I was listening to El Fusilado by Chumbawumba the other day and it struck me that, though I thought the song’s story was neat, I had never actually fact-checked any part of it. I’ve listened to the song many times, and often wondered if it described real events or described an old story based on dubious fact.
What I found surprised me in a most satisfying way.
The song describes a real man, by the name of Wenseslao Moguel, who took part in the Mexican Revolution. He was captured by enemy forces, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Now, a lot of firing squads have a bunch of guys with blanks and one guy with a real bullet and no one knows who has the real bullet. The reason being that after their target is bleeding out onto the ground, each one of them can be reasonably confident that “it probably wasn’t me that killed that guy.” Everybody gets to go home and get a full night’s sleep, confident that it almost certainly wasn’t them that shot a defenseless dude tied to a pole.
That… was not what happened here. Wenseslao Moguel, as made famous by Chumbawumba’s song, was shot nine times, one of those shots being straight into his head to “make sure he was dead” after the firing squad had finished up.
Now, it’s wouldn’t be a good story unless he lived. Which he did.
His good looks, on the other hand? Not so much.
His case seems to lack documentation, from what I have been able to research. Sources cited by Wikipedia even include a link to some guy’s blog, which gives an interesting (but unverified) account of the story, including one detail mentioned by the song about how Mogel crawled away through piles of bodies in the dead of night. The Evening Independent (on Page 10, under Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), from 1935, omits the “crawling over dead bodies” bit. A shame, really, because that adds so much flavor to the legend of this really badass Mexican soldier.
He became know as “El Fusilado”, meaning “executed one.” That is, probably, the best nickname anyone could hope to get. He’s basically a real life version of The Crow, except without the goofy makeup and goth fashions. Of course, he didn’t really do much after being being found and rescued at a church. It wasn’t like he went charging back into the battle, or anything. Instead, he seems to have played it safe and retired to a quiet life after the war, once appearing on the Ripley’s radio show many years later.
Is there a lesson to be learned from any of this? Probably not. I mean, “don’t get shot nine times” is a pretty good moral to any story, but I feel like it doesn’t really need to be said in the first place. Though Chumbawuba describes Mogel as a “Mexican war hero”, I would, instead, call him a Mexican war martyr. I mean, I doubt he had much of a normal life after his face got that messed up – he probably suffered many years of pity or abuse due to his war wounds. Still, he lived to the ripe old age of 85 despite his horrific maiming, so I guess it couldn’t have been all bad.
Actually, I guess there is a moral to all this: If you’re gonna get shot and survive, go big, or go home. After all, how else are you gonna get on Ripley’s?
Warning: I’m about to out myself as a seriously awful film snob. You will probably want to punch me right in my smug snob face. Very light spoilers for the latest Guardians of the Galaxy movie follow, as well.
I don’t understand paintings. I really do enjoy looking at good art, I think, but I need someone to tell me what makes a painting good or bad.
“See,” they say, “how the brush strokes on the tiger flow fluently forward to create the cohesion between the stripes, and the illusion of fur?”
“Ah, yes!” I nod, seeing it only after they explain.
“Now look,” they say, hands pointing at the picture, “and see how the artist’s use of color shows the depression that she felt during this period of her life, and the utter and bleak hopelessness that pervades all of her works during these years.”
“Right,” I say, “of course. I understand.”
But I don’t, really. I only understand because it was explained to me, not because I felt it in my heart.
A few months ago, I took a Sunday afternoon to walk through an art gallery in Rochester, NY called the Memorial Art Gallery. It’s a deceptively small place, and examining all the pieces takes only an hour or two. This, of course, has no bearing on my enjoyment of the experience; one short film can outshine a three-hour movie just as a short walk through highly curated art outshine flipping through the “Random” option on Imgur for half a day.
I walked the halls, taking the time to examine each and every painting and sculpture that I saw. I tried to formulate the feelings behind the piece, to understand where the artist was coming from when they created their work, and then I took a look at the actual description given by the artist, or ascribed to it by scholars. More often than not, I was completely off the mark. It struck me then that I did not understand the basic language of physical art. That is not to say I cannot learn it, only that I am ignorant of it as I am now.
Flash forward to a months later. Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2 has just come out and my mother, an avid superhero film fan, asked me to take her out to the movies as a birthday present. I had seen it already, once, but I was more than happy to see it again because, to put it simply, I love that movie.
The jokes almost all hit , the action is fun and flows smoothly without too many jarring cuts, and while the plot itself is, in my opinion, about as bland as it can get, the overall experience of the film puts it easily in my top films of the year so far. Hell, maybe it’s the best in a few years. Not sure yet, need some time to mull it over.
Now, I studied film in college. Go on, laugh it up. As those of you who have read this blog before know, I am not currently working in the film industry. That’s certainly for the best, because I’m simply not insane enough to set foot in that ego-destroying business. To those of you who claim sour grapes, well, you may not be wrong, but a summer of making films at Universal’s back lot taught me it simply wasn’t the place for me.
Now, I may not have picked up a job in the industry, but I like to kid myself that I understand the visual and artistic language of film. I love movies that have deep sub currents of metanarrative and that use their visuals as part of their storytelling motif.
(Looking at you, American Psycho, you glorious bastard of a film. Christ, I could spend half an hour talking about the intro scene and its role on the viewer’s perception of Patrick Bateman both before and after the big reveal at the end… but that’s for another time.)
It was while I was sitting in the movie theater with my mother that I realized film watching, in itself, is part of the art of cinema.
Let me reign it back a little and admit something a little embarrassing and probably TMI: I cry at the end of Guardians 2. Part of this, I’m sure, is due to my own lack of a father figure in my life. Never knew my dad, never felt the need to. Now, I don’t want to spoil the ending of the movie, but I will say that Guardians 2 explores Peter Quill’s connection with his absent father in an unexpected, touching moment. Fireworks are involved. And yeah, I cried. Both times I saw it, in fact. I think the visuals, character connections, and soundtrack really come together in the last few minutes to make an incredibly bittersweet ending that ties up a lot of loose ends for Peter.
And then I looked at my mother, who has watched and rewatched the original Guardians probably ten times of her own volition, and knows the characters and plot inside and out – and found her completely unaffected. She didn’t remember the names of several characters – characters she had been introduced to ten times over in the first movie – and yet she thought it was “very fun!”
I was reminded of how some of my friends watch movies – cellphone in hand, texting or browsing the web, looking up once every thirty seconds to say “whoa!” or “huh!” and then turning back down to their phones. I ask them how they liked the movie, and they say “Oh, I loved it! I just wish it made a little more sense. It was hard to follow” or “I don’t really understand why that one guy died,” or my personal favorite: “Why were they all so mad?” (That last one was asked by someone watching a war film. No, that’s not a joke – somehow the presence of soldiers and gunfire didn’t tip my friend off as to why they might just be a little bit upset)
Now, before I continue, I want to emphasize that I’m not just waggling my you-know-what around saying “Ooh, look at me! I’m great! I’m unique! I’m the only one who truly understands art!” Far from it. I’m the guy that walks into a movie based on a long-running series without reading the books first, who asks his friends who the characters are when they first appear on the screen. “Was that guy in the comic?” I’ll interrupt a show and ask, and my more educated friends will fill me in on some crucial details that I was ignorant of. I’m not saying I’m anyone special, really.
I am, however, claiming that some people are better at watching movies than other people. Some people, perhaps more educated in film-making and the creation of visual mediums, are able to understand the themes and undercurrents of films better than others and, if some people can be good at it and others are bad at it, well, it must be a skill.
Friends of mine know I have an irritating quirk: to judge someone’s opinions on movies, I ask them if they enjoyed Ted 2. If they say yes, then I disregard their movie opinions pretty much right away. If you were to call me a dick for that, well, you’d probably be right. Still gonna do it, though.
Ted 2 was a movie in which people got hit by stuff, or smoked pot. Those were the two jokes in that movie. I believe it was a movie made for people who like to “turn their brain off” at the theater, something my ADD-riddled mind is perhaps unable to do. There are no deeper themes, and no interesting discussions to be had after watching it. Instead, there are conversations like “Did you see that guy get hit by the spaceship?” and “Ha, there was a lot of weed in one scene and they made a reference to Jurassic Park, which is a movie that I have seen and enjoyed”.
Well, Seth MacFarlane did kind of equate the struggles of African Americans in the 21st century to a literal teddy bear, something so mind-bogglingly strange that I blocked it out until doing some research for this little essay. Okay, back on point…
The ability to really watch and comprehend a movie is not something that some people are born with, and others are not. I know how these people feel. They feel just like I did when I walked around the art gallery, scratching my head and ogling at the watercolors. I could tell something was going on, something “artistic”, but I didn’t have a language in which to describe it. I couldn’t put those thoughts swimming around the back of my mind into coherent words to describe what I was looking at and, because of this, a lot of the meaning of each piece was lost on me. The ability to really watch and comprehend a movie is not something that some people are born with, and others are not, though.
I think the reason that movies like Ted 2 succeed is the same reason that Adam Sandler movies still make returns at the box office: people don’t know how to watch film in the same way I don’t know how to appreciate paintings. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but it makes me sad that when filmmakers do something clever, like pull off a really complicated trick it goes right over the audience’s head.
So, here’s the solution. Get ready, America, because we’re about to Make Hollywood Great Again: Film Comprehension classes.
Ok, I can tell by the look on your face that you’re not completely on board, but give me a moment to explain.
Writing is one of the oldest human art forms and, as such, we are taught to understand reading and writing from an early age. We learn English is school, take tests on our comprehension of assigned readings, and (supposedly) learn to differentiate good writing from bad writing.
Your milage on that last point might vary, I suppose.
To a limited degree, we practice similar education with other forms of art. I think all of us can remember studying political cartoons in history class at one point or another, and being asked to interpret and understand the events contained in them. I distinctly remember writing a short essay on the boston massacre based on a political cartoon drawn the year that it happened. We are taught to seek themes and structure in all forms of art.
Well, except film for some reason. Even though film sales and book sales run neck-and-neck. Even though films are more easily accessible, and take less time to digest than a novel. Even though people actively seek out movies and ignore books.
That last point is what gets me. Kids like to watch movies. Hell, I’m pretty sure everybody likes movies. So why not teach film comprehension in grade school? Let kids understand what they’re seeing on screen. When a filmmaker pays homage to a Hitchcock film with a Vertigo Shot, is it wrong for me to want other people in the theater to understand the rich film history that the director is drawing inspiration from? Isn’t that why we tell High Schoolers to study Shakespeare? Isn’t that why teachers actively curate examples of good literature to share with their students?
The point is, we need film comprehension classes. Films are more accessible and, in most cases when grade schoolers and high schoolers are involved, more sought-after than their literary counterparts, but that doesn’t make them any less important. If anything, instilling a history of film and cinema culture in the minds of young students would foster a desire for higher-quality film making and story-telling. Hell, it could cause a massive upset in the film industry, leading to better, richer films being produced, and for dull, repetitive and boring works to be discarded.
People like movies. Is it so wrong that I think we should want to understand movies, as well?
This rant inspired by three shots of awful whiskey, and my mother. Love ya, mom!
And James won’t be alone. Paul George, John Wall, and even DeMarcus Cousins could join him.
(Getty Images)
We already know that LeBron James could leave Cleveland after next season, but for Bill Simmons, it’s a near certainty. He explained how he sees it all going down on the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast. And his theory involves a lot more people than just LeBron James.
“I do genuinely, honestly, truly believe LeBron will be on the Lakers next year,” Simmons begins. “I think that’s how this is going to play out.”
The first piece of evidence: The Cavs are still in win-now mode.
“[LeBron] has not committed long term to the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Simmons says. “Everything they’re doing is kind of short term, win-now, fix-it stuff. They tried to shop Kyrie for help. They claim they didn’t, but they did. They shopped Kevin Love all over the place. I think they’re stuck with this year’s team.”
Second piece: He already delivered on his promise to bring a title to Cleveland.
“And win or lose, he brought Cleveland a title,” Simmons says. “He has an out. He can finish his career in Los Angeles.”
There are a bunch of other reasons why LeBron might move to L.A.
“His business is here, as we’ve discussed, his family has a giant house here, as we’ve discussed,” Simmons says. “And most important, they have a ton of cap space.”
But that’s only the beginning. Simmons sees a much bigger picture that could come together.
“What if I told you that 12 months from now, LeBron James, Paul George, John Wall, and Boogie Cousins will all be on the Los Angeles Lakers together?” he says. “Conspiracy Bill has some things that he doesn’t like about what’s going on. I think the LeBron James–[to]-L.A. [story], he hasn’t come out and denied it. Everyone’s talking about it in the league, it became public last month. He knows they’re talking about it and hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t said, ‘This is ridiculous. I’m so tired of hearing this. I want to finish my career in Cleveland.’”
Plus, Los Angeles gives LeBron the best foundation for life off the court.
“[LeBron] came home, he brought them a title. He did an incredible amount of stuff with the scholarships in Akron and the college program. He’s amazing. It’s an unassailable resume if he leaves now. ‘I did my best, we spent a lot of money, and now I’m going to finish my career in Los Angeles and I’m going to try to become a billionaire.’ And I think that’s where this goes. I think he’s going to say, ‘My idols are Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. I believe I’m on the same level as those guys, and part of having an awesome career is the career after the career, and that’s what I’m starting to think about. I want to own an NBA team. I want to be a media mogul, I want to be a billionaire, and to do all this I have to be in L.A., and I’m going to go there now.’”
Wait a second. Back up. LeBron, Paul George, John Wall, and DeMarcus Cousins on the Lakers. Really? Here’s why Simmons thinks it could happen:
“Here’s the interesting part,” Simmons says. “So, John Wall, represented by Klutch — Rich Paul — LeBron’s buddy. LeBron, it’s pretty clear he either owns Klutch or funded it or has a stake in it. You could have John Wall and LeBron. Paul George is going to the Lakers anyway. I mean, that’s not even a secret anymore. It’s just like, they might as well start selling his jersey. And I always thought John Wall and Boogie are a team.”
It’s true that Cousins isn’t represented by Klutch or Rich Paul, but he has been friends with John Wall since their Kentucky days.
“I feel like 2018, I think that summer they’re like, ‘We’re a package deal,’” Simmons says. “So they go to L.A. If [the Lakers] can get rid of the Luol Deng contract, use first-round picks [in a deal] just to get rid of them. I don’t think they’d have to use Brandon Ingram. The market for getting rid of a contract is a first-round pick at this point. So you have Lonzo under contract and Ingram, which is about, I don’t know, $11, $12 million combined.”
That could be enough cap space for all four guys, depending on where the ceiling is set and how they divvy up the money.
“Maybe like $96 million [in space] for the four guys,” Simmons says. “LeBron takes less. LeBron takes $20 because they secretly promise him 2 percent of the team after he retires. He’ll make up the money. $20 million, so he leaves, let’s say, $75 million for the other three. They split it up, $25 million a piece. And the 2018 Lakers — John Wall, LeBron, Paul George, Brandon Ingram, Boogie, and Lonzo off the bench. That’s something.”
Listen to the full podcast here. This transcript has been edited and condensed.
I woke up in a dark place, lying on my back. I groaned as I pulled myself upright into a sitting position, clutching my head. There was pain there, dull, and pounding. Had I been drinking last night? No, this didn’t feel like that kind of headache. The pain was fading away quickly, at least, which I was thankful for.
Still, I was having trouble remembering what happened the night before. It was like every time I tried to pull my mind back to last night, the memories slipped away into nothingness.
Frustrated, I turned my thoughts away from what had been and examined where I was.
I was sitting on what felt like fine black sand. I picked up a handful of it and felt it run through my fingers; it felt soft and smooth, very different than sand I had felt at the ocean. The light was very low. I could see a few feet in front of me, but no further. Try as I might, I couldn’t make out the source of what little light there was.
I patted my pockets, looking for my phone. If I could turn on the phone’s flashlight app, I’d surely be able to get a handle on this. I found it, not in my pocket, but lying in the sand next to me.
“Oh, shit shit shit,” I muttered, wiping the sand off of it, praying there was no water damage or sand stuck in the jacks. To my relief it turned on just fine, with full battery. I sighed, audibly, at my good fortune. No signal, and the clock was displaying 99:99, but somehow I had full battery. Good enough. I clicked the flashlight app.
What I saw was sand, and darkness – nothing I couldn’t already see. Of course, now I could see sand twenty feet off in the distance instead of just five. Whoopee.
“Well,” I said to myself, “That is most distinctly unhelpful.”
“I bet that light ain’t gonna help,” said a deep voice from just behind me. I nearly shat myself.
“ Bwah!” I exclaimed, spinning around so fast I fell flat on my ass. My phone went flying off into the distance. “Whaddafuck?”
Before me stood a tall, thin figure in a black jacket. He had one hand in his pocket, and the other one casually hanging by his side. So surprised was I by his sudden appearance that I almost didn’t notice he was holding a pistol, the same kind the army I had used in the army. Even in the low light, I saw its polished steel glint with a mirror-like sheen.
“Jesus Christ,” was about all I could say.
The man let out a dry, rasping chuckle.
“Interesting choice of words.”
I pulled myself back up to my feet, slowly, palms extended out in front of me.
“H-hey man,” I stammer out, “I don’t want any trouble, ok? What do you want from me? Money? My credit card? You can take ‘em, let me just…”
I reached for my wallet only to realize it’s not in my back pocket. I froze, one hand in front of me, and one hand digging into the ass pocket of my jeans. Holy shit, I was going to die here, in this… wherever I was.
“Don’t bother with any of that,” the man said. “I don’t want your money. I want your help.”
I had serious doubts as to whether that was an improvement in my situation.
“Okay, uh, let’s talk then. What do you need help with?”
The tall guy sighed, and shrugged his arms in a hopeless gesture.
“We need to get out of here.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, unsure of what he meant, “you mean off this beach?”
He looked upset with my answer.
“Look around you, man! Where do you think we are?”
“Uh,” I said, mind racing, “a beach? At night?”
The man in the jacket scowled at me.
“A beach, huh? You hear waves around here? Do ya?”
I swallowed, nervously.
“Well-”
“No!” he shouted, interrupting me. He crossed his arms, letting the silver handgun rest on his elbow.
“This ain’t no beach!” he continued, leaning back and frowning. I was vaguely aware that he was making a very important point, that I should be paying attention to his words, but in truth the only thought going through my head was gun he has a gun gun gun gun there is a gun oh my God oh my God he has a gun.
I nodded.
“Right,” I said slowly, “no waves. No beach. Makes sense.”
I paused, my own words finally connecting with my brain.
“… no beach?”
The tall man nodded.
“Now you see it. No beach. Some kinda desert, maybe, but not a beach.”
My brow furrowed involuntarily, and I put my hand to my chin.
“So, like, a desert? But there certainly aren’t any deserts in Rhode Island, and it isn’t really all that hot here… We must be indoors then, right? This is some kind of big room full of sand, maybe? Though, I must say, that sounds patently ridiculous.”
Now it was the other guy’s turn to look confused.
“What in the shit is a Rhode Island?”
I paused, a little stunned. This guy had a Jersey accent. He was white, with short brown hair, and a bit of stubble around his chin. He looked and sounded like someone I might have bumped into on the street.
“Uh,” I said, a little unsure of my footing, “where are you from?”
He scoffed.
“Dude,” he said, “I’m from Kabul.”
“You mean, like, the place in the middle east?”
He tapped his head with his index finger and gave me a condescending look, as if I was the last guy in the room to understand the punchline of a joke.
“Um, hello? Yes, my man, obviously. In Afghanistan. Our capital city. Can’t you tell? Listen to my goddamn accent, dude, I’m a city slicker. How do you not know this? You raised under a rock or somethin’?”
I wasn’t really sure what to say to the guy, so I opted for total honesty.
“Um… Not sure how to tell you this, but you sound like someone from America. You’ve got a really heavy New Jersey accent, and you look vaguely Italian. You don’t look, uh… like you came from the middle east.”
He stared at me, eyebrows creased in concern, and he looked at his hands and arms.
“Nah, no,” he finally said, “no, no, no. That’s bullshit. I know what I am, man, and I ain’t no American. Not one bit.”
He crossed his arms again, and chewed his lower lip, looking at the sand. There was a moment where neither of us talked, or moved. Finally, he looked up at me again.
“Do you know who you look like?” he asked.
“Uh, I dunno,” I answered, “a skinny Polish guy who grew up on the coast of the Atlantic? White?”
“No,” he said, “you’re a tan-skinned motherfucker with a big nose who looks like an Indian guy I knew named Rajit, and you’re speaking perfectly fluent Pashto.”
We both stared at each other, appraisingly, unsure of what to say next. I looked down at my hands, which were pale white, as always. I touched my nose, which felt the same as it always had. Not big, by any stretch of the imagination. He broke the silence before I could.
“I seriously need to know what the hell is going on. Something is really fucked up about all this.”
“Yeah, right,” was all I could muster up. I wasn’t sure if I believed any of this, but the guy had a gun, and I didn’t he got to make the rules today.
“Like I said,” he continued, ignoring my weak affirmation, “we need to get out of here.”
He stuck the gun in the pocket of his black jacket, and began pacing in a wide circle in front of me. He chewed his nails while he walked and, looking down, I saw that he was barefoot. I realized that I had been barefoot this entire time as well. Had someone taken my shoes?
“Well,” I said, “can’t we just… walk away? This sand can’t go on forever. There’s gotta be a door or a wall somewhere, right?”
The faux-Italian looked at me with sadness writ large on his face.
“You don’t think I tried that? I woke up here, same as you. You were lying down next to me in the sand, with a gun by your side, fast asleep. I walked away for what felt like half an hour and found myself right back next to you.”
“You walked in a circle?” I asked.
“No!” he shouted, hands raised upwards in frustration. “I didn’t walk in a fucking circle! I walked in a straight line! This place is just wrong, man! There’s something messed up going on here!”
This time, I was the one who let out a chuckle.
“No way. You walked in a circle. Here, let me find my phone, we’ll turn on the light, and we’ll walk together.”
He looked unconvinced, but didn’t voice any arguments. I picked up my phone from where it had fallen before, and gently blew the sand off the screen. I turned the flashlight app back on, and we began to walk.
The sand was flat in all directions, as far as I could tell. We trudged along for what felt, at least, like along time. I walked in front, my phone held up in front of me, and the tall man behind me, keeping close to make sure he didn’t lose me in the darkness.
The darkness itself was strange, too. It felt weighty, pressing in on all sides with an almost animalistic aggression. I told myself it was just my imagination. Darkness was darkness, just a lack of light. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t alive, and it certainly couldn’t move a little closer every time I looked away. That was crazy.
There were no stars overhead to guide us. I did my best to keep moving in a straight line, but I couldn’t be sure that I was succeeding. I tried my best to put that out of my mind, along with other questions that worried me at the moment, such as “Where am I?” and “Am I even alive?” I couldn’t even remember my own name, I realized a start, then quickly pushed that thought out of my mind as well.
I didn’t like thinking about those questions. Best to leave them for someone else.
The sound of our footsteps in the sand was the only noise I heard. After a few minutes the soft swish-swish of our feet was starting to drive me nuts, so I started talking.
“So, Afghanistan, huh? What’s that like this time of year?”
“It’s pretty awesome, man. Beautiful mountains, clear blue skies, and just absolutely stunning landscapes in every direction. Getting a little cold, since winter’s pulling in, probably around 10 degrees. Not too bad, though.”
I didn’t know if he meant celsius or fahrenheit, but I said it “sounded pretty nice.”
“Hell yeah. How about you, man?”
I didn’t answer at first, not knowing what was even worth talking about in Rhode Island.
“Well, I like a couple miles from the beach, so we see a lot of boats come through. That’s pretty nice. The trees are starting to change color, so everywhere you look you see reds and oranges.”
“The beach?” my companion asked, “you mean, like, the sea? The ocean?”
“Yeah. Not much to look at, really.”
“Oh,” he said, “I dunno about that. I never even seen the sea, man. I don’t live anywhere near water. Hell, I’m lucky to see the stuff when I take a piss!”
He laughed, and to my surprise I found myself laughing with him. I couldn’t stop; I laughed until I almost cried. We both did. It wasn’t even a funny joke, but we laughed anyway. I think we just needed to release some of the built-up stress we were both feeling. When we stopped laughing, we just stood still for a few moments, grinning like idiots.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
He thought for a moment.
“Dunno,” he said. “Can’t remember. Just kinda know some stuff about myself.”
“Same here. No idea who I am. Not a clue, just some random memories floating around my head. I don’t like to think about it.”
There was a pause.
“Do you think we…” I almost said “died”, but I cut myself off. I didn’t want to be the one to ask the question that I knew we were both thinking.
“Do I think we’re dead?” he said, catching my drift. “Who fuckin’ knows, man. All I know is I haven’t been hot or cold since I got here, and I haven’t been hungry or thirsty even once. Fuck, maybe this is just a dream. Sure ain’t no seventy-two virgins waiting for me here.”
He kicked the sand as he said this, and it sprayed up in a fan of fine black particles.
“You religious?” he asked me.
“Ah,” I said, “not really. I mean, I was raised Christian, but… I just kinda stopped going to church one day in college, and never really looked back. Don’t know why.”
“Huh,” he grunted.
“How about you?” I asked. He grimaced.
“Oh, very. I didn’t have much choice, honestly, but I don’t think I would have done things any other way. My dad raised me real hardcore-like, very strict. Said I had to do all sorts of shitty things. A few days ago, they said I had to…”
He paused, and abruptly grabbed his stomach as if in extreme pain.
“Ah, fuck!” he yelped, falling to his knees.
“What? What?” I asked, helplessly, kneeling down to him.
“Ah, my fuckin stomach hurts! Holy shit! Ah!”
He curled up into a ball, and started to cry. I didn’t know what to do, or how to help, so I sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He lay there, in the sand, groaning for a few minutes. There was sweat beading on his forehead, but as time went by, he seemed to be doing a little better.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He rolled onto his back, and stretched his arms out in the sand.
“Feels like I just got hit by a truck.” He pushed off the sand and stood up, wincing slightly as he straightened out. “Let’s keep moving.”
“But-” I started, but he interrupted me with a wave of his hand.
“No buts. Let’s go. We haven’t come across our own path yet, so maybe we’re doing something right.” He had an angry look in his eyes, like he had just seen something that really pissed him off.
“But your stomach-” I began, but he had already started walking. I was about to say something else, but I noticed he had his hand back in the pocket of his jacket – the pocket with the gun in it. I jogged back up to him, and resumed my position in the front of our two man line.
I tried to make some light conversation with him, but his mood had soured considerably. All I received in reply to my questions were one-word responses or toneless grunts. After a few minutes of this back-and-forth, I stopped trying.
We walked. For how long, I am not sure. Time seems meaningless when nothing around you moved. There was darkness all around, and nothing ahead but soft black sand, and the sound of our own footsteps fading into the void around us.
“Wait a second,” I said, coming to a stop. “I see something up ahead.”
There was something in the sand, something I couldn’t quite see, and that my eyes were refusing to focus on. It was black, and about 30 feet ahead of us. As I walked towards it cautiously, I saw it was not a thing, but a lack of things.
In front of us was a hole. I gigantic, gaping hole that stretched on and on into the darkness. I could not see the other side, or even if there was another side. There was simply nothing, as far as the eye could see. It stretched straight down at a very nearly ninety-degree angle from where we stood, going on in every direction.
There was nowhere left to walk to. Our journey was at an end. I sat down in the black sand, and just stared into the yawning abyss before me, saying nothing. After all, what was there left to say? I sat, and I stared.
I heard a click from behind me, and turned around to see what it was. To my surprise, my companion had taken the gun out of his pocket, and had cocked the hammer back.
“… What are you doing?” I asked, unsure if I would like the answer.
To my surprise, the tall man answered me, in stark contrast to his recent silence.
“Back there, when my stomach hurt, I remembered something.”
I said nothing, keeping my eyes on the handgun he had started waving about as he talked.
“The bad news,” he said, “is that we are most certainly dead. I remember exactly how I died, you see. The good news,” he continued, “is that I know why we’re here.”
He took a step towards me, gun still in hand.
“Funny thing, y’know, is that you were there.”
I felt a dull ache in my head again, like when I had just woken up.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You were there,” he repeated, “but you weren’t dressed in a T-Shirt and jeans like you are now, friendo.”
“I wasn’t?”
He grinned, but there was no humor in his eyes.
“Oh no,” he said, “you was dressed up nice and fine in your prettyboy American body armor, weren’t ya?”
As he said it, images flashed into my head faster than I could process. The dull pain in my head erupted into a roar, and fell face down into the sand, clutching my head and screaming. At least, I think I was screaming; the blood in my ears was pounding so hard I could hear little else.
“Ah, you remember it now, eh? You fuckin’ see it?” I felt him press his foot onto my back, pressing me flat onto the sand.
I did see it. I saw everything. I saw him walking towards me in a black jacket, only he didn’t look like he did to me here. He looked like a regular Afghan man, in a black jacket. No italian in his blood, no Jersey accent. There was something underneath the jacket, something bulky. He was walking towards a bus full of kids.
Someone had yelled “fire”, and I raised my rifle. Pointed it dead at his face. And then, he had looked at me. He had seen me, clearly, through my sights, and looked me straight in the eye. My finger faltered, and I just sat there, doing nothing.
And then he clicked something in his hand, and just… exploded. Four kids dead, twelve others injured. Suicide bombing, they said. Not your fault, they said. Not my fault, I repeated. I remember thinking those words as I had put the gun in my mouth, and brought my finger to the trigger.
He kicked me, bringing me back to reality.
“I was wondering,” I heard him say, “why I was here with you, some fuckin’ American asshole, in this weird-ass place where nothing looks right. Oh, but now I know! I know, sure as hell. This is about finishing the job!”
I felt something hard press against the back of my head. I didn’t have to look to know it was the gun.
“It has to be,” he continued, manically,” it has to be be. I’m not gonna be stuck here forever. I won’t! I can’t! I’ve done too much!”
I could feel his hand shaking as he pressed the gun harder against my skull. I heard him sniffle, despite the pounding in my head, and realized he was crying.
“Please,” I said, my words muffled by the sand, “don’t do this. You don’t want to do this.”
He barked out a short, humorless laugh that sounded almost like a sob.
“You know,” he said, his voice strained, “you’re right. You’re really, really right. But I gotta. Can’t go this far and pussy out now, y’know? Gotta end this, and get on with this whole afterlife thing. Gotta! Gotta do it. Just gotta do it.”
His hand was shaking more, now. His gun – my gun – was rattling against my skull, each hit like a nail being driving into the spot where the hole in my head used to be. I braced myself for the bullet. I wasn’t sure that I could die here, in this place that wasn’t a place, but pain was real; I knew that much. I knew what a shot to the head felt like, and it wasn’t pretty.
But the shot didn’t come.
I heard a click, like the sound of a firing pin hitting a bullet, but there was no gunshot. There was only a soft thump next to my head. I opened my eyes, and saw the gun lying in the sand next to me. I turned onto my back, to face my companion, but he was gone.
His footprints in the sand ended exactly where he was standing. He hadn’t taken any steps, hadn’t jumped off the side of the sheer cliff wall behind us, and he certainly hadn’t flown away. He was just… gone.
I picked up the gun. It was loaded. Aiming it up in the air, I pulled the trigger and expended a round into the pit behind me. There was nothing wrong with the gun, at least. I unloaded the clip, and saw that two bullets were missing.
He had tried to shoot me, he had really pulled that trigger. And now he was gone. I stood, staring at the gun in my hand, mind a blank. Maybe one bullet
Making up my mind, I turned back towards the pit that surrounded this dark, sandy place, and hurled the gun as far as I could into the darkness beyond. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom, even though I waited for what must have been minutes.
Corn Dog Dessert Burger. Instead of a bun, they use two corn dogs, and the filling inside is rainbow-colored cotton candy.
Double Corn Dog. A foot-long corn dog is battered in another foot-long corn dog that’s been flash-frozen, ground up, and made into a batter.
The Corn Dog Centipede. A foot-long corn dog that has been improbably and mysteriously stuffed with 10,000 corn dogs that are the size of a grain of sand.
Deep-Fried Sno-Cone.
Extra-Buttered Corn. An ear of good ol’ fashioned corn-on-the-cob, slathered in hot butter, but then also buttered from within because the farmers squirted butter into the corn from a crop dusting plane while the corn was still growing.
Chocolate Donut Funnel Cake. A funnel cake that takes the form of a funnel, and it’s used to more easily drop into the mouth the included bag of double-fried, chocolate frosting-injected donut holes.
Elephant Ear Sub Sandwich. It’s a sandwich, but instead of bread they use two elephant ears, and instead of sandwich filling they use three elephant ears.
Shave Ice-Flavored Sno-Cone.
Sno-Cone-Flavored Shave Ice.
Deep-Fried Dark Snickers Bar. It’s not a dark chocolate Snickers; rather, the “Dark” refers to the fact that this Snickers Bar is hiding a “dark secret,” and that dark secret is that it is two deep-fried Snickers Bars.
Extra-Creamy Insulin. Fairgoers have said it’s the creamiest insulin they’ve ever had.
The Most Delicious Lipitor in the World. Fairgoers have said it tastes much better than homemade Lipitor.
“Cheeeez!”
Coca-Cola Syrup Trough. A private, six-foot-long trench of the secret ingredient that makes Coca-Cola taste great: Coca-Cola syrup.
Chicken-Fried Butter.
Three Handfuls of Shortening. Served hot, on a stick.
Bowl of Lukewarm Oil. Served with dipping oil.
Fried Fried.
Cotton Fat. Fat is heated, whipped, and served atop a paper cone. Whimsical and tasty!
