K is for KRUQ-FM
Introduction to “K is for KRUQ-FM”
Of all these stories, this is probably the one closest to my heart; I think it shows.
If you lived through the 1980’s, especially in southern California, this is for you. If not, then I hope enough things connect for it to be enjoyable. But that’s the setting.
At that point in our lives, radio was what mattered. My friends and I were all in it, one way or another, whether in the radio program at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, or interning around at one station or another. CD’s were just arriving, so we were all still buying cassettes and making mix tapes for our cars. No internet yet, so our new music came by...radio.
And new music in the 80’s was nuts. Disco was dying, stubbornly, and there was a new energy coming out of New York and London that was loud and lower-class and unruly and fast-fast-faster.
At the center of that, in L.A., was KROQ-FM, a little station out of Pasadena. God, we loved those people. They were smart and clever and they knew all our references and in-jokes. They knew all the bad movies we loved. They were smart-assed and cynical and quick. They were us and we loved them. We didn’t believe in much of anything, but we believed in our DJs; they were like our slightly-older cousins who were so cool, so plugged-in, so in-it but yet not of-it.
So it was almost romantic, in the most cynical way possible.
And so this is for them, for Freddie Snakeskin (especially for Freddie) and Jed the Fish and Rodney and Dusty Street and Poorman and Richard Blade and Swedish Egil and Raechel (the godmother) and Ian and Scott Mason and Dr. Drew and the boss, Rick Carroll.
And for Crispin Glover, because nothing was more 80’s than Crispin Glover.
If you were there, you remember. If you weren’t, well...I hope someday you find magic like we found there.
Oh, and of course, this is all completely fictitious...except the parts that really happened that they never told you about.
“So that’s the traffic, here’s the weather...getting slippery out there, so if you like that kinda thing...it’s 63 and wet in Orangutan County, no reading from San Baboondino or Gorillaside, God knows what’s happened out there! But it’s 65 in the Valley of the Great Apes, 64 and rain at Monkey Beach, and 67 and all moisty at the Simian Center in downtown Los Angeles…” As I was finishing the last line, I flicked on the turntable and Sparks began “Tips for Teens.” I touched the top cart machine, for the Jack Webb Dragnet clip, “Maybe the problem is you’re in a hurry; You’ve grown up on instant orange juice...flip a switch, instant entertainment…” Like clockwork, the drop-in ended a half-second before the song vocals began.
I flicked off the microphone switch and pulled off my headphones.
There was a face at the glass of the studio door. Almost every night there was a face at the door; the station had tapped into something that attracted a certain crowd, a friendly, young crowd, a crowd that seemed to appreciate that this felt like a “local” radio station, not a slick corporate station that had a lot of money.
In fact, if the station had any money at all, they weren’t sharing much of it with me. But the crowd that loved the station liked to share; almost every night, somebody I’d never met before brought by some pizza or burgers or Mexican...or baggies with various pharmaceuticals. That was why we always left the back door unlocked, and that was why there was always a face at the studio door. They brought something, they got to hang around; that was the deal, and it was the salvation of my food budget.
I stood up and went to the door; that was one thing, at least the “on air” studio door was always locked. With the song clock ticking in my head (3:29 left), I opened it to find a tall, pale fellow holding two bags of something that looked about ready to burst through their soggy bottoms.
“Umm, Mr. Alpaca? I’m...I’m…”
I pulled him into the studio and closed it behind him. “Hey, hey, thanks for coming down, especially in the rain.” I pulled out the one extra chair and brushed off the seat. “So, what’ve you got there?”
“Oh, um, it’s…” the man looked harried, confused, like conversation wasn’t something he did often enough to be good at it. “I believe it is called Tye?”
I smiled. “Oh, Thai!” I said, reaching for the bags and setting them down on top of an old Van Halen album. “I love Thai. This will be great.” I paused; this was always the awkward part. “So, how much do I owe you for this?”
The man looked up with alarm. “Oh, no, there is no payment. I am a…” he looked around the studio for the word, his head moving stiffly. “A fan.” He smiled, in a way that made it seem a new experience.
I smiled back, and looked at the man, who was by now fishing through the bags and getting sauce all over Van Halen. He was indeed tall, and thin, with long bony fingers that seemed to work with unusual speed and dexterity. His brown hair was shortish in back but long in front, so that when he leaned over the bags it hung over his eyes, even down below his nose. He was wearing a brown suit that was too short in the legs and arms. He looked more Crispin Glover-ish than Crispin Glover ever did.
I took the plate the fellow handed me and began eating...and realized I had forgotten something. I swallowed a mouthful of pad thai and stuck out my hand. “I’m Sammy Alpaca. Glad to meet you.”
The man nearly dropped his plate. He looked at my hand, looked at his own, dropped his fork onto his plate, and put his hand into mine. The long fingers were cold, dry, a little weird. I hoped there was a wetnap somewhere in the bag; I didn’t have time to get to the sink before the record ended. “I am...Mael,” said the man.
“Well, Mael, glad to meet you,” I said, letting go of his hand and rolling my chair back towards the mic. “Give me just a moment.” I had Missing Persons’ “Walking in LA” cued up, so I flipped it on without opening the mic, then pulled off the Sparks 45, put it back in the sleeve, and filed it. I looked at the wheel, that scribbled nearly-illegible plan that Rick-the-PD had given me for each hour’s music; next was Duran Duran, “Girls on Film.” Really? Oh well, I had a dozen drop-ins I could layer over that one. I popped carts into the two empty machines.
We spent most of the record in silence, eating and smiling politely. Guests with food were usually a little more...talkative. I was wondering if Mael would notice that I was actually much quieter off the air than on. I rarely had to carry the conversation with most visitors, the excitable high schoolers or slightly-coked college guys. This guy wasn’t at all the typical visitor.
Just as the clock went off in my head, Mael started to speak. I smiled, held up a finger, and rolled back over to the mic. “It’s 11 pm in Los Ang-eh-leez,” I said as the song ended cold. “This is the world-famous K-R-U-Q, FM.” I flipped the mic closed and flipped on the turntable with “Girls.” I had 15 wonderful seconds to be subversive. I reached for the #2 cart machine, for the Sunset Boulevard “I am big…” drop-in, followed immediately by the cart in machine #3, Bacall’s “You know how to whistle...”
Not art, maybe, but it worked. I mean, Duran Duran? Jeez. A man can only do so much.
I turned back to Mael. “Sorry, duty calls and all that,” I smiled my gaptoothed smile. “Were you going to ask something?”
Mael was smiling, overjoyed and a little amazed, like a little boy at a circus. “What you do...it is very amazing to watch…” His face looked a bit glazed over.
I was embarrassed at that. I mean, I loved doing this, and I knew I was pretty good at it, but it was still uncomfortable to hear it. There were other jocks, the daytime guys, who drank that kind of praise like beer, and hated being sober. But it was still awkward for me. Yeah, Mr. False Modesty, that’s me.
“So you are a… communicator?” Mael was leaning forward now, the awed glow replaced by an earnestness. “You are skilled in communicating with people?”
I furrowed my brow. “I...suppose that’s true. I’ve always thought of it more like...entertainment, helping people have fun. Make things a little brighter. But yeah, I guess I do that by communicating, yes.”
Mael had pulled a little notebook out of his badly-fitting suit and was scribbling. “So…” he looked up from his notes, and I remember being struck by the cold blue of his eyes. “This...radio station…” he said, like they were unfamiliar words. “How many people are listening to it? Maybe, all of this south California?” He waved his hands around randomly; his voice was very nasal, a little tinny. Not typical.
The wording of the question almost made me forget the song clock in my head; I had commercials coming up. I glanced back at the timer; I had a little over a minute. “Uhh, no,” I said, trying not to look distracted. “That would be nice, we might all be making some money...but no, we get good ratings but, no, not all of Southern California. There are lots of radio stations, so there isn’t one station that everybody listens to. And there’s probably a good number of people who don’t listen to any radio at all.”
Mael was scribbling frantically; I noticed a frown on his face. He looked up abruptly. “So they are not required to listen?”
“Uhh, no,” I was wheeling the chair back to the mic. I started to flip the switch open, then paused and looked across at Mael. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Mael started to answer, but I held up a finger, and flipped the mic open. “That’s Girls on Film, from Duran Duran Duran Duran Duran...maybe it gets better if you say it more times. Before that was Missing Persons, Walking in LA.” He glanced over at Mael. “And if any of you have a missing person, well, come down to the station, I may have found him.” I flipped off the mic and pushed the #1 cart machine with the beer commercial in it. I loaded the next two spots into the two other cart machines. I felt a need to be a little more direct here; lots of times in this studio it had gotten weird, but this was starting to get beyond weird.
“So, quick answer,” I pointed at Mael. “You’re not from around here?”
