8/31/05 The Rise Of Communism

For the last week I�ve been laying out the pages for a book of lyrics and poetry I am going to self-publish.

Last night I went to the Angelica to see the film Junebug. A quiet movie with very interesting characters. It was set in the south when I son visits his home with his new wife from New York City.
There is a funny character who is an outsider artist who paints civil wars battles with the soldiers shooting bullets from their cocks. On one painting he doesn�t have room for General Lee�s gargantuan phallus so he wraps around unto the back of the canvas.

A few nights ago I read a Tibetan death prayer that gave me a nasty case of existential angst. Thinking of it gave me an anxiety attack in the middle of the movie. It�s odd how close an anxiety attack can be to a moment of satori. Charles Manson said that fear makes one wholly conscious.


Ever since the collapse of the Soviet empire the U.S. government has been telling third world countries that free market economies will bring them prosperity. Unfortunately hard economic times have caused many nations in South and Central America to question free markets economic.

The most glaring example is Venezuela which has embraced socialism and buddied-up with Cuba communist leader Fidel Castro. A few years ago it seemed that communism was dead and buried, but now one must wonder if a new wave of communism might sweep the third world as free market economies falter under rocketing energy costs and the usual mismanagement.

The threat of a new wave of communism look even more likely when we look at the dramatic rise of China as an economic and military power. Nations emulate those who are the most powerful and successful. It appears that as the United States suffers economic and political decline China will rise as the superpower of the future.

The rise of China is accelerated by the supply side economic policies of the current administration. For years the administration has been telling the public that is we run the budget deep into dept so that we can give the ultra-rich huge tax cuts and corporate welfare programs, that those rich folks will invest the money in new business ventures that will provide new jobs. What they didn�t tell us is that those jobs will be in China or in a most of other Asian third world countries.

If we take closer inspection of what is taking place in the U.S. economy we find that the tax cuts for the rich have made the economy grow, but only the super rich have experienced a growth in income that creates the statistical economic growth that the administration brags about. While the administration points to new jobs in the U.S, they fail to mention that most of these jobs are minimum wage jobs in the service sector. For the fourth straight year poverty rates have grown in the U.S, despite relatively low unemployment rates. For those that haven�t experienced it firsthand, I can testify that it�s hard to survive when the only job available is pumping gas or serving fast food.

Meanwhile all the new manufacturing jobs go to China where low labor costs ensure high profits to the wealthy investors. Many American companies are focused in China as an exciting new market to sell their products to. But if American companies manufacture their products I China, and sell them to China, how does the U.S. benefit. It doesn�t accept to the extent that the rich stockholders earn profits.

The working class Americans are being left out of the administration�s economic strategy and the benefits that result from that strategy. It was created by the rich for the rich.

Meanwhile China is using the money from their economic explosion of growth to expand their military to alarming proportions. One may ask why our president would put the Chinese people above the American people. The answer is that he�ll do what ever benefits his elite benefactors and billionaire patrons.

8/30/05 The Sick Pies

When I got out of high school I played drums for a punk rock band called Friction. The group always had a gang of lunatics that followed us around and made trouble. Often they would do something that would cause us to be banned from the clubs we played. Random acts of vandalism were a favorite.

These people created a circus-like environment for our entertainment. Usually half of the audience would find its way into the dressing room to snort coke and act like idiots.

One of these was Brian Held, or B.R.ian as he went by as a cartoon artist. When I first met Brian he came to my apartment with a mutual friend. He dressed in tattered jeans and a motorcycle jacket and carried decorated clubs made of large animal bones with screws protruding from them for extra menace.
They looked like something out of a Mad Max movie. Brian soon became a regular with the group. Often riding to shows in the band’s van.

Other hanger’s on included Vince Pacini, an Italian kid from a slightly wealthy family with a bum eye. The eye was rumored to have been caused by a bought of childhood cancer. The eye was a little distorted and aimed way off course.

Vince was a compulsive liar who always had an outrageous tale of some adventure he was soon to undertake. Usually gold mining in Saudi Arabia or the like. He would tell you his yarns in all earnestness even while you were laughing in his face. There seemed to be a disconnect from reality on this issue.

He was also prone to walk into a McDonalds and set upon some unsuspecting cashier and demand free food for the entire crew because his father owned the place. He would lie with such force that the poor girl would be at a loss as to what to do. If you didn’t know he was a lunatic, his lies were just outrageous enough to sound true.

In a moment of brilliance Vince and a friend were driving and partying and decided to break into a rural convenience store to steal the money and get cigarettes. They went in and rifled a few bucks from the till and then left. As they drove away, the owners who lived above the store saw them out the window. After driving away they realized they forgot the cigs.

And here’s where the smarts come in, they went back to steal the cigarettes even after they’d been spotted. Of course when they got there the police where waiting and a high-speed chase ensued through rural PA. After the chase went for about 20 miles they missed a turn and ended up stuck in someone’s front yard. For their exploits Vince’s friend went to jail, but because of his family’s money and connections Vince got off Scott-free.

Another of the Friction hanger’s on was Blink, who became our lighting man for a period. Blink could always be found with a bottle of Southern Comfort in his hand, which he ceremoniously pushed on everyone else. A brutal form of refreshment to say the least. You could pour a lid full in the bottle’s cap and light the stuff on fire to warm your hands on a cold winter’s night. The only catch to Blink’s forceful generosity was that the next week he’d be whining that everyone should buy him a case of the rotgut because we drank so much of his stash.

Blink also had the unholy distinction of being known to greet guests in his bathrobe. And for good measure he could always be counted on to accidentally flash his guests before the visit was over. Eventually he was arrested for wearing a dress and peeping in people’s windows, after which he disappeared from our little scene.

Then there was Steve, a soft-spoken man who hauled our equipment and crew from gig to gig in the back of his old green bread truck. Steve always traveled with a German Shepard dog. He bread the dogs in a mountain cabin and traded them to the local Hari Krishna farm in exchange for magic mushrooms. The Krishna trained them to be seeing-eye dogs and sold them to fund their community.

Steve was also a very successful pot farmer, whose seventh generation skunkweed yielded 12-inch glistening buds that would put you halfway into a coma. He always kept a garbage bag full of the stuff above his dashboard and when the group went to gigs out of town we always arrived brain dead from a non-stop supply of his Cheech and Chong sized spliffs.

Then there was Bad Brad. He was your stereotypical bad boy in black leather and dark good looks. A ladies man to the drunken white-trash sluts who haunted the local dives. Brad seemed to be completely without morals. He would be your best friend to your face and stab you in the back in a moment’s notice.

Brad was also a bit of a liar who told of his heroic exploits in Vietnam, although it turned out he never left the mainland. It was also suspected that Brad was a bit homo, despite his stud status.
On one mysterious night Brad took Brian for a ride deep into the forest in his van. Finding a dark pull-off he parked the van and sat staring at Brian as if waiting for something. After a few minutes, when Brian failed to deliver Brad drove off and the incident was never mentioned again.

Eventually this crew became known as the ‘Sick Pies.” The name came when Friction played at a huge outdoor party at the Sig Phi fraternity in some forgotten college town. Brad was drinking with some of the frat boys and someone ask him, “Are you a Sig Phi.”

A little wasted and not sure what they said he answered, “Yeah we’re all sick pies.”

And the name stuck.

So our regular group of Sick Pies along with an ever-changing array of extra stragglers would follow the group from town to town. They never served any real practical purpose, such as carrying equipment or paying the cover charge at the door. It was always, “I’m with the band.” Sometimes half the audience would be “with the band.” Meaning we got paid nothing when working for the door. Mainly the sick pies just partied and caused trouble.

Now the aforementioned Brian was something of a genius who never read a book. He was a walking performance artist who spoke in surreal abstractions. For those that learned to understand his bizarre form of communication he could make cynical comments on social situations without those being commented on knowing what he was saying.

He was a true working class punk who had contempt for everything and tried to poke a hole in every bit of mendacity. You could always count on him to say the wrong thing at the right time. On one occasion Friction was playing a small yuppie dive in Harrisburg, PA. Right as Craig, the band’s singer, was holding a coke spoon up to his girlfriend’s nose the club’s manager walked into our dressing room. Now you might think that this sort of behavior would be expected from a punk rock band in the 1980s, but the manager was shocked and outraged.

Sitting in the dressing room was the entire band, our manager, the folk singer Jeffrey Gaines, a few groupies, and Brian. The club manger gave us all an angry lecture as if we were naughty schoolboys. As silly as it sounds we all sat in total silence as he gave his speech and tried to set all right with the world. When he finished, the room was taken by an awkward pause. On cue, Brian opened the door to exit yelling behind him, “OK, see ya later guys, thanks for the horse.”

While the fans of most bands yell out their favorite tunes or adoring accolades such as “You guys rock,” but on old recordings Brian and our other fans can be heard shouting inspirational chants such as “Shoot your breakfast for dinner,” “Bleed from the hole,” and “Play one we know.”

Brian was also known to do some creative dancing while the group played. The 80’s were a horrible time for punk bands in most of America. On a usual night the dancefloor at our shows would be filled with yuppie couples who would rather be hearing cover versions of the latest Flock Of Seagulls hit than a punk band playing original music. In the middle of such as group you would find Brian dressed in a spiked collar and black leather po-go-ing by himself. He didn’t seem to give a fuck what anyone else thought, he did his own thing.

On the same night as the cocaine incident Brian was in rare form on the dancefloor and smashed his head against the corner of the PA monitor causing a bloody gash on his forehead. Despite the bleeding wound he kept dancing the rest of the night. By the evening’s end the entire dancefloor, the walls, and the clothes of anyone else who was brave enough to get out on the dancefloor, were covered in patterns of crimson blood spots.

At 3 AM as the band was loading out the equipment Brian was alone with a mop and a bucket cleaning his own blood from the floor and walls. The manager bullied him into it after angry professionals complained that their white party dresses and khaki trousers were ruined by a bleeding lunatic who was “with the band.”


Brian was the guy who could be counted on to smash a bottle over his own head to liven up a boring party. He once took it into his head that he wanted his fingers to be longer. To this end a tried to cut the webbing between his fingers. Luckily the plan was abandoned before things to too bloody.

On a personal level Brian was a gentle and giving person. Always the one you could go to when you needed help. His violence was always symbolic, as an act of performance art. He once told me he wanted to write a manifesto against society and make copies of it, then strap explosives to his body and climb to the top of the memorial tower in the town square and blow himself up. Not in any way that anyone else would be hurt, but to scatter the manifesto copies far and wide.

Being punk rockers in the age of hair bands always kept Friction in the underdog status. The local hair bands always made more money than us, and always seemed more favored by the club owners. None of us new a thing about the music business, including our coke-dealer manager who wouldn’t have known a recording contract from a crack-pipe, but succeeded in making money by selling $90 grams of blow to the band members. Thanks to his side business the band members often walked unto the stage all simultaneously wiping our noses from the last minute lines, as if it were some kind of stoner-version of a boy band dance routine.

Because of our naiveté about the music business we spent our time and energy playing endless gig in backwoods dives to people who wanted to hear top 40 covers or heavy metal. Nightly we endured catcalls for Sweet Home Alabama, Back In Black, or when dissatisfied audience members wanting to hear Eric Clapton’s hit yelled out, “Do Cocaine,” we dutifully responded “Give us some.”

It was years of beating our heads against the wall without any long-term goal in mind. No plan at all. We thought some label executive would just happen to wander into a bar in some nowhere town in rural Pennsylvania and reward our undiscovered brilliance with a recording contract.

This was the backdrop that fueled our major attitude problems. Within our first year we were banned from most of the venues we performed at across PA.

At Princeton University we played a ritzy frat house where our entire audience was one hippie chick practicing her ballet moves. I was in my political-radical phase and had taped Time Magazine pages with Ronald Reagan’s photos all over my drum kit.

During the performance the Sick Pies wrote graffiti on the walls saying “Anarchy For Princeton,” which brought weeks of phone calls to my house asking for money to cover the damages.

That night the hotel room was like a decadent nightmare from a 1950s drug scare movie. People wasted into oblivion, both males and females were passed out on beds, on the floors, and in bathtubs. Lit cigarettes burned holes in people’s clothing as those who passed out were demoted to serve as human ashtrays. The powerful downers that everyone was taking put people in such a comatose state that they were undressed and molested without waking from their stupors. Hotel room lamps and bed frames were set ablaze. Pillows and beds were shredded and tossed about. It was pure bedlam.

In Elizabethtown we were booked to play at an alcohol-free Christian school. We rolled in with cases of Budweiser in tow, causing a panic. Our audience consisted of two geeks in skinny ties trying their luck with the new wave look, and two girls who sat in the corner with a sour look on their faces.

Near the end of the night a guy walked through and yelled “These girls say you suck.”

Joe our guitar player asked the girls, “Why don’t you leave then?”

The event got so blown out of proportion that the next day the newspaper claimed that we threatened to rape the woman and tear down the building.

In State College, PA. A fraternity booked us for an annual salamander eating party. I knew it was going to be trouble when we were setting up our equipment and a muscle bound frat brother came into the room and stood in front of us and crossed his arms.
“So you guys are punks, huh?” he asked.

For the night’s festivities the frat boys had created a couple of small ponds in their basement and filled them with hundreds of live salamanders and newts. Within the first hour of the party all the doomed amphibians had been gobbled up by these shining young examples of American manhood for the sake of some cockeyed show of bravado.

The first half of the gig went OK, even though no one had ever heard the strange music we were playing by odd artists with names such as The Clash, the Talking Heads, and the Velvet Underground.
But soon it all went haywire. The frat boys shut off the electricity on us and started playing disco records. Since the only thing they couldn’t shut off was the drums, I played an extended drum solo. I was never clear on what happened next, but I recall some furniture was broken and a switchblade was pulled. The last thing I remember is hauling our equipment while one of our crew was holed up high in a tree in the frat house’s front yard yelling “I hate fucking frat boys!” over and over again.

At the biggest punk club in Philadelphia as our show ended one of the Sick Pies unrolled a long fire hose and threw it down the stairs. On the way home we realized we were low on gas. We scraped together 20 bucks to fill the bread truck and pulled into an all-night gas station. Craig and I, and a few of the Sick Pies headed for the bathroom. As soon as we entered all hell broke loose. Within 30 seconds the place was demolished. The commode smashed, and as I was pissing in the sink, the fluorescent ceiling lights, fixtures and all came crashing down into the sink. The station attendant ran in to see what the commotion was as we ran back to the van. As the attendant threatened us with arrest Vince kept yelling mindlessly, “Call my lawyer, call my lawyer.”

Finally we gave him our 20 bucks even though we got no gas and drove off before he could complain too much. As we drove off and looked out the truck’s back window to see him fold his forehead into his arm on top of the gas pump as if he didn’t know what had just hit him.

Now we were back on the road but dangerously out of gas. I had mixed Quaaludes and cocaine and was babbling to the poor sod who was unlucky enough to sit beside me about the fluidity of reggae rhythms as compared to rock beats. Driving on fumes we reached a rest area on the turnpike to refuel. Piling out of the van we swore to the more level-headed members of the entourage, Steve and Jon, the group’s bass player, that we would not engage in any illegal activities inside.

As I came out of the bathroom I noticed Craig was at the phone booth stacking torn out pages from the phone booth into a crumpled pile and had a lighter as if he were preparing to start a campfire. Luckily at that moment Jon also spied the action and dragged Craig back to the van before he ended up in prison for a major act of arson.

All in all in seemed a wake of destruction trailed behind us. As one club owners said to our manager, “I understand you guys are artists, but we don’t want that kind around here.”

Often it was just the vast amounts of drugs and alcohol that our fans consumed that scared off club owners. It wasn’t unusual to see people passing out on the dancefloor from Quayluude stupors. I used to judge how successful and show was by the amount of vomit in and around the bathroom. The police showed up at our performances so often that we dubbed them, “the fan club.”

The band’s dressing room was always a madhouse where some lunacy was taking place. I would hardly bat an eye when I walked into the room to find Brian huddled in a ball in the middle of the floor with garbage cans, chairs and other debris and furniture piled on top of him like a sculpture of found objects that reached towards the ceiling. To add to the merriment Vince the one-eyed Italian was hurling beer bottled at the creation, covering the floor with shreds of broken glass.

Trying to work the music business with the Sick Pies around was hopeless, but then again, perhaps they kept of from becoming whores. The biggest club in Harrisburg, PA was the Metron. The club’s manager was a local music mogul who wasn’t too fond of Friction, but booked us for a series of dates because our manager blackmailed him with threats of exposing some homosexual secrets he held.

We often double billed with other ‘up & coming’ acts. One such act was a glammy new wave hair band whose name long ago faded from memory. The group’s manager was rumored to have label ties and we were hoping to impress him. The dressing room had one large mirror that both bands shared. As might be expected the hair band was hogging the mirror space all night long as they primped and sprayed their magnificent quaffs.

The group’s portly manager sat on a couch beside our manager.
A coffee table with a picture of soda sat in front of them. As our manager tried to chat up theirs, Brian stood directly in front of them and began mocking the hair band by pretending to comb his hair in an effeminate manner. He then unzipped his fly and began combing his public hair, and then dipping his comb into the picture of soda that both mangers were pouring drinks from, he continued to comb his hair.

Throughout Brian’s performance both managers sat looking, theirs dumbfounded, ours exasperated. Looking at the picture of soda their manager simply said, “I don’t think I want any more of that.”

Needless to day he didn’t take us under his wing and lead us to fame and fortune.

Bob Dylan has said of his music, “Every song I write is a protest song.”

I think we felt that way in Friction as well. Our very existence as a band and a small-scale social phenomenon was a protest. But in the end the reality we protest against is always unmovable. In the end we always fail. The best you can hope to do is be a thorn in the side of the placid status quo.

But perhaps what is more important is the experience of expressing rebellion. It is a statement of life. A declaration of individuality.

In our later years the group fell prey to our own bad behavior. Band members became consumed with drug and alcohol abuse, which hampered our ability to perform or record music. Once the music was gone there was nothing left. No point in going on. Instead of going out with a bang we just ceased to exist without much notice. By that time the scene surrounding the group had already begun to dissipate. Soon everyone just faded into the woodwork of small town life. It was as if nothing had ever happened. What was left of a local music scene returned to the usual heavy metal, grunge, and top 40 cover bands.

After I left the area and began new creative endeavors, when I returned to the area and would meet people from that scene I would sometimes feel annoyed at the enthusiasm they felt for the past. The group was tied up in the memories of their misspent youths when they weren’t saddled with mortgage payments, stale marriages, and dead end jobs.

8/29/05 MOMA and Mediocre Music

Saturday morning I went to MOMA. Heather gets free passes because she works for AM EX. I wasn’t feeling the greatest, which impeded my ability to enjoy the artwork. Although the Dali sculpture with the loaf of bread is ALWAYS inspiring. I think looking at great art re-wires your brain a little bit. It makes me want to break from the mundane and think more freely.

I seemed to be attracted to the ugliest and most jarring works. The Rauschenberg stuff and the Jasper Johns stuff affected me. Pollack’s giant canvases are impressive. They’re like separate worlds that you can sink into.

Saturday night we went to the North Sixth club. A local hot-spot for indie rock bands in swingin’ Williamsburg. The top room was sold out so we paid $8 each to go into the downstairs lounge. When I walked down the steps I was surprised to see a tiny little room with 8 folding chairs against the wall. The stage was tiny and the whole place was grimy and run down. The performer was a guy with a folk guitar playing along with tracks from his iPod. He was from Texas and touring the Northeast. Except from Heather and I the only people in the audience were his girlfriend and two buddies.

He had a beefy voice and sang re-re-hashed emo and grunge type lyrics. Not a bit of creativity anywhere to be found. What made the situation uncomfortable was that if we left his entire audience was gone. Pretty tough we you came all the way from Texas. And he was trying to work the crowd (IE: us) talking to us personally from the stage. But mediocrity should not be encouraged and after three painful tunes we snuck out the back. Sometimes it’ shard not to give up on rock and roll there is so much boring crap out there.
Everyone wants to be an artist, and creativity and originality are not in vogue. It’s all about imitating those who make the big money.

On my way out I ran into my friend Steve Koester (A singer songwriter of a high caliber) and his wife. Steve was pretty wasted. I asked him how the music biz was treating him and he responded drying, “ I am unbelievably wealthy.” Midwestern irony always resonates with me.

This morning I was posting an old piece of writing to some writer’s groups online. The piece was called The Mall Of America and was from the Apology writing. When I read it I was confronted with some harsh facts. At that time I had such a strong sense of destiny. I was surrounded by excitement and energy. Like the Blues Brothers I felt I was on a mission from God. It’s amazing how far I’ve fallen from that time. I wish I knew how to recapture that focus. Sometimes it seems only violent upheaval will do the trick. After all, at that time I was living in a car.

8/25/05 Bad Hudoo In The Air

The Homeless Experience

Let the cruel world be my guru. Unfortunately these past five years I have developed a masochistic streak that caused me to enjoy the cruelty and sometimes forget the goal.

Perhaps this is not completely true. To seek detachment and still live immersed in life is a balancing act. The trick being to neither live so detached that life is passionless, or to live so immersed in the moment that the spirit drowns in passion.

For years I lived slightly more on the detached side of life. Existing quietly. Working steadily to gain material status. Years were passing by and I was not living or growing. To counteract this I took a conscious leap to the other side and immersed myself in experience. That was five years ago and the effects of this have played a major role in bringing me to my current station. And where is that station? Right now I am writing with one hand as I drive 70 mph on RT 322 West. I feel I have reached bottom. Only desperate measures cold create a miracle and save me. Nadine is right in her criticism. I cannot turn to anyone else unless I resurrect myself first. Although my plight frightens me, somehow my emotional distress is real, yet limited. Deep inside it no longer touches me. As I enter the Lewistown narrows the sun comes out. The mountains are topped with wisps of blue haze. The green mounds appear like sensuous beds of broccoli. The panorama looks like a painted canvas. I imagine that I could stop the car and throw a stone that would tear through it and leave a gaping hole into another dimension.

As I enter the locale of my youth time recedes. Although my earlier experiences with poverty were not as dramatic as this one, they still had a profound effect on me. My parents were peasants. Both were forced to drop out of high school during the eighth grade to help support their families. When they married and had children they lived from paycheck to paycheck. They had neither the education nor foresight to escape their lot. It was always my hope to one day provide them with comfort. When I completed high school attending college was not even an option to be considered.

Not long after my eighteenth birthday I spent an evening tripping with my girlfriend. Many people say that using drugs such as LSD makes them lose touch with reality. I found that LSD often made me painfully aware of reality's harsh truths. At the time I was living with my parents in their rented apartment. As always they were struggling financially. I remember being overtaken by an overwhelming sense of guilt for being a burden on them. I took what little money I had in my wallet and insisted that my mother put it towards one of their many outstanding bills. I was so distressed by my guilt that I stayed out all night so I wouldn't have to face them. Nine days later Janet and I moved into our first apartment.

In 1980 when Reagen took office the economy was sinking fast. For nearly two years I could not find a job, regardless of how hard I searched, or how many potential employers I tried to impress with my enthusiasm. With no job I was quickly swallowed into a spiral of downward mobility. One of Reagen's first actions was to end welfare assistance for all able bodied males.

There is one moment from that period in my life that has remained clear in my memory. I was in a local grocery store and I had five dollars with which to feed Janet and I for four days. It was as I stood in front of the neatly stacked boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that my feelings of hopelessness and desperation first began to change to bitterness and resentment. I watched the happy shoppers piling their carts high, enjoying abundance which far exceeds any human need, suddenly the entire structure of our civilization's moral codes began to fall into absurdity. My mind raced with covetous impunity; 'every society, whether democratic or communist, is based on the ideal that each individual is part of the whole. It is expected by the whole that the individual will obey laws and follow social norms for the good of the whole. In exchange for this the individual will share in the bounty which the whole creates and enjoys. The problem is, if an individual has fallen out of the whole, and is excluded from the bounty which the whole enjoys, even to the point where not only the individual's dignity but his entire existence is in peril, does the society still have the right to expect the individual to obey the laws which benefit the whole?'.

A minute later I lifted an eight pound package of ground beef off the shelf and stuffed it into my pants. I had never stolen anything before. Poverty had reduced me to thievery. My self-image would never be the same. During that time I viewed society as my nemesis. When you are poor many people who earn large incomes deride you for any meager help that the government might offer. In my ire I reasoned that if these people's well paying jobs were reduced to four instead of five days a week there would be enough work for everyone and they would not have to worry about their tax dollars going to feed those who could not find work. But such 'pink' suggestions would never be considered by such people.

Poverty made me an insolent example of the proverbial 'angry young man'. Age may have tempered my disposition, but I hold fast to the memories of my struggles. I look to them to help me appreciate any blessing which life bestows. I look to them so I am never blind to the injustice that is an inextricable part of our world. Every nation in every age had its forgotten poor. And while I condemn the rich for their lack of charity, I feel guilt because compared to so many in the world I live in unimaginable plenteousness. America's homeless are a class unto themselves.

One of my best experiences in college was the making of a documentary film on homelessness. To make the film we traveled across the East Coast, from New York to New Orleans, observing and speaking with the beggars, prostitutes, and con men who live in the crevices of urban affluence. I was a co-director on the film which was financed and directed by Nadine. Our now de-funked relationship was in its early stages. We left State College to begin the journey on August 16, 1992.

On our first morning we went to a shelter called The Samaritan Inn in Raonoke, Virginia. At first we were intimidated by the people and environment. After walking by the building a few times we gathered our courage and began interviewing the people who were streaming in for free plates of hot dogs and beans. In the next hour we interviewed fourteen people. Among them a young man who tried to commit suicide on his first night in the streets, a red faced wino who cursed George Bush for sending aid to the Russians, and an elderly veteran who after fighting for his country in two wars cannot afford to maintain a home. As tears rolled down his cheeks he stated simply "this ain't no life, this ain't no life."

During the following days we traveled to Cherokee, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and on to New Orleans. Our first day in New Orleans was spent talking to street beggars and filming under bridges where the cardboard box communities tend to thrive.

That night, because our budget was getting increasingly slim we rented a room at a $20 dive. Once inside we found it to be far worse than we could have imagined. Besides general dilapidation, we found stained and dirty sheets, unbearable stench, and a polluted bathroom. Our complaints to the manager turned into a heated argument and we ended up without a room and no money refunded. With nothing left in our budget for another room we drove for hours wondering what we could do. At the time the irony of the situation never crossed my mind. Of course we would never consider joining our subjects in their shelters or cardboard boxes, so we broke into a campground, pitched tent and slept, then left before the owners found us out.

After a second day of shooting in a New Orleans shelter we returned to Atlanta to film fifteen hundred people standing in the rain waiting for a free meal. Inside the kitchen we watched as a Catholic nun spoke to the crowd over an antiquated P.A. system. As she spoke they ignored her and went about eating their food and talking among themselves. To my surprise I heard the sister speak my name as she placed the microphone into my hand. Almost instantly the room went silent. As the faces of hundreds of downtrodden human beings gazed at me questioningly I found myself searching for a way to explain our intentions and account for our motives in this project. As filmmakers we would like to believe that our work would help these people, but the more likely truth is that as individuals they would never see a noticeable benefit. On the other hand with every story of poverty and degradation we captured on tape we would personally gain. I stammered through a declaration of our altruism and the potential film subjects abruptly turned away and resumed their conversations.

Assuming we had struck out we waited outside the kitchen exit with our camera. After about an hour of waiting they began to pour out of the building, many eager to speak their peace. It was as if we had unstopped the gap for an endless flow of bottled up emotions. People stood in line and we couldn't move the camera fast enough. I felt overwhelmed by a flood of pathos, wrath, and resigned consternation. We heard stories of every kind. From rich college kids who threw their lives away to drugs, to middle class workers whose plants closed down leaving them without a future. We heard street corner preachers who warned of Armageddion times. We heard of an old woman turned away at a church gate in freezing cold. One man told us of his method of robbing at knive-point those who would ignore his request for donations. We heard from the mentally ill, cast out by families and shunned by psychiatric hospitals. Of men and women who gave up, too discouraged to care or try Of a man who claimed he had equal opportunity but drank it away. And one particularly eloquent black man who described the homeless situation in terms of social/economic exploitation. The stories went on and on. We no longer had to ask questions. The voices went on of their own impetus. And all this from one shelter in one city with eight other shelters. And there were more stories in every city in the United States. And beyond that we may only imagine what horrors exist elsewhere in the world.

As the voices continued I felt numb. My eyes began to wander from the unending parade of faces up to the horizon of the Atlanta skyline. Up to the top of the skyscrapers where men of power went about the business of making the decisions that define our society and create our economy. My eyes were filled with the images of humanity's power and success, and my ears were filled with the stories of humanity's sorrow and disgrace.

Previous to this experience homeless people were an abstraction. A theoretical 'they' without name or face. Now that is not the case. The strongest image I hold from the journey is of a woman who said, "We're people too. We just don't have the things you all do." Speaking with these people, seeing their faces, looking into their eyes, has effected me in ways I may never come to terms with. When I watch the evening news, when I think of our economic structure, even when I sit down to eat my breakfast, my entire view of the world has been altered by these experiences. Many in this country can claim ignorance when it comes to the conditions of the downtrodden. I cannot.

for mroe info please visit mt website at http://www.caeserpink.com

8/22/05 Job & His Brethren

Last night I did some work on the track ‘The Amazing Tenacity Of Job & His Brethren.’ The tune was co-written by Glenn Stella, a producer I did some recording with. The original computer recording he did had a crazy sample built into the rhythm track.
I’m not sure what the sample was, but I had no access to it and therefore couldn’t reproduce it.

I tried a variety new sample sounds in its place but nothing seemed to work. Then a few weeks ago I was watching the movie Skeleton Key. They had a lot of voodoo drumming and singing from old scratchy records in the movie. It reminded me of Moby’s one semi-original idea of using samples from old blues records in his techno music. It seemed like what I needed for Job.

So yesterday I went into my old field recordings of back porch gospel singers and made a sample of an old black woman singing “Oh Lord.” The sample fit the bill perfectly. It gave the song just a touch of creepiness that sounds both modern and harkens the past. The track is meant to merge modern digital sounding rock and the old time blues and gospel spirit, so the sample really helped get the mood across.

8/21/05 The Credit Card President

I have a friend who is married and has two kids. His wife was out of work and they were struggling to make ends meet. I heard that the factory he worked for closed up shop and moved to China leaving him without a job.

Concerned about his situation I called to see if there was anything I could do to help. To my surprise he said they were doing fine, in fact, they had just bought a brand new big screen TV.

It turned out they had just gotten a couple new credit cards and were living in the delusion that everything was alright as long as they could run up debt on the credit cards. They seemed to have no thought for what would happen when the credit cards came due and they were drowning in interest payments.

This friend reminds me of what our current president is doing. He has run up the national debt to horrible new heights and then pretends the economy is booming. His short-term thinking ignores the future costs of running the country on credit. By then he will be out of office.

During the Clinton years we learned that paying down the debt is good for the economy. Simple logic tells us the same. Yet as soon as Republicans get into office they run up the debt. Why are they so addicted to living on credit?

Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility. Reagan ran up the debt to new heights, Clinton came in and not only paid down the debt, but created huge surpluses. Bush immediately squandered those surplus and created ever-higher debts.

Bush can rightly be called the credit card president. Like my friend, living in the delusion of economic prosperity while running up credit card debt. The question I have is: is Bush that stupid or is he pulling a con-game on the American public?

8/19/05 Lewistown Calling

Yesterday I had a recording session at Tin Man Studios. We put some guitar tracks on Lewistown Calling. The song is now ready to mix. It will be the first single and the first track on the CD. We did a rough board mix so I could listen to it and plan for the real mix. So far it sounds really good. The surf vocals and handclaps in the chorus really add a kick. The only thing holding up the mix is money for studio time.

Although it is a pretty raw punk song, it is also quite poppy. The only thing that ruins it is the lyrics, which are a litany of bad behavior. I want it to be the firs single because I feel like it explains where I came from. Kind of a personal introduction.

I was there and almost blew my mind
Nothin' to do but waste your time
Smokin' dope, poppin' pills
Brother you don't know how good it feels

Qualudes, tequila, Acapulca Gold
Drivin' round drunk with the tape deck on
Listenen' to that song that says "I hope I die before I get old'

My grildfriend threw her milkshake across the Burger King
Man, we just all began to scream
She was shopliftin clothes down on Market Street
Till the township police had to make the scene

When the girls got drunk they could all be had
On that dirty matress in the wharehouse pad
Tomrrow she'll be screamin' that you're just a dick
It didn't mean nothin' it was just for kicks

I don't care if this song corrupts the youth
I just wanna tell you the fuckin' truth
If you'ens don't know about the working class
You won't understand don't even ask
What is the reason, what is the cure?
Nobody knows what they're doin' it for
Now I'm older don't act that way
But deep inside I just gotta say
You're just nieve if ya think I changed

Every now and then it was vandal time
Smashin' cars, irrational crimes
Craig n' Spig, B.R. Ian and Ron
Let the straights all know that there's somethin' wrong

Qauluudes, Tequila and window pane
Man that shit can really fry your brain
Listen to that song that says 'There's no future, no future for you'
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
That's what we were livin' for
Sex and drugs and rock and roll


I’ve been thinking about putting a photo of an Elvis Presley lamp on the cover. That really says it all as far as rock and roll goes.
The title is a reference to the Clash’s London Calling, whose cover was a reference to Elvis’ first album.

Last night I went to the Charleston to watch their open mic night.
The place was empty except for one guy with a folk guitar who just played the whole night. Every song he sang was a low self-esteem pity party. It was all a bore. The Charleston was the first bar in the area. It’s been there since the 1930’s, but I guess it’s not hip enough for the Williamsburg bohemes.

8/17/05 The Age Of Oil

Last night there were dire warnings on the news about an impending oil crunch that could cripple the U.S. Everything depends on energy. Without it our economy would grind to a dead halt. And yet our president accepts the fact that our destiny is in the hands of Saudi Arabia and a few other dubious allies.

The fact is that the age of oil will come to an end in the not-too-distant future. Whoever controls the energy technology of the future will be a great power in the world. If our leaders had any vision they would be doing everything possible to ensure that this power would be held by the U.S.

If you look at the ups and downs of the U.S. economy over the last 25 years you will see that when oil prices rise the rest of the economy goes down. During the times of economic recession oil companies have posted record profits, as is the case today.

In the early 1960’s president Kennedy announced that the U.S. would put a man on the moon within ten years. It might have seemed impossible to some, but the goal was achieved.

It is time for our president to set a similar goal for developing new energy resources. It should be the highest priority. President Bush put 2 Billion towards developing new energy technology in his last budget. Compare that with the 200-plus billion we are spending to protect Iraqi and Saudi oil in the Iraq war. Most of out nation’s problems are caused by oil. We would never be entangled in the Middle East if it wasn’t for oil. We would not be fighting the war on terror if it wasn’t for oil. We have fought and financed multiple wars to protect Saudi Oil. We have lost thousand s of lives and spent billions fighting the war on terror because of our Middle East entanglements. Why then is it not worth putting money into development of new energy technology?

The well being of the American people should not be in the hands of Saudi oil sheiks. Every president for the last 25 years has failed the public by not rising to face this challenge. Of course, when you make an x-oilman president, whose campaign was financed by U.S. oil companies and who is a longtime friend of the Saudi royal family, you shouldn’t be surprised when gas prices skyrocket and oil companies announce a 300% increase in profits since the last year.

Unfortunately it is unlikely the next president will give this matter priority unless the public outcry makes this an important campaign issue. Does anyone have any ideas on how we can get the media to get behind this issue?

9/12/94 Ornelia - The Biting Girl

Tuesday Ornelia returns from Pittsburgh where she has been visiting her parents. She calls when she arrives. "Caeser, can you come out and play," her pretend little girl voice rings through the receiver.

We agree to meet at 10:00. Come evening, she, her Indian roommate Mina, and I are drinking at our now usual haunt, the Cafe 210. The women are having a passionate conversation about the joys of dance. Ornelia loves ballet while Mina prefers modern.

It is a mild evening and the wine has slowed my mind. Earlier this evening I had a premonition that I would like to create excitement. Instead I am overcome by a mild lack of confidence.

The atmosphere is calm and cheerful. The women look beautiful in the soft light. I look at Ornelia as she speaks in a cool collected manner and wonder how only recently, I suspected her of being secretly insane.

At midnight Mina takes her leave and Ornelia and I move down the street to Zino's, a grungy basement bar. Tonight Ornelia has a different style to her dress. She wears a pleated black skirt with thigh high stockings and a maroon low cut sweater. The deep color of the sweater seems to bring her face to life. Her long red hair streams over her shoulders, and the curls frame her hazel eyes.

We reside at a corner table. Ornelia is bored and wants to be entertained. After spending a weekend with her parents she is in a salacious mood.

"I almost walked out of church Sunday. I couldn't believe he would give a sermon on abortion when I'm working on this play."

She is interning as a research assistant for a university theater production dealing with abortion. Rubbing out her second cigarette and lighting a third she continues.

"And then I had this big fight with my mother because I wanted to go over to the North side to see the Warhol museum. I saw two more of his films; 'Blowjob' and 'Haircut.' Only two of us sat through the whole thing. That's how it is though, a man doesn't come in fifteen minutes. A blow job takes forty-five."

A young man that looks like some kind of surfer dude walks past smiling at her.

"Hey you." She waves with dutiful enthusiasm. Turning back to me she goes on, "I am proud to say I had five orgasms masturbating in my parent's house. I've never understood frigid women. I always have multiple orgasms. The second and third come thirty seconds after the first."

A husky young Korean man sits down and chats her up with a swagger like a Bronx Italian from the disco era. Morrisey blares from the sound system keeping me outside their conversation. There are no signs of anger or argument, but the smiling Ornelia has began pinching and punching her friend. He slaps her hands away and grimaces in pain.

To my surprise she turns to me and pinches my neck. She squeezes the soft flesh between her fingers and looks at me questioningly. I sit nonchalant. The pain is a curiosity which I have no urge to escape.

"Doesn't that hurt?" she asks.

"Yeah," I answer.

She manages to squeeze a bit harder. "Why doesn't it look like it then?"

"I'm just going with the pain."

Disappointed she releases her grip and resumes the conversation with her Korean friend cheerfully. When we take our leave she is feeling the alcohol.

"I haven't drank in four days and already my tolerance is down." After a moment she adds, "I feel pretty obnoxious."

As we walk down College avenue she begins hitting and pinching me. She walks ahead and charges back, stopping a few inches from my face to see if I flinch.

I laugh at the spectacle. Curious to see what it revealed of her character. Without warning she grabs my neck and twists, inflicting a swell of agony. I grab her and try to tickler her. She immediately turns barbarous.

In seconds pushing and pulling give way to true brutality. I try to grab her arms as she scratches, bites, and kicks. She tears my shirt open with buttons flying in all directions. She claws my bare chest and blood meanders over my nipple.

As I try to subdue her we tumble off the sidewalk and land on the curb's edge. My weight presses her against the concrete as I lie on top of her in the missionary position. She bites my neck, clenching the skin between her teeth. Her lips are an inviting bouquet painted deep red, but they hide a vice-like grip able to deliver torture.

I laugh and moan in pain at the same time. Her breasts are soft below my bleeding chest. The affliction of her bite is a maddening punishment for any pleasure I might get from this intimacy.

"Leave go or I'll bite harder," her muffled lips warn.

Although, I am not the one in control of the situation I rasp, "I'm letting go."

She releases me and I stagger to my feet. I am dazed. She sings happily as I limp along to a nearby house where a mutual friend lives. She runs up the stairs and into the bedroom where Gavin lies reading in his bed. She jumps on the bed and begins pounding on his back and head.

"You fuckin' bitch, I'll sock you!" he yells.

"Oh Gavin, aren't you happy to see me?" she mocks.

"Yes, Ornelia." Sarcasm is Gavin's natural tone of voice. "Why don't you just go watch one of your Warhol movies? Which ones did you see? Bad? Trash? What high works of art."

We go down to the living room which is littered with film canisters, videotapes, and coffee cans for use as ashtrays. I sit in a chair on the opposite side of the room from them. Ornelia glows with licentious strength. She has transformed into every man's fantasy of the proper young lady given way to wanton abandon. She sits with her skirt up to her hips and her legs spread benevolently. I can't look in her direction without savoring her long legs, soft thighs, and the pink print on her white panties.

Soon she can not get the CD player to work so she can hear the Nine Inch Nails song she absolutely must hear immediately, so she storms out of the house and walks hurriedly down the street. I catch up to her and we walk side by side without speaking.

"Have you had enough excitement for one night?" I ask.

"Yes. I'm calm now," she replies.

"Well, I'm not," I whisper and grab her by the shoulders.

She immediately attacks with violent scratching and biting. I push her into the loading dock of an auto parts store and pin her against the brick wall. Her eyes look savage and her head moves back and forth as if possessed by Satan. I grab her left leg and pull it into the air. She wraps her legs around me and my pelvis is pressed tight against her crotch. She shakes her head from side to side vigorously, banging her skull against the hard brick. I place my forehead against hers and moan, "No matter what happens, I don't want to hurt you."

We stand still, gripping each other. I am unsure whether I am trying to subdue her or control myself. She seems restrained but waiting to explode. Letting her go I step out of the way. Immediately she begins making false lunges at me.

"A little jumpy aren't we Caeser?" she chides.

She sits on the steps of a storefront and fixes her shoe. I lay down my notebook and computer discs which have somehow made it through the evening without being lost. When I look away she grabs the notebook and discs and runs into an alley. I chase her and grab the notebook from her hands, but she holds onto the computer discs.

This brings a new wave a fury. She bites my shoulders like a madwoman. My every limb is in excruciating pain, with wounds bleeding from my knees, arms, and nose. She again clenches her teeth into my neck delivering the most intense pain.

My mind is inebriated with the pain. The smell of my own blood coalesced with her saliva peels away civilized restraints. A rupture of animal instincts transforms me backwards through evolution. 'Neanderthal..Cro-magnum...Homo Erectus... Australopithecus.." My mind flashes red. For the first time I understand the pleasure of misogynistic brutality..

I think 'O.K. bitch, you wanna see how easy it could be for me?'

I encircle her with my arms and raise her into the air, believing she will be incapacitated, but her thrashing legs, armored with a brand new pair of platform shoes, still make a perilous weapon.

I throw her down on the gravel covered macadam of the alley way. Leaping on top of her I pin her arms above her head and sit on her legs. To add insult to her subjugation I run the flattest part of my wet tongue up her neck and across her face.

Catching myself before I follow an uninhibited path to the point of no return, I halt. I am dazed and struggling to control myself. Minutes pass as we both breathe heavily. A passer by walks past gawking at our spectacle as we lay in the alley way.

After we regain our sanity I allow her to rise from the ground. Still not beaten she runs towards her apartment building shouting "I've still got your discs and you'll regret it!"

I follow her at a walking pace. When I turn to start down her walkway I see that she is entering her front door. I walk to the door, which is always kept tightly locked. I Turn the knob and freely enter. I begin ascending the stairs that lead to her room. All is quiet inside.

I know that if I enter her room all inhibitions will be torn asunder . I visualize her black stockinged legs and white panties as I climb the stairs. It almost seems too easy.

I stop momentarily as a smile crosses my face. Turning I descend the stairs and run out the door and up the street. I am laughing aloud as I picture her bruised body lying on the black sheets of her bed. Perhaps she is wondering if I am lurking in her apartment somewhere. I wish I could hear her thoughts when she realizes I have declined her temptations.

When I return home there is a message on my machine. It is Ornelia. With a petulant sneer in her voice she hisses, "I've still got your computer disks. I didn't think you'd give up so easily. Have a good night, Caeser!"

"Have a good night." I lay on the floor of my empty room. It seems a fitting symbol for emptiness that has taken my once full life. I close my eyes and wait for sleep. Sasha seems a million miles away, and the abyss between us grows wider each day. I hate to sleep alone. I think of Ornelia, so near and sleeping alone in her room. I hear her words again, "have a good night, Caeser."

8/15/05 Job Security and Social Violence

Heather and I went camping at the Del Water Gap on the Appalachian Trail. It’s been oppressively hot. The humidity sucks the life right out of you. I am hoping to begin writing a TV show proposal this weekend if I can get motivated.

On Thursday night I got some work done on the recording of Lewistown Calling. I added handclaps and backing vocals to the chorus. In order to do the handclaps I had to do four tracks, each with one handclap, and then mix them together to make it sound like a group of people. I also did three tacks of vocal “Aaahs,” and two tracks of falsetto “ooohs,’ with a Four Seasons whine to them.
Although the individual tracks don’t sound great, when put together they are pretty effective. It gave the song a real surf rock feel.

I saw the movie Four Brothers. Trying to find a motif in a movie like this is not easy. The film’s flimsy plot mainly served as an excuse for lots of vigilante violence. I guess the message is ‘the world is unjust and the system is corrupt, so the only way to get justice is from a hero who uses violence as an answer to every problem. The film certainly was violent. Machine gun battles would take place in urban neighborhoods and no one would seem to notice.

This morning when I read the news it was also filled with random violence. An x-marine began shooting at people on the streets because he was annoyed by the noise outside his window. A rancher in Texas began shooting because he didn’t like the protesters outside his neighbor’s (President Bush) property. I guess the message that guns are the answer to every problem is really coming home.

I’ve been very stressed out about business and financial matters. As thoughts of financial security cross my mind I recall a friend whose boyfriend was in the coast guard. He looked down on others who struggled financially. People in the military service have a great degree of financial security. Unless they really fuck-up they always know where their next paycheck is coming from and how much it will be. The trade off is that they also know the limits of their potential success in life. Even under the best circumstances there’s only so far they can go. It’s the price they pay for that security. So when I would hear of this guy looking down on others who struggle I always thought of him as something of a coward. As someone who doesn’t believe in himself enough to live by his wits and instead clings to a safe and secure path in life.

For people in the private sector, say in an office or factory, there is much less job security. These days a person can dedicate their whole life to a company and be a model employee, only to be sacked because they earn too much. If you read management handbooks you’ll find this practice is recommended.

Still, on a week-to -eek basis, as long as you have your job you know you have a paycheck coming each week and how much it will be. You still have some measure of security. Again this security comes with limitations on future success. In theory an office worker could become the CEO of the company and make millions, but in reality, for the average office admin or cubicle dweller there’s not much chance of that happening.

When you own your own business you have no security. Every day is a gamble and a struggle for survival. If you don’t produce, you don’t eat. The trick is to survive the lean times. The trade off is, you are what you can make of yourself. The sky is the limit. The odds are against success, but with brains, hard work, and a good deal of luck, you can make your own way.

8/11/05 DEVO

Last night I went to see DEVO at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Although they’re pretty old looking guys they put on an energetic performance. They focused on their pre-Whip It material. Their message that humanity is de-evolving into mechanized half robots due to corporate brainwashing seems more appropriate now than it did when they originally arrived on the scene. At one point they said “Do you believe in de-evolution now”

“Yes” The audience roared.

“You don’t have to look far to see proof. I’m sorry. I hoped we’d be wrong,’ They continued before breaking into “Are We Not Men.”

As roadies in gorilla suits danced onstage Mark Mothersbaugh sang, “God made a man, but he used a monkey to do it.”

‘Why is it that the entire evolution VS creationism debate isn’t solved with that single line?’ Why do fundamentalists have to insist that God just wiggled his nose and the universe instantly came into existence? Why can’t god have a method for creation?

Overall it was a very political show. Between songs the bass player made a speech about ‘fundamentalists off all denominations trying to control your life.”

It’s too bad DEVO had a hit with Whip It. It really made a great band something of a joke. People underestimate their musical abilities and the complexity of their music. The drummer is fantastic. Near the end of the show he hurt his left hand. They stopped to apply first-aid and he played the last four songs with one hand.

8/10/05 get the Ukulele out of the pawnshop

It looks like I’ll be able to get the Ukulele out of the pawnshop soon. I finally got a
new client. A rapper who thinks he’s the next Puffy. It doesn’t solve all my problems
but it’s a step in the right direction.

Last weekend I went back to Lewistown to evict one of my tenants. It went smoothly
and he’s finally gone. Although he took me for about $1500, and he seemed to have
a clear conscious about it. I’m sure he’ll do the same at his next stop.

I also have a new tenant in an apartment that’s been empty for a few months. What a
relief. That is.

Sunday afternoon I had a rehearsal with the punk band Friction. Out reunion show is
set for October 15th. I hope I’ll be ready. I have more stamina for the drumming than
before, but still not all I need. It’s such aggressive music. There are about four songs
that just brutalize me.

Monday night I went t6o see Broken Flowers, a film by Jim Jarmusch. It was at the
Angelica theatre and was packed. People seem to be starving for films that are
creative and intelligent.

I often write about the motifs behind films. Many have the ‘embracing family’ motif,
or the related motif of ‘taming the wild man.’ Although it had a taming the wild man
theme it did not end with an embrace of family message. In fact, the wild man wasn’t
actually tamed, he just went on a journey into his own past. The end had no
resolution or obvious message. It left you to think about it. (We know how people
hate that) It was a very funny movie though.

8/6/05 Let Mortal Men Worship The Goddess

Three friends came to New York from Utah this week. The ringleader is Jodi, the other is her husband Jeff, and her boyfriend Christopher.

I met Jodi went through The Imperial Orgy website. Although I don’t really recall this, apparently the first time she went through the website, when she got to the end she felt disappointed and wrote me a nasty email accusing me of being the spiritual equivalent of an errant father. I get so many crazy emails that I don’t recall it, although it seems like something one would remember.

Later she went through the site again and it seems liked it a bit better because she began sending me emails with seductive photos of herself. After a few months of this she made her first trip to NYC so we could meet.

In the years that followed she has made quite a few visits and we have remained close.

Last summer when she visited I went to the airport to pick her up and she was nowhere to be found. I walked up and down the airport getting increasingly worried. Finally I got a call from an airport police officer who told me she was in the station house. When I got there I found out that she was asleep on the plane and a big greasy Jewish guy kept sliding his hand up her skirt. She complained to the stewardess and they moved her to another seat. Because the incident happened in the air it became a federal offense and the FBI was waiting for the guy when they landed.

A year later it was time for the court trial. The FBI was paying for Jodi’s airline ticket and hotel so she could come testify. As previously mentioned, on this trip the husband and boyfriend came long.

When Jodi and I first met she explained her husband to me by saying he was gay and English. She had married him so he could stay in the country. After five years they were able to divorce, but stayed married out of convenience. She claimed it was a sex-free marriage. Even though, he had changed his mind about the whole being-gay-thing.

Christopher, the boyfriend, was a tougher one to explain. He was a friend of her husband’s who worshipped the ground she walked on. He lived for her. Carrying out her wishes and following her like a sick puppy. Again, she claimed it was a non-sexual relationship.

When she would come to New York Christopher would call her every hour or two. If he couldn’t reach her for a few hours he would panic. Sometimes he would call the NYPD to ask them to look for her, which surely must have given them either a big headache or a big laugh.

During her first trip, Jodi and Heather and I were having our first ménage a trios together and soon after he called in a panic. He had gotten it into his head that we were going to “sacrifice her with big knives.”

When I visited her in Salt Lake City in the days after 9/11 an awkward situation arose where Jodi, Christopher and I were hanging out late into the night. Jodi and I were waiting for him to leave so we could be together, and he was hanging on to see that we weren’t given the opportunity. When he finally left he told her “use a condom.” In the morning she had to go to his apartment to make sure he was OK.

Taken as a whole her situation with these two was cockeyed from beginning to end. I imagine she must torment them on a daily basis. During my visit Christopher, Jeff, and I were waiting for Jodi to change clothes. As we waited in the living room she nonchalantly walked out with her breasts, magnificent as they are, out for all to see. We must have looked like three monkeys who were beaned on the head with a mallet. In the wrong crowd it might have started a goddamned riot it was such a beautiful obscenity.

In the past year I had been told that Christopher and Jodi had become ‘more of a couple.’ I assumed that meant sex, but who could say for sure with that crew. Now all three were in New York City and I did not really know where I stood with Jodi. Would she still be my lover? And if so, could I get a moment alone with her?

Sunday night I picked them up at La Gaurdia Airport. Jodi was on a separate plane that arrived an hour earlier than Christopher and Jeff’s, giving us a few moments alone. She was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a revealing blouse. Her platform shoes were black with white skulls on them. Her hair was dyed a dark shade of red. She was soft and voluptuous looking. An angel face and a 190 IQ.

We sat in the airport chairs and kissed. I kissed the back of her neck and shoulders. She told me I didn’t need to feel awkward about touching her in front of ‘the boys,’ as she called them. She said we could at least hold hands.

I drove them to their hotel in Queens to drop off their suitcases, then we went to Indian Row to eat. Jodi sat beside me and Christopher and Jeff sat on the other side of the table. Both of the men are very nice guys, but I have little in common with them, making it hard to keep conversation going.

Jeff, the husband, is a quiet fellow. He works as a computer tech and has a no-nonsense demeanor. Christopher is the geekier of the two. His interests are in comic-book heroes and video games. He is particularly fond of Spider Man. Christopher is also a Dungeons and Dragons kind-of-guy who is into spider webs and medieval weaponry. Their taste in music and movies is very mainstream corporate. By their dress and hairstyles they had middle-America-tourist written all over them.

Throughout the meal I tried to keep conversation lively either by playing New York City tour-guide, or with sarcastic humor. (The only humor I am capable of, it seems). The social butterfly role does not come naturally to me and the game wore thin real quick. The whole thing was only a hair away from a bad dinner party scene in a Woody Allen movie. Given my propensity to misbehave in such situations I feel I contained myself quite nicely. Only once or twice did I brush my fingers lightly along Jodi’s thighs underneath the table, just to remind her of old times.

Having survived the dinner experience I lead them down St. Mark’s to peer at East Village nightlife. Then per their request I drove them down through Times Square. Christopher’s only comment was, “I’m glad I’m in the car. I feel safer.”

The next day the three went to the Empire State Building and I excused myself from the social obligation of doing tourist activities. That evening Heather came back from a two week trip to Colorado and I picked her up at the airport at about 10PM. Later that night Jodi called and wanted me to come meet her at the hotel. She said she would leave the boys alone in the room and come out with me. I wanted a chance to be alone with herm, but it would have been too rude to leave Heather behind so I had to decline the offer.

Tuesday night Jodi wanted to go to the Wine Bar in Williamburg. Normally it’s a place I wouldn’t go. It’s a wanna-be chi-chi place where they have overpriced wine and charge twenty dollars for two dollars worth of cheese.

Heather and I picked them up at the hotel and we all went to the Wine Bar. For my money it was a fairly dreadful scene. I was out of cash making the situation that much more uncomfortable. Jodi sat beside Christopher against the wall and I sat beside Jeff, leaving Heather at the head of the table. Jeff looked absolutely miserable. Christopher seemed to be in high-heaven with Jodi by his side. A regular cock-of-the-walk. Heather was just trying to create a pleasant evening for all, but conversation was painful.

Since we were all in a wine bar I ask if they had seen the movie
“Sideways.” Jeff said he had gotten halfway through it and quit because it was boring and pretentious. The conversation was downhill from there. Before it was all over I was trying to make jokes about the artwork on the wall, the waitress’s eyebrows, any goddamn thing to make a dead fish dance. At one point I got up and excused myself and walked around the block to get a break from the social quagmire.

Throughout the night Jodi hung on Christopher affectionately. With Jodi it is hard to tell whether that is due to love or just because he was the nearest man. Sexuality permeates her presence. It’s her favorite topic of conversation. It’s her weapon of power, and her temple to receive worship.

On this night the T-shirt she wore was light blue with a picture of two colorful birds on it. On the top of the shirt was the word in large letters “swallows.” Believe me she wasn’t wearing the shirt because of her interest in ornithology. Her persona is somewhat childlike. She likes to dress like a schoolgirl and feign innocence.

When we left the Wine Bar and walked towards the car, the streets of Williamsburg were quiet. The hipsters and NYU students whose playground this once working-call neighborhood has become, had all slipped away into the underground subways bound for Manhattan or back to the cramped but chicly overpriced apartments paid for by their corporate daddies in L. A. and Tokyo.

I fell behind the group, happy to have a little sense of space. Jodi fell back with me and taking my hand walked by my side.

“Why have you been avoiding me this trip,” she asked.

I tried to protest that it wasn’t so, but no words came out of my mouth.

“I would’ve came down and met you last night,”

“I wanted to, I really did” I replied with resignation.

Twenty minutes later I dropped them off at their hotel, relieved to escape the group, yet frustrated by the complications of the situation with Jodi.

The next day I put them off. “Call me tonight when you have free time,” I told Jodi when she called. I little after midnight I hear the phone ring, but I am too close to sleep to answer. The late hour gives me an excuse to ignore the call.

The next evening is their final night in the big apple so there is no escaping a night of partying. I spend the day trying to drum up new clients for my business. Jodi is in court testifying all day. As evening falls she calls and asks me to come by. From her words I believe that the boys might be asleep allowing us some time alone to say goodbye.

They were now staying at the Holiday Inn in Chinatown. When I arrive the whole gang is ready to drink. We walk up to Bleeker Street and find a hole in the wall with happy hour mixed drinks going for $2.50 a pop. A good thing considering my entire fortune consists of ten dollars I borrowed from Heather.

The crew must have had a few drinks before I arrived because they all seem little tipsy after the first drink. We were in a round booth and Jodi sat beside me, and Christopher sat on the far end beside Jeff. As the drinks came and went the usual cockeyed situation became even more askew. The boys seemed jolly, but on edge. The conversation kept turning towards lesbianism and there were questions about Heather’s whereabouts. I got the feeling they were hoping to see a lesbian exhibition between heather and Jodi. A lovely scene I can attest, but I’m not sure it’s a show Heather would be willing to provide them with.

The drunker they became, the clearer the social order of their group became. Jodi was the goddess among geeks. She had been attacked in court that morning as the defense tried to destroy her credibility. Now she was feeling (or feigning) insecurity and fishing for complements to restore her ego. Compliments that the boys provided gushingly. They worshipped their object of devotion, lavishly praising her beauty, her intelligence, her goodness, her sexuality, even her cooking.

As is no surprise to anyone with a little insight into the mysteries of womanhood, as they bowed down before her, she became a bit contemptuous of her devotees. She began to slide ever-so-innocent insults into the conversation, and generally began holding herself above them. The more she withdrew from them, the more she snuggled into my side. I tried to remain aloof to it all, not feeling comfortable with any of the cuckoo proceedings.

After four drinks and lots of bad 80’s music we left and began walking the street of the West Village, meandering towards their hotel. Jeff seemed nicely plastered and for the first time in the entire trip had a smile spread across his face. He trailed behind the group, wobbling along and leisurely taking in the sights and examining oddities in the garbage that was abundantly piled on the sidewalk’s edge.

Christopher was now in the role of the spurned lover and tried to take the insult with humor. It seemed a role he was well acquainted with. Jodi walked arm and arm with me and kept telling Christopher, “This is the buddy system. I have my buddy and Jeff is yours. You have to hold him up.”

When Christopher tried to walk beside her she pushed him away in Jeff’s direction.

“I guess I’m out of favor tonight,” he complained.

I tried to stay remote. Taking whatever came or went with a reasonable amount of detachment. As we walked she whispered, “You’re so handsome. You really are.”

“That’s nice to hear,” I replied, attempting to be nonchalant.

“You saved my life, when I thought nobody cared,” she continued. “Your website changed my life. I kept going back again and again, and then I’d make everyone… Jeff look at it.”

The streets were surprisingly empty except for a couple who were locked in an impassioned embrace on the other side of the street, causing Christopher to hoot out loud at them.

“Christopher!” Jodi reprimanded him as if he were an errant child.

As we moved down Spring Street the boy’s attention were often diverted by the sights in the shop windows. Jodi tried to move ahead of them as they lagged behind. Feeling bad about the nastiness of the whole affair I tried to keep an eye on them and not allow them to fall too far behind.

As we walked she cooed, “I love you, I love you, I really do,” Over and over again.

I don’t know how things got turned around and I was the one looking out for the two guys, who the laws of the jungle dictate I should be in competition with. The whole scene had an air of quiet pathos. Women’s favors come and go. As much as I might desire, I also have more than most men ever dream of. It’s not worth trampling a couple of weak souls underfoot for. Or at least, not worth rubbing it in their faces.

When we got to the hotel there were two beds for the three of them. Jodi flung herself onto one of the beds and ordered Christopher to undress her.

“You can’t undress right now,” he replied.

“Then take off my shoes,” she demanded.

Christopher did as he was commanded. Shoeless but still clothed Jodi grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me into the bed with her. If she could have had her way I think she would have had me fuck her silly right there before their eyes just to torment them. Although I wanted her, I didn’t want to be a tool in her cruelty.

There was something frenetic in the air. Repressed sexuality that threatened to explode, but only if I obliged to lead the way. Jodi was wearing a top with no shoulders or arms. Christopher was acting like an over-excited child, babbling something about how great her breasts were, he put his head between them outside her top and moved his head back and forth wildly while making blubbering sounds.

I got out of bed and Jodi pulled me back in. Repeatedly.

“She’s drunk and horny,” Jeff commented.

Finally I pulled myself out of the bed one more time and shook both of the men’s hands to say goodbye. “You can walk me to the elevator,” I told Jodi.

“Wait till I put on my shoes,” she replied.

“You don’t need your shoes,” I responded forcefully.

I know if she put her shoes on we would end up in the alley and I would be fucking her up against a brick wall. And as wonderful as that sounds I just didn’t want to do it to those poor fucks. Maybe I should have been more selfish. Maybe they would have liked to sit and wait knowingly while I defiled their Goddess in the New York dirt. Maybe I should have let her come back to her subjects with my seed dripping from her womb. Let them to smell my sweat on her for days to come.

But alas, instead I walked Jodi to the lobby by the elevators and kissed her. I kissed her neck and face, feeling a bit mad with the pent-up lust.

“I love you,” she offered.

“I love you too,” I whispered hoarsely.

“You never said that before,” she intoned.

“Life is too short not to have you in it,” I teased.

Then right there in the open light of the Holiday Inn lobby I tore down her top allowing her naked breasts to burst into the open. I took her left nipple in my mouth and sucked like a starving man.

“Oh my god…” she moaned.

Powerful women always want to be overpowered. Once when Jodi and I were driving on a cold winter’s day, I pulled over behind a garage at a truck stop and pulled her out of the car. Pushing her face against the cement block wall of the garage, I lifted her skirt and took her from behind. After I had my pleasure I took her by the hand and lead her back to the car.

“If I didn’t love you before, I would love you now,” she said weakly.

Back in the hotel lobby I released her breast and pulled her top back up covering her nakedness. Giving her one last kiss I said, “I’ll find a way to see you again soon.”

As I got into the elevator she mouthed “I love you,” one more time and I winked at her in response.

I can’t imagine what the scene was like when she returned to the room with her boys waiting. I felt good about my behavior. And otherwise…fuck it. Fuck em’ all. When you live in a cesspool there’s not much room for honor. You can only do what you can do. Beauty is devoured and ripped to shreds like meat before sharks. And sometimes a woman’s innocence is a trap that ensnarls and devours just as viciously. Enslaving the poor bastards who need the enticements of a helpless little girl to make them feel like men.

It seems that the less I want, the more I receive. The less I give the more is offered. There is an unspoken code of valor to men who love women but don’t give themselves to any. Women respect what they can’t conquer. They seem to lay less blame on the Don Juan than other men do. After all, who truly celebrates the glory of Woman with a capital ‘W.’ Let mortal men worship the goddess. Let god’s on earth be their consorts.

8/05/05 Recording Sessions

Over recent days I finally got some recording done. I completed the vocal harmonies for Mickey Mouse World and began work on Lewistown Calling.

I also had a session at Tin Man Studios that went well. The process for this recording has been very convoluted. We did the basic instrumental tracks at Headgear Studios in Brooklyn. We recorded to 2” analog tape. Then we bounced those to digital files and took the files to Tin Man Studios (owned by Tony our guitar player) where I recorded the lead vocal tracks digitally. Then I took a rough mix back to my home studio to record overdubs.

The next major step is to record the background singers at Tin Man Studios. Before I do that I have to get the overdubs I recorded at my home studio back into the computer at Tin Man Studio and make sure they are in sync. I was concerned that this might be a problem but Tony knew a technique that made it easy.

Because it went so easily we had time to record some guitar tracks on “In Praise Of Shadows.” I had recorded some guitar tracks at home, but I was unhappy with the sound quality of the guitar distortion so we rerecorded them using an old fuzzbox that Tony had, I recorded my guitar line twice and panned one to each side of the stereo. Then I played it again at an octave and put it in the middle of the stereo.

During the recording we noticed Tony had a bum note in his guitar track so we rerecorded it with the fuzzbox and added an octave for good measure. When it was all done we had a wall of fuzz guitars that I found quite funny in an ‘I love old rock and roll’ kind-of-way.

8/17/94 Chief Logan Rebellion

August 17, 1994

A tiny brown shriveled human form. Only inches long. It lies helplessly under a glass box with tubes running to it. Except for feint signs of breathing it appears lifeless.

I stand holding a boom and microphone over this hapless creature as I attempt to record the conversation of two doctors who stand before the prematurely born child. Although this child clings precariously to life, for the sake of a small commercial venture we are allowed to create chaos by filming in this room full of such children.

I know I should be focusing my attention on getting the microphone on just the right axis so that I might catch the doctor's voices as clearly as possible, but my eyes are drawn towards the shrunken baby who seems to be treated as unimportant by all present. I can't help wondering where its parents are and what they would feel if they were to see this spectacle.

Over recent moths, for the first time in my life I have felt the pangs of desire for family and fatherhood. I have become increasingly aware that there is an emptiness which only family can fill. Sasha played a major role in bringing these feelings to the forefront of my thoughts.

There was an evening when we visited a friend of hers who lives with her two daughters on a farm buried deep in the forest. We spent most of the evening playing tether ball with the two young girls. As we drove of Sasha said, "I could definitely see myself raising children with you."





To my surprise her statement brought a wave of emotion to me. After that I gazed at small children with a new curiosity. These thoughts make my financial situation even more distressing because it makes the possibility of supporting a family seem like an unattainable dream.

During a two week period when Sasha thought she might be pregnant my ongoing depression was heightened by the thought that she might feel forced to abort the child because I was incapable of supporting a family. This seemed like the greatest punishment I could suffer for my failure to find financial success. Thankfully that decision never had to be made.



In the afternoon I find myself invading the privacy of a psychiatrist's office in a V.A. hospital. As the psychiatrist questions the patient about his medication I cling to the wall of the tiny office in a vain attempt to be unobtrusive. I record the conversation while the doctor's questions become increasingly personal.

Dr. -Have you had any feelings that you want to hurt yourself or others?

Patient -No Not lately. (he seems unsure) Not That Much,

Dr. -No suicidal thoughts?

Patient -No. But I don't see any point in going on.

Dr. -Have you had any flashbacks?

Patient -Not really. Maybe one or two a week. And lately my nightmares haven't been the blood n' guts kind. I realize I've been taking scenes from the field and putting people and places from my daily life into..(looks confused) ...it's like I feel the emotions from the war, but they're in a situation from my life now.

Dr. -So you do feel hopeless at times.

Patient -When I feel hopeless I really feel hopeless. So I would have to say 'no.' But I just have my normal day to day feelings that there's no point in going on.

This man's words shock me. So many of his feelings are what I feel every day. Especially the feelings of hopelessness. It is amazing that twenty years after the war he suffers its traumas.

As a young child I recall the body counts at the end of the news reports. I was too young to understand what it all meant, but the strife which tore this country apart over Vietnam was in the air and in the media. The entire aura of that era played a huge part in my psychic make-up. The slogans were everywhere and the naive ideals of the hippies entered my mind and formed the basis for many of my values before I was old enough to think for myself.

Even at that young age I was affected by the sense of revolution and the feeling that people could be part of something that would change the world. Although most of what the hippies said now seems immature, I have always felt a nostalgia for that era, and a feeling that something was missing in the decades that followed. It seems now that there is little worth believing in and a disheartening apathy among all segments of society.

Some have argued that this created a bad seed in my generation. That this nostalgia for social action and community spirit created a generation of despair filled nihilists who ground out their frustrations and emptiness with drug use, promiscuity, and self destructiveness.

After I graduated from high school one of my teachers referred to our class as 'the Vietnam generation,' and claimed that we were the worst students to ever pass through the doors of the Chief Logan High School.

I believe it's true that this nihilism was reflected in the youth of that time. I can tell you firsthand that my classmates didn't have a clue why they acted the way they did. Vietnam was a long long time ago and most of them new nothing about Vietnam or the social revolution. The nihilism was a quiet spirit that snuck in through the unconscious and struck out at society with the giant proclamation of our generation: "So What!"

Chief Logan became the voice of the underculture. A voice of anger threatening society by portraying the youth of America as the idiot sons and daughters which the elder generation had created with their hypocritical moralities and materialists values. Chief Logan was a warning that there was a poison brewing among the youth which could burst open and destroy our society from within.

Although many believed that Chief Logan rock would create a social political movement equal to the sixties, the music business stubbornly ignored Chief Logan , and it all quickly faded away in a country caught in the tide of Ronald Reagan's Moral Majority.

During my high school years I first began to experiment with drugs. A change in my life was triggered by a modest philosophical thought. I was day dreaming in my problems of democracy class, and as the teacher droned on I found myself thinking about death. I Thought, 'I know I'm going to die so I might as well get out and enjoy life while I can.'

Afterwards I began to party with a vengeance. Each day I entered school with my eyes glowing red from the dope I had smoked while cruising around the school parking lot. In home room the potheads spied each other knowingly, as if we were members of some secret fraternity. Being a drug user gave one a sense of community and a feeling of being against the system and the status quo.

Drugs were everywhere in those days. In our school the drug users became the dominant force during my senior year. Kids were smoking hash in science class and dropping acid during lunch. The users formed an unspoken alliance which eventually succeeded in total disruption of the already ailing school system.

One of the defining factors in this drama was the faculty's decision at the beginning of my senior year to reestablish order and respect for authority among the students. To achieve this they hired a new principal', x-marine sergeant Thomas Best, and am X-football player who was a member of the New York Jets when they won the superbowel; vice-princapal Charles Backman.

On the first day of classes I knew I was in trouble when walking down the hall I heard a deep voice calling out, "hey fuzzhead, hey fuzzhead." (at the time I wore my hair in a long tangled afro) I was used to suck mockery form the backwoods cretins that were bussed in from the outer regions. This time I was pleased to find that these sophisticated insults were coming from the new vice-principal Backman. From that day he had his eye on me and we were bound to clash.

Among the faculty's plans to reestablish order were rules such as one way halls, limited locker stops, and arranged seating in the cafeteria. These new rules did little more than create more confusion, but that fact was secondary to the prime objective; instilling respect for school authority.

In response to the new authoritarianism the drug users began carrying out ridiculously disruptive acts which served no purpose other than forcing a confrontation with the faculty. Although I was not familiar with performance art that time, the irrational nature of some of these actions would certainly have passed as such.

Some of my favorite examples were a grade 'A' student who would fill his mouth with water before class started, hold it for as long as he could, then fake convulsive vomiting as he spewed the liquid across the classroom. A friend of mine had the adolescent genius to wait until the English teacher would finish her lecture, then when she asked with finality, "does anyone have anymore questions," he would raise his hand innocently and ask, "what's the meaning of life?" Another fellow in my class was fond of bellowing 'Quaaludes' in response to every question the teacher ask.

In time this rebellious spirit penetrated the entire student body. Random noise because an effective means of disrupting classroom activities. At least every hour a student would release a spine tingling primal scream that would be echoed by other students until the entire school was pierced by the chilling howls.

There were other more violent actions also taking place. Early in the year a cheerleader was expelled for throwing a brick through the principal's living room window. By mid year commodes were regularly being exploded by small sticks of dynamite, and during the graduation rehearsals the vice-principal's tires were slashed on his brand new BMW.

My own troubles with the administration seriously began when a car battery exploded and my mother was taken to the hospital in the morning before school. Despite this I was only a few minutes late. As I entered the school I heard the opening of the National Anthem which signaled I was officially late. When the Anthem began all in the hallways had to freeze in place as if we were playing a bizarre game of Red Light Green Light.

While I stood frozen in place like a statue honoring dope crazed youth, inside the glass doors of the administrator's offices I could see secretaries and students going about their business. The office was the one place were the freeze in place rule did not apply, making it clear that it wasn't really important for adults to respect the Anthem, but that it was something merely intended to teach students to honor authority. The absurdity irritated my sense of dignity. My teenage mind raged against the hypocrisies of the system.

In my previous five years attending the school a few late days were overlooked as a fact of life. But with the new discipline my tardiness created a snowball effect that gave me my first true taste of authoritarian mentalities. Because of my lateness I was given detention the following evening. Because I had to be at work at a fast food restaurant at that hour I did not go to the detention.

The next morning Vice-Principal Bakeman paid me a visit in my first period art class. He said that my punishment for missing detention was T.A.P. I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but it means that I had to spend two days isolated in a small room. In the stone dead silence of the art class Bakeman and I had a stand off when I refused to go to the isolation room. For this I was expelled for three days.

I argued my case fervently before the administrators, stating that the circumstances of my tardiness were legally considered an act of God, and that the reason why I did not attend the detention was because real world financial considerations take precedence over symbolic disciplinary acts. Finally frustrated with the arguments Principal Best took me into his office and shut the door.

"Listen Caeser," he said as if clearing away the slates. "It doesn't matter if I'm wrong in this matter. I have the authority here, and if you check the law books you'll find that students have no legal rights. What I say goes and you're just going to have to accept that!"

But I couldn't accept that. I clung stubbornly to the naive idea that justice existed inherently in the world and one just needed to fight a little to set things right. To this end I fought their actions with any means possible within the system. First I tried speaking to the superintendent of the school district. I told him my story, including that to drive the point home, after the three days suspension, on returning I would still have to spend the two days in the isolation room and attend the day of detention. At first the superintendent was encouraging, "you're right, I think they've taken this a little too far. I'll see to it that the T.A.P. and detention are canceled." The following day and thereafter he refused my calls and nothing changed.

I wrote a letter to the local newspaper, which although they refused to print it, the newspaper's editor called to say that it was a well written letter and he supported my 'sChief Logan,' but it would not be appropriate for the paper to question the school administrators.

Finally I acceded and took my punishment. Really I only gave in to the fact that you can't beat the system by working within it, because those in authority look out for their own. They figure if people are allowed to question authority at all, then it is a threat to all in authority. Instead I embraced the disruptive actions of the subculture full force. I figured I couldn't beat them, but I could certainly make their lives unpleasant.

When I was placed in T.A.P. the room chosen for my isolation was the tiny cubicle that housed the school P.A. system. For no particular reason I stole the tape that contained the National Anthem and the pledge to the flag. My thievery did succeed in relieving the students of these early morning forced shows of patriotism for awhile. After about two months a new tape was bought and all returned to normal.

Near the year's end I was again given T.A.P. giving me an opportunity to carry out my most fulfilling act of rebellion. My trouble this time was caused by a series of obscene essays I had written in English class. Under the influence of the aforementioned Saturday Night Live, and the music of Frank Zappa and the Tubes, I began writing in a style of social satire based on the blackest of humor I could fathom. I began this after our class read Gulliver's Travels.

I found the scene of Gulliver exploring the cancer holes in the giant bodies of the ???? to be disgusting, and the book's symbolism was so obscure that it was rendered meaningless without the correct historical background and a knowledge of the social/political circumstances of the era. By way of protest I began filling my essays with absurd satires of our society's consumer values, and the perverse sexual appetite of the national media.

After about a month of this Ms. Snieder, a young overweight woman who wore skin tight pants which revealed every bulge and crevice of her cellulite laden form, came to me with my latest essay.

"Caeser I've tried finding something of value in these. I even brought them before the entire English department, and they all agreed that this is simply rubbish. Until you're ready to stop this, report to the office instead of coming to class."

In the office I was taken to the guidance counselor. The counselor joked with me briefly, obviously trying to show me what a regular guy he was, then he began uneasily, "As you know we're concerned about these essays you've been writing. We were wondering if these might represent...we were wondering if they might be a cry out for help. If you would like we could arrange for a psychiatrist to speak with you."

This stunned me, "A cry out for help? Let's see; I am in a school system where the teachers don't have a drop of passion for the subjects they teach. My career prospects are nil. I live in a society whose values I find hypocritical at best, and sometimes downright obscene. There is nothing to believe in either spiritually or politically. And the threat of nuclear war hangs over our heads in the balance of the cold war. Do you think you could help that?"

I did not have the slightest inclination to debate philosophy with this man so I assured him it was all in naughty fun, we discussed English humor for awhile, and I was transferred to the Principal's office.

"What's wrong with you?" Bakeman gestured at the white pages filled with my scribbled handwriting. "Some of these things deal with necrophilia!" At the time I wasn't sure what necrophilia was, but I did my best to look very very ashamed of myself.

As he rambled on I noticed a small crucifix on his desk beside a photo of his family, and suddenly I was overcome by an uncontrollable urge to sneeze.

"Aaachooo," I expelled loudly. The unguarded spray speckled the crucifix, family photo, and his hands which still held one of my essays. He stopped mid-sentence and we stared at each other, both somewhat shocked by the magnitude of my nasal explosion.

My eyes widened with fear as steam began to seep out of his ears and his flat top bristles stood on end. Finally he growled through his teeth, "Just get out of here. You're on T.A.P. for the next three days."

The first two days locked in the isolation room passed uneventfully. At the end of the third day I stole the new tape with the National Anthem and pledge to the flag and replaced it with the old one which I had rerecorded with a special message for Vice-Principal Bakeman.

The next morning in home room the class rose as usual and faced the small flag at the front of the room as the Anthem crackled through the aged speaker above the chalkboard. Then the pledge began. A few students mumbled along, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of....."

"Fuck you Bakeman," my voice blared through the speaker. Instantly the song School's Out by Alice Cooper shrieked into the air. Not only my homeroom, but the entire school roared with laughter.

I thought for sure I could kiss my diploma good-bye after this, but I was never even questioned about the incident. For the rest of the year neither anthem or pledge was heard again, and I felt at least somewhat vindicated. And more importantly, I was having the time of my life.

By this point the situation had deteriorated to such a degree that the faculty seemed to give up. On one of the final days of school a fight broke out in the cafeteria between two girls. Vice-Principal Bakeman, who was one of the cafeteria monitors, rushed over to stop the melee. When he did the entire lunchroom, which had previously been hooting and making cat calls at the fighting girls, began to chant "Kill Bakeman, Kill Bakeman..."

He stopped in place, quickly forgetting the fight and peering about the chanting crowd of students. He looked towards another teacher and tried to laugh, but his face registered an obvious expression of fear. He turned and left the cafeteria never to return.

On the last day of classes it was revealed that both Principal Best and Vice-Principal Bakeman had resigned their positions. At the graduation ceremony Principal Best made his final appearance to congratulate the graduating seniors. When he finished, as we tossed our square caps into the air he was greeted with a unified bellow from the students; "FUCK YOU!!"

At the graduation party a long forgotten friend ask me, "What are you gonna do now that you've graduated?"

"Get drunk, I replied.