What happened to “Drop out and Tune In””Asking Alice” and the great American Road trip????
A friend is leaving New York City, the "Right Coast" for the "Left Coast" in two weeks, bound for San Clemente, California.I am soooooooo jealous he gets to "Drop Out" and "Tune In". 40 years ago this was the norm and expected, although with a little help, which would require one to "Go ask Alice".Ahh, sad, these days we found out that the Great American "Go ask Alice" Experiment Failed.
The 2006 "Drop Out and Tune In" means you enjoy plying the road in a Lexus for a month before you end up and MBA program at Berkeley. If Grace Slick of "Jefferson Starship" sang "Go Ask Alice"….well, different program entirely……
So you get to the ‘Spiritual Alice", i.e., this Alice, Birkenstock clogged, short, punky hair with chunky blond highlights concealing her grays-she will hand you a granola bar as you pass the Caterpillar, who tuned his mushroom into a vacation condo and will be seen running off, attending his 12 step Hookah anonymous meetings. They had to leave Olde England for Northern California for tax reasons.
The Red Queen took advantage of an early retirement program and now runs a Lesbian Retreat House, called "The Door Knocker", an ill understood reference to some retro term from a half a century ago, which referred to the brass thing that people used to think would talk back to them as they clunked it on the front door. Poor doorknocker has been relegated to a glass memoirs cabinet, along with a dusty picture of Timothy Leary, the Caterpillars’s old hookah (makes a wonderful vase for fresh cut flowers too), all managed by the Rabbit, who got his MBA in the hospitality business at Northwestern.
Rabbit recently reflected:
"Oh, poor us, we all lost the way with the Turtle Doves at some point and ended up in the retail chain Bed and Breakfast line, not like the old days at all". "After the red knights refused to work with non organic paint, we had to give up the rose garden for local, indigenous varieties of fauna". "Red Queen bailed out on stock options."
6 Responses
Rich
10 Feb 2010
Papa_Bear
10 Feb 2010
I know that the Go Ask Alice web site caught a lot of flack when they answered a question from a 14 year old girl about how to clean blood off leather whips that are used while having sex.
TG Special
10 Feb 2010
I would have loved to have been part of the San Francisco experience.
But it was destined to be a short experience. Play time ended.
Bills have to be paid, real lives had to be lived.
You can’t pay the bills just by dropping acid and listening to The Quicksilver Messenger Service all day.
Though I bet it was one hell of a trip!
ESweetPea
10 Feb 2010
Well, I’d say it was the 70s. Nixon, Vietnam War, leisure suits, cocaine…all very anti-hippie.
Not that I was around for most of the 70s. The 80s were fun at the time (being very young and unaware of what a stone-cold b&stard Reagan was) but finished killing what the 70s tried to kill. 90s, disillusion. 00s–who knows? But the 60s are long-gone, man.
fred b
10 Feb 2010
Some became lawyers that defend child molestors, some are CEO’s, some are gov’t officials which is why our gov’t is so scary. My point is if you are young then you or your generation will someday be the leaders of your society; plan the future wisely.
whataboutme
10 Feb 2010
It’s just like yesterday! unfortunate we are growing older! Remember staying out until 4 and getting up at 6 and going to work? Work all day and party all night?! Those days are gone, most have a hard time staying up to11.
Well dropping acid without a guide a shaman a clean spirit or the cultural background. You don’t swim with the spirits you start to drown in a spirit world you are not capable of understanding and all you end up doing is kill your brain cells. I guess The brain cells they killed were the ones responsible for compassion and social justice because every one of those hippies turned into selfish me me screw the poor help myself kind of people who market tie die tee shirts and spirit catchers to remember when they had a soul.