The screen-shot above comes from an Entertainment News article from 2019 about a theory I am increasingly growing suspicious of, and that’s the Smiley Face Theory asserting ONLY young men are being hunted by a network of killers, and that these killers use graffiti’d smiley faces to proudly signal their work.
There are a number of reasons I’ve grown weary of this theory, and those who are promoting it, but it’s NOT because I think the core assertion is necessarily wrong. Like I wrote in my kick-ass Super Bowl post, my thinking on this theory has moved toward these killers existing as a sub-culture vs. cells of isolated human hunters, and because of this evolution in my thinking, I’ve started to see promoters of this theory as witting or unwitting players in a purposeful distraction that obfuscates the true scope of what we’re dealing with.
William Ramsey is one of the main promoters of this theory, having written a book and made two documentaries about it, but I caught William using my own insights without crediting me after he dismissed those insights as not relevant in an email.
This email correspondence was from October of last year. When I heard William Ramsey on a recent podcast interview CHANGING HIS TUNE about this movie, I complained about it to one of his main apologists, who I communicated with back in October, since this “expert” on the Smiley Face Killers was appearing so stupidly dismissive.
Well, now even the apologist is shutting me out, blocking me after his handler approach to my frustration didn’t work. Here’s a portion of our conversation:
First, let’s get a few things straight: I actually DO CARE about making a dollar, but making a dollar will ALWAYS take a back seat to THE TRUTH. Second, this supposed “researcher” is NOT my friend, which was made clear when this coward quickly blocked me after it became apparent I couldn’t be easily handled while his “expert” pal LARP’s the Smiley Face Theory for book sales.
Let’s get back to the originators of this theory, the New York cops who I’m sure are in this game for pure, honorable reasons, and not to get some co-ed action while searching for missing college-aged men. Am I wrong to assume noble intentions from New York cops like Kevin Gannon? From the link:
Kevin Gannon, the ex-New York cop who believes a team of “smiley-face” serial killers is responsible for the drownings of young men across the country, was investigated in the sexual assault of a 19-year-old University of St. Thomas student last spring during the search for a missing St. Thomas freshman.
The investigation was closed late last summer after Ramsey County prosecutors “reviewed the case and declined charges citing insufficient evidence to pursue prosecution,” said St. Paul police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell.
“One of the challenges in the investigation was the lack of cooperation by Mr. Gannon,” Schnell added. “While the case is currently inactive, the department can reopen the inquiry as may be warranted and future investigative efforts cannot be ruled out.”
This situation arose MANY years ago, but I think it’s worth considering, especially when the involvement of this cop in the search for the missing college dude was so UNimpressive. Here’s what I’m talking about regarding this investigation in RAMSEY County (interesting coincidence):
According to one search organizer, Gannon had not done much to help, “with the exception of hanging around downstairs, talking with female volunteers and eating,” the police file states. The student “said Gannon would just sit around eating and talking to the females — telling them ‘war stories.’ ”
Other students told investigators that Gannon called the alleged victim “pretty” and complimented her on “her beautiful legs.”
The assault allegedly took place April 19 in the parking lot of the U.S. Bank office park at 2751 Shepard Road in St. Paul. Surveillance cameras recorded a Lincoln matching Gannon’s rental vehicle’s description in the parking lot for 73 minutes that evening.
The student, described by police as “very distraught,” was first interviewed by St. Paul police April 23. She told Sgt. Shannon Hutton that she did not know Zamlen well but that some of her friends involved in the search did.
She joined the search and also had heard the rumors that Zamlen “was abducted by the Smiley Face Killers,” according to Hutton’s report.
“They told us about their NYPD stories and filled us all with hope,” the student told Hutton. “They said they were going to figure this out, and they were going to help us find Dan.”
Giving desperate people hope is one of the oldest grifts in the book. I mean, entire RELIGIONS have been created due to the mortal dread we all experience at some point living these finite lives of ours, so this scenario is not surprising at all, but it IS disappointing, since I really do think these young men are being hunted by well-organized and highly protected killers.
I hope I’m wrong about William Ramsey and his apologist pal, Jim, but at the end of the day I do appreciate the clarity on this topic they’ve helped me gain, so THANKS BOYS! I’m going to keep kicking-ass, like my recent discovery of an occult Montana connection so big, I’m figuring out how to absorb it into my understanding of this region and the role its going to play in the madness that’s about to descend, so stay tuned!
Like the title of this post audaciously declares, I don’t think it’s a serial killer dumping bodies in Lady Bird Lake that locals in Austin need to worry about, I think it’s a sub-culture now operating in plain view, and we ALL need to worry about it because, after 10 bodies, local authorities are still saying NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Maybe that’s because they are a part of this sub-culture?
From the link (emphasis mine):
True crime groups in the Austin, Texas area are certain an unidentified serial killer is terrorizing the city, however, these claims are unfounded.
The Austin Police Department held a press conference on Monday afternoon to confirm that a body had been pulled from Lady Bird Lake.
Police didn’t disclose how long the body was in the water or how the person, who is still unidentified, had died.
“Homicide is actively investigating this as a death investigation,” Public Information Officer Ariel Crumes told the media.
Public Information Officers are paid liars, and I can say that because I’m a kick-ass journalist with impressive local connections in Zoom Town (Missoula).
What do I mean?
I mean the FORMER Public Information Officer for the Missoula Police Department, Lydia Arnold, once told me a bald-faced lie about a police training that the punk-ass local media reported as some kind of weird false alarm involving a SWAT response on West Broadway. Nope!
Both of the links above go to my original reporting, and I can write these article because I’ve lived in this community for 23 years, with 10 years working in the non-profit sector (7 at the homeless shelter, the Poverello Center). This matters because it’s the foundation I’m standing on now, near the end of my third loop driving around this country and SEEING FOR MYSELF what is out there, and it isn’t good.
That said, it’s ALSO critical to keep this in mind: this sub-culture not only WANTS you to be afraid of it, they NEED you to be afraid of it because your fear is their food, and these fuckers are ALWAYS searching for a snack.
Isn’t this image cute? It’s a hoodie in the pop-up store for Stranger Things, which I visited while spending some time on the Las Vegas strip on Wednesday. Why would a pop-up store for Stranger Things be at the location for Super Bowl LVIII? This is where knowing some history can be beneficial. From the link (emphasis mine):
Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high-society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century. The name most commonly refers to Francis Dashwood’s Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe. Such clubs, rumour had it, served as the meeting places of “persons of quality” who wished to take part in what were socially perceived as immoral acts, and the members were often involved in politics. Neither the activities nor membership of the clubs are easy to ascertain. The clubs allegedly had distant ties to an elite society known only as “The Order of the Second Circle”.
Yes, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, but I forget that most people don’t assume, like I do, that something on a t-shirt might be more than just catchy marketing, so catchy that I couldn’t leave the store without picking up a friend for Tentapus, my Octopus road companion.
I named my new parasite Virgil because I was crossing the Virgin River in the midst of a synchronicity storm AND a real one (of course) when, in conversation with my new road companion, I realized this glorified butthole needed a name. I sure hope Tentapus warms up to it eventually!
If you’ve been reading along during my departure from Zoom Town–covered here, at Zoom Chron, and at the new blog space–you’ll know names are important to me, which is why I was a bit shocked to discover Oliver Stone has a first name, and it’s NOT Oliver. Nope, it’s WILLIAM. Welcome to the club, Ollie!
The TRAVIS club is a little more exclusive now, thanks to Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, and if number 87 helps number 15 win another Super Bowl today, maybe I’ll get some residual energy in the form of MONEY for the work I’m doing tracking this crazy shit (the go-fund me I stopped promoting will still say YES to your 1’s and 0’s, by the way).
Another Travis that came up during my travels is Ghost Travis from True Detective’s fourth installment, Night Country, but when I got caught up I heard something I had to go online to make sure I heard correctly: Travis COHLE. Oh shit, I immediately thought, this hits on multiple levels.
For those who are familiar with the “fictional” world of True Detective, this last name confirms that the Travis character is Rustin Cohle’s father, and “Rust” is the brooding detective played brilliantly by Matthew McConaughey in season 1.
In the world THIS Travis inhabits, Cohle sounds very similar to the family name that runs a Spokane-based media empire, and Spokane is where I was born. Go figure. From the link, so you can see that other willful name pop up again:
Cowles (pronounced “coles”) is a fourth generation family-owned enterprise that operates a portfolio of legacy companies and seeks to invest in high potential growth businesses for the long-term benefit of shareholders, customers, employees and the communities in which it operates.
The Company got its start in 1890, when William H. Cowles arrived in Spokane to be the business manager of The Spokesman, one of three local newspapers. He had been a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, where his father Alfred Cowles was the business manager. During the panic of 1893, Cowles gained ownership of and merged The Spokesman and The Review. He purchased The Chronicle in 1897, thus consolidating ownership of the region’s three largest newspapers. Other print products owned by Cowles today are the Journal of Business and Nickels Worth (a north Idaho publication).
Further down I JUST discovered how the Cowles moved their media influence into Montana, including Zoom Town! Cool!
William H. Cowles Jr. succeeded his father and continued the expansion of the company’s scope. KHQ-AM radio was bought in 1946. The radio station expanded to FM and, in 1952, signed on as Spokane’s first television station. KHQ is one of the oldest NBC affiliates in the country. In the 1980s, the radio stations were sold. In 1999, NBC affiliates KNDO/KNDU in Yakima/ Tri-Cities were purchased. In 2013, Cowles bought a group of Montana stations. They are ABC and Fox affiliates in Missoula, Kalispell, Helena, Great Falls, Butte and Bozeman, and a NBC affiliate in Billings. The company also operates a 24/7 regional sports and weather channel that covers professional, collegiate and high school sports in Washington, Idaho and Montana.
When you understand that I’ve been doing fascinating work in relative obscurity for literally years, the hilarity factor of how the universe seems to be trolling me greatly increases. When you factor in things like my Grandfather on my mother’s side owning and maintaining the ACTUAL communication infrastructure for radio in the Tri-Cities area, well, it just gets straight-up bizarre, bordering on the unbelievable. And I’m not even CLOSE to being done with this one. Buckle-up!
Here’s Travis Cohle as he first appeared in episode 1 of Night Country. In episode 2, it’s Travis’ partner, Rose, who confirms the fan-theory that emerged after the show premiered last month. Rose is of course a name that hits very close to home for me, close enough I’m not going to specify.
Who is Rose talking to when she makes this disclosure? The cop with the metaphysical touch, Evangeline, that’s who. Did that name come up recently in my research? Of course it did, and it relates to a name I have absolutely NO fondness for: Aleister Crowley.
I stumbled upon this connection because of a conversation with a man who did NOT die in a wartime plane incident, though he surely thought that was his fate. Instead, his fate was to have a family, and to do work on the Shroud of Turin, no biggie, and it was this man’s family who I traveled to visit in Texas this past month, where I stumbled onto that Masonic party weekend to kick-off my adventure.
Without getting into too much detail about WHY Crowley’s name came up (you’ll have to wait for the documentary, if I can get if financed), this influential occultist is known for having a spot in America where he resided when he visited, and that New Hampshire location belonged to an astrologist by the name of EVANGELINE Adams.
From the link:
Evangeline Smith Adams (February 8, 1868 – November 10, 1932) was an American astrologer based in New York City. She ran a thriving astrological consulting business, gained widespread notability for successfully defending her astrological practice in court, and produced a number of popular books about astrology, including Astrology: Your Place in the Sun (1927), Astrology: Your Place Among the Stars (1930), and her autobiography, The Bowl of Heaven (1926). While Aleister Crowley ghostwrote her books on astrology, Adams is an acknowledged contributor to Crowley’s own astrological text The General Practice of Astrology. She has been described as “America’s first astrological superstar”
You don’t have to be clairvoyant to recognize patterns in order to anticipate future events. For example, a pattern is beginning to emerge of public figures who have come under my style of scrutiny deciding to STOP being public figures.
It started with Missoula County’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott. This guy was all hot and bothered to run for Mayor during our last election cycle, even going so far as filing for the job, but he never got so far as to publicly move forward with his campaign. Could it be because I wrote posts like this one? And this one?
In the second link we have an appearance from someone who JUST ANNOUNCED her intention to stop doing her job, a job she was elected to do with a term that is NOT OVER yet. So why are you leaving, Pabst?
Before getting to my much more informative coverage of our infamous County Attorney, let’s see what the jokers at the Missoulian have to say, beginning with this entertaining headline:
From the link:
In her time as county attorney, she worked with the Montana Attorney General and U.S. Department of Justice to overhaul the office’s victim relations. The special victims unit she established grew from one to nine prosecutors focusing on sexual assault, domestic abuse and child abuse. And she hired multiple staffers to oversee and improve victim relations.
But it was Pabst’s last years as a deputy attorney and her time in private practice that made her the key player in what author and journalist John Krakauer depicted in his 2015 book, “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town,” as a prosecutorial system that deferred to accused rapists over their alleged victims. The office’s handling of such cases led to investigations from the Montana Attorney General and U.S. Department of Justice.
Not even Krakauer could fathom the depths of fuckery going on in Zoom Town, and my evidence to back up that assertion is the fact his book positively platformed the Detective I’m starting a fan club for. Is that why Jon’s Beverly Hills literary agent, Joe Veltre, isn’t interested in MY version of the characters Krakauer has portrayed?
Other people who have decided to quit doing their jobs after I started criticizing them include the Executive Director of the Poverello Center, that Public Information Office I mentioned above, and the Police Chief, Jaeson White, who came to us from California’s Highway Patrol. That means all three of the people my open letter called out in September of 2022 have quit. Isn’t that interesting?
For more reading on the Pabst legacy, here are two posts of mine worth checking out:
Another pattern I’d like to emphasize in this post before I wrap things up for game time is the pattern of catch and release that certain offenders seem to enjoy. If anyone has read up on Charles Manson, like I have, then you’ll know how odd it was that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office arrested and RELEASED Charles Manson AFTER the murders. Here’s a little blurb from Penguin that uses this fact to promote Tom O’Neill’s incredible book on this subject, Chaos:
Soon after the murders, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office launched a major raid on the Manson Family ranch – but Manson wasn’t charged with a crime. Bugliosi claims this was due to a paperwork error invalidating the warrant. O’Neill found that this wasn’t true. The raid was legal – and Manson was found with stolen credit cards on his person and stolen cars on his property. For some reason, the district attorney declined to press charges, and Manson wasn’t brought to justice for four months. Why was Bugliosi fabricating non-existent errors to cover for this? Did Manson have friends in high places?
Where does this pattern exist in Missoula? Let’s see, there was the odd catch and release of Johnny Lee Perry before the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office shot Johnny in the back, and the guy who appeared to make the assist in that scenario, Jackie Maxwill, also had curious, and brief, stints of temporary incarceration.
And then there’s the INFAMOUS (thanks to ME) history of the non-compliant sex offender, Todd Spence, and the increasingly dangerous reports I was getting from people on the streets, and in the “urban camps”, of his distribution of Fentanyl-laced weed. I was even told that this Fentanyl-laced weed had caused MULTIPLE overdoses, including at least one death. That was before the three dead bodies I wrote about a month ago.
To add to this list I now have another curious individual to bring some attention to, and that’s the dude one perceptive reader of this blog has referred to as THE TESLA COWBOY. Here’s his mugshot from the Missoula County Detention Portal:
When this guy’s stand-off with Mineral County was first brought to my attention, I wasn’t as skeptical of him as I probably should have been, so I reached out to his parents, since he gave out their phone number during the stand-off. After some limited communication where he invited me to join his Telegram group (I declined), I bid him good luck and went off on my first crazy road trip.
When I got back to Montana, a concerned reader told me I was being targeted by this dude on his Youtube channel. I also received texts from Jed ON THE DAY I RETURNED, demanding that I take down the posts where I wrote about him. I cited a document a prepper like this should appreciate–the CONSTITUTION–and politely told him to fuck off, since I don’t appreciate being called a FED unless this asshole has the paystubs to prove it.
Jed may have tried to remove his online targeting of me, since I couldn’t find his “expose” of me on his silly Youtube channel the last time I checked, but thankfully I took a screen shot on October 24th.
Will Jed be extradited to San Bernardino, a County in California that had a very curious incident in 2015 with a cop chase and a shootout? From the link:
On December 2, 2015, a terrorist attack, consisting of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing, occurred at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, United States. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and Christmas party of about 80 employees in a rented banquet room. Fourteen people were killed and 22 others were seriously injured. Farook was an American born citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Pakistani-born green card holder. After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented Ford Expedition SUV. Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout, which also left two officers injured.
I’m not sure why this incident popped into my head, or if it’s relevant, but something about how the Tesla Cowboy called ME a Fed after I turned down his invitation to join his group has my antenna tingling.
Circling back to the main topic of this article, I’ve amassed an entire library of serious occult titles to back up my assertion that what we’re dealing with here is a death-obsessed sub-culture that can’t be “caught” with smoking guns or conventional investigations because this death cult is too extensive and enmeshed in the very products we use to “entertain” ourselves, which puts us in a compromised position of metaphysical complicity that requires self-examination in order to truly understand, so we can start disentangling ourselves from it. Unfortunately, this process seems too uncomfortable for most people to even consider, because it means leaving behind old ways of understanding how the world works.
One reason I think my investigation into the corrupt dynamics of local power has been fruitful, though, is because I use something I’ll call the LOUD MOUTH tactic, a tactic that simulates the bat’s use of echo-location to determine where to fly. What the hell am I talking about? Let me explain how talking shit and seeing what comes back to me functions, using my fifteen minute stop in Wallace, Idaho, as a delightful example.
The simple questions retail people politely ask their customers is an opportunity I use, over and over again, to exercise my LOUD MOUTH, and often times my LOUD MOUTH is discussing the work I’m doing exposing local corruption. What did that produce in Wallace?
Well, I was discussing the St. Regis shootout and the consequences of what it means when a County goes to war with itself, the way Mineral County has been doing, and I included the rumor about a certain tow truck company being a corrupt tool of the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office, and guess what? This woman in Wallace had heard about “people getting in trouble in Montana, then getting their cars back.” Isn’t that interesting?
When I spoke to the FORMER Sheriff of Mineral County last month, I told readers he hung up on me, but I didn’t say WHY. It was a pointed question about this tow truck company that ended my conversation with a former Sheriff I connected to a case now considered to be a part of the Smiley Face pattern of killing, not to mention the ACTING SHERIFF when Rebekah Barsotti went missing.
If I wanted to use the Smiley Face theory to make a name for myself and sell books, like William Ramsey has done, then I would ignore the case of a FEMALE who died under VERY MYSTERIOUS circumstances in Montana, but that’s not my intent (which is why I’m almost broke).
No, I want to understand HOW FUCKED the institutions are in my own backyard because I don’t want my own children to be euthanized or executed by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office.
When I interviewed William Ramsey last February, I’m pretty sure I asked him if he knew who his Sheriff was, and, if I recall correctly, he didn’t know. For anyone reading this, in whatever County you reside, THIS IS WHY you should become familiar with who your fucking Sheriff is.
What is going on? Are there Chinese Nationals being arrested in Missoula? Yes, there are, and here is my original reporting on what I was running across last June. So don’t dismiss what I’m about to say next, because I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
As I was on the home-stretch yesterday, heading east, to Zoom Town, I saw a military helicopter flying low at mile marker 22 outside of St. Regis. This things was BIG, had two rotors, and it was quiet. And, yes, it was black.
I’ll ask again: what the hell is going on? Whatever it is, the I-90 interstate gateway to Montana has a County being run by a joke of a Sheriff’s Office, and this bad joke is being propped up by the Jasper family via Lance, the obnoxious lawyer who better travel with a tissue box for how much he seems to CRY about the Mandamus case he launched to make sure Ryan Funke became Sheriff. Here’s some of that crying:
If any of these jokers want to talk shop, I’m back in Montana now, and I’m SURE they have my number, since I do things like call to find out WHERE dead bodies like the body of Joey Thompson was found (still haven’t gotten an answer, boys, but I guess you’re busy).
It’s cool, I’m busy too–busy being a reluctant journalist getting paid virtually nothing to do the work I feel called to do. And if this post feels like I’m breathing fire, maybe that’s because it’s the year of the DRAGON, and my REAL appreciation for language is how musical it can be.
That’s language, NOT my ukulele playing, which I provide regardless of talent.
I decided to get caught up on True Detective while staying in Santa Monica because the storms just won’t leave me alone. The latest installment of storm to put a serious damper on my travels is the historic rainfall that’s been falling on Los Angeles since I got here on Saturday. From the link:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A storm of historic proportions dumped a record amount of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes while people living in homeless encampments in many parts of the city scrambled for safety.
About 710,000 people statewide were without power Monday evening.
Yeah, Monday was fun. After the odyssey of getting into my rental unit was accomplished (don’t hide a key in toilet paper when there’s homeless people everywhere because I’m going to assume it’s actual TOILET PAPER), I went to a fantastic bookstore in downtown LA and made it there ALIVE, which wasn’t a sure thing as I navigated the highway where a woman must have hydroplaned, because she was at a complete stop and facing the wrong direction in the middle of the road. Good times.
I’ve gone on three separate road trips over the last 6 months, and during EACH ONE I’ve had issues with storms, like the historic rain the fell on Brooklyn during my ONLY full day in New York City last September 29th. From the link:
Numerous locations across received more than 4 inches (100 mm) of rain, with Central Park recording 5.48 inches (139 mm) of rainfall, Midtown Manhattan recording 6.09 inches (155 mm) of rain, Fordham recording 6.19 inches (157 mm) of rain and Howard Beach recording 7.86 inches (200 mm) of rain. The rainfall in Central Park was the sixth-highest rainfall over 141 years. The heaviest rainfall, however, was in Brooklyn where Park Slope received 9.80 inches (249 mm) of rain, with Valley Stream in Nassau County recording 9.06 inches (230 mm) of rain. Parts of Brooklyn received 4.5 in (110 mm) of rain in just three hours. The heavy rainfall on September 29 contributed to the second-wettest September in New York City on record.
If that was it, I wouldn’t be developing a serious storm complex, but I was also in Austin, Texas, last month during rain that produced flooding, and I was in the Joshua Tree area last fall when rain closed down roads. Isn’t this fun?
Back to True Detective, the picture I took shows a character in the show with a coat that clearly features a smiley face on it. Thanks to “researchers” like William Ramsey, the smiley face is becoming notorious for being a symbolic calling card of sorts for the psychopath class, but if “researchers” aren’t suggesting COUNTER steps to what’s being signaled with these symbols, then what they end up doing is essentially PROMOTING this method of signaling, and I think that HELPS these psychos spread the fear, which may be one of the goals behind charging this symbol with dark intent.
I would like to say more, but my time is limited, so I’m going to wrap this up as I prepare for the next stop on my adventure: Las Vegas.
It started before I got off the highway. Jim started singing in my headphones as the highway sign that passed overhead read CROSSROADS. Ok then.
When I’m approaching a new city I’m not familiar with I like to find a book store on my map-app for my first stop, and Los Angeles was no different. Sideshow Books looked good, so that’s what I picked, and the signs indicated I was on the right track.
I got into LA pretty early, having failed the previous evening to find Slab City, an interesting place that attracts drifters and snowbirds, which Jon Krakauer depicted in his book, Into The Wild. Since Krakauer platformed the cop who I think deserves a fan club in his book about Missoula, it seemed like a good idea to check out at the time. But when the sun went down on the wasteland I was exploring, unsuccessfully, I decided to give up and sleep, hitting the road the following morning around 4am.
The two previous days were NOT enjoyable, since I had clearly angered the Native energies with my second poem about bodily functions on the road. I did what I could to appease the spirits, which included heeding the wisdom of the gas station attendant who told me the roads where I was going could get bad, and he was NOT WRONG, so NO Chaco Canyon human barbecue site, though I was within just a few miles of this creepy place, and ended up sleeping in my truck at 7,000 feet near a windmill in the middle of no where.
I stayed one night in Sedona, where storms kept following me. I barely missed the heavy rains in Austin a few weeks previous, just like the previous road trip where I barely missed the flooding in Joshua Tree, and the road trip after that, where the Brooklyn deluge absolutely drenched me. And guess what it’s doing in LA right now? Raining HARD, like it’s been doing since I’ve been here, and the forecast is RAIN until I leave. Sounds about right.
I drove through Phoenix and, while getting some food, remembered that a reader of the blog had sent me a link near the beginning of my trip about the White Lion I was tracking, Mr. Wags Capital. Apparently this former football player turned developer just had a zoning request DENIED in Scottsdale, which my map-app told me was just a few miles from where I was eating. Cool!
I talked to the editor who wrote up the first story about this zoning denial before heading to this VERY HIP suburb of Phoenix, so hip I got a warning from the editor that’s a Bourbon Street wannabe part of Phoenix, and he was right. It was GROSS and PERFECT for someone like Mr. Wags, so I’m sure getting shut down here is REALLY bugging the White Lion.
Here’s the latest on this project from a few days ago:
Aaron Wagner, a newcomer to Scottsdale’s development scene, proposed building a fine dining restaurant of his own last year. Swags was slated to replace the shuttered Three Wisemen bar, which is across the street from Yari’s Maya site and about 700 feet away from Calle Rosa.
Wagner said Swags needed a third-story patio to make it pencil out financially on his tiny 0.2-acre lot, so he asked the city for permission to build one floor higher than is typically allowed in that area. The plan was backed by the Scottsdale Planning Commission, city staffers, the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale and more than 30 nearby property owners.
Yari was the only major player in Scottsdale against it, saying he was concerned the rooftop dining would blast too much noise toward his Maya Hotel. And because he owns at least 20% of the surrounding properties, his opposition required Swags to get five “yes” votes from the seven-member City Council, rather than the usual four.
Swags came up one vote short on Jan. 9 when Ortega voted “no” along with two council colleagues who generally oppose developments. Ortega said he had problems with Swags’ third floor and another zoning request.
Ortega said he voted “no” because he believes rezoning such a tiny lot to allow an 85-foot-tall building “sets a bad precedent.” Swags was slated to be about 30 feet shorter, but Ortega explained the “zoning runs with the land,” so if the property were sold another developer could build to the full 85 feet.
I don’t think this bodes well for the Wags plans for the old Missoulian building on the Hip Strip, but only time will tell if this developer who appears to be pissing off people in MULTIPLE states has what it takes to persevere through adversity.
We will be returning to Phoenix in just a moment, but first I must explain what I discovered in the book I found at Sideshow Books, a book I zeroed in on BEFORE knowing it was about Jim Morrison. Here is how the book by Craig Kee Strete begins:
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? A joke? Since it’s literally how the book begins, there isn’t much context for the reader to glean what the author is intending. Exaggeration for shock value? Who the fuck is this guy anyway? From the link (emphasis mine)
Craig K. Strete earned his B.A. in 1975 at Wayne State University and his M.F.A. in 1978 at University of California at Irvine.[citation needed]
Beginning in the early 1970s, while working in the Film and Television industry, Strete began writing emotional Native American themed, and science fiction short stories and novellas. He has had three Nebula Award nominations: two for the short stories Time Deer and A Sunday Visit with Great-grandfather and one for the novelette The Bleeding Man.
In 1974 Strete published a magazine dedicated to Native American science fiction, Red Planet Earth. His play Paint Your Face On A Drowning In The River (originally produced May 16, 1984 by East/West Players in Los Angeles, CA) was the 1984 Dramatists Guild/CBS New Plays Program first-place winner.
PAINT YOUR FACE ON A DROWNING IN THE RIVER? For someone who is reluctantly investigating the Smiley Face Killer theory, this DEFINITELY got my attention, so I read on in the book about Morrison and found MORE disturbing shit, like this scene from chapter 3 (TRIGGER WARNING):
The bloody-haired girl who had been throwing up on the door as we went out is being dragged into one of the bedrooms by four tough-looking guys in biker gear as I walk in. Her shirt’s already ripped off. Skinny little ribs and little-girl breasts. Maybe she’s thirteen years old or fourteen. She’s screaming hysterically but nobody pays attention to her.
Some party she’s h having, if she survives it.
A few paragraphs after this graphic scene, our author write this:
Ok, enough of this trash. Let’s move on.
Oliver Stone is now REALLY on my shit-list, alongside directors like David Lynch, who was born in Missoula. Why? After re-watchingNatural Born Killers, I realized how much nefarious messaging is really going on throughout the movie, which means I’ve got to reconsider ALL his material, which includes a movie about JFK and, of course, a movie about The Doors.
But it wasn’t either of those films I watched last night. Nope, instead I watched a TERRIBLE movie by Oliver Stone, titled U-Turn (1997), which takes place in a little town outside of Phoenix. And the name of the town? Well, it should sound familiar to Zoom Chron readers who know about my interest in Mineral County because the name of the Arizona town depicted in this movie is SUPERIOR. Ok then.
With my new impression that Natural Born Killers is a movie about psycho-initiates and the metaphysical marriage of the dark masculine and dark feminine energies, I was interested in the plot of the movie, which has the dark masculine (Sean Penn) pushed off a cliff near the end of the movie by the dark feminine (Jennifer Lopez).
Why did I find this interesting? Well, because it mirrors a REAL LIFE scenario that has personal implications for me that I can’t write about, but I WILL quote the gist of what happened when Jordan Graham pushed her newly wed husband off a cliff in Glacier Park because she apparently decided that the whole “consummate the marriage” thing was too terrifying to go through with. From the link:
MISSOULA, Mont. – A Montana woman was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for killing her husband of eight days by pushing him from a cliff in Glacier National Park while they argued about her second thoughts about the marriage.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy sentenced Jordan Graham, 22, who had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder just before closing arguments during her December trial.
Prosecutors argued Graham was having second thoughts about her recent marriage to 25-year-old Cody Johnson when she lured him to a steep cliff in Glacier Park on July 7 and pushed him over.
Getting back to the movie, I checked out the town of Superior, Arizona, on a REAL map and something stood out to me, since one of the meta-themes I’m investigating is how WATER fits into all this. I immediately noticed that the creek flowing through Superior is QUEEN creek. I wasn’t sure how significant this was to the film until I saw Jennifer Lopez holding a QUEEN OF SPADES card in her hand. Interesting.
What unleashes the dark feminine? In this movie, it’s sexual abuse, specifically incest, which echoes one of Hollywood’s FAVORITE movies about itself, Chinatown, a movie that thematically combines incest with an element VERY important to a city like LA, which is WATER. From the link:
The plot of Chinatown is also drawn not just from the diversion of water from the Owens Valley via the aqueduct but also from another actual event. In the movie, water is being purposefully released in order to drive the land owners out and create support for a dam through an artificial drought. The event that the movie refers to occurred in late 1903 and 1904 when underground water levels plummeted and water usage rose precipitously. Rather than a deliberate release, Mulholland was able to figure out that because of faulty valves and gates in the water system, large quantities of water were being released in the overflow sewer system and then into the ocean. Mulholland was able to stop the leaks.
Isn’t this interesting? I think it is, and I could say more about all this, but there are things I’d like to actually accomplish while in LA, even though the sky is trying to drown me.
To wrap this up, here’s poop-tune number two (ha!), which I hope you enjoy, because I incurred some spiritual wrath to bring it to life.
