Strange Brain Parts (4 page)
For reasons most curious and beyond explanation we found ourselves in an animated conversation about aliens.
Everyone knew him as Reverend Godzilla. He claimed this to be the actual name given to him at birth, having been born to beatnik era parents with phenomenal insight and precognitive capabilities. His parents had apparently inherently understood from the moment of his inception that he was destined to preach the Monster Gospel to a disenchanted generation of 20-somethings during a point in history when neon colors and skinny ties weren’t questionable fashion trends.
This was the legend the Reverend liked to spread about himself when confronted with the origin of his name and his ministry. However, with the Reverend, truth was always flexible and mutable. This may have been one of his finer qualities.
The Reverend was fond of giving impromptu lectures at local nightclubs, usually performing as a warm-up act before the star attraction took the stage. Whether he was a performance artist who lived the life of a character he was portraying or whether he preached and advocated an actual lifestyle he hoped others would adopt was never established. His performances were always whimsical in delivery, as if he had no expectation that anyone was either listening to him sermonize or believing that his misadventures were true. Usually there was such absurd excess that one couldn’t help but hope these sermons were true.
Regardless of perspective on the individual, the Reverend was inarguably a living document of a generation that had given up and was merely partying until the obligatory nuclear holocaust wiped out the planet. He understood that attitude, maybe even encouraged it to a degree. This was the era of AIDS and nuclear war. This was a generation that lived in persistent fear that it could all end in a mushroom cloud bang at any time. Instead of shuddering in a corner and waiting for mommy or daddy to make it all better with emotional deception or television programming, this generation decided to party until the inevitable end. Party way past the end, if at all possible. When you live with the notion that total extinction is probably only moments away every single day you find yourself capable of more self-indulgence than you might expect.
The Reverend Godzilla understood this attitude well.
What follows is a transcript of an extemporaneous lecture he gave at the Manifest Dancefloor in Edmonton sometime in the summer of 1986. He appeared on the stage before the scheduled band and spoke for 22 minutes. Since the scheduled band that evening was recording their performance for posterity the technician decided to record the Reverend’s lecture as well.
All that has been omitted is the occasional stutter or giggle as the Reverend amused himself.
* * *
Hello again, all you sold-out hippies, crypto-fascist punk wannabes and yuppie scum. The good Reverend is once again at the pulpit and ready to amaze the living Beejesus into your soul. Prepare yourself to receive the Holy Spirit in vain.
I know it's been a few weeks since my last public sermon, but I found myself preoccupied, communing in private with the Apostles of Stinkweed about the idiosyncratic evils that are the foundation of our modern society. And I also managed to get a hardline on some damn good Thai stick and hash from an angelic being who doesn't charge the Reverend too much at all for such indulgences. That type of kindness can preoccupy even the holiest of holy men.
Now, as some of you may know, the Reverend's seemingly capricious descent into hedonism has firm roots in eschatology, despite the fact that the Vatican (who are owned by Exxon, anyway) doesn't recognize the valuable work of the Reverend as divinely inspired and holy in its intent. Jesus walked among the lepers to provide alleviation to their suffering and then made time to make Mary Magdalene feel a whole lot better about being a whore. The times being what they are, and Jerusalem being way the hell over on another continent, the Reverend instead walks in the valley of the Temple Of Me, sampling the offerings of the Tune In, Turn On, Sellout generation and their valuable progeny. It's catechism with a New Wave soundtrack.
That brings me to the latest adventure with the Apostles Of Stinkweed and our trip to a Plasmatics concert (with special guests).
It was Jacks Norad Norad that spotted the ad in the pages of the Sexy Leather Singles Weekly announcing that Wendy O. Williams and the boys (with special guests) were on their way to The Dome for a performance that was sure to inspire rioting and arrests. After first circling another ad for wicked dominatrix action (this one specialized in whipped cream discipline) Jacks handed me the paper, pointing out the forthcoming concert.
"Who do you figure 'special guests' are, Rev?" asked Jacks.
I told him that the only band in Babylon today that was capable of warming up the crowd for a woman who wore electrical tape across her nipples and had a fetish for smashing TVs with a righteous sledgehammer had to be Bow Wow Wow.
And just like that it became fact that "special guests" were Bow Wow Wow. And it also became inevitable that we would trek our asses to The Dome to witness a sonic mother lode of present day nihilism. It would also provide the perfect opportunity to test the coke and mescaline we stole from a stockbroker's condo a few weeks back.
Jacks Norad Norad got on the telephone and gave the information to the other Apostles while I went and purchased refreshments at a liquor store for the long day's journey into suburbia. While there I took the opportunity to do some preaching. The two cases of beer was my pulpit, a bottle in my hand was my holy sacrament and the Soon to be Dulled were my flock. While I worked a good buzz-on I warned the Soon to be Dulled that the Establishment wanted them inebriated so they wouldn't understand Blue Chip Stocks or how to recognize a junk bond from a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller album. I told them that Elvis had to die so that he and Marilyn Monroe could fuck in Heaven and produce a litter of angel babies that would, eventually, redeem our eternal souls. Even though, in this Reverend’s opinion, we didn’t deserve such mercy from the Grand Deity because we allowed and encouraged Duran Duran to become rich and famous.
The Reverend got all this out in ten minutes (the average response time of cops to reports of civil disobedience in front of liquor stores) and beat the feet home.
When I got back, Jacks Norad Norad was near tears. He was the weakest of The Apostles and had an overwhelming Madonna and Oedipus complex, so he was easy to set off when it came to issues involving women. I gave him a sacrament and asked him what devil was in his soul.
"The concert was three days ago, man," he said.
I checked the ad again and Jacks Norad Norad was right. However, I didn't think that meant we had necessarily missed the experience. It just meant we had to hurry up and mobilize so we didn't miss the psychic repercussions of the ambient wavelengths in the air from the former Plasmatics concert (with special guests, that we had divined were Bow Wow Wow). I figured the best thing we could do is pile all The Apostles into the broken down Dodge parked in the backyard, get wasted and tune into the events that took place three days and forty-eight miles away. We'd be our own retroactive prophecy.
Next thing you know, that's exactly what we were doing.
We all did lines to warm up once the five of us were piled into the Dodge in the backyard. Even though the Dodge was on blocks and the only sensation of translocation came from the blown shock absorbers whenever someone shifted their mass, we decided to ignore the laws of the encroaching legal system and not fasten our seat belts. Jesus didn't wear a seat belt when he carried the cross and neither would we, dammit. That only seemed proper.
The song 88 Lines About 44 Women blasted its permutations from the tape deck to keep us in the mood while Anna Dominne worked on a Rubik's cube, proclaiming our trip ends when the puzzle is solved.
After about half an hour of drinking, I instructed Bob the Redeemer to start handing out the Corpus Cookie (the mescaline) so we could truly begin our sacred journey into time/space and jack into the Big Leftover Whatever that the Plasmatics and special guests had left behind. Jacks Norad Norad (who was riding shotgun) astutely remarked that the Dodge was going to weigh us down when we hit the ethereal, so we had better get it stoned too. That sounded like it made a whole lot of sense to me, so I got out of the car and offered the Dodge's gas tank a ritualistic blend of Southern Comfort and Corpus Cookie. Now there was nothing left to ground us. We were sure to hit the Big Leftover Whatever no matter what because we had command over a steering wheel that controlled the direction of a completely stoned hunk of steel.
In the back seat, Black Dennis (who's sitting between Anna Dominne and Bob the Redeemer) starts gurgling in time with Are You Ready For The Sex, Girls?
"Glurragggg," intones Black Dennis from a place that none of us have the cognitive capability of understanding.
Anna Dominne giggles.
"Glurragllaaa."
Being the Reverend and more in tune with deism and the symptoms of relativistic shock, I knew that Black Dennis was one of them assholes who had seen the movie Altered States one too many times and figured that as soon as the buzz set in he'd automatically start regressing to his primitive self. This is one of the anti-beliefs the Establishment ingrains into us through the Mass Media. The only resolution is to avoid contradicting that anti-belief, thus creating a true contradiction through affirmation of deeply held disbeliefs. That may seem insoluble in the cold light of day, but it sure makes a lot of sense when you're jamming through time/space, going to a concert that ended three days ago.
"Guuuhhhmagg. "
I give Jacks Norad Norad the wheel and turn around to mess with Black Dennis' head. Just in case he really is regressed back to the Stone Age and he really has tapped into his caveman soul from thousands of years ago, I tell him that fire is bad and that a wheel has three sides. If Black Dennis is really where he thinks he is, I have the divine opportunity not afforded many people: I have the chance to fuck up the entire history of mankind.
"Maaahhhmaggraa."
I reiterate: Fire bad. The wheel has three sides.
I'm looking all around for confirmation that I've altered the cosmic consciousness of the world and that de-evolution and the structural design of society is declining because Black Dennis' caveman self is spreading the news to all his cavemen buddies that fire is bad and the wheel needs to be sculptured with three sides.
I'm waiting. And waiting.
Then Black Dennis suddenly snaps back to something resembling our shared reality and says, "Forgive me, Father, for I am tin. It's been one hundred and fifty thousand years since my last confession."
Absolution would have to wait, though. Next thing we know we're all stirring in a bass line, followed by guitars being raked with fingers originating from perdition, and a woman wearing patent leather pants and tape across her nipples takes the mic and screams something in a language that died three days ago. Everything after that is bodies and noise.
I wake up sometime later to see we've returned to normal time/space and I'm laying on the grass just underneath the naked brake system of the Dodge, staring at rusted metal that had seized up months ago, noting the pattern of rust that leaked into the wood that supported the frame of the motionless vehicle looked like brownish fractals. Dew misted off me under the sunlight of morning. It was quiet. And a solved Rubik's Cube sat on my damp chest, gleaming like a newly polished Holy Grail. It was the closest anyone gets to a moment of perfection.
Amen.
One was Pain. The other was Death. With countless millennia to waste they sat together and devised ways to avoid their respective duties, pass the time and avoid the utter boredom of eternity.
Pain reached for his glass of warm napalm tainted with a hint of lemon and said, “You know, we really need something to break up the monotony, old pal.”
“Yeah,” agreed Death. “What do you figure we should do?”
“How about creating a new disease? Something with some real bite to it.”
“Nah,” replied Death. “Creating isn’t my style.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” said Pain. “Why don’t we play a joke on the Horsemen? We’ll tell them the Apocalypse is finally here and watch them scramble to tear the universe apart. That should be good for a laugh. Especially Famine’s reaction. She gets so worked up over the end of everything.”
“Nope,” sighed Death. “We tried that a couple of million years ago. We need an original idea.”
“Wanna check out a séance?”
“Like, really, get serious.”
They fell silent for quite some time as their minds toyed with the many avenues of amusement at their disposal. The options at hand were essentially limitless. However, the two of them had spent the better part of a millennium creating and implementing interesting distractions like plagues and wars, but had lately found their diversions to be lacking a certain, entertaining flair. There was only so many times you could influence some rabid dictator into a frenzy of inspired violence before it became pedestrian and predictable.
