Babes of The Haight-Ashbury #1

We’re starting a new series on The Pig today, but I’m not sure what to call it yet.  We will be featuring  photos of the remarkably lovely women who graced the streets of the Haight-Ashbury in those halcyon days of yore.  (The above is not one of the babes, by the way.  That’s Pigpen.  We asked him to stand in for the babes until we find a name for the real Babes, and he reluctantly agreed.  Which explains his expression.)

With the Pondering Pig as your guide, we’ll revisit those charming fashion dissenters of the mid-Sixties - before the fashion pundits taught everyone what was truly psychedelic and what was not.  Here’s a psychedelic fashion pundit now:  “Paisley!  Paisley is  SO psychedelic - look at all those swirling things that look like cells of consciousness expanding.  Swirling things that look like brain cells are so now! But you must never wear checks - they’re…absolutely…square!”

Plus, our Babes will be topped with the finest Swiss treble cream milk chocolate and served on a bed of cherry surprise.

What shall we name this new series?  I like Babes of the Haight-Ashbury. It’s classic, you know?  It’s the  word that never went away, just as current today as it was 150 years ago.  It leads to lovely adjectives like “Babe-a-licious”  In fact maybe we should call the series “Babe-a-licious Babes of the Haight-Ashbury.” Or is that too Wayne’s World?

The only problem with the word is - it’s slightly offensive.  I can already see my in-box piled high with notes from irate women shouting, “You only love me for my body!”

So, how about “Belles of The Haight-Ashbury”?  That’s not offensive in the least.  Trouble is it sounds like rich girls wearing muffs while they ice skate in Central Park in 1892.

Twentieth Century Foxes? Nah. Too LA.

Piglet of the Month?

How about “Slum Goddesses of the Haight-Ashbury”?  Allen Cohen, editor of the super-psycho-spirito-conscious-o-turnon-o-San Francisco Oracle, actually considered this name for an Oracle series. It comes from  the song “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side” by the seminal anti-psychedelic pychedelic group, The Fugs, and I’ve read the Village Voice actually ran a series by that name.  So it’s got the period flavor.  But the fact that Allen ultimately nixed the idea gives it an aura of failure, certainly not appropriate for the Pondering Pig.

I’m running out of ideas.  So I need help.  Please improve on my suggestions with comments below by next week or we’re going with “Babe-a-licious Babes of the Haight”, okay?

Photos of lovely Haight-Ashbury maidens (matrons okay too) may be sent to ponderingpig@yahoo.com.  My Assistant, The Pondering Chicken,  will start tabulating this afternoon! Stay tuned.

(Photo of Pigpen by the dependable Herbie Greene and swiped from his Book of the Dead.)

The Sad Story of Everpresent Anxiety

Continued from last time…

Back in ‘66  me and a couple of pals got this idea for a power trio.  Nobody was doing power trios then, I guess because nobody was good enough - but not being good enough didn’t stop us!  No way!  I practiced up on fife,  Jascha figured out how to play fiddle and of course Prackers held down keyboards.  After a few weeks, we were rockin’.  Unlike most of the bands of that era, we were so hot we didn’t even need drums.  Jerry Garcia used to always say he was going to drop by to jam with us one of these days.  So that’s how we knew we were good.

I liked it when we practiced.  Pretty soon the police would be breaking down the door and it got really exciting.  Plus the free publicity!

We decided to call ourselves Everpresent Anxiety.  Jascha was into this Kirkegaard thing so each of us took one of his books and wrote songs out of them.  I worked out Fear and Trembling - did a Chuck Berry thing with it with some folk-rock mixed in.  Did you ever read Fear and Trembling?  It’s really long! Truth is I couldn’t remember all the words, so when I got stuck I would just wail on Tra La La!  Tra la la! Really spontaneous, you know?

The high point was our version of Is There Such a Thing as Teleological Suspension of the Ethical? Oh, our friends all told us it couldn’t be done, the teenyboppers wouldn’t get it, and on and on, but we just took that as a challenge.  It was a time of experimentation, new frontiers,  breaking the boundaries - and we were breaking Kirkegaard!  Philosophy Rock!

