067. booed usic
- t he telectropheremoanin'quinquennial, Galaxy Ballroom, Baltimore, us@ - Tuesday, January 24, 1984
- This was the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Baltimore Underground Telephone Network. The word "telectropheremoanin'" being a pun that combined "telectro" (as in having to do with telephone communications) with "pheremones" (lust inducing biological signals) with "moanin'" (as in moaning with pleasure). This pun was the theme of the night. I had paid a phone sex prostitute by mail to be called by me that night. In case there was any problem with that I'd asked my friend Lisa "Wet-Legs" (as she became known after this night) to act as a back-up. The basic idea was that I'd call the prostitute & broadcast our conversation to the bar's audience - gradually making it more & more perverse. As my conversation was to get stranger, the booed usicians were to gradually start playing until their sounds would drown out the conversation. The booed usicians were: Mark Harp (tapes & radio), Craig Considine (trombone), Ron Cummings (tapes, records, & mixing board), Leroy Keltner (trombone), & myself (tapes). There was "trouble on the line" at the phone sex prostitute's so Lisa substituted. Lisa had gotten mysteriously sick earlier, had vomited & passed out - my call awoke her. This added to the general feeling of it all. Suggestions from the audience were taken & someone's friend was called too. I was too drunk &/or inhibited to carry on a very good conversation so the extremely able Buddy Johnson was called in to relieve me. The highlight of his conversation with Lisa for me was their reminiscing about school-days they never had together when he pulled out his "short fat pancake" & she "covered it with Mrs. Butterworth's". Throughout the "phone sex" & the booed usic that encroached on it, an hour long analysis projector transfer to video of the 16mm version of my film "Subtitles" was shown on a large video projection screen.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
068. Sinnit-Nut Hollow Earth Symposium
- the Sinnit-Nut caves in West Virginia (?), us@
- Saturday, April 21,1984, noon to Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984, noon
- Having been interested in & entertained by theories about the earth being hollow, I organized this subterranean discussion of such things. This was coincidentally on the days when Jiminy H. Particulate Matter Criminy is said to've been entombed in a cave & then to've been reanimated & to've moved a giant rock blocking the entrance in order to leave. Dave Bakker, who picked the caves & otherwise organized the spelunking, & I took Betsy Greene, Richard, Cathy Leaycraft, & Matty Nadov fairly deeply into either the Sinnit or the Nut caves for this. Writer Al Ackerman made a tape recording of a fake radio talk show especially for it. In it he poses as fictitious cave expert Dr. Paul Wilhelm being interviewed about the Sinnit-Nut caves by fictitious talk-show host Ted Lindner (played by a "sociopathic" friend of his). He tells a detailed tale about a Reverend who led a church group into these caves only to return alone, deranged & ill. The conclusion we're led to believe is that the caves have been used to dump toxic military waste from chemical warfare experiments & that this waste mutated the church group into zombies who still wander the caves saying "dit-dit, dit-dit". The Reverend has apparently survived because he didn't approach the "black lake". However, he does eventually waste away after trying to explain the disappearance of the church group in an incoherent story. As a special surprise to the Symposium attendees, this tape was played while we were in the Sinnit-Nut complex without their being told that it was a fiction created especially for the event. No-one seemed particularly worried. Excerpts from various relevant publications were read: Marshall B. Gardner's A Journey to the Earth's Interior or Have the Poles Really Been Discovered; the magazine "Shavertron" #9 - dedicated to the fabulous writings of Richard Shaver & edited by Richard Toronto; the magazine "The Conspiracy Tracker" #1, edited by D. A. Passero; Dr. Raymond Bernard's The Hollow Earth; & Mary Davis' magazine "The Hollow Hassle". With substantial difficulty we slept in sleeping bags on the damp boulders - afraid of falling off the side into the nearby stream. The next morning we recounted our dreams. We recorded our readings, dream tellings, & playings of stalactites & stalagmites (etc..) & these were mixed with Ackerman's tape with the assistance of Bob Boilen at Startec Studio to produce the Sinnit-Nut Hollow Earth Symposium cassette published by Widémouth Tapes. This tape is meant to be listened to either in a cave or while laying naked in a damp bath-tub or on a cellar floor in the dark with headphones on. As far as I 'know', no-one has ever listened to it under the correct conditions. When we left the cave the next day, there were 2 guys there who said they had been about to enter the caves to look for us because they'd noticed our cars parked overnight nearby & were worried that something might've happened to us. Upon returning to Baltimore, we learned that there had been a small earthquake there - something that I had never heard of happening there in the 30 years I'd lived there! We decided that the quake was a way of expressing displeasure with our invasion of their territory by the "Deros" ("Detrimental Robots" posited by Richard Shaver as anti-human hollow earth dwellers).
