HT: Why, in your opinion, is fiction still an important art form?Trip out on that! In Jackson, no less!
TR: Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture. The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn't going to change just because we've gone electronic. What is changing is that now we're allowing corporations to tell our stories for us. And as I write in my new novel, the message of the corporate story is always the same: "To be special, you must conform; to be valid, you must consume." Real fiction will prevail, however, because at its best it's an enchantment that refreshes the wasteland of the mind.
But Breathes can proudly face-off against other critics in the world of media. Let’s face it: there are a host of reviewers out there who note the aesthetics of a variety of commercial products – like wine, cigars, beer, food – and often use the same language, focusing on the terpenes that they detect in the nose or on the palette. Why not cannabis reviewers, as well, being considered as serious and distinguished trades people?
A mixture of humor and bluster. Bark and snark. Singing about White Demons and White Castle hamburgers. Cartoonish. Playing with sedition in the classic, American tradition, like a Charlie Chaplin or Abbie Hoffman. A self-referential, all-brown, Cheech and Chong meets the Three Stooges meets the Beastie Boys.
One of the few friends of mine to have his own Wikipedia page, Johnny Strike certainly possesses a background worthy of being researched via an online encyclopedia: co-founder of the seminal San Francisco punk band CRIME; former methadone clinic counselor; author of two books. The above photo, taken in May 2010, also appears on his "author page" on the web site for Headpress, one of his publishers.
Recently, I wrote an article on the Merry Prankster and author Ken Babbs, someone I'd long been interested in meeting again after encountering him once in Boulder in the early ‘90s. Luckily, Babbs just released a novel loosely-based on his time as a marine helicopter pilot in Vietnam at the start of that war – Who Shot the Water Buffalo? -- which allowed me to secure an assignment from Kush Magazine (scroll to page 108).
Babbs was there in '64 on the festively-painted bus Further with fellow writer Ken Kesey and crew: a journey spotlighted in Tom Wolfe’s novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and a new documentary film Magic Trip. The first public Acid Test was held at his place, as well.
Here’s the psychedelic captain in July 2011 at his spread near Eugene, Oregon, flying both his American flag and his, so to speak, “Freak” flag.
