A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (6 page)

Whenever something unbelievable happens, I always hear some fucking sportscaster or news anchor (read: talking head) say, “the world’s best fiction writers could not have come up with something as outlandish as this!” Um, I hope no one minds, but I strenuously object to that. You see, a good fiction writer could come up with stuff like that, whatever “that” actually happens to be. It does not take much in this day and age to create something completely and unabashedly false and fantastic. It is real life that is constantly throwing us for a loop, with chaos and entropy and all the crap that comes with it. Real life cannot be controlled—it can only be lived and adapted to, equally. It is when people start meddling and proceed to build myths out of molehills that shit gets complicated. You see, people wrote the Bible. People created God. The problem erupts when you try to sell it the other way around. So “the world’s best fiction writers” could come up with a concept like God and all the trimmings, and we suffer aeons later when the fiction is treated as fact and we allow the witless to determine what we should do to evolve.

There it is: control. The faithful cannot handle when others try to do something without invoking God’s name, so they try to control the outcome or its completion. It is my belief that man (or woman—I want to be inclusive) will go nowhere as long as the Holy Monkey is on our back. We will never make it to the next level of existence with flawed thinking. There is a reason that anyone with any reason resists the so-called intelligent design theory, and that is because it is not a theory. The faithful say that in order to be fair, this theory should be taught in school right alongside the theory of evolution. Well, you holy yocals, here is the rub: the theory of evolution is a scientific theory because it is verifiable. That is the whole reason it is a scientific theory. Intelligent design is not science—it is mythology that is not based on factual data that can be observed and tested. You are so busy trying to be right and so set in your ways that you never bothered to learn the actual definition of the term “scientific theory,” and I am so disgusted with your ignorant behavior that I will not provide it for you herein. Let me just say that the definition does not involve the words hope, guess, myth, unverifiable, or bullshit. So keep your hopeless guess-ridden unscientific myth out of my school system, and I will do my best not to throw shit at you just after your gorgeous buffets on Easter Sunday.

My friends, I do not want to be an asshole. I do not want to sound like a dick-faced hypocrite. But I am also not going to sugarcoat a bunch of fucked up delusions just so they taste better when I try to swallow them. If faith works for you, please understand that I will not judge you for that—in fact, I envy you. I wish I could suspend my reality that far over the precipice, like that dream I have in the mountain that I will never comprehend. But I am saddled with that prick of a burden named cynicism. Does that make me a hypocrite when it comes to my adherence to the paranormal? Maybe—actually, more like yes, absolutely. And yet who knows? Like I said, I know what I saw and experienced. We will get to all of that—and I do mean all of it—soon enough.

Sometimes I wonder why I am trying so hard to get to that cave in the mountain. I wonder about who that voice belongs to, the voice that is so concerned about me wiping my feet in a dirty-ass cave. I wonder why those zombies were protecting him or even if they were protecting him. What lies beyond that doorway? What is that man’s name? Who would have ever thought I would have the balls to base-jump? Sure, I am in a mountain, but that does not mean it is not equally terrifying. But where does this fantasy come from, anyway? Maybe I will never know, and quite frankly I am alright with that.

In the end we all need that rope to keep us tethered to our lives, leading us through our own strange caverns and pitfalls until we eventually find that faceless man in the mountain to give us the clues we think we deserve. Maybe my dream is some kind of accepted version of St. Peter, guarding the pearly gates with his ledger and his questions. That could mean there is a bit of my sodden brain that desperately wants to have that kind of faith. I do not know why—maybe to belong, maybe to have some semblance of order and dictation. Maybe I am just getting to that age when it feels easier to stop fighting the waves and let the current sweep me out into the deeper pieces, so to speak. But my fucking mind will never relent to that: I know me way too well. I have been finding ways to break rules and bend popular thought my whole life, armed only with uncommonly common sense. Hell, I even have a hard time giving a red shit about wearing underwear with jeans, for fuck’s sake. You think I could ever give in and buy the thought of a spiritual overseer up in the cumulus keeping score on all the monkeys on his blue-green marble? Not only keeping score, but ready at any minute to file us in the “ETERNAL BURN” folder for something as irrelevant as eating the wrong meat on the wrong day while also working on another verboten day? Maybe I myself could not make this up, but somebody else did. I know this in my shitty little heart, and I will never submit.

Ever.

I am no Einstein. Hell, I am no actual Albert Einstein. But I do know this: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” That, my friends, is a quote from the actual Albert Einstein. What I have tried to say in a chapter he says with one complex sentence. If I could be allowed to act as a posthumous Einstein hype man for a brief but glorious second or two, I rest my fucking case. We will have a little more from our friend with the crazy hair later on in the book, but for now I am content in my happiness that, at least on paper (more pun intended), he and I appear to be on the same page (that was the end of said pun).

Oh, by the way—my computer just suggested that Einstein’s quote was grammatically unsound. Cheeky fucker.

Lately people have been asking me a lot of questions about death, most likely because I have lost a lot of people extremely close to me in the last four years. However, they never ask me if we come back as a spirit. It always comes down to heaven and the dead stampede into the great corral. I keep my answers succinct and solid: I have no idea what happens when you die. I could not care less, really. You say maybe this is just because of all the misery and shit I went through when I was younger, but my attention is squarely on the present, on life, and less on death and whatnot. Maybe when I get older I will cast a better eye toward that end of the gym. But right now I do not and will not give an opinion on the more cloudy section of the heavens. I will say, however, that I believe there is a better shot of walking the Earth after you are gone than ascending toward some unseen dimension between one of the spheres in the wide sky.

There will be a day when I die, and the only thing I want is to be cremated. I want some of my ashes made into Life Gems for my wife and family. Some more of the ashes I want sprinkled into various ashtrays outside of grocery stores in Des Moines, in salute to the days when I was homeless—people always light a smoke when they get out of their car, take two drags, and put it out in those ashtrays. When you are broke and homeless, those are the best places to get free cigarettes. Depending on what my wife wants, the rest of my ashes can be buried next to her or commingled with her own ashes. Thus ends what I think about for after I die. Let’s put it this way: if I wake up in Heaven, I will shit myself. Then I will quietly head for the exit—I know when and where I am not wanted.

Well, that is my side of it. That also means we are ready to get to the good shit. Both teams are aware of the rules. They have told us a little bit about each other, likes and dislikes, and what life is like back in Bucktooth, Wisconsin. They know what is at stake, and they know we are playing for keeps. So no waiting for a commercial break, and no flipping a coin to see who goes first—square your stance, bear down on it, pray you do not hit any whammies, and prepare yourself.

Time to play the Feud.

The Mansion

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in Hollywood looking for something to do that does not have the unholy stench of “tourist” all over it, here is something you can do that will not cost you a dime. Find Sunset Boulevard and turn up Laurel Canyon, heading toward the valley. You will pass Mt. Olympus (sort of—it is not the “real” one). You will pass the neighborhoods where all the rock stars in the sixties and seventies lived, from the Mamas and the Papas and the Eagles to Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa. You will also pass the little general store on the corner where the groupies waited for all these said rock stars to come and shop or maybe just take one of them home. Once the corner store is in your rearview mirror, all that is left is a stoplight and two turns. You will pass Lookout Mountain, and then the road straightens out for a split second. Quick—turn your head to the left. Did you see the sprawling mansion set hard against a slope in the Hollywood Hills?

You just saw a haunted house.

The house at 2451 Laurel Canyon has a very strange history, and depending on who is telling it, you might get a different history each time. Owned by Rick Rubin, it has been called “The Mansion,” or “The Houdini Mansion,” and “The House Bess Houdini Built after Harry Died.” After all the research I have done and all the available info I have combed through, the only name that fits is the first. The fact is that Harry Houdini never lived at 2451, nor did his wife build it after he died. To be honest, no two people can agree on when it was actually built. Some say it was erected in 1918, one year before Harry Houdini relocated to Hollywood to get into “moving pictures.” Other people maintain that the estate was built in 1925 by Richard Burkell. Harry’s proper “house” was at 2400 Laurel Canyon, but even that is open to debate. There is no documentation to show that Houdini even owned a home in Los Angeles; he and his wife reportedly used the guesthouse of department store magnate Ralf Walker, and Bess Houdini continued to stay in that same guesthouse until Walker’s death. This is basically how 2451 Laurel Canyon got the name Houdini House. But legend has it that there was so much more. According to myth and nonsense, there was a sprawling castle with parapets and hidden tunnels, passageways for the great escapist to visit his mistress with his wife being none the wiser. You would think she might have noticed all the construction, but I do not judge; I do not even check expiration dates. I just sniff and hope.

Popular usage by a user-friendly populace has perpetuated the assumption that the Mansion at 2451 had anything to do with Houdini and vice versa. I can relate—hey, it is a wonderful story to swap over margaritas at an afternoon get-together. Gossip and rumor are a lot like trading cards—the more rare and outlandish they seem to be, the more valuable they are to all involved. So everyone from housewives to hippies gave this crispy quip a longer shelf life than it might have expected. I am confident Rubin let that bet ride as well. Nothing makes the heart grow fonder than the proposition of mystique . . . and a sweet pool.

The confusion does not stop there. Some people claim Errol Flynn lived in the Mansion in the thirties, but others claim his only real home in the area was at Mulholland Farm. Then again, if you read the book Errol Flynn Slept Here, he crashed at a lot of places over the years. So maybe that one has a glimmer of merit. I do not think he lived there per se, but he might have gotten his swashbuckling groove on. I think I read somewhere that he liked to make fuck with his socks on—either he had bad circulation or he just had a penchant for sexing in snowdrifts.

Sorry—that had dick and balls to do with here, there or anywhere . . .

What is true finally is that the Mansion burned down with everything else in the area in 1959, when fire ravaged the hills. From what I have been able to research, a woman named Fania Pearson eventually purchased the properties on all four corners of Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain and owned them from the sixties to the mid-nineties. These included the “real” Houdini House, the Tom Mix/Frank Zappa Cabin, and the Mansion. To this day there are people who live in the canyon who doubt Houdini ever even visited there. But by then the legend had taken on a life and purpose of its own. Never mind all the evidence and documentation—that does not stop people from seeing his “ghost” walking the grounds and frightening children. Nor does it keep groups from trying to hold séances somewhere on the property to contact the Great Houdini. The Master of Magic is making the rounds more frequently in death than in life.

The residents in the canyon have legends that have nothing to do with Houdini and his immortal coil, like how the Mansion was a squat in the heady decades of rock, roll, and the Sunset Strip. There was even a rumor that Vasquez’s gold (huh?) was supposedly hidden beneath some of the foliage on the trails that run up the back of the house. One tale features a mentally deranged gentleman who was convinced he was Robin Hood reborn, and the canyon was Sherwood Forest; children going to and from Wonderland Elementary had to beware of “arrows” and old English. Most believe this is who people truly saw when they claimed it was Houdini back from beyond the grave. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I think I can spot the difference between a spirit and a crazy fucker.