EARLY SIGNS OF DEMENTIA IN AJ WEBERMAN

The pharmacies in Brooklyn would sell you anything during the 1950's.
I first obtained the ingredients for gunpowder in 1955, when I was ten
years old, by looking up any pharmaceutical value the ingredients of
gunpowder (sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrite) possessed. Then I
forged a note that read, "I give my son Alan Weberman permission to
buy charcoal because he has a stomach ache and it helps him. Sara
Weberman." I bought each ingredient at a different pharmacy. Some
of the pharmacists were skeptical and did not believe I suffered from
the condition described in the notes. But they all sold the chemicals to
me. What did I do with the gunpowder after I made it? I put it on a
round metal tray, placed the tray on the toilet seat in my family's
LES FLEUR DE MAL bathroom and ignited it. The tray was so thin that the god dam toilet
seat caught on fire!!! My parents could not believe their eyes when they tried to use it!! This
episode makes me recall the anti-war slogan - "Nixon, liar, we gonna set your ass on fire!"

HEY KID WANNA BUY SOME SPANISH FLY

Thanks to a pharmacy on Flatbush Avenue I got into the aphrodisiac

(Spanish Fly) and vomiting pill businesses. I would purchase 20 double-0
capsules by telling the pharmacist, who was getting know me rather well by
this time, that I gagged when I took aspirin tablets, so I had to crush them up
and put them in a capsule. I filled the capsules with salt and pepper then
sold them as either vomiting pills, or Spanish Fly. One of my customers,
Sammy Fishman, asked me to meet him Flatbush and Church Avenues. He said, "I gave the
Spanish Fly pill to my older sister. I put it in her food. She got really sick." I thought fast. I said, "I
mixed up the vomiting pill with the Spanish fly, Sammy. They look alike." I didn’t want to deal
with the dude if he was giving them to his sister...the motherfucker might try it on his mother
next!

I had some other rackets going before I adopted a socialist morality. When I was 9 I obtained
stock certificates from bankrupt companies (my dad was an attorney), and sold them to the kids
on my block, assuring them a high rate of return on their allowances. When my father received
complaints from the kid’s parents he said, "You are nine years old and you committed a Federal
crime!! This is a violation of the Securities and Exchange Act!!" I reluctantly returned all the kids
stinking allowances and apologized to their parents telephonically. When I was 10 I invited a
rather slow think kid named Eddy Greenspan over to my parent’s apartment when they were not
there to witness my crime. Then I slipped a pair of leg irons I had purchased at an Army surplus
store on Cortland Street on Eddy and refused to release him until he signed a Last Will and
Testament leaving everything he owned to me. This was a great Army surplus store – they
would sell a kid like me, who looked like his mother dressed him, ANYTHING. I purchased all
sorts of knives there along with DDT bombs that looked like little CO2 capsules. I took several of
these bombs to summer camp and when a counselor fucked with me I set one off in his face.
He beat the shit out of me but is now probably dead of cancer. Later Eddy told me that since his
Last Will and Testament was written under duress it was invalid. I guess he had sought legal
advice. While attending Lefferts Junior High School I obtained information that one David Held’s
mother had been committed to a mental institution. The information was passed on to me in this
fashion: “Held’s mother’s a nut.” Back in the 1950’s there was a tremendous stigma attached to
mental illness, especially in the Jewish Community. Instead of having sympathy for this boy who
had to grow up bereft of a mother, I fucking blackmailed him. I told him that if he didn’t give me
his lunch money every day I would tell everyone his mother was a nut. David made the tragic
error of giving into blackmail and for several months turned over his money to me. One day
when I was making my collection Held went nuts. He said he could not take it anymore. But
before he could attack me Stevie Kurshner and Bruce Mann beat the crap out of him. David
Held lived in a building on Flatbush Avenue and Lincoln Road that became the center of
controversy after a Judge sentenced its Jewish landlord to live under the conditions he allegedly
created for his tenants. The problem here is that before the Jamaicans took over the hood there
was no problem with this building. They destroyed it but the liberals could not handle this so
they blamed it on the owner. By the time I got to Erasmus Hall High School I was already a
beatnik but retained some Brooklynese characteristics such as an interest in racing sheets. A
boy sitting in back of me, Jeffrey Knapp, offered to take my bets. It was then I coined this adage
“It is better to take bets than to place them” based on “it is better to give then to receive.” When I
got to college, Michigan State University, I received information that a student named Steven
Lupoff had lied about his grades to other students. Lupoff’s father owned a pharmacy in Detroit.
I tore out the index to a book entitled Drugs And The Mind and checked off various drugs I was
interested in such as Mescaline. I told Stevie that if he didn’t steal the drugs I had checked off
from his father everyone would be informed of his real grade point average. He agreed to the
deal with the Devil. When he returned after Winter break he pleaded with me, “I tried but there is
no disease that is cured by Mescaline or LSD. My father had none but I did bring you these.” I
looked at the label, it said “Antorax Children’s tranquillizer.” Another said “Chlorpromazine.” I
said, “I guess these will have to do” and I popped a few. Not only did they not get me high but
they got me straight.

REEFER

Marijuana was instrumental in the development of computer hardware and

software. Longhaired, pot smoking, dudes from the West Coast, formed Apple, a
company similar to John Lennon's Apple Records. They capitalized Apple on
money made from selling toll fraud devices - red boxes and blue boxes - that had
first been designed by Yippie Captain Crunch. Crunch wrote the first Word
Perfect-like program, Easy Writer. Because pot improves creativity in already
creative people, the people at Apple found a use for the serial mouse, which had been invented
by the UNIX people at Bell Labs. This led to the proliferation of computers using American made
chips and software and reinvigorated the American economy. The high tech stocks fuel the
market. DIG WHAT STEWART BRAND LAID DOWN:

In the 1960s and early '70s, the first generation of hackers emerged in university computer-
science departments. They transformed mainframes into virtual personal computers, using a
technique called time sharing that provided widespread access to computers. Then in the late
'70s, the second generation invented and manufactured the personal computer. These
nonacademic hackers were hard-core counterculture types - like Steve Jobs, a Beatle-haired
hippie who had dropped out of Reed College, and Steve Wozniak, a Hewlett-Packard engineer.
Before their success with Apple, both Steve’s developed and sold "blue boxes," outlaw devices
for making free telephone calls. Their contemporary and early collaborator, Lee Felsenstein,
who designed the first portable computer, known as the Osborne 1, was a New Left radical who
wrote for the renowned underground paper the Berkeley Barb.

As they followed the mantra "Turn on, tune in and drop out," college students of the '60s also
dropped academia's traditional disdain for business. "Do your own thing" easily translated into
"Start your own business." Reviled by the broader social establishment, hippies found ready
acceptance in the world of small business. They brought honesty and a dedication to service
that was attractive to vendors and customers alike. Success in business made them disinclined
to "grow out of" their countercultural values, and it made a number of them wealthy and
powerful at a young age.

The third generation of revolutionaries, the software hackers of the early '80s, created the
application, education and entertainment programs for personal computers. Typical was Mitch
Kapor, a former transcendental-meditation teacher, who gave us the spreadsheet program
Lotus 1-2-3, which ensured the success of IBM's Apple-imitating PC. Like most computer
pioneers, Kapor is still active. His Electronic Frontier Foundation, which he co-founded with a
lyricist for the Grateful Dead, lobbies successfully in Washington for civil rights in cyberspace.

In the years since Levy's book, a fourth generation of revolutionaries has come to power. Still
abiding by the Hacker Ethic, these tens of thousands of netheads have created myriad
computer bulletin boards and a nonhierarchical linking system called Usenet. At the same time,
they have transformed the Defense Department-sponsored ARPAnet into what has become the
global digital epidemic known as the Internet. The average age of today's Internet users, who
number in the tens of millions, is about 30 years. Just as personal computers transformed the
'80s, this latest generation knows that the Net is going to transform the '90s. With the same
ethic that has guided previous generations, today's users are leading the way with tools created
initially as "freeware" or "shareware," available to anyone who wants them.
Of course, not everyone on the electronic frontier identifies with the countercultural roots of the
'60s. One would hardly call Nicholas Negroponte, the patrician head of M.I.T.'s Media Lab, or
Microsoft magnate Bill Gates "hippies." Yet creative forces continue to emanate from that
period. Virtual reality - computerized sensory immersion - was named, largely inspired and
partly equipped by Jaron Lanier, who grew up under a geodesic dome in New Mexico, once
played clarinet in the New York City subway and still sports dreadlocks halfway down his back.
The latest generation of supercomputers, utilizing massive parallel processing, was invented,
developed and manufactured by Danny Hillis, a genial longhair who set out to build "a machine
that could be proud of us." Public-key encryption, which can ensure unbreakable privacy for
anyone, is the brainchild of Whitfield Diffie, a lifelong peacenik and privacy advocate who
declared in a recent interview, "I have always believed the thesis that one's politics and the
character of one's intellectual work are inseparable."

Our generation proved in cyberspace that where self-reliance leads, resilience follows, and
where generosity leads, prosperity follows. If that dynamic continues, and everything so far
suggests that it will, then the information age will bear the distinctive mark of the countercultural
'60s well into the new millennium.

Does the underground ever get credit for this? Does pot ever get credit?
All we get is Newt Gingrich blaming the counterculture for Afro-American
crime by accusing us of breaking down moral standards in the 1960's.
Newt was once in the underground, in fact he was the editor of an
underground newspaper. Newt Gingrich smoked pot, and introduced a
bill to ease federal restrictions on medical marijuana in 1981. On March 19, 1982 he wrote in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,

We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to
obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. Federal policies
do not reflect a factual or balanced assessment of marijuana's use as a medicant.

Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie Bennett, who came down on pot smoker's as drug czar in 1990's, had
an addiction problem that he fed in Lost Wages. These men should be put on trial along with
Usama Bin Laden for September 11th, as they had the Feds so focused on the drug thing, with
THE PARTNERSHIP FOR DRUG FREE AMERICA, that the Islamist scum were overlooked.
Another guilty party is Bill Clinton, the happy-time party cat who let the Feds go off in the
direction they chose because he was having his asshole reamed by a high-level groupie!
President Clinton smoked pot. But he did not inhale. What a liar. Who would have ever thought
to say this?
I WANT TO FILE ASSAULT CHARGES AGAINST THE RABBI WHO CIRCUMCISED ME!!

I was born on May 26, 1945, in Manhattan although I grew up at 50

Lefferts Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. The first thing I
remember is an image of a sick demented looking motherfucker
dressed in black coming at me with a knife and praying at the same
time. I would like to find this motherfucker today and fuck him up. Hey
and what is this bullshit circumcision anyway? It is fucking mutilation; no
Rabbi with a knife in his hand is going to improve on millions of years of
evolution. Yeah, not only is it unnecessary, it is a crime - you ever heard
of murder and mayhem? Murder is when you kill someone, mayhem is when you dismember
them. My member got like dismembered. I have no idea of what it is like to have a foreskin. I
have read that numerous nerve endings are severed during circumcision so sex becomes less
pleasurable. But diminishing male satisfaction only causes the male to seek more sexual
experiences so instead of making you less horny circumcision makes Jews more horny. That's
why most male heterosexual porn stars are Jewish. And the shit they tell you, the foreskin
infection story is lot of crap. Shit, when I went out to the Midwest I expected to see hundreds of
drive in foreskin clinics, to deal with all the goys foreskin infections out there. Like "Foreskins
Cleaned While You Wait" shit like that that never appeared. So fuck it all, stupidity in the world
cannot be avoided, cause some of it comes upon you while you are still dependant on your
parents for life.

Hey, I never had my dogs' balls cut off and I never will. They call it
"neutering." What the fuck does that mean? That the dog is "neutral" like
Switzerland allegedly was during World War II? I call it castration! These
bitches at the dog run tell me, "Oh he has a much less chance of getting
testicular cancer if you have him neutered." No shit! By that same
reasoning I should have my heart removed then I would have a much less
chance of getting a heart attack. Pugs motto is "Jump 'em Hump 'em and Dump 'em" and he
already knocked up a bitch at the dog run. Now he prefers males...he tries to cornhole them
unceasingly. I would have hated to have him as a cellmate....so what if my pug is a homo thug?
What am I supposed to do? Return him to Christopher Street Pets?

TWENTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE RIGHT

Like 99% of the people in America believed in Christianity but the Jews didn't. This sowed the
seeds of dissention in the Jewish psyche, since the majority was not always right. If we put it up
for a vote Jesus would win hands down, at least in America. If we put it up for a vote worldwide
Mohammad would have a landslide. Nonetheless, I dont go for any of that shit. I had this
fantasy of going to Ireland while the IRA was active there and like going on the radio and giving
a speech: "What the fuck are you killing each other for assholes? Both Catholicism and
Protestantism are both equally absurd delusions. Get your acts together and give up the
bullshit." I would have gotten my ass kicked by both sides.

BEING JEWISH MEANT BEING “EXTERMINATED” LIKE AN INSECT

Having been born just as the war ended it was bound to have
had an effect on my brain. I don’t remember when it was I
found out I was Jewish, it was just always something I knew.
What Jewish meant to me then was people waiting in line to
get gassed. Why wait in an orderly line? What the fuck was
wrong with the European Jews, why didn’t they fight back more
than they did? This thought bugged many intelligent kidz at the
time. In Hebrew School we talked of possible extermination in
America. The answer was "They will get the Negroes first." We
figured the Nazis hated the blacks more than the Jews
because the blacks committed a lot of violent crime. When I studied the Nazis later in life I found
exactly the opposite was true. The Nazis didn’t want to gas all the blacks - they just wanted to
send them back to Africa. It was the Jews that the gas chambers were reserved for. I also did
not know that the Jews were ignorant as to the real intentions of the Nazis but they should have
known something was up when they were separated from their children. The only good nazi is a
dead nazi. So I modeled myself to be the exact opposite of the Nazis. Why worry about being
clean when the nazis bathed regularly? Why listen to classical music when the "civilized" nazis
listened to classical music? Why not be a fucking communist, like those who defeated the Nazi
scum? Who knew what was going on inside the USSR at the time. I became a short wave
listener and tuned into Radio Moscow, which had very powerful transmitters at the time. In my
public school yearbook it stated that I listened to Radio Moscow, which my parents felt would
follow me through life. Shit, the first time I wrote to a socialist organization the Feds contacted
my father. They had a mail cover on the group and since this was my first contact with the left,
they told my father I could have another chance if I never contacted a leftist group again. During
the anti-war period the Feds contacted everyone who subscribed to the Yipster Times. I had to
go to John Shattuck of the American Civil Liberties Union to get them to stop. America is a free
country as long as you dont try and exercise your freedom. You are free to obey, free to
conform. Shit, you can dress anyway you like, mutilate yourself to your hearts content, but dont
cross over certain bounds.

SHUL IS OUT FOREVER

I never believed in religion from the word go but was forced to observe the tenants of orthodox
Judaism by my father, who dug the lick. I was forced to go to the Prospect Park Synagogue,
which had moved from a walk up above a supermarket on Flatbush Avenue. My first memories
are of this walk up house of prayer and a dude named Joe Barth, whose wife couldn't have kids,
praying like a motherfucker with his tallis over his head. I never prayed, I only pretended to,
rocking back and forth and mumbling. What difference did it make. I couldn't understand what I
was saying in Hebrew. I was taught to read and write Hebrew but not to speak it. Modern
Hebrew is as difficult as Chinese to learn, there are no vowels, so a lot of immigrants to Israel
can speak it but not read it. But a Jewish education, as absurd as it is focusing on superstition
like don’t turn on lights on the Sabbath, is a good way to teach you to think. If you can memorize
all these commandments your brain would have had some good exercise. Yeah, I have to admit
that I believe Jews are smarter than the rest. Many are professionals, scholars, Noble prize
winners or like really rich. But what Jews really excel at is figuring out ways to destroy
themselves. Both the Jews and the Muslims voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry - the Jews to
destroy themselves, the Muslims to destroy America! Kerry would have tried to gut the Patriot
Act - hey the Patriot Act is aimed at Muslims, not at the general population. And guess what -
the feds did black bag jobs, obtained confidential records and a whole lot of other things long
before the Patriot Act was passed. Maybe they couldn't use the info in court but it didn't really
matter since there is no justice - just ice - if you go to trial. The Feds have a 90% conviction rate
- tantamount to a court martial. If you have the temerity to question their investigative ability you
gonna sit for ten years my man! And guess what, while you be waiting to go to trial - if you can't
make bail or are denied bail - you be living under worse conditions than after you are convicted.
Hey, I been there sports fans.

I have never read the Bible. I figure I might as well wait until I get thrown in jail to do so. (First
thing I did when they tossed me into The Union County Jail in Jersey was beg for a bible. The
dude I was locked up with went to Erasmus, the same High School I attended, so I asked him to
sing "On Erasmus, On Erasmus Fight on to your Fame" with me. He was a big black dude who
tossed some drugs while the cops were chasing him. He had the top bunk and his feet dangled
down. I felt like Huck Finn on that raft in the river, locked up but free. I had Aron Morton Kay call
the dudes wife and tell her he was clinkified at the crossbar inn because the brother couldn't do
it himself for some reason.

Who the fuck knows why but from the word go I never
fit in the mold. Yeah, I went to PS 241, where I peed in
my pants and left a big wet circle on the floor. The
teacher tried to figure out who did by reconstructing
who sat where. That fucking building was a fucking
maze to me and I had to leave little bits of paper in the
hallways when I went to the bathroom on the first floor
to find my way back. Fear. Fear. Fear permeated the
Jewish community that survived in America, fear they
didn't know even existed. Death. Gas chambers. Roundups. American Jews came real close to
mass death and this left an imprint on their psyches. Then there was the fear that Jews would
be labeled as Communists due to the Rosenbergs and so many others. The Rosenbergs were
guilty of either trying to steal America's atomic secrets or stealing America's atomic secrets -
there is no doubt about that. I went through the entire Rosenberg file at the FBI reading room
and the sketch that they transmitted to the Russians resembled a diagram of an atomic device
that some of my associates in the Underground Press published in a Wisconsin newspaper.
What they were also guilty of was gratitude to the Soviet Union for defeating Hitler and saving
their lives. America would never have entered World War Two but for the attack on Pearl
Harbor. Sixty-five percent of Americans were isolationists. The Germans were the largest ethnic
group that immigrated here. This image we have of a little old American lady sitting in front of
her radio in the 1940's listening to war reports and saying: "Sonny we got to go over there and
fight Hitler" is a load of shit. It was more likely "Let’s not get involved in a war for the Jews."
Hitler dug Amerika. He wrote in Mein Kampf that unlike the conquerors of Latin America, the
Americans did not intermix with the indigenous population. Like the rest of Mein Kampf this
statement is historically inaccurate. American slave owners could not stay out of the slave
quarters and although blacks were considered only a fraction human they were human enough
to fuck the shit out them. This created the race of blacks we see here in America. The first time I
saw an African, on a beach in Tel Aviv in 1959, I could not believe it. They looked so much
different than American blacks. Well, shit those were Victorian times and everyone was horny.
But my take on this is that the Constitution said that Blacks were only two thirds human beings.
By implication this means that the other third was animal. So any slave owner that fucked three
of his slaves was fucking someone who the founding fathers considered an animal and should
have been busted under the laws against beastiality.

Hitler dug America for other reasons. The Americans exterminated the natives or sent them to
concentration camps (not death camps) known as reservations. They gave the Indians blankets
contaminated with smallpox, germ warfare that even Hitler temporarily shunned. The
Rosenbergs had a false picture of life in the Soviet Union, they never visited there but were
taken in by CPUSA propaganda. I do not believe they were evil people, just deluded and victims
of the Second World War.

FIRECRACKERS

My major ambition when I was about 10 or 11 was to purchase an

entire mat of firecrackers so I could resell them by the pack to other
kids. I saved up my money and along with my buddy, I believe it was
Stevie Kirshner, we headed down to Canal Street to cop. Our first
problem was our dress. Like we looked like our mothers dressed us,
which they did. A dark complexioned older kid approached us and
asked if we wanted to buy firecrackers. We said we did and he told us
that we had come the right place. As we walked down the Manhattan
old city street we stopped and the kid bought us both Italian ices. Then
we went into a red bricked housing project building and were told to
give him the money and wait on the staircase. He was going up to see Joey Maldanado in
Apartment 15-B. An hour passed. Than two. Soon we realized we had been ripped off. We went
to 15-B and knocked on the door. A Puerto-Rican lady answered. She didn’t speak English. I
learned two things from this experience - always ask to see the goods before you turn over the
money and the Italians will fill your stomach before they rip you off.

This little piece of knowledge came in handy later on in life. It was 1980 and Aron Kay and I
were hitchhiking back from a Yippie Conference in Columbus, Ohio. It was a strange night: First
we got picked up by a military policeman whose ambition was to join United States Customs so
that one day he could take a bribe and become rich. He knew there was no other way this was
going to happen. Then a dude in an antique car picked us up. A skinny dark haired Italian junkie
from Brooklyn, the kind of guy even the Mafia wouldn't touch. The evil that Brooklyn could
produce often gave me cause to wonder. This dude was all scarred up and began to reminisce
about the various accidents he had been in. Aron, who had a big scar on his neck from an old
auto accident began to chime in about his mishap. I didn’t dig the conversation in the least.
When he stopped off to get gas the dude bought us some food and asked us where we lived
and if he could come upstairs and make a telephone call. I told him we lived on McDougal
Street in the village. When we got to the Holland tunnel and stopped for the toll I opened the
door and Aron and I got out quickly. The dude drove off. The cops saw us and told us if we were
still there when they returned we were busted. Luckily we were pretty well known in New York
City at the time and someone who recognized us gave us a lift home. I went over to my buddy
Lenny's pad on Sixth Avenue. Lenny was a professional poker player who collected antique
cars. I picked up a newspaper Lenny had lying about and there was an article about a dude who
had placed an a classified ad in a newspaper stating that he wished to sell his antique car, the
same make and model car that we had just driven in with the psychopath. The dude lived in
Pennsylvania. When the guy arrived to look at the short, he pulled a gun, tied up the owner and
stole the car. That was the last time I hitchhiked...

I became adept at the use of firecrackers. My parents hired a

baby sitter for me named Mrs. Suckman who I did not like. I
remember she was watching Ike’s first inauguration intently on
our Dumont television when I set off a firecracker a few feet from
her. She slapped me but that was the last I saw of her. I learned
to remove the gunpowder from the firecrackers fuse so it would
not ignite immediately. I would place one of these modified firecrackers in a pile of dog shit and
ignite it when a pedestrian or pedestrians passed a certain point, a large tree in a garbage
collection area. I had it timed so just as they passed the dogshit the firecracker would ignite
sending the dog all over the poor passerby whose only crime was to have encountered Alan
Weberman. I would be across the street pretending to practice stoop ball and pretend to be
startled by the blast. I also trafficked in cracker balls, these little round explosive devices that
would explode on impact. They looked like children’s candy and I am sure that several kids bit
into them every Fourth of July. What I would do with those would be to go over to my friend
Arthur Dyner’s parents apartment and wait until a convertible passed under his 6th floor window
then toss down a barrage of crackerballs at the driver and occupants of the car. The cops came
and told us we had better stop before we caused a serious accident. As I grew more
sophisticated I switched from firecrackers to Ash cans and cherry bombs. The ashcan was an
interesting device in that it had a magnesium fuse so it would explode under water. I took a few
ashcans to camp, went out boating in the middle of Maple Lake and set it off. All of a sudden I
saw everyone in the swimming area get out of the water in a panic. It seems that sound waves
carry quite some distance in water. I came close to getting kicked out of camp for that one as
the swimming counselor claimed I could have deafened all the swimmers.

THE FIRST TIME I GOT TURNED ON

I lived under a very oppressive regime thanks to my father, Ezra

Weberman, who was into Judaism. I was strictly forbidden from eating
pork. But I never believed any of that horseshit from the get go. Pork
was supposed to contain trichina worm anyway, so you weren’t missing
anything. Of course finding a non-Jewish student who had to stay home
for school because he had trichinosis was unheard of. The first one to turn me on was my friend
Martin Levinson's mother, Risha Levinson. And the first one was free. Risha Levinson was a
living example of the creativity of second-generation Russian Jewish immigrants. She is still
around today as sentient and creative as ever at age 90. Her son Martin wrote a book, Brooklyn
Boomer, wherein he recalled the childhood experiences we shared in common. Unfortunately
this angelic lady turned me on to ham, not lobster. But this was kewl cause it was ham for the
first time in years of ham free existence. Oh I had had unkosher shit before. Like my mother
washed my mouth out with hand soap after I said SHIT a couple of times in the elevator. She
should have used Rokeach kosher kitchen soap. The soap was like a gateway drug. So it was
either Risha or my mom that got me started on the stuff. The next unkosher experience I
remember was in a candy store near my public school, PS 241 in Brooklyn. In Crown Heights,
all black kids now. It was raining and I was sitting next to Andrew Pulos whose father was a
superintendent. Pulos was a dummy, and I attributed this to his environment. I had saved my
allowance and I ordered a steak sandwich for the first time. It came on a Kaiser roll, and
consisted of several thin layers of steak like Steak Ums. The meat had not been koshered.
There were still traces of blood in it. Blood. Blood is tasty shit, the Chinese eat coagulated pig
blood. Like Jews kidnap Christian kids and eat them? Hey kids ain't kosher, they have no split
hooves.

One problem that Jewish people have is that they are too civilized. Non-Jews dont have this
problem, they have another one: civilization is merely a veneer that can be stripped off at any
moment. Koshering meat means civilizing meat, as if meat could be civilized? But the Bible
implies that you are what you eat. What this boils down to is draining the blood and salting it to
get rid of the blood. Like I think the first commandment is not eat the flesh of an animal while it is
still alive. Like it is hard for me to picture a bunch of Hebrews getting together and each taking
turns taking bites out of a live cow. They must have eaten smaller animals while they were still
alive. It also means only eating animals with a split hoof that chew their cud, only eating fish with
scales. Now as a garbologist I was at first offended by the fact that Jews were not allowed to eat
creatures that were scavengers like lobsters. I was a scavenger. What in the fuck was wrong
with scavengers? Then I realized that these creatures were high in cholesterol and especially
unhealthy. It was also kewl to kill animals in a humane fashion, humane for the times at least.
Animals are eventually going to die, why not slaughter them before this happens and recycle
them as food? That's why eating veal is uncool. Veal is baby cow so the animal is not given a
chance to live and reproduce. Chickens that are locked in small cages all their lives are also
uncool. But if an animal lives out its life and is going to croak anyway recycle the fucker. But
dont pig out on the stuff. One needs about half the size of a normal American portion to thrive.

MY MOTHER

My mom, Sara Weberman, was no dummy. She was the personal secretary of Rita Sands, a
member of the Board of Education who was paid $1. a year by the city for her services. This,
however, turned me into what is now known as....

THE UNHAPPY CAMPER

My father was Orthodox, my mother was secular. This made for strange
karma. When my father suspected my mother was buying non-kosher food, he
went through our garbage and read the labels. This inspired me to go through
Dylan's garbage and become the first garbologist. I went to P.S. 241 in
Brooklyn, instead of to Yeshiva; however, during the summertime I attended Camp Maple Lake,
an Orthodox Jewish summer camp. Suddenly, I was forced to pray three times a day, wear a
Kippur, and observe the laws of the Sabbath. I took out my frustrations on my bunkmate, Salo
Belkin, the son of the President of Yeshiva University. Salo was in an automobile accident, and
was retarded. This, I felt, was a major factor in his being a true believer in Judaism, and I gave
him many a chance to demonstrate his loyalty to the Jewish faith.
I brought Salo to a remote part of Camp Maple Lake. I grabbed his yarmulke then ran. I
reminded Salo that the Torah forbade him to walk without his head covered in the presence of
God for more than four feet. Later I learned that there was no such commandment. It was
merely custom that caused Jews to cover their heads, not the word of God. Salo was
PARALYZED. I left the yarmulke on the ground just out of his reach. If he stretched his body
enough he could get his yarmulke back and be on his way. Salo lay down on the ground on his
stomach, extended his arm, and reached for it with all his might ---- but he couldn't get it,
proving, God did not exist.

Salo never finished his evening prayers on time. I finished on time, since I
never really prayed, but merely pretended to do so, rocking back and forth
and moving my lips as if I was reading the Hebrew words that I could not
understand. Belkin finished his prayers in the back room of the bunkhouse,
after everyone was asleep. I came in there one night, while Belkin was in
the middle of the Shamona Esrick, a prayer where you are forbidden to walk
or talk, and I shut the light off, making it impossible for him to finish. I
reminded Salo "No walking or talking during the Shemona Esrick!!!" Since
he was in the middle of the prayer, Salo was forced to stay in the backroom,
unable to call for help and unable to move. He was paralyzed by his religion.
At approximately 4:00 a.m. one of my fellow campers had to use the john. He discovered Salo
and released him. He described Salo as having been "foaming at the mouth or frothing at the
mouth."

The esteemed Rabbi Belkin visited Camp Maple Lake. My camp counselors, Alan Dershowitz
and Daniel Chill, made me return everything I had stolen from Belkin, so he would have some
stuff in his cubby when his father arrived. I gave him back his stuff, knowing I could steal it again
after Rabbi Belkin left. While stealing Salo's stuff for a second time around, I found a Kodak
flash camera loaded with film. Rabbi Belkin also left a mailing envelope with his home address
on it, so Salo could mail him the film and he could have it developed. I called my friend Tanny
Berman. Tanny and I entered the bunkhouse when it was empty, and got the camera from
Salo's cubby. I pulled down my pants. Now most kids would have mooned the Rabbi, but I had
Tanny take close up shots of my pecker. (I had one public hair at the time). I mailed the film to
the Rabbi. Salo got to keep the camera because it would be evidence against him when his
father tried to determine whose hairless pecker was in the pictures. Salo had been Oswalded!

I never could figure out what happened to those pictures, no one complained, or mentioned
anything about them, ever. Alan Deshowitz did the O.J. Simpson case. Danny Chill was an
attorney for Bernard Bergman, who ran a series of old age homes where old Jewish people
were neglected.
Salo only lived for 43 years. I was extremely sad to discover this and realized that I loved Salo
Belkin. I attributed my actions to the human condition.

We were all super-horney in those days. One of my fellow campers, Norbert Ecstein, heard that
there was a prostitute by the name of Mary Vega in Manhattan. When we returned from camp,
Norbert got the Manhattan white pages and called up every Mary Vega in it, to inquire if she
was the Mary Vega who was a prostitute.

TIMES SQUARE...NOW THE ONLY ONE TO FUCK IS DONALD DUCK

I began to cut class and head for Times Square, in

order to pursue my interest in African culture. In
those days the courts had decided that the breasts
of African woman could be shown in movie
theatres since they could not possibly arouse
passion in the white man. (I am not a white man, I
am a Jew, but I assumed the law also covered
me) So I became a devotee of movies such as
"Bare Africa" "Naked Africa." This brought me to
42nd Street, and Hubert's Trained Flea Circus, the
last freak show on Times Square. By the time I got
to Hubert’s there were no trained fleas, at least I don't remember seeing any. I don't remember
anything about Hubert's except for a snake dancer who danced to Tequila and a midget or two.
The place latter became a peep show, which was sort of a freak show in itself, and then was
torn down by Disney. Someday I hope to head the Times Square De-Development Board,
where I will supervise the destruction of The New Times Square and recreate the old one - with
its dirty movie theatres, Modells, Richard's Dive Shop, titty shows, hot dog luncheonettes, stores
selling transistor radios and stilettos, dirty magazine stores and Tanfastic - one of the raunchiest
whore houses ever...

THE GALLO BROTHERS: BROOKLYN CIRCA 1959

Strangely enough, my association with the Gallo crime family

started after I became a Jean Shepard listener in the mid-
1950's. Shepard told of life in Chicago during the Depression
and came up with a lot of good Americana. His sponsors were
mostly located in the Village and included Ed Fancher of the
Village Voice, the Paperbook Gallery, Ying and Yang
restaurant, the Cafe Bizarre, Marlboro Books - all that survives
in the Voice. Jean Shepard died on Sunday October 17, 1999 in Sanibel Island, Florida.
Shepard's obituary stated that he had two children that he never acknowledged were his. They
apparently hated him, proving, that the great artist is not always the greatest person. A good
example of this is Dr. Destouches, also known as Louis Ferdinand Celine. Although he was a
Jew hater and Nazi collaborator there is no denying that he wrote some great books such as
Journey to the End of Night. One day circa 1958 I brought a Jean Shepard LP with me to
Erasmus Hall High School. A homeroom classmate approached me. He said, "Hey man, are
you a listener?" Like Shepard would have all his listeners flash their electric lights on and off at
4:00 a.m. so that they could identify each other and groove on each other. His listeners were
termed "a cult". I said, "Yeah, I'm a Jean Shepard listener." (Shepard also said that names were
symbolic - pointing to his own name) The classmate was Neil Hickey, and his mother was one
of Joey and Larry Gallo's sisters. The Gallo brothers were notorious gangsters in Brooklyn. Joey
had a pet lion at his headquarters on President Street. When the cops caught him with his pet,
Joey had someone come forward and take the rap for him. Joey got shot in Umberto's Clam
House. Dylan sang a song about, him, called "Joey," but I was
buddies with his hippie nephew. Dylan was just a sports fan. Neil told
me that while visiting his grandmother, Larry "Kid Blast" Gallo ran
into the house, grabbed Neil, took him to a bedroom, and threw up
the mattress from his bed, then took aim at the door with a handgun.
No one appeared and Neil split. I am sure Neil shit in his pants. The
Gallos favored admitting blacks into the mob. When Joey did time, he
was the first white to get a haircut from a Negro barber. Neil asked
me what kind of music I dug. I said, "I dig like My Fair Lady" the only kind of music I knew about
at the time. Neil took two steps back and said, "Man, you don't dig jazz?" I said, "Like Bennie
Goodman?" He says, "No man, like John Coltrane." I became close with Neil, who introduced
me to Dennis D'Amico. When my parents found out I was hanging with Italians, they freaked.
They wanted to know if they were dark skinned Italians, or light skinned Italians. My parents
were like weird. When ever there was a report of an accident, or murder, on the radio or
television, they would listen for the persons name and then say "Not a Jewish name." I did not
get along with them and on return from college I found a note written in my blood in which I
vowed to kill my mother later on in life for the repression I had suffered when I was a child. I
vowed never to chicken out, even if what my mom did to me seemed trivial later on in life. I
purchased a starter pistol. Whenever I had a fight with my parents I would come out of my room
and pump a few blank rounds in their direction. I was a strange, immoral kid. Before I became a
beatnik and leftist, I was into scams. I purchased condoms from Mark Krause, who worked at a
Pharmacy near my school, PS 241, put pinholes in them, then sold them to kids. Krause
admitted later on that he also put pinholes in them. I once stiffed Krause for scumbag shipment
and he came after me and twisted my arm until I paid up. Krause contacted me via email and is
now a stage manager and a cool guy. It turns out his parents sent him to military school - the
ultimate threat back then - so that was why he did not attend the same high school (Erasmus
Hall) that I did. The kids would attach the condoms to water faucets, then turn on the water and
watch them explode. Here is a candid photo of one of my customers checking the product:
 Neil and I played the African drums. Our hero was Babalundi Olatungi, whose record,
Lumumba Died For All Africa, was recalled by Columbia Records. I
purchased a congo drum at Macy's and Neil got a set of bongos. We
liked to jam, so we went over to Neil's grandmother's house every
Saturday. Mrs. Gallo was a short, red-headed lady, who would also
say "See you later, alligator." Why she spawned a bunch of
gangsters was beyond me. Neil and I formed the Progressive Bible
Readers. We read from the first page of Genesis with bongos and
congo drum accompaniment in between. It was weird. It was like "In
the beginning" (thump, thump, thump) God created Heaven and
Earth (thump thump thump)". I told Dylan about the Progressive Bible Readers and he did a
song that parodies it, "God Gave Names to all the Animals, In the Beginning." One day Mrs.
Gallo tells me this: "Whena Joey wasa boy the Monkey Grinder used to come around and a give
Joey money." He shook down the monkey grinder!!! Joey later went into the juke box business
and juke boxes began appearing in butcher shops, dry cleaning stores etc. We would confront
Neil: "Hey, we heard your uncle beat up another butcher today." Gangsterism had lost its
romanticism. We had all become Socialists or Communists, and my career as a con man ended
abruptly, because this kind of thing went against Socialist principles. It was wrong to cheat
people. It was something the capitalists did.

THE PERILS OF LIVING IN THE SAME BUILDING AS ALAN WEBERMAN

I was always into running operations only back in the 1950’s I had no one in particular to run
them against so anyone within my proximity was destined to have big problems. I was like into
photography and turned my parent’s bathroom into a dark room. I also bought a tripod in Times
Square thinking this would automatically give me access to photographing naked chicks. I stole
a stereo camera from Lafayette Radio on 6th Avenue along with a 35 mm camera. I really didn’t
have too many subjects so I took pictures of the people in my building including photos of a
“Mr.Furst” whose apartment faced my room via a courtyard. When Mr. Furst died I figured out a
great plan to basically drive the widow Mrs. Furst fucking nuts. Now what I did was to project,
not a positive image, but a negative image of Mr. Furst into Mrs. Furst’s apartment real late at
night so she would think her husband had come back to haunt her. What did Mrs. Furst do to
deserve this sort of thing? Absolutely nothing. Her only crime was living next to a maniac. Then
there was another couple across the courtyard that would get into screaming arguments very
late at night, usually on Sundays. The fight would begin shortly after Jean Shepard signed off
the air on WOR radio. I had built a carbon arc lamp out of two carbon electrodes found in D cell
batteries to which I soldered 115 volt zip cord to their metal tips and mounted them in a box.
When I plugged the zip cord into the wall gave off a blinding light from the arc. I pointed it at the
window in question and the entire apartment lit up. “It’s that crazy kid in 4-N again” then the
argument stopped. They realize they had worse enemies than each other. Perhaps my most
destructive operation was when I purchased long hollow glass tubes on Canal Street just the
diameter of a self igniting wooden kitchen match stick. I put the match in the tube and propelled
 it forward with my breath. Basically I turned it into a blow gun. When the
when the match hit the brick in the other side of the courtyard it would
ignite. The next time the couple across the way had a fight I took my blow
gun and aimed just above the top of their window so lit matches came
falling down one after another. “Now he’s trying to set our apartment on fire”
I heard the lady yell. They reported me to the super who told my parents I
would be arrested for arson if anything caught fire. Later I observed that the
couple had the Wall Street Journal delivered to them every day so I
attributed my operation to class warfare. I had a crush on the girl who lived in the apartment
directly below me but she was like older than me so I did the only thing a red-blooded American
13 year old boy would have done absent the existence of pinhole cameras. I built a periscope
so I could watch her get undressed however she didn’t get undressed that often so there was a
of dead time involved.

There were relatively harmless pranks compared to what my associate Robert Schoonmaker
cooked up for some noisy neighbors who lived above him.