It was about this time that Steve’s girlfriend arrived in LA. She was a gel, whose name I’m struggling with at the moment, but it’ll come. But as a gel she was unhappy with the level of provisions in their flat. So she wanted to do a ‘shop’. A big shop. And neither Steve nor Joey had a car in LA. Presumably ‘hit men’ don’t use cars or if they do they just rent them or steal them. Steve had his motorcycle shipped over from New York, but that wasn’t much use for ‘big shopping’. Though for all else, it was fantastic. A massive Kawasaki 1100, loud, fast, fabulous. The girlfriend borrowed my car. No problem, I said, I need it for 6 to go to work. “Phah”, she said, “I’ll be back long before then”, as it was about 3 o’clock and the supermarket was one block away. By 5.45 ‘no problem’ had become a potential problem. By 6 it was indeed a real problem. And at 10 past 6 Steve gave me the keys to his bike. Which I’d ridden before but never properly ‘borrowed’. He loved that bike whereas I had nothing but contempt for my car.

And after that we simply ‘car-pooled’. Or ‘bike-pooled’. Just take whatever’s there. And if I got to the bike first, where was the tragedy if I chose the $20,000 bike and kindly left 250 bucks’ worth of Detroit garbage? As I pulled into the car park at the College on a balmy night (they’re all balmy), helmetless (cos I was stupid and there was no ‘helmet law’ in California in 1982), I was indeed the coolest dude that’s ever been in my head.

Saturday Night Live is an American institution. Has been since it started in the 1970s. Its still on now, with Alec Baldwin providing endless amusement as Pres. Trump. By 1982 the show was fielding regular stars like Eddie Murphy, just before he hit the movies. SNL has always been a massive springboard for comedy talent. But I didn’t watch the ‘new’ ones, I was generally out at 10 on a Saturday night. But on the ‘local’ tv channels (as opposed to the networks) they showed the ‘old’ SNLs every night. From the late 70s. And they starred Dan Aykroyd, Chevi Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, all before they became mainstream ‘stars’. I would always watch it when in, they were brilliant. Of course I knew Belushi and Aykroyd from the Blues Brothers (which started as a sketch on SNL) movie and Animal House, Bill Murray from Stripes, but to see them all in early mode, rough cut, unscripted, was fantastic.

And then my hero, John Belushi, died. At Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, couple of blocks from where I was living. He basically snorted himself up his own nostrils. Had a problem. Being John Belushi, it was a big problem. If you’re interested in his incredible life, there’s a biography by Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) called ‘Wired: the short life and fast times of John Belushi’, which is as manic as it is amazing.

So you know what you do when your feeling doomy and gloomy? As Belushi said himself in Animal House: “ROAD TRIP!!!”

And we had a few.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx