Saturday, May 29, 2010

William S Burroughs on Saturday Night Live


The Goodkind recently posted about William S Burroughs (and Shelby did here). Burroughs was a strange cat. I lived two blocks from him when I was in college, in a basement apartment on Baxter or Buchanan or something like that (it started with a "B" and I'm too drunk to remember) and walked by his house everyday on the way to the bus stop. After his death the university offered a class which culminated in a party at his former house (as in, the "final" grade was dependent upon whether or not a student actually showed up at the party). Above is his appearance on Saturday Night Live. Enjoy!

4 comments:

  1. He was kind of awesome, wasn't he?

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  2. I honestly believe that the poor quality of this clip adds to it's effectiveness and charm. It makes it feel like a transmission from beyond the grave. Or, perhaps, from somewhere beyond what we know of the cosmos. Beware the mark inside.

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  3. "Christmas eve, an olde junkie selling Christmas seals on North Park street. The priest, they called him."

    I quite enjoy the album of kurtis donald kobain playing avant garde background guitar whilst W.S.B. Spins his yarn about the depravity of slum living.

    Great clip.

    So if you went to his house did you see his orgone accumulator box? I heard it was in his backyard? Burroughs was very fond of Wilhelm Reich's work on the speculative and totally unscientific realm of orgone energy flowing in the aethyr...just curious.

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