March 26, 2024 (Freda)

Today I am thinking of Freda. I see myself walking to her house on what feels like a Summer afternoon. The year is 1992 or '93. Freda lives near the Mall. Mom has given me her address. Freda's street is a little hard to find because it's hidden in a block of cul-de-sacs, but I finally make the correct turn and now I'm in front of her house. What to do but ring the bell? I'm feeling a little nervous.

I got the call...when? Was it the day before? The same day? I'm not sure. But it was you. You called. It was one of your Special Calls, where you said, "wait for the bells before you hang up." There were these bell tones or beeps or bleeps at the end of those calls. I wasn't supposed to hang up until I heard them.

I don't know if you mentioned Freda or if it was Mom who told me to go to her house. You might've just said "I'll see you tomorrow." Your Special Calls always contained instructions. But I think it was Mom who gave me Freda's address.

When I was little, my family lived on Hatton Street in Reseda. Freda and her family lived directly behind us on Lull (and next door to Pearl). I was briefly friends with Freda's son Richie. She sometimes picked us up from Kindergarten at Lorne Street School, located a mile away. Back then, Freda was a boisterous lady, in a fun "New York" sort of way (she was from NY), and whenever she picked us up from school (in her big 1960s sedan) she'd say, "Push down!"

I don't know how many of us kids she gave rides to, but it was enough to pack her car. And I was a dunce because I didn't know what "Push down!" meant. The first time I heard Freda say that (or exclaim it), I was getting into the back seat of what might have been a gigantic Oldsmobile. A boat, you remember the type. I was getting in, following the kid before me, and we were running out of room in the back seat. That didn't register with me, and I might've been malingering, so when Freda exclaimed, "Push down!" I didn't realize I was holding up the parade, and instead of doing what she wanted, I pressed down, with both hands, on the cushion of the rear bench seat. In fact, I pressed it down with emphasis, hoping Freda would see me in the rear view mirror, because I didn't want her to get mad at me. I have always been sensitive to people's energy, and even at five years old, I could tell that Freda was "fun but tense". She was then married to Harry, a PTSD Korean War vet, which could not have been easy. When Freda told me to "Push down!", she was trying to expedite the ride home.

"Push down!" was New York for "move over." When one of the other kids pointed that out to me, I moved over, the last kid got in, and Freda drove us all to our houses. Then, at the end of 1967, my family moved to Northridge and I didn't think of Reseda for a long time.

But then, in the mid-70s, Freda also moved to Northridge. By that time, she'd divorced Harry and opened a New Age book shop in the strip mall at Reseda Boulevard and Prairie. Usually, I'm not a fan of New Age, but Freda was the real deal. She was into astrology and especially numerology. She was a highly intelligent lady. My Mom also studied astrology (even took classes at CSUN) and one day she re-connected with Freda.

Or maybe they never lost touch. I say that because it turns out that my Mom was what you might call A Very Interesting Person, and so was Freda.

Freda played a role in 1989.

Hypnotism and hypnotic states have played a role in my life. I'm thinking of the Special Phone Calls again.

And when I walked to Freda's house, that Summer day, I think I was under a spell. It's funny about hypnosis - you don't always know that you're under. I mean, sometimes you do, like when some bad guy has slipped you a Roofie, or when you're riding in a silent helicopter. Sometimes, like when you've been given sodium pentothal, you have no doubt you're under hypnosis. In that case, you're So Far Under you feel like you're inside yourself. You feel like just Eyes and a Voice, like you're a Miniature You Inside Your Brain...

But there are different levels of hypnotic trance, and at a low-level, you might feel like it's an ordinary day and you're walking to Freda's house in the Summer sun.

You are a specialist at administering low-level trance, at least with me. But I have to say, it's never an ordinary day with you. Because at these meetings, like the one we're about to have at Freda's, wonderful things always happen. 

I think Mom may have arranged the meeting at Freda's house. Remember, Freda played a role in '89. That means she knew what was going on. And Freda was a true-blue friend who believed in love. I don't know if you knew Freda before that day. I just remember ringing her doorbell, and then being in her living room, and suddenly you were there, too. In a low-level trance, it can feel like an ordinary day, but you're still very much "in the moment." The people around you know more of what is going on than you do. That's why seeing you at Freda's was such a surprise. I don't think I knew you were going to be there. Or maybe Mom had given me a hint...

Freda raised a toast. I think it was "to love", and she said something like, "can you believe you're both here?" I don't know if Mom was there, too (or anyone else), but it feels like there's more than me, you, and Freda. You guys used her house because it was a safe place for us to meet. I think I apologized for "being sweaty" because I'd walked there and it was a hot day. But Freda had her AC on, it was cool in the living room and she said, "Yes, it is hot, but it's a beautiful day and it's going to be a lovely evening."

I can see us getting in your car and backing out of Freda's driveway. If we went where I think we went, it blows my mind in the best possible way.

I see online that Freda passed away in 2018. The last time I saw her was after the earthquake, but I didn't know anything then.

Now I do. Thank you, Freda. You believed in love and you were absolutely amazing.

March 20, 2024

For starters, did you see the SpaceX launch from Vandenberg on Monday night? I was driving home from Ralphs, when all of a sudden in the Western sky...wow.

In music news, I'm liking the new Judas Priest album, "Invincible Shield." I bought the deluxe edition with the extra songs and it's really good, sounding (almost) like 1980s Priest. The song craft is back, and Richie Faulkner has established himself on this record as a worthy successor to Tipton and Downing. I generally don't like shredders (they're to guitar as CGI is to movies) but Richie has melody. He solos in the shred style but has enough feel (something modern players are devoid of) to get you emotionally involved. And Rob, who will be 73 in September, has most of his high voice back. Amazing. I wish Scott Travis would do less of his double-kick thing but there was only one Dave Holland and he has passed on. All hail the Priest. These songs and especially Rob's lyrics will be my anthems for this year.

I am also listening to Cold Lake by Celtic Frost, an album Tom G hates but I love it. 

Now then: I'm currently working on August 1989, and a movie has jumped out that I hadn't previously given thought to: "The Package" starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones. Lillian and I saw it on Sunday August 27. Since 2006, when I initially made my movie list, I've only ever thought of "The Package" as the last film we saw before the Timeline began, and until last Fall (October 2023), I thought it began on September 1, 1989. That date was so carved in stone, for so many years, that I never considered otherwise.

Now, however, I know The Timeline began in July and the things that happened in July 1989 were extreme enough, but August is off the charts. The assault I wrote about in the last blog occurred on or about August 22. Then Lilly and I saw "The Package" on August 27, just five days later. And I didn't have a mark on me. No black eyes, nothing.

No fractured eye socket.

I'm in the process of researching what happened in those five days between the two occurrences (the assault and the movie), and the preliminary evidence is so...unusual...that I'm not gonna say anything about it. It's gonna have to wait for my book, but I'll bet Ann knows what I'm referring to. I remember seeing "The Package", though, and there were a couple of weird things about that movie date that have raised my antenna. The first is that, even though it was a very bad time in our relationship, Lillian called and matter-of-factly asked if I'd like to see a movie, almost by rote, like it was a reflex. Keep in mind that this is only ten days after the cataclysmic debacle of the "Casualties of War" screening at UCLA, which we attended and about which much more is known than in previous reports on that subject. The "Casualties" screening (and everything else that happened on August 17, 1989) is now in my conscious memory. That entire day was as extreme, in it's way, as anything that happened that summer.

Other extreme things happened between August 18 and August 21 (also to be saved for the book, but if you were there, you know what I'm talking about). Then came the assault at Terry's apartment. That assault, in which I was severely beaten (see last blog) is an absolute fact, established beyond a doubt. The date seems to be August 22.

And yet Lilly called on the 27th (on a Sunday, which was rare) to say, "Should we go to a movie?" In my research, I strive for verbatim dialogue (as close as I can get), and this is what I remember about that phone call. First, it was unexpected. Secondly, her question was casual. It was like "we might as well go to a movie." Things were very bad between us. On that score, it's mind boggling that I had no awareness of what had happened at "Casualties of War" only ten days earlier, and also what happened after that movie. I am learning that my mind was being messed with on an almost daily basis in August 1989, mostly through hypnosis, but by other means, too. As I've noted many times in recent blogs, I've had an avalanche of new information since October of last year and I am still processing it, and one of the most intriguing questions I've had, is "how did things not register?" or "how did these incidents not accumulate in my memory?" What I mean is, let's say you've had a gargantuan argument with your girlfriend. Or let's say you went to an acquaintance's apartment and something terrible happened to you there. In the first instance, the next time you saw your girl, you would almost certainly discuss the argument. You might apologize, or she might, or you both might. But you'd say something about it, just to avoid it becoming the proverbial 800-pound elephant in the room. And in the second instance, involving the apartment, if you went there and something bad happened, it's doubtful you'd return. Yet, in the case of Terry's apartment at Concord Square, I went there several times in July 1989, because I had no memory of the incidents that were accumulating. I was, however, aware at all times of the state of my relationship, meaning that Lilly had by that time graduated college, was beginning her career, and had "outgrown" me (so to speak). So when she called to suggest a movie, it was not only a surprise, but strange because I thought by that point we were done. I thought two conflicting things: "Why is she calling to ask me to a movie?" and "Wow, Lilly is calling to ask me to a movie! Maybe we aren't done yet."

The question I find myself now asking, is this: was I entirely unaware of the incidents as they accumulated, and the extreme situation in which I was living?

In August, prior to the 22nd, I think the answer is that "I was aware, on and off." In other words, every time something extreme happened, I had my memory messed with afterward, by hypnosis, and/or electronic or electrical means (car batteries, anyone?), sometimes in combination with surreptitiously administered drugs like Rohypnol. On a side note, it is important to remember that I was sober that Summer. I had quit drinking, barely smoked pot, and did no hard drugs. But there were occasions when drugs were slipped to me to knock me out.

But getting back to "The Package", that movie date was also weird because, while barely a word was said between Lillian and myself (and in that sense I felt the estrangement), there were no bad vibes that I remember. We had worse dates in 1989. This one seemed prearranged or "scheduled", almost like someone "suggested" that Lilly should take me to a movie, by which I mean that a situation was being managed without my knowledge. And as I work on enhancing that memory, I'm trying to establish a "before" and an "after," meaning the connecting memories that provide continuity. 

One connecting memory that is now standing out for me, on the weekend of August 26-27, 1989, is another movie, "Millennium", which was released Friday August 25. "Millennium", for me, is another of the "black" movie titles I've written about in other blogs. The adjective "black" represents some incident associated with a film (even if I didn't see it) that is significant - and bad - but is buried in my memory. With "Millennium", I picture myself looking at a full page ad for the film in the LA Times, which showed an airliner caught in the beam of a UFO. In my first impressions of the memory, the ad for "Millennium" is bothering me. I have a very bad feeling about "Millennium". That's why it's a Black Movie Title.

In 2015, while at Pearl's, I was studying Edwards Air Force Base and I learned of a sector called North Base, about which I'll say no more. But the thing about "The Package", is that it exists as an "island of calm" for me and Lilly as a couple, in the midst of three months of total mayhem at 9032 and Concord Square. We had other nice movie dates that Summer, but they were mostly before the middle of July (and on a side note, I should mention to Lillian that I now remember going to Sambo's - and what happened there - after seeing "When Harry Met Sally"). 

As to the mayhem of that Summer, the screening of "Nightmare on Elm Street 5" at the UA Granada Hills on August 11 proves the whole thing. I attended that movie with Pat Fordyce. He insisted I go with him so he could show me what was going on behind my back and a major incident happened when the film was over. The guy who precipitated it (we all know him) threatened to wait in his car and shoot us when we came out of the theater. Luckily for us, he didn't do it. Pat and I went to Wendy's after that and the incident continued, with other people who had been at the movie, including David Friedman. Wendy's was right next to Sambo's in the UA Granada Hills parking lot. 

And what's bizarre is that I wonder if I am "the same guy" (if you get my drift) who went through all that stuff in the Summer of 1989. I think must be, because of my hernia scar. I popped my abdomen in August 1989 while doing sit-ups to tighten my stomach, and I had surgery in 1998. And the thing is, if I am a Different Me, how come I have a hernia scar? The answer (I think) is that I was only a Different Me for about a week, from August 25 to September 2 or thereabouts. It's so weird that I can't yet provide the details. But Ann knows.

On August 22, 1989 I got my face bashed in, and on August 27, I went to see "The Package" with Lillian, and I didn't have a mark on me. 

Thank You, Lord. Thank you, Ann. Thank You, Lilly. 

March 13, 2024 (August 1989)

Before we begin, I have to ask: Have you ever worked for Eddie Nash or worked for anyone who worked for or alongside Eddie Nash?

Think hard before you answer.

Gary Patterson worked for Eddie Nash. The evil David Friedman was Gary's right hand man.

Now you can answer the question. 

Here's another one: Do you remember that old David Letterman joke: "Man Never Talks About Dead Son"? I saw Letterman before he became famous, before he had his talk show, at a taping of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert in 1977 at the Long Beach Arena. I went with Mike Bellamy, expecting to see Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, who were listed on the bill, but as often happened with Sir Richard, he did not show up for whatever reason. We stayed anyway. Being a live TV taping, it was an all day affair, and we also saw a relatively unknown comedian named Steve Martin, who twisted some amazing balloon animals. I think Blue Oyster Cult played that day, but the thing I most remembered from that eight hour show was David Letterman's joke. It went like this: "The other day I was at the newsstand, and I saw this headline. It was in one of those tabloids, the sensational kind, and it said in huge type, 'Man Never Talks About Dead Son.' And I thought, 'what's the deal, do his neighbors come up and ask 'how's that dead boy of yours'? And he says, 'I refuse to talk about him!' Is that what this world has come to?"

That joke was what I most remembered from the Don Kirshner's Rock Concert taping, and it got me to ponder The Things People Refuse To Talk About.

The concept baffles me, because I have nothing I refuse to talk about. Give me any subject and I'll talk, except for dumb stuff. But personal stuff? No problem, as long as you're willing to Go All The Way.

And I think that's the trouble with most folks. They refuse to go all the way. Especially certain people I know. They can dish it out but not take it. They can do the crime but not the time. That's why they have things they won't talk about.

And that brings us to the subject of The Troubled Mind. Not one with everyday troubles but major ones concerning Things That Cannot Be Undone.

As a victim of extreme violence, I feel it is necessary to study compulsion if we are to learn about the roots (or nature, i.e. the soil in which the roots take hold) of psychoses. In our case, we are studying the compulsion toward extreme violence, volcanic rage that, being compulsed and therefore (in the perpetrator's mind) uncontrollable, becomes personally unrestrained violence. I bring this up because in August 1989 I was assaulted by a guy who stated - to a third party present - that, because he'd become enraged at me, he could not control himself and because of this lack of control, his violence was about to be unleashed. The way he stated it, his violence was in charge of him, not the other way around. His compulsion was calling the shots. Thinking about him now, he reminds me of the cop who beat Kelly Thomas to death, rather methodically, after gearing himself up by announcing he was going to administer the beating. This murder was caught on tape in a famous and terrible case in Fullerton in 2011 (in which the cop, like our bad guy, walked away scot-free). The cop was under the influence of the same rage as the person I am talking about, a "nursed" rage, one that the enraged person felt both entitled to and not in command of.

For the perpetrator, his psychosis can be summed up in a sentence: "I can't do anything about the way I feel, so I am going to beat you and I probably won't be able to stop."

This is psychotic rage, buried deep inside a psyche. We must study it to see where it is born, and how it turns into a compulsion that the person feels the need to repeat, or even to "show off as a proud possession". In the case of the assault on me, there was the aforementioned third party present, a passive observer who stood and watched as I was beaten to within an inch of my life, offering occasional comments to my attacker, like "Hey man, maybe you should stop hitting him."

It happened at the Concord Square Apartments in Reseda. I was handcuffed during the assault, thus defenseless. At one point, the assailant told the tenant to get a bag of cocaine out of his closet so that he could "have a bump." The tenant at first refused because the coke was not his. The assailant said, "I'll cover it," or something like that. The apartment was being used as a stash house.

Not long after he began hitting me in the head with his fist, my assailant picked up a square, sharp cornered glass ashtray (the kind that were common in bars and restaurants) and hit me in the side of my face with it at least once, breaking the orbital bone in my eye socket. And the tenant just stood there. 

That was bizarre to me. But as I myself stood dazed, against the tenant's bar counter (on the living room side of his kitchen), it was even more bizarre to watch my attacker acknowledge his wrath, literally roll his sleeves up during a "breather", then start in on me again. He actually told the tenant (paraphrase): "You know how I get," meaning when he was angry and coked-up. He said this matter-of-factly, as if it was a "given." The look on his face was demented, and yet methodical. On the surface, he was determined to "dish out an appropriate beating" to his handcuffed and defenseless victim, and yet at the same time his Id was unleashing pure psychotic rage. He was running into me with his full body, elbow out, the way a football player would crash into a tackling dummy. This person was quite a bit bigger than me: 6' 1" and 225 to my 5' 8" and 160. He also took my head and rammed it into the wall or bar counter (I'm not sure which), but the whole thing was "stop and start", which was fucking weird. You would think, in an assault of rage, that an attacker would expend his fury all at once. But this guy took breaks.

That is what we are studying here. Nursed and entitled rage. The guy was demonstrating something to himself, to me, and also to his audience (the passive third party) whom the assailant forced to kick me in the ribs so that the third party would become complicit.

The bad guy was demonstrating his control, through murderous psychotic rage, over a person he'd long felt envious of. He was also demonstrating to his audience (the third party) that he could get away with what he was doing. He, and his audience, must have felt protected by someone powerful, not to have to worry about LAPD, the most professional police department on the planet.

During the assault, I thought I was going to die. I'd lost my equilibrium and could barely stand up. The room felt "tilted". I was seeing double and my head hurt so bad it felt like it was going to explode. And I will never forget what the bad guy said toward the end. He said, to the tenant, "It's taking every bit of self control I have not to hit him over the head with that lamp." He meant the large ceramic one on the tenant's table. 

I have thought about this guy for several months now. He got away with what he did, and very likely beat up other people in his approximately 18 month career as an "enforcer" (i.e "thug") for a sex and drug cult. He was (and is) a coward at heart, and could only carry out his acts after disabling his victims with a stun gun or by applying handcuffs, which took the help of an accomplice. As noted, I was handcuffed when he beat me half to death, and when hit me in the eye with the glass ashtray.

I believe this guy may have killed someone, or participated in a killing, during the time he worked for Eddie Nash, through a lower lever cocaine distributor. And because he had high-powered crooks above him, when he was drunk and coked up, or even when his Id (his psychosis) was feeling free to strut its stuff, he felt entitled to engage in an activity he'd found was to his liking: beating the shit out of someone while they were restrained or drugged or both. While the person could not defend himself.

This guy was more than merely evil. This is why we must study him. 

He's still walking free. It's as if his deeds never happened.

Someone helped engineer that.  

Once again, Ann was there in the aftermath to help me. Someone called her and she responded and took me to (I think) Holy Cross hospital in Mission Hills (on Rinaldi). Ann may have saved my life that night (she is one of my greatest heroes). While we were still at the apartment, I remember hearing the word "coma". Ann was worried that if I passed out, went unconscious or otherwise fell asleep, that I could slip into a coma and not recover. There was the question of concussion, and whether I had a fractured skull. It is also possible that my attacker degraded me in ways that I'll decline (for now) to describe. However, preliminary evidence shows these degradations as probable. He even took a shower when he was "all done." 

He and his passive assistant/observer (the apartment tenant) may have been detained that night (I'm not sure), but if so, they were never arrested and never charged, because once again the police had no jurisdiction and these guys walked scot-free. The tenant is now deader than a doornail. My attacker is still alive. We will continue to study him. He is now dormant, but in my opinion he is not far removed (if at all) from a BTK or a Manuel Ramos. 

March 10, 2024

Envy is the worst sin, the one that leads to murder. St. Augustine called it the "diabolical sin," which "seeks to minimize, end, or destroy what is good."

"By the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are allied with him experience it."  Wisdom 2:24

One day in August 1989, they were gonna have a party at 9032. Two guys went into one of the bedrooms and brought out a mattress. They dragged it into the living room and laid in on the floor. I say "two guys" but we all know who they are. It's not like Two Random Guys would go into a bedroom at 9032 and drag out a mattress. We also know which bedroom.

You remember that day, don't you? The Day Two Guys Went Into A Bedroom At 9032 and Dragged A Mattress Into the Living Room? You say you do? Okay, I'll take your word for it. 

They were planning a party. One guy was the best friend of the other guy. It was a hot day. I think they brought a fan out, too. I was standing right there. I watched them haul out the mattress. Then some other people came over. My Mom was not pleased, in fact, she was disgusted. But it was August 1989. Mom and I were under siege. There wasn't a whole lot we could do to stop it.

There are some very bad people in the world who today lie dormant, whose psychoses lie dormant. 

I will soon be 64, and while that isn't elderly, it is a marker for my age group, given our love of The Beatles and Sir Paul McCartney, who used that number to imagine senior citizenship when he wrote the song at age 14. For me, 64 means I Want To Achieve Something Meaningful. Not in the usual sense of that cliched phrase, but on the All Time Scale. I want to achieve Something Meaningful For All Time.

And of course, for me, that means Telling The Truth. The very specific truth. The truth that can change the world. I've actually been telling it for 30 years, but at 64, the need is more urgent. Especially after the year I've had, so far, in 2024.

The American concept of "24/7 News Cycle" life means less than nothing to me. I don't live that way. I live in the place where the Supernatural stands at the thick concrete wall of 24/7 and silently says, "this is bullshit".

I've known this about myself definitively since I was 17, and subliminally since the day I was born.

I'm not saying the material world is a joke, or that America is not a great country. I'm only saying what is obvious to everyone but that no one will say in 2024: that we are at the end of the line.

I don't include myself in anything you might call "We". There is no "We" that I am part of (except for loving my loved ones) (and they know who they are). I remember a quote from Charles Bronson (and I wish I could quote him exactly) where he stated his distance from the Hollywood celebrity scene and said (paraphrase): "My family is what is important to me." In my case, it's the handful of people I call my loved ones (and I repeat, they know who they are). I don't feel part of an "organised society" because I see how controlled and manipulated America is. Thirty years of gadget culture and rap "music"? Enough said. 

When you can bring about the end of music, you are good at ten level chess.

Me? I am better at ten level chess than the main players, but they outnumber me. And I am almost 64 and tired. They seem to really want what they want. But what that is, I don't know. How long can you do "bling bling"? 

I'm a spirit in a human body. So are you. The difference is that I feel like a spirit. Always have. That's why I can't (literally cannot) do 24/7 News Cycle Turnover America. Internet America. Electronic America.

And I need to do something, so that at the end of my physical life I won't have regrets. And what I do is write. I write about the truth. The real truth, not the one of sanctioned investigative journalists. Their's is only a surface level truth, and - just as I "don't do 24/7" - I also Don't Do Surface Level, because the devil lies under the surface and so do his allies.

