I'm not sure when Del came upon PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA.... it might have been when he was with Ken Kesey and the Acid Test.

 

Now this brings up several issues best dealt with in the monolog chapter. Which is this one.

 

First, how on earth can you, the reader believe the stories written of here?

 

There was a great hillbilly bar in the loop at 54 West Randolph Street, where the Psychotronic Film Society was based as was the Woods grindhouse movie theater. The hillbilly bar was where the working class whites would go and listen to the SUNDOWNERS play cool old school country (including a great version of GHOST RIDERS IN THE SKY one of my top five favorite songs).

 

 I had discovered the bar when I was living downtown illegally after Art Girl (more on that later) and even tried many of the over 50 kinds of chili they had there. The Woods showed Black films and the Bar Double R catered to transplanted southern whites. Quite a mix passed each other every day.

 

The bar itself was caked in tobacco residue which gave everything country and western on the walls a yellow hue. The jukebox was a country music fans dream machine.

 

So Del and I are sitting in the bar, I'm drinking beer and he's talking to me about doing GET SMART! and what that show was like to work on when all of a sudden a redneck looked up and said, "He's kiddin' ya kid" and I saw at least two episodes he was on but as the comments came up from the patrons sitting at the bar I watched as Del was disbelieved. He laughed it off, said he had more fun doing his scene with Sean Connery in THE UNTOUCHABLES and the bar was having none of that.

 

No one believed him!

 

Biographers have had problems sorting out the myth from the mythtakes to the point where one author I knew had his editor strike a portion of an article that mentioned Del running the light show for the Ken Kesey Acid Tests while blasted on speed. When the bus came to town those "in the know" would get ready for an LSD party. There was no corroborating evidence so it couldn't be written about.

 

 

I got a bootleg video from eBay of Acid Test footage and watched it before setting up my play THE ACID TEST 1966 ( I played Albert Hubbard the CIA agent that turned on a nation as well as directed that show) with musical genius Mark Mothersbaugh and lo and behold in the middle of the footage- was Del. Doing the light show and speeding his brains out. That editor was wrong. So were the people at the bar.

 

How do you know Del had L. Ron Hubbard for a therapist, was in GET SMART or THE UNTOUCHABLES with Sean Connery or anything else for that matter?

 

Because I fucking say so, that's why. Frankly my life has been far too interesting to have to make up anything. It simply isn't necessary.

 

Del is even more so.

 

Got it?

 

Now where was I, oh yes, the Discordians.

 

Here was the chain of counter culture command for the baby boomer crowd, in order of appearance after World War 2:

 

OUTLAWS/ DELINQUENTS/PARTY TILL YOU PUKE -

http://www.boozefighters18.com/frames_history.html  (click on the link for the true story of the biker "riot" that became the basis for the Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin film THE WILD ONE.

favorite drugs: Booze

 

BEATS aka BEATNIK a play on the Russian word Sputnik and a putdown.

Favorite drugs: booze, coffee, speed, heroin. More speed.

 

DIGGERS - believed that everything should be free, and made me many a great meal!

 Between the Beats and the hippies- favorite drugs- what you got?

 

HIPPIES -

FAVORITE DRUGS: High man!

 

The Discordians came out sometime between the beats and the Diggers and saw order in chaos. Or at least, in the book stated that chaos was as important as order and has its own unique emerging order- about 50 years before physicists said the same thing and centuries after Zen Buddhists made much the same argument.

 

After the war men had enough of order. The founders of the Hell's Angels had been in the military! Men began to wonder if they should rush into marriage after high school and PLAYBOY arrived on the scene to tell those men there was fun to be had before settling down. Beats broke from the order of the day- practicing free loving and free drugging, with their minds wrapped around poetry and Buddhism and heroin and anything to be different from the L7's, the squares. The Diggers had survived the downers and uppers, and enjoyed watching one American style dying out as a new one emerged.

 

Of course women would respond in kind and begin wondering about their place as the men did as well.

Principia Discordia was a written drug high, a blast that began with five copies made of it and was reprinted, added to, quoted from and built over the years. It would lead to the ILLUMINTUS TRILOGY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus%21_Trilogy  which is well worth wrapping your brain around.

World War 2 had many effects on the people of the time- but the vast majority were "with the program". There weren't a lot of beats, yet their influence continues to this day. There weren't but five potential Discordians, and it grew as hipsters discovered it.

Del had discovered that when you went with improv and just a few rules, from chaos scenes would emerge. Could a structure be devised that would lend itself to long form improvisations?

Some French authors writing to a very small audience, held the key .