The Moose in the Closet: Bendis Likes Elk’s Run and Citronella Fire Pit of Death

You know, there’s been tons of good press, good reviews, good buzz, etc and we’ve been grinning like pimps with each one. But when Brian Michael Bendis posted at thumbs up for Elk’s Run on his message board, we were smiling like a pimp that got to turn out Evangeline Lilly (what a lucky pimp that would be). I want to say thank you to Brian, I’m glad you enjoyed it; we all worked so hard on it. If you haven’t ordered Elk’s Run, we’ll have it for sale at WWLA and we also have some issue for sale over at our online store.

A bit hung over, Robin's brother and girlfriend are visiting, I hope I tell this story to it's full potential.

All right, what have we got today? G and I go way back, I knew him since pre-K. If it wasn’t against the rules of society for a guy to call someone “best friend” I think I would label G with the title. Even if we don’t see each other as much or talk as much, he just gets it by fucking default.

So one day we were home from college, sitting in my backyard, talking…just sort of catching up. It’s summer time, mosquitoes are swarming Brooklyn, and we light up this huge citronella candle my mom keeps in the yard. This thing was in a metal pot, probably a foot and a half in diameter and a foot and a half tall, I would imagine. We have it on a table, situated between us and a little off to the left. As we talk, we’re ripping pieces of a paper plate and throwing them into the candle, the pyromaniac in both of us.

Well, we continue to do this for about an hour, never really paying mind to the candle. The fire is growing, however. And I mean growing. The flame is rising high above the pot, a mixture of paper plate and citronella oil has now caught fire and the entire surface of the candle is aflame. It’s a torch now, no longer a candle by any means. And for some reason, we found nothing wrong with this.

My mom has this uncanny ability to smell smoke from about 38 miles away. Our trance is interrupted by my mother, at 2 O’clock in the morning, hanging out of our second floor apartment window, screaming, “What are you doing! You’re setting the yard on fire!”

We really looked at the pot for the first time and realized that it was pretty much burning brighter than the sun. We kind of jump out of our seats and stare at the flame, unsure what to do. It was at this time that my questionably sane mom took actions into her own hand.

She threw a bucket of water out the window, onto the candle.

Let me tell you about citronella, it’s an oil. Let me tell you about oil, it doesn’t mix with water. Let me tell you about oil on fire mixed with water. Fucking fireball. Like I’ve never seen in my life.

The whole thing just erupted, fire spilled over the edge, into the air. The flame came up so high I’m surprised it didn’t singe my mom’s eyeballs. The entire neighborhood got woken up, I would imagine, by a huge flash and three people yelling, “Holy shit!”

Before things got anymore out of hand I went to the basement and grabbed two shovels. I started throwing dirt on some of the fire that was hanging out outside of the pot (astonishingly, there wasn’t a lot) while G dug a hole in the yard. I hooked the handle of the candle with my shovel and we threw it in the hole, buried it and never dug it up.

My parents are selling the house now, after living there for 29 years. Whoever buys the house, might someday find a citronella candle buried in the yard and wonder how the hell it got there.

turn off the metallica, fanboy: Legal

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Bendis Likes Elk’s Run and Citronella Fire Pit of Death

Thursday, March 10, 2005

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