Dirk Destroyer - The Final Insultment

  Here it is, the HIGHLY ANTICIPATED (if two people following this thread constitute high anticipation,) conclusion to Dirk Destroyer's Less Destructive Brother.  What's happened so far?
   Mostly political cheap shots and cigar innuendo.  (Wow!  That sounds painful.)
   And now the end...

 Chapter 27

Mysterious Ending – That Is, Until You Read It

I was back on the couch in So-Ho. The twins must have gotten up because the futon was empty, and I could hear them moving around in the kitchen. Dirk was playing around with a magic box on his desk.

“Check this out,” he said. He manipulated a small item on the desk, and suddenly there were two people inside the magic box and they were singing – which would probably not be my reaction if Dirk had imprisoned me in a magic box.

My goodness they were singing! I’d never heard anything like it before.

“Who are these musical people you’ve imprisoned?” I asked.

“Steve and Eydie,” said Dirk.

“Steve and Eydie would be musical gods on Two!” I said.

“I know,” said Dirk, manipulating the magic box in such a way that Steve and Eydie shut up. “That’s why I had to leave. Maybe tonight we’ll go hear some real music.”

“We could play some Fassentinker,” I said.

“I don’t see how,” said Dirk. “You lost the scratchwing.”

“I lost the scratchwing?”

“Yeah, and I don’t know how I’m ever going to find another one. I told you to hold onto it.”

“That wasn’t the real reason you asked me to hold onto it,” I said.

There was a suspicious gleam in Dirk’s eye. I checked my fanny pack. There was no fish stick. What did that mean?

“If I didn’t know you better…” said Dirk.

Maybe it wasn’t the Stevens twins in the kitchen, maybe it was…

Mage-e-not came in bare-chested. I was glad to see him, but not like that. He held up a wet ball of shredded cloth. “Your magic cleaning box ate my shirt.”

Dirk looked at me. “Tomorrow we go find you a place of your own.”

I nodded absent-mindedly. Mage-e-not was here, but what about…

Something crashed in the kitchen. “Broken dish,” squawked Swampy.

“Oopsie,” exclaimed the voice I most wanted to hear.

“Tomorrow,” I agreed with Dirk. Would we be looking for a short-term lease, or one for the next several thousand years? I knew where Ono’s immortality switch was, and where mine was as well.

Whichever we decided, we’d live at the same setting.

   What - that's it?  I wrote the stupid thing and I think that was a lame ending.  It's a good thing I didn't charge anybody for this.  Bundle up these posts and give them to someone you can't stand this Christmas.

   All I can say is the vid better be good.

Dirk Destroyer Part 45 Chapter 25

Contrary to Elmer’s nature he’s ignoring his younger brother’s instructions and is trying to do something clever.

This rarely ends well.

Chapter 25

Dude

Dude had told me not to come back to the school, and not to play with time again, but as glorious as Dude was, not to mention his mop, I had more information now. After all, Dirk bargained with Dude. Maybe I could too. I had the greatest power of human creative power working in my favor.

The power of Desperate Male inSecurity DMS™.

That didn’t tell me how I was going to sway Dude, but I had hints, like a fish stick in my fanny pack, and the origin of my fanny pack as well. As I surfaced into the school of amazing stuff, I headed right for the kitchen. There was only one way I knew to call Dude. I wasn’t at all surprised when after twisting the knob, that I saw fish sticks come out the spigot. I filled my fanny pack with fresh, and wholesome fish sticks, and watched as hundreds more cascaded onto Dude’s once clean floor.

The sticks started to pile up. Maybe this wouldn’t work.

I tried a fish stick. It was good. Was that cilantro and basil? Who ever thought of adding that to a fish stick deserved to live in the Celestial realm. I could probably skip Dirk’s gold-digging trip and make plenty of money making fish sticks with cilantro and basil.

I had a couple more. Oh yes, there were all sorts of things to learn in the school of amazing stuff.

“A-hem.” I’d never heard a-hem put so eloquently. I shut off the knob. I was up to my knees in fish sticks.

“I’m waiting for it.”

“My excuse?” I asked.

The custodian nodded regally.

“I need your help,” I said, “and you didn’t tell me how to contact you.”

“You need my help.” Dude pulled two of his magic silver squares from his back pocket, vigorously swung them in the air, and they became shiny silver bags. He handed one to me, and I gladly began gathering fish sticks, though I was careful to only take the ones that weren’t touching the floor. “I remember banning you from the school until you were old enough.”

“You did,” I agreed, “and you were really convincing, but that was before I heard the moral law of something-or-other, and heard a story about a tobacco thief named Dude.”

“Dirk!” said Dude in a vaulting tone full of grace and frustration. “It’s the moral code of causation.”

“That’s the one,” I said.

“I don’t see how that helps you,” said Dude, filling his bag, also from non-floor-dwelling fish sticks, handing me the bag, and then flicking his mop of glory at the ones that remained eliminating them instantly. “According to the code, you just caused the waste of many high-quality fish sticks.”

“Yes,” I said, “but how did that come about?”

Dude stared through me as if I was made of glass and shook his head. “Dirk said you were stupid,” he said forthrightly. “It’s the only reason I agreed to let him introduce you to the school.”

“You never should have let him give me the fanny pack.”

“He told you?”

“I guessed,” I said as smugly as I could manage. “I didn’t know for certain until you just confirmed it.”

“What do you know?”

“I know that my fanny pack doesn’t follow all the other laws of this world. I couldn’t pick up this mixer,” I said, trying and failing to pick up the mixer, “and take it with me back to my world. But if it was in one of your silver bags, or in my fanny pack…”

“I’m not telling you anything,” said Dude.

“And you’re also not stopping me.”

“What?”

“I am going into the nurses’ office, and I am going to twist that dial of second chances.”

“No,” said Dude, but it was no longer the melodic authoritative voice he used before, but a melodic pleading and desperate voice. “You have more moral feeling that Dirk, even if you aren’t very bright. Try to see how much moral trouble the dial of time could cause.”

“I’m just trying to go back and save my friends.”

“Save your friends? You’re not going ahead in time to get tomorrow’s race results?”

“I wasn’t planning on it, but…”

“No!” shouted Dude, and the sound of his voice was like a chorus of pissed and anxious angels.

“I know I can do this, Dude,” I said. “There was a day-old fish stick in my fanny pack this morning. I don’t know how this pack works, but I believe it means I can succeed in going back in time and saving my friends.”

Dude hung his glorious golden head. “It is the fanny pack of possibilities, so yes, it is possible to go back, but there is no guarantee that you will save your friends.”

“You could help me.”

“Why should I do such a foolish thing?”

“Because if you help me, I will promise not to do two things.”

“What are the two things?”

“I will not go ahead in time to see tomorrow’s race results.”

“And?”

“And I will not tell Dirk about the dial of time – or second chances which is what I call it.”

“Dirk!” squeaked Dude in a squeak that only a heavenly mouse or Celestial Custodian about to pee himself might make. “With the dial of time, Dirk might…”

“Do anything,” I finished in not nearly so glorious a tone as Dude might, but sometimes you have to nail down your bargaining position.

“I never should have gathered tobacco on Two that day. I don’t understand why this school is non-smoking!”

“Are you asking me?”

Dude started laughing. I wasn’t sure why he was laughing. I was suspected the joke might be on me, but celestial laughter is contagious so I laughed right along with him.

“All right, I’ll help you. And you can keep the fish sticks; your friends are probably getting hungry in relative time.”

I thought about asking him to define relative time, but instead described my situation, and as he told me to hurry up several times, I won’t relate all that here. I don’t know why people think I go on and on with things. I think I just say what needs to be said, but then somebody calls me a bore and somebody else calls me stupid.

You know what I call stupid? People who call other people stupid, that’s what I call stupid! Maybe I don’t always get right to the point, but that’s no excuse to… stupidify me.

I’m thinking as fast as I can, you know!

When I finished my story, which I didn’t think was too long, or contained useless detail, Dude shook his head.

“You should just give up,” he said.

“I’m not going to give up.” I wished I could think of some way of saying ‘give up’ other than just echoing Dude’s ‘give up.’ I know I sounded like a parrot, and I was feeling sensitive about how Dude was looking down on me just because he was millions of years old and his boots shone like sunlight on a warm spring day.

“See if you can understand what I’m saying,” said Dude very slowly.

I wanted to hit him in the nose, but I just nodded instead.

“You’ve moved progressively through time – the way you ordinarily do. You know about that, right?”

Nod.

“But you’ve also moved trans-dimensionally. Do you know what that means?”

Nod.

“I doubt it,” Dude muttered beatifically. Then he shook his head as if he wasn’t going to go on.

“Dirk will love that dial,” I said.

“You can’t go back in your body!” Dude shouted.

“Oh,” I said, trying desperately to look smarter than Dude thought I was. “I’ve heard something about this. It’s called a time paradox, right?”

“A time paradox?” Dude started giggling in an entirely masculine and awe-inspiring way. “How did you learn to read – from pulp science fiction?”

“No.”

“Don’t try to be smart,” Dude warned me. “You do stupid well. Stay with what you know.”

I wondered what would happen if I hit Dude with his mop of glory.

“You can go back in time, but you have to avoid yourself. You can’t join with the you from before. That’s because of… Just believe me. Think of it as a rule and breaking the rule will cause an explosion that will kill everyone you ever met.”

“Including you?”

“Of course not me,” said Dude as if that was obvious.

“Okay,” I said, using that So-Ho expression once again. I could see how that could become a habit. I wondered why we didn’t say, okay on Two. “I’ve got it.”

“You’re sure?”

“You’re worried about us?”

“Actually,” said Dude, “it would be convenient for me if you did kill everyone you ever met. Unfortunately, if I don’t do everything I can to prevent it, the moral code of causation will bite me big time.”

“Well said.” I enjoyed complementing Dude. He obviously hated it, but he couldn’t complain about it. Maybe complements from a lower life form is like receiving mud pies from two-year-olds. You know the gesture is meant well, but the last thing you want is a pile of excrement-filled mud in your hand, and then half the time the kid expects you to eat it.

I considered staying around and complementing Dude the rest of the day. After all, the time dial meant I wasn’t in a rush, but I was also anxious to get this done, and I knew the fish sticks weren’t getting any fresher.

Dude led me into the nurses’ office. “How much time you need?”

“I’ll just turn it until I…”

“No, no, no,” said Dude as he might have to a wet dog about to jump on his bed. “I don’t want your hands on this control.”

“About a day.”

“About a day? You can’t be more specific?”

“Well, it’s mid-morning now, right?”

“In So-Ho, New York City? Yes,” Dude answered. “It’s ten twelve Anti-meridian.”

I pretended that I had an idea what that meant. “Yup,” I said. “About a day.”

Dude sighed and turned the dial.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think Elmer just had a minor triumph. Will Elmer continue to succeed or will he return to form and end up rescuing Swampy or even Youtickubus Akwar (shudder,) instead of Ono? Or maybe this time he’ll end up in the real oblivion that Dirk has been avoiding for thousands of years. Tune in next Friday for the exciting conclu… (don't overstate it,) for the conclusion to Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother.

Of course it won’t be the last post of the book because I can never leave well enough alone.

There are those who accuse me of drawing everything I write from The Tick (especially Volition Man.)  What libel! (or is it slander?)  (Oh, and any resemblance between Dude and Plunger Man is entirely co-incidental.)

The Sleepy Prune with Large Calves

The question most writers dread is the one they are asked the most often. “Where do you get your ideas?”

Now I haven’t been asked that question yet, but I’m hoping that someday I will be famous enough that someone will. When that day comes, I WILL HAVE AN ANSWER!!

I get them in the shower. It’s usually when the water is hottest, and steam fills the bathroom. In other words it’s when a computer or tape recorder would corrode, paper would wilt and when ink would run.

I get them when the lights are out and I’m so close to asleep that I’m not sure if I’m even awake. It’s when my legs are half under the covers and half walking a woodsy trail I walked when I was a child. In other words, it’s when I can’t possibly get up and fire up the desk top.

I get them when I’m walking, far from home and only when I have no mobile device, pen or paper. It’s when a mockingbird or noisy brook is telling me a story with the kind of magic that will break if I breathe too hard. In other words, it’s when I am absolutely certain that I can take nothing from my experience but memories.

It’s also usually raining.

So when I’m in the shower, or about to fall asleep, or walking by a brook, I do my best to remember the brilliant idea.

And I usually forget most of it.

Muses, being frisky sorts, love giving writers – or at least wannabe writers, glimpses and teases, without any possibility to them getting the entire picture down in print.

Or maybe they just want us to be clean, well rested, and properly exercised (but not exorcised.)

No – I think they’re just frisky.

Muses are allergic to the practical. Muses want to haunt the writer, not give dictation. They want you to forget your dentist appointment on Tuesday, and that you need to make a deposit in your checking account by 3PM to prevent the check you wrote to the Mystic Order of Arachnid Vigilance (my favorite civic organization,)

from bouncing. They want your entire attention, all the time; because if you stop listening, that’s the moment they’ll whisper their best stuff – too low to hear.

So now you know why writers step out in traffic, zone out at dinner parties, and wear outfits that were obviously chosen at random. We’re paying attention to another world, a world of ideas populated by practical jokesters. Our laptops are crammed with thousands of files – most of them shorter than a paragraph or two, waiting for the moment with the muse will relent and give the rest of the story.

But that rarely happens. Usually the rest of the story is constructed by the badly abused and poorly dressed writer, building his superstructure of paper-mache onto the muse’s tiny foundation of gold.

And it usually sucks, and gets relegated to the “needs work” file which always far exceeds the “ready to publish” file.

And you hear the muse giggle.

Some day a sixteen-year-old at a dinner in one of those rare moments when I’m paying attention will say to me, “I’d want to be a writer, but I’d love to know where you get your ideas.”

“Would you; would your really?” I’ll ask.

And I’ll giggle in conjunction with a chorus of muses dancing around my head and braiding my nose hairs.

Misery loves company, so they say.

And sometimes, as in the movie, Stranger than Fiction, the muses really mess us up.

Beware the Swiss Reprise

In honor of the Pope's visit (and because I just got nothing,) here's a repost from February.
Don’t piss off the Swiss!

Last Olympics the Swiss hockey team didn't get a medal.  Although they were excellent skaters, they didn't fare well for the following reasons

1)    When the referee called icing, they thought he was talking about pastry

2)    They were penalized for attempting to build a large ice-capped barrier around their goal

3)    They spent far too much time in the “neutral” zone.

We think of Swiss and we see people in fairy tale clothing, blowing 12 foot horns in between bites of chocolate. 

 Amiable, comical, harmless people: hardly a people to fear. 

Those who have visited the Vatican (or those, like me, who've seen pictures of people visiting the Vatican and been spared the 18 hours in a tour bus next to retired couple from Toledo who ate something they shouldn't have) have seen the famous Swiss guards.  They look like they just came off the label on a bottle of scotch.  On the ferocity scale they appear to fall somewhere between Tony the Tiger and Winnie the Pooh.

And so they are – assuming Tony was a real Tiger and Pooh a real bear.

Those of us of German descent pretend to be tough.  We go around spitting threatening “ach” sounds at the end of our words and stare malignly at any collection of items or people not in a straight line.  We've been living next to the Swiss for centuries but you don’t see us ever bothering them.  Martin Luther was once impolite to Zwingli and the Reformation nearly met a tragic end right there.

In all the World War II movies, refugees are always escaping to Switzerland.  Do you think Clint Eastwood, Donald Southerland and Don Rickles were concerned that the Nazis would try to get their gold back?  Do you think Maria and all those sickeningly sweet children worried that Papa Von Trapp would be snatched back up and put on a U-boat?

Nah!

As they climbed the Alps and crossed the boarder they met one pudgy guy in leather shorts who greeted them.  “Welcome to Switzerland, have some chocolate, pet the Saint Bernard, bend over and moon Berlin.”

Rumor is the Heidi and her Grandfather alone, held off an entire SS company using nothing but a shepherd’s crook and hair ribbons.

  Once, the finish to a professional football playoff game was preempted to show a rerun of the movie “Heidi.”  If Roone Arlidge was scared of them, so am I.

It’s OK, you tell me.  The Swiss can be tough but we don’t have to worry about them.  Sure, every citizen over the age of three has an automatic weapon

 but the Swiss gather only short-range defensive ordinance.  They’re interested in stopping an enemy from climbing over the Alps.  After all, Hannibal surprised them with arrow-proof elephants and they want to make sure no one ever does that again!

Oh yeah, smart guy?  You’re so sure you won’t see the Swiss rolling across Europe, North America or even (for the hell of it) Australia, establishing marshal law, resetting clocks and disposing of inferior chocolate?

You’re forgetting one thing.  The most devastating tactical assault vehicle known to man.  The M-1 tank you ask?  The Bradley fighting vehicle?  No, I’m talking about the Pope-mobile.

Whenever you see the Pope traveling, he’s always safely ensconced in a Pope-mobile.  These vehicles are not built like some spit guard on a salad bar at your local Ponderosa; these babies are high tech!  You could launch a smart bomb, a nuke or even Oprah at one of these machines and you wouldn't even bother the man’s pointy hat.  All of this advanced armor is there just to protect an icon of peace?  C’mon, we know better.

Still, you argue (you just don’t give up do you?).  What do we have to fear from just one Pope-mobile?

You don’t see any crumbling “I break for baby ducks” stickers on the Pope’s bumper do you?  No!  The Pope has no interest in keeping a vehicle past its first oil change.  The man gets a new ride for every trip.  I bet he’s gone through hundreds, if not thousands of these suckers.

You never notice a Pope-mobile blowout at Billy-Bob-Joe-Ben McGinty’s Used Car Heaven?  I’ll tell you why.  The used papal assault vehicles are stored in a massive alpine bunker directly below a coo-coo clock manufacturing plant and several thousand of Donald Trump’s safety deposit boxes.

Do you want to wake up at five every morning to the sound of elongated brass performing cough drop jingles?  Are you willing to surrender the Swiss Miss cocoa company executives to a Geneva war-crimes tribunal?  Are you prepared to be conquered by an army that speaks five languages better than you speak English?

Write to our President.  Tell him to forget middle-east terrorism and stop Pope-mobile proliferation.  Only when every Pope-mobile is safely decaying in a New Jersey hazardous waste dump am I going to feel safe sleeping at night.

Then maybe we can do something about the Tony the Tiger and Winnie the Pooh threat.

Don't believe me?  Check this animated documentary from the mid 90s.  They're even more scary now.

Beware the Swiss

Don’t piss off the Swiss!

Last Olympics the Swiss hockey team didn't get a medal.  Although they were excellent skaters, they didn't fare well for the following reasons

1)    When the referee called icing, they thought he was talking about pastry

2)    They were penalized for attempting to build a large ice-capped barrier around their goal

3)    They spent far too much time in the “neutral” zone.

We think of Swiss and we see people in fairy tale clothing, blowing 12 foot horns in between bites of chocolate. 

 Amiable, comical, harmless people: hardly a people to fear. 

Those who have visited the Vatican (or those, like me, who've seen pictures of people visiting the Vatican and been spared the 18 hours in a tour bus next to retired couple from Toledo who ate something they shouldn't have) have seen the famous Swiss guards.  They look like they just came off the label on a bottle of scotch.  On the ferocity scale they appear to fall somewhere between Tony the Tiger and Winnie the Pooh.

And so they are – assuming Tony was a real Tiger and Pooh a real bear.

Those of us of German descent pretend to be tough.  We go around spitting threatening “ach” sounds at the end of our words and stare malignly at any collection of items or people not in a straight line.  We've been living next to the Swiss for centuries but you don’t see us ever bothering them.  Martin Luther was once impolite to Zwingli and the Reformation nearly met a tragic end right there.

In all the World War II movies, refugees are always escaping to Switzerland.  Do you think Clint Eastwood, Donald Southerland and Don Rickles were concerned that the Nazis would try to get their gold back?  Do you think Maria and all those sickeningly sweet children worried that Papa Von Trapp would be snatched back up and put on a U-boat?

Nah!

As they climbed the Alps and crossed the boarder they met one pudgy guy in leather shorts who greeted them.  “Welcome to Switzerland, have some chocolate, pet the Saint Bernard, bend over and moon Berlin.”

Rumor is the Heidi and her Grandfather alone, held off an entire SS company using nothing but a shepherd’s crook and hair ribbons.

  Once, the finish to a professional football playoff game was preempted to show a rerun of the movie “Heidi.”  If Roone Arlidge was scared of them, so am I.

It’s OK, you tell me.  The Swiss can be tough but we don’t have to worry about them.  Sure, every citizen over the age of three has an automatic weapon

 but the Swiss gather only short-range defensive ordinance.  They’re interested in stopping an enemy from climbing over the Alps.  After all, Hannibal surprised them with arrow-proof elephants and they want to make sure no one ever does that again!

Oh yeah, smart guy?  You’re so sure you won’t see the Swiss rolling across Europe, North America or even (for the hell of it) Australia, establishing marshal law, resetting clocks and disposing of inferior chocolate?

You’re forgetting one thing.  The most devastating tactical assault vehicle known to man.  The M-1 tank you ask?  The Bradley fighting vehicle?  No, I’m talking about the Pope-mobile.

Whenever you see the Pope traveling, he’s always safely ensconced in a Pope-mobile.  These vehicles are not built like some spit guard on a salad bar at your local Ponderosa; these babies are high tech!  You could launch a smart bomb, a nuke or even Oprah at one of these machines and you wouldn't even bother the man’s pointy hat.  All of this advanced armor is there just to protect an icon of peace?  C’mon, we know better.

Still, you argue (you just don’t give up do you?).  What do we have to fear from just one Pope-mobile?

You don’t see any crumbling “I break for baby ducks” stickers on the Pope’s bumper do you?  No!  The Pope has no interest in keeping a vehicle past its first oil change.  The man gets a new ride for every trip.  I bet he’s gone through hundreds, if not thousands of these suckers.

You never notice a Pope-mobile blowout at Billy-Bob-Joe-Ben McGinty’s Used Car Heaven?  I’ll tell you why.  The used papal assault vehicles are stored in a massive alpine bunker directly below a coo-coo clock manufacturing plant and several thousand of Donald Trump’s safety deposit boxes.

Do you want to wake up at five every morning to the sound of elongated brass performing cough drop jingles?  Are you willing to surrender the Swiss Miss cocoa company executives to a Geneva war-crimes tribunal?  Are you prepared to be conquered by an army that speaks five languages better than you speak English?

Write to our President.  Tell him to forget middle-east terrorism and stop Pope-mobile proliferation.  Only when every Pope-mobile is safely decaying in a New Jersey hazardous waste dump am I going to feel safe sleeping at night.

Then maybe we can do something about the Tony the Tiger and Winnie the Pooh threat.

Don't believe me?  Check this animated documentary from the mid 90s.  They're even more scary now.

Editor’s note:  The increasingly over-rated, Trouble in Taos will be free as an e-book on Amazon this weekend, Feb 7, 8, 2015.  “People seem to like it – can someone tell me why?” asks Headley Hauser, the author (and writer of this blog.)  No-one here at Go Figure Reads was able to answer his question.

Walter Bego

20 Reasons I Still Believe in Santa Claus

1) I’ve watched Miracle on 34th Street. The Postal Service knows their stuff.

2) Ralphie got his bb-gun, didn’t he?

3) The sugar plums may be gone, but their fruit flies are still dancing in my head.

4) Somebody had to teach pirates that ho-ho-ho thing.

5) My neighbor claims he winged him once skeet shooting.

6) Mrs. Claus is a serious babe! I know that’s not a reason, but I’m just sayin’.

7) 1.3 billion Muslims can’t be wrong… Say what?... Okay, my bad on that one.

8) Somebody keeps eating my Christmas cookies.

9) MIB (Men in Black) derives from MIR - his corps of elite elves tracking down delinquent misfit toys.

10) There’s festive red and green mold growing on my tile grout.

11) Santa’s a man that’s 150 pounds overweight who constantly eats cookies and candy and drinks eggnog. He exercises only one day a year, and is hundreds of years old. He represents the hope held by many lazy middle-aged Americans that the AMA is full of crap.

12) Will Ferrell has never lied to me.

13) The Tick Loves Santa.

14) That bag of flaming reindeer poop he left at my door.

15) According to WikiLeaks, last year the NSA seized Santa’s “he knows when you are sleeping; he knows when you’re awake; he knows when you’ve been bad or good” files.

16) Hanukkah Harry.

17) I just saw him outside the mall yesterday.

18) Who else do you think delivers all those presents? The Tooth Fairy can barely lift a dollar coin.

19) Mr. Adam’s garden gnomes say there are consequences for Santa doubters.

What’s that you say? That’s only 19? What are you, the Christmas blog fact-checker? Number 20 doesn’t need any words from me.

HHHH Inducts Ben Edlund

It grieves me to do this to someone nearly a decade younger than I am - mostly because it shows what a failure I’ve made of my life. I induct Ben Edlund into the Headley Hauser Hall of Honor (pronounced Haw-nor.) Ben is the fourth inductee into the hall (fifth is you count both the Coen brothers link) along with Douglas Adams link, and Christopher Moore link.

Ben started out small – I mean freakishly small – less than 10 pounds. Knowing that Hollywood would never listen to anyone under 2 feet tall, Ben spent the next decade and a half growing to approximately full size.

This was only the first of his many accomplishments.

It was in High School (shortly after recovering from his ‘small’ disability,) that Ben created, The Tick

 the finest superhero in comedic history. (on the advice of my lawyers, I omitted the words “I’ve ever ripped off in novella form” preceding in comedic history.

While he was studying to do film stuff, New England Comics a local comic company, (on the advice of those guys, I omitted the words “a third-rate, derivative, fly-by-night” preceding the worlds, local comic company,) asked him to do a Tick series because they’d seriously dropped the ball on something else they were going to do. In spite of NEC desperate need for immediate rescue from creative blah-dom, Ben took his time creating issue 1. This served NEC right, but more importantly, it brought The Tick to public awareness.

Sometime afterwards he signed a limited edition #1 for me. It has a crease in the cover – but I don’t completely blame him.

Paired with Richard Libmann-Smith, Edlund created The Tick TV show in 1994. Edlund wrote a number of episodes in this GREATEST ANIMATED TV SERIES OF ALL TIME including the 20 minutes of gold that is: That Mustache Feeling,

as well as the very fine episodes, Grandpa Wore Tights and The Tick vs. Filth.

The Fox network showed how shortsighted they were by cramming The Tick into their Saturday morning line-up instead of putting it on Sunday evening right after the Simpsons. Not surprisingly, the largely adult male audience that gravitated to The Tick bought very little of the Baby-wets-herself type toys advertised as they were too busy buying pizza, beer, and pick-up trucks that Fox might have sold in abundance had they put The Tick in the right time slot. The Tick was cancelled after three seasons.

Freakin’ bean-counters.

A few years later, the bean-counters overcompensated by making a live action version of The Tick for prime time. Although Patrick Warburton was a fine choice to play the big guy, focus-group input insisted on more sexual innuendo which cheapened the product and it was cancelled after just a few shows.

As it turns out, the battle of good vs. evil has similarities to the battle of creative folks vs. beancounters.

Edlund wrote two of the live action episodes - The Tick vs. Justice, and The Terror which were each wonderful quirky throwbacks to the kind of humor all of us beer and pizza consuming, pick-up driving adult males hoped for when The Tick came to prime time.

Then Edlund went on to work with Joss Whedon with the series, Angel, (with that dead guy, David Boreanaz,) and did Firefly, and other Supernatural stuff…

Yada yada yada.

Let’s be honest – I’m inducting Edlund in the Headley Hauser Hall of Honor (pronounced Haw-nor,) because it looks pretty silly to induct a large blue animated fictional character.

So congratulations, Tick

… I mean, Ben!

And now – a YouTube full episode of The Tick!!!!!!! Rejoice, ye with sufficient bandwidth!