Like Pike

Christopher Pike Fan Club

2010-02-01T18:36:00.001-04:00

So, I would imagine that Christopher Pike is enjoying the income generated by his newly renewed fame. On da flip side, he's been a hella private guy over the years. In order to accommodate his millions of new fans/old fans who totally forgot about him for a decade or two, there's a fantastic fan club site.

Click & see many excellent Mr. Pike facts, including a bio provided by answers.com, & a Q&A with many great details, such as:

* he's gonna sell out and write more Last Vampire stories! Money, money, money, money! MOOOONNNEYY!

* he likes Dexter (squeeeeee!!)

* he didn't write Seedling, the advertised sequel to The Cold One because he didn't have time. I like to think that I went back in time & changed the future by maybe beating him with a pipe wrench until he agreed to, like, not inflict that shit on paying customers.

* he wishes he could re-write The Grave, which I've been thankfully able to block from my cognitive memory. I had to re-read the post on that one for a refresher. It was delightful. Hence why my grade 8 yearbook blurb as chosen by my peers says that my hobby is laughing at my own jokes.

* there's a LINKS section, which I am dying to get into... maybe if I bought a proper domain? Or would he take a hit out on my ass?

Also, this exists:

For those of you who are like me & are "too busy" to click on videos, there's a teen girl getting ready for bed in the bathroom. Her zany underweared sleepwalking brother comes in with a knife. Other stuff happens for about 30 seconds. She goes to her room & reads the end of Remember Me & says, "Remember Me? Forget you!" and tosses the book aside. An actor playing Christopher Pike comes in and menaces her, then throws her out the window saying, "It's Christopher Pike, bitch!" and she's, like, dead on the pavement. So, that's a pretty bizarre ode to this guy.

So, what are you saying? Gonna join the fan club?

Thirsty for more Pike?

2010-01-30T18:03:00.001-04:00

Apparently Last Vampire is cool again?

Yeah, I started noticing last summer that some of my Goodreads buds had this Thirst compilation on their to-read lists. An investigation seemed necessary. Are Twihards stooping to this old-ass hexalogy to fulfill their need for vampire novels aimed at teens? And if so, why didn't High School Musical renew any interest in Last Act, DAMMIT?!

What's totally annoying is that back in '08 I made a hexalogy of visits to used book stores looking for a copy of Red Dice. If I had known I could simply order it from Amazon in '09, I would have retroactively not went into that one shop that was a maze of book-stacks piled to the ceiling with the creepy shopkeeper who kept crowding me toward a tiny closet filled with canned goods at the back of the store.

So, um, I guess I have to mention the blogging coma? Or can we just forget about it? Maybe I'm here alone now... is anybody listening? Ohoh, no reply at all. Ok, I'm rocking Genesis lyrics from '81. You totally have to love me. Or hate me. Or forsake me. All valid options.

Maybe give me a few weeks to get my shizzle together & get back into it & we'll talk then?

The Tears of Teresa (Tales of Terror #2)

2009-05-25T11:22:00.001-03:00

The Tears of Teresa

from

In Christopher Pike's introduction to this story he says that his greatest fear is becoming paralyzed, and that Christopher Reeve's memoir Still Me was partially the inspiration for The Tears of Teresa.

A man and woman come home from a late movie. Their 18 year old daughter is sleeping, and they sit in the kitchen talking for a little while. Suddenly, a figure rises out of the pile of dirty darks in the adjoining laundry room. The guy comes into the kitchen and forces the couple outside to their car at gunpoint.

Next, we meet Max, a 20 year old reformed high school nerd who recently avoided a life crisis using "gentle persistence and an occasional flash of anger" to convince his pregnant girlfriend, Teresa, to get an abortion.

Since the abortion, Teresa has been traumatized and unable to sleep. She hears a baby boy crying all night long. Max wants to give her money so she won't be so stressed out from college and her job, but he works for his father and good ol' Dad keeps hardcore control of all Max's money.

Max decides that he'll take Teresa on a trip to Las Vegas to help her unwind. He invites along his BFF David and his girlfriend Sandy to be buffers between Max & scary, cry-y, nightmarey Teresa, but Dave declines.

Meanwhile, the woman and man are still being held at gunpoint by the unknown man in their car. The woman drives, while the kidnapper sits in back. She tries the "I have to pee" routine, but does it half-assed. She didn't go for the gold with "I have my period"/"Do you like blood and piss?" I guess that wouldn't work because she's driving her own car and he's, like, sitting in the back, and hence wouldn't really be affected.

Teresa & Max have a great time in Vegas, until Teresa decides she wants to get married. Like, now. Max eventually agrees, and a drunken preacher performs the ceremony. Back in their room, Teresa wants to shower before consummating the marriage. Max stands on the balcony to clear his head in the night air. Suddenly, a hammer attacks his back, and some mystery being gives him the big boot over the balcony railing!!

Back to unknown woman, man, and kidnapper: the guy viciously ties up and beats his captives. He takes out a knife. He has the right to harm them... because of Max.

Max is semi-conscious in the hospital. A crying baby is hanging out next to him. He hears Teresa and his BFF Dave, and, man, are they plotting. 1! No abortion. Teresa's still pregnant. 2! Dave and Teresa planned this fakeass marriage/murder to get at Max's money when Max's dad realizes that Teresa is having Max's baby. 3! Max is awake enough to hear everything, and let them know he heard, but then he dies. 4! The crying baby grows up to take revenge on Dave and Teresa by kidnapping them as they get home from a movie 20 years later. Oh yeeeeah, this thing is going full circle.

So, even though Max dies, he WOULDA been a cripple if he'd lived, and that is the fate that Teresa and Dave have earned for themselves. But I have a question for the 20 year old baby man: Max's dad didn't give them any money, AND Dave raised Max's kid as his own... does that not count for anything? Past Baby/Future Crippler totally doesn't wanna hear it. He knifes both their spinal cords, and leaves Teresa and Dave to rot.

Anyweegie, still working on Last Vampire sextiligy. Sextology? That doesn't sound right... the rest of the Last Vampires. Those books don't read themselves. Uh, I read them. Right. So, those are coming up later in the week, along with some Pike short stories starring the fabulous Marvin Summers! Ok, he's not that fab. He was kind of a dumbass, but whatev.

The Last Vampire

2009-05-17T15:54:00.001-03:00

This time someone is hunting her....

She thought she was the last vampire.

The Last Vampire - Christopher Pike
1994, 193 pages

Vampires
Alisa Perne - older than you, stronger than you, smarter, faster, better than you, and she's seen waaay cooler stuff
Yaksha - born of a demon

Mortals
PI Mike Riley - a detective investigating Alisa
Ray Riley - Mike's son
Seymour Dorsten - school nerd with a secret

Other
Krishna - yeah, that Krishna

Alisa was born in 3000 BCE. She was originally called Sita, but she uses a crapload of aliases in the book, so I'm sticking with Alisa because... that's what I'm gonna do. When Alisa was 7, a disease, pretty much swine flu times a million, infected her village. Her best friend Amba, who was 14 years old and 8 months pregnant, died of the disease - along with lots and lots of other people.

A dark priest shows up with an idea. Everyone is in a panic, so they listen to his shit even though they woulda ran his ass outta town straightaway under normal circumstances. His hypothesis is that a demon brought the disease & they have to get rid of the demon.

They decide to use Amba's body for their ceremony. She wakes up, except she's a hideous demon with a ridiculously long tongue, which she uses to lick the skin off of the priest's face.

After she lays back down dead, her stomach is still moving. The gathered townspeople have different ideas about what to do. Like, it's a baby. But it's probably evil. Except what if it's not, how would you feel then, murderer? Anyways, they take the baby out and it's a boy! Alisa names him Yaksha.

Years pass, and Alisa is now 15. Yaksha is 8, but he's the same size and intelligence as she is. Actually, he's the most beautiful, generous, and smart person in the village - and only 8 years old!

Suddenly, the townspeople who were there when Yaksha was born start to disappear, one by one. There were 5 nobodies, Alisa's dad, and Alisa, who had snuck/sneaked into the ceremony. When Alisa's dad was the last man left, he asked Yaksha to please leave town. He was creeping people out. Soon after, both Pops and Yaksha went missing.

So, time passes. Alisa grows up and meets a guy, Rama. They get married and have a baby, Lalita. It's all good until one night when Yaksha shows up. He pretty much immediately makes it clear that he's not only a violent creep, he's evil too.

He gives Alisa two choices: 1) Join him and become like him, or 2) Watch her family die, and then be killed as well.

So, Yaksha is a jackass and she hates him, but clearly she's gonna have to go with him. He performs a blood-mixing, which gives Alisa a crazy orgasmic reaction, as well as turning her into a vampire. It's like Yaksha is her god now. Sorry, Vishnu, you're like totally forsaken.

You know the catch though. Alisa needs blood to survive. And she doesn't wanna go there. She becomes weak and tortured, until Yaksha brings her a half-dead boy whose veins are already open. It's too easy, and she succumbs.

Another 50 years pass and the vampire colony starts hearing a lot of rumours about a guy, Krishna, who can slay demons and grant bliss. The whole "slay demons" thing puts off most of the vampires, but Yaksha is still young and cocky and he wants to check Krishna out.

The vampires march toward Krishna's 'hood. Nearly there, a brutal bow & arrow attack takes out most of the vampires, but the survivors keep moving. They meet Krishna's #1 babe, Radha, in the woods and take her hostage. Yaksha threatens to kill her unless Krishna will go one-on-one with him. Krishna agrees, but he wants to choose the type of combat.

Krishna challenges Yaksha to a flute duel. Yeah, the woodwind. They have to play for control of a pit of snakes. Like, keep them away from yourself and make them attack your opponent. The deal is that if Krishna wins then Radha lives and Yaksha must take a vow of Krishna's choosing. If Yaksha wins, he gets to keep Radha for whatever purposes he pleases.

So they play. Yaksha is good, but Krishna is magical. He wins. He has private words with Yaksha, and then speaks to Alisa. He promises her his protection and grace if she never makes another vampire. And remember, where there is love, there is grace.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that Yaksha's vow had to do with killing all of the vampires he'd made. Alisa flees, and lives a fun and colourful life throughout many times and places in history. Until the present.

Shit gets stirred up when a private investigator, Mike Riley, calls her to his office. He wants to know what her deal is. She's one of the richest people in the world. She's only, like, 18 years old but she's got deals and investments going back decades. She owns property all over the world. What gives?

Alisa kind of freaks out when Mike won't say who hired him to investigate her and totally kills the guy. You know, she's got the reflexes of the mother of all cats. Which is the goofiest description since Rela said her smile was a bar of white chocolate. Just before Mike took his final breath, he told Alisa that a man named Slim hired him. Seriously though, he was under extreme duress. Not only was his chest crushed and he was about to die, Alisa was threatening a picture of his son.

After setting up a new ID, Alisa poses as a transfer student and goes to all of Riley Jr.'s classes. He may have info she can use, plus that picture of him was pretty cute. She meets him in history class. Hey, did you know that Alisa was in France during the Revolution when Marie Antoinette was guillotined? But Alisa's been shot, hanged, and even crucified on four separate occasions. God, I didn't know she was a one-upper. Marie Antoinette died! I think you can let her win this one.

In gym class, Alisa makes the acquaintance of Seymour Dorsten. That's a lame name, but I could accept it... until I read that he wears that style of glasses that makes it look like you've got humongous freaking elephant eyes. It shoulda been Seymour Dorksten. Hahaha. Alisa suggests changing his name to "Marlboro", or "Slade", or "Bubba". Because these are all cool. (?)

Seymour gives Alisa deja vu. They're connected somehow. She can sense that his blood is sick and that he doesn't have long to live. She guesses it's AIDS.

Next Alisa has biology with Ray Riley. She asks him if he will help her move her furniture into her new place tonight. He doesn't really want to, but eventually agrees. Alisa notices that he has the same spirit in his eyes as Rama, her beloved husband.

Ray shows up at 10 PM to help with the furniture. Alisa gets an idea to seduce him in the hot tub. God, Christopher Pike was into that waaayy before Blind Date made it popular. "Many men and women have swooned just from the brush of my lips", so Alisa doesn't expect to have any problems getting into Ray's drawers.

But wait! First, hey, Ray, don't you think you should call your dad and tell him where you are? This is a different tactic. I guess Ray's dad is "out of town" on a case, but he hasn't called in a few days. Hmmm, wonder what's up with that. Yo, Alisa, any ideas?

Alisa suggests that they go to his dad's office to check his computer and see what cases he's working on, and then maybe Ray can figure out where he is. Ray's down with the idea, so they go. In the office, "the computer is equipped with a mouse." Oy. Ray boots up the system. When Alisa spots the file with her name on it, she fakes fright at a nonexistent noise and sends Ray to go check on it.

She jams the door and copies the files onto floppy disks before erasing most of the contents of the Alisa Perne file. After she lets Ray back in, he looks at the computer files for a few minutes, then Alisa plays tired and asks to be taken home.

Alone at home, Alisa reads the file. Riley's contact was called Slim, but only a Swiss fax number is included. There's no other info about him. She writes him a fax offering to meet somewhere. They arrange to meet at the pier... tonight... alone.

At the pier, Alisa waits until a man and woman approach her. Armed creeps surround the pier. Slim wants to take Alisa for a drive. From his behaviour she figures he must not know she's a vampire, so she decides to go along with stuff until she can meet Slim's superior.

The captors are pretty tough, but stupid. Alisa tricks them with the old "I have to pee... and I have my PERIOD!!!!" lie, and then kills a bunch of them when they stop at a gas station. She lets Slim live just until he describes his boss... it's Yaksha!

After disposing of Slim, Alisa calls Seymour Dorsten. At her request, he brings a change of clothes to her and then drops her off at her home.

Alisa thinks that Yaksha may try to get to her through Ray, so she gets him and brings him back to her place. They finish what they started earlier in the hot tub and it's awesome. It's almost dawn, and Ray sleeps all day. Alisa has a gun, but knows that it won't stop Yaksha.

When Ray wakes, Alisa tries to send him away for his own safety. He's better off away from her. He won't leave, so she tells him that she killed his father. And that she's a 5000 year old vampire. And that she knew Krishna. Krishna is protecting her, but also devastating her by making her lose Ray. Ray isn't protected, and should totally leave before shit gets ugly.

But it's too late. Yaksha shows up outside, playing the flute. Alisa approaches him. He explains that he is tired and wants to die. And to die with Krishna's grace, he must kill all the vampires. But if Krishna is protecting Alisa, she's going to have to break her word to him and make a vampire so Yaksha is justified in killing her.

Alisa isn't going for it, but Yaksha wasn't making a suggestion. He plays a note on his flute that shatters the window Ray is standing next to in the house. Ray topples out and falls 60 feet to the cement driveway. His head is crushed and his back is twisted, but he's still alive. Alisa has only one way to save him: mix their blood and make him a vampire.

While Ray rests, Alisa visits Seymour. She tells him all about herself. And that Yaksha will be coming back at dawn to kill her and Ray. Seymour has an idea to make it look like they will all die together, but actually she and Ray will survive. Alisa runs with it and concocts a dynamite plan to coordinate 2 separate explosions: the first to throw herself and Ray clear of the second, killer blast to take out Yaksha.

Seymour tells Alisa that he got AIDS from a tainted transfusion after an accident. Alisa mixes a portion of her blood with his, hoping it will heal him without turning him into a vampire. Or killing him. That would suck, too. Suck. Vampire. Well, I liked it.

Alisa spends the night preparing her plot. Ray is like a "vampire on acid", all mesmerized with his newly sharp senses. When Yaksha arrives, Alisa shows him the explosives. Yaksha is down with all of them getting blown up at once. The fuse has a 3-minute timer. Like Boggle. While they wait for it to burn down, Yaksha turns on Alisa and says that he knows what she's up to. Alisa begs Yaksha to let Ray live. He's so young.

Yaksha realizes that Alisa loves Ray, and that the only reason she agreed to go with him so many years ago was because of her love for Rama and Lalita. Where there is love, there is Krishna's grace, so Yaksha shoos them out of the house before the detonation.

But - whoa, dude - a piece of shrapnel from the explosion pierces Alisa through the heart as she flees. Ray tries to pull it out. Alisa feels so much pain and love, and maybe she'll die. But maybe she won't.

So, what's up? I liked this book better than I remembered. One thing I don't like is my long weekend being all rainy and cold. People who live in civilized climates have no idea how awesome they have it. In other words, brrrrrrr. But anyway, I believe I promised many Last Vampires in rapid succession, so I'm outta here.

Coming up: The Last Vampire

2009-05-12T14:34:00.000-03:00

Blog, I have not forsaken you! Here's the deal: I think I last posted sometime in March? Since then I've lost 30-ish lbs, which is cool and fun. But it was hella time consuming to have to learn about vegetables and pedometers and stuff.

Hey, how about I show you a picture of my cat, and we can all just forget about the months-long lapse in posting? OK?!

Actually, she looks depressed in this photo. I think she's got SAD. So... are we cool now?

Back when I started blogging, I realized I only had Last Vampire 1 and 2 and 5 and 6. & I seriously don't think I've ever read 5 or 6. For years, I waited for the middle third to turn up at a yard sale or used book store before I cracked #5.

So, here's my newest plan yet. I'm gonna use my long weekend (it's Victoria Day!) to knock all six of these Vampire muthas offa the to-read list. Which is probably a lot harder on the head than simply celebrating the monarchy. And, yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Ease yourself into that shit, sister!" But, no. I've been a doucheblogger, now I have to make up for it.

All right, I'll be back with some Last Vampire this weekend! Ciao~

Master of Murder

2009-03-12T20:12:00.000-03:00

He wrote about his own murder...

No one knew he was famous.

Master of Murder - Christopher Pike
1992, 198 pages

Peeps
Marvin Summer - AKA Mack Slate, beloved mystery author
Shelly - object of adoration
Triad - Try-add? Tree-ade? Anyway, he's the Sir Jockenstein of this book
Harry - Shelly's former boyfriend and Marvin's rival. Dead guy.

Get this: Marvin's a famous mystery writer... but no one knows he's famous! Ha ha, *wheeze*, now he can sit smugly by while his classmates go apeshit about the books he's written. Oh, that Marvin! From the sounds of things, his mystery series is Fall into Darkness, written in the style of Final Friends, with a Nancy Drew-style title: The Mystery at Silver Spring, per the back cover, Silver Lake in the book's text. And the kids love it, let me tell you. It's like Harry Potter and Twilight combined. But with sex! Lots of sex.

So, Shelly. Marvin really likes Shelly. "Shelly had hair and she had skin - both lovely." Opposed to the bald skeletons in Bio class, I bet she looks pretty good? Or just other, uglier girls with un-lovely hair and skin? Man, Marv, you're making them feel so damn un-lovely/loverly (for British Like Pike reader/maybe readers?).

Flashback to the events of one year ago: Shelly is dating Harry. Buuuut, she decides to go out with Marvin - five times! And then Harry turns up dead in the river after being missing for 3 days. It's ruled a suicide by police but, man, if this happened in my life, I'd be totally suspecting... someone else.

Flashforward to the present: Marv stops to talk to Shelly after class. She's been sort of dating deceased boyfriend Harry's best friend Triad. Despite this, she agrees to a date with Marvin. Oh. My. God. Shell. Did you learn nothing at all from the events of one year ago?

Poor Marvie has the typical sad-sack family life. Like so many YA novel families of the past, there's an alcoholic mother who never leaves the couch, an alcoholic absent father who only shows up every couple months to rough Marv up, and an adorable little sister who is wise beyond her years.

In order to keep his sack of shit parents from stealing his Mack Slate fortune, only Marv's little sister, Ann, knows he writes books. No one else in the world, not even his agent, knows that he's a high school kid. Fo real? Mack Slate is mythically famous. Kids talk about him in class. They wonder if he's tall and dark, or blond with a matching pretty blond wife by the ocean. He's an enigma... I wonder what his "About the Author" says.

So, Marv and Ann spend a lot of time reading fan mail that his agents sends to him at an anonymous post box. Check out these excerpts from fangirl "Becky":
"...you are really god and we are all just characters in your stories..."
aaaaannnnnd, a pervy story about a dream (ack! no!) she had where she was in the school showers, and Mack Slate came in wearing a tux and had sex with her.
"You were like the devil 'cause you were so forceful, but it was so good, the sex, that you were like God as well."

Ok, girlfriend, you're skeeving me out. I wonder if Mr. Pike used to get this quality of fan letter. No time to ponder because Marv (and, yeah, I am the only one calling him that) has received a locally mailed letter saying only: "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE." Say whattt? No one knows who Mack Slate really is... unless someone does. You will not believe how little this whole letter plot adds to the story. Truly, it will blow your mind.

So, Marv's secret is out AND his deadline for the sixth and final Mack Slate novel passed months ago and he has no clue how to end the series. The story goes like this: Town treasure Ann McGaffer (yes, the dead girl in his novel is named after his own little sister) has been found dead by murder. Someone in Skank Spring/Lake is responsible. Her skanky best friend? Her skankalicious boyfriend? Her skankalicious boyfriend's skanktastic best friend? Her skankass brother? Her skank dad? Her skankariffic male confidante/fuck buddy? There are so many orgies in the plot, I can't even tell you who was doing who (or whom?).

It's date night for Shell and Marv. They go out on Marv's motorcycle. He falls asleep in the movie theatre. Marv, man, this is your date! If you're bored, think of how Shelly feels. Think of how I feel!!

Later at Shelly's, they make a bubble tub in the Jacuzzi and make some jokes about how un-gay they both are, and then make out. . Romantic! Last train to Sexin'town... until Shelly breaks down and tells Marv that Harry (her dead beau) didn't commit suicide - he was murdered!

Marv can't solve his own murder story, which ridiculously mirrors Harry's real-life death so much that Marv woulda had to be psychic or something when he wrote it, so he decides to spend the weekend demolishing the shoddy police investigation into Harry's "murder"/murder.

Anyweegie, Marv ends up doing crazy shit like dreaming about his Silver Lake characters, visiting the old man who found Harry's body, fist-fighting with his pisshead dad, and getting more anonymous fan letters saying "SHE DOESN'T LOVE YOU THE WAY YOU THINK SHE DOES" and "THEY ARE PLOTTING TO KILL YOU AS YOU READ THIS."

He drives to Shelly's to, like, see what's up. And finds her bubbletubbin' with Triad! That bastard! Marv dies in a ball on the floor of his own soul, then cries for hours while driving his motorbike. The wind will dry his tears.

No, really, it will. It's in the text. Page 113.

Just because he's at the point of all things obsessive, Marv goes back to the bridge where he suspects Harry died. I have no clue why he's doing favours for Shelly NOW, but, hey, that's Marv. He pretty much works up a reasonable theory that Harry hung from a rope off the side of the bridge, based on rope burn evidence on Harry's jacket and broken blood capillaries in his legs from hanging for an extended time.

And oil stains on his hands! ZOMG! That's it! Harry was lying in wait over the side of the bridge, after dumping oil everywhere and putting a rope across the lane. When Marv came by on his motorcycle, Harry was gonna use his own weight or something to raise the rope into a clothesline/tripwire and kill/injure Marv, and then hide the rope so it looked like the oil spill did Marv in. Ooohh, evil. But Harry got trapped in the rope over the side, and eventually fell to his death. Or hung to his death, and then fell.

Having solved Harry's accidental death to his own satisfaction, Marv decides that he will write the end of his novel series... as soon as he kills Triad.

So, one thing I didn't tell you about Triad is that he's after Marvin's bike. He's made several offers, and Marv finally decides to take him up on it. Cuzzz the best way to kill a guy is to copy the way a different guy tried to kill you but ended up accidentally killing himself. And you know what? This whole book people were talking about how smart Marv is.

Jockstrap Triad buys the bike, and Marv sets him up to have to drive across the deadly bridge and back to get the helmet.

Marv does the lying-in-wait thing with his rope and oil trap all set. It's awesome, man. Until... he notices that Shelly is on the back of the bike! There's no way he can go through with it. He realizes that Harry had done the same thing one year ago.

Triad stops the bike, and a fight erupts. Well, he pretty much shows Marv what he thinks of people who try to kill him with a fake-oil-slick-and-clothesline combo. Marvin realizes that just like in his story, the boyfriend's BFF wanted the heroine for himself. Triad killed Harry! Triad wouldn't think twice about killing Marv! Traid would probably freaking kill Shelly so no one else could have her!

Shelly chooses now to reveal that she's the one who knows Marvin's author identity. B-b-but how? Actually, who cares? Triad's about to commit a mass massacre. Bunch o' action: everyone nearly falls off the bridge, Triad beats up Marv and even bashes Shelly's face offa the bridge railing. Triad grabs Shelly and holds a knife to her, but Marvin don't even care. He steals Triad's new-previously-owned motorcycle and leaves.

So, then Marv goes to finish his book, The Mystery of Silver Lake VI: Night of Grief. Having escaped becoming a murder-by-jock-involving-bridge statistic, he's feeling pretty cocky. He calls his agent and tells him to book a big reveal and author reading at Sesa High - his very own high school!

He takes the stage, to complete silence and astonishment from the audience. He makes a speech and whatever. Shelly doesn't show up. Neither does Triad. Maybe he's in triage? Come on, gimme somethin'!

Shelly meets Marv at the bridge and tells him that she thought that HE was the one who killed Harry, because his books told the story so exactly. And she knew he was Mack Slate because she broke into his house and looked on his computer. Anyways, she won't tell what happened to Triad after Marv left them on the bridge, but let's put it this way: he was never seen again.

Oh, and check out this sleazy leg art meant to entice readers.

And I'll thank you to not check out the pudding stain directly above the sexy leg.

Thanks to everyone who stuck around/returned. I'm a knob, and I know it. I just got really into knitting this winter. Which is a poor excuse, but at least it's not jigsaw puzzles. I'll get the "Coming Up Next"-majig going again in the side bar once I'm all organized. See you soon!

No Excuses.

2009-03-05T09:01:00.000-04:00

Back next week.

The Thin Line

2008-12-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

The Thin Line

from

Mr's Pike's intro:
He started this story shortly before the Jonesboro massacre, and it was weird for him to see the stuff he was writing about showing up on TV. He says that he's often been asked if he worries about his violent tales inspiring copycats, but he says no, because his heroes have strong moral centres. He also has a beef with the cover art of his novels. He doesn't like the scary covers that the publishers keep choosing; he'd like to see a beautiful painting with his name above it.

The story:
So, our buddy Tim Klane is a high school basketball player. And he's good. Actually "damn good". And he even looks good. He describes himself as 6-foot-2 with shaggy dark blond hair, and "eyes as blue as a gloomy Monday morning." And the ego of a poet, apparently.

Everything is all good until the day that he realizes his cosmic ownership of a certain girl in school: Jane, a popular cheerleader AND the coach's daughter. They go out for a while, and one night after a date they fall asleep on the living room floor at her place. Coach finds them together in the morning and goes apeshizzle. He tries to attack Tim with various living room accessories, and forbids Jane from seeing Tim anymore.

Tim still attends basketball practice, until one day when Jane's ex-boyfriend, Tim's teammate Steve, bumps into Tim while he's airborne making a dunk. Tim goes down hard and ruptures 4 vertebrae and breaks his tailbone. When the coach comes to check on Tim's injury, he hints that it wasn't an accident...

During two months of recovery, Tim doesn't hear from Jane at all. He is depressed and angry. The day before he is going to return to school, he empties his bank account and buys two guns on the black market. Tim acts like such a psycho while he's buying the guns that he makes the black market gun dealer uncomfortable. Yikes.

After school, basketball practice and cheerleading practice are scheduled in the gym. Which is mondo-convenient for Tim, who wants to take out all of his enemies at the same time. He chains the gym doors shut and starts menacingly showing off his weapons. Jane's ex, and the causer of Tim's injuries, Steve, tries to talk to Tim, only to be shot through the thigh. It's apparently pretty gory. In fact, it's so gross that Tim can't go through with his plan of killing everyone. Too much blood.

Jane was supposed to be one of the first to die, but she approaches Tim and isn't even afraid when he rams the gun up under her chin and screams in her face. She didn't visit him in the hospital! She didn't call! Does he mean nothing to her?!? No, she says that he is still her boyfriend.

The cops show up outside and call to see what Tim's demands are. Poor guy didn't even really realize that he was holding hostages. But he pulls it together quick and demands a half million dollars and a van to take him to a plane. He chooses five hostages to take with him, including Jane and her father, the coach.

In the plane, he forces the hostages to put on parachutes and prepare to jump. Jane tells Tim that she loves him, and even though he hates her, he loves her too, and asks her to jump with him. They land safely with all the ransom money intact.

Jane and Tim got plastic surgery to change their faces, rented an apartment, and had a whole life together. Tim's attack on his school was a big news topic, and they would sometimes see interviews with the survivors on TV. Steve had had his leg amputated after the shooting. All the hostages from the plane survived, but the pilot did not. He hit a tree when he jumped from the plane and broke his neck.

Even though they were free from trouble, had loads of money, and each other, Jane and Tim lived with horrible guilt. Tim felt that Jane was even more burdened that he was, because she had chosen to share his guilt. As time passed, Jane became reckless, often stepping into traffic, or standing at the very tippy-toe edge of the subway platform.

Four years after they'd jumped from the plane together, Jane tempted death for the last time. She was struck and killed by a bus. After the funeral, Tim went home to his mother, who didn't recognize him until he spoke. Tim had made a killing on the stock market, and decided to divvy up all his money and leave half on Steve's doorstep and half on the dead pilot's family's doorstep.

Lastly, Tim stopped at the high school gym and found Jane's father, the coach, shooting hoops alone. The coach offers him a game of one-on-one, without recognizing him. Tim has lived in horrible agony from his back injury and hasn't touched a basketball since the the day he was hurt. Despite that, he leads the coach, 9 to 3, until the pain overcomes him and he collapses, crying. The coach helps him to the bench, and says it's too bad Tim can't finish the game; he was about to win. Tim says that they are both losers, and thinks "Jane is dead. We both killed her." and decides not to tell the coach that Jane is dead.

The End.

So, I overestimated my free time this week - friggin' Christmas eve is tomorrow! Whaaatttt?! - so the rest of the Tales of Terror will be posted on the weekend or next week. Hopefully everyone is gonna be too busy having holiday fun to be reading silly blogs anyway! Have a good one, everybody!!

Bamboo

2008-12-22T19:53:00.003-04:00

Bamboo

from

The Intro: Mr. Pike confesses that this story a) didn't take long to write, b) is strange, c) he enjoys strange things, and d) strangest of all, his novel The Visitor, which he acknowledges as being universally unpopular, is on his Top 5 of all time list. The one with the grave-humping? Really? The grave-humping one is your favourite, sir?!? Um, ok... on with tonight's story, then!

Three children - Gary, Teri, and Mark - grow up as best friends. They're also very close to their neighbour, Mr. Shambu, a man from India. Mr. Shambu plants bamboo and tells the children stories in his spare time.

One story goes like this: Five thousand years ago a guy was born into India's highest and most religious caste. But this was no normal guy. He was a demon. (Or "demond", as my boss says.) As a youth, he killed a bunch of animals and stuff. When he was 16, his parents got him a wife, who he also murdered.

Guy went to trial, but not before going into some kind of demond-anger-rage and killing both his parents. One of his sisters helped him escape and hide in the woods, but his other sisters turned him in when they found out.

He was beheaded and his soul was to walk the earth forever. Except his loyal sister found a way to put his soul into bamboo shoots, which popped and released his soul.

So, later in life, Mark falls in love with Teri. But - you guessed it! - she's dating Gary. Teri and Gary get married after high school, and Gary joins the marines. He dies in an explosion on his first mission.

At Gary's funeral, Teri tells Mark that she is four months pregnant, and that she never had a chance to tell Gary. She doesn't feel like she's able to be a mother. Mark tries to convince her that things will be ok, but that night Teri overdoses on pills and goes into a coma.

Mark goes back to university for 2 years, while Teri is still comatose in the hospital. After his graduation, he visits Teri and removes her breathing tube. After she dies, Mark goes to the field where Teri had overdosed and sets the place on fire. All the bamboo in the area pops and Mark feels relieved that Teri and Gary will be free.

Yeah, so that's, uh, a story. I didn't dig it too much, but props for having an actual Indian guy tell India stories. Up next: a school shooting goes all DB Cooper on us; a cult of witches wreak havoc; and home invasions, abortion, and torture collide.

The Tomb of Time

2008-12-21T18:58:00.005-04:00

The Tomb of Time

from

Yes, the skeletons are reading Fall into Darkness and Scavenger Hunt. You know what I would have liked even more? If the skeletons were leaning against the MIKE gravestone from the Bury Me Deep cover. Eh?

Mr. Pike provided a short introduction to each story. Before The Tomb of Time, he writes that he loves end-of-the-world stories and thinking about what would happen if our world ended. As far as he can see it, there are advantages to the world ending. For starters, no deadlines, and no need to write these stinkin' introductions. Ha! Niiiiiice.

Now, about this story... recipes are popular. Wanna recipe?

The Tomb of Time

Ingredients:
- 3 condensed gender-reversed chapters of The Star Group
- dash each of The Immortal, The Midnight Club, and The Visitor
- ½ The Eternal Enemy, blended with outer space

Combine and serve.

And here's how it turns out:

Girl (Shannon) lusts after guy (Joel) who doesn't know she's alive. Girl feels oddly connected to the past, even believing that she would have felt "more at home in ancient Greece or Egypt". Yeah, that has nothing to do with anything. But it's in there!

It's graduation day, Shannon's last chance to tell Joel how she feels. While walking to school, Joel's aunt Betty stops Shannon in the street. Betty has exactly one minute to tell Shannon that Joel talks about her all the time.

Shannon continues on to school, only briefly interrupted by a minor earthquake. At her locker, she sees Joel kissing some blond-haired strumpet. The skank writes something in Joel's notebook, then leaves. And there's another wee little earthquake.

In class, Shannon finishes her chemistry exam, and then thinks about the girl she saw with Joel. She looked familiar, like someone Shannon knew in the past. Well. How about that. Are you surprised???

At lunch, the soon-to-be grads have a water balloon fight. Joel hits Shannon with a balloon, telling her, "You made such an appealing target." Shannon replies: "I'm not that fat." Ok, hold up. Wrong answer, wrong sentiment, wrong conversation. I love how, like, fatties are the only good water balloon targets. The fact that this story takes place at Sweet Valley High should have been advertised better.

The two kids sign each other's yearbooks. Shannon writes a rather forward message that Joel is sure to make lasting contributions in the field of science (Hawt!) and that he should call her sometime. Joel writes "Best Wishes (Nawt hawt).

Shannon is a goody-goody and actually goes to gym class. She changes and everything! It's the last day of school, Shan. Don't be lame. On the field, she practices some zen archery (oh, Pike!), and meets a little girl, Joel's niece. She's got one minute to make sure that Shannon knows Joel talks about her ALL THE TIME. Aaaandd then... there's another earthquake.

Suddenly, an arrows shoots from parts unknown and pierces the little girl through the chest.

Shannon runs to find help, and spots Joel. She tells him that his niece is dying on the archery field. Joel doesn't have a niece, or an aunt Betty, but he comes back to the field anyway. The girl's body and blood are gone from the grass. Joel's response: "You have a nice life, Shannon." Awkward. Oh my God, he thinks she's totally cracked! So much for calling her this summer.

After her sanity was questioned, Shannon goes home and naps. Yeah, there mighta been a dream. Whatevs. She wakes up to "the business end of a shotgun" being held by the mysterious kissing blond. Shannon looks closely at the girl... she has Shannon's face! But with better hair!

The girls says: "I'm the third you that you met today." The aunt and niece were really other versions of Shannon who harnessed the power of the earthquakes to travel from 55 million years in the future to make sure Shannon and Joel got together. They need to eventually marry, as Shannon's future wifely encouragement will cause Joel to invent some hyperspace thing that will stop the world from ending.

But this blond fake Shannon is from a race of negatives who want the world suffer and are gonna kill Shannon and Joel. Shannon's reaction: "This is confusing... Why do you bother telling me all this?" I hear you, sister.

The girl tries to shoot Shannon, but the gun backfires and blows her own hand off. Shannon strikes with a fireplace poker and kills her. An exact twin of Shannon appears and tells her to be nice to Joel.

The phone rings and Shannon and Joel have a very confusing and hostile conversation, because this event is being erased from their minds as they speak. They hang up, and Joel calls straight back, wanting to know if they'd made plans or something, because he was gonna call her but he can't remember now if he did or not. And they decide to go for ice cream! Awwwww!!!

Pre-Tales of Terror #2

2008-12-21T13:06:00.003-04:00

Joys and evils to savor.

The Weird and the Wonderful.

1998, 207 pages

Some advice I got from a friend during the golden age of compact discs: Play a CD on random to see how good it REALLY is, without the corporately orchestrated song order manipulating your brain. I do the same thing with short story collections.

I started #2 Tales of Terror on the second story, but not before flipping the pages and noticing that Mr. Pike himself wrote a short introduction to each story! OMG - his own words! Not storytelling, or his about the author paragraph, but REAL thoughts and opinions and information!

Each story is like an unholy remix of several previous plots all crammed into 40 pages. It's as "Yikes!" as it sounds. I want to analyze it all properly, so every day this week check in for a post about a different Tale of Terror from this collection.

I hope you're totally in the mood to savor some evil, and to read some totally unexpected personal info about our beloved author. See you later today for the first story, The Tomb of Time.

The Midnight Club

2008-12-20T22:57:00.003-04:00

Their stories became their lives...

They were all going to die.

The Midnight Club - Christopher Pike
1994, 211 pages

Midnight Club Members & Corresponding Catchphrases

Ilonka - "It's not a tumour!"

Kevin - "I'm boring, so I don't get one!"

Anya - "It's not the cancer, I'm always a bitch."

Spence - "You think you know me. You have no idea."

Sandra - "See ya, wouldn't wanna BE YA!!"

At Rotterham Home, a hospice for terminally ill teens, some residents formed a club to meet at midnight in the library to tell stories. Kind of like The Midnight Society, but with morphine.

All of the residents are literally in their death beds and are no longer being treated for their illnesses, only pain management is allowed per Rotterham's policy. Ilonka has a bunch of tumours, and is totally in love with Kevin. Ilonka's roomie, Anya, has bone cancer and has already lost a leg to it.

I found all this seriously depressing. Like, pain, and tiredness, and more pain, and dying, and - oh - shitty stories. I don't want to hear a bunch of amateurs tell stories. I never want that. Most people are not natural raconteurs. As for the rest of the club, there's Spence - he's got "brain cancer" and a shocking secret! (it's not actually brain cancer!!) - and Sandra, one who doesn't seem all that sick.

Kevin's other trait (yeah, one of his traits is being Ilonka's crush - he doesn't really have a lot going for him personality-wise) is that he's an artiste. And excuse me for getting angry, but he's the same motherfucking artist as Jerry in The Visitor. Like drawing a skeleton in a spaceship in the desert and shit like that. I'm not impressed, but Ilonka loves it: "Her heart skipped so high it almost crashlanded." But she doesn't know why she loves Kevin, just that "it had to do with the past. The ancient past." Someone's gonna need to hold my hair if this thing takes a turn for the ancient-Egyptian-Indian-Master-on-a-spaceship-ier.

So, yeah, they all meet nightly for storytime, but first there's a ritual to be completed: hugging each member tightly and saying "I belong to you." Maybe I'm getting cynical, but I don't like that. And then it's storytime:

Spence regales with a tale of Eddie, a Vietnam vet who kidnaps his ex-wife to the top of the Eiffel tower and starts shooting people with a sniper rifle, only to find that his ex had a kid after they broke up! He's a father. Woo hoo! Celebratory shooting ensues, and when the police arrive, he blames it on his ex-wife, who is shot and killed by the police. And Eddie is free to meet his kid. Great ending, top notch.

Anya tells a story about Dana, a teenager undergoing a strict upbringing from her parents. She meets the devil, who agrees to clone her, so one of them can go have sex with strangers, do hard drugs, litter, and do whatever else the morally loose tend to do, while the other one stays at home and gets good grades. The devil's only stipulation is that Dana has to stay cloned for a minimum one year term.

Dana II goes to Los Angeles and meets a handsome stranger. And you know what? Dana One can feel everything that Dana II does. Yeah, I'm talking sex. Orgasms while watching Wheel of Fortune with her parents. Kinda like: "I'd like to buy a vowel. Can I get an O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!!!"

Dana II becomes a cokehead, so it's just like Dana One is high or jonesin' ALL THE TIME. She goes to find her double, and when they meet they both pull guns on each other. One is killed and the other is crippled in the shooting. The devil pops up to tell the surviving Dana to kill herself. The end. The Midnight Club members protest the ending, but this little story was the only bit of the book that I truly liked.

Ilonka chooses to tell a story from one of her past lives. Kevin wants to know if any of the people present are in her past life. She lies and says no. Her story takes place in Egypt, 20650 years ago. Jeez, that's so precise, it just has to be true! Aaaaaannnd... I'm sparing you from the rest of it. Just trust me on this. There's a Master. I hate shit with Masters. Anyways, the main characters represent Ilonka and Kevin, cuz that's what things do in this book.

Kevin's got a story to top all stories. It's practically neverending. An angel named Hermes lives in the Louvre, painting copies of the masterpiece artworks all day. And he can never leave the Louvre. EVER! Then he meets a beautiful, young American tourist, Teresa. Hermes makes a deal with God to be able to leave the museum in order to take Teresa for a date, but he's gonna have to become human and lose all of his angelic advantages.

Before finishing the story, Kevin runs outta gas. He saves the end for another night, but really, guys, when you could all die at any minute, why risk it? Just finish the freakin' story. Cut some shit out if you have to.

Anya asks if there is life after death. The first person in the group to die should give a sign to the rest. I think they do a blood oath or something. Ilonka enjoys the "pagan flavor."

The next day, Ilonka has a tumour scan at the hospital. As you know, that is against Rotterham policy. You are only allowed to die. You are not allowed to try to fix your problem anymore. She thinks herbs have shrunk her tumours. When she comes back, she finds Kevin's girlfriend Kathy waiting to visit him. Ilonka rips into her, telling her that Kevin's gonna die - SOON! And it hurts him to have to pretend to be OK for Kathy. So... hit the bricks and don't come back to Rotterham again. You know, for Kevin's sake. Nothing to do with Ilonka's own monster crush on him or anything. Whoa, evil.

So, the other storyline that coulda been interesting was that Anya once sculpted a statue of herself and her boyfriend Bill, together. He caught her sleeping with another guy and smashed the statue, breaking off Anya's right leg. Shortly after, Anya was diagnosed with bone cancer and needed her right leg amputated. Spooooky.

Ilonka naps and dreams about the Rishi from Remember Me.

She wakes up in time for the Midnight Club meeting. Spence opens the meeting with a story of a vengeful teenage magician who burns down his school gym during a basketball game. His assistant puns that the gym was filled with "one thousand die-hard fans." Ha. But that's not my favourite "burning gym" play on words. The gym in my hometown burned down a while ago and my brother came up with, "They worked out until they felt the burn." It's funny because no one was hurt. And because I have a comically bad sense of humour. And no sense of when to stay on topic. Actually, I was seriously morbid from reading about these young, cold, weak, sick, dying kids. I needed to cheer myself up with wordplay.

Tonight the meeting is a little different. Someone brought booze. I like it. Ilonka tells an ancient India story this time. Yeah, this crap was jam-packed with symbolism (I'm guessing... I'm a dirty, rotten skimmer). Kevin continues his story of Herme, the recovering angel. Anya asks him to finish it, but he's too tired to make it to the end.

The next morning, Ilonka finds Anya dead in her bed. Traumatizing! Not to mention that there's a rumour going around: someone's not terminal! And Ilonka just had new scans! She's pretty much celebrating until she sees Sandra packing a suitcase. No one at Rotterham has ever re-packed their shit before. Turns out that Sandra's Hodgkin's disease was misdiagnosed as a worse type than what she really had. And Ilonka still only has 2 weeks to live. Two weeks! Suck it, Dawn Rochelle!

Ilonka is so stressed that the doctor gives her a shot. She dreams about Master. God, Pike, quit name-dropping Master all the mofo time. Just say that she had a dream about a certain young adult author with a massive ego who isn't R.L. Stine.

When she wakes up, Kevin is with her. He also dreamt about Master and now he welcomes death. Ilonka asks to hear the rest of Kevin's angel story, because Anya didn't get the chance. Herme and Teresa moved to New York, but Herme really lost his awesomeness once he became mortal. He finds out Teresa is cheating on him, so he quits painting and becomes a taxi driver. Then he moves to Colorado (??) and becomes a park ranger (???) and falls in love with another park ranger (<3) and gets paralyzed during a forest fire :( and dumps his girlfriend :(:(:( and goes to med school (???) and becomes a doctor in a free clinic in Los Angeles (?!) where he meets his old love, Teresa (!!!!!!!!!!!!!1) who is some kind of crackhead now (!) and she has AIDS :( but he paints a picture of how beautiful she was in her youth, and she realizes that her doctor is Herme, and then she dies. At some point, I needed to quit saying: "What the hell, Colorado?" and just go with it.

Ilonka is in tears after the story, and wants to sleep with Kevin. Unfortch, he's too weak from his cancer to do anything, so they just sleep naked in each other's arms. In the morning, he says he loves her, then dies.

After Kevin's death, Ilonka visits Spence. She wants to know what was up with the booze at the meeting the night Anya died. Was it drugged or what? Spence confesses that he actually has AIDS, and had infected his partner, who died painfully from it. In order to redeem himself for causing his partner to die that way, he agreed to help Anya die with dignity. He drugged Ilonka, then smothered Anya in the bed next to her.

Ilonka tells Spence about a dream she had where Kevin offered himself to God to share any punishment Ilonka was going to have to suffer. But it was all about witchcraft and symbols and junk. You know how it is. She tells Spence that if he is punished in the afterlife, she will be with him and share the punishment, just like Kevin will do for her.

Shortly after, Spence slips into a coma and dies. Ilonka invites Anya's ex-boyfriend, Bill to Rotterham. She gives him the broken statue, but wait! It's not broken anymore. Love conquers all. Love fixes shit. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love. Yada yada.

Lastly, Ilonka dies. Then there's the obligatory epilogue, which takes place on the Space Beagle III. Yeah, you know what I'm thinking. Space travelers "Eisokna" and "Karlen" are done monitoring the situation on Earth and are ready to go wherever they're going. "Yes. I'm ready to leave."

So, how glad am I to put this depressing pile on the "read" list? Um, very. This book managed to combine every single thing that I hate about Christopher Pike books into one book, and make it into a really long, morbid, depressing, soul-sucking heap. My Christmas wish is for friggin' spaceships to be delivered to the plot device landfill and never seen again. But we know better than that, right?

And tomorrow (or Monday - being a recovering slacker ain't easy), I'll have the totally random offering of Tales of Terror #2.

I sheepishly peek back into Blogland...

2008-12-18T15:50:00.002-04:00

Remember Me? The Return.... to blogging... at Like Pike!

It's been a while. So, jeez, The Midnight Club. That book could have been the book that derailed this entire project. If I wanted to read a book of Christopher Pike's short stories, I woulda read freakin' Tales of Terror #2.

You know, I would feel awful if I just put up a little inconsequential teaser post after all this time, so let's gab for a sec about something very important to me: celebrity look-alikes.

Remember back when the internet was first getting popular and people were starting to chat and ICQ with people in other parts of the world?

My male middle school classmates fell into a frenzy of chatting online with American girls. You know, "Gemini" from "Texas", and all that stuff. And every guy wanted to know what hot celebrity he looked like so he could tell the girl he was chatting with, and hopefully appear cooler than he actually was.

The answer, "You look like a combination of JTT, Andrew Keegan, and Pauly Shore's detox ID" is a little harsh, so I usually said nothing.

If myheritage.com had existed then, I may never have had a chance to bring up Pauly Shore on this blog. Naw, I didn't sell out; I just think it's a cool site. You can upload a picture of yourself and it matches your face with celebrity look-alikes. I guess there's a Facebook app that does it now too.

I tried it out a while ago with a family picture. My mom and my brother both had Peter Gallagher as the #1 match.

"OMG, Mom! You look like the dad on The OC!!!!"

Oy. And me, I'm a combo of Kristin Kreuk from Smallville, and British jazzy-type singer Jamie Cullum. But you know who my one true celebrity look-alike is? Mindy Cohn. Natalie from The Facts Of Life. Her face at age 13 is pretty much the same face I've had my entire life. Check it out; just add naturally curly hair:

Thanks for sticking with me, you guys, and I hope to be back to some sort of regular posting schedule from now until I finish the Pike catalogue.

This weekend come around for a double header of the ramblin'-esque posts that I'm sure everyone's been missing - featuring The Midnight Club on Saturday, and Tales of Terror #2 on Sunday. Does the Christmas pre-weekend get any better than that? See you then!

The Grave

2008-11-20T08:21:00.002-04:00

Eternal life, eternal death.

The grave is not the end of the story.

The Grave - Christopher Pike

1999, 194 pages

This thing is a disaster/failure/nightmare of the epically highest order. I don't even know how this book, The Grave, was allowed to happen. It's like: you read it, and you think you're down with it even though it sucks, and then there's a major whammy and you're all: "WT...F?"

The book opens with 19 year old knob Ted meeting and dating Dara, who has permed long hair "the color of simmering corn on the cob, invisible steam rising through blond curls". How - who... I mean, whaaaa?? Only page two, and this prose is pukeworthy ALREADY. How'm I to cope?

After three dates, you know what it's time for... yeah, not that. I wish. Actually, three dates means a midnight hike to a "burial ground". What Ted doesn't know is that he's gonna be the one initiatin' this here burial ground. A gang of creeps attacks Ted, cutting his clothes with knives and ripping them off: "Tearing was followed by atrocity - his pants and underwear were pulled down...". Ted's junk is atrocious? OMG, I love it!

Ted is covered in pig's blood, buried in a sealed coffin, and left to die.

Next we meet Keri, who works in a CD/DVD shop, where she meets Oscar. I'm just gonna tell you now that Oscar is the new incarnation of Ted, so you won't be surprised later.

Their meetings at the shop included such conversation gems as:

Keri: "You're different from most of the guys who come in here."

Oscar: "I'm grave?"

Yeah, Oscar, you're grave. And from beyond the grave. I get it. *gags*

Keri already has a boyfriend, Clay, but it doesn't really work out with them. She wasn't that into him, actually. I only bring him up because he went to a movie one night while Keri was working. It was called Kill the Cop and starred rap star Chrome Shoes. Friggin' Chrome Shoes! Man, what were you smokin', Pike? I know it was 1999 and you couldn't keep mentioning David Bowie, but there's no need - there's NEVER a need - to call your "rap star" Chrome muthafuckin' Shoes.

So, Keri and Oscar go on a date. The destination: his place. That was fast. He's an artist, and he's totally colour-blind. He can only see black and white. He owns a boat, so he and Keri go sailing. After he "raises his mast" (you know what I mean), we're told that Oscar isn't human: "No, Keri Weir did not understand that she'd just made love to death itself."

After this, Keri experiences menstrual symptoms, but it's not near her special lady time. There's a cold ache in her gut. She doesn't have much time to worry about it, because later that day she is grabbed, drugged with a chloroform rag, and stuffed into the back of a car.

Since Keri was getting ready to meet Oscar for a date when she was grabbed, she's understandably not wearing any underwear. Go, Keri. Hawt and classy. Her captor pulls down her pants - OMG - more atrocity?! Nah, Keri doesn't have issues with her biz, and the guy is just injecting her booty with some kind of serum.

The guy puts Keri into a grocer's freezer. It's not just for toaster strudels anymore! She realizes she's going to die. This freezer will be her grave, but... the grave is not the end of the story.

Keri dies, then wakes up. She finds that she is super strong, ripping the door off the freezer. The grocery store is closed, so she helps herself to, like, 9 rotisserie chickens and some other assorted snacks.

Outside the shop, a gang of hoods give her trouble. The leader gropes her chest, so Keri knees him in the groin. However, a superstrong knee to the groin shatters bone(r)s and ruptures organs. The guy bleeds out on the ground while his pals run off. Except for one, who Keri catches. She gets in his face and tells him to stop being a jackoff and to grow up to be a doctor... she'll be watching!

In addition to being strong as hell, Keri can't cry, can't see colour, and can't "know true unconsciousness". Eternal safety from comas!

Keri remembers where she'd seen Oscar before - in the newspaper, as dead boy Ted. She goes to his place, where he's waiting with Dr. Gary Schelling to explain why they kidnapped her and left her to die with the Carvel ice cream treats and rising crust pizza.

This whole dying-then-not-being-dead-anymore thing came about when Dr. Schelling, a geneticist, discovered a way to manipulate the human genome so people can live forever. Inject his discovery into someone, kill them, and they'll be on their way back just moments later, ready to live forever unless they are incinerated. Even if decapitated, a new head and brain will regenerate, but the brain cells will be different. Maybe even evil...

The purpose of the experiment was to save his daughter, Dara, who was dying of leukemia. After her dose, she changed. She was evil. She dosed and killed her brother, Eric, who became evil too, and started an army of "two dozen fiends."

Oscar's post-death abilities include having a super smeller. When he met Keri, he knew she was fertile. He had impregnated her on the boat. Hiz jizz iz awesome, so there's no way it wouldn't find what it was looking for.

Keri's metabolism is crazy-rapid now, which is why she needs to eat 24/7. Dr. Schelling tells her that her pregnancy will be only 9 days long.

"What followed next was like a scene from a bad movie." I love how Christopher Pike himself sometimes had to acknowledge that what he was writing was, like, cheesy as hell. Oscar, Schelling, and Keri are hanging out when the door knocks. OMG - is it fiends? The guys grab some semis from the hall closet, just as Dara and her fiend goons bust in with their own guns.

Oscar, Keri, and the Doc escape to Oscar's boat, but there's trouble in the air. Evil Eric is in a helicopter shooting at them. Can you just picture this? Dara captures Oscar and Keri and takes them to a cave in the desert, where they are to be held until Keri gives birth. Dara wants the baby. She calls it The Dark One.

The baby arrives and proud parents Oscar and Keri decide to name him John, after both of their fathers. In just 20 days, he is full grown and "built like a god". Dara still hasn't let them leave the cave, but does provide John with learning materials. He even uses the internet to learn stuff. When John asks for seeds, Dara brings them. John can make plants and fruit grow in the dark cave just by talking to the seeds.

One day, there's a ruckus at the back of the cave. Dr. Schelling and the government have finally come to save them! They bomb the cave and Keri burns to real death.

In the epilogue, Oscar speculates that John is an incarnation of Pan, king of the fairies, sent by God to save the rainforest.

"Humanity has polluted every corner of the globe. Maybe John will be able to fix the damage."

After all the shit this book put me through... it's about the environment?!? I hate the environment. I do. It's everywhere, and it's always annoying me. Ohhhhh, the disappointment. It hurrrrttts!!! I don't know if I can go on reading these treacherous late '90s titles. My verdict: Pike should have quit life after The Midnight Club. Which probably isn't even as good as I remember it. Let's find out next week!

Final Friends 3: The Graduation

2008-11-18T20:37:00.005-04:00

The truth was neither black nor white... but a horrible shade of gray.

It was his last chance to find the answer.

The Graduation - Christopher Pike
1989, 238 pages

How about some recap to make up for the loooong posting delay?

Remember The Party? Alice "killed" "herself", but Michael thinks someone else was behind it. Blah, blah, shitloads of other vapid dicks and bitches do stuff that matters not. Small detail I didn't mention that may be important: Alice's sister Polly (you remember, the fat one!) had undergone shock therapy as a kid after their parents died. You know, for her depression.

After that, The Dance. Poor little Hispanic Maria falls to her paralysis. But the float that collapsed under her may have been sabotaged for someone else, because there is no way in hell that anyone predicted that Maria was going to win Homecoming Queen.

Now it's time for The Graduation. Mike is either lazier than me or the worst procrastinator ever because he's done NOTHING in the last seven months to find Alice's killer. Even though he's still obsessed over it. With enough credits to graduate, both Mike and Clair left school after first semester. So Mike's been doing nothing when there's a killer on the loose?? Come on, Mike, avenge your friend. And make it bloody. Cuzzzz that's what I like.

Russ Desmond was sent to juvie after the dance for allegedly cutting down a tree which fell on, and destroyed, the school snack shack. Sara is still school president, and is the only reason Jessica is graduating. Jess was so depressed from the double whammy of Alice's death, and then Maria, a friend she knew for, like, 6 weeks, saying that she hated Jessica and never wanted to see her again, that Jess stopped attending school after Christmas break and only by Sara bringing her assignments to her did she manage to graduate.

Nick is a huge basketball hero and popular beyond his craziest dreams. Oh - and Polly! Polly is THIN. Hallelujah! The girl is thin. Woooooo!! And, like, depressed and insane, but that doesn't matter because thin people are perfect, don't forget.

So, it's graduation day. Mike returns to school to give the valedictorian speech, and to harass Polly about Clark's whereabouts. Are you serious, Mike? Alice died in, like, October. It's mofo June! Polly doesn't have any info, other than the last time she saw Clark was after the dance and Aunty was dead in the house.

Mike ditches Polly when he spots Jessica (wearing a green skirt and yellow blouse!) and starts stalking her around the courtyard like a "frightened lowlife". He hasn't seen her in months, but he still likes what he sees. Ow ow!!

Oh yeah, Kats is at school too. He's a graduate scholar, except he's not even a student, and he's like 29 years old. I wonder if his parents got him something nice for grad? Bill Skater got a Corvette. Jess and Sara got matching trips to Hawaii. I think I got $100 for graduating. Ohhhhhhhh. My life sucks.

Before the ceremony, Sara picks Russ up from the bus station. He has a weekend pass from juvie to go to graduation. Nick drives to the rehab facility where Maria has been living. After her accident, her family's illegal alien status was discovered and her parents were deported back to El Salvador. Once she is stable, she will be sent back too.

The grad ceremony is underway. Mike gives his smartest-guy-in-school speech and, like, forces everyone in attendance to have a moment of silence for Alice... WHAT?? She went to this school for 3 weeks and she was in grade 9. And, as far as anyone knows, she wanted to die. Why would it ever be appropriate to hold a moment of silence for friggin' Alice? Mike needs to check himself hardcore.

Jessica ends the ceremony by singing "Let It Be", while Kats becomes psychotic with anger for some reason. He wants to turn the grad cruise into a ghost ship. That'll show them. Yeah. That'll show them.

After the ceremony, Mike heads straight to Alice's art teacher/sorta boyfriend/also Polly's former sorta boyfriend Clark's place. He'd been investigating Clark for some time, even paying people from Clark's high school for info. Mike tracks down Clark's address and decides that packing heat (for squares, that's "carrying a gun") is the best idea. Once inside, Mike accidentally reveals the piece ("gun") and Clark stomps the crap outta him.

Shortly before the grad cruise ship is set to leave, Jessica and Sara take a trip to the pharmacy for contraceptives. Sara snagged them some private rooms so they can have some alone time (i.e. virginity losing time) with their guys. Um, I know Jess has been depressed, but what the hell? She wanted to bang Bill Skater, like, two books ago. What gives?? (If you don't remember, I'll tell you what gives... later.)

Before the cruise, Polly visits Alice's grave. Clark unceremoniously shows up at the cemetery with a backpack full of bomb-making supplies and asks Polly to sneak him onto the boat. Polly warns him that Mike will stop him. Clark doesn't think so.

Hey, remember how Sara lost all the student's council money that was supposed to pay for the Homecoming dance? And then she got Bubba to spot her the cash, in exchange for sex. Remember that? Well, apparently the bastard's been holding it over her for the entire school year, and now he tells her that he's gambled all the money she needs to pay for the grad cruise. On a mofo basketball game. So she could end up with no money, and still have to sleep with friggin' gross-out Bubba. Ack!!

Sara tries to spend time with Russ, who she considers to be her boyfriend except he doesn't, like, know it yet. He's totally cool with just ignoring her though. God, the guys in this book! Each and every one = tools.

Once the ship has sailed, lots of people start talking and doing stuff. Maria and Jessica talk, and it's not awesome, but it's not a fiasco either. Maria is more distant than flat-out hateful. Mike starts ditching people left, right, and centre. I think those boots to the head from Clark have affected his attention span. He talks to Nick for, like, 3 lines. He even walks away from Jessica. I think she was in the middle of a sentence. Then he goes to bug Bubba about the night of the party.

Bubba confesses that he and Clair were in one of the bedrooms upstairs and that he got her pregnant that night. Since Clair's abortion, their relationship has gotten stronger. Now Bubba and Clair are planning to get married in Vegas on the weekend. Um, I always thought Clair was competent. My mistake. Also via Bubba: Jess won Homecoming Queen, but Bubba switched it so Clair wouldn't be upset. Ooooh!

In one of the private rooms, Polly and Clark are hanging out. Polly is soaking in the tub wondering why Clark doesn't want to come in and look at her. She depressed because no one likes her even though she lost all that weight. That would be depressing.

Polly cuts her wrist with a razor blade, and that's when Clark decides to peek in. Great timing, guy. He goes nuts and threatens to cuts out her eyeballs and tongue if she ever cuts herself again. He's so pissed that he throws a plugged-in hairdryer into the tub... while Polly's still in there!!! Bzzzz-zzz-zzz-zzz!

All the jocks, plus Bubba and Sara, have been glued to the TV showing the basketball game. Lakers vs. Celtics, a grand 80s rivalry. Bubba had told Sara that he bet on the hometown Lakers. And the Lakers lost. Oh no! Sara drags Bubba outside. She's desperate. She needs money. Gotta have money, yo.

Oh, but Bubba actually bet on the Celtics. That Bubba! Sara can pay for the cruise, what a relief. And now that Bubba and Clair are so committed to each other, Bubba doesn't want to cheat by collecting his fee (ie: blackmail booty call) from Sara. Sara is totally offended that Bubba doesn't want to sleep with her. OMG - so offended! It's the mannish way that she walks, apparently, that did Bubba in.

Now that Sara's off the hook with Bubba, she wants to get wit' Russ Desmond even more. Sara and Jess invite the boys to their rooms with this ridiculous idea to be in the shower when the guys show up. There's no resistin' that. Nosiree. Jess stood in the shower wondering "how long Bill would be". I think she meant minute-wise, but that is an awesome double-entendre. Bill comes in, and promptly rejects all Jessica's advances. Bill = N.I., not interested. He blows up, yelling that he thought she was decent. He promises not to say anything to ruin Jess's reputation.

Russ comes to Sara's room. They talk and find out that they lurve each other, but Russ doesn't want to just use Sara like he has so many other girls, so they don't have sex.

It's 2 AM in partyland, and Mike has hit rock bottom. He plays chess (at a grad party? Laaaaaame! They shoulda played some charades while they were at it!) and only draws. No win. Kats is stalking him everywhere he goes. Bill Skater basically asks him out on a date. And when Mike goes to talk to Jessica, the whole scene seems like Jess and Bill had just been intimate.

Mike is secretly, furiously disappointed. He asks Jess to sign his yearbook, and then tries to get the hell out of there. Jess makes him read her message: "I love you, Michael". Jess tells Mike about what just happened with Bill, and the pieces fall into place: "Oh, God!... I've been trying to seduce a gay!...I am sooo dumb." These two deteriorate with laughter. They friggin' die. Jess and Mike are hysterical, all because Bill Skater is gay. Sorry, "a" gay.

Jess teases Mike about Bill's crush on him. Mike's never kissed a girl before, and he's about to do a lot more than that. Jessica takes him into the shower to wash the blood out of his hair from where Clark injured him earlier. It's very romantic. And... *lights out*

In the meantime, Maria has asked Nick to gather everyone from the party in the hull for a meeting. Mike has the same idea, and has been searching for Polly all over the ship. Polly is recovered from her electrocutioning and is watching Clark set the timer on the explosives. One hour.

Kats is also planning... uh, not mischief. I guess "mass devastation" is more appropriate. He's going to make them pay. They will pay for not hugging him after the grad ceremony. Dammit, Kats is gonna open up a world of hurt on everybody who didn't congratulate him. See, people, this is why Rule #1 of All-Night Grad Party Cruises is "You don't let Kats on your All-Night Grad Party Cruise". And, yeah, Mike and Nick both told him to get his ass into the hull for the meeting, but he's not gonna listen to those jerks. Not until his plans are complete. Wuh haha. Wuh haha. *Hack!*

So, everyone important is at the meeting: Maria, Nick, Sara, Russ, Clair, Bubba, Bill, The Rock, Polly, Jess, and Mike. Mike starts by outlining his theory that Alice did not commit suicide, she was murdered. They recreate the night from everyone's POV, Weekend-style. The gunshot... it came from the backyard, not the upstairs bedroom. Polly says that Clark pushed Alice off the ladder, and she hit her nose and died. Then they covered it up with the fake suicide and gunshots.

Suddenly the boat alarm goes off! The boat is sinking. Polly has a gun and reveals the bomb. No one leaves. Shockingly, Maria stands and tries to disarm Polly. OMG - Maria's been playing possum this whole book? Awesome! Polly tosses Maria aside, then Mike gets the gun away from her.

Kats creeps into the hull, "grinning the full length of his greasy moustache." He lit some smoke bombs so everyone would have to evacuate the ship. Take that, privileged scumbags!

Suddenly, the bomb Polly planted explodes - right in Jessica's face!!

The boat catches real fire and starts filling with water. And if there's one thing I know about Jessica, it's that she can't swim. She is pinned under debris in the boat. The water rises as everyone else escapes. Mike and The Rock stay behind to free her. Jess's arm is broken badly and Mike helps her to safety.

Once they escape, they realize that The Rock is still in there! All the guys want to be a hero and go back for him, and all the girlfriends stomp on that plan in a hurry. Single Bill goes, and as he disappears into the wreckage, the boat tips and sinks.

Polly is in the lifeboat, still going on that Clark pushed Alice offa the ladder, and he buggered the float to punish Jessica for making Polly have the party, and he stole Sara's council money to punish her for making Polly have the party, and he smothered Aunty, and he chopped down the school tree, which Russ got blamed for, but Clark didn't have a specific vendetta against Russ.

Mike has a theory: Yeah, Imaginary Clark did all that shit. Polly and electricity are a bad mix. Polly confesses that she did it all and now she can't live with herself. She happens to have one more bomb, set to go off in 5 minutes. Everyone who wants to live evacuates the area. All but Jess, who stays behind to convince Polly that Alice's death was an accident. She slipped off the ladder. Polly's parents didn't die in that car crash because of anything Polly did. It was an accident too, and there's no need to go all Kats on everyone because of it.

Polly is all good, and tosses the bomb away. And Kats is a hero to everyone above-deck for helping with the lifeboats so quickly. Haha.

The next day we find out that The Rock and Bill are ok. Maria and Nick are joining Bubba and Clair in Vegas to get married themselves so Maria will be able to stay in the country. Mike and Jess are going to go for the trip, and they tease about getting married too. Oy. For some reason, all these teenagers getting married is giving me the creeps. I don't like this ending. I'm going to rewind my brain to when Jessica got blown up... and end the book there in my mind.

So, that's that for Final Friends. So, the covers - who died in The Dance and The Graduation where a chalk outline would be relevant? I would love if the cover of the The Dance showed a chalk outline around ancient Aunty in her deathbed. That's the only way it would be true. And this one would have an outline around Kats's dignity, or something. Except that would be pretty abstract and only we would understand it.

Thursday (yes, this Thursday!) come 'round for The Grave, which one commenter speculated was the worst Christopher Pike book of all time.

Final Friends Book 2: The Dance

2008-11-06T20:43:00.004-04:00

The Party had claimed one victim... The Dance would take another.

He searched for a murderer that couldn't exist.

The Dance - Christopher Pike
1988, 226 pages

I wasn't too excited to read this. After the crushing disappointment that was The Party, I didn't think I could handle another dose so soon. WHY did I/everyone else remember this series being so swank? Here's what happened in Book 2:

About 2 months have passed since Alice's death. Mike's devastation hasn't lessened, and he still wants answers. Why was Alice holding the gun in her right hand? She was left handed. Did the mysterious Clark have anything to do with what happened? Blah blah. I'll leave it at that because Mike could easily subject you to, like, 80 pages on it. But I won't even spend another paragraph on it. You wanna know why? BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO FREAKING MANY OTHER CHARACTERS.

Sara still craves the attention of the bastard, Russ Desmond. Mike and Jess haven't spoken since the big blowup they had re: Alice's "suicide". Jess is still chasing Bill Skater. Nick and Maria haven't spoken. He thinks it's because he was held as a suspect in Alice's death, and it is. Maria's parents of course think that Nick killed Alice because he's black. Clair and Bubba are still going together. Bubba - still pervy. Who else??

OMG - Polly! Polly has lost 20 lbs and is a doll once again. Here's the sad thing: Polly eats only carrots and drinks only Coke this entire book. When I was a kid, I thought that sounded awesome if it made you skinny. Friggin' bastard Pike, giving me body image problems/eating disorder tips.

Sara, as school prez, has made some changes to homecoming this year. It will take place at the beginning of basketball season, outdoors in a tent. She takes $3000 from the school account to book food, music and build a float, and we know this can only end in failure.

Sara's newest hobby has been to stalk Russ Desmond at his grocery store workplace, but usually he's not there. Today he is. She follows him into the stockroom freezer, harassing him and being generally annoying. He doesn't respond in a respectful manner, which, as we learned before, is just how Russ operates. No need to take it personal. But Sara does, and locks him in the freezer. She leaves, forgetting her purse filled with 3 large of the school's money in the stockroom, never to be seen again.

Jessica spends time staked out on Mike's street, looking for a way to reconnect with him. He comes out when he recognizes her car, thinking she's meeting another classmate who lives across the street. Jess says she still owes him a movie, and they make a plan to go out.

The mysterious Clark shows up at Polly's for the first time since Alice died. He opens with "You look exotic, Polly, real tender." That's an... odd compliment. Polly tips Clark off that Mike has been looking for info about him. They kiss a little, then Clark leaves out the back just as there's a knock at the front.

It's beat-up Russ Desmond! For some reason, he thinks Polly's would be a good place to stay for a few nights, even though he's pretty much a professional at ignoring her. I get it though - I usually like people better when I'm using them, too.

At school, the homecoming nominees are named. Jessica and Clair were givens. Cindy "The Book Can't Mention Her Without Mentioning Her Tits, So Neither Can I" Fosmeyer is kind of a surprise pick, but the BIG upset is when Jessica's "tiny Hispanic friend", Maria, is also called as a nominee.

The homecoming dance draws closer and Sara is desperate for money to replace what she lost. Bubba has a rep for being a stock market wiz, so she goes to him for a favour. Bubba is a loathsome human being with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and agrees to help Sara in exchange for sex.

Sara is desperate and says OK. OMG - he's not even attractive! Why does no one notice this? He's FAT. You've got to have some standards. Like, risk missing limbs with your local loan shark. But don't have sex with Bubba. Never have sex with Bubba!

Polly's Aunty is bedridden and senile, so she doesn't get in Polly's way in her mission to get laid by Russ. Russ, a track superstar, enjoys running in the rain, like, away from Polly. "The rain and I are old friends." This guy is in high school? That sounds like something that Shaolin priest would say on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Polly, totally oblivious that there's nothing going on between her and Russ, makes an appointment at the family planning clinic to get birth control.

While at the clinic, Polly sees a haggard-looking, totally out-of-it Clair coming out of one of the offices. Bubba is there to help her, but I still hate him.

Speaking of preventing pregnancy, and possible abortions, remember Mike's mom? She's pregnant again, and she doesn't care WHAT her boyfriend says, she's keeping her baby. I think Mike preached too much after the last abortion.

It's date night for Mike and Jess... or is it? Sorry, no. Jess spent the day with Bill Skater, and hopes to spend the night with him too. She hopes it will be The Night, the "Get lost, virginity! Yo, beat it!" night. So Jess calls Mike to cancel. Yeah, she wants to try to turn on Bill Skater by LYING to him about how bad her grades are. Jess, you are a tool. I don't understand that in these books... even Rela lied about poor school performance to impress a guy - and she was a friggin' robot!!!!!

Jess compliments Bill on his zipper. Oy - she meant his belt. The longer the better, right? She tries a few more tactics before he gets his keys. Huge fail.

Now let's add some CREEPY to the mix: Clark shows up at Polly's, threatens to rape her, tries to turn her against her friends, and tells her to smother Aunty, then leaves. What the hell is up with this guy? Psychological problems, much?

Friday night, there's a basketball game at the school. Nick and Mike play on the team. Mike and Jess schedule a make-up date for Saturday night, after they take their SAT exams. Jess sits with Polly to watch the game. Polly mentions seeing Clair at the family planning clinic, without thinking of why Clair would be at the family planning clinic, in front of the entire cheerleading squad. Rumours run wild about abortions and people (i.e. Jessica) still think Bill Skater could be the father, even though Clair is pretty public about being with Bubba now.

The next day - SAT day! - Jess takes some No-DOZ caffeine pills to combat her all-nighter study fatigue. OH NO! Those aren't No-DOZ! Those are VALIUM! Now what? Mike manages to slip Jess some answers, while she barely remains conscious during the exam, only finding out later that there were 4 different versions of the test and Jess is a total failure.

Meanwhile, at school, some of the b-ball guys have been practicing. The Rock is alone in the locker room when Nick comes in. Nick wants to know why the hell The Rock still has a beef with him? Does he have a death wish, or what? Rock explains that he's a Big Brother to ghetto children, and he's seen Nick there pushing drugs. This is obvious bullshit, which is proven when Nick takes Rock to the hood and makes him knock on a crackhouse's door. The knock is answered by a Nick doppelganger-in-the-eyes-of-white-people, who of course is Stanley, the crack dealer. Well, that settles that.

A bunch of stuff - nothing good, don't worry - happens leading up to the mofo dance to end all dances. Jess is going with Bill Skater. She realizes that Bill is boring as hell, but his body just won't quit. And she realizes that SHE. LOVES. MIKE. OMG. In the meantime, Mike investigates Clark. Abort this mission, Mike. It's boooooring. And I won't judge you the way you judged your mom, I promise.

Bubba found a way to hack into the autopsy database so Mike can see Alice's report. Clair wants Bubba's technical know-how used for another purpose: to make her Homecoming Queen.

It's creepy-time in Pollyland. Russ moved out, leaving a note for Polly. Clark finds the note, and then lurks in the dark until Polly climbs a ladder. Man, she spends a lot of time on ladders. I haven't been on ladders as much in my whole life as she has been in two books! Clark shoves her violently. He is deranged. He runs ahead of injured Polly to go smother Aunty. But he doesn't do it. What a gem of a guy.

Homecoming night, y'all! There are many, MANY pages of basketball strategy. How does that benefit me/the story? Like, I like Nick and all, but come on! Anyways, Nick free throws to win the game, and his pa showed up to watch him succeed. YAY! Maria's parents admire Nick's athleticism, and allow her to reunite with him! Best night ever!!

Sara is pleased with how the float to carry the nominees turned out. Everything is great, except that she's totally overworked. Last year's Queen can't complete her queenly hand-off duties because she gained weight in college. Because of course she did. And now she can never be seen in public again.

And - OMG - Kats is driving the float! KATS is driving the fucking float. You don't ever let Kats drive your float. There's no precedent for that scenario, but don't do it anyway. It gives me that "bad-idea" vibe.

Everyone packs into the tent for the dance, except Mike. He's still computer-geeking it up, looking through records for Alice's autopsy report. Sara and Russ hit the dancefloor, and, as school president, she can't be seen engaging in any scandalous behavior. She doesn't want to be making out all over Russ in front of the whole school. Russ thinks an appropriate reaction is to say, "If you don't kiss me right now, I'll fondle your breasts in front of everybody." Um, how dare he? He better be joking.

Sara takes off in a hurry to help guide the float into the tent. I warned you about Kats, you guys... actually, nevermind. He pulled it off. I mighta misjudged him.

The nominees are all called to the stage. Clair, Jessica, Maria, and "Dog Face/Fun Bags" Fosmeyer await the decision.

And the homecoming queen is................... MARIA GONZALES!!!

Holy crap, Maria winning the crown is like an episode of Murder, She Wrote where the killer turns out to be a janitor who was only on-screen for 6 seconds.

After the dance, Mike finally gets satisfaction: he has Alice's report up on his CRT. Alice had a broken nose. But how? So, there's Mystery #1 to lead us into Book 3.

After the dance, Sara and Jessica clean up the tent, while Maria celebrates by dreamily wandering around on the float with her crown. She climbs to the upper throne part of the homemade stage, only to have it collapse under her. She falls many feet, breaking through the float floor and landing amid rubble and glass. Sara and Jessica run to Maria, and find her twisted and bloody on the ground. Mystery #2: Did someone tamper with the integrity of the float's construction?

After the dance, Polly arrives home to see Clark leaving her yard on his motorbike. Inside, she finds that Aunty is dead. She is still warm though, sooooo Clark probably just killed her. Mystery #3: What did Clark have to do with the death of Aunty... and why?

Jess, Nick, and Mike wait at the hospital for word about Maria. She has a broken back and will likely be paralyzed. Maria asks to see Jessica. She tells Jess that she never should have sold hope that Maria could be popular. Now look what happened, and it's all Jess's fault. Never speak to Maria again, Jess. Do you hear me?

Maria knows a secret about Nick: that he was running away from the upstairs after Alice was shot. She makes it very clear that if Nick thinks he can sit on his ass and not try to find out who messed with the float to sabotage her - well, that just ain't gonna happen.

Mike leaves the hospital and decides to flip through some yearbooks he'd taken from other local high schools in his search for Clark. He spots the guy in a group shot, but not in the singles section with names. But wait! Under the students who didn't pose heading, there he is: Clark Halley. You will not be able to hide from Mike for much longer. Even though I'm pretty sure you already weren't.

Stay tuned for Final Friends 3: The Graduation

The truth is finally revealed.

At a terrible price....

I'm sure no one can wait. Yeah. So, get this: I had a dream night before last that there was a movie being made of Pike's book Master of Murder. And Emile Hirsch was playing Marvin (the lead). Dunno why I dreamed that, but there it is.

See ya next Thursday!

Book List Update

2008-11-01T09:53:00.002-03:00

Hey, remember how back on the old Book List post there were always a few books I couldn't find?

Not anymore!!

Check this out: Hollow Skull, generously provided by reader Kelly. She mailed it to me - internationally even! - and I want to gratefully acknowledge her kindness. Thank you, Kelly!

Aaaaaaand: Execution of Innocence. I ordered this copy from Bookmooch and it was a splendid experience.

So, that's it. Every Christopher Pike YA and adult book will eventually show up on here. I'm sure I'll be Pike-blogging until mid-'09 at least. Hurrah!

Final Friends Book 1: The Party

2008-10-30T21:14:00.005-03:00

It was their last year of school... Maybe the last year of their lives

They wanted to throw a party....

The Party - Christopher Pike
1988, 212 pages

Before we talk about ANYTHING else: check out that red mullet in the lower right corner. Yeeeow! Hurtin' hairdo alert.

Mesa High has gone out of business, so Tabb High will educate Mesa's students from now on. Friends and former Mesa students Jessica, Sara, and Alice plan to have a party at Alice's place to mix the two schools' students together.

Right off the bat we learn that Alice, age 14, is perfect. She doesn't even perspire, because her blonde curls reflect the sun away. Jessica, 16, and brunette, is apparently ewwwy with sweat. You know, because of her hair.

Jess is a little low self-esteemy and it grates. "She believed, like most teenage girls who don't date much, that there was something wrong with her, something missing." Yeah, Jess. Boys complete you. They're not, like, totally annoying or anything either. And Alice's poor sister Polly... don't even go there. "When thin, Polly was a doll." When fat, she's a fucking obscene monster, I guess.

Alice already has a friend at her new school, Michael Olson. Her secret fantasy is to set up Michael and Jessica. Unfortch, Mike and Jess end up sharing a locker and meet before Alice's dream introduction. Is that, like, bad enough to kill yourself over?

The big names at Tabb are Clair Hilrey, head cheerleader; and her boytoy Bill Skater, who is always, always, always called Bill Skater. Also on the hot list: Russ Desmond, track star; and The Rock, football douchewad. On *my* not list: Michael's BFF Bubba, a 5'4" tubba who is irresistible to girls. God, what gives with the girls at this school? Bubba... I kinda hate him. And Mike too. Seriously. "Michael chuckled at the crude manner in which Bubba referred to Jessica." What immature bastards! Even though the reference wasn't even that bad.

One would think that Mike would have more respect for women because he loves his mom like I love scandalous gossip, soooo - OMG - did you hear about Mike's mom? She got knocked up two years ago and had an abortion, even though Mike begged her not to. Mike dreams about the unborn sibling and imagines that it's Alice/would be Alice/is like Alice. In some way. Not really sure. Don't ask me.

To create additional first-week-of-school drama, Alice and Jess practice bitchery by signing Sara up to run for school president. And she wins! More on that later...

Meanwhile, in the weight room, ghetto transfer student Nick is trying to work out. His blackness irritates some of the jockstraps, so The Rock tries to start something. Uh, bad move. Nick knees The Rock's stones, and no one really wants to mess with him after that.

After, Nick needs a Coke but doesn't have enough change. Instead of running from the big black guy, sweet Maria gives him correct change. Awww.

Moments later, Sara shows up at the same machine to buy a 7-Up. Uh, I call shenanigans. Maybe it's a homemade pop machine. Because Coke and 7-Up don't usually get along. Maybe Nick calls all pop "Coke" as some people apparently do. We'll never know, because Sara's change gets stuck and she tips the machine over. Easy, Rambo.

While fleeing the scene of the pop machine massacre, Sara steps into the path of Russ Desmond, who happens to be running a track race. He takes time to see that she's all right, and it's love at first sight (for Sara). We'll come back to that.

Uh, back to Mike! He works at 7Eleven. Nick comes in and pays for a pop with silver dollars. It's obvious that he's down to his last resort money, so Mike offers him a job cleaning the stockroom. He starts straight away, and everything is awesome until a masked guy enters with a gun. Nick karate kicks the gun into the cereal aisle while Mike plays butterfingers with the till. Nick Irish-whips the guy into a beer pyramid, and that's when shit gets real.

It's Kats, local dropout/reject, here to play a prank on Mike. Kats is "one of those rare people that no one respected." Bwah!

Since Mike and Nick hit it off so well, they go to the football game together. Mike meets Alice's mysterious new boyfriend/art instructor, Clark. Clark is a sad sack combo of a freakin' knob and a skeletized creep. He used to be Polly's beau... well, make-out friend, until he dropped her for Alice.

Bubba takes advantage of Bill Skater being on the playing field to ask out Bill's girlfriend, Clair. He bribes her with non-existent U2 tickets, and she agrees to a date. Mike, having developed a crush on Jessica during their locker meet-ups, talks to her for a while and eventually realizes that Jessica is the girl that Alice has mentioned to him. He's embarrassed that Alice has told Jessica about how Mr. Fantastic he is. Plus, Jess is totally digging Bill Skater.

Polly, being a lardy outcast, takes a walk alone during the game. She comes upon a drunken fiend with a ax chopping the hell out of a schoolyard tree. It's Russ Desmond, track star. I guess his race didn't go so good. He got kicked off the team or something. He thinks Polly is Sara, which is farfetched as hell, because isn't Polly fat or something? I'm never sure, because it's not like it's brought up every time Polly is mentioned or anything. Anyways, Polly decides to take advantage of the mix up and drives Russ home.

Later on, Bubba gives Mike and Nick a pick-up-chicks lesson so they can bag Jessica and Maria. Mike finds Jessica studying her chem book. She's been having problems with the lab lingo, and Mike edited the chem manual, so she asks if he'll tutor her in exchange for her taking him to a movie. Ha, that was easy.

Nick is braver, but not as smooth. Maria is carrying a bag of oranges in the hallway when Nick spots her. She gives him one, and he tries to pull the casual-guy-leaning-against-wall/locker/etc-with-arm-above-girl's-head, but fails miz when the orange IN HIS LEANING HAND is squished and squirts into Maria's eye. That would hurt. She must be really soft spoken, because she didn't even swear. And she actually agrees to a date with this oaf.

It's later again, and in the meantime Sara used her school president gig to get Russ Desmond back on the track team. Now everyone is gathered to watch him race. After the race, Sara and Russ talk. In Russ's mind Sara is Sara, but "Sara" also includes Polly from the night of the football game, and he wants his ax back out of her car trunk.

The whole thing makes no sense to Sara, and he totally doesn't appreciate that Sara got him back onto the team, so she storms away. Russ asks Jessica, who was standing nearby, if Sara's got her period or what. Soooo, ignoring that fact that Russ is a complete bastard, Jess sets him up on a date with Sara. Why she did that, and why he agreed to it... maybe Book 2 will explain.

So, next it's date night. Bubba has his phony U2 concert with Clair, Mike and Jess, Nick and Maria, and Sara and Russ all have dates. Despite all starting the night on their individual ways, the four couples meet in line at the movies.

Some dates have been good. Bubba and Clair really hit it off in the back of his car, even though he lied. Maria confided in Nick that her family are illegal aliens. Mike and Jess bore me. And "The Date That Should Never Have Happened" starring Russ and Sara. He was late, he was disheveled, he was half lit, the only reason he showed up at all was because Jess called to harass him, and now he has no money for movie tickets. Aaaaaaand, to make a terrible night worse, Sara finds out that the reason Russ is being distant/a douche is because he didn't actually want to go out with her!!! Sara runs away crying, and Jessica and Mike cut their night short to drive her home.

After dropping off Sara, Jess tells Mike to take his chem help and shove it. Ok, not really. I wish! She just says she won't be needing him. It's because she doesn't want to take time away from his own studies, but he doesn't know that and ends up all demoralized.

Mike avoids Jess all week before the party. He sees her getting closer to Bill Skater and gives up all hope.

TGI P(arty) N(ight). Polly tries hanging out with Russ, but he doesn't know her, remember? Bubba wants to hang out with Clair, but she doesn't want to be seen with him around her friends. OMG - that is sooooo Breakfast Club. Mike spots Jess and Bill Skater talking and destroys a charades game in anger... just kidding. It was a ping pong table. There are no charades at this party.

Polly and Alice try to keep a close eye on the house. Their parents are dead, so they live with an elderly aunt, who has been sent away for the night. They have a little confrontation upstairs when Polly bugs Alice about where Clark is and Alice says she isn't seeing him anymore, and then leaves in anger without getting the paper cups out of the top of the closet like she was supposed to.

Since there's a ladder handy, Polly changes a burnt out light in one of the bedrooms. Her hands are a little wet and she is electric-charged to the ground. She's a'ight, though. No worries. When Polly goes back downstairs, she finds that the party is getting out of hand.

Ways To Tell The Party Is Out Of Control: A Simple Guide:
#1: Kats is in the house. You don't ever let Kats in your house.
#2: Jessica is looking for a way to lose her virginity to Bill Skater.
#3: Clair is using lines like: "Let's go, big boy... Time to get wet... Time to get down" to get Bill Skater's attention back.
#4: The Rock is ready for Round 2 with Nick.

Ooooh, let's elaborate on that one. A coupla meatheads hold Nick in the pool while The Rock takes Nick's shorts off, leaving him naked, kneeling, in the shallow end. Bubba loves fights, and showing off his wang, so he gives his trunks to Nick so Nick can kill The Rock.

It's a major rumble, with the football team featuring The Rock vs. Nick and possibly Mike, if he doesn't wuss out. Polly's not gonna put up with the nonsense, and tosses chlorine powder into The Rock's eyes.

That kinda kills the party.

Mike and Alice take advantage of the quiet to have a nice conversation about Jessica and stuff. The few people left are in other parts of the house doing different stuff. That's all I can tell you, or else this recap is gonna run to novella length. Anyways, Nick goes upstairs to the can. The atmosphere is eerie. There's a gunshot. The following people gather to find Alice on the floor with a gun in her mouth: Mike, Nick, Maria, Sara, Polly, Jessica, Kats, Bill, Bubba, Clair, and The Rock. And maybe Russ Desmond. He says he was "sleeping" in another room, but seriously, who doesn't hear gunshots and wake up?

Just like in Remember Me, a suicide funeral gets a poor turnout. What's WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!??? Don't you remember Alice is perfect???

The police had held Nick, Russ, The Rock, and Kats. Kats owned the gun Alice (or someone) used. Nick's fingerprints were on it, but he'd snatched it away from Alice when they found the body. The deal is that because of Nick's location when the shot was fired, there's no way anyone else shot Alice unless he or she could walk through walls.

Nick lost his new job, and Maria won't talk to him because of all this. Mike shadows the cop on the case, Lt. Keller. Mike knows Alice wouldn't kill herself, and MUST PROVE IT. He confronts Keller with some new theories, which, in my opinion, need work.

Somehow, Mike is allowed into Alice's house alone and unsupervised to draw a diagram of the rooms in the house and where everyone was when Alice was killed. Jessica shows up to pack some things for Polly, who is sedated in hospital.

Mike is blind with rage at Jessica for saying to the cop that yeah, it did look like a suicide. He knows someone killed Alice. Someone! Another person... or maybe a couple of people... or MAYBE all of them working together!! Haha, how would they pull that off? There's like 76.5 characters in this book. Why couldn't more of them have died NOW, so I don't need to bother with them next book?

See you next week for the middle installment of the Final Friends trilogy, and this weekend I'll be posting some very special blog info, so stay tuned for that. Happy Halloween!!!

Google Hits: The Raunchy Remix

2008-10-28T05:36:00.001-03:00

So, apparently this blog is raunch-tastic. Blame Christopher Pike, I guess. I mean, I'm not some pervy person trying to attract creeps to my blog. Certainly not! But it seems like whenever they hit me up Google-style, it's from a sexual search term.

Searches, Sexual

* Shena's sex tape

* massage hidden camera blogspot com

* locker room showering together

* There was even one - jeez, I probably shouldn't even... ehhhh, you guy(s) don't judge - that was like: "preteen erotic stories". I don't remember if that's it exactly, and my stats thingy doesn't save stuff for more than, like, five days, but it was creepy. Trust me, Like Pike does NOT want to be associated AT ALL with the kind of sites that you're gonna see in "preteen erotic stories" search results.

Also:

90s-Related Searches

* the 90s had no culture

* 90's pop bands.. backstreet boys, nsync, etc.

* song in the philippines 90's foreign songs

* 90's lame music

* embarresing pop culture of the 90's

* creative homemade backstreet boy t shirts

* backstreet boys bed sheets

Ok, question: is there REALLY so little written about Backstreet Boys on the internet that my freaking blog with one BSB-related post has to show up in the results? That's sad. It kinda makes me want to do a BSB blog side project and scan all my pin-ups and articles and, like, gossip about who's cutest in each pic! OMG! That would be sooooo aweso- ...actually, on second thought, who would be the target audience for a blog like that??... Ohhhhh. Only me.

And:

Oddities

* trapped in kitchen scavenger hunt movie

* falling into hell clip

* betty sue abortion
This could have been a legit Whisper of Death inquiry, but the person didn't stick around at all. I checked out the search, and I liked one of the other site descriptions that was like, "Get your abortion advice here, not from some Betty Sue down the street". I don't know why I like that, but I do.

I just thought this one was cute!

* in remember me 2: the return are peter and shari still together?

And, my fave:

* ya lit and scaffolding
What the hell was the desired result here? Like, a list of instances of scaffolding in young adult novels? Would that even ever exist? Too bizarre. I don't really consider the inclusion of scaffolding to be such a high point that I actively look for it in books.

Anyways, Thursday is Final Friends Book 1: The Party. OMG, it is sooooo not as awesome as I remembered. See ya!

Spooksville Marathon: Part 1

2008-10-26T12:47:00.011-03:00

Spooksville #13 - Creature in the Teacher

"Their teacher was not normal."

"Adam never imagined his first day of school would be so bad."

So, a down-on-his-luck alien tries to find a home on Earth for his race of alien people whose home planet has been destroyed, but the Spooksville gang is all: "Nuh uh, we don't think so", because these aliens, like, eat hamsters and disguise themselves as schoolteachers, and the alien teacher kidnapped the class wimp and took him to outer space.

After transporting the brave kids onto the alien spaceship to rescue Wimpy, they land in Africa, and then use a time travel thing to send the aliens back in time to live on Earth in dinosaur times, on the condition that they don't change anything and find somewhere else in live within ten thousand years.

The end.

Spooksville #17 - The Thing in the Closet

"It was real. It was scary. It was not nice."

"Most kids are afraid there might be a monster in their closet."

So, by being afraid of her closet, Cindy opened a fear portal into a land called Centrae. An elf boy helps her find her way while she waits for her friends to rescue her. The others show up in time to help Cindy and elf boy sort out some turmoil involving evil beings who can only be defeated by being laughed at, then they all go home.

The end.

Spooksville #23 - Phone Fear

"The evil was in the phone lines."

"The gang did not understand who or what was calling."

So, Bryce, this candyass kid with a cell phone, starts getting crazy calls telling him to do stuff that he's obvs not gonna do, like burn down his mail carrier's house. The caller is named Nernit. Watch leaps to the conclusion that it's actually spelled "Neernitt" and it's the Internet calling. OMG - the internet is after us! I guess after everything else I've accepted from Pike, I can't start nitpicking now.

Neernitt has an army of followers who hold Watch, Bryce, and their friends captive until they agree to build Neernitt a body. Being the internet is cool and all, but moving around is apparently better.

Watch - I dunno - makes a body out of a robot friend he had who died in an earlier book, and then rigs it to trap Neernitt inside it once he puts his - I dunno - mental prowess into the body.

More to come...

The Star Group

2008-10-23T08:29:00.002-03:00

To be human and to be touched by the stars.

They thought they were normal. They thought wrong.

The Star Group - Christopher Pike
1997, 182 pages

This book is easily the worst yet. The best thing about this book? It didn't crack the 200 page mark!! It wasn't loathsome, it was just boring and didn't even try to explain itself or make any sense.

The back of the book description says: "There are seven of them, three guys and four girls. Driven to return to a lonely spot where tragedy struck before". Then it goes on to mention alien contact, and I was like: "Chain Letter meets The Visitor? This could be... good?? Bad? Neutral? Or really fffreaking terrible. With a triple F. I never know with stuff published after '95."

Oh, and: there's only 6 characters. One must have gotten written out, which is probably the best thing that has happened to my life in weeks. Unless I miscounted. Or fell asleep. Or died, then my neighbour/brother/cat/boyfriend/goldfish gave up their life force so I could come back and finish reading the book. Why, oh, why couldn't they have just let me stay dead?!?

Does it always have to be aliens, by the way? Can't it ever just be lizard people? Wait a tick... maybe it can be both! Check it out -> -> ->

Meet The Star Group
Daniel - has crush on Gale
Gale - hot chick
Sal - black guy, Teri's boyfriend
Teri - valedictorian/entrepreneur
Jimmy - guy, Shena's boyfriend
Shena - her face was mangled in a car battery acid accident

Imagine forty pages of surfing and suicide threats. I'm gonna skip all that. The interesting points:

1) surfing can be dangerous,
2) it's unusual for black guys to surf,
3) Shena's face is messed up and people at school call her "Toast,
4) kids can be cruel,
5) Dan is into "esoteric literature" and always refers to it as such,
6) Dan is a pompous fucker.

Dan has had a crush on Gale for four years, and now that it's graduation night, it's his last chance to ask her out. He approaches her as she sits on a picnic table outside school wearing Peter Nichols from Remember Me's death outfit: baggy white shorts and a red t-shirt. Christopher Pike = the opposite of Ann M. Martin (and her infinite ghostwriter army). He ALWAYS uses the same goddamn outfits. He has never described a pattern printed on a garment. Sometimes I think that's what these books need: more paisley.

Gale agrees to go to the Safe Grad (except that's not what they call it - is there a special name for it in the US?) event at Disneyland with Dan. Yay! Dan celebrates by visiting his favourite used book store to browse the New Age/Occult section. I wish he woulda bought a copy of that Sylvia Browne book about where animals go when they die. That would have changed the rest of this book, fo' sho'.

But he didn't. He bought "The Magnetic Reality" and learned how to use a magnet to communicate with... E.T.!! He gets a message from "Mentor", an alien thing that "is Dan and is not Dan." It lives 642 light years away in Ortee. It is Dan's soul. Dan and his pals are all from space and need to be awakened to their purpose. Get me outta here.

Dan takes the news pretty well and goes to Disneyland with his friends. Shena has a breakdown when her boyfriend, Jimmy, flirts with another girl. She tries to commit suicide on the Matterhorn. It wasn't as exciting as it sounds.

After the park closes, Dan goes to Gale's house. She's got incense and is into meditation. Dan's especially interested in that because he reads "a lot of esoteric literature". What a bunch of phonies these kids are. I wish this book had a bully. Just pop into the scene and give Dan a wedgie.

But wait! Now it gets explicit. Even - raunchy? I'm suddenly wayyyy more into this! Dan and Gale get jiggy in the hot tub. Nudity! Touching!! SEX!!! Daniel admits it was his first time. Gale says she's slept with someone from school, but won't say who.

The next afternoon, Dan is home alone. He contacts Mentor, who instructs him to set up a tape recorder and relax. Dan channels Mentor. Mentor speaks through Dan's voice as Dan goes into a trance.

He listens to the tape and it's the exact same crap as the Ouija board said in The Visitor. Right down to the different density beings. Dan's made a sacrifice and given up his outer space self to live in a human body on Earth. But this is the first he's heard of it, so it's not that bad. Evolution. Reincarnation. Dan's friends - "They, too, are spacemen."

Oh, good. Gale shows up. Mo' sexxxin'. Dan does his thang (first asking, "Are we using any form of birth control here?" How responsible.), then goes to sleep. He wakes up to find Gale listening to the Mentor tape. The Mentor had instructed the 6 (I was right!) of them to gather in an isolated location. The power when they all get together and learn their mission will be apparently extraordinary.

So, Shena rents a cabin in the woods at Crystal Lake. Christ, that's where Jason Voorhees killed everyone! Well, we know Dan and Gale aren't going to make it. Skaaaaanks!

The gang gathers on the porch to talk. Sal brought a gun. You can take the black male character out of the ghetto... but apparently Pike wants to leave him there. Dan brought copper sheets and gemstones, per Mentor's orders. They start talking, the way friends do, about outer space and the sky. It's so nice and quiet. Until *GASP* - sorry, false alarm. Nothing exciting. Just Jimmy going off on a tangent about how NASA is bullshit, science sucks, space exploration benefits no one, and galaxy pictures have "no relevance to daily life". And the moon landing was faked. Ok, he didn't take it that far. I wish! Maybe next outburst. This book needs more conspiracy theorists. And bullies. And paisley. Maybe a few Cosby sweaters. I'm gonna have a whole wishlist to send to Mr. Pike!

Dan segues into talking about Mentor and, oddly, his buddies don't heckle him. He sets up the gemstones and channels Mentor for everyone to hear. He talks about God, the periodic table of elements (again, this is supposed to thrill teens?), yantra, akasha (don't ask), and the seven centres of the body. Spine, groin, gut, heart, throat, forehead, crown. Dan's mind E X P A N D S !

The next day, no one clearly remembers what had happened. Dan checks in with his friends. Sal seems to have superhuman strength. Jimmy can somehow see a bag of gold buried 3 feet underground one mile away.

The girls don't seem to have any special symptoms... but wait! Gale fell and cut herself. Teri gives her a head massage and her cuts heal instantly. Shena begs Teri to try to heal her face, but it doesn't work.

They contact Mentor. Jimmy wants to know if he can keep the gold he found. Sal wants to use his strength to play football. Mentor can only guide. He can't control what they do. Dan envisions 6... I dunno - things which represent all of them. But one is different: vaguely reptilian. Suuuuure. Now you bring the lizards into it! There's only 30 pages left. God, I only ask for one thing, Pike: lizard aliens and you do it half-assed! And Mentor WON'T fix Shena's face. Now is not the time. Shena freaks out in anger and runs away.

Dan searches the woods for 3 hours before stopping to drink from a tranquil woodland stream. The water is red. He notices that Jimmy is facedown in the water with his head bashed in. Dan runs back to the cabin, meeting Gale on the way. There are so many suspects. Angry Shena, Super-strength Sal, Dan himself unknowingly being controlled by Mentor. Or, like, anyone else for any reason that could possibly materialize in this plot.

Shena still hasn't shown up back at the cabin, so Sal gets his gun and heads a search party to find her. Everyone pretty much thinks she attacked and killed Jimmy. They find her in a cave and Sal shoots her in the side. He says that she made a lizard tongue of flames try to burn him. Ok, guys, I think it's time to take the gun AWAY from Sal. The kids carry Shena out of the woods and take her to the hospital.

At the hospital a bunch o' stuff (finally!!!) happens. Sal tries to run from cops and gets shot and killed. Teri uses all of her healing life force to bring Shena back from her terminal life-support gunshot wound condition... and dies. Holy crap, it's a mass massacre (of characters that were, like, barely necessary to the story).

Later, Dan is typing the whole story of the Star Group and Mentor to send to Shena via modem. Gale shows up and takes control of Dan's free will. She forces him to keep typing. Dan compares Gale to a snake. Gale says that she mangled Shena's face on purpose so she would look scaly and Dan would suspect her of being the evil reptile and not Gale.

And you remember how Gale wasn't a virgin? Turns out she's slept with EVERYONE. Sal! Jimmy!! Shena!!! She blackmailed them all into keeping quiet.

Gale wants Dan to shoot himself. He is compelled to shoot his right thigh. Now Gale tells him he can: A) Kill himself, or B) Become evil with Gale for the next billion years and kill Shena at the first opportunity. Dan sends his story off to Shena, then shoots himself in the mouth.

The epilogue is Shena at the fivefold funeral. Everyone is dead now. She is the only survivor. Her face is back to perfection from Teri's healforce. She has Dan's story on her computer and has kept it secret. No one needs to know what happened because she, Shena, was the real mastermind who set all this shit up to stop Gale, and just figured that her friends wouldn't mind being sacrificed for the cause. Or something.

So, that's The Star Group. Back next week with Final Friends: The Party.

The Anti-Pike II: More Stuff That I Read

2008-10-19T21:20:00.004-03:00

The jeezly book is called Heads. After that, how can anything go right?

So, a neuroscientist, John, and Susan, his girlfriend/research assistant, have an enjoyable life together somewhere in possibly DC, or maybe just nearby.

John is mangled and burnt in a car crash. His prognosis is poor. Michael, a brain science researcher working on top secret shiz for the government, has been working on getting John to come work with him and share his research. John doesn't like the secrecy, and prefers to work alone.

Michael's work actually involves removing heads offa near-dead candidates in order to increase brain function from the standard 10%, which apparently is easy to do once heads don't have bodies to worry about.

Of course, Michael illegally enrolls critically injured John into the program so he can force him to continue his research. The deal is that you're listed as dead, buried, and only your head survives in this secret lab.

In addition, Michael convinces Susan to come work for him, to help sort out John's research as his head comes up with new stuff. She's not allowed into the wing with the heads, and has no idea what the project is all about or that John is still technically alive. Michael starts sleeping with Susan, natch, much to the chagrin of his business associate, Katherine, who is his girlfriend. But Susan is irresistible, what with her "slender, full-bosomed body" and her "long leggy casual look". Yeah, I know I can never look at long legs without thinking how appropriate they are for informal occasions.

There's a whole team of lab scientists, including Toni, an Asian-American (God, not "Asiatic" or "Oriental". I know this thing was published in '85, but wow, that seems out of date!) lesbian, and Al, a giant man who can imitate any voice. I swear, these people are only there to set up more horrible sex talk/fantasies. Ie: women's chests "thrusting" against their shirts (I can't lie, there's a lotta pump action in that area), "pubic contour" (whoa, sexy! that is such arousing language.... not), and "his buttocks like marble". Why do these authors always have to bring the marble buttocks into it???

Eventually Susan gets suspicious and steals a keycard to break into the heads area. She is shocked and disgusted by what she finds. John's head viciously taunts her, telling her to unzip his neck thingy and check out his stump if she really wants to be grossed out. But you know what though? I don't think Susan wants to be grossed out. That wasn't really her intention when she went in there.

Since this whole thing is government-sponsored, Susan is put under constant surveillance in case she wants to, you know, tell anyone about the heads. And, because she already knows what's up there, she's given access to see John and the other heads whenever she wants.

John is trying to find a way to break into the 1985 internet and post his research findings, and blow the whistle on what's going on in this hospital. He finds the password, and is too threatening, so the other doctors kill him.

With John gone, Susan is considered a loose cannon. The only thing to do is to remove her head so they can keep her intelligence and knowledge, and not have to worry about, like, anything else.

Susan sets a fire in the OR right before her decapitation, and escapes. She knocks out Katherine, Michael's lady friend, and steals her doctor duds so she can escape unnoticed. Al, the other doctor, comes upon Katherine's unconscious body and, deciding that he never really liked her, disguises her as Susan and makes Michael unknowingly decapitate his own girlfriend.

Yeah, that's the ending. I did read this start to fin, by the way. Now I need to, like, compost this thing so I never run across it again. Stay tuned for The Star Group on Thursday - it's the worst. I would friggin' kill the shit out of it... if I knew how. And start getting excited for Final Friends, coming up Halloween week.

The Immortal

2008-10-16T20:00:00.002-03:00

The Goddess wanted a human body....

The ancient artifact was cursed.

The Immortal - Christopher Pike
1993, 213 pages

The Immortal: It's a book, and, like, stuff happens. I stopped taking notes halfway through because I was too busy watching election results and being depressed. So, this recap could be kinda iffy. I apologize in advance.

GODS:
Sryope - awesome storyteller, daughter of a muse
Phthia - father unknown

MORTALS:
Josie - almost died a year ago from some kind of cardiac condition
Helen - almost died a year ago from a suicide attempt
Tom - Oxford student who chills in Greece during his vacations
Pascal - French guy, Tom's buddy
Josie's Dad - washed-up Hollywood screenwriter
Silk - Josie's dad's girlfriend, booze-aholic

Back in the time of Greek gods there were two friends, Sryope and Phthia. Sryope liked this guy, and so did Phthia. Phthia made the guy swear a pledge to be faithful only to her. I don't remember the details, but basically she started screwing everyone and he was sad and lonely. So Sryope challenged Phthia to a storytelling competition. If Phthia lost, she would release the guy from his oath, so he and Sryope could hook up.

Sryope gathered a crowd and told a crazy story about a Fury disguising itself as a dude and knocking up a goddess. This hits a sore spot with Phthia, since that's the story of her own parentage, and being half-Fury would REALLY be frowned upon. Phthia goes ballistic and runs off, losing by default. Sryope and dude are free to be together... or are they??

In the present, Josie is on a flight from L.A. to Athens, along with her dad, dad's lady friend "Silk", and Josie's BFF Helen. They're flying Swiss Air. I'm going to segue outta Pikeland for 2 seconds and tell ya that Swiss Air flight 111 actually CRASHED into the ocean near where I live. It was 10 years ago last month, which is crazy to believe, because it happened the night before my very first day of high school. I'm getting oooold.

Aaaannnd back to the story! Let's get the parallels out of the way. Helen used to have a boyfriend, Ralph. They kind of broke up, then Josie and Ralph dated. Scandalicious! Helen was weird about it for a while, but it's all good now that's Ralph's moved away. There's more to come on the boy front, btw. Also, Josie's a master storyteller. The only reason her dad's career isn't totally in the can is because she helps him with ideas. For example, right now he's working on this thing about the future, and humans, and aliens, and earth is destroyed and the spaceship captain's wife is leaving him, now he's gonna have a tender moment with an alien woman (named Vani, same as in The Tachyon Web), and blah blah I am so tired of this unnecessary crap every single book and I won't be speaking of it again.

So, they arrive in Athens and take another flight to the island of Mykonos. Helen met a guy, Tom, when she vacationed in Greece last year and can't wait to see him again. Tom works in a bar on the beach, which is convenient because Josie almost drowns and he saves her. To Helen's anger and chagrin, Tom and Josie bond. Josie wants Tom's bod and doesn't even care who gets hurt. Whoa. Drama.

The girls make a date with Tom and his friend Pascal. The four of them hang out until late. Pascal leaves first. Helen wants Josie to leave too, but Josie pretty much says that she's a California girl and she wants to bang Tom, so suck it, Helen because Josie isn't going anywhere.

Tom pays more attention to Josie than Helen, so Helen figures that since she can't out-interesting Josie, she's going to out-drink her. Helen orders many scotch and sodas, then PUKES all over the floor/Tom's sandals. Josie estimates the vomit volume at a half-gallon. That's a pretty precise Imperial measurement. I can't even look at puke long enough to assess the amount, so good on Josie, I guess.

They carry Helen out of the bar, and Josie tries to kiss Tom. He responds by running away.

Josie and Helen make it back to the hotel and go to bed. Josie dreams about wearing a toga and being served as a goddess would be. She wakes up with no hangover and believes that her dream kept her from feeling the effects of her boozin'.

The plan for the day is to visit the nearby island of Delos. It's uninhabited and covered in ruins. Josie touches the pillars and feels an electric jolt. There's something special about the place. Helen had noticed it too, when she came here after her suicide attempt. "Things change when you almost die."

Back at the hotel, Helen naps, so Josie takes the opportunity to go see Tom. She wants to go out with him... alone. Then she realizes she's being "horribly bitchy" to Helen about the whole situation. Hello! Helen has a history with this guy, and yer bein' a ho, Jo.

When Helen wakes up, she says she'd like to call Tom and Pascal to go out again. Really? You friggin' chucked all over Tom's sandaled feet. I would avoid someone forever if I did that. For-ever... For-ever...

Josie tries to convince Helen that Pascal is interested in her, to make her back up offa Tom. This conversation has the potential to go really sour, but Helen changes the topic by insulting Josie's dad. Hey, whatever works to keep the friendship alive. And from what I've heard, he actually is "such a hack".

Josie naps before they go out. You know, there's a lot of sleeping in this book. Naps, full night sleeps, the works. The first couple sleep sequences were DREAMLESS. Then it took a turn for the severely lamer and now it's ALL DREAMS. How dare Pike fake me out with no dreams, then - suddenly - dreams!

This dream is about the origin of Apollo, and Josie is a goddess, and she's praying to other gods to get help for her human devotees. Whatevs.

So, the four of them go out again. Josie tells Helen that she spoke to Tom earlier and made plans to pretty much ditch Pascal and Helen together and go off alone. Helen screams that Ralph (remember, the old boyfriend they shared?) died of natural causes last year after he moved. She didn't tell Josie because she didn't deserve to know. These girls are the worst best friends ever!

Helen storms off, so Josie and Tom take a romantic row boat ride. Tom's rowing, and they're talking, and it's so nice... then shit gets real. The wind picks up and their oar floats away and Tom tries to swim after it and is carried out of sight. Josie, alone in the boat, tries to bail out water and, like, not die. She washes up on Delos, which is totally deserted at night. She climbs the embankment and sees the ruins in the moonlight. Except... they're not ruins. It's all brand new and there's people. What. Josie walks toward the archeologist's shed for shelter, but the people there think she's a goddess and want to serve her.

When Josie awakens, she finds the island in the same condition that it's always been: old and crumbly. Next to her, there's a small statue of a goddess. Josie feels connected to the statue and comes up with a plan to sneak it off the island and keep it.

She waits for the tour boats to come over, then goes back to Mykonos on one of the return trips. Her dad just happens to be on the beach talking to a police officer. There are boats everywhere searching for her. Tom is ok, and he's out looking for her with Helen and Pascal.

Turns out that while Tom frantically searched the seas for Josie's body, Pascal and Helen flirted and rubbed each other with lotion. Um, inappropriate much? BFF is presumed dead, and this is how Helen acts? While she's supposed to be looking for the body!?!? The good thing is Josie is alive and now she can have Tom all to herself!!

Josie and Tom celebrate their survival by going to a secluded nude beach. Josie gets naked right away, but Tom won't and actually runs away from her. God, what is up with this guy? Josie says something rottenly bitchy, like that she knows about him and Pascal being lovers. But apparently that's not it. Tom just doesn't want to do anything without condoms.

Josie shows Tom the statue she'd stolen from Delos, but she won't let him touch it. She thinks that if he touched it, he would die.

Back at the hotel, they have a "Josie Lives" celebratory BBQ. Silk and Helen make burgers and chicken and lamb and other foodstuffs. Afterwards, it's either night or naptime because Josie's all up in dreamland's grill... AGAIN. She dreams of the goddesses. Sryope is on trial for the murder of Phthia. B-b-but how? Phthia is a goddess, how could she ever be killed? She is immortal.

When Josie wakes up, she is in terrible pain. She goes for a walk, and calls Tom when she gets home. He's also ill. Josie rushes to his place to find him in awful shape. Pascal takes them both to the medical centre. While Tom is being examined, Josie collapses and resumes her dream:

Sryope is questioned about her friendship with Phthia, her relationship with the dude they both wanted, and her interference in the lives of humans. There are about 2000 modern day humans that she helps and inspires with their creative lives. The lawyer, or who/whatever is questioning her, brings out hidden camera footage of Sryope innocently helping Josie's dad with his screenwriting, helping Josie with school assignments, etc.

But then this trial shit gets real: the lawyer presents footage of Josie and Helen having a sleepover. Sryope comes in from the ceiling, reaches into Josie's chest and grabs her heart, drags her to the can, makes her empty a bunch of pill capsules into a cup of water, drags her back to Helen's side, and forces Josie to force Helen to drink it. This hardcore heart-grabbing is what caused Josie's medical troubles last summer.

And it gets worse. There are images of Helen in a hospital bed, gravely ill. While holding Phthia by a noose of thorns, Sryope descends from the ceiling, spits on Helen, which causes her monitors to all go crazy, then shoves Phthia into Helen's body. Phthia is now mortal!

Sryope knows she is innocent, and that the only type of being who could do this shapeshifting thing is a Fury, like Phthia's father. Who also carries a noose of thorns. Sryope can't prove her innocence, so she must be sentenced.

She is to be given the same fate she forced upon Phthia: to become mortal. She is pulled through space and time, and put into Josie's body, as she lies in the hospital.

Josie wakes up in the hospital. Helen is by her side. Josie asks Helen what she did, poison them or what? Helen says she ground up glass and added it to Josie's BBQ burgers. Josie and Tom's insides have been finely shredded and there's no way to repair it.

Phthia, as Helen, is still pissed that Sryope told that story about the goddess with a Fury for a father. She enlisted her Fury father to help her set up Sryope for revenge, now she needs to pay her father back by giving him what he wants: human flesh. She plans to sacrifice Pascal on Delos... tonight! Just like she sacrificed Ralph a year ago when she first became mortal!

Josie writes a letter to her dad, telling him how to end his screenplay and telling him that she's gonna die. She tells Tom what's going on, and even though he thinks it's hella farfetched, he leaves the hospital with her. They steal a boat and drive to Delos. Tom is really sick by the time they get there, but Josie is able to climb to where Helen and Pascal are.

Helen has a gun and has mesmerized Pascal into thinking the gun is her. Like, touch the gun, lick the gun, kiss the gun. I don't get this book sometimes. Josie distracts Helen with the flash from her camera, then shoots her 6 times in the chest. Gun shooting, not photography shooting. That wouldn't be effective in this situation at all.

Since Josie took the goddess statue from Delos, it's turned from stone into crystal. She cracks it open and it's full of fluid. Her blood. She gives it to Tom to drink, saving his life. Then Josie's body dies, with Sryope inside.

There's a bunch more stuff throughout the book about the gods, but it's way too detailed for me to mess with in this recap. I wasn't thrilled with this one. For an entirely different and much much more entertaining piece of fiction about the Greek gods and goddesses, check out Gods Behaving Badly by UK author Marie Phillips. That's all for now!!

The Anti-Pike: Other Stuff That I Read

2008-10-11T13:45:00.003-03:00

Reading is educational.
Reading is fun.
Reading the following books
Just SHOULDN'T BE DONE!

An Original Sin by Nina Bangs. Bangs. And she writes raunchy romance novels. Strike one.

This thing turned up at my workplace book drive, which sent me on weeks-long mission to discover which of my co-workers was the donor and original owner of An Original Sin.

I made a list of suspect co-workers based on who I thought would most enjoy a story of the devil, bored, and in cat form, sending both a 1700s Scottish warrior-guy and a woman who lives in the year 2300 where men are extinct, to the year 2000 where they find conflict and romance as the devil cat stirs shit up between them.

I spoke to each suspect, telling them I had a great idea for a story I wanted to write, then I described the plot of An Original Sin. I waited for someone to say: "Hey, I already read a book with that plot. It's called An Original Sin by Nina Bangs. Actually, you might like it. There's an unwanted copy in the book drive box, if you want to check it out." I never found out who donated it, by the way. I feel that this person probably knows I only want to make fun of her and has taken steps to throw me off her trail.

So, I stole the book from the sale leftovers and keep it at my desk, where I sometimes hold random read-alouds from the text. It is bad. It's not even the fun kind of raunch-tastic bad. It's almost not even readable, mainly because all the guy's dialogue is written in a treacherous Scottish accent, which makes Ann M. Martin's Logan Bruno accent look competent.

Accent Example: "Ye could drain a man dry wi' only yer stare... If I dinna please ye, I might leave yer bed wi' my manhood a wee shriveled berry."

The whole book, guys, the WHOLE BOOK is like this! And this is me complaining! I say "yer"! (Recently I've been trying to stop talking like a hick. No more yer and fer... also trying to pronounce 'about' more Americanly (a-b-ow-t), rather than 'a-boat' - not aboot! NEVER aboot! - but it's hard to change stuff like that. I digress...).
Hey, check that cover close up! Ok, I have spent literally hours looking at this cover (the book's been propped up in the corner of my cubie since last March), and that guy is not sexy. He looks like a goofball and his kilt thingy looks like a blanket my grandmother used to keep in the trunk of her car.

The back cover tagline is: "MEN'S BODIES WERE HER BUSINESS." If that's not a line for daily usage about your ho-baggiest friends, I don't know what is.

This book is mad ridiculous. I'm sorry if Nina Bangs happens to be, like, someone's aunt or something. The girl character is from the future, like I said. Men are extinct, and her job is to build custom man models for the women of the future. Her most popular models are Stud-Muffin Stuart (not joking!) and (it gets worse!) Hot and Horny Hal. The guy character is an old-fashioned ass of the highest order.

Just to make it even more historically awesome, her name is Four-Two-N "Fortune" MacDonald. He is Leith Campbell. Lotta bad blood between those families. I guess I have to take this seriously now. Ok, it's pretty telling that I accidentally typed "not" instead of "now" like 3 times before my typing psyche would understand the sarcasm.

And not to make out that I've read the whole book, because I totally haven't. But I have researched it to the max. Obviously, there's such a thing as romance novel fans. Then you have your time travel romance fans. And, even more specifically, you have your time travel romance fans who like it best when both partners travel through time. And these fans feel VERY strongly about their preferences.

I was going to do two books, but I think I'll save the other one for next weekend. It's possibly even doozier (more of a doozy? you know what I mean) than this one.

It's time for well-wishes: Canadians, enjoy your Thankgiving. Americans, enjoy observing Columbus day. Other citizens, just have a good one doin' what yer doin'. I'm going home for the weekend to freeload turkey, pie, and whatever other baked goods I can get into me. Visit Like Pike on Thursday to get the scoop on Pike's The Immortal.

Whisper of Death

2008-10-09T21:53:00.006-03:00

They returned home to a dead world....

All the people had vanished.

Whisper of Death - Christopher Pike
1991, 180 pages

Characters, Dead
Betty Sue McCormick

Characters, Living (for now)
Roxanne Wells
Paul "Pepper" Pointzel
Stan Reese
Helter Skater AKA Helter Skelter
Leslie Belle

Pepper and Roxanne meet, flirt, and date. On their first date they go to a horror movie: The Season of Passage, about the second mission to Mars. Dropping names of as-yet unpublished future works, Pike? Yow! That takes skillz! After more dates, they go to Paul's aunt and uncle's horse barn to, um, be alone on the hay bales. You know what I mean.

Pulling a Jamie Lynn Spears, teenage Rox is knocked up. She tells the doctor she's not interested in an abortion, but when she tells Pepper the news, he says he doesn't want to keep it.

Soon the couple find themselves on a weekend trip to nearby Foster, AZ. Five hundred dollars later, Pepper waits in the clinic waiting room, while Roxanne waits on the operating table. She thinks about a classmate, Betty Sue McCormick, who committed suicide recently. BY BURNING. Suicide by burning. I think most people would agree that that is the most unrealistic thing about this book. Of all methods, burning? Get serious.

Roxanne thinks about how Betty Sue's death was such a waste, then questions her own beliefs about the sanctity of life. She decides not to go through with the procedure, dresses, and leaves before the doctor returns.

In the car, Rox tells Pepper that she didn't go through with it. He starts acting all distant and being an ass. Pepper falls asleep shortly after, while Roxanne keeps driving. She sees a figure on the side of the road. A shadowy-lookin' thing dressed all in black with long, bright red hair. Red hair of a colour previously only seen on the head of one Betty Sue McCormick. Rox plans to stop for the hitchhiker, but the person disappears.

They stop for gas at an abandoned gas station. Rox tears out of there, thinking the place was being held up, due to the open till and empty premises. When the kids arrive home in Salem, AZ, it's still early morning. After dropping Pepper off at home, Rox goes to her own place. Her dad is a long distance trucker who is never home and her mom split on them when Rox was only a few days old. Rox soon finds that something strange is going on: the radio and TV are nothing but static, there are no cars on the road, no neighbours answer their doors, no phone calls are answered, and there aren't even any birds in the trees.

Roxanne leaves home, and heads toward downtown, knocking on doors along the way. No one. Nothing. She collapses in the square in the centre of town.

A while later, Pepper shows up with a theory about a possible town evacuation that they missed while they were in Foster not getting an abortion. Roxanne wonders if they're really all alone, when a voice behind them confirms that they are...

Cliff-hanging chapters! Rare. First person narrative? Unheard of until Whisper of Death. And I've read 21 of Christopher Pike's books in the last 3 ½ months. This book is different. It feels different and it reads different. What gives?

The voice belonged to Stan Reese, former child prodigy/school valedictorian, who is smart and cool. Someone pin a medal on this guy. Apparently he's one of those yearbook "Friend to All" types, smart without being a condescending jackass, and has a "rather major problem with his weight". Cool, I love literary lardasses. Rox knows Stan from school, but doesn't think Pepper knows him.

Stan reveals that his hobby is short wave radio... and none of his international friends are online. The whole world is empty! He guesses that maybe a warhead knocked out the communication satellites (or something) and that maybe there's a reason for their entire town to be empty... but probably not.

Being alone in town, and possibly the world, there's only one thing for three teenagers to do... well, two, but surveys says: ROB A BANK!! I'm sure orgy was up there, too. Just not the #1 response.

They break into a bank, only to be startled by gunshots. Roxanne's leg is grazed by a bullet. WTF? Who beat them to it?!

The shooter was Helter Skater, AKA Helter Skelter, a local tough. The gang of four break into the drugstore for bandages, and are surprised when yet another student from their high school shows up. In walks blonde, beautiful Leslie Belle. And nevermind that Rox was just SHOT for frick's sake, because horndog Pepper is ALL up in Leslie's biz.

Five people left in the world, and they decide to temporarily forget the bank robbing and B & E Baskin Robbins. That whole bank robbing thing was silly: if you're breaking and entering and there's no law enforcement around, who needs money (when you can have ice cream)?

Over ice cream treats, they talk about what's happened. And how? Flying saucer? Another dimension? Dreaming? (Interruption from me: "Nooooooooooooo!") Rox mentions the disappearing hitchhiker she'd seen, bringing up the resemblance to B.S. McCormick.

Helter's opinion is that Betty Sue was just a bitch. Stan liked Betty Sue. Leslie thought she was spooky. Pepper keeps quiet. Well, if nothing else, Betty Sue elicits a reaction from everyone and could possibly be the common denominator among everyone present. They decide to go to Betty Sue's house.

Leslie and Betty Sue are neighbours and grew up together, but they had a falling out and haven't been friends in years. Inside Betty Sue's house is a trip. It's full of religious pictures featuring various bible characters and they're all bleeding. I'm picturing a Carrie type mother who forced recitation from her daughter: "Eve was weak! Eve was weak! Say it, woman!"

Betty Sue's diary and some papers have been left out on her desk. They check her diary, which starts at age 10. The first entry describes Leslie's 10th birthday party. Awwww. The diary goes on to wish death on a boy who called Betty Sue just "Betty", and it turns out he did die, horribly, of cancer.

The diary also contains references to Helter and Pepper. And kissing Pepper! Rox isn't pleased, and Pepper suggests that they look at Betty Sue's papers instead, and, like, drop the freakin' diary already, ok?

There are stories written on the pages. The first one is LATI BALL PUTS ON A MASK. It describes a beautiful girl who burns her face on birthday cake candles. Leslie Belle goes ballistic, grabs the diary and papers, and burns them in the gas stove. Singing maniacally, she runs outside into a desert sandstorm and starts shredding the rest of the papers.

Leslie comes out of it and says she's leaving town. She's scared and needs to get the hell out of there. Helter wants to go with her, so they pack up a car, and go to the gas station. Helter checks the tire pressure while Leslie fills the tank. She walks away and lights a smoke, which is odd because she's never smoked before, then comes back to the pump. The gas nozzle falls out and sprays everywhere, and in her surprise, the cigarette falls out of her mouth. Roxanne and Pepper go flying in a whoosh of flames. Leslie gets cooked. Stan says: "Lati Ball blew out her candles."

Stan tries reading what was left of Betty Sue's diary when he pulled it out of the gas stove. It says "I have done so much for her. I made her what she is" about Leslie. Helter remembers that Leslie used to be ugly. Like dog ugly. She should have advertised for an alibi in the want ads, because she, like, totally needed one. He even used to throw rocks at her. Then suddenly she turned pretty. Which apparently Betty Sue caused.

Stan was kinda friends with Betty Sue too. He tells the group that her main hobby was to trap butterflies in glass jars and watch them die from the greenhouse effect. And love it. She got a total kick out of the butterflies not realizing they were in jars and that there was no possibility of escape. Eeeeee-villll!!!

The wind has picked up, but they decide to go back to Betty Sue's neighbourhood to look for scraps of the stories Leslie had ripped up. Rox makes an amateur mistake and goes into the house alone. "I felt something tighten around my throat. A garrote of silver wire spun from a nightmare recorded in black ink on a page of white notebook paper." Isn't that just neat as hell to read?

Rox sees a red and black blurry shadow thing in the mirror. Betty Sue!! She screams and runs outside to find Helter and Pepper chasing after the red shadow thing, and Stan piecing together stories. His theory? Betty Sue wrote them into an empty world.

Stan also tells Roxanne, confidentially, that, according to the diary, Helter had raped Betty Sue. Roxanne - the bitch - immediately goes into victim-blaming overdrive, suggesting that Betty Sue made him do it. Stan's managed to piece a story back to readability. It's called HOLT SKATER TAKES A WALK. In it, Holt walks along a wall until it's very thin and razor sharp, then he slips and slices his whole body into two pieces, balls first. It sounds like Betty Sue wants to punish Helter's junk.

Wanting to share the info, Rox and Stan follow Pepper and Helter to the schoolyard, where they're breaking into the gym to follow the Betty Sue shadow thing. Rox observes that it seems like the guys aren't acting of their own will and thinks that B.S.'s forces are forcing them to chase her.

Being in the gym reminds Rox of her one experience involving Betty Sue. It happened in the locker room showers. Roxanne and Betty Sue were alone, showering after all the other girls had left. Yeah, it's not that kind of story. I friggin' wish! Betty Sue left the shower first, and on the way slipped a bar of soap into Roxanne's hand. It was carved in the shaped of a tiny curled up baby.

Roxanne followed Betty Sue to the lockers and saw B.S. drawing on her own reflection in the mirror with bright red soap, drawing a jar shape around her gut and colouring it in.

In the gym, the kids split up to look around. Suddenly, they hear Helter screaming. He'd been startled by his reflection and starting shooting the mirror with his shotgun. He grabbed for the pistol in his belt, and accidentally set it off, shooting himself in the groin. Actually, why am I being delicate? I should be honest and just tell you that his manhood was essentially destroyed.

The pain is too great and Helter begs for someone to end it. The guys don't have the balls - well, they still have their balls... let's say they don't have the guts - to do it, so Roxanne sends them away. Helter admits that he'd raped Betty Sue, but that she'd been inside his head that night making him do stuff. Rox shoots him in the head and ends his pain.

In the meantime, Stan had finished puzzle-piecing together the next story: SODA RADAR GOES TO SLEEP. Soda was a court jester for the queen. She told him he would be sold, so he stabbed himself in the heart with a needle and bled out.

Stan's a little creeped out and wants to be alone for a bit. Pepper and Roxanne kill time by buying a newspaper from one of those outdoor box things. But get this - it's tomorrow's paper! The headline is about the deaths of 5 local teens. It describes the deaths of Leslie and Helter and Stan, but says to turn the page for the rest. Wait a tick! Stan? But he's not dead ye- oh.

Rox rushes to where Stan is, only to find that he's cut his wrists and is on the brink of dying. He has enough juice left to tell Rox that B.S. was pregnant when she died. She'd told him that day, then killed herself that night.

The original two read the last story: SALT AND PEPPER FOR SUPPER. The queen, like, invites Salt and Pepper to stay for supper, then tries to kill them or something, and Salt gets pissed and shoves Pepper, who lands on the queen's fork and dies of impalement.

Rox and Pepper go back to where it all began: his aunt and uncle's hay barn. Rox badgers him about Betty Sue. Did he sleep with her? Did he? Diiiiid heeee??? Well, it turns out that he did. Before AND after he started dating Roxanne. Rox flips and shoves him into the hay... where he lands on a pitchfork and dies of impalement.

All alone, Roxanne walks back to Betty Sue's house and sits at her desk. She writes and writes, recording the entire story of what's happened. All of a sudden, Betty Sue herself shows up at the door, telling Rox: "Write as I speak. Record everything."

Betty Sue explains: "I was the one in your womb. I came back for you. You were pregnant with me." B.S. had come back to kill Roxanne, but first Rox needed to have that abortion. Rox tells her that, uh, she didn't actually have it, so... fallacy?

B.S. was in love with Pepper. She'd come around that night and seen Rox and Pep rolling in the hay. And it huurrrttttt!! She'd made Roxanne feel the same pain by making her push Pepper onto the pitchfork and killing him.

Rox argues that this is all bullshit, because she didn't go through with it, but Betty Sue has some new information. Rox is still on the table. She's bleeding and the doctor doesn't think she'll make it. Rox has been writing through all this, and now Betty Sue reminds her to keep writing or else she's gonna stab her in the abdomen. Rox stops and Betty Sue stabs her with a needle, straight through the gut.

Epilogue time! Pepper's in the waiting room. He can't believe what a tool he is! Getting two girls pregnant in two months. There's a mistake for ya. Well, at least Betty Sue killed herself, and now Roxanne is aborting. All will be well, again.

There's a clamour in the operating room. Roxanne is dying on the table. Pepper freaks out and starts crying.

Laying there, Rox had a sensation of dreaming away. She left her body and walked away. Out past crying Pepper, and into the light.

Pepper drives home, on the way stopping for a hitchhiker with bright red hair. She looks familiar, but not really. She's going to Salem, too. Soon after she gets in the car, she starts stabbing Pepper with a fork. Not too hard, but Pepper, like most people in that situation, wants to know what the frig she's doing. She wants to repay him for the ride by cooking him supper. He says no, but she thinks she has ways of convincing him...

Come around this weekend to check out some of the treacherously cheesy books that I read when I'm not reading Christopher Pike. Next week, I'm back on schedule with The Immortal. See you soon!

You probably noticed...

2008-10-01T11:32:00.003-03:00

... that I've changed the publication dates (haha) of the upcoming Whisper of Death and The Immortal recaps.

Although I'm pretty much a professional overtime avoider ("Uh, my drive's already on the way!" / "I have to get home to turn off my crockpot!" / other frantically delivered excuses that cannot be argued against); and have no hobbies, friends or life, this week I just didn't git 'er done.

Blame Dexter, which I've recently become obsessed with (so much that I haven't even been keeping up with my Coronation Street!). Or Superstitious by RL Stine, which I can't put down no matter how bad I want to. And I'm applying for a new job, so that's a stressful pain, too. Résumés! Cover letters! Bread knife stab wounds! Suicide notes!

This week, instead of Like Pike's take on Christopher Pike, why not take a look at these alternate Remember Me & Remember Me 2 recaps on bookssky.wordpress.com? These recaps are super thorough and really rip apart the foreshadowing, so please enjoy them.

Also, be awesome by checking out my recent submission to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. Actually, if you've never been, check out the whole site: it's hella fun.

Catch ya on the flip side!!

The Cold One

2008-09-27T12:25:00.009-03:00

There's no front cover/back cover taglines, so you can make up your own using these related keywords:

Double incest / fetus in a garbage disposal / near death experiences / mysterious phone calls / failed generator / monster evil / ripped limb from limb / preacher blow job / interracial dating / 5000 year old sexy blind Himalayan Yeti man.

Ok, number 1: This book has, like, 60 five-star reviews on Amazon. Which is far-fetched as hell. If you pick up this book as a regular person looking to read a normal thriller novel, you're gonna be like: "WTF?" when you get to page 139 and all the action moves to India and there's 40 pages of guru-kriya-chakra stuff that I only know about because of Remember Me 2, and you know that the rest of the book is gonna annoy you (and by you I mean me) because it's going to have to incorporate that shiz.

Number 2: Why all the guru stuff, man?

So, this is just going to be a QuickCap because I finished reading this days ago and I need to get it out of my memory so I can read something else... i.e. Whisper of Death. Or R.L. Stine's "adult" novel, Superstitious, which I currently have in my possession, and I think I'm really gonna like. Hahaha. (There's sex and cussin'... and I've only read the prologue!)

The Story, told through Selected Characters:

Penny Hampton - In Prologue I (yup, there's multiple prologues), Penny, a physical therapist at a long term care facility, is massaging Patient 111, who uses an oxygen machine to breathe, during a storm. The power goes out and the generator fails. Penny does the breathing part of CPR to keep the patient alive. She feels weird during and after, and feels connected to the patient forever after. She believes that if the patient ever dies, so will she.

Sandra Morray, aka Patient 111 - First wife of Dr. Lawrence Morray. She had a drowning experience 30 years ago and has been in a coma since. She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, 9 months after going into the coma.

The Cold One, aka Leslie, aka Sara Morray, aka Ruth - The Cold One kills people and things, and can transform people with a kiss into some deranged killing machine monsters. Leslie is the name she uses as The Cold One's public persona. Sara Morray is the second wife of Dr. Lawrence Morray. She is 30 years old. Before coming to California and meeting Dr. Morray, she was known as Ruth. She was one of the twins born to Sandra Morray during her coma, and adopted by a family. She was a creepy child who caused her adopted brother to go insane, and who killed her adopted parents when she was sixteen. Yes, she is currently married to her birth father. She had miscarried their baby, and Dr. Morray saved the fetus and did experiments on it. It wouldn't die, so Sara put it down the garbage disposal. Peter Jacobs is infatuated with her, which is convenient, because he is the other twin and his seed is the only one that can survive inside her. Uh huh, believe it or not: more twincest.

Dr. Lawrence Morray - Used to do research into near death experiences, but has kept his research secret for many years. Julie Moore contacts him to ask if she can look through his notes.

Peter Jacobs - So, you think he's all nice and stuff. He grew up in an orphanage, and still takes care of his childhood friend, Matt, who is slow. He meets Julie and Sara on the same day. Sara is married, but he wants her anyway. This is his twin, remember. He dates Julie for sex, then avoids her, and that really sets her off.

Matthew Bill - Peter's slow friend/roommate. At the end, The Cold One/Sara kills him, but Peter gives his life to bring Matt back.

Julie Moore - A doctorate candidate studying near-death experiences. She dates Peter, and almost gets killed by The Cold One's minions. And it turns out she's pregnant by Peter's cold seed, which is supposed to set up the sequel, The Seedling, which is advertised twice at the back of the book, but was never published, and possibly never even written.

Govinda Sharma- So, this guy is a citizen of India who used to live in the US. He went to an American university and married an Indian woman who was also living in the US. She died while she was pregnant, and Govinda went back to India to recover. Some people ask him to track/follow Rak, a 5000 year old guy who had, like, fought with Buddha or something. (I'm so sorry, I have no idea what this guy's scoop is, or how he's attached to the American characters. I can't pay attention sometimes... I'm gonna blame it on me finishing the book last weekend and not thinking about it again until this weekend. And that I barely skimmed all the chanting/guru stuff...)

Rak - This guy is 5000 years old, blind, and a Yeti, but still sexy and good looking, and has control/power over people. For example, he left India and flew to Los Angeles wearing only a loin cloth and no one called him on it. No one seemed to notice, in fact. Govinda tails him on all his travels. Rak goes to meet Lawrence Morray and tells him a fairytale that is meant to make him realize his wife/daughter, Sara, is evil.

In the end, Sara kills Matt, then Peter dies to bring him back. Then Sara senses that she's about to die. Dr. Lawrence Morray went to the facility where his first wife is cared for and cuts her ventilator line. But - OMG - Sara, the evil twin daughter child, has been living off her mother's life force. And she does die. Ok, whatevs. There's an epilogue where Govinda and Julie are visiting, and Julie has a daughter, the child of Peter's cold seed. Then my misery (and this book) is over.

Bee-Tee-Dub (BTW) Bonus: In Remember Me 2, Peter Nichols is momentarily called Peter Jacobs. In Remember Me, Shari Cooper wears green pants and a yellow blouse to the party where she dies. In The Cold One, Julie wears green pants and yellow blouse to meet Peter for a date. What does it all mean??... Just kidding. I don't really care.

Has anyone else here read this one? Were you an Amazon-five-star fan? Or a WTF-er, like me?

This one will probably go down with the Christopher Pike books that annoy me the most. Seriously, I was irritable as hell while reading this. I needed to pig out on Cinnabon and ketchup chips to get me through it. It was worse than work. And worse than work is as bad as anything can ever be.

Whisper of Death. Thursday. Maybe Friday. See you then.

The Visitor

2008-09-24T22:10:00.003-03:00

They did not invite him....

He was out of this world.

The Visitor - Christopher Pike
1995, 168 pages

Tom was not like a normal teenager. First off, he looked weird. He was too tall, too thin, and his hair was practically white. Also, he had incredible eyes. When you looked into them you felt like you were staring into deep space. Some thought he was from outer space. Almost everyone believed he was a nice guy. But was Tom really nice? Was he even human?

I have multiple beefs (beeves?) with this book description. Tom doesn't even appear until page 75. Up to that point I was like: "What the hell? Who's Tom?" No one thought he was from space, no one thought he was nice, and his human status wasn't called into question. By anyone. Ever.

Also, Pike must have been a recent grad of the James Patterson school of the two-page-chapter when he wrote this. There are 42 chapters crammed into 168 pages. And an epilogue. Aaaaaand chapter 4 is like 19 pages long for some reason.

So, now that we know Tom has little-to-nothing to do with it, let's hit up the character list:

DEAD
Jerry Rickman - Mary's boyfriend

LIVING
Mary Weist - Jerry's grieving (read: horny) girlfriend
Pamela Poole - school bitch
Savey Barker - hot for Mary
Ken Rickman - Jerry's little brother

MISC.
Tom - whatever

Words found on page 1: waking, nightmare, consciousness, dream, memory, napping, sleeping, and chronic fatigue. I'm not even joking. Chronic. Fatigue. Help me, you guys. I sense an abundance of dreams coming up.

One month ago, Mary and Jerry (a teenage couple with rhyming names - gag me) broke into the principal's office to count the homecoming queen votes and see if Mary won. They weren't stealthy enough, and a security guard caught them. The guy was absurdly aggressive, and ended up shooting Jerry in the arm. Mary went apeshit and the gun went off again, this time hitting Jerry in the head. Mary had a superhuman moment and turned the guard's gun hand around, forcing him to shoot himself in the head. Then she fled, and didn't tell anyone she was there during the killings.

In the present, Mary has taken up hardcore cigarette smoking since Jerry's death, and her friend Savey had been trying everything to get in her pants now that she's single. It's a Friday night and Mary's sometimes-nemesis Pamela is having a house party. Savey picks Mary up for the party, where Mary proceeds to get smashed on expensive wine.

Jerry's little brother, Ken, wants to hold a séance to contact Jerry after the party. Just the idea makes Mary vomit THREE TIMES! She leaves the party to walk in the woods to the spot where she and Jerry had first made a soul connection. Fourteen months ago, Mary had been wandering aimlessly, thinking about a story she'd been writing about an Egyptian goddess who'd been trapped in a tomb by evil priests. She couldn't think of a way to end it without it being totally ridiculous. That's pretty telling, eh?

Jerry, an artist, had brought his easel and paints into the middle of the woods and was painting a skeleton in the desert and a spaceship with "insectoid creatures" coming out of it. I woulda been like: "Geek!" or "What kinda weirdo brings all his art shit out into the woods like that?", but Mary was very attracted to Jerry from the first moment.

This information was brought to you by Mary, lost in memory. Congratulations, Christopher Pike, for not just having her pass out in a wineful stupor and dream about it. Maybe I misjudged you.

Savey finds Mary in the woods, and brings her back to the party. Most of the guests are gone, so it's time to contact spirits. Pamela, the hostess, is wearing "silk sweats" and carrying around a can of beer. That sounds sooooo like a washed up movie star living in the hills drinking her days away. There are many mentions of Pamela possibly being infected with sexually transmitted diseases, and awesomely, she has a mirrored ceiling above her bed. Who the freak's parents would be redecorating their teenage daughter's bedroom and be like: "Flowered wallpaper, pink window treatments, dusty rose carpet, ceiling mirror..."?

Apparently Pamela and Ken had had a séance before and Mary's name kept coming up. The spirit requested that Mary be there next time they make contact. The gang contacts something, but it's not Jerry. It's an ancient being from Egypt. It says that Mary was in ancient Egypt and she'd thought she was a god. And it was unnatural. Whateva.

Anyway, Savey drives Mary home and begs for sex. She says no, but he can give her a massage. She gets naked and he massages her butt for, like, 45 minutes, until she tells him to leave. Then Mary, dressed in her robe, drives to the cemetery and humps the dirt pile on top of Jerry's grave. I'm being real.

Mary reminisces about when Jerry was shot in the head. His face had turned into a dried out mummy face and he said some stuff about Clareesh and sacrifices, then he died.

Before driving home, Mary spits on the security guard's grave. At home, she goes to sleep and dreams (aaugh!) about the desert, and pyramids. She's woken up by a light in the sky. It's a flying saucer! She puts on a different robe, because her other one is dirty, and goes outside.

Next, Mary is writhing on Jerry's grave again, wearing the second robe. What. She gets up, spits on the guard's grave - take two!, and sees Jerry's van in the parking lot. Well, ok. She drives it back to Jerry's place and walks the rest of the way back home. She goes back to bed. Holy crap, this town has long nights.

Mary has a job at the movie theatre in town. Her boss is an old blind guy called Mr. Barker, who is also Savey's uncle. The next day while he counts the till, Little House on the Prairie blind school advanced lesson style, Mary asks him about life on other planets.

This book, jeez... sadly, nothing exciting happens until the next dream, and even that's not interesting, but I'm obligated to mention it or else this will make even less sense. Mary dreams that she's in the desert with her camel. She's an invisible being who is the supreme commander. "Mysteriously, she made herself visible." I think you mean "conveniently" or "contrivedly". Everyone around starts to worship her, and then she becomes them. I'm not gonna argue, but what the shit is all this about???

It's the middle of the night when Mary wakes up and calls Savey. She tells him to come over and bring Ken. Savey thought he was gonna finally get a piece, but he didn't agree to Ken being involved. Mary tells him it's not a sexual visit; they need to have another séance.

The guys show up, and the Ouija board spells out a verse/poem, Prayer of a False God. I guess it wasn't a big deal, because the guys leave and Mary goes back to bed. She dreams that she's buried alive.

God, I don't know why Mary's being so annoying. She wakes up and calls Savey, but something else answers the call. It says: "Yes, Clareesh", then the real Savey picks up. He's pissed off because it's the middle of the night and he STILL hasn't gotten laid and he doesn't want to talk.

Mary decides to walk in the woods. Really? I thought she'd wanna do some more sleeping. This is gonna turn out to be the one where it was all a dream. Hahaha! In the woods, Mary sees an alien being. She starts to approach it, but - bear! Cubs!! RUN!!!

At school the next day, Pamela tells Mary about a new kid, Tom. Mary wants to know if he has a cute butt. Pamela answers with: "He looks like sex with all the trimmings!" Ok, #1: I'm gonna have to use that about - I dunno - David Beckham in those underwear ads, or - ooooh! - Tom Brady. And #2: For realz? According to the book description, he looks kinda weird. Too tall, too thin, white hair, and the book says he has a deep tan. So, he's a young, twigged-out hybrid of George Hamilton and Leslie Neilsen? Zexy. Not. Sounds a little grody to me. Anyway, Mary and Pamela talk for about 2 seconds before they start to hate on each other and their conversation ends with Mary saying: "Later, bitch", which I love.

Mary meets Tom, and they go to Denny's. She babbles on & on about Jerry. They go back to Mary's, where she lights a fire. Soon they are kissing and rolling around naked in front of the fireplace. But they don't have sex. Tom doesn't want to. Mary has no love, so they'd end up making nothing. That's so deep. And also, it's the excuse Mary used on Savey earlier.

Next, Mary is sleeping (OH MY FUCK/R U SERIOUS???!!). A bright light wakes her up. There's an alien in the backyard. The alien touches her and everything changes...

Tom and Mary are Klaxtor and Clareesh, alien beings in ancient Egypt. They are of the "fourth density", which means that they have abilities that humans don't. Clareesh brought the ship to earth to correct gender inequity and stuff like that. She is a shapeshifter, and takes the form of a girl she meets. The girl was Phairee, a servant to a cruel high priest.

Clareesh does some stuff to make herself into a false deity to the ancient Egyptian community. She takes on Phairee as her personal assistant. Thirty-five years pass, and Clareesh still looks young and hot in Phairee's teenage form. Phairee has aged and become bitter.

Clareesh meets a sexy sculptor named Jarteen. She had told Phairee about the rule that beings of different densities can't have sex. Well, they can, but it violates the "law of life". When Phairee found out about Clareesh and Jarteen's relationship, she turned everyone against Clareesh, killed Jarteen, and buried him in a tomb along with Clareesh, who is still alive and CAN'T DIE.

Mary wakes up. It was just a dream. This has gotta be a record.

After school, Mary stalks Tom. She sees Tom embrace a fox that had been flattened by a car. The fox comes back to life and runs away.

Pamela tells Mary that Jerry is going to be exhumed. Mary is distraught, but still needs to go to work. She asks Mr. Barker, the blind movie theatre owner, about her alien experiences. He responds with a story about how he was walking in the woods 18 years ago and he met an alien. It asked him which women in town were pregnant. He didn't want to tell, but it got the info straight out of his brain.

The faces of the pregnant women flashed in his mind, but there was one woman whose face he saw who he hadn't known was pregnant: Mary's mother. Okayyyyy.

Mary gets a gun and goes to find Tom. She tells him to bring Jerry back to life, like the fox, or she will kill him. Her birthday is tomorrow and she should get to screw her boyfriend on her birthday.

Tom unburies Jerry, all the while protesting and trying to make Mary think of the consequences. He tells Mary that it's been 5000 years and she needs to go back to the ship now. She doesn't care. Tom holds Jerry until Jerry starts convulsing and choking. Mary commands Tom to help him, but Tom is toast. He used all his life force to bring back Jerry.

Jerry is all forehead-gunshot-wound, stench, and babbling. His autopsy stitches leak all over the place. He's in extreme pain. Mary thinks some fresh blood would help. So she comes up with a plan...

Mary calls Pamela to say that she has the real homecoming ballots, the ones Jerry found in the principal's office the night he was killed. She will give Pamela the ballots if she calls off the police from opening Jerry's grave.

Pamela meets Mary downtown, and is immediately clubbed in the head with a hammer. Mary takes her back home and starts draining out her blood in the garage.

Jerry's eyeballs are all mouldy and he can't see. He begs Mary to let him die, but she keeps refilling his blood. Eventually she realizes that he really can't stay alive.

After calling an ambulance for Pamela, Mary takes Jerry back to the graveyard. Tom is still there, barely hanging on to life. Mary shoots Jerry in the head, and then decides to give her life force to save Tom, so he can go back to the ship.

Mary sacrifices herself for Tom, and gets into the coffin with Jerry. Jerry disappears, the wood coffin lid turns to marble, and she says: "Mary Weist had been a dream, nothing more." Oh. My. God. I called it. I actually had this piece of crap's number. I can't believe it. BTW, guys: Jarteen was really an olden-days Egyptian form of Jerry (he was an artist too!) and Phairee was Pamela.

To make it even stupider and more intolerable, the epilogue mimics the first séance at Pamela's, but... Jerry is there! And Mary isn't! The seance is to contact Mary. It doesn't work so great, and Jerry visits her grave after the party. He wishes that he and Mary were together, as a shooting star (or something) passes overhead.

The earth moves and Jerry hears moaning. As he turns to leave, he sees an empty cigarette box in the dirt. And it's the same brand as the one Mary had thrown there when she made Tom bring Jerry back. Jerry leaves the cemetery, and the book is over.

Wow, I hated it. Well, I liked the beginning. But the end? Silly, silly shit. By the way - got any ideas for next week? I can never decide. See ya!

The Eternal Enemy

2008-09-18T07:40:00.007-03:00

Someone had come for her....

A VCR that could tape tomorrow's news.

The Eternal Enemy - Christopher Pike
1993, 180 pages

For only being 180 pages, this book is full of complicated stuff. I was sure that you punks were gonna pick The Eternal Enemy in the poll. Then you all went and foiled me by picking Die Softly. Niiiiiice, guys. Way to mess with the bloggist. Well, here it is: your second place book choice, and the new first place most effed up Christopher Pike book (in my opinion, anyway: it narrowly beats previous craziness champion Scavenger Hunt).

There are some really beautiful/meaningful/nice/I like them quotes at the beginning of The Eternal Enemy. Mind if I share?

"How fragile we all are. Time has a permanent hold on us the moment we're born. It allows us to grow, to get big. We go to school, we find jobs, we fall in love, get married, and have children. Time lets us do all these things. But then, in the end, it kills us."

"Someone I knew well once said if there was no sorrow in the world there would be no compassion. That's how I feel as I begin this tale - filled with love for all the people of the world."

And I, filled with love for all the readers of this blog. Thanks, everyone, for showing up to hang out every week.

Now - to the story-mobile!!! Our teenage heroine Rela wants a VCR, so she saves up $200 from her part time job at the library and hauls ass to Circuit City. All the good VCRs are $300 and up, and the young, sexy salesman won't let her buy one that doesn't do slow-motion. Mel Gibson's booty in Lethal Weapon viewed in slow-mo is apparently worth the extra $100. Rela buys the machine, takes it home, and sets it to record It! The Terror from Beyond Space (ha, holy crap, Reverend Alden is in that!).

The next day in class, Rela writes a love letter to her crush, Christopher. It includes such romance gems as "... my body is your most wonderful dream. My nose is a button, my smile is a bar of white chocolate" and "You're brilliant - I want to eat your brains! No, yuck, that's gross. I didn't mean that."

After class, Christopher stops to talk to her about the calculus test they'd had that period. Fortunately, they skip the Q: "How'd you find the test?" / A: "It was on the desk!" lameass routine that I used to pull in high school, and Rela goes straight for the dummy-girl-must-make-man-feel-smart-and-superior drill. Chris thought the test was easy. So did Rela, but she says: "For you, maybe. I have to study hard." Which, like, isn't even true. Kill me now.

Chris had heard that Rela was throwing a party. He asks if he can come and bring a friend. Bring a friend? Has he been totally missing every pheromone Rela's been putting out there?

Anyways, this being Pike, there's a shizload of dream sequences. Rela dreams about a cult carrying a corpse to a dentist's chair.

The next night, Rela prepares for her party. I dunno what kind of pushover adoptive father Rela's got, but this adoptive reverend father guy is kindly sleeping elsewhere for the night in case Rela's friends want to stay over. And girl's making sandwiches outta cold cuts and cucumbers. Doesn't that equal, like, garden party, not high school teenagers partying unsupervised?

About four dozen guests show up, and start to eat, drink (even beer!), and mingle to music. God, probably Nelson. Once the party is underway and everyone is having a good time, Rela has to fucking ruin it by - I kid you not - introducing a game of charades. She redeems herself later with some Trivial Pursuit and a guessing game based on a tape of TV theme songs.

Rela's fun night is destroyed when Christopher finally shows up with the school fox, Debbie. "Debbie was staying near him but was not kissing him or anything that would make me want to vomit in her face." God, Rela, you don't even know that they're cousins yet.

Rela mopes in the kitchen, cutting up veggies, until Chris comes to find her. She says, "You don't like charades?" like it's an unfathomable impossibility. Somehow they get onto the subject that Chris has a biofeedback machine in his bedroom. Well, hey, that's cool. Except not. Obviously. One mention of Chris's bedroom and Rela nearly chops her hand off.

In the living room, she suggests that the remaining partiers watch It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but - ohh noo - it's not on the tape. Only boring news. Chris drives Rela to Blockbuster to pick up some videos. On the way, he asks her out!!! Eeeeee!!

That night, Rela dreams a little dream about the secrets of the universe, syringes, and Christopher. She wakes up naked about to drown in a tub of cold water. Too much booze or what?

In her room, the eerie VHS tape winks at her from the top of the VCR. Rela is sure that as a first time VCR user, there's no way in hell she could have misprogrammed it. She puts in the tape and watches the news program. It's giving football scores. Say whattt? Football is a Sunday thang! Wuzz it doing on this Friday broadcast? Rela realizes that she had taped Monday's news - the future!

The next day, Sunday, she makes a wager with her dad. Raiders will plunder the Steelers, 21 to 17. He gives her 5 to 1 odds for the score, so she will win $500 if correct. If Rela's such a movie buff, I'm surprised she didn't remember about the sports almanac in Back To The Future II. This gambling with the future is bad news, sister.

That night, Rela nightmares a little nightmare that she is bound in a dentist's chair. The cult rips her spine out and cuts her brain open. Then she wakes up and watches her new future-news recording. Woo hoo - baseball playoff scores!!!

Monday morning, Rela skips school and drives to Vegas. That is extreme school-skipping. She bets the $500 she won from her father, and wins $21,600.

When she returns to Los Angeles, she stops at Christopher's with the plan to show him the money. She knocks on his bedroom window. Wearing electrodes on his head and grinning a creepy grin, he lets Rela in. He wants to hook up Rela. Hook up with Rela would have been a lot more interesting... cuz I'm sleazy like that. Rela freaks out when he comes near her with the electrodes. And a very telling moment: "[I] had seen Christopher before in his bedroom - a long time ago. Yet not in this room."

On a later future-news, Rela sees that four window washers will fall to their deaths from a hotel in San Francisco. OMG - Rela's rich now! She can't drive there in time, but she can FLY to San Francisco and be a hero! Hurrah! Fuck the time space continuum!

She makes it to San Francisco with little time to spare. She pays her cabbie $100 for each red light he runs. She bursts in the the hotel and tells the fronk desk lady that the scaffolding is about to collapse. Rela takes the elevator and finds a ladder to the roof. She yells to the window washers that there's an emergency phone call for one of them, but they all have to come up. They're not buying it, so she lies about a sniper in another building.

One of the washers comes up to the roof, but when it seems like she thinks Rela is fucking nuts, Rela cold-cocks her with a flashlight and knocks her out. Seconds later, the scaffolding collapses and Rela sees the other three workers fall to their deaths.

Rela hightails it the hell out of there. On her flight home, she stops to consider that maybe the washers were meant to die. What if she messed up the world as a result of having changed the future? Well, it's kinda late to worry about it now, so... meh.

In Rela's newest dream, she's in the hospital recovering from her previous procedures. She rehabs until she can go to the can on her own and eat solid foods. She stares at the wall until she MERGES with the wall. She becomes one with the wall. That is some hardcore staring. She sees molecules/carbon atoms of the plaster. God, what is this? Polymer science or something? This is supposed to thrill teens? Rela is immortal, standing "at the center of the wheel of creation". Ok, whatev. Hope this doesn't all come up later cuz I'm kinda bored.

"I cannot keep having these dreams," I whispered to myself. "I will go insane if I do." Awesome. Change the pronoun and I totally agree.

On the next future-news, Rela sees that her own self is gonna be mutilated to death. She plans to escape before she's supposed to get killed tomorrow night. And then I guess she's asleep again? It's called narcolepsy, and I'm pretty sure there are pills for it. She dreams that she's wandering the streets of Pasadena alone until a guy takes her to the shelter that the reverend runs.

Upon waking, Rela shops for a Rambo knife at the mall. Then, even though she's a thousandaire, with only hours left to live, she goes to her job at the library. It is admirable to take one's responsibilities so seriously. A creepy man follows her around the stacks. She knows the guy is dangerous because his jogging suit doesn't have any seams!!! OMG - KILLER ALERT! She calls Chris to meet her at home so she can show him the tape of her death on the news.

Later, at home with Chris, Rela watches the news tape again alone in her room before showing Chris. But now Chris is the one who dies! The continuum was altered by Rela learning of her death. She tells Chris they have to leave the house. She grabs the VCR, Chris suddenly collapses, the lights go out, and the door knocks.

Creepy dude comes in and takes the bandage off Rela's hand from where she cut it at the party. He then PEELS THE SKIN right off with it. All the skin from her hand. Yet, she feels no pain. RELA is Robotic Experimentation Logistical Algorhythm. The guy is Grandfather. He's gonna destroy Rela with a ray gun, but first...

Remember Sara? Born in 2036 in LA, in the aftermath of a world war and during an American depression. Sara's grandfather disappeared when she was 10, and reappeared when she was eighteen. He told her about some stuff he'd been working on in the meantime... i.e. making human cyborgs that can travel to the past. You know, everyday stuff.

A mysterious organization called New Life has been rebuilding the world after the war. It was kind of like the UN, except really successful. Grandfather tells Sara that, in fact, New Life is run by cyborgs that he created using human central nervous systems and computer parts. The group is so successful because the cyborgs are programmed to relieve the suffering of humans.

Grandfather can look into the future, because he injected computer chips into his brain once. Eventually, he realizes that, to the cyborgs, relieving human suffering means ending the human race (!). There are no possible futures in which humans still exist.

Grandfather had named Sara when she was a baby. She was named after a girl Grandfather knew in his youth, who was murdered shortly after Grandfather met her. The original Sara had believed in the sanctity of life, and that is what inspired G-Father to start making cyborgs in the first place.

Granddaughter Sara is angry that Grandfather has doomed the human race, and decides to send a cyborg back in time to kill him before he can cause all this damage. And SHE is gonna be that cyborg!!!

Back in Rela's living room, the creepy guy, Grandfather, says he's from the year 3116. He is momentarily distracted by some friends of Rela's at the door, giving Rela a chance to plug her computer finger into the VCR to download her entire story on tape.

The friends leave, the door slams, and Christopher - Young Grandfather - finally regains consciousness. Rela knows she has to kill him in order to make the old guy disappear, and also herself, because without Grandfather, she would never have been born.

Christopher rises to leave, and Rela plans to judo chop his neck, but can't do it. The entire human race will die because of her love. She unplugs herself from the VCR, and prepares for Grandfather to ray-gun her to death.

In the epilogue, Rela's adoptive reverend father brings her VCR over to Christopher's for him to have. He watches the tape it contains, the story of Rela and Sara, and vows to never become that Grandfather thing.

Next week's recap will be The Visitor. Ancient Egyptian alien zombies, you guys. For real.

Die Softly

2008-09-11T22:44:00.005-03:00

He took a picture of death...

He might have photographed a murder.

Die Softly - Christopher Pike
1991, 248 pages

The first 50ish pages of Die Softly gave me a strange Scavenger Hunt-esque vibe, possibly because of the male protagonist. There's a little Gimme A Kiss thrown in there too, with some police-questioning chapters titled "In The End" stuck in intermittently. Not one of my favourites (it opens with a DREAM SEQUENCE, for frick sakes!), but here it is: I present Die Softly.

Who's Who - This Week
Herb Trasker - our main guy, kinda pervy, amateur photographer
Sammie Smith - Herb's friend, OMG fat girl, wears large sweatshirts
Theo Corbin - Herb's other friend, teenage alkie, his brother Roger died in a car crash recently
Alexa Close - hot cheerleader, Herb's fantasy chick
Lisa Barnscull - hotter cheerleader, school bitch, cocaine addict, was Roger's girlfriend at the time of his death
Stephen Plead - dumb guy, Alexa's boyfriend
Sgt. Fitzsimmons - local cop

We join the gang in Mannville, CA, a small town 40 miles east of Sacramento. Besides a crappy prologue, the first words of the book are "His blood was hot. His thoughts were naughty." Well, Christ, Herb, get over here and let me give you a spank. Not. Herb is exactly the type of teenage loser who spends waaayyyy too much time alone in his room beating it. And I don't even know how he finds the time since he goes to school, then works at an electronics assembly plant for eight hours every night.

Here's the deal: Pervy Herbie has an idea. His buddy Sammie - she of the fat rolls, giant sweaters, makeup-less face, sweaty bangs, and general appearance of a male ex-con - suggests that he set up a camera in the girl's shower after cheer practice and get some swank nudie pics of the snotty bitches "to pass around at grad". Sammie doesn't just suggest, she insists.

After shooting the cheerleadering team for the yearbook, Herb has the opportunity to drive his crush, Alexa, home after school. It's because Alexa's allergies are acting up and she's not allowed in her boyfriend Stephen's red Fiat, lest she stain the seat with boogers. Which, like, is not gonna happen, but Stephen won't hear it. Herb's (wet) dream comes true when Alexa wants to stop at McDonald's for food. It's almost like a date!!!

Herb and Alexa's heart-to-heart about their future hopes and dreams is interupted by Sammie, who is also in the joint. Gross. People are trying to eat. Hello! I wanna point out that in addition to being fat and disgusting, Herb also says that Sammie is funny and loyal. Just the tiniest passing mention of any redeeming qualities. Jeez, way to treat your friend. (Like, even though I have a four-point scale that I use to grade people, I would never diss a friend the way Herb does. In case you care, it's looks, humour, intelligence, kindness. The order of importance varies, like if I have a zit I have to be nicer about looks, etc... I'm only kidding a little.)

Apparently, Sammie's car won't run, so she needs a drive... with Herb. Is there no one else? She sits down with Herb and Alexa to wait for them to finish up. Awk-ward. Sammie is sweating profusely and seems nervous to be around Alexa.

After they drop Alexa off, Sammie starts in bugging Herb about the shower cam. It's almost like she's got a personal stake in it or something... or she really wants to see those pictures. Herb drops her off and goes home.

The plan is now set in stone: Herb's going to rig the camera to a VCR timer, plant it in the shower, and set it to record after cheer practice tomorrow. Conveniently, Herb's job is soldering chips to motherboards to make VCRs work. He sets one up especially for his own needs and sneaks it out of the building.

Also working at the factory is Herb's BFF, Theo. Theo's gone off the alcoholic gun-nut deep end since his brother Roger was found burned in his car at the bottom of a cliff with 2 grams of coke in his system. He's convinced that Roger's girlfriend Lisa had had something to do with Roger's death, even though she has an alibi.

At 2:30 AM, after work, Herb climbs a tree in the schoolyard in order to place his equipment. There's seriously about 9 pages of Herb hiding the camera. Let's just agree it's not visible to the general public and move on. Theo, who drank a six-pack during his shift, is passed out in the parking lot waiting for Herb. Hey, that's funny - Herb didn't tell Theo he was coming here. He leaves without disturbing Theo and goes home.

The next morning, Herb wakes up late for school. While he eats breakfast, he ponders the art of book reading. "Books got too complicated. He'd usually just flip to the last page to see what happened." Is this a hint? I hope not, because I'm not falling for it.

Herb decides to take the whole day off school and go stalk Alexa's house instead. On his way there, he sees smoke. Smoke coming from a cliff-bottom. The same cliff-bottom where Roger crashed his car and died. And the same cliff-bottom where a certain red Fiat was currently burning. Herb can see a burning girl behind the wheel... it's Lisa, Alexa's best friend! They're so close that they're known as the Sugar Sisters around school because they sold homemade (i.e. laced with cocaine) cookies to raise money for the cheer team.

Police, firefighters, and conveniently, Sammie and Alexa show up at the scene. Lisa's body is removed from the vehicle and taken for autopsy. It's later revealed that Lisa had used lots of cocaine over a long period of time during her life.

Our buddy Herb picks up his film from the school, then goes home, where he finds Theo asleep in a chair in his living room. Herb ignores him and starts developing his film. The camera caught some great shots of Lisa naked in the showers, and - oh! - the final frame is of a second person sneaking up on Lisa with a ball bat. And it looks like Alexa!

While Herb enlarges... the photo, creeps!... a few things happen. The phone rings, the door knocks, and Theo wakes up. At the door, Sammie has a theory that Lisa was murdered and wants to see the pictures. Theo, drunk again, falls out the door while Sammie and Herb are talking. Herb won't admit he has the pictures, and is suspicious. How would Sammie know there's a murder on the film unless she was the one behind it?????

On the phone, Alexa says that she received an anonymous note saying "We have pictures of what you did to Lisa." Herb tells Alexa, that he does, in fact, have incriminating pictures, but lies about where/how he got them. Alexa asks him to bring the photo to her immediately.

On the road, a blue Toyota Celica follows Herb. B-b-b-but that's Lisa's car! It's a g-g-g-ghost! Ok, not really. It's Stephen and he's there to kick some ass. Steve pulls Herb out through the car window at a red light and beats the crap out of him while Herb's car slowly rolls away. Steve kindly chases it, while yelling: "You little prick!" Also, such threat gems as "You are going to die", "I am going to make you die", and "You are going to die slowly". Huh. "Die softly" would have been so much nicer. Suddenly, a gunshot fires from the hills above and almost makes Stephen die. He runs off to his car and boots 'er outta there.

Theo is up in the hills with a gun. Herb realizes that Stephen took the photo out of his car. Oh noes! How's he going to impress Alexa now? He ditches Theo and drives to Alexa's. She wants to go back to Herb's place to see the negative. She thinks that Sammie is trying to set her up or something.

Back at Herb's, he and Alexa have a conversation where she reveals that her parents don't exactly treat her right. "You mean sexual abuse?" Herb asks, and yes, that is what she means. She feels terribly guilty that she never tried to stop Lisa from using so much cocaine. After Herb makes another print for Alexa to look at, she tells him some bullshizzle story about "Oh, this photo was taken two weeks ago. We were just playing around. Blah blah blah-lieve me. Oh, look. There's a man reflection in the mirror there. That's Sammie. She took these pictures." Now Herb is all pretty-girl mindfucked into thinking Sammie switched the film in his camera with some pre-existing incriminating film from the past. Methinks you're giving her too much credit, sir.

Alexa continues manipulating Herb by making out with him and saying she wants to tie him up. Shit! The phone rings! Christ, it's like 4 AM. What if Herb's mom has to work in the morning? It's Sammie, desperate to see the shower pictures. Jeez, girl. Just go buy a magazine already. Alexa instructs Herb to say they'd meet her at the death cliff in half an hour. Then naive Herb allows Alexa to take the only photo and the only negative into the can, alone, for an extended bathroom visit.

Herb and Alexa arrive at the cliff at 5 AM, and see Sammie waiting. Alexa makes them stay back, hidden, in case Sammie brought back-up. Unexpectedly (to some people) Stephen shows up. He accuses Sammie of stealing something of Lisa's. Drama, drama, until Sammie is backed up to the edge of the cliff. Sammie denies having anything to do with Lisa, but says that she had been involved with Roger's death at this very same cliff. Sammie pulls a gun. Stephen pulls a knife. Sammie shoots Stephen in the gut, as Alexa runs out of her hiding place with her own gun. Stephen dies.

Alexa shoots a shot in the air to scare Sammie. Sammie shoots at Alexa and misses. A shot comes from randomly in the air, strikes Sammie in the chest, and she flies over the cliff, landing on the burnt Fiat wreckage. Sammie dies.

Herb runs into the hills to see who the hell shot Sammie. He finds Theo sitting on a rock with his gun. God, this guy gets around. He says calmly: "She killed my brother. I killed her... If you don't like it, then you can go to hell." Stephen had apparently called him and told him to be here. Then he suggests that someone call the police. He's not afraid of jail. Good-bye, Theo. You were a character who... existed in this book... to, um, shoot at stuff?

The next morning, Herb is home in bed (alone, boo), until he is woken up by the phone. It's the cop, Sgt. Fitzsimmons. They talk for, like, five chapters interspersed throughout the book. All anyone needs to know is that Fitzie thinks Alexa is dangerous and implores Herb not to see her that day. Herb won't agree to it, so Fitz asks him to come to the station by his own free will. Herb's not doing that either, but concedes that he can't stop the Fitz from dropping by to talk in person in, say, half an hour.

Herb does his Saturday morning chores, like putting a knife under his pillow, and rigging up his VCR/camera hybrid to takes pictures of his bed area. Alexa shows up at the door with a bag of cookies for Herb. How sweet of her! I knew they didn't call her a Sugar Sister for nothing! Herb pours milk, but Alexa prefers beer with her cookies, calling it the "breakfast of champions". Ah, I see she's gotten her "How to be Cool" tips from Weekend and Chain Letter.

They move into the bedroom to get it on. Herb cranks up the Zeppelin to drown out the shutter clicking. Alexa brought rope to fulfill her fantasy of tying up Herb. Or maybe Herb's gonna die in the bedroom with the rope. After Alexa secures Herb's limbs, he says he wants to talk rather than be seduced. I call farfetched! Alexa says: "You know."

She starts talking... and never stops. Roger Corbin was Lisa's boyfriend, but really Lisa and Alexa shared him. They got him hooked on coke and ménage à trois, and forced him to steal shit that they could sell to get more coke. When he didn't wanna do it anymore, they lured him to the woods, probably by promising some woodlands lovin', and tied him to a tree.

Lisa duct taped his mouth and held a palmful of cocaine under his nose. After he'd breathed in a crap-ton of coke, he had some kind of superhuman Hulk moment and got free. He chased the girls to their car, and then chased them in his car. The vehicles careened 90 MPH down the hill, to the curve at the bottom. Lisa and Alexa narrowly missed a car, which swerved to avoid them. As Roger came down behind them, he tried not to hit the oncoming car and went over the cliff in the process. The driver of the oncoming car?? Sammie! Now we know her secret.

Alexa mindfucked Sammie into thinking that Lisa was going to the cops about it, so Sammie was totally willing to watch Alexa kill Lisa in the shower, then help her move the body. But then Sammie got all cocky and thought that Alexa couldn't touch her anymore. Well, that wasn't very true, now was it?

Figuring that Sammie had something on her, like concrete proof, she called Herb, lied about getting a note re: the pictures, found out her suspicions were true, and went into action. She used her sexy enchantressness to get the negative into her possession. She called Stephen to rile him up and set him and Sammie up to die at the cliff.

Herb tells Alexa that Sgt. Fitzie knows all this shit, just not the details. He goes for the knife, which is in his reach, but barely. This angers Alexa. She pulls out a baggie. Herb's mouth is taped shut. He's forced to snort not only cocaine, but some kind of poisonous bloody nose inducing bad coke. He eventually breathes it in, and tries to snuff it away. A ton of blood flies out of his face. The end (of Herb).

In the epilogue, Alexa attends Herb's funeral service. Sgt. Fitzsimmons shows some photos to Herb's mother, who punches Alexa. Fitz shows Alexa the pics and says: "You are a wicked girl."

"At least I'm not a wicked boy" is her response, and that is the end (of the entire book).

Check that cover, by the way. Sideways, it's got black gloved hands holding a camera. Honestly, there's something wrong with me. I don't pay attention when I look at stuff. I always thought that was a porthole window into the shower and that there were black flowers or some sort of plumage in the top corner. Yikes, not even close. Now that I know it's a camera, I feel like a stupid ass every time I look at this cover. Stay tuned next week for second place vote-getter The Eternal Enemy. See you around!

The Lost Mind

2008-09-04T08:04:00.003-03:00

Someone had stolen her memory....

She didn't know what she had done.

The Lost Mind - Christopher Pike
1995, 213 pages

The Lost Mind: When it was good, it was very... well, moderately good. And when it was bad, it was fucking awful. Remember how I said there was a negative review that made me want to read this one next? Want an excerpt?

" ... poorly developed novel... Confusing metaphysics and stereotypical, one-dimensional characters do nothing to move the contrived plot. Try steering teens to Stephen King, Beverly Hastings, and the many other horror-story writers who can put together a plot and characterization with some creativity." - School Library Journal Review, 1995

Oh, burnzzz! "Poor", "confusing", "stereotypical", "one-dimensional", "contrived", can't put together a plot with creativity. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The man's gettin' KILLED. This one is cracked to the core. I hope you're ready. Let's hit it:

Characters, Alive
Jenny - woke up next to dead BFF with no memories of anything ever
Mitch - Jenny's boyfriend, gambling fiend
Amir - Crystal's boyfriend who Jenny is dying to sleep with
Gator - Jenny's lil bro

Characters, Dead
Crystal - Jenny's best friend

Jenny wakes up in the woods next to a bloody knife. A dead girl in a super bloody-riffic sweater is on the ground nearby. With no memory of who or where she is, or what happened, Jenny grabs the knife to defend herself against psycho murderers and tries to escape the woods.

On the road, she finds a new Toyota, which happens to open with the key in her pocket. Not wanting to soil the seats with her blood-stained clothes, she changes into some gym clothes she finds in the trunk. She finds ID in a purse under the driver's seat, and recognizes herself in the picture. Her name is Jennifer Hobbs. She lives in Carlsrue, Oregon, and is 110 lbs. Well, at least that's reassuring.

She starts driving, which she knows how to do, even though she doesn't know where she's going. At a gas station, she uses a local map to determine where the address on her ID is. She calls home from a payphone and tells her mother she'll be home soon. Her mom mentions that Crystal's parents are looking for her, but Jenny says she doesn't know where Crystal is.

At about 2:15 AM, Jenny stops at Denny's, which also turns out to be where she works, and has coffee and pie. By the time she arrives at the address on her license, everyone there is asleep. She makes a stab (ha) at which bedroom is hers, gets into bed, and goes to sleep.

It gets wacky: Jenny dreams that she's beyond stoned from smoking some kind of dope. A fortune teller is dealing out tarot cards until.... Jenny grabs fortune teller's hand and slices it open with a knife!!

The next day at school (which Jenny let her 8-ish year old brother drive to because she didn't know the way), a random guy comes up to Jenny and starts making out with her. Well, helloooo. This seems to be Mitch, Jenny's boyfriend. He's hard up for $300. If he doesn't have it by the end of the day, Duke's boys are gonna break his thumbs. Every time the book referred to "Duke's boys", I was like: "Duke boys!" and got all excited about Bo and Luke. Wrong Dukes. This Duke has NOTHING to do with redneck mischief. This Duke deals only in cash or pain.

All day at school, people ask Jenny where Crystal is. Apparently you can't have one without the other. Jenny goes home mid-day to check her yearbook. She has a terrible (and correct) feeling that the dead girl in the woods was Crystal.

There's a phone message from Amir, Crystal's boyfriend. He wants to "talk" about "last night". Or maybe that's actually what he wants. He thinks that Crystal ran away because she thought Jenny and Amir were having an affair. I would hardly call high school skanks cheating with their best friend's boyfriends "having an affair". That makes it sound classy, which it probably even isn't.

Not having any memory and just winging everything takes its toll on Jenny. "The charade had to end." All right, all right, Pike. Enough with the charades. Also taking its toll: picturing animals and bugs crawling over Crystal's face. This drives Jenny to place an anonymous call to the police to report Crystal's body in the woods.

Later, the police show up at Jenny's to inform her of Crystal's death, and to question her because she had been with Crystal last night. Jenny's answers don't make any sense because she doesn't remember anything, but doesn't want to tell anyone that and look automatically guilty of murder. The cops want to see her shoes. Hey, it worked in Remember Me. Jenny stalls by acting outraged that anyone could believe she would kill her best friend, and tells the cops to leave.

Gator, the little brother, can tell that Jenny is acting funny. He tells Jenny about a toy/TV show/something that kids enjoy where Clyde the Robot loses his memory and sticks his head in a nuclear reactor to get it back. Very helpful.

In her room, Jenny tries to find out about who she was by looking at her belongings. Lots of books: romance, fantasy, classics. Fave band: U2. And her diary, which tells her she was a totally superficial bee-yotch. She finds out that Mitch gambles on his own football games and is in pretty deep with some bookies, which is convenient because Mitch shows up right then looking for that $300 he needs. Jenny doesn't have it all, so she goes to raid Gator's piggy bank. By the time she gets back to her room, Mitch is naked and boner-fied on her bed.

Jenny flips because Mitch is being so insensitive about Crystal's death. She says that it would be good if Duke's boys broke Mitch's neck, not his thumbs; there'd be one less phony in Carlsrue. Mitch replies with, "You'll regret what you just said, Jen. You'll regret it before the sun goes down." OMG - Mitch is making cowboy threats! Then he saunters away, probably to do lasso tricks or something.

A short time later, Amir is at the door. The police had just been by his place and grilled him hardcore. He told the police that he'd been sleeping with Jenny, now Jenny is sure the police will think she killed Crystal to get her man.

That night, Jenny dreams she's at the pyramids, stoned on hash, and hiking with a witch, who is also her dreamself's mother. And in this dream Jenny's a dude. The mother is keeping some information from Jenny's dude form, so Jenny knifes her.

The next day, Jenny visits Crystal's parents. She asks to go into Crystal's room to reminisce alone. She reads a few entries in Crystal's diary. Crystal had seen Mitch out with other girls and was torn about whether to tell Jenny. And... Crystal had been having the same Egyptian hashish crazy dreams as Jenny! Say whatttt? Crystal's dad comes in, so Jenny has to drop the diary and leave.

When Jenny gets home, the cops are back. They tell her to stay at home. DNA from the scene and tire tracks have pretty much given them enough evidence to come arrest her in the morning. An officer will be parked outside all night to see to it that she doesn't leave.

Jenny asks Gator to break into Crystal's room and steal her diary. When she reads the rest of the entries, she finds out that Amir had, like, multiple personality disorder or something. He was nice to Crystal, then he would smoke some hash and rape her. Then he would read gun magazines and ignore her until she left. No matter what he did, Crystal still missed him and loved him, but didn't understand why.

That night, Jenny has another dream... and this one explains everything. I'm so freaking tired of all these dreams. She's the Egyptian dude again. There's a girl she's interested in. Her witch mother tells her/him that the girl is 1/3 of her soul, and someone else has the other third. Then Jenny stabs the mother in the eyeball with the knife. I hate this book now.

She wakes up somehow knowing exactly what happened to Crystal and with a masterful plan. First, she mixes up some sleeping pills and coffee to give to the cop outside. Once he's out, she writes a suicide note and leaves it in her room. Then she drives to the woods and buries the knife that she'd taken from the murder scene. And then she breaks into Amir's apartment, pistol whips him, and tells him they're going for a walk.

In the woods, Jenny ties Amir's arms around a tree. She drinks booze and takes a handful of sleeping pills. Jenny wants to know how Amir entered her. How he raped her mind. Apparently, Amir, Jenny, and Crystal are three parts of the same soul. Amir found Crystal, but she didn't complete him, so he started to loathe her.

The day of Crystal's murder, Amir had been at home with his pipe when Crystal and Jenny showed up unannounced. This caused a "premature rupture of the soul". Amir was in Jenny's body, Jenny was in Crystal's body, and Crystal's soul was dancing on the ceiling.

Amir had taken advantage of the situation to murder Crystal while he was in Jenny, and evil bastard let Crystal's soul back into her body so that she could feel herself being stabbed and killed.

Back in the woods, Jenny's heard enough. She's woozy from the sleeping pills she took and needs to get this shit over with. She pulls out a syringe and says she's gonna inject Amir with air, Amanda-from-Remember-Me style. She stabbed him once with the needle, and as she tried to stab him a second time, there's a rush of light and power, and she goes unconscious.

When Jenny wakes up, she's tied to the tree and Jenny is standing over her with a gun. Yes, Amir had switched their souls. What he doesn't know is that Jenny's taken a lethal dose of pills and the body he's in is going to die soon. And that Jenny hadn't really injected any air into his body. Aaaaaand that Jenny buried the knife at the base of the tree, so she can easily cut herself free and live the rest of her life as an Egyptian-American man.

Amir-in-Jenny collapses and dies. Jenny-in-Amir cuts the ropes loose from the tree and drives Jenny's body home, where she plants it next to the suicide note. Which totally says that she didn't kill Crystal, but who the hell would believe that now?

At Jenny and Crystal's joint funeral (ok, maybe the townspeople did believe Jenny's note), Amir talks to Gator and tells him some crap about Clyde the Robot, which is what Gator babbled about the whole book, and basically tells him that he's Jenny, inside. And that's that.

I would have loved this if it had a logical conclusion. Instead it had a shizload of crazy ass hash and bizarre knife dreams fuelling the entire plot. Seriously, everything was dreams. There were so many dreams. I'm a dreamskimmer, so this book was especially frustrating.

One last thing: please VOTE in the poll for next week's book recap. Your opinion counts! Let your voice be heard! Have your say! (I'm in, like, election overdrive right now: American, Canadian, freakin' municipal. So forgive me for cheesy slogan-ing you into placing a vote... but you don't have to register or drive anywhere, so it's not a pain in the ass like real voting. Maybe you should just click on something. No pressure, though. Oy, I'll leave you alone now.) See you next week!

Why I Like Christopher Pike

2008-08-31T10:32:00.001-03:00

Did you ever read the About the Author segment in the back of his books? I love how, like, among his favourite activities is stealth-rearranging bookstore shelves to put his own books in the best spot. That is awesome. Because if I were an author, you know that's what I'd be doing.

Not even to mention that it's the longest author bio I've ever seen. The previous jobs, the many New Age-y hobbies, the titles of every freaking single published work. This is verging on extreme. Like, do we really need the titles of every Last Vampire and Remember Me? For being such a mysterious guy who we know nothing about, he seems to be giving a lot away right here.

For the Spooksville series, he switched it up a little. Maybe he figured that little kids won't read an About the Author anyway, so he can pretty much say whatever the hell he wants. It is the most enigmatic and bizarre author bio I have ever read. It's the Legend of Christopher Pike.

"Little is known about Christopher Pike, although he is supposed to be a strange man. It is rumored that he was born in New York but grew up in Los Angeles. He has been seen in Santa Barbara lately, so he probably lives there now. But no one really knows what he looks like, or how old he really is. It is possible that he is not a real person, but an eccentric creature visiting from another world. When he is not writing, he sits and stares at the walls of his huge haunted house. A short, ugly troll wanders around him in the dark and whispers scary stories in his ear.

Christopher Pike is one of this planet's best selling authors of young adult fiction."

The troll muse from the story-within-the-story in Remember Me 2: The Return makes an appearance! That's kinda cheap, recycling it here. Unless it's true. It couldn't - you don't think - what if he... nah. Right???

And how about "staring at the walls of his huge haunted house"? These are his two options for activites: writing or staring at the wall like a psycho. And bringing up that his massive popularity is limited to "this planet"... so far. What a nutty guy. Or alien creature. That's a possibility too.

Fall Into Darkness ~MOVIE BONUS~

2008-08-29T08:28:00.000-03:00

I figured everyone already knew about the Fall Into Darkness tv movie starring Jonathan Brandis and Tatyana Ali, so I didn't mention it in the book post.

Jonathan Brandis played Chad. Tatyana Ali played Sharon. The rest of the cast were knobs and ham & eggers who I have never heard of.

For your viewing pleasure, I present YouTube clips from the movie. They're pretty useless; the first one is 30 seconds, the second one is about 1:30.

The director's website has a 6-ish minute clip of Ann jumping, Sharon being arrested, and the police interrogating a bunch of people. You can check that out here. I will WARN YOU that my antivirus blocked 3 worm intrusion attempts while I was watching it, so only check it out if you are using protection / enjoy living on the edge.

On JonathanBrandis.org there are 4 downloadable clips from the movie. Clips #1 & #4 are the same as the youtube ones. I watched Clip #2 with no sound, but I'd guess it's Chad and Jerry doing stuff that didn't happen in the book.

I kinda wanted to see this... I even emailed someone with a Pike fansite to see if she would make me a copy. After looking at the flat-out fricking cheesiness of the second youtube vid, I want nothing to do with it. Has anyone seen this, and is it as fromage-tastic as it looks?

Fall Into Darkness

2008-08-28T17:58:00.002-03:00

She fell forever... and never hit the ground.

They said she murdered her best friend.

Fall Into Darkness - Christopher Pike
1990, 213 pages

Characters, Dead or Presumed Dead
Ann Rice - supposedly pushed over a cliff to her death
Jerry Rice - Ann's brother who died from an apparent suicide a year ago

Jeez, between these two, it's like Dancing With Lestat in here.

Characters, Alive
Sharon McKay - on trial for Ann's murder
Chad Lear - his interests include reading and gardening (I love how, like, he has the same hobbies as my grandmother)
Paul Lear - Ann's beau, and Chad's half-brother
Johnny Richmond - Sharon's court-appointed attorney

The back cover tagline annoys me. "They said she murdered her best friend." It's, like, a fact. There's no mystery or suspense. It's not a pun or a play on words. It's not clever. It's just... true. And NOT exciting. (And, yes, I realize a lot of them are like that, but this one particularly bothers me because I feel like this book deserves better.)

And what about: "She fell forever... and never hit the ground."? I like imagining that one. Like, falling, falling, screaming, looking over shoulder to realize she's no closer to the ground, screaming, thrashing, continuing to fall... FOREVER. For-ev-er. For-ev-er. (Oh no, I can't find a proper reference or video... remember in The Sandlot when Squints is in the treehouse telling everyone the story about James Earl Jones's dog and it ends: "For-ev-er. For-ev-er."? Right after the part about the smores (You know, "You're killin' me, Smalls". Parentheses within parentheses! Ack! Somebody stop me!) Please know what I'm babbling about. Pleeeeease!!! I love how I'm failing mis at my new goal of a decreased word count.)

Aaaaand there's no Ann necklace in the story. Cover illustrator Brian Kotzky usually gets it right. So I don't know what that's all about, unless he was just making shit up, but whatevs. I'm so over picking on the cover and presentation of this book. Let's get to the good stuff.

Follow me, gang, it's storytime (skippity, skip, skip to the story corner):

Sharon McKay is on trial for the murder of her best friend, Ann Rice. Hey, there was a character named Sharon in Gimme A Kiss! I wonder if there are any other similarities between these two stories???

Even though Sharon's been in prison for the last month, she doesn't really say much about her hard time experience. Her scuzzy lawyer, Johnny Richmond, has a reputation among the inmates of wanting his payment in, um, a non-monetary form. If ya know what I'm sayin'. Well, he has exercised her right to a speedy trial: Ann's murder was 4 weeks ago, but her body has not yet been found. And here's how it happened:

Approximately one year ago, Ann's little brother Jerry committed suicide by gunshot. Ann found his body and a note simply saying "I love her". Ann believes that Jerry killed himself because her best friend Sharon did not return Jerry's romantic affections. Keep your friends close... and your enemies closer, to use a total cliche (just pronounce it 'cleesh', it's too hard to find an accent aigu at this hour).

Ann enlists her hunka hunka dumbass boytoy, Paul, to help her pull off her scheme. Ann, who happens to be an heiress worth millions, plots to frame Sharon for her murder, will a crap-ton of moolah to Paul, run off to Mexico to hide the fact that she still has a pulse, and meet Pauly-boy down there in a year's time to live in the sun and revel in Sharon's ruination.

All along, though, Ann's still acting like she and Sharon are best buds and like she's not plotting to destroy Sharon's life. Ann thinks she's the puppet master...

And yeah, I am doing that marionette dance move from the Bye Bye Bye vid right now.

Chad, Ann's longtime friend and household gardener, teaches her to rock climb. She plants the seeds into Chad's mind to take everyone on a cliffside camping excursion... where she will carry out her evil plan! Wuh hahahaha! Wuh hahahaha!

Partaking in this camping trip we have Ann, Paul, Chad, Sharon, and Fred, who is Sharon's date, but he isn't important and will never be mentioned again.

They do camping shit like singing around a fire, putting up tents, hiking, I dunno, etc. Sharon suggests that she and Ann go for a walk. It's so perfect that it's almost like Sharon is in on framing herself. The two girls walk to the cliff, where Ann stays after Sharon heads back to camp. Ann yells "DON'T", then screams an echoing, fading scream as she falls over the cliff to the river below.

Oooh, but check out her plan: she's hooked to some kind of 400 ft rope and the fall is 500 ft. And she's got a harness thing hidden under her sweater to attach to another rope to lower herself to the ground. Then she's gonna run off into the woods where she planted a stolen getaway car. And flee the country! Totally brillz, Ann. Gotta give props for your mad awesome evilosity.

Hey, wait... how did Ann come up with this idea in the first place?? Well, it comes out in trial that she'd been inspired by a certain slim, green, paperback novel in which a girl plots revenge on her boyfriend by making it look like he killed her...

But what REALLY happens is that when one is suspended from a 400 ft rope, one can build up a lot of momentum on the back-swing. Ann slams into the cliff wall arm-first, shattering her elbow bone. There's a ton of paragraphage in this segment about nerves being scraped with bone shards and all kinds of stuff to twist your insides. I'll be kind and leave it at that.

Ann does manage, painfully, to get loose from the long rope and make her getaway. And that's the last we hear of her... for now.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, everyone is going nuts because they think Sharon pretty much just killed Ann. Except Paul. Cuzzzzz he's in on it, remember? So, Paul's task is to rappel over the cliff to "look for Ann's body on a ledge", but really to cut Ann's rope so she can hide it from the police.

The police soon arrive and take Sharon into custody. This cop is the foul-mouthiest cop I've ever seen in print. He's calling Sharon a bitch and everything. What gives? The police charge Sharon with second degree murder, and we're back at the beginning with Johnny Richmond and the trial.

Different people take the stand, like Paul and Chad. This Johnny Sleazebag is a-whole-nother type of mastermind. He'd visited Ann's place to investigate and Groundskeeper Chad had shown him around. In the library, he found the incriminating copy of Gimme A Kiss (never mentioned by name, but we know what Pike's on about). When Paul is on the stand, Johnny presses him into confessing Ann's plan. He says that he may have cut the rope too soon, causing Ann to fall to her death. She never made it to the car parked in the woods, and he hasn't heard from her since she fell into darkness.

Sharon is released, and to get some closure, she and Chad go back to that fatal cliff. They walk around the spot where Ann would have landed. Chad leads Sharon into a cave that is underneath the river.

Now it's time for a flashback to Ann's adventure. She'd been walking for a while, and had passed out. She woke to find herself in a cave... with Chad! She starts to give an evil villain speech to explain what she's doing, when Chad interrupts her to give his own evil villain speech (!). Who gave her the book that gave her the idea? He knows her better than she knows herself. They should have been together, but she had to go and fall for his half-brother, Paul. Chad had told Jerry that he was in love with Ann. When Jerry laughed at him and threatened to tell Ann, Chad shot him and put a paper with a song Jerry had started writing next to his body.

Chad is the real Puppet Master!

Ann tries to escape the cave, but Chad chases her and....

Meanwhile, Sharon and Chad explore the cave area. Sharon gets creeped out and leaves. She stops to drink some clear river water, and sees Ann's eyeball-less body at the bottom of the river. The police show up AGAIN, and it's the same bastard cop who already hates Sharon. He thinks it's pretty convenient that Sharon would return to the scene and find Ann's body. He also picks up on the fact that Sharon is wearing a new piece of jewellery: a ruby ring.

She'd found it on a ledge near the cave and recognized it as a gift she'd given to Ann on her 16th birthday. She wondered why Ann would have removed it. The funny deal with the ring is that the girls had always called it "Chad's ring" because it had a ruby stone. Sharon had asked him what Ann's birthstone was (June, pearl), but he thought Ann's birthday was in July, like his (July, ruby).

The police have no evidence, and it's late now, so Sharon and Chad decide to camp in the park as is. Thinking about Ann's ring, Sharon realizes that - OMG - it's a sign! Ann was leaving a clue for Sharon that Chad had killed her! Sharon makes a wood-gathering excuse to get away from Chad, but her suspicious behavior gives her away.

Bunch o' action happens at the cliff, and Chad ends up on a ledge, threatening to jump. Sharon feels awful about it, even though he just spent 15 pages trying to kill her. He jumps, and then the police come back. Sharon's pretty well screwed this time, and maybe literally: her last thought in the book is that Johnny Richmond might represent her again, but he'd already warned her how he'd wanna get paid next time. (Cue porn music).

And now you know the rest of the story.

A notable first of the Pikerocosm: Fall into Darkness took place entirely in the Beehive State. That's right, Utah. Not California, or Mexican/Hawaiian vacation spots.

This weekend, I'll be back with an analysis of Christopher Pike's author bio. Next Thursday, visit Like Pike to find a recap of The Lost Mind. During my research I found a bunch of old reviews, and the one for The Lost Mind was - I wanna say "SCATHING" - but "unfavourable" is more accurate. (I'm never joking about the research, btw. And this is just a hobby. Imagine if I was getting paid. I'd be so dedicated that I'd be typing up posts while sitting on Chris Pike's lap in California.)

Reader requests for Die Softly, The Eternal Enemy, and The Starlight Crystal are in the pipeline for the weeks after that.

Which Christopher Pike Book Are You?

2008-08-24T10:40:00.005-03:00

I woke up early this morning to do "research" and lookie what I found:
QUIZZES!!

Which Christopher Pike book are you?

What Christopher Pike book are you?

They don't make a hell of a lot of sense, but have fun!

My result:

Hahahahaha.

Spooksville #1: The Secret Path

2008-08-24T00:03:00.002-03:00

The path led to magic... and danger!

Adam didn't believe all the stories about Spooksville.

Spooksville #1: The Secret Path
Christopher Pike
1995, 129 pages

Twelve year old Adam Freeman has just moved to a new town... uh oh. Can someone tell me how many R.L. Stine books begin this way?

Check out that erotic cover. Pre-teen hand holding? I don't remember Goosebumps ever going there. I dunno about that castle either. This is supposed to be California. Maybe it's Winchester House. And who does the witch-face look like? I thought maybe like a really intense Mandy Moore. What do you think?

Adam soon meets Sara "Call Me Sally" Wilcox. That is an acceptable nickname, so I'm OK with it. Sally talks a lot. She tells Adam that she's going through some kind of tween identity crisis. Pike was a little ahead of his time on that one, I think. Sally says the town is haunted, and that her friend Watch (Unacceptable Nickname #1) saw a girl disappear into a cloud while partaking in some seemingly safe kite-flying. Ha! I've read enough Peanuts to put the kibosh on that idea. Safe kites! Hrrumph!

Oh, but Sally doesn't want Adam to get the wrong idea. She's single, and has no romantic feelings for Watch. Her mentioning him means NOTHING. "If he wasn't so weird, I'd be attracted to him," she says. I wish I was that sensible.

Another thing you need to be careful of in Spooksville is robots. A mother walking down the street with a carriage might not have a real baby inside. It could be a robot. Adam's reaction?

"I don't believe in robots. There are no robots. That's a simple fact."

I thought I, Robot was scary, too, but there's a point where you have to quit lying to yourself and grow up.

In a parking lot, Adam dives to stop a runaway shopping cart (which was totally the name of my band in my childhood rock star fantasies) from hitting a car. The car's owner is Ms. Ann Templeton (ahhh, the sweet sight of progress: Pike no longer considers Ms. an italics-worthy title, as it was in '88 in Last Act.), great-times-4-granddaughter of old town witch, Madeline Templeton. Ann thanks Adam for his good deed and invites him to visit her castle sometime.

The kids take off, planning to go to the arcade, but Watch (so named for the two watches he wears on each wrist) wants to visit Bum (Unacceptable Nickname #2) first. Bum used to be mayor, now he's the town bum. Where I grew up, the town bum used to be a professor. We called him Earflap Jack because he wore an earflap toque year-round, and because it's a before-and-after and we love The Wheel.

Bum tells Watch how to find the Secret Path in exchange for sandwiches. The Secret Path is part of town legend. It is said to lead to magic, danger, and other Spooksvilles in other dimensions.

Now let's refer to the back of the book: "Together Adam, Sally, and Watch will take the Secret Path and pass through a dark doorway. On the other side they will find a terrifying Spooksville where there are huge spiders, living skeletons, evil black knights, and a witch who just loves to make dolls - out of kids." Well, I, for one, think that deserves an exclamation point (!).

So, that's exactly what happens. In the same order. Soooo, I guess if you like suspense, you may be out of luck. Like, they take the path... check. Oh, huge spiders. I actually think there was only one, but putting a singular huge spider in the book description is awkward and lame. After that happens, the living skeletons show up, natch. Then the evil black knight is on the scene. And next the witch, who has a stash of deformed children shackled in an underground jail.

The witch captures Watch and Adam, but Sally gets away. As the witch is preparing to remove her favourite parts from the boys for use in her doll collection, Sally breaks into the castle and busts the hell out of the witch's hourglass, which runs upwards and is filled with diamond dust. Classy. I wonder if it's an official Seyko timepiece??

The kids escape in the confusion and run to the cemetery, where the wormhole is that will let them escape. The witch follows them, but is pulled into the ground by a reprise of the living skeletons, allowing the kids to escape back to their reality.

I have had Googled hits from presumable children looking for plots of Spooksville books, so I'm providing an in-demand service here. So, all in all, I liked the book. Sally had some funny lines, it wasn't boring or anything, so I guess the only drawback is that the book loses some of its awesomeness when you're as old as fucking hell reading it for the first time.

What I liked BEST about the book was Chris Pike's About the Author. He totally discarded the old one used in all the YA books and came up with the most insane author bio ever. Which I will discuss... next weekend.

And if you're around on Thursday, why not stop by Like Pike for a recap of Fall into Darkness?

Bury Me Deep

2008-08-20T20:17:00.004-03:00

They buried Mike. But not deep enough...

The dead boy would not go away.

Bury Me Deep - Christopher Pike
1991, 211 pages

Characters, Alive
Jean - not Rodrigues, although that would be mighty interesting
Mandy - the fat friend with bangs (eewwww!!)
Michele - the hot friend
Johnny - scuba instructin' hottie
Dave - serious scuba instructor

Characters, Deceased
Mike Clyde - he's not gonna stay buried for long!! (according to back-of-book blurb... actual results may vary)
Ringo - dead former business partner of Dave and Johnny

There is a reason why no one ever mentions, remembers, or acknowledges Bury Me Deep when discussing the works of Christopher Pike (particuarly favourite works of Christopher Pike). Let me sum up the story for you in three words. This is it, this explains the entire book: 1) Jean. 2) Has. 3) Urges.

If I ever meet C. Pike, I'm gonna ask him what's the significance of the names Jean and Clyde, which are both repeats.

Also, I always thought girls AND guys could read Christopher Pike books. But this one is so friggin' girly, I'm starting to have my doubts. All book long, Jean can't stop thinking about poor Mike Clyde, the sad-eyed boy with two first names. Like, I am strong, I am invincible. I AM WOMAN and I don't even wanna read 200 pages of cheesy shit like that over'n over.

So, I hope you're ready for a Hawaiian, scuba-divin', balcony-fallin', skull-findin' adventure. Actually, that's all there is... no need for a recap.

Just kidding. I live for this shit.

While flying to Hawaii on Easter break to meet her friends, Mandy and Michele, Jean wakes up to find a sad-eyed young man sitting next to her. His name is Mike Clyde and he won his trip to Hawaii from a magazine contest. I know she just woke up, but Jean starts asking him a million questions, some not even sensical. Like: are there pools in Alabama (where Mike's from), and just repeating the stuff that he says. Someone must have told her: "Jean, be David Caruso in Jade."

Mike's slow to answer, and says some crazy-ass stuff about the water in Hawaii. He's creepy... then he starts choking to death and seizing. A flight attendant, Patricia, does CPR, but it's too late. Mike is packed into a bodybag, while Jean watches, traumatized.

After landing, Jean stops to talk to Patricia, the flight attendant. They talk about how sad it is what happened to Mike. Ok, that's been established.

Mandy picks up Jean at the airport. Jean's upset about Mike, but not sad enough to not spazz when it turns out that Michele and Mandy had been using some of their trip activity coupons without her. Jean's poor/a cheapskate/didn't book with Expedia, and hence is a coupon Nazi. So, Jean = levelheaded, organized, not prone to impulse anything. We've got her number. Now, how about some story?

Mandy tells Jean that she'd booked a scuba class for the three of them that morning at 11 o'clock. Jean settles her stuff in the hotel room, and then goes to relax on the balcony. But OMG - a wet hand touches her! *Tired Plot Device Alert!* She almost goes over the railing. Wow, I wonder how many times that's gonna happen in this book/the oeuvre of Pike??

Chillz, my friends. It's only Michele. She and scuba-instructor Dave had been in the shower when Jean arrived, and now they stand before her wearing towels. Niiiiice.

Jean and Michele meet Mandy at the hotel pool for the scuba lesson. Dave's assistant is a guy named Johnny, who Mandy really likes. But Johnny's into Jean, unfortunately for Mandy. Well, what did Mandy expect, being all fat and having those bangs? The scuba training begins with a lecture. Gross ear popping, lungs rupturing, and all that. Jean and Michele have no problem catching on, but Mandy sucks.

After the lesson, they go out into the ocean to dive at the reef. Afterwards, Johnny asks Jean out. Ooooooooh!!

Jean rests up for the date, and has a bizarre dream. In her dream, she wakes up in the hotel room, goes to the can, and finds the bathtub full of blood. She looks closer and sees Mike's face in the depths of the blood! She wakes up and goes into the real hotel can to find... the tub filled with red! Michele had been eating fries while bathing and spilled ketchup into the tub earlier. Not contrived at all, nope.

That night at dinner (which turned out to not be a private date, but all 5 of them going to Hawaiian Long John Silver's, or somewhere like that), Dave and Johnny talk about how poor they are from paying for their boat. OMG... Jean + Johnny = a match made in serendipitous, coupon clippin', poverty-vision, garbage pickin' heaven. Another poor guy, Dave's original partner Ringo, had disappeared while searching for sunken treasure from a ship wreck a year ago, and his body was never found.

This bit has some really long chapters where shit-all happens. Jean and Johnny go dancing. He receives a page from his neighbour saying that his alcoholic mother fell and needs help. Jean - I dunno - is asleep again for some reason and dreams about Mike. Continuing the tradition started in Remember Me, I present Dream Balloon Symbolism. Jean dreams that Mike is in a cave with a heart-shaped balloon. It bursts and he dies. Jean wakes up about to fall over the balcony AGAIN, with Dave holding her up by her panties.

The next morning, the girls take a tour on Dave and Johnny's boat. As they all suit up for more diving, Jean notices a small rip in Dave's wetsuit and tells him: "You need someone to sew this up for you." Whaaaatt?? HE can't do it? He's some kind of "alpha" "male"? His mom needs to sew his wetsuit? A break. Gimme one. I need it.

Now it gets good. Jean's URGES start. I wish they were urges for, like, donuts, or sex, or break-open tickets. But alas, she only wants to scuba dive in a different area. She points the place out to Johnny, and he agrees to take her there later. But only after she goes all She-Hulk like: "WANNA GO OVER THERE!!! NEED TO GO OVER THERRREE!! THERE!!!... I mean, I'd, uh, like to dive somewhere I haven't been yet... must learn to control urges."

Mandy comes with them, which is lame because she sucks at everything. Because she's fat and has short hair with bangs. BTW - fatty ass lard girl weighs 135 lbs. What is she, friggin' 3'2"? I love YA books where everyone in the human race who is awesome is a twig (Jean weighs only 105, the bee-yotch. That's why she's allowed to judge). Everyone else is a fat loser. No exceptions.

Once they dive down, Mandy screws up, and starts choking, so Johnny signals for Jean to come up too. There's a really nice descriptive passage about lung rupture right here. My guts! I can't think about bodily ruptures with out thinking about (sorry, girlies!!!) frigging mammogram breast ruptures, which apparently do sometimes happen and give me nightmares. They better have that security-wand-style tumour finder ready in about 20 years, that's all I'm sayin' about that.

Having only learned to scuba yesterday, Jean can't stay down there unsupervised. Except Jean's a douche, so she decides to go to the bottom (over 100 feet!) to "adjust her weight belt". Mmm hmm. She looks to the side and sees the cave that Mike had been hanging out in in her dream. Ehhh, gotta go in there. She gets her tank stuck between the cave walls and her air starts to deplete rapidly. Suddenly, a skull falls out of the wall, and in her surprise, she jerks her tank loose from the cave. Luckily, Johnny had come down and was waiting to grab her outside the cave. They slowly go back to the surface.

The power of Mike Clyde compels Jean. She goes to a phone booth to call Patricia, the flight attendant. It turns out that Mike died a month ago while scuba diving and he wasn't really on the plane at all. Patricia just thought that Jean was a very poor and random conversationalist who had known Mike from before.

Jean visits the library (girl, you're on vacation!) to check the newspaper and see where Mike is buried. While visiting his grave, a giant tree branch falls and hits her in the head, knocking her out.

Dead Mike comes out of the ground. He was killed. He starts blowing up another balloon. Jean is transported to outside the cave. She sees Mike find a skull, then a guy in a red wetsuit takes off Mike's weight belt and blows up his buoyancy control, causing him to rise quickly. Which will lead to that whole ruptured lung thing I think I mentioned. (Picture me doing that grossed-out girl thing of flailing my hands on either side of my face every time I talk about the rupture. I sincerely hope this will be the final reference.)

After Jean wakes up, she goes back to the hotel to find police surrounding the building. Mandy is splat on the ground. She fell/was pushed/jumped from the balcony. Jean calls Johnny to tell him her theory: Mike found Ringo's skull (who Dave had apparently murdered), so Dave had to kill Mike.

Jean don't want to wait (Paula Cole, 1997) for Johnny to show up, so she breaks onto his boat to steal the scuba equipment she needs. Dave is there, so she knocks his ass out with a spare tank.

So, Jean makes it underwater with the pilfered equipment and finds Ringo's entire skellington in the cave. When she leaves the cave, someone is there to grab her. Unknown person rips off her weight belt and inflates her buoyancy control to max. OMG - Jean's gonna be the new Mike Clyde. She's convinced that quickly-recovered-Dave is the one trying to kill her.

Unfortunately for "Dave", Jean is a strong swimmer and is able to turn herself around, deflate the buoyancy balloon, and get to the bottom to fill her pockets with sand. And avoid having her lungs turn into bloody confetti. She carefully rises to the surface, where Johnny meets her. He says that Dave just came up out of the water.

Johnny and Jean board the boat, where they find Michele and Dave unconscious on the deck. Johnny begins his evil villain confession. His mom's a gambling addict who's been forced into prostitution to pay her bookie bills. When he and Ringo found a safe from that wrecked ship, Johnny shot Ringo so he wouldn't have to share the loot. But Dummy Johnny killed Ringo too soon and wasn't able to raise the safe the whole way himself, and dropped it over 400 feet underwater.

