It smelled like turpentine, it looked like Indian ink.
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink.
33rd and Vine, My Friend the Witchdoctor lives there.
Do you all check out The Week in Pictures at Powerline on Saturdays? Today is full of good ones on Dr Seuss etc, but one of the funniest is a picture of Cuomo with a MAGA Make Andrew Go Away sign next to him.
Trump may need a new slogan now because Andrew has ruined MAGA.
OMT, I didn’t pay much attention to lyrics with rock music or even the BeeGees, but I did start with Simon and Garfunkel. The range of things they sang about is amazing. And my favorite YouTube performance is the Concert in Central Park.
I top your ‘Love Potion No. 9’ with ‘Strawberry Letter 23’
Expat: yup. Never liked country because of the limited subject matter (at least, in traditional country). And was often bored with bands who could do nothibg BUT love ballads and love songs… And not even with any originality.
Does wearing blackface count as “trying to be less white”?
Does wearing blackface count as “trying to be less white”?
bof:
It does count as trying to be less employed.
expat,
How are things in Deutschland? Is it locked down? COVID cases under control?
“Love Potion No. 9” was big with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their legendary, acid-fueled, bus trip across the country in 1964. For some reason.
Of course, Ken & friends preferred the Clovers version. “Magic Trip” tells all.
I may check that out. I read Wolfe’s excellent, “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” many years ago. Kesey seemed like a good egg. His wife was (is?) a saint!
Rufus,
Things are horrible. They aren’t getting up vaccinations, and the various states are fighting over lock downs. The Health Minister is a disaster, as is the EU bureaucrat Ursula von der Leyen. Schools are starting to open, but nothing is settled. When it’s warm, I can’t breathe under the damned masks.
Rufus T. Firefly:
By all means, check out “Magic Trip.” The perfect complement to “Electric Kool-Aid.” You get to see some of the actual bus film footage and understand why that footage was almost entirely unusable, plus see Neal Cassady in motion and talking a-mile-an-amusing-minute.
Then there’s “Stark Naked” and the whole flap where she ended up “off the bus” for going mental under the rigors of the bus trip, when the Bus stopped at Larry McMurtry’s house in Texas. Her boyfriend turns out to be the actor who played “Mr. Heckels” on “Friends.”
After Kesey died his wife, Faye, married Larry McMurtry. Kesey and McMurtry had met and become friends while in the Stanford Creative Writing program.
Kesey was a good egg and a solid fellow, in spite of his wilder reputation as a founder of the hippie movement.
And here I thought I was the only person in the universe for whom “Love Potion #9” was understood as being by The Clovers, with The Searchers’ British Invasion cover being only a pale imitation.
HAH!! I’m less white than all those who think it was a Searchers original . . .
[While we’re at it, let’s give songwriting credit to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.]
I’ve composed alternate lyrics, so all here can insert themselves into the plot of “Love Potion #9” despite the year their loveless drought began:
I told her that with chicks things were not great,
I’ve been this way since 1968.
With chicks it seemed I’d met my Waterloo,
I’ve been this way since 1982.
I told her that I had no luck with guys,
It’s been this way since 1995.
expat,
I am very sorry to hear that. About 10 months ago Germany was the envy of the world. Any speculation on where things went wrong? Was it just initial, good luck the worst of the virus spared the country, or was it some change in policy? Or, are the politicians botching the response?
It does show that the reaction to the incident does vary by region–and politics.
Many of these people will face long term consequences, especially if the justice system insists on charging them with felonies.
bof:
There’s is nothing on earth that is whiter than wearing blackface.
Although apparently in the 19th Century some black people performed in blackface. See this.
Rufus, It’s the politicians. They are so committed to the EU and international organizations, and negotiations. They screwed up on ordering vaccines. They want trade deals with China, the Norddstream pipeline and anything else that brings in money. And then you have the virtue-signalling Greens and the Left party. There isn’t one person running for office that my husband will vote for.
huxley,
I just did some internet sleuthing. I had no idea McMurtry went on to be such an accomplished author. Kesey seemed to suffer the plight of Salinger and Lee; an early work that became so huge it stifled his ability to write. Have you ever read his second(?) novel, “Sometimes a Great Notion?”
Brian E,
Tucker Carlson has done several minute pieces at least twice on the treatment of the Capital rioters; especially vs. those who stormed and tried to burn down the federal building in Portland, and other civil unrest’ers from last summer.
expat,
Europe shows the genius of America’s founders mixing Federalism with our centralized government. There are many things that are just more efficient and effective when done at the local level. Even though Germany basically rules the EU, my guess is Germans won’t tolerate being bossed around by figureheads in Brussels much longer. Especially now that the Brits are showing it’s more than possible to separate, or “consciously uncouple” as another, famous expat puts it.
I’m surprised the fiscally obsessed Germans put up with the damage done to the Euro by Greece and Portugal. Maybe this pandemic will be the death knell.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Yes, McMurtry has written long and well. For those unfamiliar, he wrote the book behind “The Lonesome Dove” mini-series.
I read about half of “Sometimes A Great Notion.” It’s a Hard Book. Kesey was shooting for High Lit in the Faulkner mold. It was from the viewpoint of strikebreakers. He also wrote it some of it tripping, so there’s a certain amount of acid weird to the writing. In short it confused everyone who loved “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Towards the end of the “Magic Trip” doco, Kesey explains in a voice-over from an interview what he thinks happened to his career as a writer.
Most writers live somewhat monastic lives so they can focus. After the two books and the Acid Tests, Kesey was spread very thin. He was a celebrity, a countercultural hero, and a father raising four children and running a farm. He kept writing regularly but never hit the high, sustained concentration for a serious novel again.
“Either that,” he says, “or I fried my marbles, like everybody thinks.”
Here’s a passage describing a dock from “Notion” that impressed me so much I copied it out and emailed it to a friend:
_________________________________________________________
The wood that led along the dock was so perforated by years of calk boots, soaked by rain, dried and perforated and soaked again, that it had attained the quality of a rich, firm silver-gray carpet of finely woven wool. The planks sprang beneath the step, slapping the river. The pilings along which the dock moved up and down with the rise and fall of the river were worn flat with rubbing next to the dock and draped with shaggy mollusks the rest of the way around; three feet above the surface of the river these barnacles and mussels sizzled and clicked in the sun, talking of tides past and tides to come.
At the end of the dock a hinged plank incline with one railing ran up the embankment to the hedge bordering the yard; in high water, when the floating dock rose, this walkway inclined to a gradual slope, in low water it slanted down so steeply that time and again in wet weather spikeless-shoed climbers would slip and zoom like otters out into the river. Hank mounted this incline at a run and when the hounds heard the hollow thudding they swung as a pack and dashed after him, whooping their confidence: anyone heading in the direction of the house was headed in the direction of the rows of coffee cans nailed along the edge of the steps, the dogs reasoned, and any time is suppertime.
–Ken Kesey, “Sometimes a Great Notion”
_________________________________________________________
Wow. You can’t just decide to write like that. You have to go out into the world, open your senses, and notice heaps of stuff. Then, if you’ve got the the chops, you put it together as music with rhythm and imagery
Mrs jack is not waiting till Gov Abbot March 10 to open up. After almost a year she went to beauty shop and got her a new do.
I like that hairdo a lot! Seems like it would be very easy to take care of. Looks especially good in white, blonde or gray.
My wife tried short hair once, even shorter than that, and she looked fantastic, but she missed the options long hair gave her so she grew it back out. She also looks fantastic with long hair, so I don’t mind at all. I too married a redhead. No white yet, but she swears she’s finding some gray.
I have a funny tale to tell about my own hair. Maybe I’ll add it to an open thread soon.
huxley,
That is a heckuva passage! I can envision how writing, especially a lengthy novel, could get difficult when one gets successful. Didn’t the “Game of Thrones” guy (George R.R.R., etc. Martin?) have trouble with that? I think J.K. Rowling struggled when her “Harry Potter” series took off after the 3rd or 4th book. Charles Dickens had famous battles with writer’s block. That struggle seems to have killed Poe.
I think I read McMurtry also wrote, “Brokeback Mountain.”
I have a funny tale to tell about my own hair.
A week before my high school graduation was called into office. Told I would have to get haircut or would not be able to participate in commencement ceremony. My mother marched into that office and read them the riot act … MY SON WILL GRADUATE WITH HIS CLASS … they caved.
90% of literate Americans would surely understand and agree with everything Rowe stated. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
huxley and rufus t. firefly —
I’m astonished and disappointed by what you say about Ken Kesey. I happen to know quite a bit about Kesey and the guardians of the Kesey myth. There’s a lot of ugly material that his acolytes and widow and well-paid lawyers do their best to cover up. Those who were around Kesey and the Grateful Dead back in the 60s knew that they were notorious for dosing 13 year old girls with large doses of LSD and then raping them all day and all night, “turning them out” — to use the Hell’s Angels’ phrase. Jerry Garcia, Pigpen and Kesey were the most avid and obsessive here, but various roadies and Angels and so on eagerly took part in the sexual despoliation of the “teenyboppers.”
There’ve been a couple of attempts to write about this in the years since. I knew one writer who collected sworn (and filmed) testimony from as many as ten women who’d been teenagers at the time. Even a daughter of Kesey’s testified. I remember the writer saying to me in a phonecall: “You won’t believe this stuff.”
But word got out, probably leaked by someone at the publisher, and the women began to receive threatening phonecalls and so forth, and the publisher began to feel the heat from all the Kesey camp’s lawyers… and one by one the women were scared off. Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner didn’t want this this kind of thing to come out. The publisher lost his nerve. He said it was worse than when someone had tried to write about Scientology.
There’s a book that eventually came out called **** ******, which automatically made some money but is a shadow of what it might have been. None of the real story got told.
I’m actually thinking twice about posting this, as it’s not my fight and I don’t want those assholes coming after me. (I just obscured the title, as if that helps. It’s stupid of me not to delete this.
The late novelist Robert Stone (“Dog Soldiers”, “A Flag for Sunrise” etc.) was another alumnus of the Stegner writing fellowship at Stanford in the early 1960s, the beginnings of the California counterculture, and the Kesey crew. Check out his memoir “Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties”.
Stone was one of the more based participants in that sinister saturnalia. He had a tough childhood in NYC and joined the Navy at 17. I think he had a bourgeois core. He always stood a little off to the side, observing–and judging. His depiction of the counterculture and a Kesey-like figure in “Dog Soldiers” is not flattering.
miklos000rosza:
Well, that is disappointing if true, to say the least, about Kesey et al. I did not know. I assure you I’m not part of the cover-up.
I was aware of the Hells Angels gangbang at a Kesey party and the messiness of the wives and Jerry Garcia’s estate. Plus, the Haight in general became a nightmare for that sort of thing. But that’s about it.
His depiction of the counterculture and a Kesey-like figure in “Dog Soldiers” is not flattering.
Hubert:
FWIW, the Hicks character in “Dog Soldiers” (and the film version, “Who’ll Stop the Rain”) was based on Neal Cassady.
Though Cassady was a sort of alter-ego for Kesey, as well as Jack Kerouac.
Interestingly, Nick Nolte played a Cassady figure in “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Heart Beat,” based on Carolyn’s Cassady’s memoir of her time with Cassady and Kerouac.
You can see Robert Stone towards the end of the “Magic Trip” documentary I mentioned earlier. He seemed much more ordinary than I expected from reading his book.
Ginsberg’s poem about Ye Gangbang in Ye Redwoods brings to mind the old “Other than that, Mrs Lincoln…” saw.
Stone had a visiting prof gig in my hometown in the 1970s, after the publication of “Dog Soldiers”. His kids–he was married for 55 years to the same woman–attended the local public schools. I used to see him walking around town in a polyester sport coat and 1970s wide tie. “Ordinary”: he looked like a slightly bohemian car dealer or a radio station manager. Great writer.
Yes, “Hicks” in “Dog Soldiers” was based on Cassady. “Dieter”–the guy who ran the commune in the mountains–was apparently based on Kesey. Good flick, by the way. Anthony Zerbe was great as the crooked Fed.
Anthony Zerbe was great as the crooked Fed.
Hubert:
Wasn’t he! Zerbe is underrated. He was one of those steady actors who did the job. See “Harry O.”
Tuesday Weld was also great in “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” I had no idea. I consider “Rain” a lost movie.
Huxley,
Haven’t seen it in years, but it had a great cast. Nolte, Zerbe, Weld, and Michael Moriarty as the broken-bad Vietnam journalist who gets into the heroin-smuggling business. Makes me want to get a copy.
I just checked my bookcase and my old copy of “Dog Soldiers” isn’t in it, but the book has a bunch of great lines. One I remember is the comment by the journalist’s father-in-law, an Old Lefty lawyer, that Antheil–the Fed–“has the kind of bohemian flair that I find highly disturbing in a policeman”. Heh!
I’m spending more time reading folk I usually don’t read so much – need different styles of thought meat to think about.
Loved the less than 2 min Love Potion #9.
“Held my nose and took a drink”
Hubert:
Based on “Rain” I looked for more Michael Moriarty, but didn’t find much I liked. Maybe his “Law and Order” work was good.
According to wiki he is also a talented jazz piano player.
Huxley: you might look a “Q”, a very odd, somewhat goofy little movie about Quetzelcoatl (sp?) — the “Q” of the title — being summoned by a cult. It appears as a dragon/pterodactyl thing and terrifies NYC.
It’s a very odd little movie — bad in a deliberately cheesy, funny way (like, oh, “Tremors”), and Moriarty does a good job in It, AS I recall (i admit, it’s been about 30y since I saw it)
Moriarty played the gentleman caller in an early 1970s TV production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” with Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston (who later replaced him on “Law and Order”), and Joanna Miles. His performance made an impression on me at the time. He also had a bit role in “The Last Detail” (1973), opposite Jack Nicholson. He is best known for his role as Assistant DA Stone in the early years of “Law and Order”. He was never leading-man material, but he was an interesting and intelligent actor. Also difficult to work with, reputedly.
“A week before my high school graduation was called into office. Told I would have to get haircut or would not be able to participate in commencement ceremony. My mother marched into that office and read them the riot act … MY SON WILL GRADUATE WITH HIS CLASS … they caved.” – jack
Our youngest son was the only one who wore long hair in high school. We didn’t have a problem with it, but told him we would side with the school if he was asked to cut it (because, reasons). The Vice Principal would occasionally nag him to “get a haircut” while passing in the hall, but never actually made him do it.
Probably helped that Son was team captain of the boat crew that the VP mentored, and he went to our church.
“I did start with Simon and Garfunkel” – expat
I tell my kids and friends that I stopped listening to popular music when Paul and Art broke up the act, which is more or less true.
Somewhat amazingly, they created all of their collaborations in just around 3 years of performing together, and yet have a roster of hits that ought to span 2 decades.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
It smelled like turpentine, it looked like Indian ink.
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink.
33rd and Vine, My Friend the Witchdoctor lives there.
Do you all check out The Week in Pictures at Powerline on Saturdays? Today is full of good ones on Dr Seuss etc, but one of the funniest is a picture of Cuomo with a MAGA Make Andrew Go Away sign next to him.
Trump may need a new slogan now because Andrew has ruined MAGA.
OMT, I didn’t pay much attention to lyrics with rock music or even the BeeGees, but I did start with Simon and Garfunkel. The range of things they sang about is amazing. And my favorite YouTube performance is the Concert in Central Park.
I top your ‘Love Potion No. 9’ with ‘Strawberry Letter 23’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0bdLdTJdKl
Expat: yup. Never liked country because of the limited subject matter (at least, in traditional country). And was often bored with bands who could do nothibg BUT love ballads and love songs… And not even with any originality.
One band I liked was Australia’s Split Enz.
They often managed to do even a love song inventively:
https://youtu.be/NduGJ0F5sdI
Does wearing blackface count as “trying to be less white”?
Does wearing blackface count as “trying to be less white”?
bof:
It does count as trying to be less employed.
expat,
How are things in Deutschland? Is it locked down? COVID cases under control?
“Love Potion No. 9” was big with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their legendary, acid-fueled, bus trip across the country in 1964. For some reason.
Of course, Ken & friends preferred the Clovers version. “Magic Trip” tells all.
–“MAGIC TRIP – Official Trailer – Ken Kesey Documentary”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q8qlsx8tdA
It’s a great doco. By Alex Gibney who also did the excellent one on Scientology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_(film)
huxley,
I may check that out. I read Wolfe’s excellent, “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” many years ago. Kesey seemed like a good egg. His wife was (is?) a saint!
Rufus,
Things are horrible. They aren’t getting up vaccinations, and the various states are fighting over lock downs. The Health Minister is a disaster, as is the EU bureaucrat Ursula von der Leyen. Schools are starting to open, but nothing is settled. When it’s warm, I can’t breathe under the damned masks.
Rufus T. Firefly:
By all means, check out “Magic Trip.” The perfect complement to “Electric Kool-Aid.” You get to see some of the actual bus film footage and understand why that footage was almost entirely unusable, plus see Neal Cassady in motion and talking a-mile-an-amusing-minute.
Then there’s “Stark Naked” and the whole flap where she ended up “off the bus” for going mental under the rigors of the bus trip, when the Bus stopped at Larry McMurtry’s house in Texas. Her boyfriend turns out to be the actor who played “Mr. Heckels” on “Friends.”
After Kesey died his wife, Faye, married Larry McMurtry. Kesey and McMurtry had met and become friends while in the Stanford Creative Writing program.
Kesey was a good egg and a solid fellow, in spite of his wilder reputation as a founder of the hippie movement.
And here I thought I was the only person in the universe for whom “Love Potion #9” was understood as being by The Clovers, with The Searchers’ British Invasion cover being only a pale imitation.
HAH!! I’m less white than all those who think it was a Searchers original . . .
[While we’re at it, let’s give songwriting credit to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.]
I’ve composed alternate lyrics, so all here can insert themselves into the plot of “Love Potion #9” despite the year their loveless drought began:
I told her that with chicks things were not great,
I’ve been this way since 1968.
With chicks it seemed I’d met my Waterloo,
I’ve been this way since 1982.
I told her that I had no luck with guys,
It’s been this way since 1995.
expat,
I am very sorry to hear that. About 10 months ago Germany was the envy of the world. Any speculation on where things went wrong? Was it just initial, good luck the worst of the virus spared the country, or was it some change in policy? Or, are the politicians botching the response?
The status of people charged (now up to 313) in the Jan. 6 capitol riots hasn’t received much attention, IMO.
I have read several have had bail denied and some have been moved from their home jurisdictions to DC.
The only news report I found was this from CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/19/politics/capitol-riot-defendants-detention-release/index.html
It does show that the reaction to the incident does vary by region–and politics.
Many of these people will face long term consequences, especially if the justice system insists on charging them with felonies.
bof:
There’s is nothing on earth that is whiter than wearing blackface.
Although apparently in the 19th Century some black people performed in blackface. See this.
Rufus, It’s the politicians. They are so committed to the EU and international organizations, and negotiations. They screwed up on ordering vaccines. They want trade deals with China, the Norddstream pipeline and anything else that brings in money. And then you have the virtue-signalling Greens and the Left party. There isn’t one person running for office that my husband will vote for.
huxley,
I just did some internet sleuthing. I had no idea McMurtry went on to be such an accomplished author. Kesey seemed to suffer the plight of Salinger and Lee; an early work that became so huge it stifled his ability to write. Have you ever read his second(?) novel, “Sometimes a Great Notion?”
Brian E,
Tucker Carlson has done several minute pieces at least twice on the treatment of the Capital rioters; especially vs. those who stormed and tried to burn down the federal building in Portland, and other civil unrest’ers from last summer.
expat,
Europe shows the genius of America’s founders mixing Federalism with our centralized government. There are many things that are just more efficient and effective when done at the local level. Even though Germany basically rules the EU, my guess is Germans won’t tolerate being bossed around by figureheads in Brussels much longer. Especially now that the Brits are showing it’s more than possible to separate, or “consciously uncouple” as another, famous expat puts it.
I’m surprised the fiscally obsessed Germans put up with the damage done to the Euro by Greece and Portugal. Maybe this pandemic will be the death knell.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Yes, McMurtry has written long and well. For those unfamiliar, he wrote the book behind “The Lonesome Dove” mini-series.
I read about half of “Sometimes A Great Notion.” It’s a Hard Book. Kesey was shooting for High Lit in the Faulkner mold. It was from the viewpoint of strikebreakers. He also wrote it some of it tripping, so there’s a certain amount of acid weird to the writing. In short it confused everyone who loved “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Towards the end of the “Magic Trip” doco, Kesey explains in a voice-over from an interview what he thinks happened to his career as a writer.
Most writers live somewhat monastic lives so they can focus. After the two books and the Acid Tests, Kesey was spread very thin. He was a celebrity, a countercultural hero, and a father raising four children and running a farm. He kept writing regularly but never hit the high, sustained concentration for a serious novel again.
“Either that,” he says, “or I fried my marbles, like everybody thinks.”
Here’s a passage describing a dock from “Notion” that impressed me so much I copied it out and emailed it to a friend:
_________________________________________________________
The wood that led along the dock was so perforated by years of calk boots, soaked by rain, dried and perforated and soaked again, that it had attained the quality of a rich, firm silver-gray carpet of finely woven wool. The planks sprang beneath the step, slapping the river. The pilings along which the dock moved up and down with the rise and fall of the river were worn flat with rubbing next to the dock and draped with shaggy mollusks the rest of the way around; three feet above the surface of the river these barnacles and mussels sizzled and clicked in the sun, talking of tides past and tides to come.
At the end of the dock a hinged plank incline with one railing ran up the embankment to the hedge bordering the yard; in high water, when the floating dock rose, this walkway inclined to a gradual slope, in low water it slanted down so steeply that time and again in wet weather spikeless-shoed climbers would slip and zoom like otters out into the river. Hank mounted this incline at a run and when the hounds heard the hollow thudding they swung as a pack and dashed after him, whooping their confidence: anyone heading in the direction of the house was headed in the direction of the rows of coffee cans nailed along the edge of the steps, the dogs reasoned, and any time is suppertime.
–Ken Kesey, “Sometimes a Great Notion”
_________________________________________________________
Wow. You can’t just decide to write like that. You have to go out into the world, open your senses, and notice heaps of stuff. Then, if you’ve got the the chops, you put it together as music with rhythm and imagery
Mrs jack is not waiting till Gov Abbot March 10 to open up. After almost a year she went to beauty shop and got her a new do.
Mid length bob … and it looks great.
Hers example …
https://www.blonde-hairstyles.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/18-medium-blonde-white-hair-color-20170913516.jpg
Married a redhead … now it’s snow white
jack,
I like that hairdo a lot! Seems like it would be very easy to take care of. Looks especially good in white, blonde or gray.
My wife tried short hair once, even shorter than that, and she looked fantastic, but she missed the options long hair gave her so she grew it back out. She also looks fantastic with long hair, so I don’t mind at all. I too married a redhead. No white yet, but she swears she’s finding some gray.
