Where Is Good Old American Weirdness?

[realp]

i don't see this already here on the board, so i'm posting it. i suspect that many rig_int readers will have their differences with rosenbaum, as i do.<br><br>- - - - - - - - -<br><br>10 August 2005<br><br>Voices in Our Head: Where Is Good Old American Weirdness?<br><br>By Ron Rosenbaum<br><br>So where do you find Truly Weird America these days? Does the “Ghost Worldâ€

[robertdreed]

It's findable. Trust me d;'P<br><br>I wonder if Ron Rosenbaum still smokes herb...he got his first regular journalism gig with <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->, as "R", the "Cannabis Connossieur." He was a good friend of the founder of <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->, an Air Force brat named Tom Forcade- I think that was his real name. As a result, Rosenbaum (by his own account) had eased into a gig as quasi-official pot and hash taster for Forcade- who was, for several years in the 1970s, one of the biggest pot wholesalers in New York City. <br><br>Forcade started <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> in 1975, with the profits from his marijuana importing business. But- sad story- about five years later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, a .22 bullet in the mouth. One of his editors, Dean Latimer, wrote his obit for the magazine, concurring with the official verdict of "suicide." According to Latimer, Forcade was prone to bipolar mood swings, and, like many of the vanguard of '70s Youth Counterculture, had recklessly taken to cocaine rather than staying with marijuana. So Latimer had no doubt about Forcade taking his own life, due to manic depression exacerbated by the psychological edginess of a cocaine habit.<br><br>But sometimes I consider that perhaps Tom Forcade- who Rosenbaum once wrote was one of the biggest dealers on the East Coast, the first to use "mothership" freighters to bring in loads in the thousands of pounds from Colombia- had stumbled upon who his upstream connections actually consisted of...in retrospect, they were almost certainly with the Bay of Pigs Cubans, and the Trafficante mob out of Miami. And that knowledge may have helped lead to his unfortunate demise...even if it was by his own hand. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 8/11/05 8:16 am<br></i>

[ZeroHaven]

oh my goodness.. herb? This guy must be smokin crack..<br>or he doesn't know how to use a TV or the internet.<br><br>I've mentioned before, the other place I hang out at is a ghost study board. I can attest that most serious ghost hunting groups consider Coast to Coast AM to be in the same category as Weekly World News; the occasional true story buried under tons of not-so-cleverly concocted garbage.<br><br>Granted, ghost study and UFOlogy now have the benefit of modern gadgets and a scientific approach, but there's still plenty of people just snapping photos of graveyards just to "see if anything's there". Maybe dropping him into a poltergeist haunted home will clear things up. I'm sure I can assist in making arrangements.<br><br>Maybe he thinks we're being outclassed by fabulous <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/rubberjohnny.html" target="top">British Weirdness</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->? <br><br> <p><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--></p><i></i>

[glubglubglub]

.22 rounds are a top choice for professional hitmen when they can get direct, private access to the target: the bullets are small and soft enough that doing forensics on them is basically impossible. They're also not really powerful enough to be a sure thing unless you can shoot through the eyes or maybe the roof of the mouth, and are not very lethal when applied to any other area...most suiciders going for the gun route tend to use bigger calibres for more of a sure-thing effect. <p></p><i></i>

[robertdreed]

According to Dean Latimer, he got into a conversation with Tom Forcade shortly before his death. Latimer was trying to make a point about the connections between the forebrain, the midbrain, and the medulla oblongata in relation to the activity of some sorts of drugs...Latimer thought that his conversation topic may have unintintentionally influenced Forcade to choose his method of exit. But that's the way people proximate to the deceased often think, in the aftermath of a death like that.<br><br>Latimer quoted the surgeon who tried to save Forcade's life as noting that "we tried, but it was hopeless. If he'd used a .44, there would have been nothing left to try and save." <br><br>I'm recalling Latimer's obit/eulogy from memory...the death weapon might have been a .25 caliber pistol. But nothing larger. <br><br>The choice of weapon does sound odd, but I think that it was a weapon that was a personal possession of Forcade's...now I feel as if I need to confirm my recollections. <br><br>Fortunately, I've held on to quite a collection of the vintage-era HT magazines...most libraries shunned them, an excellent reason to pick up copies on eBay, in my opinion. Particularly 1970s-early 1980s era...<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> always carried a lot of articles by the "Liberation News Service"- another Forcade project- almost the only reporting on US covert ops and associated blowback generally available in the 1970s. Lots of newsclips every month, sometimes longer articles...<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>High Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> had by far the most in-depth reportage on the Bolivian Cocaine Coup and its aftermath. DEA agent Mike Levine himself attests to that. Levine should know, he was there. <br><br>Mike Levine's track record of questioning the high-level political protection granted by various US administrations to drug traffickers goes back a long ways. He was sending letters to <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Newsweek</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> on the topic as far back as the early 1980s, but the magazine never published them. See, Levine started out by "going through channels", humbly...he didn't just burst onto the media scene out of nowhere peddling a set of "inside revelations"...<br><br>I wonder what Rosenbaum, who's so respectable these days, recalls about Tom Forcade and the circumstances surrounding his death.<br><br>Well, it's about bedtime for this Bolo, seeya...<br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 8/11/05 10:50 am<br></i>

[hanshan]

<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.acidtrip.com/secure/forcade.htm" target="top">Tom Focade</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Forcade worked closely with Ron Rosenbaum on undermining the establishment. When Warner Brothers did a hippie movie entitled MEDICINE BALL CARAVAN, Forcade got David Peel and Rosenbaum to come with him in one of his stolen caddies, to harass the Warner Brother's cultural rip offs. Rosenbaum wrote about it for the Village Voice and a blow was struck against the empire.<br><br>The front for Forcade's dealing, smuggling and bombing empire was the Underground Press Syndicate, a sort of Dissociated Press of the underground. Each week his collective came out with another issue which was a compendium of the best in the underground press. Forcade attempted to join the White House Press corps but was rebuffed as a security risk, which he was, because given the opportunity he would have blown Nixon's head clean out from between his shoulders. The American Civil Liberties Union took his case but he was never able to get close to Nixscum. Forcade was issued Congressional Press Credentials and he pied a member of a pornography commission. Forcade dug porn and was not what he termed "a movementoid." <br><br>“Well, no one really knows,” Buddy said. “There is no doubt a combination of factors. I understand he was doing a lot of ludes, which make people depressed. Things weren’t well with him and his girl friend, Gabrielle---whom by this time he had married to keep her from testifying against him.<br><br>“Rumor also had it that Forçade had something to do with the 35 tons that got busted on a freighter right in Jamaica Bay in New York. A huge amount---maybe it wasn’t 35 tons but it was a very large amount. It got cracked very shortly before he committed suicide. He was also very depressed because his best friend Jack died in a plane crash. <br><br>“Jack uh….gee, we use to call him ‘Jack O’ Lantern,’ but I can’t remember his name. Forçade claimed that the DEA had put an altitude bomb in Jack’s plane and that they had murdered him, basically. Tom also sunk a lot of money in a movie, which was a disaster. It was going to be called the Smugglers or something like that. The storyline was that some guys would get released out of jail or out of some trouble that they were in but there was a load that was coming in from Colombia. They had to go build an airstrip on top of a mountain in Georgia’s Polk County. They had to go up there with a bunch of rednecks to cut down the trees and do these bulldozers and work day and night in order to put in this rough landing strip for a plane to come in and bring in all this weed. <br><br>“The rumor was that Forçade was making a movie about smuggling weed so that he could smuggle some weed while he was making the movie. I don’t know if he did or not because the weed that was movie didn’t look particularly realistic to me. Somehow, they screwed up the sound. The sound recording of the movie was very bad and Forçade had a screening of the movie in some MGM studio for some insiders and things like that. <br><br><br><br>“At this time there was a rivalry between High Times---Tom Forçade---and Dana Beal, who was from Yipster Times. The Yipster Times was the only nationally distributed underground newspaper in America and it was the official organ of the Youth International Party. It later became Overthrow Magazine. See, Forçade came from the tradition of the underground journalist and he was the founder of the UPS, which is the Underground Press Syndicate. They had offices on Broadway but there was this inherent rivalry between him and Dana. <br><br>In the end, Tom shot himself in the head with a pearl-handled, small caliber pistol. He didn’t die right away but remained in a coma for more than a day. <br><br>“Yeah,” Buddy said, “but that kind of coma must be like having a bad dream where you can’t wake up. Usually when you have a bad dream you wake but imagine if you are in a coma and having a bad dream and you can’t wake up---shit! That’s a problem, you know. And he did it with a little gun, a small caliber revolver. He didn’t even know how to do it. Too young to die and he didn’t even know how to kill himself properly. But he was a true social architect. <br><br>“Forçade defined the marijuana culture as a good culture. He helped make it clear that there a millions of people who smoke marijuana in America and that they deserve to have their opinions known, their ideas respected and they are not criminals---aside from violating the marijuana laws! That they are, by and large honest, hard-working, law-biding, taxpaying citizens who shouldn’t be victimized by government out of control. That they should have a voice, representation and they should have a forum by which they could express themselves and communicate openly about important issues of the day. <br><br>“Tom helped organize the marijuana culture to go on and deal with important issues of the day. High Times went on to do a lot of breaking through. The magazine, from time to time---just like people or organizations lose their way. They stray from the path that they first set out to walk. There was a time when cocaine became very fashionable and the magazine succumbed to that hype---even though, as you so aptly point out, coke is a lie. But the magazine fell for the lie for a while. Then they had to deal with the advertising pressure. What they could advertise and what they couldn’t. They would have some sexy ads too and feminists would be upset about it because they would show sexy young woman in revealing poses. There were adulterants at one point that they allowed to advertise---chemicals which would adulterate drugs. <br><br>”High Times was not a non-profit organization for the public good. But they did do a tremendous amount of public good. They warned people about the dangers of paraquot when the government was out to poison people by poisoning marijuana---then it was in Mexico and then it would come up here and people would smoke it and who knows what would happen?</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>

[hanshan]

<br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>It never would have happened if <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.cures-not-wars.org/ibogaine/chap01.html" target="top">Tom Forcade</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> hadn't shot himself in the head.<br><br>Forcade, who'd built HIGH TIMES up to 4 million readers by being six months ahead on new trends, was the only one who could keep the functions of his sprawling Empire reconciled. But by October 1978, hounded by the DEA and acutely depressed by scheming, ambitious underlings as well as the death of his best friend Jack in a plane crash in Florida, the King was at the end of his tether. <br><br><br>With HIGH TIMES, Forcade pioneered the true marijuana mass market. Before he died he tried to create the same acceptability for his other favorite drug, cocaine. But he always drew the line at heroin. He and Dana Beal had done the first march against CIA heroin July 4, 1971. He knew, even though the William Burroughs groupies were dogging him the year before his suicide to do it, that this was one line the magazine should not cross.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>

[lemonang]

This morning I pulled a copy of The Dick Gibson Show from my bookshelf to read on the way to work. It's been sitting there neglected for a couple years. "About time I read this," I thought. So I get to work and break time rolls around and I pay a visit to RI, a daily routine, but this time I decide to check out the discussion board, something I've only done one other time, a couple months ago. The first thing I read is this post about The Old Weird America and the author's enthusiasm for Elkin and The Dick Gibson Show. I mean, it's not like I took The Da Vinci Code from the bookshelf. ... 'nuff said ... <p></p><i></i>