The Plat Lite

I think I'm ready.

2011-08-22T00:52:00.002-05:00

Supplies

2011-08-22T00:52:00.001-05:00

"can't live under the transmission lines"

2011-08-22T00:51:00.001-05:00

Grasshoppers

2011-08-22T00:50:00.001-05:00

"Murderous thoughts towards his leading man..."

2011-08-22T00:46:00.000-05:00

"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."

2011-08-16T14:42:00.000-05:00

"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.

2011-08-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

Noon Lighting

2011-08-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

The Sophomoric and Powerful

2011-08-06T00:27:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-06T00:24:00.000-05:00

Explode!

2011-08-06T00:23:00.001-05:00

Dennis' Rule

2011-08-06T00:20:00.000-05:00

Beard Envy

2011-08-06T00:18:00.000-05:00

Hey Errol!

2011-08-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

The envelope contained about two thousand dollars - more than enough to finance a two-week trip Morris had been planning. Recently, he had read a newspaper article about an insurance investigator which mentioned, in passing, how several people in an unidentified Southern town had tried to collect benefits after "accidentally" losing limbs. Morris had tracked down the insurance investigator and learned that the town was Vernon (pop. 883), in the Florida panhandle.

Vernon's unofficial nickname was now Nub City. In the hierarchy of nubbiedom, the supremely rewarding self-sacrifice was the loss of a right leg and a left arm, because, so the theory went, "afterward, you could still write your name and still have a foot to press the gas pedal of your Cadillac." Morris stayed in Vernon long enough to read some files at the courthouse, talk to an insurance broker and several nubbies, and receive at least one unambiguous death threat. At the Cat's Eye Tavern one night, a citizen twice Morris's size smiled as he extinguished a cigarette on the lapel of Morris's blazer. Morris remembers thinking that perhaps he had packed the wrong clothes. Also, "I remember it hurt my feelings, because it seemed that, you know, maybe the people in Vernon didn't like me." Rarely did murders take place in Vernon, because, someone explained, "down here, people don't get murdered - they just disappear."

From.

West

2011-07-20T22:18:00.001-05:00

NE

2011-07-20T22:15:00.001-05:00

"They must cook their veggie sausage in bacon grease"

2011-07-20T22:14:00.001-05:00

Wish there were more.

2011-07-20T22:13:00.001-05:00

Desolation (Yellowstone)

2011-07-20T16:56:00.001-05:00

DW

2011-07-20T16:54:00.001-05:00

Custer Sodak

2011-07-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

Rushmore

2011-07-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

CEELO

2011-07-20T16:51:00.000-05:00

Interlude with Jack

2011-07-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

But there is a difference between the original Buddha of India, and the Buddha of Vietnam who just shaves his hair and puts on a yellow robe and is a communist agitating agent. The original Buddha wouldn't even walk on young grass so that he wouldn't destroy it. He was born in Gorakhpur, the son of the consul of the invading Persian hordes. And he was called Sage of the Warriors, and he had seventeen thousand broads dancing for him all night, holding out flowers, saying, “You want to smell it, my lord?” He says, “Git outta here you whore.” He laid a lot of them you know. But by the time he was thirty-one years old he got sick and tired . . . his father was protecting him from what was going on outside the town. And so he went out on a horse, against his father's orders and he saw a woman dying—a man being burnt on a ghat. And he said, “What is all this death and decay?” The servant said,”That is the way things go on. Your father was hiding you from the way things go on.”

He says, “What? My father!! Get my horse, saddle my horse! Ride me into the forest!” They ride into the forest; he says, “Now take the saddle off the horse. Put it on your horse, hang it on . . . Take my horse by the rein and ride back to the castle and tell my father I'll never see him again!” And the servant, Channa, cried, he said, “I'll never see you again. I don't care! Go on! Shoosh! Get away!!”

He spent seven years in the forest. Biting his teeth together. Nothing happened. Tormenting himself with starvation. He said, “I will keep my teeth bit together until I find the cause of death.” Then one day he was stumbling across the Rapti River, and he fainted in the river. And a young girl came by with a bowl of milk and said, “My lord, a bowl of milk.” [Slurppp] He said, “That gives me great energy, thank you my dear.” Then he went and sat under the Bo tree. Figuerosa. The fig tree. He said, “Now . . . [demonstrates posture] I will cross my legs . . . and grit my teeth until I find the cause of death.” Two o'clock in the morning, one hundred thousand phantoms assailed him. He didn't move. Three o'clock in the morning, the great blue ghosts!! Arrghhh!!! All accosted him. (You see I am really Scottish.) Four o'clock in the morning the mad maniacs of hell . . . came out of manhole covers . . . in New York City. You know Wall Street where the steam comes out? You know Wall Street, where the manhole covers . . . steam comes up? You take off them covers—yaaaaaahhh!!!!! Six o'clock, everything was peaceful—the birds started to trill, and he said, “Aha! The cause of death . . . the cause of death is birth.”

Simple? So he started walking down the road to Banaras in India . . . with long hair, like you, see.

So, three guys. One says, “Hey, here comes Buddha there who, uh, starved with us in the forest. When he sits down here on that bucket, don't wash his feet.” So Buddha sits down on the bucket . . . The guy rushes up and washes his feet. “Why dost thou wash his feet?” Buddha says, “Because I go to Banaras to beat the drum of life.” “And what is that?” “That the cause of death is birth.” “What do you mean?” “I'll show you.”

A woman comes up with a dead baby in her arms. Says, “Bring my child back to life if you are the Lord.” He says, “Sure I'll do that anytime. Just go and find one family in ´Sravasti [FLAT LINE OVER THE FIRST A AND THE I PLEASE THANKS!] that ain't had a death in the last five years. Get a mustard seed from them and bring it to me. And I'll bring your child back to life.” She went all over town, man, two million people, ´Sravasti [DITTO!] the town was, a bigger town than Banaras by the way, and she came back and said, “I can't find no such family. They've all had deaths within five years.” He said, “Then, bury your baby.”

Then, his jealous cousin, Devadatta (that's Ginsberg you see . . . I am Buddha and Ginsberg is Devadatta), gets this elephant drunk . . . great big bull elephant drunk on whiskey. The elephant goes up—[trumpets like elephant going up] with a big trunk, and Buddha comes up in the road and gets the elephant and goes like this [kneels]. And the elephant kneels down. “You are buried in sorrow's mud! Quiet your trunk! Stay there!” He's an elephant trainer. Then Devadatta rolled a big boulder over a cliff. And it almost hit Buddha's head. Just missed. Boooom! He says, “That's Devadatta again.” Then Buddha went like this [paces back and forth] in front of his boys, you see. Behind him was his cousin that loved him . . . Ananda . . . which means “love” in Sanskrit [keeps pacing]. This is what you do in jail to keep in shape.

I know a lot of stories about Buddha, but I don't know exactly what he said every time. But I know what he said about the guy who spit at him. He said, “Since I can't use your abuse you may have it back.” He was great.

[Kerouac plays piano. Drinks are served.]

From the Paris Review

blues

2011-06-28T22:45:00.001-05:00

Isobel

2011-06-28T22:43:00.001-05:00

Afield.

2011-06-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

Peace Island

2011-06-28T22:38:00.000-05:00

MOLTEN

2011-06-28T22:35:00.000-05:00

Way Up There

2011-06-05T14:46:00.002-05:00

Don't U?

2011-06-05T14:46:00.001-05:00

Solsbury Redux

2011-06-01T14:38:00.001-05:00

LOLZ

2011-06-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

Among Dreams

2011-06-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

High Table

2011-05-22T19:50:00.001-05:00

GUGGENHEIM

2011-05-18T15:14:00.000-05:00

Best Tag Ever

2011-05-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

Can't Argue

2011-05-18T15:12:00.001-05:00

TRUST

2011-05-18T15:12:00.000-05:00

The Balcony

2011-05-18T15:11:00.000-05:00

I miss my mom.

2011-05-08T17:37:00.002-05:00

Not my poem.

2011-05-08T17:37:00.001-05:00

Wish it was.

Right?

2011-05-08T17:35:00.000-05:00

Popped Mo' on Easter

2011-04-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

history

2011-04-20T10:49:00.000-05:00

ROAST

2011-04-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

Chew Knowit!

2011-04-04T14:52:00.000-05:00

My first North Face.

'98 Slippers

2011-04-03T01:38:00.000-05:00

GAP

Lamb 'n Fish Kimchi

2011-04-03T01:36:00.000-05:00

3 X Modded

2011-04-03T01:35:00.001-05:00

Guess what I bought.

2011-04-03T01:35:00.000-05:00

Brrr

2011-03-30T20:06:00.000-05:00

FINALLY

2011-03-28T18:06:00.000-05:00

Spracked

2011-03-25T16:03:00.001-05:00

Some things stay the same.

2011-03-21T16:43:00.000-05:00

GATEKEEPER

2011-03-18T21:24:00.000-05:00

BBQ CASUALTY

2011-03-17T17:52:00.000-05:00

SO MUCH SOJU ON MY MIND

2011-03-14T18:02:00.000-05:00

Dear Cody,

2011-03-14T00:49:00.002-05:00

Whom I miss
On worlds away
Thus success
I cannot sway

If I may
While I write
Tell her well
Or just goodnight

Oh
I'm mostly right

Lower East Side

2011-03-10T20:31:00.000-06:00

BLL

2011-03-05T15:07:00.000-06:00

Gotham Slept

2011-03-02T17:03:00.000-06:00

Salad Days

2011-03-02T17:02:00.000-06:00

DANGER

2011-03-01T23:25:00.000-06:00

FL: Weird But Beautiful

2011-02-28T20:20:00.001-06:00

Happy Birthday to Me

2011-02-28T20:20:00.000-06:00

Finals Week

2011-02-28T20:19:00.000-06:00

KIMCHI

2011-02-28T19:55:00.000-06:00

Again?

2011-02-28T19:54:00.002-06:00

Lounge

2011-02-28T19:54:00.001-06:00

10 Hours of Energy and 0 Pain

2011-02-28T19:53:00.000-06:00

1072

2011-02-28T19:52:00.001-06:00

Ruling.

2011-02-28T19:52:00.000-06:00

Whiskey & Tokyo Drift

2011-02-28T19:51:00.000-06:00

Dan.

2011-02-28T19:50:00.001-06:00

Right?

2011-02-28T19:50:00.000-06:00

Hawks

2011-02-28T19:49:00.000-06:00

SOONER

2011-02-28T19:47:00.000-06:00

Appreciate Pizza

2011-02-28T19:46:00.000-06:00

Tiny Hands

2011-02-28T19:45:00.000-06:00

Police Dog Training Course

2011-02-28T19:44:00.000-06:00

Hell Day

2011-02-28T19:43:00.001-06:00

BIG

2011-02-28T19:43:00.000-06:00

Hammer Heads

2011-02-28T19:42:00.000-06:00

Most Reputable Rep

2011-02-28T19:41:00.001-06:00

View from the Room

2011-02-28T19:40:00.000-06:00

NYC Faded!

2010-08-18T22:04:00.000-05:00

2010-08-17T18:17:00.000-05:00

Denied!

2010-08-17T18:16:00.001-05:00

Roger!

2010-08-17T18:16:00.000-05:00

SKETCH

2010-08-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

Tasted Like Malt Liquor

2010-08-17T18:14:00.000-05:00

Dance of Death

2010-08-17T18:13:00.000-05:00

No Clue Where This Is From

2010-08-17T18:12:00.000-05:00

Man Down

2010-07-29T16:12:00.001-05:00

Welcome To Coralville

2010-07-29T16:12:00.000-05:00

For Real

2010-07-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

Almost Perfect

2010-07-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

I Still Like Craig

2010-07-06T18:47:00.000-05:00

Good luck in free agency man.

Twins by Day

2010-07-06T18:45:00.000-05:00