Hollywood Part Four
What follows is part four in the chamblee54 celebration of Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski. The book details making the movie Barfly. Other installments of this series are available. one two three five Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
29 – The movie is shooting. Press people are starting to descend, in search of interesting copy. People have this notion that Hank is gonna be interesting. “The phone rang every day. People wanted to interview the writer. I never realized that there were so many movie magazines, or magazines interested in the movies. It was a sickness, this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed, time after time after time, to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing **** on film that they no longer realized it was ****.”
Hank Chinaski has to have a pro-active editor. This book is too smooth, and too easy to read. There is no way that a broken broken down urinal-feeder like pink China’s key can write a page turner like this. (Sometimes it is best to not correct the robo secretary.) Easy riding makes hard reading. Stream of consciousness is more fun to write, than it is to read.
Barbet Schroeder/Jon Pinchot did a series of interviews with Hank for French TV. I’m gonna find them on YouTube, and listen to as much as I can stand. (I did not make it through two minutes.) I thought I could use them as background noise for a graphic poem. The text was written by Ambrose Bierce, yet another drunken journalist. I’m gonna to use pictures of dogs for the background. This is gonna be the first time that I’ve married images to text in a while.
30 – Hank and Sarah go to a party. They meet a lawyer representing somebody. The client owes Hank money. The lawyer says the check is in the mail. Hank, Sarah, and the lawyer, continue to drink heavily. The lawyer’s wife, Helga, is a retired drunk. Hank says that there is absolutely nothing worse then being sober around drunks.
I was brought up in a Southern Baptist house. Father would drink a beer or two, but mom was a teetotaler. As a result, I really never learned how to drink. A social outcast in high school, I didn’t learn there either. I may be the only person alive that never drank, before he was legal. By this time, I was a dedicated pothead. It went from enjoying an occaisonal beer, to the point where the drinking was more than I was comfortable with. I never got a DUI, and I never progressed to hard liquor dependency. When I was 34, I quit, and never looked back.
I quit drinking on December 31st 1988 … The windows robo-secretary quit, for the last time. I am moving over to google docs, which is much better. … I’m not as willing to put up with alcoholic nonsense as I was before. I try not to be obnoxious about it. Alcohol serves as a social lubricant, that helps you get to know people. I spend a lot more time by myself now. It got even worse when I quit smoking pot. Now I’m an anti-social mess. It would be best if I could figure out *moderation,* but that is not happening for me.
31 – The checks did arrive. They promptly bounced. … I’ve always liked the phrase, returned for insufficient funds. The last time I got a reality check, it was returned for insufficient funds.
There’s a campaign ad, from a lady named Kay Ivey. She’s some sort of politician in Alabama, and she has nothing good to say about President Brandon. I’ve condensed this video down to the best 5 seconds. This lady looks at the camera all sweet and squishy and says “poor Joe bless his heart.”
32 – So they’re shooting the scene in a bathtub. Francine is concerned that her tits are going to show. Mickey is not loosening up. They’re on their 19th to take. The camera man wants a drink … he’s a brilliant camera man, and a drunk. They don’t want him to drink. However, people do want Francine to have a drink, so she can loosen up. Finally, Sarah comes out of the kitchen, with of coffeecup of whiskey, gin, and cat piss. Francine drinks the concoction, and the scene is shot.
Being a retired drunk is nothing to be proud of. If I was really doing it right, I would have learned the gift of … what’s that word, not sobriety, not temperance … anyways that that word that means that you can drink enough to enjoy yourself, or to loosen up when you need to, but not become a basket case. Now I can’t remember the word. I never could do it when I was drinking, and now I can’t remember the word for it. I’m sure I’ll remember it later.
33 – They’re shooting a scene. The building they’re using used to be a ballroom. It was full on Saturday night. The drunks outside hated the bougie dancing people. Now the building is a rehabilitation center for alcoholics, full of “reformed drunks who read the Bible, smoke too many cigarettes, and play bingo.”
This German lady, and this Italian lady, want to interview Mr. Chinaski. Italian lady goes first, all she wants to do is talk about drinking. Hank wants to talk about being pickling up the ass of death. By the time he got to German lady, Hank ran out of things to say. … There’s an old joke, about this Polish starlet. She thought she could get a part by fucking the screenwriter.
I am happy with the google robo secretary. It is time to take this further, and try editing in gd. as this program is affectionately initialized. I have to have background music. This would be The fastest guitar in the world. A man named Lloyd Ellis created the album in 1958. A bunch of studio musicians record instrumentals, destined for the $1.98 bin at K-mart. Meanwhile, the timer on the phone goes off. Breakfast is ready. Life is good.
34 – Jon Pinchot calls Hank. The movie has been cancelled, again. That seems to happen a lot. Hank is sympathetic, and invites Jon over for a few drinks. Pinchot says no thank you, I have a date with two lesbians. Hank was going to go to the racetrack anyway.
The racetrack system is all based on the concept that the public must lose. You decide what the public is going to do, and bet against it. Hank has a good system, but doesn’t always follow it. One of the problems that you have to defeat is human weakness.
Cary Grant was a star of LA racing. He would go to Hollywood Park, place a $2 bet, and go into hysterics when losting. The former Archie Leach was so well known at the track, they named a race The Cary Grant Stakes. Randolph Scott was a drink served in the clubhouse.
Hollywood Park eventually became obsolete. It was torn down, and SoFi stadium was built on the site. The Super Bowl is playing in this venue as we speak. I have a digital converter powering a huge tv that weighs 66.6 pounds. It was given to me. The game is on Channel 11, where over-the-air broadcasting is not a priority. The picture is on for a while, then breaks down into pixelated goulash.
35 – Hank and Sarah go to see a scene shot. They go to the bar. It is somehow connected to a flop house hotel. They go in, and a famous film critic there. .. Siskel and Ebert or Airhead or one of those guys .. Soon, Francine Bowers/Faye Dunaway comes in with her little notebook.
