A Punch Line and an Exit

On a sunny weekend afternoon, the members of the Los Angeles Cacophony Society sit in semi-darkness beneath the old pinatas at a Highland Park bar called Mr. T’s. This is their first meeting of 2002, their first gathering in at least four months. They are here to pick up the pieces.

Cacophonists are part of a loose network of underground societies, with “lodges” in about a dozen U.S. cities. For the last decade, the L.A. group has been one of the most active in the country.

But last spring, Al Ridenour, a.k.a. “Reverend Al,” stepped down from his post as Grand Instigator and Supreme Leader. “I felt that the original iconoclastic energy had given way to timeworn jokes and stale excuses for socializing,” Ridenour, 40, said recently over a sandwich at Philippe’s French Dip, a favorite cacophonist gathering spot because of the clown photos that adorn one wall. Clowns are icons for cacophonists, who aspire to “live life as fools.”

In the last 10 years, many of the original members have mellowed as they reach their 40s. The world has grown more corporate, and the corporations quickly co-opt underground movements. Furthermore, some once-thrilling ideas--such as unfurling a “Just Quit” sign at Mile 22 of the marathon and offering tired runners doughnuts, beer, cigarettes and beef jerky--have become humdrum.

At this meeting, on a Saturday in January, the cacophonists are in the midst of an existential crisis: Can they carry on without their leader, or are they aimless, as lost as the Merry Pranksters without Ken Kesey?

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“Cacophony Societies are disorganized groups of klowns, guerrilla artists, kitsch hounds, slackers and noisemakers in search of experiences beyond the mainstream.... We go wherever there are some raw materials from which we can make our dada.... You may already be a member.”

--From the Los Angeles Cacophony Society Web site, at la.cacophony.org.

L.A. cacophonists have staged Laundromat poetry readings, picnics on earthquake faults and field trips to cryonics companies.

At the L.A. Pet Cemetery in Calabasas they have visited the markers of luminaries ranging from Tom Mix’s horse, Tony, to Blinkey, the frozen chicken interred by artist Jeffrey Vallance. They have parodied far-out theories about the Kennedy assassination, holding what they called “an unprecedented orgy of paranoia and disinformation.” True to their anticonsumerist underpinnings, they have engaged in reverse shoplifting, planting everything from “Bobbitt dog chews” to Cement-Cuddlers--teddy bears filled with cement--in various retail outlets, only to watch as confused cashiers would struggle to ring up the strange merchandise.

One time a group of the urban pranksters descended on Universal Studios’ squeaky-clean CityWalk Mall sporting tattered garments they had barbecued in a park the day before. CityWalk should reflect L.A.’s apocalyptic soul, they reasoned, including its poverty and grit. Unfortunately, visitors just assumed the cadre of charred outcasts were human billboards for the “Backdraft” ride.

“We subvert prime-time reality,” said cacophonist Robert Moss, 45, a part-time actor and computer consultant. “When we rent a club and put on a show, that’s fun, too. But the real nut of Cacophony is going out in public places--where everyone goes and knows what to expect--and doing pranks.”

The history of the Cacophony Society, which exists for the most part as an oral tradition, is as slippery as a water-logged rat skittering through a maze of city drainage tunnels--something local cacophonists have been known to do. The group was founded 15 years ago in San Francisco. Ridenour discovered Cacophony in 1991 and decided to import it to L.A. He planned a bogus UFO landing. At a local convocation of saucerheads, Ridenour passed out fliers announcing the landing at a beachfront park.

Near the airport, Ridenour, who confesses a fascination with all things religious, staked out a giant landing pad, constructed a 20-foot foil cross, burned incense and decorated the scene with religious icons. He donned a clerical collar and called himself Rev. Al. The curious and crazy came, his nom de guerre stuck, and the Los Angeles Cacophony Society was born.

You may never have heard of the cacophonists, but you may have heard of some of the people and events they claim to have inspired. The list includes novelist Chuck Palahniuk, author of the anticonsumerist novel “Fight Club,” who is said to have frequented meetings of the Portland Cacophony Society, the San Francisco event that was the precursor of Burning Man, and Santacon, the folkloric fatman frolic that originated in San Francisco nine years ago--and features squads of drunken Santas climbing on buses, going to strip clubs and engaging in other un-Santa-like behavior.

The cacophonists are part of an avant-garde tradition descended from Dada, the profoundly influential artistic movement that started in Zurich and swept Europe and the U.S. in the second and third decades of the 20th century in reaction to the social upheaval that followed World War I. Dadaists aimed to provoke. The spirit of Dada was in events: cabaret performances, demonstrations, declarations, confrontations, the distribution of leaflets and what we now call “guerrilla theater.”

“It seems like they are in this tradition of cultural resistance, provocation, epater le bourgeoisie,” said sociologist Jeffrey Halley, a professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio, who focuses on European and American avant-garde movements.

Unlike some of their predecessors, however, cacophonists are not political. “We are not anarchists. We are not left wing,” Moss said. “We comment on culture.”

Most, in fact, are products of the middle-class sensibility against which they rebel. Many work in obscure jobs on the edges of the entertainment industry. Cacophonist Eric Harris, a.k.a. Grammarian, described the group as “those guys in high school in the A.V. club, kind of nerdy, who bring the 16-millimeter film projector to class. Misfits.”

Sociologists say marginal groups such as the cacophonists often serve an important social function, bringing attention to what one academic called “the details of domination” in the culture. That function, however, can often only be discerned in hindsight.

“They create ideas that are out there, waiting to be discovered,” said Clarence Lo, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri who studies social movements. “The more groups like this, the more we begin to rethink those ... things we take for granted.”

Halley agreed: “They are testifying to something about American society, and that is extremely important. As a reality, as a critique, as a record.”

In its mid-1990s heyday, the Cacophony Society held two to four events a month. Ridenour estimates he spent 40 hours a week writing newsletters, distributing fliers and overseeing construction of elaborate papier mache props. He even transformed rooms of his house into impromptu theater spaces.

“This is a kind of war against the culture of buying Nikes and making your kids watch Barney,” said Ridenour.

Eventually, Ridenour found it difficult to carry on his full-time job as an animator. He burned through his personal savings staging events. (He now works as a freelance journalist specializing in offbeat stories and occasionally writes for The Times.)

And the adrenaline rush began to wear off. Take Santacon. Once, the event was a handful of madmen in Santa suits, running the streets, risking arrest. Over time it grew into a multiple city happening--with hundreds of Santas roaming the streets not only around Los Angeles, but also in Portland, Brooklyn and even London. “In a weird way, it became traditional,” Ridenour said. “It became too traditional. It became expected. It’s like the anti-holiday that is everyone’s holiday favorite.”

Sometime around fall of 2000, Ridenour just seemed to lose steam. The Web postings grew old, the activities petered out. Then, in perhaps the ultimate cacophonist act, he turned the group’s philosophy upon itself and pranked his fellow cacophonists. “I wanted it to go down in a fireball,” Ridenour said. “I wanted it to end. I looked at cacophony as a big theatrical extravaganza, so I wanted a big end to it all.”

So, after the final night of the Museum of Mental Decay, the cacophonists’ twisted version of a Halloween haunted house, in October 2000, Ridenour reported on the group’s Web site the grisly death of a member in a drunk driving accident. (That member had actually moved to New Orleans.) Professing pain and spiritual confusion, he faked his own conversion to “Christian anarchy.”

Some members fell for the prank; chaos ensued. “I heard him say more than once he wanted to do a prank that would make the group self-destruct,” said 42-year-old Al Guerrero, a.k.a. Al Pastor, Al Qaeda or Al Fresco. “We felt it was an aggressive act, an act of desperation, an act of finality. It was like an internal time bomb.”

After that, “Rev. Al” went into retirement.

For months, until the meeting at Mr. T’s, the group was in disarray.

In the bar’s gloom, cacophonists lay their calendars on the table, scribble save-the-date notes and request volunteers. Numbering about 18, they could be PTA members divvying up duties for back-to-school night.

Out of the shadows wafted whispers of the subversive: How about a Mexican Night, with fake INS raids and faux day laborers? A field trip to L. Ron Hubbard’s museum, in full nautical regalia? A weekend caravan of campers to bring paint and encouragement to Leonard Knight, who lives by the Salton Sea, painting a mountain of stone with Bible verses?

The freaks and misfits had their energy back. But few of the ideas were fresh. Most of the proposed events were staged performances, not the daring Dada to which cacophonists once aspired.

“That’s something Rev. Al disliked,” said Kim Cooper, Cacophony’s newly appointed public relations person, invoking Ridenour as if he were Mao, Fidel or God. “The recycling of events.”

Excited members called the recent meeting a renaissance.

Privately, though, some members concede Ridenour’s concerns are legitimate. “As you age, you are not as daring,” said Guerrero. “That’s just a sign of growing up. There was a time when most of the events could get you arrested, or you would wind up running away from the police at the end.”

No longer.

At the height of the controversy over the fate of Belmont Learning Complex, built on an environmentally suspect site downtown, Harris tried to plan a nighttime trip to the school to see if there really was toxic waste at the site, and to plant some if there wasn’t. “We were going to break in, look inside the classrooms,” Guerrero recalled. “But in the end it turned out people were just too nervous.”

Joe Austin, a professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, said the cacophonists’ plight is not unusual. “Almost all avant-garde groups have some charismatic leader, living on the border of a self-destructive life because of what they are involved in. Usually there are a lot of other people in their wake, sort of like lieutenants and soldiers. But that immediately sets up the problem of reproduction. There is no one to take over after they get tired.”

It may be too early to tell, but maybe the society’s time has passed. As Halley, the Texas sociologist, put it: “They are not a movement, but a moment.”