THE HARD WAY

By Jon Millikin

Fiction between 300 and 1,000 words
Guidelines and Submission Form

When you cops find this note I’ll be long, long gone. I didn’t mean to do this, you see, and don’t feel I should spend my life in jail for it.

You see what happened was she was mocking my grammer. That and my spelling. It started with the motherfucking semi-colin. I know what the fuck it is, alright? It’s both a period and a comma and can do either job. Like a spork. I don’t know why they invented it, but thats cool with me and I find it very handy. But she told me I was misusing it. Some shit about “independent closets”. The bitch was fucking with me;

She told me she thinks I should pursue something else. That I’m not ‘destined’ to be a writer. Well I spent a fucking year on my first novel, “The Hard Way” and didn’t stop until it was complete; so what’s that make me? “The Hard Way” is about a guy like me that’s about my size and looks like me and will fuck your world up at the drop of a hat. And like I told her; you don’t crank out 330 thousand words in one year if your not a real writer.

So; I had her read it and in the next room I can hear her laughing after, like, only one or two minutes, and there is no funny shit in the first chapter. ‘The Hard Way’ dosen’t get really funny till chapter 72 when Glock catches the guy who has been kidnapping all the lemurs from the zoo where he works and he’s got them all in his apartment. See, because he’s got a hookup in the black market and he’s selling them. But the lemur guy is just a background charactor. Glock is the star. He’s a private detective-slash-hitman who was also trained by the CIA before he dropped out and went his own way. In The Hard Way he has to fight all kinds of dudes, including prominint members of Al-Quida who want him dead and will stop at nothing. But I will stop before I ruin it for you.

So finally I was tearing out my motherfucking hair and I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I went in there and asked her what was so goddamned funny. And she was just holding her face in both her hands and laughing so hard that she couldn’t sit up and I looked and she was still on PAGE ONE!!!! Well, she started telling me all this grammer and spelling shit, and laughing in my face about it at the same time, and I don’t know what happened to tell you the truth. The next I remember I was back in my office, next to my old typowriter, trying to clean the spots of blood off my manuscript.

So now I am going on the lamb, but I will be submitting The Hard Way to publishers from parts unknown because I’m not going to let her and her uppity fucking aditude take away my dreams. You wont catch me so don’t even try. I have not only invented Glock; but have learned a great deal from him. Look for “the Hard Way” out in hardCOVER by this time next year. Adios motherfuckers;

JON MILLIKIN is a stand-up comedian by night and a waiter … also by night. In the day he sleeps.

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From Kenzie and Gennaro to The Louisiana Vampire/Werewolf Ass-Fest

SIX SHOTS UNLOADED By John Jasper Owens

Bullets and Boobs, Guns and Gams, Sin and Skin. Alliteration and Additional Alliteration. Assonance? Ass, anyway. Always ass. I can’t define Gutter material, but as Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography in 1964, “I know it when I see it. And it would be better with a car chase.”

• Moonlight Mile by Dennis LeHane 
  This turned out to be a sequel to the awesomeness that was Gone Baby Gone. Who knew? It was okay. Unless you’re a fan of Kenzie and Gennaro (I am not, although I love me some Bubba) or a Lehane completist (which I definitely am) you can skip it. Although there are some broad hints this will be the last K-G novel, you never know. Jack Reacher got blown up in a cavern full of jet fuel at the end of 61 Hours and has already managed to put that a full novel behind him. Speaking of…

• Second Son and The Affair by Lee Child 
  Both of these are Reacher Prequels (see what I did there?) and by definition feature a younger Jack Reacher ─ way back to age thirteen in Second Son. These are good choices if you want to put some Lee Child in the hands of someone woefully uninformed, but don’t want to back them all the way back to The Killing Floor. I don’t know if Second Son is available in hard copy; I got mine on Kindle. Speaking of…

• Not Comin’ Home to You by Lawrence Block 
  This is new to me on Kindle (2010, but just barely). A mass market paperback in 1997 according to Amazon (I was working at Barnes & Noble, already a Blockhead, and don’t remember it at all, if that tells you anything about its distribution), and based on a treatment Lawrence Block wrote around 1970, if you believe the extensive endnotes on the Kindle edition. And why do that? ─ the man tells lies for both fun and profit. Get it, read it, love it, Starkweather, fictionalized, fascinating, and we all knew a girl like that in high school. My favorite Block since Everybody Dies, outside the Bernie books, which exist in their own separate place.

• Raylan!  
   Excuse me, Raylan. Tim Olyphant forever as a character I had envisioned more James Brolin. But it works! The book (2012) and the almighty series. What’s cool (as if you needed more cool) about reading Raylan is the different take on the characters as envisioned by the master, and the characters as sustained by mere mortal actors and screenwriters. Raylan is three short stories repackaged as a novel, just so you know. Don’t get too hepped. But… Boyd is there… (I see I haven’t mentioned the author yet. If you don’t know, you are in the wrong place.)

• The Guard (2011 movie) 
  Caught it on Netflix, 'cause I missed it when it came out. It’s probably the Gutterest thing on this list, what with the hookers and the body count and the profanity, don’t you know. Stars Brendan Gleeson (Mad-Eye Moody!) and Don Cheadle, looking all cragged and bad-ass. Loved it. Maybe the ending isn’t fully set up, and the cop murder goes from being random to being a plot point, but who cares? And don’t be fooled by the marketing, which targets this as a comedy. It’s funny, but in a Guy Ritchie sort of way. It’s a crime story first.

• True Blood (TV series) 
  HBO, always good for some Gutter, brings back True Blood, otherwise known as "The Louisiana Vampire/Werewolf Ass-Fest," on June 10th for a twelve episode run. Lots of beheadings and precious fairy vagina, I’m sure. After that, Boardwalk Empire swaggers in. Season three skips ahead a year, but that’s still well before the real life Enoch Johnson got carted off to prison, so plenty of wiggle room for Buscemi to wiggle it in. And what’s good Gutter without plenty of wiggling it in?

John Jasper Owens lives in the South, where he offers fiction, humor and opinion at low, low prices.

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FICTION SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN!

By Matt Louis

Out of the Gutter Online is live, fully staffed, and taking fiction submissions in both the flash fiction and short fiction categories.

The gang at The Flash Fiction Offensive has been packing boxes all week, preparing to move their operation into the larger communal structure of the online incarnation of Out of the Gutter, and their U-Haul just pulled up to the curb. I can now see, through the smudged, cracked glass, David Barber getting out, looking badly hungover, unshaven, eye blackened...

Added to this we have set up an office in one of the larger storage rooms and moved in Court Merrigan to oversee the newly-minted short fiction department. By "short fiction" we mean, to be as specific as possible, fiction between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Since the material will appear on glowing, electrified screens, longer stories, however ingeniously written, can get to hurting people's eyes after ten or fifteen minutes, so for the good of all the writers who want their work read to the shocking conclusions, and all the readers who don't like to blink convulsively and fight dizzy spells while they enjoy rape and murder tales, we are keeping the longer stories relatively short.

There will, however, be a monthly feature entitled "The Big Story," edited by the guy behind the big desk, the cigar-chewing, grumbling, foul-mouthed, ink-stained, pot-bellied, disheveled, cynical, snarling chief editor, Matt Louis. The feature will launch shortly, and will have an astonishing 8,000-word limit. The goal is to have the story be so compelling that readers will not look away regardless of increasing discomfort and will be able, in the future, to cite reading it as the origin of their ongoing migraines and vision problems.

And, in case you think we've knuckled under completely to twenty-first century technology, all of the material posted on this site will be reviewed as it is published and the most exciting fiction and nonfiction will be collected in a regular print (and ebook) release that, just to throw everyone a curve-ball, we will entitle Out of the Gutter.

That's it. Your official introduction to Out of the Gutter Online is complete. Stop dicking around on the Internet and get your best work to us as soon as possible.

Submissions will now be processed by our associates at Submittable.

