can * nois * seur (kan' us sur' ), n. one competent to render critical judgement on the qualities and merits of Cannabis.




Heads Up: A chance visit to Hope Net @ 223 ninth off Howard, proved fortuitous. (look it up) Always a haven for the dollar-wise seeker the clinic stocks a wide variety of moderately priced, and lower priced strains, including a choice of shake. This week's featured bud is Bubba Kush. A burly, genial sativa, BK expands as it elevates, like solar panels on a surveillance satellite. It has a generous arc that gently descends to earth landing. At $15 a gram Bubba is San Francisco's finest gourmet bargain.

Black Friday: November 22, 1963

For three days we sat around the black and white TV, stunned by the shocking news coming out of Dallas. Kennedy represented our best hope. Far from the media picture of naive hippies bearing flowers, the real protest against the Vietnam was was coming from people who saw through the propaganda and flag waving. those like myself who had already been through the draft and knew first-hand the senseless waste in blood and resources. ( an unsung generation of Vietnam battle veterans was yet to come). We also had heard, and discussed, the rumours buzzing on the grapevine...

*JFK had smoked weed and was on speed.
*The CIA was conducting mind control experiments involving LSD.
*The CIA was involved in the heroin trade in Vietnam.
*The CIA was involved in a number of flashy assassinations including South Vietnamese
President Diem on Nov 1, 1963 , while his wife was visiting the White House.

The reason hippies became hippies in the first place was because we all knew bullshit when we
heard, or saw it. Bullshit radio music (the Beatles never won a Grammy), bullshit propaganda, bullshit sexual repression, bullshit marijuana hysteria, bullshit perpetrated by those who wished to manipulate a docile mass. "The people is a great beast..." Thomas Jefferson. So of course it was the hippy movement that swept across the nation's campuses and generated the peace movement. The students were greatly motivated by the prospect of being drafted, and dropped by their government into a jungle fire-fight.

Anyway, the point is, we were all highly sceptical of the events that unfolded that weekend.
John Kennedy represented the best and brightest in America. And he had been shot. In Texas. Home state of Vice President Lyndon Johnson who had ascended to Presidency on JFK's death. Less than a month since Diem's assassination, and less than a week since JFK signed the order to begin withdrawal from Vietnam. If you were watching this as a Shakespearean play, what would you think? Rozencranz did it?

Flashback: While i was still living in the Lower East Side, my high school friend Bob Pasolli, who was working as a Theatrical Publicist, gave me two $100 tickets to John F Kennedy's birthday party at Madison Square Garden. i was psyched, thinking they were front-row seats but of course found myself in the upper tier. Still i had a good view of our vibrant prez with his yachtsman tan and global teeth. He was right up there with Cary Grant in my Manly Hall of Fame. Then Marilyn Monroe appeared, silver sequined dress and blond hair shimmering white-hot under the lights as she sang Happy Birthday in a low, smoky voice...i still have the program.

All weekend long we watched the scene unfold with a mixture of horror, disbelief and anger at the hourly insults to our intelligence. Information revealed that defied common sense. Hard facts dismissed for stupid reasons. Evidence lost, the autopsy botched, witnesses disregarded...the beat goes on. We could see that the authorities had recovered from the confusion of the first few hours and were busy constructing The Official Version. In other words, bullshit. During the first few hours we saw eyewitness testimony of shots coming from the Grassy Knoll, the overpass, there was footage of people pointing away from the Book Depository. All vanished by the second day...The police had their man, Lee Harvey Oswald.
We knew it was a set-up even before Oswald announced to reporters as he was being hauled away, "I'm just a patsy." How right he was.
The next day (Sunday Nov 24 ) he was dead. Shot in the basement of the goddamn police station by a low-level strip club owner, an unmade man called Jack Ruby.
Well there you have it, the authorities told us, Oswald shot Kennedy and Ruby shot Oswald. Case closed.
Oh yeah? Let's light up and review this a bit. We had all seen the early witnesses, we had all seen Oswald's black eye, we had all seen how he was hustled away from reporters, we all heard the "patsy' line, and we were all painfully aware of the government's relentless selling of The Lone Gunman Theory and knew it was pure road apples. Common sense dictated you look for, rather than dismiss, a conspiracy when a President is assassinated.
We also all realized something had been stolen from us. And we wanted it back.
A few weeks later Joel, Harvey, Barbara and myself booked a Lincoln Continental and began driving cross-country, back to New York.
i would not reconnect with Robert for the next thirty years...

Recommended Reading: Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac