I have written ANOTHER short story.

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

The Monday after the night of ne'r-do-well, Ogelby went into the office feeling like a million bucks. He strode in confidently, hoping to see her. Instead, he was greeted by the receptionist. Her information that the boss wanted to see him did not even worry him. That's how great of a mood he was in. When the boss asked him to close the door, he didn't think twice about it. When the boss said he was fired, he failed to comprehend it.

A ne'er-do-well is a person, not an event. Her "information"? Terribly awkward phasing. "That's how great of a mood he was in," thanks for assuming that I can't gather that on my own. "He failed to comprehend it," more telling, not showing.

"Wait, what did you just say?" he said.

The boss said, you're fired. It's just annual budget cuts. Necessary layoffs. Nothing out of the normal. It was all so sudden. First he was on top of the world, but the next minute, he was cleaning out his desk, piling his personal belongings into boxes. The familiar business suit walked by as he piled his belongings. Her eyes seemed to look past him, not noticing until he said, hey.

What happened to the quotemarks?

"Oh, hey," she said. Her eyes darted around the office, making sure the conversation was limited to just four eyes. "Listen, it was great meeting you the other night, but I don't think we can go out again."

Now we're fucking up anatomy. You don't hear with your eyes, CK.

She looked stern. She was a middle-aged mother, ready to cut the cord. Her baby had grown up, from a teenager into adulthood. It was time to send him out on his own the hard way, kick him out of the house. Or the relationship.

Or this metaphor doesn't really work. Babies do not start growing up from being teenagers. I don't think this narrative style of writing like you're talking is working out, especially given that it's in the third person.

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

As he stood alone in the room, the air conditioner buzzing in the background, he thought about his last contact with her -- the peck at the door. It was so cold, so emotionless. No, that's how dates end, he thought. Polite kisses at the door. It's equitette, damn it. Don't overanalyze this.

Okay there's nothing wrong with this graf.

Etiquette is spelled wrong *flexes or something*

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

If I can just add two pieces of actual constructive criticism (and have you actually read it, I've been such a dick this time because your last story was so bad you insisted it was on purpose and ignored everything I said), and sure it might not be completely valid because people exist in their imaginations all the time and write wonderful work.  But let's be honest you don't have enough world experience on you to cultivate from, neither do I, that's why the depressive accidentally autobiographical stories I write stay in a composition notebook in my dresser underneath a pair of pants I never wear.

Write what you know, write about things that have happened to you sure twist them into interesting characters because no one really wants to read about you (or me) for that long.  This story fails so hard because you can tell every emotion and event was experienced vicariously through television or writing.

Secondly you're a narrator, you're telling me a story.  The narrator has a voice too, obviously not an active participant in this story but there's no style or definition to it.  Imagine this being read outloud to you, or read it outloud yourself.  Do you want to hear it? It's so matter-of-fact and dry that I can practically see the crisp freshly printed paper it was printed on, it's perfectly justified columns and college approved fontsize.  You're not telling a story you're just recounting events.

[Webcam ham.]

I enjoy seriousposts from Steve.

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

It sounds that way because he's telling and not showing, a cardinal sin in prose. Declaring what emotions people have is not compelling writing. It's something that you might hear in a news article, though, but news stories are not meant to be fun. Part of the fun of reading prose is interpreting the clues you see in the text to build the scene. So instead of saying someone smiled nervously, you can say that they gave a half-smile, their lip muscles twitching under the strain, or something like that. Let the reader construct the scene in their heads, thus giving them an activity to do other than simply plowing through a series of events. If you write well enough, they will correctly interperet the scene.

I don't know if an utter lack of experience is what is keeping CK down. He doesn't have enough experience having his work critiqued, though, but you don't necessarily need to be worldly in order to write a story (it really helps, though). You don't have to write purely about what you know, but you definitely should avoid writing about yourself (I'm sure most people who've read this story have concluded that Ogleby is a stand-in for you). Do NOT write yourself into stories unless you're certain you can do something interesting with it (and most times, you can't).

Here's a suggestion to improve your ability to characterize people (which is sorely lacking): observe people. Listen to how they talk, watch how they move when talking, what gestures they use, their tones of voice, etc. And I don't mean gleaning this info from a TV show, actors calculate their movements. It seems that you don't really have any way of visualizing how the characters act or react in this story, so we're left with you declaring emotions and whatnot.

When you use metaphors, for the love of god read them and visualize them. If the visualization does not make sense, either fix or nix the metaphor.

Lastly, learn how to use details. This should be easy because figuring out what kinds of details work and what don't is a simple matter of reading. The entire first 1/5 of the story is completely pointless because you are using details that nobody gives a shit about. You might think that Ogleby tapping his computer provides some kind of insight, but there's no context to it. He's just a dude tapping a computer. Is that interesting? Does that say anything about him that we need to know? No. You use details to point out something that the reader should know or to paint a picture of a scene so that the reader can better visualize it. That does not mean pointing out minutiae. Give just enough to give a general picture and move on. The reader can fill in anything that isn't important in their head.

I don't think I'd even bother rewriting this story, CK. There's nothing here. It's a vignette. You need to come up with a more compelling conflict and to develop characters that are not simply cut-ups or stand-ins.

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Here's what I think,

[Webcam ham.]

Your insight is appreciated.

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

This story sucks because i couldn't beat off to it.

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

[Webcam ham.]

This story sucks because i couldn't beat off to it.

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Part 2 / final part. Like the first, this isn't finished because it's not revised. (OVK is doing a lot of that for me, which is fantastic. I honestly would have overlooked some of his grammatical revisions.) This part is pretty different than part 1 but it also ratchets up the emoness in some ways. So yeah. It might also be too rushed, but right now it's at 18 pages so I'm pushing it on length.

---

"I never thought I would be in a relationship like this," Nate said.

He lie in bed, nessled under the covers. The upper half of his fit frame, peaking out over a mountain of blankets, had a light coating of sweat. His arms were high in the air above his head and against the gold bedframe, exposing his unshaven armpits.

"I didn't think love existed," he added, staring up at the ceiling.

A woman, Melissa, who had faced the same direction as Nate, now turned on her side to face to the right and away from him. God, she thought, another soliloquy from the Hamlet of sex.

Nate's head rested perfectly on a plain white pillow. His face glowed, emitting his dumb grin in all possible directions of the room. The resulting radiation was seeping the life out of Melissa. She needed oxygen.

Nate turned over toward Melissa and spooned her, cradling her torso against him. He let a finger creep down the length of her right arm and cup the back of her hand. "Your skin is so soft," he whispered in her ear.

She shivered.

He raised his body up a bit off her. "What is it?" he asked.

"Let's go to sleep," she said.

Nate smiled and gave her a light peck on the cheek. "OK," he said. He let his body fall back on top of her completely, resting his head immediately behind hers.

After a few seconds, Melissa stirred. "Hey, why don't we use the whole bed?" she said.

"I like being next to you," he said, going in for another peck. He missed when she got up to turn her head around. The two knocked heads.

"Fuck, what were you doing?" she asked, getting off the bed.

"I was trying to kiss you," he said, rubbing his forehead.

She stared out a nearby window, off in the distance at the busy city life. It was 2 a.m., yet cars still honked and people still yelled. Even this late, some people were out partying. Not too long ago, that was also her.

She turned to Nate. "Look, I'll call you. I'm kinda ... yeah," she said.

"What?"

"I need some sleep," she said, reaching for her coat. "I don't think I can get it here. No offense."

Up on his knees in bed, Nate held his hands out, palms facing her. "What did I do?" the gesture said.

"Acted like a dumbass," her eyes replied.

"I'll call you," she reinterated as the door shut.

Sometimes Melissa compared her life to those of her peers from high school and college. It depressed her. She was not successful. Her career was worthless, just some entry-level job at an advertising firm. Absolutely worthless. Any idiot could get it with a few chance meetings and a few smiles. Her love life was pedestrian. She had somehow sucked the joy out of sex, something she once thought impossible. Going through the motions, sex is now like watching a movie. Eh, it was decent. Not bad. Could have used some better acting but she was doing the best she could under the circumstances. And like watching a movie, most of the plot quickly left the memory. All that left was a few blurs.

People who say sex comes from love or relationships are full of it, she thought. Sex is sex. Relationships just make you feel like you earned it. They think, well, I had to put up with this dating bullshit. I sure as hell better get some sex.

People who dated Melissa generally were not disappointed. She had started having sex on the first date a long time ago. It's just what's expected these days, she thought. There's no courtship. You're either serious about someone, or you're not.

As she was jostling for the keys to her apartment that night, miles away from Nate's humble abode and all of the expectations, all this thinking reminded her of her mother. How young Mom had looked, she thought. How naive she was.

Suddenly it was 10 years earlier, and she was in a familiar room. In her mother's house, the room upstairs, two doors down and to the left. Her room. She and her mother -- Charlotte -- were sitting on the bed. Charlotte had a serious expression. A let's-have-a-discussion look. An after-school-special demeanor.

Melissa felt like she was watching the scene, though she was outside of herself. The memory was fuzzy, and some of the sensory imagery wasn't there like she had no idea what color her Bible was, sitting on the nightstand. The textbooks on her desk were also colorless and formless, looking like the contrast was turned much too bright. But the television set was as vibrant as gray could be, and the walls were sky blue.

It felt like summer with the sounds of birds chirping and the bright sky streaming in light from the window, but it was decidedly autumn. The trees messed up the lawn by having shed a flurry of multicolored leaves. Both mother and daughter had matching brown turtlenecks on. Those were sewn by Melissa's grandmother and had initials on the sleeves. They were worn on special occasions in the winter, and certainly, one would say Melissa's sixteenth birthday is a special occasion. The turtlenecks had only lasted through one special occasion while the grandmother was still around, so Charlotte now insisted on wearing them. It was sort of a tribute at this point, an obligation.

Now Melissa remembered it was late afternoon. The party was done. Everything had been unwrapped, eaten, cleaned and thanked for. She was about to leave in her brand-new car. She had gotten her license that morning and unsurprisingly, she had gotten her car that afternoon. She was ready to drive it that night. Life was good, she thought. But then, in a way, it wasn't.

Melissa and her mother sat on her bed. A very cheesy romantic would have made a joke about them being sisters. Her mother sat with short black hair, a bit shorter than Melissa's but not by much. Her physique was slim but modest. She wore informal blue jeans like her daughter. Melissa might have been mortified at the duplicity if she had not been used to it by now.

As Charlotte grew nervous, she tucked a thread of hair behind her ear obsessively. She had asked Melissa to talk for a specific purpose. It wasn't so much that Charlotte had seen or heard anything unsettling. She hadn't. But Melissa was 16 now and would struggle with these issues soon enough.

As Charlotte drew in her breath to speak, to tell her that men only wanted one thing, to talk about the birds and the bees, to run through things she had already gleaned from popular television and film, Melissa interrupted her. "Where was Dad?" Melissa blurted.

Flabbergasted, Charlotte paused. Then responded, slowly and cheerfully, "What made you expect him?"

"I just figured this was sort of a big birthday. I thought maybe he would be here."

Charlotte looked at her daughter's eyes, which were searching the floor, looking at the rug, another grandmother product. She mimicking her daughter's pained expression. Then Charlotte's eyes joined her daughter's.

"I'm sorry, honey," she said in a whisper, ashamed. A real mother would have persuaded him to be here, no matter the distance, no matter what other prior commitments he may have made. Charlotte had put him out of her life long ago, but she sometimes forgot that Melissa hadn't. And wouldn't.