She is playing Jane, Hank’s gf, and wants to know about her. The Barfly cheat sheet says that Jane is “real,” but I suspect that her name is really Betty. In one of his books, Hank talks about his shack job Betty. Neither one was a member of the Junior League.
This man, Illiantovitch, comes in, and orders a double vodka. I had that I had to Google that name because it’s not in the Wikipedia summary. I found this Bukowski Forum. They had a text document, with every character in Hollywood, and the real life counterpart. There is no information about Illiantovitch, which is too bad. He is a sloppy drunk, but a neat character. Illiantovitch keeps drinking double vodkas, cussing out everybody when they go to watch the movie.
Francine is a great name. On dead Saturday, 1973, I went to a Stadium concert in Charlotte NC. One of the bands was ZZ Top. This was back when their beards were only about three fingers long. ZZ Top was the only band that to play an encore. One of their star songs was Francine.
36 – They need to shoot the bar fight. They’ve got doubles, to do the real fighting. Mickey Rourke is just going to pretend, in a couple of close-ups. Let the doubles do all the dirty work. Hank is nostalgic for his days as a barroom drunk. Later, Francine asks Hank how Jane died. She was the maid in this hotel, and everybody gave her a bottle of wine for Christmas. Hank went over to see her, and saw all these bottles in her room. “Babe you can’t drink all of that you’re going to die.” He came back a few days later, all the bottles were empty, and she was laying on the bed unconscious. Jane came to long enough to say “I knew it was you going to be you.” She died an hour later.
Hollywood Part Three
What follows is Part Three of a book report series. The topical text is Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski. The book is a semi-fictional account of making Barfly. Other parts of this series are available. one two four five Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
22 – I finally broke down, and cheated. The Hollywood (Bukowski novel) wikipedia page is the decoder ring, to see who the fictional names are. The technical name is Roman-à-Clef, even when nom de guerre is more accurate. It turns out that the producers are not Harvey Weinstein/Orion. BF was produced by the Cannon Group. Cannon/Firepower seems to be as crooked and devious as Orion … an occupational hazard of show business.
23 – Hank and Sarah go back to the ghetto, to visit Jon and François. Life is lots of fun. People sneak into the crawl space. They will knock on the floor, and let the residents know they’re there. After a live demonstration for Hank and Sarah, François started cussing out the crawlers. François is a French actor named Steve Baës. He’s one of the best characters in the story, yet does not have a Wikipedia page. At the end of chapter 23, Jon Pinchot gets a phone call from the crooks. The picture has been cancelled again. All’s fair in hate and Hollywood.
24 – Pinchot decided on a plan. He’s gonna go see the producers. He will threaten to cut off his little finger if he doesn’t get his way. Hank doesn’t think this is a very good plan. You need your little finger for typing a. Pinchot says that he never types a. He may be a type a, but he never types a.
This reminds me of a story. Paul was on the payroll, allegedly as a salesman. Most of the time he was in the office, looking at the accountants. One day, our store manager wrote a message on the white board. “Clean the head, Jim.” Jim was a driver. I went to the white board, erased Jim, and wrote in Paul. When he saw this, Paul got mad. “I shouldn’t have to clean the bathroom, I never use it.”
I am moving this production into the living room. There’s a nice comfy chair here. Take the mouse, book, and pink glasses to the living room. Since cataract surgery, I’ve been dependent on reading glasses. Every time I go to the dollar store, I pick up another pair. Every pair that I get is a little bit tackier than the one before. The latest one is flamingo pink. It is going to be tough to get something tackier than flamingo pink. All things are possible in a world without God.
There was a twitter notification. I made a comment about the instability of calling human ivermectin “horse dewormer.” There was a reply. This is what you expect from the kool aid drinkers who believe everything that Rachel Maddow says. @chamblee54 What about corporate media labeling a safe drug like ivermectin as horse dewormer? ~ “safe drug” 1) with a common side effect of causing you to shed your intestines? 2) that is known to cause kidney failure? 3) that available data does not show is effective against COVID-19? They’re labeling it horse dewormer because that’s what too many idiots are ingesting ~ “context needed” ~ Context: If someone eats a product sold to deworm horses, calling it horse dewormer is accurate. If someone refuses to take a proven safe/effective vaccine, but willingly shits their intestines out after eating horse dewormer, they are in fact an idiot. Context supplied.
25 – Hank and Pinchot have a meeting with a lawyer named Zach Nick. Pinchot brought his Black and Decker saw, and he repeatedly threatens to cut his little finger off. The lawyer gives him the contract, then deletes one of the chapters. Pinchot says it has too many ambiguities. Hank asks Zach Nick if he’s read anything of his. His daughter read Cesspool Dreams. Surely that’s a fake name, even if Cesspool Dreams is tasteful by Hank Chinaski standards. The meeting finally ends. Zach Nick says the practice of law gets stranger all the time.
26 – Hank is in movie production hell, again. He’s going to work on “the poem” now. There isn’t much money in the poem, but it sure was a big playground to flounder around in. It seems like Hank signed a contract years ago. It gives somebody else the rights to the character of Hank Chinaski. Now, they can’t make this movie. Hank gets on the phone with his old buddy, who’s somehow connected to the guy that owns the rights to Hank. He gives Hank a release, and the movie is on again
27 – The movie is back with the Canon Group. Now they’re having problems with actors. Francine Bowers got sick, and it’s gonna have to be out for a couple of weeks. Mickey Rourke has to have a Rolls Royce limousine. Some of his buddies are gonna get up on the hood of the Rolls, and do shots, and pound all kinds of insecurities into the hood. They’re gonna be moving into a hotel, with a bunch of real barflies … is barf short for barflies? I always thought that barf was short for bar food, especially after eating some. Of course, some of the barflies are nasty to eat, so maybe barf does mean barflies. The Bay Area Radical Faeries should be ashamed.
I really do need to see this movie. I did a multi-part book report for Catch 22 a while back. I had seen the movie Catch 22, when it first came out. C22, a so-so flick, did not turn out to be a hit. I saw C22 in this old theater that smelled like a popcorn machine. Margaret Mitchell was trying to cross Peachtree Street, to get to this theater, when she was run over by a taxicab.
A facebook friend posted an item. ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ merchandise at Alaska exchange crossed AAFES’ line on vulgarity “In the days leading up to Christmas, a temporary vendor at the exchange … sold wooden bear figurines fashioned to resemble former President Donald Trump and holding signs reading, “Let’s Go Brandon.” … The foot-tall bears sported long red ties and slicked-back blond hair in Trump fashion. … “Let’s Go Brandon” serves as code for some who oppose Joe Biden’s presidency. Pro-Trump crowds routinely chant the phrase during rallies, and it now adorns T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs and a host of other merchandise popular with conservatives.”
28 – They’re starting on the movie. Filming is in this old beat up hotel in Los Angeles. One of the rooms they’re using, in the movie, is a room that Hank lived in. They’ve hired some of the degenerates living in the hotel, to work as extras on the movie. The hotel is gonna be torn down for some commercial venture. The residents don’t know where they will go.
Hollywood Part Two
This is part two of a book report on “Hollywood,” by Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski.
13 – Jon Pinchot needs to move out of his house, and lands with Hank and Sarah. They get to drinking and hanging out, and Jon tells a movie financing war story. This wealthy lady in Russia wanted to work with him, but only after Jon goes to church with her, and fucks her. “please understand I have nothing against the old the aged but it was like kissing a sewer hole.”
This afternoon, I took the book with me to the Kroger parking lot. The idea was to read, while waiting for my brother to finish shopping. When I went in for my groceries, i got in the checkout line behind a lady with WIC coupons. By the time I got through, and returned by shopping cart, the checkout line was cleared up, and Mac was almost ready to go. I did not get to read, and peruse the cosmic comic insights of alkies in movieland.
I did get to drive home. The Kroger parking lot is a nightmare on the best day, but I got out, and on to Clairmont going north. I am going to be turning left in a couple of blocks, and there is no point in being in the right lane. This is a problem for some drivers. People on Clairmont road drive as though they were still on I85, and are very annoyed when someone does the speed limit in front of them.
14 – Hank and Sarah see a movie about skid row degenerates. It turns out to have clean cut, well dressed actors playing broken down drunks. Inevitably one of them gets Jesus, which may have been the point of the movie all along.
These facebook fuddy-duddies were talking about Joe Rogan. I had enough of the negativity, and decided to find some of the content, that makes Mr. Rogan the most entertaining man on the internet. I found this: “black people didn’t know what plastic surgery was, so the deal was you take that government butter and you rub it on your titties on your ass and they said it’ll make it grow yeah … that’s what we used to do back in the day.”
This is the person Nikole-Hannah Jones was talking about when she said, in response to a tweet form: @AllMattNYT “Joe Rogan is what he is. We in the media might want to spend more time thinking about why so many people trust him instead of us.” @nhannajones ” With respect, I don’t get this. We need to understand why millions of Americans don’t mind the open racism? It’s not a mystery. Been reporting on it for years. So what do we do with that?” IOW, giving a comedian the opportunity to tell us about using government butter, to make your titties bigger, is open racism. TBH, to say that government butter will make your titties bigger probably does qualify as misinformation.
15 – “Something went wrong. Try again in a little while.” I am trying to find the motivation to write about a boring chapter. Hank is trying to force a screenplay out of his typer, and it is not happening. There is a letter about how to play the horses. There is a trip downstairs to plead for mercy from Jon Pinchot, who responds by saying that François is coming back from France, and they are going to move out to somewhere.
The fifth letter of François is c-cedilla. Ç “is a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Manx, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish, Zazaki, and Romance alphabets. Romance languages that use this letter include Catalan, French, Friulian, Ligurian, Occitan, and Portuguese as a variant of the letter C.” To make Ç, you hold down the alt key and type the numbers 0199. Or you just find someone else who typed it, and copy that. If you want a ç, the code is alt+0231.
16 – Jon and François have moved into a ghetto, and they think it is the coolest thing ever. Hank is not so sure, but he gets his knife, puts his money in his shoe, and drives down there. I have known lots of people who lived in “those” neighborhoods. They are usually happy to get out, even if they don’t say so out loud. You have to wonder how long it will take the romance to wear off with these two Frenchman-living-among-the-natives.
17 – Let’s see if the electronic section robo secretary is working hey it’s working too bad I’m not. So I boot the computer now the robo secretary is working. Chapter 17 is kind of boring. Hank and Sarah go to a party at John and François’s place in the ghetto. They’re having a cookout in the backyard and cooking chicken. François doesn’t know how to cook chicken. It turns out hard as a rock. Hank can’t eat it. Someone steals the wheels off of François’s vehicle, and sells them to him for $38. The robo-secretary hears “ghetto life” and gives me “get a life.”
18 – There are these two characters. Wikipedia tells me that it’s Sean Penn and Dennis Hopper. The story is that Sean Penn wants to be in Barfly, but insists that Dennis Hopper direct. Barbet Schroeder ( robo secretary: Barbie show drunk Schroeder) hates Dennis Hopper. He hates him so much, he calls Paris and talks to his lawyer. A clause is written in his will. If Mr. Schroeder dies in the production of Barfly, Dennis Hopper cannot direct this movie.
The story took place when Sean Penn was married to Madonna. The fake name in Hollywood is Ramona. “All’s fair in hate and Hollywood.”
19 – Hank and Sarah go to meet an actor who wants to play the part. Mickey Rourke eventually played the role, so it is probably him. He lives in this broken down bachelor pad. “there were springs sticking out of the sofa, and there were pillows on the floor, used magazines, paper bags. “This is a real male hangout” Sarah laughed.
They mentioned that Francine Bowers was the female they were trying to get to play some role in this drama. Francine Bowers is a great name for Faye Dunaway. There was a person at Cross Keys named Mr Bowers, aka officer dibble. He was this guy that went around in the halls, before school, making trouble for everybody. Later, I had a friend that thought he was a musician. One of his stage names was Harry Bowers. Francine Bowers is a good name for the ultimate diva actress.
20 – Hank is going to a party for some sleazy Hollywood type and he goes by the Chateau Marmont to pick up Norman Mailer. Hank asks Norman if he has anything to drink. Mormon … calling Norman Mailer Mormon…. Norman has the bottle of wine, but no Corkscrew. Hank says that he was an amateur drunk. Hank is not a purist, and drinks the wine.
21 – Hank goes to this party for a producer who may or may not be Harvey Weinstein. IMDb doesn’t say that Weinstein produced BF, but the character at this party was certainly acting like you would expect Harvey Weinstein to act. At the end of the night, Hank has decided that he likes Mr. Weinstein. John Pinchot says that he’s the nicest person he’s ever met, including Idi Amin. Other parts of this series are available. one three four five Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Hollywood Part One
I had this bright idea. I was going to do a chapter by chapter commentary of Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski. Hollywood has 48 chapters most of them are only a few pages long. This is my kind of book. Jack Keruoac made a single sentence last five pages. Per this source, Keruoac is the only beat that CB never met. “… Neal Cassidy and Ginsberg ( i think ) coaxing Buk out for a joy ride in Hollywood. … Cassidy was a wild man and drove like a racer in death race 2000. He spun the car out near Ivar and Buk went to floor. Apparently he wet his pants. …”
1 – The story starts with Hank Chinaski (Charles Bukowski,) and Sarah, on a mission. (Sarah is Linda Lee Beighle, his wife.) They go to a meeting in a wealthy part of Los Angeles. Hank does not feel comfortable. “We have just landed upon the outpost of death. My soul is puking.” Sarah replied, “Will you stop worrying about your soul.” This sets the tone for what is to follow.
2 – Hank and Sarah meet an obnoxious, drunken Frenchman. Some people are trying to get Hank to write a screenplay for a movie. Barfly eventually did get made. I’ve never seen it, which is not unusual. I don’t see a lot of movies. There is a scene on youtube, where Mickey Roarke picks a fight with a bartender. It is not pleasant to watch, either on video or in real life. I have known degenerates that can’t control their impulses, and they are no fun at all. Fortunately, the dead tree version of Hank Chinaski can be put down whenever necessary, and then revived again when it is convenient.
3 – Chapter 3 is what I read the other day, when I went to Walgreens for my booster shot. It gets quite juicy. Hank is attending a screening of a documentary, about an African tyrant. Barbet Schroeder, whom Hollywood is dedicated to, once directed a movie about Idi Amin. The dictator would kill his opponents, and then dump them in a swamp, where the crocidiles would become impossibly fat. It is not good for the swamp’s ecological balance.
4 – Two of the obnoxious frenchmen are François Racine and Jon Pinchot. It is uncertain who they are stand ins for. François and Jon go to a Las Vegas show starring Tom Jones. François hates it, and rants on and on about how much he hates Tom Jones. I remember Mr. Jones, aka Sir Thomas John Woodward OBE, fondly. Mr. Woodward was on the WTF podcast last year, but that show is now behind a paywall. I wasn’t going to listen to it anyway, just to remember a few good stories.
Tom Jones: “Fast-forward to 1965. My own singing career had taken off, with three hit records and a big-selling album, and I was on my first trip to America. I went to Paramount Studios to talk about recording a song for a movie and someone told me that Elvis was filming on the neighboring sound stage and wanted to say hello.”
“‘Oh, my God! Surely Elvis Presley doesn’t know who I am’. But I walked on the set, where he was sitting in a helicopter, and he sort of waved in my direction. I couldn’t believe he was waving at me, but I waved back, just in case. Then he came over and said he knew every track on my album and he sang one of my songs, With These Hands, all the way through. He said to me, ‘How the hell do you sing like you do?’ And I said, ‘Well, you are to blame because I listened to all your records in the 1950s.” He told me that when he heard me singing What’s New Pussycat? on record, he thought I was black. I thought that was a bit ironic, as I’d thought he was black when I first heard him singing.”
5 – Hank is in a bar, hating it. A man comes up, and says he wants to finance his screenplay. The man just finished a film about Jack Keruoac called Heart Beat. (Those are not the names Hank uses, but it easy to figure out what he means.) The movie-dude tells Hank the title of the Keruoac-flick. Hank hates the title, and won’t talk to the movie-dude after that.
6 – This chapter is a meeting in a hotel room, full of Frenchmen who talk too much. It is much better when Hank tells the story. I have never known anyone named Hank. When I was a kid, the Braves had a player named Hank, who you have heard too much about. One night, during their lame duck season in Milwaukee, the Braves played an exhibition game at the toilet-bowl stadium. After the game, my long suffering dad took me to the bowels of the stadium. You could stand outside the clubhouse, and get autographs as the players left. A couple of times, the door would open, and you could see a naked player. So, Hank Aaron came out, patiently signed a bunch of autographs. He was smoking a cigarette. Joe Torre came out, saw the crowd of people, ducked behind a truck, and took off away from the autograph seekers. Good times.
7 – Hank finally gets to work on the screenplay, when he is interrupted by a phone call. This is counter-productive to the business of writing. The caller is a hip-talking German, who Hank asks for money. Hank tells him a joke. “Whats the difference between a chicken’s asshole and a rabbit’s asshole?” “I don’t know. What’s the difference?” “Ask little dick.” I don’t get it. I think this one is funnier. “Why did the pervert cross the road? He couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken.”
8 – Some slick talking tax finagler calls on Hank, who is very leery of the whole thing.
9 – Hank goes into this real estate office, and is treated as though he were a degenerate. The only appropriate thing to do is go into a bar. The ale house is full of biker types, who recognize Hank and call out to him. Hank is a wino rock star, and insanely uncomfortable. He gets out of APES HAVEN before you can say rehabilitation.
10 – One of the bits of money advice Hank gets is to buy a house. He goes, with Sarah, to this rundown place in the sticks. It is a scene out of a bad movie. Someone spray painted over the bath tub, IF TIM LEARY AIN’T GOD, THEN GOD IS DEAD. Finally, Sarah gets this notion that this is the house where Charles Manson killed somebody. This is too much, even for Hank Chinaski. They leave before they get too drunk to drive home.
When typing the existential exhortation about Tim Leary, I decided not to use the cap lock, but typed it one letter at a time. If I had it to do over again, I would have used cap lock, even though typing in cap lock is the facebook equivalent of saying LOOK AT ME I AM AN IDIOT. I had a co-worker once who typed with one finger. I think it was the index finger on his right hand. When Kyle wanted to type a capital letter, he would turn cap lock on, type the letter, and, turn cap lock off.
11 – Hank brings in the mail. There are two items. One is a fan letter. Someone writes this letter full of vile insults, and then wants Hank to read his poems. Hank reads one and a half, and decides that he has better things to do with his time. The second letter is from a lawyer. It is incorporation papers, the intention being the incorporation, for tax purposes, of Henry Charles Chinaski. Hank reads through the papers, and crosses out the parts he does not like. The corporation can have Hank declared insane, and take all his money away. Eventually, Hank and Sarah open a bottle of wine.
12 – The neighborhood that Hank lives in is going downhill, even to a point where it is worse off than Hank. People from somewhere in Central America are flooding in, and bringing fourth world conditions to third world LA. Finally, Hank gets busy with the house hunting, and finds something to his liking. The note is going to be $789.81. This is where I was in the book, when I had the inspiration to write this falling-off-a-cliff-notes version of H-wood. This is a good place to stop, edit what I have already written, and decide what to do next.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. More is available. two three four five
The Days of Anna Madrigal
If I don’t start dictating this thing now I never will. This is a book report about the The Days of Anna Madrigal, the last book in the Tales of the City cycle. DOAM was written by Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. There might be a spoiler alert in this book report; that’s what book reports are for. DOAM is a wonderful book. However, like all of AJM books, you have to have a suspension of disbelief, because some of these things are just too weird to be true..
One way to prepare for a book report is to listen to videos of the author. I saw an AJM event, at the Decatur First Baptist Church in pre-pandemic 2018. Finally, I found a lovely quote.
The DOAM characters all go to Burning Man. I’ve never been to BM, and probably never will. I’ve been to many faerie gatherings, so I have a slight taste for intentional community. From all indications BM is much much, much, more intense. The BM aura is a bit off-putting. I could probably get into it but I’d have to I’d have to be prepared, and that probably is not going to happen. Fortunately, AJM had a younger husband, that dragged him there kicking and screaming.
When you make YouTube clips, you have to guess when it starts, and when it finishes. This entertainment does not have a transcript, or a cis-script. After consultation with the law firm of Trial and Error, I made this clip. It starts at 1970 seconds, and it ends at 2100 seconds. There’s a synchronicity to 1970 – 2100. These 130 seconds start with the acknowledgement that it was autobiographical. We’ve always suspected that Michael was really AJM. So he goes to BM. The last words of this clip are there would be rules.
DOAM ended much too soon for my taste. It goes into a bit of the back story for Anna Madrigal. For those who are new here, AM is the landlady at the house where the TOTC players lived. It seems like AM was raised in a cathouse in Winnemucca, NV. There was a real family named Madrigal. Part of the DOAM story is how Anna goes back to Winnemucca, and meets a player in this narrative. It’s a of a tearjerker, but most AJM stories are from time to time.
As for the fantasy of being raised in a brothel … when I was a young man I had this friend going by the name of Raven (not Wolfdancer.) He later went through several other names in the time that I knew him, and I never did find out his real name. This makes looking for him on facebook difficult. I first met Raven, his story was that he was raised in a brothel at the end of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Being the naive young idiot that I was, I believed him. Once, we went to a house on McLendon Avenue, where this old lady was introduced as being his grandmother. I said something about the business you were in, which went over her head. Anyway, Raven … then known as Harry Bowers … moved to New York in 1983, and was never heard from again.
There will be no more TOTC books, and probably little more of the characters. DOAM was set in 2012, when AM is 92. The “boomer” characters are starting to draw social security. Since Mouse is a stand in for AJM, it is safe to assume that he is alive. It is tempting to re-read some of the TOTC books, but there are so many other books to read. The current selection is Hollywood by Charles Bukowski. It will be fun, until it is done. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Slow Days, Fast Company
On the last wednesday of 2021, I read the last paragraph of Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz. Bret Easton Ellis mentioned EB, and SDFC, several times on his podcast. I ordered SDFC from the library. While reading it, on December 17, Eve Babitz died. Did I kill EB, by reading her book?
SDFC has been described as the work of an unapologetically shallow California girl. It is true. Then EB references Virginia Wolff, or Diane Arbus. In one story, EB (no middle name) goes to a gated community in Orange County for the weekend. The people there are so Nixony! Later, one of the ladies commits suicide. EB plows ahead without missing a beat.
EB was gonna design an album cover for Janis Joplin, and went to meet her. Janis was in the studio. The music was painfully loud. Janis was passed out on the floor of the studio. A few days later, EB went to visit Janis at some hotel in Los Angeles. Janis was laying up in the pool face up, not drowning but obviously on a distant planet.
SDFC is an amazing book. It’s not very long, broken down into nine stories. EB went to Bakersfield to hang out with the son of a grape grower. Another is when that EB hangs out with a lady who is a musician, and heroin user. EB thinks that heroin is very glamorous, for other people. EB was a big tequila fan, and consumed a few plane-loads of white powder. SDFC is set around 1973, before the democratization of cocaine in the eighties.
After the demise of Joan Didion, and EB, Bret had Lily Anolick on his show. She did a podcast series about Bennington College. The lady … whose name is not anal-lick … wrote Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Amazon had a one star review: Totally the C Word “After reading this book I thought I was going to have to go to the clinic and get treated for VD. Incredible, did she really have sex with this many people?”
SDFC is written by a woman, from a woman’s point of view. Here is a sample. “Women want to be loved like roses. They spend hours perfecting their eyebrows and toes and inventing irresistible curls that fall by accident down the back of their necks from otherwise austere hair-dos. … The only time men fall in love with roses is on douche commercials.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Second International Pageant of Pulchritude and Eighth Annual Bathing Girl Revue, May 21, 22, 23, Galveston, Texas, 1927. This article includes the picture of a naked EB playing chess with Marcel Duchamp.
Armistead Maupin At DBF
When PG heard that Armistead Maupin was coming to the Dick Hater Book Festival, not going was out of the question. There were rumors of a film showing/Q&A on saturday, and PG scoured the DBF website, looking for information. When the film showing was finally put on the website, tickets were no longer available. This is a repost.
On the morning of the talk, PG fussed over which shirt to wear, settling on a purple t-shirt with no adornment. Next, PG called his friend “P” to make arrangements to meet at the First Baptist Church, site of Mr. Maupin’s appearance. The ring tone for PG calls on “P”‘s phone is “Tutti Frutti.” “P” had agreed to let a friend do laundry at his house, and had to jiggle the schedule a bit. “P” wore a tie dyed t-shirt, with a chest hair display hole below the collar. This all blends in nicely with the lavender shirt, pink suspenders, and Levis that Mr. Maupin wore.
The talk started at 1:15. PG arrived at 12:30, and snagged a prime parking spot. The talk was in the sanctuary, and PG found seats in the fifth row pew. The church house setting gave Mr. Maupin pause. He said something about using profanity, and the pastor said “Its all good.” Mr. Maupin then told the story of getting lubricated on maitais, and coming out to his neighbor. She said “big fucking deal.”
When PG arrived at the church, Mr. Maupin was standing in front of the auditorium. PG went down and shook his hand. “My blog is Chamblee54, and I am writing about this, so I am going to watch what you say.” Mr. Maupin looked sideways, as if to say “who does this guy think he is.” Later, while discussing gender transition, Mr. Maupin paused for a second, and said he manted to say this properly. He was watching what he said.
The talk was a delight, as everyone knew it would be. The *southern-ness* of his parents, moving to San Francisco, the Tales of the City series, and Rock Hudson all were discussed. The pbs lady who hosted the event said that Mr. Maupin was like the Forrest Gump of our generation. This went over about as well as PG telling Mr. Maupin to watch what he said.
At some point, the racial values of 1950s North Carolina came up again. It occurred to PG that this was a very white audience. He looked in the rows ahead of him, and to the side, and did not see any POC. When the talk ended, PG was one of the first to stand up, and did a quick survey of the rest of the room. There may have been POC at this event, but PG did not see them. For painfully woke Decatur, this is an interesting development. You can welcome people all you want, but if nobody shows up, then nobody shows up.
PG spoke to Mr. Maupin one more time. While discussing the techno-gentrification of San Francisco, Mr. Maupin said that “Decatur is starting to look pretty good.” He then said that maybe you say Deck-a-tur. After the show was over, PG approached the stage, and told Mr. Maupin that the correct pronunciation was Dick Hater…. the town had been renamed Dick Hater in honor of the lesbian population. Mr. Maupin laughed, and acted like he had never heard that. A man with a DBF badge told PG “You’re making that up.”
Chamblee54 has featured Mr. Maupin one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times. Pictures, for the text to go between, are from The Library of Congress.
Mary Ann in Autumn
There is a moment near the end of Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel. Michael is talking to his much-younger husband, Ben. Tangerines are involved. Michael says something about a song “from the sixties.” Claudine Longet sings “Would you like some of my tangerine? I know I’ll never treat you mean.” Claudine Georgette Longet is alive in 2021.
Flashback to the summer of 1973. Sopwith Camel is opening for Rory Gallagher at Richards. They play the closest thing they had to a hit, “Hello Hello.” “Would you like some of my tangerine? I know I’ll never treat you mean.” Somebody in the audience liked that song, and offered them a great deal of money to play it again. “Would you like some of my tangerine? I know I’ll never treat you mean.” SC wound up playing “Hello Hello” five times that night.
TOTC books are known for their unlikely plot twists. They are fun books, but not to be taken literaly. MAIA is no different. Mary Ann has unterine cancer, and just caught the husband screwing the life coach. She flies to San Francisco, and stays with Michael and Ben. A couple of long time lady-friends hook her up with an amazing gynecologist, who gets her to surgery in under two weeks. There are a few more subplots, which come together in a *bangup* finale. Check your critical thinking at the door, and you will be just fine.
Armistead Maupin writes about San Francisco, with a sharp eye for detail. One character is a dog park. Another is the homeless population. A third is the lifestyle blogger, which is obsolete just a dozen years later. (MAIA is set in 2008, which already seems like another century.) Somehow, these scenes marinate one another, producing a head-exploding finish. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
She Always Carries Jonquils
PG found Archival Atlanta: Electric Street Dummies, the Great Stonehenge Explosion, Nerve Tonics, and Bovine Laws : Forgotten Facts and Well-Kept Secrets from Our City’s Past at the Chamblee library. There are always more stories to be heard. This repost has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. It is written like Margaret Mitchell.
In the 1840s, the Western and Atlantic railroad wanted to hook up with the Central of Georgia railroad. The spot for the meeting was called Terminus. One idea was to name the town for William Lumpkin, a former Georgia Governor and a railroad executive. Lumpkinville sounded bad in the mouth, and the new town was named “Marthasville”, after the daughter of the Governor. (Martha is buried in Oakland Cemetery.) Few people liked this name, and someone decided that the feminine form of Atlantic was Atlanta. Unlike the state flag, this is unlikely to change.
The new town prospered, and recovered from the unpleasantness of 1864. In 1875, there was a problem with stray cows. The answer was the “1875 Cow Ordinance”. The law required that cows be kept in a pen at night. A fine of two dollars was assessed for every stray cow that was caught.
About this time, there were a few very busy railroad tracks going through downtown. People were getting tired of waiting for the trains to go through. One by one, viaducts were built over the tracks, creating a forgotten ground floor. This was built up into Underground Atlanta in the sixties, which was red hot for a while, then cooled off, and is now so so.
In 1897, J.W. Alexander was the first person in town to own a “horseless carriage”. One day, he decided to take a ride to East Point. A mule objected, and kicked man and machine into a ditch.
It is a rule that all history books about Atlanta have to discuss Coca Cola and Gone With The Wind. There are only so many stories to go around. This book tells of an Alpharetta farmer who bought the Tara set from MGM. He stored in a barn, the location of which was a secret. Betty Talmadge wanted to buy it, and the price went from $375k to $5k. After a while, the sale was finalized. There was only one problem…the farmer died, and never told anyone where the barn was. Mrs. Talmadge got the money from her husband’s overcoat, went to Alpharetta, and found the barn. The set was moved into another secret location, where it was in 1996, when Archival Atlanta was published, at an undisclosed local location.
Sam and William Venable owned Stone Mountain, and had a quarry there. (The Ku Klux Klan held meetings on the mountain.) (The spell check suggestion for Ku Klux is Kook Klutz.) Sam built a large granite house at 1410 Ponce de Leon Avenue, and stocked it with ammunition. He thought a race war was on the way, and wanted to be prepared. One night, a chimney overheated. The roof caught on fire. The explosives in the attic exploded, and took the roof off. The house was repaired, Mr. Venable died, and the house became part of a Lutheran church.
One of the few ante bellum houses in Atlanta is near Grant Park. It was once owned by Lemuel Grant, who donated the land for the park. He stays in a large marble house in Oakland Cemetery now. The Grant Park house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. John Marsh, in partnership with Boyd Eugene Taylor. After the death of Mrs. Marsh (also known as Margaret Mitchell), she was known to visit the house. “Margaret just wanders through the house, looking things over. She never talks, and she always carries jonquils. The first night she came I was very shocked. I went out to her grave at Oakland Cemetery the next day. I’d never been to the house before. But I was almost certain of what I’d find. The plot is covered by a bed of jonquils.”
Squeeze Me
A new laptop has found its way into the world of chamblee54. The best way to make friends is to assign chores to the new device, and just do it. The first one was this poem. There were numerous challenges along the way. I never hesitated to take a break. Finally, the poem was finished, and posted. The next assignment is a book report on Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen.
One challenge of working with Mr. H is the surname. The first google how-to, Pronounce Names, got it wrong, after running a popup ad for Lucy McBath. (The congresslady’s son was killed in Florida.) Finally, another video was found, where the man introduces himself. The proper way to say Hiaassen is HI-a-sin. High a sin. How could anyone mess that up?
SM is set in Florida, with most of the action taking place in Palm Beach. There are plenty of widows, with too much money, and way too much spare time. A group of them, called the Potussies, are Presidential groupies. A sometimes resident of PB bears a striking resemblance to a recent POTUS. The Secret Service code name is Mastadon.
Trump bashing has been the national pastime for the last few years. Most of it is unimaginative, featuring an unhealthy obsession with racial attitudes. Mr. Hiassen takes Trump bashing to a new level. Between the adderall, and the velcro wig holder, it is little wonder that POTUS cannot satisfy Mockingbird, his wife. She takes comfort in the arms of a Secret Service agent.
The plot centers around a Potussy, eaten by a Burmese Python. The snakes were imported to PB by Skink, a recurring Hiassen character. I have always thought Skink was one of Hiassen’s yuckier characters, and was happy to go through most of the book without him. Alas, when it became clear that the snakes were manually introduced to PB, it should have been obvious who was responsible.
SM is a wild ride. It is like eating a box of chocolates… you know you will run out soon, but cannot resist just one bite. Soon it will time to look up something else to get from the library. There are two volumes in the “Tales of the City” series to go. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Heroin Diaries
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star turned up on the used book table at the Chamblee library. A hardback copy was $2. THD is a visual overload. Every page has comic-book drawings, in a horror show theme. The text/background switches back and forth between red, black, and white. If you are in a spot with low lighting, red on black text is almost impossible to read.
THD is about the life, and near death, of Nikki Sixx. He is the bass player/creative force for Mötley Crüe. THD starts Christmas 1986. The main portion ends at the end of 1987. There are a few pages, telling the short version from 1988, until the book’s publication in 2007. The copyright is assigned to Nikki Sixx, with Ian Gihins the editorial miracle worker. Mr. Sixx kept a diary throughout 1987, and added comments in 2007. A cast of characters adds further commentary.
Nikki Sixx did a lot of drugs in 1987. Heroin, cocaine, and Jack Daniels were the big three. Crüe went on tour in June, and were on the road the rest of the year. The “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour may have been the high water mark for rockstar bad behavior. One story has Nikki, and Tommy Lee (Crüe’s drummer/Nikki’s co-conspirator) set a hotel room on fire. Nikki thought it was someone in their entourage, and was surprised when it was a Chinese tourist. There are many more stories.
Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr. was born December 11, 1958. THD starts two weeks after his 28th birthday, ending his chance to join the 27 club. At some point, and ex-girlfriend took a boyfriend named “Nikki Syxx.” Frank Feranna had a tough childhood. After his father left, Frank was bounced around between his mother, and his grandparents. Somewhere in there, his mother is said to have dated Richard Pryor. Frank got older, with a lot of issues. AHD goes into great detail about his childhood, and the self-medicating that followed.
The GGG tour came to the Omni, in Atlanta, November 20, 1987. By this time Guns and Roses were the opening act. (Slash on the same tour as Nikki Sixx, what could possibly go wrong?) “Axl Rose was onstage in Atlanta when he saw one of the security guards, who turned out to be an off-duty cop, pushing their fans around. Axl jumped off the stage and started fighting the guard, so security grabbed him and took him backstage. So Slash sang a few songs, and Guns’ drum technician sang “Honky Tonk Woman”—four times, not terribly well.”
“As concert promoter Charlie Brusco walked through the back door of the arena shortly after the concert started, he knew something was wrong. “I heard this horrible sound,” Brusco says. “I look up, and one of the guys in the road crew was singing.” A roadie for the band named Big Ron was on lead vocals, because, earlier, Rose had jumped offstage, punched a cop, and been carried away. The Omni’s head of security told Brusco, … “Third strike, he hit a black female Atlanta police officer. He’s going to jail.” Brusco begged for Rose to be allowed to finish the show. Finally the security chief said, “If he apologizes to the police officer in writing, we’ll let him go.” Brusco agreed. He was led to Rose, who was sitting at a makeshift booking table wearing his trademark bandanna. Rose dutifully signed his apology, and security brought in the female officer. Then Rose looked up and said, “Fuck you, you fucking jag-off cop.” He was hauled to jail, and the show was canceled.”
An amazon one-star review: “I don’t know how you read this and aren’t questioning how Nikki Sixx isn’t in prison for rape; “Nikki. He asked me if I was serious about her, and when I replied that we were just getting to know each other, Nikki started telling her how hot she was. As he bent her over what was a locker-room bench she complained that she was in the middle of her period. Nikki told her he wasn’t scared by a little bit of blood and proceeded to have intercourse with her right there on the spot, in front of anybody who happened to be there.”
THD is ever-so-slightly misogynistic. The phrase “CHICKS=TROUBLE” appears throughout the book, beside the tittie bars and groupies. The ladies are definitely not as important to Nikki as the drugs. “My dick didn’t seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I’m not surprised she left. I suspect she won’t be coming back.”
“We paint the outside of our bodies beautiful but the inside is like dead men’s bones. … We mistake lust for love and pop more pills, slam more drugs, drink ourselves silly or end us, as I did, scraping the inside of a pipe just to hit the resin and flush life down a toilet.” Evangelist Denise Matthews, aka Vanity, was Nikki’s girlfriend for much of 1987. A former gf of Prince, Miss Matthews had a volatile personality. Being a serious crackhead did not help. Evangelist Denise Matthews passed away February 15, 2016. Her kidney failure is almost certainly the result of her crack addiction.
Near the end of 1987, Nikki shot too much heroin. Many people thought he died. He managed to pull through. The next few years saw Nikki get sober, only to relapse, only to get sober again, only to relapse. Rinse and repeat, unlike the appalling approach to personal hygiene. Hong Kong, December 19, 1987: “P.S. I smell so bad, I haven’t showered since LA I can see people actually look repulsed when they get a whiff of me. I stand next to people just to fuck with them. I didn’t bring any clothes with me, just cash. Fuck, what else do I need.”
After 1987, the narrative becomes much less detailed. Nikki gets married and divorced a few times, with a few children born along the way. At one point, he abandoned his wife and kids, which made him feel horrible, but did not stop him. Finally, Nikki detoxed for good, and was clean when THD was written in 2007. According to his instagram, Nikki Sixx has been sober 20 years on July 2, 2021. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
When an author has book product, the author gets interviewed. This is how PG first heard of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. The act of using “the media” to promote book product is a curious analog to shaming. To have the exhibitionism on the wtf podcast, starring the shame-proof Marc Maron, is another item on an overloaded irony buffet. This is a repost.
Justine Sacco made an unwise tweet about AIDS and white privilege. She landed in South Africa to discover herself notorious, and unemployed. The tabloid press said Max Mosley was at a Nazi themed sex party. He sued the paper about the Nazi part, won a settlement, and boasted of being a player. The tabloid newspaper got caught in another scandal, and was shut down.
This being non fiction, Mr. Ronson goes all over the place. There is a $500 a seat weekend seminar on “radical honesty.” There are academics, of various levels of intelligence, who write about shaming, prison techniques, and other trivia. There is a company who floods the internet with flattering stories about you, so that the trash goes to page three of google. There are also more people whose lives were ruined by public shaming. One example is the rape victim who committed suicide after her cross examination.
The star shaming saga is donglegate. (spell check suggestion: congregate) Two young men at a tech conference made a tacky joke. A lady, Adria Richards, took a picture of the young men. Immediately, the picture was on twitter. @adrisrichards Not cool Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles Right behind me.
In her interview with Mr. Ronson, Ms. Richards said she felt that the dongle joke jeopardized her safety. “Have you ever heard that thing, Men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” “People might consider that an overblown thing to say”… She had, after all, been in the middle of a tech conference with eight hundred bystanders” “Sure And those people would probably be white and they would probably be male.”
While researching donglegate, Mr. Ronson talked to some people at 4chan. There was a comment made. It went into the preview copies of the book, but not the final edition. This is part of the the publicity process. Someone took offense at this comment, and made an issue out of it. For more details see this story, File under ‘inevitable’: “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” author Jon Ronson slammed by Twitter-shamers.
In all of these tales, Mr. Ronson’s name was spelled correctly. Some say there is no bad publicity. Whatever is said creates awareness of your product. There is a lot of awareness for SYBPS, and Mr. Ronson, right now. @jonronson Feeling incredibly sorry for #RachelDolezal and hope she’s okay. The world knows very little about her, her motives.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Picture #06662 is from “Second International Pageant of Pulchritude and Eighth Annual Bathing Girl Revue, May 21, 22, 23, 1927, Galveston TX.”
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