gleason tripping in skidoo. bizarre. - dave 1-04-2008 9:52 pm [add a comment]
paul krassner tripping with groucho (who plays god in skidoo):
The Groucho Marx Connection
We ingested those little white tabs one afternoon at the home of an actress in Beverly Hills.
Groucho was interested in the social background of the drug. There were two items that particularly tickled his fancy.
One was about the day acid was outlawed. Hippies were standing around the streets waiting for the exact appointed minute to strike so they could all publicly swallow their LSD the exact second it became illegal.
The other was how the tour bus would pass through Haight-Ashbury and passengers would try to take snapshots of the local alien creatures, who in turn would hold mirrors up to the bus windows so that the tourists would see themselves focusing their cameras.
I told Groucho about the first thing I ever sold to the old Steve Allen show. It was a sketch called "Unsung Heroes of Television. " Among the heroes was the individual whose sole job it was to listen intently the whole half hour for somebody to say the secret word on "You Bet your Life and then to drop that decoy duck when the word was said.
He told me about one of his favorite contestants "a gentleman with white hair, on in years but a chipper fellow. I inquired as to what he did to retain his sunny disposition. "Well, I'll tell you, Groucho," he says "every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day."
We had long periods of silence and of listening to music. I was accustomed to playing rock 'n' roll while tripping, but the record collection here was all classical and Broadway show albums. After we heard the Bach "Cantata No. 7 Groucho said, "I may be Jewish, but I was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do you think Bach knew he was doing that?
Later, we were listening to the score of a musical comedy Fanny There was one song called "Welcome Home," where the lyrics go something like, "Welcome home, says the clock", and the chair says, "Welcome home," and so do various other pieces of furniture. Groucho started acting out each line; as if he were actually being greeted by the duck, the chair and so forth. He was like a child, charmed by his own ability to respond to the music that way.
There was a point when our conversation somehow got into a negative space. Groucho was equally bitter about institutions such as marriage ("like quicksand") and individuals such as Lyndon Johnson ("that potato-head"). Eventually, I asked, "What gives you hope?
Groucho thought for a moment. Then he said just one word out loud: "People."
After a while, he started chuckling to himself. I hesitated to interrupt his revelry. Finally he spoke: "I'm really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?"
"Always?"
"If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh"
And right after he said that, his eyes began to tear.
When he came back from peeing, he said, "Everybody is waiting for miracles to happen. The human body is a goddam miracle."
He mentioned, "I had a little crush on Marilyn Monroe when we were making Love Happy . I remember I got a hard-on just talking to her on the set.
During a little snack: "I never thought eating a fig would be the biggest thrill of my life."
He held and smelled a cigar for a long time but never smoked it.
"Everybody has their own Laurel and Hardy," he mused. "A miniature Laurel and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you out-he says, 'Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into.' And your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy -"Oh, Ollie, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry, I did the best I could. . . '"
Five years later, my book, How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years, was published by Putnam. Editor William Targ sent an advance copy to Groucho, and he sent back a postcard that was as eerie as it was complimentary: "Thanks for the book. I am sending this card to you, because I don't know where Mr. Krassner lives. Or even if he is alive. At any rate, it's a hilarious book and I predict in time he will wind up as the only live Lenny Bruce. "
The year after that, I was heavy into my Manson investigation. During the acid trip with three of his family members Squeaky Fromme, Sandra Good and Brenda McCann I got an even more awesome compliment.
Sandy Good had once seen me perform at The Committee in San Francisco. Now she was saying to me, "When people used to ask me what Charlie was like, I would compare him to Lenny Bruce and Paul Krassner."
My heart thumped rather strangely.
Sandy had been a civil-rights activist. But Charlie Manson stepped on her eyeglasses, threw away her birth control pills, remolded her personality and transformed her value system. So now she was parroting Charlie's racism and asking me to tell John Lennon that he should get rid of Yoko Ono and "marry his own kind."
I've never met Charlie Manson, although I've corresponded with him. But I have heard a tape of his rap, and he definitely used humor as a tool for evil.
For the first time I understood in my guts what Groucho Marx had meant about misusing the power to make people laugh. - dave 1-04-2008 10:06 pm [add a comment]
- dave 1-04-2008 9:38 pm
gleason tripping in skidoo. bizarre.
- dave 1-04-2008 9:52 pm [add a comment]
paul krassner tripping with groucho (who plays god in skidoo):
The Groucho Marx Connection
We ingested those little white tabs one afternoon at the home of an actress in Beverly Hills.
Groucho was interested in the social background of the drug. There were two items that particularly tickled his fancy.
One was about the day acid was outlawed. Hippies were standing around the streets waiting for the exact appointed minute to strike so they could all publicly swallow their LSD the exact second it became illegal.
The other was how the tour bus would pass through Haight-Ashbury and passengers would try to take snapshots of the local alien creatures, who in turn would hold mirrors up to the bus windows so that the tourists would see themselves focusing their cameras.
I told Groucho about the first thing I ever sold to the old Steve Allen show. It was a sketch called "Unsung Heroes of Television. " Among the heroes was the individual whose sole job it was to listen intently the whole half hour for somebody to say the secret word on "You Bet your Life and then to drop that decoy duck when the word was said.
He told me about one of his favorite contestants "a gentleman with white hair, on in years but a chipper fellow. I inquired as to what he did to retain his sunny disposition. "Well, I'll tell you, Groucho," he says "every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day."
We had long periods of silence and of listening to music. I was accustomed to playing rock 'n' roll while tripping, but the record collection here was all classical and Broadway show albums. After we heard the Bach "Cantata No. 7 Groucho said, "I may be Jewish, but I was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do you think Bach knew he was doing that?
Later, we were listening to the score of a musical comedy Fanny There was one song called "Welcome Home," where the lyrics go something like, "Welcome home, says the clock", and the chair says, "Welcome home," and so do various other pieces of furniture. Groucho started acting out each line; as if he were actually being greeted by the duck, the chair and so forth. He was like a child, charmed by his own ability to respond to the music that way.
There was a point when our conversation somehow got into a negative space. Groucho was equally bitter about institutions such as marriage ("like quicksand") and individuals such as Lyndon Johnson ("that potato-head"). Eventually, I asked, "What gives you hope?
Groucho thought for a moment. Then he said just one word out loud: "People."
After a while, he started chuckling to himself. I hesitated to interrupt his revelry. Finally he spoke: "I'm really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?"
"Always?"
"If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh"
And right after he said that, his eyes began to tear.
When he came back from peeing, he said, "Everybody is waiting for miracles to happen. The human body is a goddam miracle."
He mentioned, "I had a little crush on Marilyn Monroe when we were making Love Happy . I remember I got a hard-on just talking to her on the set.
During a little snack: "I never thought eating a fig would be the biggest thrill of my life."
He held and smelled a cigar for a long time but never smoked it.
"Everybody has their own Laurel and Hardy," he mused. "A miniature Laurel and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you out-he says, 'Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into.' And your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy -"Oh, Ollie, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry, I did the best I could. . . '"
Five years later, my book, How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years, was published by Putnam. Editor William Targ sent an advance copy to Groucho, and he sent back a postcard that was as eerie as it was complimentary: "Thanks for the book. I am sending this card to you, because I don't know where Mr. Krassner lives. Or even if he is alive. At any rate, it's a hilarious book and I predict in time he will wind up as the only live Lenny Bruce. "
The year after that, I was heavy into my Manson investigation. During the acid trip with three of his family members Squeaky Fromme, Sandra Good and Brenda McCann I got an even more awesome compliment.
Sandy Good had once seen me perform at The Committee in San Francisco. Now she was saying to me, "When people used to ask me what Charlie was like, I would compare him to Lenny Bruce and Paul Krassner."
My heart thumped rather strangely.
Sandy had been a civil-rights activist. But Charlie Manson stepped on her eyeglasses, threw away her birth control pills, remolded her personality and transformed her value system. So now she was parroting Charlie's racism and asking me to tell John Lennon that he should get rid of Yoko Ono and "marry his own kind."
I've never met Charlie Manson, although I've corresponded with him. But I have heard a tape of his rap, and he definitely used humor as a tool for evil.
For the first time I understood in my guts what Groucho Marx had meant about misusing the power to make people laugh.
- dave 1-04-2008 10:06 pm [add a comment]
the link
- bill 1-04-2008 10:29 pm [add a comment]
ya got me. preminger directed skidoo.
- dave 1-04-2008 10:34 pm [add a comment]