Wake up 7:40am, 30 minutes late, shower, dress, drive to Hollywood, grab friend + Starbucks, drive 4 hours to Hearst Castle, spend 5 hours at Hearst Castle, drive 4 hours home, drop off friend, get Taco Bell, get to apartment, watch Doctor Who (S3E11), shocked by Doctor Who, find out other friend has been in accident, pass out, sleep.

Pix tomorrow.

A last remnant from the visit Back East: pictures of a trip taken to Waterbury, CT’s infamous Holy Land, U.S.A.

The drive from Los Angeles to San Simeon is best described in one word: long. For a normal person, it takes four hours. Because I am the master of either space & time or the gas pedal, I did it in three and then had to add on an hour of nothing to get our prebooked tour. The return trip hit traffick around Santa Barbara & had me doing the full four. By that time I got into the Valley I kept awake only by reminding myself that if I crashed and died, I’d miss the new episode of Doctor Who. Even this, a powerful enticement, was only operating at half-efficacy. Still, I live.

The Hearst Castle is what it is: another major California attraction that once was a rich man’s home. The grand follies of the fabulously wealthy are interesting places to tour, and the primarily Southern European/Mediterranean exteriors of San Simeon contrasted against the Northern European/Gothic interiors make it feel like you’re stepping in and out of two completely different worlds. Superbly disconcerting. My interior photos didn’t turn out– no flash and no time to get the settings right.

After the tour & National Geographic propaganda film (no mention of Marion Davies?) we got lunch and sat around feeding potato chips to a murder of crows. Possibly the best part of the day.

There was an Indian family on the tour & they broke into the most Deadwood-esque dialogue I’ve ever heard.

Mother: “That man, he died. That man Hearst.”

11-Year Son: “Is he in Heaven? Was he a good man or a bad one?”

Father: “That’s for Jesus to judge. It’s not our place. It depends on his deeds.”

Hangdai.

When the gypsy calls, the caravan comes and some times you’re the one driving. Went to the Getty Villa today, probably the single greatest thing in SoCal– had one last go round with the items to be returned to Italy & seen no more on our foreign shores.

Goodbye Griffins, goodbye!

Also found on my camera, picture of spider that had been in my apartment some time ago:

Live & oh so direct from Boston and Cambridge, our man in red, typhoid free & my Best Friend, who believes that the speed limit on Mass Ave is “I dunno, 100.” Even if life is a hideous game 80 years short and you can’t count on nothing or nobody, at least Arafat Kazi will dance for you once every summer.

IZOD:

The footprint of Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Rhode Island is surprisingly shallow: a plaque on the campus of Brown, a headstone & not much else.

But the discerning eye will find many traces of the gent from Angell Street. Often it happens with your knowledge– like returning home as a new Ulysses and being offered Lovecraft’s apartment at 10 Barnes Street and instead taking the one where Donald Wandrei wrote part of The Web of Easter Island. Other times, you find out years later– like discovering that your high school was on the same grounds as Lovecraft’s grammar school.

It accumulates over the years and then there’s nary a thing Lovecraftian you haven’t seen or done.

But there’s always more. We had, in particular, focused on the Dark Swamp of Chepachet, RI, the hardest to find of all Lovecraftian locations. In the summer of 1923, Lovecraft and the Eddys hunted for the swamp and could not find it– this mystery resonates through the letters and the first wave of remembrances & grows into a thing discussed in whispers and scholarly articles. For years I tried to uncover its location– but it wasn’t until USGS Topographical maps became easily searchable that I was able to find and pinpoint its very location.

USGS maps only tell one thing: where a place is, not how to get there. I had given my erstwhile chum, Andrew Harrison, a Google Maps location of the swamp’s GPS coordinates– he’d printed out some half-assed directions, but these were useless. So we drove around Glocester, RI desperately trying to get there from here. We trespassed private property. We mistook White’s Pond for the swamp. At last, we found a Department of Fish & Wildlife topographical map posted to a board and realized exactly what we, as men, had to do: drive the car down a dirt path, find a place to park, and then walk a mile in the woods.

And then, finally, we were there: the dark swamp. Dark because it’s wooded. Light hardly penetrates the dense canopy. A swamp because it’s disgustingly wet and covered in a large moss bed that attacks every living thing around it. It kills trees. It grows mushrooms. We saw no monster. But we had done it; we had gone to the most randomly inaccessible Lovecraftian location that we could– and only one jackass had fallen in the muck.

Me.

Update: Go here for directions to the swamp.

More on the Dark Swamp.

Here’s a quick illustrated map. Find the Southern half of Willie Woodhead Rd (3), which is paved but then becomes a dirt trail. (Incidentally, this was marked on the Dept. of Wildlife & Fish’s topographical map as Dark Swamp Road.) Follow the trail north until one sees a very wide and noticeable dirt clearing on the left (1). There’s room enough here to park your car. Walk into the clearing, and follow the leftmost trail into the woods. You’ll go down a hill. This gets you to the woods before the Dark Swamp. These lands are protected by the Federal & State governments, which in theory means there’s no issue of trespassing. There are orange flags tied to trees, marking the land, but the forest is dark enough that the flags aren’t visible until you stumble into one. Continue walking in the general direction west. You’ll get to the Swamp (2).

It’s very possible that there’s darker swamp than we found. A useful tool would be a GPS coordinate thingy; the actual location of the Swamp is 41.89070, -71.76260.

Although the area looks smallish on the map, when you’re on the ground, it seems giant and the woods are very, very thick and very, very dense. Try not to get lost. Or lecture your friend regarding a Fortean Times article that you’d read about the etymology of the word Panic being related to the feeling induced by the Great God Pan while one is lost in a wood.

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.

King Diamond Looking Latino Band, Glasslands, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, December 19th, 2007, 11pm:

George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal A/K/A the Heinrich Himmler Moon Station, Washington Heights, Manhattan, NY, December
21, 2007, 10:57PM:

San Francisco is a city with which I have a turbulent history. While within its limits, I’ve broken my foot, killed a relationship, spent a sleepless week in a fleabag residency hotel, watched a visit with an old pal go horribly awry, and had my only episode of genuine Xenophobic paranoia– and these are only the bad memories. The good ones are too numerous and possibly painful but in a different way.

–

I’ve come back to Los Angeles, the freak kingdom, and I’m feeling whacked.

I’ve been dealing with some form of vacation– either my own or that of others– since December 1st. That’s a month and a half, with only about 10 days off. I believe that we may safely conclude that this Winter Tour has come to its inevitable end.

I have assorted photos & videos, but otherwise that’s it.

It’s done. Thanks, world!

A Late Nite Sojourn to The Old Stone Mill/Viking Tower of Newport, Rhode Island.

From the recent archives of the black magic wielder.

(Some say a witch.)

Back now. “Hollywood.” After 15 or 17 or 2000 days of travel– the original plan was a week long stay in Oregon with elly, purpose: a lovely wedding (not mine)– somehow, after the ceremony and gathering of folk and a delusional wander around Eugene in which a man uncovered the heretofore ignored works of Ross MacDonald and an astonishing mid-sixties copy of (our hero) Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, I ended up in San Francisco. Even this ballooned for extra days, the city unwilling to allow a release according to my improvized schedule. I am tired. I want to hide for a million years and yet things is mad tricky; I leave again Sunday and have stupid Plans for the current week. Life, like love, comes in spurts.

As we are wont to do, me and Andy Harrison got together and opted to journey towards one of the increasingly rare instances of Weird Garbage in Rhode Island which neither of us had previously visited; this turned out to be Hanton City in Smithfield. Directions from the Internet were awful and seemingly authored by drunken half-wits and cut-rate Englishmen, but we managed a sense of our intended destination.

The above map shows our point of entry: Lydia Ann Road off Douglas Pike, Route 7, in Smithfield. The thick red transparent line denotes the main route traveling through the woods; it quickly turns dirt. According to Topographical Maps and Internet Gossip, at some point it becomes Hanton City Trail. This is not to be mistaken with the other Hanton City Trail, an actual paved road that leads to nothing except Historical Cemetery 62 and ugly houses; there has been some confusion between Cemetery 62 and Cemetery 8, which I’ve put on the map. They’re different places. Same family name, though.

As of this writing, the satellite image on Google Maps is older than that of Live Maps. Thus, it lacks any trace of the dominant feature of my helpful illustration: the enormous new road and construction that has been driven straight through the woods. It is quite possible that this has eliminated much of Hanton City. The construction is visible here, sort of, but what we found was far more advanced and complete.

Our first mistake was in ever being born. Our second was in visiting the area on the hottest day of Summer. We’re talking about 99 to 101 degrees and me and Harrison wandering around in the woods, looking for a Spook City that may not even exist; it’s unclear if we found anything. There were a few walls and apparent foundations, but they were so covered in debris and tree branches that it’s difficult to ascertain if they represented the real Hanton City, or were just old stone fences left over from Halcyon Dayes of Yore. The low point of this sweating exhaustathon was, as may be inferred from my illustration, when I got the car stuck; we’re talking full on stuck, with me revving the engine and Harrison pushing the stupid thing and the wheels not getting traction on the gravel. There was a snow shovel in the trunk, so we managed to dig our way out of the predicament; again, this was in 100 degree heat. Madness set in and we wandered around for another two or so hours, finding little but trash.

The function of this post is twofold: to provide a better reference for people seeking out Spook City, and to reflect on how incredibly strange Rhode Island remains, even after decades of being in its thrall. It’s hard to imagine a place outside of early 80s computer RPGs where a person can hunt for a ruined city hidden in the woods while being three minutes away from relatively populated civilization and about ten from the state capital. Though some unsatisfactory attempts have been made, the remains an amazing book to be written (by someone other than me) that is a Weird New Jersey-esque tour up and down the Ocean State’s weird places and marvels. So. Get popping, someone.