Bubble Man

Just go for a swim in the waterfall

Dive off the hydroelectric dam wall

Undersea creatures waiting for you

Seductive sirens sing the sweetest tunes

Hammerhead sharks smell your blood

Now’s the time for underwear mud

Speedo lemonade for the jellyfish

Sting your ass for as long as they wish

Hold your breath like a YA hero

Watch your temperature drop to zero

Ain’t no lifeguards in my domain

Just a short existence and eternal pain

You came searching for the Bubble Man

Couldn’t come up with a better plan?

Dollar signs in your bloodshot eyes

Dreams of riches dissolved into lies

Bubble Man’s got a price on his head

Yet you’re the one who ends up dead

But not before he has some good fun

And even then, he’s still not done

Bubbles in your ass and in your lungs

Bubbles in your sack and in your eardrums

Pop them fuckers like birthday balloons

Scrape your guts off with a metal spoon

Mix your slime in a cauldron of chowder

Feed it to the minions with curry powder

Shit you out for the plankton and coral

They bring our climate back to normal

You weren’t the first to look for fortune

But you’re the latest post-birth abortion

Bubble Man may have a name so silly

But his weapons turn bitches to beef chili

Better luck next time, bounty hunter

Should’ve stayed in the arms of your mother

The Hateful Eight

MOVIE TITLE: The Hateful Eight

DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino

YEAR: 2015

GENRE: Western Thriller

RATING: R for violence, swearing, nudity, and rape

GRADE: Pass

A blizzard hits Wyoming in the middle of bounty hunter John Ruth transporting his $10,000 captive Daisy Domergue to Red Rock to be executed. After his stagecoach picks up two extra passengers along the way, Major Marquis Warren and Sheriff Chris Mannix, the travelers are forced to hunker down in a lodge together with other suspicious characters until the blizzard passes over. As the strangers get to know each other, not everyone can keep their stories straight and it leads to paranoid distrust. Bodies begin piling up until their paranoia tapers, which means Daisy’s chances of escaping execution increase even more.

Just like with any other Quentin Tarantino movie, every character is developed through realistic, gritty, and vulgar dialogue. It’s not just cursing and slurs for the sake of edginess. Everything said in this movie has a purpose and nothing goes to waste. This is especially true when Marquis is telling old man Sandy Smithers how the latter’s son died at the former’s hands. It’s also true when John Ruth tells stories about how he prefers to hang his bounties rather than give them an easy route to death. And it’s true again when Chris Mannix brags about his father’s renegade army of confederate remnants fighting for a dying cause. None of the characters’ back stories or present actions make them appear sympathetic, I’ll admit, but if we were meant to sympathize with them, the movie wouldn’t be called the Hateful Eight. This is classic Tarantino storytelling at its apex.

I also must commend the musicianship of Ennio Morricone, who provided most of the soundtrack for this movie. Whenever a feeling of impending doom or hard justice needs to be experienced by the audience, Morricone’s music will make them believe in the brutality they’re seeing onscreen. He has a legendary track record of providing fantastic scores for western movies, so recruiting him was a natural fit on Tarantino’s part. I’m not sure if the Hateful Eight’s soundtrack has been released as a CD or digital album, but if it hasn’t, then it’s a crime. Classical music never goes out of style and even if it did, it can always be revived by conductors like Morricone.

Tarantino movies could be criticized for dragging themselves out too long or being overindulgent in their exposition through dialogue, but in the case of the Hateful Eight, I don’t agree with that sentiment at all. Everything had its place. Every conversation had its own feeling of drama and excitement. If you watch Tarantino movies just for the brutality, you might have to wait a while, but it’ll be worth it in the end. Think of the conversations as the slow build and the violence as the major crescendo in a symphony of masterful filmmaking. I wouldn’t lump John Ruth punching and elbowing Daisy in with that symphony since it was disturbing to watch and out of context it would make John Ruth look like a jerk. Yes, your butt will go numb as you go through this two and a half hour long masterpiece, but when you’re kicking it in the Caribbean, you’ll be saying to yourself, “Marcellus Wallace was right.” Wait a minute, wrong movie! But you get the idea.

While this movie isn’t anything earth shattering, it is a piece of art to be admired and rewatched just to soak in the talents of everybody involved. Samuel L. Jackson was undoubtedly the show stealer when it came to the acting. Ennio Morricone’s music is always heaven on the ears. The story itself can be easily pieced together once the movie draws to its conclusion. All in all, there’s not much to complain about even with the lengthy screen time and the scenes where Daisy gets punched (despite the fact that she too is an unsympathetic villain). A passing grade will go to this modern day Tarantino classic!

