Mark Allen

An interview with Sam Benjamin: my latest on the WFMU blog.

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Stump trouble? Call SEXLAB. Don’t know what to do with that PVC breath-control suit you got as a gag gift? Call SEXLAB. Can’t stop crying after your first three-way? Call SEXLAB. Join asstronauts Wm. Berger, Pseu Braun and Mark Allen for an evening of conversation about all things sex, unbound by gravitas (or gravity). Your hosts will be occupying in SEXLAB — the only sex laboratory and sex help crisis phone-line stationed in outer space — subsisting on Tang and Astroglide, orbiting terrestrial WFMU and broadcasting on the web only (because in space, the FCC can’t hear you curse). The phone lines will be open to all species for your live questions and transmissions at 201-209-9368 (or email your inquiry now), Friday, May 22, 8-11pm ET, only on WFMU.org. UPDATE: the archive of the show can be heard here.

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They weren’t actually sewers, but we liked to refer to them as such. They were really storm drain tunnels, miles of which run underneath the suburbs of Plano, Texas. Even though there’s no direct human or household waste flowing through them, it’s odd looking back and realizing that at the time we assumed there was, and that it didn’t bother us. It never smelled more than just musty, and there was never more than a small trickle of water running through them. The tunnels were mostly bone dry, so it was easy to navigate on their poured concrete surfaces with sneakers and not feel like you’d stepped in something gross. These cylindrical, concrete caves provided a chilly, dim, wholly other universe for me and my friends while growing up…always waiting there for us mere inches beneath our front lawns. The real purpose of storm drain tunnels is to prevent flooding in low-lying areas: drains built within the grid of paved streets (usually along the curbs) sieve off rainwater directly into large tunnels under the ground, or sometimes smaller connecting ones, which lead to others, and others, and eventually dump out into creeks. Rainwater run-off, lawn water run-off, street water, creek water, storm drains, storm tunnels: to us…they’ll always be sewers.

1. The Regal Road tunnel

Here’s one of the most-trafficked curb drain exits of the first storm drain tunnel we ever discovered as kids. The Regal Road tunnel was the best one, and the first we happened upon (at about the age of seven). It’s length was about one mile, and it had many connecting tunnels of various sizes and indeterminate lengths. Of course a curb drain manhole exit of a storm drain tunnel is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is far more vast.

The “official” twin entrance of the Regal Road tunnel can be seen a few blocks east, here (look closely). Although it’s moved since I played in it as a kid. Greenway Drive used to be the cut-off point, but thirty years later it’s moved east, ending just underneath Custer Road (the new extension traveling underneath two blocks of what used to be nothing). But it’s the same tunnel. Typical of Texan suburban sprawl, the tightly-packed sea of precursory McMansions that made up our neighborhood abruptly ended at the edge of a large field of old prairie space (scraggly brush, ancient tree property lines, meandering creaks and rabbit holes). This field is where the two original outlets of the Regal Road tunnel let out into a creak. The water that ran out of them forged a small creek that eventually made it’s way to a larger one, which lead to an even larger one, and on and on. The outlets and entrances to storm drain tunnels were often doubles, right next to each other, with a poured concrete “floor” extending out from beneath them like a curved lip.

Of this particular one, the left tunnel was perpetually clogged with debris (sticks, boards, dead grass and clusters of small trash). But the right one was always accessible, all the way through. If I entered it now, I’d obviously have to crouch down. But as small children we could walk right in and easily reach up to touch the inside of the top. I remember the first thing we did when we discovered it was to just walk right in, because it seemed like an entrance. And when we did, we just kept going and going. We noticed the temperature was far cooler than above ground, even chilly.

As soon as we discovered the way sound carried inside the tunnel, we couldn’t shut up. We whooped, hollered and clapped our hands, listening to the sound reverberate and echo into infinity in front and back of us (which must have sounded interesting coming out of all the curb drains above ground). We eventually discovered we hadn’t been the first: there was spray-painted graffiti on the walls inside. It said something like “fuk pigz” over a crudely drawn picture of Gene Simmons’ face with his tongue stretching really far out and licking a marijuana leaf. Next to that was a spray painted drawing of a smiling nude man and woman, standing and facing each other in profile, with the man’s too-long penis sticking straight out and going directly into the front of the woman (I think for years I thought women’s vaginas opened out directly in the front of their crotches, vertically). But besides early sex education, the big realization was that the farther we ventured, the darker it got. And darker, and darker…and darker. We eventually made 180 degree turn and went out again, rather quickly, vowing to return with flashlights. We did, and began venturing deeper and deeper into them.

We’d soon spend hours exploring down there, sometimes whole afternoons. There were all kinds of smaller tunnels that drained water into the main one, and although most of these looked very icky, some perpendicular side tunnels were large enough to walk into (we got lost more than once, but always eventually got our bearings). One time we came out of an exit tunnel in a vast, empty area that had a grid pattern of streets paved in an empty field, awaiting homes to be built (not an uncommon sight at the time). To this day I have no idea where that was because we went right back in the tunnel and walked back home through it. Often there were parallel tunnels that would connect occasionally with a smaller perpendicular tunnel between them (which would usually be clogged with decaying leaves). We learned that in parallel tunnel lines there was almost always one tunnel that was very clogged, and one that was clear (never really figured out why). Although, despite my childhood imagination, the drain tunnel system beneath Plano at the time was relatively simple, which probably explains how we were able to always find our way back if we got lost (I’d love to see a map of the system today, or dated from back then, and compare it with what I remember). Nevertheless, traveling through the tunnels was mostly cerebral anyway. It was fun because it was scary to see how far you could go without freaking out. After long periods, sometimes you’d get dizzy and literally begin to forget which way was up. Sometimes the flickering flashlights on the curved walls and reverberating sound as you walked caused vertigo, and you feel like the curling walls were closing in on you like a cobra. Originally we thought the only way in or out was the outlet you’d originally entered (which could be a half-hour’s walk back the way you came), but sometimes you needed a quicker exit.

