Hail To The Cheese (The Hip Chicks No. 5)

Ellie and Millie, the Skooby Dooby Sisters, planned to celebrate President’s Day in the most presidential place in the USA, Washington DC. They boarded a squaresville Greyhound Bus from their Bohemian digs in Manhattan, Greenwich Village to be exactarooni, and headed to the Nation’s capitol.

Playing chess using a standard sized board on the bus proved to be quite a challenge. Every time the bus driver cut a wide turn the chess pieces would slide across the board, some even rolling across the aisle under people’s feet.

“Man!” Ellie tossed her blonde hair. “Who goofed?”
"My rook just split the scene! Crazy, baby”, Millie scratched her auburn rat’s nest of hair.
"How long will it take for us to get to President land?"
"Another four and a half hours, sister".
"But, baby, we've already been cooling out in this sled for half an hour. Man! Can't this bus make like a rocket and blast off?"

They both banged their moccasins impatiently against the floor, in addition to rating disapproving stares for their velvet trousers and floral tunic blouses. The snooty riders were worn-out women in dull house dresses and pipe smoking men in moldy suits with porkpie hats. How bland they looked against the colorful highway seen beyond the bus window. One day color would win the war against black and white, but not during the sensible Fifties.

Ellie opened up her tiny [paperback edition of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" while Millie threw open her oversized library book "Famous Presidents of the United States - Illustrated Edition". She thrilled at the large oil painted portraits of Millard Fillmore, John Tyler and Rutherford B. Hayes.

"Millard Fillmore, the last Whig President...groovy, check out his silver feathers!"
"Whig prez...is he wearing a wig?"
"I don't know, keed..."
"Rutherford B. Hayes! Check out the crazy face bush!"
"He looks like Mad Man Zack! You know, that real gone poet who doesn't write poetry!"
"Shazzzzz yeah!"

"What state would you like to be born in?"
"Ohio, of course. There have been more presidents from Ohio than from any other state in the country".
"Ohio is never square. It's round on the sides and high in the middle".
"I dig, baby, I dig".

Their banter over the Presidents went well on until the end of the ride, guaranteeing them a quick exit from the bus just to shut them up. They didn't care because the sun was out, the birds were singing and Washington was making with the crazy cherry trees all over town.

Walking through the town, Millie's eyes glazed at the canopy of pink trees that enveloped them.
"Man, it's like cotton candy antennas can you dig it?"
"I dig the scene, sister".
Their heads spun around like spinning tops with ratted hair and lipstick.

"There's the FBI Building!"
"I see the Capitol! All those square cats are probably raising taxes in there right now!"
"Crazy!"

Gray haired men in suits puffing pipes carrying briefcases were staring at our freaky hipster girls. All was fine until the girls walked along the Potomac and neared the Washington Monument, where they saw a bald man in horn-rimmed glasses wearing a striped coat and a straw hat holding a placard and screaming, "IMPEACH EISENHOWER!"

The sign he held said, "J. EDGAR HOOVER IS A COMMIE SPY!
THE BIBLE TELLS US SO!!!!"

He had cymbals attached to his legs and a harmonica holder on his shoulders. Every few seconds he'd lock his legs, smashing the cymbals. He hollered, "IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT!" a couple times and then blow a tuneless blast from his harmonica. BLEEP BLEEP BLEH!

Every time he'd blow his harmonica the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses would fog up like a car windshield in a snow storm.
"That's one beat musician, Millie!"
"Yeah, he'd really make the scene at The Screaming Bean!"
The bum's ears perked up when he noticed the girls approaching.

"Ladies, ladies. Did you know that President Dwight David Eisenhower is really a Communist spy just like J. Edgar Hoover and they've been wire tapping my house and Mamie Van Doren's house too?"
"Wild, Daddy! Lay some more of that dingy harmonica rebop on us!"
BLEEP BLEEP BLEH!

"Girls, girls, girls! Spread the word! President Dwight David Eisenhower and J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are plotting and planning on kidnapping Mister Arthur Godfrey and cutting his tongue off and cutting out his brain, we must -"
"Why?"
"Because he knows too much!"
"Wild! I thought they'd get Steve Allen first".
"No, no, no, no he's next. And then they're going to kidnap Tennessee Ernie Ford and shoot him off in a space capsule!!"

