Old & In The Way

While taking stock of how totally insane I’ve become over the last 20 years, many cold hard truths came to light. It would be unfair to place the blame upon the city of Atlanta, tempting and convenient though that may be. No, I take full onus for my insanity and overall obsessive/compulsive misbehavior; for a gentleman such as myself, they are par for the course.

My alcohol and drug abuse have, without exception, been for the purpose of the work. The overall artistic entity of myself. I have never indulged in crystal meth nor crack because those kind of drugs damage the quality of the work. They produce no inspirational or educational offspring, only humiliation and spiritual entropy. Meanwhile, all of us have seen a pothead who spews workable and often hilarious ideas anytime a bong is passed, then complains about forgetting them later. Well, if you’re a writer or a cartoonist, you can put that shit on paper and make money.

Did everybody forget about that? You can just Xerox and staple a little quarto together and offer ’em for a dollar. Or give ’em away. At no point does the internet have to be involved. People did this for centuries, before this one.

You could make a little booklet of the most fucked up thing you can dredge up from the depths of your imagination, leave any identifying information off, and leave it on a train, to be found by someone who will either trash it, or allow it to live rent-free in their head for the rest of their life.

That’s the power of printed matter, which is neither acknowledged nor respected in our Current Year.

Artists of printed matter are almost invariably substance abusers. This, in many cases, is grandfathered in from bygone workplace environments that fostered drug and alcohol indulgences, even what would now be considered insane nicotine abuse, as common practice almost up to the turn of the century.

In the 21st century, we’ve had the privilege to know what works and what doesn’t, regarding substance abuse. When I write about taking drugs, I am writing from a place of wisdom, gained through the risk of first-hand experience. Because all long, I did for the work.*

*^{lulz, ofc. IDIFTL always implied. see also T-bone/Bumfights ref., prev. sent.}

Age-wise, I’m around when George Lucas released the Special Editions of Star Wars, and launched production of the Prequels. This is excellent because I’m already at work on the new John’s Arm stuff, and the spiffed-up** Blu-Ray is coming soon, which contains a version of my movie like I’ve never seen before. So that lines right up.

**^{if you like, this can be a movie ref.}

Now, as for another legendary director, that being Francis Ford Coppola, at my present age he had just come off of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and was three years from crapping out Jack, a “dumb Disney movie with Robin Williams” (his words). Since then, Coppola has helmed only five films over the past thirty years. His most recent, 2024’s Megalopolis, was a notorious commercial failure you might have heard about, most likely from conflicting reports about Coppola’s marijuana use on set.

Remember what I said about the inspirational qualities of pot? Have you seen Megalopolis? If you’re like myself, and are one of the few who have, does it strike you as the product of a sober mind? Bonus question; how did Coppola ensure that no one in the entire mainstream media sphere called it “Megaflopolis”?

A year before what may be Coppola’s final film, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was released; although their ages are similar, it would almost be unfair to compare their two movies. Suffice to say the latter is one of the finest films I’ve ever seen, and the former I found totally inexplicable. I don’t understand the purpose of Megalopolis; the performances of the actors are irrelevant in that it seems even they don’t understand what they’re saying. Killers of the Flower Moon is a genuine masterpiece, loaded with incredible, indelible moments and performances, with a gut-shot of an ending that made me want to experience the whole thing all over again. There’s Martin Scorsese, as himself, biting back tears as he reads the fate of Mollie Kyle. It’s a spectacular coda to what feels like a genuine cultural artifact.

When Scorsese was my present age, he was between Casino and Kundun. I’m beginning to notice a pattern here. The mid-fifties seem to be the time when big-time directors explore new territory, for better or for worse, and for myriad reasons. Both Jack and Kundun were released by Disney; actually, scratch that- Kundun was buried by Disney, “in order to minimize the damage to the company’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party^[24]“. It opened in two theaters; I have my doubts that Christopher Moltisanti ever saw it, as claimed.

Who knows; maybe he rented it at Blockbuster.

When Ridley Scott was my age, he directed Thelma & Louise, a film I have never seen. I know it involves Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis driving a convertible off a cliff in the desert, which is supposed to be metaphorical of the oppression of women or some such. I also haven’t seen Napoleon, Scott’s recent counterpart to Megalopolis and Killers of the Flower Moon. I was about to label it his “final effort” before I saw that he’s directed two films since then, one of which is a sequel to 2000’s Gladiator. I haven’t seen those either. Frankly, the bloom’s been off the rose for me since Scott’s Alien: Covenant from 2017. He roped me in with Prometheus, then proceeded to sully everything interesting about that beautiful yet fatally flawed film five years later. To be frank, currently the only Ridley Scott movie I care for is The Duellists, his first, starring Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine as two fellas who just can’t see eye-to-eye.

In all sincerity, I give it a “hard recommend”. It’s beautiful, and you owe it to yourself to see its spectacular final shot. See for yourself.

When Jerry Garcia’s band Old & In The Way released their eponymous elpee (with art by the late great Greg Irons), Garcia was 21 years younger than I am right now. He died a year before my current age (at 53), this month in 1995. I feel this only supplants my theory about how abusing drugs and alcohol for recreation rather than the work leads to premature death and/or eventual disaster. Frank Zappa, a lifelong smoker, didn’t make it to my age (or Jerry’s) either.

As I said; the privilege to know what works, and what doesn’t.