Hex Death

"LOS ANGELES (PNS)—Richard M. Zhlubb, night manager of the Orpheus Theatre on Melrose, has come out against what he calls 'irresponsible use of the harmonica.' Or, actually, 'harbodica,' since Manager Zhlubb suffers from a chronic adenoidal condition, which affects his speech. Friends and detractors alike think of him as 'the Adenoid.' Anyway, Zhlubb states that his queues, especially for midnight showings, have fallen into a state of near anarchy because of the musical instrument.

'It's been going on ever since our Bengt Ekerot / Maria Casarès Film Festival,' complains Zhlubb, who is fiftyish and jowled, with a permanent five-o'clock shadow (the worst by far of all the Hourly Shadows), and a habit of throwing his arms up into an inverted 'peace sign,' which also happens to be semaphore code for the letter U, exposing in the act uncounted yards of white French cuff.

'Here, Richard,' jeers a passerby, 'I got your French cuff, right here,' meanwhile exposing himself in the grossest possible way and manipulating his foreskin in a manner your correspondent cannot set upon his page.

Manager Zhlubb winces slightly. 'That's one of the ringleaders, definitely,' he confides. 'I've had a lot of trouble with him. Him and that Steve Edelman.' He pronounces it 'Edelbid.' 'I'b dot afraid to dabe dabes.'"

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

JJ: You know that movie RICHARD with Richard M. Dixon? Well you know Nixon went through a big change after over after he lost in California?
MM: A sex change?
JJ: Well, whatever. And he went to psychiatrists and all that. Well in RICHARD they portrayed that with a Clockwork Orange thing with him sitting in a theater with his eyes clamped open watching his 'Checkers' speech and him barfing.

- from an Interview magazine exchange
with Malcolm McDowell, c. 1972

"In the backseat of this solar system is the planet of OB. It has 5:00 o'clock shadow and a thousand ski-slope noses for mountains. Its orbit is so sneaky and wishy-washy that it defies the astronomers' calculations. Every day on this planet is blue monday and every season the fall. Its surface is the size of Brooklyn. Its craters were once filled with chicken soup but that needn't bother us here. It is a bug among planets and leaves in its wake a trail of brown stains. As it moves closer and closer to earth a dying race of Noxons await the signal of their Noxious. It has already begun. I mean, you know, the nightmare for our solar system."

- Ishmael Reed, from "Cab Calloway Stands In for
the Moon, or D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful"

"We're working on a 'Flush for Nixon' campaign, so when he says 'I accept' at the Republican Convention, you run into your bathroom and flush the toilet. We figure if we can have like 30,000 toilets flush around the country, we can drain the Potomac."

- Abbie Hoffman