i wonder if sun-tzu ever got writers' block?

as he spent his life in ancient china, compiling the experiences that would eventually become the art of war, did he ever trip over what exactly he should write next?

so anyway, there were deaths in chicago.  one was a chicago bear. lenny strahan. some called him the best linebacker ever. he had grit. played through every injury imaginable. but you can't play through having your heart cut out with a spoon.

IT'S TIME FOR 3 THINGS...

1. what? you thought the sun tzu thing was a set up for something? you thought you were getting a segue? psych!
2. hearing someone having their heart cut out with a spoon will never not remind me of robin hood: prince of thieves. not that i hear about a lot of people getting their hearts cut out with ... you know what? nevermind.
3. couldn't they have tried to find video of a team that sorta had bears colors? this game could have been 49ers-rams. maybe even ohio state-notre dame. but there were no bears to be found here, my friends.

THIS HAS BEEN 3 THINGS!

lenny isn't the only one getting free, unwanted open heart surgery. same thing happened to staff sergeant anderson, who walked into the wrong doorway and got attacked by giant chickens. yup. or at least people in chicken outfits. the important part is that someone's heart got cut out.

while all of these heartectomies are going on, tony vincenzo is trying to schmooze clients at a swanky hotel. his first mistake was believing carl kolchak cared enough to actually show up on time. when the familiar faded yellow mustang convertible arrives, it doesn't stay long before reports of a homicide crackle over the police scanner. like a rumpled flash, kolchak is on the move again.

once on scene, he ducks the press briefing from captain webster (who looks shockingly like captain baker from episode 8) and happens upon the murder scene whereupon he learns that the body was found in a stairwell with the heart placed five steps below.

(pro tip: remember that stair thing)

after being shoo'd away from the scene like a baby chick, kolchak is back at the hotel where a steamed tony is trying to get his star reporter to write a piece on captain timmons, who is aiming to be one of the first women in combat.

i've repeatedly given this show a hard time about condescending to its female characters. so it was fun to see one of them give it back to the men for constantly preventing cpt. timmons from finishing a sentence. huzzah!

kolchak, looking for a way out, finds one in the person of mr. pepe torres (a pre-CHiPs erik estrada!) surrounded by three beautiful women and dressed in the pimping'est pink suit you ever saw. pepe's allegedly one of the hotel's vice presidents but the only thing he seems interested in presiding over is a meeting between him and cap timmons in his room.

too bad that won't happen. not after a bunch of giant chicken people bust into her room and ... i guess peck her to death? whatever it is, the birderers (get it? bird murderers? look, they can't all be gems.) decide they can't leave the body in the room. so they take it to grant park and dump it on some steps. 

our favorite ink-stained snoop gets to the body not long after the cops. but while 5-0 runs off to chase a noise in the bushes, kolchak sticks around to get some photos. in this instance, he finds it hard to take pictures when you're being bashed in the head by a giant bird-man.

BIIIIIIIIIIRRRRDMAN!

i just wanted to yell that.

when he comes to, kolchak has a head full of bees and a fistful of feathers. although saying you were knocked the f*** out by a six-foot-tall chicken isn't the kind of thing you want to tell cops who already don't trust you.

next stop is back to the hotel where kolchak is prevented from checking around cpt. timmons' room by the over-officious officer lyons. there's a whole rigamarole that leads to lyons chasing kolchak around a basement and ends with carl getting padlocked into a storage closet.

that's the bad news. the worse news is that he's locked in with a portrait of the chicken man that k.o.'d him. oh ... also an ornately decorated mummified corpse in a coffin. fun times.

after some terrified shrieks and banging on the door, security arrives and escorts him to the office of tillie jones, head of the hotel's public relations. why did they take him there as opposed to the head of security? shhh...don't you worry your pretty little head about the things that don't make sense. you'll only hurt yourself.

anyway, ms. jones doesn't want to press trespassing charges and would prefer to make the whole thing go away. kolchak is certainly on board with that ides. but first he'd like some off-the-record info about pepe torres. that name is apparently a trigger word for tillie. she launches into a fit about how incompetent pepe and how he showed up about a year ago and immediately fell into the owner's good graces. what really grinds her gears is having to clean up for his lack of productivity of any sort.

which is sorta what happened when me and a friend in high school ended up shooting a video project by ourselves when the rest of our group flaked out. it was about experiencing death. we spliced in shots of michael jackson's thriller video. high school was a weird time for me.

kolchak decides to pay pepe a visit. at this point, i'm not sure if erik estrada is good at pretending to be high. or is actually high. which might be a credit to his acting. or his tolerance. i don't know which. either way, he's not thrilled about kolchak harshing his buzz asking questions about his job and his "assistants" -- lona, nina and vicki.

after being politely asked to gtfo, kolchak heads back to the basement where he breaks into the storage room he was previously locked in. surprise! no more chicken-man portrait. no more coffin. welpity welp welp.

but hey ... he's still got those feathers. maybe that's a clue. obviously the next step is to visit an ornithologist. or at least a zoo, right? silly rabbit. why would kolchak do any of that when he could visit a taxidermist? yep. there couldn't be a single person on earth more knowledgeable about birds than a guy who stuffs dead ones for a living.

oh ... and don't call them stuffed animals around this dude. that'll get him madder than a wet box of feral housecats. unpreserved, of course. apparently he knows enough about birds to immediately recognize that they came from some species of parrot indigenous to southern mexico. aaah, but that's not the limit of his knowledge. this big-head animal stuffer even knew that the ancient aztecs tried their hand a mummification -- although the humidity of the region forced them to have slightly different tactics than the ancient egyptians. it feels like this guy missed his calling.

then again, i write about fake football for a living. so what do i know?

by this point, kolchak's imagination is running free like a stallion in the countryside. he's found old reports detailing strings of unsolved murders where the victims had their hearts cut out. one was 52 years ago. the other was 100 years ago. and because there are aztecs (?) involved, kolchak immediately suspects pepe torres or someone connected with the hotel. why else would there be a mummified body in the basement? well actually, he kinda has a point on that one.

there's a scene where kolchak visits the mexican consulate and ends up speaking with the commercial attache, who happens to be the only one in the building (um...okay) and doesn't know a damn thing about mexican history and culture (weird) and apparently doesn't even know where a person could go to find out that sort of thing (really?). but he does spit out the name of a professor rodriguez who might be able to help. this scene was a waste of several minutes. i'll never get that time back.

you know who else won't get his time back? over-officious officer lyons. he pulled over in his patrol car to help a woman with car trouble. instead he ended up with people-in-chicken-suit problems. you don't want those problems.

knowing that he didn't want any of those problems, kolchak visits professor rodriguez, who was trying to get his swerve on at a faculty party. carl is more third wheel than wingman. especially when he's asking about the aztec ritual of cutting out hearts. that's sort of a turnoff. what follows is a crash course through ancient aztec religion involving a lot of names that are hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. here's the poop: there's a warrior god that rises up every 52 years looking for blood sacrifices in preparation for a new aztec millennium beginning in 2027. (those guys with "the end is near" signs are getting closer.) but he can be stopped by the appearance of venus in the sky. or something like that. i checked out for a minute. but something about 12:10 a.m. was mentioned.

other important part: it was never five sacrifices. it was four sacrifices and a willing participant. that willing participant was usually a handsome young man who's given everything he could ever want for one year -- women, weed, weather and other things not in kendrick lamar rap songs. all of which sounds sorta like how pepe torres is living.

there's still the little trick of figuring out where the bird-persons are going to do their murderin'. remember when i told you to put a pin in that bit about finding the heart on the stairs? this is where you'll need it. there's some jazz about the killers putting the heart a certain number of steps away from the body based on what day of the month it is. five steps on the 5th. nine on the 9th. apparently the final killing happens on the tallest staircase in town. which is at the stadium.

in a town with the sears tower.

***thinking face emoji***

i have no time to quibble with this episode anymore.

kolchak sneaks into "stadium" and skulks around until he finds pepe, dressed in aztec garb and getting ready for the ceremony. and by "getting ready" i mean he was sipping something out of a big chalice. maybe it was lean. maybe this is where the rappers got it. i'm going to start going through lil wayne's liner notes to see if he lists kolchak: the night stalker as an influence. kolchak interrupts the sizzurp sizzipping with an exhortation for pepe not to go through with it.

but pepe's eyes are open. poor and brown is a tough way to grow up in 1975 chicago. or 2017 chicago for that matter. his prospects were dead, in jail or being a "boxboy". he's just had the greatest year of his life. now he's ready to hold up his end of the bargain. plus the birdpersons promised to take care of his mom for the rest of her life. provided, y'know, kooky murderous people dressed up like giant birds keep their word about that sort of thing. this sounds like a potential job for charlie kelly, attorney at birdlaw.

suddenly more birdpeople swoop in and capture kolchak. and bring him to watch the ceremony.

okay. hoooooooool' up. you're bringing an extra witness to a murder? why? so he can notarize the death certificate? help me understand what's going on here.

after some pomp and circumstance, pepe bugs out at the last minute and runs away. birdpeople give chase. mummy arises from coffin (who even knew it was there?) and swings a sword at kolchak. whiff. kolchak stumbles down the stairs and walks around looking punch drunk. the time is 12:08. the reporter looks behind him and...

MUMMY WITH A SWORD!

swing and a miss. 12:10. mummy collapses. everyone goes home happy. except pepe. he ended up as a boxboy downstate. thanks for nothing, kolchak.

reporter's notebook

i'm pretty sure erik estrada found a way to bottle his essence and pass it to the parents of wilmer valderrama.

you might have recognized the taxidermist as boss hogg. i thought he looked weird standing up then wondered if he was always seated in the dukes of hazzard. a quick google search proved me wrong.

updyke update: ron was in two distinct scenes this week. though he only spoke in one. the other involved some slow-developing gag about leaving a taxidermied bird on his desk. it sucked.

"stadium" in this instance bears a striking resemblance to the great western forum in inglewood. it's almost like a los angeles-based production didn't have the budget to fly to chicago or something.

quote of the week

"mr. torres? isn't it obvious? he's in charge of the flute." - tillie jones

i thought this was a sex joke. until he showed up with a flute.

next week on kolchak: the night stalker: kolchak investigates a series of murders committed with ancient weapons.