Round Six: Dark and stormy site...

[jhlurie]

"Joey despaired, and looked longingly into his cereal. Pink Hearts! Orange Stars! Blue Diamonds! Yellow Moons! Green Clovers! So many choices."

[jackal10]

It was a dark and stormy night. They last man left sat all alone. Suddenly, the maitre'd appeared at last,.

[Varmint]

"For the girl, I make special sauce." The wok boy's promise was my first tip that this was going to be no ordinary egg foo yung, but then, I knew the dame was a sucker for special sauces, if you know what I mean.

[Lady T]

He'd followed me the entire time: right through the Washington Library while I pondered reading matter, into and out of Sam's while I selected wines, all the way around the produce section of Treasure Island. Tonight, he'd shadowed me through the dark stormy night, his car just behind my cab, straight to the very door of Charlie Trotter's. He was sticking to me like honeyed dates, and I knew he was trouble.

So I killed him. The Chef forgives his patrons many things, but I was about to find out whether the impeccable servers would get the blood dry-cleaned off my suit jacket by the time I'd finished my eight-course degustation...

Edited June 17, 2003 by Lady T (log)

[hollywood]

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in Torrance, a sleepy little burg, not close enough to the big city that anyone would notice, not near enough to the beach to be fashionable, in short the perfect locale for an egomaniacal cook to set up shop posing as some kind of chef de cuisine.

Enter Trent Sabatier, ex-cop, ex-con, exlax, etc., with nothing better to do this fateful night than to inquire of Cheri, the waitress recently canned from Krispy Kreme for squeezing the jelly out of one too many donuts, "What's on the menu tonight, sugar?" Subsequent investigation would prove that this was a question Cheri should not have answered.

Edited June 18, 2003 by hollywood (log)

[maggiethecat]

Oh dear...could this be "The Last of Cheri?"

[Nick]

If anyone want to try it... at another site every few months someone starts a story like this with a line or two and subsequent posts contribute a line or two, or a few words. It ends up with many twists and turns. If you want to try it, don't use quotes - just a post that follows the previous post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a dark and stormy site, when from the shadows of a thread long forgotten....

[kitwilliams]

Kit, how really cool!  I hope your esteemed relative will understand.  And I'd just bet he'd love to see if his writing talent has been passed down through the generations.

Sorry, Maggie. I'm not falling for it! Don't even want to attempt it. But poor Sir Edward, who will forever be remembered for that unfortunate first sentence instead of another oft-used line which he penned, "The pen is mightier than the sword."

And the actual Bulwer-Lytton contest is for the worst opening sentence of a novel, as "It was a dark and stormy night" does not end with a period but a semi-colon and it rambles along from there in rather amazing dullness. So all of you entrants need to remove any periods and replace them with commas, dashes, semi-colons, etc. and you'll all be able to enter next year's contest!

[jhlurie]

And the actual Bulwer-Lytton contest is for the worst opening sentence of a novel, as "It was a dark and stormy night" does not end with a period but a semi-colon and it rambles along from there in rather amazing dullness.  So all of you entrants need to remove any periods and replace them with commas, dashes, semi-colons, etc. and you'll all be able to enter next year's contest!

resubmitted:

"It was hot, so hot that the sweat ran off their bodies into the soup; the chef wasn't displeased, however--he liked it salty."

[maggiethecat]

If anyone want to try it... at another site every few months someone starts a story like this with a line or two and subsequent posts contribute a line or two, or a few words. It ends up with many twists and turns. If you want to try it, don't use quotes - just a post that follows the previous post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a dark and stormy site, when from the shadows of a thread long forgotten....

Nick...I've considered this idea and agree it could be a kick. Almost as good as some bio threads!

Check this space soon.

And: I want more bad writing, dammit!

[pogophiles]

"This is offal", instructed Jim, plopping a small bite into the waitresses mouth and noting, not for the first time, the robust swelling under her nametag (all over, in fact), waiting for the inevitable "Yep" in reply and cursing the fate that caused him to long ago lose his sanity and his sense of humor -- perhaps becoming the executive chef in charge of hauteing the cuisine at "Waffle House" was not panning out as the smooth career move he had envisioned, but then surely someone had to commercialize the "offal omelette" -- why not him?

[jackal10]

Sorry, Maggie.  I'm not falling for it!  Don't even want to attempt it.  But poor Sir Edward, who will forever be remembered for that unfortunate first sentence instead of another oft-used line which he penned, "The pen is mightier than the sword."

I thought Bulwer-Lytton was chiefly remembered for the famous court case, and locking his wife up unfairly in a lunatic asylum.

[glenn]

[excert from an upcoming novel, tm gs] Time for a little reflection. A dedicated reader (uh, aren’t you all?) asked my opinion about the single largest factor that can be attributed to the beet’s upcoming demise. How did the beet go from being in the limelight for a millisecond to losing thousands of bucks every week? [well, it always lost thousands of bucks every week, even in its short-lived popular days.] I started to open my mouth, then had to stop and think. Jeez, that is such a tough question! There’s a bazillion little to medium to big things I can cite, and I think I have cited most of them in the past 5 months [gulp]. All those factors basically boil down to the Clampetts coming to the Big Apple with a fistful of dollars, paranoid schizophrenia, greed, egos to rival Donald Trump and complete ignorance of the restaurant industry. But that can apply to most restaurant failures, no? Think glenn, think. Ah, light bulb…. I confidently answered, “lack of identity.” The beet strives to be everything to everyone….. an upscale eatery, a lounge, affordable comfort food, a neighborhood joint but aspiring to be a destination spot as well as a place for the tourists to flock. Yeah, this must be it, and for the moment I’ll leave this is as the BIG FACTOR. In trying to please everyone, the beet pleases no one except perhaps the hookers and derelicts. The wine markup is a minimum of 3 times cost. While this is traditional in New York, in these economic times, the savvy restaurants have lowered the markup by almost 50%. Neighborhood people don’t eat or drink at the beet because, among other factors, the beet is by far the most expensive restaurant/bar in the area. No one else serves glasses of wine for $14+, and let’s not forget the $26 prime rib. Destination spot? Laughable? For the money and quality, you can find a better deal at thousands of other places. So we end up getting a mix of a cheap B&T crowd and the area winos and hooker types. The B’s have failed miserably in their attempts to give the more modestly priced café its own identity. Maybe that’s because if people want a hamburger, they’re gonna go eat at the institution next door. The beet had IT once. In its brief popular days, all 10 of them, it was a trendy lounge with reasonably priced good food. But they wanted more, greedy bastids.

[hollywood]

Oh dear...could this be "The Last of Cheri?"

You peeked!

[srhcb]

Well, Steve said to Dick, can always resort to one of the Three Eternal Topics of Death, Shit and Dairy Queen Man.

[amytraverso]

"Damnit!" Fiona screamed as she slammed her cell phone shut on the blundering assistant who had blown her lunch with Si. Third such error in the past month, and she'd have fired the little bitch if Fiona hadn't noticed her taking conspicuous notes every time she left the office door open.

Now she was stuck on Madison with no car and a 3-inch heel that was beginning to wobble. Hoping for a quick rescue, she called Thad, who sounded breathless when he answered. He promised to call back in twenty, but made no mention of their anniversary. And her hair was beginning to frizz at the ends.

Nothing to do but wait for another car to come and get her. She rummaged around in her Kelly bag and found an apple. "At least this won't make me bloat"," she muttered as she bit in, peeling her mouth back to save the lipstick. She looked down to examine the loose heel, which would probably hold through dinner. It was only when looked up at the white flesh of the fruit that she saw the worm's other half.

[maggiethecat]

Weclome Junes! The Literary Smackdown is honored to receive your Post #1.

[estufarian]

He hadn’t intended to become the New Messiah - all he had done was to count up to 100 and randomly assign scores to the wines that passed his, now crimson, lips; but, as his Followers rushed to worship those sacramental liquids that had received labels 90+, and also raised their voices in praise of the God-given 100, he recognised that he had indeed founded a new Religion, and he was the High Priest.

[Suzanne F]

It was the best of chines, it was the worst of chines.

Or:

It was the best of thymes, it was the worst of thymes.

(I've already proclaimed my shamelessness.)

[Bridges]

Things all began to go wrong for Gerta, during that long, exhausting night in the cavernous kitchens below Hellespoint Castle, when she leaned in close and murmured a question to Goeffrey Lamoureux, quintessential Chef de Cuisine, which enraged him and caught him off guard so terribly that he smacked his gnarly, much-abused hand (Goeff had been a chef for many years), and which was covered in flour, right down across Gerta’s chubby, rosy cheek, the flour making a ghost of her face; she looked askance at him, but then recognized that she loved him.

[fresco]

When I agreed to investigate the contaminated food case, little did I know that I would be opening up a can of worms that would blow the lid off some real hot potatoes.

Edited June 24, 2003 by fresco (log)

[Nick]

I've gone out to look for myself. If I return before I get back, please ask me to wait here until I return.

(Disclaimer: I stole this from a post on a different board.)

[GordonCooks]

"Clang, clang, clang" went the food trolley! In its wake - a dirty martini glass, and a bloody, sequined apron proclaiming “I love Rocco Di Spirito’s Cannoli”

[Bond Girl]

In the beginning, there were the strawberries. To cliched. Then, there were the oysters. And, the great case of seafood poisoning. In the end, it was the mediocre french toasts that sealed their fate. As they sat at the kitchen table one drizzling morning, when the sky was the shade of a grey sole, he leaned over and licked the maple syrup from her finger, his smouldering eyes shot like arrows into her heart.....

(Hey, I was so young at the time, I was using a word processor...)

[snowangel]

As she stood over the kitchen counter on that August day, knife in hand, vegetables on the counter, liquid exuded from every pore in her body. Everything chopped into a uniform dice, she scooped the trimmings up and opened the screen door with her arm, heading for the compost bin, perspiration dripping in rivulets between her breasts. As she carried the leftovers to the compost, she noticed the car, sitting in her driveway, her man at the wheel – a man pleased to see his dewy young lass, beckoning her to join him in some forbidden lark. Expecting to jump into the passenger seat in the cool and refreshing comfort of an air-conditioned sedan with a wide back seat, she was shocked when her bare thighs welded to the hot black vinyl.