BONUS FEATURES

All stories by Justin Grimbol

Check out these links. They will lead you to more Grimbol stories.

THE BUTT MUNCHERS
TEA HOUSE ARTICLE
SPINELESS featuring Pussy Bear
BABY POWDERED HILLS
A BUNCH OF TINY STORIES

EXXXTREME GRIMBOL

SEX ED

THIS FUNERAL SMELLS LIKE A PUSSY 

JIZZ

WHAT IF THE PLACENTA TOOK OVER THE UNIVERSE?

UFO

LASER TITS
PIRATES OF BATHWATER

She Was Not Impressed, The Worlds Worst Interview

by Justin Grimbol

This was originally published by Bizarro Central. 

A chubby old woman walked into the coffee shop and started asking random people if they wanted to be interviewed. She said she needed an article for the newspaper she worked for. No one wanted to talk to her.
“Come on, you seem like an interesting fella,” she said to one hipster.
“I don’t do anything,” he said.
“I’ll do an interview with you,” I said.
At that moment I was online promoting my book. I figured being interviewed by this woman might help sales a bit.
The people that were sitting around me gave me a strange look. Some of them got up and left. I couldn’t understand why they all hated this old lady so much. She just wants to interview them for some local paper. What was the big deal?
The woman sat next to me on a couch that was in the middle of the coffee shop. I felt like I was on display, like I was on Oprah or Richard Bay.
“I have such bad gas,” she said. “I think I ate too much candy.”
She leaned back and rubbed her tummy. I knew right then that there was something off about this woman. What kind of old woman talks about flatulence so openly?
I sat and waited to be interviewed. The woman rubbed her belly.
“So, what do you do?” she asked.
I told her I was a writer and that I had recently got a book published.
“How lovely. What’s it about?”
“It’s like the movie THE OUTSIDERS, but with…”
“What’s the OUTSIDERS?” she asked.
I had never met anyone who had not seen THE OUTSIDERS. This woman must be ancient, I decided.
“It’s like WEST SIDE STORY,” I told her.
She didn’t know what WEST SIDE STORY was either.
“It’s like Romeo and Juliet,” I said.
She still seemed confused. Did this woman not know what Romeo and Juliet was either?
“So your book is like Romeo and Juliet?”
“No, not at all. It’s about poor kids fighting rich kids and there are monsters,” I said. “It’s a Bizarro book.”
“What’s Bizarro?”
Usually when I describe Bizarro, I compare it to Lynch and Cronenberg and John Waters. I had a feeling this woman had no idea about any of those guys. So I brought up Roald Dahl.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“You know, the guy who wrote CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, WITCHES, MATILDA.”
She looked at me suspiciously, like I was lying to her.
“I’ve never heard of any of those books.”
“Well, have you ever heard of the Wizard of OZ? That’s kinda Bizarro.”
“Nope, sorry.”
“It’s just weird,” I said. “It’s just really weird fiction.”
“Do people actually read that stuff?” she asked, even though I had not yet described to her any Bizarro fiction except my own.
“Yes, people like it.”
The conversation went on. She mainly asked me questions about my life. She wanted to know where I was born and what I did for work and what college I went to. I kept trying to insert little things about my book. She was not interested.
I asked her what kind of Newspaper she worked for. She said it was more like a blog.
After an hour she looked at me and said “I’m sorry but this isn’t the kind of thing I am looking for.”
She then got up, farted, and left.
The guy sitting across from me laughed. “Dude, you just talked to that crazy lady for like an hour.”
I sat there and thought about what had just happened. I felt tired.
I walked over to Rosemont, dorky health food store across from the coffee shop. The old lady was there. She was standing next to the cashier and pestering customers, asking them if they wanted an interview. Everyone ignored her, except the cashier, who begged her to leave. She looked so upset. I felt bad for her. I would have offered to do another interview, maybe about something other than fiction, but I was just too worn out.

This was initially posted in the PORTYMOUTH REVIEW, a little blog I started with my buddy Gordo that never really took off. The story takes place when I was first moving to Portland, Maine. 


I had just looked at two different apartments and I was feeling lost and unlovable. My friend, Gorcoff, was with me. He’d been living in Portland for years and he knew how hard it was to find a decent apartment.
“Looking for apartments is torture,” he said. “Let’s go have a beer.”
I loved that idea. “Where should we go?” I asked. “I saw this one place called The Snug. Its right down the block.”
“No, that place is awful. Too many right angles.”
“What does that mean?”
“The seats are hard and really uncomfortable. I can’t handle. It’s like sitting in a church pew. Too many right angles.”
“Where should we go then?”
“Local 188.”
“What kind of bar is that?”
“I don’t know. It’s a bar.”
“I mean is it fancy? I just want to go to somewhere chill right now, somewhere low key. A dive bar.”
“We’ll go to 188. It’s chill. You’ll like it.”
“Is it close?”
“Sure.”
We started walking. It was hot and with my beard grown out I looked like a human Snuffleuphagus. Within two blocks I was drenched in sweat and smelling like a hobo.
“I thought you said this place was close,” I said in a whiny voice.
“Sure…”
“Well, how much farther do we have to go?”
“Just a block or two.”
At this point my crotch was so sweaty it felt like a water slide. I was very irritable.
“You sure this place is chill? I don’t want to go anywhere fancy.”
“It’s a little fancy,” he admitted. “But not bad.”
We walked for another couple of miles.
“I thought you said it was only two blocks away.”
“It is.”
“That was forever ago.”
“It’s right around the corner, relax.”
“Are you sure it’s not fancy? I smell really bad. I can’t handle anything fancy.”
“It’s not fancy, I promise. Just stop sweating so much. You’re so irritable when you’re sweaty.”
“I can’t help it.”
When we finally got to Local 188, I started laughing hysterically.
“What the fuck ?” I said. “This is the fanciest place I have ever seen.”
“No, it’s chill,” he insisted.
“Gorcoff, I feel like I’m in the movie Eyes Wide Shut.”
“Nah, its fine.”
“Who are you, Bruce Wayne? Who the fuck drinks at places like this? I feel like I should be wearing a turtle neck right now.”
“You’d look amazing in a turtle neck.”
I pointed to a random skinny kid sitting at table. “Look,” I said. “It’s the guy that invented facebook.”
He laughed. “Is it really that fancy here?”
“Gorcoff, I feel like I’m in some rich guys living room. I thought we were going to a dive bar.”
“I like this place,” he said. “Just order a beer and relax.”
We sat on two leather couches. A waitress brought over a menu. She was a very pretty girl. Her legs were nice and long. There was something wonderful at the end of those things. I was sure of it. She probably had a waterslide of her own. I could see why Gorcoff liked this place so much.
We ordered drinks and chatted and flirted with our waitress. Gorcoff called up some friends to join us. By nightfall there were a dozen of us and we were all drunk and acting like animals. I was sure we were going to get kicked out. But the place was surprisingly tolerant.
At one point his friend Sam tried to pick up the table. “I’m so strong!” he yelled.
“Stop. we’ll get kicked out,” Gorcoff warned him.
“They love it. They love how strong I am.”
A waitress came over but she didn’t ask us to leave or tell us to calm down. All she did was ask us if we needed more drinks.
Once I was really drunk I went out to smoke a cigarette. I usually don’t smoke. But I was stressed and I was drunk and it seemed like the right thing to do. While we were smoking, we were approached by an old man. He was tall and bald and looked like he hunted with his bare hands.
“You two want to finish this joint?” he said.
“Sure,” I said nervously.
I took the joint and we all smoked it as quickly as possible. It got me so high. It got me so high I could barely function.
When I went back into Local 188, I saw the old man. He was sitting with a real young, real scrawny woman that looked like used cocaine as bath soap.
“You guys have a good time.”
All I could do was nod. I was too stoned. I didn’t know what to say. The old guy was so nice but also kinda scary.
“I think I need to go to bed,” I said to Gorcoff. “This place is too rowdy for me.”
“Did you have a good time?” He asked. “Sorry I didn’t bring you to a dive bar.”
“Its fine,” I said. “I had a good time.”
Jay gave me a big hug then I was on my way.
I had been staying on my buddy Benny’s couch. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but that night I slept like a baby. A gigantic, sweaty, homeless baby.

                    

A PILE OF TWENTIES

My first strip club was really lame. I had just turned twenty one and I was living in Brooklyn. The club was in Manhattan. It cost ten bucks to get in, and you had to buy a drink. All they served was soda. They made you buy soda. There’s nothing sexy about that.

I didn’t have much money, so I sat in the back and watched the stage from a distance. The place was small. There was no back room. The lap dances took place in the main room, in front of everyone.

I watched this one obese guy get lap dance. The dance seemed to go on forever. When a song ended, the guy threw another twenty at the girl and she would continue dancing. Only it wasn’t really dancing. After a couple of songs the dancer just started rubbing her butt on his crotch. Eventually he came and she got up and collected a large pile of money that had gathered at her feet. I looked at the guy. He looked like he had pissed himself. His sweat pants were drenched in cum.

I felt grossed out, but also a big jealous. I asked one of the dancers for a lap dance. She smiled and chatted with me until a new song came on. I leaned back, held my twenty dollar bill in my sweaty little hand, and got the dry-hump of my life. It blew my mind.  

I ran out of the strip club to go to an ATM and get more money. But the ATM wouldn’t give me any cash. I had already over drawn a fuck ton of money and it wouldn’t let me overdraw any more. I didn’t even have money to get on the subway. I had to walk all the way to Flatbush Brooklyn. By the time I got home I was sweaty and smelled like a diaper. My feet were covered in blisters and I felt pathetic. But I had a boner. A raging boner. And sometimes, for a guy like me, that’s all you need.

THE GOLDEN GATES

Jay and I drove into San Fransisco and found an ATM. We had been a long road trip and this was the first time we had checked our accounts.

Neither of us had much money left in our accounts. We had about four hundred bucks between us. That wasn’t enough to sustain our trip. I was going to have to borrow money from my dad. I hated barrowing money from my dad. It made me feel like a nerd.

“We got to be more careful with our money,” I said to Jay.

 He agreed.

We wandered around the city. It was morning and the sun was coming up and I was getting sweaty.

“Let’s get a drink,” Gorcoff said, noticing how sour my mood was.

I noticed a Strip Club a couple blocks away. I felt drawn to it. It was a fountain of water in the middle of the desert.

“Grimbol, are you taking me to a strip club?  I was just figuring we could find a cafe and you could drink one of those diet sodas you love so much.”

“It’s ten in the morning. Who drinks diet soda a ten in the morning?”

“Who goes to a strip club at ten in the morning?”

I continued down the street, looking hypnotized.

“I bet it’s not even open,” he said.

I picked up my pace. There was a large neon sign saying “open”. It was open. It was so open I could barely stand it.

“I can’t believe it’s open. Fuck it, let’s go in,” Jay said.

 We walked in. The dim light and perfume and air conditioning felt soothing. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer.  

“Do you want a lap dance?” a girl asked.

She seemed tired.

“Maybe later,” I said.

She sat with me and waited. There were only a couple of dancers in the club and they all looked half asleep. Jay and I sat and drank and talked about our trip.

An hour later more girls came in. They looked more lively. A couple approached us. I was feeling good. I had eight finished beers sitting in front of me and it wasn’t even noon. And I stank. I didn’t mind. My financial issues were eight beers behind me.  I felt good.

“I want a lap dance!” I yelled.

Jay liked how rowdy I was getting. He raised his beer in the air. “SOMEBODY GIVE MY BUDDY LAP DANCE!” he yelled.

A chubby dancer with bleach blonde hair came up to me. She said that a dance cost twenty bucks, but that I could get a four song full contact dance for sixty.

“What I deal,” I said.

She took me by the hand like I was a child and led me into one of the back rooms. We waited of a song to start. She danced slowly and undressed. I grabbed her hips. We dry humped until I was dizzy. I had forgotten how fun dry humping could be.

When I was done I met jay at the bar. “We have to get out of here,” I said.

“What why?”

“I have to change my pants.”

I showed him the huge puddle on the crotch of my pants. “I jizzed myself!” I said.

“Holy shit! Are you serious?” he started laughing hysterically.

“I have to put on a new pair of pants,” I said.

“Sounds good, then we need to get some lunch, it’s almost noon.”

TAVERN DANCERS

Heather and I were in Astoria Oregon and I had just won fifty dollars on slot machine. I felt rich. To celebrate, Heather, my fiancé, and I, decided to go to Annie’s Tavern Dancers, one of the most wonderfully divey, sleazy and stinky strip clubs in the universe.

We got really drunk and belligerent. At one point Heather got on stage and took her boobs out. The other dancers loved her. They danced with her and slapped her boobs around. I was feeling awesome. Some dudes through money and her. I grabbed the bills and went to go get beers. The bar tender wouldn’t give me any drinks. She told me I was too drunk that I was wobbling when I walk.

“That’s just how I walk,” I said.

She gave me a blank stare. “Sorry,” she said. “But I am not giving you any more drinks.”

I told Heather we had to go. She looked broken hearted. We had both gone to a hippy college in Vermont. We had met a naked party. She loved getting naked. This was the first time in years that she had felt comfortable with getting drunk and naked the way she had in college. And they were kicking us out. Well, they were kicking me out. Heather didn’t feel right being there alone.

We walked back to our motel feeling defeated.

“So what did you think?”

“Of what?”

“The strip clubs, did you like it?”

“I didn’t like getting kicked out.”

“But you liked it. Admit it, you we were having a blast.”

“It was really fun,” she said.

I held her close and we fell asleep.

$$$

We continued going to Annies. I didn’t let getting kicked out discourage me too much. I liked Annies. It was small and cozy. The dancers there are very friendly to couples.

 One night Heather invited our friend Liz to come with us. We sat at the stage.  One dancer wrapped her leg and Liz and me and pulled our heads close to her naked poon.

“Kiss!” she yelled. “I can’t,” I said. “She’s not my girlfriend,” the dancer looked really embarrassed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” she said.

I looked over at my girlfriend.

She was laughing hysterically.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t think she cares.”

$$$

     Not all the dancers were friendly. My favorite girl at Annies was downright mean.  Her body was puffy in the all the right places. And she had lots of trashy tattoos.

     “Stop staring at me,” she said one night.

     I was confused. What else was I supposed to do?

     She growled and then turned around with her ass spread and facing me. She put her feet up on my shoulders.

     “You ready?”

     “For what?”  I asked.

     She hammered her ass into my face over and over again. She almost broke my nose with her anus. It hurt like hell. But I loved every second of it.

     When she finished everyone in the bar laughed hysterically. Sometimes being mean can be really sexy. 

SUNNY FLORIDA

I was in Key West. The sun was coming up.  I was looking for my motel. I was hungover, but I felt good. My body still smelled like the strip clubs I had visited the night before. It’s a hard smell to describe. There’s the smell of sweat and booze. There’s the smell of perfume and the disinfectant spray they put on the poles. But there’s another smell. It’s a hard smell to place. It smells the way I would imagine a Unicorn would smell if they were real.

 It had been a fun night. As I walked searched for my motel I thought about this one stripper. By the time I had paid her for my fifth lap dance she had really warmed up to me. At one point she spread her ass cheeks and kissed me on the nose with her anus. It was very sweet, very intimate.

     While I was roaming around, I found a bank. I decided I should check my account. I found out I had only twenty dollars left. It would cost at least three hundred to get home. Luckily Washington Mutual loved letting me overdraw on my account. I pulled out four hundred bucks.  

Even with the money, it was going to be a long ride home. I had a made plans to visit my girlfriend, Zoe. She  was itching to break up with me. I had initially driven to Florida to convince to stay with me. The longer I drove the more futile that seemed. So I made a detour and headed to Key West. I figured I would go swimming and jet skiing, maybe something adventurous like hang gliding.  Instead I spent my times in the strip clubs.

I got to my motel room and got into bed. Right before I fell asleep the phone rang. The guy at the front desk reminded me that it was time to check out. I got up and got in my little Honda Accord. I had a big wad of overdrawn cash in my pocket. I smelled like a unicorn.  I thanked the lord for strip clubs and all the assy kisses the women have given me, and I prepared to get dumped.

MY FIRST TASTE OF BIZARRO

By Justin Grimbol

Originally Published by Bizarro Central

I was 12. It was late. I was in bed watching the Showtime network, hoping to catch some sleazy movie with lots of nudity in it. Showtime was good for that. Once they showed a movie where Erik Estrada from Chips had sex with a woman under a water fall. The woman had giant fake boobs and the scene was ten minutes long. At the time, this was the most erotic experience of my life.

That night the movie they played was “Class of Nuke Em High”. I had never seen anything like it. It was strange and chaotic and raw. The gore was gorier than most movies. Even the sex scenes seemed fleshier than in most movies.

Usually when I watched late night movies on Showtime, I would wait for a sex scene, jerk off, then go to sleep. But — with “Class of Nuke Em High”, I was hypnotized. I lied in bed with my underpants around my ankles, my eyes glued to the screen. I didn’t want it to end.

            The movie is about a high school that is located near a power plant. Due to poor management and frequent radiation leaks, the students at the high school start to experience strange mutations. This comes across as poetic when you’re going through puberty—especially when you were as fat and goofy looking and as horny as I was. I too felt like I was mutating. Only my life wasn’t nearly as exciting and it didn’t have any sex scenes.

After it was over they played the sequel—“Class of Nukeem High Part 2: Subhuminoid Meltdown”. I loved it. It had even more sex and violence and general weirdness. It had even more mutations, which, at times, seemed even raunchier than the sex scenes.

