BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

… Ben had turned up the volume slightly on the television when the Saturday night movie had been interrupted for a breaking news update. Brandee Street, her cameraman, and the pilot had been arrested all right—but not before getting the morbid video into the station’s hands. Even through the overblown colors of the malfunctioning set, you could easily make out Ben, Constance and me on the balcony of the apartment. We had fought a desperate fight, but in the end the sheet had fluttered enough to give at least a partial view of the woman’s nude remains.

We all stared silently at the picture as the talking heads behind the anchor desk identified us each in succession. It was all we could do to stifle disgusted sighs as they proceeded to tag us with a sensationalized nickname. A moniker that would unfortunately not only stick for some time to come but was also picked up immediately by every other station and newspaper in the bi-state area. We had been christened “The Ghoul Squad.” …

Some of you may recognize the above paragraphs as having been excerpted from Never Burn A Witch, the second novel in my Rowan Gant Investigations series. And, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter it’s a fairly good bet you’ve already heard about the “official” RGI GHOUL SQUAD. But then, maybe you haven’t, so that’s why I am going to flap my metaphorical gums about it here.

One of my fans, Walter Hardin Jr. to be exact – as I definitely want to give credit where credit is due – mentioned to me that I really needed a “Street Team” to free me up from some of the time-sucking promotional activities that come with the whole “being an author” profession. I thought I knew what a “Street Team” was, but soon discovered that there are two types – professional and fan-based. It was then I remembered something from my youth – The KISS Army. I was never a member myself, what with Styx being my ear candy of choice, but believe me I went to school with many of the KA inductees.

So, I did a bit of research. Then I researched some more. Then I got together with my publicist (Wendy) and my pa/publicist (Scott). They both gave me some great input. Then I ran it past a couple of friends, one of whom had done time in the music biz – they all had great input too. Some ideas were weeded out, others were solidified. The ones we liked most got a quick swipe of the photo fixative lacquer – sorry… had an old 1960’s Polaroid moment there… Anywho, it seemed like in the matter of just a few days I went from, “Street Team? What’s that?” to “YEEHAAAAA! Street Team!”

Better yet, a whole bunch of folks out there in Interwebz land did too…

And so, the RGI GHOUL SQUAD was officially born.

Complete with its very own website and everything, the “Squad” was set to go live January 1, 2010. But, that was before I committed premature post-aculation. By this I mean, while starting to write the posts that would fill the news section of the RGI GHOUL SQUAD website I neglected to turn off the ping.fm updater. As soon as I let loose with that first post it was all over Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace – not to mention a few other social networking venues.

Email began to pour in – “The join link doesn’t work!”, “There’s a password on xyz link so I can’t get to it!”, “I want to join right now!”… and so on. You get the picture.

Suddenly, I was busier than a cat covering up sh*t with all my email answering to explain the situation. But, I just couldn’t keep up. Don’t get me wrong, I was – and am – ecstatic that so many folks expressed an interest in the “Squad”. I simply wasn’t prepared to handle my screwup.

So, instead of fighting a losing battle I focused my energies and resources on making things happen a little quicker. Therefore, the RGI GHOUL SQUAD officially went “live” 18 days early – this past Sunday, December 13, 2009 to be exact. Hmmmm, 13… Seems kind of fitting in a lot of ways.

If you think you might be interested in checking out the “Squad,” its benefits – and responsibilities – then maybe even joining up, you can find the official website at www.rowangant.com.

Just be aware – I am NOT going to wear all that facepaint, breathe fire, spit fake blood, or even sing Rock And Roll All Nite…

Well… Okay… Maybe I’ll sing, but only after a few beers.

More to come…

Murv

Well, no… Not really. But, you know how I am. If there’s a song out there I can reference – from my era, anyway – I am likely to do so…

So… Anyway… About this whole “Turning Japanese” thing…

A few weeks back the Missouri Botanical Garden, sometimes called Shaw’s Garden – (After Henry Shaw, the man who created the garden and donated the property upon which is resides) – but these days affectionately referred to as MoBot… Not to be confused with MoDoT (Missouri Department of Transportation)… hosted its annual “Japanese Festival.”

Basically, the garden showcases native Japanese plants, flowers, sculptures, music, culture, food, and the whole nine yards. This is something they have been doing for a little slice of forever. Just to give you a frame of reference, back when the Evil Redhead and I were merely dating – not even cohabitating yet – we spent a Saturday at MoBot for the Japanese Fest. It was a great time… We walked around, looked at flowers, drank a couple of Kirins, gnawed on some Teryaki (Yeah, they say traditional Japanese food, but let’s face it – it’s Japanese American food), and lounged on the grass while listening to the syncopated pop jazz stylings of the band, Hiroshima. We even did silly stuff like holding hands and stealing kisses while in the shadows of the Japanese Maple trees… You know, that stuff you do when you are young and in lust…

So, anyway, that tells you right there that this event is better than 20 years old, so it’s been around for a while…

And, since we are on the nostalgia portion of this missive, the above description is pretty much what you saw back then. Maybe… And I do mean maybe… you saw a few (very few) folks in traditional kimonos and the like, and they were most definitely in the employ of the Garden. But generally, it was just folks walking around enjoying the flowers and ambience. (BTW – The picture on the right is from this recent trip. I was much prettier when I was younger. E K, of course, was smoking hot when she was younger, and is now so smoking hot as to burn out the elements in the digital camera’s CCD because she just keeps getting prettier and prettier every single day…)

Several years have passed – obviously – and while I have attended the festival on a variety of occasions since the days of Evil Redhead Courtship, 2009 was the first time in several years since I’ve actually NOT been on tour during the fest. So, we went. E K, the O-spring, and yours truly…

My how times have changed…

Before we ever made it into MoBot proper, I was confronted by 37 twenty-something girls in Sailor Moon outfits. At first I thought they were an actual group of Japanese school children visiting as a part of the cultural aspect of the fest. However, upon closer inspection – not, you know, really close inspection… I’m NOT that kind of a perv ya’know – it became apparent that I was actually dealing with a whole raft of Caucasian, midwestern, late-teen to early-twenty-somethings in schoolgirl costumes and wigs.

Okay… Fair enough. Anime is kind of a big thing, so I figured they were hired to be some manner of hostesses or something. Although, I have to admit, the blue, lemon yellow, and magenta hair scared me a bit.

But then I ended up in line behind them as they bought tickets. So… Obviously they didn’t work there. They were just… Well… fond of dressing up like cartoon schoolgirls I guess…

Then I turned around… Coming at me, flanked by a Sailor Moon knockoff and a Goth Lolita, was a Dalek. Now, some of you may not know what a Dalek is. Well, by way of explanation, it’s an evil robot from a British Sci-Fi TV show called Doctor Who. It basically looks like a giant salt shaker on wheels carrying a plunger, but it’s definitely not out to unplug your toilet. It pretty much runs around screaming in a mechanical voice, “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

Think low budget, salt shaker shaped terminators.

So, anyway, I kind of understood the anime thing, but now I was truly confused. What was a robot from a British SF series doing at the Japanese Festival.

I took out my cell phone and texted my good friend Anastasia – “I’m surrounded by Sailor Moons, Samurai’s with Superman Capes and Playboy Bunny ears, and Lolitas”

A moment later she texted back. “Bring me one home with you.”

That’s Anastasia for you. Always with the unexpected comebacks.

I texted her again. “There’s a Dalek too.”

I waited. Before long my phone chimed, gave a little shimmy, and I looked at the screen. “A Dalek? WTF?”

Those were my sentiments exactly.

We continued around the garden, enjoying the scenery – and I mean the flora and fauna type scenery here – as we attempted to escape the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Anime convention that had crashed into the festival.

Around the corner we went and I ran smack dab into one of those Oxymoron’s from that commercial – An Asian Scottish Schoolgirl in a corset, tartan mini-kilt-skirt thing, knee socks, heels, a cape, dog ears on a headband, and she was carrying a wooden sword.

I screamed.

She rolled her eyes.

I went the opposite direction as fast as I could.

Eventually we made the circuit. The O-spring went inside the children’s activities area with E K so she could do some arts and crafts. She’s all about that kind of stuff. Me, I sat outside, drank my water, and watched an ice sculpture melting in the bright sun while John Belushi clones tried to do the old Samurai Night Fever routine from SNL (Back when SNL was worth watching.) Some incredibly orange hair walked by and I averted my eyes before being blinded.

I pulled out my phone and texted Anastasia again. I mean, after all, she was at a family BBQ so she had nothing better to do than text back and forth with me, correct?

I sent her, “Magenta, Blue, Yellow, and Orange hair. Scary.”

Seconds later my phone did the vibro-dance and the screen read, “You feel like you dropped a hit of acid without knowing it, don’t you?”

Yeah. I did. I began to wonder if E K had slipped something into my water and was now hiding around the corner laughing at me.

It wasn’t long before we made our way back to the front and it was time to leave. I sat in the shade for a moment, waiting while E K and the O-spring did a quick pass through the vendors in search of a parasol for the munchkin. As I sat watching, confident that nothing could top anything I’d seen so far today, a gorgeous young woman in a bright red, mini-tunic type dress, stiletto heels, and chopsticks protruding from her hair sauntered by, looking every bit like the kind of Asian hookers you see portrayed in bad movies.

But, that wasn’t the one that made my eyes roll back in my head…

Just before E K and the O-spring returned, the crown jewel of the strangeness walked by. Unfortunately I was so stunned I didn’t snap a picture, but I did manage to hack out a text to Anastasia as soon as my retinas settled down…

“Just walked by: Camouflage shorts, red high heels,  bright yellow legwarmers, black tank top, fluorescent blue hair, and a huge raccoon tail hanging off her ass. WTF?” I typed.

Her return text was a simple, rhetorical question. “This is going to be a blog, isn’t it? ;-)”

Well yeah… She was correct… I mean, I couldn’t dream up shit like this even if I had a case of beer and a pound of happy mushrooms at my disposal.

Next year I think I’ll forgo MoBot and throw my own Japanese Festival. There’s a great little Sushi Bar about 5 miles from my house. If you’re looking for me, that’s where I’ll be. Just do me a favor and leave your cape and Fluorescent Crayola hair at home. I’d like to enjoy my sushi without burning out my retinas again…

More to come…

Murv