The Gary Files # 12: Gary Busey

(I found this image here.)

An explanation: Since the name Gary is going extinct, I thought it incumbent upon me to celebrate more notable Garys than myself.  This is the twelfth of a series!

Gary Busey is an American Academy-award-nominated (!) actor.  He has perhaps become more famous for his erratic behavior & weird way of expressing himself than he ever did for his acting.

When did you first become aware of him?  I think it was when he played Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award).  That was in 1978, so I was ten.  He seemed too large to be Buddy Holly to me.

Did you ever see the film?  No, never did.

Did you like him as an actor?  Except for that movie, I can't think of a single film that he was in that was made notable by his presence or acting.

Really?  Yeah, looking over his IMDb page, I am struck by how I have barely noticed him in movies at all.  I might remember his performance in Law & Order.  That's about it.

I think I've noticed his son in movies more often than him.  Maybe because it's weird to see someone that looks so much like Gary Busey.

Do you think of him as mainly a crazy celebrity?  Yes.  You can thank The Soup for that.  The Gary Busey clips were always funny & not a little bit disturbing.

You have a two- or three-degrees of separation with him, don't you?  I do!  He was married to a girl I went to high school with, whose name is Tiani Warden.  I don't think she & I ever spoke, but I do recall my little brother had a crush on her.  She was in his class, I believe.  The rumor was that after high school she became a stripper, & that's how she met Busey, although the two of them became born-again Christians at some point together.

I just looked at pictures of them, & I recognize her name but not her.  We must not have known each other at all.  But wow!  He was over twenty years older than she!

Is his name really Gary?  It's his middle name.  William Gary Busey.

He was born in 1944, so it's Gary Cooper, isn't it?  Dollars to donuts, it is.

Self Help Radio 120815: Skin

(Original image here.)

Did you know, I've actually been to a dermatologist before.  I won't go into details, but despite the reason I was there, they first wanted to give me a good going-over, & there was a nurse-type person who had what I think was a canister of liquid nitrogen (?) which I got the impression they used to remove blemishes of some sort from skin.  Okay, I just looked it up - they freeze moles & stuff.  I guess they were looking for those on me.

Anyway, after I took my shirt off & the nurse-type person was inspecting my back, she said, "Hm, I see you have some sun damage here."  That was alarming.  Sun damage!  God damn it!  I knew I should never go out during the day!  Then I thought, "What does that mean, sun damage?"  So I said, "Do you mean freckles?"  "Yes," she said.

Of course I can't see my own back, & have probably not espied it for years, & most certainly that was true then, but I did recall a terrible sunburn I got way back in 1990 or so by spending a summer's day splashing around in the San Marcos river.  Apparently a dermatologist or at least a dermatologist's nurse-like helper (she could have been a nurse, I don't recall) can tell, years later, like moldering clues from the scene of a cold case, that one was so feckless & careless.  It was a sobering moment - I never really did anything like that again without slathering myself in smelly oily sunscreen.

This is all I'm going to tell you ever about my skin.  The show this week showed way too much skin, & I'm surprised actually that I got away with it.  Honestly, if it hadn't been on the radio, I'd probably have been arrested for indecent exposure.

You can listen now at the Self Help Radio website-type place.  Blah blah blah username password blah blah blah SHR selfhelp.  All the songs I played, in both parts of the show, are listed below.

Agh!  Biopsy that!  Quickly!

