I have much more to say about this soon, but I think I have a near-confirmed date for THE RESURRECTION OF KERMIT THE FROG, being Saturday, June 15th, which is next month. It will be a sort of pagan ceremony officiated by a group of druid monks, and I among them. Hmm. I don’t want to give away too much, but yes, just because I know you all want to know: the Grim Reaper and an honest-to-God angel will be there soon. So much for paganism! And listen: these two individuals are very special people, and I’m lucky to have gotten them. The Reaper was something of a priest and a bartender in his last life, and the angel is a 12-foot-tall siren who recently covered me in hot sauce and bit my neck in a bar in Portland. W-whew!!

OK! I’m making invitations after I get back from Reno. If you want one, even if you’re not coming, just email me and of course I’ll send one your way. I reckon that’d be kind of a cool thing to just have. And as for the usual suspects in my inner circle: you know you’re getting one of these, baby, so sit back and relax!!!

Gosh!! This’ll be real cool. I’m going to make it even bigger and better than the funeral. It’s gonna be weird as hell, man. Yeah~

Every May my friends Laura and Gayle and I (and later Monty) have been taking trips together. For two years in a row we went to Los Angeles and had ourselves a good old time:

We, THE LA ANGELS, rent a room somewhere with absolutely no itinerary and drive around wearing cool sunglasses and drinkin iced coffee while listening to Dad Rock. Sometimes we get drunk or smoke or whatever. Sometimes we walk around dead sober . . . or at least highly caffeinated. That’s pretty much the head, the tail, the whole damn thing. It’s just something to do is all, and it is good the whole way through.

Last year we stayed in this huge apartment right on Hollywood Boulevard, and Laura and Monty and I slept on a California king-sized bed in this pitch-black climate-controlled bedroom while Gayle volunteered to sleep in the living room on a massive sectional couch. We would wake up every morning and get breakfast and then just go wherever we felt like going. Wherever someone said they wanted to go, we went. There was no voting, for god’s sake, or really any discussion. We just did it, because anywhere we went would be cool since we were all together. And if we did get to a place and none of the strangers around us were having any fun, we went ahead and had fun anyway. With the undying spirit of fun at any expense burning in our cute little hearts, we made our way to Santa Monica and Venice Beach and Silver Lake and Mulholland Drive, and on and on—all the while, yes, wearing each other’s sunglasses and drinking iced coffee. In a sense we did nothing. It was beautiful. It was one of the best trips of my whole life.

THIS FRIDAY, The LA Angels are renting a car and driving to Tahoe. We are staying on the lake there, in a sort of resort which was so suspiciously cheap that I’m wondering if it’s even real. All signs point to yes, but then you never know. It has free parking and free breakfast and I think there’s a fireplace and a fucking hot tub in our room. And two big-ass queen beds and huge pillows. It really is right on the lake. You step outside and there it is. We’re gonna get in Friday evening and GRAB DINNER and get stoned and walk around, or whatever, and then wake up the next day and do more or less the same thing. However! When we check out at 3 p.m., we cease to be The LA Angels and transform into the Reno Bambinos because: we’re driving to Reno, Nevada for no reason other than the fact that none of us have ever been to Reno. And there I have booked us another cheap room in the Sands Regency Casino Hotel, which, yes, has a god damn Mels Diner on the ground floor:

And maybe this goes without saying, but it’s a CASINO HOTEL, so we can gamble our balls off before we even hit the streets that evening.

We have adopted personas and pseudonyms. I have decided my name is GORGEOUS JACKPOTS. My fellow angels / bambinos Laura and Monty have adopted other money / gambling-related names, but for the time being I have forgotten them. (I should note here that Gayle is not coming because she signed up to be a harlequin clown at a children’s birthday party (???).) We’re bringing fur coats and boots and huge sunglasses and makeup, and so on. Monty and I are going to chain smoke using Hunter S. Thompson cigarette filters. I anticipate us staying in character the entire time, which I imagine will be easy enough since we’ll be ripped out of our heads and goofed up on desert delirium.

What a beautifully idiotic weekend it will be. And why not? It’s like the fella said: You’ve got to do something. Yes, well, this is what my friends and I do. We’re idiots, and it rules.

I’LL REPORT BACK IN A FEW DAYS WITH PICTURES OF OUR AIMLESS EXCURSION.

Until then: Stay frosty, my angels ☆~

Laura and I ate mushrooms a few weekends ago. We walked all the way from my fortified compound on the Oakland-Berkeley line to the Berkeley Rose Garden. I have no idea how long it took because we left our phones at home and had no sense of time anyway. We just walked up Euclid Avenue and cut through little side streets if they looked nice or had a lot of flowers on them. As we neared the Rose Garden itself, we found a massive circular field just off the road a bit. Laura said it looked like a UFO could land there. I can’t describe the scale . . . it was football-field size, and perfectly round. We stepped inside and were encircled by many tall trees. We started running till we reached the center of the field. It felt very good to run. We were laughing and chasing each other around. I looked up at the stars. My pupils were dilated—were big black zeroes. It made the stars brighter. I watched them flicker. I saw airplanes rocketing across the sky. Everything was perfectly silent up there. I told Laura I could see the curvature of the planet, and a sort of grid overlaid across space. She said she saw it too. I couldn’t stop looking at the stars. I wanted to sail through them. I was filled with so much energy so I started running around the circumference of the field as fast as I could. It was a good feeling. My eyes were pointed toward the stars. I started crying. I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were. I returned to Laura and, out of breath, said, “I love stars so much!” We made our way to the dark rim of the field, far away from the street. There was an opening in the trees . . . a sort of archway of branches. We stood in the darkness and gazed back out at the starry field. The sky was this deep dark purple, which is my favorite color. I asked Laura if the sky was purple for her too, and she said for her it was a deep dark blue. The sky was my favorite color because subconsciously I wanted it to be. I wanted to be in a purple world filled with stars. “I love purple,” I said. My vision pulsed that same dark purple when I said that. I kept saying the word. Every time I said it, the world turned more purple. “Everything is purple!” I put my hands on Laura’s shoulders. “Laura, everything is purple.” It was so beautiful seeing the stars dotted along that deep dark purple. The sky looked so peaceful. It looked like a petri dish of life, even though it was just a bunch of burning plasma spheres. I had tears rolling down my face. My two favorite things were harmonizing above me in a million miles in every direction.

We went into the forest together and made our way through the darkness— through several winding paths in the woods and across a playground and into a tunnel till we reached the Rose Garden. Mostly we talked about our friendship and how much we love each other. It was a good night. I love you, Laura. Thanks for coming with me.

Kate: I got the postcard you said you didn’t think I would get because it didn’t have enough postage on it. Cool! That’s three this month. Thanks dude.

You enclosed a quote from my hero Iggy Pop about a city I like a whole lot:

Berlin was a city you could go to get lost in, or be forgotten and still get something done. A good and dangerous place for lunatics and the artistically minded. Sometimes you need that. It’s often where great things come from.

Yeeaaahhhhh~

Those pictures you sent me the other day that Iggy’s girlfriend Esther Friedman took of him in Berlin are so good. I see myself in them!!

. . . and uhhhh yeah I found this cute li’l photobooth print of them too: