Max Koch Uncorked

Labor Day weekends are just not the same now that the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethons are no more. I grew up on those and I remember staying up all night to watch Jerry and Ed and Dean Martin and Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra and Tony Orlando and the Kasems all pretend they were sober and semi-coherent while trying to raise scratch for woefully-compromised wee ones in wheelchairs…only to arise the next morning to the Sesame Street Muppets because I could never keep my eyes open for 6 of 24 hours.  When Jerry was finally let go as the MDA Chairman (or WHATEVER the hell happened), I knew that another nail in the proverbial coffin of my youth had been hammered.

Thankfully, this past Labor Day weekend was extremely reflective and chill even without Jerry being inappropriate as hell on national television. Hit the Greek Theatre, saw some movies (including a extremely unique documentary I’ll be telling you about in a minute), grilled some steaks and veggies (lots more veggies these days), attempted to get on my bike again and failed (just walked aggressively instead), enjoyed an INCREDIBLE “Hawaiian Mahi Mahi” plate at BJ’s Brewery in Century City (nope, did not have booze, just iced tea), and went to checked out a country music artist photo show at the Annenberg Space Exhibit.

Now, hold on here… is it just me or is this warning sign they posted REALLY fucking CONFUSING?

Holiday weekends can be a dick, can’t they? They always throw me off-track. I almost feel like the party’s still going because I have yet to fully leap back into this blogging stuff like I should be. Don’t get me wrong, maxkochuncorked has actually given me a new lease on my twisted life. But I can also get very distracted very easily these days and I feel I need to work much harder on my time management skills. I’ve sunk back into a slight slump of creative inactivity again, I fear. 3-day weekends can pummel the momentum, man! Gots to stay in the GAME. But that takes a lotta gumption, drive, and desire. Sometimes it’s so much easier just to escape, isn’t it? To disappear into a great graphic novel. Or other person close to you, preferably female. Or bottle of wine. Or documentary about people who collect “Murderabilia”.

“Serial Killer Culture” by John Borowski is a mind-bender of a doc. It’s a portrait of people (like myself) who are hopelessly enthralled by true crime. But UNlike me, it’s about folks who stop at nothing to collect anything and everything they can pilfer from actual crime scenes of historical significance. You want a skull Ed Gein smashed in? It’s not hard to find. In fact, there are looming dime museums you could access out there, so as to feast your eyes upon such dark treasures. Me, I would not bring such a thing into my home these days. I remember when a nearby funeral house closed it’s doors for good. I busted in there with a ginger buddy of mine and helped myself to a bottle of formaldehyde, which I actually kept on dour display for a few years. What? Why?? What kind of sick fucker am I? Am I not surrounded by enough grim reminders of life and death on a day-to-day basis, with all that’s going on out there in the world? “Get rid of the Dark!”, my mystic great-uncle Hilton once famously instructed me to do on my “Mimosa” show. And so I tried. And continue to try. I will never stop wearing black and skull rings, that’s for damn sure. But I was able to successfully cleanse myself of many macabre items I possessed during this last office space do-over. It was not easy. I find a good deal of comfort in death, darkness, despair, and negativity. That’s another thing I’m trying to work on. You’d think by middle age, you’d have all that baggage stowed, man. Not me. Not yet. 

Will I ever stop being a work in progress…?

All this said, I still have a “Manson Family shelf” I won’t be getting rid of, like, EVER, most likely:

“Serial Killer Culture” is currently streaming on Netflix. You will meet other colorful characters, such as Rick Staton (a dealer of John Wayne Gacy art), Hart Fisher (who wrote and published a Jeffrey Dahmer comic book) and the great Joe Coleman, who’s paintings you’ve probably seen but might have been unable to stare at it for too long. Meanwhile, I can’t look AWAY from his stuff. You wouldn’t BELIEVE the amount of time and energy he puts into his pieces. It’s all-too-inspiring! How does HE have the gumption, the drive, the desire?? I need to get back to WORK here! Labor Day weekend is over!

Coleman was also the subject of his own documentary you might wish to explore. Especially if you are any kind of painter or illustrator or provocateur. Not for the faint of heart, I must warn the wimp-os.

There are moral questions at the center of “Serial Killer Culture”.  Like, is it right for a guy to make a buck off Gacy-duplicated prints of the killer’s alter-ego, Pogo the clown? Probably not. But what’s the difference between that and someone personally connected to the crimes who writes a book and it becomes a nationwide bestseller? I say it’s part of our history, our lore, our collective subconscious, and you can’t curb the curiosity and bloodlust. Just don’t attempt any copycat killings, huh? Don’t permit guys like Gacy to spur you. The last thing we need is another homicidal maniac in clown garb running around.

If you want to hear my buddies and I talk to the great Brian Dennehy about exploitation and Gacy, you can do so here.  He, of course, scared the piss out of us all as John Wayne in the 1992 made-for-television thriller, “To Catch a Killer”.

So here we are. Hump Day. While I wish that meant something else, it mainly just means Wednesday. Writing all this out felt really good, I gotta say. Productive. I feel re-charged. Like I wanna do more now. Yeah. That’s it. More. I mean, if serial killers and documentary filmmakers can be so creative and prolific, why can’t I? And this is coming from a dude who’s never whacked anyone and escorts SPIDERS out the door.

WINE PAIRING:  “Serial Killer Culture” would go great with a 2011 Laetitia Pinot Noir “Whole Cluster”.  A very vibrant crimson-colored red.