Wire side Sculptures Artist: Laure Marie Capsuto


- Dog made from car parts

- Cow head

- Gear horse

- Celtic inspired rendering of Bullwinkle's death.

"My sculptures and painting are a reflection of what I believe to be true and the spirit they reflect is that of unconditional love and hope that we can all be safe and able to live the way God intended us to live, with unconditional love and acceptance. I graduated from the Art Center of Tucson with a degree in Advertising art and have worked as a freelance professional fine artist since I was 16. My goal is to pursue a Bachelors degree in Art Therapy and to work with emotionally disabled children. I have 3 children of my own who are thriving in one of the best school districts in Tucson and I also have 3 horses, 2 of which I use for animal therapy. I currently still work as a freelance artist and have my work on display and for sale throughout the southwest. Please feel free to contact me if you know someone who would benefit from some animal therapy work or who would like a sculpture or painting."

Peace and unconditional love,

LaureLaureMC@comcast.net

http://www.myspace.com/ashedangel

Get new course on blogging for fun and profit - for free!

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

OSHO: Absolutely Free to Be Funny
Osho...a.k.a. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, born December 11, 1931


"They have starved thinking for centuries...I'm not going to console anybody, because the more you console them the more retarded they remain...I am not your savior, I am not going to help you in any way to enter into the kingdom of God. But I can explain to you how we can live here in the kingdom of beauty, love, joy. To me God is a dead word."

"A chimpanzee could do better than that!"
- Actually this is by "Congo (1954-1964), a chimpanzee who painted pictures at the age of two to four years under the aegis of Desmond Morris." So it's pretty damned good, considering.


Source: Wikimedia Commons

John Lennon: Genius, Revolutionary, Surrealist...Hypocrite

Today is the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, on December 8, 1980. I remember I was quite shocked and affected by it when I came home from school (I was in 6th grade or so) and heard the news from my mom, then from the constant television coverage. I had just finished a big school report on Lennon, so I was quite the little expert on the irreverent Liverpoolian. Or maybe I wrote the report after his death. Whatever, I was steeped in his mythos at an early age.

I always had a natural love for the Beatles, and regarded John's brilliant, acerbic, surrealist take on things a necessary counterpoint to Paul's dapper, whimsical outlook. Together their unique chemistry made the greatest songwriting team in rock and roll history. In their solo careers, after the break-up inspired by entropy, the insufferable Yoko, and many other factors, Paul was often overly sentimental, sappy, and irrelevant. John on his own was too often strident, self-righteous, and smug.

"Power to the people"? A little too overtly agit-prop from the man who a few years earlier had astutely sung: "If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao/You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow." And how about "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can." Something tells me John was not about to sign over the deed to his unit at the Dakota Apartments anytime soon.

And it's a damn shame, although par for the course, that one of the greatest artists of the 20th century was such a shitty father, at least to his son Julian ("Hey Jude..."). Watch the movie Pop and Me (1999), where the director, when traveling the world with his dad and interviewing fathers and sons about their relationship, encounters Julian at a poolside. Julian nails his famous father for abandoning him as a child, and for the hypocrisy of espousing his great message of peace and love in his music, while verbally abusing his own son in his early years.

For John at his best, see the You Tube videos below...spiritually prophetic, tender and affectioniate (towards his son Sean at least), beyond the wheels of Samsara just before a madman took his life in a senseless murder...


"Instant Karma"


"Watching the Wheels"


"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"

Contemporary poetry: "Thumbs down!"
by T.S. Minton

"I no longer feel compelled, or even impelled, to write poetry these days, and possibly will not for years to come. Number one, that muse has closed down. When I do get the urge to go on a creative jag, in the midst of the skull-splitting caffeinated stress and frantic pursuit of business endeavors which presently dominates my daily life, I plan on going back ot my original love: visual art, especially cartooning. Number two, although I have no interest in actively following it, what I have heard of contemporary poetry bores me silly. I find most of it insular, cryptic, pseudo-intellectual, full of annoying cadences and overly wedded to the dogmatic concept that art should be a platform for anarcho-leftist political screeds (to wit: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's wrong-headed little manifesto "Poetry as Insurgent Art"). I'll pass. Anyway, the greatest poet of our time, in an opinion I share with my former B.U. professor Christopher Ricks, is a rock and roller, not a self-conscious academic: Bob Dylan. Dylan, almost always, has dealt in riddles, rhymes, and metaphorical symbol-systems - NOT polemics. His concerns are the universal truths of the human heart - NOT promoting the passing ideologies of the day."
- From Squidoo.com/tsminton

Do you , uh, Squidoo? I do...

"Steve Minton is..."
See http://www.squidoo.com/tsminton

Create your own Squidoo Lens now! - Why not? It's free, and they'll break you off 50% of all ad revenue. ..plus submit your Lens to Google.

The Tony Redhouse Show...a new friend of T.S. Minton Blogs.

I've appeared several times on a new show on Access Tucson..."The Tony Redhouse Show"... a fascinating showcase for the aformentioned hoop dancer and Navajo teacher, and the always unexpected happenings that he brings about by his encouragement, nay insistence on audience participation.

