My review of the Akashic Books short story collection, OC Noir, edited by Gary Phillips, is up at Spinetingler Magazine:

Orange County Noir edited by Gary Phillips: Orange County with Extra Pulp

By Matthew C. Funk

Orange County is the sick dog living off of Los Angeles County’s scraps, and Akashic Books’ OC Noir delivers that depraved desperation. This hardboiled bite of Orange County’s sprawl keeps its genre plotting consistent thanks to the accomplished instincts of editor, Gary Phillips. OC Noir has to leap from diverse ZIP codes—the immigrant-driven squalor of Santa Ana to the beachside sparkle of Dana Point—but Phillips makes sure the stories share the same pounding pulse and venomous blood. OC Noir manages to be as true to the genre as it is to the character of its neighborhoods.

Needle Magazine is deep in the veins of Net Noir. It drains its pain. The story below is my homage to The Needle, a Magazine of Noir

PAIN ENDS
by Matthew C. Funk

“Starvation isn’t so bad,” says Izzy Button. Her nose lets cigarette smoke drain into a curtain for her face. “It doesn’t hurt nearly so bad as eating.”

“What’s so bad about eating?” I ask, picking a curve of fried sugar from my beignet. We lounge in Café Du Monde. This is where Izzy Button holds court for her Sunday morning hangovers. She is here because it is famous.

“It makes you fat,” Izzy shivers, thin as a dropping thermometer in her Vera Wang. “And everybody rightly hates the fat.”

Izzy Button says famous people have to belong in famous places.

“So?”

“So, it hurts to be hated.” Izzy waits for a little girl with a tambourine to pass by before flicking her cigarette butt on the curb. “Not that you would know, Ava, being Miss Perfect.”

I am Ava and that is why Izzy is wrong. I do hurt. I have all the hurt in the world.

It came to me when I was 12 and it came out of the walls with cellophane voices in mass-grave stereo and it spoke to the seams of my brain. I did not listen. It did not stop the voices from speaking their pain.

“I’m not so perfect.” I say but I do not say that the last time I felt perfect was four nights ago. Four nights ago, I did things to let the pain of the world sigh in relief, just for a little while. Just long enough to keep it from becoming too much for the world to keep turning.

“I guess not, considering you’re so full of shit that you make squeaks like that.”

I gave in and listened to the voices when I was 12. It still did no good. And after I was done trying to cut and paste the newspapers into a better shape, I did not feel better. After I painted the television pink, I did not feel better. I burned my bed but it would not make the voices into smoke. I felt the pain of the world and knew something had to be done.

“I don’t like to judge.” I say to Izzy Button.

I did not know what to do. The doctors said they did. They gave me pills to filter the voices into white noise.

“You’re a saint.” Izzy rummages in her purse with wax model hands. I have what she needs in my purse, though. I have the needle for her.

“I just do what I can.”

I stopped taking the pills when I got to college. I was in a new place and I needed to know what to do.

“Like her.” Izzy snaps her lighter alive before her Cadillac-sized sunglasses. Her hands are shaking. The flame shakes as she glares at a young woman swollen by chemotherapy. “Lucky bitch.”

“Why is she lucky?” I ask without affect. Not because I don’t feel pain for the woman. But because I feel every pain there is.

“Everyone feels sorry for her. Whether she’s pretty, whether she’s empty inside, nobody minds. They just feel sorry for her. Cunt.”

I feel every pain there is, and I know what I have to do. I have to bleed that pain off before it builds up so much that the goodness stops. Agony is my salvation.

“I wish I had cancer.” Izzy touches the flame to her cigarette. “Not for lack of trying.”

I listen without affect. Not because I don’t feel Izzy’s pain. But because I know what I have to do. I have the needle for her.

*      *      *

Later, when I have stolen her from the sorority house and carried her to the abandoned doll factory, I show her the needle.

The needle is longer than any cigarette and it is thin and bright like a frozen miracle.

“Please, Jesus, don’t hurt me.” Izzy says about the needle from where she is bound to the doll-manufacture bely.

Izzy is wrong. I am not Jesus. I am not here to take away the world’s sins. I keep it turning despite them.

I brush the tawdry pigtails from her face.

“Oh fuck, Ava, please, come on, why?”

I use a bolt of doll-dress cloth to bind her head in place over her brow. Izzy’s sobs turn into giggles. Her giggles froth against the smooth surface of my wooden mask—the mask of an Oni, an invisible spirit that does the work of the invisible world.

“And here I used to like one-sided conversations.” Izzy babbles.

And Izzy is so wrong: This is not a one-sided conversation. Her ache flows into me and it cracks me open inside. I am a broken baptismal. My flesh is open from core to crown and I am leaking. My latex gloves are the texture of Bible paper as I point the needle down at Izzy’s eye.

“Stop it!” Izzy explodes with rage.

This is not a one-sided conversation. All I do, I do to tell her that the pain will stop. Agony is the only mercy I know.

“Stop it!” Izzy tries to bang her head loose.

Agony is the only mercy there is.

“Stop, Ava; stop it!”

I aim the needle at the soft pink corner between eyelid and eye.

I am the only mercy there is. I make the pain go on so that goodness can go on, too. But there will be no more pain for Izzy Button.

I drive the needle down just like I saw the doctors do when I was 12.

“Oh God oh fuck oh what?” Izzy is speaking softer now that the needle is in her brain. Maybe she understands. I care for her too much for her pain to go on.

I begin to scramble the needle, wrenching its sharp point through thin fibers.

They go pop, pop, pop.

The genocides will go on and I hear them. The children will starve on Project streets, unheard by their mothers and fathers, and I hear them. The lonely people stare soundlessly and I hear them.

Izzy goes quiet. I keep the needle scratching. Then I stop.

Her pain is stopped.

I stroke her face with the latex gloves. It is smooth as porcelain. Izzy smiles up at me, a perfect doll.

Living to be cared for. Living without pain. Living until death will take her softly by the shoulder.

I have done good work. The world still screams through the seams within me. I put the needle away.

I have so much more work to do.

Photo credit to soldier68w of Flickr

General David Petraeus has added another bold act of brilliance to his already storied career - the counter-insurgency training and the secret wars of the Surge Strategy to name two - by endorsing repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell today.

Shifting from DADT is long overdue - this is not a situation like Integration, where prejudices can be segregated. Gays can and do serve in the military. They are just forced to do so with the indignity of living a lie.

The default attitude of DADT is not security but homophobia. It is far easier to the victim of homophobia ejected by its standard than it is the abuser. There is no reason for this not to change in our enlightened times, save for prejudice, and prejudice has never been a valid reason for the U.S.A.

My horror story about Cougars, cubs and other predators, “California Panthers,” is in print and on sale.

Amazing as it is to find a genuine Russian restaurant and deli in Orange County, it is even more amazing that one as high-quality and affordable as Russian Gourmet at 22722 Lambert Street has set down roots.

Prepare to be amazed.

Russian Gourmet opened two weeks ago and is already drawing a loyal lunch crowd. It is a tidy location in a modest mini-mall, well-stocked with distinctive fare from Belarus to Siberia. Rare candies are shelved alongside spices labeled in Cyrillic. But the main attraction for the casual visitor or Russian connoisseur are its prepared dishes.

The menu is extensive and a la carte. This translates to exceptional prices, with entrees averaging a County-low $2.50 a plate. The quality is easily beyond that. Their first lunch special—the staple of Russian tables, borsch—is an exquisite balance of natural broth and abundant chunks of beets and meat. Served in a Styrofoam bowl, it is subtly spiced and amply filling.

I also sampled a pirozschk and found it to have top-tier sausage that revealed layers of flavor. The kebab was lamb of the best cut; savory and rich in taste while still being lean of fat. With both of these items winning high marks, I am sure to return to explore the rest of their menu. Vegetarian choices are not in short supply either, with egg-based pirogis in a variety of options and a selection of salads.

Russian Gourmet is an experience not to be missed—an affordable adventure into Eastern European cuisine for the dabbler and a vindication of trans-Volga delights for those accomplished in this rare and toothsome fare.

Pictures from the New Orleans neighborhood of my upcoming serial killer-savior novel, Ava.

A lot of debate has been going on about Afghanistan. With the Taliban digging in, the Pakistanis pushing hard and new questions about troop increases, everyone’s wondering what to do with the war we swept under the carpet.

My advice is what it always has been: Learn from the greatest - Alexander the Great.

Alexander would bastardize a modern saying, “Go big or go home.” The way to win in Afghanistan, following in his bloody sandal prints, is to Go Big, Then Go Home.

Afghanistan will never embrace “enlightenment” by Western values. They will embrace our cash. But touch their burkhas, child prostitutes and opium without properly buying them all off, and look out. The best we can hope for is getting a pack of honor-killing, clannish mercenaries on our side.

That has not changed since Alexander’s time. Neither has the threat Afghanistan poses. Turn your back on those bandits at your peril.

So the thing to do now, is to link hands with Pakistan in hitting them as hard as you can. Don’t cut corners - take a page from the famed “Surge” and give the combat commanders at least somewhere near the amount of shooters they want. Then give the Talibs, foreign fighters and local gunslingers a chance to cut terms.

It’s the only way to safe face and keep the coin flowing. Anything less, and you risk Kabul becoming gory sequel to Saigon. But for the sake of American fighting power and Afghani civilians everywhere, make sure you plan on going home after you go big.

I conducted an interview with Jocelin Donahue, an Imperialist-era history scholar who just happens to be an Indy film star, lately lighting up the brooding frames of Ti West’s The House of the Devil.

Check it out here at the one, only, absolutely awesome Pretty-Scary, site of women in horror, by women in horror.

Jocelin Donahue is a thoughtful actress. Thoughtful films would be her genre: The former NYU Sociology-History undergrad has starred in period pieces like The Burrowers, a horror-western that was as much about settling the wilderness of the West as about what beasts lurk beneath that harsh terrain. She has been in abstracted short films like The Masquerade and Express 831. Sitting with me in a room at the Four Seasons, draped in the catalog-sharp attire that befits her past career as a model, Jocelin tells me she is drawn to acting because she is fascinated by the formation of identity.

Stem cell research finally pays off big:

Scientists have developed breast implants grown from the client directly. The key is stem cell research, which serves to make the implants stable.

Successful trials have already been carried out in Japan producing breasts that look and feel smoother than those from conventional cosmetic surgery using implants. Apparently using stem cell technology means that the fat grows its own blood supply and becomes part of the breast.

Why am I entirely unsurprised that the Japanese developed this first?

Can’t wait to see what the folks who brought you used-school-girl-panties vending machines will do with stem cells next.

Holy O.M.G., Batman!

It looks like teens were sending naughty pix and messages to each other!  This kind of aggression against the near-certainty that they’d reach the Age of Majority absolutely innocent of carnal knowledge cannot stand.

Fortunately, cops were quick to act, and will likely bring child porn charges against the offending teens.

Ruining their lives with a jail sentence and lifelong sex offender tag - now that’ll teach those teens to do adult stuff!

I am back in the online word circuit. This blog will be used as billboard for what I’m up to. Political opinions may still soil the screen. If so, my apologies in advance. I will not be kind. The time for kindness ended when the greatest economic crisis of our age was answered by a pissing contest from all directions.

So what am I do? I take a page from our “Elected Representatives” and I, who cannot do, criticize.

I wrote this recent review of Jennifer’s Body, for my friend Heidi Martinuzzi’s take-no-prisoners, women-in-horror site, the incomparable “Pretty-Scary”:

I also reviewed the straight-to-video Infestation, one of the better survival horror comedies I’ve seen in awhile. Check it out on Pretty-Scary.

As for other projects … I’m certain to go back to politics eventually. For now, my analysis can be summed up neatly.

My future is less about macro-level misery: Watch this space for serial murder.

Of all of the things to catch up with in the political cosmos, I’m going to be bringing my blog back to life with a spirited discussion about the Kurds.

