Johnny Khalud -in- The Occult Roots of Mormonism

The best writing on the web about Steve Ditko’s Mr. A are here, here, and here. If you have no idea who the hell Steve Ditko is, or what Mr. A is, these posts are the place to start. They’re worth it.

A month ago, I downloaded a torrent of the two 70s issues of Mr. A. Re-reading these books (I own physical copies of both, but god knows where), I was struck by how perfectly Ditko’s content matches his form. His 60s work was always jittery, over-textured and really dense, but the pages from Mr. A are something else.

The above is a sixteen-panel page. It’s lively, incredibly paranoid and entirely of itself. Despite their failures at story-telling and entertainment, there’s never a doubt that every page and panel of Mr. A brings us into a unique world. I consider this an achievement of some kind. But I’m not sure of what.

Much has been written about Alan Moore basing the character of Rorschach in Watchmen on both Mr. A and The Question, a pre-Mr. A creation of Ditko. In its own way, Watchmen has a political agenda as extreme as Mr. A– the difference is that Moore’s politics are better disguised and on the side of pinko liberal righteousness, while Ditko is unafraid of seeming nuts. The narrative functions of Rorschach and Mr. A couldn’t be further from one another– Mr. A is a walking cipher, a morality tale that will mortally wound if he encounters a violation of his complex, yet painfully convoluted, code of justice.

To Ditko’s immense credit, there is never, ever a sense of wish-fulfillment in Mr. A.’s brutality. Rorschach, on the other hand, is the Dark Antihero at its most fully realized– the fascist vigilante appealing to the reader on a gutter level, inviting us to take a pleasure in the directness of his methods. I find that Rorschach destabilizes Watchmen– either you have a pinkboy liberal fantasy, or you write a gritty revenge comic. You can’t do both without compromising the moral purpose of your book. To any who would argue, I say: let us not forget the identity of the One True Soul in Watchmen, nor his noble reward.

Ditko’s concerns are entirely different– not crime, not man’s inhumanity to man, but the violation of a Randian Moral Code. Even if his beliefs strike me as an insane, I’m willing to take Mr. A at face value, and acknowledge that Ditko’s motivation, and its philosophical underpinnings, differentiate his work from the revenge fantasies of the decades that followed.

I’ve long believed that the 1980s rise of the Dark Antihero had more to do with the drug & crime epidemic of US Society than any real trends within the comics industry other than a disproportionate number of creators living in NYC, the epicenter. Is it any surprise that Giuliani Time killed the beast? Despite Ditko’s residence in Nuevo Gomorrah, his work clearly rests on a different foundation than the impotent rage of writers, artists and readers beset by a crime epidemic that they can not affect.

–

Hey, stop emailing. I know I haven’t posted. Been busy and am sending my laptop in for repairs. Also going on a long voyage. But will post soon.

Yay.

WINTER TOUR ‘08 BEGINS HERE, PRELUDE:

Harvey Etter, Special Correspondent, Jersey Prophet & old textfiles guy. Formerly “The Master.” On the razor’s edge of 30.

Corner of Hollywood Boulevard & Gower, having just tread upon many a Celluloid Hero.

4:15pm, Saturday, December 1st, 2007.

UPDATE: I got an angry text message from Etter’s wonderful wife, Lauren, wondering why I had failed to give her creds for the photo. There was a paragraph I wrote about her, but I guess that didn’t make it. So. Behind the camera: Mrs. Lauren Etter, one of my favorite people in the world.

Go tell that to your friend in the cowboy hat.

elly jonez, old pal and romantic interest.

Astrologer, relentless self-chronicler and general paranoiac. Owns an amazing oversized copy of Manly P. Hall’s Secret Teachings of All Ages. Rooster-God with Snake legs. Original Camwhore & one of the first SuicideGirls.

My camera went missing, so this is stolen from her flickr account. At an ultra-Yuppie conference in the Getty Center. That dinosaur costs $300 and hugs.

Just turned 30.

Four days, three nights on Kenmore Ave.

2 Live N Die in LA.

December 5th, 2007 thru December 8th, 2007.

The tour was supposed to begin two days ago with a quick visit to the Midwest. That didn’t happen & I previously failed to get pictures of the Festival of Lights in Griffith Park. But life, as always, has its disappointments.

I’m out. Will update when I have my laptop.

In the meantime, here are pictures of a crushed roach in my toilet. In profile, it looks mournful.

Woke up Saturday to catch 10:40am plane. Missed due to lateness. First time in my life. Turned out fortuitous: said flight routed through Chicago, which was, at that time, on the verge of Winter Wonderland. Got airline to give me a new flight. Also routed through Chicago. Got another flight, this time through Vegas. Waited around trying to read William James’s The Variety of Religious Experience. Total failure, only 3 hours sleep. Encountered Barrington ex-pat on the plane. She slept on me. We’re hanging out soon.

Twelve hours later, Rhode Island, mi amor. Tried waking up early, failed miserably. Can’t remember what I did other than watch Miami Vice remake. Terrible film, also awesome. Colin Farrell stalking like a retarded bull, or a waiting butler. Somewhere I re-read the entirety of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. Next day, went and saw parochial school K thru 8 Christmas recital. Nice. Confident I am the only audience member to have co-written a youthful piece of reporting on the Church of Satan. Began re-reading Exile by Blake Nelson. Original assessment remains sadly true: very close to my own autobiography, had I written it 2 1/2 years ago. Weird lesbian teenage scribbles on my copy still heart-rending.

Returned to New York. Bus two hours late. Immediate rise of psychic energy crossing the 3rd Avenue Bronx bridge. Hey white boy, what you doing up town? Lexington One Two Five, Port Authority, Q Train, Union Square: home. Found boy poet & film-maker Jason Tallon. He’s dressed like a Swiss Banker Vampire. Went to Around the Clock. Ate. Tried to call Sam Tregar, denizen of Astor Place. His tooth hurts, he’s in Westchester. Returned, ingloriously, to the L Train & went to Williamsburg. Interesting. Not feeling like home. Dumped luggage. Wrote Important Email.

Took L train to Bedford Ave to find other film-maker, Fritz Donnelly. Tending bar in a hovel on Kent. Latino death metal bands, full makeup. Went and saw huge art collection in former bakery. Walked back up Metropolitan. Hana Foods. Back to apartment. Watched boy poet take two hours to set up projector. Played GOD OF WAR 2. Stupid Zeus. Sleep.

Next day. Woke up to film-maker Jason Tallon bonafide hustlin’, makin’ his name, editing his film. Head ache, jet lag. Showered, dressed. Found food and coffee, steak and eggs. Return to Tallon’s place. Leave him to his devices, head to Manhattan. L Train, ugh, then 6 Train uptown. Find Kaia Wong of Mixel Pixel and other assorted Academites. Talk in the rain for 20 minutes. Kaia plays Virgil, leads me through the homogeneous hell of the East Village. We go to DCP? BCP? (Memo to affluent bar owners: call it something I can remember.)

Laughs and fun with Kaia. She’s well. She gives Thai massages and makes lip balm. Isn’t carrying any. Lame. We walk to Odessa. End up in an occult bookstore buying crap neither of us needs, talking about Aleister Crowley and Book Four. Found volumes published by the late, lamented Magickal Childe. Cheap. Got one on the Tarot. Got Tallon The Book of Light. Each $5. At Odessa, eat. Forget what. Return to Brooklyn. L Train, ugh. Back to Tallon’s. Problems getting his film projected. Hours are spent squaring this circle, intermittently playing GOD OF WAR 2 and getting phone calls from my father. Don’t see the film until 4am. It’s amazing. Genuinely amazing.

Bed at 5am, wake at 11. Dress, talk to Tallon, watch him pack. Phone call from Sam Tregar, plans for lunch. L Train, one last time. Ugh. Fare-thee-well to Tallon– the boy’s to Vermont. He’s a whisperer in the darkness, a morning star of mourning. Good times. Back in Manhattan. Kim’s Mondo Video, dropping off Tallon’s late DVD rentals. “Do you want to pay the fees?” “That jerk can pay his own damned bills!”

Tregar in front. The man’s grown meaty enough to muscle for the ADL. We eat Moroccan food. Lamb kabob. Tregar is well. Tell him a story about the first time I drove a stick shift. Laughs. Rumors from his old college of Deep Springs: his class has become a thing of legend. They believe that Sam, the world’s only genuine teetotaler, had a week-long heroin binge in the basement. Bigger laughs. Tregar takes me to his cubicle farm in Astor Place. Amazing bathroom. We part.