When Mike found Ringo's skeleton, Johnny made him die a horrible death. Jean jumps off the boat and tries to swim away. Johnny gets on the waverunner and tries to run her over, but ends up crashing and breaking his neck.

In the end, Jean is visiting Mike's grave one last time before leaving Hawaii. On the ground, she sees a pendant like one Mandy had, but Mandy hadn't brought hers on vacation. Well, there's a sign.

And that's the story of Jean's trip to Hawaii.

BeeTeeDub (BTW) Bonus: Apparently Bury Me Deep was released as an audiobook on cassette, read by Kelly Ripa. So, you can picture Jean as Kelly Ripa if you want. My local library has a copy of the tape... I might have to borrow it.

Visit Like Pike this weekend for a first look at the Spooksville series. Lame Goosebumps ripoffs? Watered down versions of his 80s/early 90s YA plots? Or, like, a legitimately awesome children's series? We'll explore Spooksville and find out.

Thursday's post is TBD. Have no fear (God, what am I saying? Like you all live in fear that I'm not gonna post? My theory that blogging is for narcissists is, like, totally true. Which should have been obvious, because I know everything and I'm always right.), there will be a book blogged about. I just don't know which one. I'm on Pike overload. I did a library run and now I've got about 40 Christopher Pike books in the house and I'm waaaayyy to excited about too many of them to sit down and finish any of them. I need downers or something. Well, I'm veering way off topic. Gotta go!

These just in...

2008-08-18T19:45:00.005-03:00

For your future entertainment:

Yes, the cover art features an hourglass full of skulls:

Did you notice my nosy kitty on the left?? Man, I can't wait to read this one.

And my thanks go out to everyone who has commented to help me find the few titles I'm missing. Especially Kat: the Bookmooch hint was awesome. I'm just figuring out what I own that I can part with, and then Hollow Skull will be mine. MINE!!! Miiiiiine!! (unless someone else gets it first.)

Remember Me 3: The Last Story

2008-08-14T07:56:00.000-03:00

They wanted her killed a second time....

SOMEONE DID NOT LIKE SHARI COOPER WRITING HER STORIES.

Remember Me 3: The Last Story
Christopher Pike
1995, 244 pages

The Peeps
Shari - Remember Shari? She's back. In Jean Rodrigues form.
Peter - still in Lenny's body and wheelchair
Roger - sexy star of the new movie based on Shari's book
Bob - obnoxious star of the new movie based on Shari's book
Garrett - or maybe I oughta say "Private Detective Garrett" and give him some dignity for a change

We meet up with Shari three years after Remember Me 2 ends. She's 21, and a famous and successful author, just like Rishi had told her. Peter is still crippled Lenny, except everyone calls him "Peter", which I thought was a little weird. Like, Peter is his pseudonym, even though he's not famous.

Even though Peter has been rendered, uh, not fully functional (y'know what I'm sayin', right?) by his injuries, he and Shari have been dating for the past three years.

Shari's most famous work, First To Die, is being made into a Hollywood movie. Against the advice of her brother, Jimmy Cooper, she had published her story, Remember Me. And she'd written another book called Magic Fire. Hey, wanna play 'spot the titles of actual Christopher Pike novels within the novel Remember Me 3?

Shari is producing First To Die with her new production company. The story is that a geek named Bob invites his classmates on a cruise and then sets them up to be stranded on the sinking boat in shark infested waters, with only enough lifeboats for 3 of the 7 passengers to get out of the water alive. Who will backstab who, who will survive, etc. Just to throw this out there, cuz I don't know everything: is that shark thing a real Pike plot (of one of his full-length books)? I'm not sure, so maybe someone can be my buddy in comments.

A geek named Bob plays "Bob". Roger, a handsome newcomer to Hollywood, will be playing the role of "Daniel", the hero.

One night, when Shari has plans with Peter to go see a mystical yogi in a church basement, Roger invites her out after work. Shari is attracted to the handsome stranger, and so accompanies him to eat lobster, without so much as phoning Peter to say she won't make it to the presentation.

After her date, Shari goes home to Peter. He's been successful coaching various youth sports teams and even working with the Special Olympics. Despite this, he still turns to the mystical, hoping that someday he will be cured. Peter tells Shari all about the meeting she missed due to "a late night on the set". Mmmm hmm. He thinks that the yogi is an Earth incarnation of Rishi, and wants her to attend the next meeting.

That night while Peter sleeps, Shari is drawn to her computer to start working on a new story. This one is called The Starlight Crystal. Wow, another Pike. We actually get a lot of Shari-typed pages of story for this one. I'm interested to see if it's like the real The Starlight Crystal when I read it. There's probably, like, symbolism to Shari's own real-life story, but whatever.

Later, on set, Roger invites Shari for lunch. She ditches a pre-planned event with Peter AGAIN to go to some cheesy restaurant with Rog. At the table, he reads her palm. He tells her that her lifeline broke 3 years ago. Is that how it even works? I thought it was like long or short. Not specific years. I have no idea. He must be pretty talented. Or creepy.

Ok, I'm gonna go with creepy, now that I know that Shari's getting Private Detective Garrett to check him out. Some shit that he said didn't add up, so Shari wants a discreet background check. After Shari made it big, she sent an anonymous cheque for 50 grand to Garrett, which he used to quit the force and open his own PI biz. When Shari visits his office, she recognizes the receptionist as Garrett's daughter. The one who Shari and Peter scared straight at the end of Remember Me. It worked!

Apparently Shari suspects that Roger might be a Wanderer himself, and wants some proof. She wants to know if he even knows he's a Wanderer and what his mission is.

Later that day, Shari has to go to that yogi thing with Peter. Roger is interested too, so he comes along with Shari. At the meeting, they do breathing, kriya, chanting, and some other stuff. The yogi hosts a Q & A where he shows off how awesome he is at avoiding/never answering questions. Roger gets pissed and tells off the yogi, then walks out of the church basement.

Shari and Peter go home. A boy from Peter's baseball team, Jacob, is staying with them. Jacob is blind, having had both his eyes removed, but that doesn't stop him from being an incredible pitcher. That night, Shari writes more of her new story. I would tell you about it, but I only skimmed it. It's all spaceships and future. I'm too old to be reading that stuff.

The next day on the movie set, one of the actresses confesses that she can't swim. The whole movie takes place in neck deep water, so they fire her. At this stage of production, there's only one person who can take her place: Shari. She steps in, and after a number of romantic scenes with Roger, her neglected sex drive is raring.

A short time later, on Peter and Shari's bed, Roger massages Shari. They are pretty close to gettin' it on when the door opens. It's Jacob, that kid that's staying there. It's really good that he's blind, and hence can't see that it's not Peter in the bed with Shari, but his intuition is good enough to know what was going on. Roger keeps quiet and sneaks out, while Shari makes like it's Peter in the bedroom and tells Jacob that Peter is embarrassed about the whole situation, that's why he's being so quiet.

She lies and tells Jacob that it's 10 PM (it's, like, 7) and he should go to bed, so he won't be awake and surprised when Peter gets home for real. Like, Peter shows up, and Jacob would be all: "You weren't sulking in the bedroom for the last 2 hours because I came home and ruined your sexin', what?"

Jacob isn't tired, so Shari decides the better course of action is to get him the hell out of there. She takes him to Disneyland, where they ride Space Mountain a zillion times, but Shari makes up different names for the ride and tells Jacob it's a different ride every time. Man, oh, man, it is NOT safe to be a blind person around Shari Cooper.

After Disney, they go back home. Peter's there now, and Shari only needs to take one look at him to know she needs to confess. But... why? Is she only capable of lying to the visually impaired? She waits until Peter is all tucked into bed before telling him what she and Roger had done there earlier. Christ, Shari! He's paralyzed. He doesn't even have the luxury of angrily jumping out of the bed. Shari feels guilty and leaves.

Guess where she goes? The very same hotel where Roger is staying while he works on the movie. Oh, but it's ok, because she's not in the mood now. Shari, you're getting on my nerves. Then she starts writing on her early 90s laptop. More Starlight Crystal. Blah.

The next morning, Shari visits Garrett's office and finds out that Roger's license plate is a fake. And he has a shady past, including demonstrating a huge tolerance for alcohol, simulating a rape during an acting class assignment, and beating up an old girlfriend he was co-starring in a play with, causing the play to close after only one show. What a winner, eh?

Shari calls up Peter and tries to explain that Roger has some kind of hold over her and she can't promise to not see him again. Uh, girlfriend, maybe you oughta go back and re-read what Garrett just told you. Anyway, Peter is super understanding. He wants them to see the yogi for help. Shari is going to think about it, but I think she should take any offer Peter makes. After they hang up, Shari gets a call from Bob, the jerk from her movie. He says that someone has an evil plan involving the rental sharks, and wants Shari to meet him at the tank.

After she calls Roger to come with her, they arrive to find Bob on a boat in the tank HOLDING A GUN! He puts a leaky inflatable boat in the shark water and tells Shari to row across the tank and back. After she does completes her task, Bob orders Roger to do the same thing. Roger's like, "I don't thaaaaank so", and karate chops the gun out of Bob's hand, before tossing Bob overboard into sharkland.

The police come and question Shari and Roger. And there ain't nothing like a near-death experience to bring people together, so of course Peter is able to forgive Shari now.

Garrett calls and wants to meet Shari at the beach to give her some more info about Rog. It's the beach next to where Shari had originally died, so she tries to suggest other locations, but Garrett is firm. Shari and Peter drive to the beach, where Shari introduces Peter as "Lenny". That is the only Lenny reference in this entire book.

Garrett leads them into the condo from where Shari had fallen to her death. He's creating ambiance. And he's pissed. His daughter read Shari's book, Remember Me, and almost died of a heart attack, seizure, and stroke when she got to the end and read the bit about herself. Also, Shari was lazy and called the alcoholic detective "Garrison", which Garrett immediately recognized as himself. He wants to know why the hell she was sick enough to choose Shari Cooper as a pseudonym, then write about the real Shari Cooper's death in such detail.

Shari doesn't really explain anything (yogi-style!), and Garrett gets to the point. Rog is bad. Then - oh! - Roger shows up with a gun. He's really really bad. Shamone. He orders Garrett, Shari, and Peter onto the balcony. Tell me once again - who's bad? Roger makes Garrett get up on the railing. Garrett's old, and presumably uncoordinated, so he falls. He splats on the ground and dies instantly.

Roger herds Shari and Peter to Shari's gravestone. He is a Black Wanderer, sent to destroy Shari because her writing challenges established concepts and that can't happen. Wait a tick - this is the entire point of this series of Remember Mes?

Shari says she writes about the future. Everyone knows it's fiction and fantasy. Rog tells her that she's writing about THE PAST. All this spaceship shit happened long ago, and reading about it could stir ancient memories. Roger throws Shari into an open grave and starts burying her. ("My dad will wonder where I am!"/ "He'll never know you're gone!" - hahahahaha). Then - from behind - Roger is smacked with a shovel! It's Peter, taking Gloria Estefan's advice.

After all this drama, Shari decides to go see her original mother, Mrs. Cooper. Mrs. Cooper had read Remember Me and been pretty disturbed by it, according to Jimmy Cooper. Shari, as Jean, tries to explain how she was able to tell Shari's story. Shari starts feeling shitty and asks if she can lay down. Mrs. C. takes her to Shari's old room and tucks her in. Shari closes her eyes... forever.

In the end, Peter's still walking. At the end of Shari's funeral, he hands a disc with The Starlight Crystal on it over to Jimmy, asking him to finish the story.

And that is the very very end of Remember Me: The Trilogy.

Beyond next week, I'm totally unscheduled, recap-wise. If there are any requests off the Pike Book List, I'll do those. If not, I'll just do whatever I want. I don't feel like doing another biggie right away, so I'll probably save Final Friends until summer is over. Cool? Cool.

Where did you learn to binge-eat like that?

2008-08-13T09:14:00.005-03:00

Yeah, I've heard that question before. Like when Usher and Chilli broke up and I spent the weekend drinking, crying, and binge eating. Or that time when the cable went out right before TV Bingo came on. Talk about disappointment.

Well, whenever I get asked, the answer is always the same: "Hello! Sleepover Friends!" I have fond memories of these books. I remember reading one to my little brother when he was in the hospital once. I don't think he was a fan. It was the one where it was Horace's birthday or something and they made a cake, but it fell and had a huge crack in it, so they made it into a prehistoric cake with dinosaurs and stuff on it. Is anyone still with me??

Let me get to the point, half-dozen regulars. Frequent commenter Zanne has started a blog to recap these fine books. Apparently there are more than 30 books in the series, which is kinda news to me. I don't remember reading that many when I was younger, so I am very much looking forward to reading the recaps.

So, check it out everyone: Sleepover Friends Forever.

Stay tuned, btw, for Remember Me 3: The Last Story (thank friggin' God) to be posted tomorrow.

Sometimes I Write Songs

2008-08-08T00:00:00.001-03:00

BWAH HA HA!! The joke is on me. UPDATE: AUG 19/08 = The comments are back on that post. I hope no one thinks I'm crazy now.

Reader: "Woo hoo - unscheduled bonus material!!!!" (hahahahaha, yeah right... unsolicited more like)

(roughly to the tune of the hoe-down on 'Whose Line is it Anyway?')

Blogger erased all the comments
On my post of Tuesday last
I am not a fan of that
It makes me kind of sad

There's no proper contact form
And the forums are a joke
I just want my comments back
Or I will sit and mope

Blogger, why'd you do it to me?
I'm gonna make you pay
Maybe I will switch to Wordpress
I hear it's better anyway

(all together): Better annnny-waaaayyyyyy

And, because real comments can disappear, I'm putting a selection of expected comments in this post:

"An original work of masterful lyricism..." - anonymous
"...girly angst at its best..." - ShariCooper
"Where can I buy the album?" - TheScaretaker

rant

So, I'm looking through my shit and I notice that the comments on my google post have disappeared. Not a big deal in the scheme of the world, I know, but I don't like it. Shit like that shouldn't happen. God, what next? My fecking posts go missing?? I can't trust you anymore, B. Can't trust you AT ALL.

/rant

Remember Me 2: The Return

2008-08-07T01:00:00.005-03:00

She returned into a body not her own...

They called her a Wanderer.

Remember Me 2: The Return
Christopher Pike
1994, 210 pages

My beef with this book is so huge that it might even have been genetically engineered. Starting with the back cover book description. Bunch o' stuff, then:

"Not everybody on earth welcomes Wanderers. Of the few who know of their existence, some want them dead. And others, the truly evil ones, wish them much worse than that."

Wow, that sounds really interesting. But... it doesn't even happen. Unless I, like, slept through it. This book is not good, guys. I hate to be the one to tell you. Actually, I don't. I wish more people had told me! I actually bought this. Recently! It was $2.50! WHYYYYY?!?!?!

I didn't read it as a kid, but that's not why I hated it. I'm Glad (Jennifer Lopez, 2003. Holy crap, I'm doing the Goldmember!) that I didn't read it when I was younger. I probably wouldn't have been able to handle it. This is not the sequel that Remember Me deserves. On with it --->

Characters, Dead
Shari Cooper - we know her from Remember Me
Peter Nichols - also still dead
Sporty - Darlene's boyfriend who was killed in a drive by shooting

Characters, Living
Jean Rodrigues - tired of living
Carol - Jean's best friend, gay
Lenny - Jean's boyfriend, stereotype
Darlene - friends with Jean and co, vengeance seeker

Characters, Unknown Status
Rishi - the master of spirituality or something

Setting
Los Angeles, CA

Time Period
One year after Shari's murder

Everything starts out promising. Just like the Shari of one year ago, Jean is getting ready for a birthday party. The person doing the aging is her boyfriend, Lenny. And, boy, does she have a birthday surprise for him: she's pregnant.

Jean drinks her juice in South Central's Hispanic ghetto. She's about to graduate from high school, and doesn't know what will happen to her life now that she's pregnant. She wonders if Lenny will force her to abort or take her somewhere and shoot her or what.

Honestly, guys, when you're reading about broken condoms on page 3, you know you're in for it.

Jean's best friend Carol, a girly lesbian, comes to pick her up for the party. Jean tells us that she and Carol are really into the weed and smoke up every day. Jean's super-stressed from life, school, and her job as a Subway sandwich artist. She NEEDS this party so she can get loaded and forget everything. I love how, like, she's pregnant. But whatever, I'm not here to judge.

At the party, a hookah filled with Colombian Gold is set up for the partygoers. Jean's kind-of-but-not-really friend Darlene is there with a question for Jean: do her and Carol ever have sex? This was written in '94, so that might be scandalous.

Later, after the party people clear out, Lenny and Jean have a moment alone. She tells him she's pregnant. He leaves the room and she falls asleep. When she wakes up, only Lenny, Darlene, and Carol are still around.

Darlene believes that Juan Chianto killed her boyfriend Sporty, and she wants revenge. Jean thinks it's too dangerous to go after someone so high up in gang land. She and Darlene argue, then Jean goes out on the apartment's deathtrap balcony to get away from the noise. She stands on the rickety thing, reflecting on how effed up her life is and wishing she could get away from it all. Suddenly, the balcony floor vanishes beneath her and she plummets to the ground.

At this point in the story, we meet Rishi and I start to get annoyed. Rishi's a seer, and some kind of master in the spirit world. Shari hangs out with him a lot. Maybe other people would find an inspirational message in all this. I don't want to sound like a dumbass and a heathen, but that's what I am, so I can't help it if I don't want to read page after page of "there's no such thing as time, there's no such thing as death".

Let's break for an "Interlude of Entertainment": Hey, remember that one episode of Star Trek? You know, one of the old ones, where Spock and Dr. McCoy go to ancient Rome and think that the Romans are all pagans worshipping the sun, and are going to war with them over it, but it turns out that they worship the Son, Jesus Christ, just like everyone else who deserves to live in peace, and it was all just a crazy Three's Company-style mix up. Now that's a good story.

Now back to your regularly scheduled piece of shiz. I mean, um, awes- oh, whatever. I'm not gonna pretend in front of grown ass people. The Rishi offers Shari a chance to go back to Earth into the body of an 18 year old girl who is tired of life. Shari will be a Wanderer, and will have no guarantee of remembering her life as Shari Cooper once she becomes Jean Rodrigues.

Jean wakes up in the hospital with broken ribs, a bad knee, and some head injuries. It's Monday and she's been out since her fall on Friday night. Carol is at her bedside. Jean asks if Lenny has been to see her. Turns out that he was on the balcony too. His spine snapped and he is paralyzed for life. In other news (Good? Bad? You decide!), Jean miscarried her pregnancy in the fall.

Now it gets even more Rishi-diculous. Rishi preps Shari for her mission by recounting the successes of some famous wanderers in history in a segment I like to call "Famous Wanderers in History". Einstein was a Wanderer. Remember how he was, like, stupid then he suddenly became smart? That was the work of a Wanderer. Martin Luther King, also a Wanderer. Malcolm X. He, too, was a Wanderer. He was able to circumvent the rules of peacefulness that Wanderers must follow because segregation was what the African-American community needed at the time. I gotta say, Pike's taking some serious liberties with shit here.

As Jean, Shari will be a famous author and a great role model for Hispanic youth. Rishi is probably human, but I picture him as Rafiki in The Lion King. Like, not making any sense and annoying the hell out of Simba (i.e. me). Except I'm not going to talk to my dad in the sky or defeat my uncle to rule Pride Rock. I'm just gonna debate making up my own ending to this book and wonder how many people will call me on it.

Back in Jean's life, she's stopped getting high and started volunteering at the hospital. One patient, Debra Zimmerer, is 18 years old and dying of leukemia. She is reading Lord of the Rings, and asks Jean to spoil it for her because she won't be able to finish it before she dies.

Jean tells her the story, and also brings some of her original writing for Debra to look at. Jean tries to spend time with Lenny in the hospital, too. He's been suicidal since the fall and usually wants to be alone.

As parts of her memory start to come back, Jean has some strange Shari-like urges. Instead of going to her crappy neighbourhood beach, she goes to the nice one in Shari's old 'hood. She visits the spot where Shari died, and the landlady there tells her all about Shari's murder.

After looking up the Cooper family in the phonebook, she visits their house. Jean stops to talk to Jimmy, who is in the driveway packing his car. He introduces himself as "James Cooper". Why so formal, Jimbo? Jimmis. Jimdinga. Jimenstein. Never James Cooper. James Cooper is the 2nd adopted son of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. Don't start messing with my cranium here and make me picture young Jason Bateman when I KNOW that's not what you look like. Jimmy is moving to his own apartment. Jean offers to help him move in exchange for a drive home.

Back in Rishi-World, we are treated to some false Peter information. Peter was wearing jeans and a ball cap when he met Shari in the afterlife. Uh, no. I just read Remember Me and it was baggy white shorts and a red T-shirt top. No accessories were mentioned. Good generic try, though. And I don't wanna nitpick, but on one page he's called Peter Nichols and on the next page he's called Peter Jacobs. Maybe it's some kind of trick, like perception is reality. He's transforming into something else. Or maybe the editors just bungled it. Blah.

Shari and Peter have scheduled a date, and plan on having spirit sex. Peter is reluctant, so Shari asks him if his, erm, bits still work. Peter: "Are you asking me if I'm impotent?" That woulda had me going for the dictionary when I was younger, fo' sho'. There were no Cialis commercials in the early-mid 90s to educate the little girls of North America about penis function.

Together, Shari and Peter - oh, I don't even friggin' know anymore - float to the stars or something. There's a dark cloud over the Middle East. One of them says: "I do hope they get their act together there. It looks ready to explode." Wow. I'm speechless. I wonder why it would ever explode???

They talk about Mars. And we're all stars. And you're all a part of me, and I'm a part of you. OMG - this book is getting into Jan Brady quotes from The Brady Bunch Movie. I can't believe it. If only it were RuPaul instead of Rishi. I'd be in heaven.

On Earth, Jean and Carol drive to Debra's grave. She has died of her leukemia in the meantime. I got confused when I started this chapter and thought it was Darlene who was dead. Must... pay... better attention. Now that Shari is Jean, Jean's all sanctimonious, tellin' Carol 'go to college' and 'don't be gay'.

Jean brought a story that she'd finished writing to read aloud to Debra's grave. The story-within-a-story is about an author whose muse lives in her closet and tries to blackmail her. It's pretty entertaining and lasts from page 116 - 144, but I'm not gonna go into it. The best quote from the story, though, is "Grammar is for editors and pansies".

Later that day, Jean calls up Jimmy to see if he wants any company. He feels inexplicibly comfortable around her, and even shows her a story about his sister's death that he'd written while he was sleepwalking. He leaves the room to let Jean read it, and as she does, she recognizes that she wrote it. She, Shari Ann Cooper.

Jean reads a little, and then calls Jimmy back in. She tells him a bunch of stuff that only Shari would know, convincing him that she is Shari. They stay up all night talking. Jimmy was easy to convince because he's open to metaphysical things. I guess that's my problem: I'm not open.

Jimmy invites Jean to live with him, but she remembers the Rishi's instructions. Jean has to stay in South Central and try to make things better there. Jimmy tells Jean that Dan is still dating Beth Palmones. Why is she plural in Part II? There are so many mistakes, I almost think some of them had to be on purpose.

That night, Jean calls her mother (Mrs. Rodrigues, that is), who tells her to call Carol immediately. Carol is frantic! Darlene has a piece ("gun") and Lenny is checking hisself out of hospital. They're going after Juan!

Jean rushes to Darlene's and takes Lenny back to Jimmy's apartment. I thought this plot was too messed up to even think about bringing charades into it, but, sadly, I was wrong:
Lenny: "Drop the charade, Jean. You're screwing this guy..."
Jean: "You drop the charade, you bastard."

Lenny goes into psycho overdrive and pulls the gun on Jean. He thinks that she was screwing Sporty and that it was Sporty's baby, and that's why Sporty had to die. Lenny had set Sporty up! Lenny orders Jean onto the balcony for her execution. He shoots Jean in the side and tells her to jump headfirst, or he'll keep shooting. She gets up on the railing and Lenny says: "That's a good little slut". WHAAATTTTTTT>?!!!?>? That's, like, porn talk. Where the HELL did that come from??

Jean falls, but holds onto the edge of the balcony, hoping that Lenny can't make it though the balcony door in his wheelchair. She sees his face. "Master!" "Shari." But it's Peter. Shari calls Peter "Master" in the afterlife? Say what? Then Jean falls.

It turns out that Rishi had made a deal with Peter. Peter had wanted to go back to a body too, and be with Shari. Since he'd committed suicide, there was a waiting period, but Rishi pulled some strings for him. Because Peter would have been crippled in his accident if he'd lived, he had to return to the body of a cripple. This Rishi guy isn't the most politically correct, eh? Rishi had taken both Peter and Shari to the hospital the day Jean and Lenny had woken up after the accident, and installed both of them in their new bodies.

Jean's fall landed her in the deep end of the pool! She lives! Jimmy, and Shari's old friend Jo show up, and even though Jean's in a pool full of blood, shot, and could possibly die, Jo, who Jimmy had told everything to, tells Jean she's gonna need a nickname if she keeps falling off of balconies. She will henceforth be called "The Fall Girl".

It ends: "To Be Continued..."

Yeah, to be continued next week. Remember Me Part 3: The Return, right here on Like Pike. Will I like it? Am I gonna hate it? Will I still "Like Pike" after I get through with it? Only time will tell.

Google-y Searchable

2008-08-05T20:06:00.009-03:00

I've seen other blogs put together lists of Google searches that lead people to their site, so I thought I'd publicize mine, too. For most of these, I understand why that lead the Google searcher here, because I wrote all this shit and I know what it all says, I just think it's funny/weird/cute that someone was Googling that in the first place.

It makes me laugh that Like Pike is way easier to find on google.com than google.ca. In Canada, there are about a million fishing websites before you get to anything involving not fishing. And that is... sadly, exactly what I would expect.

- how to make a basement into the perfect slumber party room
I'm imagining a little outcast trying waaaay to hard to impress some of her school friends. My advice? Avoid Ouija boarding.

- fear street blogger beware
This cracked me up. My freakin' blogroll! Well, whoever's got awesome taste in blogs, hope s/he found what s/he was looking for.

- pictures of andy gibb in tight pants
I'll tell you where to find them if you tell me why you want them.

- slumber party tied up
Kinky!!!

- what do pike like
It's either fish or weird grammar.

- what was that film, where an alien women visits earth and uses a pool table to lay out her galaxy
Comma in a search term?

- upper frontals
On Match Game, Fannie Flagg, Marcia Wallace, and other #6 seat ladies always referred to breasts as "upper frontals". I checked this search and apparently upper frontals is only used regarding dinosaurs and prehistoric birds, which, like, don't even have breasts. I'm baffled.

- like a pop it on the street
Pop it like it's hot. / (condescending tone): "Did you mean to search for 'poppet'?"

- "get shot to death" actress
I didn't read about that on Perez.

Don't forget: Remember Me 2: The Return - Thursday on Like Pike! I want to be all scathe-wise, but I don't know how.

Pop Culture Confessions: Music of the '90s

2008-08-02T09:00:00.005-03:00

So, the last few weekend editions of Pop Culture Confessions have been about lame stuff that I did. With this episode, I'm going to segue into lame stuff that I have. And I have a great transition for this that will encompass both.

Music of the 90s... where do I begin? The 90s sucked. I don't care what Rob Sheffield says, even though I adore him. Like, friggin' Michael Bolton was getting #1 hits. Musically, the 90s are most famous for the introduction or increased popularity of grunge, hip-hop, and rap, that minor swing revival, that minor disco revival (oy - remember the Grease Mega-Mix?), and bubblegum pop.¹

I wanna talk about bubblegum pop. That is where I lived. There is one specific act that was more than music to me. It was an obsession. Yes, I am talking about Backstreet Boys.

The reason I'm even bringing this up is because, as I'm sure nobody already knows, Backstreet Boys have reunited (minus one) and it feels so good that they're touring again. I saw them in concert 11 ½ years ago. And I will see them again... this weekend!

¹ This is all just my opinion, btw. I'm an enthusiast, not an expert. (Well, I am kind of an expert, but not one you'd cite or anything.)

So, there's the lame shit that I did/am gonna do again. For Part II, you might be asking yourself, "What kind of lame shit could someone possibly own relating to Backstreet Boys?" My answer: "Everything." I have it ALL:

VHS Tapes (Spot the one I home-made to win!):

CDs (and CD singles):

My concert T-shirt, which I'm debating wearing this weekend. Except I have really close seats and I don't want Howie D to see me looking like the 23 year old loser that I unfortunately am:

Newspaper Articles (and it doesn't get much worse than that):

My homemade scrapbook with every teen mag article about BSB clipped and glued to looseleaf:

Official Sticker Albums. And, yes, these are both entirely filled. I accomplished that by having my dad buy me a half box of sticker packets (like 75 packs, or something like that) for each album, which easily gave me all the ones I needed, plus a ton of doubles which I could then sell at school, 25¢ each, or 5 for $1. I made $16 one recess!

These sticker albums are the most embarrassing because a) they cost the most, and b) the stickers are positively hurtin'. There are shiny ones that say lame shit like "Backstreet Boys Are Cool!" and "Backstreet Boys: A Light In The Dark" with a burning candle. I was gonna include pics of those, but... uh, there was a glare.

And finally, among other stuff, a German-language cardboard stand up thing of Nick Carter:

I have articles and posters in French, Spanish, and German that I collected from foreign penpals who I befriended for the specific purpose of obtaining foreign Backstreet Boys stuff. I had a Swiss penpal who enjoyed Formula 1 car racing, so I sent her a Jacques Villeneuve cereal box. I had a Philippines penpal who loved the Moffatts and 98° (which are the most incomprehensible favourites. I did not find 98° pin-ups hard to part with.), so I would send her crap about them in exchange for anything Backstreet Boys.

I could go on (and on... and on... let's be honest: I suck, don't I?), but I'll limit myself to one anecdote (except I call them anec-don'ts). The backstory is that pretty much everyone in my house had BSB fever to a certain extent just from being around me. Not to mention, as you can tell by the newspaper articles, BSB were a huge deal in Nova Scotia for about a 2-3 year span and everyone in the province was at least knowledgeable about Backstreet Boys whether they wanted to be or not.

Circa 1999, a new guy started at my mom's work and she was introducing him around. His name was Rick Carter.

Mom: "Everyone, meet Nick Carter."
Rick: "Uh, it's Rick."
Mom: "Oh my God, quit playin' games with my name!!!"
The group of fieldhands (including old men, young men, scientologists, and alcoholics) deteriorate in laughter... because they all get it.

I also wanna add that the reason I know this is lame (because, obviously, I thought it was pretty cool) is because I invited every girly co-worker and cousin aged 20-30 that I have (yeah, no friends. I don't have those.) and they ALL made fun of me and wouldn't even accept a free Backstreet Boys reunion concert ticket.

Anyone else have any former psychotic obsessions like this? Maybe not to this extent. Milder, obviously, but similar??

So, that's that. We have a fake holiday here called Natal Day and I have Monday off work, so I'm taking off for the long weekend (after BSB, that is!!). Plus, my birthday is on Wednesday, so I think the Thursday book recap is gonna be late. I'll let you know. Have a good weekend, everybody (rock your body right cuz Backstreet's back all right!).

Remember Me

2008-07-30T19:11:00.008-03:00

They killed her... but she came back.

She did not understand that she was dead.

Remember Me, or "Hangin' With Shari Cooper"
1989, 230 pages

People, Dead
Shari Cooper - killed at a birthday party, wants to know why
Peter Nichols - spirit guide with a secret
The SHADOW - it's coming for you!

People, Living
"Big" Beth Palmone - nickname comes from her large "upper-frontals"
Dan "Spam" Heard - Shari's boyfriend, a-hole
Jo Foulton - occult expert, nicknaming enthusiast
Jeff Nichols - Beth's boyfriend, Jo's crush, and Peter's brother
Jimmy Cooper - Shari's beloved brother
Amanda Parish - Jimmy's girlfriend
Mrs. Parish - Amanda's mother, keeper of the Cooper family home and dark secrets
Mrs. Foulton - Jo's mother, chain smoking nurse, Mrs. Parish's sister
Garrett - alcoholic detective investigating Shari's death

My memory is the pits. I failed to remember anything about Remember Me. Even with the constant reminders every time I've signed into anything online for the last zillion years (you know, that little "Remember me?" checkbox? Ok, I'm bombing. Let's move on.) It's nuts that I forgot it all, because this book has everything (except charades, and you know me: I ain't complainin' about that).

It's jam-packed with séances, chase scenes, and explicit drug use. Secrets of all varieties: regular, dark, and sexy. And more incest than you can shake your brother's jock at, for those people who enjoy that in their YA books. The one thing I did remember was the epilogue, but I'll get to that in about 3000 words. Let's start at the beginning.

Shari Cooper is rich, got a red Ferrari for her most recent birthday, has a boyfriend who she has the option of going all the way with, and is generally happy with herself, her appearance, and her life.

Shari's favourite person in the world is her brother Jimmy. Jimmy's 19 years old, diabetic, and has problematic eyesight that makes him unable to tell the colour of Shari's eyes. (They are bright, sparkling emerald green! And don't you effin' forget it!). Shari shares with us the story of when Jimmy ate too many Christmas cookies and had to spend Christmas in the hospital. Hey, remember the Babysitters Club TV episode where that happens to Stacey?

Shari spends the first bit of the story getting ready for "Big" Beth's birthday bash. And giving us the dirt on her sex life. Which doesn't exist because that one time they tried, Dan was too fast for her. On her way downstairs to leave for Beth's party, she notices that Jimmy is awake in his room. I guess he works really awful shifts and has to sleep at weird times. She goes into his room and tells him to turn off his CRT. I had to look that up, but that's ok. It could be a Jeopardy! question sometime.

So, downstairs Shari finds Mrs. Parish, the housekeeper, and her daughter Amanda in the kitchen. Amanda basically asked her mother to ask Shari to invite her along to this party, even though she hardly knows anyone. Dan comes along to pick up the girls, and - ooooh! - late 80s partying outfits! Shari wears green pants and a yellow blouse, while Dan sports a rust coloured leather coat and white pants. I'll bet he calls them "egg shell".

On the way to the party, the kids pick up Jo. Shari goes into Jo's house where Jo's mother, Mrs. Foulton, is about to leave for work. She's a nurse. She is also Mrs. Parish's sister, making Jo and Amanda cousins. She also hates Mrs. Parish because she had an affair with Mr. Foulton and ruined both of their marriages. She tells Shari to make sure that Jo doesn't take her Ouija board to Beth's party. She must have read Slumber Party recently.

Shari goes upstairs to hurry Jo along. Jo shows her some stories that Jeff Nichols had given her. Jeff's brother Peter, the author of the stories, had died a while ago in a motorcycle crash. The one Jo is currently reading has no ending, but is about a girl who buys a VCR that can tape tomorrow's news today. That one, Pike fans, is called The Eternal Enemy, and I'll tell you all about it in a few weeks.

Jo's got a total Jess Wakefield 'tude about parties. They don't start until she gets there. But Dan drives really fast anyway. Amanda asks if he's always so fast, and Jo bungles the evening by saying something like: "That's what I hear!!!" meaning that Shari had told her about Dan's premature, um, problem. Dan gets really pissy and won't talk to Shari at all once they arrive at the party.

Some of the guests (like, everyone except Shari) had been notified that there would be swimming at the party. Beth's rich-person condo has a pool and hot tub. When everyone else leaves to engage in some watersports, Shari falls asleep on Beth's bed. A while later, Amanda wakes Shari up and tells her that Beth and Dan were naked in the hot tub. Shari's reaction, "Was he fondling her?", is the awesomest.

Jo uses the opportunity of Beth being indisposed in the hot tub to get all up in Jeff's biz. Everyone comes back upstairs, and I'm not sure I understand why, but Shari doesn't confront Dan and Beth. She pretends she knows nothing and carries on with the evening. Jo wants to put people into a trance using magnets and use their bodies as receivers to talk to the universe. Or some equally New Age-y type thing. Beth goes first, and is really spacey when she comes out of it.

Shari is next. Jo tries to make her channel a spirit. Shari plans to fake it, then laugh at anyone who believed it really happened. But she really does get overtaken by a spirit and starts talking as someone else for a few seconds. It seems like it was Peter Nichols, dead brother of Jeff.

She snaps out of it quick, and feels all cold and lonely. She goes out on the balcony alone and suddenly has a sensation of rising, then realizes that she is speeding headfirst to the ground. Shari dies.

Later, she wakes up at home. Her parents ignore her while they take a phone call, wake up Jimmy, and get into the car. They drive to the hospital in silence. Shari is confused and wonders who's sick. The whole family goes to the morgue, where Shari sees her own body and crushed head and realizes that OMG she's dead.

Ghost-Shari leaves the hospital and follows Jimmy to Beth's, where the police are questioning everyone from the party. The cop, Garrett, is major-boozin' it up outta the Palmone family liquor cabinet. Shari watches while Garrett wanders around the apartment and draws the floor layout.

(I took this and that's why it sucks)

When he leaves, she goes to the spot where she'd landed in the parking lot and lays down on the bloodstain. But Shari can't relax. She sees The SHADOW - a cloud-vapour dark, evil thing. She runs and yells for her mother, which allows her to be transported to her mother's room. Mom is in bed crying. Shari tries to hold onto her, and falls asleep.

She wakes up at Amanda's to find Amanda and Mrs. Parish preparing to leave for Shari's funeral. Jo and her mother show up to carpool. Jo is wearing orange pants and an orange blouse. Shari is livid. That's her best friend wearin' that! I went to a rainy day funeral with my gram once and people were wearing random raincoats. Some of them were red. Some were yellow. Some were, like, plaid. Gram went off on a haywire in the car on the way home. She hated everyone who wore non-black/grey colours and prints. It was a cardinal sin for someone to wear a disrespectfully cheerful colour to a funeral service. So I have actually literally heard where Shari is coming from.

She sees her parents and Jimmy up front at the church, but sits with Mrs. Parish in the back. Not a lot of people showed up. There's one guy she doesn't recognize: a young man in white baggy shorts and a red T-shirt. She wonders if it's someone from school who loved her from afar. Haha, sounds like me circa grade 11. Like, sitting in class: "I wonder whose new crush I am today??"

Mrs. P prays quietly with her rosary while the reverend/religious figure does his thing. Shari goes into a trance of religious light until the service ends. Afterwards, she's understandably pissed. Like, no "Stairway to Heaven", no sobbing friends making speeches, and only a handful of people even go to the grave site! She watches her family drop roses onto her casket, then the guy in red and white comes up to her. It's dead guy, Peter Nichols! She hadn't recognized him before!

They have a long conversation about God and the afterlife. Peter encourages Shari to move into the religious light, like when Mrs. P was praying. She only needs to think about it and it will come. Shari got a vibe from the service that everyone thinks she killed herself, and she wants to find out who killed her and clear her name.

Peter admits that he had been at Beth's the night of the party and during the group interrogation, but he doesn't know anything. Shari asks Peter about The SHADOW. He tells her that it imprisons you if you stick around too long after death and it catches you. He agrees to help Shari with her investigation.

Shari suspects Amanda, but it could also have been Dan, Beth, Jo, or Jeff who pushed her. Some of them have motives. It could have been two, three, or even ALL OF THEM WORKING TOGETHER!

Peter tries to teach Shari to transport herself using her mind. She is trying too hard and can't do it. He uses Yoda quotes (for the second book in a row), calls her Shari Poppins, and tries to inspire her with lessons from Peter Pan, Superman, and The Wizard of Oz.

The two ghosts give up on that and take the bus to Dan's house. Dan and Beth are making out, half undressed, on the couch. There's a knock, and Garrett comes in. He starts grilling them about who was where in the apartment when Shari went over the edge. Garrett rips a condom out of Dan's shirt pocket and tells him that if he thinks he's practicing safe sex, he's not even close. What?! Garrett's got a condom problem? What the hell does he recommend using then? I know he's probably old school, but I don't wanna hear "chip bag" or "Coca-Cola douche".

After Garrett leaves, Beth starts crying, and Dan goes to his bedroom where he takes Shari's prom picture out of a drawer and smashes it against the wall. Shari's ok with this. She has to be. She also has to move fast to follow Garrett before she loses him.

Shar and Pete ride in the bed of Garrett's truck to Jeff's house (and Peter's house, when he was alive). Jeff is working on his motorcycle in the driveway when they arrive. Garrett asks him for a beer. Jeff tells him sure, but it's not cold. Garrett is fine with that, saying that he's on duty. Oh, ok. So you can drink on the job as long as you don't enjoy it. Warm beer = non-alcoholic, apparently. Got it.

While Jeff and Garrett are talking, the phone in the garage rings. Jeff answers it and Shari demonstrates a Cool Phone Trick: Dead Person Edition. She simply presses her ear up to the phone/Jeff's head, and of course, he won't notice. Shari hears Jo asking Jeff to attend a 10 PM meeting at her house to talk about Shari.

Garrett soon leaves, and Shari & Peter ride in the back of the truck. He goes downtown to the seedy end of Hollywood, stops at a liquor store, then parks with his binoculars ready. There's a creep in the distance wearing tight black leather pants, an orange Day-Glo T-shirt, and, incomprehensibly, a thin gold chain around his shaved head. I've never seen that sort of get-up before, and it does sound hurtin', but I kinda wanna know what type of chain it is. Box link, curb, rope, singapore? Friggin' figaro? Sixteen inch? Eighteen inch? That could make the difference here.

A girl comes up to the guy and they start making out, causing Garrett to guzzle his whiskey. The chain guy gives the girl a Baggie of white powder and she leaves. Shari recognizes the girl from a picture she saw in Garrett's wallet. It's his daughter!!

For whatever reason, Shari thinks it would be cool to follow the daughter. They get into her apartment, where she is gathering the materials needed to prepare the powder for ~~safe~~ ~~legal~~ ~~tasty~~ human consumption. Syringe, spoon, lighter, tourniquet. Check, check, check, check. It turns out that the girl can see Shari. Peter explains that people in an altered state of consciousness can sometimes see into the spirit world. Shari tells the girl to cut the shit because it's ruining her own/her father's life.

Later that night, they head over to Jo's for the meeting. Jimmy, Amanda, Jeff, Beth, Dan, and Jo are there with the Ouija board. Peter tells Shari that she can manipulate the planchette by sticking her ghost hands into their living hands, but she doesn't wanna do it. Peter reluctantly does it, and starts spelling Shari's name wrong.

He manages to communicate that Peter + Shari are together before he is blocked from moving the pointer. It spells out B-U-R-N-I-N-G and H-E-L-L. Jeff freaks and flips the board, almost knocking over a candle on the table. Are they ever gonna learn??

Jimmy runs from the room, and Shari follows him. The SHADOW shows up and corners her in the cemetery. Her gravestone turns into a mirror and Shari's reflection rewinds back through time and memories to when she was a new baby.

Peter's on the scene and pulls Shari out through the cemetery gates. He wants Shari to go to the light NOW, but she has another plan: to break into Jimmy's dreams and tell him that she's not in hell.

At Shari's house, her parents are leaving for a few days. Amanda will be staying over to keep Jimmy company while they're gone, and she's sleeping in Shari's bed. Shari goes into Jimmy's room at 2:15 AM, and touches him to get into his dreams. She does the same thing to Amanda in the room next door.

She decides to try Dan's dreams next. In Dan's bedroom, she grabs him and is immediately treated to a glimpse of Dan DreamWorld. A naked woman with Shari's face, and Beth's breasts and voice is laying on a circular bed. Actually, I'm not sure if it was circular, maybe I added that myself when I was picturing this. Shari has an outburst, to which DreamDan responds by asking "Marsha" to come back later. Shari asks: "Who's Marsha?"

Dan says it's his cousin from Florida, but they didn't have sex or anything. They only took a shower together. Shari = incredulous. She recovers and asks Dan how she died, which causes her to look all head-splattered to Dan's eyes. She leaves his dream and his house.

Shari also enters Jo's dream, but doesn't get any good information. She's interrupted when Peter calls out for help. The SHADOW is after him!!

Running to help Peter, Shari doesn't see The SHADOW. He tells her that there's a different SHADOW for each person. It's the hardass, self-critiquin', judgemental parts of your soul that get left behind when you go into the light. He doesn't really know what happens if you go into the SHADOW.

Once Peter is all right, Shari goes to Beth's and climbs up to the balcony from which she'd fallen to her death. The SHADOW appears on the bloodstained pavement and encourages Shari to jump. She does.

Her life flashes from birth, to being in the hospital nursery and having her hospital bracelet switched with another baby and being taken back to the wrong mother and living her entire life with fake parents and a fake brother. She sees her entire life until the scene of her death, but not who pushed her. But she knows for sure now that she didn't jump.

Shari wakes up later in the spot where she had died. She remembers some of what The SHADOW had shown her. Peter 'n' Shari head over to Mrs. Parish's in time to see Mrs. Foulton show up. Mrs. Foulton has a couple questions: 1) Does Mrs. Parish know that Amanda is spending the night at Jimmy's? and 2) What is the Catholic punishment for incest?

That's enough for Shari to figure it all out. Amanda is the daughter of the Cooper family. Shari is Mrs. Parish and Mr. Foulton's kid from when they had that affair that time. Mrs. Foulton switched the babies in the hospital just to be evil, I guess. Shari and Jo are half-sisters. Jimmy and Amanda are full brother and sister. But sister better not be full of brother over there at the Cooper's, if ya catch my drift.

There's a knock at the door and it's Garrett. I love how through the whole book it's just "Garrett". No title from the police force, no Detective, no Lieutenant, not even Mr. Like, he's an alcoholic so we needn't show him even a modicum of respect. He sits down with the sisters and drinks coffee, hangs out, shoots the shit, then makes an excuse to go to the can when he really just wants to snoop in Amanda's bedroom. He looks at her sneaker collection and finds a pair with orange dust on the soles. The very same orange dust that would only be on one's footwear if one had pushed Shari from the balcony, then had to climb part of the roof to get to the other door to reenter the apartment without being seen by the people inside.

Garrett wraps up a sneaker and tosses it out the window, so he can pick it up when he leaves. Which he promptly does. Back in his car, he radios for cars to get to the Cooper house to restrain Amanda. Shari uses her dead powers to make herself fly. She needs to get home quick in case Jimmy is in danger (of screwing a blood relation).

At the Cooper's, Amanda is feeding Jimmy diabetic-coma cake. She tells him that she's a virgin, and a diabetic, too. She has this romantic idea of them giving each other insulin shots. Amanda had heard her mother say that she and Jimmy were related, but Amanda believes that "Love knows no reason" and wants to sleep with him anyway.

He tries putting her off, and she gives him a shot of 10X his insulin dosage. Amanda tells Jimmy that she's the one who pushed Shari, then tries to inject him with an empty syringe. Shari begs Peter to go into Amanda and control her so she can't do it. He does for a second, but his SHADOW comes and he has to run. Peter tells Shari that he crossed the centre line on his motorcycle on purpose to commit suicide and that's why he's so afraid of his SHADOW and can't go into the light himself.

Amanda injects Jimmy with the air, and Shari somehow jumps herself into the air in the syringe and gets injected into Jimmy. In a mini-dream-world inside of Jimmy's heart, Shari tells Jimmy that he has to forgive Amanda and pop the balloon, which represents the air bubble in his vein, and not something else, you pervs, and he will live.

Garrett and the police finally arrive to arrest Amanda and get medical help for Jimmy. Shari and Peter confess that they had had feelings for each other when they were alive and make some sort of deal involving kisses. Cute.

So, the sad part is that the Cooper's real daughter killed their fake daughter and is being charged for it. Luckily, they're made of money and decide that Amanda needs the best legal coucil available. She's sentenced to a few years in psych. Poor Mrs. Parish's real daughter is dead, and her fake daughter is a psychotic criminal who now has a rich, real family and will never care about who raised her ever again.

The book ends with Shari & Peter getting into costumes (Shari as an angel, Peter as the devil) and paying a visit to Garrett's daughter. Shari is all goodness and light, trying to make her go straight before the devil gets a hold of her. Peter's devil is incredible. He talks all in rhymes, and that is truly the only bit of this whole book that rang any bells with me. So, they threaten the girl, and maybe that'll do it.

The other end-of-the-book tyin'-up-ends thing is that this entire story, the whole of Remember Me, is something that Shari wrote on Jimmy's computer (CRT) from beyond the grave. However that works.

******NOTES******

This book is a hell of a lot of fun. Even when I don't make any Dead Like Me references. Shari is cool, real (Miss Cleo: "She real."), and not lame or annoying at all. The brother love is a little weird at times. Before we know that Amanda is Jimmy's DNA-mate, Shari is all jealous of their relationship. And that's when we all were being suckered into thinking Jimmy and Shari are bro/sis. So, Pike set it up that no matter who was related to who, it was gonna be a little bit creepy.

Awesome Readers, I have a very special treat for everyone this weekend. Pop Culture Confessions: Music of the 90s (and I can't be more specific than that because it's so treacherous that I might back out at the last minute. I'm gonna have to pre-schedule it to publish, then take a lot of sleeping pills or something just to make sure I don't delete the whole thing) promises to be totally awesome, if your idea of awesome is having so much ammo to make fun of me with that you're gonna have to quit your job just to heckle me like I deserve. So, be back here at Like Pike on Saturday. (Or whenever. I'll still be here.) See you then!

Pike Book List

2008-07-28T08:30:00.055-03:00

Slumber Party (1985)
Weekend (1986)
Chain Letter (1986)
The Tachyon Web (1986)
Last Act (1988)
Spellbound (1988)
Gimme a Kiss (1988)
Scavenger Hunt (1989)
Fall into Darkness (1990)
See You Later (1990)
Sati (1990)
Witch (1990)
Die Softly (1991)
Bury Me Deep (1991)
Whisper of Death (1991)
Chain Letter 2: The Ancient Evil (1992)
Master of Murder (1992)
Monster (1992)
The Season of Passage (1992)
Road to Nowhere (1993)
The Eternal Enemy (1993)
The Immortal (1993)
The Wicked Heart (1993)
The Midnight Club (1994)
The Listeners (1994)
The Cold One (1994)
The Lost Mind (1995)
The Visitor (1995)
The Starlight Crystal (1995)
The Star Group (1997)
Execution of Innocence (1997)
Hollow Skull (1998)
Magic Fire (1998)
The Grave (1999)
The Blind Mirror (2003)
Falling (2007)

Final Friends: The Party (1988)
Final Friends: The Dance (1988)
Final Friends: The Graduation (1989)

Remember Me (1989)
Remember Me 2: The Return (1992)
Remember Me 3: The Last Story (1994)

The Last Vampire (1994)
The Last Vampire 2: Black Blood (1994)
The Last Vampire 3: Red Dice (1995)
The Last Vampire 4: Phantom (1996)
The Last Vampire 5: Evil Thirst (1996)
The Last Vampire 6: Creatures of Forever (1996)

Alosha (2004)
Alosha Trilogy 2: The Shaktra (2005)
Alosha Trilogy 3: The Yanti (2006)

Tales of Terror (1997)

Death of Despair
The Fan from Hell
Last Dawn
Timespell
Revenge
Dark Walk

Tales of Terror #2 (1998)

Spooksville
The Secret Path (1995)
Creature in the Teacher (1996)
The Thing in the Closet (1997)
Phone Fear (1998)

Pop Culture Confessions: Full House Edition (Plus More!)

2008-07-26T11:50:00.005-03:00

A Few Things...

1) My First Full House Memory

Full House was a huge part of my life growing up. I remember the first time I ever watched it. Like, not the exact episode (I friggin' wish!), but the scenario. One Friday night in 1989, my mom was putting me to bed. Then, from downstairs - a beautiful sound! The Full House theme song! I asked what it was, and Mom told me it was a show called Full House, and that I could stay up to watch it if I wanted! From then on, I never missed an episode of Full House on TGIF. The move to Tuesdays in '91 ('92?) kinda killed it for me, so I stayed caught up with the syndicated episodes weeknights at 6 o'clock, 6:30 in Newfoundland (haha, li'l Canadian joke for East Coasters).

2) Backstory: A co-worker recently got married in an airplane, and then she and the groom parachuted to the ground. Our local newspaper did a story on it, but, upon googling the couples' names, I found that a lot of other newspapers had carried the story too. And not just in Canada (some American ones too!).

I mentioned what a big story it was to another co-worker, and this is what followed:

Her: "Why?"

Me: "I guess it's a big deal when people jump out of airplanes to get married."

Her: (staring silently)

Me: (babbling nervously) "Yeah, I thought it was common enough that it wouldn't be big news, but I guess maybe it's jumping out of a plane before you get married that's so popular. (pause) Like Uncle Jesse. (long pause) On Full House."

Her: (staring silently... 3... 2... 1... walks away, with no look of disgust or anything, just no possible way to relate to/answer me)

Me: "With the tomato truck??"

This is why I keep my gob shut, like, all the time. I can't say anything, ever, about any of the stuff I enjoy, or every conversation I have ends like that. There's so much stuff that's off limits for me. Like, if you enjoy one lame thing, that's ok. If you enjoy every lame thing, no one will ever forgive you. And by "you", I mean me.

3) My "Ways To Seem Normal" Reference Guide:

don't talk to people about life lessons learned from Little House on the Prairie/confess to having childhood crush on Michael Landon
don't use Peanuts comics to prove a point
don't mention Breaker High (ever!)
never list Billboard Hot 100 #1s by year/tell someone the #1 song on the day he or she was born... from memory
Gummi Bears, Smurfs, and Stop the Smoggies are like Gummi - Don't you dare!, Go Smurf Yourself, and Stop (yourself before you say anything about) The Smoggies. (That last one was just like a Shania Twain song title. & by that, I mean that she often uses parentheses in her song titles. Beyond often. Obsessively. Actually, all punctuation. I think I saw a semi-colon once. Check it out if you don't believe me.)

So I'm pretty much a joke on wheels. Except the wheels part. I liked him on Degrassi, though. Even with the treacherous hairdo/embarrassingly tight jeans.

Also, it was great to see, from the reponses to my Sweet Valley ("Why, yes, I do talk to myself and live in an imaginary world, got a problem with it?") Confession, that I am not the only person who is this way/does stuff like this. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of blogging. Actually, I'm only wasting time with all this nonsense because there aren't extremely many Christopher Pike books to blog about.

A few recent comments have inspired me to put together a complete Pike book list, so I'll post that early next week.

Oh, and: if you don't have a favorite Christopher Pike book, may I suggest Remember Me? We can talk about it more on Thursday, if you wanna.

Scavenger Hunt

2008-07-23T19:30:00.005-03:00

Pray they don't find what they're looking for....

The hunt was on

Scavenger Hunt - Christopher Pike
1989, 215 pages

Carl Timmons is a “troubled young man”, as described by the back of the book. That's an expression that I will always associate with Home Alone 2 when Buzz messes up Kevin's solo at the Christmas concert, then gives him that phony-ass apology and Kev goes ballistic. Buzz says, "What a troubled young man", and the parents and, like, Uncle Frank totally believe that Buzz is sincere.

So the story is that each year, at Jacob High in Express, California, the senior class holds a scavenger hunt for wicked prizes. This year the winning team get a one week vacation in Hawaii. The hunt is organized by a secret school club lead by the mysterious Mr. Partridge.

It's really messed up, so if you don't wanna read the whole thing, here's how it all ends up:

Cessy and Davey are actually part of an ancient race of dinosaurs that developed intelligence and found a way to gain immortality after surviving the dinosaur holocaust.

Yeah.

And here's how we get to that:

As the end of senior year approaches, it brings with it the one year anniversary of when Carl's BFF Joe Travers died in a freak flood during a hike in the desert. Carl had tried to save Joe, but failed. A few months later, Joe's body was found, skeletal-ized, in the desert by a hunter who almost wound up pissin' on his bones.

Before Joe's death, the closest thing Carl had to a girlfriend was Tracie White. Convolutedly, Tracie was Joe's girlfriend Paula's best friend. Tracie is in mad love with Carl, but doesn't know how to tell him. Especially when they've barely spoken since Joe died.

The night before the scavenger hunt, Tracie calls up Carl to invite him to be on the team with her, Paula, and Paula's little brother Rick. Believe it or not, Carl's not at home. Please leave a message at the beep. Yeah, that's right. Carl's dad is so important that his family had to get an answering machine. It cost $100 and no one else they know has one!

Carl has the best intentions to return Tracie’s call, until the phone rings and it's Cessy Stepford. Cessy is the object of Carl's lust. She wants Carl on her team, and invites him over to watch her skinny-dip. Seconds later, Carl shows up at Cessy’s to find his buddy, Tom Barrett, already there.

Tom used to be a big football star until he suffered a head injury. Now his reaction times suck and his brain functions at about 40%. He doesn't even notice when Cessy gets out of the pool naked, that's how bad off he is. Carl feels bad that people used to like Tom when he was the football guy, but now that he doesn’t play anymore, people don’t even know his name.

Cessy dries off, and the two boys do whatever they do to make themselves presentable, then the three kids head off to school. When they arrive, they meet Cessy’s brother Davey, the student council president, preparing for the scavenger hunt assembly. Cessy and Davey are both totes gorgeous, with black hair and big, dark eyes. But they’re NOT TWINS. They just look the same/are the same age. They aren’t perfect size 6, and don’t wear matching lavalieres, thus cannot be Californian twins.

The mysterious Mr. Partridge lumbers up to the stage, wearing his trademark mirrored sunglasses, and explains the rules of the hunt. Get a clue sheet before you leave; after the first clue, the sheet contains only half-clues: the second half will be found when the teams reach each destination.

Tracie meets up with Carl before he takes off with Cessy and the guys. She is finally able to ask him to be on her hunt team with Paula and Rick. It's a huge step for Paula to agree to have Carl on the team; she had blamed him for Joe’s death. After Joe died, Paula went completely off the rails. She started smoking, getting into trouble, driving around on motorcycles. Good Lord! Imagine the shenanigans! But Carl tells them that he already promised Cessy to be on her team with Tom and Davey. Davey hands out clue sheets to everyone, and the two teams get to work.

Rick is one of those genius-type kids. He’s got Muscular Dystrophy and has been in a wheelchair for a long time. He’s only 15, but is going to graduate with the older kids. He’s got a great personality, and is the kind of guy who would probably be voted “Friend To All” in a 2000s era yearbook. God, kids of the 80s had it so easy at graduation time. "I Will Remember You" and "Graduation (Friends Forever)" didn't exist yet, so grad ceremonies probably didn't even require barfbags.

Rick and Davey compete to get the answer first, and both figure out that first clue leads them to the school track. One the way to the second clue, Davey starts going on about current events. There was a story in the paper recently about an old goldmine not too far away. Back in, like, 1872 four people went down there and found a fortune. It was awesome. But then they got fucking greedy and went back for more.

In the mine the second time, they got trapped. The bodies of two men were the only ones found. The bodies of the young, enterprising couple, Daniel and Claire Stevens, who had originally found the mine and made the deal to split the profits with the other two in exchange for labour, were never found. Davey suggests that Rick research where the mine is, then Davey will look for treasure, and they can split whatever they find. Rick is moderately interested in the prospect. The two groups split up after finding the second clue.

A short time later, they meet up again at the local video rental store. A Yoda quote from The Empire Strikes Back had lead them there; they found their loot and next clue-half behind the video case on the shelf. The next clue is tricky. While everyone works on figuring it out, Cessy and Davey visit the ice cream shop across the street. Tom, Carl, Paula, and Rick decide that some ice cream would really help them think, and send Tracie over to pick up cones and shiz for them.

Tracie steps outside to see Cessy and Davey making out. While licking ice cream cones. In Carl’s truck. She is revolted. It's like fucking a mirror¹. She almost pukes, recovers, then goes to get the ice creams everyone wanted. Except she doesn’t really care anymore and gets choco-shakes for everyone, regardless of what they asked for. Shoddy work, Trace.

Apparently, the shock of what she'd witnessed was good for her brain, because Tracie then realizes that the clue was coming from inside the video rental establishment. It was a line from a classic film (which none of these 1980s bozo schoolkids recognized), and not just any line either. We're talking about #3 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list:

"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."

The gang seeks out the next clue from behind the On the Waterfront VHS case, decide to split up (again), and move on out. Rick can't resist taking a detour to the library to check out that article Davey had been telling him about. Rick, dude, you are in the middle of a timed event. That is like me trying to take cute pictures of my cat while playing Bejeweled 2. You can't succeed at both endeavors. If you take your eyes offa it, that meter can blow right up in yo' face so fast. Or, more relevantly, other people will get ahead of you in this scavenger hunt and beat your ass.

Rick searches for, but can't find, the article that Davey had mentioned. He checks out the really old local newspaper from the 1870s to see if it says anything about the mine. He finds something interesting, but because Tracie & Paula are obviously anxious to get-the-hell-out-of-the-library-cuz-there-ain't-no-jeezly-clues-here, he doesn't have time to read it. He sticks the 100+ year old paper under himself in the wheelchair and takes off with it.

Paula wants Rick to be able to focus on the hunt, so she shoves the newspaper in the trunk where he can't get it. In the meantime, Carl's team has moved through the next couple of clues quite easily and can't believe the big lead they've maintained. Even with all the time they wasted at the video store, no other teams caught up to them. Well, I guess they can all feel good about their intelligence... or can they?

A clue leads them up the local mountain. Cessy and Carl go alone, on foot. Cessy is full of boundless energy. Cessy is so perfect that she can hike for an hour in a short, white dress with no panties on and still look perfect. She even has time for a non-sibling make out break, which Carl enjoys. After they find their clue, which says "Keep Going", they return to the bottom, where Davey and Tom are waiting. Carl has a strange sensation that he suddenly can't remember how Tom got the way he is: football accident, car accident, or toomuchpot bodystoned.

They proceed up the mountain again, this time in Carl's truck. Carl's truck woulda preferred to stay home. Pieces of crap are flying offa the truck the whole way up the bumpy mountain. The team arrives at a little purple house in the woods. It's boarded up and smells funky. There's black oozy crap on the ground. Suddenly, a purple lizard the size of a large housecat shows up. WTF? Cessy doesn't mind the thing and lets it crawl up her foot, but Davey moves like lightning to crush its skull under his boot.

Carl has that weird feeling again, and so removes his watch and drops it on the ground before getting back in the truck. It's Carl's version of the Inukshuk: "Now the people will know we were here."

A short time later, Tracie and her carload of teammates have also unravelled the path and found the purple cabin. Tracie sees Carl's watch on the ground and wants to know what the deal is. She spills to Rick and Paula that she saw Cessy and Davey kissing outside the ice cream shop. Brother and sister themselves, they are totally grossed out. Rick becomes suspicious of why the hell no other classmates have arrived yet. Like, he's smart and all, but this is gettin' ridiculous. He thinks that Davey switched the clue papers that he gave them to lead them where-the-hell-ever for some twisted purpose that they couldn't begin to guess. Ol' Ricko is on to something.

They debate quitting the scavenger hunt, because Davey's plan obvs isn't gonna include a trip to Hawaii. Tracie wants to check out what's inside the purple cabin, and Rick decides to finish reading the antique newspaper that he horked from the library.

Even though Paula's the one with the criminal record, Tracie wields the crowbar to bust into the cabin. She finds a dirty, dirty residence belonging to someone with really bizarre interests. A collection of newspaper clippings about torture is piled on the kitchen table. A long mirror covers one wall, and on the other side is... A POSTER OF MR. PARTRIDGE!!!!!! In it, he's wearing his gray hiking uniform and SMILING, which Trace has never seen in real life. It's a creepy effect. Not to mention the pic is reflected in the mirror, so you can easily double your creeped-out-edness.

What's weird is that the picture convinces Tracie that this is Mr. Partridge's house. Instead of assuming that this is, like, Mr. Partridge's stalker's house. Or Mr. Partridge's mother's house. I dunno. All this shit points to the fact that Carl is not safe, wherever he is, and if Tracie wants to ever see him again, she's gonna have to keep scavenger hunting.

When she joins the others, Rick catches her up on the article. The highlight was diary entries written by one of the poor bastards who died. Him and his buddy waited in the dark for days for Claire and Daniel to return. Then he either had a dream or really saw Claire return and let his friend drink from her canteen. But it wasn’t water! It was acid that melted his face! Dude is so groded-out that he can only write about it in his diary, and then die.

So, at the same time, Carl has been taken out to the desert with the crazy lot of we-don’t-even-know-whats, and into an old mine passageway, where he is told to start digging. Cessy finds a homeless desert dog, which she decides to keep. Cessy’s a real animal lover. Which is what I always say about Betty White. Futility overtakes Carl, and he refuses to dig any longer. Suddenly, help appears. Or MORE VICTIMS!

The other team shows up. Rick in his wheelchair even made it though the passageway. Davey wants Tracie to help dig up the surprise. She and Carl get to the bottom, and find… a pair of mirrored shades... on Mr. Partridge's face! Davey had told him to bury himself deeper than that! Ok, what? But it’s not Mr. Partridge! Davey peels Partridge's face off to reveal the bone structure and crooked teeth. It’s body of Joe, eyeball-less and disguised. He's been reanimated as Davey's puppet the entire school year!

Rick guesses that Cessy and Davey are actually part of a race of dinosaurs that developed intelligence and a way to gain immortality after surviving the dinosaur holocaust. In the past, they had lived as Claire and Daniel of the 1870s mine scam, and had hid out underground for years until they needed new corpses to maintain their lifespan. And he would be pretty much correct.

Davey tries to convince everyone that the dinosaurs were more advanced than humans, but come on… did they have computers? Did they have space travel? Rick wants to know, seriously. Answer up, Davey. Apparently, the shit the lizard people did was EVEN BETTER than computers. Davey can make up all the explanations he wants. If there were no YA blogs, then yeah, I doubt it was better.

Joe had washed down into Lizard Mine during the flood and made a deal with them. Cessy and Davey got to keep being immortal… and Joe was able to come back to zombie-life as a shell-shocked version of himself… in the form of TOM!!! And get his revenge on Carl, who he believes left him to die the day of the flood. So, Partridge was body of Joe, and Tom was random body with partial mind of Joe.

Take my word, the rest doesn't get any better. Davey tosses Cessy’s dog into an acid pit; the result turns my guts. Then he wants to put Rick in there, too. Kid’s got a disease. I think he’s been through enough. As Davey is going to shove Rick in, Cessy distracts him and breaks Rick’s neck, so he won’t have to die of being submerged in acid. Davey doesn't notice and shoves Rick in, thinking he's still alive.

Davey has one more, bigger, better, and more shocking surprise. He sticks a machete into Carl, who doesn't die, and tells him that he's already dead! But Davey's just having a laugh with our Carl. He's not really dead; the machete was a collapsible prop. I wanna say something here, but I got nothin'.

Carl gets freaked and runs away, leaving Tracy and Paula to fend for themselves. He finds a church with a Mexican, tequila-drinking priest in the confessional. He starts telling the guy everything that I've told you up to this point. Shortly after, everyone else bursts in. Tracie and Paula have their mouths taped, but aren't otherwise hurt or restrained.

Davey pulls the priest out of the booth and garrots him to death. Carl shows his face outta the booth in time to see Davey garrotting the priest. Then Davey makes some kind of threat against Carl's balls with the garrot. Let me tell you what, I read the last 50-ish pages of this book twice on the weekend and once last night... I didn't notice the threat against Carl's, um, manhood until the very last reading:

"Look at you, Carl. You're ready to pee your pants. But imagine this." Davey held up his bloody wire. "Soon you may have nothing to put in those pants."

Huh? Could that mean anything else? I'm confused.

Carl had lit a candle in front of the Virgin Mary statue when he entered the church. Tracie is Catholic and wants to do her own ceremony thing. The lizards know nothing of this God, so Tracie explains that God created everything, even them.

Cessy is intrigued by the ceremony and wants to light a candle and receive a blessing. Tracie notices that Davey is now holding the priest's tequila bottle, and remembers that Davey and Cessy had both seemed scared of fire earlier in the mine tunnel when Paula tried to light a smoke. She formulates a plan.

Cessy's getting a little tired of Davey, having spent millions of years with him, so she uses her powers to amplify Tracie and Paula's abilities, allowing them to soak him with booze and ignite him. Carl puts on the finishing touch, by stabbing Davey in the back with his own machete. His body-thing disappears into the church floor.

There is only one place where Davey can leave Earth and enter his lizard dimension, and be able to return to Earth. And this ain't that place. So Cessy wins.

Tracie takes a moment to explain to Cessy what true love is. Cessy pretty much says that if Tracie and Carl get together and last as a couple, she gonna come back in 50 years still all young and hot and take Carl for a hot tub.

In the epilogue, they travel back to Express, wondering how they're gonna explain what the hell happened to Rick. This shit was weird, and I could totally have misinterpreted/misunderstood, like, the whole thing. Which is sad because this was written for children. So if any Scavenger Hunt experts wanna set my shit straight in comments, do it. Nicely, please.

The best (and basically only) scavenger hunt related movie quote I can think of, I'm gonna tack on down here for your enjoyment:

"...if you had told me we'd be going on a six-hour scavenger hunt for blow I would've passed."
- Andrew Largeman, Garden State

¹ If anyone recogized "It's like fucking a mirror" from The House of Yes, mega props. You and I are probably kindred spirits.