HAPPY CYBER-WEEN

 

Well it's here and I'm sitting in front of my computer. I'm usually out trick or treating with the kids and hitting the haunted attractions. This will be a first for me a cyber trick or treat. Hopping around to all my sites in costume checking out all my friends in their costumes.
I just popped in for a tweet at Karl Clay Vetter @vetter99.

Then off to Blood Moon Social Club Page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blood-Moon-Social-Club/354434527949489?ref=bookmarks

A quick costume change before I drop into crossbreeds by KCV page. https://www.facebook.com/karlclayvetter?ref=bookmarks

And another change for the Blood Moon social group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1488306761451445/

Well it's never going to be a kool as being there but to one and all HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

DAWN OF THE BLOOD MOON

The Blood Moon Social Club hosted its first Live Action Roll Play [LARP] based around Mark Rein*Hagen's controversial and disturbing Vampire the Masquerade on Halloween of 1993.

 

 The event was sponsored by the Kool Kollectables comic and game store and took place at the Road Runner Ranch. Most people think that was the beginning. In fact the curators of the RR Ranch were no strangers to disturbing events or controversy.

The year was 1989 and we had built a large Santa Fe style hacienda at the end of quarter-hores lane, twenty miles from Las Vegas. Surrounded by open range and a few scattered neighbors. We had a herd of twenty-five horses and a menagerie of calves, sheep, peacocks assorted poultry, a pig and a goat. In town we had a pet shop Parrot Gallery and there we had birds, fish, reptiles and even giant black scorpions and tarantulas.

The 'We' in this Dude Ranch project was my wife Carol our sons Patrick and Philip and our partner Marilyn Gubler.

Marilyn was from a prominent politically connected family and she had two adorable children Laura and her little brother Matt.

The project was to build a retreat from Vegas where family and guests could ride horses, have BBQs and quietly chill out. At least that was the plan but from the beginning 'quiet' was never achieved.

Saturday nights were always raucous for the bunkhouse crew were a rowdy bunch. Drinking hard and getting into fights over poker but such is the way of wandering saddle bums. But wait I said 1989 not 1889.

Although when the bark of gunfire stung the eardrums and gun-smoke chocked the nostrils, one was transported back in time briefly to a day when gunfighters and gamblers cavorted with dance hall girls of questionable morality. Vegas hadn’t changed much in a hundred years.

The Road Runner Ranch was known for its wild west theme parties and other things. There was a darker side to all those cowboy shenanigans. From time to time my wife Carol and sons Patrick and Phillip shed our big hats and boots and donned costumes of a darker more sinister look and we took our crew along with us. For to work at the ranch meant you had to play dress up with the eccentric owners no matter how bizarre those games were. One could surmise that we were a red-neck version of the Addams Family.

We then ventured into the desert littered with old mine shafts. Imagine the 'new guy's' nervous questions when instructed to load gallons of volatile liquid and a black coffin. The plumes of flame and smoke could be seen for miles. The crew were a mishmash of carneys, vagabonds, and even reputable citizens on the lame from responsibility, their rough and course manner made the locals nervous.

The sparsely populated neighborhood was already suspicious. So when they saw us with live snakes dressed in black and cammo setting fires, naturally they summoned the local constabulary. On more than one occasion I had to explain that we were merely shooting low budget movies, with my new digital video camera.

“Well, the neighbors think you’re practicing witchcraft and sacrificing animals,” said the cop with a grim eye on the snake and the black cat.
“As you can see officer the critters are alive and well and if you will step inside the house you can view the tape for yourself.”
“No thanks Mr. Vetter just keep it down,” he said and quickly left a flurry of dust in his wake.
I suspect he'd seen enough horror movies to know that when the creepy man invites the snoopy cop into the scary house... Don't go!

Young Matt grew and developed a morbid fascination for Magic, Halloween parties and all things of a frightening nature. Laura had a keen eye for fashion and perhaps being older and female leaned more toward normal.

We had just framed a large guest house and Halloween was right around the bend. So we stopped building and decided to do a one time Halloween blow out. I suggested to all that with no interior walls in the gust house we could do anything and after the party just slap up drywall and paint over the evidence. The idea was roundly accepted. We took black and red spray paint and tagged evil imagery all over the bare walls and spent a month decorating and coming up with scary ideas. The Gublers invited all their friends and we painted up our crew. Frankly that was easy they didn't need much help to make them look scary. The party was a smash, young and old ran screaming through our haunted house and the roar of my chainsaw no doubt frightened the neighbors as well.

