fig. a: diptych
The following is a slightly revised and considerably updated version of a story I posted on Instagram back in November.
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The toughest guy at our junior high school was a guy named Bart Simpson. No joke. Thing is, the context was rather different at the time: this was roughly 5 years before Matt Groening began creating Simpsons shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show.*
Anyway, among other personality quirks, Bart was convinced he was the reincarnation of Jim Morrison, which was particularly strange (people ARE strange) because he was born a couple of years BEFORE Jimbo died in 1971.
At the end of eighth grade, when our yearbooks were released to us, Bart grabbed my friend Kevin’s yearbook and scribbled something in it. Kevin was powerless to do anything because this was Bart Simpson, the toughest guy in school, after all, and he was terrified that his yearbook would be returned to him with all kinds of vulgarities that would be hard to explain to his mother.
When Bart finally handed back his yearbook it read “smoke dope / snort coke / drink wine / feel fine / —Jim Morrison.”
This inscription was still pretty hard for Kevin to explain to his mom, but it was considerably cooler than what he’d been expecting.
Five years later, when The Simpsons appeared on the scene, it became infinitely cooler.
Or, at least that’s the way I remembered things decades later.
Recently I asked Kevin to confirm this story. Turns out I was pretty close, but that Bart’s text was even more noteworthy than I remembered.
It read: “smoke dope / snort coce [sic] / drink wine / feel fine / p.s. Have a nice sumer [sic] / me / Jim Morrison / The Doors [captured in the form of their distinctive logo] / #1.”
fig. b: Jim Morrison in his own words
The truth is stranger than non-fiction.
The Truth / #1.
aj
*And, thus, about 7 1/2 years before it debuted as a stand-alone television show.