Maurice and Me is a Tumblr blog by Randy Rose, lead singer of The Residents. The blog was active between February 2012 and January 2019, and often featured historical anecdotes about Rose's history with The Residents, as well as further context about Rose himself and projects including the video series In My Room and the Wonder of Weird live tour.
This page collects posts made to this blog in February 2012, archived from the original Tumblr page by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.
Blog posts[]
Saturday, February 4th 2012 (1)[]
Me -Randy
Tagged: #portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Saturday, February 4th 2012 (2)[]
This is Maurice. He lives with me.
Tagged: #animals, #cats.
The Maurices - Saturday, February 4th 2012 (3)[]
Actually it’s Maurice II. Before Maurice II there was Original Maurice.
Thursday, February 9th 2012[]
This is where I live in West LA. That’s my apartment in the middle on the right.
Tagged: #architecture, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Friday, February 10th 2012[]
"Aim at the high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect."
— Annie Oakley
Sunday, February 12th 2012 (1)[]
I like to take pictures. This a picture of me taking a picture of me. Okay! Whoa! I know some of my fans are probably saying, “Hey, Randy! What about the MIRROR PEOPLE!?! On the Talking Light tour you freaked out when you looked in a mirror. What’s the deal, man?”
So chill out already, okay! This is SHOW BUSINESS and I’m an ENTERTAINER! Of course I look at mirrors. How else could I put on makeup… or shave… or make sure I’m looking cool when I go and maybe meet some cute geezer squeezer and she wants to give me a BJ? Think about it!
Tagged: #portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Sunday, February 12th 2012 (2)[]
There’s a weird thing about being an obscure but kinda successful rock n'roll singer - it winds up giving you all this free time. I mean if you’re not touring or cutting a new album, what do you do? I like to go exploring and LA has lots of places to explore, like churches, amusement parks and cemeteries - those are some of my favorites.
Tagged: #Randy Rose, #The Residents.
EXPLORING LA - Part 1 - Monday, February 13th 2012 (1)[]
EXPLORING LA - Part 1
A few days ago I started exploring at The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
Tagged: #architecture
Monday, February 13th 2012 (2)[]
Now I don’t really care so much about religion, but it always amazes me what people will believe and those whacky Catholics are pretty much the world leaders when it comes to the loony and goony. They used to take young guys and cut off their balls because they liked the way they sang high parts, kind of like Michael Jackson I guess. Back in 1902 one of them was even recorded - his name was Alessandro Moreschi. For obvious reasons, he was not singing “Beat It.”
EXPLORING LA - Part 2 - Monday, February 13th 2012 (3)[]
EXPLORING LA - Part 2
Then I went to this place dedicated to the memories of dead people. I love cemeteries, but they always confuse me. Is it so hard to believe that people can just disappear - one day they’re here and the next day they’re gone - that we need physical reminders that they were ever actually here? Or do we create these places hoping that we will be remembered after we disappear? I guess it doesn’t matter, but I love them when they’re so pleasant and peaceful. Sometimes I go there to eat lunch.
Tagged: #landscape
EXPLORING LA - Part 3 - Wednesday, February 15th 2012 (1)[]
EXPLORING LA - Part 3
After the cemetery I went to an amusement park. It wasn’t one of the biggies - I hate those places. It was just a funky little one way out in the valley. I’d been exploring all day and it was starting to get dark.
EXPLORING LA - Part 4 - Wednesday, February 15th 2012 (2)[]
EXPLORING LA - Part 4
All day long I’d been thinking about the stuff people believe. Believing in God, believing in people that usually get better after they die, believing in having fun at an amusement park. And it actually worked for me - the fun part - but my kind of fun is not like normal people. I don’t ride the rides or try to win stuffed Snoopy dolls. I just walk around with my camera and take pictures. Sometimes I eat cotton candy.
EXPLORING LA - Part 5 - Wednesday, February 15th 2012 (3)[]
EXPLORING LA - Part 5
I watched this guy for a long time. He was repairing the lights on top of a Niagara Falls ride. The ride was probably 60 or 70 feet long and 15 feet tall and it had the entire Niagara Falls inside. No shit. There was a nice sunset that day.
Friday, February 17th 2012 (1)[]
"Love is a failure of the mind to understand nature."
— Hedy Lamarr (in “Comrade X”)
Friday, February 17th 2012 (2)[]
Okay, so I know I said the bit about me being afraid to look in a mirror was just show biz schtick, but people keep asking me about the ghost stuff. Well, the ghost stories were all REAL (more or less) and they scare the bejesus out of me. I also have more ghost stores than we used in the Talking Light show, so I’m putting the extra ones up here. Some are kind of long, so it may takes a few days to get them up.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 1 - Saturday, February 18th 2012[]
(This a picture of Chuck back in the 60’s. He was kind of shy even back then)
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 1
I only went to college for one year before dropping out but that was where I first met Chuck. After one loathsome semester in a dorm, I decided to move off campus and answered an ad from someone looking for a roommate - Chuck. After the repression of small college dorm life, I not only enjoyed the freedom of an apartment but Chuck and I really seemed to click as roommates.
But soon, three or four times a week, when we came home from school we noticed a tiny, dark and shadowy form sitting on a swing slowly moving back and forth on the locked and inaccessible front porch. The silent shape was so vague and lacking in presence that it took a while before we noticed, but once we we spotted the eerie form of our landlady, Mrs. Rutledge, silently swinging on the porch, the old woman became a constant topic of conversation.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #long reads, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 2 - Tuesday, February 21st 2012[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 2
The house was fairly large, but Chuck and I only had access to two bedrooms and the kitchen - and of course, the bathroom. None of these spaces were especially interesting - with one exception. The bathroom window above the tub faced out onto a porch that had long ago been enclosed and, by standing in the tub and peering out into the dimly lit back porch, a few pieces of furniture could be seen. The most notable of these objects immediately below the window was a bed, and on the bed… was a body. Of course, since the room was dark and the bed was covered by a spread, you couldn’t exactly see it, but the unmistakable shape of a reclining human form covered by a piece of cloth was obvious.
We were stunned. I mean, short of getting laid, what better thing could happen to a couple of young college guys than finding a corpse, lying in the shadows and just out of reach, on their back porch. Of course, we didn’t really think it was a body, but it was SOMETHING!… and we sure as hell didn’t know what it was, or how it got there - until it moved. It was a couple of months later; Chuck and I talked about the body a lot and showed it to our friends, but nothing changed, so we pretty much forgot about it - until one afternoon when I cut classes and went home early. I decided to take a bath and as I finished, I stood up, casually glanced out the window and found myself watching the now familiar lump of cloth - slowly moving up and down. The body was breathing. I was shaking so hard I could barely put my clothes on - I had to find Chuck. I mean, this was it… we were either moving out… or finding out what was under that bedspread - and no way was I going onto that porch by myself.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #long reads.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 3 - Wednesday, February 22nd 2012 (1)[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 3
I found Chuck in the student center. It took a few minutes to pry him away from the cute chick he was hustling, but as soon as he saw the look in my eyes, he knew something was up. As we walked back to the apartment, I explained what I had seen, but of course, when we got back to the bathroom and looked through the window, the body was no longer moving. Chuck wanted to believe me, but I could tell he wasn’t completely convinced, so I said there wasn’t any choice - we had to go into the porch. Something was back there and I had seen it breathing. I had to find out what it was.
There were two French doors that opened from the hallway onto the back porch and even though they were locked, Chuck and I were convinced that a small amount of pressure where the doors came together would almost certainly spring them open. So this was it - with Chuck right behind me, I grabbed the two doorknobs and firmly pushed; the twin panels resisted momentarily, but as I increased the pressure, the doors slowly parted.
As the opening appeared, the smell of stale, musty air hit us with an unmistakable force, as if shouting a warning: GO AWAY! Hesitant, we stood in the doorway, our eyes peering into the dim, shapeless gloom, aware that we had no choice, but still reluctant to move. WIth blood pounding in my ears and every nerve ending alive, I took a step onto the porch; nearing the bed, the feeling of disuse and decay was overpowering - how long had the tomb-like room been sealed off, and what would I find beneath the cover? Slowly I reached out, grabbed the spread, and after taking a deep breath, I cautiously removed the blanket, revealing - a pile of cloth. A PILE OF CLOTH!!! It was nothing more than a mound of old clothes, wadded up beneath the bedspread, but the lump of clothing was arranged in this odd, elongated way that made it look exactly like a body. I mean, this was even weirder than if it actually WAS A BODY! Obviously, someone had done this on purpose, but why? Why would someone create this crazy, corpse-like effigy and then leave it in this room that no one had used since FUCKING ROOSEVELT DIED? It didn’t make any sense… no sense at all.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #ghosts, #long reads.
Wednesday, February 22nd 2012 (2)[]
STOP THE PRESSES!
I will be doing a show with just me and a piano player at the Abrons Art Center in NYC from March 24-27. Here’s a link for anyone who wants to check it out: http://support.henrystreet.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AAC_PERF_the_residents
(This is a photo of me singing Livin’ La Vida Loca at a performance of Sam in Berkeley last fall. Photo by Elizabeth Gohr)
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 4 - Thursday, February 23rd 2012 (1)[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 4
Chuck and I put the bed back like it was, closed the doors, and went back to our part of the house. While Chuck laughed the whole thing off as a weird joke, if anything, I had become more obsessed than ever by the mystery surrounding the house and its curious owner, Mrs. Rutledge. According to local lore, the building had originally belonged to the old woman’s younger sister who, as the story went, died at an early age under somewhat strange circumstances. Weeks before, when we initially peered through the bathroom window, our speculation concluded that Baby Sister was still on the back porch, mummified and rotting away for some bizarre, unexplained reason, awaiting only the arrival of Alfred Hitchcock to make the tale complete. But there was no Baby Sister, only a pile of old and moldy clothes. Maybe it was a joke, but if it was, Mrs. Rutledge had a pretty sick sense of humor - I had to know more.
Okay, maybe there was no mystery. Maybe all I wanted was an escape, a diversion, something to occupy an overly active imagination. I wasn’t doing so great in school, my love life sucked, and as the semester went on, Chuck and I had sort of drifted apart. More than once he said I was drinking too much and I was getting tired of his criticism. It wasn’t like I was drunk all the time, but my moods had become darker and increasingly obsessed with Mrs Rutledge and the legend of Baby Sister. Hanging out at the apartment more and more, I soon noticed the landlady arrived every day at exactly the same time. An unmistakable event, the old woman’s appearance was announced by the arrival of her car, an immense old DeSoto, that almost appeared to be driving itself; but upon closer examination, Mrs. Rutledge’s tiny head could be seen peeking through the steering wheel. It was always the same: she parked in front of the house, let herself in, then appeared on the front porch, swinging in the dark.
But then, as I started paying more attention, I realized that the old lady would eventually disappear back into the house; the big DeSoto was still out there by the curb, so I knew she was still around, but where had she gone? What was she doing back in those musty, lifeless rooms for several hours every afternoon? I decided to find out.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #car, #long reads, #vintage.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 5 - Thursday, February 23rd 2012 (2)[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 5
I was convinced that Mrs. Rutledge’s daily disappearance into the murky and lifeless rooms of her sister’s house was somehow connected to the body shaped pile of clothes on the back porch - the same pile of clothes that I had seen breathing as I looked out the bathroom window several weeks earlier. By now I was familiar enough with the old woman’s habits that I knew exactly when she would arrive and when she would disappear back into the unused rooms, so I decided to wait and watch and find out exactly what she did. There was a closet in the back porch, so one afternoon shortly before her arrival time, I forced the French doors open again, closed them behind me and waited in the closet.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #long reads.
Friday, February 24th 2012 (1)[]
(Original Maurice)
Okay, okay… People keep asking me about Original Maurice. They say if this cat is Maurice II, what happened to Maurice I ? Well, the answer is I don’t really know. You see Original Maurice belonged to Evonette and me - Evonette was my fifth wife. We didn’t have any kids. We just had Original Maurice - then one day he disappeared. And not too long after that, Evonette disappeared. I was on tour and when I came back nobody was there - no Maurice, no Evonette, nobody. Needless to say I was kind of bummed. After a while I decided to move and when I started taking stuff out of my closet, there was Original Maurice, right up on a shelf, all dried up. He didn’t stink or anything, so I decided to keep him. He was a cool cat.
Tagged: #animals, #art, #long reads, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 6 - Friday, February 24th 2012 (2)[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Part 6
Detached and uninterested in school, I had been staying up late at night so I guess I had nodded out when the old woman finally arrived, because all of sudden I heard Mrs. Rutledge’s voice. The closet door had vents that allowed me to peek out and barely see the shadowy form of Mrs. Rutledge kneeling at the side of the bed, less than two feet from me. She was praying:
“Dear Lord, here I am again. Please take me this time. I know you have been punishing me for what I did and I guess it was wrong, but please Dear Lord, I think it’s been long enough. Please take me and let me return to the loving embrace of my sweet Baby Sister. It’s been a long time and I know she must need me like she always did, especially after what happened… Papa always said, "A sharp blade cuts clean!”… but SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE WHAT SHE DID!! But if you can forgive me, I know I can forgive her. Please take me away from this living hell of a life. I see her pitiful face every day and can’t eat hamburgers any more because of it. Please, Dear Lord, please… Amen.“
At that point, with her prayers completed, Mrs. Rutledge pulled the bedspread back, gently removed the pile of clothes, leaned back onto the bed and covered herself with the spread. Completely still, the melancholy landlady laid upon her dead sister’s bed in total silence for two hours, and then began to cry. Her soft weeping sound filled the room for about ten minutes until old lady Rutledge finally sat up, replaced the pile of her sister’s clothes and left the room.
(to be continued)
Tagged: #long reads, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Friday, February 24th 2012 (3)[]
Here’s another picture of me in costume for Sam’s Enchanted Evening, the show I will be doing in NYC in about a month. That’s Raoul in the background - he plays piano with me. This photo is from a photo session; it’s not actually from the show. (photo by Josh Keppel)
Click here if you want to know more: http://support.henrystreet.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AAC_PERF_the_residents
Tagged: #Randy Rose, #The Residents, #portrait.
Friday, February 24th 2012 (4)[]
This is Paint It Black, which I will be doing in my show in NYC at the end of March. This is a demo version, not the way it actually sounds in the show, which is only me and Raoul the piano player. The talking is stuff from the performance.
Click here if you want to find out more: http://support.henrystreet.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AAC_PERF_the_residents
Tagged: #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Final Part - Monday, February 27th 2012[]
SEARCHING FOR BABY SISTER - Final Part
Dropping out a few weeks later, this would be my last semester of college. My downward spiral of romantic failure, cut classes and drinking had only been accelerated by my bizarre encounter with Mrs. Rutledge and the memories of her long dead Baby Sister. Finding out far more than I wanted to know, I looked no further. Years later I still have no idea if the old woman’s strange behavior represented anything beyond the personal demons of a warped and tormented mind, but I know it took many years to get her out of my mind.
One more thing - Mrs. Rutledge had several apartments in that small college town and at the end of every school year, she presented one the students with the “Rutledge Top Tenant Award.” I was the recipient of this award my last semester at school. The prize was a straight razor with my initials engraved on it.
Tagged: #long reads, #portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Wednesday, February 29th 2012 (1)[]
Okay, so people have been saying, “Hey Randy! So how come you’re living in L.A.? I thought The Residents were from San Francisco.” Well, it’s a good question, I guess. It’s true that I lived in the Bay Area for most of my life, but then when I got involved with Cheetah - Cheetah was my 8th wife - she said I had to move to L.A. She said that with my voice, I could make a fortune doing voice overs and she had an agent friend who could get me tons of work - so I moved to L.A. And sure as shit, he did get me some work, doing things like industrial videos and commercials for drag races and stuff like that. But the really big one was the voice of the donkey in Shrek. No shit! I got FOUR CALLBACKS and my agent said I had it - until that asshole Eddie Murphy decided he wanted the gig. I was bummed and then of course Cheetah and I broke up (her real name was Martha.)
Tagged: #gif, #portrait, #The Residents, #Randy Rose.
Wednesday, February 29th 2012 (2)[]
So this is a picture of Maurice watching the sunset from the building next door a couple of days ago. Do cats actually look at the sunset? It doesn’t seem like a cat kinda thing, but Maurice seems to. Once when I was sitting on a big rock overlooking Yosemite Valley, a chipmunk came by and I wondered if it even noticed the spectacular view that was its everyday wallpaper, but I figured probably not. But I’m pretty sure Maurice is smarter than a chipmunk.
Tagged: #animals, #cats.
Wednesday, February 29th 2012 (3)[]
"I’m not a CIA agent. I’m a mother looking for her son."
— Ashley Judd in “Missing”