Throwing darts and knives, you know what I mean...
Scary girlfriend! Super creeps!
I know, this is CombatProse, but an incantation was the fastest way I could think of to get you in the mood. Monsters in my opinion, aren't completely hostile. See Theodore Sturgeon's "The Professor's Teddy Bear" for the scariest stuffed animal in literature. Vampires are boring. Zombies are boring. And see my essay 'on zombies' to see the classic monster cycle play itself out: werewolf time. The point is, monsters are by their nature, mirrors--avenues to our own horrible nature. The Vampire is the obsessive-compulsive: its rituals are necessary for its very existence. The Werewolf is the savage that lurks beneath every civilized person--whose bloodletting permits the civilized person to survive in a society that represses such primal instincts. The Zombie is a nuclear-age monster: an anthropomorphization of extinction. So real monsters, fantastic monsters--I don't really care--just be creative.
Now for the second half of the kombat rules: super creeps. 'Creep' is almost like a fnord in terms of how invisible its actual meaning has become: a creep is a specific type of freak. It's used too often as a word for someone you dislike--no, The older couple with stuffed, dead corpses of once-beloved pets all over their house? Creepy. The key is eccentricity: a presumption that their actions don't deviate from the norm. Creepiness comes from a misunderstanding or misapplication of social rules and norms--as well as a lack of empathy. A 'creep' was once, I think, what people called borderline sociopaths, hermits and olde tyme mild autistics. Throw a few Ed Geins in there and you you need a word to describe the type.
So, write of scary monsters and not just any sort of creep, a super-creep.
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L.A., mid-70s. V. called me - said she needed a ride to the Beverly Wilshire because Kim Fowley wanted to have dinner with her. So Mike and I drove her down. I thought they had dinner at the restaurant there -- it wasn't until the other day, revisiting the episode with her, that I learned he had taken her to some cheesy Tiki place instead. We saw him waiting out front, dropped V. off, then parked the car and walked around the corner the chat. V. introduced us -- Mike said she should've told him that we were two of L.A.'s hottest musicians, maybe he could've gotten us gigs. I asked V. if we needed to pick her up after dinner. Fowley told us: "She's taken care of for the night." So we took off.
ReplyDeleteI called the next day and asked her how the dinner with Fowley went. She said it was a nightmare. "I like to shit, piss and fuck!" he told her at one point. The pretext for the dinner was that some Swiss countess had invited him on a European tour. What, there's no such thing as a Swiss countess? Hmmm. Probably bullshit. Right? It was Hollywood in the '70s. People said a lot of things that weren't true.
A few months later Tony, Greg, V. and I went to see the Weirdos and the Runaways at the Whisky. Fowley was out front holding court -- the Runaways were his band, he had put them together. V. had introduced him to the bass player, Jackie. Fowley saw V. with us and said: "I see you've brought your dogs." Tony told me later that normally he would've kicked his ass, but he wanted to see the bands and out in front of the Whisky before a Runaways show, "It's his world."
V. and I reminisced about all that via e-mail a few weeks ago when the Runaways movie opened at Sundance. V. told me she had seen clips and the guy who plays Fowley just nailed him. I reminded her of the night at the Beverly Wilshire -- she didn't remember the Swiss countess part, but I sure did -- and she told me he had tried to get her back to his apartment after dinner, (I always suspected that, but wouldn't have asked) and she wouldn't go. "I'm not into predators."
She said she had been at a club with a group of friends a few months later and called him by he nickname she had given him: "Hello Foulmouth." He responded: "Why don't you go back to the Valley and masturbate?" Her friends thought that was a riot.
She first learned Fowley's real nature even before all that I've written above: She had arranged for one of his bands, the Quick, to play at graduation from hairdresser school at the mall. But when mall management found out about it, they told her no way, not electronic instruments. So she called Fowley to cancel: "You FUCKING BITCH, do you know how much it costs to rent the equipment! You're going to play for this!" She told me last week: "No one had ever spoken to me that way in my life." I think he showed her a side of the world she hadn't been aware of. I guess she can thank him for that.
I had always thought Fowley had written "Nutrocker," but I learned a few years ago that he just bought it. He also has a songrwriting credit on the Byrds' "Hungry Planet," with Terry Melchor, the son of Doris Day, whom Manson wanted to terrorize by killing the people who moved into his house after he had moved out. I don't know if he actually wrote "Hungry Planet." (cont)
I saw Fowley interviewed for that documentary about the life of Rodney Bingenheimer, "Mayor of the Sunset Strip." At one point, Fowley said something like: "Invite me into your house. I'll bet you up. I'll steal your valuables. I'll rape your wife and I'll kill your dog. I'm at war. This is war. I'm at war with you and I'm at war with the world because I'm at war with myself."
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to make of Fowley. Not a scary monster, but definitely a supercreep. I'll have to see the Runaways movie when it comes out, though. I little piece of the world of my teens, the world of Kim Fowley, in wide release.
Correction: Reading up about Fowley, I see that "Hungry Planet" was not co-written by Melcher(sp)as I had thought (he was producer) but by Skip Battin and Roger McGuinn.
ReplyDeleteMore creepiness! I love it, but more. Closer psychic distance, more social-gore, etc.
ReplyDeleteI will write my own counter, later today. I have to wrap up the first News Poem I owe my readers.
There is a little more creepiness. V. has always reminded me: Fowley and Bingenheimer were constantly prowling their clubs for underage girls. Predators, she calls them, and looks back in horror at her association with them. "Swiss countess." I think the pretext for the dinner was that Fowley wanted V. to tag along on this (no doubt mythical) European tour with him.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how much more I can or want to do with Fowley. I just trotted these memories out because he does fit the supercreep theme.