Tom & Dinosaur Hand...

review:
Love in the Time of Cholera, Alice in Wonderland, and City Island. Tom: Hey there Dino, after that last review you did, I kind of figured we need to buckle down and do some reputable reviewing.
Dinosaur Hand: I don't know what you're talking about.
Tom: Deny it, that's fine. Do you remember Love in the Time of Cholera? We actually saw this a few months ago.
D.H: I remember boobies.
Tom: Jeez. I'm not sure that this movie got very good reviews, but I really enjoyed it. It is set in Cartagena, Columbia, and involves a young man, a poet/clerk, who falls in love with a young woman and pursues her, only to wait fifty years until they can be together.
D.H: Hurry up and wait. Sounds like a snoozer. 50 years a snoozer.
Tom: Of course a lot of stuff and a lot of women come and go in the fifty years, but when his true love finally becomes available, he immediately begins the pursuit again...
D.H: ..and she is pretty surly about that!
Tom: Good movie. I say Go for it.
D.H: Whatever. It's set in the year 2. What's this movie got? It's got no explosions!

Tom: Next movie, maybe this is more to your liking Dinosaur Hand; Alice in Wonderland, the Tim Burton version. What did you think?
D.H: Here we go...Jabberwockys, and disappearing cats and bigheaded queens and a Bandersnatch...wow.
Tom: How about the vorpal sword?
D.H: Hoo and wa!
Tom: Okay; I thought this movie pretty much sucked. It started off sort of willy nilly and after a while started to settle into a watchable story.
D.H: Are you mad? Did I mention the Bandersnatch? There were funny little round dimwits as well!
Tom: Mmm. Johnny Depp was as ridiculous here as he was in Willy Wonka. That movie was only slightly worse than this one. I thought the girl cast as Alice was good, and her progression from start to end was interesting, but nothing new. Why does Burton keep doing these remakes? His original stuff is brilliant.
D.H: You are a foo-bear-twit, and I shall write an epic poem about your dunderheadedness.

Tom: Here's a movie I doubt many people have heard of; City Island.
Dinosaur Hand: Is that a Mario Brother's game? Can we play it now, puleeeez?
Tom: No, Dino, it's a movie starring Andy Garcia. I really liked this one. It also starred Julianna Margulies and a few other actors I've never heard of, but were vaguely familiar.
D.H: Oh, ho...where have I heard that before?
Tom: Excuse me; what? Anyway, there were a lot of characters and a lot of stories to go along. One central character tied them all together in some fashion or another and it all came together. Funny, outrageous, quirky...all good stuff here. You like dramas? Here's a good one.
D.H: Fine, but come on, no car chases?
Tom: Well, Garcia threw some punches, right?
D.H: Boom, bam, bash!

Sunday Comix Redux

Happy Happy! Hope you all are enjoying the Christmas break--it's back to the grind tommorrow (ack--and another holiday right down the road...)

Dinosaur Hand,

reviews some stuff all by himself.

Dinosaur Hand: Poo on that pesky Tom—all these new movies out, and what's he doing, he's watching Bingo Crosby, or some such silly Christmas wiggler!
Toby: Woof! D.H: Uh huh. Toby says he'll co-review this one.
Toby: Woof x 2.
D.H: This weeks review is Dinosaur Hand Scares the World! Starring...Me!
Toby: wooo fff.
D.H: Action, car chases, punch outs..you name it. I get into it with Charlton Heston; I totally break his nose. Then Clint Eastwood,and his gun back me up – you feel lucky, punk?
Toby: heh heh heh. D.H: Dang it, your nose is cold, boy! Of course this is directed by Speelieburg and I'm huge...I mean really really big. I eat the head off some guy in a tuxedo! Later in the big 'finally' we go to the ocean and Godzilla and me get into a tussle, and oh man, that dude breathes fire and shit, but I got a fist and wham, a karate chop baby cakes!
Toby: grrrr. D.H: Sweet; and Jaws that big mama shark comes back like a zombie fish, oh yeah, and, oh, the blood! Lots of it. How about that, Toby; the blood, right?
Toby: heh.
Tom: Hey, what are you guys doing...what is this? This is a terrible review.
D.H: Who invited you? Go watch your silly singing Christmas movie. Tom: It's all lies. Why don't you review Harry Potter or something? We saw that, you know.
D.H: Aw...I don't remember what happened in it. Didn't they turn into a newt? Or something?
Tom: Never mind...do what you want. C'mon Toby, let's play with your rope.
Toby: weeeeeeeee!

lonely Comics.

ALiENaNTiCS!!!

since there is no Touche', Cliche' this week, I figured I'd include the bottom silly little one panel strip toilet strip that sprouted from Jeff's deranged noggin:

ennui

Yesterday when she had me in the chair, tied into a yarn suit and surrounded by those mewling chickens, I told her the truth.

She had not realized I found her letter to Santa Claus. It was written backwards in a shifted skink format, all the more surprising for its blueness off the get-go. Not without pains though I deciphered the crap and found her correspondence to be without merit. A ruse, yes; but a clever one.

I hold my secrets dearly, but I kept this one to save my life. Knowing it was known meant certain doom – at least a sound tickling. And in my condition, who knows where such things might end. Nuts, spilled among the gadgets and various raised accoutrements, not in the least.

Alone, for she was engaged that night to peruse various portraits of trebuchets in her Tuesday evening nipple piercing guild, I scoured the residence for additional clues and found much to my annoyance an eyesore. It was slightly L shaped and covered in Naugahyde and tucked away in a corner of the living room, a random space cordoned off by swinging doors and normally off limits to one such as I. In no time I deduced its perimeters by swinging my arms about and using my inch-stick. The exact proportions became known to me, and armed with this information I fell back, intact.

She came home late and complained of soreness and chafing, forcing me to alleviate her pains with a sponge and other means, but the advancing hours saved me from the usual drudgery and that night I did not don the suit of yarn, and the fowl pecked indiscriminately at their leisure, and more, at scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces of Buckingham Palace intermixed with macaroni. Ten thousand monkeys typing on ten thousand typewriters might eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare, but all the chickens in the world couldn't sort out the edge pieces in a thousand piece puzzle of the queen when they've got macaroni too. That's the theorem I worked out, but I digress....

While I have little spare time, I confess also to sleeping very little, but I needn't ascribe that to insomnia. In every corner of the small world I inhabit there is a collection of motes, and I keep them occupied by means of a one hundred watt light bulb which is attached by various long cords, some green, some orange. The place is quite dark, and air currents have no refuge here, so by leaping around and casting my light like angry aspersions I keep these motes agitated, and thus fit for future duty. It is my army of dust, and I march my troops nightly. Quietly, in rank.

My captains and I were unrelenting that night, and it was understand that action was likely. In the wardroom we discussed general affairs, as well as the atrocity I had measured. When asked, I acceded, and so we cataloged it as Floral, for such was the pattern that enveloped the whole of its girth. Springtime floral, in fact, and dreadful. I begged to be left behind, for needles to be driven deep into the soft pieces of my frontal lobe, but mightily they held me down, and my dementia subsided.

I left them to it, and succumbed to a slumber as deep as any ever encountered, and to my everlasting shame, this is what I dreamed: A plethora of wire plugs danced willy nilly the length of my dozen unpolished casserole dishes and circled back, dosey doe, and with no warning fell deep into catatonia, whereupon they dreamed of me. Exclamation. Finally I became aware of my own shape and form – I was a god in every aspect, and looked exactly like Clark Gable. Eventually I woke after evaluating my good fortune, only to find that the casserole pans were absent, and worse, merely stew pots, and cooking at their innards were the plugs who writhed in a comic dance from some overwrought Dante-ish opera composed by the master himself, Batmaster Spleen. The wire plugs poked me and I awoke again, for real. Oh, my.

I sat up for some time brooding on my dilemma. Knowing of the heinous creation, I pondered the existence of further atrocities. If there be one, perchance there might be more. All would be lost, for I could not sustain my vigor knowing of such vile contraptions. No more would I recline, entranced by a jellybean sculpture, not even by a woven big stuffed thingamajig, not I, moi, the me. Nor would I entertain the thought of a new, a better horror 'round the next bend. Here I was, here I would stand my ground, my motes and I.

Balloon skulls rising in a bag of mesh, sobriety expressed by the girl in a window. Somewhere a dog is barking. No cliché would temper my mood, and ere I dissolved them all in an acid bath of forgetfulness, she came to me suggesting a soiree and teacakes. A certain rue must have been etched upon my face, and it reflected off her visage like a marble dropped on stone facade. Pigtails and a twelve foot Trojan elk. She stood, her chickens took me by the hand, and led me to a chair, unencumbered by prestige. Gently I was stripped and adorned anew by all involved – they circled so that by and by I, like a maypole, was born of wool streamers and immobile as a giant locked in immortal combat with really big glottal tongues. I would never jump rope with heavy nymphs, probably. Hardly could I bemoan the fact, when she stroked my cheek and teetered on the brink of a notion, suppressing a giggle while the tattoo brow of a maid jiggled atop her loosened bodice. I came undone and the babbled arcanum came flowing in a torrent of conjoined participles, my syllables were transient.

She mesmerized into my soul like a torch eating screwbit even as I pondered the parameters of my mecho-master board – interface and circuitry, inverting my eyes I followed the thread and moved across the board, tuning down the switchback and backflipping a lateral plunger. Too late, I flinched, and unraveled like a flung spool, cast like spent dregs in a pool of disorderly nematodes. My usefulness at an end, I fell wholly bent and subservient as a young willow to the North wind. My struggles were over, and preparations were all for naught, but lightly she gathered her yarn back into a ball and led me like a newborn through rhythmic doors and lay me down on a supple divan, kissing me back and forth, to and fro, thoroughly through and through, until all thoughts of subterfuge and motes died in a swirling vortex of fluff and daisies.

