Astral projection and searching for ass-teeth, another night for Grant Morrison

Last night I was treated to a rare and curious sight, that of both a madman, an artist and a prophet (plus a British pop star to boot. Robbie Williams was in attendance). Of course I'm speaking of the one and only Grant Morrison.

This is a name that would not bat many eyes in mainstream circles, and why should it? He's a surrealist comic book writer who has done his best over the past decade to dismantle the mythology of comics and reassemble it in ways that would make Picasso envious. His many achievements include The Doom Patrol, a sort of X-Men meets Dali where everyone's power is ridiculously pathos filled and not necessarily helpful in the least. He also did a run of Animal Man comics where Animal Man discovers that he is not real and is actually a two dimensional puppet being controlled by the crazed three dimensional Scotsman, Morrison.

Which is a good place to talk about dimensions, because he talked about dimensions, a lot. With personal first-hand experience of traversing between them. Yeah, this is where it gets weird. Mostly weird because he seems like such a reasonable man. Sure, he's a person that is constantly not only wearing a "fiction suit" (his words not mine) but an electric blue suit and tie, as well. From photos and drawings, I can only imagine that he's eats, sleeps and does God-knows-what every day of his adult life decked out like a trimmer, pastier version of one of Gladys Knight's Pips. To add to the icon that is Grant Morrison, he keeps his head shaved not unlike a young Lex Luthor or Kingpin. His image is so honed that it was supposedly the inspiration for Spider Jerusalem, a Pulitzer prize winning junkie in the comic Transmetropolitain.

But just because he dresses like a comic book character doesn't mean he thinks he's living one, right? Wrong.

The comments about dimensions started off quite simple, and for the most part terrestrial. He commented about being hired to write the new Superman series and how he was honored to dip his hands into the powerful stream of mythology that is Clark Kent. He also talked about the thrill of experiencing the 2nd dimension and dealing with the rules of the world created by decades of writers in the DC universe. Which is fine and sane and makes a bit of sense.

Then his credibility as a lucid human being went through the floor.

With little prodding, actually someone in the audience sort of blurted out, "tell us about the fifth dimension", he smiled his charming Scottish smile and said, "I'd love to tell you."

He told about how he and his friends heard about a mystical place of trancendance in Budapest (I think. Somewhere foreign and magical. Or should I say majickal.) It was a place where they say that if you are able to run up a certain flight of stairs on one breath you can achieve enlightenment. Which sounds reasonable enough, right?

So they went to this place. (On what? comic book money? Does he seriously get paid enough dough to run away to Golden Child land whenever he wants? Damn, where do I sign up?) They found the magical stairs and they all ran up them on one breath. "Easy," he says. At first nothing out of the ordinary happened, and it wasn't until later that night on the roof of his lodgings that he made "contact".

There on the roof he felt his soul being ripped from his body and before him floated five silver beings. They told him, "You wanted to see this, Grant. We'll show you." He turned around and saw the entirity of human history in one lump. His own birth, life and death. Shakespeare. Dinosaurs. Everything.

He said that the feeling was that of a clarity unlike any other. Not as if he were dreaming, but as if the living world were a dream and he was finally awake. He said it was unlike any drug he had taken, and that he had taken everything since just to see if it brought him back to the same state.

Then he went on to explain how the aliens had planted the 3rd dimension and earth as a seed of life and that true life existed outside and how they could manipulate the 3rd dimension. At that point I checked out.

You get to a point listening to an insane person where it stops being entertaining and becomes draining. You realize there is no internal logic to their madness and that ultimately it's not as funny as it is sad.

I have no idea if he really believes this crap, but I am of a good mind that he does. My friend Ben told me Grant is a card carrying Kaos Magician, and that he practices the mystical arts, or whatever. I suppose if you live in a world of constant fanboy adoration, you could literally weave any sort of fucked up tale and people will believe it.

We left the show about the time some gangly pimple farm started rattling off about his infatuation-in-the-form-of-a-question with a race of hobbit people who lived among giant rats.

It was just too much. Plus it was depressing. I want to know that the guys who create the cool stuff i like are like me. Or cooler versions of me. Not doped out Timothy Leary sycophants with a freaky messiah meets Whitley Streiber type psychosis.

And who were these other people there? Were they buying it? And why did they all have hot girlfriends? That's something I'll never understand, how these stinky skinny dorks with bad taste in music and comics (I hope) can get these fawning cyber-punk nymphets who love nothing more than cleaning up discarded pizza crust and beer cans and cutting up old Filler Bunny t-shirts to make into tubetops.

From that geekfest to another we headed off to the Improv Olympic to see an amazing show: Ian vs. Miles. Brilliant. A two man show between Ian Roberts (Upright Citizen's Brigade, Arrested Development) and Miles Stroth (Improv Olympic teacher and grizzled veteran). These guys were so flawless, and funny, and understated and calm. Nothing was forced, there were times when they said nothing on stage for almost a minute, but you never felt nervous for them. The initiations were so simple, too. "It's my birthday," That's it. From there on to bliss.

One of my favorite characters was Ian Roberts playing a grad student who had sort of accidently became a pimp since the neighborhood pimp got offed.

That's my kind of magic. And it really isn't that different from Grant Morrison's, except for the fact that these guys enjoy the moment, they enjoy laughing at shows, and they enjoy the act of witnessing daily life and experience on stage, and after that they go home. They don't get taken to planet Improv-a-tron and have to battle alongside the Yes-And Army. Okay, maybe that happened to Del Close, but not these guys.

++++++++++++++++++
Speaking of that intersection between art and the fucked up, what the hell happened to Mitch Hedberg? To reiterate a tired Lewis Black-esque routine, why do drugs always take the good ones? Why not Andy Dick, as defamer.com suggests. Or the guy that created Life on a Stick. Or Neil Hamburger? Or Pat O'Brien? How can that insufferable poonhound keep ticking but one of the funniest joke makers goes before his fourth decade?

I suggest you all go out and download his albums, they are brilliant. Screw buying them, he can't make anything off them any way.