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P.A.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 3

We assembled in New York City and then took a tramp steamer from Pier 82 to Calston, Flordia where we boarded The Wayward Trope, our home for the seven-day voyage to Sao Paulo. Our captain is a weathered old sea dog named Farnsworth L. Pendulum but everyone calls him Salisbury. The first night he invited me to dine at the captain’s table along with Mya Danner Dungle and her fiancé Efron Cax. Salisbury’s first mate is a ridiculously tall man, skinny as a 17-year-old Hot Topic sales associate. He sat next to the Salisbury and used his steak knife to shave his 7:30 p.m. shadow. It was not appetizing.

“How smooth is our voyage expected to be?” I asked Salisbury.

“Smooth? Smooth!? SMOOTH!? SSMMOOTTHH!?!? This is the Ad-tlantic! A salty brine brimming with sea anemones! You’ve never seen Her horrifying whore-face! You’ve never gazed deep into Her bosom, been squirted in the eye with the foul milk of Her teet! You’ve never had your hand plunged deep between Her butt cheeks and come out tattered and torn like it had spent six weeks in a blender on the pulse setting! There is nothing smooth about Her except for the way She turns glass into very smooth shiny pebbles that sparkle when you’re walking on the beach! Let me tell you a story, Mr. Ditkovski. Let me relate to you a tale. Let me chronicle for you an apologue.

“When I was but a lad of six, my father sent me off as an intern on a sturdy ship called the Giardiasis. It was a rough-hewn hell-pit stuffed full of the worst type of murderous sociopathic villains. The nicest person on that ship was a guy named Cal. The first time I met him he stabbed me in the face with trench knife. Within four days of our 428 day tour the ship’s engine exploded. There were no life vests or rafts. Of the 4,120 crew members all of them died except for me. I was lucky enough to have been so badly burned by the explosion that my flesh tasted of gristle. The bottle-nosed dolphins that came to feed on the survivors simply took a few licks and several hundred nibbles of my charred flesh and left me alone to drown. But, as you well know, I did not drown. My flesh was so puffed with horrifying boils from the deep fry I suffered in the explosion that I was rendered super-buoyant. Not even a hundred perched seagulls could have sunk me. And lord knows they tried. The poop was... the poop was deafening.

“I ran ashore on a small island with no name on the King’s map but in America it is known as ‘Juji Bo Weefle.’ It’s a small speck of garbage off the coast of St. Christ. The locals are a tribe whose ancient sun-worshipping religion took them to mistake me for someone who had personally met their god. They cleaned my wounds, mostly with frequent forced baths in a citrus fruit most closely resembling a lemon mixed with a plum oozing pure gasoline. I became the most revered person on the island and was married to at least seven of their most buxom women. My seared and blistered member was forced repeatedly to satisfy their wanton sexual desires. I fathered a son. He was named Boo-ti-koo after his maternal grandfather who was a very successful real estate agent in South Boca Raton.

“Once I had regained my strength I built a raft out of the row boat I had been given as a wedding present from my third wife’s brother. I pushed off into the unknown, placing my foolish, misguided, severely retarded faith in the sea. The Great Sea. The Ad-tlantic.

“On the 17th day, the 16th without fresh water, my near-corpse was picked up by a fishing vessel from Vietnam. The men cut each of my fingers off and re-attached them for sport. When they were boarded by a coast guard vessel they locked me in the engine room. I would not be sitting here today had I not remembered exactly how I had made the previous engine explode.

“The currents of the Ad-tlantic, Mr. Ditkovski, as every one knows, have a keen and very well developed sense of irony. They deposited my body back onto the shores of Juji Bo Weefle. My wives had been married off to various friends of ours after I had been certified dead by the chief constable of Juji Bo Weefle. My home had been converted into a fast food spiced chicken franchise called Spookies. Destitute, I moved in with Boo-ti-koo. It was horrifying. He was, after all, an infant. I became addicted to spiced rum. It was the only way I could tune out his nightmarish screams for attention and food. Finally I was able to sell the child to a couple from San Diego in exchange for a flight to Newark International where I became a toll booth operator.

“Do you understand, Mr. Ditkovski? There is no such thing as a smooth voyage on this ocean. This ocean will destroy you on a whim! She sucks! She really, really sucks! I fucking hate boats!”

I was deft enough to steer the conversation towards more congenial topics of conversation and we all had quite a pleasant meal after that. It turns out we had both recently purchased cold mist humidifiers and compared notes. The whole while Salisbury's number two gave me a chilling stare, his stone-dead eyes burning the fires of hell into my immortal soul.

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CARLOUGH WAS SERIOUS

I can't even believe he was serious.

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One has to wonder if that's truly Togo's midriff.

TRUE PERSON OF DARING: WILL CARLOUGH

The first time I met Will Carlough was in a fox-hole in an unauthorized war you will not find in any text book. Since then he has become an award-winning filmmaker, talented comedian and world-famous gangsta hip-hop artist. His Paraphrase Theater, a series of recreations of famous movie scenes, can be seen on Comedy Central’s late night show Atom TV. His paraphrasial of a Star Wars scene has had over 500,000 views on YouTube, more people than voted for the President of Bolivia.

His genius has attracted actors of acclaimed dramatic skill such as Sam Rockwell and CSI: Miami’s Jonathan Togo as well as comedic thespians of the likes of Justin Long, SNL’s Will Forte and Will Carlough.

A person of daring? He proved as much with a machete and 30 yards of cellophane under the skies of Kyrgyzstan. But that was a lifetime ago. Had he lost his daring and become some kind of fuck-hole? I intended to find out.

You are a filmmaker, rapper, actor and now a True Person of Daring. So congratulations on that.
Wow, thank you.

Do you consider yourself daring or are you just incredibly humble?
I would not consider myself daring. But I’m also mind-bogglingly humble. I’m probably the most humble person you’ll ever meet.

I assume that you’re doing all sorts of illegal things when you’re making your movies.
I try to. The first movie that I made out of college, The Great A.T.M. Heist, we shot in an A.T.M. The cops eventually came and they said, do you have permission to shoot at this A.T.M? And we were like, no, we absolutely, really, do not have permission at all.



Robin’s Big Date would be perhaps your biggest short or at least your flashiest one.
When I first posted it on my website, RedheadedLeague.com, it cost me five times the cost of the movie in bandwidth in about two days. My server just crashed. Then six months later it got into Sundance.

How did you get that cast together? Sam Rockwell, Justin Long.
The director and I went to Vassar with Justin and he knew Sam, I believe, from Galaxy Quest. So Sam basically said I will be in a movie that you make as long as it takes three hours to shoot on this particular Wednesday. James was like, oh, okay. Then I wrote it. It is not an exciting story. I’m going to come up with a more exciting story.



You have a web series called Casted staring Justin Long and Jonathan Togo. The one you’re in, you take your clothes off. And you are pasty and white. How dare you.
It was originally going to be Sam [Rockwell] that takes his clothes off but we just were, like, too chicken to ask him to do it.

You’re an underground filmmaker, subverting the mainstream media. You point out the absurdity of American mythos.
Sure.

Are you trying to sell out and failing or do you have a kind of integrity?
Oh man. That’s, uh . . . I have . . . um . . . I’m trying sell out and failing. But I ain’t licked yet. I’m actually working on a new short series for Comedy Central/Atom.com with Togo, but I don’t . . . actually maybe I can’t tell you.

Are you afraid of screwing it up or getting sued or something?
Yeah. I guess.

What if you only told me things that weren’t true about it?
I play a talking penis. I play Jon Togo’s talking penis in it.



What’s the diciest situation you’ve ever found yourself in?
The G train wasn’t running so I’m like, well, I’ll walk. Part of my walk took me through Bed-Stuy and this guy grabbed me from behind, got me on the ground and was pointing a gun at my head. He was like empty your pockets and I had recently bought an iPhone and I did not want to give him my iPhone. I had like 20 bucks on me and I took that out right away and then he said, “No, but, keep on, you know, emptying your pockets.” And I was like that is all I got. I really stuck to my guns, risking my life to save my iPhone. And it worked. He eventually gave up. And I then lost my iPhone a month later.



Daring Tales of Daring! Tales of Brother Island

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 2

Before setting off on my latest adventure I stopped by the University to consult with Professor Ashua Kellinsworth. The principle goal of the expedition being to find Captain Quinn Danner's crash site somewhere in the Upper Amazon, Prof. Kellinsworth is the world's premier authority on all things Danner. Captain Danner was attempting to find the mythical Original Spring, the place where the Amazon supposedly originates and, as local legend has it, from whence all water on earth first sprang forth. His plane is known to have crashed but the site is unknown. Danner's aeroplane, The Indefatigable Hummingbird, was never found. Or, to be more precise, the innumerable flaming pieces of The Indefatigable Hummingbird were never found. Danner built the I.H. himself and left no plans or specifications. He claimed it was indestructible and could even survive a direct collision with the side of a solid steel mountain. If we find the crash site the exercise will be a success but if we find even one small piece of the I.H. it will go down as the single greatest endeavour in the history of all mankind.

I arrived at Prof. Kellinsworth's office with a fifth of scotch under my arm. Ashua is a connoisseur of being intoxicated. It was office hours and a young, skinny nerd was sitting before the good professor with a bright red back-pack on. Prof. Kellinsworth's brow was wrinkled more than usual, his stringy white hair spread out in all directions perhaps in exasperation.

“No no no no no,” he was saying. “Wrong. Wrong again. You are wrong.”

The nerd's eyes were wide. His lip trembled. “But –” he began.

“No. Wrong. Wrong.”

“How –”

“Wrong.”

“If I –”

“No.”

“Can I –”

“Stop it. Just stop it. You're wasting my time. You're wasting MY time. Here's my advice, listen carefully because I will not repeat it, go home. Not to your dorm room, to your parents' home. Look around yourself. Soak it in. Because that is where you are going to live your entire life because you are a moron and will never amount to anything.”

The young man shifted his eyes as he passed me. Prof. Kellinsworth does not believe in the Socratic method. Socrates, he often points out, was killed. Obviously he made some mistakes.

“Ditkovski,” Kellinsworth mumbled. Then he saw the liquor. “Have a seat!” He smiled brightly, all his teeth showing. I pushed the bottle onto what little spare space there was on the cluttered desk. The Professor flipped the top off with one thumb and poured a health dose into his mouth.

“I'm going,” I told him. “The Amazon.”

“You're a damn fool,” he said. “You'll never find it and if you do you'll never survive.”

“Survive what?” I asked.

“I can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't. What? I don't feel like it. Go away.”

It was an ominous beginning to a trek that was already certain to feature danger as its main entree. I pressed Kellinsworth for more information but he said he was sleepy.

For this trip it is important to keep the size of the expedition party small. We will be traveling in very sensitive areas amongst some peoples that have never seen a civilised man before. My assistant, Penelope Atwood, can not make the expedition as her fiancée, a rugged man's man named Gregory Pince, is insisting that she attend their wedding. I am therefore trusting my very life as well as copious note-taking to my second string assistant, Benvolio Sinclair. Joining us on the expedition are a who’s who of the most rugged, intellectually hungry scientists, adventurers and servants in the world. Our Amazon expert is Paulo Kwampis, a half-Brasilian/half-Australian professor from the University of Bali. His assistant is Maxwell Penchant from College du Quebec. Our Brasilian emissary is Chicago Dan, an Ohio State quarterback from Chicago who was kidnapped on a college summer abroad to Brasil. He killed his captors and set himself free but loved the country so much he never left. Our resident Captain Danner expert is his great grand-niece Mya Danner Dungle. She's brought along her fiancée, Efron Cax, heir to the Cax Uranium fortune. To analyze the remains of the Indefatigable Hummingbird, if we're so lucky, is experimental aviation engineers Joel and Bill Hollister formerly of Lockheed-Martin. Joel designed the first successful stealth aircraft and Bill flew its first test flight. It crashed. And it took four months to find the crash site as there was no way of tracking its flight path. Bill survived by very slowly ingesting the only food source – the poisonous Cackle Berry. Eventually he was able to build up an immunity. For protection we've hired a tight-knit crew of seven mercenaries known only as Les Sept. They are French. We also have a mechanic for our armored caravan known only as Carl. Our meals will be cooked by Rufus Antonio, the man who chef'd my very first expedition. They will be served by Amy, Alexa and Sara, three interns from The Culinary Institute of America. Essential to such a cloistered group as ours is always a troupe of entertainers to stave off cabin fever. We were lucky enough to land zydeco band Brother Buford from the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is our intrepid group. Just 26 plus our seven various toadies to do any manual labor and heavy lifting. The perfect group to assault the Amazon!

