Adventures in Marketing: Weeks 521 – 530
It’s been a long time.
I thought I’d have something to report when Giselle, a friend from Philadelphia in the wild-and-wooly ‘60s, who’d turned-on, tuned-in and dropped-out to Jamaica, said a friend of hers, who’d recently moved from Philly to Oakland, would be shipping her a package and could include a copy of “Messiahs,” which I’d promised Giselle as a gift, if she’d pay postage. The friend and I had arranged to meet at the café, but she cancelled at the last minute. “Car trouble.” It’s been two weeks. That car must be a mess.
But waiting for her to reschedule led me to pick up a call with a Philadelphia area code that I didn’t recognize. The caller was Mickey Kipper. Our friendship began in kindergarten and faded during high school, when he decided I wasn’t socially slick enough for him and I decided he didn’t have enough renegade edge for me. After I’d moved west, we’d exchanged occasional birthday cards and, 15 or 20 years ago, when Adele and I were visiting family, he took us on a tour of the old neighborhood, keeping us off streets it was unsafe to walk. Mickey was a retired junior high teacher and president of the local NRA chapter, and we didn’t have much in common.
Now he was calling from a rehab facility where he’d been since December, having fallen, shattering the bones in one leg and, it seemed to me, sustaining cognitive damage. Mickey’s news came shortly after that from another elementary school friend who was facing a second carotid artery surgery. A café pal with OHS in his past is due for a pacemaker and I’m up for an intervention to correct a leaky valve and a fellow I know from Mended Hearts with a history more extensive than my own, is looking at his own re-opening. (“We are all just walking each other home, brother” he tells me.)
I offered Mickey what support I could. I was touched he had called. But I wondered why he’d reached out to me.
“He’s been flat on his back for three months,” Xavier said. “You’re probably the last name in his address book.”
Then, “Bob on Bob” and “Lollipop” were picked up from my web site by a 48-year-old fellow who works for Fantagraphics, my sometime publisher. He said my book on the Air Pirates had made him “a reader of yours for life.” He’d already done “Best Ride” and “Fully Armed” and these were next.
Hence, this report.
In other news:
1.) The time to file for a share of the Anthropic settlement has passed. I don’t know if my original application for inclusion made it where it was supposed to, but it may not matter. The last time I looked, it didn’t seem any of my books were among those appropriated. How is AI to learn about S. Clay Wilson without me?
2.) On a more positive note, my pal Glory reports her Alzheimer-afflicted mother continues to re-read the “Puddles” chapter of “Cheesesteak” and is delighted every time. “He is so funny,” she tells Glory.
ALL OF BOB’S BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT www.theboblevin.com.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.