Amsterdam It!!

Tinkerbell, pixie dust and pirates made Peter Pans day as he flew around in tights in the fictional paradise lost of Neverland. Today, you too can have a fairy tale journey as a Bohemian Lost Boy or a Lost Goth Girl in the underground and undercurrent sub-culture of the Netherlands. Lets face it, those, daring, dauntless Dutch have given us more than delf, dikes, wooden shoes and windmills. Amsterdam is a steaming, compost rich in history, art, culture, and a William Burroughs subterranean narco nightlife to die for.

Amsterdam is also the penultimate Euro-industrial showcase and mecca for the severely perverse sub-culture vulture. It's a narcissistic syringe laced with enough creativity to induce a paralyzing and fatal art attack in the truly art addicted! Galaxies of galleries orbit in perfect harmony around its solar system, planets of art, of all types and tastes circle it's sun and proliferate like tulips on steroids. One gallery alone is devoted to over 500 works of the invincible Vincent Van Gogh.

History is kept alive with museums highlighting Hollands colorful and sometimes somber past, including the Anne Frank Museum. Anne was the young girl who not only kept a diary of her families trials and tribulations under German occupation, but who also fell victim to Nazi atrocities in Hitlers drive for world domination. Virulently anti-Nazi, it was the brave Dutch who used to toss wooden shoes, called sabots into the industrial machinery of the Third and thankfully final Reich, and gave us the word..sabotage! On the lighter side of the fence is a museum for devotees of the history of red light district sex, a museum of torture, and what would hemp happy Holland be without it's museum of Hemp and Cannabis.

This beautiful old world city of Hans Brinker fame is graced by a geometric, winding labyrinth of canals where you can enjoy a pleasurable cruise while enjoying a massive urban architectural bricks and mortar orgasm. The Dutch, always eco-minded, have provided an array of public transportation alternatives to renting a car, but the best way to enjoy and absorb all Amsterdam has to offer is by bicycle, and they can be rented at any number of conveyance establishments.

Amsterdam is also the most hemp tolerant city in the world, and although not completely legal by any means, the cannabis culture of cabal is alive and well at numerous "coffeshops" where you can get more bang for your bong.

If the Indy 500 is one of the pre-eminent auto events in the world, then Amsterdam can lay claim as the home of the the Grand Prix of Cannabis, as it plays host to the annual International Cannabis Cup Competition. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!

Prostitution, on the other hand, is legal in Amsterdam and the Red Light District is a fertile ground for the sexual imagination. Walk down the streets and the windows attractively display flesh and fantasy in equal amounts.You can find everyting from a menage a trois to a giddyup session with a ponygirl, and all can be had for the price a right sound spanking by a Dutch Dom to make your bottom tingle with delight.

The city of bikes and dikes pushes the cultural envelope and has something for everyone, proving that life is indeed a cannabis and carnal cabaret old chum. More than that, it is truly a delicious and somewhat delightfully decadent garden of history, art, cannabis culture and a cornucopia of consentual sex. So, hop aboard the Canna-Bus Tourbus, grab your Zig Zags and your Trojans, and lets Amsterdam it!

SEEDS AND STEMS
Those damn Amsterdam coffeeshops kick some highly serious grass glass! Dutch doobies have been firing up since Dutch society started lightening up, and stopped bashing the hash in the 1970's. Prior to that, the 1960's were a time of societal upheaveal and reefer revolution, and the Dutch Provo's were in the avant vanguard for all the other guerilla street politico's to come.

This melting pot of protest, led to the eventual relaxation of restrictive smoking pot penalization.
As the Sixties began to wither on the vine, the great global ganja culture of "wasted" youth began to bloom, bud and blossom in the Garden of Hedon. The Age of Aquarius made room for the Age of Cannabis, and the Dutch coffeehouse culture had finally reached a full climax and officially, unofficially came of age.

The Acid Tests of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the Digger free feed, free store culture of Haight Ashbury in the Psychedelic Sixites, can directly trace their DNA to the result of the social intercourse already banging away full tilt boogie in the humping hempster bedrooms of Holland. One by one, the first coffeeshops began to open their experimental doors of perception. Names like "Mellow Yellow" and others, are living monuments to Mary Jane and Co. that still exists to this day. To put it into pop culture perspective, they are the Lincoln Memorials of Marijuana! Four Scored and Seven Joints Ago!

Once disco died it's polyester death, the tied dyed times were ripe for fans of cannabis to borrow from the Blue Grass State, and planted the seed to hold the first of the Kentucky Derby of green grass competitions in Amsterdam. By the late 1980's, it was time to harvest the idea, and the first Cannabis Cup Competition was held, and has been growing like a weed ever since. Over the years the tokers and smokers have stoked the pop culture bowls with theme competitions and institued the dubious doobie Counter Culture Hall of Fame.

The first inductee was the Godfather of Ganja, Bob Marley, during the 10th Cannabis Cup and subsequent inductees include beatniks Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, along with peaceniks Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. Then, to really jazz it up one year, Ann Arbor's power to the people poet, weed warrior, vagabond emeritus and rainbow colored white panther, John Sinclair, inducted the one and only...Louis Armstrong into the hallowed halls of hemp.

Hello, Doobie!
Most of Amsterdams psychedelic and colorful emporiums of euphoria are within walking distance of Centraal Station and Dam Square, and convieniently located on top of the Red Light District. You can get a drink and a smoke at most shops, listen to marijuana music, reefer regaee, and rock n' roll, so if your 18 years of age or older, stoners can socialize in a convivial carnival of cannabis with one another without Big Brother's heavy handed retribution.

Hash and pot are sold over the counter or at windows, and some offer free rolling papers and cardboard to fashion filters. A few shops offer bongs, pipes and vaporizers so if you don't carry your own you can count on the the house to pass the glass.


Seeds n' stems rules of social etiquette apply in Amsterdam, and will go a long way in keeping your trip flying high, and not go up in smoke! First, leave the mask of the Ugly American at home. Americans have an overseas reputation as being embarassingly brash and overbearing to some Europeans, so the red, white and rude act won't win you any brownie points. Patience is also a virtue here, so pace yourself and slow down and smell the tulips.

Remember you are a tourist and a guest in their country, and not a member of the George Bushocracy searching for phantom WMD's. You just want to find some Bongs of Mass Dilerium and smoke a little dope!

THE RED THREAD TOUR
Cobblestones and cannabis may pave the counter cultural streets of Amsterdam, but there's also a lively panoramic pavement of prostitution in a vibratory marketplace chock full of sex and goodies. The Red Light District is symbolic of "de rode draad" or the red thread of prostitution that runs rampant through society.

Prostitution is not only legal in Holland, but a highly respected profession in this erotic enclave of Dutch dildo's and delightful decadence. In addition to the promiscuous leg spreading vicariousness of the area, there are numerous merchants of mastabatoria that will salivate with capitalistic glee, as the cash register rings while catering to any and all of your machinations and fascinations. They will go the extra mile when it comes to putting a collar and leash on your wildest leather fetish fantasies.

Sex clubs are as abundant as a hardon in a harem, and offer a diverse menu of exotic and gender bending entertainment. Big buxom female beauties and tantalizing tranny teasers, parade and strut thier stuff au natural to please the patrons of heterosexual persuasion. If, however, you are heterophobic, the deliriously gay and luciously lesbian crowd can also have their sexual palates and panties pleased at numerous clubs and cabarets that feature shows and dancing that resembles a close contact sport.

Shops sell everything from bottom pleasing riding crops to bridles and saddles to harness that ponygirl in training, as well as forced maid costuming and a dazzling array of bondage and discipline and they are everywhere. Absolute Danny is a orgasmic must see on your genital tour of Amsterdam.

It's the Fort Knox of vaginal weaponry and includes the atomic bomb of self gratification, the amazing Tarzan Dildo. Condomerie, one of the oldest and largest erection emporiums in town has every concievable size, shape and style of penis wear finery to be found in Europe. They have an explosive rainbow selection of colors and hues, and when it comes to varietals of condom flavors it's the Baskin Robbins of Latex.

The artsy fartsy crowd can also get their rocks off as they stare in amazement at a concrete example of erectus eroticus art in the form and shape of a giant penis fountain with spinning balls and all, and a water flow to qualify it as Viagra Falls! The "soiled doves" of America's Wild West were the Queens of the raggedy frontier cowboy kingdom and were adored by robber baron and train robber alike. Today, the prostitutes of Amsterdam command more respect from their society, and deservedly so, than do most politicians in the numerous Bush-ocracy's around the globe.

Amsterdams Red Light District is not just an area set aside as a garden of Eden for sexual nirvana, but also a refined cathedral of worship of this, the oldest of professions...and yes, you can get laid! Every color of the racial rainbow, and dialect of the United Nations is available in an assortment of sizes from slim to ample.

As you walk down the streets you'll pass the soft red glow of windows filled with female flesh on display with the promise of fantasies fullfilled for a price. Top or bottom, soft or hard, sub or dom, you choose the dream and she'll drive the train to it's final destination. Make no mistake, these are not mannequins, these are man eaters and man pleasers.

A few rules of decorum for the uninitiated. Treat the prostitutes with all the respect you would your own sister or your own mother. Also, you're not allowed to take any photographs of them. These are not Polaroid Prosititutes, so keep the digitals out of reach. They are working girls and at the same time, they are ladies and are to be treated as such. One more word, these girls are also members of a union called De Rode Draad and take their profession and art seriously.

The redlight district is host to happy hookers and hempy hookahs, but it's also a repository of some of the finest damned architecture in Amsterdam.

Walk down the winding streets and you'll swear you've stumbled into a fairy tale realm and the buildings will remind you of times and ages long gone in the forgotten ghost shoud of time. The District is also home to a bustling and mysterious Chinatown, a Jewish quarter with the some of the best pastrami this side of the Wailing Wall, and a daily flea market that is a must for the rummager and collector of trash as treasure. Got Sex? Amsterdam does!

MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES
Amsterdam is also the Netherlands never ending haven for art and antiquities. The country has over 400 museums that delve into a variety of cultural corners of the Dutch. The glutton for art galleries will certainly satiate his or her hunger at a myriad of reknown art enclaves highlighting the works of Van Gogh and Rembrandt to lesser known painters and other artists and art forms, including photography and film.

Among the the museums of the more sedate and serious nature you'll find the Anne Frank House and Museum and also the Dutch Resistance Museum. Both focus on a dark period of world history and the bravery it evoked in a whole populace as well as the heart of one young girl who found her inner strength through her beliefs. There is also a Jewish Museum, Dutch History Museum and a variety of science and natural history museums, including a childrens hands on experience to explore the mysteries of the world of science.

Nautical and tropical themed museums exist, and in addition to a Dutch Shipping Museum there's even a small Houseboat Museum. The Brew Happy Lager Heads will be overjoyed to learn there is a Heineken Experience and brewry tour that gets up a full head of steam, and you can even get a peek under Marilyn Monroe's skirt at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.
The more macabre sensibilities will be tickled pink with a jaunt through the world of torture and pain at the famed Torture Museum.

All the tools for extracting a witches confession are on hand along with a variety of restraints and cages. The cannabis cannibal crowd will enjoy a tokin' tour through the Hemp Marijuana Museum and find it a truly enlightening experience.

There is also a Tatoo Museum for the tat crowd and from tat's to tit's, its the Sex Museum and also the Erotic Museum in the heart of the Red Light District. Like a matching pair of breasts, the museums hightlight the history of the district as well as including erotic art, paintings and objects from around the world. The Erotic Museum is five full floors of fantasy.

If you're on the art and culture side of the coin and want to maximize your museum clout, you can purchase a Museum Card that for a small price allows you unlimited access to over 400 museums in the Netherlands with 30 of them in Amsterdam alone. The pass is good for a year, so if your kickin' off your shoes for awhile or expating it...it's a bargain!

Amsterdam has it all. Houseboats, canal cruises, pedal boat tours, bikes and dikes, cannabis and sex, culture and counter culture. No matter what your looking for, the Dutch do it right. So when you're trying to figure out where to go off the beaten path...just do what I do...and Amsterdam It, damn it!

The Laundromat Louvre

Does the Guggenheim Groove gitcha down, Luv? Is the Museum of Modern Art too moderne for your truest scholar and bluest of collar concept of art? Is the Smithsonian stuffy, staid and as stale to you as a flat-ass two day old beer in a mug sitting next to a jumble of wet cigarettes ripely fermenting in an ashtray in some dingy dive in the Tenderloin?

Does your dictionary spell art "prissy" and "sissy"? Man-up! You know damn well and you have a $10 bet to back you up that the heavy-metal mucho machismo macho-machino Diego Rivera could kick whitebread milktoast Monets lite-rock soft-pastel ass in a fair fight!
Flashback. An evening with imposters and impossible poseurs at the galleria; joining hands with the incurable curators who act as secretive as ever; stealing and smuggling art and antiquities from the backalleys of Tangier and Cairo.

Goodfellas and Artfellas smoke dreaming of lit-fame and big chunky bricks of "dumb blonde" hashish. Flashforward. The effected t-girl "Toodles" and Ru-Paul "Ta-Ta's" following at the end of the sequined evening, Dahlings! Dreadful wine-in-a-box puns, "Got to go, Sweetums, it's getting latte!" Ha! Guffaw!

Listen up! All is art, and art is well. There's narry a Mary Martin lostboy or sweet Sal Mineo lostgirl in all of Neverland that has to search very far for it. Far from it. Great walls of art everywhere, along with painters and pirates inhaling pixie dust, and there's a full jammin' needle loaded with kreative karma to ease the pain of the summertime art-fix cold turkey blues.

Look, art is where you find it, and most of it is right in front of you. The cost? Free, at least a lot of it, amigos y amigas. Cities and towns circling the globe in 17 languages have vibrant art scenes and communities popping up like a garden of peyote buttons in the desert. So, what the hell, grab a crowbar and a chainsaw, it's time to tear down the academic Walls of Geritol Jericho and take to the streets, as mad for art as a French student is for leftwing politics. It's time for the Spare Change Asphalt Kickin' Street Fightin' Art Attack!

'Merika is high on art, from the urban crossroads of cocaine and concrete to the rural regions of barnyard methlabs and farm fields of beans, corn, wheat, surrounded by purple mountains filled with manure and majesty. Visual arts come into clear focus in the worlds great cathedrals of creativity to be "oooh and ahhhed" at by the toney tuxedo'd crowd and not necessarily by the brigands and brigades of bowling shirt Bolsheviks.

Peoples art, volksart, is readily available everywhere and freely viewable too. Depictions painted on buildings along the strolling boulevards of the city and on the beatup grey weathered old barns off the beaten path of forgotten two-lanes.

It's on daring display in parks populated by people and the bovine enriched dung filled cowpie pastures of plenty. There are festivals of arts and celebrations of crafts in big cities and small burgs; and art is not marooned on the Devils Island of academia either. Today art is not only visual, but viewable in diverse venues such as, but not limited to public libraries and public reading rooms.

It's alive on the mass-transit systems and can be savoured on subways, muni-cars, buslines, trolleys and railcars. San Fran-freakin-cisco is most creative culturally when it comes to the display of all things art for arts sake, fer Crissakes.

Masterpieces for San Franciscos tired, poor and huddled masses can be enjoyed in varied locales in The United Nations of Art. Elvis kitsch kulture is on display in a unrinal packed mensroom in a metro-sexual fern bar and literally plays to a standing room only crowd. That would make it the first Uri-National Art Gallery of the Porcelain Proletariat, wouldn't it?

Next stop on the trolley ride ain't exactly the Louvre, but is a peculiar "peoples gallery" that opened it's doors amidst great flamboyance and fabric softener fanfare at a laundromat! Now, that is artful power to the artful people, not to mention whiter whites and bluer blues...Right On!

Murals are the Katherine Hepburn of art forms. Elegant, stately and regal, they dress up the austere highrisers with imaginative and colorful imagery that induces a mild art-cotic narcotic buzz. Bangor to Boston; St. Loo to San Fran, all jump and jive with outdoor visual art feasts delighting the eyes.

Jazz and blues themes dress up the West coast as sexy as a female impersonator in black fishnet stockings doing Liza justice in fresco Frisco's frisky North Beach enclave of cleavage, Italian sausage, cheap wine and ten dollar whores. Midwestern murals depict the turn of the century age of raucous ragtime and tickle the ivories of the highrise and sedate Scott Joplin streets of Sedalia, Missouri.

Street art itself is schizoid, with a mean streak and a soft spot sharing the mind. Visceral and existential to a fault, it's created in pshyco-science labs by visionary Sterno holymen disguised as monks and madmen. Street smart art also comes in a can well shaken, as great-gonzo grafitti articulations appear on masonry palettes created by crazed dayglo tribesmen who've braved the journey across sea-beast infested oceans sailing on flimsy straw rafts.

In time, with fast currents and favorable winds, they arrive safely ashore from the bitchin' beaches of the Islands of Graffiti.
Contrary to public belief, the subway IS the underground and it's a full metal jacket of gangbanger art created by an army of 9mm graffti commandos who watch it all glide by on electrified third rails below the ground.

Railyards too, have been known to shapeshift into lonesome whistle gallerias du arte as the graffiti ghosts decorate the rusted, weather beaten boxcars of the Haiku Hobos. This is a mobile art attack on the march at 45mph-ish.
Sculptors of metal mold shapes and forms from whitehot fires produced by the redhot lava that flows slowly from deep inside old black volcanos.

Musicians without stages or roofs play chords on a bluesy guitar or on a jazzy sax. These lost chords were once lost and tossed haphazardly into dark alley dumpsters and forgotten. Soon they're found in the piles of trash and castaway garbage by street-music saints who have the word "crazy" written all over them in invisible ink. The band cranks up the volumn to play as they wash down a feast of diuretics and meds with bottles of warm Night Train wine.

The panhandlers pavement is alive with homeless poets, prophets and discarded prophylactics. The passing parade includes mimes who speak in stony silence, as though their tongues have been removed, and jugglers who juggle torches, gas powered chainsaws and swords of Toledo steel. Vendors line the streets, like mucho sand dollars on a golden beach in old dusty Mexico.

Tables laden with fine crafted riches as if it were stolen booty from the hulls of Spanish galleons sailing from the Phillipines. Beaded jewelry from the Orient; Black gold from the Black Hills; Arizona turquoise and New-Mex silver from deep inside the mines of the old Southwest. Mandolin makers and makers of handmade lutes and homemade flutes.

Hemmingways and Steinbecks offering for sale stapled books of xeroxed poetry and prose.
Rural 'Merika ain't immune from the art junkies' needle neither. The highest of plains in plain old Kansas are anything but plain what with whirlygig artfarms and hayseed haystack tom-foolery with feet emerging from the inside of large round bales of hay to haystack fabrications of giant Area 51 alien monsters from outer space staring in a vacant purple haze from the hayfields with giant hubcap eyes, All this and more, displayed with a devilish hayseed wink of the eye to delight the most skeptical who happen by.

The Lone Ranger, Hi Yo Silver, Away! and longneck beer Lone Star State of Texas has a chrome-magnon Motor City phenom of cool Cadillacs. They're set at a weird angle nose-down, chrome down, and look for all the world as though they crash landed; a metallic heavy meteor of unknown substance, composition or origin from somewhere deep in space at high velocity and then, bang, boom, smack, crash into the ground of an old barren bean field in rusted repose resting just west of Amarillo. It's visible and visitable from the interstate, interestingly enough.

Now, gas up and head north to the rectangular, (and damn proud of it!) cornhusker, corn happy state of Nebraska.

It's as flat as roadkill after it's been turned to toast by an 18-wheeler; the utility pole is the state tree and the horsefly is the official state bird. It's also where you'll find a gased up and jazzed up enclave of fantastic farm folk/artisans laying claim to being the heavy weight champeenship grease monkey-monkey wrench Hall of Fame trophy winners when it comes to pop culture and chrome. It's one of 8 wonders of the roadhead world. Ladies and Gentlemen...I present to you for your enjoyment and pleasure...Carhenge!!!

The curtain rises in the morning mist as the actors fill the stage.. Beads of sweat form on your brow and Your mouth drops open as you join the audience in an assault of appreciative applause. You gaze in wonder at the mighty "Carhenge" the King Kong of Khrome!. Forget those dreary Druids, this is the ultimate heavy metal knockoff of Stonehenge itself in Jolly Olde England, eh wot?

Got bull testicles? Colorado does and has been long known for it's legendary Rocky Mountain Oysters. Colorado also has altitude and Colorado has attitude, but, it also can induce a damn near mile high art attack at the Swetsville Sculpture Zoo just north of old dharmabum Denver.

Carparts and their second cousins, truckparts and tractorparts, have become part and parcel of the metal sculptured moonscape of the zoo/farm/gallery, Steel and iron have been welded together into shapes resembling large prickly pineapples of polynesian persuasian; gigunga metal ants and humunga metal bugs. There are fish fashioned from joyous junk, and there are enough rusted T-Rexs made of old tractor parts to fill Spielbergs' Jurassic Park!

Metal sculptors who sculpt and welders who wield diabolical welding devices are in the genre top ten of the art worlds hip-parade, but, there is another sculpting movement afoot, Sherlook Holmes! Grab some smoked whitefish, a six pack of Moosehead beer and a handful of sawdust knotty piners, because We're firing up the four-wheelers and snowmobiles and heading deep into the North Country to visit woodland venues of plaid and proud art created by the "youbetcha" crowd.

This is the fabled bar and grill kingdom of pool tables, bowling alleys, guns, ammo, camo and booze, Here, you'll find cocky, as well as half-cocked chainsaw art inspired by Scandinavian lumberjacks with Viking names like Lars, Rolf and Nils. They wear lots o' plaid and Carhart bib overalls and fell trees to the cries of "TTIIMMBBEER".

They also create hardwood masterpieces by sculpting tree stumps and tree trunks into fine looking bucktoothed incisor baring Canadian beavers and hungry, angry, salivating black bears that would scare the hell out of Cujo!.

Legendary Lumberjack Lore is alive and well with the legend of Paul Bunyan and Babe his Blue Ox. Paul left years ago, literally and literarily from the great shite northland of the French Canucks who gave birth to this tallest of woodland tales.

Rumour has it is that he crossed the border as an illegal alien somewhere near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Today, thanks to a compost heap of timbermania, Paul is a full blooded double-axe tossing log rolling red, white, blue, plaid and proud, my country right or wrong 'Merikan citizen. Just as the flag flies at full staff there stand in tribute to his most holy bruteness, a delightfully weird assemblage of lumber monuments, that penetrate the willing 'Merikan landscape like a compliant virgin on prom night.

His boots roam the hard and soft woodlands from downeast lobstah-chowdah coniferous rich Maine to the giant redwoods of far-freakin-out California. Big and bad, the biggest badass Paul of all is a northern Californian, and has the dubious distinction of being the only talking Paul Bunyan statue in the United States. During my last visit to this Pauly anomaly it could only speak English, but, who knows, by now it could very well be bi-lingual, bi-sexual and multi-cultural all at the same time.

Other Pauls of note line the highways and byways of Northern Michigan like so many unemployed concrete and plaster statues waiting in line for foodstamps.

As you enter the Realm of Unemployment in Michigans Upper Peninsula, there's a Paul on the westside of the highway greeting you as you exit the Mackinac Bridge. He's sitting down holding a sign facing the highway. One can only assume that the sign reads "will work for food".

Another Michigan Paul is on the Sunrise Side of the state in the Lower Peninsula and is made entirely of old discarded Kaiser junk carparts. Then..then, well, then there's the story of an Ox named Babe without any balls standing off Highway 23 south of Alpena, Michigan,

So, settle back now, pop open a brew and gather 'round children, I have a tale to tell about an Ox with no balls. Long, long ago, in a galactic bar and grill far, far away, a blue ox named Babe had his ox balls blown off by with a double barreled shotgun by jackpine savages with deerheads on the wall, all drunk. Seems they was drunk.

Drunk as skunks they was, yessiree, and stumbled out of the bar for a bit of beer and buckshot saloonery buffoonry across the highway, all at Babes expense mind you. They, the balls, have never been replaced by ball bearing men nor beasts bearing balls either. One lesson learned though, is that it answered the gender defying question of the ages regarding Babes sexual identity and preferences, and gave meaning to the phrase "breaking your balls"!

Creatures from the mad lagoon of Madison Avenue have created a universe of orbiting planets of commercial kitsch culture that includes a huge Mr. Peanut, tophat and cane in hand near Ft. Smith in Ar-Kansas, to a bizarre Ethel Mermanesque tomato tribute in Collinsville, Illinois to one of 'Merikas fave mondo-condiments, Catsup! Ketchup or catsup, it doesn't matter how you say it, besides you say to-may-to and I say toe-mah-to, it's in Collinsville, Illinois.

Don't be retching at thought of advert art either. Remember, in the groovy '60s old randy Andy Warhol turned Campbells soup into something unfathomably fashionable in the highly unfashionable pre-Seinfeld soup-Nazi blitzkreig of pop culture.

Squaresville, USA. Be there, and be square! It seems that every square towns townsquare has a Statue of Liberty of varying size and stature. Other cities, in lieu of Libery statues, are infested with an array of bronze beasties in the form of sculptures of historical figures from past and present.

The Honeymooners ruled the small screen for years and a statue of New Yawk City's most irrascible bus driver, Ralph Kramden stands guard on a pedestal in front of the Transit Authority Building.

Superman stands tall in the square of Metropolis, Illinois and Spokane, Washington can boast a big bust of Abe Lincoln actually looks more like Hawkeye Pierce on "M.A.S.H" rather then The Great Emancipator.

Long distance information, in Memphis, Tennessee it's pop goes the culture as multiple Elvis sculptures sneer, swivel, shake, rattle and roll on a blue suede cruise along the bbq boulevards of the jukin', jivin', jumpin' jambalaya highway of great gobs of gumbo known as Beale Street.


Artists inspire, but also neep second helpings of inspiration themselves. They need a muse to amuse and one that speaks creatively from deep within. Winston Churchill, no stranger himself to the demands of literary demons, once refered to the muse as more of a demanding mistress that requires more and more on a daily basis of the writers heart, art and soul.


In addition to inspiration, an artist also needs an audience and will take one where he or she can find one, and as we've seen that can be almost anywhere today. In New Yawk City home of culture and Nathans hotdogs, the art comes to your neighborhood, via a Ryder Truck. Dubbed "The Rider Project" some of the City's finest or more revolutionary artists and activists travel the burroughs from the Bronx to Chelsea bringing a truck full of art and social commentary to the masses. Get your Rider Project fix online at http://www.art-anon.org

During your own personal journey and expedition searching high and low for highbrow or lowbrow art in the artistic highlands and lowlands, bear in mind that art is what you feel it is, and when you find it, enjoy it like a good old fashioned stolen, illegal Cuban cigar my stogey stokin' Amigos. Enjoy it too, WHERE you find it, because art has hopped the fence having escaped from the asylum grounds. The inmates have shed their creative straitjackets and are hiding in the bushes, in plain public sight, crazed, existential and bonko wild-eyed in venues that defy the status quo.

Open your bloodshot all-night eyes and enjoy the performance on the cities concrete streets and along the asphalt highways of the rural realms of the midwest; as well as in the hayseed haystacks and on the haughty highrises of the for the people, by the people and of the Peoples Republic of 'Merika. Remember, now, the next time you can't get the Guggenheim to give you a full tilt boogie artistic groove, just check out the subways and the Elvis bathrooms. Hell, if you really have a case of the art attack blues, just load up a basket of your dirty laundry and bop on down to the local Laundromat Louvre to get your laundromat groove!
Toodles and Ta Ta's

E=MC5
Kick Out The Jams, Motherfuckers!"Kick out the jams, Motherfuckers!"
That was the purple-hazed, double-dazed battle hymn of the 1960's. The Late Great Altered States of America.

The Red, White and Screwed. It was an era that ripped the bra off of Lady Liberty to reveal her falsies and hypocripsy. Meanwhile, "Kick out the Jams" was resonating from deep within the bowels of the Motor City from the stage of the Grande Ballroom.

It echoed throughout the concrete canyons of a youthful hipster America. The Grande, for those who may not know it, is to rock n' roll what the tomb of Jesus is to christians, except a much cooler and louder place!. It was a great time to be alive, stoned and crazy.
It was a musio-politico warning shot fired over the head of a disheveled establishment. The tattered flag that represented a faded American dream was emerging from the chaotic mushroom cloud of Flower Power.

The Sixties brought about the assasination of two Kennedy's and a King, not to mention a law and order police meltdown during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Vietnam was a raging drunken bulldyke in a baddass biker bar on too many bennies and dexies, and with too much to prove. The Black Panthers and Angela Davis had "gone to the top of the mountain" too, and realized it was the perfect spot for a sniper.

"Free Huey" and "Burn Baby, Burn" had become the new bestselling militant mantra, pushing "We Shall Overcome" from the top of the Civil Rights pop music charts...and the hits kept on a'comin'. A gagged Bobby Seale sits at the defense table during the Chicago Seven trial where Judge Hoffman judged Abbie Hoffman and his merry band of pranksters, hipsters and Yippee lost boys.

Michigan had spawned the Students for a Democratic Society on the heels of the Port Huron Statement, and from that seedling, sprang the Weathermen...and by the way, you really don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In Detroit and the neighboring People's Republic of Ann Arbor, John Sinclair and a cadre of blue collar artists - slash - bolsheviks formed The White Panther Party, a group in spiritual alignment with the Black Panthers.

San Fran-freakin'cisco had Haight Ashbury, New Yawk had the Village and Detroit had a small pisser of a bohemian ghetto known as Plum Street, artists, headshops, too much sandalwood and intense patchouli incense, panhandlers and rag tag student neo-revolutionaries from Wayne State and pants pissin' winos from the Cass Corridor...That was the backdrop...now the players.

The Motor City had it's unholy share of madmen and rock n' roll Rasputins. It was the rock hunting grounds of Her Leather Thighness, Suzi Quatro, the Amboy Dukes, Frigid Pink, the Stooges and Frost. The brothers Hodge, Dallas and Catfish.

The radio station of choice was WABX, home of Dave Dixon and across the river the Canadian eh, airwave ballbuster of CJOM with it's no hold's barred middle finger attitude to the American Woman across the bridge. The Fifth Estate newspaper was the only paper worth stealing and 12th Street was ready to boil over with snipers, tanks and the National Guard, as race relations reached below sea level lows that erupted in a rage with looting, shootings, beatings, and a city left scarred and scared..it was the home of rock n' roll.

It was bar bands, garage bands and basement bands. God created this rock n' roll universe in six days...on the seventh he rested but not before he created the MC5 and built the Grande Ballroom.

The Grande is the quintisential Igrid Bergman of rock venues in the Motor City. Just enough erection causing sex appeal , style, grace and Ilsa elegance, ala "Casablanco" that was built in 1928 with the ballroom located on the second floor. Jazz bands improvised as Detroits elite swarmed to over capaicty to the ballroom, boppin' and jazzin' and finger poppin' into the Thirties.

Then along came Bennie Goodman and the other big bands whose sound filled the cavernous ballroom with a bobby sox sexuality. In the Sixties, Russ Gibb took over and started booking bands from Jeff Beck to Cream and everyone in between. Bob Seger and Ted Nugent plying their rock trade alongside the top acts and the other local acts that comprised the Detroit rock n' roll scene, but one band came to epitomize the mucho grande days of the ballroom Grande....The Motor City Five.

The Motor City Five added an element of fuel injected energy and high octane creativity to a highly combustible mixture of rock and revolution. The turbulent Sixties were fueling the band with left-wing politics and a penchant for psychedelics, the Breakfast of '60's Champions.

Bizarrely, or not, the group made the cover of the highly coveted Rolling Stone Magazine (in the days it was worth reading) without having an album out. Their on-stage antics, pitbull approach to convention and their outrageously high-powered hi-amped energy paved the way of their reputation with the effectivenss of a bulldozer clearing a rain forest. The were loud, and they were proud. They had energy to spare and you didn't have to be an Einstein to figure out that E=MC5.

In the beginning there was rock n' roll...Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith were high school friends and guitarists who played in several bands at sockhops which were the rage of the day before the days of rage. By 1964, the Motor City Two, were now Five with the addition of Michael Davis on bass, Dennis Thompson on drums, and a singer with a voice that seemed to erupt from a very angry volcano, Rob Tyner.

Tyner originally was going to be the bands manager but didn't care for that aspect..can't get laid being a manager, eh? So he tried out as the bass player, and failed miserably. So as is inevitable in rock n' roll, the one who is the least talented musician, becomes the singer and front man. If Phil Spector built the Tycoon of Teen "wall of sound" then Tyner and the Five created the rock n' roll wall of heavy metal iron and steel that was a natural musical spawn from the blue collar-unionized autoworker City of Motors.

Enter..stage far left. The Lone Socialist Ranger in the persona of John Sinclair who would take over the duties as "manager" for the group and use it effectively to spearhead a cultural revolution through raw high energy rock n' roll. Sinclair was one of the first Marxist multi-taskers if such a thing can exist.

He was head of the Detroit Artists Workshop, anarchists and artists working towards a gentle world of peace, art and anarchy. His militancy grew over the years, and he, along with others, formed the White Panter Party as the vanilla extract to the Black Panthers.

The Five/Sinclair marriage lasted a few years with the band getting more revolutionary by the minute as they and Sinclair spiraled through the helter skelter Sixties, the decade that had a societal deathwish and would climax in death and disallusionment with not only the establishment, but itself.

The stage is set....
There was the Haight ...there was the Village...and in Detroit there was Plum Street.

Plum Street was the envisioneed Bohemian art colony smack dab in the middle of middle america in the middle of the middle earth of the Motor City. Shops, artisans, a gentrified community unlike the rucksack roadies that were crossing the continent.

Haight Ashbury, Colfax Ave in Denver and the Village had evolved over the years, a fine wine aging in an oak cask. Plum Street, in typical Detroit fashion was "assembled and manufactured" and rolled off the assembly line in 1966 with fanfare and the goddamn mayor of Detroit officially opening it! How fucking revolutionary is that?

It was capitalism and commercialism trying to sell new Cadillacs in a used car lot. Yes, the artists came, yes the tourists came, and yes, the "hippies" came and were, (ready for this shit?) Persona non gratis as they did what they will do and did in those days...you know, "Spare Change?" You have to remember, Plum Street was a fake, it was not a real "woman" but a drag queen on a runway strutting her stuff, attractive maybe, but not the real deal.

April...1967...just months before the summer solstice and the flower powered Summer of Love, the psuedo-hippie scene of Detroit emulating the San Francisco Human Be-in, decided to stage a love-in, which in the blue collar votex of Detroit is an oxymoron. Let's face it, Detroit was never the sensitive type. Detroit, Rock City! Detroit, Murder City! No sissy Seattle here amigo.The "Love Locale" chosen was Belle Isle, an island playground smack dab in the middle of the Detroit River with a bridge from Jefferson Ave taking visitors to it's gardens, outdoor grilling pits, decorative fountains, aquarium, dance emporium and yacht club. The same bridge that Harry Houdini did his appendix bursting underwater escape trick from.

One of the groups playing that day was the MC5. The park was packed, the rolling papers kept rolling along, acid was dropped and music filled the park with thousands of weekend hippies, artists, musicians, bikers, hipsters, squares and narcs. Narcs in the parks was a mainstay of the Sixties. As the sun began to set with the city skyline framed in the foreground, the cops were getting restless..oh, oh, bad sign.

The polizia, on foot and mounted troops stormed the crowd to move them off the island, back across the river, back to Jefferson Avenue but apparantly they weren't moving fast enough so batons were raised, heads were cracked, and all hell broke loose as the cops went anal on the "anarchy" before them.

The Outlaw motorcycle gang was also on hand and there were instances of members of the brotherhood beating up bystanders. During all this, businesses on Jefferson Ave, including the restaurants locked their doors. Liquor stores on the other hand didn't fare as well with windows smithereen'd and bro's Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker made there escape to the streets.

The crowd of close to 3,000 was finally dispersed by 9:30 pm. Sinclair rationalization claimed that all the real hippies had left before the melee and the problem was caused by wannabe's and police. The MC5 had experienced their first head knocker riot, but, more were waiting in the wings on the turbulent horizon just months away, August actually, as the Motor City became an occupied city.

Detroit has this peculiar habit, religious in nature me thinks, of setting itself on fire, overturning cars, and looting. Sports mainly will be the gasoline to fuel the flames...Piston pumping win on the court, Red Wings victory on ice, Detroit Tigers ballpark win, doesn't matter. Like a Bhudist monk in Saigon, it decides to torch itself to celebrate a victory or bitch and moan about defeat.

In late summer, 1967, it was a street rampage bonfire that ignited on 12 Street. Cops were in the habit in those days of harrassing anyone with long hair or black skin. In the city, a blind pig was raided by the infamous "Big Four" which were separate groups of four cops who fancied themselves Texas Rangers or some macho fraternity of law and disorder who roamed the inner city neighborhoods of Detroit checking identification of people who may just be standing around, They would arrest people in squad cars, or trump up charges on an individual, pulling one magically out of the hat, or cop helmet in this case.

In a few cases, the Big Fours tactics led to the outright murder of three people during questioning. A teenager, and two prosititutes, all shot "while attempting to escape the back of a squad car". Police honchos bought the act, lock, stock and gun barrel, with a sly wink.

The blind pig raided was merely a group of black citizens hosting a welcome home party for two returning Vietnam veterans. The cops expected a dozen people to be on the premises, easy billy club pickens, but, instead there damn near a hundred of these mo'fo's.

Shit...Calling all cars, calling all cars. Gotta have backup, right? The cops burst in roughing up the patrons, things started to get out of control and before you know it, riots break out. It was Dresden during the fire bombings. as the city flicked it's Bic and went up in glorious technocolor flames. Cops shot at looters, and snipers shot at cops and firemen from rooftop nests as the city and the police went schizoid with a synapse that snapped.

The National Guard (the weekend warriors from the farm) were called in, along with Michigan State Police (glorified meter maids) and eventually the White House wanted in on the head busting action and ordered the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne to the scene. Christ, it was the Tet Offensive in reverse. Tanks rumbled through the streets, martial law was in force, and at the end of the 5 days the tally was 43 killed, 1,100 injured and over 7,000 arrested. Today, 12th Street has been renamed...Rosa Parks Boulevard.

You can't blame this one on the MC5 or even John Sinclair. They were in town, yes, and living in the city, yes, so they were witness to the flames and brutality.

In an interview Wayne Kramer relates that he was arrested during the riots as he had a telescope in his apartment window downtown. The cops saw it and busted in, cracking heads and opening them up like so many cans of Spam. Kramer was arrested as the cops claimed he was spotting uniformed targets for snipers. Incoming!!

This was the Fives second encounter with a schizophrenic Demon-ocracy not taking it's meds. The MC5 and John Sinclair were now in the rifle sights of a paranoid establishment and were the poster children of the dreaded Red Squads that kept lists of "enemies of the state", a phrase borrowed from Josef Stalin no doubt, but it was the year 1968, the Chicago Year of Daley that would make all other riots pale in comparison and place the MC5 on a government hit list, marked for commercial death.

1968. The Democratic Convention in Chicago. There was a euphoric elation lifting the spirits of the younger generation accompanied by a sense of real change in the air, optimism for the future, and an arrogance on both sides of the line drawn in the generational sand. The chant of "Make Love, Not War" drowning out the Om! of Merle Haggards, "Love It or Leave It" Okie mental illness that affected an older generation with hardhatitis "my country right or wrong" philosophizing.

Jerry Rubin, Uncle Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, yeah, the list goes on and on of the participants and syncophants involved. Anyone who was anyone was there. Terry Southern covering the convention for left wing periodicals, but the scene that stands out is the live telecast of regular guy journalista, Dan Rather being carted off, unceremoniously from the convention floor, with an appalled Walter Cronkite giving a blow by blow commentary.

Mayor Daley of Chicago was glaring at the podium in a classic case of a Political Portrait of Dorian Gray whose time had come and gone. Outside in the park the crowd was getting as restless as villagers ready to storm Dr. Frankensteins castle to kill the Promethian beast the mad doctor had created...so with pitchforks held and decibels cranked up high, the band played on.
The MC5 were scheduled to play a free concert outside the convention hall, and they did amidst the amok and the chaos.

They had been invited by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to kick out the jams, and kick them out they did, right in the balls. Just as they were finishing the cops moved in and the Five began removing their equipment as fast as they could. Having been through many riots before, they didn't need a crystal ball to know what was next on the "to protect and serve" agenda.

The MC5 have the distinction of being the only band to actually perform a free concert amidst the melee and police riot that subsequently defined the American meltdown of the American wet-dream, and many were now thinking of bullets over ballots. The revolution was on....or so we thought.


Following the Demo-debaucle, the MC5 clicked their revolutionary Red slippers (There's No Place Like Home) and returned to Detroit and the familiar sanctuary of the Grande. Elektra Records was now interested in the band, so they sent a talent agent to hear what they had in a live performance, (along with the Stooges) and in the end signed the Five and Iggy Pop both to the label.

Their first Elektra release is the now classic "Kick Out The Jams" which was recorded live at the Grande in late '68 and because the record company felt they sounded better live, decided to release the live version.

Of course there was a matter of Mother Fuckers...so the dreaded, castrated AM radio version that turned Mother fuckers into Brothers and Sisters won out...ok, so it was a compromise...it's hard to foment revolution without a top ten on the hit parade.

Fuck Karl Marx and his manifesto, and Mao's Little Red Book...gotta make Billboard Magazine first.

But wait...not another fuckin' riot. New Yawk this time, and a riot by any other name...not on the scale of the Newark or Detroit riots...not near the benchmark set in Berkeley at Peoples Park and the gassing on Telegraph Ave. but a riot all the same if you please. In New York, Bill Graham, rock empresario without peer had opened the Filmore East to compliment his original Filmore in the Filmore District of San Francisco, now unfortunately re-named, Filmore West.

A group calling themselves the East Village Motherfuckers were the American version of Amsterdams Provos, without knowing it, and had talked Wild Bill Graham into setting Wednesday nights aside as "community night" with free shows for the panhandling proletariat who roamed the beat streets of the Village.

Bill, said yes, and even had the MC5 play a freebie for the community. Elektra, the MC5 lable wanted to showcase the band to a more affluent record buying crowd so they in turn booked the Filmore (real American cash money) on a Wednesday, yes, community night. Now that was a page torn from How to Piss-off an Already Pissed-Off Mother Fucker 101. The MF's, never really a cheerful lot to begin with weren't happy and stormed the Graham Bastille. (I know, more villager visuals for the reader to consume)

Bill stood his ground outside the auditorium and refused entry, in a stance reminiscent of Gov. Lester Maddox standing in a southern academia doorway brandishing an axe handle so black students couldn't enter a white school. Next thing you know old Bill is hit with a chain by a Motherfucker who breaks his considerable nose.

Inside, the band is kickin' out the jams with Motherfuckers in the audience who had crashed the party, and when the Five finished, the maddening crowd storm trooped the stage trying to rip off the Five's gear as the band itself bolted out of the Filmore as fast as their power to the people legs could run. motherfuckers in hot pursuit, roadies mixing it up in the fray, a carnival call of Hey Rube goes up and all hell breaks out.

Then it happened. Two limo's appear for the band...limos? Revolutionaries...fuck...the crowd went nuts. Wayne Kramer tries to explain MC5 and White Panther theory while the crowd gets more hostile and come at him with knives just like a scene of the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story. Kramer does get out alive with a little help from his friends, but unfortunately, Bill Graham thought it was Rob Tyner who swung the chain at him, it wasn't but it didn't matter, this was Graham and he had more clout than God...Graham had the band blacklisted not only at his venues but within his secret society circle of promoters who made the rules and had the decoder rings to prove it.

The Five had released their album and waited for success to come a'knockin' at the door. One of the places that the newly released album was to be available was in the bands hometown mondo-monstro department store, J.L.Hudsons, the venerable merchantile dominatrix that ruled the downtown Detroit skyline on Woodward Ave for decades merchandising whip in hand.

Hudson's was the equivalent of the Mall of America in it's day in the Motor City, and in fact, the Hudson family were the backers of the famed Hudson automobile including the NASCAR darling, the Hudson Hornet.

Hudsons sponsored the annual Thanksgiving Parade that would cruise down Woodward from the Institute of Arts into the city center, past the Vernors bottling plant where Detroiters for decades could watch ginger ale being bottled as they gazed through giant windows. Motown had moved it's record studios from it's ghetto nest to the more prestigious Woodward Ave...all culminating in a dramatic waterfront as Woodward ended at Jefferson Avenue exposing the freighter bearing Detroit River just across from the Canadian city of Windsor.

Hudsons was the record store of choice for Motor City rock n' roll rebels. Elvis dominated the racks at one time and now it was time for the MC5...hometown, homegrown favorites to take their place on the Rock n' Roll Rack of Fame at the gargantuan Hudsons.

Well, not quite. Seems the white collar sensitivities of the buying department at Hudsons, didn't take to the overtly blue collar, anarchistic war chant of the band, and the release was deemed...obscene which in itself was an obsenity.

The underground press and emerging FM radio stations such as the revolutionary WABX which broadcast from downtown Detroit took the battle of the retailer to the press and the airwaves and the Five took out a full page ad in The Fifth Estate underground paper with the simple message..."Fuck Hudsons"

Can't say for certain how effective it was, but today, ask any young Detroiter about Hudsons and they'll give you a blank deer in the headlight state...ask them who the MC5 were and at best you'll get "Oh fuck yeah, Kick out the jams, motherfuckers" although they will still miss the point. Let's face it, this generation is not of a rebellious nature, but if they ever do reinstate the draft I guarantee they will put down their Playstations and face it or fight it. Might even hear a chorus of Country Joe's Vietnam Rag.

It was a bit too much for Elektra, so they dropped the band faster than hot merchandise, but, they were picked up by Atlantic, who somehow thought they could make a silk purse out of this rock n' roll sows ear but that wasn't to be either.

Their releases failed to chart anywhere near acceptable and the material was turning commercial which the band didn't like. Their political-managerial alliance with John Sinclair was changing too. The band was beat, and Sinclair was about to make the blunder of his life by getting narc'd. It was only a matter of time.

John was busted for giving two joints to a narc. The result was a sentence of 9 and a half to 10 years imposed on the imposing White Panther. In 1971 a glitterati of leftists music luminaries assembled in the great Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor for the Free John Sinclair Rally.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono were there, and in fact the song "John Sinclair" (10 for 2) is on the "Sometime in New York" album. Rockin' Robert Seger was there, as were folk artist Phil Ochs and Howlin' poet emeritus of the beat generation, Allen Ginsberg to name but a few. Within days of the rally, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the Sinclair sentence and from then on, the white knight was talking backwards as Ann Arbor held it's hookah high.
Soon, marijuana laws were decriminalized in Ann Arbor, (many thanks to Zolton Ferency and the Human Rights Party), and combined, all these events led to the present day Hash Bash held on the U of M campus each year in academia's version of the Grassy Bowl Conspiracy. Thank you to both John's and Zolton.

The MC5 planets were no longer aligned in perfect chaotic harmony. The times were changing faster than a pit crew at Indy changing tires, the bright red of revolution had become a faded pinkish punkish hue and the war in Vietnam was only escalating and the music hadn't brought the Pentagon to it's knees. Drugs began to push to the forefront of the bands quest for the holy rock n' roll grail, and as politics became less, well, political to them, the drugs took front and center stage, forcing the band into the background and relegated as the opening act of the comedy of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, and oh yeah, by the way, a blast from the past...the MC5.

One of the tours they did before the final splitting of the MC5 atom was in Jolly Olde across the pond to the land of the Ripper, God Save the Queen, the Union Jack and a jerkoff gang of UK Teddyboys at Wembley Stadium.

Fifties wannabe rockers with peg pants, bowling shirts and enough fuckin' grease to last a week in the state penitentiary. There were 50 thousand plus in attendance, and not in a mood for the new look of the Five and began pelting the band with beer cans and other hurled missles from the audience...Tyner, ever the Detroiter, began tossing them back into the audience and that was all she wrote..the band escaped from the stage and the stadium and headed back to the "sanity", they thought, of their beloved home turf, Detroit.

Nixon captured White House in 1972, the same year the MC5 said "fuckit" to the music industry. Touring and drugs wearing them down, no commercial successes and dropped by two labels will give you a complex in due time.

So in true Five fashion they decided to give a farewell concert at, where else? The Grande, the scene of so many past grand MC5 performances. The farewell show was pretty much a no show as far as packing in the SRO crowd. They were offered $500 for the gig. The crowd was sparce, 250 if that, Kramer got pissed and mid-set walked off the stage and the Five Horsemen of the Rock n' Roll Apocalypse had disappeared in a nuclear flash. It was the musical version of "Death of a Salesman" the MC5 now rock n' rolls Willie Loman.

Today, the defunct Five in retrospect are regarded as gods, as well they should be. John Sinclair lives in Amsterdam as a gentle poet who at times rambles incoherently to anyone who will listen anymore.

The White Panthers became the Rainbow Peoples Party and by now, all of them are run of the mill Democrats. Bobby Seale schlepps BBQ recipes, Abbie Hoffman is dead and Lennon was assasinated.

The music scene as a whole sucks today with no MC5 or Ramones or Flamin' Groovies or New York Dolls on the horizon to salvage what's left of rock n' roll. The revolution never got off the ground full speed but did make a dent in the establishments armor. The generation today is not interested in protest, in fact compliance is the mantra, not defiance.

Just once I would like to here a presidential candidate stand and the podium and instead of saying things like "We must work together as one people to make a stronger America, my fellow Americans"..just once, with a wink in the candidates eye as he or she looks into the camera, smiles to the American public and says...."My Fellow Americans....screw this....it's time to Kick out the Jams, Motherfuckers!!" <p>

High Mass, Low Mass, No Mas!

"Holy Communion, Batman"!! The Batman and Robin...the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder! The Parish Padre and the Alter Boy. The Dark Knight of the the Comic Book Template Templar guarding the chalice of Christ.

Dressed in bullet proof double rubber vestments fighting immoral mortal sin and handing out penance like so much Pez spilling from a pinata. Whoa! Ok, so I was raised a Catholic the church scared the living hell out of me...on the upside, yes, black patent leather shoes do reflect upwards which had to be hell for every plaid skirted Catholic school girl, but a peek at heaven above and beyond for every young Catholic school boy who walked the hallowed halls haunted by nuns with bad habits using semi-automatic rosaries as weapons with Hail Mary beads as big as Buicks and a monster crucifix affixed to the end of it, locked and loaded, a bayonet ready to charge into flesh on the field in "Paths of Glory"


Growing up Catholic in an Eye-talian Catholic neighborhood on the Catholic eastside of Detroit, Michigan you learn that it is a sin to be anything other than a Catholic. We have purgatory after all. How many other religions can claim that?

Jesus was hanging out with Barabbas and the other biblical wise guy hanging on a cross. (only when someone is nailed to it is it called a crucifix, sans human flesh, a mere cross to bear)

Purgatory is similar in theory to a Greyhound Bus Depot anywhere in the U.S. You have your ticket punched but you don't know if your going to San Francisco (heaven) or South Bend, Indiana (hell on earth) and you sit on a hard bench with an odd assortment of people, much like yourself, hung out to dry with a penny in your pocket to spare.


You get baptized at birth, which is getting the registration and title to a car. Following are the various catholic "maintenance tune-ups" ...Holy Communion, confirmation (affirmation of something).

Once all these borders are crossed you're in the big leagues and out of the minors. A Toledo Mudhen becomes a Detroit Tiger. You now enter the ballpark of the pros...the right to confess your sins. It doesn't get much better than that for a Catholic. This is where you get to go into a small booth and confess to masturbation, swearing, thinking bad thoughts about others, lying, etc to a man who sits behind a gauze screen who recognize and he knows your voice.

It's Father Flanagan and you are boy’s town. Guys confess more because we feel guiltier than girls and besides, we are scum anyway as most of our fantasies are dirty and involve girls. Sex guilt in the world of Catholicism is as common as sex abuse cases by priests from Boston to San Francisco.

The priest listens attentively, and then makes a judgment call when all is said and done and diligently dispenses penance to you as though he were a judge at Nuremburg sentencing Goering to hang until dead. Usually a couple of Hail Mary's and Our Fathers will get you off the hook along with a sad, head hung low forlorn look as you walk to the pews to be penitent.
All eyes upon you from others just as guilty of sin as you. Sheepish flocks being watched over by sheepish shepards. You could get nailed with the Act of Contrition...which is akin to the death sentence in a capital murder trial. It is the lethal injection of all prayers and if you were a flagellant you would be beating your flesh with an assortment of whips of reeds.

Holy Communion is at first unsettling as the unleavened wafer is lowered onto the tongue top like a cherry on a sundae. The body of Christ, for Christ’s sakes. A thin Necco wafer that we crunched as kids now a symbolic body to be hosanna’s and hallelulia'd over inferring the second coming...catholic cannibalism if you ask me. The wafer thin wafer must dissolve of its own free will...your teeth can't touch it, you can't touch it with your fingers, and it must just...poof! Disappear into the bowels of your body without aid or assistance.

Unfortunately...it would sometimes stick to the roof of your mouth, and not in your hands, a real M&M of a deal. So take your prayer pose hands and with the two index fingers, touching Indian teepee style, insert them into your mouth to recon the upper palate..locate the offending dough and dislodge, all unseen by the pious in pews around you in a penitent pose kneeling on kneelers that resemble real bleeders.

A catholic school boy, as all young boys will do, suffer from hero worship. Some adult that stands out...good or bad and the kid wants to grow up to be just like them. I'll bet even Ted Bundy had his admirers. In this case however it's the catholic kid’s ambition to grow up from the pupa stage of mere altar boy to become a full fledged colorful butterfly of a priest. Holy vestments, colorful and flowing, like a Cristo art project on a California hillside. Lutheran kids have less flamboyant role models with their ministers, dull by standards and not in possession of the purse full of abundant Liberace flair that a parish padre possesses.

Besides Lutheran kids want to be cops when they grow up, gun and badge and all, while Jewish kids dream of a career as a doctor or a comedian in the Catskills.

Catholic schoolgirls on the other hand, rarely want to become nuns...mostly repressed in elementary school they want to uncork and let loose...they don't want to be nuns anymore then they want to be lady golfers. They mainly want to marry rich, Catholic and get past their first period without embarrassing themselves in class or the locker room.
Catholic mass is another thing altogether.

It has mysticism, mystery, and magic..of sorts. The High Mass, the dreaded one hour job, has the density of the gravitational field of the planet Jupiter when it comes to pomp and pomposity. Incense dolled out over the head of the pious filling the room like so much mustard gas in a World War I French trench, and the holy water dispensed from a wand up and down the aisles and falling on the heads of the praying congregation...holy water dispensed in such a fashion has one purpose and one purpose only...to ferret out any reluctant vampires that may be hiding among the holy. Holy water will blow their cover faster than a roadside bomb taking out a Humvee in Iraq.

The High Mass, Low Mass indicator is the number of candles lit on the altar when you go in prior to service.

Two candles, short Readers Digest abridged version. Six Candles? You're in big time trouble. An hour minimum with all the rites tossed in like a Caesar salad. It's an easy code, this two candle, six candle thing, to break. Especially the High Mass..it brings the priest out in vestments so bright and colorful, you'd think you stumbled into the backstage area of an Elton John Concert as the priest is decked out in more colors than Sonny Barger at a Hells Angels funeral in Oakland, California.


So if you were raised Presbyterian...Baptist...Jewish...Muslim...count your blessings. Growing up Catholic, I only have one thing to say...High Mass, Low Mass....No Mas! Now, about those reflecting patent leather shoes...they reveal the wonders of the potential of a pubescent Garden of Hedon!

The LIterate Lefty
The Socialist Garden of Literature is a rich Marxian compost that fill the literary pinata with metaphor and theory. When the pinata is struck with a stick of indignation, it explodes, with word candy flying, and begins it's rampage, a runaway river, cutting a swath through the arroyo of society. Some writers utilize magical metaphors more than others. Such is the case with H.G. Wells, who chose to disguise his theories by camouflaging them in a mysterious cloak of pure science fiction.

Still, others prefer the art of penned letters and serialized magazine articles once fame has been garnered and achieved, and only then are others willing to listen to what they have to say. Helen Keller is a prime example of this. Helen may not have been able to hear, but she could "speak" volumns adequately on many socialist issues of the day. Others prefer the platform of combining storytelling with deadpan journalism in an act of literate fornication. Such was the path chosen by Upton Sinclair, whose writings, and whose life, exemplify the highest ideals of art and activism as a weapon, and whose craft was a finely honed proletarian sword that cut deep into society and in effect, effected change.

A child of the crumbled old "Gone with the Wind" aristocratic south, Upton marched from the womb, banner held high, in 1878 in Baltimore. Little did anyone know at the time that this new life would one day wield a literary meat cleaver to change an entire industry, and in the process, hit a nerve that would resonate with the American public reaching far deeper into the soul of the American psyche than a Texas oil well.

Sinclair, the senior, was a liquor salesman, a real booster of booze, and unfortunately fell madly in love of his own product, the product that in the long run would do him in when he expired from the cumulative effects and in the process, literally drank himself to death. Mama Sinclair was liquor free, and a drug free kind of woman. Prior to the drunken demise of Sinclair the Senior, the family bolted from Baltimore and made tracks for New York, where the literary winds blew strong all day long, and filled the young creative sails of Sinclair with magic, so much so that by the age of 15, he had already embarked on his literary voyage and was writing dime novels.

Sinclair attended NYC College, but in 1897 enrolled in Columbia University and financed his studies by writing hack fiction for pulp magazines, and lighter fare for various boys weeklies. He also began studying and mastering the French language, the language of romance. The call of the wild, or rather the call of the wild romance tugged at the hearstrings as the 20th Century dawned and bid a fond adieu to the 19th. By now, Sinclair was hooked into a marriage that was destined to fall apart by 1911. But...as all good writers who write from experience, it led to the writing and publication of "Sprintime and Harvest," about two penniless lovers. The marriage not only gave birth to the small novel, but also gave birth to a son, David.

A few weak attempts at fiction proved unsuccessful, and failure was not a stranger to Upton. He felt he was a failed writer, and a failed poet. So he decided to switch gears from romance and poetry, and by 1904 moved towards the realm of realistic fiction. He read socialist classics and literature, and socialist populists weeklies. Though never an avowed Communist, Upton was frequently pictured as a violent revolutionary.

He wrote a novel depicting the Civil War, but it was as successful as the Confederacy. Then as in all lives the fork in the road appears, and with Upton that turning point came in 1906 with the publication of the novel.."The Jungle" which was a scathing report on the conditions in the Chicago meat-packing industry.

The book was more than an "interesting read", it was a sword that cut a swath through an industry and led to the implementation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Then President, Big Stick Bullmooser, Teddy Roosevelt called Sinclair to the White House for a sit down to go over what he had seen and described. Needless to say the public was clamoring for this book and the proceeds enabled Sinclair to establish and support the socialist commune, Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey.

It was a commune designed primarily for left wing writers, but it burnt down in 1907 and Sinclair was, once again spare change broke down on his literary luck. (There will be a separate articl on Helicon and other socialist utopias in the near future!)

Upton was no on a roll. The path he was now blazing dealt with society and it's various injustices. "Metropolis" for example, no, not the Fritz Lang film about the False Maria, this "Metropolis" stripped away the nickers and facade of fashionable New York society. "King Coal" followed in 1917 about a Colorado miners strike in 1914, and of course, "Oil!"

Then along came the book "Boston." It was a provocative book about the Sacco-Vanzetti case that caused public outrage in the 1920's for it's defense of them. Other writers who supported them were John Dos Passos and Dorothy Parker. The post war era gave the reading public "Jimmie Higgins" published in 1919. It was an introspective look at the dilema facing American Leftists during the conflict who felt temporarily obliged to support the ruling classes of England and France during WWI, affectionately known as "The Great War."

The Dustbowl Thirties saw farm foreclosures, poverty, breadlines, hobos riding the rails and of course a hallelulia chorus singing Woody Guthrie songs. Unions were on the rise and Progress politics were winning over farmers unions and industrial unions. The WPA was full tilt boogie and soup kitchens were king. The time seemed right for Upton to run as governor of California with it's plethora of produce production, farmers, workers, and immigrants who would all surely vote for him on the Socialist ticket in 1934.

He did get 900,000 votes but it was still a failed attempt. Talk about dirty politics, it was at it's heyday back in the day. He was accused by detractors as an advocate of free love.(That alone would have gotten my vote, and probably yours too!)

His pen then became a recruiting tool as witnessed by his novel the Flivver King (1937) which was used in the union organizing campaign of the Ford Motor Company. Then another war, a world wide conflagration brought about his novel "Dragons Teeth" in 1943 where he made the comment that "Adolph Hitler looks like Charlie Chaplin, except Hitler has no sense of humour." He did get the Pulitzer for this book and is the only literary award he would ever receive.)

After the hot war, the chill of the Cold War blanketed the planet in a battle of wills for the hearts and minds to join the camps of either Communism or Capitalism. Nukes poised to strike on either side of the planet to obliterate the other side of the planet, and it was during this Cold War that Sinclair started corresponding with Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenhiemer about a details for a book on the devolopment of the atomic bomb.

Upton was wearing down in the literary whirlwinds of salons and NYC, and in 1953 he went to live in a remote Arizona village called Buckeye, and devote the rest of his days to putting his memoirs to paper. As the psychedelic Sixties dawned, he published "MY LIFETIME IN LETTERS," his autobiography where he said, "In politics and economics I believe what I have believed ever since I discovered the socialist movement at the beginning of this century.

Upton died in his sleep on November 25, 1968 in a nursing home. One quote by him seems to stand out more than others, and sums up the power of his writing style. Regarding his book "The Jungle" Sinclair once said..."I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Not bad for a literate lefty. <p>

Oh, Canada! Why, Canada?
Oh, Canada! More to the point, why Canada? Why the fuss? Who are these beer and moose lovers? What do they want from us...mere mortal Americans? My family has deep roots in the fertilized Canadian soils, and yes, I do own sweaters. A lot of them, and shirts too that are plaid and proud.

My family's Canuck ancestry goes back to the beaver pelt laden 1700's, before the first dribble from the leaky family faucet migrated like Canadian geese across the bi-national line of demarcation in 1875. I was raised in Detroit, Michigan, (The Rustbelt version Oz) and anyone who enjoys the sun, fun and snow in the Great Lakes kingdom, sharing the border with Canada feels the warm and fuzzy Canadian karma that races down from up north like the winter winds of the locomotive locomotion bi-polar express.

So to answer the question...Why Canada? Hell, that's an easy one. Ice cold Canadian beer and warm, fuzzy Canadian beaver! While the rest of the world yells, "Screw You, America," the strongest epithet tossed at the Canadians seems to be, "Go Fuck a Canuck," ...a much more pleasing visual and physical experience then getting fucked ourselves, don't you think?


Why Canada? It's not James Bonds' Monte Carlo, where he would be seen at the baccarat tables smoking Turkish cigs or drinking a shaken not stirred martini. Nor is it where the "beautiful people" go for the season when they plan a vacation. The dialogue usually follows a path along the lines of..."Lets winter in the Caribbean" or "Muffy and Ben say Italia is nice this time of year," or "France has wines to die for, and besides, we simply must do Paris in the Spring," Never have I, nor probably you, heard anyone (beautiful person or not) plan a vacation with the words..."I hear Manitoba rocks!" or "Saskatchewan is sexy!" or "Ontario is Orgasmic!"

Yes, Canada has unpronounceably named provinces, but worse, as you unfold a map of Canada it reveals a large tract of geography, composed of lazy, lethargic row upon row of provincial and parochial rectangles, strategically and mysteriously aligned by ancient aliens in near mystical east-west progression. A veritable Stonehenge of provinces and more frightening than crop circles created by a three-headed maritime Medusan Martian Moose from the planet New Brunswick.

The provinces do look alike, Xeroxed, hard to differentiate one from another, as was the False Maria in the dark, moody Fritz Lang "Metropolis." Except for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland hanging loose in the Atlantic trying desperately to escape to Greenland on their own. The rest of them however, are neat and austere, molded into tight formations, a rigid police line up for felonious provinces. "That's the one. Yeah, Alberta, that’s the province I saw running out of the store with a gun. He had a limp too, kind of a goofy hopping action, but, yeah, that’s the one. Alberta. I'd recognize that province anywhere."

American states are shaped for the most part with a sense of humor, except for our own Bermuda Triangle of Rectangles of the Three Stooges of Agriculture...Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. Now, take Michigan. An imperfectly shaped mutation of a human right hand, probably belonging to a Thalidomide baby, facing outward and is used by randy Michiganders as a portable flesh and bones Rand McNally map to help others from say, Wyoming, know where Michiganians are from..."Yeah, born right there in Mackinac City" as they point out the tip of the finger mostly used for flipping off other drivers in urban areas everywhere. Then the person who says..."And over here, is the Thumb"...duh! It’s a fun game anyone can play. Hold your hand up and see if you can find Detroit. See, piece of cake.


Now, Florida. The only state shaped like a body part used in fornication or the much more private practice of masturbation. Yes, it is a familiar male body part. A penis, to be exact, that has prematurely ejaculated, emptied itself into the waiting vagina of Havana due south of it's aim, hanging limp now and scaring the hell out of Cuba because they know what will happen to her should Florida get horny again...this is where Michigan’s hand comes into play, or self foreplay in this case. They don't call it Jack-sonville for nothing. Try that Canada, just try, I dare you to get Manitoba to masturbate. It can't be done.

Why Canada? Name one Canadian that pops to the fore except for the herd of Canadian comedians that have migrated from Toronto, or Alex Trebeck and Michael J. Fox. Name a political leader? Who is the father of his country in Canada. The United States. Ok, so we were raised here and should know aout George Washington, but we also have heard of Ghandi in India, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Napoleon in France, Mao in China, Queen Elizabeth in England, Crocodile Dundee from downunda, (Ok, so he's not real) and Pancho Villa of Mexico. The only non-show-biz Canadian that comes to mind to me is Margaret Trudeau, the former prime ministers wife who spread her Trudeaudian thighs wide to Maggie bang a Rolling Stone while she was still first lady of the realm and hubby Pierre was still drinking Perrier prior to parliamentary procedure and being cuckolded Canuck style.

Why Canadian? or Why Canadien? One half of my family is French Canadien, until the 1800's when they copulated cross culturally with the bloody bulldog redcoat Brit side of the Commonwealth coin and created a new species of bi-lingual Canadian...half English, half French, but all Canadian. There is a secession movement, of course amongst the French factions in Quebec or K'beck as it is pronounced (K'eh? Beck) just as there are Basque separatists in Spain. Hell, we had a civil war in this country so not everybody is always happy with the status quo, non?

What about this "eh" thing? It means so many things to so many people, Canadians, but perplexing to the rest of the English speaking world. It also can be used in the official spelling of the country...C-eh-N-eh-D-eh....eh? See what I mean. Eh is also one of those vocabulary anomalies that has multiple linguistic meanings. It could mean when used as it is at the end of sentence..."See what I mean" or "Don't you agree" or "No, that’s wrong." It can also be used as "wow" was in the Sixties a stand alone. It's a very similar word to "fugettaboutit" used by American Mafioso types as explained by Johnny Depp in the film "Donnie Brasco." He explains that it means..."I agree" or "Man that Caddy is a fine machine" or "Do I look worried." So if you run into a Canadian Mafioso, literally, excuse yourself politely and they will turn and look at you and say, "fuggetabout, eh."

Don't forget "oot" and "aboot". Growing up in Detroit (Day'twa for the uninitiated) I did pick up the accent and when I moved to California to do morning rock and roll radio, I was accused of being from Canada. Accused maybe to strong of a word, but the perception was that I was Canadian, which is not a bad thing by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. I was just surprised that the accent stuck out, not embarrassed, but surprised, pleasantly in retrospect.

Canadians, like their counterparts without sweaters south of the Rio Grande, also flock to America in numbers. No, not numbers as large as the Mexicans who make a mad dash into the tidal pool of tired, hungry, and poor wretched refuse. No exact Canadian numbers can be calculated but the estimated lower numbers is based on the fact that if you go down the food aisle of WalMart not one of them is labeled "Canadian Food", nor is it packed with pregnant Canadians with one in the oven and five in tow.

Which brings up another aspect. Canadian cuisine. Usually in a conversation when deciding where to dine during the evening it's usually discussed and decided by choosing a Chinese restaurant, or for the Yuppie wannabe, "Let's do Thai" or "Have you tried that new French restaurant?" Search your soul and be absolutely honest with us and yourself...how many times have you ever suggested to another..."Lets try that new Canadian restaurant that opened last week. I hear the waitresses wear plaid skirts and Elmer Fudd hunting hats and the cook carries a shotgun at all times." Well...have you, eh?

In Detroit though we did have Canadian radio and Canadian TV, yes, there is such a thing. Ask any old time Detroiter about CKLW or CJOM radio and they'll wax nostalgic about rock n' roll, Ron Legg and Ted the Bear Richards for hours. Not to mention cartoons on the telly with Capt. Jolly and Poopdeck Paul.

More Americans have probably crossed north of the border into the benevolent bosom of the commonwealth, seeking escape from the draft during the Sixties and the vacuum of Vietnam. Whole communities since have sprung up there, with these exiles still expat'd and who have since mingled, intermarried and intercoursed with the fine stock and supply of Canadian women to propagate babies with questionable American genes.

Why Canada? Myths and mythters. Big Foot sightings plague the American Northwest of Oregon and Washington where paranoia is a national past time anyway. Too much time in the woods alone on unemployment is the causation of this fixation. Notice how many people have seen Big Foot when looking for it, but no one ever thought to bring a camera along or gun. Ok, there is one bad old hoax film from the Sixties that exists, but, remember we were living in the days of Holy Hallucination as it was.

Both Washington and Oregon have a real hard on for reality it seems. Reality is castrated for all intents and purposes known only to them, and both states exist in a state of mind of their own creation. Big Foot, was not conceived in the far out furry forests of Washington. He is Sasquatch, conceived as an imaginative Canadian creature created to fill the Gap of Mythology. Indians north of the border no doubt came up with the vision first after smoking a few bowls. Canadians also gave us the plaid and proud, ravager of forests big and small, a man named Bunyan, first name Paul.


French Canadien is the rumour,too as I understand it. Bunch of lumber jack types sitting around the fire dreaming up this Hulk Hogan of loggers, and even gave him a blue ox named Babe to cavort with, however one would cavort with a blue ox. Michigan has numerous Paul and Babe statues along the tourist routes. One, on US 23 south of Alpena on Lake Huron, is a big blue ox that had it's concrete balls shot off by local drunks at a VFW years back, proving that Babe must have been a guy ox. The Babe still stands proud, even though the balls have never been replaced. You can pull into the small parking lot to take photos too, so if you ever pass this monument to the axmen, pull into the parking lot, grab a camera and go stand under Babe...look up between it's hind legs and you'll have proof to show others. Some blue job, eh?

Why Canada? When you hear the American National Anthem you picture someone standing in the Oval Office pretending to be the most powerful person on the planet. Hear the strains of the Marseilles and you think of the French underground standing up to Nazi occupation and Ingrid Bergman kissing Bogie in Casablanca. Hear the first strains of the Canadian anthem, Oh Canada..and badda bing, badda boom your either at a hockey game in Ottawa or a curling match in Windsor.

Why Canada? Why not Canada. As a neighbor they are a formidable foe...for example, we duked it out twice with them, once in 1775 and again in 1812. Both times they beat us back and kicked our ass at one point occupying Fort Detroit. Today, Fort Wayne still stands on the shores of the Detroit River on the Detroit side, ready, just in case those pesky rum runners decide to run more whiskey across the river as they did during prohibition with the help of the Purple Gang, or Capone’s Navy as they were called.

The biggest warning Detroit has to thwart any thought or attempt at an attack from Windsor on our non-socialist democracatic shores was the placement of a mega-ton black, bronze fist of Joe Louis in front of city hall at the corner of Woodward and Jefferson Avenues. The fist is locked and loaded, clenched and the knuckles are appropriately facing Canada as a heavyweight knockout warning against any such attempt to assail the unassailable.


Why Canada? Cannabis of course. Medical marijuana is as common as methamphetamine in Missouri, bad wines in Washington or crack cocaine in the nation’s capital, but without the nasty side effects. Once kick ass grass is legal all around, it won’t take long for Vancouver to replace Amsterdam on the Reefer Richter Scale but don't expect the marijuana leaf to replace the Maple Leaf on the Canadian flag anytime soon.

Canadians are also hysterical over gay marriage, and people’s rights. The Indians or Inuits as they are called are now self governing, as Canada has created a new territory just for that purpose, for the Inuit, by the Inuit and of the Inuit, called Nunavut...Unlike the United States with reservations designed to confine. The American reservations systems were carefully plotted and laid out across the country for the sole purpose of having a geographically distributed and strategically placed locations for casinos. Although the Native American hates with a pent up passion is Andrew Jackson, although they will willingly accept all the $20 bills you can through at them. So how is the reservation system of America viewed in Canada? The Inuit are having nonuvit.

Why Canada? Again, why not Canada. If ever a land be called in honesty, the land of the free, it's the marvelous Maple Leafers who should get the reward. Besides they have the coldest beer and the warmest beaver on the planet...so grab a Molson and go fuck a Canuck. <p>

The Royal Typewriter
The curio known as the modern day computer keyboard is a sassy little sissy. It's a prissy plastic keypad made of cheap modern materials, not classy modern materials, or moderne either. It is no where in close architectural proximity to the look of sleek highly polished 1930's aluminum and steel and iron that make up the composition of the skyscraper masterpiece, the Chrysler Building, or even radios and watches and chairs made of artful deco Bakelite products found around the home and office that come in multi hues and uses that are multi too.

The keys have a click and not a clack. In fact, it is all click without the clack, without the steroids...the keyboard of the computer is merely tiny electrical circuits opening and closing as silently as a serial killer stalks its prey. A 90 pound underfed weakling on the literary beach, delete buttons, always at the ready, the new White Out of the digital generation...don't have to wait for "delete" to dry, no fumes to try to get you high. The scroll button...opens the Gates of Pixel, as words flow downward, southward, sinking below the horizon of the computer screen into a purgatory of words waiting, pleading piously to be released as visible and viable parts of the whole of the paragraph.

The kingdom of the keyboard creates a sense of key-boredom akin to the keyless entry of a motel room. One swipe down and the green light comes on. The entire system is wired for wireless if such a wiring can be done or is even the correct terminology to use when discussing these units. These Computers. Wireless plasticity, means throw away disposability. Name your landfill, name your garbage dump...give us your poor electronic refuse..and we will not refuse it, but recycle it so we can re-use it.

It is a function of the times...but retro returns riding tall in the saddle in the oddest places. The bottom shelf of a Goodwill Store. The store where they have faded old field jackets and Aloha shirts on the rack, and old soggy stuffed animals in a bin that kids have drooled on. In the back, an eclectic assortment of electronics in an electroid graveyard. Lamps without shades, shades without lamps, RCA plugs and discordant lost cords, turntables without needles, old toasters, old Singer Sewing Machines, walkie talkies, waffle makers, VCR machines, DVD machines, CD machines, and other machines with similar designations.

There is a large and select eclectic selection of Selectrics, the kind you plug into a wall, but without electricity they too are dead in the water. But there stashed in the back like a bag of hidden treasure sat a beauty...built like a Buick it was truly a beastie of the best kind...a Sixties era Royal Typewriter. Solid as a Motor City muscle mo'sheen, with that hard to describe heavy metallic brown, maroon, purplish, or as some say, grey, with the Royal placard pasted on front...a hood ornament on the writers muscle car...the authors Dodge Charger...the typewriter.

Now this one has panache. The keys pound down hard, leaving its inky imprint onto the surface of paper. Unlike the ticky ticky sound of the plastic computer keyboard, the typewriter keys have the thunderous impact of John Henrys hammer coming down with a roar on spikes to lay miles and miles of railroad rails.The keys, are guided to imprint the impressionable pages through it's guide. The letters fill the page with the accuracy of a smart bomb fired from a US Naval ship 50 miles away smack dab dead on into the school yard of a small village in Afghanistan.

The typewriter ribbon is also a curious oddity. Without it, there is no imprint, no matter how powerful the crashing waves are on the shores of creativity. It slips and moves through its guides silently, a submarine underwater maintaining radio silence. It moves up and down with a gliding motion depending on whether the letter to be implanted, as a bas relief release of the keys, is to be a capitalization of a letter or not. Lower case, upper case, just in case...the ribbon is locked and loaded.

The carriage leaves in its wake the rooster tail carnage of a writer’s vocabulary. It's wounded diction and walking dead zombie apostrophe's...it's comma's in a coma, it's gritty little grammatical nuances which to a writer, can be a nuisance when on a stream of consciousness flow propelled by the thumping of the space bar, the bang of the keys, and when the carriage reaches the marginal ends...the bell...the bing! for whom the carriage bell tolls...it tolls for me. Then the writer gives the carriage return a smack and the paper, carriage, in unison, choreographed, moves down a line so the words can reposition themselves for repository on the next line of the same page. The silver lever is a gear shift with an invisible suicide knob. The words come faster, the carriage moves swifter, the keys work furiously and soon it crosses the finish line of the quarter mile and the paragraph, the article, the book is finished, and it's ready to go again.

Not once will your Royal machine proclaim..."Battery Low" as it has no battery to batter your flow of words or dam them up, like Hoover and stopping them dead in their tracks until the Japanese Tea Ceremony of the Recharge takes place high on some mountain top in some way above sea level forbidden temple full of monks with vows of silence. That is if you even have electricity to draw juice from.

The computer can be a royal pain in the ass...but the Royal typewriter is a wonderful wordsmithing machine that has never heard of Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Email, Google or Yahoo. That in itself is worth praising! The best part? No Batteries Required. Pull the plug...proclaim your freedom....write on!
<p>


So, You Say You Want a Revolution?
"Every Communist must grasp the truth. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Chairman Mao


"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao...you aint gonna make it with anyone anyhow"
John Lennon

Little Red Books hungrily read by hordes of angry young reds. Got your Marx and Lenin confused with Groucho and John? ...right on! It happens in the best of families. And you say, you want a revolution...that’s all well and good, but, ask yourself, do they all work as the warranty suggests, or is the reality that they are a worse curse then what they've replaced?

As a political and social scientist, I register a negative-two, positively, or lower on the Richter scale, and yes, no social scientist degree, and yes, no -ologist attached anywhere in my name, cart or horse, fore and aft, so don't anticipate any salivatory revelations or orgasmic illuminations in this piece, this, this peek through the peephole of history at the paths followed in revolutionary orbit in a rebellious solar system of social issues and rights of the people. I am merely a dumpster diver in the overflowing trash bin of pop culture and clutter that has lived blissfully ignorant and comfortably numb on the Pacific Left Coast and the Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor.

Writers words aren't gospel, although some writers will claim they are the second coming of Jesus H. (Hemmingway) Christ, truth is...forget the words, and realize it is between the lines, between the sweaty sheets of literature, that you'll find the message, as well as the white space between the words...or what a writer doesn’t write but actually omits, that tells the story and pieces the puzzle together.

The old one hand clapping Zen hipster zinger. Either way, that is the chance I take writing this, but, the worse chance you take in reading it. It will look at the power to the people mantra chanting and how revolution, in it's preliminary stages creates a coagulated solidarity, but somewhere, soon after overthrow and the mask of reform is ripped from the face, the revolution and it's leaders reveal themselves for what they are and the peoples message soon gets trampled by the very same crowds who not long before, stormed the Winter Palace..the fever of revolt is usually followed by the fervor of excess and executions, retaliation replacing revolution, and the diaharea of a demagogue’s diatribe turns into a commintern compost of (in the case of Russia) communist constipation.

Revolution is an internal family affair...like incest its best kept hidden away in the closet of the trailer. It's a social fabric that has torn, and in time inbred, ready to come apart at the familial seams it seems. It's a case of weird Uncle Hector fucking his 13 year old first cousin dressed in a sheer see-through frock behind the barn, why? Because he can, and the resultant child is a mutant, born with three heads similar to a freak farm animal on display at some roadside rattlesnake farm in the Southwest.

Revolution is not like war where the factions are delineated by a "border" and participants from outside the "family." Nope. Revolution is a good old fashioned down home brother sister fuck. Which brings me to my point about keeping a revolution hot and juicy and alive after it's initial success...it needs the social version of KY jelly to keep it aroused to achieve what it craves....a social orgasm of formidable change of epic proportions. Don't be confused either, nor mislead with the term "civil war" ... no war is civil and when two same family sides parry, it is rebellion...nothing more, nothing less....

Those who know me have referred to me as a Tom Joad Zen socialist, tinged by the effects of years of reefer madness and staring at Diego Rivera murals too long in the sun. I have no idea what the description actually means, but, is as close to the bulls eye as anyone has come yet. Could be my Motor City Detroit blue collar union/strikers childhood, and being kidnapped and raised in the rustbelt by a pack of Teamster wolves in the urban forest.

I do believe in an ongoing evolving heat seeking humanities socio-economic revolution of every society and every strata of a society, its arts, it's social programs, it's philosophy, and of course it's layers of literature. Anthropological archeology to be studied by the studious of the future. Actual armed revolt, you know, that serious takin' it to the streets kind of shit, revolutionary rigormortis sets in, despotic degeneration eats away at the flesh of the righteous rebellion. Revolution walks with the limp, and becomes a flesh eating George Romero zombie, cannibalistic, eating itself and choking, doesn't keep revolving as it should...a planet on it's axis, a planet around it's sun, the hands of clock moving to count off the hours of the day. It stops. The sign post ahead...The Twilight Zone.

This patchwork piece is merely a reflection of revolutions, Communist revolutions primarily...although the French and the Americans had their own bout of exuberant excess in laying the foundation of popular emancipation. These, the communist’s editions of Revolution 101, were not necessarily successful in the long term, nor models to follow in the short term, but rather behemoths of unimaginable lumbering longevity.

Each revolution was camp followed immediately by the whores of paranoia, planning Prozac retaliation against those pesky isolation ward voices heard only in the head of the head of state that were interpreted as a street corner preacher preaching reaction. The walls of Jericho had nothing on the foundation these revolutions, as the process of the delirious deterioration of human rights began it's handling of snakes and speaking in tongues, which created the lack of ideological anchors that were designed to hold the ship of revolutionary state safely in the harbor of the societies reformation. In other words....it all went down the crapper.

Revolution takes a number, and gets in line. A 19th century peasant women with a babushka thing, you know, a rag scarf over her head, she has bad teeth and she needs a shave let alone a bikini wax, as she stands stoically in a Ukrainian bakery on a Saturday morning in random order of rebellion.The Russian Revolution is regarded as the undisputed World Series of revolutionary events as pastry...it is also the model of how things can go horribly wrong and it's guided missile of social reform can be misguided from it's inception immediately following a faltering overthrow.


The 20th century industrial age, no inhibited Hobbits inhabit, however it is a dream catcher of Wobblie workers of the world ready to ignite and unite. Revolution. Pinkos. Commies. Socialists. Bolsheviks. Anarchists. Menshaviks, Trotskyites. The Age of Aquarius it aint, nor was. Its roots were deep in the socialist soil of the prior pre-horseless carriage century of steam and turbines....The Red Revolt is the flashpoint where the Utopian garden of Marxian Eden turned into a compost pile of rotted leftist leafy matter left behind by Lenin's leaflets eventually mutating into the homicidal stain of Stalinism. Say what you will about Hitler, Stalin with 20,000,000 purged and killed, made Hitler look like Ghandi by comparison.

Tsarist Russia (Tsar? Czar?) was not just about priceless shining bejeweled chandeliers and fabulous eggs by a flamboyant Faberge...they were however two of the three-dimensional symbols of the growing tsunami that was swelling into a giant wave of resentment of the Rus people for the Rus leadership. The Tsar may have been the thorn in the side of the Russian people, but the people were about to become a royal pain in the ass to Royal Russia.

From the Steppes to the Tundra...it was a not so pleasant peasant land of ox carts, antique farm tools, modern day serfs, according to Bennett, abject poverty and subjective taxes..all tossed into a chipper shredder that was bleeding and crushing the populous like so many of Steinbeck’s grapes of wrath. The workers ate stale bread, stolen bread, when they could get even that, while the royal family, would fastidiously feast on wild beasts, wilder game and choice meats. They lived an openly opulent lifestyle, wrapped in obscene luxury, wanting for nothing, as the masses starved, wanting for just the basics. In this political setting, a blinded Tsar Nicolas could not see the forest of reform, for the trees of dissent. The land we know as Russia is well known for its Bolshoi, but at this juncture in the crossroads of time, the Bolsheviks were tired of the bullshit.

This was the also the age of the restless revolutionary pamphleteer. The graphic mimeo minions.

The Bolsheviks cranked up the volume of a message of a socialist utopia and the words were pouring from the printed pages of proletarian produced pamphlets propelled by propaganda on Viagra that ran as thick, and as it turns out, as red, as a hemophiliacs blood. The proletarian psyche was now psyched, ripe as peaches to taste the fruit of revolt, they were in effect..."Hot to Trotsky"....Lenin raised the flag, led the charge and pitched battles broke out in the streets ...in the end, twists and turns later, a minor Civil War added as a punctuation mark, the Czar and his loyal royal family were rounded up and, no good way to put this,...disposed of, ok, killed, in revolutionary fashion..every revolutionary action is designed to prevent a reactionary reaction....the country had been at war in Europe for years, WWI, and they were shell shocked, the people had had enough and the result is that the incarcerated royal family was imprisoned and cell shot.

Good Golly Miss Gulag! The Gulags dot the landscape in the 1920's and 1930's, so many houses and hotels on a Monopoly game board. Arrests and trials, propelled by patent paranoia, the jails filled quickly like a backed up sewer with imaginary enemies, real enemies, socialists, trade union leaders, clergy, military, and plain old peasantry arrested capriciously and filling the cells to capacity. Eventually Stalin turns from the Man of Steel to worm food and does the world a favor by dying, and the Soviet Union gets Kruschevfied on a communist cold war cross and eventually Gorbachev'd into a Russian version of "democracy."

The Cold War, replaced the Hot War. Nuclear annihilation seemed a reality, looming darkly on a mushroom shaped hopeless, helpless horizon. America was doing the math and the domino effect of multiplying communism was adding up in Korea, China, Vietnam and of course on our very doorstep, 90 miles off shore in Cuba. All of this kept America in a state of holocaustic anxiety, and the film Dr. Strangelove, strangely enough, doctor Kubrick, summed up all our fears in one cinematic package that still stands on it's own black and white merits today.

The Iron Curtain came down hard on the stage of the Eastern European theater at the close of the war, the Big One, Number Two, one of many wars to end all wars. Eastern Europe had traded in fascism for communism, and soon, revolts within the revolt erupted as Hungary was hungry for democratic reform and the freedom fighters of Czechoslovakia where Chzechmated with a show of force and tanks.

The race for space, nuclear arms superiority, spheres of political influence, Two bully nations set out to carve up the world like an overcooked Thanksgiving turkey, but the Soviets were out rumbled and out rubled in the Texas Death Match of national defense, but mostly, the revolution failed due to decades of military paranoia, political purges and racial pogroms.There were too many Five Year Plans that extended into ten years; too many Politburo and Dumas fat cats setting themselves up as revolutionary royalty, creating a worse class system then the one they had replaced. The communist cure, became the cancer instead, but by the 1980's paranoia paved the way to perestroika. The Gulag system crashed to the ground like the Twin Towers to a rubble of glasnost and Gorbachev, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down at Checkpoint Charlie like a truckload of tinker toys and East could finally meet West.


Cuba. When it comes to government overthrows..this one is the sexy tits and ass floor show of revolutions....and proved that in on a third world island nation, when it comes to revolution...there is no business like show business...Cuba...a most sexy and sensuous Soviet satellite. A Caribbean island paradise of carnal pleasures, where pussy and politics go hand in hand along with the rum soaked bacchanals since the United States hijacked it during the Spanish-American War in 1898. An outlandishly flamboyant island nation of sexy, curvaceous and long leggedy African heritaged females, dressed as plumed dancers on brightly lit casino stages, next door to premium grade heavenly whorehouses in decadent old Havana with a stable full of sex floor shows involving everything from one on one on one lesbianism to Hi Yo Silver beastiality....giddyup! It was the private American play land of brothels, good times, and bad gangsters, like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, and Third World American hand picked hand puppet leaders, like Juan Bautista, who was America's Howdy Doody on a string and a devoted fetishista for a fashionable form of facism.

The mob made Cuba an offer it couldn't refuse in the 1950's. The rich got richer, and the poor once again, got poorer. The country was as ripe as a field of sugar cane for revolution, when cabana's would give way to Companero's and beach bums would make way for beach bombs. It was time for the Mafioso to make room for the Marxists and Lansky to surrender to Lenin. It had been a long struggle, but on New Years Eve, 1959.....the island nation of Cuba began it's long trek on the Kremlin Brick Road to take it's place 90 miles off shore to become the Soviet suppository poised to ram up the ideological ass of the Ugly American.

Revolucion had been brewing slowly for years in the hands of the Cuban maestros of the masses ...Fidel Castro, his brother Raoul and there brother in arms, former South American doctor, Ernesto Guevara...or Che as he is commonly referred to on t-shirts in head shops around the world right next to the bong pipes. Together, they managed to orchestrate the overthrow of the Bautista regime to a raging hot, hot, hot calypso beat. The beat was loud, ten plus decibels at least, as the record spun, one revolution at a time at a speed of 33 revolutions per minute, and Castros message was crystal clear, and pure High Fidel-ity.

Castro, enamored with American sports, baseball, hotdogs and all things America, wanted to play ball with the "free" world, and I use that term loosely, so he went to New York to speak to the United Nations, and to countries including the United States for some sort of cooperative agreement to work together with the new Peoples Republic. That very term, A Peoples Republic is repulsive and repugnant to the likes of Uncle Sam (of the people, for the people and by the people)...but if Big Brother can call the shots, that is a different story, but Castro wasn't about to let them extend the control they used to enjoy over his new country, so the U.S. began it's bully tactics to back Castro down.

So, Castro goes next door to the Soviet Union to borrow a cup of political sugar and the Kremlin was only too happy to accommodate him. To America, Cuba was a piss ant third world county, but to those cagey KGB types in Russia, they envisioned a giant erector set of armed nuclear missiles strategically aimed at America Thus began the arduous Cuban Missile Crisis and an untold number of bungled CIA led assassination attempts against Castro, and the conspiracy theories only multiply from there like rabbits. Just ask Oliver Stone.

The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight in the Mid 1980's and the economic umbilical chord to Cuba was severely severed. Cuba's economy faltered, and that damned American embargo is still imbecilic ally in place. Vacationing Canadians and economics minded Europeans on business trips go there all the time, but Americans are still banned from visiting or doing business in this land of 20,000,000 potential consumers. Which is the type of halted reasoning that marks the time when the clock stopped, as America heads into the future with geriatric politics 50 years old, proving that a democracy with Alzheimer’s doesn't always work either when there are no term limits...America....no country for old men.

So, in theory the Cuban Revolution worked, although held together today with economic duct tape lo these many years later. It has become the Rolling Stones of revolution. Today, Cuba is struggling, but getting by, and the political climate is changing. The rest of the world has thrown open it's doors and windows, and although Kennedy was cut down, and all the other presidents dead or retired...Fidel marches on like a Timex watch...he takes a licking but keeps on ticking...he is also president of a country that, thanks to a slow economy and the need to hold onto everything and waste not, want not, things like old cars abound. Chevy's, Buicks, Nomads, Woody's, ponderously ply the ornamental balcony'd streets of hood ornament Havana and internal combustion Cuba has become one massive V-8 under the hood, power to the people classic car show on wheels! Hot cars Hav-an-a blast!


The Sleeping Red Giant of China. More than mere Mao. It's a melting pot of proletarian posturing on everything from Taiwan to the Manchurian Candidates vacation hot spot of North Korea (yes, another revolution/Civil War that is holding America at bay to this day..the Forgotten War. Stalemate.) The I-ching Chiang Nationalists had to partner with the Maoists to fight the Japanese...lets face it, it takes three to tango in the Sino-Japanese war.

Once the common enemy, Japan was defeated, by the Nationalist and Communist forces of the Chinese schizo-political two headed Medusa....America backed Chiang...until it got bored and eventually pulled the rug out from under the defeat feet of Mr. and Mrs. Spare Change Chiang. At this point, Papa Ooh Mao Mao moved into the driver’s seat of power...while the Chiangs thumbed a ride to tie one on in Taiwan.

Little Red Guards, Little Red Books, Little Red Stars (looking strangely today like a Macy's Christmas ad)...and an atrocious taste in clothing that would never be seen on Project Runway...spare, sparse and utilitarian...Chinese revolutionary clothing are the epitome of what is found at a clearance sale in the basement of a Salvation Army Mission in downtown Gary, Indiana...that is about as low on the skid row fashion scale as you can go,.... red-rags for the rag-tags. That is part of the reason that America only gives lip service to human rights violations in China, as opposed to attacking them as we like to do to other countries...You can't fight a war with imperialism effectively if you're not accessorized properly. Capitalists like a nattily dressed adversary to spar with.

Now if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao...take that Little Red Book...it ain't Steinbeck, it aint Hemmingway, but it's a best seller in China and outsells the bible by billions in the Mao-belt. The Counter Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, c'mon, how many revolutions within a revolution do you need? Or to put it differently, how many revolutions does it take to screw in a light bulb?

China today has gotten orgasmic and has taken to a body politic of copulation between communism and capitalism in a big way, fiduciary fornication, marketing and selling and manufacturing just about anything and everything you can find in home or office. It's a definite Yin-Yang thang. China no longer says "phooey," to Hong Kong, chop suey economics, is embracing its import/export foreign trade fornication superiority over the United States. I received a American Flag pin recently from some misguided VFW post for a journalistic piece I did on their Voice of Democracy program, I still don't know why, .anyway...I unwrapped it from it's plastic and looked at the back...yep, Made in China! Irony for Imperialism, eh? It's like getting raped without a rubber. Of course, even the rubber would be made in China.

China is mucho mysterioso and today its money markets and the stock exchange have replaced its Great Wall. Confucius made room for capitalist confusion and economic dichotomy in its public square psyche...Tiananmen Square...American outrage ...the outcome? Business as usual...America doesn't see red in China anymore...it sees green and that drives the machine.

This is one Communist led revolution that has been a success under the circumstances..ecomonically, militarily, and diplomatically with the so called "free world"....Cuba too, for it's sheer staying power and longevity and muy gigante Castro cajones in holding off the Beast for decades, and then...there is Vietnam....and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? 50,000 dead ... an American crime against itself. We were told "go fuck ourselves" and being who we are, we did just that.


Those feisty Vietnamese ricers beat the crap out of the Japaneses, flambeaued French imperialism into French toast at Dien Bien Phu and then Giap wholloped the heavy weight contender, the Ugly America with a resounding knock out victory and a final score of 53,000 Americans dead, needlessly. If nothing else, the conflict of conscription led to demonstrations back in the states, mistrust of the government, rioting, Black Panthers, SDS...it ignited a revolution in the Sixties. Women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, gay rights. No, it didn't result in the overthrow of anything except a collective human conciseness., Lets face it, the other side had more guns but we had more flowers, and we learned never take a gardenia to a gun fight. The French Student Revolts of the Sixties however are modern day models of proletarian efficiency and that is because they took less flowers to the barricades. Next time...leave the flowers in the garden.

It did change our concienseness and spawned a new and improved generation of Tom Joad inspired Tom Hayden types...politicians who over time, ripened, and softened, turning into just plain old liberal Democrats, (dogs without teeth) no longer street fighting activists. So in essence, Vietnams own revolution infected it's violator, it's rapist, America, with a revolutionary spirit, and gave America a dose of political clap, it's side effect, residual effects, made it the most influential revolt of all time.....a comedian at the time regarding democracy said..."Why are we trying to ram democracy down the throats of Vietnam at the point of a bayonet. In my neighborhood, if something is that good, they steal it..."

There will be no such outcry today in draft-free America over Iraq or Afghanistan. The thinking is that it's only volunteers whose asses are on the line, along with the civilians of those countries, so the world doesn't really rally or stand up loud and proud and take notice, except the families of the dead, and a few quietly, passive activists, reserved and resigned to the fact that their "warriors" died for a good cause, whether or not it is, or was, or will be. Not mine to judge. Most wars are stupidity of the highest order anyway. But...as with all revolutions, eventually, the walls come tumbling down.


In the past, America has managed to back its own future enemies along with dictators who ruled their countries with an iron fist, and we backed them as long as it was in our best interests. Examples: Batista in Cuba, the Shah of Iran, Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stalin, ...hell we even backed to the hilt Saddam Hussein (he was keeping Iran at bay for us) and leave us not forget that at one point we gladly armed and supported and in effect created our own enemy in Osama Bin Laden in his peoples revolt against the Soviet Union. America backed the Brits in India against Ghandi in post WWII, and the British claims to Palestine.

A good rule of thumb...if America is backing a world leader...chances are that leader is destined for the political guillotine, and will be overthrown by their own angry populace, or at some point that backed leader will turn on it's Master becoming it's sworn enemy, such as Bin Laden...in America we're lucky, unlike the old Soviet Union, you can disagree with this countries policies...as long as it's not too loud, too proud and too far left of Pennsylvania Avenue.

..So..you say you want a revolution..."the revolution will be televised."

Take a fistful of green leafy Lenin, mix with a philosophical pinch of Karl Marx, and my oh, Mao! You have the makin's for a real oldtime Uncle Ho Chi Minh hoe-down that gyrates to a sexy, balmy, palmy Caribbean calypso boshevik beat played by a company of campy commies in a tropical paradise. Viva Cuba! Lee-Ward Islands, Left-Wing Islands. Face it amigo's and amiga's, when you go to the Islands mon, Forgettabout Club Med...this juke joint's a jumpin' Club Red! It's hi-fi, high-Fidel-ity 45 rpm socialism spinning out of control, and out of tune with the times on a turntable of nostalgia in a "me" generation of capitalism in the digital world of MP3's!

Cigars and Commies conjur up the world vision we have of cocky Cuba and it's cockier Castro. The cold war castrator has kicked America in it's red, white and blue stars and stripes balls of democracy for decades. He has sucessfully flipped off the American Eagle, and has given us a hearty Hi-Yo Silver middlefinger along with a heartfelt "Fuck You" every chance he could. He's outlived them all, and in the squared circle of the Cold War championship ring..he IS Jerry Lee Lewis, he IS the last man standing. Kennedy, had beautifully coiffed metrosexual hair, but also harbored a hardon for Castro. Eventually JKF was DOA and went down for the count. In the case of Tricky Dicky Richard Nixon, the entire belief in the American way of political life went ejaculation limp, with the nation having spent itself screwing the rest of the world in a baccanal in the boudiour of bad behaviour in a display of Military Industrial might, God On Our Side muscle, and political rape at the point of a bayonet. Dick Gregory had some great comments about forcing democracy down the throats of a people with guns..."In my neighborhood," he said, "If something is that good, someone will steal it!"

A revolutionary compost pile in a Cold War garden, Cuba sits 90 miles offshore. Socialists and communists have never been popular in the American peoples republic of demon-cracy, the land of Lincoln, (the man, not the car!) and the land of Jefferson. For that matter it frowned on anyone who fought for civil rights and they were most likely labeled as communists. Labor leaders and others who fought for workers rights were labeled communist. Martin Luther King, Ceasar Chavez, hell, Lucille Ball..commies all..must have been her red hair. Eleanor Roosevelt fighting for civil rights...damn commie bitch. How dare her. America has never been kindly towards "socialist" causes such as equal rights for all, health care for all, veterans benefits, and the homeless. Veterans, (of which I am one from the Vietnam Era and not proud of it) after they have given a few years of service, a limb or two as an amputees offering to Lady Liberty are really screwed all the way from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. The list goes on and on as to a litany of failings of this "most powerful nation on earth" and the reputation it has earned as the bully in the political playground beating the shit out of the smaller kids who dare defy it. Enter, stage far left, Cuba and Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz...the communist thorn up America's ass for almost 50 years.

BC...Before Castro...The Ugly American had been portrayed in film by Marlon Brando as the Ambassador to a small ricer country, (shock, sigh, epiphany)..a euphemism for Vietnam, north and south, and the Ugly American has been portrayed off screen in real life in many countries around the world including the real life Vietnam, and closer to home, in Cuba. Cuba was part of the war chest trophy booty at the end of the Spanish American War rainbow, a political pot of tropical gold that exploded in flames in Havana Harbor. Some say the fuse was lit by the match of yellow journalism with political pyro, William Randolph Hearst igniting it one day, and by wars end, we had in possession, the Phillipines, Guam and Cuba. The country with African roots was from then on dominated by American greed, politics and for awhile, organized crime that bolstered the island nations government, promoted prostitution and gambling, lining the political pockets of the halls of Cuban power while the United States forced itself on her as though she were a street alley whore in the employ of her red, white and blue pimp.

Enter stage left. The pre-revolutionary Fidel Castro, who, when born, shot from the womb in 1926...a socialist cannonball looking for an imperialist bullseye to penetrate. One child of a Cuban brood of Castro children that numbered a half a dozen, his life was good...tropical balmy and tropical palmy, where he grew up in the confines of economic comfort in a hardship free household. Fidels padre, a Spainard by birth, was a sugar plantation owner of some means who was married twice. Madre the Second, Fidels mamacita, was a maid to his fathers first wife. Hence, Fidels Levi-Leninist 501 genes were split down the middle..plantataion overseer on the right, and the proletarian left on the other side. which may explain his schizophrenia in dealing with the west and the east and never the twain shall meet except headon in a collision of diametrically opposed social philosophies.

Jesuit boarding schools and a penchant for baseball pennants, provided the macro elements of his education, which was a strange mixture of religion and secular interests. Fidel merely wanted to graduate with a mortar board (not a mortar, they came later) and hit one out of the ballpark! A Louisville slugger the prefered "weapon" of choice at the time, not the grenade. Gimme some peanuts and cracker jacks was probably numero uno on his private hit parade.

Law school in 1945 was next, and while in the haughty halls of higher education, as most students will do, he gets caught up in the cacophony of political chaos that involved Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism and of course, sassy socialism. This paved a rugged road of political thought and theory that would lead him down the garden path of revolution that began hacking it's way through the societal forest with a machete of military machismo in 1947 when he traveled to the Dominican Republic with others to overthrow the dicatator, Rafael Trujilla. Even though they failed to "vote him off the island" it did fuel inject Fidel's passion for social justice.

Castro soon joined an anti-communist political party called the Partido Ortodoxo. It's presidential candidate lost his bid for election in 1948 but set his sights on 1951 where he hoped to warn the populace that General Fulgncio Batista, former corrupt president was planing a return to power. The year 1948 also brought marriage to Fidel to a woman from a wealthy and powerful family that garnered strong political connections and he ran for election, but as prophesized, Batista overthrew the governemnt and cancelled the election. Now castro had no political platform and very little money to support a growing family. He eventually divorced in 1955.

Batista set himself up as dictator, and got his government recognized by the United States. By the Cold War Fab Fifties, American gangsters, led for the most part by the economic philosophies of Meyer Lansky, had dropped anchor in Cuba with a plethora of gambling casinos and bawdy bordellos that lined the streets of Havana with criminal activity. It also lined the pockets of Batista and his Cuban cronies with wealth at the expense of the Cuban population. Add to this the exploitation of the islands natural resources at the hands of American big business, and you had a capitalist tag team to be reckoned with. The island was having it's economic blood sucked dry by a new breed of American Vampire...the Miltary Industrial Complex...and it was only a matter of time before the victim would strike back at the perpetrator, coiled like a cobra and ready to strike with the vengeful venom of viva la revolution! Never mind Viva Las Vegas! (Insert Elvis Here!)

On July 26, 1953, Castroites attacked the Moncada military barracks in an attempt to sink the Batista barrio battleship. It failed. Castro was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in 1955. Once free, he went to Mexico, where he met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Che (the face that is the darling of tee-shirts and posters on college campuses everywhere today!) devised a new strategy to topple the Batista regime...based on an old tactic that the patriots (To the British Crown, they were regarded as terrorsists much as we think of the Taliban today) of the American Revolution initiated...guerrilla warfare. Guevara believed that the plight of Latin America's poor could be rectified, but only through violent revolution. Bullets before Ballots! He joined Castro's group and became an important confidante, helping to shape Castro's political beliefs and started inadvertently a stylish, trendy interest in sporting great amounts of facial hair that was quickly copied thoughout the Caribbean.

In December of 1956, Castro returned to Cuba with a boatload of insurgents near the city of Manzanillo. Batista was prepared for them and killed or captured most of the attackers. Castro, along with his brother Raul, and Guevara were able to bootscoot high and deep into the Sierra Maestra mountain range along the island's southeastern coast. From there the bearded battalions of revolutionaries waged guerrilla war over the course of the next two years and aimed bullseye dead on against the Batista government. They organizing resistance groups in cities and small towns across Cuba. He was also able to organize a parallel government, kind of like Supermans Bizzaro World, and to carry out some communal agrarian reform, along with the control of provinces with agricultural and manufacturing production.

The political and military fabric of the Batista regime began to unravel like a cheap suit off the rack at Montgomery Wards in 1958. Along with the loss of popular support and massive desertions in the military, Batista's government collapsed like a cancerous lung due to Castro's efforts. In January of 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, (what the hell..it was good enough for Trujillo!) and at the ripe old revolutionary age of 32, Castro concluded a classic check mate guerrilla campaign allowing him to take control of Cuba where he implemented reforms by nationalizing factories and plantations in an effort to end U.S. economic dominance on the island. Strangulation was more like it, and American companies felt the negative effects of the reforms, causing friction between Cuba and the United States. For example, the Castro government announced it was going to base compensation to foreign companies on the artificially low property values that the companies themselves had negotiated with past Cuban governments in order to keep their taxes low. Of course capitalist arms were up in a rage.

Then in April of 1959, Castro hopped a plane to the United States (later, planes were usually highjacked to Cuba!) as guests of the National Press Club. President Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of Normandy, avid golfer and downhome yokel refused to meet with him which is typical of American conduct when her nose is out of joint and it's ass isn't kissed properly. So what's a feller to do? Screw You, Uncle Sam, and he began to establish relations with the Soviet Union and asked the Commie Princess if she'd go to the prom with him..she said "Si!" The USSR sent more than 100 Spanish-speaking advisers to help organize Cuba's defense committee. In February 1960, Cuba signed a trade agreement to buy oil from the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations. U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, so Castro expropriated the refineries. The United States retaliated by cutting Cuba's import quota on sugar. This began a decades-long contentious relationship between the two countries.

On January 3, 1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with the Cuban government leaving that mess for the next guy and the next guys after that to clena up...Yikes Ike! On April 16, Castro had the equivalient of a coming out ball, a scene right out of Gone with the Wind where Tara was host to a debutantes ball of societies finest sicialists in rag to riches to rags formals. He declared Cuba a socialist state.

The following day 1,400 US backed, badly trained and inept Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow the Castro regime. The incursion ended in disaster with hundreds of the insurgents killed and nearly 1,000 captured. Though the United States denied any involvement, it was revealed that the Cuban exiles were trained by the Central Intelligence (Intelligence is a misnomer) Agency and armed with U.S. weapons. (but no air support! and remember the US had lost in Korea, and most recently in Vietnam, and had it's first "solo" victory in Grenada! Grenada? C'mon! Hell, we're still getting our ass kicked in Iraq and Afghanistan!) Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced the Cuban government was adopting communist economic and political policies. On February 7, 1962, the United States imposed a full economic embargo on Cuba, a policy that continues to this day.

Castro intensified his relations with the Soviet Union by accepting further economic and military aid. In October 1962, his increasing reliance on Soviet aid brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Wanting to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived an idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. He justified the move as a response to U.S. Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey. An American U2 reconnaissance plane discovered the missile base construction before the missiles were installed. President Kennedy responded by demanding the removal of the missiles with orders for the U.S. Navy to search any vessels headed for the island.

Over the course of several anxious days of secret communications between Khrushchev, Kennedy, and their agents, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the United States' public agreement not to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration also agreed to secretly remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both leaders saved face and gained some admiration for restraint. The soviet system fell apart in the Eighties like a second hand Yugo. "Bring that wall down Mr. Gorbechev" and all that, and today Havana is an idyllic island wide classic car show on post cold war cruise control, where aging Chevy's have replaced fading murals of Che, although they still stand, proud but peeling, and watching over the Cuban populace. Bicycles are a basic mode of transportation, and Guantanamo, the US marine base at the end of an island, a constant reminder to Castro that there is an American suppository ready to race up the commie colon at a moments notice...

The Castro mystique has not only survived to this day, but the mythology has grown deeper than the six foot deep hole the conspiracy theorists have dug..dig it..he was behind the Kennedy assassination...the CIA had exploding cigars to kill him, chemicals to make his beard fall off his face, yadda, yadda, and more yadda...49 years later...he is the last man standing. Kruschev and Kennedy are mere cold war footprints in history. Castro, on the other hand is a living dinosaur of a politically Jurassic period that defies logic. From Che to Chevy's on the cold war dragstrip....but...he is the last man standing!

When Sockmonkeys Ruled the Earth!

No such thing, you say? Big furry things that go barefootin' and big footin' in the Left Coast Peoples Republic of the Pacific Northwest? Too many better living through chemistry hallucinagenic drugs over the years have created cretinous creatures of immense mythical stature, more so than those peskly little green angry red planet Roswellian aliens or a Jurassic Scot Nessie that only grainy film will attest too? Who'se been smoking the redwoods anway?

When it comes to "The Ugly American" Bigfoot has that contest won in spades, but is he or she or it an American original? Is Big Foot a guy...or a girl? Damn ugly either gender, are there Pink Big Foot's..homosexual Sasquatchs...the term Sasquatch does conjur up some weird sexual configurations. Is it religious?

No doubt about it..there ain't no pussyfootin' when your Bigfootin' and try, just try to squash the Sasquatch legend. It's a realm of myth guarded by the Keepers and Creepers of the unexplained...the more unexplained..the better. Leaves room for desert in the form of conspiracy. The Northwest is particularly susceptible to Bigfoot brainscan bravado. Remember in the Northwest they have given us Randy Weaver and Ted Kascinski..two people who spent too much time foraging and hallucinating in the Northwoods of the Northwest. Nazis, Uni-Bombers and Bigfoot...the Larry, Moe and Curly of Northwest pop culture.

Don't forget D.B. Cooper who parachuted into physical oblivion but certainly not local legend as his face adorns many a tee-shirt in Seattle and Portland to this day. A Highjacking High Priest who set sail over the Northwest forests with a parachute and a bag o' cash. He actually was met on the ground by a tribe of Bigfoots or Bigfeet as Oregonians refer to them, and is now their tribal leader leading a hidden underground life in the pine trees emulating the late, great Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now..the horror...the horror.

The land of yaks and yurts and all things that begin with "Y" have given us the legendary Yeti. a purely Tibetan incarnation. Is it real, or just a happy holy hoax of Bhuddist monks with an unholy sense of humour? The Dali Lama alone knows the truth..and he aint giving it up! Yoga to Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yogi Bear, Yogi Yeti, Yoga Bear, Yoga Yeti..the fictional beast that guards the gates to Shangri-la where the elusive monks of Bhuddism conceal the secret of remaining young to keep the Yeti legend alive for decades. Yeti on the other hand is pure speculation as to it's source of myth and legend. Hallucinating monasticians looking too deeply for the meaning of life, stumbling across and large furry prescence they couldn't explain...something that needed no explanation and any student of zen could have explained simply by not saying a word? "Holy Tao Batman, it's Yeti!"

Unlike the Loch Ness Monster, which is only seen by tipsy Scots who'se kilts are wrapped too tight, Big Foot is seen everywhere from New York to Michigan to Texas to California to Oregon-Washington..(both states are the same, Siamese Twins joined at the hip...the only difference is that one of them thinks they're hip, the other actually is!) Canada is probably the root of all Big Foot evil, the land where the legend was born...probably around a lumberjack campfire, as was Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...these loggers were sitting around with a Mershcaum full of fine Quebec marijuana or Halifax Hashish when these tall tales were hewn from the experience of the great outdoors.

Sooner or later, yet another Yeti had to surface on The Trail of Fears and all roads to this myth vs. reality adventure leads to the doorstep of Canada where smoking dried beaver tail has taken it's toll over the years in creating and spinning yards of yeti yarns that morphed into something oh so Canadian...Sasquatch! Native Canadians, the north of the border version of Native Americans like words that begin with "S" as much as non-indigenous Canadians who share the vast lands of the Great White North...Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and the ultimate Canadian apology word..."Sorry."

Enter....Sasquatch as in Sasquatchewan could be the name of a new province. Remember in a land so vast you always have room for one more...Canada gave us a blue ox named Babe, a feminine named bit of cattle lore that had a hefty set of balls on her, go figure...a Transexual bovine version of Sarah Palin...big balls...small brain...a tea party Tea Bag.

Somehow, somewhere, Sasquatch crossed the border of sanity into the insanity of American folklore and became..Big Foot...we are a simple people..Big Foot will do...Europe gave us the artful game of chess...we turned it into checkers! Must have been the plaid layout of the board that appealed to our simplistic nature. We Americas worship mediocrity and love to dumb things down at any cost and Sasquatch is not immune to our desire to do just that. "Look at the size of that footprint, Ed..man, what do you make of it?" Ed replies dropping his jaw and empty whiskey bottle at the same time..."Why, looks like some sort of big footed monster, Billy Bob..." Yep, they both agree ..."Yep, a goddamn bigfoot is what it is, a goddamn bigfoot..." Whooweeeee...almost dropped my dentures over that 'un. Lets tell the wives over dinner then afterwards go outside and practice for the big weekend "Deliverance" re-enactment festival..."

The mythical monster inhabits uninhibited in the Pacific Left Coast forests, if you buy into the dream of Bigfoot afficianado's everywhere. There is but on bit of celluloid "proof" and I use that term loosely that purportedly has a sauntering bugger of beast hightailing it away from a mere mortal human...now, it's been my experience and others, that a behemoth as large as a grizzly bear or a cougar or an ape..would run from us...in fact...we would be considered fair "game" for the game to devour.

Bigfoot..part gorilla, along with other parts unknown would have feasted heartily on any Oregonion or Washingtonian that happened to cross his carnivorous path. The other puzzling aspect of Bigfoot sightings is the high incidence of Redneck to Bigfoot that exists. Recently in the Carolina's a man reported a sighting and even called 911..it made all the news and don't know how you missed it. Here's a guy who lives in the woods alone, probably drinking shine for breakfast, owns a small arsenal of backwoods weaponry, claims Bigfoot was attacking his dog and yet not one shot was fired off..not even a warning shot over the head, the type you fire over the heads of Christmas carolers when they come a caroling, tra, la, tra, la, tra, la.

In a subsequent interview he (affect drawl here and put yourself in a hillbilly frame of mind)..."I seed him over thar and I rough talked him!" Rough Talked Him? What the fuck is that all about...the rough talk by the way consisted of him yelling.."Git...Git..Git" and of course the creature done got as he must have feared for his life at the sight of an overweight, overly plaid dressed Ted Kascinsky comes "rough talkin'" him. This is the reason people should not live alone in the woods removed from society. If this guy were ever in jail, I can see him "rough talkin" old Bubba in the bottom bunk..Now..who's your daddy?

Is it a carnivore though? A herbivore...omnivore...or none of the above and just a hallucinatory outbreak by the uneducated who want 15 minutes of Warholion fame even if they don't have a clue who Warhol is? They search for the beast but never was a skeleton found or other ghastly remains...droppings...c'mon you can follow a rabbit trail on their tiny offerings of waste...Bigfoot? Man that shit has to be as big as the Rock of Gibraltor! Bigfoots always travel solo...no primate mates in evidence...no little Son of Bigfoots found romping gaily through the trees...Footprints but no rubbings on trees or rocks that have left a hair or two or piece of skin to extract DNA from...certainly a meticulously clean machine. No droppings, no rubbings, and no photos.

With technology today and the clarity of optics not one decent photo has been taken and the strangest part of this whole mystery...everyone who goes in search of Bigfoot..never takes a camera along nor a gun to fell the giant...if I'm in the deep forest purposely looking for something that by rights can rip me to tinier shreds thant he Nixon tapes...I'm gonna be armed...and dangerous, scared shitless too, but armed at least. Today we snap photos of the most innocuous things on our cell phones...yet, somehow no can remember to bring their camera along when searching for Bigfoot..remember King Kong and the search for the mythical beast on skull island? A whole fucking film crew, gas bombs and guns...Sasquatch gear? A pint of whiskey and a very redneck.

One of the other fascinating aspects of this mythical monster is it's supposed role in historic events and is the only explanation that conspiracy theorists can profer. Take the Kennedy Assasination..rumor has it that a large hairy ape-like creature was spotted on the Grassy Knoll. Probably a dark, swarthy Italian made mob guy...real greaseball kind of stuff, but new information has come to the surface over the decades of investigation. Now, the Zapruder film missed this missing link of the puzzle but does explain why Jackie Kennedy was trying to hot foot it out of the limo...Bigfoot scared the privileged pants off of her and her mind kept replaying scenes from King Kong where Faye Ray was palmed and pampered and became the surrogate wife of Kong in his cave. Besides the name Jacqueline Bouvier Bigfoot just didnt have the same panache and resonance of Bouvier Kennedy or Onassis or the hip hop version, Jackie -O!

Bigfoot has also been implicated in the Hoffa disappearance. Posing as a trade unionist, Big Foot managed to infiltrate the Teamsters Union and get up close and personal with James Riddle Hoffa. Seems Jimmy got out of prison and immediately got off on the wrong foot of the mob, and Bigfoot was called in to "do the deed"...Hoffa went to lunch, never ate desert and today is buried in the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and not the Meadowlands of New Joisey as has been wrongly surmised over the years. The plot thickens as now they have Big Foot sightings on Belle Isle, the island park in the middle of the Detroit River that is more akin to a dark back alley for pimps and junkies in the summer, and has never been mistaken for a tranquil rainforest with Enya music coming from every limb, ad nauseaum. There is also supposedly a large bronze fist of Joe Louis, tons of heavy metal fist posed and poised to strike Windsor, Ontario at any minute. Some Canadians have claimed that the fist of Joe Louis bears a striking resemblance to the fist of Sasquatch whose progeny south of the Canadian Border have become the clan of Big Foot, eh?

There are no doubt Bigfoot female impersonators..Carol Doda for example was one but those weren't big feet she was sporting, but they were the stuff of pure urban legend. Recently a Russian spy ring with one hot red Anna was caught red-handed, turns out she was reporting to a Siberian Big Foot named Uri who used to be KGB. There are also innuendo from the northwest again, that Al Gore fondled and attacked a Big Foot Masseuse who accuses him of being a crazed sex poodle...I can more readily accept a mythical Sasquatch than I can a "crazed sex poodle" or Al Gore even being remotely sexually interesting to anyone.

Anyway you look at it...Big Foot is here to stay in one form or another. Myth, reality or just something to "rough talk" when it charges at you like a crazed sex poodle or any politician. Good God, run...It's Al Gore!

Cheech & Chong: Grassy Bowl Conspiracy

Sex...Drugs...Rock n' Roll!

The left over baggy of the seeds and stems of Haight Ashbury's purple haze daze, and the tie-dyed Summer of Love have long since gone up in smoke. It was a dimebag time of rolling papers, roach clips, and badda-bing, badda-bong pipes. Tim Leary, the High Priest of The United Psychedelic States of America, told us it was hightime to turn on, tune in and drop out. If you had some spare time, along with your spare change, you could also Kick Out The Jams, Brothers and Sisters! Pot, protest and politics, combined to create a strange menage a' trois of bedfellows, and the cast of cannabis characters is the stuff of killer weed legend.

Hemp, Hemp, Hooray!


Marijuana, mayhem and the movies were a magical mixture created in the soul kitchen of Hollyweed that manufactured recipes for some classic celluloid cannabis cinema. The semi-fabulous freak brothers, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in "Easy Rider" took us for a gas and grass two-wheeled shotgun roadtrip through the deep fried, deep south world of southern fried brutality and hospitality. It became the counter cultures roadmap through Mainstream America where the asphalt highways and byways were laced with acid, weed, necks of red and loads of buckshot.

In the film "Alice B. Toklas", Alice wasn't just the Baroness of Brownies of her day, but a hemp happy Martha Stewart. "The Magic Christian" with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, had one of the characters, Lawrence Faggot (Fah-go!) tossing "damn hemp cigarettes" aside in disgust! The teen-angel badass, bad-angst full throttle afterburner of the Fab Fifties, gave us a full kilo of delightfully delirious and slightly deranged delinquent doper dramas. Hot Rods, hot chicks and marijuana sticks collided in a tangled wreck of highspeed and high weed.


All of these films owe their potency to a 1930's pot "high" camp classic silver screen smoke dream marijuana machine called "Reefer Madness". This is the proposterously hilariaous propaganda classic that dared tell the pulp fiction truth. and nothing but the truth about...Marijuana! The Killer Drug!! Marijuana! The Assassin of Youth! One puff leads to murder, rape, insanity and a one way straight jacketed ticket to ride to the looney bin aboard the Lobotomy Express! This film is the good golly Miss Molly great ganja grandaddy of them all. Released in the mid-1930's as a church film decrying the inherently evil properties of the killer weed and it's dilaterious effects on all decent citizenry of the Republic. It was originally released with the title "Tell Your Children". After a brief run it was purchased by Dwain Esper, a maestro of the exploitation genre,, who took his meat cleaver and hacked out scenes with the skill of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, inserted new ones, added graphic violence and sex, a brilliant, overacted touch of insanity and a demented piano player and voila! The refeer recipe for success and madness!

After it's uninhibited run in the Prohibition Thirties (the social experiment that gave rise to Organized Crime!) it ended up in storage and forgotten until 1971, when Kieth Stroup, founer of NORML bought a public domain copy for under 300 bucks. The print was cleaned up, the film re-released primarily to college campus audiences, and it became an instant hit. A cannabis midnight cowboy movie to be savored by stoned audiences who cheered wildly at every scene tossing sobriety out the theater doors!

Marijuana is still with us, and so is the prodigal cinematic child of pot parentage, "Reefer Madness". The original film is still available in it's original black and white incarnate form, as well as a new colorized lava lampoon version. The just to prove that people are strange production was a 2005 release of "Reefer Madness: The Musical" a show tune belter that was exhaled and released after a roach clip run on Off-Broadway. Theres No Business, Like Dope Business!

Julius Ceaser was a rank amateur when it came to ruling a vast empire. Nero was no hero either, and I Claudius had to make way for I Cannabis. In the powerplay annals of history and conquest, kingdoms, kings and conquerors, there are only two who can measure up to the tokin' task of total and absolute rule. Cheech & Chong...The Crowned Heads of the Holy Rollin' Empire!


California born Cheech Marin and Canadian Tommy Chong emerged as the Laurel and Hardy of the Reefer Revolution. Lighting up the radio dial in 1971 with their first album, and it wouldn't be long until the big screen went 'Up In Smoke" in 1978. Over the years they have remained as the Stoner Poster Children of the counter culture and have taken their rightful place in the Hemp Hall of Fame and Infamy.

Cheech met Chong in a comedy club in Vancouver in the post-Woodstock year of 1970. Chong formerly was a musician with Canadian rock bands, eh, and decided to take a stab at comedy, and when the hemp plant planets were in perfect alignment Tommy traded in his Maple Leaf for the Green Leaf and a pairing of historic proportions was conceived. The act was a hit and they decided then to hit road with their act. "Up In Smoke" was the dynamic doobie duo's big screen debut and featured this oddball couple as Anthony "Man" Stoner and Pedro de Pacas. Produced by none other than Lou Adler it also featured Strother Martin of Cool Hand Luke fame ("What we have here is a failure to communicate!") and Edie Adams, Mrs. Ernie Kovacs as Tommy Chongs Mom & Dad! Tommy, Man Stoner, gets kicked out of the house and heads for the ocean where he meets son of a beach Cheech in his Chick-Mobile and from there on it's horsepower, joint jokes and homegrown fun...as they try to keep one toke over the borderline, (driving a van made of marijuana from Mexico to the United States) from Sgt. Stedenko of the DEA, played to bumbling perfection by Stacy Keach.

Eventually, in a pop premonition of the low spark of high heeled leather boys in "Rocky Horror Picture Show", the Bong Boys end up on stage at LA's Roxy Theater with a fetchingly attired Cheech in a garish pink tutu and Tommy dressed as a giant red quaalude! The times, they may have changed, but the lude dudes are still scoring big on the streets with continued sales of those vintage albums and cult classic movies. The best part is, they only seem to get better with age.

If smart bombs and Black Hawk helicopters fill the Pentagons battlefields to overflowing with the tools of war, then rolling papers, waterpipes, lava lamps and bongs are the weedy weapons of choice in the head shop arsenals of the United Altered States of America. Getting bombed on bongs, stoned on joints and getting as high as a caterpiller on hookahs is as American as red, white and blue napalm and the cache of nuclear stars and stripes weaponry of mass destruction at our disposal.


Rolling papers have been a staple since they first appeared in 1854 on a European battlefield! It was during the Crimean War and the Battle of Sevastopol that a French Zoave soldier broke his claypipe in the heatful exchange with the Russkis. Claypipes were the vehicle of choice for smoking tobacco in those times, so in order to enjoy his daily smoke he simple tore some paper from his gun powder bag, folded it, placed a line of tobacco in it and rolled his own. The idea caught on with others and the rest is hempstory!

This new way of smoking wasn't just confined to the battlefields, and seemed to catch on back in the toney town of Gay Paree. In 1894, two enterprising brothers, Maurice and Jacques Braunstein, developed and patented a unique process of interweaving cigarette rolling papers. The process was called, simply, zig-zagging and the company became the legendary Zig Zag Company. Zig Zag Papers were such a hit, that they took the Gold Medal honors in 1900 at the Universal Exposition in Paris. So, whatever became of that soave Zoave of fancy France? Next time you pull out your Zags to roll a Godzilla sized doobie, look at the logo. Yep, thats him. High times have immortalized his Royal Reefer Headness and he's been helping us all to ride high as a kite for over a century.


The lava flow of the Vesuvian Sixties didn't race down a Mediterranean mountainside. Instead, it flowed through the inner mind with heat and hot sexy colors performing their ballet of bubbles. The original liquid in motion lights, as they were called, was the brainchild of a native of Singapore, named Craven Walker who called his first light, The Astro Lite! A Roswellian name to be sure to light the path for the invasion of the UFO's of the Flower Power Ganja Galaxy to come!

During WWII Walker was a pilot with the RAF fighting the flying metal of Messerschmidts during the Battle of Britain. As the world tried to put the pieces of the political puzzle back together after the fall of Berlin and atomizing of Hiroshima, Walker went about his tinkering and by 1963 light up London with the first loads of lava lamps. The lamp lit up one of the trade shows in Germany and two marketing suit and tie types bought the US light rights to the little Astro. In 1965 the first marketing eruption occured as the innaguaral light was sold in the United States. The psychedelic lava flow had begun. Craven Walker died in London at the age of 82 in 2000 and once said of his little light, "If you don't like lava lamps, you don't like sex either!"

The weed seeds of the counter culture of the spare change Sixites were planted a long time ago in a compost pile of history that goes back thousands of years. The early American Colonists were no stranger to cannabis and we can trace the nations hemp lineage from Washington and Jefferson to Cheech and Chong!

Hemp, Hemp, Hooray!

Feed Your Head!

It was an age of paranoia, not the colorful and harmonious age of Aquarius sung and hailed by the Fifth Dimension, quoth the raving nevermore. Why do so many sit in front of television sets with tin foil hats on you ask, You did ask, didn't you? They do wear it don't they/ You with the roll of Reynolds wrap at the ready and reading this readily.

Armies of defoliated tinfoiliated Citizens of the Tin Foil Nation, shoulders heavy with the burden of unexplained theories of conspiracy. Too much stimuli...atomic amounts...faster...faster...dial phones, dial tones, cell phones, ring tones...awash we are in an ocean of information....a small fish...a big fish...a one ton newt-on a neutron minnow in a wasteland so technologically vast, so powerful with information, it could level the Great Wall of China faster than an earthquake in Haiti.

You know, the whole tinfoil television connection is a direct result of the Atomic Age. Think about it...the Googie Fifties...the advent of the TV tray to place the TV dinner on to sit in front of the TV set to watch Uncle and Auntie Miltie. The TV dinner had a peel back tinfoil cover that when ceremoniously pulled back revealed bad meatloaf.. Next...(there was not cable..only antenna telly)...when you wanted to boost a signal you placed a strip of tin foil on the connectors to the antenna to summon the signal gods from network heaven to dismiss the ghosts of double vision that formed on the screen....we used the foil, unfolded, to wrap and cover the television dinner leftovers in the duck and cover age of space too...face it..television and tin foil go hand in hand...today, schizoid and psychotic alike, try to block perceived (to them a reality world gone awry) government rays from emanating from the TV and ensconcing themselves, barnacles on the brains...they fashion and don tin foil hats as a protective barrier against Manchurian Candidation, a tin foiled-again government...of the tinfoil people, for the tinfoil people and by the tinfoil people ..now we have legions of Reynolds wrapped Tin Heads, all bad limited edition imitations of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz...the first of the Metal Heads!


The true power of the medium flexed its muscle, when Kennedy democratically debated, defaced and debased a tired 5 o'clock shadowed Ricky Ricardo Nixon on television. Nixon was stuck in the past of radio...won the debate on that medium by the way,...but Kennedy coiffed and confident won the tube race, (radio with pictures, this television)...next the power morphed before our very eyes, as as we watched the Vietnam war unfold body bags one by one in our living rooms, along with napalm and B-52's (not the group)....Korea was not televised...the big one was not televised...but we invited Vietnam into our living rooms as an unwitting host invites a vampire into it's home....if we didn't like what we saw we just changed the channel, poof...reality gone in a puff of smoke...never before was the mute button used to silence a war....it was also the first war, with real dead people, that took two minute breaks for commercials...Vietnam...brought to you by General Motors...makers of fine cars and tanks.....GE...better living through chemistry...

Also in the big stimuli parade came the silver screen sci-fi B-screamers. Cheap tin foil suited creatures from outer space. Tin and tinfoil miniature saucers dangling on strings of cheese before assaulting a miniature earth. Tin and tin foil....the foil is not a fable. Even the tv show...Rin Tin Tin...two tins, not just one, all an effort to block out stimuli and to starve the head from Speedy Alka-seltzer and his mad, Madison Avenue kinfolk. Scrubbing bubbles, my ass. It was enough stimuli to make the mind run amok amongst the snap, crackle and pop of the medium and its mixed messages. Bravo Brillo! It was too much....we found a need to starve ourselves in our back yard Eisenhower bomb shelters, right next to the tinfoil covered grills of our backyard barbeque....isolated from isotopes and ready for radioactive activity..bring it on..."we've got your tin foil right here!" It was all tin and aluminum..silver and shiny...The Invasion of the Aluminati!! The Tin Lateral Commission.


Three stations, maybe four if you were lucky were on the air. UHF was in the future, VHF ruled the airwaves...(cable hadn't reared it's Borg-like head to feed us intravenously...bundled no less...in complete control of our daily lives..phone-cable-internet...one down, all down)..much as AM ruled the radio roost until FM...Amplitude modulation made room for frequency modulation with a sexy undulation. Then...along came Pong...King Kong Pong...the future was beckoning and little did we realize the avalanche of stimuli that would come crashing down the mountain and close off all routes of escape. A sinister little game to be played on your telly screen with a few screws and wires..we were on the cusp...and didn't know it...this little game that walked with an electron limp, the recon unit of the information age...spies in disguise really....Chinese-like, like a slant eyed ping-pong ball, not round, but vertically rectangular like a piece of Pez candy floating without strings nor wings...we had pong without the ping impinging into our daily red, white and blue lives...our beehives....our tinfoil lives....it was all Greek to us...or Chinee or maybe it was English but we just didn't understand it or the ramifications.

Dick Tracy and his gizmo's and gadgets were fantasy...imagine talking into a watch that was a phone and a video at the same time...impossible...not plausible...the stuff of fantasy...Star Trek...beaming and streaming through space the final frontier..preposterous!!

Later it was Alex Trebeck tossing out trick questions, coded messages, over our heads, and into the shortwave earphones of East Berlin agents; reruns of a James Dickey South floating flotilla's of Ned Beatty’s running the rapids in rivers of no return, banjo's dueling. Then bang pow zoom...caped crusaders chasing after boy wonders and men from u.n.c.l.e.s. avenging them and getting smart with agent 99 who had just finished bonding with james showing pussy galore. Hillbillies on the move to be with Beverly in the hills, and gullible Gilligan was guiless and directionless, adrift and drift less at the same time, timeless and out of time with the times and out of step and off the beaten path on a three hour tour.

Superman had committed suicide. The fucking Man of Steel, not faster than a speeding bullet to the brain. Kennedy proved that too...Two Kennedy's actually on the table, and King in the wings of Memphis. Conspiracy...conspiracy...a canned good packaged since man invented paranoia...Judge Crater...Amelia Earhart....who killed Kennedy and King and Oswald and Giancana and Rosselli and just where the hell is Hoffa anyway?

The Sixties brought a war right smack dab into our living rooms....we had vicious attack dogs by German Shepards who were eating southern Negroes who in turn were only trying to effect and initiate a counter balance to the unbalanced bus depot lunch counter. These dogs were so vicious PETA itself would call for the wholesale killing of them on a level never imagined before or since along with the holders and handlers who grinned with shit kickin' grits eatin' drawl and backwoods smile and simplicity of someone whose been dropped on their heads one two many times or swam in the swamps or bobbed for apples in the family outhouse on Grandaddys birthday while he dithered himself to Buck Owens music in old black and white on the Grand Old Opry...

Firehoses flooded our patio from these images, imagine...people trying for equality in late 20th century America...America for Christ sakes...land of the free, all men are created equal..except for them and you and me. Protesters bashed daily by Daley in Chicago...protesters ...imagine that in the land of the free, America again, where freedom of speech and dissent are cornerstones of its democracy...no this is not Red Square or Tiananmen...but Chicago. The Pepsi Generation was replacing all things Coke...and cola moved over for the un-cola and everything was upside down...damn that Pong...I forgot about that little bastard of genuine genetic engineering genius..a Mengele experiment...like shoving a VW up the ass of a 1939 Jewish banker and turning him into a flesh and blood garage for stolen and now stored Gestapo booty in a booty.


Player pianos rippin' out with 78 rpm honky tonk wimmen to Victorious Victoria's Victrola and through the alley and 8-tracking it through the woods to the planet MP3 where a full scale invasion of the body snatching I-Pods was carefully underway. The telegraph cables were twisted into knots, poles used for pirate planks and fiber was good for optics as well as your digestive tract. So many channels to choose from it's as grueling as watching one episode of Real Housewives of Toledo. Cougars my ass.

Face lifted hags who have spent too much time in the sun and look like cheap hookers on the streets of Gary, Indiana...that is as bad as it gets...no lower than Gary my friends. Been there? Don't judge unless you have. We went from the telegraphers key...dit..dit..dit...dat...dis n' dat....rattatat-tat...Thompson machine gun fast across the wired landscape of the old odd west to images of Chistopher Walken on SNL offering more Campagn-ya.

Today..it's the Food Channel, Look-A-Like on the TV Guide Channel..like we really tune in the TV Guide Channel for programming...we just want to know what’s on NatGeo, please, thats it...Ok, "Punk'd" isnt bad...Bravo with it's feminine overtones, reality this and reality that none of which are reality anyway, CNN boring it's way around the world stuck on one news subject for 24-hours a day for a 6 months at a time...newspapers have burst into the flame of history and nostalgia and turn into the ashes of the past as Yahoo and Google bring us our news with the speed of light...so fast, it makes you twitter with delight. The Weather Channel that is predictably wrong when it comes to predicting.

Cable, cell phones, i-pods, wireless computers, wired computers, radio, the internet, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, blah, blah, blog...today we are bundled...and coddled by technology....it's an overdose of information. It's all about self today..thank god in the Sixties these channels of information weren't available. We would never have gotten out of the house or on the road. Fuck GPS...give me a ratty old randy Rand McNally with creases and food greases from diners and dives. The lava lamp was about as high tech as we got...we just got high, not high tech...we got stoned in Technicolor...not technical...freaks...not geeks ...better living through chemistry...outer space? The light show at the Fillmore was our space shuttle to our starship on Jefferson Airlines riding on the back of a white rabbit....the music? Amplified!, not computerized wimp pop Beyonce crap either. Our imaginations ran rampant....we read Ramparts...we were Fugged, not fucked...and Tinfoil? Yes...it was the Mother of Invention.

Today...the Borg revel in a lack of revelation...the tinfoil is flying off the shelves like Burrito Brothers, brother, where art thou? The next time you see some hapless individual wearing tinfoil protection as a protective suit of armor...walk up to them....greet them kindly...and say simply this..."Just unplug the damn thing...cut the power of the technological age...the Twin Towers was nothing...pull the plug and see what happens...."

The Red Bear and The Black Panther
America's Political Third Rail

What happens in the atomic political reactor when you unscientifically split the atoms of two people who share a nuclear passion for societal change? Whats worse, is that each is from a different end of the socio-ethnic spectrum? The answer? Easy, that is when political isotopes go kaboom! A Big Bang, that's what happens!

One of these fissionabe personages is aa real iron range son of a political bitch, born of Finnish immigrants who, like many before them, made their home, home on the range, in and on the Mesabi Range. The Mesabi kimosabe, is in northern "youbetcha" Minnesota. Stout, workahlolic, alcolholic miners. Proud stock, with shirts of proletarian plaid in all colors of the rainbow and Rockford socks (forerunner of Sockmonkeys) to help fight off the winter freeze. Flapping flags of Finland adorn the working class town and the inevitable company store. It's a cacophany of the proud heritage of steely, swarthy workers intermingled with doses of liberal amounts of labor friendly leanings.

The other reactor factor: a fiery young black woman with deep southern fried routes in the fertile soil that was also the fiercely racist real estate south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Angela Davis would emerge as an inspiring intellectual and passionate proselytizer of peoples rights, making her one of the most vocal of voices of the purple hazed double dazed Sixties that gave shape to a new generation of questioning activists, who believe me, weren't proud to be Okie's from Muskogee. Leave that to the haggard huddled masses that didn't and still don't quite understand that dissent is as American as apple pie, baseball and imposing democracy down other nations throat at the point of a bayonet..now, that's about as American as it gets!

The formidable fornication of socialist philosophy and conviction eventually generated enough politically sexual heat and gravity to bring these two separate orbs into perfect alignment, fusing them together in concise orbits, which in turn lead to the Communist Party's Presidential Campaign Ticket that featured the Red Bear and the Black Panther, Gus Hall and Angela Davis. It was the political equivilent of "Dancing with the Leftist Stars" as the times they are a changin' times produced the all-American dream team of the Communist Party of the USA. It was the birth of the third party political third rail of American politics where the red star of communism wore a hammer and sickle along with a mountainous skyscraper Afro. In effect, Davis was the party's stick of dynamite while mucho gusto Gus added a red tinged hue of Bolshevism to a socialist rainbow of radical activism.

A little background if you please Maestro! Following the no-bullshit Bolseviks takin' it to the streets ousting and elimination of the Czar and his family in old imperial Nicholas Russia (most famous for large fur hats and Faberge eggs!) the left wing of the Socialist Party of America organized the first American Communists with a determination to build support among American workers, support the Soviet Union and of course, the simple matter of overthrowing capitalism. The gospel according the Marx and Engels.

It had been a long time since the American government was afraid of a portion of it's citizenry, (and all governments should be afraid of it's citizens and not the the other way around,) so the United States began a not so land of the free campaign to limit it's dosage of democracy and instead suggested suppressing the "godless" movement that wanted rights for the working class. The gall of it all. The persecution forced them to go underground like bolshevik ground hogs, hoverin in secret cells, which only strengthened their resolve. After a bit of infighting, the new party was unified after a period of ideological constipation and managed to emerge above ground existence with the friction of fractured factions easing up. Then as though someone tossed another log onto the campfire the flames of dissent erupted again in the camp of the comrades, ending in the eventual expulsion of those Hot to Trotskyists.

Gus Hall wasn't always, well, Gus Hall...in fact his real name was a gusher of a moniker. He came marching proudly from the womb in 1910 as Arvo Kustaa Halberg to parents who at the time were involved in the Industrial Workers of the World..or Wobblies as they were known. They were also early members of the Communist Party of the USA as far back as 1919. It wasn't unusual, as those madcap Finnish immigrants were often red hued radicals when it came to political preferences. They tended to be extremely active in labor militancy and political activism. Arvos father had to pay the political piper the price for his leftists leanings, resulting in his beinng booted by the bosses from working in the mines when he joined in the IWW strike. This of course resulted in the diminshing returns of whatever income and safety net that capitalism had failed to provide for in just such circumstances. It's no wonder in those days workers were attracted to communism over capitalism..capitalism tended to have it's citizens bend over as far forward as it could for an economic fucking with the dildo of democracy.

The family then went all from comfortable working class to all out Ted Kacyinski rustic, and moved into a small cabin in the northwoods that Gus's dad built with his own hands. Here Gus lived there as a proletarian version of Davey "The Commie" Crockett. Politically, he was loaded for bear, or "bar" in the frontier parlance of the buckskin and fringe days. With ten in the family to feed, Gus by the age of 15, had to forgoe any formal schooling, and instead rolled up his working class sleeves working to help keep the starving family from sinking below the surface of a hungry ocean. The north woods howled a wolf call to him and Gus went to work in lumber camps, as well as working in mines and on the railroad.

Most young boys are encouraged to join cub scouts or boy scouts but two years before the stock market crash of 1929, Gus was recruited by his father into the Communist Pary of the USA, or CPUSA where he proved he had exceptional organizational skills for the Young Communist League. Now that his commintern internship was complete, it was time for higher Red-ucation, so in a 1931 socialist version of the Sorcerers Apprentice, he recieved an apprenticeship that allowed him to travel to the Soviet Union to study at the International Lenin School in Moscow where he excelled in sabotage (seriously! Sabotage! I wonder who he asked to the Proletarian Prom that year?) He also got straight A's in guerrilla tactics, all part of the curiculum of Three R's, Stalin style...Reds, Riots and Revolution!

Meanwhile, back in the States...Hall moved to Minneapolis and became involved in hunger marches, farmers rights and industrial strikes. The whirlwind of progressive politics caught up with him by 1934 when he was jailed for six months for taking part in the Minneapolis Teamster's Strike, a strike led by that madcap hot to Trotkyite, Farrell Dobbs. Eventually Gus was released and blacklisted which made it impossible for him to get any work under his birth name. So with the flair of creativity with the air of subterfuge, he shed his skin of identification, emerging with his new moniker..Gus Hall...which, by the way, was legalized in 1935.

He moved his activities to Ohio where at one point he ran for Mayor of Youngstown on the Communist Party ticket, and being the patriot he was, or at least ardent anti-Facist, enlisted in the US Navy during WWII and while serving in the Pacific theater of action he was elected to the Communist Party's National Committee in 1944.

While Gus was in the Pacific theater of war, an event was taking place that would eventually put two people on a Communist collision course. Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama in January of 1944. A highly educated and passionate individual her name has become synonomous with the fight for civil rights and involvement with the hyper-activism of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, started in 1966 by Huey "Free Huey" Newton and Bobby "Gag Me Judge Hoffman" Seale. It was group that practiced and perfected militant self-defense of minority communitys against the US government and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizine and community based programs. The agenda was the revolutionary establishmnet of real economic , social and political equality across gender and color lines.

By 1946, Gus was elected to the Executive Board of the party. He didn't exactly have any red letter days in 1948, as that was the year that he was convicted under the anti-communist Smith Act and was sentenced to a five year prison term. So, he pulled a Trotsky and headed SOB, or South of the Border, down Mexico way. While in exile he was elected as the Communist Partys National Secretary in 1050. He was busted in 1951 and given three additional years of prison time. When released in the psychedelic Sixties he worked to rebuild the party to it's former glory after years of decline. In 1968 he tossed his fur hat into the fray and ran for President of the US. Being a liberated soul, he chose a female running mate, Charlene Mitchell but received a little over a thousand votes.

He soon became the red debutante of the new leftist ball and gained a new crop of young activists with the YCL, now known as the W.E.B. DuBois clubs, and among the crop of militants attracted to his orb was a young Angela Davis. Dubois was an intellectual leader of the black community in America fighting racism in the country. He was a scholar, a writer, and was founder and editor of the NAACP's journal, The Crisis.

Davis whose membership in the Communist party at the time led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the state of California. She was also tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad Brothers 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County.

In the 1980's she and Gus formed the dream team ticket to proletarian paradise twice, both times going down in defeat. By the early 1990's Davis moved away from party communism to other forms of political commitment and she has identified herself as a democratic socialist.

Hall ran the race four more times and it was during one of his campaigns that he uttered the infamous phrase..People Before Profits. His last race before being put in the proletarian pasture was in 1984, but in 1988 he steered the CP into full support for the Democratic party. He felt confident Jesse Jackson would win. In 1991, he led the anti-Gorbechev-Pro CPSU establishmet in the Communist Party. By now his planet was drifting further away in the political galaxy from for allies such as Davis and Mitchell. He did lead the party until his death. He passed awy on October 13, 2000. Halls family recieved condolences from as far away as Vietnam.

It was a red banner campaign where the Red Bear ran with the Black Panther through the jungle of politics, becaming the political third rail derailed by a two party political system that had no stomach for an upstart third party...especially one that espoused "power to the people" and "People Over Profits"..damn it..that just ain't American! Once again the Red White and Blue becomes the land of the red white and screwed!

Gimme an F!

..and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for, don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!

Country Joe MacDonald sang it loud and and sang it proud along with "300,000 of you fuckers out there!" The hook and seed of the song, "Gimme an F" was screamed at the counter culture crowd, crowded, and packed tight in true cannery row style at a whacked out Woodstock. An ocean away, sat Vietnam, a divided country by external forces beyond it's control,that was also ripping to shreds the social fabric of the United States. The counter culture was encountering clashes in the streets between riotious police in Chicago and street fighting baby boomer men and boomerette women...yip, yip, hoo-ray Yippies, with Jerry and Abbie acting as it's fulcrum. They, combined, were a lefty act of leftover vaudeville of guerilla political comedy, destined to fade into the dark nightime of changing times.

The Chicago Seven, Angela Davis, jet Black Panthers, wild and wooly Woodstock, hap, hap, hempy Haight Ashbury, and a plethora of psychedelics in the chemical rainbow of a multi-colored psychotropic of cancer ablaze with a hallucinagenic explosion caused by mushrooms, pills, tablets and crumbly weed and hashish for paper and pipe. Arlo was coming into Los Angeles carryin' a couple of keys, while numerous other Americans were heading north of the border carrying only a backpack, a pack of rolling papers and visions of a life free from war living under the maple leaf canopy of protection of the war resisters movement. Either way...we pleaded..."don't touch my bags if you please, Mr. Customs Man.

Leviathan demonstrations to levitate the Pentagon, which led to the demise of the short lived garden of Hedon spawned by the tender loving care of love and peace of the Flower Power Generation would be trampled underfoot and suffer from Flower Power Degeneration as Kent State added four more dead in Ohio to the body count, (as though 50,000 plus American lives, not to mention the untold tens of thousands of Vietnamese) weren't enough to feed the hypodermic needle of the junkie needs of an addict addicted to a sense of false democracy with war machinations. Democracy is a noble movement, but as practiced in America, it's a diluted illusion of freedom, similar to taking pure grade heroin and cutting it to dilute it's potency in order to stretch the softer product in a futher effort to increase volumn and thus, street profits. Uncle Sam is the proverbial school yard pusher of low grade democracy to countries who don't want it. Dick Gregory, Black activist and comedian stated in the Sixties regarding Vietnam.."Shit, I don't know why we have to shove democracy down the Vietnamese throat at the point of a bayonet. In my old neighborhood, if something was THAT good, we'd steal it!"

The B-52's in the Sixties weren't just some damned mindless band on the radio, and napalm was not a froo froo drink on the veranda in a tropical paradise. Hell..the Sixties were on fire with anti-war sentiment and all some of us wanted to do was avoid the draft, go up country, jump in the water and stay drunk all the time. Some of us had those options, the Vietnamese did not. It was their country being told to bend over and take it in the ass. Hell where could they go to get away, and did they want to?

The answer to the last part is no! The Vietnamese are not only one of the most effective guerilla fighting forces on the planet but with a long history of unrest and revolution, they are some of the most resiliant as well. The "Vietnam Problem" didn't start with Dwight David Eisenhower, the golfing goofbag of Presidents, nor John F. Kennedy, the male whore of American history. The "problem", for the Vietnamese began over two thousand years ago, under the ruling thumb of a dynasty far, far away, and eventually ended with a victorious kick in the American red, white and screwed balls. Black and blue and all we have to show for it is untold buried dead of our young and a lousy wall with names of the not so grateful dead etched for eternity or not, which ever comes first. How do those t-shirts read? Oh yeah, "I went to Vietnam and all I got was this lousy T-shirt and a body bag!" As the song goes.."be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.." Today we are more enlightened and forward thinking with Iraq and Afghanistan.."now your wife, mother or sister can also come home in a box" Thank Gawd for liberation and equality, eh? Vietnam is an egomanical stain on the American conscience of a nation not used to loosing, a school yard bully that got it's ass kicked for once. It's never recovered it's national pride. America was born of revolution over 200 years ago, and the resultiant overthrow of an occupying force. Vietnams history goes back much further as revolution was fomented against a phalanx of formidable foes.

I will dispense with an in depth look at American involvement..that has been done to death on the History Channel, we know what happened, we know we got our ass kicked. Case closed. Move on, and now into the time machine we go for some information that may help understand the voracious determination of these Asian peoples, who believe me, if I had to go to war, I'd want them on my side!

Two-thousand and five hundred years ago, Vietnam was under Chinese control for over a thousand years. They regained independence in the early 10th Century, and complete autonomy after another century had passed. By the 19th century, the land was ripe for picking again for foreign intervention by one or another Imperialistic powers. This time the brass ring was won by France in 1854. This lasted into the 20th Century until WWII, you know, the big one, when those madcap Rape of Nanking Let's Bomb Pearl Harbor Japanese occupied what is today Vietnam.

Once hostilities had ceased, Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong version of George Washington, creates the National Liberation Committee of Vietnam to form a provisional government. Japan, dow broken and beaten, transfers all power to Ho's Vietminh. Ho declares independence of Vietnam, and wouldn't you know it, like a bad stage play, here come those bloody Brit redcoats as British forces land in Saigon to help return authority to the French. (Never mind that Ghandi was kicking Brit butt in the bid for Indian independence!) Also in 1945, the first American blood is shed, in Vietnam, when Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, head of American OSS mission, was killed by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport. Reports later indicated that his death was due to a case of mistaken identity. He had been mistaken for a Frenchman. Now France got a colonial hard-on to re-exert it's power and influence over the tiny nation, and opted to go for colonial rule, only now, the rules had changed and there was no room anymore for fancy pants France!

One year after the world war had ended, the French and Vietminh reach an accord. France recognizes Vietnam as a "free state" within the French Union.Negotiations Between France and the Vietminh breakdown like an old car on the open road, and the Indochina War begins. Following months of steadily deteriorating relations, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launches its first attack against the French. A force of 40,000 heavily armed Vietminh lay seige to the French garrison at Dienbienphu. Using Chinese artillery to shell the airstrip, the Vietminh make it impossible for French supplies to arrive by air. It soon becomes clear that the French have met their match.

It is also important to note that Ho Chi Minh had contacted Harry Truman in 1949 for recognition, as he also did to Dwight Eisenhower when he was president. Both declined to respond. Much as what happened in Cuba when Castro took over. Both countries looked to the "free world" for support and were refused. This country has a habit of creating it's own "enemies" so it has someone to fight to take the American people's minds off of real problems here at home such as poverty, unemployment, unafforadable health care, etc. The American government is the grand Illusionist when it comes to hiding it's own dirt in plain sight.(This is also the same country that backed Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden!)

Meanwhile, the French, well they got phucked at Dien Bien Phu in 1953, and once more outside forces prevail as the Geneva accords determined that the country be partitioned into two separate entities,the north and the south. During the cold war the north of course supported by China and the USSR (after non response from the west!) while the south was supported by the United States. This eventually burst into flames and not only gave birth to a new nation, but later some really great films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now.."God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning." In 1960's there was a cornucopia of campus teach ins, Veterans stage anti-war rallies, including those from WWII and the Korean war stage a protest rally in New York City. Discharge and separation papers are burned in protest of US involvement in Vietnam.

The Civil Rights movement joined in the refrain as CORE cites "Burden On Minorities and Poor" in Vietnam, where The Congress of Racial Equality issues a report claiming that the US military draft places "a heavy discriminatory burden on minority groups and the poor." The group also calls for a withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam. Martin Luther King speaks out against the war, calling the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world," Martin Luther King also encourages draft evasion and suggests a merger between antiwar and civil rights groups.

Secret negotiations and peace talks finally start to take place in Paris and stagger on for many agonizing years as the body count grows faster than a New York Taxi meter can add up the miles.

Then turn the clock to 1973..the reality check is complete. It's over. The last remaining American troops withdraw from Vietnam as President Nixon declares "the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come." America's longest war, and its first defeat, thus concludes. During 15 years of military involvement, over 2 million Americans served in Vietnam with 500,000 seeing actual combat. 47,244 were killed in action, including 8000 airmen. There were 10,446 non-combat deaths. 153,329 were seriously wounded, including 10,000 amputees. Over 2400 American POWs/MIAs were unaccounted for as of 1973.

In 1975 South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivers an unconditional surrender to the Communists in the early hours of April 30. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin accepts the surrender and assures Minh that, "...Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy." As the few remaining Americans evacuate Saigon, the last two US servicemen to die in Vietnam are killed when their helicopter crashes.


Today, Vietnam has become a tourist destination. French, Brits and yes, even Americans make the trip and trek post Tet. It's a land today still of rice paddies, ocean beaches and palm trees. The smells of foods and spices permeate the landscape and the open air markets, as the memories and the stench of Napalm and burning monks recedes from memory and fades into a distant past.

The 8-Track Tape & The Assasins Bullet

The 8-track tape, just like the rotating disco ball in a gay bar, hit the pop culture scene with nuclear impact...then, thanks to changing times and an even more rapid fire semi-automatioc changing world of technology, faded away faster then an avalanche!.

Hula-hoops a generation earlier and lava lamps of the Sixties along with polyester and tie dyed clothing peaked and ultimately fell on the pop culture battlefield looking for all the world as the dead and dying blue and grey laid out pretty as a black and white picture in an 8X10 negative Civil War photograph by the Matthew Brady Bunch. Icons come and icons go.

The Hula Hoop and Twister...ones a tease, the other a sexual act. C'mon...two people facing each other, groin to groin, gyrating with hula hoop hip action, thrusting to and fro, back and forth, with full throttle action kicked into gear...a few minutes of that and then it's off to a group session of twister, crawling all over each other in a Rubics cube of what could be construed as sexual positions on the floor, climbing, crawling, pawing, bumping, mounting, dismounting...this all on the heels of a devastating round of strip poker where half the room is in the buff and Twister accessible!

Take Hollywood and Memphis. Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. The king and queen of the teen dream pop prom. Didn't make it to social security but adorn t-shirts from Brooklyn to Tokyo along with Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and John Lennon. Forever young, (forever Jung?) in sizes small to large. Elvis, almost didn't make the icon archives gracefully as he was beginning to wear at the seams and sat waivering on the border of cartoon or buffoon. The rest of the rest in peace crowd though...what would they look like today? Lining up for the Larry King show, himself a living corpse that in one interview confused Ringo with the dead George in front of Paul, and Georges widow..like all cadavers, King just moved on in his own little dream world where you run in slow motion and the slower mummy can actually catch up to you to cause great harm.

Janis, God bless her Texas soul, would be a Sophie Tucker fixture on the Oprah show. Dean would probably try for a "Rebel Without a Cause" part two reunion but casting Corey Feldman as Sal Mineo, and himself as the father played originally by Jim Backus. Dean would not have the following today had he lived and couldn't even get himself punked by Ashton Kutcher.

Let's face it...they die young, get t-shirted, and are frozen in Dorian Gray time like a TV dinner. Those that have kept alive in spite of things and failing careers are wheeled out on occassion to our great horror. Tina Louise, Ginger on "Gilligans Island", Tuesday Weld the blonde nuclear bombshell of Dobie Gillis, the girl who played Ellie Mae on "Beverly Hillbillies"...40 years have gone by and they re-emerge as though nothing has changed, except as in Shangri-la you don't age until you leave the mountain..well, they left the mountain and age caught up with them as though an avalanche has raced down the hill. It's not that THEY have aged that bothers us...it's that it is a reminder that we also have right alongside of them, but we see ourselves everyday..complain a bit about wrinkles, grey hair, etc but we still view them as young...their youth, our youth, our illusion that nothing has changed and they show up and shatter our own false reality like broken glass flying everywhere from the Twin Towers.

Small town America and Route 66, America's Mainstreet are dust in the wind of nostalgia. Wal-Mart and the interstate combined an inevitable sucker punch that was long over due anyway. The rolling assembly lines of Detroit, spelled the end of the horse and buggy era, and the interstate highway system and it's speed and convienience in a world that had less and less time available was a welcome beacon to the demise of the two lane. Nobody had the time anymore to meander mindlessly through small town after small town while trying to get to their "destination."

Great old dives, cafes and diners have stepped aside for the chain restaurants..no, don't blame McDonalds, blame places like Stuckeys, still revered as roadside nostalgia, they helped foster the chain concept to kill the mom and pops. They literally took pecan rolls and shoved them up our collective nostalgia ass. Thankfully Wall Drug is holding the fort, the last stand of the asphalt Alamo!

The front page challenge of the newspaper industry today is to merely remain afloat in an ocean of digital information. Bobbing up and down in a digital sea, the printed newspaper has been eroded as a viable source of news, to the status of an informational dingy good for classified ads for garage sales, obits and not much more. It is not the Titantic it once was. It's the 8-track tape of news and information. Out dated, out moded, like the public phone booth.

See those any more? No. They never worked anyway when they were plentiful sentinels on the streets but thanks to cell phones...they have disappeared as a dinosaur as is the hard line phone in the home...good bye to the Princess Phone, iconic as she was, she has lost her virginity and become passe...another icon-a-tech product bites the dust. Clark Kent is still in a state of super shock.

The typewriter is a boat anchor in comparison to the small, light weight lap tops of today. Atari games, Pac Man, River Raid and other cartridge games of the early 80's are now a curiosity along with 78 rpm records and Victrola machines and penny arcades. Radio with it's constant babble has been replaced by MP3's.

When it comes to polyester..where the fuck is PETA when you need them! Do you know, really know how many polyesters have to die to make one really shiny shirt..the kind worn at disco's in the era by swarthy, sweaty dago's and by trailer trash in parks across America? Usually by Mrs. White Trash who just completed a course of cosmetology and opened a hairsalon in the spare room of her trailer. The polyester is now on the endangered species list but small herds still survive in the seaside forests of New Jersey.

Which brings us now to tie-dyed..used to be cool to wear, when you're in you teens in the sixties. Today they are generally worn by those who are over the hill, over the weight limit and they look ridiculous. Like the classic car buff in his early 40's who buys a 57 Chevy to fix up as though it is his past he is resurrecting instead of someone elses as they weren't even born until the 1970's and didn't even have a license until the 1980's!! The Fab Fifties Wannabes...the Sixties are grabbed onto like a life preserver by the Twenty somethings...that's fine but it's not their generation of nostalgia and for the most part think all the Sixties were about were the Beatles and Peace and Love! They forget the assasinations, the Civil Rights hangings and Freedom Bus Rides and Chicago.

Their worship of our era would be similar to our generation in 1965 grabbing a hold of American pop culture in 1925...I don't think Rudy Vallee would have made it to the top of our hit parade. So in reality...all I am doing is "talkin' bout my g..g...g...generation....so tear down your posters of Jimi Hendrix until you understand the times and you finally answer Jimi's question...Are you Experienced?

3-D is making a comeback but it was obnoxious when it first came out and we sat google eyed in theaters. Does anything spell geek more than 3-D glasses? But to a certain degree the glasses were cool..from a geek perspective...kind of made us look like psychedelic Mr. Magoo's. Lava Lamps are back with a vengeance and so is the Mini Cooper. Vinyl is trying to comeback from the sewer of nostalgia that it fell into in favor of CD's which are waning due to MP3's...cries of "get a horse" didn't stem the automobile tide and of course "if man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings.." Screw that...we made our own! Why wait for heavenly divine intervention?

I have learned to live with change...technological and in pop culture...but damn, I do miss Davy Crockett coon skin caps and Beatle boots!

Free Speech Movement
The Savio Salvo

Mario Savio fired the first free speech salvo over the heads of straight America from a verbal cannon on a California campus. Youbetcha...that was the Savio salvo heard 'round the world. That one particular speech galvanized a generation in much the same way as the Howling Ginsberg or the road weary Kerouac did in the era of the Beat Generation, but, few know about this prophetic proselytizer who charged into the free speech battle on the front lines with an arsenal of verbal grenades, along with Mario in the trenches, though on different battlefronts facing off with the "enemy" were the likes of Lenny Bruce, who proclaimed to one and all that "to" is a prepostion, "come" is a verb.

Mario hit the spotlight, center stage in an era that America found itself beginning to shed it's conservative Fab Fifties paranoia of the Red Scare, and the baby boomers were coming of age. The old paranoia's were being transferred from the parents fear of the Red..to the childrens fear of it's own Red, White and Blue. Bob Dylan was blowing folk music magic dust in the wind and Lenny Bruce was a schtick up artist playing bawdy rimshot tits and ass shows in burlesque houses from the Sunset Strip to North Beach in San Francisco. Mort Sahl was urbane, and fired with a single shot to hit it's sociological target while Lenny Bruce used a shotgun blast of profanity to test the limits of endurance..in the end..Sahl was mortified!

Retro backstep to 1958, student activists organized SLATE, a campus political party, to promote the right of student groups to support off-campus issues. In the fall of 1964, student activists who had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and were soliciting donations for civil rights causes. According to existing rules on campus at the time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.The yin and yang of the continuing failure of the American two party system to function for the people, of the people and by the people of the land of the Red, White and Screwed. This was further proof of that ongoing malfunction.

There was also the residual air of Red Scare Big Brotherism, as a mandatory loyalty oath was required of the campus faculty, which had led to dismissals and ongoing controversy over academic freedom. (Loyalty to the government to me is treason, loyalty to the "people" is democracy!) In September of 1964, Dean Katherine Towle announced that existing university regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment of members, and fundraising by student organizations at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues would be strictly enforced. This particular piece of real estate was until then thought to be city property, not campus property.

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a direct result of all these new restrictive and somewhat facist impositions and exploded into a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 on the Berkeley campu under an informal leadership of a body of activist students. In protests unprecedented at the time, students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom.The runaway free speech train was on a non-stop collision course and there was no turning back at this juncture.

Stepping into the spotlight was "true believer" -Mario Savio. Mario was the blue collar son of a Sicilian steel worker, born in New York in 1942. Within 22 years his voice would not only lead a generational movement but his would be the voice that opened the floodgates on an entire body electric called "the free speech movement" letting loose the wild verbal mustangs as they broke out of the corral of formality in Berkeley in 1964.

His podium could be everything from the steps of Sproul Hall on campus to the rooftop of police car. It was an age ripe to rip from it's face the phantoms mask that disguised the "odious operation of the machine!" He was raised a devout Catholic with all it's cathedrals and holy catheters. Mario was involved in the early Civil Rights movement and eventually ended up at Berkeley. Although his activism was activated in the deep south during the era of the fight for civil rights, his super nova protest exploded on the Berkeley campus in October 1964 when former studen Jack Weinberg was manning a table for CORE.

The university cops put Weinberg in a cop car when someone from the surrounding crowd yelled out..."sit down", and Savio along with others began a 32 hour sit in..that's when he hopped atop a cop car and worked the crowd into a frenzy with his speech. But it was December of that year that launched the first real Savio Salvo heard round the world.

That volley was the "Bodies upon the gears" speech to 4,000 assembled on campus..which led to the arrest of Mario and 800 others where Mario proclaimed.."There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." The Free Speech Movement was now full tilt boogie. Eventually in 1965 Mario quit the FSM as he was disappointed with the growing gab between the leadership of the FSM and the students themselves.

America..democracy...free speech for all... yeah right, no left..yeah, left..it's a reality alright, for all, except those who truly have a voice and can make a loud and clear impact and stir the emotions and jumpstart activism. This country does not mind one iota if you are a mental deficient and can't speak in whole sentences, like most newspaper readers and journalists, but .... but...if you have a voice, a real voice that scream from deep within the well that is you, well, well, if that is you, the FBI is not far behind you waiting for you to bend over before they pounce and gang rape your rights. Forget about soap on a rope in the jailhouse shower your fair game and tasty meat. Savio was "summoned" to the FBI Berkeley office after he had quit FSM. They claimed they had threatening letters that were directed to Mario, but in true Hooverian melodrama refused to speak while Mario's attorney was present. Mario instead criticised the FBI for failure to make arrests and take action in the deep fried southern south where human rights were being violated everyday. The meeting ended faster than early ejaculation.

Mario, was a highly passionate and educated individual who held a variety of jobs. Not all requiring the brain of a rocket scientist. Marriage was in the cards for Mario as well, in 1965 when he married a free speech movement activista and they both bid adieu to Americo, doffing their sombreros to the ghost of Woody Guthrie, and off they went to Jolly Old England.

Mario, it seems had won a scholarship to Oxford. While in England, the Savio's had a son, Stefan, but, things were starting to fall apart for Mario as emotional problems began to surface from the bottom of his pysche's ocean floor, and exact a toll on him. By 1966 the Savio's en masse moved back to the Left Coast and the Peoples Republic of Berkeley.

By 1968, Mario got all mainstream politically and decided to run for state senator from Alameda County on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, but, lost to one of those pesky wimpy liberal democrats that always screw the skew for die hard activists by diluting the message and cater to the centrists. It's the political equivilent of watering a guys drink down in a bar and charging him full price.

The Free Speech Movement had long-lasting effects, sort of a radical left westie hangover after boys night out on the Berkeley campus and left it's indelible marks as a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement in America. It was seen as the beginning of the student activism that existed on the campus in the 1960s, and continues to a much lesser degree today..much lesser today, non-existent!. Everything that goes up, however, must come down, or, for every action, there is a reaction.

The reaction this time was a substantial voter backlash against the players involved in the Free Speech Movement. Ronald Reagan, yep, that one, won an unexpected victory in the fall of 1966 and was elected Governor...to the left that was akin to snapping a wet towel against some naked jocks ass in the locker room. Ray-Guns first order of the day was to direct the UC Board of Regents to dismiss UC President Clark Kerr because of the perception that he had been too soft on the protesters. The FBI had kept a secret file on Kerr. Hell, they probably have one on you two. If so, be proud! Besides I don't trust many people who haven't spent time in jail.

Mario, in 1980, decided to return to the ivy vined towers of tweed, wool and academia at the university at San Francisco State, four years later he received a summa cum laude lawdy lawdy miss clawdy degree in physics and snagged his masters in 1989, and then moved to Sonoma County where he taught mathematics, philosophy and logic at Sonoma state university.

Paranoia strikes deep as the song goes, and sometimes, most times in this so called democracy of ours it is a justifiable fear that creates a wall of resistance to this "land is not your land", "this land is not my land,"America. The purple mountain majesty, is stripped and found not to be so majestic at all but loathesome. In the case of Mario, it was eventually revealed as the 20th Century was coming to a close, that Savio had been trailed, tailed, spied and lied about by the FBI.

This ghost shadowing began the moment he had climbed on to the police car that harbored Jack Weinberg on that Berkeley campus in 1964. It was at this point that the wing tipped depraved departmental mental minions of J. Edgar Hoover were salivating over Savio in an effort to bring in an orchestrated movement of anti-Savio salvation to the nation. If only Mario were homosexual, he would have been better off. Hoover would have overlooked his politics, in fact, would probably have invited him to bed in the Rotunda, or at least engaged in a rousing round of odious machine masturbation of Savio's speeches.

Mario was followed for more than a decade because he had emerged as the nation’s most prominent student leader.There was no evidence that he was a threat or that he had any connection with the Communist Party, but the FBI decided he merited their attention because they thought he could inspire students to rebel. Dammit America, someone has to lead and this country hasn't had any leadership from the White House in years, and yes, that includes the "mighty" Great White Hope, Barack Obama, who has decided to let Bill Clinton run the country in his absense.

Mario was on an unauthorized list of people to be detained without judicial warrant in event of a national emergency, and designated him as a "Key Activist" whose political activities should be "disrupted" and "neutralized" under the bureau's illegal counterintelligence program ivestigation finally ended at the beginning of 1975 and at that point an investigation into the FBI’s abuse of power began. Savio’s ex-wife, Suzanne Goldberg, said that the "FBI’s investigation of her and Savio was, a waste of money and an invasion of privacy."

Mario time card was about to be punched. He had a history of a weak heart and after a life of high octane visibility it began to wear hime down. He was admitted to the hospital in Sebastopol on Nov. 2, 1996 where he slipped into a coma on November 5, and he died the following day after being removed from life support. The voice of a generation was silenced and the odious machine still grinds away to this day, but not without some modification thanks to Mario Savio, Lenny Bruce and other advocates of Free Speech in America. Remember to celebrate true democracy..it's alright, and legal to burn the American flag..what better way to celebrate a legacy.

The Savio legacy lives on on the campus at Berkeley. The Sproul Steps which was the proletarian pulpit of student activism in the Sixties are referred to as The Mario Savio Steps, and grab a latte laddie and lassies, The Free Speech Movement Cafe is open and the walls are covered with murals depicting the times, feeling and mood of the revolutionary Sixties and the Berkeley Campus..ground zero for Free Speech and the battleground where the first Savio Salvo was fired in a free speech shot heard around the world. They also serve soup and sandwiches and most foods are organic, what else would you expect?

Planet Steinbeck Revisited

The Golden Goddess of Northern California stands by the side of the road, thumbing a ride to the bucolic Monterey Peninsula. The Peninsula is the orbital center of Planet Steinbeck, the writer who took us on travels from the Mother Road to the Cannery Row, not to mention his travels with a dog named Charley and Baja bound marine biologist, Doc Ricketts.

The peninsula is a geographic strand of pearls, with towns strung as decorative beads along the windswept Pacific shoreline. These towns abound with cultural diversity in such gargantuan quantities that they nourish the individuals inner craving for culture, outdoor activities and history. In fact, when it comes to artistic expression, it's not merely a cultural cornucopia of art and literature, but a bonafide full scale Art Attack!

Ground zero in this seaside adventure, is the town of Monterey itself, where once, King Sardine ruled his mighty rows of canneries, made famous in John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row." Today, you can embark on a coastal journey of discovery that includes an avalanche of art galleries, museums, and for the outdoor aficionado, seaside pathways and gardens that are famous for fantastic arrays of California flora. These cliff side and coastal hikes offer up displays of Monet-like imagery of windswept cypress trees, looking for all the world to be objects proudly painted on a Pacific canvas. The shopaholics and those with a penchant for the gastronomic, can get their need fix, as shopping and dining is truly eclectic. It has over two dozen restaurants where cuisine is an art form, and nightclubs and pubs aplenty. Think it's all about sardines? Think again. Classy wine country tours abound for the vinophil, and you can develop your own "Grapes of Wrath" Wine Country tour in a vino limo (the Joads would be green with envy!) and combine elegance with good taste as tours can be customized to visit either Monterey's Wine Country or the vineyards of the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains.

Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" of 1945 has changed from it's "glory" days of gritty sardine canning. Today, it has magically morphed (thanks to tourism and marketing) into a center for not only shopping and dining, but it holds the door open for exciting exploration of the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary. Take the Monterey Aquarium for example. While many aquariums may be high grade sirloin, this one is prime rib! It's one of the premier aquariums in the world, with educational programs for the whole family designed to teach about the unique aquatic animals and plant life of this delicate marine eco-system from tiger sharks to hot pink flamingos! Along with this world class aquarium, there are enough outdoor adventure and eco-activities to feed the eccentric tourist machine around the clock.

Whales are the undisputed rock stars of the marine world, and you can board a whale watching vessel at Old Fisherman's Wharf on the bay and set sail for a real Herman Melville fantastic, fun and safe experience of a lifetime (minus the harpoons!), by getting up close and Moby Dick personal with these magnificent creatures. Touring the area by sea can be accomplished by renting a kayak to traverse the shoreline in peace and solitude, or opt to take a guided kayak tour to explore the marine life along Cannery Row or Stillwater Cove.

Mariners depend on the coastal beacons, and one of the oldest still operational lights on the Pacific Coast is a stone lighthouse located at Point Pinos at the northernmost tip of the peninsula that originally fired up it's light in 1855. Further down the coast south of Carmel is the Point Sur light station in the Point Sur State Historical Park. It first saw sea time service in 1889. For the true daughter or son of a beach, there are plenty of beachy keen ocean views to satisfy the visual feast demanded by those who choose this Garden of Art just East of Eden.

You can stay in town at a charming B&B or Four Star it in luxury. If there is a bit of mountainman or woman in you and you want to flex your rustic muscles, you can pitch a tent at a primitive site with a (not so primitive) picnic table and a fire pit at the Big Sur Campgrounds. Cabin rentals add a touch of knotty pine attitude with a fireplace nestled lovingly in the arms of the redwoods while the Big Sur River rushes to the Pacific Ocean. They also have RV accommodation's for the Winnebago Warriors.

Down the road in Carmel, the former man with no name, Clint Eastwood, purchased and refubished an old Spanish Mission that today is a hotel that welcomes visitors to a stay that will certainly "make your day." The Mission Ranch Hotel, before it was a hotel in the 1850's was one of the earliest of California dairies, which was big business in the area. You've all seen the TV ads, "California Cows are Happy Cows!" At one point it's residents also farmed potatoes, to feed the hungry legions of gold miners in the Sierras. The creamery on site cranked out cheese and butter for the county's needs, but today, is home to the restaurant which is part of the Mission Ranch.

The Eastwood Project began decades ago, when development began it's encroachment in the mid-1980's and like his spaghetti western hero persona, Clint Eastwood, for just a few dollars more bought the ranch to protect it from the developers drawing boards. Only the best of the best craftsmen were hired to accomplish the renovation and today the restaurant and hotel retain the ambiance of the 1840's. The former bunkhouse is now one of the buildings where guests can "hang their hats" for the evening, in rooms snug in a surrounding o cypress trees, gardens, and a patch where not antelope roam, but sheep that "work" the ranch.

Planet Steinbeck has a lot to offer, from the urbane to the rustic to the majestic. Fine cuisine in a four star restaurant or cooking over an open campfire on the beach. Open a fine bottle of wine from one of the local wineries or unscrew your favorite bum wine on the beach, Steinbeck style. It's journey to a literary fourth dimension that can be the experience of lifetime.

The Redwood Highway

Does green leafy matter, matter? Yes, it matters! When you see or hear those words, what's the first thing that pops into your head? Right! I thought so. Now, thinking only a geographical West Coast third dimension, dream up a vision of a redwood laden Land of Oz, with an ocean view of course, and call it Northern California. The region comes complete with a Alice in Wonderland caterpiller smoking hookah reputation for it's "far out" grassy bowl green leafy flora. Yet, it sends out another vision that is also visibly crystal clear in the swirling motion of the organic kaliedescope. Giant Redwoods, fog bound coasts, thick forests of silence, and legends of giant lumberjacks and a blue ox named Babe!

It's a coniferous cornucopia of outdoor activity, towns with seaside flair, and enough art galleries to circle the planet two times at the equator. Ok, that may be an exaggertion, but, there are a lot o' them. Redwoods, so large, they fill the Grand Canyon of your imagination with portraits of ancient woody giants, sentinels standing tall and still on the Pacific Coastline, awe inspiring, fog shrouded backdrop curtains ready to rise on opening night to a packed house to watch the quirky cabaret stageshow that is Northern California.

It's kitschy and kool, it's Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Babe, tucked away in the Trees of Mystery. Just what is the gender of Babe? Could be a girlie name, eh? There is no actual reference as to the sex of the big blue bovine beauty, but, there is a clue in the Great Lakes area. A large statue of Paul and Babe stand across the highway from a VFW in Michigan. One night, in a drunken VFW galaxy far, far away, a bunch of bleary-eyed VFWer's waltzed out of the tavern across the highway from the imposing statues, determined to save the planet from havoc wrought by these giant beasts no doubt. One very loaded veteran, with a very loaded double barreled shotgun managed to get off a couple of shots to off the large concrete blue bovine balls sported by Babe! Today, the results of that bizarre castration remain..the Babe balls are still missing in action!

California's Trees of Mystery located just off Highway 101 near the Klamath River is Paul Bunyans retirement home. Exit your vehicle to take the tour, and a giant two-story talking Paul statue shouts out greetings to the family, generally scaring the crap out of small children. There is a Native American museum, cafe, motel and a gift shop with unique redwood items.The latest in Redwood attitude, now includes a ride of redwood altitude aboard the Sky Trail Tram. Swiss made precision for a trip to the top that takes 10 minutes to the Redwood canopy. Take a shuttle, or walk the almost mile long Trail of Tall Tales to the Sky Trail. The trail is devoted to the mythology of all things Paul Bunyan, and is worth the forest jaunt.

It gets even weirder, with the appearance of another "larger than life legend" that also hails from the land of the plaid and proud..the Great White North of Canada! Paul it seems has deep Canadian roots. He was apparently created around blazing woodland campfires during those frigid Canadian nights when lumberjacks and lumberjills, spun tall tales of legendary men and creatures of the north. It is all too obvious that these conversations were fuel injected with copious amounts of Canadian alcohol.

Sasquatch, better known on the West Coast as Bigfoot was also given birth in Canada. While Paul hangs his axe and toque in Klamath, Bigfoot kicks back in Garberville. There's a shop with all things Big Foot, and a carved figure of him/it to pose with for that photo op that will knock'em dead back in Minnesota. (Bigfoot Footnote: There are reports of numerous actual Big Foot sightings in the Del Norte Six Rivers National Forest! So now you can pitch your tent, settle back and camp where Big Foot gets campy!

There are rustic secluded areas for tent camping, and plots to park your RV...the new Conestoga Wagon of the American asphalt pioneer blazing trails across the tourist frontier. State parks and acres of Redwood trails invite hiking, while a network of rivers beckon to the hearty white water types for rafting or kayaking. On foot or on the hoof, you can hike or ride horseback underneath the Redwood canopy of natures forested cathedrals. Other outdoor activities include beach combing beachbum style on beaches more expansive than the landing strip aboard an aircraft carrier. Crescent City has some of the best surfing waters in the region and longboarding is a religion, so hang ten with a Beach Boy beat and ride the wet suit wild waves.

Lighthouse afficianado's will delight in the Crescent City light. It's called Battery Point and is on an island just off shore. Built in 1856, it is still a working light, with it's alter ego functioning as a nautical museum with artifacts, photographs of shipwrecks, seafaring memorabilia and a gift shop with gifts for the Nauti-boy or Nauti-girl in your life. When I explored the island, there was a plethora of coastal flora, succulents and wild flowers with a rainbow of colors and hues hugging the rocky coastline cliff. If you are planning on visiting the museum, you have to watch your timing..it's all dependent on the whims of the Pacific tides. The island has a strip of rocky shore to walk to get to the location, but once the tide is high, the rocky patch is completely underwater and access to and fro is cut off.

Heading south parallel to the Pacific Oceon on Highway 101, the charming, artsy community of Eureka welcomes you to it's parade of Victorian architecture. This combination of art and architecture is what defines Eureka's downtown oldtown. Eureka's peculiar Pacific persona is punctuated with a plethora of art galleries and artisan studios, unique shops and eateries, where shopping is a near spiritual experience and the food is to die for! Cruisin' the Harbor with the experienced cruise crews of Humboldt Bay Harbor Cruise is one way to nautically explore the area, while critters and gardens dot the landscape of Eureka's Sequoia Park and Zoo.

All of the various towns and cities along Highway 100 in Redwood Territory not only offer unique shopping and dining experiences, but lodging choices are varied as well. You can stay at hotel or hostel, motel, cabin or campground. Plush it or rough it, the choice is yours. Some of the citizenry, who comprise the local cast of characters, are straight from the pages of a Charles Bukowski novel. It is a coastal highway for transients, the same Haiku Hobo Highway that I used to travel in my days living on the road and on the streets...it all was too familiar and not much had changed...only the names of the ragged rucksack army had changed. It was deja vu all over again, and today, the beat goes on...to a Pacific Left Coast Redwood beat and cadence...

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 26.01.2011

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