Finally we were ready.  We took the bus down to the Avalon to audition.  We started off with one of our strongest numbers, Sickness Unto Death, and Chet Helms said he thought we had something.  Maybe we should all go home and rest.  But finally he came around.  He said if we stuck to Rolling Stones covers we could have a Sunday afternoon slot.  The only thing was - the name had to go.

“What’s wrong with Everpresent Anxiety, Chet?  It’s perfect for our new sound.”

“Yeah, but it sounds too much like Everpresent Fullness. “

“So?”

“They’re a band!  They playing on the same bill with the Sir Douglas Quintet next week.  That’s their name!”

We couldn’t believe it.  How dare they!  Probably from LA too!  We rode the bus back to the Haight shaking our heads.  Why would anyone name a band after a digestive problem?

But Practical thought maybe bands named after digestive problems would be the new thing and we should have one too.  Prakky always had good ideas so we worked on it.

Jascha said, “Well, how about Duodenal Ulcer?  That’s a digestive problem.”  Prac thought about it while we transferred to the Haight Street bus.  Pretty soon he said it was good but he thought Peptic Ulcer would be even better.  Sounded peppier, you know?

Me:  “Ulcers Schmulzers.  Lets call ourselves Heartburn!  It’s got everything!  Romantic desolation, rage against the system and digestive problems all in one!”

But we never could agree so after a couple of weeks we gave up and just called ourselves The Three Pigs.

I think it was the name, but maybe hippies just weren’t ready for three guys wearing sailor suit jackets and no pants.  Our big Sunday afternoon tryout fell apart.  The hippies didn’t even want to hear Teleological Suspension.  They just kept shouting Off The Pigs! Off The Pigs!  It was a debacle.

Finally, we fought back.  Improvised an incredible Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?, chanting the final Tra la la  Tra la la like we were Vanilla Fudge.  Show them!  Chet finally had to cut the power and the rent-a-cops led us off stage in handcuffs.  It was so embarrassing!

I don’t know.  We tried to regroup, and we got a few gigs around the Bay Area, mostly playing nursery schools and zoos.  Finally we threw in the towel and went back to building houses out of sticks and things.  All because of Everpresent Fullness.

How To Write A Novel Set In The 1920s

1) First, get in the mood by watching this terrific video by Aaron 12…

2) Now listen to a 1920s pop singer like the fabulous Ruth Etting, (she’s the clam’s garters) or the endearing, sweet and lovable Annette Hanshaw until you start to Get Hot!

Lovable and Sweet by Annette Hanshaw

When the music stops sounding quaint and you’re thinking “Hey, I want to go Leona Wilderson’s house party and dance the Charleston (Charleston?) all night with a red hot hopper!” then you’re getting there. You’re almost ready to write.

3) Memorize stories about how much fun your ancestors had in those glory days. Like here’s my Dad in 1924 with a few intimate friends…

and here he is on the way to a costume ball with his incomparable cousin, the reigning princess of Haight-Ashbury radio…the unforgettable…Miss Margaret Hancock.

Now, when your hot tamale is ridin’ the trolley, when your goose is on the loose, your cherry smashes have strawberry rashes and your cuddling cutie’s shouting Rootie Kazootie, start typing! You can’t miss.

Wyatt Earp Fights James Dean

As the proprietor of this joint, I like to check what the ‘Top Posts’ are (see the sidebar down towards the bottom). What astonishes me is that, along with and even to the detriment of some of my greatest works of literature, that pesky ‘Patrushka Shoots Wyatt Earp’ hits the list day after day. People really want to know more about the grim old lawman who lies at rest in Colma, California.

It’s a throwaway piece I wrote in the summer of 2006 as we were driving acoss the country. The map showed Wyatt Earp’s birthplace just off the road a few miles and we were tired of the stupid interstate. Which usually happens after ten miles. So we drove up there and I wrote a little comedy piece about it when we got to the motel. Strictly for laffs, understand?

