This has been around before…

 

…but it never fails to crack me up.  False metaphors forwarded to me by Mike Thompson, author of The Curse of Al Capone’s Gold.   Thank you, Mike!    You’ve saved me an hour of writing my next post.  🙂 

 1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

 

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

 

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

 

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

 

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

 

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

 

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

 

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

 

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

 

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

 

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

 

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

 

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

 

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

 

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

 

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

 

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

 

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

 

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

 

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

 

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

 

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

 

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

 

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

 

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

 

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

 

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

 

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

I have nothing to add other than stay tuned for Marvin Wilson’s stop on December 9th as he continued his whirlwind blog tour for OWEN FIDDLER!

Side-tracked

My original intention was to write my first post on the Left Coast Crime convention in Denver. However, I veered off track (it happens) after reading the introduction for zombie novel. The intro describes the book as a ‘pulp zombie masterpiece,’ the author as ‘the Quentin Tarantino of zombie literature,’ and further states the author ‘goes balls-to-the wall’ to give the readers what they want in a zombie story.

Balls-to-the wall.

Now when did this expression become popular?  And why?  I know it’s supposed to convey a tesosterone filled all out attempt to accomplish something, but the image it conjurs is of some guy with his package super-glued to a wall.  Kind of like this, but with the woogies pressed up against the wall.

‘Balls to the wall’ has been used, among other things, to describe writer/director Eli Roth’s treatment of the horror genre, namely his first commercial film CABIN FEVER, which was said by one sycophantic review to have ‘revitalized horror movies’ or something thereabouts.   And all I can say to that is if you’ve seen CABIN FEVER and the word “Pancakes!” doesn’t make you a: laugh, b: cringe, c: shake your head in disbelief or d: all of the above, then please don’t come over to my house for Bad Movie Night because neither of us will have a good time.

Now please excuse me.  It’s time to utilize my tits to the wind style of writing, test the boundaries of reality, good taste, disregard the sanctity of my characters,  push the envelope of my readers’ comfort zone, and, if I’m really lucky, revitalize a genre or two.