Amble about the alma mater, talk on phone to elly, head to Cafe Reggio. Iced espresso, ham & swiss. Same prices since 19–. I call Andrew “Freaktard” Harrison. Communication breakdown. Me in Cafe Reggio half an hour too long. The man arrives, strutting in his perfumed fineries. What to do? Only as we can: MacDougal Ale House, the quietest sports bar on the world’s most annoying street. Cute blonde bartender with unusually good taste in music.

Screaming about whatever Andrew and I always scream about: jackanapes and braying jackasses, Native American necromancers, awful psychedelic music, dead junkies, how Andrew’s stupid Pantera joke got me literally thrown out of a girlfriend’s apartment, and the profit margins of video games. We leave. On Thompson Street, my old block, we attempt to cut the Gordian Knot of teaching 4 Jersey Desi-American girls how to smoke cigars while not oozing innuendo. Only one gets hers lit. We part. “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” says Freaktard, “we shall see each other again.”

A Train to 177th.

MARZ BAR NYC DECEMEBER 21ST 2007


the night ends poorly

Get off A Train in Washington Heights and called Lauren T. She was like, yo, what up, I’m over here, and I was like, yo, where the hell’s over there? This apartment dance ended with her hunting me in the street. Looming before us was the George Washington Bridge, where the Goblin killed Gwen Stacey, and its bus terminal, a monstrous structure reminiscent of a fortress built by Heinrich Himmler on the dark side of the Moon. Hey ho, never be still, Lauren brings me inside. I eat and read an interview with Norman Mailer in the Paris Review. Apparently, he had problems with frequent urination. This information infects me for the rest of the night & so I have to pee every 30 minutes.

We wander Washington Heights, one of those amazing places in Manhattan with varied elevation. Now I’m up, now I’m down, now she’s high, now I’m low. It’s like the first 5 tracks of Mechanical Animals. We buy the world’s cheapest bottle of wine, a fruity South African number called Goats Do Roam, and, Christ, do they ever. Back at Lauren’s apartment, I’m screaming about something, we’re watching the 2000 A&E adaptation of The Great Gatsby and all I can think about Nick Carraway is, “Jesus, wasn’t this guy in Knocked Up, and when he’s gonna end up with his pants off looking at a portfolio?” (He never does.) The DVD starts skipping. I fall off the couch, convinced that I possess a direct psychic link with the player, and that if I talk to the machine with enough feeling, it will behave. I’m wrong. We miss a significant amount of Gatsby. That’s OK– he still gets shot by an Oakie-Ozark from the ashheap. C’est la guerre.

We sleep, or try to, but there’s a knife in my back for every day I’ve known her. So, like, two. This is a wine/MacDougal Ale House problem– insomnia. I force Lauren to watch another DVD, which I don’t remember the name of, and then I’m getting up and trying to sleep and failing. All night. Madness. Lauren handles it with the moxie you’d expect of a girl from Canarsie. Eventually it’s morning and she’s kicking me, demanding that I rise. She’s been up for hours. I shower. We walk to her job, and then I’m back on the A Train, heading to safety zone of life beneath 23rd Street.

50 minutes later, at West 4th, standing in front of the former Waverly like Frank Mills, I call Sam Tregar, author of the rivetingly titled Writing Perl Modules for CPAN. We had tentative plans for lunch– but it’s something like 12:30PM, and he’s only on the train from Westchester. I call Kaia Wong– she suggests that I head to 32nd, as she’s got lip balm and a book for Freaktard Harrison. I walk to The Giant Bagel Shop on 13th & University, a deli I’ve been frequenting since I was 17 and first moved to Manhattan. I eat.

Walking University to Union Square, a terrible urge takes me. I’m like Ulysses staring at the distant shore of Ithaca, I’m being directed by Fritz Lang on Capri. First I’m thinking it, then I’m yelling it.

“OKAY, NEW YORK, OKAY. YOU WANT ME, PAL? YOU WANT ME? I’M YOURS! I SURRENDER! YOU CAN HAVE ME. BUT YOU HAD BETTER SET THIS THING UP, BUDDY. YOU HAD BETTER FUCKING SET IT UP, PAL. YOU FUCKING OWE ME, NEW YORK. YOU FUCKING OWE ME.”

We’ll get back to where we was, I promise, but flash forward a couple of days and too much to contain, explain or detain. I’m in a Castle in Newport where Senator Whitehouse was born. It has become clear– considering the connection of the 1974 Robert Redford movie, filmed in and around the mansions of the city– that the defining narrative of this trip is Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We have long been within the imaginary confines of West Egg, old sport, but now we’re acting out the novel’s climax– five jerks in a drawing room. But there’s no argumentation, no great reveal and no hearts broken, though as someone is trying to kiss me, I have to point out that she’d been making out my friend 2 minutes earlier.

And then, as always, there’s this:

Up to 32nd street. Kaia and I hang out by The Future. I decide that We Run New York. She gives me lip balm. We chat. Ten minutes. We find this poster:

Walk back to 6. Go downtown. Go to the Strand. Buy The Great Gatsby, Christmas presents and this. Go to Café Reggio. Venitian Coffee. Call Harrison. Make plans for 4:30. Get call from Kaia. She’s riding her bike to MacDougal. She arrives. I finish my coffee-n-creme. Head to Harrison’s worky-work. But he’s latey-watey. So we sit in the park. He shows up, strutting in his perfumed fineries.

What now? What now? What else? MacDougal Ale house. Same bartender, same music. Gruboy shows up. Another immigrant, a Ukrane Jew with an eager demeanor and bad attitude. Paradox? You figure it out. British wankers at the bar, coked up and harassing women. I try getting Harrison to glass them. Instead they talk two portly lasses, who Gruboy sez are fellow NYU alums, into making out. I video some of it:

By now we’re all thinking about the War of 1812. But the British leave. OK! We’re still here. Incredible gossip and rumors are thrown around—shock revelations about old chums and working partners. Somewhere in here, I may or may not have given a speech about Patti Smith. I can’t remember.

OK, what next? Food. Around the Clock. What then? The worst fate comes to pass: we head to the Marz Bar. This is one of the few long standing signs of the East Village that a night has spun completely off the rails. We go in. It’s the Marz Bar. A vodka tonic is miraculously made with gin. The bartender in cat-eyed glasses fights with one of the drunks in residence. I video some of it:

Kaia cuts out. It’s me, Harrison and Gruboy. OK, eventually The Fun wears off. I go with Harrison to Brooklyn, Gruboy goes to Washington Heights. OK! We’re in Harrison’s apartment. He shows me Super Mario Galaxy, which is, eh, whatever, but then the bastard breaks out his Guitar Hero 2. Of which I’ve heard but have not played. It’s a rhythm game denuded of any of the genre’s redeeming features: i.e., embarrassing your sophisticated friends as you dance like an idiot before a tide of Korean and Latino children.

Somewhere around the Rage Against the Machine song, I realize that the game is a swan song for every asshole my age +/- five years. It’s as if God took a memo to all the children of the 1990s which reads: WELCOME TO THE REST OF YOUR HORRIBLE LIFE, YOU STUPID BASTARD. YOU’LL NEVER BE INTERESTING AGAIN. HERE’S YOUR STUPID RELIC, CHERISH AND LOVE IT. REMEMBER HOW AWESOME IT WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND (POSSIBLY) COLLEGE? THAT SHIT’S DONE. YOU’RE DONE. YOU’RE OVER.

Pass out and wake in the morn, cheery faced, starry eyed and waiting to see the Etters.

Christmas had me mildly depressed. I snapped out of it. A single true thought rose and brought me cheer: if my major concerns circa the end of 2007 were presented to my past self at the end of 2006, they would be 100% incomprehensible. Not bad for a year.

To my mind, the single best working gauge of success is how totally, completely far away you can get from all the things you’ve ever known. To rush, like Marcus Garvey, into the fearful unknown. It don’t matter if it’s good, bad, or just plain boring. Only so long as it’s newly weird.

It’s obvious that my cycle of constant churn has, if anything, accelerated. This has been going on since, I guess, late 2004. All I’ve ever tried to do is keep on keepin’ on. What else can a poor boy do?

2005 was chaos, 2006 was just stupid, and 2007 was the single most insane time of my life. Further reflection makes me wonder if 2008 isn’t to be the year where, at last, it calms down. This is probably the proper course– how much longer can I be a psychedelic gypsy without it getting a little pathetic?

The New Year begins differently than any before it: for the first time ever, I know what I want and what I have to do. So watch out, O Lord, there’s a mutiny in Heaven and You owe me a favor. We march to victory on a road of bones.

–

Undercutting everything that I’ve written, here’s a picture from two nights ago that could have been taken at any point between 1995 and now:

Ah, adulthood.