some folks- who are aware of the various lunacy I have been involved with over the last nine months- have asked me if i am exaggerating about some of my descriptions of elements of the situation. One of these is the living conditions of the Wonder Twins.

Luckily, I had a friend with a pickup come to help during one of the attempted excavations. I asked him to describe the scene as an objective observer:

“ Yes, I have seen the living (and that’s the wrong word) conditions. *I* was appalled. Considering I left Thanksgiving dinner dishes in the sink until I moved the following September and have been known to wash transmissions on my living room floor, you’d think that I wouldn’t really notice good filth when I saw it. Oh no. This was filth. (In my defense, I started spending all my time at Sierra’s, so I didn’t really have a chance to wash the dishes. Really. Besides, they crust over and stop smelling.)

I had made the mistake of letting Flagg know that I had a pickup truck. I wasn’t too surprised when I received a call that went something like “Tommy, I need a favor. *** has finally woken up to the fact that Courtney isn’t coming back and I need to get her stuff out of there before he tosses it out the window.” That wasn’t exactly the call I was expecting – I always expect the “I need a favor” conversation to include “shovel” and “garbage bag” and “2 AM” and “meadowlands,” so I was pretty relieved he just wanted to mooch moving services. I’ve met the insane couple in question a few times over the years and didn’t particularly like them, so I figured it’d be worth my afternoon to watch them try to play the polite-but-fuming game with Flagg. He’s a master; they’re insane: Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Just in case, I discretely packed a can of mace. I didn’t need it – I should have brought a camera instead.

It was a typical 3 story Steinway railroad tenement: you enter in a living room, there’s a kitchen to the rear of the house and a room in the front accessed through a narrow hallway and the intermediate room. I didn’t venture too deep into it; then again, I couldn’t. Nobody could. Imagine the contents of a large thrift store on the wrong side of the tracks. Now remove the roof of the apartment and dump in said thrift store contents. Visualize 20-odd years’ worth of cheap crap, out-of-style clothes, magazines, bric-a-brac, stuff, garbage, crap – all dumped and drifted as if from Fred Sanford’s snowstorm. Then shovel out a 12″ wide path winding through the mounds, from the kitchen, through the living room, down the hall. One pile in the corner of the living room was taller than I am. OK, that’s not very tall, but it was still pretty impressive; seldom do I see old clothes piled so high they form a cone with it’s own angle of repose. As I watched, the occasional sock or scarf would avalanche off, taking an unsuspecting hat or pair of gloves with it on it’s perilous journey down into the valley of the animals. No, I’m not talking about the 2 that took Flagg to court, I mean real animals. They have them. Trust me. I couldn’t see ’em, but I could smell ’em.

It should have been the apartment of an old lady with 14 cats. Next to that place, living with Flagg – in the Bronx, no less – looks pretty damn good.

So- for those of you who might have thought i was making it up… now you know.