who dat? contest



"i know!"


previous results:



actor wes studi
heat, mystery men

first correct answer:

kent allard

celebrity interview: jack kerouac

After my last two celebrity interviews, I’ve been having a rather difficult time getting anyone to agree to sit down with me. I had Prince’s old keyboardist "Doctor" lined up, but he cancelled at the last minute. But I would not let an industry-wide blackballing keep me from my duties, so I invented a time-machine out of an old refrigerator I found on the side of Caheunga Blvd. and went back in time to interview one of my favorite writers: Jack Kerouac.

August 6, 1963. New York City. A decrepit five story walk-up on the corner of B and Third. I can hear what sounds like congas coming from inside apartment 17C. I knock. The door swings open to reveal a fat naked Jack Kerouac, unfiltered cigarette in one hand and a large jug of red wine in the other. He presses the wine into my hand and hands me a fist full of pills. I take a swig and Jack laughs as I cough deeply. He sits on the floor and being cooking a bottle of codeine cough medicine, reducing it to a black tar which he then smokes. This goes on throughout the interview. I sit on a pile of books and put my tape recorder on the floor between us. Jack picks up the tape recorder and lights it on fire, cackling and warming his hands in front of the flames.

ME: So Jack. I really enjoy your work.
JACK KEROUAC: Crazy.
ME: What?
JK: It’s all kicks, man. It’s just wild crazy kicks in the black-hearted American night. You want a baloney sandwich?
ME: No thanks.
JK: Wild.
ME: What do you make of your fame, now that On The Road and other books have become so popular.
JK: I’m a Bhikku Blank Rat.
ME: What?
JK: This beat room holds in my reindeer caterwaulings.
ME: I’m sorry?
JK: What do I care about the squawk of the beat souls journeying from the neverthink to the neverdo? They read the holy mad ramblings of my poor lost freeish-floating soul and find a hibbity jibbity passle o’ logic and highfallutingness and that’s just A-1 perfect-o man. You have to hear this. (Jack jumps up and tears the room apart, books and bottles flying until he finds Mingus’ Epitaph. He drops the needle on the record and begins a spastic dance that lasts for 38 minutes. Grabbing my head in his hands, sweating, grinning, and grinding his teeth, he laughs.) You see??? Do you?
ME: Yeah.
JK: Aw, yer just joshin’ me. But that’s AOK too. That’s 100 percent-o perfect-o, s-t-e-e-e-e-e-o.
ME: About your popularity.
JK: Right. It’s great.
ME: Great.
JK: Yup.
ME: So… What is your relationship like with Alan-
JK: That Jewish faggot! He’s wild man. Have you read his poems?
ME: I love Howl.
JK: Howl is fer shit, man. He wrote me these crazy lines the other day, better than a thousands hellos for your precious Howl. Dig this: "Jack Jack Jack / Saint Jack / You are fat, drunk, and happy / I need some boy-cock." Righty?
ME: Great. Are you still riding the rails?
JK: I crawl through the streets like a giant spider.
ME: Trains? You still hop them?
JK: Buddham saranam gocchami. Your pancakes are ready.
ME: The rails?
JK: I camped out under the stars one night, smoking a Lucky Strike and watching the patterns of the pine needles brushing the stars back and forth in the gentle New Mexico breeze. Far off in the distance, I heard the whistle of a locomotive headed somewhere in the lonely American night, carrying the ghosts of dead railhounds and mad gypsy hobos dancing the stinky-sock shuffle in the open boxcars and flatbeds of the still-born womb of the United States of Heartbreak. The whistle of that Nelly was so sad and forlorn sounding that it touched something deep inside my poor lost vagabond soul and I shimmied out of my BVD’s and howled a lonely echo back to my train brother, "WHOO WHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" And as the last sounds of my train call were carried off by the night wind, I saw myself in the shadows of the dying campfire, standing there nekkid as Noah. I was staring at me, staring at me, staring at me. I said "who are you?" And the other me replied, "You’ll have to find that out for yourself."
ME: (tears in my eyes) Wow.
JK: Let’s find us some pussy.
ME: Just a few more questions.
JK: I don’t want to answer your pinning-down soul-stealing brain-questions, Cowboy. Yer beat intellectual journalistic gobblity-gook is no good for anypeoples or animals or plant-type-life youknowwhatimsaying. My name is Raja. King of the frozen food section.
ME: You played football in college. Do you still follow sports?
(Jack Kerouac runs at me naked and tackles me. He knocks his head into a three-legged coffee table and slumps to the ground. An hour later he wakes up.)
JK: Crazy football tackle.
ME: Good one.
JK: I’m a Canuck feets-ball ex-pat Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng!!! You sure you don’t want a baloney sandwich?
ME: That’s OK. (Jack begins work on a bottle of Four Roses.) Regarding your struggle to invent a style of writing akin to the improvisational sax work of Charlie Parker and Lester Young, do the marathon Benzedrine and caffeine-fueled writing sessions you’ve talked about help or hinder that "jazz" prose?
JK: Look at this. (Jack hands me an Etch-A-Sketch.) It’s this crazy new mind-blowing thingamabob they inventicized. Crazy, huh? C’mon. Let’s go find us some real gone chicks. (Jack unwraps a Twinkie, bites off the tip of one end, and smokes it.)
ME: Can I just ask one or two more questions?
JK: Awwwwww. Sure, Ricky.
ME: Stee.
JK: Twenty-Stee Skiddoooooo!!!
ME: Satori in Paris actually got me writing my own dream journal. It’s a beautiful book.
JK: Ha Cha Cha.
ME: And I felt that a lot of the novella really reflected a maturing, but also a deep and profound sadness. Would you care to comment?
JK: What’s Satori in Paris?
ME: Oh. Shit. Yeah, um. Nothing.
JK: Wait. I’ve been think-a-linging about using that as a title lates-ly. How did you-
ME: Nothing. Nevermind. Let’s go for those gone chicks you were talking about.
(Jack pins me against the wall. He’s still very strong.)
JK: Who are you, man?
ME: I’m no one.
JK: Who are you?
ME: I write an online journal.
JK: On what Line? The left? A Commie rag?
ME: No, uh…
JK: How did you know the title? (Raising his beat fist.)
ME: I’m from the future.
(Jack backs off, blinking. Pause.)
JK: Me too.
ME: No really. I’m from the future. From 1999.
JK: Oh. Wow. (Jack just stares.) Am I still alive?
ME: (I stare at Jack for a minute – at his early deterioration. He looks 50 already, though he’s nowhere close. But there is a fierce twinkle in his bloodshot eyes.) Yes, you are.
JK: (Jack smiles broadly and takes a massive swig of whiskey.) Crazy.

The Larry King Happy Song Corner

Who dat is? A mean brotha, bad for your health. Lookin damn good though, if I could say it myself. Told me Larry is a mad man, but I don't fear that. Got mad weapons too, ain't tryin to hear that. Tryin to bring down me, this champion. When y'all clowns gonna see that it can't be done. Understand me son, I'm the slickest they is. I'm the quickest as they is, did I say I'm the slickest they is?… speaking of which. The other day my good friend Marlon Brando apparently gave an impromptu lecture to agents and guests at CAA. Why wasn’t I invited? I have to learn this from that freaking yenta Liz Smith?! Who kissed Marlon on the lips, Liz? It was Larry! Larry alone, damn you! Marlon is a mad man for not inviting me. A mad man, I say!

home     back    index     next     howl