Chapter 15: Do you believe that people can change? Why or why not?
Originally written March 29, 2021
It’s almost tempting to to answer this question with some sort of platitude. People may change superficially — they get wrinkles and gray hair, they get weaker, some get smarter, some grow bitter … but deep, deep down, they’re really just the same as we always were. We’re all God’s children and our spirits are immortal and we’re all just trying to spread the love vibration and connect with other souls in our own special way …
And blah blah blah.
And indeed, I have friends I’ve known for more than 50 years who, despite outward appearances basically are the same goofballs I’ve known since high school or earlier. Thinking specifically of my old, old pals Alec and Mark Ducaj [Note from 2024: Mark died just days after I wrote this], I still relate to them the same way I have for decades. We still talk about the same kind of crazy stuff we have for decades. We still tell the same dumb jokes.
I think about my late old college friend Erik Ness, originally from Alamogordo, who I met in college back in 1972. Sometime in the mid 80s, after he got a job with the New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau, Erik’s politics did a complete turnaround, going from hippie/liberal to arch-conservative.
But one time I teased him: “Erik if you’re not careful I’m going to tell all your Republican friends that you supported George McGovern in 1972.” He laughed and replied, “Hell, I’d vote for McGovern again if he ran.”
If you haven’t already, read all about one of my weird adventures with Erik in this previous chapter.
But Erik and I didn’t argue politics all that much. We did laugh a lot about certain politicians and he did love political gossip I was privy to when I worked in the state Capitol news room.
But most the time we talked about the same kind of crazy stuff we had for decades and told the same dumb jokes.
And of course we both loved music. In his case, it mostly was good country music. Once, a few decades ago, Erik told me he was going to pitch some of my songs to country star Joe Stampley, who was big at the time. If he did pitch my song, nothing ever came of it.
And the very last conversation I had with him, a few days before he died of cancer, Erik was talking about some music biz scheme he thought would benefit the both of us. I knew at the time we were talking that this never would come to fruition.
I was just happy that even in the face of his deteriorating health, Erik was still dreaming and scheming — just like the kid from Alamogordo I met in college all those years ago.
Unfortunately, however, at least one of my oldest friends has drastically changed in recent years. And not for the better.
I met Boo Boo in the fall of 1972, my sophomore year of college (around the same time I met Erik.) He was a free-spirited, creative soul, a talented writer and just a fun guy to be around.
One summer, it must have been 1973, he wasn’t getting along with his roommates and my roommate had moved out to get married. So Boo Boo moved into my basement apartment for a while.
About 20 years later, when I was going through my second divorce (about the same time Boo Boo was going through his second divorce) and he returned the favor, letting me move into a spare room in his house.
And, as I discussed in the previous chapter, what a fun summer that was. It was almost like being in college again. I can’t cite any examples, but I’m sure there were old friends back then who said, “You guys never change!”
But around the time of Donald Trump’s election, Boo Boo had not only become a Trump supporter, but a true believer in QAnon, the ultimate conspiracy/cult.
One day in early 2017, I ran into him when he stopped by The New Mexican office to drop off a story or review he’d written for Pasatiempo.
I don’t remember how the matter came up, but he started telling me that there were thousands of unsealed indictments in federal courts around the country, including a couple of hundred, I think he said, in New Mexico.
“I’ve researched this,” he kept saying. It was his belief that most these unsealed indictments were for those charged with pedophilia and among those about to get arrested were prominent politicians, including former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
But the situation was even worse than run-of-the-bill child molesting, Boo Boo informed me. He said Jeffrey Epstein’s island in the Virgin Islands was used for killing babies and drinking their blood. “I’ve researched this …”
At the time, I hadn’t even heard of QAnon, but I was familiar with another easily debunked conspiracy, “Pizzagate,” which also involved high-level politicians and an alleged child-sex ring — this one located in the basement of Comet Ping-Pong, a popular Washington, D.C. pizza joint.
I told him that I’d just interviewed Arrington de Dionyso, an artist and musician who had a mural at Comet Ping-Pong. Because of that mural — which had been painted over long before “Pizzagate” — Arrington had become a target for the frothing conspiracy faithful, who claimed claimed that his colorful primitive art — inspired by dreams and mythology, and bursting with sexual energy — was full of symbols of pedophilia and Satanism. Some accused him of making “degenerate art” — a term the artist noted was used by the Nazi Party in Germany in its fight against modern art in the 1930s.
When I mentioned de Dionyso to Boo Boo, he looked at me as if I’d been duped by Satan himself. “He is not a good person,” Boo Boo said.
He knew.
He’d done his “research”!
Here’s a sample of de Dionyso’s music. He’s he one on the far left.
That might have been the last time I actually spoke to Boo Boo face-to-face, though for awhile he would send me “information” (ie. disinformation) about all those sealed indictments. He moved to Kentucky where he’d bought land (though someone told me he actually was in Ohio.) His Facebook page stated run more and more screeds about the “rat bastards” in the media (Boo Boo was a journalist for nearly all his career).
One of his only posts since last year’s election dealt with the connections between Rudy Giuliani’s much-ridiculed press conference at a Philadelphia landscaping company and a 2009 movie called Law Abiding Citizen.
Tha post belittled journalists for ignoring the fact that Four Seasons Total Landscaping is “just around the corner” from an abandoned prison where this movie was shot.
He quoted a line from the movie — “I’m going to pull the whole thing down. I’m going to bring the whole fuckin’ diseased corrupt temple down on your head. It’s going to be Biblical” and concluded with the observation, “Modern-day journalists are not so inclined to do homework or research. But they sure do love mouthing off! My prediction: Look for things to turn Biblical in the not-too-distant future!”
But here’s a ray of hope: As of this writing, he has only posted one other thing. It was a Youtube video of the original unaired pilot for The Munsters. That’s something that the 1972, or even the 2012 “Boo Boo” would have posted.
He didn’t even argue that Grandpa Munster was some kind of symbol of Satantic pedophiles.
The Munsters post also was in November. I hope Boo Boo is OK.
[Updating in 2024 again: Boo Boo and I had a cordial text conversation a few months after I wrote this chapter after I helped a mutual friend who needed to contact him. He even said he’d give me a holler if he ever got back to Santa Fe. But he hasn’t so far. And when I texted him when a mutual friend had died a few months later, he never responded. He rarely posts on Facebook anymore — which means at least in this respect he’s saner than me. And when he does post, at least it’s not about QAnon stuff.]
Sadly, this reminds me of an old Loudon Wainwright song: