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In the dank pith of night I followed Angelyne, who
flounced to the trunk of her world-famous pink Corvette.
It gleamed, galvanic, like a nuclear Good’N’Plenty.
We were in the parking lot of a Hollywood mini-mall;
neon signs set her cleavage ablaze.
She was hell-bent to change my status from ‘Democrat’
to ‘Independent’ so that I could Vote
Pink in the gubernatorial primary — a race that
a more seasoned statesman, The Terminator, eventually
won (Angelyne was a candidate for the governorship
of California).
Angelyne popped the trunk. I was utterly athrill.
I was about to behold the true Eighth Wonder of the
World, L.A.’s very own Great Pyramid of Giza,
a sight that few alive have seen.
“This won’t take long,” she said
in the kittenish voice that’s really her voice.
The trunk’s catacombs revealed stalactites
of pink and clear balloons, pink totes, and pink puffy/fluffy
things. I think I saw a fairy bear. She pulled a black,
CEO type briefcase from underneath, setting her accoutrements
into a tempest.
“Angelyne, uh… why are you running for
office?” I asked her. Publicity, duh, but I
was wondering what she’d say. I knew that the
campaign was costing her a fortune. People think she’s
broke, but she makes some nice gelt abroad.
Angelyne was thoughtful. “The artist’s
job is to illuminate.” She paused. “Otherwise,
there’s no purpose to art.”
Now, unlike Bush, God ain’t my bitch, so I
doubt things. I bored into the eyes of this pale,
chimeric icon with my fiercest poisoned spear, past
the stalag of lashes, looking for blood.
I was socks-knocked-off gobsmacked to find that…
there was nothing to kill. The woman is guileless.
Starkly sincere. And, believe me, not dumb.
Andy Warhol was a piker next to Angelyne. He did
a pretty good job of the Blank Thing, ‘reflecting
society back on itself.’ He pioneered pandemic
use of the vague non-comment (for which I’d
like to dig him up and mince him.) But he was a sham.
Warhol had a little clan-ette with whom he dropped
the crap. He was a call girl for the good life. In
the end, his own dry soul dispersed into the jet (set)
stream around him. Not longer outsider or artist,
he fully reflected himself — empty and opaque,
with nothing to say.
Angelyne is the real deal. I’ve gotten to know
her. Her life is 24/7 performance art, and yet it’s
no act. What you see is, absolutely, what she is.
It’s just that… there’s more.
“At four years old, I knew I was an avatar’
Angelyne croons over Saag Paneer. “I knew I
was sent to Earth from somewhere else. I’m here
on a mission.”
We’re at one of her ‘lucky’ spots,
a Beverly Hills Indian café. Through the years
Angelyne has pretty well cased L.A. and sussed out
the ‘lucky’ and ‘power’ spots,
as well as the portals to other worlds.
One main portal is the parking lot of ‘Rock’n’Roll
Ralphs,’ a Ralphs market on the Sunset Strip.
It is so nicknamed because it’s a favorite wee
hours stop for the rich, famous and loaded. I challenge
you to find me another market with eight limos by
the door at four A.M.
(NOTE: If you’re smirking please remember that
there are world-wide ‘holy’ holidays for
an oddly pale middle-eastern Jewish slacker who rose
from the dead and whose invisible Dad knocked up a
married chick.)
“Earth is like a bus bench for cosmic bums,”
Angelyne continues, “and the bus never comes.
We’re trapped in some kind of awful terrarium.”
She picks up the pepper shaker. Our spirits are caught,
like the pepper grains in here. We’re all slaves
in a syndrome that we have to break.”
She stops talking and looks down. Her hair trimming,
a pink butterfly on a pink spring, is now in an air
vent’s path, and bobs wildly. Moments pass.
When I emit my rude-ish JAP ‘nudge’ sigh,
Angelyne does ‘time out’ with her hands
and says, “I have to think of how to put this!”
I scarf two pappadums while Angelyne excogitates.
I only now notice that people are drooling, goose-necked,
to grab a glimpse of her. (There’s a whole website
devoted to ‘Angelyne sightings’.) Noses
are pressed on a window, spouting breath steam. A
couple of wives pout as their hubbys stare.
Eventually, Angelyne looks up. “My mission
is only revealed to me step-by-step, as I go. But
I know now that I was ‘hired’ by I’m
not sure who to be a kind of ‘Social Worker.”
She leans forward, intense, “My job is to help
people get out of here.”
She turns the pepper shaker over, and the grains
escape. “Tyranny is unheard of where I come
from. Here, life itself is a tyrant.”
The obvious question throbbed. I strained to tiptoe,
“If your task on Earth is, uh, spiritual,
why do you present yourself, you know, the boobs,
the sexpot thing…?
“Well,” she suspired, tiny-soft, “When
Sherlock Holmes wanted to find a murderer he would
lie in bed and try to get inside his head; think like
a murderer would think. I just figured that with earthlings,”
— her eyes seemed to quintuple in size —
“I’d grab ‘em by the groin and work
up.”
Allow me to pause here, gentlepeople, and inform
you that Angelyne’s face is, actually, kind
and delicate. Her get-ups, please note, are their
own, separate, oracular trip.
I was raised in Beverly Hills, and learned at my
mother’s knee the local craft of discerning
plastic surgery at twenty yards. I’m a master.
I’m also renowned as a black-belt psycho magnet,
but I’d say my eye for augmentation edges even
that out.
While Angelyne has clearly had ‘work’
done (L.A. patois) I submit that the amount is only
on par or less than your average, local Jaguar-driving
matron. Her age is a pan-dimensional secret, but to
me, ‘unseemly’ is chicken-breasted grandma
Goldie Hawn giggling, cutesy-biting her lip.
“When I get up in the morning, I feel a hundred
feet tall,” our lost world’s Billboard
Queen continues, “and then I realize I have
to POUR my spirit into this body-vessel I was assigned…
and slog through another day on earth.” She
sighs. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“But Angelyne,” I say, “No one
knows about this stuff. You’ve never said a
word. There’s not a thing about this on your
website.”
“I don’t want to scare people. My bosses
are so vague.” Angelyne sips her tea. “But
see — I’m telling you, and news tumbleweeds.
I figure everyone will come to me eventually.”
Tour Hollywood with Angelyne on her website:
http://www.angelyne.com
You can write to Xanadu Xero at xanadu@rawstory.com.
Xanadu also cordially invites you to join the
Raw
Story Forums and visit her fiefdom, The
Raw Bar, to discuss these topics, any other damn
thing, or just bitch and talk trash. You can also
view an archive of her columns by clicking
here.
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