Sci Fi Survival Tips -- The Complete List

Nobody runs more bad sci-fi and horror movies that the SyFy cable television channel.  And so its executives  were quick to notice something that sci-fi fans have known for years:

The people in sci-fi movies always make the same mistakes.  Invent a revolutionary growth formula and somebody will pour in into the dog's dish by mistake. Soon a hundred-foot-tall Corgi will be seen gallumphing toward Manhattan.

Or, your new semi-autonomous death robot communicates on the same frequency as garage-door openers.  Or, you and two friends are out in the woods late at night and hear a ferocious roar from the woods nearby.  And someone says, "Let's go see what it was."  Hopeless people, all of them.

So the SyFy Channel compiled a list -- from fans -- of tips for surviving through one Syfy's own Romanian-made sci-fi or horror extravangzas.  SyFy ran them as public service spots on Saturday nights, before or during the 9 p.m. "Sci-Fi Saturday" movie.

They were a scream.  Click here to see a short selection of the survival-tip spots -- for as long as the video stays up.

And here is the complete list of tips -- I think. I had to go to various sites to find them all. I've added punctuation to simulate the vocal emphasis that the voice actors used. Read these tips with an open mind; and here's hoping that they don't come in handy some day.

1. If the Earth loses its atmosphere... don’t waste your breath screaming.
2. If it can eat through walls... it can eat through you.
3. Never swim alone, at night…naked.
4. Wishes can be dangerous; if you catch a Leprechaun, kill it.
5. If it has 20 legs... you can’t outrun it.
6. In the woods, everything can hear you scream.
7. If a giant spider catches you, don’t panic... it won’t eat you for days.
8. Never go on an epic quest... without having an exit strategy.
9. NUMBER SKIPPED
10. NUMBER SKIPPED
11. When building an army of mutant super-soldiers, don’t use the criminally insane.
12. Not all monsters want to eat you; some just want your skin.
13. Never play God... even if you are one.
14. Just because you’re immortal... doesn’t mean you can’t get your ass kicked.
15. If the egg weighs more than you... don’t wait around for it to hatch.
16. If its foot is bigger than your house... don’t hide in your house.
17. Never brew love potions... around family members.
18. If it has two heads, it can eat you in half the time.
19. If its footprint is bigger than your hummer... leave.
20. Never make fun of fairies... they aren’t as cute when they swarm.
21. Never mate with an alien... no matter how hot it is.
22. If you discover that you can fly... don’t do it in commercial airspace.
23. If you can see bits of flesh caught in its teeth... you’re standing too close.
24. If a giant asteroid is heading for Earth... duck and cover won’t help.
25. When building a robot don’t give it a brain; and if you do, don’t give it a weapon.
26. When running from a monster... never wear high heels.
27. If a giant snake is trying to kill you... don’t send a larger one to defeat it.
28. If a fraternity requires a blood sacrifice... don’t pledge.
29. Kids love dinosaurs; unfortunately dinosaurs love kids too.
30. If it comes from outer space... don’t eat it.
31. If you find human remains, don’t wait around to see what was eating them.
32. If you engineer a super-virus, also engineer an unbreakable test-tube. 
33. If you think your town has a werewolf problem... move.
34. NUMBER SKIPPED 
35. ‘No Trespassing’ signs... only work for things that can read.
36. If the static in the TV is talking to you... don’t talk back.
37. If its teeth are bigger than its body... don’t try to pet it.
38. Massive doses of radiation... won’t give you superpowers.
39. If you successfully clone yourself... it will probably try to kill you.
40. When using an Ouija board:  only summon people who liked you.
41. NUMBER SKIPPED
42. NUMBER SKIPPED 
43. If a club requires a blood sacrifice... don’t join.
44. Never sign a contract in blood, no matter how badass it feels.
45. Just because it has fur... doesn’t mean you should pet it.
46. 46. Not all parasites need you for food; some just need you for shelter.
47. NUMBER SKIPPED
48. NUMBER SKIPPED
49. Just because it’s not safe outside... doesn’t mean its safe inside.
50. If the thing under your porch ate your dog... it’s probably not the cat.
51. NUMBER SKIPPED
52. NUMBER SKIPPED
53. If it has eyes in the back of its head... don’t stand behind it.
54. Skipped
55. Not everything in the dark will hurt you; some wait till you turn on the lights.
56. If your closet starts glowing... don’t open the door.
57. NUMBER SKIPPED
58. If something crawls down your chimney... it’s not bringing you toys.
59. If it feeds every 23 years... don’t be around when it wakes up.
60. If you’re mentioned in a prophecy... remember to write down the details.
61. If every animal runs in the same direction... follow them.
62. If you hear it growling a mile away... don’t wait around to see what it is.
63. If you open a door to another dimension... make sure you know how to close it.
64. If she starts growing fur... she’s no longer your sister.
65. NUMBER SKIPPED 
66. If you build a Doomsday device... don’t leave it on standby
67. In the event of a nuclear winter... don’t eat the snow.
68. If a book can summon the dead... don’t read it out loud.
69. If it creeps up quietly... it probably eats loudly.

http://vimeo.com/17853991

Thumbnail Lotharios

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

Here's the low down, gentlemen. The Miserere of the manicurist. Peewee, the Titian-haired Aphrodite of the Thousand Nails has been inveigled into submitting her lipstick memoirs to the public eye.

Peewee is the melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of guile as the face of the Blessed Damosel.

There are others, scissor-Salomes and nail-file Dryads. Mr. Flo Ziegfeld has nothing on George, the head barber, when it comes to an eye for color and a sense for curve. But they are busy at the moment. The hair-tonic Dons and the mud-pack Romeos are giving the girls a heavy play. Peewee alone is at leisure. Therefore let us gallop quickly to the memoirs.

"H'm," says Peewee, "I'll tell you about men. Of course what I say doesn't include all men. There may be exceptions to the rule. I say may be. I hope there are. I'd hate to think there weren't. I'd get sad."

Steady, gentlemen. Peewee's doll face has lost guilelessness. Peewee's face has taken on a derisive and ominous air.

"I'll give you the low down," says she with a sniff. "Men? They're all alike. I don't care who they are or what their wives and pastors think of them or what their mothers think of them. I got them pegged regardless. Young and old, and some of them so old they've gone back to the milk diet, they all make the same play when they come in here.

"And they're all cheap. Yes, sir, some are cheaper than others, of course. There's the patent-leather hair lounge-lizard. I hand him the fur-lined medal for cheapness. But I got a lot of other medals and I give them all away, too.

"Well, sir, they come in here and you take hold of their hand and start in doing honest work and, blooey! they're off. They're strangers in town. And lonesome! My God, how lonesome they are! And they don't know no place to go. That's the way they begin. And they give your hand a squeeze and roll a soft-boiled eye at you.

"Say, it gets kind of tiring, you can imagine. Particularly after you've been through what I have and know their middle names, which are all alike, they all answering to the name of cheap sport. Sometimes I give them the baby stare and pretend I don't know what's on their so-called minds. And sometimes when my nerves are a little ragged I freeze them. Then sometimes I take them up. I let them put it over.

"You'd be surprised. Liars! They're all rich. The young ones are all bond salesmen with wealthy fathers and going to inherit soon. The middle-aged ones are great manufacturers. The old ones are retired financiers. You should ought to hear the lads when they're hitting on all six."

Peewee wagged a wise old head and her vermilion mouth registered scorn at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. A very cold light, however, kindled in her beautiful eyes.

"Yes, yes, I've taken them up," she went on. "I've let them stake me to the swell time. Say, ten dollars to one that these manicured millionaires don't mean any more than the Governor's pardon does to Carl Wanderer. Not a bit. I don't want to get personal, but, take it from me, they're all after one thing. And they're a pack of selfish, mushy-headed tin horns with fishhook pockets, the kind you can't pull anything out of.

"Well, to get back. About the first minute you get the big, come-on squeeze. Then next the big talk about being strangers in your town. Then next they open with the big, hearty invitations. Will you be their little guide? And ain't you the most beautiful thing they ever set eyes on! And say, if they'd only met you before they wouldn't be living around hotels now, lonesome bachelors without a friend. I forgot to tell you, they're all single. No, never married. Even some of the most humpbacked married men you ever saw, who come in here dragging leg irons and looking a picture of the Common People, they're single, too. I've seen them slip wedding rings off their fingers to make their racket stand up.

"Then after they've got along and think they've got you biting they begin to get fresh. They tell you you shouldn't ought to work in a barber shop, a girl as beautiful as you. The surroundings ain't what they should be. And they'd like to fix you up. Yes, they begin handing out their castles in Rome or Spain or whatever it is. Cheap! Say, they are so cheap they wouldn't go on the 5- and 10-cent store counter.

"Sometimes you can shame them into making good in a small way. But it's too much work. Oh, yes, they give tips. Fifty cents is the usual tip. Sometimes they make it $2.00. They think they're buying you, though, for that.

"As I was saying, the patent-leather hair boys are the worst. They're the ones who call themselves loop hounds. They know everybody by their first name and sometimes they've got all of $6.50 in their pocket at one time. And if you're out some evening with a friend—a regular fella, they pop in the next day and say, 'Hello, Peewee, who was that street sweeper I see you palling with last night? Oh, he wasn't! Well, I had him pegged either as a street sweeper or a plumber!"

"That's their speed. And they come again and again. They never give up. They've got visions of making a conquest some day—on $1.50. And when a new girl comes into the shop—boy, don't the buzzards buzz! I came here six months ago and they started it on me. But I wasn't born yesterday. I'd been a manicure in Indianapolis. And they're just the same in Indianapolis as they are in Chicago. And they're just the same in Podunk.

"Now, I'm not going to mention any names. But take your city directory and begin with Ab Abner and go right on through to Zeke Zimbo and don't skip any. And you'll get a clear idea about the particular gentlemen I'm talking about."

Peewee sighed and shook her head.

"Are you busy?" inquired the head manicurist.

"Not at all," said Peewee, "not at all."

Peewee's biographer asked a final question. To which she responded as follows:

"Well, I'll get married. Maybe. When I find the exception I was telling you about—the gentleman who isn't a stranger in town and in need of a little guide. There must be one of them somewhere. Unless they was all killed in the war."

Queen Bess' Feast

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

Elizabeth Winslow, who was a short, fat woman with an amazing gift of profanity and "known to the police" as "Queen Bess," is dead. According to the coroner's report Queen Bess died suddenly in a Wabash Avenue rooming house at the age of seventy.

Twenty-five years ago Queen Bess rented rooms and sold drinks according to the easy-going ideas of that day. But there was something untouched by the sordidness of her calling about this ample Rabelaisian woman. There was a noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.

"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money, Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Washington Park—a lot of good that would do her in her old age!

But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing—a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the worst—Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.

Nevertheless, in memory of the set of Oscar Wilde's works presented to my roommate twelve years ago one Christmas morning by Queen Bess, and in memory of the six world-famous oaths this great lady invented—here goes. Let Bess roar in her grave. There's one thing she can't do and that's call me a liar.

* * * * *

It was Thanksgiving day and years ago and my roommate Ned and I were staring glumly over the roofs of the town.

"I've got an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for both of us," said Ned. "But I feel kind of doubtful about going."

I inquired what kind of invitation.

"An engraved invitation," grinned Ned. "Here it is. I'll read it to you." He read from a white card: "You are cordially invited to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Queen Bess, —— Street and Wabash Avenue, at 3 o'clock. You may bring one gentleman friend."

"Why not go?" I asked.

"I'm a New Englander at heart," smiled Ned, "and Thanksgiving is a sort of meaningful holiday. Particularly when you're alone in the great and wicked city. I've inquired of some of the fellows about Queen Bess's dinner. It seems that she gives one every Thanksgiving and that they're quite a tradition or institution. I can't find out what sort they are, though. I suspect some sort of an orgy on the order of the Black Mass."

At 2 o'clock we left our room and headed for the house of Queen Bess.

* * * * *

A huge and ornamental chamber known as the ballroom, or the parlor, had been converted into a dining-room. Ned and I were early. Six or seven men had arrived. They stood around ill at ease, looking at the flamboyant paintings on the wall as if they were inspecting the Titian room of some museum. Ned, who knew the town, pointed out two of the six as men of means. One was manager of a store. One was a billiard champion in a Michigan Avenue club.

Gradually the room filled up. A dozen more men arrived. Each was admitted by invitation as we had been. Sally, the colored mammy of the house, took charge and bade us be seated. Some twenty men took their places about the long rectangular table. And then a pianist entered. I think it was Prof. Schultz. He played the piano in the ballrooms of the district. He came in in a brand-new frock coat and patent leather shoes and sat down at the ivories. There was a pause and then the professor struck up, doloroso pianissimo, the tune of "Home, Sweet Home."

As the first notes carrying the almost audible words, "Mid pleasures and palaces" arose from the piano the folding doors at the end of the ballroom parted and there appeared Queen Bess, followed by fifteen of the girls who sold drinks for her. Queen Bess was dressed in black, her white hair coiffured like a hospital superintendent's. Her girls were dressed in simple afternoon frocks. Neither rouge nor beads were to be seen on them. And as the professor played "Home, Sweet Home" Queen Bess marched her companions solemnly down the length of the ballroom and seated them at the table.

I remember that before the numerous servitors started functioning Queen Bess made a speech. She stood up at the head of the table, her red face beaming under her white hair and her black eyes commanding the attention of the men and women before her.

"All of you know who I am, blankety blank," said Queen Bess, "and, blankety blank, what a reputation I got. All of you know. But I've invited you to this blankety blank dinner, hoping you will humor me for the afternoon and pretend you forget. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves at the banquet board, eat and drink what wine there is and laugh and be thankful, but without pulling any blankety blank rough stuff. I would like to see you enjoy yourselves as if you were in—in your own homes. Which I take it none of you gentlemen have got, seeing you are sitting here at the board of Queen Bess.

"Now, gentlemen," she concluded, "if it's asking too much of you to forget, the fault is mine and not yours. And nobody will be penalized or bawled out, blankety blank him, for being unable to forget. But if you can forget, and if you can let us enjoy ourselves for an afternoon in a blankety blank decent and God-fearing way—God love you."

And Queen Bess sat down. We ate and drank and laughed till seven o'clock that evening. And I remember that not one of the twenty men present used a profane word during this time; not one of them did or said anything that wouldn't have passed muster in his own home, if he had one. And that no one got drunk except Queen Bess. Yes, Queen Bess in her black dress got very drunk and swore like a trooper and laughed like a crazy child. And when the party was over Queen Bess stood at the door and we passed out, shaking hands with her and giving her our thanks. She stood, steadying herself against the door beam, and saying to each of us as she shook our hands:

"God love you. God love you for bringing happiness to a blankety blank blank like old Queen Bess."

An Iowa Humoresque

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

In a room at the Auditorium Hotel a group of men and women connected with the opera were having tea. As they drank out of the fragile cups and nibbled at the little cakes they boasted to each other of their love affairs.

"And I had the devil of a time getting rid of her," was the motif of the men's conversation. The women said, "And I just couldn't shake him. It was awful."

There was one—an American prima donna—who grew pensive as the amorous boasting increased. An opulent woman past 35, dark-haired, great-eyed; a robust enchantress with a sweep to her manner. Her beauty was an exaggeration. Exaggerated contours, colors, features that needed perspective to set them off. Diluted by distance and bathed by the footlights she focused prettily into a Manon, a Thaïs, an Isolde. But in the room drinking tea she had the effect of a too startling close-up—a rococo siren cramped for space.

The barytone leaned unctuously across the small table and said to her with a preposterous archness of manner:

"And how does it happen, my dear, that you have nothing to tell us?"

"Because she has too much," said one of the orchestra men, laughingly.

The prima donna smiled.

"Oh, I can tell a story as well as anybody," she said. "In fact, I was just thinking of one. You know I was in Iowa last month. And I visited the town where I was born and lived as a girl—until I was nineteen. It's funny."

Again the pensive stare out of the window at the chill-looking autumn sky and the sharp outlines of the city roofs.

"Go on," her hostess cried. To her guests she added, in the social curtain-raiser manner peculiar to rambunctious hostesses, "if Mugs tells anything about herself you can be sure it'll be something immense. Go on, Mugs." Mugs is one of the nicknames the prima donna is known by among her friends.

"We went to school together," the prima donna smiled, "John and I. And I don't think I've ever loved anybody as I loved him. He used to frighten me to death. You see, I was ambitious. I wanted to be somebody. And John wanted me to marry him. Somehow marriage wasn't what I wanted then. There were other things. I had started singing and at night I used to lie awake, not wanting to sleep. I was so taken up with my dreams and plans that I hated to lose consciousness. That's a fact.

"Well, John grew more and more insistent. And one evening he came to call on me. I was alone on the porch. John was about twenty-three then. That was about twenty years ago. He was a tall, good-looking, sharp-faced young man with lively eyes. I thought him marvelous at the time. And he stood on the steps of the porch and talked to me. I never forgot a word he said. I have never heard anything so wonderful since."

The barytone shrugged his shoulders politely and said "Hm!"

"Oh, I know," smiled the prima donna, "you're the Great Lover and all that. But you never could talk as John did that evening on the porch—in Iowa. He stood there and said, 'Mugs, you're going to regret this moment for the rest of your life. There'll be nights when you'll wake up shivering and crying and you'll want to kill yourself. Why? Because you didn't marry me. Because you had your chance to marry me and turned it down. Remember. Remember how I'm standing here talking to you—unknown—a country boy. Remember that when you hear of me again.'

"'What are you going to do?' I asked.

"I'm going to be president of the United States,' he said. And he said it so that there was truth in it. As I looked at him standing on the steps I felt frightened to death. There he was, going to be president of the United States, and there was I, throwing the greatest chance in the world away. He knew I believed him and that made it worse. He went on talking in a sort of oracular singsong that drove me mad.

"'I'm not asking you again. You've had your chance, Mugs. And you've thrown it away. All right. It'll not be said afterward that John Marcey made a fool of himself. Good-bye.'"

The prima donna sighed. "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup; "it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body swinging. And I sat there shivering. I had turned down a president of the United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl. And, what was worse, I was in love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake all night, crying and shivering.

"I didn't see John Marcey again. I stayed only a week longer and then I came to Chicago to study music. My folks were able to finance me for a time. But I never forgot him. It was John who had started me for Chicago. And it was John who kept me practicing eight hours a day, studying and practicing until I thought I'd drop.

"I was going to make good. When he became president I was going to be somebody. I wasn't going to do what he said I would, wake up cursing myself and remembering my lost chance. So I went right on working my head off and finally it was Paris and finally it was a job in London. And I never stopped working.

"But the funny part was that I gradually forgot about John Marcey. When I had arrived as an opera singer he was entirely dead for me. But last month I visited my home town. I was passing through and couldn't resist getting off and looking up people I knew as a girl. My folks are dead, you know.

"And when I walked down the street—the same old funny little Main Street—I remembered John Marcey. And, would you believe it, that same feeling of fear came back to me as I'd had that night on the porch when he made his 'remember' speech. I got curious as the devil about John and felt afraid to inquire. But finally I was talking to an old, old man who runs the drug-store on the corner of Main and Sixth streets there. I'd recognized him through the window and gone inside and shaken hands; and I asked him:

"'Do you remember John Marcey?'

"'Marcey—Marcey?' he repeated. 'Oh, yes. Old Marse. Why, yes. Sure.' And he kept nodding his head. Then I asked with my heart in my mouth, 'What's become of him?' And the old druggist who was looking out of his store window adjusted his glasses and pointed with his finger. 'There he is. There he is. Wait a minute. I'll call him.'

"And there was John, my president of the United States, hunched over on the seat of a garbage wagon driving a woebegone nag down the street. I grabbed hold of the druggist and said, 'Don't, I'll see him later.'

"Well, I couldn't stay in that town another minute. I hurried to the station and waited for the next train and kept thinking of John driving his garbage wagon, and his battered felt hat and his hangdog face until I thought I'd go mad.

"That's all," laughed the prima donna, "That's my love story." And she stared pensively into the empty teacup as the barytone moved a bit closer and began:

"I'll tell you about a Spanish girl I met in Prague that'll interest you—"

The Exile

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

The newspaper man told the story apropos of nothing at all. There was a pause in the talk among the well-dressed dinner guests. A very satisfied-looking man said:

"Well, thank God, this radical excitement is over."

Every one agreed it was fortunate and the newspaper man, an insufferably garrulous person, interjected: "That reminds me of Bill Haywood."

"Oh, yes," said the hostess, "he was the leader of all that terrible thing, wasn't he?"

"He was," said the newspaper man. "I knew him fairly well. I covered the I.W.W. trial in Judge Landis' court, where he and a hundred or so others were sent to prison."

"What was the charge against them?" inquired the satisfied one.

"I forget," said the newspaper man, "but I remember Haywood. The trial, of course, had something to do with the war. The war was going on then, you remember."

"Oh, yes, indeed," exclaimed the hostess. "It will take a long time to forget the war." And her eyes brightened.

"You were going to tell us about the I.W.W. trial," pursued the hostess a few minutes later.

"Oh, there's nothing much about that," said the newspaper man. "I was principally interested in Bill Haywood for a moment. You know they sent him to jail for twenty years or so. Anyway, that was his sentence."

"The scoundrel ran away," said the very satisfied one. "Funny they should let a man as unprincipled and dangerous as Haywood slip through their hands after sending him to jail."

"Yes, they let him escape to Russia, of all places," declared the hostess with indignation. "Where he could do the most harm. Oh, the government is so stupid at times it simply drives one furious. Or makes you laugh. Doesn't it?"

"Yes, he skipped his bond or something," said the newspaper man, "and became an exile."

The satisfied one snorted.

"Exile!" he derided. "You don't call a man an exile who runs away from a country he has always despised and fought against?"

"The last time I saw him," went on the newspaper man, as if he were unruffled, "was about four or five days before he disappeared. I was surprised to see him. I thought he was serving his time in jail. I hadn't been following the ins and outs and I wasn't aware he had got appeals and things and was still at large."

"Yes," said the satisfied one, "that's the trouble with this country. Too lenient toward these scoundrels. As if they were entitled to—"

"Justice," murmured the newspaper man. "Quite so. Our enemies are not entitled to justice. It is one of my oldest notions."

"But tell us about what this Haywood said," pursued the hostess. "It must have been funny meeting him."

"It was," said the newspaper man. "It was at the Columbia theater between acts in the evening. I had gone to see a burlesque show there. And between acts I was on the mezzanine floor. I went out to get a glass of water.

"As I was coming back whom do I see leaning against the railing but old Bill Haywood. I hadn't seen him for about two years, I guess. But he hadn't changed an iota. The same crooked-lipped smile. And his one eye staring ahead of him with a mildly amused light in it. A rather striking person was Bill. I suppose it was because he always seemed so calm outside.

"He remembered me and when I said hello to him he called me by name and I walked to his side. I started talking and said: 'Well, what are you doing here? I thought you were serving time in six jails.'

"'Not yet,' said Haywood, 'but in a few days. The sentence starts next week.'

"'Twenty years?'

"'Oh, something like that.'

"Well," said the newspaper man, "I suddenly remembered that he was in a theater and I got kind of curious. I asked what he was doing in the theater and he looked at me and grinned.

"'I'm all in," he said. 'Been going the pace for about a month now. Out every night. Taking in all the glad spots and high spots.'

"This was so curious coming from Big Bill that I looked surprised. And he went on talking. Yes, sir, this Big Bill Haywood, the terror of organized society, was saying goodbye to his native land as if he were a sentimental playboy. He wasn't going to jail because by that time he had all his plans matured for his escape to Russia.

"But he knew he was going to leave the country and perhaps never come back again. So he was making the rounds.

"'I've been to almost every show in town,' he went on talking, 'all the musical comedies, all the dramas, all the west side melodramas. I've been to almost all the cafés, the swell ones with the monkey-suit waiters and the old ones I've known myself for years. I drew up a list of all these places in town about a month ago and I've been following a schedule ever since.'

"I asked him," said the newspaper man, "if he liked the plays he'd seen. Bill grinned at that.

"'It ain't that,' said Bill. 'No, it ain't that. It's only seeing them. You know, there's nothing like these kind of things anywhere else in the world.'

"And then the theater got dark and we said good-bye casually and went to our different seats. I didn't see Haywood again. About a week or so later I read the headline that he had fled the country. Nobody knew where he was, but people suspected. And then two weeks after that there was the story that he had reached Russia and was in Moscow.

"Well, when I read that," said the newspaper man, "I remembered all of a sudden how he had stood leaning against the railing at the Columbia theater saying good-bye to something. Making the rounds for a month saying good-bye in his own way to all the places he would never see again. Kind of odd, I thought, for Bill Haywood to do that. That isn't the way Nietzsche would have written a radical. But Dickens might have written it that way, like Bill.

"That's why whenever I see his name in print now," pursued the newspaper man, "I always think of the burlesque chorus on the stage kicking their legs and yodeling jazzily and Big Bill Haywood staring with his one eye, saying good-bye with his one eye.

"Tell me he's not an exile!" laughed the newspaper man suddenly.

Sergt. Kuzich's Waterloo

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

"Offhand," said Sergt. Kuzick of the first precinct, "offhand, I can't think of any stories for you. If you give me a little time, maybe I could think of one or two. What you want, I suppose, is some story as I know about from personal experience. Like the time, for instance, that the half-breed Indian busted out of the bridewell, where he was serving a six months' sentence, and snuck home and killed his wife and went back again to the bridewell, and they didn't find out who killed her until he got drunk a year later and told a bartender about it. That's the kind you want, ain't it?"

I said it was.

"Well," said Sergt. Kuzick, "I can't think of any offhand, like I said. There was a building over on West Monroe Street once where we found three bodies in the basement. They was all dead, but that wouldn't make a story hardly, because nobody ever found out who killed them. Let me think awhile."

Sergt. Kuzick thought.

"Do you remember the Leggett mystery?" he inquired doubtfully. "I guess that was before your time. I was only a patrolman then. Old Leggett had a tobacco jar made out of a human skull, and that's how they found out he killed his wife. It was her skull. It come out one evening when he brought his bride home. You know, he got married again after killin' the first one. And they was having a party and the new bride said she didn't want that skull around in her house. Old Leggett got mad and said he wouldn't part with that skull for love or money. So when he was to work one day she threw the skull into the ash can, and when old Leggett come home and saw the skull missing he swore like the devil and come down to the station to swear out a warrant for his wife's arrest, chargin' her with disorderly conduct. He carried on so that one of the boys got suspicious and went out to the house with him and they found the skull in the ash can, and old Leggett began to weep over it. So one of the boys asked him, naturally, whose skull it was. He said it wasn't a skull no more, but a tobacco jar. And they asked him where he'd got it. And he begun to lie so hard that they tripped him up and finally he said it was his first wife's skull, and he was hung shortly afterward. You see, if you give me time I could remember something like that for a story.

"Offhand, though," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, "it's difficult. I ain't got it clear in my head what you want either. Of course I know it's got to be interestin' or the paper won't print it. But interestin' things is pretty hard to run into. I remember one night out to the old morgue. This was 'way back when I started on the force thirty years ago and more. And they was having trouble at the morgue owing to the stiffs vanishing and being mutilated. They thought maybe it was students carryin' them off to practice medicine on. But it wasn't, because they found old Pete—that was the colored janitor they had out there—he wasn't an African, but it turned out a Fiji Islander afterward. They found him dead in the morgue one day and it turned out he was a cannibal. Or, anyway, his folks had been cannibals in Fiji, and the old habit had come up in him so he couldn't help himself, and he was makin' a diet off the bodies in the morgue. But he struck one that was embalmed, and the poison in the body killed him. The papers didn't carry much on it on account of it not bein' very important, but I always thought it was kind of interestin' at that. That's about what you want, I suppose—some story or other like that. Well, let's see.

"It's hard," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, after a pause, "to put your finger on a yarn offhand. I remember a lot of things now, come to think of it, like the case I was on where a fella named Zianow killed his wife by pouring little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and while they was monkeying with the skull they heard something rattle and when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling around. So they arrested Zianow and got him to confess the whole thing, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out his wife had stabbed him four times the week before he poured the lead into her while she slept, and frightened him so that he did it in self-defense, in a way.

"I understand in a general way what you want," murmured Sergt. Kuzick, "but so help me if I can think of a thing that you might call interestin'. Most of the things we have to deal with is chiefly murders and suicides and highway robberies, like the time old Alderman McGuire, who is dead now, was held up by two bandits while going home from a night session of the council, and he hypnotized one bandit. Yes, sir, you may wonder at that, but you didn't know McGuire. He was a wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn't hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, 'You're a policeman, shoot this highwayman.' And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station—I was on duty that night—the captain wouldn't believe it, and tried to argue McGuire into saying it was a accident, and that the gun had gone off accidentally and killed the unhypnotized bandit. But the alderman stuck to his story, and it was true, because the hypnotized bandit told me privately all about it when I took him down to Joliet.

"I will try," said Sergt. Kuzick, "to think of something for you in about a week. I begin to get a pretty definite idea what you want, and I'll talk it over with old Jim, who used to travel beat with me. He's a great one for stories, old Jim is. A man tan hardly think of them offhand like. You give me a week." And the old sergeant sank into his wooden chair and gazed out of the dusty station window with a perplexed and baffled eye.

Nirvana

By Ben Hecht (from 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, 1922)

The newspaper man felt a bit pensive. He sat in his bedroom frowning at his typewriter. About eight years ago he had decided to write a novel. Not that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man's thought from day to day with an irritating blur.

And for eight years or so the newspaper man had been fumbling around trying to get it down on paper. But no novel had grown out of the blur in his head.

The newspaper man put on his last year's straw hat and went into the street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops, movie theatres invite with the promise of a saturnalia in suspense.

At Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road the newspaper man paused. Here the loneliness he had felt in his bedroom seemed to grow more acute. Not only his own aimlessness, but the aimlessness of the staring, smiling crowd afflicted him.

Then out of the babble of faces he heard his name called. A rouged young flapper, high heeled, short skirted and a jaunty green hat. One of the impudent little swaggering boulevard promenaders who talk like simpletons and dance like Salomes, who laugh like parrots and ogle like Pierettes. The birdlike strut of her silkened legs, the brazen lure of her stenciled child face, the lithe grimace of her adolescent body under the stiff coloring of her clothes were a part of the blur in the newspaper man's mind.

She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter—one of the city products born of the tinpan bacchanal of the cabarets. A sort of frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the typewritten phrases.

"Wilson Avenue," he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. "The wise, brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler. She's it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette."

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened together; eyes glassy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

"Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well, that's the way with you Johns. But there's enough to go around, you can bet. Say boy! I met the classiest John the other evening in front of the Hopper. Did he have class, boy! You know there are some of these fancy Johns who look like they were the class. But are they? Ask me. Nix. And don't I give them the berries, quick? Say, I don't let any John get moldy on me. Soon as I see they're heading for a dumb time I say 'razzberry.' And off your little sugar toddles."

"How old are you?" inquired the newspaper man abstractedly.

"Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain't going good? One of the Johns I met in front of the Edgewater steered me to it. He turned out kind of moldy, and say! he was dumb. But I played along and got the job.

"Say, I bet you never noticed my swell kicks." The flapper thrust forth her legs and twirled her feet. "Classy, eh? They go with the lid pretty nice. Say, you're kind of dumb yourself. You've got moldy since I saw you last."

"How'd you remember my name?" inquired the newspaper man.

"Oh, there are some Johns who tip over the oil can right from the start. And you never forget them. Nobody could forget you, handsome. Never no more, never. What do you say to another shot of hootch? The stuff's getting rottener and rottener, don't you think? Come on, swallow. Here's how. Oh, ain't we got fun!"

The orchestra paused. It resumed. The crowd thickened. Shouts, laughter, swaying bodies. A tinkle of glassware, snort of trombones, whang of banjos. The newspaper man looked on and listened through a film.

The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing and amusement parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman. Yes, she'd had a lot of close times, but they wouldn't get her. Never, no, never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a whoop-de-da-da in the amusement parks.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls. Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin—the unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the cabarets."

They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting themselves in the artifice of confusion.

The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick couldn't reach, seemed to grow deader and deader.

The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd rose in an "ah-ah-ah." Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place, squeezing fresh arrivals around them.

The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories. Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man's ear above the racket:

"Say this is a dumb place."

The newspaper man smiled.

"Ain't it, though?" she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless voice sighed. She spoke.

"Gee!"—with a laugh that still seemed breathless—"gee, but it's lonely here!"