Post #157115 by johntiki on Fri, May 6, 2005 9:08 PM

I'm envisioning a long and involved story regarding a lounge singer doing some gigs in Reno who ends up getting involved with a vicious gang of Austrian art thieves when he finds a Van Gogh tucked under the bed in his sleazy motel room. The singer who we shall call Jimmy Velvet, decides he's gonna make off with the painting and sell it on the black-market. He knows a guy in Kansas City with ties to organized crime that would probably be able to unload it and get him a sizable chunk of change. Jimmy has had enough of playing Rainbow Room's at Holiday Inn's across the country and one night after easing his nervous mind with a drink at Harvey's he keeps the souvenir mug. Feeling a little tipsy he exits the hotel to his beaten Ford Fairlane when two men on motorcycles with thick accents accost him. With a stroke of luck he manages to evade the semi-automatic gunfire flung in his direction, gets the car started and blasts back to his motel room. He packs up his junk, feels the mug in his jacket pocket and contemplates tossing it in the trash but when the Austrians crash the scene he just has enough time to grab the Van Gogh and the Harvey's mug. With a shriek of bald tires he rockets out onto the highway across the desert in the pitch black. Jimmy is worried that the thugs are following behind him waiting for the perfect opportunity to overtake his car, take the painting back, then riddle his defenseless body with bullets on the shoulder of the interstate.

I could go on but I don't want to give the ending away ...oh, we know the ending... Atomictony finds the Harvey's mug in Edinburg.

I think my writer's block may be cured... I'm onto something here!