The Machinations Of Dr Groovis Toovis And My Relationship with Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick was visionary. But they were tortured visions. The kind where you wake up in a cold sweat. I knew Philip. I accepted him. Excesses and all. The words that he wrote, dripped honey on the paper. I was drawn to his writing like a moth to a flame. I had to have all the things he penned. But, I can't think that I didn't have a hand or a leg(albeit invisible) in his writing career.

People gravitate to his novel Blade Runner, or, for those in the know, such as myself, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. But, I was enamored with his masterpiece, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch.

I was so fascinated by it because I am positive he was so inspired by my sci fi master piece I wrote two years before he wrote his.  The Machinations of Dr. Groovis Toovis.

The Machinations of Dr. Groovis Toovis, is a story about a super villian like Dr. Fu Manchu. In it he wakes up one day with a vision that he can change the world and make it a more groovy place by putting LSD in the water supply of Los Angeles, thus expanding the population's collective mind and bringing it to the highest elevation of enlightenment. But something goes awry.

I will not tell you the rest because I want you to hunt down this classic and read it and gain your own enrichment.

Greetings again

Greetings from the the sun-baked land of LA. It's hot here. But not as hot as my career. I sense a comeback folks. I am putting together deals. Meeting important people. Big things are on the horizon. It's all about the break wide open!

Sun will rise and great cities will fall. Dirty angels will blast comforting notes from their battered horns.

The Mailman And My Wild Days And Nights With The Great Charles Bukowski

Nobody wrote like Buk. Nobody had the stones like he did, to live life to the fullest. to celebrate the grit and existence of the loser. The rooming house boarder, the  Barfly. Bukowski was the bard of the bum, the miserable minstrel, walking lonely streets of LA. People would look at him and see him as a dirty old man and pass "notes" to one another like giggly school girls. But they would never get the soul of such a great writer, such a great, but ragged prince.

I knew Buk. Drank with him when he was just a brash thirty-five year old with a head full of stories but not the voice to convey those yarns. I gave him his voice.

We were out bar hopping one night, and I lent him a copy of my latest opus called The Mailman, about a man who one day wakes up after a surreal vision and decides he needs to deliver letters to the good citizens of the City Of Angels. So, he goes to work for the Post Office. This is a story that holds a mirror up to America in the middle sixties and shows what  an ugly beast it had become.

Well Charlie took it and staggered out of the bar.  He read it that night cover to cover. Needless to say he loved it-- in fact, he was in love with it! So inspired by it, he trashed his little room in search of his typewriter-- he had to write... had to put ink to paper because what he read in my book touched him in ways that he did not understand. My words reached those dark places in his dark soul. They soothed him the way David's harp soothed King Saul.

So, when he found his typewriter, he began pounding away at what would be his iconic novel Post Office.

This work would not only go on to be his best seller, it would be talked about in the halls of Academia. It would be loved, caressed by generations of dough-eyed collegiates.

I like to think I had an invisible hand in steering such greatness.

Gypsies

Fire burns  in their eyes and they whirl like dervishes. Dancing for change, love, and piece of mind. Their costumes are garish and they exude a zest for life that only gypsies can exude. I look at their Medusa like hair and get lost in the pyre that is their passion for living. Oh they taunt me in this city square to the eerie laughs of Karl Marx and Victor Hugo.

A Moment Of Clarity

Ok, as the train lurches back and forth on the way to Brussels, I see things more clearly. My head feels like a barbell--but even so, the world seems like a much lighter place. I no longer feel like a wounded Atlas with a grimy globe on my shoulders. I've learned alot in the last few days--some of those memories I thought it best to erase. 

I think we will all be ok if we love each other and appreciate each other's differences. Amsterdam is now but a fly spec. But the lessons learned are gigantic and they shall remain with me for the rest of my life.

I, Rabbit( My Kinship With John Updike And His Character Rabbit Angstrom

John Updike was a friend of mine. In fact, he was like a brother, a father, and a grand shaman wrapped up in one. He was my confessor, my priest and my Rasputin.

His most seminal work was his novel Rabbit Run, about  a former high school athlete whose greatness is behind him, and how he may have peaked too early in his life-- I was that man!

When Updike wrote about Rabbit, he had me in mind. This story goes way back to the early sixties.
I was married, living in Scranton P A with a wife and three kids-- but, I was twenty six, young and had alot of wild oats to sow; and sow them I did. One day, while I was out buying milk for the family, I got this wild hair and decided to go on a soul searching trip to Florida.

Somewhere On The Road, in Wheeling West Virginia, I had the epiphany that I wanted to be a writer. This was followed by a dream I had while in a tormented, fitful, sleep that I was Stud's Turkel-- only I was a bull dog version of the literary giant.

Well, that's appropriate, because at this time I was a dog with a bone and I was chewing on it until my gums turned raw. That early morning, I woke up in an icy sweat an begin writing my first novel on a roll of toilet paper. This book would turn into to the great cult classic called On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit.

It was part long, snaky Beat poem and part guide through the underbelly that was rural America in the early sixties. The book is full of hallucinatory observations on the vexations of the human condition out in the hinterlands between the east an left coast of the USA.

