Stop by our Facebook page today for your chance to win a Trumbull shirt.¹ All you gotta do is post the best picture on our wall. Can it be so simple?

Leeway – Live soundboard @ JC Staddijk, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 12/07/1991

01 The Future
02 Enforcer
03 All About Dope
04 Marathon / On The Outside
05 Who’s To Blame
06 No Heroes
07 Kingpin
08 Stand For
09 Ball Hugger
10 Catholic High School (Girls In Trouble)
11 Unexpected
12 Rise And Fall / Mark Of The Squealer
13 Born To Expire
14 Should I Stay Or Should I Go (The Clash)

Enjoy the free tunes, son. Our emp game goes back to Audiogalaxy, and has broken up both friendships and fights.

Never not seeding. Never not emping.

After smoking about 20 joints of zol with Vuilgeboost, we settled back and watched Die Antwoord go full flex on the audience at Governor’s Island. About one minute into “Enter the Ninja,” NINJA had to stop the track and get his and Yo-Landi’s vocals turned up, but this did little to hinder their performance. I admired that their costume changes amounted to popping in an out of different pairs of sweatpants, boxers, XL tees, and gold leggings. Learning was in the curriculum as NINJA administered lessons in Afrikaans between songs. Wanna know what I learned during M.I.A.’s set? How not to perform. How not to let your hype woman act. How to look dumb playing with smoky light trails. How not to mix your sound. The best part of M.I.A.’s set was when the rain started hitting her lasers and she played what sounded like a real song from one of her albums. The second best part was when she threw bottles of tequila into the crowd. Third best was that young boy dancing onstage. And then people started running because there was lightning and some of it was pointing at us.

Die Antwoord Live Hard Fest NYC July 24, 2010 Governor’s Island from Trumbull Magazine on Vimeo.

Let me tally this shit up:

Ticket: $68.90
Zef Side shirt: $25
Pulled pork sandwich: $8
Bottomless lemonade: $18

That’s $120.

NEW YORK (Trumbull Monkey Racing Newswire) — Call it the sport of kings of the jungle. In front of a packed-in house Thursday at the Dog Aqueducts in Queens, 2-to-3 favorite Fueled by Postum delivered on her promise as a dog which could be raced extremely fast by a trained monkey, taking the first Dog Triple Crown win in the history of Thoroughbred Monkey on a Dog Racing (TMDR). She won in easy fashion, glistening to the finish by bit more than two-and-a-thirds of a daschund’s length.

“She raced extremely well for a dog ridden by a monkey,” owner Abe Metro, of the fledgling movie house Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer, remarked from the dog winner’s circle. “This was a race for our president, Herbert Hoover.”

It was also the third win in as many races for Postum, which won the Preakness Monkey Stakes by two lengths and the Kansas Derby by five. Her owner stands to receive a healthy $82.50 sum for successful stewardship resulting in the Dog Triple Crown.

Monkey jockey Cynthia the Monkey, at the helm for all three Triple Crown races, rode Postum hard from the start and gained good distance from the first turn with stern usury of the reins. Postum, ever anxious to please her monkey boss, dug into the bit and began a violent, timed series of dog kicks, pushing dog rival and 3-to-1 shot Hotdogcracy into a dog hole its monkey jockey Stella the Monkey could not dig out of.

Despite a crippling economic depression that has rendered a good part of the country dusty and out-of-work, TMDR chair-woman and commissioner Loretta David said the capacity crowd at the Aqueducts was a sign of the one-year-old sport’s resonance with “orphans and the working man alike.”

“It’s certainly a testament to the good people of Queens, that they were able to leave their mills and rag carts to watch quality dog racing, with monkey jockeys, on a Thursday afternoon.”

David, who established the circuit with her husband Charles in 1930, says the TMDR has come a long way since its first race, outside their Flatbush home a year hence, in 1931, of but two monkeys and dogs. In that race, one of their monkey jockeys caught flu and had to be replaced by a bunch of bugs taped together. The other monkey became distracted by a nearby discarded banana, and left the race early, against wishes of  both dog and commissioner.

“The quality of racing has certainly improved,” said David.

Indeed, while the clear favorite Postum won out in easy fashion, a ripping battle for place remained until the last length, no doubt aiding the mangy Irish bettors comprising the bulwark of the adult crowd to remain awake. Having immediately eaten Postum’s cruel race-track dust, Hotdogcracy gathered itself and champed on the bit early to make distance with the peloton, taking a clear daschund-length lead behind Postum into the final straight.

A late surge from 15-to-1 underdog Don’t Telegram Me Unless You Mean It prompted neck-and-neck monkeys-on-dog racing, and a late cheer from the now-tumescent crowd. Shoddy riding by Telegram’s monkey jockey, Ellen the Monkey, a late injury replacement for decorated monkey jockey Shoshana the Monkey, let Hotdogcracy, the popular neighborhood dog from nearby Rockaway, take the inside line on the final turn, and place.

“It was certainly quite a finish,” said Pete O’Neill, flush with winnings from a successful Hotdogcracy parlay, outside the Aqueduct. “I came here to get out of my eleven-person, one-room house, but I stayed for the sport of it.”

Metro confirmed that a talking movie about Postum, which kennels and trains at the lush Roxbury-based Pynchon Doggery in Massachusetts, is in the works at his Los Angeles studio.

“Whether the jockey will be played by a monkey, or by Mary Pickford, is as-to-date uncertain,” said Metro. “Today I’m just happy for my dog and monkey.”

For more on the short-lived Thoroughbred Monkey on a Dog Racing Society, click here.

Trumbull Island has discovered that one of the hottest jams of 2008-2009, Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face,” has quite an interesting story in its provenance. It seems that our friend Jonathan Lee Riches © had a hand in the penning of this number one hit. In a lawsuit dated March 29, 2010, Jonathan unfurls an account of how GaGa, “star struck” upon recognizing Jonathan at the MGM Grand in July 2002, took action against him after giving her the idea for her second big single:

Stefani Germanotta sat next to me and asked “Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans your [sic] wearing.” …I said “Look lady, can’t you see I got a poker face, I’m trying to concentrate.” She then said “Poker face, I’m going to use that in a song of mine one day.”

Continue reading for the entire text of the suit, as well as the original PDF.
Riches v. Germanotta et al PDF

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON

Case No: 6:2010cv06074

Jonathan Lee Riches d/b/a
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a/k/a
Bernard Madoff,
Plaintiff
v.
Stefani Germanotta a/k/a Lady Gaga;
Nadya Suleman a/k/a Octomom,
Defendants

