DOWN MEMORY LANE

Or, to be precise, down Santa Monica Boulevard back in Hollywood in the 1990s, when – on the way to the drugstore or one of my favorite bars – I would pass the "Undie World of Lili St. Cyr" a lingerie store owned and operated by the legendary stripper who was alleged to have been an nearly role model for Marilyn Monroe. If my memory serves me (which it may not) it was between a dry cleaners and a donut shop. (Although, from the ad it seerms that the mailorder office was on Melrose.) The story was that the store was manned by a crew of little old ladies who were all ex-strippers who’d found a semi-retirement working for Lili. The weird part was that I’d always imagined the strippers of the 1940s and 1050s to be tall and statuesque, but in all of them, including Lili herself, were little tiny women.

Click here for The Cramps

The secret word is Grind

AND MORE...

AND HERE’S LILI…

ELVIS & SCIENTOLOGY

Our pal Postcriptus sent us this gem of an insight…

“I'm reading a history of Scientology. Peggy Lipton at one point got Elvis to go into the Scientology center on Sunset. They start testing him, but Elvis soon comes back out saying, "Fuck these people! There's no way I'll ever get involved with this son-of-a-bitchin' group. All they want is my money." Not only is this a revelation that many of his peers failed ever to have, but his initial reaction shows that here was a man who either had little in the way of self doubt; or if he had it, then also had the moral fiber to deal with it on his own terms.”

Click here for a party.

PAINTED TALLULAH

I lifted this from the blog of Anthony Brockway for no other reason that I’ve always admired the celebrated Bankhead…

“What a meeting it must have been when Augustus John painted Tallulah Bankhead in 1929. The Welsh artist, famous for his scandalous behaviour and voracious sexual appetite, in the same room as Bankhead the American actress, famous for her scandalous behaviour and voracious sexual appetite.”

GODZILLA ON A DATE

GRATUITOUS JOLIE

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti and a hatful of McFries. What more does a poor boy need to get to heaven?

Click here for Dies Irae

The secret word is Sanctum

OR FROM ANOTHER IDEOLOGICAL STANDPOINT

(Image by Romero Britto)

MARILYN SEZ...

“Neither the Pope nor Chairman Mao had to play paddle ball with drunken cowboys staring at their ass.”

JONESEY AND THE XENOMORPH

For some years I have been working in semi secrecy on a book of short stories all from the point of view of cats. (Publishers take note.) The half finished collection contains tales of feral felines and mendacious moggies, but also celebrity cats. I have already written the first scene from The Godfather from the POV of the cat in Marlon’s lap, and I had planned a reworking of Alien as told Jonesey the cat but (goddamn it) author Anne Billson beat me to the punch…

“Nostromo is making hysterical hooting noises and flashing its lights on and off. This is all rather exciting, but as I’m being ferried through the passages and walkways I feel helpless, and would really rather be free to run around. Also, the can-opener is hurling herself around like nobody’s business, so it’s not a smooth journey, I can tell you. Anyhow we roll to a stop, and I can tell straightaway it’s because we’ve run slap-dab into the hairless kitten again. Only I’m not sure I can call it a kitten any more – it’s really big now. Honestly, it’s like a super-giant cat. But since it’s still only a few hours old and clearly hasn’t been housetrained and hasn’t a clue how to groom itself or behave in can-opener company, I shall continue to call it a kitten. Because, technically, that’s what it is.” (Click here for more)

DON’T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

UNDISCOVERED WOODY

I see happy school kids singing Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land," unaware that Woody was a card-carrying communist, a lifelong supporter of the IWW, and that the song was written as a protest against the banal apple-pie patriotism of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." "This Land is Your Land" was originally titled "God Bless America for Me," and the original chorus used that line instead of "this land was made for you and me." And, of course, the apple pie version always leaves out the last two verses.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin' I saw a sign there
And that sign said trespassin'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are hungey and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Click here for Bruce and the whole tune

The secret word is Dustbowl

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Bucky Frozdick liked to get drunk and make out with chicks in his UFO.

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

ANOTHER PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

WE HAVE A SOLUTION FOR EVERY PROBLEM

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

WAR – FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD – IS GOOD

This memoir of A.A. Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame) makes me wonder if the mindset of the fat cat elite of 98 years ago was really any different to that of the fat cat elite of today.

"A.A. (Alan) Milne says in his autobiography that he would have liked to ignore the four years he spent in the army. 'I should like to put asterisks here, and then write 'It was in 1919 that I found myself once again a civilian.' For it makes me almost physically sick to think of that nightmare of mental and moral degradation, the war.' But of course the war cannot be ignored. In 1914, no one (reader, writer, or hero) can ignore history. Milne overheard hideous talk in the smoking-rooms of golf clubs and recorded it in the issue of Punch that came out the day after war was declared. 'What England wants,' someone said, leaning back and puffing at his cigar - he was, of course, himself well past military age - 'What England wants is a war. (Another whisky and soda, waiter.) We're getting flabby. All this pampering of the poor is playing the very deuce with the country. A bit of a scrap with a foreign power would do us all the good in the world.' He disposed of his whisky at a draught. 'We're flabby,' he repeated. 'The lower classes seem to have no discipline nowadays. We want a war to brace us up.'"

Click here for Frankie

The secret word is Bayonet

Johnny Otis – RIP
Etta James – RIP

YOU TALKING TO ME?

Click here for Travis

IS IT ANY WONDER?

Click here for Del Shannon

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSICS # 96

DOC40 IS BLACKED OUT IN SOLIDARITY. Click here for why.

TANKS FOR THE DRUG WAR

Remember the cocaine submarine? Now we have drug tanks. Seemingly the bad-ass Mexican narco crews are creating their own panzer divisions. Police found this armored dope-mobile war wagon in a metalworking shop. I would yet again point out that all this would vanish like the morning mist if legalization removed the criminal profit motive, but who the hell listens to me?

“The completed versions were bigger than what has been found before. Built on three-axle truck beds, they had room for 20 armed men, one official said. They were covered with inch-thick steel, which could withstand 50-caliber fire, and each had been equipped with insulation. The Mexican Army officials do not seem particularly intimidated. They have criticized the machines for being difficult to maneuver, noting that they are designed to frighten rivals. But for most Mexicans, the mere sight of the seized narco-rhino monsters in military photographs offers a stark reminder that in the battle against crime here there is no place more dangerous than Mexico’s roads.”

Click here for Gene Vincent

The secret word is Sherman

READ ALL ABOUT IT

There’s a rather nice interview with me in the current issue of Word magazine. Click here for the website but I think you may have to pick up a real paper magazine to read the interview.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Lucrezia Frozdick found it hard to obtain credit.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GREAT ONE

GRATUITOUS BARDOT

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

Breakfast with the iguana? What can I say today? He is the lizard king. He can do anything.

Click here for an extended dueling banjo.

NOSFERATU DIY

In the last decade I labored long and hard on what came to be known as The Renquist Quartet, four modern-gothic novels on a nosferatu theme that had little if nothing to do with the bloody vampire nonsense we currently see in the cinema and on TV. Maybe, of course, that was my mistake, but that hardly seems relevant now tales of the undead can be composed with magnets.

Click here for the Victor Renquist Facebook page. (Not, I might add, created by me.)

ALL I HAVE TO DO IS SCREAM

I sometimes wonder how Edvard Munch would have felt if he knew that his most celebrated painting was reproduced on t-shirts, fridge magnets, and in inflatable plastic. These are his words on the inspiration behind epic painting. I’d never read them before and thus I pass them on…

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

Click here for the animated version.

MARILYN SEZ...

“In space no one cares if you scream.”

TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA STRIKES!

It’s Friday 13th. I’m hiding under the bed. Don’t tell them I’m here!

Click here for The Move

The secret word is Irrational

FROM THE TATTOO PARLORS OF MORDOR

GRATUITOUS BACK

WARNING ONE

Tomorrow is Friday 13th and this would seem to be a fine day for early warnings. In addition to what you see below it’s most likely inadvisable to take the green acid.

Click here for the inevitable Jim

The secret word is Finale

WARNING TWO

This is not the stairway to heaven.

WARNING THREE

A rifle would give the tots too much of an even break.

WARNING FOUR

Click here for VU

MARILYN SEZ...

“Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

THE INVISIBLE GORILLA

Focused. Yes, I have been focused. I have been so damned focused – and also still taking fistfuls of meds – that I frequently have a feeling that the undefined is passing me by, unknown entities materialize sight-unseen without me knowing anything about them except some Ballad-Of-A-Thin-Man suspicions. But then our pals at Delancey place clued me in on the invisible gorilla, and I released the focus was to blame…

"Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention. The most dramatic demonstration was offered by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book The Invisible Gorilla. They constructed a short film of two teams passing basketballs, one team wearing white shirts, the other wearing black. The viewers of the film are instructed to count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on. The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds.
"Many thousands of people have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice anything unusual. It is the counting task-and especially the instruction to ignore one of the teams-that causes the blindness. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla. Seeing and orienting are automatic functions of System 1, but they depend on the allocation of some attention to the relevant stimulus. The authors note that the most remarkable observation of their study is that people find its results very surprising. Indeed, the viewers who fail to see the gorilla are initially sure that it was not there - they cannot imagine missing such a striking event. The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness. – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Click here for Bowie

The secret word is Guy

ONE WAY, I GUESS, OF FOOLING THE BIOMETRIC SCAN

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Vladimir Ilyich Frozdick was probably the only one in the family who really knew the score.

GRATUITOUS REAGAN

SPACE OPERA

ELVIS SUNDAY

As regular readers have probably noticed, Doc40 has been sadly neglected as I work on the great convalescent catch-up. I promise you I’ll soon be up to speed (if I had some) and regular posts will resume. I couldn’t, however, miss Elvis’ 77th birthday.

Click here

The secret word is Forever

THE NATIONAL ELF SERVICE

Guess who!

GRATUITOUS NATALIE

I think you can work out the Elvis connection for yourself.

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

Yes. I had a very good New Year’s Eve, thank you. And now it’s 2012, okay? To paraphrase Pop – another year for me and you, another year with (I suspect) plenty to do.

Click here a whole lotta Jimi

The secret word is Ringing

...OR CATAPOCALYPSE?