Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 6

Part 1: Chapters 11, 12, & 13

Dennis and Arnie attend Roland D. LeBay’s funeral. They nearly outnumber the number of official mourners. One of the people standing graveside is Roland’s younger brother, George. Arnie approaches George to ask for permission to keep Christine at Roland’s garage until the house is sold. George forbids it out of hand and tells Arnie to junk the car as soon as possible. Sensing that there is more to the man’s refusal, Dennis (sans Arnie) admits to George that he doesn’t like his friend’s car, that he thinks it is bad for him. George tells Dennis to come to his motel that night. He has a story to tell.

Sitting outside his room at the Rainbow Motel, George tells Dennis about his brother, Rollie. About his neverending anger, his cowed wife, and the short and tragic life of their only daughter. Both Rollie’s wife and daughter died in proximity to Christine: Rita, his daughter, chokes to death on a hamburger  on the side of the road while the family was “motorvating,” and Veronica, his wife, mourning her dead child, commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in the car. At no time did Rollie consider getting rid of Christine. George tells Dennis that he believes that strong emotions can linger and live on in their surroundings, like a house or a car. Rollie, he says, was a deeply unhappy and angry man. George warns Dennis that Arnie looks equally unhappy.

Later that night, Arnie tells Dennis some “good” news: Darnell tossed Repperton from the garage for good. Christine doesn’t have to find a new home. In fact, Arnie says, it’s going to cost less to keep Christine at Darnell’s, because Arnie is going to work for the man. Dennis’s father, overhearing his son’s half of the phone conversation, tells his son that he used to be an accountant for Darnell. He warns Dennis that Darnell has his fingers in enough pies that if the I.R.S. or the police came snooping around, then he — and anyone associated with him — would be in big, big trouble…

I love a good “secret history reveal" in horror fiction, and Chapter 12 of Christine is one of my favorites. (Not to worry… this isn’t the only reveal in the book… there are more horrible reveals to come…) We got a good, albeit quick, look at Roland D. LeBay in the chapters before this one, but he wasn’t on stage for very long. He just seemed like an angry old man at the end of his days in those moments, but his brother, George, reveals to Dennis that that anger — his “unending fury” (95) — had been with him all his life.

It’s fitting that George’s recollections of his brother take place at a cheap motel. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, while explaining to Montag how their fast-paced and shallow world came to be, Captain Beatty describes

“[h]ighways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.” (52)

I’ve always felt a little sad about hotels and motels. They are so momentary, so fleeting. People live in them, but they are home to none. George tells of his brother’s nomadic life in the army. Moving around the country and the world, never owning anything, never placing roots. The things in his life that should have been a foundation — family, home, work, friends — none of it held firm. All of those things were transient. Everything that mattered to Rollie was summed up in the cold metal shape of a 1958 Plymouth Fury sport coupe. His home sat on four wheels, and he could move it about unbothered by the rest of the world, the rest of the “shitters.”

Roland D. Lebay, gasoline refugee.

George LeBay also mentions a theory that shows up in quite a few of King’s tales: 

“I don’t believe in curses, you know. Not in ghosts or anything particularly supernatural. But I do believe that emotions and events have a certain… lingering resonance. It may be that emotions can even communicate themselves in certain circumstances, if the circumstances are peculiar enough… the way a carton of milk will take the flavor of certain strongly spiced foods if it’s left open in the refrigerator.”” (106)

If you were with us a couple of years ago when we read ‘Salem’s Lot, then this should sound familiar. Ben Mears has a similar theory about the Marsden House. In that book, he describes certain places as akin to psychic rechargeable batteries, in that they absorb the emotions spent inside of them. The Overlook Hotel in The Shining could be another of these charged sites. If George LeBay is correct, then Christine has absorbed every awful thing that has happened within her — LeBay’s anger, the deaths of his child and wife. As she begins to get in shape, what more will she need to absorb?

We will talk more later about where the evil resides — is it within LeBay or within Christine — and how deciding that will change how we understand the novel. There comes a moment in Dennis’s conversation with George when the older man says “People are mortal” (98), then pauses. Dennis thinks that George has something more to say on the subject but he chooses to keep it to himself. We shall see whether or not he is correct in that assumption later.

George LeBay brings up another age old theory about human endeavors:

“…[T]here are ‘times’ in human existence… [W]hen it came to be ‘steam-engine time,’ a dozen men invested the steam engine. Maybe only one man got the patent, or the credit in the history books, but all at once there they were, all those people working on that one idea. How do you explain it? Just that it’s steam-engine time.

“Comes the Civil War and all at once it’s ‘ironclad time.’ Then it’s ‘machine-gun time.’ Next thing you know it’s ‘electricity time’ and ‘wireless time’ and finally it’s ‘atom-bomb time.’ As if those ideas all come not from individuals but from some great wave of intelligence that keeps flowing… some wave of intelligence outside of humanity.” (105)

Dennis tells the reader that later he checked the back issues of the local paper looking for an ad from Roland LeBay about Christine. There was none. He rolled the car onto his front lawn and waited. Why? As Dennis says, it was just “sell Christine time” (105). George seems to agree with that assumption because, as he tells Dennis,

“Ecclesiastes says there’s a season for everything — a time to sow, a time to reap, a time for war, a time for peace, a time to put away the sling, and a time to gather stones together. A negative for every positive. So if there was ‘Christine time’ in Rollie’s life, there might have come a time for him to put Christine away, as well.

“If so, he would have known it. He was an animal, and animals listen very well to their instincts.” (105)

Yikes!

This theory, unlike the “opened milk carton” one, seems to sway responsibility away from LeBay and onto Christine. We shall see if that is the case.

Dennis also begins to make the connection between LeBay and Arnie. There seems to be a reason that it was Arnie who drove past LeBay’s house, saw the car, and fell in love with it. Both Arnie and LeBay are good with their hands. LeBay spent years in the Army keeping the decrepit vehicles running. Arnie, much to the chagrin of his parents, takes Auto Shop classes in school and excels in them. He took those classes over the protestations of his parents, displaying a stubborn streak as wide as LeBay’s. Arnie’s anger at all the people trying to stop him from keeping Christine mirror’s LeBay’s, as well. Let’s keep our eyes open for more of these echoes in the coming chapters.

One last thing before we pull over for the night…

Dennis’s dad mentions that he used to work for Darnell until he felt uneasy with the amount of mysterious cash showing up in the crook’s cooked books. So, Darnell got himself a more amiable and amenable accountant. The cash kept rolling in, and now that accountant — one Bill Upshaw — lives in a “$300,000 English Tudor in Sewickley” (113).

Where now?

The Borough of Sewickley sits along the Ohio River some 12 miles northwest of Pittsburgh (and Libertyville). I was actually born at Sewickley Hospital. Sewickley is, for all intents and purposes, very upscale and fancy. (Which is why I was born there, natch.) It is home to many professional Pittsburgh athletes and artists, including Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, and Caitlin Clarke (not that Caitlin Clark).

As any devotee of SCTV can tell you, Sewickley has also dealt with tragedy and disaster, mainly in the form of bloodsucking monkeys from West Mifflin, PA.

Whoooo-nelly! I am pooped. It’s time to pull into that motor lodge up ahead and get some shut-eye. What’s that, Blog-o-weeners? You’re gonna take a swim in the pool then watch the free HBO that comes with our room? I don’t think so! I may be taking a break, but you’ve got some work to do.

For tomorrow, I want you to cast your eyes over Part 1: Chapters 14 & 15. We’re gonna learn a little bit more about the history between Darnell and Christine. We’re also going to take a peek at that most American of American high school experiences: the Friday night football game! 

After you finish your reading, then you can goof around in the pool. Don’t stay up too late playing “Marco Polo” though — and no skinnydippin’! This place takes a dim view of horseplay in the pool. How do I know that? Well… never you mind how I know that. For once just listen to me and do what I say because…

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 5

Part 1: Chapters 8, 9, & 10

It’s the weekend, and there’s a ballgame on the radio, but Arnie doesn’t show up at Dennis’s to listen to it. He’s been too busy down at the garage spending time with Christine and running errands for Darnell. Dennis can feel the thin end of the wedge begin to make its way between him and his friend.

After work and over a pizza, a bruised and battered Arnie tells Dennis about a run-in with high school bully Buddy Repperton at Darnell’s garage. Little by little, day by day, Repperton has tried to antagonize Arnie into a physical confrontation, but to no avail. One day, however, Buddy finally succeeds not by attacking Arnie but by “accidentally” smashing one of Christine’s headlights with a jackhandle. This sends Arnie over the edge, and (as Dennis finds out from a mutual friend and not from Arnie himself) he jumps on Repperton and fights back with a vehemence that the bully did not expect. Darnell (who up until this point had mysterious split the scene) breaks the fight up and tells Arnie to turn in his toolbox key and hit the bricks.

In an effort to help his friend out of a jam, Dennis gets the bright idea that since Arnie is on the outs with Darnell, he could store Christine at LeBay’s house. The old man would be happy to see his old car again, and he probably wouldn’t charge as much as Darnell was clipping Arnie for. Arnie is not amused by Dennis’s suggestion. Later, Dennis discovers why: LeBay has died… suddenly… around about the time that Repperton took his jackhandle to Christine…

Ah… Buddy Repperton…

Stephen King must have been the target of some serious tormenting as a kid, because the guy really nails the banal, mindless violence at the heart of your average school bully. Chris Hargensen in Carrie, Richie Boddin in ‘Salem’s Lot, Henry Bowers in IT — every one of these creeps is a finely crafted study in the small-minded despots that set up shop in our lives. You know the type… like the ones who jumped Otter in Animal House…

Repperton is no different, and his schtick is immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time on a school playground, in the back of a classroom, or in the locker room after gym. The idiotic strutting, playing to the “yes men” who guffaw at every dumb joke and putdown, the need to cull the weakest member from what Jean Shepherd would call “the nameless rabble of victims” — it’s all there on these few pages, and it all unlocks memories (in this reader, at least) of every jock or greaser who loved nothing more than flicking the ear lobes and slapping the necks of “nerds.”

Dennis has had his own run-in with this particular bogeyman. Four years earlier, at a school dance, Dennis fell into Repperton’s crosshairs. Here’s how sophomore Buddy looked then:

“He had a lantern jaw, a thick clot of greasy black hair, and little eyes set too close together. But those eyes were not entirely stupid; an unpleasant intelligence lurked behind them. He was one of those guys who spend their high school time majoring in Smoking Area.” (74)

I could probably pick a half a dozen felons… er, I mean, fellows… who match that description in my high school yearbook. I’m sure that you could, too. I’m sure they are CEOs and Senators now. We’ll keep an eye out for Mr. Repperton and his cronies. I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of them.

We are beginning to see a change come over Arnie Cunningham. Namely, his complexion is starting to clear up. Up to now, when describing Arnie’s acne (say that ten times fast), Dennis has said that his friend’s face was “pimple city” (2) and that it looked like “a loaded pizza” (2).

Now, however, Dennis notes that Arnie’s “complexion seemed a trifle better than it had been lately” (69) and that

“[h]e sure must have been steering clear of [soda pop] lately. The slight improvement in his complexion I’d noticed on that overcast Sunday two weeks ago was definite now. He still had plenty of bumps and craters, but not so many of them were […] oozing.” (72)

So goes Christine, so goes Arnie’s skin and, it seems, his temperament. With Buddy Repperton’s attack on Christine’s headlight, Arnie (according to a eyewitness) “went after [him] as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass” (78). Dennis recalls his friend’s anger after dealing with Darnell and the yinzer family, but chalks that up to the stress of the situation. This — a physical fight with a much bigger opponent — strikes Dennis as something else entirely. It’s like he’s possessed or something.

LeBay’s life is also somehow linked to Christine’s physical wellbeing. I think Dennis makes the connection between Buddy Repperton’s attack on her headlight and LeBay suddenly dying a little too quickly. I’m not saying it isn’t right or it doesn’t work, but Dennis leaps to that conclusion just a tad too fast. One wonders what had been happening to LeBay after Arnie drove her off his property. If gaining Christine has made Arnie’s face clear up, what had been happening in the LeBay household?

Why the heck are those kids standing so close to the road?!?!

Let’s hit the buttons on the radio and jump around the dial a bit before we get to the next motor lodge…

I called BS on Dennis having a cat named Captain Beefheart. His current cat is named after Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I will allow that. It fits with the overall feel of the book, and Hawkins was a known quantity at the time. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s was the Alice Cooper of his day — emerging from a coffin onstage and using voodoo props — though he resented the exploitative quality of it all. His most famous recording, “I Put a Spell on You,” was released in 1956.

Arnie and Dennis head off to see a kung fu picture at the local movie theater that only charges a buck for a matinee program. Dennis says that they ended up seeing a Chuck Norris movie. I wonder which one it was? Movies moved around the country then very differently from today. A picture was opened regionally and often given time to garner some word of mouth. (A little independent ditty named Halloween would open in a single city — Kansas City, Missouri, on 24 October 1978, before taking off. Maybe Dennis and his cheerleader girlfriend saw it later — after catching Grease — as it made its way into Pennsylvania?) Dennis and Arnie would probably have gone to see Norris’s latest flick, Good Guys Wear Black (1978), but they could have also have seen the previous year’s CB radio-flavored goodie Breaker! Breaker! (1977). Either way, they sat in their seats, munched popcorn, and enjoyed watching someone get kicked in the face.

Dennis and Arnie have their heart-to-heart over pizza. That isn’t a difficult thing to do in Pittsburgh. There are three things that every little town in the Pittsburgh area has: churches, bars, and pizza joints. Sometimes that’s all they have. At one time, the town where I went to high school — Ambridge, PA — was known for having the most bars and churches per capita in the United States. (I don’t know if that is 100% true, but as the man once said, “It’s close enough for government work.”) Ambridge also boasts two of the best pizza joints I’ve ever ordered from — Police Station Pizza and (my personal all-time favorite) Frank’s Pizzeria.

Every Pittsburgh neighborhood I ever lived in had at least three pizza joints within walking distance of my apartment, and they were all good. It was like a city ordinance or something. One of the best pizza places in Pittsburgh is one that would not be too far from Libertyville: Forest Hills’s Vincent’s Pizza. I could see Arnie’s complexion bursting as well as his belly from a visit.

And, yes, there’s more Philadelphia Phillies nonsense from Dennis and Arnie. It has been noted. You know how I feel about that…

Well, we put some miles behind us today, did we not, Blog-o-weeners? Suddenly, I’ve got a hankerin’ for some pizza. While I go up to the counter and order us a couple of Vinnie pies (extra grease, if you please!) and a pitcher of Iron City, why don’t you get started on tomorrow’s reading — Part 1: Chapters 11, 12, & 13. We’re going to a funeral where we’re gonna meet Roland LeBay’s brother, George. He’s got a few things to tell us about ol’ Rollie and Christine.

Until then, keep your eyes peeled for Buddy Repperton. He said he was going to teach us a lesson. He doesn’t seem the booklearnin’ type, but who knows…

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 4

Free Day:

Those Terrific Teens

and their Hot Rod Machines

As I’ve already mentioned during Blog-o-weens past and present, I’m from Western Pennsylvania. More specifically, I’m from a small, rural area twenty-five miles to the north of Pittsburgh. I hesitate to use the term “town” to describe where I’m from. There is no Main Street, no town hall, no center around which everything else revolves.

I’ve used the narration from Robert Persons’s 2009 documentary/poem General Orders No. 9 in Blog-o-weens past. Persons’s film, a Chris Marker-esque rumination on the State (and state) of Georgia, is about the loss of identity and innocence as life moves from the rural to the urban, or as Persons’s says in the film as “deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road becomes interstate.” The narration for the film has been transcribed as a poem here, and there are a few stanza’s at its beginning that describe the sense of place I am trying to capture:

Where the roads of the county intersect, there is a town.


The town is at the center of the county.


From the center, the town extends 
for one mile in every direction.

It’s a pattern, a pattern of point and periphery, 
star and satellite, being and witness.

The courthouse is at the center of the town.


It’s a brick building on a granite foundation.


It has a clock tower and a weather vane.


The clock tower has four faces 
addressing each of the principle directions,
 and the weather vane is high above, 
brutal in its aspect and high in the air.

The building stands in the middle of the square 
and the square is formed by four streets 
running north and south, east and west.


Here, there is a sense of order 
from above and below, from within and without.


This shall be the center post of the world,
 the pillar of Heaven.

This is exactly what Economy Borough, PA, is missing: a sense of order, a center, a pattern. Other areas of Beaver County had that “courthouse in the center of town,” but not us. We had farmland, mobile home parks, and auto garages spread out over eighteen square miles. If we wanted Person’s sense of centering and meaning (or James Joyce’s sense of “omphalos”), we had to go elsewhere. And that meant having access to a car.

(You were wondering where I was going with all that, weren’t you? Not to worry, Blog-o-weeners, I have a graduate degree in English, so I know how to bloviate. I mean… who the hell else is gonna use the term “omphalos” when discussing Stephen King’s Christine, hmmm?)

Unlike Dennis and Arnie, I never had my own car as a kid. In fact, I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was eighteen years old. I never felt that drive (pun intended!) for freedom and escape. I was also not a “gearhead.” I was not (and am still not) the type of person to drop a wad of dough on some used junker and spend my time (and more money) fixing it up. The inner workings of a car were (and still are) a complete mystery to me.

So how did I, like the good American teenager that I was, explore the world outside the confines of my hometown? Well, I had friends with their own licenses and permission to borrow their parents’ cars who were happy to swing by and pick me up on the way to the mall or the movies or the local Eat’n Park or (if we were feeling particularly daring) the big city of Pittsburgh. (Not to worry… I chipped in for gas!) In that way, we were no different than the generations of American teenagers that had come before us: we used the mobility of the car to push against the boundaries (and sometimes the envelope) of what we were used to. The car was like a spaceship that gave us access to new, undiscovered worlds.

Not only was a car the gateway to the world without, it also allowed us to get in touch with the world within. The car was our internet chatroom. Imagine four or five teenagers piled into a Nissan Sentra, radio blaring, talking incessantly about school, girls, work, girls, the future, and… well… girls. The car allowed us to cement the bonds of friendship, as well as to define what that friendship was. It set boundaries around our friend group — there was “us” in the car and “them” outside of it.

The car was the key to economic freedom. Having access to a car meant getting to a job on time and making money that could be spent at the mall, the movies, etc. It allowed us to purchase our own clothes, which in turn allowed us to better tell the rest of the world who we were.

For some, the car was also the key to sexual freedom, too. You could pick up a date, head off to the nearest drive-in theater, jump in the backseat (or the front seat — a lot of cars still had bench seating), and get a heavy petting session in while E.T. was phoning home. Didn’t have the money for the drive-in? There were plenty of out-of-the-way places in rural southwestern Pennsylvania to go “parking.” The car was a roving bedroom on wheels.

The teenager qua “Teenager” didn’t really come into existence until the early 20th Century, when mandatory schooling removed young people from the workforce. Instead of becoming socialized to adults at a factory, they socialized with one another in another factory of sorts — the local high school. This allowed young people to develop their own rituals and customs and norms outside of the family. With the post-war economic boom in the 1950s, car ownership was within reach of teens. The used cars of the 1930 and 1940s could be purchased and fixed up easily. And those fixed up hot rods could, in turn, be used to defend American values from evils such as giant gila monsters, ghosts, and teenage werewolves.

My teenaged experiences with cars in the 1980s were essentially no different from millions of other kids over the previous thirty or forty years. Thanks to mass media (like Christine), I think the connection between teens and cars is a more or less universal one. You may never have owned a car in your life, you may not even be from the United States, but thanks to movies like American Graffiti or Van Nuys Blvd. just about everyone understands what the car means to a teenager.

I think Stephen King is playing with these teenaged tropes in Christine. Sometimes he plays them straight and other times he tips them on their ear. One of the things I’d ask you to keep track of is how Christine, instead of acting as a lifeline to freedom for Arnie, is actually alienating him — from his parents, from Dennis, from Leigh, and from himself.

Well, that’s enough of that. Time to hit the books again, Blog-o-weeners. For tomorrow, why don’t you read Part 1: Chapters 8, 9, & 10. I think you’ll dig ‘em. We get our first look at a staple of Stephen King novels. I think you know who I’m talkin’ about: the high school bully with a chip on his shoulder, a switchblade in his mitts, and not a thought in his head.

But, hey, let’s not be too hard on the high school bully. Let’s try to understand where they are coming from. After all…

Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 3

Part 1: Chapters 5, 6, & 7

After leaving LeBay’s, Dennis finds Arnie parked on one of Libertyville’s side roads with a flat tire. A local housewife and her rugrats are less than happy to see Christine sitting in front of their house. Dennis, good friend that he is, runs off to buy a new tire. When he returns, Arnie and the owner of the house, home now from work, are standing nose-to-nose spouting witty repartee at one another. Dennis intervenes, Christine is fitted with her new tire, and they drive off in a cloud of exhaust.

Arriving at Darnell’s Garage, Arnie and Christine are not greeted warmly. Will Darnell dresses Arnie down in front of everyone, and Arnie, much to Dennis’s consternation, accepts it. Christine is left at Darnell’s, and Dennis takes Arnie home.

On the way, Arnie breaks down. The day was just too much for him. In between his sobbing, he promises that he will get them all, that he will make them all pay. Dennis doesn’t like the sound of that.

That night, Dennis has a nightmare. He is back at LeBay’s. Standing in front of the open garage door, Dennis sees a rejuvenated Christine. Her engine revs up, but there is no one behind the wheel. Christine urges Dennis to go cruising with her; Dennis refuses. The nightmare ends as Christine lunges forward, her engine screaming her fury… 

As someone who just finished writing a novel set in Pittsburgh (cough, cough… shameless self-promotion…), I know that it is difficult to render the Pittsburgh accent into print. I think what hurts its chances of being generally understood by your average reader is that it isn’t as well known as your Noo Yawk or Bahston or even your, like, Valley Girl accents. If you say a character is from Boston, and you write “Let’s go park our cars down in the Harvard yard!” most readers will know how to hear those words. But if I write “When are you clowns going to learn not to fool around downtown?” would you know how that is supposed to sound in Pittsburghese? No? Well here is a primer for all of you non-Western Pennsylvanians. Listen to this, and then go back to Chapter 5 and re-read the dialogue spoken by the family who wants Christine “aht of dere yard” and Will Darnell, who warns Arnie not to “screw arahnd” with him.

Actually, now that I think of it, everyone in Christine should be speaking like that. I mean, they’re all from the Pittsburgh area, no?

There’s a nice moment — probably the only nice moment in the chunk of text that we read for today, Blog-o-weeners — where Dennis feels the passage of time and realizes that a chapter of his life is soon to end:

“By the time I had the mounted tire back in my trunk… the early evening light had become the fading purple of late evening. The shadow of each bush was long and velvety, and as I cruised slowly back up the street I saw the day’s last light streaming almost horizontally through the trash-littered space between the Arby’s and the bowling alley. That light, so much flooding gold, was nearly terrible in it strange, unexpected beauty.

“I was surprised by a choking panic that climbed up in my throat like dry fire. It was the first time a feeling like that came over me that year — that long, strange year — but no the last. Yet it’s hard for me to explain, or even define. It had something to do with realizing that it was August 11, 1978, that I was going to be a senior in high school next month, and that when school started again it meant the end of a long, quiet phase of my life. I was getting ready to be a grown-up, and I saw that somehow — saw it for sure, for the firs time in the lovely but somehow ancient spill of golden light flooding down the alleyway between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint, And I think I understood then that what really scares people about growing up is that you stop trying on the life-mask and start trying on another one. If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.” (44-5)

That’s probably the deepest emotion ever expressed in the shadow of an Arby’s.

I barely remember what I was feeling at the start of my senior year at Ambridge Area High School. It was probably some form of confusion. “Being a grown-up” was the furthest thing from my mind. It still is. (Which explains a lot about my current lot.) I think that if I could tell Dennis anything, it’s that “being a grown-up” doesn’t necessarily mean “learning how to die.” If anything, thanks to modern science’s penchant for finding new ways to extend human life, it’s probably more important than ever to keep trying on the life-mask — try on as many as you can with the time that you have. Remember, in the timeless words of Motorbooty magazine…

We only get a brief introduction to Will Darnell, but it’s a doozy, ain’t it? He’s only around for four and a half pages, but you get who the man is instantly: your run-of-the-mill mobster/grifter. The kind that every town has. He’s the guy who seems to know everyone worth knowing. He’s the guy who can find things for you… for a price. He’s the guy to track down, as Dennis mentions, if you wanted illegal fireworks for the Fourth. There are whispers that Darnell deals in stolen cars and other illicit activities more dangerous than contraband cherry bombs.

Somehow Arnie bringing Christine to Darnell’s does not bode well, does it, Blog-o-weeners?

And now we come to the most horrifying moment in the entire novel. I am not talking about Dennis’s nightmare — which is a jim-dandy. Is there anything worse than being trapped in a dream where something — a car, a dog, a bear, a shark, a falling building, etc. — is coming at you, and you can’t move, and you can’t move, and you can’t move? Ugh. As terrible as that is, it is nothing compared to what happens in this snippet of text:

“I turned the radio to FM-104, where the Block Party Weekend was continuing, and got Bob Segar and the Silver Bullet Band singing 'Still the Same.’ The serendipity was just a little too hideously perfect, and I dialed away to the Phillies game.

“The Phillies were losing. That was all right. That was par for the course.” (57)

Did you catch it, Blog-o-weeners? Did you see what fresh horrors Mr. Stephen “I just loves the baseball!” King introduced to the story? No? Then let me hip you to something, kiddies:

There is no way — NO FLIPPIN’ WAY! — that any teenager who lives a scant ten miles from Pittsburgh is going to give a frog’s fat ass about the Philadelphia Phillies. No way, Jose! Dennis Guilder is going to choose the Phillies over Dave Parker, over Jim Rooker, over WILLIE FREAKING STARGELL?!?!

Just how far east of Pittsburgh do you think Dennis lives, Mr. King? Do you think Philadelphia is just over the hill in the neighboring county? It’s on the other side of the for-cry-Pete state! It is 257 miles away. Boston is only 190 miles away from New York. By that logic, no one would care if someone was a Yankees fan in the middle of Red Sox Country, right Stevie? No one — and I mean NOOOOOOO OOOOOONNNEEEE! — in Pittsburgh would give two shits on a shingle about how the Phillies were faring. Jeepers, it’s like those morons from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia wrote this lunacy.

And what radio station would dare to broadcast a Phillies game in the Pittsburgh area? That little escapade would result in justifiable arson. There wouldn’t be a judge in the land who would hear the case, and if they did, there wouldn’t be a jury who would convict the mad-dog mob that took justice into its own hands and burned down that station. They had it comin’, coppers!

In 1978, the Pittsburgh Pirates finished second in the division, one and a half games behind the Philadelphia Phillies. (So, maybe Dennis is a fair-weather fan. Which makes me hate him even more.) The following year, 1979, the Pirates won their division (fourteen games ahead of your beloved Phillies, Guilder, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!), knocked off the Cincinnati Reds for the pennant, and, thanks to the pulsing disco beat of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” won the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles.

And you’re telling me Dennis Guilder would rather side with a bunch of people who booed Santa Claus? They booed Santa Claus, for the love of Mike!

I think I need to pull over for a little while, Blog-o-weeners. Get out of the car and cool my jets. In fact, why don’t we all do that? Tomorrow is Sunday, so let’s take our first “Free Day” of the season. There's no reading for yinz to do tonight. Instead, I'll wax fantastic on the roles teenagers and cars (and teenagers in cars) have played in the culture.

You know… I think the fresh air is doing me good. The red mist is lifting, and I’m beginning to see things more clearly. Maybe I’m being too hard on ol’ Stevie King. Maybe I should relax and hear him out. After all…