Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut

by Paul Krassner

  Waits has written a song—“How’s It Gonna End,” on his album Real Gone—that includes this lyric: “Joel Tornabene lies broken on the wheel . . .”

  And Joel’s ten-year-old nephew used him as a topic for a history project. He centered it on the 1968 convention in Chicago—titled “Someone Who Took a Stand.”

  The process of writing an autobiography becomes part of the autobiography. The healing of my relationship with Lyle Stuart became intertwined with the writing of my manuscript. He had been justifiably bitter toward me, but as I came to understand what I had done during my psychotic episode, and was able to share it with him, forgiveness followed.

  After twenty years of estrangement, it made me happy that he became my severest critic again, and his encouragement immensely enhanced my confidence in writing this book. I don’t know how my whole life itself would have turned out if I had never met Lyle in the first place.

  My friend Robin Clauson has An Astrological Mandala which features trance readings for all 365 phases of the Zodiac. Mine is: “A Revolutionary Magazine Asking for Action . . . Whether the revolutionary action is violent or peaceful, bitterly resentful or loving, the one desire is to reach beyond established forms.”

  Robin believes I was fated to publish The Realist, but that’s much too mystical a concept for me. I can only observe how the combinations of chance and choice in my life have ultimately merged into some kind of random destiny. Coincidence is still my religion. I believe that life on earth was the result of inconceivable coincidence rather than conscious design, and that my own individual conception was the result of inconceivable coincidence. It was much easier believing that my parents had purchased me in a hospital.

  When my father died, my mother wrote in that day’s box on the kitchen calendar: “No more Mike.” Although my father had never approved of my work, preferring to avoid controversy, my mother told me, a year after he died, that he had really admired what I did, and would’ve liked to have done it himself. The last time we spoke, I told him how his talking about the law of supply and demand had influenced me so strongly as a kid, and he said, “Aw, I don’t believe in that anymore.” I asked, “Why not?” And he said, “The manipulation of the human mind.”

  Just as the counterculture of the sixties evolved and exploded out of the blandness and repression of the Eisenhower-Nixon years, so has the counterculture of the twenty-first century been evolving and exploding out of the blandness and repression of the Bush-Cheney years and beyond, in a myriad of forms.

  While we’ve gone from the Zapruder film to the Rodney King video to YouTube, from entertainment to evidence, things have been happening so fast that even the rate of acceleration has been accelerating, and irreverence has been increasing along with everything else. Although it took more than a decade after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy for there to be a band called the Dead Kennedys, it took only a few months after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan for there to be a group called Jodie Foster’s Army. Other bands have been named Sharon Tate’s Baby, Jim Jones and the Suicides, and Lennonburger.

  Whenever I’ve performed on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death, I’ve worn a T-shirt he once gave me. It has a lithograph of John playing the piano and singing. Above the illustration is the word IMAGINE. In Chicago, a woman in the back of the audience asked, “Why are you wearing that T-shirt?” I explained what John Lennon had meant to the culture and to me.

  She called out, “Why are you telling us all that?”

  “Because you asked me why I was wearing this T-shirt,” and I proceeded to describe the T-shirt.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I thought it said I. Magnin.”

  Lennon would’ve liked that.

  Like other editors, I was willing to tolerate Hunter Thompson’s irresponsibility in the process of presenting his talent. In 1997, at a memorial for Allen Ginsberg that I emceed, Thompson—true to his reputation—was supposed to make an appearance, but he didn’t show up. Johnny Depp, who played him in the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, did.

  I told the audience that I was disappointed because I was hoping to present Depp, Thompson, and Bill Murray (who played him in Where the Buffalo Roam) all standing together, and then I would say, “Will the real Hunter Thompson please fall down?”

  In 2005, I learned of Thompson’s suicide when Associated Press Culture Correspondent John Rogers phoned to ask what my reaction was. He would write, “‘I’m stunned,’ said Krassner, who was nearly speechless for several minutes after hearing the news. ‘It’s hard to believe I’m referring to him in the past tense.’” This was on a Sunday evening in the middle of a three-day Presidents’ Day holiday weekend. I don’t know who else or how many others Rogers had called before or after me, but apparently I was the only one who happened to be accessible at the time.

  As a result, after the AP report was dispatched, I was deluged with interview requests from print, radio, and TV outlets. Each time, I found myself uttering some new observation, if only to keep myself from getting jaded. During one call, I said, “Hunter was larger than life, sort of like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float.” On the next call, I added, “Except that it was filled with nitrous oxide.”

  Among the interviews was NPR’s All Things Considered. After it was broadcast, I learned that I was considered “big enough now” to merit the preparation of an advance obituary for NPR. I don’t take it personally. This is a purely pragmatic practice in the media world. I’ll be right up there with Charlie Manson, who is certainly a high achiever in his own field of endeavor. My personal definition of success is simply trying to do the appropriate thing every moment. As Ken Kesey once told me, “I think of my energy and my image as two separate entities. My energy is what I do. My image is what other people think I do.”

  My friend, radio journalist Jon Kalish, was given the assignment to put me “in the can.” He allowed me the rare opportunity of fact-checking my own obituary. I asked him if it would be possible to include my website. Actually, I was slightly disappointed that my electronic obit doesn’t mention my role as an underground abortion referral service, because that was such a turning point in my life. I had crossed a line, from observer to participant, from satirist to activist.

  After Kalish finished interviewing Steve Allen for my NPR obit on October 30, 2000, Steve was driving to his son’s home, and a car backing out of a driveway struck his car. Everything seemed okay, but later, while taking a nap at his son’s home, Steve had a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead. An autopsy indicated that the heart attack had been triggered by the traffic accident. Ah, if only Kalish had asked Steve one more question—or one less question—then Steve would still be alive today.

  I’ve noticed that the network news shows are all targeted at middle-aged and elderly viewers. They are all sponsored by prescription drugs promising to cure erectile dysfunction. A Viagra commercial—with background music by Queen singing “We are the Champions”—features men dancing in the streets, ecstatic at the prospect of asking their doctors if a free sample is right for them. Personally, I don’t have any problem getting a hard-on, but I’ve begun to worry that it’s really rigor mortis setting in on the installment plan.

  My friends have grown older, and the musicians we listened to in the sixties have grown older along with us. I imagine myself emceeing the Geezerstock Festival, standing on an outdoor stage, looking out at a vast audience of gray-haired hippies with paunches and granny glasses, as I speak in a slow, shaky voice:

  “Are you having fun? . . . I can’t hear you! . . . No, I mean I really can’t hear you! . . . I have an announcement. The Port-o-Potties that are painted green should be used only by those who have to pee at least once an hour. The Port-o-Potties that are painted red should be used only by those who have to pee less than once an hour.... It’s now my pleasure to introduce the Rolling Stones. They’ve been very busy gathering moss. Here comes Mick Jagger with the aid of a walker. And Keith Richa
rds is being carried out on a gurney . . . Oh, wait, I’ve just been handed another announcement: Warning—do not take the brown antacid . . .”

  When I was seventy, I wrote a piece for the AARP magazine, Modern Maturity. My subscription copy arrived—it was the issue in which my article was supposed to be featured—but it wasn’t in there. I checked with my editor, who asked how old I was. I told her that I didn’t understand what difference that would make. She explained that there were three editions: one for readers fifty and over, one for readers sixty and over, and one for readers seventy and over. I was too old to read my own article.

  There was a time when I was considered too young to read certain things, and now I’m considered too old to read certain things. Obviously, something must have happened to me in between. Like, say, most of my life?

  Once a short-lived magazine, Cheetah, published a fake obituary of me. An AP reporter called, and I explained that it was a hoax.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I replied. “I’d tell you if I was dead.”

  On WBAI, Bob Fass was taking phone calls, and listeners were discussing whether that obit was legit. Someone called and said, “You know, I didn’t even know that Paul Krassner was alive until I heard that he was dead.” And, at that precise moment, my sense of false humility was restored.

  If the universe is infinite, then the paths to connect with it are also infinite. There was, for example, a woman who won a clam-shucking contest, and her husband said, with genuine pride, “I think she was born to shuck clams.” To him, she was the personification of Lennon’s working class hero.

  In 1976, I attended “The American Hero: Myths and Media,” a symposium held in Sun Valley, Idaho. I delivered a keynote address, “The Heroism of Failure”:Remember the guy whose car crashed into Gerald Ford’s car when he was campaigning in Connecticut? Well, he was asked to stand up in the audience of Howard Cosell’s variety show. The audience hesitated just a beat before they applauded, realizing that it was all right to clap because this guy had not succeeded in killing President Ford. If he had, he never would have been invited even to sit in the audience.

  However, Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore both failed in their attempts to kill Ford, yet neither of them was invited to stand up in the audience of the Howard Cosell show. Is this still another example of male chauvinism in the presentation of heroes as role models? Not quite. Although it’s true that Squeaky and Sara Jane were unsuccessful assassins, it’s the intent that counts. An audience will applaud for the perpetrator of an unsuccessful accident, but not if you shoot somebody on purpose, even if you miss.

  At that Heroes conference, I met Lindsay Wagner, star of The Bionic Woman. She was unaware that the CIA served as technical adviser to her series, but she spoke poignantly of the positive influence that her TV alter-ego had on young amputees she visited in hospitals.

  I also met Tom Laughlin, of Billy Jack movie fame. A couple of years later, he and his wife, Delores Taylor, invited me to a dinner party. They were Thomas Jefferson enthusiasts. In their home, there was Thomas Jefferson’s furniture, Thomas Jefferson’s silverware, Thomas Jefferson’s recipes—we started with peanut soup—and even Thomas Jefferson’s violin. I mentioned playing the violin as a child, and Laughlin invited me to play this one. I hadn’t held a violin for twenty-five years, not since I had used it as a prop when I started doing stand-up comedy, and four decades had passed since that concert in Carnegie Hall. It felt like a previous incarnation. But now Billy Jack himself was handing me Thomas Jefferson’s violin. How could I resist?

  “I’d like to dedicate this to Thomas Jefferson’s slaves,” I said.

  And then I played the only thing I felt competent enough to perform—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” While I was playing, I stood and, as unobtrusively as possible, balancing on my left foot, I scratched my left leg with my right foot. It was a private joke between me and the god of Absurdity.

  CHAPTER 14

  BLOOPERS AND OUTTAKES: THE PARTS LEFT OUT OF THIS BOOK

  The “Early Years” section of the Wikipedia entry for me began: “Krassner was a child violin prodigy (and was the youngest person ever to play Carnegie Hall, in 1939 at age six). He is Jewish . . .”

  I felt that was inaccurate, and I contacted the Wiki-people, requesting a correction. I gave as a required source the autobiography you now hold in your hands—specifically, the Lenny Bruce chapter, with this quote of mine:

  “I don’t consider myself Jewish. I equate religion with organized superstition. And anyone who thinks of Judaism as a race rather than a religion is accepting the Nazi tenets.”

  And so now the entry for me reads: “His parents were Jewish . . .” To that was added: “. . . but Krassner is firmly secular, considering Judaism ‘organized superstition.’”

  This time I was, in effect, misquoted. I contacted the Wiki-people again, giving the same required source.

  And so now that sentence ends: “. . . considering religion ‘organized superstition.’”

  What if I didn’t happen to cross paths with an old Yippie friend, Jim Fouratt, near the post office in Venice Beach shortly after Confessions was originally published in 1993? He told me that Danny Goldberg—producer of music albums, anti-nuclear activist, and head of the Southern California branch of the ACLU—really enjoyed reading it. I wrote to Danny, and he suggested I do a stand-up comedy CD. He ended up overseeing six such albums, two at Mercury Records and four at Artemis Records.

  One of them—Irony Lives!—was recorded in February 2002 in Los Angeles. Dan Castellaneta, who does the voice of Homer on The Simpsons, graciously agreed to introduce my performance, which he did from an offstage microphone in order to maintain the image of that blustery animated–cartoon character. However, the attorneys at Fox TV wanted to hear the whole album before granting permission to include the introduction, and they asked for seven copies of the tape.

  Finally, in June, I was informed by an attorney for Artemis that, “unfortunately, Fox declined our request, and in doing so failed to go into any detail as to what their reasons were.” It may have been because the album included such tracks as “Terrorist Attacks,” “In the Guise of Security,” and “My Cannabis Cup Runneth Over.”

  Naturally, I leaked the banned introduction to my own website, which then crashed because there were so many hits. Ironically, more people heard the intro there than would have heard it on Irony Lives! Well, Fox may own Homer’s voice—when it’s done by Dan Castellaneta, that is—but they do not own the following transcript of his introduction. Whoever thought that Homer Simpson would be considered intellectual property? D’oh! And now I’d like to introduce Homer introducing me:Hello. I’m Homer Simpson. There have been many great counterculture heroes I have admired over the years. Steve McQueen, Dr. Demento, Dr. Denis Leary, and Wavy Gravy. Mmmmm, gravy. But even some counterculture heroes go too far and step over that line between dissent and in-dissent-cy. I’m speaking of Paul Krassner.

  The first problem I have with Paul Krassner is that the only good song he wrote for Jefferson Airplane was “Crown of Creation.” And even then his name is spelled K-a-n-t-n-e-r even though it is pronounced Krassner.

  I also have a problem with the fact that he is an atheist. If there is no God, then who has placed a pox on me and mocks me every day? Of whom do I live in fear and mortal terror? Buddha? I think not. He’s way over in China where thankfully he can’t get at me.

  I have a problem with his constant use of words such as “penis,” “Larry Flynt,” “premature,” “ejaculation,” “CIA,” and on several occasions he has been known to use the words “Bush” and “Bush Jr.” in mixed company. Did I mention “penis”? Yeah, here it is—“penis” (Laughs). (To self) “Penis.”

  Let’s see, where was I? I mentioned, “penis,” “gravy,” “Buddha,” “God,” “Jefferson Airplane” . . . No. That’s it . . . Will everyone please put their hands together for that raving, unconfined nut . . . here’s hopin
g he opens with “Crown of Creation” . . . Paul Krassner!

  At the first annual Portland (Oregon) Book Festival, “Wordstock,” in 2005, I was invited to open for Norman Mailer and then introduce him. I said:The thing I most admire about Mailer is a combination of his courage as a writer and how much he respects the craft. He writes in longhand with a number two pencil, he once told me, because it puts him in more direct contact with the paper that he’s writing on, and I felt so guilty because I was still using an electric typewriter at the time. You remember typewriters, don’t you? But I have a niece who saw a manual typewriter, and she said, “What’s that for?” I explained, and she said, “Well, where do you plug it in?” “You don’t have to plug it in, you just push the keys.” And she said, “That’s awesome.”

  Anyway, one aspect of Norman Mailer’s craft is that he chooses his words very carefully. Or, as he would say, “One chooses one’s words very carefully.” The thing that I recall, the words that he chose most carefully, of all the books he’s written, was something that he said when I asked him how he felt about circumcision. He thought for a moment, then he chose his words carefully and, with a twinkle in his eye—one of his main characteristics—he said, Well, I believe that if Jews didn’t have circumcision, they would punch their babies in the nose and break them.”

  When Mailer came onstage, walking with the aid of two canes because of a severe arthritic condition, he received a standing ovation. He eased himself onto a high chair behind the podium. He said:Gee, Paul, I didn’t know how to start tonight, but maybe you got me going. Now, if I ever made that remark, that the reason Jews get circumcised is to keep them from breaking their babies’ noses, all I can say is that I must have been down in the lower depths of a very bad marijuana trip. But I think, even at my worst, I couldn’t really have said that. Paul is a master of hyperbole. He loves hyperbole, as for example when Lyndon Johnson attacked the wound in JFK’s head.