by Paul Krassner
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When I first met Wavy Gravy, he was Hugh Romney, a thin, goateed, stand-up comic who wore a three-piece suit and performed abstract material. Now he's a roly-poly, socially active clown -- the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Teresa.
Wavy's portable commune, the Hog Farm, provided free breakfast at the original Woodstock festival; he has campaigned several times as Nobody for President; he kept the Yippie candidate -- a porker named Pigasus -- in a Lower East Side bathtub; and more recently Wavy has become a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream flavor.
While traveling, the Hog Farmers once found themselves at a fork in the road. Up above, a pair of sky-writing planes were playing tic-tac-toe, and Wavy decided that they would go one way if the X's won and the other way if the O's won.
Meanwhile, between the time that Charles Manson got released from prison and the time he orchestrated a mass murder, he was busy exploring and exploiting the counterculture, from Haight-Ashbury to Strawberry Fields.
Driving his family around in a school bus painted black, Manson stopped at the Hog Farm, whose school bus was painted in rainbow colors. They were back on their land, all standing in a circle chanting "Om," which somehow caused Manson to start choking and gagging, so *his* family began counter-chanting "Evil." It was an archetypal confrontation. Manson even tried to exchange one of his girls for Wavy's wife, Bonnie Jean. But the black bus finally left, mission unaccomplished.
When Bonnie Jean, whose Sufi name is Jahanarah, gave birth to a baby boy, they named him Howdy Do-Good. However, on his 13th birthday, Howdy legally changed his name to Jordan Romney. He is now a computer programmer.
Wavy and Jahanarah run Winnarainbow, a performing arts summer camp. One year, I was the comedy counselor, and at the end of the season I had a one-night stand with another counselor on the outdoor trampoline.
Wavy's Rainbow Bridge
At camp, Wavy always led an orientation, at the end of which he would turn out all the lights and tell the kids, "In ancient times, I was a teenage beatnik, and I used to brush my teeth with Snickers bars and gargle with Hoffman's Black Cherry Soda and, after a while, I began to get these cavities and my teeth would rot out...."
In fact, when he joined The Committee, a satirical improve troupe in San Francisco, dentists would leave their cards for him at the box office. Eventually, the Merry Pranksters' dentist, Dick Smith, began to work on his teeth. He overheard Wavy mutter to Neal Cassady, "After listening to a lot of Vietnam War body counts, the only flag I wanna salute is a rainbow," so Smith secretly made a rainbow bridge, each tooth a different color of the rainbow spectrum. Kids thought it was really cool.
Wavy's rainbow bridge was formally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for their exhibit, "I Want to Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era." We had a gig there, and he was walking a rubber fish named Saul Bass on a stiff leather dog leash. Wavy takes him everywhere.
"I don't know what that means," he told me. "It may be my latent Christianity. But walking this fish in New York City, nobody asks me for money. People either enjoy the fish or they pretend it's not happening."
The Heady Days of the Great Softball Game
In addition to the rainbow bridge being on display, there was Wavy's sleeping bag, called "Home Plate" because it had actually served as home plate in the Great Softball Game. Two communes had challenged the Hog Farm. They all ate a lot of green acid left over from Woodstock, then proceeded to make up the rules.
Second base was inside a cottage on the second floor looking out the window. Third base, you had to slide down a rope into a big barrel of water. And to get to home plate, a player had to pick you up and carry you home. And home, when you got there, was a foot rub, a cheeseburger and a line of coke.
"It was back in those nutty days," Wavy explains, "and we didn't know any better. These days I think cocaine is Nature's way of telling people to spend money and be mean to their kids. If you saw the Woodstock movie, there is a scene where I'm snorting a line before I hit the stage. My mother said, 'What are you doing there?' I told her I was clearing my sinuses. That's when I started calling cocaine the Thinking Man's Dristan.
Wavy's Arresting Performances
Wavy has been arrested dozens of times at demonstrations for a variety of humane causes. Most recently he was busted while wearing a Santa Claus outfit with large red sunglasses and a red clown nose, calling himself "Insanity Clause." Wavy was among those arrested for trespassing and blocking the gates of San Quentin Prison, to protest the scheduled execution of Kevin Cooper, the only condemned inmate who has actively organized anti-death penalty protests. Cooper, an African-American, was convicted of murder, although an 8-year-old boy who survived the attack said the killings were carried out by three white people.
Wavy also expends tremendous time and energy organizing benefits for a variety of humane causes. On December 13, he organized and emceed a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater as a benefit to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Seva (the Sanskrit word meaning "divine work" or "service to God"), featuring performers Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Dead, Hamza el Din, and Steve Earle. The concert raised $250,000 for Seva. And on May 8, Wavy staged another Seva fund-raiser at San Francisco's Great America Music Hall.
Co-founded by Wavy, Seva has been supporting projects and hospitals that have given back sight to more than two million blind persons through low cost or free surgery in developing countries around the world, plus community self-development programs that have helped thousands of indigenous peoples to drink clean water, read, write and deliver healthier babies, as well as promoting diabetes prevention for Native Americans.
A couple of things I've learned from Wavy's work: (1) that altruism is the highest form of selfishness; and (2) that absurdity can be a spiritual path.
Paul Krassner is the author of Murder at the Conspiracy Convention. A new book, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs from Toad Slime to Ecstasy was edited by Krassner. Additional examples of outrageous accomplishments and creatively anti--authoritarian behavior are on view at: http://www.paulkrassner.com.
Celebrate Seva's 25 Years of Compassionate Service
To learn more, contact the Seva Foundation, 1786 Fifth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, 510-845-7382, fax: 510-845-7410, orders: 1-800-223-7382. http://www.seva.org.