"Dealing with the Public (& The Halloween Face When Things Get Ugly)"

"Dealing with the Public"
(& The Halloween Face When Things Get Ugly)

Whenever I have hailed local celebrities in a public place, they always seem to shrink a couple of inches. They're uncertain whether someone is there to shake their hand or punch them in the mouth, but they definitely don't want to draw attention to themselves. . . . . even in something so wishy-washy as "the opinion business" slogged out week-after-week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or on local PBS television.

There always seems to be this film of separation, that they'll say almost anything friendly to quiet you down, keep it short, then be rid of you. I've seen local newscasters at the local Walgreens who walk away altogether before people can recognize them as customers turn around with their fingers in the air as if to ask, "haven't I seen you around someplace?"

If they're doing that to avoid potentially-angry people, I would think that their snippy behavior would only make more people angry. . . . . mainly because they're not being "real" or "truthful" on any level, as if they're "hiding something", or find themselves "too good for the likes of us". All most people really want is a crumb of acknowledgement, or company, and not to be brushed off in our ever-increasingly-impersonal society. And ignoring them only builds up the rancor, the alienation, the urge to throw a punch "and show 'em a thing or two".

So many folks have the feeling that "they're outsiders" struggling for a piece of happiness, contentment, and security. . . . . if not a transcending answer. Verily, they would die for a peek of "the inner mystery". . . . . and who would I be not to show them that the joke is "there is no mystery"? To have that heaviness lifted, to see the mechanism behind "the trick", and to be liberated from what's holding them back! We have lots of "lost souls", troubled souls rattling their chains-- and when you deal with a disturbed spirit, usually you ask what it wants. . . . . and that will relieve the psychic disturbance and dismount the tension. That's why you should always deal with people squarely, perhaps with a touch of euphemism to sand over the rough edges.

And we should ask ourselves, what is it about us that would draw this soul? Very rarely are we completely 100% innocent within a bad interaction. Are we too passive? Too aggressive? Do we have a chip on our shoulder? Or are we too needy and expect too much out of life? Usually, when we trace it back, it all makes perfect sense and it scarcely pays to blame others when we ourselves need to accept responsibility for what we can change.

One time, the singer of Metallica was sitting in a bar in Mexico when a fan came up to him and remarked that he had been at one of his very first shows. He asked if he might be able to buy the singer a beer, and the Metallica front-man agreed. The fan asked if he could sit down and the singer said "no". He gladly took the beer, but he didn't want to deal with his fans. Seeing that James Hetfield is an ornery varmint, if not a mean old drunk, it was little surprise when tempers rose and a fight broke out. Ultimately the singer had to run to his truck and high-tail out of there lest the record company have to ransom him out of a Mexican jail.

Now this situation was completely avoidable if James had only humored the fan for five or ten minutes and let that be it. Or decline the beer and express very politely that he didn't want to hang out that night and kept it down to one minute.

Even when John Lennon was assassinated by Mark David Chapman, there was a certain logic to the killer's madness. It happened because of John Lennon's notorious interview from "The Beatles" days when he pointed out that "we're bigger than Jesus". In the context of the interview, he meant to say that The Beatles were bigger with young people than Christianity and the quotation can easily be taken out of context in the cultural game of "telephone" where not everyone is "on the same page". There was tons of outrage in conservative circles when John Lennon said that, and I see his murder as the spill-over from a decade of such tumultuous bad feeling played out years later with a terrible after-shock and ongoing celebrity obnoxiousness, if you really stop and remember how John Lennon continued to behave "on and on".

If you read about Mark David Chapman's life, you would see that it played out as a marginal, pathetic tale that actually had great promise when he was a Christian youth leader who descended down into suicidal mental illness and distorted thoughts. But society does not have "a third eye" or perfect knowledge, nor can offer ideal solutions for festering social problems and an increasing lack of sane voices "to set the record straight" in our whirling kaleidoscope of postmodern imagery where you see speed, violence, and people thrown into the machine.

We pay for our sins with the lives that we lead. . . . . and it all catches up with us. Deal with it courageously or like a coward, but sooner or later we all dance with the reaper. But at least let people get a good look at you and see that you are not what they thought you were. Far better to do it this way, with honor-- with the least resistance-- and remember that I'll always sign your autograph with a smile.

*******************

"The Day I Met Captain Kangaroo"

One of the most jolting adolescent moments of my life was when I happened to glance over and notice a gathering of people around an old, white-haired gentleman in a dark-blue suit. I looked at the card of scheduled book signings, and it turned out to be Bob Keeshan. . . . . the man who played "Captain Kangaroo" on television.

Personally, that show was a little bit before my time but what I remembered him for was the 1980's Saturday morning kids' show, "CBS Story-Break" which basically took popular books for young adults and turned them into cut-rate cartoons spun out of a South Korean conglomerate and fed back to we boys and girls in a Reagan-era nutritionless swill. But of course, we lil' bastards scarcely knew the difference, as the advertisers had a bonanza of our undivided attention.

Or at least some of the time. . . . .

My favorite part of the show was the opening theme. . . . . a roller-coaster ride of high-octane electric guitars and lightning bolts and robotic dinosaurs falling away with a roar and about a million other things in the junior '80s zeitgeist that would promise something so much more glorious and exciting then my drab life sitting in front of my television like a pouting, misshapen Quasimodo. Then "Captain Kangaroo" would come out, looking very impeccable and detached from all of this high-stimulation overdrive, and would cheerfully announce that morning's story.

-- Or maybe "Something Less". . . . . ?

Of course, it was given either the 10:30 or 11:00 A.M slot which is the equivalent of "Siberia" for kids' shows. But the old man was taking it fair & square; he needed the paycheck.

Part of me was actually convinced that he was "plugged in" to that super-electric world in the beginning, that he held the key to an existence somewhere that was "that intense". I was also the sort of kid who believed that you could magically drop in on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and find "just another day in the life" going on just like the t.v. show, that it was some kind of valid statement "of how to be". I saw a commercial for the "Super Koolaid Super Fun-House", a wild claymation world and asked my parents to buy "Koolaid" when the announcer said that you could enter the super sweepstakes to visit such a place, not understanding that they would usher you to a playpen, a table of coloring books, and a man in a "Mr. Koolaid" costume.

I know enough about the world now to understand that.

But as a shell-shocked adolescent wandering around, wondering how his magical childhood world of such abundance-- an Ur-consciousness of wonder-- had been reduced to this running sore of life, it was very important for me to glance over and see that Bob Keeshan was standing there and talking like anyone else. He wasn't exalted, he wasn't god-like, he just happened to be some schnook on t.v.

That's why I think it's very important that fans meet their idols and have the realization sink in, that there's no mystery about it.

One time I turned on MTV in a hotel room, and saw a show-- "meet your hero". And the producers arranged it so some geeky contestant got to greet Bruce Willis at a Planet Hollywood in a major city when the actor had some spare time to drop in. Well, Bruce was somewhat skeptical about this and took a seat-- seeing what he had here as he sat sideways, cradling his chin in his fingers like a man at an uncomfortable interview. The kid was so excited, he was sweating. . . . . he was shaking. . . . . he was yelling. . . . . All the while, Bruce was looking quite concerned.

In this kid's legend of Willis, he had been a bartender before he took up acting as a hard-bitten action star, muttering his lines at the perfect instant. Bruce nodded with a "yeah", a question-mark trailed on the end of his sentence as if he did not quite understand the import of this sacred connection, beginning to get worried. The kid rattled off more and more facts, and you could see Bruce becoming edgier, gradually inching away in his chair. The more he'd shrink, the louder the kid would get. . . . . sensing that his time was running out, that the moment of a transcendent eclipse between his life and Bruce's was waning into the all-too-improbable cosmos of bizarre coincidence.

Both left, neither satisfied.

Bruce went back to the solace of the bottle and the kid wandered off in the zig-zagging, disillusioned faith of the pilgrim where life is spare and unyielding like a boot to the ribs. But isn't it said that "truth comes in blows"?

********************

"A Big Difference Between What You See & What You Get:
Watching Interviews with **THE STARS**"

I myself consider the author of this personal website to be the supreme arbiter of "good taste" (-- though others might throw a brick through their computer screen) but what I'm always taken aback by is HOW MARGINAL the worlds of others are, particularly that of actors, artists, musicians-- millionaires, billionaires-- apparently all those "beautiful people" attending "that hip, happening party raging somewhere in the night" where someone like me would never be admitted.

After-all, it was Groucho Marx who once said that "I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member", where the time-honored principle is not who you let in but who you "keep out". Just why Winona feels that she has to collect every last printed edition of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" stashed obsessive-compulsively on a bookshelf or why Johnny Depp buys "prison art" from convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy-- a fat man who liked to dress up in a clown suit and wave at children's birthday parties before he went off and strangled teenagers-- I can't say, nor can these VIP's in the alternative American consciousness adequately explain. In fact, no one can give a very good account for themselves. . . . . mumbling and inarticulate as if their implied "glamour" is supposed to carry them through.

"Actors as symbols" are supposed "to stand for things", and there's a vast separation between the manufactured image in photos, movies, n' music videos and the person you actually GET-- because what do you have but ACTING, and what is acting but LYING?

River Phoenix looked like a comic book character, but was half brain-dead in interviews and never came across as nearly composed as he did in the movies, which itself is a bunch of taped-together scenes, choosing the best "takes" out of many shot over multiple months where nothing is left to chance. But because he did hip, mysterious things without particularly meaning to, fans bought into him as if "he had an answer". Well, he wasn't nearly as convincing if you had seen him and his family starving down in South America on missionary work for a whacked-out southern California sex cult when the parents quite literally had the kids singing and dancing in the streets, little River playing guitar and busking for spare change. They were billed as "The Blonde Children" until they could raise enough money to beg, borrow, or steal their way onto a 4th class freighter back to The United States, eating rotten cheese and shivering in steerage. No, they left that part out of "Tiger Beat" and "Bop" magazine. And it just goes to show how flaky his parents were, falling for a fat pedophile who strutted around wearing the hat of "THE BLACK POPE".

I remember being about 10 or 11 and walking down "The Katy Trail" with a half-empty Dairy Queen shake sweating in my fist during the height of August. It was a long railroad that went 20 miles or more in the distance, that spoke to me of the far-off state of Hollywood dreams and 1930's hoboes and "hitchin' the rails" to the next town where things might be mythically better. One kept their eyes on "the vanishing point" and felt as if they could go on forever, passing rusted-through detritus of metal scrap as they pondered on those who had "braved the journey" and "made it clear to the other side". But if I did my research, I would have understood that actors and heavy metal bands lived like animals and only made it because either "they were born into this", were extremely hardy, or were extremely lucky. Or some combination of all above.

But that doesn't make them more exalted than me-- being such flighty, loose screws that they could go the entire distance of "The Katy Trail" on a whiff of gas and only a hint of water in the radiator, like the family in "The Grapes of Wrath" trying to make it to "The Pastures of Plenty" in California, the promised land.

After-all. . . . . . I am the chieftain of this principality and Satan laughs as you eternally rot.

Festival seating?

Not on your life. . . . . especially at a Guns n' Roses concert.

*******************

7-Eleven & "The Jungle-Floor"

What would theoretically bother me the most about being a celebrity is being out in public, say in a 7-Eleven, and all those people who would "feel the license" to come up to you and act "outrageous", as if you're a larger-than-life television character or someone "they think they know" who's "come to life" and is standing before them "in the flesh" like they're reaching out and merging with their television or movie screen. Why, you could call it "stepping through the looking glass" and merging into their own personal simulacrum fantasy. What are you, man-- a guy in a "Pink Panther" outfit waving at a theme park??

Late Night with Jay Leno or Conan O' Brian really doesn't help matters by jacking up the levels of "theme park" immaturity with cheap laughs and "happy end" thinking that makes the audience want to believe that becoming a Hollywood success is as easy as 1-2-3, that you might have "a magical encounter with a celebrity" and "live happily ever after", and that their show's guests have fundamentally anything in common with the average American buying a "Big Gulp" in said convenience store of "lotto ticket" dreams.

I find it amusing that the rich & famous, or even the well-connected, fundamentally can't even step into a 7-Eleven at any time of day or night without getting mobbed by fans and papparazzi. Honestly, if you were that motivated to jump through "that many hoops" or "run through that many filters" to get to where you are today, you must have "a dead spot" in your perceptions where most of "the more level-headed" would have cynically dropped off like flies "a long time ago". You could not understand the low-down concerns of "the pork-rind contingent" where the intuitive center of the country lies, even if it's not necessarily acknowledged or catered to by the elite media because it's not a prominent "marketing segment" with money or votes. It's quick to rise to anger when the nation's machismo is tested, the stuff of motorcycles and open-air rock concerts and fighter-jet air shows and "P.O.W." stickers. Love it or leave it. . . . . but don't talk about what you don't know, whatever side of the barricade you might be on, whether screaming fan or celebrity stalking by with a pair of sunglasses, holding up their hands so their face isn't snapped by the cameras.

And be able to acknowledge it when something unexpected happens on the set of a show. . . . . like some crazed fan making an unexpected appearance. You don't have to film "the intro" over again and leave the first take on the cutting room floor when that was a more important part of reality than anything that ever passes as "television". With how little grace they handled it, showing "that no one is really in charge", that life is not about a bunch of hip, self-referential "cool little moments", that fundamentally we're all "caught off guard" as much as anyone else. Just what makes these numbskulls millionaires I can't say, but I announce that there's a fire-sale in televised credibility. . . . . at least in my book.

Step aside, if you will.

"The Fishbowl"

The most damaging thing about being a celebrity is once you're caught in a situation "of your own making" that you quite literally "can't get out of". You're "on top of the mountain", but everyone is watching your every move. Your job is to be a public figure, so you can never say "what you really think". The whole industry is fundamentally bogus and you feel uncomfortable, but the hordes down below offer the brisk judgment, "then don't be up here". The perks are good, the pay is swell, but one is quite literally on a white river-rafting adventure of human foibles in which they can no longer quite control. You have become "part of a machine" that's far bigger and more demanding than what you can ever give, and the stresses are tremendous. This is not like the early days, when one did it "for the hell of it"-- or went on a long, hard journey after "the forbidden fruit" that was so "off-limits" for a reason. Now you know why.

A classic lab experiment is to play with the mind of an animal on a floor wired for electricity. If you shock the mouse, it will figure out enough to leap over the wall to the other side. Gradually you can condition it to when every time a light comes on it knows "to haul ass". But the worst part is when shocks come "out of nowhere, for no apparent reason". The animal sweats and frets and gradually begins to develop the self-defeating traits of neurotic behavior rooted in "learned helplessness" as it begins to mentally disintegrate. Perhaps it will figure out that if you pull a lever over here, you can drop down pellets that will alleviate your suffering with pleasurable chemicals. This can be found in an excess of food, sex, drugs, whatever we try to do to fix the void of "learned helplessness" and not knowing how to deal with "the shocks of life".

What's worse, is when our problems/addictions/fixations get so bad that we start "scrambling things around", hiding opened packages or financial statements so friends and loved ones and associates don't "catch on". If the problem persists and becomes "big enough", we will do all sorts of things to get out of our self-imposed "JAM", no matter how ridiculous it looks to the outside world when we're caught red-handed. . . . . like either Winona shoplifting or "Cookie Monster" filching the cookies. He was always my favorite character on Sesame Street-- and I think, a touch obsessive-compulsive. Like no one we know around here right? Like either a special someone who owns 1000 editions of "Catcher in the Rye" or the lunatic who scrawls out this doggerel devoted to her? I rest my case. . . . . . kindly pass the bag.

Part I: Some Self-Defense Tips for Actresses & All Women in General-- The wisest thing to do "is having a sense" of how to stop this sort of irritating behavior in its tracks, by learning "not to be too nice" and remembering "that we deserve what we permit". . . . . and by "heading it off early" with firm, deliberate action-- you don't risk "overreacting" and REALLY getting them stirred up. Most fans "who can't accept no" on some level are mewling babies who want someone "to take care of them", but alas-- if they don't "shape up" and develop "hardness", that will never happen. A situation may degenerate in which they may whine, or beg, or plead, or howl-- but don't "cave in" lest they have this idea that you'll "take them in" and mother them. If it gets "physically aggressive", like a shoving toddler who wraps his arms around you and won't let you "get away"-- go for the groin, eyes, or face with scratching, twisting fingers-- but never stop struggling to get loose, because he won't stop until he dominates ABSOLUTELY and controls your free will "through punishment", which you must never submit to and keep proud & free. If someone approaches you and seems "overexcited", hold up a palm and tell them to keep their distance with a business-like tone and then ask "what you can do for them". That will demonstrate that you're not "their sugar-tit", and they'll stutter and leave. But fundamentally, YOU ARE THE ONE IN CONTROL & LET THEM KNOW IT. If it's anything a woman ever died of, it was "giving her all" and more. Put your dainty little foot down and empower thyself.

Part II: If, in some gold-tinged future. . . . . I stepped outside of a restaurant "for a smoke" and some desperate fan asked "if Winona was in there"-- Look, man. A truism about this world is that the needier you are, the less likely it is that you'll "get what you want"-- and there is always a difference between "what we want", "what we need", and then "what we get". . . . . and it is human nature's issues with AVOIDANCE that keeps him locked in this cycle of destruction that undercuts his ability "to get places". It's bad enough when we feel cold and monstrous and unwanted, it's worse when everyone KNOWS we feel this way and takes pathetic advantage in a manner that not only makes us look ridiculous, "but feel worse about ourselves".

What do you think Winona-- if she really is in there-- can do for someone like you? What, you spill out your sad story-- "kiss her ass"-- and think that she's going "to adopt you"? What's in it for her? And what are you in the market for-- "a mother" or "a girlfriend"? As a general rule, women "with higher status" do not go out with shivering curs. . . . . I should know, I was one. And there's nothing worse than "Mr. Hunk" who never knew this world-- and never will-- keeping you at arm's length, when both you and him know what you each think about the other's "station in life", and the more you try "to explain your case" or "bargain" the more he pretends to listen-- "just to get rid of you" and then finally chases you out "with a bark". And then "how passive-aggressive" do you get, man? Fundamentally, you have to take "all this gnarled inner energy" and direct it OUTWARD in a decent way so life becomes far less complicated.

Men got to be in control. . . . . and these days ain't taught how to be men. Look at you-- all emotional, carrying on like a jilted 12 year-old boy. You got to transition out of that slowly and surely, being in control of your emotions-- leave the excitement and screaming and hoppin' up & down to the women when they see some movie star walk by. Let me tell you the truth about Chippendale's and the guys who work there. They play into what's absurdly forbidden, by keeping a bland "Mr. Stallion" face that keeps the crowd going crazier and crazier, but to them-- this is "just a business", and they never-ever take their fan-base personally no matter who's in that club. They're "in control"-- and they get any woman they want. They possess "an air of mystery" while you're trying to hand Winona a puke-stained bib. You ain't gettin' near her. And now you know why. Get out of here before I give you a kick in your raggedy pants and call the cops!!!

"What all celebrities and high-profile targets should know about stalking. . . . ." is that these are fundamentally very weak characters caught up "in a co-dependent relationship" when the other side simply "isn't in the picture", or in the world of civilians-- "not very much". They may "play games", whether hopeful or base-- when the best thing to do is to call them on their bullshit cooly and directly, "like snapping on a flashlight" on a darker, more childish side of the human psyche that will send them scurrying-- especially with the fear of public exposure when the police may be called in to duly investigate our now-mortified "Woody Allen" type. Your silence only encourages them-- perhaps interpreted "as a mixed message". Kick 'em in the nuts "and shut 'em down".

What all celebrities and high-profile targets should know about kidnapping. . . . . don't ever underestimate the raw, hard-knuckle valuation some out there may see in your status as a naive, plush, easy piece "of fenced property" for a game of "ransom". This is about "power" and your sheltered ass is their leverage, which they control through threats, fear, hope, and greed. This goes for any vulnerable person in society, especially "women n' children", if not "baby-faced liberals" who fall for some pretty awful tricks. Always build up your ability "to read people"-- and to have as much of an "intelligence profile" on the world as possible. Disbelieve; carry on through the world boldly while interpreting gestures "through a cloud of possibilties". Build up your ability to fight; don't be caught "flat-footed & paralyzed"-- which is what the predator counts on. Courage and assertiveness "as a real contender" to show 'em "that you mean trouble" will give them "second thoughts".

This story here shows you a character "who got into a mess", but did the right thing "once captured" to cooperate but eventually BREAK LOOSE.

"Risk"

"There's a fine line between persistence & pathology. . . . ."

If my dreams were to "come true", Winona and I became "an item", and I was to find myself a wealthy "waysted white boy" in a trans-futurist "Celebrity-style" suit in the pages of "People", there would come others. . . . . and others. . . . . and others. Once you give the public hope "that the average fat-ass" might have a shot, "then that's when it gets crazy".

The truth about the general public is, obviously-- that they must be both educated and disabused of their notions. . . . . the difference between what's possible and improbable or even "all that likely" upon the dancing, Satanic glees within our "Hellespont of hellish infernos" known as "wishful nibbling" that needs a punch or two to the head or at least "a security man to chase out the curious". Back on one of Winona's miscellaneous alt-movie runs, the director set up a message board-- anyone could sign up-- in which fans could post questions to the cast. A certain very leggy, attractive woman who had once been "a comic book goddess" in a series of recent super hero movies answered a single question and pandemonium broke out.

If you had ever watched the scene in "Apocalypse Now" when the USO flew in some "dancing girls" for the stranded, strung-out, homesick, sex-starved soldiers pumping their fists and cheering in a thunderstorm and how eventually "it all got so out-of-hand" the girls had to flee to the helicopter as the men charged the stage and rioted in an orgy of lovesick horniness as they screamed with their faces to the sky in the pouring rain.

(-- Presumably, they went back to the bunk in a depression "to eat candy & whack-off" because that was "the only affordable substitute" down in the jungle)

In this life, if there are not "perfect solutions" we must find "a stand-in" and what I would tell to everyone out there. . . . . fan, stalker, geek, internet junkie alike, is that you will eventually find out "through sheer trial & error" there are appropriate and inappropriate substitutes, and it will cosmically dawn on you "that there ain't no short-cuts".

You might bluff your way in "through bluster", but if you sit around too long "over your stolen meal" eventually someone or something will mount "a counterattack" and drive you back with far greater losses "than what you had in the beginning". That's why most gamblers end up "in the gutter", Napoleon on "Devil's Island", Donald Rumsfeld hiding out in an undisclosed bunker with the toxic spillage "of bad feeling". Because they "didn't know when to quit" and eventually were playing "a reactive game" when everyone banded against them "and kicked 'em the hell out".

One cosmic sin is that of "emotional projection", or presuming that you and someone else "are on the same page". A spy may pose as a friend, a journalist as a confidant, "a squire" as "an innocent", and turn around and be your worst teeth-gritting enemy as you recover from "the fall-out". Appearances can be deceiving, and if you're ever outside a Walgreens and someone says they want to run back to their car "to grab their camera", that's when you get out of there because they might be coming back with a weapon.

Many times I considered what it would be like if Winona "threw a party" for some of her fans, the ole' gang on that ever-reliable, ever-dependable, ever-steady message-board. But how would such a venture work? Would the fans have to pay for their own transportation to a cordoned back area of a restaurant or nightclub? Would hysteria break out under the pressure of that moment? Spikes of jealously, violence. . . . . all competing for her limited attention?

And the awful truth of it-- the more apparently scarce "an oasis", than the more desperately men will fight for survival. The biggest lesson I ever had to learn is that desperation is counterproductive and makes one far less worthy in the world of status and hierarchy, much less "managing what you desire". To truly "win", you must rise above "the fray" and see not only see ourselves "as actors on a stage" but "the great silence" that exists, over, above, and beyond them to make any kind of reasonable character judgment of assertions and shimmering life energies.

And the rest, speaks for itself. . . . .

-- "Thank you for your input, Ms. Buxbaum".