Orgone Research

At the end of November 1999, the World Trade Organization held a conference here in Seattle. The proceedings lasted several days, and generated huge street protests. Some called it “the Battle in Seattle”. At the time I was working as a pharmacist on Capitol Hill, rather removed from the fracas which was occurring mostly downtown. But several protestor-police altercations happened on Capitol Hill as well. As I recall, I was assigned to work the evening shifts for the first two nights of the conference. Our store stayed open until 9:00 pm.

At around 7:00 on both nights, my manager approached me and told me to shut down the pharmacy. Evidently she had received word from the police that protestors were coming up to Capitol Hill from downtown, and that businesses should close to be on the safe side. I was more than happy to comply and get the heck out of there!

As I recall, the third day of the conference I had off. That afternoon and evening I was going to help my friend Kim schlep gear to the Showbox, a venue downtown he was scheduled to perform at that night. It was a one-off performance called the “No WTO Combo”, which consisted of Jello Biafra, Kim Thayil, Krist Novoselic, and Gina Mainwal, a drummer who had previously worked with Novoselic.

I picked up Kim in the afternoon and we drove to Belltown to a practice space to meet the other members of the band. Loud helicopters circled over the downtown area. Jello wasn’t there, but the rest of us huddled around a small TV which was tuned to a local news program. The vibe on the TV news was tense, as was the vibe in the room. On the TV, images of downtown chaos played endlessly. Kim was close to bailing on the whole thing, as one TV camera located near the Showbox seemed to indicate there was teargas still in the air. It seemed foolhardy to walk right into what might be a genuine riot. None of us were sure that we were even going to be allowed to enter the downtown area.

Krist started arguing that it really wasn’t that bad, that he lived downtown, and that what we were seeing on the TV “wasn’t real”. At this point I began to seriously question Krist’s judgment, as it was obvious from the live TV broadcasts that downtown was still in chaos. I began to wonder if Krist wasn’t like some of the Missoula hippies I was exposed to growing up; living in a new-age fantasy land of his own making, oblivious to the harsh reality around him. My mind was tipped more toward Kim’s vaguely paranoid and cynical risk assessment. Yet we all sat around watching the TV, deciding whether to go to the Showbox or not.

Being that this was December 1, the sun set early that day. The practice room had a western exposure, and we could look out the window towards the setting sun. At least Belltown was calm. Suddenly I had a genuine epiphany: As the sun set, the shadows grew longer in the real world out the window. But the shadows on what was purported to be “live” TV coverage were not! The TV stations were “looping” a few minutes of footage shot earlier, again and again, and calling it “live”! Suddenly Krist’s pronouncements about the TV coverage made complete and total sense. I was seeing the truth of his crazy “new age” viewpoint with my own eyes! The local TV news was lying to us after all!

So we set out to the Showbox. Kim and I took a big loop around downtown, and came up 1st Ave from the South. There were no police checkpoints, no tear gas, no protestors, no chaos at all! We parked and moved his gear into the venue.

Soon enough Jello arrived. I had been a huge Dead Kennedys fan back in the 80’s so it was a trip for me to meet him. He had gained a few pounds over the years, and no longer looked like the hungry hardcore punk of his glory days. I chatted briefly with him, and I remember him telling me that Levi’s had made an offer to use “Holiday in Cambodia” in a Dockers ad. I was most impressed at his refusal to sell out for a few dollars.

I helped move equipment onto the stage, thus fulfilling my “roadie” obligations. Soon the crowd began coming in. I recognized a gal I’d spoken to before, and started talking with her. Neither of us could remember where we originally met. As it turned out, she was friends with local Seattle comedian Cathy Sorbo. We had met some time before at Cathy’s baby shower. For a time she wrote a gossip column for the Stranger, a weekly Seattle newspaper, and had done an impression of Courtney Love for the local TV show Almost Live. We met again in early January 2001, where I made the egregious faux pas of telling her that she reminded me of an old girlfriend of mine. Later I read about our encounter in her Stranger gossip column, where she compared me to a dog lapping up antifreeze. I didn’t quite get the analogy at the time, and I still don’t. At the Showbox she was escorted by a man that I believed to be an out-of-town protestor. I spoke to him only briefly, as he had an overwhelming body odor.

Despite all the alleged chaos downtown, the show was well attended, probably because of the draw of three veteran rock stars on the same bill. Eventually the lights dim, and the band hits the stage. Now to my way of thinking, when an act first hits the stage the audience is primed; they’ve been waiting for hours for this moment, and they want action! Think of Led Zeppelin in the movie The Song Remains the Same; they open the show with Rock and Roll, not Going to California.

So the “No WTO Combo” hits the stage, and Jello begins to talk. Kim, Krist, and Gina wait in place while Jello delivers his leftist spoken-word diatribe. In my mind this was a total buzz-kill, a self-centered and narcissistic indulgence, especially considering who he was sharing the stage with!

But eventually the music started, and it genuinely rocked! If I remember correctly the first tune was a new one, a dig at Microsoft, called “Electronic Plantation”. Jello’s play on words was that Microsoft’s employment policies created “serfs” so he “never wanted to hear serf music again”…

And then a Dead Kennedy’s song; Let’s Lynch the Landlord, I believe. At some point someone in the crowd handed Krist a gas mask. Krist put it on and continued playing.

I think the band played only 3 or 4 songs, but thankfully it was all recorded. I remember Kim contacting me later to ask how I wanted to be listed in the liner notes to the forthcoming CD. “Matt Crowley”, “Matt ‘The Tube’ Crowley”, “Tube”, or something else? Eventually I got a copy of the CD, but I loaned it to a gal at a pharmacy shortly before I quit, and I never pursued getting it back.

All in all, the whole experience was genuinely surreal. I’m glad I was there.

Many Americans visit Amsterdam for the debauchery. I visited Amsterdam as a sideshow performer. I was one of the founding members of the Jim Rose sideshow. Our story was well chronicled by our road manager Jan Gregor in his book Circus of the Scars. Since most performers only “perform” for a few hours in the evening, there is a huge amount of time available just to wander around and explore when one is in a new city. Lots of Americans go ga-ga over the cannabis in the Amsterdam coffee shops, but that was not my thing. I was also too chicken to even think about “visiting” a prostitute, and couldn’t get the STD issue out of my mind either. But I did enjoy simply browsing through the “red light” district, and I liked all the porn, too.

One fine summer afternoon in 1993, Jan Gregor, Tim “Zamora” Cridland, and I were walking thorough the red light district of Amsterdam. We notice explicit posters on walls offering a “Live Sex Act”. As we walk, well dressed men in doorways pitch us offers; “Live Sex Act 100 guilders”. While this made us curious, the price was too expensive. The Netherlands switched over to the Euro as its currency in 2002, and so I’m having trouble working out and remembering exactly how much they really wanted for the “Live Sex Act”. I seem to remember the first pitches we heard would have set us back about 50 dollars. We kept on walking. The talented talkers clearly could tell we were American, as they instinctively addressed us in English. More men in doorways made additional pitches. The prices were going down. Eventually one man’s pitch came down to what would be about 15 dollars in American money. We agreed. Now it got weird. The man took our money, and we assumed we would be admitted into the theater that was right behind him. Instead he started walking away, as if to lead us somewhere else. Now I felt like a “mark” and figured this guy was simply going to slip away with our money at the time of his choosing.

But circumstances favored us, and he led us to a theater where we were let in. The theater had its poster on display; a skinny black man copulating with a chubby white woman in at least a dozen poses straight out of the Kama Sutra. We went inside and sat down. The seats were really cramped, and I remember having to pull my legs almost to my chest to simply sit down. A few other men were seated inside the small theater, which held perhaps 100. We caught the end of a typical vintage porno movie projected onto the screen above the stage.

Now the show began. The chubby white woman pictured on the poster came on stage. She began to dance, while clothed. The music that accompanied her “show” was coming from two very small speakers mounted high on the wall. The music was vastly too loud and distorted, and was almost hurting my ears. The cramped seating, the excessive music, and the frumpy woman did not yet provoke an erotic response in me.

After a few songs and more dancing, she had stripped naked. She placed a small throw rug on the stage, and her partner came out. This was the skinny black man from the poster. At this point, the “free form” vibe of the previous strip show gave way to a tightly choreographed suck-n-fuck in time to the music. The couple indeed demonstrated all the various yoga-esque penetrations, as seen on the poster. When it was over, which took perhaps 2 minutes, I believe the guy still had an erection. The show was over.

Now as a debauched “war story” of a performer’s life on the road, this one’s not too bad. But as something actually arousing, I would have to place it significantly lower than trying to spank to a National Geographic magazine. The value of the experience is the story you get to tell your buddies back home, not any kind of enhanced arousal. But as a lure to get customers into a theater, it worked like a charm!

When I was a kid, I had a rock tumbler. It must have been a Christmas or birthday gift from my parents, as I didn’t have a lot of spending money as a child. I hardly remember it as a toy, only that rock tumblers enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the early 1970′s. Kind of a geological version of the “ant farm”.

I remember very little about using the device; the machine was small, and was essentially a box with two rollers on top. A yellow plastic container fit between the rollers, and when the machine was turned on, the yellow plastic container slowly rolled. In fact, to polish rocks, it had to roll for something like a week. I think we put it in a corner in our basement laundry room, and it ground away the minutes, the hours, and the days. I assume I watched Hogan’s Heroes and I Dream of Jeannie while it tirelessly worked.

Eventually I had a polished rock. It was too big to put on a ring, and I didn’t wear rings anyway. I don’t know what ever happened to my polished rock. I don’t know what ever happened to my rock polisher…

I love old Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines. These magazines had a heavy influence on me as a child, augmenting an already huge fascination with science. As I grew older, I became somewhat more savvy about the commercial nature of these enterprises, and I saw that many of the things that were claimed to soon revolutionize our lives never panned out.

Some years back my friend Jan Gregor gave me a huge stack of these magazines from my favorite time period, the late 1960′s and early 1970′s. I even remember some of the particular issues. I nearly creamed my jeans when I found the soy-protein-turned-into-meat story from a particular issue of Popular Science in the early 1970′s. For some reason, this seemed unbelievably cool for me growing up in Missoula Montana. I developed a mighty craving for some soy-beef, and eventually I got some. But that’s another story…

While looking through the June 1965 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, Volume 62, number 445 I found a remarkable “sidebar”.

On page 30 is an illustrated account that lacks an author’s name, but instead refers to the contents of a letter submitted by a Frank Wynne of South Pittsburg Tennessee.

For some reason, I find this concept as cool as hell, and would love to try it myself if I ever lived near a small stream. It sounds like way more fun than a “rock polisher”, but I assume you need soft stone to start with. It kind of reminds me of the quasi-mysterious “ice circles” that get reported from time to time.
This is the text of the MI article:

“In January, 1964, MI ran a little piece called Marble Players of Blue Eye, about the grownup game of marbles played in that Ozark community. The players didn’t play for keeps because their marbles are ancient ones made of stone and no one knew how to make them any more, we said. Wrong again.

Somewhere a boy living near a stream is going to try this. We know it.”

Some time after I first put this page up I decided to ask the “hive mind” of Metafilter’s AskMeFi if anyone knew anything about this exotic subject. Here is the thread.

One individual in particular was very helpful, so much so that he allowed me to post photographs of his grandfather’s marbles!

I can’t remember exactly when and where I met Denny Eichhorn. It must have been in the early 1990′s, as I can remember visiting him in either 1994 or 1995. I believe I met him through Mike Hoy of Loompanics books, where he worked at that time. At the time, I had no idea of his “Real Stuff” comic persona until he gave me a set of his comics. The level of violence in his comics would lead you to imagine Denny as a real hot-head, but in fact he he is one of the more mellow people I know.One of the reasons I now “blog” is because of Eichhorn. Denny told me that he found the comic treatment of some of his more extreme life events to be something of a psychic exorcism, and helped him “get over” the various life traumas. While I’ve not yet written about some of the more traumatic events in my life, I actually look forward to doing so, as I can tell already that “full disclosure” is emotionally helpful to some, like me and Eichhorn.

As you can see, I made Denny pose with the novel To Live and Die in LA which is the basis of my favorite film of all time. When I first visited Denny, I was surprised to see that he, like me, had read Numbers by John Rechy.

Despite owning most of the original comics, I bought the compilation volume recently published. It had a few comics I did not have. So if you want the original, very funny, very sad, very weird, “full disclosure” life blog then go forth and buy Denny’s book.

Years ago I was involved with a woman who was friends with Camella Grace. Camella worked for a video company called RetinaLogic, whose most famous client was the late Timothy Leary. One day out of the blue, I’m told that Camella is coming to Seattle for a visit, and was it OK for her to stay with us in my house. I said sure, and then learned Camella would be bringing her boyfriend Sean. Sean Lennon.

When I got home from work one night, I learned Camella and Sean had arrived and were downstairs. When they came upstairs, Sean started talking to me about peanut butter. They stayed a day or two, and I took them to Boeing Surplus, for some Seattle “color”.

Some months later Sean was kind enough to return the favor. We were invited to stay with him and Camella in New York. Sean had a wonderful loft in the village, with the twin towers in view. Inside his loft was a stairway that led to his open sleeping area. On the wall next to the stairway was a poster. The typography caught my eye, and I realized it was the original poster his father John had used as the basis of the song Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite! Indeed, the poster is remarkable enough to warrant a website of its own.

Sean and Camella had a party on one of the days we were there.

Strangely, this is the only photo I have that was taken during my stay…

I remember the movie 2001 was playing on a big TV and Sean’s mother called him in the midst of the festivities. We went to the roof above his loft and I marveled at the gridlock of Manhattan at rush hour. All in all it was a wonderful time, and I could see how warm and charming Sean really was. This all took place about 1995 or 1996, so I would have been 33 or 34, while Sean was only about 20 or 21. I could still relate to him well, despite the age difference. I attributed this to his “worldly” upbringing.

Time passed, and with it, the inevitable dissolution of relationships. Sean and Camella broke up. Camella had moved out of Sean’s place in New York and was now living in LA. She was assisting Timothy Leary by putting his papers online. Today this sounds fairly prosaic, but in 1996 it was still rather cutting edge. Camella invited us to visit her in LA.

I’m pretty sure this photo is of Camella, sitting in Leary’s motorized wheelchair.

Camella had a very nice apartment in Hollywood, about a block off of Sunset. I seem to remember it was near some huge and famous guitar shop. As we settled in as guests, I began to look through Camella’s library. At the risk of sounding sexist, a lot of her books seemed to be the things that men would own and read. Lots of heavy history and non-fiction. One book stood out; a first edition paperback copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book. I understood that first editions of this book were quite rare, and thus valuable. I instinctively picked it up and looked at it. On the inside page was a hand written note that read ” To John and Yoko; your album “Two Virgins” motivated me to write this book – Abbie”. Well now! Here we had something that might be valuable on the order of Sean’s poster!

I asked Camella about the book and got a strangely oblique answer; “It was part of the settlement” or something like that. Huh, I was under the impression that Yoko had intervened and had asked Camella to pack her bags and leave… But that was based on hearsay, so I don’t honestly know. I doubted there was any “settlement”, and I simply assumed the book had been taken from Sean. I got a feeling, though, that Camella simply didn’t venerate this book as I did. I cannot deny that I secretly hoped that Camella might give me the book when we departed for Seattle. I was making no secret that I was twitterpated by the book, and I casually “left it out”. I knew deep down though, that it was probably stolen from Sean, and that as much as I might want it, the moral thing would be to return it to him.

Enter Page Hamilton, lead singer of Helmet. He was in LA for something or another, and he knew Camella. We all went out one night and hung out. Page impressed me as being a very smart guy, as most of the rock stars I’ve met are kind of dopey. Page and I got along well, and when Helmet performed in Seattle sometime later, I was able to hang out some more. I understand that Page was married at this time.

By this time, I was getting a subtle vibe that Camella was something of a “star fucker”, by the way she was paying attention to Page. Having been a performer myself , I was familiar with the signs and symptoms of that. Eventually we all go back to Camella’s apartment. I had left Hoffman’s book out. Hamilton, being a literate kind of guy, notices the book as I did. He picks it up and begins to look through it. But he’s not as excited by it as I was. I think you know what happens next; she gives the book to Page…

I still wonder if Page has that book….