Confessions, Part 6

-- Wednesday, 21 August, 1974

The following is the transcribed version of a script of a broadcast which occurred after our press deadline, repeated here in its entirety:

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation”

Act III, Scene I, Take 600

To whom it may discern:

I shall begin at the beginning. I could start at the end, but then you, the reader, would have to stand on your figurative head to divine any semblance of logical, rational meanings from this, the most recent of a series of pompously verbose expostulations and subjective truths.

It all began innocently enough on Monday, 1974, in the restaurant of an average metropolitan airport in San Diego, California, the world’s finest city. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and although I had seemingly recovered from a nocturnal attack of phlebitis (a rare sub-tropical disease of the interior vena cava indigenous to San Clemente and Whittier), I had to wipe the sleep from my eyes as I studied the depleted breakfast menu. I had been awakened ninety minutes prior to this point in time, Senator, by seven short bursts of sonic energy from Mommy Fortuna's mechanical wind-up chicken.

But we digress. I ordered myself a first-class: eggs, orange juice, coffee, muffins, and the killer, sausages. These feisty little red-hot dachshund wieners did an about-face in my digestive tract into a doggy bag just as we were about to land at Los Angeles Airport, in the heart of smog city.

The airline, TWA (who could forget their famous tea?) illegally, immorally, and fatteningly left us with only thirty (count 'em) minutes to catch our connecting flight. The TWA terminal was more than a stoned throw away, so we arrived ten minutes late, amid tram/bus/taxi/feet and handbag confusion. Fortunately, page 76 of the script called for some generator problems, so we reached our goal.

The flight went smoothly. It was 9½ hours (in the centimeter, gram, second system) from L.A., so I had ample opportunity to program my bio-computer with such contemporary literary artifacts as "Goodbye Columbus", "Man and His Symbols" (heavy!) and a complete rendition of a recent issue of Time magazine. Did you know that General Morons and the Nixxon Corporation rank primary and secondary, in this and the other remaining cosmos? These googols of U.S. Imperial Dollar Credits could be put to much better use on urban renewal programs on the moon.

As usual, I had already seen the airline's Channel One flick "Sugarland Express" starring Goldie Hawn, so I had to be content with self-initiated brain teasers and pumpkin seeds while the retinas of the rest of the airborne anxious androids were glued to the silver screen.

Because of the extended time distortion ratio which occurs when the Earth revolves around Neptune, we arrived in “jolly old” about 7 a.m. the next morning, with a loss of eight hours somewhere in there. I'm sure we'll get back this lost time on the way back to the United Snakes, so Great Grid hasn't really cheated us out of our due.

It was a beautiful grey-green English dawn when the intrepid travelers touched down at London's Heathrow Airport. The signs that lined the moving walkway proclaimed "Welcome to Britain." I did indeed feel welcome. To me, it was just like coming home.

There are many cars in England, most of which look understandably foreign. These include Cortinas, Volvos, Vauxhalls, Datsuns, Minis, Hillmans, Volkswagens, Mercedes, Fiats, Capris, Triumphs, etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I have been here two days (and that's a long time in this end of the biosphere) and I have yet to see a Cadaverlac Eldorado or any other species of the dinosaur of the future. I have not seen Elton John or Mr Heath.

1974 Vauxhall Viva

Welcome to "The Era of the Age of Epic Proportions" – Top of page 17

Flat 5 of #6 Roslyn Hill in historic Hampstead is just charming. There are four rooms, including a kitchen, water closet, bedroom, and living room. Physical therapists and other religious ecstatics will be pleased to note that an invigorating climb of 2½ flights is required to reach the abode where we dormicide. This morning, through the bedroom window, I watched the sun Helios arc on his axis over the verdant foliage which surrounds us, tastefully interspersed with superannuated Victorian or Edwardian (only your geriatrician knows for sure) mansions and pillar boxes. 98.6 degrees to the south-southeast is the world's largest hospital, rising like a sixteen-story bedpan over (ironically) the Vale of Health.

I will write more after the painful removal of the ovarian cyst that has engulfed the kosher pickled pig's knuckles of my writing hand.

Remember, "There are no small actors, only small parts." (that's a line from something, I can't remember quite what).

See you on the other side of the record as we slip through the hole of life. Groovy.

Confessions, Part 5

London, Thursday, 5 September, 1974 (continued)

I have seen several shows during my stay in London. Last week we saw the Low Moan Spectacular (comedy theater co.) version of "Bullshot Crummond". This was a satire of the Bulldog Drummond TV and radio series (which, incidentally, was the inspiration for the Firesign Theater's "Nick Danger") - complete with suave, handsome British detective Crummond, arch villain Von Brunno, and a bewildered butler (remember Catherwood?). In all, it was a pleasant evening's entertainment.  Also saw "Bringing Up Baby", the 1938 Howard Hawks comedy classic, starring Cary Grant (Archie Leach) and Katherine Hepburn in their younger days and filmed in glorious black and living white, for those of you in our studio audience who hate hullabaluses.

 We also saw a trite but well-formed version of "Sherlock's Last Case" in which, in a bizarre twist, Dr. Watson finally kills Holmes because he is tired of being nothing but a second fiddle banana lackey dormouse. Play it again, Sam.

 Have been watching quite a bit of British television (TV, telly), which I think doesn't have the emotional stranglehold that it had on the American pop culture. There are three channels (two BBC, and one commercial) and the quality is, on the whole, quite good. I remember back home in the United Snakes that any BBC production shown on American TV was good simply because it was British. (I’ll admit, “Upstairs, Downstairs” was great.) However, I have seen some tripe over here, particularly several of the half-hour supposed comedies. On the positive, though, “Steptoe and Son” (the cockney forerunner of “Sanford and Son”, which was brought across the Big Ditch by Norman Lear.) Did have its moments of hilarity. The coverage of the European Games (one step short of the Olympics) was superb. The British athletes came through in jolly good (to paraphrase the vernacular) form, and my conscious retinal being was riveted to the squawk box as the spartan sprinters and heroic harriers kicked up the cinder dust. I have always hoped for a career as an Olympic javelin catcher. The commercials on British TV are more subtle and lower-key (Ab harmonic minor) than that of the by now moribund mediacracy that comprises the post-hypnotic American airways.

-- Saturday, September 7, 1974

Dear Friends,

I have been in London for nearly two weeks and am enjoying myself immensely thanks to my mother who is putting me up, buying and cooking good and nutritious food and taking me to the theatre and in general being a jolly good sport, not to mention the perfect hostess. In addition to these activities, I am reading, writing and studying the form and esthetic merit of the intrinsic artistic and historic intricacies of Victorian, Edwardian, and Neo-Elizabethan architecture. 

(Refer to Part 4, paragraph 7)
Rain...

"You're not getting younger, you're getting worse. Welcome to the past." - inverted TV logo

I hope all you anxious androids in the clinical psychology biz enjoy the forthcoming holiday season and fit those nuts and bolts together before we all go crazy.

"Sanity is getting away with it." - Anon.

Pax, Luv, Brotherhood, and Good Karma.
Yr. Obt. Svt. etc., etc. [FIN]

Confessions, Part 4

London, Thursday, 5 September, 1974 (continued)

Take a moment...relax...now that you're comfortable, think back, way back, to those antediluvian times before the dawn of pre-recorded history, when everything – including milk –was good for you. Yes, that was before the beginning, before they changed the water. That was before instantaneous alchemists on both sides of the big ditch developed that now familial process of mind-overdub. That was years (in the antiquated English system of weights and measures) before Hanna Milhous Nixon had her hysterectomy and put Whittier on the map. That was before the world’s fossil fuel supply trickled inexorably through the ventricles of modern motor media madness, giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small dying creatures. That was before the four lads from Liverpool dropped their great load on the compost heap of human knowledge.  As official Paisley House pornographer David Hume Kennerly once said, “Those were un-groovy times.”

But enough metaphoric mouthwash, hypodermic hogwash, and bicarbonate brainwash. The president and I both thank you for the insurrection. Please join us for Act III of “A Slice of Life”, starring the Reality Players, which is already in progress.

Warning: The Sturgeon General has proven that money is hazardous to your wealth.

Note: This lifetime and others like it are dedicated to St. Richard Milhous-Nixxon, the 37^th resident of the Subdivided States of Unconsciousness, without whom none of this would have been necessary.

To continue…Yesterday we had to clear the flat for the maid, so we took a motor trip (in Mother’s friend Pat’s Mini) through the winding cobbled streets of Hampstead to the old English mansion, Kenwood House. Originally Caenwood House, this example of Adam architecture was built in the early 1600s and was owned in those fallopian times by such dignitaries as the second and third Dukes of Argyll, the Earl of Bute, and the Earl of Manchester, among others. The many, many rooms which have hardwood floors, and are generously hung with fifty or sixty (at least) paintings from Old Masters, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Vermeer, “The Guitar Player” (alone worth millions) was recently stolen and held for ransom by a band of displaced desperados.  However, it was returned in good working order after its perilous journey around the tip of the Cape of Good Horn in South Armenia.

We visited Kentish Town and Camden Town (some of the poorer sections of London, which resemble Brooklyn), Golders Green (where the people of the Jewish persuasion hang out), and Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose three-story brick mansions make Bel-Air look like the slums. These palatial dwellings are inhabited by the noble aristocratic families of the capitalist ruling strata which go back many spontaneous generations. Hampstead, it turns out, has the most expensive land per acre in the world (probably excluding downtown Newark and Burbank).

Rain, the tears of the almighty grid, comes almost every day, bringing with it multitudes of umbrellas, macs, anoraks, and other vestments of garb, which prohibit the incursion of insipient precipitation. This is why the English countryside is so green. (That’s lucky for us, because if it were red, all the Chinese would fall off.) Now and again the shining face of the sun Helios pokes through the veneer of clouds, bathing the emerald hills in a sea of photons. This variable climate, though gloomy at times, is perhaps a welcome change from Southern California’s standard temperature and pressure (STP) Celsius monochromatic sameness. The staccato of thunder punctuates the magic bowl movement of life’s magnum opus.