When the book was eventually published, by Pinnacle Books, years later, it met with only minor success. But John Updike's agent picked it up one day, read it, and then handed the dog-eared and loved copy to the author. He read it, loved it and tracked me down through the use of a sleazy dime store PI. We have been friends ever since.

From then on I inhaled and John exhaled. He often quoted from On The Road And Frolicking Like A  Jack Rabbit. It became his Bible, Torah and Koran bundled up like a Christmas present--he idolized me.

It must have been my hep cat cool-- the way I held my Virginia Slim in the cubic zirconium encrusted cigarette holder. Anybody could blow smoke through their nose--but not everybody could gag profusely while they were doing it!

Eventually, John began to dress like me and sported the same kind rakish floppy hat I wore in those days. Well one thing led to another, and he ended up writing Rabbit Run( the fact that he included "Rabbit" in his title was no accident).

You see the more Updike read On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit, the more he became obsessed with rabbits in general. He studied them. Their moving parts. Their scatological waste.

 In a fit of method acting, he dressed up like a rabbit, dipped his fluffy little rabbit tail in paint, and set  up an easel and canvas and did some contour painting-- you know just dabbing his tail here and there on the cloth? He tried to sell that painting to an art gallery in West Hollywood, but was roughly and curtly shown the door. Apparently the gallery owner saw the work of art and vomited all over some valuable Salvador Dali prints. Updike, understandably so, was devastated. But he came to terms with the fact that painting was not his calling and that only steeled his resolve to finish Rabbit Run-- and stole he did, there are practically verbatim passages in his book from On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit. But that's OK. I am happy to know that my book, part confessional, part bromance with the great rugged, individualistic Hemingway  man that is America, was the spark that launched a very lucrative series for Mr. Updike.

All The People I have Been and Loved

I've been Charles Bukowski... I've been Ferlinghetti and Ginsburg... been an angel headed hipster... been Delmore Schwartz, Walt Whitman, and Frank Ohara... I've been Sinatra, Dino, Sammy, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. I've burned through Barstow on a mad dash to Vegas under an itchy bloodshot sunset... I went bust at the Desert Inn and threw up in the Starlight Lounge at the Stardust... got smacked by dancer at the Sands. Got tossed out of Harold's in Reno...I've been Clark Gable, Red Skeleton, Emmet Kelly, Buster Keaton Elvis and Jim Morrison. But today I feel like being Rod Mckuen... is that so wrong?

The Hollywood Sign

We've all seen it.  Those big white block letters, planted in the the hillside overlooking Hollywood and the rest of Tinsel Town. When it was first put up, it used to read" Hollywood Land'. The "Land" part of the sign was removed in 1949. It used to light up as well, but that also changed over time.  What hasn't changed is what the landmark symbolizes: Fame, Fortune and Bloody, Ambition!

I look up at  Mount Lee, at that monolith, with lust in my eyes. Hollywood was a woman I had to have, and ended up conquering. But the conquest came at a price-- one I paid for in blood and soul! The blood was replenished but my soul never returned. This woman, sometimes  gentle lover, but most times, a harpie, took my vitality and squashed it like a grape for fine wine. Then left it in the desert to bleach in the scorching sun. Oh Hollywood you unforgiving she devil! I fed you and clothed you, and you returned the favor by sucking the marrow out of my creative bones and leaving the filament to scatter in the hot Santa Ana wind! As I shield my eyes from the glare glinting off those nine letters, I am reminded of my pal and mentor Murray Lipschlitz.


Murray was a viral man. His frame topped out 6'1 and 210 pounds. Very burly, with a pronounced nose. He was bald on top, but had sterling silver wings emanating from the sides of his head, just above his ears. He was poetry on the dance floor. All the women loved him: his Rasputin eyes, his manly, hairy chest, and those ropey gold chains. Even though he dressed like a Cuban pimp, he wore the duds well.

Murray was also a writer; in the same vein as Sheldon and Robbins. The difference is, he told his tales of passion and greed in the world of swords, sweaty flesh and sorcery.

I write about Murray because he truly understood the symbolism behind The Hollywood Sign. And he was able to highlight those sentiments when he described the lives of elves, orcs, and faeries-- a rare talent that Lipschlitz!

Murray was a soulful white knight walking hip deep through a city of lost humanity. He had a head full of fantastic stories which only met with minor success. But, he was another literary hero of mine.

Which is why, I gaze so fondly today at The Hollywood Sign and treat her with the respect she deserves-- and in some small way, honor my great friend Murray Lipschlitz.

Harold Robbins And Sydney Sheldon

Right now I am standing on my deck looking at the bowl of broth that is the Burbank skyline. People think Hollywood is where all the magic happens, but it's really Burbank. It's the home of The Tonight Show and the home of Universal Studios and Industrial Light And Magic. So, movie magic abounds in this city that's at the mouth of the San Fernando Valley.

Burbank also makes me think of Harold Robbins and Sydney Sheldon. If you were to ask me who influenced me as a writer, I would point directly to those two.

I was captivated by their big stories of the tawdry lives of power brokers and sultry baronesses.

To me the best books ever written were The Betsy and Master Of the Game. They are seminal works of two great literary authors who swung for the fences in life--who dreamed larger than their surrounding environment.

These guys were the old Hollywood war horses-- the men with big sunglasses and fly away collars.

Today we have pimply faced kids on skateboards passing themselves off as the movers and shakers in this business. It was a sad moment when we ceded this great industry to Romper Room.

Well back Sheldon and Robbins, I feel in my writing I channel their spirits--sometimes it's like they take over the keyboard and they are typing the words onto the screen. I can tell, because it's then, my prose drips syrup and molasses. So, that is why I cast a gaze on Burbank and hold a glass to their honor.

It's because Burbank felt like home to these men. It was their seat of power. It was were they built there literary empires and lived like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think I live like Fitzgerald-- maybe I don't have the wealth, but I have the spirit and soul of that great author-- and so did the Harold and Syd. Their souls and spirits scream out to me up from the smog of the city below and they echo through the brown biscuit hills. To them, I owe great respect.

Sunrise In The Hollywood Hills

Burnt orange floods the sky at this time of morning. In the distance  a scraggly lone coyote cries fowl. A box sportster races pell mell down Laurel Canyon. A night of depravity or debauchery? Or, a damsel tired of dodging a bloated ogre's hairy paws.

What will today bring? I often times find myself asking if this will be the day I meet my maker;deep down I know it will be more of weaving in and out of traffic on Hollywood Boulevard. Squinting at the sun filtered through the gauze of a brown and hazy afternoon. Lots of anger. Lots of heartache... all coasting into a night of Bacchanalia.

With this in mind, I look out over the house-pitted hills and watch the morning unfold and feel grateful I am alive.

Lost In The Tradewinds Of My Mind

A moment ago I was having the most vivid daydream where I was lying in a swaying hammock being tickled by a sunny tropical breeze. The turquoise water lapped at the shore. In my hand was a Pina Colada in a carved out coconut with a dayglo straw that curled around like Salvador Dali's mustache. A young woman in a flowing grass skirt massaged my ears with her delicate ukulele music.

I normally have colorful dreams--but this one felt so very real.

The Night John Barley Came To Town.

The coyote's call made John Barley twitch. As did the sweat running from his furrowed brow into his eye. It was a windless night and the heat rose as the sun went down.

John Barley walked down Main Street nervously fingering the holster of his six gun. A showdown was imminent. But his opponent was unknown.

Waiting For Lola

One night at a party up in the Hollywood Hills, while I was nursing a Martini and having carnal knowledge of the olive, I was sitting pool side. It was an extravagant pool, very similar to the one at Caesar's in Vegas.  I was staring over at the diving board and the under water light was casting this eerie lunar glow-- that is when I saw the lovely Lola Falana doing back strokes from one side to the other. I watched her with rapt attention. It must've been about 1975. Anyway, it was a night that would change my life forever and fire the loins of my creativity. From then on I became obsessed with Lola and wanted to be everywhere she was. I would follow her to clubs and restaurants and even the beauty salon. This obsession never went away. It inspired my novel Waiting for Lola, about a fan who was so driven by his love for an actress that he committed murder for her and then took his own life by giving himself a Viking funeral pyre.

My Love Of Westerns

I have always been captivated by the genre that is so affectionatley titled "the western". I am a true blue fan of the movies of Glen Ford with their panoramic photography and I have read everything that Zane Grey ever wrote. To me the western entails high drama and cinematic action. I think one of my all time favorite westerns was Howard Hugh's The Outlaw that featured the lovely Jane Russell.

The west should always be a place where men are men and the women are damn glad of it. The old west tale is on my list of stories to conquer. I intend to create some rollickingly good yarns.

The Business Of Writing

I was drawn to writing like a moth to a flame when I found I had the gift for describing places and people. I mostly found myself wanting to live vicariously through others with my quill. So, I began with writing about my environment which at the time was Hollywood in the early seventies. I wrote about the restaurants I ate in, the bars I drank in and the people I associated with at parties. I was captivated by the rich texture that we call life; and at that time, my life was filled with the zest and vigor that only the everyday Joe dreamed about. So, I ended up filling many spiral notebooks full of experiences-- some were good, and some were just downright unfortunate. From these notebooks I was able to put together my first story that I ended up selling to the New Yorker. This was followed by numerous letters to Penthouse Magazine. Eventually, I penned my first novel Hot Days And Hollywood Nights and the rest was history.

Blinding Headlights Glaring Into The Misty Night

The amber of blinding headlights glared into the misty night as the silver Porsche Cabriolet whipped around the corner, heading down Laural Canyon. A fiery vixen sat behind the wheel with her foot to the pedal. She was headed toward the twinkling lights of Los Angeles; a town where the angels had soot stained faces.

Purple Prose

The willows whipped and the wind sang. And her hair fluttered about. She turned to him with her eyes on fire and an insatiable hunger. He wanted her, his thirst needed to be slaked. But, something held him back. Was it the fact that she was only 18 and he was old enough to be her father? Or did it have to do with him being a man of the cloth?