... My Peculiar Adventures Abroad ...
an account of the curious adventures of a domesticated American in the lands of the windmills and the pyramids, tales of the octopus messiah with whom he travelled, and an account of the trial and judgment of the ever curious Ishmael Gradsdovic
The travel diaries of Ishmael Gradsdovic send us racing from the coffeeshops of Amsterdam to the criminal courts of Ork (planet of origin of one Mork, who enjoyed some success as an entertainer and comic several years back), then up the pyramids of Giza and down into the search rooms of the notorious and brutal U.S. Customs bureau.
For readers unfamiliar with the life and activities of Ishmael Gradsdovic (yes, that Ishmael Gradsdovic), or with the octopus messiah (his comrade in travel), the journal may be somewhat confusing at first. Unless you understand, for instance, that the octopus messiah has all of the power of the four winds at his command and that nary a star is set in the sky but that he wills it so, you are likely to interpret as 'magical realism' or metaphor the sequence in which he inhabits Gradsdovic's mind during sleep and dreams his dreams.
A few words first about the accuracy and integrity of the account: Much has been said about Ishmael Gradsdovic's tendency to exaggerate or invent in his ostensibly narrative writings. These criticisms will certainly be raised in the reaction to the stories told here. However, there are many surviving witnesses to the events described in this volume, and their testimony is remarkably similar, with the exception that Gradsdovic has claimed to have been the author many ideas and feats herein described that D---- claims also to have been the primary creative force behind.
So as to avoid the use of footnotes, I will try to raise issues of context here in the foreword.... [foreword unfinished]
-[]- How Ishmael Gradsdovic
-[]- Received No Satisfaction
-[]- From Beating a Crack-Ho
Ishmael is a nice guy. Come to him when your girlfriend kicks you out of the house at three in the a.m. on a Monday morning in January and he'll let you in, smoke you out, listen patiently to your tale of woe, and sleep in the wet spot.
Calamity is a junkie waif with a broken arm, weighing in at eighty-one and a half pounds. She figured out early that the goal in life is to fuck over more people than fuck you over and she's still playing catch-up. I don't believe her story of how she broke her arm. I think someone got to her before Ishmael did.
This is their story: the story of how Ishmael Gradsdovic got no satisfaction beating a crack-ho. Therapeutic whoop-ass intervention or cathartic excuse for gorilla brutality? I'm D----, and on our show today we'll let you, our target market, make the call. Be sure to tune in tomorrow when I'll be showing slides from my vacation overseas. Hit it, Murray!
+ organ fadeout + Chick Hearn's voice ... it's in — it's out — it's in ... ... he's all alone down there ... ... Michael Jordan wastes no time ... + generic voce
Michael Jordan for RitalinTM
+ Jordan's voice
You gotta dance; there's no — you can't be thinking more than about a second ahead but at the same time you can never lose the big picture.
+ generic voce
Because in the Big Game, 100% is never quite enough. RitalinTM. Use as directed.
+ slip 01 catch
rate rate splendid
rate splendid splendito
all at Ted's Armorclas Warehouse
Take Christ off the 205 and hang a leftist into the liquor barn parking lot. We're open six days a week and are proud members of the Merchant Taxpayers Honor Program. Normal restrictions may apply. And remember - wave 'hello' to Malcolm!
+ black 05 crop + 'God Save the Queen' playing + stark message, white-on-black, scrolls up screen
This has been a public service announcement
+ cue calliope + voice of James Earl Jones
Tonight... on Firefight PM
+ Earl Pitzner
...that punishes the victim and robs his owner of...
+ Doria Gherkin
...or her owner, Earl.
+ Jef Dunse
But ultimately isn't it absurd to say that giving someone their freedom is equivalent to victimizing them? And if you weigh the freedom of one man...
+ Gherkin
...there you go again...
+ Pitzner
But your abstractions, Jef, turn out to be American citizens with real faces, just like you and me, whose livelihood and security is being threatened by intellectuals who never had to oversee a plantation in their lives...
+ Mort Dunahoe
Tune in tonight to Firefight PM: "Abolition - can it be a winning issue for the Republicans"
+ Ishmael Gradsdovic wrests control of the remote, shuts off the TV, begins to speak.
"What time is it?"
"Quarter to one."
"She said morning. Ain't morning. Ergo."
Ishmael picks up the phone, dials a pager number, and then his own. He puts down the phone. I ask him, "so, I heard you got arrested."
"Yeah."
"What for?"
"Corrupting the morals of the youth of the city."
"You did some little kid?"
"Nah. That's just what they're charging me with. Let's use the Wayback Machine!"
"Hey that's a great idea! Off to a land sizzling with such meaty ideas that they just had to call it Greece!"
"Say goodnight, Gracie."
+ Dissolve to smoke + Coughing off screen + Enter Socrates
"So, I tells them, I says, your temples don't get you any closer to God. I can prove this, I says. Okay. A few yawns, but okay. Then I says if you are spending time and money on a pasttime that isn't doing what you hoped it would do, and someone told you that you were essentially being hornswaggled by snake-oil salesmen, well, I asks them, all slow and clear so as everyone can follow me, 'What Do You Do Next?'"
"Then what happened?"
"One of the kids says 'You're not just saying that people oughn't to go to the temples, you're telling us that the temples aren't no good.' And I say 'I don't know the temples are bad, I just don't think there's a shred of evidence that they're any good.' And so this kid says, 'So you think we should just smash the temples down, then.' And I scream, 'Yes! Better to destroy them brick by brick than to use them the way they're being used now.'"
"Uh oh."
"So they've got me on 41 counts of corrupting the morals of the children of the city of Athens by soliciting (a) child(ren) to vandalize, damage or loot a place of public worship."
"How are you going to plead."
"Not guilty."
"Got a lawyer yet?"
"No. I'm thinking of representing myself."
"Dude."
A tall, handsome fellow (Ishmael) and his dog (Peabody) materialize. Ishmael notes, sotto voce, that Socrates is utterly unstartled by their sudden appearance. Socrates' buddy, a Mr. Snooks Talisman of Athens, overhears the comment, and (although he himself had nearly jumped out of his sandals) says: "Socrates isn't surprised by anything!"
"On the contrary," Socrates replies. "I am equally startled by each new fact. It truly surprised me greatly to see this gentleman and this bespectacled dog appear by the roadside, but I would have been just as surprised if for some reason they hadn't."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," said Ishmael.
"So, you speek Greek!"
"I thought I was speaking English."
"Let's call it 'English,' then," said Socrates. "Sounds more exotic that way."
"Socrates," Ishmael began. "I've got a dilemma."
"Don't start getting technical. I'll warn you that once we start getting above four-syllables I just ad hoc the definitions and pronunciation. What's your problem?"
"I've got some legal trouble, and I'm not sure how to proceed."
"I'm not a lawyer."
"These aren't the kind of problems that legal training helps to solve."
"But I'm not the kind of philosopher who solves problems. I'm much better at questions. Wanna hear one?"
"Uh. Sure."
"What was your face before your mother was born?"
"I don't think that's quite what I'm looking for."
"I get that a lot. You want to know the future; I'm a philosopher, not a soothsayer. Study the present; it's all we know."
The Present. A nice little homonym. Playful. Housebroken. Sitting in a familiar coffeeshop in Amsterdam, baked like you-won't-believe-it, ducks playing in the rain in the canal outside the window. The sound of fooz-ball and trance. The story twisting my fingers like some sort of syntactical seizure. Stage fright. The Judge is waiting.
Peabody has made a discovery. People will buy tyranny if you introduce natural selection into the process of generating the marketing and sales staff.
Ishmael is pondering. He does this a lot. I think it makes him look dignified, but I think he looks upon it as an embarassing tic. He's wondering if he can stop the talk about philosophical falderol and start talking about what's vexing him. He knows, though, that any attempt to cheaply dodge the issue will just provoke the old busybody to new heights of bullshit.
Socrates is, as ever, surprised and perplexed. He felt an itch on his inner left calf and he wondered. He noticed the dog's mischevious grin and this puzzled him. He observed himself noting these things and then took note of the process of taking note of this in a passionate embrace of a state of erotic perplexity. He smiled, stupidly, as if he might drool.
Snooks, seeking to break the impasse, hits the button on the Wayback Machine, and Ishmael's problem remains unsolved. He finds himself propelled into the dimension of Ork. The Judge, in a round, frilly collar, top-hat with buckle, and wig of white curls, floats suspended in an opalescent bubble. He is otherwise naked and apparantly unconscious.
"Your Honor," Ishmael begins, his voice echoing somehow from the distant violet mist. "I have been repeatedly harassed by the police during the course of my affairs — all quite legal and honorable ones."
A voice issues from the globe: "You're speaking about the marijuana arrests?"
"Yes. They never found or claimed to find any marijuana on my person, I was never charged with any offense, yet here I am, arrested time and time again on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs."
"I asked The People to explain..."
"And that's another thing. About this 'The People' stuff - what does that make me exactly? Everyone who didn't fall asleep during the filmstrips in school knows that all throughout history people who wanted to do inhumane things to other humans turned them into non-people first. You think I trust this process to presume me innocent? Dragged into court in CalTrans orange and shackles is not presumed..."
"Noted."
"...innocent. Uh, thanks."
"As I was saying, I asked the attorney prosecuting this case, in chambers..."
"Where all the important things happen, apparantly."
"...to explain... Mr. Grandervoss... Gradsdivoch... whatever your name is. I - I'll look it up later — I need you to stop interrupting me. Do yo understand? Good. I asked Mrs. Goatbang about those arrests and she informed me that you were arrested each time on the steps of the police department smoking a marijuana waterpipe with some sort of marijuana substitute, that they are forced to arrest you each time just in case, and that you seem to think that this is some sort of great practical joke."
"Certainly not, Your Honor. I think it's terrible that they arrest me over and over again for doing something that they discover each time to be something they don't have the authority to arrest me for. There ought to be a law against that sort of thing!"
"There is!" says Mrs. Goatbang, dramatically missing the point. "The state legislature just passed the Omnivorous Prepotent Counterfeit Marijuana Possession Prevention and Protection of Police, Fire, Safety and Certain Other Workers Act. You try that again and you're busted, buddy!"
"The act," Ishmael proposed, "surely defines 'counterfeit marijuana' to be anything a police officer sincerely hoped was marijuana at the time of the arrest. And I'll bet it's 100% constitutional. Congratulations."
+ Camera zooms back to soft focus + Big-screen titles slap on screen, black&white, one word at a time + "The Ugliest Prostitute in Amsterdam"
+ Slow pan to the body
"Look at me; I'm Quail Bumpee, the ugliest prostitute in Amsterdam. The scenes you are about to witness (uncut and uncensored) are U.G.L.Y. Don't say you weren't warned. I've got reefs of cellulite emerging from all corners of my body. There are parts of me I cannot reach to put medicine on my boils. I have a mustache that I try to bleach away but the bleach just makes it glow under the blacklight in my booth. This is just the beginning."
+ Announcer, off screen, in humorous moment
"But Quail, Baby!"
QB: "What, honey?"
A: "What the people at home want to know is why you... how you got into the prostitution business."
QB: "Well, I haven't always been ugly, you know..."
A: "Really?"
QB: "No. I lied. I came out this way. Only thing that ever made me look better was getting the harelip fixed, and that didn't help much."
A: "But do tell us, Quailee."
QB: "Don't call me that. Really. It bugs me. D'ya got another cigarette? Thanks. Hey, no, forget about it. No. It turns out there's a lot of business there for an ugly girl like me. There's the perverts who get off on amputations and shit - whatever. Then there's the ones who figure that since I'm ugly that means I'll appreciate the customers that much more than your average whore. Wrong-o. And there's that type who hire me out of guilt that I'm so ugly and they aren't. Ever hear of anything so weird? They're all impotent. Every once in a while I'll get some Einstein who figures that since I'm so ugly, I've got to have some secret ninja sex skill that's just out of this world. Nope. Ejaculation isn't like gene sequencing, guys."
Is it tomorrow already? Somewhere the click and hiss of a tape recorder; the whir of a slide-projector fan; the recorded car horns of Cairo. Our first slides, shooting up on the walls in front of you - panorama from 25 meters above the streets near the Ramses Station.
Rooftops covered with grey debris, tangled roads with donkey-carts of onions or soft-drinks, women on the sidewalks chatting and selling eggs, men at the cafes smoking shisha and playing backgammon - you smell the smoke 25 meters up, it can't be, no, it's the shisha at your table, tobacco sticky with apple-flavored goo, lit in a large clay bowl by coals tweezered in by your waiter. Head rush and it is good.
Oh, so you feel it too? Suits and caftans and shawls seen from above, every car and van with an industrial-strength luggage rack pushing past tin shacks of automotive parts to merge inefficiently from many 'lanes' to one in front of the station. Women with baskets balanced on their covered heads, silhouetted highrises and mosque minarettes in the smoggy orange haze.
"Why do Japanese cars have such flat taillights?" our driver asks us. Turns out to be closely correlated to eye shape in the manufacturing culture.
The massacre at Luxor has scared the tourists away all over Egypt, and with Cairo so dependent on tourist dollars, we have the red carpet rolled out for us wherever we go - smoking bango with the perfume factory owner ("get high before you die") in the canopied perfumery while the little woman was sent out for tea and dinner, traveling in style to uncrowded sites, never a struggle to find a taxi.
This night we bicycle through the back streets behind the el-khalili bazaar on bicycles with one semi-functional brake, on winding potholed streets full of children, pedestrians, animals, carts, vehicles, debris, and all manner of enterprise. We smoked out on the roof at Mohammad's with his friend Mohammad who was our guide at the bazaar where we picked up scarves, ornate boxes, and other absurdly inexpensive gifts. Wherever we stop, whether for shisha and Egyptian lager or munchies, Mohammad goes in first and sets things up. His excuse is that if they see foreigners in the party, they charge twice as much, but he's really negotiating what his cut is going to be and wants us to be out of earshot.
We score some Egyptian schwag, about an eighth, and rather than roll joints, as we did on the roof where we manicured on a plate and girls of the house brought us tea (and Mohammad dropped a joint straight in the glass and we laughed and I introduced the term "stoner foul" into the local dialect) - instead we file into the bedroom and fill up a shisha with sticky tobacco and weed and smoke until its gone, singing songs to entertain a younger brother and two younger sisters, dirty and smiling.
Mohammad says he left home at six and travelled around Egypt until he was
eleven, getting by as best he could and filling his mind with wisdom. Now,
his friend Mohammad tells us, he knows everything. He's a great stoner
buddy, that's for sure. Since eleven to now (18), he's been back in Cairo,
living at home above his father's shoe "factory." His school forgave him
for selling his fellow students coffee mixed with henna as 'hashish.' Now
he's a big man at home and a sharp-dresser who speaks English like a champ.
email Ishmael