Syd wants to be a star!

I love Gramercy. It’s like a set for The Odd Couple—the one on TV with Randall and Klugman (my personal fave).

When I first got here, I just lay around the room—napping, listening to Slackr on a net book, reading all the Liz Taylor tributes and staring at photo spreads.

But now, I am light. I am happy. I’m walking on air as I stroll down Third Avenue on my way to the East Village.

In fact, sometimes I just laugh out loud (Hey, it’s New York; nobody gives a shit).

I’m laughing—gales of happy, joy-drenched laughter of the Gods—because my time has come.

I’m in the shape of my life. I’m cranking out poems and fragments like crazy, Daddy.

I’m planning some readings in New York (No, I’m sorry; no specific dates yet, but I got some things in the works. Don’t you freakin’ worry about me, Bucky Boy).

I am going to peddle a savage little chapbook—and enough marketing tie-ins (e.g., Syd Amerika t-shirts, Syd Amerika mouse pads, maybe even those killer brownies I’m known for) to choke a giraffe, my friends.

And what could be the Culmination? The Apotheosis of Syd in the Sun? Even better, a pretext for a triumphant return to L.A.?

It would be a Syd Amerika one-man show. See, as Owen Gleiberman recognizes, Charlie Sheen may be blowing it with his current crappy tour.

I totally recommend, dear readers, that you check out “Charlie Sheen at Radio City Music Hall: He’s not winning anymore. He’s losing, big time,” posted by Owen Gleiberman April 9 at insidetv.ew.com.

By the way, as I write these deathless words, I’m sitting in my room at the Carlton, but I’m going nuts to get out and walk downtown. I want to wander about and have my own semi-private Be-In, you dig me? So I have GOT to finish this damned column in about 15 minutes, then I’m free.

Anyway, Gleiberman nailed it:

“In the early stages of [Sheen’s] madman meltdown phase, when he played the talk shows like a seasoned provocateur, or even on his public-access-style Webcasts, he created the sex-and-dope version of a Howard Beale mad-as-hell moment. He held out the prospect of danger, of saying the things that we aren’t allowed to say. And that, let’s be honest, became — at least to some of us — an addictive prospect, a slumming form of performance-art entertainment for an overly controlled, rule-bound, PR-driven, terminally politically correct, spin-cycle America. Which leads one to ask: What does a Howard Beale who has already had his mad-as-hell eruption do for an encore?”

Hey, if Sheen can’t cut it as the new Howard Beale, let me take a crack at it. I’m mad as hell, or can be for a price! I can be crazy. And I come cheaper than Charlie, because I don’t have a mansion and a bunch of cars and a whole bunch of women to take care of.

I am rested and ready. Look for that chapbook. It’s coming soon, hepcats!

And I am going to put together a little spoken-word road show with enough flash and enough gimmick and enough AWESOME, ANGRY, GORGEOUS verse to take the tops of your heads off.

I accept your Hosannahs, Dear readers. Thank you. Thank you.

But right now I’m going to bust a move down to the St. Marks bookstore.

And I need to call Aubrey, my so-called or might-be book agent, for a cocktail.

Peace out, y’all!!

(One more time, I love you, Elizabeth, wherever you are. Syd will always miss you. And I will never forget our Midnight Assignation after Merv’s party at the ranch. I’ll see you soon, when I return to the City of Angels—the western gateway, the Sun-Splashed Gomorrah and, the Gods help me, my spiritual home.)

Syd Amerika has a gift for gab and a vaudeville trunk full of memories. He is a graduate of the Ed Anger School of Journalism in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He is a former consultant to felon and presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche. Send your comments to editor@bhamweekly.com.