s.a.griffin | tumbleweed in a box

Tumbleweed In A Box

was my answer to the pet rock back in about ’96. I sent one to my good friend, writer, director and Jesus H. Christ songbird Risa Mickenberg in New York City and she flipped. She insisted that we turn it into a short film, so we did, shooting this in the summer heat of 2000. As you can see, the old Cadillac, with nowhere to rest but on the street, was starting to disintegrate, but still holding up. That’s a real flat on the freeway, and if you look closely at one of the quick cuts, you’ll see Scott pissing on the side of the road while I am changing the flat. The dashboard shots you can see all the chatchkis collected over the years during our road trips: the purple panther of poetry from The Smash Gallery in Vancouver, Yoda from MacDonald’s, Ganesh from Eric Brown, barbed wire from Mike Mollet’s Dad, mud balls from Mike Mollett, rocks from the road, a golden hand clenching impossible music, and love beads and such hanging from the mirror. Risa and I co-wrote and produced this gem, Risa directed. Bruce Dickson shot it all. Others in the video are poet and best pal Scott Wannberg, Ringling Sister and poet Iris Berry, Jim Balsom and C.C. Skusa. Jim Balsom also offered assist on camera/crew. Shot on location near Edwards AFB, and at C.C.’s ranch outside of Acton. Also the pool outside my apartment with interiors of course, in my apartment here in terminally hip, Silverlake. By the way, those are my lava lamps, of which I now have 32. The piece was masterfully edited by Jordan Green, also of NYC.

The ’59 Cadillac Sedan de Ville was traded away a few years back for body and paint on my 1960 Cadillac Coupe, which Scott and I took on the road in 1988 for our San Francisco weekend with Skie Bender and Voxx Voltaire. The very first road car tho was a 1975 Mercury Capri, which we used for The Lost Tribe’s first tour to San Francisco during April Fool’s weekend of 1985. With the help of my neighbor, all on the same day, I literally took the engine out of my ’74 Capri, dropped it into the ’75, put all of our luggage and big asses into that car and then blazed north up the boring I-5 to S.F. The Lost Tribe were Mike Bruner, yours truly, Doug Knott and Mike Mollett. It was 80 degrees in San Francisco that weekend, we had three gigs. Nobody came to any except at The Intersection for The Arts, about a dozen friends showed up, everybody else had gone fishing. It was our first group performance. Of course, we were stoned. So in the end, we were all happy campers. It was an auspicious beginning for us. Like in the poem, we were and are bad brothers to the bone. I treasure all of our times together, but doubt I could ever live thru it all ever again. Famous last words and words without end. S.A.Griffin

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