The Last Train Out

Frisbees • It Happened Again

Advice For Kids By Kids

Frisbees

Joshua Alfaro (edited)

You can’t throw a Frisbee all the way across the Atlantic ocean.

Don’t waste your allowance trying.

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—Billy Flyer. Daytona Beach, Florida

Poetic Fiction

The Last Train Out

Roland Lösslein (edited)

The ash rains came.
No one knew how they came to be, 
but they poured from the sky nonetheless.
The planet turned gray and charcoal.

The ash rain was cruel. And corrosive.
Eating through anything electronic.
The gears of the digital world came to a grinding halt.
Chaos and violence regained their former glory.

Rumors slowly made their way to the battered city.
“A land that was untouched by the rain. Immune.”
But how would weary souls get there?
From a dusty, rarely visited museum, an old man emerged.
“I know a way.”

With a cloud of smoke, the great beast awoke.
It would use the ash of the past to fuel the present escape.
To give the hopeless hope.
To carry fragile hearts to a new home.

Those who witnessed the awakening climbed onboard.
They would be the final passengers.
On the last train out.

Letters Home

It Happened Again

Hermes Rivera

Dearest Betty,

It happened again. I wish you were here to keep me calm. Everything was going fine. I was giving my presentation on the effects of Gamma radiation when some idiot stood up and said, “Dr. Banner. Isn’t it true that the Monkees are a better band than The Beatles?”

Not again, I thought.

I calmly tried to explain that The Monkees were a band assembled for a television show. They were intended to be an American version of The Beatles (even though Davy Jones is English.) That their hit songs were written by other songwriters like Boyce and Hart, and Neil Diamond. That studio musicians such as Glen Campbell played the music on their early albums.

Then some other idiot stood up and said The Partridge Family was better than both The Beatles and The Monkees because they were a family.

I was losing my patience, but I explained that Shirley Jones was David Cassidy’s stepmother, and none of them were actually siblings. I also told him that David Cassidy and Shirley Jones were the only real musicians in the group. Then he called me a liar and said Danny Partridge was a better bass player than Paul McCartney.

I lost it. I could feel my anger rising and my clothes ripping. The next thing I know, I’m smashing up the room, throwing chairs around, out of my mind with rage.

While I’m tearing the place apart, the Partridge Family moron yells, “Come on, get happy!”

I busted through the roof, bounced off several buildings, and eventually landed in the river. A fireboat hosed me down until I could calm down. I swam back to shore and took a cab back to my hotel.

I’ll be home tomorrow. Can you stop at Sears and pick me up a new suit? I have another Science Gone Wrong conference Friday in San Francisco. I hope there aren’t any opinionated music fans there.

Thanks.

Love always,

Bruce

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Having rarely read Hulk comics as a kid (The Fantastic Four were my favorites), I didn’t realize that Bruce Banner had a love interest and eventual wife named Elizabeth “Betty” Ross in the 1960s comics (until I did some research.) If you are interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Ross

Happy Monday. Thanks for reading and responding. You make it fun.

Mark

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Monday Morning Mark • 111