129. More video lies } from the Unfinished House.

The following is an excerpt from the column Video Lies, a regular feature in the 1990s ‘zine Kraken Farmer, edited by Lucy Kurtz, available at Tower Records and Flyrabbit.

Alligator II: The Mutation. Dir. Jon Hess. Perf. Joseph Bologna, Dee Wallace, and Richard Lynch. Cannon, 1991. Video.

Swamp-rat floats /on a human ribcage.

Red flashlight floats / and a fisherman’s leg.

Breakfast with a VHS tape on a timer. Cop Hodges dances with a food truck vendor. “Maybe it’s machinery.”

TWO COPS: Hodges, you can’t park here.

HODGES: Get it washed. [Hands over his keys.]

TWO COPS: Hodges!

See the serpent woman walk, talk, “and crawl on her belly like a reptile”; see her meet “...that ain’t no gator” but a Future Chemical gator—“You ever seen a nest this big?”

A mutant alligator eats who swims among the reeds in Regent Park. No, you may not explode grenades beneath Lake Shore Drive. Remove the alligator = gentrification = the loss of local color, i.e., The Crazy Boys. Send in the man on stilts. Feed the alligator land developers.