At that moment, Melissa remembered her 16-year-old self. Life feels always so strange, she thought. So incomplete. Was it really just the mundane fact that her parents were divorced? Had that not happened to countless other families? At that moment, her 26-year-old self thought, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and unlocked the apartment door.

---

The sound of soft sobbing could be heard in Ogelby's room some 37 days into his unemployment. He struggled to contain his breath. He remembered the day he was fired, hearing one guy two cubicles down chuckle and say to a co-worker, "Did you hear? Nate fired Yuppie Chris because he slept with Melissa."

"Seriously? How the hell did he sleep with Melissa?"

"I have no idea, man," he added, laughing.

Ogelby's tears subsided. Yuppie Chris, he thought. A nickname he didn't know he had. He imagined Melissa laughing with Nate during sex, calling him Yuppie Chris in casual conversations. It was probably all a joke, he thought now. Just some sick practical joke.

He remembered Nate looking back at him once, immediately after he had talked briefly with Melissa. At the time, Ogelby thought Nate was just staring in his direction, but no, he must have known. They must have been together the whole time. Everybody probably knew. It was just a joke. Ogelby didn't think about his obvious case of wrongful termination. What was the point? Everyone hated him there.

His computer tuned out, going into hibernate, and Ogelby slowly stood up from his chair.

---

Melissa showed up at the club wearing a tight black dress. It clung and showed a moderate amount of cleavage. The gaze of a number of men in the club did not meet her eyes. While less than flattering, this made her feel better about herself. She didn't know exactly why. Just the fact that she could get it if she wanted to was nice. Just the fact that people thought she was desirable.

She looked around and smiled. There were so many people, bobbing blobs of dancers entranced by the music. The DJ, the pied piper of the club, danced goofily in place and held up gigantic headphones to his right ear unnecessarily. Overhead lights beamed blue and yellow spotlights on the crowd, hovering to and fro and creating some sort of cosmic vomit. All the while, Tears for Fears' song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" played.

She noticed Nate, the ole boss. She suddenly remembered how Nate had asked her out. He had asked, oogling her by the watercooler, "How do you feel about mixing business with pleasure?" He said it in a real Hollywood attempt at seduction. God, she thought, it sounded like something out of a campy sexual harrassment in the workplace video.

Melissa reluctantly waved to Nate. This was a mistake because it had been almost two months since she had sex with Nate. She'd done her best to avoid him since then, even taking the easy catch of Yuppie Chris when she got lonely. When word got out somehow (presumably Yuppie Chris or maybe they weren't secretive enough in the office), Yuppie Chris took his early exit. Melissa felt bad for him in a way but only in a way one feels bad for someone he or she trips into when walking. "Excuse me," she thought, a message to Yuppie Chris.

The wave was also a mistake because, as Nate stumbled over to her, it was plain as day that he was drunk out of his mind. Dressed in a blue jean jacket and matching pants with ruffled brown hair, Nate looked like he had been to hell and back, and his cheesy grin said he didn't care about anything anymore. Not paperwork. Not relationships. Nothing.

"How are you?" he slurred, struggling to look her in the eye.

"I'm fine," she said, managing to smile.

Nate took the opportunity the loud music and talking provided him to grab her ass softly. She continued to stare out toward the crowd, but her body stiffened and her smile fell. Nate looked around as well and did not notice this. He couldn't help but smile widely, though. He took his hand off and turned to her.

"I've never seen such a wwwwhhhooorrreee, even around here," he said, looking her in the eyes and smirking.

She returned his smirk, "Yeah? What did you say to Chris when you fired him? On what grounds was THAT termination?"

He winced and rubbed his eyes. "Look, it's fine, you wanna dance or what?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "See, I don't typically dance with guys who just got done groping me in public."

He stared blankly at her, hunching down a bit as if she was shorter than she actually was. "C'mon. You are always such a tight ass. Let's dance," he said, grabbing her arm and pulling it.

She tugged it back her way, pulling him toward her. "I don't think so," she said.

He grabbed both her wrists and pulled her closer. The stench of alcohol filled her nostrils, and she nearly gagged. Overpowering her, he moved one of his hands to her ass again, stammering every few seconds another "c'mon ..." He began to suck in deep breaths and gasp for air. As his eyes looked down at her breasts, she slapped him briskly across the face with her newly free hand.

He seized both her hands, handcuffing them with his. Both their foreheads touched. "Don't you hurt me," he slowly whispered through gritted teeth. They danced an awkward dance like this, as she tried to flail and kick him away. His feet were together, making the classic ball shot impossible. He smiled but then frowned and added, "Don't."

In his arms, she began to cry, her mascara running down her face. Others nearby were noticing, and a collection of college-age students pulled him away, hurling insults at him. He tried to pull away from their grips, shouting, "Don't you touch me!" and "I didn't do anything!" The words were only barely distinguishable above the '80s music.

Melissa stood there, rubbing her wrists where he had wrenched and yanked them. She cried louder. The tears now streamed down her face, an endless faucet once the first drip appeared. She gasped for breath, an old habit from her childhood.

"Hey, are you all right?" It was a boy from the group who pried Nate off her. She bristled when the boy touched her.

"Yeah," she managed over her shoulder and began walking away quickly. She tripped into a table and a bowl full of red fruit punch drenched her stomach and crotch. The coldness shook her spine. She grabbed the punch bowl quickly and hurled it toward the wall. It shattered to a million pieces, causing a lot of people nearby to say, "Woah." A few said comments that were essentially, "Hey, watch it!"

Out the door of the club, she sped down the sidewalk, past the sounds of cabs, past the "Sex and the City"-esque gossip conversation among girlfriends, past the romantic walkhomes from dates. Her high heels echoing behind her, her legs dripping fruity goodness, she was about to pass a group of high school boys. Beyond them, she saw Nate stumbling down the sidewalk. Her eyes lit up.

One from the group of boys looked toward her and chuckled. "Hey honey, what's the problem? Do I make you wet?"

She ran past them, shrieking, "GET OUT OF MY WAY," in their faces.

The group turned and watched her run down the street towards the drunk man. The boy called after her, "What's your problem, bitch?"

She spat without turning, "Go back home, you little shit."

She sniffed back tears as the beat of her high heels against the street intensified. Her eyes were filled with rage, all her inhibitions erased, as she tackled Nate to the ground. Barely managing to stand before she arrived, he crumbled under her weight to the ground.

"Men," she said. "They only want one thing."

She struggled to turn him over and, after doing so, punched him as hard as she could.

"And then they leave," she said and slugged him once more.

A crowd arrived and pulled her off the drunk, unconscious man. Before they did, she had already pulled off her right high heel and began clubbing his abdomen with it. The scene mimicked the club scene, except this time the assilant was sober enough to run away.

---

When she opened the door to the apartment, she was smiling, despite the night being so horrific. As she walked past her answering machine, she turned it on. She heard Nate's voice for a long time. "Blah, blah, blah," she yelled over it as she put her belongings down. Her newfound devil-may-care attitude came out in her voice.

Suddenly she heard something from the kitchen. Sobbing. Then, "Oh, so you broke up with Nate?"

She entered the kitchen. In the dark, she could make out a man, Yuppie Chris, with a small gun in his right hand.

Ogelby laughed. "Man, that really makes," he choked back a breath, "that really makes me getting fired pointless, doesn't it?" He chuckled again before softly crying.

Melissa just stood there shocked, her eyes wide, before finally uttering, "No ..."

"Do you even remember me?" he said, raising his voice.

She stood alert, turning her gaze from the gun to his eyes.

"Do you even care?" he said, pleading.

As she began to speak, her voice cracked, and she shrieked, "Don't."

A second later, the bullet left, and she was gone. Ogelby watched her die. He continued to cry, using his left hand to hold down his right. Finally he raised his head and released his left hand. The right hand immediately took the gun to his mouth, and, in one fell swoop, he was gone too.

[Zeon]

Pretty good.  It's a sad story but I laughed a few times.

Best line: "Her legs dripping fruity goodness..."

[Webcam ham.]

Who would wear a jean jacket to the club?

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

denim pussy got ya excited

[The Mystery on Baby Butthole Jr. Lake]

Tears For Fears? That's the worst DJ ever.

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

She looked around and smiled. There were so many people, bobbing blobs of dancers entranced by the music. The DJ, the pied piper of the club, danced goofily to the shuffle beat and held up gigantic headphones to his right ear unnecessarily. Overhead lights beamed blue and yellow spotlights on the crowd, hovering to and fro and creating some sort of cosmic vomit. All the while, October Sundae's song "Fishmarket Blues" played.

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

Assailant

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

Tony Hawk waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were bobbing blobs of dancers in the base. He couldn't hear them over the DJ's poor choice in music, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to OVK were not listenend to and now it was too late to keep him from reading the second half of this story. Far too late for now, anyway.

[Webcam ham.]

She looked around and smiled. There were so many people, bobbing blobs of dancers entranced by the music. The DJ, the pied piper of the club, danced goofily to the shuffle beat and held up gigantic headphones to his right ear unnecessarily. Overhead lights beamed blue and yellow spotlights on the crowd, hovering to and fro and creating some sort of cosmic vomit. All the while, October Sundae's song "Fishmarket Blues" played.

Hahahahahahaha, how did I miss this?

That part is awful, Robby Rob.

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

I don't know when I'm going to get to the second half as this is a BUSY WEEK. From what I've read though, I think it's pretty odd that the narrator takes Melissa's perspective and then refers to her mother by her first name.

Also yeah, still seeing too much purple prose.

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Is the idea to be humorously verbose about minor things

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

Is the idea to be humorously verbose about minor things

Not at all, my poor attempts at description

I think I am just inherently verbose

what's purple prose mean

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

what's purple prose mean

http://web.archive.org/web/19991114100031/http://home.earthlink.net/~bcbull/dotb.htm

[[ASK] me about making my shitty forum more like 4chan IV]

now this I can read

[A albright...]

Ah, man

[The Girl Who Couldn't Remember]

In final revisions, I used about half of OVK's edits, most notably cutting the entire first of the story completely out. It now begins "For Chris Ogelby's self-esteem, it is a good thing no one else knew his computer password. The background of the computer consisted of a less-than-flattering picture of a woman nude." I worry this might thrust us into the action abruptly, but hey, that's probably better than how it was.

I completely agree with what everyone said about the beginning. I don't know if I said this earlier in this thread, but my original idea was to write a story that basically was a camera trained on a computer screen and somehow that would tell a story. Shortly into riffing on it, I just fell into this other story, so that's why the very beginning was so different from everything else.

I agree with RD as well. That's my main limit in creative writing is a severe lack of experience, though I think it's unfair to immediately assume I'm Ogelby.

To be honest, coming off two comedic short stories, I just felt like writing a serious one, although with those, I usually have a hard time not being cliche with them. As much as everyone here disliked my comedic stories as well, I enjoy writing them in that quasi-journalistic zany style, no matter how outdated or cheesy they are. And my friends seem to like them. My creative writing instructors have liked Benjamin O'Brien and Johnny Lindsay, but that may be because (intentional) comedy in college creative writing classes is rare from my experience. I don't know how my class will take this one at all, which is interesting.

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Yo is that a post or is it part of the story

[Webcam ham.]

You think Joe's sister would like it?

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

I'll go ask her

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

no she said a lot of the things OVK said actually

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

You think Joe Vita's sister would like it?

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Haha Joe Vita's sister CK write a story about that

[The Mystery of the Mother Wolf]

The drifters, the hipsters, the hot sisters!

[Webcam ham.]

About Joe Landstander and Joe Vita's sisters making a pact as children to stay friends forever and meet again by this tree in 20 years when they are old and fat.

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

The touching story of a boy and his right hand. Deadliest hands of kung fu, longest arm of the law. To thwart a king

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

About Joe Landstander and Joe Vita's sisters making a pact as children to stay friends forever and meet again by this tree in 20 years when they are old and fat.

Landstander isn't my last name, it's my internet monkeyer.

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

hm

[Webcam ham.]

The touching story of a boy and his right hand.

The story of Albright's weekend. Every weekend.

[The Legend of the Emerald Lady]

The drifters, the hipsters, the hot sisters!

The touching story of a boy and his right hand. Deadliest hands of kung fu, longest arm of the law. To thwart a king's passion, he gambled the fate of a nation. They sabotaged his nuclear lab. They took his wife. They tried to kill him. Then they cloned him. He was a man who couldn't care less, until he met a man who couldn't care more. Tortured by desires his vows forbid, master of a house of mortal sin. He hit "the Man" for $3 million. Right  where it hurts. In the diamonds. And baby, that's cold. Save your lipstick, girls, he plays for keeps. Dealer. Snitch. Junkie. Hustler. Suddenly, life was more than French fries, gravy and girls.

He's a big city plastic surgeon, in a small town that doesn't take plastic.

The black cat from Watts. The kung fu cat from Hong Kong. Delightfully devilish, definitely deadly. Every kiss carved his name on another bullet. It took him 20 years to find out who he was and 2 laps to let the world know. He was the lord of ten thousand years, the absolute monarch of China.

He's on the right side of justice, but the wrong side of the law. Indecent. Immoral. Irresistible. It's the role he was born to play. Singing six-guns that sang a song of death for the gang that was out to frame him. He's lost his car. He's lost his money. He's lost his girlfriend. Now he's losing his mind.

Boy, oh boy.

What you can see thru his x-ray specs. Lord high minister of everything sinister. He's on a mission so secret, even he doesn't know about it. He was an innocent from a small village, soon to be trapped in the erotic underworld of Prague. Women want him for his wit. The C.I.A. wants him for his body. Real badge. Real gun. Fake cop. When he's around nothing adds up. He planned a paradise. He created a hell. The truth is more shocking than the uniform he wears. Everything that makes him dangerous makes her love him more. A man of evil, with a face that could stop a heart and eyes that
crawl with madness and hands that creep like cobras. He frees hostages for a living. Now he's taking hostages to survive.

Trying to kill him was their first mistake. Letting him live was their last.

Tonight, he either fights for his life or he'll be running for the rest of it. He knew where $50,000 lay begging to be stolen. He took them all on. On their terms. On their turf. Your singin', fist-swingin', cowboy favorite. You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it? His secret power menaced the world. The ghost who walks. The man who cannot die. He sold his soul for rock and roll. The crowd worshipped him, one woman understood him. Country's biggest star. He'd trade it all to find the kind of love he'd only sung about. No man, no law, no war can stop him. For years the government paid him to kill. Now he is self-employed. He can turn the simple into the simply amazing, and now he turns revenge into high comedy. They said there wasn't a man in the world who could pull off this job, they were right. He's an astro-not turned astronaut in the maddest mix-up in space history. He lives to kill and kills to live. He's back in the most human heart-warming picture in years. The funny man is here with rhythm, comedy and music.

He's a vampire who hasn't scored in 400 years.
The miracle kid with the super zoom ball.

He's at it again. Chasing down the most dramatic crime in London legend. Shock-charged drama, with a peppery bit of love on the side.

[The Clue of the Tapping Heels]

Roogie Bump