Mer Rouge (Part 65)

Everyone jumped to their feet. All except for Moses. He was still recovering from a bullet to the shoulder and an axe wound to the chest. “C’mon Mo!” the Priest shouted.

“Can you guys give me a goddamn minute?! Jesus fucking Christ!” 

Hutch knelt down and carried him up. He threw his arm over his shoulder and the pair followed the others down the corridor. The mansion was far more complicated than DuPont anticipated. He halted and grabbed Hutch’s shirt. “Where’s the staircase?” he asked him.

“Past the kitchen,” Hutch said. “There’s a huge parlor on the other side. At the other end is the staircase with the doorway to the spring right behind it.”

The sheriff waved his hand. “Let’s go!”

They entered the rear of the kitchen. DuPont walked in first with his reloaded .44 leading the way. It was abandoned. On the other side was another corridor leading to the right. If they were to be ambushed, it would be there. The sheriff whispered to Oren. “Give me a stick of dynamite,” he said. 

Oren reluctantly agreed and handed him a stick. DuPont put a cigarette to his lips and took out a zippo. He lit the cigarette and used it to light the explosive. He waited for the long wick to burn down to just centimeters before tossing it down the hallway. When he did, the gang collapsed to the ground. A second later, a mighty wave of ether swept over them followed by calamitous sounds and clouds of debris. Silence followed. As the dust cleared, DuPont leapt up.

“On your feet!” he ordered.

And like a unified regiment, all the men jumped to their feet and rushed the entry to the hallway. They unloaded one shotgun shell after another but as the smoke settled, they again found no resistance. “We need to get the fuck out of here now,” Oren said.

“Yeah,” agreed the sheriff. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

They turned around and bolted toward the garage entryway. As the last man crossed through the threshold, a hidden metal slide from the doorframe  slammed the entrance shut. They were trapped in near total darkness.

“Shit,” Moses said aloud.

And no one spoke. There was a clanking against the concrete. Everyone turned towards it. The clanking continued as if it were taunting them. Moments later, a single light pierced the dark and before them stood an old conquistador with a sword in hand.

TO BE CONTINUED….

hands where I can see them

Hello. I see you scrolling by.

Why don’t you have a seat right there.

You’re free to scroll to the next blog if you wish. But there’s something you should know. I’m Chris Hansen played by Robert Pattinson in Primetime and we’re doing a story on adults who haven’t purchased Stories No One Should Read online.

How old are you?

Would you like to try that again?

I know you’re 56 years old. You work at Taco Bell, thrice divorced, and are suffering from crippling diabetes. You have no retirement savings and no future worth mentioning. This is a book written specifically for people like you. So why haven’t you bought Stories No One Should Read on Kindle for $2.99?

There’s buying it and not buying it and you haven’t bought it. For that, you only have yourself to blame.

No decisions have been made yet. We don’t know which segments will air. But I’m gonna have to ask you to leave and go to Amazon or Dead Star Press to buy your copy today.

Stories No One Should Read by Beau Montana

The official ©️ book of A24’s Primetime. In theaters September 25th

Neither A24 nor anyone associated with Lance Oppenheimer’s Primetime is connected to the release of this book. The author, identified as “Beau Montana”, is mentally unwell, has a small penis, and functionally illiterate. His legal team pleads with A24 to keep that in mind before pursuing legal action.

take a seat

After watching all 24,000 hours of Chris Hansen’s investigations into online predatory behavior (in one night) I’ve arrived at a radical conclusion: Chris Hansen is not a journalist. That’s a view for the simpletons. He’s something a little bit more.

He’s a provocateur. A performance artist.

I’m not throwing shade at Hansen necessarily. Indeed, if my interpretation of him is correct, he’s the greatest to ever do it. Unlike all the other firebrands, Hansen didn’t rise up through stand up comedy or cheap political punditry. He captured the public trust by doing legitimate investigative journalism. But as usual, the times make the man. And Hansen stumbled upon a subject matter that was alarming, darkly provocative, and timely. After the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger era of the 80s and 90s, followed by the intense paranoia and entrenchment of the surveillance state during the early 2000s, Hansen invited us to take a seat and peek into the world of online predatory behavior towards children.

As mentioned in the video above, To Catch a Predator always had its controversies, specifically regarding the media’s relationship with law enforcement, entrapment, etc. Initially, the program dedicated time towards educating parents on how to protect their children online. So there was, in a sense, an educational component. But then the show kinda morphed into something else. Something a bit unsettling and much more difficult to put your finger on.

We all know the setup. After baiting a predator, a “decoy” (usually a paid actor playing an underage girl or boy) waits at a sting house for the individual to show up. The predator comes into the house, the decoy disappears, and out comes Chris Hansen asking the man to “take a seat”. What follows is an uncomfortable conversation where Hansen attempts to understand the predator’s motivations and intentions. The first few interviews, you’re like “hahaha fuck that guy.” But the more you watch, the sadder it becomes. Eventually you have to ask yourself: “what are we accomplishing with this?”. Even in the rare moments where the predator is calm and honest, we really don’t learn anything that we couldn’t have deduced ourselves. So the interviews are like watching a trapped animal. The predator spins their tires until the interviewer gets bored and says “I’m Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC”. The man panics and tries to leave until they are busted by a whole squad of cops. It’s the strangest and most unsettling bit of television you will ever see.

Sure they catch a predator. But Chris Hansen presents himself as a predator of a different beast. With his access to primetime television and absence of a court of law, Hansen becomes the judge, jury, and executioner. You and I, as viewers, are his co-conspirators.

But as with any good art, there’s an undercurrent of themes presented but left to the viewer to ponder on. Male loneliness. Declining social mobility. Mental health. Rarely, if ever, were these subjects outright discussed but were nonetheless screaming at us through the television. Moreover, the pretense of journalistic intent was addressed only in the most halfassed way. If Hansen was truly concerned with online sexual predators, more attention would have been paid to victims of it.

Instead, Chris Hansen chose to turn a disturbing subject into spectacle. That’s why it’s not fair to call his work in the subject “journalism”. Not to knock To Catch a Predator and its successors though. It not only provided spectacle but it also gave us insight into ourselves and our times.

That’s what good art is supposed to do.

On pooping your pants in public

Thank you for joining me for this very special emergency post. We have witnessed reports coming out of Beijing of a woman defecating herself during an athletic competition in front of god and all the Chinese. Despite the embarrassing situation, the woman, identified as Joanna Wietrzyk of Australia, finished first place in the HYROX competition all whilst fecal matter visibly seeped from her spandex shorts and down her legs.

From the perspective of The Internet Ruined Everything, this is an athletic feat on par with Bill Moro bowing a perfect game on 9/11 or Dock Ellis pitching a no hitter on LSD. Yet Wietrzyk’s achievement has stirred up an international controversy. Many are left wondering if the HYROX committee should have removed Wietrzyk, paused the competition, and disinfected the course.

I have reached out to an expert on the matter, the scatologist Dr. Peter Houndmouth of the University of Tampa Bay at the Jacksonville campus in Ocala.

Montana: Dr. Houndmouth, thank you for joining me.

Houndmouth: My pleasure, Beau.

Montana: So tell me, what were your initial thoughts when you first heard the news out of China?

Houndmouth: I tell ya, I dropped everything and immediately searched the internet for every image I could find. So far, I’ve collected 378 images and clips. So this is all I’ve been doing for the last 24 hours. It’s been nonstop staring at Ms. Wietrzyk’s buttocks and the spew of poo streaming down her legs. I tell ya, this is every scatologists’ dream.

Montana: Well many on the internet are concerned about sanitary safety, particularly for the other athletes. Is there any merit to these concerns?

