1998 was also a busy year for the Oracle who at that time went by the name of "The Carpenter, The Walrus and Tu Wong Futex". The story of how we came by the following message is strange. In May of '98 we were vacationing at the the luxurious Hotel Utopia in Amsterdam (which sadly no longer exists). One day we were sitting in the Bar Pinocchio on the Warmoestraat when the music we were listening to was yanked off the stereo and replaced with Frank Sinatra music. I walked up to the bartender and asked her: "Is Frank Sinatra finally dead?" She said yes. Then our friends who were in Hoboken (aka Frank Sinatra Central) at the time, called us to let us hear all the news helicopters flying overhead. After listening to two hours of Sinatra we got back to the Utopia and found the following letter dated April 13th on top of the nightstand.
Supernatural, perhaps? Balony, perhaps not.
To The Mods:
Hope you got our Easter Greeting! Hope you all survived the religious deluge. We barely came out alive. So why does no one ever comment that it's Monday the 13th? It's a hell of a lot worse than Friday the 13th! And just one day after Easter and two days before the Taxman cometh! I don't know if you British truly appreciate the Horror that is April 15th! Caesar had it all wrong! Imagine if Marlon Brando came to your house wearing a suit and a pocket protector on which the words were printed, "Internal Revenue Service". Even when you are on the dole you HAVE to pay taxes! Why do they torture us so?
We think the Taxman is more to blame for all the suicides than Christ. Did you know that the suicide rate is much higher in the Spring than it is at Christmastime. Appropriately enough we had purchased our Brian Jonestown Massacre tickets (if you are unaware, they are rivals of the Dandy Warhols in Portland, Oregon; kind of a small scale Blur vs. Oasis rivalry!) It is ironic (not in the Alanis Morrisette sense of the word) that they will be playing on the Ides of April. There will be suicides aplenty that day, and therefore the show will not be sold out, but we must be super sure that we will not be shut out. That is an example of smartness!!!
How strange that when we were reading Wendy O. Williams obituary on April 8th there was a Nirvana question on "Win Ben Stein's Money" (it is a cheesy T.V. game show on The Comedy Central Politburo network which is very addictive because it revels in the use of very bad puns like "Dictator Tots" -- OK, we'll have to explain this one: Tater Tots are yet another ingenious post-Sputnik American invention. We took and essentially Russian concept (the potato) and packaged it in such a way that it bears no resemblance to the real thing. This would have never occurred to the Russians in a million years! (Hell, they don't even have retail stores, much less frozen food aisles at their supermarkets - if they even have those!) The point is that most of the questions on "Win Ben Stein's Money" are about Richard Nixon, a very much adored and revered figure in our infamous history. Why, on April 8th, do they finally have a Nirvana question? And you know that Kurt Cobain shared the Ante-chamber of Heaven/Hell with both Richard Nixon and Jackie O. There's a Watergate conspiracy going on and we HAVE GOT to get to the bottom of it...but Nevermind, Forget it, You wouldn't understand anyway. We digress.
Last night we found out about many more celebrity suicides that we never knew existed. Half of Milli Vanilli is now dead and he died in April. Do they really have any money left to still have to pay the Taxman? In the case of Wendy O. Williams, she went from being a Plasmatic, to an "animal rehabilitator" in Storrs, Connecticut in only 15 years! Even I had the good sense to get out of Connecticut as soon as humanly possible. Chances of survival in that state are minimal. They have a VERY high rate of suicides there, I'm sure.
Anyway, Good Friday is always a slow news day. Headline reads: "Pilot gets hung up on way to work". The photo depicts a demolished helicopter hanging from a telephone wire by only one wheel (so now you understand why we INSISTED on stunt doubles for the Boyz in Rio!) I thought it was Judas who got hung up on the wire; or was it Pontius? No, we believe it was Sancho Panza!
Which brings us to the Bolshevik Revolution #9. Trotsky, as he was hiding from various governments in Mexico, said of Lenin (the other guy, not the Beatle): "He was not a revolutionary. He merely hung around the Revolution." If we were to update that to include the 70's we would have to add " And it's not the Communist Par-Tea. It's the Communist Par-Tay!" Those Bolsheviks just don't get the Spirit of '76. C'mon, even our forefathers were clever enough and had an eight ball to figure out the importance of 1976!
The second headline reads (ha! you thought we forgot!): "Redefining Seders for Today: Seders for Tibet - next year in Jerusalem! Next year in Lhasa. Add them to the 90's tumble that includes women's seders. Seders as Last Suppers. Cyberseders, Environmental Seders; Gay Seders; Secular Seders; Pre-Passover and third day Seders. And Fabulous Seders! Come dressed as you favorite Plague!!" It is almost enough to make us convert. But only if we can make the following addition: "Dictator Tots Seder: A Retrospective of the Best of the Wurst!"
You may be able to answer why so many Protestants fall for the Jerusalem Syndrome and very few Jews and Catholics. It seems like Protestants are starting up crackpot religions every day! Jews and Catholics view religion as some sort of Periodic Table of the Celestial Elements. You can rebel against, but you can't change it. It goes a long way toward explaining why 75% of American Punk Rockers are Catholic!
We may be in the higher echelons of stupid, but we are not stupid enough to burn our Beatles Records, just cause the Protestants Pilates tell us so, because we know FOR A FACT that the Beatles are bigger than Jesus! These are the headlines when Good Friday falls on the same day as Passover!
This goes a long way toward explaining our main point: Why we sat around voting for Oasis over Sublime during Y-100's March madness band competition in Philadelphia Freedom-dum. We got people from all over the U.S. to call in with our votes. But first, we had to stage an upset over that horrible Philly band, Live. Who did we get to beat them, you ask? Kula Shaker! I know you don't really want to hear that. But we did manage to get Oasis into the top four spot only to be crushed by those fanatical Sublime fans! We called and called, yet they still won. Another aborted coup! Do they all have 10 lines, a computer and auto speed dial? I guess we are going to have to "drop out" of real life entirely and work a little harder to become the true Dictator Tots!
A week later we realized that Salvador Dali - aka Avida Dollars - anticipated this moral crisis when he painted "The Sublime Moment". The painting depicts a busted up phone suspended over a couple of fried eggs. It certainly wasn't "Triumph of Ponce de LaPhone". Tomorrow belongs to us... or is it Scarlett O'Hara? "Tomorrow is another day?" Even we are confused. We are absolutely horrified to say that Sublime went all they way and actually beat Nirvana. Clash of the two dead Rock Stars. At least Nirvana survived long enough to perform a couple of their hits live. If only Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had E-mail and a phone. World War I (not called this until after WWII) and World War II could have been avoided...never mind the Spanish Civil War. Tomorrow never knows, but Inquiring minds still wanna know if Brutus (not Bluto) was Canadian or not. "Eh, tu Brutus? Eh?" I think we're going to have to wait until 3001 to get the answer to that one. The Sybilline Oracle (aka the Talking Magic 8 Ball), say so. It also said we have the right to remain silent, in which case we will take the 5th Dimension (or dementia).
We recently read a review of the movie Head in The NME in which the writer gave it a " marginal Roman thumbs up." Maybe if we recast the film for British audiences, overdubbing all the annoying Texas dialect we can actually make you guys understand how aHead of its time this film really was. Actually, we have a great title for our upcoming version of the film, starring Oasis, but we want money before we give that one away! [Well now the cat is out of the bag ... what's your bag? -ed.]
It is probably a mistake to tell you the details of this upcoming controversial box-office, blockbuster, but what the hell. Here's who will star.:
1. Davy Jones - Liam (not David Bowie)
2. Mickey Dolenz - Shaun Ryder (not Winona)
3. Peter Tork - Crispian Mills
4. Mike Nesmith - Scott Walker
And of course all the lads from Trainspotting and Sean Connery!
Everyone can be an Iluminati for 15 minutes (yes, Warhol is in it too!)
So, we are after you because we want you to Pilate this mission (should you choose to accept it, and you should!) Uncle Sam wants us, but for all the wrong reasons. He only loves us for our money! If you haven't noticed, we are SO COMPLETELY overwhelmed by taxes in this country that we are actually shipping out to your neck of the woods. We had plans to go to Spain but the Taxman took our savings so we can only afford Amsterdam, where we can stay with a friend who is on the dole there! We are going on Holiday by mistake (Uncle Sam's mistake!)
Question #2?
Did you know that the day Noel's amp blew in Mexico City (where Trotsky was finally assassinated with an ice pick - you can never be too paranoid! Just amazing how it ALL comes full circle!) was Elton John's Birthday? I knew you should have dedicated "A day In the Life" To Princess Diana. And maybe the Brian Jonestown Massacre should change their name to the Brian Jonesboro Arkansas Massacre. Instead of Be Here Now you should change to Pork Lips Now...another Bay of Pigs.
It has occurred to us that Eddie Vedder has learned something from Noel. We think he has come to the conclusion that it is better to be a Rock Star who wants more than a gas station attendant. It is the only thing that could explain the the addition of a second Pearl Jam show in Philadelphia, the City of Big Brotherly Love ( quite appropriate that the Gallagher brothers started their last stateside tour here!) It nearly caused a riot at the Tower, King of Prussia parking lot (yes, that is the name of the town; and yes the name has managed to survive just about every war with Germany America has ever had... that in and of itself is more miraculous than Jesus turning rocks into loaves and fishes.) We are not trying to imply that we care for Pearl Jam; we were just innocent bystanders.
Nothing, however, can compare to the Good Friday Miracle that happened in Cincinnati, Ohio (aka Porkopolis), for it was there that the Manchester United vs. Liverpool Pele-ponesian wars was actually being broadcast live! And they tied!! Que Cono! (translation: Spanish for bloody hell!) We think this could be an omen, especially in an age where Verve songs are being played on Nike advertisements during the Superbowl. We actually like the Superbowl, but not for the same reason we like the World Cup. It's a great day to go out and eat Sushi and watch bad Hong Kong action movies in the theaters. You never have to sit next to anyone because they are all either at home watching the game or in sports bar watching the Superbowl on the tele. It only sucks when you are at the airport and you are forced to watch the Cobi (remember him? The real thing, not that impersonator Futex) Country Music half-time special. This year it was Jewel;. We rest our case. Which brings us to the World Cup: if Britain is out won't you please, please Mr. Postman root for the Champions, the team that is bigger than Christ (or at least bigger than his armpit), Brazil.
Okay, so here is the point (yes we do have one, in a very surreal roundabout way. As our Bible says: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro! And boy, it never got weird enough for us. That is why we are asking for your help.) We still believe that Oasis may not be bigger than the Beatles, but they are certainly bigger than Christ (at least in Rio.) Actually, as far as the Beatle thing goes, we think it could be a tie. In fact, we definitely maybe think it is a tie.
Jesus may just have been a Carpenter, but Pontius was a Pilot AND a Taxman...a true visionary and Renaissance man.
Signed,
The Walrus, the Carpenter and Tu Wong Futex