Pinkerton's Weblog

Scene: The Black Gate

Aragorn rides up to the Black Gate as 10,000 Gondorian warriors mount their horses and prepare for a final battle. The King of Gondor hammers on the Gate, and hollow-sounding, far-off echoes radiate from it, chilling the hearts of everyone present.

Aragorn: "May the lord of these lands come forth, so that justice may be done upon him!"

From inside the Black Gate, the sound of a television being turned off.

TV: "Wheel! Of! Fortune!" [click]

The sounds of scuffling. A voice:

Voice: "Hold on, I'm coming, I'm coming..."

The Black Gate creaks open anticlimactically. Sauron, wearing a bright purple housecoat and sipping at coffee (on the mug: World's Worst Overlord!), pokes his head out. His eyes are bleary and 5 o'clock shadow coats the bottom of his face.

Dark Lord Sauron: "Yello?"

Sauron sees the host of 10,000 Gondorian warriors and spit-takes his coffee.

Dark Lord Sauron: "Could... could you excuse me for just a second?"

Inside come sounds of moving furniture, frantic looking and various other noises. Snippets of dialogue are heard:

"...of course I'm not kidding, go look for yourself..." "...well, I don't know why they're so pissed off, you want to go ask them?..." "...easily like 10,000 fucking guys out there! You fucking go out there!..." "I don't know where the ring of power is, do I? If I did, I'd be wearing it, wouldn't I! Stop asking stupid goddamn questions and help me look for my armor!" "...what? Why would he? You ask! That's just stupid! I -- fine!..."

The Black Gate creaks open again. Sauron creeps out, still wearing his housecoat. Various pieces of armor hang off of him -- a forearm guard, chainmail pants, a shoulder guard with a sock hanging out of it.

Sauron: "Hi. Aragorn, right?"

Aragorn: "Yes, I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, keeper of the line of Numenor and bearer of Narsil, the sword that was broken and sh--"

Sauron: "Sure, okay, great. Listen, this might sound stupid? But I was wondering if you could come back tomorrow?"

Sauron bites his lower lip and looks at Aragorn hopefully.

Aragorn: "You... you've got to be fucking kidding me."

Sauron: "Well, here's the thing. We were sort of thinking we'd attack Gondor again in a few weeks, after you guys had rebuilt a little and we'd recuperated and... well, this is all just catching me a little off-guard." [makes "crazy Mondays!" gesture] "Between you me and the Black Gate, I have got a to-do list this long I haven't even looked at. But sometimes you just need to kick back, you know? Have a little Sauron time."

Aragorn makes a "speed this along" gesture.

Sauron: "Right. Anyway. Tomorrow? I'd totally owe you next war."

Aragorn walks off back to his troops, shaking his head.

Sauron: "So... that's a no then?" [to self] "That's a no. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. I swear, it's always something..." [he storms back into Mordor] "Alright, look alive, you idiots! Apparently we're at war again!"

Sound of 40,000 orcs saying "Awwwwwwwwww!"

Sauron: "Yeah, well, tell it to Big King Reforged Sword out there. Fucking... has anyone found my breastplate?"

Robbie Jordan's Wheel O' Time

Made for a friend of mine who's a huge Robert Jordan fan. And by "made for," I of course mean "to irritate her by mocking her cherished novels." Moo hoo ha ha ha ha ha.

I am one hell of a guy.

Reading is Dead (Long Live the King)

There was a time, not too too long ago, when I absolutely devoured Stephen King novels.

(As with most popular novelists, can that help but sound a little like a guilty, red-handed confession?)

Ten years ago, when I was in high school, I blasted through King's back catalog at a rate of a novel every three days -- I read all his major novels, the Dark Tower books, the short story collections, even the Bachman books.

By the time I'd worked my way downwards to the smelly bottom of the King barrel -- somewhere around The Eye of the Dragon or Maximum Overdrive, I think -- my thirst for his particular brand of page-turning horror was more than sated. I think I read through the last couple more out of a sense of completion than anything else.

