The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving

Somebody posted the entire “Art and Science of Dumpster Diving” book. So dig in.

Click to access Art%20&%20Science%20of%20Dumpster%20Diving.pdf

The Ballad of Isy Jones

The Ace Backwords Report
(journal entry) February 4, 2007, SUPER SUNDAY!!!

I have this almost unbearable sadness in me now. I wonder if its finally taken ahold of me for good. This battle I’ve fought all my life.

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Isy Jones’s death last month — jumping in front of a train in final, permanent, agonizing torment — was like some final nail in my coffin.

I can’t help thinking of that period — 1993 and 1994 — which I always look back on in my mind’s eye as an endless sunny, summer day. We were all young and strong and full of hope for some glorious Future that we were sure was just around the corner if we could just hot-wire the thing. Hot-wire Reality.

Now, 13 painful years later, I sit back and watch all the people dying horrible, agonizing deaths, one after another. Its like we’re getting picked off, one after another. And I’m next. I look at the list of names on the TELEGRAPH STREET MUSIC CD — Anthony, Monk, Comatoes, Charles, Zack, Duncan, Isy, etc — and watch them wiping out, one after another. Coming to bad ends.
You wonder if you’re under some kind of curse.

I’m vaguely haunted by my last interaction with Isy (Am I fated to end all these games — all my “relationships” — on a losing note, an unresolved note?).

It was around December 9th (as I count the days backwards, as I always do, realize its already been almost 2 months, as the memory of Isy and everything that he once was, rushes into the Oblivion of the past)…Isy, on his own accord, has approached me and eagerly offered to buy me a $20 bag of chrystal meth if I’ve got the dough. He’s got it all lined up.

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“This isn’t going to be a complicated deal?” I ask, as I always ask with Isy, from painful past experiences, having wasted 6 or 7 hours waiting around on a dark street-corner, only to get burned by Isy, on “simple, easy deals” Isy had set up before. So I tend to stress that point before I get into a weird “situation” with weird people, and Godknowswhat (factor in the generally deranging power of chrystal meth, and the fact that virtually every person involved in “the deal” is angling to burn you, plus the cop/paranoia/arrest factor, plus the generally complicated nature of ANY free-lance entrepenuerial enterprise of commerce involving more than 4 people (3 of whom are insane, including me) in complex patterns of social behavior — and you have all the ingredients for a “complicated” situation.

“No, I’ll be right back! I got it all set up in the Park!” insists Isy, with that air of frantic urgency that Isy always got when involved with all things chrystal methamphetamine (arms jerking up in the air as he talked, etc.)

“Okay,” I said, making that fateful, and sometimes fatal, commitment of pressing the $20 bill into Isy’s hand (Flashing on the memory of another time I had slipped Isy a bill in similar circumstances, Isy walked off and returned 6 hour later, empty-handed,alas, but at least he returned my bill THAT time — a minor miracle in itself — but what was odd was the bill itself — it was crumpled and wrinkled almost beyond belief, with this strange, glossy sheen to the surface, as if Isy had been frantically rubbing and carressing and folding and unfolding the bill non-stop, with enormous finger pressure for the entire 6 hours the bill was stuffed in his pocket.).

About 15 LONG minutes later, Isy did in fact return.

“Lets for for a walk,” he said

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“So how’d it go?” I asked as we walked down Haste Street, still not sure if he’d hand me back my bill (in God knows what condition) or the drugs (in God knows what amount and/or quality: “Oh no! Not generic white powder AGAIN!”) or whether some strange, new complication has arisen calling for a private strategy session and a Re-thinking of Our Options.

.
“Did you get it?”

“Yeah, i got it,” said Isy. “Lets go somewhere and let me snort a line for scoring for you.” (Isy’s original plan, his original proposal, was that he had $20 and if I kicked in my $20 we could BOTH split a really good deal. But, as I said, unexpected complications often developed when going from step A to step B in most methamphetamine transactions.) Isy handed me the little bag of meth as we walked side-by-side down the street, as I quickly eyed the size and feel of the bag, sizing up the amount and the potential quality before I quickly jammed it into my pocket. Like I said, suspicion and paranoia runs rampant at this crucial juncture of the transaction, as well as the thought (always in the back of my mind)that one false, or merely unlucky move, could bring the unwanted presence of the cops, which could change the course of my life for the next couple months, if not the next couple years. So I’m always eager for this crucial part of the transactions — for the money to change hands, and for the drugs to change hands — to go as quickly as possible. I’ve now got the bag in my pocket, which I’m compulsively fingering to re-assure myself that I haven’t lost it, or that the contents aren’t spilling out (zip-lock working A-OK?) and I’m so close to home and I’m already hungering in anticipation of that magic moment when I finally get safely back to my office and take that first big hit, with all the promise of satisfaction and well-being and euphoric energy and sensual pleasure (what the hell, sometimes that shit actually works — why do you think people are going to jail for it?).

But now — darn, darn, darn!! — this unforseen complication has arisen: involving taking the little bag of highly illegal drugs out of the safety of my pocket and into public view, and then daintily measuring out a line (How much is that greedy bastard Isy gonna take?!) hopefully without spilling a drop of the precious little contents (Its rarely enough anyways) and then nervously tapping my feet during those perilous moments when Isy (he could give a fuck) is Doing Drugs in Public. (Though, in retrospect, I wonder if all this feverish outlaw excitement is part of the big appeal of drugs. I noticed I completely stopped smoking pot right around the time they de-criminalized it and you could just go buy it at all the cannabis clubs — somehow that killed the buzz.).

“Man, I hate this shit,” I muttered, letting Isy know I wanted this part of the transaction to be as short-and-sweet as possible.

We’re both making slightly manic small-talk as we walk side-by-side down the street. I’m nervous and giddy with hopeful anticipation at the prospect of actually getting HIGH (my life has been so low lately, for so long), and, of course, we’re both trying hard to “act normal” — which flies in the face of our normal, abnormal behavior. We sing a few odd lines from songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones (in retrospect, I guess it should have been “This could be the last time . . “). And I say: “It’s a whacky world, Isy.” An inside joke between me and Isy, told and re-told during the course of many previously-shared scenes of whackiness over the last 13 years on the scene. Ahh, the things we have seen, me and Isy. Two damaged, fucked-up, but eminently soulful, bums on the streets of Berkeley. Sheesh. (If you could look at some of the real-life movies that played out from behind our eye-balls you probably wouldn’t believe some of the scenes. For people like Isy live at that juncture where the surreal, the crazed, the bizarre, the demented,and the horrific, is the norm. (Too bad these scribbled journals are the closest I can come to capturing those eye-ball movies).

Isy leads me around the corner and up the steps to the side porch of the First Presb Church. We both sat down on the floor, our backs resting against the church building. It was a fairly safe spot,we were blocked out of the sidewalk traffic, and we’d be able to spot anybody coming from any direction before they got to us. Isy — as crazy as he was — was a genius in that sense. In the middle of the most crowded city street, he could ALWAYS find some little covey-hole, some safe little haven, where you could get high. A skill no doubt honed with animal grace by thousands and thousands of previous drug-related manuevers in the urban jungle. (Reminiscing after his death, virtually every person on the Berkeley street scene had cherished memories of “getting high with Isy” or “going to jail with Isy.” And often, both. And its with a painful, poignant feeling that I realize I am chronicling the last of what was a long, long line — a lifetime — of “getting high with Isy” episodes. If there was a Tweeker Hall of Fame, Isy Jones would certainly be a first-ballot inductee.

“Lets be quick about this,” I whispered, handing Isy the tiny, zip-locked baggie.

“Gimme your lighter, Ace.” He took my lighter and rolled it over the bag of meth, crushing the little rocks into a snortable powder. (“So THATS how you do it!” I thought. Previously, I had taken the meth out of the bag and crushed them with an exacto-knife — sometimes causing parts of the rock to go ping-ing off the mirror and into the un-seen distance — always fun searching for those long-lost crumbs of meth, two days later, when you’re down to your last line. But leave it to Isy: the Expert. He was in fact the expert on all things Drugs. He had virtually dedicated his life to the pursuit, the study, and the consumption, of drugs.)

Isy quickly poured out a line. “Gimme a dollar, Ace.” Isy expertly rolled up the bill and took a big, nostril-burning snort. AHH!

Isy handed me back the little bag of meth. “Give me back my dollar, too,” I said, a little too quickly. And I always felt bad about that, regret it. Because it was a cheap thing to say. But at this point, I had already given Isy $20, and now HE was the one getting high, and I STILL didn’t know how much was in the bag or if I’d gotten burned — still hadn’t had a chance to take a good look at my little, covert prize. So, at the LEAST, I wanted my dollar back. But its weird how these mundane interactions take on more of a resonance — and this haunted feeling — because they’re your LAST interactions with the guy. Its like I’m magnifying them. Searching for clues at the scene of the crime.

We quickly got up and scurried down the steps. (And now, every time I pass that spot by the First Presb Church, I flashback to that last time with Isy, sitting there, crushing the meth with my lighter, etc. and I say a little prayer for Isy, repeat my mantra for Isy, for his spirit, wherever its roaming across the Universe, in whatever dimension.)

Isy was strangely subdued as we walked back to the Ave. I could feel the heaviness of his spirit. He wasn’t his usual, herky-jerky self. In retrospect, I think he already knew. He had already made up his mind. He knew this was The Last Time. Of course, I didn’t know. To me it was just one more mundane afternoon on Telegraph, in a seemingly endless expanse of them, dating back to 1993 — the Ace and Isy show. Isn’t it weird how we always think its going to last forever? I didn’t think any more of it as Isy walked off and disappeared down the street, one more time. Until later.”Where’d you and Isy go?” said Psycho Joe with a leering, knowing grin on his face.

“Nowhere,” I said. All the nosy bums on the corner had been watching the interactions between me and Isy — the whole crazy dance — and they all knew. Which was embarrassing. Because crystal meth is a degenerate drug. And I was embarrassed that everyone knew about my degeneracy.

“Its a good thing you left,” said Psycho Joe. “Because while you were gone the cops were just here busting those guys hanging out in the corner.” (Which just shows you how slim your margin-of-error can be on the streets). But now that I think of it, the other thing I always thought about whenever I walked back-and-forth with Isy in the middle of these drug scenes, was: I always thought about the ghosts of all the great Drug Outlaws Past. Isy — the Keith Richards wannabe. And me — the John Lennon wannabe. And I’d think of all the exciting books and magazines and records we had read and listened to. William Burroughs. Jim Carroll. Lou Reed. The New York Dolls. Iggy Pop. Jim Morrison. William Blake. GG Allin, man! On and on. All the great drug heroes of our youth. And all the exciting descriptions of their drug use. Mind-tripping to all these strange and taboo realms of reality. And the whole outlaw mystique that we bought into, hook-line-and-sinker. And the whole desperate need to just simply feel GOOD. To feel happy, to feel sensual pleasure, to feel contented, to feel love, to love and be loved. In a world that mostly seemed to offer pain, emptiness, and unfulfillment. Except for this fleeting thing we could sometimes grasp in a little, tiny, zip-locked baggie.

But mostly it was the feeling that we’d blown it, that we’d been conned, that we’d walked down this False Path and we had walked too far beyond the point where we could make that U-turn back to safety (wherever THAT was, in what direction THAT was, God knows where; safety; sheesh.). And that what we were doing was just a tired re-tread of that whole ’60s trip. Which by now had been done to death — like a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy. Scoring drugs. Doing drugs. The whole so-called excitement of the drug subculture. But here we were, one more time on that doomed loop — me and Isy.I went back to my office, snorted up the speed, and masturbated for 48 hours. It was a reasonably good deal. (And, in retrospect, I think Isy had set up the deal because he wanted to pay me back for the times he had burned me in the past, like he wanted to clear the karmic slate before he left this plane.)

I finally woke up on Thursday with a splitting headache. I emerged from my hole and went back up to the Ave. I had $5 in my pocket that I wanted to give to Isy as a tip.

.
Rick was holding a little potted plant, and Fat Bill said:

“. . . and we can plant it in People’s Park in Isy’s favorite spot where he always liked to hang out.”

“What?” I said.

“Didn’t you hear? Isy stepped in front of a train yesterday morning. . . “

And the worst thing is: you never get to say good-bye. Its just over. Phppt. Like an anti-climactic ending to a movie. Or more like God suddenly, and inexplicably, just snips the movie right in the middle. And the screen goes blank. The End.

But one things for sure: I sure as fuck couldn’t give Isy the $5 now. And I felt especially guilty about the “Gimme back my dollar” crack. And my mind immediately started racing through the quickly-fading memories of my last interaction with Isy, searching for SOMETHING. Wondering if it was somehow my FAULT. Survivor’s guilt. Or if there was something I could’ve done differently. Or if I had at least had had the chance to give him his goddam $5 . . .

But it always seems to end like that for me. These loose ends, with these loose interactions, with all these loose people, that I can never quite tie together.

Like when my friend Linda the painter had died earlier in the year last summer — that wretched year of 2006. My last interaction with her, after 24 years of friendship, was when she left a message on the answering machine of my phone:

“Ace, why didn’t you stop and talk to me when we passed on the street the other day? Are you mad at me? Please give me a call some time . . .” I was just busy and in a hurry. A million things in this haphazard life going on in a thousand different directions in space and time. Pulled a thousand different ways. When I finally got around to calling Linda back 2 months later, her phone was disconnected. She was dead.

I cried for Linda as I walked down the street. This aching, piercing sadness in my heart.

And I cried for Isy later that night as I walked down the street. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

“I was up for 14 days / Would have done a couple more / Got hauled off to Santa Rita / Third bunk from the floor . . . “

Tommy Lee comes to Berkeley

Apr 21, 2008

Tommy Lee was in Berkeley the other day. There was a big, Greyhound-size bus parked on Bancroft Ave in front of the Berkeley campus, with “TOMMY LEE” written in big, fancy letters on the side of the bus like a product logo. Which I guess it is.

“Who’s Tommy Lee?” I asked Johnny.

“He’s the drummer from Motley Crue,” said Johnny. “They’re filming a video.”

“Isn’t he the guy that boned that Pamela Anderson babe?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Johnny.

“Well that’s something to have on your resume,” I said.

I walked a block down the street. The film crew was set up on the corner of Durant and Telegraph filming a scene, surrounded by a big crowd of on-lookers. Tommy was calling across the street to this skanky, hot blonde rock’n’roll chick in skin-tight black pants. I guess she was the love interest.

Tommy Lee had a bit of a presence. But not as much as you would think for a big Famous Guy. He looked like he could work at a tattoo parlor, or be a bike messenger. He was wearing a baseball hat. So I couldn’t help wondering if, like me, he was losing some of his hair on top. Could anything be more tragic for a guy who’s claim-to-fame was being in a “hair band”? He was kind of tall and gawky, wearing a black t-shirt and black pants, and his long, skinny arms were covered with tattoos. He had the dark pallor of a vulture with his dark, undertaker eyes and hawk-like profile. But he seemed like a pretty cool, friendly guy.

Maybe he would have had more of a “presence” to me if I had been following his career for 20 years. Its weird when you see somebody’s face in the paper and on TV for 20 years, and then suddenly see them in the flesh. Its surreal. Like a newspaper comic strip character like Dagwood and Blondie suddenly coming to life in the flesh. Its a weird parrallel universe, the whole media zone. I remember when Bill Clinton was on Telegraph for a book-signing. Now that boy had presence. You could spot his shock of white hair from a block away. It was like he was surrounded by a glow, a force-field. Everywhere he walked he was like Moses parting the sea, every eye on him.

Course, the only thing I knew about Tommy Lee was that he was in a New York Dolls-style glam rock band in the ’80s. I’d see a few pictures, the whole crew in their decadent, rocknroll pose, lying around partying with bottles of Jack Daniels and skantily-clad groupies hovering around. I guess they kind of symbolized sex & drugs & rocknroll for awhile. That whole “wild in the streets,” bad-boy pose. (Nowadays, I hear they’re all writing books about how they’re clean-and-sober and in programs. I guess you gotta’ cover all the bases if you want a long career in Show Biz.) And I remember reading something in the paper last year about him getting in a fist-fight with Kid Rock at an awards show. I think they both dated Pamela Anderson, so it was probably the old two-bulls-fighting-over-a-cow routine.

But aside from that, I didn’t know anything about Tommy Lee or Motley Crue. I wouldn’t recognize a Crue song if I heard it. But the weird thing was, earlier in the day when I was getting my mail at my P.O. Box, I scrounged through the post office recycling bin (like I usually do) and found I this little catalogue advertising porn videos which I stuffed ii in my backpack. But when I looked through it later in the day, I noticed it advertised the Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson sex video. It must be weird to be famous on that level. To have your name everywhere; in stranger’s backpacks.

Anyways, the film crew spent the afternoon going up and down Telegraph Avenue filming at different locations. The Intermezzo Cafe set up outdoor tables and chairs in front of their coffee shop so they could film a scene there.

In another scene, Tommy Lee pulls a big, black garbage bag full of garbage out of a garbage can and goes running down the street chasing after the garbage truck.

Then the crew passed by my 25-cent used book vending table on Haste & Tele. I hope they got some good shots. Free advertising.

I was pretty excited about the whole thing. I”m a bit of a star-fucker. What can I say. And its not every day a bona fide Rock Star graces the scene. And most people on Telegraph seemed to get a kick out of it. But there were also the grumblings that I guess go along with celebrity-hood. “Fuck Tommy Lee,” said one guy as he passed me. “I’ll spit in his face.”

Others made a big show of ignoring the whole spectacle. “I could care less,” said Leland, as he rolled a big fat joint on my vending table. Then he positioned himself so he could watch the whole spectacle from a distance, with a look of studied disdain and disinterest on his face.

Fame brings out so many weird, ambivalent feelings in people. On the one hand its: “WOW ITS THAT GREAT GUY!” On the other hand its: “WHO THE HELL DOES THAT GUY THINK HE IS!”

My friend Mick Amok, on the other hand, was visible upset. “I HATE Tommy Lee!” said Mick. “Beebs, the love of my love, was the biggest Motley Crue fan in the world back in the day. She gave head to all four of those guys. I hate them for that. I’ll never get over it.”

Then he made a big speech about how he never wanted to be famous. “I got talent. I don’t need fame,” he repeated, over and over for about 20 minutes. “I never wanted to be famous!” But it was kind of one of those “verily you doth protest too much” kind of deals.

For the big final scene, they had the garbage truck blasting down Haste Street, with Tommy Lee on the front of the truck, raising his arms in the air in triumph, with a big smile on his face as he screamed at the top of his lungs in apparent victory of some sort. So I guess the story has a happy ending. As the truck passed me, I stood up on my chair with my arms in the air, yelling along with Tommy Lee. So, hopefully, I’ll sneak myself into the final cut

The film crew went running down the street to congratulate Tommy Lee on the successful shoot. “Great job, men, very exciting,” I said to the chubby little director as he huffed by me. “Thanks,” he said.

Then they all walked back up to the corner. There was this crazy Berkeley street person who had been standing on the corner all day, waving a “FUCK THE POLICE” sign that he had scribbled on cardboard, and screaming “FUCK THE POLICE!” to everyone who passed by. Really annoying, this high-pitched squawk and the crazed eyes of too many years and too many meds in the nut-house. Just a typical Berkeley street crazy. But as Tommy Lee and the crew approached, he started screaming “FUCK THE POLICE!! FUCK TOMMY LEE!!” over and over. “FUCK THE POLICE!! FUCK TOMMY LEE!!”

As Tommy Lee and the crew passed him he thrusted his sign at Tommy Lee and said “FUCK TOMMY LEE!”

Tommy Lee turned and said over his shoulder as he was crossing the street,: “I could care less about your sign, BITCH!” And then headed off to the sunset. Or to some hotel room with the skanky blonde rock’n’roll chick. But I couldn’t help thinking: “Tommy Lee’s got a little bit of the street in him.”

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Bum (Nov. 5, 2009)

I’ve been homeless now for about 2 and a half years. I’ve been homeless off and on for a good portion of my life. I once tried to add up how much time I’ve spent sleeping outdoors over the years and it came out to about 8 or 9 years, starting at age 19. I wrote about it in my previous book, SURVIVING ON THE STREETS. Which is a goddam classic. Just like my latest book, ACID HEROES. I actually wrote, edited and self-published ACID HEROES (along with the great Pat Hartman) while living out of a sleeping bag in the rainy season. It just about killed me. Try publishing a book out of sleeping bag sometime. But the thing has sold nearly 20 copies already. So I guess it was worth it. I’m still baffled as to why my stuff doesn’t sell better. One theory is that I’m a self-deluded egomaniac with an inflated opinion of my talents (in other words, a typical artist). But that can’t possibly be it. Another theory is that I’m 20 years ahead of my times. Or 20 years behind the times. Or maybe I’m a genius in some alternate dimension of reality. Alas, you can’t cash the checks in this reality.

My life is so weird. Every morning I wake up and 4 feral cats are sitting there staring at me, waiting to be fed. A mother and her 3 kittens. The mother, Blondie, I’ve been feeding for almost 2 years. She’s strictly feral and always keeps a safe distance from me. But the kittens have known me since they was born. So they eat right out of my hands, and sleep nestled at the foot of my sleepingbag. I actually saw them being procreated. About 7 months ago Blondie, the shameless hussy, went wild in an orgy of cat passion. Those cats fucked for days. Non-stop. Some mornings Blondie would be dragging herself down the hill towards that cat food dish with a tom on her back pumping away the whole time. Finally she’d get down to the food dish and brush the tom off her with disdain. Another time, the tom wouldn’t let her be so she climbed way up this tree to get away from him. He climbed up right after her. Followed her all the way out to the end of this tree branch about 30 feet off the ground. Very precariously poised. No way out except down. Then a second female, also in heat, followed the two of them out to the end of the branch. So the 3 of them are sitting up there like a log-jam of backed up traffic. It makes you realize how strong the sex drive is. Even stronger than the survival drive. Willing to risk their lives for a piece of tail. Literally. Somehow, Blondie managed to manuever herself around the tom and escaped down the tree. With the other two cats in hot pursuit. Nowadays, when I see the kittens frolicking around by that tree, I wonder: Do they have any idea that that’s where they came from?

It’s pretty savage how they fuck, too. The tom sinks his teeth right into the back of the females neck. To give him extra pumping leverage, I guess. And when the female gets enough of it, she’s not adverse to slashing the male in the face with her claws. I was embarrassed to watch them. I mean, can’t they go do their business in private instead of right in front of me and my sleeping bag. But I guess I’m kind of a feral human myself. Thats part of my identification with those feral cats, I guess. I live like a wild animal myself, sleeping in the bushes under the stars and the moon and the rain. And we both do the same thing whenever we hear a strange sound in the woods. We both freeze and stare off in the distance in the direction of the sound. And we don’t move until we’ve been able to categorize the sound as either: a.) threatening, or b.) non-threatening. You’re in total survival mode in the deep dark woods. But once the cats realize it’s no threat, they immediately go back to goofing off. They turn it on and off in a second, all day long. Basically, them feral cats act like they’re stoned most of the time. frolicking and romping and investigating and generally just playing. It’s like some weird lesson of life to me, watching them feral cats. And I’ll look at them sometimes as they’re staring at me inscrutably (like cats do). And I’ll think. “They have eyes, and noses, and mouths, and ears, and they eat food and shit it out their kitty asses and fuck … ..” and its like, whatever Force is manifesting them is pretty similar to whatever Force is manifesting me. Sometimes I imagine that its God Himself who’s playing at being them cats. This divine life-force thats eternally dancing through the woods. They’re cosmic cats all right.

When the kittens were real little and still being nursed by Blondie in her secret nest, she would sometimes take the hot dogs that I tossed in her food dish and carry it in her teeth up to her kittens. Then, a couple weeks later, she brought the kittens down to the food dish for the first time. It was so cute to see her marching down the hill with the 3 kittens trooping behind her in a line. Here comes the troops. Now the kittens are about 4 months old and getting bigger every day. The little buggers eat like horses. It’s unbelievable how they pack it away. They’re eating me out of house and home. Or should I say houseless and homeless? Well, that’s enough goddam cat talk for one day. I’m already enough of an art fag as it is. Those cats really got me.

Feral cats on the attack. Blondie, Moo Cat and Keef prepare to pounce.

Brushes with Greatness Part 2: The Secret Origin of “Ace Backwords”

Originally published 2002_11_27

The first famous (or semi-famous, I’ll let you decide where the cut-off point is for true celebrity) person I ever met was Carol Connors. Connors’ claim to fame was, she played the nurse in Deep Throat, the number-one-selling porn movie of all time at that point (I’ve heard its recently been eclipsed by The World’s Biggest Gang Bang starring Annibel Chong).

I was working for a sleazy porno tabloid from Los Angeles at the time. Impulse was the paper’s name, and it really was sleazy, even by porn’s standards. From some of the ads, you had to wonder if it was a front for some kind of underground sex ring or something. This was 1979, and there was an anything-goes feeling at the times, especially in decadent Los Angeles.

Anyways, I wrote a column for Impulse called; “Sin Francisco: Your Bay Area Porno Report” (how’s that for cheezy?) And I’d go to the local strip clubs and interview the latest porn stars or whatever. This was my first and only “success” at that point, age 22, writing a column and doing a comic strip for a sleazy porn tabloid from Los Angeles. I had some hazy dream in my head of being a professional underground artist. But the world mostly refused to cooperate with my dreams. Quite simply, I couldn’t deal with the world. I was a hyper-sensitive, art-fag kind of guy. I had all these strange and tender feelings whizzing around in my head, and that’s what seemed real to me. The so-called Real World outside me seemed un-real. I had gotten a few comics published in the Berkeley Barb, the latest remnant of the ’60s underground. But aside from that, the world seemed completely indifferent, if not outright hostile, to my strange and tender feelings. I sent out my work here and there. But the only encouragement I got was from this sleazy porn tabloid from Los Angeles. They actually printed a couple of my comics: stuff like Dagwood and Blondie having sex and then appearing on the Dick Cavett show and getting in a bitch-fight. “Phil Olsen” — the one-man editor/publisher of Impulse— sent me a postcard along with a $25 check: “Send more stuff. Let your imagination run wild.” And somehow, that postcard inflamed me. I still remember it clearly, 23 years later. For it was the first real encouragement I had gotten.

So I came up with the pen-name “Ace Backwords” — to save my family name from the disgrace of being associated with a sleazy tabloid from Los Angeles (they would do a good enough job disgracing themselves on their own later). Little did I realize that 23 years later I would literally have BECOME Ace Backwords, that almost everyone I knew would know me and call me by that name, that I would cash my checks made out to that name, and that my “real” name would basically cease to exist as an entity in this world.

So anyway, I came up with this column, “Sin Francisco,” and I would hack it out in sort of the style of a second-rate Hunter S. Thompson imitator. He was one of my heroes. And, like Thompson, I was beginning to see how working in the media, even on the minor league level of this sleazy porn tabloid, could be a ticket to ride. For one thing, I got into all the porn clubs for free. And on the months when “Phil Olsen” couldn’t afford to pay me in cash, he’d pay me with a big box of sex toys; huge dildos with accordion-like pieces in the middle that were battery operated and went up-and-down when turned on the vibrator mode (made a great coffee-table conversation piece).

I had done a comic strip take-off on the Mitchell Brothers, called “The Bitchell Brothers” (pretty clever, huh?) which they had liked, so they gave me a free press pass to their club, The O’Farrell Theatre, to snoop around and write about whatever I wanted.

The Mitchell Brothers were among the first pornographers to really cultivate the press. They’d set up the reporters with free passes, hook ’em up with naked chicks, and take out expensive ads in the local papers. I think their underlying assumption re: the press was along the lines of Lyndon Johnson’s classic line: “Better to have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” And they were rewarded for their efforts with over a decade of generally favorable, if not fawning, press from the Bay Area’s finest.

Every two weeks, when the new issue of Impulse hit the newspaper racks, I’d grab 20 copies and carefully stack them in my closet. Then I’d cut out my column and comics and paste them into a big scrapbook. Then I’d intricately color them in and decorate the margins with magic markers. I’d moon over that scrapbook, like I was a real writer and my work was being compiled in this glorious collection. The whole porn business was kind of like that. It was sort of a minor league version of the mainstream media, a Bizarro parallel media universe. And we had our own stars and celebrities and fan-clubs and movie premieres and even our own version of the Academy Awards. And we were just like real stars, except that the whole thing had an aura of loser-dom and shame.

And this, too. It was 1979, post-’60s Sexual Revolution, pre-’80s AIDS epidemic. So everybody was having sex with everybody in every possible combination. Hell, even I was getting laid back then. And, in some circles, the Mitchell Brothers were seen as the vanguard, the cutting-edge of the new Sexual Revolution. They were heroes almost. Not just pornographers, but promoters of sexual freedom and liberation. And there was considered something wrong with you if you weren’t jumping into the sack all the time. How repressed and un-liberated.

At the time, I considered Sex to be the holy grail that would lead me to Happiness, if not downright Enlightenment. So the Mitchell Brothers, to my 22-year-old eyes, seemed to be the Kings of the Party; the ones with virtually unlimited access to the most beautiful young sex-pots in the world. They were the Kings, and the O’Farrell Theatre was their Harem. So I took it as a given that they must be having the greatest time in the world, an assumption I clung to right up to the moment when Jim Mitchell took out a handgun and blew the brains out of his brother Artie.

Anyway, that night Carol Connors was the featured attraction. She got up on stage of the main theatre within the theatre, New York Live it was called. She was wearing a bright white nurses uniform and white nurses cap, and her white mini-skirt barely covering her fat wobbling ass. She looked like some kind of Viking Goddess Amazon. An inflatable love doll robot. She was sort of a cross between a brassy Mae West and wholesome blonde Daisy Mae sex appeal. With a strong jaw and big bones, big curves, tiny waist. She put on a very athletic, energetic show, bounding across the stage, unbuttoning her nurse’s uniform and stripping naked.

After the strip show it was announced over the P.A. that Connors would be appearing in 15 minutes in the Kopenhagen Lounge (how’s that for class?). There were like 4 different theatres within the O’Farrell Theatre, including a big video store. It was truly a porno arcade, one of the first of its kind. All done up first class; red wall-to-wall carpeting, “the Carnegie Hall of smut.” All that was missing was the chandeliers. The Kopenhagen Lounge was an intimate little room; about 50 plush chairs lined the four walls with a little mini stage the size of a bed in the middle. The “dancer” would strip and pose while the customers shined flashlights (provided by the theatre) at her. After her routine, the stripper would go from person to person offering herself for a lap-dance for a couple of bucks. You could stick your hand in her cunt for a couple of bucks, okay? That’s what it really boiled down to once you got past the wall-to-wall carpeting. And the line stretched down the hallway waiting to get in for Carol Connors show.

While the show was going on I talked to her manager/agent, Jack, who looked just like you’d expect a Hollywood porno star’s manager/agent to look; in other words like an undercover narc, with the shades and gold chains and shirt un-buttoned to show off chest-hair, etc. He and Carol were a team, and he talked enthusiastically about their up-coming deals and projects, visits to the Playboy mansion (they actually met with Hef!), etc. I couldn’t help wondering what he thought about his woman in the next room being mauled by 50 slobbering jack-offs with flashlights. What did they talk about at the end of the day when they were in their hotel room? It was a strange, brutal business, the porno business. Everybody involved was either grabbing for money or grabbing for sex. So there were so many angles whizzing by, it was dizzying. Like a big, multi-dimensional jerk-off. And me, I was the most confused of all, for I had somehow added “art” and “love” into this potent mix. I had fallen in love with a 19-year old blonde Swedish stripper, so I was surely the biggest fool of all. There was another guy, a customer, who was always there at the Theatre, a nice Asian guy who was madly in love with this one stripper, Wendy. He’d bring her hundreds of dollars worth of flowers and candy and expensive stuffed animals. He’d pay for a lap dance until his money ran out, and then watch forlornly as she left him, his beloved, to work the rest of the crowd of men. I had a line in my head that sort of made sense at the time: “Even at its most sordid, life is a profoundly spiritual affair.” And that line kind of saved me, for I never lost sight of where I was at, even as I was destined to spend the next 23 years in the gutter, or one small step above. Even in the cut-and-dried world of this haunted hall of neon zombies and sex and price-tags, there was love. And that was the most sickening and painful thing of all.

Later, I stood there in the hallway, interviewing Carol Connors, wearing a robe and not much else. I can still picture her baby face, so milk-fed wholesome, and her Hollywood false eyelashes (just the touch to make her seem like a glossy star). I don’t remember what she said. But I suppose I could look it up in my scrapbook; I still have it somewhere. That’s the weird thing about me: I’ve documented in one medium or other just about everything that’s happened to me over the last 25 years. Mostly I remember thinking: “I’m getting paid money to talk to one of the most beautiful, voluptuous women in the world. Me, the guy who never even had the courage to talk to the girl sitting in the desk next to me in high school.” And from that moment I was hooked on the whole media business. This whole crazy game.

I went back to my apartment and wrote up the interview in a style that was sort of a cheap, second-rate imitation of Hunter S. Thompson (“I was there to Cover The Story…”) who was one of my heroes, the big underground media hipster star. In a weird twist of life-imitating-art, Hunter Thompson Himself would come the O’Farrell Theatre 5 years later, and spend a year hanging around the club, ostensibly working on a big book about the club for Playboy, but mostly ending up too coked-out, and too whored-out, to produce anything.

My interview with Charles Schulz

I’ve met some big-time cartoonists in my day. I’m talking BIG, big-time cartoonists. But some of the biggest stars can turn out to be some of the biggest assholes. I’ll give you just one such example. Charles Schulz. He was a total prick. Yes, that’s right, Charles M. Schulz himself. Good ole’ Sparky. He was a right bloody bastard. I actually met the dude back in 1983. I got his personal home address from a friend of a friend. So I figured I’d drop in uninvited and interview him for a fan-zine I was thinking of putting out. Ya know? Two fellow cartoonists; a meeting-of-the-minds kind of thing. Well, Schulz answered the door himself. But he didn’t seem pleased to see me.”CHUCK! CHUCK!” I said. “I’m one of your BIGGEST fans!” I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and gave him a big, manly hug. “I used to read your comic strip every day when I was a kid. Charlie Brown and Snoopy and all that!”

This seemed to temporarily placate him. But then I said: “So what are you doing nowadays, Chuck? Are you still working on that comic strip of yours? That Peanuts thing?”

His whole demeanor towards me changed after that. In fact, he acted like he wanted to kill me. He said something about how he had to get back to work; some bullshit about a pressing deadline or something like that. Ya know? Like he’s such a big hot-shot he doesn’t have any time to spend with his fans — the ones who made him who he is!

I asked him if he would autograph this cocktail napkin I brought with me. “Make it out to my girlfriend,” I said, “and draw a cartoon of Charlie Bown kicking Lucy in the butt, with Snoopy and the Red Baron flying around in the background.” He complied. Grudgingly.

But the cheap fountain pen he was using bled the ink all over the napkin. I was giving Schulz some good tips for how he could improve his drawing ability when he went completely berzerk. With no provocation on my part, he suddenly lunged at me and kneed me hard in the groin area. Twice. I crumpled to the floor. Then he grabbed me by the collar — this is Charles “Mr. Nice Guy” Schulz. “The Gospel According to Peanuts” Schulz. Good ole’ Sparky — he grabbed me by the collar and slapped me hard in the face, twice. When I looked up from the floor, Schulz was standing directly over me with a big two-by-four, ready to finish me off. “NO SPARKY NO!” I cried. I deftly side-stepped his attack and responded with a manuever that I call the Ace Backwords Karate Chop of Doom; a good solid chop to the back of Schulz’s neck. He went down like a sack of shit. I maced him in the face for good measure. That temporarily subdued him.

But as I was making my exit amidst a cloud of mace, Charles Schulz tearfully spat out those words that would cut me like an X-acto knife. “YOU BASTARD!” he hissed. “YOUR COMIC STRIP WILL NEVER BE NATIONALLY SYNDICATED! YOUR CARTOONS WILL NEVER APPEAR ON HALLMARK GREETING CARDS AND HOSTESS TWINKEES! YOU ARE NOTHING! I AM CHARLES M. SCHULZ!”

I punched him in the head and knocked him unconscious. For an old guy, he really wasn’t all that tough. But the worst thing of all was, in the ensuing melee I ended up losing that stupid doodle he drew for me. I bet that thing would be worth a lot of money today if I sold it on ebay.

So don’t let nobody tell you different. Charles Schulz was a total asshole.

The Strange Case of Maximum Rocknroll

(originally published May 20, 2008)

For years now, there’s been these clumps of “gutter punks” flopped out on the sidewalks of Berkeley. They sit there spare-changing and getting drunk and stoned and fighting. But mostly they just sit there. They remind me of a bunch of beached flounders. They seem like some kind of stunted organism that has stopped developing. When I look at them, I often get this strange acid flashback . .

@ @ @

I saw the Sex Pistols last concert at Winterland in January of 1978. I remember saying to a friend during the ride home: “When punk rock hits the high schools, its gonna catch on like wild-fire.” And then . . . . nothing happened. So I figured I was wrong about Punk Rock like I was wrong about most everything else.

Then, in the summer of 1982, when I was living in quiet Humboldt County, I got an excited phone call from my friend Mary Mayhem. “Its unbelievable!” said Mary. “There’s been all these punk rock shows with all these kids with mohawks slam-dancing and stage-diving and bouncing off walls! Its wild!”

I was madly in love with Mary at the time, so I dragged my ass back to San Francisco and checked out a punk band called Fear at the Elite Club (formerly the Filmore West). It was indeed wild. And I decided to start an underground punk rock newspaper to capture the energy of this emerging youth culture. I interviewed Fear and that was the big feature for what became TWISTED IMAGE # 1. Around the exact same time, MAXIMUM ROCKROLL # 1 was published, with somewhat similar intentions.

So I’d always feel a weird connection with MAXIMUM ROCKROLL. Like two seeds that were spawned from the same soil, but developed in quite different directions. From the beginning, the differences were clear. MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL saw the punk rock movement as a progressive social force. They were constantly proseletyzing on behalf of “the scene” and urging kids to join up and get involved with “the punk rock community.” I, on the other hand, could sum up my feelings by a review I wrote for the record “Punk & Disorderly” in TWISTED IMAGE # 1. “Punk rock is the perfect soundtrack for the Apocalypse.” Like a war reporter, I looked at punk as a fascinating, but ultimately dark and destructive, historical movement. Join up at your own risk, kiddies.

So TWISTED IMAGE and MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL mostly existed as two seperate parrallel universes. But then in the late-80s I was working as a free-lance cartoonist and writer and my stuff was getting published in hundreds of zines, mags, comics and newspapers. So MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL started running a column and comics by me every month. We were co-existing fine until one issue when the publisher of MRR, Tim Yohannon, published a glowing eulogy for the just-deceased Huey Newton, the former Black Panther leader, along with a glowing book review of fellow Panther George Jackson’s prison diaries.

Well, this slightly irritated me. Because, in fact, Huey Newton was a violent, crack-dealing, murdering lunatic. No hero in my book. And the same goes for George Jackson. In fact, Jackson’s book was actually ghost-written by Fay Stender (a Berkeley activist), who later repudiated her own bullshit after she got shot and paralyzed for life by one of Jackson’s thugs for, allegedly “betraying the revolution.”

So I submitted a column for the next issue of MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL, mildly chiding them for glorifying this thug Huey Newton, and laying out the real story about Jackson’s book.

Before the issue went to press, I got a phone call from Tim Yohannon telling me they had decided to drop my column. “It has nothing to do with your politics, of course,” he assured me. “But the MRR collective has decided that you’re a bad writer that nobody wants to read.”

Now, I may not be Shakespeare, but my writing has been read by millions of readers, so it was mildly annoying to be told that my work was no longer up to the high literary standards set by a magazine that was mostly written and read by 17-year-old boys (and chronological adults who still had the minds of 17-year-old boys). And plus, Yohannon was full of shit. And he knew it, and he knew that I knew it. So I told him to get fucked, and I told him they couldn’t run my comics either (the only publication I ever denied my comics to, so there’s another MRR claim to fame). It wasn’t like my ego was bruised or anything — hell, as a free-lancer, I’d had my work rejected and accepted by hundreds of editors, it went with the territory. But something about the whole deal stunk.

TIm Yohannon — the MRR co-founder — was an interesting character. He was one of those guys who talked like a lawyer. Virtually everything that came out of his mouth (in my experience) was a lie, or double-talk, or purposefully misleading (then he could defend himself by saying TECHNICALLY he hadn’t been lying). Just one of those types. A little weasel who was endlessly described as “manipulative.”

This manipulative quality was a trait that came in good stead when, for example, he was working through all the buerocratic red-tape that it took to get the Gilman Street Project going. And he was the driving force behind that thing. I remember as early as 1983, when I was still a San Francisco bike messenger, Yohannon coming up to me and talking up the Gilman Street project. And its still going today, perhaps the possitive side of Yo’s legacy. For the East Bay youth now have a place where they can blast out punk rock power chords and scream and yell at ear-splitting volume. As well as learn valuable life-skills such as how to publish a fan-zine and design rad band logos. By all accounts, Yohannon was a hard worker, with excellent organizational skills.

I’m not sure what exactly irked me the most about Tim Yohannon. For he was a man who inspired many, many irkesome reactions. As well as many of the possitive variety, too. He had been a radical, campus activist in the late-60s. And now here he was in the ’80s, proseletyzing that same failed bullshit to another generation of naive youth. He was always railing against “the multi-national corporations,” of course. Which was odd, considering that Yohannon worked for one of the biggest corporations in the state — the University of California — with full health benefits and retirement plan. Something I doubt many of the punk kids who bought into his dead-end vision of anti-corporate rhetoric, would enjoy.

And, of course, anyone who came into the Maxi pad with a record from one of those “evil corporate record companies” — for instance, fake punks like the Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones, etc — was instantly banned from the Maxi kingdom as a hopeless poseur. Ahh, the evil corporate media. But even odder, Yohannon would then turn on his television set and watch “Perry Mason” and all the other corporate junk that spewed from his TV set. But somehow, that was different.

Probably nobody railed more than Tim Yohannon against those “sell-outs” who exploited the sacred punk rock movement for personal gain. But, oddly, probably nobody reaped more benefits from the Bay Area punk scene than Tim Yohannon himself. Like the house he was able to buy for himself (oh, excuse me, it was owned by “the Maximum Rocknroll collective”). And Yohannon decided who could live there and who got kicked out and what the ground rules of the house were (one of his odd rules were “no boyfriends and girlfriends allowed” — which I guess meant that all the chicks were open season for the host). Or the little metal box stuffed with $20 grand that he kept under his bed, and he decided who would or wouldn’t get chunks of the dough, as well as who would be beholden to him.

But Yohannon — selfless saint that he was — did this all for The Greater Good of the Punk Rock Movement. So it was cool. It probably all came down to the fact that he was a 50-year-old geezer who liked to hit on teenage chicks. It usually comes down to that, doesn’t it. But I’m sure he did this for the greater glory of punkdom also.

In truth, he reminded me of the nerd who never got to hang out with the cool clique in high school. So now he was living out his fantasy as a middle-age man, the head of the coolest clique of high school punks. Weird when you think of it.

Yohannon called all the shots at MRR from beginning to end. Then, the stooges and yes-men that made up “the Maximum Rockroll collective” would rubber-stamp whatever decision Yohannon had come up with. So it was held up as a sterling example of socialism in action. And here’s to the new punks, same as the old punks.

Finally, he ended up getting cancer and died at age 52. I suspect, as it often is the case with these things, that his own body got sick of hanging out with him and checked out. Just as so many of his former friends and associates came to the same conclusion. For his last request, as he lay on his death bed, he requested from his huge and legendary record collection, “The Ha Ha Song” by Flipper, those legendary nihilistic burn-outs. And, on that note, he faded into eternity.

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL, the magazine, still lives on today. I stumbled upon a copy a couple years ago. And it looks remarkably the same as it did in 1982. It was a strange sight. Like discovering a petrified fossil under a rock — this dead thing, frozen in time, where nothing new can ever grow and develop.

@ @ @

Ahh, these weird nostalgic musings as I pass the gutter punks flopped out on the sidewalk. Its a long way from 1982. Perhaps these gutter punks need yet another “anti-corporate” lecture from the political geniuses at MRR. Or perhaps they need to get a job.

Ace buys a new guitar

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Electric Guitars, Acoustic Guitars, & Bass Guitars - Competition Music in Fort Worth, TX

I bought a new guitar yesterday. I hadn’t had one since 2000 when this tweaker chick broke my one good guitar in a fit of pique. And since then, I’ve been banging away on this $20 Good Will guitar for the last 8 years, which was more of a toy than a musical instrument. So I decided it was time to up-grade. Walking into a guitar store is always a nuerotic experience for me. All the guitar store employees are virtuosos and musical snobs. So I always imagine them looking at me and thinking: “WHAT? You think YOU’RE a musician?? I spit on your guitar pick!!” But that could be my imagination. I had actually bought a guitar a couple weeks ago, this $140 clunker — the cheapest guitar in the store. But I couldn’t squeeze any magic out of the thing. So I was hoping they would let me trade it back in and up-grade to a better guitar for a couple hundred more bucks. But they didn’t have to do that. They could figure: “You’re stupid enough to buy the thing, now your stuck with it.” So it was a tense situation. I explained my situation to the young guy behind the counter. “You’ll have to talk to James, the owner,” he said. James looked kind of like a 50-year-old Jimmy Page. James was a dapper fellow, he moved like a dancer, and had vaguely haunted eyes. He examined my clunker guitar for tell-tale nicks and scratches.

“The only thing I did to it was, I changed the strings,” I said.

“You WHAT?” said James, with an expression that implied that I had done something really stupid and he was repressing the urge to slap me in the face, and then throttle me around the throat until I was dead. James had a manner that immediately put you on the defensive. (For some reason, I wondered to myself: “I’ll bet nobody ever calls him Jimmy.”)

“Yeah, I changed the strings to see if that was the problem,” I said. “But that didn’t help, so I put the original strings back on the guitar.”

“Man, would you LOOK at those strings!” James announced to everyone in the store. “I’ve never seen anything LIKE that. What did you DO to those strings? They’re completely smooth as if they’ve been sanded down.”

I stood there feeling really stupid, wondering if I had deformed, spastic fingers or something. Had I somehow ruined the strings while I was hammering out my tender love ballads in E-Flat? I kind of felt like I was in a proctologist’s office and the proctologists suddenly announced: “Would you look at the stool sample this guy just produced? I’ve never seen anything like it! What kind of an asshole would produce something like THAT?” So I felt vaguely humiliated, as well as slightly pissed off, like: “HEY!! Don’t be talking shit about my shit!” But, on the other hand, I’ve never compared my stool sample to other people’s stool sample. So what do I know. So you have to defer to the experts. Thats what its like walking into a guitar shop. You’re helpless. You’re at their mercy.

Anyways, James agreed to refund my money, minus $25 for having to “clean the dirt off the neck,” which was nice of him.

Then the young salesman took me into the next room to help me pick out a new guitar. Now buying a new guitar is tricky. Its kind of like buying new shoes. The shoes might look great and feel great while you’re trying them on in the store. But then, after you walk around in them for a week, you develop these hideous blisters on your feet, and they have to amputate your feet at the ankles, and then you get gangreen and die a slow, hideous death. Buying a new guitar is like that. Only more painful.

Plus, I’m the worst shopper in the world (the previous guitar I had strummed 3 times and bought it on the spot. I HATE trying to decide.). The salesman showed me 3 different guitars and I strummed them a bit.

“Do you like THIS one or THAT one?” he said.

I’m trying to comparison shop. I can never decide. “Well, I like the tone on that one,” I said. “And I like the action on the other one. But that other one is bigger.” I wondered if that counted for something. I held the guitar up-side-down and peered down the neck, as if searching for important clues. “Hmmm,” I said.

Then I played a few of my riffs on the guitar. But I’m nervous because I think the salesman is judging me. They’re all goddam virtuosos and snobs that work at guitar stores. Plus, they have to deal with musicians all day long, and musicians are all egomaniacs, or flakes, or drug addicts (or weird combinations of all three). So they’re a hardened lot, guitar salesmen. Plus, they’ve heard every guitar riff in the world, 8 hours aday for 20 years. So they’re jaded.

There’s a famous story about Jerry Garcia. He worked as a salesman in a guitar store for a short while before he became famous. This customer came into the store, picked up a guitar and whipped off about 4 or 5 hot-shot, fancy-pants guitar riffs in quick succession. And then he suddenly stopped playing and put the guitar down. Garcia looked at him and said: “Whats a matter? You run out of talent?” So working in a guitar store can turn even a nice guy like Jerry Garcia into a snob. Its inevitable.

So I tell the young salesman up-front: “My biggest problem is I’m a mediocre musician. I have clumsy fingering. So number one I need a guitar thats easy to play. And I need a guitar with a nice tone. And one where it stays in tune all the way up and down the neck.” In other words, I want a really great guitar for as cheap a price as I can get away with.

“I know what you mean,” said the salesman. So he’s sympathetic. Or is he just setting me up with salesman charm to pawn off a piece of crap on me? So paranoia reins on both ends of the transaction..

The salesman goes in demonstration mode and strums away on the different guitars. But whichever guitar he plays sounds great because he has actual musical talent. So I want that guitar. But then, when I play it, it still sounds like me. So thats fucked. Its a shame you can’t just buy talent. That would simplify the process.

“Man, thats a nice bit you played,” I said. “What song is that?”

“Thats something I wrote myself,” he said.

“Sounds like something that would get played on the ALICE radio station,” I said. “I mostly just write songs myself. I could never play in front of people.”

“Oh sure you could do it,” he said.

“Are you kidding? Its hard enough for me to play in front of one person in a guitar store.” (I really am nuerotic.)

“It is a stressful situation in a guitar store,” he said.

He asks if I want to see any more guitars. “Forget it,” I said. “I’d never be able to decide.” So I just grabbed one and told him I’d take it. $400 out the door, minus the $120 that James was knocking off for the trade-in guitar.

As the salesman was ringing up the transaction, I said to James: “Of all the art-forms I’ve dabbled in, music is the weirdest. If only it was clear-cut, like: For X amount of dollars you’ll get X amount of magic from the guitar. And if you pay $50 more, you’ll get X amount more magic. But it doesn’t work that way.”

James laughed. Or smirked. Hard to tell some times.

“I was a cartoonist for 15 years, and cartooning is a pretty simple medium,” I said. “You got the paper and the pen and it works the same way every time. Its linear. But music is different. Its more ethereal. It seems to be there one moment, and then its gone.”

“Where’d you get your cartoons printed?” asked the young salesman.

“Magazines like HIGH TIMES and MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL,” I said.

“HIGH TIMES, isn’t that the pot magazine?”

“Yeah.

Then a guy burst into the store and said: “My band is going to be opening for Smashmouth!” This set off a round of congratulations, followed by some unintelligible mutterings that sounded vaguely like: “YOU DIRTY NO-TALENT BASTARD! WHY I HAVE MORE TALENT IN MY LITTLE FINGER THAN YOU HAVE IN YOUR WHOLE ETC ETC….” But that could’ve been my imagination.

Well, to make a long blog short, I walked out of that store with my new guitar.

As I walked down the street, I thought to myself: I’ve accomplished just about everything I wanted to accomplish in this life, aside from finding lasting happiness (and that never seemed part of the equation). I’ve published books. I made a living as an artist for 10 years. I got my picture on the frontpage of papers. I got hit on the head with a chair and suffered a perforated eardrum. So its been a full life.

But the only thing I still want to do is make a hit record and have it played on the radio. Not for the fame or the money or the chicks (thought I’ll take it), because I’ve already had enough experience with that shit to know it can just as easily back-fire on you as the other way. But just for pure bloody kicks. Like working on a puzzle, to see if you can figure out how to connect all the dots. Why not.

Later that night, I took the guitar out and played it a bit. It sounded great. It has some magic, and it really fit my style (thats assuming I have one). I like it. I better like it. Because I know that bastard James isn’t going to go through this shit with me a third time.

We’re number 9,239,719!!

According to http://www.webstatsdomain.com/domains/acidheroes.wordpress.com/ — which ranks the top 30 million websites in the world — acidheroes.wordpress.com is ranked number 9,239,719. And our estimated net worth is $687. (No, we’re not for sale)

I finally cracked the goddamn Top Ten Million.

Aaron Cometbus

March 12, 2008

A couple weeks ago I got interviewed by Aaron Cometbus of the legendary COMETBUS fan-zine. Aaron is another one of those guys I consider “from the class of ’82.” One of those teenage punk kids who was profoundly influenced by the whole punk scene at the time. That whole scene died for me by 1984. But, apparently, its still going. Spotted a review in the latest EAST BAY EXPRESS about Aaron’s “legendary punk band” that was making a “rare” appearance at Gilman Street. The line stretched down the street, some people had been waiting all day in the hopes of getting in for the show. Aaron’s band features the front-man from Green Day — Billie Joe Armstrong. So that shows you how plugged in Aaron is to the whole scene. He’s sort of the literary rock star of the scene. Regularly referred to as a “punk rock Kerouac.” The thing — COMETBUS — mostly goes over my head. Probably because I’m 10 years older than Aaron and have already “been there and done that” by the time Aaron gets to it. But I’m impressed by how much the kids of his generation relate to his writiing. And he’s an undeniable “star” in a scene thats produced precious few of them.

He caught me at a flat moment. We sat there on the sidewalk by “my spot” on Telegraph & Haste and I chain-smoked and tried to think of something signifigant, or at least clever, to say. And mostly failed. I’m always intimidated by handsome guys. Even when they’re nice guys like Aaron. Aaron Cometbus always reminded me of the cool guy in high school who effortlessly hung out with the coolest of the cool crowd. But never looked down on the un-cool kids. Which only made him seem cooler.

“I always thought your 25-cent book vending table idea was a stroke of genius,” said Aaron.

“More like a stroke of desperation,” I said. “Somehow, I never pictured myself at age 51 selling junk on a street corner.”

He asked me about the exciting Telegraph Avenue scene.

“Its pretty much turned into a skid row,” I groused.

We gossiped a bit about the old fan-zine scene. Darby Romeo, of BEN IS DEAD zine, was rumored to have completely dropped out and turned into a recluse and joined a weird religious cult. Turns out she’s in Hawaii working for a school that teaches young girls how to surf. Which seemed exactly right for a former SASSY afficionado. So there’s your fan-zine up-date.

Aaron and I chatted some more. I don’t know who gets more props: Me, name-dropping him. Or him, name-dropping me. Probably him. He’s got way more “Google search” hits after his name. Which is the new barometer for fame. Myself, I’m sort of a weird, minor-league legend in certain circles. Which is nice. But it doesn’t help pay the rent. Or alleviate this persistent painful rectal itch. So, in other words, I’m fucked.

Araon asked me about some obscure, sappy comic strip I had done about a Paul McCartney album (“Red Rose Speedway”) back in 1987. Which is weird that he would remember it 21 years later, it was only published in one place, the UC Berkeley college newspaper. But I guess thats why he’s the Kerouac of punk. Kerouac, of course, was known for his attention to detail. Had a bit of a photographic memory.

Anyways, we concluded our chat, shook hands, and went off with the rest of our lives (as horrifying as that prospect can sometimes be).

Now I’m at Raleigh’s across the street, drinking a pint of dark beer and watching a dull college basketball game. I’ve wasted this whole day. I’ve wasted so many days. And yet, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. What ARE we supposed to be doing? I’m surrounded by bums who never do anything. They sit around and get stoned and drunk all day long and make noises (“socializing” I guess its called). Others of them hang around coffee shops all day doing nothing. Zombies. Then there’s the ones who camp out at the public computers on the campus playing mindless computer games all day long.

Then there’s the drones who work at the local establishments. Frittering away their hours, “watching the clock” until Friday when they can sit around and watch TV all day.

Then there’s the hordes of Asian college students swamping the campus, just looking to slot into the machine like mindless clones.

And then there’s me. I guess I’m a zombie, too. Water seeks its own level, right? But then, I did draw a memorable comic strip about Paul McCartney back in 1987, so at least there’s something on my resume.

I kept looking for a “scene” to plug into. And when one wasn’t there, I set out to make one myself. And that turned into an even bigger horror.