Hollywood’s Eve Part Four
This is part four of a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., by Lili Anolik. More chapters are available. one two three Pictures for this profusion of confusion are from The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.
RACHEL KUSHNER: You mentioned to me (in an email) that you learned new things about yourself from listening to that (very juicy) podcast by Lili Anolik on Bennington College. Can you say more? BRET EASTON ELLIS: It was just odd to hear your life presented as a kind of oral history lesson and even odder to realize that this era at Bennington has somehow become a compelling story for a lot of people. If only we knew back then, I think we might have behaved a bit differently. I think there was an overemphasis on drugs (maybe not) that surprised me, and some publishing stuff surrounding Less Than Zero that I don’t quite remember in the same way a few editors do. I also learned a lot about Donna Tartt, which I hadn’t expected.
BEE is the thread that runs through all of these rags. I first heard about Eve on his podcast, including the Earl McGrath quote. Lili was a guest, probably when she was promoting HE. Lili, at some point, did a podcast series about Bennington College, featuring BEE. Finally, Eve wrote a blurb for Less Than Zero, when BEE was a young nobody.
185 “Eve wasn’t attempting books, though she did blurb one, the debut of a valley boy, a mere sixteen when he completed the first draft. “This is the novel your mother warned you about … Jim Morrison would be proud.” … BEE met Eve after LTZ was published. “My memory of Eve in the semi darkness of Ports in 1985 is that she was very buxom, very flirtatious, great smile. She wasn’t a ditzy Southern California girl. She was almost a parody of that idea. And then through the parody, this no-nonsense intelligence would come out.”
Ports was an accessory for Eve during the squalid overboogie days. “Forty years ago today, on Feb. 9, 1970, a burly actor named Jock Livingston and his artist wife, Micaela, opened an extraordinary, eccentric, and eventually rather legendary restaurant called Ports, across the street from Goldwyn Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. … The place had formerly been a bar called Sports Inn and Jock had climbed up a ladder, … and removed the first letter and the last three. … Micaela had very definite ideas about the people who dined and drank (and worked) at the establishment, and she expressed them with a biting wit. When one brash young man was overheard complaining loudly that he’d been sitting there for 10 minutes and hadn’t gotten menus, she said, sotto voce, “You haven’t even earned your napkins yet.” When a regular described a vapidly handsome young waiter as looking like an 8×10 glossy, she added, “Yes, and only on one side.”
Self promotion is important in the BEE-Lili-Eve world. Capitalist BEE is currently hustling The Shards. Lili returns the favor on facebook: “Lili Anolik reads the iconic opening of Less Than Zero. Return to 1980’s Los Angeles with Bret’s new novel, The Shards, on January 17th. Pre-order now.”
One page 198, Mirandi Babitz enters. Mirandi (née Miriam,) the younger sister of Eve, was a valuable source for Lili. Mirandi was an important part of the story. Mirandi was dating Julian Wasser when he took the chess photograph. Mirandi owned a leather shop, and made a pair for Jim Morrison.
222 “Miranda watched Morrison perform at the London Fog, then called Eve.”You have to see this guy, he’s Edith Piaf with a dick.” Eve stopped by the club the next night, seduced Morrison the night after that … her description of Morrison was pretty irresistible, and Eve, as a rule, didn’t resist.”
241 *”I’m not going to identify this famous lover or any of the other famous lovers mentioned in this section. Why not? To paraphrase Eve, so I don’t get sued!”
250 “… after we’ve brought Eve to the Village Idiot for a lunch of Ale steamed mussels and deep-fried brussel sprouts and cinnamon-sugar-dusted churros, after Eve dragged me to a nearby 7-Eleven so I can buy her $100 worth of British tabloids and disposable e-cigarettes” When Lili caught up with Eve, the LA woman was in reduced circumstances. Eve never really had a job, and when she caught on fire, there were $$ problems. Even in her glory days, Eve knew how to work people. What are tits for?”
Lili pursued Eve. There was a profitable story to be told. Lili saw a payday, took Eve to lunch, and bought her prezzies. When Eve finally accepted Lili’s invitation, the author flew from New York to Los Angeles the next day. Being a doctor’s wife has its advantages. The End
Hollywood’s Eve Part Three
This is a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., by Lili Anolik. More chapters are available. one two four Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
109 Eve’s Hollywood was the first book Eve published. Even with a salacious cover photo by girlfriend Annie Leibovitz, the book did not do well. Goodreads has a page of quotes, some of which may not be from EH. “I dressed next to her in gym (on my other side was this nice girl named Cathy whose only flaw was that she was kind of gullible and that kept me from being too shocked when I saw her in Life magazine crouched under a rock as one of the “Manson Family” and called Gypsy).” … “You can’t read Proust at the Laundromat.”
EH is dedicated to a bunch of people, many of whom are famous. One was her Hollywood High English teacher, Harry Major. “And to Mr. Major, I’m sorry I turned out this way.” Mr. Major died February 10, 2014, at 82. He would write young men in prison, and offer them a place to stay. Scott Kratlin took him up on his offer, and showed his appreciation by murdering Mr. Major.
114 Carrie Fisher wound up in Eve’s orbit, even if nobody could remember later. The answering machine at the Fisher house had this message. “Hello and welcome to Carrie’s voice mail. Due to recent electroconvulsive therapy, please pay close attention to the following options. Leave your name, number, and a brief history as to how Carrie knows you, and she will get back to you if this jogs what’s left of her memory. Thank you for calling, and have a great day.”
135 * “Beth Manville is, like every other character in Slow Days Fast Company, a real person, Her name was Peg Thorsdale, and she was the best friend of Petey Mazza (“Jo Marchese”), wife of Aldo Mazza (“Mason Marchese”). And same as Beth, Peg killed herself. Petey was upset by Eve’s story, and what she thought was an unfair swipe at Peg. Slow Days s became a source of tension between Petey and Eve, which, Eve being Eve, scarcely noticed. A strange coincidence:”… Slow Days was reissued in 2016. The publisher had Petey and Aldo’s copy. … “ the inscription: 4/24/77 To Petey and Aldo. Without you I’d be nothing. Love, Eve Babitz. Under Eve’s name was a lipstick kiss, the pink still bright, even after all these years.”
123 * “As I mentioned in the previous section, Fiorucci was the very last work of Eve’s that I read. I did not have to pay $2,000 for the privilege as I feared I might. In the summer of 2016, Jewish Family Services cleaned Eve’s condo. A copy was found. She let me borrow it for the afternoon.”
HE was written before the publication of I Used To Be Charming, a collection of articles Eve wrote. IUTBC contains Fiorucci, another payday for Eve. Here is what chamblee54 said: “Fiorucci, the book takes up the last 48 pages of IUTBC. Eve wrote text for a collection of graphics from the Fiorucci fashion emporium. Fiorucci closed its retail stores in the eighties, and is mostly known today because it rhymes with Gucci. “Zeigt und erklärt, wie und warum Fiorucci in den 70ern und 80ern bigger than life war. Das Buch ist Kunst, Marketinghandbuch und Poesiealbum in einem.”
Tussit Chronicles 011223
@jordanbpeterson “Just another reason to spend tens of thousands a year to send your kids to university… “@GailHeriot “Another perfectly good word is being canceled: The USC School of Social Work is nixing the word “field” as in “field work” & “going into the field.” USC thinks this has something to do with white supremacy. Please stop.” Pictures from The Library of Congress.
The document in question is rather festive. The Daily Trojan reports: “A department of USC’s school of social work said in a press release Tuesday that it will no longer use the phrases “field work” and “going into the field” in its curriculum, instead replacing them with “practicum.” The department said the change is meant to support its anti-racist social work. … Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of enslaved people and immigrant workers that are not benign”
Content Warning: This paragraph will link to definitions that include a six letter word. Since I want to live this weekend, I am not going to use the expression. As a substitute, I am going to say pock. … There are two phrases to consider, field pock and house pock. Per Urban Dictionary: Field Pock “Pock that works in the field all day picking cotton instead of working inside like a house pock.” House Pock “A black person that does their best to please white people even if it means disowning their own racial identity.” House Pock is not a compliment.
“The house Negro always looked out for his master. … he didn’t want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he’d say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” … When the master’s house caught afire, he’d try and put the fire out. … he was more defensive of it than the master was … But then you had some field Negroes … They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. … If the master got sick, they’d pray that the master died. If the master’s house caught afire, they’d pray for a strong wind to come along. … And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. I’m a field Negro.” Malcolm X
“We know that changing terminology can be challenging, and a complete transition will take some time, but we thank you in advance for joining us in this effort and for your patience as we transition.” This is the last sentence of the “practicum” memo. As we all know, transition is a process. A person is assigned a gender at birth. At a certain point in their evolution, this person will come to live in the gender that fits them better. This process is known as a transition. It is the root word of trans.
I was on youtube, and saw a video with Gore Vidal in 2011. He looked like death warmed over. I went to wikipedia for details, and saw that the gentleman (voice typing calls him Gore the doll) died in 2012. Wikiwaki has a few details about a feud Mr. Vidal had with Truman Capote, with a festive quote from Jackie O’s sister. Wikiwanker had a footnote to the source of this quote: At 92, Liz Smith Reveals How Rupert Murdoch Fired Her, What It Felt Like to Be Outed The story ran April 8, 2015.
Mary Elizabeth Smith “Bette Midler was pretty tough on me early on. I ran something about her dating some actor. And she called me up, furious, saying, “I don’t want to be in your f—ing column!” Which was an odd thing to hear from someone just starting a career in show business. The funny thing is, I love Bette now. She’s amazing, but she’s a volatile person. Remember the guy she was with? The funny guy with the grand piano?” Hollywood Reporter “Barry Manilow?”MES “That’s him. I used to go see them at the Continental Baths! But that partnership didn’t end so well.”
HR “You had a legendary aversion to Jackie O.’s sister, Princess Lee Radziwill. What was it that set you off?” MES ”Well, she did something terrible. She was always a close friend of Truman Capote‘s. But then Capote got embroiled in that ridiculous libel suit with Gore Vidal over his claim that Vidal had been drunkenly kicked out of the White House. Lee is the one who told Capote the story, but when it ended up in court, she threw him to the wolves. All she had to do was tell the truth. But she refused, and Truman lost the lawsuit, which devastated him. During the trial, as a last-ditch effort, he asked me to call her and beg her to testify. And you know, Truman had done everything for her. He even tried to help her start an acting career. But when I called her and said, “Lee, you really must testify for Truman,” she said, “Oh, Liz, what do we care; they’re just a couple of fags! They’re disgusting.” I was so stunned, I just hung up. I’ve never spoken to her since.”
HR Donald Trump … MES “I was just appalled by his treatment of Ivana! She came to me shortly after he dumped her, and she was beside herself. I said, “Look, everybody’s had a love affair where they’re rejected. It takes about two years to get over it — less if you see a psychiatrist.” I was touched by Ivana, so I spoke up for her. But, in the end, their fight wasn’t about betrayal. It was about money. She was as greedy as he was. It was a great story about nothing. But it made me world famous.”
HR Madonna … MES “She’s an extremely talented, deeply complicated woman. We were close for a while, or as close as anyone can get to her. The first time we met, she glowered at me and said, “Aren’t you scared of me?” I just laughed. We got along real well after that.”
Hollywood’s Eve Part Two
Publishing Hollywood’s Eve Part One had an unexpected complication. When tweeting the link, I thought it would be cool to tag author @LiliAnolik. Only one problem … the link would not come up. I thought her name was spelled Lily, with a y. Fortunately, WordPress is easy to edit, and I was about to correct this. … So it is another day. The episode will actually be about the Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Lili has a lot of *notes, for details that don’t fit her narrative. One way to cover HE is to go through the *notes, and see what they inspire.
016 * “Eve has told this story both orally and in writing many—many times as in many—many times. Though the major details remain constant, the minor change. … I went with this one for no better reason than because I like it best.” Julian Wasser was a photographer, a bf of Mirandi Babitz … Eve’s sister … and a California player in 1963. He took a famous picture of Eve playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. Eve’s fashion statement in the picture was very well received.
023 “What are tits for?” * “A rhetorical question posed by Eve, in casual conversation.”
034 “New York is hot in the summer, so I got a boyfriend who had air-conditioning. Ralph Metzner. Ralph was part of Timothy Leary’s team. I hated Tim. He was an alcoholic, and he always ordered everybody around as soon as he walked into a room. He made me type all his lectures, and he couldn’t write.” Eve went to New York in 1966, stayed a year, and had a lot of adventures.
044 “In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz. It is usually Eve Babitz.” This observation is in every piece ever written about Eve, so we can now take that off the to-do list. It is blamed on Earl McGrath, who was a well connected piece of work. “I was researching a piece on Andy Warhol and … Edie Sedgwick and received a message …He needed to reschedule the day of our interview. “ Earl’s memorial service has been postponed to let the smart set at Jerry Hall’s wedding to Rupert Murdoch fly across the Atlantic including the bride and groom.”
Earl McGrath is one of the degrees of connection that populated Eve’s life. Earl came from humbled beginnings, and charmed/fucked his way into friendships with many famous people. Eve met Earl one morning at Peter Pilafian’s house. Earl came by one morning to hit on Peter, and became friends with Eve. Earl and Eve were faghag buddies, until they were not. Earl appears in “Slow Days Fast Company” as a toxic queen. … Earl does not have a wikipedia page. Nor does Lili Anolik. As best I can determine, Earl did not have a middle name.
060 It is another rule … all stories about sixties California must mention Charles Manson. “The first time I saw Sharon was at the Cafe’ de Paris in Rome. It was 1961, the same year I saw the pope. I couldn’t believe anyone was that beautiful.” Later, Bobby Beausoleil stayed with Eve for a week. “He’d worn a sign that said “I am Bummer Bob.” I let him stay but hadn’t slept with him because anyone who called himself that, I figured, must have the clap.”
097 *”Once when we were at lunch a woman—Eve’s age—perfectly pleasant seeming, waved from a neighboring table. Eve didn’t return the wave. I asked Eve who the woman was, and she said, eyes wide, voice grave, “That’s my enemy.” (Eve and the woman had, as it happened, shared a boyfriend forty years before.)”
100 Eve wrote to Joseph Heller: “I am a stacked eighteen-year-old blond on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer. Eve Babitz.” This letter is another part of the Eve legend. As in other Eve stories, there are several versions, so you must pick the one you like. In this interview, Lili says that Eve had an affair with Mr. Heller. Google does not confirm this detail.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” Other parts of the Hollywood’s Eve series are available. one three four
Millard Fillmore’s Birthday
On January 7, 1800, Millard Fillmore was born. He had no middle name, so his initials were MF. He was POTUS number thirteen, serving July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853. A member of the Whig party, Mr. Fillmore became President after the death of Zachary Taylor. This is the only death of a serving President not connected to the zero factor.
Whenever a President dies in office, there are conspiracty theries. In the case of Zachary Taylor, the body was exhumed in 1991. The investigation found that Mr. Taylor “had no more arsenic in him than you or I walking around in the environment today.”
“The details about how and why President Taylor died are still in dispute today. The president attended a ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument on July 4th on a reportedly hot summer day. He fell ill soon after with a stomach ailment after drinking iced drinks and eating a bowl of cherries. His doctors gave him relief medication that included opium and later bled the president. Taylor died five days later at the age of 65.
Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington. There are other theories, including one where Taylor was poisoned by people who supported the South’s pro-slavery position. (In recent years, Taylor’s body was exhumed and a small, non-lethal amount of arsenic was found in samples taken from his corpse.) It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to the expansion of slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.”
Some naysayers claim that Millard Fillmore was the one to poison the President, but they are not taken seriously. Millard Fillmore served what was left of Mr. Taylor’s term. He is little known today, which makes one wonder why he was included in the history series American Douchebag. Which is not to say that Mr. Fillmore is completely forgotten.
@EdDarrell Happy Birthday Millard Fillmore! Born January 7, 1800. Fillmore as a young man? @fillmoremillard Thank you Ed! I was a handsome devil, wasn’t I? #Fillmore2016 @EdDarrell One story holds that when Fillmore toured England and Europe Queen Victoria said said was the handsomest man she ever met. @MonroeNumber5 Prince Albert must have loved that… Perhaps he wasn’t vain enough to let it bother him. @EdDarrell Or, more likely, Albert knew Victoria’s astounding love and devotion to him. Albert died 6 years later.
At one time, Johnny Carson thought jokes about Millard Fillmore were funny. A youtube search does not reveal any of these jokes. During a writers guild strike, Mr. Carson wrote his own monolog. “… astrology would no longer be used at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Employed instead, he said, would be “a channeler speaking through the spirit of Millard Fillmore.”
The rest of this holiday post is recycled. It was inspired by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, a fine blog. MFB is published today, six years after the original post. As you may have guessed, it is named for Millard Fillmore. MF was POTUS (and many POTUS are MF) between 1850 and 1853. The last whig to serve as POTUS (history does not record whether he wore one), Mr. Fillmore helped delay the War Between the States for ten years.
After he left office, Mr. Fillmore visited Atlanta GA in 1854, becoming the first POTUS to do so. A road in San Francisco was named Fillmore Street, and loaned the name to a famous concert hall. Johnny Carson made him a punch line to many jokes. And, there is the bathtub.
In 1917, with America mixed up in a European war, H.L. Mencken published a column in the New York Evening Mail. He claimed that the bathtub had been invented in 1842, and was a controversial device. (The first model was made of mahogany lined with lead.) President Millard Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House in 1850, and greatly increased the acceptance of the invention. The story was a lie, but was believed without question by the (unwashed) public.
Recently someone found a letter, written by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was seen by many as a disaster. Mr. Stephens disagreed: “I know the man [Lincoln] well, he is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillmore did and better too in my opinion.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” This is a repost.
Carpe Per Diem
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harijan 1940 ~ gandhiserve ~ Eve ~ mcgrath ~ cemmcgrath
will roberds ~ chipmonks ~ bennington ~ farrah fawcett
aruba ~ photo viewer ~ goad 22 ~ trippy picnic ~ zeihan
peter zeihan ~ asian privilege ~ zexmte driver ~ tt mahoney ~ burst of joy
snl ~ tailgate ~ decatur slur ~ decatur ~ -ussy
john chestnut ~ fallenmaster69 ~ wired emoji ~ npr emoji ~ cpo complaint
acled data ~ harijan ~ whataburger ~ fifth element ~ “Lily Anolik husband”
very fine people ~ autism ~ robert anolik ~ mattress matt ~ rainfall
lily anolik ~ big table podcast ~ repost ~ steve babitz ~ steve_babitz
greater good ~ anolik ~ cook out one star ~ Rontravius Dawson ~ artistry live decatur
damar hamlin ~ cities ~ fasting ~ lili anolik ~ steve_babitz
I was posting my first weekly report of 2023, and something was horribly askew. It turns out I left a > out of a line of code, and it fucked everything up ~ I have heard the line about the caged bird for years, but never read the poem that inspired it. It turns out the Ms. Angelou is not talking about a privileged white man expressing his wonderful thoughts on the information superhighway. I might need to find another metaphor ~ @JonathanLKrohn Local health insurance ad warns viewers to be aware of “the three Ps.” *snickers* Johnathan Krohn has a story. When he was 12, he gave speeches at right wing meetings, and became a celebrity for a few minutes. Today, he is twenty something, and is a professional journalist. He currently identifies as queer ~ the adjective scale goes descriptive, comparative, superlative … good better best … i am not sure which one is applies to normal ~ Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it. ~ “That leaves yellow, the Esperanto of emoji skin tones, which seems to offer an all-purpose or neutral form of pictographic expression, one that does not require an acknowledgment of race—or, for that matter, embodiment. … The yellow emoji feels almost like claiming, “I don’t see race,” that dubious shibboleth of post-racial politics, in which the ostensible desire to transcend racism often conceals a more insidious desire to avoid having to contend with its burdens.” ~ @chamblee54 The persian king asked his advisor for some words he could say on all occasions. The answer was “these things too shall pass away.” … This was before LOL. ~ 🩱 one thing about this morning is I have learned how to negotiate the emoji table … instead of scrolling endlessly, i can click on an icon to go directly to underwear ~ English would be well served to find another way of expressing apathy, rather than saying “I don’t give a damn/shit/fuck.” ~ The Biden Administration is basically taking the trade policy of Donald Trump and running it through grammar checker ~ This is repulsive. This is the headline on youtube:”Sean McDermott: Damar Hamlin sad news from hospital, Buffalo Bills Head Coach – LIVE,” When the man finally speaks, it is mostly what players are injured, and how next Sunday’s game is going to go. The name Damar Hamlin has not been mentioned. This is what is in the youtube show notes: “Tesla & Elon Musk are sponsoring this live stream. Join the crypto giveaway by Elon Musk. As explained in the live stream: Double your Bitcoin & Ethereum within 0-5 minutes. Send 0.1+ BTC & receive 0.2+ BTC Send 1+ ETH & receive 2+ ETH Over 430 BTC & 3,900 ETH have been sent to our live stream viewers.” Gross ~ @chamblee54 I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force. Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97 ~ @benaveryisgood Every smart guy will tell you the news isn’t real, and then have endless opinions on it ~ @chamblee54 it is an old line about opinions and a certain body part … twitter does not want me specify … but the truth is that most people only have one “shipping and receiving department” ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
David Bowie
It was a strange week to be a David Bowie fan. On Friday, I was looking for a rerun to post, and was reminded that January 8 was his birthday. (Along with Elvis and Shirley Bassey) I put up a piece about Mr. Bowie, and fashioned a poem out of his song titles. Aquarian Drunkard reissued a collection of the “best and most interesting Bowie oddities”. A new album was released, with a lot of comments about how strange it was. Strange is something Bowie fans turn to face.
On Monday, I woke up. Go on the internet. MSN news says that David Bowie has died. This is surprising. I know what people are going to talk about for a few days.
I typically download the new wtf podcast on Monday. The show is “supported” by Columbia records, presenting David Bowie’s new album “Blackstar.” Marc Maron gushes on about how ” DAVID BOWIE I LOVE DAVID BOWIE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” The single is called “Lazarus.”
The timing of the whole thing is bizarre. Was this planned? To release a puzzling new work on your sixty ninth birthday, and then die two days later. With the master media manipulator involved, prior planning cannot be ruled out. Or was it just a parting shot of synchronicity? We will never know.
In what might be a new move for celebrity deaths, sex scandal rumors emerged. A lady named Lori Maddox claims that Mr. Bowie “devirginized” her. Miss Maddox was underage at the time. Some people think that this incident makes Mr. Bowie a terrible person, whose artistic output should be ignored. One made the inevitable comment “As someone who sees White stars get a pass for things that celebrities of color get crucified for.”
I learned a long time ago to separate the performer from the performance. I also apply this rule to David Robert Jones. (David Bowie was a stage name. The legal name was never changed.) In 1976, there was an interview, where the artist said “Don’t believe anything you hear me say.” While the creative/marketing genius can be enjoyed, there was always a bit of coldness behind the mask. Some press reports say that this softened as the years went by. In the end David Bowie was human. Ziggy Stardust was a character played by an actor. Does it matter that they were a Cracked Actor?
It is ironic that David Bowie played Andy Warhol in Basquiat. Both combined creation of art, and the marketing of art product, into a seamless unit. The two did not have a good first meeting. “Remember, David Bowie was not a big star. He was just some guy off the street as far as Andy Warhol was concerned. They found a common ground in David’s shoes. David was wearing yellow Mary Janes and Andy had been a shoe illustrator, which David knew so they began talking about shoes.” UPDATE I got to see Basquiat. Andy Warhol’s wig, worn by David Bowie, gave an outstanding performance.
This would have been in 1971. Mr. Bowie discusses his adventures in between songs of this show. There is another story from that first tour: “I think that must’ve been part of the Mercury Records publicity tour in early 1971, Gus. Ted Vigodsky, if I remember correctly, brought Bowie by The Great Speckled Bird’s offices on North Avenue where Moe Slotin and I met him. Bowie was dressed in an ill-fitting gingham dress and looked something like a gaunt, poverty-stricken woman in one of those Walker Evans photos from the Depression. He informed Moe and me that he was gonna be the next big star in rock-n-roll. It took all of our will power not to laugh in his face. This was before anyone in America had heard of him and he had no records out yet (“Space Oddity,” a hit in England in 1969, was not released in the USA until 1973). Six months later Moe and I realized we had completely underestimated him. I had forgotten Charlie had called you about interviewing him.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
David Bowie is 76 today. Elvis is ageless. Betsy DeVos is unemployed. This Bowie tribute is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
A webpage called CaptainsDead had a download of a David Bowie concert. (Here is another edition.) Most Bowie live recordings are pretty dull. While the Thin White Duke is renowned for his concerts, they tend to be live events, that depend on staging and costumes as much as music. This show, from 1974, is different. Focusing on material from “Diamond Dogs”, the sound he produces comes close to matching the studio sound.
The next move for Bowie in 1974 was the “white soul” sound of “Young Americans”. He is moving in that direction in this show, even while he lingers in the glitter apocalypse. This tour included a stop at the Fox Theater, the first Atlanta show for Mr.Bowie. On the way to Florida for the next show, the truck with the sets and costumes crashed into a swamp full of rattlesnakes. The show in Tampa was performed in street clothes.
Maybe it is time for a Chamblee54 tribute to David Bowie. It is six am, and PG has stumbled into a job. The time and energy required to write new material is not always available.
The first album by David Bowie that PG heard about was “Hunky Dory”. At the time, Mr. Bowie had generated some buzz by admitting that he fancies blokes, or some uber british expression for being queer. In time, this would be seen as more publicity stunt than brave confession. The RCA debut got some good reviews, but not much else.
The next year produced “Ziggy Stardust”, a concept album. At about this time he did a tour of the United States, with costumes and onstage antics that generated even more publicity. More and more people started listening, some in spite of his outrageous image, and quite a few more because of it. He broke up his band, the spiders from mars, and announced his retirement. The band, according to reports, learned about this while standing on stage behind him. Mr. Bowie, for all his genius, is not always a nice man.
In 1974 there was an album, “Diamond Dogs”, about the decadent urban life in the scifi future. A stage show based on this album…the source of the download mentioned above…marked a return to the concert stage. The next year gave us “Young Americans”, and the year after that “Station to Station”. Every year was a different sound and vision.
Meanwhile, the artist was not doing so good as a human being. According to all reports, he was doing mountains of cocaine. (There is a story of going to meet the parents of Ava Cherry, one of his girlfriends. He shows up at 3am, and does coke on the dining room table.) There was an interview in Playboy (or maybe it was Rolling Stone ) where the first thing he says is, don’t believe anything I say. He went on to say that he admired Adolf Hitler. Have we mentioned the physical appearance of David Bowie in 1975? He looked like he was dead, and nobody bothered to tell him. (By contrast, in recent photo collections of rock stars, Mr. Bowie looks pretty good for a man who is 69 yo.)
This was the era of Rocky Horror show. At one point, Riff Raff sings (Tim O’Brien wrote the show, and gave himself some darn good lines) Frank n furter, it’s all over, your mission is a failure, your lifestyle’s too extreme.I’m your new commander you now are my prisoner we return to transylvania prepare the transit beam While this may not have been directed at David Bowie, he took the hint.
We interrupt this David Bowie tribute with an emergency announcement. A person, reputed to be an entertainer, was seen using the n word on facebook. The screen shots have disappeared, and all we have is the word of the accuser. More details will be available as soon as anyone is interested.
David Bowie saw himself at a dead end, and possibly a dead life. He moved into a little apartment in West Berlin, on top of a garage. Brian Eno offered his assistance, and a series of electronic albums was the result. The next few years saw rock and roll, dance music, and finally, crap. PG bought a Bowie album in 1984, the first time he saw it on sale, and was immensely disappointed. The last David Bowie album that PG got was a free cd that was given to people buying a magazine.
Around 1981, MTV was born, and radio was suddenly obsolete. A visual artiste like David Bowie was a natural for video. Unfortunately, many of these videos are not available for embedding in blogs. Ashes to Ashes was a staple of early MTV. Boys Keep Swinging , off the “Lodger” album, is a return to the gender bender Bowie of younger days.
David Bowie continued to do tours, and PG got to see two of the shows. In 1987, something called the “Glass Spider Tour” came to the Omni. (In a later interview, it turns out Mr. Bowie was extremely unhappy during this tour, and close to suicide at some points.) The Glass Spider was this mass of lighting effects that hovered over the stage, and was used to best advantage during “Scary Monsters”. The show featured Peter Frampton on guitar, and had a pack of dancers. (One apparent female took her drag off during the finale.) A good time was had by all.
In 1990, another retirement tour came to the Omni. This one had movies projected on a screen behind the stage, and featured guitar hero Adrian Bellew. The night had the feel of a contractual obligation. David Bowie is too professional to give a bad show, but this one did not have the fire of “Glass Spider”. PG had a new set of contact lenses, and his eyes were painfully dry most of the night.
M.K. Gandhi And Truth
I identify as human 🌎 @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” “Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. one two three Pictures are from Library of Congress.
Hollywood’s Eve Part One
Lilianne O’Likk: “I have a problem with objectivity. I always think it’s a pose. Why would I be moved to spend five or six years of my life on a subject that I was neutral about? With this book, I clocked my subjectivity from the start. Cold-eyed subjectivity is what you need to write a good book. I’m extremely tough on Eve. The fact that I love her doesn’t mean I’m going to be soft on her.”
This quote is from “Lili Anolik on Eve Babitz …” It is one of the podcasts I found yesterday, while writing a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Hardcover, by Lili Anolik. The book is all over the place. This book report will follow suit.
A primer is in order. Eve Babitz was a groupie. A pretty young lady in California, who partied with many famous people. Eve wrote a few books. One, Slow Days Fast Company, is pretty good. After the eighties hit, and she joined AA, a slow decline set in. In 1997, she set herself on fire, and nearly died. The next twenty four years were spent processing all that input. Chamblee54 wrote book reports on SDFC and I Used To Be Charming, a collection of magazine articles written by Eve.
“The adjective scale goes descriptive, comparative, superlative … good better best … i am not sure which one is applies to normal.” This thought came up in a chat conversation, and is a good way to start this appreciation of Hollywood’s Eve … I am not sure how this is going to work, which is another Babitz Bestie. Eve … I would say EB for the middle-nameless Eve, but Eve is only one letter longer. We should be grateful that Sol and Mae did not have a son named Steve . … maybe i should just listen to the podcasts I found with Lili Anolik, dig dirt on google, and finish this post later. I can always find something in the archive for chamblee54.
I am validating my admiration for Lili Anolik. First, it is pronounced Ann-o-lick … vaguely suggestive, but not anal ick. (Maybe Eve thought Lili was Miss Anal-Ick when she decided to answer the phone calls, and they bonded over the analickiness.) I found a bunch of podcasts that she did while self promoting. Lili Anolik on … was only 10 minutes long. It provided the tasteful quote above.
How Long Gone is two over-the-hill potheads talking trash, until their guest appears. The babblethon at the start is going to last longer than the first podcast. At 22:47, they send Lili a “zoomie”. I listened to about ten minutes of Lili talking about what shoes her husband … a New York Dermatologist … wears. Listening to this pablum is too much work, even for art.
I thought it would be cool to include a link to Dr. Anolik. When googling “Lili Anolik husband”, the first result is When You’re Married to a Dermatologist, All You Need Is Eye Cream. When the pothead podcast opens, they are hustling Soft Services Buffing Bar, a skin care product. One of the young men cannot afford to use SSBB on his XXL butt. Product promotion is a lifestyle choice.
Fortunately, a third podcast had some solid information. The Eve story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. When Lili connected with her, Eve was a mess. The next passage is a google-docs-transcript from podcast number three. It has been edited for easier reading, not accuracy. Just like Eve.
“I finally did get to her, she was living in, it wasn’t squalor, it was so much more extreme. It felt almost like she was a cave dweller. I mean the level of filth, and the darkness of that apartment, and the stench of that apartment, was so extreme, it was just despair…. it was madness, she smelled like madness. I mean it was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life and if I went into that apartment, I don’t think I’m a squeamish person, but I would have to walk around the block like four or five times before I call a cab or Uber.” …
Lili mentioned the Eve aroma in the book, but not in such graphic terms. The book was published in 2019, and created in the years before that. Eve died December 17, 2021. She had Huntington’s Disease, which may have been a factor in the squalor that Lili saw. At some point before her death, Eve went into assisted living.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The Hollywood’s Eve series is available. two three four
Before You Diagnose
PG was minding his digital business when a fbf posted a meme. It features a studious Sigmund Freud, with a quote: “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” Pictures today are from Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs.
As some of you know, PG likes to debunk inspirational quotes. This one seemed a bit flakier than most. PG typed “before you diagnose” in the window. Magic sentences filled in the rest. When the first result you see is from Quote Investigator, there is a possibility of a measly meme.
Notorious d.e.b. @debihope “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” By all accounts, this is where the quote started. It was retweeted by William Gibson @GreatDismal. He has denied authorship several times. @GreatDismal What’s your (now) (in)famous quote about depression? [Actually not my quote. Never said it] @GreatDismal Really? What’s it like having a now viral quote incorrectly attributed to yourself? [Very 21st Century] How Sigmund Freud got dragged into this is anyone’s guess.
The meme machine can be tempting. The desire is strong to share something you enjoy. The @debihope quote does have a kernal of truth to it, even when *you* is one of the assholes. However, some actors here that should know better. It is easy to verify a quote. Professional meme mongers like goodreads should make friends with google. Even if the quote is real, William Gibson is alive, and knows about copyright infringement.
Pefect Papers takes this thing to a new level. They are currently selling the Before You Diagnose Yourself … Gold Marble Sigmund Freud Quote Notebook for $7.99. The book has the quote on the cover, followed by 120 lined pages. This is a repost
Tussit Chronicles 010323
I woke up. Today is the third day of the new year. The 2023 plan is to try intermittent fasting for a month, and see how I feel. Today is the third day. It is one thing to say what you are going to do. It is another to actually do it.
IF changes your relationship with food. The plan now is to eat from 2pm until 10 pm. The internet folks say to go from 1-9. I like to eat a late night bowl of oatmeal, to promote regularity. This may change as we continue.
@BkL0v “all good news about Damar Hamlin so far – despite the scary cardiac arrest and 9min CPR, his vitals are good, they restarted his heart, now they say he’s in stable condition. he’a gonna play football again! just watch !!!!” … The twitter news this morning is about a football player collapsing last night. The word is that many COVID vaccinated people have fallen over dead recently. There will be no way to prove/disprove that the vaxx caused these sudden deaths.
I am vaxxed. When they became widely available, I was skeptical, but not enough of a rebel to abstain. It is becoming apparent that the deep state government rushed the vaxx into mass distribution without adequate testing. The pandemic was seen as an emergency, and extreme measures were taken. The national debt spiraled out of control. Children essentially took a year off from school. We will be dealing with the quote/unquote cure a lot longer than we dealt with the disease.
Why do I continue to write these dispatches, when few people are reading? Last year, I wrote two posts about why I enjoy listening to Joseph James Rogan. The facebook friend who trashed JJR deleted the link. When I looked at the stats a few days later, NOBODY had read the post. Writing these dispatches is fun, and may elicit some worthwhile commentary. The fact that nobody is reading should not be a problem. The only expense is my time.
Why does the caged bird sing? I have heard that line for years, but am starting to understand it. The caged bird sings because he enjoys it. He does not care if you enjoy his tunes, or if you are annoyed by it. If you want to ignore me, that is easier than filtering out a bird that will not quit singing.
I have heard the line about the caged bird for years, but never read the poem that inspired it. It turns out Maya Angelou is not talking about a privileged white man expressing his wonderful thoughts on the information superhighway. The metaphor still works. If some fuddy duddy wants to cry racist cultural appropriation, that is their privilege. In the meantime, I will look for another metaphor.
The Rogan posts mentioned above deal with the COVID clusterfuck. “JRE does tackle serious issues. You should listen, and think for yourself. I heard about 45 minutes of the Robert Malone episode. A great deal of it was nonsense. One that rang true was the government prioritizing vaccines over treatment, with disastrous results. Typical is this story: Experts say monoclonal antibody treatment is not a substitute for COVID-19 vaccines.”
“The suspicion is that the covid industrial complex does not want you to think critically. The idea is to be good little sheep. Get the vaccine, wear a mask, and watch the government borrow $3t a year. Talk trash about anyone who does not salute the Pfizer-flag. When a popular entertainer questions the status quo, he must be ridiculed, along with anyone who listens.
Pictures today are by chamblee 54. These are haiku pictures, another underappreciated expression. You take a bit of text, usually off twitter or facebook. Highlight the words you want to keep, in the 5 beat-7 beat-5 beat format. Filter out the remaining text. Have a nice day.
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