What the fork was I bitching about? There has been this badge up at Listics that took me forever to mouseover … and when I did, whoa! Of course now it’s long gone—I told you, I operate on Icelandic time—but there’s nothing easier than helping yourself, on a Mac. Just drag that sucker to the desktop and it’s yours. Unless of course FP has some kinda weird license on it. Copyright I get. That other stuff, no. It’s not that I don’t believe in the Good, or that it springs perpetual-like from the heart—I simply cannot stand anything that smacks of PBS.

So, after finally remembering what is thing was on my desktop—Frank! What greater honor, what higher accolade! I just do not know.

That Frank is … an old hippie, is what he is. Not, of course, wholly unlike oneself. Old not in years—well, maybe that too, depends on your perspective, you child—but to have been a hippie is to forever after shed traces of that far-away state of heart, of mind …

Dear HST, you can still see the line where the wave broke, from Grizzly Peak. On a good day you can see over the City and, way out to sea, to the tiny peaks of the Farallons. The water is so bright.

What I have always thought is that the wave never broke at all, but rose higher and higher til it curled over San Francisco and fell into the Pacific, disappearing into the ocean. So that, really, there was never any end. Not for me, not for Frank, or Annie … or a hundred thousand other souls.

The wave may grow smaller as it ripples outward in both the ocean and the dusty dimension of time, may seem to have disappeared … but that is illusion, dear man. You know as well as I, waves do not die.

I write to Hunter Thompson even though he is dead. To get jacked that high, daily, in order to live, to write, the thought tires me near to death. Cool as that kind of life was, it was also unsustainable. Which became instantly clear the moment any of us tried to raise kids. One of the sadder scenes I remember from the mountains was coming across a camp of completely stoned people, who never looked up … and their bewildered, dirty children, who ran alongside the car like beggars, peering in at my kids. Hi! Where you going? What’s your name? When really, they were scared, lost.

If I’m talking to HST again, there must be gonzo about. Which is at least half hippie anyway—at least for those who had edge. In Berkeley, we had edge. Hey, some of us still do. There’s me … there’s Dave Winer …

Edge as opposed to those drug-addled flower children in the Haight—present company excepted, Annie.

So here you are, dear href Frank. My public thanks. I’ve never received an award for being a pain in the ass. (Unless of course we count my divorce decree.)

You’re the best,
Zo

And finally, the Rolling Stones are much better than the Beatles.

Now admittedly, this Stones versus Beatles thing is decades old. But it rages still through the halls of nursing homes the world over.

Oh, oh! Low blow!

Not a successful one, but low.

Hell, I could run a pipsqueak like you through a Beatles marathon what would rip your heart out. ‘Cept you weren’t even born yet, that’s how much you know.

Of course the Stones are the better band . . . But that is hardly the point.

The point is, the Beatles were, well, the Beatles, and you will never know a revolution in your whole life like the one that beset our ears, summer of ’63. The DJ’s were teasing the hell out of us with this weird and weirdly compelling sound, playing over and over, She loves you, yeah yeah yeah . . . and then the way they dropped into the minor chord,And you know that can’t be bad … who had ever heard anything like it/

You think they rose to Jesus-level over nothing? I know what you think, dudes like you, you think the Beatles were just a bigger Back Street Boys, or Boys on the Next Fucking Block or whoever it was.

No.

The Stones are deeper, nastier—and hey, unfair advantage: they’ve got Keef. But back then? Ruby Tuesday. Nuff said?

The point is, the Beatles music was and remains wonderful, the foursome, besides being Master Rocksters, always dear, always unbeatable. Perhaps it was their dearness, as persons, which never hardened over, even as it grew more sad, that had something to do with their immediate and permanent grip on the heart. Which, as you can see, is a whole nother discussion from the Stones, whose grip is on quite a different part of the collective anatomy. Isn’t it.

Okay. I win. And when I do have The White Album blasting the nursing home one day—Why Don’t We Do It In The Road—this will be in no way a watered-down oldster experience. I may still be avoiding Start Me Up, but only because it will get me going about an old boyfriend (just ran a quick check: yup, three chords in and I’m still outta there, I miss the bastard so) … and yes, in case you were wondering, I will be in charge of the tunes, who better?

Oh, Crispy boy, try and think afore you write, next time. I can’t be getting all stirred up like this, I got work to do.

Love,
Zo

Rabbitblog , that fount of all wisdom, says:

The more you face the bag lady life, the better it starts to look. Oh sure, it’s deeply uncool, but what truly good thing isn’t?

Of course, this tips a clue to the secret of genuine, unshakable coolness. The kind you couldn’t be rid of if you wanted. The cool on the other side of uncoolness.

I have nothing yet to say on the origins of this cool. Maybe one word: The Sixties. (Okay, picky: two.)

But for now, I can say no more. As George said to Ringo.

Or was it Paul to John.