Karma, Purgatory, Bureaucracy

  

Karma, Purgatory, Bureaucracy

“Just another number”.

Be there “no Karma about it” but THE RECENTLY DECEASED will hit that old after-life office with the thud of paperwork.

(Reminds me of the ole’ Social Security office)

Franz Kafka couldn’t have said it better, whether just the victim is mad or “THE SYSTEM”, itself is even crazier. . . . . and remember, that guy in the “Metamorphosis” story did turn into an insect. OR EVEN A BEETLE.

A lot of people “kill time” in the waiting room, bearing the incarnation they took when “struck-down, mortally”. The visual cue—its own kind of karma whether you’re a shrunken-head on the leash of a witch-doctor as it didn’t end well for the big game hunter.

Don’t go smoking in bed, either—or take poison which will turn you into an icky, translucent green like the secretary behind the sliding window.

Perky, pert, and sarcastic—if not despondent in this perfect illustrated example of the mind/body and material/spiritual splits that cleaves the world into an alienated hell.

Ole’ Beetlejuice pops his head in and takes a seat. I’d imagine him probably sticking his hand down the front of his pants like Al Bundy in “Married with Children”. Half-resourceful or maybe just fool-hardy “no one will notice” as he lopes across the parking lot to grab a cooler of beer.

You’d imagine he’d only lose his place in line.

Solely the balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve simultaneous emotion and lucidity. . . . . but there he hollers at his loss.

In this last week, we’ve lost Chris Cornell—the singer from Soundgarden—and Roger Ailles—the chairman of Fox News. Only out of an episode of “Adult Swim” could these figures every encounter each other.

The moody rock singer leans up on the chair, hang-dog with his hands stretched over his knee while the right-wing chieftain tries to bluster and glad-hand his way out of federal commitment for dinner reservations “elsewhere”.

There’s only a few things certain in this life. . . . . death, taxes, and irate constituents.

End up here and you have to meet your quota of lingering, ghostly “overtime” back on earth. Spook the hell out of the living for a spike of adrenaline and ecto-residue that kicks into your early retirement, building enough parasitically-fueled power to ascend up the spiritual pyramid to eternal bliss.

Sounds like Medicare and Social Security.

You’ll pay though. . . . . they’ll take everything “but the squeal”.

Death. Taxes. Hollywood sequels. . . . .

Welcome to America. You could die laughing. . . . .

 

“No dream”, kid. This was your life! Remember to Linger in the graveyard and pick the daisies before summoning for pizza on the Ouija board.

Bill & Ted go to Hell, Meet the Easter Bunny

A clip from “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”, almost entitled “Bill & Ted go to Hell”. . . . . where they meet the easter bunny and practically a Easter family Get-Together, for the entwining of fate & real life.

Party Hearty in the after-world of Contemporary Fantasia!

Will there be a Bill & Ted 3? Make it happen before the dudes end up in a retirement facility, if we see that Beetlejuice sequel first. Let’s see it before Doomsday, itself.

Did you know? Alex Winter (the blonde kid) is actually from St. Louis! Righteous Local alumni!

 

Even the “Wyld Stallions” have to eat. Enjoy the local St. Louis Loop in University City, right by the Tivoli movie theater where Alex Winter was a special guest at the big film festival a couple of years back. Voted one of the top districts in the nation– have a bite!

Tales of the Christmas Crypt-Keeper

So how many product-franchises can we tie into this big Beetlejuice project?

Everything is a cross-promotion, all but “throwing in the kitchen sink” as we could use the ghoulish crypt-keeper to narrate the action, throw-in some bad puns from time-to-time.

Otherwise following the adventures of Beetlejuice– either a tour guide at a gator farm or working as a lackey at a Christmas tree lot. Now there’s a vivid image, with the red stocking cap as always. . . . .

This movie would have jokey asides and surreal pivots of direction as it moves from thing to thing and pays proper homage to the kinds of things Beetlejuice– and yes, Lydia– would be up too. Not “a cookie-cutter sequel” by any means, but practically a literary exercise in THE BIZARRE. . . . . just take a look at how this script is developing.

You will be shocked. . . . . you will be amazed. You will be glad that you tagged-along for the journey. Right now, “the muse” is kicking back with a beer– the Yuletide living-room in shambles, like Christmas turkey left-over’s and socks draped in the sink.

If not a kids’ birthday party clown then a repo-man. Home for the holidays– Beetlejuice takes a vacation. But we will be back in three flicks of a reindeer’s tail so don’t you go changin’ and stick around for more madcap fun in the following year to come.

  

Geena Davis as “THE EXORCIST”

 

St. Louis. . . . . the grassy outskirts, on the edge of the rising skyline. . . . . WHERE DEMONS WALK THE EARTH.

We may simultaneously be both the most blessed and backwards state in the union when it comes to wild-cat religiosity with all sorts of sanctified holy-rolllers. Casting out demons on local cable access t.v. programs as you could have a mixture of clap-board theater, self-taught demonology, and mental aberration for growling lost souls and any rabble of charity cases.

It’s all about on the production level of Beetlejuice’s yard—like flashing lights, arrow-signs, and checkered flags on the outskirts of civilization—a no man’s land of improvised sales pitches and gravel-pit roads. Like graveyards and landfills across the field from flea-market heaven.

That’s good and all—but when you really have a confounding problem you have to turn it over to the big guns of Western Civilization—The Catholic Church and not the roadside snake-farm.

A bit of ritual is in order. . . . . with the frocks, chalices, and holy water. It perfectly fits in with this town, as St. Louis  speaks of graveyard dirt and haunted, pallorous secrets with breweries, the stinking river, and insane asylums.

And believe it or not, but the actual “Exorcist case” happened here at the old Alextion Bros. Hospital.

Imagine, now—an Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step program meeting in a boiler-room, somewhere and an old groundskeeper volunteering “his piece”.

“I’m Joe Carletto. . . . . I’m an alcoholic but I don’t believe in any of this ‘higher power’ stuff. This support group may help me, for what it’s worth—but I mostly don’t believe it. THANK-YOU”.

But he couldn’t explain, for the life of him—what actually happened that night back in 1949. He was working maintenance as the excitement went on, upstairs. The only thing he’ll say is that they couldn’t control the temperature of the room as it dipped into freezing hellishness no matter how much they stoked the boilers.

He shakes his head and sits back down. . . . . not saying more.

Except for the child’s head twisting-around 360 degrees, it really happened. Only it was a young boy and not Linda Blair. The knocking beds, the levitating possession victim, the projectile-vomiting.

And now Geena Davis stars in a t.v. show based on the original “Exorcist” movie from 1973. . . . . and you can bet that her co-star, Beetlejuice “saw it 167 times. . . . . and how it keeps getting funnier EVERYTIME HE SEES IT”.

But Geena Davis steals the show, this time. Ever goofy, like a sharp fang and a corona of high-intelligence clarified by her beanpole height and open mind she returns to supernatural television. Read an interview with her—a fun gal to be around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/arts/television/geena-davis-the-exorcist.html

 

BJ: Faith-Healer & Televangelist

 

Seen, up at @

http://www.paladin-press.com/product/How_to_Get_Rich_As_a_Televangelist_or_Faith_Healer/Financial_Freedom

A book description that reads as follows:

Learn how to make a fortune as a religious con artist. This lucrative career has sustained countless scoundrels, frauds and hucksters for millennia. If you play the part right, you will be blessed with riches, power, prestige and sex.

Discover the easy, inexpensive ways to get religious credentials (and the tax-free status that goes with them), how to develop your following, how to tailor your message for maximum gain and how to weasel out of trouble when your lavish lifestyle or personal misconduct hits the fan.

Your victims will be the feeble, the old, the poor and the desperate, so this is for people with no conscience whatsoever. Get ready to stare into the hopeful faces of the lame and the terminally ill and lie, convince working people to send you their last five or ten bucks by telling them that God will return the donation a hundredfold and rob nursing home residents of what little they have as they hang on to every word you say. In return, you will give them a good show, a temporary emotional high and a hefty dose of false hope. And you will be one rich SOB!

Whether you’re actually considering a career in televangelism or just studying their methods to protect yourself or a loved one, you’ll find page after page of shocking, amusing and heartbreaking true stories from the world of religious chicanery.

Hold on to your seats, folks

Something tells me that a streak of Beetlejuice lives in motor-mouthed televangelism and other fast-talk as he could literally “fall out of his Beelzebub ways” with a laying-on of hands for a quick conversion– moving in all ways holy and dubious “as a transformed creature”.

Casting out demons, as it were– as 666 devils, goblins, snakes, and lizards pop out of his mouth in bottomless evil down at the ole’ revival tent. Spirits bump against heads of parishioners and bounce about like crazy as you have a real exorcism going on, there.

He sees the light! Now, in a cheap suit with his hair flying rotted and wild as always as “Bible Study” theology discussion takes on wild, unscripted directions. (He speaks from extensive, personal experience). Pray, work, and die– as he’s “touched with the spirit” and slathers on “the praise” with bad, rotted teeth– the empty collection plate rattles with a genuine home business– howling with “the anointing” with a touch of werewolf as the most entertaining show on local cable-access television.

A bit of faith-healing with a pinched-brow, a magician’s bag of tricks.

Going around carnivals and selling “patent medicine” from an illegal whiskey still and otherwise being much like a television kids’ show host for a bunch of skeptical, laughing 13 year-old’s as he wraps his arms around their shoulder and lures them into the revival tent– otherwise raving-on against masturbation and the like.

You’ll be rolling with holy-laughter as you haven’t seen a character “so earthy” since John the Baptist, a pinch of brimstone and a thing for cute church secretaries. A divinity degree bought online from a diploma mill as that’s “Pastor Beetle” to you.

A Bonus:

“Attention, K-mart Shoppers–“

Someone uploaded all the Muzak that played, month-to-month at K-mart stores and seems oddly appropriate, at the mention of our bargain-discount buddy as dogged shoppers push their carts down the aisles, “like walking death”.

This guy uploaded a collection of 1989 – 1993 Kmart background music

And also: Miss Winona is as curious about this new Beetlejuice movie as anyone, and wishes that someone would shed light on the subject. Would she consider visiting this website for some genuine inspiration?

http://www.mtv.com/news/2346647/winona-ryder-beetlejuice-2-rumors/

Back tomorrow, kids– don’t sign-away your souls as Pastor Beetle would find ways to swindle you with a contract, made “with the devil, himself” as a bit of side business. We prophesize that a fool and his money will be soon parted.

BJ-2 World-View

The movie we know as BEETLEJUICE is a kind of “feel-good” movie about death as the franchise’s theology about the here-after is no less twisted—a wild, convoluted tale of our universe so much vaster and stranger than we can imagine, yet more true to the day-to-day indignities and drudgery than we could ever guess.

What, you thought “being dead” would be some kind of picnic, or something?

In that gnarled, creepy Tim Burton way— it’s outrageous and dead and so unclean—whether punk-midnight-rebellion or sin is more interesting to an admission-paying audience.

There can’t be light without the opposite, or even absence of light—which is darkness. And as we know-it, populated with demons and aliens and lost-souls like side characters in the on-going parable of survival. Call it “a roll of the dice” when everybody “kind of shows-up” and does the best they can as the greater mysteries may be more a common misunderstanding like missing the bus or not having “your number” at the waiting-room window.

Just because you believe or don’t believe—well, if you start making enough noise eventually someone or something will show-up to investigate. That goes for talking into CB-radios or playing-around with Ouija boards as you might not want to mess-around with that. Corporeal indignities and spiritual energies are not mutually-exclusive as we access hidden, deeper realms of innate psychology—as we self-reinforce ourselves to become a moving body full of the life-force.

Don’t forget that energy comes from a clotted, talking pile of cells and blood and flesh from whence a hunger is asserted, the urge to self-preservation and survival. Hopefully, off to brighter realms. . . . .

Nor should you decide that “the fish-bowl” is turned upside-down and how you’ll die on your own expiring oxygen and cruddy wastes on a waning course of pitiful existence.

I come from a mixed Lutheran/Jewish cultural background which gives you a glimpse into how circles of society interact, as it’s a broader-view than being raised in a mono-culture. With the ability to compare and weigh distinctions, you become a kind of trickster or wandering “gad-about”

There was that book, “Flat-Land” put out by a mathematician in the late 18th century that described how 2-dimensional shapes slide around a flat grid and talk and live there. And how would the world appear to them—if a 3D shape from a higher dimension descended down into their corner of things. If an apple made a guest appearance, the flat figures would only see “slices” of the spherical object dissolving through the table like a mind-warping hallucination.

Postmodernism brings in a collage of clashing world-views, as it least part of something points toward a universal truth—and reality is what happens, whether you agree with it or not. . . . . and even if you close your eyes, it’s still “there”. It doesn’t follow that there’s much purpose behind-it, only that we arrive and move around while in a dream, yet awake.

Maybe that makes me a varied and comical-enough writer to come up with “Beetlejuice 2”.

Back again, soon.