Page 109: Ski Accident

“The Ski Accident” is the favorite of pioneering urban legend researcher Jan Harold Brunvand. Belonging to a class of stories that give listeners an intense dose of schadenfreude, it has been told as an absolutely true story since at least the winter of 1979–1980. It goes something like this:

Having exited the ski-lift at the top of a mountain, a snow-bunny’s first time downhill is temporarily pre-empted when she feels the call of nature. Unable to locate any facilities, she skis to a private location behind some trees to relieve herself. It turns out that leaving her skis on was a bad idea, for once she’s dropped her pants around her ankles and squatted, she begins to slide downhill backwards. Not only do all the other skiers witness this embarrassing incident, but her journey is interrupted by a tree, necessitating a trip to the first-aid room.

There, she encounters a ski instructor who, like her, has a broken arm. She asks him how a pro sustained such an injury. He explains that he was riding to the top of the mountain when he saw a woman with her pants around her ankles skiing backwards downhill, and when he leaned over to get a better look he fell off the ski lift. [Or, in some versions, the sight of the bare-bottomed backward skier distracts the instructor so much that he collides with a tree himself. Sometimes the other person isn’t an instructor at all, but just another spectator/skier.]

Then he looks at her and asks, “How about you?”

A panel from “The Ski Accident,” a one-page serial art version of this urban legend from Robert Loren Fleming, Jan Harold Brunvand, and Robert F. Boyd, The Big Book of Urban Legends: Adapted from the Works of Jan Harold Brunvand (New York: Paradox Press, 1994), 104. Art by the great Dan Barry (1923–1997), who began in the 1940s with Doc Savage and Blue Bolt, did daily strips for Tarzan and Flash Gordon, and most recently drew Indiana Jones and Predator comics for Dark Horse.

Like most urban legends, details such as the skier’s hometown and where the incident happened vary in the retelling, often to someplace relatively nearby. In The Billionth Monkey, the story plays out in slightly altered form: Our character, although quite embarrassed, does not require a trip to first aid. And the injured ski instructor is replaced by her date…and not here, but in the story’s replay with Bruiser on page 123. While the urban legend doesn’t seem to ever name the skier in this mishap, I added the fictional detail that she is typically identified generically as “Miss Jones.”

For Further Reading

Jan Harold Brunvand, “The Ski Accident,” in Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 386–7.

Robert Loren Fleming, Jan Harold Brunvand, and Robert F. Boyd, The Big Book of Urban Legends: Adapted from the Works of Jan Harold Brunvand (New York: Paradox Press, 1994), 104.

Barbara Mikkelson, “Ski Bum,” December 27, 2004, Snopes.com.

Page 106: Devil to pay

The phrase “devil to pay” has its origins in the classic German legend of Faust, who sold his soul in a pact with the devil…the original “Faustian bargain.” The legend was popularized by Christopher Marlowe (The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, 1604) and Goethe (Faust, written between 1772 and 1831).

Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604).

The popularity of the Faust legend led to coining the nautical term for caulking (“paying”) the seams (“devil”) in a ship’s hull. See http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/devil-to-pay.html. In The Billionth Monkey, it is used in its modern colloquial sense for “serious trouble resulting from some (in)action,” and is another #DevilReference.

In 1926, F. W. Murnau [of Nosferatu fame] directed a silver screen adaptation of Goethe's Faust.
It was distributed by MGM, which was also handling Rex Ingram's adaptation of The Magician (1926),
based on Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name whose villain is inspired by Aleister Crowley.
Image source: News from the Boston Becks.

Bonus entry: Destiny Jones shows off her smarts when she tosses off the phrase Summa cum risu. In graduation ceremonies, students who graduate at the top of their class with the best grade point average receive the distinction summa cum laude, “with highest honors.” Naturally, Destiny figures that those at the bottom of her class must graduate summa cum risu, “with greatest ridicule.” But as the joke goes, “Do you know what you call the medical student who graduates at the bottom of his class? Doctor.”

Page 106: NunMoreDark

There’s a lot to unpack in this one screenshot!

Here we encounter the first of (the as-yet-unnamed) Destiny Jones’ social media posts. Her username NunMoreDark is a double entendre: The phrase “none more dark” references the classic rock-n-roll mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), from the scene in which the band discusses the cover for their record Smell the Glove:

In the context of our newly-introduced goth character, “Nun More Black” is simultaneously an homage to Spinal Tap and a reflection of her own gothness.

Since today is Thanksgiving, let me say that I’m thankful for Stoya and her photographer steve prue for giving me permission to use her photo as Destiny Jones’ avatar/icon. When looking for a user icon, Stoya was my first choice. She not only looks the part—she’s gorgeous, after all—but for a book layered with in-jokes and social commentary, Stoya’s prominence in pop culture brings to the table an additional layer of resonance and meaning (which I’ll get to below). I was also hoping she’d enjoy being part of the project.

Stoya began modeling in the alt scene (sometimes wearing her own designs), and eventually became a pornographic actress celebrated as the first major alt contract star and as the “goth girl next door.” Moving from contract star to indie entrepreneur, she writes columns for websites like Vice and The Verge, among others. She and her business partner Kayden Kross manage their own adult website, http://trenchcoatx.com (link NSFW), offering curated content where they are free to call the shots in the artsy side of the business ...along with the business side of the business. She even had a brief cameo in a Daily Show skit earlier this year. Stoya has gone from being a sex-worker to a pop culture phenom: “America’s sweetheart” and “the prettiest girl in New York,” according to the Village Voice. What’s next? She’s smart, talented and tenacious enough to do anything she wants.

The author and the model
(you can probably tell which one is which).

She’s also no stranger to the pop/nerd culture that permeates The Billionth Monkey. In fact, she’s part of it. She’s friends with Neil Gaiman and has done cosplay modeling as Death for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. She’s known to read sci-fi and fantasy, play D&D, and enjoy videogames (she’s even on Steam). Perfect for a storyline about urban legends and pop culture changing reality.

I feel that my inclusion of Stoya also makes a statement that sex work—for all that it gets stigmatized and marginalized—plays a significant role in pop culture. Just look at Avenue Q’s breakout hit, “The Internet Is for Porn”!

And sex workers—like anyone else with a job—have interests and hobbies outside of work (duh!). In my experience, alternative subcultures are very sex-positive and overlap a lot; one is not surprised to find the Ren Faire leather worker at a kink fest, a sci-fi con, or pagan camp-out. So yes, a porn star fits very comfortably into my fictional world alongside references to Star Wars, comic books, Stanley Kubrick, and social media. I’m very grateful to Stoya for going along with this, and for putting me in touch with steve prue for photography. They are both fantastic people. You can give Stoya your business at http://trenchcoatx.com, and steve through www.teamrockstarnsfw.com (both URLs NSFW).

Moving on to the conent of the Tweezer post: Tim Gunn is a famous fashion consultant and longtime co-host of the reality TV show Project Runway. He’s fashion sensitive, so the appalling couture in this scene of The Billionth Monkey would most certainly make him cry.

Wherever possible, I tried to sneak Easter eggs into these screenshots. For instance, the time of this post is 2:20, which is a shout-out to the readers of my book Perdurabo (2010), because Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law contains 220 verses. Similarly, the number of “followers” in this post, 59, reflects the fact that the letters in “Tim” add up to 59 in Hebrew gematria (t=ט=9, i= י=10, m=מ=40), as do the unique letters of his last name (g=ג=3, u=ו=6, n=נ=50). There are plenty more hidden jokes throughout the book, so this will get extra fun as we go along.

Page 105: Your hands are trembling

When I encounter something surprising, I invariably remark “Inconceivable!” in the style of Vizzini from The Princess Bride. When someone insults me—hopefully in fun—I reply with Jack Sparrow’s “But you have heard of me!” When extremely frustrated and throwing things is a real possibility, I’ll say “Hulk smash!” And whenever I hear someone say “I’ll be careful,” I can’t resist blurting out, “You’ll be dead!” from the Star Wars cantina scene: the more serious the “careful” remark is, the funnier the retort is (to me, at least).

Conversations with my friends invariably involve quotes and references to movies, TV shows, and song lyrics. It’s probably the same with you and your friends. It is a normal part of interaction, an affirmation of the shared experiences that bond us with our friends. 

That such one-liners are touchstones of popular culture demonstrates the incredible influence of movies and the other sources from which such “memes” derive. I wanted to make that part of Destiny Jones’ repertoire (as far as “fair use” would allow). Their inclusion in The Billionth Monkey is therefore not just a reflection of how real people talk, but a tribute to things which have a big place in the hearts of millions, myself included. Additionally, writing a commentary on pop culture by liberally salting in pop culture references is very meta.

Take, for instance, the scene on page 105 of The Billionth Monkey. As Destiny Jones implies by calling Belanger “Princess Leia,” she recognizes his remark to be an unintended quotation from The Empire Strikes Back. If you can’t immediately picture the scene I’m talking about—inconceivable!—here’s the relevant snippet:

Technical note: I would have preferred to embed the official video from StarWars.com, but for some reason Blogger won't allow it in an iframe. If the above video gets removed from YouTube someday, here's a link to the video at StarWars.com. And if all else fails, here's a still image from the scene to jog your memory:

But Destiny doesn’t stop there. She follows Star Wars up with The Princess Bride by adding, “As you wish.”

Page 105: The hairy-armed hitchhiker

This legendary encounter in The Billionth Monkey is based on the myth dubbed “The Hariy-Armed Hitchhiker,” even though some later permutations of this urban legend don’t involve hitchhiking at all. It’s basically a “stranger danger” story: A woman narrowly escapes gruesome consequences when she agrees to give a ride to a little old lady who turns out to be a homicidal man in disguise. As Belanger tells us on page 111, the myth has its origins in the 1977 “Yorkshire ripper” scares. The "hairy-armed hitchhiker" legend became so popular that at least seventeen different police stations received reports of this near-miss that happened to a friend-of-a-friend. It soon spread to other locales throughout England and from there into other countries. The original tale is generally of the following form:

A young woman in Leeds was getting into her car during a blackout when she is approached by an old woman asking for a ride, as she cannot find her way home in the dark. The driver agrees. However, as the hitchhiker places a large grocery bag in the back seat, the girl notices something suspicious about her passenger: hairy arms. Thinking quickly, the driver asks the stranger to check her recently-repaired tail-lights, as she wouldn’t want to have trouble from the police. When the obliging stranger exits the vehicle, the driver takes the opportunity to speed off. Only later does she look in the big grocery bag left behind and discover that it contains a hatchet.

Image source: Freebie Photography.

By the time the story made spread across the US in the 1980s, the location became a shopping mall, and other details fell away: The scenario shifted away from a hitchhiker—which by then was a less common sight in the US and prone to more suspicion thanks to things like the movie The Hitch-Hiker (1953)—to the more ubiquitous American shopping mall. There is no blackout. And sometimes the hairy arms are missing in favor of some more generalized suspicion.

The 1953 movie The Hitch-Hiker caused this urban legend
to move to American shopping malls.

By the 1990s the story morphed further: Returning to her car from shopping at the mall, a young lady discovers that she has a flat tire. The nice man who offers to help her turns out to be a not-so-nice killer. This variation appears to have its basis in a real-world incident from 1989. As Mikkelson (2011) reports,

On 16 December 1989, 29-year-old Sedrick Cobb kidnapped 23-year-old Julie Ashe from a department store parking lot in Waterbury, CT, after he helped her change a flat tire on her car that he had let the air out of while she was in the store Christmas shopping. He then drove Miss Ashe to a wooded area, raped her, bound her, and pushed her off a dam into an icy pond 23 feet below. Her feet were found protruding from the ice on Christmas Day, nine days after she disappeared.

Although the legend has changed, chameleon-like, to reflect current events like the 1977 ripper scare or a 1989 murder-kidnapping, its roots are actually much older. Mikkelson points to antecedents going back as far as the early nineteenth century.

This urban legend is a favorite of academics. As Brunvand explains, “The story appeals to folklorists because of its long history, its numerous texts and variations, it similarity to some current crimes, and its thematic content.” (2001, p. 186). The most interesting elements are:

• The intended victim is always a young woman.
• The assailant is disguising his gender by dressing as an elderly woman.
• The absence of a male rescuer.

