Bob Dylan
This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Today is Bob Dylan’s eighty first birthday. This tribute is composed primarily of three previously published pieces of work. Some people think Bob Dylan is a piece of work.
This compendium was assembled in 2016. On David Bowie’s in 2016, PG created a computer playlist, and assembled a few blog posts into a birthday celebration. Three days later, David Bowie was dead. PG decided to do the same thing to Bob Dylan on his birthday. Instead of dying, Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize. A similar effort on RuPaul’s birthday had no effect on the performer.
It was a late may morning in Atlanta GA, and a slack blogger was searching his archives. Yes, Issac Asinov never got writers block, and when he wasn’t going to the bathroom he was typing, but that is a lifestyle choice. Easy writing makes tough reading. So, anyway, in the may archive for 2011 there was a post about Bob Dylan’s seventieth birthday. People were taking bets on whether he would make it to thirty, and here he is at seventy nine.
Hibbing MN is a cold place. At least it can claim to be the birthplace of Robert Allen Zimmerman. That’s Allen, with an e, and double L, just like hell. The original initials were RAZ, which might be a good trivia question, or, with a silent W in front, radio station call letters. The problem is, he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, with no known middle name. Those initial are BD.
On May 24, 1941, the curly haired wonder boi arrived. The world was a different place. Europe was in flames, and eyeing the young men of America as fresh cannon fodder. This was twelve years, eleven months, and eighteen days before PG graced the planet. A twelve year old in Hibbing MN would have no reason to think of a newborn baby in Atlanta GA.
The first time PG heard of Bob Dylan was probably at the record rack of Zippy’s dime store in Cherokee Plaza. There was an album of his greatest hits, and it came with a poster. The poster had a drawing of the man, with psychedelic waves of hair cascading in multi colored glory to the edges. PG never did buy the LP.
The former Mr. Zimmerman was never big on top 40 am radio. Somebody somewhere was getting a headache over those lyrics, but Atlanta GA was not somewhere in those days. By this time, Mr. Dylan had crashed his motorcycle, and gone into hiding. As the counter culture exploded (if only someone had disinfected that counter) the curly haired poet was in hiding, the subject of much speculation. At one point, people were stealing his garbage, and claiming to find evidence of investment in munitions firms. The neoscience of Dylanology continues to this day.
As PG got older and stupider, he heard more and more Bob Dylan music. In the summer of 1972, there was a performance at the Concert for Bangladesh. A couple of albums released during this era sucked, and some people stopped caring about Bob Dylan.
At the start of 1974, a tour was announced. The Band was to be the backing group. The circus came to the Omni, and PG got some of the mail order tickets. He couldn’t find anyone to use the second ticket, and sold it to a stranger outside the arena.
The show was nothing special. Bob Dylan excels at writing, is ok in the studio, and blah on stage. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was at the show, and was said to look bored. Mr. Dylan was invited to the Governor’s mansion after the show, and talked to the Governor. A lot of people in Georgia were surprised that Jimmy would want to run for President.
As the Seventies went me me meing into sex and drugs oblivion, Bob Dylan regained both his writing touch, and love of the spotlight. The Rolling Thunder tour happened, he got back together with Joan Baez, divorced his wife, became born again, became more Jewish, counted money, and generally lived the life. PG did his own version of all that, without Joan Baez or being circumcised again.
In the winter of 1991, America was consumed by war fever. Saddam Hussein had been elevated to next Hitler status, and had to be taught a lesson. One night, Bob Dylan played on a music awards show, and performed “Masters of War”. He played a discordant version of that ditty, with the result that few understood what he had said. By this time, Mr. Dylan had assembled a band, and gone out on the “Never Ending Tour”. A Bob Dylan concert had gone from being a special event, to being another name on the festival roster. Overexposure will do that.
On the last night of the Olympics in 1996, Bob Dylan played the House of Blues downtown. PG won a pair of the $80 tickets in a radio station contest. It was his only trip downtown during the games, and had to wait in a security line to get into Centennial Olympic Park.
The only celebrity, other than Mr. Dylan, seen at the House of Blues that night was Bill Walton. The band was competent…they impressed PG as being like a bar band that did a lot of Dylan songs, with a strangely authentic lead vocalist. The sound in the room was not good, at least in the spot where PG stood. The only song he recognized was “All along the Watchtower”, the Jimi Hendrix classic. Mr. Dylan got a cheer when he put his harmonica appliance on.
The aptly named dangerousminds has a link to a story about the recording of Blonde on Blonde, by Bob Dylan. It only happened once.
Bob Dylan was 24 years old, newly married, and had “sold out” i.e. started to play electric guitar. A bunch of Canadians known as The Hawks (later The Band) was touring with him. Barely a month after the release of “Highway 61 Revisited”, sessions started at a New York studio.
The New York sessions did not work, so a decision was made to go to Nashville. Al Kooper played organ, and served as a music director. A crew of Nashville players was recruited. A bass player named Joseph Souter, Jr. would become famous a few years later using the name Joe South. Kris Kristofferson was the janitor at the studio.
Most studios have bafflers, or sound proof room dividers, splitting the studio into cubicles. For these sessions, the bafflers were taken down, and the band played together as a unit.
The second session in Nashville started at 6pm and lasted until 530 the next morning. Mr. Dylan was working on the lyrics to “Sad eyed lady of the lowlands”, and the recording could not start until he was ready. The musicians played ping pong and waited. At 4am, the song was ready, and the record was finished in two takes.
PG had marginal encounters with two of the players on this album. He met a lady once, who worked in an insurance office. One of the customers was Joe South. His driving record file was an inch thick.
Al Kooper had a prosperous career after his association with Bob Dylan. The former Alan Peter Kuperschmidt produced the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, sold that contract for a nice piece of change, and lived happily ever after.
One night, Mr. Kooper was playing a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall, and PG sat in front of the stage. During a break between songs, PG asked his friend “what time is it?”. Mr. Kooper heard him on stage, and said it was 11:30.
If it ever quits raining, PG is going to walk to the Chamblee library and return a book, and a cd. The cd is by Bob Dylan, and is a work of genius. The book is about the former Mr. Zimmerman, and is a piece of garbage. (BTW, Dylan is not the only Zimmerman to hit the big time. Ethel Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmerman.The Zimmerman telegram got us into World War I. The less said about George Zimmerman, the better)
When returning cd’s to a library, you need to get a check in receipt. Once, PG returned a stack of cd’s to the Brookhaven library. When checking them in, one was missed by the scanner. A few days later, there was a note in the mail about an overdue cd.
The good news was, the cd was on the shelf when PG went back to investigate, and the matter was quickly settled. It did not help that the cd was a collection of disco music called “Shake your booty”.