“Why the Kurds?” you ask.  Because, out of the entire deck making up the house of cards of global politics, the Kurds are the card that could send the whole thing crashing down.  Not the situation in Afghanistan; that’s a sticky wicket we won’t be batting out of soon.  Not the turbulence of retrenching rogue states like North Korea and the Russian Commonwealth; those bad boys can be bought off or it’ll come to blows way down the line.  Not even the global economic crisis - on that point, I assure you we’re heading south in the months to come, and the best we can hope for is a parachute.

But the Kurds could topple the whole mess even faster.  They are the weakest link.  And while everything else is sliding down, it is the Kurds who can pitch us over the edge in the months to come.

The reason why, is because the Kurds have long been the red-headed step child of the Gulf region.  Allies against Saddam by virtue of necessity, they went back to doctrine-based in-fighting as soon as the statue fell in Baghdad. They have since resisted any form of democratic control - from the Iraqi capitol or from the possibility of local parliaments. Now that elections have taken place, the Kurds stand to be as marginalized a party in politics as they were ethnically.

This leaves them ready, willing and able to do what they’re used to - take up arms and seize back their scrap of land from the Iraqi state, our ostensible ally.  Things could turn into a shooting war very soon.

So what? Well, it wouldn’t just be an internal conflict.  Iraq isn’t the only nation that the Kurds seek to draw into a firefight.  The Kurdish claim to space extends over two other states the USA definitely doesn’t want caught in this tug of war - one because it’s an ally; the other because it’s as close to a sworn enemy as America gets these days: Turkey and Iran.

Israel may be the US media sweetheart of the Middle East, but it’s Turkey that bends whenever the US asks an ally in the region to grab ankles. Though we couldn’t sign them up for full access rights when the Coalition of the Willing was preparing to tangle with Saddam, Turkey allows us everything from military bases to political crackdowns.  The few lines in the sand they draw and mean it involve their dealings with ethic minorities inside their borders - most significantly, these days, the Kurds who’re trading bullets and bombs with them over the southeast end of their country.

Iran is also locked in skirmishes with Kurds from time to time.  And Iran would be none too keen on having to grapple with the USA - or a US ally - in the Kurdish-run regions of its state.

The likelihood goes grim, and it goes like this: The Kurds resist the Iraqi capitol.  The Iraqis respond with military force.  In order to do so, they need to attack into Iran and Turkey.  Iran and Turkey mobilize in kind.

The result is a super-sized Charlie-Foxtrot in a state where the US was just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It means having to talk at the same table with Turkey and Iran.  It means a possibility of permanent instability in Iraq’s north.

So, no, it doesn’t mean you’ll be bankrupt.  It doesn’t mean global nuclear warfare.  But it does mean that yet another flashpoint could flare up in a big way, at a time when the US desperately needs a way out.

For the better part of the last month, I have been simply stunned by the change that the American electorate brought into being. I have been beyond commentary. I’ve just been admiring.

America, there is no overstating how profound the choice of Obama was. It means so much in terms of civil rights, meritocracy and decency in political discourse. But most significantly are two changes that will be taking place with such rapidity and intensity, we will soon hardly recognize our world.

One is the impact on America’s body politic – an impact that will, after generations of division, bring us together. This may sound simplistic, but you can see it happening already: Obama has, through his choices of advisors and vision for legislation, begun to dispel the notion of an opposition party. Now there are two parties, cooperating, and the fringe that clings bitterly to the politics of the past.

A recent NPR interview with a Republican strategist spoke directly to this phenomenon: The strategist talked about how Obama has co-opted many of the issues of the Right. Among them are reducing wasteful spending in government, defending gun rights, reducing abortions and taking a new, effective stance against terrorism and greater threats to American security. The strategist lamented this, given that these priorities of policy demands that Republicans either hold to their values and work with the administration, or take a more “conservative” stance socially in order to distinguish themselves.

We’ve seen it happening over the last month. Moderate conservatives such as those I’ve identified here on the blog are speaking with cautious favorability of the promise of Obama’s leadership. Meanwhile, staunch conservatives such as Norquist and Dobson are retrenching, trying to drum their flagging base into a more fervent condition with the old, campaign tropes of Obama being some manner of nebulous, foreign threat. The latter perception will not last long, and the former will find leaner numbers as people are clearly put off by the militant social conservatism of the far Right.

Perhaps the most corrosive element to the efforts of the Right to distinguish themselves as a firm opposition is the fact that Obama has seized upon some of the best talent of the middle. On the middle-right, we see figures like General Brent Scowcroft, Bush I’s NSA, and men like Paul Volker and General James Jones being brought in to be principal advisors to Obama. Secretary of Defense Gates being a holdover underscores this prevailing attitude of the Obama administration – that pragmatism and merit trumps political alignment.

So the statement is clearer now than ever: Obama wants the people of quality, the people with ideas, not political hacks. Even his appointment of various Clinton operatives suggests this – he wants the people, like Rahm Emmanuel, who can produce results.  Above all, 

Politics as we knew it in the spin-heavy, partisan, mercenary ways of the last twenty years is over.

Secondly, the major change will be in the globe. And unlike the post-partisan attitudes of the administration’s public veneer, this is a change that only the select that voted for Obama will be able to take credit for.

For yes, Obama’s politics will be one of unity, but it was the moment of his election – and that alone – that inspires the rest of the globe’s change.

That instant proved to the rest of the globe that America will no longer be taking a turn for the regressive. In the moment of electing Obama, a vast percentage of the electorate declared that America is still a nation of firsts in civil liberties.

We are now first in a man of color leading a major Western Empire. We stood for a first when it came to embracing a multi-cultural man. And we were first to confront the greatest ill of our past – slavery – by appointing a black man as our President.

This is no mean achievement: For the last eight years, the world has been waiting for us to seize the reins of progressiveness that we had led the charge with for the last century. Recognize, America, that in the era of World War II, we stood for grand values that inspired populations across the globe:

We stood for being prudent while still supporting the unfortunates in our society, as with the New Deal. We stood for placing the protection of the minority over the demagoguery of the majority, as with the civil rights movement. We led the globe in international organizations that helped the needy and could intervene if necessary in a crisis, as with the UN and NATO. And above all, we stood for the ideal that all men were created equal.

Now, electing the colored child of a single mother from the lower middle class, those that cast a vote for Obama have reminded the globe that we are still the champions of those values – those values that, above our prosperity and our custodianship, the world held dear.

We declared the era of state-sanctioned torture is over. The era of profligate corporate welfare at the expense of the masses is over. Isolationism and adherence to regressive international ideas, is over.

But this message was spoken only by those who voted for Obama – that is the honor that his supporters alone bear. For even though the opposition can support or curtail the events of the future, they cannot claim to be party to the awesome statement in favor of civil rights and global liberty that Obama represents.

They fought it; some hard, some casually and some tacitly, but all of them were opposition to it. They are numbered among those that fought the best of history – the judges who voted for segregation on the Supreme Court during Brown v. Board of Education; among the supporters of poor Goldwater who stood for separate facilities being allowed as States Rights; among those who passed Constitutional reforms against interracial marriage.

In light of this separation, I will be changing the title and mission of this blog. With an administration that I clearly favor in power, there is no playing the moderate. I chose my side in this election, and though I chose it because it was biparistan – even post-partisan – I will not pretend to not be aligned. I made my choice and chose to stand for liberty and progress.

I welcome those that stood against it, against the greatest values to ever inspire the globe, to work with me in this new time of unity.

I was ardent for change. I fought ardently against those who fought against it. I will be ardent to enact it the only way we can – together.

Since 8:00pm PST on November 4th, 2008, my mind has been preoccupied with a certain soaring sensation. Considering its hard to be lyrical or profound while flying, I’ve yet to produce a fitting denouement to the awesome, world-altering events of Barack Obama’s victory in the Presidential race.

In nod to this happy incapacity, and in fun-loving spirit, I present the kind of weirdo video that gets spread around the Internets for your brief viewing enjoyment:

To paraphrase Nixon, “If the President’s dog does it, it’s not illegal.”

I suspect - and hope - Barney lives to be deceptively benign-looking another day.

This is neither the crest of the wave, its source or its break, but the view from here is glorious all the same: