|
In a recent interview with Shay Cheeze of Karmakaze magazine, The Lonesome Wizard Boys, Merlin Bob & Hotrod, discussed their lives and experiences in San Michez.
SC: I must say, without that excellent map I never would have found this place. MB: Thank you. HR: It’s nice to be here. SC: San Michez is...well, safe to say it’s interesting. For example, I’m looking at what appears to be a small mesquite bush with lots of little liquor bottles, like the ones they serve on airplanes, stuck on it upside down. Tell me about that. MB: That’s a bonsai bottle tree. SC: How charming. You’re the one they call Hotbob, right? MB: No, I’m Merlin Rod. He’s Hotbob. SC: Our readers will be dying to know—I know I am—what’s the significance of the bonsai bottle tree? Does it ward off evil? Is it used in some special and powerful meditation or fertility ritual? HR: Nah, it’s just a fun hobby. As you can see, Shay, most of our favorite brands are represented. We’re still looking for a miniature gallon jug of wine. If any of your readers have one— SC: I’m intrigued by your motto: “If we weren’t so enlightened we’d be petrified.” I think I know what you mean. MB: Well, that gives you a leg up on us. SC: Those of us who have peered behind the veil, we’ve seen things, we know things that would turn white the hair of the uninitiated. All that stands between us and insanity is our intellectually and morally superior state of enlightenment. MB: (Nudging Hotrod) Is that what turned your hair white? HR: No, it was...I mean yeah, sure. We call it white enlighten. MB: To answer your question, Ms. Cheeze, our motto—as you call it—is kind of an inside joke. Sometimes it seems we’re makin all kinds of progress, squarin our awareness and multiplyin our mindfulness, only to get derailed by the most mundane things. When one of us gets all hung up in the Daily Stupid, one or the other will snap out of it and say somethin like, “It’s a good thing we’re so enlightened and above all this.” It’s a way of laughin at ourselves. HR: And at each other. SC: Why do I get the feeling you guys are holding back? MB: We’re bein just as up front as we know how, ma’am. SC: Come on, now. You’re Wizard Boys. You’ve experienced some weirdness. You’ve seen things that just scared the Hell out of you, right? HR: That we have, Ms. Cheeze. That we have. SC: Would you elaborate? HR: I might...if I knew what that meant. MB: Give her a for instance. HR: Oh, sure. I heard about some research that the folks at Armadillo beer did. The great majority of beer drinkers, mostly male, swore that they could tell the difference between one American beer and another. They had great faith in their discerning palates. After a series of taste tests, the Armadillo people discovered that most beer drinkers could not, in fact, tell one American beer from the next. So, rather than improving the quality of their product, they started a new marketing campaign: “Remember the Alamo, even if you can’t remember your own name. Drink Armadillo Beer!” Appealing to patriotism. And it worked. That scares the Hell out of me. MB: What that crap has to do with the Alamo is beyond me. HR: Plus, it’s brewed by the Schmutz Beer Company. It’s the same stuff, just with a different label. And Schmutz is considered very uncool by the Armadillo crowd. They say that’s what French people and hippies drink at their fancy beer and Vienna sausage parties. MB: We did a little research of our own. HR: Yeah, tell her about that, Merl. MB: We sent a sample of Armadillo beer to the lab. A few weeks later they wrote back and said, “We regret to inform you that your horse has diabetes.” SC: Do you boys drink Armadillo or Schmutz? MB: We make our own. It’s good, too. Want one? SC: Sure. It is pretty hot out here. MB: Here ya’ go. We call it wizard water. SC: Thanks, Merlin Rod. Hey, that’s pretty good! HR: Yeah, it is, isn’t it? That’s because of our secret ingredient. SC: What’s that? HR: It’s something that just one or two people know and they won’t tell anyone else. SC: I know what a secret is. I mean what’s the secret ingredient? HR: If we told you, it wouldn’t be the secret ingredient anymore. It would be the well-Hell-everybody-knows-that ingredient. Like limestone water or barley or hops. SC: Come on, you can trust me. HR: You promise not to tell? SC: Give me another one and let me see if I can guess. MB: Here you are. Drink it fast as you can; that way you’ll get the full flavor. SC: Hoo-boy! That didn’t come out my nose, did it? MB: Not so’s you’d notice. Can you guess the secret ingredient? SC: I give up. HR: It’s gopher wings. SC: I’ve never seen gopher wings. HR: Have you ever seen electricity? SC: No, but I’ve seen the results of it. HR: Well, you’ve tasted the results of gopher wings. You gonna try to tell me they ain’t there? SC: Good point. Gopher wings. Who’d of guessed? Now, let’s get down to it, shall we? Our reeders will want to know— HR: That wizard water getting to you? SC: No. Why? HR: Your spelling is getting a little sloppy. SC: Oh. See what you mean. Our readers will want to know what wisdom and insights you boys have to share. MB: Well, Shay, it’s like the old Chinese feller said: Them that know shit don’t talk. Them that don’t know talk shit. SC: And here we all sit, still talking. MB: Exactly. SC: Well, it seems to me that you boys aren’t really talking; you’re just beating around the bush. HR: As folks around here will tell you, you beat about the bush long enough you’re liable to scare something up. Sometimes something you don’t want scared up. SC: I’ll take my chances. You boys have the reputation for knowing a thing or three about wiseness and mystical stuff. HR: You want another beer? SC: No, thanks. I’m fine. MB: It’s true that we get e-mails and regular mails, mostly wantin to know what it’s like to be enlightened. SC: What is it like? How does one go about becoming enlightened? HR: (Winking at Merlin Bob) There’s a lot of discipline and hard work involved. SC: But is it worth it? I mean why go to all that trouble? What are the advantages? MB: (Winking at Hotrod) I can answer that question with a true story that happened a few days ago: I was kicked back in my La-Z-Boy, drinkin a cold one, eatin a hotlink sandwich and watchin Family Strokes on TV. HR: That’s a classic show. Is it in reruns, now? MB: Well, see, that’s one advantage of bein enlightened: You don’t have to turn on the TV in order to enjoy a fine program. Anyway, I was unwindin, just gettin in the zone, when all of a sudden the walls of the den started to melt. HR: Whachew tawkin ‘bout, Willis? MB: Hey, that’s pretty good. HR: Thanks. MB: We’re talkin about rock walls, and those don’t melt easy. SC: It would take a temperature of at least— MB: These space aliens materialized right there in the room, all kinds of green smoke and what-have-you. They must not of known I was telepathic because they didn’t even try to disguise their thoughts. HR: You could read right through ‘em, ‘eh Merl? MB: And I knew they intended to take me onto their Mother Ship and perform some bizarre sexual experiments. HR: Like we can’t get that sort of thing right here in San Michez! MB: I took off runnin down the hall, yellin, “Lord hep me! Lord hep me!” Then all of a sudden I remembered how enlightened I was and that I didn’t have to take that kind of mule hockey. They realized real quick like that their time invadin my space was over. SC: Wow. What a harrowing experience. MB: Shay, if I wasn’t so enlightened, I’d be petrified. HR: Tell her about how you made ‘em fix your wall. MB: I told that leader, “You get your big-headed green ass back here and fix my wall!” And they did, too. SC: How ‘bout you, Hotbob? Any examples you can think of? HR: You met my wife when you came in, right? SC: Yes, I’ll have to look at my notes: Shakti Nirvanamoon Pond Dancer, I believe. HR: Yeah, but I can’t call her that with a straight face. I still mostly just call her Alma Joy. SC: That’s a pretty name. HR: Anyhoo, last week I was heading out to Ten Pin Alley for my bowling league when Alma Joy reminded me that I’d promised to channel Loretta’s dead grandmother, in exchange for Loretta givin Alma Joy a perm. Well, Hay-Zeus Christmas! But she’s right. I did promise. Don’t know what I was thinking. Besides, it was crystal clear that she’d already got her perm— MB: Looked like a damn— HR: I know, I know. You ain’t gotta say it. She liked it and that’s all that matters, apparently. So I’m doing my dead level damndest to conjure the old girl up, not wanting to rush things, but still hoping I could get there for the second game. All of a sudden the room went cold; I mean it froze the chamomile tea right in the cup. Loretta started flopping all around and this dragon-looking thing came right out of the top of her head and went to blowing fire, thrashing around the room and bellowing about Judgment Day. MB: That’ll let you know. HR: I came straight up outta that chair, right now—tarot cards, horoscopes, and tea leaves flying all over Hell. I was headed to the barn, son, waving my arms and yelling, “Lord hep me! Lord, hep me!” MB: Tell her what happened next. HR: All of a sudden like, out of the blue, I remembered how enlightened I was. I looked that dragon thing right in his yellow eyes and said, “I’m gonna count to three.” Well, he dissolved just as timid as you please and things were back to normal. SC: That’s quite a story. HR: I’ll tell you one damn thing, Shay: If I wasn’t so enlightened, I’d be petrified. SC: You guys are giving me the willies. MB: Good of you to say so, Shay, but I read your article about when you spent a week with Rob Riggs. I know you’ve seen some weird, hair-raisin things while stalkin the Wild Man in the Big Thicket. SC: We were camping on the northeast shore of Sour Lake one night when this— HR: Even so, I find that the spookiest things of all are the things we put up with everyday, without even a second thought. MB: If we’d stand back and take a good look at what we do and what goes on around us, it would make our hair stand on end. We act like all this stuff makes perfectly good sense. Those aliens, for example, they thought that the sole purpose of our society was to breed frightened, unhealthy neurotics. HR: And you can’t blame ‘em. Watch some commercials, listen to the news, read the labels on the products we eat. Look at people spending seventy-five percent of their waking hours working at jobs they can’t stand. SC: And most would never even imagine reexamining their world view. MB: Shay, if we weren’t so enlightened, All 3: We’d be petrified! SC: Yes, we would. Thanks Merlin Rod. Hotbob, thank you. MB: It’s been our pleasure, Shay. HR: You’re welcome here in San Michez anytime. MB: Don’t be a stranger. SC: Oh, one more thing, fellas: I’ve looked at your web page and wondered how you remember those word-for-word conversations. MB: (laughs) Oh, that’s a story in itself. HR: We don’t remember those things in detail. And as a matter of fact, we, too, were wondering how that happened. MB: As it turns out—you know Recorder Coyote? SC: Yeah, I saw him taking a leak on the big oak tree. MB: Well, as it turns out, that coyote has a great memory. SC: Eidetic? HR: Naw, he’s healthy enough. But I can see why you might think he’s eye-detic; he’s been looking rather lean and peekid lately. Like most coyotes. SC: You guys don’t expect me to believe that a coyote eavesdrops on your conversations and then publishes them on the web site? MB: Good Lord, no. Don’t be silly, Shay. Whizzin on the oak tree is about the extent of his writin ability. HR: It’s a little confusing at first, but once it’s explained…well, here’s what happens: Recorder Coyote memorizes every conversation, every campfire story. Then he tells them to a squirrel friend of ours. MB: Sagacious Squirrel. HR: His friends call him Saggy. MB: Saggy’s good people. HR: Amen to that. Anyway, Saggy types out the stories and puts ‘em on the web page. Me and Merl never touch it. SC: Saggy—this squirrel friend—types them out? HR: Yes. He’s a resourceful thing. With his own hardworking hands, he crafted a typewriter from materials found in the forest. MB: The ribbon is made out of Johnson grass. HR: The ink is either walnut stain, berry juice, or some other stuff I’d rather not think about. MB: The keys are acorns. HR: On twigs of hard maple, with his own hardworking teeth, Saggy gnawed each letter and character. MB: (Laughing out loud) Saggy types with all four feet; man, he’s all over that thing! HR: You ought to see him fly when the fit’s upon him! MB: Hits the space bar with his tail. SC: Thanks, fellas. It’s been fun. MB: What’s your hurry? Stick around. We’ll build a fire, fix you up with a slaw dog and glass of homemade brew-ha. SC: Maybe next time. Listen, I appreciate your time. HR: The pleasure is our own. And good luck with Kawasutra. SC: Karmakaze. MR: That, too. Say, reckon which issue this interview will be in? SC: Oh, I don’t know. We’ll probably save this one for something really special. MB: (After Shay has left) I feel bad lyin to that gal. HB: You mean the part about Saggy hitting the spacebar with his tail?
|