“The freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was released in the early sixties, when the man was barely old enough to buy a drink. There is not a bad song on it, and several are classic rock staples. At a time when mindless pop dominated pop music, here were thoughtful, moving lyrics.
In 1991, with America in a war frenzy, Mr. Dylan appeared on a music awards show. He performed “Masters of War”, at a time when the majority would be appalled if they could understand what he was singing. Mr. Dylan has been reinvented many times, and often the lyrics get gargled.
Five years later, PG won tickets to a Bob Dylan concert. It was the last night of the Olympics, and the man was appearing at the House of Blues. (Tickets were $80, so the radio contest is the only reason PG went). It was like hearing a good bar band, that did nothing but Dylan songs, with the man as the vocalist. Due to the mix of the sound, PG could not recognize many of the songs.
The book is Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet by Seth Rogovoy. It tells the Dylan tale as a story of Jewish prophecy. PG got to page 16, where the author claims that “Like a Rolling Stone” “almost single handedly revolutionized rock’n roll music”. Huh?
PG was eating dinner, and did not have anything else to read. He got to page 38. Nothing in the next 22 pages changed his mind away from ditching the book. How does nonsense like this get published?
Witch
A podcast, read poetry and eventually die, featured a poet named John Mortara. PG became interested when the poet was a queer witch, or was it witchy queer. Never mind that the poet writes more about prozac than black magic. Just because poets take prozac, that doesn’t mean that prose writers take poetryzac. This is a repost.
It turns out there was an Atlanta stop on a tour. PG drove through Dickhater, past the Donald Trimble Mortuary, until a string of red brick houses appeared. PG looked at the mailbox of the first one. The mailbox fell off the pole. That was not the correct house.
PG got there twenty minutes early, and drove around the neighborhood until nine pm. In a few minutes, the hostess announced that the event was taking place in the basement. There was a half hour before the event started.
The basement had atmosphere. Literally. At one point, the host announced that cigarette smoking was acceptable inside. Holy 1958. It had been years since people smoked indoors, and here was a crowd of young, young people… one poet read a piece about the one hair on his chest, which he names after either republicans, or democrats, depending on how bad it smells. He read the poem from his phone.
The host and hostess did double duty as the master, and mistress, of ceremonies. They wore bathrobes, that were supposed to be lab coats. They were auditioning people to take on a trip to Mars. There must be a shortage of poets, comedians, and tweeters on the red planet.
For a while they alternated poets and comedians. A lady said she could choose from playing fake blackjack with geriatric queers at the Hideaway, or going to Lithonia to have sex for ten minutes. A man made murder Kroger jokes. PG crouched on a wooden shelf thing in the corner of the basement, with an exposed light bulb shining in his face.
After a few performers, there was an intermission. PG went back to his vehicle, which was not broken into. He got a baseball cap, to block the light bulb.. At this point the hostess made the glorious announcement that smoking was not allowed in the basement. The air conditioning brought the aroma upstairs. The back yard kudzu approved.
During the intermission, the sound system was tweaked to allow two ladies to perform. The tweaking did not take, and they shouted “stay off my snapchat you piece of shit homie” over the recorded music. For faux microphones, the ladies used a mountain dew bottle, and a comb.
The final performer was John Mortara. (spell check suggestions: Mortal, Mortar) The poet had purple hair, a wool hat, and a sleeveless shirt saying “I am a unicorn.” The first piece was recited from memory, with no need for a microphone. There was a piece about tweets written on prozac… all that twitters is not gold. Soon the show was over. The last line: “Told my dad I’m a fricken witch.” Pictures for today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. UPDATE This comment appeared on facebook. John Mortara “i am frequently misgendered throughout this article and it makes me angry.” An attempt at correcting this has been made. UPDATE TWO Here is the story of what happened later. UPDATE THREE Read Poetry and Eventually Die was hacked by by Mr.dexter.305. This attack from Saudi Arabia.
Virgil Delano Presnell Jr.
The state of Georgia is planning to execute Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. on May 17. He was convicted of killing an 8 year old girl, and raping a 10 year old. The crimes were committed May 4, 1976. There is little doubt that Mr. Presnell is guilty. This is the short version of the story. You can read the rest of this feature for more details. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” The names of the girls will not be used in this feature.
“On May 3, 1976, Presnell staked out an elementary school in Cobb County and observed a ten-year-old girl walking home on a wooded trail. He returned the following day and waited on the trail. In his car, he had a rug and a jar of lubricant.”
“When the ten-year-old girl came walking down the trail with her eight-year-old friend, Presnell abducted both girls. He taped their mouths shut and threatened to kill them if they did not cooperate; he also said he had a gun. They got into Presnell’s blue Plymouth Duster. While Presnell was driving, he forced the older girl to orally sodomize him and inserted his finger into her vagina.”
“They drove to a secluded area and Presnell walked the children into the woods. He carried the rug and the jar of lubricant. He made both girls undress and he raped the older girl on the rug. Her vagina was torn during the rape and began bleeding. Presnell then said that he was going to take ___ back to his car and that the older girl should wait for him. On the way back to the car, ___ tried to run away, but Presnell caught her and forced her face underwater in a creek, drowning her.”
“The medical examiner testified that there was water, sand and plant matter in her lungs and stomach and that it would have taken one to several minutes for her to die. She had bruises on her neck and a bruise on her back from where Presnell apparently placed his knee. Presnell returned to the older girl and again forced her to orally sodomize him. He then locked her in his car trunk and began driving, but a tire went flat so he dropped her off in another wooded area after forcing her to commit oral sodomy again.” Although Presnell told her he would return, the older girl heard the sound of a nearby gas station and walked there. She later gave police a description of Presnell and his blue Duster and stated that his tire was flat. Shortly thereafter the police spotted Presnell changing a tire on his blue Duster at his apartment complex not far from where he dropped off the older girl.”
“Presnell initially denied everything but later admitted that he knew the location of the missing girl and led the police to ___’s body. He also confessed. A search of Presnell’s bedroom uncovered a handgun and child pornography depicting young girls.”
“Presnell was convicted in 1976 of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and other crimes and was sentenced to death for the murder. … In 1992, Presnell’s death sentence was vacated during Federal habeas corpus proceedings. … A re-sentencing trial was held in 1999 and the jury recommended a death sentence after finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Presnell committed the murder while engaged in the commission of kidnapping with bodily injury and that the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved torture and depravity of mind.”
In the years after the crime, the execution of Mr. Presnell was fought. Many of the tactics appear foolish to the layman observer. “Presnell challenged the composition of the Cobb County Board of Jury Commissioners, which authorized Presnell’s jury pool, on the basis that the board was composed of only five members instead of the six members required by OCGA 15-12-20.” No nit is too picky for a lawyer, trying to keep a guilty man from being executed.
“The Supreme Court of Georgia vacated Petitioner’s conviction for forcible rape after determining that the trial court had charged both statutory and forcible rape and the jury’s verdict did not specify between the two … ruled that, in light of the ambiguity, the trial court had to sentence Petitioner for the offense of statutory rape. … also vacated Petitioner’s death sentences for the offenses of forcible rape and kidnapping with bodily injury, as each sentence depended upon the finding of forcible rape, which was vacated …” This is what lawyers argue about.
“Presnell contends the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress the gun and books of child pornography found in his bedroom. Presnell lived with his mother in an apartment. Two days after his arrest and confession, the police went to the apartment to look for the gun Presnell said he had possessed and that the older girl had noticed in his Duster when he dropped her off. Although they did not have a search warrant, police witnesses testified that Presnell’s mother consented to a search of Presnell’s bedroom and that she showed them the handgun, which she apparently owned but to which Presnell had access, in Presnell’s headboard/bookcase. It was at that time that the police also noticed and seized the child pornography books. There was no evidence that Presnell’s bedroom was locked or that he paid rent.”
“At trial, Presnell’s mother corroborated the police testimony by admitting that she consented to a search of the bedroom. Although Presnell argues that his mother did not have authority to consent to a search of his bedroom, the evidence was sufficient … to find that his mother had common control and authority over his bedroom and that she could therefore consent to a search of that area. … The trial court did not err by admitting the gun and the child pornography books into evidence.”
“There is no evidence to support Presnell’s assertion that the magistrate who issued the search warrant for his Duster in 1976 was not neutral and detached because he had a pecuniary interest in issuing the warrant. … The record shows that the search warrant was facially valid and supported by probable cause. … Therefore, the evidence seized from his car was properly admitted.”
“Presnell contends the trial court committed reversible error by allowing the State to use at trial a book, entitled Radiant Identities by Jock Sturges, which contained photographs of nude children, that the State claimed Presnell had ordered in 1996 from his prison cell. … The State’s evidence properly established that Presnell was upset about the rejection of a book entitled Radiant Identities and, as a consequence, sent a letter to the warden requesting the prison rules and guidelines governing the receipt of materials containing pictures of nude children. Although Presnell claims that the admission of the book was highly inflammatory, the defense did not dispute that Presnell continued to be a pedophile and that Radiant Identities was the type of book to which a pedophile would be attracted.” (An amazon review: “dont waste your money, there is nothing here worth seeing.”)
“Presnell asserts that the trial court erroneously allowed the State to introduce improper evidence regarding his 1976 Florida conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and numerous Georgia arrests and convictions for motor vehicle thefts. … However, the record shows that the documentary evidence of these convictions and indictments was not presented to the jury but only placed in the record so the State could demonstrate it had a good faith basis for asking Presnell’s mitigation witnesses on cross-examination about their knowledge of Presnell’s criminal history.”
The next paragraph is the strangest one I saw in my research on this case. “At the hearing petitioner produced three witnesses, none of whom challenged any of the aggravating circumstances alleged by the State, and all of whom were designed to appeal to the jury’s mercy. Dr. Harry Porter, a psychiatrist, testified that he had diagnosed petitioner as suffering from pedophilia, a medical condition he considered curable. Dr. Porter also testified that he did not believe petitioner had intended to harm his victims, and characterized petitioner as a very compliant individual who could function satisfactorily in a controlled environment. Dr. Miguel A. Bosh, another psychiatrist, also testified to the treatability of pedophilia. Rev. John T. Welch, a Baptist minister who had supervised petitioner for twelve months at a mission for juvenile delinquents, testified that he had baptized petitioner and described petitioner as “easily swayed.” Finally, petitioner’s mother, Lois Cole, spoke of her son’s troubled childhood in a broken home without the benefit of fatherly guidance for most of his youth, and his academic problems leading to the failure of “two or three different grades.”
The execution got a step closer on Monday evening. “The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has decided to deny clemency for … Virgil Delano Presnell, Jr. on Monday evening. He is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, May 17 at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. …”
“His attorney argued in a clemency application that Presnell had significant cognitive impairments that likely contributed to his crimes and has suffered horrific abuse in prison. … “Virgil Presnell is profoundly disabled,” his attorney Monet Brewerton-Palmer wrote in the clemency application that was declassified Friday by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Presnell’s mother drank large amounts of alcohol while she was pregnant with him, and a history of serious developmental disabilities is well-documented in his school records, Brewerton-Palmer wrote, adding that he grew up in an “abusive and unstable environment,” and sexual abuse was “endemic” in his family.”
Mr. Presnell “requested a last meal of four hamburgers, four french fries, two vanilla milkshakes, four sodas, eight-piece bucket of chicken, potato salad and two pints of vanilla ice cream.”
There Is No I In Denial
There’s no I in denial. ~ What does a house wear? A dress.
What did the buffalo say to his son as he left for college? Bison.
I asked a Frenchman if he played video games. He said “wii”.
I ate a clock yesterday, it was so time consuming.
Why was Santa’s little helper feeling depressed? Because he has low Elf esteem
How many optometrists does it take to change a light bulb?… 1 or 2? 1… or 2?
Just read a few facts about frogs. They were ribbiting.
Want to hear a word I just made up? Plagiarism.
What did the hungry clock do? Went back four seconds!
Becoming a vegetarian is a huge missed steak.
Have you seen that new movie about trees in love? …Yeah, it’s pretty sappy…
I don’t like atoms, they’re liars. They make up everything.
I was thinking about moving to Moscow but there is no point Russian into things.
First rule of Thesaurus Club: You don’t talk, converse, discuss, speak, chat,
deliberate, confer, gab, gossip or natter about Thesaurus Club.
There is a new disease found in margarine… Apparently it spreading very easily.
People are making apocalypse jokes like there’s no tomorrow.
Need an ark to save two of every animal? I Noah guy.
What’s the advantage of living in Switzerland? Well, the flag is a big plus.
“I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting!”
It’s so hard to think of another chemistry joke… All the good ones Argon.
Breaking news! Energizer Bunny arrested – charged with battery.
I’m off to Nairobi in the Summer. Kenya believe it?
A baker was caught bonking his bread loaves. They say he was inbread.
I enjoy using the comedy technique of self-deprecation – but I’m not very good at it.
This is a repost. Pictures are from “Special Collections, Georgia State University Library.”
I Used To Be Charming Part Four
What follows is the fourth installment of the chamblee54 deconstruction of I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. Pictures today are by “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” Other features in this cycle are available. one two three five
Sober Virgins of the Eighties (Smart Fall 1988) was published in late 1988, at about the time I quit drinking. IUTBC is in chronological order. The pieces covered today are from Eve’s overboogie recovery days. Many are written for Esquire. “Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.” Eve may be counterculture, but by 1990 she was writing for the emperors tailor.
By 1988, aids was hitting like a ton of bricks. While some still partied, many started to clean up their act. SVOTE is about this. “Of course, now that it’s the eighties, most desirable members of the opposite sex give rise to dark wanderings like “If they’re so cute, why aren’t they dead?”—which for me really put a damper on sex and made me actually take up chastity for almost two years. … The great thing about the eighties is that if you’re still alive, there’s hope. That, anyway, has changed.”
SVOTE was in the first edition of Smart, in the “Love and Science” column. “One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads” HL Mencken “Terry McDonell, the now legendary magazine editor, was starting his own magazine, Smart, in 1989. When he said he wanted to evoke The Smart Set, the stylish, literary monthly edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in the Roaring Twenties, I thought of Lucian Bernhard’s Bauer typeface from 1929, Lucian. That resulted in another early Font Bureau digitzation of a vintage foundry type, Belucian. At that point David Berlow was thinking of a adding a “Be-” to the names of all his revivals (cf. Belizio), but we talked him out of that later.”
Ronstadt For President (Smart May-June 1989) returns to Eve’s friendship with Linda Ronstadt. Eve is sometimes credited with designing the album ocver for “Heart Like a Wheel.” Other sources say that Eve was the photographer on the inner sleeve. Very little is said about Eve as a photographer. Mostly, artist Eve paints, and assembles collages.
RFP is about Linda’s struggles to make it as a singer. Her looks got in the way. “… men like Hugh Hefner would be propositioning her with “Let’s just shoot you with no clothes on, why don’t we?” and casting directors were trying to interest her in movies. “That’s not what I am, Eve,” she said, laughing and laughing. “Me with no clothes, imagine!” …
“I mean, Linda is just your normal good-time overeater type of person, whereas Jane Fonda, as she mentions in her book, was a bulimic—one of those sneaky people who eat and eat and then throw up. And bulimia is not what I want in a politician at all. I want things to stay down. And I want Linda to sing a slow, sexy double-entendre version of “You’re Just Too Marvelous” to Gorbachev.”
Rapture of the Shallows (Smart July-August 1989) was about Walter Hopps. He created an art gallery called Ferus, despite the NY notion that LA was a wasteland for art. Mr. Hopps was also Eve’s extramarital bf, and the motivation for the chess photograph with Marcel Duchamp.
“Ephemera mattered at Ferus. Founded by curator Walter Hopps and artist Ed Kienholz in March 1957, the “Ferus” honorific was designed to commemorate an unknown artist named James Farris who shot himself; the peculiar variant spelling of the gallery’s name got transposed, however, when Robert Alexander (a.k.a. “Baza”), the collage artist and poet who executed the gallery’s earliest typography, proposed “F-e-r-u-s” instead. Why? “Because it has more strength typographically,” Hopps remembers. Hopps’ response? “Let’s do it.” And thus, the gallery’s founding identity was composed with an ephemeral sensibility and by a typographic twist of fate.”
Eve: “I’m going to write a piece about John Goode and maybe Ed Ruscha and Laddie Dill and …” I told my friend Aaron, a New York collector who lives here but hates it. “Those phony-baloney bulshit artists … they all suck. They’re just for restaurant openings, tea at Trumps.”
In the Bret-Lili podcast, Trumps came up. It seems to have been quite the trendy place. In The Shards, Bret meets at Trumps with this semi-closeted producer, (and father of Bret’s gf.) He pretends to be interested in Bret’s script, but is really after Bret. If you like, you can buy a matchbook, and a small plate, from Trumps.
The Sexual Politics of Fashion (The Washington Post Book World July 30, 1989) is about books, (one two) that people wrote about fashion. Eve was not impressed with either. “But the Luscious photographs and illustrations are given a continuous cold shower by the prose: Every time you get a romance or fantasy going in your head … you are smacked into rectitude by phrases like “gender-specific” or just the very word “gender” itself which is enough to keep me from wanting to hear more, no matter how cute the people in the pictures are.” Eve had an eye, however badly focused, on the future. In 1989, gender meant boy and girl. Today, gender is the new civils rights movement, more third-railish than even race or football.
Gotta Dance (Playboy October 1989) was written for Playboy magazine. It’s mind blowing to think of Eve working in concert with Hugh Hefner. Apparently, when sex/drugs/rock/roll not longer did it, Eve started to dance.
“My only recommendation to a man who is even remotely thinking about ballroom dancing is to be careful. Unless you have a very large trust fund or a very strong character, don’t begin at Arthur Murray. Once they hook you, they have you for life. … “Me?” you say. “Hooked? On ballroom dancing? Come on!” … “I know. The only reason you’d take ballroom dancing at all would be as a joke. So that’s why I’m telling you: Don’t. Like a newborn duck, you’ll get imprinted on your teacher and your classmates, and then they’ll sign you up for lifetime lessons. Later, when you ask around, you’ll discover that you could get the same lessons for less from someone who used to teach at Arthur Murray and now gives lessons himself.”
I got a email before writing this. A young lady we knew, back in the day, passed away. For purposes of this story, we are going to call her Aspen. She drank the kool aid, and signed a mega-bucks contract with Fred Astaire dance studio. One time Aspen got me to go to a party, with “champagne ladies” trying to sell you dance lessons. I declined the kool aid.
The Soup Can as Big as the Ritz (Movieline November 1989) is about Andy Warhol. Walter Hopps brought the soup can paintings to California in 1962. Andy made it to the infamous Duchamp opening in 1963, which promted the photo of a naked Eve playing chess with Mr. Duchamp.
Walter Hopps: “… we may have also seen, in Warhol’s studio, work in progress that included one of his first Campbell’s Soup cans. … I said to Warhol, ‘Absolutely, I want to take some of this work for a show in Los Angeles.’ Warhol, who had never been to California, answered with some excitement, ‘Oh, that’s where Hollywood is!’ In the sea of magazines and fanzines scattered on the floor, so deep it was hard to walk around, were all those Photoplay and old-fashioned glamour magazines out of the Hollywood publicity mill. So a show in L.A. sounded great to Warhol. He agreed, and thus the multiple-image soup can show came to Ferus in 1962. Warhol missed that first exhibition of his Pop images, but he finally made it to California in September 1963 for the opening of the Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum and his own second Ferus show.”
Andy Warhol: “Marcel Duchamp was having a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum and we were invited to that opening … They served pink champagne at the party, which tasted so good that I made the mistake of drinking a lot of it, and on the way home we had to pull over to the side of the road so I could throw up on the flora and fauna. In California, in the cool night air, you even felt healthy when you puked – it was so different from New York.”
Eve gets talking about Edie Sedgwick here. “The next time I saw Edie she was sitting at the bar at Max’s Kansas City with Bob Neuwirth, the famous hippest coolest art type guy of his generation, and again she was crying this time into a gin and tonic. … Suddenly my ambition was to look gorgeous and miserable, but I’m always so thrilled to be anything and do anything in those days. … If you weren’t on speed you weren’t in New York City in the sixties. I was certainly on it. In fact, if you took the speed out of New York in the sixties, it would have been Des Moines. …”
“The world’s most fabulous people were dancing everywhere, and on stage was Nico, the girl lead singer of the Velvets looking down at the audience with eyes that’s all nothing but apolcalyptic collapse and the voice that did nothing but omit a bagpipe like drone.”
“On October 23, 1967, in New York, singer Nico sang with The Velvet Underground. … Nico’s delivery of her material was very flat, deadpan, and expressionless, and she played as though all of her songs were dirges. She seemed as though she was trying to resurrect the ennui and decadence of Weimar, pre-Hitler Germany. Her icy, Nordic image also added to the detachment of her delivery. … In between sets, Frank Zappa got up from his seat and walked up on the stage and sat behind the keyboard of Nico’s B-3 organ. He proceeded to place his hands indiscriminately on the keyboard in a total, atonal fashion and screamed at the top of his lungs, doing a caricature of Nico’s set, the one he had just seen. The words to his impromptu song were the names of vegetables like broccolli, cabbage, asparagus… This “song” kept going for about a minute or so and then suddenly stopped. He walked off the stage and the show moved on.”
Blame it on the VCRs (Smart June 1990) “In the meantime, the gay men and the feminists were in the background, girding their loins against the Farrah Fawcett spun-gold hair of the seventies, trying to ruin everything. And they succeeded. Yes, men were pigs, women were exploited—yet gay men were, well, out of the closet and staying out and up till three in the morning, having more fun than anyone else ever did in the history of mankind. They made straight people jealous.”
Jim Morrison is Dead and Living in Hollywood (Esquire March 1991) Part of the Eve Legend was that she was Jim Morrison’s girlfriend for a while. Nobody is sure how much of that is real. Eve doesn’t really seem to be too terribly impressed with Mr Morrison, who she calls the Bing Crosby from hell. Jimbo was basically a fat drunken asshole. Pamela, the heroin Juliet to Jimbo’s whiskey Romeo, does not seem to be a very nice person.
No matter how chummy Eve was to Jimbo, she did not design any of the Door’s album covers. Eve did do the cover for the Elektra reissue, The Best of Lord Buckley, who may have been the strangest neo-celebrity that ever lived.
I was a Naked Pawn for Art (Esquire September 1991) returns to the infamous picture of naked Eve playing chess with Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp. “The trouble was, I had been taking birth control pills for the first and only time in my life, and not only had I puffed up like a blimp but my breasts had swollen to look like two pink footballs. Plus they hurt. On the other hand it would be a great contrast — this large too-LA surfer girl with an extremely tiny old man in a French suit. Playing chess.”
On page 243, there is a typo. This is something that you see in hard copy. I treasure the moments when I catch a typo. and there he was it was just that they were changing suddenly the had eyes to see.
Life at Chateau Marmont (Esquire January 1992) Then she has a story about Chateau Marmont. of which many stories could be told and hopefully they spray Down the Walls of that hotel and they were doing a renovation of it. “In L.A., the impulse to tear down anything good but old and rebuild it crummy and different is so rampant that the only things anyone tries to restore are women’s faces.”
They Might be Giants Esquire May 1992 (Esquire May 1992) features a photo shoot of four hot, photogenic young actors. Thirty years later, none is a superstar. Being called the next James Dean is somewhat of a curse.
“James Dean was rock and roll before anyone knew it wasn’t a fad, and he was rock and roll before it was Disneyized and turned into role-model material. He was the role model for people who hated role models, and what we still want is more James Dean’s and no one will ever be James Dean enough.”
The trouble with James Byron Dean was that he lived the image, and it f****** killed him. When I was a kid, the one person that “they” held up as a bad example was Joe Namath. When you’re a kid growing up in Georgia, you need bad examples. Today, Broadway Joe is on cable tv, on commercials for medicare insurance. The kids he was a bad example to are buying medicare insurance.
Explaining Fake News
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@CountDankulaTV Of course all of this is just total assumption. I wasn’t there.
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black sabbath video ~ starwood ~ vic romero ~ greene.house.gov ~ @repMTG
brookhaven bolt ~ neal cassady ~ @CawthornforNC ~ the tape ~ firemadison
cynthia plaster caster ~ @Cringetopia_ ~ pulchritude ~ paul ruscha ~ lip sync fail
tubby boots ~ louis daniel igo ~ john igo ~ apd ~ queerserial
mattachinepod ~ good at heart ~ starship ~ pfizer ~ cleveland criminals
nina turner ~ Mirandi ~ evangelical ~ draft opinion ~ road rage
ts madison ~ leary rfk ~ rfk lsd ~ lsd ~ tim leary
Excerpts from Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations [concerning federal research and regulation of LSD-25] May 24, 1966 ~ @CountDankulaTV From my experience as a bouncer, given that the guys face is fine, but his arm is mangled leads me to believe that Chapelles security didn’t “fuck him up backstage” (maybe, but let me explain). But this was down to a standard under the shoulder restraining arm hold mostly used ~ @PamelaDesBarres displays a bit of rock memorabilia. “this right here is jimi hendrix isn’t that just beyond special he had some girth” ~ Madison Cawthorn Confirms Tape Showing Him Naked And Engaged In Physical Activity With Another Man Is Real ~ @libsoftiktok This is what pro-abortionists think of aborted babies. These are the same people furious at the thought of #RoeVWade being overturned. @LiveAction ~ Jack Groves 10-25-2014, Don Hutcheson 07-06-1980, John Igo 02-17-2018, Sue Kolakowski January 1994 ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” ~ selah
May 6, 2022
May 6 is a day in spring, with 35% of the year gone by. It has it’s fair share of history, some of which did not turn out well. In 1861, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States. In 1937, a German zeppelin named “Hindenburg” exploded while trying to land in New Jersey. In 1940, Bob Hope did his first show for the USO, somewhere in California.
Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, on May 6, 1954. The current record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj on July 7, 1999, with a party with Prince to celebrate. Since most track meets now use 1500 meters, the mile record is obsolete.
On this day, Georgia executed two notable prisoners. In 2003, Carl Isaacs was put to death. Mr. Isaacs was the ringleader in the 1973 Alday family killing, in Donalsonville GA. Five years later, in 2008, William Earl Lynd was poisoned by the state. This was the first condemned man to die after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution by poisoning was constitutional.
Taurus is the sign for those whose blood starts to pump May 6. Included are:
Maximilien Robespierre (1758) Sigmund Freud (1856) Rudolph Valentino (1895)
Orson Welles (1915) Willie Mays (1931) Rubin Carter (1937)
Bob Seger (1945) Tony Blair (1953) PG (1954) George Clooney(1961)
To make room for these folks, someone has to die. For May 6 this would mean:
Henry David Thoreau (1862) L. Frank Baum (1919) Marlene Dietrich (1992)
This repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft, has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Facts
@Atheist_Bot “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. – Aldous Huxley.” I was stumbling through my morning, when I saw this. Other than reading The Doors of Perception many years ago, I don’t know Aldous Leonard Huxley. The quote is plausible.
Atheist Quote Bot 💉💉💉 is part of the problem. “@Atheist_Bot Challenging beliefs, while respecting the believer. It’s difficult sometimes. Numbered tweets are automatic, replies are from my programmer. I don’t feed trolls” A robot, in a server, dispensing commodity wisdom on schedule. This is what passes for learning in Post-Obama America.
The Huxley wikiquote shows 14 results for “facts.” The money quote appears to be legitimate. It is from a book, published in 1927, ”Proper Studies.” “The proper study of mankind is man” The text appears to be academic and difficult. This researcher will make no effort to identify the context.
Time Must Have a Stop (1944) has another ALH fact-quote. This one may be more true than the coffee mug. “Facts are ventriloquists’ dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.”
Time Must Have a Stop “Sebastian Barnack, a handsome English schoolboy, goes to Italy for the summer, and there his real education begins. His teachers are two quite different men: Bruno Rontini, the saintly bookseller, who teaches him about things spiritual; and Uncle Eustace, who introduces him to life’s profane pleasures.”
”The novel that Aldous Huxley himself thought was his most successful at “fusing idea with story,” Time Must Have A Stop is part of Huxley’s lifelong attempt to explore the dilemmas of twentieth-century man and to create characters who, though ill-equipped to solve the dilemmas, all go stumbling on in their painfully serious comedies (in this novel we have the dead atheist who returns in a seance to reveal what he has learned after death but is stuck with a second-rate medium who garbles his messages).” Is TMHAS about facts, or about dummies?
Bruno Rontini is the character who said the comment about facts. We do not know the context. Is this how Huxley feels, or is a foolish character speaking nonsense? The only way to know is to read Time Must Have a Stop. This sort of scholarship is too much to expect of chamblee54, or Atheist Quote Bot. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
I Used To Be Charming Part Three
This is the latest edition of the chamblee54 book report on I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. This feature is a bit different. Instead of focusing on IUTBC, we will look at some of the key players in the story. A catalyst for today is a 2019 episode of the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. The guest is Lili Anolik, promoting a book, Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
One important name is Earl McGrath. Bret had never heard of him. A friend of many influential people, McGrath had many careers. Apparently, his main skill was a talent for being fabulous. As David Bowie said, “It’s not really work, it’s just the power to charm.”
“McGrath’s story began in Superior WI. The son of an itinerant short-order cook, it wasn’t long before the teenage Earl began to display a wanderlust of his own, dropping out of high school and leaving home, ‘hanging out with Aldous Huxley in Los Angeles and going to see Henry Miller in Big Sur’, according to Vanity Fair. In the late 1950s he served with the Merchant Marine in Africa and the Middle East, and in Italy, in 1958, he met the woman he would later marry, Camilla Pecci-Blunt — a glamorous countess, and a descendant of Pope Leo XIII … McGrath was working for 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s when he met perhaps the other most influential person in his life, the legendary co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun.”
“Maybe that’s why Eve fell in “friend love” with a gay man, the cattiest breed of all, if we want to be cuntily honest as well. Specifically, Earl McGrath … As any gay man not fully out would be, McGrath was married to an Italian countess. He never had an official title, per se, though, in death, he would be credited as a “writer, music executive, art collector, and gallery owner.” In short, a jack-of-no-trades. Other than knowing how to be at the right place at the right time, and network with the right people. This is how he came into Eve’s orbit in the late 60s. The two grew Siamese twin close until McGrath’s venom reared its ugly head with the line … “Is that the blue you’re using?” As Anolik interprets the phrase, it’s an easy way to make an artist (of any kind) doubt themselves and their vision.”
Eve met Earl McGrath when Eve, and possibly McGrath, was dating Peter Pilafian, the electric violin player with The Mamas and The Papas. Peter Pilafian is one of those players that is unknown today. He does not have a wikipedia page, and we do not know if he is alive. Apparently, Eve would spend the night with Pilafian, and McGrath would show up at 7am the next day.
Somehow, Eve and McGrath connected. McGrath makes a spectacle of himself in Slow Days Fast Company. McGrath also gets credit/blame for the line you always seem to hear about Eve. “In every young man’s life, there is an Eve Babitz. It is usually Eve Babitz.”
lilianolikwriter has a tasteful picture, with this caption: “Eve Babitz with frenemy, Earl McGrath, at the opening of the Black Rabbit restaurant on Melrose, at the tail-end of the 60s. Earl is in the cowboy mustache, Eve in the glasses, which she was normally too vain to wear in photographs. The brunette with the pixie hair is Diane Gardiner, Doors publicist and long-time squeeze of Chuck Berry. (Says Eve, “Diane was a mean monster but everything she said was funny so I forgave her.”) … The woman in the floppy hat and sunglasses, says Eve, doesn’t ring a bell, not even a faint one.”
Allegedly, the Eve-McGrath falling out came when Eve was dating Harrison Ford, who also caught McGrath’s eye. A posthumous article about McGrath mentions “His great friend Harrison Ford — three of whose children were among McGrath’s two-dozen godchildren — saluted him as, ‘The last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.’”
Lili Anolik tells an amusing story about Mr. Ford. “I remember one of our first conversations Eve told me about Harrison Ford dealing dope out of a bass fiddle at Barney’s Beanery”…. Michelle Phillips talks about seeing Star Wars when it first came out. When Harrison Ford appeared on the screen, Michelle said “whats he doing there, that’s my dope dealer.” A less reliable source chimes in: “Harrison Ford was her weed dealer, and, briefly, her lover: “The thing about Harrison was, Harrison could fuck. Nine people a day. It’s a talent, loving nine different people in one day. Warren [Beatty] could only do six.”
Part of the Eve legend is the photograph of Eve playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. “What happened was, my boyfriend at the time, Walter Hopps [director of the Pasadena Art Museum, 31, married], had scored this great coup. He’d convinced Duchamp, who’d given up art for chess back in the 1920s, to do a retrospective with him. He threw a party for the private opening, and L.A. had never seen anything like it. Everyone, everyone, was there—Duchamp, naturally, and Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg and Dennis Hopper and, oh, just everyone. I wasn’t, though, because I wasn’t invited. I guess Walter was afraid I’d make a scene in front of his wife. I was mad, which is why when Julian asked me at the public opening to take off my clothes and pose for him, I said sure. I mean, my breasts were normally something to behold, but birth control had made them even bigger, so they were really something to behold at that particular moment. …”
The photographer, Julian Wasser, was dating Eve’s sister Mirandi. Wasser had an exhibit in 2019, so apparently he was alive 3 years ago. Wasser took his most famous picture a few years later.“One August day in 1969, I was listening to a police radio when I heard all this strange talk about something going on in this residential area next to Beverly Hills. It was the kind of neighbourhood where people would … put pillows over their heads if murders were going on.”
“That was how I first heard that Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, had been killed, along with four others. When I went up there shortly afterwards for Life magazine, Roman asked me to take Polaroid shots of the scene as well – and give them to a psychic who could study them and find out who the killers were. You can see my Polaroid on the chair beside Roman. …”
“When I was 14, I used to steal my dad’s car and drive all over Washington listening to police radio. There was segregation then and all the best murders, robberies and bloody events were in the black part of town. I’d photograph them and give the shots to the Washington Post. I was so naïve. Of course they wouldn’t run them – it was black people. … It’s a rough world now. I think Manson started it and 9/11 finished it. Reality has fallen on us like a ton of bricks.”
Ed Ruscha and brother Paul Ruscha were longtime *friends* of Eve. After Eve died, they had a paywall protected chat. Ed Ruscha: “Oh, it was the early ’60s, but she was a great part of my growing up. I know I was with her when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I was in bed with Eve and we were watching this on live TV, a little black-and-white set. … she lived in this house behind her parents’ house. She kept a sloppy quarters because she had a lot of cats who had their way. Her parents lived up at the front house on Bronson near Franklin. And I knew her parents well. Mae was a beautiful, sweet Texan who was an artist, and she drew pictures of the gingerbread houses on Bunker Hill. And Sol was the musician, violinist. They were very sweet people.”
Paul Ruscha: “I came to L.A. in 1973. We met at Jack’s Catch All; it was this great thrift store. I was a veteran thrift shopper and so was Danna [Ed Ruscha’s wife]. She introduced me to Eve, who said, “I’d like to have you over for dinner.” Danna said, “I think she likes you.” Eve knew that Ed and I were friends with [fashion model] Leon Bing. So she called Leon, who told Eve, “Well, no matter what you make for him, be sure that it’s loaded with cilantro because he’s just crazy about cilantro.” Eve put it in the salad and the soup, and I hate cilantro and I couldn’t eat it. All I could do is laugh. … If I spent the night with her, she’d wake up before I did and then want me to leave. So she’d throw coffee into a pot of boiling water and bang on it to make the grounds go down and to wake me up and say, “OK, here’s your coffee. Now get out of here.” And I’d laugh and then she’d say, “I think I’ve got something I’d like you to read.” Then I’d read whatever she’d written the day before. I gave her my critique, and if she liked it, she let me stay, and if she didn’t, she’d throw me out. … She just couldn’t go anywhere without ruining something. She’d knock something over or break something, and the same thing at her house. I remember a couple of fur coats I gave her, and one of them she threw over this little space heater that she had. It caught on fire and it burned up her garage.”
Since this is Hollywood, a certain amount of skepticism is appropriate. Lili says in the BEE appearance “the modern way of being objective is a kind of hyper objectivity, it’s a reconstituted objectivity, is objectivity that acknowledges the inevitability of subjectivity.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” More episodes of this series are available. one two four five
Drug Slang Emojis
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I have published a book. The title is “500 Horrible Ways to Die in Georgia”.
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11 bits of WhatsApp slang you need to master today By Sonja
madison cawthorn ~ ポイントキャンペーン ~ the bird ~ trap music ~ jason stanley
trap music ~ jason stanley ~ col. bruce hampton ~ retweet from 2017. ~ 403 forbidden
dhs ~ babitz ertegun ~ earl mcgrath ~ earl mcgrath ~ earl mcgrath
terry southern ~ anna khachiyan ~ lily anolik ~ audio recordings ~ revolutions
rocky horror ~ dwayne haskins ~ irving rosenthal ~ Freedom ~ fark
Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. ~ beltline guns ~ fierstein ~ fierstein ~ lester lanin ~ wilton felder
ginsberg ~ ginsberg ~ talcum x ~ harvey fierstein ~ musk ~ sos
Maybe this was staged. Maybe not. Young Jamie is off camera, and tells Joe that the deal is official. Joe yells oh [ _ ] and loses it. Staged or not, this is where our culture is right now. “and this is where we find ourselves with elon musk about to buy twitter yeah i saw that apparently it’s going down it happened oh [ _ ] what oh [ _ ] the press release has been announced elon musk just bought twitter we got a movie star” ~ @shaunking I am told this morning that Apple and Google will remove Twitter from the App Store if it does not moderate and remove hate speech under @ElonMusk This isn’t a new policy, but a commitment already made. Amazon Web Services has the same commitment. So there’s that. ~ I have never read 1984, like most of the people who use the phrase “Orwellian” So I really don’t know what I am talking about. I think the reality of 2022 is different from the scifi fantasy of 1948. Better in some ways, worse in many more, and dumber in almost every way ~ @a_boss_sandwich I’m going to tell a tale about online speech, moderation, banning, and healthy websites. Buckle up. ~ @chamblee54 the first thing I saw on youtube was a teenage boy shooting bottle rockets out of his butt ~ I was curious about the “Disinformation Governance Board.” FWIW, DGB is creepier than “Ministry of Truth.” I went to the DHS website, and did a search for DGB. The top result was a .pdf “Combatting Targeted Disinformation Campaigns.” I clicked on the link: “Forbidden You don’t have permission to access this resource.” ~ 500 Horrible Ways to Die in Georgia: A Collection of Grim, Grisly, Gruesome, Ghastly, Gory, Grotesque, Lurid, Terrible, Tragic, Bizarre, and Sensational Deaths Reported in Georgia Newspapers Between 1820 and 1920 – A. Stephen Johnson ~ I did a search for “500 Horrible Ways to Die in Georgia” on bing. Before I got any results, I saw this: You’re not alone Help is available National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255 ~ @elizableu I used to listen to every Joe Rogan podcast. Then slowly I found podcasters that cover issues that I care about more. By the time Rogan moved to Spotify I listened to roughly 4 podcasts he’d put out a year for specific guests. I had almost forgotten about him….. (thread) ~ the modern way of being objective is a kind of hyper objectivity, it’s a reconstituted objectivity, is objectivity that acknowledges the inevitability of subjectivity Lily Anolik ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” ~ selah
April 30, 1992
Doug Richards is an Atlanta tv news reporter. He writes a blog, live apartment fire. He was on the scene twenty nine years ago. There was a riot downtown. Mr. Richards had a bad night.
PG was working in the Healey building that day. He ran an RMS, or reprographic management service, in an architects office. He had a blueline machine, ran jobs for the customer, and had free time. PG did a lot of exploring, and enjoyed the various events downtown. On April 30, 1992, there was an event he did not enjoy.
The day before, a jury in California issued a verdict. Four policemen were acquitted of wrongdoing in an incident involving Rodney King. The incident had been videotaped, and received widespread attention. The verdict of the jury was not popular. The dissatisfaction spread to Atlanta.
Sometimes, PG thinks he has a guardian angel looking over him. If so, then this thursday afternoon was one of those times. PG went walking out into the gathering storm. He was a block south of the train station at five points, when he saw someone throw a rock into a store front. The sheet metal drapes were rolled down on the outside of the store. PG realized that he was not in a good place, and quickly made his way back to the Healey building.
A group of policeman were lined up in the lobby of the building, wearing flack jackets. One of the police was a white man, who was familiar to workers in the neighborhood. A few weeks before the incident, he had been walking around the neighborhood showing off his newborn baby.
There was very little work done that afternoon in the architect’s office. Someone said not to stand close to the windows, which seemed like a good idea. Fourteen floors below, on Broad Street, the window at Rosa’s Pizza had a brick thrown threw it. There were helicopters hovering over downtown, making an ominous noise.
There was a lot of soul searching about race relations that day. The Olympics were coming to town in four years, and the potential for international disaster was apparent. As it turned out, the disturbance was limited to a few hundred people. It could have been much, much worse. If one percent of the anger in Atlanta had been unleashed that day, instead of .001 percent, the Olympics would have been looking for a new host.
After a while, the people in the office were called into the lobby. The Principal of the firm, the partner in charge of production, walked out to his vehicle with PG. The principal drove an inconspicuous vehicle, which made PG feel a bit better. PG took his pocketknife, opened the blade, and put it in his back pocket. It probably would not have done him much good.
PG usually took the train downtown. As fate would have it, there was a big project at the main office of redo blue on West Peachtree Street. That is where PG’s vehicle was, in anticipation of working overtime that night. The principal drove PG to this building. PG called his mother, to let her know that he was ok. The Atlanta manager of Redo Blue talked to him, to make sure that he was not hurt.
If PG had not gone back downtown the next day, he might not have ever gone back. He was back at the West Peachtree Street office, and was assured that it was safe to ride the train into town. The Macy’s at 180 Peachtree had plywood nailed over the display windows. A gift shop in the Healey building had a sign in the window, “Black owned business”. Friday May 1, 1992, was a quiet day.
Pictures for this repost are from “Special Collections and Archives, G.S.U. Library”.
Mike Pence And Lester Maddox
This is a repost from 2015. In the seven years after, Mike Pence has served as Vice President of the United States. In the post was this sentence: “It is highly unlikely that anyone will know who this Pence person is in forty four years.” Political predictions are risky.
Salon posted a festive piece the other day. The headline: “Indiana’s Mike Pence is starting to look like Lester Maddox — without the spine.” What about the Governor’s breast, thigh, and wing?
Mr. Pence is the media punching bag of the moment. In a few days, someone else will screw up, and the nabbering classes can pick on someone else. The riffraff law will be lawyered out in the courts.
The question here is the connection to the former Georgia Governor. It turns out to be a rhetorical gimmick. In the first paragraph, author Joan Walsh essentially repeats the headline. “… even before Pence began to look like a 21st century Lester Maddox — without the spine.” This is the last time Lester is mentioned. He is used as a bald headed Honey Boo Boo.
It is ironic that Lester is this famous forty four years later. There are many bad things you can say about Mr. Maddox. However, Georgia survived both Lester, and smiling Jimmy, as Governor. It is highly unlikely that anyone will know who this Pence person is in forty four years.
The second part of this feature is a previously published piece about Lester Maddox. PG was twelve when Lester was elected, and has many memories of the four years that followed. The post goes into some of the mixed feelings, and tells a couple of stories. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
There has never been a politician like Lester Garfield Maddox. He was elected Governor of Georgia (with help of a quirk in the state constitution) in 1966. PG was 12 at the time, and saw the spectacle of the next four years with amazement.
Before we get started on this, we should remember a couple of things. Lester Maddox became notorious when he shut down his restaurant, The Pickrick, rather than serve a black customer. He was a segregationist, which means he did not want Black people to have the same rights as White people. Looking back from 2022, it seems incredible that civil rights legislation was needed, 58 years ago, so that 30% of Georgia could eat in a restaurant. PG does not condone the actions, and attitudes, of Lester Maddox, or the people who supported him.
There is style, and there is substance. While the substance of Lester may have been horrible, the style was a sight to behold. He could ride a bicycle backwards, and did so whenever a crowd was there to watch. (PG saw this at halftime of the Peach Bowl.) Lester was on The Joe Pyne Show and The Dick Cavett Show, and walked off of both.
This section from a previous post tells one story. The Governor was speaking to a group of reporters. He was announcing the appointment of a Black man to a Selective Service Board.. The reporter said it was the first Black man to serve on a draft board since reconstruction. What did the Governor think about this? The Governor said “Gee”
The screen returned to the Channel Five newsroom. The men at the desks were all laughing. The weatherman looked up at the camera and said “That’s a tough act to follow”
Whatever you might say about Lester Maddox … and there is no shortage of bad things to say … there has never been a public official that entertaining. As for being a tough act to follow, the next Governor was Jimmy Carter. As for the weatherman, PG saw him in a parking lot once. It was raining heavily. The “Gray Ghost” looked at PG with an ironic smile, as if to say “I am sorry”. The weatherman, Guy Sharpe, is on the right in the picture below this post. He is signing a book.
In 1970, the Governor of Georgia could not succeed himself. Lester ran for Lt. Governor, and spent the next four years feuding with Governor Jimmy Carter. Lester ran for a second term in 1974, and was trounced by George Busbee. (The slogan: “Elect a work horse, not a show horse.”) When Jimmy ran for President in 1976, Lester made a point of badmouthing Jimmy. In his own way, Lester Maddox helped Jimmy Carter get elected President.
Lester appeared on the Joe Pyne show. Lester was later on the Dick Cavett show. Another Cavett guest was Truman Capote. After Lester walked off the show, Mr. Capote said, in his own inimitable way, “I ate at his restaurant one time, and all I have to say is, it was not finger licking good”.
Chamblee54 
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