INSTALLMENT 56: 22 DECEMBER 82

 

They’re killing me with these deadlines, folks. No sooner do I hand in installment 55 than Phil Tracy is on the horn telling me that this issue of the paper has to go to bed the next day. Would that profundities came to me unbidden; but the truth is that epiphanies happen only once every fortnight for your columnist; and so this week’s ramble is precisely that: fill-in. Perhaps it’s time to answer some mail and correct some stupid errors I’ve made, and clean the slate for the New Year. So rest easily…I won’t trash anyone this time.

One point I would like to make, however. I attended the Weekly’s annual Christmas bash last week, at which gathering I met, for the first time, many of the people who put out this estimable journal. To my surprise and considerable pleasure they were all, with one exception, affable and complimentary about these auctorial outings. The one exception was a harridan whose name does not appear on the masthead (nor will it appear in this column) who braced me and began giving me stuff. Her cavil with me, considerably slurred either from the effects of too much bad dope and booze, or from tertiary brain-rot, was that I was posing as “an ’80s person” (her phrase).

I don’t really know what she meant by that. As the decade is barely two years gone, I doubt that a stereotype, or even a viable somatotype, can be projected as prototypically “’80s.” But whatever it finally turns out to be—and if she’s the model we are definitely on our way to joining the dinosaurs as an unworkable biological experiment—I ain’t a candidate for inclusion. I was born in the middle Thirties, was a kid in the Forties, stumbled through the horrible Fifties, reached belated puberty in the Sixties, and began to grasp some small part of what life was all about in the Seventies. Though I wrote for the Free Press in the ’60s and ’70s, I was in, rather than of the paper or that milieu. I have too much history in my skin to identify much with any Now Generation.

So the croaking by the Fedco Discount Wicked Witch of the West utterly bewildered me. If others of you out there share a folie à deux with her, and perceive intimations of my trying to shoehorn myself into the punk technopop spiked hair shmatah-clothing negative affect ingroup, please reread. I’m too old and cranky to run with a gang.

Not to mention that if my compatriots in such a pursuit turned out to be this high priestess of the intellectually destitute, I would rather spend my remaining years as a caretaker at the Crystal Cathedral.

Onward. A minor glitch two weeks ago caused the deletion of the photo credit on the Miss Tush of 1983 picture. The photo was taken by Fritz Ptasynski, who broke his butt, or tush, or whatever, getting the photos of Shallon Ross to me before deadline. Apologies for the oversight herewith tendered.

Cindy Little of L.A. points out, much to my chagrin, that I referred to Eugene Ormandy as “the late.” She writes, “If he is, then the photograph in Time last week had him stuffed, sitting next to Gene Kelly on a couch.” She is correct, and I’m fuddledly wrong, of course. My brain did one of those skip-logic tricks and I was thinking about Arthur Fiedler. I think parts of my head need a long vacation. Papeete, here I come!

Two letters blown in on a Santa Ana personify the extremes of opinion re the Miss Tush essay. I quote them without comment, save to hope the mid-range of responses yet to come will elicit somewhat more intellectually-searching considerations, which is what was intended by the column. The first letter is from Don Morris of Santa Monica, who writes:

“Cease and desist and perhaps refrain from ignoring then denying the biologically-determined, physiologically and psychosexually conditioned characteristic differences between the sexes that are as different as cats and dogs, Mr. Tush contests and Chippendale’s women’s nights notwithstanding.

“Despite your excellent writing gifts, try to climb out of that quagmire of quasi-liberal social causes (Feminism, etc.) that cause you and your Reader (me) such terrible Tylenol-of-Chicago headaches.

“There is no great Philosophical Contradiction to hold over men’s heads when a small segment of our masculine grouping takes a vacation from the preoccupation with our mistresses’ G-spot, and perhaps slobbers and salivates (as rutting animals) over ‘hot’ chicks in fetishistically tantalizing sweet nothings.”

The other far outpost of comment comes from Diane Street of Los Angeles, who wrote, crumpled, threw away, and then decided to send a note that reads:

“Ellison, don’t let erections fool you. You were used. We aren’t ashamed of our basic drives, but crap like tush pageants make us want to be. You know it’s quite one-sided in this country (planet). There is no artistry in oppression. ‘Pedestal’ femininity is a hoax. Those events show women who are used to satirize being female, and they don’t even realize it’s happening. There are no questions in my mind on any of these things.”

Received in the mail a dandy little booklet of some 66 pages titled EVERYBODY’S GUIDE TO NON-REGISTRATION. Written by attorney Carol Delton and community economic planning consultant Andrew Mazar in late 1980, this publication is an exhaustive information primer that provides military draft age persons, counselors, teachers, parents, etc. with all the data one needs on how not to register for the draft. While I advise no one either way on registering or avoiding doing same, I must tell you that I was drafted for two of the most ghastly years of my life in 1957, and were I of the ominous age today, I would send $2.50 (including postage, handling & tax) at once (check payable to EGNR) to 2000 Center Street, #1091, Berkeley, California 94704. At once I’d send it. Or run like hell.

Continuing interest from a substantial number of you anent the kind of monies being paid for freelance writing in America prompts my reprinting the following figures from the Authors Guide Bulletin of last February–March. The freelance life, whatever its other rewards, is no way to get rich. What many writers don’t realize is that pay scales only seem to be getting better. Actually, when inflation is taken into account, the freelancer is much worse off than twenty years ago. The fees magazines really pay are frequently different from (and usually higher than) the rates that they announce as standard in writers’ reference sources. This chart may be outdated already. I understand the N. Y. Times Magazine is now starting out at $2500 for first acceptance.

 

Several people inquired what happened to my romance with the woman for whom I said I would crawl through monkey vomit. It ended. Nice of you to ask, though. Maybe the grail is out there for me, but as of this writing…the search goes on. You see, we’re not very different, you and I.

Some of you in the music industry noticed that on the preliminary Grammy ballot there was a nominee in the Spoken Word category labeled Jeffty Is Five, read by Harlan Ellison. Yes, that’s your columnist, delighted and trepidatious about being this close to a Grammy nomination. As I’m up against Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson, I don’t hold out very much hope that when they hold the big Grammy spectacular in February I’ll be picking up any awards; but I must confess to a genuine thrill. I’d try and buy your votes, but I’m as tapped out as those of you who work full time in the recording industry.

Don’t you hate those form letter hustles from the publishers of magazines to which you subscribe, urging you to re-up at once, before you lose even one precious copy…and then you notice on the computer replication of your mail sticker that you have eight months, or two years, or a decade to go before your previous sub runs out? Don’t you hate it? Don’t you wish they’d knock off that shit? Gee, I sure do.

Well, I see by the albatross on the wall that we’re coming to the end of the year, as well as nearly a full year’s installments of this column, so I’ll invoke that mystic power I acquired in the Orient which enables me to cloud men’s minds, so they cannot see me, and wish you the following for 1983:

Chances.

That’s all you need, kiddo.

 

—————LETTERS—————

Jill Sez…

Dear Editor:

Harlan Ellison is a pretentious, dim-witted, cliché-minded jerk. I can’t stand it any more! His last article on The Miss Tush Beauty Pageant was too much. Listen, Harlan, do us women a favor and from now on stay off our side! It’s no joke, Harlan. Women’s rights are serious business and you clearly aren’t up to it. Being such a devil-may-care, rebellious, crazy, walk on the wild side kind of guy must make it hard to take life seriously. So why don’t you just step down from the podium and go about your business? We don’t need the aggravation. Seriously.

—Jill Giegerich 
    Los Angeles