Ken Kesey is sick. Everybody's gotta say a toast for him tonight, wish him well. I'm not fuckin' around everybody's got to do this. He's the guy who bought the BUS. Come back here later this weekend and post the accounts of your toast. I think it would be a nice way to honor the man. Get back to yous later this weekend...
GRANTS PASS, Oregon (AP) -- Ken Kesey, the author of the best-selling novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and a pioneer of the psychedelic 1960s, was in critical condition at a Eugene hospital Friday, recovering from surgery for a tumor on his liver.
Kesey, 66, was operated on several weeks ago to remove a tumor found on his liver following complaints of abdominal pain, said longtime friend Ken Babbs.
"He's holding his own, but it looks like it will be a long, hard struggle," said Babbs. He spoke from his home in Dexter, not far from Kesey's home in Pleasant Hill.
Kesey was in critical condition at Sacred Heart Medical Center, said Diane Mattoon, a hospital spokeswoman.
Kesey burst onto the literary scene with "Cuckoo's Nest" in 1962, which he wrote from his experiences working at a veterans hospital.
During the same period, Kesey volunteered for testing on the drug LSD. After writing his second novel, "Sometimes a Great Notion," he bought an old school bus dubbed "Further."
With Neal Cassidy, hero of Jack Kerouac's beat generation classic "On the Road," at the wheel and pitchers of LSD-laced Kool-Aid in the cooler, Kesey and a band of friends who called themselves The Merry Pranksters took a trip across America to the New York World's Fair.
It would be 28 years before Kesey published his third major novel, "Sailor Song" in 1992, and he later said he lost interest in the novel as an art form after discovering the magic of the bus.
The bus ride was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 account, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."
The movie version of "Cuckoo's Nest" swept the 1974 Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best actor and best actress. But Kesey, who has never seen the film, sued the producers because it took the viewpoint away from the character of the schizophrenic American Indian, Chief Bromden.
Kesey, who was diagnosed with diabetes in 1992, set down roots in Pleasant Hill in the mid-'60s, after serving four months in jail for a marijuana bust in California.
His rambling red barn-house has become a landmark of the psychedelic era, attracting visits from myriad strangers in tie-dyed clothing seeking enlightenment
Oh No!
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mccutcheon
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Oh No!
Time to morn the passing of another great writer. Shit there ain't many left.
Ken Kesey (1935-2001)
Novelist, 60s Icon Ken Kesey Dies
(AP) - Ken Kesey, whose LSD-fueled bus ride became a symbol of the psychedelic 1960s after he won fame as a novelist with ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' died Saturday morning. He was 66. Kesey died following cancer surgery on his liver at Sacred Heart Medical Center, according to a nursing supervisor who would not give her name. The hospital's Web site listed Kesey as ``deceased.''
Ken Kesey (1935-2001)
Novelist, 60s Icon Ken Kesey Dies
(AP) - Ken Kesey, whose LSD-fueled bus ride became a symbol of the psychedelic 1960s after he won fame as a novelist with ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' died Saturday morning. He was 66. Kesey died following cancer surgery on his liver at Sacred Heart Medical Center, according to a nursing supervisor who would not give her name. The hospital's Web site listed Kesey as ``deceased.''
Oh No!
Cheers, Ken
Happy Birthday, Jenny
Jenny is gorgeous. She just turned twenty-three on Friday, thin but curvy (in the good ways). She's got long brown hair past the middle of her back. She looks like a hippy chick. She was wearing a rainbow tie-dyed t-shirt and her hair was pulled back in a baby blue bandana. Just beautiful, but she's not a hippy chick. She kept making me put in Metallica and do shots of tequila with her. In all ways a fantastic individual.
We were smoking weed out of a crack pipe at around one o'clock when someone mentioned Jack Nicholson. "Shit, I thought. He was in 'Cuckoo's Nest'." It jogged my memory.
"Everybody, everybody, I've got something to say. I've got a toast to make."
I told them about Ken Kesey being sick. I told them about the Pax Acidus bulletin board and I said "I've gotta make a toast tonight and I'm going to tell my friends about it, but on Jenny's birthday I though we should drink to Ken Kesey and wish him well."
Everybody (a room of about 30 people) joined in, clinking their glasses. Jenny gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Happy Birthday, Jenny.
Cheers, Ken.
Happy Birthday, Jenny
Jenny is gorgeous. She just turned twenty-three on Friday, thin but curvy (in the good ways). She's got long brown hair past the middle of her back. She looks like a hippy chick. She was wearing a rainbow tie-dyed t-shirt and her hair was pulled back in a baby blue bandana. Just beautiful, but she's not a hippy chick. She kept making me put in Metallica and do shots of tequila with her. In all ways a fantastic individual.
We were smoking weed out of a crack pipe at around one o'clock when someone mentioned Jack Nicholson. "Shit, I thought. He was in 'Cuckoo's Nest'." It jogged my memory.
"Everybody, everybody, I've got something to say. I've got a toast to make."
I told them about Ken Kesey being sick. I told them about the Pax Acidus bulletin board and I said "I've gotta make a toast tonight and I'm going to tell my friends about it, but on Jenny's birthday I though we should drink to Ken Kesey and wish him well."
Everybody (a room of about 30 people) joined in, clinking their glasses. Jenny gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Happy Birthday, Jenny.
Cheers, Ken.