HOME | BROADSHEETS | ARCHIVE | AUDIO | ITINERARIES | MIXTAPE | EVENTS | FAQ | RSS | LINKS
Advertise | Newsletter | About/Subscribe | Submissions | Art Walk | Books | THE2NDHAND Writers Fund

**PRINT: Our 30th broadsheet, GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTERS, by Chicago-based Spencer Dew, is a tale of one man's small heartbreak, the backdrop to a contemporary landscape of well-meaning but ultimately shallow political activism, fractured communicative lines, and more ultimately enduring drives toward total inebriation. In classic Dew fashion, he'll have you laughing all the way to brink of the void. Dew is the author of the short-story collection Songs of Insurgency (2008). This issue also features excerpts from our David Foster Wallace collaborative mini-tribute by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills and Bellingham, Wash.-based Doug Milam, author of our 27th broadsheet

**WEB: STOIC COMMANDERS OF FAT MALE THIGHS, Part 2 Marc Baez
FAQ: THIS SWITCH TO DIGITAL TV IS DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY Paul A. Toth
FOUR CARDINAL RULES FOR CRAFTING A RESPECTABLE POEM Tyler Enfield
STUPID QUESTIONS Aaron Edmund Sitze
ARCHITECTURAL ABSENCES Sarah Joy Freese
THE LIARS Heather McShane
WING & FLY: BEST OF 2008: SACRIFICIAL CIRCUMCISION OF THE BRONX, review | Todd Dills
WAITING FOR DESSERT AT THE PALMER HOUSE HILTON Ling Ma
MIXTAPE: GET THE HELL OUT OF TOWN, JOHN MCENTIRE Jill Summers
HIDEOUS BOUNTY: I AM IN HERE | Andrew Davis

STOIC COMMANDERS OF FAT MALE THIGHS
---
Marc Baez

In Part 1, this tri-part treatise on "self-sufficient laziness," among other things, began its discursive romp through time. Here, Baez addresses his exigesis directly.

Dear Corey Haim,
You were born in 1971, two days before Christmas. Your
skin smelled like Valentine's Day paper. There was
something nestled deep in your eyes called a God given
talent. Your newborn legs kicked and your mouth
grinned, already displaying the who gives a damn rock
and roll attitude that is one of your many gifts to
the United States of America.

In 1992's The Double O Kid, you dreamed of being a
secret agent. So I have written 34 secret agent movie
scripts for you to star in. Here are the titles:

Peripheral Vision
Chinese Box
Useful Field of Vision
Primary Area of Interest
The Contraction
Critical Signal
Edges of Winter
Red Error
The German Relationship
Maniac Excitement
The Recognition Spiral
Involuntary Options
Criminal Services
French Persuasions
The Adjustment
The 10th Factor
Autonomy
The Third Party
Adverse Effects
The Jamaican
The Paradigm
Equal Application
Private Data
The Causal Effect
The Doorman
Infinite Range
Parity
Exchange Force
The Extraction
Spanish Whispers
Partial Witness
Anaconda's Kiss
The Russian Ladder
Roger Dallas

You dreamed of being a secret agent. When a dreamboat
dreams there is a noisy merriment for us all. Make a
movie with me and you will ride an undulating wave of
endless cash from sea to shining sea. You will have
whatever you want: bowls of human nudity dumped onto
your bed. You will only interact with others as their
hero. The nation will watch your movies and dream of
you, wishful wall to wall.

Synopsis for Roger Dallas:
When Roger Dallas gets angry he likes to throw
punches, and his punches tend to land where he wants
them to, and they certainly hurt. Ex-skateboard
champion, ex-Navy Seal, and ex-boyfriend of Venice
beach's hottest ladies, Roger Dallas puts the s in
sex, and with his other gun, he puts hot red holes in
those who would endanger his community with drugs. By
day, Roger Dallas runs Venice Beach's number one gym,
Muscle Wars. By night, he moves through the neon
labyrinth of L.A.'s nightlife where drugs are the name
of the game. A lover and a fighter "among the stars,"
Roger Dallas is a secret agent for a secret outfit
whose sole purpose it is to rid the city of drugs, by
any means necessary. There's just one problem. A new
drug called "Orgasm" has been introduced into the
city, a drug so intoxicating that even the Mayor is
said to be hooked. Manufactured by evil billionaire
Blaine Derek, "Orgasm" is distributed by the city's
gangs without interference from the police, who have
been bought off so thoroughly that those few honest
officers who have tried to make arrests have been
either fired, killed, or tricked into addiction. With
no hopes of assistance from the police, it is up to
Roger Dallas and his fellow secret agents to end this
"Orgasm" before it destroys everything. Making love
and making war, with both of his guns fully loaded,
Roger Dallas is on task to make sure that the right
orgasm wins.

Mr. Haim, I realize that there are a lot of haters
right now who believe that your star has fallen -- that
it is not long before you will be drunk and homeless
in an alley pissing into the fake hair of an
abandoned doll. But what do they know about the
internal struggles of those born with a God given
talent, the sort of talent that makes the mundane
details of everyday life among civilians so difficult
to endure. Nobody seems to understand that.

To make room, to clear the air, there are many "stars"
I would like to punish and get rid of, but I am not
sure if my impulses are correct, and I look for your
guidance. For example:

Is it wrong to want to cut open Zac Efron's chest and
insert a baby ram into it? Would it be off base to
take that little boy from One Tree Hill, smear the
hot-blooded paste of his just dynamited mother all
over his face, shove a lit cigar into his mouth and
have him go "Waakaa Waaka Waaka!" as tongs pinch his
sides so amazingly hard that his screams make
everything within ten miles immortal? Would it be
rude to build a machine that traps Johnny Depp in a
full-nelson and makes him cry for eleven months,
keeping him alive on robotic spoonfulls of black
olives and splashing his face with rave sparkles?

Why do all of these "stars" get to enjoy success while
you struggle to get a part? Last night while I was
dreaming of our making movies together, my good dream
shifted into a nightmare about David Lee Roth at the
height of his powers. I will now tell you this
nightmare as an illustration of the kind of life I would
like to see you have, the kind of life you could have
if we make a movie. So as you read this nightmare,
just switch out Roth's name and insert yours, and
switch out his songs and replace them with the songs
you have written on your synthesizer. Take this
nightmare, Mr. Haim, make it your dream, and then call
me, and let's make your dream come true.

My Nightmare in Which David Lee Roth Lives the Life That You Should Be Living, Mr. Haim

In my nightmare, David Lee Roth is feeding on the
stickiness of women, then Swan-dives into his Olympic
sized pool filled entirely with saliva gathered from
new born horses trembling to stand in meadows, and
then he lays on a massage table where Miss America
rubs his neck and shoulders with oil extracted from a
species of flower that only grows at the bottom of the
Baltic Sea in ancient shipwrecks' pirate shit, and
then Roth rises, is handed a pair of nunchucks, walks
onto his yard and kills a servant whose head is
immediately shorn off to be transformed with flames,
honeys and spices into a delicious lunch, and then
Roth mounts a large, motorized diamond and drives
toward his garden, which is where he goes to write
songs, and then sitting there with his legs spread
open he orders his executive gardener to bring out
Danielle the five foot fellatio-giving butterfly
(grown by Roth's personal scientist) to service him,
its blue, tear-drop patterned wings extended,
collecting solar energy, as it performs, and then Roth
writes "Panama," folds the page of lyrics into the shape
of Tinkerbell and, yawning, sends it gliding toward
Eddie Van Halen's house with a blast from his blow
dryer, and then Roth leans back into the arms of a
panda bear
---Goodnight whispers the women
---Goodnight whispers Miss America
---Goodnight whispers the half-digested servant meat
---Goodnight whispers the executive gardener
---Goodnight whispers Danielle the butterfly
---Goodnight whispers the Panda bear
and then David Lee Roth closes his eyes and goes to
sleep.

Part 1
Part 3

**SUBSCRIBE TO THE2NDHAND if you like reading our our respective broadsheet and online series -- any donation above $30 gets you a LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION to THE2NDHAND's quarterly broadsheet. See this page or send a payment through PayPal here:


OUR FRIENDS AT The Left Hand make great soap, salves, balms and other natural hygiene-type stuff, in addition to publishing a zine and running a book swap, a performance series and more from their Tuscaloosa, AL, homebase. When they offered to make something for us, we jumped. We introduce THE2NDHAND soap, an olive oil soap with a quadruple dose of Bergamot, "for the readers we've sullied..." Price is $6, ppd.

**BOOKS BY THE2NDHAND CONTRIBUTORS at Amazon

Google




020208