Maurice and Me, April 2012
Maurice and Me is a Tumblr blog by Randy Rose, lead singer of The Residents. The blog was active between February 2012 and January 2019, and often featured historical anecdotes about Rose's history with The Residents, as well as further context about Rose himself and projects including the video series In My Room and the Wonder of Weird live tour.
This page collects posts made to this blog in April 2012, archived from the original Tumblr page by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.
Blog posts
THE PLOT THICKENS
Okay, so Saturday afternoon I remembered that Mr. Manimoto, my landlord has a surveillance camera keeping tabs on the garage entrances to our building. I called up Mr. M and after and whining back and forth, I eventually convinced him to let me look at the video from when I gone to NYC. Man - TALK ABOUT BORING! But IT’S MAURICE, so I had to do it and finally, after 14 hours - BINGO! The evidence is right there, plain as day right in front of my apartment! I’m pretty sure I know who she is, but I can’t be making making false accusations and getting sued and stuff. I have to be careful, but I think I’ve got it figured out where Maurice is.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
MISS TWEETY!!!
Okay, I’m pretty sure I’ve zeroed in on the heinous catnapper here - it’s Miss Tweety! For those of you don’t know, Miss Tweety was my, uh, 10th wife. This is a picture of her that I took when we were on our honeymoon in Denver a few years ago. We had a big fight about Maurice when we broke up - she always said that he was her cat, and, okay, he was with her when we got together, but it was pretty goddam obvious that he liked me best. I mean, for chrissake, anybody could tell!
Well, after studying that surveillance photo I got from Mr. Manimoto, I’ve pretty much decided that it has to be her. Besides, I’m thinking that she still has a key to the apartment so that sews it up - it has to be Miss Tweety.
(Her friends called her “Miss Tweety” because everybody said she looked like the Tweety Bird. I never saw the resemblance myself - I mean I would NEVER MARRY someone who looked like the GODDAM TWEETY BIRD - but that’s what everyone else called her, so I called her Miss Tweety, too - she didn’t seem to mind. Her real name is Ethyl.)
Tagged: #Portrait, #The Residents, Randy Rose.
NINJA RANDY!
Okay, I’m getting ready to go sneak into Miss Tweety’s apartment and steal Maurice back! She’s a really heavy sleeper, so I don’t think there will be any problem about waking her up, plus she doesn’t have any guns or anything.
This is, like, my kind of ninja suit so I can sneak around and be practically invisible, but I’m wearing this mask just in case someone does see me. Being an almost famous rock star and all, I’m pretty recognizable, so I can’t be too careful.
Tagged: #Portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
BOO!
Okay, so Maurice wasn’t there. And Miss Tweety wasn’t there either. There was a bunch of her unopened mail lying around, so I guess she must be on vacation or something. Whatever! It’s pretty obvious that Miss Tweety’s not the catnapper. But some asshole saw me sneaking out of her apartment and CALLED THE COPS! I was hiding behind a bush when they showed up. This is not going so well.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Tagged: #Animal, #Cat, #Portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
DON - THE CAT GUY (and Mojo)
Okay, so here’s the story. Not long after my humiliating, potential jail-time fiasco at Miss Tweety’s, I noticed this cat in the window of an apartment a block or so down the street from mine, and - AHA MOMENT! - the cat bore a strong resemblance to - none other than - MAURICE! Puzzled, I walked up to the window and stared, while the cat, true to his feline nature, paid absolutely no attention to me. Still, I thought, it’s Maurice - it had to be Maurice. So, I rang the bell and who should come to the door but Don, the Cat Guy. (Don’t blame me - Don, the Cat Guy is what he calls himself.)
I said, “Excuse me, uh, Don, the Cat Guy, but that looks an awful lot like Maurice, my missing cat, in your window.” Don said, “Oh, so Chico is your cat.” (He had already renamed Maurice, CHICO!?!) “Well, you know he just showed up here a week or so ago and he is very friendly, so I fed him and…”
So anyway, I explained that I had been out of town and Maurice wasn’t there when my friend came to feed him and then I thanked Don and picked Maurice up and we went home. Okay, I do leave a window open so he can come and go, but he’d never done this before - of course, I’d never forgotten to leave cat food out before… sorry, Maurice, my bad.
Oh well, all’s well that ends with Maurice. Thanks, Don, the Cat Guy.
Tagged: #Animal, #Cat, #Portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Okay, so now that Maurice is back and everything is okay, I’m going to be starting another ghost story. This is one that I wrote for the Talking Light tour but we didn’t use it, except just a little bit. Of course it’s ABSOLUTELY TRUE!
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
(The building, back in the 70’s)
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 1
I was never really afraid of heights until the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. That was when my uncle’s company hired me to be the timekeeper during the construction of a twelve story apartment building. It was a pretty easy job and, when I think back, I have to wonder if the timekeeper’s job wasn’t invented by my uncle to fill his teenaged nephew’s idle summer hours. Every morning I walked the construction site, confirming the presence of each carpenter, bricklayer, cement finisher and laborer by placing a “dot” beside his name on the daily timesheet. Later, near the end of the workday, I would reconfirm those same workers and write the number “8” next to the dot I had made that morning. Between the dots and the eights, I sat around the office reading and answering a phone that never rang. As I said, it wasn’t a very difficult job - except for Red.
Tagged: #Architecture, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 2
I doubt that Red actually hated me, but I can see that he must have despised the privileged life he thought I represented. Even though my family was solidly middle class, as far as Red was concerned, I was born with a ticket to the front of the line, and he loved to let me know it. The big man was just a common laborer, but somehow he always succeeded in making me feel lower than a bug on the bottom of his steel toed boot. It wasn’t long until I loathed going anywhere near the place where he was working. It was like that every day for a month - until Red fell off the building.
Tagged: #Black and white, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 3
Red’s nightly “parties” and the resulting hangovers were legendary, so his accident was no great surprise. The morning was quiet and clear and I can still remember being so distracted by the bright flashes of mating cardinals, that I almost tripped over his body. Apparently no one had seen him fall. High speed impact with concrete had rearranged his remains in such an awkward way, that at first it was at difficult to tell that this clump of dirty work clothes had once been human. As the reality of the situation sunk in, I was, of course, horrified, but somehow strangely fascinated, too. Here was my tormentor, reduced to a pile of pulverized flesh. No longer capable of dispensing pain, big bad Red was simply a mildly amusing bag of garbage, capable of containing my idle curiosity for a few moments, but nothing more …or so I thought.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose, #Black and White.
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 4
Red must have hit the ground face first and then bounced, because his unseeing eyes were staring up, but what they were stuck to now resembled the remains of a partially eaten flounder - but my satisfying feeling of superiority toward the now dead Red quickly disappeared. It was probably only reflexive muscles still twitching in his newly deceased corpse, but just as I bent down for a closer look, his mouth, an ugly smear of tooth fragments protruding from bloated lips, twisted into a grotesque grin and then I was winked at by a blind and bulging eye. Shaken, I ran to get help, but somehow, even in death, Red had left his mark on my mind.
From that day on, I was terrified to climb above the ground floor of the building. I would greet each new day with horror at the thought of slowly climbing twelve floors to find the various workers scattered throughout the building, but the worst terror was always waiting on the twelfth floor. The foundations for each of the other levels had already been finished, so I was able to climb eleven floors by using the relatively safe central stairway; but the twelfth floor was only accessible by a ladder, and the ladder hung out over a hundred feet of blindingly open air.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Black and White, #Randy Rose, #portrait.
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 5
It was just a few days after he died when Red first appeared, floating beside me as I climbed the ladder. Something touched my shoulder and I jerked around to find his grinning flounder face next to mine. It was all I could do to hold on. Quickly I scrambled back down the ladder, told the foreman I didn’t feel well, and went home. I laid around the house pretending to be sick for most of a week, until my uncle’s prodding and my feeble rationalization of Red’s appearance forced me to return. I kept telling myself that everything was okay, but I knew he was up there waiting for me.
I put off making the morning rounds as long as possible, until finally I had no choice. Slowly I made my rounds, finding each worker, while gradually climbing higher and higher until finally, only the ladder to the twelfth floor remained. At that point, as the rest of the world faded into the surging sound of blood pounding in my eardrums, a strange thing happened. I heard Red’s voice, but instead of the mocking laughter I had expected, he was singing, in a soothing almost gentle voice that I had never heard before. Suddenly I felt reassured, confident and even began to hum the tune myself.
Tagged: #Black and White, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
RED’S SIREN SONG - part 6
Everyone said I must have tripped over a bag of cement that was carelessly left near the foot of the ladder, but I knew better. I don’t remember much of those last few seconds before I hit the ground, but I do recall the feeling of being pushed, just as I reached out for the ladder. I also remember the echoing sound of laughter that followed my freefall flight to the ground below.
Some would say I was luckier than Red, since my fall was softened by a pile of sand, but since both legs were shattered and I spent ten weeks recovering in a hospital, it’s difficult to feel “lucky” about my accident. As an obvious turning point in my life, I’ve endlessly considered what happened without ever reaching a reasonable explanation, but this much is true: whenever I find myself looking down from a great hight, an ominous mix of fear and fond anticipation greets me - just before I hear Red’s voice, softly singing his siren song.
Tagged: #Black and White, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Res 40th Anniversary Article »
Hey everybody! It occurred to me that some of my tumblr buds out there might like a little Residents history lesson. With our 40th anniversary happening this year, there is a great retrospective article in pitchfork. Check it out. R
Tagged: #The Residents.
"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancin'."
— James Brown
WORLD’S GREATEST MASTURBATOR!
Okay, now this is kind of weird, even for me. I’ve been doing some research getting ready for the next Residents’ tour (WHICH I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT! Jeez… I got in BIG TROUBLE when I mentioned it MIGHT be later this year, but I repeat I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!) anyway, I was doing some research and came across this story about the World’s Greatest Masturbator. He’s a Japanese guy who set the record of 9 hrs and 58 min of straight milking the monkey at the 2009 Masturbate-a-thon (in San Francisco, of course - I really have to move back).
Okay, I have to admit this is kind of impressive, but hey, I’m pretty sure I once drained the donkey for at least THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT - or at least it felt like it. I’m pretty sure I got married once or twice just so I could quit. Anyway, this guy’s name is Masanobu Sato and he prefers anime to real women for stimulation because it’s clean and pretty.
Oh well, back to pummeling the pomeranian.
Tagged: #Randy Rose, #The Residents, #Sex.
(It all started here)
RESIDENTS HISTORY - part 1
Okay, people seemed to like that Residents’ article I posted from Pitchfork, so I thought what with this being the 40th anniversary and all, it might be cool to do a few Residents’ history lessons. I’ve got a few personal items I’ve held onto over the years so I’ll be showing them along with a little story about each one.
This is the ORIGINAL picture of Santa Dog (if you don’t know what Santa Dog is, you’re running way behind - get with the program). We found this photo (and it’s not a STUPID INSTAGRAM! - instant vintage? NO WAY!) in our first studio at 20 Sycamore St in San Francisco (look it up on Google Maps) and used it for the cover of our first ever record release - Santa Dog (duh!). More later
Tagged: #randy rose, #santa dog, #the residents, #vintage, #animals.
MASSAGING THE MONGOOSE - part 2 »
For those that are interested, here’s a followup to my World’s Greatest Masturbator posting. It’s an article from the SF Weekly about the Maturbate-A-Thon, the event where Masanobu Sato, uh, rose to fame. This is mondo whacky stuff (heh, heh) but I don’t think I’ll be doing any more of these - enough is enough.
Tagged: #Sex, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
(Okay, I guess it started here, too)
RESIDENTS HISTORY - part 2
When we rented the building at Sycamore St. late in 1971, the lower floor, destined to become our recording and video studios, was occupied by a huge printing press. The previous tenant was Western Kennel World, a doggy magazine, which after a million years, had gone belly up. It was like everybody went home one day and never came back, leaving us with a lovely, but useless, piece of machinery. We complained to the owner who hired an old black guy to come in every day with a sledge hammer. Piece by piece, the printing press went away. It was almost gone when this picture was taken.
(I had hair back then, if you can tell.)
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose, #Vintage.
(More evidence)
RESIDENTS HISTORY - part 2 (continued)
For all the skeptics out there (like I would make this stuff up), here’s a copy of Western Kennel World from Oct, 1935. (This picture came from eBay - they’re actually trying to get 20 quankers for it. LOL, as the young folks say.) In addition to the printing press, the whole building was CRAMMED FULL of all this doggy stuff, like this lovely photo of Spice (that’s what it says - right on the back), the Santa Dog photo, and many, many more. It was kind of like Christmas - or Halloween - I’m always getting those mixed up.
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose, #animals, #Vintage.
SPANKING THE SPERM WHALE - part 3
Okay, okay, I know I said I was done with this stuff, but things come up, if you know what I mean. So, continuing my libidinous R&D, I discovered that Masanobu Sato, my hero, the World’s Greatest Salamander Squeezer, is actual a SHILL FOR A WHANK TOY COMPANY! Here I thought the guy was all about Purity Of Essence - you know protecting his natural fluids from those smelly women, when it turns out that he’s just a SEX TOY SALESMAN! I mean, hey, go ahead and pet the pony, I don’t care, but COME ON! (so to speak). Oh well, wake up and smell the monkey milk, Randy.
As a special treat, here’s a link to a demo of one the products Masanobu pimps. Be prepared, this is really out there.
[broken link]
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose, #Sex, #Weird.
"You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning."
— Billy Wilder
Hey everybody! I thought I’d post this cool Residents 40th Anniversary logo that the Cryptic Corp made for us. Major Mondo, huh? We’ll probably put it on T-Shirts and stuff when we do the tour (WHICH I STILL DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT!!!)
Tagged: #the residents, #randy rose, #logos.
HAVE A BAD DAY?
Hey Everybody! Back in the dark ages of 1995 The Residents released a CD-Rom (remember them?) called BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY. It was a game - but a very strange game. It came out on a label called Inscape which was backed by Warner Music and had the biggest budget of any project we’ve ever done - we’re talking hundreds of thousands of quankers, no shit! It had great graphics, cool music and mondo weird game play.
Well anyway, with overpriced with mostly lousy product, people intelligently quit buying buying CD-Roms and they went away or became games where you shoot people, or monsters, or old ladies pushing baby carriages or whatever. Meanwhile, technology continued to, uh, advance. Five years after we released it, nobody could play BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY - on anything.
But it’s still cool. So I decided to take all the weird characters and the whacked out story and make them into a book - like a short novel - and it’s almost done. So I’ll be putting some stuff from it up here to see what people think.
Tagged: #CD-Rom, #randy rose, #the residents, #vintage, #gaming.
(This is the intro of the original text describing Bad Day on the Midway)
- THE RESIDENTS’
- BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY
- • INTRODUCTION
- From the minute you wake up, the world is not quite right. A power blackout has caused your alarm to go off an hour late, the last piece of bread burns in the toaster and there’s no milk for your coffee. Immediately after breaking a shoestring, you discover a stain on the favorite shirt you’re wearing to an important lunch date. When four total strangers say, “You look tired” on the way to work, you realize it’s not going to get any better.
- Sooner or later it happens to everyone, but most bad days don’t include the possibilities of plague death, being stalked by a psychotic killer and having the family business shut down by the IRS. It may be true that no one escapes death and taxes, but we don’t often deal with both at once. While THE RESIDENTS’ BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY may be a little more extreme than most, its goal is the same as any other bad day: SURVIVAL!
- A player enters the world of BAD DAY within the character of Timmy, a sweet and innocent young boy, and while the child’s innocence offers protection from the deceit and duplicity surrounding the other characters, the player must eventually leave Timmy. For ultimately, it’s only the act of inhabiting the seedy and shameless that allows one to uncover the secrets and survive the perils of BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY.
Tagged: #the residents, #randy rose, #gaming.
(This is beginning of my short novel based on our BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY game)
BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY
March 5, 1963
8:38 AM - Tebo loved to hate. Everyone draws meaning from something in life. It could be their children, renewing the idea of unlimited hope, it could be their career, their hobby, their feeling of connection to a favorite cause, but everyone cares about something. For Tebo, it was hate. Because, in Tebo’s twisted mind, his hatred somehow turned bad into good. Hate was power. Hate was passion. Hate was fear in the eyes of his enemies, and Tebo had many enemies.
For most of his life Ronnie Tookey had been a weird little shrimp that everyone called Spooky … Spooky Tookey. Ronnie hated his nickname, but around the time he started junior high, the shrimp began to grow, and he liked growing. Soon some guy called him Spooky once too often and Ronnie hit him. Then he hit him again and again. Finally, standing over his fallen foe, Ronnie laughed and said he made the guy’s face look like a T-bone steak. After that nobody called him Spooky any more. They called him T-bone. Pretty soon that was shortened to Tebo, and Ronnie liked being Tebo.
Sure, nobody liked him, just like nobody had liked him when he was Spooky. But this was a different kind of dislike. Before, he was just trash, a dried up wad of spit, a dustball left behind by a lazy janitor. But, by the time he got to high school, nobody treated him like trash any more. They were afraid. He saw it in their eyes and the more he saw, the more he liked.
Just like the day he beat up that wimp, Bob Bennefield. Bob Bennefield, the big tough basketball player. Tebo had wanted to kick his butt for a long time and Bob knew it, too; that’s why he kept dodging and ducking and weaseling away. So Tebo just waited. He waited until he had a class with Bob’s girlfriend. First he blew his nose on her sweater, then he put some salt in a jar full of slugs and left it on her desk. Finally, when that wasn’t enough to make Bob Bennefield show up, Tebo wrapped up a turkey head in the girlfriend’s gym clothes. The next day when the outraged basketball player confronted Tebo with the turkey head, his protest was met with laughter and a perfectly aimed wad of spittle, landing right in the middle of the turkey’s lifeless, unseeing eye. With that Bennefield went berserk, charging Tebo who simply stepped aside and pushed a garbage can into big Bob’s path. As soon as the basketball player hit the ground, Tebo grabbed the can, smashed it over Bob’s head and kicked him in the stomach, over and over again. As the bloody teenager clutched his broken ribs and writhed in pain, his tormentor casually picked up the turkey head and stuffed it in Bob’s mouth. For Tebo it was a moment of immense satisfaction.
One of Tebo’s favorite haunts was the carnival midway on the outskirts of town. With its rides, shows and gyp joints, the midway always brought new people to entertain him. And new people were fun for Tebo. The carnival had just opened for its new season a few weeks earlier and the young thug only had a little more to do before leaving for the fairgrounds. He was almost done wrapping black friction tape around one end of a short pipe he carried beneath his shirt. The tape provided maximum gripping power on an object that only existed for one reason: to crush bones. Tebo always felt a tingle of excitement at these times and, as soon as he finished the pipe, this pimple faced lover of pain was off in search of gaiety and grisly fun at the fair.
Tagged: #Long Reads, #randy rose, #the residents, #gaming.
BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY - WIRED, 1995 »
If you want to check it out, here’s what WIRED had to say about BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY back in 1995.
Tagged: #the residents, #randy rose, #gaming.
[YouTube video: TorturesTopTen.mp4]
This is a video from the original BAD DAY ON THE MIDWAY CD-rom. It’s what you would see if you rode on the TORTURE’S TOP TEN ride. Way cool!
Tagged: #the residents, #randy rose, #gaming, #vintage.
This the poster for original release of the Bad Day on the Midway CD-rom. The image is much higher-res file than what I can post on tumblr, but I’m trying to do a higher than normal one - hopefully it will work.
Tagged: #the residents, #randy rose, #gaming.