Chamblee54

This is a repost from 2008, inspired by Jack Kerouac: An Appreciation. JKAA appeared in KIKO’S HOUSE, a blog I read in 2008. Kiko’s was the retirement project of Shaun Mullen, an journalist who was “born to blog.” People said things like that when W was president. Kikos published its last post 12/11/2019, the day before Shaun Mullen died. Chamblee54 is still going, which makes writing about Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac much easier.
Over the years, I keep lists of posts. While writing this feature, I learned that I never compiled one for JLLK. I knew there was an extended book report covering “On The Road,” and vaguely remembered doing one for “The Dharma Bums.” The next step was to use Google Advanced Search, which does not work for “Dharma site: chamblee54.wordpress.com.” If you substitute bums for dharma, you are referred to something about Charles Bukowski. I did a GAS search for Kerouac, and found a series about “Satori in Paris” which I had totally forgotten. I also found a story about starting work on “The Dharma Bums” and used it to track down the posts.
From “The Dharma Bums Part Four” … This chapter by chapter thing is not working. The idea is to use this as a springboard for improvisation, to say whatever comes up. This does not seem to be happening. Tdb is a worthwhile read, the first time. Reading it twice, while taking notes, is not a good idea. … While in Corte Madera, there are a lot of wild parties. It is the sort of boho thing the rest of America tittered about…. Dwight Eisenhower got reelected. He is not mentioned in tdb, but his buddy Richard Nixon is. We know how that story turned out.
JLLK published BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE in the Summer 1958 edition of Evergreen Review. … 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time 15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
From Kerouac … I read OTR, and found it entertaining but not life changing. I get the sense that Kerouac and Cassidy could be real jerks. … OTR was published in 1957, when I was three years old and living on a street of always pregnant stay at home moms. … I suspect that if Jack Kerouac had not written his books that someone else would have, and maybe survived fame in better shape. … At one time, Kerouac was staying with Neal Cassidy (his uncredited co author) and his family. Mr. Cassidy thought that Mr. Keruac was smoking too much marijuana.
I saw Allan Gurganus (no middle name) at the Dickhater Book Festival in 2014. I knew AG was from Rocky Mount NC, and that JLLK once spent a winter there. This was described in “The Dharma Bums.” AG would have been about seven years old. I wanted to ask AG about it in the Q&A, but I did not get called on. After the talk was over, I managed to talk to AG in a hallway. “Yes, it really did happen. The place where he used to go meditate was my grandfather’s property.”
The pictures today are from The Library of Congress Marjory Collins took the featured photograph in February 1943. “New York, New York. Band in an Irish-American restaurant O’Reilly’s at Third Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street, on Saturday night.” Chamblee54 has published expanded book reports about “Satori in Paris” 031211 032211 032911 040711 · “The Dharma Bums” 111713 113013 122213 011314 · “On The Road” 060119 061119 062519 062719 071019 071419 073019 · selah

David Bowie: A Life was sitting on the biography shelf at the Chamblee library. It is an “oral biography.” Dylan Jones gets the blame, and the copyright. He took a bunch of interviews, and curated salient passages into a narrative. It is a fun book to read, full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
The Amazon one star reviews beg to differ. Guitar Gregg “I thought this would be biography not assorted comments. Very few comments from David Bowie. Who cares what Debora Harry or hundreds of “Joe blows” have to say? No pictures? 500 pages? Too much too little. Buy his cd’s instead.” worst read ever “Belongs in the fire … worst read ever!”
I enjoyed DBAL. At some point, the lurid tales of depravity got too quotable. I started keeping a list. In this book report, we will use this list, until the list, or the reader’s attention span, is exhausted. There may be another installment. Part one was published last week.
“There’s one instance — probably included just so it would be cited — about someone calling Bowie’s room in New York with an offer of a still-warm corpse. “The town had never seen anything like David before,” says onetime groupie Josette Caruso. “And he obviously looked like such a freak that some sick people thought he might be into necrophilia.” (He wasn’t.) (Page 142)
Page 146 “He (Lou Reed) had an auteur complex, and Bowie didn’t fit into that. Lou was also a prime member of the awkward squad. He could lose a charm competition with Van Morrison.” In 1972 David had gone through years of struggle, and was starting to make it. After the Ziggy Stardust tour, he was hot. At this time, David wound up helping two struggling artists, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop
The Elton John/Rolling Stone article was published during one Iggy phase. “May 1975 — It’s four in the morning, Hollywood time, and David Bowie is twitching with energy. … Bowie clutches his heart and beams like a proud father watching his kid in the school play. His whisper is full of wonder. “They just don’t appreciate Iggy.” he is saying. “He’s Lenny fucking Bruce and James Dean. When that adlib flow starts, there’s nobody like him. It’s verbal jazz, man!” … Bowie and Iggy never did make it back into the studio. Pop slept past the booked time, called up drunk several nights later and when Bowie told him to “go away” — meaning “hang up” — Iggy did just that. Now he’s disappeared. “I hope he’s not dead,” says Bowie, “he’s not a good act.” Iggy will show up later in this story.
Page 151 has stories from the Ziggy tour. In Seattle, the entourage went to a gay bar, and someone invited David to a party. When the next day came, and the tour needed to go to the next city, David was nowhere to be found. When he finally called the hotel, all he knew was that he was in a house, with a lot of trees around it. A hotel employee talked to David on the phone, and they managed to figure out where he was.
Page 155 Lori Mattox was a fifteen year old rock fan in 1972. “We got to the Beverly Hilton, and all went up to Bowie’s enormous suite. … We were getting stoned when, all of a sudden, the bedroom door opens and there is Bowie in this beautiful red and orange and yellow kimono … “Lori, darling, can you come with me? … Of course I did. Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me.”
There is a lot of text about David’s sex life. The boy got around, in spite of, or because of, his open marriage with Angela. Apparently, nature was generous with David. While performatively gay during this era, David made plenty of exceptions with ladies. DBAL is an entertaining book.
Page 176 Ava Cherry was a girlfriend who stuck around. “… and yes, we did have some fun together. We were staying at the Sherry-Netherland one night in New York, where David had given a party for Rudolph Nureyev. At the end of the party, everyone was gone apart from me and David and Mick, (Jagger) so it just ended up with the three of us sleeping together.”
Page 263 87 pages later, David has burned out on American rock stardom, and is living on top of an auto parts store in Berlin. This is the phase which produced Low and Heroes, two creative, though non commercial, efforts. Iggy Pop is back in the picture. Longtime assistant Coco Schwab never left. Iggy Pop : “There’s sevent days in a week: two for bingeing, two for recovery, and three more for any other activity.” Coco Schwab “I remember one elevated subway ride where you ride into East Berlin with no checkpoints and then back out with Absinthe into the west. Trust Jim (Iggy) to find that one.”
Page 277 David meets Adrian Bellew, who is in Frank Zappa’s band. David is talking to Adrian about doing a tour with David. At some point, the two go to a restaurant, where they run into Frank Zappa. “…David tried to strike up a conversation with Frank, saying “This is quite a guitar player you have here” And Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.” David persisted, and said “Oh come on now, Frank, surely we can be gentleman about this?” And Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.” … so David said, “So you really have nothing to say?” To which Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.”
This is a repost from 2019. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the featured photograph in April 1941. “Scene at bar. Southside of Chicago IL.”

This is a repost from 2022. … 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.
Other episodes of the “Hollywood” series are available. two three four five Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the featured photograph in August 1941. “Mr. Akers, construction worker from Flint, Michigan now working at Ford bomber plant near Ypsilanti. He lives in a tent with two other men at Edgewater Park. Edgewater Park normally closes on Labor Day. This year it will remain open through the winter.”

