A Lovely Spring Day, 1969

AHHHHHHHH! It was a day just like this one, except it was April already, and warmer and it was raining.

An MMMMMMMMMM-Note

In the spring of 1969, I was training for a decathlon under Walt Rostow, along with Jack Lemmon and some others of LBJ’s staff. I was the horse we were betting on, the others were just to round out the team – for camaraderie and encouragement and what have you.

Me on the field of glory

The training schedule was grueling, but by late February, Lemmon and I had managed to put together the financing for a new XXX film loosely based on a book by James Leo Herlihy. Of course, by the time the picture came out, it starred Jon Voight and *Dennis Hoffman and was rated X. But, by then, we were sitting pretty on an island in the Caribbean with fifty $10, 000 bills and did not give a care. But that is another story. (*not a typo – Dustin gets credit for his look-alike cousin’s performances in most of his early films – yet another story.

Walsh; file photo

One particular afternoon training session at Rice Stadium had been going well until Brendon Walsh showed up to taunt us from the bleachers. Lemmon had finally gotten his forty under forty-five, so we were drinking beer and tossing the javelin.  Walsh started yelling sissy this and pussy javelin that, and Lemmon, without saying a word, picked up a discus and chucks it at him. It didn’t hit him, but that was the farthest he’s ever thrown the discus, so the team was pretty excited and kinda forgot about Brendon, who was fetching  the disc. He found it and hucked it back at us, falling way short and knocking over the Dr. Pepper cooler.

General Westmoreland literally flew at Brendon, who was already storming down the bleachers two at a time. A lightning bolt erupted into the sky when their bodies clashed on ninth row.

Westmoreland being a pain in the ass to rest of the world

Westmoreland was worn out from training all afternoon, so Brendon easily got the best of him. We were all sick of Wes’s shit and Cambodia by that time, so we were slow to break it up and we were all friends again within minutes, except Westmoreland, who went back to Austin on the bus that night.

The whole gang spent the night at Judy Garland’s house in West University, doing Whip-Its and DMT. Jeff Beck threw up.

We miss you already

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Kennedy Assassination

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this guy Leonardo Da Vinci and his alleged role in the Kennedy assassination. Everybody seems to think Da Vinci’s ancient drawings of helicopters and naked ladies contain some kind of code that predicted the biblical flood and Kennedy assassination and the eventual end of the world at the hands of Tommy Lee Jones. However, I think this is wrong.

Candy in disguise after killing spree

I took a meeting with Jack Lemmon at the Driskill Hotel bar late one night in the early nineteen-eighties. Years before that Oliver Stone movie (JFK), Jack told me the story of a very sweaty John Candy’s role in the JFK assassination in New Orleans and the cover-up that followed. Jack told me that if the real John Candy had lived longer, then Kevin Costner was really going to prosecute him in an actual court of law, albeit this time in one with air conditioning.

Jack was very nervous that night and was drinking more heavily than usual. Within half an hour of arriving, he was soused. He kept saying, “What does that have to do with the price of rice in China?” and “You can’t make an omelette,” driving home every point by banging his glass on the table. He shouted at the bartender, over-enunciating every syllable as if to prove he wasn’t yet drunk, “Set them up, Joe. You can’t make a fucking omelette?”

The bartender, who was not at all pleased with his behavior, replied, “We don’t make omelettes in this bar, Mr. Lemmon, sir.”

Lemmon in happier days

“What’s that got to do with the price of rice in China?” Jack said, then elbowed me hard in the ribs. “This guy says he doesn’t make omelettes!”

“Fuck, Jack…” I said, “Can you forget the omelettes and tell me some more about the connection between Da Vinci and Tommy Lee Jones?”

But the sixteen bourbons on the rocks had done their job, and instead of answering me Jack broke down in a quivering heap on the bar, sobbing and crying, “I can’t! You just don’t get it, do you, Mark? I can’t…you can’t make omelettes.” He shouted “omelettes” at the top of his lungs, but suddenly realized he was making quite a scene in the posh hotel bar. “Take me to my room, put me to bed. I can’t be here anymore.”

Destroyer of Worlds?

I helped him up and we walked together to his room, he having summoned enough dignity and balance to walk on his own, only occasionally leaning on me or grabbing my arm to catch his balance. When we arrived at his door, he grabbed my collar and pulled me in close, as if he were going to whisper some kernel of truth that was eating him up and killing him to be released. Instead, he spit in my face and, in the same precise voice he had used with the bartender, told me, “You’re barking in the wrong tree. There’s plenty of Leonardos in the sea.”

I haven’t seen Jack Lemmon since that night, but I saw JFK, which he made shortly after our conversation at The Driskill. Suspiciously absent from the film was any mention of Da Vinci or his secret code. Many people say this omission signifies that Oliver Stone attempted to cover up the true events leading up to that fateful day in December, and that the absence of Da Vinci in the screenplay is practically iron-clad proof that he was involved at a very high level in predicting and planning the assassination.

Developmentally disabled or criminal mastermind?

I don’t buy it. I believe that this is a very clever ruse to cover up the real truth-that Da Vinci was a patsy and that Tommy Lee Jones, John Candy, and Leonardo Di Caprio are not only responsible for the murder of our 61^st president, but also Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Chester A. Arthur, Zachary Taylor, and Franklin Roosevelt. History will bear me out.

Bears probably not involved in plot

Boxing Russell Crowe

My landlord, wearing "Golden Shower" from designer Ralph Lauren

When I interviewed Russell Crowe for Rolling Stone in December of 1999, I had just moved into Farrah Fawcett’s poolhouse for the summer. Farrah would come out to the poolhouse and smear paint all over the walls and me, using her naked body as a brush. She wouldn’t have intercourse with me, but she would rub her paint-covered breasts and ass on my dick until I ejaculated. Still, she wouldn’t even kiss me until Russell Crowe insisted on a more intimate setting for our interview.

Lemmon, in a rare moment of levity

A surly Russell Crowe knocked on my poolhouse door at two o’clock in the afternoon. He had already been drinking heavily over lunch at Cisco’s with Jack Lemmon and Brendon Walsh. He was irritated because he had heard from his friend Randy–who had heard from his little sister’s best’s friend’s uncle–that I did not care for him. And that was all I had said. I was asked by a colleague if I was excited about meeting Russell, and I said, “I don’t care for him.” So he was pissed about that. What a baby.

Walsh, in a rare moment of sobriety

Meanwhile, Farrah was at Home Depot stocking up on paint from the Ralph Lauren collection for what she had been calling “Fucking Russell Crowe Day”.

In the poolhouse, I’m asking  Russell about his movies and what’s it like to beat up strangers. He’s answering me, but he’s all pissy and giving bullshit answers. So, I started getting more confrontational with him, trying to get his aggro tendencies to flare up. I was asking him questions like, “Yes or no: does your mom know you’re gay?” and “Have you ever had Prince Albert in the can?”

Farrah's poolhouse-papasan not shown

Russell finally boiled over. He lept from his beanbag and pushed my papasan over backwards, then kicked me several times before he shouted, “This answering your question, cockfern?”

I answered, “Hell no, bitch! Get me out of this bamboo deathtrap so we can fight like men instead of this pussy ambush and sissy kicking bullshit.” He pulled me up and was apologizing just as Farrah and the Home Depot guy arrived with about a thousand gallons of paint and the Domino’s guy rang the doorbell.

Chad enjoys videogames and fingering his girlfriend

We stripped down to our boxer briefs and fought three rounds of regulation boxing in my  living room. Steve the Home Depot guy refereed and kept things fair. Farrah cheered for Russell and walked around with those big numbers to announce what round was coming up–stark naked, except for a fresh coat of “Seductive Scarlet”. The kid from  Domino’s kept ringing the doorbell once per minute, so we kept time with it and boxed until I knocked Russell out in the third round.

No rabbit punches!

As Steve grabbed my arm and declared me the winner, Farrah started rubbing her paint-slathered tits on Russell’s face, trying to revive him, while she blew me. Seeing the direction things were headed, Steve politely excused himself with the old “I think I left the refrigerator running” line. I gave him twenty bucks to pay the Domino’s guy. He left the change on my kitchen table and the pizza in the oven–on “Warm”. Nice guy.