garishly colored photo. “Yes,” he said, biting his lip. “But here the title of the film is given as Gojiro vs. the Square Grabbyhands of Jump on Fifty-Third Street .”
“Fifty-Third Street? Ain’t Fifty-Third Street. It’s Fifty-Second Street! What’s going on here? We never made any lobby cards for any of those movies.”
“There was no need to, because—”
“Because they never played anywhere !”
They weren’t supposed to play anywhere, either. The movies were just another pastime, one in a series of activities Komodo worked out in hopes of providing those unfortunate Atoms a few moments of mirth before their inevitable demise. “Many of the children display superior technical abilities and would make excellent crew members,” the kindhearted Japanese explained to Gojiro, attempting to get the reluctant reptile to star in those old scenarios the two friends conjured up during the heady Glazed Days. Assured perpetual over-the-title billing, the monster could not resist. So the movies were made. But they never—ever—were intended to go beyond the Cloudcover.
Yet here Gojiro was picking up a dripping poster for a movie supposedly entitled Gojiro vs. the Most Nasty Internal Cells inside the Heavy Heart but which, from the accompanying stills, was readily identifiable as Gojiro vs. the Buzzsaw Teratomas by the Bad-news By-pass . At the bottom of the sheet, in balloonish handwriting, it said, “Playing all this week, Centerville Simplex, theaters one, five, nine, twelve. Free RV parking.”
It wasn’t until several months later, when the Gojiro—King of Monsters, Friend to Atoms movies first began turning up on the Dish, that the monster became aware of his international celebrity. “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “Shig stole those jerk movies! All over the world they’re looking at my swollen supraoc, laughing at my mutated face. God, I’m so embarrassed!”
Then, not for the first time, Gojiro felt like crashing across Vinyl Aire Meadow, knocking down every tree in Asbestos Wood until he found Shig’s hideout, and having it out with the weird boy. But that was out of the question. The reptile’s shameful memories defeated him. He couldn’t say a thing.
* * *
It was only with the advent of the 90 Series, however, that Gojiro began to glimpse Shig’s ultimate scheme. Of course, the monster was well acquainted with the contents of the other eighty-nine so-called Gojiro Crystal Communications, not that the dictums, in his opinion at least, amounted to shit. Maybe they did at one time, but not now. Once, in another form, they represented his personal interpretations of the Great Teachings of the Evolloo, as revealed by the prophet Budd Hazard. At least that’s how the monster billed his lecture series to the Atoms back in the days when he retained some hope that those abnormals might psychically upbootstrap themselves and become Initiates in the New Bunch he and Komodo dreamed of founding on Radioactive Island.
“Do ’em some good to catch a smack of the Cosmo,” Gojiro told Komodo as he mounted the rec-room podium to deliver the opening lecture, “The Evolloo and You, a Young Mutant’s Guide to the Unfathomable.” “Couldn’t do no harm,” he added as he faced his drooling audience.
For six, sometimes eight hours, Gojiro talked, carried away by the beauty of the Design he loved so much. But the Atoms, the ones who stayed awake, were less than rapt. They threw gummy spitballs at the blackboard, smearing Gojiro’s diagrams of Beam-Bunch matrices, and their renditions of Anti-Speciesist chants had neither rhythm nor resonance.
“It’s pointless,” Gojiro said, throwing up his claws. “I have lost my dreams for them. They have no grasp, no scope.”
So imagine his chagrin when, one evening, he saw the Atoms sitting in orderly rows and reciting in unison the Communications Shig made up. “Now repeat,” Shig barked, his spiked pointer screeching across the blackboard.
“Fifty-Third Street? Ain’t Fifty-Third Street. It’s Fifty-Second Street! What’s going on here? We never made any lobby cards for any of those movies.”
“There was no need to, because—”
“Because they never played anywhere !”
They weren’t supposed to play anywhere, either. The movies were just another pastime, one in a series of activities Komodo worked out in hopes of providing those unfortunate Atoms a few moments of mirth before their inevitable demise. “Many of the children display superior technical abilities and would make excellent crew members,” the kindhearted Japanese explained to Gojiro, attempting to get the reluctant reptile to star in those old scenarios the two friends conjured up during the heady Glazed Days. Assured perpetual over-the-title billing, the monster could not resist. So the movies were made. But they never—ever—were intended to go beyond the Cloudcover.
Yet here Gojiro was picking up a dripping poster for a movie supposedly entitled Gojiro vs. the Most Nasty Internal Cells inside the Heavy Heart but which, from the accompanying stills, was readily identifiable as Gojiro vs. the Buzzsaw Teratomas by the Bad-news By-pass . At the bottom of the sheet, in balloonish handwriting, it said, “Playing all this week, Centerville Simplex, theaters one, five, nine, twelve. Free RV parking.”
It wasn’t until several months later, when the Gojiro—King of Monsters, Friend to Atoms movies first began turning up on the Dish, that the monster became aware of his international celebrity. “I can’t believe it!” he cried. “Shig stole those jerk movies! All over the world they’re looking at my swollen supraoc, laughing at my mutated face. God, I’m so embarrassed!”
Then, not for the first time, Gojiro felt like crashing across Vinyl Aire Meadow, knocking down every tree in Asbestos Wood until he found Shig’s hideout, and having it out with the weird boy. But that was out of the question. The reptile’s shameful memories defeated him. He couldn’t say a thing.
* * *
It was only with the advent of the 90 Series, however, that Gojiro began to glimpse Shig’s ultimate scheme. Of course, the monster was well acquainted with the contents of the other eighty-nine so-called Gojiro Crystal Communications, not that the dictums, in his opinion at least, amounted to shit. Maybe they did at one time, but not now. Once, in another form, they represented his personal interpretations of the Great Teachings of the Evolloo, as revealed by the prophet Budd Hazard. At least that’s how the monster billed his lecture series to the Atoms back in the days when he retained some hope that those abnormals might psychically upbootstrap themselves and become Initiates in the New Bunch he and Komodo dreamed of founding on Radioactive Island.
“Do ’em some good to catch a smack of the Cosmo,” Gojiro told Komodo as he mounted the rec-room podium to deliver the opening lecture, “The Evolloo and You, a Young Mutant’s Guide to the Unfathomable.” “Couldn’t do no harm,” he added as he faced his drooling audience.
For six, sometimes eight hours, Gojiro talked, carried away by the beauty of the Design he loved so much. But the Atoms, the ones who stayed awake, were less than rapt. They threw gummy spitballs at the blackboard, smearing Gojiro’s diagrams of Beam-Bunch matrices, and their renditions of Anti-Speciesist chants had neither rhythm nor resonance.
“It’s pointless,” Gojiro said, throwing up his claws. “I have lost my dreams for them. They have no grasp, no scope.”
So imagine his chagrin when, one evening, he saw the Atoms sitting in orderly rows and reciting in unison the Communications Shig made up. “Now repeat,” Shig barked, his spiked pointer screeching across the blackboard.
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