Episode 372 - Adam Parfrey
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuckaholics and what the fuck nicks let's leave it at that i am mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show thank you for listening as always it's morning time as i record this which is unusual so i have this uh
Marc:urge to keep it down for some reason.
Marc:Maybe I'm going to wake my neighbor or upset my girlfriend if I shout too loud from the garage.
Marc:It'll go up into the vent system and just my voice will just punch her in the head.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I guess I'll figure that out after I'm done here.
Marc:Today on the show, the scholar, I guess you would call him, or the curator or the overseer, in-house scholar, publisher,
Marc:Adam Parfrey is here.
Marc:If you don't know who Adam Parfrey is, I will tell you in a minute.
Marc:The man had an important effect on my life.
Marc:I can't say it was all for the good, but he definitely had hold of my brain for a good few years.
Marc:Him and his work, his publications.
Marc:Oh my God, I'm just looking at the price of this book that I'm holding, an old book that Parfrey put out, the original and first Apocalypse Culture, which I've talked about on this show before.
Marc:The price was $9.95.
Marc:Let me tell you, I'm going to be back in Boston area.
Marc:The rescheduled dates are now.
Marc:This Friday, the 29th, I will be at the Hookie Lau in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com for the ticket link.
Marc:And on the 30th, I will be at the Wilbur Theater doing a live stand-up show and a live WTF featuring...
Marc:DJ Hazard, one of the legends, local legends of the Boston comedy scene, DJ Hazard.
Marc:Without DJ Hazard, there's no Louis C.K.
Marc:in the great comedy family tree.
Marc:I've got Sue Costello.
Marc:I've got Rick Jenkins.
Marc:I've got Dan Crone.
Marc:I've got George McDonald, who was the host of the first open mic I ever did in my life.
Marc:Those are happening in Boston.
Marc:Then April 4th through 6th, Crackers Comedy Club in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Marc:Going to be pounding out the hour there.
Marc:Excited.
Marc:Haven't been back there in a long time.
Marc:April 13th, I'll be at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
Marc:April 19th, I'll be at the Music Fest Cafe.
Marc:It's very complicated.
Marc:There's so many different names involved in these Bethlehem, Pennsylvania gigs.
Marc:I'm not sure.
Marc:If you live in Bethlehem, you'll figure it out.
Marc:April 24th through April 27th, Moon Tower Comedy Festival, and I will be premiering my television show Marin there.
Marc:I will be showing an episode and doing a Q&A and doing a live WTF.
Marc:And May 4th, I'll be at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee.
Marc:So, okay, on to other things.
Marc:Those are the me plugs.
Marc:I was just in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:I took a trip.
Marc:Jess wanted to go down to Carlsbad Caverns, and I grew up in New Mexico.
Marc:She had been there when she was a kid and was sort of obsessed with it.
Marc:So I'm like, all right, we're going to go.
Marc:We're going to go to Carlsbad Caverns.
Marc:Jess and I had a lovely time, although there's really only four restaurants you can sit down at in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Marc:It just seems brutal.
Marc:I mean, I went to a Chili's, folks.
Marc:I've not been to a Chili's in, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 years.
Marc:And the only other time I went in there was out of necessity.
Marc:Again, this was out of necessity.
Marc:I walk into a Chili's.
Marc:The place was packed, but somehow still seemed dead inside.
Marc:That's all I can tell you.
Marc:There was just something wrong.
Marc:And I'm sure I could explain it on a lot of levels.
Marc:But it was brutal.
Marc:But we had a good time at the caverns.
Marc:We drove back up to Albuquerque where we went to Santa Fe for a few days.
Marc:Stayed at 10,000 Waves up there.
Marc:Did the spa thing.
Marc:Had a massage.
Marc:I got a massage.
Marc:It was so deep.
Marc:I think that tears from seventh grade came out of my face.
Marc:It was a regular massage.
Marc:There was no sexy stuff.
Marc:Then we went to Albuquerque and stayed at the Los Poblanos Inn.
Marc:And I've told you about this place before, but this place is fucking amazing.
Marc:I mean, how often can you say that you've gone to where you grew up, stayed literally a half a mile from where your house used to be, and not even known where you were because it was so beautiful?
Marc:I mean, I can't even explain it, but I will say this, and this is not a paid plug.
Marc:This is just something that I do and I'm going to do again.
Marc:You know, the Remby family who owns these two properties down there that are now one property.
Marc:You know, they've got a restaurant there.
Marc:They got pigs on the premises.
Marc:They got cows.
Marc:I met a cow.
Marc:I saw some pigs.
Marc:You know, I apologized to the pigs to what I'd done to their kind.
Marc:It did not tip me towards the direction of not eating pigs, but I felt that there was an understanding between me and the pigs that I met along the pig sort of wavelength.
Marc:Maybe, maybe I'm misreading it.
Marc:Perhaps I will end miserably because of a pig, as many people will.
Marc:It's a slow death by pig.
Marc:That's what's going on in your chest, people.
Marc:pow look out just shit my pants just coffee.coop available at wtfpod.com but what i'm saying is it's stunning there is there are two homes on this property they're not homes there's a hacienda style home and then there's this huge sort of uh 1920s 1930s ballroom style home set back on all this land there's little places where you can stay and walk there's a beautiful restaurant but i don't even know that i can explain it to you other than it's uh then it's stunning
Marc:Los Poblanos Inn in Albuquerque.
Marc:If you need to go to Albuquerque on business or for any other reason, it's affordable and you won't know where you are.
Marc:They have peacocks on the property.
Marc:There's a barn.
Marc:You can walk around.
Marc:There's a little store.
Marc:Peacocks.
Marc:How often do you get to see that?
Marc:I just had an amazing time.
Marc:And it's just rare that you go somewhere that doesn't feel like a contrived sort of environment.
Marc:Saw my old man in Albuquerque.
Marc:Had dinner with him.
Marc:That was as easy as it was going to be.
Marc:He did have an interesting pitch.
Marc:We got to talking about manic depression and bipolar disorder.
Marc:And he had read some sort of article...
Marc:About all the list of celebrities that were bipolar.
Marc:My father being bipolar finds a great comfort in finding other people who are bipolar, especially intelligent people or celebrities of sorts.
Marc:So my dad looks at me.
Marc:This is a man who has not listened to one of my podcasts, cannot figure it out.
Marc:Supposedly not listen to one.
Marc:My father, I'm not crying about it.
Marc:But he looks at me honestly in the middle of dinner and says they should do a show where you just got maybe five or six, you know, bipolar people, celebrities talking, you know, maybe with a host, just, you know, talking with an audience.
Marc:And I go about bipolarity.
Marc:No, no, just about anything.
Marc:Just because there's a, you know, they share this common thing and there's an intelligence to it that maybe they should just do a show on television that just features, you know, maybe five or six bipolar people.
Marc:I'm thinking, like, there's a show that does that on the Internet, kind of.
Marc:They interview people about, you know, real stuff.
Marc:It's called WTF Pod.
Marc:I don't know if you know that one.
Marc:But in terms of having five or six bipolar people on television at the same time, that's every show on television now.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So Adam Parfrey.
Marc:What did Adam Parfrey do for me?
Marc:There are certain books in your life that just blow your fucking mind.
Marc:And Apocalypse Culture, which was edited by Adam Parfrey, did it.
Marc:It pulled me into the world of sort of artistic, morbid fascination, speculative science and weirdness, types of art that I never conceived of or understood, conspiracy theories, wrong-minded expressions of self.
Marc:Wrong minded.
Marc:I say that.
Marc:And you know who they are.
Marc:I mean, there are people that do wrong minded shit as a public entertainment or display specifically because they can.
Marc:They have they have the right to do that because this is a beautiful country.
Marc:And I certainly embrace that.
Marc:But there's very few people that take advantage of it to the hilt.
Marc:The wrong minded expression of self in order to provoke.
Marc:And Adam is a champion of that.
Marc:And this sent me spiraling into dark nerdism, pulling together, learning about Manson, learning about conspiracy theories, watching morbid videos of Bud Dwyer blowing his brains out, trying to understand the great tapestry of occultism through conspiracy theories.
Marc:There's dogma to conspiracies.
Marc:There's a method of belief that is involved in believing conspiracies that they're true.
Marc:Look, we'd all want them to be true.
Marc:Look, I want the Freemasons, even the ancient Egyptians.
Marc:I want to go back to this first guy with burning eyes who held a dagger over a goat and sent the whole thing spiraling into the system of government we have now that has been corrupted by witches and lizards.
Marc:God damn it, I would love for that to be true.
Marc:And there's been times in my life where I believe that is true because I wanted to believe it.
Marc:How clear does it have to be?
Marc:I don't know, a little clearer, I think, for it to be more than just a...
Marc:countering belief system but look whatever you hang your hat on as long as it's not too dangerous I guess it's okay can be entertaining to some but I my point is is that you know I pulled out of the conspiracy racket because you know it's it's it still comes down to bullshit avoidance of practical problems it's a sort of like I've got the secret wisdom and this is what's really going on and well what do you do about it I talk about it
Marc:But Apocalypse Culture sent me spiraling into that, into a lot of different areas.
Marc:And I tell you, I was just thrilled because he was a mythological person to me, some sort of dark overlord of important information that nobody else had.
Marc:All right, let's talk to Adam Parfrey from Farrell House.
Lock the gates on these fuckheads!
Marc:So, Adam Parfrey, I got to be honest with you, I was nervous to talk to you.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Well, you have to understand that these books that you put out, Apocalypse Culture, what year was that, the first Apocalypse Culture?
Marc:87.
Marc:All right, 87.
Marc:So, 67, 83.
Marc:So, I was about 25 years old.
Marc:When I found this book, I can't quite remember where I found the book, but it was at some bookstore that would have this book.
Marc:And it fucking blew my mind.
Marc:So then I started buying all the books that you were part of with a muck press or with Feral House.
Marc:And, you know, I had pictured you as some sort of, you know, kind of some magician, some dark sorcerer, some guy that had, you know, that had an empire of weird shit that blows minds.
Marc:I must be a magician if you thought that.
Marc:I didn't know who you were.
Marc:I'd see these pictures and I'm like, that's the guy.
Marc:You were like the anti-L Ron Hubbard to me or something.
Guest:Just funny because the Church of Scientology chased after me.
Guest:They did?
Guest:On one respect before that.
Guest:You know that Jack Parsons, that Sex and Rockets book?
Marc:The Sex and Rockets, the first time I heard about that stuff was in City of Courts, the Mike Davis book.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a chapter in there on Parsons and Hubbard and the rocket scientists.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You did a book that was, which book did you do?
Guest:It's a biography about Parsons.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And a situation with Hubbard, Elrond Hubbard.
Marc:Right.
Guest:A situation with Aleister Crowley and being killed in a rocket or an explosion.
Guest:Parsons was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was the premise of the book?
Guest:What was the focus?
Guest:The focus is a biography, specifically, because there's so much misinformation about this crazy guy, this very dark man, who, Wernher von Braun, credited Jack Parsons for...
Guest:promoting or creating the whole space program because he found this sort of rocket fuel that lifted a rocket above the Earth's gravitational field.
Guest:That was Parsons.
Marc:That was Parsons.
Marc:And he's an American rocket scientist who was at USC?
Marc:Was he or UC?
Guest:No, it was Caltech.
Guest:Caltech, right.
Guest:And then Jet Propulsion Laboratories he co-founded.
Guest:but he was a he was notably a crazy man took a loads of drugs uh followed alistair crowley's magic and occultism yeah he was like at that point uh rocketry was like sci-fi science fiction right it wasn't really considered practical there were no missiles there was no space travel there were these little rocket things but it that it
Guest:Not much was made of it.
Guest:It was like kids playing around.
Guest:But that's what he was.
Guest:He was a kid playing around.
Guest:And he created the whole space program.
Guest:And before every rocket test, he would recite this poem called The Hymn to Pan that was written by Aleister Crowley.
Guest:Totally occult.
Guest:Totally dark magic, whatever they call that.
Marc:So he was a scientist, but he also was a cult practitioner.
Guest:Yeah, but the thing is, is that it was the way he practiced the magic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, then you have to ask yourself, what is magic?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just science, but people don't understand as being science, so it becomes magical to them, like cargo cult.
Marc:Well, let's explain that because that's a big missing element of my education is that, look, I tried to tap into Crowley.
Marc:I tried to understand.
Marc:I read some book that I picked up at some kind of new age bookstore called The Philosophy of Magic.
Marc:And I think that sort of explained a little more to me about what magic did.
Marc:And it really is a sequence of...
Marc:of repetitions and mythologies that rejigger your mind into a type of focus that you would call the effect of magic.
Marc:I mean, you're not going to manifest things.
Marc:Do you believe?
Marc:Well, that's all questionable.
Marc:Okay, so let's deal with the science then.
Marc:You said there's a science of magic.
Guest:Well, what I was just trying to put across was that science is considered by many to be magic before it becomes science.
Guest:Okay, right, right.
Guest:Because then it's practical.
Guest:You can repeat the idea of it and then do it again.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But then, you know...
Guest:the cargo cult in new guinea or wherever sees the airplanes flying over and dropping these containers of food or what have you during the world war ii yeah so they make these uh icons they build these uh ideas of what these airplanes are to summon these gods back to
Guest:new guinea to get them food again right but there's there are more practical ways of doing that but it's interesting i i think it's fascinating because there's i'm writing a a script about it actually uh a movie script the parsons story about parsons because what was the hubbard connection just so people know hubbard uh lived with parsons for a while
Guest:And he did some magical rituals.
Guest:With the three of them, right?
Guest:The wife, too, right?
Guest:Wasn't Parsons' wife?
Guest:Wasn't there a... There's this woman named Cameron.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They did these things.
Guest:But specifically with Hubbard, he did it together.
Guest:And then there are some rituals he's actually jerking off in front of...
Guest:L. Ron Hubbard and doing these mystical rituals.
Guest:I don't have a personal belief that if I jerk off and say these words that something mystical is going to happen.
Guest:But Parsons did.
Guest:And look, he's part of the American space program.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:No warheads without Parsons.
Marc:No warheads without Parsons.
Marc:So, on some level, it all gets sort of tied together in these secret histories and these interpretations of things.
Marc:Because, I mean, one of the most provocative pieces in the original Apocalypse culture to me was the downward piece.
Marc:The King Kill 33.
Marc:Downard, yeah.
Marc:Downard.
Marc:And this was all sort of a...
Marc:almost schizophrenic interpretation of Masonic symbolism and how it relates to global domination.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So there's a poetry to the whole thing.
Marc:But you sort of become fascinated with these latitudes, that the earth was broken down into these latitudes.
Marc:The one that always sticks with me in terms of growing up in New Mexico in the land of enchantment was that you have the king kill ritual or ceremony, which was, in his eyes, the killing of Kennedy.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:But then also there's the nuclear tests that took place in southern New Mexico that also play into one of the other sort of I'm assuming he's he's drawing exactly from from Masonic literature that there were certain things that needed to happen for the Masonic global rule to occur.
Guest:Well, specifically the space program, they brought a Masonic flag to the moon.
Guest:And Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, before they landed with the landing craft, they enact a ritual at a certain geography on the moon.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:It's not strange.
Guest:This is science, is it not?
Guest:And it seems a little mystifying to me.
Guest:How do these people got involved with this situation?
Guest:But if you go back, that's why I did that Ritual America book I sent you.
Guest:Yeah, it looks great.
Guest:But when you go through it, it's all about how...
Guest:uh the masonic ideas and fraternal brotherhoods the secret societies and why were they secret initially anyway and and how they were integral into the formation of the country and what they did and what were they there for you know it's not um sarah palin's concept of christianized con it's these are very
Guest:Egyptian, pagan, other cultural concepts.
Marc:And how do they explain it away?
Marc:That, hey, it's like the Elks Lodge.
Marc:Hey, you know, we're just guys who meet and do this thing.
Marc:In terms of what I needed to do to free myself from a complete conspiratorial nervous breakdown because of you.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, at some point I had to say, well, secret societies is how power is consolidated and maintained no matter what, whether there's ritual or not.
Marc:There is a brotherhood of trust that then enacts whatever nasty business they have to enact in order to gain control of something.
Marc:Well, it makes perfect sense, really.
Guest:Initially, what it was is that the Catholics and the monarchy controlled finances.
Guest:They controlled life in that time, whatever.
Guest:And so if you run against that and you run your own little financial situation, like some pirates in Scotland, a guy named John Sinclair, and that was the opposing monetary system and...
Guest:belief system as well and very threatening to the catholic structure and so uh up to today if you read the pope say he he's got things online you can read them how he opposes freemasonry entirely and how it's currently oh yeah and it's been going on for a thousand years or more yeah absolutely yeah so even today so the thing is is that uh in respect to john f kennedy
Guest:He was an opposing member.
Guest:He didn't talk about it that much, except he did have a speech about secret societies or something being not good.
Guest:You can find that on YouTube.
Guest:But in any case, John F. Kennedy was Catholic.
Guest:What was so damn threatening about that?
Guest:But it was because Freemasonry is a Protestant religion.
Guest:And it's run by people who are Protestants, basically.
Guest:And so it was an opposing religious point of view.
Guest:It's fascinating how the whole country is structured that way.
Guest:If you go to any small town in this country, you'll see there's the original Masonic Lodge, the original Odd Fellows Lodge, all that stuff.
Guest:And why are they these weird outfits?
Guest:What do they do in these meetings?
Guest:It's like...
Guest:You know, are they all like barbers, like the honeymooners or something?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or what?
Guest:And what did you come up with?
Guest:It was the structure of the good old boy networks, basically.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they had higher up levels and lower levels.
Marc:Right.
Marc:When does it become insidious and why is Freemasonry, you know, certainly from the Christian point of view and in some eschatology, you know, is a precursor or an active instigator of a one world government?
Right.
Guest:uh the illuminati idea yeah yeah well isn't that tied in with freemasonry of course it's tied in but for the not specific those people say this is a crock and it's not really what happens and all that stuff let's let's see it's not like those little christian booklets or those chick booklets or tracks tracks of course like they got that track place down the street yeah yeah so um
Guest:No, it's fascinating because there is something.
Guest:There is the Illuminati structure at the basis of it.
Guest:A guy named Adam Weishaupt invented it.
Guest:And so what Adam Weishaupt did, it was an anti-Catholic, anti-monarchical, revolutionary aspect.
Marc:Where you took aristocratic people, thinking people of all kinds, and you created clubhouses where they could meet and engage in ritual, create a brotherhood, and...
Marc:And slowly undermine the Catholic institutions.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:And that was the institution.
Guest:So it was extremely threatening.
Guest:But did it start in Europe then?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's the Grand Orient Lodge, which is France and surrounding countries.
Guest:Also...
Guest:How do you explain this?
Guest:Because the UK-Britain had their own Freemasonry thing.
Guest:What's the difference, you know?
Guest:But there were opposing views of their things.
Guest:Britain became anti-Catholic in a sense with Luther and Henry VIII and trying to marry and all that.
Guest:So these things were worked out hundreds of years before that, really.
Guest:But still...
Guest:There was the Freemasons in America were aligned with the French ones, the Grand Orient.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And against the British ones.
Marc:So these were, in a sense, I mean, in terms of what hold they have on the world now, it's a residual effect.
Marc:Uh, that you're saying like, cause I, I understand that, that Ben Franklin was, uh, that some of these early founding fathers were Freemasons.
Marc:They were involved in a lodge that Ben Franklin was quite the party animal.
Marc:And that he was, uh, one of the hellfire lodge Masons.
Marc:Uh, where was that in France?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And England.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So so like so that some people maybe it is an actual historical fact believe that the revolution that led to the colonization of America was was birthed in a Freemason Hall.
Marc:Do you have?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that there are some people that believe that Adam Weishaupt was actually there are pictures of of George Washington in a Freemason apron.
Marc:And some people believe that perhaps, you know, the Weishaupt Washington thing is a little hazy that that I don't remember what that that that particular theory is that.
Guest:Well, you know, today, you know, you think, who are these guys?
Guest:It was like the lodges are falling apart.
Guest:There are far fewer masons today than ever before.
Guest:The lodges are breaking down.
Marc:So is Catholic Church.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there you have it.
Marc:So they won.
Yeah.
Guest:Another thing is that where are they important?
Guest:Are they still important in any way or any structure today in America?
Guest:And I think they are in certain respects with cops, with the military.
Guest:Because if you look through, I put that in a book, about all this stuff about the Middle East and Israel and this warfare in Iraq.
Guest:They were obsessed with Baghdad, and there's all this stuff about Baghdad.
Guest:Why?
Guest:They feel that that was the basis or the origin of this Masonic concept is indeed comes from there.
Marc:Where they meet is the Temple Mount.
Marc:And the rebuilding of the second temple.
Marc:In order for Jesus to come back, the second temple needs to be rebuilt.
Marc:The Dome of the Rock sits on that space, and they cannot get up there.
Marc:So the Temple Mount is actually the most significant place in the Jewish religion, and they can only get as close as the wall to the Temple Mount.
Marc:So in order for the temple to be rebuilt, the Muslims have to be moved off the site.
Marc:So you're saying that somehow that bit of Christian lore, Freemason lore, and it's somehow informing some of the military activity that's going on.
Marc:I believe so.
Marc:But who knows this?
Marc:I mean, are you telling me that Donald Rumsfeld was hip to this shit?
Marc:Of course he was.
Marc:Yeah, they're in these in-groups.
Marc:groups are they not i mean but they're modern people you're telling me that rumsfeld and cheney and and well certainly not bush jr but maybe bush senior what is skull and bones i get it the yale secret society but that was a guarantee uh of of aristocratic power so it's all the same shit to you yeah but why did they have geronimo's skull in there because they were kids and it seemed like
Marc:See, in order to like, you know, I go along with you and I and you're my teacher in this that, you know, I understand that there is a mystical relevance and also a poetic and very ritual relevance.
Marc:of taking one of the most powerful leaders of the indigenous people to the United States and having them in this sort of secret society aristocratic training camp lodge for its magical value.
Marc:And I think what we're getting to is that the magical value of that is relative to your belief in the power that you are inheriting.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So basically, to have possession of that magical thing, which is the head of Geronimo, is in itself sort of buttressing your natural legacy as an aristocratic leader in this country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, also, yeah, but-
Marc:that's that's true but that's meaningful is it not that they believe these no i i agree with you i agree that you know that the catholic church is is is sort of a demonic place of of of weird witchcraft i don't think you have to deconstruct it that much and i and i certainly think that the uh the events of the last few years in relation to uncovering what i imagine is a centuries and centuries long tradition of child abuse yeah and ritual child abuse i would imagine in that they were passing these kids around sure
Marc:Once you transgress or once you cross a line in action, you enter a magical space.
Marc:And how you navigate that is really up to you.
Marc:But the assumption is most of what we're talking about is being navigated for dark purposes, for global domination and power.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In respect to apocalypse culture or the things I publish about that, I'm not a believer in anything.
Guest:I just look at these aspects.
Guest:I find it fascinating because these belief systems conflict with the New York Times or the paper of record.
Guest:That's just like it's considered craziness, but it's a part of American history and things that happen.
Guest:Like I have a picture of...
Guest:Andrew Mellon, who was the second richest man in America in the 30s at the Mellon Banks and all that stuff.
Guest:And so what's he doing?
Guest:Doing a cornerstone ritual of this new building in Washington, D.C.
Guest:with his name on it.
Guest:He's holding a Masonic trowel.
Guest:He's doing an initiation cornerstone ritual with a new IRS building.
Guest:What the hell does a government building...
Guest:have to do with the Masonic ritual.
Guest:And why?
Guest:And why is his name on it?
Guest:What's going on there?
Guest:It was important, obviously, if they're enacting these rituals.
Guest:I have photographs of FDR doing that Masonic trial ritual with a Jefferson memorial in D.C.
Guest:and other things.
Guest:It's just unending amounts, and it was really important, a big part of our culture, a big part of our political structure.
Guest:It's a ruling class.
Marc:yes yes and they wanted to make sure that you know that the the the signals and signs were out there for those who understood them and that that was not to be fucked with yeah but okay so like getting away from from that you know the original books that you know your fascination oh by the way yeah you mentioned james shelby downard right yeah yeah as in as being an influence of some sort on you the the piece of writing that's in the first apocalypse culture which i don't know why you didn't put in the second one was there a reason for that
Marc:Yeah, because I wanted more material.
Guest:I didn't want to repeat it.
Guest:There were 30,000 copies of that book around, and I wanted more Downard without going through the same thing again.
Guest:Was there more in here?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There was a thing about the atom bomb.
Marc:Right, but that's the other one I was thinking of.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:So that's in that edition.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And the King Kill 33.
Guest:But anyway, King Kill 33 is also in part in the Ritual America book.
Guest:But, however, I want to say, and I'm very excited because...
Guest:downard has become a character in a movie i had co-written that's going to be made this year oh really about the kennedy assassination it's a kind of a a thriller conspiracy thriller of sorts and it's being uh produced this coming year for the 50th anniversary time wow can you believe that i'm it's shocking and striking but i'm very excited about this and and is it from that that angle or is he just representing
Guest:that he is a character in the movie um and uh you know what his perspective on things what do you think he was you knew him i went down to memphis to meet him yeah he's dead now oh yeah and where'd you find him
Guest:He was introduced to me by a couple weird old Fortiana type guys.
Guest:And it was shocking to me.
Guest:Weird, crazy, interesting.
Guest:Because I've never seen the perspective of that.
Marc:I guess... I don't think it's... To do it so...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And to take, you know, to read every almost every word within the prime, you know, the key players within the assassination.
Marc:I mean, to deconstruct Jack Ruby's name along the lines of the significance of the ruby of the color.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In relation to Masonic symbolism.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you think of his sanity?
Guest:Well, I'm so glad he's a little bit insane.
Guest:Because if he didn't have... His brain was structured like everybody's, like mine or my neighbor's or whatnot.
Guest:You would not go there.
Guest:And do you take it seriously in a way that this is the answer to it?
Guest:No, but it opens up your mind to a grand perspective of reading things or seeing things or living things.
Guest:And it was quite eye-opening to me, and it changed my life, really.
Marc:That was one of the things?
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And that was before you published the first Apocalypse Culture?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that sort of served for you as sort of a catalyst to engage a fascination in alternate understandings of reality.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was a great influence in that respect, yeah.
Marc:I think I've got the first three exits.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that was before that.
Marc:I've got the first three editions of Exits that I found in a garbage can in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:In 19... That was a good find for a garbage can.
Marc:Well, they were all together.
Marc:It was almost as if someone said, I can't handle it.
Marc:You know, it was like they were just, you know, they were pristine.
Marc:I have them up there.
Marc:And I had no idea what they were.
Marc:I'd never seen them before.
Marc:So it was 1988 probably.
Marc:So when did they come out?
Marc:83, 84.
Marc:So I don't know how they ended up there or why, but I started going through this stuff and I'm like, what the fuck is this?
Marc:I mean, just a full huge page of the universe with Manson's eyes in the middle of it.
Marc:Or the Beatles standing with Hitler overlooking, what were they overlooking?
Marc:Like the planet Earth or something?
Marc:Well, there were World War II plans, you know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it was the Beatles with Hitler.
Marc:And it just was like, what is this?
Marc:What does this mean?
Marc:Why is this happening in my head?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that what you wanted to happen?
Guest:Absolutely wanted that to happen.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:It's sort of like that anybody would look at it and it would strike their consciousness in any way.
Guest:That's of course.
Guest:But at that point, I did that with a friend.
Marc:His name was George Petros.
Marc:Who was that guy?
Marc:I got obsessed with his name, too.
Marc:I started trying to do research on him.
Marc:I'm like, what am I supposed to glean?
Marc:Does anyone else know about this shit?
Guest:Well, he's an odd bird, for sure.
Guest:Still around?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he lives in New York.
Guest:He had just some book he published himself on kind of a third or fourth sex and weird...
Guest:but we parted ways after the first three issues of exit so that was it the ones i have well no he did a couple other issues beyond that himself that i wasn't involved with well what what okay so let's go back with you a little bit and then and then get up to speed you grew up here
Marc:Mostly.
Guest:My father was an actor, and he moved from New York to L.A.
Guest:in 62.
Guest:What roles was he?
Guest:He was a character actor, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's probably best known for being in Planet of the Apes and Dirty Harry and Papillon and hundreds of TV shows.
Guest:What was his name?
Marc:Woodrow Parfrey.
Marc:So you grew up sort of a little bit in the studio system in a way.
Marc:Well, he took me to sound stages and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go over the scripts with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought everybody's family was involved with it.
Guest:It seemed that way out here.
Guest:I lived in Brentwood.
Guest:And it's like, yeah, the neighbor is a character actor named Bert Freed.
Guest:And his son is like going to school.
Guest:So it was just like an everyday thing.
Guest:It's an industry town.
Marc:Yeah, it's just the industry was, you know, the dreams and movies.
Guest:No, that's what everybody did.
Guest:They went to work in studios and made TV shows.
Guest:Right, still like that.
Marc:But you didn't have any weird, because like, you know, there's the other trajectory that I think preceded you, which was the Kenneth Anger.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Kind of that Crowley connection.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also there is, you know, you put out a book that I see here about Hollywood's Hellfire Club.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, that that the dark percolations of Hollywood was always pretty there.
Guest:absolutely ken anger really brought that out in the you know babylon yeah but so you start out out here and then uh and then what happens for you where'd you go from here i mean did you well um well i grew i grew up i went to ucla i dropped out of ucla i went up to uc santa cruz i was in punk rock at at that time this is the 70s and yeah and then it's i i
Guest:I thought in 1978 punk rock was over and I'm not really interesting anymore.
Guest:So I went up to.
Guest:You were in a band?
Guest:I did actually, what I did was I did a newspaper called Idea.
Guest:And it was sort of like I wanted to do, I was sick and tired of music per se.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everything's about punk rock.
Guest:Everybody's in a band.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's not interesting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I wanted to have like an unorthodox punky attitude towards whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I picked up on that and did a newsprint paper that way.
Guest:In Santa Cruz.
Guest:Santa Cruz and San Francisco later.
Guest:Two very bizarrely mystical, fucked up places.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:But the paper wasn't necessarily that mystical itself.
Guest:But in any case, it was...
Guest:so i moved to new york after that i tried to start a book store because i i was searching through i think drug experiences and being on speed or not staying up all night and step up the next day and i found that goodwill was throwing out hundreds and thousands of books and they're taking it through dumpsters the uh-huh to the city dump and all that
Guest:But I saw that they were throwing out the good books and they only kept the bad books.
Guest:And they said, I said, well, can we get some of those books you're throwing out?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, yeah, but you're going to have to truck them out.
Guest:So I had to buy a book truck.
Guest:And so I learned about publishing that way.
Guest:I learned like going through all the goodwill.
Guest:By a vision on trash.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:On speed.
Marc:Jacked up on bannies.
Guest:That's for sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:yeah i got a project and i tell you those were dark apocalyptic moments in my life you know yeah were they oh yeah looking at piles of books and dumpsters thinking like this is my future dark moment it was dark
Guest:Besides that, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But anyway, the so I learned the industry.
Guest:So I moved out to New York.
Guest:I sold these things pennies on the dollar.
Guest:And I just got the hell out.
Guest:I went to New York because my family, my father, mother, you know, they grew up with, you know,
Guest:plays theater and live tv and that whole thing and so this was kind of like the the promised land new york yeah but it was you know what it was oh being on speed in san francisco in the early 80s with with the guys from flipper and other band toiling midgets and
Marc:There are some pockets in San Francisco that are still beyond my comprehension.
Marc:You get off of the BART on 16th and Mission, and you're like, what the fuck is happening here?
Marc:It's like there's just that corner where you just feel some tangible chaos.
Marc:Anything could just fucking hit you in the head, and you don't know what the hell is going to happen.
Guest:And it probably will hit you in the head for cholos down there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I was there in the late 80s, and I definitely could never ... I think that either you're sensitive to ... I don't want to say vibrations, but definitely to ... There's something in the air up there.
Marc:I never knew ... You go to New York, you're like, I know who's in charge here.
Marc:You go uptown.
Marc:There they are.
Marc:Those are the kings, and there's a grid, and we understand how this is laid out.
Marc:But in San Francisco, I always got this feeling like, what the fuck is happening here?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What is that about San Francisco?
Marc:Was it always sort of a mecca for individualists and crackpots and art?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The reason I moved, because of that, it was this weird vibe going on, but it was like no one was ever getting anything done also.
Guest:It was all drugs and weirdness.
Guest:After a while, I had enough of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:went to place where supposedly things were being done there's a grid yeah you went to where the grid was not just hills and curvy streets yeah yeah and all my my friends that maybe they'll show up maybe they won't maybe it'll you know it's like that right sense of and speed doesn't help the time continuity either
Marc:I guess not.
Marc:So, okay, so you meet Petros.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, he's just, you're fascinated by the way his brain works.
Marc:So this was, was he the first guy that was sort of like, that made it clear to you that there's something else going on that needs to be?
Guest:Well, what was going on with Petros is that he was a cartoonist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he wanted to do, put a monograph of his work.
Yeah.
Guest:And he was a good illustrator, a good cartoonist.
Guest:But I said, this would be far more interesting if we did a collection of various things and had some ideas going.
Guest:So here we are, you know, we're doing drugs and all that stuff.
Guest:And we're energizing thoughts.
Guest:He was...
Guest:He thought about alternative views of history, you know, Philip Dick style things.
Guest:And that he was responsible for these great reconstructions of the New York Times daily front pages and stuff like that.
Guest:If other things happen.
Guest:That's in the front page of the exit, one of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or maybe all of them.
Guest:Well, they had that front page thing in each edition.
Guest:So he was very interested in sci-fi and Phil Dick and this kind of thing.
Guest:And then I was interested in other weird historical aspects like the Charlie Manson Beatles, Hitler stuff.
Guest:That was my photo collages stuff.
Guest:So we had our own thing.
Marc:And what was the fascination with Manson?
Marc:Because that continued for a while.
Marc:Well, it had to do a lot to do with Boyd Rice, I think.
Marc:With Boyd Rice.
Marc:He just sent me his book.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who is Boyd Rice?
Marc:Because he really created, you know, for some of us.
Marc:I mean, obviously, a lot of people who are listening to this aren't going to know what we're talking about or why.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But certainly in San Francisco, when I was there in the early 90s, and I don't remember, where was the Farrell House store?
Marc:You had a store for a while, right?
Marc:No, no, not, no, we never had a store.
Marc:There was a muck store in LA.
Marc:A muck, right, that's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you were only tangentially involved with them.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, all right, that's right.
Marc:So...
Marc:There was a Manson thing going on.
Marc:It revolved around zines, around weird cassette recordings of things, videotape of Bud Dwyer shooting himself in the head.
Marc:There was also the nose, which my buddy Jack Boulware was the editor of, that there was this weird craving that I think came a little after the zines or around the same time for alternate information.
Marc:Of any kind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Manson seemed to play a big part in that for you.
Marc:And who was his name?
Marc:Nick Brugas?
Marc:Nick Brugas.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the thing is, is that what did Manson represent?
Guest:What was that all about?
Guest:The crucifixion of the 60s.
Guest:Well, yeah, yeah, but it was, if you listen to that guy, a crazy guy, didn't make much sense, however, but there was something about him in the way he would talk, and it's not like we were cultists run after people.
Guest:But it had a fascination because the cult idea of people following person with who's so far out with his ideas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he brings them there.
Guest:That was refreshing, particularly at a time when it's all about Suzanne Somers cookbooks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, there was no Internet.
Right.
Guest:And it was sort of like... And at that point, we weren't overdone with all that serial killer crap.
Guest:And it was a different perspective at that moment.
Guest:Now, if you think back, Manson, so, yeah, who cares?
Guest:But at that point, it really was a...
Guest:A way to fight against the status quo is to elevate.
Guest:It's not even a fight.
Guest:It was just people felt that there was something horrible to be vastly wrong with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And get the hell away from it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we just have fun with that reactivity, you know?
Guest:Right.
Marc:You just want to stick it to the regular people.
Guest:Yeah, but then with these farthest collages about, I used the Book of Revelation where he did a notation of it.
Guest:Boyd Rice owned that particular book where Manson notated.
Guest:The Book of Revelation?
Marc:The Book of Revelation.
Guest:Where did he get that, from Charlie himself?
Guest:I forget where.
Guest:No, I don't think it was from him himself, but it was from some other thing.
Guest:So, in any case, so I thought, well, let's do a collage, and I'm not sure if I took it seriously, but it was a great way to inspire a creative and unorthodox look at society and things and, like...
Guest:Yeah, you don't do that to the Beatles.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because the Beatles are gods.
Marc:With Hitler.
Guest:And Hitler, of course.
Guest:But there was a connection, as far as I could see.
Marc:Between the Beatles and Manson and Hitler.
Marc:Beatles, Manson, Hitler.
Marc:Well, oddly...
Marc:A few of the biggest ideas that were sort of mind-changing ideas was that what I got out of that, what was provoked in me was the nature of commercialism and the nature of being elevated to mythic status and what that requires and also in how it's maintained.
Marc:So there was a totalitarian, almost fascistic suggestion within that piece of art that made me rethink, you know, why are the Beatles so fucking revered?
Marc:I mean, sure, they were great musicians and arguably there aren't there are other musicians that are as good.
Marc:But how did they seize that moment and hold it for so long?
Marc:It wasn't just on them.
Guest:Well, that's what we used, the totalitarian aesthetics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, at that point, what was really big was, you know, was who's that guy did that mouse book and his raw magazine?
Marc:Spiegelman.
Guest:Spiegelman did these like these poor bedraggled Jewish mice or mice or cartoon artists.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm tired of that.
Guest:yeah that aesthetic you know let's go elsewhere that's also the art chrome aesthetic you're tired of the standard well our chrome i love but all that but the thing is is that that was everything yeah underground comics that was everything there was no alternative to that actually and so i put that out and spiegelman got so upset with exit magazine because there shouldn't only be one large format serial art magazine which was raw
Guest:yeah yeah so what he did he got it banned from these stores like uh forbidden planet and so who's that in new york city spiegel did yeah really he called him up said you can't carry that what was his beef did he think you were being anti-semitic probably but were you whatever provoked satisfied me
Guest:Really?
Guest:But when pushed through the wall, you'd be like, hey, I'm just, you know, what are you not worked up about?
Guest:Look, my mother's Jewish.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You know, it's like, what the fuck?
Guest:All right.
Guest:So it's payback.
Guest:So, yeah, call me whatever you want.
Guest:But if it, you know, if it stimulates thought and provokes like it did with you, that's perfect.
Guest:That's exactly the intent.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and I'm a Jew.
Marc:And the things that really stand out to me about the exits were the Manson eyes in the middle of the universe.
Marc:And the Beatles looking at the plans.
Marc:That there was some sort of secret meeting with Adolf Hitler and the Beatles and they were overlooking the agenda or whatever it may be.
Marc:What that spurred me was to look at commercialization and myth-making in a different way.
Marc:yeah grail marcus actually wrote a good review about that uh piece somewhere oh did he yeah he's a thinky he's a thinky guy i guess so yeah um okay so like so manson and all right now the rants this was also you know a tremendous uh book for me uh that you put out bob black and adam parfy this was at a feral house right or a muck yeah
Marc:and what this book is is just this weird you know a collection of the ones i like best are the ones uh that are just sort of the the scrawl of of barely sane people some of them you know famous some of them not so famous i think the futurist manifesto meant uh you know had an effect on me and there was an ezra pound piece in here yeah and the wilhelm reich thing who was also
Marc:not unlike you know you i mean spiritually or not spiritually but intellectually in the same place yeah you know that this you know kind of uh yeah complete you know manic personality insisting uh that orgone energy exists and
Marc:I've got this book of his called Contact with Space.
Guest:We went out to the Arizona desert, okay, with these cloud busting devices.
Marc:Right, the cloud buster.
Marc:That was the last straw, I think.
Guest:Point them up to the sky and supposedly shoot down with these cloud busters.
Guest:the extraterrestrial aircraft, which he called EAs, okay?
Guest:And so, that contact with space, an entire book about it.
Guest:And what's interesting is the guy who did the drawings of that Shrek book, that cartoonist, he was there with him and was part of that.
Guest:And other people, it was not just him alone.
Marc:Well, there were Reikian characters.
Marc:schools i mean that they you know that you know still to this day i mean i have it up there the mass psychology of uh fascism and personality types are still fairly you know uh reputable texts in psychology yeah he just went off the reservation and they at some point they had to kick him out once he started building metal boxes and jerking off in them
Marc:And making guns to communicate with extraterrestrials.
Marc:You know, there was a problem with the old guard.
Marc:I would imagine the Masonic equivalent of the psychiatry old boys network.
Guest:And also creating life forms.
Guest:They called bions.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was like godlike.
Guest:He would create through, you know, through chemical substances, a living being.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That he would photograph through his microscope.
Marc:But in your mind, I'm assuming there's no reason to pathologize any of these heroes of mental exploration.
Marc:It's easy to dismiss behavior, I think, and I think there's a dogma to it when you start saying, well, yeah, he was just a psychotic break.
Marc:Why trivialize...
Guest:the the catharsis of that mental state i i'm glad you put it that way that's my whole reason for being right now i'm there's the skeptics out there and i can understand that i understand their belief system and what they say if you can't like replicate something it's like but i don't think everything is worthless
Guest:And why say that if you are unable to replicate it in a certain way, that it means it cannot be done?
Guest:I don't believe that.
Marc:Or even if it can't be done, I think it's a problem with context.
Marc:I think it's a problem like, well, if this guy is saying, you know, why not just take the poetry of it and let it do what it's going to do to you?
Marc:Instead of getting hung up on science or pseudoscience of whether something can or can't be done, look at the amazing language of a guy at the end of his fucking rope speculating and assuming or insisting things that are fucking ridiculous or crazy.
Marc:Because the momentum of a lot of what's in here, these incendiary tracks, the passion
Guest:uh and and desperation and anger and and clarity that they're experiencing is something that you can feel yeah and why isn't that enough reich would call these people like that little men right right and he had a whole book on that listen little man about people who could not be accepting of things outside their small little limited perspectives and just it was very influential to me that book and that you know
Guest:you only live so long yeah and it's like you enjoy life yeah and understand the greatness of things you know why pay so much attention on these minuscule like talmudic type of aspects of it right right why let it bend a little yeah absolutely break it open
Marc:It's like that Burroughs riff where he said that grammar was a dogmatic structure.
Marc:If you start to identify dogma as just sort of ingrained belief systems.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:it's all restrictive and there's very few things that aren't after a certain amount of time right yeah but uh all right so so moving past that now your relationship with Anton LaVey the uh the uh what do you what what is his title is he the the um the inventor or the the the chief or the head of the church of Satan created it right and you had a relationship with his daughter
Marc:Zena?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Briefly.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now, he was your bread and butter for a while, right?
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you published the Satanic Bible.
Guest:No, I didn't do that one.
Guest:That's out with a major New York company.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Satanic Bible, Satanic Rituals.
Guest:That's a New York house.
Guest:First book I put out was a Satanic witch, which was earlier called in another edition, The Complete Witch.
Guest:And now it's a satanic witch and then the devil's notebook.
Guest:Right, devil's notebook.
Guest:All these very popular with women I dated in the late 80s.
Guest:Were they?
Guest:Sometimes wives didn't like them too much.
Guest:Oh, that's another thing.
Guest:What?
Guest:That's what I kept hearing.
Guest:It's like, oh, I got apocalypse culture, but my wife told me to throw that out and I can't keep it here.
Guest:Or I got in a big fight with my girlfriend.
Marc:Over what?
Marc:Over what?
Marc:Some of the dirty, misogynistic, horrible things in here?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Now, what about Peter Soto's?
Guest:What about Peter Soares?
Guest:He's a good friend of mine, actually, and I've toured with him recently on the Ritual America.
Guest:He brought out a book called Pure Filth that he did with the porn star now dead, Jamie Gillis.
Marc:Oh, Jamie, yeah, he was a nice guy.
Marc:He was a San Francisco guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he went to Columbia.
Marc:We ran into him once over there in North Beach.
Marc:Unusual guy.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't really know him, but he was in one of the first,
Marc:I saw an opening of Misty Beethoven.
Marc:So I was familiar with his work.
Marc:But he was sort of like a fairly well-adjusted, bright guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Well, that could be argued how well-adjusted he is.
Guest:But he did these films that that Boogie Nights movie did a takeoff on where they'd pick people up at porn stars or porn stores and then have them... Fuck in the car.
Guest:Or other places.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that, so he had this whole series of kind of like reality porn, you know?
Marc:Well, that became a thing.
Marc:I mean, what's his name?
Marc:Dirty Debutants Powers, Ed Powers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the Buttman, Seymour Butts.
Guest:Yeah, they're all takeoffs of Jamie's stuff.
Guest:So the Burt Reynolds character in that Boogie Nights, that was based on... On Gillis?
Guest:On Gillis, yes.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So what Sotos did, he transcribed all...
Guest:these things, and he liked it because it sounded like that, how he described it, it sounded like Andy Warhol's book, A, where it's just all these people in the factory mouthing off nonsense for hours.
Guest:But here it was, and it brought another perspective to these things entirely.
Guest:And I found it interesting, and I published it.
Marc:So, pure filth.
Marc:Yeah, and that was... So, the take was that, you know, what it was set against was the sort of hackneyed and mockable dialogue of produced porn.
Marc:And this was sort of like had an improvisational nature toward a reality to it because it was happening in real time.
Guest:You get it, absolutely, yeah.
Guest:That's what it is.
Guest:And it's a very interesting thing because of who are these people?
Guest:Were they...
Guest:Horrors?
Guest:What's the perspective of it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:What... That sadistic, masochistic interaction with them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It was really curious, you know?
Marc:And so does so.
Marc:But there was some problem with the original Pure, right?
Marc:Was that the name of the book?
Marc:Which was like... Was that a...
Marc:It was a first-person narrative of a... It was a magazine.
Guest:It's kind of like, you know, the zine world, but it wasn't really a zine, per se, because zines hadn't really taken off by that time, but it was earlier than that.
Guest:So he did these, you know, it's kind of juvenile stuff, you know, but he'd like...
Guest:say really awful nasty things but in a very satiric way but wasn't a lot of it focused on pedophilia pedophilia no all the worst stuff all the bad shit yeah yeah but so he was put in jail for that for a bit
Guest:for this magazine for thought crimes basically uh-huh and so that was a perspective of apocalypse culture what is a thought crime uh-huh say not of actual behavior but of a thought crime right and that happened you know time and again like the uh images in the apocalypse culture too yeah
Marc:I can't print that book anywhere because of these... What was that?
Marc:Was that the one with the... Oh, that was the other thing in the exit, the Hitler pictures with kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what can't you print?
Guest:The Pixies used that, one of those Hitler with kids images of their...
Guest:what can't you put in here what which ones which pictures do you see the color oh yeah yeah yeah section yeah yeah there was a german artist named blala hallman yeah and then this um artist in minnesota lives in berlin now uh what's his name but he uh
Guest:you know he did a lot of uh paintings of children yeah in sexual poses right and so this sort of thing you know these are thought crimes really um and you can't you know you can print them in various countries but these are these are blacked out yeah yeah by by i didn't do that intentionally that was ordered by the printer
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:But later the printer said, we just won't do this.
Guest:And no printer would do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's now out of print and it's not going to be reprinted.
Guest:It's just some people better get it used because it's not going to be any such thing.
Marc:And do you think this is a...
Marc:Is it a constitutional issue?
Marc:Is it a theocratic issue?
Guest:Well, the issue I thought was strange was that every week at that time when I put that out, there was some weird pornographic style JonBenet Ramsey obsession.
Guest:There was no tabloid paper without JonBenet Ramsey on the cover.
Guest:The whole thing about children being tortured and raped, like an obsession, like you couldn't get enough of that.
Marc:Well, that's what made that story sorted, was that she was raped and murdered, and no one knew why.
Marc:And then there was a never-ending catalog of pictures of her dressed up like a grown-up.
Guest:And then there was this TV movie where they had her in panties.
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:I was just like, what is American culture?
Guest:What's American consciousness?
Guest:What's going on there?
Guest:And so I tried to figure this out with this apocalyptic concept.
Guest:And then also with what is the art of it?
Guest:What are the laws?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:Why are these laws not affecting National Enquirer?
Guest:but they affect an actual artist, you know?
Guest:So those are things, ideas we're picking up on in that book, but we couldn't print it, although National Choir could print their stuff.
Marc:What's your explanation for that?
Marc:I mean, what is your thinking around that?
Marc:When it comes to... As long as you make money, that's okay.
Guest:And there's an interesting influence on tabloids with government reasons.
Marc:Well, I mean, it became sort of clear to me the big sort of...
Marc:answer to that question for me was that in the 80s, during the Reagan administration, that you had the Mies Commission on Pornography, and this was a battlefront, though a fictional one, but now where
Marc:you can get you know porn is fucking everywhere yeah you don't hear word one about it yeah from the christian writer anywhere and all you hear you know they what's going to end up happening really is is what you'll start to hear about is an epidemic of of porn addiction and a bunch of emasculated impotent fucking idiots who have rewired their brains to you know only be able to jerk off to pornography and
Marc:But that fight, that public fight against porn is completely irrelevant now.
Marc:It just went away because the money that porn generates now because of the internet is beyond anything that we can imagine.
Marc:And you know how that money works.
Marc:Everyone's getting a piece of that somehow, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, piece of the pie, but the American pie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what are your thoughts about, you know, in all that you have done and what you've continued to do,
Marc:what's been won and what's been lost.
Marc:I mean, you talk about the internet and the thing that came to my mind is the Goads Answer Me, the first three issues of Answer Me were vile masterpieces.
Marc:And then there was Murder Can Be Fun, that zine, I don't remember who did that, do you?
Marc:uh johnny marr yeah i mean though that time is behind us and now you know with very little effort the that alternative information or the the provocative sort of you know mind-fucking stuff that will shatter paradigms yeah is now just a google search away uh and it's sort of uh you know what do you call it on demand yeah so what's been won and what's been lost and what you saw as as your your fight
Guest:What's my role in this world?
Guest:Like, I introduced this information that wasn't there before, and now it's everywhere.
Marc:Right, but I mean, does that mean that, you know, not unlike Downard's sort of Masonic prophecy that everything will become manifest?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that eventually, you know, truth will become irrelevant.
Marc:So we seem to be in that.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:He's a genius, man.
Yeah.
Guest:My God, these are so brilliant.
Guest:So what do we do now, Adam?
Guest:My role is curatorial.
Guest:Solely.
Guest:It's all out there.
Guest:Not inventing stuff, but putting it together, whatever.
Guest:But there are things that are not done because the money people cannot get behind it.
Guest:For example, I'm putting out a book.
Guest:It's going to the printer shortly.
Guest:One's called Dying for the Truth.
Guest:There's a blog in Mexico called Blog del Narco.
Guest:It's about narco-terrorism.
Guest:But what, you know, people know about it.
Guest:There's, it's a lot of killing going on down there.
Guest:But people don't realize what, how much and what is really going on there.
Guest:And this blog Del Narco tells you about it.
Guest:And, but the, what, the, the,
Guest:the incredible amount of murder and the murderers don't want to be not known they wanted to be known so they arrange bodies and parts and things they put all these messages on it so they want to make sure that everybody knows who did it and when and where and it's sort of like it's the end of western culture really how is that manifesting in our culture and what is here yeah is there news about it what's
Guest:What do you know about it?
Guest:No one knows about it.
Guest:But, like, mega murder stuff just within an inch of the border, you know.
Guest:They hang loads of bodies.
Guest:Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana area.
Guest:It's incredible.
Guest:And so we're like, so here's something I'm publishing that's not manifested in the everyday.
Guest:But...
Guest:And there's still that blindness and or not even intentional blindness because they don't, it doesn't sell things well, you know, that my role is to do things we won't do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not all the time, but just some of that.
Guest:I feel that's my role.
Marc:But when you look at American culture and what's being dumped into our heads on the TV, thematically what we're dealing with here is a malignant tabloid culture, a sort of predatory reality TV culture, a completely corrupt political culture.
Marc:a sort of religious fanatic culture.
Marc:So how do you take that in?
Marc:I mean, you read the writing on the wall.
Marc:I mean, that's part of being a curator.
Marc:It's like, well, I saw all this coming.
Marc:And I know your job as a curator, but as an intellectual person, I mean, are we in some sort of aesthetic apocalypse or are we in a real apocalypse?
Guest:Well, I'm not sure, but I'm, you know, not just biding my time.
Guest:I moved up to northern Washington state myself.
Guest:I'm growing my own food and stuff.
Guest:I mean, I have a...
Guest:inoculated with these apocalyptic concepts it's hard for me to get outside of that and um you know people think i'm just overreacting i'm paranoid and that very well may be probably is but you know you have kids no
Guest:It's just you and your wife up there?
Guest:I did have a wife, but she moved out back to L.A.
Guest:because she couldn't stand being in this old hippie area.
Guest:Are you up there with some old hippies?
Guest:Yeah, I'm up there with old hippies.
Guest:But beyond that, think about eccentrics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eccentrics are revered maybe, more so in England.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But they're ridiculed and cast aside in the United States, right?
Guest:You can't be eccentric here, right?
Marc:Yeah, there's a momentum to maintain the status quo.
Marc:And if you're eccentric and you're surrounded by 12 or 15 other people that are eccentric like you or trying to do you, then eventually some music label or fashion label will find the theme and then make it available to other people so they can appear.
Marc:Take any, like,
Marc:Just gut the life out of it.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So should I pack up and move?
Guest:Pack up and move to Port Townsend, Washington?
Marc:Yeah, I want a good friend there besides me.
Marc:So the label is still there and still churning out books.
Marc:I just got a big pile of books right under here that I haven't had time to get to, but I do have a pile in front of me.
Marc:Is Rant still available?
Marc:No.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Manson File?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, it's available.
Guest:Yeah, it's available from Amazon as a print-on-demand book.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This apocalypse culture will not ever be out again.
Marc:The first one, which is the fucking classic.
Marc:That's still in print.
Marc:This one?
Marc:Oh, no, not that one.
Marc:The revised one.
Marc:This one is like... I've protected this book.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like one of my...
Marc:Well, good.
Marc:Well, yeah, that's a rare book.
Marc:So what I've got in front of me is the Encyclopedia of Hell, an invasion manual for demons concerning the planet Earth and the human race which infests it.
Marc:Okay, that's a new book.
Marc:What's this book about?
Marc:Because I didn't get into it yet, but the, what is it, I Hate Andy Kaufman book?
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Guest:Yeah, the letters written to Andy Kaufman when he started insulting women.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, he was having wrestling matches with them and so on.
Marc:Dear Andy Kaufman, I hate your books.
Marc:I hate your guts.
Marc:Your guts.
Marc:Lexicon Devil, The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs, Hollywood's Hellfire Club, and then the big book that we discussed at the very beginning, right out of the gate, Ritual of America, Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society.
Yeah.
Marc:It's a very visual book.
Marc:And then there's the raw food book.
Marc:Yeah, raw food.
Guest:It's a process.
Marc:Superfoods for superpeople.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a very cultic concept these days.
Guest:Yeah, raw foods is big.
Marc:I just had a conversation about it.
Guest:Are you doing that?
Guest:Sometimes.
Guest:Not all the time.
Marc:But if you don't do it all the time, then you're not doing it, right?
Marc:Yeah, you're just doing something to beat the shit out of yourself about the other time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, fuck, I'm not doing it now.
Marc:I'm an asshole.
Marc:Well, I don't do that.
Marc:Do you butcher your own meat?
Marc:What do you mean you grow your own food?
Marc:You got animals up there?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Well, I got a dog.
Guest:I don't eat my dog.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:But the, you know, grow, you know, kale and berries and potatoes and whatnot.
Guest:Beets.
Guest:Nice.
Marc:Beets are good.
Marc:Garlic.
Marc:It's beet time now.
Marc:You can't beat them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the Mason thing to you still resonates in terms of being a reasonable way to track the direction of power and of global domination and stuff.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm not sure, maybe, but the global thing, all I can say is you can put together a lot of people who belong to the Masons, who then became very powerful people, and then buildings with Masonic cornerstones.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:You can't say this is not wholly important.
Marc:Sure, right.
Marc:But what about the Trilateral Commission and about the G, what is it?
Marc:Bilderbergs?
Marc:Well, the Bilderbergs.
Marc:And then there's also the fucking Bohemian Club and all that shit.
Marc:But I mean, right now, it really comes down to banking blocks.
Marc:And, you know, I mean, when people say, you know, they do this, they do that.
Marc:There is a they.
Marc:They meet once a year.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:The G4, the G5?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:The G8.
Marc:The G8.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, those are them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I mean, it's right out there in the open.
Marc:It's not Masonic.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:The secret societies are not really that secret.
Guest:That's a thing.
Guest:They're all over the place.
Guest:And so it's just a good old boy network stuff.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And it's in the judiciary.
Marc:It's in the political system.
Marc:It's on every branch of government.
Marc:I agree, very agree.
Marc:They run the big money laundering system that the dupes who are most of us just dump our fucking lives into.
Guest:I love the sinister aspect because it becomes very novelistic and very exciting when you do that.
Marc:What is that thing I got up there?
Marc:Hold on a minute.
Marc:I think you'll like this.
Marc:This seemed to resonate with me.
Marc:I think you'll like it.
Marc:It's from Jim Harrison.
Marc:Jim Harrison, the novelist.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It's one quote.
Marc:The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
Guest:I don't call that a danger for me.
Guest:I call that reality.
Marc:Thank you, Adam Parfrey, for hanging out.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I know it was a spirited conversation between two people that are fascinated with stuff, specific stuff, but I was thrilled to talk to Adam Parfrey, and I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list, kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Check out the episode guide.
Marc:Get the app.
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Marc:Check out the calendar.
Marc:You know, go there.
Marc:Leave a comment.
Marc:The dicks weren't there last week, so I'm not trying to encourage them, but, you know, maybe you can get in there and leave a comment without having to engage with some troll douchebag.
Marc:All trolls are hacks.
Marc:Same shit.
Marc:Same hate.
Marc:Same point of view.
Marc:For a very specific purpose.
Marc:To aggravate and feed off of other people.
Marc:Alright, look.
Marc:Heavy hearted, heavy handed.
Marc:Oh shit, I forgot to tell you.
Marc:Yeah, I'll do it on... Yeah, I'll do it on... Do it on Thursday.
Marc:Alright, I gotta go lose some weight right now.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you