Posted on 09/02/2002 7:29:14 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Okay, I tried to track down some of the Merry Pranksters mentioned in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” so that they might participate in our discussion on this book on September 9. However, I have been unable to contact any of them so in the spirit of the Merry Pranksters, who in 1965 hung a banner in front of Ken Kesey’s La Honda home that said “THE MERRY PRANKSTERS WELCOME THE BEATLES,” I am now hanging this virtual banner in Cyberspace---“THE FREE REPUBLIC WELCOMES THE MERRY PRANKSTERS.”
Hopefully this message will carry across the Cyberspace ether and reach Mountain Girl, Ken Babbs, Gretchen Fetchen, Owsley, The Hermit, George Walker, Hugh Romney, Norman Hartweg, Hagen, Doris Delay, Zonker, Black Maria, etc..
I will also be sending this thread to Tom Wolfe’s publishers. They told me that he usually doesn’t do such events but, hey, there’s an EXCEPTION to every rule.
If any of you happen to know the Merry Pranksters or know someone who knows the Merry Pranksters, please pass this thread along to them. Hopefully on September 9 (or soon afterwards) we can WELCOME THE MERRY PRANKSTERS!!!
Oh, and on October 14 our next book assignment is due. It will be a big change of pace---“Homage To Catalonia” by George Orwell.
Your birthday is September 9?
Then send them this thread. I did my part by tossing this "banner" up into Cyberspace. From this point, the only e-mail I will personally send is to the publishers of Tom Wolfe's book to pass along this thread to Tom Wolfe.
Heh, where do you come up with this stuff?
As I explained at the beginning of this thread, I got this idea for hanging out a virtual banner in cyberspace from Tom Wolfe's own book. Rather than try to laborious task of tracking down the Pranksters I just toss this "banner" out into the cyberspace ether and hopefully the invitation will reach them one way or another.
Videos of Kesey's films are being released, I wonder how much (if any) of that material Tom Wolfe viewed while he was writing the book.
There are also some interesting recordings of Neal Cassidy behind the wheel shifting gears (physically and mentally), talking non-stop.
Go ahead and send him this thread.
Kesey's dead for one. He'd hate FR.
Ken Babbs is still around I think.
Wavy Gravy danced around when Clinton won holding a picture of ol Bill with a beard in the 60's and a caption reading, "my president", or some such.
That's your merry prankster.
Do a seance with Neal Cassidy, that'd be better.
No. He thought they were unpatriotic morons.
He was right.
No.
He'd tripped with Leary just the same time period.
Kerouac was never an anti-American idiot. He was self destructive, but knew enough to appreciate America and know communism was not good.
I came to FR to get away from this sort of hippy dippy liberal claptrap that is the establishment where I come from.
I think it caused most of the problems we have now.
I really should write a book. It was all great fun for me, a convent educated white-glove-wearing young woman. I was in the thick of it, but not part of of it...it was like living on a movie set 24/7, and I did appreciate the freedom after a lifetime of repressioon. But yes, I agree that unreconstructed hippies continue to louse up this country. And I've seen the dreadful waste of humanity that drugs cause. Some of those pretty young men playing guitars on streetcorners in the '60s are still playing those guitars, totally wasted, ugly, unhealthy, and without a purpose to their lives. Sad. Stupid. But they were probably stupid to begin with.
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