Letter from Natalie when I was in jail, 1969

Letter to the editor of the Chicago Seed, 1969

Make up a story with these images...

(Bruce Conner with Penelope of the Avengers in San Francisco)
(Rude boy in Rome)

(A Mayan village where Rude Boy lived for two weeks)
(James Broughton, film poet, at Athens Film Festival)


(Theater maverick Beau O'Reilly at a party, with Scott Mutter)

B. Ruby Rich

Ruby and I shared lunch during the Chicago Film Festival and carried on a correspondence for a while. I found two of her letters in the box in the basement. A wonderful film critic, still.

Joey Ramone

I have completely lost the photo of me and Joey buying shampoo in an Osco Drug Store. I think someone stole it. But you can see this is from when they performed in the tiny Red Lion in Champaign. They were so loud. Gabba gabba.

Kevin Barry Howe, co-host of Picking Your Seat

Bad Plaid Shirts Even Then

Someone stop me before I scan more.

Picking Your Seat At The Movies

Kevin Barry Howe and I had this long-running cable TV show parodying Siskel and Ebert. We were probably the first to do this. Nobody got it, least of all the distributors who sent us film clips to use. I have Kevin's picture taken from the screen here someplace. I'll post it later.

Michaelangelo Antonioni

The face in the background. I couldn't get closer. I was awestruck, I suppose. It was at Cannes, I forget which year.

David Johansson

I interviewed Johannsson and Sylvain Sylvain. Johannsson was extremely clever and affable. Sylvain, not so much.

In Guatemala City

Editor

I was the publisher and editor of a punk rock newspaper called Hick City. Jeri Leek and Hellen were editorial assistants, I guess, but no one did much of anything. I must have been going for the Elvis Costello look. I'll see if I can find the picture of our Fourth of July float, with the entire staff playing rock and roll. The people watching the parade had no idea what to make of us.

24 julio 2008: Write a caption for this picture

This picture was posed. It was supposed to be satirical. Probably about as funny as the Obama New Yorker cover, I guess. I wonder if I still have those Fonzie socks?

Ghostbuster Boys

Henry and Ernie on the backyard tree swing.

21 julio 2008: Trip Psychology

After six months
Or so
An ache

Unrecognized for what it is
At first

A month
Of angst
Goes by

Trapped
Insane

I need a day off
Away

Planning begins
Flight prices scanned
Googled

Suddenly (sharp intake of breath)
I click and buy

Suddenly then everything here
Is fine
Angst gone

I never want to leave.
What was I thinking?
This is the most beautiful place on earth.
Is it too late?
Can I back out?
I dread even the thought of going.
I Google the possibility
Of flight cancellation.

But I go
I force myself to pack
Each toiletry item
A heavy heart
I know the routine

Finally, I feel the pull of gravity
As the ground beneath me falls away
On the runway

And, one day later, I will have forgotten
ResponsibilityIdentityHomeEverything

InvisibleUnconsciousRecharging

It worked.

Rinse and repeat
Every six months or so

This is the way
it has been
since 1982

I blame the babies
Who are no longer
Babies

But when
Is the time
I never have to leave?

O demon of the peripatetic
O guru of simplicity
Tell me that

19 julio 2008: The narcissism of memorabilia

Spending the summer
Sorting the past

Unceremoniously to the dumpster
Two Zeppelin LPs

The letters Natalie wrote
When I was in prison

Musty bylines ask to be preserved
Desperate to seem important

The addiction of the printed name
Worse than heroin

Embrace the lot in armfuls
Pitch without hesitation

Better to review
and bury the past

Before the young imagine
it holds answers

Maybe if I'd worn a tie...

Not exactly the glamor type, I did turn in many articles from Cannes. (Click on the picture to enlarge it and read the caption.) Anyway, aren't the people in bunny outfits sillier looking?

Roman Polanski, Rudolph Nureyev, the Carradine Brothers

Nureyev posed for us. I never spoke to any of the Carradines, who were present for the Walter Hill cowboy movie, The Long Riders (which starred three sets of brothers, The Carradines, the Quaids, and the Keachs. But I did speak with Polanski for a few minutes outside his hotel room. He was very open and funny.

Ellen Burstyn

I'm sorting through old slides and converting them to digital. Here's Ellen Burstyn cutting the Chaplin Memorial Cake at the press luncheon in Cannes. I talked with her briefly.

1991

Robert Altman, Cannes press conference

Sam Fuller, Athens Film Festival interview

Henry, 1982 and 2008

Bruce Conner, 1933-2008 RIP

MONGOLOID




AMERICA IS WAITING

confessions of a football hater

this letter revised almost hourly, it seems

To the editor:

I am writing to ask why you publish badly-written and bigoted letters opposing evolution and gay equality. These letters contain no information and barely an authentic opinion. Most often, they are tautological circles of received ideas -- "It is what it is because I say that's what it is" -- as if this could convince anyone.

Major metropolitan newspapers publish thoughtful letters with insights and ideas, not petty squabbling riddled with factual errors.

Many local letters reveal their authors to be deeply misinformed. I would think that, for the newspaper, this in itself would be an embarrassment.

Neither is it amusing to read letters that are ungrammatical or ignorant. They reflect badly upon the newspaper and the community.

Not that long ago, someone wrote suggesting we bomb Gaza as a solution to the problems of the Middle East. Some, if not many, of these letters qualify as hate speech -- against Muslims, against immigrants, against same-sex couples, against other letter-writers, even against people who support free speech.

The insane war in Iraq continues (a war the newspaper endorses), while letter writers selfishly wax irate over the cost to fill their cars with gas.

The News-Gazette is not required to publish every letter it receives. Without practicing censorship or partisanship, the newspaper would do well and improve the community by editing the letters column more judiciously.

The day before Dorothy's birthday

08 julio 2008: The Rich Young Ruler Figures It Out

Coldplay Chris
Husband of Gwyneth
Father of Moses and Apple
sings,

"I used to rule the world
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Oh who would ever want to be king?"

All the rich people
Figured out how to give it away

They don't want it
Having had it

They just want to play
Same as the rest of us

Score is a wash
Love
Equal
Nothing

Nobody loses

08 julio 2008: Unpublishing

Text comes and then goes
Here today, gone tomorrow
Finely edited

What lasts forever
As simple perceptions change
Tibet sand painting

06 julio 2008: The nurse asked, "Are you the writer?"

rejected and despised. his gutter's toll
exacts the cost of freedom he'd imbibed.
deliberate, his choice, with blood inscribed:
the child the bride the house the job the soul:
the suicide engagement, nothing planned,
impulse and opportunity await,
the clock the hour the calendar the date,
humiliation's end the years unmanned
for sale for free no charge no money down
it all was a mistake that lasted long
beyond the overture before the song
the interstitial phantom like a clown
he is red nosed bald pated belly flop
the pointing fingers laughter never stop

03 julio 2008: Dashed Dreams

The blame does not reside within your heart,
My laxity of pen comes naturally,
A consequence of conscience, plus folly,
Because I chose companionship, in part.
My vow unto myself to render true
Enchained all aspiration, humbled, low.
The offspring that, like vines, arrived, I know,
Did one by one ensure that all we do
Would hence and ever serve a tangled love.
I write the checks like clockwork, pay the fine,
We mark the dates on Christmas calendars,
One day upon the next, time ever blurs.
Sometimes I catch of glimpse of what was mine
Before the fall to earth, before the ring,
Before the potion, back when we could sing.

01 julio 2008: The 88s

Two 88-year-old women on my route were waiting for me today, one near the beginning of deliveries and the other near the end. I carry their papers up to their doors, not because I'm such a nice guy but because they asked me to, coming up with little evasive hints and excuses and before I knew it, I was getting out of the car, rain or shine, unlocking their gates and doors, and hand-delivering their news.

Today, the one who looks exactly like the old woman who tempted Snow White with a poison apple, was hobbling out to the gate before I arrived.

"I was born here," she said, mentioning that her birthday would be the coming week. It was the first time I realized that she had never married. Her one sister lives about ten miles away. She spoke of her nieces, who help tend the yard.

The farmhouse is a storybook place, perfect for Hansel and Gretel to pop by for a snack, flowers, old sheds, raspberry bushes, old trees, her dog Coco. Lately, would-be thieves have been raiding her gas pump and her berry bushes.

"That tree was planted the year I was born," she pointed out. I was already late with the papers, but it was the day she was spilling the beans on her life. My video camera was in the car, but I didn't have the heart to grab it and document her confessions.

Hers has been a more circumscribed life than I imagined. No husband and no children, just the old homestead and her dog Coco. She spoke of the house and how it came to be built. She spoke of the time her parents took her and her sister to Colorado. She remembered not only the year, 1930, but the day they left, February 14. Another time, they had traveled to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. Once, they went to Brownsville, Texas, for some sort of Mardi Gras celebration and, for two hours, they had slipped across the border to go shopping in Mexico.

"So I have been out of the United States!" she laughed. "For two hours."

The furthest east she ever traveled was to Indianapolis, to visit relatives. She rode the train home, the one and only time she traveled on a train.

"Were you ever in an airplane?" I asked.

"Oh, no," she said, almost disgusted at the question. "I'm too dizzy for anything like that."

Her birthday is July 10. I'll put a card in her newspaper.

Alice, another woman who is 88, greeted me today as well, to ask if I had seen in the paper that her sister had died the previous week. I hadn't. She rambled a little bit, talking about relatives I knew nothing about. She told me about her sister, who was ten years her senior and whose last words were, "Just leave me alone!" They had been attaching her oxygen and she wanted nothing to do with it, apparently.

"It was a blessing," Alice said. "It was time."

01 julio 2008: Nice Reunion

nice visit
everyone is so beautiful
so many babies and brides

no need to mention the war
or any October surprise
or the families over there
or how everything all along
has been about the oil

so nephew ben works for the military
who ever would have thought that!

subverting from within, right?

at least he's not gay
'cause that would be REALLY bad