Your Horoscope:

Aries: Some might say that cheaters never prosper, but the truth is they do. They really, really, do.
Taurus: The shortest route from A to B is not necessarily the quickest... Wait a sec, then what the hell is? The scenic route taking in points C, D, E, and F?
Gemini: See above (a tip: take the shortest route).
Cancer: You will continue to view oatmeal as meal made from oats.
Leo: You have the warmth of a puppy dog and the intelligence of a puppy dog.
Virgo: Pixies seem to listen to our private thoughts. They also spray their dust on people to make them happy and wondrous. Catch a pixie! Dance with a pixie! Tell everyone you know about the pixies and become a social outcast.
Libra: Wow. You are starting to pursue a wise plan... Aaaaaaand, now you’re back to screwing things up.
Scorpio: Scorpio – what a cool name for a sign, man.
Sagittarius: You are not in the mood for serious work and since no one takes you seriously to begin with, everyone’s a winner. 
Capricorn: If a friend or colleague asks for your opinion today what they really mean is they want you to lend them money.
Aquarius: It’s easy to place the blame for your problems on someone else – that’s why we all do it.
Pisces: You will get more out of life today if you live it with a cocktail in your hand.

      
           This Week’s Featured Album:
         Geraldine and Ricky

Trees Talk Too!

Liner Notes.

All Material by Geraldine and Ricky
* Unless Noted

Recorded Live at The Belleview Hospital for the Insane

Side One:

1. Good Wood
2. My Hand’s Up Your Ass (And My Fingers Are Covered In Splinters)
3. Everyone Says I’m Crazy (To Love You)
4. Let Me Do The Talking
5. Shut Up Dummy  
6. Trees Talk Too! (Crazy Bedlam Dance Mix)
7. Geraldine (If You Love Me, You Will Kill People!)

Side Two:

1. My Split Personality
2. Ventriloquism – Art Form of the Future
3. Once Again, The Children Are Crying
4. Notes on Ricky’s Schizophrenia, Extreme Paranoid Tendencies, Repetition Compulsion, and His Many Other Mental Disorders *(written by Dr. Seymour Rabinovitz)
5. The Bitch Wears White *(written by Ricky)
6. Do The Lobotomy *(written by Dr. Seymour Rabinovitz)
7. No More Voices (In My Head) *(written by Ricky and Frank Sinatra)

In my many years as a clinical psychoanalyst, I had come across thousands of bizarre and disturbing cases, yet none of them was ever so troubling and freakishly weird as the split-personality case of Geraldine and Ricky. (Or Ricky and Geraldine, depending on whom you talked to.)

Ricky and Geraldine were brought to my office by their traumatized and severely alcoholic parents. They claimed that Geraldine and Ricky’s relationship, while initially cute and funny, was now bordering on the “weird and scary.” It was also implied that the two had begun to “hurt people.” While drinking from a flask, their mother blurted out that they shared a bed and were involved in “unnatural activities” together. I promised to do what I could.

Right off the bat it became apparent that Ricky was the dominant aggressor in the relationship. He insulted me, broke my office lamp and swore like a turret’s victim. Geraldine, for her part, tended to smile vacantly and look glassy eyed. The fact that Ricky constantly referred to her as a “dumb bitch” and a “controlling whore” demonstrated just how conflicted he was about Geraldine, and her role in his life. The fact that his hateful words seemed to have no impact on Geraldine whatsoever allowed me to conclude that she was the “enabler” in this relationship, and, I suspected, probably also very passive aggressive.

The first thing I did was have them committed. I then began to creatively mix and prescribe mind-bending drugs that would cure them. Large doses of powerful hallucinogenics would be required! Ricky really seemed to take to them and talked endlessly about all the “cool colors, man!” whereas Geraldine became listless and started sprouting mustache hairs.  I would need to rethink my methodology.

My next brainstorm was to put them in straightjackets and separate them. Again, the results were not what I had hoped for. Ricky became silent and lay in the corner, inert, refusing to eat, move, breath or talk, while Geraldine began forming an extremely unhealthy relationship with a wooden chair.

One late night, while sitting in my office drinking and masturbating in moderation, I finally arrived at what would ultimately be the perfect therapy to help these two troubled souls slay their mental demons and find peace of mind: Lobotomies all round!

Later, my secretary suggested that instead of carving out small pieces of their frontal lobes, maybe I should encourage them to record an album. She noted that I could then analyze the resulting creation and search for psychological clues in the words that might serve as the root source and foundations of their mental disorder. Since I couldn’t find my lobotomy scalpel, I decided to go this route. Perhaps it might prove to be therapeutic.

The result was Geraldine and Ricky’s “Trees Talk Too!” a combination of traditional gypsy music, talk-therapy and ventriloquism comedy with some clinical observations by me.

I obtained some intriguing insights into the brains of both of them through the material. It was obvious that Ricky was the creative visionary whereas Geraldine was simply the straight woman and Ricky’s goonish plastic-haired sidekick. Of course I had to keep a lid on some of Ricky’s “artistic concepts.” His idea to have Geraldine strip would have excited the other patients far too much, and there was no way in hell the two of them were going to perform a “live sex show.”

As the creative power struggle became more enhanced between the two, so did their hopes of recovery. Geraldine often talked of a sock puppet from her childhood that she wouldn’t mind revisiting and Ricky began working on a solo stand-up comedy act about insanity, wood products and his immense dislike of carpenters and termites.

By the time the album was recorded (live, at our very own Belleview Hospital for the Insane) a rift between the two had formed that would never be mended.

Shortly after the album was recorded, Ricky met me for a private consultation and admitted that the time had come to give up the “unhealthy act of ventriloquism” and “get on with life.” He told me had discarded his puppet, Geraldine, and as far as he was concerned I could toss her into the incinerator.

I asked him if he didn’t want to have the Geraldine dummy as a keepsake (this was a test!), but he told me it would just be an unpleasant memory of his troubled mental times. He was free of the dummy and happier for it... I had solved the case!

I congratulated Ricky on his incredible breakthrough and then when he wasn’t looking, I gave him a lobotomy (I can’t help myself!) and sent him on his way.

I’m proud to say that Ricky is now a functioning member of society and a small-time criminal and a petty thug at worst. 

Geraldine, of course, was nothing more than a stuffed puppet made of wood shavings, foam, glue, plastic, and cheap pinewood. However she sits on an honored place on my office bookshelf. Sometimes when I look into her glassy eyes I swear she almost looks human...      

Dr. Seymour Rabinovitz

Belleview Hospital for the Insane (1972)

Cover photo: Hans the Orderly  © 1972 Bedlam Records