Aquarian Weekly 8/2/00
REALITY CHECK

THE "NEVER" SOLUTION
& OTHER BIZARRE REVELATIONS ABOUT BLAZO!! PART II - (read part I)

The room became eerily quiet, the way it would in an old-time movie when the stoic captain addresses a ship of doomed men. That's when Mighty Chief Wonka leaned forward, closing his left eye, and poked his cane in my direction. "Einstein never slept," he began. "The man dressed in the same goddamn suit everyday, subsisted on an inordinate amount of fish and collapsed in a heap on more than one occasion!"

More silence.

"But in the end," he continued. "Someone was better off for it! That is what we aspire to here in the hub of grandeur, the glowing talisman of hope, the graduation of wit and art! That is what it means to loyal BLAZOists worldwide!"

It went on like that for over 20 excruciating minutes, complete with obtuse references to defunct civilizations, vague Angus Young memories and a list of women Picasso turned down. Completing the diatribe with a deep breath, the Chief intertwined reasons for the death of television as we know it. Not that it meant actually killing anyone at the major networks, but after it was done, it was hard for me to tell the difference between literal and figurative death.

Looking on with rapt attention were those making up the BLAZO!! inner circle; two well-attired dwarfs, a manic middle-aged grump called Bart Francis and the pacing spectre of Kaptain Karl. These were men that Chief Wonka referred to on several occasions as the "chosen ones", capable of understanding every detail of this kinetic hyperbole.

Of course, even that snapshot of circus maximus seemed ordinary in the shadow of the gentleman who entered the room next. He was over six-foot and wide-bodied in an intimidating, but fun-soaked way, with a wild tuft of jet-black curls swaying atop a deeply carved, but round face, interrupted by penetrating dark eyes. His brightly multi-colored Hawaiian shirt billowed as he strode through the group, his bushy eyebrows raised in pulsing anticipation.

The Chief spread his arms, and with a powerful grin, shouted, "It is Beautiful Chaz, the walking quintessence of the word…LOVE!!"

Beautiful Chaz engulfed the sizable Chief Wonka in his gripping hug, then spun around with surprising swiftness and pointed in my direction. "Don't tell me who this is…" he hissed, hesitating and then bending into a crouch to commence a awkward duck walk across the room toward me. "Is this that friggin' loooon, Campion," he spit out, laughing maniacally. "Let me show the boy where we're at!" And that is exactly what Beautiful Chaz did.

And as I followed him throughout the operation, laid out like a maze in separate parts of the BLAZO!! castle, my pen was moving rapidly upon a small pad hidden in my oversized shirt. With every journalistic instinct I could muster amidst the unfolding circumstances, these are the actual notes I scribbled down:

Strange staircases…winding, stone pillars. A large room filled with hunched artists scratching out crude, but amusing figures. Angry animators punching monitor screens and baying like wolves in heat. A chamber beyond with hollowed walls filled with candy and a sizable soda fountain (literally a fountain as in a park). Here several men in navy blue suits communicate to each other via long bullhorns with the words…TAKE NO PRISONERS posted on them. A twenty-foot mural of Chief Wonka looms behind them with one word written in script…SMILE.

A short ride in an elevator decorated in plaid wallpaper (very ill, almost woozy from the ride) up to an attic lair for writers - horribly mutated men and women with sunglasses lurching back from the shifting light in the room. Beautiful Chaz, laughing wildly, slips me a blue pill. "Right you up," he says. I am reticent, but tired of the spins, so I swallow it. One dwarf hands me back the mini-tape recorder he'd stolen from my jacket and tells me to press play. Twisted melody chimes from the tiny speaker. La-la-la-la-la-la. Over and over. Walls moving. Chaz's head getting larger and larger. I'm blacking…

Wake up in a massive media room with hundreds of television screens playing one thing: A man dressed in a business suit with a monitor for a head is dancing around a lime green hallway. His face pulses different messages…Never ask you to conform…Never ask you to kill for a pair of Nikes…. Never ask you to shave your head, wear a sheet, hang in airports…Never ask you to drink the kool aid, carve images into your forehead, move to Montana…Never ask you to listen to the Beatles White Album backwards…

Suffice to say, no man should have to endure such cryptic lunacy, but this was something I should've decided before putting my name on a contract beneath the BLAZO!! logo. Nothing else I remember about the evening made the type of sense sufficient for a cohesive story. This has always been the legacy of this space from politics to showbiz and back. Even an afternoon with the mutants running the Hillary campaign was less harrowing than what goes on behind the walls of BLAZO!!

As a postscript, and before my visit ended, I structured the utter silliness I'd witnessed into what amounts to a rambling manifesto that currently sits on the Internet at blazo.com, all the while Chief Wonka peering over my shoulder and whispering key phrases and clever aphorisms. But he never asked for blood, and for that I'm more than grateful, because every revolution has its casualties, and as close as I came to this one, I'm glad to not be counted.

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