HILDE: Hmm. Why did you call Quinn a midget if he wasn't one?
MARSHALL: He was a kid so he was short. Not short for a kid but shorter than us.
At first we called him The Kid, but Quinn hated that. For revenge he started calling
Wilson Bobby, which Wilson didn't mind, and me Richie, which I hated, so we called
him The Midget. He was a genius, one of those child prodigies. He could play
chess like Bobby Fischer, poker like Maverick. (Bobby Fischer won the World
Chess Championship in 1972, and "Maverick" was a 1960s American television
show about a family of expert poker players in the Old West --P.H.)
He called himself "The Game Master." Also had a knack for being where things
were happening--ran away to San Francisco in 1967 and got in on the birth of the
Flower Children and the Summer of Love, then ran away again in '69 and went to
Woodstock. Can see why he kept running away. Had it bad at home in L. A.--his
family was poor, he was colored--black--not too bad then, the movement had
started, so he could go to white schools--California was already intergrated--but he
had Klinefelter's syndrome, so he felt like a freak.
HILDE: Please tell me about that syndrome.
MARSHALL: Males have XY chromosomes, females have XX. He had XXY. Same
thing Tula had.
HILDE: Tula?
MARSHALL: The James Bond girl.
HILDE: Oh yes, the transsexual model who was featured in Playboy. Did you know
Shea and Wilson when they wrote for Playboy?
MARSHALL: Knew Wilson, of course. I knew Shea a little. Never did get to know
him very well, unfortunately.
HILDE: But you knew Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley.
MARSHALL: Very different, those two. I always wondered how they got along. Hill
was philosophical and something of a comic, but in a laid back, "isn't this shit
interesting" type of way. A comic social commentator, like George Carlin or Lenny
Bruce, only with words on paper not on stage. Discordia was a diversion for him,
something fun to talk about and map out, but not to live in. He was always the more
practical of the two. His big crime was stealing rubber stamps. Later started
programming computers, worked for a bank.
HILDE: I believe that was Bank of America.
MARSHALL: Hill was change from within. Don't tear down the building if you don't
like it, sneak inside and rebuild it. He was practical.
HILDE: And Thornley? Some have called him a divine mad man.
MARSHALL: Thornley was a genius, not literally a genius like Quinn, but clever.
Hill was too. But Hill was more, "Look before you leap," Thornley was more, "He
who hestitates is lost." He wouldn't tear down the building either, he'd piss on the
wall and then plant marijuana seeds where'd he'd pissed. I actually saw him do
that, except he planted first. Thornley was like Jim Morrison, a horny poet who'd try
anything. I'm surprised, and glad, he lived as long as he did. I always worried he'd
end up like Morrison and Bruce, dead on the toilet.
Remember one time we heard Morrison took whatever drug anyone handed him.
So Thornley decided he'd do it. He asked me for something, and I gave him an
aspirin. (Laughs).
HILDE: Did you contribute something to the Principia?
MARSHALL: The what?
HILDE: Principia Discordia.
MARSHALL: Yeah. No, I don't think so. Maybe I'm quoted in it somewhere, don't
remember.
HILDE: What was your Discordian name, your holy name?
MARSHALL: Don't think I ever had one; don't remember.
HILDE: Or is it, Marshall, that you don't want to tell me?
MARSHALL: That's the problem with Operation Mindfuck: if you do it right, you
fuck up your own mind. Oh, excuse my French.
HILDE: You can say "fuck," "shit," any word in front of me. In English or French.
Please tell me about Operation Mindfuck.
MARSHALL: It's fucking--sorry, but that's what it is--it's fucking with people's
minds, guerilla ontology. Shake up people's views of reality, challenge their
thinking. That's what started the '60s; it was all a philosophical and cultural
mindfuck until everybody started worrying about getting their brains blowed out in
Viet Nam. Part of it's from Chairman Mao, who mindfucked the hide-bound Chinese
into accepting something completely different disguised as tradition. Something
Mao said: "Cloak the revolution in the clothing of the past."
MARSHALL: He was a kid so he was short. Not short for a kid but shorter than us.
At first we called him The Kid, but Quinn hated that. For revenge he started calling
Wilson Bobby, which Wilson didn't mind, and me Richie, which I hated, so we called
him The Midget. He was a genius, one of those child prodigies. He could play
chess like Bobby Fischer, poker like Maverick. (Bobby Fischer won the World
Chess Championship in 1972, and "Maverick" was a 1960s American television
show about a family of expert poker players in the Old West --P.H.)
He called himself "The Game Master." Also had a knack for being where things
were happening--ran away to San Francisco in 1967 and got in on the birth of the
Flower Children and the Summer of Love, then ran away again in '69 and went to
Woodstock. Can see why he kept running away. Had it bad at home in L. A.--his
family was poor, he was colored--black--not too bad then, the movement had
started, so he could go to white schools--California was already intergrated--but he
had Klinefelter's syndrome, so he felt like a freak.
HILDE: Please tell me about that syndrome.
MARSHALL: Males have XY chromosomes, females have XX. He had XXY. Same
thing Tula had.
HILDE: Tula?
MARSHALL: The James Bond girl.
HILDE: Oh yes, the transsexual model who was featured in Playboy. Did you know
Shea and Wilson when they wrote for Playboy?
MARSHALL: Knew Wilson, of course. I knew Shea a little. Never did get to know
him very well, unfortunately.
HILDE: But you knew Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley.
MARSHALL: Very different, those two. I always wondered how they got along. Hill
was philosophical and something of a comic, but in a laid back, "isn't this shit
interesting" type of way. A comic social commentator, like George Carlin or Lenny
Bruce, only with words on paper not on stage. Discordia was a diversion for him,
something fun to talk about and map out, but not to live in. He was always the more
practical of the two. His big crime was stealing rubber stamps. Later started
programming computers, worked for a bank.
HILDE: I believe that was Bank of America.
MARSHALL: Hill was change from within. Don't tear down the building if you don't
like it, sneak inside and rebuild it. He was practical.
HILDE: And Thornley? Some have called him a divine mad man.
MARSHALL: Thornley was a genius, not literally a genius like Quinn, but clever.
Hill was too. But Hill was more, "Look before you leap," Thornley was more, "He
who hestitates is lost." He wouldn't tear down the building either, he'd piss on the
wall and then plant marijuana seeds where'd he'd pissed. I actually saw him do
that, except he planted first. Thornley was like Jim Morrison, a horny poet who'd try
anything. I'm surprised, and glad, he lived as long as he did. I always worried he'd
end up like Morrison and Bruce, dead on the toilet.
Remember one time we heard Morrison took whatever drug anyone handed him.
So Thornley decided he'd do it. He asked me for something, and I gave him an
aspirin. (Laughs).
HILDE: Did you contribute something to the Principia?
MARSHALL: The what?
HILDE: Principia Discordia.
MARSHALL: Yeah. No, I don't think so. Maybe I'm quoted in it somewhere, don't
remember.
HILDE: What was your Discordian name, your holy name?
MARSHALL: Don't think I ever had one; don't remember.
HILDE: Or is it, Marshall, that you don't want to tell me?
MARSHALL: That's the problem with Operation Mindfuck: if you do it right, you
fuck up your own mind. Oh, excuse my French.
HILDE: You can say "fuck," "shit," any word in front of me. In English or French.
Please tell me about Operation Mindfuck.
MARSHALL: It's fucking--sorry, but that's what it is--it's fucking with people's
minds, guerilla ontology. Shake up people's views of reality, challenge their
thinking. That's what started the '60s; it was all a philosophical and cultural
mindfuck until everybody started worrying about getting their brains blowed out in
Viet Nam. Part of it's from Chairman Mao, who mindfucked the hide-bound Chinese
into accepting something completely different disguised as tradition. Something
Mao said: "Cloak the revolution in the clothing of the past."
This is kerry thornley dot com, a site about kerry wendell thornley aka lord omar khayyam ravenhurst, co-conspirator with gregory hill aka greg hill aka
malaclypse the younger, contributor to principia discordia, worker on operation mindfuck, investigated by im garrison, friend of robert anton wilson and
robert shea, supposed co-assassin of president john f. kennedy, and fnord
malaclypse the younger, contributor to principia discordia, worker on operation mindfuck, investigated by im garrison, friend of robert anton wilson and
robert shea, supposed co-assassin of president john f. kennedy, and fnord
| PART B |
| An Interview with Richard Marshall June 10, 2009 by Pope Hilde |
| This is part B of the first of a series of three interviews with original Erisian Richard Marshall conducted by Pope Hilde. We have them all. |
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| This interview also appears in Intermittens Magazine Issue 7 with our permission. |