I have a funny tale to tell about my own hair. Maybe I’ll add it to an open thread soon.
huxley,
That is a heckuva passage! I can envision how writing, especially a lengthy novel, could get difficult when one gets successful. Didn’t the “Game of Thrones” guy (George R.R.R., etc. Martin?) have trouble with that? I think J.K. Rowling struggled when her “Harry Potter” series took off after the 3rd or 4th book. Charles Dickens had famous battles with writer’s block. That struggle seems to have killed Poe.
I think I read McMurtry also wrote, “Brokeback Mountain.”
A week before my high school graduation was called into office. Told I would have to get haircut or would not be able to participate in commencement ceremony. My mother marched into that office and read them the riot act … MY SON WILL GRADUATE WITH HIS CLASS … they caved.
Mike Rowe’s picking apart of a reader’s complaint here is well worth a read: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/4092032884140157
And a post by our own Neo is linked in the post where I find the link to Rowe: http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=392993
90% of literate Americans would surely understand and agree with everything Rowe stated. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
huxley and rufus t. firefly —
I’m astonished and disappointed by what you say about Ken Kesey. I happen to know quite a bit about Kesey and the guardians of the Kesey myth. There’s a lot of ugly material that his acolytes and widow and well-paid lawyers do their best to cover up. Those who were around Kesey and the Grateful Dead back in the 60s knew that they were notorious for dosing 13 year old girls with large doses of LSD and then raping them all day and all night, “turning them out” — to use the Hell’s Angels’ phrase. Jerry Garcia, Pigpen and Kesey were the most avid and obsessive here, but various roadies and Angels and so on eagerly took part in the sexual despoliation of the “teenyboppers.”
There’ve been a couple of attempts to write about this in the years since. I knew one writer who collected sworn (and filmed) testimony from as many as ten women who’d been teenagers at the time. Even a daughter of Kesey’s testified. I remember the writer saying to me in a phonecall: “You won’t believe this stuff.”
But word got out, probably leaked by someone at the publisher, and the women began to receive threatening phonecalls and so forth, and the publisher began to feel the heat from all the Kesey camp’s lawyers… and one by one the women were scared off. Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner didn’t want this this kind of thing to come out. The publisher lost his nerve. He said it was worse than when someone had tried to write about Scientology.
There’s a book that eventually came out called **** ******, which automatically made some money but is a shadow of what it might have been. None of the real story got told.
I’m actually thinking twice about posting this, as it’s not my fight and I don’t want those assholes coming after me. (I just obscured the title, as if that helps. It’s stupid of me not to delete this.
The late novelist Robert Stone (“Dog Soldiers”, “A Flag for Sunrise” etc.) was another alumnus of the Stegner writing fellowship at Stanford in the early 1960s, the beginnings of the California counterculture, and the Kesey crew. Check out his memoir “Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties”.
Stone was one of the more based participants in that sinister saturnalia. He had a tough childhood in NYC and joined the Navy at 17. I think he had a bourgeois core. He always stood a little off to the side, observing–and judging. His depiction of the counterculture and a Kesey-like figure in “Dog Soldiers” is not flattering.
miklos000rosza:
Well, that is disappointing if true, to say the least, about Kesey et al. I did not know. I assure you I’m not part of the cover-up.
I was aware of the Hells Angels gangbang at a Kesey party and the messiness of the wives and Jerry Garcia’s estate. Plus, the Haight in general became a nightmare for that sort of thing. But that’s about it.
His depiction of the counterculture and a Kesey-like figure in “Dog Soldiers” is not flattering.
Hubert:
FWIW, the Hicks character in “Dog Soldiers” (and the film version, “Who’ll Stop the Rain”) was based on Neal Cassady.
Though Cassady was a sort of alter-ego for Kesey, as well as Jack Kerouac.
Interestingly, Nick Nolte played a Cassady figure in “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Heart Beat,” based on Carolyn’s Cassady’s memoir of her time with Cassady and Kerouac.
You can see Robert Stone towards the end of the “Magic Trip” documentary I mentioned earlier. He seemed much more ordinary than I expected from reading his book.
Ginsberg’s poem about Ye Gangbang in Ye Redwoods brings to mind the old “Other than that, Mrs Lincoln…” saw.
Stone had a visiting prof gig in my hometown in the 1970s, after the publication of “Dog Soldiers”. His kids–he was married for 55 years to the same woman–attended the local public schools. I used to see him walking around town in a polyester sport coat and 1970s wide tie. “Ordinary”: he looked like a slightly bohemian car dealer or a radio station manager. Great writer.
Yes, “Hicks” in “Dog Soldiers” was based on Cassady. “Dieter”–the guy who ran the commune in the mountains–was apparently based on Kesey. Good flick, by the way. Anthony Zerbe was great as the crooked Fed.
Anthony Zerbe was great as the crooked Fed.
Hubert:
Wasn’t he! Zerbe is underrated. He was one of those steady actors who did the job. See “Harry O.”
Tuesday Weld was also great in “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” I had no idea. I consider “Rain” a lost movie.
Huxley,
Haven’t seen it in years, but it had a great cast. Nolte, Zerbe, Weld, and Michael Moriarty as the broken-bad Vietnam journalist who gets into the heroin-smuggling business. Makes me want to get a copy.
I just checked my bookcase and my old copy of “Dog Soldiers” isn’t in it, but the book has a bunch of great lines. One I remember is the comment by the journalist’s father-in-law, an Old Lefty lawyer, that Antheil–the Fed–“has the kind of bohemian flair that I find highly disturbing in a policeman”. Heh!
For Neo and commenters, Arnold Kling is trying to have a Fantasy Intellectual Team season for 2021 that looks interesting.
Here’s the list of possible Intellectuals & bloggers that might be drafted.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UfxlKq9zg4o_ULquNsfs5neLFX2Zwnwb/edit#gid=351237869
Current first season rules here: http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/fits-details/
I’m spending more time reading folk I usually don’t read so much – need different styles of thought meat to think about.
Loved the less than 2 min Love Potion #9.
“Held my nose and took a drink”
Hubert:
Based on “Rain” I looked for more Michael Moriarty, but didn’t find much I liked. Maybe his “Law and Order” work was good.
According to wiki he is also a talented jazz piano player.
Huxley: you might look a “Q”, a very odd, somewhat goofy little movie about Quetzelcoatl (sp?) — the “Q” of the title — being summoned by a cult. It appears as a dragon/pterodactyl thing and terrifies NYC.
It’s a very odd little movie — bad in a deliberately cheesy, funny way (like, oh, “Tremors”), and Moriarty does a good job in It, AS I recall (i admit, it’s been about 30y since I saw it)
Moriarty played the gentleman caller in an early 1970s TV production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” with Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston (who later replaced him on “Law and Order”), and Joanna Miles. His performance made an impression on me at the time. He also had a bit role in “The Last Detail” (1973), opposite Jack Nicholson. He is best known for his role as Assistant DA Stone in the early years of “Law and Order”. He was never leading-man material, but he was an interesting and intelligent actor. Also difficult to work with, reputedly.
“A week before my high school graduation was called into office. Told I would have to get haircut or would not be able to participate in commencement ceremony. My mother marched into that office and read them the riot act … MY SON WILL GRADUATE WITH HIS CLASS … they caved.” – jack
Our youngest son was the only one who wore long hair in high school. We didn’t have a problem with it, but told him we would side with the school if he was asked to cut it (because, reasons). The Vice Principal would occasionally nag him to “get a haircut” while passing in the hall, but never actually made him do it.
Probably helped that Son was team captain of the boat crew that the VP mentored, and he went to our church.
“I did start with Simon and Garfunkel” – expat
I tell my kids and friends that I stopped listening to popular music when Paul and Art broke up the act, which is more or less true.
Somewhat amazingly, they created all of their collaborations in just around 3 years of performing together, and yet have a roster of hits that ought to span 2 decades.