Paul Krassner - The Art of the Prank

July 21, 2019December 15, 2023

Paul Krassner, RIP

Sadly, my friend Paul Krassner, satirist, activist, comedian, author, and publisher of The Realist, has passed away. Since the 1960s, he was always there for me, as I was for him.

Paul was with me on my Hippie Bus Tour To Queens and was part of my Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning in Central Park, both in 1968.

In 1969, he published a photo of himself standing with my Grotesque Statues of Liberty on the back cover of his book How a satirical editor became a Yippie conspirator in ten easy years.

Paul used his voice to draw attention to social injustice, inequality and challenges to our freedom. I’ll miss his satirical wit.

Here’s his full obit in The New York Times (for people who can’t access it).

[Editor’s note: The New York Times covered my Hippie Bus Tour to Queens in 1968 when it happened. Years later, in 1992, they misattributed it to Abbie Hoffman and had to print a retraction. They’ve now done it a second time in Paul’s obit. Paul was one of 60 hippies who accompanied me on the tour (Hippie Bus Tour to Queens Remembered 50 years later! by Joey Skaggs, Artsy.net). I know he’d want to set this record straight.]

Paul Krassner, Anarchist, Prankster and a Yippies Founder, Dies at 87
by Joseph Berger
The New York Times
July 21, 2019

Paul Krassner, right, in 1969 with, from left, Ed Sanders of the rock group the Fugs and Abbie Hoffman. Mr. Krassner helped start the Yippie movement and was the founder of The Realist magazine. Credit The New York Times

He was a prankster, a master of the put-on that thumbed its nose at what he saw as a stuffy and blundering political establishment. Continue reading “Paul Krassner, RIP”

July 14, 2010December 15, 2023

Tuli Kupferberg, RIP

By Paul Krassner, via Toni Dalton:

Tuli Kupferberg is better off dead.

My friend and countercultural icon had been suffering from a couple of strokes, hospitals, breathing tubes, feeding tubes, anemia, infections, blindness, catheter, hearing aids, wheelchairs, psychosis, memory loss, diapers, constipation, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, fatigue and a chronically bed-ridden life that seemed to be no life worth living.

Tuli was a dedicated truthseeker, and I”™d like to honor that quality with a couple of truths.

There was a rumor that Phiip Roth had lifted the onanistically obsessed idea for Portnoy”™s Complaint from a song by the Fugs–a band on the cusp of rock and punk, named after Norman Mailer”™s euphemism for fuck in The Naked and the Dead–but this notion was disavowed by Fugs leader Ed Sanders, who assured me, “Philip Roth did not plagiarize a Fugs song. He came to a Fugs show in 1966, and I think he was inspired by Tuli, in top hat and cane, singing “˜Jack-Off Blues.”™ Many times in reunion concerts, introducing Tuli singing that song, I have suggested that Roth got some of the impetus for Portnoy”™s Complaint from that time he was inspired by the Tuli tune.” Continue reading “Tuli Kupferberg, RIP”

October 13, 2009December 15, 2023

Paul Krassner on BookTV

Who’s to Say What’s Obscene? Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today
by Paul Krassner
BookTV.org
Monday, October 12, 2009

paulkrassner-200 About the Program
[This is an hour long reading in which] Mr. Krassner assesses the ongoing conflict between the governmental power that be and cultural opponents. The comic, journalist and author looks at how obscenity is defined, by whom and why. He also examines why drugs laws are what they are and why so many are incarcerated for what he believes are victimless crimes.

About the Author
Paul Krassner
Mr. Krassner is founder of the Realist magazine, a journalist, author, stand-up comedien and close friend of Lenny Bruce. He was also editor of Bruce’s autobiography and his articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, Mother Jones, and National Lampoon.

Watch the video here.
Buy the author’s book here.

thanks Toni

July 5, 2009December 15, 2023

Krassner vs. King

Submitted by Paul Krassner as posted on YouTube by City Lights Books

A mock interview between Paul Krassner and Larry King by Andy Thomas:

Also, Paul Krassner discusses his new book, Who’s to Say What’s Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today, with Andy Thomas.

June 24, 2009December 15, 2023

Krassner: Who’s to Say What’s Obscene

Our friend and Art of the Prank contributor Paul Krassner has a new book coming out:

Yippie founder Paul Krassner still testing limits
by John Rogers, Associated Press Writer
June 22, 2009

Books Paul Krassner Desert Hot Springs, Calif. – He was once a child music prodigy and in the decades since, Paul Krassner has been everything from political satirist to author, editor, anarchist and an advocate for both peace and pornography.

But the title he may favor is one he found buried in his FBI file.

“To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute,” a letter in the file said in response to a favorable magazine interview with the co-founder of the Yippie Party, the group that notoriously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.”

So Krassner titled his autobiography “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut.”

“I figured I might as well make use of it,” says the author, smiling broadly as he sits in the living room of his modest tract home in this sandy, sagebrush-dotted corner of the Mojave Desert on a scorchingly hot morning. On a nearby table is a copy of “A People’s History of the United States of America” by historian and social activist Howard Zinn. Continue reading “Krassner: Who’s to Say What’s Obscene”