Read: Part 1
The boys expected to find the hospital in chaos, with nurses and doctors rushing frantically around Grady. Instead, they walked into sterile white indifference. Grady, pale but otherwise looking the same as always, smiled at them from his bed.
Grady’s mother was there too, her enormous girth swallowing the chair beneath her as she held her son’s hand. She turned to smile at the boys, tears glimmering in her eyes.
“I knew you’d be here,” she said. “Such good friends.”
The boys squirmed, awkwardly picking at their clothes or running hands through their hair. Compliments were foreign…
12:05 AM, January 1, 1967.
Lower Haight neighborhood, San Francisco, California.
The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” emanates from a dilapidated house on an otherwise quiet street. The house’s windows glow with soft orange light. Darkness bathes the front porch. A match flame pops into life and illuminates the face of a prostitute named Sunshine as she lights a cigarette while standing on the porch steps.
Sunshine takes a drag, arches her back against the railing and exhales languidly into the night air. She can see herself perfectly in her mind’s eye, the way the curves of her body silhouette against…
(Final)
Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12
Grady lay in bed with the window open next to him so that he could hear the laughter of the audience, the good-humored heckles, and the cheers. Only after these sounds faded did he finally take the pain meds.
He let the relief sink in as he watched a half moon burning over silhouetted treetops. Crickets chirped at the wood’s edge and the faint scent of smoldering cedar wafted in on every breeze. …
Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11
First showing was three days later, a Saturday, with the film being projected on the white cinderblock wall of Butchie’s Garage, which sat at the end of the road leading into the Sunset.
Residents began filing down two hours before show time. Some brought lawn chairs for seats. Others dropped the tailgates of their pickup trucks and sat on those. …
Give us ALL the Sax (that’s SAX, Pervs!): Scavenger Selects its #1 Greatest Workout Song of All Time
Three words: Oiled-up biceps
After a long, painful selection process, we here at Scavenger have finally selected our #1 greatest workout song of all time.
By “we,” of course, we mean “I,” editor, writer, interviewer, manager Jeff Suwak (I’ve created multiple identities in my head to accommodate my various roles — the resulting infighting and backbiting have been terrible, but at the end of the day we are a family and prefer to think of ourselves as such).
Our choice will have our offices swarming with haters. So be it. …
This piece is for those who have seen Sebastián Silva’s “Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus.” Unless you’ve seen the film, this piece won’t much mean to you.
Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus is on my top-50 favorite films list. I’ve seen it multiple times and with multiple people. The end of the film has always left me with two contemplations that, for whatever reason, I found myself coming back to regularly over the past couple of weeks. One is rather simple, the other less so.
Jamie doesn’t get enough credit. I don’t know if this was by director…
Inspired by Ricky Bascom’s “Lil Boy”
Damn I feel good today.
I only slept about 3.5 hours but woke up feeling juiced up and ready to get some words down, to work, to create. Lots of stuff feeding the morning buzz, but most of all I think it’s this young guy named Ricky Bascom and his buddies.
No, I’m not joking.
I found his stuff last night on the Twitter feed of Hotep Jesus. The energy of Bascom and his friends had me laughing like a slack-jawed yokel at a greased pig contest.
The whole world is going crazy right…
Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
That afternoon, filming of the Sunset Matinee began.
No one knew what the movie was about or what they were supposed to be doing. Grady simply walked through the crowd telling one group that they were robotic pirates encircling a Martian castle, telling another that they were beatnik werewolves who’d traveled into the future in a magical boxcar.
The actors tried to make sense of it all at first, but eventually succumbed to the madness and played out their…
Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9
Wes had no idea how to make a movie set. He was even more clueless about how to make a set for a movie about everything.
He gathered every Easter, Christmas, and Halloween decoration that park residents were willing to spare, combined them with fake flowers and plastic slides, rusty bicycles and scrap lumber, but still found that the chaotic scene wasn’t nearly enough to transform a chunk of the Sunset sizable enough for the number of actors that would be…
Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
Grady, Momma, and Denny had gone inside after the auditions were completed. They ate dinner and sat around the table playing board games. It was almost midnight by the time they decided to call it a wrap. Momma tucked both the boys into bed. Denny complained a little about it. Grady just laughed.
She sat on the edge of his bed, brushing his hair back with her hand. “Do you want to know some more about your father? …
Jeff Suwak
I’m not in the Matrix. I AM the Matrix.
