
Brunch with The Contiguous Man

The website of the greatest pulp fiction writer who ever lived


Happy International Dance Day !






Hack wrote this after watching his cover artist Jonny M.’s pug Boris effortlessly pick up women by playing sad songs on a local dive bar’s tinny piano. After his set, Boris would take one of them to a table in a dark table and have them scratch him behind the ears until their fingers cramped.

Hack wrote the first “Grumpy Old Bastard” earnestly about his efforts to teach the teenagers in his neighborhood some manners, and only claimed he meant it to be funny when everyone told him it was when it was when they read it in in proofs. For this sequel, he tried to make it funny and the thing fell right on its face.

Hack had intended this to be the story of how he had heroically fought down some young thugs in his neighborhood but when everyone read the proofs, they congratulated him on writing a hilarious book about a mean-spirited old bastard who was constantly harassing innocent teens. He quietly changed the title from “The Hero of the Neighborhood” to “The Grumpy Old Bastard” and pretended that was what he had meant all along.