I guess the things I like best about this time of year are the little lights in the dark.
He flies. That’s what’s to think about. He flies. St. Lucy walks the northern nights unburned. He flies. It doesn’t matter whether with reindeer or not, or with what other fanciful beasts or not. He flies. He flies above the little lights, set against snow or darkness or moonlight. He flies around as the darkest nights of the year push the darkest days aside, especially up here on Mystery Island where the sun is now going down at four, instead of at ten six months from now. The light comes and the light goes and when it goes, he flies.
Down below him, we set out the little lights. We don’t care about him, we care about them. He doesn’t exist, after all, and they do.
Two months ago we went down to Hollywood for four shows with the Firesign Theatre at the 300-seat Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, a kind of adjunct to the famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House, surrounded by a small park right off Hollywood Boulevard near Vermont. Technically, that would be East Hollywood, edging closer to Mixville and the old haunts of the Early Firesign Theatre, but right in the middle of my past life – pre-FST – when I was a kind of Shakespearian actor stuck in a town where life revolves around film and other technologies unimagined – I imagine – by smartass college boys of the late Sixteenth century. I think I appeared in Twelfth Night outdoors in the little Barnsdall park, somewhere in the Sixties of the last lamented century. I remember we dressed in the Hollyhock House itself. I always liked wearing tights in all those Shakespeare plays, because almost all girls would tell me that I had nice legs. The way parts of my body looked were much more important then. I had a kind of brutal, intelligent approach to Shakespeare. I figured it was my job to explain to the audience what the hell we were talking about and the actual acting and so forth came second.
So two months ago we had our own theatre for a little while, we four imitators of Sixteenth century smartasses. All partnerships become exercises in equality. Shakespeare tended to write a lot about balance and imbalance and the teeter-totter of their union is a kind of exercise in equality and inequality. We four partners are as interested as ever, each of us, in getting each his way. The impossibility of ever fully achieving that had better turn to laughter, or we’re in the wrong business. It’s like four guys trying to operate four – not two – teeter-totters. There’s some running involved, some strategy, some things unsaid and some things way too said. You get the picture. Laughing while desperately trying to reach the open end of a teeter-totter that’s low enough in your direction to get you onboard. Ah, the Firesign Theatre, back in business as big storms and rain swept over the City of the Queen of the Angels just before the Big Blonde’s birthday.
It really helps that we’re all getting along so well. We had fun, through it all, and wound up at our house after the last show, up until two or three in the morning, drinking and smoking with friends we’ve all shared for over forty years. It’s really fun to watch Oona and Melinda at a party, because they’re both so incredibly personable.
And then the next night, she and I went to the last party of the week, about a quarter-mile over the crest of the hill toward Laurel Canyon to the rented home of our friend the Genuine Movie Star, who’s in town shooting a TV series and after staying in our house with his family for a minute, has rented a house a little ways away. We took the dogs because he and Mrs. Genuine Movie Star love dogs and have thousands themselves at their home in the East. It’s a long story. Lets just say we laughed like idiots, that a cat attacked an actor, that an actor got really mad at a Sports Agent who made billions collecting stamps, that another Beautiful Movie Star told Oona the entire odd story of her romance and children by and with the Really Famous Good Actor Movie Star and where I finally got to meet Mrs. Invention, who’d lived a couple of hillside blocks away from us for thirty years, yet we’d never met. I just can’t tell you how much fun this all was, not only laughing with old and new friends, but searching for bandages in a household where ziplocs are considered tools of the Devil, where Green is a religion of everyday concern. Blood everywhere and there are no paper towels (towels of the Devil) to be found. In the bathroom, Mr. Star bleeding, surrounded by beautiful women whom he is making laugh hysterically while Mrs. Invention pours sugar on the cat wounds, Oona sends me out to the car for bandaids. It’s a beautiful night in my old town and as fun as ever when it isn’t crapping all over you.
I hadn’t been in Hollywood in some nine months and our house there seems huge compared to what is basically a beach cabin up where we live so much now. The Hollywood house is very small too, but an architectural gem a mile above Hollywood Boulevard in the hills between Laurel and Hockney Canyons. We’ve got an acre there and it’s quieter and more filled with wildlife than the Mystery Island place. I saw a bobcat at the end of the little street that bounds our bottom lot line. A bobcat. The towhees are still there and the hummingbirds and the wacky ravens that feed on the fig trees that arch over the garage on the flat roof of which the deer feed. I’m going to hate to have to sell that house, but we’ve got to face the facts someday soon. We’re Mystery Islanders now and Hollywood, strange and wonderful as it is, doesn’t need us or we it much more.
Well, two months later and the little lights are out and all the sacred stuff that covers every flat surface of our house up here up north is out. All the little stuff among the little lights punching colored holes in the darkest dark of the year.
He flies above teeter-totterers. He doesn’t care and neither do I. We’re both imaginary.
Phil, Oona, and Assorted Dogs(past and present),
Nice to see you all connecting with friends.
Have the Best Christmas and New and Interesting New Year!!
This Foursome could be a catchy thing . . ?
After sleeping on it, for better part of a night, everything came out flat.
It was the morning before, the night before, Christmas and all thrum’ (through each room) the house, not a creature was stirring his coffee, not even this insomniac, and that’s no rhyme err-ah, crime.
The clock on the wall said three, right after I had to go _ _ _. It could have been once or maybe twice, it really didn’t matter if I was either naughty or nice. Santa Claus ain’t comin’ to my town, . . . amen, pass the plate.
A wonderfully wrought and well-seasoned account of the season leading up to the season… keep the lights burning and, you, keep ‘em flying. The teeter-totters, that is. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Strangely moving imagery with the teeter
totters! I can see the album cover now!
Have a wonderfully tiny lit holiday season.
See you and the boyz in Jan. on the island!
Has Mo shorted a few lights on the tree, by raising his leg once or twice?
It could have been that weekend after Christmas, when everybody quickly forgot what day it was. Did we really go through or even have one, to begin with, and they’re calling it a decade, in less than a week.
At best, all that can be said is to end up on the other side, like some chicken on a mission. Oh yeah, what’s for dinner, tonight?
It’s early, it’s quiet, and the one string of old school, hot filament, inefficient for all but dreaming colored lights is lit (blinky lives!). I remember having nice legs. What really is finer than the company of friends? The good old ones who remember and, luckily, occasionally the ones newly met who feel like they could have been the old ones. People who get that life can be hard and are here to lift things, like spirits or old clawfoot tubs.
I imagine those are just deer on the garage roof. If we get a new year and a new decade, why not add new friends and new hope?
Bessie Mae Mucho
Oops, wrong byline.
Hart Felt
Phil: To you and Oona and assorted animals and friends, and the Four or Five Krazy Guyz in Eyeball Hatz – wishing you a belated but heartfelt Merry Christmas, and a wonderful first year of a new decade. The Aughts/Zeros are almost behind us. I still hope to one day see TFS live again (it was at the Beacon Theatre in 1993, that I first and last saw the troupe – only half the damn show too, thanks to Northwest Airlines that day).
Rock on.
- Randy
The knack is to have a no-year new year,
dusting, one of the previously used ones, off
and retro-ing it, with everything predictable.
Tirebiter did win that election, that year, didn’t he?
Claw Foot and Red Beet. Old friend. New friend. Let’s ring around the ancient tub, drain our past sorrows, transform our tired, stinky toes with metallic golds and aqua marine blues. Did you know “ew” means “I Love You” in Vietnamese?
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4221938955_471a683bd0.jpg
Phil, Oona, and assorted dogs,
Have a Better One, Next Year!
I am saying “Happy Ew Year” to everyone I greet but so far only the guy who does my wife’s nails seemed to get it. You have a very pretty tub rat. Don’t get to say that often enough.
Blue Moonston
It was all about yesterday, until it became today.
Once past it, there’s the rest of them to contend with,
and everything else becomes passe.
So, bring it on, with what was started before.
Everybody knows where they were, with all becoming common.
Pass the salt or anything else for that manner.
Next week is the BIG GIG,
still making ‘TheWhidder’ an island,
and four men on it
JUST LIKE STARTING OVER, WITH TWENTY-TWENTY HINDSIGHT, OCCUPY THAT ISLAND WITH YOUR PRESENCE.
Good Luck!!
Could be, Whidbey, if they could only isolate that island long enough.
Have the BEST, tonight!
In my mind I just formed an AARP punk band and we named the band The Bloody Runs but then we decided that wasn’t shocking enough and settled on Forever Silver.
Hi Oh
. . . not in any way want to put myself in a confrontatory position
either with the United Snakes, or with Them.
And you can believe me,
because I never lie and I’m always right.
So wake up! [slap and baby crying]
And take a look at your only logical choice. Austin and Company . . .
Phil,
How did that local gig turn out?
Non-Washington residence want to know, . . please.
In my mind I am managing an all-girl punk band called Tinkerbitch.
Juan Tothreefour
Phil + Anthropic,
If these gigs and engagements ever reach the East Coast, how will they ever get you on a plane? It’s not one of those situations where you can pack up the dogs and wife in the family car and drive the covered wagon East.
Band name: The Bagels.
Whidbey Island gig pics: http://community.webshots.com/user/sidfudd
Yr Obt Svt Fuddles
I was never much for changing the world, but respecting other points of view, without jumping in. Simply practiced, I sell the popcorm and pass out the programs for the show, not ever being the main act.
I could potentially run and coordinate it, with a great deal of controll and outcome, but is never call upon to do so. At the same time, I have to know when to just shut up and let it happen, not being able to turn time on its ear.
Write one for me, pleaase
Maybe, if I wait long enough, it will be Wednesday,
the hump,
then slide to the other end,
after that, only to find another, on the other side.
Somehow, it has to be somewhat different in between, all these neatly measured time periods.
I need a dose of surreality. . .
I always knew I was dyslexic, but it is intentionally following me, to accomodate my delicate condition. Twist that with a bit of Murphy and that pretty much paints the landscape where I occupy. There is never the need to wait for the sky to fall; I’m walking on it as terra firma, past tense. Little bits of tiny smog, sticking to my heels, with assorted seagull droppings, and don’t forget to wipe your feet before coming inside.
The meek shall inherit the earth, right after it has been used by your larger opponent, first.
When you walk your dogs,
Is Mo self winding or a key wound internal spring action?
Here’s a first, one hour, then getting up, thinking it has been the better part of a night, then, after looking at my watch, short. As a matter of discipline, I could go back to where I was previously, but once up, it’s hard to reverse the momentum. A better point-of-view would be what woke me up in the first place? It all could be in the listening and not why I am up at this hour. Then-again, that makes a lot of sense, twice removed. While trying to let things play out, I’ll catch what I have missed, when it chooses to catch up, the convenience of leisure. It looks good on paper and rolls off the tongue well, but in practice, never shapes up that way, with the best made plans being something other than what they are called. It has been rumored and never confirmed, Little-Hour really exists, but only in legend and never seen, always whispered under the breath, so not to be heard.
The hat brim turned to one side, bent in a way to obscure an eye from view, never really seeing the full face and just standing out of view from the overhead light. Is this what they are looking for, while never looking for it, in the first place? That idea quickly fades as suspicion, only looking to point the finger at anybody close or happeening by. But, it’s still in the air. Maybe, I haven’t looked for it, as believed before, twisted off the normal path in such a way, to recognise it residing in a another form, just to the left, in the corner of the picture. ‘ Should have suspected that all along, in such a neutral way, blending in, almost looking like all the rest that was around it.
While checking out the other side, I’ll take this break, while it all resides, across the dreamscape. Hold your thumb on the line, so you don’t lose your place. Now, I know what you’re thinking, saying just about anything in order to exit this typed line, with no particular conclusion or direction. I once had a foot race in high school that had those goals, never knowing where to finish, let alone when.
Shake all this down to being Friday and making no excuses, there’s always tomorrow, or maybe not.
I saw them! Three bright blue lights flying in a triangular pattern and then hovering over the western hills. Among us at last! I can feel it right down my supraspinatus.
Happy Harry Coccyx
Part 1 of Spike Milligan on Room 101:
It won’t embed, so I’ll just add the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiJFx-R6HAc.
It really comes down to the fact, which side do you want to be on, the conscious or picking up trash in a dreamscape? The litter between the blinks of my eyes would make any decent person stumble, while manuvering and comfronting. Housing the mental dust, with a pile of unread books, in the back, isn’t all that troublesome, as one might think, in their own head. Interpreted correctly, it’s that blank look, with everything racing behind the eyes, neatly keeping the chaos where it should be, and where feeding the animals is encouraged.
Saw the King Tut funereal show last weekend and it reminded me I’ve got to tidy up the details on my afterlife planning. I want to be laid out on top of a little island mesa I’ve picked out in the U.S. Southwest, there to be picked clean by the Turkey Vultures. I can only dream that Condors will get involved. Ahhh… the sun, the rain the dessicating wind. What a great skeleton it will make- almost seven feet long with several gold teeth and a titanium hip. So much fun for the lucky hikers who find it! I can’t decide what to inscribe on the rock left with me. I think I want a corny old-west poem along the lines of “…here lies Lonesome Burt, got this far when his foot got hurt…”
Sal Fubsorbed
It’s the birthday of William S. Burroughs, born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1914, the year America entered World War I, who went to a boarding school for rich kids in New Mexico and then to Harvard, kept a revolver and a ferret in his dorm room, lived off a generous stipend his parents gave him and off of money he made selling drugs, moved around the country, and then made his way to New York City, where he hung out at bars in Harlem and Greenwich Village with Beat poets. He became friends with Allen Ginsburg and with Jack Kerouac.
He moved to Texas, grew cotton and marijuana, and then moved to Mexico. He and his wife, Joan, were drinking with friends one night in 1951 when they decided to do a party trick for their friends, one where Joan would balance a glass on her head and William would shoot it off. She put the glass on her head and he fired, but he missed the glass and shot her in the temple. She died.
Burroughs was convicted of criminal negligence but not made to serve jail time. He left Mexico. He later said, “I am faced with the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death. It brought me in contact with the invader, the ugly spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle in which I have had no choice but to write my way out.”
He wrote many books, including Junkie (1953), and NAKED LUNCH (1959). He eventually got a job as a university professor, moved to Kansas, and lived until 1997 to be 83 years old.
Making the escape to the border, they quietly wait on the other side, with only the queue, when eyelids briefly close and the flood gate begins. Actors hit their mark and sensorship is thrown out the window, with all manner of surreality suddenly fits, like a walk in the park, until the eyes open and the consciousness interjects another reality, that would confuse most, including whoever lives in this head of mine. You quickly become aware of where you were, only after returning, but never during that brief stay on the other side.
The faces are new, either never seen before or possibly not remembered, and the spoke lines are original, with you, at best, being the fly on the wall, watching and hearing it all. If I could only take that notepad back with me, of all the exchanges spoken, each being uniquely their own when delivered. If one not remembered, the next one will follow it, different than the previous, and a different set of actors in their place. How often can you change the clothes, with a new set of clean original laundry in its place? Staring, while in mid dream, at distinguished faces, with prominent features, the kind you could almost walk up to, on the street and identify, later. Haven’t I seen you before, but really haven’t, at the same time? It’s that gift, when you see someone, that you know they have that unspoken quality, without even speaking a word. No foolishness and foul behavior, here, with most common men hitting the wall with their heads, over-and-over again, cursing drunketly without provocation or cause. It’s that common thing, like being from the same hometown, where pride takes that certain lead before anything. “We have all been here before,” a David Crosby lyric line.
Here are messages I like to see beside dessicated skeletons:
“Say, that enemies list was no myth”
“Next time nix on the braised duck”
“Did they all make it off the island?”
“Call my agent”
“Radio’s a heartbreak”
Evidence (gathered over a lifetime, but reinforced in the last few days by viewing “Nuit Blanche” which you should Google and Saul Bass talking about making-money-vs.-making-quality-work which you should YouTube and “Flight” which you should read, all six volumes) suggests that we are in this industry to bring the Awesome. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have any Awesome.
Footnote: This Industry refers of course to the industry of This, which last year alone generated $5.1 billion in revenue in America, compared to That industry which scored a measly $2.9 billion and a bucket of Thai weed. Who needs That?
Anthea Ther-Thing
I like the implications of “call my agent.” Here’s some new old news:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists have sequenced the DNA from four frozen hairs of a Greenlander who died 4,000 years ago in a study they say takes genetic technology into several new realms.
Surprisingly, the long-dead man appears to have originated in Siberia and is unrelated to modern Greenlanders, Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues found.
“This provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit,” the researchers wrote in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
~So, does this mean that it was the Siberians who invented the vacation?
Long Wak Shortpier
Nothing much of anything is happening, as the Winter piles on more snow and Washington stacks the darker variety, with their bad-little-boy behavior. No health plan coming out of congress, where politicians serve themselves and their business interests, first and the voter somewhere down the bottom of the list. If things continue to get screwed into the ground, this society will eventually go tribal, out of necessity, to just get by. While this will serve the immediate needs, the ongoing conditioning of just to dumb down will take its toll, with anyone who has the most mild aspirations(think as we do or else). Pardon me, if I don’t say anything, the ability to blend in has its advantages. Let that glance assume anything they want to expect, with entertainment coming down to a waving pencil, in front of their peripheral view, with 3-D glasses for the greater visual effect.
For right now, I’m just waiting for the seasons to change. That is the only consistent future that has any reliability and keeps some sort of semblance of normality. Any other affecting factions serve their immediate warm bum, letting everything else pretty much twist in the wind and freeze in place. That option of dipping all politicians in the honey pile, twice, is nothing short of a mild cure and might even give their disposition a shiny glow, not present before.
Take Care America . . .
Phil, there is a decent-sized group on Facebook waiting for you. Come join the boredom.
I. Post Sometimes
“One of us.” “Come play with us…forever.” “Join us.”
But seriously, joining Facebook probably makes sense – if Firesign has any kind of “mailing list” it’s your ability to get messages straight to the Fireheads through Facebook. That’s really the only reason I joined. You won’t be required to participate, or even lurk. It’s like ultra-high nosebleed seats to the Lakers game – you’re dimly aware something’s happening below, and you can shout out if you like, but for the most part nobody even knows you’re there.
The Guy in the Rainbow Wig
Hey, I think I was sitting right behind your damn wig at that game against the Mavs in November, 1984!
Mel Countstoten
One more thing to service, and maybe not your benefit.
Stand on the soapbox, amuse me, never have any moments for yourself,
It’s the only view that seems to be passed around, follow me or group like a bunch of roaches collecting in the shadows or stand in line for the cliff jump.
If you’ve ever been to Facebook, you know that there’s very little that’s amusing. It’s less about performing monkeys than it is about opening lines of communication with large numbers of people while retaining some measure of privacy. Not unlike this blog, really.
I have been contacted – well, I don’t know that actually – but I keep getting messages from people who SEEM NICE and who seem to have my BEST INTERESTS at heart about something that has parked its saucer in front of the White House and which espouses, I don’t know, something to do with social networking. I am thinking seriously about this and have asked Art Wholeflaffer for advice as I think whether I am to JOIN THEM or not. Art has not got back to me yet and Mrs. W. says he’s off flying with crows across the hi/lo desert area on missions only imagined by brujos.
That’s me, up above. I got into this site from a different route and have achieved anonymity thereby.
Throw caution to the wind but try not to hit Wholeflaffer.
Hap Staffer
I have finally accepted FB into my life. I am enjoying the drunking. The rewards: photos from Brazil of baby Luna and daily flafferations from my favorite blogger friends, Mark and Len. I’ve hidden everyone else.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2688/4382385282_074e9e7df6_m.jpg
For the moment, I am keeping all the balls in the air, but at times things can be shaky and I have to really count all the balls, to make sure they are all there.
I did lose a ball when I had a hernia repaired. It would seem that the mesh that they used restricted the blood flow to my right testicle and it eventually swelled to the size of a half apple and then shrunk to nothing, eclipsing my manhoodlessness.
That’s probably why I lean toward my left when I walk, . . the Uniballer will strike again, somewhere or maybe, sometimes, in your neighborhood when you least expect it or particularly want it.
Now I have to speak in the single sense, when it is said that I get my rock off and one removed.