THE SATURDAY BOY

Note From Banks:

Name: Smith. Occupation: Writer, and sometime professional hula artiste. Background: Former nun-baiter and philanthropist, with extensive experience in retail (can work individually or as part of a team!), now leaving a trail of broken hearts and shattered limbs behind him as he tears through the blogosphere like some hepped-up Viking, hawking his compulsively readable, one-of-the-best-of-2008 tome Yellow Medicine.

Someone called this motherfucker sane. They were wrong.

Last stop: Patricia Abbott’s Blog

Banks = Utter lunacy. Emphasis on “utter”.

Banks writes crazy good. And I mean that both as “crazy good” and as “writes insane people well.

And for a relatively well-adjusted (yeeeeeah) diminutive horror fan, that’s saying a lot.

His wife likes him!

We bumped into him along the cyber sidewalks of the original PWG runs, thinking, “He’s going somewhere, this one.” And he did. I mean, the critics are jizzing all over him! Saturday’s Child, Donkey Punch, No More Heroes, and some cracking short stories (like the pitch perfect “Last Kayfabe” I accepted for Mississippi Review), he’s like pure caffeine on the page. Caffeine and the chemicals they put in candy. Like his former wrestler telling us, “Look at me now, you think I’m FUBAR. Lean and old, holding my fuckin’ leg like it’s gonna drop off. It’s why they don’t recognise me. Been a long time since I was the ultimate face in the Federation. But then, I was Babyface. The crowd popped at me, man. I put so many heels to the mat, I was a fuckin’ hero. Spin out a running DDT as a finish, hear twenty thousand people calling my name.” Popped, man. The right word at the right time. It always fits. He’s what we want out of our next generation of crime writers. He takes it as goddamned seriously as you can while still thinking, Can you believe they’re paying me to have this much fun? All I know is that I’m very much jealous and thrilled every time I hear he’s taken another couple of steps up the ladder.

So he climbs onto the Hummer-sine’s running boards before we even come to a full stop, rubbing his nose and sniffing, saying, “Are we there yet? Fucking there? Fucking yet? Can I have some of that homemade booze, Duane? Can I see the photo of Megan with her Edgar?” On and on and on until we finally find some music to drown him out. But he’ll never stop. No he won’t.

And neither will I, beating this dead horse a few more degrees of deader: Yellow Medicine. Psychobilly Monday. May 12. Our shot at showing our strength to Barnes & Noble. Please?

Still a long way to go. A short time to get there. We’re gonna do what they say can’t be done…

We all simultaneously pass out on the side of the road, ten feet in front of a sign that says “Welcome to Ft. Lauderdale.” How we got from England to Florida that fast, geez. But tomorrow the trip continues through three more blogs, starting with another West Coast run to grab podcaster and fresh new badass P.I. writer Seth Harwood before someone else gets to him first (he’s pretty popular these days).

Driving time: Through 312 full versions of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”

Tune for the leg: “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog” by The Cramps