Roger gets his space ticket

MAD MEN gets it right again.

As I have written here before, LSD was originally the (legal) property of the drawing room and the elite types who visited psychiatrists, such as Henry and Claire Booth Luce, Cary Grant, RD Laing... and Roger Sterling and his wife Jane. Hippies did not widely partake until the Merry Pranksters decided to go cross-country, playing Johnny Appleseed and distributing it throughout the heartland. And THEN it was made illegal (in 1966), in response to their nefarious scheme to Enlighten the Masses.

In fact, where do you think the first hippies came from? Guys like Roger, transformed. I am curious what will happen to Roger now; the show closed with Roger informing the ever-beleaguered Don Draper, "It's a beautiful day!"

At this point in the show, it is likely Roger will tell Don about his acid-experience and 1) try to get Don to take it, or 2) Don will be sufficiently curious (after hearing Roger's description) to try it himself. And all of that childhood-trauma of Don's? Wow, that will be hairy. Because yes, those traumas really do come back in technicolor, they weren't joking about that. I would compare it to one of those 180-degree photographs, everything momentarily frozen so that you can go back and have a full-look at it, maybe start a conversation with someone else in the frame.

From Entertainment Weekly:

I could write 3,000 words just about what happened after Roger let a sugar cube of psychedelic chemicals dissolve on his tongue. So many of Roger's hallucinations fed right back into his horn-dog Peter Pan syndrome: The half-grey-half-black hair dye ad; the Beach Boys' "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" playing overtop a far older song I couldn't quite place; Roger cackling in the bathtub as the 1919 World Series unfolded in his head. It was a telling detail that Roger imagined Don to be his spiritual guide, but I ad0red so many of the small, silly details, too: The bombastic (possibly Russian?) opera that played after Roger uncorked a bottle of vodka; the cigarette that collapsed like an accordion the moment Roger began smoking it; the five dollar bill with Bert Cooper's face on it...

Although it never happened to me personally, paper-dollars with various faces on them was a pretty common LSD-hallucination. Also, the faces on the bills suddenly talking to you. George Washington talks! (I once got out a dollar-bill, hoping George would say something to me, but I guess money only talks to some people.)

And Roger and Jane finally get real:

Really, though, the long, strange trip was all about stripping away Roger's defenses -- his glib charm, his fragile ego -- and building up Jane's self-assurance and confidence so they could both admit to each other that their marriage was over. As Roger and Jane stared at the ceiling, the truth came gently tumbling out of them: "It's over." Their hostess wasn't Jane's friend, she was her therapist, who thinks Jane has been waiting for Roger to tell her their marriage is over so she won't have to. And although Jane's thought about having an affair, her love for Roger was real. But, Jane added, "I just know for a fact that you did not fall in love."

"So what was wrong again?" asked Roger.

"You don't like me."

"I did. I really did."

And their marriage is done.

~*~

As a lone six-year-old who had somehow blundered into the wrong place and time, I was once cornered in the doorway of an empty house by a cluster of (white female) teenage bullies. They had backed me into the proverbial corner and were slapping me, grabbing hair, kicking... all while laughing and laughing. I knew it was just the warm-up, because they were having too much fun. I was sick with fear.

I tried to say something cute, be charming or polite, all the things that had ever worked in the past; like a dog that rolls over and suddenly shows its underbelly in a fight, I was hollering uncle in a hundred ways. They correctly read my body-language of surrender and were emboldened and maliciously overjoyed by it, like a pack of wolves, circling. Exactly like that.

I turned, cupped my hand and peered through the small window on the door. "There's nobody in there," one said, threateningly. The words echoed and echoed through my psyche, and I could never remember what happened directly after. My mother said they had beaten me, but I could not remember it. Approaching that moment in my memory had always frightened me, more than the threat of nuclear weapons, more than drowning, more than snakes. I shut it down, pushed it back, thought of something else.

We all do this, and so do you.

But LSD goes straight for the house that has nobody inside (when it should have), straight for that thing you have repressed. And it can go several ways, from what I am told. But for me?

I was transported back to the sidewalk in front of the house (which I had passed many times) and saw the girls on the porch, who suddenly seemed so young. My goodness, I thought, they are only 14 or 15, aren't they? They aren't giants. They aren't adults. And as I ascended the porch stairs, one by one, they disappeared. I could never remember their faces anyway, but this made it official: they really did not exist any more. They were phantoms that had chased me. I realized, these girls had since grown up. I turned to one, just as she vanished, and asked her if she remembered. "Do you remember this?" I asked her.

She wrinkled her brow and shook her head, no. She was the blonde one, and she was the last to vanish.

I then saw my little six-year-old self, who had been beaten. I was wearing the same clothes I always remembered wearing. They had ripped my favorite shirt, with multicolored pockets on the front. I knew my grandmother (who had bought it for me) would be mad. I hoped she wouldn't be mad at me for straying too far from home, but of course, beaten or not, I thought she would be.

And then, the adult me embraced the six-year-old me. The little-me wept, while I soothed and comforted this little girl (me and not-me, all at once) and told her how strong she was for enduring this. I told her it would make her tough from this point onward, and as I said this, I realized: it had.

I told her everything would be okay, and she would grow up and the girls would vanish. Look, I said, they are gone already. I gestured, and showed her/me, that they were gone.

"They ARE gone!" the six-year-old me said, smiling through tears. Yes, they are.

And they were.

They never came back.

Here's hoping Roger fares as well. And Don, with his ghosts. They might vanish or they might return and kick his ass. It's all up to him.

Be nice to your old self; be charitable and kind to the younger-you. After all, you did the best you could.

Getting to know you

Its been awhile since I participated in a fun meme, and so here we go! These are "Getting to Know You" Questions from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

1. What is the most daring thing you've done?

Hitchhiking to New York City from Ohio, twice. And back! Also hitchhiked out of Candlestick Park after the Rolling Stones concert, and considering the acidheads who picked me up, that was rather daring, as well.

Speaking of which, I've also done my fair share of LSD, and probably your share, too.

2. What is your favourite article of clothing?

I love my vintage 'Doris Day coats' from the 50s, lovingly salvaged from estate sales, attics and such, but of course, I rarely get a chance to wear them. One is far too fragile to wear (although I did wear it for one season); the stitching holding the lining together has nearly turned to dust, and it really does need to be properly restored... the other is bright red and doesn't go with anything, but it's nice during the holidays.

But it is rarely cold enough in SC to wear these kinds of old-style heavy coats.

3. What is your favourite monster?

I love all the vampires in THE HUNGER (David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), and Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY.

4. If you had to dress up as your favourite literary character, who would it be?

Hmm, not sure. I guess I could be one of the women from JG Ballard's COCAINE NIGHTS, but who could afford those designer-duds? I'll 'dress' as one of those characters after they become addicted to morphine, and just be naked in the back of a limo, perpetually confused.

5. What is your favourite fairy tale, urban legend or nursery rhyme:

I am terribly fond of all GREAT conspiracy theories, particularly the most outrageous and ridiculous of our time. I like the 911-truthers a lot, that is some highly-entertaining stuff, and there appears to be no end to it, regardless of the dedicated-debunkers.

Of course, as an ex-Yippie, I know all the JFK-assassination theories by heart, and I like to concentrate on Jack Ruby's role, as regular readers know. I also believe Roman Polanski was tipped off before Charlie's girls dropped by for a visit... that sudden trip to France has always been suspect to me. (I believe the worst of Polanski, always, and he has never disappointed.)

My favorite conspiracy theory these days is CHEMTRAILS: those "tracks" in the sky that are rendering us sterile. I urge you to study and learn and read all about it! I used to hear this story every day (for about 3 yrs) when I sold supplements, and then the overall popularity of the theory seemed to fade a bit. But I am still all about the CHEMTRAILS and I love hearing people talk seriously about them.

I also love Wilhelm Reich's ORGONE theory... not a conspiracy theory, but amazing and wonderful and certainly worth mentioning here.

6. What is a cause near and dear to your heart?

I am a lifelong activist, so there are many... right now, I want to continue the work Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy movements throughout the country) have started, particularly the strengthening of local networks (especially here in conservative SC) and progressive communities. Occupy and its various accompanying social networks have given us the tools, and we must stay connected and involved. KEEPING PEOPLE'S SPIRITS UP (in the face of unbridled right-wing attacks) is crucial right now, and that is something I am concentrating on too.

When people are in jeopardy, I tend to put animal rights on the back-burner, but animal rights ARE near and dear to my heart, also.

7. What is the strangest item you've used as a bookmark?

I famously destroyed a book by using a leaky-pen as a bookmark! YIGH!

8. Do you have any nicknames? What are they and how did you earn them?

Daisy IS my nickname, which I took from my late grandmother.

9. Name one habit you want to change in yourself?

Various food addictions that wax and wane. When I tackle them, I veer off into ORTHOREXIA, and when I don't, I can easily chow down on Reese's Easter eggs, one right after the other. No healthy and sane in-between seems possible for me in the area of food. I am usually in one mode or another (or on my way to one or the other). I chalk this up to a lifetime of evilll dieting, as well as having gone without food (unwillingly) for long periods as a child.

"Feast or famine" is something I have deeply internalized, unfortunately. (sigh)

10. Tell us something interesting or shocking about yourself.

Is there anything I haven't fessed up to on this blog? If I haven't, rest assured, I HAVE fessed up somewhere and I expect somebody will re-print it one of these days. ;)

I once dressed up as the antichrist for Halloween, with a bright "666" etched on my forehead in red-and-black paint, with upside-down crosses on both cheeks; swathed in black, with a black shawl. People took my photo at various parties, all night long, and if I ever run for office or get famous as a talk-radio maven, I expect to see these dreaded antichrist photos re-surface and posted coast-to-coast. (I guess I will have to plead drug abuse, which is true enough.)


Thanks to my beloved Deadhead friend Jojo, for this meme. THANKS JOJO!

Peter Bergman 1939-2012

I really wanted to title this obituary, "Waiting for Peter Bergman, or someone like him," which I think he would have appreciated.




Instead, decided to be properly respectful and just reprint the New York Times obit:

Peter Bergman, Satirist With the Firesign Theater, Dies at 72
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: March 9, 2012

Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest.

“We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.”

Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?”

By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation).

Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.”

Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.”

“It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.”

When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.”

Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said.

While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game Myst.

Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer.

Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career.

He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner.

Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ”

For good or ill, I hold Bergman and Company responsible for much of my rather bizarre sense of humor.

My consigliere posted the following quote from Bergman on Facebook (originally posted on the Firesign website), and I certainly can't improve on it... could any of us improve on Peter Bergman?:

Take heart, dear friends. We are passing through the darkening of the light. We're gonna make it and we're going to make it together. Don't get ground down by cynicism. Don't let depression darken the glass through which you look. This is a garden we live in. A garden seeded with unconditional love. And the tears of the oppressed, and the tears of the frustrated, and the tears of the good will spring those seeds. The flag has been waived. It says occupy. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy the banks. Occupy the nursing homes. Occupy Congress. Occupy the big law offices. Occupy the lobbyists. Occupy...yourself. Because that's where it all comes together. I pledge to you, from this moment on, whatever it means, I'm going to occupy myself.

I love you. See ya tomorrow.

Ah, he's no fun. He fell right over!

Goodbye old friend. We shall not see your like again.

Heaven is real, says four year old

These books are the new sensation. I originally thought they were fiction, but apparently, they are claiming they to be real:

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

Synopsis: 4-year-old goes to heaven during surgery, comes back and has information he couldn't have known otherwise. Jesus told him stuff while he was there, so pay attention.

~*~

90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life

Same thing, but it's a famous Baptist minister this time, hit by a semi. Makes the New York Times bestseller list.

~*~

23 Minutes in Hell: One Man's Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in that Place of Torment

Real estate agent goes to hell for 23 minutes, says it scary.

~*~

I think this genre may be my ticket to finally get published. Some ideas:

Daisy goes to Deadhead Hell: An account of a Deadhead forced to listen to Miley Cyrus for all eternity.

Self-explanatory. Horrendous song lists greet her upon arrival, containing old Partridge Family tunes and commercial jingles. First thing, they serenade you with "I'd like to teach the world to sing"--and make you drink New Coke. (You always wondered where it went to, didn't you?)

Nirvana is Real: a Trip to the Pure Land

4-year-old goes to Nirvana during surgery, says it rocks, comes back and tells us to kick back and relax, you'll get there eventually. Buddha tells him that animals have souls, and child instantly becomes a vegetarian, upsetting his Texas family of hunters and steak-eaters.

23 Minutes in Hell: alternative version

Hell is populated with fundamentalist Christians, or wait, is that heaven? Existential drama modeled on the terrifying Jacob's Ladder, as our plucky heroine can't quite figure out WHERE she is.

Luckily, LSD wears off in about 12 hours.

~*~

Add your own! Play along at home!

Nothing can change the shape of things to come

A classic DEAD AIR rerun from 2007, because I really wanted to hear the song: bringing you classic NOSTALGIA with Max Frost and the Troopers, a fictional band made up for the movie WILD IN THE STREETS.

Wild in the Streets (1968) was a super-fabulous B-movie about adult paranoia circa 1968, as the kids lower the voting age to 14, feed LSD to everyone over 30, and take over the country. Christopher Jones, beautiful ex-husband of Susan Strasberg, brazenly channels Jim Morrison, and gives us this fantastic Doors-as-garage-band song (by brilliant songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil), which ominously reminds us that Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come. Ain't it the truth.

The kids elect Max president in the movie, which doesn't bode well, as you might imagine.

And if your kids try to get you to drink anything suspect, REFUSE IT!

~*~

Max Frost And The Troopers - Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come

Goodbye, Bear

Chemist of the Stratosphere, Owsley Stanley, inventor of the Stealie (without which I would have no blog logo!) has died. I can personally attest that his infamous product rocked the house, featuring (borrowing a line from Hunter Thompson) "the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums"... he was also the actual "Dancing Bear" in Grateful Dead iconography, for those who didn't know. He was the subject of the Steely Dan song, Kid Charlemagne. (I wrote about him in part, here.) He died in a car crash, of all things.

Rest in peace, Bear. There is a special place in heaven with your name on it, where the music never stops.

~*~

The near-total blackout of TV-coverage about Saturday's big rally here in South Carolina has depressed me. If a thousand people rally and nobody covers it, did it make a noise?

Wait, what am I saying, near-total? I think it was, in fact, total. The print media covered the rally in a somewhat cursory fashion, and at least one TV-station announced the rally in advance. There was some sporadic coverage, which I suppose is better than none. But several of us agreed that we saw NO TV-cameras at all, throughout the event.

I noted that there were a few radio-reporters present, God bless them. In particular, I saw hip-hop radio stations and black Gospel radio stations... are these the only two factions left in the state who will people tell the truth?

Apparently.

~*~

My sincere apologies for lack of brilliance. I have simply had NO TIME to write or even get my laundry done. And my Farmville crops keep dying! :( But I must admit, I love that T-shirt at the HOT TOPIC, Nobody Cares About Your Farm, and feel strangely compelled to buy it.

I hope to provide some pithy commentary by the weekend, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here is a very cool song about a great chemist. :)

Kid Charlemagne - Steely Dan

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

... and my favorite movie Mardi Gras comes courtesy of Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Toni Basil and Karen Black... who I guess really did take acid at the Mardi Gras and decide to put it all in the movie.

Hey, why not?

Note: Peter (and Jane) Fonda's mother committed suicide when they were young, and that appears to be what he is talking about, whilst sitting in the lap of the Blessed Mother statue: "Why did you leave like that?" (approx 4:47 to the end of the segment.) Although you don't need to know that to enjoy the movie, it suddenly becomes a very intense scene if you do know. (Karen Black seems to be having the worst trip of the four of them, and several of her remarks are fairly harrowing, as well.)

My favorite movie acid trip! Probably because it's genuine, and I think you can easily differentiate this one from all the fakers.

Don't eat too much King Cake! We will be discussing penance and Ash Wednesday tomorrow, but today, you can indulge.

Warning, nudity, possibly NSFW.


Mardi Gras - Easy Rider (1969)

Voodoo Chile, slight return

Our Lady of Fatima appears to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco in Portugal in 1917, stained glass from St Mary's Church in Greenville, SC.

~*~



We are discussing archetypes, mountains, deserts, religion, Jesus, Philip K Dick novels, psychedelic drugs and other cool stuff over on the Rapture thread, so if you one of those old hippies into all that, bring it!



On the thread in question, I embarrassingly confessed that I once had a profound mystical experience listening to 70s progressive ART ROCK, God help us. (((blushes bright pink)))

To make up for that, and to mend my musical reputation, I hurriedly add that I also had a mystical experience listening to THIS... yes, along with most of the rest of population of Berserkely and all points Westward.

Only someone possessed of the Holy Spirit could make a guitar (or anything else) sound like this. And he played it upside-down and left-handed, which as any religion scholar will tell you, cinches the deal.

PS: And if people want to talk about Voodoo, go for it!

Must be played very, very loud for maximum spiritual benefits.

~*~

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) - Jimi Hendrix



And if I don't meet you no more in this world
Then I'll meet you in the next one
And don't be late
Don't be late.

Rainbow Tribe attacked at annual Gathering of the Tribes

My Deadhead comrades report that there was a violent event this year at the Rainbow Gathering (which the Yippies used to lovingly call "The Rainbozo"), if you can believe it. The first Gathering (also known informally as the "gathering of the tribes") was in 1972, and has been held annually ever since during the first week of July, on National Forest land. There are also other Rainbow Gatherings on other continents, but I don't know much about those.

I have investigated, and apparently, this IS true. (((EYES BUG OUT, AS IN OLD TEX AVERY CARTOONS: BOINN--NNN-GGGG-GGGGG!))) For those of us who remember The Rainbozo as one of the most mellow, peaceful, accepting places on earth, this is something of a shock.

The idea of violence invading the Gathering is upsetting enough to cause actual disorientation.

It's interesting that my own experience with The Rainbozo was in West Virginia, and everyone warned us that the local rednecks would not countenance naked hippies dropping acid in the woods. That turned out to be totally untrue; nobody cared, or if they did, not enough to make trouble. This pattern would be re-enacted over and over again, as various participants in places like Arkansas and North Carolina were warned that Dangerous Rednecks Hate the Hippies, and they will attack. To their credit, the Rainbow Family always said nonsense--we welcome the locals! We LOVE YOU! PEACE AND LOVE! COME ONE, COME ALL!

Every Gathering had funny stories about locals who came to jeer at the hippies and, unprepared for the unconditional love (much less the powerful acid), "went native" and ended up joining the Rainbow Family for keeps.

I don't remember any problems ever reported at previous Gatherings, although readers can certainly correct me if they know of any other incidents I may have missed. (But Wyoming??? I just want to stop and draw everyone's attention to that word: WYOMING!!!! It didn't happen in the south!)

Accounts are just now trickling in, since the Gathering just ended, and my Deadhead spies do not write the most coherent emails, particularly after tripping in the woods for a week, but hey. All of the accounts sound more or less the same: law enforcement decided to go roust the Gathering, at long last. What didn't even happen in 1972, has happened now, in 2008.

My investigation turned up the usual "warnings" issued before the Gathering, that the Rainbow Family has heard since its inception. From Rivertonradio.com, this story dated June 28:

Federal officials began arriving in Riverton earlier this month to prepare for the arrival of the group, which calls itself the Rainbow Family of Living Light.

Anywhere between several hundred to a few thousand members of the group are expected, and their arrival has already drawn the ire of some locals. Civilians and councilmembers alike are concerned over rumors and speculation which seem to follow the group around the country.

To help aleviate fears, the Rainbow Family participated in a town hall meeting in Pinedale last week, saying they were a "people of peace," and asking for a moment of silence.

Still, local law enforcement in Green River has advised the public not to pick up hitchhikers as members of the group begin to arrive in the area for the gathering, which is scheduled to begin in full July 1. Residents who are disturbed by the arrival of the group have cited reports of fires and crime which have arisen in the last week near the area where members of the Rainbow Family have already assembled to justify concerns.

Rescue searchers found the pickup of missing 24-year-old Garrett Bardin this week in the Big Sandy area of Pinedale, not far from where the Rainbow Family has been gathering in recent weeks for its event.

On Monday, a wildfire was extinguished in Lander after it had burned a quarter of an acre in the same area where residents had complained about the behavior of some of the group's members.

Some of the rumors about the clan may not be entirely unfounded. In February, officials in Florida relocated the group as they hosting a similar meeting at the Ocala National Forest near Orlando. The group was forced out, and officials cited some members for minor violence, drug use, and violation of federal land permits.

Earlier this month, the Boy Scouts of America conceded that the arrival of the Rainbow Family had forced them to reschedule a planned forest restoration project.

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso has written a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, complaining the group has not respected the process of reserving federal land.

"The Rainbow Family Gathering displaced the Boy Scouts of America who had planned to do an ecological project," wrote Barrasso, as reported by the Casper Star Tribune on Friday. "In addition, livestock permittees, recreationists, cabin owners and lodge visitors are impacted by this gathering. All of these users have completed the appropriate permit process and worked with the agency to properly plan their activities."

The group's website stresses that this year's gathering will be peaceful, and says the group "is an international loose affiliation of individuals who have a common goal of trying to achieve peace and love on Earth."

God forbid, you displace the BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA!!!!

And hey! Happy 4th of July to you too!

Five arrested in Rainbow Family clash with feds

By BEN NEARY – July 4, 2008

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — About 400 members of the Rainbow Family threw rocks and sticks at 10 federal officers as they tried to arrest a member of the group, the U.S. Forest Service said Friday.

Five members of the group were arrested and one officer was slightly injured. A government vehicle was also damaged.

About 7,000 members of the Rainbow Family are camping this year on Forest Service land near Big Piney. The Rainbow Family is a loose affiliation of eccentrics, young people and hippie types who choose a forest each year in which hold a weeklong national gathering.

Ten Forest Service officers were patrolling the main meadow of the Rainbow Family's camping area Thursday night and apprehended one person described as being uncooperative, Rita Vollmer, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, said in a statement Friday.

"Officers began to leave the gathering site with the subject and were circled by more Rainbow participants that began to physically interfere," Vollmer said.

About 400 Rainbows surrounded the officers trying to leave, she said.

"The mob began to advance, throwing sticks and rocks at the officers," Vollmer said.

State troopers have also arrested two people this week on felony drug charges for allegedly possessing 96 hits of LSD, said Sgt. Stephen Townsend of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

This is so ridiculous, I can't believe how ridiculous it is.

The Jackson Hole Star-Tribune seemed far more liberal in its coverage:

Arrest leads to Rainbow riot

By TOM MORTON
Star-Tribune staff writer

U.S. Forest Service officers pointed weapons at children and fired rubber bullets and pepper spray balls at Rainbow Family members while making arrests Thursday evening, according to witnesses.

"They were so violent, like dogs," Robert Parker told reporter Deborah Stevens of the libertarian-oriented, Round Rock, Texas-based We the People Radio Network after the incident.

"People yelled at them, 'You're shooting children,'" Parker said during an interview on the network's "Rule of Law Show."

About 7,000 people have arrived at the gathering near Big Sandy in the Wind River Mountains for the annual Gathering of the Tribes, a seven-day event of fellowship, partying including illicit drug use, praying, and living on the land.

They camp on Forest Service land around the country every year, but the Rainbow family's non-hierarchical methods -- no one can speak for the Rainbows, much less sign a land use permit -- often have stymied their relationships.

But rarely do the tensions escalate into violence.

The Forest Service's Incident Command Team in Rock Springs issued a press release Friday morning, saying officers were patrolling the main meadow of the gathering Thursday evening when they contacted a man who fled and was later caught. Another Rainbow was detained for physically interfering.

Officers began to leave the area with the subjects and were circled by Rainbow participants, according to the news release from Rita Vollmer of the Incident Command Team.

Ten officers were escorting the detained subjects when about 400 Rainbows surrounded the squad, and more officers were requested, according to the news release.

"The mob began to advance, throwing sticks and rocks at the officers. Crowd control tactics were used to keep moving through the group of Rainbows," the news release said.

Other law enforcement agencies were called to the scene, the news release said.

Officers made five arrests; one officer suffered minor injuries and was cleared by a local hospital; and a government vehicle sustained damage, the news release said.

"This lawless behavior is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it," said John Twiss, Forest Service director of law enforcement. "The safety of our employees, public and Rainbow participants is our number one priority, and we will continue to protect everyone on the national forest."

Vollmer of the Forest Service Incident Management Team did not return calls requesting comment Friday.

Rainbow Family members' accounts told a different story.

One member who identified himself only as "Ryan" told Stevens he was with his two children in his tent at the Rainbows' Kid Village north of the main meadow where the major prayer circles and dinners are held.

One of the 10 officers pointed a pepper spray gun at him and his children, he said. His girlfriend was using the latrine outside when four officers came to her and asked if she was smoking marijuana.

The officers then ran through the Kid Village and through its kitchen, and chaos erupted, he said.

Other witnesses recounted seeing about 10 officers of the Forest Service's incident command team drag an older man from the woods near the Kid Village, according to interviews by Stevens.

A woman in the village told the officers to take their guns out of the Kid Village. An officer threw that woman to the ground and pulled her head back by her hair while she was being handcuffed, one Rainbow named Rick told Stevens.

"I got out and yelled, 'what the f--- are you doing?'" Rick said. "That got it started."

The officers backed up in a defensive position, and some used their Tasers on Rainbows, he said.

Rainbows called for their crisis management team, and Rainbow family elders urged the crowd to remain calm, he said. However, the crowd kept moving, and the Forest Service officers began randomly spraying the crowd with pepper spray bullets.

The officers, with their two suspects in custody, found an exit trail from the main meadow, and the peacekeepers urged the crowd to let them go, he said.

"These people deliberately, for hours, were aggressively working the camp over and working the people over," Ryan said. "They chose the kiddie village -- the one place, the kids, to take their stand and create a riot, and I bought into it. ... They were looking for an excuse to do some damage to us."

Ryan's partner, Feather, told Stevens she was pepper-sprayed, and saw another Rainbow with welts all over his body.

Feather also recounted seeing a couple with a young child and an infant who had just emerged from the woods and didn't know what was happening.

The couple asked the officers what was going on, and the officers pointed their guns at the children. The officers walked away, but one turned around and pointed his rifle at the baby, she told Stevens.

Robert Kinn of Afton told the Casper Star-Tribune in an interview Friday that he and his family had been camping and drove to Big Sandy because they'd never been to a gathering.

Forest Service officers gave Kinn a citation and a $175 ticket for allowing someone to ride on his vehicle's trailer, and said the officers weren't polite. "I was scared, was harassed."

Kinn and his family went to the main circle for dinner, when they heard people yelling about needing help to put out a fire in the Kid Village.

About 10 minutes later, people came back to tell the main circle the fire was over, and the crowd resumed eating, he said.

One of the senior Rainbows gathered the crowd and explained the clash with the Forest Service, and another man showed where rubber bullets hit him in the stomach, Kinn said.

Kinn and his family drove home that night, he said.

And finally, the American Civil Liberties Union has been called in. (Don't leave home without em!)

ACLU plans to investigate Rainbow Family treatment

By BEN NEARY – July 6, 2008

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union said Saturday that it plans to investigate the actions of federal law enforcers who arrested five Rainbow Family members in western Wyoming during their annual gathering.

The U.S. Forest Service says a mob of about 400 members of the Rainbow Family, a group of hippie types and eccentrics who camp on public land every year, threw rocks and sticks at Forest Service officers who tried to arrest a member of the group.

Up to 60 federal and local law enforcers responded, Forest Service officials say, and fired "pepper balls" — similar to paint balls but containing a pepper solution — at the crowd to control it.

As many as 7,000 members of the Rainbow Family camped out this year on Forest Service land near the Big Sandy Reservoir. The group holds a weeklong gathering on public land in a different area each year.

The Rainbows and federal officers have clashed before, and in 1998, the Forest Service established a national response team to deal with the group.

The ACLU plans to accept collect calls from Rainbow Family members for the next two weeks to hear their version of events, Linda Burt, executive director of Wyoming's ACLU, said Saturday.

Burt said she has been concerned to hear reports that Rainbow Family members have been ticketed for small traffic infractions. She also said she has heard reports that officers have walked among the Rainbow camps asking people whether they're using drugs.

"I have some real concerns about how this is handled," Burt said. "Particularly the pretext arrests — the idea that people are just cruising around looking for people to arrest when there have been no complaints and no reason for them to be there."

Burt said the ACLU's response to the matter will depend on what it learns from Rainbow Family members. It's possible the ACLU will issue a report, she said, and it may also consider posting observers at future Rainbow Family gatherings.

Rita Vollmer, spokeswoman for the Forest Service, declined Saturday to name the five people arrested Thursday or say why the agency was trying to arrest the first person.

Italics mine, of course. Stating they have "clashed before" is interesting. They have? Translation: The Feds have harassed the Rainbow Family before, and the Rainbow Family has always relied on love and peace to talk the various authorities out of mass arrests for LSD and reefer.

I guess this time--? What happened differently?

I'd like to know.

***

EDIT 7/10/08: I got a couple of emails asking "Just who is the Rainbow Family?"--and this is the best description I have found online.
----------------
Listening to: Grateful Dead - The Music Never Stopped
via FoxyTunes

Dead Air Church: Tomorrow Never Knows

Welcome to all you intrepid explorers of the psyche, you mad adventurers of the gray matter, out there on Facebook and an unnamed message board, currently musing over my Dr Hofmann post. YES, this week, Dead Air Church is for you, you stratosphere-hopping maniacs!

Today, we feature Tomorrow Never Knows, the last song on the Beatles' influential Revolver. I was momentarily concerned that I had used a John Lennon song for Dead Air Church only a couple of weeks ago. And then I thought, wait a minute, regular churches uses the same prophets and mystics over and over again. I guess I can do the same here. I found a wonderfully appropriate psychedelic version.

Wikipedia gives us the background, as if you couldn't tell by just listening:

John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, closely adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, which they based on, and quoted from, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, with the understanding that the "ego death" experienced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is essentially similar to the dying process and requires similar guidance.

Peter Brown claimed that Lennon's only source of inspiration for the song came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which it says Lennon read whilst tripping on LSD. George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book. McCartney confirmed this by stating that he and Lennon once visited the newly opened Indica bookshop—as Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche—and Lennon found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, which quoted the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream". Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book.

That you may see the meaning of within: It is being.

~*~

The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

[via FoxyTunes / The Beatles]

Albert Hofmann 1906-2008

Left: Albert Hofmann shows us the molecule. (But first, are you experienced?) Photo from the New York Times.

~*~

Albert Hofmann was always pretty freaked out by the massive amounts of LSD taken in the USA. No wonder; he seemed transformed by only a small amount. At his 100-year-birthday celebration, covered by the New York Times two years ago, he described the experience of working for Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz Laboratories, isolating rye-grown, poisonous ergot fungus, used successfully by midwives for millennia to precipitate childbirth. He finally isolated the compound, lysergic acid. Tinkering a bit, it was his 25th compound that unlocked the stratosphere, lysergic acid diethylamide.

As legend and myth tell us, if you get any onya, well, kiss it goodbye for 10-12 hours. The stories are never-ending--one of my favorites involves an old friend who was cutting tabs of acid and looked down after about an hour to see his hands melting. (Humorously, he told me "I knew I'd never get any work done with hands like THOSE!")

LSD is tasteless, odorless, colorless and can be absorbed right through the skin. What, did you panic and decide you didn't want any after all? Ha! Too late, babe. Toss your cookies into the toilet all you want, but it's too late, ignition is imminent and your ticket to Andromeda will NOT be canceled, however much you barf up that little tab of paper with Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice printed thereon. You don't even have to swallow it; in fact, when some Yippie (I think it was Paul Krassner) spat on somebody important (possibly Richard Nixon?), law enforcement analyzed the saliva to make sure no LSD was present. (Chatter of dosing Richard Nixon was constant. Not as punishment, but to enlighten him, which as we know, he sorely needed.)

It was said that Hizzoner, Owsley himself, CLOSED THE LAB during the final stage of chemical composition, whatever IT IS that makes it happen. WE ARE CLOSING THE LAB, announced Bear. And if you were inside after the doors closed, you stayed in--and you went to Andromeda with everyone else. Those not ready for space travel waited patiently outside for the batch to be done, several hours it was, and then the magic batch was ready. Owsley's famous product, the veritable Cadillac of psychedelic drugs, then went into the eager hands of the Bay Area's prodigious acidheads, always up for infinite experimentation. The FINAL STAGE (more mythical terms) means one must inhale it, and then, like it's inventor, you are tripping.

At left: Owsley's acid tabs were often printed with R. Crumb's underground comic-book character Mr Natural on them, and this became a sign of quality as well as a brand name: "Does anyone have any Mr Natural?"


In the late 70s, various university towns hosted many tales of disreputable chemists, dropouts from various nearby schools, synthesizing LSD in the garage, but UNWILLING to go to the much-heralded, necessary FINAL STAGE--then selling this inferior, not-completely-synthesized product on the street as acid. Many of the bad trips, muscle-squeezing aches (imitating strychnine poisoning), crashing headaches and other bad side effects of late 70s acid, were said to be caused by this not-LSD, that was known as LSA. I have no way of knowing if these stories are true. Alas, one of the negative side effects of the drug war, then as now, has been to keep people uneducated about the basics; the street thrived on rumor. (And BTW, you are invited to post your own mythology and rumor in the comments!) Personally, I've always enjoyed these stories as spiritual dharma-talk: you know the disreputable acid-manufacturer by the fact that he is not willing to take his LSD himself.

But Dr Hofmann did. Of course, as stated above, he had to.

It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "

He experimented with the drug, taking a dose so small that even the most active toxin known at that time would have had little or no effect. The result with LSD, however, was a powerful experience, during which he rode his bicycle home, accompanied by an assistant. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as "bicycle day."

Riding the bicycle, Hofmann famously said "I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his own creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence."(1) Words quoted over and over again, it was the statement heard round the world.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Mr. Hofmann participated in tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used only under carefully controlled circumstances.

And this is what brought the CIA knocking. You have WHAT? A scary drug? When the Generals come calling, you know you got trouble.(2)

Thus, Hofmann learned the Gospel Rule of LSD (SET AND SETTING!) before anybody else:

In 1951, [Hofmann] wrote to the German novelist Ernst Junger, who had experimented with mescaline, and proposed that they take LSD together. They each took 0.05 milligrams of pure LSD at Mr. Hofmann's home accompanied by roses, music by Mozart and burning Japanese incense. "That was the first planned psychedelic test," Mr. Hofmann said.

He took the drug dozens of times after that, he said, and once experienced what he called a "horror trip" when he was tired and Mr. Junger gave him amphetamines first. But his hallucinogenic days are long behind him.

"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," Mr. Hofmann said. "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley," who asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of his fatal throat cancer.

But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed.

Indeed, we might name Timothy Leary the PT Barnum of the movement...as we go from bourgeois, ultra-civilized Hofmann and his Mozart (the museum or the drawing room, if you will) to the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey, Leary and the Grateful Dead, signifying the carnival, the circus, the traveling show, scary gypsies.(3) As LSD made it's way down the social ladder, it would become more dangerous, as indeed, life on the lower rungs is more fraught with danger in general. Dangerous, my late Native American friend Steve Conliff used to say, like gunpowder or nuclear fission. In the right hands, great, useful, incredible! But in the wrong hands?

I repeat, in the wrong hands? (4) When administering LSD, mind control is fairly easy to accomplish. And it was that hugely scary, almost effortless mind-control--the various vampiristic elements of the counterculture--that gave everyone pause. (They liked to call it "suggestibility" in the mental health literature.) As Leary was busted by none other than G. Gordon Liddy at Millbrook (5) the whole enterprise came crashing down, at least for awhile. But alas, the myth, the legend, the concept, would never die.

"Wanna buy a space ticket/see God?" is a pretty amazing selling-point. As we say in retail, it sells itself. The echoes of Eden, the invitation to bite the forbidden fruit and ye will be as Gods, is just TOO MUCH for some of us.

As lesser psychedelics, such as party-friendly Ecstasy, would take over the kids' market, LSD now remains in the hands of the psychedelic connoisseur, or the interrogator.

And now, the man who gave us the key to the golden door, has passed:

Mr. Hofmann rose, slightly stooped and now barely reaching five feet, and walked through his house with his arm-support cane. When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. "I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all," he said.

Goodbye, Dr Hofmann. And thank you for Andromeda. It was beautiful.

~*~

1) See Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens.

2) Heartily recommend the highly flawed but fascinating LSD-inspired movie, Brainstorm. Not entirely the movie-makers' fault that the movie ends badly, since Natalie Wood died during filming, re-arranging the plot. For a comprehensive account of extensive CIA research into LSD-based interrogation techniques (testing LSD on regular people who had no idea what awaited them), see the invaluable Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

3) See The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe.