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
069. Figment of the Collective Imagination
- Madrid, Spain
- May 1984
- Erecting a banner reading "Eso Es Una Quimera Colectivo" (intended to mean "We Are A Figment of The Collective Imagination") a group of 6 or more of us (including Ricki Kilreagan & Gail Litfin) made alotof noise while kids romped around us wearing cylindrical boxes around their feet & lower legs that we'd originally brought as drums. This was late at night in a public square with a central statue & was brought to a halt when an old woman from a near-by apartment building came out & chastised us for disturbing the old & infirm.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
070. Neoist Haircut (in the Popular Chapati Circus - act 1?)
- the Neoist Network's 8th Apartment Festival, London Musicians Collective, London, UK
- Wednesday, May 23, 1984
- Pete Horobin/Monty Cantsin had drawn a brain on my mostly shaved head. My haircut at the time was a circle that went around 1 ear in the front & the other ear in the back. There was an upside-down & backwards question mark on the back. This was before I had my brain tattoo. For the "Chapati Circus" I wore a green clown wig hiding it all & a clear plastic "normal" face mask. My clothes were a jump suit made by & given to me by Nancy Andrews that had "Discover a Lovelier You" written neatly on it with pictures of plastic surgery - including "nose jobs" & "tummy tucks". Continuing the tradition of free neoist haircuts, I had Monty/Pete cut my wig & lather my mask. To climax this grotesque farce, I eventually ripped my transparent mask apart in the process of shaving it & Pete pulled off my wig to reveal my "brain" & the spectacle of my head underneath.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
071. Neoist Guide Dog
- the Neoist Network's 8th Apartment Festival, London, UK
- late May, 1984
- My lover/travelling companion of the time, Gail Litfin, was diabetic. She'd had laser surgery on her left eye which had left that eye blind. Her right eye had hemorrhaged so that all she could see was the red blur of the pool of blood there. She was legally blind. Since I was leading her around, we joked about me being her "seeing-eye dog". We bought a dog mask from a store specializing in animal masks (where Gail almost got caught shoplifting) & added a leash to my outfit for "completeness". The Festival's organizer, Monty Cantsin/Pete Horobin, shot a film of Gail leaving our fest HQ with me on all fours as her "guide dog" (as they say in England), boarding a bus (where guide dogs ride for free, of course, & the driver didn't question the unusualness of this particular dog), & shopping in a mall (where we were kicked out of 1 store).
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
072. Les Promenades Hysteriques
- Paris, France
- late May?, 1984
- I was periodically visiting my friends Reinhardt U. Sevol & Via Vidorae in Paris. Reinhardt was an avid anti-neoist at the time & wasn't planning to participate in the London Apartment Festival so we decided to form another group to perpetrate actions. Those present at this founding were Eugenie Vincent, Via, Reinhardt, Gail Litfin, & myself. The name of the group, Ton Tocock Schisme, was a mesostic made from the names of previous groups that we'd been involved with. Reinhardt made a flier announcing "La Fondation d'une Clinique d'une Realite Cyniquement Inversive". Later, Reinhardt, Via, & I made a film of the only series of actions made in the name of this group that I know of. My main part in it was wearing chef's coveralls that R.U.S. had swiped from his hotel kitchen job which had the title & credit for the film on it while laying on my back on the longest pedestrian conveyor belt in the Paris subway. Reinhardt filmed while people navigated their way past my obstacle.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
073. Halloween Demonstration Against Reagan
- near the White House, Washington DC, us@
- October 31 (Halloween Day), 1984, 10:30AM - 1PM
- In an action conceived of & co-ordinated by Doug Retzler, people wore cardboard "Halloween" masks with Reagan faces on them with null signs over them & distributed anti-Reagan literature to convince voters to vote for anyone but him. The gist of the message was "If You're Not Scared, You Ought To Be." I was photographed by the secret service while wearing mine. If only Reagan could have been arrested as a result in a case of mistaken identity, eh?
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
074. Form Love Letter reading
- the Severn Institute, Annapolis, us@
- December 8, 1984
- I made a form love letter which had the dual function of exploiting the aphrodisiacal qualities of romanticism & making fun of the absurdity of it. I often filled in the name of a person that I was sincerely attracted to & gave the letter to them in places where the lighting was so low it wasn't obvious it was a xerox. Even though the letter was written in a deliberately "poetic" overkill style, I found most women to be surprisingly responsive to it. My intention hadn't been to "humiliate" anyone but just to have a mutual laugh over the ridiculousness of my own extreme romanticism & that of anyone who might share it. Sometimes it backfired somewhat. For this reading, I addressed the letter to 2 different women & had them read it simultaneously.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
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