I was just about to step into a well-deserved hot bath after the art class and a post-lunch book carrying session up and down the stairs, plus five paintings completed for the marketplace. Knock on door. “Tiffany’s here, she wants to see you if you’re available.”
I hadn’t actually stepped into the tub, was still bone-dry, so I quickly jumped into my senior sweats, slipped on my runners, and went out to Gorby’s Cafe — my dining room — where Tiffany sat, hot cup of tea in hand, smiling and obviously happy. First of all, she’d heard about SpaceBuddhaa and Hoodoo Pilot’s good fortune and commitment as a couple, from Amy; so of course general celebrations and congratulations were in order, which I duly pass along now.
Keep in mind that from the perspective of this Reality Zone, they’ve been a couple all along, but this is news to voyagers coming from the Previous Reality Zone. To Rocky, it will not be news. He’s been here all along. We had to develop a rationale in the Previous for why he wasn’t.
I depend on Rocky and other Future Teachers — and thanks to our little detour into L3(14)d, we now have a lot more well-trained Future Teachers than we’d have had if we’d straight-lined it here — to organize certain events, and will certainly look forward to seeing … wait, I just realized that if you’ve experienced the Previous Reality before coming here, a tedious operation, but necessary in the preparation of certain individuals, including Rocky, as Ashram Guides, well, you probably don’t know about my EVENTS BOARD.
Forgive me if you already know all about this, but just in case you don’t; I happen to keep an up-to-date record, a daily chart, of ALL of the Ashram activities, events and happenings.
I have this in front of me every day at our daily admin meetings. I can see a week or two ahead, what’s going to be going on day by day in the Ashram. I help determine the venues for these events… what??? Oh, you want to know what happened with Tiffany, right?
Okay, so after our hugs and greetings, she got to the real reason for her unexpected visit:
As a result of the James Rodney photo shoot, she’d been invited to audition and been immediately hired for TWO modeling jobs for Marvel on Broadway, one job was a photo-shoot which unfortunately got cancelled, but the other was a live runway show, which happens on Saturday, august 9th — hey, that’s TONIGHT, 7:00 PM (doors open at 5:00 PM) at the Red Lion Wood Hotel, 500 Leisure Lane, Sacramento, California, and it’s all because she did that photo shoot with James Rodney! If you’ve ever seen his photos, you’ll know why, plus Tiffany is a natural model.
She knows what to do without having to be asked, prompted, coached, encouraged.
As a photographer, I know this instinctively. I had to.
When I worked for PHOTO Magazine, ADAM, KNIGHT & CAVALIER and once for Vince Tajiri at Playboy, plus my work at Modernage Studio and for Phil’s Modeling Agency in Hollywood, I had to find my own models for my personal work.
When I worked for Phil back in 1964-65, I did two jobs; photo shoots with the models from 9:00 am ’til 4:00 pm, when I went into the darkroom to run all the film and make 8×10 glossies and four-ups for the girls to take to their modeling, singing, dancing and acting auditions.
Phil sold The Dream. You know, you go to Schwab’s Deli and a producer sees you and offers you a contract. Popular Wisdom — you can see how it easily earns its place in the pantheon of oxymorons — has it that Lana Turner was discovered at the age of 16, sipping a malt at Schwab’s Deli, and from then on, kids showed up there, hanging out all day, waiting for Hollywood Reporter’s publisher, Bill Wilkerson, to show up again.
They still wait, though Wilkerson has been demonstrably dead since September 2, 1962. I asked the funeral director (they used to be undertakers) what had been wrong with him.
“He was dead,” I was told. Hell, that’s good enough reason to bury or cremate him for my book, but in some cases I understand they just stuff the guy and keep the party going.
So…what the heck was I …. oh, yeh, it all comes back to me now. Modeling shoots and runway shows. You never know where a path might lead. I started with model photo layouts for the Hollywood Hopefuls, but soon began to get requests for sports shots.
My friend Bill Rau did a sports column for his newspaper in New Delhi. He asked me if I’d like to do the photos while he did the interviews. Our first interview was with Angel Baseball Team member Jimmy Piersall, in Donner Family country, Anaheim, California.
I had family there, the Donners, so I stayed with them rather than endure a hotel. Spence’s wife was a terrific cook, and when the Donners tell you that they’d like to have you for dinner, they’re not just whistling “Dixie”.
I never realized what a rotten cook my mother was until I had my first decent meals in the U.S. Army mess hall. Gosh, that food sure was swell. What I mean is, it swelled up as you watched it gyre & gimble on the plate.
I’ve blogged about this event where Bill Rau and I did the first Jimmy Piersall interview in detail; in brief, Jimmy and I have been friends ever since. He often visited our hospitalized kids in L.A. and often performed headstands and handstands for my camera, which I might put up sometime.
Jimmy was unique in the field; he’d been locked up in a psychiatric ward for a while — hell, anyone with a portfolio that doesn’t include bad reactions from the environment would be hard to find among interdimensional voyagers anywhere — was able, with professional help, to rebalance himself and resolve himself to his difficulties and life situation, and UNLIKE HUNDREDS OF OTHER SPORTS PROFESSIONALS, returned to sports and openly spoke about his ordeal and recovery.
He serves still today as a beacon for those who are troubled and are ashamed of having a tough time. My friend Jonathan Winters had similar trouble and, using the Bob Newhart “Stop It” Method, actually regained balance enough to continue on.
Everybody has a tough time now and then, and nobody is immune from fear, suffering or death. Nobody, no matter how rich or famous or powerful. The very wise know this to be so, and take steps to use the moment for the work they have taken on themselves for the greatest good and the most widespread and powerful effect.
This makes one valuable to the Work. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Somehow things happen for you that make it possible — just barely so — to work and to prove yourself to The Work. Should you become valuable to The Work, it will elevate you and place you in your Post. You can stay at your Post for as long as you don’t leave it.
When you are needed at another Post, The Work issues orders and you get transferred, sometimes with notice, mostly not.
ABRUPT SEGUE (segway) ALERT:
So there I was at Phil’s Modeling Agency, taking photos of hundreds of young ladies every week, at a rate of 10 or more a day with 10-minute, and sometimes 20-minute, photo sessions in which we needed to get one good closeup for the 8×10 glossy, the thing you send out first to any potential employer or agency. We also needed to get four very different moods, ages, looks or character types, in two-shot poses and full body poses for the dancers.
For face models, they needed five closeups. Dancers needed poses more than closeups. Hand and Feet models needed shots of their hands and feet, not their faces. Phil composed their whole CV — curriculum vita — for them, packaged it in a professional way, and made sure they got to the right hiring agencies for consideration, all for a very low fee of $25 for the whole shebang, including the binder.
It was a great deal for the time. Today, you’d pay no less than $2500 for the same service. That doesn’t indicate any change of value, just of currency and buying power.
I was a good darkroom worker, had been trained in the Army to develop film under harsh conditions in intelligence gathering and information passing, etc.; in short, darkroom work was part of my job description and I duly performed it and did it quickly and well, in and out like ducks mating, in and out like the wind…
Any time you think you’re actually going to get in and out like the wind, you got another think coming. There’s always a gang of Wing-Kong out there, not to mention David Lo-Pan himself.
So I typically spent four hours in the evening five days a week, over at Phil’s house doing the darkroom work — his darkroom was in the converted garage below the house, and by the time I had finished the day’s work, my wife Linda would arrive with our only car, and we’d all sit down to a meal cooked by Phil’s wife, Ginger, or Linda and I would dash off to Musso & Frank’s Grill in Hollywood, our favorite eating spot.
You’d think that, out of the thousands of young girls I met, I’d be able to find at least a couple who would model for me, right? I never thought of asking. It was a job, just a job; I did my photos and darkroom work and left.
Sure, I chatted with the models; any good photographer knows how to help the model loosen up. I don’t use the standard “own it, own it!!!”. I didn’t ask the girls to do anything other than just let the flow happen, and I encouraged my models to have a good time and not worry about the result.
I’d often say, “If this session doesn’t yield good shots, we can always do another.” That takes the pressure off, which is often all you need to do to get good shots.
As an artist, I needed models, until I outgrew the need for them, around 1968, when I could mock up the human form almost like an illustration out of Gray’s Anatomy, which I’d gotten when I started sculpture classes with Renzo Fenci at Otis Art Institute back in 1965 — there’s a photo somewhere of one of my bronzes that was part of an installation in the Otis courtyard in October, 1966.
Yeah, the prime problem of all artists everywhere — from where do I get my inspiration?
The answer is always, “from the model”. But that model can be anything, inside or out. My first photo and art models were my friends from art school, mostly artists themselves. We modeled for each other, because art students don’t typically have the ability to pay someone more than they themselves can earn an hour.
Although several of the pro models offered to model for me, I just couldn’t bring myself to take advantage of them, but a few prevailed, and so you see a few professional models in my photo portfolio from the 50s and 60s. But wait, I must tell you a wonderful story.
Back in 1958, I was 17 years old. I traveled by subway most of the time and knew every stop of every express and local train on every single transit service, and every “right place” to stand on a train to get off at exactly the street exit I wanted, over 2,000 specific items to memorize and recall.
Think that’s unique? Every one of my friends, especially Carl Jerome, Gene Falk, Mike DeMatteo, Rusty Grey, Charles Gelfand III, Barbara Kronengold and Bob Glaberson; we were all confirmed subway geeks.
Of course, there were no “geeks” in those days, only “eggheads”. That described us to a “t”.
I was on the uptown IRT express, seated on the basket-weave straw seat on the side of the car, trying not to look at the rolled-down stockings of the ladies sitting across from me with shopping bags on either side of their legs, exposed for ventilation in the cool subterranean atmosphere.
The windows were wide open. It was summer, and New York City was in a heat wave with a touch of 101% humidity and no air-conditioning for private homes yet, just the latest gadget, the electric fan.
Between two very Russian women was a slight, spectacularly pretty girl. I was a photographer and painter, but I didn’t have the idea of asking her to pose. I just wanted her to know she had a chance to do something other than secretarial pool typing, the typical job at that time for a young girl.
Glass ceiling? It was about six feet off the ground, about as tall as a man, which is what a woman had to have in order to do business in a man’s world. Ask anyone who’s been refused a checking account because no man would co-sign for her.
“I really am not trying to pick you up or get fresh with you,” I said over the roar of the train. “…but if someone hasn’t told you this before, I’m going to tell you now — you should be a model.”
“I am a model,” she smiled, “I’m on the cover of Jet and Ebony this month. It turned out that she worked at the same studio I worked at, thanks to my friend Shep Sherbell, who lent me his prewar camera for my first pro shoot, ModernAge Studios. We said goodbye, and that, I figured, was that.
The very next day, at ModernAge, I ran into Shirley — that was her name — and we went to lunch together, with her roommate, blues singer Annette Washington. Annette and I became an “item” right away, and we lived together in Black Harlem, on 103rd Street just east of Broadway — the Golden Apple Jazz Club was on Broadway, west side of the street, between 108th and 109th.
My dearest lifelong friend, Peggy Lee, came to sing there just for fun, one incredible night in 1959. We were in phone touch until the day before her passing, and used to sing to one another over the phone.
My very first camera was, predictably, a Kodak Brownie. It was right in the middle of World War II, and cameras were not being made, because all the stuff needed was directed to the War Effort — we were at the Home Front, as it was called, and everything was rationed, as I’ve blogged previously.
We got our meat, eggs, milk and butter from our friend who owned a restaurant just up the street. We lived at 349 East 49th street during and just after the war.
Manny would hand us a wrapped package to “drop into the garbage on our way out”.
Of course, it was perfectly fresh beef, lamb and veal — we never ate pork, not because of Jewish law, just as a family, didn’t like the gamey taste and gritty texture. The cuts he gave us were pieces of perfectly good meat that had been trimmed from the steaks that were served there. You have to trim steaks a little, most of the time, in retail food operations that serve actual food, not the plastic derivatives and oil byproducts they serve at fast-food chains.
So I suffered under the weight of a thousand young Hollywood Hopefuls for a couple of years, and then, in 1966, my friends Bob & Leanna Gaskins asked me if I’d take their wedding photos.
I explained that my $25 view camera with single exposure and plate film, was horribly antiquated and that I hadn’t yet figured out quite how to use it. They said to do it anyway, because if I didn’t there’d be none at all.
