These Punks Are Gonna Die Hard! : Movies: Mayhem on Hollywood’s scale is a fabrication, but sometimes a fellow dreams of becoming a lethal weapon, too.
It’s 1 a.m. and the punks next door are making noise again. Huge yelps of laughter and the TV blaring something about a home shopping bonanza--the sound exploding in the narrow alleyway between our two apartment buildings, rattling my windows, jarring me awake.
Minutes pass and the punks continue to cackle like hyenas in heat. Old Man Kershner upstairs yells, “Shut up, down there!” The response is a torrent of profanity aimed at silencing him, maybe forever.
That does it. Any macho movie hero worth his weight in nunchaku and nitroglycerin wouldn’t let these bad guys slide. I swing into action.
Rising slowly from my bed, I switch on the light and examine my arsenal. If I were feeling chipper, I’d flex my massive arms, make like Arnold Schwarzenegger and plod over there to silence them in person. I’d grab the punks by the neck, one dangling from each of my gargantuan hands, and squeeze the noise right out of them. But the six pork enchiladas and Bud Lites I consumed after catching “Robocop 2” earlier that evening are doing some MC Hammer thing in my stomach, so I decide to avenge justice from the comfort of my own bedroom.
I pick up Robocop’s high-tech handgun and fire three shots across the alleyway. Glass shatters, waking the rest of the neighborhood. I see splattered blood on the villains’ living room wall, but still the howling persists. I grab Dick Tracy’s machine gun and riddle the apartment. When I stop, all is quiet. I smile and head back to bed.
Suddenly, my bedroom explodes in flames. These are no ordinary punks I’m dealing with. They’re maniacal biker assassins right out of “Another 48 Hours.” Bullets ricochet all around me. I dive for the floor, positioning myself under my guerrilla-tested rocket launcher.
Outside, I hear my neighbors screaming in pain. Old Man Kershner is blown through the wall of his living room and onto a Sparkletts truck, which erupts on impact like Old Faithful.
I steady the rocket launcher and press the button. The explosion levels the building next door, silencing all 107 people who lived there. But these punks--er, biker assassins--don’t die easy. The explosion has launched them like shrapnel into my apartment. They land on their feet--bloodied, ugly and a bit dazed, but determined to get me.
We run from room to room, sending shotgun blasts off every wall. In one of my Picassos, bullet holes spell out D-I-E, D-U-D-E before the canvas falls to the floor.
I spy one of the punks by the refrigerator. I hit him clean and deadly in the temple with a shot that first banks off the electric can opener and then tears through the gas line that feeds the stove. I turn to run, but there, not more than 10 feet away, stands the other one. Choking on the gas, I squeeze the trigger on my huge revolver. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing happens.
The biker assassin throws his stringy hair back like a schoolgirl and laughs and laughs that same laugh that had awakened and riled me in the first place. He aims his big gun. With his free hand, he yanks a cigarette from behind his ear and pops it in his mouth. Then he pulls another gun from his leather jacket, positions it beside the cigarette and fires.
Now, here is where it all gets a little fuzzy. I’m not quite sure if he mixed up the real gun with the cigarette lighter and blew his own head off or if the flame from the lighter ignited the gas-saturated air and blew us both 96 stories into the sky. The next thing I know, I’m lying in the street on top of the crazed biker, slamming his head against the asphalt. Sirens blare all around me. Police Chief Gates lifts me off the mangled corpse. Mayor Bradley drives up in his limousine and hands me the key to the city. I hear a woman call my name and turn just in time to see Michelle Pfeiffer--no, make that Greta Scacchi--clad only in a slightly ripped black negligee, running toward me, heedless of the flames. The mayor bundles the two of us into the back of the limo and tells the driver to take us to the President’s Bungalow at the Bel Air Hotel. But since the champagne is already flowing and we have a big day ahead of us--including plans to see Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard 2”--Greta and I see no reason to wait for the bungalow. Another night in the big city. . . . At 3 a.m., when the punks are still whooping it up next door, there’s not much you can do but dream up your own Hollywood solution--and vow to buy yourself some earplugs.