Mael did another of those “am-I-doing-this-right?” smiles. “No, not from here. From long away.”
I pushed the button for the second commercial. I tried to give Mael a comically-quizzical look. “So-o-o… how long away?”
Mael looked up at the ceiling, and seemed to sigh. “Long. Long away. Long from home.”
We looked at each other until I had to start the third spot, then cue up a record. “You...want to tell me...where?” I said, looking up from the board at my visitor.
Mael looked at me thoughtfully, and for the first time, I saw him as something other than an eccentric groupie. “You would not know. It is longer away than any of your people have ever been.”
I damn near missed the end of the commercial. I flipped the turntable switch and started Bowie’s “Cat People.” Hell of a song to pick for right now, Rick...thanks. There was a long intro, ripe for a drop-in, but I just didn’t much feel like it .
“You want any more of this...curry?” Mael asked, reaching into the bag.
I tried to play it cool for the rest of the hour. Mael asked lots of questions about tower heights and frequencies. That was really “Spacin’ Jason” the engineer’s thing, but I BS’d as best I could. All the time, Mael was scribbling furiously, while I was tap-dancing my way through the playlist and the commercials and wondering what (if anything) I should do with this guy.
It went quickly. Soon, just after I’d started spinning “Shock the Monkey,” there was a familiar knock on the door; it was Rickey Lane, our midnight-to-3 jock. While Mael watched, I got up to let her in. “Sammy...” she purred at me, giving me the daily almost-too-long Rickey hug. She looked like she usually did, like she’d just woken up from a three-day drunk, more makeup on the left eye than the right, a stretch top so tight that she was burning calories just breathing, eight-inch leopard-print heels. “How’s your Thursday, baby?” It always amazed me; she looked like trash, but she had the most amazing voice, like warm butter. Radio is wonderful like that.
“Hey, Rickey… this is Mael, tonight’s guest from our ever-expanding fanbase.” Mael stood up and wasn’t done giving her the up-and-down look before she seized him in one of those hugs. “Oh, wonderful! Sammy always has best fans!”
His whole body went rigid, his long fingers frozen into claws. At first he pulled his head back from her, but about fifteen seconds into the hug, he gave up and buried his face into the endless pile of bleached-blonde hair on her shoulder.
He dropped his notebook. I reached out with my foot and kicked it under the console, out of sight.
A commotion in the hallway (the studio door was still open) finally broke her hold on him. “Girls, come on, no goofing!” Rickey barked. Almost immediately, the doorway was filled with three barely-teenage girls in school uniforms. Cute girls. Cute young girls. Cute too-young girls.
Rickey’s entourage (today you’d call them, what, her posse?)...that’s not actually the word that we usually used around the station, but it’s the most printable one. There were stories about it, like Spacin’ Jason the engineer coming in at 2am and finding naked young girls running around the station during Rickey’s shift. Yes, we should have asked some questions but, hey, it was the 80’s and we all had, you know, our own issues. Nobody asked any questions.
I mean, we were still playing The Knack all the time.
Rickey introduced Mael to the girls; they were instantly taken with him. “Oh my God are you Crispin Glover?” they all seemed to ask at once. They pulled his long fingers. “Come play chase with us!” Mael looked confused and a little panicked. Rickey put a hand on his face, her long gold-flecked nails brushing his ear. “They like you. Maybe you could play a little?”
Mael nodded in mute desperation. On the spur of the moment, I made a decision. I waved at him, “Hey, Mael, if you can, come by tomorrow night. Let’s talk more!” Mael was already halfway down the hallway, six small hands pulling him on. He nodded, something like fear on his face.
I closed the studio door and rushed past Rickey and back behind the board, fading out the Peter Gabriel and fading in the Jetson’s Theme; I would go out with that one tonight. I flipped the mic open: “Okay, mouseketeers, that’s it for me tonight, I’m Sammy Alpaca, I’ll see you tomorrow night at 9, and I leave you in the warm and friendly hands of Rickey Lane… And one thing before I go.” I pressed the cart button and played the “Thing from Another World” drop-in:
Every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking.
I made sure to reach down and pick up the notebook before I slid away from the board and made my way into the dark.
Before I came in the next night, I spent hours going over Mael’s small notebook. It was crammed, with notes begun long before last night. Unfortunately, his handwriting was terrible; fortunately, his notes were in English...maybe as a way to practice the language?
Because by now, I was convinced that Mael was indeed from somewhere else, and maybe somewhere actually out there, you know? I was open to that kind of thing. Why not? I always thought it was kind of arrogant to think we were the only things in the whole universe who had mastered fire and CDs and music videos.
But the notebook was disturbing. There were lots of badly-drawn maps of Earth and the Falklands and Los Angeles and even Pasadena. Badly-drawn diagrams of Commodore computers and football plays involving a marching band. A really lousy sketch of what the caption claimed was Claus von Bulow. There were pages and pages about human puberty, especially females.
The more I read, the more convinced I was that, if Mael had a mission, it wasn’t friendly. The words “invasion” and “assimilation” (each spelled in multiple creative ways) came up several times. Lots of perverse (and kind of childish, to be honest) potential uses of the human race were listed, with Mael’s apparent favorites highlighted with lots of stars and hearts and exclamation points. Several specifically focused on David Hasselhoff.
I wondered if Mael was some kind of scout. He had been at random places all over the planet earlier this year; Washington DC, Nevada, Tokyo, northeast Brazil, Louisiana, Afghanistan. He was apparently gathering information and, as best I could tell, doing an absolutely awful job of it. By the time I got to his last page, it was clear to me he was some sort of spy, and from the notes, a spy for something or someone not of this Earth.
The future of the human race was at stake. What could I, a mere nighttime disc jockey, do?
So I napped for a couple of hours, then set up a mission control center on my yellow vinyl-top kitchen table. I pulled out a short stack of notebook paper and began to write questions; Who needed to know? Who could I share the notebook with? Who could be trusted? If I notified the government, would they take action, or bury the evidence? I mean, I had seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” you know?
After a while, I realized that, among all my other questions, I had written the same one about six times: Why should anyone believe me?
And as the late November sun began to go down, I realized something else; this whole thing sounded like a radio station promotional stunt. Aliens in Pasadena...sure, okay. And they were here because they wanted to play Perkins Palace, right? More terrifying details, and ticket information, right after this!
I leaned back and shook my head. Nobody would believe this. Not even Rickey would believe this, and she could talk for hours about the Trilateral Commission and Nelson Rockefeller and the New World Order. No, this was on me. Mael was the point man, and so I would have to take out Mael.
That didn’t sound do-able. I could barely stomach getting my cats spayed.
But if I could somehow taint Mael’s information, make the Earth sound like it was too tough a place to invade...maybe they’d go someplace else? Find a softer target?
I would have to find a way to influence the reporting Mael was doing. I would have to plug Mael into something or someone that would scare him deeply, deeply enough that he would warn off his extraterrestrial overlords.
I thought about it for about half a second. There was but one man who was perfectly positioned, by choice, chance, or destiny, to fulfill this mission.
Maxey Munchausen. Our weekend late-night DJ.
Maxey was the SoCal scene, all by himself. He had been a child actor; his mom had worked in the studios doing something behind the scenes, and Maxey was a bright kid, small for his age so he could play younger, and he could take direction and remember lines. Later on, he was an indie music columnist; then, he ended up managing a small but trendy Hollywood club that booked lots of British groups and also local groups. Now he was on the radio; nobody at the station would say it publicly, but we all knew (well, hell, at least I knew) that if there had been no Maxey, there would have been no “world famous KRUQ.” The music that was making us famous would have arrived in LA eventually, sure, but later...and probably not at our station first.
See, one thing I’ve learned from being in radio is how small the music scene in LA is (or was, at least). There were a few key clubs, a few key publications, a few key people, and a few key radio stations (like we had become), and if you could get your music to any of them, you had a foot halfway in the door.
And Maxey was inside all of those doors; the clubs, the papers, the players, and now the radio. He’d been at the station four or five years longer than I had. That doesn’t sound like much, but people treated me like an old guy after just two years; by those standards, Maxey was older than dirt. He really was older than literally all of us, and looked even older than he really was; he’d started balding young, and had a less-than-great toupee that was a red somewhere between auburn and tomato.
The thing about Maxey was, he knew he was odd. He was short, not handsome, bad hair, squeaky, raspy voice. He knew all that. But he loved music, especially music and musicians who (like him, I guess) weren’t mainstream, who weren’t glossy or slick or well-financed. And he had a hell of an ear; that’s a gift. So when the Ramones came out of New York, and the Clash and Sex Pistols busted out of London, Maxey was the guy in LA standing there with open arms. He dropped their names in his columns, booked them in his club...and when he got to the radio station, he started playing their music; sometimes just cassettes the bands would mail him. And all the local bands who were listening to the Ramones and the Clash and the Sex Pistols and saying “Hell, yeah!”, he played their stuff too. Nobody else was playing it, just us, thanks to Maxey.
Maxey was also a hedonist, but a gentle, almost innocent hedonist. He not only embraced punk (and, later, new wave) music, but he embraced the lifestyle; the anti-establishment stuff (the establishment had never done him any favors, I guess), the theatrical (or real) violence, the shameless sex, the excessive excess. It was all good fun to him, as long as you didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t want or deserve to be hurt; I remember being surprised when he stopped playing one band’s music because, in his words, “they did some bad things.”
But I also remember the first time I met him. It was my first month at the station, and it was also my first real Hollywood party. It was at a stupendous house up in the tops of the hills above Sunset, and I had to walk uphill about a mile after I parked. The house was huge but it still felt crowded; maybe 250 people? One of our other jocks, Billy Shazam, found me in the crowd and began to introduce me around. I met lots of people that I’d only seen on TV or in movies or at concerts.
You know, there are a lot of famous actors who are pretty damn short. Maybe you knew that.
Billy asked me if I wanted to meet Maxey. Of course I did; I was reading Maxey’s columns long before he went on radio, and his radio show was required listening for a music nerd. Billy led me to a hallway across the room, and the hallway itself was like two blocks long. Billy opened the last door on that hallway; I followed him in. There was a big disco ball on the ceiling, throwing light everywhere. The music was blasting “Neal and Jack and Me.” There was a ten foot long glass table near the door, with what must have been twenty pounds of cocaine on it. In the middle of this huge room was...what? A huge cushion? A bunch of mattresses? It was hard to tell and probably didn’t really matter, because whatever it was, it was all covered with a whole lot of naked people.
I watched Billy scanning the floor; then he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the middle. I walked carefully between and across arms and legs and necks and buttocks, mouthing a continuous stream of “pardon me’s” that were inaudible because of the deafening King Crimson. Finally we stood over what appeared (in the strobing light) to be a stunning long-legged redhead and a stunning long-legged blonde, laying side by side facing down. Between them, right about hip-level, was an odd pile of reddish hair. Billy reached down and tapped on the pile. There was a head under the pile; it surfaced and turned up to face us.
It was Maxey Munchausen.
His smile was cherubic. He managed to free a hand from under the blonde and reach up towards me. “Oh, hi! How are you? Are you new?”
I flipped the turntable switch and The Motels’ “So L.A.” started. 24 seconds of intro; so much time! I flipped open the mic: “11:14 on a Friday night, boys and girls...I know you need something; if it’s a song request, call the flaming smegma line at 213-555-1067.” Closed the mic, punched the cart for good old Jack: “This is the city, Los Angeles, California…” And up came Martha.
I was feeling good--tired but good--maybe because Mael hadn’t come in yet, and I had less than an hour left. Maybe I had blown the whole thing out of proportion. Maybe he was just a harmless loony who would never show again? There were no shortage of odd-looking guys wandering LA at night with notebooks of ravings and conspiracies. I’d have to ask Rickey how he had done with her girls after I left last night. Wish I’d gotten more than four hours of sleep; maybe it was all for nothing.
I had remembered his notebook; I’d put it back on the floor just almost out of sight from where he would sit. If he came.
And then he came.
As I let him into the studio, he looked a little bleary, worse for wear and tear. He smelled like Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, and his face was bright red. But he seemed really happy.
“Hello again, Sammy Alpaca! Hello!” he grinned as he fell into the chair. “Thank you for letting me again visit you again!”
I put my finger to my lips and stepped around to the other side of the console; Mael put his own shaky finger to his own lips and grinned broadly. I pulled on the headphones and opened the mic. “Soooo LA, isn’t it though...The Motels, on the world-famous KRUQ, and before that, the Go-Go’s with Speeding--don’cha be doing that in LA, no sir--and before that Adam Anthill and Toodie Goo Shoes, and Talk Talk committed by, well guess who, Talk Talk... and hey, here’s something that’ll straighten you out…”
I closed the mic, pulled off the earphones, and punched the cart machine that had the Dianetics commercial; it was the first of three, so I had a minute and a half. I cued up the next record (Clash, cool!), and finally looked up at my visitor. “So, Mael, you look...relaxed!” I tried to look relaxed myself.
He was pointing at me, his finger wavering just slightly. “You know, you are very...impressive with this. You are very good. The girls say you are the best JD here.” His smile was borderline goofy. I think my alien guest was a little buzzed.
I pressed the second cart, a beer commercial. “DJ. I think you mean DJ. And did the girls show you a good time last night?”
He put a bony and surprisingly red hand to his equally red forehead. “Oh those girls! Those girls are crazy! We were out in the…” he was searching for a word again. “...parking lot! Yes, parking lot, in the rain, until 3 am. Miss Lane had to gather them all up and drive them home, or we might still be there!” He started to giggle, which for him was an odd combination of chipmunk chattering and gargling.
I punched the third cart, and watched as he tried to sit up straight. “Oh Sammy, oh Sammy, very important...did you find a little notebook?” He held out an unsteady hand, his thumb and forefinger trying to show me the size of the object.
“Gee, Mael, no,” I lied effortlessly. “Maybe if fell out when you met Rickey last night. Men tend to lose things during those hugs, you know?”
I thought it was funny, but Mael was too busy being alarmed. He looked around and then disappeared down onto the floor. I took the opportunity to open the mic; I had copy to read after that last spot: “...and if you make it down to Michael’s any day before Thanksgiving and mention KRUQ, you can get one free well drink. That’s Michael’s, on La Cienega.” I hit the turntable switch. “Time to Rock the Catbox, with The Clash, on the world-famous K...oh, you know who…” Mic off, headphones off.
His head reappeared, as did his smile. “It was right here!” he held it up triumphantly as he climbed unsteadily back into the chair. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost this. I must be much more careful!” He slid it shakily into his inside jacket pocket.
I gave him my best exaggerated smile and held two thumbs up. I was breaking Rick’s precious music wheel; I was playing the 6:11 version of “Casbah,” not the radio edit. I needed more time to get Mael to talk. “So, Mael, we’ve got a few minutes here… just what can humble Sammy do for you?” I rocked back in the chair, put my hands on my chest.
Mael started to lean forward, wavered with his balance a little, and decided to sit back instead. But he was looking intently at me. “Sammy, Sammy…” He looked away dramatically, like he was trying to convince me that what he was about to say was important and difficult to share. But it came across like acting. “I am going to tell you something crazy. But I need your help, and…” he looked up at me, but his eyes weren’t focusing well. “I trust you, Sammy Alpaca.”
Okay, here we go. He’d laid down a card; my turn now.
“Gee, Mael,” I tried to not lay it on too thick. “I’m really flattered by that. I’d like to help you.”
He smiled, and clapped his long hands together. “Ah, that is grand...yes, grand. I thought maybe you would tell me to ‘take a chill pill,’ you know?”
“The girls taught you that one, didn’t they?”
“Those girls, they were...totally bitching, yes?” He looked at me eagerly. “They told me I was, uh...for sure, not a dweeb.”
I kept a straight face. I swear I did. My lips were pressed so tightly together I thought I was going to break my face. “No, Mael, you are “for sure” not a dweeb. But how can I help you?”
He leaned forward again, steadying himself on the chair arm. The words blurted out. “Sammy Alpaca...I am from another planet.”
He burped slightly in the middle of “planet.”
I didn’t laugh. I swear. “Wow, Mael, that’s...that’s a pretty wild thing to say. You seem really, um, human to me.” I felt the corners of my lips curling up. I checked the clock; about three minutes left in the song.
He laughed a little. “Well, yes, I was the best at it.” He leaned back and stroked his bony chin. “There were six of us in the training...four years, you know, every day...and in the end, they said I was the most...human. So I got to go.” He was nodding now, his eyebrows raised. He seemed pleased with himself.
“Soooo...” I needed to move this along. “Why did you come? How can I help?”
Mael shook his head head as if to clear it, then winced like he wished he hadn’t. “I am sorry, I am having trouble concentrating. I did not rest much last night…” He leaned forward again. “Sammy, we have much wisdom we could share with your planet. But we need to find...partners, people who can communicate with your people, people who control the means of communication. You are such a man, yes?”
I sat back, my eye on the clock; two minutes left. This was where it got delicate. “I could help you communicate, yes, and God knows we could use some wisdom, you know?” I folded my hands together; hopefully I was looking thoughtful. “And I have a decent-sized audience, I suppose…” I tried to look like a sudden brainstorm had struck me mightily. “But,” I leaned forward suddenly, “in order to reach the important people in our culture, the leaders of tomorrow, the young ones who would listen to you…I need to connect you with...someone else.”
Mael leaned forward so hard he almost came out of the chair. “You would do this for me? For us? For our cause… I mean…” He gestured back and forth between us. “Our cause, of course, my people and your people!”
I leaned back. I had a minute left; the timing needed to work, and I was a little early. Stretch it a bit. “I can introduce you to a man who...who…” I paused, pretending to search for words; I was really counting seconds. “A man who is deeply connected and respected by the people in a way I can only dream of!” It was coming out thick now, like spoiled milk, but I was almost home. “A man who can not only reach the people for you, but can blend you into their culture, into their world, so that you would not need to communicate with them as an outsider. He could help you become one of them, and they would listen to you as their friend, and perhaps as...their leader!”
Mael reached out, his forearms resting on the top of the board. He looked ready to grab me by the shirtcollar. “Who is such a man? You must help me meet him!”
I put my finger up, and reached down to start the second turntable. The Clash’s drumbeat faded into different drums and a strumming acoustic guitar: “Ground control to Major Tom…”
The studio door opened, unlocked with a key. As far as I knew, there were only three keys to that door; Rick the PD had one, Spacin’ Jason the engineer had one, and only one DJ had one.
My savior had come, on cue, in black leather pants, a black leather jacket, a bright red shirt with a white collar, and a yellow polka-dot bowtie. His hair, as always, was amazing.
“Hi, I’m Maxey Munchausen. You must be Mael.”
It had taken some doing to pull Maxey out of a club on a Friday night. His radio shifts were Saturday and Sunday nights, 8 to midnight, so Friday was his night to be out and around. But he always sort of liked me; maybe he somehow realized that I knew how important he was, even if I never told him. Plus I promised to play some Bowie. He loved Bowie.
He swept Mael out of the studio. All I had told Maxey on the phone was that Mael was a foreign journalist who wanted to learn all he could about the Hollywood club culture, and he would be willing to follow Maxey everywhere and do anything.
Anything was pretty much what Mael got. Over the several weeks, he got covered in some unknown fluid at a Circle Jerks show at Madame Wong’s, got beat up at Al’s Bar down by the river, was a one-night-only-guitar tech for Black Flag at the Ukrainian Hall on Melrose, got blackout drunk with Nikki Sixx behind the Troubadour and got to try on his 16-inch platforms, made it all the way out to the Reseda Country Club and back, sang onstage with The Last at the Music Machine on Pico, got kidnapped at a Motels’ New Year’s Eve show at the Beverly, and was found by Maxey three days later naked and giggling near the Hollywood sign. And those were only the things Maxey told me about. He also told me that Mael had gone to Bluebird Office Supply downtown and bought a whole case of little notebooks.
I also saw the pictures Maxey brought into the station. Mael and Maxey with Debbie Harry, Mael and Maxey with the Go-Go’s (at least, Gina and Kathy), Mael and Maxey with Joan Jett, Mael and Maxey with Stiv Bators and Iggy Pop. In each picture, Mael’s hair and clothes got a little crazier. In the last picture, one with Exene Cervenka outside Cantor’s, he was shirtless, his long hair spiked straight up, with a chain between two pierced nipples and a lightning-bolt tattoo on his face. He was smiling but a little glazed.
I didn’t see Mael again. There was one night on the request line when I got a call from a “Bobby Sox” who requested “88 Lines About 44 Women.” I knew it was him. He sounded happy and buzzed and very tired.
One evening Maxey dropped in during my shift at the station and said he hadn’t seen Mael in a couple of weeks, and wondered if we should check LAX to see if he had left the country. I couldn’t tell him that, if Mael was departing, he wouldn’t be using the airport.
That night I played Elvis’ “Peace, Love, and Understanding” and dedicated it to him. First and only time I’ve ever dedicated a song myself. Of course, I dropped in the line from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”:
“And so far, there is no reasonable cause for alarm…”
The invasion never happened, of course. Decades later, when the reports and intercepted transmissions were declassified [and heavily redacted] and many websites were launched, the following half-truths came to light:
Apparently the aliens had been monitoring the radio station as a means of gathering information; thus, the attack plans were confused and delayed due to their inability to locate places such as Orangutan County, Canyon of the Lost Virgins, Rancho Cipromycin, or El Morte on the regional maps they had prepared. This spread concern among leadership that Mael’s advance information was dangerously faulty.
The station’s multiple mentions of additional previously-unknown places such as The Simian Center, San Baboondino, and Gorillaside raised alarm that large areas of the region were actually dominated by apes. A previous attempt by the aliens to assimilate an ape-dominated planet had apparently not gone well; there were some leaked entries in the captain’s logs about his ex-wife and some “furry natives” but these were eventually officially dismissed as fictitious.
Anthropological reports, regularly filed by Mael, contained eccentric descriptions of human beings, with an inordinate number of pictures of Joey Ramone and a shirtless John Lydon, and several dossiers of pictures of Wendy O. Williams. Several dossiers.
Mael’s advanced technology allowed him to broadcast back to the mothership a school Christmas dance at St. Lucinda’s Preparatory School for Girls, which was being MC’d by Maxey Munchausen. However, Mael apparently did not fully understand the technology, and so he inadvertently also broadcast his activities after the dance with Maxey and several St. Lucinda’s students (whose names were redacted), which involved a midnight raid on a local animal shelter, a small fire set outside an Encino house being rented by Stephen King, and vandalism of an unnamed diner on La Cienega.
Of most concern to the aliens were the increasingly-incoherent personal videologs filed by Mael. They were filled with long reflections on Rik Mayall and plane crashes and wars on drugs and Vincent Price, plus a particularly passionate and angsty report on the song “Lola,” along with several short sad love poems he read about “Lisa” and “Kimberley” and “Michelle” (who were later identified as St. Lucinda students). One log apparently contained only Mael’s oral interpretation of the entire lyrics of Tonio K’s “H-A-T-R-E-D” and Nena’s “99 Luftballons”; on another, he read the entirety of Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog.” I found it interesting to learn that the aliens’ physiology had apparently evolved such that their emotions interacted closely with their sense of smell; there was a notation from the captain that Mael’s journals stunk of “alienation, anger, and desperation.”
The garbled and distressed final log from Mael about the “beliefs and attitudes of the planet’s natives” so panicked the alien leadership that they became fearful for their own safety should they actually land on the planet, and thus the entire fleet warped back to wherever it was they came from. Long away.
And Mael?
In the end, it wasn’t the cocaine that got Mael; I was told he could do a line from one end of a Russian blonde to the other and get nothing other than amusingly jittery. It wasn’t AIDS that got him, either; his species apparently had an immunity that, had his body remained intact, might have been invaluable for research. It wasn’t the alcohol, either; though it did turn various bodily extremities an extremely bright and angry red (which made him exceptionally popular at high school parties), he could absorb massive and apparently near-continuous amounts with little more than an ongoing goofy buzz and a little flatulence. His particular flatulence was uncommonly disturbing, however, which made his party-popularity often short-lived.
What got Mael were the high school girls. I mean, goes without saying, right?
They found what was left of him, mostly ashes in a vaguely humanoid-shaped pile, in the alley behind the cafeteria of the prep school. He had apparently literally burned out. There were an endless number of young girls, and only one Mael. He just couldn’t keep up and died trying. They said the ashes smelled of marijuana and Love’s Baby Soft.
Maxey Munchausen’s role in the entire affair was kept out of the papers, at the request of St. Lucinda’s Preparatory School for Girls, the animal shelter, and Maxey himself.
Yes, I know, I did feel a little bit bad about Mael...that old movie cliche about “if things had been different, we might have been friends” did come into my head more than once during those weeks. I guess you’ll have to forgive me for doubting someone who talks about imparting wisdom but has a notebook full of words like invasion and assimilation, even poorly spelled.
I’m not saying I didn’t think about it. I mean, it wasn’t a great year; they had just closed the Whiskey...Blondie and The Jam had both broken up...John Belushi was dead...and those Stryper guys were playing at Gazzarri’s...so part of me said, okay fine, just take the whole damn planet.
But no. No. There was still The Cure and Thriller and Bowie was coming back and then those U2 guys… No. You can’t have my world just yet.
As for me...well, my heroism resulted in a lifetime contract with the radio station and a promotion to afternoon drive (and to program director), along with multiple large cash rewards and honorariums from the government and other interested parties. When a large corporation began inquiring about purchasing the station, I stepped in and purchased it myself, and it now resides atop the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area radio ratings charts. Me, I now reside in the gentle hills of old Pasadena, in a 6000-square-foot Craftsman home with four cats and my manservant, Catherwood. I still do afternoon drive, just for fun.
[loud sarcastic laugh from over the writer’s shoulder]
-for Freddie Snakeskin, who could’ve told it better…
