March 27, 2009 Winston’s Beach Club, San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia
Moon­al­ice poster by Alexan­dra Fischer

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, San Diego was home to Goldfin­ger Moon­al­ice, a trail­blazer in the surf­ing busi­ness. You may not be aware of Goldfin­ger Moon­al­ice. He was a lousy hemp farmer, but a fan­tas­tic surfer. A true beach boy in the days before Brian Wil­son. But Goldfinger’s great­est tal­ent was in the design of surf­boards. Moon­al­ice leg­end says Goldfinger’s were the most valu­able surf­boards ever cre­ated, and they attracted a cult fol­low­ing. Sadly, if you have not seen a Goldfin­ger board by now, you never will. They are all gone. Why? They were made of fan­tas­tic Afghani hash.

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, the peo­ple of San Diego have always favored water pipes. Is this true? We bring this up because we were perus­ing the leg­end for this town and came across the story of West­ern Moon­al­ice, a plumb­ing con­trac­tor in this town in the early part of the 20th cen­tury. West­ern acquired a plumb­ing sup­ply busi­ness and built a four-story build­ing at 215 Sev­enth Avenue to house it. In many ways, the West­ern Metal Sup­ply build­ing was a stan­dard ware­house. But it was spe­cial. The build­ing was con­structed to be a GIANT water pipe. West­ern and his friends would hang out on the roof — where the mouth­pieces were — smoke up a storm and enjoy the view. They are reputed to have got­ten so wasted that they thought they saw pro­fes­sional base­ball games on the ground below. Ridicu­lous. Who ever heard of peo­ple watch­ing base­ball from the roof of a Metal Sup­ply Building.

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, today is the 128th anniver­sary of the Moon­al­ice riot in Bas­ingstoke, Eng­land. The tribe is excep­tion­ally peace­ful. And excep­tion­ally lazy, which has his­tor­i­cally enabled them to avoid con­fronta­tion. But back in Eng­land in 1880, the Sal­va­tion Army came to Bas­ingstoke with an emo­tional and evan­gel­i­cal cam­paign against alco­hol. The tribe couldn’t care less about alco­hol, but it was a mem­ber of the Natives Against Tem­per­ance Orga­ni­za­tions — NATO for short — and hon­ored its oblig­a­tion to defend against lim­its on self-medication. Appar­ently, some Sal­va­tion Army guy rang his bell one time too many and the tribe rose up in protest. The Mayor had to read the Riot Act and call out troops to put down the riot. After­wards, the mayor invited every­one over to his place for a beer and a doobie.

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, San Diego is home to the Spreck­els Organ Pavil­ion, the world’s largest out­door organ. The pavil­ion resulted from the world’s largest organ trans­plant, but that’s another story. Named for a bass player named Spreck­els Moon­al­ice, the organ orig­i­nally con­sisted of 3,400 pipes. What could a Moon­al­ice do with 3,400 pipes? Give that some thought. Recently, they expanded the organ to 4,518 pipes. The per­cent­age change matches recent growth in San Diego’s pop­u­la­tion. Coin­ci­dence? We think not.

Are you famil­iar with anapes­tic tetram­e­ter? We’ll give you a hint. There’s no cure for it. Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, La Jolla was home to the great­est poet of the 20th Cen­tury: Theodore Giesel, also known as Doc­tor Seuss. Moon­al­ice leg­end is ambigu­ous on this point, but we believe the good doc­tor was a Moon­al­ice on his mother’s side. His books con­vey so much of the Moon­al­ice phi­los­o­phy that we believe Hor­ton, Lit­tle Cats X Y and Z, and other Seuss char­ac­ters are drawn from real life in the tribe. How else do you explain Green Eggs? A civ­i­liza­tion that lives on a speck of dust? He described him­self as “sub­ver­sive as hell.” He wrote mostly in anapes­tic tetram­e­ter, a meter that goes “soft, soft, hard, soft, soft hard.” To Doc­tor Seuss, the man who taught Doc­tor Steve Parish every­thing he knows. Stage plot reversed.

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