Pranksters in Portland

The two hour ride from Eugene to Portland was a Prankster adventure of Oregonian proportions. Chessman cleaned us out of all our accumulated booty as the Willamette Valley colorfully rolled past the windows of the colorful Bus. George Walker once again drove us right into the heart of town wheeling the Bus right up to the door of the Bagdad Theater just in time to set up, sit down and get to the evenings' work. The BookVentureTour continues its third edition this time not in a bookstore but in the fabulous Bagdad movie palace on Hawthorne street. Warmth exuded immediately upon entering this place. There is an energetic restaurant and bar in front of the theater, a mainstay of Pranksterism after every jaunt about a town. The hallway leading in is a warm and friendly deco-rated area that makes you feel really welcome. The theater has about, maybe, we'll guess, perhaps... uh, more than five or six hundred seats. It's a real nice joint! Normally used for films, tonight's so-called movie is about the BookVentureTour featuring Ed McClanahan with fellow and fellowette contributors to the Spit In The Ocean #7 journal, and of course the Cap'n Skypilot the Intrepid Traveler and His Band of Merry Pranksters.

We were in luck! Or so we thought at first. The cafe with the
Wi-Fi high speed internet connection across the street from the Bagdad Theater is called the Fresh Pot! We were all thrilled at the idea when we first saw the sign. Conceptual hallucinatory concepts aside, the coffee was fabulous and the internet connection was flawless allowing for the fast uploading of these pages via ftp or file transfer protocol for you Prankster techies.

Elizabeth Babbs assumed the director's role for the show this evening. Her incorrigible father, Cap'n Skypilot, needed to be relieved of his role to concentrate on delivering his lines. Shown here, Elizabeth is explaining the recent edits she made to the script for one of the Six Kesey Sketches. It's always something!

Serendipity ruled this evening. Rosalie Sorrels came to the Bagdad Theater to pay respects to Kesey and perform the tune Last Go Round: A Song for Ken Kesey from Spit In The Ocean #7.

Gus Van Sant was also on hand to read from his essay. "Ken was the original do-it-yourselfer (sse the early issues of Spit In The Ocean), and he hoped to share what he had learned about filmmaking with other Oregon filmmakers. It was an us-versus-them thing with him, the Oregonaians valiantly battling the Hollywoodians. We were watching footage from the famous bus movie that he was editing on off-the-rack equipment - Sony, Motorola, regular VHS video gear that was really good, but didn't cost tens of thousands of dollars. The equipment itself, some of it painted Day-Glo, was exciting to him because it represented the low-cost tools the Oregon filmmakers were going to be using in their fight with the Hollywood establishment.