You might know some of them. You say you do? Okay, I'll take your word for it.

Now then: we've all heard the saying "He's getting away with murder", or in the past tense, that someone has "gotten (or has got) away with murder", and I presume we almost always (or always) take it as a euphemism. We might use that phrase in reference to a man like Donald Trump, who seems immune to prosecution. "Just look at that guy! He's getting away with murder!" Indeed, Trump himself made such a comment when he stated that he could shoot someone on Park Avenue and people would still vote for him. Of course, he was joking, right? He was saying he could "get away with murder." And he meant it euphemistically because that's how we interpret that saying.

But what if you knew somebody who had actually gotten away with murder? What would you then say, or do? It would doggone scary knowing a person like that, because what if he or she was aware that you knew? But that's a side issue. Our question is "what would you say, or do?" Would you tell someone else? Would you say, "Hey listen, I have to tell you - Joe has committed a murder and he got away with it."

That could be a dicey proposition, because what if the person you were telling already knew about Joe and what he'd done, and was keeping it secret on Joe's behalf? 

Then you might be in a truckload of trouble.

Worse still, what if you tried to tell the authorities about The Person Who Got Away With Murder, and found out they didn't give a hoot? Or that they couldn't do anything about it. What if you tried to tell the police about Someone Who Got Away With Murder and they straight up told you "there is nothing we can do about it." 

You might wonder why. You might wonder if they were "out-jurisdictioned".

Where I live, it's pretty hard to "out-badass" the LAPD. But our hypothetical Person Who Got Away With Murder seems to have done it. It's not because he's a badass. Its because he has (or had) protection. What kind of protection? Ahh, that's the tricky question, and it's a combination of things that we'll save for later. Let's just say, for now, that this person has Inside Information that gives him supreme confidence that he will never be prosecuted (or even charged) for the murder he has committed.

Under what circumstance could this happen?

During a Federally Classified Emergency, perhaps? A state of martial law.

Or maybe something occult. So occult it would boggle the mind of every American and cancel American culture.

But now we have to take things a step further. What if the person Who Got Away With Murder was your friend or relative? What would you say or do then, considering your personal attachment to that person (and granting that you felt an emotional attachment). Would you call the authorities to "tell" on your best friend? On your parent? On your sibling or uncle?

What must Ted Kasczinski's brother have felt upon reading the manifesto and realizing Ted was the Unibomber? David Kasczinski recognized his brother's writing style and knew he had two choices: to turn Ted in or not.

How would you like to have been in his shoes?

I'm asking you these things because.....well....you might know Someone Who Has Gotten Away With Murder (and rape). It isn't me. But if you know me, you might know who I mean.

March 5, 2024

The car rides are becoming clearer. I can see many details now, some of which are vivid enough to seem like they happened yesterday. I see myself sitting in the back seat of her car, with Lys, who is telling me important things I need to know. This time I've met them at the Northridge Mall, to avoid other people, to prevent confrontations like the one at Rayen and Rathburn.

I'm at the entrance to The Broadway department store (now Macy's), at the door located in the mall's parking garage. It's the entry we used when I got my hair styled at The Broadway in the 1980s. She thought it was a good place to meet because it's dark there, and no one will see us. But she and Lys aren't taking any chances. I'm on time, and I'm waiting by that door, and when they come out, they're wearing hats and big sunglasses. She says, "Do you like our disguises?" I say "yes" and one of them says, "This worked pretty well," meaning it was a good place to meet. Better than Rayen and Rathburn.

One of them says: "Do you think it's okay to take off our hats?" and the other says, "I think so."

We get into her car which is parked nearby. I sit in back with Lys. This seems to be our usual seating arrangement: one of them drives, the other sits in back with me.  This time, she is driving, Lys is in back. Lilly says, "This is the last time Lys will be coming with us." I ask why and they explain it.

I swear these car rides happened. Straight up swear.

The trouble is, I still have no context for them, no "connectors" that will provide a "before" and an "after". I don't know how the meetings were arranged. I imagine it had to be through phone calls but, as of now, I don't remember any. And yet I know the rides are real because I can hear everything Lys is saying to me. I can see myself sitting next to her in the back seat. I can hear verbatim dialogue. At least once, we went to see Ann. I'm not sure where. Maybe St. Joseph's Hospital, but more likely an annex. Someplace nondescript. It feels like NoHo/Burbank/Studio City. One time, I think Lys drove her own car. I remember she was told she had to wait outside, that she wasn't allowed in the room where Ann was.....(doing what?) (Testing me?) Checking my BP or my eyes or something? I'm not sure. (Were electrodes involved?) (I don't know). But I definitely remember that Lys was not allowed in, and she was cool about it. She said something like, "That's okay, I have to move my car anyway." Maybe she was parked in a one-hour zone. She used to have a white VW Rabbit. And even Lilly wasn't allowed in, though they let her walk me to the room where Ann was waiting.

One of these trips is the last one with Lys. I don't remember the reason. Maybe it's because Lys was all done with her part in (the program?) (I don't know). Lys was a major player in the events of 1989. So was Ann. They were much bigger players than I realised until this year. Until 2024.

When my memory first came back in 1997, I wrote a truckload of letters, requesting information. I wrote to the Governor, I wrote to Northridge Hospital, I wrote to the President, I wrote to the LAPD, I wrote to Edwards Air Force Base, I wrote to my Congressperson, I wrote to a whole bunch of people. Something like 20 letters. 

One of the people I wrote to was Ann. But I never mailed the letter. Maybe I should've mailed it. Or maybe it would've done no good.

But I swear those car rides happened. And at least one of them was to go see Ann.

One fact that does have context (and has long since been proven) is that Ann was at Concord Square. She and Lys were the "first responders", and Ann was at the ambulance that was parked in the driveway of that building when I was being examined by a paramedic. And it was Ann who drove me home the next day. We've known those things for 27 years. But I didn't learn more about Ann and Lys until this year, 2024.

If you'd asked me about Lys in 1992, I'd have said "the last time I saw her was....hmm, maybe 1986?" I thought that after high school, she and Lilly sort of drifted apart. Of course, If you asked me about Lys in 2006, I'd have said, "The last time I saw her was in 1989. She was at Concord Square and at Northridge Hospital." But if you ask me now, I can say with authority, "I saw her all the way up to (perhaps) 1993." I say "perhaps" because I don't yet know the years of those car rides. But I have zero doubt they happened.

Lilly, Lys and Ann were part of a program. Lys had studied psychology and was very philosophical. A highly intelligent woman. Lilly was math and science. I call her a Supergenius. Ann was medical, from the military end of things. This is my intuition. 

And the program may have been to help me get my memory back.

I say "may have been" but my intuition is that it was definitely for that reason.    

I once had a thing about the Navy. This was at Burton Street in early 1997. I was all worked up about it and was intuiting things about places like like Terminal Island and San Diego Naval Air Station and Miramar. By 1997, I felt an attachment to Edwards Air Force Base, and thus "identified" with the Air Force, and because I thought the other residents of and visitors to the Burton Street house were "spying on me", I deemed them Navy. "You're Navy and you're Navy and so are you." I said this to Dave Small, to Ryan, and our friend Nick, who lived down the street.

Man, was I harping on the Navy. But it was never just mumbo-jumbo. Something was ticking in my brain about the Navy, and it bugged me enough to make those accusations. But the response I got was weird. One day, Dave and Nick came up to me and flashed I.D. cards. They were in wallets, the way a policeman's I.D. card would be, and they were laminated. They had head shots of Dave and Nick; they were photo I.Ds. And they had the insignia of the United States Navy, and maybe even a special division imprinted, like ONI (Office of Naval Investigation) or something. They were authentic looking, and the guys said, "You were right all along, Adam. We are in the Navy." And I said, "Wait a minute. You guys are playing me. I just said you were in the Navy. You aren't really in the Navy......are you?" They toyed with me for a few minutes, but then finally copped: "No, man. We're just goofin'. We aren't in the Navy." I said, "Well then where the hell did you get those extremely real lookin' I.D cards?" I'm telling you readers, these I.D.s could've passed - at the very least - on a TV show like "NCIS". Or even in real life.

And the guys said, "Julie made them for us." I asked why. They said, "Because you wouldn't shut up about the Navy. We told her about it and she thought it would be funny to play a joke on you." Julie was Bob's girlfriend. I never knew her to be a talented forger, but maybe she was. Dave and Nick got the I.D. cards from someone. And Julie was as good a source as any. She and Bob where what you might call "interesting people."

But in thinking about my 1997 Navy obsession today, at a time in my life when I know more about things than I ever have before, I ask myself why I was "intuiting the Navy" and I think I have a fairly good answer. Especially for ONI. I consider those I.D. cards Dave and Nick had, and I'm telling you, they were authentic looking. Laminated photo I.D.s, with insignia that looked like what I imagine the real thing would look like. And it seems to me that it was a "long way to go" just to play a joke on me because I "wouldn't shut up about the Navy". Don't you think so? Don't you think it was a lot of work for Julie to make those fake I.D.s, just for a ten minute joke that she wasn't even there to see?

I think she went way out of her way. All that work for a joke, it just doesn't make sense to me ...unless "the joke" had another purpose. And with what I know now, I think it did.

You aren't in the Navy, are you?

February 28, 2024

It's the weirdest thing. I'm having the strangest notion lately, ever since the revelation of the 1992 ELP concert came to light. I think she came to get me, and I think I rode in her car, as late as 1993. I've had a "trigger image" emerge out of the blue, of the sidewalk down near Rayen Street at the end of Rathburn. In it, I am walking south on the west side of the street, and I am passing under a mulberry tree, the leaves of which are mottling the sidewalk with shade. It is Summer, maybe late July or August. And I stop at the corner of Rathburn and Rayen, because she is coming to pick me up. She has chosen this corner because she doesn't want anyone to see us, but alas, here they come, Chris and Terry. In the imagery, which is moving now (triggered by the mulberry leaves), they have either followed me down to the end of Rathburn Avenue, trailing me as I walk, or they've found out I'm headed there, within minutes of my departure from the house, and they've hightailed it to intercept me before she arrives.

They are down there because they have their interests to protect. Their secrets. And they're worried that she's picking me up. They don't want her alone with me, because of what she could say. What she could tell me. There were times, at 9032, when that lowlife Terry lived there, that she'd call, and he'd pick up, and he wouldn't give me the phone. I'd say, "Who is it? Is it for me?" He'd keep talking, and it would only be minutes later, when he finally handed me the phone, that I'd find out it was her. And I'd wonder, "Why was he talking to her for so long?" And the reason was that he had his interests to protect - his secrets - and he probably was trying to make sure she was "on board", hoping that she was, perhaps making insinuations of what he'd do, what he'd say, if she wasn't. But I wouldn't have known any of this then, because in the early 1990s, I had no memory.

Now, I have a lot of my memory back. Its actually kind of funny, because in 2008, when I finished the first edition of "What Happened in Northridge", I estimated that I "knew" 70% of what happened in 1989. Now, since the avalanche began four months ago, I realize I only ever knew 10 - 20 %, at best. It is only now that I can say, with assurance, that I know 70 - 80%, and I'm learning more every day. I used to think the entirety of What Happened in Northridge was a 12-day event that began on September 1 and ended on September 12.

And that was gigantic enough, by itself.

But good grief, Charlie Brown, and Holy Smokes, and what have you: It turns out that it lasted all Summer! 

And some of the worst incidents took place in July and August, and some of the worst violence was committed by a few goons we all know very well.  

But let's not talk about them now. Let's go back to the corner of Rayen and Rathburn in 1993. She has just pulled up. Lys is with her. They want me to get into the car, but Chris and Terry are hassling them. But wait a minute, because Pat Fordyce is there, too. He arrived a few minutes earlier. Maybe he knew what was happening, and followed Chris and Terry just as they had followed me. Pat also had "interests to protect" (his own secrets), but in cases like this (or at the ELP concert), he usually sided with The Good Guys (which is not to say he was a member of the Good Guy Team, but he sometimes tried to do the right thing). On this occasion, he "runs interference" against Terry and Chris, who are there strictly to harass her when she arrives, to make sure she tells me nothing.

Threats are insinuated if she talks. One of them says, "I'm here to make sure nothing is said about me." Lys gets out of the car to help Pat get rid of these guys.

In April of '93, she called me - unsolicited - to offer to take me to lunch. I of course said yes. But it never came to pass, and she never called to cancel. And when I called her, wondering what happened to our lunch date, she had a reason why she didn't come over. And I accepted it as legit. But now I wonder if someone coerced her to cancel. Coincidentally, I gave Chris and his friend Kurt a ride to the airport that day. But that's probably just a coincidence......right?

The "trigger" image of the shady sidewalk near the Rathburn/Rayen corner first came to me about a week ago. Since then, it's gotten stronger and has built into a (probable) memory. I can see Lys getting out of the car, to assist Pat, who is arguing with Chris and Terry, telling them to "go home", or "get lost", but they aren't leaving. I can also see Lys driving the car, when we finally got rid of them.

Though the memory is only "probable" at the moment, and needs more context to confirm it, I believe that it happened. I can feel it. And I believe she came to pick me up more than once, in 1992 and (mostly) '93. I think one time we even went to a movie. It may have been the re-release of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" or it may have been "Tom and Jerry: The Movie". She loves T and J. I see us having lunch afterward (maybe at a Chinese restaurant). This "movie and lunch date" is still only a notion. It doesn't yet have a context, but it's been persistent enough that I'm willing to bet that it happened. It's from a different "car ride" than the one with Lys.

And I find these "clandestine car rides" (as I've named them) not only fascinating (in the way they seem dreamlike, i.e. buried in my subconscious yet very real), but also inspiring because they mean that she never gave up. At least through 1993, and maybe longer. That makes her Marine Corps in my book, and also My Hero.

I know we went on these rides in her car. They had a purpose, she took me places and told me many things. The Rayen/Rathburn "pickup spot" is emerging from my subconscious and into my conscious memory. The imagery is becoming fluid. I have other "car ride" notions (think of notions as emergent memories) that are thus far only snapshots, but include things like the (possible) aforementioned movie-and-lunch date, and trips to see Ann at a building, possibly in NoHo or Burbank. And Lys was along at least once. She is a Hero, as well. We love Lys.

So I just want to say "thanks for being there." It's amazing that you came to get me. Thanks for stepping up to the plate, and being hardcore and Marine Corps. It's been 30 years, but I've never given up. I hope you haven't, either, and I love you.

February 22, 2024 (ELP)

In working on my book, I've been writing about the year 1992, and on August 28th of that year I attended an Emerson Lake and Palmer concert at the Universal Amphitheater. In the decades since then, I had casually remembered it as a good show, one that I attended alone (or at least went to alone). I also went to another ELP show the next day, at UC Irvine of all places, with a group of friends (or "friends" as I think of them now). Pat drove us down there in a pickup truck that I think belonged to his brother. I rode in the back, in the pickup bed, with two other people, and that was a good concert, too. But in writing about the first show at Universal, something was bugging me, and when something bugs me I have learned it is for a reason. It is my intuition trying to tell me something, so I stop to figure it out.

What was bugging me about the ELP concert at the Universal Amphitheater on August 28, 1992?

I didn't know at first. 1992 was the year Emerson Lake and Palmer reunited after a long hiatus. If you're a fan, you'll remember they had a two-thirds reunion in 1986, when Keith and Greg teamed up with Cozy Powell, and there was another short-lived group in 1988 called "3", featuring Keith and Carl with Robert Berry. 

But Keith, Greg and Carl, the one-and-only Emerson Lake and Palmer, broke up in 1979, a year after "Love Beach" was released, and they didn't get back together for 13 years, until 1992. And they toured that year. They had a new album out called "Black Moon". It wasn't exactly "Brain Salad Surgery" but it had some good stuff, and you knew they'd be great in concert, even if Greg's voice was a little rougher. It was ELP! How could they not be incredible? 

I took the bus down to Universal City by myself; that was the first thing I specifically recalled about attending that show. The #35 bus (or was it the #135?) ran all the way down Reseda Boulevard, turned east on Ventura, and took you to Los Angeles, if you were going that far. I got off at Lankershim, the Universal Studios stop, but I didn't walk uphill to the venue right away. You see, I'd brought a couple of drinks with me (those little 8oz Screwdrivers in a can from Seagram's), and I stopped to surreptitiously sip them from their brown paper bag. I was standing on Lankershim Boulevard across from the steep access road that leads to the Universal parking lot.

And was I thinking about someone. That was the next thing I remembered. And I'm wondering now why I would've been thinking of her at that particular time and location. Why, in memory, was I associating her with the ELP show, and specifically with my activities before the show? That, I couldn't figure out. As far as I knew, she was not an ELP fan (nothing wrong with that; they weren't everyone's cup of tea). But why would I have been thinking about her prior to that concert? Did I think she was going to be there? No, that didn't make any sense, and something like this can present a challenge in psychic work, not knowing if a thought or "mental association" was present at the time of an event (in this case the ELP concert) or if it "arrived in retrospect" (years later, when considering that concert). The exact question I am currently debating is: "Was I thinking about her when I arrived at Universal, or am I associating that thought with another circumstance?" But you have to trust your intuition, and mine tells me that I was thinking about her for some specific reason before that concert. 

When we say, "trust your intuition", one of the most important components of that trust is the mental picture you get when you are considering something that makes you curious. "Where did I leave my keys?" for instance. You "ask yourself" where you might've left them, then you mentally retrace your steps, and you receive a snapshot image of where they might be, and voila! You find them. That is trusting your intuition.

It's a little more complex after 30-plus years, but the principle is the same, and when I thought of that ELP concert, my immediate "mental image" was of standing on Lankershim, drinking my drinks (across the street from the access road leading to the Universal parking lot), and thinking of the person in question. This doesn't mean I was associating her with the concert. It could've been in another context. I'd recently seen her at the Lollapalooza show at Irvine Meadows. Pat invited me to that festival at the very last minute, on the morning of the concert. He called and said he had free tickets and did I want to go? Of course I did. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were playing (so was Lush, but I wasn't aware of them then). 

And after Soundgarden's set, Pat pointed several rows down and said "look who's here." I did, and then Pat went and got her, and brought her up to say hello. I was nervous because I was pretty scroungy that day, having had no chance to shower and shave when Pat called me to go to the concert. So I was nervous to see her, but also very excited and happy. We had a nice time talking in the intermission before Ice Cube played (or was it Ministry?) and then she had to go back to her seat because she was actually working PR at that show.

In hindsight, though, I have to say that I've wondered if she and Pat "pre-arranged" that meeting. Of course it could've been pure coincidence, but in working on my book I've had some amazing revelations about the early 1990s, which is why I think that meeting could've been pre-arranged. Keep in mind that I say "could've been" and not "was".

But back to the ELP concert, it took place only about five weeks after Lollapalooza, so that could be why I was thinking about her (and I thought about her all the time, anyway), but it didn't seem conclusive as an answer, so again, I wondered, "why is this concert bugging me so much?" and I bypassed the intuitive pre-concert imagery to consider the unusual circumstance of how I got to that show. I thought "Hmm, I took the bus there, alone. Why was I going to an ELP concert by myself? Why wasn't everyone going?" And then I remembered, "Well, I did sit alone, but Pat came to visit me during the show". It was the kind of detail I wouldn't have remembered unless I considered the entire event. 

And I thought, "Okay, I rode the bus alone, and I sat alone, but Pat once again had a record company seat, and he drove to the concert separately from me, after he got off work." And I thought, "Okay, but why didn't anyone else want to go?" meaning any of the other "friends". That seemed unusual, given that they were ELP fans. I remembered that Pat, when he visited me during the show, was critical of the band's performance (he could be a bit jaded when it came to concerts) and I just wanted to enjoy ELP, who I'd waited 15 years to see. I thought they were fantastic, so I was glad when Pat went back to his seat (which I think was on the floor. I was in the loge). But before he went back to his seat, he offered to give me a ride home.

I would never have remembered this if I hadn't considered why the ELP concert was bothering me.

Pat offered me a ride home, and probably either came back up to my seat after the show was over, or I met him in the lobby. And while considering this, I visualized us walking to his car in the Universal parking garage.

And then - boom! - all of a sudden, Dennis was right beside us. He has a habit of turning up in these stories, doesn't he? He'd somehow seen us in the parking garage, and caught up, and now he had stopped me because he wanted to talk. I remembered that Pat was in a hurry to get going, and was trying to blow Dennis off. But Dennis kept talking, and he said to Pat, "It's okay, leave if you want to. I'll give Adam a ride home", and I said "no thanks" because Dennis was riding his motorcycle. No way was I going to ride home on the back. So Pat said, "well, if you're riding with with me then let's go". And I tried to leave but Dennis kept talking, saying very specific things, which upset me, and then Pat got upset and came over and started arguing with Dennis, accusing him of "stirring up shit", and at this point I said, "okay guys, I think I'm just gonna stick to my original plan and take the bus home". I'd checked the bus schedule before I left my house. Now I looked at my watch and saw I still had time to catch the last one. "If I start walking now, I'll make it. I have about 25 minutes." Pat was pissed off. "No, no. Don't walk to the bus stop. I'll give you a ride. I just wanna know why Dennis is being such an a-hole." Pat and Dennis were now in a dispute that had seemed to come from nowhere. All I wanted was to make sure I got home, but now Pat was grabbing Dennis by the arm. Was there going to be a fight? I hoped not.

As I was remembering all of this (and the memory was vivid), I thought "Aha! Now I know why this ELP concert was bugging me, because of the argument between Dennis and Pat after the show."

But then, as will happen these days, the memory continued to develop past that point. Something else happened after that argument. And when it happened, Pat said to me, "that's why I was trying to get you to leave, so now you know." And then he said to Dennis, "thanks for being such an a-hole, Dennis! Now you've ruined Adam's night."

Dennis protested that he wasn't the one who ruined the night. The way he saw it, he was trying to help me, by showing me something I didn't know.

And now, in 2024, I was amazed yet again at how memory works, and how I was able to take a single thread - of being "bothered" by the memory of the ELP concert (but not knowing why) - and "pull it out of the water" of my subconscious (like reeling in a big fish) - and astound myself with the results.

Something major happened in the Universal parking garage after the ELP concert ended. And it was preceded by an argument between Pat and Dennis, who seemed to make a point of trying to delay me. Pat wanted us to leave, asap. But then it was too late, and the "major thing" happened.

Wow. To remember that was huge.

But then I remembered something more. Something even bigger and more important. After Dennis left, and the bad situation calmed down, I was asked to go sit in a car so that the incident could be explained to me. I didn't want to sit in this car, but Pat persuaded me. He said "Ah, c'mon Adam. Go talk to her. She's waiting for you in her car. She just wants to talk to you for five minutes." I agreed to do it, and was very glad I did, because she explained the entire situation to me and I felt much better.