DAILY MONSTER 86 (of 100)
Good morning. Thank you for visiting the monsters on a Sunday. Please augment your Sunday paper experience by adding yesterday’s monster stories to the mix:
Monster 86 likes to groove. You wouldn’t know from looking at him when he’s just standing there, but the proof is in the pudding. Perhaps he heard that I’ve been playing all kinds of bad pop lately and decided to join the fun. Or maybe he suffers from sudden debilitating seizures that happen to fall on the beat? Does he dance alone? Or is he waiting for his date? Do you think he’s a young monster? Or an ancient dancing fool? Does he listen to ABBA? Or to James Brown & The Famous Flames’ Live at the Apollo? Or is he bouncing along to a new track by new contributor Transient? It is, as always, for you to know and for me to find out. (And I love that.) Please don’t keep me in suspense:
I hope you’ll have a great Sunday.
You do know, don’t you, that 344 LOVES YOU
Henrietta tries desperately to shake the hair off her chest. Sadly, the elegant bounce just isn’t enough vibration, but charmed by her moves, OkGo includes her in their latest viral video. The instant fame is too much for the young monster to handle, and she spirals into a life of drugs and Whataburgers.
In spite of her less than studied cat walking skills Beatrice quickly became the envy of West Coast supermodels. In a private interview she said her secret was in the pants and it must be true as close friends reported, “God knows it isn’t in her voice.”
Her name is Rosie. She is nervous because she’s never worn red shoes before. Her mother disapproves of them. Ever since she was 11 she snuck into the club and killed everyone–sailors, construction workers, kids on dates–at pool. This is how she had enough money to buy red shoes now, and her mother suspects she dealt drugs for them and disapproves. They call her Killer Cue downtown.
April 5th, 1900::
Crime Scene. 0800 hours. Location of the crime is about 15 miles down the yellow brick road. A brutally mangled body was found along the YBR today. Although most of her face and a good portion of the skin on her upper body has been removed, extensive forensic testing has revealed to 90% accuracy that this is in fact the body of ‘Dorthy Gale’. Dorthy was believed to be on vacation in Oz from her hometown of Kansas. Eyewitnesses to the scene claim to have seen a strange hunching dark creature spring out of the bushes and attack Dorthy, multiple witnesses claim to have hear Dorthy repeating ‘There’s no place like home, There’s no place like home” over and over again like a mantra. It seems the object of the monster’s desire was solely to claim Dorthy’s ‘red slippers’, but what the monster’s motive was for doing so remains unclear. The monster quickly left the scene of the crime and didn’t cause harm to any of Dorthy’s eclectic traveling partners. We’ll keep you up to date on this story as new info arrives.
EEEE! This monster REALLY has to go to the bathroom, but he can’t go now, because he is in time out for scaring little children.
” Fateful Lovers” A small mental dialogue provided by AH
Peter, Bjorn and John blast from the speakers. Bill cannot stop his feet from tapping. He’s spent his entire paycheck on his new duds. He scoured the Lower East Side for these shoes, limited, patent leather, the last pair…
“These dames would have to be blind not to want this…”
Bills been in front of the mirror all day practicing his new one-armed fish dance…
“Why won’t this DJ play that new Jay Z?…I can’t one-arm Willy it to just anyone!!” Bill laments.
Big Bertha eyes our young hero from across the smoke filled bar. Her clevage and love handles spilling out of her extra small tube top. Bertha still has a little piece of her dinner stuck between the gap in her front teeth. Her hair as greasy, deodrant is caked to the rolls fat under her arms. She smells of leftover Chinese food. Big Bertha is the definition of a keeper.
” Oh I hope they don’t play some Hov, I came HERE 2 BOOGIE!!!” She squeals.
The DJ blends the tracks…. the horns kick in…ba duh duh duh da duh… ” THIS IS A STATE OF EMERGENCY …….”
>>>DESTINY is not just a stripper name<<<<<<
Chloë the orycteropus afer,
Went clubbin’ one night with a heifer.
She had a few shots,
Met some guys that were hot,
And woke up next morn under a scotch fir.
“So how does this work, again?” asked Niko as she tugged at her shirt to inspect some invisible dirt upon it. Juntao looked down at his friend and replied, rather lightly, “At noon, we all touch the center stone in the meadow and the game begins. Whoever is ‘It’ will try to tag you. When they do, you are supposed to freeze until someone else tags you to unfreeze you. If everyone gets frozen within 5 minutes, the game ends and the last person tagged then becomes ‘it’ for the next game.”
Niko thought it sounded simple enough. But there was something that still plagued her mind. “What about the rumors this meadow is haunted?”
Juntao just laughed a little. “C’mon! It’s a field of grass. Haunted… geez.”
Noon came along and the six children present walked up to the stone and touched it. With a flash of light shooting forth from the rock, a person was selected as the tagger. Someone the kids hadn’t noticed there before and who wasn’t touching the stone in the center of the oddly large meadow. The individual was another kid wearing a pair of striped pants and no shirt, but some of the brightest red shoes they’d ever seen, as he swayed and bobbed in place. One of the children broke the silence by stating, “Dude dresses like that weirdo, from English, that stopped showing up last week.”
The game was on and kids were running about the tree-encircled meadow trying to avoid being tagged. Every time a kid would be tagged they froze. Expertly so. It was like watching time freeze around them. They didn’t even blink. Niko raced up to one of the ‘frozen’ kids and gave a light slap as she ran by. “Hey, kid! You’re cold.” she yelled back, not really thinking about what she said. Once unfrozen, however, the kid didn’t immediately start to run. He simply stood there, sort of shivering. The tagger raced up easily and tagged the kid, returning him back to his previous, immobile state.
Niko stopped running and looked back at the frozen kids, which now numbered four. Only Juntao and her remained untagged. They were on opposite sides of the meadow, so they had the advantage. Then a loud rapping, like that of a drum, came from the stone. Ba-doo. Ba-doo. Ba-doo. With every second that ticked down, the beat grew louder. Juntao yelled across the field to Niko, “There’s less than a minute left. Just keep unfreezing the kids and we win.”
Juntao dashed to one kid while Niko sprinted for another. With lightening reflexes, the tagger re-froze a stunned child and then brushed Juntao’s shoulder on his way to Niko. Juntao froze right where he stood. In mid-sprint. Nobody could hold a position like that. Niko grew frightened. Her hesitation proved too much opportunity for the tagger. He now stood in front of Niko as the last beats coming from the stone blared across the meadow. Reaching out a hand to tag Niko, it gently spoke, “Tag. You’re ‘It’.” Instantly, all the other children, the meadow, the trees, the stone, the tagger, everything faded away from Niko’s view. She now stood in a dark room with no dimension.
Juntao and the other children stood dazed as there bodies recovered from being cold and frozen in time. The tagger was no where to be found. Neither was Niko. Juntao called out Niko’s name and franticly asked the others about her while he searched, but was unsuccessful in locating her. He raced back to the rock and searched it for anything of a clue. The remaining children simply ran home, too confused and frightened to help. Many vowing to never play again. As he examined the stone, he noticed a small inscription at its base.
“To play, you need but touch the stone. They who are ‘It’ will arrive to start the game. To be last tagged progresses you to the next game. To be ‘It’ is to belong to the game. Win and free them.”
Here we see Hildegarde flaunting her pumps. Mmm Hmm. That’s just lovely, dear. Very flattering! And her dapper pinstripes are pret-a-porter Vivants, a trés popular clothing line for women monsters who…love pinstripes….oh, your pardon I do beg, this is actually Gerald, who wears pumps with panache and wears a rhinestone belt made bespoke by VaVoom. Yawn, it’s late and I am punchy.
Wow what a great batch of stories!
Stefan, do you draw while you are watching yourself through the camera lens? Because you always adjust the picture to the viewer just right, and promptly, when the page starts skewing off-site. Do tell US the story if you’ve the time…
Hello Victoria. I agree: Lots of cool stories tonight.
Nice to see a girl monster come through again, too!
As for your question: Well observed! Yes, I’m filming through iMovie these days, which is giving me a nice big monitor window to work with and lets me adjust the drawing to fit inside the image area. (When I remember to look up and check, that is. Sometimes I get too absorbed in the process.)
On earlier monsters I had used the video feature on my little Sony Cybershot and had to rig a mirror to hang off of my computer screen, so I could see the little LCD display on the back of the camera.
I would hang the mirror with a pair of shoestrings and some packing tape. It was an entirely ridiculous set-up that also covered half my computer screen. Not ideal, not ideal. So this new set-up is much easier to work with. My thanks go to my friend Saam, whose video camera I’m still borrowing.
Bella had begun to regret showing her plastic surgeon pictures from a cruise catalogue before her nose job…
Stefan, are you pulling our collective legs? Naaaawwww. But the shoestring and packing tape is pretty much the first picture that came to mind when I imagined you rigging something up. Then I thought no no no, Stefan probably just does something sleek and uncomplicated. I’m tickled to read you’ve done both. That’s awesome!
wow – things have been SUPER crazy lately, but i have not forgotten! there are so many that i want to post about, i love these monsters and i will catch up soon! These past few are really great, and i can’t wait to see what else is in store – back to work, catchya soon!
Put your hand on my shoulder…
Nein, nicht nur die Hand, leg deine Arme auf meine starke Schulter, ruft Heinrich der Eiserne.
Sie soll ja nicht umkippen, seine Frieda, wenn Procol Harum’s Kuschelsong ertönt.
We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick…
An Heinrichs Schulter, kann sich drehen was da will. Er ist der Fels in der Brandung, an dem sie sich bei auftretenden Schwindelgefühlen halten kann.