As an adolescent, purchasing condoms was a traumatic experience. I’d buy other stuff to avoid being embarrassed. “I’d like a Batman comic book, and this candy bar—[whispering] and a pack of prophylactics—and a tube of toothpaste, please.” By the late ’80s, there were huge billboards proclaiming: “If you can’t say no, use condoms,” but an executive of the Gannett Outdoor Advertising Company confirmed that they held off putting up those signs until after the Pope’s visit to America.
The Catholic Church is faced with an interesting dilemma. On one hand, they are opposed to condoms as an artificial method of birth control. On the other hand, they’re well aware that condoms can serve as a protection against AIDS. A group of bishops once argued that any educational program that included information about condoms should also stress that they are morally incorrect.
A compromise is possible, of course. They could manufacture theologically correct condoms, with teeny tiny pinprick holes in the reservoir tips, just enough to give all those spermatozoa a fighting chance. That’s fair enough. But the problem then is that if the semen can get out, the AIDS virus can get in. So, then, it’s back to the Vatican drawing board.
Now, theologically correct condoms would still have those teeny tiny pinprick holes in the reservoir tips, but there would also be little feather repellers with the message, “Wrong Way—Do Not Enter—Severe Tire Damage.”
GRAMMYS, SHRAMMYS
I got a phone call from an old friend: “Hey, congratulations!”
“Thanks. For what?”
“You’ve been nominated for a Grammy Award.”
This was a big surprise. My album, The Zen Bastard Rides Again, had been released in September 2004 by Artemis Records, without fanfare, advertising, reviews or, for that matter, sales. I checked the nominations for Best Comedy Album. There was Triumph the Insult Comic Dog for Come Poop With Me; Jon Stewart and the cast of The Daily Show for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart; Ellen DeGeneres for The Funny Thing Is . . . ; David Sedaris for Live At Carnegie Hall; and Al Franken for The O’Franken Factor Factor—The Very Best of The O’Franken Factor.
But not me.
I called my friend back, and learned that my nomination was for Best Album Notes. I didn’t even know there was such a category. I had been invited by Shawn Amos at the Shout! Factory label to write a 5,000-word essay, “The Ballad of Lenny the Lawyer,” accompanying a 6-CD anthology, Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware.
My competition: the album notes for The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964—Concert At Philharmonic Hall; Peter, Paul & Mary’s Carry It On; The Complete Columbia Recordings of Woody Herman and His Orchestra & Wood-choppers (1945-1947); and No Thanks! The ’70s Punk Rebellion.
I didn’t expect to win, but if I did, it would be a tribute to Lenny, not me. Actually, people often mistake me for Paul Kantner. In fact, when I returned from the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, a Customs agent looked at my passport and said, “Hey, you guys made some great music.” And my luggage wasn’t searched. I could’ve smuggled in several buds of prize-winning marijuana.
I once attended the Academy Awards in a borrowed tuxedo with a co-writer on Fox’s short-lived Wilton North Report, Paul Slansky, who had an extra ticket. His friend Albert Brooks had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Broadcast News. The ceremony was boring—indeed, Brooks had explained to his shrink that he smoked pot because “it makes boredom more tolerable”—so, after Brooks didn’t win, Slansky and I left, got some take-out Kentucky Fried Chicken, and watched the rest of the Oscars on TV.
Now, for the Grammy Awards in February 2005, I couldn’t afford to fly to Los Angeles and stay at a hotel. I considered selling my tickets—somebody was auctioning six tickets on eBay at a minimum bid of $4,000 each—but instead I decided to give my tickets to a couple of friends. It turned out, though, that I’m entitled to just one complimentary ticket. Only members of the Recording Academy are entitled to two comps. A ticket for Nancy would cost $550. What a racket. Nobody goes to the Grammys alone. My friend offered to reimburse me. However, my nominee order form advised: “Tickets transferred or re-sold without permission will be revoked and their bearers deemed trespassers.”
At my request, Danny Goldberg, who ran Artemis, asked its publicist to find out the appropriate person I could speak to who could grant me permission to transfer my tickets. She e-mailed me: “I have checked with NARAS and unfortunately, Grammy tickets are not transferable under any circumstances.” So I wrote a letter appealing my case to Neil Portnow, president of the Recording Academy. No reply. My friends will not be going to the Grammys, after all.
As for me, I’ll just borrow a tux, get some Chinese take-out and watch the show at home.
Postscript: Since the tickets would not be mailed but had to be picked up, I realized that, obviously, every nominee and industry mogul and their paid-for guests would not be picking up their tickets individually. I called the Recording Academy and explained that I didn’t live in Los Angeles, so would it be all right if a friend picked up my tickets?
The answer was yes. They would mail me a Ticket Release Authorization form to fill out and fax back. “Your authorized third party,” the form stated, “will be required to present (1) A copy of this authorization and (2) Photo identification (driver’s license or passport).” There was also a warning: “Please be prepared to show photo identification for entrance to all Grammy Awards events.”
Michael Risman made the pick-up, “though they let you know,” he told me, “that they do random checking to insure the ticket-holder is the proper party at the gate.” Michael and his wife Rebecca are the friends to whom I was giving the tickets. Rebecca worked at Concord Records, which received several nominations for albums featuring Ray Charles, but she had already left the company.
“We did gain admission to the award show and post party,” she told me. “We entered the grounds of Staples Center, having the tickets checked a few times at a number of barricades. No one flinched. No one asked for ID. We found our way to the entrance by walking on the red (it was really green) carpet. The Ray Charles ‘Genius Loves Company,’ my swan song for the company, did very well. The after party was quite a spectacle. One bar was completely made of an ice sculpture about 5 feet high. We’ve come a long way since the chopped liver molded into a poultry shape.”
The album notes for the Woody Herman CD won the Grammy.
As for me, it was an honor just to be defeated.
PROVOCATIVE PROFESSOR
In 1970, the War Resisters League in New York organized a demonstration at City Hall Park. I was asked to emcee and to burn a giant blow-up of a tax form. Later, a CBS correspondent interviewed me on camera.
“You’ve just burned that replica of a tax form,” he said. “Have you paid your taxes?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I would like to confess right here on network television that I’m a mass murderer, because so much of the tax money I pay to the government goes to the Pentagon for just that purpose. I pay taxes, and that money has gone for dropping napalm on children in Vietnam.”
My answer never got on the air.
Three decades later, following the 9/11 attacks, on a radio interview, I talked about “the mass anguish experienced by shell-shocked America and beyond. So much human suffering, for the sake of the nation’s karma.”
Compared to Ward Churchill, I’m a fucking girlie-man diplomat. When he wrote that the World Trade Center victims were “the equivalent of little Eichmanns”—with the exception of certain politically correct victims—Churchill was saying the same thing as Osama bin Laden when he explained the reason for the attacks.
Defending his position, Churchill says, “It should be emphasized that I applied the ‘little Eichmanns’ characterization only to those described as ‘technicians’ of the economy. Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food-service workers, firemen and random passersby killed in the 9/11 attack. According to Pentagon logic, they were simply part of the collater
al damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that’s my point. It’s no less ugly, painful or dehuamnizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.”
He’s playing the Oldie But Goldie card—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—which brings up a phone call I got from a friend of 30 years. She attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois at the same tiime Ward Churchill did.
“He’s a phony radical from way back,” she said. “He snitched me out to the police in 1970. He came over to my house one time and—the very first pound of pot that I ever bought—I sold him an ounce. I didn’t get arrested, but I had to suffer the wrath of my parents. They just went nuts. It’s one of the reasons I moved away from Peoria.”
“What do you think was Churchill’s motivation?”
“My guess is he’s been arrested before, and his fingerprints are probably still in existence. He may have had it expunged. I think obviously they had him on something else. He might’ve had a felony conviction. And he went around and ratted everybody out. And I wasn’t the only one. He was the campus snitch. I’d love for him to be able to say anything he damn well wants. But he’s not the authentic article.”
ROONEY’S ASS
Attention, ad agencies: Here’s a method to receive more attention for a product than you would from a 30-second spot, yet pay not a penny to the TV networks. Simply produce a commercial that’s so raunchy you know it will be turned down. Then those same networks will play your commercial—for free—on their news programs. Or if they call your bluff and allow the commercial to be aired, then you can be sure that viewers will bring their eyeballs to the water cooler. It’s truly a win-win situation.
It happened with the Super Bowl commercials. For example, the CBS network turned down a commercial which featured Mickey Rooney baring his ass, but it was pixilated on all the network news programs. Ironically, I have no idea what product was being advertised. Old asses, maybe.
In fact, the Washington Post published this correction: “The TV Column in the Feb. 8 Style section incorrectly described one of the Super Bowl commercials that were scrapped. The ad featured the bare bottom of Mickey Rooney, not Andy Rooney.”
All those old asses look alike.
And now, from the ridiculous to the sublime. . . .
I was touched and intrigued by the story of a woman, Sarah Scantlin, who was the victim of a drunken driver in September 1984. The driver served six months in jail for driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident. Sarah was 18 years old at the time. Now, after having been in a coma for 20 years, she finally spoke her first words. For years she could only blink her eyes—one blink for “no,” two blinks for “yes.”
“I am astonished how primal communication is,” her father said. “It is a key element of humanity.”
Early in February, one of the nurses at the Golden Plains Health Care Center in Hutchinson, Kansas called Sarah’s mother, asked her if she was sitting down, told her someone wanted to talk to her and switched the phone to speaker mode.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Sarah, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
Later, her mother asked, “Do you need anything?”
“More make-up.”
I was stunned by that answer. Could the concept of “more make-up” been somewhere in her consciousness at the moment she was struck unconscious because she had just won a spot on the Hutchinson Community College drill team and been hired at an upscale clothing store?
The nurses say that Sarah thinks that she’s still living in the ’80s. She knows what a CD is, and that it plays music, but she has no idea what a DVD is. When her brother asked whether she knew how old she was, she guessed she was 22. When he told her that she was 38 now, she just stared silently back at him.
Most poignant was that, although she began talking in mid-January, she had requested staff members not to tell her parents until Valentine’s day. She wanted to surprise them. Sarah is back in Kansas again.
THE FEAR OF FICTION
Maybe it’s because Tom Hanks will star in the movie version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code—a novel which has already been translated into 44 languages and sold 20 million copies—that senior Vatican official Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is suddenly telling Catholics not to buy or read the book, because it involves a painting with clues proving Jesus Christ was not the son of God, that he married Mary Magdalene, fathered a family and, for all we know, frequently used Day-Glo condoms as a method of artificial birth control.
Don Novello, who inhabited the character of offbeat priest Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live, appeared on MSNBC in his clerical costume to comment on this literary phenomenon:
“Starting in 320 A.D., popes have commissioned, preserved and collected works of art, and now this guy comes from nowhere, making a fortune from a book that is based on a painting we own. He used our painting for his own benefit. Where was he when we were taking care of it for 500 years—dusting it all that time, and keeping it away from mildew—where was he? And worse, he did it in a holy year. Holy years come once every 50 years—we put a lot of money behind planning and promotion—and he comes out with his book then. Year 2000 coincidence? He waited until a holy year, he jumped on our wave, he stole our holy year. If it’s Mary Magdalene instead of St. John, where did St. John go? Did Jesus have to tell him, ‘Sorry, there’s no room for you in this painting.’ So send for the Da Vinci De-Coder Ring right now. . . .”
And now, on top of that theological controversy, there’s the case of Terri Schiavo and her right to die. Consider the possibility that last-minute, unprecedented political pandering was based on a false premise that the Christian right put George Bush in the White House for a second term; that this myth stemmed from early exit polls in the 2004 election, where some pollsters included “moral values” as one of the reasons Bush was re-elected—what voter would ever have denied that?—when actually it was because of a combination of John Kerry’s personality problem, Osama bin Laden’s favorable review of Farhenheit 911 and the historical fact that American presidents have never been changed in the midstream of a war.
The interference of legislators in a private medical situation boils down to a matter of taxation without representation, as indicated by an ABC poll—conducted by telephone while members of Congress and the president were grandstanding their asses off in a display of bipartisan hypocrisy—a poll which found that 63 percent of their constituents supported the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube. The poll also found that 58 percent of Republicans believed that such intervention was inappropriate, and 61 percent supported removal.
Nonetheless, according to satirist Barry Crimmins, Republican mothers now admonish their children, “If you don’t feed the vegetable, you don’t get any dessert.”
And Don Novello alerted me: “I hear there are a lot of feeding tubes on eBay now they say are Terri Schiavo’s, so collectors are being told to watch out for fakes. If I was in charge of realilty TV, I’d buy them all and put them in a box at the end of a football field and have Michael Jackson and Barry Bonds race—having to use each other’s crutches—from the other end, grab as many as they can with one hand, like reaching in a jar for pennies on Super Circus, and see who gets back first with the most, without complaining.”
THE END OF JOURNALISM
A media watchdog group, the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, affiliated with Columbia University, has just released its annual report on the news business, concluding that journalists should “document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it.”
Well, here’s a case in point.
United Press International dispatched a story last week about a former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing
ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and said that the public version of his capture was fabricated. UPI stated:
“Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army. ‘I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced,’ Abou Rabeh said. ‘We captured him after fierce reisistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed. . . . Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam’s capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well,’ Abou Rabeh said.”
This story definitely had the ring of falsehood. Could it possibly have been a fabrication about a fabrication? I contacted Pam Hess, the UPI Pentagon correspondent.
“My editor and I have been doing our damnedest to kill the story,” she told me. “It is actually a clean pick up from the Saudi press but obviously flawed. It came from our Lebanon desk, which translated and ran the story—standard procedures for a wire. However, this was obviously a huge story if true, and very controversial, and should have been run through me first, which it was not.
“So, the story came from UPI—but I don’t recommend picking it up. Obviously fabricated. The Marines don’t have records of the original source who makes the claims. I have recently heard from some guy who says the fact that the dates (the fruit) were yellow in the background suggest that Saddam was captured and filmed earlier than December—but I’m not sure that rises to the level of reportable.”
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