SPACE NOIR BAR by Mike Marino (top books to read txt) 📖

from a neighboring planet who secretly funded and supported the project. Nobody wants a planetary threat a mere 90 days away from their orb. The promised air support never came, so  Ed and Che Stadium, his Soma addicted seconal second in command and a few remaining troops hid out in the jungles planning their next move.

This was when Ed Wood, designed his revolutionary Plan 9 while out of his mind in outer space. He built a large army of followers, mainly trashy transvestites and drug addicts and assorted sordid characters from the other planets nearby, including a hardcore group of mercenaries called the Ru Pauls who arrived in black mesh stockings and angora sweaters and women's underwear led by a two headed hydra known far and wide as Glen and Glenda dressed in women’s clothing. It was the Flying Fagman from Outer Spaced!

Joining Glen/Glenda  were some heavy hitters in the mercenary universe including the brassiere wearing  Ro-Man-Wo-Man and his bubble blowing machines of death leading the feared Killer Klowns from Outer Space...the circus  mafia of the galaxy including Jugglers who vainly went for the jugular, and meat eating mimes.

It was a drag queen extravaganza  under the big top of the cosmos leaving a lasting image of  revolutionaries with two or more heads in  space helmets wearing garters and  fabulous angora sweaters...there will be, I suspect monuments in the future to Ed Wood, Space Revolutionary as well as  Che Stadium, both  in full drag..laughing their heads off.

Unfortunately the rebel army was  overwhelmed and defeated, but, miraculously, as will happen in space novels, Che discovered  this rift quite by accident where they  could hide and he led the remaining fighters, including Ed  into a place and space in time completely unaware of what lay ahead. It was Ed, however who discovered that there many “doors” inside  the vortex. Some leading to other dimensions..some to distant  quadrants across the void of space ...some to other spaces and places in time. He became so familiar with the rift  he became a real cocaine cowboy Casey Jones driving this train when he entered Robotia and landed smack dab down in  the middle of the Rabbits  revolution.

Ed Wood and Che Stadium decided to hide out here, join forces with the revolutionaries and fight the Tohos and those errant Eroti-bots.  When he met the Rabbit, she asked him why he would align himself with her forces. His reply, “Look, I’m a Tom Joad revolutionary and an outlaw now...I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too. just somethin' I been thinkin' about.” I swore it was the Pledge of Allegiance of the Planet Steinbeck every school kid learns by heart.

I couldn’t wait to meet this group. Damn, a pair of fishnets.  I’m not that fussy. I don’t care who’s wearing them.  As we reached the summit of Soma Hill we saw before us laid out in a pleasant valley this fine Sunday morning, strawberry fields forever. We also saw a  military encampment  below us. Crude huts dotted the panorama with a large lodge not unlike a small fortress commanding the enclave. We paused before making our descent into the plateau.

“This is the Rudy Valley and that’s Ed Wood’s army, or what’s left of it. See, in the large building on the far left? You’ll find Col. Kurtz in there. He’s now in command.  Ed was captured, then executed while shopping at Victoria’s Venusian Secrets for red thongs in the city without his bodyguard present!” Wang declared.. “Now we are the first line of defense to protect the Rabbit. Nobody would be able to break through here, or at least they would be slowed down.”

We made our way down the north side of the hill and into the camp where we were immediately surrounded by a swarm of combat hardened vets. “He’s OK,” Poontang assured her old friends, as only a woman revolutionary in battle fatigues can do.  At that point we made our guarded way to the “big lodge” guided by  a ragtag band of juveniles. “These are rebels? They can’t be more than teenagers.” I whispered to Strangelove.

“They were teenagers when they arrived here. Buck up Yucatan, once here you remain at your present age, but once you leave your current actual age catches up to you.” Not only was I in  parallel universe, but somehow had checked into the Heartbreak James Hilton Hotel in some time warped Shangri-La!  This cadre of kids never grew up, nor had reason to. They had made it to Never Land wearing tights that showed off a lost boys lost bulge in a region we  know as the Sansa Belt Action Zone. Is that a Peter Pan in your pants or are you just playing with your tinkerbell? These kids never made it with the prom queen to my knowledge and it was a hilarious hermaphrodite homage at the very least and had all the potential for a gay bar in paradise lost at the most. Hey, it's 5 O'Clock Somewhere and happy hour is about to begin.

Peter Pan himself couldn’t have done better. Not a tough Sam Spade character but more of a cross between a young Leo Dicaprio and Ru Paul. It's like having Mickey Rourke play Barbarella (now that could be interesting!)

As we approached the lodge of Col. Kurtz, I could feel the tension in the air among my comrades. “Prepare yourself Yucatan.,” Long Wang advised quietly. “You’re about to meet Col. Kurtz!!!”
“The horror...the horror” I kept repeating to myself. What the hell...As long as Poontang was at my side I felt safe...besides I love the smell of feminine hygiene products in the morning! Chapter 27 - Col. Kurtz: Who's the Leader of the Band?

The maelstrom of music was attacking our senses well from deep within the lodge hut of Col. Kurtz. Loud and proud, louder as we closed the gap eliminating  the wide space across the barricaded compound as a spill  of old White Out obliterates a writer’s spelling mistakes that arrive on a typewritten page quite by accident.

I was plagued on this whole joyride of a quest, my head fronting as an antiquated pulsating neon jukebox in a dive bar. Someone invisible, tailing me in the dark perhaps followed me there and  kept dropping old three plays for a quarter coins into a slot to begin its stylus probing journey at 45 RPM’s as the needle dropped into a groove. The music was a strange brew, a real he man he brew of sound  which was music minus all the beards and dancing to Zero Mostel Hebrew numbers. It was a musical litany creating within a visceral image of  sensational  sensual sexual saxual saxaphonic saxophone barfly broad on her last buck for the evening  filling the empty seat next to me at the Pacifico bar in Detroit at one a.m. “Excuse me. I have to make a saxophone call. Can you tell the bartender to keep the blues away from the piano please and do something about that trumpet!”

“Doc? Doc?” Poontang had penetrated my thought trance. “Yeah, yeah. Here, present and accounted for.” It was then someone pulled the plug on the jukebox of my mind and suddenly from the lodge emerged the deafening strains of Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” at surround sound pounding from the compound emanating from a point dead ahead and our destination...the elusive Col. Kurtz. He commanded loyalty, perhaps out of fear maybe shared beliefs. Either way his followers would die for him, that was plain to see. They were Mouseketeers following blindly the evil version of Mickey Mouse. Why? Because they love and worship him. Who’s the leader of band? “C-O-L-O-N-E-L   K-U-R-T-Z!”

Our guard left us at the door and with one swift deft motion indicated we were to enter. Cautiously I pulled the bamboo door open only to reveal a dark interior with wafts and whiffs of Uranian opium billowing from within and rising high in the air outside. As I peered deep into the moody blue colored smoke screen I noticed a rather large humanoid ensconced in its hallucinogenic aura. His head was as bald as a lunar landscape and he was mumbling under his breath to no one in particular, in fact to no one at all. I I could tell he was alone in his world. Those he had gathered around  him were mere theatrical props and one dimensional actors on a Samuel Beckett minimalist stage  reading their lines for the 350th performance on far out far off Broadway to the entranced patrons of the arts slumming for the evening in fancy dress and already drunk on F. Scott Fitzgerald booze engrossed in a nude performance of “Waiting for Godot”

We entered his domain, the den of the lion, not knowing what his response to our intrusion would be. To my surprise he smiled broadly, acknowledging our existence. “Long Wang, long time. Have you done Wang Chung tonight?” he roared a laugh. Please, sit and relax. I knew you were coming. I could tell by all the activity in the Vortex.”

“These are friends of mine Colonel. Poontang Pemalang and Sappho Strangelove. Former Comred agents, and this rumpled character is Doc Yucatan. A detective from Retropolis who came along to help find the Falcon and of course the Rabbit,” Long Wang explained.

“I know all that already. The Toho’s sent an emissary under a flag of truce to make a deal with me for it’s return. In fact they made me an offer they didn’t think I’d refuse. I surprised them when I turned them down. They misjudged me. My son Fredo, who now works at a carnival as a barker running a tilt-a-whirl and guessing weights on Jupiter said we should take them up on their offer. I told him to never go against his family again!”

Then as reading from a copious Coppola script he added  “I've seen horrors, horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror! Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.”

He paused for that dramatic pregnant pause so cliche in film, then continued as an old vinyl record stuck in a groove  “I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Yucatan, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything