“I’m glad you’re black again, Parasol. Now I can get rid of that White Elvis hairdoo. Back to the old self, ahh!” He settles back in his beach chair, taking in the waves.
“How about the ant? There’s always the ant to deal with. Ant,” Parasol by his side reinforces.
The Mann looks from the waves up to the mountains. “I’ll deal with that later.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0505, Corsica, Northwest
The jazz and beatnik club known as The Dive was actually just a front for the numbers station in a secret room below the establishment. An old bomb shelter. Charlie Banana became humanized after being successfully contacted by Poetry Dancer. They listened to the artful tunes of D.J. Marty, still intent on finding out whether Yoko was a good or bad witch. We’d determined that Mid-Hazel was the real manipulator behind the scenes. Another All the Numbers situation, most likely. He played his Pepper album both forwards and backwards at once to attempt to create a third, higher perspective. Lt. Salt entered the club and killed them all bought them all drinks. It was an unexpected result.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0502, HANA LEI
Teddy had seen it all coming and had tried to warn his master Baker Bloch about the impending event. With his hoof he had counted to five this day before the bay but purposefully stopped at six. Marty was not who he seemed to be. *No one* was who they seemed to be, not Marty, not The Mann, not Peter Oesso, nobody. Here they were all variants. The numbers one through five represent the time before the peak, when Penny Lane was a memory and not a song, when Strawberry Fields was a place as well. After the release of the double single — and accompanying album — something happened to The Beetles, indeed the world as a whole. Arnold Lane, another place that became not a place, played a role in this as well. I’m here to tell you: something happened.
Storybrook’s deserted Arnold Lane
Marty’s nearby, red-topped, bible-less church
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0316, Heartsdale+, Storybrook-
“Are you going to open that can of worms *now*? You can’t fish properly without them, you know.”
In the boat before Baker Bloch, Yoko Ona seethed. “Who are you to tell *me* how to run my business? They agreed upon McCartney-Len –, I mean, Lennon-McCartney, *years* and years ago. I am honoring my late husband’s wishes. Marty just wants to rock the boat. He’s a trouble maker. In fact –.”
“He’s not even Paul,” Baker Bloch guesses. “A switch occurred. Arkansas,” he followed, thinking of how five progresses into six. Not quite all the numbers but getting there. Didn’t matter, though. *Here* he was Marty. All the signs were that he was Mozart instead of the other way around. And Lennon Lemon was, well, the other one, the *Jealous Guy*. He told this to Yoko Ona, standing her right side up so he could see directly into her eyes, into her soul, tell her what went wrong — and perhaps right as well but wrong especially. At this moment, in this instant.
Something happened to make Baker Bloch rethink his strategy. Yoko Ona returned to her boat, putting away the worms for good. There would be no fishing today in the Heartsdale Bay. Mid-Hazel had her tied around her little finger. It was the more powerful witch Baker had to deal with from now on. He had met his match. Time to send in the female (again).
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0315, Heartsdale+
Since Lennon’s death in 1980, McCartney has fought an uphill battle to assert his place in history, often finding himself dismissed as a shallow hack, a Salieri to Lennon’s Mozart, as Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono cruelly put it. So even as McCartney’s tunes continue to carry the load for the Beatles’ back catalog (14 of the 27 chart-topping songs featured on the group’s wildly successful “1” compilation were predominantly Paul’s, and another four were at least half-written by him), little of the prestige reflects back on him….
Seeing the mid-’90s “Beatles Anthology” releases as an attempt to rectify the historical record, McCartney asked Ono if his name could be placed ahead of Lennon’s, if only for the song “Yesterday”….
But Ono was adamant that the Lennon-McCartney billing should not be altered, arguing that it would be “opening a can of worms.” McCartney did not forget: Two years later, when Linda McCartney died of cancer, Ono was not invited to the New York wake.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there at your, ahem, wake. I’m sorry that you had to die, and in such a bad way. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that old thing,” she waved off. “Yeah, I died. But it really wasn’t me. As you are really not who you are either. Clones are standing by, as Mid-Hazel likes to say. I am only a product of Oregon; Merlin merely points that out. Where is Merlin anyway? Helping Golden Josephine out of that tight dress she likes to wear when digging more greenbacks out of men?”
“I don’t know,” Yoko returned simply and plainly, wondering who Merlin is. Another dead person?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0314, Heartsdale+, Missouri, New York
Marty was moving across the street, and, in the process, giving away his true former identity as determined reinforced by the Piera.
Who or what is the Piera? That’s a question to be asking. Next…
We can probably start with the Man About Time, since he seems to have created it.
“Yes I did.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0313, Corsica, Urqhart
He decides to become Harrison Jett this morning, who seems to be the same as Young Harris the professor, perhaps a later incarnation. It was a logical choice, given the shirt he wore.
“Another Messed Up,” he observed about the art work before him, thinking back to the contract signed on that particular Weird-o Island. Not the one with the Upper New York virtual university. Not the one where that pseudo-God lives up in the aether somewhere — David something or ‘nother. Instead perhaps the *weirdest* one of the 3, but he can’t recall the name. He remembers… staying there. Perhaps he is still there.
Whose heart is left on the musical stand? He must think of Mozart and the critical error of Yoko Ona the witch. Hole in the center. But it wasn’t John’s. It was his! The walrus was… well, you know the story.
I think this has something to do directly with that Weird-o island I can’t recall the name of. Queer?
Better head back there for more clarification hopefully.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0214, Corsica, Northwest
“Everyone knows about the Ant Castle,” replies Golden Jim, glancing over at the structure perched on top of Yellowmoon Ridge, wearing it like an orange crown. “It’s where the ants emerge from the elephants trunk, turning it into, well, just Eleph. Peak, that is.
“And do you *know* the particular black ant that lives in the castle?” the mann next to him queries further about the mysterious object high in the sky. “Not Queen but King.”
“Boldon,” Golden Jim guesses, suddenly recalling the history of the place, the *smell*. The wax hardens and everything is recorded. It was a good work.
“He invented the telephone, you know,” The Mann spoke over. “That’s why he likes to use it so much. One could say he’s really *jazzed* about it.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0213, Corsica, Northwest
She stands at a crossroads outside the motel. David A.B. and Linda Halsey are still talking in the lighted patio outside the lobby. They would be doing this as long as the motel itself existed, she realized. She stares toward the mysteriously highlighted red-blue-green gate to the east (sky-sea-land). She’s *been* here before, she realizes while studying it and almost being hit by a right turning, beat up station wagon with Illinois license plates in the process. BDR529. Not quite all the numbers but getting there.
“Where there are churches there must be liquor stores,” she remarks confidently while walking between two. She goes in a direction no Yoko has ever gone before, messing with the patterns.
—–
“So this is what you do all the time, Baker B.?” asked observing Marty at Collagesity’s Blue Feather Table Room.
“Pretty much,” admitted the male baker version to the famous composer/musician variant.
“W-where is she going? She’s just heading off in a random direction.”
“Not random,” spoke Baker Bloch. “Hopefully.”
“What is this place?” Marty further queried.
“Heartsdale. It’s in title.” Baker looked over, confident in his randomness. “She’s been here before,” he added. “Or *I* have.”
“And this has — something to do with John.”
“Absolutely,” I crowed. “Bakersworks,” I said to end.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0104, Corsica, Heartsdale+, Missouri, Urqhart
“I wanted to bring you here, Hucka Doobie, to show you where John and I use to meet to go to our various hangouts. Before he became — well, you know now.”
“Solid lime green,” responded Hucka, recalling the meeting. “Lemon”.
“Yeah, the whole *blurring* of the n’s. Like we can’t see properly. And we *can’t*. John is lost to me. But *here*. We could go back…”
“To go back is to die, Marty,” the resident Sunklands blog spirit offered to this.
“Yeah. I suppose.” Marty looked around. “Smells so fresh here after a pouring rain. This is where I also became the Fireman. In short: I want to help.” He stared straight at Hucka Doobie here.
“The Table.”
“Yes!”
—–
“I suppose it makes sense,” replied Baker Bloch later to Hucka Doobie sitting at the same. “He *does* live here after all. He’s just a skip and a beat away. Lemon can’t come, though.”
“Oh no,” states Hucka Doobie. “He has a, well, he has a hole in the middle that can’t be filled. Property of a *witch*.”
“Now Hucka, you know we can’t say that here.”
“*We* — just did.”
Sunklands 