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.