(part one)

"Skin" Allan Sherman _My Son The Box_
"Skin" Siouxsie & The Banshees _Kaleidoscope_
"Quiet As Skin" Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles _Oh Man, Cover The Ground_

"Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" Robert Mitchum _Calypso Is Like So_
"Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" The Temptations _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6: 1966_
"Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" Ike & Tina Turner _The Collection_
"Skin Deep" Nick Lowe _Labour Of Lust_

"Perfect Skin" Lloyd Cole & The Commotions _Rattlesnakes_
"Perfect Skin" Peace _Happy People_
"Sacred Skin" Hellfire Sermons _Hymns, Ancient & Modern (1988-1993)_
"Candyskin" Fire Engines _Fond_

"I've Got You Under My Skin" Frances Langford _Stars Of The 30s Sing Cole Porter_
"Skin & Bones" The Kinks _Muswell Hillbillies_

(part two)

"Gimme Some Skin" Frank Penn _Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay_
"Skin I'm In" Sly & The Family Stone _Fresh_
"Skin & Fur" G.D. Luxxe _Between Zero & Eternity_

"Skin Storm" Bradford _Shouting Quietly_
"Skin Diving" The Bardots _V-Neck_
"W/O Skin" Gut Bank _The Dark Ages_
"A Second Skin" Girls Names _The New Life_

"Soft Skin" Mountain Man _Made The Harbor_
"Settle On Your Skin" Swan Lake _Enemy Mine_
"Skin To Wear" Straitjacket Fits _Melt_
"Skin" Bailterspace _Thermos_

"Second Skin (Live In Bremen, 1983)" The Chameleons _Script Of The Bridge_

Whither Skin?

(I found this image here.)

Do you remember those skin diagrams from health textbooks in middle school?  Boy, did they used to creep me out.  Holy shit, I think they gave me nightmares.  Just look at that picture up there!  The sweat gland looks all fucked up.  The hairs are like daggers stuck up from some medieval torture weapon.  & the subcutaneous tissue looks like it's warty or something.  For fuck's sake!

Hopefully the show today won't be as fricking gross as this diagram.  I can't un-remember this now.  I think I passed out once in health class because of this.  Either this or drugs.  I know!  I passed out because the teacher was talking about intravenous drug use!  I probably was thinking about the needle going through the skin, right through some sheath or other, uprooting the hair bulb & puncturing the stupid scrambled-up sweat gland, & pouring heroin or morphine all over that gross subcutaneous tissue!  Who wouldn't faint thinking about that?  I'm a little light-headed as I write this, actually.

All right, get yourself together, Gary.  The show is about skin, but luckily there aren't too many songs about subcutaneous tissue.  You can listen to today's Self Help Radio from 4-6pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  If I don't pass out during the show, I'll put it up on the Self Help Radio web page tomorrow.  But you should listen today, when the skin is nice & fresh!

(Whatever that means.)

Preface To Skin: Acne

There's one weird, specific memory I have of being a kid - a teenager I guess.  It won't surprise anyone that I spent a good portion of those teen years being hopelessly self-absorbed, & managed - through sheer luck - to avoid incurring the wrath of the bullies who picked on other people I knew.  Because I was a total nerd.  I should've at least been pants once or twice.

Anyway, at some point, because of the horrible hormones coursing through my body, I became a pimply-faced adolescent.  I'm sure it wasn't pretty but at some point I must've realized it didn't matter to me because, quite frankly, I was an unattractive kid & I was wholly incapable of being anything but a bystander to the whole dating/experimenting with sex stuff that was happening to so many of my classmates.  This is not to say I didn't want something like that (the hormones were making me want something like that); I was just enough of a realist to understand it would be something other than my looks that would get me into that world.  I had to make some kind of plan.*

Therefore I didn't bother with cremes or ointments or whatever kids use or used to try to keep pimples away.  In fact, I found them fascinating, & when bored in class I would often just touch them, these odd growths on my face that didn't seem to stay in any one place.  I don't know if I noticed them on anyone else, but maybe I did.  I just wouldn't have judged, since I myself knew my face was awful splotchy.  Or what's that British term?  Spotty.  Boy, I must've been awful spotty.

Oh, but I had a friend - he might better be called a "friend," for although he seemed to enjoy hanging out with me, much of the fun he derived from doing so involved making fun of me - which is something I came to understand much later, because, you know, head up my own ass & all - & at some point he became aware that my skin was much worse than his (if it was - I wasn't staring so intently in his face).  He began to criticize me for my "whiteheads."

That was not a term with which I was terribly familiar.  I knew "blackheads" - they used that word in all the pimple cream commercials.  But this guy - his name was Gus - he used "whiteheads" in a way that made me think someone had just taught him the word.  He made me self-conscious, & I began to pick or pop them (whatever the term) rather than ignoring them as they more or less had ignored me.

Luckily I grew older, & they went away.  & hey!  Gus did too.  But he did leave me this weird, specific memory about my skin - which I might not have if he hadn't been such a little douche to me when we were teens.

* "Others conquered love, but I ran.
I sat in my room & I drew up a plan."
- Morrissey

Cradle To Grave (Episode Three)

Last night at 7pm, the ears of Lexington were assaulted with malice aforethought by the third episode of my other radio show, called Cradle To Grave, on 95.7 fm WLXL.  How it went I can't tell you.  My brain dumps all the information in my head right after a radio show, to make room for the next damn show. Let's just say I did the best I could & hope that counts for something.

In the first hour, I played songs by musicians who were having a birthday that very day, December 5, which surely was a happy day for them, & in the second hour I played musics from folks for whom December 5 was the end of the line.  I think I quipped that it was like throwing a birthday party & a funeral back-to-back.  Doesn't that sound like fun?

The show can be listened to at your convenience at Self Help Radio Web Central.  "Web Central"?  Boy I'm pretentious.  If you need a username & password, you can find it on the website, no worries.  The stuff I played is listed below.

Enjoy!

(part one: birthdays)

"Nothing But The Blues" Al Hibbler & Kay Davis with Duke Ellington _Big Band Voices_
"Chili Con Carne" Willie Kent & Willie James Lyon _Ghetto_
"Don't Start Me To Talkin'" Sonny Boy Williamson II _Blues Masters Vol. 2: Postwar Chicago Blues_
"Corinna" John Henry Brown _High Water Blues_
"I Got The Same Old Blues" JJ Cale _Okie_
"The Peanut Vendor" Alvin 'Red' Tyler & The Gyros _Simply 'Red'_

"Happy Times" Freddie Hubbard _The Artistry Of Freddie Hubbard_
"Kalimba (Lua Cheia)" Egberto Gismonti _Sol Do Meio Dia_
"K9 & Impro K9" Enrico Pieranunzi _Plays Domenico Scarlatti (Sonatas & Improvisations)_

"Slippin' & Slidin'" Little Richard _The Essential Little Richard_
"Smokes" ? & The Mysterians _The Best Of ? & The Mysterians_
"Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" Frank Wilson _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 5: 1965_
"This is How It Feels" Inspiral Carpets _Life_
"The Asian Thing" Margaret Cho _I'm The One That I Want_

(part two: death anniversaries)

"Poor Ellen Smith" Molly O'Day _The History Of Country & Western Music, Vol. 17 (1949)_
"Prairie Blues" Montana Slim _Cowboy Songs_
"I Live In The Past" Bill Monroe _Bluegrass (1959-1969)_
"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas" Johnson's Jazzers _James Stump Johnson (1929-1964)_
"Going To Fishing" Fiddlin' Joe Martin _Walking Blues_

"Blue Rondo A La Turk" Dave Brubeck Quartet _Time Out_
"The Black & Crazy Blues" Rahsaan Roland Kirk _The Inflated Tear_
"Lotus Blossom" Kenny Dorham _Quiet Kenny_

"Rockin' Behind The Iron Curtain" Bobby Marchan & The Clowns _Atomic Platters_
"Notify The FBI" The Arena Twins _Oh What A Shame_
"The Boy From New York City" The Ad Libs _The Red Bird Story_
"The Girl From New York City" Tony Rivers & The Castaways _The Tony Rivers Collection, Vol. 1: Castaways_
"Stay" Thor's Hammer _Umbarumbamba... And More_

"Hupenyu Hwangu" Bhundu Boys _Shabini_