So I took some shots, sort of mucking about with settings and exposures and lenses, and got a few nice photos of the event, but it started me on the Path of Medium Format.
I stopped by my friend’s place — Bob owned “Schaeffer’s Photos” on Cahuenga, and in early 1966, I went in there to ask his help. I wanted to do more than use my camera to record my art production and create portfolios. I wanted to do album covers, magazine covers and the like, and mostly in color.
That would mean medium format, a Rollei. As far as I knew, there was no other alternative to the Rollei. Oh, sure, we all knew about Hasselblads, but nobody I knew had that kind of money to burn; besides, you need two Hassies, like Jaguars — one to use, and one to sit in the repair shop.
When I got there, Bob introduced me to one of his newest crew members, Kirk Kirkpatrick, a darkroom specialist. We spoke for about two hours, and in the end, I had a MamiyaFlex Reflex camera, two bodies with three lenses, one for portrait, one for sports and one for general medium shots.
When I developed my first roll of film, a modeling session with my friend Dyan, an English actress and model and really talented artist in her own right, I was amazed to discover that literally every hair, every pore, was totally in focus and richly endowed with gray-scale.
I never used 35mm until 1980, when I no longer practiced the profession. Now I use my favorite not very expensive electronic camera to take shots and there’s no darkroom work involved. In spite of the danger of chemical mishaps, I think I’d rather have the darkroom than Adobe Photoshop, but that’s not the way this world works. Here, everything, including dating, is electronic and over the internet.
In October of 1966, my actor friend Bill Lucking, asked me if I’d take some publicity shot of him. Then others asked. Then more, and more, and that’s basically how I became a “photographer to the stars”, although the pay didn’t come within a zillion light-years of matching the exalted title.
Then came my big photo break; Roger Hart had requested me for the Raiders, and I’d been asked to do the covers for Harry Nilsson and a few others whose names did not survive the years — Family Tree among others…many, many others.
I did hundreds and hundreds of album covers and liner notes from 1966 through 1972, mostly for RCA, Columbia and my step-dad’s company, Capitol Records — Paul Donner Spencer was the marketing director and had signed many important artists to the label. He was responsible for the “Angel” label on Capitol, that specialized in high-grade classical music.
Donner’s Dad, Spence, owned KWIZ radio in Santa Ana, a 50,000 watt FM Banger at the right spot on the dial. It had started as a classical station, affording Donner the opportunity to learn the classical record industry and typical repertoire. Donner worked as a disk-jockey at his Dad’s station for exactly one day.
He wrote down all the engineering stuff for the board and the transmitter, in chalk, right on the equipment, indicating the correct settings for each, about 120 different items in all. Naturally, Donner didn’t have an engineer’s license; back then in the 30s, none was required, at least not so you’d notice. All sorts of folks were running licensed and unlicensed radio stations, both AM and FM.
Spence fired Donner on the spot, for failing to get the station up on time, a serious FCC offense and punishable by a fine and possible suspension of license to transmit commercially.
The ultimate disaster had happened to Donn. The janitor had fastidiously wiped clean all the surfaces of the equipment, the night before. The floor was brilliantly waxed, the board perfectly clean, not a trace of that horrible chalk anywhere.
His Dad disowned him and when the radio station was sold for $3 million, the money went to Donner’s son, who is spiritually very blessed and is a very wise person — he gave it all to his sangha.
Naturally, the white sheep were not amused. Hey, never depend on breadcrumbs to make a permanent trail. That goes right along with “Never eat anything larger than your head.” Boy, is that good advice; take it from someone who knows.
It was about this time that I got a phone call from my friend Annie Moses — she had talked to Charles Laufer, her publisher, and he wanted to hire me to take intimate studio shots of my rock star friends, mostly the Monkees. I knew Tork and Mike from Greenwich Village days, and by 1966, was in the studio with the Monkees every time they were back in L.A..
You’ll hear me and Harry clapping, whistling and banging mike stands and other oddities on the album “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones”. The basics had been done mostly in Nashville by mostly jazz studio musicians, then shipped to RCA Hollywood so Chip, a bass player who had become the Monkees’ record producer, as opposed to tv production at the film studio, so the boys could overlace the basics with their own brand of music.