Flash fiction goes here.

Short fiction goes here.

"The Big Story" guidelines will be posted soon.

If you would like to contribute a work of nonfiction, or have an idea for a regular feature, get in touch here.

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Customers

Things seen while working at a bookstore....

CHEESIN' By Andrew Hilbert

Working at a bookstore, I see a whole slew of human beings and overgrown festering wounds. You know how at Wal-Mart, you're greeted by a clinging-to-life 90 year old when you walk in? At my bookstore you're greeted by a clinging-to-life 20 something getting paid minimum wage who is overqualified to count the number of people going through the entrance each hour.

Some people get off on knowing this fact.

Shit Happens

Truth #1: If you're shopping for pleasure in a bookstore, you make more money than anyone who works there.

One day I was the greeter. Some blob of a man waddles in. I wondered how his mustache stayed on his face.

"Where's 50 Shades of Grey!?" he yells at me. 50 Shades of Grey is that badly written porno for middle aged women who are disappointed in their marriages.

This is what happens when you spend your days searching
for "disappointed middle aged women" on the internet.
Disappointment. 

I told him but before I could finish, his cell phone rang and he started yelling at his wife, or girlfriend, or, more likely, his mother. He moved his hips when he walked away.

The only reason this man moves his hips when he walks is because his rear denim seams are too far up his ass. I'm trying to say this man was fat. He was also an asshole. This is not figurative language. He was literally fat and his rear denim seam was literally really far up his ass (also figuratively). His belt was above his navel. What is it with this sense of fashion? I doubt his wife sends him out in the wild like that. Dressing like that ensures never getting a wife to dress you respectably. It's a vicious cycle that ends only at KFC.

My conclusion is that he was yelling at his mom.

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Fiction excerpt: "Killing Time in Vegas" by Tony Black

Award-winning Scottish crime novelist Tony Black gets into the head of an American homosexual bodybuilder in this Gutter classic.

First published in Out of the Gutter 3

Man I was itchin’. The temp topped out at ninety-plus, but the humidity was the killer. Collar and tie weather it ain’t. Shit, you carry about a fifty-five inch chest in this—I was bench-pressing four-eighty and upping the reps daily—comfortable you ain’t.

My suit was linen. Navy blue, bought from Hugo Boss back in New York but not by me. This was a thrift store job. Time I can buy Hugo Boss off the rack I ain’t coming to Vegas for work.

“Can I help you, sir?” asked the blonde with diddy eyes and the whitest top row of teeth I’d ever seen. Bottom row lagging behind, musta been waiting for the top’s payment plan to finish.

“Francis Jarman,” I told her, “I’m here for the instructor’s job.”

“Excuse me?” She looked vacant. Like the chick on the Minute Maid ads, minus the smile.

“The, eh, fitness instructor . . . for the gym.”

She still didn’t get it, pointed me to sit with a long red fingernail. When she picked up the phone, I heard her get my name wrong, called me “Farnham.” I shook my head but I only got a look, one that said, “Please, like I give a shit.”

I sat back down and saw her cross her legs away from me, tug her skirt over her knees. Always makes me smile when chicks do this around me. They see the muscles bulging out all over and think I’m a real player. But I ain’t . . . chicks don’t float my boat.

“Stay seated, Mr. Farnham,” she said slamming down the phone. “There’ll be someone to see you presently.”

“Presently!” I said too soon, then realized I’d put the heavy-hitting intonation in there. I'd been blurting a lot lately.

She dipped her head, looked at me over long lashes, “That’s right away,” she spat.
I smiled one of my widest. Jonny calls it my stage school smirk. “Thank you so much, ma’am.”

I could hardly wait to meet my interviewer; just a joy to be dragging my ass across the country for this kinda shit.

***

Five’ll get you ten this guy’s a homophobe, I thought. Had queer-hater written all over him as he came in: Brookes Brothers’ shirt open at the collar, Gap Khakis and sweet loafers . . . Timberland or Sebago, something like that . . . way outta my price range.

He blanked me big time as he popped a Pocket-PC on the desk. A good ten minutes of office chat passed between Mr. Big Shot and Blondie as he tried to tell her to fish out something from the mail he wanted “upstairs on my desk by five.” She smiled and giggled. That ain’t all he was getting upstairs on his desk later, I thought.

I felt ready to bail when he finally turned to me, dropped eyes on a clipboard and said, “Mr . . . Jarman?”

“That’s right,” I stood up, tried to keep my size outta the picture, but I dwarfed him into shadows. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Would you walk this way, please?”

I thought if I could walk that way I’d be buying size 32 khakis off the rack too, as my thighs chafed together on every step.

“Take a seat,” he told me. I still didn't know the motherfucker’s name. Dang! Bad manners, that’s always been a piss-boiler of mine. I don’t allow myself prejudices, but bad-mannered people I just hate right out. I needed the job, though, so I battened it down fast.

“That’s some heat you got today!” I said, going for the small talk angle.
“This is Vegas,” he said, shooting a look that told me he wanted to end the sentence with “fuckhead.”

He handed me a form to fill out. On gray paper, real thick too. I fired through and when I tossed it back, it looked like I’d been mopping up shit by the sweat marks all over it.

“Sorry, I’m real hot,” I said, spluttering, “I mean, the heat, y’know, it’s hard being in the heat when you’re used to New York.”

I screwed up. I knew it. Could see the signs, but I’d have been way off the mark if I had to pick his next question. I just didn’t see it coming in a month of Sundays.

“Mr. Jarman . . .” he paused, leaned over the desk and locked his fingers together in a tent. “Are you a . . . homosexual?”

Read the rest in THE BADDEST OF THE BAD or OUT OF THE GUTTER 3, available here.

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TWEAKER

Featured short fiction for the week of May 1, 2012

By M. C. O'Connor. First Published in Out of the Gutter 2

Fiction between 1,000 and 3,000 words
Guidelines and Submission Form

When you’re fourteen and your knees are callused from sucking juice for a dose of crystal, you’re a write-off. Unless you have a big brother. Which is me—Tyler Silva. Cassie—which is her—fell off the map almost five years ago. The Youth Authority wound up with her a few months back and now she’s been cut loose. I picked her up in Camarillo and we made the long drive home.

Her butt was so skinny it didn’t make a dent in my truck seat. Her blond hair was as limp as a gelding’s dick, and the gray skin and sunken cheeks made her look like she’d been embalmed. If Tinkerbell had had chemotherapy, she’d be Cassie.

We got along fine. She was “in recovery” and she stayed clean. Stayed home, mostly. After a few months of my beer and cheeseburgers diet she started to look good. Her skin got a gloss to it and the meat showed up on her bones. You wouldn’t know we were brother and sister. Cassie has the Nordic genes, taking after our Mom. I got the dark side. I think Dad ran off when his Azorean blood lost out to blue eyes and ivory skin. But he was also one-quarter Indian, and we took advantage of that for Cassie’s sake. She started working at the new casino the day it opened. Rory, my ex-brother-in-law, owns the company that built it. I’ve run herd on Rory’s illegals since he started his contracting business. It was good money for a long stretch, so I took time off to look out for my little sister.

Meth flows like a river through this county. Most of the ex-crackheads don’t have a chance. They just step right back in the stream and it sweeps them away. Cassie kept out of it. We’d go bowling one night a week. Fishing one day. We’d drive up to the mall in Medford once a month. I fixed the place up when she was working. It was just a mobile at the prestigious Pine Villa Estates, but it was our home. I think I tore out every damn appliance—stove, fridge, water heater, dishwasher—and put in bigger and better ones. I even got a new TV and satellite. Cassie loved movies and we watched a lot of them.

My sister is a looker when she’s healthy. It wasn’t long before she started getting a lot of attention. It made her feel good, but it scared the hell out of me. I figured all I could do was keep an eye on the creeps, and hope she found someone okay. I kept thinking she was an innocent kid, which is crazy, but I couldn’t see past that. One night I found out what she had her sights on.

I picked her up after work and she was on her tiptoes kissing a silver-haired cowboy in a tan suit and bolo tie.

“Who was that?” I asked as she climbed in the truck.

“Who?”

“The old man.” I pointed. He was climbing into a powder blue Lincoln.

“Oh, him. That’s C.J.”

“C.J.?”

“That’s what they call him.” She smiled. “Well, everyone else calls him ‘Mr. Martenson’ but he lets me call him C.J.” She smiled again. “He likes me.”

“I like you too, Cassie. But I hate playing games.”

“Don’t worry, Tyler. I know what I’m doing. He’s the owner.”

I almost swerved off the highway. “Of the casino?” I looked at my sister with new admiration.

“I don’t know,” she said, “it’s complicated. His corporation owns a bunch of casinos. Or at least it owns the companies that run the casinos. I’m not sure how it works. He’s not an Indian, but they all treat him like he’s the big chief.”

“Cassie?”

“Mm-hmm?” She kept her eyes on the road.

“Are you gold-digging?”

I saw a little grin form at the edges of her mouth. She didn’t say anything.

“You be careful, little sister. And you come to me for help, you hear?”

My tires crunched in the gravel as I pulled up in front of the single-wide. Cassie looked at me with glowing eyes.

“I’m going to the top, Tyler. All the way.”

***

I usually drink nothing stronger than beer. Tonight, though, I let Harry pour me a couple of Jacks. The Shamrock was a relaxed place with a couple of pool tables no one was interested in using. This was a bar that had enough regular customers to keep the lights on, but not enough to keep casuals away. It was only half full, not so loud I couldn’t hear the guy two stools down.

“Tweaker. Fucking little tweaker cunt. I can’t believe the
old man is going through with it.”

He was tall and well-dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt and black tie. He had a nice hairdo, one you have to pay for. He was as blond as Cassie but his eyes were darker and had heavy lids. His mouth was a crooked gash his words spilled from. When he breathed he seemed to snatch bites out of the air.

“She’s with him all the fucking time!” The suit complained to his companion. “I can’t get near her!” He shook his head. “I’m going to give her one chance to get her fucking claws out of my old man’s money or I am going to find a way to fuck with that girl so she’ll never use that fucking tweaker cunt of hers again!”

That did it.

I walked over to blondie, now that I knew he was C.J.’s kid, and grabbed him by the tie. I got his attention.

“Listen, Junior, my sister loses one hair on her head I’ll reach down your throat and pull your fucking guts out.”

He began turning a deep red. I had him a little off-balance, pushing him against the bar, and my fist against his throat made it hard for him to speak. He decided to swing his arms up and box my ears with his palms.

It hurt.

I bent my knees and thrust my arm up. I lifted him off his feet, swung him around and tossed him at the pool table behind us. The lip of the table hit him just below the butt and he fell back on to the felt. I was on him in a heartbeat. I grabbed his throat with my right and pushed his head down. He tried to lift his leg to kick me but only managed to get his knee stuck in my armpit. He tried to pull my hand off his throat with one hand while he flailed at my face with the other, his right.

I’m thick around the chest. And strong. He got a look of real fear in his face when he started to lose air. I carry a ka-bar in a belt scabbard stuck into my right boot. If I’d meant to kill him, I’d have grabbed his throat with my left and knifed him with my right. As it was, I had to slam his head a couple of times to slow down his wriggling. I managed a clumsy reach across with my free hand to my uplifted right leg and pulled out the combat blade. I plunged it at his face a few times, he stuck up his right to parry, and grabbed my wrist. I pushed hard on a downward stroke, and moved the knife closer. He knew now I could overpower him. We grunted and rocked a few seconds more and then I let him go.

He rolled over on his side, still on the table. He gasped and coughed with rage and humiliation. I turned and switched the knife to my right and pointed it at his companion. That one had the good sense to wave his hands in surrender.

“Tell your buddy here to watch his back. I just might be behind him.”

Junior was sitting up, regaining his breath. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with,” he rasped. His buddy came over to help him up but he pulled away, throwing himself off the pool table. He stood and straightened his rumpled suit. His face was twisted into a scowl. He spat a curse and a warning at me and staggered out the door, his friend in tow. They drove off in a black Hummer.

Harry was not a happy man. I figured I’d spent my last dollar at The Shamrock. The place was silent, staring at me. I put my knife away and left quickly.

Cassie was watching TV when I got back.

“So when were you going to tell me?”

She thought about saying something cute but saw the look in my eyes.

“This weekend. It—it’s not official. There’re lawyers to sit down with. Craig, that’s his son, he hates me. He’s trying to stop it.”

“I just met Craig. Stuck my ka-bar in his face.”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t hurt him.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s just, well, Craig is a psycho. Even C. J. is scared of him.”

I started to tell Cassie what Craig had said about her, but stopped. Things were escalating now, I needed to keep cool.

Like her.

“So how does it work?”

“The lawyers have a pre-nup all worked out. That would be okay, I mean, he still has a lot of money even without the corporation. A lot of money. And it would be mine, I mean, as his wife.”

How many girls figured they would marry a rich man? Most have thought about it, I’ll bet. And now here was my flesh-and-blood kid sister actually pulling it off. Damn, he was old enough to be our grandpa.

Cassie looked at me evenly. There was the vastness of space in her eyes. “I think I’ve talked him out of that, though. The pre-nup. He wants a partner to run the corporation with him. He’s old but his mind is still sharp, and he knows he’s going to have to turn it all over to someone pretty soon. And it won’t be Craig. It’ll be me.”

“He’s in love with you.”

Cassie blushed. She actually turned pink like a schoolgirl. I was going to have to get used to surprises from her.

“I thought it was just, y’know, the young girlfriend thing. But he can buy girls any time he wants. He likes me. Really likes me. Laughs at my jokes. Treats me like a queen.” Cassie held her mouth open, speechless for a few seconds. “He had no idea what it was like to actually work in one of his places. He listened to me. He thinks I’m some kind of natural business genius.”

“You are.”

***

Cassie Silva was Mrs. C.J. Martenson by the end of the summer. Private ceremony, private getaway. I didn’t see her after that. I went back to work for Rory for a few months doing spec houses before the snows in January shut us down. I was just getting a bad case of lonely winter blues when something turned up in the mail.

It was a stiff cardboard envelope with a PO Box in Hawaii on the return. In it was a letter. And a cashier’s check for ten thousand bucks

Dear Ty,

This is the most I can send you as a gift without tax consequences. It is clean, 100%. C.J. is in to some amazing things and I’ve learned so much. I can’t believe my luck. Things are working out better than I imagined. Come work for us. Leave the old home behind.

Love, Cass

***

I drove to Sacramento that night and flew to Honolulu the next day. I figured I would relax and get in some beach time before seeing Cassie. I was avoiding the contact. Not that I didn’t want to see her. It was a deep unease that I avoided until the second day and the tenth beer. She’d said “us.” As in her and the old guy. It was just too weird. I was never going to see him as my brother-in-law, or some surrogate father-type, or even Cassie’s lover. I was going to see a pipeline, a delivery tube for whatever it was made her happy, no different than the pipes she’d smoked and syringes she’d emptied. What would happen when this high wore off? I was too drunk to know if I was just jealous. I told myself I didn’t want what she had, didn’t like the trade she’d made, but the bottom line was I had nothing. Nothing to leave behind and nothing to go back to.

I took a taxi to the Martenson place the next day. I paid no attention to the scenery, even though I’d hardly been out of California in my life. I felt like a sack of old shoes. Not worthy of the garbage, but not worth wearing either. The kid driving the cab kept thanking me for the twenty dollar tip. I just handed him some bills as I got out. I could see Cassie coming down the long walk. I wrapped her up and held her very tight.

We got down to business that evening. The whole place was open terraces facing the ocean. We sat under the fronds of mature palms in a patio of slate flagstones on chairs made of tropical hardwood. The old man seemed to nod in and out and the Filipino staff ran around keeping him going. Cassie was completely at ease, inhabiting a body and mind of some other, better being. I was drunk, drunk on the good booze, the lofty cliffside, the exotic locale, drunk in the presence of a true woman of power. I wasn’t so drunk I was stupid, just awestruck. My life was never going to be the same.

“So we’ve agreed.” She smiled. One thousand watts.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure, Ty?”

“Oh, yeah. You bet. No problem.”

***

I found out later that killing him was a problem. I couldn’t do it. Thank god he was in Vegas. Anyplace else, I don’t know. Something about Vegas, you just feel like anything goes. And they say what happens there stays there.

I had to score some crystal. Yeah, before I could take him down I had to be screaming inside, my muscles twitching like I was in an electric chair, my heart beating twice as fast as it should have been. Two or three big hits and I felt like Superman, ready to jump out of the fucking window and make mayhem on the masses. A weekend of that and I was tweaking good, real good. I could have killed Craig with my bare hands. But I didn’t, I used the 9mm Cassie had so thoughtfully provided—which I then dismantled and dumped like a good boy.

I went home to Pine Villa a hundred thousand bucks richer. I was glad I kept the old dump; I could hide out and detox before the next job came along. No, it wasn’t going to end with Craig. I knew that. I’d have to be sure I’d lined up the ice beforehand. It just wouldn’t do to ask Cassie for it.

M. C. O’Connor lives in Siskiyou County, California where he writes about books, baseball, whiskey and things noir.

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LA County Museum of Art Buys Rock for $10 Million

For the in-crowd in LA, squandering fortunes is an art.

GUTTERSNIPE LOS ANGELES By Tony Bulmer

Old bag gets a good blow (Clint Eastwood's daughter,
Francesca, burning a  $100,000 handbag for art.)

Marcel Duchamp said, “All art must shock and provoke thought,” which is pretty smart for a guy who in 1917 brought the world of Fine Art a new masterpiece in the shape of a urinal that he signed R.Mutt. Many thought he was taking the piss, which of course, he was.

Fast forward to Los Angeles, 2012, and conceptual art nuisance Michael Heizer has managed to sell the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a 340-ton boulder for an astonishing $10million.

Calling it Levitated Mass, Heizner admitted to Guttersnipe that he has been working on the project for a staggering four decades. The name of the installation derives from the way this modern day Leonardo da Vinci has dug a trench under the giant rock, so it appears to be “floating.” Quite how much of the $10 million he spent on wacky 'backy while thinking up this ingenius idea is open to conjecture.

Rocky Horror show with artist Michael Heizer

Guttersnipe remembers the good old days when art criminals would break into museums and steal stuff rather than charging the art establishment cash money to dump giant rocks in the back yard. For the record, Guttersnipe's connections in the Latino gardening community said they could have done this job for an altogether more reasonable $300.

Heizner and his stoner chums used a 206 wheel 300-foot-long truck to deposit the giant rock on LACMA’s forecourt, bragging that the 150-million-year-old boulder is good for another 3,500 years, at least. Oh good. Longevity is so important.

Eastwood and Shields

Talking of Art, Hollywood poppet and reality show “star” Francesca Eastwood, daughter of long suffering Clint "make my day" Eastwood, has joined the conceptual art bandwagon. Saucy Francesca, nineteen, who has been described somewhat unkindly by certain commentators as, "having a face like a bag of spanners," teamed up with her chinless boyfriend, Tyler Shields, to set fire to a red crocodile Hermès Birkin handbag, which allegedly cost $100,000.

The stylish young “artists” then proceeded to film and photograph this edifying spectacle, so that others might share in this great artistic moment. Apparently death threats have been received [yawn].

Guttersnipe has therefore proposed to the LACMA a new art project, where we roll their giant rock Indiana Jones-style down a hill of their choosing after Eastwood and Shields and see who can run the fastest. Now that is real art, and fun too.

Tony Bulmer is Editor of Crimezine. His latest book SEX NET is available now.

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