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Saturday, June 21, 2008
THE DARKNESS COMES
Everything on the street had changed. Atlanta was not crazy about hippies in the area and had tried various methods to keep the onslaught of thousands of Southern outcasts, the curious and teenyboppers from flooding the small area we lived in.There were times when police returned to the tactics of the depression in dealing with us. In the depression folks were discouraged from entering states looking for work that wasn't there, now the city was trying to figure out what to do with the hippies on the way and were trying to discourage people from moving into the area. I learned really quick to have my fake ID on me at all times but it was getting tiring. I still remember the night I was eating dinner in a restaurant, as cops entered and asked every long hair for their ID. The fun was slipping away.
What did I have to show for it? A pocketful of sunshine. The warmth and camaraderie of the community had outlasted the hippie areas in other parts of the world, here was this last enclave that was just beginning to be hit by speed, crime and the police.
It was like this, dig, I needed a place to crash because I was cross town and had awakened from smoking Vietnamese pot in a bong, so I went out to catch the bus, which I discovered hours before had stopped running. A fellow longhair walked by, I told him my predicament and he offered me a place to crash. Only thing was he was on his way to his girlfriends, so he handed me his keys and pointed out where he lived so I could crash on the couch.
What had pulled us together like this?
We had been beaten, some girls raped, The Bird office had been shot at. This cloud was passing over all of us. It was a change that drifted across the community in fact the entire country and it had a name. MANSON.
The press and the prosecution had a field day comparing all hippies to Manson, all LSD users to murderers, all long hairs to dangerous thugs.
As a child I had first seen Sharon Tate on an episode of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and let me tell you she was so beautiful it was obvious to me this was a special girl. Found stabbed to death over 14 times after begging for her life and her unborn baby, I couldn't believe anyone would destroy anything so lovely,
Sharon Tate would have been the first star to pose pregnant years before Demi Moore or Britney, unfortunately this picture was taken the day of the murder.
The Manson arrest and newspaper trial had become a trial of a generation. Us.
As a child I first saw Sharon Tate on TV and was amazed. All girls weren't like my mom!
And they had it all to use against us. Beatles records. Drugs. Sex. New Age beliefs. Communes.Hippies. Revolution. Ecology. Being against the war. EVERYTHING. President Nixon voiced his belief the Manson family were all guilty and almost forced an end to the trial with his reckless talk.
I was use to being asked for my ID, but now the cops remembered my name and called it when they asked for me. They watched me, like now they were on to us all. And the press churned the stories out. Manson had brought dead birds back to life, the press babbled, hippies were getting instructions for revolution from Beatles music. LSD had turned a generation insane.
And they made a mistake that would later come back to haunt them. Somehow it wasn't just the fear of maybe 3% of young people. Somehow it became all young people. the tourists who filled their cars and came to look at us found themselves pulled over if they were young. By beginning to treat all young people as the same enemy, they were laying the seeds that would turn demonstrations from several hundred to hundreds of thousands.
Did I realize this all then? I had begun to think about the war, the change in the streets, but had yet to find my voice. My voice was coming, and it would make a loud boom in Atlanta and even nationally. For now I was happy to have free love and enjoy my days and nights. Part of me wondered what love was like, but not enough to stop the fun.
One night, sitting in front of Atlantis Rising a stunning woman I had never seen before walked by with long blond hair and I said, "Hey chick, what's happening?". She turned, walked over to me pointing her finger in my face and said, "Don't you ever call me chick again", and walked away. My buddies sitting next to me cracked up, but I was wondering what the button was she was wearing meant. It looked like a fist coming out of the women's symbol.
I had no way of knowing, but the party was coming to an end. Her accent sounded odd to me, a pal said it was a Boston accent. I chalked up her comment to Northern rudeness. Everyone said chick, even chicks, and the line had helped me get laid before! My reasoning did not see what was coming.
I picked up the newspaper at the Krispy Kreme and saw an article that might just give me a focus. The article was about Buddy Holly, one of my heroes and the studio in Clovis, New Mexico that his band still owned and recorded at. In fact, they were quoted as saying they had tapes of loads of Buddy and The Crickets and I thought this would make a great article. Hitchhike to Clovis and get the story, use it to get a job writing for an underground newspaper. I had to get hold of Sandy the hooker and the AWOL soldier and begin the journey with them to New Orleans during Mardis Gras.
At the time the plan seemed easy..............
Posted at 09:52 am by Psychomike
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008
PUNK ROCK, ART GIRL, MY FIRST STALKER
Occasionally I do finish a story, like the story of Art Girl. http://subgeniusslack.blogdrive.com/archive/9.html It has taken awhile, but here's the story. When punk hit I was blown away. Although it wasn't covered by publications like ROLLING STONE, it was huge in fanzines- fan based music publications.
Because mainstream music mags wanted nothing to do with the music, fanzines filled the void. Like the beginnings of the hippie music scene that started at art schools (and the military as so many musicians from David Crosby and Jimi Hendrix had been in the military), to bands like the Stones and Who earlier (all from art schools or had members in them) punk would meld into the art world and I helped bring it to Chicago.
When I heard that Patti Smith, then a New York poet dating a member of Blue Oyster Cult would be in town to sing on their encore numbers (she actually wrote a few of their songs) I got tickets. None of my friends at the Art Institute knew who she was, had seen her books of poetry, or had much interest in a heavy metal band.
She kept the light open, all night long
For me to come home, and sing her my song
Oh Debbie Denise was true to me
She'd wait by the window, so patiently
And I'd come on home with my hair hanging down
She'd pin it up, and softly smile
But I was out rolling with my band
And I was out rolling with my band
I never realized, she was so undone
I didn't suspect she had no life of her own
She was so true but she was a she
She was just there I would just come
Stumbling in she'd show me she'd care
I didn't care cause she was just there
But I was out rolling with my band
And I was out rolling with my band
I wouldn't come home for weeks at a time
She wouldn't accept that she was free
Oh Debbie Denise was true to me
She'd wait by the window so bitterly
Wanting me to come close, I guess I noticed
I couldn't see, so what could I say
That more affection could I show her
I had only one thing on my mind
When I come to her, she'd pin back my hair
And out past the fields out the window I'd stare
Where I was out rolling with my band
I was out rolling with my band
BLUE OYSTER CULT AND PATTI SMITH
The Art Institute was a mix of hippies and Nam era vets. I had actually been a hippie and was tired of the way that scene degenerated, had taken to wearing biker jackets to school and ordering bootleg punk shows from NYC on cassette tapes. The UK with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren beckoned and their new take on clothes beckoned.
I knew there was an alternative to arena rock and disco, and I knew it would hit hard. As word spread through the school that I knew about this "movement" from the fashion department to painting, people started to come up to talk to me around the school. That was how I met Art Girl. She was married to a security guard and had invited me over after her husband went to work. When I showed up she was in her nighties and began kissing me at the door and this routine would continue for weeks.
That's when she told me she was being blackmailed into having sex with a black guy she had previously fucked into having sex with her and she asked if I could scare him off. For the kind of sex we were having, I said yes. To show how naive I was about a real relationship, there were no warning flags on the field - married, blackmailed, seeing her after her husband left for work, zero.
When I did finally get a warning signal I was talked out of it. I went to Le Mere Viper, a Puerto Rican lesbian bar that one night a month began having punk music nights an hour earlier than I was supposed to and she was making out with some guy. I turned to leave, she followed me down the street and talked her way out of it. Or I guess, told me what I wanted to hear to ignore what I saw. She told me she loved me. She was willing to divorce her husband, and did.
I had more sex than Hugh Hefner's total- before I was 18. I had become somewhat in demand as Art Institute girls began hearing that I actually knew what I was doing (there is a famous tale of me banging a girl I picked up in the cafeteria in a room that students smoked pot in, some dozen students walked in to catch me in the act!),
but I knew less than zero about love.
I met Art Girls best friend Junkie Girl. For some reason, people into heroin never liked me. When Junkie Girl found out I was at college on scholarships she confronted me, saying that if she were poor she'd never admit it, and I must have no shame. This, for winning scholarships! She would send letters to the press when they covered the things I was doing claiming everything from me having AIDS to being a school bus driver responsible for the deaths of kids in Indiana ( I don't drive). For years this went on, as she endeavored to "expose me". God only knows what the press thought. Long after Art Girl and I were through, for quite a few years, she circulated letters spreading absurd crap about me.
Art Girl had a couple of surprises for me.
The last two years I was in school I taught for salary - I was teaching students who were my fellow students. Not bad for a kid that went through the admissions process three times with nothing in my portfolio but a three minute film. Stan Brakhage, Ken Anger and John Schofill intervened to get me admitted. Brakhage actually threatened to quit teaching unless I was admitted!
This only got many students and Professors angry at me. Before I graduated, three museums had purchased my underground film, ORGASM.
I was going to Don Seidan's graduating class party and at the last second Art Girl suddenly said she had a headache and couldn't go. She gave me a drink and when I got to the party I became violently ill- in front of the graduating students. Though we lived just a few blocks from the party, Art Girl was too busy to come get me. I passed out on Don's bed. Not a very good impression.
A few weeks later, an artist named Montana who was dating a doctor contacted me and said her boyfriend was having an affair with Art Girl, and they had drugged me so they could rendezvous. She had heard them on the phone. I got home and threw her out barefoot in below zero weather.
A couple of weeks later, she enticed me back. Without telling anyone, she begged forgiveness and started seeing me for sex again.
Two months later, we were to go on a boat party and walked to the river to board. She told me these words I will never forget:
I AM GETTING MARRIED IN TWO WEEKS. BUT DON'T WORRY, I CAN STILL SEE YOU EVERY WEEK.
There was no way to describe the devastation. Funny thing was, it wasn't to the Doctor!
Everyone was getting played with Art Girl.
I walked away with tears streaming down my face.
To this day, people from the early punk days still tell me she was the one, that they all thought she was the one I'd marry. That she was so nice and cool.
I guess she fooled them, too. I lost my chance to teach as a result of her antics. People I thought were friends were elated over me being brought down several notches.
She went into fashion for several years, and then switched careers.
SHE BECAME AN ARTS TEACHER! The career she denied me.
Posted at 02:02 pm by Psychomike
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Monday, September 01, 2008
HOW TO SPEAK HIP
Released in 1959, this album captures the underground comedians at their early best and manages to both lampoon and accurately encapsulate the difference between hip and square society at the time. Unlike other mean-spirited comedy takes on the beatnik craze (Allan Sherman's "The Rebel" springs to mind), Close and Brent's satire was close to the truth because they truly were bohemian spirits. John Brent wrote poetry and honed his "Geets Romo" character (also known as "Huey the Hipster") while acting in a Jules Feiffer play. Del Close was an actor and poetry director at the Gaslight. And they both became well-known as being early members of Chicago's Second City.
Even though Del Close plays the square reporter on How To Speak Hip, he went on to live one of the most exciting (and hyperbolic) lives in comedy history. He befriended, worked with, and quite often did copious amounts of drugs with the likes of Lenny Bruce, Wavy Gravy, Frank Zappa, Tiny Tim, the Grateful Dead, and the Merry Pranksters. Hear the album here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/08/how-to-speak-hi.html
Posted at 11:50 pm by Psychomike
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Thursday, October 02, 2008
1970: AS THE WORLD TURNS!
DRIVING INTO NEW ORLEANS; MARDIS GRAS!
It has been quite a while since I wrote on my hitchhiking across America story. You can catch the preludes here :
Well folks I've been working on a play THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE that I've been too swamped to get over here. Hitchhiking across country was a means of transportation those days and plenty of people would pick you up. In some cities like LA and San Francisco people waited in lines of at times over 100 people waiting for a ride. There were dangers, but when you're young you don't think you can run into them. I had no idea I'd be hitchhiking out of New Orleans!
So I hopped in the van with my new found pals and we drove towards New Orleans. Smoking joints and drinking along the way. America was in shock over the Manson murders and there had even been a copy cat murder when a soldier would kill his wife and kids- and blame hippies. 1969 had a huge film event that touched all of us, the movie EASY RIDER http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tuUG6dLv4 which also tapped into the anger people were feeling towards us and all hippies I suppose immediately identified with. At the start of 1970 American flag jackets and shirts began to appear, the wandering lust was calling out to us.
James MacDonald would wipe out his family and blame hippies, but the cops investigating him doubted his story of a hippie killer clan, even after Manson.
Mick Jagger had paid a fine for pot possession.
The Chicago 7 had been cleared of conspiring to riot at the convention. The cops knee shows who was rioting:
BLACK SABBATH had put out an album which suddenly showed up in vans on 8 track all over America.
The Mai Lai Massacre indictments showed America a side of war it had never seen before:
Dead children was too much for even the Army to take
and Americans looked at pictures and began to wonder what we were trying to win. The one two punch had felt the first blow, Kent State would be the second.
It was a interesting time! The Chinese by the way, call "interesting times" a curse, as in, "May you live in interesting times" is not delivered with a smile!
We pulled into New Orleans and I couldn't believe it, the fog was drifting through the streets. It was a scene out of an old Jack the Ripper movie, the buildings looked old and we got out at the building we were to stay at. It was a office building, but it was clean and big and had showers and toilets. In keeping with the priorities of the day, we decided to trip that night! We walked into the city each going our own ways after writing the address and streets of where we were staying down. The keys were to be left in the mailbox and returned there by each person.
I journeyed into the new city tripping and came upon a guy selling a tourist paper. I talked to him, Carlos I'll call him, and he took me to his home. Here we smoked pot, I found out he published the paper which was mostly bar ads for tourists in for Mardis Gras and the first thing he told me as he rolled up a joint surprised me. He told me not to be on the streets at the end of Mardis Gras because the police would sweep through, arrest all hippies and put them to work to clean!
Life under Jim Garrison!
Not even Atlanta ever did anything like that, but I found out later he wasn't kidding.
I had made my first friend in New Orleans, and he was a writer! That morning I walked back to where we were, and passed by a coffee and beignets and heard a woman scream. I looked over and saw a woman dressed in a business dress yelling at two redneck cops that the person she was with was here on business. He was on the ground in a suit and tie, as the two cops beat him first with their fists and then their clubs. They beat him into the streets and looked right up at me and told me to get the hell out and I did.
I headed back to my place thinking about the difference between what I had been taught America was like, and what it was really like.
Posted at 08:30 pm by Psychomike
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
ON THE ROAD
When I got back to the storefront in New Orleans I was confronted by Danny. It seems after I left Atlanta my crew cutted Dad had gone to where I lived and asked my roommates if I was around. Stoned, they mistook my dad bringing me my comic book collection- for a cop. I had no idea what Danny was talking about when he said the cops were looking for me in Atlanta, handed me a bag with about 1/3 of the LSD and pot I had found and told me I'd have to stay somewhere else. I was shell shocked, and headed over to the writers pad.
I told him I had just lost my pad and he quickly offered me his. He didn't even ask why I had lost it, those were the days. He told me he was going to be selling papers in front of a concert venue and we could check out the band. They were called Z.Z. Top and tickets were $2. I had never heard of them but he said that all the bands playing at the venue were cool, and it was a great way to meet other hippies in the area. I looked through the papers he had, and found a copy of Rolling Stone when I caught a story about one of my heroes, Buddy Holly. It seems his band had a recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico and many tapes of them rehearsing and working on songs. I got the idea to go to Clovis and interview them for the paper, listen to some unreleased tracks and tapes of how they worked together. First however, I had to check out Mardis Gras.
Z.Z. Top before they had the long beards!
