Fake News Dept. - 'World Mayor' Contest's local twist

‘Futurama’ Phil
Mayor Gordon seeks ‘world’s best’ nod—maybe in a Phoenix that is ‘capital of the whole universe,’ eh


Fresh off his hands-down re-election as mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon is already campaigning again—this time for “Best Mayor in the World.”
According to the website for the municipality “World,” “The World Mayor project, organised by City Mayors, seeks out mayors who have the vision, passion and skills to make their cities amazing places to live in, work in and visit.”
Charley Jones of the Pierson Place Association neighborhood group, who tirelessly forwards self-promoting notices from a variety of tirelessly self-promoting city officials to various weary e-mail recipients, commented on Gordon’s worthiness for “Best Mayor”: “Phoenix is an amazing place to live in, work in and visit. Especially around July 17, while held up in Midtown traffic due to light rail construction. Or, on any of our highways—you pick.”
Stephen Lemons, who writes a column in the city’s weekly alternative paper in which city officials are often lambasted, said he didn’t think Gordon could take much credit for the city’s amazing climate. “But I don’t think he’s done anything significant to detract from the constant oven blast that is Phoenix in midsummer. And early summer. And late spring. And late early spring. And mid spring. And fall. And early winter. He contributes at least his quota of politician’s hot air. And it’s not as if the design of amazing new downtown projects includes major sources of shade or other deprivation of searing solar radiation caressing downtown’s new contingents of students, city workers and undocumented immigrants—who are about the only midsummer ‘visitors’ I’m aware of, despite the touted Civic Center expansion and city-owned hotel.”
Gordon’s e-mail pitch for support in his quest for the “Best Mayor in the World” honor notes that the outreach is “paid for by Phil for Phoenix ... not at government expense.” “Clearly, city pols are having trouble figuring out what to do with the financial largesse lavished on them in Phoenix’s recent election cycle,” said alternative weekly reporter Sarah Fenske, who wrote in January about “campaign contributions” received by the donkeyload by the surprise winner of the city’s District 7 Council seat, following the election. The new councilman’s generous admirers said they had simply forgotten to sign the checks and buy stamps earlier, what with the holidays coming up.
State pollster and political maven Bruce Merrill speculated about the oddness of a “Phil for Phoenix” organization touting “Phil for the World.” “I’m guessing this means Phil is hoping to make Phoenix capital of the world,” he said. “After all, it’s quickly becoming the political center not only of Arizona, but of Mexico and the ‘mountain West’—as well as becoming an extension of Chicago and its political machine—or vice versa (no pun intended). With all the transplants moving here from the ‘Second City,’ Chicago is starting to become known as ‘Phoenix East’—not to be confused with east Phoenix, which is not to be confused with the East Valley, although east Phoenix is easily confused with Scottsdale, with the naive notion that the Phoenix Film Festival actually takes place in Phoenix anymore.”
“Phil’s major qualification for ‘World Mayor’ is his clear ability to be ‘all things to all people,’” said former legislator and sometime preservationist Earl Wilcox, who, along with former state Sen. Bill Brotherton, was endorsed by Gordon in the Democratic primary in which they contended for the same Senate seat in 2003.
“That’s why we get a piñata, a Hanukkah bush and a Christmas tree!” said Jake Gordon, Gordon’s youngest scion in his second, winter crop of offspring.
Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris agreed, noting Gordon’s success at being all things to all people in the recent controversy over whether police should check the immigration status of brownish people arrested in the city.
(As noted in this publication last year, Gordon is virtually the same person as ubiquitous-in-2006 actor Gael Garcia Bernal. In that guise, he often goes by the alias “El Gordo.”)
However, “Nah, I think it’s his ‘amazing’ record on civil liberties,” countered Brotherton, noting Gordon’s amazing insight into the guilt of the suspects apprehended in the “Baseline murders” case, immediately on their arrest a couple years ago. “He also was Johnny-on-the-spot when it was pointed out that porn was accessible via computers at the city library, due to bothersome Constitutional loopholes allowing freedom of speech and expression,” Brotherton added, noting that the “World Mayor” project, with its Anglicized spellings, clearly is backed by proponents of a world order that would hobble Gordon with no such civil libertarian constraints. “Their spelling ‘honour’ with a ‘u’—but not ‘Mayor’—is clearly part of the stealth nature of the campaign to elect the world’s top ... figurehead,” he said.
City Manager Frank Fairbanks, nearing retirement in Phoenix, had no comment whether he would serve “under” Gordon in a World-municipality administration.
“Frankly, I think it’s his ability to reach across party lines to get things done” that recommends Gordon for World Mayor, said maverick politician and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who received Democrat Gordon’s endorsement in the not-yet-geared-up general election against whomever the Democrats themselves pick.
Handicapping Gordon’s chances, Merrill pointed out his potentially crippling Achilles heel: literally, his weak Achilles heel, with a tendon injury from when hizzoner fell a couple of years ago, reportedly running desperately to get to a Starbuck’s minutes before closing. “He’s lucky one of our deputies didn’t see him running in the dark like that,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “We woulda picked him up for ‘running while possibly Mexican’”—an offense County Attorney Andrew Thomas was then already enforcing, a year before the Legislature even enacted it into law.
“And he’d better not let our sidewalk speed enforcement cameras catch him doing that,” said Gov. Janet Napolitano.
While “World” Mayor seems to imply “mayor of Earth,” it’s not clear that it doesn’t also include the universe as a whole in its jurisdiction—though provisions for lodging votes by denizens, or citizens, of Outer Space—a demographic Gordon has prudently counted on in the past—were not clearly explained on the World Mayor website.
Nonetheless, “He’s got my vote!” announced Lynne Spears. “My too,” echoed international goodwill ambassador Borat Sagdiyev, adding, after a long pause, “Not!” Failed Democratic presidential candidate and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel was rumored to be considering lending Gordon his endorsement.
—David Tell

Editor’s note: Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon’s being in the running—and touting himself—for “Best Mayor in the World” is not part of what is fake about this “fake news” article. For more about the contest—and to vote for or comment on Phil—visit worldmayor.com.

The Literary Offenses of ... some obscure scribbler

They say everybody’s a critic. So? Everyone else thinks they’re an author
The case contra on-demand publishing

On the second anniversary of the appearance of this essay in the print publication, we post it here the better for other anal-retentives to bask in its glow and bathe in its delights. Or something like that.



Ahem. Allow me to present Prof. Frumly Lymphschtickenraad, to deliver the latest in his series of lectures on the decline in American letters since Feb. 29, 1997. The professor (whose seminal study of cheese as metaphor in Moldovan literature during the brief post-prandial renaissance of 984 to 1011 we are all familiar with), has in this essay—which he will present with the aid of Ashlee Simpson using a laser pointer to keep him focused on his TelePrompTer—updated Herr Mark Twain’s rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction, which that luminary applied so incisively to the work of Mr. J.F. Cooper. Ms. Simpson—please—no—The laser pointer is only to be used with the briefest of applications to the professor’s sensitive nasal lesions and diaphanous wattle, just to keep him alert—no—no!—please, not in his eyes. OK, then.

Wusses! Have we yet failed to to exorcise, expectorate and scuff into the dust, like a worm, the last castings of the putrid, pusillanimous pastiche of sensibilities and execrable esthetic errors that characterized the ’60s and ’70s? While there is the ages-old maxim, “Dance with the one what brung ya,” must we be Brautigan and again back to this sad and laughable era? What Merry Pranksters have visited this viscid and flaccid “literary” corpse upon us? O exquisite corpse, would that you did not, like wide-gauze-bandaged mummy or pale and ghoulish zombie, visit and revisit yourself upon us, spreading pestilent prose, dusty declamation, and chalky snowblindness upon those who would gaze upon your papery raiment?
Well. Let us now, for the purposes of our elucidation, distill the illustrious Prof. Twain’s 19 or so rules governing the art of fiction to a mere two or three:

1. Do not, unless with artful skill and satiric intent, sully sublime notions, vulgarize eternal mysteries, excrete on the ethereal essences.
2. Do not depict chemically-altered psychic excursions, or physic ecstasies, unless with clarity of vision and dextrousness of narration that would suffice to suggest why the depraved seek (yet, paradoxically, fear) these debased states.
3. If, indeed, you are authentically acquainted first-hand with these states, would you, nonetheless, mind terribly refraining from writing whilst in them?
4. Employ your language of choice in such manner as to avoid boring or repulsing the reader.

(OK, four.)
Here, we assess the literary efforts of one Henry Wingfield; and, to adumbrate our conclusion, we find that H.W., a fervid if not continuously employed massage therapist, ought reserve the laying on of his hands, not to the alphabetic keyboard, but to the human or (if also a pet masseur) animalian corpus. H.W., having graduated in his literary output from a book relatively blank and at least inoffensive in its austerity (Imagine Art) to one busy, verily squirming, with words, ought to be sent back a grade.
The subsequent tome is notable. It is remarkable. It is even admirable (if one admires crime consistently, predictably and reliably committed) in the breaking of at least two of the four foregoing rules in nigh every paragraph of H.W.’s novel Ancient Lovers—and of all four on virtually every page! Multiple times, in many instances.
Synoptically, we describe the book as mucking about in the notion of “past lives”—as far as we can tell. Apparently, in the main, modern phase of the novel, certain antiquated paramours’ spirits dwell or manifest in the embarrassingly juicy and concupiscent flesh of modern humans, who, without prior contemporary acquaintance, then justify their hedonistic couplings—not to mention their nostalgic gazings one into another’s eyes—by their ineradicable and soulfully “deep” connection across time and space. (A process and a connection, we venture, not unlike when VP search committee chief Cheney became George Walker Bush’s vice-presidential running mate Dick.)

How do these fallible figures know they have this connection? Via one of the most clumsily banal faults of the book (and, simultaneously, one of the most egregious violations of Rule Number One - or Two - or Four): They see it (among other things) in each other’s eyes, as if watching a movie in said orbs:

Pedro and Abby sat next to each other. They held hands. Pedro turned and fell into Abby’s eyes. This time she concocted the results. It was mesmerizing. Pedro again sat hypnotized, entranced. Almost a minute passed, but what Pedro saw he knew lapsed back 2100 years. He blinked and withdrew his stare from Abby, expounding, “It is absolutely, spellbindingly unbelievable to me. I have no other way to express it. I do not understand it. What I just saw was us—you and me—but we were different people in a different time, in a different place, and we were lovers. I knew that. In fact, we were together as a couple. I want to say “married,” but I know we were not because they did not have that back then, and somehow I just know that. I do not believe this is a form of reincarnation, although I do believe in reincarnation. This is something else. I am watching a movie of ancient times in your eyes, and we are the actors. I see myself in the form of some other body with what appears to be a burlap sack on my body as clothing. I might be 15 years of age, but I feel older. You are plain and yet stunning because I love you so much. Your complexion is olive and your eyes are different than what I see now, but they are just as beautiful. You are so gentle and full of love—new love fresh with every breath. You are very happy. You might be 13 or older. Can I go back there again?” Abby, quickly with sincerity, “Not now. We should go back to the clinic. Will you take me? I need to rest. We’ll explore again soon.”

Pedro, “Of course. How insensitive of me. You must make those arrangements.” pp. 28-29

Contrary to supposition, Abby and Pedro are not engaged in a brief constitutional during a furlough off the grounds of an inpatient mental health sanitarium. But nor, whatever other purposes it serves, is this necessarily a fitting paragraph to hold up against the harsh requirements of the rules of fiction-writing. For, whatever errors and gaffes, lamenesses and atonalities might appear in it, who is to say Mr. Wingfield did not knowingly intend his speakers to sound thus, in a subtle exposition of their particular foibles?
No, it is in the narrative and descriptive stretches of Mr. Wingfield’s writing that we can most instructively apply the rules. Such a segment may be found on virtually any page of the book; we marveled at these paragraphs found as early as page 13, at the beginning of the second chapter:

Abby and Stephan, her husband, had been vacationing in Central America since January 1st, 1997. Their jeep overturned January 22nd in Guatemala, and Stephan was killed They were madly in love with one another and shared a bountiful life together, but had no children. Abby did not know the long-range ramifications of what was about to transpire with this dreadful, fatal single-car accident.
Abby suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises and a concussion. She was transported to Callebocca, Guatemala, on the east coast near the Caribbean Sea to a small public medical clinic. She was unconscious for five days while under Pedro’s care and supervision. He took an unusually special interest in Abby. Something touched him with her beauty. He could somehow see a past life from deep inside her eyes. Pedro checked them every day for consciousness or awareness, but instead saw into her past like a movie flashing before his eyes. He recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body It was, in fact, a movie he was watching inside Abby’s eyes. He was fascinated by this, not freaked out or scared. He fell deeper into the plot, but really did not know where it was going.

Here let us digress a scoche, and refer to Herr Twain’s Rule 9 as applied to Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, one of those of which the four above are a distillation: “The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.” Foremost among the remarkable things in the above paragraph is that Pedro was “not freaked out or scared.” So often this is the dilemma in popular entertainment: that in the face of unworldly experience that no one would at first believe—all the evidence of their senses notwithstanding—how credulous to make the protagonist? We do not yet know or care enough about Pedro to feel relief that he is not “freaked out or scared”—but in truth, do we believe it? Here is a man who is dutifully tending a patient in a prolonged swoon, and checking her eyes for awareness or consciousness, and it’s like he’s a kid at Harkins in 1966, kicked back, watching “One Million Years B.C.”
On points more mundane—but, in their pervasiveness, equally grave—Rule 4 of our abridged set finds ample play. To begin, writing with good English requires avoiding clichés, as well as empty, gushy descriptives lacking in concreteness and specificity. (To its credit, the Moldovan tongue and literary canon also support these virtues.) Note the number of words and phrases violating this prescriptive in this brief passage: “madly in love,” “bountiful life,” “about to transpire,” “care and supervision,” “like a movie flashing before his eyes,” “freaked out,” “fell deeper.”
Too, Mr. Wingfield seems much in haste to get wherever it is he is going—maybe to the “movies” of the sex scenes, ja?—rather than attend to basic matters of the storyteller’s art: painting the setting, imagery—concrete specifics—that would place us in the characters’ world, and in turn, keep them from resembling Punch and Judy animated by a drunken puppeteer. We learn merely that the star-crossed couple were “vacationing” “in Central America,” that their jeep overturned “in a dreadful, fatal single-car accident.” It might further the verisimilitude of the tale to know something about how they were spending their vacation, and, especially, what they were doing that resulted in the tragic upending of their Jeep. Were they miles beyond ordinary, enjoying a few Coronas? Did the flash of a bright-plumed macaw or menacing jagular catch Stephan’s eye and cause him, mortally, to swerve? Was Abby engaged unseemly with the gear shifter? Sadly, we do not know.
On additional inspection, the generally clumsy, cluttered stacking up of words without care for sound, sense or meaning grates on the reader throughout the passage. For example, that Abby “did not know the long-range ramifications of what was to transpire” should surprise us so little as to require no mention, as we had not been previousy advised that she possessed any extraordinary faculty of prescience.
To say she “suffered” “a broken leg, cuts and bruises and a concussion” comes off as a mere statistic, as Herr Twain would say. It reads as if quoted from the clinic’s chart, not the imagination’s tabula rasa. Truly she may have “suffered,” and from the broken leg most of all, yet it is only in the academic sense that the word is used, i.e., as in “sustained a copious bleeding from the ears.” Cuts and bruises, and a broken leg—Oh my!
Abby was “transported” to Calleboca, about whose geographical situating we learn much; while about the particulars of her life-threatening trip thence, nothing. “She was unconscious five days while under Pedro’s care and supervision.” Do we here detect the suggestion of a causal connection, so that when Pedro relinquished her care and supervision to another practitioner, her condition improved? (If so, Pedro, at least, took not only a special interest in Abby (in her vulnerable state), but an “unusually special interest.” Hmmm. Nurse, please remain in the room at all times.)
Here’s our favorite: “Something touched him with her beauty.” Now, we all know what Wingfield here means. But that is not his fault. It’s due only to our toleration for syntactical impreciseness, as veteran language users, that we understand him. We take him to mean, “In some indefinable way, her beauty touched him.” And so he should have put it. Or, it could be as simple a fix as by the choice and placement of preposition; viz.: “Something in her beauty touched him.” Or: “He was touched by her beauty.” As it reads on the page, however (“Some thing [nom., subject] touched [v.t.] him [d.o.] with [i.e., “using,” “with the instrumentality of”] her beauty.”), it is as if something—perhaps a wandering howler monkey—somehow actually held Abby’s beauty in its simian grasp, and poked (or merely stroked) Pedro with it, as if with a leafy tree-limb. Clearly, as an abstract, even Ideal-partaking Platonic form informing and infusing the substance of Abby’s human visage, her “beauty” is not something to be bandied about like a stick in such manner. So one should not write as if it was.
Too, not only should the writer stick to the possible, or at least dabble in rendering the improbable plausible—he should avoid the use of such fake and facile realism-intensifiers as “in fact,” “literally” and suchlike clichés, reminding ourselves anyway that they are mental placeholders serving largely to give thinking a holiday. “He recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body. It was, in fact, a movie he was watching inside Abby’s eyes.” (Emphasis reluctantly added.)
First, a hint please, as to how Pedro “recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body”? —We are not being coy. Please make something up—anything: a tic, a certain leer of lip, a piebaldness, or one eye being a different colour than the other—to justify and explain how he recognized himself in someone else’s body; not a regular occurrence, after all.
Then, no matter how sincerely Mr. Wingfield wants us to believe Pedro’s experience is like watching a movie play in Abby’s eyes, let us not abandon and deny the essential artifice of simile and insist there is literal cinema-going going on here. For I doubt Mr. Wingfield envisions a little film projector—nor even a tiny iPod Photo—perched on Abby’s nose, or hidden inside a sinus or tear duct or Eustachian tube, “in fact” projecting a movie in her eyes there for Pedro to see. No, no matter how much he would like to indulge—sloppily, incoherently, and impossibly—to the contrary, there are no such miniature movie projectors in the jungle (or on the coast) of Guatemala. Nor is there sufficient bio-mechanical expertise in that largely agrarian economy to implant such technology and operate it—much less maintain it. Nor did they have the filmmaking equipment “way back then” to make the movies now “in fact” playing in Abby’s eyes ... in the time, as if in ancient Greece, that the original souls lived and loved under the moonilght by the wine-dark sea, la-de-doo-dah (just like they “didn’t have marriage” then, either). (Well, OK: Maybe gay marriage.)
— D. Tell

Editor’s note: The foregoing is loosely—maybe feebly—modeled on two classic, hilarious essays by Mark Twain on the “literary offenses of Fenimore Cooper.” The first of them may be found online at users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/ cooper.html. We also advise our readers that Henry Wingfield, as a good sport, agreed to see a review published that took this tack. Still, fortunately for Cooper, perhaps, he had established his literary fame and reputation—and had been dead for over 40 years—before Twain published his calumnies. (And, as it turned out, Wingfield was not so sanguine after seeing the published review.)
Ancient Lovers can be ordered from Xlibris, 1-888-795-4274, www.xlibris.com, orders@xlibris.com.

Poor William's Almanack - 12/24/06

More Marciisms

My wife, Marci, usually hears only partial information about news and current events, digests what she hears poorly and later regurgitates it almost unrecognizably.

Marci heard that Time's "Person of the Year" for 2006 is someone called "You." Who's that Asian guy they named?" she asked. Or maybe, "Hu's that Asian guy they named." With her, it's hard to tell.

Poor William's Almanack - 12/10/06

APHORISMS, or, notes for a stand-up routine

©2006
David "Poor William" Tell


The suffix of the word “misogynist” seems to imply that merely by adding a little focus, one can refine a general, perhaps casual hatred of mankind into something more a hobby or art.

If the valley in which Phoenix lies were meant for human habitation, the Hohokam would still be living there.

I’ll never forget the time my wife told me the difference between me and her is that she doesn’t dwell on the differences between people.

She also once admitted that once she gets breast implants, she’ll probably find other aspects of her body to be dissatisfied with. “Yes,” I said, “but at least then you’ll be able to take your mind off it by playing with your boobs.”

Filial love probably arises in early childhood from the sycophancy of being “in” or “tight” with the most important person you know.

I like product names. I noticed an RV with the model name “Intruder” emblazoned on it. I imagined the tagline or slogan to go along with this product: “And we’re parking in your neighborhood!”

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is “my wife’s and my movie.” It’s about a couple who get a second chance at their relationship because HOW MUCH THEY HATE EACH OTHER HAS BEEN BURNED OUT OF THEIR MEMORIES!

Or, to put it differently, paraphrasing Santayana: “Those who can’t remember the history of their relationship are doomed to repeat it.”

This is true: My toilet paper brand found an innovative place to put a coupon to buy more of their product. Actually, I didn’t notice it right away. But the clerk I hand it to probably will.

Ode to a Civic Structure – With a Phoenician Turn

As the extensive expansion and revamping of Phoenix Civic Plaza grinds toward completion, it seems fitting to post here a poem written by Midtown resident Amy Taylor, submitted to The Midtown Messenger for publication in July of 2004. Amy said in a cover note that the poem was written before the existing Civic Plaza was completed in 1972, when she worked as a nighttime answering service operator near Central and Thomas. In that stint, she said, a Civic Center guard who would report in by phone from the site offered her a private tour at midnight one night. Amy was 47 at the time, and married, and her relationship with the guard--and their rendezvous for the tour--were strictly platonic, she said in her note. Amy added that she provided the poem to the Maricopa Recorder’s Office after writing it in 1972.

Editor's additional note: Attempts to call Amy at the number she gave in 2004 and one found online reached "number not in service" messages. If anyone who knew Amy knows her current whereabouts and health condition, please contact us. In any case, we hope her poem's publication here gives it exposure that Amy would find gratifying.


Phoenix Civic Plaza

Manifestation - Revelation

I asked “Is that [the] new civic plaza
Where you’re working as guard?”
He said “Why don’t you come see it,
I can show you, ’tisn’t hard.
First you find Fifth and Van Buren,
The turn south through the stop gate,
Then stand and wait,
Blow your horn, and I will listen
For the sound, I’ll be around.”

Velvet dark the Phoenix sky,
Stars twinkling Andromeda,
Noise of traffic moving near,
Sounds of city,
Sounds of fear,
Midnight, waiting for the guard, Locket,
He will show me round the civic plaza.
I have found, the best way to see the sights,
Is ask the people working nights.

Airplanes gliding overhead,
Electricians in their beds,
The building looms a solid mass,
Wire gates for the trucks to pass,
Chain link fencing circles round,
Construction trailers on the ground.
All visitors must check in at
The Del Webb building, think of that.

Police cruisers on the prowl,
Three hippies pass, their night to howl,
Sit and wait,
At the gate,
Lights are flashing, getting late,
Listen to the radio,
Solid rock, full of life,
People’s problems,
Songs of strife,
Noisy love songs, loud and clear,
Are playing while I’m sitting here.

There’s a car along the street,
Here comes Locket looking neat,
Cowboy hat, pants as tight as skin,
Victory sign, it must be him,
He looks as cute as cute can be,
Smiling as he looks at me.

Overhead doors in a row,
Vast empty rooms, light fixtures glow,
Massive chambers, dark and quiet,
Box offices await the crowd,
Planned for people by the thousand,
Our footsteps on the bare floor pound
And echo as we cross the space,
Transformers hum,
Architects’ schemes,
To make a background for his dreams.

In visions I can see the place,
Filled with all the human race.
Conventions here from every state,
The entrance at the going rate,
For trailer shows, boat, car and coin,
All people here in Phoenix join
The kids crowding through the gates,
To many various shows, a spate.

Stairways leading from the ground,
General offices abound,
The ghostly figures pass,
In dreams behind the blackened glass.

Walkway taken over Third Street,
Third Street dipping underneath,
Square on square of patterned concrete,
Squares of velvet for our feet,
Round reservoir, which is in truth
Mythological fountain of youth.

Main entrance to the concert hall,
Solid glass three-eighths inch thick
Rising up to fifty feet.
Silicate of tinted glass
Defying the bright sun to pass.
Concrete shell to catch the sound,
Smooth, elliptical and round.

In a little room the phone is.
Locket made a call to Burns,
To record the fact that he was working.
Then he turns.
Amy do you see the drawings
That they follow as they work.
See the rolls and rolls of blueprints,
Book of plans is inches thick.
See the rolls and rolls of dreams
Transformed into reality,
Then rolled up and tucked away.
Dry leaves curled on an autumn day,
Victims of autumnal blast,
When their usefulness is past.

Moving through the empty spaces,
See the vast and darkened places,
Hydraulic orchestra pit lift,
Musicians offered up, a gift.
Power lifted elevator for unloading scenery,
Exit signs are glowing red,
I can see way overhead.
Light is on the second floor
Shining on an open door,
Dressing rooms are all around,
But the keys cannot be found.
Walking on the concrete bare,
Carpeting will soon be there.
Hear applause, the actors bow,
See the visions then and now.
When all assembled and complete,
Two thousand and more it will seat.
Dark - a flashlight - on the stage,
Scaffolding’s intricate maze
Reaching heavenward so high,
Seeming that they touch the sky.

In one corner of the stage,
To reach the gridiron overhead,
A Jacob’s ladder, round and round,
Black spiral staircase is found,
From ground to gridiron, eighty five feet,
Metal, black, and very neat,
Like smoke rising to the sky,
Curling to the heavens high.
Or a black dust devil dancing,
Swirling in the desert bare
While the stormclouds are advancing,
Ominous the desert air.

Manila ropes connect to cables,
Cables connect to the pipes,
Pipes to hang the scenery,
Single purchase counterweights,
Added weights to compensate,
Ropes for curtains by the score
Actually sixty five or more.

Caverns underneath the buildings
Waiting for a thousand cars,
Supporting pillars, full of grace
Like atlas hold the world in place.
Think of the hole they dug before
The concrete mixers start to pour.

From Monroe south to Washington,
That’s two blocks wide, and three blocks long
A vision, yes, a lovely dream
Is rising in this Phoenix scene.

Beneath the overpass we walked
On empty Third Street, and we talked
Of Phoenix, how we felt about her,
The lack of night life in the center,
How Tucson has much more to offer,
Las Vegas is more to our choice
Where day and night blend into one,
No clocks to tell the time of day,
To drift along bohemian way,
And never have to say,
“That’s closed, we must go home.”

It would be nice, if, in this scheme
They'd plan a nightlife for the scene
So when conventioners arrive
The nightclubs would grow and thrive
When people came they'd have no fear
Of what they're going to here.

We found the door, the metal stair,
And climbed to catwalk waiting there,
I looked below, beyond the lights
And was amazed to find my knees
Which usually would shake with fright,
And with sheer terror I would freeze,
They didn't shake when looking down.

We climbed aloft, until we reached the roof,
Then walked beyond and viewed the fairy city,
How fabulous and truly pretty,
The sky a shade of gentian blue,
Even of the darkest hue,
The lights were twinkling all around,
As far as we could see,
And we thought what a pity,
The smog obscured mountains beyond,
There were no edges to the pond,
The water lay as though below,
With stars reflected in the glow,
The sky above, the air was chill,
The view gave me such a thrill.

We slowly walked down to the ground,
To powdery dust that's all around,
And walked and talked of life and such,
Of many things, yet not of much.

I said goodbye, he locked the gate,
The very strangest thing is fate,
That I should meet a guard like him,
And on a momentary whim,
Be privileged alone to view
The Civic Plaza - all brand new.

Read this preview chapter of a new memoir, promised in the review of "Running With Scissors" in our Nov. 20 print issue

Here is Chapter Four of the memoir-in-progress, My Life and High Times, which loosely emulates James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times, in covering about the same period of my life as his memoir did his--my life also serendipitously suggesting chapter titles that, again, echo Thurber's. I wish I could also say the writing is similar and, especially, that the humorous touch is as light as his. I tried, but alas, my style is my own, such as it is. And it's my life, anyway. Welcome to it ...

The title of this chapter alludes to Thurber's "The Day the Dam Broke." I dedicate it to my two wonderful, more or less drug-free children, now that they are adults and the question of obtaining custody is entirely moot.


Chapter Three

The Day All Hell Broke Loose
© 2006. All rights reserved.

In “those years,” my friends and I, like all subcultures, had our own little set of code words and specialized slang. In addition to articulated grunts, squeaks, clicks, whistles, whoops and burps, we also used a number of made-up words (or regular words with special meanings), the general import of all of which was that we were really cool. (We didn’t do too much with secret hand gestures or handshakes, though Colby Pressley and I did get in trouble once in 7th grade for what Mrs. Koontz oddly assumed were some kind of sexually suggestive finger motions. Actually, here’s what was going on: There was some odd bit of wispy lint or fuzz that I had noticed floating across the room toward me among the thousands of more minute motes and dust specks visible in a broad shaft of sunlight stabbing though our English classroom one slow afternoon. Now distracted from the blackboard exercises in grammar trees, I snatched the lazily wafting piece of fuzz, and, by rubbing my thumb and forefinger together, managed to re-release it, in Colby’s direction. We played “catch” for a few slo-mo back-and-forths with the amazing wisp of fuzz, but meanwhile, all Mrs. Koontz could see was that we were intermittently rubbing our thumb and finger together across the room at each other. After we failed to take the import of her deadly glare, she called us to her desk, where we cleared up the misunderstanding. I suppose we produced the fuzz-bit as evidence, though in my view, her guess that we were making some kind of dirty gesture was more outlandish than the real story. Jeez.)
Some of our druggie-era slang included “berry-face”: an allusion to someone having a beaming, perhaps even flushed face, though the beatific grin was the real clincher. This term was drawn from our fascination, when tripping, with the ripe dogwood berries ubiquitous around our landscape. These autumn adornments are a shiny bright scarlet as ordinarily beheld--and incandescent little drops of immanent godhead when you’re hallucinating. Another, more made-up term was “neckle-nozle peacock-eyes,” which referred to the eyes of someone having an LSD experience--luminous, shiny, and with telltale dilated pupils. Stan, one of the more creative, and correspondingly unstable, members of our little clique, came up with this one, among others.
So, just as smoking pot itself is kind of child’s play, the slang that comes from that part of stoner culture is clearly infantile compared to mature expressions such as this highly abbreviated version of our LSD-related lexicon. As for getting initiated into that subcultural niche, there’s a first time for everyone.
Mine came on an otherwise inauspicious Saturday, during the year when I was already seeing a counselor as part of a small group with some other “troubled but salvageable” kids. I suppose I was sent there as the outcome of a series of misadventures beginning with the time I didn’t come home till 3 a.m., which was about two days past curfew when I was 14. You see, as the youth theater’s “Fiddler on the Roof” opening night party wound down (I played one of kids betrothed to the younger girls, a non-speaking part--and worked behind the scenes on sets and lighting), Gordon, the lighting designer, and Wayne, another really cool older guy, asked if I wanted to go to some girl’s house where we would “get laid,” they promised. (It was a big gyp, of course; and moreover, the night’s featured coquette, Karen Hyde, was, years later, a thorn in my side in a Philosophy of Religion class at the local U., where I was an East-leaning atheist, and she was at that juncture a born-again Baptist. Gordon, who lived in William Jennings Bryan’s old home, actually somehow ended up coming over to my house to go to bat for me against the more dire punishments my parents had in mind. As a ressult, I ended up grounded for a month, sans the eight hours of rock-bustin’ on non-school days.)
I think the event immediately triggering the counseling, though, was when Stan, Drew, Steve Ward and I ended up having to be picked up at the police station at 1 a.m. by our parents, who were a little peeved about it. Drew and I had been spending the night at Stan’s and we snuck out and met Steve, and all went over to Robin Young’s, and we were throwing pebbles at her bedroom window, to get her to come out too, except we actually had no idea which was her window. Perhaps her parents thought it was a light shower of very small meteorites--although if I thought that, I would probably turn on the radio for a civil defense message, rather than calling the police. Jeez.
One of the other counseling participants was a girl with trichtilomania, which means she pulled her own hair out in handfuls. I think it was was whispering offensive come-ons in her right ear. She would have been kind of cute, too, except ... you know those dolls that little girls play with, with the synthetic hair, and after a few years, you can see the pattern of holes in their pink rubber scalp that the hair no longer hides?
There was another kid in the counseling, too, whose misdeeds I was never clear on. I hung out at his house a few times, and I think it reassured both sets of parents that our activity together never went beyond “listlessness.”
Our counselor was Don Boone, M.S.W., an early “tough-love” advocate who looked kind of like Dr. Phil except his shaved head and ears were shaped more like Henry’s, the silent kid from the comics. He comes into this story again later, in peanut-headed cameo.
So, this one Saturday, I was to meet this black kid named Daniel at Montford Park, in the once stately but now seedier part of town that my sister now lives in now that it’s getting gentrified all over again. I waited forever ... the kind of forever that, the longer you wait, the more sure you are you’ll just have missed the guy, and after all that time invested, too! He did eventually show up. From my own commerce, I later understood how little it may have been worth it to him to meet some suburban nerd just to sell a $3 pill.
The pill was, I think, Purple Barrel acid, which is just like the name sounds. I took it then and there, and that was the fatal mistake.
I already knew academically that LSD trips could last twelve to sixteen hours or more. I knew this from reading Dr. Joel Fort’s books about treating wacked-out druggies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the ’60s. That’s where also I learned Valium could keep me from going over the bright orange edge into the rabbit-hole of irreversible madness, if I had taken anything labeled “Eat Me.” I also checked the overdose level and “contraindications” of various fun pharmaceuticals such as Obedrin LA (a form of prescribed amphetamine--a white pill infused with flecks of red fun-crystals, and called “Strawberry Shortcake” by the depraved) and oxycodone (Percodan, or synthetic morphine), in my girlfriend Jennifer’s decased father’s Physician’s Desk Reference before lightly and casually abusing them.
I was a rebel, a bad kid--but also a Nice Jewish Boy. OK, I was a nerd.
Anyway, I took the acid, then started walking toward the east side of downtown from Montford, where I would be able to more directly hitch-hike my way to Jennifer’s house. This was about 3 in the afternoon.
Jennifer’s mom was one of those “pal” kind of parents who make their home a hospitable hangout for her daughters’ friends--in the spaces between shrieking at one or both of her female offspring, driving them to tears (and booze, drugs and the comforting embrace of horny young boys). Tina drank Champales all day with no evident effect except that it made her oblivious to our oblique derision. By the time she switched to vodka tonics in the evening, teasing her became a complete waste of breath, but she took up the slack by berating her friend Edward, who could also often be found hanging around the Vernon house. The tragedy of his having been a lobotomy patient made teasing him a little too guilt-ridden an exercise for outsiders, but at least we could watch the Vernons, including elementary-school-age Betsy and Billy, mess with his head.
Edward wasn’t there that day, but Don Boone, who also had a therapeutic relationship, separately, with the Vernons, dropped by. I smugly, breezily said “Hi” to Don, who himself kind of breezed in and out, and that was about the last breezy thing to take place that day, as my trip then moved from the phase of fascinating and peculiar physical sensations to one of total, tongue-tying, jaw-dropping mystical awe. So, had we run into one another a few minutes later, Don would have had the advantage. Even Edward.
The physical effects: First, “electric teeth.” Speed, I later learned, tends to make you clench your jaw and grind your teeth with an involuntary, pit-bull-like resolve. Acid has a similar effect, except your teeth tingle tantalizingly even before you, if instead under the influence of amphetamines, would have loosened them from the jawbone. So, you commence to clack them lightly together, and on contact, they seem to conduct the tingly electric current emanating from the big brain starting to wiggle and writhe nearby, elsewhere in your skull. And, as you slowly separate your choppers, or bring them nearly back together, uppers seem to repel lowers, as if like poles of a magnet. (I bet that happens even if you have ceramic, not metallic, fillings. It would be interesting to see what would happen if old people did acid: What about when they take their dentures out at night? Remember that old novelty toy, the wind-up clattering teeth? The idea must have come from somewhere ...)
This “electric teeth” phenomenon could occupy you for hours if not for the other things that begin to happen. These “other things” represent the transformation of perceptual distortions limited to one’s own body, into ones that start to involve the outside world. (Though these also start to raise the old question, left unanswered by most people back in infancy, and forgotten, as seemingly obvious: Where does my “self” end and the “outside world” begin? On acid, perceptually, the question regains some fascination, if not urgency ...)
One of these effects is “trails”--stubbornly persistent after-images of things in motion. Such as your arms--looking like they’re still where they were at the same time they appear to be where they now are (and at all points in between)--which you may begin constantly waving across your field of vision, watching the “trails.” If otherwise supple, you may be able to trick sober observers into thinking you’re practicing belly-dancing, with its accompanying, meaningful hand movements, while you’re actually watching “trails.” And even if you’re not too supple, and don’t fool anyone, this still might be good exercise.
(See Appendix A for a discussion of the phamacological basis of “trails” and other perceptual distortions caused by LSD, which occupies the receptor sites of the inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain’s synapses. See Appendix B for what this implies about modern-day SSRI-type antidepressants, and how the confident social functioning they promote in many patients represents the opposite pole from profound insight into the nature of the Self and a mystical attunement with the Tao. In so many words, Prozac is firmly at odds with dedicated navel-gazing.)
As for this story, you may be worrying that not much hell has broken loose yet, and it is already almost, oh ... about 7 p.m. on The Day All Hell Broke Loose. That’s all right, it’s about to.
What happened was that my dinnertime absence triggered some implacable calling around to my friends’ houses by my Mom. She finally called Jennifer’s, where Tina informed her that I was there. This betrayal is distressing; given my condition, she could at least have informed her that I was not all there. Actually, I think the news was that I had been there; then I had walked over to Stan’s, and was picked up by my Mom en route back to Jennifer’s--this made all the easier by the fact that walking the black asphalt road had begun to seem like slogging though wet but shifting sand, the way the novel, geometrically shifting composition of the paved surface seemed to be trying to convert the substance of my tennis shoes likewise, to absorb them into itself. So, when my mom drove up, I couldn’t get away very fast, and she got me into the car.
(The “crystalline, geometric” thing is another characteristic perceptual effect that, fortunately, is there to take over when the novelty of “trails” may begin to wear off. That “crystalline, geometric” appearance that all surfaces begin to take on, at the same time renders everything as seemingly alive, organically interconnected, so that boundaries between things seem less significant. And, ordinarily nondescript things can become intricately beautiful. At Jennifer’s for instance, the wall-to-wall blue carpeting with yellow stains of dog pee here and there appeared like a splendid Oriental carpet--and their dog wasn’t even a Pekingese (much less a Shar-Pei or Shih-Tsu), but rather a regular old American Standard poodle.
With everything also pulsing, shimmering, undulating and so on, this is when things--such as your face in the mirror--can seem to the ill-prepared to be melting or morphing into Yourself As an Old Man, or a decaying corpse, or your cousin Joey who everybody used to say you looked so much like, while pinching both your cheeks. This is a good time to try NOT to freak out. It’s not OK to punch a feeble old aunt just because she’s pinching your cheek, no matter how much a painful pinch interferes with your cheek’s organic oneness with the All. (A warning, though: In this condition, when you may begin to feel “one” with Joey, or that you really can’t tell where you end and Outer Reality begins--neither of these realizations is conducive to acing midterm exams.)
Upon arriving home, I was ushered into my parents’ bedroom, where my Dad was waiting, kind of irritated, I suppose. His blood pressure, barely controlled at the best of times, was pounding in my supersenses. His face appeared to me livid, bloated with blood, like a rotting tomato filled with noxious gases and about to burst. “Nice berry-face, Dad!” I thought. At least, I think I only thought it, though he then lashed out at me, knocking off my glasses. I picked them back up and put them on, inarticulately indicating I had something of great importance to say. This at least forestalled further blows. I don’t think my Dad really wanted to hit me; he was just acting out the pre-programmed robot-like motions of a straight, unevolved mortal, so my Buddha-nature showered him invisibly with my compassion.
Thus, we all became aware of the futility of the interview, and I was allowed to go to the kitchen for the supper they had saved for me, oh boy! I was transfixed for a while, gazing at the awesomeness of the last few bits of soap suds valiantly hanging in there against the ravages of grease in the hamburger griddle, soaking in the sink. Then I sat down to contemplate the hamburger. Every sensation--biting, salivating, chewing and swallowing--was greatly magnified. Occasionally, even flavor wormed its way into my consciousness amid all the other, preoccupying sensations, like an orgasm achieved in haste, and accomplished despite an uncomfortable position.
That hamburger seemed to last forever. Not that I wanted it to.
I went and started running a bath, whereupon my Mom called me back into their bedroom. She handed me a book for parents about drug abuse and pointed to a paragraph about LSD and suicide. Somehow, though, I must have conveyed the incorrigible joy I took in being alive and that my “lightness of being” was entirely bearable, so they let me take my bath while they went on preparing for a party they were going out to.
In the bath, I again exulted and mourned the desperate travails of the suds against the grime, seeing in it a metaphor for all wordly, Darwinian struggles, and happy to be transcendent over all such petty, temporal concerns even as my trip was hitting the downhill slide. So it didn’t matter to me how water-puckered my hands and feet were by the time I got out of the bath; if it meant I was actually, physically regressing into Salamander Man or Toad Boy, then that was just my karmic fate. Was it not?
I think my little brother Sam wisely avoided me the rest of the evening, and my sister was out having her own thrills somewhere, having earned them by participating in the family dinner at the appointed hour. But my grandmother, who was living with us at the time, cornered me in the hall. “Why can’t you be a good boy?” she wailed, crying. “I will be, Gram,” I said, hugging her reassuringly--yet with the emotional remoteness of my amphibious nature.
A little later, I felt human enough to hop across the street to Nobby’s. Even though the LSD was now quickly wearing off, I was able to enjoy observing the trails, the persistent parabolas left by the ping-pong ball, as Nobby and his dad, Nobby Senior, played a couple of games.
I stepped up to play against Mr. Riedy, but my confidence that literally being able to visualize the ball’s trajectory would give me an insuperable competitive edge was sorely misplaced.