Personal Millennium Ads (February 2, 1999)
Actual Personal Ads from the Los Angeles papers.
Seeking VGL wm for Millennium fun. Must be easily excitable and have a sense of timing. Prefer someone who will party like the world was ending. Props a plus
Ready for the Millennium I am. Slender Female seeks father time for journey into the great unknown. Let's have a serious relationship and end it on January 1, 2000.
I hear wedding bells at midnight December 31, 1999. Spend the Millennium married to me. Dominant, voluptuous female seeking submissive wimp for years of unpleasant pleasure.
Turn my century. SJF seeks affluent lawyer for Millennium hijinks. Must be ready to change the laws of nature. If convicted must serve me for the duration. No cowboys or wookies please.
Millennium muscle man seeks millennium muscle woman for buff times in the new age. Me, single pumped and ready? you tall tan and hard! let's go where no oiled person has gone before. Rolex a plus.
Look before you leap.but don't look too close. Millennium conscious accountant wants to add up your figure and make you financially secure when you get to the next century.
I saw you at the Millennium Bakery on Figuroa. I was wearing the T-shirt that said "The Millennium is in my pants" You were fanning yourself with the LA Weekly and said my T made you hot.
Long term stability sought by mature artist who wants to immortalize you in the next century. Be my Millennium mistress you won't be disappointed. Clothes on ok.
Millennium fever, I've got it and so will you when I you see my petit hard body that is going to tease you over the timeline of your life.
Millennium man wanted. Must be tall, strong, and thick wristed. My time machine is waiting and we don't have much time. Call after 6PM.
Long walks on the beach, rockabily, bookstores, Sundays at the café with the NYTimes? All this will change after 2000 and we can change it together. No smokers, meat eaters please.
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Millennium Impersonators (September 9, 1998)
There must be a millennium conference about every ten minutes these days. And driving in Southern California, especially LA (The Millennium Capital of America) is especially tedious. But that's what I do. So I steeled myself for a miserable time at the Millennium Imitators Conference last week at the Plaza. What a surprise huh? Lots of old Elvis stuff (the word on the millennium street is that nobody will remember him after 2001) and a lot of weird stuff..like Phyliss Diller..go figure. The oddest one though was George Harrison. There must have been fifty guys dressed up in every period of the poor man's life..the pop days with the Moe haircut, the psychedelic satin George with the droopy mustache, the Traveling Wilbury George with a flannel shirt, the sunglasses Gonna need a lotta money George..and ..and here is the big surprise..they all sounded alike. Maybe with a little bit more energy in the early years but all pretty much sounded like..uh..George Harrison. So they started lining up and it was like a weird mono-dimensional Beatles tour. Word has it that it is in bad taste to imitate John, Paul with his sad story of late is also off limits and nobody wants to deal with Ringo because he has so many powerful friends. So they pick on George..pushing the notion that in the millennium he is the only one that will survive as a marketable imitation. I must have heard the voice of the future mouthing the "Beware (more like Bee wurrr) of Darkness" a thousand times. So it just goes to show that the millennium is full of strange surprise to come..like a reunion of George Harrisons or shirts with half a collar (collar/no collar being the norm) ..but that's another story. I was just leaving the big demo hall when I heard another familiar voice behind me..at first I couldn't put it together with a face but after a few minutes...actually I was outside trying to get the guy to bring the Buick around ..the guy being the valet parking guy ..not Lex my regular driver who is on vacation in Bhutan..where ever the hell that is..but it was the voice of Don Pardo..just like it was on Saturday night live thirty years ago..only it was Don Pardo..not an imitator..he was trying to franchise his voice to a crowd of George Harrison clones. Time flies huh?