The Four Horsemen of D&D

These four characters aren’t submitting job applications, though they may be used in future stories. Instead, they’re going to listen to my obituaries. I talk all the time about how in 2010 when I binge-played Dungeons & Dragons with Heather and TJ, four different player characters died under my watch. Every time one of these deaths happened, tears formed in my players’ eyes and RPG life wasn’t the same without them. Their spiritual essences would haunt the PC’s dreams and bring back traumatic memories as they entered their next battlefield thinking the next one could be one of them. As they say at the beginning of every episode from the Law & Order franchise, “These are their stories.”


NAME: Chris Bryan
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


Chris and his cousin Wade made a pact to be lifelong vegans after running away from their farm home due to the bloody treatment of innocent animals. To sustain themselves, they both signed up for the Middlesex National Guard. Both cousins graduated, but at different times in their careers. Wade went on to be a personal bodyguard for the lead PC Darthania Gaveston (controlled by Heather) while Chris joined much later. The cousins and their new PC friends were inseparable. And then one night, their world turned black (not that it already wasn’t in a crime-infested place like Middlesex). Middlesex Fighting Championship, the main MMA enterprise of the D&D campaign, was blocking traffic because ticket sales to their most recent event were skyrocketing. In a fit of road rage, one of the MMA stars, Glenn Allen, tried to run over several innocent people while honking at them. It took Chris, Wade, and an elf paladin named Windham Farrell to subdue Mr. Allen. Unfortunately, Chris was the recipient of several unanswered kicks to the ribs and died of suffocation. Wade was so devastated by his cousin and best friend’s death that he thought about quitting the bodyguard business until his mentor, Zell Jardine, convinced him to do a commercial promoting National Guard membership on the basis that they rescue animals from their abusers. Wade did as he was told, but described it as the most sobering experience in his life. Poor guy.


NAME: Gerard Killings
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


NAME: Kurt Blades
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Panther


Zell Jardine, the founder of the leftwing terrorist organization The Trench Coat Militia, trained a lot of people in his lifetime into becoming badass soldiers with his ruthless drill instructor mentality. But of all those people, he only had four he considered his best pupils. Gerard and Kurt were among those four people, the other two being a human fighter named Ethan Stryker and a troll fighter named Michael Heaven. Together, the Trench Coat Militia changed the city of Middlesex from a dictatorship to a democracy, but not without shedding a shit ton of blood along the way with their machetes. But when you bring about change with violence, you can expect more violence as you can guess from the deaths of Gerard Killings and Kurt Blades. Both warriors died defending different MMA events from terror organizations and criminal gangs. The difference between the two deaths is that Gerard had a 19-year-old son named Jason who signed up after his father died. Kurt Blades had no family and died in obscurity. Kurt even visited one of the PC’s, a half-orc barbarian named Agrusk Xis (controlled by TJ), in his dreams and asked a profound question, “Why, sweet God, why?!” Agrusk couldn’t come up with an answer even if he was awake and alert.


NAME: India Malakar
LEVEL: 2
CLASS: Monk
RACE: Elf


Considering the fact that India was an elf with a negative constitution modifier and a warrior class, his death shouldn’t have come as a surprise. What was really surprising was how this guy became the longest reigning MFC Welterweight Champion of all time before losing the gold to Agrusk Xis? A negative constitution modifier is detrimental to the work of a mixed-martial artist since most of what they do centers around their conditioning. In gaming terms, India was a level two character with only 7 hit points. This made absolutely perfect sense at the time I played with him, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. Before turning to MMA as a source of income, Brutus Warcry (a human barbarian that I controlled) along with his wife Darthania (Heather’s half-elf wizard) and best friend Agrusk Xis (TJ’s half-orc barbarian) needed help capturing wanted criminals around Middlesex and turning them in to the authorities for bounty money. These criminals could blow the shit out of populations with nail bombs or they could just slash everyone they see to pieces. They were too dangerous for one person to take on alone. India gladly lent his help and surprisingly did a good job of it. But when bounty hunting became too much of a dangerous chore, India was the one person who recommended Brutus, Agrusk, and Darthania become involved with mixed-martial arts, which is much safer and much more regulated by comparison. Brutus became the MFC’s Heavyweight Champion, Agrusk as I’ve said before became the Welterweight Champion, and Darthania became the Vice President of the company. They did well for themselves, unlike India who while helping his new friends fight off terrorists died after having his throat slit by a rat warrior. India’s death was the first to take place among the official PC’s, so everybody in the game took it hard. Even Agrusk, a macho half-orc, was blubbering as he tended to India’s dying corpse.


Four dead player characters from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in 2010. But death is only the beginning. The greatest thing about being a fictional character from another canon is that there are always extra chances. Instead of rotting in the Middlesex Cemetery, these four are in the unemployment line of my imagination. But don’t worry, they’ll find work soon enough. They always do.