ENTERTAINMENT USA 1924-2014

A Hollywood Fuck-Up

Aren't you the guy who cast hamsters as
sex-crazed cannibals in your all-hamster
remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Nobody even knows what sex they are!
They could be anything!

Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice...

Untitled

Were you one of the torturers?

Were you one of the torturers
or more like a troll or voyeur or a

tormented blunderer in the
temple of souls?

Were you one of the torturers?

Diosa - Hollywood Boulevard - 12/13/2014

franz kafka

Viper Room - West Hollywood CA - 12/9/2014

Mussel Shoals

I stole a guitar from Mussel Shoals!
You smooched the witch of moolah!

We lived like elves in the leafy canopy!
You could probably fly!

Now all our
swans are dying

and we don't even cry!

Breakfast

They can hear you snoring in the house next door!
You mooned the planet Neptune!

You look like a
cross between an

eel and a cue-ball and
no,

you can't wear your
prom dress to breakfast!

FYI

You live on a reef!
You'll probably drown next week!
My sockeye sees a big storm coming!
He sees it in a cheesy fresco!
He saw it in raw meat!

My sockeye sees you go under!

Klaire Bielonko

Meerkat

I own the Great State of Oklahoma!
I'm a meerkat tycoon!

Meerkats choke the Niebelungen!
They call it triage!

Choke the Rhine!
Choke the Rhone!
Choke the Rhine!
Choke the Rhone!

It's a meerkat enigma!
My phone won't ring!

I own Ohio and Wyoming!
I'm a meerkat tycoon!

Cartoon Pink

My grandma was a burgler!
My mommy burns glue in the sink!

We drink all day and at night we turn
cartoon pink!

Vita Propria

Are you the owner of this moron?
What mother wouldn't want to hear those words?

It looks like a lawn mower!
Put some pants on it!

What mother wouldn't want to hear those words?

It bit my uncle!
It swallowed a thermos!

What mother wouldn't want to hear those words?

But we came to the end and remembered everything,
and then we didn't.

High School

You go back to high school.
You wish you were dead.
You blush.

You blush like the Red Mists of Aldebaran!

All the mimics and
sickos dissolve in a

cosmic

kiss!

Long Island Railroad

They all eat the same oyster!
They all ride the same horse!

Oyster-horse on a house-boat in Mecox Bay!

Arty oysters from Montauk!
Bratty oysters from Quogue!

Blur

Were you ever a blur?

Were you ever a word that turned into thistles?
Were you ever a word that turned into fur?

Were you ever a blur?

Mexico

Why does every message I get from
Mexico look like a
sex-text from a swat team?

Get naked!
Walk out the front door!

It's always bad advice!

Yuba River

We were laying out a picnic on a
big flat rock beside the Yuba River
below the Bridgeport Bridge when a couple of
kids came running down the bank and
as soon as they saw us
I guess they knew
we would have had to have
seen their father still
thrashing and splashing and
trying to swim.

He was swept away from a beautiful
pool about a mile upriver,
where the river grinds stone into
sand and the sand can

suddenly slip away

and eventually the
EMT's from Yuba City picked up the kids
in their all-purpose
hearse and ambulance
and there are worse
ways to die than drowning in the
Yuba River below the Bridgeport Bridge,
where the river runs fast and cold and clear.

Ebola Bebop

Is this the ebola bebola bebop?
She-bop!

She-wow!

Is this the ebola bebola bebop?
She-bop!

She-wow!

Do you sing as you swing through the jungle?
Did you ever escape from a zoo?
Do they wash you in ozone or ouzo?

Is that your mouth on my menu?

You got the ebola bebola bebop!
She bop!

She-wow!

You got the ebola bebola bebop!
She-bop!

She-wow!

Hot Pink Tingle

You may be hogtied or you may be
tiptoeing out the back door
in your nightie.

You may be
grinning into infinity
when you feel the hot pink tingle.

Is it real?
Can you feel it?
Are you my brick?
Am I your pecan?

I got a pancake in my brain-pan!

Forest Lawn

What I need is a
flaming meteor and four
old Jews playing euchre on my coffin!

What I need is a teacher to teach me to
speak in trochees and I need to be
buried in the same grave as Greta Garbo!

What I got is a row of
true-love weepers and a B-list
bouquet from MGM.

Ghost to Ghost

Aboriginal man, aboriginal TV repairman,
I worked most of my life in Melbourne and Sydney,
telecine to kinescope, film into TV in the Menzies Hotel,
ghost to ghost from the American studios,
but I don't die into ghost TV,
I don't die into America neither,
I die into fire and stars and whispers.

Teach

I coulda been a made man!
I coulda teached to teach!

I coulda traded my socks for
cosmic moxie!

I coulda ate a bomb!
I coulda teached to teach!

True As Snow

Flounce around in your
doleful opulence if you want to!
We still live in a bubble!

We live in a mumble-a-bumble!
We live in a bai-bai-bai-bai!
We live in a wobble-a-bobble!

We live in a bubble in Mumbai.

Late Date at Wal-Face

You toyed with a
boy who was
obviously annoyed with
himself.

I scattered my change
all over the
check-out lane!

I scattered my change
all over the
check-out lane!

Is this

your place or my place?
Is this

your place or my place?

I can't even
see my face

myself.

Aria - Marco Uccellini

 
 

Invisible Friend

I live in the
darkest shadow in every room.

I am close.

Are you listening?
I am

closer than your breath.

Hinge

Are you a dainty eater?
Are we bonding with bodies or antibodies?

Do you own a home-made bomb?
Are you wearing a beak?
Is your woowoo a widget?

Hey Grandma!

Did you hear the big hinge squeak?

Bodhisattva on Mars

 
 

Mermaid

You load your aquarium onto a
rocket and land on Mars.

All the Martians rush out of their
hidey-holes and ask you...

"What's it like to be a mermaid?"

It's like dancing a jig on the
wings of a wig!

Wiggy-waggy as elasticized as our
ideal chemise!

Hollywood Boulevard - 9/6/2014

 
 

Scream

Kill them all!
Kill the sequel!

Kill them all!
Kill the franchise!

Kill them all!
Kill them all!
Kill them all!

Kill every human being,
except a few slutty teenage girls.

Romance

"I love you like a lunatic!"
This is very romantic.

"I eat like a lunatic!"
This begins to be creepy.

"I practice medicine like a lunatic!"
What?

"I fuck like a lunatic!"
And here we go again!

Dirge

In 1992 I won a life-time
supply of Fig Newtons which
Nabisco would only deliver to my "actual residence,"
and even after I explained that my
"actual residence" is the endless cycle of eternity,
Nabisco nevertheless refused to deliver my
life-time supply to a lake-side
ashram in Minnesota,
where Flora and I once recited
a dirge for Derwood Robinson.

Every monk in that ashram was
crazy about Fig Newtons!

Playground - Lakewood CA - 8/17/2014

 
 

Malibu

We rented this house on the beach to write lyrics!
We rehearsed our pitch on a Russian rocketship!

Did we bring enough pancakes?
Did we bring enough pancakes for a space-walk?

Did we stage a sneak attack of the sparkle-shark?

We rented this house on the beach to write lyrics
and most of the time we were happy, I guess.

Then we moved to Seal Beach, then New York,
then the far-away stars and the dark behind the dark.

Surprise

This was the season when we
learned to play the nocturnes...


Big

           slow

                       balloons

                                 bouncing

                                         around

                                              an

                                         empty

                                 ballroom.

This was the season of oysters and curtseys!
Tenors singing on sentry duty!

Your mom hired a druid to read the runes!

Your mom hired a druid to read the runes,
and all of them were curses!

Vision Center - Culver City - 8/9/2014

 
 

Maggot

Maggot walks into an
art museum and says...

"Show me the meat!"

It's a fast-moving maggot!
Maggot bigger than a hog!

Then it gobbles up the guard and
charges into a mob of tourists!

Maggot bigger than a Buick!
Maggot faster than a Maserati!

You can't get away!

You defaulted on your mortgage!
You don't even own a car!

All you want to do is vegetate!

Meanwhile the maggot eats Beirut!
Maggot eats Greenwich Village!

You can't kill it with hate-mail!

Maggot brighter than a thousand suns!
Maggot bigger than New York!

Bad Guess

Is this book about cannibals?
Yes.
Is there more than one cannibal in it?
Yes.
Did you marry a cannibal?
Yes and no.

I saw thousands of cannibals on a beach in Malibu
and all of them died of old age or drowning.

Promo

I bought a tacky watch!
I attached a

catchier tag-line to your
wacky cat-walk!

Woman, what do you want from me?

I gave you everything I had!
I can't give you any more!

California

 
 

Crabgrass

It rained! Whoosh! Then the sun came out, and the rain soaked in,
and everything looked clean and shiny, especially the crabgrass.
 
 

Garden Center - Santa Monica - 7/26/2014

 
 

Seagrass Negative - Los Cerritos Center - 7/22/2014

 
 

Cleaner - El Segundo Boulevard - 7/20/2014

 
 

School Lunch

You need magnesium in your diet?
Chew my watch!

Iron deficiency anemia?
Shove a fork up your ass!

We count gangrene as a veggie!
Gangrene!

It's a veggie!
Gangrene!

Del Amo Boulevard - Redondo Beach - 7/19/2014

 
 

Fum

Fee fi fo fum!
Are we having fun yet?

Hack the fax!
Gag the hag!
Smack the cracker!

My cake aches for you!

Fee fi fo fum!
Are we having fun yet?

Blue Fence - Santa Monica

 
 

Picnic - Tarzana - 7/12/2014

 
 

Control

I visited a friend of mine in his fifth-floor walk-up in Atlanta
a few days ago, and after I finished huffing and puffing from the
climb, we got down to the serious business of talking about Control,
the new movie about Ian Curtis from Joy Division.

Sam Riley was great as Ian, my friend said, but seeing an actor play
epilepsy in the middle of a concert is still nothing like knowing that
Ian Curtis could actually die at any given moment on stage.

While he was talking I noticed a few wisps of smoke rising through
the floor. "What's that all about?" I said.

"Maybe the building is on fire," my friend said, "but the City Council
just passed an ordinance to reduce fires in old wooden tenements by
ten percent in the next five years, or maybe it was five percent in
the next ten years, or some such shit as that."

So we went back to talking about how some characters like Ian and
Kurt Cobain somehow absorb so much of the world-sickness that there's
no way they can live with it, and if they didn't finish themselves off
maybe a meteor would hit them or a bus would jump the curb or some
other strange accident would befall them as an expression of a great
sickness that is normally distributed over billions of people
but sometimes fully expresses itself in a single individual.

By this time the smoke was so dense that I couldn't even see my friend,
and maybe I remembered that he gave up on his crazy music and his band
and died in 2003, but it doesn't really matter because all of us will
be fucked sooner rather than later, and my friend isn't missing anything
except a little stretch of terminal bullshit.
 
 

Midnight at WalMart - Culver City - 7/7/2014

 
 

3 AM in El Segundo - 7/4/2014

 
 

Wasteland

 
 

Lights

 
 

Drive Through - Tarzana CA - 6/17/2014

 
 

Rancho Palos Verdes - 6/12/2014

 
 

Rustoleum Royal Blue in Hawai'ian Gardens - 6-8-2014

 
 

Board Fence - San Pedro CA - 6/02/2014

 
 

American Express - Torrance CA - 5/28/2014

 
 

Mr. Ram on the late shift - Torrance CA - 5-26-2014

 
 

Wasteland

My tongue is falling asleep.

My tongue is falling falling falling
asleep.

Someone slowly draws sails on a blackboard.
I forgot how to scream!

Dreams are walking across my brain
like ants walking over jelly.

Motel on 7th Street - Long Beach CA - 5-23-2014

 
 

Custom - Bellflower Boulevard - 5/21/2014

 
 

Bellflower Boulevard

 
 

Studio City - Midnight - 5/12/2014

 
 

Playa Vista - 1 AM - 5/10/2014

 
 

Sepulveda Boulevard - 5/6/2014

 
 

Arrows

 
 

Parking Lot on Santa Monica Boulevard - 2 AM - 5/3/2014

 
 

Sigma Chi

I am ill, Sigma Chi!
King Tut bit me!
Then he hurled!
We had to lick it up!
He made us lurk in the basement until Halloween.
Then we killed him.

Hulks in kilts are still dancing on his chin!
They gave him a wedgie.
They ate his glands.

Those hicks should chill!
The Gilded Age is over.
Nobody survived.

I am ill, Sigma Chi!
My world is dying, and I don't know why.

AK-47

I'm a clam at your clambake!
Ack ack!

Are your eyeballs retractable?
Ack ack!

Were you born in re-Borneo?
Ack ack!

Are you more like a crab or a crackerjack?
Ack ack!

Coca in my beak!
Coca in my oboe!

Ack ack!

Blue

What do you see?

I see blue sky and stars
behind the blue

and

you

here

now.

Bomb

Is my cow from another planet?
How would I know?
I saw her eating laundry at the laundromat.
She was down on all fours!
Eating laundry at the laundromat!
I wish she would eat a bomb!

Surrender

You may drown in the darkness of surrender
you may drown in a drop of rain
and even when you drowned in the
nothing of the nothing of the nothing
as soon as you went under
you saw hundreds of hidden suns.

James Bond

Am I your nursemaid?
I can't drive you around forever!
I wish I had a suicide pill!
All we ever do is drive around and around
and I don't know
how you turned out so wrong!
All your siblings are eagles and peacocks!
Gigantic thoroughbred race horses!
Greta Garbo!
John Wayne!

Your Uncle Freddy is standing on the moon!

Your dad can whistle with his feet!

But all we ever do is drive around and around
and I never wanted to be a Bond Girl anyway!

I get shot all the time!
They made me eat a worm!
I was always naked!

Now my husband and I own a string of laundromats
and all we ever do is drive around.

Are we dead yet?

I designed this terrarium.
A crawdad evolved in it.
He's addicted to seaweed.

Are we dead yet?

Are you a bleeder?
Can I borrow your fur?
Are we bleeding money?

Are we dead yet?

There's a bomb in my brain!
They engraved me with melody-needles!
I married a tree!

Are we dead yet?

Are you clever?
Why not?
Are you clever?

Are we dead yet

Rumba

What we need is a fuck-tax.
Fuck-tax on the fuckers!

Rumba dumba!

I got my dumbbell and my ice-ax!

Rumba dumba!

What we need is a fuck-tax,
and if the Duke don't like it...

He can fax us his adieux!

And if the dog don't doodoo,
and if the cow don't moo...

If a much of a Duchess don't chacha...

We can fack-fack-fack-fax them too!

Rumba dumba!

Ants

I was born in an ethical ant-hill.
I was raised by the ethical ants.

Have you seen the ants dancing?
They dance all the time!
Some of them can even tap-dance!

Tap tap tap tappity tappity tap!
Tappity tap tap tap tap tap!

Can you dance with the ethical ants?
Am I dancing?

Am I dancing the ethical ant-dance?

Malta

Before we met, I was
probably a peanut.

I was pickled by the Huns.
Pickled peanuts!
That's all they ate.
Later Sydney Greenstreet bought me at a yard sale.

He glued wings on me and
called me the Maltese Peanut.

Are we flying yet?

I already waited for a thousand years!

How Scary Is This Movie?

We screamed so much, they had to gag us!
They glued us to the seats!

A tooth for a tooth, and torture for the toothless!

Get ready to gargle!
Get ready to squeak!

Okra

Don't look at the clock!
We could turn into okra!

Our garage is on fire!
We could turn into okra!

Fuh-uh-uh-uh-uh
ucka-fuh-fuh
fuh-ucka-fuh-fuh!

All souls are
barking in a
child-proof jar!

We could turn into okra!

Café des Arts

You may be sad,
you may be smart,
or you may be funny,
my friends,
but the only living art
is the art of money.

Calf of God

Am I calving?
Have a look at my vagina!
Can you see a cow in it?
Now look around for the baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus, is you my fetus?
Baby Jesus, is you my friend?
Baby Jesus, is these the end-times?
Yes they is, child, yes they is!

I-80

Manhattan to Chicago to Omaha
Omaha to Wyoming Nevada Utah
Utah of the Arapaho
abandoned farms far away from the mile-wide highway

Coal towns gold towns ghost towns
Elko Laramie Sioux City Hoboken
Hoboken of the Hackensack
Hackensack of the Lenni Lenape

Bang the drum!
Sing the death-trap tantra!

Obit

I once saw a guy juggle seven knives in Brixton!
He emcee'd the Brixton Oscars!
Inked a bee!
Bit a trike!

He unboned a Brixton ostrich!
It wrote the obit.

Here
lies
the
guy
who juggled seven knives in Brixton,
and now nobody knows the same trick.

A Message from the Maharani

Read my armband!
Grow henna!
Don't drive!

Are you poor,
are you poor,
are you poor,
or are you only
afraid of the fire?

You're afraid of the fire,
and you're already burning!
You're already burning!

The maharani is a raw-boned woman.
She wants to be embalmed in marmalade.
(This is a bad idea.)

Helmet

I got a mullet and a meth-helmet!
What the hell?

Mulct the whelks?
Milk the whales?
Welch on Willie?

I got a mullet and a meth-helmet!
What the hell?

Ice

Stripper opens her steamer-trunk and a
midget jumps out of it!

Midget howling like a fiend!

I own a magic orange, says the midget.
Give me back my cigar!
Are there narcs in Iran?

Stripper hurls a few
trinkets at the midget and asks herself...

Is this the life I chose?
Midgets shrieking in a sex-club?

Let's go skiing instead, says the midget.
Skis hissing on the snow-pack!

Blue skies!
Blue skies!
Blue skies!

Skis hissing on the ice!

Hollywood Boulevard

I scream salaam at the signal-man!
Salaam!

My granddad got the
glam-malaria from Lana Turner.

Salaam!

He grew hundreds of fins!
Salaam!

He looked more like a peony than a fish!
Salaam!

We buried him under Hollywood Boulevard.
Salaam!

I scream salaam at the signal-man!
Salaam!

Officer

Do I look like the kind of woman who would
eat the frosting off her daughter's wedding-cake?

Ma'am, you're crawling around on the floor,
you have frosting all over your face,
and you're completely naked.
What am I supposed to think?

Tell me!

What am I supposed to think?

West of La Brea

Once upon a time the
Society of Fish at
Hollywood High School elected her as the
sluttiest prom date west of La Brea
and ever since that day she begins every sentence with
"Speaking as a celebrity..."

So now when it's 400 degrees on Sunset Boulevard and the
last trees burst into flames and my
MawMaw curses God, she says...

"Speaking as a celebrity, I curse God."

Tiara

I got a pig in my tiara!
Pig like a thousand suns!

Like a thousand suns?
Or like a thousand gerbils?

Are you really even wearing a tiara?
Or are you wearing a donut?

I got a pig in my donut!

Donut like a thousand suns!

Jingle

I'll be the
tango in your mango
if you'll be the
money on my tongue.

Mango as sweet as money!
Mango as sweet as money!

I'll be your
mangled Anglo jingle
if you'll be the
money on my tongue.

Julia Butterfly Hill and the White House Cowboys

I'm posting this beautiful photo of Julia Butterfly Hill to
make a small point about all the phony cowboys who rule the USA,
"tough guys" from their fucking prep schools in New Hampshire or
Hawaii, Bush and Obama with their drones and bombers and especially
Dick Cheney, who even wears a goddamned cowboy hat in his Facebook photos.

Hey, "tough guys!"

What did you ever do that took even a fraction of the pure brute toughness
of living in a sequoia for two long years of rain and sun and snow and
mountain storms that blew Julia Butterfly Hill back and forth in her
tree-top like a sailor at the top of a 200-foot mast in a hurricane?

Hollywood

I know hundreds of ghosts,
but only one money.

Are we having fun yet?

I have brung my stenographer with me
into the men's room!

Run away!

Run away from the rodents and donuts and
you can quote me!

I can quote myself!

I have brung my stenographer with me
into the men's room!

Vacation

Are you looking for a whale?
I'm your non-fatal case of the flop-sweats!

Are you my date?
I'm the national tap-root!

Is this really the end of vacation?

A Good Beginning

We called him "Ernest," we boys who ran around the marina on
Key West.

"Hey Mr. Hemingway! Hey Ernest!"

He hated this name, and if one of us cranked it up to "Ernestine!"
he would get so sputtery and distracted that another of us could
sneak up behind him and steal the glasses off his face.

Cats

Most people don't take me seriously,
because I'm a cat.

Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!
Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!

You can't taste water in your mouth!
We never take a bath!

Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!
Cat-a-rat-a-rat-cat!

Were you ever a were-cat?
Can you hear them laughing?

Laugh like the water in your mouth!
Laugh like a jungle!

Elvis on Easter Island - Ritratto monumentale di Joseph Michael Reynolds

 
 

Banana

Monkey-face on the sidewalk
cracks under the leaves
I see you monkey-face

I'm the man from Amalgamated Marmalade!
Life is my banana

Life is my banana banana banana

Are you underwhelmed by my arm-hole?
Are there yodelers in your back yard?
Shall I eat my grandma?

I'm the man from Amalgamated Marmalade!
Life is my banana banana banana

A Wrong-Colored Sky

You wanted a wrong-colored sky

sky as seen from
inside a peach

sky as seen from inside a plum

"No, you don't want a
wrong-colored sky," they told you,
"Try to look at it our way."

"First close one eye."

"Then poke out the other."
 
 

New York, 2013 - Spencer Platt

This is one of those too-good-to-be-true photo ops that nobody can pass up,
like a sousaphone/kazoo of meta-photography, honk if you hate the rich, honk
if you hate the poor, just fucking honk and keep on honking!

Rainy Nights in Hollywood

I looked up, and
suddenly the stars were
bright enough to light the world premiere of
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN
SPIDERMAN