"Dragsville!" they said together.
"Girls, call the Washington Post before it's too late. This is HIGHLY CLASSIFIED information".
"Blow some more harp, Daddy!" Ellie hopped up and down, clapping her hands.
BLEEP BLEEP BLEH!

Millie frowned. "If I knew there'd be a jam session at the Washington Monument I would've brought my finger cymbals".
"And my bongos".
"HOOVER IS A COMMIE!" the man yelled to no one in particular.

"Hey, Dad, could you tell us where we'd go to find the Grover Cleveland Women's Club, or the Ulysses S. Grant Social Hall?"
The man's body stiffened, his face became glassy eyed, and then he mechanically pointed ahead to the west.
"Go yonder. As it says in The Bible!"

"Cool!"
"Let's go, he looks like he's on the lush".
"Or blowing Merry Wanna from Tea Wanna!"

The girls walked awhile and stopped in front of the Jefferson Memorial. There was a small group of shaggy college students marching up and down in front carrying placards screaming, "BAN THE BOMB! BAN THE BOMB!"

"Dig it baby, these hepcats are protesting and they're not blowing any mouth harps either".
"NO MORE ATOMIC BOMBS!"
"What about Steve Allen? Or Tennessee Ernie Ford? Isn't that important too?" Ellie asked.
"NO MORE TRINITY! NO MORE LOS ALAMOS!"
"Where's Grover Cleveland?" Millie asked.

"Millie? Ellie? Are you girls here to protest the A Bomb, too?" a young man's voice chimed behind them. They spun around, and it was -
"SCRUFFY!"
Yes, it was their Village crush, Scruffy, young beat stud Sterling Holloway Scarborough IV, black-haired with a neatly trimmed goatee and dressed in his black sweater and blacker chinos. "Did you girls say you wanted to hear some music?" He picked up a flute and started blowing some cool Mingus lines. Mulligan would have approved.

Ellie went into her wild interpretive dance to the flute playing. The college kids kept up their protest.
"NO MORE NAGASAKI! STOP THE BOMBS NOW!!!"

Millie walked carefully past the protesters and went inside the monument, reading the inscription about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She pulled out a bag of almonds, ate one and felt stuffed. She liked the Jefferson Memorial just fine but thought it would have been a lot better if it had a Martin Van Buren statue instead.

Presidents pictured above: Chester A. Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Buchanan. Lead illustration by Rebecca Seven.

Dig That Crazy Bird

The Scooby Dooby sisters, Millie and Ellie were oblivious to the fact that it was the third Thursday in November. Millie industriously painted a stiff, wooden chair with Duco house paint. At first she applied a red coat but then decided to go abstract and add small slashes of yellow and green, making the Jackson Pollock scene. Ellie busied herself brushing her hair 100 times, a favorite pastime particular to blonde girls.

Millie found herself stuck to her paint brush as her hair got stuck to the quickly drying paint on the brush. "Ow! Not cool! Sis!!"
Ellie found herself in a similar predicament when her brush got deeply tangled in her hair and she couldn't pull it out anymore. "What a drag! Sis!!!"

Millie raced over to her sister with a big paint brush dangling from her hair like a clunky ear ring. "Help, my branches are all stuck!"
"Mine too!"
Ellie began pulling the paint brush out of her sister's hair as Millie reached over to pull the hairbrush out of her sister's head. Both of them twisted and cussed as their groovy crash pad door opened and their rich, fat, gray-haired mother strode in wearing her customary pill box hat, silver fox mink stole and Cartier pearls.
"Oh, girls, what foolishness are you up to now?"
"Mother!!!" they wailed at the same time.
Mother Huntington rolled her eyes and grabbed a rusty butter knife from the kitchen. "How many times have I told you girls to cut that monstrously long hair of yours? Oh well, I suppose this'll do. Once I cut your hair and you change out of your rags you're coming home for Thanksgiving dinner".
"Mother!!" they both wailed.

**********************

Although Millie and Ellie were hip, card-carrying beatnik sisters they were strictly trust fund brats and had to put up with occasional inconveniences like family get togethers, i.e. Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner was held at the Huntington family's stuffy Park Avenue penthouse with the gray-haired squares sitting at the large dining room table and the youngsters sitting at the tiny Japanese-style table.

"Hubert's closing a highly lucrative account in Tokyo, even as we speak. They're selling low after that terrible war", Mother Huntington told the guests. "We're doing our part to help those unfortunate little Buddhist peasants". The guests nodded, grunted with a few "here heres" and sipped their expensive wine. There were several candelabras at the table even though the dining room had the brightest chandelier money could buy.

"Bodhisattva bebop", Ellie whispered to Millie. "Dad's making the Buddha scene".
"I dig, chick. I'm just jazzed Mom didn't get a chance to slash all our weeds".
"Zilch, baby. As soon as she copped my locks off that crazy brush I split out of the pad".
"Me too, baby. And she didn't get a chance to flip our threads, either!"
They both giggled, but Millie quickly frowned when Grimly the butler placed two heaping plates of Thanksgiving dinner in front of them.

"What's with the feast? Maaaannnn!"
"Hold the banquet, baby, I don't dig".
"Thanksgiving dinner", Grimly announced, "Per Lady Huntington's request". He dashed away, disgusted by the scruffy debutantes sitting Indian style on the floor by their meals. He looked back and caught a sight of Ellie taking off her moccasins and shivered with disgust, dashing into the kitchen.

Millie began industriously building an abstract sculpture out of her mashed potatoes and stuffing, building an upper tier of yams and stacking the rooftop with slabs of turkey.

Lady Huntington glanced over at her daughters' kiddie table, did a horrified double take and stopped her dissertation on Coco Chanel's latest collection.
"Millicent, what on earth are you doing?" Everyone at the adults table stared at them with smarmy disdain.
"I call it 'Ode To A High Rise'", Millie tossed her hair proudly. "Isn't it the most?"
Lady Huntington turned three shades of red and roared, "Child, you'll be the death of me yet!"
"Must they be here? The air has a faint...aroma...of narcotics", a silver-haired man with an enormously red face burbled.
"That's patchouli, Gramps!" Millie purred.
"Oh, alright, get out. Oh, these unruly children!" Lady Huntington poo-hooed.

"LET'S SPLIT THIS WAX MUSEUM!" Ellie grabbed Millie's hand and they promptly walked out the door, but not until Millie stopped at a bowl of fruit.
"Wax fruit!" Millie smirked, "You cats must be putting us on!"
"OUT!!!!!!"

**********************

Millie and Ellie made a detour home to their favorite coffee house, The Pony Espresso, where coffee, chess, and their hipster crush Scruffy worked. Dave Brubeck was blasting on the hi-fi and a few scattered beats were sitting around reading poetry and sketching with plates of food by their side.

"Dig that grocery store rebop, Sister", Millie whispered to Ellie, "Is today Food Day?"
"Gadzooks", Ellie scratched her head, "Foodarama, like feast-a-rooni".
Scruffy ambled up to them as they sat down at a table.
"Aloha, chicks", Scruffy brought over a tray with two espressos, the way the girls liked it, hot and strong. They thought Scruffy was hot and strong, too. "Got some atomic bomb juice, on the house".

Millie grabbed a chess board from the book case in the corner as Ellie asked Scruffy, "What's with the food scene, Daddy? I don't savvy, Pappy".
Scruffy stroked his groovy goatee and said, "You don't dig, Baby? Today's Thanksgiving Day. We give thanks for giving and today I'm making with the banquet scene".
"Coolness! Lay it on me, Hepcat".
"Grab a plate and pile on some grub - it's on the pub".
"Solid!"

The two girls ambled over listlessly to the buffet table. Ellie put two cubes of yam, three teaspoonfuls of cranberries and half a slice of pumpkin pie. Millie piled on a tablespoonful of bread pudding and half a slice of mince pie. She grabbed three pecans for later if she got hungry.
"I'm gonna get so stuffed", Ellie mumbled.
"I dig, like my plate is jammed like Grand Central Station", Millie peered at the meager helpings.

They put their food down and started playing chess. Scruffy walked up and said, "Happy Thanksgiving, chicks".
"Yeah, like Happy Thanks for Giving, Scruffy. You're the most and squares are toast".

