Pleasure Island

 

Podcast star Matt Walsh wrote a book titled 'The Devil's Pleasure Palace' that explains how German intellectuals corrupted U.S. liberal arts. It put me in mind of innocent Pinocchio seduced by thespian Honest John, who handed him to an evil cabal that operated Pleasure Island. Boys were turned into jackasses by tempting them with total liberty — the fun of smashing windows, strong drink, cigars, and pool tables. They sprouted long gray ears and tails and transformed into braying donkeys to be roped and tamed and labor the rest of their lives as beasts of burden. Pinocchio escaped (with long ears and a donkey tail) to be swallowed by a whale and reunited with his father who was searching for him.

 

Back to Walsh. He says German critical theory caused the disaster of underachieving hippies, drug use, antiwar riots, casual sex, and loud rock concerts. That was my generation. I was slightly out of step with my socialist peers. Filmmakers are capitalists, need mountains of money to make stuff. Directing was a profound pinnacle of honor and exaltation at times. But sensible people don't fritter their lives away in low budget filmmaking. It took 20 years to figure out that Hollywood didn't need me, another 30 years to discover that self published novelists starve and sell no books. Did pleasure corrupt yours truly?

 

I don't think so. It was hell trying to make progress as a film director. Writing was worse. I'd like to edit some of my experiences with women, although I doubt anyone knows a winning formula that doesn't involve becoming a tame beast of burden, subsisting on steel cut oats and leafy green vegetables.

 

I wanted a life of pleasure. I failed to achieve it and settled for a life of adventure, waving my donkey ears at grease paint evangelists like Walsh. I carried a gun because I had to, never shot anyone, partly because they knew I was armed, alert, and angry about being threatened. Thankfully, it was only a brief season of alarm. I didn't want the job of a warrior. I write about war because it takes life twice — those who are killed and those who kill, forever changed by killing. Taxation is worse than war, no army big enough to stop the elected thespians chosen by donkeys braying for pleasure.

 

Ignore the donkeys. Pleasure Island is broken and bankrupt. The Federal Reserve is holding $7 trillion in Treasurys backed by the taxing power, plus $2 trillion more in agency bonds backed by U.S. mortgages. Everything has to be sold at a discount fairly fast before interest rates float higher.

 

Sure, I had enormous pleasure and pain, while it was available to me as a handsome young blade in a golden era of modern history, the 60s and 70s, culminating in disco. Go ahead, laugh. I had a splendid adventure in Milwaukee, Madison, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Sydney. That's how I grew donkey ears. In today's scorched earth urban combat, it's too dangerous to go anywhere as a feeble sage.

 

It's pleasant work to start an important project in a nice, quiet, rural environment. The bugs are awful and have to be fought with fly strips, swatters, tweezers, and band-aids, but that's a seasonal problem. Steam Punk will roll along through multiple seasons, the ultimate pleasure of taking my foot off the gas and driving a leisurely narrative when I feel like it. I don't even care if it finishes. That's serenity.

 

It occurs to me that pleasure is good, feeling like a jackass occasionally is good, and a spectrum of stern challenges bestows the distinct satisfaction that one's life was full to the brim. Nothing omitted or lost. There's a Sinatra song comparing life to a barrel of wine, from the brim to the dregs, which I admit will darken my final decline, unable to write. Till then, a gentle serenity of vision.

 

UPDATE 6/3 — My serenity lasted less than eight hours. A week ago, radio superstar Alice Cooper told a stupendous deadpan joke on "Nights With Alice Cooper" about American wieners and German sausages that made me laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes. I wrote a note to say thanks and acknowledge separately that his story about a 3-year-old granddaughter was heartwarming as heck. The bum read my email on the air last night in a dull, unemotional fake German accent. I was stunned, hearing my words syndicated to 300 FM stations. After he read the email, he identified me by the sender name (wasn't in the text) and said: "Wolf DeVoon. What a great name! But it'd be better if it was Wolf Da Moon."

 

Reminds me of something P.G. Wodehouse wrote:

"Just when a chap is feeling particularly braced with things in general, Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping."