"Light My Fire"

JIM MORRISON CRUCIFIED IN MIAMI COURTROOM

From Paul

I received an e-mail yesterday asking me to join the campaign to secure a posthumous pardon for Jim Morrison of The Doors.

What do I have to do with Morrison's 1970 conviction for lewd conduct during a concert in Miami? Well, in those days, I was a wet-behind-the-ears criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald, a once-great newspaper. And the last case I covered before entering law school was the trial of The Doors' lead singer.
JIM MORRISON LEAVING COURTROOM OF JUDGE MURRAY GOODMAN DURING MIAMI TRIAL

The e-mail came from Dave Diamond, a cable TV producer in Dayton, Ohio who at 34 years old, wasn't yet born when Jim Morrison either did or didn't drop his pants and expose himself during the Miami concert. There's more about the pardon effort in The Doors Collector Magazine.

Little Known Fact Number One. The reason our very own Jim Born attended Florida State was to follow in the footsteps of his idol, fellow Seminole, Jim Morrison.

Little Known Fact Number Two. Our Jim tried to start a band made up of fellow cops. He wanted to call it "The Sex Pistols," and was disappointed to learn that someone else was already using the name.

Little Known Fact Number Three. Jim Born formed a band anyway, but simply called it, "The Sex Shotguns."

The Miami Herald a/k/a "The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper" reported on Diamond's efforts last week:

[Florida Gov. Charlie] Crist can't pardon someone by himself. He needs two of the three other members of the Florida Cabinet, which acts as the clemency board. Plus there are no procedures to request a posthumous pardon.

Morrison was charged days after a chaotic concert at Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove in March 1969. The singer gave rambling monologues, cursed and exhorted concertgoers to have sex with each another. Morrison was also alleged to have pulled down his pants and feigned masturbation, which he denied doing. The trial featured contradictory accounts. He was eventually acquitted of a felony charge of lewd and lascivious behavior, but was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity. [Naked Authors are shitfaced with embarrassment to note that "profanity" was a crime back then, Florida coming late to the notion of the First Amendment.]

In his letter to Crist, Diamond noted that former New York Gov. George Pataki pardoned the late comedian Lenny Bruce on an obscenity conviction.

''It's not about Jim Morrison's image as the Lizard King or The Doors music,'' said Diamond. ``It's about a citizen of Florida who was convicted in a case where the law was not applied.''

My fading recollection is that the trial was a travesty, and that the evidence was conflicting and confused as to what Morrison did. The singer died of heart failure in a Paris bathtub before his appeal could be heard. I wonder if he would even want the pardon request pursued.

AUTHOR APPEARANCES DROPPED FROM PRINT OF EDITION OF L.A. TIMES
We got our first taste of the "new" Los Angeles Times Book Section Sunday...which is to say...the disappearing book section. It's being folded into the "Opinion" Section. First to be jettisoned, the "Book Calendar." So, if you want to know where Naomi Hirahara, Diana Wagman, and Denise Hamilton are discussing "Los Angeles Noir" tonight, you have to go to the Times' on-line book pages. (It's the Barnes & Noble on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica).

On the plus side, the website is being beefed up. Critic Sarah Weinman, who blogs at "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind" is writing a monthly crime fiction column. (I wish it were weekly). On Sunday, she probed the phenomenon of ghostwriters in the mystery field. Also promised by Times Books Editor David Ulin are future columns by Ed Park (Science Fiction) and Sonja Bolle (children's books).

AND WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DISCOS?

I am so out of it, so un-hip, so retro, that I never knew the term “Yo Cos” until reading yesterday’s Washington Post (“In the Dating Scene, the Attraction is a Beautiful Mind.”) The gist of the story is that single “Young Cosmopolitans” are now hooking up at library events, lectures, and museums.

Great. But whatever happened to discos?

By Paul