I've overstayed my welcome this time. The sun's coming up. My neck muscles hurt the way they do when you drive truck cross-country, thirty-six hours on NoDoz and coffee and Clark Bars for the jolt. You looked fragged, too. We've been sitting here talking for hours. You ought to go home and crap out for a couple of hours before you go to work.
I've got a hard day ahead of me. Cardiac rehab tomorrow morning, and before I can snag a few zees I've got to fax this introduction out to Dana Buckelew at White Wolf.
They call this a metafiction. Watching myself watching me as I watch myself write an introduction. Drive carefully. Stay away from bad dope. Avoid Stephen Seagal movies. Thank your mother for the chicken soup.
And as Howard Garis used to say, We'll get together again unless the soup spoon flips itself off the edge of the table and puts out the cat's eye so that it runs amuck in the kitchen and lands in the microwave and fricasees its feline ass, and Uncle Wiggily gets involved with a hooker who takes him for his top hat and spectacles; unless all that happens, I'll be back here in six months or so with Volume Three, containing THE HARLAN ELLISON HORNBOOK and the previously only-limited-edition-published book-length screenplay, HARLAN ELLISON'S MOVIE.
Until that time, kiddo, stay out of the line of fire. And let's pretend
Life is a lot easier than reality tells us.
Harlan Ellison
6 August 1996
Los Angeles
| Go to Table of Contents |
One
First there was only the empty golden circle of the hot spot, blazing against the silk curtains. That, and in another vein, the animal murmuring of the audience, mostly teen-age girls with tight sweaters and mouths open-crammed by gum. For what seemed the longest time that was the portrait: cut from primordial materials in an expectant arena. There was a tension so intense it could be felt as warmth on the neck, uncontrollable twitches in the lips and eyes, the nervous shifting of small hands from nowhere to nowhere.
The curtains gave a vagrant rustle and from three parts of the orchestra and four parts of the balcony came piercing, wind-up-a-chimney shrieks of pleasure and torment. Behind the velvet ropes, overflow crowds pressed body on body to get a neck-straining view of the stage. Just those purple and yellow draperies, the golden coin of the spotlight beam. The scene was laid with a simple, but forceful, altogether impressive sense of dramatics.
In the pit, the orchestra began warming its sounds, and the jungle murmur of the anxious crowd rose a decibel. There would be no Master of Ceremonies to start festivities, no prefatory acts — the Tumbling Turellos; Wally French & Sadie, the educated dachshund; Ivor Harrig with mime and merriment; The DeLaney Sisters — there would only be that golden spotlight, a blast of sound, and the curtains would part. This was one man's show, as it had been one man's show for two weeks. This was The Palace, and it had been invaded.
Two weeks before they had made The Palace alter all its precedents. The screaming, feral teen-age girls with their eyes like wine-soaked jewels, their mouths hungry, their adolescent bodies rigged and trussed erotically. They had booed and hissed the other acts from the stage before they could gain a hearing. They had stamped and clamored so outrageously, the booker and stage manager had decided — in the absence of the manager — to cut straight through to the feature attraction, the draw-card that had brought an audience rivaled only by the gates of Garland, Belafonte and in days past, Martin & Lewis.
They had set the other acts aside, hoping this demonstration was only an opening day phenomenon. But it had been two weeks, with SRO at every performance, and the other acts had been paid off, told a profusion of sorrys, and the headliner had lengthened his stint to fill the space. He seemed, in fact, suffused with an inner electricity that allowed him to perform for hours without fatigue. The
I've got a hard day ahead of me. Cardiac rehab tomorrow morning, and before I can snag a few zees I've got to fax this introduction out to Dana Buckelew at White Wolf.
They call this a metafiction. Watching myself watching me as I watch myself write an introduction. Drive carefully. Stay away from bad dope. Avoid Stephen Seagal movies. Thank your mother for the chicken soup.
And as Howard Garis used to say, We'll get together again unless the soup spoon flips itself off the edge of the table and puts out the cat's eye so that it runs amuck in the kitchen and lands in the microwave and fricasees its feline ass, and Uncle Wiggily gets involved with a hooker who takes him for his top hat and spectacles; unless all that happens, I'll be back here in six months or so with Volume Three, containing THE HARLAN ELLISON HORNBOOK and the previously only-limited-edition-published book-length screenplay, HARLAN ELLISON'S MOVIE.
Until that time, kiddo, stay out of the line of fire. And let's pretend
Life is a lot easier than reality tells us.
Harlan Ellison
6 August 1996
Los Angeles
| Go to Table of Contents |
One
First there was only the empty golden circle of the hot spot, blazing against the silk curtains. That, and in another vein, the animal murmuring of the audience, mostly teen-age girls with tight sweaters and mouths open-crammed by gum. For what seemed the longest time that was the portrait: cut from primordial materials in an expectant arena. There was a tension so intense it could be felt as warmth on the neck, uncontrollable twitches in the lips and eyes, the nervous shifting of small hands from nowhere to nowhere.
The curtains gave a vagrant rustle and from three parts of the orchestra and four parts of the balcony came piercing, wind-up-a-chimney shrieks of pleasure and torment. Behind the velvet ropes, overflow crowds pressed body on body to get a neck-straining view of the stage. Just those purple and yellow draperies, the golden coin of the spotlight beam. The scene was laid with a simple, but forceful, altogether impressive sense of dramatics.
In the pit, the orchestra began warming its sounds, and the jungle murmur of the anxious crowd rose a decibel. There would be no Master of Ceremonies to start festivities, no prefatory acts — the Tumbling Turellos; Wally French & Sadie, the educated dachshund; Ivor Harrig with mime and merriment; The DeLaney Sisters — there would only be that golden spotlight, a blast of sound, and the curtains would part. This was one man's show, as it had been one man's show for two weeks. This was The Palace, and it had been invaded.
Two weeks before they had made The Palace alter all its precedents. The screaming, feral teen-age girls with their eyes like wine-soaked jewels, their mouths hungry, their adolescent bodies rigged and trussed erotically. They had booed and hissed the other acts from the stage before they could gain a hearing. They had stamped and clamored so outrageously, the booker and stage manager had decided — in the absence of the manager — to cut straight through to the feature attraction, the draw-card that had brought an audience rivaled only by the gates of Garland, Belafonte and in days past, Martin & Lewis.
They had set the other acts aside, hoping this demonstration was only an opening day phenomenon. But it had been two weeks, with SRO at every performance, and the other acts had been paid off, told a profusion of sorrys, and the headliner had lengthened his stint to fill the space. He seemed, in fact, suffused with an inner electricity that allowed him to perform for hours without fatigue. The
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