THE FREE REPUBLIC WELCOMES THE MERRY PRANKSTERS!!! (9-09 Book Discussion Thread)

Self | September 2, 2002 | PJ-Comix

[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.

[Spiff]

Why don't you have a spliff and lighten up ?

And just excuse the plague-like decay our society has suffered as a result of the culture of the 60's? The only thing potentially worse has been the disease-like spread of the "Hip Hop" culture. I reject both and work to ensure that my homeschooled children reject them too.

[Erasmus]

It sounds like you know some of the Pranksters. Send them this thread. I am still hoping we can get Tom Wolfe to come aboard this Cyberspace Bus.

Barney: "I think we're all Bozos on this bus."

Clem: "My mother was a Bozoette in school."

[weegee]

I have the first of the videos from the 1964 bus trip. It ends shortly after New Orleans (and has the visit to Larry MacMurtry's home in Houston). A second tape of the bus trip has been released but I do not have it yet (I suppose it picks up where volume 1 left off).

I have also seen a video of one of the Acid Tests (I do not know if it was the first or the "Graduation").

All of these (and more) are available from Key-z.com.

There is also a little bit of footage of the Acid Test Graduation on the DVD of Mondo Mod/The Hippie Revolt. It is an interesting time capsule of old explotation documentaries. Johnny Legend and a video store owner provide an alternate commentary track where they discuss what they were doing on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s. Neither is conscious of what the Acid Test Graduation was though nor do they recognize Kesey, Cassidy, etc.

[weegee]

I read somewhere that Tom Wolfe stated that he never used LSD and that it would have affected the objectivity of his book if he had.

[weegee]

I'm reminded of Jack Kerouac recording his first album with Steve Allen (the comedian/writer, also a pianist). Steve Allen could compose music on the fly (he would even challenge people to pick out three keys on the piano to work from).

Jack pulled out some papers and read while Steve played piano and altered his style to match the content. Jack was drinking (Mad Dog I think) and Steve (who normally didn't drink) did partake in a spirit of friendship to be polite.

At the end of an hour, the someone asked if they were ready to begin on the album and they replied that they were done.

Dot Records originally released it but they quickly balked when they heard some of the language on it. I still like it best out of the 3 Kerouac albums.

[weegee]

Rick Griffin was the best of the poster artists. His work is quite acid inspired though.

I can't comment on his whole life but he died as a Christian (in a motorcycle accident).

[weegee]

You might want to read Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels as well. That book was his first, elevated the Angels' prominence, and is one of the few books to look at (not necessarily glorify) a tradition of "outlaw culture" in America. These were people who didn't want to partake in the American dream. There is also a passage near the end where some high school kids plan a massacre on the preps and jocks in the school (shades of Columbine). Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it and our hypoberlic media are only too ready to say "nothing like this has ever happened before".

I also read Timothy Leary's autobigraphy "Flashbacks" and the book by the men who financed the first Woodstock festival (not the con artist who has been connected to every major festival debacle).

There are plenty of interesting things to read in these books even if you do not agree with the subject or author.

For example, Leary admits that there were subversive communists (as well as subversive government agents) in some of the social organizations he joined in the 1950s.

[Middle Man]

"...Jack met the Pranksters, he was strictly on booze..."

By the time of his death in '69, his favored combination was brandy with a malt liquor chaser.

[weegee]

I'd say that the transition occurred sometime during Ken Kesey's absence (when he was hiding out in Mexico on a marijuana charge).

I don't know what Kesey's take on the "Hippy" pheonomenon was or how things may have transpired if he hadn't left.

[weegee]

I liked it (certainly better than Where The Buffalo Roam). It gets a lot of things right but is still no substitute for the book.

I saw it on opening day and Billy F. Gibbons was in the theater (yes he wore his sunglasses during the movie). He walked out at some point after an hour; I haven't remembered to ask him what he thought of it when I see him around.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Actually Kerouac became quite conservative in his later years. He was a big reader of the National Review and was a fan of Bill Buckley.

He was a good French-Canadian immigrant from Lowell, MA. That's why.

[weegee]

Any plans to read The Pump House Gang as well (there is some crossover between the people mentioned).

There is a passage that deals with the Hell's Angels that is also included in Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels book.

[weegee]

I take it that the actual book discussion thread will be a separate thread.

Any significance behind the September 9th date?

[Hemingway's Ghost]

I wearied of Burroughs' overweeningly scatophilic brainrot...

Give Junky a shot: the only thing I've found worthwhile from Burroughs. Avoid The Lost Boys like the plague.

Kerouac? Two words: Dharma Bums. On the Road is for white guys from the suburbs who want to snag artsy freshman chicks.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Hell's Angels.

Opening lines don't get much better than this:

"California, Labor Day weekend . . . early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur . . . The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches . . . like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know . . . Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on . . . Little Jesus, the Gimp, Chocolate George, Buzzard, Zorro, Hambone, Clean Cut, Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Frenchy, Mouldy Marvin, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Chuck the Duck, Fat Freddy, Filthy Phil, Charger Charley the Child Molester, Crazy Cross, Puff, Magoo, Animal and at least a hundred more . . . tense for the action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down Harleys flashing chrome as traffic on 101 moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder . . ."

[maxwell]

You talked me into it, dude... I am buying that book TODAY...

[tallhappy]

I read EAKT, of course.

I still do not get your idea. It makes no sense for this web site.

Might as well invite Bill and Hillary to discuss how they got started.

[tallhappy]

Actually Kerouac became quite conservative in his later years.

Kerouac was always conservative. He knew Buckley from Horace Mann.

He never, though, stopped using drugs.

[tallhappy]

I have read every kerouac bio except Amburn's and other recent ones.

I think you can find it in Nicosia's. Perhaps Charters.

[sushiman]

" Why don't you have a spliff and lighten up ? "

""And just excuse the plague-like decay our society has suffered as a result of the culture of the 60's? The only thing potentially worse has been the disease-like spread of the "Hip Hop" culture. I reject both and work to ensure that my homeschooled children reject them too.""

Yes , I'll agree that our society is in decay , and that the 60's counterculture who've grown up , and who now permeate academia , politics , and media are screwing up the works . It is NOT Keroauc's ( or pot's ) fault . Jack was a sympathetic hero who loved America for the most part and lived in awe of all it had to offer . A true patriot through and through . Nobody loved America more than Jack Kerouac .