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SoapBox 9/18/07 10:42 AM Page 12

soapbox A Better Sky

Through Chemicals
I grew up with a Deadhead. Mark is an archetype; we
air-guitared American Beauty and Europe ‘72 in his
bedroom every day after school. Suburban teens,
pre-pubescent hippies in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. The
music never stopped. He’s now a professor at Berkeley—
What is most fascinating to me about the chemtrails
is how no one but me appears to take notice. Perhaps
they represent an aspect of my heightening awareness
that is so obtuse, at times I begin to doubt whether what
I’m seeing with my own eyes is actually there. A couple
deep stuff, biology, chemistry. But Mark is really an artist; days ago, I stood on the balcony of my soon-to-be-demol-
a Gram Parsons-channeling, undiscovered singer/song- ished apartment building and watched four separate jets
writer of immense insight and talent. One gig pays the at one time crisscrossing the sky, dumping its load in full
mortgage, the other serves the soul. view of the population. One of my neighbors was head-
I’ve spent 20 years writing about rock. The melody in ing down to her car. “Another nice chemtrail day in L.A.,”
my heart has always been I quipped sarcastically.
eclectic. Forty years since
“However benign or malignant “Huh?” she fired back. I

by
Jerry and Bob taught us
how to wield our (tennis) the agenda, like the price of
pointed up to the bizarre
pillow patterns directly
Full pg ad #6
rackets, Mark remains
LONN my best friend. In midlife,
gasoline, we the people have above her head. Zero
reaction, off she went, to
FRIEND we are as Henry Miller absolutely nothing pick up her cleaning, or
mused, “dazzled by the fill her tank or do what-
glorious collapse of the to say about it.” ever normal people do
world.” And so appears that don’t stare at the sky
Relix: The pulpit of the authentic, the jammers, the and wonder what the fuck is happening to our city, our
trippers, the lovers… the Haighters. It’s an honor to be state, our nation, our planet.
here. Cue the debut. When you Google Chemtrails, prepare to have your
The streaks across the L.A. skies appear three to four mind blown. Like UFOs, the mainstream media cowers in
times a week now. Jets soaring the shadows and reports very little. It’s up to the alterna-
straight up in vertical climb or tive information seekers and underground networks—
horizontal like commercial the Mulders and Scullys—to unearth the truth. Where do
fliers en route to somewhere the jets come from? Who is flying them? Who is paying
cool, exotic, important. But these for this? What are they spraying? And of course, WHY is
planes, they don’t go anywhere. it happening at all? I found a band on MySpace called
Their only mission is to X and O Chemtrails and sent them a message. A member of the
the morning blue with plumes of San Francisco-based group responded that the trails have
white smoke that moments after been increasing over the Bay Area and hypothesized it
belching from the ass of the semi- has something to do with the current political climate
clandestine chariots of fire, disperse and global warming. However benign or malignant the
into faux clouds. Soon after, what was agenda, like the price of gasoline, we the people have
once azure clear morphs to murky pastel absolutely nothing to say about it.
haze. Can I have a little Marvin? “What’s Mark lives in the Bay Area, the Portrero Hill district,
going on?” a Barry Bonds blast downwind from the stadium. He
They’re called Chemtrails. The covert wasn’t hip to the lines in the sky until recently. “I’ll do
spraying mission began in the late ‘90s. Last some research on my end. Who the hell knows what’s
month, I watched a big, fat rail chop out over going on, man?” If the thunder and lightning don’t get
Manhattan while touring Columbia University us, will the chemtrails? Yeah, the music and the mystery
Copyright Rumi Enterprises 2007 Photo

with my daughter. If God were a cokehead, never stop. ★

He’d have snorted this one up like Pacino in
Scarface. In Baltimore last April, I stepped Lonn Friend is a veteran multimedia music journalist and
outside Johns Hopkins Medical Center where former editor of the iconic hard-rock publication, RIP.
my dear friend Judy was donating a kidney to Morgan Road/Random House published his memoir, Life
her cousin, to behold a vertical cotton tower on Planet Rock, in 2006.
shooting skyward off the institute’s famous dome.
In angel city, they are as commonplace as star
sightings in a Beverly Hills deli.

12 relix november 2007