Yo Adrian, I Did It

An important announcement, plus the long-awaited return of "Apocalypse in Flavortown"

Hey folks, hey. I dunno if anyone noticed or cared, but Healings has been dark these last couple weeks. This happened without any notice or planning on my part—life just sorta intervened. But it’s all good stuff, really good stuff in fact, almost entirely having to do with SOME PROFESSIONAL NEWS, which is this: The newly formed entity that I am and will be the CEO of, The Small Bow, Inc., is now officially a thing, with a birth certificate from the state of Delaware and a bank account with a real ATM card attached to it. And lemme tell ya…that feeling of getting a new ATM card is as cool at 46 as it was at 13 when I opened my first savings account after selling my baseball card collection to my older brother for $300. Man, I got hosed on that deal.  

But so, the launch of this new business venture and partnership with fellow sober buddy A.J. — which you can read more about here — and the very quick uptick in momentum said launch has occasioned, means I’ve had very little time to devote to Healings, let alone the amount of time I think these life events warrant, given their significance to the journey some of you have been following here in this space for over a year now. Put it this way: I was at my therapist’s yesterday, the person I started seeing last year once I was recovered enough from cancer treatment to venture out in the world. It was in that therapist’s office that I first started to articulate my hopes and dreams for the post-cancer phase of my life, a phase during which I aspired to focus my now much more precious and appreciated time on this earth on things that Mattered Most—specifically family, sobriety, spirituality, and helping myself and others find greater peace in their lives. And as I brought said therapist up to speed on everything that’s been happening these last several weeks, we both found ourselves crying tears of joy at how beautifully things have worked out, considering where they were when we started.

The reasons for this are probably more obvious to the handful of folks who’ve been following this journey since last summer than the several hundred strangers (bless you all!) I’ve picked up along the way, but regardless I’m hoping and intending to really unpack them soon, in this space. But right now it’s all just so big and momentous, and I really do have very little time, and also I’m severely sleep-deprived because our daughter’s been battling a fever these last few days. So this post is not that post, and now is not that time. Frankly, I’m not sure when the time will be—I hope soon, but I also want to give myself some breathing room, which is why I’m popping in here today, as kind of a stalling tactic.

Also, though, also: I have some administrative updates. Since it’s clear to me that Healings is going to be getting less of my attention for the foreseeable future, and also because I’ve always had mixed feelings about charging for it generally, I’m going to be turning off paid subscriptions for this newsletter, effective immediately. FWIW, your money was used to pay our art director Yana and our editor Tommy, and we donated what remained (actually more than what remained) to Patient Advocate Foundation, so it all went to good causes. Anyone who signed up for an annual or founding subscription will be receiving a gift subscription to The Small Bow as a token of my appreciation.

As for what happens next: Healings will persist, if somewhat more sporadically. As a friend morbidly put it as I contemplated this newsletter’s future: People are going to continue to die, and I’ll probably want to write about that from time to time. But more importantly: I think the journey that me and A.J. are starting together with this new incarnation of The Small Bow is going to be both relevant to and overlapping with the overall mission of Healings, which has always been to explore what life looks like after you’ve been struck by a lightning bolt, metaphorically speaking—whether that lightning bolt is cancer or surrendering after a prolonged battle with addiction or maybe just realizing that everything up to a certain point in one’s life has served as prologue to a new beginning. If Healings has been about my own personal account of that journey, then the Small Bow Inc. is about creating a space for others to experience their own version of it, and for all of us to compare notes. So I think there’ll be plenty to report back on as we build out that space, and I plan to do so here, soon. But please gimme some time to figure out what that looks like.

Finally, lest you think I’d invade your inbox with this extended interstitial without leaving you with something to sink your teeth into, it’s time we rejoined Guy Fieri in his zombie battle. Loyal readers will recall that there have been two previous installments in this space of my unfinished novella, “Apocalypse in Flavortown,” a work of speculative fiction about his holiness Mr. Fieri battling his way across the country amidst a zombie invasion. With each installment, I’ve surveyed the Healings readership to confirm further installments are in fact desired, and the results consistently indicate (by a margin of three votes to zero, last time) that the answer is an emphatic yes. This latest installment is actually the last one I have written, meaning you’ll have to endure an epic cliffhanger while I get around to writing the rest, but it should be no different than, say, a typical season finale of Game of Thrones, the dramatic stakes of which I’m sure we can all agree are roughly equal to the foregoing.

And so with that, I bid you adieu, for now at least. Thank you so very much for your support.

---

Apocalypse in Flavortown, Pt. 3

Part One

Part Two

They drove in silence for nearly an hour, their adrenaline being slowly metabolized as fields of wheat and corn and soy passed by outside. There were moments when Guy felt like blurting out a thought, some half-formed theory he caught a glimpse of before it was replaced by flashes of the fear he felt mad-dashing through that parking lot, but he kept the thoughts to himself, because what the hell good were they? There was no cell reception, no radio, no information other than what they’d seen with their own eyes. There were zombies, but what were zombies? Where did they come from and why? Their situation was like being diagnosed with a disease and having no idea what the cure was. All you knew was you had it, were stuck with it, that there was a way it could all go that would lead directly to death. But then there was the nagging feeling that you could, if you thought about in just the right way, puzzle your way through a solution, that even in the absence of any information or expertise, you could decipher the exact sequence of steps that would get you out of this mess. As Liz drove, each of them puzzled through it in their own way, turning the images over, folding in whatever they could remember from high school biology or movies they’d seen, the cortisol misleading them into thinking they might be making progress, which they weren’t.

“I just realized I’m starving,” Liz finally said. “Doesn’t Boomer stock this thing with food?” And so after just under an hour of driving, having finally reached what could reasonably be classified as the middle of nowhere, the panic having receded to the point where they could at least have a conversation and figure out their next move, she pulled the van over.

They were lucky to have the van, a Mercedes Sprinter that Boomer had taken extreme amounts of pride in customizing and fortifying. While optimized as a mobile production unit, with a wall of compartments housing all manner of camera and sound gadgets, it was also outfitted with a small pantry, including a fridge, and was regularly resupplied with Guy and his crew’s favorite snacks and beverages. Best of all, when fully secured the Sprinter was basically impregnable, a steel box that would keep them safe inside should a horde descend. On top of that, it had four-wheel drive.

Liz tucked the car in under the shade of a large oak tree twenty feet from the side of the road. They got out and raided the pantry.

“Well we’re heading west, right?” Guy asked in between bites of a beef stick.

“I think so,” Liz said, munching an apple. “The sun seems to be arcing that way, which is the direction we’re going, but it’s hard to tell. West, Southwest…it’s one of those.”

“Goddammit why can’t they get the phones to work?” Guy said, shaking his iPhone. “Doesn’t the military have a plan for this sort of thing? Zombies, alien invasions, whatever it is we’re dealing with?” He looked over at Liz, who was sitting on top of an upside down bucket, carefully eating her apple and staring off into space. He hoped maybe she was formulating a plan, one of her signature abilities. Guy knew how lucky he was that she had found him, lucky it was her of all people to have made it and not Rick or Gabe or Samantha, all of whom were fun to pal around with but who would not have inspired confidence in a survival situation. Liz, on the other hand, was resourceful, deliberate, fearless. Even at just over five feet tall, she was physically imposing, the kind of person who carried herself as if she maybe knew the location of certain pressure points, or how to apply a chokehold. There was the time they were shooting in Cuba, when the sanctions lifted, and the crew was set upon by police of some kind, and Guy’s celebrity was useless. Seeing an opportunity, the police were threatening detention and demanding money, but Liz somehow defused the entire situation without incident, walking back to the crew with a these-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for smile on her face, saying, “Alright everyone, back to work.”

If only there was a way for her to talk their way out of their current predicament.

“Wherever we’re going,” Liz said, “we won’t get there if we can’t find some gas.”

The other reason Guy was extremely fortunate it was Liz who found him and not anyone else, was that he knew Liz had nowhere in particular she needed to get back to. Guy knew, because he talked about this sort of thing with everyone who worked for him, that Liz’s parents were both deceased, that she was an only child, and that unlike Guy she wasn’t close with any aunts or uncles, nephews or cousins—she didn’t sponsor biannual family reunions so big they required catering, like Guy did. Guy knew there was a live-in girlfriend at one point, but that Liz had broken it off last year when talk of marriage went from hypothetical to confrontational, with Liz being the one to assert that for her, marriage was not a life goal, or even something she was particularly interested in. And because they were shooting so much, and the money was good, Liz let her girlfriend keep the apartment in Silver Lake, and she’d been living nomadically ever since, squeezing trips to Burning Man and the occasional ayahuasca retreat in between these multi-week stretches of Triple D shoots. And this was all very fortunate because not only did Guy need to get back to his own family in Sonoma as soon as humanly possible, but he knew he’d need Liz’s help to do it.  

---

By the time they arrived in Wichita, the sun was starting its descent toward the horizon and they had maybe an eighth of a tank of gas. Without cell phone service, it was going to be tough to locate Ernie’s Pie Hole, but on top of all her other talents, Liz had a pretty good sense of direction, and an even better memory. She felt confident she could pilot them to the site of their shoot four years ago, for what became season 29’s “Pies & Fries” special episode.

“It’s like a mile away from downtown,” she said as they rolled into the city at 25 mph.

“Yeah,” Guy said, “but a mile in which direction?”

He had made a point of staying in regular contact with each and every business owner whose diner, drive-in, or dive he’d made semi-famous. Granted, he had people who handled this—a staff working out of Donkey Sauce HQ in Los Angeles who maintained a mailing list, sending holiday cards and thank you notes, as well as fielding various requests, such as those for signed headshots—but Guy supervised the effort, or at least blessed it. And sometimes he formed a genuine bond. After all, it wasn’t hard for him to stay attuned to the days when he was just a cook who liked to experiment, who hoped his customers would respond to PB&J wontons or Bloody Mary hot wings. Kindred spirits were spread all over this country, but occasionally he came across a character with whom he clicked on an even more personal level, for reasons he sometimes understood but often didn’t. Ernie was one of these, although Ernie wasn’t his real name—it was Duc Anh, and he’d arrived in the states from Vietnam when he was just a baby. Growing up, he learned English from watching Sesame Street, and got his nickname thanks to an obsession with Bert’s snickering companion, whose laugh he imitated until it became his own. But Sesame Street wasn’t the only American product Ernie liked to imitate. By the time Guy met him, he’d built Ernie’s Pie Hole into a veritable museum of U.S. comfort foods, each rendered as outsized versions of themselves that would have made them mere novelties if executed by a lesser chef. But that was Ernie’s true talent—the guy could really cook.

One small issue with Ernie was that over the years he’d become increasingly fixated on the end of the world. Perhaps it had something to do with his exposure to the book of Revelation as a kid growing up in a born-again Christian household, or the fact that as a restaurant owner in Wichita, his clientele included no small number of fringe right-wing homesteaders, who somehow managed to indoctrinate him. Guy wasn’t sure exactly what the origins were, but he knew things had gotten serious from the various texts Ernie sent him over the years, which evolved from occasional pics of firearms he’d acquired to things like tactical bows and do-it-yourself MREs. Why Ernie thought Guy might be interested in these things was anyone’s guess, especially after Guy’s responses went from two-word to emoji to non-existent. But suffice it to say Guy was happy he hadn’t blocked Ernie entirely now that the apocalypse was actually under way, and they happened to be in the neighborhood.

“There!” Liz exclaimed. “Fuck yeah, I recognize that statue. I think I know where we are.” Downtown Wichita wasn’t nearly as bad as the version of Kansas City they’d escaped from, but it was no paradise either. A number of shop windows had been boarded up, and just as many more were smashed through. A few cars were smoldering or still on fire, but most were just abandoned. As with so many other details of their situation, they couldn’t figure out why they saw neither people nor zombies. “Two more blocks and a right turn, and I betcha we’ll see the sign.”

Sure enough, once Liz banked a right, the infamous Ernie’s Pie Hole sign greeted them. When lit up, its twirling neon depicted a slice of pie being shoved down a gaping mouth, back and forth, in and out, over and over again. But sadly, with the power knocked out, it just looked like a tangled mess of tubular glass.

“Pull up around the back,” Guy instructed needlessly and to Liz’s chagrin. Did he still think he was in charge?

---

“What are the chances he’s here?” Liz asked as they pushed their way through the side door and into the large kitchen. Building your restaurant empire in Wichita had its upsides, Guy thought to himself, remembering how big this place was, how nice it must have been to have so much space for countertops, storage, refrigerators, etc. A kitchen this big could serve as both a factory and an R&D lab—you could churn out orders in one half and use the other to dream up your next outlandish creation. This observation was in fact one of the first things he and Ernie bonded over.

“If I know Ernie,” Guy said, “he’s the kind of person who’d sooner let the zombies get him than abandon this cathedral.”

“OK, but what if the zombies got him then?”

They didn’t have very many options if this one didn’t pan out. The way Guy figured it, they were something like a four or five day drive across the country to his compound in Sonoma. The place was completely fortified, so there was a very good chance—make that a certainty—that Guy’s wife and kids were safe inside it, but the longer it took him to get there the greater the chance they might do something silly, such as leave in the hopes they might find him. Perhaps worse, and more likely, he was concerned that eventually survivors would band together and go looking for a safe place to hole up, and for as much as Guy had kept himself and his family in the good graces of the local Sonoma community, he knew that desperation could transform otherwise reasonable people. What would happen when someone in town remembered that the Fieris maintained a sprawling vegetable garden, one that encircled a massive outdoor kitchen that included wood-burning stoves, grills, and ovens? How long would it take for one of Guy’s house cleaners, or an employee from the place that designed and installed the tasteful yet treacherous gates that traced the boundaries of his compound, or a landscaper whose job it was to obscure those gates with tall shrubbery, so as not to give off the impression that Guy was some paranoid celebrity obsessed with keeping his neighbors at bay—how long would it take one of these people, assuming they survived whatever initial phase they were now all battling their way through, to mention to their newly adopted family of grizzled survivors that they knew a place they could all go, somewhere safe, secure, and stocked with an assortment of seasonal fruits and vegetables? Guy figured it wouldn’t take that long, which is why they had to make their way across the country as fast as possible, and also why it would be helpful to have guns, ammo, and whatever else Ernie might deem prudent as they did so.

They shuffled down the line of stovetops, the same appliances where Ernie had demonstrated to Guy the process for constructing one of his signature entrees, the Napalm Burger, a double entendre of a sandwich that, with its combination of habanero-infused cheese sauce, thick bacon, 80/20 chuck, and onion strings, was both a natural fit for a show like Triple-D and an unsubtle comment on the American imperialism that had shaped Ernie’s place in this world. Guy fiddled with the knobs of the stovetop just to see if there was still gas running and there wasn’t. The whole place was empty, and it seemed like folks had left in a hurry. Plates were still stacked up, knives were still out, the mise en place was still en place. Guy started to despair. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea after all—why would Ernie stick around when everyone else fled? He was crazy, but was he that cra—

“Aarrrnngggg!” a Zombie gargled, hurling itself against the pass through that separated the dining room from the kitchen. It was dressed in an apron and backwards baseball hat. The apron said “Kiss the Chef.”

“Fuck!” Guy screamed as it jutted its arms through the opening. “Thing came out of nowhere!”

While the Zombie seemed objectively stupid, in Guy’s estimation, it was smart enough to notice that the pass-through only extended another ten feet before giving way to a swinging door the led to the kitchen. After swiping futilely at Guy and Liz, the zombie made for the door, pushing it through before they could collect themselves and descending on them from across the room.

“Back door, back door,” Guy yelled. Liz dashed toward the way they came in, but as he attempted to navigate between the countertops Guy’s flip-flop got caught on something and he stumbled to the ground.

“Guy!” Liz screamed.

“Save yourself!”

The zombie closed the gap, was about to pounce and make a meal out of Guy when half its head exploded against a poster depicting best practices for administering CPR. Guy felt himself recoil at the sound of the shotgun blast, then the sight it produced. As the zombie’s body fell to ground, chunk of brains, bone, and of face slid down the wall. Guy stood up and looked across the room, where a cloud of fog came billowing out of the walk-in freezer. Emerging from it was Ernie, wrapped in layers of blankets and a Kansas City Chiefs scarf, smoke still rising from the barrel of his 12-guage.

“Lemme guess,” said Ernie, snickering like his namesake. “You were in the neighborhood and decided to drop by.”

to be continued…

---