Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy

An Essay from Chuck Klosterman IV

Chuck Klosterman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781451624854
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television, this essay is about Val Kilmer.

CALL ME “LIZARD KING.” NO … REALLY. I INSIST.

When I was leaving Val Kilmer’s ranch house, he gave me a present. He found a two-page poem he had written about a melancholy farmer, and he ripped it out of the book it was in (in 1988, Val apparently published a book of free-verse poetry called My Edens After Burns). He taped the two pages of poetry onto a piece of cardboard and autographed it, which I did not ask him to do. “This is my gift to you,” he said. I still possess this gift. Whenever I stumble across those two pages, I reread Val Kilmer’s poem. Its theme is somewhat murky. In fact, I can’t even tell if the writing is decent or terrible; I’ve asked four other people to analyze its merits, and the jury remain polarized. But this is what I will always wonder: Why did Val Kilmer give me this poem? Why didn’t he just give me the entire book? Was Kilmer trying to tell me something?

The man did not lack confidence.

CRAZY THINGS SEEM NORMAL, NORMAL THINGS SEEM CRAZY
(JULY 2005)

“I just like looking at them,” Val Kilmer tells me as we stare at his bison. “I liked looking at them when I was a kid, and I like looking at them now.” The two buffalo are behind a fence, twenty-five feet away. A 1,500-pound bull stares back at us, bored and tired; he stomps his right hoof, turns 180 degrees, and defecates in our general direction. “Obviously, we are not seeing these particular buffalo at their most noble of moments,” Kilmer adds, “but I still like looking at them. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m part Cherokee. There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian—the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animal.”

Val Kilmer tells me he used to own a dozen buffalo, but now he’s down to two. Val says he named one of these remaining two ungulates James Brown, because it likes to spin around in circles and looks like the kind of beast who might beat up his wife. I have been talking to Kilmer for approximately three minutes; it’s 5:20 P.M. on April Fool’s Day. Twenty-four hours ago, I was preparing to fly to Los Angeles to interview Kilmer on the Sunset Strip; this was because Val was supposedly leaving for Switzerland (for four months) on April 3. Late last night, these plans changed entirely: suddenly, Val was not going to be in L.A. Instead, I was instructed to fly to New Mexico, where someone would pick me up at the Albuquerque airport and drive me to his 6,000-acre ranch. However, when I arrived in Albuquerque this afternoon, I received a voicemail on my cell phone; I was now told to rent a car and drive to the ranch myself. Curiously, his ranch is not outside Albuquerque (which I assumed would be the case, particularly since Val himself suggested I fly into the Albuquerque airport). His ranch is actually outside of Santa Fe, which is seventy-three miles away. He’s also no longer going to Switzerland; now he’s going to London.

The drive to Santa Fe on I-25 is mildly Zen: there are public road signs that say “Gusty Winds May Exist.” This seems more like lazy philosophy than travel advice. When I arrive in New Mexico’s capital city, I discover that Kilmer’s ranch is still another thirty minutes away, and the directions on how to arrive there are a little confusing; it takes at least forty-fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy
• More by Chuck Klosterman