THE FATE OF MARY MALLON

Chandler checked his watch. It was 6:23 A.M. Walt would be one of the first people aware of the bounty. Word spread fast, by afternoon every two bit scumbag and professional assassin in New York City would probably be on him if the bounty was north of $2,000.

Chandler hailed a taxi and took it to Penn. Station. He stood on line at the ticket counter. He would buy the first ticket to Philadelphia and wait there until he could plan his next move. He would call his mother from Philly so she wouldn’t worry.

“Chandler!” The voice was cheerful and friendly. And that should have been the tip-off.

Chandler turned and the line evaporated as Roofus Platts, a thick-nosed, wrinkled hitman Chandler knew well, took a large revolver out and pointed it at Chandler. In the middle of Penn. Station. In the middle of the morning. As broad daylight streamed in through the cathedral windows.

Somehow Chandler was able to keep his sphincter closed and simultaneous dive behind the thick, five foot marble base of a lamppost. He scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as he possibly could up the marble stairs and through the doors.

Outside now, Chandler turned the corner and ran full out down the block, across the street and down into the crowded rush hour subway station. Pressed into the car like a sardine being made into a waffle, Chandler was finally able to breathe. The smell was thick with body odor and the heavy, fragrant spices immigrants cooked with and, apparently, substituted for soap and water. Chandler tried to think. Grand Central would likely also be staked out. This was getting serious. He decided to go see his mommy.

-

Mother didn’t answer the bell at his childhood home in the Doily Gardens section of Brooklyn. Chandler took the key from under the matt and let himself in.

The house had a very distinctive smell of bleach and cookies that was both sentimental and suffocating. He walked down the hall to his old bedroom. The ceiling of the closet had a panel that led into a small attic. Chandler removed the board and felt up there with his hand, afraid any second he’d touch something hairy with long sharp front teeth. He felt the oily rag and pulled it down. He peeled back the red, soiled fabric. It was his father’s cavalry pistol from the Spanish War. The one that the old man had chosen to spend his last moments on earth with instead of his only son. Chandler hadn’t seen it since he was 13, when Father Simon gave it to him after the reception. Chandler had taken it home, cleaned it and hid it in the closet. He told his mother he threw it away.

Ben Chandler never spoke of his time as one of the famous Rough Riders, marauding through Cuba under the command of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt. Chandler knew from his mother some of the less glamorous aspects of the story. After the Battle of San Juan Hill, the Rough Riders were bogged down in Cuba, being gunned down more efficiently by malaria and various tropical fevers than they had by the Spanish garrison. It was over a month before the U.S. War Department approved the evacuation of the regiment to Long Island where they were held in quarantine for another month. The men, starved and mad from months of disease and death in isolation, staged theatrical productions of Shakespeare plays. But the language and general sweep of the stories suffered from their state. Hamlet survived their version, furiously masturbating until Fortinbras entered and promptly shot himself in the thigh. Which was apparently an ad-lib.

Chandler’s father was a hard, quiet, stone-faced man. When he came home from work at a plant on the East River he would usually go to a bar and come home late, stumbling into the kitchen chairs. Still, the man was a solid consistent rock of withheld affection and it was a mortal shock to Chandler when he was suddenly gone. He hadn’t even seemed sad.

AMAZON

The book is now available on Amazon. This is a very good thing. You can get free Super Saver Shipping and if you have Amazon Prime you also get free shipping. If you have an Amazon credit card I believe you get double points. It's a wonderful event. If you're near a mountain top, rejoice from it.

P.A.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 1

In my first memoir: Deepest Depth of a Dark Dragon Called Adventure I described adventuring thusly:

The true adventurer is the man who eschews all respect for man and beast, for decency and morality, for intellect and truth. The true adventurer travels and subdues for one reason and only one reason – the adventure itself.

I stole this quote from a man I knew and had the pleasure of traveling with – Horace P. Trumbull. A true intrepid spirit, he inspired me up to the moment his corpse was ript apart by a pack of uncouth Omilia Panthers in the darkest region of Bolivia. Almost every word of the memoir is in one way or another directly plagiarized from things Trumbull said, thought or published in the years I knew him. The book is currently out of print because of an unrelated legal dispute with the royal family of Uruguay.

My plane had just touched down at Heathrow when I received word from the home office that the expedition to the Amazon had been cleared by the relevant governmental agencies. All that was left was my insurance physical. On my last voyage I was stabbed through the chest by the snout of a swordshark in the Crystal Waters off the coast of Madagascar. The scaly sword passed through my body just south of my heart, collapsed a lung but missed my major organs. (Unless the lung can be considered a major organ and I hope, based on my years of Peyote endulgance that isn't the case.) The worst part was the thrashing, my body like an olive at the end of a toothpick being carelessly flailed by an older drunk woman wearing too much lipstick. Luckily I was able to strangle the shark into submission with my vice-like grip. But it definitely called into question the cost of insurance for my next trip. I needed a solid gold bill of health or Bernstein, Goldman & Juex would not allow me to venture deep into the moistest jungles of the Amazon.

Dr. Klem Von Rogula is my favorite doctor in the Kingdom. His offices are in an 400-year-old castle south of Holtonshire on the top of rolling green hills fully roamed with livestock. His man-servant, Whol, welcomed me and my assistant, Penelope Atwood, at the draw-bridge. Whol is a 24 year old Dr. Rogula rescued from an orphanage in southern Prussia that was set aflame by an angry mob of anti-orphan protesters. Whol was badly burnt and crushed in the collapse of the building. Dr. Rogula has been slowly and carefully replacing the boy's charred and gristled flesh with soft, vibrant skin. He had already finished half the face, most of the left arm and the right foot. His beautifully pedicured toes poked out from his designer sandal. His other foot was in a heavy black boot.

Whol showed us into the stone great hall. It was a long drive from London and we were very hungry so before my physical we had a succulent feast prepared by Chuczink, Dr. Rogula's personal chef and a former Serbian body-builder. As we ate Chuczink and Whol crouched at Dr. Rogula's feet. He fed them from hand like masculine, obedient birds.

After dinner Dr. Rogula examined me extremely thoroughly. He films every examination for his archives. I have to admit there were moments of pain and discomfort but it's always worth a sacrifice to maintain a high standard of physical well-being. With my clean bill of health in Ms. Atwood's brief-case we declined Dr. Rogula's generous offer of staying the night at the castle and started down the twisting road back to civilisation. In the night the haunting cries of the nocturnal cows almost sounded like human moans of pain.

BOOK SALES

The book is currently on sale here. It will be on Amazon by the end of the month. Frankly, though, we have a much better deal with CreateSpace. Don't tell Jacob I said that. He maintains Amazon has panache.

P.A.

COMING DISPATCHES

All,

I'm very excited about the coming launch of this website as well as the entire Daring Tales of Daring! series. Mr. Ditkovski is currently in Brasil on expedition and I have just begun going through the early dispatches, preparing them for publication. I would like to note to all of Mr. Ditkovski's fawning well-wishers that the dispatches are rife with spelling, grammatical and intellectual errors. I am doing my best to 'clean up' Mr. Ditkovski's words but I am also planning a wedding and am not a miracle worker. Please excuse in advance any such errors in the coming weekly dispatches.

Cheers,
P.A.