Sunday Toons

dog V cat

Touche',Cliche'--an apple a day...

by Jeff & Tom--click on for enhugement ;)

some

Alien Antics!!!

Shooting the Breeze...

...har!
FatPie short video: dig this
..and these:

alright, here are two of six 'toons i doodled up, i like to call them ALIEN ANTICS!!!
go ahead and click on the images for extralargifiable results.

the new Touche', Cliche', in which our Heroes Clarence and Jenifer have a meaningful bedtime conversation...

...not now, honey...
art by Tom, text by Jeff.

trolling the white space

She rode a tree naked
in a forest of black net
intrigued by skulls and
spiders through a frosted glass
pain

Finally
stretched in limber repose
by a skeleton dancer
he handed her
his card:
ecr. L'inf.
and his tell tale
memoir of UFO Life
a dreamstate account of
fantasy worlds and fantasy girls
endorsed by
anatomical formulists
in Prague

Now for her it ends
with twins in rubber hats
sipping absinthe
that voodoo libation
against a white wall
blasted by lights
and constructing
shadow V's
in defense of
woodland rides
and flights of forest fantasy.

shooting the breeeeeeeze

Lackadaisical wandering whereabouts, William Perry, ne'er do well extraordinaire is out and about, in a location near you. At the mall: Perusing shoes at the shoe store, “Why hello, miss. Did you know that the average shoe size for American women is 8? Wide, in fact. Only one hundred and fifty years ago, it was merely a size four!” So wizened by this trifle, the young miss moves on querifiably miffed and a tad bit creeped out. He bows,“Good afternoon, lovely shoe vixen,” and so our intrepid wanderer moves on, perhaps to a location nearer you.

He is on the avenue strolling with a purposeful stride, chin adjusted skyward for maximum smarmy effect. At the bus stop there is a believably smelly young man quaffing from a brown paper bag and a woman with a Goodwill shopping bag and a flimsy plastic grocery sack containing a loaf of day old french bread. William Perry produces from his overcoat a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. “I know, really - but believe me Missy; it's the gol-darn truth!” He high fives the smelly young man, who doesn't appear to recognize the gesture, thus leaves him hanging, and zigs left, possibly to a location near you.

He enters a busy street, lined head to toe with shimmering black sedans, and penetrates the facade of a marbled office building. At the desk he produces his card for the information guru to ogle, knowingly. It reads as such: William Maniacal Perry, III, social outcast, rebel ax junkie for hire, and pie lover. Phone number? Don't call us, we're not home. In a whiny voice the info guy says “floor eleven,” and he munches something nondescript.

The elevator is awesome, for it goes up and down, and William Perry gets in line for the ride; he even has produced a dollar for the privilege and gives it to a fancy black woman who wears a tulip poplar on her lapel and a snow white dove tucked pleasantly into her coif. “Coo,” he says, and she in response, “oh, Daddy.” Then she tucks the buck into her brassiere and adjusts her meaty cleavage.

On the eleventh floor Perry squirms out from the elevator packed tight as a can of sardines patting his pockets and physical paraphernalia to be assured nothing has leapt off of his body or is springing loose only to find he has compromised the personal accounting offices of one Gordon Gahonas Gozongas! and Associates. There are secretaries spilling out into the hallway and men without coats but with natty suspenders and coffee cups leaning on desks and saying things like “send that out immediately” and “oops, I dropped all your pencils” or “hey, nice cubical – does it come in beige?”

William Perry sucker punches a mid-level clerical schmo and drags the carcass into a vacant cubicle, noting the general cleanliness of the paper trays and nicks a hole puncher. He disturbs the lackey's comb-over, drives a one and a half inch finishing nail into the center of the veneered desktop and blows an immense pink bubble which is surreptitiously surrendered onto the standard office issue keyboard. DNA tests will confirm that William Perry has indeed been on the premises.

Now he produces a Foldaway Barmah and dons it with a flourish escaping the corner unseen and meets Virginia at a water cooler. She is studying the bulletin board and has already read 'new insurance information: you are covered only in extreme cases of section 1.3 or alien seed pod invasion' and 'Marshall's retirement party is being moved to Ida Viscera's loft where she will be serving aperitifs and tiny leftover wieners from a jar'. Virginia reads aloud “Oh no, listen to this, 'effective immediately, all unicorn privileges are revoked!”

“Why, ma'am,” says William Perry, “Even I can see you haven't been a virgin for thirty years,” and he dances with her through the crowded hallway past a heavily guarded exhibit of Peruvian shrunken heads, then double dipping her tresses at the bubbler he flees unscathed into a stairwell, perhaps to visit a location near you...

touche', cliche's

here are a couple weeks worth of Touche', Cliche's.

text by Jeff, doodled by Tom. click on 'toons for biggifying!

Tc #3..."Cats have Nine..."

tc#4: "Money don't Grow..."

a bit of early sketching and trying to get an idea of characters, and prop placement...

it's all good fun!

anad'r doodle-toon

click on pic for to expandage!

Gods Playing Poker: A Bold Bluff

*Continued from Gods Playing Poker: Sitting Up With a Sick Friend

East guides his GMM Camvette II around the corner, through a brushed chrome traffic director signaling in vain for him to stop - it line-faxes his driving demerit directly to MCEE HQ. He's doing well over 200 kilometers per hour in a 40 zone. He doesn't know where he's driving, just that he needs to drive.

He looks up and sees Sirius twinkling red and blue in the night sky. Oh.

"Call Normandy," he screams into his mo-comm.

"Normandy," the Captain answers, obviously before she checked her comm ID. "East?"

"I know where Silver's gone to. Where he was taken. Send everyone you've got to the hotel." East doesn't really know where his partner's gone, but he's got a pretty good idea.

"We're on it, East. Half of Scene Control is already there. We've been calling you for 15 minutes."

"What? Why?" Apparently, everyone's got a pretty good idea.

"Silver shot up the lobby. He's in the room. SWAT says he has hostages."

East hangs up. "Fuck."

***

***

The Camvette II pulls up to the hotel. It's completely surrounded. Scene Control already has the street in front of the building and access way in back locked down. Sentries and fire guards man positions carefully selected to block both freedom of movement and enable as complete a visual picture as possible. The SWAT van is parked at the corner of West Southern Avenue and Fortune Circle East. Velocicopters circle in tight formations with at least two directly overhead at any given time.

All that and the Feds, too. They're subdued - as Feds sometimes like to pretend to be - but East catches a glimpse Colm Baker's visage. Even for Silver's obvious mental state, this overwhelming police reaction seems like overkill. Then again, he was going to suggest such a reaction before Normandy informed him that the response was already underway. What can he do? Silver's not just East's partner, but his best friend.

East parks his Camvette II and runs to the command and control van, waving his PDP and badge in plain sight. He bolts into the open door.

"What is going on?" East's tone is more incredulity than surprise.

"Gotta department dick in a tenth floor room. At least two hostages." Commander Jameson "Jimmy-Jimmy" James doesn't look up.

"Yeah, that's my partner. Gary Silver."

Two-Jims looks up now. "You Steve East?"

"Yeah. Two hostages?"

"Sniper identified one as a missing department employee, Emily Hyra." James doesn't notice East's jaw hitting the floor. "The Feds think they've IDed the other. Some European rapist. Dario something." He doesn't notice the popping eyes, either.

"Ganganelli." East exhales the name.

"Yeah, that guy."

"You got Silver's jacket already?" East glances around. Doesn't see his partner's personnel file anywhere.

"No, not yet."

"Then how do you know who I am?"

"Silver's been asking for you." James-Jimmy hands East a phone-set.

East stares at it for a moment, a confused expression hiding a thought that's anything but confused. Maybe a little angry. East grabs the set and keys the receiver.

Silver's voice crackles to life. "Steve-o?"

"Yeah, Gary. It's me."

"Come on up here. Got something you need to see." It's an invitation. Open, welcome. Perhaps a tiny bit sinister.

East shoots a questioning glance at the commander.

"It's your call," the James' responds.

East hands the commander his sidearm, who snaps his fingers, signaling a techie to bring over a surveillance radio, but East declines.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Jim-James says.

"What difference would it make?" East mumbles.

***

The magnet lifts all deactivated, East winds his way up the stairwell, passing dozens of SWAT dogs and Hostage Rescue cats. East recognizes a few of the higher-ups - some were patrol officers with East back in the day. He's surprised to find Marquitez outside the door, but then realizes Marquitez is the only other officer here who's actually been in the room.

"Switch to non-lethal, boys," East commands, doing his best impersonation of confidence. "Might need to come rescue me and I'd rather not be perforated."

A few quiet laughs. Everyone knows this might go down poorly. Silver's one of the best. He knows the MCEE and its tactics well.

"You sure about this, East?" Marquitez looks worried, which should worry East. But the fact that Marquitez is even present makes East feel a little better.

East nods and pauses at the door. Knocks.

"Come on in, Steve. It's unlocked." Even though the voice is muffled, it sounds cheery.

East pushes the door open and steps in, taking care to let the alpha SWAT dog see into the room for as long as possible. The door snaps shut. East checks the perimeter. Empty, save for Silver's pet project. There's no one else in the room. Silver and East. Alone on a mission. Just like old times.

Silver's been busy rebuilding his gadget, which someone called a re-reflector. Where Silver picked up the engineering and design knowledge to do such a thing is beyond East. Then again, that might explain the Tinker Toys, Erector sets, and Build-O-Break-Os^TM East found in Silver's trunk one day.

"What are you doing, Gary?"

Silver, leaning over one of his creation's support stands, tilts his head up and smiles. Broad. Beaming. "Fixing the door."

East, out of reflex, turns to check the door behind him. The way Silver spoke made East think of a booby trap. It takes a few seconds, but East gradually realizes what Silver actually meant.

East needs to bring Silver back to reality, and tries to change the subject. "Surveillance says there were two people in here with you."

Silver doesn't look up from his work on the re-reflector. "Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"They're here when they want to be." He turns his spanwrench another quarter-turn, satisfied at the support's stability, and heads into the kitchenette.

East continues to check out his surroundings. The door to the bedroom is cracked open, but the lights inside are off and East can't hear any movement. He sees Silver's short-round protruding from the belt-line in his trousers. Silver's definitely gone crazy. He'd never put a firearm in his pants.

"You going to tell me what's going on? What's that a door to?"

Silver laughs, then runs to the window and checks a couple of mirror mounts. He tools a lens, spinning its modifier until it changes from convex to concave, then spanwrenches another blocknut. East almost thinks Silver's oblivious to the company surrounding the building, but then Silver stops and peers out the window.

"Wow, dude. They send everybody?" He almost sounds like old Silver.

"Almost everybody." East almost sounds like new Silver. He's getting impatient. Worried.

"Tell them to go home." Silver sounds like new Silver again. He hopscotches across the floor into the kitchenette.

"What's that a door to, Gary?"

Pirating a gyro from a wall-maid, Silver sticks his head up. Another wicked grin. "Isn't it obvious, Steve? The other side."

***

*Continued in Gods Playing Poker: Post Mortem


The Complete Gods Playing Poker

• Part 1: A Friend in Need
• Part 2: Pinched With Four Aces
• Part 3: Stranger in Camp
• Part 4: Sitting Up With a Sick Friend
• Part 5: A Bold Bluff
• Part 6: Post Mortem

Gods Playing Poker: Stranger in Camp

*Continued from Gods Playing Poker: Pinched With Four Aces

East pulls the CruTector over to a vacant curb, blocked off by two very retro orange cones, and activates a rooftop flash n' park light. A couple of sanitation goons busy looking busy give him some lip.

Silver nods and waves. "Give us five minutes, boys." He and East cross over to a wiener vendor.

"Two with everything, eh?" Silver leans against an embankment while drawing his small-round. A sani-plant snakes out a tendril, brushes Silver's treated paper slacks for lint and withdraws into the bushes.

"Put that shoot-6 back in your pants, Johnny Holmes."

"That's a shoot-foot-and-a-half to you, limpy. Just checking settings. Might want to trade up for this gig." Silver holsters the small-round in his shoulder snap and collects his loaded dogs from East.

"You buy the next lunch," says East through a mouthful of green seaweed chips.

"Shit, no, you always want steak and beer. Go fuck yourself." A dribble of ketchup oozes out of the wrapper and hangs there for a split-second before landing on Silver's undulating tie. "Oh, asshole." The pattern adjusts immediately, but can't conform to the glob of organics before the shift-nanites power down. "Great. Now it's just beige. With condiments."

"Told you that programmable wear is a waste of money. And it's first generation? Should always wait for gen two, man. You always gotta have the latest."

Silver pulls off the ruined tie and chucks it in the bushes where there's a rustling scramble of vines to claim it. "Yeah, yeah. There's a MetroSquire across the plaza. I'm gonna go get another."

"I ain't waiting for a tie. Catch the Public. There's a stop on the other side of the mall." East jams half a hot dog into his maw and chews slowly. It's a good dog.

Silver grunts and runs the Public Magrail through his head. The Red Line runs the length of Meridian Avenue and connects to the precinct at a nearby hub. And he can get home via the Fuschia Mag. No biggie.

"If that's the way it's gotta be." Silver wads up lunch's microwax wrapper and tosses it in the midst of some newpigeons that tear into it in a flurry of feathers.

"You want me to take that prism to evidence?"

"Nah, I'm gonna pawn it for magfare."

East smirks and drives off, leaving Silver to cross the windswept pressed-brick patio on his way to the clothing store. Leaky piles of slush trickle into the cracks. Inside, a middle-aged woman directs him to a gyro-rack where he stands for awhile, admiring the selection of neckties. They're under lock and key, being the newest gadgetry from South Texas: The new Taiwan. That's when he sees it.

A mirror on the rack. Behind him, another mirror on a nude-room door, slightly askew. Across the lobby by the checkout counter is a sunglasses display; a sun-glint sheen refracting light like a rainbow. Silver reaches out and stops the tie rack; looks into the mirrors. One mirror reflecting another, round and round in an infinite, multicolored pattern. Depending on the angle of the rack, the colored rays shoot off in every direction until he can't begin to follow them, or seem to converge on a single white spot. He thumbs the crucifix prism in his pocket, then pulls it out and adds it to the light show.

