PAUL KRASSNER: Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel

Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel

By PAUL KRASSNER

A recent obituary in the Los Angeles Times began: "Bernie Boston, the photojournalist who captured the iconic image of a young Vietnam War protester placing a flower in the barrel of a rifle held by a National Guardsman died...The photo known as 'Flower Power' became Boston's signature image and earned him acclaim in the world of photojournalism. Taken during an antiwar march on the Pentagon on Oct. 22, 1967, the photo was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize."

The protester, not identified, was Joel Tornabene. In my autobiography -- Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, published by Simon & Schuster in 1993--I described him as "an unheralded Yippie organizer known as Super-Joel. His grandfather was Mafia boss Sam Giancana, but Super-Joel had dropped out of the family business. Instead, he let his hair grow long and distributed LSD. The intelligence division of the Chicago Police Department warned Giancana that Super-Joel shouldn't hang around with me. The cops were telling the *Mafia* that *I* was a bad influence. It could've been worse. The FBI planned to 'neutralize' Dick Gregory by alerting the Mafia to his verbal attacks on the crime syndicate."

Super-Joel once told me, "If it wasn't for acid, I with my Sicilian ancestry and you with your Jewish ancestry, we would never have become such close friends." And he kissed me on the forehead. But that was okay. It meant love now, not murder.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/krassner02022008.html

I really do miss this sort of thing around here during the Crazy Season.


KnR

Tom

Once Giants walked the earth & raised bloody hell.

Best to you,
LST