I was able to record most of the first movie and the entire second movie onto VHS. I watched the movies over and over again. I couldn’t get enough.

For years this was the only movie I knew of that were as wonderful and bizarre and tactless as Class of Nuke Em High. Then, when I was fifteen, I discovered Troma Entertainment. Not only was Troma responsible for all the Class of Nuke Em High movies, but they actually specialized in strange campy B level exploitation flicks. They had put out hundreds of wonderfully crappy movies and I watched as many of them as I could. There was the “Toxic Avenger”, “Rabid Grannies”, “Blood Sucking Freaks”, “Tromeo and Juliet”. And I loved them all.

I was obsessed with Troma throughout my adolescence and into my early twenties. When I was nineteen I worked for them, briefly, as an intern.

They couldn’t pay me but I didn’t care. Working for them seemed exciting. I imagined an office filled with Tromettes(this was they called the sexy punk girls in their movies). I imagined myself meeting Lloyd Kaufman. I was sure that as soon as we got to talking he would become  charmed by me and that he would ask me to write the screenplay to his next movie.

This was not at all how it went. The office smelled like Cheetos, and the only Tromette was a chick that looked like Oscar the Grouch. She was incredibly stoned and spent the whole day eating hot pockets. Lloyd Kaufman was there. He was shorter and droopier than I had imagined he would be—and he was wearing pink sweat pants and this really disturbed me for some reason.

At one point a group came in to interview him. The chubby-hot-pocket-fiend had me dress up as the toxic avenger and join the interview. I was excited. Finally some action. Maybe this would end up being an audition of sorts and he would ask me to star in the next Toxic Avenger film.

The interview was a disaster. I was nervous and my imitation of Toxie was horrible. At one point Lloyd asked me to talk to the viewer’s about the Troma dance. Troma dance? What the fuck was the Troma dance? I had only been working there for two hours I didn’t know about any Troma Dance. What was I going to do?

I started pretending I was drunk.

“Troma pants? I don’t even wear pants.” I said.

Lloyd didn’t laugh. “No, I’m talking about the Troma Dance, the one we have every year.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember, I must have gotten drunk and blacked out. Actually I think I’m about to black out drunk right now!”

I started stumbling around trying to act as inebriated as possible.

No one seemed amused.

Things got really tense.

 I tripped over Lloyd’s Mic chord, unplugging it. While trying to plug it back in I knocked a stack of papers off his desk. “God damn it,” Lloyd growled.

I was mortified. I had to get out of there.

“I gotta take a shit!” I yelled.

And then I ran out of the room, got out of my costume, told Oscar the Grouch that I was wasn’t feeling well, then ran out of the office. That was the last time I worked for them. I was too embarrassed to go back. Plus I was broke as hell and their office was in New York City, which was expensive and my friends were already tired of me sleeping on their couch, making their apartment smell like a crotch. I moved back home feeling defeated.

Years passed. I began to lose interest in cult movies. It became harder and harder to deal with all the bad acting and the shoddy camera work. Watching movies like “Class of Nuke Em High”, actually made me feel nauseous. It was sad. For a while I suspected I had simply grown out of them, but I missed it. I missed the excitement I felt when I discovered those strange movies. I felt disenchanted.

Then I discovered a book called “The Haunted Vagina”. It was an offensive title and the book was outrageous and obscene, but I was also surprised by how sweet the story ended up being. The book was put out by Eraserhead Press. All their books had strange titles. There was “The Cannibals of Candy Land”, and “Ass Goblins of Auschwitz”. I spent most of my pay check on these books.  Reading them was like watching a Troma Movie, only you didn’t have to deal with bad acting and all the crap that’s affected by low budget crappy effects. I felt just like I had when i was twelve years old and first watched “Class of Nuke Em High” .

My favorite Bizarro Author was Mellick. I read all his books in a month. And for a young author he had a lot of books. Almost thirty. I couldn’t get enough. Each novel was gold. “Ape Shit”, “The Egg Man”, “Razor Wire Pubic Hair”…. My favorite novel was Teethe and Tongue Landscape. It’s about a world made out of flesh. I wrote him a letter telling him so. It was a very mild mannered email. I told him I found his novel and that I hope to write my own bizarre novel in the future. And that was all.  

I wish I wasn’t so shy with my emails. I wish I didn’t hold back.

What I wanted to do was tell him:

THANK YOU!  YOU CRAZY FUCKS! DISCOVERING ERASERHEAD PRESS WAS LIKE FINDING THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH!