DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part VII)

Dave Insurgent of Reagan Youth, circa 1984

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

Nov 16, SAN FRANCISCO
KING OF THE HIPPIES

In 1984, a San Francisco police officer told me I should leave town and never come back. Seriously. Leave town, and never come back. I guess he didn’t like me very much.

Which was fine, believe me, the feeling was mutual. It was like this: I was in town with the Rock Against Reagan/Rock Against Racism Tour, driving and being the general facilitator for New York matinee thrash idols Reagan Youth. Singer Dave Insurgent (nee Rubenstein) was one of my best pals and he insisted I come on the tour and open their shows with the world’s most obnoxious comedy act, a Borscht-Belt Comedian as Satan-in-a-madras-jacket character that would tell one-liners about invading Nicarauga, a real sore point for lefties back then. Invaribly I would catch a hail of bottles and death threats before Dave and the band came on to deliver their message of peace and anarchy: Liberate yourelf, don’t be a reactionary, think for yourself, and get a fucking sense of humor.

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part VI)

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

Nov. 10, New York City
Punk Rock, Dirty Blues, and the Dark Side of Professional Wrestling: A Real Beat Happening

With the Midwest fading like headlights in our rear view mirror, Mickey Finn, The World’s Greatest Piano Player, and I are ready to take on the home town crowd in New York City.

The venue is none other than Manitoba’s Bar on Ave B and 7th Street, the scene of many of my favorite outrages. Once upon a time, I had a band called the New York Sheiks. It was a kind of a punk rock blues and dirty boogie band, a free wheeling experiment in gospel, glam and rock’n’roll terrorism, and back around the end of the century we played at this bar every Thursday for about three months getting ready to record our first record.

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part V)

Edison the Drop Out punks it up at ye olde college event board

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

Nov 6, University of Chicago
“Like Pouring Chocolate Sauce on Cocaine”

I love doing gigs at colleges. It makes me feel somewhat legit — after all, I dropped out of a couple of very good ones and despite writing a few books and working as a journalist I am still outside looking in, especially when it comes to my family. I broke my mother’s heart twice, the first time when I dropped out of NYU film school, and then after I traded up to Columbia, I went off the reservation after just a semester.

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part IV)

The Greatest Honor Ever Bestowed on a Writer, Ever.

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

Nov 5, Chicago
Return of the Fighting Cock, or, Hey Patti Smith, Eat My Shorts!
The World’s Greatest Piano Player’s relationship with The Car is beginning to worry me. It isn’t right. It is…. Well, unnatural. He has begun to fetishize its German engineering to the point of some man-meets-machine post-apocalyptic sexuality that I am not sure I am comfortable with. If we are parked outside of a bookstore, he feels he has to visit The Car. Not check on it, VISIT it. Late at night when it is parked for the evening and we are drinking, he gets wistful about it. He talks to his girlfriend in New York every day but I notice he is careful not to mention The Car. Then again, even the punters are impressed by our ride. How many times have we heard in the last three days, “Hey, whose BMW is this?” and of course no one believes us when we say it is ours. Writers do not tour in Beemers. For most of us a more appropriate vehicle would be a hearse.

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part III)

THe Bee-yoo-tee-ful Fisher Michigan gets DIRTY!

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

Jew vs. Hillbilly: the Day the Pornographer Came to Town
Nov 4, Pt. Huron, MI

Looks like Labatt’s Blue is going to be the Shower Beer of the Week. No problem, works for me. It’s a light lager with a little more taste than Budweiser, my preferred beer to drink while loitering under a life-giving blast of hot water and going through the semi-ritual process of Cleaning the Jew.

So it’s not exactly a micva, me drinking beer in the shower, but I do draw a lot of power from it. The thing about the beer is it has to be ice cold, and nothing fancy. I’m not in there sipping a pint of handcrafted IPA; I am enjoying the medicinal, spa-like effects of a cold beverage in me and super hot water on me, plus the regular cycle of wash, rinse, repeat, etc – it is not only a crucial hangover killer (even if you have to really gag back the Bud on some days), but the panacea for any sort of early morning blues, not to mention the best way to recharge the batteries, or simply relax, after a long day. Sometimes I like to linger and have a few while I listen to an entire Beethoven symphony, or a few sides of Led Zeppelin, which always sounds better in a small, tiled room. (In fact I have actually constructed a playlist for better shower drinking, reprinted below.)

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A High Speed Book Tour (part II)

Hotter Than the Sun: At Leopold's Books in Detroit.

Editor’s Note: Mike Edison has been out on the road promoting his new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, on what has been a book tour like no other, perpetrating a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here in this exclusive blog. For more info on DDD and all things Edison, please visit www.mikeedison.com. Click here for the full tour diary.

“Motor City’s Burning”
Day 2: New York City/Detroit

Every day on tour starts off with a beer in the shower. It is the answer to all of life’s little problems, not least of all the cotton ball tongue and sandpaper brain that comes with an early morning after an evening of ranting about the vagaries of blow jobs and bi-curious pornographers, chased by frequent flights of bourbon. It is the breakfast of champions, and the secret to my success, such as it is.

Here’s the tic-tock.

7:30 a.m. EST – Hot shower, ice cold Bud. Was up late repairing the theremin and packing for four days on the road. Flight to Chicago leaves LaGuardia at 9, and must leave time to check the gear and get breakfasted (eggs, potatoes, Bloody Mary), because we intend to hit the ground running in Chicago.

11:40 a.m. CST – Plane is late getting in, and we lose an hour because we are going to drive straight to Detroit. Later this will play in our favor – coming back to Chicago we get the hour back, plus Daylight Savings Time is over, so really we get TWO hours. I call it time slippage and I love it.

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DIRTY! DIRTY! DIRTY! A high speed book tour (part I)

Mike Edison’s new book, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder, has been described as a “high-speed saga of sixty years of sex in the centerfold.” Largely following the outsized egos of what he calls the “Four Horsemen of Porn and the magazines they created — Hugh Hefner and Playboy, Bob Guccione and Penthouse, Larry Flynt and Huster, and the lesser known but equally vituperous  Al Goldstein and Screw — Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! is at turns foul-mouthed social history, post-gonzo journalism, and tragi-comic epic storytelling. Edison has been out on the road promoting Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! on what was a book tour like no other. Traveling at times with his collaborator and accompanist, Mickey Finn, who Edison calls “the World;s Greatest Piano Player,” Edison will  be perpetrated a mix of literary mayhem and music in bookstores, pizza parlors, dive bars, and art museums, and will be sharing his tour diary and road tales here for the next two weeks. You can find upcoming dates, comix, videos including the 3D trailer for Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! and the legendary bong guitar plus a whole lot more at www.mikeedison.com.

Wednesday, Nov 2, 2010
New York City/Brooklyn, USA: IT’S A ROCK’N’ROLL THING.

I’ve been asked, point blank, what the fuck is wrong with you? “Other authors just carry a copy of their book. It’s easy. Why can’t you just read from your book and answer questions like everyone else?

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