Yet it’s become one of the world’s all-time favorite Pondering Pig pieces, right up there with “James Dean’s Jeans”, a complete throwaway with a catchy title. Here I am explaining the Bible or revealing my deepest soul and the crowds flock to read “James Dean’s Jeans.”

Well, I figure this post is going to top them both. Check out the title.

By the way, for all you serious Wyatt Earp or pig comedy fans, yesterday I refurbished another old post, even more ridiculous than the first , but pretty funny — called The Strange Case of Wyatt Earp’s Tombstone. And, while I was at it, I refurbished another comedy classic, The Pondering Pig’s Tour of San Francisco. Hope you enjoy them.

The Pindering Pog

There’s only one trouble with this blog. Nobody reads it. Oh, Jinx the Cat comes by sometimes. My wife. There’s a guy in Peoria used to drop in. My mother would probably read it, except she died.

That’s the one drawback to perfect freedom. I only write about what I’m in the mood to write about. “Hey, let’s go read that guy who writes about hippies in the 1960s.” But then you get here and the I’m explaining how to fix a sink. I’m making silly jokes or writing down my dreams. I’m posting the latest chapter to my novel. Anything, in fact, except hippies in the Hashbury in the 1960s. No wonder no search engine can find the Pindering Pog.

So far, the only people who can make sense out of it are people who relate to talking pigs. Of whom there are less than one dozen in the entire world. So I’ve been doing some reading up on how to attract more readers.

Secret #1: A nice clear name makes it easier for kindred spirits to find your blog. For instance, a blog called “Cheeses of France” will find lots of readers who want to read about cheese in France. If I was smart I’d change my name to Haight-Ashbury Hippies in the Sixties.com, or Funny Stories About Plumbing.com, get it?

But then I’d have to write about one stupid thing all day and you’d get mad when you came here and I was actually writing about a tortilla I ate once. And if I just wrote about that stupid tortilla all day I’d get bored and wouldn’t write anything. So I live for my art in a garret when I could be living in a villa in the south of France writing my successful blog about plumbing and Mick and Keith and Marianne Faithfull would drop by for tea. Even though they never wrote successful blogs about anything. Is that clear? Maybe I wouldn’t let them in.

Speaking of blogs, I see that John McCain’s daughter has a blog. She writes about stuff like her mother’s favorite songs from the 1980s, posts pics of hot security guards and puts up letters from readers who love her blog. She generally tries to look fun and with it like Chelsea. Trouble is Chelsea is a registered, pedigreed celebrity while nobody but the Pindering Pog is interested in Meghan McCain. And even I’m not much interested.

She writes with two friends who call themselves The Blogettes. It would be good if they wrote more like Republican Wonkettes but they pretty much stick to stuff like their favorite songs of the week and photos of Mom putting on her makeup in the campaign plane.

Now, if Chelsea wrote a blog, people would be lined up out the door to hear about her dinner with Warren Beatty or her hamburger with MIssy Possum. If Obama’s children wrote a blog, well, I guess they’re not registered celebrities either. But if they did a lot of people besides little kids and me would read it.

Celebrities can write about whatever they want to and people swarm to read them, while normal people have to write blogs like Collecting_Little_Golden_Books.com or Fixing_your_plumbing.com. So Secret #2 is: Be a celebrity.

Since I don’t have that option, I guess the next thing for me is to decide what I want to write about, stick to it for at least two weeks, and then send an email to Mick and Keith and Marianne to see if they’re still living in Provence. Let ‘em know I’m coming.

My First Morning At WordPress

Ah, my first post at the all-new, same-old Pondering Pig. Do you like the new banner? My assistant, The Pondering Chicken, worked long and hard on it. I had to show him how to open the Photoshop Elements box, but after that he was on his own. It was his idea to put my picture on a piece of a lunchbag. Like somebody had been sweeping out the schoolyard at Our Lady Of The Gulag Elementary and found it under a bench. And he said I had to have a cheerful color because I’m so melancholy all the time. And nobody likes a melancholy pig.

I won’t say he hurt my feelings, but I, personally, have always enjoyed a good melancholy talking pig.

Those tags crawling out over the edge of the paper on the right are WordPress’s design flaw. We at the Pigsty had nothing to do with it. Today The Syndicate Of Eternal Friendship has decided to grow like a mushroom. That’s the name of my novel, and it just means that I tend I write about my novel more than anything else. Tomorrow it might be Global Warming growing like a weed. Or Reese Witherspoon. Fortunately, she’s pretty thin.

The only way I could fix it would be to use a completely new, better designed template. But then I’d have scratch the Pondering Chicken’s new masthead and tell him to make another one to fit my new design. And then he would sulk and he wouldn’t fix lunch.

There’s still a lot of fiddling to do. I have to get my Blogroll back up so I can promote all my friend’s blogs. And I have to start getting serious again. You know, moping around and beating my breast as I gaze at the stormy sky. The sort thing I’m good at. Thinking of important things to ponder.

I think I’ll just let the tags grow for a few days. See what happens. Get comfortable. I never know if I like a shirt or something until I’ve worn it for a year. Same with a new blog design.

Anyway, it’s pretty nice over here so far. Looking forward to some real pondering with you.

Pigsty Is Moving Cross Town

If you dropped by the Pigsty over the weekend you probably noticed the mess. Looked like a pig lives here. Stories were flung helter skelter over the page, margins mislaid, images in the wastebasket.

I was packing up, okay? I hadn’t meant to move out, just fix things up a little. But here I go.

It was spring. Time for frolicking in the daffodils. Except here in Spokane, where it is wintertime again. Snow in your eyes time again, Freeze your patootie off time again. So I thought I’d put the miserable weather to use by staying in and creating a fresh new look for the blog, something modern and appropriate for a pig of stature.

I decided to put up a new picture, write a little poem to go under it and then have Taj Majal play the opening bars of Statesboro Blues on Henrietta, his favorite Strat. Next an animated curtain would open and Jinx The Cat would come out in a top hat to warm you up with a few cat jokes and then do the Charleston with Reese Witherspoon. Set the appropriate mood, you know? Was that too much to ask?

Well, I made a few mistakes. What do I know about HTML? CSS? I know how to make a word italic and that’s about it. I can make a link if I look it up. But my creative vision overcame me. I wanted comfortable little armchairs for you all like in my living room and a fire in the fireplace where we could sit around and trade stories of famous beatniks. When the tempo slowed I could read aloud from my first edition of Thrilling Stories For Boys: Bomba the Jungle Boy Goes Over The Falls.

But it turns out wholesale blog remodeling is a little over my head. What looked great on the sketchpad didn’t translate. In fact, because of one misplaced HTML bracket or something my new up-to-date blog wouldn’t publish at all. And I forgot to backup my template first like all the bloggers tell me to do. And I couldn’t remember what I actually changed.

Okay, so a pig is a pig. What can I do? Well, I could get help. (I know. I need help.) But all my blogger friends know even less than I do and Blogger gives absolutely no support. You made you own mess, now lie in it. That’s their moral philosophy. Finally, as you can see, I did get the Pigsty back up. Looking exactly the same as it ever did.

So I’m moving cross town to the Typepad neighborhood. It’s a little more upscale. They promise help if I bollox up my template again. The mess you saw was me packing up boxes and moving out of Blogger. I’m just moving in to my new digs, of course, but I’ll give you the new address soon with an invitation to my open house. Maybe tomorrow. It’ll be the same old blog of course, but in a slick new 2008 format. Polished steel. Robots. Gandalf the Good. Jinx the Cat doing the Charleston with Reese Witherspoon. That kind of stuff.

Sixty-Six And All That

So what’s so bad about turning sixty-six? All the cool and famous people do it. For instance, how about…Peter Tork?  He turned sixty-six this week, just like me. And don’t you dare say, “Who’s Peter Tork?”(Deafening Silence)

Brother! OK, children, if you really don’t know, Peter Tork was a beautiful, Grammy award winning singer from Iceland. Oh wait, that’s Bjork.

Sorry. Now I’ve got it. Peter Tork was an funny guy from another planet who lived in Mindy’s attic…hmm, that doesn’t seem right either.

Let me think, He must be famous for something. Now I remember! He is from another planet but he has long pointy ears and used to have a job on the Starship Enterprise.

Oh, I don’t know! I can’t remember either. I’m only monkeeing around. I guess it just shows - fame is fleeting. Take for instance, Brian Jones. (Don’t you DARE ask ‘Who?’) He’d be sixty-six this month
if he hadn’t drowned in his swimming pool in 1969 after being eighty-sixed from the Rolling Stones. Poor bastard. But you probably already know his sad story. If you don’t, apply to Marianne Faithfull
(and don’t give me that ‘who?’ stuff again.) I only tell stories about the interesting unknowns and barely knowns of my San Francisco youth.

Anyway, what’s the point of all this scrambling for fame so our names will live forever?

Like Brian Jones, for all his fame now laying in a country churchyard off the A435 forgotten by flowers and children.

Like Yvette Mimiuex (age sixty-six), beautiful freak from the future famous for her wonderful name, now immersed in money somewhere in the LA basin. Does she collect her lobby cards? And dream she’ll still be
famous again when the time machine lands?

Like…like…CAROL CLEVELAND! She’s sixty-six, and look at her! (Oh look her up. If you know who Monty Python was, you should know who Carol Cleveland is. She was famous.)

Like Pete Best, ousted by Ringo so long ago, still organizing his next nostalgia band tour. If that promoter in Winnipeg ever calls, I’ll be down pub.

Like Tom Fogerty, he waited a long time for that steamboat round the bend, but it never came. Now he’s in the ground. About him, people like to say, “Wasn’t he John Fogarty’s brother?” Other people say, “What was
Credence Clearwater Revival?”

Or like Ellen Naomi Cohen, really Cass Elliot, but really Ellen Naomi Cohen, big voiced, big bodied, still alone in a little grave in the LA hills. Just a few months older than the Pondering Pig. If she were here.

Like Fingerless Joe Novakovich, missing on San Francisco streets these long years, and following a trail of tokay glistened glass somewhere towards home…

Like Saint Jack Kerouac who vomited his guts into the toilet, cried out, “La j me rapele! La j me rapele!” (Now I remember! Now I remember!), breathed deep one farewell breath for remembrance of this rainwet earth before the black shroud finally smiled upon him.

Like the Lovely Linda, one half of rock’s greatest love affair, the kind that comes with children who grow up without artillery holes in their hearts and grandchildren and a marriage that didn’t let massive
fame snatch love forever and homemade loaves. No early death from cancer can take that laurel from her brow. God bless that girl, also sixty-six.

Or like Country Joe McDonald (age sixty-six), who don’t care (I think) that he’s not headlining Woodstock any more but getting on with his life honoring Woody and Vietnam vets and still singing “It’s one two three what are we fightin’ for don’t ask me i don’t give a damn next stop is Vietnam” in the shower or in the daffodils come spring.

Like our own Saint Joan, who will matter forever, already far past her sixty-sixth, yet still on the road night after night through phantom music halls of Yugoslavia and South Carolina.

Like, I don’t know, like me.

Like you, dear reader. Well, maybe not YOU. You’ve got too much sense.

Whaddayasay we forget the whole thing, walk over to Golden Gate Park and join The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship in a little game of Frisbee? As Jinx the Cat says, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?
They’re playing Frisbee in the park.”

Once I heard him add, “See that dog over there? Watch out for that dog”

Photo Credits: Cryptomundo, Linda McCartney, FSM Gallery 1964-65

Drivel Takes Many Forms

I guess it’s time to redefine the blog again. I’ve got to get modern, up-to-date. I should write about about 1966 instead of 1965. Yeah! LSD, DMT, ABC, XYZ, all those unelectable but ineluctable substances were just coming into fashion. Bell-bottom hip-huggers were decidedly cool if worn with cowboy boots and no shirt.

But who would read drivel like that? I wouldn’t.

OK, how about politics? I could write a pro-Hillary blog. Go, Hillary! That would rile most of my readers but good. They would come by the thousands to be annoyed. Trouble is, I’m more of an Obama man at the moment. But I still think a woman president would be a good thing. And she’s no more of a crook than I am. Oh oh, did I say that?

Actually, all presidential hopefuls are either crooks or run by crooks. It’s one of those axioms you can live by. So don’t look too deeply into Obama’s past if you want to keep your dreams intact.

Look at good old plain-talking, straight-dealing Harry Truman. (Who? Children, he was president a long time ago, ok?) Harry was honest as old Abe, yet he emerged from the crookedest political machine in America - Kansas City under Boss Tom Pendergast. Truman got his start as Boss Tom’s poster boy City Commissioner for honesty and integrity while he conscientiously looked the other way at the protected rackets and gravy-trains of city money leaving City Hall.

So you say politics is not my metier? Not even my forte? Well, How about old movies? I would only write about actors and films you never heard of, like most reviewers do. Here’s one of my favorites: Run Wild In The Streets!

It’s about a band of talking farm animals who escape their dreary farm in upstate New York to raise havoc and cain rambling south to Florida. They’re looking for palm trees, cocos-de-mer, and banana audacities, the more the better. That’s their motivation, see? But to get there, they have to sneak through Big Town! Wait’ll you see what happens when they turn a corner and there’s Laurel and Hardy trying to move a piano across a tight rope bridge!

Run Wild stars Bob Hope as Charles The Rooster, Mr. Ed as Hank the talking horse, Marlon Brando as Chucky Cheese, John Travolta (in drag) as Mrs. Wiggins the cow, Arnold Schwarzenegger (before he became governor of course) as Tom Pendergast, Boss of Big Town, Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean and our own Pondering Pig as Freddy, leader of the tough animals. You’ll scream when they open their own cement company and have to take on the Rats!

I’m sure there’s lots to write about when I’m not writing Chapter 34 of The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship, which is what I should be doing right now. I’ll keep thinking about it. Oh! How about the global warming? Iraq? Comic books! I’ll keep thinking about it.

One More For Charlie

I haven’t caught a freight out of here yet. Really. This pigsty is still open for business. I got redeye. I got corn squeezins, what’s your pleasure? And make it snappy. You ain’t the only bindlestiff sourdough blown into town by this wind. And listen, bub, my commands are law from here all the way across to the barn. Why, even Jinx the cat keeps his distance when I’m wearing my Junior Woodchucks badge.

It’s just I haven’t felt up to all these shootouts at high noon in the barnyard lately. Maybe it’s the cold seeping through these piggy bones. It’s bitter here in the North Woods, not like my home in California where they sleep out every night. Here, you break a strap on your snowshoe and that’s all for baseball, folks.

I came up here thinking I could get rich quick. A few winters in this snowbound cabin on the edge of a cliff, Black Larsen breakin’ in allatime, an animated bear chasing me, and I’d be smoking a fur coat, man. Rich as pigs, as they say up here.

It didn’t work out that way. No, my Russian bride Patrushka, daughter of the Tsar, started wearing the fur coat to stay warm. Wouldn’t let me smoke it, even though they keep better that way. Then it got so cold we both had to wear it. So now all my cold cash is under the snow and I got nothing to smoke.

I wish Mrs. Bean would bring out the slops. I wonder where Jinx is keepin’ himself these days. Probably on the Bean family four poster bed with a nice little coal fire in the grate. Next the goat will be up there too while I’m out here boiling my shoe again.

Well, as my old friend Scarlett O’Hara used to say, “Tomorrow is another day.” Or maybe it was Tosh St. Clair. Anyway, one of my old friends used to say it. Another guy I knew used to say “Sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday. Gonna rise like a new wind blow my blues away.” All us Hard-Luck Henrys got to keep on believin’ that. Meanwhile, pony up, boys. This redeye ain’t free.