My Left Collaborative Hand was known by a number of pen names. Dr. Ruddy Foodmart, Marturo, Rud, the Martiqulous Martin Q, The Amazing Martin Q, Mudnick McFudnick, Augie McDoogle, but mostly, the Amazing Martin Q.
And amazing he was. I cut my writing teeth with Marty, waaay back in the early 1970's, when we were seniors in high school. We'd sit around the table at the end of class in Boy's Chef and work on my assignment for the next class, Creative Writing.
By the way, our inspirations at the time were the Firesign Theater, a radio troupe that recorded such gems as "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All," "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" and "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers" among many others. We were also big fans of the National nee Harvard Lampoon. With those derelicts as our guiding light, how could we not be funny?
We penned a few stupid ditty's back then, but then later became quite legendary and renowned among at least a couple hundred people for our party invitations. I'm not quite sure how that all came about, but the first one was for a Christmas party circa December, 1974, called, "Joyeux Noel Fantastique" or "Drunken Christmas."
And then followed the "Let Me Call You Sweetheart Levi Ball" on Valentine's Day, 1975. Many more invitations chock full of obnoxious and tasteless humor followed, mostly for formal Christmas parties my wife and I threw back when.
Marty always said I was the train of thought in our duo, or more to the point I was the straight man. I would generally start out somewhere in left field, because I'm a little bent too. Marty would then chime in, sometimes he'd be on the ball field, but more often than not he'd come in from somewhere in another galaxy, funnier than hell. And then we'd puddle up in laughter for a few minutes and have a heck of a time recalling what just happened. We finally started tape recording our sessions so we wouldn't lose valuable tidbits of lunacy.
Marty also assisted me with a laundry list of life event spoken word necessities for which I needed less sanity. A speech for the firefighter's association I was president of, a speech for my daughter's wedding, a speech for a while. There were a couple of roasts of hapless friends at their bachelor parties as well.
But Marty was not only a writing co-conspirator, we were buddies. We chummed, we bummed. We drank more than a few beers together, smoked a bit of weed together and yes, we might have dropped acid together a few times as well.
In one of my last phone conversations with him he asked if I remembered the "Red Mountain Incident."
How could I not? It is infamous within our own little circle of two. That I now share with you.
I'm pretty sure this happened during our senior year of high school. That year my mom ran away from home. Or more to the point she started her long-awaited relocation to San Diego. Leaving me, a senior, and my older brother by two years in charge of the house.
She paid all the bills and came home for a weekend a month. She was a whiz typist and had landed a job for the guy that invented the soft contact lens. It was her job to type up the multi thousand page submission to the FDA. In a hurry.
So that left my brother and me the opportunity of hosting probably more than one party. And we did. Pretty much all year. We didn't quite hit an "Animal House" stage of affairs, but without knowing it we gave it a pretty decent shot.
There wasn't a dead horse, but a black cat died. And a there was a giant chicken lurking around. Lots and lots and lots of beer. Plenty of weed. A little LSD now and then. The cops came a couple times too.
Actually, looking back, there's a number of pretty hilarious stories that happened that year at 6363 Rainbow Drive, San Jose, California, suburbia USA, and this is one of them.
In preparation for one of the many, Marty and I had just come back from the liquor store after scoring a gallon bottle of Red Mountain Burgundy. At the ridiculous price of $1.99. For a gallon. You can tell not only is this story vintage, but so was not the wine. But it did the job. Especially if there were chicks involved.
We were sneaking in the back door, I'm not sure why. Right next to the screen door was an old toilet, including the tank, that my mother had turned into a planter with dead flowers. But the porcelain was alive, and stone cold intact.
Marty was the designated wine carrier, I was the designated sneaker inner. I still have no idea why were sneaking in. Unless the front door was locked and I didn't have the key.
Which is probably why we used the back door. At any rate,who cares? Irrelevant to the story, except as Marty came in behind me the gallon bottle (still in the bag) was accidentally introduced to Mr. Stone Cold Porcelain Toilet Tank.
There was a loud "clang", and both Marty and I immediately looked at each other in apprehensive horror, fearing the worst. After a couple of seconds (like two) the fear in our face softened to relief and our hearts were filled with unbelievable good luck and fortune.
Which was all dashed at about the fifth second when a resounding "whoosh" erupted from the bottom of the bag and red wine went everywhere. Fortunately it was a linoleum and not carpeted floor, so we only ruined a couple of old towels. And then went off immediately to score some more cheap red wine.
Marty and I went to our first rock show together. We were big fans of Poco, the country rock band of the 1970's. And they were sandwiched in between the opening act of Focus, an English yodeling group, and Yes, the powerhouse space age thunderously melodious progressively psychedelic rock group. We had never heard of Yes, but became enraptured, especially with the blond chick behind the keyboards, until we found out later her name was Rick Wakeman.
I also went to my first and only movie theater matinee on mescaline with Marty, we saw Live and Let Die. I'm pretty sure we felt it was about the most fantastic movie we'd ever seen. And with a theme song by Paul McCartney, how could we go wrong?
Besides music, psychedelics and beer, we shared a love for sports, especially our close to hometown team, the San Francisco Giants. We were at Candlestick Park together when they defeated the Chicago Cubs for the pennant in 1989, right before the Loma Prieta earthquake-fated Bay Bridge World Series.
And before that, back in the 1970's, when my Dear Old Dad had season's tickets along the third base line, three rows up and right behind the opposing teams dugout, we went to a few games. One very memorable one was against the Dodgers.
Somewhere along the line there was a questionable call concerning the Dodgers right fielder, Lee Lacy, that went his way. And that got a couple beer fueled Giants fans more than a little riled up and verbally hostile. My dear pal Marty was relentless (and hilarious) in his hammering of Lacy, so much so he (Lacy) had to be restrained by team mates. He was ready to jump into the stands to take us on.
Which only got my dear pal more riled up.
Marty was quick, very smart, very funny. He probably would have made a good debater, but I think he might have ended up off point and his version of winning would have been to see everyone on the floor dying of laughter.
Besides all that, Marty was also a gifted singer-songwriter and musician. He put out a few CD's, one that has been featured on a radio station in Maui for years. He worked with a number of higher profile Bay Area musicians, and also collaborated with a number of other music people internationally.
I'm a music appreciator, so his exploits into that particular world were without me. Here is a link to a much more concise recollection of his music years: Time Machine Radio Blog.
Not only did we laugh a lot and do a number of things together, we also just hung out. OMG, I just remembered another great story!
Back in our day, when a really huge artist came to town we had to wait in lines in front of a ticket store (like Ticketmaster or ?). Sometimes, if the artist was really big, like, say, George Harrison for instance, one might have to wait in line overnight, kinda like some folks do now for a big screen TV at Walmart on Black Friday.
So when George Harrison at the Cow Palace was announced, it was a no brainer. We brought our sleeping bags and a cooler of beer. I think we were both twenty at the time. We got to the ticket place about 7:00 PM and ended up somewhere in the teens in line. There were at least a hundred people in line by the end of the night.
And somewhere before the end of the night, like about two, when all the bars close and you're not supposed to sell alcohol, we decided we needed more beer. Especially if we were to stay awake the rest of the night.
So off we went (in his car), finding a convenience store not too far from the ticket place. We went in, bought a couple three six-packs from the guy behind the counter and sashayed back to the car. Happy with our good fortune at not being carded, we were putting on our seat belts when there came a "rap rap rap" at both our side windows.
It was the POlice.
"Would you please step out of the car?"
Marty and I looked at each other, "Uh-oh."
So we get out of the car,with our ill-gotten gain and the cops take us back into the store. There they started in on the poor checker guy, who had sold us the alcohol after 2:00 AM. And they started in on the license to sell, called the store owner etc.
They never looked at our ID's. We had to sit in there, talking with the checker guy while the two beat cops conducted their investigation. We learned the checker had just moved to California from New York, where you can sell booze 24 hours a day. He didn't really know about the booze curfew law in California.
"You guys are 21, right?" he nervously asked on the sly.
"Oh yeah, of course," we lied.
In the meantime, the cops did their thing. We kept waiting for the other boot to kick, but it never did. They never asked for our ID's.
Even with Marty constantly tossing out gems like, "Can I wear your hat?" and "Are those bullets real?"
After about twenty minutes they sent us on our way. We asked if we could take the beer. They said no. We were OK with that, we weren't going to jail. We're calling that a win. They must've figured we were of age just because of all the joking and lack of concern we had about the whole affair.
George Harrison was great by the way.
You know, besides all the funny, fun and light-hearted stuff we lived, Marty was a true friend. A couple decades ago, when my life had taken an odd turn to the south, Marty was instrumental in guiding me back in the right direction. He is featured in my recollection of those dark years "Late Night Letters to the Moon", and since all the names have been changed to protect virtually everyone, and since Marty has left this plane, I can safely tell you his name in the book is Miguel. Not that he was Hispanic by any means, he was Lutheran. But we did go to Mexico together with another friend, which you can read about right here, "Baja or Bust."
My final good-bye to my dear Pal, the Amazing Martin Q:
A cavalcade
of endless escapades
cascades across my brow,
of endless escapades
cascades across my brow,
The mighty ship Hallucitania has set sail,
with you upon her prow,
with you upon her prow,
No time left for merriment
or share tales of our jovial past
or share tales of our jovial past
For you are off on another quest
Aaah, fifty years went by so fast.
I thank you for the time we spent,
the adventures far and wide,
the adventures far and wide,
The crazy antics that accompanied us,
It was indeed a
hallowed ride.
Rest assured old chum the fabled
stories will live
long into the star studded night,
When we together rode the range
and laughed so hard we peed.
Amen.
