A look back at Mondo 2000

Via the Mindplex podcast, a video of covers, articles and covers from Mondo 2000, "including Deborah Harry, Reese Witherspoon, Todd Rundgren, David Byrne, Timothy Leary, Neil Young and William Gibson." I missed Reese, but isn't that David Byrne, and wasn't one of the articles by Robert Anton Wilson? Music by Mondo Vanilli.  More information here. 

Full podcast with R.U. Sirius. 

If this video makes the magazine seem interesting, see the archive at the Internet Archive. See also the Mondo 2000 History Project.   And here is an archive of bOING bOING magazine. 

Update on planned 'Illuminatus!' TV show

Prop Anon interviews Brian Taylor, showrunner for the planned 'Illuminatus!' TV series.  The interview is posted on the Mondo2000 website. 

Some of the news: "We are still in a stage where we’re looking for a partner. We need a network. We need somebody who is willing to take a chance on this thing." And plans also call for bringing the show into the present, rather than leaving it back in the original 1970s setting. Taylor says encouraging things about capturing the complicated tone and texture of the original. 

Taylor also vows that if he gets to make it, the show will not water down the original material. "It’s better not to make it at all than to make the compromised version with no teeth. If we’re going to make it, it would have to be something that would make Robert proud. It has to be something that strives to have that type of impact and embraces the spirit of the material. If it can’t be that then I really believe it’s not worth the time to do it. Let the book stand. The book is always going to be great."

Prop Anon on Robert Shea

Prop Anon aka Gabriel Kennedy is hard at work on a biography of Robert Anton Wilson, and he was interviewed in 2017 by R.U. Sirius. I have permission from R.U. Sirius to reprint this bit:  

R.U.S: Robert Shea — coauthor of Illuminatus Triology — sort of ended up being “the quiet one”. What can you tell us about Shea and he and Bob’s relationship?

PA:Wilson and Shea became fast friends at Playboy. They would hang out together at the bar on payday. They, and their wives, would all hang out, smoke weed, watch TV or listen to records and think of funny sketches that made each other laugh. They had a lot in common: Both raised Irish Catholic, both left the Church young, both seeking to become full time free-lance writers. They both really dug into the Anarchist perspective. After Illuminatus!, Shea went on to start an Anarchist newsletter called No Governor, which Wilson contributed to. Wilson had a talent for collaborating with like-minded artists and thinkers; his and Shea’s collaboration resulted in Illuminatus! and that was itself a further collaboration out of their involvement with The Discordian Society. The two continually spoke of writing their sequel, Bride of Illuminatus, which they barely started before Shea was diagnosed with cancer. Shea’s death left Bob deeply distraught. Michael Shea, described seeing Bob at his father’s funeral looking shook by the whole event. Bob’s eulogy, Chimes at Midnight, published in Cosmic Trigger vol. III, written shortly after Shea provides a glimpse into Bob’s thoughts about his dead friend.

I also emailed Prop and asked if there was anything about Shea he wanted to share. He wrote back, "What seemed cool about Shea was that during the late 60s into the early 70s he got heavy into Anarchism, alongside RAW.

"Not only did he create his own anarchist newsletter, No Governor, he also was a regular contributor to the SRAF newsletter."

You could do worse than to follow Mondo 2000 on Twitter, and I noticed the other day that the R.U. Sirius book Counterculture Through the Ages is only $5 for the Kindle edition. 

Mondo 2000 looks back

The Twitter account for Mondo 2000 is worth following anyway, but it might be particularly interesting right now, as it seems to be looking back on many interesting past incidents involving the magazine; this was posted on Jan. 17:

We had recently become aware that Robert Anton Wilson was available to speak. He was touring around, setting up speaking engagements in a really cheap DIY operation — it wasn’t through an agency or anything like that. He was available to speak for $500.

— MONDO 2000 (@2000_mondo) January 17, 2020

Another anecdote:

The oddness of my friends seeing the magazine as complimentary reading material in the first class section of an airplane escalated to learning that candidate Bill Clinton, asked what he had just been doing by an interview on Labor Day, said “I was reading MONDO 2000.”

— MONDO 2000 (@2000_mondo) January 22, 2020

Good Mondo 2000 video on RAW

The Mondo 2000 website has posted a video of R.U.Sirius interviewing Lance Bauscher and Eric Wagner. It's a little under 40 minutes, and I enjoyed it when I watched it Friday night.

R.U.  explains, "This lovely video by Satori D adds some great visuals to an interview I conducted with Lance Bauscher, director of the great film Maybe Logic and Eric Wagner, author of An insider’s guide to Robert Anton Wilson shortly before his passing. Enjoy!"

My favorite bit is when R.U. asks his guests for their favorite RAW books (and also answers the question himself). R.U.'s picks come closest to what I would have said; Eric's pick surprised me.