Pulp Flippist II

Original image from Ten Story Detective magazine via Pulp Covers

Pulp Flippist I

Pulp Flippist IV

Another classic from the Flippist Archives Press!

Pulp Flippist III

I got an an invitation… to a private make-out party for two.

It was my senior year, during the Christmas break. ‘Ann’ and I weren’t exactly an item, in fact Ann was more akin to an indefinite article. But love is grand when love is new and, it being Christmastime and all, our ‘date’ was only more special. I was hardly chaste in high school, but a sordid incident in my junior year caused me to rethink my behavior while with the other sex. Since that shameful incident I had been, for all practical purposes, celibate.

It has been said that, subconsciously, a man wants to marry his mother. Ann was nothing like my Ma. Vivacious, petite and irreverent, and definitely not celibate. I was a skinny, nervous 17-year-old with an excess of hormones. Duly arriving at the trysting place (her living room, parents not home) with a copy of Cream’s recently released Disraeli Gears record album. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice for make-out music, but it did set a mood, Ann was not shy and she began to bathe me in the sunshine of her love.

(A discreet pause ensues. Use your imagination!)

While that evening was arousing a rousing success, I was not yet ready to be a proper boyfriend. Or, for that matter, an improper one. We never repeated our tête-à-tête, but we have stayed in touch over the last 50+ years, still friends. I’m no longer a skinny, nervous kid and Ann, while not quite as petite, is still vivacious and irreverent. Our love never came to full fruition but it did bloom once upon a snowy night in December, in our own Christmas in Eden.

Image: New Love Magazine, January 1948

Pulp Flippist I

Original images from Comic Book Plus.

Short Fiction

These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.

Friday Fiction

Weird Tales
Down By the River
Simple Meals Are Best
Faded Love
Fade to Black
Astronauts: A Love Story
Speed Skater
Blair Witch Project
SRO
Pulp Flippist
Misc. short fiction ©2016-2024 by Stephen Charles Cowdery

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House Party

House Party - Part I
House Party - Part II
House Party - Part III
House Party - Part IV
House Party - Part V
House Party - Part VI
House Party - Part VII (end)

House Party ©2021, Stephen Charles Cowdery

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Desperately Seeking Sharon

Part 1 “Sharon is Missing!”
Part 2 “An Enigmatic Clue…”
Part 3 “Stranded in the Jungle…”
Part 4 “Visions of Sharon…”
Part 5 “Meeting with Madam Tara”
Part 6 “At Last!”
Part 7 “Epilogue”

Desperately Seeking Sharon ©2008 by Stephen Charles Cowdery.
Sharon Spotbottom character ©2006 by Karen Heathwood, used by permission.

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Long Fiction On FITK

Dogma

A collection of memorable FITK posts, sorted by year:

2025

Óx Revisited
Willey House
Endless Summer Redux
Orange Crush
Sound 80 and Me
Mosh Pit
I want to…
Strange Santa Fe
Experiments in AI
Market Day
The Eternal Dynamic

2024

Apple Loves Me
Love of an Adolescent
Adventures in Fine Woodworking
Memories Like Jazz
The Camden Motel
Cosmic Appple
Return to Shepherd’s Harvest
Kenergy
Virtual Exercise
The Best Day
Happy New Year

2023

Puzzling Perspective
Iceland 2023 Recap
RLBQ
Mothers and Daughters
Food Truck Frenzy
Clouds Over Grand Marais
Snookies Malt Shop
Finely Drawn
Retro Dance Party!
Móðir, kona, meyja
Love Hurts Twice
Soggy Sharon

2022

Day One
Lifting the Shroud
Flu Shot Saga
Simple Meals Are Best
Modern Problem
Bubble World Revisited
Job Opportunity
The Eagle Has Landed
Suicide Tourist
Another Invitation
French Connections
An Invitation

2021

Time Traveling With Bob
Fun with Dick and Joan and Bob and Mimi
Sandhill Cranes
Adventures in Linguistics
Return to Bubble World
Peggy and Her Pals
Matchbook Masterpieces
Ghost Neighborhood
Arty Party
Audio Artifacts…
Fan Dancer’s Horse
Puzzled

2020

My Last Cigar
Tony Glover Auction
Road Trip
State Fair Memories
Marlene Mania
God in the Garden
Hat Trick
Viral Sharon
Jono’s Letter
The Last Gig
My First Date Redux
Honky-Tonk Woman

2019

Waiting, Wishing, Hoping
Weekend in New Ulm
Dylan Double Down
Four More From the Fair
Bubbleworld
Beat Travel Guide
Arty Afternoon on Willy Street
Authority Figure
Golden Boy Redux
JC Revisited
Dreams on a Winter Afternoon
First Avenue

2018

Ceramic Culture
Airwaves and Gender
Anorexic
Light Birds
Red Sun
Savoury Summer
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Art-A-Whirl
Fade to Black
Godzilla Valentine
Pulp Flippist

2017

Porcelain Queen
Farmers Market
Wednesday Night…
Betra Líf
Twinned
Food Truck Frenzy
Art vs. Nature
Pastoral
Livestock
East Jesus
Baffled by Benchley
Harriet and Desha

2016

Walking with Ms. Lee
Great Minds Think Alike
How Does it Feel?
Through a Glass, Darkly
Missives from the Jazz Age
Learning to Fly
Astronauts: A Love Story
Searching for Shoshanah
Green Lake
Depth of Focus
February Thaw
All those moments…

2015

Proustian Dilemma
The Situation Girls
Fimm Konur
Four From the Fair
Girls’ Night Out
Saturday in the Park
Rivertown Ramble
Flaming Youth
Visions of Shoshanah
Woman Lake - 1980
It’s All Too Beautiful
Endless Summer

2014

Old Friends
Wanda in Art School
The Last Day of Summer
Bayfield 1984
Trail Center
From Paradise to Sunrise
Origami Litter
Art in Bloom
Face at the Window
Wanda Gág Day
Creative Writing
Germanium

2013

The Artist and the Collector
The Divine Mrs. M
45th Parallel
Blooms
I Love the Fair
The Mansion on the Hill
Iceland for Night Owls
Two Tickets to Paradise
Missed Connections
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Playing Hooky
Chanteuse

2012

Cindy Sherman
Sunday Night Shopper
Silent Movie
Last Days of Summer
Alice in Wonderland
Night at the Improv
Love Letters Straight from Your Heart
Howie’s
The Maestro's Farewell
Fathers and Daughters
Oral
The Wallflower

2011

Convergence
Book Review
Batty Visits Development Hell
Bill
Best Friends Forever
When Cars Had Tits
Batty’s World Tour
Patina
The Mystery of Ye Old Mill
Rituals of Courtship
Joni Mitchell’s Coyote
Walking on Thin Ice

2010

The Music of Failure
Postcards from Chennai
Sharon as Salome
Cosmic Call
Summer Hiatus
Camping With Sharon
Not Jim
Archie
Loss of a Pet
Pascal Pinon
January Thaw

2009

Mál og menning
Bill Holm's Last Reading
The Pastels
L'Opera dei Dannati
Sod
The iPad™
Haunted Castle
Ensculptic
Sex Dreams
Invader
Black Forest
Iceland at the Crossroads

2008

Saturday Matinee
Cold Comfort Farm
Richmond
Elizabeth the Great
Oh! Those BC Girls
Desperately Seeking Sharon
Milestones in haberdashery
Summer Love
Soliloquy
Door
The Visitor
Soft-core

2007

Cold Night
Single Mother
Amiina Now
Beautiful Kisses
Comica's Temptation
Green Lake
P.A.F
Twinned
Sweet Rolls and Silence
A Familial Misunderstanding
Found Object

2006

700 Year Old Disclaimer
The Boat of Longing
Hippies in the Heartland
Fine, I won’t walk around at night...
lines.
Smoking Lessons - The Pipe
Family Values
Hau Tree Lanai
Seasonal Equipoise
Water
Garden Party
More Postcards From Calcutta

2005

The bigger picture
My Funny Valentine
A day in my life
Sex-Ed 101
The Door
Button Jar
Dondi and the Waitress
Dance Party
The Accidental Traveling Companion
Ghost Blog
River Reverie
Red Zinger Tea

2004

Salome’s Dance
Mel Jass and Me
Coconut Oil
Gym Class
Flippist Industries, Inc.
José Loves Betty
Pink ‘n’ Black
Lesbians taking over the world?

Saturday Strangeness

Saturday was a "culture day" at Flippist World Headquarters, a day of passive participation with no preconceptions or expectations. With the Weaver in tow, I set off to the second annual Nordic Lights Film Festival, which offered movies from Scandinavia coupled with mini-concerts- one of which was the Finnish-American folk duo Kaivama. They played traditional and modern Finnish fiddle tunes, some of which even featured a harmonium! Not something I run across every day, but very nice, with an excellent violinist:



The film we watched was Country Wedding (Sveitabrúðkaup) a film directed and written by Valdís Óskarsdóttir, which was a major disappointment for me. It was an Altmanesque-style slice of life about the members of a wedding party trying to find a country church and ending up finding out more about each other. It was supposedly a comic film, but ended up just being nasty. A good deal of it was improv, and although the cast was composed of fine actors, they were not very inspired, and certainly could of used more scripting:



After wards, it was just a short walk across the street to the sublime cafe Levain:



Wonderful food in a French-style restaurant connected to a good bakery, with the odd touch of having a very good solo clarinetist discreetly playing in the kitchen.

What better way to end a culture day than to return home for a viewing of Samuel Fuller's pulp masterpiece The Naked Kiss,?

This wild little film from the mid-sixties had just about every thing a pop-culture fanatic could want: a tough-cookie ex-prostitute with a soft spot for kids, a hard-boiled cop, a brittle madam, and a millionaire playboy with a terrible secret. Almost every scene seemed to be lit by a massive hard light; the black and white cinematography was as subtle as a sledgehammer (as was the dialog.) Constance Towers, a talented actress (who is still active in movies and television) had a field day, beating up pimps, singing with crippled children (in a production number which defies description) and generally carrying the film when it threatens to veer into Ed Wood territory. If you are a fan of this kind of schlock, it is sort of in the early Russ Meyer bag, but neither as funny nor as well done- it was just strange.

Scorecard: 2 hits, 1 miss (Country Wedding), and one split-decision (Kiss), not as good as last year, strange to be sure, but ok, nonetheless!