"Shit." The proverbial hee-lee bulb.

He pulls out his PDP, logic process outracing his voice. "Hardware store." He waits for the directions to screen up, but doesn't call East. Not yet. Silver wants to make sure of something before East decides that his partner is gonzo.

***

***

It's not the first time Silver's dug into his own pocket for cab fare, but he really wants to keep this line of investigation under wraps for the moment, and moving any amount of merchandise around on the magrails is always a pain in the ass. He gets to the building, flashes his badge, and the desk clerk buzzes him into the 10th-floor room with his cart full of junk. Once inside, Silver stashes the junk - mirrors, lenses, brackets - in the vexoleum-tiled kitchenette and starts... doing stuff.

He operates on impulse, the crazy residual vibe from the trance of mirrors. Silver soon finds himself hemmed in, sweaty. Unable to control his breath, he unloads his pockets onto a counter - his PDP, a flavor helix, the crystal prism. He removes his coat and collared shirt; kicks off his shoes. He's burning up, even though it's mid-March and the damp Midwestern winter seems slow to let spring do its magic.

Sitting on a stool at the end of the kitchenette, Silver nudges the crystal lying on the counter top. He toys with it. Spinning it, fondling it, picking it up, dropping it. The vibe subsiding, his thoughts begin to roam.

The day's been a dreary one, but the room's not too bad. It's got an outside window and, for a moment, the sky clears and some sunlight streams through dirty panes. A beam hits the crystal. Silver feels the sensation of movement, just enough, and he's up working with a purpose; doesn't dare to stop to think about what he's doing, because...he hasn't the first idea.

His pulls up Emily Hyra's assault on his PDP and props the device on a hard surface, projecting the scene onto a dark wall. From a bag he retrieves several small mirrors and some Beylar^TM mounting brackets. He walks around the room for minutes, finally setting the equipment down in failure. He moves into the corner where Hyra was brutally raped and essentially murdered, trying to gather a lucrative thought.

Nothing.

He can nearly hear East mumbling "Jury's hung." Stymied, he slides down a wall. What the Hell would East be thinking right now, seeing his partner barefoot and bare-chested, slouched in a corner at a crime scene. "Yeah, Steve-o. I'm crazy, alright."

Without realizing it, Silver finds himself standing with the crystal prism in his outstretched palm. Diffused light plays off its facets, and something reveals itself. Shapes on the edge of existence, voices looking in, blurs that expand and coalesce. There's a push, a blow, and Silver falls out of the corner.

"What the fuck?" The contact leaves a searing pain down his left side, but his senses peal with elation, deep into his... soul? Silver is an atheist; that doesn't mean much to him. Whatever just happened, it motivates.

For the next hour Silver careens through his task, positioning mirrors, reviewing footage, trying to reflect scant bouncing light into a single beam. He can't do it. Something in the mechanics just isn't right, or his thinking is fuzzy. He constantly makes adjustments that he's already made. Starting over, maybe. He's close. It's in the light.

***

Sunrise creeps through the window. Silver's yet to sleep. He's waiting for the beams to hit just the right spot, confident that he's finally mimicked the pattern from the image feed. An empty smile across his face, he waits. The light creeps closer to the prism mounted on a gobo stand, positioned at just the height of Hyra's breasts.

And it hits. His empty smile is about to fill...

Something hits him. Doubles him over. He's thrown onto his knees and lurches forward. He scrambles at the corner, but an invisible weight tosses him like candy wrappers, plural, and he's screaming and tearing at the floorboards while being pummeled by nothing at all. There's a tear across his back, bloody. He hears his trousers rip. There's a scream - he's not sure it's his own. Penetration. He's pushed down onto the floor, his buttocks rapidly and eagerly percussed.

But there's no pain. There's no fear. A rapturous sensation invades fully into his being, and though he visualizes his body brutally ravaged by a shadowy figure, there's no sensation of assault. Only... pleasure. Pure pleasure.

The door slides open. The bliss dissipates, immediately replaced by abject pain. East storms in, gun drawn and leveled, screaming chaotically at an invisible assailant.

***

*Continued in Gods Playing Poker: Sitting Up With a Sick Friend


The Complete Gods Playing Poker

• Part 1: A Friend in Need
• Part 2: Pinched With Four Aces
• Part 3: Stranger in Camp
• Part 4: Sitting Up With a Sick Friend
• Part 5: A Bold Bluff
• Part 6: Post Mortem

Gods Playing Poker: A Friend in Need

"What the Hell are we watching?" Gary Silver has seen it all. He thought. Because he's clearly never seen anything like this before.

"I dunno, man. I just work here." Marquitez seemed the natural one to ask, since he recovered the image feed. A surveillance set - a print of C.M. Coolidge's Waterloo with optical recorders facing every possible direction in the target area - accidentally left in place after a supercaine bust.

Marquitez is another who thought he's seen it all. Most officers in Marion County Executive Enforcement serve their entire careers without ever getting into a shoot-out. Marquitez has only been a cop for nine years - the last three as an undercover in Narcotics - and he's already been shot at on four separate occasions. He's killed five in the line of duty. That's more than anyone else in MCEE, save for two long-time SWAT officers. And he's clearly never seen anything like what the card-playing canines have witnessed.

Fact is, none of the more than two-dozen detectives in the room has.

***

***

Emily Hyra was only 21 years old, fresh from Purdue University where she graduated with a double major in Pop Culture Law and WaveHysteria. She applied to the MCEE the day after she received her degree and, though the position she wanted wasn't available, she impressed her interviewer enough that she was offered a position as a tech-pup. Promised first opportunity at lateral transfer, she accepted.

Not especially beautiful, she was nevertheless fit - she passed the minimum MCEE physical fitness standards with ease - and had a smile that could disarm even the most miserly people. But it's not her smile the detectives are watching now. It's her screams of abject terror, tears from her assault, and self-defense techniques that seem to do nothing to her attacker.

Most of the detectives are secretly glad Hyra had already disconnected the eEars^TM and vovocorders, even though they know whatever she was yelling might provide clues to the identity of the perp.

It's a man, they assume, though the shape is blurred. As it enters the image and passes by a vari-portrait that was changing from a profile of Abraham Lincoln to a landscape of Patagonia, one detective theorizes that the unsub wore a shape-suit or some other type of active camouflage. Another, an Army veteran, discounts the possibility. No one else offers an idea. They simply do not know. One of their department's own is being raped right in front of their eyes. The shape moves quickly, so quickly Hyra didn't even realize it was there. Silent movement from Mute-sole shoes? Another theory. Or perhaps Hyra was simply concentrating on removing the sound equipment. Doesn't matter now, or as East would say, "That shit is, yeah... history."

Marquitez recues and they watch it again. And again. A shadow grabs her by the back of the neck and pushes her face against the wall in the southwest corner of the room. The vari-print breaks from the wall and there's a pixelated rainbow of debris. Her trousers are torn; fall to the floor. They can't hear her scream, but they can all hear the scream. The act is violent - her head appears to bounce twice, maybe three times, against the false mortar of the hotel room - and none can tell if Hyra is even conscious by the end of the assault.

It horrifies the men and women of the MCEE's elite Supervisory Investigations Section as they watch. Some even close their eyes or turn their heads. But, at the end of the day, it is a typical sexual assault. Almost textbook.

It's what occurs at its conclusion that confuses Silver. Confuses his partner, Steven East. Confuses Juan Marquitez. Confuses Detective-Captain Amanda Normandy. Confuses everyone.

With no jump in timecode, there's an energy burst, centered on Emily Hyra. The shape/shadow seems to dematerialize, and Hyra - obscured by static fuzzbuzz over the visuals - disappears into hundreds, thousands of minuscule beams of light.

Then it's over. The feed records another 212 minutes of the corner of the room - an auroRose shifts with the sunset, closing its petals with the darkness - until Marquitez enters the frame, reaches for the Coolidge print and its array of electronic eyes, and the feed blinks out.

***

"Jesus." Steven East speaks with a dead-pan tone, as if naming the suspect. "What the juju-bee was that?"

"I dunno, man. I just work here." Marquitez stops the playback and excuses himself.

Detective-Captain Amanda Normandy snaps her fingers, ignoring her detective's departure. "All right, people. Phillips, Naifeh? You're skipped. East and Silver have lead. Keep doing what you're doing, but consider yourselves at their disposal."

The announcement isn't much of a surprise. East and Silver, unconventional and controversial as they are, are widely-regarded as the MCEE's best. The Feds often request them by name whenever the FBI/E has to work in Marion County or nearby. Nobody complains.

***

Steven East holds a flaccid doughnut; his face emits a like demeanor. In his other hand, a coffee cup dips to the point of imminent disaster. He's vertical only due to the digipost wallboard holding him up. Some jackass transmitted the Baby-Spider Murderer's likeness over a greasy slice of Suicide Meat onto the board.

"Mmm," mumbles East, "guess you had to be there." He watches the disc progress bar as the digipost loads the Hyra case.

Silver enters their office and slaps East's gut with a rolled-up Flixon-edition Post-Gazette. For a second, a nano-print headline sticks to East's shirt then fades into obscurity.

"You eat too much."

"It's how I cope with you."

"You two," Normandy screams across the floor from her corner office, "in the proof room. Now." There's no question as to whom the command is directed.

"Suck it down, Steve," Silver starts, just moving out of the way of East's coffee finally imitating Niagara on a slow day, "We're in the ape-shit." Silver's seen monkeys throw shit before - a vacation in northern Colombia that wasn't much of a vacation - so he imagines that ape-shit is worse. Then again, what happened to Emily Hyra probably constitutes a higher form of primate excrement.

Silver half-jogs out the door, leaving his long-time partner to mull over a one-sided retort until he slugs back the remainder of his coffee - barely a sip survived the capsize - and stuffs the uneaten half of doughnut into a Rubbermaid nano-compactor.

***

Silver paces the floor, tapping the edge of a viewdesk. "The fuck. Didn't she just walk in here a week ago?"

"Two months. Give or take." Normandy settles into a chair and leans into the desk's edge. She taps the screen and pulls up a STaRT blotter. Silver holds out his Personal Data Pad and the translucent image hovers from the viewdesk's projector and dissolves into the PDP's receiver. "You guys know the drill. Hit this hard. Need bodies? Start with Marquitez. He's taking this badly. Postpone or hand-off your other cases."

"The Hemmersmith murder and Fields bust? Come on, Captain." Silver isn't one to let cases go so easily. And he's cocky enough to believe he and East can handle all of them. Good enough to, in fact.

"The DA knows what's going on. They can wait while you're flipping flips and turning tricks."

East, against the door, stares through a photo of Vice Mayor Lancer leaning on a golden shovel. He's paying attention, but a bad feeling borne of childhood institutionalizing creeps into his thoughts like a banana roach into a trap-zap.

Normandy notices his blank expression. "East?"

"Yeah?" He shakes his head. Reflex. More coffee would be awesome.

"Something on your mind?"

East shrugs. "It's go time."

Normandy offers her hand, not wanting to be too overbearing. "Then give me your PDP and get ready to go."

***

*Continued in Gods Playing Poker: Pinched With Four Aces


The Complete Gods Playing Poker

• Part 1: A Friend in Need
• Part 2: Pinched With Four Aces
• Part 3: Stranger in Camp
• Part 4: Sitting Up With a Sick Friend
• Part 5: A Bold Bluff
• Part 6: Post Mortem

Tom & Dinosaur Hand

first a quick shout out to Jeff, over at Whatever the Hell he's calling His Blog this week, as he has posted the new Touche' Cliche'...I'll have it up over here at some point, when I can fit it in...

Dinner...and a movie! A Theme Thursday post: Dinosaur Hand: Aha! Something I can really sink my teeth into!
Tom: I'm glad you're excited. Here's the thing, though - we just aren't sophisticated connoisseurs of fine cuisine, you know.
D.H: Speak for yourself, mush-up frog face. I love stuff like rat-a-tatty and horror devourers.
Tom: You mean ratatouille and, oh never mind. Obviously you are more the beans and franks sort.
D.H: ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Tom: Alright; what I was thinking was, we rate our favorite meals, you know, the stuff we cook ourselves, for our family.
D.H: And we grub it down while watching a movie? Excellent!
Tom: Too right; Burn After Reading. One of those great Coen Brother movies.
D.H: Hoo! Remember Fargo? What did we eat with that? Spaghetti?
Tom: What? Who knows. This movie had a great cast, including John Malkovich, Francis McDormand and George Clooney.
D.H: Don't forget Brad Pitt. (snort) He was a riot! What a dope.
Tom: Yeah – I liked this one a lot. It had a couple crude parts, but mostly it was goofy and a rib tickler.
D.H: Ribs?! Are we having ribs with this? Sweet, gooey, finger smacking ribs?
Tom: No, no...but we're cooking, Dinosaur Hand...ready?
D.H: I really like the spatula. Stir the pot, stir the pot. And frosting. And the licking of the batter.
Tom: Right. Now we're getting somewhere. One of my favorite dishes is pork chops over sliced potatoes.
D.H: Fancy.
Tom: Ha. Not really. Remember how we make it?
D.H: O.K. I'll play your game. First, set the oven to 325, then slice up a mess o' spuds.
Tom: Yep – it depends on how many you're cooking for. I figure at least one good size potato per person, but I really like the taters, so I slice more.
Layer the bottom of a 9X13 casserole pan with potatoes and top that with pork chops and sliced onions.
D.H: Onions shmonions. Why is it always onions with you. Are you in love with onions?
Tom: Maybe, a little. Put either water or a half can of broth over the whole bunch, some butter and salt...
D.H: ...then cover with foil and stick in the oven for one point five hours.
Tom: It's so easy that even me and Dino Hand can do it. Almost as easy as boiling water!
D.H: how does that work?
Tom: Okay then, easy as making toast.
D.H: That lever thing always gets me...
Tom: Um, easy as buttering bread?
D.H: ack, who has time for that?!
Tom: Last chance – easy as pie!
D.H: Ta – daaaaaaaa. Winner winner, chicken dinner!

Touche' Cliche'

#2 of the infamous (not so much)

Touche' Cliche' series,

the subnormal brainchild of Jeff, drawing by Tom (me).

click on to Engorge !!!

the comic above is--for now-- the final version, but as you can see below,

a little more went between the initial sketch and the done deal.