Unruly Teenagers Through the Ages
United Statesians are, by European standards, unruly teen-agers. We're young, silly and think we know everything. We have little history, especially on the West Coast, especially especially in Los Angeles. Our history is a relatively short one, and we don't seemingly pay much attention to it. It's so, like, old.
We leave little clues about what we were like, though, in the language and look of cool.
I've been alive during six decades. When I was very little, my evil babysitters watched Elvis and said words like "keen" and "sharp." These were edgy words in not very edgy times. Cool girls (or, big girls, to me) had names that ended in "ie" like Trixie and Dixie. Hair was in a pony tail or a DA (ducktails in polite company, and duck's ass, if you were a rebel looking to annoy your parents).
My sister had a DA.
Some fringie folks, like my second piano teacher, were Beats. These groovy cats and kittys dressed in black, wrote poetry, played jazz and laid down their hip welcome mat for the sixties. They was cool, babies.
Wow! We were hip and outta site in the sixties, man. Our language was easy and our lives got edgy. Our hair was long and straight, parted down the middle unless we were black. Then we had enormous afros. We dumped all that conformity from the '50s, tuned in, turned on and dropped out. We burned our draft cards and smoked our weed. We changed the world until tie-die got fashionable and the Hells Angels became our bodyguards and beat the shit out of us.
VERY uncool, man.
In the seventies, we cut our hair into a shag. "The Brady Bunch" is in re-runs. Tune in and dig Mrs. B's do. We became dorks, did Disco, but called ourselves freaks. Turns out, we were right. We may have even been Super Freaks.
So, now it was time to get rich. Even Abby Hoffman got a gig as a stock broker in the 80's. Greed was good. We was making bread, baby. We stuffed it in our shoulder pads until they rubbed against our short, spikey over-gelled hair (or our GeriCurl, if we were black). We did blow, rode in limos, wore pastel and thought about me me me me me, while we gyrated to Madonna and Prince if we were cool, and the Go-Gos and Flock of Seagulls, if we were not.
Life in the fast lane slowed in the 90's, but THEN we were wired. We started out-electronic devicing each other, drank tons of coffee and listened to grunge. We looked like shit, but it was quite a hangover from the 80's. Our hair shrunk, our clothes got black, and our mamas wore army boots. We tuned in to the information age, but, being unruly teen-agers, we didn't have a clue what to do with all that information. So, we invested our money in businesses with no brick and mortor, and created the tech bubble.
Pop went the millenium. No Y2K meltdown happened, but the tech bubble made gas station attendants out of nerdy millionaires. Bye, Bill.
Hi, George.
We ain't so groovy, after all. Closer to 60 in age than the 60's in cool, we go to war in the name of the Naz against them oily heathens. Lord Buckley, lead us in prayer...
"Look at all you Cats and Kitties out there! Whippin' and wailin' and jumpin' up and down and suckin' up all that fine juice and pattin' each other on the back and Hippin' each other who the greatest Cat in the world is! Mr Melanencoff, Mr. Dalencoff and Mr. Zelencoff and all them Coffs, and Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Woosenwiser, Mr. Weesenwooser and all them Woosers, Mr. Woodhill and Mr. Beachill and Mr. Churchhill and all them Hills, Gonna get you straight! If they can't get you straight, they know a Cat, that knows a Cat that'll Straighten you!
But I'm gonna put a Cat on you, who was the Sweetest, Grooviest, Strongest, Wailinest, Swinginest, Jumpinest, most far out Cat that ever Stomped on the Sweet Green Sphere, and they called this here Cat, THE NAZ, that was the Cat's name.
He was a carpenter kitty. Now the Naz, was the kind of Cat that came on so cool and so wild and so groovy and so WITH IT, that when he laid it down WHAM! It stayed there! Naturally, all the rest of the Cats say:
'Dig what this Cat is puttin' down! Man! Look at that Cat blow!
'Let the Cat Go!
'Hey, there, Get out of the way, don't bug me lad, Get off my back, I'm tryin' to dig what the Cat's sayin', Jack, Cool!'
They're Pushin' The Naz! 'Cause they wanted to dig the Lick, you see, Dig his Miracle Lick.
So the Naz say, 'Wait a minute babies, tell you what I'm gonna do, I ain't gonna take two, four, six or eight of you Cats, but I'm gonna take all twelve of you Studs and Straighten You All at the same time. You look like pretty Hip Cats, You buddy with me!'
So the Naz and his Buddies was goofin' off down the boulevard one day, and they run into a little Cat with a bent frame. So the Naz look at the little Cat with the bent frame and he say 'What's de matter wid you baby?'
And the litte Cat with the bent from say, 'My frame is bent, Naz. It's been bent, from in front!!!'
So the Naz looked at the little Cat wid the bent frame and he put the golden eye of love on this here little Kitty and he looked right down into the windows of the little Cat's soul, and he say to the little Cat, he say:
'STRAIGHTEN!'
Up, Zoom-Boom! The Cat went up straighter than an arrow and everybody Jumpin' Up and Down and they say:
'Look What The Naz Put On That Boy, You Dug Him Before, DIG Him NOW!'
Now you see the Naz is comin' on so strong and so fine and so Great, They is talkin' about when he's gonna appear next, What did he do there? How he swung thru the land with great ribbons of love sounds, How he laid down the truth and made it live, just like a jumpin' garden of king size roses, How he stomped into the money changin' Court and kicked the short change all over the place, Knocked the corners off the Squares! How he put the Truth down once for the Cat, he dug it, did't dig it; put it down twice, the Cat dug it, didn't dig it; Put it down the third time, WHAM, the Cat DUG IT. WALKED AWAY WITH HIS EYES BULGING, Bumpin' into Everybody!
The Naz is comin' on so fine and so strong they is pullin' on his coat-tail. Wantin' him to sign the autograph, they want him to do this gig here, they want him do that gig there, play the radio, do the video and all that JAZZ, he can't make all that Jazz. Like I explained to you, 'cause he's a carpenter Kitty and he'd got his own lick. But when he knows he should show to blow and cannot Go 'cause, he's got some strain on him, Straightenin' out the Squares, he sends a couple of these Cats that he's hippin'!
So came a little sixty cent gig one day and the Naz was in a bind so he put it on a couple of his Buddy-Cats.
'Say Boys, will you straighten that out for me?
'Take it off your wig, Naz, we've got it covered!'
Ad they swung out to straighten this gig for the Naz when they run into a little old twenty cent pool of water. And when they got in the middle of the pool in the boat, All of a Suddden, WHAM -- BOOM! The Storm is Stormin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the boat goin' up and down and these po' cats figurin' every minute gonna be the Last! When all of a sudden One Cat look up and Here Come the Naz, Stompin' anyone you ever seen, Right Across the Water -- Stompin'!
There was a little Cat on board, I think his name was Jude and he yelled,
'Hey, Naz, Can I make it out there witcha?'
And the Naz say 'Make it Jude!'
And ole Jude went stompin' off that boat, took about four steps, dropped his hole card and ZOOT, Naz had to stash him back on board again, So the Naz look at these Kitties and he say:
'What's the matter with you Babies now? What's goin' on here boys? What's takin' place! You knockin' on that SOS bell pretty hard! You gonna bend that bell knockin' on it like that'
One Cat say, 'What seems to be the trouble? Can't you see the Storm Stornmin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the waves flippin?'
And the Naz say, 'I told you to stay COOL, didn't I?' (To stay cool means to Believe in the Magic Power of Love.)
Now the fame of the Naz is jumpin'! How he lays it down the same way every day, how he Hipped the Cats to fo-give and fo-get and how he say:
'Dig and Thou Shalt be Dug!'
'Drag Not, and Thou Shalt not be Drug!'
And many other His truths! The Beauty Sparks shootin' out the grapevine are sixty-five feel long til there is now Five Thousand Cats and Kitties in the Naz' little home town, where the Cat Live, Lookin' to get STRAIGHT! Well, the Naz know he kain't straighten them there, it's too small a place, don't want to hang everybody up, so nobody can make it!
So the Naz back away a little bit and he looked at the Cats and Kitties an a great Love Look came on his face and he say with the bird bell tones in his voice:
'Come on Babies, let's cut on down the pike.'
And there went the Naz with his Five Thousand Cats and Kitties behind him stompin' up a great necklace of beauty, Flocks of Blue Birds were flyin' along his side riffin' up a high orchestration of Bird Love. And it's brother to brother, sister to sister, and a great river of love is chargin' and super chargin' thru these Cats and Kitties, and the Naz is a talking and a swing with:
'How pretty the hour, how pretty the flower, how pretty you, how pretty he, how pretty she, how pretty the tree.'
Naz had them Love Eyes, he wanted everybody to see thru his Eyes, to Pin the Golden Rosetta of Reality. And they is havin' such a Wailin', Swingin', Glorianna style stompin' hike that before you know it, it was Scoffin' Time and these po' Cats is Forty miles out of town and ain't nobody got the first biscuit. Well, the Naz look at all the Cats and Kitties kickin' sand and he say:
'You Hungry, Ain't You, Babies?'
And one tall Cat say, 'Yea, Naz, we were so busy diggin' what you puttin' down, that we didn't pre-pare - Naz, we Goofed!'
And Naz say, 'Well, we got to take it easy here, We wouldn't want to go ahead and order up sumpin you might not like, would We?'
And the tall Cat, kickin' the sand say, 'Sweet Double Hipness, You put it Down, and we'll pick it Up!'
So the Naz back away a little bit and his head turned slowly to one side and then to the other, diggin' all these Cats and Kitties, and he laid down a Sound of Great Love:
'Oh, Sweet Swingin' Flowers of the Field'
And they answered, 'Oh Great Singular Non-Stop Singular Sound of Beauty!'
And he said, 'Stomp Upon the Terra!' And they HIT IT!!!
And he said 'Straighten you Miracle, The Body!' And the Body WENT UP!!
'Lift Your Glorious Arms to Heaven!' and he said 'Higher!' And they went Higher!!
And he said 'Lift Your Love Eyes to the Skies!' And they DID!! And he said 'Widen Your Eyes and Look HARDER' And they Did!!
And the Naz say 'Dig infinite!!' And they DUG IT.
And When they did, WHAMMMMM! Just then a Great flash of Lightnin' and a Roll of Thunder HIT the Scene! and The Cats looked down and in one hand was a Great bit of swingin' juicy stuffed smoked fish, and in the other a big thick gone loaf of that honey tastin' ever-lovin' good, groovey Home-lovin' made Bread! Why, these po' Cats FLIPPED!!
The Naz Never Did Nothin' Simple,
When He Laid It, HE LAID IT."
Amen.
May the Naz lay his Sweet Hipness on Lord Buckley in the infinite.
And dig. If we ever gonna be hip, we better get hip quick, or they'll be gluing the corners back on our square in the first ten of two-oh.
Be cool, my babies.
We leave little clues about what we were like, though, in the language and look of cool.
I've been alive during six decades. When I was very little, my evil babysitters watched Elvis and said words like "keen" and "sharp." These were edgy words in not very edgy times. Cool girls (or, big girls, to me) had names that ended in "ie" like Trixie and Dixie. Hair was in a pony tail or a DA (ducktails in polite company, and duck's ass, if you were a rebel looking to annoy your parents).
My sister had a DA.
Some fringie folks, like my second piano teacher, were Beats. These groovy cats and kittys dressed in black, wrote poetry, played jazz and laid down their hip welcome mat for the sixties. They was cool, babies.
Wow! We were hip and outta site in the sixties, man. Our language was easy and our lives got edgy. Our hair was long and straight, parted down the middle unless we were black. Then we had enormous afros. We dumped all that conformity from the '50s, tuned in, turned on and dropped out. We burned our draft cards and smoked our weed. We changed the world until tie-die got fashionable and the Hells Angels became our bodyguards and beat the shit out of us.
VERY uncool, man.
In the seventies, we cut our hair into a shag. "The Brady Bunch" is in re-runs. Tune in and dig Mrs. B's do. We became dorks, did Disco, but called ourselves freaks. Turns out, we were right. We may have even been Super Freaks.
So, now it was time to get rich. Even Abby Hoffman got a gig as a stock broker in the 80's. Greed was good. We was making bread, baby. We stuffed it in our shoulder pads until they rubbed against our short, spikey over-gelled hair (or our GeriCurl, if we were black). We did blow, rode in limos, wore pastel and thought about me me me me me, while we gyrated to Madonna and Prince if we were cool, and the Go-Gos and Flock of Seagulls, if we were not.
Life in the fast lane slowed in the 90's, but THEN we were wired. We started out-electronic devicing each other, drank tons of coffee and listened to grunge. We looked like shit, but it was quite a hangover from the 80's. Our hair shrunk, our clothes got black, and our mamas wore army boots. We tuned in to the information age, but, being unruly teen-agers, we didn't have a clue what to do with all that information. So, we invested our money in businesses with no brick and mortor, and created the tech bubble.
Pop went the millenium. No Y2K meltdown happened, but the tech bubble made gas station attendants out of nerdy millionaires. Bye, Bill.
Hi, George.
We ain't so groovy, after all. Closer to 60 in age than the 60's in cool, we go to war in the name of the Naz against them oily heathens. Lord Buckley, lead us in prayer...
"Look at all you Cats and Kitties out there! Whippin' and wailin' and jumpin' up and down and suckin' up all that fine juice and pattin' each other on the back and Hippin' each other who the greatest Cat in the world is! Mr Melanencoff, Mr. Dalencoff and Mr. Zelencoff and all them Coffs, and Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Woosenwiser, Mr. Weesenwooser and all them Woosers, Mr. Woodhill and Mr. Beachill and Mr. Churchhill and all them Hills, Gonna get you straight! If they can't get you straight, they know a Cat, that knows a Cat that'll Straighten you!
But I'm gonna put a Cat on you, who was the Sweetest, Grooviest, Strongest, Wailinest, Swinginest, Jumpinest, most far out Cat that ever Stomped on the Sweet Green Sphere, and they called this here Cat, THE NAZ, that was the Cat's name.
He was a carpenter kitty. Now the Naz, was the kind of Cat that came on so cool and so wild and so groovy and so WITH IT, that when he laid it down WHAM! It stayed there! Naturally, all the rest of the Cats say:
'Dig what this Cat is puttin' down! Man! Look at that Cat blow!
'Let the Cat Go!
'Hey, there, Get out of the way, don't bug me lad, Get off my back, I'm tryin' to dig what the Cat's sayin', Jack, Cool!'
They're Pushin' The Naz! 'Cause they wanted to dig the Lick, you see, Dig his Miracle Lick.
So the Naz say, 'Wait a minute babies, tell you what I'm gonna do, I ain't gonna take two, four, six or eight of you Cats, but I'm gonna take all twelve of you Studs and Straighten You All at the same time. You look like pretty Hip Cats, You buddy with me!'
So the Naz and his Buddies was goofin' off down the boulevard one day, and they run into a little Cat with a bent frame. So the Naz look at the little Cat with the bent frame and he say 'What's de matter wid you baby?'
And the litte Cat with the bent from say, 'My frame is bent, Naz. It's been bent, from in front!!!'
So the Naz looked at the little Cat wid the bent frame and he put the golden eye of love on this here little Kitty and he looked right down into the windows of the little Cat's soul, and he say to the little Cat, he say:
'STRAIGHTEN!'
Up, Zoom-Boom! The Cat went up straighter than an arrow and everybody Jumpin' Up and Down and they say:
'Look What The Naz Put On That Boy, You Dug Him Before, DIG Him NOW!'
Now you see the Naz is comin' on so strong and so fine and so Great, They is talkin' about when he's gonna appear next, What did he do there? How he swung thru the land with great ribbons of love sounds, How he laid down the truth and made it live, just like a jumpin' garden of king size roses, How he stomped into the money changin' Court and kicked the short change all over the place, Knocked the corners off the Squares! How he put the Truth down once for the Cat, he dug it, did't dig it; put it down twice, the Cat dug it, didn't dig it; Put it down the third time, WHAM, the Cat DUG IT. WALKED AWAY WITH HIS EYES BULGING, Bumpin' into Everybody!
The Naz is comin' on so fine and so strong they is pullin' on his coat-tail. Wantin' him to sign the autograph, they want him to do this gig here, they want him do that gig there, play the radio, do the video and all that JAZZ, he can't make all that Jazz. Like I explained to you, 'cause he's a carpenter Kitty and he'd got his own lick. But when he knows he should show to blow and cannot Go 'cause, he's got some strain on him, Straightenin' out the Squares, he sends a couple of these Cats that he's hippin'!
So came a little sixty cent gig one day and the Naz was in a bind so he put it on a couple of his Buddy-Cats.
'Say Boys, will you straighten that out for me?
'Take it off your wig, Naz, we've got it covered!'
Ad they swung out to straighten this gig for the Naz when they run into a little old twenty cent pool of water. And when they got in the middle of the pool in the boat, All of a Suddden, WHAM -- BOOM! The Storm is Stormin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the boat goin' up and down and these po' cats figurin' every minute gonna be the Last! When all of a sudden One Cat look up and Here Come the Naz, Stompin' anyone you ever seen, Right Across the Water -- Stompin'!
There was a little Cat on board, I think his name was Jude and he yelled,
'Hey, Naz, Can I make it out there witcha?'
And the Naz say 'Make it Jude!'
And ole Jude went stompin' off that boat, took about four steps, dropped his hole card and ZOOT, Naz had to stash him back on board again, So the Naz look at these Kitties and he say:
'What's the matter with you Babies now? What's goin' on here boys? What's takin' place! You knockin' on that SOS bell pretty hard! You gonna bend that bell knockin' on it like that'
One Cat say, 'What seems to be the trouble? Can't you see the Storm Stornmin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the waves flippin?'
And the Naz say, 'I told you to stay COOL, didn't I?' (To stay cool means to Believe in the Magic Power of Love.)
Now the fame of the Naz is jumpin'! How he lays it down the same way every day, how he Hipped the Cats to fo-give and fo-get and how he say:
'Dig and Thou Shalt be Dug!'
'Drag Not, and Thou Shalt not be Drug!'
And many other His truths! The Beauty Sparks shootin' out the grapevine are sixty-five feel long til there is now Five Thousand Cats and Kitties in the Naz' little home town, where the Cat Live, Lookin' to get STRAIGHT! Well, the Naz know he kain't straighten them there, it's too small a place, don't want to hang everybody up, so nobody can make it!
So the Naz back away a little bit and he looked at the Cats and Kitties an a great Love Look came on his face and he say with the bird bell tones in his voice:
'Come on Babies, let's cut on down the pike.'
And there went the Naz with his Five Thousand Cats and Kitties behind him stompin' up a great necklace of beauty, Flocks of Blue Birds were flyin' along his side riffin' up a high orchestration of Bird Love. And it's brother to brother, sister to sister, and a great river of love is chargin' and super chargin' thru these Cats and Kitties, and the Naz is a talking and a swing with:
'How pretty the hour, how pretty the flower, how pretty you, how pretty he, how pretty she, how pretty the tree.'
Naz had them Love Eyes, he wanted everybody to see thru his Eyes, to Pin the Golden Rosetta of Reality. And they is havin' such a Wailin', Swingin', Glorianna style stompin' hike that before you know it, it was Scoffin' Time and these po' Cats is Forty miles out of town and ain't nobody got the first biscuit. Well, the Naz look at all the Cats and Kitties kickin' sand and he say:
'You Hungry, Ain't You, Babies?'
And one tall Cat say, 'Yea, Naz, we were so busy diggin' what you puttin' down, that we didn't pre-pare - Naz, we Goofed!'
And Naz say, 'Well, we got to take it easy here, We wouldn't want to go ahead and order up sumpin you might not like, would We?'
And the tall Cat, kickin' the sand say, 'Sweet Double Hipness, You put it Down, and we'll pick it Up!'
So the Naz back away a little bit and his head turned slowly to one side and then to the other, diggin' all these Cats and Kitties, and he laid down a Sound of Great Love:
'Oh, Sweet Swingin' Flowers of the Field'
And they answered, 'Oh Great Singular Non-Stop Singular Sound of Beauty!'
And he said, 'Stomp Upon the Terra!' And they HIT IT!!!
And he said 'Straighten you Miracle, The Body!' And the Body WENT UP!!
'Lift Your Glorious Arms to Heaven!' and he said 'Higher!' And they went Higher!!
And he said 'Lift Your Love Eyes to the Skies!' And they DID!! And he said 'Widen Your Eyes and Look HARDER' And they Did!!
And the Naz say 'Dig infinite!!' And they DUG IT.
And When they did, WHAMMMMM! Just then a Great flash of Lightnin' and a Roll of Thunder HIT the Scene! and The Cats looked down and in one hand was a Great bit of swingin' juicy stuffed smoked fish, and in the other a big thick gone loaf of that honey tastin' ever-lovin' good, groovey Home-lovin' made Bread! Why, these po' Cats FLIPPED!!
The Naz Never Did Nothin' Simple,
When He Laid It, HE LAID IT."
Amen.
May the Naz lay his Sweet Hipness on Lord Buckley in the infinite.
And dig. If we ever gonna be hip, we better get hip quick, or they'll be gluing the corners back on our square in the first ten of two-oh.
Be cool, my babies.
posted by Kitty O'Keefe at 6:36 AM
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