No Words...

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Who's that Girl?

Patty has seen this image before but she always assumed it was Photoshopped. Recently she noticed that Aes-Nihil has the original in his collection. Obviously it's Sandy and Lynn, but now Patty is wondering, "who's that girl?"

Anyone?

TRASH TALK

Okay, I will admit it, I have an affinity for these old trashy tabloids!  You know the stuff they write is totally blown out of proportion and sometimes outright made up but, damn, it is entertaining!

 

 

 

 

You rarely hear anything about Mike Armstrong and his wife Denise, I don't think they testified at the trial.  I have found a couple of articles about them though, here's one that Cielodrive has transcribed about a fire destroying their trailer at Spahn Ranch.

Claire Vaye Watkins

This summer as part of a summer workshop Claire will do a special reading at The Cabin, a literary center in Boise Idaho on June 22nd. 

An article in the Boise Weekly reveals the news that Claire is expecting her first child in a couple of months.

Rare old photo

This Charming Man

What exactly was it that made people want to spill their guts out (no pun intended) to a man named Charles Manson? How did Charlie become so skilled at reading people? Was it just something he was born with, or was it something he learned in reform schools/prisons? Was he always charming? Back in the days of yonder, when he was a pimple-faced teen, did he have the ability to charm the girls out of their poodle skirts? Did he purposely pick certain people he knew he could dominate? Is he a man, monster, or both? What do you think he is? I don't think the answer is all that complicated. In my opinion, and I am sure I am going to get reamed for saying so, he is an extremely dangerous, unstable man who was nothing more than a clever pimp. His ability to get people to do stuff on his command is what makes him dangerous. That, and his opinion that human beings other than himself had no rights to their own lives & money. Their money was his money, according to the Gospel of Charlie. He always talked against being materialistic, but he was always the first one reaping the benefits of other people's goods. Manson loved the benefits of money more than he has ever let on, and that, right there makes him more human than ever! You didn't ever see him turning his nose up against all of the material possessions, luxuries & comforts that Dennis Wilson's money provided, did you? Hell no! He's no fool. The following excerpt from Paul Watkins book is an extremely good description of CM:

Later people would ask me how a man like Charlie Manson could ever be considered Christlike. How could he ever get that close to people, so close that they spoke his rap, and thought his thoughts. The answer is simple, really. He listened to them, each of them. He concentrated on what they said. He sympathized with their problems, knew their idiosyncrasies. He allowed them to express all their fears, hopes, aspirations. Seemingly, he did not judge, he merely listened, and focused all his attention on them. He became friend, brother, lover, and father. He gave himself in a way that, perhaps no one else ever had, particularly in the beginning. Ironically, few people ever really pay attention on that level. He taught the girls not only to love their minds, but their bodies, and to use them without inhibition. What he had started at Spahn's, he continued at Gresham Street. He was always changing the motion, remaining unpredictable. 

He went on to write:

The girls in the Family adored Charlie; he knew each of them-their hang-ups, their likes, dislikes, phobias, their tastes in food, sex, music, their backgrounds-everything. Whenever someone appeared who might cause a problem to our scene-a narc, redneck, probation officer, anyone from the straight world-Charlie knew immediately which girl would be best suited to neutralize that person. He was masterful at this; to do it, he had to know his women well.

In closing, I would like to add that while I am sure Manson is a fascinating character to know, and to correspond with, he is just too damned unstable to let out. He couldn't just go out into the desert to disappear into anonymity, because every moron in town would be chasing after him, following him around, and trying to recreate "The Family." Of course, I am sure old Charlie wouldn't mind an assortment of groupies following him out there to cater to his every need, but we all know that isn't ever going to happen. While I think Tex Watson is a helluva lot more dangerous than Manson ever will be, I still don't think he is innocent.

Linda Kasabian

Linda Kasabian 2014

Linda Kasabian 1970

Manson-related art exhibit opens today in LA

Blog reader John Tottenham has an exhibit opening today at:

Maloney Fine Art

2680 South La Cienega Blvd.

(between Venice & Washington)

Los Angeles, CA 90034

(310) 570-6420

On the subject of "The Undesirables" John writes:

"I encountered the Manson story as an impressionable 15-year-old who had recently been kicked out of one the least notable public schools in the south of England. I was sent to a school for difficult kids but spent most of my days walking the streets of London. I found a copy of  'The Family,' Ed Sanders' colorful account of the Manson murders, and I went round and round on the Circle Line in London, unable to put it down. The atmosphere it evoked, thick with sex and dread, was  intoxicating to a morbidly romantic youth whose voice still hadn't broken. In the evening, after a day of truancy, I returned to the family home in a quaint Kentish village - 35 miles from London but deep in the heart of the country, and very remote insofar as public transport was concerned - where I would read it while listening repeatedly to 'Forever Changes' by Love. Fortuitously enough, I discovered this record at precisely the same time, and it served as the perfect soundtrack, evoking an eerie, damaged, distinctively Los Angeles atmosphere. Arthur Lee's cryptic, riddling lyrics - 'Sitting on a hillside, watching all the people die,' etc, are not dissimilar to Manson's  "No sense makes sense" logic: "Look down at me and you see a fool, look up at me and you see a God, look straight at me and you see yourself," etc. The Manson case offered an exotic and extreme form of vicarious  teenage rebellion, being the complete antithesis of my staid rural colonial upbringing.

After gazing upon the grainy full page shot of Susan Atkins (AKA Sadie Mae Glutz)  in 'Helter Skelter' I became hopelessly besotted. I would stare at that photograph for minutes on end, completely losing myself in it. Her expression was very haunting, very penetrating. What most drew me to the Manson story was the  predicament of the girls. They seemed, in a way, like victims themselves, and they hadn't been much older than I was when they had fallen under Charlie's spell.

I projected most of my adolescent romantic longing onto them, though there was a lot to go around. I wrote a billet-doux to Susan Atkins and sent it to her care of the Frontera Women's Institute. A few weeks later my mother, understandably perplexed, handed over an envelope with a California prison stamp upon it and a complicated series of numbers denoting the sender. Susan had written back, informing me that she had seen the light and recommended I do likewise. After the epistolary letdown I began to feel guilty about my Manson-immersion. I built a ceremonial bonfire and burned the Atkins letter, along with other artifacts, including an original copy of the Manson 's 2019 record on ESP that I had found so affecting, especially 'Look at your Game Girl,' which perfectly evoked the eerie sun-dried lostness of those times.

When I started digging into the case again, I realized that the photograph of Sadie in 'Helter Skelter' was rather a flattering one. She certainly wasn't doing herself any favors when she started showing up in court with a shaved head and unshaven legs: that was a look I couldn't get behind. In hindsight, the Sadie infatuation probably had an unhealthy effect upon the kind of women I subsequently gravitated towards.

My interest in the case had faded by the time I made it out to LA. By then it had become off-puttingly trendy in transgressive circles. But it has turned out to be a constantly revisited fascination. And obviously I'm not alone in it. I frequently  meet people whose early impressions of Southern California were formed by the Manson case. Murder stories often serve as a portal to another time and place. In this case, it served as a window into the Los Angeles of the late 60s, obviously a very interesting time, especially as the idealism and hedonism began to sour. Here was a unique confluence of circumstances - a crucible of chaos in which a bizarrely charismatic ex-con with a messianic complex attracted just the right group of vulnerable and manipulable young men and women on just the right/wrong combination of potent drugs in a climate that facilitated a horrific and previously unthinkable chain of events.

My intention with the drawings was to capture as precisely as possible my most intimate impressions of nature. In this case, feminine nature. I was never interested in the murders as much as the shadows they cast and by the girls who dwelled in those shadows. And what became of them. The drawings are of all the girls in the Family, not just the killers; in fact, some of the killers are under-represented. I used almost every suitable image I could find. There has always been something haunting about a mugshot, especially old ones, and these mugshots are about 45-years-old now.

They started out, as everything seems to, as doodles on post-it notes, and they evolved on to slightly larger pieces of finer paper. Though tiny, some of them took a long time to complete. I wouldn't be satisfied until I felt that I'd captured something, if not an exact rendering of the photograph, then something that evoked.

The drawings are a personal exercise in nostalgia. When I think of the Manson saga I don't think so much of where it took place - and where I ended up - but rather of where I was when first exposed to it; the canyons and deserts of Southern California come sweeping back to me as I first imagined them, borne on the cold autumn wind through the English countryside, while I sat on the sofa in the living room of a modest country house with 'Forever Changes' repeatedly playing on the stereo. I know it's all played out now but it wasn't when I first came across it. It's my attempt to capture what I found so haunting when I first became obsessed with the case.

Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids posters

I don't think I have much to say about these posters, except they are from "Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids" circa 1991-1994. Just to add, I think it is sick of entertainers to use murder victims in their advertisements to sell tickets. Even more sick is the thought of Tex Watson "preaching" against Marilyn Manson music, because it is "evil!" What is worse? Don't know. Just don't know.......

Ballarat BEL Be-In, Easter Sunday '71

From the Nevada State Journal, April 8 1971:  "the gathering was called for by participants in the Laguna Beach Christmastime Happening as a religious experience. They denied later reports that the gathering would be a rock festival saying no live music was planned for the Easter sunrise observation."

*Special thanks to Michael Channels for permission to use the image at left.

Here are two more from the same event that DebS recently found in the LA Freep. One has a map showing festival attendees how to arrive at Ballarat from Laguna Beach:

"According to Superintendent Murphy of Death Valley National Monument, no arrangements have been made with his department for the festival...As we see it, this festival has all the makings of a very bad trip."


Promoters jumped on board and rumors floated that bands like Jethro Tull would be in attendance. BEL member Dion Wright who painted the Taxonomic Mandala made the following statement: "An Easter gathering will take place in Ballarat California, an eighty acre privately owned ghost town...(that) has been offered free of charge. We have represented to (Inyo County) a pilgrimage...including the placing of a Book of Life in the Panamint Valley." 

  Book of Life, not Book of Death (as in Leary's and the Manson's manifestos). Patty has heard the Goler Wash referred to as the "Holy Goler" and has always wondered why: perhaps this is part of the answer. Interesting, no?