Wednesday, November 26, 2014

PTERODACTIPUS!!!







Pterodactipus



By Anthony Greer



INT. ECONOMY CLASS – DAY

BILLY, a cute boy of 7, sits next to his MOM and a NERVOUS FLYER.  Billy is playing with his toy dinosaurs:  a T-rex and a pterodactyl.  He has the T-rex catch the flying pterodactyl.

BILLY
                   Nom, nom, nom!

Billy throws the pterodactyl and it hits the nervous flyer.  Nervous Flyer jumps.
    
BILLY’S MOM
                   Billy!

BILLY (innocently)
                   Sorry.

NERVOUS FLYER
                   It’s okay, it’s okay.

EXT. AIR – DAY

Plane flies in the sky.

INT. ECONOMY CLASS – DAY

Flamboyantly gay flight attendant, KYLE, approaches Billy’s row.

KYLE
                   Hey gurls, hey! Do you want snacks?

BILLY’S MOM
                   Thank you, dear.

KYLE
                   Oh—my—God, I like, totes luvs that dress!

BILLY’S MOM
                   Thanks, doll!

KYLE (to Billy)
                   Ooh, and what are those?

BILLY
                   Dinosaurs, you troglodyte.

Kyle chucks a bag a nuts in his face, misses and hits the nervous flyer.

NERVOUS FLYER
                   Ow! Watch it!

KYLE
                   Sorry, my nuts are lethal.

CHRIS BROWN, a passenger in the row behind them, high-fives Kyle the gay flight attendant.

CHRIS
                   Yeah, gurl, get it!

They hit turbulence.

NERVOUS FLYER
                   What was that?!

EXT. AIR – DAY

Plane flies in the sky.  A winged-shadow appears.  There’s a disconcerting noise.

INT. ECONOMY CLASS – DAY

OLD WOMAN screams.  CAPTAIN’S VOICE is heard over the intercom.

CAPTAIN’S VOICE
It’s all right, everyone.  We’re encountering a bit of turbulence.  Please stay seated with your seatbelts on until we are in the clear.

KYLE
Okay everyone—heyyyyy, trayziepoos in the upright and locked position.

CHRIS
                   Can I get another wine?

Plane shakes erraticly.

Nervous flyer screams.  Billy drops his dinosaurs and unbuckles his seatbelt.

BILLY’S MOM
                   Billy!

Close-up of Billy grabbing his dinosaurs.  A shadow appears over his face where the sun used to be.  He turns and sees a dark figure in the plane window, and then a yellow eye opens.  Billy hesitates for a minute.

NERVOUS FLYER turns and screams.

EXT. AIR – DAY

The PTERODACTIPUS, a half pterodactyl, half octopus monstrosity flails it’s monstrous tentacles, wrapping them about the body of the plane.

INT. PLANE – DAY

The passengers scream.

CHRIS
                   Oh no, not a pterodactipus!

Chris continues to sip wine.

EXT. AIR – DAY

The pterodactipus crushes the plane and breaks it two.  We see several people falling out of the plane, including Chris in his seat still drinking wine.

The Nervous flyer, who magically undid his/her seatbelt, hangs onto the seat for dear life.  A tentacle bitch-slaps them, grabs ahold of them and then throws it in the pterodactyls mouth. It then throws the halves of the plane and disappears through the space-time portal that magically appears in the sky.

EXT. FOREST CLEARING – DAY

The two dinosaur figurines are on the round.  The T-rex on the ground, with the pterodactyl on top of it.


Fade to opening credits. 

Monday, November 17, 2014

What is happening to the Lobby Bar, from someone who works there

Yes, the rumors are true. 

The Lobby Bar on 916 E. Pike is closing on November 22nd while the owners, Curtis Bigelow and Paul Villa, search for a new location to continue serving our community.  

After five years in business, the close is not due to a lack of profit or interest.  The landlords of the building made a deal with another company over a year ago to acquire the space and the lot next to year for approximately $9,000 more a month than what the Lobby bar was currently paying.  The landlords did not inform the owners of Lobby were not notified that they wouldn’t be able to sign a new lease until recently, leaving them no choice but to go on hiatus. 


While disappointed in our landlord’s utter lack of respect, we would much prefer all of you to recall all that we have accomplished in the last five years.  Curtis and Paul started out as two entrepreneurs that admittedly knew little about running a bar and, with the help of GM Dave Orton, turned Lobby into one of the most successful establishments on Capitol Hill (that would continue to flourish if the circumstances were different). 

Curtis and Paul have allowed for a staff full of artists, chefs, stylists, photographers, writers, musicians, actors, etc. to have flexible schedules so that they might pursue their dreams and become a family.  Our friends, loved ones, and regulars have become extended branches of the Lobby tree we are hope to continue those build and grow those relationships during our hiatus.  We would also like to thank our amazing customers who have made the Lobby Bar feel like a second home.  We couldn’t have done it without you for these last five years, and we wouldn’t have wanted to.

Wherever we go, we’ll continue the mission we started five years ago, to LOBBY and support LGBT causes and organizations.  We’re proud of our record and being the go-to space for significant events like the repeal of DADT (pictures of that night are on display at the MOHAI), approval of R74, and the repeal of DOMA (we joined the amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court).  Curtis and Paul even held events in their own home to further promote these causes.

Being here since almost Day 1, and I've seen all of the Lobby's transitions first-hand.  The people I've met there and the lessons I've learned have helped me grow in more ways than I can even fathom, and I wouldn't trade any of that for the world.  These people (both staff AND customers) have supported me through break-ups, make-ups, that one time I moved to San Francisco for three weeks, and five pride weekends when all you want to do is hide in the walk-in and sob until it's over.  Dave and Tyson didn't yell at me that time when I got high (off shift) and ate their entire pizza, and no one will forget the awesomeness that was all of our employee parties (though I doubt we remember all of them, either.)


I nearly cried yesterday during my final Sunday shift when I realized that some of our Sunday regulars are people that I may never see again.  We will be having to endure that sort of sadness all week, which will culminate on Saturday night when we as a staff will work all together again for the last time.  Unlike every other Lobby occasion, there will be a $5 cover on Saturday.  All of the proceeds go to the staff as a gesture of kindness on behalf of the owners of Lobby bar.  We really hope to see all of you there. 



In closing, it sucks that we have to move, but things happen for a reason and we’re looking forward to a bright future. 

My Kickstarter! Anthony wrote books--and you can be in them!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/753408764/anthony-wrote-books-and-you-can-be-in-them



Monday, November 10, 2014

The Messengers: Chapter 1

I've had a few people inquiring about what I'm ACTUALLY publishing (besides the blog, of course), so instead of a nonsensical blog post about randomness, here is the first chapter of what I've decided will be my debut novel after a few final things are taken care of:  copy-editing, more marketing, and an actual cover that someone with far more skill than I could ever have making it.  The font will be different as well.  Okay-enjoy!



















1.   Robert




Robert Baselton had a hard time looking at his girlfriend without staring at the sable haze of the messenger looming in the hallway shadows.  Its eyes were vacant in a pair of harrowing sockets as dark as a starless sky and its aphotic skull protruded through a black mist that filled the hall.  Its presence could paralyze the bravest of souls if they’d cast their eyes on it for the first time, but Robert knew that the message it’d bear was worse than the messenger itself.  Someone else was going to die.
“What are you thinking?” Julia asked, pleading for a way to start a conversation.
Robert spent most of dinner facing the lukewarm meatloaf and mashed potatoes that his mother made the day prior before going to her second job.  He'd taken three bites before feeding the rest to the still silence in the room.  It was hard to eat while knowing that he was about to receive the same message that he'd received twice already.
“R… Robert?” Julia’s hand quivered until she hid it underneath the table.  She kept her other hand busy portioning an even ratio of meatloaf and mashed potatoes on her fork.  She raised it to her mouth but didn't eat it.  Instead she kept looking at him, waiting for some semblance of a response.
“R—”
“Nothing.  I’m not thinking of anything.”
As Julia grimaced her color paled to a ghostliness counteracted only by her soft red lips.  She took a bite of her meatloaf and slowly chewed it, and he could see that she was running through her rolodex of potential conversation starters.  Robert only hoped that her new subject would be less mundane.  He had no desire to talk any further about classes or school.
“Pastor Gordon wants me to teach the kids' Sunday school lesson this week,” she said with a smile.  She was always smiling when she was doing charity work.  Tonight her philanthropic duties involved filling the emptiness that usually accompanied his meal after the blur of lipstick and heels he referred to as “mom” left for work. 
He didn’t usually mind Julia’s company.  After all, Julia was much nicer to look at than a vacant rickety chair or the messenger.  Her big brown eyes and sandy-brown hair reminded him of a Disney princess, but he was hardly the prince to give Julia her happily ever after, and tonight was no fairytale. 
“Are you even listening?” she asked as her smile faded.
“That's, uh, that's great.”  He forced himself into an oafish, cheesy grin to feign an emotion that he couldn’t feel.  He pondered how much the presence of the messenger had effected their conversation.  Probably not as much as it should have.
“...Yeah...”  Her wide, hopeful eyes begged for him to inquire more about it. 
He took another bite of his meatloaf and kept chewing it long after he no longer needed to.  Even after it dissolved into nothingness in his mouth he continued to chew on his own saliva.
“You, uh, would you like to go?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“You know, um, go see the lesson?”
He put his hand over his mouth and mumbled as he swallowed.  “I've, uh… I've got a thing that day.”
“Oh, 0yes, of course.”  He watched as a hand reached into her throat and took the words right out of her.  “A thing.”
More silence.  At any moment someone’s death clock is going to tick toward zero.  Who will the third victim be?
Julia stood up abruptly and blushed upon catching his attention.  She carefully picked her plate up from the table so that none of the contents would slip off.  She approached the garbage can and dumped the majority of the meatloaf out before turning on the sink faucet.
“Don't,” Robert said, “I'll wash it.”  You’re okay, Julia.  You’ve done your good deeds for the day.
“No, that's all right.”  Her voice was barely audible over the sink.  She rinsed her dish and then put it in the dishwasher next to other plates that had been victims of previous awkward dinners at the Baselton residence.  “I'm gonna go.  I should get to bed soon.”
The microwave clock read 8:23.
“...K...”
She lingered by the sink, just a few feet from the front door.  He felt her prolonged stare as he sat with his feet glued to the dated sepia tiled floor.  He couldn’t get up without acknowledging the other presences in the room.  The house was busy that night.  The spirits had outnumbered those that were living.
“See you at school tomorrow?”  Julia was still there, bearing the same expression that his father gave his mother when he was alive; a pair of doe-like eyes, widened and watery, quietly begging for an exchange of affection.  The Baselton family was known for consisting of two kinds of people:  the budding socialites who brought families and friends together, and the wallflowers who shut the world out.  He and his mother were one in the same.
Julia muttered a meek “bye” and crossed through the front door.  He saw her silhouette stop at the base of the front porch stairs, but then she trudged down the steps and disappeared from view.
Robert found himself alone with his cold meatloaf and the messenger, with nothing but Julia’s car pulling out of the driveway to drown out the silence.  He stabbed his fork into the butchered slice of once rectangular meat like an explorer would with a flag on uncharted ground.  There was no longer a reason to feign enjoying his meal.  He never liked meatloaf, but it was easier to pretend that he’d eaten it than it was to suggest to his mother that she make something else.  Her night shifts made her irritable (not that she was in a good mood before).  Even so, Robert would have preferred her company over what currently filled the house.
The messenger’s skull became more prominent than it had been when Julia was in the room.  It was protruding from its shadowy haven, covering the entire hallway entrance with its sheer mass.  The outlines of the shadow swayed the way a black cloak would if met with a sullen gust of wind.
The muffled sound of the fridge cooling coils covered the silence mustered up between him and the messenger, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his awful night having a staring contest.  Robert knew he had to approach it, but when he did he would be told of another future funeral.
With a deep breath, Robert rose to his feet and took a step in the direction of Death’s courier.  His foot pressed slowly on the kitchen tile.  He could hear every crease in his shoe, as if he was walking out of a movie theatre that had been littered with buttered popcorn.  With each step his pulse became a little louder.  He wanted to grip his heart before approaching the Specter out of the fear that it could reach through his ribcage and rip it from his chest.
He had to look almost straight up at the swarthy skull before him.  He trapped in his throat whatever courage he had left and spoke as bravely as he could.  “Are you gonna tell me or what?”
The messenger peered down at him and revealed the traces of a smirk and charcoal, rotted teeth. 
A bee-like buzz overcame the silence and kitchen lights flashed and then went out.  The entire house darkened as if a power surge had tripped the breaker, and Robert was left with nothing but the ethereal cerulean glow of the moon to guide him.  The messenger didn’t like his attitude.
 His heart bounced against his bones and goose bumps ran up his skin as if an icy finger caressed the discs of his spine.  Robert took a step back from the obscurity that he could no longer see.  Then he took a second, allowing his feet to be coated in the ghostly glow of the Sun’s cousin.
He spun around to acknowledge the transparent teenaged girl and the old woman that he'd had his back turned to during the meal.  The moon’s glow coated them with a set of hazy outlines, emphasizing their bleak realities:  they were no longer a teenaged girl and an old woman, but the first two victims of crimes he’d yet to understand.
“Do you really want another person to go through this?” he asked them.
The two remained as silent as they'd always been.  The girl had her face on the floor and whimpered quietly to herself.  The old woman's mouth was slightly ajar and the corners of her lips turned downward. 
The hair on the nape of his neck stood straight on end as the messenger glided behind him.  His body froze in its icy embrace, as if its frosted boney fingers were reaching through his chest and pricking fractals of his soul.  The skull contorted downward until the messenger’s maggot-encrusted jaw was nearly pressed up against his ear.  It spoke in a guttural tone that should have been difficult to comprehend, but he heard its voice loud and clear.  “Murder.”
Robert shuddered.  He didn't want to look at Death’s courier—not when it was so close to him.  God only knew what sort of unholy displeasure resided within the twin pools of finality where eyes should have been.  They would scorch an image into his mind that would resurface every time he closed his eyes until the day Death came to add him to his registrar.
“Who is going to be murdered?”
The chills went away.  The lights flickered back on.  The courier had relayed the message and left him alone to deal with it.
Robert focused on the old woman.  The girl seemed inconsolable, so if anything the old woman was most likely his best bet.  The last time he'd received the “murder” message the girl didn't do anything but sob.  He spent twenty minutes trying to get her to speak but to no avail.  Maybe the old woman, being the more recent of the two victims, would say something.
He got within a foot of her transparent body.  She grimaced and hid behind her heavy pink shawl.  If she wasn’t dead, she would have looked amusing with it draped around her morning gown with beige slippers to match, but Robert could find no humor when peering into the eyes of the deceased.  “Who is going to be murdered?”
The old woman gave him a blank stare, as if he asked her the question in a foreign language.
“You must know something.”
She remained quiet, but her eyes grew more somber while the girl continued to cry.  It had been a week since he last pushed for either of them to communicate with him.  After all of his efforts, he was beginning to ponder whether or not they even could.
“Do you really want someone else to die?”
As soon as he spoke a tear rolled from her right eye. She faded away before he could protest.  He motioned toward the girl, but her histrionics had overtaken her and she vanished before he could reach her.
For the first time all day he was alone.  Julia had left him awkwardly, his mother wouldn’t be home until the early morning, his father would never be home again, the messenger spoke of a murder-to-be, and the spirits had failed to be useful.  Without company or a desire to eat any more, he left the kitchen and entered his living room where the walls were stripped of photos of a once happy family.  His mother had taken most of the Baselton family photos down after the accident.  She preferred to pretend that his father hadn’t existed, rather than look at the past and dwell on better times.

He turned the T.V. on, where for the next several hours images and storylines blurred together in his mind.  It was always easier to ignore what wasn’t in his control:  another benign day of school ahead, his decaying relationships with everyone around him, and the knowledge that someone was about to die and there was nothing that he could do about it.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

5 other ways to get use out of your gym membership


Is a deltoid a muscle or a geometric shape that we forgot about while sleeping through high school math? Some ponder this, and yet so many of us have gym memberships!  Well, in order to re-inspire the masses to go, here are 5 ways to get the most out of your monthly dues:


1. Practice your 'O' Face


Almost true story:
Long ago, the brothers of Delta Upsilon Delta Eta held a meeting after they were informed that they made some of the most unattractive faces while pleasuring their ladies (or fellow brothers).  They communally discovered that, while pumping iron in front of a mirror, they have an opportunity to see why they were receiving one-star reviews on several of grindr Yelp.  From there spurned the underground club where D.U.D.E.s could practice their ‘O’s while in a safe, completely desexualized environment: the gym.  There, their gym fellow buddies could grade their ‘O’s while watching them pump iron, heave, and grunt (also entirely non-sexually) while wearing those shirts that show tasteful side boob.








2. Watch other practice their 'O' Face 

Does your crush happen to go to a gym that you work out at 3 times a year week?  Watch them lift weights in the mirror to judge whether their ‘O’ face and noise are something you can withstand.  If not, you have just saved yourself an awkward first encounter, dinner, drinks, 2nd dinner, 3rd date, meeting of the family, an oath to wait til marriage, and then an incredibly disappointing honeymoon.  Or, if you’re already one of the fellow ‘O’ facers gym buddies, watch and salivate and wait for the day they have too many shots of tequila and just want to “cuddle.”








3. Stave off the My Fitness Pal Guilt

Oh, sh*t
Have you ever reached that point (noon) in the day when you’ve already run out of your daily intakes of calories because, goddammit, that “healthy” smoothie was 600 calories.  Ok, it wasn’t a healthy smoothie, it was a Dairy Queen blizzard.  Okay, so you ate two of them… and then a Big Mac.  Pretending to go on the treadmill for 45 minutes will burn those calories that will allow you that.  Just set that treadmill for a 45 minute mile, enter in my fitness pal that you had an intense exercise session, and presto!  You have earned enough calories to consume that 2nd Big Mac that you were eating while watching the treadmill move.


4.        Have a Fear of God (also known as the personal trainer)

When I first started working out regularly (shut up everyone that has ever met me) I got a personal trainer, a lady who actively participated—and regularly won—fitness competitions.  She was a nice person and a damn good trainer, but I just wasn’t ready to make the health and fitness commitments she suggested for me.  For about an hour twice a week she threw a leash on me and made me her bitch until I was fully sore and a little deader inside.  She also advised me to not eat sweets, which of course didn't happen.  I’d secretly keep a pack of M&Ms in my gym locker and, when she wasn’t looking, I’d consume a couple of my candy-coated concubines.  If she ever found out, I imagine that the scene would’ve been vaguely familiar to that part that Lucy Lawless appears in during the movie “Eurotrip.”


5.       Meet Orv


In every gym, in every city, all across the world, Orv is there waiting for you.  For whatever reason, every public work out facility has the quintessential naked old guy, with more wrinkles than Einstein had brain cells and less shame than my grandmother in public (read the gastric explosion).  No one truly knows where Orv comes from, why there are so many of him, or why he’s always naked, but this smiling old sycophant is always there to welcome you on the way to your locker… just be weary and don’t step on his balls on your walk by. 







Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Not with a bang, but a gastric explosion

Does anybody have a heart-warming story about how they were born?

Photo courtesy of pixabay.com
Are you the child that came into the world as an early Christmas gift?  Did your parents, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, cradle you in their arms in the hospital room while a gentle snowfall coated the streets outside in Winter Wonderland?  Does your father recant the story of how he drove 100mph on the freeway from Portland to Seattle just to make it in time for your birth?    

The story of how I came into the world is not quite like any of that, but is still a heart-warming tale that some will never forget... no matter how much they probably want to. 

From my understanding, the story of my birth goes a little something like this…

“I can’t believe this little bastard is still in there,” my mom probably said as she and my grams went to the store on October 24th, 1986.  I was three weeks overdue, and likely grasping onto whatever tubing I could find in there in order to avoid those chilly New York autumns.

In the grocery store filled with people buying bags of snickers and kit-kats in the prelude to Halloween, a sadistic smile grew on my grandmother’s face whilst in the produce section.  My mom knew what was coming, so she made sure to distance herself.  She needed to stave off the embarrassment of dealing with a woman who gets joy from letting out the most voracious of farts that you could ever fathom curdling at the base of your nostrils.

No, seriously, my grandmother is evil.  She’s the kind of woman that will roll up and lock the car windows before letting one rip through the back of her jeans to leave the rest of us clawing at the glass, not unlike in a horror movie when someone’s just released the zombie virus in an enclosed lab.  The smell could make mashed potatoes brown instantly and cause budding spring flowers to wilt and die horrible deaths.  When she farts in the water, whole ecosystems turn belly up—not because gases are poisonous, but because the scent is so rancid that is causes sea creatures to lose the will to live. 

The worst ones are the quiet ones.  She calls them her “silent killers.”  The loud ones are always good for a laugh, but also allow for the masses to get a running start.  The silent ones can’t be heard though.  It isn’t until the green mist emerges from between those cheeks that you realize that you’ve got just seconds escape, and on that particular day, she was saving an especially gruesome one that was sure to clear out the store and rot all produce within three hundred feet of her. 

But as that killer emerged, there was something my grandmother could not expect, and I imagine that her face was a little something like this: 


“Shelly,” she called to my mother with a set of widened eyes and sweat forming on her brow.  

“Shelly!”

“Don’t talk to me.  You’re disgusting,” my mother sneered from a safe distance.

“We need to leave—now,” grams replied.

“Oh good,” my mom replied with a wisp of satisfaction.  “You can smell your own mess, then?”

“No…” grams said, still sweating and horrified.  “Shelly, it wasn’t a fart.  I thought it was but… I just shat my pants, and it’s dripping down my leg.”  She was in shorts that day, btw. 

My mother looked at my grandmother incredulously for a moment, piecing together the information in her mind.  This forty-year-old woman just shat herself in the middle of a grocery store.

“Shelly,” she pleaded.  “We’ve got to go now! I can feel it trickling.”

My mother should have been mortified.  She should have grabbed my grandmother and rushed her out of a grocery that neither of them could dignifiedly enter again (ha!!! As if anyone in this family has dignity).  Instead, my mother let out a gregarious laugh—a laugh that was so hard that it caused her stomach to squeeze and her abdomen to tense, before she had a horrifying realization of her own.  My mother had laughed so hard at my grams’ shart that she broke into labor.

A few hours later on October 25th, I was born unto this world:  an allegedly cute, very bald baby.  Unbeknownst to that poor past me, I was the byproduct of bastardization and sharting.  But hey, no one’s perfect, right?  That’s why my blog is called “Slightly Off-Kilter.”  Normies don’t have a life like mine.  If they did, they certainly wouldn’t admit to it.

Does anyone else have an amusing birth story?  I’d love to believe that I’m not alone out here…

To visit my website: anthony-greer.com