Not dead which eternal lie– Stranger Aeon, Death Might Die.
Beetlejuice had “set up shop” in what you and I know as St. Louis.
That meant trouble so far as our region—best known for its conservative tendencies– was concerned, Howdy-Doody dammit. You had that aging population hunkered over its T.V. dinners in crotchety, hard-of-hearing sufferance as if formerly ram-rod straight, patriotic “better days” were gone forever.
Half river-town and sleepy asphalt pasture, it was a carnival candy-land for the itinerant cheater setting up shop.
This was the place. The swooping vultures gave the spot away, out by the dumpsters in the rear of the spacious parking lot.
And there he stood in a red, frilly coat-vest with his hands clasped solemnly before him. Two misshapen hench-men handed-out programs like tongue-hung jaundice and ill fortunes—as you thought of working-men shoveling lion shit down at the Depression-era circus.
How mid-afternoon hung hazy on the horizon with the breath of the river and bump of traffic—as chunky families waddled past in their Sunday’s finest.
Faded, toasted. . . . . like an even lower cousin of the Salvation Army church rummage sale. It brought to mind little, cute plastic puppy-dogs and lime-green butter dishes and the porcelain sweep of angels, as if buried in their last bad suit with Elvis mutton-chop whiskers and sentimental close-out savings.
But “you got what you paid for” in this run-of-the-mill survey of heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, and cancer like mortal affliction and gnarled-up, piss-poor feebleness.
Yes, the ole’ pine-box. . . . . or even a piano crate for “the large of carriage” as the corpulent lived and died “off the fat of the land”.
Tombstones of the very heartland sat in Jefferson Barracks Soldier’s Memorial in verdure memory as the mossy, dry earth and squiggling micro-bacteria rotted and lived throughout the gently rolling hills like natural process itself.
The clanging church bells, as if out of time as local city hall witnessed the timeless rituals of births, deaths, and marriages. No more, was the man of an earlier-age plowing the land with a mule.
How modernity was like a customer kicking the tire at one of the many auto-dealerships as the flapping, colored flags bespoke of the mostly played-out Midwestern frontier. Kneeling-down “and patching-up your wagon-wheel” before moving on.
You had the dollar show and box-outlet stores as the buildings must have seemed pretty up-to-date in the 1950’s with the shale, coral-stone walls. . . . . ancient footage of “Old Glory” flapping against the blue sky with the economic growth following World War II that anchored the century.
Lots of retirement homes out this way— aging infrastructure among misbegotten, cast-off suburbia where land was cheap and plentiful. You could say death was as American as apple pie.
Thing about funeral homes. . . . . “everyone was dying” to get there.
Attending a service “was mere dress rehearsal” for the real thing. Funerals were always for the living, At least giving a formal, grody send-off and trying not to think of death in all of its unappetizing manifestations. . . . . like a chill wind through a junk yard and the metallic screech of crows on the wing.
Death was coming—you could bet on it. It came for us all.
Or at least the local television crew filming a “60-Minutes” like exposé on the habits of sleazy business in the region. Like “Rent-to-Own’s” or “Payday loans” on the scavenger’s side of low-man’s quick-fix solutions with a contract and a single answer—that single answer alone as the media ambled up your way:
“No cameras!”
Death, taxes. (And exposés) Don’t mourn the value—unbury the savings.
“7 trumpets & 7 seals” like rusty, farting tail-pipes and badly-written paperwork. Over the breeze drifted the sour, muddy breath of the Mississippi river.
“Pleased to meet you. Hiya hija. So sorry about your loss” as our scurvy mortician and funeral director glad-handed with the deceased’s family, relatives, and friends.
His hands were fish-white, green-moldy, and cold as the ditch as two hateful, yellowed eyes peered out of the eye sockets like pure “Red State id”. His hair was in a wild, blonde, dirty tangle—below which his rotten mush-mouth twisted into an expression of greatest sympathies.
(– payable by the hour)
He took their hands and shook them earnestly—rings went missing.
But who was in the mind to notice? Faces were twisted into grief and mortality’s somber stirrings over dabbed eyes, a lace handkerchief and the Lord ’s Prayer.
A cell-phone chimed with a mordant ring-tone and Beetlejuice answered it, half turned-away and listening as the throng streamed past.
“Yeah. Okay. Will be right down”.
He popped-open his red pocket-watch, noted the time, and then lurched into a half-hunched jog—waving his arms as he ran into the chapel like a screwball floor manager.
And quickly, he took his place at the registration desk were mourners signed the guest-book.
Drapes hung in the somber, golden light and an old-fashioned grandfather clock ticked-off the early evening passage. The overwhelming smell “was like hot dogs” with a chaser of formaldehyde. And you heard the scratching of a quill-pen, the yellowed pages inked with thick, red beetle-blood.
Just like the old Chicago pork factories, “they took everything but the squeal”.
Quicker than that, he was gone like a shot off to an undisclosed room where access was restricted.
And you could hear a rustling—a kind of thumping behind the wall—as a slot opened behind the eyes of a formal portrait—how the eyes seemed to follow you.
There Beetlejuice watched the subdued cries of mourners as they talked among themselves and bent over the casket, talking amongst themselves.
(– incidentally, you could say it was a shoddy job)
Hey, death was a business—as our ghoul ogled the wives, aunts, and daughters as they filed-on past.
Heh, heh, heh.
Another round of thumps and rustles as our red-ruffled ghoul reemerged in the side hall, reeking of cheap cologne and striding purposefully with vulgar, golden cuff-links and headed toward the fire-exit.
“Hey, this way—come here” he gestured. “Come here”.
You, the witness to all of this find no reason not to tag along as he shows you what it looks like “behind the scenes” of the mortuary life.
Beetlejuice halted in front of a book shelf and pulled out a volume—“Critters, Coots, and Hermits of Missouri” and part of the wall spun out to reveal a hidden staircase, winding down into the murk and lit by flickering torches.
Down to the crypt. . . . . winding around and around as Beetlejuice leads you. The smell was of mildew and cement as he walked you to his ruinous hole of an office. It was a thread-bare desk that might as well been the administrative head quarters of a creamed corn factory. A calendar on the wall, a mug of coffee, and an old, junky computer monitor and tower displaying a spreadsheet with the winking cursor.
Very Microsoft. . . . . very “Windows ‘95”. What else does the small, ratty semi-professional use—be this a scrap metal office or insurance appraiser’s office?
You could hear the ache of the working man as Beetlejuice leaned back in his squeaky chair and took off his shows with a grimace, rubbing the bunions and rotting toes wrapped in bandages and rags.
“Oooh, my dogs are barking. . . . .”
(– the stench was overpowering)
“Okay, let’s get down to business” as he flung away his dress shoes to the sound effect of a slide-whistle where they clanged against a cot and old socks soaking in a bucket.
The desk phone rang—Beetlejuice sprung forward to answer it.
“Last Gasp Mortuary—you stab ‘em we slab ‘em”.
A lawyer. Were those death certificates forged? The signatures look awfully suspicious.
Another call—a bill collector. According to our records, you’re falling behind on payments—but we don’t want to repossess the hearse. So will you pay up, please?
Next, the representative of a guns n’ ammunition company.
“No, we’re not just a funeral home—we do it all. Yes, sir—savings, savings, savings—we’ll sell you those corpses to test bullets on—my guarantee and free delivery for our V.I.P. clients”
Beetlejuice hung up the phone and laid back with a lazy guzzling sound. Roaches spewed out from the cracked and broken walls, scurrying over the land deeds, IRS rebate checks, and legal papers strewn across his desk.
Discounts or trade-in’s. . . . . . he owned your soul entirely.
His other names could have well been “Rumplstilstkin”.
Or even Beelzebub.
And those aching feet—he might have been crucified in another life by angry town’s folk he tried to pick clean or even had his head cut off with his mouth stuffed with garlic and buried at the crossroads.
Right then he sloshed coffee in his mouth and spat it out into the corner, patting his belly and looking contented with himself. A bottom-feeder. The blast of fast, flying-money was, as a rule—like richly-rotted chaos at the local casinos as fortunes eroded faster than Beetlejuice could shake a pair of dice in a ghastly fist.
Even the foam-rubber gargoyles in the corner– apparently left over from a Tim Burton yard-sale– seemed to gag. “See no evil”, “hear no evil”, “speak no evil” as they all looked ready to wretch.
Apparently, this was too much even for the door-men of Hell.
It was once said that Hell was being frozen in the ice of one’s indifference. . . . . and you could just watch in fascination as Beetlejuice filled out paperwork like a kid doodling with crayons.
His personal assistant dropped by, a lady with languid mannerisms. She haunted the basement as the resident corpse-painter and wore a cracked “Phantom of the Opera” mask.
A monotone voice, lugubrious. The morgue, where the theater arts came to die. Where artistic license wasn’t all-revoked, yet with a degree in community theater and modeling.
You could say the work on the corpses “was a real shoddy job”. The deceased looked like a badly made-up dummy stuffed with saw-dust, decked-out in ill-fitting clothes.
And with the casket made from wood stolen from construction sites, it was bottom-dollar artifice.
“Whatever, you’re the boss” as she bobbed-off like an apparition in a Bram Stoker novel.
Going on a smoking-break. Lo, the mortification. And high rate of turn-over.
Meanwhile, off in another corner of the basement—his two lowly assistants were hosing down some stiffs, the bodies leaned-up against wall as water ran down the drain in putrid rivulets.
It was as if the south-side had vomited-up its secrets amid the old, gutted-out brick buildings and tangled river air—a humid stench—as you had escapees from a lunatic asylum.
One breathed heavy and shallowly like a diseased bat as he filled his tuxedo awkwardly, the short one of the bunch. Another—a bearded, muff-eyed man looked on with great distant presumption, his eyes partially rolled-back in his head on brainless auto-pilot.
They were paid with “room & board”—and leavings from the day-old bread-store. Busy hands—the dignity of work—at least not on the welfare system as state officials turned a blind eye, by golly.
A corpse lay “on ice”, covered in a sheet.
Beetlejuice put on magician’s gloves and came over to inspect, personally. He looked like a head waiter in his red, ruffled suit as he prepared, preening over it and drew back the sheet like a table-cloth.
It was dead, alright—with glassy eyes and mouth twisted into a rigor mortis grimace.
Beetlejuice lay his head on its chest, the gaseous smell like spoiled, sour pickles. He then proceeded to rub down the body with salve and gave it a punch to the ribs, like a fresh-spanking baby.
He took out a sharp trowling instrument and slit open the belly with one smooth motion.
A whistle blew—LUNCH TIME!
Beetlejuice took a sandwich from his pocket and unwrapped it, not thinking to clean his hands as he knocked back liquor from a hip-flask. He wiped down his mouth with the back of his hand.
The corpse’s eyes popped out with a poinky-pointy sound, as if in surprise to this level of squalor.
Meanwhile, the two hench-men were struggling to bring down a body from the stairwell like delivery men muscling refrigerator. It was strapped to a dolly as they tried to jimmy it through the doorway.
Beetlejuice came over to lend moral support—as if to help, chewing on his sandwich.
Just then the wheel slipped and rolled over his aching feet. Beetlejuice hopped up and down on one foot, cursing. All three of them fought to get a better grip as the corpses in the corner fell over.
He was neglecting his guests upstairs. . . . . back up there in solemn commiseration.
And as it usually ended, the consensus of everyone was to go to the Golden Corral Buffet & Family Feed-Bag. The vapors of a Sunday sunset. . . . . . hacking-up meat as they sat at the tables. Or scavenged at the food troughs like a pack of wild dogs.
It was better not to think about it.
So the news hits me yesterday.
Poor old Lemmy Kilmister, colonel and warty lead singer– and bassist– of Motorhead has sadly passed on to the great “Hammersmith/Odeon” up in the sky. Maybe in an angel outfit– even if he was a philosophical pessimist of great decline and fall– but Motorhead was once described as the kind of animal pack who’d move next door to you AND YOUR LAWN WOULD DIE.
He was the sort of grizzled sot who kept things gruff and honest, a straight-up Englishman as a snakebite godfather to punk and heavy metal music. A mutton-chopped road-dog of stern, no-nonsense portent– off-set by his stage-appearance usually on freaky amounts of speed, marijuana, and Jack Daniels.
Just to see him screw his eyes around crazily and take the stage, craning his neck up to the microphone and singing like motor-grease and frying eggs as he tore his way through rubbery, low-throttle licks like a sonic blitzkrieg.
He found himself in several movie cameos– usually as a gloomy bystander of circumstance– as I’m sure Beetlejuice 2 will reference him somewhere.
Sing his praises– “or be a vagrant on the sidewalk of life”.
Seasons greetings– from your favorite pesky screenwriter. Milking a fictive, hoary franchise “for all it’s worth”. For your free dose of entertainment (– and mine), make a Christmas wish and Winona certainly ain’t wrapped in a bow, under my tree.
So conceptual work continues on the “here-today-gone-to-hell” script of elusive repute. Though we certainly come-up with tons of ideas– whether Beetlejuice could actually be turned into a mini-series with all the ideas we’ve generated.
Oh, and here’s the latest. . . . . as the Christmas theme is a rich vein of material where Beetlejuice can worm himself, into.
In certain Christian fundamentalist circles, they actually believe that Santa Claus is a stand-in for the devil– a kind of imposter taking the place of theological soundness.
Santa? The Devil? Really?
Well, the idea is that Santa is a cheery old devil and bit of a mischief maker.
I think I’m smelling the rot of some interesting appearences. . . . . as you could see Beetlejuice in a Santa outfit– or otherwise known as “SATAN-CLAWS”.
Here is the rationale for all of this in a Bible tract, here:
http://www.av1611.org/othpubls/santa.html
The idea is an evil-deceiver who leads kids out to the faithless snows based on their susceptible belief– and disappears with the brimstone of false promises. And if kids now won’t believe in Santa “on faith”, then what will they refuse to believe next?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence– and I’d tend to see Beetlejuice sleeping-off a drunk in a cold, shivering storage locker. He swiped all the goodies from the stockings and makes his bedraggled haunt like the stink of rum and a three-day’s growth of unshaven neglect with a single, lit candle and a mouldy summer sausage swarming with rats.
From the chimney of hell to the cold, cold grave– I believe in the enduring humor of a wretched American character (– I think he gambled away his money for Christmas presents down at the dog-track).
Well, “DIRT CHEAP” beer & liquor is always open. . . . . so leave you with an image of some debauched old St. Nick and he certainly doesn’t look jolly in this video below.
A busy holiday season has kept me away from my own personal blogosphere, yet feeling that ole’ “writer’s itch” to come back. . . . . and post-up some more ravings “from the mad monk, himself”. Maybe I needed a break but we’ll be back tomorrow as if this subject hasn’t been flayed-to-death, yet. I believe in Beetlejuice. I believe in me.
Hey, y’all–
Had to quick, declaim any mistaken connotation with the “Hell-Fire Club, Paris” entry as an unfortunate turn of events would make it seem offensive and insensitive– like some kind of hideously-rotten joke about concert halls and “express-elevators to hell” as we don’t need that. Just a bit of bad timing, that’s all. Friday the 13th, anybody?
We’re a comedy blog– and if you asked Beetlejuice about fanaticism he’d ask you why you were in such a big hurry to get to the netherworld. Say, eternity “gets kind of boring, after a while” and to find any meaning there is like trying to explain what we’re doing here on earth. It’s just a sale, a big of snuggling-down comfort and cycles of rejuvenation and then getting run-down all over again.
Unto ghostly exoticism you can have questions if jinn or what is known as genie-spirits whipping across the desert in calamitous whirl-winds and mostly causing trouble for wandering humans. Say his name “three times” to summon the powers of the undead. He’s a cut-rate genie, so you get your wishes only granted “half as well” like discount bargains on hopes n’ dreams.
It’s a strange world out there as a global culture of local spirits and superstitions all meet as even stranger phenomena of The Netherworld. We’ll keep you posted, and may everything settle down over in Paris. . . . .
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/le_cabaret_de_lenfer_the_turn_of_the_century_paris_nightclub
Someone sent me a link on Facebook, one of those “memes” that pastes images over text as I wish to imitate the idea in the truest form of homage by remixing it right here.
So it’s the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” chucked in the direction of the newly-dead and spiritually-orphaned that proved to be an eerie plot-point in the original “Beetlejuice” as newly-weds Barbara and Adam Maitland found themselves marooned in the hereafter. Funny, it “read like stereo instructions” or even the legalese of the dusty tax code as tomes fall on the table and frighten you with their finality.
If you moved a passed-out drunk into an attic and locked the door– leaving out nothing but “The Handbook” would it dawn on him, paging through the book– that maybe he was deceased? What a dirty trick. . . . .
. . . . . as there was once a story out of The Arabian Knights about a peasant in the city who was drugged and woke-up in the sultan’s palace of pleasures, led to believe he was really royalty all along. Then drugged again, and waking up in his usual humble lodgings. He began handing out orders and raving when no one would listen to him.
Of course there’s the story when a sultan played a prank and had his victim drugged, waking up in a pit of wild animals that had their teeth and claws removed. Rousing into consciousness and scurrying around with the growls of beasts following him.
What else do you do for an encore? Maybe we’re all victims of a big cosmic joke when you think about it– a theater of the absurd as then again, Beetlejuice is not one to go off quoting Shakespeare or anything. To be or not to be, is the question.
We answer it with this website.
The rules of the universe wouldn’t have it any other way.
Happy haunting!
Scott H. Biram. . . . . will whip his own weight in wild-cats.
Step up right now, folks– watch the tent-act with toothy gouts of “Beetlejuice” drippin’ right down his chin like beer gravy and chicken blood. . . . . the green feed-store cap and mean blue-jeans “right off the street” as he glares through the smoky darkness of juke joints and concert halls and taverns like red brick loam and the smell of beer suds.
Like grit in your craw, jerkin’ a knot in the devil’s tail and snarling like a rabid shit-dog drove through a thresher. . . . . sawed-bone and green biting flies for prairie Texas sugar-land gothic and a whole lot of American roots.
His skilled fingers slide over the nylon guitar strings– like that rough edge that digs into your ribs, a stomp-pedal keepin’ rhythm as he sits on the amplifier over the smell of frying meat and mean-grilled BBQ.
Working man’s music, like that wind howling over mile after mile of interstate truck-drivers, a sandpaper clutter that wails it’s troubles from the very bottom of the world like you were staked to an ant hill and dunked in Tabasco sauce.
Scott H. Biram. . . . . one man tornado.
Once, I showed-up in a zany black Beetlejuice t-shirt, a perfect riff on hoppin’ low-down human behavior. And there, as “the ghost with the most” oggled you upon white press-on plastic, arms extended like a carny or Grand ole’ Oprey comedian. Corn liquor for your troubles or a slurred swallow of “Beetlejuice” like chewing tobacco.
He “got” the reference.
“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”
Part of this man IS Beetlejuice. And he tied-on a wild one, that night down by the river.
Visit his website at:
Down at the St. Louis International Film Festival, over the weekend. Of local interest, Alex Winter from the “Bill & Ted” nostalgia-wagon was by to glad-hand at a special late-night screening, not to mention promote his own line of directorial work.
He won a local award for lifetime achievement by the local film society of artists, academics, minstrels, and poets. . . . . a far cry from what he’ll always best be remembered, for. Mixing business, pleasure, and a cultural touch-stone of local fandom as I wonder if he ever gets tired, rehashing over his “Excellent Adventure” or “Bogus Journey”, depending on how you choose to look at.
Like they said in some “View-Askew” Kevin Smith moment, I guess the internet is an excuse to bat around porn files back & forth and otherwise cluster around movie nostalgia.
The world belongs to the fans– and hungry they are, for “fresh meat”. Or the carcass of Beetlejuice dragged-out in his old pin-striped suit as there’s putrescent juice left in the franchise, yet. Bloating potential and chock-full of squirming, squiggling maggots as I’d like to refer to film-can scavengers as something, nobler.
Beetlejuice is like the splattered possum of a misbegotten sequel no one quite gets around to shoveling off the super information highway of rumor, fan-art, and hope. Tap that vein– that rich, rich vein as I’m sure this blog is generating interest, somewhere.
On a softly-ominous portent “of what might be”, the Beetlejuice Rockin’ Graveyard Revue is closing-down at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida as you wonder about the remnants of hoosier heaven south in Tampa– and where the real fun’s at.
Easily transposed to the wilds of South St. Louis, Beetlejuice never dies in spirit and will walk among us so long as there’s truck stops, carnivals, and fireworks stands– and you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be sleazing around your neighborhood, or in a word-processing program late at night on my home computer.
So say it once, say it twice– third time’s a charm– “SCREENPLAY, SCREENPLAY, SCREENPLAY”. The madness continues as you’re in store for no end of fun. As sure as the trailer rolls-up to my backyard to take permanent residence as you hear the barking dogs and banging trash-cans as Beetlejuice takes possession of myself, as muse– and won’t die-down until the money rolls in, at long last.
The epitaph on this one will be “The Final Word”. Sequel-juice! Sequel-juice! Sequel-juice! Because one good turn deserves another– and you can just call be “The Necro-Butcher” of WordPress blogging. See you again, right here tomorrow.
Beetlejuice 2 Fan-Fiction 