1
Billie Holiday and Orson Welles were
responsible for the only "man-made"
earthquake in the history of earth.
Traditionally, insurance companies
refer to earthquakes as
an "Act of God."
But the "man-made" earthquake
was an act of love and the date
was February 1, 1938.
2
February 1, 1938 was Langston Hughes' birthday.
On that day, the Harlem Renaissance poet
was thirty-six years old.
His birthday was celebrated in Harlem
by the most famous people on earth.
How do I know this?
The Amsterdam News, Harlem's daily newspaper,
provided the details.
An excerpt is to follow.
3
Half Of Harlem Was There
And So Was Half Of Hollywood.
The private party began on the eve
of Langston Hughes' 36th birthday.
The Cotton Club was hopping.
The gin was flowing.
The jazz did flow
and the dancers did
shake their money makers.
They shook them until there was almost one million dollars
stuffed into their bosomy bosoms and their bouncy bottoms.
John Wayne, Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway
Babe Ruth, Dorothy Parker, Bette Davis, Countee Cullen
were at the Cotton Club tonight in honor
of a distinguished Renaissance poet:
Harlem's LANGSTON HUGHES.
Cab Calloway entertained while Mae West shimmied
with Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City.
Then Frank Sinatra sang while Louis Armstrong played trumpet.
Eleanor Roosevelt danced with a pimp named Leroy.
Her husband, the President of the United States,could not attend
but sent the Vice-President in his place.
That was John Nance Garner and he won a trophy that night
for doing the Charleston and Cha-Cha simultaneously.
4
I play it cool
And dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive
My Motto
As I live and learn
Is dig and be dug in return
Langton Hughes wrote that.
If ever you write a poem as good–and concise–as MY MOTTO,
the President of the United States, or his ChaChaCharleston
representative, might attend your birthday party.
5
There was a Sleazy Does It HOTEL
right next door to the Cotton Club in Harlem.
During the thirty-six hour party, countless pairs
of birthday celebrants from the Cotton Club
either very secretly or very obviously
departed from the club to get sleazy.
There were probably trios of people and orgy-sized groups of people
doing the same thing but, according to this historian,
none of that can be confirmed.
The birthday boy had his eye on a dancer.
Her name was Banda La Bandita.
Langston Hughes winked
and Banda danced.
To rousing applause, she leaped into his arms
and he carried her next door–to Room 333.
Then they made love. Sleazy love.
They deserved more applause.
6
At the the
Sleazy Does It HOTEL–in room 666–
Orson Welles made love to Billie Holiday.
It was the morning of February 1, 1938.
The jazz singer was as talented and volatile
as the actor was volatile and talented.
Orson made love to Billie and Billie made love to Orson.
The process was repeated ten times.
They made the bed shake.
They made the street shake.
They made the earth quake!
Literally.
7
There was an earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter Scale.
The epicenter would come to be known
as "God's Whoppee Cushion."
The epicenter would be known as THE BANDA SEA.
The date was February 1, 1938.
You can look it up
According to Wikipedia, it was the ninth largest earthquake of the 20th Century.
But when the
Los Angeles Times published a list of the eighteen largest earthquakes
of the century, it ignored the BANDA SEA EARTHQUAKE,
despite the Banda's intensity qualifying it as the sixth
most violent shake of the planet.
In the Times' defense: how the hell can you respect the magnitude
of an 8.5 quake when nobody died?
There were no deaths on February 1, 1938 when the earth reverberated
from the magnitudinous, magnificent love-making in Harlem
next door to the world-famous Cotton Club.
A research paper found in the LCSoL archives
describes the Banda quake in the last chapter.
8
Neither child nor adult nor goat nor chicken died
as a result of this earthquake.
Not a building was destroyed when the earth shook
in "God's Whoopie Cushion" on February 1, 1938.
Yet, by magnitude, it was the ninth largest earthquake
of the twentieth century.
It erupted in the Banda Sea, an obscure
and remote tributary of the Pacific Ocean.
The Banda is located hundreds of miles
from anything resembling civilization.
Coincidentally, In the early morning hours
of the February 1, 1938 earthquake,
Langston Hughes was making love
to a dancer named Banda.
Good thing he didn't make love
to a dancer named Coney Island.
But the BANDA SEA EARTHQUAKE might never have happened
if Billie Holiday & Orson Welles didn't have volcanic orgasms that night.
It would be wrong to regard this tremor
as a "man-made" earthquake because, in addition
to two men, two women inspired it.
One of those women was Billie Holiday
who was good enough to inspire
a grasshopper to wear
a gorilla suit.
Excerpted from the Lewis Carroll School of Logic Research Paper #142857
