Get up! Get up! It’s Monday! Best day of the whole week!
I’ve been up since 5 AM, baby! Seriously. I’ve been awake since 5 in the morning.
But so what? Eddie Cave was a cobblers son, and you can bet your sweet sugary ass he got up early.
That’s Edward Cave on the left. Eddie was the publisher and editor of the worlds first magazine. It was founded in 1731 and was called The Gentleman’s Magazine. It was the first publication to report on a broad range of topics that the educated public was interested in… commodity prices, Latin poetry, shit like that. Fags.
To the right is another Cave called Nicholas Edward Cave. Nick is also involved in words and has a book coming out called
The Death of Bunny Munro. I hope it’s better than his first book, And the Ass saw the Angel, because that book was way too much work. AND I heard recently that he made up a bunch of the words in it. Seriously. He invented new words.
Frank the Horny Pig is a book I’m working on right now, and I’m almost done. I Just need to add a few more illustrations of men beating a pig with hockey sticks.
Anyway, whatever. That’s neither here nor there. What’s important right now is that I tell you about a friend I miss.
His name was Richard Holzman and we used to call him ‘The Littlest Maori’ because he was. He was six feet tall and at least 170 pounds, but he was still the littlest maori we’d ever seen.
Richard was quite possibly one of the funniest people I have ever met. He was instinctively hilarious. He didn’t have to think about it. It was hardwired to his autonomic nervous system: Breath, pump blood, make people piss themselves.
One time I came home and he had broken into my apartment. I found him dry humping my bed like a dog, all bug-eyed and lolling tongue, my smut-mag collection splashed across the room. I was disgusted and furious, but now, over ten years later, I see the funny side.
That’s time-release comedy. No one does that.
Richard would regularly stage impromptu dance performances for us in our living room, and they were fantastic. He’d even bring his own music!
There was a period where he would rock up to our pad, at any time of day or night, with Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby on cassette.
He’d fast forward to the song ‘Kicks‘ and then just blow our minds with a hail of startlingly unusual shapes. Then he’d rewind and do it again… and then again. (Please click Kicks, close your eyes, and imagine a skinny, wild haired maori in cowboy boots dancing in your dimly lit living room)
And then, if we were lucky, he’d tenderly interpret the title track for us.
He was magical. He was Graceful. He was my special friend and I miss him deeply. We all do.
Richard, if you’re reading this, please reach out and say hi. Seriously. Where the fuck are you?
