Chamblee54

My current book is I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. The plan is to have a multi-part dialogue. IUTBC is a collection of magazine pieces. Sometimes the magazine is as much fun as the story. This is especially true for No Onions, a story about Archie, Veronica, and people who don’t to eat onions. The story was in Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing.
All This And The Godfather Too kicks off the book. Eve gets hired to go to Lake Tahoe, and write about the production. There are magic moments. Eve gets booked into a San Francisco hotel, along with a spy gathering. The phrase employed here is “buggers convention.” When you consider the British meaning of “bugger,” you realize that San Francisco is always a buggers convention.
On page 27, Eve is writing a story for some magazine. She types on single-sided pieces of paper, and writes a number at the top of each page. Eve is an alcoholic space kitten, and forgets page 29. The manuscript goes to Europe. Someone spends $34 to call Eve, and find out there is no page 29. This happens on page 28 of IUTBC.
Mr. Coppola made of ton of money on the first Godfather, and goes around San Francisco buying things. He’s got this office building, which is now a boutique hotel. Mr. Coppola also bought City Magazine, which became a financial quagmire. City Magazine shut down in 1976. Eve said it was not saving the magazine, as much as keeping the Titanic afloat.
Cindy Williams appears at a dinner. She had starred in a couple of movies, and was starting to make a name for herself. The dinner was before Laverne & Shirley. It is fun to read something 47 years after publication, when you know what the author did not know.
I read a 1980 Playboy in the mid-eighties. The article was about the 1980 elections. A press secretary was asked about the zero factor … the way Presidents, elected in years ending in zero, seem to die in office. The man said, this was interesting, but we really are not worried about it. The PS is question was James Brady, who was severely wounded in an assassination attempt on President Reagan.
ATATGT is written for something called Coast magazine. You can buy a copy on eBay for $99. It’s a beautiful magazine, with a drawing of Mr. Coppola on the cover. Eve Babitz is above the masthead.
My God, Eve, How Can You Live Here? appears in City Magazine, “Vol. 8 No. 64 Apr. 30- May 13, 1975 “Inside Los Angeles” Edition.” Eve wrote a survival guide to LA, intended for visitors from San Francisco. “Rent A Car: That’s Rule One.” She calls one road the Raymond Chandler Memorial Parkway. Chandler wrote fun books, about an LA that no longer exists.
My Life In A 36DD Bra appeared in the April, 1976 edition of Ms. Magazine. How this got on the cover of a feminist magazine is anyone’s guess. Eve’s mammaries are part of her aesthetic. “When she graduated from Hollywood High in 1961, Babitz wrote to Joseph Heller: ‘Dear Joseph Heller, I am a stacked 18-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer. Eve Babitz.’ … Babitz wrote a Daisy Miller-inspired novel, which Heller sent to his publisher: it was turned down.”
Her booby broadside has a feminine slant. The men who hit on Eve routinely say that they are really leg man, even when drooling over her chest. Despite sporting enormous breasts, Eve rattles on about how she does not like her ass. This type of anti-feminism can be dangerous. Another article in the April Ms. was TRASHING: The Dark Side of Sisterhood. If you substitute “cancel culture” for “TRASHING,” that article could have been written today.
Eve had her ups and downs, before taking the ultimate downer December 17, 2021. Someone managed to snag an interview in 2019.
LA Mag You went from sex, drugs, and rock and roll to what The New York Times described as a political conservative and supposed MAGA hat owner.
What brought this change about, and where do you stand now?
Eve I never talk about politics. … Although I was so happy [when] my friend Linda [Ronstadt] was going out with Jerry Brown. …
LA Mag All of your writings contain what the press calls “unabashed hedonism.” We’re living in an antihedonist moment now: political correctness and Twitter quash humor/sarcasm/sexual jokes. Sobriety’s rampant. If your books debuted now, how do think they’d go over?
Eve I can’t imagine, and luckily I don’t have to! Also if I were writing now, I doubt the books would be the same. After all, my sobriety is rampant, too!
LA Mag What are you currently doing with your time?
Eve I see my friends; go to [AA] meetings. I am gratefully sober.
I read all the time: books, magazines, everything.
Losing Weight Made Me A New Person—A Novelist appeared in the September, 1977 edition of Vogue. Traditionally, September is the most important issue of the year for fashion magazines.
The story is as much about alcoholism recovery as losing weight. Eve was quite a lush in her day.
Of course, when you knock off the sauce, you eat/sleep/exercise/fuck better, and become a healthier person. And, as we learned in the 36DD story, Eve was already a healthy girl. Never mind that the early alcohol recovery did not last. Eventually, Eve became a cocaine aficionado.
“Her friend Paul Ruscha was once quoted saying, “She’d blown her book advance on coke, fucked up her nose. She called me, begged me to come over. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There wasn’t an inch of floor not covered in bloody Kleenex. The cats were running around high.” … She stopped using in May of 1982. “Everyone has their own reasons for stopping an addiction. It’s hard to say what it is, except you know in your bones that if you don’t stop at the moment you decide, you never will.”
It is traditional for drunken writers … redundancy alert … to talk about the many authors who were raging drunks. Eve even coins a verb … Mailered … to describe this. Stormin’ Norman was as famous for his drunken brawling as his prose. His place in the slobberin’ scribe hall of fame is assured.
When people noticed that Eve was losing weight, and not being drunk all the time, they started pestering her to write a novel. She started pasting notes together. “I thought it was a little greedy of her. After all, I was the one who’d gotten the corpse from the guy in the alley at midnight; now she wanted me to dissect it all by herself, and I hadn’t even finished drinking the blood.”
I was reading the chapter about losing weight in the Walmart parking lot. At one point, I looked up from the text, to see a 300 pound women and her equally porcine husband. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. More “Charming” episodes are available. two three four five

There was a facebook link to a feature, Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis. It turns out to be verbatim droppings from Ayn Rand’s Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors. If you are interested in details, there are the links. 55% of the comments were one-star. This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
Miss Rand has read more C.S. Lewis than PG. There was a copy of a CSL work at a yard sale once, which PG invested a quarter in. He read as far as the appearance of a pig named trufflehunter. Maybe it was a bad day for books, but PG put CSL down, never to make another attempt.
There was a sixth grade english teacher at Ashford Park named Mrs. Ruff. Lots of people talked about how sweet she was, but PG was not impressed. One day, between handing out mimeographed copies of poems to be memorized, Mrs. Ruff started to talk about Narnia. It was a fantastic and amazing story. With a hint of primness, she told the class that Narnia was really about Jesus.

This is the fifth, and final, installment of chamblee54’s revenge fantasy against Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski. The book is an account of making the movie Barfly. Other chapters in this series are available. one two three four Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
37 – Some photographer comes by. He wants to take photographs of Hank, and Francine Bowers/Faye Dunaway. Jack Bledsoe/Mickey Rourke also posed, but refused to sign a release. I went looking for the pictures online. I found a picture that Francine and Hank did after the movie has been released. I don’t know what happened to the glamor shots.
38 – The action starts at a party, after shooting for Barfly wrapped up. It’s at a club somewhere, rented only until midnight. Hank orders a drink after midnight. The bartender says she has to charge him. Tonight, because, she’s a fan, Hank won’t have to pay. The evening is a mixed blessing for Hank. Some guy comes up to him, and swears he got drunk with Hank at Barney’s Beanery. The fan is offended that Hank does not remember.
The Super Bowl turned into a disaster. I was at my online poetry reading, watching the game with the sound cut off. Channel 11 was not doing very good. It kept going into this video catastrophe. It was tolerable as long as the picture came back, and I could see most of the action. But then, just as the game was starting to get good, the video just completely went out. I’m probably not going to watch too much TV until football season starts again, so it might not be a problem.
I’m trying to pay attention to the game, and feeling terrible because I can’t. I get a phone call, pick up the phone, and push this button. It is supposed to turn on speaker phone, but, if the call is not fully connected, will decline the call. IOW, I hung up. The call was from “J,” who lives in Mexico. He can call me, but I cannot call him. After some facebook messaging buzzouts, we get to talk on the phone. “J” was carrying on about how he does not care about the super bowl, and I just zoned out and said yeah, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow is another day.
39 – Hank goes to the editing room, and asks John Pinchot about the producers. “They are like children, they have heart. Even when they are trying to cut your throat, there is a certain warmth about them. I’d much rather deal with them than with the corporate lawyers who run most of the business in Hollywood.”
There’s a tasty quote on page 200. Hank notices a shot in the movie where his alter ego is meeting a girl. He takes a beer that he’s halfway through, pushes it aside, and doesn’t finish it. Hank points out that no alcoholic would ever do that. “That’s what happens you have a director who isn’t an alcoholic, an actor who hated to drink, and an alcoholic writer who preferred to be at the racetrack.”
40 – Hank and Sarah go to a screening of the movie. They get to the screening place, and it’s been moved to another location. They have to drive over there, and Hank needs a bottle.
There is a rhetorical tactic called the Motte and Bailey. As I understand it, this strategy involves making a claim that no one could disagree. Later, you learn that the plan is for something treacherous. An example would be CRT in K-12 schools. Who could disagree with learning about racism in school? It seems reasonable enough. It is only when you bring in Robin DiAngelo that you learn the truth. “Its always something. If its not one thing its another.”
Motte and Bailey is based on a medieval castle. The motte is a ground in front, where people live their everyday lives. The Bailey is a fortified stone house behind a moat. When there is trouble, this is where people go to wait out the trouble.
41 – Well Hank is going good, now that he’s made it to the premiere. This chapter is pretty boring, except when Hank tells about the time he lived with Tully and Nadine. This is not the same Nadine that Chuck Berry wrote a song about. Nor is it about the facebook friend who lives in Florida with three cats, one of whom is named Nadine.
Hank was living with this lady named Tully, some sort of entertainment industry suit. Tully thought Hank was in a bad way, and needed to be cared for. Hank responded by staying drunk, insulting all her friends, and fornicating with Tully whenever appropriate. Tully had a housemate named Nadine, who was keeping a musician named Rich. One night Hank and Rich got drunk, and decided that this business of being a kept fuckboy was not working too good, even if Nadine was a nymphomaniac. Nadine was going around the house naked one time, when Tully was out. Hank was not amused, and said he didn’t want to see her p**** flapping around. Nadine replied that she wouldn’t screw him if he was the last man on Earth.
42 – Hank is hanging out at the house in Los Angeles, and takes a phone call from Jon Pinchot at the Cannes Film Festival. Mickey never showed up, and Francine is making a spectacle of herself. She’s the last great movie star. Meanwhile Hank is reading James Thurber, who he thought was pretty funny. It was a shame that Thurbur had such a upper-middle-class view point. “He would have made one hell of a badass coal miner.”
It’s time for another interlude from real life. I was at the gym, and Neil Young’s “Rockin in the free world” came over the noise box. It was so ironic to hear that old geezer sing about freedom, when he is made taken it upon himself to censor Joe Rogan. I agree with Lynyrd Skynyrd about Neil Young.
I will give Neil Young credit for one thing. One afternoon in 1978 I went over to see someone. He told me that 96 Rock was giving away tickets to see Neil Young. 96 Rock was in that triangle building on Clairmont Road. There was a man out in front, with a shoebox full of tickets for Neil Young at the Omni. You could have taken you could have asked him for 15 tickets, and he would have happily given them to you. The seats were in the upper level, at the back of the hall. The band was so loud you could hear them clear as day. Even though I think Neil Young is a pretentious, half-crazy fuquad, he puts on a damn good show. He was doing the Rust Never Sleeps show. The roadies were dressed up like Star Wars characters. Neil tore the place up, so you have to give a man credit, even if he has way too many opinions for his own good, and is ugly is boiled over sin.
The only Neil that’s uglier than Neil Young is Neal Boortz. I would hate to be the judge of that beauty contest. I saw Mr. Boortz give a show, at the CNN Center, one time. They had an on camera talk show, with Neal as the host. It is a cliche that Neal has a face for radio, but there is another reason he never made it on tv. When he talked that day, you could see the disdain for the audience in his face. You can just look at him, and tell that he’s a lying a*******. He thinks you’re an idiot for paying attention to him, which many of his followers are … this robo secretary rant is being edited on the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. It is amazing how last week’s concerns are now obsolete.
43 – At first, there was not going to be a premiere for Barfly. Then Hank insisted that he wanted one. He wanted to have a white limousine take him to this premiere. On the night of the premiere, this gentleman named Frank picks him up. Frank was sort of an a******, but then very few people got along with Hank. They made it to the premiere without breaking down in Hollywood traffic.
There used to be a dirt road in Chamblee, where a bunch of limousines were parked. I just rode my bike by there, and I saw them. There’s another place down on Whitehall Street, just south of downtown. They kept horses that used to pull buggies for the tourists . I don’t go downtown anymore, so I don’t know if it is still there.
44 – So the premiere happened. Hank and Sarah showed up, and had to have some wine brought in for them. They sat on the front row, where all he could see was these huge figures towering above. He realized that one day he was going to watch it all on videocassette, so he could actually see it.
After the premiere Hank is in the men’s room. There’s this drunk at the urinal next to him. He says “hey you’re hanging trying to ski.” Hank says “no, I’m his brother Danny.” “why don’t you talk to him” “because I used to beat him up every time I could and that’s why we don’t get along. I don’t know why I came to this premiere, I hate his guts, but that’s how life goes”
There were a bunch of hippies at Cross Keys who thought forty four was a magic number. It was Hank Aaron’s jersey number. Forty four has a certain synchronicity, with the multiplication of two times two times eleven. Eleven is two ones to that, so there is a sequence of two ones multiplied by two twos. There’s a certain fibonaccian synchronicity afoot. Two is a fibonacci number, as is thirteen, which is two plus eleven. Thirteen is also considered unlucky.
45 – I am starting to run out of things to say. The story is over, but Hank might be getting paid by the word. I did enjoy this adventure. The next book is The Santa Suit, by Mary Kay Andrews. TSS is off to a slow start, and seems a touch boring, after the antics of Hank Chinaski. An Amazon one-star review gets to the inner truth: “The book is ripped and dirty. I can’t give this to a patient for christmas! If I could give it zero stars I would”
The one-star review did not have a period at the end. When you write stuff, you notice details like that. God is in the details. I always think I am going to have a red-pencil happy english teacher going over my text. Like my butch tenth grade teacher. She was married at the time, to a greasy haired man with two packs of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
46 – This is the last chapter. This has been a fun series. It was my first production written, in part, by the google robo secretary. While it requires a lot of editing after the fact, it does have its applications. It is good for reading text from a book, like this cable tv movie show review of The Dance of Jim Beam, which is what Hank calls Barfly. The next paragraph was borrowed, and not written by me.
“Selby shook his head, and limp-wristed the movie away. Awful, terrible. This has to be the worst movie of the year. Here we have this bum, with his pants down around his ankles. He’s filthy, uncaring, obnoxious. All he wants to do is beat up the bartender. From time to time he writes poems on torn pieces of paper, but mostly we see this scumbag sucking on bottles of wine, or begging for drinks at the bar. In one bar scene, we see two ladies fighting to their very death over him. Impossible. Nobody nobody would ever care for this man. Who could care for him. We rate movies from 1 to 10 here. Is there anyway I can give this a -1?”
From what I remember of my bar-room days, there’s a lot of characters like that. I’ve always felt that Hank Chinaski is the one person who actually created something, instead of just feeding a urinal. Drunks are generally useless people.
One morning, a friend and I had been up all night tripping. We wound up in the blue room, a beer joint across the street from the bus station. There was this guy in there named Hawaiian Eddie. He was insisting that we stay, and let him buy us another beer. We had to lie to him, and tell him we had to go to work, so we could leave without drinking more beer. Life was fun in those days.