San Sebastian Avenue
My ex-wife drove the coolest automobile ever made. The 1965 Volkswagen truck was built for The Working Crew. Maryanne became a carpenter. She bought tools and a Euro Work Mobile. I might have her be the Star of……Oakland. I want Tom in my movie – and Kamala Harris, who ran against the greatest villain – of all time! Europeans – hate Donald Trump, and his hired Fund Killer.
John Presco
After Fariña’s wedding, Pynchon went up to Berkeley, where he met up with Tharaldsen and Seidler. For years, Pynchon trackers have wondered about Tharaldsen, listed as married to Pynchon in a 1966–67 alumni directory. The real story is not of a secret marriage but a distressing divorce—hers from Seidler. Pynchon and Tharaldsen quickly fell in love, and when Pynchon went back to Mexico City shortly after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Tharaldsen soon followed.
Thomas Pynchon and I
Posted on March 10, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
We are in the same family tree. We married the same woman. My 10th. great grandfather married Tom’s 10th. great grandmother – twice! We are kin to Shakespeare.
John Presco
Pynchon’s Eclipse House
Posted on August 21, 2017by Royal Rosamond Press
Here is the apartment my ex lived in with Thomas Pynchon. It has “ECLIPSE” written all over it!
Don’t you think he is keen on the Buck Hangars and this Nazi talk? Mary Ann Tharaldsen was Christine Rosamond’s sister-in-law. She got Tom a job at Boeing. I bet your Bob Buck makes Pynchon – even more paranoiac! There’s “DOOMSDAY” written all over Bob.
Jon Presco
“Engineering physics, the hardest program at Cornell, was meant to supply Cold War America with its elites—the best and the brightest, junior league. One professor called its students “intellectual supermen”; Pynchon’s old friend David Shetzline remembers them as “the slide-rule boys.” But after less than two years in the major, Pynchon left Cornell in order to enlist in another Cold War operation, the Navy. He once wrote that calculus was “the only class I ever failed,” but he’s always used self-deprecation to deflect inquiries, and professors remembered universally good grades. Tharaldsen says she saw Pynchon’s IQ score, somewhere in the 190s. So why would he leave? He wrote much later about feeling in college “a sense of that other world humming out there”—a sense that would surely nag him from one city to another for the rest of his life. He was also in thrall to Thomas Wolfe and Lord Byron. Most likely he wanted to follow their examples, to experience adventure at ground level and not from the command centers.
What finally smoked him out was Richard Fariña’s wedding to Mimi Baez, sister of the famous folk singer. In August, Pynchon took a bus up the California coast to serve as his friend’s best man. Remembering the visit soon after, Fariña portrayed Pynchon with his head buried in Scientific American before eventually “coming to life with the tacos.” Pynchon later wrote to Mimi that Fariña teased him about his “anti-photograph Thing … what’s the matter, you afraid people are going to stick pins; pour aqua regia? So how could I tell him yeah, yeah right, you got it.
”
After Fariña’s wedding, Pynchon went up to Berkeley, where he met up with Tharaldsen and Seidler. For years, Pynchon trackers have wondered about Tharaldsen, listed as married to Pynchon in a 1966–67 alumni directory. The real story is not of a secret marriage but a distressing divorce—hers from Seidler. Pynchon and Tharaldsen quickly fell in love, and when Pynchon went back to Mexico City shortly after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Tharaldsen soon followed.
In Mexico, Tharaldsen says, Pynchon wrote all night, slept all day, and kept mostly to himself. When he didn’t write, he read—mainly Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, a big influence on his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49. (He also translated Julio Cortázar’s short story “Axolotl.”) His odd writing habits persisted throughout his life; later, when he was in the throes of a chapter, he’d live off junk food (and sometimes pot). He’d cover the windows with black sheets, never answer the door, and avoid anything that smelled of obligation. He often worked on multiple books at once—three or four in the mid-sixties—and a friend remembers him bringing up the subject of 1997’s Mason & Dixon in 1970.
Tharaldsen grew bored of the routine. Soon they moved to Houston, then to Manhattan Beach. Tharaldsen, a painter, did a portrait of Pynchon with a pig on his shoulder, referencing a pig figurine he’d always carry in his pocket, talking to it on the street or at the movies. (He still identified closely with the animals, collecting swine paraphernalia and even signing a note to friends with a drawing of a pig.) Once Tharaldsen painted a man with massive teeth devouring a burger, which she titled Bottomless, Unfillable Nothingness. Pynchon thought it was him, and hated it. Tharaldsen insists it wasn’t, but their friend Mary Beal isn’t so sure. “I know she regarded him as devouring people. I think in the sense that he—well, I shouldn’t say this, because all writers do it. Writers use people.”
Tharaldsen hated L.A., and decided to go back to school in Berkeley. “I thought they were unserious sort of beach people—lazy bums! But Tom didn’t care because he was inside all day and writing all night.” At the moment, eager to break with his publisher, Lippincott (and rejoin Cork Smith, since departed to Viking), he saw Lot 49 as a quickie “potboiler” meant to break his option with the house—forcing them to either reject it, liberating him, or pay him $10,000. They paid him, defying his own low opinion of it. In his introduction to Slow Learner, a later collection of his early stories, he’d write that with Lot 49, “I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I’d learned up till then.” Now it’s required reading in college courses, a gateway drug to the serious stuff. Which, of course, was his next book: Gravity’s Rainbow.
Gravity’s Rainbow
Posted on August 13, 2013by Royal Rosamond Press
Quotation
“a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it.”
I have not read Thomas Pynchon’s Gravities Rainbow. I tried, and put it down, along with ‘V’. My former wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, lived with Thomas in Mexico for three years, and was his lover. They met at Cornell. Mary Ann showed me the words Thomas wrote her inside her copy of V. There might be some jealousy here, but, I don’t get it, why his books got all this/that attention, and why some say it is one of the greatest American novels ever written.
I’m sorry – and I have just read the treatment by Wikipedia. However, I am intrigued with it’s connection to Rena and her husband, Sir Ian Easton, who got his compatriots at British Aeorspace to put up money to put the ‘White Crusader’ in a cup race. Rena and Ian are Pynchonish. This literary theme I have woven around them takes on a life of its own.
Pynchon takes us back to 1945 a period where Ian Easton excelled as a pilot and hero. This is Ian’s era. He marries a young woman who is not even of my era. Rena is what comes after the Hippie-Peace era – that Thomas appears not to have been a part of. Pynchon seems to have created his own fictional peer group, slipped in a generation – that did not exist – but for the woman I married around the same time Ian and Rena got married, 1979. Mary Ann is ten years my senior. Like Pynchon, Rena dropped out of sight – and is ungrouped – till now!
Putting Rena and Thomas together, reading a book, or, taking a road-reading trip, is no a fantastic stretch of the imagination. Did Thomas employ Mary Ann as a character in his books? Yes.
Again we have a classic study of Life imitating art in a weird way, because Thomas may have been keenly aware of this theory, and creates a Life and Art World where he is the only living thing left standing. Rena and Thomas may have painted themselves into a corner. This may be applicable to my former wife, who is reclusive, now. Are these people just hanging around waiting to be plucked and thrown into the workings of a novelist – who gets the last word?
I have looked at the idea that Ian Easton is the real James Bond, and thus he wanted the most beautiful woman by his side. Rena is – Bondish!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace
To read this entry about British Aerospace is the read what Pynchon mimicked, even channeled in some manner. Rena must have been surrounded by military eggheads who fought a cold war in her home – around the clock! Dinner at the Eastons must have been like dining in a war room. Rena must have been very impressed as she stood guard as a life-size statue – against the flowery wallpaper.
1034 Bancroft Way — Closer
As I drew near to where the house or apartment should be my heart began to pound. I was a bit damp from the walk, and chilled by the air. But I could not find 1034 Bancroft Way. There was a 1032 and a 1036, but no 1034. Given how elusive Pynchon had proved to be, this seemed to me at the time just right. That’s perfect, I thought. If I returned to the library the librarian would no doubt tell me she couldn’t find the 1975 phone book. In front of 1032 Bancroft was an old black Saab with Massachusetts license plates. In Gravity’s Rainbow Massachusetts is the state of Slothrop’s birth and childhood. In my heart of hearts I could not imagine that Thomas Pynchon or an actual Tyrone Slothrop lived in this area, yet circumstances seemed designed to shake my common sense.”
After reading the claim that this educator might have played bridge with Pynchon, and, he almost had an orgasm, I thought it was my turn to brag. I have been denied all bragging rights concerning my offspring. Is Tom Schaub a stalker? Maybe I should be careful? What if he finds out I and the vagina Tom enjoyed went on a cross country road trip in a new Thunderbird?
The is from the New Yorker Magazine.
“Siegel and Jolly wrote a short book about Pynchon, in which Jolly said he “could slip into any character he wanted. He was really crafty, methodical.” For good measure, she added, “He broke up more than one marriage, because he was too shy to find someone on his own.” Harsh as that may sound, Tharaldsen seconds it: “That seems to be his modus operandi,” she says. “He was very withdrawn, and the one way he could make connections with women would be through his friends … It’s a pattern.”
I woke up from my nap, because, in my dream, I was in bed with my ex-wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, profusely apologizing for what went wrong, that was a real tragedy. Her ex instigated a child custody battle. She lived in this San Rafael house with her attorney husband. She lived in an appartment in Manhattan Beach with Thomas Pynchon. It looks like she lived in Eugene for awhile. Tom has yet to pop up in one of my dreams.
I had been reading an article by Hanggi about all the “offspring” Thomas Pynchon is responsible for. Many avant-guarde musicians attached themselves to Pynchon’s Star. Tom is in my family tree because of a tiny piece of paper that says Tom and my ex were marred. Looking for my articles on Tom’s love of Jazz, I found this article.
I wanted to out do the other Pynchon authors, and came up with this;
Other cities and locations that Mary could have lived includes Burlington,NC, Pittsboro,NC, Oakland,CA, Fearrington,NC, San Rafael,CA, Fearrington Village,NC, Novato,CA, Eugene,OR, Woodacre,CA, Marcola,OR, Durham,NC, Chapel Hill,NC, Mill Valley,CA. We currently show as many as 24 address,
Tom Schaub has taught at University of California Berkeley and University of Wisconsin Madison. He has been Executive Editor of Contemporary Literature since 1989, and has published widely on Thomas Pynchon, including Thomas Pynchon: The Voice of Ambiguity,
Schaub is name dropping – Berkeley streets! One of them is College Ave. where Tom and Maryanne lived. Close, but no cigar! There is a picture of a mail box, which is sexually suggestive i.e. Male Penis & Box-Vagina. I am considering making ultrasound images of a penis in a uterus and have a showing in a museum. I have been working on a eulogy for Kenney Reed just in case I am called to give one. How’s this for an opening.
“Kenny Reed and I enjoyed the same vagina. This may account for the vivid dreams he appeared in. Thrice I went home to Oakland, and, try as I may not, to, I ended up in the all-black part of town. I would find Kenny there, in this part. I knew what it was to be a black man. This was a dangerous place. Almost everyone did their best not to look, scared – but scary! But, there were black men around Kenny who were tired of this shit. We began to discuss how we could change everything. I woke up.”
Well, that worked, till the next time. Will there be a next time?
Above is an image of my daughter and un-born granddaughter. How about changing her alleged words?
“Penis’s are a part of life, and living in fear is not healthy for anyone!”
My daughter and I had a falling out eight years ago over he aunt’s weak bladder. I was not told she was pregnant – thrice. I wrote the editor of North Bay Woman’s Magazine and informed her my daughter has never been married, and has gotten pregnant with two men. I failed to shame anyone.
“How dare you, Mam, invade my privacy by showing images of my daughter’s reproduction organs – with child! Your mag is going to end up in dental office all over Marine county, for anyone to pick up, and drool over!”
All the woman gathered around the Blessed Virgin Heather and her immaculate conception, and publicly castrated me. This is why I am asking my Fellow Man to send me an ultrasound of their erection encased beautifully in a healthy uterus. I will publish everyone of these divine images! A literary license and precedent has been set. We must, and can – take pride! We will not be left outside the redeemable parts, like some filthy beast! We are worthy of being inside the sanctuary – with the lit votive candles!
“We’re a work of art!”
Note the long hair on Leonard’s heterosexual.
Peter Shaprio and Tim O’Connor played music at our second wedding in Oakland. Peter played with the Loading Zone. When we went back East, my family stayed at Peter’s house in West Virginia. Anderson’s song was inspired by Pynchon. Come back, this article will propagate.
I include this article about Tom carrying firecrackers in the L.A. Is On Fire in the Wilding and Cran gallery. Fire kills children in so many ways.
“He was surrounded by a group of people that protected him fiercely,” says Jim Hall, a peripheral member, “and you either were accepted on some level or you were not.”
With his straggly hair and mustache and Army-surplus clothes, the writer who’d once resembled William Faulkner now looked more like Frank Zappa. For a while he took in a girlfriend, the young daughter of Phyllis Coates, TV’s original Lois Lane, and looked after her son, Ethan. “They huddled up in that little dump he lived in,” Coates remembers. “Tom was very good to Ethan.” There was lots of what was once called getting together and is now called hooking up. Among the women was Chrissie Jolly, the wife of Jules Siegel, which is why his Playboy exposé was titled “Who Is Thomas Pynchon … and Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?”
Mary Ann did a life-size portrait of her friend, Mimi Farina, that was damaged at the bottom by being stored in a shed at the San Rafael house. I met Mimi at a Monterey festival. Phillis was married to Jazz Pianist, Robert Nelms. Did Pynchon get filled in on the Jazz of L.A. by his daughter and her mother. Here is Diana Prince. I see a new series…The Super Boho Man. A man with super powers hangs around the new downtown art scene as a freelance writer. The hipster suspect he is Thomas Pynchon’s illegitimate son by the way he writes.
Tom accuses old friends of copping out and threatens to travel around America on The Dog, meeting people. Some folks claim he chatted with Lee Harvey Oswald on a Greyhound. This can be a series. Marilyn Reed designed and made the dress Mary Ann is wearing. Debbie’s mother-in-law is Rosemary Clooney, the Jazz singer. Every episode of ‘The Dog’ will end with a Clooney Tune. I GOT IT!
‘Bum On A Bus’ starring Tom Waites (who might be Thomas Pynchon in disguise).
Synopsis: For eighty years everyone who rode the Greyhound feared they would be accosted by Wise Bum on the bus who might have a pint of gin on his person. He comes out of nowhere after you take a seat, and take a look around.
“Excuse me! Is this seat taken?”
“(Shit!)
My friend Michael Harkins used to go to L.A. on business. He would stay in a motel with his friend, Jim Morrison. They were both good friends of the poet Michael McClure. One afternoon, he stopped in a downtown bar, and heard this awful singer playing piano. When he came to the bar, they struck up a conversation – and ended up partying for two days. In Tom’s convertible, overlooking the San Fernando Valley, where they were going to do all the great bars, there, Michael said;
“I’m done. I got to get away from you!”
A month later he finds out who this Downtown Bum, is. I want David Lynch to direct ‘Bum on a Bus’. How can he refuse?
“Hey good looken! What are you doing the rest of your life? What town are you getting off at?”
John Presco
My Saved Oakland History
Posted on May 3, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
EXTRA! After posting the following I called to cancel my flight and they want $250 dollars. So, I am going!
The owner of ‘Oakland History’ did not get all my history expunged. I saved some of it. I will make sure he, or, she – lives in infamy! Below is the part where I talk about my ex-friend Paul Drake who played Mick in the movie ‘Sudden Impact’. After I caught him in bed with my lover, whom I was living with, I ended up in the Golden West Bar. Ten Oakland Cops showed up after I told Paul to come outside and get a ass-whoopen. It was a showdown.
Above is Buffalo Bill with Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux. I was good friends with his kindred here in Eugene. I have seen photographs that no one has seen. I begged Joy to allow me to help her scan them.
I am not going to Oakland, because I realized I was toying with too much death, playing with bad and good ghosts. I have gone there anyway, in spirit, and by using My Vision. The chance I might die – is high! I want to finish the Gideon Computer, that became real when I read the report of Hollowhornbear’s involvement in the gruesome murder of Herbert Pierruci, the bartender at the Gold West Bar on September 3, 1984. Twenty-three days later, my daughter was born. Heather came into my life sixteen years later. I did not know I had a daughter. She and her mother were Paul’s neighbor on Broadway.
I talked to Chris last night about the Golden West murder, and the western murals that appeared in my Science Fiction book, the Gideon Computer. My hero, Berkley Bill Bolagard, would hold court in a booth in this downtown Oakland Bar. When he was younger, Bill owned a white Thunderbird like the one Barry Zorthian owned. When he went to visit his old friend Dexter Lewis in Los Angeles, he put him in front of a camera selling Ford trucks because he was dressed like Buffalo Bill. He was instructed to let out a yell!
“Yeeehaw!” Ride em cowboy!”
Jon Presco
Copyright 2017
STOP THE PRESSES!
I just found this old photograph! It’s coming back to me. The Golden West Bar was patronized by employees of the Oakland Tribune. I talked to several of them. The Tribune was located in…………..THE GOLDEN WEST HOTEL……..that may have been located nearby. I am trying to locate it. Were the murals inside the Golden West Bar connected to Wild Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and the hotel! This is astounding! The Tribune is no more! The ghosts of the men and women who printed a daily newspaper are calling me. I may show up October 1st for the anniversary of one of Bill’s last shows – which I am now going to organize! Too many ghosts for one man to handle, and remain in his body! Maybe I am the embodiment of Buffalo Bill?
In 1915, when Joseph Knowland, a former U.S. congressman, acquired the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper was located at Eighth and Franklin streets in the old Golden West Hotel. In 1918, the Breuner Furniture Company vacated its home at Thirteenth and Franklin. Knowland envisioned the vacated showroom and an adjacent warehouse as the site of a first-class newspaper facility. He began to implement this vision with the acquisition of the Breuner’s property and the move of the Tribune there.
Marilyn’s Train Line
Posted on July 26, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
Marilyn Reed came out with her ‘Train Line’ in the late 70’s. Her designs were influenced by movies of the 40,s. My late sister, Christine Rosamond Benton owned a Train dress, and my ex-wife, Mary Ann Thareldsen, wore one at our wedding. These two women artists recognized the Creative Class when they saw it, as did Debbie Boone who performed ‘You Light Up My Life’ in M’s dress.
Jon Presco
Play both videos at same time.
Gravity’s Rainbow
Devo: “Whip It” from Freedom of Choice (1980) ♥
The band’s Gerald Casale has stated that the song with its sadomasochistic theme and provocative video is an ode to Gravity’s Rainbow (see Colby Itkowitz). According to Wikipedia, Gerald Casale told Songfacts that the lyrics were written “as an imitation of Thomas Pynchon’s parodies” in Gravity’s Rainbow. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | last.fm | Youtube
http://maudnewton.com/blog/jules-siegel-on-pynchons-wife/
After a year of looking through phone books I didn’t expect to find any of Pynchon’s character names listed, but the coffee wasn’t yet ready and there was still the 1975 Oakland-Berkeley phone book. The coffee machine was going through its last spasms when fiction and reality came together. There on the page was the name: “Slothrop Tyrone 1034 Bancroft Wy Brk” and a phone number.
I saw Pynchon occasionally in New York. Once he took me down to Greenwich Village to the Cafe Bohemia, where Max Roach was playing. It was the only band I ever heard in which the drums carried the melody. The Modern Jazz Quartet and the Kent Micronite Filter commercial were about as much modern music as I could handle. Pynchon, however, was deeply into the mysteries of Thelonious Monk. On religious grounds, I excused myself from attending chapel with him at the Five Spot to hear “God” play. I was an atheist.
Later that morning I showed the page in the phone book to my mother
Pynchon on Record, Vol. 4
September 28, 2017 by Christian Hänggi 10 Comments
The British literature scholar Cedric Watts once wrote: “One test of literary merit is fecundity, the ability to generate offspring” (xix). More than many other novelists, Pynchon’s work has generated not only literary but also musical offspring: songs, bands, entire albums inspired by Pynchon’s themes and novels. In 1982, Steven Moore made a first attempt to collect such songs and inspirations in Pynchon Notes under the title “Pynchon on Record,” to which Laurence Daw added “More on Pynchon on Record” in 1983 (and later expanded the list on themodernword.com). Sixteen years later, Juan García Iborra and Oscar de Jódar Bonilla published an article that added more names to the previous lists. Since then, the search algorithms on the internet have vastly improved—and so has the amount of available information and the possibilities to upload one’s own material.
Oakland Tommy
Posted on March 4, 2016by Royal Rosamond Press
I just found out my ex-wife lived on College Avenue – IN OAKLAND – with Thomas Pynchon. They lived in a big apartment building located next to ‘Ye Olde Hut’ where I did a lot of drinking with my friends, including Paul Drake who Mary Ann encouraged to take up acting. Paul claims he based his tough-guy persona on watching me drink, but I believe he is speaking of Richard Swartz who was a bodyguard for Dederich of Synanon. Richard held the world’s record to the fifty yard dash – on his hands!
Mary Ann did illustrations for a rare book about the Symbionese Liberation Army. Her best friend, Joan (who lived right off college) came home for Thanksgiving and found her whole family blown away by the Black Mau Maus. Her father was a CEO of Standard Oil. Patty Hurst was kidnapped from 2803 Benvenue, which is about ten blocks from the Hut. I thought Mary Ann and I were going to be Facebook friends, then she prohibited any more drama. Maybe I will get an Oscar someday – late in my life – when most of my peers are dead, leaving a thousand writers to guess what became of Pynchon? What about Patty? What us olde ones don’t realize, is, that every seven years you get a new generation, thus withholding information from them – is futile!
“Patty who? Pynchon? Doesn’t he own a chain of tiny drive-in coffee huts?”
Pynchon Has Firecrackers
Posted on July 29, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
After declaring Mary Ann Tharaldsen a Apocalyptic Artist, I go further and suggest the excavation of her lost artwork would bring on Armageddon. Was I right?
After getting stoned with Thomas Pynchon, Pynchon pulled firecrackers out of his pocket and asked if there was somewhere he could shoot them off. Today, thousands who took LSD in the 60s, did so believing our collective minds could stop the genocide in Vietnam and bring about World Peace. When evangelicals failed to elect Sarah Palin with the help of their collective PRAYERS, they reinvented themselves as Revolutionary Soldiers, who armed with the God-given Constitution, would RUIN the choice of the Democrats for President.
Very few see the target here, being, the Christniks must negate the power of secular choice that empowers the idea of Free Will. All things must be ORDAINED. This includes The End Time, that must occur, or they are rendered False Prophets. Mary Ann is a secular prophet, the answer to Sarah Palin.
Why does Pynchon keep firecrackers in his pocket?
Jon
I used to get shit-faced with Steve Kupka, who played saxophone for the Loading Zone, then for the Tower of Power. There is a strong Jazz element in both bands. Pynchon is a Jazz Lover. Did he drink at The Hut with his new bride who was married to David Seidler who won an Oscar for ‘The King’s Speech’ ?
I believe that is a portrait of David that Mary Ann Tharaldsen is holding up. There is a discussion about a movie coming out – and cashing in. I wondered why this classy dame bought a house in Oakland about a mile from the Hut. She never told me she and Tom lived in this building. She is sticking to her newfound Bohemian roots the Cornell Three have transplanted to my hometown. And Gertrude Stein said;
“There is no there – there!”
Looks like all the great writers have been “there” in the LEAVE US ALONE CITY.
Here is the ‘Cornell Cluster’.
Thomas Pynchon: Mary Ann Tharaldsen: Richard Farina: David Seidler: Jules Siegel.
.https://rosamondpress.com/2015/02/23/our-home-on-miles-2/
What is truly profound, is that the Berkeley Experimental Arts Foundation was located up College about a half mile, just across the Oakland-Berkeley line in the Elmwood district where Jane Fonda lived. We’re talking about The College Avenue Renaissance’ made up of New Yorkers that went to Cornell. Did David live in this apartment building and drink at ‘The Hut’? Richard and Mimi Farina had something to do with Thomas heading north to visit his fellow alumni. David was the leader of the famous Cornell Riot of 58. He and Richard got detained along with twenty-six un-named Co-eds. Was Mary Ann one of them? I will ask.
Alas I have the solution for the disaster movie made in Pynchon’s name. There was real inherent vice going on in The Hut. The dude who shot my friend there, tried to shoot me. He went to school with Tom Hanks. Millions of folks claim they went to “The College of Hard Knocks” I think I will print up some degrees and sell them.
Even though I have twenty-nine years of sobriety, I suggest we go back to Oakland, and cozy up at the bar. How about another ‘Cheers’? My unfinished novel ‘The Gideon Computer’ begins at the Golden West Bar that was torn down after the earthquake. My friend, Nancy Hamren, suggested I author the history of the Hippies in 1986. I chose to write about the last hippie standing – in the future! (see review of Hut below)
The Hippie Movement got its start at the Berkeley Experimental Arts Foundation that is located near the Beauty Center. The Arts were meant to play a central roll until Kesey spoke the punch with LSD, and all one could focus on was the music. Artists now took a back seat to Musicians. Poster Art did well. Peter Max and my late sister, Christine Rosamond did well. Christine took up art in 1972 after seeing a painting I did of Rena Easton when I was a roommate of Peter Shapiro, the lead guitarist for the Loading Zone.
Here are the Four Amigos on a bridge in Venice, Keith Purvis, Peter Shapiro, Tim O’Connor, and myself. We lived in a large Victorian in Oakland. I was the artist in residence. These lads were at my wedding reception. Peter and Time provided the music. The group ‘Love’ is now titled the innovators of proto-punk. Bryan played at our wedding. Marilyn Reed made the dress my bride is wearing. She is married to Jazz Artist, Kenny Reed, and is a good friend of Les McCann. We can’t leave ‘Oakland Tommy’ swinging on a yardarm in Hollywood. We bring him home, bring him back – to Oakland! Come ye back to Ye Olde Hut!
I hereby make Thomas Pynchon an honorary member of the Loading Zone a.k.a. The Marbles. Then there are the Stackpoles who hung in Elmwood.
I’ve been thinking of going home again – to die! Maybe I will do some murals of Ye Olde Monster’ Mary Ann created, of Paul atop the roller coaster in ‘Sudden Impact’ and Paul impaled on a Unicorn, a fate many Republican leaders wish upon Donald Trump.
Clint Eastwood grew up in Oakland. We went to the same elementary school. Christine Wandel dated Peter Shapiro of the Loading Zone. She is close with Stefan Eins of Fashion Moda. We are talking about a New York Cluster. Add to this my favorite artist and dear friend, Amy Sargent of Walton New York, then you got a bad-ass crew of creative souls doing them Oakland Strokes!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ye-olde-hut-Oakland
Mary Ann found me living in a shack in the Fruitvale. She was blown away when she saw my drawings for Atlantis on my draft board. When I saw her life-size painting of her friend, Mimi Baez Farina, I hung it n the side of her house, like a banner. It was sitting under the stairs, getting ruined like her other works of art in a shed in Marine. I begged her to go rescue them, but, she refused. I know she wanted to be a Great Woman Artist, and believed she fell short. There should be an award for Dramatic Creative Women…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8UfrC3HnmA l
The Roscarette
Here is my wife-to-be facing down one of my parasites, Juan, who worked for the City of Oakland and deliberately dropped a slab of concrete on his foot so he could sue. This is almost like Fountainhead. I think this photo should be in the Smithsonian. Eat your heart out, Clint, she does your walk – better than you! This is a classic showdown!
Having majored in architecture, Mary Ann thought my hundred Atlantis drawings were worthy on a honorary degree. If the truth must be known, this was a one Bad-ass Oakland Woman! And, Tommy ‘Two Teeth’ couldn’t hang. But, hey! Everyone deserves a second chance. Let me know if your ready for a College Ave. reunion. You can come disguised as a Hobo, if you get my drift!
The California College of Arts and Crafts was at the Oakland end of College Avenue. Ken Kesey came to speak here with the Beat English Department that dovetails nicely with the Beat Cornell English Department, who are all but ghosts sitting around the fire at ‘Ye Olde Hut’.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
- I spent years wandering around LA’s skid Row and I’ve spent years in Oakland’s “Ye Old Hut”. No comparison when it comes to being treated like a human being or having some dignity. LA’s skid Row takes it in all categories. Quality of people, bathrooms, bartenders and intelligence quotient. “Ye Old Hut” only hardcore masochists with no self-esteem need apply. It’s basically a big Romper Room for the bartenders and their close personal friends. Even strung out and destitute I was offended by the stupidity inside this place. It took a long time but I finally grew up and I don’t miss now and never will miss the gang down at
“Ye Old Hut”.
I believe Thomas Pynchon wrote the above. Tommy ‘Two Teeth’ was known as Oakland’s Howard Hughes. I think I might have had a drink with this……crusty ole snob!
1967: A possible address for Thomas Pynchon: 5507 College Avenue Oakland, CA 94618
1967 Directory of Living Alumni, Cornell University
AB: Bachelor of Arts
BFA: Bachelor of Fine Arts
C: Civil Engineering Course
Dirty Harry and Oakland Jonny
Posted on June 3, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
Clint Eastwood is a famous actor who played a larger then life fictional character, Lieutenant Callahan. Clint grew up in Oakland, then went to LA to attend acting school. He never looked back, never got in a fist fight, never looked down the barrel of a gun, never shot someone. Mr. Eastwood made his fortune in Hollywood, and prides himself on being a Republican capitalist right-wing patriot. He understands he is affecting the way the average smuck in the street, votes. Obviously he enjoys the yuppie lifestyle his kindred exhibit on the reality show ‘Mrs. Eastwood and Company’ aired on the Entertainment channel.
Check out the Rosamond-like painting of Morgon Eastwood in this trailer. Heather thought it would be like this, when we found each other in 2000, and the Rosamond Gallery in Carmel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Ng8BtHU1M
Above is a photo of me getting off a train in Eugene Oregon in 1987. I am about to enter rehab. I have had enough. I have become bigger then life. I have moved out of a converted water tower in Oakland where I have come under the protection of a very dangerous crack gang. They consider me a member of the hood. I knew the leaders when they were children. I have taken on the persona ‘Oakland Jonny’. The Sumer of Love is surely at an end. There is no love in crack. None!
When I graduated from the New Hope program at Serenity Lane, I did a skit on Jonny wearing my players hat I bought in downtown Oakland. My childhood friend, Nancy Hamren, was there. She got me on the bus, she at the core of the Kesey family legacy.
Above are photos of a phone and desk with the words “Baba Bruce”. This phone belongs to Bruce Perlowin who shows off his new office in Las Vegas. Bruce was the largest pot smuggler in history. He lived in the basement of my surrogate mother’s house on Pinehaven Road where these pics were taken. Above the phone is Perlowin’s ex-wife, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, who was a famous Russian spy that Bruce met while in the federal prison. Wanda’s second bonr son married Bruce’s ex-wife. Bruce was in business with Abbie Hoffman and would go down in the basement where I spent many a night before Bruce got out on parole.
This was a revival of the Hippie Movement that cost law enforcement billions of dollars to oppress. The billion dollar War on Drugs has been declared a failure. Who wasted most of those hippie wanna-be punks in Sudden Impact? A. A middle calss caucasion housewife who later found Jesus and became a Tea Party Patriot who campaigned for Sarah Palin. She was the first ‘Momma Grizzly’ thanks to Dirty Harry filing a false police report in order to set free – THE VICTIMS OF THE LIBERAL LEFT.
Bruce and my father, Capitan Vic, are larger then life. Bruce ‘The King of Pot’ had an article in the Oakland Tribune where he was looking for a job that would employ his organizational skills. I arranged a interview with Captain Victim, and they met at my father’s Lafayette home. Vic did not hire Bruce, because he did not grasp the idea that one could make all the money in the world by making bad real-estate loans that bordered on Loan Sharking. Bruce was too much of an idealist, he into Creative and Compassionate Capitalism, which is much like my Bohemian Bank idea that Kenny Reed ad Rick Cobian rejected.
Above is a photo of two men, one a Puerto Rican whose kindred tried to assassinate President Harry Truman. He grew up in Harlem. The other guy is Choo-Choo Joe who lived in a classic rail car in a train car in a Oakland Park. Joe served in the 101 Airborne. Our mutual friends fled from El Salvador to Oakland. One became a cop. We used to party with the Oakland police.
The guy in uniform with cigar, is my father-in-law, Robert Miles. He served in the 101 in Vietnam, and is six months younger then me. Most of his platoon buddies were black, and dopers. They would go on missions and come back with a neckless of Vietcong ears around their necks. No one dare fuck with these guys. Within minutes of meeting Robby, he called me outside, knocked me on my ass, and wanted to fight. Mr. Eastwood, the actor, sends out powerful messages he is this kind of man. Robby is the real McCoy – who killed many human beings.
The woman in the turquoise dress is my mother, Rosemary, who born four children. She is thirty three in this photo. She made porno movies for the Mafia around this time, for Big Bones Bremmer the only proven Mafia guy on the west coast. Big Bones owned card rooms in Emeryville where Rosemary worked for Rucker. Rosemary told me the mob owned garbage and landfill companies that were filling in the bay.
The woman wrapped in the curtain is Karen Holly. I believe she fathered my child, a son named William, or, Bill. Before she went into rehab she wanted to drive to LA to meet Rosemary. Why? In looking back I believe her doctor told her if she kept drinking she would lose her baby – she told me nothing about. After I got sober, I got wise, and gave her a call.
“His name is Bill. He has blonde hair. He is not yours.” Karen offered.
“Did I ask?” and there was silence. I did not know for sure if I had a daughter at this time. Above is a photo of Heather Hanson, who was growing up while my life was in the balance. She had blonde hair that runs in our family with some kindred, this a Rosamond trait that may come from Radbot the Viking Rover.
Paul Drake had made reservations at the Flamingo near the Santa Monica peir after I told him I was coming down to LA.
“Get me a room with some Bohemian class. Karen is an artist.”
Paul played Mick in Sudden Impact.
The woman with her back to us is my ex-wife, Marianne Thoraldson, who is kin to Erick the Red, and was the mistress of the reclusive Thomas Pynchon. She has come to take me out of the bad hood I lived in and is in a showdown with my crazy Mexican neighbor who dropped a big hunk of steel on his toe and is suing his boss.
In Oakland, a real con is born every second.
That’s me and my Cadillac on Pinehaven Road, and Pops at the wheel of his Chris Craft, he jugging past the place his father lived in a house boat, he a famous Barbary Coast Gambler. Victor will soon become a player in the Art World when he formed a partneship with his two daughters, one the world famous artist, Rosamond, who would a month later form a partnership with Lawrence Chazen, a ficinacial advisor for J. Paul Getty who Andrew Cuomo of HUD accused of being a Loan Shark after he made a preditory loan to Mrs. Aikens who grandson played football with Mark Presco and Oakland High, he apearing with my brother in a year book. Maryk wanted to be another Golden Boy like Jackie Jensen.
Above is Vic and his business partner, whose brother was the head of the Meixan Mafia in San Quinton. Vic would drink with Art all night then brag to me about how he was a made man. The Captian would stay in his bathrobe all day, like Vinnie the Chin Giante. He was the singing Don, a member of the Barbershop Quartet. When you here this crooner crowing, the grimm reaper is not far behind.
My daughter hates me because I stopped drinking and drugging, because I was way biffer then life, and walked the hood with a white rabbit on a silver chain. I had to let that rabbit go. If I hadn’t, she would have never met her father. I love this Lost Child – to death! She has got to get a clue! My Oakland friends offered to take care of Heather’s fake father when he was outside my abode with a baseball bat screaming I was a dead man. Patrice Hanson said he was born of a dnferous Cicilian family.
But for Bruce Perlowin, and Mick getting blown off that roller coaster in Santa Cruz, Callahan and his ilk never busted me and my boys in the hood.
Jon Presco a.k.a. Oakland Jonny
Copyright 2012
Rosamond Press 
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