We quickly sold out of papers to the New Orleans hippies going to see Z.Z. Top and joined them inside this warehouse building. I don't remember the opening act, but I had a great time watching Z.Z. Top as the smell of reefer permeated the hall. Joints came at us from every direction until I couldn't smoke anymore. People didn't just pass a joint to their date or immediate friends in those days, the joint would disappear into the crowd! If someone held on to it while speed rapping someone would say, "Don't Bogart that joint" and the joint would continue on its way.
Mardis Gras has the biggest crowds at the end but for almost two weeks leading up to it there are all kinds of parades and events. Mardis Gras was a drinking party, it seemed like everywhere I went women- straight women(!) were flashing their breasts for beads. People were throwing up in the streets. Fights were breaking out over nothing. It was a great time.
Mardis Gras itself I was told was a pre-Christian celebration, a fertility party based on the Lupercus celebrations in ancient Rome. Those were drunken street orgies that were followed up by 40 days of fasting. One night walking home I decided I needed to take a leak and couldn't wait, so I turned into an alley only to see a half dozen couples having sex standing up against the wall! Give me that old time religion!
The Christians gave up trying to get converted pagans to stop the party and named the period foremerly known as the fast, Lent.
When otherwise newly uptight Christians discovered they could get away with drunkeness and orgies the practice spread throught Europe. In England the noblemen would hand out cakes and dubloons to the poor, which is how we got the King Cake and beads for boobs.
When the French owned Louisianna they were appalled at the "drunken orgys" and banned the party. Once they sold the state, the Creoles convinced the government to re-instate it. Originally, they wanted to do it all year long, but that was asking a lot!
The floats in the parades are unreal- they are created by krewes as they are called, and can be racist, silly, sexy, and fun. Or at least that's the way it was in 1970.
Mardis Gras was and remains an open celebration of lust.
To get arrested you had to really go out of your way in those early days of the celebration, smoking a joint would suffice. So I'd get wasted until I left the pad for the Bourbon Street area. It didn't take long for me to find the hippie chicks, strippers and straight girls who wondered what sex with a hippie was like. Once again I was scoring every day to my roommates astonishment.
One incident made me decide I should move on. I went to the strippers parade and found myself in a crowd so packed my feet were off the sidewalk. I was being held up in mid-air, and if I had fainted, I had no idea who would be able to pick me up. It was a scary experience, and I was starting to get tired of the drinking and crowds which were only growing larger. After the parade I sat on the sidewalk to gather my wits, and a young woman came up to me and asked me my name.
"Flash", I said, which was my hippie name in Atlanta. She was gorgeous, but dressed in what I would call straight clothes. She did however have a cleft in her chin and dimples on her cheeks, a look that still gets to me. She invited me to see a movie with her! Well, this seemed cool, until she told me it was a Barbra Streisand movie. Getting laid was pretty easy in The Big Easy, so I said no! She asked me what kinds of films hippies liked, I said I wasn't a hippie (all hippies said that), and how about going to my pad to smoke a joint and listen to some music?
She confessed she hadn't smoked a joint before, so, OK!
We got to the pad and my apartment mate was gone and started smoking pot. By the third joint I was locking lips and blowing the smoke in my mouth into hers. For the first time and last time in my life, we started fucking to Simon and Garfunkles BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER. She selected it, don't blame me! We hung out for a day and a night, I told her my plan to go to Clovis, and she asked if she could come along! I said yes, she quit her job over the phone, and we were going to drive to Clovis. That next day!
She left and a couple of hours later my roommate came home and told me to come outside and watch what was going on. We walked carefully outside and peaked around a corner. There I saw about 30 hippies under arrest and being put in police wagons. Some were saying they weren't vagrants and were staying at hotels. One showed a cop his room key, the cop took it, threw it down on the ground and said that now the hippie was a vagrant! I decided I was getting out while the getting was good.
She made good her promise, and showed up in her car the next day. I said goodbye to my writer friend, rubbed my lucky quarter for good luck, and off we went.
I finally asked her what her last name was.
Posted at 09:50 am by Psychomike
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Sunday, November 09, 2008
DEL GETS SMART
Del drifted in and out of sleep as the sound of a siren, a woman on the rocks, filled his eyes. Was she a mermaid? Then came a loud piercing ring, he opened his eyes.
The second alarm of three had gone off. Usually he would have waited for the third but today was a big day. He sat up, cut off the two alarms, and lit a cig. He looked around the room until he saw the third alarm waiting to go off. Before it could, he rose out of bed and walked over to shut it off. Time to shower and shave, grab some coffee, and head to the studio. He carried his cig into the shower and thought about what his agent had told him.
If he pulled this off, he would have a sizable weekly paycheck as a recurring character on GET SMART the wildly successful show created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks. He had feelings of anxiety mixed with excitement as he put out his cig and dried himself off.
Anxiety is a feeling all actors know. The smart ones know how to use it, the not so bright ones let it panic them. To be an actor is to go against everything we are taught, the biggest fears most people have, speaking in public and looking for work, an actor has to do all the time.
Del got to the studio straighter than he'd been in years and ready to work. He walked into the stage building and noticed a cluster of women chatting all at once excited and overly expressive. He asked the guard what was going on and was told there was secret special guest due on the set and everyone was trying to find out who it was.
Del knew it wasn't him, and wondered if some past star was going to be trying out for his role, too. He assured himself that he was a huge James Bond fan, knew the role of Q in the film series, and could toast anyone else trying out for the satirical version of the role.
Upon entering on his way to the dressing room he saw Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, excited and glancing at each person coming in. They looked at Del, then quickly looked away.
Del got his clothes and headed over to hair and makeup where all the girls were speculating on who was coming. He walked out after they makeupped him and was led to a set with Don Adams and his TV boss Edward Platt who were engrossed in discussing how exciting the secret star was going to be. Del looked for the director, but his assistant was directing the scene. He asked about a rehearsal and said he had questions about his character but was told there was no time for that- they had to shoot "and get this scene over with as fast as possible".
Del wasn't at all happy with the scene, or the preoccupation of the cast on the special guest. The scene was over way too fast. There weren't a lot of takes.
Del took his clothes back to wardrobe and put his own clothes back on. He knew he hadn't done well, and knew no one was paying any attention to him at all.
As he walked out of the building the guest star entered.
JOHNNY CARSON!
Actors have to overcome a lot. That fate, circumstance or even getting a break is outside the realm of their abilities and that means they have little control over whether they make it or not. Actors can put obstacles in their way, the ones who fail usually do, but even those who are gung ho can be undone by - well, a special guest appearing on a show.
With the wrong girlfriend.
With too much booze or drugs.
Without money to keep going.
With the flutter of a butterflies wings.
Posted at 09:20 am by Psychomike
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
We pause now from the story that never seems to end to present - my new show ad:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE: THE CHRISTMAS EDITION!
Put the X back into X-Mas this December when THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE: The X-Mas Edition, pops up at The Liar's Club, 1665 W Fullerton, 773- 665- 1110. NO RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED, DOORS OPEN AT 8:00 PM, SHOW STARTS PROMPTLY AT 8:15. Admission is $10. THIS SPECIAL CHRISTMAS EDITION will run for 6 performances only. YOU MUST BE 21 OR OVER TO ATTEND. Dec 5,6, 12, 13, 19, 20 ONLY!
The Iroquois Theater Fire within twenty minutes, claimed 602 lives on December 30, 1903. There is no sign to honor the dead all these years later, in THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE you will relive the panic and horror of the audience trapped inside the theater. That is just one of the many Chicago area supernatural stories you'll discover in the show, which will also contain the Pagan origins of Christmas! LET'S PUT THE X BACK INTO X-MAS!
THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE ran to standing room only crowds at The Liar's Club- you don't want to miss this unusual theatre experience - where the entire bar is the stage, in the Special Christmas Edition! This Christmas show is not for kids!
Christmas Fears!
THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE- CHRISTMAS EDITION IS COMING!
Because the terror doesn't end on Halloween........
Friday and Saturday Nights
Liar's Club
Dec 5,6, 12, 13, 19, 20 ONLY!
8PM Doors open, 8:15 show $10
http://ghosthunter.blogdrive.com
Posted at 09:11 am by Psychomike
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Thursday, November 27, 2008
COCAINE ALL AROUND MY BRAIN
Ev'ry time my baby an' me we go uptown Police come an' they knock me down -- Cocaine, all around my brain.
Hey, baby, won't you come here quick;
This old cocaine is 'bout to make me sick --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
Yonder come my baby, she's dressed in red,
She's got a shotgun, says she's gonna kill me dead --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
Hey, baby, will you come here quick;
This old cocaine 'bout to make me sick --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
You take Sally, an' I take Sue,
Ain't no difference between the two --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
Hey, baby, ya better come here quick;
This ol' cocaine 'bout to make me sick --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
Cocaine's for horses, an' it's not for men,
Doctors say they kill you, but it doesn't say when --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
Hey, baby, ya better come here quick;
This old cocaine 'bout to make me sick --
Cocaine, all around my brain.
- Traditional
So Louisiana Chick and I are in a motel room and we traded some smoke for blow and its 2 am and she is trying to move the furniture around for the third time to make it right and talking about the war and it has to be over oil right, I mean, why else would we be there, and Nixon said he'd end the war but he didn't and wouldn't the TV be better over here than there.
Me I get all quiet on cocaine and just shrug.
She looks at the couch, let's move it over here that will make the room right, man am I glad there is no fridge in the room and we do another line though neither of us really needs to and she catches her breath and says what's the kinkiest thing you ever did in bed she asks me and I say sleep and we both laugh there will be no sleep tonight and the clock is moving so damn slow.
"Why don't we lay out lines on a mirror and have sex and do the lines while we have sex" I say and wow she says and in 2 seconds she's naked and we're both sniffing and I don't even think there is room for more coke in our nose but here we go she does a line as I explore every inch of her pussy and I'm precise and not one crease or fold is unlicked.
My turn and I do a line and she starts at my toes and licks and nibbles her way up my leg, the inner part of my leg and I'm covered in goosebumps she hasn't even made it to my dick yet when I see her pick up a line of coke with the biz card of hers and carefully pour the powder on my dick only part of it rolls off because it isn't ground up enough and she catches it and then licks the coke off. My cock that is.
She holds up the mirror and I do a line and her mouth is warm and wet and I close my eyes.....
Music. We should have music on!
Cut on the radio I mumble and she gets up and does but there's some preacher on so she changes the channel
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A,
Say M,
Say E,
Say R,
Say I,
C,
Say A,
N,
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don't come hangin' around my door
I don't wanna see your face no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin' old with you
,
American woman, listen what I say.
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don't come knockin' around my door
Don't wanna see your shadow no more
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else's eyes
Now woman, I said get away
American woman, listen what I say.
American woman, said get away
American woman, listen what I say
Don't come hangin' around my door
Don't wanna see your face no more
I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else's eyes
Now woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be.
Go, gotta get away, gotta get away
Now go go go
Gonna leave you, woman
Gonna leave you, woman
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
You're no good for me
I'm no good for you
Gonna look you right in the eye.
Tell you what I'm gonna do
You know I'm gonna leave
You know I'm gonna go
You know I'm gonna leave
You know I'm gonna go, woman
I'm gonna leave, woman
Goodbye, American woman
Goodbye, American chick
Goodbye, American broad ...
(Bachman-Cummings-Kale-Peterson)
What the fuck is that I say. We are blown away by this song and we fall into each others arms, stopping only to do lines and I leave my autograph on her face,
I try to sleep but she's moving the table light and the chair.
Got to get it just right. She asks me where we're going and I say Clovis, New Mexico.
Posted at 02:49 pm by Psychomike
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Friday, December 12, 2008
RIP BETTIE PAGE, ARTHUR C. CLARKE, FORREST J. ACKERMAN.
Remembering Bestoink Dooley, too!
I think there are two ways of knowing that you are getting older. One is that you can see the sign in bars that says IF YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THIS DATE AND YEAR WE WON'T SERVE YOU and you remember whom you were sleeping with that date, the other is that those older than you that influenced your life start dying.
Forrest J. Ackerman, Arthur C.Clarke and Bettie Page have all passed away in 2008. One published monster mags, one began his writing career writing in pulp magazines, one posed for pictures that the government ordered destroyed danced in burlesque and posed for fetish photography. These three seem to have nothing in common but they do, each did what was considered to be "trash" at the time they began. Each would be elevated far beyond that dismissal before they died.
Television in the 1960's had become a classroom for film. The Three Stooges shorts once seen at a movie theater every several months were now on TV on a daily basis. Horror movies starring Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi and many others were everywhere, often on TV shows with horror hosts. In Atlanta we had Bestoink Dooley whose show followed the news and he would often interrupt the weather to clown around with the weatherman.
I would wait for my parents to fall asleep and get up quietly to watch Bestoink, I was only caught once when I fell asleep during FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN and my parents caught me n the couch the next morning! I would meet Bestoink, aka George Ellis at the Festival Cinema and was able to see Andy Warhol's CHELSEA GIRLS, Kenneth Anger's FIREWORKS and I dated one of the beautiful girls that worked there. She had to audition for Russ Meyer and I met Russ for the first time. Years later I was the judge and host at The Limelight for a LEAVE IT TO CLEAVAGE contest and reminded him of our first meting. He was stunned, and remembered me, but thought she was baby sitting me. He took me to the bar and ordered me three Bombay and tonics in a row and said any kid who was dating girls like that at 12 he had his hat off to! He would come back several years later for his birthday party hosted by myself,girls from an all girl band called HOT HEELS, and co-host Roger Ebert!
You can read Roger's intro to the event and my onstage interview with Russ here:
I was being exposed to horror and science fiction movies and wanted to know more about them, who the people were in them, anything I could. I even had the Aurora monster models that I would paint and glue together. My room was becoming a shrine to monster movies. I bought a six sheet poster for THE MOLE PEOPLE made for billboards and that covered one wall of my room. My models were on shelves and tabletops.
Funny how my love for horror films would lead me to the 60's film rebellion from the underground here and to the terrific foreign films coming out at the same.
Then I saw a copy of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, and discovered not only the back stories to the movies I loved ( the 1933 KING KONG remains my favorite film), but started promoting the films ad actors myself. I hand printed a fanzine called FLORES' INFERNO and would rent it out for a nickle for fellow students to read.
There is no way to know how many parents took one look at FAMOUS MONSTERS and threw the magazine out. The kids who read it however, would often go on to create films and books. John Landis,Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and many others would acknowledge his influence on them. Beneath the puns was a wealth of information, respect and love for the films considered trash by the general public and serious critics.
For the longest time horror and sci-fi films were only came out for kids n the summer and Halloween. Ackerman began the change so that today film subjects once considered trash now dominate the film market year round, with huge budgets and major stars. Here's a toast to the Ackermonster.
Arthur C. Clarke started in the penny a word pulp market writing for magazines like ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, GALAXY and others. I loved his writing with its almost mystical approach to technology. Clarke himself was an atheist, but for many hippies watching 2001 he had made a scientific advance come across like a mystical trip.
I was a student at the Art Institute and was living in Hyde Park. I learned he was going to be at the University of Chicago to speak and after his lecture on satellites I asked him about 2001. He quickly dismissed me, and said he wasn't there to talk about it and he was tired of talking about it. The students in the hall applauded, and when the audience applause and laughter died down I persisted. What did I have to lose? I sat in on classes with Milton Friedman and others, no one noticed I wasn't a student!
I said I had a question that was not about the film in general, but an idea in the film that I felt was relevant today.
That got his attention. The hall grew silent. He relented.
"In the film, the Russians and the U.S. are shown to be allies though you get the feeling they still are wary of each other. How do you think we can reach this point, and do you think we will?", I boldly asked.
Mr. Clarke immediately apologized to me twice. Twice. He then said that was the best question he ever received on the film. Every single student in the room turned around and looked at me.
Then he declined to answer the question due to the political climate in America under Nixon, but he would answer me after the lecture if I'd come forward. After the lecture I shook his hand and he told me to read an article, which turned out to be about how we would become reluctant allies after the fall of the Soviet Union!
For months after students and Professors would come up to me and congratulate me on an outstanding question.
A penny a word writer, whose writing was sometimes adapted for radio on the show X-1, ends up speaking at the U of C. A toast to Arthur C. Clarke.
The range of emotions I have about Bettie are entangled in personal feelings and fan feelings.
I first saw her picture when was 13 at a comic book/ junk shop called Cantrell's in Atlanta. Here she was, tied up and in her undies looking directly at me . I would put Bettie in three of my plays, THE BETTY PAGE STORY, BETTIE PAGE UNCENSORED, and THE GOOD TIME GIRLS.
The first play was THE BETTY PAGE STORY. She had become a recluse and I had only seen 8 plays in my life, so when the producers at The Prop Theater approached me to do a show I jumped at the chance. I had a few story meetings, which ended with Scott going off to buy cocaine, and me leaving. The auditions were to be held at the theatre. What I didn't know was the actors were there hoping to be paid for their last show which had been a huge hit starring Tony Fitzpatrick.
Scott showed up coked up and suddenly announced everyone there was in the show, no audition needed. I was in shock. There were over 20 people there! The actors fell for his ruse as did I, and before we cold finish the script I had loaned him several months rent, for his apartment, and money for a huge gas bill at the theatre. ( He had used kerosene headache causing machines to heat the place!). And money for rent at the theatre. Meanwhile it was all going to drugs, as presumably the last shows money had.
Two weeks before the show opened Tony Fitzpatrick, a terrific artist in town, warned me to not do the show. After 4 months work and thousands paid out, it was kind of late to tell me.
There was no way I'd ever get any of that money back. The show hadn't even opened yet. One night an actor who had done a speedball with Scott, passed out on the couch in the lobby. Scott was sweating and shaking and told me I had to go onstage. To the shock of the cast I entered the stage and performed.
Penn and Teller had flown in for the show. The met us for dinner after, though Scott was too high to go, and they congratulated me for my performance!
Our agreement had called for Scott to pay the actors, the money was going for drugs instead. I got in a fight with him, but I had realized the only people Scott was paying were the musicians and tech people, the actors he had fully bamboozled. So I called the techies, told them what was going on and they refused to work unless the actors got paid. And that I was at the theatre as well. An apology came within minutes and Scott left before the actors got there. It happened quick. The actors never knew what happened.
During rehearsal Scott was awful. I had to figure out a way to get around him and his pompous partner. His partner would lecture the cast on sleeping with each other, but was banging one actress and trying to get others in the show as well. I'd had enough of these clowns and decided to pull a prank. I followed the lead of a fellow prankster JB, and got my hands on a urine specimen jar, label and typed Scott's name on the label, poured apple juice in it, a doctor's name and placed it Jonathon's fridge.
The name I used was Boutrous- Boutrous, the then head of the U.N., I knew actors didn't follow politics and they wouldn't get it.
A couple of days later I got a frantic call from Jonathon, was Scottie OK and why did he leave his urine in his fridge! I played dumb, they decided it had to be one of the actors. For three weeks they did nothing at rehearsal but try to find the culprits, often skipping the rehearsals.
Finally during tech week they called everyone together in a circle and Scott and Jonathon stood in the center. They thought they had guessed who did it. They held up the bottle looking at a confused actor and Scotty asked, "What's this?", I stepped forward, opened the bottle and drank from it. Then I said, "It tastes like urine". I laughed, they looked shocked, I explained the prank to the cast.
Some years later, and after I learned Scott had used me as the excuse not to pay actors as he had his former girlfriend to not pay Tony and the others in his previous show (to this day actors ask me when they will be paid for Bettie, I tell them to ask Scotty and also ask him when I'm getting back my money for his drugs, I mean rent). They never get it.
That play however became a critics hit. It would also destroy an 11 year loving relationship, but that story I'll get back to. Including the story of my drunken late night call to Penn that would scare him. He doesn't drink, and has never been dunk. Never do a late night drunk call to a tee totaller! More on that later.
Walking on North Avenue one day Scott ran out and hugged me. I didn't know whether to hit him and the first thing he said to me was we had to work together. This time would it be different. I could pick the play, direct it alone, pick the cast. He loved my work and wanted me to do more.
This was very odd as Scott and Jonathon were bad mouthing me all over the place.
He wanted to do a meeting right then and there, but I had a meeting to go to.
On the walk back I saw a frantic Scott, pleading with a sheriff as he was evicted from the theatre.
A couple of years later a Hollywood pal of his would have Scott pick up a rented car to drive to get him from a set. He warned Scott not to use the car to buy drugs but Scott drove off to find drugs, got wasted and was in a car accident leaving the actor with a huge bill for the car. Call it carma!
My Bettie experiences will be coming up a lot including my phone call with her, Playboy putting me on cable and in the magazine, and the actress I discovered in a brothel, the botching of the movie by an egotistic producer- there is much more coming. But for now, a toast to Bettie Page, a fetish model and burlyq dancer whose obituary ended up in the New York Times!
Life is like that.
Posted at 11:26 am by Psychomike
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
VIETNAM DOMINATED EVERYTHING, JANE FONDA
Ladies and gentlemen I'd like you to meet our cast, I think you'll enjoy these mementos of an era. Merry Christmas and enjoy.:
Bonnie and Clyde, Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg
Riots
Night of The Living Dead
Vietnam dominated everything
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
The Allman Brothers, with Duane
Jerry Lewis, here with drummer Buddy Rich
Protests began
Aleister Crowley
Robert McNamara
Rosemary's Baby
LSD, Timothy Leary
Madame Ngo Ninh Nhu gives a startling response to the Buddhist monks' self-immolations to protest the Diem government in 1963.
her bio
The Wild Bunch
Music before riots
Bob Hope
Films showing up on TV after not being released for years suddenly grabbed audiences and re-started many careers. Then theaters opened that only did revivals of old films- and college walls were adorned with The Three Stooges, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Groucho and oh yeah,Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. But that's a different story
Joey Heatherton
Jane Fonda (first person I cover below)
Chicago riots 1968
Westmoreland
Barbra Steisand
Protest movement
Introducing Jane Fonda
Quote:
You don't know America if you don't know the Jane Fonda cult. Or rather, the anti-Fonda cult. At places where soldiers or former soldiers congregate, there'll be stickers of her likeness on the urinals; one is an invitation to symbolic rape: Fonda in her 1980s 'work-out' costume, her legs splayed, pudenda at the bulls-eye. Every night at lights-out midshipmen at the US Naval Academy cry out 'Goodnight, bitch!' in her honour. They've learned, Carol Burke writes in her study of military folklore, Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane and the High-and-Tight, what you learn at all the service academies: 'that being a real warrior and hating Jane Fonda are synonymous.'[*]When Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built on the Washington Mall, well-organised veterans who criticised it as the 'gook monument' – Lin is Chinese-American – were allowed to open their own kiosks nearby. These became the cult's temples, the places to buy its sacraments and phylacteries; bumper stickers, for example, saying 'Jane Fonda: John Kerry with Tits'. Phyllis Schlafly and Tom Wolfe have both described the memorial wall as a 'monument to Jane Fonda'.
A set of urban legends has sprung up around her visit to Hanoi in the summer of 1972: a prisoner of war, ordered by his captors to describe his 'lenient and humane' treatment to the visiting actress, spat on her instead and was beaten almost into blindness; prisoners secretly gave her their social security numbers to prove their existence to the outside world – Fonda turned the numbers over to their captors and men were supposed to have died from the beatings that followed. The reliability of such tales is suggested by a piece that appeared in the Washington Times, a right-wing daily, in 1989: a former pow, Air Force Major Fred Cherry, recalled Fonda's voice ringing out over the prison public address system during an 'extended torture siege' in 1967. Fonda didn't speak out against the war until 1970.
The cult matured in the 1980s when America finally began to accept that it had lost a war which hadn't been worth fighting in the first place. UNQUOTE
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/perl01_.html
I don't like Jane, but only because she quit making hot movies like BARBARELLA. I did meet her in her very isolated world (she had stopped communication with men and was with a female folk singer) and I'll get to that eventually.
When she made her stupid trip to Nam she betrayed the soldiers alright- but not the ones you think. Have friends who really hate Jane Fonda?- email them this quiz:
#1: DO YOU BELIEVE WE FOUGHT THE VIETNAM WAR TO WIN? If you say no, guess what? THAT MAKES YOU A PROTESTER TOO!
#2: Barry Goldwater called LBJ out. He said that we were going to Nam and LBJ was lying when he said we weren't. The groundwork was already done. The press attacked Goldwater for calling LBJ a liar. LBJ ran an ad implying Goldwater would nuke Nam. America voted for the peace candidate. LBJ then engineered a fake attack at the Gulf of Tonkin TWICE to send troops in. IS IT OK FOR A PRESIDENT TO FAKE AN ATTACK TO START A WAR? If you say no, guess what? YOU ARE A PROTESTER.
#3. Vietnamization had already impacted he war when Jane went. Less troops were being sent in, and soon torture and murder had stopped in the camps to help along the talks, REMEMBER? ( By the way, We didn't "leave POW's behind", we now know through KGB documents after the fall of Russia, pilots were taken to Russia, interrogated and killed). By the way, LBJ and Nixon knew Russians were involved but never told us. Do any of you have stickers of LBJ and Nixon in your urinal? I mean, please!
#4. Goldwater said if we couldn't win within 1 year he would withdraw all troops because Vietnam had no significance for us.
What would America be like if in 1965 if we had left Nam, again in 1965? WHY AREN'T YOU MAD AT LBJ? Instead of some dumb actress?
#5. When Jane went to Nam it was 60 days before her film F.T.A. was to come out. She had toured near military bases and drawn TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ANTI-WAR SOLDIERS. Soldiers were being sentenced to jail for publishing anti-war papers, holding sit ins and demonstrations. All of them wanted that movie to show what they were doing. After Jane went to Nam, the film was withdrawn by the film studio, and those men's stories were never told. F.T.A. was never released, and those soldiers who risked jail to speak up were betrayed.
#6. What I am about to write is hated by the left and the right. Yet it pertains to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as much as it does Nam. VIETNAM WASN'T OURS TO WIN OR LOSE. Got it? ONLY THE VIETNAMESE COULD WIN OR LOSE NAM. Because we have never faced this, we are repeating the same mistakes all over again.
Posted at 02:15 pm by Psychomike
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