Two Days later - The Alien Zombie!

As you might image, Thanksgiving at our house was totally insane. We didn't have any rattlesnake escapes or rooster attacks, just the noise of 195 people crammed into the 5 rooms of our downstairs. We really didn't have 195 people there -  it just sounded like the cacophony of one hundred and ninety-five very loud and rambunctious people.  With Nana, Aunt Mary, Walter Daniels, all the hippies who live in our house and Pinky and Kleghorn and Mario and Red and Primo and Chewy and last minutes stragglers brought home by my dad - like Roy Spenjamin - plus a couple weirdos like Jim Andel (who was a Lennon Sister stalker) and the guy with the funny voice everyone called "The Quaker" our large house was packed. Add in all the older boys girlfriends it was probably in the neighborhood of 60 plus people at our feast-turned-circus-event.

Dining room




























(Nana in chair and Harry, "The Quaker" very back center - be sure to check out the TV with rabbit ear antennae)

Some of the Lennons, Blasers and other neighbors came by in a long standing tradition just to gape open-mouthed at the lunacy of it all. This allowed them to be on the fringe of our neurotic madness and then escape back to normalcy of the plain-wrapped life.

(Pat Lennon and Bruce Grant to the Right)





                   




  (Left- Dad "Mr. D" partying)

We did not disappoint. Just after dinner, Dooh-Dooh Pants "cut the cheese" with the nastiest silent-but-deadly ever recorded in history and crop-dusted the entire living room in a fashion that he had become notorious for. I was caught in the middle and barely made it to the bathroom before puking up all the turkey and mash potatoes I had gorged myself with when playful rough-housing ensued because of the gas attack.

To stir things up even more like striking a hornets nest with a stick, Donny Blaser got his hands on a loaded Daisy BB gun and began to open fire. Puke Breath ran upstairs and came back armed with his Red Rider repeater and war broke out.

One of the returning Vietnam Vets began having a PTSD flashback. He took cover under a folding table where he loudly cursed and started calling everyone "Charlie."  

Donny shot a hole in our large front picture window and nobody seemed to care. I did. I knew dad would be upset or that he should be upset - other parents would have been mad, but he was too busy horse-playing like a teenager and engaged in the ruckus to notice.

My mom tried to calm down the reckless folly by screaming the, "Under-Pain-Of-Mortal-Sin" clause but since it failed to make a dent in the din she parted the Red Sea of bodies, went up stairs and locked herself in her bedroom.

"How convenient" I thought with prophetic utterance knowing exactly what this meant. It meant that Pinky and I would have to spend the next two days cleaning up the aftermath of this colossal mess and towering stacks of dirty dishes. Chewbacca and the older boys felt I deserved it, since they had blessed me with an extra two days off of school by covering my body in a thousand red marker pockmarks.

Every year they had always managed to come up with some lame excuse that meant I had to clean up the mess. Mostly, it was because they didn't seem to mind the clutter and it was my job to hold back the second law of thermodynamics: increasing degree of chaos. No one cared how dirty our house was by me. The older boys weren't even embarrassed to have their girlfriends over to see the pigsty. I couldn't stand it. I felt to me like the dark Paranormal Ooze was winning and cleaning was the only way to hold the demonic substance at bay.

I put up a fight to make them feel good - they liked a good fight(like I did with the hamper trap Hamper Trap ), but cleaning up after everyone was more than a duty it was my cause. I didn't really feel a part of this family, but felt as if I had been sent to them from another planet to save them and dug deep into my superpowers to wash the one hundred billion dirty dishes. Like a robot drone, I stood next to Pinky who was still in his pajamas and washed one dish after another and daydreamed of what it might feel like to love and be loved. Then and only then would I know what it was like to be human, until that time I would walk among them - alone and distant like a lost, orphaned Zombie that needed to be saved more then them all.

Show and Tell and the Ebola Outbreak

(continued from last time) Sunday night before the big day at the Saint Marks eight grade "Show and Tell" I pulled out a paper and began brainstorming.
  
There had to be something from the insane zoo we had at our house that I could bring that would impress the love of my life:   Alligator too dangerous (already wrestled with the hideous beast that crawled out of the primordial swap of evolution)The 12-year-old and the Alligator

Grandpa the giant frog - too management intensive, needs slimy-green, mosquito-laden water - yuck (gagging thinking about it).
 Grandpa the Mutant Bullfrog






Fat Pinky:  NO. No. No. NO! It's not right.  He would know why I brought him and would probably sit on me (my brothers tried to keep him in the house as much as possible)









The monkey was my best option - until I remembered how it liked to fondle itself, and in a moment of clarity, figured I couldn't subject the kids to that kind of graphic imagery involving boy parts.

Poochie the "The Wonder Dog" had been missing for 3 days and I was stuck! None of kids would be impressed by a brown beagle (even if I could find the missing companion) and none of our other animals were safe to go to a Catholic School. Iguana Del Diablo Escapes



I decided that I would try to get one of my 8 older hippie brothers to come with me to school tomorrow for Show and Tell.  The other kids had to love that..right?  Besides, I don't think any of them had ever seen a real hippie before...


Chewbacca was out of school and I thought maybe the other kids would like to see one "up close and personal," they could touch his hair and ask him questions about his eating and grooming habits.


YES! Brilliant...who would think of that! This would make me famous and Andrea would have to take notice of me for sure (as Chewbacca would say, "Like..it's all copacetic...man." He used "man" and "like" as if they were punctuation marks.)

I asked, Chewbacca if he would like to come to school with me and after he caught me held me down and tortured me to death by tickling - I had to tell the truth. I told him it was for Show and Tell. And when he forced me to explain that it was because he was a hippie he squeezed my forehead and gave me a "template." Chewbacca and the Template Torture

I woke up from my unconscious state with nothing on but my chonies - and freaked out when I discovered that he and Ulrich had taken off my clothes and covered my entire body in red spots with a indelible red marker.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise - Now I had some communicable disease that would make it impossible for me to go to school - at least until after the Thanksgiving break!

I put my hand on a light bulb, faintly grabbed my mom's hand and barely managed to get out the name of my sickness - "chicken pox leprosy" and dramatically collapsed just after saying that I couldn't go to school in the morning.

She said, "You're Swedish...I don't want to hear your excuses! You're getting up and going to school in the morning"

This went from bad to very worst...I had no animal for Show and Tell... my body is covered in red spots from head to toe... AND mom is making me go to school! I THINK mom thought that I had painted myself like this and wanted me to suffer the consequences... UGGGHHHHHHhhhh!  She even quoted my eight grade teacher, Sister Schultz, "You shouldn't have put yourself in that position" double ugh!

That Monday morning I woke up early to take care of my "trash day" duties (because the lazy hippies sleep until noon) when the crazy monster from hell - the Veloci-Rooster, broke our agreement and attacked me on the way back from the alley to the house. Now I had five deep holes in my leg and was dripping with fresh blood. This was only getting better. I smeared the blood on my face and arms and tore off the leg of one of Ulrich's hand-me-down uniform pants. I looked like nothing you had ever seen before - A ZOMBIE. This was better than the "The Wolf Boy" 12 second preview of Wolf Boy 

I bandaged my head, picked up my old crutches from last year where I nearly died Markie's Death and pathetically hobbled to school with the fresh stream of blood running down from knee cap to sock- looking one of the "pagan-children" in an improvised country you gave money at church to sponsor.  I slowly passed by Sister Superior's office making sure to catch her attention... and I guessed it worked. She screamed, intercepted me, turned me around and said, "Where do you think you are going young man."

"To class" said I, in my best Tiny Tim impression..."despite this case of bleeding Ebola or fatal leprosy or whatever this is...." voice fading as though I could die at any minute - then pretended to try turn back as if I wanted to be in school.

"Over my dead body" she replied, emphatically planting her feet and hands firmly on hips - blocking my way taking a step back for fear of making physical contact with me... "Go home!" she demanded pointing out the door like I was a rabid dog.

"I can't. I need a note from my mother!" I said with puppy dog eyes as though I was always this obedient.

"Leave this instant and I'll talk to your mother!"


Thank you Chewbacca
Thank you Veloci-Rooster
Thank you Sister Superior

I got to skip school and didn't have to show up for the stupid Show and Tell... Hallelujah! Her expulsion saved me from embarrassment of being seen with red dots.

Maybe I still had a chance with Andrea.

Maybe I still had a chance to find out what this thing called love was all about.

Like the dude that was healed by Jesus in the gospels...I picked up my crutches and ran.

Bringing a Hippie for "Show and Tell"

When I talk about the Mutant Zoo, I'm not talking metaphorically about the long-haired hippies up on the third floor of our house. I'm  literally talking about the eclectic collection of animals that we have assembled over the years through hook and by crook.








We had to do a "show and tell" for the new eight grade class over at Saint Marks and I was creating an inventory list of possibilities for me to bring to school next week. As I scratched things down on a list that filled two sheets of paper, I realized (AGAIN) how far out of the ordinary we were.

  
While most normal families in America had a dog or a cat or gold fish for a pet, we had enough animals to rival the Santa Barbara Zoo, only most of their animals were in cages and visitors there were safe. The first animal on the very top of my list was an alligator...an alligator that liked to eat little kids. I could show off the sharp-toothed prehistoric creature and tell about the time I had to wrestle it in the bathtub Alligator Wrestling, but felt that there was a possibility of  things going terribly wrong. I thought that I could get Andrea's attention but figured that if four eighth-graders got mauled to death that would be the wrong kind of attention.

In the ivy next to the pond in a Styrofoam saucer was the giant bullfrog named, "Grandpa" the size of a small dog that could swallow baby chickens or rats whole as if they were crickets. That might work...maybe I could feed one of our baby chickens to the antediluvian creature in front of the class- surely that would be a hit. Wouldn't it?

Next was the soft-shelled snapping turtle that loved to latch on to fingers like Pinky liked to gulp down Vienna hot dogs - neither was a good visual.                 (Pinky Pictured to the right)

Next to the chicken coop with the 23 stinky hens and the crazy attack Veloci-Rooster that thought it ruled the world as if it were Godzilla himself  Hell has no Fury. That wouldn't work because it had already had a reputation of attacking one of the nuns after which a priest had come over and tried to preform an exorcism.
                                 Score: Rooster 2 vs. Clergy 0


We had 42 guinea pigs; rabbits too numerous to count, and a bunch of hole-digging tortoises that had been dropped off by some zoo somewhere. I don't know exactly where they came from - that's the story I was told, but to tell you the truth - I wouldn't be surprised if they were stolen. "Sheeze- hippies and their kindred spirits - I tell ya?

Moving indoors we had the notorious spider monkey that should have been mandated to wear pants because it sat on the fireplace mantle proudly dangling his boy parts in front of God - everyone else.










1)The monkey was just plain GROSS! 2)It was very embarrassing for a boy my age to be showing off genitalia like that...(even though I'm sure the girls may have been thrilled)... and 3)I'm pretty positive that the nuns would have had a heart attack.

Next was Lazarus, the burned cat, that had been resurrected from the dead after the Fraternity fire Miracle, After the Fire . One of my older brothers, Chewbacca, allowed the crusty feline to walk on the counter tops claiming that the nasty looking thing had the right to because it was a miracle. The scaly feline roamed freely and ate from open tubs of margarine and any other food that had been left out, leaving a trail of burnt skin flakes in its path. GROSS! GROSS!  I wanted to take the thing under the pretenses of the "show and tell" and lose it somewhere along the way, but Chewbacca would probably kill me.




    (picture of mom combing one of by older brother's hair)

I'm not even close to being finished yet! Even worst than the grodie cat - was Johnny, the one-eyed pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator. The bird was like frigate carrier for parasites that took refuge under its feathers that you could see scuttle back and forth from time to time. It pooped...indiscriminately and tried to attack your head.

In the dining room we had a television set that  had been gutted and turned into a lizard terrarium that my tree-hugging brothers were very proud of that contained chuckwallas Chuckwalla Escape, desert geckos and leopard lizards that we had brought home from Salton Sea.

In the entry we had the foul mouthed Mynah-bird that my mom said swore like a drunken sailor. I actually thought about that one but knew I would have been kicked out of catholic school (I had already been decommissioned as an altar boy for throwing up on Father Scott - still shaking my head - Not a Good Thing.


On the third floor we had Iguana Del Diablo Day of the Iguana, three rattlesnakes, two king snakes, a couple garter-snakes and mice that we bred for feeding all of the snakes and lizards.







Never mind the million mosquitoes and the 10 billion fleas that was also a part of our collection, I bet Cheryl Arnold, the beauty queen, who lived directly behind us didn't have an menagerie like ours.

Like normal people, the Blasers next door to us, just had a dog - ONE DOG - that's it; a beautiful collie named Ginger that looked just like lassie. Ginger got washed and had a regular regime of hair-brushing and was fully trained to poop outdoors.





Heck the Lennons on the corner -didn't even have one pet.. not a dog... not even a gold fish!

At least we had a dog... a beagle, affectionately known as "Wonder Dog."








Maybe we were more normal than the Lennons........?


Naw....  I thought, maybe I'd just bring an older brother to school and talk about what it was like to have one of these things called hippies sharing space in your house.



"What is normal?" I figured I could talk about the care.. the feeding (minus the part about the marijuana plants) and share about the grooming habits (or the lack thereof) of these strange creatures...that had evolved over the last couple years Evolution of the Dahlins.

     (picture of my older brothers to the right)



"Hey, Chewbacca, do you want to go with me to school on Monday?"


Chewbacca sensed my sarcasm, bellowed and chased me down the hall!

It was the invisible Ooze - I tell you. It had gotten a hold of both of us... maybe this was the new normal...but  look at all the fun I got to have that regular people missed out on!

"Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"

(continued from last post)

One time we were saints - all of us! Well, practically all of us, except for me. I was the spawn of Charles Manson... (I didn't know what that meant, but that is what Mr. Steadman said when we came to his house and knocked on the door for Halloween). Though my Catholic mother had good intentions and tried to convince me that I was John the Baptist, I felt more like "Wolf Boy" dressed in the old fox stoles and holding a paper plate with a doll's head that had been covered in ketchup as my costume accessory.



 As you can see to the right - I didn't get it! I didn't know why I had to hold a plate with a head on it. She said it was because John was beheaded. I still didn't get it. (You can see the video of me telling that story here... The telling of Wolf Boy )

Since we had opened the portal to the demonic influences through our séances and by conjuring up the dead when we decided to mess around with the Ouija Board -everything had changed.

The darkness that crept out of the door to the dark underworld which we had opened was like a black, slow moving ooze. It was invisible to adults and to most people, but not to me. I could see it and smell the rotting stench whenever it began to take over someone's body and when it influenced their behavior.

I think it had a lot to do with the long hair.. and the burning of draft cards...and the marijuana plants... and the pits that the older boys had buried me in... and the electrocutions and the times they tried to kill Kurt and the time the house tried to eat him (last post).  I think that slimy, evil sludge had something to do with mom locking herself in her room every night and why Chewbacca felt it was important to squeeze the temples on my forehead and knock me out every day for a year. I think it had something to do with the older boy's meanness and rejection towards me.

Maybe that's the reason Ulrich felt he had to launch a big fat loogie down my throat - The Loogie that caused Mount Vesuvius . Maybe that was the reason I ran Urich under the can opener... Oops - Reverse Mohawk, or why I was almost murdered at the McElliot's pool "Here lay Markie D".  It was the Ooze...I tell you and maybe that is why I decided to cut my little sister's hair with the Snippy scissors...

And since the time we had cracked open the door  to the occult, the stinky ooze of evil spilled out of our house and into the neighborhood. If I had to guess, I would say that we didn't have the only portal to hell that had been opened... No...I think there are lots of them.







 

There are probably houses and families just like ours in every city that allowed the the gooey-black substance to flow like slow moving lava that burned everything in its path.

Seriously, think about it... maybe it explains Charles Manson... and the riots on college campuses in the anti-war protest... maybe it explains the Vietnam War... maybe it explains the assassinations... maybe it explains the "Fraternity House" fire on Harding Ave...Venice on Fire .


This is between me and you.... but I even think that the evil slim had been carried over to Saint Mark's School. Don't tell anyone - but I think Sister Godzilla had stepped in it (that would explain why she was so mean and tried to send me back a grade for yawning - of all things)! This would explain why I couldn't get Andrea to notice me.

I think Donny had carried some back with him to the Blaser's house and that Pat had gotten some of the invisible goo stuck on the bottom of his shoe and carried the stuff back to the Lennon house on the corner (if you could believe it). With the shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window, I didn't think it was possible for the evil slim to enter their house, but Pat was beginning to look like one of the Dahlin boys.

IT WAS THE OOZE I TELL YOU.



It began slowly, but several of the Lennon boys were becoming hippies down there too... They were the Best Catholics in the entire world and it took hold there as well.  Yep, even there!

First one - then two...

...they had been infected...

...and my hole in the wall - my bed - (pictured to the left) was right in the center of it all. Maybe that's why I was a target of my older brother's inventive cruel-pranks and horrible tricks and also figured that the awful glop had gotten on me. I keep my rosary beads close and felt I had to pray to keep the monsters away that I saw moving around in the dark shadows at night and thought this was the only way I could slow the stuff down. AND quite possibly - the only way that I would live another day.

I heard wrestling noises in the attic and sinister footsteps that turned my stomach, something evil this way comes.

 "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."  Terrified, I slipped on my boxing gloves and tried not to close my eyes, for I had to fend off the devil and be ready for my brothers, The Wolf Pack, should they decided to attack tonight.  

Venice Infected by the Paranormal

(Ouija continued)

Kurt had fallen through the floor and was now caught between the sharp, teeth-like plaster that had dried downward between the century old lath.  It was the wicked "ooze" I tell you - that drew us to this spot by the bewitching of the Ouija Board that we found ourselves At the Devil's Door... itself.

That "harmless" board game communicated with ancient Housebound spirits that now had Kurt trapped in the bowels of its dark clutches and the rest of my older brothers contemplated whether or not to leave him in the dark abyss to die. The demonic Ooze was everywhere. The Wolf Pack had been contaminated and I alone could smell the rotting stench of decaying flesh. Yes, we had opened a portal to the dark forces of the supernatural that had spilled out and filled the hippie hangout in the ivy cave in the backyard that my older brothers affectionately called Wall Drug.


Anyone who stepped in the slim carried that cancerous substance with them where ever they went. It might have infected the Lennons,  the Blasers and the Nargies by now.

It had infested the rundown shanty's of the Venice canals where the notorious Hell's Angels hung out.


It made its way down to Main Street and Westminster Avenue to a place everyone called "Heroin Park" where strung-out hippies went to get a fix and to sunbathe - sometimes with clothes on.


I was worried for Kurt's life. The Ooze we had released back in 1962 was powerful and I believe it was responsible for Kurt's near-death at Kings River The Tragic Death of Dooh-Dooh Pants ...my being Left Behind at Salton Sea Left Behind ....for the electrocutions - for the burials (click here) The Igloo of Death- for the smothering episodes, for the Templates, for the needle tipped arrows, for the mess in the backyard Trash Towers of Venice and for almost burning down the Lennon Sister's house Roswell and the UFO crash.  I think it had something to do with the invasion of the Detroit Convent and the spontaneous Exorcism The Naked kid and the Exorcism ...for the Possessed Whale A Whale of a Tail. AND, Oh...yeah it's all linked!  This Paranormal tool used to communicate with the dead was trying the kill us off one by one - We were The Marked Ones.  And now this evil presence was on it's fourth attempt to kill Kurt- and this time, the house was trying to swallow him whole.

I said a quick prayer - especially the part about "Deliver us from Evil" at the end of the "Our Father." Coincidentally that is when the Wolf Pack decided to pull him out of the pit rather then let him rot between the walls. The dry plaster made it like trying to pull him out of the mouth of a shark and no matter how hard they pulled the more the sharp brittle plaster tore into his skin. We were losing the battle - this was worse than the time we tried to pull Ulrich out of the monkey pit at the LA Zoo Dahlins at the Zoo.

REMEMBER - THIS IS ALL TRUE!

It appeared hopeless and seemed like the evil spirits were going to win this one. They had Kurt and were not about to give him up as easily as the time we let the 600 monkeys escape. Kurt's face was pressed up against a round metal object that turned out to be a knob to cabinet-sized doors of a hidden - never yet discovered secret room in this old house. Turning the small knob with mouth, he managed to crack open the ancient doors that led directly into pitch blackness. This was his only hope. This was his only escape. Inch by inch he fought against the plaster and wormed his way up - contorting his body like a worm. In he crawled into the blackness and was now like Jonah in the belly of the giant fish that had swallowed him.

Quickly, Tony scavenged the backyard bringing back an ax and began chopping a hole in the wall of the bedroom.  Pounding through old paneling and wallpaper and plaster he busted a opening into the space where Kurt was trapped. This was the forgotten room that we were lead to by the dark powers of the Ouija Board.

This hole was eventually turned into a loft that was now my bed (see picture to the left), and from the smell of black evil Ooze, I was positive that I slept in the very portal of the evil forces that had been released from the lake of fire itself.

And so, as I said before - I was happy to have this high advantage in this loft bed that offered me three sides of protection from the sinister night raids from the Wolf Pack, but was also very much afraid of the dark - for I knew what had been released. The Ooze was everywhere and I could smell it, so I was probably the only 8th grader in the entire world who prayed the "Our Father" every night and asked that God would give me a good "right hook" so that I could take out a couple members of the Wolf Pack whenever they attacked or land a well placed fist on Ulrich or any of the members of his angry little-men-crew from time to time.

              Sniff... "Pew, is that Ooze I smell on my shoe? I was infected!