[Preliminary Injunction, Temporary Restraining Order]
TRO

Comes now, Jonathan Lee Riches d/b/a Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a/k/a Bernard Madoff, moves this honorable court to issue a restraining order against Stefani Germanotta a/k/a Lady GaGa and Nadya Suleman a/k/a OctoMom because I face imminent danger and bodily harm from them, they want to kill me because I know secrets on them that has never been revealed to the world and I plan to write a tell all book called: “Snitches, I’m Jonathan Lee Riches.” I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth against the defendants illegal acts of manipulation, deceit, cunning, lip singing, abortions, etc. I met defendant Stefani Germanotta in July 2002 at a poker table at MGM Casino in Las Vegas. I was in town attending Defcon’s annual Black Hat hacker convention where I gave a public demonstration on how to commit identity fraud, computer hacking, phishing, and spamming, where I received $52,000 at a Kroger grocery store Western Union. I then spent my money lavishly around Las Vegas. I was at a poker table where Stefani Germanotta sat next to me and asked “Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans your [sic] wearing.” I did not respond then Germanotta told me she knew me from being a Internet celebrity all over Google and Wikipedia. Google “Jonathan Lee Riches.” She said she heard about me having the Guinness Book of World Records for suing the most people in the history of mankind and then she asked for my autograph on her breast. I said “Look lady, can’t you see I got a poker face, I’m trying to concentrate” she then said “Poker face, I’m going to use that in a song of mine one day.” I was practicing playing poker so I could enter the World Series of Poker each year. The year before I used stolen identity theft money from each of the Dixie Chicks to enter, but I lost because I had a hernia and I could not concentrate, so this time I had my “poker face” game look on and defendant Germanotta kept distracting me and harassing me. She said I smelled so good with Calvin Klein, she also sexually fondled me under the poker table which ruined my royal flush. Then I was drinking Red Bull, and Germanotta slipped me the date rape pill and ecstasy and before I knew it I was passed out. I woke up 4 hours later at the penthouse suite at Trump’s casino in bed with defendant Germanotta and her best friend defendant Nadya Suleman. I was used, abused, and sexually assaulted and insulted by both of them. Defendant Suleman forced me to get her pregnant while Germanotta filmed it with a camcorder. Now the defendants both have been distributing this material online, on YouTube, and adult book stores. In early 2003, Germanotta forced me to do wardrobes and outfits she is currently wearing on tour. I used P-Ditty [sic] Combs’ stolen CitiBank credit card to get Germanotta breast implants, her hair extensions, DJ equipment, lipo around her tummy, and for her gall bladder surgery totaling $126,000. I then was forced at gunpoint by Germanotta to rob banks using fake IDs and credit cards to pay for her best friend defendant Nadya Suleman’s 8 baby cribs, pampers, slinkys [sic], Gerber baby food. This was also filmed. I was featured in a CNN documentary titled “CNN presents: How to Rob a Bank,” this can be viewed online. If you watch close you can see Germanotta pointing a 9mm at my head. I had no choice, now I’m doing 125 months in prison because of the defendants. On top of that, after I got Suleman pregnant, she then gave my baby boy Maddox away to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to adopt. This was theft of my child, I did not authorize this and I compel this court to order my son back to me or at least give me visitation rights. I have evidence on the defendants including their DNA, prison love letters from both of them. Defendant Germanotta has been sending me thousands of dollars on my prison account if I sue her music rivals like Riches v. Timberlake, Riches v. Combs, Riches v. Ludacris, Riches v. Jay-Z, Riches v. Lil Wayne, to put them in debt and embarrass them. I’m now coming clean, I want out of this conspiracy. I just want to get my life back on track without doing crimes for the defendants. They continue to stalk me and are doing everything possible to stop me from whistle blowing in my tell all book. Lady Gaga is not compensating me for giving her the idea of “Poker Face.” Defendants, please leave me be. When I get out of prison I plan to live low key and operate a ice cream truck somewhere in North Dakota. I move for a restraining order to stop this harassment and stalking. I’m so scared of the defendants I get goosebumps when I see them in tabloids, and get anxiety attacks when Lady Gaga sings on the radio, this is disturbing my sentence. I also move this court to compel the FBI to do a investigation on crimes the defendants previously did with me because they are both co-defendants of mine that never been indicted. Check out my criminal case from the Southern District of Texas, case # 4:03-CR-90-2 and I have a eating disorder now because of the stress inflicted on me by the defendants. Look at my picture on the lawsuit Riches v. Hurricane Ike at the end of it has me flexing without a shirt on. I need help and I pray this court will grant my motion for relief.

Respectfully
Jonathan Lee Riches
3-19-10

Jonathan Lee Riches
d/b/a
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
a/k/a
Bernard Madoff
#40948018

Federal Medical Center
P.O. Box 14500
Lexington, KY 40512
859-255-6812

Did you see Lil Wayne at Rikers?

No, I didn’t see him but my friend Kent who’s in there was housed with him for like two and a half months in March and April, and then my friend Fred had a seizure in the bullpen.¹ He woke up at this hospital in Queens and Lil Wayne was in the bed next to him because I guess Lil Wayne faked some medical shit because he got a 16-year-old pregnant in Far Rockaway and she just had his twins and he wanted to be in the hosptial with the twins while they were born so he faked some medical shit to get there. The mother of the girl was trying to say that he needed a whole motorcade escort back to Rikers Island, like, he needed to be surrounded by cops on motorcycles and shit but he’s just chilling in there. He’s like the first rapper to ever go in there and be like “I wanna be housed in general population,” all rappers when they go in there like DMX and Wu-Tang dudes they go into, not protective custody but high profile, which means they have captains with them at all times and shit. You know, they have police escorts. But Lil Wayne was like “Nah, fuck that, I’m gonna chill,” you know what I mean? And I guess he’s got mad money in his account, he’s in a house with like 50 other inmates, he just buys them all food and whatever they want, you know? So everyone’s like, “Whoa, Lil Wayne, he puts it on in here.” They say he just walks around all day drinking coffee and eating cookies, all day. And the female corrections officers are fuckin’ him and shit, like he’s just ballin’, he doesn’t give a fuck.

So what are the houses like?

You’re housed with, there’s different buildings on Rikers Island, and in each building it’s divided into houses, and some of them are like open dorms where it’s just a room with like 60 beds, where you sleep with like 59 other people, and there’s ones that will be like, 23-man cells. And then there’s a room in the front with a television. You basically just watch TV all day and chill. If you have some money in your account, you just buy shit at the store there and drink soda and eat…

They have a store?²

The commissary.

Yeah, commissary. It’s like, you get shitty little bags of chips and, yeah, you just chill with the commissary shit and watch crappy action movies all day, it’s so funny. Dudes wanna watch the same movies over and over.

Which ones?

This movie “Taken.” Everyone wanted to watch…the movie was sick! I saw it like 5-6 times.

Was the DVD there or something?

Yeah, the different guards who watch the cells, if you get cool ones, they’ll bring in DVDs for you to watch like every day, you know what I mean? But sometimes you get shafted and you get stuck with like guards who got a stick up their ass and wanna enforce the rules but the house I was in was cool. There was this one Muslim guard and then the other one worked there at night and came in and gambled with everybody like all night. He was chill. He played dice and cards with everyone. There’s mad weed in there too, like, everyone just smokes weed and cigarettes, you kinda just chill.

Sounds like a vacation.

It sorta is!

LeBron James, this past day, has been excoriated for “building his brand,” for potentially leaving Cleveland, for possibly staying in Cleveland, for asking for front-line help, for upsetting the time-honored tradition of the sleepy press conference. LeBron, you see, has been implicating himself in a sideshow instead of leaving the confetti-throwing to removed professionals. And worse, he’s not a winner. It’s hard to say if this outsized rage is deserved or merely misplaced.

It’s no secret LeBron has always been keen on building his “brand,” and efforts have kicked up a notch this past month. He joined Twitter — when every NBA athlete from Adonal Foyle to Zaza Pachulia has an account — and launched a website this week. His strongarming a primetime TV slot belies how strong of a brand James actually has. This is a kid who signed a $90 million endorsement contract in high school. Before playing a minute of professional basketball, before anyone outside the small confines of high school basketball aficionados¹ knew who he was, he was promised eight figures and crack Nike promotion. That is brand building. Pre-empting Baseball Tonight, or NASCAR Live, or whatever it is that ESPN airs at 9 PM on a weeknight might be brand building too, but it’s slightly smaller beans, and should not be immediately offensive to anyone except overworked ESPN producers.

It’s also worth mentioning that wherever LeBron goes to, brand or otherwise, he will be incredibly underpaid. CNBC’s Darren Rovell estimates that James will be worth millions more than his salary in 2011 to every team in the hunt except the Cavaliers. (Rovell also notes that he’d make more money in Miami than in Cleveland over the first five years of his contract, because of Florida’s lack of state taxes.) And it should also be mentioned that no matter his destination, James will draw a salary smaller than Joe Johnson and equal to Chris Bosh. LeBron’s mere presence would turn around a franchise and send season-ticket lines into a tizzy. Johnson and Bosh — not so much. It’s not patently unfair — he’ll be paid — but he’s certainly going to make more money than he earns. Why not strengthen the brand to puff the second paycheck?

While he’s the subject of significant criticism now, it seems to me the real moment of judgment would come in late June 2011. Looking at it in strictly basketball terms, LeBron lacks for tantalizing options. His Miami signing could spur the club to improve on the 2008 Celtics’ formula, sure, but it may also resemble the Galacticos, or, as Roland Lazenby noted, the ’68 Lakers. Amar’e Stoudemire and Danilo Gallinari form a talented Knicks core, but neither play interior defense, and I can’t see the club effectively guarding Dwight Howard or Bosh in the playoffs, to say nothing of Pau Gasol. If James goes to the Nets, Brook Lopez and cap space aside, he will have joined the worst club in the NBA. The Bulls are a good option, but could use another shooter, and even then still won’t sniff the Lakers. The Clippers, he’s got some help, but they’re rebuilding, and will doubtlessly not pass the Lakers. If he stays with Cleveland, people will be happy, but in June? They’ll boo him again – and why not. It’s just not a very good team, and they won’t beat the Lakers, to say nothing of the Eastern Conference competition.²

LeBron’s a free agent, sure, the biggest ever. But his choice is extremely limited, between a handful of teams, none of which carry deep rosters. The sad fact of the matter just might be that, like Kobe without an all-NBA big man, LeBron can’t win. How can we expect him to? There are, after all, 31 other teams, each employing grown men playing for money, lots of it, some millions more than him, standing in his way. Would any team he joins be so deep as to be prohibitive favorites to beat the field? This is free agency, and barring a 2008-style collusionary trade, I’m just not so sure.

Phil?

La-la-la. You know, I lived with Timothy Leary, too, and the Grateful Dead and Baba Ram Dass who was Richard Alpert, and [Allen] Ginsberg, and Owsley [Stanley] who made that acid, when I was, in ’68 i lived on this 25-mile estate owned by William Mellon Hitchcock in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., just like a middle class kid who would take LSD, this middle class, this millionaire kid brought the proponents of LSD, mainly Timothy Leary who had graduated West Point and then became a psychologist at Harvard, and then he discovered LSD from Switzerland and he coined the phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and got a LOT of kids to do just that. LSD, the only drug that you see things.

So you were living at Millbrook for awhile.

Yeah I was living at Millbrook for three months with those people, 1968. I was brought up for a weekend by a kid from Yale named Jake who was friends with my brother. I lived with these Hindus about 50 yards from Timothy Leary’s house, he was living with his secretary named Rosemary. I remember he drank a lot of vodka, I think more than he did LSD. And on the 10 trips I’ve taken in my life I only had one bad trip, right near there. One bad trip, the rest were all great. I went up these stairs that take 10 seconds to walk up. Stairs outside leading up to a [inaudible]-house, you know, and instead of taking me 10 seconds it took me an hour and half because I thought I was on a cliff and if I fell, I just grabbed each rung, and people watched me … it was the only bad trip I ever had. Oh, I remember things, like pebbles would try to spell things out, tree branches would reach down for ya, walls would breathe. It’s the only drug I’ve ever taken, I’ve never taken heroin, I’ve never taken [inaudible], it’s the only drug that you see things that aren’t there. I haven’t done that in like, 25-30 years. Anyways, what would you like to talk about, sir?

You mentioned that you were dating Berry Gordy’s assistant.

Berry Gordy and Suzanne de Passe

That’s right, Suzanne de Passe, very nice girl, for a short time, and she’s the one that told me that he was bringing a family from Gary, Indiana, and I should move out of my five-bedroom house, I was paying $800 a month, living by myself, is that crazy or what?

How could you afford that back then? That was a lot of money, and why did you have such a big house?

At first I lived with my brother in his apartment for a couple of weeks, and then this guy, Mack Scott, I met in a restaurant, who was Berry Gordy’s assistant, even above Suzanne, he kind of found out I had this house, and I had some, I was 22, and from 16-22 I got $800 a month from my family’s estate, so I had money, and when I got to Los Angeles, I don’t know how I was paying $800 a month, because I only got $800 a month, I started playing poker and I was winning. I don’t know, but all I know is I was renting this house for $800 a month, I was only there for three or four months, ’til Suzanne kicked me out. She didn’t kick me out, but she gave me a reason to leave, and I left, and they took it over. I didn’t tell the owner of the house, who was a character actor about 50-years-old. He wasn’t too happy when he went up there to see me, and he sees 11 black people. I think he, what I heard was, Suzanne told me he called the cops and he made a deal, you know, money was exchanged, and, you know, money straightens things out in a hurry. So they never got evicted, they just maybe signed a lease with him and that was that.

I read that before they got the family all together in that house, it was just The Jackson 5 at first with the dad [Joe] in California and then…

Oh, I never knew that, I thought that Suzanne said that my house … I had no idea. What you’re saying is The 5, the performers, came out with the dad before the rest of the family.

Right.

I didn’t know that.

Because then they started making some money recording some hits, and they could afford…

They moved to Encino I think, after 1601 Queens Rd., but I don’t really know.

Yeah, there was an estate called Hayvenhurst that they moved into after 1601 Queens.¹

I know nothing about that, I only know 1601 Queens Rd. And Berry Gordy, I only met twice, in a studio once and at a party, and I got to meet Broderick Crawford because of him. He asked Dick Scott to fly his son in a helicopter to get a rental car to go to military school, and I went along for the ride. And we rented a Cadillac on this mountaintop, a Hertz, and who was there? Broderick Crawford, who I really like, and I got to say hello to him. You should see him in Diane Lane’s first movie starring the greatest actor ever, Lawrence Olivier, it’s called “A Little Romance,” if you ever run across that movie, Diane Lane’s 13, it is one excellent movie. Broderick Crawford‘s in it.

So why was the helicopter necessary to get this guy to military school?

We had to take a helicopter to this mountaintop to rent a Cadillac at a Hertz dealership. From Los Angeles we took a helicopter about, I don’t know, 20 minutes, half an hour, rented a car, and then in the car took Berry Gordy’s son to this military academy, he was about 12- or 13-years-old. About 1973. I’m just saying I got to meet Broderick Crawford just cause I did a, I happened to go along for the ride for something that was being done for Mr. Gordy.

Was Suzanne with you when you did that?

No, just me, [Gordy's assistant] Richard Mack Scott, and the son. [Scott] was taking him to military school and asked if I wanted to go along on a ride in a helicopter and a rented car to drop the kid off at military school. Richard Mack Scott is the guy that I met at a restaurant, he was also the manager of New Kids on the Block here in Boston, with a kid named Maurice Starr, who was a guitarist who became a kinda rich man, he moved to Atlanta, but those two, Maurice Starr and Richard Mack Scott were the managers of NKOTB from Boston when they started out.

Michael was living with Diana Ross when the Jacksons moved into 1601 Queens Rd.

That I did not know.

The Supremes: Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, and Mary Wilson

Did she ever stop by the house or anything?

No, I was at the house say, 15 times, I never saw Diana Ross there. The only time I ever saw Diana Ross was at Mary Wilson’s house and when I went to the movies with her and Suzanne and Tony Jones, we went to see “John and Mary,” then we went dancing, Century City. And that was about two weeks before her first marriage to a guy named Robert Silverburg [actually Robert Ellis Silberstein]. And his motorcycle was up at Mary Wilson’s when I was there … and Mary Wilson was very nice, I offered to pay for her bathroom door. Suzanne’s house was right across the street from Mary Wilson’s and Suzanne didn’t have a pool so we used Mary Wilson’s whenever we wanted to and her roommate got stuck in the bathtub. And the door was a mirrored door and she AHH … so I broke the door down, you know, and I offered to pay Mary Wilson but she wouldn’t take it. And her roommate Gina, I’m 22-years-old, she had, you know she’s in the bathtub naked, she had perfect, round breasts and I’d never known anybody … they were silicone, I had never seen anything like that before.

Why was she stuck in the bathtub?

Not the bathtub, the bathroom door, she couldn’t get it open. and from the outside, I pressed it, tried to open it, and I ended up like, smashing it, ’cause it was a mirrored door.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

Well, they asked me to!

Do you remember the oldest daughter, Rebbie Jackson? She must have been 20 back then.

I don’t remember, I remember some little girls, maybe Janet … I remember Jackie, I remember Jermaine, I remember, who was the other big one, Joe? What was his name? I don’t know. but I don’t remember any adult girls living at 1601 Queens Road.² I remember, you know, a lot, it seems to me I counted them once and there were 11, two parents and nine kids, does that ring true with what you know or, living at sixteen-oh-randy was, no, was randy one? I remember one of the girls was Janet and the other one was maybe La Toya. But, I do kinda remember, you know, nine people living in that house and me laughing at myself saying, “You dope, you’re living there by yourself and this is housing 11 people.”

i think there were, yeah, nine kids and two parents, so that adds up. What do you remember about Jermaine? And were the older boys in the family cool with you?

Those were the two I was friendliest with, Michael and Jermaine, those were the ones … what do I remember? They were both good-looking kids … hard to remember but I thought Jermaine was a very good-looking kid. I remember Michael Jackson called me “Greenberry,” and for about the first three times I was there he’d go, “Yahfahout, yahfahout,” and it took me three visits to finally figure out he was saying, “You’re far out,” cuz he just said, “Yahfahout, yahfahout.”

Why do you think he thought you were far out? Was it because you had a motorcycle?

I don’t know why he thought that. Yeah, I did have a motorcycle and I drove it around there, and I’m pretty sure Jermaine was the closest to him in age³, I remember them being like, I don’t know, they looked the same height, is that true, is he the closest one in age of Michael Jackson? Marlon!

Let’s see…Jackie’s 59…Marlon’s 53…

Wait a minute, Jackie’s 59, I’m 63, so when I was 22, he had to be 18.

So what did you do with all your time back then, did you just hang out and play poker?

In Los Angeles, what did I do? I learned how to play cards and made enough money to live there. I learned how to play poker. Yeah, yeah, 53-card draw poker, one joker, that’s about what I did and besides that, you know I had one month where I won $16,000 and I went to Mexico for three weeks and drove 5,300 miles in 21 days, and because of going to Mexico I ended up in Key West ’cause when I was, the night before I left for Mexico I went to a movie called “Dog Day Afternoon,” I got to go to the movie for free in Westwood because the people I gambled with in Gardena, one was the manager. And in that movie theater, I went with a, this girl I know from Venice and her two brothers, and at the popcorn stand I met a girl named Caprice, what was her name? Caprice Huffman, from Hillyard, Ohio, the most innocent-looking girl I’d ever seen in my life, with this crazy brown … she was looking for her “professor friend” S.C.

She couldn’t find him. So I, I’m going to Mexico and I said, I gave her my apartment, a stranger. You might think it’s crazy but I didn’t have much to rob and if you need … I did that, and I came back three weeks later, and she left a note and the key: “Yeah, I found my friend, thanks a lot, I’m going to Fort Lauderdale to hook up with my boyfriend, do you wanna take a ride with me?” So I took a ride with her to Fort Lauderdale, I met her boyfriend, Steve Lewis…

From California all the way to Florida?

Correct, we went from … and we spent a night in New Orleans. We drove in her little red car from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale, that’s where her boyfriend lived. And I went …

That’s a long way to go with a girl who has a boyfriend, Phil.

Well, I just came back from a trip in Mexico, did I say we were lovers? We were once, but that’s beside the point. So, but then, I’m there for a couple of weeks in Fort Lauderdale, what a town that is, and um, then I go to Key West for three days to see it, and I liked it so much I sold everything in Los Angeles and moved to Key West and didn’t work for almost two years on that 16 grand I had won in a month, best month I ever had in california. That’s how i left for Key West, I’m just a straw in the wind! What are you gonna do?

How’d you find that poker game?

Which poker game, the one in California? It’s legal, there’s a city called Gardena with seven poker clubs, each one has 45 tables, 10 minutes from the LA airport. It’s totally legal, it’s not like finding a poker game with some gangsters, blah-blah-blah. Poker was legal back in the ’70s, it was the only game that was legal. In other words, you didn’t have casinos in California, you had them in Nevada, but in California only you had poker clubs. Poker is a french word, it means “bluff.” I think that’s where the game was invented.

So did you teach Michael any of his dance moves?

No, but he showed me a dance step, and so did Diana Ross. yeah, he showed me a dance step where you … a shuffle, you throw … I’m doing it … you throw your left foot out and you pull it back quick, and you shuffle your right. He showed me the straightforward shuffle and Diana Ross taught me a dance that was popular for a few months in ’72 called The Four Corners. She said, she had …”ay-yi-yi” … I’ll show you some time.

She must have been beautiful back then.

Diana Ross, she was a little, I think she was very pretty … I dunno but it was definitely ’72 or ’73.

Did she seem like a diva back then?

Did she seem like a diva? Oh, was she snooty? No, no, she was very polite and calm and friendly. No, she didn’t seem like a diva, but, you know, she was with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s cousin, and me, so I don’t know, but we got in the movie free, all four of us just because they recognized her in Beverly Hills, that happened.

Did you get her some popcorn?

I don’t remember. But I remember it was a pretty good movie. “John and Mary.” Speaking of popcorn, you know, I met Stephen King in a movie theatre, and he ate one kernel of popcorn at a time and it was just remarkable, what a guy. He told me he wrote “Misery” in longhand at The Brown Hotel at Rudyard Kipling’s desk, the desk that Rudyard Kipling died at. But I asked Mr. King, I told Mr. King he was one of my three favorite writers, Rudyard Kipling, William Goldman, and he. And when I said, “Your wife writes as well as you do,” he sighed like they had just had a fight, “ahhhuuhhh,” he sighed sadly. And when I told him Walter Brennan was the only man who had won four Academy Awards for acting, he said, “I love Walter Brennan in the ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre,’” and I said, “No, Mr. King, that was Walter Houston,” he went, “oh.” Pretty good.

You referenced another movie in your email to me. After you and Suzanne dated, she got married to somebody named…

Yeah, yeah, Paul Le Mat, that’s right. The guy from “American Graffiti” and he starred in a movie called “Melvin and somebody,” “Melvin and Howard,” about Howard Hughes, how, a true story how Howard Hughes crashed and this gas station kid helped him out, Hughes gave him a lot of money, I think that’s what that movie was about. Paul Le Mat, Canadian actor, very good.

Did you see “The Aviator,” about Howard Hughes?

Oh, that was great with Leonardo DiCaprio. Great movie. Scorcese, I think, finally got an Academy Award for that.⁴

Hey, you ever see “Taxi Driver”? You know that Scorcese’s in that movie — you know what part he has? In “Taxi Driver”? He’s in the back seat of Robert De Niro’s cab saying, “Look up at the window, my wife’s having sex with a black guy, I’ve got a .45 here, I could blow them both.” … He’s an unhappy husband watching his wife have an affair. And you know, Robert De Niro makes reference to “Taxi Driver” in the movie “Bullwinkle and Rocky” [actually, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle"], where he plays the general, he does a takeoff from the “Taxi Driver” shows: “Nobody’s here, who are you talkin…” He had a sign in his bedroom that made me laugh, Robert De Niro in the movie “Taxi Driver,” the sign said “Tomorrow I’ve got to get organizized.”

I read that a lot of the kids in the neighborhood, on Queens Rd., would come by and play with the Jacksons as they started to become popular.

The times I was there, there were neighborhood kids there, maybe three out of the 10 times, you know, I was usually there in the afternoon or something or, I don’t know, but yeah there were other kids around, there were other neighborhood kids around. And they did board games…

Was there a basketball hoop or anything?

I remember being inside playing, you know, board games, or marbles, or, and rehearsing, they rehearsed in the garage, that was attached to 1601, it had this little walkway, like a little bridge from the garage, to, you know, just like, about 10 or 12 feet.

Did you ever witness them rehearsing?

No, I saw them go off to rehearse, but I never witnessed them rehearsing, nope.

Because, you know, they got kicked out of a lot of places before that one because they had been making too much noise.

You mean residences in California?

Yeah.

They had a few places before Queens Rd., then? Oh. I remember Suzanne saying they’re bringing a group from Gary, Indiana, and they need a place to live. But maybe I, it was so long ago, all I know is, it was a way for me get out of paying for this big house, you know, I was glad that it happened because I realized, “what am i doing?”

So tell me the story of when you took Michael riding.

For a motorcycle ride? It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and … who else saw it? There were a couple of his brothers around, but his parents weren’t there and I happened to come up on the motorcycle, so we went for about, maybe, about a 12-minute ride through the Hollywood Hills. Queens Road is right in the middle of the Hollywood Hills and, I know at least two of his brothers were there when I did, I think they asked for rides but I had to go or, I got worried, you know, actually, that maybe this wasn’t a good idea, you know, taking the kid riding around without his parents’ permission, the kid that they’re trying to make a star out of, but we did go for about a 12-minute motorcycle ride. 650 Yamaha.

That sounds like a real nice experience.

He was a very nice, gentle kid, he wasn’t uppity, he didn’t think he was a star, he was a very nice person at 11, somehow he got off the beaten path.

In all the interviews from that era, he seemed like such a real down-to-earth, respecftul, polite, nice kid.

Yeah, gentle, shy, reticent. Somehow, he never got out there in the real world and walked around, I don’t know, maybe he was protected, I don’t know what it is, but … I have no idea. And was he a homosexual pedophile? Who the heck knows? I think he was more … I have no idea. It seemed like he really liked children, he was more interested in snuggling than an orgasm, but who knows. I have no idea. I knew him for a brief period when he was 11 years old.

Did you ever meet his mother?

Sure, Katherine and Joe, I met her a bunch of times at the house, absolutely.

did they ever have you over for dinner or anything?

Nah, more just hanging out, playing with the kids, I never sat down to dinner. I was given some food, you know, maybe watching TV, sitting around or something, hanging out a little bit, but I never sat down for a formal dinner. But they lived right in the house, they were there every time I went over there.

Were the kids real fun, goofin’ around with each other and stuff? Did they seem like they had big personalities?

I don’t know, maybe we were outside riding bikes, I don’t remember like, eight or… all the kids being, you know, I just remember when I was there, maybe three or four kids and … I never saw them argue with each other, you know? And if I remember correctly, the girls were very very young, like almost … could hardly talk, is that possible? I couldn’t remember any adult girls.

Janet and La Toya were still very young. Rebbie was the older one, actually, the oldest.

See, I never saw her, I remember just boys, basically, and the girls, they were really too young to get involved.

She actually had a song.⁵ She actually had a brief musical career.

Berry Gordy was in love with this white singer he was trying to groom named, Christine what-was-her-name … I can’t remember her name but, ay-yi-yi. I remember being in a recording studio with him and him having one of his assistants go, “go get me some aspirin.” And the assistant had to run out and find a drugstore.

What did Suzanne do for Berry Gordy, mostly?

She tutored his children, she did kinda everything, she was a, the manager of The Cheetah Club in Harlem [we're not sure if he's talking about the one in midtown], she was into booking groups, and the kinda thing that Motown did, way before she even hooked up with Berry Gordy, that’s probably why he hired her. She tutored one of his daughters in English, but mostly she worked for the company trying to find acts, setting up acts, she was an executive. And she wrote, she ended up writing, producing “Lonesome Dove,” she has a company now, De Passe Enterprises [actually, Entertainment], she’s made some films and she was on a TV show, too. Somebody said they saw her in a TV show with blonde hair, yikes! She had a part in a TV show, so, she did very well. She became president of Motown after I knew her, and …

Really?

Yeah, Suzanne De Passe became president of Motown Records, and then she formed her own production company and one of the things she produced was that Tommy Lee Jones hit, “Lonesome Dove.”

Hey. I’m going to ask you four questions, if you get ‘em all right, I’m gonna send you $10. They’re all Robert Duvall questions. Here they are:

Name Robert Duvall’s first movie.
Name the movie that Robert Duvall’s most-often quote is, what is the quote?
Name the movie that he shoots and kills Michael Douglass.
Name the movie he says to Diane Lane, “I need a poke,” p-o-k-e.

Let’s see, Robert Duvall. I’m thinking about his first movie…

I’ll give you a hint. Kind of, ha ha ha, why can’t Casper the Friendly Ghost have any offspring?

Um, “Twilight Zone”?

No. Why can’t Casper the Friendly Ghost have any offspring? Because he has a hollow weiner. Now, on Halloween, what do ghosts say? They say, “boo.”

BOO!

Think of a part where Duvall played “Boo.” Boo Radley.

You’re way ahead of me on this movie stuff, Phil.

I’ll tell you, his first movie ever was “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He played the mockingbird. He played the retarded kid. In the movie he kills Michael Douglass in it, he’s a cop and his captain is congratulating him after he kills Michael Douglass what a good cop he is, and Robert Duvall says to his superior officer, who’s been calling him a no-good cop ’cause he’s retiring, he put him down the whole time, he says,”Fuck you, Captain Harris. Fuck you very much.” And the reporter goes, “Did you hear what he said?” Hahaha. The movie is called “Falling Down.”

With Michael Douglass, yeah, “Falling Down,” I remember that. My ex-girlfriend used to say “Fuck you very much” to me.

The movie that he is most often quoted from, what movie?

“The Apostle”?

Not “The Apostle.” You got the right letter, his most-often quote is “I love the smell of napalm in the morning — it’s the smell of victory. ”

Oh, “Apocalypse Now.”

Right. And in what movie does he say to Diane Lane, “I need a poke.” And what does he mean?

I think that ne heeds … I think that he wants to have sex with her.

That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what a poke is. And the movie is “Lonesome Dove” and Di — the great Diane Lane, who I want you to see in her first movie, “Little Romance,” she’s a hooker.

I’m going to get deep into Robert Duvall’s filmography, which is very extensive, just so I can keep up with you next time.

You know that Diane Lane, “Cotton Club-”

He was also in “True Grit.” Hey, did you see him in George Lucas’ first film, “THX 1138″? That was a far-out movie.

You know what I’m looking forward to? Learning how to use a computer. All I can do is email but when I learn how to do Word, I’m gonna … Words are so abstract, words are nothing. They don’t describe the wind in your face or the sun, but they’re the best we’ve got. And computers are amazing. And GPS is amazing, that blows my mind. I heard, here’s the three jokes I’ve heard lately. What do you get when a girl has both PMS and GPS?⁶

[conversation deteriorates (further) for two minutes]

Got a couple more questions for you. Did the Jackson family have a car?

Did they have a car? I never saw them, no, they must have had a car. Berry Gordy had lots of cars, and chauffeurs. They must have had a car. But I don’t remember. The times I saw Katherine and Joseph were in the house, I never remembered seeing them drive. No, I have no idea.

Did you ever actually see them perform, like, any gigs around LA?

Never ever, I never seen them, no no no. In the living room, he showed me this one little shuffle and he danced just for a couple of seconds, but I have never seen them perform except on television.

So, it was 1970. Did you see any concerts back then?

What did I see? I remember seeing “Hair,” and that was it. And the guy named Butler in the Smothers Brothers produced it. This guy Butler lived right above Suzanne De Passe’s house. Suzanne lived across from Mary Wilson but right above her was this guy John Butler, the big head of “Hair.” I went to see, that was good. Oh, I saw Janis Joplin! At a 3-day concert. And then I met her in person for about 10 seconds we talked. Right on Santa Monica Blvd. She pulled up in the parking lot with a black Porsche, big round dots on it, each one, each dot maybe a foot around, and she got out of the car and I walked her into this clothing store we both went to and she said, “I’m here making a recording,” and that was it. But I had seen her about a year before out in Cali there was a three-day concert, and she was there. I can’t remember who else was there but it lasted three days so there must have been a lot of groups, but I did meet Janis Joplin. And I got in an elevator once, at Century City, was going up and, me and this other guy, I said, “You’re my favorite character actor, Warren Oates.” He looks back at me and he says “No, Phil Holloman(?),” I got the wrong actor. And Warren Oates was pathetic, he played the father in “Badlands” where they kill him and run off. And his last movie, “Stripes,” he makes a movie called “Stripes” with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, pretty funny movie, and he’s coming out of Czechoslovakia on this motor vehicle, and he’s bouncing around on top, hanging out while they’re driving out of the enemy territory and he goes, “I’m getting too old for this shit!” And it was pathetic, he died two weeks later, that was his last movie, he was right.

Well Janis Joplin died later in 1970, October 4.

She died when?

October 4, 1970.

I got to Los Angeles — I left New Haven, Connecticut, six days after I was 22, April Fool’s Day, and I got to California about maybe eight or nine days later. So she died…? Then that all happened so quick, I’m amazed, I never thought she died in 1970, because I didn’t get to California ’til 1969, and I saw her in a three-day concert and then I met her in person.

How did she seem when you met her?

Janis Joplin? She wasn’t stoned or anything, she seemed very fine, she seemed like a regular person, not particularly pretty, she was wearing blue jeans and a vest, a striped vest, and she seemed very reasonable. I just said “Hello, hey, Janis Joplin.” She said “Hi, I’m recording here in Los Angeles,” and we walked into the clothing store right up the street. And I met Amy Irving, too, on a bicycle. She married Steven Spielberg. She was on a bicycle in a bikini in the middle of Santa Monica, you know, like two miles from the beach, very inappropriate and riding a bicycle,  I’m walking across the street, she says “Hi, my name’s Amy Irving, I’m gonna be an actress!” She rides off. And I saw her a couple years later I think in her first movie, “Dog Day Afternoon.” Great movie. Changed my whole life. I met that girl and I moved to Florida. When I moved to Key West, I didn’t work for a year and a half, then my first job was a garbageman, $2.25 an hour. And the funny thing was I got that job because when I wasn’t working, just for exercise, I’d jump on the truck when it went by my house and — I’ll show you pictures, what an apartment I had, $150 a month — and I’d do the garbageman’s job for an hour or so and let him sit in the truck. And then I became a garbageman.

Did you actually go to college?

Three. Syracuse University, New Haven College and Southern Connecticut State. Four majors. Speech and Drama, English, Psychology, and Phys Ed. Wanna hear a good definition of psychology? It’s not a good definition, it’s a bad definition, but it’s funny because psychology is real, we treat each person differently. Parents, boyfriend, girlfriend, and we use it mostly to intimidate. But here’s a funny definition from a guy who lived to be 37. Born in 1900, Asheville, North Carolina, went to Harvard at 17, taught at NYU at 21, died at age 37 ’cause he took a drink from a guy’s whiskey bottle and got tuberculosis. Thomas Wolfe, they made a movie about him called “Youngblood Hawke,” James Franciscus plays him but, here’s the quote, from a book called “Of Time and the River” about living in Boston and going to Harvard. “Psychology; the bastard of superstition and quackery, the black magic of little minds, the effort of a blind man crawling around a darkened room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” Hahaha. I think that’s pretty funny!

I think that’s a good quote to end on. Thanks, Phil.

Thanks to MJSite.com and IAmNotAStalker.com for the photos.

6-15-10
Trumbull,

This is Jonathan Lee Riches ©, my ramblings to you are under duress. I’m being experimented on with psychological warfare. I’m writing from solitary confinement, it’s called the special housing unit, SHU at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky, FMC Lexington.

I’ve been placed in administrative detention. I been in here since May 3, 2010. The Bureau of Prisons plan on shipping me to a undisclosed location. This is a covert operation akin to the CIA kidnapping nationals and shipping them to secret CIA torture stations abroad. Well it happens to American citizens like me. The conditions at FMC Lexington are barbaric and inhumane. My 8th amendment rights are being violated for cruel and unusual punishment, the prison is calling me a threat to national security when it comes to filing lawsuits. I was recently enrolled in the RDAP 500 hour residential drug abuse program where if I completed it, I would of got a year off my sentence and would of been in the 1/2 way house by September 2010. Dr. Amanda Hughes a/k/a Dr. Amanda Leigh Hughes was my primary and she kicked me out to silence me because I have evidence that she is having a current sexual relationship with inmate Patrick J. Simpson, #05095-036, another RDAP participant. Patrick J. Simpson is a convicted arsonist and child molester from York Maine. Dr. Amanda Hughes has been smuggling drugs, alcohol, and cell phones into FMC Lexington for Patrick Simpson. Simpson claims I filed a fictitious lawsuit in his name Simpson v. Riley [5:2010cv00138] in U.S. District Court E.D. of Kentucky and Simpson claims I wrote to his sister Michelle Breeding in Coxs Creek Kentucky. Simpson filed a prison restraining order against me, now I’m in solitary. I lost out on a year because of this Simpson punk. I’m going to sue him, his family and Dr. Hughes the rest of my life. The current conditions I’m in are horrible. I’m locked in a little room 24 hours a day. I never come out. I get one set of clothing which are all in bright orange including orange slippers. These clothes are all used including the boxers, I exchange it once a week. I get no access to a phone, only once a month I get a 15 minute call, I get fed like a dog through a food slot in my door. The food is tainted. Mystery meat, stale bread, expired milk, ecoli lettuce. Breakfast comes at 8am, lunch at 10:30am and dinner at 3:30pm (who the fuck eats dinner at 3:30. I ain’t no early bird). I get no commissary, so I’m living off this 1000 calorie a day diet. I have a small shower in my room. I have to press the water button every 15 seconds to get only lukewarm water. I get one towel, the vent is pumping out ice cold air. I’m freezing, I’m only in a T-shirt. I’m so cold I use my socks as sleeves and rap [sic] my feet with toilet paper which I only get 1 roll a week. I get 1 blanket, 1 sheet, no pillow, a tiny window, if I look outside I see a brick wall. My cell is filthy. Ants, bugs, roaches, rats cross the floor. My walls have tons of Spanish and gang graffiti. I get 1 Bob Barker soap, Bob Barker toothpaste once a week. I’m writing with a pencil that’s as big as my pinky. My toilet smells like urine. I can’t see any other inmate, but I hear constant noise at all hours. Afro-Americans screaming out anti-white ebonics, Mexicans yelling in Spanish. I feel like a goldfish in a fishbowl as once a week on Fridays the warden, AW, administration walk through and stare at me through my window. My light stays on 24 hours a day. USA Today just did a front page 6-13-10 article on solitary confinement. The only positive thing is i get my mail and I continue to file lawsuits while I’m oppressed in here. The litigation will not stop. I’m the Litigator Crusader. The people responsible for this torture I will see them in court. Dr. Amanda Hughes is going to federal prison soon. I will continue to write with my status and I encourage all my fans and supporters to continue to write me. God Bless

Jonathan Lee Riches
#40948015
Federal Medical Center
P.O. Box 14500
Lexington, KY 40512

PS – remember the movie “Lean On Me” – Free Mr. Clark. Call this prison 24 hours a day and demand them to free Jonathan Lee Riches
859-255-6812

Respectfully,

Jonathan Lee Riches
6-15-10

In commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the death of Michael Jackson, Trumbull Island spoke to a friend who got to know the Jackson family quite well at a crucial time in their career, when young bebs were becoming young men, with another destined to remain forever young. Phil, 63, lives in Boston and prefers to speak on the phone, so we called him up for this interview. But he wrote us a short message awhile back which we have excerpted here. Stay tuned for the rest.

hi  pal—  i left new haven on april first 1969- i was 22 years and 6 days old- i drove to la in a 4 on the floor chevy  camaro – when i got to l.a. i couldn’t  find my brother rt away so the first thing i did was  see a  film, the heart is a lonly  hunter starring  allen arkin and sandra lock  from the pen of a 23 year old  named  carson  mccullers—– about a month after  getting  to hollywood  i met in a ben franklin  restrant  a guy  named  richard  mac  scott  who was the manager for the new kids  on the block— when i met him  he  was personell  assistant  to  berry  gordy— he found me the house i rented  for 8 hundred a month  at  1601  queens   road…

⁂

Dave's first snow race in Michigan in 2008. He didn't have competition snow tires, but took 1st anyway. So Icey.

Our friend Dave Carapetyan of Rally Ready Motorsports from Texas made the transition from hardcore punk singer to rally car racer with the grace of a pupae metamorphosing into a butterfly. Not to say that Dave is a butterfly. Let’s think of him as a man who sits inside a giant metal cheetah that guzzles high octane gasoline and exhales at ear-mincing volumes as it devours rough ground and long distances at pant-shitting speeds. Trumbull spoke with Dave just days before he took home his third consecutive Pikes Peak victory in the Open division on June 27.

Dave, we met a long ass time ago. Why were you in Massachusetts to begin with?
I was in a band from 2000-20002 called The Snobs… we were a skate punk band out of Austin, Tex., with a lineup of all 13-year-olds that played like some combination of Negative Approach and Government Issue. We were heavily influenced by early Dischord bands, old Austin bands like the Big Boys and even the modern youth crew goofballs. It was in 2002 just before our summer tour that I came to Boston to visit my friend Sweet Pete from the band In My Eyes and my friend Bill, who had played bass for us briefly but had just moved to Boston to poke some joke of a girl.

How did you become a rally car racer?
I got sick of the lack of sincerity and the bullshit associated with hardcore and music in general. After the Snobs broke up, I started recording but got sick of having people fuck me over and weasel out of $20 here or $50 there when I was already cutting outrageously good deals. I’ve always been obsessed with anything fast and especially anything with wheels, as I got a bit older it was a natural progression, I guess. It started with working at a friend’s shop who built street race cars and drag race stuff, but I wasn’t interested in having a cool car — I was interested in cool driving. Nobody gives a shit about the baseball bat, they just care about how far you hit the home run, you know? As far as motorsport, rallying is by far the most intense and difficult kind of racing on the planet. It’s you and a co-driver on a dirt road you’ve never driven, going as fast as you possibly can based only on descriptive notes about the road you’re hearing as you’re flying up on it at 100 mph. How cool is that?!

You live in Texas. Do you love Texas? What is the best Texas movie? band?
In the rally world I’m known as Texas Dave and boy howdy, I love my dang ol’ state. When I was in The Snobs, it was all we could do to avoid the image Matt was trying to create for us, but I’ve learned now to love and embrace it. It’s a pretty good gimmick, too. There are way too many Texas movies to count but I dunno I guess if I had to pick it would be something that truly embodies Texas film culture like “Slackers” or “Dazed and Confused.” No idea what band, I don’t really keep up with the local music scene. I guess I’ve always been a pretty big fan of The Offenders.

Do you live on oil land? Do your cars need a lot of oil? What’s the deal with oil?
By George, I sure wish I lived on oil land! My life would be much easier, that’s for certain. All cars need a lot of oil, race cars, I suppose, consume more in terms of liter per mile, but I run my race cars for less than a couple hundred miles a year so they don’t need all that much. The stuff I use is called Motul 300V and it’s $20/quart and I change it every 50-100 miles or so. Sometimes, more, at races like Pikes Peak. It’s an ester-based synthetic though so it hardly counts as dino juice.

How are rally car racing groupies?
Surprisingly, they do exist. I don’t know how they are because they’re mostly on the internet and even if they did exist in person, I’ve got way too much going on at a race and way too cool of a girlfriend back home to be fucking around with that mess.

Have you ever crashed?
There are two kinds of rally drivers, those who have rolled and those who will. Somehow in six years I haven’t rolled but I’ve had my fair share of smashes, crashes and bashes. It’s entirely inevitable that if you expect to remain competitive you’ll be on the limit. Driving on the limit means you’ll often be under and over the limit resulting in nothing less than spectacular automotive destruction. I have yet to write a car off entirely, though.

Tell us about the racing school you are opening.
If I could have any job and still be able to race at the level I want to race at, I’d teach. Unfortunately, they will never pay teachers enough and I’ll never have the time to do that. I love mentoring and teaching and working with people. I don’t really like sales, which is what I’ve been doing for a while. I’ve built a pretty good resume racing for the past few years with two consecutive wins at the biggest hill climb in the world [make that three - Ed.] and a handful of good results rallying, so when an opportunity came up for me to build some rally roads at a race track here in town, I took it. A few hundred hours with a bulldozer and a few hundred hours in front of a computer and I’ve got the facility, curriculum and website… Now it’s just time to dial it all in, get the funding to put a top layer on the roads, buy a dozen cars and get to teaching people the coolest sport in the world. The curriculum is neat, as I’ve made it so anyone at all can walk away improved in whatever they do. Whether you’re a regular joe schmoe looking to improve your driving skills for the wild highways, a road racer looking to learn how to control a car beyond the traction limit, a rally driver looking to learn and hone in their skills, or an off-road racer looking to learn how to actually drive, haha.

This is our car and crew in 2007, the first year we raced an all-wheel-drive car. The car is a '99 Mitsubishi Evolution 6.5, a car we didn't get in the USA. I bought it from a guy out in CA who imported it brand new and spent $110,000 building it to race. Ten years later it's not worth but a fraction of that but it still had a lot of life left in it. We lost the win in our division by only 4 seconds that year.

Can Trumbull become a sponsor for your car? I don’t have any decals but I could tag your shit. Who are your sponsors?
Anyone can be a sponsor with with right amount of $. I’d be co-sponsored by Tampax and Depend and wear a giant tampon suit for the right amount of money. I’ve got a few good people helping out this year. Harris Hill Road, Magnus Motorsports, AWD Tuning, Evolution Dynamics, Torque Solution, a whole plethora of gibberish to you, I’m sure.

Do you ever bring snacks or drinks in the car with you during a race? what about music?
Snacks always… usually lots of granola bars, Clif Bars and water or Gatorade. I’ve never listened to music while driving but I have been known to drop some early 2000s hardcore on the regular before getting in the car.. A Life Less Plagued, Background Music, Days of the White Owl, etc.

What are your favorite cars? For: Rallying, daily life, balling, Formula 1
For rallying I love the Evolution. It’s a ridiculously sick package right out of the box, I think much more than the Subaru. I recently have become infatuated with the idea of rallying a ’69 Camaro, however. Too much power, not enough traction and super silly sideways fun. Plus it would make old men really, really angry to watch a ’69 get the shit beat out of it. My daily driver switches between our ’07 Ram 3500 Mega Cab and an ’88 Suzuki Samurai. I don’t really give a shit about going fast on the street. Although, the Samurai may not be a street car for long, my buddy and I are talking about building it for the Raid De Himalaya where you race Suzuki Samurais through the Himalayan mountains for 2,000 miles. Just need to figure out how to get a car to Nepal. Formula 1, I’m all about the underdogs… Brawn from last year was unreal, Force India puts on an absolutely stunning show given their resources… I even get down with Red Bull.

This is 2008, same Evolution, just beat to shit for a year so we gave it the ghetto camo.. A bunch of weird black shapes to distract the eye from how busted up the car really was. We finally managed the elusive win in the Pikes Peak Open division which really lit the fire for us. Unfortunately the economy tanked and we spent 2009 trying to stay afloat.. we didn't think there was any way we could make it to Pikes Peak.

Are you down with NASCAR?
Motorsport is about automotive evolution. It is the proving ground for road car technology and the birthplace of idea and concept. All modern safety systems, fuel economy, brakes, engines, transmissions, everything in a modern car was born on a race track. For a group of hillbilly country bumpkins to be running a steel bodied chassis with suspension geometry from a 1962 Chevy Impala running carbureted v8s and fighting any technical changes or modernization for over 50 years to call what they do RACING just pisses me off.

Can anyone become a rally racer? What does it take to be one? Who is the best out there right now?
Anybody who can write the check can get in a rally car. You have to start in two-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated cars, and after a season you can run anything you’d like. It takes a lot of money and even more commitment, persistence and most importantly, passion. Anybody can do a rally, it takes serious commitment to come back at it year after year, especially if you’re not making $300K a year and can just throw money at it. Most of us are making next to nothing at our real jobs and are busting ass to try and make it to one event a year. To run the whole national championship in the Rally America series in the Open class without even being particularly competitive would cost between $150-200K. That’s for six races.

As for the best out there, Sebastien Loeb is the best in the world and the best of all time. He drives for Citroën World Rally Team and has won the driver’s championship every year since 2004. He’s looking good to do it again in 2010. He revolutionized the way people thought of rally driving. In the past it’s always been a sport of flat-out and sideways, with massive slides everywhere. Loeb’s style is much smoother and more conservative to the naked eye, but he is faster mile for mile than anyone else, and has an unbelievable level of consistency. Domestically, Travis Pastrana has dominated the Rally America championship every year since 2006, but this year he will be taken down by some new blood. As great of a driver as Travis has become, the majority of his dominance lies in his resources. He’s driving a $250,000 Subaru with a factory budget and all the private testing, training and resources he needs to be the best there is. Nobody else in the States has that level of resources.

How many hours a week do you spend on your car?
On average not that many, I’m only doing two races this year so I’m not bouncing from event to event busting ass to keep the car together. With that said, I probably put in over 1,000 hours for our last race, and we’re taking three cars to this race, I’m sure we’ll have 5,000+ man hours to get three cars to Pikes Peak.

This is our first trip up Pikes Peak and our third race ever. I'm driving a '98 Acura Integra Type-R with a totally stock engine. We drove a supercharged version of the same car in 2006.

Can you explain why you need three cars for Pikes Peak? And what is the “Open” division all about?
No one person needs three cars for one race but your costs decrease exponentially as you add more cars. We can share most of our assets between cars so bringing more cars cuts the per car cost significantly. Three cars breaks down as follows: I drive one car, my buddy is driving a second and we prepped and rented the third. The rental cost helps offset our costs significantly and the sponsors fill in as much of the gap as possible. So our costs increase by say 40% to run three cars instead of one, but our marketing profile and R.O.I. increases tenfold so we have a ton more to offer sponsors. This is turn attracts more sponsors which offsets our costs even further thus creating the formula for ultimate winning! You follow me?

As for the Open division, there are a bunch of classes or divisions on Pikes Peak, the fastest of which is the Unlimited division. If you’ve ever played Gran Turismo on Playstation you might remember the 1,000-hp Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak. That car is an Unlimited-class Pikes Peak car. It’s a tube-frame chassis with a carbon fiber body and an AWD turbo Suzuki V6 engine. It’s built to go up Pikes Peak and thats it. Just below the Unlimited division is the Pikes Peak Open division.. Another class for cars just built for Pikes Peak, the Open division basically says your car has to appear semi-stock or resemble its factory, street-driving counterpart. Otherwise there are little to no restrictions. You can have a wild tube chassis, you can have all carbon bodywork, you can have a billion horsepower, whatever you want. Given those very free regulations, we don’t have the budget to build a car to be as fast as it could be in the class but we have managed to build competitive cars and take the win in the class the past two years. Eventually, maybe as soon as 2011, we’d like to move to the Unlimited division and focus all our resources on building a ridiculously overpowered insanely fast Unlimited car so I can achieve my ultimate dream to hold the overall record on the mountain.

Can you break down your rally car history, as in all the cars you’ve raced?
I started in 2004 in a Production, or stock class, Acura Integra Type-R. I raced that through 2006 with a few wins, a national championship and a pair of podium finishes at Pikes Peak. In 2007, I bought a Mitsubishi Evo 6.5 which we prepped for Pikes Peak again and took second in the Time Attack division. That car brought me three overall rally wins and my first Pikes Peak win in 2008. In 2009, I bought a Mitsubishi Evo 8 which has become our dedicated Pikes Peak car and brought me a second consecutive win in 2009. For 2010 we traded the Evo 6 for an 05 STi street car… We built that from street car to rally car in six weeks and raced it at the Sno Drift rally in Michigan where we failed to finish. That car is now being rebuilt and reprepped to run Pikes Peak as a rental to a former factory Subaru driver. In June, I’m hoping to win the Open division at Pikes Peak again [A reminder that he did - Ed.] and take the Open division record which has stood since 2000. Thanks to a host of awesome sponsors and an incredibly dedicated and loyal crew, we’re looking pretty good to do that.

Do you have a partner/navigator who rides shotgun with you during races? Can I ride with you in a race some day?
My co-driver, Rob Amato, has been in the right seat for eight years and has spent three of those with me. He moved his family from Rhode Island down to Texas in 2007 and we partnered up with a great deal of success. You can ride with me in a race car anytime but I think I’ve got to stick with my right hand man for the races… He trusts me with his life and I trust him with mine, it’s important to stick with somebody you have a very solid relationship and dynamic with. Although if you busted out a homemade Mortal Kombat shirt, I may be persuaded the other way.

Who?

You, the girl.

I’m not a girl..

Oh my bad. Whatup son?

Yeah.

Whatup?

Yeah..

You playing handball today?

Nah, not today.

You’ll ruin your sneakers playin’

True.

Those new?

These shits?

Yeah.

Nah these aren’t anything..

How’s summer?

It’s good.

Yeah I don’t know about this. What about you, pound cake?

(Other kid) The fuck you say?

How’s summer for you, ya lil shit?

[Unintelligible audio]

Summer for some people is fried corn, boat shoes in the park, cutoff jean shorts, independently-funded adult contemporary music, and bike rides to some pizza place on a checklist. Not us. Summer here includes but is not limited to: body odor, moldy linen suits, potato, and cheese burekas by the pound in holey and dewy plastic bags, barbeques gone wrong, twenty-dollar bills gone missing, starters’ arms and bullpens destroyed, camping for free and for pay, vacuum-sealing, the air conditioner’s box, getting the measles, sweating on the train platform, Billy Joel cover bands at Belmont, two-a-days, Mr. Two-Showers-A-Day, rotten, dead-air Sportscenters, wilting second-hand books, Ms. Undershirt-A-Day, spur moviegoing, shredded and curly cardboard diet coke and king can cases, Manon Rheaume drunk at the cottage, better parking spots, more sleep and less, Civic Holiday, pressurizing stretch runs, tons of tourists, cashing out and the subsequent race for rare joints.

Cruyff doin work

Haan – Zo

The breathtaking wonderwork that are the free kicks of David Beckham

Science — it’s not just for scousers

Wayne Rooney doing work

Now, what about the Guatemalan Sinkhole? Is anyone still talking about it? Is everyone OK with it now? You’re all just OK with a giant hole in the earth opening up in a perfect circle and going so deep and swallowing part of a neighborhood in Guatemala? No. I think that more questions need to be asked. I don’t like looking into that thing and hearing the hollow sound of terror. But since I doubt that the scope of tonight’s Presidential address will include this issue, we sent a correspondent to the very mouth of doom with a list of questions so bold and prying that we fully expected him to be eaten alive by the interview subject. But after all, what are interns for if not to stand between the minds at work and the dark and mysterious forces of the universe that we dutifully and tirelessly analyze?

What is your name?

Most people call me the Guatemalan Sinkhole, but I’m really a “piping feature.” I don’t associate with sinkholes. You think about sinkholes, and you think of the Great Blue Hole, or the discovery of fossils from the Pliocene. Sinkholes are like potholes in the street — think of me as a gaping sewer that leads straight down to the meat locker. I’m here for chaos, for fire, the disappearance of neighborhood pets and churches falling into my belly.

Are you aware that there have been no deaths attributed to you?

Give me a break — I ate a factory my first day on the job. You probably made coffee for a fool.

So this is your job?

I’m just another horse from the big red stable downstairs.

Why do you smell so bad?

Smell bad? How about you fuck off and send the National Geographic guy back here? At least he knew what he was talking about.

Buddy, I think my work here is done. And it looks like yours is, too. They’re filling you in next week.

It would take an eon for these guys to fill me in! Have you seen how fast they work?

“These guys”? Are you racist?

I hate all people. I hate you.

Can I ask you one more question? This one’s from the list.

Sure, I-

Who would win in a fight, you or a firecane?

I’m fairly certain I could extinguish a firecane, but why would I want to? I wish I could belch them. In fact…you see that oil truck parked over there? Could you drive that into me? Let’s burn this shit down, bro.

Buddy, you’re dreaming. Good luck in Guatemala…Staples Center really could have used you!

It’s about time Trumbull weighed in on this BP mess in the Gulf of Mexico. However, our oil interests have called our objectivity into question. So, we’re going to pass the mic to our friend IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF COLORADO

Jonathan Lee Riches d/b/a
Bernard L. Madoff a/k/a
Umar Farouk ABdulmutallab,
Plaintiff
v.
Deepwater Horizon Rig a/k/a Transocean Ltd d/b/a BP PLC; HalliBurton Co.; Royal Dutch Shell PLC; Total SA; American Petroleum Institute; Tony Hayward; Gulf of Mexico; Gulf Islands National Seashore; Lake Pontchartrain; Chandeleur Sound; Mobile Bay; Breton National Wildlife refuge; Plaquemines Parish; Mississippi Delta; Gulfport Mississippi Police Department; Bon Secour National Wildlife refuge;
Defendants

[Preliminary Injunction, Temporary Restraining Order, TRO 28 USC 1331]

Comes now, Jonathan Lee Riches, d/b/a Bernard L. Madoff a/k/a Umar Farouk AbdulmutallaB. I face imminent danger and Bodily harm from the defendants collectively. My health is in serious Jeopardy because the oil is seeping through the ground and will hurt me causing me more medical problems than I can handle. The Deepwater Horizon Rig is a Environmental hazzard that’s involved with a major conspiracy with the Democrats to create a disaster so that Congress can justify a Ban on offshore drilling. Florida Sen. Ben Nelson [actually, Nebraska (D) — ed.] used his campaign money to secretly funnel funds into the accounts of the workers who died on the rig, in return they would die for the cause as martyrs, by blowing up the Deepwater Horizon Rig on purpose, so Nelson and other democrats can put on their Legacy to get Congress to stop drilling offshore.

This effects me personally. I will explain why. I’m in prison for computer hacking, phishing, spamming, identity theft. I’m illegally incarcerated as I was sentenced to over a decade in prison for being the mastermind of a international identity theft ring, cabal of cybercrooks where I sent the Melissa virus into 128 million PCs, and created botnets, spyware, and a Trojan horse to go steal Americans personal information, which I used to finance corporations and create a Ponzi scheme with my step-father Bernard Madoff, we financed GoDaddy.com with stolen money, I bought an ice cream truck in Phoenix, I renovated the Studio 54 nightclub and bought 43 acres of land and 3 cabins at Valley Forge Park, and now that I’m in prison at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Ky., getting medical treatment for my thigh cancer, I’m HIV positive, I have Hep-C, I have 1 leg, my right eye was poked out in a prison gang yard fight with Unabomber Kazinski (sic) and shoe bomber Reid at the ADX in Florence, Colo., where I spent 3 years in solitary confinement for filing 5,000 lawsuits and I’m not mentally stable now. The only thing I eat is on the prison commissary bluefin tuna, which comes from the Gulf of Mexico. The tuna I eat was caught 150 yards from where the Deepwater Horizon Rig exploded, and on 4-30-10 I opened up my tuna packet and ate a bunch of crude oil mixed in tuna oil which caused me to vomit, this is the defendants’ fault. All my 625 tuna packs that I bought are tainted with oil and in one of my tuna packs on 5-1-10, I found a burnt 1/2 identification badge from a unknown worker on the defendants’ rig that exploded. I want full congressional investigations because BP PLC, HalliBurton Co. stock went down after the disaster, but their executives and senators knew ahead of time to blow the rig up, so they sold their shares and did options knowing their stock would go down, this is manipulation, and a Wall St. scandal.

Also now, expect high prices at the gas pumps, this was done on purpose, so Americans will have to pay more for Memorial Day, this affects me because my mother collects SSI and is on welfare and defendants caused high gas prices, so she can’t afford to drive here to see me from Pennsylvania, my poor mother is 88 years old and she is now walking on the side of the interstate with a cane to come visit me. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is involved with chain gang labor, the defendants are in contract with the prisoners of FMC Lexington, to bring down 125 inmates, including me in a Bluebird Bus, to clean up oil on the Gulf Coast with our bare hands in balls and chains and my wildlife is being affected. My family can’t eat out at Red Lobster on Sat. night anymore out of fear the defendants poisoned their seafood, and the Mississippi River is in danger of overcrowding because illegal wildlife and Aqua life will have nowhere else to go but to swim upriver for safe haven which will cause fish gang turf wars and swordfish identity thieves with Travolta, and I won’t be able to swim in the Gulf of Mexico when I get out of prison because I will meet hostile poranna’s (sic), killer whales, Jaws who will be irritated and these animals know humans made their lives miserable and that’s why killer whales kill instructors at Sea World because oil got in their eyes. I was forced to build the Deepwater Horizon Rig for prison community service with Legos and Toyota parts. Also the defendants were in a conspiracy with North Korean ships, a covert operation. The Illuminati is responsible [for] cursing the New Orleans area again because of the areas Voo-doo practices. I admit on the record that Louis Farrakan paid me $3.5 million dollars to put dynamite on the 9th Ward Levees right after Katrina hit, I have the evidence on my DNA file and I pushed the act on YouTube.

Defendants are in a secret plot with republicans who are in a conspiracy with the democrats, the democrats want a end to offshore drilling, once this ban takes effect, then the republicans wil justify a invasion of Iran to steal their oil, using Iran as a enemy of Israel as a excuse, because gas prices are about to hit $4.00 a gallon and with this government caused recession, Americans will want justice and take it out on the poor Iranians. Also, the government controls the weather and this summer a Cat 5 hurricane is going to hammer the coast, justifying higher prices. I seek restraining orders, a government investigator, and the defendants turned over to the Hague for war crimes. I pray for relief.

Respectfully,
5-1-10
Jonathan Lee Riches