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July 9, 2003 The Silly Idyllwild, CA - The Silly needn't inherit the Earth. It is already theirs. They dance weightless upon it with bodies equally light, fully aware of the transience of all things. They do not obsess upon inevitable ends, but watch instead with inverted head as one after another sun shoots upward into the salty womb horizon of mother Earth. It is enough. The silly roll over and gulp down the sky. They laugh clear down to their toes. They know. Up here in the trees and eternal blue sky there ain't no news. Headlines here are comprised of silly little local tidbits about the record-breaking pinecone or the pancake breakfast at the Lions Club. And take it from me, the guy wearing the blue tank top in the photo below, silly is good. Silly is all I wanna be anymore, anymore in this scary new era of unending war and eroding personal freedoms. I say God bless the beasts cascading into extinction and the poor, bastard children shuffled off to school in Kevlar bulletproof vests. Bless the beasts, the children, the poor of the world, hell, bless us all staring skyward waiting for the shit to fall. And thus said, bless the freaks, the clowns, the silly, the artists, the poets. What the hell are they thinking? This world doesn't want them, doesn't GET them, finds them foolish, trite, irresponsible. Well, guess what, world? You NEED the freaks, the silly, the eternal children of time. You need us. And so it has always been. In monarchies through the ages, none have known greater impunity with kings than jesters. The jester kept his head, so to speak, because laughter, joy, gaiety, irreverence, ebullience, these the great men of their time knew to be more valuable even than trust, honor, gold. A few weeks ago in LA, I hung out with some of the most refreshingly silly people I've hung with in years. I mean, how silly is this: A dozen freaks rolling through the streets of LA in a silver school bus doing the funky chicken dance and other gentle sweet stoned gyrations to a more than amply amped sound system, some chilling, some gluing foam dice on dinner jackets, belts and thrift store shoes in preparation for the freak invasion of the gallery show in Culver City, the bus bouncing along, the air full of that sweet, sweet medicinal smoke that's rolled and roached and goes riggily-wiggly wild in the mind, and the lovely ladies scantily dressed or else dressed not at all, changing into this or that, laughing, smiling, unabashed, and suave Sammy at the wheel taking it all in and taking it all on, all the cybersilliness and freakiness and fun, and the responsibility, too, and the history, too, the history in the making as the Cyberbuss full of trippers, pixies and trolls rolls along roads paved by predecessors like Kesey now defunct and happy I'm sure to see Sam carrying the torch, carrying it.. and smoking it, too. And the silliness goes on. In the photo above, Kelly Lyles (talented painter of oft-silly themes), Rebecca Caldwell (gothic oft-silly super-talented creator of the Carthedral), her beau Steffanos (Tom Jones-esque lounge singer in funny pants) and myself are downstairs in the swanky hochnase (snooty) Key Club on Wilshire Blvd. in Hollywod celebrating the outstanding art of our friend Extremo, (manic clown painter sculptor car artist & more) whilst upstairs in the main performance space the fat old lead singer of Foreigner is sweating out "Urgent" and other tunes I rollerskated to in the late 70s, to a truly-silly crowd of middle-aged Dana-Carvey-Wayne's World lookalikes. But what really punched-up the irony was the high-nosed, hollywood-holier-than-thou attitude of the two dozen or so L.A. beautiful people that filtered downstairs from the Lou-whoever gig. I could just feel the condescending stares of the swankies as Extremo & Co. donned red noses, silly hats and face paint and sang karioke (or however that's spelled) to beat the band, as they say. Ahh, guess you had to be there. It was silliness in-car-nate. But enough with all this serious grammatical chit-chat about silliness. Let's rant! Tommy the art shark of harmony on the phone from Oak Town layin' it down, smoothin' it straight and sober with just a hint of well-earned sedition. Seems the body politic of that fiery wooden sawhorse of cooperation and participation that so loftily glides beyond the pre-prescribed borders of contemporary entertainment, the new anarchistic order of mass expression that is da Burn, seems them folks got sticks up their butts just as wide and woody as any clique. Tommy who dun so much for the cause, Tommy who is participation incarnate, but who isn't an asskiss, Tommy the shark, Tommy the whale, Tommy the burning world, Tommy of the 13-foot tall daredevil finmobile, Tommy the on and on, Tommy my friend, seems the high council on burning don't support his kind no more. After all, they judge you by the company you keep, and Tommy wisely keeps with the Flash, the Flash whose flash and dazzle and razzle-throated dust devil don juan no bullshit bullet-dodging and blind-from-the-belly driving tell-it-like-it-is ways don't wash well with the neon-coated hierarchy, the higher-anarchy as it were. Ooooh! Shame, shame. Ah, well. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. Shoot your bowling ball cannon over the mountain, my man. Sing sweet praises to the blueberry sky, keep your sites on the stars, breathe deep the dander of jewels and with all respect and good manners, Tommy, please, pleeeeeeeeez.. keep on breaking the rules. As fast as they can make em, we gots to be breakin' em. Now that, cats, is true patriotism. Ask Tommy Jeffa-son! Dig it. All right, all right, it's the middle of the night and I'm tired. My narcoleptic narcissism and spam-eggs-and-sausage brain fried aneurysm has reached its nightly endicism. Good night. -RSM the Duke of Silly Willy Nilly
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