4) See THE FAMILY: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion by Ed Sanders--the best book to place the whole Manson-family saga in the social setting of the times. (COURT TV groupies, take note, has tons of great observations, hippie history and creepy connections that you'll never read anywhere else.)

5) For both sides of this bust, see Flashbacks, Timothy Leary's autobiography. G. Gordon Liddy gives his version in his own autobiography, Will. Interestingly, they mirror each other's account of the bust remarkably well. Later, they would serve time in the same prison! (Is America great or what?)

Captain Walker didn't come home

Left: Tommy's mother, Ann-Margret, swims in baked beans, for reasons unknown, in Ken Russell's version of The Who's TOMMY (1975).

If you've never seen Ken Russell's phantasmagoric version of The Who's rock opera Tommy, you will have the chance tomorrow at 6pm EST, on Turner Classic Movies.

As a big Who fanatic, I will admit here: I used to hate the movie. As a teenager, I wanted the story of Tommy to be all hippie-sensitive and Dr Phil... sort of like the Broadway version turned out, I guess. But now? Bollocks, as Pete Townshend would say.

How often do you get to see Roger Daltrey dosed with acid (by Tina Turner, no less) borne by hundreds of hypodermic needles in some kinky-weird lotus-blossom creation? Keith Moon as child-molesting Uncle Ernie? ("Your mother's left me here to mind you/Now I'm doing what I want to!") Check out Jack Nicholson, as Tommy's concerned physician, sagely intoning "He seems to be completely un-recep-tive! The tests I gave him show no-sense-at-all!" And BTW, where did this American doctor come from? And how did American Ann-Margret get to be the mother of Roger Daltrey, with that Shepherds Bush accent of his? And who doesn't want to see Ann-Margret swimming in baked beans? Come on, admit that you do not see that every day.


Ken Russell is berserk, and extended his berserkery to the film. For those of us who had very definite ideas about Tommy, who he was, what he represented, the movie smashed all of that to hell. Of course, I now see that this deliberate iconoclasm was the whole intention; Townshend was giving the finger to those of us who were deifying Tommy, which was the warning delivered in the rock opera: Don't deify human beings. Only God deserves our worship.

Left: Tommy passes the acid test.

There is one truly incredible, bang-up sequence in the movie, delivered by hizzoner Eric Clapton, which I have included below. The blues classic Eyesight to the Blind (written by Sonny Boy Williamson) was the only non-original song in the rock-opera and was simply too perfect not to include, since Tommy IS deaf, mute and blind. This sequence--Tommy's mother taking him to a faith-healer played by Clapton at a Marilyn-Monroe shrine--is Ken Russell at his finest and most trippy. (Other times, if you've ever seen Russell's indescribably bizarre films The Devils or Lair of the White Worm, you know he can drift far off into Andromeda somewhere... Earth to Ken!) This particular sequence manages to be just bizarre enough to be utterly fabulous.

Great observations, meditations and hallucinations about music, God, worship, disability, trauma, child abuse, sexual abuse, religious hucksters and all of that good cosmic stuff. If you've never seen it and you have a taste for the strange, don't miss it.

~*~

Nothing can change the shape of things to come

Dead Air Church brings you classic NOSTALGIA with Max Frost and the Troopers, a fictional band made up for the movie WILD IN THE STREETS!

Wild in the Streets (1968) was a super-fabulous B-movie about adult paranoia circa 1968, as the kids lower the voting age to 14, feed LSD to everyone over 30, and take over the country. Christopher Jones, beautiful ex-husband of Susan Strasberg, brazenly channels Jim Morrison, and gives us this fantastic Doors-as-garage-band song (by brilliant songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil), which ominously reminds us that Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come. Ain't it the truth.

The kids elect Max president in the movie, which doesn't bode well, as you might imagine.

And if your kids try to get you to drink anything suspect, REFUSE IT!

~*~

Max Frost And The Troopers - Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come

Too much to dream: the Monkees' HEAD

One of the more bizarre artifacts from the 60s is on display tonight on Turner Classic Movies Underground film series: The Monkees' very weird, trippy HEAD (1968), which must be seen to be believed.

The Monkees were, as you probably know, prefabricated teenybopper idols manufactured in Hollywood. They were also (yes, I admit it!) beloved by your humble narrator, whilst still a scruffy, rust-belt ragamuffin, subsisting mostly on TV-dinners and Velveeta cheese. The Monkees mass-marketed bubblegum cards fit right in with the Velveeta. One memory I have of the fourth grade: my tiny bedroom mirror lined with Mike, Peter, Davy and Micky, smelling faintly of bubblegum.

American culture shifted very suddenly during that era. The prefab Monkees took LSD and became conscious beings. Subsequently, they decided to make a movie with Jack Nicholson about what it's like to be conscious beings, while also experiencing major intergalactic teenybopper mega-fame at the same time. You have to admit, that's something else!

In HEAD, you get all manner of bizarre acidhead-slapstick repartee, later perfected by the Firesign-Theatre, and other 70s comedy troupes. There are several blatantly Beatlesesque musical knock-offs, one memorably accompanied by a psychedelic underwater swimming sequence. From Jeff Stafford at TCM:

Initially called Untitled, HEAD was an unconventional project from the beginning. According to author Patrick McGilligan in Jack's Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson, "Bob [Rafelson, director], Bert [Schneider, executive producer], and Jack, with the four Monkees in tow, went to Ojai [California] for several days. They smoked "a ton of dope" (as Davy Jones recalls) and tossed ideas into a running tape recorder...The script was set up to have the least continuity imaginable, and only the slenderest plot trigger - the four Monkees leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge in an effort to escape the mental prison of a black box, which was "Head," meaning pothead, but also meaning all the rules and straitlaced conventions inside one's head that inhibit enjoyment of life. With their tapes and notes, Nicholson and Rafelson went away to the desert for inspiration. According to at least one account, they scribbled a treatment while tripping on acid."

By the time filming began on Head, The Monkees were less than happy with their circumstances. Not only were they feuding with Columbia over their contracts and salaries but they felt betrayed by Rafelson and Nicholson after they were informed that none of them would receive a writing credit on the film. "We were disappointed and angry," Micky Dolenz said. "Mike was furious. He took all the tapes and locked them in the trunk of his car!" As a result, Micky, Davy and Mike (without Peter's involvement) refused to show up on the first day of shooting which infuriated Rafelson and Nicholson. After a day of negotiations, filming resumed with all four band members but relations between the Monkees and their director were decidedly strained after that...and Mike, Davy, Micky and Peter never received a writer's credit for their contributions.

When Head was completed, Rafelson and Nicholson launched a guerilla advertising campaign in New York City, plastering stickers for the film everywhere on taxicabs, signs, police helmets, you name it. At one point they were even arrested for being public nuisances but their efforts were in vain. The critics were unimpressed and the film held little appeal for anyone who wasn't a fan of the Monkees' TV show. Dolenz stated later, "Because the film was rated R, most of our fans couldn't even get into the theatre to see it in the first place and those who did just didn't have any idea of what we were up to." Nicholson, however, maintains even today that Head is one of his proudest accomplishments and still calls it "the best rock-'n-roll movie ever made." Despite its commercial failure, Rafelson was equally pleased with it, comparing it often to Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963).

In HEAD, the Monkees finally play their own instruments, attack a coke machine in the desert, play dandruff in Victor Mature's hair, and jump off the Golden Gate bridge. In general, they finally get to do whatever they want.

They rebelled mightily against their own Velveeta-hood.

In the process, they became Real, and as you good children know, once you are Real you can't become unreal.

~*~

Trailer:



----------------
Listening to: The Electric Prunes - I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)
via FoxyTunes

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be

Photo from Microscopy-UK


(((shrieks!)))

If you read my earlier post about Grand Old Man, Feline King of the Daisy Household, you know he went in for a body shave and flea bath last week. Danelle informed me there were "a few fleas"--which is always surprising since my cats don't go outside. I don't think I've had a flea problem since first acquiring them--and since they were throwaways, they DID have fleas when I rescued them. But, oh, that's all in the past, dear reader, all in the in the past, as I have told myself countless times. No fleas in here! Nosirree Bob!

But there he was, the redoubtable Grand Old Man (herein referred to as GOM), on top of the dryer (where he enjoys sitting, since it's warm and cozy)... and I saw... what is -that?-... on his newly-shaven skin. It's---MOVING! OH MY GOD!!!! A MOVING BLACK SPOT!!!! AIYEEEEEEE! (((shrieks)))

And yes, I picked it off, and it wiggled and jumped away.

(((shrieks!))))

I hate them, with every fiber of my being. As a vegetarian, I have guilt over hating any species of God's creatures; hence, I do what every good Christian has historically done: I have consigned rats, cockroaches, fleas and flies to THE DEVIL. That's probably not fair, and yeah, I know the Hindus like the rats and maintain they are really holy (apparently, they are a lot better-behaved over there?) and primarily for this reason, I try to hold off on the rats. But FLEAS!?! NOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOH! I can NOT abide the evil parasites, bringer of plagues, NASTY THINGS!

Some background is in order.

My initial war with the fleas commenced at age 19, when I dealt with my first overwhelming infestation in my first apartment. For some reason, they ate me alive. Not sure why; they don't seem too interested in biting me now, thank heavens. (Body chemistry changes? Science geeks, please explain!) But there was horrible, pathological itching and swelling from nearly every bite (there were dozens), and every wee tickle I experienced made me even more insane. I would hurriedly look to see if it was a FLEA creating the tickle, and about half the time, it surely was--just often enough to drive me paranoid-raving-batshit. I started keeping a 24-hour flea-vigil. I classified certain areas in my apartment Where The Fleas Are. I went a little berserk, constantly checking myself for those telltale evil black dots that would be there, and then (unlike dirt and lint) hop away, leaving a swollen red itchy welt in their wake.

I went to the library and studied the fleas. They can jump all over the place! They could jump halfway around the fucking world! Not to worry, dammit, I was DEDICATED! In my youthful exuberance and fired-up-flea-frenzy, I was gonna drive them out. I became obsessed, like Peter Weller became obsessed with the rat in OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN. I was gonna GET RID OF THEM if it was the LAST THING I DID!!! Being a good hippie, I started off with politically-correct cloves and lavender from the co-op where I then worked. Ha! They are laughing at you and your pissant cloves! They are eating cloves for breakfast! YUM YUM, say the fleas! CLOVES!

I also dutifully ingested the substances that supposedly make the fleas take a bite of you and then say -ptui!- and spit you out and never come back. Nutritional yeast, brewer's yeast, B-12, blah blah blah. The fleas loved it all, and came back for seconds and thirds. (They particularly liked the brewer's yeast, causing my grandmother to wonder aloud if they were Irish fleas. :P)

Thus, I upped the ante and bombed my apartment with what I now know was a panoply of carcinogenic substances, without even waiting for the prescribed period of time to pass before trying again. Like the cloves, the fleas lapped up the chemicals, growing ever larger and more bold. Just as anti-bacterial soaps and antibiotics are now breeding superbugs, I was breeding them, too.

I even risked my life by giving all four of my cats (count 'em, four) flea baths, which was exactly like when Porky tried to give Sylvester a bath, if you saw that famous episode. The claws sunk deep, deep, into my skin, and I still have a scar from one of them. One of them seemed to be trying to climb up my skull.

Cats, you may have heard, do not like baths.

At some point, I entered what I call flea-psychosis and started attributing characteristics to them, which is possibly a side effect of too much LSD (nobody's perfect). I began to think of them as having personalities, like Socrates and Ben in WILLARD: We will wait until she is peaking on acid and then bite her, and she won't know if she actually saw us or not, since we are little black dots that jump away with lightening speed! (Yes, they really said this; I heard them!)

And so, for years, I engaged in FLEA WARS.

Finally, some years ago, I decided to keep all my cats inside, and that seemed to handle the problem, at long last. As animal rights people have increasingly counseled folks to keep cats inside to conserve the dwindling bird populations (particularly in growing suburbs), I also got the bonus of feeling morally righteous, which is always a big plus. (Also, it was so nice not to worry about my babies getting hit by cars.) But of course, you know the real reason! Totally selfish!

And now, I see MOVING DOTS ON MY GOM! (((shrieks)))

I hightailed it to the vet and got more chemicals, which I had discontinued on my cats some years ago, thinking it was safe to do so because they were flea-free. Ha! I should have known that Ben and Socrates would be back.

And so that's what I've been doing lately. How about yourselves?