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Thursday, October 29, 2015

The Werewolf Dentists From Hell

In honor of Halloween and of my root canal horror story, I am posting my story THE WEREWOLF DENTISTS FROM HELL for free. Trick or treat. It was originally published in a Halloween anthology from horrornovelreviews.com.


THE WEREWOLF DENTISTS FROM HELL
by Andrew Hilbert

“Aren’t you a little old to be trick-or-treating?” Carl asked the two masked men at his doorstep.

“Just give us some fucking Tootsie Rolls,” one of the men said. His voice was low and gravely and his eyes were bright red underneath his mask.

“Wh-what are you supposed to be anyways?”

They stood there. Their faces were covered by werewolf masks but they were also wearing scrubs and stethoscopes dangled around their neck.

“Dentists from Hell,” they both said and pushed their way into Carl’s house where his wife sat around the television watching The Simpsons.

“Television rots the brain, moron,” one of the men said.

“It’s a family tradition! The kids go out and get candy and we watch The Simpsons. What’s so wrong about that?”

“Turn off your porch light. You’re done giving candy to kids,” one of the werewolf dentists from Hell said.

Carl, realizing that he had no choice, obeyed.

“And turn off that noise!”

Carl turned to his wife.

“Honey, please turn off the TV. These nice dentists from Hell have something to say.”

Betty turned off the TV.

“H-How can I help you?”

The dentists from Hell looked at each other. Beneath their masks, they smiled.

“You got a La-Z-Boy?”

Carl nodded and pointed to his favorite reclining chair.

“You got some duct tape?”

Carl nodded and pointed to the kitchen.

“You got any Tootsie Rolls?”

Carl shook his head.

“Only Butterfingers and Twix, king sized,” he said.

“Fuck!” one werewolf yelled. “I wanted the Tootsie Rolls.”

“Go get the duct tape, you son of a bitch!” the other said.

Carl could feel a steady stream of piss roll down his leg. It showed through his khakis.

“Hey, look. This tooth killer pissed his pants.”

The werewolf dentists laughed.

“Get the fucking duct tape.”

Carl nodded and waddled to his kitchen. With each stride, he could feel his pant legs sticking and unsticking to the hairs of his legs.

“Kids ‘round the neighborhood must love your house,” one of the dentists said to Betty.

“They do, they sure do. We always give out the good stuff.”

“Heh, the good stuff, she says.”

Carl came back with the duct tape in his hand.

“Wh-what are you planning to do?”

“Sit down and shut up.” The dentists from Hell pointed to the recliner.

Carl nodded and sat down.

One dentist pointed to Betty.

“You,” he said, “What’s your name?”

“Betty.”

“Betty, I’m Pavlovius and this is my partner, Theolonius. Please duct tape your husband’s hands and feet to the La-Z-Boy.”

“Do whatever they ask! Do whatever they ask, sweetheart!”

Betty got up and brushed the popcorn off her sweatshirt. She grabbed the duct tape from Carl’s hand and started to bind him to his beloved recliner.

“Pliers,” one of the dentists asked. The other pulled out some pliers from his trick-or-treat goodie bag.

The pliers were rusted and disgusting.

“Open your mouth or we’ll lengthen your lips.” He pulled out a knife.

“I’ll open! I’ll open!” Carl wriggled as much as he could but Betty had much practice at binding her husband. They were BDSM enthusiasts.

“Say ahhh, motherfucker.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

The dentist from Hell put the pliers in Carl’s mouth, grabbed his front tooth, and pulled. Blood flowed like the corn syrup surprise inside a Gushers candy.

“You’re rotting children’s teeth,” the dentist from Hell said and plucked another tooth out. “You’re destroying the mouths of babes!”

“You’re giving into the sugar industry like slaves!” the other dentist from Hell said as the pliers continued their work.

Carl screamed as blood sputtered out of his mouth and dribbled all over his shirt and khakis.

In no time, Carl was toothless. His mouth was a gaping wound of blood and spit.

“This is the future of all the kids you’re feeding king sized candy bars,” the dentist with the pliers said as he grabbed a compact mirror and held it up to Carl’s face.

All Carl could see was a mouth bleeding all over itself in the mirror. He couldn’t help but cry.

“But ifn’t prue fhat rotting peefh are your bread and bupper?”

The pliers fell to the ground. The werewolf dentists from Hell looked at each other.

“No, shit,” one said.

“We didn’t even think of that.”

“You’re the guy who gives us business.”

“Shit.”

The werewolf dentists looked at their feet and shook their heads.

“Fuck.”

“We’re really sorry about this.”

“Here’s a business card for a real good oral surgeon. He can fix you up with teeth implants or dentures or whatever you prefer.”

They handed him a card.

“Shit,” one of them said. “We’ll just turn on the porch light on our way out.”

“Again, we can’t apologize enough.”

They backed out of the house and closed the door behind them. The porch light was on.

Carl sat there, still bound, as Betty collected his teeth from the ground.

Their doorbell rang.

“Trick-or-treat!”





Reviews and other such nonsense!

Yo!

I will have you know that I have been keeping up with the Simpsons and there will be reviews and thoughts posted soon but what everyone really should be watching right now is the new season of South Park.



Some friends came into town for a bachelor party. Two friends are getting hitched this year and, luckily for me, they decided to come to Austin to celebrate. I got to catch up with everyone and one of those friends informed me that South Park this season was killing it. He was right. I work in the service industry by day and by night and the Yelp episode is spot on. Do yourself a favor and watch it. 

Anyways, I haven't been posting recently because I'm going through quite an ordeal with my tooth after a root canal on top of getting sick at the end of October every year.



Here's a roundup of more recent reviews and mentions of Death Thing:






You can always purchase a signed copy of any of my work through the Weekly Weird Monthly here. 

If you've read Death Thing, Toilet Stories, or Cat Food, please review them on Goodreads and/or Amazon!



Thursday, October 1, 2015

The Simpsons and How They Embiggened Me: Simpsons Season 27 Premiere

Simpsons, Season 27, Episode 1: Every Man's Dream

If the rest of the season is like this, it's bad news.

Last thing's first. It ends with a referential joke that is mind boggling if you aren't aware of the reference. Early Simpsons episodes referenced and parodied and it wasn't necessary to even know what was being referenced or parodied to laugh. Sure, you might laugh more if you knew the reference but you'd still laugh because the Simpsons was funny.

The Simpsons excelled at referential and self-referential humor because the joke didn't live and die on the reference. The joke was funny regardless of the reference. There's this whole genre of humor that is solely referential. It's not funny on its own. Sorry. Randomly spewing a piece of TV trivia is not funny regardless of how many people put their nose in the air and laugh as their eyes dart around looking for the people who don't get it. There's nothing to get.

I GOT THE REFERENCE, THOUGH! IT WAS ALL A DREAM IN AN EPISODE OF GIRLS AND HANNAH HORVATH SAYS SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT BROOKLYN.

The episode, surprisingly, started off good. Homer and Marge have had serious marital problems throughout the series. I did not understand the uproar over the episode before it aired because this is a tried-and-true episode formula for the Simpsons. It's not as common as a Sideshow Bob formula but it's still common throughout Simpsons' history.

There's really not too much to say about the episode other than it lacked jokes. Bart was also weirdly psychopathic. He's always been a brat, he's always been vaguely psychopathic, but I don't recall him ever trying to kill his father and have that be played up for laughs. It was bizarre. It was too over the top, even for Bart.

The drug scene wasn't super visually interesting. Homer's already had some great drug episodes (when he meets the coyote voiced by Johnny Cash, when he starts smoking medical marijuana) and this one just seemed to go through the motions. Maybe it was a deeper commentary on millenial culture - we're so boring that even our drugs produce nothing more than minute long filler in a cartoon. I doubt that, though.

The episode was cheap and used an Inception-like series of dream endings to quickly wrap up a story that should have never been unwrapped.

Hopefully this isn't a sign of the rest of the season.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Best of Austin 2015

Holy cow.

I was the critic's pick for Best Author Reading for the Austin Chronicle's Annual Best of Austin awards. 

Francois Pointeau and Owen Egerton also won some literary awards and my former employer, BookPeople, continues their reign as best bookstore in Austin. We got to party for free, got a nice tshirt, drank a lot of Austin Beerworks and ate a lot of Via 313. Sometimes life's just damn good.

I've been in Texas since 2010, though.

The Weekly Weird Monthly Automatons at the Austin Chronicle Party 
Nina, me, Cheryl, and Chris

Austin is losing Francois Pointeau to the road soon. We sent him off at the Whip In at his book release party. It was wildly successful. I had the honor of hosting the whole thing and all I can say is that Austin got a whole lot less French. Get Francois's book by clicking here. 

Francois as a boxed wino. The If Onlys on stage.

Death Thing is continuing to generate positive interest and I'm starting to pursue next steps career-wise. It's overwhelming but it's also necessary to keep forward movement. I think Death Thing is perfect for the screen and I'm talking to a lot of folks on how to get that done. 

I'll be in Long Beach on Sunday, October 4th, at Gatsby Books for a Death Thing release party but I'm also releasing my new chapbook, Cat Food, there. You can get both books here. 


I'm extremely grateful to the city of Austin and Texas in general. I don't know that I'd be writing as much as I am today if it wasn't for a rather sudden move to Texas. Texas revitalized me. It threw me around and sent me to some depths in the beginning, sure, but it was for the best.

I'll be updating this blog more. I'm terrible at internetting. 

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Death Thing reviews

Howdy, folks.

The Death Thing release from Double Life Press has been a wild and fun ride, for sure. I've done a number of readings and performances in support of Death Thing's release in Austin, TX. There will be many more.

I'm starting to look to the road, though. My good friend, Francois Pointeau, is hitting the road in an RV to do performances and sell his book and, hopefully, make a living. He's braver than I am. I can't live in an RV. I'd rather live across the street from a Whataburger. I may be joining him for some performances. He's heading west first. He's also starting a new podcast called The Rolling Chateau. It should be pretty damn good.

There have been a number of positive Death Thing reviews. Here's the list I have so far:

http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/book-review-death-thing.html

http://www.sacredchickens.com/sacred-chickens-blog/and-now-for-a-break-from-the-usual-drivel

http://www.deadendfollies.com/2015/06/book-review-andrew-hilbert-death-thing.html

http://francoispointeau.com/death-thing/

It's been an exciting ride so far.

Tonight I'll be at Opal Divine's for Noir at the Bar. Here's a Q&A I did with BookPeople's MysteryPeople. 

I read Flesh House for the first time ever live at the Whip In for Bastille Day. I'm told there will be a podcast posted of it. I could hear the crowd undulating in disgust. It was magnificent.



Thursday, July 2, 2015

The past couple days and the next few

The release party for Death Thing at Radio Coffee and Beer went incredibly well. Holy War at the Sex Store was the opening band and they played classic standards like, "Stigmata Handjob." Francois Pointeau also acted as a fluffer with a short reading of his poetry. Chris Mattix was the host of the night. The Weekly Weird Monthly was represented by Cheryl Couture at the merch table. One lucky buyer got a can of tuna. It's possible they said, "Fuck tuna," but reports are unsubstantiated.

It was quite a night.

Sold some books, signed some books, drew some silly doodles that I regret. Such is life.

Francois is a local man-about-town. He's a bartender at one of my regular haunts, he's a radio show host, and a poet. I met him at Owen Egerton's One Page Salon at the Whip In almost a year ago now and we became fast friends. I was lucky to have him invite me on his radio show the first time in promotion of my chapbook Toilet Stories From Outer space and he invited me again to promote Death Thing yesterday.

The first time I was on the radio, I was nervous. This time it was a breeze. Francois is good at making things feel like a conversation (albeit without all the cussing).

Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted. I knew I wanted to promote the hell out of Death Thing as much as I could with live performances but I didn't expect to be so damn tired.

The MEV rolls on, though. Next week I'll be performing at the Badlands for the Badlands Blotter. On the 14th, I'll be at the Whip In for Francois's Frenchie Bastille Day Festival and Hoedown. Then to round things out on the 22nd, I'll be at Bookpeople's Noir at the Bar with Brad Parks. 

We're not stopping there, either. I'll be announcing more dates soon.

One big surprise of this past weekend was that my mom and grandma showed up in the humid hellhole of Austin right now to be at the release party. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing but they, as always, kept me near planet Earth. My grandmother is Donna Hilbert, a phenomenal poet who has always been an inspiration to me. She's encouraged me since the day I asked her how to write poetry when I was just a little snot-nosed twerp. She also printed the first edition of the first book I ever wrote, Fat Legs. At 29 I still have the same sense of humor as 5 year old me. That's something.

In other news... Ted Cruz does terrible Simpsons impressions



Ted Cruz astounds me. He managed to do every impression with the same voice.

Now, there are people on my Facebook feed that -I shit you not- refuse to watch the video because they don't want to give Ted Cruz any more legitimacy. I can assure you, watching this video will not add an ounce of credibility or legitimacy to the walking SCOBY that is Ted Cruz.

In fact, it just adds to a narrative of his own delusion.


I finally saw Mad Max...

Nina and I went to the first showing of Mad Max on a Friday. We were the only folks in the theater. I thought it was excellent. It was a lot of fun. It was just a damn good action flick with damn good action and damn good heroes. 

Luckily, Tom Hardy had as many lines as I do fingers on half of my left hand. He only delivered half of those well. The other half sounded like bad impressions of Mel Gibson's Max. Small potatoes there. I didn't go there for lines. 

And in the end, like every good western or samurai movie, the hero walks into the sunset for the next adventure. 

ADIOS. 



Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The MEV rolls on

It's been a wild month.

Death Thing was released in May and the reviews are pretty damn excellent so far. I'm carrying around a stress ball for when the first truly negative review goes up.

I know it's bad for authors to even read their own reviews or to check their sales rankings so I try to limit it to fifty times a day.

The craziest thing that happened for the Death Thing release was that my publisher was sent fan art. That blew my mind. Take a look:


Besides that, I've been getting personal messages from readers expressing how much they liked Death Thing and that is honestly the best feeling for an author. 

I've got a few more books coming down the pipeline. My relationship with Double Life Press is great. I couldn't have asked for a better publisher. If they'll keep publishing me, I'll keep sending them stuff. 

The MEV is rolling hard these next few months. Here's the schedule: