Hey folks,
Man, what is up with me creating all these posts sending people away from my site today? Anyway, a bit of “flash fiction” I wrote called “Mitchell Oswald Realizes He’s The Biggest Asshole In The World” has been published by the good people at a fine website called Shelf Life Magazine. It’s in the “shorts” section. Check it out! Hope you dig it!
Love,
D.J.
On Nerdroid.com, cartoonist Anthony Clark posts two or three comics a week, usually starring BFF’s Beartato (a bear shaped like a potato) and Reginald (a bird whose name has nothing to do with his shape.) Really simple yet expressive linework and just delightfully bizarre shenanigans. Always manages to turn my perma-frown upside down, which is an impressive feat. I don’t know this Anthony Clark, but to him I say: “Well done, sir.” Also: “Thank you.”
He also posts some full color art here and there and other adventures. Just good timey good times all around. Check it out!
Who is the sassy sumbitch who wrote this? What the hell happened to him? (Though, well, the prediction for evil was already there…)
From my PURE LARD column at the footnote, way back in February of 2005. AWESOME illustration by Jason Ericksen.
Evil Twin: Special Director’s Cut
It all started one day when I was walking down the street, on my way to my weekly EXTREME Weight Watchers (an as of now little known hardcore offshoot of the more pussified mainstream Weight Watchers in which the Geneva Convention doesn’t hold any water) meeting, minding my own damn business…
Out of nowhere, this lil’ old Asian man sporting a super fly look in a mauve colored velour gym suit starts yelling at me! I tried to speed up as I didn’t need no more trouble with Asian men in velour gym suits. Who does? But he kept yappin’ and got right on my tail, his old, twiggy legs speeding him up to me, hindered in the speed department by my lumbering thunder thighs and overall sleepy demeanor, even in the face of sudden danger.
I told him I didn’t speak English (which was a bald faced lie on par with Bush’s “protecting freedom” reasons for bombing every other country in the world) and thought about starting to run when he pelted me in the back of the head with a rock! I went down like an out of shape, cracker-ass white dude who’d just been pelted in the back of the head with a rock.
“What the shit, Pat Morita?” I demanded breathlessly, winded from the mere thought of possibly running. (Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention that the Asian dude in the velour gym suit was Pat Morita from them Karate Kid movies.) He started blathering some goofy ching chong that I couldn’t understand. Then I heard him call me a “shit ass” for ripping him off in Vegas and say that I couldn’t fool him by shaving off my “white trash mustache”.
“Hold it, hold it, Mr. Miyagi. Vegas? Mustache? What’re you talking about?” This is where I realized that shit was about to get weird. I thought it was already, what with Pat Morita attacking me, but I realized right then and there that it had went and got really weird. We’re talking Jim Belushi having a semi-successful sitcom weird.
Turns out that there’s this jackass who looks exactly like me except with the white trash mustache who’s, like, the third best magician in Vegas. (Right behind Lance Burton and Wayne Newton.) Apparently, this mustachioed version of me had done the old smashing up something from an audience member thing when Pat Morita was in town for the premier of “Happy Days On Ice” at the Stardust.
The end of the trick is supposed to be that after just smashing the living hell out of some object from the audience, the magician “magically” fixes said object, returning it to the audience member unscathed. Unfortunately for Pat Morita, my magician doppelganger is either not that good or just a grade A fuck up. Pat, who’s an admittedly proud man, always carries around the Emmy he won for his recurring role as the Asian crack head informant on the classic show Nash Bridges and offered it to the hairy lipped magician me for that classic trick. Obviously, things didn’t go as planned, and Pat was hot pissed, his Emmy in thousands of pieces. Morita was about to do some wax on, wax off shit when shitty trickster D.J. disappeared in a cloud of smoke (which was actually a pretty good bit of magic by my estimation).
I could see why he’d be enraged enough to throw a rock at someone now. Unfortunately, he hit me really hard and the rock was jagged. I’d lost a lot of blood as he told me his tale and passed out before I could convince him I was, in fact, an innocent twin with no knowledge of what my carbon copy did in Vegas.
When I awoke, I half expected to be in a hospital or in my bed, my head bandaged up. Maybe surrounded by loved ones and some flowers. That’s the sort of thing that’d happen on the TV. But this wasn’t television. This was real damn life. And I was still on a dirty, disease ridden LA sidewalk lying in a now dried up and sticky pool of my own head blood.
As I stood, still woozy from what was looking like massive amounts of Pat Morita-induced blood loss, I pondered strange twists of fate such as this. It has been said that we all have a twin. Somewhere out there in this great big, stupid-ass, pointless, dipshit world each of us supposedly has a look-alike wandering around, maybe doing dumb shit like smashing up Pat Morita’s Emmy. And good god, I find it chilling to imagine a big, Lance Burton style billboard in Vegas featuring my fat head– with a white trash mustache no less! I couldn’t believe I had an evil twin that fucked Mr. Miyagi over so bad.
Then it occurred to me: What if that was just one mistake? The thought crept into my silly, movie trivia filled brain that perhaps magician D.J. was a swell guy who had one off performance and panicked. Hell, maybe he donated half of his profits to charities or helped old women cross the street! I mean, who the hell am I to assume that I’m the “good” twin? I bet everyone just figures they’re the GOOD twin! What if… what if the magical, mustachioed D.J. was actually the good twin, despite his horrible taste in facial hair and the fact that he was a Vegas magician (and, from the sounds of it, a bad one) and I, your very own PURE LARD writer D.J. Kirkbride was… the EVIL twin? Wow. That’s some heavy stuff to ponder, yo.
I mean, I fit the profile. I look like me, so the “twin” part’s down. As for the “evil” part… shit, I’ve done, like way worse stuff than breaking Pat Morita’s Emmy on accident during a Vegas magic show. Stuff that I dare not repeat as there’s a chance my mom’s reading this if her internet connection is working. This caused me great pause. I automatically jumped to the conclusion that the Vegas magic act me was the bad guy based on very sketchy evidence via an enraged, old Asian actor. I owe the Vegas me an apology…
Magician me with the white trash mustache, if you can read, and are reading this, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you suck at magic. And I’m sorry I assumed you evil. Please forgive me… Your evil Twin, D.J.
Wait! If I’m the EVIL one, then what the hell do I care if I hurt the feelings of my shitty magician, schmuck doppelganger? I shouldn’t give two shits! Ha ha! Yeah! Eff you, douche bag! I’m EVIL! WOOOOOO!!!
At the age of 42, I should really have more of an intuition on the ways of the world. Actually, I do. But it just takes a little longer for my brain to process it.
It’s become apparent that I am a jerk.
This is an issue.
Is it about neurotransmitters and certain chemical levels? Or just being an idiot man-child? Probably. To all that shit. Gotta do something about it.
Some dudes can get away with being jerks. I’m not one of them.
Captain Kirk. Shatner Kirk specifically. Made some dick moves. You know, he made some mistakes. “Zigged when [he] should’ve zagged” (I think that’s a direct quote from the rated-exactly-right-as-crappy Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), but would we say he was a jerk? A dick? An asshole? Well, probably not. Sure, he used his masculine wiles to get all up in every woman — human, alien, whateves — but he was just an alpha male. Well, apparently he was also a deadbeat dad, but he didn’t know about his son David Marcus because Carol didn’t tell him, I think, but… wait, I’m getting off track.
I guess Captain Kirk could get away with being a jerk — regardless of his mental or chemical or emotional or, um, whatever blah, blah, blah reasons — because he commanded the greatest ship in Starfleet and saved the universe at least a few times.
I’ve never saved the universe.
A little known true fact of history, buried deep within many historical texts that chronicled things that happened before now (i.e., history) is the subject of this writing of truth today.
Before Young Abe Lincoln became PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN-MAN, he was just a boy growing up in Springfield, IL (as seen on the historical CW show SPRINGFIELD). Not sure from whence he came, but knowing he was different, Abe would often save lives and prevent disasters both natural and supernatural in secret. (This was before he grew his beard, mind you.)
One of his greatest adventures is the one in which the town of Springfield was attacked by none other than the haunted wooden teeth of George Washington. Being as he was the father of our nation (even though he was sterile, which raises many theological questions), the world of the USA was shocked at the news that his teeth were evil.
Young Abe, using his cunning and secret karate skills (as taught to him by Paul Bunyan during Forest Camp), discovered that while, yes, the wooden teeth did indeed used to be in the mouth of God’s America’s first official president, they were not possessed by Washington himself!
After using what passed for the internet back in them olden times (smoke signals, peyote, and mice with notes written on hemp paper tied to them) to do intense research, Young Abe discovered that there had been a struggle on the Rainbow Bridge (the bridge that connects Asgard, the world of the Norse gods, with earth — know your geography) between the ascending spirit of George Washington and… the then-future ghost of Adolf Hitler!!!
Washington had been bested in the battle, though only through Hitler fighting dirty (of course). Hitler then possessed Washington’s wooden teeth and sent them back to earth to destroy the hometowns of future great leaders — hence the attack on Young Abe’s Springfield.
As you have no doubt guessed (or remember if you made it past middle school), Young Abe defeated the Hitler-possessed wooden teeth of George Washington by inventing fire, which he used to burn them to undeath.
And that’s why Washington, once he reached Asgard, implored Odin, king shit of the gods, to make sure Young Abe grew up to be president of the the U.S. of A as soon as he was capable of growing a beard.
And that’s… one to grow on, so… now you know the more you know. And knowing is half the battle. Amen.
This is the infrequently updated website for D.J. Kirkbride, an Eisner and Harvey award winning comic book editor who is also a comic book writer... and a ninja poet. He is often referred to as 'and many more.'
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