I forget which author I moved onto after that. (Though to this day I continue that habit; once I discover an author, I plough through his or her canon with an unhealthy apetite until I'm pretty much sick of them). As I kept at it, I like to think that I got better at it; reading, I mean. The number of books I'd read grew year to year. As my knowledge of literature began to grow, my tastes even started to mature a little.

Eventually my love of the written word took me to college, where I studied english and, for the better part of four years, submerged myself in those enormous dusty tomes of strong intellectual fiber (read: the really fucking boring ones) that you love for someone to notice on your bookshelf (doubly so if there's pencil marks and notes in the margins).

After graduation, it occured to me that I'd been digesting a steady stream of fiction at a rate of several books a week for years. I was, in fact, sick to death of fiction. From there I moved to non-fiction: history. Science. Politics. Essays. I learned a lot, or at least enough to sound intelligent enough to fool people into thinking I wasn't as dense as I am (sort of the point of reading a lot of that stuff in the first place, if we were being completely honest with ourselves).

Some time last year I stopped reading altogether. I'd run the circuit, as it were. It was as if I'd been working my way through a maze and suddenly hit a dead end. I just stopped wanting to read. No authors interested me. No subjects sparked desire. I'd fallen out of love with reading.

In an effort to rediscover what was so fun about fiction in the first place, I've lately gone back to the absolute basics: comic books and trashy fiction. This weekend -- after a hiatus of ten years, and having sampled from as wide a variety that literature has to offer -- I once again returned to that Master of the Macabre, Mr. Stephen King.

I admit it: there might have even been a small sneer on my upper lip, perhaps; sort of a snotty "Prove yourself, Steve" arrogance. I'd read classics, after all. I wasn't some 16 year old okie. I was motherfuckin' cultured, motherfucker. King had his work cut out for him, clearly.

I decided to start with a $5 used copy of From a Buick 8 this past Saturday evening, picking it only on the basis that it was his latest one. I can tell you right now that the premise is kind of silly; that there exist quite gaping plot holes; that things don't resolve terribly well; that King's basically squeezed 400-plus pages out of what should have been a short story.

I can tell you all of this because I read it yesterday and today. Every last page.

I started reading it last night and finished it this afternoon, and I don't think I put it down once, except to sleep. For the trashy pulp veneer, for all the creaky premises, for all the unsatisfactory conclusions, Stephen King, it turns out, is really really really good at what he does. I didn't even have time to decide whether or not I liked it until I was done, because I was unable to put it down long enough to step back from it.

Stephen King, most likely because he's been doing this for a while, has the equivelent of an internal stopwatch ticking away in his books, I swear he must. Because just about every time I started to think, "Well, not bad, but maybe I should put this down and get something done..." he'd throw in one of those sentences like: Neither one of them knew that, within the space of ten minutes, only one would still be alive, and I'd think, "Crap, one of them's gonna die in ten minutes? I'd better read the next chapter." And so on until the last page.

It's not art. It's not literature. But a crappy book about possessed cars re-ignited my passion for the written word more effectively than a bookshelf full of dusty classics.

Why? I had to keep reading. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. And really: if you can't say that about your fiction, you're not reading the right fiction. I don't care how highly touted it is. It's the most award-winning doorstop in existence.

Late last year, Stephen King won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. At the time, it seemed like a tawdry publicity stunt, and I would have been the first to tsk-tsk the dumbing down of our poor culture, that we'd give a respected award to a "popular" author.

I'm not sure if I still think that. I know for a fact there are more accomplished writers than Stephen King. I admit he basically just serves up the equivelant of a cheeseburger, year after year. But after he reminded me why I liked reading, when so many others could not, I'll say this.

That's one tasty fuckin' cheeseburger, innit?

A belated congratulations to Stephen King on his award.