An old math professor came in and started reciting some way out poetry about the Mayflower and Pocahontas being a real gone squaw and the pilgrims wearing those crazy toppers and the two girls felt warmer than they felt in months. The food grew cold on their plates but they couldn't guzzle their coffees fast enough! Like, Endsville.

Christmas With The Hip Chicks

Saddle up a satellite, baby, and I’ll spin you a wild yarn about two hip chicks, the Scooby Dooby Sisters, why they might be the craziest chicks you ever did seed, keed. It was Christmas Day and Ellie and Millie bugged out on making the scene at their Mom’s humble three-story pad. They stayed in and sipped their holiday espressos, digging their crazy Christmas branch, a thick branch from an elm tree with a red balloon on it with glitter. There were four presents under this Christmas branch. One for each of them from their mother and one they bought for each other.

Ellie, the blonde with the ironed hair, opened up her Christmas gift from Moms, and pulled out a beautiful black Christian Dior formal. “Dig this. What am I supposed to do with these crazy threads?”
Millie, her sister with the ratted out auburn locks, shook her shoulder. “Zilch! She laid a century on you, though”, and pointed towards the $100 bill that fell out of the package.
“Crazy! Benjamin Franklin, dig those crazy shades. Never did make the presidential scene”.
“What a drag”.
Millie opened up her package from Mom and another $100 bill tumbled out along with a necklace of double string pearls. “Pearls? Dresses? Man, somebody GOOFED!”

Ellie picked up something that looked like a pair of bongos poorly wrapped up in some newspaper scraps stuck together with scotch tape that had blonde hair strands stuck on the ends.
“Hey, sis, dig this crazy present”.
“Man, that’s one suave-looking gift, lay it on me, chick”, Millie grabbed it and tore off the wrapping. “New bongos! They’re the most!”
“Lay some sounds on me!” Millie drummed wildly on the bongos while Ellie did a wild interpretive dance. This went on for five minutes until they both got tired.
Millie picked up her package and thrust it at Ellie. “Dig my bodacious bundle. Merry Commercial Christmas!”
Ellie tore open her package and it was a stolen library book called, “Famous Presidents In American History”.
“Ooh, solid, baby! All my faves are here: William McKinley, James Buchanan, the only swinging single President ever, Millard Fillmore –“
“-and don’t forget Zachary Taylor, the coolest President alive. He split the scene seven weeks after he got elected!”
“Yeah, he cut out right after he copped the Big Chief gig!”
The chicks got so jazzed that Millie picked up her dirty bongos again and Ellie went into her abstract expressionist dance with her book in her hands, the very stern face of Abraham Lincoln peering out of the cover. Her wicked dance cast shadows set by the flickering candle in the room, the shadows playing against the cheap Picasso prints and bullfight poster on the wall of their humble beatnik apartment.

Well, the dolls got so tired from dancing and crashing from their caffeine jag that they both sacked out on the sofa, making the sandman scene, both snoring more atonally than Brubeck, Mulligan and Kenton all put together.

___________________ _______________________ ______________

Millie and Ellie stood around a dark ballroom with brightly colored gels projected on a stage. There were hipsters of all sizes wearing brightly colored clothes and the men had hair as long as the girls they were with.

“Dig this crazy fallout shelter!” Millie’s crazy orbs got big clocking the weirdo establishment they were standing around in.
Ellie nodded. “Like nervous, baby, nervous! These cats got some caveman action going on, hair down to their-“
“Say girls”, a hippie with a bushy beard and Ben Franklin shades walked up to them. “I’ve never seen you chicks make the scene at the Fillmore West before. What’s shaking?” He handed them both a dirty, wilted flower that smelled like sweaty dogs.
“I dig your glasses, Clyde, you got that presidential thing going on, bippity bop, boop bop”.
“Far out, sunshine! They call me Star Sailor. Hey, are you going to the Love-In at the park by Haight Street this Saturday? The Dead are gonna be jamming.”
“You wanna transpose that in another key, Long Hair Daddy. Why would you be loving a place called Hate Street? That’s abstract!”
“Dead people jamming, chicky”, Millie added, “that’s some freaky rebop!”
“Later, chicks, much, much, later”, the hippie walked away, disgusted.
“What’s his scene?” Ellie asked.
“Too many test patterns. Sold American”.

A voice came over the PA as a band got on stage. “Give a warm Fillmore West welcome to Big Brother and The Holding Company”.
The band tore into their opening number and Janis Joplin started squalling. “Why-ie-ie-ie I need a man to lo-ove…”
“Man, dig those crazy branches! I gotta have a major pow-wow with her”.
Janis shrieked for two more numbers. "Love's like uh bawwwllll-een-chayunnnn- waw-wowow..."
“She’s flipping out!”
“What a drag!”
“When does she make with the finger cymbals?”
A stoned girl in a huge mu-mu crashed into them and fell flat on her back, prompting our two hipsters to split towards the back of the club.
“Flip city!”
“Bugsville, like too bugged out!”

They looked around the club near the back and noticed one of their heroes double-fisting beers and chatting up an acid-bleached hippie hag.
“Neal Cassady? What’s he doing here?”
“Man, he looks beat, like more beat than he’s ever been beat”.
“What a drag. Mayhaps Sal Paradise or Ginsberg are making the scene, too”.
“Man, Cassady, he looks like fell off one of Kerouac’s crazy peaks and didn’t miss a boulder”.
“Neurotic”.

“You chicks made the scene! Far out!” a familiar voice piped up behind them. They spun around and smiled to see –
“SCRUFFY!” they both yelled. It was their beatnik crush, Scruffy aka Sterling Holloway Scarborough IV, hipper and even richer than them with a large trust fund. His hair was a little longer than they remembered, but his cooler looks were still as solid as ever.
“Man, what is this tee-pee we’re at? Clue us in”, Ellie asked.
“It’s 1967, you’re in San Francisco, it’s the Summer of Love, dig? This is the Fillmore West, where it’s all happening. Those crazy test patterns are called a light show and these kids are grooving to Janis on some prime psychedelic Owsley, baby”.
“Ows-what?”
“Acid, baby, acid!”
“No coffee? Bongos? Poetry readings?”
“Negative, but all the interpretive dancing you ever did see”, he pointed at a 300-pound girl nine months pregnant doing an Arabic snake dance with herself. “Dig that crazy way-out doll, she strips at a groovy club to all the square johns down on North Beach".
“You must be putting us on!”
Millie looked perplexed. “But why is it 1967? We're from 1955”.
“Just let your mind flow, dig the ride while it lasts”, Scruffy smiled. “Have some love beads”, and he placed love beads on both their necks. “Gotta split, like dig ya later. OOOOOM".

____________ ____________________ _______________

Janis finished her set and the girls moved up towards the front. The stench of pot was overwhelming, hemp stank of marijuana so thick you could cut it with a saber.

A short, thick Japanese girl with fried black hair down to her ankles got on stage with a guitarist playing noisy feedback. “Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, KYOKOKYOKOKYOKO, AIEEEEEEE!” She shrieked and wailed like a cat caught in a threshing machine. The Hip Chicks clutched their ears and winced with pain.
“Bad scene!”
“Whaaaat?”
“BAD SCENE!”
“We gotta split from this oxygen tent, like, NOW!”

“AAAIIIIIIEEEEE, PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE, GET IN THE BAG, KYOKO!” She growled and screamed, her demented Japanese witch face all screwed up. The high-pitched frequencies of her shrieking coupled with her grotesque features made our girls cry.
“Cut the rebop, Kabuki Witch!” Ellie cried, tears streaming down her face.
“Make with that square Hollywood jazz, sister, say it!”
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, Ellie chanted, clicking her scuffed moccasins over and over again. “There’s no place like home!”

_______________ _____________ _____________

Millie and Ellie both woke up from the sofa to the piercing whine of the test pattern with the Injun head on their tiny television set.

“I just had the craziest dream, sister”.
“I dig, like ditto. It was wilder than that test pattern on the boob tube”.
“Scruffy was in mine, and–“
“Me too, and Neal Cassady was in it making like a dirty old man, dig!”
“Yeah, and this beat geisha witch was screaming about bags and peace–“
“Ditto, chicky baby, ditto! That voice of hers jammed my wavelength.”

“Let’s cross our paws and wish it stays 1955 forever”.
“I dig, 1967 sounds like a stone cold drag”.
“All I gotta say is, we wish you a real gone gasser this Yuletide”, they both smiled and said. “And a groovier New Year”.

Did Somebody Mention Patti Smith?

Once upon a time, many great new bands would forego playing auditoriums and instead do three night engagements at The Whiskey A Go-Go, The Roxy Theatre or The Starwood. These engagements would of course be over the weekend, and right around the time Patti Smith’s groundbreaking debut album “Horses” was released she booked a weekend engagement at The Roxy Theatre.

When buying tickets for a weekend engagement this was the rule of thumb: Friday, opening night, was always sold out and so packed that standing in the club was sweaty and uncomfortable. The performance was usually wobbly because the band was feeling out the shit PA and acoustics. It was so funky you never felt like you got your money’s worth. I avoided Fridays, which was easy because they sold out the quickest.

Saturdays were better, the band gaining more confidence with their material and understanding how to work the room. I remember a Saturday at The Whiskey A Go-Go featuring Blondie and her openers, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Both bands were having a lot of fun on stage. I shook Petty’s hand when it mattered(1977).

Sundays were the best. Nobody went out on Sunday night, it was closing night, the bands were fully confident and experimented on stage and interacted with the smaller audience and it was big, big fun. Did I mention that bands always played an early show and a late show? If you went on Sunday night you got to stay and watch the late show for free! I saw Patti Smith on Sunday night.

I had tickets for the late show (12 midnight) and stood in a longish line (Patti was already big because she pulled a bigger line on Sundays than anyone else). As I stood in line waiting for the early birds to leave I saw Peter Falk, Columbo, quietly strolling down Sunset Blvd. with his wife holding hands. They were so dressed down they fit in with everybody on the street, him in uncombed hair, dirty t-shirt and scummy jeans. The wife wore a plain house dress and didn’t give a Hollywood fuck what anybody thought. What a killer couple.

So! Anyway, Patti’s first set finally ended and out filed out the largest conglomeration of tragic lesbians I’ve ever seen: the bulls with their Ziggy Stardust Bowie haircuts in jumpsuits, the stark ‘n skinny folkie Peggy Liptons with no man-forced make-up on, angry debs in leather motorcycle caps, not a smiling dyke in the pack. It was severity on parade. Suzi Quatro was probably jealous as shit.

Patti Smith was not really punk rock but a kind of garage noise band. While Patti would recite her free-form poetry on “Birdland” her guitarist Lenny Kaye would make percussive noises on his guitar. I loved that line she sang in the Velvet Underground cover: “Don’t you know the blackest thing in Harlem is white?”

More Pattisms: “Redondo Beach is a place where women love other women”…”Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”…She kept her between-song patter to a minimum and kept the yackety-yak to performance poetry. Legendary shit. It’s one of those shows you’ll remember even when you’re seventy-five years old.

A year and a half later Patti came back for a spoken word show at The Roxy. By this point she was the toast of the town and this show was a star-studded event, a garage punk version of “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. While Patti scatted and recited selections from her books “Witt” and “Seventh Heaven” she was getting support from her band and John Cale, Buddy Miles (!), Iggy Pop, Ray Manzarek, and some guys from The Byrds, etc. The real show was outside: an extremely drunken Arthur Lee from Love was fighting with the bouncers outside and pulled a gun on them, by which point Sheriff’s Deputies were called and Lee ran down glamorous Sunset Blvd. cussing and yelling like Uncle Humphrey at the Easter Sunday BBQ church picnic. Love may have set the scene on the Strip way back when but The Roxy wasn’t having it.

At this point Patti’s head was getting bigger than ever and was given to silly dance moves (eventually breaking her neck at one show from it), even sillier statements to the press, posing as a PLO terrorist in photos and the audience shifted from the Beebo Brinker Knitting Circle to the Gabba Gabba ramones clones and Johnny Rotten wannabes. Our cult of misfit toys no longer had our beatnik cheerleader anymore; she was now the public domain of shopping center punks in suburban Southern California. But it’s cool. To be honest it never really had anything to do with Patti Smith, anyway.

The Screaming Bean

1954, Greenwich Village:
Millie and Ellie, The Skooby Dooby Sisters were hanging out at their wickedest coffee emporium, The Pony Espresso, playing chess very intently.
Millie lifted her head and peered through her ratted out brunette locks and mumbled, “Like can you imagine tape recording The Steve Allen Show off the boob tube and you could like play it over and over again?”
“Man, you’re getting too abstract for me. That’s almost as crazy as cats typing out messages to each other on a telephone they carry around in their back pocket!” Ellie coolly sniffed.
“A telephone – in your back pocket? Chick, you’re on a wilder rocket ship than me. But dig this, imagine typing your poetry on a typewriter and seeing it on a way-out TV set and cats from all over the world can read your crazy scrambles?”
“Yeah, dig, and they can print it on a tiny printing press next to the typewriter.”
“Man, are you crazy chicks drinking your tea or smoking it?”
“Scruffy!” they said in unison.

A quick word about Scruffy: His real name was Sterling Holloway Scarborough IV, and received an even larger trust fund than both transistor sisters combined, a secret he kept hidden better than they because boys keep secrets better than girls. Scruffy always managed to maintain his cool with only one exception, and that was when people assumed he was from the New Haven Scarboroughs who worked the galley on the Mayflower, which he wasn't. He was of the Newport Scarboroughs, who actually helmed the Mayflower. Such class distinctions were not to be bandied about. It was rumored he was the more affluent nephew of writer William S. Burroughs.

“Chicks, you better like cool on the smoke signals”, he growled with his piercing blue eyes blasting through his ruggedly good counter-culture looks. The sisters both stared at him with hipster love. “Hey! Dig the square tourists!” Scruffy grinned. “The golden-agers coming in at 2 on the clock!”
A very harried, well-dressed elderly couple raced up to the Skooby Doobies, and stared at them incredulously.
The elderly woman clutched her handbag and gasped in horror. “Oh! There you are, we searched high and low for you girls! Glenn, will you look at them?”
“Yes dear, I’m looking at them”, a dapper old man in a topcoat complied.
“You girls look like a pack of gypsies.”
“Yeah, well”, Millie’s left leg and right eye twitched nervously. “That’s like, your opinion, man”.
“Man? Man?? Did a sick raccoon apply your make-up? Didn’t you learn anything in finishing school?”
“Muth-errrrr…”
"You wanna, like, transpose that in a major key?"
“Look at your father. You’re breaking his heart! Do you enjoy breaking your father’s heart?”
“Well, actually dear, they're not as bad as those hooligan doctors trying to ruin my business by that dreadful report they released yesterday. Imagine, cigarettes killing people! Did you ever hear such trash!”
“That’s alright dear, we’ll be summering in the Hamptons with the Kefauvers. We’ll get old Estes to break up that gang.”
“Blast that Estes, I’ll call old Tailgunner Joe McCarthy on them, my old Air Force chum. He’ll sort those scoundrel butchers and run them back to medical school. Cancer, of all the confounding crazy ideas.”

Mother Huntington said, “You can’t believe the filthy hovels we trudged through to find you girls. First we went to the Two Much!”
“Went there yesterday”.
“And then we went to The Screaming Bean.”
“Screaming Bean? Made the scene at The Bean last night, Mama Rebop”.
“After that ordeal, we went to that flea pit The Psychiatrist’s Kouch, and promptly walked out.”
“The Psychiatrists’ Kouch? Man, that pad’s for squares.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, children. So then we went to The Eye Ball 8 Ball”.
“Did we go to the Ball this morning?” Ellie asked Millie.
Millie’s eye twitched nervously. “Aw, lemme concert trate…was it on Bleecker and Houston?”
“No, doll, that’s The Neurotics Club”.
“McDougal and Central?”
“Nix, baby, that’s The Stone Cold Dragg. That’s for square Jane tourists.”
“We ever make the scene at Magick Carpet Ryde?”
“Yeah, but they like, 86’ed us from there, remember?”
“No. We must have boppin’ around The Eye Ball 8 Ball, then.”
“Crazy!”
“You girls are crazy, and we’re going home. Right now!” Mother Huntington ordered.
“What are you doing, Eleanor? Why are you stroking your hand?”
Ellie’s eyes glazed. “Dig, I’m not stroking, I’m petting Katmandu. You’re giving her middle class persecution complexes.”
“What is she talking about, Glenn?”
“Dear, this opium den smells just like that Hindu costume party the Van Gelders threw at their estate at the Breakers after their hostile takeover of the First National–“
“Dig, Mommy-O, Katmandu is like our invisible cat, you copy, jane?”
“Why of all the nerve, talking to your mother in such a fashion. Young lady, just remember one thing: I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!”
Millie and Ellie’s eyes widened and looking at each other, cooed, “Craaazzzzy”.

Scruffy elbowed the the girls’ parents gently further and further out of the club and into the rainy street. Millie turned to Ellie and looked upset. “Hey!”
“It’s my turn to pet the cat. Hand her over, chicky baby!”
Ellie lifted her arms and dropped the invisible pet to her sister. Millie smiled. “Katmandu, you dig us. You’re no square poppa”.

The Hip Chicks

Bend me an ear and I'll tell you all about the two coolest chicky babies to ever grace the Village. They had the rattiest hair and the craziest clothes and made the scene wherever they went. These way out sisters were far out > Someone said their real names were Millie and Ellie and they came from a very prosperous family from Cape Cod. They lived off a trust fund and went vacationing in the Hamptons every summer, but not without bundling up and covering their tender skin from the big-bad wicked sun. They envied the way twins would always swing by the same handle, so they went by the same name wherever they went: Skooby Dooby. Either one would answer to the name, so one of them was bound to answer you.

They would get a fucking generous stipend from their parents at the end of every month, which they kept more private from everyone than Allen Ginsburg's sex life. The dough would get spent on tights, pot, bongos and bullfight posters. Some of the coffee cans in their pad held espresso beans and some held endless rolls of hundred dollar bills.

Whenever they'd get bored playing chess and sipping coal-black java, they'd quiz each other about great Presidents.
"So, like, who's a bigger swinger?" the blonde Skooby Dooby asked her sister. "William Henry Harrison or Chester A. Arthur?"
"Ohhh, man", mulled the brunette Skooby Dooby, "William Henry Harrison is the most, like you dig?"
"Crazy!" the blonde Skooby Dooby said.
Some Audrey Hepburn wannabe snob in a little black dress, pearls and little white cotton gloves walked right by them.
"Hey, hey, Godiva, you're stepping on my cat, dig?" the blonde Skooby Dooby pointed at the uptown sister.
"What cat?" the snooty dame whined. "I don't see a cat".
"Hey, like, you're stepping on our invisible cat, Katmandu. Katmandu don't like dig your vibraphonic vibrations. Get on your way, like way out".
"Invisible cat? Chester A. Arthur? You girls are insane".
"Yeah, well", the brunette Skooby Dooby was twitching nervously, her left leg shaking uncontrollably from ingesting too many shots of capuccino, "That's like your, um, like opinion, you know?" Her right eye started twitching in rhythm with her leg. "You like dig, Square Jane?"
The owner, a ringer for Maynard G. Krebs, came up to them in his smelly sweatshirt, given to him by Gregory Corso, and asked, "Ex-squeeze me, is this girl bothering you ladies?"
"Yowzah, Scruffy", Skooby Dooby said, "this, like debutante from Squaresville University is trying to break up our, like, transmission".
"Yeah, um and she stepped on Katmandu!"
Scruffy ushered the rich girl out of the cafe, but she stopped and stared at the blonde Skooby Dooby intnently. "Ellie, is that you? Omigod! Ellie Huntington of the Cape Cod Huntingtons, I don't believe it! The sorority misses you! What are you doing here?"
The brunette's left leg and right eye was twitching faster and harder, "No man, we don't know any El-Seven Humdingertons, Scruffy! Scruffy! Show her the way, way out!"
“No! Seriously! Elzie, don’t you recognize me, Bibzie Hollingsworth! What are you doing in that crazy get up? What did you do to your hair???” she gawked as Scruffy gently gave her like the old heave-ho.

As soon as she was thrown out of the coffee house, Millie looked at Ellie. “Wow, bad scene”.
“Like, purple nightmare”.
“Yeah…….so…..who’s the craziest cat, William McKinley or Millard Fillmore?”