 

We had gruesome fun in those nights, we made a zombie move and staged Road Warrior battles. But alas as the 80s had come and gone it was time for reinvention. We sold off our live stock and put away our guns and boots. I had been dragging my wife to gamer cons for a while and that's where she got the idea of starting a comic shop. I'd seen Vampire the Masquerade demoed at one and shortly after Kool Kollectables emerged.

 

It wouldn't be long before the RR Ranch would be crawling with Vampires, werewolves and all manner of fiendish monsters.

Our dear friend and patron Marilyn parted with us and started the Sandy Valley Movie Ranch. Which is even more spectacular than anything we had previously. Laura married a fine gentleman and had a son and still has her hand in fashion.

Poor Matthew never out grew his infatuation with magic and creepyness. He went on to the NY film school and now he's an actor, director and staring in Suburban Gothic a comedy horror film winning all kinds of critical praise and awards. And to think he could have been anything, a respectable doctor, lawyer or even a... politician.

FAST TIME IN THE SLOW LANE

Autumn chill at dawn in the low 40s is bearable in the tree house, with hot tea and a cozy parka. Some times I get lucky and spot wildlife foraging in Mystic Canyon as the sun rises.

Not this morning but the river rushing and the leaves turning is the perfect serenity I need to unscramble my thoughts. As of late I've been stressed over what direction I should go with my stories. Should I start something new that appeals to the masses and copy what everyone else is doing just so I can sell more books? Or should I stick to my original concept and travel the riskier trail of thorns?
I read your posts on FB and see that many of you struggle with similar issues with your own creative efforts in art, life philosophy or politics. Most of you tough it out to the bitter conclusion. That in of its self is a lesson in perseverance. It may not always end in riches and glory... Who we kidding? It virtually never ends that way? But when you think about it, win or loose it's the race against overwhelming opposition that makes any story worth reading. So it is with the struggles of life; a path paved with clover often leads to a slaughterhouse.
Or, if you're cute and adorable you land on a silky pillow but you're still some rich cat's bitch.
Don't get me wrong, if you're cute and adorable make the most of it. The rest of us will still tune into your pretend reality show and buy your produced for the masses designer gear. Cause rich cats still gotta buy premium for their limos ya know.
Here's a thought, what if life were like that Cars movie? I know a lot of people would love to be the Farrier, a Porsche or a Lamborghini. The road in life we travel has many detours and sometimes those side roads get real bumpy. I'm not so sure a sleek convertible three inches off the ground would survive some of the places I've been. Sooner or later most of us end up back on the free way and traffic is intense. How we choose to get down that free way is different for each but most go with the flow and are satisfied with nice regular acceptable vehicles.
As for my own quandary, well I've never been cute or adorable, and I never blended well with mainstream traffic. Maybe that's why I'm sitting in a tree house in a hidden canyon watching for mountain lions.
I don't know why I keep having this conversation with myself. The result is always the same. “To hell with trying to be like every other car on the road.” I'm not a sporty gas saving solar powered hybrid.
I did see a rig the other day that pretty much personifies what kind of vehicle I'd be in the movie.

So I'm going to battle it out my way, right to the bloody end and if my guts get splattered all over the high way, well that's just how the big rig rolls. Thanks for letting me rant and now I must buckle down and finish the work I've started, I hope you stay with me. Now move that Mercedes out of the slow lane I'm coming through.

HOW I BURNED OFF 40 POUNDS WITH RED HOT PEPPERS

Heed the warning signs your body is broadcasting, my friends. That's number one right there. For years I was complaining to my Doctors about chest pain and shortness of breath. They did all kinds of tests and found nothing. The pains continued and I wrote it off as anything but what it really was. At my peak I was hitting 248, then I would cut back for a while and drop down into the 230s. But I didn't really change my diet. Rather than list all the bad food I was eating lets just say this. I lived in Las Vegas, NV. for thirty years and never met a buffet I didn't fall in love with.
In the 90s I was writing a lot and sitting around all day, by the turn of the century I was really getting weaker and having difficulty with physical excretion. But still the Doctors could find no abnormality with my heart. I was getting so tired I couldn’t even write or concentrate. We like to fantasize about a catastrophic end by super storms, biblical plagues, or the eminent zombi apocalypse, but the real danger is right in our refrigerators.
In my life time I’ve eaten hundreds of cows, pigs, turkeys, sheep, countless chickens and just about
everything else even fried gator. I especially loved them deep fried with buckets of gravy and potatoes.
Fried catfish! Oh shit, don't get me going on catfish. Everywhere I went it was all you can eat catfish, breakfast lunch and dinner, YUM.
In 2008 we sold our Vegas properties and bought Mystic Canyon Ranch in New Mexico. At last I could devote more time to writing Sci Fi novels. I was getting more exercise working around the ranch but New Mexican cuisine is so freaking good and I do love spicy food. You know I found a place down here that serves deep fried avocados with jalapeno ranch. Kill me to death!
Unfortunately, the chest pains got worse, so bad I couldn’t ignore them any longer. At one point I was flat on my back like a five hundred pound gorilla was bouncing on my chest. What's his problem? I never ate any primates.
I went to the Doctor he took one look at my EKG and rushed me to the emergency room. They did some tests and determined that I had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. They shipped me by ambulance a hundred miles away to a crack team of cardiologists. My surgeon was ancient shriveled up with hunched shoulders. He reminded me of the proverbial mad scientist, I new right away I was in good hands.
They went to work on me immediately making an incision in my artery and inserted wires and cables from my groin to my heart. They pumped a special dye in to track my blood flow through my heart. Once they determined my arteries were 91% blocked they inflated balloons in there and inserted three stints. Little tubes to keep the arteries open.

You know when you’re laid out on a slab wide awake and some guy you just met five minutes ago is using your heart as a sock puppet. You get a new perspective on life really quick. You also discover just how much excruciating pain you can endure without flinching. For to do so would instantly change the outcome of the procedure. Well, I guess I had it coming, I did eat all those animals.

After my near death experience 16 months ago I had to make a lot of changes. Diet mainly I’ve
lost 40 lbs on my salsa diet. Yeah you eat a lot of greens, very little meat and you cover all that
grass up with SALSA. It’s great and I feel good. I also had to reevaluate my perception of time.
You do that when you pass the reaper in the hall and he winks at you. I’ve been working my crossbreed series for five years and I decided I’ve got to get on with it because time is fleeting.
So how did I do it? Changing my diet was key. No fried food, no pork in any form and yes bacon is pork and stacking it a mile high on everything is not good. No sugary sweets or ice cream except on birthdays. Milk yogurt and cheese in extreme moderation.
Now days I have to eat a lot of vegies fruit and Oatmeal. so it’s good I like them but they can get boring if you must cut out red meat. Now that’s tough if you’re an omnivore. So here’s a tip, but I warn you it’s not for the weak of stomach.

SALSA OLE'

Slice and dice 1 cup of onion, 5 cloves fresh garlic, chile peppers to taste. I like a lot, but you should be careful if you haven’t built up resistance. Add a little cilantro if you have it and a squeeze of lime juice. Now comes the tomatoes. Dice them fresh as many as you need. 5 big ones will make a good amount of salsa. A faster way is 2 cans of diced tomatoes. Either way is good. Add all ingredients to a large pan and bring to a boil. Warning, pan searing peppers, onion and garlic together requires some ventilation. Very powerful combination.
Reduce heat to medium and simmer ten minutes or longer as needed. This is the basic recipe for salsa. From this platform you can run wild. Add almost anything, ground turkey meat cooked

separately or steamed vegies and mushrooms. Pour over rice, noodles, toasted bread of course chips will do but they are high in fat. Salsa has no fat or cholesterol. For a splash of western flavor add a squirt of BBQ sauce.

Salsa really takes the boredom out of vegetarian fare. You can also add cheese and other meats if your heart Doc doesn’t find out. Those days are over for me but the party must go on.

If you’re looking to shed a few pounds my salsa diet works as long as you eliminate the obvious
pound packers. You know the ones without me listing them. Alcoholic beverages are a factor too, I only have a glass of wine rarely anymore. There was a time when I launched battleships on seas of booze but not for many years.
I eventually dropped down to 195. after a year and just stopped, for months I was stuck. This was not good and my cholesterol count was still bad. So I had to make another change. I cut way back on carbohydrates. About a hundred grams a day. I dramatically reduced my bread, tortillas, rice, noodles, potatoes and defiantly cut back on sweets. Oh yeah gravy is for holidays only. I know that's rough but fear not, salsa will save the day I assure you. At this point I started eating the occasional steak, beef has vital nutrients and 2 or 3 times a month is acceptable. You can have a few bites of rice, bread and pasta... I said bites not bowls. A bite fits on the end of a fork. I don't care if it is fat free it's the carbs that kill you.

ZUCCHINI BOATS

We are lucky that we can grow organic vegetables in our garden. This year we started Habanero peppers. Ye ha! Hot!
So what do you do with a squash that’s as big as a watermelon? First you cut it in half and hollow
out the seeds then place in turkey pan. Then get out your slicer-dicer thingy and finely chop up
about a ½ cup each of onion, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, carrots, and broccoli. Then 1 or 2
jalapeno peppers, 5 cloves garlic, 2 eggs and 2 cups turkey stuffing. Moisten with chicken broth.
Grind up 2 skinless chicken breasts and mix it all in a large bowel. Then stuff the boats. Add some
vegies around the side and bake for 1& 1/2 hours at 450. Adjust cooking time to size of zuks.
This recipe is based on what you like and have in the fridge. If you want to go totally vegan leave
out the chicken and sub with lots of mushrooms. If you’re not too keen on all those vegies then
just smother it in salsa like me.
LINTAL FEISTA
Start with chopping red onions, garlic and a pepper. Add a leek if you've got it. Pressure cook a bag of lintels in four quarts of water. Very good for you and goes well with salsa. Actually most any beans will work with this recipe.
HUEVOS CON SALSA
I love eggs but I eat eggbeaters now [0 Cholesterol], I make spinach mushroom omelets with salsa for breakfast. Or oatmeal and fruit. No cholesterol to worry about and the carbs in oatmeal are off set by the fact that oatmeal helps control cholesterol. Unfortunately, oatmeal gets tiresome so I add peanut butter and pecans with blackberries.

NO BURN NO LOSS

Well that covers the diet, but if you don't burn the calories you take in it will never work. I get up before dawn and drink steaming hot Chinese green tea and watch the sun come up over Mystic Canyon. Some times I do this from the tree house. It gets my Zin going to face the day. I work on the computer for a while then I go out and work until around 3pm. I stay really busy just read the other blogs before this one. Physical activity is painful at my age but it keeps me from stagnating. You have to burn those cals and keep the body limber.
So why the big emphasis on salsa? Look at the ingredients. Onions, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers. These four items are packed with nature's healers, all four are known to aid with a score of conditions that plague humans. Thousands of books and articles have been written about them, you've got the internet at your finger tips look it up.
Then you must deal with the fact that we are carnivorous creatures. We love meat, dairy, sweats and bread products. If you cut all that out you will give up in short order because of boredom. Spicy food is not boring, salsa added to most meals will liven up your day. You don't have to go wild like me, I love the burn. You can turn the pepper down to a warm glow and be satisfied.
My current weight is 190 Lbs. When I went in for surgery I was 230. You do the math it's no magic formula. Eat less of fat and carbs work out a lot and spice up your meals to make them fun and exciting. I hope this helps and even if you're not concerned about your weight Salsa is a great party food.
FINAL NOTES
Counting carbs is a pain so I made a carb chart of all my favorite foods by looking them up on the net. I keep it handy where I cook and a small one in my wallet. Don't keep your peppers in the fridge. They tend to rot so leave them in a bowl on the counter. They dry out and turn red but you can still eat them. Also fresh salsa is the best but I always keep a dozen jars of store bought in the pantry. You know just in case the zombies overrun Walmart.

HALLOWEEN COSPLAY

Spooky Jack-o-Lanterns, monster costumes, scary movie marathons and bloody haunted houses. Yes it's that time again and I'm excited and sad. Sad because I won't be going to Vegas to hang out with Evil Don and Gail Charette. They run the loony bin known as the Asylum.

Or check out the block parties with Joe Eagle Eyes and Benny the Badger and other ghoulish gatherings that I wish I could see. Perhaps another time.

Excited however because my son Patrick and I are busy building the Blood Moon Social Club and Crossbreeds pages under the new www.koolkollectables.com. This blog vetterSverse is part of that effort but we are building much more. The BMSC page will have an undead art gallery and a Fangtastic Photo album. Filled with pics form back in the night when Vampire the Masquerade was all the rage.

The crossbreed page will expand on the crossbreed series. Featuring details that may not be in the books. Background on the characters and artwork to flesh out the world of the crossbreeds.

I think most writers approach their work from a classic literary prospective. They work up a concept put together an outline and craft a novel from that.
I do it from the prospective of a gamer. First I design the world and then I work up character profiles. In the beginning with crossbreeds I made miniatures and played out scenarios with dice. Later I visualized the world as a video game. For me this allows the characters to become more real. I get board with stories where the narrative is mostly from the writer. I give my characters each their own voice, I like to hear what they have to say.

Lieutenant Dixon; Eradicator: Infiltrator. Mission: Blend in gather intelligence. Report to Eiger Dracthorn. Reclamation of pre-war technology and precocious materials buried in landfills is crucial for survival in the world of crossbreeds. Hunter's Point a crossbreed stronghold is sitting on a bonanza of recyclable materials. The scrap boom attracts hoards of prospectors looking to stake a claim. One more scavie looks as any other and Dracthorn's agent skulks about drawing little attention. Dixon's first appearance in Scorn the Vulgarian, Crossbreeds 3: Dark Legends.

At this time of year I always enjoy the costumes, make up and props the most. After we moved from Vegas to Mystic Canyon my cosplay gear was buried in a steel vault. Recently I dug it all out. Since I'm in the Halloween spirit anyway I decided to take the crossbreed character development a step further.

Why not? I've got a massive collection of props and a hundred and fifty acres of canyons, winding river and dense forest. For those of you that remember how remote the old ranch was where we held the Blood Moon Vampire games. This is much further out. No one can hear you scream. The perfect setting to let the crossbreeds out of their book world and roam around the real world.

Trooper Rotax; Eradicator: Cyborg weapons specialist. Mission: Seek out and destroy all crossbreeds. The Crossbreed Phenomenon has no known cause. Yet many believe it is a contagion. Eiger Dracthorn believes he has the cure. With bionanotech he mentally controls an army of drones to rid humanity of the source; crossbreeds. Eiger Dracthorn's first appearance in Scorn The Vulgarian; Crossbreeds 3: Dark Legends.

Of course this all seems innocent enough, actually one could argue that it's silly for a grown man to dress up like a hideous mutant and skulk around in the woods with dangerous weapons. Silly you say! Next you'll accuse me of being a delusional paranoid psychotic and that somehow I've become detached from reality. Go ahead it's been said before, I know what they whisper behind my back. Well I say reality is what you make of it. In my world anything is possible. They come alive and speak to me, they live I tell you, they live...

Boris; Stage 2 Crossbreed: Caprine. Saboteur & hijacker. Mission: Bring about the end of technology in the name of the great horned one. With the world in chaos many sought comfort from clergy. When even organized religion could not give adequate response to why children were changing at puberty, cults claiming to have answers sprang up like weeds. A popular theory among them was the rise of the old ones. Somehow the ancient gods had returned to punish mankind for his worship of technology and the destruction of mother earth. Boris appears in Crossbreeds 2: Tanglewood Terrorists.

What I meant to say is they live as figments of my fevered imagination.

Badlander; Occupation: Road Pirate. Mission: Pillage and plunder. With the collapse of the government and disintegration of civilization. Many disaffected souls have gone into the harsh wilderness. Bands of raiders harry truckers and caravans to survive off the spoils. Both crossbreeds and 100% humans prowl the high desert looking for easy prey.

I'll cut this short, it's time for my pills and a nap. For the record I'll tell you the same thing I told the sheriff. I know nothing about those missing collage students. Naked hedonist, they could be anywhere. The deep dark canyons are so unforgiving.

TECHNO-APOCALYPTO

Technology is changing so incredibly fast it's hard to keep up. Especially, for the Boomers but we've managed to figure out texting, E-mail, and smart phones. Not as quickly as the younger generation, true enough. Way back in the dark ages we learned to read books that had big heavy pages and we wrote letters with a thing called an ink pin. We gave them to a guy on a horse and he rode hell bent to hand the mail off to another rider to delver them. It was tough but we evolved. Even our telephones were primitive, huge bulky things tethered to the wall with a cord and had a dangerous dial that sometimes strained our finger to turn it. Oh yeah we did have cameras but not married to our phones. You had to wait a week for the prints to come back before you knew which ones to delete.

You neo-tech gurus are so smug at how tech savvy you are, but if your operating systems go down you look so funny staring at blank screens. I just crack up when the panic fills your eyes when your bars disappear. If there is to be an Apocalypse it won't be from zombies. It will be when a terrorist figures out how to shut down the net cutting you off from your movie and game library in the cloud. Pandemonium! You'll all start eating each other. We old farts however will just light a lantern, dust off a copy of Huck Finn then wait for the lights to come back on.

THAT STILL MAKES US SMARTER THAN YOU SO WIPE THAT ARROGANT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE NURD-PUNK.

MACAYO THE MAGNIFICENT

Things were happening in the 80s, a lot of technological changes. Video rental stores were popping up on every corner. The personal computer was the must have home improvement. My wife Carol and I were looking to make some changes too. Leave California and the natural food business to start. Maybe try something radically different, a reinvention of sorts.

We had just gotten a pair of cockatiels and were having a lot of fun training the little cuties. Carol suggested we move to Las Vegas, NV. And start raising and training exotic birds. I'd had a tropical fish hatchery in my backyard when I was a kid and I'd spent some time on my grandmother's Texas cattle ranch. Chickens were the only birds I had any familiarity with but what the heck let's go wild.

That crazy idea would turn out to be a great adventure and one bird above all others would change our lives forever. We moved to Vegas and hunted around for a suitable place where we could raise parrots. Someplace where the chattering wouldn't disturb neighbors. We jumped around a bit as our flock grew but we came to rest and soon had dozens of birds. Some imported, others hand raised. Among the first imports was a very cool looking blue and gold macaw from South America. We called him Macayo. He seemed to be different from the others and quickly learned some simple tricks. After a few weeks it was obvious just how different Macayo was. He advanced well beyond simple tricks and also his plumage was sharper than other macaws.

During this time we had other jobs and had met a prominent local woman, we worked for her on and off. She had two young children the boy around two and the girl a few years older. Eventually we managed a mini storage property in an industrial zone for her. It was perfect for our flock. No neighbors and lots of room.

My wife being the smart one decided if we were to rent all the units we should seek clients other than people looking to store their belongings. So we advertized “music studios for rent”. Turns out a lot of rock bands needed a place to practice where the noise wouldn’t attract the police. This part of the story will become relevant further on.

A lot was going on at this time I was really into photography and taking pictures of our beautiful birds. I'd also acquired an early model of a new gadget. The video camera was just hitting the market and what a wonderful technology to have. The camera was huge and you had to carry the recorder deck separately on your shoulder with a strap. I put it to good use capturing the birds doing tricks and our benefactor’s children. To make the videos more interesting I would shoot little movies with props and costumes. On occasion I would swipe the little boy's Star Wars action figures and make stop action movies for him. This part of the story will also become relevant later.

I was getting so confident with Macayo that I decided to hire us out as a pirate and his trained parrot for children's parties. My wife whipped up a costume while Macayo and I worked out a routine. We were a hit... well OK he was a hit. It was really Macayo The Magnificent and his pirate sidekick. He knocked them dead when he rolled across the floor on his modified corvette stingray.

Jazzed at the possibilities I conceived a bigger stunt. I built a ramp and rigged up all his cars so when he rolled down the ramp his momentum would carry him over the cars like a feathered Evil Knievel. I was of course concerned for his safety. So we practiced the gag several times with me holding on but at some point he would have to drive all on his own.

When the time came the stunt was flawless, just as he launched air born he spread his wings and guided the jump truck to a perfect landing. I was elated. Now you might think this was a simple thing to teach the other birds, but no. While some managed to stay with the vehicle none could guide it to such a smooth landing. Macayo was truly gifted and fearless he made it look easy.

Our sons Pat and Phil were graduating and deciding on what they were going to do in life. Phil wanted to serve in the Marines and Pat was a varsity jock / computer wiz kid who'd taken over his computer class in high school. By now we had scores of birds and needed to expand. So Patrick decided to partner up with us and Parrot Gallery was born. We opened on Spring Mt. Road in view of the Las Vegas strip. We had birds, tropical fish, reptiles, and all manner of exotic pets and our party business grew too.

Now with a menagerie this big I could go on for ten thousand words with stories that would blow you away. Like when the ball python escaped into the sewer and gave a secretary the shock of her life when he turned up in her toilet three doors down. Poor Patrick had to play plumber with a real snake. Or the time our monkey was monkey-napped and Carol and I went undercover to rescue him from a gang of thieves. Yes there are so many stories but that's for another blog post, for now I'll try to keep it on topic.

Macayo too has many stories to tell but here is one of his best. Aside form kid and adult parties we also did free shows for classrooms and school carnivals. Birds weren’t the only critters we took to these educational events there were turtles, emperor scorpions, tarantulas and snakes. But it was a new member of the troop that really got them excited. Lash the Dragon would come crawling out of his black travel castle and flick his long forked tongue at the kids. He was a four foot long Nile monitor lizard of the Komodo family. Fierce to look upon but gentle as a pussy-cat unless you were a rat then it was curtains for you.

These events were all fun but the best one was Bird shows for Blind kids. Now you're probably scratching your head about now. “They're blind right?” Yes, but the visually impaired can see with their fingers. And virtually none of the kids in the audience had ever touched a small parrot much less a three foot long macaw with a huge hooked bill; capable of crushing walnuts. Lash was especially popular with the visually impaired kids for his hide was like beaded leather and he flicked them with his tongue, which got a lot of giggles. When the media heard about this, Macayo was the talk of Vegas. Two newspapers and three TV news crews covered the event.

Lash was getting a reputation too just a little scarier. He and I would stroll about in front of Parrot Gallery, he in studded black leather harness on a leash like a bull terror. He could clear a sidewalk quicker than you can say, “What the heck is that?” Like Macayo Lash was unique among the big lizards. They all came in wild and quick to strike with tail or bite. Most could be tamed with some work but Lash was different. He took to people and learned that they were a prime source of his favorite snacks. Now as promised the relevance of those aforementioned rock bands.

We still managed the mini storage for our friend and had many bands that we sometimes would hire for parties. You see how all things are connected. There was one group of talented young musicians that really wanted to enter the Battle of the Bands at a local nightclub. It was well known that a very popular group always took first place. But second place was usually up for grabs. Our unknown group, “My Exciter” had no chance in hell of winning anything. Too many top competitors with a good following of fans each. But we thought their brand of metal rock was good so we made some videos and got them a few gigs.
They had this one number that just cracked me up. They did a metal version of the Flintstones theme song. This got me to thinking, what if their lead dancer could do her number with Lash to the Flintstones? Lash was no problem but the young lady was terrified of the lizard that was almost as long as she was tall. I worked with her until she was comfortable and the big night came. The place was a mad house, the music was insane and Lash was cooped up for a long time in his special travel case. When My Exciter were finally called it was near midnight. They did their regular set which was good but was in no way going to get a prize. So it was all up to Lash who came out of his bag with a wild hiss. The music was loud and his partner danced behind him in a Wilma Flintstone cave girl costume as he tugged at his leash. Lash was very curious about the crowd and drug her to the edge of the stage. The gawkers in the front row all leaned back as far as they could. The howlers in the back wanted to see better and pressed forward.
Lash puffed up and strutted his dinosaur heritage for all to see, causing the audience to gasp and roar. He snared second place in his powerful jaws as if it were a fat juicy rodent and swallowed it whole.

Macayo continued to preform for audiences large and small and he appeared in TV in commercials as well as appearing in print. Remember the little boy that I was careful not to name? He grew up to become a beloved celebrity himself. Can you guess who he is?

 

Macayo is retired now and living comfortably in Mystic Canyon. We do a few tricks for the grand kids now and then just to stay loose. Recently, however I've put forth the idea of him maybe coming out of retirement and doing some web work, maybe You Tube. He's weighing his options.

Oh yeah the little boy. Give up? He's Matthew Gray Gubler... [Spencer Reid; Criminal Minds CBS.]... You know, The Riddler; Batman Assault on Arkham.. Yeah that Matthew Gray Gubler.