[UA] Dueling Banjos

[Stuart Anderson]

Eric Brennan wrote:

>     And rural doesn't have to mean farms.  The west is full of miles of
> empty highway, where anything could exist just out of sight of the
> Interstate.  I've never been more "creeped out" than when I had been driving
> for hours after midnight in East Texas.  You feel like you're on another
> planet.

    I ran In Nomine for a while, with the characters doing a lot of driving late
at night, where there's nothing on the FM dial at all, and little if anything on
the AM, other than the Rev. Fred Phelps' messages of righteous hatred and bile,
coming in clear and bright all over the midwest and into the southwest. I had
recorded several tapes so I could have his horrid drone in the background as I
described their other observations. I played selections at random, but--as
usual--one of the players was bright and odd enough to listen hard and take
notes, constructing an elaborate relationship between Phelps' routines and the
plot of the campaign. They became convinced he was a demon goading them into
trouble. I ran with it. I can't listen to Phelps now without feeling, in
addition to the usual revulsion, an additional cumulative case of the willies.
    Read some Joe R Lansdale for a writer who's as good as Ennis for evocative
East Texas badness.
--Stu


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