I think I'm ready.

Supplies

"can't live under the transmission lines"

Grasshoppers

"Murderous thoughts towards his leading man..."

"In the documentary that Herzog made about Kinski after his death, My Best Fiend, he alludes in passing to one other time when he sincerely entertained murderous thoughts toward his leading man, when he planned to firebomb Kinski's house until deterred by Kinski's dog. I'd like to know more.

"'We had plans to kill each other, strangely enough, at exactly the same time,'" Herzog begins, a little hesitantly. "'But you have to see it as these beautiful plots, like in a detective story, and those were mostly plots, I would say, in sheer fantasy. But at some moment it got closer than just a pure fantasy.'"

What were you going to do?

[pause] "'Well, as I said, I plotted to kill him.'"

From GQ on Werner.

"Coney Island of catastrophes."

"You toss in your seaman's bunk and dream the oldest, oddest beachcomber's dream: Something has siphoned away all the waters of the seas, and you're taking a cold, damp hike down into the world's empty pool. Beer cans, busted pipes, concrete blocks, grocery carts, a Cadillac on its back, all four tires missing--every object casts a long, stark shadow on the puddled sand. With the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty behind you, you trek due east into the sunrise, following the toxic trough of the Hudson River's outflow--known to divers in these parts as the Mudhole--until you arrive, some miles out, at Wreck Valley.You see whole fishing fleets asleep on their sides and about a million lobsters crawling around like giant cockroaches, waving confounded antennae in the thin air. Yeah, what a dump of history you see, a real Coney Island of catastrophes. The greatest human migration in the history of the world passed through here, first in a trickle of dauntless hard-asses, and then in that famous flood of huddled masses, Western man's main manifest destiny arcing across the northern ocean. The whole story is written in the ruins: in worm-ridden middens, mere stinking piles of mud; in tall ships chewed to fish-bone skeletons; five-hundred-foot steel-plated cruisers plunked down onto their guns; the battered cigar tubes of German U-boats; and sleek yachts scuttled alongside sunken tubs as humble as old boots."

From Everest at the Bottom of the Sea.

Cross court two handers.

Noon Lighting

The Sophomoric and Powerful

The peeing is ceaseless and more than a little exhibitionistic. Everyone talks about it. Bohemian reminiscences describe such bizarre initiation rites as escorting new members to the redwood at which one of the founders "did his morning ablutions." The Owl Hoots, which are poster-size cartoons racked up each day near the Camp Fire Circle, are filled with pissing pictures. One featured a spurious design for a commemorative stamp of club member U.S. Postmaster General Anthony Frank relieving himself on a redwood.

"Are you going to show it?" I heard a 50-ish Bohemian, the "captain" of Pow Wow camp, call out one day as young George went to pee off the deck. "Most of it. At least six inches." Came the reply: "Now, don't be modest, George." A screen door creaked on a little house farther up the hill, and a Bohemian named Richard poked his head out, emerging from his siesta. "Do it counterclockwise, Dickie, that's best," the captain called out. "Oh, I've had my hand off it for two minutes now," Richard protested. "There's a lot of wasted time."

This dick-fussing often manifests itself as that starkest of male nostalgias, the hankering for the punctual erections of boyhood. According to 1979 figures, the average age of Bohemians is 55. Impotence is on many people's minds. The poster outside Monkey Block camp advertising this year's Grove play, Pompeii, featured a gigantic erection under a toga. The set for the play included a wall inscription in Latin meaning "Always hard." One day I was at the Grove beach when a Bohemian discovered that a friend's sunscreen was supposed to impede aging.

"You got it too late." The owner of the lotion sighed. "Well, I should give up putting it on my face and arms and spray it on my prick -- see if that'll do any good."

From Inside the Bohemian Grove, or "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love The Power Elite," (my subtitle).

No Way