German postage stamp honoring Jim Morrison
Today’s Great Moment In Bizarro History comes to us courtesy of Mikal Gilmore’s book, Stories Done: Writings On The 1960s And It’s Discontents.
Most of this book (so far) has read like a series of smarter-than-average VH1 Behind The Music-esque portraits of 60s rock and literary figures. Interesting, but hardly Bizarro.
But this morning I read the following, which certainly strikes me as strange:
“In 1968, (Jim) Morrison showed up drunk at a club where Jimi Hendrix was playing. In the middle of one of Hendrix’s solos, Morrison crept onstage, wrapped himself around Hendrix’s legs, and announced, ‘I want to suck your cock.’ The scene culminated when Janis Joplin apeared onstage and clubbed Morrison with a bottle of liquor, and all three artists wound up rolling on the floor, fighting.”
As weird as this situation was, as a writer of Bizarro fiction I keep on thinking of ways it could have been even weirder. Like what if Morrison actually had been turned on by getting hit over the head by the liquor bottle, and a spontaneous S&M orgy had erupted right there on stage? What if someone decided to re-enact this great moment in history, only using chimpanzees dressed up in little costumes and wigs instead of human actors?
Alas…until this happens, we’re left only with Gilmore’s (regrettably sparse) rendering of events and our own imaginations with which to fill in the gaps!
