The Book of Mormon: Best original Broadway recording ever! - Seattle theatre | Examiner.com

The premiere of my new theatre column.

The Book of Mormon: Best original Broadway recording ever! - Seattle theatre | Examiner.com

The Fact Checker #1

There's an old fashioned thing called a copy editor and fact checker that newspapers used to have and I was one of them. The job involves splitting yourself in two. As a copy editor, I don't give a damn what the writer is saying, I'm just verifying it's in proper English - spelling and grammar - that's it. First test of being a good copy editor, doing it from the bottom up, paying no attention to content, just making sure there isn't a their that should be a they're or dash that should be a comma. Then you're done copy editing.

Then you start fact checking, or you can do it the other way around if you've got both jobs, but in the old days, it was two different people.

So this putz film critic has declared that The Godfather is the worst movie ever made. This, in your opinion, is not a fact, it is an opinion, an opinion that will go on forever as a representation of the magazine or newspaper paying your salary. Should you call the writer and maybe ask him to reconsider the statement, maybe add "one of" or "in my opinion," something other than a statement of fact that will making everyone at the paper a laughingstock. A statement of fact is a dangerous thing in the golden age of litigation, not to mention the potential of no more advertising dollars from a distribution company that bears a grudge.

As a fact checker, it is your job to question the veracity of absolutely everything, you're like a personal Wikipedia where everything has to be proven. This was a tough job before Wikipedia.

So as a fact checker, I say the bin Laden assassination story is full of holes. Not gaping, just little places where the pieces don't fit. It seems to me that if you don't believe in evolution because of a single missing link in a vast chain of empirical evidence, you can't believe the bin Laden story for the exact same reason. There are missing links.

So the first thing I "fact check" is the traditional Muslim method of burial, which mentions in the ground by sunset with the head pointed towards Mecca and nothing of having your picture taken then moved to the nearest ocean and being dumped off a U.S. destroyer.

As long as there was a way to bury bin Laden in the ground with his head towards Mecca, the burial at sea was distinctly NOT according to Muslim tradition. The obvious answer, the U.S. didn't want him buried, knowing the site would become an an attraction to the enemy, and ignoring the obvious, that surveillance of such a site would allow them to keep track of the enemy.

All it would have taken was one single country to allow the burial of bin Laden and there would have been no need for a burial at sea, according to Muslim tradition. You wanna tell me there wasn't single lunatic dictator in some backwoods African no-man's-land that wouldn't have taken bin Laden's body just for a tourist attraction? Did the U.S. actually ask every country if they wanted him? That would have been more in line with Muslim tradition than a burial at sea as long as his head was pointed towards Mecca.

Yet the media has blindly repeated Obama's line on this, it was according to Muslim tradition, when it was no such thing.

There. Now you know why I'm not working as a fact checker at any major news organization.

MD

My Encounter with Owsley by Paul Krassner

In 1967, there was a concert in Pittsburgh, with the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, the Fugs and me, playing the part of a stand-up satirist.

There were two shows, both completely sold out, and this was the first time anybody had realized how many hippies actually lived in Pittsburgh.

Backstage between shows, a man sidled up to me. Call me Bear, he said.

Okay, you're Bear.

Don't you recognize me?

You look familiar, but

I'm Owsley.

Of course Owsley acid! 

Fun fact: His nickname, Bear, was originally inspired by his prematurely hairy chest.

Now he presented me with a tab of Monterey Purple LSD. Not wishing to carry around an illegal drug in my pocket, I swallowed it instead.

Soon I found myself in the front lobby, talking with Jerry Garcia. As people from the audience wandered past us, he whimsically stuck out his hand, palm up.

Got any spare change?

Somebody passing by gave him a dime, and Garcia said thanks.

He didn't recognize you, I said.

See, we all look alike.

In the course of our conversation, I used the word evil to describe someone.

There are no evil people, Garcia said, just as the LSD was settling into my psyche. There are only victims.

What does that mean? If a rapist is a victim, you should have compassion when you kick 'im in the balls?

I did the second show while the Dead were setting up behind me. Then they began to play, softly, and as they built up their riff, I faded out and left the stage.

Later, some local folks brought me to a restaurant which, they told me, catered to a Mafia clientele. They pointed out a woman sitting at a table. The legend was that her fingers had once been chopped off, and shed go to a theater, walk straight up to the ticket-taker, hold up her hand and say, I have my stubs.

With my long brown curly hair underneath my Mexican cowboy hat, I didn't quite fit in. The manager came over and asked me to kindly remove my hat. I was still tripping. I hardly ate any of my spaghetti after I noticed how it was wiggling on my plate.

I glanced around at the various Mafia figures sitting at their tables, wondering if they had killed anybody. Then I remembered what Jerry Garcia had said about evil. So these guys might be executioners, but they were also victims.

The spaghetti was still wiggling on my plate, but then I realized it wasn't really spaghetti, it was actually worms in tomato sauce. The other people at my table were all pretending not to notice.

It was, after all, the Summer of Love. 

Thanks for enhancing it, Bear.

* * *

Excerpted from the expanded edition of my autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture not sold in any bookstores; available only at paulkrassner.com and as a Kindle e-book.

Calling all Russ Meyer fans: this is better than Black Swan

18 classic proto-punk songs from the 60s cut to the best and worst go-go dancing you've ever seen. It's like Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens without all that troublesome plot and dialogue. Gals can learn a move or two and guys will be visited by the ghosts of feminist ex-girlfriends to put their tongues back in their mouths.

The Grimys: 37 minutes of non-stop go go action and relentless garage rock rhythm. NSFW

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part One

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm

Part one is pre-screening.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part Two

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm

Part two is opening credits, closing credits, and beginning of discussion.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part Three

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm.

Part three is more discussion.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part Four

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part Five

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Screening, July 12, 1990 - Part Six

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

Transcription at http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/russmeyer.htm.