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This is the first in a series of sit down, kif smoking interviews with opiated writer Mike Marino who hates interviews, but relented when we offered to pay all his expenses including a supply of hallucinogens and alcohol to meet us here in a run down Spanish firecracker vine cover villa on the sun drenched coast of Spain. He was late in arriving and was visibly under the influence when at last he did arrive.
AB: Glad you could finally make it Mr. Marino. We have been looking forward to this chat and will also have questions for you that our readers have sent in.
MM: (Mumbles something about illiteracy and reaches in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and pours a drink from the wine bottle next to him on the table.) I prefer to drink from a Dixie Cup but cut glass with a sharp tone will do. Your magazine must do very well by the spread you laid out here.
AB: Please, if you don’t mind, I’d like to begin the interview.
MM: Start your tape and let’s go then.
AB: When was the last time you were in Spain?
MM: I don’t see how that is important but if you must know it was during one of my reincarnations. I fought against Franco and told Picasso to paint some pictures of the civil war and taught Hemingway how to duck and cover.
AB: Seriously, you were here in Seventies and had to leave the country in a hurry. Why was that, the facts are murky.
MM: I was having an affair with Princess Sofia, Presidente Juan Carlos wife. The first lady of Spain. Mick Jagger and I had a bet on of who could bag the most international first ladies in a year. Neither of us wanted Pat Nixon so we looked around and bang boom! We couldn’t even imagine Pat doing it with Dick...Nixon that is who was a dick.
AB: How much has changed since the Sixties. Is there still a revolution going on?
MM: Revolution as political evolution is always going on. It’s as perpetual as the atomic clock and varies in intensity. We had the war in Vietnam, fears of nuclear destruction of the entire planet and our worst nightmare emerged in the 70’s….Disco, although I wouldn’t have minded a tumble with Grace Jones. Dig a babe with a drill sergeant flat top you could land a drone on. Yes, there is discourse, a better word, Trump Not My President, Hillary The Angel of Death, a nasty pipeline on rez land...terrorism, immigration, hell yes there’s a revolution as yet unresolved but at least there is enough juice to keep activism alive and well….
AB: Have you ever been abducted by UFO’s?
MM: Ah, I saw that one coming. You’ve been talking to editor Cheryl again. She by the way is an illegal alien from Boston. All Bostonians are illegal and from Mars. I could be honest and admit to it, so yes. I have been. In fact I was aboard the same craft as Gene Roddenberry years ago. We were in our guest quarters and I said to him over a bottle of Anduluvian wine…”this could make for a great TV show...that night drunk, we wrote a rough draft of a pilot called “Star Trek Keeps on Truckin’” It would have Jerry Garcia as a spaceman landing in Haight Ashbury where everyone was stoned and would believe it...we were gonna film it on location and even got Allen Ginsberg to sign on as a poem howling robot who falls in love with Mr Spock played by William Burroughs.
(MM jumps up and dashes to the radio and turns it on but doesn’t tune it in and sits back down)
MM: I need radio static in the background. It relaxes me. Like a good massage or an even better blow job in Thailand. (We decided to go out and grab something to eat as MM is always animated and can’t sit still so I turned off the recorder and we agreed to resume later that night and the next day.)
AB: I have a lot of reader questions regarding writing methods etc. Are you going to be up to those?
MM: It’s your magazine and will be happy too...as long as you keep footing the bill… I need a hooker tonight ...are you willing to pay for that too...I mean an expensive one who can create magic and speaks no English?
AB: Off the record yes.
MM: Call it a dinner expense, you know room service...I ate the maid for dessert!
