Retread — Burroughs Month: Thanksgiving Prayer

“To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day. November 28, 1986.”

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories — all right let’s see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

I do not believe it is as hopeless as all that. This year, I am incredibly thankful to be alive at all, let alone to live where I do with the people I love. I understand Mr. Burroughs’ criticisms, I just think that we must keep caring and trying to win out against the sense of defeat and cynicism, and maybe then the dream can still be saved. I don’t believe people are inherently bad; I believe the opposite, and I won’t get discouraged and filled with bitterness toward all of humanity just because of the publicized exploits and outrages of the bad apples in our barrel. I believe that for each one of the headlines that sends people in to despair over the state of the world, there are a thousand unreported little kindnesses and gestures of love and connection.

And world peace. I know. I get cheesey. I’m just feeling very happy and free and alive.

Almost all photos via Square America.

This post originally appeared on November 26, 2010.

Take-two Tuesday: William Blake Month — “The Fly”

This entry originally appeared on June 22, 2010 at 1:44pm.

Late post, am I right? I’ve been invovled in some deep bookfoolery which I will explain below. The heading of each of the chapters in a book I read last night/today is followed by a quote, and one such quote was from this poem of Blake’s.

via

Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

via

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

(William Blake, “The Fly.”)

So — the lateness in the day. Yes. Sorry, but I am not even firing on four let alone six cyllinders today. See, I went against all my usual instincts and quickly finished my yearly series last night wayyy ahead of time and I refuse to let that happen with my other obligations, so when I dropped the last in the series to the floor, I dug in to my pile and instead of snatching up The Tommyknockers (absolutely not touching it until July 2nd or 3rd or I will not be where I need to be for the 4th and I cannot afford any more Bad Days), I started this book my cousin Mary loaned me called The Descent.

I was initially skeptical and, at points, flirting with grogginess from the overabundance of sleep-inducing substances I pour down my throat every night in an effort to quiet the seven-headed rock dragon of my insomnia which makes the Balrog look like a Pound Puppy, but it was amazing shit, full of caves and sci-fi creatures and anthropology and linguistics and religious themes and Hell and mountaineers and Jesuits and everything else that rings my bell, and before I knew it I was completely sucked in to the throat of it. I powered through the layers of tylenol pm, Miller, and a slug of Ny-Quil I’d taken earlier, ignoring my sandy eyelids because I Couldn’t Stop Reading, and, having finally shook off any need for sleep and finished the last sentence and closed the book thoughtfully at around nine this morning, I can confidently say I’m a believer.

via

I slid it under my bed and lay reflecting on what I’d read for a few minutes, because I felt like there had been some unresolved plot points, then I suddenly did this herky jerky twitch and thought, “How many standalone science fiction novels are that long? Plus … it was set in ’99, but the cover was new. No dog-eared pages. Mary would’ve loaned it to me years ago if she hadn’t just recently bought and read it. It’s a new book.” Reprint. Why?

via

Totally excited by this chain of thought, I flipped my ass in the air, dove under my bed and grabbed the book back out of my piles and checked the front. HELL YES: among the author’s other books listed by the publisher is one titled The Ascent, which I think it is fair to conjecture can only be a sequel, so now that I’ve finished all the housework and cooking I’d planned previously to do in the hours of the morning I’d spent reading, I’m going to cruise out to the used book store by my house and see about scaring that bitch up for tonight — and see if there are more. Keep you posted. Don’t worry about the insomnia thing: I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Smiley face

That explains the smilling faces.

Concerned that drugs from Medicap Rx are too corporate? Consult your neighborhood unlicensed pharmaceutical representative about 100% organic, area-sustainable alternatives. Shop local, kids.

Take-two Tuesday — Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Christmas is going to the dogs edition

This entry was originally posted on November 30, 2009 at 9:16 am.

Leeds, England.

Bump a fat rail because foot-traffic at the mall was a fist-raping, soul-tarring clusterfuck, but by gum, Jesus would’ve wanted you to get that doorbuster deal, so you done all right, sunshine.

Burroughs Month: Thanksgiving Prayer

“To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day. November 28, 1986.”

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories — all right let’s see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

I do not believe it is as hopeless as all that. This year, I am incredibly thankful to be alive at all, let alone to live where I do with the people I love. I understand Mr. Burroughs’ criticisms, I just think that we must keep caring and trying to win out against the sense of defeat and cynicism, and maybe then the dream can still be saved. I don’t believe people are inherently bad; I believe the opposite, and I won’t get discouraged and filled with bitterness toward all of humanity just because of the publicized exploits and outrages of the bad apples in our barrel. I believe that for each one of the headlines that sends people in to despair over the state of the world, there are a thousand unreported little kindnesses and gestures of love and connection.

And world peace. I know. I get cheesey. I’m just feeling very happy and free and alive.

Almost all photos via Square America.

Girls of Summer: Delores Wells, Miss June 1960

Photographed by Don Bronstein.

Delores Wells, Playboy’s Miss June 1960, shares her October 17th birthday with the anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which stopped the World Series and collapsed the Cypress Structure on the Nimitz Freeway and part of the Bay Bridge, and with the birthday of my dearest old friendoh Big Ben, who I’ve gotten to see twice this month and am super glad of it (a much more cheery connection).

At the time of her Playboy appearance, Ms. Wells was living in Chicago, like a lot of the early centerfolds. She worked as a bunny in the Chicago club. Sources suggest that Ms. Wells made $1,000 per week working at the club, but that her payment for this pictorial was only $500.

The above picture did not make it in to the original spread because Ms. Wells’ pubic hair was slightly visible, which god forbid — until the Pubic Wars of the 70’s.

Ms. Wells eventually wung her way west and appeared in several of the surf-rock propelled, beach party movies that were popular in this era: Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, and Bikini Beach.

Beach party movies came up for us recently in the context of Sharon Tate’s Actual Life Awareness Month, but I had not taken the time to discuss them because I was trying to stick to my self-imposed edict of keeping the spotlight on Ms. Tate. In this post I am beholden to no such stringency and will tell you all about it.

American International Pictures produced the first “beach party” movie, titled, go figure, Beach Party in 1963. I do not count the Gidget movies. Wikipedia does, but I do not. In my opinion the AIP beach movies were too different to give Gidget inspiration credit, and had a totally different market and theme in mind. Also I have been a huge Connie Francis guy since birth, and even though I know it is stupid and pointless, I bear a grudge against Sandra Dee for being the one who got to marry Bobby Darin. Yes, I know: stupid and pointless.

Following the success of Beach Party, AIP cooked up more films featuring beachy monkey shines, about seven in all, which mainly served as frontispieces for selling the motion picture soundtracks with appearances from popular musicians of the era. (You know — like Shrek movies.)

Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon starred in the majority of the AIP beach party flicks, and players like Ms. Wells appeared regularly as the same “Type” of person, though sometimes with different character names from film to film. The important thing was their recognizable persona. You know, the giggly flirts, the schoolbookish types, the buffed dimwits, etc … and, of course, the ne’er do wells. In the AIP beach party movies, the ne’er do wells were the comically inept Rats & Mice.

Oh, the decorative sex*. Hands-down my favorite shot.

The villains of the story were usually biker Eric Von Zipper (played by comic actor Harvey Lembeck as a parody of Marlon Brando in The Wild One) and his inept gang the Rat Pack, or “Rats & Mice”.

(the wiki)

The most popular running gag of the beach party series is “The Himalayan Suspender” technique, originated by Professor Sutwell in Beach Party, in which the forefinger is pressed against a certain part of the skull, rendering the victim paralyzed. The victim of this move (aka “The finger”) was always [Rats & Mice leader] Eric Von Zipper, who learned it from Sutwell and threatened people with it in subsequent films, calling it “The Rats’ Revenge.”

(Ibid.)

However, Von Zipper’s finger never worked on others, only himself. Once Von Zipper became paralyzed (usually with a big open-mouthed smile on his face), the Rats & Mice would carry him out and declare “Eric Von Zipper will return!”

(Ibid.)

I am pretty sure one of my girlfriends in high school lay “the finger” on our other friend as he knelt between us in Math class trying to coax my friend to share more of her large water bottle full of vodka mixed with orange juice, from which we’d been healthily improving our outlook on the late morning for at least a half hour. We told him to go away before he made it obvious what was going on, but he was having none of it.

I was particularly concerned about “maintaining” because I was not the kind of student who got in trouble, living a very weird double life in which I outwardly exemplified a golden student and banner citizen and genuinely cared about service to others and studying for tests, yet I also secretly ditched school, drank, and smoked. I was too young at that time to reconcile those behaviors with one another. I was also worried because I was better friends with his sister than with this guy, though he too was a friend, and I looked up to her as a role model, and my opinion at that time was that the less he knew about my bad behavior, the better.

A close contender for favorite shot of the spread.

Exasperated and sympathetic to my worries, my girlfriend made hoo-doo signs in the air over our annoying friend’s head and elaborately pressed her index finger to the middle of his forehead, and he did a method face plant from his knees in to the carpet of the classroom.

We thought this was hysterical.

I have no idea how any of this was going on while a teacher was in the room, but that shit would never fly with me. My covertly misspent youth is a mixed blessing for my students: I am empathetic to their desire to break the mold and be bad, and party down and word up and whathaveyou in the process of living their life, man, but I am simultaneously wise to their shenanigans. The hell you are flashing a pack of Marlboros in here, young lady — if the girls’ bathroom during passing period was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you; and you may save your joints for behind the tennis court like everyone else since time out of mind, mister.

Coda about the three characters in this anecdote, as we stand fifteen years later. My girlfriend in this story’s son and my daughter were baptized together five years ago. She works as a physician’s assistant. The guy on whom we lay the finger and I got high a few years later on the state seal the night before he went to join the Marines, or maybe the Air Force. I’d gotten over my hang-up about fearing too greatly the judgment of people I cared about. We stumbled to the Hard Rock Cafe and ate our weight in onion rings, and he told them it was my birthday even though it wasn’t, so we scored free dessert. Later he worked as the music teacher at our Catholic high school in town and is now pursuing a full-time career in Los Angeles as a musician.

I am now substitute teaching at the very church at which we all met, and drive every day past the high school in the story. All that time I wanted to drink and smoke away the trapped feeling of the pressure of living in this town, which shrinks the longer you live here and the more people you know, so that a town of 215k or so can start to feel quite small indeedy, and now I like it just fine. Did I mellow out, or did I sell out? I think the former.

One of the above pictures has made an appearance here before, in the inaugural “Showdown!” edition. I’ve totally dropped the ball on “Showdown!”s. Those were fun. All apologies: will remedy it soon, promise.

Coda to Ms. Wells’ story: the very lovely and talented Ms. Wells continued to work in film and television in Los Angeles. Later, she worked for a while as personal secretary to the late Linda Lovelace, controversial star of Deep Throat. They met at a party at the Mansion in Holmby Hills. I assume her time with Ms. Lovelace ended before Ms. Lovelace’s denunciation of the pornography industry.

Ms. Wells is still alive and kicking and will celebrate her 73rd birthday this coming October 17th, which brings us full circle to the beginning of an entry that it’s taken me four days to write. Again, all apologies — had a lot of dogs in the fire, Stanimal. No reflection on marvelous Ms. Wells or the AIP beach flicks. This post has now reminded me that I need a movie moment on both Deep Throat and the magnificent camp parody Psycho Beach Party. I’ll try to get to that, I swar to gar! All y’all keep on rockin’ in the free world and please forgive me my absences.

*Phrase borrowed with amused admiration from chainedandperfumed right here on the wordpress, then googled and found to be of even more apt camp and vintage. Thanks for the loan, c&p. Truly you are the O.G. of this biz.

Daily Batman: Enter Talia

Talia al Ghul by Stephane Roux.

Said it before but I say again:

Mother of Bruce Wayne’s child.

RACHEL WEISZ.

If I could design subliminal messages, I would pipe those two things in to Chris Nolan’s dreams, I swar to gar.

She’s not getting any younger, Mr. Nolan. But you know what she is getting? Ever-more-perfect to play the part of Talia and take these films to the Next Level. Already had her dad as a villain, and his invisible hand is present in the sequel (the drugs Dr. Crane is still moving around GC in The Dark Knight are obviously chemically based on the hallucinogen he weaponized for Ra’s when he was a little more, ahem, put together; as he could have no present access to original stockpiles of that drug’s ingredients due to the plant’s destruction during the riots in the Narrows which concluded Batman Begins, Crane is likely acquiring the material to continue the synthesized manufacture of the fear drug from the League of Shadows, who’d provided him with his chemicals in the past. Yes?). Tie it all in and bring us home by bringing Talia in and let’s do this!

Goethe Month: HST edition

Mixed-media self-portrait by Hunter S. Thompson, 1976.

Bin ich ein Gott? Mir wird so licht!

Am I a god? I see so clearly! / Light fills my mind!

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act I, Scene 4, 439-40.)

At Big Sur, 1961.

Allwissend bin ich nicht; doch viel ist mir bewußt.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

(Ibid.Act I, Scene 7, 1582.)

The speaker of the first quote is Faust; the second speaker is Mephistopheles. I feel like both or either quote could be attributed to Hunter Thompson and no one would think that out of his ordinary style. I’ve been thinking a lot about him and the things his writing has always made me feel, I suppose it’s more acute than usual with his birthday coming up soon. R.I.P. is I guess all I can say.

William Blake Month: “The Fly”

Late post, am I right? I’ve been invovled in some deep bookfoolery which I will explain below. The heading of each of the chapters in a book I read last night/today is followed by a quote, and one such quote was from this poem of Blake’s.

via

Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

via

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

(William Blake, “The Fly.”)

So — the lateness in the day. Yes. Sorry, but I am not even firing on four let alone six cyllinders today. See, I went against all my usual instincts and quickly finished my yearly series last night wayyy ahead of time and I refuse to let that happen with my other obligations, so when I dropped the last in the series to the floor, I dug in to my pile and instead of snatching up The Tommyknockers (absolutely not touching it until July 2nd or 3rd or I will not be where I need to be for the 4th and I cannot afford any more Bad Days), I started this book my cousin Mary loaned me called The Descent.

I was initially skeptical and, at points, flirting with grogginess from the overabundance of sleep-inducing substances I pour down my throat every night in an effort to quiet the seven-headed rock dragon of my insomnia which makes the Balrog look like a Pound Puppy, but it was amazing shit, full of caves and sci-fi creatures and anthropology and linguistics and religious themes and Hell and mountaineers and Jesuits and everything else that rings my bell, and before I knew it I was completely sucked in to the throat of it. I powered through the layers of tylenol pm, Miller, and a slug of Ny-Quil I’d taken earlier, ignoring my sandy eyelids because I Couldn’t Stop Reading, and, having finally shook off any need for sleep and finished the last sentence and closed the book thoughtfully at around nine this morning, I can confidently say I’m a believer.

via

I slid it under my bed and lay reflecting on what I’d read for a few minutes, because I felt like there had been some unresolved plot points, then I suddenly did this herky jerky twitch and thought, “How many standalone science fiction novels are that long? Plus … it was set in ’99, but the cover was new. No dog-eared pages. Mary would’ve loaned it to me years ago if she hadn’t just recently bought and read it. It’s a new book.” Reprint. Why?

via

Totally excited by this chain of thought, I flipped my ass in the air, dove under my bed and grabbed the book back out of my piles and checked the front. HELL YES: among the author’s other books listed by the publisher is one titled The Ascent, which I think it is fair to conjecture can only be a sequel, so now that I’ve finished all the housework and cooking I’d planned previously to do in the hours of the morning I’d spent reading, I’m going to cruise out to the used book store by my house and see about scaring that bitch up for tonight — and see if there are more. Keep you posted. Don’t worry about the insomnia thing: I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead.

The Girls of Summer: DeDe Lind, Miss August 1967

The lovely and talented DeDe Lind has come up several times before, and I am totally pumped that she gets her own post! She is an amazing woman who is sweet, funny, and deservedly popular.

Photographed by Mario Casilli.

This picture has been to Vietnam and the moon and its friendly, upbeat subject just keeps on truckin’. Read on and find out more about the single most popular centerfold model in the history of Playboy!

How did she get that gravity-defying figure? Spaghetti, of course.

Early in the evening, DeDe turns to the kitchen and her principal avocation, with a flair and success in cooking that does the Swedish and Italian roots of her family tree proud. “Like Mom’s, my best main course is a spaghetti dish,” DeDe says.

(“DeDe Girl.” Playboy, August 1967.)

For a quiet woman, DeDe is not without opinions. “I don’t see how we can get out,” she says of the war in Vietnam. “But — perhaps because I’m a girl and I’m young? — The thought of losing our young men way over there is awful.”

(Ibid.)

Maybe it was that anxious empathy, her sunny spirits, confession of shyness, or maybe a little something to do with the sweet rack and all these adorable girly-girl pictures? — Whatever the cause, DeDe Lind holds the honor of being the undisputed most popular Playmate of all time. She received more mail than any other Playmate before her time and since. Get it, girl!

This popularity was out of control with the soldiers serving overseas in Vietnam. I think a large part of it was her genuine, outspoken empathy for their plight. Dudes seriously flipped out over DeDe Lind, begging relatives to send multiple copies of the magazine in case something happened to their first copy, and writing DeDe truckloads of fan letters. I think that’s actually really cool and a unique and touching cultural phenomenon.

Similar to the pinups in WWII, when young men are far away and fighting for something that 90% of them probably only realize when they get there is far more huge, truly random, and more complex than they possibly imagined, and their comrades are dying around them, I know it’s cliched, but I think it is very valid to get the idea that you have something to fight for. And if that comes from a centerfold of a plucky young gal smiling sweetly in a men’s cardigan, yellow hairbow, and nothing else, then I say go for it!

Ms. Lind’s popularity was such that she has even been to space! True story, non-fiction — on NASA’s Apollo 12 mission in 1969, the nine astronauts who performed the second manned lunar landing in the history of humanity, thank you very much included DeDe’s centerfold in the Yankee Clipper command module. They labeled it “Map of a Heavenly Body.” Hilarious, true, and freaking AWESOME. Nous allons a la lune!

What’s intriguing is that Playboy really massaged the facts of Ms. Lind’s truly interesting life at the time. Yes, everything she says is true, about loving horses and Catalina Island, etc, and all her sweetness and good cheer are genuine, but it was more like a sin of omission. They sort of didn’t mention she was married and had a child.

That often gets thrown around like it is some type of evidence of the magazine’s hypocrisy, but I don’t believe Playboy has any obligation to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about anything, let alone the private lives of the Playmates. Hef was striving again and again with the centerfolds for the Girl Next Door who happens to be naked, and it was a great opportunity for a lot of these women, like marvelous Ms. Lind, to get a jump on their careers — why bum out all those soldiers, for example, using Ms. Lind as an ideal woman in their minds for whom to survive, with all the details?

sidebar: I don’t know if this is an outtake or an airbrushed elaborate fake or what, but that is pubic hair like two or three years before that actually made its wispy, hinted-at debut in Playboy magazine, and almost four years before a Playmate of the Month fully flashed the carpet. If you have knowledge of this shoot and know what’s up, please explain, because I’m pretty surprised.

Says Ms. Lind in a more recent interview about having been in Hollywood during the swinging late 60’s but not being much of a participant:

“I did marry very young. I had a baby. I was a mom. I never got into the hippie or drug scene. … I dated Bobby Fuller. I also knew Jan and Dean. I wouldn’t go so far to say I dated Jan, but, I was friends with him. So, those are the kind of pop stars I liked. They were a little bit cleaner-cut. More American, Apple Pie.”

(“De De Lind Interview.” James, George. Undated.)

Q – Do you remember any film roles you turned down that maybe later you were sorry you turned down?
A – Yes. There was a movie called ‘Candy’. I actually turned it down. I pretty much had the part. The idea of me at the time portraying a young girl sleeping with all actors — it didn’t sit well with me. (Laughs). Because of that I really didn’t want to do the movie.

(Ibid.)

I was just thinking about doing a Movie Moment on Candy. This clinches it. A famous piece of well-shot, mostly-failed camp, the sort-of-satire’s cast includes Ringo Starr, James Coburn, Sir Richard Burton, and Marlon Brando. And Ms. Lind was right, it was mainly a scandal and flopped, to boot, so good on her for deciding against it. I can’t see someone so sweet and shy having been happy to be part of that glorious and vulgar, hot mess. You’ll see what I mean when I do the Movie Moment. Look for that sometime this week or eventually, maybe! I know myself too well to make promises with actual dates in them. Lord, I am such a lazy person.

Besides hanging out with good pal the lovely and talented Lisa Baker at their place in Boca Raton, Florida, DeDe continues to model and appear at Glamourcon and related events. And I’m happy to say she definitely retains that sunny sense of humor that is clever enough to send up the genre in which she models. Dig that shot above, which comes from her dedelind.com: “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” Very funny.

You may see more of Ms. Lind’s present doings on her official website or hit her up any ol’ time on the myspace (current mood: amused ), on which some of her top friends are Janet Lupo, Julie Michelle McCullough, and naturally Hef.

Special edit from Ms. Lind: “My Centerfold did not go to the moon. My 2nd. Calendar Photo (Nov. 1969) holding a que stick topless went to the moon and back with Dick Gordon. That photo sold at auction for $17,511.00 this Jan. 2011.” Thanks for the clarification!

Movie Moment: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975).

I wrote quite a while ago about how I had always responded very strongly to this movie, well before reading the book, but I recently rewatched it after having gone through the excruciating experience of being impelled to read the book all of a night in September (thanks to a loan from Jonohs), and it reminded me I’ve been collecting screencaps which I’d like to share.

Actually I have dozens more of these, but I think in this edition I want to keep the focus mainly on the question of Mac’s mental state and the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.

“In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she won’t know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.”

(I’m pretty sure that all of these particular caps are via One Day, One Movie on the tumblr.)

Did You Know? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed on location at the State Mental Hospital in scenic Salem, Oregon. I’m not familiar with that particular monkeyhouse, but Ken Kesey was: he based the 1962 book, from which the movie was adapted, on his experiences working as an orderly there, during which time he participated in a study where he was given, among other hallucinogenic compounds, a friendly little fuckstorm of LSD and peyote. Yummy! Your tax dollars at work!

Nurse Ratched: If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.

McMurphy: [to Harding] You’d like it, wouldn’t you? Here, give it to me.

“Is that crazy enough for you? You want me to take a shit on the floor?”

“Hey, baby, where you from?” “I am from 1234 Asylum Street, Room 22.”

The original Oregon State Hospital for the Insane was established by J.C. Hawthorne in what was then East Portland, Oregon, (now the Hawthorne District). It was built in 1862, and the street on which it was built was renamed Asylum Street. Local residents protested about the name, however, and it was renamed Hawthorne after the hospital’s founder in 1888.

The street in Salem on which the current hospital is located, Center Street, was also originally named Asylum Avenue.

Heartwarming. I used to live very close to Hawthorne in Portland. Between you and me, the name change was unnecessary. There is just as much a cacophony of poverty, despair, madcap high spirits, compassionately helpless onlookers, and emotionless venture capitalists as the name “Asylum Street” suggests. An intersection of mixed purposes and emotions.

Droppin’ c-bombs. That Mac!

“Now they’re telling me I’m crazy because I don’t sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, whacko — no more, no less, that’s it.”

I have basically scene by scene screencaps but I’ve always felt really strongly about this movie and I’m committed to hoping that everyone goes and watches it for themselves. No spoilers today.

The main difference between the [film and the book] is that the novel is narrated by Chief Bromden, and the reader knows straight away that he [no spoilers].

This was a major source of controversy in developing the screenplay, and eventually the reason why the author, Ken Kesey, was not the final writer. He felt as though the narration of a schizophrenic was an important aspect of the novel, because it produced a hallucinogenic perspective where the reader/viewer is not always sure exactly what is true. (the wiki)

That was my only criticism to Jonohs, I believe, when we discussed the differences between the book and its film adaptation, so now I’m feeling pretty unoriginal.

The end.

Daily Batman: Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions

Oh, the places I’ve been. I was feeling my way around a very dark place and sorting out all that bumpy rabbit hole chicanery, but I’ve crawled toward the light and I think I’m almost totally back now. New and Improved, now with 63% less sad and lonely, blind, foolish credulity. In a Good Way. Thank you.

Here is some awesome bat-art and a pithy and appropriate accompanying quote via magnificent patron saint the Rev. Dr. HST on the topics of myths and legends and why Americans — of which I am among we braggardly upstart progenitors of the superhero — so badly crave, with an almost breathtakingly childlike mania for it, our illusion of the larger-than-life, mythic and all-saving champion.

via holymushbatman on the tumblr.

“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final.”

— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt, 1979.

Never throw out anyone

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. — Audrey Hepburn.

We’re having lunch with the o.g.b.d. again today. I really hope it goes well. I mean, it went well last time, actually: the bottle only concerned me because I don’t want him to be feeling dissolute or inconsolable in general, and I know he’d hate to accidentally go too far in front of kidlet. That would hurt her image of him, and I know ultimately he would regret that terribly. I don’t want either of them to have to go through that, but particularly not him, because he does not need to hate himself on top of everything else he must be feeling right now with his breakup with his wife. I don’t want him to have to deal with that and compound any unhappiness he is already having to go through.

I want to tell him that I know what it’s like to have that inconsolable sense that life, taken straight, is intolerable; the feeling that you have to physically “take the edge off” of the knife blades of your thoughts and shield yourself from the “muchness,” the crazy coming-at-you-from-all-sides agony of crushing reality. I know the necessity of the filter: how it is to shield yourself and to see things through a veil in order to keep from seeing all of it at once, because you couldn’t take that because you feel too deeply about all things, and fearing the overwhelming magnitude of the difficult emotions you’re working through.

We have always been two peas in a pod in our way of being lost in this universe, oversensitive and underattenuated to proper socialization, and so of course we have brought suffering on ourselves, and of course we have both of us had terribly abusive relationships with anything that will alter our moods. I understand that alcohol and drugs are a handy, popular, easily attained crutch (long-term health and usefulness: debatable; short-term-pain-dulling and turn-to-able-ness: undeniable) that can help you come at your emotions sidewise, do that little crab scuttle over to them that keeps them from smacking you in the face and knocking you out. I know that.

But I know that it doesn’t work forever. There is always an ugly day that you face on the natch and you have this gnawing desperation and anxiety that mounts and mounts, and everything is unbearable and your eyelids are crawling and you just want to scream — but then that day passes. And then the next one, and another, and pretty soon you get in to the swing of mainly sobriety and it is not so bad, and you have the side benefit of not despising yourself quite so much.

I have no plans and particularly no grounds to get preachy: I just want him to know that I get it, and that he will want to set boundaries for himself around the kidlet, or he will regret it and hate himself all the more later. And I want him to know that I’m here for him. That’s a trite expression that in this case means I am physically willing to go pick him up from somewhere, or spend a long while on the phone, with disregard for personal inconvenience, talking him down from a ledge. I am actually here and present for him in a way that I never was when we were together, and I think that we have chanced in to a situation where we have a unique opportunity for renewal and redemption: where we can truly both benefit from one another’s company.

Please send vibes that I will find the right words and the convincing gestures to express to him my very ardent sincerity and my genuine love and concern without saying anything that turns him away.

Unlikely G: Scarface edition

Elvira Hancock, you money-grubbing whore-queen, I love you.

“Oh my god, gangster shit is hella boring.”