SOCIAL CLIMBING AT JUMBO'S CLOWN ROOM: A TALE OF A FEW STRIPPERS
12/28/06
From-Cole Coonce
It was a couple of hours after the bars and the liquor stores closed and back in the days before 1) punk rock broke and 2) Kurt Cobain's widow got fake hooters and a nose job. Somehow the guitar player from this half-famous new wave band from North Carolina ended up at my house with my new pal Hofer, a new wave drummer from Lincoln, Nebraska who had recently moved out to LA in search of a record contract. We were drinking cheap Mexican beer, smoking sticks and coffin nails, listening to records, and arguing about Camper Van Beethoven. In a non-linear manner, the topic became Alex Cox films...
"Hey man, y'all ever heard of Courtney Love?" the aw-shucks bumpkin guitar player asked. We nodded in the affirmative, and Hofer referenced Jumbo's Clown Room, a stripper bar on Hollywood Boulevard, where Ms. Love did a slinky bump-n-grind for drug money.
"Well then, I gotta' show y'all sump'n," the bumpkin said and began to peel off his shirt.
Proud as a peacock, he shows us some disturbing, striated cuts across his bare back.
"I was in Jumbo's last night to grab a couple of beers and she danced for me and we got to talkin'. I ended up going home with her after her shift ended," he winced. "Shit fire, that gal sho' is a wild one."
"You want some hydrogen peroxide for that?" I asked.
*****
It began -- as it is wont to do -- innocently enough. I was having a drink with a couple of ex-pat Brits who were now living in Los Angeles, editing Rob Reiner movies. They were saying that back in Ol' Sod, they had friends in LA who would tape KCRW's "The Cool and The Crazy" off of the radio for them and then mail them the cassettes via a slow boat across the Atlantic. The Brit's were always curious about the deejay's sign off, which was something to the effect of, "The show's over, folks; now we're going to Jumbo's Clown Room!"
"By absentia, that place has always held an exotic, quintessential place in my heart and mind," one of the Brits told me, as we paid our bar tab and prepared to drive down Hollywood Boulevard to watch chicks squat and climb a greased silver pole for a couple of sawbucks.
I got it, though: Jumbo's was a symbol and a signifier for these guys. A totem. It was like the Hollywood sign or the Capitol Records building or something.
"Or the Matterhorn at Disneyland," he said.
So we went in. It smelled of Listerine and popcorn. A straw-haired dancer dervishly slithered up and down a pole while "Round and Round" by Ratt played over the house sound system. Later, this same lass took our order and then served us watery five-dollar beers.
In some attempt at socio-anthropological discourse, I coughed up the old saw that went "what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"Oh, just trying to stay in shape and make money for tuition."
"You mean that you mount that eight foot silver marital aid in front of strange men for muscle tone and college money?"
"Yeah, well, it's hard to work this place into my schedule because I have another job teaching aerobics and I'm pre-law at UCLA. But this is fun and the money's pretty good."
"Are you sure you're not living with a junkie musician and you're just dropping trou' for strangers in order to keep him in clean needles and bass guitar strings?"
She laughed.
And yes, this UCLA student was living out Camille Paglia's wettest dream: a smart woman using her toothsome and fetching body as a tool of empowerment.
*****
A year or three ago around Thanksgiving time, a friend and I took a cycling trip down the Pacific Coast, out of California and into Mexico. As fate would have it, we ended up bumming around in Tijuana after dark. As proper American turistas, we felt it was our duty to help the local economy, which is this case, meant patronizing a Mexican Gentlemen's Club.
Sundry senoritas made their rounds, cervezas were quaffed and laps were straddled. An olive-skinned missus of prodigious pulchitrude with eyes like moonlit pearls took a liking to my person -- if not my cash flow -- and offered a pair of private lap dances, with the first one free.
At first it was erotic and titillating.... but upon closer and continued contact, it beccame just bizarre, absurd and bathetic as I could smell the dirt and poverty of her native village in her honey hair and across the perfumed nape of her neck. To her credit, this whore/goddess had catapulted her way out of squalor. Was she was probing me for an opening to a better life across the border?
What was I going to do? What would Meta-Feminist Paglia advise? To take the Mexican lap dance to a new life up north, with this sexy Indigent Princess astride my bicycle's handlebars? And what would that better life be? Her raising our bambinos as Good Catholics between her shifts at Jumbo's?
*****
Last Good Friday, after a semi-private screening of Dark Arc, this film starring and directed by Dan Zukovic, a film director and a professional acquaintance who, often as not, lives in the Winona Motel across from the Clown Room. The poster for the movie featured a pull quote from the Independent Film Channel, which blurbed: "(Dark Arc is a) bizarre blend of art, sex and opium... (and) plays like a candy-colored version of David Lynch."
After the screening, there is party for Dark Arc's cast and crew at the Clown Room around 11:30 or so. True to the invite, there is Zukovic, a thin Spock-ish film director flanked by a pasty-faced coterie of asexual indie film producer-types. But that's not all: although the club is half-empty (maybe because it is Good Friday?), there are a smattering of celebretroids in the place, including Dennis Rodman (the cross-dressing basketball player), who has a seat at the bar, with his back to the dancers.
More saliently, there is this guy with a gray Eraserhead pompadour who has a seat at the lip of the stage and is mutely admiring the talent as they ply their wares. I blink to clear my eyes, and yes, I am seeing this properly: It's David Lynch.
I am used to coincidences in this town, but this is a rather pushed and weird meta-media doppelganger: Here Dan Zukovic is kibitzing with David Lynch... yes, DZ, the director who has made a movie that IFC said was "Lynchian" is talkin' turkey with Lynch hisself.
Finally, the two filmmakers shook hands. Upon such an interface, my fear was that there would be two piles of ashes where the two of them had been sitting. You know: Lynch and the anti-Lynch intersecting like matter and anti-matter, creating the mother of all cosmic and metaphysical implosions inside a tittie bar on Hollywood Boulevard.
To my surprise, the world did not split like an apple. Even so, the dancers really cranked up their mojo when it came time to stick their moneymakers in Lynch's face. They knew that Jumbo's was their ticket to greater things: Just like Courtney Love.
PARADIGM SHIFTS INTO THE ETHER
05/18/06
From-wrenchski wrenchski@aol.com
(excerpted from THE ALCHEMIST'S NEGRO)
It's lonely at the top.
We've beaten them all...the heavy hitters that seemingly come out of the fog with their mounts trailered have all gone home with their tails between their legs... the big block tunnel ram t-bucket was the last, too much power and not enough traction for him allowed our 4200 pound nitrous assisted ten second battleship to win all the sidebets and give us a chunk of change that'd make a smaller, lighter same-drivetrain Ford a reality. I'm looking forward to this, an 800lb lighter beast where hitting the nitrous button is an option instead of a piston burning bearing crushing necessity...
Maybe in another universe.
The worn out Mercury Cougar awaiting the transformation outside the compound is mysteriously stolen... after an out-of-town street race the 10 second beast is firebombed parked in the Russian's driveway, whatever they used melted everything but the engine block and frame... swarthy short fat gentlemen are asking me in heavily accented English if I know how to navigate from Bimini to Miami in the dark... yea, I'll take fool for the money for $10,000, Alex... this usually does not end well for those who try it, you get put aboard a heavily overloaded day cruiser at gunpoint and end up the Colombian's monthly sacrifice to the dog-gods of the D.E.A...
Thick darkness closing in on all sides.
Telephone ringing middle of the night... voice on the other end tells me to pick up everything I own in the next hour or I might not own it anymore, he and his family have been asked to leave the area or shuffle off the mortal coil, something about tires full of burning gasoline hanging from their necks or Columbian neckties...
I tell him I'm off to make it happen, SOMEHOW forget to do that, and see the compound on the six o'clock news the next night. Bikes... Hunter's bikes... Hunter who I ain't seen in a week or so... tools tires engines spraybooth workbenches all gone... Someone had filled the place with substances I know weren't there the day before, and dropped a dime... the question is, was it old friends, or new enemies?
Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player... wrenchturner... tire changer... no, I'm a dessert topping... furniture polish, yea, that's the ticket, I'll hide under the kitchen sink with the Windex and the Pledge... too cold in the refrigerator...
This is how it ends... not with a bang, or a wimper... but silence. Just silence and who am I supposed to be now that in a span of 48 hours I no longer exist?
TWO-HANDED READ
04/23/06 17:32:00 PDT
From-Damo Kandinsky
(the continuing adventures of Buffy Strangelove... excerpted from the forthcoming KUNTZSPIEL)
Kellermann eyes the boss. The unspoken answer in Strangelove's eyeballs, lids
levered and pinned back so that he must at all times focus on his underlings,
is gratefully received by the robot. He has no wish to debate with the
master. He already has a surfeit of unwanted experience of the mercurial
putdown, the quicksilver riposte, that disdainful contemptuousness in
verbal combat for which BS is infamous. His circuits are, in places,
burned down to the nodes as a result of unwise word-bandying with the
big cheese.
"OK. No add-ons then, but we should at least sticker it? I mean" he hastens, "we should put stickers on the front, advising the punters to hold
on and all. They're going to need both hands with this one after all,
as you yourself have insisted, your grace. What I'm thinking is... Stickers,
BS! A sticker on the dust jacket that says something brief, to the point
and wholly impenetrable. Something like 'USE TWO HANDS -- OR LOSE
'EM!' No? Well maybe not. How about, 'HEALTH WARNING! HOLD TIGHT!
IDLE HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK OF THE INSENISIBLE!'"
Kellermann
senses he's losing it. Big time.
"Er, um, what I mean is", he flounders, "we must make it entirely clear, absolutely transparently crystal-like that readers, for their own health, need to hold the book with BOTH HANDS. Or maybe we should insert an Erratum page. 'Keep BOTH your hands to yourself!' If I might refer
to the DDM... "
But Strangelove is away with the birds. References to the Devotional Directional Manual always have him glazing over.
"Forget
that Kellermann. That was for a different project, different co-ordinates.
We have no recourse in this timeline to pachydermal assistance. Unless
I can revive certain homoncular familiars, clapped out pinhead assistants,
we're fucked on that score my old son. And it don't look good I
tells ye. We must rely on our own wits this time Kellermann, hard though
that might be for ye to grasp, being witless as scotch mist as ye are.
Besides, ye fucking idiots ye, we're talking movies here. What in
the unholy name of Medusa Rappa gave you the idea we were putting out
a book? Whaddaya think the movie stars are about? Did it not strike
you at all, laddie, the rare abundance hereabouts of movie avatar wraiths?"
The servo-robot cowers and emits a low key whining electro-hum which denotes total subservience. He gets down on all fours, sticks his arse in the air and begins baritoning lines from old Joy Division songs, which always
gets a full and heartfelt round of laughs in the StrangeCorp/EuroStrCorp
offices.
"OK then. No more. We move forward. By the tangled beard of Marius Adrianus Priemus that's agreed" intones Strangelove. He pats the servo-bot/amanuensis on the arse, a gesture at once forgiving and pointedly proprietorial. He continues to expound the good stuff as the minor gods of the household begin drawing their salaries at the salary holes. Servo-geeks dish out
bon-bons and bon mots, lounge lizard bespectacled stuffed shirts yaw-yaw
and jaw-jaw, sex-mad clerical bozos begin their tiresome daily routines,
power bitches strap on shoulder pads... in short the office thrums with
a kind of dead ersatz-life. All avatars cardboarded and two-D, straining
for a kind of vital energi. BS surveys his fiefdom with disdain. He
visualizes alpine vistas. Pedestrians in the outer 'burbs run for
cover like rabbits as the Strangelove motorcade, Monster Truck with
BS at the helm, sweeps by. Imaginatively, the film seems to take shape
inside the eyeball. Inside, the visions stack up as BS drives at speed...
Strangelove, eyes still pinned open, sighs and stares out the window at... Mountains! Snow! Broad necked security guys! We're in Europe. Europe is the present location for all StrangeCorp activities and they've moved the offices lock stock and barrel to the Alpine ski resort hotel complex marked
HoledUpInSwiss. Holed up in a Swiss safe house Mr Memory is in the hands
of the euros who are the only ones at present with both the political
backing and the financial wherewithal for the challenges ahead, despite
talk of the paper tiger economies coming good. Coming real good. That
talk's been doing the rounds for years. So he's fronted up to present
a case of sorts, entourage of ghosts, avatars, office trash, as well
as real-life Hollywood legend-geeks in tow...
He
is brandishing his new manuscript, tentatively entitled "Kunzspiel!"
tentatively sub-entitled "A Hymnal for Foundlings and Too-Far-Gone
Executives of the Light Side" and containing all avatar experiment
results (rip offs from obscure movies and mainstream crowd pleasers)
and memory chip blueprints. The panel/board of directors is attentive.
In time honoured style Strangelove clears his throat, pretends to look
nervously from face to face (Bergman, Borgman, Bellermann, Cudlipp and
Culpepper -- EuroStrCorp executive board all present and corrected)
and then recommences...
"This,
girls, is a two-handed read. You need, my friends, to hold this book
with both hands. Clapperboard here [indicates cardboard facsimile
clapperboard] moves up and down for the punters we're after --
that is, modern punters. This is a movie toned down for the punters
to come to terms with... imagine we're bullet pointing this thing like
it was some sort of pro forma presentation. Imagine in other words that
none of us are blessed with any brains whatsoever".
He
pauses for effect and/or to gather his thoughts.
"You
realize, gentleman" schmoozes Strangelove, "that I don't actually
understand any of this. I just channel. Like Hitler. Or Madame Blavatsky.
Or, er, actually maybe not like Madame B... as we've known for millennia,
she was clearly revealed under rigorous scientific testing as a fake.
Nonetheless, I channel effectively and the beauty is I don't know
what I'm doing. Which is an arrangement that satisfies both the RealCorp
agents under my control and the RealTaxmen. The truth, my friends,
is that I take everything personally. I don't do cool. My wrath is
a thing to behold and the source, I may say, of my strength. I have
the memory and the strength of an elephant and the righteous anger of
an islamist. I do hold grudges which, while not endearing me
to secular fools and dhimmi bimbos, certainly stands me in good stead
while invoking celluloid emoticon prototypes. Which, girls and ladies,
is why I front here in this here alpine hole-up."
He
pauses again, this time neither for breath nor to gauge the stupefied
reaction of his audience, but to gaze out of the window as though lost
in thought. The board members follow his gaze with their gazes. They
dimly make out, across the picturesque vistas, a puny rope ladder-bridge
connecting the main bulk of the adjacent mountain with an isthmus, an
outcrop, of erectile earth. On this rope ladder-bridge they dimly discern
the figures of a pair of harmonium-movers, one fat and the other - in
time-honoured style - thin, struggling to maneuver an harmonium from
one side of the bridge to the other, all the whole pursued by a third
figure in a gorilla suit. The antics of this menage, plunging hither
and yon as they struggle to maintain their balances, fill the onlookers
with mirth and there are many many belly laughs before the day's
work is done. Strangelove's will is instrumental in all parties fulfilling
their destinies in satisfactory fashion, and all sigh enormous sighs
of relief at the denouement.
"What we're talking, laddies" he purrs eventually, turning away from the spectacle and exhaling gales of sweet fetid love breath into the receptive ear of his PA Daisy, high kicking sex-bimbo minute taker for the sexist equation makers in his audience, which are legion, "is the nature
of Truth. The punters will want to know the precise quantities and kinds
of truth we're dealing in here. To this end, I've had Daisy here
bar-chart a kind of Truth Evaluation Equation Statement, incorporating
all relevant Business Models and User Acceptance Uptake Modules."
HE
switches on the overhead projector.
"You'll
see from the slides that I've prepared that we're dealing with very
circumscribed truths. Some we admit to, others we hide. Sometimes we
deny there is any such thing as truth. Look at this... "
All
heads are dutifully turned. The figures kind of stack up. Truth --
36%. Lies -- 48%. Bullshit -- 15%. Meta-truth -- 1%.
"Come
into the lab with me now" he resumes, "as I show you these life
movies. With one eye, maybe, on posterity... this is how we do things
these days... NOW: first things first....
- Become aware of your narrator as soon as possible. In seconds, they have the gist. It's all about identification with the most egregious character.
- This is a two handed read. Introductions are both unwelcome and intrusive but as you don't yet know who or what is talking to you... I leave it to your subjective selves to determine the identities of your individual narrators...
- Who is talking now? I am Blanko. The clue's in the name... you know it... you've always known it... tabalu rasa is right on the money for the modern punters... but NO relative states, NO polymorphous readings if you please... I am your traditional host. TRADITIONAL!!!
- Picture me, although I'm at present in combat fatigues, as avuncular, in mufti... don't know what that means? Look it up... NOW: we're quite straightforward in not letting on who the hell's talking here... extrapolate and be kind of happy... happy is as happy does... never forget we're not after the punter's money, we're after the punter's dreams. We'll never catch 'em with condescension. Make movies you yourselves want to watch ladies.
- Both hands firmly on the wheel... hold on to your hats for thee punters... life and all that's lived day by day, endured as fact... the logos intact... we'll all be better for this experience... countdown to the end of the book is now ON... I am your guide. Your uncle, if I may be cute.
- Dear reader... to understand... hold on with both hands. You need both hands, because you know what idle hands get up to! You, Culpepper! What do idle hands get up to?"
"Er, um, the devil's work, your eminence?"
"Wrong, Culpepper. They start by hanging inanely at the sides. After a while, at a point when an inalienable sense of inanity has reduced the individual to craven self-abnegation, they get frisky. Masturbation is what I'm
on about Culpepper. The punters pleasure themselves from fear, out of
a terrible apprehension of the appalling absurdity of the image-free
universe. This, my dear friends, is why it is imperative
that you hold onto these manuals with both
hands."
Having drilled home his point, Strangelove becomes more informal. That is, he drops the bullet point schtick and eschews the whole formulaic presentation projection. His audience is bolt awake, snapped out of their trances.
Strangelove intones again, sending them back whence they came...
"You
know it... we want to lose the inattentive RIGHT NOW!!!
"We're
challenged on the one hand by economics (how can we pay for it?) and
on the other hand, by our psychology (we are too messed up internally
to put up with the demands of a balanced psychological life). Philosophy
never got out of the starting blocks. Really it gave up on the project
of teaching us how to live in the early 19th century -- it started to
pursue a more scientific, less humanistic goal; much to my regret. In
my work, I look back to an earlier, Greek and/or Roman conception of
philosophy as a guide to everyday life. This is pre-memory of course.
People back then (but time isn't linear anyway, so "back then"
really has no meaning... of course... of course... ) didn't have "memory".
Our job... my job if you like... I can call on countless personae... is
to provide you, one and all, with memory. Chips are implanted as and
when...
"The cry goes out... I've failed in my memory. Therefore I'm a loser. I'm judged by my memory successes. But I don't remember how it happened.
I could be up for it but I don't know how to recapture the sparky
moments. For instance, in my work, I appear as the narrator, even though
the autobiographical red herrings are explicitly signposted. On the
one hand, I am destiny. On the other, I'm causality. The more I work
on it, the less it works. That's how the paradox lives and breathes... you,
my dear friends and possessors of enormous penises, are the first species
that we know of in history to exist in and around pure paradox.
"Here's
something I was thinking about earlier... I have to keep my mind occupied
or it drifts... you know what I mean? Yes of course you do... it's the
way it is...
"Let's start with what's on my mind... in my memory... even though it doesn't matter much. When I think of things the immediate next thing I think of is did that matter? Many many thoughts seem just to constitute drift,
as though the thinking of those thoughts is a weightless that is to
say non-consequential act. For instance just the other day I heard that
the Pope regards "world peace" as "still a long way off"...
"This
Scottish woman phones... The wrong number. Wanna talk to Mickey?... Melville
Senior High?...My reply is measured. You might have the wrong number... this
is a private number... 3345 2187... yes that's right, well you've
definitely got a wrong number then... oh sorry, byeeeee... what does
she make of that? Does she think ever again of the unlikelihood
of that happening? Does the thought enter her head and stay there? What
do I do but think about that? The minor events that substitute for major
happenings in my life? I sit here, imagining experience and thinking
of the past experiences but never of the present that actually constitutes
experience. I think of the past. This memory chip is buzzing now. New
sounds. Or old ones. Sounds in and out... loudness of guitars and insistence
of drum beats. But it doesn't exist. Not any more it doesn't. I
personally don't think it ever existed. Despite meaning something to me, as does everything that happened 25 and upwards years ago, I don't really I mean really think it actually existed.
"Where is it? In my mind sort of tangled up and over-written by heavy experience. This intentionality mitigates against the sticking power of things in themselves. How do you find something when it doesn't exist? Never existed. There was never any such thing as "punk". Nor Punk. Nor PUNK. Neither yet punk. Never was. There was, in chronological
quasi-reality, a groundswell of "activity" in the margins of society,
a flicker of something "going on" and the catalyst of a certain
moody posed disaffection... But the disaffection was widespread (not
just the "kids") and was therefore in need of a process of "focusing"
for the benefit of those who needed to understand the "process".
Basically this "focusing" consisted of a lot of posturing, play
acting, mimesis of "aggressive" or "confrontational" attitudes,
as the principle players, or those assigned roles as principle players
by a voracious media intent on rationalizing "the moment", took
swift advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for self elevation
of the principle, ie: most voracious, players. These people were of
course the luckiest in history and were also, by definition,
the most tenacious in their desires and dreams, fantasies of being "important",
having "something to say", being Players. Ranging from Saturday
job shop assistants to lairy proles, from Home Counties "poets"
to grammar school control freaks, from desiccated loonies to "characters",
from dental receptionists to no-mark no-mates bedroom scribblers, whose
dreams of omnipotence were thankfully diverted away from the models
provided by Brady/Manson/Hubbard thanks to the once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. They were enabled by their very detractors, because
the incipient groundswell, tired of waiting for a miracle/The Man/"it"
to happen, made it happen... ..and it DID happen. The councilors,
uptight middle classes, the prog kids, no-marks in bedrooms, street
gangs, ALL welcomed it with open arms. Everyone needed a break.
Not just the "kids". Despite the fact that in retrospect (and even
at the time if we're honest) the 70s was indeed the best of times.
All citizens needed an enemy to unite against. And the enemy needed
an opposition to kick against. The primary event was of course the
naming of the phenomenon, of the "punk" groundswell... the whole
population, each section tickled up in its own way, according to its
prejudices/desires/bigotries, complicit, in on the act of naming.
"Punk" (which remember, never existed) was as much the guy who kicked
his TV set in due to the "bad language" as it was the foul mouthed
but undeniably humourous Steve Jones on the Grundy show. But that's
all it was. A name. Once you name something, as we post-psychologists
can tell you, you disarm it. All participants, despite their rhetoric
to the contrary (of class war, of the "boredom" they felt with the
way they were forced to live their "meaningless" "lives") actively
connived at its emasculation. Once they had their leg up, their
entrŽe stamped, despite the affectation of solidarity with a spurious
"underclass" of "kids" (who never existed either, because all
"kids" are temperamentally conservative anyway) earnestly wished
that "Punk" would go away. All rhetorical pronouncements, coded
as rhetoric, gave away covertly that Punk/punk/punk, as far as
the principle players were concerned was at best an embarrassment and
at worst an irrelevance. This, of course, took the form of the claim
that (to paraphrase) "it was only ever real in the initial
stages, before anyone had heard of it. The authenticity of Punk/punk/punk
was transient, lasting barely 6 months. Once people started to hear
about it, to dress accordingly, to adopt the correct "attitudes",
it was already over"
In adopting these sentiments, the principals clearly identified themselves as in all senses above the genre. They transcended it. And of course a grateful media, staffed by the kinds of whores whose very bread was buttered, or tongues browned, by the most articulate
of these principals, in a very real co-dependent relationship, gratefully
and dutifully regurgitated this line as literal fact. What nobody seemed
to realize, or were at least seen to realize, was that this very fact
of mutual self-abuse in itself confirmed that Punk had never existed.
A moment of wishful thinking, a mutual wish-fulfillment fantasy, in
which all principle players covertly agreed to give a name to
something that existed only in the voracious appetites for fame/glory/importance
of the principle principals.
When talent or originality isn't even on the agenda (ie: when a virtue is made of amateurism and/or inarticulacy and/or the sanctimonious and hypocritical, sentimental lie that "everyone is equal" and that there's "no difference" between performers on a stage and those
being performed to?) it's no surprise that the creation of a media
friendly "movement", a readymade spectacle with principle/supporting
players and simulation of "anti-social" "attitudes", becomes
the be-all and end-all of the event. What's important to realize is
that it isn't just the mythical "early days" of punk (when only
those "in the know" were aware of what was happening) that were
unreal, but that the unreality of the whole "movement" was hard
wired by the very need of the principle players to maintain and service
their apartness from the monster/creature they'd created. Poor saps
who belatedly (ie: from mid-77 onwards) formed bands were not aware,
except perhaps in a tiny minority of cases, that the simulacrum in which
they had involved themselves was itself based on a simulated model.
"Punk" has consequently and subsequently been re-coded as an industry
forged in the crucible of self-interested "hipsters" whose only
interest was, indeed could be nothing other than, naked self interest.
To take the most obvious example, what lay ahead for John Lydon? Years
of sullen, sarky, twilight life in and around the precincts of Holloway,
leading inexorably to drink related disease, early ageing and association
with elements likely to lead him eventually to prison and/or early cirrhosis.
The naming of the event and his prescience in seizing the moment, however,
enabled him to become a principal. Once established, by the use of judicious
amounts of rhetoric and a steady distancing from something that had
in no known reality (as opposed to simulacrum) ever existed, he ensured
that he would never again be anything other than a principal, while
simultaneously claiming disingenuously that the 'punk' citadel was/is
his virtual personal fiefdom, denying the oxygen of reflected glory
to all and sundry. The importance of recognizing that this is the sum
total of the achievement of the principle players of "Punk" cannot
be over-stressed.
Not that this is to diss the bastards. Presented with the choice, who wouldn't choose life over living death? But we must realize that it was simply a matter of chance. All parties, even those "opposed" to the "movement" in reality were desperately in need of it, wanted it, or something like it. Ironically, it can be confidently asserted that the proof that this
was so lies in the fact that everyone (not just the "punks") were,
by mid 76, bored out of their tiny minds. People were spoiling for a
fight. Depression and tranquilizer dependency for the masses and a general
irritability brought on by not having had a war to fight for 30 years,
a kind of boorish intolerance, was burgeoning in all sections and at
all levels of society. The impolite society was really hatched at this
time. The "kids" were merely one highly visible section of a heavily
traumatized society, and being the "kids", the onus was on them
to make something of it. The young, being the young, are obliged to
be in the vanguard of anti-social "movements", but rest assured
that the irritation and "boredom" they expressed was felt by all
sections of society. The old/middle aged may have affected
disapproval of "youth" but in reality, the antics of "youth"
were simply a means of enabling their own feelings of frustration
by proxy. This in large measure explains the relish with which middle
aged men kicked in their TV sets when confronted with images of young
men swearing indiscriminately on TV.
This is not to diss the old/middle aged. Who wouldn't, when presented with an opportunity to express legitimate frustration, and bearing in mind the limited opportunities/socially acceptable ways of discharging them, have acted similarly? Unfortunately, a false dialectic was set up early on by those with a vested interest in "oppositional" forces, those whose very careers (sneery and cynical hipster hacks) depended on repeatedly giving voice to the original and well tried and tested rhetoric of "youth" "frustration" and "aimlessness". In reality, the old/middle
aged were always (and still are) the most obviously aimless and frustrated.
Simply by virtue of having already lived the majority of the useful
portion of their lives and, except in a miniscule number of cases,
having more or less wasted their lives and/or been disappointed/unfulfilled/frustrated in their ambitions/hopes/dreams, the old/middle aged are almost universally depressed, frustrated and angry. The irony now of course (and this is hardly an example of the fact that the term is oft-misused) is that those who were then young are now middle aged. The then middle aged have almost without exception passed into a netherworld of uncomprehending vacancy and bewilderment. One thing hasn't changed though. All sections of society are today still angry, bitter, deluded, frustrated
and bored. Only more so. As memory lets them in on the facts. The reason?
The original 76 rhetoricians are still wielding their baleful cultural
influence. The media is almost universally tenanted by veterans of the
simulacrum of "punk", or post-boomers if we're being cute, that
is to say by left-educated "counter" culturalists, people whose
lives and careers depend upon the furthering of ludicrous notions
of the inevitability of "historical processes", who insist that
they "were there", who confuse naming something with attaching a
reality to it, advancing the same sentimental readings of "moments"
in history..."
Strangelove is by this stage shaking, virtually speaking in tongues. He blinks and staggers, he topples and weaves. He sweats and mops at his own fevered brow. He gets Daisy to give him a quick one off the wrist. His cultural analysis has left his minions, pony-tailed cunts to a man and woman,
with mouths agape. These shoddy yes-men, sanctimonious relics of the
Me-generation, are not used to home truths. But they're living in
new times, albeit end ones. They fear the wrath of Strangelove and they
know where their bread's buttered. Strangelove continues in his strange
charismatic way...
"... The fact that they're still peddling the same fucking rubbish leads to a general irritation in the population. People are generally appalled at the crap they read on a daily basis in what passes for cultural commentary in the papers. The truth is that nobody was "there", because "there" wasn't a place, either in time or space. "There" was and is where
we all are, namely finally and completely in our own heads. Shared moments
are a fiction, except in localized (ie: personal) locations. Nothing
happened in 76. Nor in 77. Nor is likely to happen. We make our own
realities, despite rhetorical constructs that are essentially only a
function of the ambition and desire for attention/notoriety of their
shapers. The principals rely on our continued acceptance of their blurring
of the lines between personal experience and generalized rhetoric, resulting
in a general debasing of all experience... which is where RealityCorp comes in, in case you were wondering, gentlemen, where this mock history lesson was leading. As a monopolist of Reality Experience, RealCorp exists to shape memory. To lead troubled souls into the bowers of contentment. I am Memory Man and I'm pulling the strings. But my role in all this is, I assert, still avuncular. This is my role as narrator. I'm blank. I picture myself as avuncular. Helpful. The phrase "Look! No Hands!!" might have been coined with
me specifically in mind.
"But what I can't stand is the way the present crowds in and the way I find reasons in the moment to hate people for ever. I need no encouragement to hate. I am DESIRE! The way they suck their teeth at me. The bronzed arms and worked pecs. The little goatees... I know I should be above
this sort of thing but the sad truth is I'm not. As I said, I do hold
grudges. To the ends of the known earth. I actually wallow in the loathing
that shapes my present. So many presents and each one an invitation
to disbelief."
The RealEuroCorp executives recoil in distaste, their putty faces a picture, monstrous Bacon-maelstroms of bitter grey matter. But the Strangelove geek is their guarantor. The guy who'll make good for them. He's
the money man, not the memory man, from their POV. The thought transfers
at digital speed from Bergman to Borgman, from Borgmann to Bellermann,
from Bellerman to Cudlipp and Culpepper. And back again, swirling in
the ionosphere like a cloud of noxious gas...
He
thinks he's Adolf Hitler. How clever can this really be? It ain't
rocket science. How is it possible not to despise this... this... Woody Allen? Even while acknowledging that the art isn't the man. The art is deducted from the man isn't it?
Strangelove is way ahead. Channels to Agent BDSM and beyond to all minor irritatant agents and proxy loafers. Fuckwits expound like seasoned cynics on the benefits of taking it easy. Strangelove knows that nothing ever came of indolence. Good work bro. The signs are all good. The board is now primed. Funding to be relied upon as per memos circulated...
Final word to Strangelove of course in this dopey tryst. He eyes his audience one further last time. They are the movers if not the shakers. They
need his words, he needs their acquiescence. People whose "favourite
word" is always Serendipity. Happy accidents? Sentences that follow
sequentially if not thematically? Fall-guys who speak as though from
a pre-written script? The written word that looks like a transcript
of the spoken word? Yep, all that. Can't stand it. It's all in the
memory. And the occupied hands.
METACARSAL MATCH RACE MADNESS
04/09/06 09:34:08 PDT
From-Wrenchski
(excerpted from the Alchemist's Negro)
My head hurts...using powdered substances in order to injest larger amounts of liquid substances to stave off the pain of old car crashes and no sleep will do that.
RTN raceway is situated on a dead end Road To Nowhere several miles west of town,,,the cul du sac is the staging area, and it runs for half a mile back to the interstate where it dead ends again...
Shutdown or end up in a crossfire of 70+ mph grannies and truckers.
I'm on the starting line holding the Russian straight during a burnout with the line-loc on... when I hear... CLINKping... somewhere around the rear of the car.
I wave the Russian off, and open the driver's door... Hunter, our drag bike driver runs over and opens the passenger door. He grabs the doorsill for balance and reaches under the car to retrieve something, and I'm trying to calm down a rather large driver who's pumped up due to the pending $1000 match race with an alleged 9 second Vega that arrived on a trailer... the boy driver is hot.
Tells me I DON"T CARE, IF THE WHEELS STAYED ON, WE GO... and reaches over and slams the passenger door.
Unfortunately, Hunter's hand is still on the sill... and a Mercury Talladega's door hits like a sledgehammer.
I run around, open the door and release Hunter, who has a slapper bar safety strap firmly planted in the middle of a squashed hand... the Russian pulls up and stages... we beat the Vega by a fender... seein' as how I knew the vega's machinist, and how small his engine was... I already knew that was gonna happen.
The Russian is happy as hell when he gets back to staging seein' a how he has ten Benjamins in his meaty fist... till he sees hunter's hand.
He gets Hunter into the tow car and tells me to watch the car and the bike till they get back from the hospital...it's 2 AM.
...and he leaves with the bike trailer in tow...
It's now 4am...I'm lucky Squid has decided to keep me company, cause everyone else has left...I'm faced with a decision of how to get the car AND a non-streetlegal dragbike back to the shop.
Squid has never driven a stickshift automobile. I give him several quick lessons and approach the bike.
Clip on bars... controls spaced for a rider more than a foot shorter that I... snap throttle, it's either wide open or closed. Hunter explained part throttle would pull the wrist pins outa the pistons.
I tell Squid as soon as I get it started he is to put the battery back in the trunk of the Merc and follow me to the shop. I get it to fire, and can't put the child sized helmet on my head... I throw it into the trunk with the batteries.
Open throttle, release clutch, WHEELSTAND, close throttle, SHIFT... Repeat as many times as it took me to get back with Squid in hot pursuit... or as hot as he could, stalling the engine repeatedly as he was.
Did I mention the part where all I could see was the painted stripe on the road, as my head was past the tripletree and didn't rotate up far enough to see forward?
Did I mention a Kawi triple on expansion chambers and exotic fuels sounds roughly like TEN THOUSAND SCREAMING CHAINSAWS, 'specially at 4 in the morning?
God looks out for drunks and little children...I somehow got the car and the bike locked back up in the shop before the cops could target that awful noise, they were running around pretty good as I was leaving in the beat up LTD we used for a shop car... passed by three or four on my way home, lights and sirens on...
Hunter's hand was alright, took a month to heal so he could ride again... but with no insurance, it ate up all of the grand we won beating the vega, and THEN some.
GET BLANKO!
03/17/06
From-Damo Kandinsky
(the continuing adventures of Buffy Strangelove... excerpted from the forthcoming KUNTZSPIEL)
BEEP...channels opening... StrangeCorp data retrieval operational...
"LA call for ya, Mr S..."
The humanoid-voiceprint avatar clean forgotten since last night's debauches sidled up to Strangelove, all mincing electro-hum, high pitched whiney love-me-cos-I'm-deferential self abasement, but the recumbent demi/household god was/is in no mood for trifling. He flicks/flicked a switch and the robot's sarcasm/camp-banter circuit went dead on him.
BS, Buffy, Buffy to his friends, Mr Strangelove to those who go in fear of the wrath of God in (at least) 3 persons...today is BLANKO. These nuisance-value websites haven't yet been closed down...the BS channels of influence not yet fully tumescent. Not yet characteristically tumescent with throbbing BS activity, agents up and down the line, digital agitators, flesh 'n' blood agents, cack-handed office functionaries, power bimbos with stick-on political convictions, court officers, corrupt Media barons, Mr. Bigs, none of them yet awake to the potentiality of Blanko Is Evil propaganda. Websites bearing the (semi)divine image, telling it like it is, as they say. They say he's evil. But they know NOTHING. His good is their death. But...nothing. They're like flies and he's like a wanton boy. Kandinsky likes a good semi-classical allusion early doors. He's the fucking boss though innit? We humour or defer. Humour or defer. He's a moron but when roused...
"OK, ready..." hums Mr S as he eases into semi-consciousness. Today he sports a bald look, one bulging/one squinting eye and massive soup strainer moustache. He warms up with a few preliminary "Doh"s and squints at the vid-phone screen, puffing and blowing in exasperation. He's worked it (somehow -- nobody knows how, which is a function of the genius of StrangeCorp generally) that every time anyone anywhere in the world says "Doh" credit deposits are made into StrangeCorp accounts straight from FOX, and of course Groening is at his wits end, but that's another made up story...
"Agent BDSM guv..." says the image on the screen.
A pregnant pause looms, but somehow also kick starts and simultaneously anticipates the strange banter to come in a manner not readily susceptible of description.
"Well"? enquires Strangelove.
"Well...well, we're waiting...I can't hold these goddam hyeanas off any longer Mr S. We..." he corrects himself "...they are still waiting. We...I mean they, want product. New product. StrangeCorp stocks are plummeting BS..."
Strangelove/Blanko merely looks nonplussed, blows through his moustache a few more times and fixes Agent BDSM with a bulge-eyed stare.
"Er, what I mean is, your, er, grace..."
BS dismisses the blandishments with a wave of the hand
"...uh, what I mean, BS, is that sanguine though you may be about the state of StrangeCorp stocks, there are rumblings in the financial jungle!"
"Rumblings?"
Emboldened, Agent BDSM warms to his theme.
"Yes, rumblings! It may seem ludicrous to you, but we need product. Again. But...and I'll tell you this for nothing mate...it's got to be below 35,000 feet of film this time. That's TOTAL length. Unedited. Get me? Somehow, your message must be condensed, de-tumesced...if you will..."
His tone softens appreciably as he leans into the camera, bumping his forehead as he does so.
"Listen Buffy, you know I'd only say this for your own good. I'm not trying to force you into anything. But you know, and I know, we all know, that not doing anything is like, well, you know the result in advance. Do something and the effects are, well, imponderable to say the least!"
And with that he sits back with the air of a man whose point has been well made.
And indeed it had been. Strangelove knew the wisdom of Agent BDSM. He knew that, even though StrangeCorp shares could never collapse entirely while he was still capable of MIndFUck Operations reality morphing (via subsidiary offshore holding Co RealityCorp Ents) the quality of the stock must never be allowed to depreciate appreciably. New product, he understood, was necessary for the continued maintenance of channels A B C and beyond...
New Product. Yes, why not? New Product out of his very own genes. New lines of discontinuance. New obfuscations. New HUMANS. New carefully covered tracks. Evil bastards in their prime halted in their tracks. New traditions of subservience, bullshit, obeisance and obfuscation to be nurtured.
Plus of course inaction almost always equaled De-Tumescence of the most distressing kind. Product is and was of course the be-all and end-all of existence. No point denying it. People need things to have, to touch, to dream...
Giving one last puff through his moustache, then, and fixing Agent BDSM with one last gimlet stare, he acquiesced...
"Agent BDSM, you're a diamond...You done good my son...Hear me and hear me well. Your efforts will never go unrewarded while I breathe this fetid air. Are there any more like you at home Agent BDSM? Or did they break the mold when they made you? Your ingenuity in these matters will not go un-noticed while I still...[CLICK]..."
Agent BDSM was already gone. He had of course heard it all, and much verbiage of a similar nature, before.
Blanko sighed. The start of a good day's work...and to reward himself he rolled over again, already Get Catered Michael Caine, nekkid with a shotgun(!) to all intents and purposes, and gave the boarding-house landlady, who for her part was wondering how on earth she'd ended up in this strange place, one of the best, most roistering seeings-to she'd experienced in many a long frustrated year...
Coming up for air, literal realities intervened...humming, straight from the enlarged, engorged brainpan of Strangelove. Fully channeled. All agents on standby...receiving. Direct download of spurious material...
DELEGATE!
"Bullet point this fucker would ya sweetie?"
Strangelove habitually disrespects employees but since they've all grown up in and beyond a universe in which this sort of disrespect is no longer regarded as a bad thing (ie: they don't give a fuck themselves) they give as good as they get and given that Mr. S is a simpleton whose actual understanding of the channels of power he controls is attenuated to say the least, it doesn't seem to matter to them. The power is always obtuse, impossible to actually discover. And that is his secret or one of them anyway...
DELEGATE!
We need...
* An impenetrable section. Full of abstruse imagery and lame-arsed pseudo- intellectual rambling. Something that will set indelible benchmarks of otiosity for the clinically tendentious and loathsome. This demographic should never be underestimated. It grows like a cancer. And we need to be ready to supply like with like, meeting this cancer in the body politic with a cancer of our own. A kick-ass cancer that brooks no backchat. This will take the form of impenetrable rambling of an intensely fatuous nature.
* A romantic interlude. Needless to say, for our purposes, "romantic" must perforce be an analogue of "pornographic". I know for certain, Daisy, that in some influential circles, the only real romance left in the world is that of the pornographic. While I have personal issues with this outlook, I know it carries weight in certain bone-headed enclaves.
* An abstruse intellectual fugue. This must needs be composed of rhetorical elements purporting to explain ontological phenomena with reference to pop-cultural elements. I know it's distasteful Daisy, but any book or film seriously intending to throw its intellectual weight around must of course touch these bases as delicately or as roughly as you like, according to taste. My personal preference (for what it's worth -- not much, as of course I exist merely to channel, to facilitate, to dream, to create, to babble, to expectorate, to haver, to prevaricate, to decipher, to alienate) is to take the rough with the smooth. With the emphasis firmly on the rough.
* A sex scene. This must, for obvious reasons, involve a multiplicity of rabbits. What's that you say? It's not obvious to you? My dear child, surely you know that rabbits are the most myth-laden creatures in the entire mytho-cultural realm. There barely exists a civilization in this or any dimension that I'm aware of that hasn't seriously relied on rabbit iconography to bolster it's sense of permanence or weightiness. Mythologically speaking, in other words, rabbits is where it's at. But also clearly sex sells and by extension Key Moments in the narrative/continuum must be weighted with sex, freighted with rabbit imagery and sealed with a kiss.
Now, Daisy, I'm all shagged out. Come and give me one while I visualize. The visions must be unlocked. Agents must be placed on standby. Remind me, after you've sucked me dry, to memo Agent BDSM. Channels must be opened. And now, let us be GARLANDED with daisies. We enter the new world vision zone of Key Moments frozen in time/space. The ghosts are emerging...bottle the pure bliss...globules of love explode in image frenzy...3 Stooges...Marx Bros...Laurel 'n' Hardy...(later later)...Brando...Montgomery Shirtlifter...(earlier earlier)...Cagney white heat...no, too cack handed...Mae West...Adam West...(how's that for a juxtaposition?)...Michael Angelo Caine...CAINE???
LIVING TOO LATE
02/22/06
From-John Tottenham
excerpted from
DR. BUCK'S LETTERS
I sit at the counter of a loud and smoky bar, watching all the pretty people flitting by. It's just another night in another watering hole. Once again I am surrounded by young people. But they are not really young, they are just younger than me. And that isn't saying much anymore. These days, there are even old people who are younger than me. Indeed, it is not infrequently that somebody whom I assumed was much older than me turns out to be much younger than me.
A song from twenty years ago plays on the jukebox. It provides strength, or the reminder of it. A memory crystallized in a few bars of music. But somebody else's song can't save me now. I am the oldest guy in the joint. There's no getting around that fact. It shouldn't matter. There are people who age gracefully or otherwise without letting it bother them. But I cannot pretend to be completely impervious to such gnawings. Perhaps that is because I measure age by achievement and I have not achieved anything in this life. Moreover, most of these whippersnappers are wealthier and more successful than me... and that isn't saying much either.
Then I wonder if this is what it feels like to lose it. Maybe these are my twilight times... my waning days... the ones dreaded throughout all the lost years that led to now. The decline has been too gradual to trace. In darkness, corners have been groped around, and without realizing it, I have aged.
I am not going to be this age forever, though I seem to have been for a long time.
When people meet me they are often impressed by my curiosity. I ask a lot of questions. But mostly I am attempting to gauge how old they are and how much money they have, so that I can resent or pity them accordingly. When I read or hear about anybody who has achieved anything, the first thing I do is calculate their age and then compare myself to them. The results are seldom encouraging. There used to be other late bloomers to take solace in. But I am now older than the most dilatory of those late bloomers were when they ‘produced' anything.
As one grows older, one keeps extending one's expiration date. Once thirty was the deferred wake-up call to turn one's life around... then thirty-five... then one was looking at forty. But surely there is an age that unequivocally represents the end of youth, of choice, and of promise. That age would have to be one's mid-forties. That is about as far as one can stretch it. The artist Jules Pascin once maintained that if a man had not produced his best work by the age of forty-five, then he was unlikely to do so afterwards. Pascin proved his point by killing himself on the night of his forty-fifth birthday, slashing his wrists and smearing a bloody love message to his young girlfriend on the walls of his studio.
Others adjust in different ways. The countdown to obsolescence begins. You are the only thing that is slowing down. Time itself is moving faster. Five years ago seems like last month and everything seems like five years ago. Death is closer now than birth and one spends a lot more time looking backward than forward. Panic sets in but apathy wins the day. So little has happened. What markers can one use in order to navigate one's way back through such a wasteland? At the same time, the view beyond early middle-age seems inconceivable.
As one grows older one must learn to suffer the pity of others. There exists the added indignity that one must brook not only pity but also resentment. One's juniors resent one for growing old, as if there is something shameful or indecent about it. One's age becomes an accusation, as if one has been found guilty of committing a heinous crime or carrying a fatal disease.
One's face, from which life is visibly draining, sends out a warning signal: defeat, decay and death are more than mere abstractions. One becomes a living reminder to others of what they will one day endure, and they resent you for pointing it out to them.
The solitude of one's position makes it harder to take. The long tracts of seclusion that were so vital to one's development as a younger man are not as important now. One's friends drift of and lose it in one way or another: death, career, family. The need for company becomes greater but kindred souls are harder to find. On the rare occasions when one encounters a contemporary who is on the same shaky footing as oneself, one initially finds it refreshing. Then one instinctively recoils. It is an automatic reaction to the scent of mature poverty. There is something more corrosive than consoling about the company of one's fellow scufflers. As a single person on society's fringes, one can easily acquire a distorted and hazy view of age that it is foolish to succumb to if one wishes to avoid looking ridiculous. Without the traditional signifiers of progress to guide one through these difficult years, one risks drifting indefinitely in a state of stale, suspended adolescence, a lifestyle choice that has become viable in the youth-obsessed climate of the last fifty years and a criterion by which it is tempting to judge oneself even when one doesn't subscribe to it. It might even be deemed an achievement of sorts to have maintained the questionable standards of integrity fostered during one's misguided youth into middle age. At the same time, there seems to be something unsavory, even sinful, about growing old without changing one's ways. It is perhaps a means of deluding oneself, of living in the realm of undignified make-believe that one is so anxious to avoid.
To age gracefully without making the usual adjustments requires careful handling.
Beware the vain -- in both definitions of the word -- lure of eternal youth. It is natural and right to carry on as if one is recklessly immortal when one is young, but to continue behaving that way into one's declining years is unseemly. The outward signifiers of age denial must also be avoided. One would be advised to dress and act in an elderly manner while still young, therefore preacclimatizing oneself to the desolations of middle age. William Burroughs and Robert Crumb were exemplars of this breed.
But they, of course, were successful. And therein lies the crux of the matter: The only way to redeem age is through success. It is acceptable to grow old as long as one has the money, power or achievement to counterbalance its more humiliating aspects. Success commands respect and an endless supply of nubile flesh, regardless of how decrepit one has the audacity to become. But success, after all, is a young person's game, and perhaps one has grown too old for it. How then does one cope with the awkward business of growing old without -- in the accepted sense "growing up"? There are several alternatives to consider: one could live on the street, commit suicide, get a job...or get married. Marriage, of course, is a convenient escape route. It is easier to grow old as part of a cozy domestic unit. Such arrangements, apparently, force one to grow up and provide one with a degree of security. It is comforting to know that someone will be around when the time comes to push one's wheelchair and empty one's bedpan.
Bachelordom, which once seemed a means of prolonging youth, turns on one. The mature bachelor resigns himself to a life of diminishing returns and becomes a potentially absurd figure. But why should it even matter? In a society that places so much emphasis upon coupledom it might even be considered heroic to remain single as a matter of choice. It is a lonely choice and one that few people consciously make. But for some it beats the alternatives. There is a certain satisfaction to be had from taking such a stance, and exposure to the lives of one's married friends is usually enough to convince one that the right decision has been made.
Life rolls on: rock hard, gently rolling. You distance yourself from what you once would have viewed as possibilities. You drift in the dullest glow of what once was. You don't allow yourself to get carried away with the thoughts you used to get carried away with. You resign yourself to indifference, your own and that of others. And in this way life can become quite painless. It doesn't feel as if there's much to look forward to anymore. But so what? Perhaps there never was.
|