At 1838, February 19th 2025, I shut the cover on Didion & Babitz. Say what you will about author Lilliane O’Lick, she is one helluva storyteller. D&B was easy and fun to read. The book ends with a description of Joan Didion’s memorial, a star-studded celebrity event. Page 339 had one final bit of tackiness: “On the day Joan’s obituary appeared in the New York Times, journalist and podcaster Maris Kreizman took to Twitter. “I want to believe that Joan Didion lived an extra week out of spite so that she could officially outlive Eve Babitz.” p.339
The dedication page to Eve’s Hollywood mentions Steve Martin (the car.) The car is a 1965 VW, which Mr. Martin gave to EB. She later said “Linda Ronstadt was his girlfriend and I was his girlfriend and we were both doing him wrong.” EH was released in March 1974, about the same time I saw Mr. Martin open for Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at the Great Southeast Music Hall. Nobody in the Nitty Gritty crowd had any clue who this white suit wearing banjo player was. John McEuen kept stumbling into the microphone, saying “this guy cracks me up.” p. 215
“Huntington’s disease (HD) is named after George Huntington, who described it among residents of East Hampton, Long Island in 1872. It is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease.” HD claimed both EB, and her father, Sol Babitz. EB was aware of her fate for many years. The most famous victim of HD was Woody Guthrie. Many speculated that son Arlo would get HD, but he never did. “Woody’s most productive time artistically was in the 5 years immediately preceding the onset of overt symptoms of HD. I hypothesize that subclinical HD may have been an important driving force behind Woody Guthrie’s creativity.” p. 244
We know little about LOL. She was 32 in 2010, and went to Princeton, after doing high school somewhere else. LOL has the same last name as her Manhattan Doctor husband, but leaves no clues about her maiden name. We do have “A note my older boy, Ike, left on my pillow Valentine’s Day 2020” “DEAR MOM YOU AR WORM AND COTULY AND YOU HAD SEX WITH BREAT ESTIN ELIS BUT DONT TRY TO HIDE IT FROM ME NAW LETS GET DOWN TO BUSINESS I WANT TO GO TO THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM THIS WEEKEND AND I WANT NO ARGUING ABOUT IT”
Page 290 marks the return of Bret Easton Ellis. EB tuned in to “Less Than Zero,” which made BEE a star before he was old enough to (legally) drink. EB compared BEE to Jim Morrison, … another way that People Are Strange. BEE met EB for dinner about this time. There is no word on whether BEE was EB’s dessert. This was about the time AIDS was becoming obnoxious, and EB decided to tone down the whore-of-babylon act. The bi-leaning-gay Paul Ruscha had been a long playing EB boyfriend, which probably has nothing to do with any of this.
On May 7, 2000, JD appeared on In Depth, a PBS talk show. After a polite discussion, and a chance to promote here most recent book, the show was opened up to callers. One of the callers was EB, who introduced herself as “a friend of Joan’s from Hollywood.” JD dropped her stone face once, when EB said that JD’s house “was the first time I ever saw Spode china.” JD did not show much pizazz in that brief clip. I don’t know about the rest of the show, because I am not bored enough to watch it. JD was never known as a vibrant personality. p.306
There may be one defining difference between author and subject. EB wrote a piece about her near-fatal fire titled “I used to be charming.” Recently, LOL did an interview promoting D&B. “I always think of the last line of a Salinger short story, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.” … “I was a nice girl once, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?” I think about that all the time, because I used to be so polite. And now I’m just used to getting yelled at and told I’m a jerk or to go away. I just don’t mind at this point.”
Page 332 has EB in her final years. In 1997 EB was badly burned, and never fully recovered. That story is available elsewhere. By the time Donald J. Trump was President, EB had become a talk radio consuming conservative, to go with HD. LOL went to California frequently to have lunch with EB, and talked to her on the phone. In one of these conversations, EB asked “Where can I find a blouse the same shade of blue as Melania Trump’s eyes?” When I asked AI that. I found a description of the Ralph Lauren dress FLOTUS wore to her first inauguration. “She looked simply flawless.” … This is the final installment of D&B. Part one is available. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the featured photograph in June 1940. “Brooklyn NY. Red Hook housing development. Jimmy Caputo, seven years old, and Annette, three years old, at their nightly prayers.”

This repost 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 from: @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. John Vachon took the featured photograph in August 1941. “Farm boy in beer parlor on Sunday afternoon. Bruce Crossing, Michigan”

Didion & Babitz has hit the streets, as anyone who reads instagram knows. Lilianne O’Lick knows how to sell the soap, as well as a dirty story that leaves many readers wanting a bath. This is not my first time with either Eve Babitz or LOL. D&B is the story of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. … Neither lady had a middle name. Chamblee 54 has written about EB on several occasions. 123021 032622 010523 This is not the case with JD. There was once a paperback copy of The White Album … I never got past the abandoned gas station being the authentic west.
“Finishing Didion and Babitz has become a Herculean effort on my part. Lili Anolik clearly hates Joan Didion and continually criticizes and condemns her. This book should be called Loving Eve Babitz, Wench, Whore and Failed “Artist”. Anolik seems to fashion herself as a therapist, making some drastic, others ridiculous, excuses for Babit’s tawdry behavior. … This seemed to be an exercise in “look at my big word vocabulary. I’m going to repeat what I just said using big words that no one ever uses just to impress you. “ From an Amazon one-star review, “Loving Eve Loathing Joan,” by NFox.
(“The seventies in LA weren’t a decade under themselves but an extension of the previous decade: the Sixties the flower child, the seventies the juvenile delinquent that the flower child—a Bad Seed all along—grew into.” p. 124) The sixties were special, too beautiful to live, to profitable to die. Being a kid in Georgia was just one way to see it all. I had little notion of what was going on then in California, and by the time I started to get hip, California had Mansoned its way into a permanent Altamont. EB was playing the game, and the players.
Carrie White was a celebrity hairburner, who wrote a book Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life. She is probably not the same Carrie White as the telekinetic teenager at the center of “Carrie” but one cannot be too certain. The CW in D&B went to Hollywood High with EB, and was in the glamor sorority that EB missed out on. CW remained close to Rosalind Frank, who was the fairest of them all in High School. Alas, life after graduation did not work out, and Miss Frank died an early, drug related death. This untimely demise got EB busy writing.
Page 168 sees the first appearance of Bret Easton Ellis, who simply had to be in this book. The first time I heard of EB was on the BEE podcast, which later had an appearance by LOL promoting her first book about EB. BEE idolized JD, and was a close friend of JD’s daughter Quintana Roo Dunne. It is rather poignant that BEE enters this narrative as part of a discussion about JG Dunn’s apparent taste for male company. John Gregory Dunne is the husband of JD, and the younger brother of Dominick John Dunne, … another bicoastal fudge packer.
I was trolling google, looking for dirt on JD … there is a small mountain of dirt on EB … and I stumbled onto a bit of clickbait, “It’s Time To Retire Joan Didion’s Most Famous Line”. The line is “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I had probably heard it before. I process a lot of commodity wisdom these days. It goes in one eye and out the other … assuming that useless knowledge leaves the head the same way it gets in. Which brings us to page 211, where LOL ends a chapter with JDMFL.
There is a line about EB, whose inclusion in this feature is required by law: “In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz. It’s usually Eve Babitz.” Credit/blame for this tidbit is usually given to Earl McGrath. When “Eve’s Hollywood” came out, the line was on the blurb page, written by “anonymous.” The book “came out” in March 1974, with a glamor girl cover photo by Eve’s number one lady lover, Annie Leibovitz. D&B does not have any hint that EB and JD were cleaning carpets together. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The featured photo: “Unidentified soldier in Confederate nine-button frock coat.” · Part two of D&B is available.

This is a repost from 2017. John Cooke passed away September 3, 2017. … John Byrne Cooke, the son of public television star Alistair Cooke, had gotten a liberal arts degree from Harvard. He stumbled into a job filming the Monterrey Pop Festival. Like the rest of America, he was impressed by Janis Joplin. Soon, Mr. Cooke got a job as the road manager for Big Brother and the Holding Company. One result is a book, On the Road with Janis Joplin.
The management of Big Brother did not want the band filmed at Monterrey. After their saturday afternoon show, the film makers realized that Miss Joplin was important to the film. A second show was arranged for sunday night. This show was filmed. When you see Cass Elliot saying oh wow, that was saturday afternoon. The film crew filmed the crowd during that show.
Mr. Cooke arrived in San Francisco as the summer of love was playing out. Many old timers on the scene were already getting out. At first it was an uneasy fit with the band … the eastern bluegrass player, and the hippies. There was one meeting, where Mr. Cooke thought he was going to be fired. Things were patched up, and the show went on.
There were a lot of people who knew each other. Mr. Cooke had been trying to romance a California girl. It turns out she was a friend of someone, possibly Linda Gravenites, the roommate, and close friend, of Miss Joplin.
Peggy Caserta was another connection. Supposedly Miss Caserta had a lesbian thing going with Miss Joplin. Whatever did, or did not, happen, Miss Caserta wrote an awesomely trashly book, Going Down With Janis. The opening line: “I was stark naked, stoned out of my mind on heroin, and between my legs giving me head was Janis Joplin.”
“Peggy Caserta whose candid revelations about her romantic relationship with rock star Janis Joplin were revealed in a groundbreaking if often sordid 1973 tell-all book that she later disavowed as ghostwritten exploitation, died Thursday, November 21, 2024, of natural causes at her cabin on the Tillamook River on the Oregon Coast. She was 84. … Her first memoir, written she later said for the sole purpose of funding the ferocious heroin habit that would dog her for decades, has over the years been both reviled as a tawdry invasion of privacy and revered as an LGBTQ souvenir from an era and milieu that offered few.”
The year spent with Big Brother was 1968. Miss Joplin was staying in an apartment on Noe Street. Robert Kennedy made a campaign appearance on nearby Castro Street, with Miss Joplin in the crowd. When Mr. Kennedy was killed, after winning the California primary, the band was in Los Angeles. Mr. Cooke sought solace with Judy Collins that night.
Around this time, some people convinced Miss Joplin that she should leave Big Brother. There was three weeks between the last Big Brother show, and the first show as a solo artist. The Kozmic Blues band never really worked. Miss Joplin felt she was a failure. Miss Joplin started to use heroin frequently. Except for a European tour, 1969 was a bad year.
In 1970, Miss Joplin quit using heroin, and started to play with Fult Tilt Boogie. Things wer going well. The band was in Los Angeles recording an album. One night, Miss Joplin got some extra strong heroin. Mr. Cooke found the body.
This book report leaves a great deal of the story out. Miss Joplin broke a whiskey bottle over Jim Morrison’s head, and got into a fist fight with Jerry Lee Lewis. There were three appearances on the Dick Cavett show, 1969, 06-25-70, and 08-03-70. At 1:12 in this video, Miss Joplin observes “you’re a real swinger I can tell by your shoes man.” (Here is a screen shot from 1969, with heroin, next to another from clean 1970.)
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Charles R. Rees took the featured photograph in 1862. ‘Captain James H.M. Neblett of Neblett’s-Coleman’s Virginia Heavy Artillery Battery.”