The weekly Ho-Hum: staring a hole through his scrambled eggs

Jacques Corédor and I were pondering the menu at the Orchid Luncheonette when he told me of his Halloween excursion to some rightwing hillbilly Western New York ‘amusement’ called Hell House Buffalo: “I toured it with eight other people. Four of them had had too much to drink—that glazed eye and slack jaw look. A religious stench clogged the air as a Crypt Keeper preacher led us from tableau to tableau. The most freaky exhibit was called ‘Gay Marriage’ where a bed-ridden AIDS victim vomits green bile and sinks into a glowing Hellhole in the bed. Another was ‘The Rave’ where a schoolgirl gets gangbanged on a pool table—it reminded me of that Jodie Foster movie. Near the end there was ‘The Gates of Hell’ that had a gutted victim on a pentagram being eaten by flesh-colored leotard-clad devil worshippers. You exit the whole mess by choosing the door to heaven or hell. One of the drunks said, ‘I have a problem with God’ and went for the hell door. I followed him and we ended up in the same room as the heaven-bound people, but separating us was a makeshift barrier where, on the ‘saved’ side, you could write out your sins and pin them to a silhouette of God. On the ‘doomed’ side you could have your picture taken being crucified on a cross for five bucks.” A sound investment, I thought, as I ordered two over easy, homefries and toast.