Naturally, different people bring different perspectives to bear when analyzing this story. As noted at the beginning, it can be taken as a “stranger danger” tale, expressing a general xenophobia symptomatic of the Mean World Syndrome (which we will discuss when we get to page 149). Carroll (1988) offers a Freudian explanation, arguing that the killer symbolizes the mother and the tale reflects her daughter’s feelings on realizing that her mother doesn’t have a penis. The lack of a male rescuer makes this a tale of female empowerment.

Recent research confirms that hitchhiking can also be very dangerous for the hitchhiker.

For Further Reading

Brunvand, Jan Harold, “The Hairy-Armed Hitchhiker” in Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 184–6.

Carroll Michael P., “The Sick Old Lady Who Is a Man: A Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Study of Urban Legends,” Psychoanalytic Study of Society 1988, 13: 133–48.

Mikkelson, Barbara, “Shopping Mauled,” Snopes.com, April 8, 2011.

Page 104: Samuel L. Jackson, call your service

I suppose I ought to fess up right now that in this scene from The Billionth Monkey I imagined the bartender looking kind of like Samuel L. Jackson’s character Stephen from Django Unchained (2012). Not that the bartender is (to use Jackson’s description of Stephen) “the most despised Negro in cinematic history.”  I was just picturing a distinguished-looking older man who dressed better than the establishment he was tending.

Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen in Django Unchained
(2012, dir. Quentin Tarantino, Weinstein Company).

Given this, I also thought it would be hilarious to see the bartender’s proper demeanor crumble when he reached for a shotgun and reverted into Snakes on a Plane-vintage Samuel L. Jackson. Which is exactly why he makes the remark about the motherfucking snipers. I just love the fact that Jackson insisted that the 2006 movie keep its original working title, Snakes on a Plane, because it was the reason he agreed to be in the movie in the first place.

Samuel L. Jackson as Neville Flynn in Snakes on a Plane (2006, dir David R. Ellis, New Line Cinema):
Feel the fury!

Page 103: Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes is another #MonkeyReference in The Billionth Monkey. This is my shocked face. Yes, I know that apes are not monkeys...but they’re both primates. I freely and knowingly exercised creative license here. Nevertheless, obvious though it may be, the reference is far from being a throwaway. It’s actually kind of important to Niels Belanger's backstory.

We’re talking old-school here: the original series of five films, not the recent reboots and remakes.

Back on page 50 of The Billionth Monkey, we learn that hanging in Belanger’s office is a photograph of actor and photographer Roddy McDowall (1928–1998), signed to Belanger’s mother, Diane. The implication is that Belanger's mother has passed, and that the photo hangs in Belanger’s office as a keepsake. (Her name comes from my older sister Diahann, who died in the 1990s...far too young.)

McDowall began as a child actor in films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943), and appeared in a long string of movies before being cast—some might say typecast—in his defining role as Cornelius in Planet of the Apes (1968). He would go on to appear in the successful franchise’s sequels, portraying the characters Cornelius (Escape from the Planet of the Apes, 1971) Caesar (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, 1972, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, 1973), and Galen in the short-lived Planet of the Apes TV series (1974).

Despite appearing in over 150 movies, ironically enough it is his work on the Planet of the Apes movies—in which his itchy prosthetics prevented him from eating, touching his face, or emoting very much—for which he is best known.

He died of lung cancer in 1998, and in December of that year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its photo archive in his honor: the Roddy McDowall Photograph Archive at the Margaret Herrick Library.

This cast photo from the Planet of the Apes TV series (1974; source: Wikimedia Commons)
shows Roddy McDowall in his role as Galen. I still have my childhood action figures from this show.

However, not until page 103 do we learn the real significance of the signed Roddy McDowall photo in Belanger’s office. His parents were big fans of American television and movies, and Diane was fond enough of Roddy McDowall that she not only managed to get a personally signed photo of the actor, but she named her son after the character for which he is best known.

This is where I tantalize you by saying this wasn’t the only reason I picked the name “Niels.” For that you have to wait until the blog gets to page 174. Or you can read that page yourself and get a pretty good idea.