Madness in Gumbyville

Haven't filed in a long time & don't have much time & so much has happened. So will attempt a post-neo-impressionistic account. Like taking a whiz after standing on a long line with a lot of angry would-be whizzers at a stadium restroom grumbling behind me & cursing the day I was born."Get a move-on awready...!"

Okay. Maybe I should work backwards. From last night. (Like trying to recall a dream in the cold sweat of hot sheets at the first full flush of dawn, the smell of flesh and bodily fluids pervading the fetid rat-infested spider-overrun rustic mountain loft I often make my habitat.

Working sound at Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga--one town over--every Thursday for tips. Positively positive atmosphere. Plenty of blonds. Waiting for not Lefty--although, who knows--but rather Motorcycle Girl (lovely Lori who likes her beer too much & then cruises off into the night). Toujours l'amour...

Today supposed to meet Carla Maserati for coffee this afternoon. But of course would rather meet her next Wednesday--with plenty of free condoms courtesy of Planned Parenthood--later in the evening for plenty of drinks & dancing at the One Broadway. We'll see. I'll mention it. Maybe bug-out of coffee. Unless she wants to go see & be seen at the Los Gatos Roasting Co. where the snobs & the slobs & the Bobs & the Cobbs come to gather as at some temple of the religion of the dreaded bean.

Almost former friend & erstwhile comrade (he's treading on thin ice with me these days...familiarity breeds contempt?) Crazy Vic--incredibly negative about everything now...an entirely other person from the fearless street fighter I once knew in Frisco...one of the Hyatt 6 back in '77...beat the hell out of some rent-a-cops at an anti-union anti-worker utterly reactionary quasi-fascist super-fascistic advanced management seminar before finally being hamstrung & hog-tied by the real frigging police...defended by the Revolutionary Communist Party, although himself no Party member whose lawyer got him off the hook.

Anyway...

The Battle of the Witless is Joined

Vic has nothing better to do than complain constantly about his diarrhea, diabetes, diverticulitis, diverticulosis...and that's just the D's! He sits around watching the grass grow, like the rest of the understimulated yokels bumpkins & knuckleheads...not that they're all bad...If they have vaginas I usually give them a pass...or make one..with the exception of Vic's circus-freak roommate "girlfriend" tormentress Jodie--loves cats, hates people; typical funky refugee from the 60s, out of San Jose, Santa Cruz (aka Santa Crud) & such lovely little Worst of the Leftcoast hideaways.

I've a fatwa out on her ass. He'd probably be in much better shape without her but the entire dysfunctional relationship is exceedingly complicated & founded on basic economics & stupidity. I suppose he has no monopoly in that kind of thing. Suffice to say: he's a difficult friend. An aged--62? 63?--child. Let's just leave it at that. I need a vacation from him. But he calls me 6 times a day to assure me of doom, earthquakes, floods, fires, God's wrath...the usual weather report...

In fact I never had a cellphone until I moved to L.G. And at Vic's behest. Costs my $50 a month just so Crazy with his blabbering addiction can bug me. I mean, shouldn't he be paying my bill? It's time I just cut him off.

Sample Crazy Vic grift:

"Hey J. Can you spring for a couple of sliders & a side order of Garlic Fries? [Panic mode.] I have to eat every 15 minutes otherwise I might pass out...!!!"

To which I think: "So? Good! Pass out already...!"

None of this is news. I sized him up 30 years ago 5 minutes after I met him. The clown! What's fun is watching how much & how often he gets over on the suckers out here in the provinces. Unbelievable. He's like some overgrown baby armadillo. A giant rodent afraid to cross the road as he might be crushed in a rush by some speeding semi barreling through town. He claims to have had a heart attack or be on the verge of one, but he has the heart of an ox. He'll live to be a hundred, to blow his monthly stipend from The People on the horses. He & those like him--parasitic lumpen-proletarian losers--should just be taken out & you know what! And I'm tired of these so-called mental cases using their alleged psychiatric conditions as excuses for being lazy bums. A drag on the Revolution! Yes. I am a conservative. A progressive conservative Bolshevik! That's right. Uh-huh...

Back to the Vic File: Okay. So I was told a long time ago by Martha the Drunk (who has since passed on) Vic was scared witless by her. As were many of the other loser males around here with one foot in the Middle Ages & their other in the shit-pile of today; the creators of their own misery & everyday horrors; no one can liberate them but themselves. And they never shut up! They know nothing but talk & talk & talk...& then claim it's because they've had too much coffee. Maybe they shou8ld try decaffeinated? And where the hell do they get the dough to buy coffee anyway? Uncle Sam, for one. Local suckers, two. Finding money on the street. Good luck. As the Greater Depression deepens that trick becomes harder & harder to pull off. However, I did find a $20 in a Safeway parking-lot sometime ago. But that's pretty much ancient history. I find quarters, dimes, nickels & pennies these days. Everyone is living on credit. But that was always the case in California. Much more-so than back East & elsewhere.

Vic believed I was dying of liver cancer because I told him some student misdiagnosed me as being in end-stage liver disease. He did the chicken moan clucking his tongue--as has been reported to me by reliable intelligence gatherers loyal to me, being the charismatic successor of Leon Trotsky, Lion Feuchtwanger & Captain Blood (The Producer in my head: "We need a musical score! Call Max Steiner!")--"Poor poor J. He won't be among us for long." And when I confront him with it he denies he wishes me ill disguised as care & concern. Am I getting paranoid? No. Paranoid is believing I'm CIA, FBI, Illuminati, International Zionist Masonic Cosmocratic Intergalactic Conspiracy.

And sooner or later, according to Vic, everybody is working to get him. If he keeps behaving like a donkey that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Also...while being envious of my abilities with the ladies (what I lack in endurance I make up for with experience)...being polyamorous yet serially monogamous...if you can handle that...he bloviates on how I should give up seeking out women 20-40 years younger than myself (hey...I'm looking to breed, yea even at this late date; & as a member of a religio-ethnic group that almost got wiped out during the last world war I stand on my natural right to do so, to replenish the tribe, so to speak...if it's anybody's business...). That I should settle for little old blue-haired 75 year olds! What?

Meanwhile he's the one who hasn't had an erection in 10 years after they nuked his prostate (conspiracy?) (although I think he might have had problems before then). But this is neither hair nor there...

Furthermore, he believes I'm writing a screenplay about him that will show him in a negative light. "Nobody's gonna turn me into a clown?" O no? Hey, Bozo, get over here...! The fact of the matter is, Vic is alienating more and more people. Because he won't shut up! Leaving aside his bloated physical appearance, on those occasions when he somehow manages to be absolutely charming he ends up sabotaging himself with talk of his bowel movement schedule. Just the thing pretty women want to hear.

He's outmaneuvered himself. Not for the last time, unfortunately. The fate of the two-headed Gemini?