Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 18:10:35 -0500 From: Kafka Dreams To: void Subject: A Brief Story with No Point and Little Redeeming Value MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY: "A Brief Story with No Point and Little Redeeming Value" Coming out the other side of Arisia 2001, I've noticed that I have A Few Good Stories, ones that get told now and again and they're getting a little motheaten (or bit-rotten, depending upon your point of view). And that made me think about how I have a lot of stories, almost none of which have been written down, that I tell. And I know a lot more stories of odd little things that I've observed or had happen to me that I've never mentioned, or only told in small groups. Some of them are short and silly, some long and interesting, some just random. Then that reminded me of a lunch I ate in California a few months back and the phrase "MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY" that I'd been meaning to look up. So I poked around on the web and I found a couple of details that put together a picture for me. And now I'm gonna describe it to you. I flew to California back in September 2000 for a wedding of a friend of mine (who might be a friend of yours too). I went out a few days early because I needed the vacation time and I was invited along on a wine-tasting tour and just because. I flew in on a Wednesday afternoon. Out near the San Francisco airport, there's a Marriott all of 5 minutes away that's right on the water. It's got one hell of a view, although my window looked out on the sparse end of the city. I got in, checked in, then lay around and didn't do anything but eat dinner and go to sleep. The next morning was the Napa Valley Tour I'd been invited to attend and I had to be there at a particular time and of course the universe conspired against me and I was late, but the universe doesn't actually care and other conspiracies snagged other people and it All Worked Out. We had a lovely day and I discovered a heretofore unknown tastebud for deadly-sweet dessert wines and V.Sattui's Madeira. The day finished off in a progressively more surreal-though-pleasant fashion and ended with me back in my hotel room, to sleep again. Friday morning I blew off a breakfast run for a leisurely morning and managed to get up and check out before noon. I was headed for the Exploratorium, but before I left I wanted to eat so I stopped in at the Marriott's restaurant and ordered lunch. As I sat, staring out the window at the impressive view, watching planes landing and leaping into the air, the hostess seated a small group behind me. I didn't take much notice of their conversation - it was the sort of pleasant chatter my parents (in their early-to-mid 50's) indulge in, business talk peppered with aches and pains and friends in the hospital. Plus, I was trying to not eavesdrop. But my mind was pleasantly unoccupied and I caught bits and pieces of what they said. Somehow, they drifted around to reminiscing about their youth, and a couple of them had been in the Haight-Ashbury area during the 60's and they got on the subject of MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY. It's hard not to hear a bunch of 50-somethings laughing medium to loud and reveling in saying MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY over and over and I eventually discerned that MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY was both a dessert and a restaurant - or something. (Seems some of the recollections of these good folk werre blurry for some reason or another that I'm sure none of us could possibly imagine.) Again and again - MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY - it involved chocolate and it was decadent. Brief aborted anecdotes about the 60's started and stopped and they would come back to MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY. I managed to not laugh (out loud) and also finish my lunch, pay the bill and meander off to my rental car. I glanced at their table as I passed - there were five of them and one or two looked a little sheepish. They just looked like normal adults - no graying ponytails or aging hippy paraphenalia. I stopped in the parking lot and write the phrase down because it is both memorable and oddly forgettable. There's nothing in my mind that really links MAGNOLIA to THUNDER PUSSY, so I kept losing the first word or replacing it with another "M" word. MEMORIAL THUNDER PUSSY... MIRACULOUS THUNDER PUSSY... MAIDEN THUNDER PUSSY... MONDO THUNDER PUSSY... Even after I wrote it down, I kept forgetting it and trying to remember all afternoon. I met up with some folks at the Exploratorium, which was great fun as usual. (MISTER THUNDER PUSSY...) Also as usual, my timing in leaving the place sucked and I spent several hours in one long continuous traffic jam (which was probably about a dozen local jams, but I was traveling a fair distance) as I headed north to the wedding location. Several hours with the true insanity of California drivers - yipes. I have never seen anyone, much less such a large group of people take an illegal U-turn so personally. Serious freaks. (MEEK THUNDER PUSSY...) The scenery was lovely, even if it was sort of crispy brown. (MARGERINE THUNDER PUSSY...) I enjoyed the drive, enjoyed the wedding the next day (Saturday), enjoyed the reception. The day after the wedding (Sunday), I bought a couple maps and managed to plot myself a route from Santa Rosa over to the famous Route 1 (talk about miserable, evil California drivers - I was only on 1 for a couple of miles, but they were unbelievable). I pulled over, walked down to the beach, walked back up again, watched a perfect sunset, ate a pack of Oreo's, experienced a 30' temperature change, and had no deep thoughts whatsoever. (MELANIN THUNDER PUSSY...) Drove back down to San Francisco on Monday and flew home feeling much calmer and pretty much completely forgot about MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY. Over the past few months, I've remembered it a couple of times (MILLENIUM THUNDER PUSSY), but never while in front of a computer. But today, I did remember and I fired up a search engine. Then another, and then another. Turns out that there's a famous Ohio-based record store called Magnolia Thunder Pussy - magnolia.thunderpussy.com is their URL - and it's hard to find anything about those three words without running across these guys. (I even found the owner's teenage daughter's web page). But they don't have anything on the site that refers to the California dessert/restaurant. I did finally use the right set of words (I was mixing the phrase MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY with variations on "dessert" "restaurant" "Haight" "Ashbury" "60's" and finally dropped the THUNDER PUSSY) to get to something useful out of GOOGLE at http://www.magnoliapub.com/pub/history.html ...which gave me enough words to find a few other brief mentions. It turns out that Magnolia Thunderpussy was a burlesque dancer who ran an eponymous dessert delivery business out of the 1398 Haight Street address from 1967-1969 (although the space had been many things before, including the Drugstore Cafe, and has been many things since). The desserts were memorable for two reasons (1) they were rich and delicious and (2) they were of an erotic nature, which stoked the interest of the rich and famous (particularly rock stars) of the time and helped with Ms. Thunderpussy's fame. A restaurant called "Dish" (which might have been so named for Ms. Thunderpussy's radio gig as a gossip columnist) followed. The lady herself has been refered to as a "crusty" mother figure to the flower children. She died on May 15th, 1996. An SFC quote called her "the lost beauty, the queen of the underground." Three years ago, the space changed again to become the Magnolia Pub & Brewery, and they're the ones who run the web page, although only a couple of the details about Magnolia herself are there. But the page has a nice, detailed history of the Haight that's worth checking out if you're interested. I had this dream once, where a wizard was teasing me about why creatures of great knowledge and wisdom hide away - it's so they can choose the stories that they follow. Because - given the right (omniscient or at least very knowledgeable) perspective - the temptation to follow all the stories can become a compulsion that will drive you crazy. MAGNOLIA THUNDER PUSSY gave me that feeling - a story I wanted to chase down the details on, but one that I would never really understand because I didn't experience it. And it also reminded me of the tension between unraveling a mystery (which changes it from a mystery to something else, like a memory or a story) and just enjoying something mysterious. Kelly J. 15 January 2001