No Soap, GHB, or Why The Germs Shouldn't Mix with Dr. Bronner
More proof that the End Times are nigh: Rock stars (well, never-quite-made-it-as-such former junkie drummers of mythic punk bands) are being arrested for carrying soap!
Granted, it's a hemp-oil soap and the cops say the container was filled with a date-rape drug. But still…
From the LA Times:
[Don] Bolles, 50, whose real name is Jimmy Michael Giorsetti, said in an interview that he and his girlfriend were driving to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting Wednesday evening when police pulled over his 1968 Dodge van for a broken taillight.
Inside the vehicle, police found a toiletry kit containing denture glue, razors and a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap.
When a field test of the alleged liquid peppermint soap indicated it was GHB, a date-rape drug, Bolles was arrested on suspicion of felony narcotics possession…
The Germs, a trailblazing punk ban formed in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, are credited with influencing generations of musicians and popularizing mohawks. Bolles took his name from Arizona Republic journalist Don Bolles, who was killed in 1976 by a car bomb while investigating corruption….
But the idea of finding GHB in a Dr. Bronner's product is "beyond belief," Bronner said. "The field test must have been flawed or tampered with."
Is it possible Bolles was using the soap bottle to carry the drug?
No way, Bronner said. With a definitive test of the bottle's contents coming soon from the Orange County Crime Lab, "it would be ridiculous for Bolles to be lying," Bronner said.
Bolles, a onetime heroin addict…dismissed the idea that he would carry GHB. "A date-rape drug is the last thing I need," he said. "If anything, I need a way to keep the girls off of me. They make my girlfriend mad."
I hope Bolles is exonerated and it sounds like he should have checked out the Flex Your Rights video a long time ago–how do you go from a citation for a broken tail light to what sounds like a full-car search? At the same time, Dr. Bronner's faith in the truth-telling propensities of former heroin addicts and rock musicians is nothing short of, er, touching.
The whole soap opera here. Best line in the story? "'I've been using Dr. Bronner's for 35 years,' he said Tuesday, adding that the organic ingredients help give him the complexion of a 15-year-old girl."
Wonderful, scarifying, depressing, and exhilirating account of "the short life and fast times of Darby Crash and the Germs," partly authored by Bolles, here.
