Dredging epistles past. The following from early 2005, right when I had plunged into composing the pastel works which would comprise [working title] Sun Change: Summer of '68, Autumnal Sun, Winter Blue, Isle of Islay Revisited—technicolor reworkings of which to be released later this year.

Friends-

I've been remiss with my updates, I know. After my last epistle in September, wherein I described going to the Playboy radio talkshow, Night Calls, to talk about HoneyBun, several people suggested I write a book about the vagabond marketing of HoneyBun and my newfound gypsy lifestyle.

Then it was time to go the International Lingerie Show in Las Vegas, preparing for which consumed every waking minute for almost a month. After Las Vegas, I was waiting for some major revelation to come to me about Las Vegas to come to me that I might share some grand new insight. Alas, what can I say about that place which hasn't already been said?

I just finished a stint of house-(and dog)-sitting in Laguna Beach. Lovely house. The dogs were three adorable pugs, cute, affectionate, prolific beyond any expectation in befouling and beshitting the lovely home up on the hill.

My cup runneth over.

Acquiring one of these pug dogs (rescue cases) is both noble and honorable, I think; two: evidence of neurotic and masochistic tendencies of the most narcissistic and grandiose kind; three: symptomatic of mental illness, unimaginable grandiosity, borderline megalomania, plain and simple.

But the house was lovely and when the dogs were peaceful or sleeping, afforded a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean.

In the afternoons, the sunlight on the water shimmered like a great silver pavilion stretching to the horizon, rippling into blue at the edges.

At night, the moon rose in the sky and its light made a shining pathway across the waters. Venus shone brightly right above the moon in the dark, star-splattered sky. The multi-colored lights of jets, whispering in and out of the Long Beach airport, floated across the muted blur of the horizon in the distance.

Along the reef in the bay, calamari boats lined up, perhaps two hundred feet apart, halogen lights burning down into the sea to attract the squid—an incandescent necklace on the calm waters of the bay. They moved night after night, following the squid.

There were times where I was just overcome with the beauty of it all. So, despite the dog problem, Laguna Beach was great.

The owners of the house are an Italian couple. He is a painter. All he paints are pictures of his wife's legs in stockings and garters, in a very Warholian aspect. I suspect this probably makes for a good marriage. I also suspect she is the one with the money.

Back in L.A. now. Staying at my friend Kim's place. She owns sextoy shops in Boston and West Hollywood. She has been very helpful to me and HoneyBun. She is really into the whole adult industry scene, whereas I am but a ... what ... a well-scrubbed and wide-eyed initiate? :)

She took me to the new Hustler nightclub a couple months ago. She thought I might meet some people who would be good to know for HoneyBun promotion. The occasion was the world premier of some new porn movie, featuring some very well-known porn star, Jessie Jane, I think. I forget the name of the movie. But I do recall it was big news that she was actually onscreen with a man for the first time in years.

I watched about 5 minutes of it in the screening room—borrrrring! I talked to an editor from the huge glossy trade magazine, Adult Video News, a little later. He said the company behind the movie was going all out and putting an amazing amount of money and time this new venture, in hopes of establishing a new standard of production for a flagship collection of adult movies. I asked him how long they took on the movie they were screening. "Three months," he replied, without batting an eye.

This party also allowed me to see porn stars up close for the first time in my life.

I can say with some authority that a new measurement system for breast-size needs to be created. We all know A-B-C-D cup. After that, it should go to H ... as in ".5 H" which would be half the size of the starlet's head. "1.1 H" would be each breast 10% larger than her head, "2H" twice as big as her head - oh yes - and so on.

At these industry parties (I've been to a couple now), there are three types of guys, excluding the "stars" and outsiders like myself.

The first type are guys (in their 20's and 30's) who take their fashion cues, as well as how they act and speak, from the movie "Swingers." They perceive themselves as action guys, players ... and most of them are fairly dim bulbs ... they actually say things like, "You are MONEY, bro ... !" ...Then there are the older bulls. They range from 40 to 60 or more and have smoke-and-booze-ravaged voices and shifty, reptilian eyes. They are ALWAYS seen hovering over, leaning in on, and rasping at, conspiratorily, running a line on some bulbous young model or porn star. Their fashion and style god is Ricardo Montalban.

Then there are a few quiet types, middle-aged, intelligent and well-spoken when introduced. They are either (a) along for the ride like the AVN editor, just having fun or (b) the actual company owners who are making all the money. Either way, they are usually in a good mood.

The male porn stars are another story entirely and I've only met one, so I am not equipped to share any useful insight or knowledge here.

Las Vegas is my latest obsession.

The HoneyBun crew had a great time at the Lingerie Show at the Tropicana Hotel in October. It was me, Charmagne, Tatyana, Maria, and my erstwhile "partners," Batman and Robin. The HoneyBun products and the girls were the sleeper hit of the show, that much is certain. Looking forward to returning in April with a new kit - a high-quality massage oil kit with a cd of wonderfully relaxing music (some of my best work ever, I think) and some Brazilian lingerie and HoneyBun pajamas and nightgowns on which I am working with a clothing designer I've met.

I was NOT prepared for the scale of Las Vegas - and the level at which it is co-opting every culture, past and present, on Earth.

There is something really alien about the place, like way down under the Earth, next to each of the money-counting rooms, is a special room that is perhaps in another dimension or time, but is a part of the city's actual engine and the engine, of which this locus is but one cog or transistor, or pulley, or whatever metaphorical machine part makes sense to you, is simply a vast and steaming and bubbling vat of shit, the aroma of which subtly invades and permiates every pocket of space in every air-conditioned hotel, casino, club, restaurant and penthouse far far above on the once-parched, now paved, desert floor.

But the city was jammed and everybody was drunk and having too good a time to worry about this. Except me and perhaps a few other people. 

My friend Rod, an old ex-gangster, told me not to be intimidated by it. "It's just another city with a hustle, kid," he says.

The scariest part was walking through the Tropicana, hearing Cheap Trick "Surrender," the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated," and David Bowie's "Heroes" blasting on the sound system. Heroes? The Ramones? Jeeezus! This is desecration that shall not go unpunished, I hope.What that means is that they hired someone with the same excellent taste in music as yours truly to program the casino music. Scary scary scary. First that they had the sense to do so. Second that he or she took the job.

An old hippie friend of mine, Bob, loves Las Vegas. He says,"Knox, Las Vegas is THE most democratic place on earth. They spend millions and millions of dollar building these amazing casinos, attractions, world-class art exhibitions. I mean, anybody—white, black, rich, poor, whatever—can go and enjoy this stuff and all the casinos ask for is ... just ... for you to hand over whatever money you have in your pocket." And he laughs.

I remember having to leave my room at 7:00 a.m. to walk to the exhibition hall to grab a pair of HoneyBun Hot shorts for one of the girls. The route I took brought me to a balcony overlooking one of the slot machine farms. I looked down and, in all the expanse, right below me, was just one older, overweight woman, cigaret in mouth, a one inch ash about to fall into the drink in her left hand, staring vacantly ahead as she fed quarters into the machine. Jeez do I wish I had had my camera for that picture.

Right after I got back from Las Vegas, I finished a Sam Giancana biography, by his bother, wherein Giancana claimed responsibility for JFK's death, RFK's, and Marilyn Monroe's, among others. I was in a deep funk for a week. I just read "The Money and The Power, The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America," and "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK."

These books put me in an even worse frame of mind! I actually have to stop reading them for a while. Because I get too lost in meditations on democracy's ability to withstand true evil. All is not lost yet, I tell myself.In Las Vegas, who cares? Hey - what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, right? I am looking forward to going back. What does a man do, who has obsessed intermittently for three decades about what level of collusion with the killers is necessary for material success in this most open society?

Well, he can always sell Warming Oil, Soothing Lotion, Spanking Cream, and the essential Cooling Mist.

And HoneyBun thongs in blue, pink, white.

The love of money, indeed.

But I must be honest: I was very very excited when I got my first big order from a Las Vegas hotel shop.

Let's see, what else? On my way south this last time, I picked up a hitch-hiker on Hwy. 1 somewhere near Half Moon Bay. He was a poet, hitching and riding the rails from town to town, doing open mikes, selling cd's. He had a backpack and a sleeping bag. His mother had been a hippie (he was born a few years after the Summer of Love). They had moved around a lot. He had recently spent a lot of time in Seattle, but couldn't deal with his girlfriend's heroin addiction and hitched down to Nevada City for a while, then decided it was time to hit Santa Cruz.

He was a thoroughly entertaining fellow—I even liked one of the poems he insisted on reciting to me. I have a feeling everyone who picks him up gets a recital ... a sort of singing-for-one's-supper gesture. It turns out he regularly attends AA meetings—we discussed star sightings in Hollywood meetings (please no lectures on anonymity)—but never takes a birthday chip because he has remained an inveterate pot smoker for all the years of his sobriety.

But talking to him, as we wound down the coast towards Santa Cruz, took me back 35 years, when there were guys like him all over. Folkies, beats, hippies on the road. I remembered hitching to and from Santa Cruz and Carmel and Berkeley a few times myself. A very different time and, as conservative as I have grown in many ways since then (trust me, it's true), I felt a real sadness for the passing of that innocent and trusting era within what was then known as the "counter-culture."

I've seen glimpses of it subsequently in the Punk and, in a little more forced manner, Rave scenes in recent decades. Jeez, do I sound like an old fart or what?

After my visit to Las Vegas, in my depression, I was able to see why some people still try to renounce all the plasticity, materialism, and at the far edges of those precepts, the renegade criminal mind-set which feeds solely on them, that pervades modern life. The ride with Robert-the-last-wandering-poet was a breath of fresh air. I mean, you have to be a certain age to remember the "counter-culture."

The only counter-culture I see today is a very small percentage of the population who have rejected almost everything that comprises what we perceive as our collective, though sprawling, over-merchandised consciousness. There were a few days after Las Vegas where I thought those people who throw it all off and go to Goa and dance to trance music all night didn't seem quite so insipid.

To the boomers out there: are you aware that CD's now have stickers on them to let potential buyers know that one of the tracks was used for a television commercial? Can you imagine that happening in the sixties? It would have been the absolute kiss of death.

I still flip out when I think that Microsoft, before the Tropicana, used "Heroes" for an ad. Now, when Bill Gates uses "Start Me Up" by the Stones, that seems appropriate. Truman Capote once said,"The minute Mick [Jagger] walks offstage, he pulls out his pocket calculator.

One thing I like about LA is that people are soooo positive. Anything you want to do, people get excited and give you positive feeback. And then never return a call until they need something or think you have something they want. There are, of course, exceptions to this. But the culture is so different from the Bay Area in that regard. Pretty much everybody is selling all the time. The key is to find the sellers who are also doers. I've been lucky to meet a few.

In LA, there is only MyBlonde™.

MyBlonde™ at the cafe, in the supermarket, at the gym, on the boulevard, in the park, at the bookstore, on the strip, in the ticket line, in the movie, and of course, in the AA meeting. MyBlonde™ shimmers in the midday sun and glows under the alabaster moon at midnight. But who needs manners, when you have MyBlonde™?

I find this city endlessly fascinating.

You see what happens when a fourth-generation north california lad leaves town?

I started this letter a few days ago. I don't really know what I'm trying to say. Life has been so strange since I left town almost a year ago. The shock passed some time ago, but there is still enormous uncertainty ahead. I refuse to give up on HoneyBun and my new hometown. Although I often reflect that I would probably be playing more music if I were pulling espresso at Starbucks!

'Til next time, I don't know when ... I remain, riding the wild bubble over new and uncharted lands, your humble correspondent,

Knox

Part 5 

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