The curb drains were long rectangular slits in the poured concrete curb (too small to fit through, even at age seven), and occurred at last two or three times each block along the length of the tunnel. These drains provided intervals of natural light, which punctuated along it’s length and allowed you to see deep into a tunnel and tell if it curved or even ended far up ahead. The curb drains also sometimes provided entry and exit points…but only sometimes. Behind each curb drain, directly under that rectangular-shaped paved area between the curb and the sidewalk, was a small rectangular room (that the man holes opened into). These weird rooms then had an opening off into the main tunnel (that was sometimes covered with metal grating). These little rooms were actually kind of large, or seemed so at the time. If there was no grating covering the room’s opening into the main tunnel, you could access the tunnel this way (that is, if you could get the manhole cover off at age seven). But sometimes the openings connecting to the main tunnel were narrow slits themselves, and getting through them meant you had to squeeze through them, which could be a little scary. The rooms were also filled with old decaying leaves, trash and other flotsam and jetsam, and often too gross to enter. But sometimes you’d find one relatively free of debris, and you could just kind of hang out in it. It was a true room with a view.

The view looking out from a curb drain was unique. You’d see people’s feet, or car wheels going by. Sometimes we’d yell at passing strangers and then scurry back into the main tunnel once they’d spotted us (it always took a while). We learned a funny prank to do was to hide very quietly right inside the curb drain and listen for someone walking along the sidewalk on the side of the street we were on. As soon as we heard them near us, we’d stick our arms out of the curb drain all at once and reach up and around as if we were sewer zombies trying to grab them (we heard lots of yelps and screams, but we never saw what our prank victims looked like). Sometimes we’d look out and spot friends of ours and call them over, then we’d hang out there like that, one group above ground and one under, handing each other Laffy Taffy or Fun Dip candy that we’d just bought from 7-11 (we learned the hard, sticky way it was impossible to pass Slurpees back and forth — but we did learn that you could tear out the bright red cup’s bottom and put your flashlight through it to make a nice kind of torch/lamp). Sometimes we’d crawl from the tunnel up into these curb drain rooms just to peer out the curb drains and figure out where we were, even spotting street signs occasionally (there certainly were no maps), and then go back into the main tunnel and solider on.

As mentioned, the iron manhole covers could sometimes be lifted off if we pushed really hard. Sometimes we couldn’t get them to budge because they were either too heavy or somehow locked, we never figured it out (and I don’t ever remember trying op open one from the outside). There was one moment I remember very clearly, which I think was the first time we exited one of these manholes. There were about five of us, guys and girls, and we climbed up into the crawl space and then loudly pushed the cover off it’s seal. Unannounced, we then one by one climbed out of the manhole into the warm, sunny outside world. It was a typical spring Saturday; families were out on their lawns, doing yard work, sitting in lawn chairs and chatting or bar-b-cueing. Kids were playing. And here come five 7-year-olds crawling out of the sewers like C.H.U.D.s. No one said anything to us, but everyone stopped what they were doing. We just carefully placed the cover back in it’s place, and then all walked home as a group. The neighbors stared and stared and stared.

We formed a club called the River Rats, and added our friends of friends to the ranks (to join, you had to prove your bravery by venturing very deep into the tunnel alone, without a flashlight, to retrieve an object we’d hidden). Our dream was to spend the night down there, tell each of our parents that we were spending the night at the others house, them meet up for the most hair-rising slumber party ever…underground. We never did, and I honestly don’t think I’d have the guts to do that now.

Going inside storm drain tunnels is technically illegal, and indeed rather dangerous during or even many hours following a rainstorm. We’d heard all the warnings, and statistics. I think we’d just lucked out and happened to use the tunnels in a year that was particularly dry, as we never remembered any water level deeper than a trickle. Honestly, the worst thing you could imagine happening down there at that age was the tunnel filling with water and then Jaws swimming up and eating you alive (a perfectly realistic fear for a 7-year-old in the late 70’s).

Another fantasy was to follow the Regal Road tunnel from the original outlet on Greenway Drive, all the way under Plano to our school at the time, Weatherford Elementary. We had the idea that, since we walked to school anyway, if we could map it out then maybe we could walk to and from school through the sewers alone. We could move undetected along the route, disappear and reappear at a moments notice through the curb drain man holes, amaze, dazzle and fool our friends.

So one day, me and one other friend spontaneously decided to try it. It was pretty late in the afternoon on a Sunday when we’d decided (who checks the time at that age?) Going all the way to our school through the Regal Road tunnel seemed like a hundred miles from the outlet on Greenway Drive, which was near our homes. But looking now, it’s actually only about one mile.

We descended into the Greenway Drive entrance, each carrying our own flashlight. We were determined to not go above ground at all until we’d reached the exit tunnel we’d heard let out right by the school (which for some reason we imagined would let out right in the middle of the playground). We got a good pace going and trudged on and on. On and on. We eventually reached a part of the tunnel we’d never been in before. In some places the tunnel would get narrower, and then expand again. This was scary, especially when it was getting dark.

After what seemed like an hour (probably five minutes), we decided to access some of the curb drain rooms to see if we could open the man hole covers, just in case. Each one we checked along the line had metal grating on it, so we just kept going forwards. Our original hunch to do that probably should have been paid more attention to, because suddenly we both noticed that it seemed to be getting particularly dark for the time of day. That much time couldn’t have passed, could it have? We turned off our flashlights and looked ahead and behind us. We could see the sporadic spots of light that would normally be shining into the tunnel from the curb drains looked like they were running low on batteries. All the spots of light seemed to be dimming out. And why did it seem cold all of the sudden? Had we somehow gone deeper underground?

Our throats fell into our legs when we first heard it. A booming, rattling, deafening sound blasted all around us, and seemed to rapidly increase in volume. It shot through the tunnel with a low roar, accentuated with a high, piercing whistle that hurt your ears. And it kept getting louder. “What is it!?” we tried to shout as we clasped our hands over our ears, trembling. An…earthquake? It got even darker. We looked ahead and behind us quickly. Oh my God, it must be….a train! Coming towards us in the tunnel! That’s the only thing that could make such a sound! We had to get out…now! With our hands still clasped over our stinging ears we ran ahead to the next curb drain to see if we could (oh God please) get out there. Just before we reached it, the realization of what was making the deafening roar hit our faces with a chilly mist. We reached the small passage into the curb drain access room to look up and see through the faraway rectangular slit: RAIN! Not just rain…but buckets of cats and dogs of rain pounding the parched pavement like jack hammers. It was a total downpour. Dirty water was already pouring in through the curb drain and rustling the piles of debris that had collected in the drain’s room in all the weeks it probably hadn’t rained. Of course we were watching all of this through a metal grating, which we had our fingers desperately clasped around, and which meant we couldn’t get out there. Should we try and make it to the school to get out? How far were we?

“Run!” my friend (literally) screamed. With no time to think, we faced the facts. There was only one way out: the way we’d come in. We shot off in the direction we’d come. We both turned on our flashlights just in time to see that each curb drain passage we advanced on now had a small arc of water pouring directly out of it into the main tunnel, which pushed out clumps of freshly wet leaves, creating soggy piles that exploded and clung all over us each time our sneakers hit one. They were like place markers. The realization that it was simply rain made everything worse. Every statistic I’d been lectured to about kids getting drowned in storm tunnels during flash floods raced through my mind. I pictured my blue, bloated body flailing helplessly in underwater darkness. I turned around as I ran, expecting to see a foaming rush of flood water coming towards us in the shape of a laughing skull (and which had Jaws in it). Then, the ultimate horror movie cliche happened: we both tripped and fell, simultaneously. Gross storm drain water soaked our fronts as our knees plunged into the now ankle-deep water and clapped hard onto the concrete (thank God we had on our Wrangler Toughskins). The broken pieces of both our flashlights ricocheted around us. A wet, airborne D-size battery stung me in the cheek. Now it was really, really dark. The roaring sound was beyond deafening. There was water…everywhere. We didn’t stop to find any broken flashlight pieces, or teeth. We got right up and kept charging. Every split-second counted. We both seem to agree with our actions that neither of us had any interest in stopping to see if we could get out through any of the curb drains we knew were accessible, not with water now shooting out of each of them. No, a lightening-speed death race for the exit on drenched sneakers was our only hope for a life past the fourth grade. Luckily, without the flashlights on, the Greenway Drive entrance to the tunnel was now faintly in view. A tiny, perfectly round electric blue dot far off in the jiggling distance, like looking at a dime from the top of a staircase. All we knew is the harder our feet pounded the water, and the more our lungs burned, the more our chances of outwitting a watery grave would be. It seemed like an eternity. We were now very weighted down with water itself, as the run off from each curb drain was now powerful enough to blast our crotches like a firehose each time we’d run past. Still, I ran fast enough to blast through them and practically skim the water’s rising surface. No matter how fast we ran, the blue light circle of the entrance ahead of us kept taking way too long to get bigger, and at times seemed to flutter out. The roar behind us was even louder now. I didn’t look, but I imagined the wall of water directly behind us, it’s foamy laughing skull face now transformed into a cackling Gene Simmons, his watery tongue licking and tripping my ankles. Just when I thought I might collapse, through watery eyes I glanced to my left and…I spied the graffiti of the man’s penis going into the woman’s sideways vagina! My God we must be near the end!

Despite being nearly dusk, and overcast, and a total downpour, when we flung our limp bodies out of the tunnel’s exit the dim light was almost blinding. If our faces hadn’t been instantly soaked from the rain we would have both seen that the other had been crying. We didn’t even stop to catch our breath. “Don’t tell your parents! Don’t tell your parents!” we both shouted to one another as we kept charging on, each in the direction of our houses.

The next day at school we told all of our friends we’d been “under the school.” Nobody believed us. At recess we ventured out into the school grounds to try and find the storm drain exit tunnel we’d heard let out at the school. Knowing where it had been before we’d started would have been better planning, but there you go.

Perhaps when we found it, we’d look into it from the other end and discover that we’d been right near the end all along, that that we’d panicked when the sudden rain hit for nothing, and if we’d just gone another hundred yards, etc., etc. We looked and looked, but never found it the Regal Road tunnel exit near the school. Eventually we deducted that it didn’t exist, and we were lucky to be alive.

Years later, through the miracle of Google Maps, I’ve found it. Right under our noses the whole time.

2. The Rustic Drive tunnel sewer monster

This one’s hard to see, obviously, because the Rustic Drive storm drain tunnel let out at a very proper creek which was lined with tree growth. I remember right by the entry tunnel was an itchy vine growing off of a tall tree that you could grab and swing to the other side of the creek on. We hung out near the Rustic Drive storm drain tunnel often, and entered it occasionally, but mostly hung out by the creek catching crawdads. It’s hard to see from this satellite view, but it’s on the near side of the creek, across from the house with the circle driveway. This same home was where two older twin brothers of another friend who hung around at the time lived, and who both were decidedly “bad” kids. I think they were in high school. They knew we played in this storm drain tunnel, and one day they walked down there when we were all hanging out and started telling us about the “sewer monster” who lived in the tunnel, that they had seen coming in and out of the tunnel late at night. They said it had grown from a baby piranha or snake or alligator or something that someone had flushed down the toilet, and had mutated because of all the chlorine in Plano’s water supply (a real and very heated local topic at the time). It was the size of a large bull, except it had thick, stunted arms with giant claws, and sat on all fours close to the ground so it could live in the tunnel. To camouflage itself, it had developed a fur coat that looked like long pieces of dead grass clinging to a large mass of debris…so you wouldn’t know if you were walking right by it, which of course would be too late, as it was carnivorous. And also…there had been a babysitter found near the entrance to a sewer tunnel in the suburban section of McKinney (a nearby town) after she hadn’t come home after returning late at night from a job at a nearby house. “Her head had been ripped off, and was gone…hadn’t we heard?” No, we hadn’t. “They’d had to identify her by her favorite brand of designer jeans.” Well no, we hadn’t heard about that either. We all listened in kind of half-belief as they wandered back up to the front yard of their house, yelling, “…never go in the sewers after dusk!” as they went inside and slammed their front door.

About a week later, when we were all in the same spot. The twins wandered down again to where we were hanging out by the Rustic Drive tunnel entrance. They had a Polaroid photograph of the sewer monster they had taken themselves. It was taken from just outside the tunnel, and was very dark and blurry. All you could really see were two reflections that looked like eyes deep inside the tunnel. They told us that it had been near dark when they heard some growling down there and decided to investigate. And that right after they snapped the picture, the sewer monster growled and charged out of the tunnel after them, and they ran back into their house in terror. But the Polaroid soon faded into view, revealing that they now had photographic evidence to scare us with. I of course don’t have a copy of the photo, but I’ve created what I remember it looking like in Photoshop:

Even though the photo looked incredibly fake, the twins gave a remarkable performance. They seemed genuinely rattled as they told us the story. It…kinda worked. Although the reflective eyes in the photo of the “monster” would eventually be revealed to be the tops of soda cans, and the monster’s “body” a denim jacket draped over a bike.

3. The Collin Creek Mall tunnels

This was the storm drain tunnel to end all storm drain tunnels. A very large group of triple arcs, done in rippled metal on the inside (which created an amazing echo effect inside) and with smooth concrete covering their entire floor. They were big enough to drive a bus through if you wanted. Here was the “entrance.” They didn’t seem to connect to the rest of the storm drain tunnels in Plano, and seemed to have their own unique design. Plus, they didn’t run under the mall as much as they ran under the large parking lot of the mall, and from Google Maps it appears they’re about 500 yards long (or something like that). These tunnels were discovered many years after the initial discoveries, which had been during grade school. Even though we weren’t teenagers yet, we were still more interested in our hair and music than making an adventure out of giant storm drain tunnels. I remember the day we found these tunnels on our bikes, I’d been carrying around my copy of The B-52’s Wild Planet LP to show to the stylist at the mall haircutting place (I’d wanted my hair to look like Keith Strickland’s). I must have been holding it under my arm wrong because at one point the LP slid right out of the cover and hit the ground spinning, rolling sideways straight into the tunnel as I ran chasing after it, screaming until it finally flopped onto it’s side in the grimy water (to this day I can pull out my copy of this LP from my old collection and look at the clusters of grit from that day permanently caked into its crackling grooves). A friend and I did return to this tunnel once or twice and tried to venture all the way through it to the other side. Here’s what the other side looks like. Unfortunately we discovered that the floor must be slightly concave at the tunnel’s center, as water eventually covers the entire bottom and gets quite deep. We vowed to return one day with high galoshes and go all the way to the other side.

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I’ve been so busy lately with work and travel that I didn’t realize NPR’s All Things Considered ran my latest piece, After A Bike Ride, Paradise Is Lost, last Friday. You can listen to the archived piece here on NPR’s site, as well as read some reactions here. And if you like it, read my original, longer, version of the story, Shroud of Tantrum.

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We Don’t Need No Technology by Jim Krewson (marker on paper, 17 x 14 inches), 2008

The helplessly handsome/terminally talented Jim Krewson will be exhibiting his new artworks, and an installation (as well as a live gig or two), at Dicksmrs Gallery (Unit 9, 1-13 Adler Street, London), October 14th through the 25th — opening reception Thursday the 14th, from 6-9PM. Promoting the show is the Yurt Project, in Regent’s Park, London (October 14th-25th). The Yurt is part of the larger 2008 Frieze Art Fair. Jim’s live gigs are in the Yurt on Wednesday and Thursday, from 12noon to 2PM. Pictured above, Jim’s drawing We Don’t Need No Technology, oh…and I also really like this one.

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photo: Gerard Malanga
On September 27th, Nathan Gluck passed away at the age of 90. I was sad to hear it. As our mutual friend Luis shared the news with me, calling from California (where Nathan had been residing the last few years), the two of us went from solemn resignation to laughter as we recounted story after story after story. It struck us that neither of us had a single bad memory of Nathan, just hundreds of vibrant, clearly unforgettable ones — which we were more than happy to pull up and re-visit over and over. Not only was he unforgettable, but he was also the type of person you never wanted to forget. Especially now.

Steven Heller has written a current piece about Nathan for the AIGA here, and a smaller write-up here. Luis de Jesus has written about Nathan here. You can read an erratic but fun interview I did with Nathan for my website way back in 2000, here. As more becomes available I’ll post it.

Bye Nathan, thanks for the recollections, the laughs, the perspective, the wisdom…and the mental rolodex of unflappable one-liners.

Memorial services for Nathan Gluck will be held in New York (Sunday, October 26th, 4:00 p.m., The West End Synagogue, 190 Amsterdam Avenue at 69th Street — behind Lincoln Center) and San Diego (Sunday, November 2nd, 2:00 p.m., at the Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library, Rotunda Gallery, 1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037), where his current exhibition of collages, titled Limited Time Offer continues through November 8.

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Original page at left, anagramed version on right. Click each image for original-sized version…

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As more and more corners of the maybe-two-decades-old internet begin to get the hairy eyeball from moi, my jaded interest keeps seducing me to cruise the most public of spaces…after hours, of course. Recently, by the Flickr-ing light of a just-lit Player No. 6, I locked-gaze under the arches with the so-very alute Hilly Blue, admiring his extra-large uploaded After Dark magazine galleries. I was too young to dig this glossy bible for confirmed bachelors and their best-est inner circles in real time, but After Dark’s kangblabla photo spreads — Fire Island studs unbuttoning their Eleganza in butterfly chairs, awe sooky sooky (”you’re soaking in it!”) zombie disco clowns walking invisible dog leashes on Nautilus treadmills, and Aspen-bound 70’s Hollywood icons gazing pensively through fringe — don’t need the esoteric magnetism of personal nostalgia. Gasp! It’s totally restracto, dude. There’s too much to highlight here, but (plucking a random selection) check out these two clams on the half shell in roller skates pictured above; “Chris Donovan and Craig Dudley pose for photographer Jon Stevens (seen in mirror) After Dark June 1971.” Strike up the band! So bone-jack…yes, for the millionth time, and feast your nostrils on Hilly Blue’s enormous Flickr collection: After Dark before 1973 (942 photos), After Dark 1974-1976 (916 photos), After Dark 1977-1979 (1,180 photos) and After Dark after 1980 (732 photos), or just bookmark it all for some snowy night in front of the fire.

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This completely rational new website has assembled a database of hundreds of celebrity home addresses, with handy links to interactive satellite aerial photography programs. The site’s introduction claims; “Tapping into Windows Live Local, you will get a birds eye view of celebrity houses and neighborhoods, often in amazing detail. Windows Live Local even allows you to rotate the image in four directions, north, south, east, and west.” It’s called CelebrityAddressAerial.com. Start here.

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Bye, thanks.

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For those with ears, I will be making a brief “return” to WFMU as a guest on Michael Goodstein’s excellent and intricate “Choking on Cufflinks” program, this Saturday, August 9th, from 9 pm - 12 midnight.

H.

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Imagine if you will…something I remember hearing. It’s not a memory of a sound, but of a moment — one that happened once, will never happen again, and could never be recreated. Put it into words? We’ll see.

It was my freshman year at University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. I was living in Bruce Hall (above), which was, and still is, the official/unofficial music and art dormitory at the school. UNT has a famous music school and a rather prestigious jazz program (it was the first university to offer a degree in jazz studies, in 1947). Therefore, a high majority of the Bruce Hall’s residents were college newbies from far and wide who were dead serious about studying music.

The rest of the residents at Bruce Hall were art students, or maybe professional partiers who’d drop out after their first semester. But there were other misfits living there too. These were people who happened to fit right in amongst the rest of the music and art riff-raff there, for whatever reason. One guy who’d lived in the dorm for years was a blind jazz pianist, African American, overweight, around 40 years-old, who always wore a Fedora hat and dark glasses and carried a long cane to help him get around. He was way too old to be there, but made friends quick because he had a loud, boisterous laugh, and was friendly as hell (yes he was a cliche, but a good one). He also l-o-o-o-o-v-e-d the ladies, and wasn’t shy about being as friendly as hell with them either, which made those resiliently sweet Texan gals well-just-never-did-you-mind. He was a charmer, and everybody liked him.

Besides odd characters, the real catch about living in an art and music dorm like Bruce Hall was the noise. And it didn’t come from the artists or the riff-raff. The music students loudly practiced their instruments, non-stop. Any freshman budding career musician worth their weight in student loans practiced, practiced, practiced that first year until the tips of their exposed nubby finger bones were whittled clean. And then they practiced some more. How else could they prepare for careers as full-time lounge band members on cruise ships? Practicing your instrument was a Cruel Bitch God that you sacrificed your dreams to. Music students at Bruce Hall = GOD AWFUL RACKET.

In contrast, any freshman budding career artist worth their weight in their parent’s money spent all their time that first year smoking pot, smoking pot, smoking pot and debating with other pot heads things like…the design merits of Factory label record album covers. How else could they make those all-important connections with “art folk” they would run into years later during their careers in the gallery world…or the booby hatch (or Hell). Art students at Bruce Hall = not any racket above the level normally associated with a freshman dorm.

Categorically, Bruce Hall is an ugly building. It’s old and made mostly of concrete, tiled floors, plaster (walls and ceilings), and fluorescent lights. I swear the pointy roofs were made of tin, but that’s probably not right. The outside walls are made of thick, sound-bouncing brick, and the structure itself (three very tall stories) has three long wings jutting out into a three-pronged fork shape, which creates two large courtyards that resonate like echo canyons (or perhaps like ozone-piercing megaphones on really, really loud days). Can a building be an instrument? There was no air conditioning at Bruce Hall so windows were always open, and any sound in the building carried everywhere and anywhere, in and out.

For musicality practicing, practicality, politeness and the eardrum-and-sanity-of-other-studying-students reasons, there were weird science fiction-y practice spaces provided inside the school’s massive music building: sealed sound-proof pod rooms that had their own separate air ventilation systems and lights, all lined up in eerily-glowing rows in even larger rooms in the building’s basement. But why use those? Most music students just used their dorm rooms to practice in during Bruce Hall’s scheduled daytime practice hours, which were something like 11 AM to 8 PM.

But with everyone in different rooms with different watches and clocks, and anxious about getting started…when exactly was 11 AM? At 10:59, every music student would be alone in their room, ready to pounce, frozen motionless in front of their instruments and not wanting to waste a single second of practice time: bows held over violins, drums sticks held motionless in midair, mouths open ready to vocalize. Whomever was brave enough to start in a bit early would signal that day’s noise-fest beginning, kind of like a tiny piccolo solo at the beginning of a boisterous symphony. It was unpredictable every time: the squiggly low notes of a bass? The blarp of a horn? A tinny violin screech? A vocalist doing scales? Or the blast of drums (drums were the loudest)? But once the floodgates creaked open by whoever was brave enough to start, the sound then instantly came crashing out of every room all at once. From coffin-quiet to World War XIII in seconds flat.

This sound was light years away from the sound of an orchestra pit warming up, way beyond the most amphetamine-fueled free jazz, even beyond the worst Japanese noise music. It was the assaultive clamor of HELL CRASHING UP THROUGH THE EARTH’S MANTLE, all done with music instruments manipulated by overly-eager and un-resting young hands — a billion fusillading, clashing soloists each in their separate, decidedly non-sound proof rooms, who refused to quit until they were forced. Each player in each room was unaware of one another, but also kind of aware. How could they not hear each other? Everybody else could…for miles. One or two instruments bleating away would have been a racket, but the sound of several hundred instruments blasting away independently of one another inside a humungous stone building with open windows, well… it created a new kind of migraine-y endurance test. Being inside the building itself was like walking around with two constantly-running jet turbines strapped to each ear. Walls vibrated, skulls crushed, people clamped their palms to their ears and screamed to no avail. Conversations became shouting matches, phone calls became absurd. I’m surprised there weren’t more heart attacks. Every hall you walked down was a new kind of nerve-kill. Each stairwell tried to simultaneously pummel and swallow your head with involute sound, and the loudness assembled itself around you as you moved inside or outside the building (dissonant versions of moments you heard clustered inside the hallways would be projecting out the windows on the other sides of the rooms, and bounce off the brick walls in the courtyards, repeating themselves). New students who weren’t musicians were horrified that first week. Angry parents pulled non-art/music students out of Bruce Hall and into one of the quieter “business school” dorms. How could academe thrive in such an environment? Even if you were just sitting in your room with the door closed (and window open — again, it was real hot and there was no A.C.), you could alter the sound by turning your head. Sometimes people would temporarily snap and stand at their dorm room windows and scream “SHUUUUTUUUUP!!!” out into the loud, muggy air. It added to the madness.

Everyone just got used to it.

Even though I was an art student, my inner circles and outer circles were peppered with musicians. My roommate that freshman year was a guitar player named Kelly (now of the jazz vocal duo Davis & Dow). Our room’s window faced inside one of the deafening courtyards. About a week and a half into the first semester, on a typical evening as the Bruce Hall practice hours were sputtering to a close (which was another weird moment, where suddenly it became incredibly quiet and you realized you could hear your veins throbbing against your skull). My roommate and I heard the distinct sound of a husky woman’s voice echoing loudly outside, it seeming to come from somewhere across campus, like it had been broadcast through an amplifier. Her voice was saying something in a campy, sensual voice, something attention-grabbing like “Ohhh…your bulge is to DIE FOR!” Just as we sat up to listen, she then boomed, “I want your BUSINESS in my MOUTH!” Huh? It literally echoed. Many of the instruments still playing in some of the other rooms stopped, and laughter could be heard coming out of some of the windows.

“What in the hell was that?” Kelly and I wondered.

That night at dinner, this woman’s voice became the topic of conversation. Everyone in the dorm, even around the campus, seemed to have heard it. The woman’s voice had sounded overly-hoarse, like she was a heavy smoker, or just old. Kind of like Mercedes McCambridge. And what she’d said was obviously inappropriate for a Texas university campus in the middle of the evening, in the 80’s. But even though it was X-rated, it was corny. It was like she was reading lines from a 70’s soft-core porn movies. She sounded like Kathy McGinty crossed with Cookie Monster. The only voice I can think to compare it to is the one heard accompanying the films Travis Bickle goes to see alone in the porno theaters, in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (just more gravelly).

And why had it been sooooo loud? It hadn’t just been someone’s stereo, this was much bigger. Some people guessed that she had been broadcasting from the campus bell tower (which also played automated, chronological tape recordings of tolling bells every half hour to mark the time, tapes which every once in a while would get stuck and then broadcast warbling, warped bell sounds psychedelically over campus — but that’s a whole other story). The sound system in the bell tower was the only thing in place powerful enough to broadcast something like that over the entire campus. Should we go over there and investigate? Would we meet some crazed dominatrix performance artist sneaking in and out of the tower’s ground entrance? Perhaps she was a disgruntled elderly university employee getting her revenge? A sorority girl gone mad? Who the hell was this woman? What was her story? The theories began to form.

The next day at around the same time, our chain-smoking, nymphomaniacal independent broadcaster struck again. Well over the roar of the loud-as-usual practicing instruments she could suddenly be heard clear as day, as if she was thundering out of the very clouds. “Now!” (echo, echo, echo…) she started, “Put your testicles over my eye sockets! Mmm…feels nice!” (echo, echo, echo…). Once again, most room-practicers stopped playing to get a better listen. You heard laughter and catcalls in the distance. Then came: “Grawrr…give it to me now HORSE MAN!” More laughter and cheers. Somewhere in the distance a tuba let out a low tone. Then: “Give it to me HORSE MAN! Give it to me HORSE MAN! Give it to me HORSE MAN!” repeated in a loop. It was obviously a pre-recording of her voice, sampled, coming through a sound system from…somewhere. The loop continued. Those that had stopped began slowly playing their instruments again. You could make out some people around the building actually playing along with the rhythmic sample, loosely but discernibly. Percussionists began to join in and get a real rhythm going. A loud violin created an alternate rhythm. Instruments were played louder out their open windows, people yelled in response. Meanwhile the sample loop kept grinding, “HORSE MAN! HORSE MAN! HORSE MAN!” It all began to build into some kind of demented crescendo and then, at the peak of the frenzied jam, in a squeaking growl the woman’s voice screamed even louder “FUUUUCCCKKK MMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” as the instruments squealed to new heights, and stopped. Everything erratically quelled to a halt. Guess what? It was 8 PM, time for practice hours to end. There were rounds of applause in our courtyard that night.

What…the…hell?

Adding to the excitement, the next day there was a small item about the incident in the university’s newspaper, The North Texas Daily. More than just Bruce Hall had heard it (and maybe joined in). The paper mentioned the “obscene” recordings being broadcast from somewhere on the west side of campus, and under what Texas law they were deemed illegal. The university administration used the paper to apologize to any students who had been offended, and reassured them that campus security were on top of it, as were local police, and that they would soon apprehend whoever was responsible.

So, not surprisingly, the next day the woman’s voice didn’t come. It didn’t for a couple of days. Everyone assumed the woman’s strange stunt had been a spontaneous fluke. Student life commenced.

Then the following Monday…she struck again. Perfectly unexpectedly. This time it was not at the end of practice hours, but smack in the middle of the bright, sunny daytime. “Mmm…I’d say naughty boys like YOU need to be taught a lesson by THIER MOTHERS!” came the first booming round. Her voice seemed to be coming from outer space. I mean this was LOUD, like rattle-the-walls-loud. People in Bruce Hall howled with approval through their open windows (yay! she’s back!), instruments began to strum and blow louder. Then she dead-panned with a resounding echo “Oooooh-Mmmmm…but when I saw that DONKEY DICK of yours I began to suspect that you probably taught YOUR MAMA a thing or two! Mmm-hmmm!” People screamed with laughter. Horns and oboes squawked at the ready, drums began altering their patterns. The woman had a willing audience. And campus security or no campus security, she obviously had balls. Then came the sample loop, “DONKEY DICK! DONKEY DICK! DONKEY DICK!” and the players began to chime in rhythmically, especially drummers. The whole building seemed to jam along, all lead by the god-like voice of donkey dick lady. French horns in wing A of Bruce Hall created droning undertones while she enthusiastically stated “Ooooh yeaaaa…I could wet my whistle while you DRAIN YOUR WEASEL!” and several drummers at the far end of wings B and C created non-stop drum solos as she screamed “Heeeeyyy! There’s something sticky in my hair, and I think it’s your LOVIN’ SPOON FULL!” Instruments played faster and louder, people yelled and roared with laughter. Then, as usual, it was over…just like that. Sixty seconds, if even. The practicing instruments continued to play, perhaps with a bit more spunk.

Over the next few weeks, she behaved like a good serial killer: striking repeatably but unpredictably. Never the same day, never the same time, never the same span or pattern. The student body’s loud, sweltering masses learned to expect her when they least expected her, but it was always with open, sweaty arms. And each time she struck, the blasting instruments of Bruce Hall’s practicing students would seamlessly alter course and weave in her direction, joining in enthusiastically. It would always be over quickly, and then the day’s autonomous noise would continue.

Did she have dissenters amongst the student body? Short and simple answer: no. Was what she was doing “art?” Long and complicated answer: yes. She put everyone in tune with one another, even if just for a moment.

The last day she did it was on a Saturday, a time at Bruce Hall when typically people practiced in their rooms especially loud and boisterously. One reason she’d been able to stay undercover so long was that when she struck, it would always be for an extremely short time. Clever? She never broadcast her porn-y rants long enough for campus security to pinpoint exactly where she was doing it from. At least that was the rumor. But on that Saturday, she let the show run a little long. It went something like this:

“My nipples are ON FIRE!” (loud intro) (echo, echo, echo…)

*Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* (drums) (cheers of approval as instruments temporarily get quiet)

“That’s right bay-beeee! Mmmmm…take the Nas-Ty plunge!”

*Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* (xylophone joined with a piano in the distance) (screams)

“Hey hon, I’ll pee in a champagne glass if you want!”

(echo-y whistling and cat-calls) (more screams)

“Hey, oh, did you just step on a duck?”

*la-la-laa-la-la-la! I haaave-a-dooonkey-diiiick!* (female vocalist on top floor imitating woman’s voice in her vocal exercises) (distant laughter)

“Oww! My ass is sittin’ on a hot plate!”

*BLAAAAARP!!!* (tuba solo missing the duck cue by a beat) *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* (more drummers join in) *clung-clung-clung!* (someone begins pounding another far-off piano) *weeen-ween-ween-ween*(a violin stars joining in) (more whistles)

“Hey…mmmm… what’s that back there?”

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* (more and more instruments join in, getting more and more frenzied) (more distant yelling)

“Ohhhh… I think someone’s knocking…”

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* *Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* *Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* (even more instruments join in, guitars, flutes, more drums, a gong, people start whistling and yelling, even louder, building and building…) (screams of laughter and clapping)

“…knocking at my B-A-A-A-C-K D-O-O-O-O-O-R!!!” (louder)

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *Z-z-z-z-z-z-t-t-t-!* *clung-clung-clung!* *Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* *Boom! Crash! Clung! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-llooom-loom-braaaarp-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-wheeee-clung!* (the instruments peak and peak and a frenzied pace, in pace and volume, people scream and holler out their windows, the instruments continue to play on and on like that…)

If there wasn’t the usual racket going on all around us, we might have heard that her voice was stopping this time because campus security were literally busting open her dorm room door. She’d been found.

The room in question ended up being (surprise!) in Bruce Hall and, (double surprise!) the twist was that the room was located on one of the men’s wings because (triple surprise!) it wasn’t a woman doing it.

The security guys (no joke) busted the lock of this poor schmuck’s door open and came blazing in like they were hunting the Zodiac Killer. They found him sitting there in front of his keyboard, a Fairlight synthesizer programed with samples he’d recorded from a live chat on a phone sex line (this was the 80’s and pay phone sex lines were still a wild new concept, especially for Texas), and huge outdoor sound amplifiers (the kind used for a small outdoor concert) laying on his floor, pointed up and out his room’s windows (not too unusual for such students to have that kind of gear). Reportedly he just looked at them with a huge grin on his face, and red hands.

And I say “looked at” meaning he just faced in their direction. Because guess who it was? Yep. Mr. blind piano player. Apparently, they had a good idea he was the culprit, and were just waiting to catch him in the act. It turns out that, in addition to adding spice to the cacophony of hundreds of musicians blasting at full-volume out of hundreds of rooms of an echo-y building with porn samples, he was also able to hide his porn samples behind the cacophony of hundreds of musicians blasting at full-volume out of hundreds of rooms of an echo-y building. Also, obviously many people on his wing could tell it was coming from the floor right above or below them, but didn’t say anything. Even though the campus security treated it seriously, and the local police were involved, apparently he got nothing more than a stern talking too (at least that was the rumor). At any rate, he stayed right on living in the dorm, now a hero, and more super-popular than ever. He was the dirty old man with a heart of gold (and a kick-ass sound system).

I lived in Bruce Hall for the remainder of that year, and half of the next. And that first week of the following year at Bruce Hall, guess what? Yep. He did it again.

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Hey Jim, go to Hell!!! Jim and I enter part of House on the Rock…

Several years ago Jim and I visited Alex Jordan’s infamous House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I’ve had the photos I took—during our endless, day-long walk through the structure’s dreamy, fluctuating, warrenlike corridors—for a long time, but never put them up on my site because nine-out-of-ten of them are too dark and blurry (I’m no wizard when it comes to dark settings and digital cameras). Well, I finally weeded through them all and picked out the ones that came out okay enough, and put them in a 66-photo Flickr set.

I kept the photos in the order I took them while walking through the house, so you can kind of know what to expect if you visit the place. In addition to the many omitted fuzzy photos, this set ends up covering only about 10% (or so) of the house itself as it was December and 1/3 of the place is shut down in winter because it’s too expensive to heat. Still, these should give you a colorful taste.

In case you’ve never heard of House on the Rock, it’s the kind of thing that you would have seen on That’s Incredible!, if you’re old enough to remember that television show. The enormous home was begun by an eccentric, enterprising, obsessive man named Alex Jordan in the 1940s. It started as a Japanese-style structure sitting on the edge of a large precipice (it was actually built by him as revenge for being scorned by Frank Lloyd Wright). Jordan liked to impress, had lots of money, and was also a collector of things from all over the world (big things…like plus-size taxidermy, whole warehouses full of discarded pipe organs, giant carousels, and animatronic angel choruses, etc.) and he just started building his maze-like home bigger and bigger and bigger, to contain everything. Soon, whole full-scale city streets (complete with real shops and vehicles) began to appear inside the house itself, and more stuff like that, and eventually the structure became THE BEAST of all architecture. It was later taken over by his son, who continued the madness. Anyway, his family owns it now (or something like that) and it’s an attraction you can go see. Highly, highly recommended. It’s the realization of what, as a child, you dreamed, fantasized…and hoped the inside of Wonka’s factory must have looked like after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 version) for the first time, just much, much darker.

Alex Jordan liked animatronics, and his collections are robotically put to work in many of the rooms, which come alive when you put little tokens into these little slots (some just do it by themselves). We found the whole place mind-blowing. It’s moderately priced and well, well worth it. Bring your walking shoes, and show up mid-morning so you don’t miss anything and can really take your time browsing. There’s no way to see it all in one visit. Like I said, we went during the winter when 1/3 of the place is shut down because it’s so expensive to heat—so you might wanna visit in the spring or early fall (hmmm…I wonder if it’s an oven in the summer?). Anyway, The House on the Rock has been covered extensively on the web already: here’s the thorough Wikipedia entry, and you can find some great galleries and information here, here, here, here and here. But I hope my Flickr photo set can at least offer a few unique glimpses for those that can’t visit the actual place because they live in an iron lung or something like that.

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