Houndmouth: Beau, I’ve been in this business for over 20 years. Do you know how many bike seats I’ve put my nose up to? How much ass sweat I’ve gotten on my fingers while doing “research” at the gym? I’ve only gotten pink eye a few dozen times. I assure you, eating ass is a totally healthy way to build your immune system and bring pleasure to your partner. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a sexual thing. Lots of people enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and even taste of poop. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I recommend to your audience that every night, particularly after physically strenuous days, to remove your underwear and place it over your head. Breathe in deep the day’s stank. And if you go commando, you can always steal a your wife’s dirty pair. But whatever you do, don’t let her catch you or else…

Montana: …Okay, so to get this conversation back on track, in your professional opinion, Wietrzyk’s incident did not pose a health risk to others?

Houndmouth: Gee, ya know, it’s difficult to say. If I had more physical evidence, I could give a more definitive answer. One way that we could get to the bottom of this is if Ms. Wietrzyk sent me her soiled shorts. Since this news has broke, I’ve been pinging her DMs relentlessly to no avail. So Joanna, if you’re reading this, please send me your dirty shorts. If you can’t send me that pair, then any pair of underwear will do. I promise to use this clothing for research purposes only. I have not, and never will, get an erection from holding a woman’s soiled underwear because I’m a real doctor from a real college and…

Montana: …alright! Thank you, Doctor. And thank you to all of you for joining me for this emergency post 🙏

Goodnight!

Mer Rouge (Part 64)

The tracer rounds momentarily stopped. The priest launched up from behind the burning squad car and unloaded several shotgun shells in their direction. DuPont stood up and fired the .44 up at the overhead window. As shards of glass rained down from the roof, Moses lurched toward the boxes of dynamite.

“Ahhhahahhhahaaa!!!!!” he screamed.

Oren and Hutch sprinted behind him and they kicked over the wooden boxes and grabbed as many sashes as they could. In a span of seconds, they collected eight sashes and then made a beeline towards the left end of the house. Moses was about to make a sharp right into the building when an axe launched itself into his chest. “For fuck’s sake!” he yelled.

Oren and Hutch stopped dead in their tracks. Holding the axe stem was none other than the butler. A quiver of arrows wrapped around his chest. Oren lifted his shotgun to parry the blow of the axe as he swung it toward him. The blade lodged itself into the metal. And as the butler raised the axe again, Oren swung his fist onto his attacker’s face and his head bent backwards. In this brief moment of victory, Oren attempted to overtake the butler but the butler grabbed ahold of Oren’s lapels and crashed the crown of his head onto his opponent’s nose. 

Oren stepped back in a daze and collapsed into the grass. 

Seconds later, DuPont and the priest rounded the corner to find Hutch swiftly and gracefully dodging the edged weapon. It was almost as if he had done something like that before. With two shots left in the cylinder, DuPont fired at the butler’s shoulder and blew it clean off its socket. The axe fell to the ground but without flinching or recoiling, the butler reached down to take it in his left hand while his right arm was dangling by his side. His lethality didn’t diminish an iota. He resumed his charge at Hutch.

DuPont fired again. The bullet lodged itself into the head of the axe and blew it clean off its handle. The butler dropped the piece of wood and reached into his dinner jacket. With his left hand, he launched shuriken after shuriken at Hutch and DuPont. But the priest drove the butler backwards with his few remaining shotgun shells before the men manning the .50 cals repositioned themselves. When DuPont noticed them, he rallied Hutch and the priest into the house and helped Moses and Oren to their feet. 

Without a second to spare, the .50 cals opened fire. DuPont and his men laid flat on the floor while shattered glass crashed down onto them. The firepower was relentless. 

Then it stopped.

They laid silent for fifteen seconds. DuPont, with glass cracking below his feet, lifted his head. The gunmen, along with the butler, were gone. “Let’s go,” the sheriff ordered.

“This has got to be a trap,” Oren said.

“No time to worry about that.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 63)

The half a dozen or so wooden boxes of dynamite sat atop the flame retardant grass. Chaz sat them a safe distance away from the Honcho before his horrid death. But the bullets whizzed overhead. The squad car could only provide so much protection. DuPont considered his options under the mounting heat and gunfire. 

“I think we’re dead, folks,” he announced to the others.

“You son of a bitch!” Oren said.

“Chill!” called the priest. “C’mon Mo. We gotta do something here.”

Moses remained flattened to the ground next to Hutch. He briefly lifted his head. “Respectfully father, you can go fuck yourself,” he said.

Another flaming arrow whizzed from the sky and blew the priest’s cossack right off his head. “My cossack!” he screamed. 

“It’s a hundred fucking degrees out here! Why are you even wearing that?” DuPont asked him.

“The arrows are coming from the second floor window!” Hutch cried out. 

Arrows and shurikens were quickly hurled towards Hutch and Moses and the two climbed to their feet and rushed toward the crowded back end of the squad car. Everyone was trapped. “We at least got to try to get to the dynamite,” the priest said. 

“Fuck that!” Moses yelled.

“Mo! What other option do we got?”

“Surrender!”

“Are you stupid? They’ll kill us no matter what and you know that!” 

“We need to get to the boxes before they start shooting at them!” DuPont said. “If we’re all gonna die, let’s at least die together!”

“What’s the plan then?”

“There’s not much of one. When the tracers stop, I’ll unload the shotgun in their direction. You, father, direct your fire toward the second story window. The rest of you grab as many dynamite sashes as you can before things get too hot and then bolt it towards the other end of the house. We’ll give you fire cover the entire time. At least until we run out of bullets and shells. Goddamn, I wish I had some lemon frags!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 62)

The ancient mansion was eerily silent. Only thunderheads in the faraway distance could be heard. The honcho rolled up first. Chaz slowly pulled up to the gaudy entrance and parked. The squad car was far behind. Oren parked it by the honcho and stepped out. DuPont climbed off of the bed, flame thrower still strapped on, and approached the building. Oren scratched his head. “It appears to be deserted,” he told the sheriff. 

“No,” DuPont said. “There’s no way they’d desert this place.”

Chaz climbed out of the driver’s seat and nodded to Oren. He put his hands on his hips and looked the old home up and down. “I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Waites,” he said. “You reckon we ought to turn this over to state police?”

DuPont spat. “And tell them what, Chaz? That we slaughtered an entire sheriff’s department because they’re hiding the fountain of youth? Use your head, son.” 

“I dunno,” Chaz said. “It might be useful for scientific research.”

“Fuck that noise!” the Priest butted in. He climbed out of the squad car’s backseat and waved his finger. “Let’s get in there and blow it all to hell!” he shouted.

“It’s a trap,” said the Sheriff. 

Oren nodded. “You’re right. It was too easy.”

“So what now?” asked Chaz.

DuPont thought. “I’m gonna smoke em out.”

Everyone backed away from the structure and the sheriff readied the flamethrower. “Everyone ready?” he asked. They looked at one another and nodded. “Alright,” he said, “here goes nothin.”

Before he could squeeze the trigger, a flaming arrow rained down and lodged itself into Chaz’s neck. “Jesus Christ!” DuPont yelled. The others took cover behind their vehicles and Chaz’s head erupted into a gigantic fireball and his body collapsed into the grass. The sheriff ducked behind the rear of the honcho. The priest and Oren behind the squad car. “What the FUCK was that?” DuPont yelled. 

Tracer rounds began pelting into the squad car. One smashed into the engine and ignited a fire. “Hutch! Mo! Get the hell outta there!” Oren screamed. Realizing the calamity, they climbed out of the passenger’s side and laid flat in the grass.

“Tracer ammunition!?” yelled DuPont. “Where the hell is it coming from?”

The priest peeked his head from behind the car. A round whistled past his head and he jumped back. “From the treeline behind the house!” he called out. 

“But what about that fuckin arrow?!”

“It seems like we fell into a coordinated ambush, sheriff!” the priest called back. 

Another arrow rained down and struck into a gas cylinder on DuPont’s back. He quickly stripped it off  and bolted towards the squad car. The cylinder exploded, briefly launching the sheriff into the air and the honcho erupted into a raging flame. DuPont recovered and finished crawling toward the others. “Sorry about your truck. Again,” he said to Oren. 

Hutch lifted his head from the grass and gazed upon the burning honcho. “It looks like that piece of shit finally bit the dust!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 61)

Dirk stood shirtless in front of the old baroque mirror. His many tattoos faded. The mirror itself was gifted to him by John Pemberton in 63. It was just before their defeat in Vicksburg. The sheriff closed his eyes and considered the old General. Nothing came to mind. All their adventures and campaigns faded into abstraction and the general’s face was nothing more than a scrawl on white canvas. This was also true of Pizarro. And Cortez. And…

He threw on a fresh sheriff’s button up and slicked back his hair. He turned around and noticed the Eunuch standing in his doorway. His arms were crossed and his face sullen. “They broke through the perimeter,” he said.

“I figured they would.”

“The Judge demands a plan of action.”

“Don’t worry,” Dirk said. “I have the butler on standby.”

“The butler,” the eunuch smirked. “Ah yes, the butler”. With arms still folded, he turned around and his guffaws echoed down the hallway. Dirk finished up and proceeded down the stairs. He found the butler standing motionless underneath the front awning in formal attire. Not a bead of sweat present on his brow. “Are you ready for this?” the sheriff asked him. 

The butler looked across the barren field and squinted. He took a deep breath and soliloquied with his thick British draw. “I found the Norsemen on the edge of River Ouse,” he began. “First came the arrows. Then came the charge. As they advanced across the shallow waters, their screams were as the howling winds of hell. It wreaked havoc in our ranks. Men were trampled underfoot and the ground thickened into a sea of mud, shit, and blood. Those who weren’t killed in the retreat were mercifully slaughtered by the spears and swords. But they saved the damned for the axes. They hacked at the men and the bones and limbs of the dead were strewn across the field and protruded from the mud. The land I once recognized became a holocaust wrought by some forsaken god. So you see sherriff, I’ve already witnessed hell. And I’ve carried those harrowing screams with me everyday since.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Just one more thing

If there’s one thing I wish would die already, it’s Star Trek. Paramount has announced that a total of 15,000 Star Trek movies have gone into preproduction since Beyond left theaters and ALL 15,000 of them failed to get made. With god on our side, maybe the latest one from John Francis Daley and Jonathon Goldstein will follow.

But unfortunately, I have a mostly positive opinion on this pitch. Mind you, I don’t think the “submarine movie in outer space” model should be the future of Trek. Even though that model has worked well in the past, my concern is whether or not the guys who made Vacation and the Dungeons and Dragons movie can pull it off. But how big of a concern should that be? After all, William Friedkin’s first scripted movie was Good Times, starring Sonny and Cher. Judging from that alone, we would have no idea this guy would later create the gritty cop genre and modern horror film. So arguably, my concern here might be misplaced. But I feel like the “submarine movie in outer space” approach is a bit too familiar and limited. It’s like we’re still trying to relive the glory of Star Trek II despite Alex Kurtzman’s numerous failed attempts to do so. With that said, Paramount seems to have the right idea: smaller budgets, smaller sets, and focus on the human drama.

Instead of a $300 million budget, let’s drop that figure down to $90 million. And since two Denzel movies are the inspiration, use most of that money to bring Denzel into the production. His appearance alone would elevate the quality. So if the pitch is Denzel Washington playing a Starfleet captain butting heads with a young and brash first officer in a tense two hour situation, then I’m not gonna lie, that’s a movie I want to see.

But as the towering intellect of our age — Rich Evans of Redlettermedia — once said, as great as Star Trek II was, it did set up a bad precedent. Star Trek shifted from being a colorful and hopeful vision of the future into a violent, cynical, and highly militaristic world. That version of Star Trek might better reflect our era of Trump, ICE, Gaza, Iran, etc. but is that what fans or potential fans want? The good news is we can have it both ways. If Roddenberry purists want to criticize Nicholas Meyer for reducing the franchise into some revenge opera for Star Trek II, Meyer turned right around and bridged the two interpretations for Star Trek VI. And in my opinion, he did it quite well. So if I were to place a wager, I’d say Star Trek VI is the template for the Daley and Goldstein production.

Or at least it should be.