- TSM



Access Tucson - Program guide
http://accesstucson.org/whatsontv/channel/12/

"Tony Redhouse, Navajo, is an articulate Professional Speaker and talented Hoop Dancer who infuses light-hearted humor and fun into every performance. Tony Redhouse is not just your ordinary speaker. Imagine colorful and mesmerizing Native American Dance, Stories, Music and audience participation in a dynamic speaking program. This is not a stoic history lesson or a worn out lecture on the plight of the American Indian. What you will get with Tony Redhouse is something personal, positive, thought provoking and even magical. Tony is one of the few Native entertainers today, who has successfully bridged the gap between cultures, social groups, races and ages. Tony has also founded his own style of yoga, Native American Yoga along with new spiritual interactive workshops, talking circles and meditative music. Mr. Redhouse has several music CD's out, and is a Grammy nominated artist. Mr. Redhouse brings healing in the form of Dance, Storytelling, Music and motivational speaking. Tony Redhouse has served as a Native American Traditional Consultant for HIV/AIDS, substance abuse recovery and Red Road Youth Groups. He is the recipient of several Native American Music Awards, and is a Kennedy Center Approved Artist. Tony has acted as Keynote Speaker for U.S. Governmental Conferences in Washington D.C. and for organizations Nationwide. "
http://www.myspace.com/tonyredhouse

"In Native American tradition, ceremony is practiced to restore personal balance in our lives. When the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional aspects of our being are each healthy and united, we experience healing and wholeness. We can then live in a state of peaceful bliss and open our hearts to "Soar like an eagle" to our highest good. Tony Redhouse creates a personal ceremony, eloquently using the most ancient forms of human expression: the voice, the drum and flute, to guide you on a meditative journey around the Sacred Circle of your life.
Tony Redhouse has served as a traditional Native American practitioner & consultant to Native American communities and behavioral health organizations. He is a visual artist, Grammy nominated recording artist, inspirational speaker, spiritual teacher, hoop and eagle dancer. He uses Native American art, dance and music to inspire and heal lives."
http://www.tonyredhouse.net/

Photos by Fred Willie, used with permission.
http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/blogs/bunnyblog/5193/

Tony Redhouse Four Winds, East Wind



Tony Redhouse Soul Blessings

"Our life is a beautiful tapestry of the many blessings carefully woven together for us by the Master Weaver of life.
In Native American Music tradition, music like art and dance tells a story. These songs reflect our human experience and express the memories, emotions and prayers of life. Soul Blessings is a rich mix of Native American, Afro-Cuban and original music which goes direct to the heart
Find your Soul Blessings with these rich layered rhythms, authentic yet soothing Native American chants, flute, guitar and fretless bass. Percussion sounds and bird whistles are from Tony's extensive collection of rare instruments. Tony is a known and internationally respected Navajo teacher, musician and healer. The production style of Liv Singh Khalsa (Crimson Series) adds powerful arrangements and beautiful sonic textures. Go to http://www.Tonyredhouse.net to hear music and see other videos by Tony Redhouse. "

Yuletide cheer...to one and all.

Myspace Christmas Graphics

Thanks also to
http://christmas-clipart.net

Music break...

Don't Look Back (You gotta walk) - Peter Tosh & Mick Jagger

Recently I was invited to blog at Idea tango.com, by technology guru and VP of Technology Pablo Bley of Tucson's The 3rd Party Media Alliance. Idea Tango is "a catalyst for innovation...providing our users with collaborative tools that help them learn, grow, share, and bring new products to market." Here are a few of my thoughts on the nature of creativity and invention:

A few morsels for thought: Where do ideas come from? No, not from "an idea factory in Schenectady," as a certain bellicose and aging science fiction/fantasy writer has been known to quip. Closer to the truth is that ideas bubble up from strange subterranean depths of the unconscious, maybe from contact with some "Mysterious Ray From Another Dimension" (referred to by some as the Jungian "collective unconscious"), from snippets of conversation lodged into our subconscious that emerge at moments of "coincidence," from shadows of dreams, maybe from the haphazard juxtaposition of disparate objects and the synergistic combinations with other, pre-existing ideas, i.e. Chocolate running into Peanut Butter or like the surrealist artists would have it, say, a giant pear sitting atop a feather, by the seaside.

What matters is not so much where ideas come from, but that we figure out how to tap these latent powers for the urgent matters facing our planet and its ticking time table. I would urge inventors of all stripes to keep in mind premises similar to what internet marketing pioneer and philanthropist Mark Joyner puts forth in his "Unifying Social Dynamics - Mark Joyner Construct Zero (version 1.0)":

"The attainment of the following will resolve much of the non-productive fixation of the world:

Universal Food and Water

Freedom From Disease

Universal Energy

Universal Education

Stabilization of Natural Resource Consumption

Imagine a world where the basic human needs are met for all and one would not have to live with the constant threat of impending starvation or disease. Note that I am not proposing an equal distribution of wealth, but technological automation that guarantees these rights to all regardless of their social position."
http://www.markjoyner.name/logs/mj_constructs0.php

The man I consider the second, yes second greatest inventor of modern times -- certainly the greatest American-born inventor ever -- was Thomas Edison. His methodology is familiar, and simple though not easy to replicate: relentless and exhaustively detailed written goal-setting and planning for Murphy's Law, ruthless persistence and a high percentage of perspiration, precious little sleep, and the like. Edison's greatest rival in the vaunted "War of the Currents" at the turn of the century, who attained victory over him in this war and was vanquished in the public imagination through the thwarting of J.P. Morgan and the eccentricities of his own imagination, was Nikola Tesla. You know, the guy who brought us the alternating current and polyphase distribution systems and AC motor, and contributed immensely to robotics, wireless communication, remote control, and other rather useful utilities. "The Wizard of Electricity" had a very different methodology than "The Wizard of Menlo Park," but one which I believe is complementary and as equally necessary as Edison's Calvinist-influenced work ethic ethos. Tesla was said to be able to envision blue-prints in his mind's eye, to vividly visualize the problems and solutions of his world-shaking, industry-spawning inventions, before he ever set his hand in motion to bring his gadgets into manifestation.

I believe we can learn much from the approaches of both of these great inventors; and I ultimately conclude that it was the tension and competition between these men which lead to the lighting and wiring of the world...in other words it was not either/or...rather it was "both"...their animosity fueled our gain...and we best produce new Edisons and Teslas to clean up the environment, feed the masses, unleash new forms of clean energy, etc. etc...before our little planetary experiment goes belly-up. The clock is ticking.

T.S. "Steve" Minton
Editor and publisher, T.S. Minton Blogs - "The Mind-Boggling Blog That's Guaranteed To Keep On Boggling"
http://tsmintonblog.blogspot.com/

Nikola Tesla: "The Man Out of Time"

---

The Mark Joyner Constructs - "Learn about the purpose of The Constructs, the Spread the Meme license model, and how you can use The Constructs in your projects."
http://www.markjoyner.name/logs/mj_constructs.php

The 3rd Party Media Alliance Group
http://www.3rdpartynetworks.com/

More about Nikola Tesla from Fusion Anomaly

http://fusionanomaly.net/nikolatesla.html

"Free speech allowed...as long as it agrees with us."

While Democrats enjoy very public support from Hollywood's top actors and musicians, who often hold lavish events for their favorite candidates, Republican supporters in Hollywood try hard to keep their political views quiet.
"They learn very quickly, if they know what's good for them, to donate to the Democratic Party," said Andrew Breitbart, co-author of "Hollywood, Interrupted." "If they were to donate to the Republican Party, they would be exposed to career-ending ridicule, period."

Hollywood stars mum on donations to GOP
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071116/NATION/111160098/1001

"To my surprise I am finding that there are a lot more non-liberals in Hollywood than I had once suspected. It's just that they live in the closet. Until things change I still can't recommend they come out either.
Conservatives exist in the closet in Hollywood because they know the nature of hiring out here. People hire people they are comfortable with. And most liberals in Hollywood detest conservatives.
Hollywood produces at least two blacklist-era inspired films a year, and it is a staple on serial television. My father-in-law, who was, in fact blacklisted in the '50s, was just on the Jerry Bruckheimer series, Cold Case, playing, what else?, a blacklisted writer.
Yet the lesson of not punishing those with whom you hold political differences is lost on the very people who insist it is the most important message of our time."

"What the Hollywood crowd is now experiencing is the end of a different kind of McCarthy era, one in which they're the ones behaving like the fascists they so volubly claim to despise."

The Heart of the Blues - Writer Andrew Breitbart, behind the Hollywood scenes.
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/qa200501141052.asp

Steve Ditko: The reclusive man of mystery...emerges from the shadows (somewhat).

(C) 1973 Steve Ditko

Jonathan Ross in Search of Steve Ditko - new BBC documentary http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/comicsbritannia/ross-ditko.shtml

Steve Ditko: "Recluse?"
http://www.bestofmostof.com/07may/index070502.htm

Steve Ditko interview (1968) - http://www.vicsage.com/essay/ditko.php

Ditko Looked Up - http://www.ditko.comics.org

Every Cover Steve Ditko Ever Drew - http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/covers/

Press release: Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

"Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the June 2008 release of the first critical retrospective of Steve Ditko, the co-creator and original artist of the Amazing Spider-Man. In the wake of the astonishing success of Sam Raimi’s three Spider-Man movies, Steve Ditko’s status as a driving force behind the pop culture icon has been revealed to an audience the world over. But, in the context of Steve Ditko’s 50-year career in comics, his creative involvement with Spider-Man is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Ditko is known amongst the cartooning cognoscenti as one of the supreme visual stylists in the history of comics, as well as the most fiercely independent cartoonist of his generation. From his earliest days in the 1950s, working for the notorious low-budget Charlton Comics (the Roger Corman Productions of the comics industry), Steve Ditko broke every convention in comics, with his innovative special designs and imaginatively hallucinatory landscapes of Dr. Strange, the almost plebian earthiness of The Amazing Spider-Man, and his black-and-white views on morality and justice through his uncompromising vigilante of the late 1960s, Mr. A (inspired by the work of Atlas Shrugged author and Objectivist philosopher, Ayn Rand).
Why will this book appeal to such a broad readership, to those who may not even be comic-book, or Steve Ditko, fans? “For the non-comic-book reader,” says author Blake Bell (author and essayist for the Marvel Comics’ line of Ditko-related Omnibus reprint projects), “we tell the narrative of Steve Ditko, the artist, from humble beginnings in Johnstown Pennsylvania; to the dizzying heights of co-creating Spider-Man; to the spectacular Howard Roark-like determination, and tribulations, in bringing his personal and philosophical vision to a recalcitrant audience. There’s a fantastic, dramatic storyline running through Ditko’s career; the artist having walked away from the Spider-Man franchise (and the billions it was to generate) as it was reaching the height of its popularity. What price did Ditko pay, and what was the impact on his work?”
Comic-book fans have also been waiting for a definitive examination of Ditko the artist; a chance to have the entire artistic scope of his career in one volume. “Fans of Ditko, and comic art, will not be able to put the book down,” says Bell, “as we explode many of themyths surrounding key moments in Ditko’s career, as well as present reams of rare and unpublished Ditko artwork. For the comic art scholar, we also break down the “hows” of Steve Ditko as a great sequential storyteller, dissecting his work in depth for the firsttime, also with analysis and commentary by some of the most skilled and articulate comic creators of the day.”
While Steve Ditko himself remains absent for the World Wide Web (minus a summer back in 2001, when Bell himself worked for Ditko as his official web site designer), Strange & Stranger will assault the ’Net with similar intensity to that of the creator himself.
In addition to updates to Bell’s unofficial Steve Ditko web site at www.ditko.comics.org, readers will be able to keep abreast of updates with pages on Facebook, MySpace, and a dedicated feature page at the Fantagraphics web site, found through the portal www.steveditkobook.com and launching soon. This will have a web log offering on-going commentary on the process of creating the book, with commentary by Bell and the staff at Fantagraphics. It will also publish commentary by professional comic-book creators on Ditko’s career and artwork, and feature artwork that won’t make it into the book. As the book speeds to its June 2008 release date, teasers, convention appearances by Bell, as well as book store signings will be featured on the site.
2008 will mark the year when Steve Ditko fans the world over will have the opportunity to celebrate the artist’s 50-plus year career with this definitive volume from Blake Bell and Fantagraphics Books."

Coming soon on T.S. Minton Blogs...a new sub-blog: "Commentary on Comics & Comix: The comic book canon?"

Finally! A more intelligent take on the "Law of Attraction"...
...an audio interview with one of our most intelligent earthlings...Mark Joyner.

http://www.evolvingtimes.com/category/simpleology/
"Here is just some of what we explored in this first part of our conversation:
A very interesting concept called Utilitarian Model Flexibility.
An in-depth, no punches pulled look at Mark’s take on the Law of Attraction.
The importance of action in the Law of Attraction.
The interaction between inspiration, motivation, behavioral psychology and the power of feelings.
The role of values and morals in success.
The potential of technology to provide for everyone’s basic needs.
Self-interest as a tool for becoming a Freedom Agent.
And more!"

"The Mysterious Ray From Another Dimension..."

...has been beaming information into the mind of a man we'll call "The man who had all the answers"...read all about it at:

http://ufoazandofftherecord.blogspot.com/

Goodbye to Mitz a.k.a. "Captain Jack Sparrow" - R.I.P.
May 2007 - November 8, 2007

Today we had to say goodbye to the newest and youngest and itty-bittiest member of our family. First I named him "Mitzi" when we got him from my daughter's horse trainer in August, when we assumed he was a girl. Then we found out he was a boy, so I turned his name into "Mitz," then Jasmine got the notion to call him "Captain Jack Sparrow" (as he was born with only one eye). Little Mitz was a brave little warrior, but he was no match for what fate had in store for him in this wicked world. The eye infection in his one good eye went from bad to worse, and he went almost totally blind and was in too much pain. On the vet's recommendation we had no choice but to put him to sleep. It's a damn shame, and we'll miss him more than we can squeeze into words on a simple blog posting. All the inscrutable idiosyncraticies that made him unique: playfully biting my nose when he lay in a cute little pile next to me at night; shedding his white hair everywhere and getting it clumped up into dread locks; climbing up my leg when I was in the kitchen; and so much more - all gone, gone forever into that strange shadowland of death, that cometh for us all sooner than we'd prefer and swallows us all into its vast waste...eventually. Too soon for him. We love you, Mitz. See you on the other side, little buddy.

"May you stay forever young."

- Bob Dylan, "Forever Young"

"Are we listening?
Hymns of offering
Have we eyes to see
That love is gathering?

All the words that I've been reading
Have now started the act of bleeding

Into one....Into one.

So I walk upon high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below

And I laugh at myself
While the tears roll down.
'Cause it's the world I know.
It's the world I know."

"The World I Know" - Collective Soul

"They brought him in and put him on the stainless steel examination table. He had grown so thin...So thin. Shaking, knowing what was going to happen to him. But still a puppy.

I cried and my nose swelled with the crying, and he buried his head in my arms because we hadn't done much crying at one another. I was ashamed at myself for not being able to take it as well as he was.

' I got to, pup, because you're in pain and you can't eat. I got to.' But he didn't want to know that...It was impossible to tell the moment he passed over from life to death. He simply laid his head on my hand, his eyes fluttered shut and he was gone...

I wrapped him in a sheet with the help of the vet and I drove home with Ahbhu on the seat beside me...I took him out in the backyard and began digging his grave. I dug for hours, crying and mumbling to myself, talking to him in the sheet...

I laid him down in the hole and he was so tiny in there for a dog who had seemed to be so big in life, so furry, so funny. And I covered him over and when the hole was packed full of dirt I replaced the neat divot of grass I'd scalped off at the start. And that was all.

But I couldn't send him to strangers."

Harlan Ellison "Ahbhu" (from "The Deathbird")

More pranking of Pranksters and general befuddlement...

"Aw, Steve, you pulled your own covers. The mystery that was Steve Minton was part of his charm. Doesn't matter, everyone agrees it is a totally entertaining piece of writing, adding to the befuddlement that the subject matter deserves. I got another email about the phrase, If you can remember the sixties then you weren't there, and it was a learned astute thing that went through all the people the phrase was attributed to, but none of them mentioned Tim Leary, whom I first heard it from.

"So, your credentials are impeccable and your sense of humor is intact, go now into your future grinning and learning and keeping up the good work, for as Kesey once said, Our job is no less than saving the world.

"Thanks for the emails."

Ken Babbs
http://www.skypilotclub.com/


-- A happening can't be planned. An event can be planned and a happening can happen within the event. A happening is something that suddenly erupts and grows like a roman candle and explodes all into everybody.

---

[Note: the following content is published as I wrote and intended it. The first email to Ken Babbs is without the additional and unintentional gaffes added by his cut and paste onto his website Skypilotclub.com, which I added on my previous posting as it appears on the Babbs site. Rest assured that my own gaffes are very intentional and part of my already over-explained satirical intent. The second, non-moronic email is the "extended play" version I sent to Babbs, which he edited for brevity on his website. - ed.]

Dear Mr. Babbs,

I understand you were one of the main antagonists in the "Electrical Cool Aid Acid-Test", a famous novel from the swinging sixties and that you actually rode with Dr. Timothy O’Leary on his Magical Mystery Bus and did many other “far out” things back in the day. As such, I am very interested in your perceptions about that era’s long-term effects on cognition and memory. Also, do you still smoke “grass,” to use the vernacular of the time? Please review the little ditty I have cut and pasted below, from one of my web pages at...

http://interfusionpress.tripod.com/id37.html …and let me know if I have all my facts straights as sometimes I myself get a little “fuzzy.” Or at least recall as much as you can, ha ha.

A while ago I emailed to Mr. Paul Krassner, a famous pornographer and from what I understand co-founder along with Jack Karoake and Wavy Gravy of the “Merry Prankster” acid test concept and magical mystery tour movie. However, he wrote back that he didn’t get the joke or couldn’t open the link or something like that. Please help clarify my confusion and get me up to speed on this wonderful era that I missed out on.

Also, I look forward to the new Magical Mystery Bus movie by Stevie Ray Van Zandt….don’t you?

Cordially yours,
T.S. “Steve” Minton
Tucson, Arizona

Dear Ken,

Thank you for posting my preposterously inaccurate email and website excerpt on Skypilot.com. Looks like I finally pranked a Prankster - or did I? Surely you could not take seriously my deliberately absurd mish-mash of historical fact, riddled as it was with grammatical and typographical errors (made even worse by the glitches from your cut and paste job!) and suffused with a generally subliterate level of rhetoric. Most likely you didn't know what the hell to make of it, although I'm glad you found it to be a laff-riot and put it on your site.

Keeping in mind that brevity is the soul of wit, and that to over-explain satire surely diminishes its impact, allow me a few words of clarification. The inspirations that impelled me to craft this piece were several: the back-asswards statements of the late rapper Proof that "the Grateful Dead had previous to their shows (been) the protestors to legalize acid"; Sacha Baron Cohen's hilarious persona of Ali G, that know-nothing Generation Y hip-hopper masquerading as a know-it-all; Kesey's story in "Demon Box" about that befuddled hippie straight outta Woodstock who straggled up to his Oregon porch and claimed he never read "Sometimes a Cuckoo Nest" but saw the movie; and my mixed sense of bemusement and disgust at those lovable dim-wits among us who are too slovenly to properly research the chronology and key players of events that are not, in the span of history, that many decades old. I note that you express similar sentiments, in response to the recent History Channel documentary "The Hippies":

"Further disinformation--that picture of a bus, calling it the Ken Kesey prankster bus. I suppose it doesn’t do any good to point out that it is not Further but someone else’s bus, for as time goes on whatever anyone portrays as reality works just fine, for anyone who was there is probably dead by now, if not in body then probably in mind. Or as that girl shouted for a couple of hours at the Watts acid test, ‘Who cares?’ Yes, who. Who indeed.”
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/18/the-sopranos-meet-th.html

You've given me enough space already, Intrepid Traveler, and I don't want to over-toot my own horn regarding my hipster credentials, but just for the record, I am hardly an ignoramus on the lore of the Beats/Pranksters/hippie counterculture. Au contraire, as I was born in 1969, smack-dab into the swirling matrix of psychedelia and radical protest that was Berkeley, California, to parents who were (still are?) second wave (or third wave?) hippies who hit the Bay Area scene right after the Summer of Love. My birth name "Thodal" is of course from The Bardo Thodol or Tibetan Book of the Dead. My mom was a resident at Leary's Millbrook mansion for about a year circa 1965, sandwiched between the arrival of that raucous busload carrying Cassady, Kesey, yourself et al., and G. Gordon Liddy's bust. As a wee tot I lived for a while in the early 70s at the Cascabel Clayworks commune in southwestern Arizona (Google my poem "Cascabel Meditation"); as a teen my dad practically force-fed me a diet of "On the Road," "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and "Kesey's Garage Sale," actually giving me extra allowance for reading them when I was about in 8th grade. As a student at Boston University, I chatted with Ginsberg after his reading at the Museum of Fine Arts, and I did my senior thesis on Kerouac (and I agreed then and now with your astute statement in a High Times interview circa 1990 that to really understand Kerouac, one needs to understand the full arc of his mighty "Duluoz Legend"). Also, in the course of my own travels I have paid my respects to Kerouac's house of birth and gravesite in Lowell, Mass., and paid homage to the house where he died in St. Petersburg, Florida as well. When Kesey made it to Tucson in the early 90s and read at the University of Arizona, I got to slap the ole teddy bear on the back as he walked down the stairs of the lecture hall.

All of the foregoing is a long-winded way of saying that "Yes, I really do know my ass from a hole in the ground, contrary to my satiric persona" and that my intentionally asinine email and webpage were attempts to see how many inaccuracies I could compound, and how many laughs I could compact into such a tiny space. Apparently I have succeeded on both counts. Thank you for allowing me to work my way into the pudding.

Ciao for now,
Steve Minton
Tucson, Arizona

p.s. Please post this on your site if you feel it is fit to print.

"Businmotion" episode 17, with Ken Babbs



Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters - excerpt from BBC documentary. Shows part of the arrival at Timothy Leary's Millbrook, New York mansion, and Neal Cassady at the wheel of Further and presiding over the Acid Tests.

T.S. Minton pranks a Prankster...or does he?

Recently I blasted off an email containing my "creative re-writing" of the 60s counterculture (see below) to one of its prime movers and shakers, the second in non-command of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, that colorful troupe of acid-fueled rabble rousers whose legendarily prescient 1964 trans-continental bus trip (driven by Beat Generation avatar and non-stop babbling visionary Neal Cassady) and subsequent "brain-melting" (to borrow a recent phrase from Phil Lesh) Acid Test events/happenings gave birth to the Grateful Dead and many other strange and wonderful things: Ken Babbs of Skypilot.com. A key concept these aging hipsters promoted back in the day was the blurring of boundaries between audience and performer...and in that spirit I have worked my way into the pudding...with a little help from the internet.

Note: the following content was recently posted at Skypilot.com. - ed.

[Ken Babbs writes:] In answer to all the emails wanting to know, is TS Minton for real or what?, the man hisself sent me this clarification:

Dear Ken,

Thank you for posting my preposterously inaccurate email and website excerpt on Skypilot.com. Looks like I finally pranked a Prankster - or did I? Surely you could not take seriously my deliberately absurd mish-mash of historical fact, riddled as it was with grammatical and typographical errors (made even worse by the glitches from your cut and paste job!) and suffused with a generally subliterate level of rhetoric. Most likely you didn't know what the hell to make of it, although I'm glad you found it to be a laff-riot and put it on your site.

Keeping in mind that brevity is the soul of wit, and that to over-explain satire surely diminishes its impact, allow me a few words of clarification. The inspirations that impelled me to craft this piece were several: the back-asswards statements of the late rapper Proof that "the Grateful Dead had previous to their shows (been) the protestors to legalize acid"; Sacha Baron Cohen's hilarious persona of Ali G, that know-nothing Generation Y hip-hopper masquerading as a know-it-all; Kesey's story in "Demon Box" about that befuddled hippie straight outta Woodstock who straggled up to his Oregon porch and claimed he never read "Sometimes a Cuckoo Nest" but saw the movie; and my mixed sense of bemusement and disgust at those lovable dim-wits among us who are too slovenly to properly research the chronology and key players of events that are not, in the span of history, that many decades old.

My intentionally asinine email and webpage were attempts to see how many inaccuracies I could compound, and how many laughs I could compact into such a tiny space. Apparently I have succeeded on both counts.Thank you for allowing me to work my way into the pudding.

Ciao for now,
Steve Minton

[Ken Babbs]
Meanwhile, I have received an email of such weirdness and laffs I thought I'd share it:

Dear Mr. Babbs,

I understand you were one of the main antagonists in the "Electrical Cool Aid Acid-Test", a famous novel from the swinging sixties and that you actually rode with Dr. Timothy O,Leary on his Magical Mystery Bus and did many other "far out things back in the day. As such, I am very interested in your perceptions about that era,s long-term effects on cognition and memory. Also, do you still smoke "grass, to use the vernacular of the time?

Please review the little ditty I have cut and pasted below, from one of my web pages at...http://interfusionpress.tripod.com/id37.html

and let me know if I have all my facts straights as sometimes I myself get a little "fuzzy. Or at least recall as much as you can, ha ha.

A while ago I emailed to Mr. Paul Krassner, a famous pornographer and from what I understand co-founder along with Jack Karoake and Wavy Gravy of the "Merry Prankster acid test concept and magical mystery tour movie. However, he wrote back that he didn,t get the joke or couldn,t open the link or something like that. Please help clarify my confusion and get me up to speed on this wonderful era that I missed out on.

Also, I look forward to the new Magical Mystery Bus movie by Stevie Ray Van Zandt.don,t you?

Cordially yours,

T.S. "Steve MintonTucson, Arizona

*******************************************************************

Tribute 2 "The Greatful Dead"

"The founders of the Electrical Kool-Aid Acid test and the "Koolest band in the world..."

by T.S. Minton

I like the Greatful Dead because they were always "drivin' that train hi on cocaine"!!The Greatful Dead were a bunch of wild longed hair Psychodelic Tripster Hipster acid rock and rollers from back in the 60s. Man what a wild time flowers in your hair, chicks always particpated in "free love" what a concept, no worries just sex & drugs & rock & roll 24/7..."Come and join the party everyday" like that song goes...

What a time...I wish I was around then but I'm only 19: but I guess if I was I'd only be an old man by now with a "Touch O'Grey" and I wouldn't have my whole miserable malcontented life ahead of me...

The "Dead" as Dead-heads (there devoted followers) used 2 call them used to ride "On The Road" with Dr. Timothy O'Leary's Magical Mystery Bus. All they did was have wild acid rave parties and free love orgies, the "Sexual Revolution" as (My Personal hero) Hugh Hefner called it was running rampage across the land. (Right on!) Also always "on the Bus" was the Deads' personal mentors Neil Cassidy and Jack Karaoke; 2 wild Old School hipsters who did it *all* back in the day (See the upcoming movie by Francis Ford "The Godfather" Coppolla, I can't wait and will get very loaded in homage to these three Great Men when this picture comes out)

Jerry Garcia (the same guy behind "Cherry Garcia" ice cream from ben and Jerry's, another personal favorite of mine) and The Dead also used to run around with Ken Kessey author of "The Electrical Kool Aid Acid test". He also did the screenplay for "One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest" by jack Nicholas. Plus Bob Dylan the poet laureaute world reknown as the singer of "Everybody must get stoned" and "Like A Rolling Stone" (of which the band and magazine took there namesake) was very much "On the Bus" as attested to the fact when he toured together with them.

They all used to get very loaded together with Tim O'leary at The Woodstock Nation peace & Rock festival and introduced the "Electrical Acid test" concept of which it has been an endurable influence on today's youth (to wit: witness the "rave" and "acid jazz" phenomenons) (Plus the work of rapper Proof has been an influence of "high" importance).

Again I just wish so bad I was around back in the day so I too could have been "Ridin' that train high on cocaine" straight thru to "Terrapin (*"TER-IPPIN" or "Trippin'" get it?) Station"...then we would get off and "Walk in the Sunshine" and be "skippin' thru the lilly fields" til we get down to the Black Muddy riverside and here "Uncle John's Band" and then me and my baby would go off in the woods 2 "d-scover the wonders of nature" wink :) wink. Man what a long strange (lysurgical acid) trip that would've been...!!

Now let's here from 2 recognized experts on Jerry & The Kool Aid Acid Tester Gang:

Searching for Jerry Garcia by Proof (up & coming rap star)

"The EP came about because I was putting out the 'Searching 4 Jerry Garcia' album and of course, the Grateful Dead had previous to their shows the protesters to legalize acid so they had electric coolaid acid testers. So therefore by the album being Searching 4 Jerry Garcia I thought that'd be dope to have the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Testing EP to hit off the DJs and radio stations and mix rotations across the nation. So I put six songs on there. The lead single is featuring MC Breed from 'Ain't No Future In Yo' Frontin'' and 'Gotta Get Mine.'"http://www.rapindustry.com/proof.htm

Homer Simpson (popular Television patriarch on Fox TV)

"Hello. I'm Homer Simpson. There have been many great counter culture heroes I have admired over the years. Steve McQueen, Dr. Demento, Dr. Denis Leary and Wavy Gravy. Mmmmm gravy. "http://www.paulkrassner.com/homersuppressed.htm

(NOTE: I think Homer needs to get his facts straighter - ed.)

T.S. (Steve) Minton

Artist/Writer/Publisher

***********************************************************************************

"We had gone to a party in La Honda in 1963 that followed us out the door and into the street and filled the world with funny colors. But the prank was on us."

Prime Green, Robert Stone

"Resurrection Collage"



(C) Mary Alice Bennett.

(C) Mary Alice Bennett

Old hippies not burning out or fading away...just going "Furthur..."
Happening today...

"...it’s on to Lowell, MA, hometown of Jack Kerouac, for a very special event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s great and hugely influential novel, On The Road. Before the performance, Bob Weir and Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally (who also wrote Desolate Angel, an acclaimed Kerouac biography) will take to the stage to discuss Kerouac and Neal Cassady, who was immortalized in the novel as Dean Moriarity and would later be a pivotal force in the formative years of the Grateful Dead, as primary driver (“Cowboy Neal at the wheel”) of the legendary Merry Pranksters bus known as “Furthur.” "
http://www.dead.net/features/news/help-way-ratdog-kimock-steps-karan

"Greetings from sunny Tucson..."

From your host, T.S. Minton (circa 1996)

And speaking of Dylan...
here's a few of the most mesmerizing performances of his greatest song, as posted on YouTube...


The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan perform "Like a Rolling Stone" in Brazil



1966, City Hall, New Castle, England



Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival, June, 1967

The great troubador of our times...the grizzled old man from the black iron hills of Minnesota...
blew through Tucson recently: Bob Dylan
(at the Casino Del Sol's Anselmo Valencia Tori Amphitheatre, Tuesday 07/24/2007)

Had lawn seats in the light drizzly summer monsoon rain at this spacious outdoor amphitheater, didn't matter because I met up with some cool people and was buzzed on beer and had my 4th opportunity in this lifetime to witness the greatest songwriter and rock and roller of our time. The Old Man performed 17 songs with his red-hot and masterful improvisatory band; he jammed lead guitar on the 1st three songs and smoking harmonica solos where noted with the asterix.

Sure his voice is grizzly and wheezy but it's seasoned like fine wine...and his band sure needs to be on their toes to follow the master wherever his mind might wander (since he never goes on stage with a setlist, a trick I reckon he picked up from his time touring with the Grateful Dead; recall Dylan's euology of Jerry Garcia where he stated "to me he wasn't only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he'll ever know.")
The man of many masks transmogrifies his old songs with startling and sometimes unrecognizable new arrangments because he's an artist constantly on the move, his Never Ending Tour takes us to places of the soul where familar tunes are imbued with an infinity of new meanings...for the wheel's still in spin and ole Zimmy keeps on keepin' on.

So where the hell is his Nobel Prize in Literature award yet?? (There, I got in my 2 cents.)

Concert also reviewed here:
Dylan's genius, magic not lost on AVA crowd
By Kevin W. Smith, Arizona Daily Star
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/193340.php

Setlist:

Leopard-skin Pill-Box Hat

Lay, Lady, Lay

Watching The River Flow

Workingman's Blues

Rollin' And Tumblin'

Simple Twist Of Fate *

Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Lonesome Day Blues

When The Deal Goes Down

Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) *

Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)

Highway 61 Revisited

Spirit On The Water *

Summer Days

Masters Of War

(encore)

Thunder On The Mountain

Blowin' In The Wind

For more details see
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/072407s.html

"Theme Time Radio Hour with your host Bob Dylan" (on XM radio)
Wednesdays at 10am ET on Deep Tracks XM 40
"Take a trip to the land of radio magic. With music hand-selected from his personal collection, Bob Dylan takes you to places only he can. Listen as Bob Dylan weaves his own brand of radio with themes, dreams and schemes."
http://www.xmradio.com/bobdylan

A few insightful things said about Dylan (including by himself)...

Dylan is mysterious, elusive, fascinating – just like his music.

Over more than four decades, Dylan has produced 500 songs and more than 40 albums. Does he ever look back at the music he's written with surprise?

"I used to. I don't do that anymore. I don't know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written," says Dylan, who quotes from his 1964 classic, "It's Alright, Ma."

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child's balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

"Try to sit down and write something like that. There's a magic to that, and it's not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It's a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time."

Does he think he can do it again today? No, says Dylan. "You can't do something forever," he says. "I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can't do that."
Transcript, 60 Minutes interview by Ed Bradley, 06/07/2004
http://soundingcircle.com/newslog2.php/__show_article/_a000195-000647.htm

"Dylan is a strange, dubious character. He has more to do with the Lone Ranger than John Wayne--"Who was that masked man?" He keeps his distance. He is from somewhere else. He not only speaks in riddles, he lives in them. For more than ten years, he has had more in common with a dead blues singer or old-time ballad singer than with any contemporary.

I think the reason the changes in his voice have not much been commented on--and I think this because your question made me realize how completely I'd ignored the question myself--is that, despite changes in tone, pitch, clarity, etc.--any formal description--the attack, the point of view, the way in which the voice enters a piece of music, what it does there, how it gets out, or how the music gets away, if it does--has not changed. That is: it remains unpredictable. It's music as a game of three-card monte. This hasn't always been true. It wasn't true for Slow Train, Saved, Shot of Love, Infidels. But the way in which the singer works on "The Drifter's Escape," "Like a Rolling Stone," "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and "High Water" defines Dylan as a singer, and defines his voice, in the greatest sense. As long as Dylan can draw breath, I imagine this will matter more than the actual sound he makes--because the twisting and turning that goes on in performances like these, the ability to bring a whole world into focus with the dramatization of a single syllable--the first "care" in "High Water" say--is the actual sound he makes."
Greil Marcus
http://www.rockcritics.com/interview/greilmarcus2.html

“The greatest rhymer of the last 50 years.”
Prof. Christopher Ricks, Boston University
Author, Dylan's Visions of Sin, reviewed here at The New York Times: 'Dylan's Visions of Sin': It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Reading)
[Note: Prof. Ricks was a former professor of T.S. Minton blogs editor & publisher Steve Minton at the aforementioned institution]

And now a word from Osho...
(A funny little lecture on the "F word" and its versatile meanings)

Osho - Strange Consequences

Comments from the Peanut Gallery
(Letters to the editor)

"Watched and listened [to "Ted Loman's UFOAZ and Off the Record Videos" - ed.]. I will recommend it to others for sure. Keep up the good work."
Tina Dugay
Chaityana Cultural Center
Tucson, Arizona

Emerging from the eccentricly eclectic mish-mash of music...

and often woefully near-Maoist and well-nigh seditious politics endorsed by Tucson's one-of-a-kind community radio station KXCI 91.3 FM...a song has been burrowing into my brain...with lyrics of such brutal no bullshit honesty and vocal delivery of such uncompromisingly expressed emotional ambivalence that it brooks rare comparison to those of Paul Westerberg's of the Replacements from their testament to pure vitality Let It Be (1984)...

"Coyote"



by Jenny Owen Youngs (who would have been about 3 years old when the aforementioned masterpiece was released).
[Note: the version which really does it for me is not the linked Youtube video above but the MySpace song linked below. - ed]

"One two three, I still hate me
There's no one else who I know how to be
Four five six, oh your body makes me sick
Don't take it away from me just yet
There's no one I can think of that I can stand less than you
Don't you want to touch my hands before you go?
I think I'm confused."

http://www.myspace.com/jennyowenyoungs

Neon collages...and a chivalrous southwestern vision...
by Mary Alice Bennett

(C) Mary Alice Bennett

Any day is a good day...for a few more from Charla Gené.
charlak@comcast.net

Noontime visitor...
"This Pigmy Owl was cooling off in my garden. 106 degrees today. So cute that I had to take a picture!"

"Butterflies like them too!"

"Zauschneria hummingbird trumpet"

These California natives want hot sun, good garden soil in a protected spot,and lots of water. They are a hummingbird favorite with profuse red flowers blooming late summer and fall. They grow back bigger and better every year.

"At least my pictures have a home on your blog. Most of the time, it’s more luck than patience. Also, learning how not to scare the little creatures away. They are my outdoor pets. Some of them know me and put a good vibe out totheir fellow creatures :) ...

Keep water, and a cool place in your yard, and they will come. . ."

Charla

"Tucson...it's 109 degrees today! The quails came by, and I was able to get a picture of one chick...almost actual size."

"Hope the Tucson monsoons bring you a lot of interesting creatures to enjoy!"

More from the vaults...
Artwork of the week...by T.S. Minton

"The day Johnny took magic taffy", 1994

Post-psychedelic, to be more accurate.

"This is the age of video violence", 1994 - 1996

(From a song title by Lou Reed.)

Praying to the gods of Amerian culture: TV, money, power; and as far as sex...well, notice the look of bemused concern on the face of our preoccupied and vegetated protagonist's woman.

"Eddie makes a beeline for the bike", 1994 (altered with Photoshop, 2007)

No idea how this one popped out of the outskirts of my subconscious.

(C) T.S. Minton. All rights reserved.

My ears were practically blown back by the mesmerizing torrent of sound...

That's how I felt when I stopped by Tucson's Access Tucson TV studios last night and happened upon Dan Harrigan's Noche de Sonora show...featuring that night Bisbee's Latin fusion band La Mezcla...

Founder Jim Harrelson.

Richard "Hunting Crow" Speer: Haight Ashbury veteran and understudy of Santana drummer Pete Valasquez.

"Jim Harrelson founded La Mezcla in 2005, after traveling throughout Latin America and Europe. His influences range from the flamenco guitar rhythms, to Ruben Blades of Panama, and Silvio Rodriguez of Cuba. He was first introduced to Latin music by friends within the exiled Chilean community living in Montreal - His love of music grew as he lived and traveled throughout Mexico, Latin America and Europe. Jim’s unique adaptations of their songs, as well as his own song writing and playing, has won crowds over from Mexico to Arizona and even the streets of Amsterdam. Accompanied by jazz guitarist Scott Baekeland on bass, Michael Panos on guitar and mandolin, with Richard Speer and Lonnie Brock on congas and drums, La Mezcla is becoming a featured band throughout Southern Arizona and along the Mexican border. Bisbee native Phil Hirales adds his passionate trumpet, sax, flute, and keyboards to the mix."

http://lamezcla.bisbee.net/

http://myspace.com/lamezclamusica

Harrigan and Son: Live Music Showcase
"Few opportunities exist for singers and musicians to perform on live TV. Harrigan and Son offers the chance for anyone to perform on either of our two Live Music Showcases, Noche de Sonora and Harrigan Afterhours. Noche de Sonora features the finest multicultural music west of the Pecos including Mariachi, Norteño, Cumbia, Tex-Mex, Waila, and Chicken Scratch. To learn more about Noche de Sonora and how to appear on it click on the wall. Harrigan Afterhours offers a full spectrum of musical performances and types of music including Folk, Country, Rock 'n' Roll, Indian, Classical, Folk Rock, and Bluegrass. Harrigan Afterhours is also an open door for Non-musical performance. We have had Magicians, clowns, dancers and mimes. To learn more about Harrigan Afterhours and how to appear on it click on http://harriganandson.tripod.com/. Noche de Sonora and Harrigan Afterhours is Public Access TV at it's best. Noche de Sonora and Harrigan Afterhours is Public Access TV at its best."