It worked well, except that Chip came into our little studio — studio B — and asked Harry and me if we could help out with a couple of claps, stamps and whistles. It needed to be on-beat, and the boys simply weren’t up to it. They were tired from the road, and were very happy to let someone else do the little stuff, so we did, including a few high-end vocals on that train song and something else, I think about summer, door into summer? Dunno.
Anyhow, this started a rash, so to speak, of celebrity photos and interviews, because I was right there on the scene and I was an insider, not a journalist. Then in 1976, I started editing Galaxy when it was apparent that my Dad, Horace, would not be able to take the helm again.
That led to all the sci-fi and fantasy photos, thousands of them, plus interviews with all the sci-fi greats of the time, the 1970s and 80s. Many photos of me with them were taken by Ken Paulson, and I have them all here on my personal database, along with almost 200,000 other photos from various lifetimes and Reality Quads.
Did you know that you can easily go to any Alternate Reality, just by clicking your heels three times?
Okay, maybe it’s not that easy, but it IS that simple. You won’t, though, because as a Worker in The Work, you travel with a Soul Group, designated L3(15)a, with a current homeworld of the same name.
Think of it as a filename, not a popular name, like Miami Beach, or Ganymede, which will someday be THE Vacation Paradise for newlyweds of the 37th century, my favorite era of Urth, but who gets to choose?
I go where I’m needed, and this is where I’m needed. I’ll be working in the Ashram tonight to get it to conform to the Present Reality Zone. In this reality, certain things happened that are not yet reflected in the Ashram model I brought with me from the Previous.
So what about Tiffany? What happened with Tiffany???
Keep in mind that in this Reality, Tiffany is one of my very closest of friends, and always has been. We’ve known each other forever, so naturally, when she went to the modeling audition that resulted from the James Rodney photo shoot, she was thoroughly adorned with my copper creations.
She’d gone to the modeling audition simply covered with copper adornment, and the jewelry coordinator saw them and asked where they came from.
My copper jewelry is perfect for runway and photo modeling, because it’s lightweight, has a rich red metallic glow without polishing, is wildly improbable in its forms and size, and shows incredibly dramatically and photogenically.
What can I tell you? I make dramatic jewelry, and I know my glamor photography and makeup and fashion and jewelry and hairstyles.
No ordinary woman dressed for the street, or even for evening, is going to wear anything like the wild rings, stage bracelets and Celtic Adornment that I normally make, so if I want to make a lot of sales, I will have to make much vanilla stuff for the general crowd and the great unwashed masses, and I don’t do that, so my sales at the Celtic festival will be rather slim, and I know that, going into it.
What I make is really for show-stoppers like Tiffany.
By the way, it’s really Julia’s and Kelly’s booth — I’m joining them in it, because I think it could be a lot of fun, and there are work opportunities aplenty in that atmosphere.
What Tiffany wanted and all she had actually asked for, were some business cards she could hand out to those who evinced an interest in the copper jewelry she’s been wearing. I said, “I’ll do better than that; wait here, have some tea, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I was, indeed, back in less than ten minutes, with a copper bracelet made to Tiff’s guesswork on the size, medium — but I made sure that it would be thoroughly adjustable to six sizes up and six sizes down, so I knew we were in the ballpark with what I’d crafted together in the spur of the moment.
I was surprised my own self at how fast I could do this, and it gives me some encouragement that I can keep up with the demand at the festival, which takes place at the Nevada County Fairgrounds.
I couldn’t think of a better workshop experience, but it won’t be popular. If you want to come at that time and help with the booth, you’re certainly welcome to do so. If you can juggle or do magic tricks, or do foil, epee and mace demos with me, you’d be mighty helpful, because people come where folks are performing, and I always do something interesting at my booth, more than just selling products, I mean.
Anyhow, Tiffany ran out to get ready for the runway show, and Michele took a few photos of us talking and laughing; what a great break for her! I’ll be making a page for her publicist, and hopefully Jim will take many many more photos of her in future.
If you have never been to James Rodney’s very inventive site, you’re in for a surprise and a treat, because he’s become one of the best sports photographers out there, and he’s a selling inventor, as well as a kick-ass guitarist; did you know that?
Looking at my Ashram Sked Book (schedule book, like a day book somewhat) I see that I’m scheduled for a talk every month at my Chen-Rig Temple. If you want it more often, you’ll have to convince me, because my opinion is that the crowd drops off faster with more exposure, so I’m keeping my talks infrequent, and therefore might have a better crowd than a weekly Darshan.
Like I said, if you can promise a decent turnout, I’ll do a talk every week, as time permits.
My plan for tonight? I’ll be working on cleaning up Reality Shifter 1 — the first in a series of world-shifting Orbs — and I’m hoping to get a start on my very first Induction Orb, which allows you to run through an induction scenario while the induction is playing in-game. It’s a new idea, and I think it’s really hot. You try it and tell me what you think. I’ll be happy to listen to suggestions and problems on subject.
Please don’t tell me your life-problems. I don’t do windows.
Lessee, what else, before the ICW? Ah, Marvette (Vettizon) is printing some sample cards for me, a new series I did from GODD™ screenshots, not from Ashram Sl screenshots, but you won’t be able to tell the difference. My Chen-Rig Temple in GODD™ is actually more detailed and more easily moved in than the Second Life version in the Ashram.
I’m slowly building a massive online Orb — GODD™ can take an unlimited number of avatars and our basic map is hundreds of times larger than anything in Second Life. The only barrier between us and having a website like Second Life but with the GODD™ engine, is to get the money needed to bring GODD™ into the 21st century mobile world.
We don’t have the skills necessary; we need to buy the talent. It could be worth millions to get our unique games and work Orbs into phone app form in full 3D with full effects, but so far, we lack the means. We need to hire the talent, and we ain’t got that kind of money, and the game industry thinks we’re idiots to bother.
From the gaming standpoint, the only thing that sells is bloody conflict.
Gee, if that isn’t a mini-description of life on Urth, I don’t know what is. Bloody conflict is the meat-and-potatoes of the gaming industry. I’ve made dozens of non-violent games and offered them in the marketplace, to no avail.
People SAY they want nonviolent games, but push comes to shove, they buy what the kids want — unremitting violence, and for the older kids, add sex.
Your avatars can’t have sex in GODD™ and if I have anything to say about it, they never will. Dance, yes, sex, no, and I say that knowing that I’m at risk of losing my entire audience; there has to be a sexual angle, or it can’t and won’t sell.
Unfortunately, I’m inclined to take the sex out of my products — playing House is not part of my job description — and therefore have enjoyed the inevitable result; very low sales volume, but a sufficiency of quality customers to just barely keep me going.
That’s the life of an artist in a nutshell, and a nutshell is where most artists belong, according to popular wisdom.
Popular Wisdom. Don’t get me started.
At this morning’s ICW, we’ll be exploring the potentials of the New Reality; keep in mind that many of you, although you’ll have a good memory of having been here at the Land and at workshops here and in town, you will be shocked at the difference in this world if you do decide to visit us for the upcoming Labor Day Convention.
Not only does the house look different, the house next door that suddenly cropped up out of nowhere now looks very different from its look two weeks ago. There’s an addition on the west side that wasn’t there before, and a garage, greenhouse and mud room that were not there when the house was built, a few months ago.
Fascinating, Captain.
I think so, too, Spock. I’m back to work now on my Orbs and bringing the Ashram into conformity with the Present Reality; I wish Tiffany great success tonight — break a leg, kid!
I’ll be at my usual Post this morning at 6:30 am — hope to see you there, on our brand-new video channel. It’ll be my very first ICW on video broadcast. As you know, if you are familiar with this Reality Zone, we’ve always done the ICW in the Ashram. This is our first experiment with video broadcast in this world, thanks to SpaceHoodoo for suggesting it and getting us started.
I’ll try to get used to doing the ICW on live video; it’s sooooo much easier to do what we’ve been doing for years, just turn on the mike and press the talk button, every so often adjusting the moves the Avatar is making…oops, I just hit the “Rhumba #4” switch. Oh, well, might as well dance…
Oh, my gosh, I’ve burned up so much time, I have barely enough to prepare the samples for the Ashram Greeting Cards!!! Meet me at the ICW this morning to find out more! Live TV, I can hardly wait!!!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby