Zombos Says: WTF?
I grabbed Glenor Glenda's elbow as her foot slipped on
the ice water puddling across the Mongolian teak wood floor of Zombos' study.
She composed herself, slid the steaming hot mug of Satan's Balls back to the center of her serving
tray, and properly presented Chef Machiavelli's frothy and zesty spiced
rum-cocoa concoction—splashed with peach-ginger--to our shivering and quite
unexpected guest. Our housekeeper waited expectantly as he took a sip and
neatified her uniform with much suspicious intent.
"May I get you a blanket...Mister...? Glenor
asked.
"Lucifer. Oh, hell, let's not stand on formality,
just call me Luc, okay? You're a darling, but I doubt a blanket would
help."
Lucifer's long red tail waved excitedly as he sipped
his drink.
"By Tartarus! This drink is wicked bad! And you
say your Chef doesn't use any black arts? Amazing! My three-eyed cook couldn't
find her way round a souffle, even with her two heads. Damn creature burns
everything. Ah, this sinful beverage is heating up my rump. In spite of all the
fur in my nether region I was going numb down there, you know."
He winked at our usually flirtatious housekeeper.
Glenor giggled.
I cleared my throat. She stopped giggling.
"Oh, jealous are we? You needn't be." He
winked at me and flicked his tongue in a devilish manner. Glenor clapped her
hand to her mouth stifling another giggle. My withering glance at her helped
keep it at bay.
I was desperate. "Zombos! Any luck?"
Zombos was standing behind his Carlton House desk, holding the phone in one hand and a thick legal document in the other. Every now and then a few more sheets of paper slipped from the document and fluttered to the floor. He shrugged. "Sosumi is looking into it. He does not know how this could have happened."
Sosumi 'Jimmy' Jango was Zombos' crackerjack estate lawyer.
Lucifer finished his drink and smacked his lips. I
motioned to Glenor to bring another one for our frisky guest. It looked like
evening vespers would be well over by the time Zombos found the document we
needed.
"What is that Jimmy?" said Zombos into the
phone. "It is in Attachment 66? Okay. Okay, I will look for it."
Zombos hung up the phone. "He is almost here. He said to look for—"
"Attachment 66, yes, I heard," I said.
"Ouch! Oh, you devil!" gasped Glenor with
delight.
I looked at Glenor.
"He pinched me," she said giggling as she
hastily left the room.
I looked at Lucifer; he shrugged, smiled, and winked
again. I looked back at Zombos imploringly. "Let's find that attachment
pronto, shall we? Did you check the Wooten? You tend to bury things in there
pretty well."
"Of course!" Zombos turned around and
quickly opened the doors of his Wooten desk. The two places Zombos relies on to
hide, store, or forget things are his closet and his cherished Wooten desk.
Since the Wooten desk is smaller than his closet, I figured it would be easier
to search first.
"Well, I'll be," said Zombos.
"You found Attachment 66?" I asked.
"What? Oh that, no. I found my set of Brasher
Doubloons. I was wondering what happened to them.”
"Great, I'll let Philip Marlowe know. What about
the legal document?" My spirits were sinking fast.
"No, I do not see--wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"I found it!" Zombos said triumphantly.
"Thank god," I sighed. Lucifer cleared his
throat. "Sorry," I said, shooting a glance his way.
When I looked back to Zombos he was doing the walk the
dog move with his gold-trimmed Duncan YoYo. That’s what he had found. I sighed
again. There but
for the grace of God I
thought. Lucifer cleared his throat more loudly and gave me a smoldering stare.
"We really need that legal document...now!"
"Oh, yes, yes. Let me see." He put the YoYo
back and opened another draw. "Here it is." He held up Attachment 66.
"Let me see, now. Jimmy said to check the waiver at the bottom of page 13.
Hmm...hmm...not good. Here, you better read it."
I walked over to Zombos and he handed the document to
me. I mentally translated the waiver's legalese as I read it. Hidden in all the
mumbo-jumbo was the stipulation that if the New York Times ever printed
a movie review that was favorable toward a movie that I, acting as Zombos'
agent, reviewed negatively, hell would most certainly freeze over. I glanced
over at Lucifer sitting uncomfortably on the large block of ice. So that’s why
both of them suddenly popped up around midnight.
"But this is impossible," I said. The New York Times has
never given a favorable review to any horror movie I disliked. It's always the
opposite. They never give favorable reviews to horror movies I like,
either."
Glenor Glenda ushered an excited Sosumi Jango into the
room. He furiously waved a copy of the New York Times.
"I found it!" he declared. "It's
Jeannette Catsoulis's review of Tokyo Gore Police." He
unfolded the paper and read the review out loud. “Propelled by geysers of blood
and tidal waves of neuroses, Tokyo Gore
Police plumbs wounds both cultural and physical to deliver splatterific
social satire."
I was dumbfounded. Had she seen the same movie I had?
"Ouch! He pinched me," said Jimmy, pointing
at Lucifer.
"What?" shrugged Lucifer. "I can't help
it. I like lawyers."
"It just doesn't make any sense. This movie is
simply not worth all this bother," I was bewildered.
"Let me see your review for the movie,"
suggested Jimmy, rubbing his behind as he stepped to a safer distance. "I
can't give you any reasonable council until I see it."
Lucifer laughed. "I've not had this much nuisance
since Daniel Webster stirred up a dickens' worth of trouble and kicked me out
of New Hampshire. Thank the fallen there are forty-nine more states, I can tell
you that. And the lord knows I love congress. Wouldn’t be any fun without them."
“Hold that thought,” I said and ran up to my attic
office to retrieve my laptop. Still huffing and puffing after running back down,
I showed Jimmy my review. As he read it out loud, Lucifer was enjoying another
mug of warm comfort while Glenor made sure to stay within pinching distance.
The woman is incorrigible.
Here’s what Jimmy read:
“Within the first half-hour of watching Tokyo Gore Police I realized it was
going to be a transgressive tour through the cineburbia of outrageous gore and
absurd social commentary, far away from movie Main Street. Surprisingly, it
works for about the first half-hour, but begins to take questionable—albeit
scenic—detours through RoboCop-styled
commercials lampooning Japanese consumerism, Japunk-technorumble filled with
bed wetting-inducing Rob Bottin-styled monstrosities comprised of squishy-gooey
latex body parts glistening with stringy mucus highlights; and hacked limbs
spouting endless geysers of blood saturating everything, including the camera
lens. A chewed limp penis, one monstrous erect penis, chip and dip ankle
drilling, a golden showering chair with vagina, and pretty women turned into
grotesque objects of perverse desire, meld non-stop into arthouse incoherence.
This Pachinko parlor's worth of bright colors and frenzy left me wondering
when exactly director Yoshihiro Nishimura let the special effects department
direct his movie.”
Jimmy stopped reading and looked at me. "What's
this mean in English?"
"Just read on," I said. He continued:
“The Scooby-Doo-simple story centers on Ruka (Eihi
Shiina), a grown up, silent, and self-mutilating daughter traumatized after she
sees her police officer father assassinated. She now works for the police as a
special agent. She has issues. Ruka repeatedly slices into her wrists with a
razor before going after a cannibalistic Engineer who is dining on his latest
victim like a heaping serving of human sushi. Engineers are serial-killing criminals who can morph their wounds
into weapons. Using a bazooka, Ruka blasts herself into action as her fellow
officers, questionable members of the privatized Tokyo Police Force, are cut to
pieces by the Engineer's newly acquired chainsaw appendage. These opening
moments are fun to watch because everything is so seriously over the top and
Ruka wields a mean cleavage—with her Samurai sword.
“After Ruka does some ice-sculpting with the
Engineer's own chainsaw—using him instead of ice—the remains are brought back
to the dirty and dreary police morgue. The hunchbacked, one-eyed coroner with a
spring in his step and clothing like one of Hostel's housekeeping staff”—
"I love Hostel," said Lucifer.
"I almost died laughing it was so funny."
—“searches for and finds the key-shaped growth found
in every Engineer, which gives them their ability to mold tissue into lethal
weapons. Someone known as the Key Man is responsible for mutating people into
maniacal killing machines.
“That is as much story as you will get jammed between
the dolled-up, blond-haired police dispatcher with her bubble-gum explanations
and lively commercials extolling stylish self-mutilating box cutters, in
assorted colors, and remote torture family fun for society's deviants.
Prolonged blood-fountain fanboy-favorite gore shocks provide the sticky action
and, apparently, the main appeal this movie has for many reviewers and horror
fans.
“The piece de
resistance is the fetish club an off-duty police officer visits. It defies
conventional or even tasteful description (not that many real fetish clubs
could be described conventionally or tastefully). Women, grotesquely mutilated,
are displayed as sexual objects to satisfy the appetites of the club's
vinyl-clad patrons. The officer loses his head over one woman (guess which
head, I dare you), but winds up with a much bigger one. Under the control
of the Key Man, he returns to the precinct to show it off to his fellow
officers with lethally envious results.”
Jimmy stopped reading. "Does this get any
better?" he asked.
"No, the movie doesn't," I said.
"I meant your review."
"Just keep reading," I said.
“Ruka eventually confronts the Key Man, who tells her
the truth about her father's murder, and reveals those responsible. As she goes
after her father's killers, the Tokyo Police Force goes crazy and begins
attacking citizens.
“Not sure
why. Not sure the director knew why, either.
“One person is drawn and quartered while others are
shot, stabbed, hacked, and (insert your own favorite gore gag or body
disassembly gimmick here).
“With little said and much mayhem done, Tokyo Gore Police will undoubtedly become a favored cult
classic for some and a Pepto-Bizmol moment for others mostly due to its zeal
for incomprehensible distastefulness.”
Jimmy closed the laptop's cover, tapping it again and
again while he weighed his thoughts, then stopped. "I got nothing."
I slumped into the Regency sofa. Zombos practiced his
Double Gerbil move on his Duncan YoYo, and Glenor Glenda busied herself by
doing nothing.
"Wait, I have it!" announced Jimmy after a
few moments reviewing the documents on Zombos’ desk. "It's here on page
777, under Rider to Attachment 66, 'herein to be known as Clause 3, otherwise
referred to as the Two-Thirds Clause.
If both parties agree to unbinding arbitration, dissolution of prior binding
agreements, notwithstanding mutually agreed upon settlements of pre-existing or
ongoing issues, will supersede, preclude, and nullify Attachment 66. Whereby
the second party, hereafter referred to as Lucifer (also known as, but not
solely restricted to, Mephistopheles, Asmodai, Beelzebub, Satan, Belial,
Abbadon, and Mr. Scratch)—' "
"That's my favorite," Lucifer interrupted.
"Has a nice inviting and unassuming ring to it, doesn't it?"
" 'Mr. Scratch,' " continued Jimmy, "
'and the first party, hereafter known as Godfrey Daniel Zombos and his
dutifully bound executor, Iloz Mordecai Zoc, representing his living and or
dead or quantum situated estate, including but not limited to chattel,
codicils, bequests and residues and residuals wherever presumptive and
inclusive, may reach mutually satisfactory resolution by invoking the Two-Thirds Clause.' "
Jimmy read the rest in silence, then said "All
right, then. Now we just need to find out what this clause is." He looked
through the papers in his hands. Not finding it, he turned to the papers
scattered on and around Zombos' desk. Soon he was on his hands and knees
examining each sheet on the floor and under the desk.
"Damn your souls to Hades with all this nonsense,”
rumbled Lucifer. “It's like waiting for a miracle. Enough of this! Time for the
Four Horsemen!"
Lucifer reached into his Loculus.
Glenor Glenda dropped her serving tray and turned
pale. I felt my heart suddenly pound against my chest. Jimmy banged his head
against the desk in his haste to stand, absently crumpling sheets of paper in
his fists as he stared at Lucifer in desperation. Zombos continued to
practice his Buddha's Revenge with his YoYo, oblivious to the impending doom
about to embrace us all.
He almost had it, though.
"Don't do it!" yelled Jimmy. "We can
work this—"
Lucifer pulled out a bright red iPod classic.
"What's that you say?" he asked, pushing the earbuds into his
pointed ears.
"Nevermind," said Jimmy, exhaling. He looked
at his balled fists and loosened their death grip on the crumpled sheets.
"The Four
Horsemen's 666 song is my favorite," said
Lucifer. "I like to crank up the volume on that one. Then again, I like to
crank up the volume on everything."
"Hey, here it is!" Jimmy triumphantly held
up a crumpled sheet of paper in his right hand. He uncrumpled it, reading it as
he did so. " 'The Two-Thirds Clause is described herewith. Should the
party of the first part and the party of the second part mutually agree to
arbitration by a party of the third part, satisfaction of encumbrance will
render null and void all prior commitments, restrictions, and privileges
pursuant to Attachment 66. Third party arbitration may be satisfied by agent or
agency not associated with, bound to, or administered by either party. Third
party agent or agency must show no prior agreement with either party of the
first part or their executing authorities, dependents, and antecedents."
We anxiously waited for the translation.
"It says that if we find someone else who always
disagrees with your reviews Zoc, but who would, for this one time, agree with
your review of Tokyo Gore Police, Attachment 66
would no longer apply. Of course, it would need to be someone not associated
with you, and who has, up until now, always showed the opposite of your
opinions and tastes in horror movies."
"What the devil," I stammered.
"Yes?" asked Lucifer, removing an earbud.
"No, not you.”
Lucifer popped the bud back into his ear.
“This is impossible. Who are we going to get who has
always shown the exact opposite in their cimema taste to mine and whom would
suddenly agree with me? It would take a mira—"
"So what's all this?" asked Paul
Hollstenwall entering the room. "I kept ringing the front doorbell. Chef
Machiavelli finally let me in.”
Paul waved hello to Lucifer. "Dude, that's some
serious Face Off makeup you got going there. Hexcellent! What are you guys
doing? Hey, am I being punked? That would be so awesome." He looked around
the room for a hidden camera.
"Paul, now's not a good time," I said.
"Wait a minute. Now I get it. You and Mr. Z are
Larpers! Man, how cool is that! Looks like you got some weird sh*t going on. I
bet the devil's in the details , right? Anyway, I was passing by on my way to
Jersey to catch Vampire Breakfast Club. I tried to Twitter you but I kept
getting that stupid ass whale. Wanted to tell you to forget my tweet on Tokyo Gore Police. Saw it last night. Lame with a capital LAME.
I was so disappointed it cooled my beans to zero. Now Drag Me to Hell was awesome."
A car horn sounded.
"Gotta go before my date gets pissed at me again.
Later."
Paul flew out of the room. A moment of silence
followed.
Jimmy looked at me. Zombos looked at his fingers
tangled in his Cat's Cradle. I looked at Lucifer. He removed his earbuds and
nodded.
"Agreed! Most certainly, agreed." He stood
up.
Thunder shook the room and the ice block Lucifer was bound
to split with a sharp crack, then shattered, sending glistening shards into
oblivion. His massive hooves clattered on the floor as he stretched to
his full height, dwarfing us in his spreading shadow floating across the
floor.
"The last time I heard a sound so sweetly
soothing was when I teased Moses into breaking those two little tablets of
stone." His voice, now unfettered, rebounded off the walls like the echos
in a sepulcher. His eyes glowed brighter than red hot iron.
"Be seeing you," he said with a nod to me.
His arms and legs erupted into plumes of red smoke as
his torso disappeared behind a shower of white sparks. His face lingered for an
instant, alone in the air with a chesire-cat’s grin lingering behind. With a
wink of an eye and a devilish grin, he vanished in a flash of crimson fire.
Now what did he mean he’ll
be seeing me? I
thought.
On earth, Kirk (Chris Pine) grows up to become a reckless, directionless, bad boy. On Vulcan, a young Spock is taunted by his classmates for being part human. When he loses his temper and pummels his tormentor to a pulp, he begins to question his place in Vulcan society. Spock (Zachary Quinto) eventually joins Starfleet, turning down an invitation to join the Vulcan Science Academy after he is insulted one last time. Kirk is chided by Captain Pike (Chris Pine), after a barroom brawl with Starfleet cadets, to do better. He does, and on the way to Starfleet Academy, Kirk and Bones (Karl Urban uncannily channeling Deforest Kelley's likable doctor) hook up. To complete the introductions for this classic trio, Kirk and Spock lock egos over Kirk's creative and humorous solution for Spock's serious Kobayashi Maru no-win training scenario, with Kirk exclaiming he doesn't believe in no-win situations.
