Go-Round

Readers should check out Tim Sansom's site CAMPAGNOLI again, if they haven't been back for a while. Our Tim has been hard at work posting prose, poetry and song lyrics for your edification--so hard, in fact, even I can't keep up, and I'm his in-the-flesh friend and cheerleader. Hit Tim's name in the Reading Room to go there.

Were people aware that the real Frank Serpico, subject of Peter Maas' sensational book and my all-time favourite movie, has a blog? He doesn't post very often, but when he does it's always interesting. The man behind the myth! Latest post is about the horrors unfolding in the Middle East (while Tony Blair's on holiday). Go to http://frankserpico.blogspot.com for a read. But be careful what you leave in the comments field. Looks like Frank's getting pi**ed off with all the abuse and defamation of his character that's going on in there.

Another site that's always worth a visit is Ken Babbs' ,which you can find at http://www.skypilotclub.com . Ken Babbs, if you're not aware, was the best friend and brother-in-arms of Ken Kesey. They rode side by side in Further, did the Acid Tests together (as featured in Tom Wolfe's counter-culture Bible "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"), even wrote a fine novel together, "The Last Go-Round", which will make a great movie when Hollywood producers stop remaking tv shows for long enough to locate a project grown-ups might enjoy. And Babbs site is a continuation of the spirit of his adventures with Kesey without the overlay of phoney Sixties nostalgia. He lives very much in the present moment, and he's still teaching us how to resist conformity.
The only reservation I have about SkyPilotClub is how commercialised it is. You can't participate fully without spending money! But that's the reality of life, I suppose. It was easier in the young and wild days when Kesey's royalties from "Cuckoo's Nest" freed a whole army of lunatics to roam the highways and byways of America on their mission to liberate the spirit through psychedelic drugs.