Bad Company

I want to write about another of the Hollywood "bad boys" (see my previous post).

I know I'm going to regret this when I sober up, but it was one of the more interesting chapters in my California past. As incredible as it's going to sound, I can assure you every word is true.
And, I can also assure you that I'll be deliberately leaving a lot out.......because I need to maintain a smidgen of dignity.......

No need to say how I met Phil. He was one of the most handsome guys in Hollywood. Blonde, blue-eyed, tall. I'm six-foot-one. He was taller than me. He could charm the pants off anyone. Don't even try to speculate. He was charismatic, reckless, and - - recently released from prison. On parol. For armed robbery and assault.
It is said that we are only as good as the company we keep. Don't believe it.

Phil had been raped and beaten in prison. It left deep psychological scars. He told me stories that I'd never repeat. He was tough and frighteningly psychotic, but he also had an intriguingly tender and vulnerable side. I won't elaborate.

Phil was a serious marijuana connoisseur. He smoked joints constantly. He had stashes hidden everywhere. I knew where he got it from, too. I'd like to be very specific, but I'll merely say that his supplier was a major-league baseball player on a California team. I met him.

I was with Phil the first time I ever smoked grass. We had driven down to Long Beach and sat on the sand watching the sunset. We smoked a few joints and I was amazed at how vivid and incredible the sunset became. This was around the time when the Queen Mary (the ship) was still a new acquisition in the Long Beach Harbor. We started throwing rocks at the ship. I always associate the memory of my first joint with sunsets, rocks, and the Queen Mary.

For some reason that I can't remember, Phil's driver's license had been revoked. We always used my car. Phil would hide his stash of grass in my car. Under the seats. In the trunk. At the time, I was too idiotic to realize the trouble I'd be in if I ever got caught.

I had a Guardian Angel watching over me in those reckless days of my youth. The angel has since committed suicide.

One of our favorite haunts was the Green Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard. The cafe is no longer in existence, but at the time it was an incredibly popular hangout of the famous and the infamous. I saw Raquel Welch there, and Cher. Even porn stars went there. One afternoon Phil and I were having lunch and Linda Lovelace came in. She had recently caused a sensation with the movie Deep Throat. Nobody in the cafe recognized her, except the waiter. She just sat there - eating a salad and drinking iced tea - like a normal everyday person.

I'm going to bypass a helluva lot of other stories involving Phil (I don't want anyone to faint) and get to one of the most interesting. One night he surprised me by showing up driving a car. He told me it was a friend's car that he'd borrowed. I believed him.

So we're driving, smoking grass, drinking whiskey, heading toward Orange County. Somehow we wound up in the Orange Hills - winding roads, dangerous curves, pitch black, completely isolated. I want to tell everything about that particular night but it would be far too much to absorb - - I need to condense and keep some memories to myself. There are aspects of complete recklessness and wickedness that should never be whispered......

He's driving, we're both drinking, smoking joints. He accelerates to alarming speeds, seeing how fast he can go. Even though I'm thoroughly stoned I can sense a semblance of genuine fear. We screech around curves, literally bounding through the darkness.

Suddenly, we miss a turn. The car spins wildly out of control, we hit a guard rail, fly over it, hurl down a hillside. The car crashes to a jolting stop.
I'll never know how we were still alive. We were bruised, bloodied, shaken, but miraculously in one piece.

How do I end this one with dignity? The car didn't belong to a friend, I later found out - - it was stolen. We walked (or limped) miles down the hill, hitchhiked back to the city. It was a long night.

Phil lived in constant fear of his parol officer (with damn good reason). He was always afraid of failing the drug tests. I eventually lost contact with him (after a few very dramatic scenes) and moved on. I later heard through a reliable source that he was back in prison.
This was all long ago when I was around 21.

These were excerpts from my typically average California days.
Now, my "average" day consists of going to WalMart and McDonalds. And feeding the feral cats. Go figure.....

Few photos exist of me during my wild

Hollywood days (thank God). Here's one of them.

Someone should have shot me for wearing that shirt!

More Hollywood Adventures, Drugs, Bad Boys

I have nothing new to say except the same old complaints, so - with the encouragement of more than a few beers - I'm ready to delve into the adventures of my long-ago Hollywood days.

 I'll do my best to present a sanitized version, although it won't be easy. My objective is not to shock, but rather to enlighten. I've had an interesting past and I occasionally get the unwholesome urge to confess.

I was never seriously into drugs. As a hypochondriac and a coward, I usually avoided them. I witnessed the destruction of numerous friends because of drugs and learned very bitter lessons from my observations. Admittedly, I occasionally indulged in some of the popular substances of the day - butyl nitrate, amyl nitrate, quaaludes, hashish, marijuana - but I never liked them. Alcohol was always my biggest vice - - and without it, the intensity of my Hollywood adventures would have been drastically diminished.

For the faint of heart, I can assure you that I haven't touched a drug in well over thirty years......

Drugs? I knew an alarming number of people who were into them. Bad boys? I knew many more than I care to admit.

Darren is the first who comes to mind. I met him when I was nineteen, still green,and still new to the Hollywood scene. He was actually a friend of a friend - and much older than myself. Darren was then in his forties (at least). He was the editor of a famous magazine and lived in an incredibly lavish house in the Hollywood Hills, with a staggering view of the city.

The only thing that Darren and I had in common was an intense love for Russian classical music. He had an extremely expensive Bechstein grand piano. He also had very rare old recordings of Russian piano music - Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Cui, Arensky, Medtner, Liadov. We listened to Russian music for hours. I also played the piano for hours, mostly Russian music, and especially Anton Rubinstein's Fourth Piano Concerto - which I was studying with a private teacher.

Darren smoked opium. His music salon was like a Chinese den of iniquity. I was unnerved to discover that Darren was also a male prostitute. He would turn "tricks" in his boudoir. We'd be listening to music. The phone would ring. A man would arrive at the door. Darren would escort him into a bedroom and have sex. At that time it shocked me. Later, I became unshockable - - in fact, it was I who often shocked others (don't attempt to read between lines).

Our friendship eventually cooled for two reasons:
I consistently spurned Darren's sexual advances. And he was jealous of me because - at the time - I was young and desirable. I didn't exactly know it, but I was.

You're wondering why the hell I'm writing all this crap down. Well, it's all completely true and - being drunk - I'm eager to purge myself of tidbits from my past.

John was an actor I lived with for awhile. He was an extremely flamboyant Hollywood character, who appeared in countless TV shows and movies. At that time I was merely an extra in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We had lunch with Peter Frampton, which was interesting - to say the least.

It was through John that I met an endless array of Hollywood characters. Much of it is now merely a memory of colorful blurs......

I distinctly remember the two vampire Lesbians. They lived on the very top floor of an old Art Deco apartment building and only emerged at night. They were both beautiful, had raven hair, black fingernails, black clothing. They were sensual and exotic.
Were they genuine vampires? Heck, I like to think so. Did they bite? I'll never tell......

John had a major drug problem, of which I was initially not fully aware. A "supplier" would come to his house every other day. I'd never seen a drug dealer before. It was both horrifying and fascinating. It was kind of like Avon calling, but with a sinister twist. The drugs often invoked John's dark side. He had an explosive temper and we often fought. That was my main inspiration for severing our "friendship".

Ironically, John (yup, that's his real name) is still living in Hollywood and is still a flamboyant personality. I don't know how he survived all these years.

These were minor scenes from my relatively "innocent" and green Hollywood years. I'd be hesitant to reveal the hardcore years - the times when I was wild and street-wise and decadent. I look back on those years with awe and wonder - - because they contrast so radically from my present tame & dull West Texas lifestyle.

I'd like to write more, because I haven't even scratched the surface, but perhaps this is enough for one sitting........

Stay tuned. As long as I have beer,I also have more upcoming confessions.

ill winds and nothing else

If I had anything new to say, anything exciting, anything positive or optimistic, I would have written sooner.
My reluctance to write is inevitably a reflection of my sorry state of mind. This first month of the new year has so far brought me nothing but physical anguish and psychological angst.
Is "angst" passe? I doubt if it's ever used any more. I'm wallowing in mostly misery and abundant self-pity.

I'm exhausted, depressed, anxious, tense, stressed out. I have sporadic panic attacks and persistant PVC's (premature ventricular contractions). I keep expecting my heart to give out......

......and suddenly I'll awaken in the tender arms of consoling angels......or more likely in a searing pyre of flames and the sting of pitchforks......

There is only one way to describe my life as it presently is: rotten.
Rotten weather, rotten health, rotten neighbors, rotten realtor, rotten environment....ad infinitum.

And the wind......the relentless West Texas wind that obscures any semblance of reality and eradicates any smidgen of hope. The winds have been blowing all week, one suffocating duststorm after another, over and over in a hopeless cycle of dust and destruction. No snow. No rain. Only thick brown dust.

The sun valiantly appears at dawn in the promise of a blue sky, but by mid-morning the air becomes dusted, the sky turns amber, the sun dims into an eerie eclipse. By noon the sky is nothing more than a brown, smouldering shroud. The afternoon quickly fades into a sightless fog of filthy dust and an evil wail of demon voices. Blinding dirt, choking dust, the incessant screams of devastating winds.

A wild, West Texas ghost symphony that plays itself out on the endless echoes of the open plains.

I hear it in my sleep at night, it haunts my dreams and inspires my nightmares. It awakens me suddenly in the timid hours just before dawn. I sit up in bed in the midst of a cold, black room, listening to the outside havoc: banging shutters, rattling windows, snapping branches.

Inside, I hear the pounding of my heart, the ticking of the clock, the purring of the cat who is snuggled cozily by my side.

And then I lay back down and pull up the covers - trying to get warm, trying to ignore the threatening, taunting wail of the phantom wind. Trying to remember if I'm still alive or if I am merely the remnant of a lost ghost passing through the West Texas night.

Trying to say some semblance of a prayer that might help me get through another day.......

Music from Turandot

Turandot, Revisited

At the request of a friend, I've decided to post my piano rendition of Turandot again. I'm doing this more out of selfishness than because of the request. Turandot is my favorite opera and my piano arrangement of the music is one of my more admirable accomplishments.

It's admittedly impossible to condense an entire opera into a five-minute piano arrangement - but I extracted some of my favorite themes from the opera and tried to make the most of them. With apologies to Puccini, of course. If nothing else, my arrangement is extremely difficult.

Why do I love Turandot so much?
Puccini's sublime music always transcends me to the realms of heaven. Turandot is a lush, exotic opera which is set in the ancient Imperial Court of the Forbidden City, Peking. The entire opera takes place at night and the atmosphere is drenched in intoxicating moonlight. Need I say more?

Turandot is actually derived from a Persian word meaning "daughter of Turan". In the opera, Turandot is a beautiful Chinese princess with a heart of ice. The handsome Prince Calaf eventually frees her from the bondage of a loveless existence by correctly answering three mysterious riddles. There's a lot more to it, but I'm trying to be mercifully brief.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) began composing Turandot in early 1921. Unfortunately, he died in 1924 before the opera was complete. Franco Alfano finished the final act of the opera, using notes that Puccini had left.

One of the greatest tragedies in operatic history is the fact that Puccini didn't live to finish Turandot. The music that he did leave, however, will endure forever.

If the above video doesn't work, you can watch it at the following link:Music from Turandot - YouTube