highbrow slapstick
I was born ahead of my time and somewhat against my will in New Orleans, Louisiana, wintertime 1952. My parents failed to be impressed when I began reading at three. Likewise, they were not much interested when, at ten, I declared myself a writer. Later in life, I dropped out not only from high school but also Tulane University where I vainly attempted to study ancient languages and philosophy––subjects that, ultimately, would have rendered me even less employable than I naturally was.
Thus began my years of wandervogel (literally, wandering bird), and my accumulation of sometimes humiliating, sometimes stimulating, always excruciating jobs. In my time, I have been––presented here as neither a complete cataloging, nor in chronological order––a movie projectionist in a porno theatre, bookstore manager, bounty hunter, welder, carpenter, rock ‘n’ roll roadie, television cameraman, advertising rep., yacht broker, bartender, waiter, nightclub manager, deck hand, line cook, assistant ranger, private investigator, film maker, building contractor, assassin, newspaper reporter, radio show host, preschool teacher...and so on.
Amazingly––considering the time-frame of my youthful escapades––I managed to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of alcoholism and drug abuse, and arrived at middle-life relatively healthy and robust and capable of completing not only whole thoughts and entire paragraphs, but books as well.
Being a man of some leisure, when not polishing another opus of post-modern comic primitivism, I can usually be found in a stupor hoeing in the veggie gardens of our heavily-fortified family estate, “elsewhere.”
