GRIMES:  "Independent of these two oddities, and as referred to elsewhere on this site, my longer tale, The USUAL, now appearing fully for the first time anywhere in Paraphilia VI http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/magazine.html is about a very hapless baby and his mutually obliterated parents and was originally intended for a Wow Cool
small press title.

The world of the 'Usual' is more or less this ol' battered world, "where anything can happen and probably will!!" There's nothing especially otherworldly or dreamlike about it. (Unless you're afraid of dogs).

Its setting is based on the house my family lived in when I was born, though there was no second floor.
And, yes, I did tumble down some stairs, but that was a very few years later, elsewhere, and I did not spin aloft throo the air!
My sister reminded me that the first page was inspired by a family anecdote about my mother's thinking I might've swallowed some broken glass, and trying to induce my gagging. Evidently then, a false alarm. I have no memory of this, only of the anecdote.
  Watch for this story's unfortunate baby, since dubbed 'Emory', particularly the way he looks as he's cartwheeling down the stairs, (but complete with 'dog dents' in his head), to turn up in Hive Baby's world whenever needed as his second banana. There he can be alive again, in that alternate world, ready for action.

Perhaps it's just the earnest rendering but I consider these tales gumball machine jewels in my output to date, if I may say so, for once, and not immediately swallow my 'fooly'.

"'JEEZ, GRIMES.WHAT'S WITH ALL THE BABIES?', you may ask.

No, I'm not some closet baby hater.

If I had any of my own, mine would be the first heart to sink into my shoes or leap out of my throat if anything such as happens in the enclosed stories happened to Ricky III (This Time It's Personal), little Rickella, or even the horrid Rickameana Jane.

Actually, the adorable, adult-like(?) tykes are MEANT to be funny. The guilty laughter at all our often beleaguered fates. So, go ahead...let it out. They're only cartoons.

But, the real question here is, "Why toddlers and why so many?"

The "National Lampoon Presents The Very Large Book of Comical Funnies" (1975), that is why. One of three of its features that took permanent lodging in my mind from
high school 'til ever on.

Specifically, here, FERRY TALE by artist Leo Burdak and writer Ted Mann, a dire little jawdropper about an evil minded, diapered little shit shedding his precautionary bindings and taking over the travellers' deck of a ferry boat. Enforcing his will with throwing stars, he then makes his move into horrific 'extreme suckle' w/ a young female passenger.
Therefrom, napping it off.

For lack of buying any of my own copies, it took me some years before I realized they were parodying Greg Irons' horror comix. The imitation is mostly spot on. Even some of the faces and body shapes appear to be artistic 'steals'. The book was a faux history of comics, you see. The story part of its 'Undergrounds' section.

The look of the pages and panels are a mime as well, although the Lampoon story, otherwise ten pages, is stacked by the pairs in vertical columns. (For some reason, I always misremember it as being in a horizontal ). This format adds to the overall peculiarity.

The wry, dry wit and darkly stilted and standard Edgar Allan Poesies of the tandem text is not to be underesteemed or underestimated in its effect upon this errant youth.


It's not that I have had to pull out my copy, pore over it and eyeball each nuance every time I did or do one of my baby tales. I only know the names and details of "Ferry Tale" now since pulling it out once again, after many years unseen, for the writing of this piece. But, I do always know he's in my mind someplace, the nameless uberbrat, and can readily note him as a hair trigger.

It is that such things set the parameters for what is negatively possible in one's own work. Just how far DO you want to go? And in what manner? Especially after being hit with them as a teenager.

Curiously, proof, too, that a parody underground can have as great an effect on someone impressionable as a source-story more inherently "underground", Irons' in this case; and greater than a National
Lampoon's lampoon is normally expected to have.

Truly, my tots are intentionally much less malign. Tho' their worlds may not be. Hence, I and they will compensate as we can.

My thanks, again, to all those involved in their dissemination."  -- (RG) Jan. 30th, 2010.