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Coming down the 405 from the Valley you could see the plumes. A little closer, nudging the Buick almost out of gas, coasting, I saw the flames. Quiet extraordinary even for Los Angeles (the Millennium Capital of America and Pacific Rim). Since Thrusday when the bill passed in the City Council, it has been to your advantage here to get rid of one of your cars. Preferably to burn it. Oh you heard right, torch it. You get the amount of the market value of the car plus ten percent if you take it one of the 2000 (get it?) Auto Burn lots in the Los Angeles Country area and let the guy spray it with good old 87 octane. You get to toss the sparkler at it. And whamo, that little old second BMW/Jag/Benz goes bright orange. The whole idea is that by the year 2000 we will have reduced the number of cars in town by half. That will make it easier to get rid of the rest of them by the year 2001. No cars in LA!!! With the new subway and bike lanes the city will supposedly take on a whole new look. The cars have to go...up in smoke. A statement for the Millennium? A wild hair brained typical cliched LA pitch? A movie? You name it..everything is riding on walking. That what I'm telling you...no more autos..its auto burn time in the Southland. And to really hose the deal, you can get a video of your car burning for $29.95 that is guaranteed to last at least five years..the tape that is. The cars are burning, the cars are burning. I heard this little kid screaming out the window of her daddy's Land Rover. I pulled over to clean the windshield when I heard the news report about the ban on helicopters..but that's another story....
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Millennium Campfires (August 12, 1998)
It was getting dark. When LA gets dark it starts to come on. The Marina gets a little spooky as the sun goes down and you hear the strange slap of sailboat rigging against the aluminum masts. What caught our eyes, Lex and I as we headed to pick up Dolores (means pain in Spanish) still aboard the Amorosa, the old sloop she and the cat nest in, was an odd flickering. Not that most of LA (the Millennium Capital of America) doesn't flicker most of the time. Hauling my night vision glasses out of the glove box, I twisted the focus wheel and suddenly found myself looking at ...campfires. Hundreds of them all up and down the coast from San Pedro to Malibu. But not good old beach blanket binko campfires. These had a pearly yellow glow like they might have been sterno fires on helium. Steadying my wrist on the heavy chrome mirror of the Buick I asked Lex to slow down and drive with both hands. He put down the pizza and eased off the gas. Up ahead in the gathering darkness I could see more of the ghastly campfires, hundreds, no ..thousands. I switched on the local talkband shortwave frequency only to hear the story coming out of the car radio. Millennium campfires. Created from old computers, the two thousand glowing monitors were placed in an arc that could be seen from outerspace, spelling out the words "Howell Norfolk"..no I'm kidding nobody would be that insane..what they were spelling was "You go first". Later, I learned that the whole thing was a stunt by the Millennium Boys and Girls Club of LA to sell raffle tickets. But for a moment, a brief moment, I thought I should call Smitty Ray right away. Lex reminded me that it was after dark and Smitty had already gone off the air. Sometimes a story is better left in the car.
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Millennium Tattoos (August 5, 1998)
Lex wheeled the Buick into a dusty alley right on the border of Venice and Culver City. I told Lex to wait. I had to see for myself just what was behind the fascade painted bright yellow. As I had suspected, it was the tattoo parlor the small hispanic fellow I had met the night before at a Feng Shui start up party had described. But that's another story. This was a tattoo parlor like I had never seen, and believe me although I have no tattoos to speak of I have seen plenty of skin art. Hunched over the needle, Lonnie Steng was busily erasing a huge dragon from the chest of a dancer named Bernice. The laser beam occasionally bounced off the dragon's eyeballs and made a poping sound when it hit an old paper tattoo design pinned to the wall. A hideous hiss. A puff of chlorine green smoke and part of the dragon vanished. But I'm no poet so I will tell you just what I was seeing. Removing the dragon was just the beginning. Millennium tattoos are all about numbers, 2000 of them. Getting rid of your old pictorial stuff and getting the zeroes put on is what tells your story. That's right, you want to go by the numbers with a millennium art work. You either want the raw data right on your skin or you want at least 2000 tattoos all over your body. And the reason you do it is so that when you're on the other side of the calendar so to speak, other millennium devotees will know you. And you better decide where to put the 'head' of that millennium tattoo..because that body part is the one that will cross over first. Don't get me started on radio tattoos either. They are painful and take a month to do but when your done you are your own millennial transmitter. And tattoos that talk can be pretty scarey. I'd seen enough. Back in the Buick Lex wouldn't leave until I showed him my left knee. That did it for him. He slammed it in reverse and headed for the Marina.
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Pet Surgery (October 16, 1996) I have been invited to a very select pet show here in Los Angeles (the Millenium Capital of America --did I say that already?). These are pets that have been surgically altered to look like their owners! Yes, you heard me right, Cosmetic Pet Surgery!! Now you no longer have to wait years for you and your pet to start looking alike. You can have it done overnight with a new technique that uses a combination of photography and laser surgery (yes just like the holograms of the Jupiter people!). First they take your picture and a picture of your pet from 1000 different angles, then, using laser cutting technology..but HEY I'm giving away the whole story here on the Web...tell your listener to oil up his/her face and put surgical gown on the little dog dozing by the door and get close to the radio because when I finish this story there's going to be a string of people and pets marching into the Millenium that look just alike..which of course means that not only can pigs fly, and cows jump over the moon, but they will have their own perosnalized credit cards too!!! Here Kitty kitty.
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I thought I had seen it all. Extreme skiing, extreme surfing, extreme skateboarding, extreme skydiving. But here in Los Angeles (Millenium Capital of the World) I've seen the extreme future. While motoring down La Cienega with Lex (my driver) we saw extreme hoops. Holding a bushel basket aloft with two forty foot poles, players hurled a bowling ball painted to resemble - a basketball! Incredible as it seems, the players would dodge the rebounding basketball (bowling ball) just at the last moment as it came crashing to the street, shattering into a million pieces. We were told that sometimes a slower player would not be so lucky. In the Spring of this year, Arlin Wreath was hit as he was blocking a lay-up by Turner Blas. Arlin received a foul but before he could do the free-throw he was history, a spot on the extreme future. Extreme enough? You would think so, but yesterday while fixing a faulty generator in the Buick near Venice Beach, Dolores (Spanish for pain) and I saw something really extreme, Extreme Street hockey! Wearing only one rollerblade on their left feet, extreme RB as it is called locally, is played with 24 inch stainless steel hockey sticks sharpened so finely that they will slice cheese. The puck is made of lubricated golf balls. A whack from the stick makes the puck fly into sliced pieces that travel over 180 miles an hour. Goalies last on the average of fifteen minutes and then have to be rushed to emergency rooms to have the puck pieces removed. Does this sound extreme? I haven't even started...ever see Extreme tennis? Extreme shuffleboard? Extreme baseball? Football? Ever think about what happens in extreme kite flying? Tune in listener and face the extreme millenium.
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The Forgetters (October 9, 1996)
This story was one of the best I discovered as the century turns. At least I think it was good. That s what everyone said after I did it at least. Wipe the slate clean before the year 2000. Forget it all and start fresh. The movement that had started in Southern California was now growing national-wide. Everyone is ready to forgive and, more importantly, forget. I got caught up in it myself. It was so tempting to get rid of all that mental baggage from the twentieth century that I jumped at the chance. All those TV shows, all those magazines, all those OJ reports just dump, get it all gone. The Forgetters are like the modern day whatchamacallits..you know who I mean the whozits the ones that believed we were all decended from whatever..a real religious zealot force. For weeks and days after this story I had the most wonderful sensation of clear headed, completely happy bliss. I didn t remember a thing and it made everything I did a new discovery..just like the coming Millennium. Every moment was unclutter and utterly awake as I had no memories to cloud my experience. Like the world s first day as what s his name says in that song or poem or novel. Oh the gift of givers, The Forgetters. After every meeting I was saying and doing something new. I could barely remember my name and I was ecstatic. Then just when I was ready to join them and follow them where ever they had decided to go I couldn t remember where they were. Stupid huh?
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They Never Sleep (August 7, 1996)
I met Boise and Dave during the Millennium Roadkill Roundup (that's another story) which takes place over several nights on Mulhuland Dr. They hadn't slept for two weeks at that time. Sleep was a waste of time they said. Why bother? They were up for the duration in anticipation of a new world order on the other side of the millennial divide (which sounds suspiciously like Mulhuland Dr.). Imagine if you can, a world without sleep. Dreams are a thing of the past. No more little clots of stuff in your eyes in the morning, no yawning, and no drooling. A life without death's second self. No raveled sleeves of time to knit up. No sandman. That's what these two are up to - putting the mattress makers out of business for good. And they do it all without the aid of drugs or alarm clocks or screaming relatives. A sleepless population, restless for new knowledge and hungry for constant experience, awaiting the millennium so they are sure to be the first across the time line. I talk to them regularly now because that's about all they do, helps them stay alert. Doing without sleep, they say, is like gradually learning to breath underwater - just a few extra seconds a day - and then that one day when you know longer think about curling up on the sofa. You are up for the duration. Wears me out just reporting it.
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I.Q. Points For Sale (July 24, 1996)
Can't afford a shrink? Bad self-image? Don t want to work on a degree to get a job? Why not be a genius? In these heady days at the turn of the century everybody wants to get ahead. Ahead of the curve, ahead of the pack, ahead of time. Out front, heading for the Millennium line. Well this guy had the solution. Yes, just pay for what you need. Too stupid to make it on your own? For a few bucks you can buy those I.Q. points that mother nature denied you. Buy um one at a time or in wads. It doesn't matter, just send what you have and the rest is taken care of. Feeling like a moron? Worry no more because you won't need an education, just a credit card and the Web address of the Millennium I.Q. Points for Sale site. Don't let anybody tell you what a fool you are any longer. No need to feel like you can't pull your weight in that Greek philosophy arena any longer. Just boost up your I.Q. and proudly go where you would never have been qualified before. I had to wonder why he was living both in LA, Florida, and Santa Barbara. But he told me his point spread was wider that way and that a lot of needy folks were in those areas. Why waste time in the Northeast with people who were satisfied with themselves when you could work Florida and Southern California for all it was worth. Forget the Millennium real estate boom, go for the head. Get smart for goodness sake. Get a brain.
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The Battery Eaters (June 26, 1996)
Mohave hot. The Buick has no air conditioning. It never had it and never will. Its too old. Maybe after the year 2000 all cars will have to have air conditioning because of the hole in the ozone. Nature has a way of demanding accessories and options. I took Dolores (means pain in Spanish) with me out to the Mohave to look for the Millennium Battery Eaters. No one in LA believed me when I told them. Not that I am believed in toto much but this was a special stretch. These guys were supposed to only eat batteries. The coming Millennium was going to demand extra energy and these wackos had to shuffle out to the desert in order to purify themselves so that they could ingest batteries. Triple As, Ds, cadnium, car batteries you name it these idiots would be dining on it. We got there pretty late and they were just polishing off a case of Ray-o-Vacs and were preparing to have some wrist watch batteries for after dinner mints when they saw the headlights of the Buick. They know that car headlights are battery power so it sends a chilly thrill threw them when the beam hits them. Battery power & that's what they see as the only way to survive into the future. Recharging your battery and running your battery down birth and death for the Battery Eaters. And they are always licking each other to make sure the connection is good. After about 11 minutes of it we'd had enough. They talk funny. Like they were on battery acid. But they have a friendly glow that really draws your current, if you know what I mean. Dolores couldn't stop flicking them on and off, twisting there little heads to get a better beam. And that dull crunching sound as they bit into another cell. My God its hot in the Mohave but the air conditioning would have run down the battery. Food for thought.
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The Pie People (April 20, 1996) They eat pie. What I can I tell you. I met them at a dinner party in Culver City and they would only eat pie. I asked them who they were and guess what they told me? Yeah, we are The Pie People. Was that a reference to the fake pie plate UFO in Space Nine?, I asked. No you big idiot, it means we only eat pies until after the Millennium. Oh I says, of course, you are THE Pie People. Excuse me for living. For Chrissake they only eat pie. Fruit pie, custard pie, meat pie, pie ala mode, pied piper freakin pie. Sometimes Millennium reporting takes an unexpected turn. This was a hairpin. These two Pie People were sitting there in the cool night breeze with a couple of police choppers over head, search lights searching, hunched over a couple of & pies. We only eat pies until after the Millennium, they said slightly out of unison (uh huh, like a round). Yeah, yeah you said that, but so what? What does pie eating have to do with the turn of the century? Pie is round. It is Round Food. Round is what is happening, we only eat round. The century is coming round. Oh like she'll be comin round the mountain when she comes? I said. Something like that the Pie People said. But nothing sexual like that song seems to connote. Uh huh, I said. You gonna eat all that pie yourselfs? Don't get smart with us, they said. OK, I says, Ok you can have your pie and eat it too. And don't get me started on ground round either.
