American Prankster

Producer/Host, Rainbow Valentine was born into the inner circle of the San Francisco counterculture which didn’t seem unusual until she grew up and discovered not everyone’s family and friends were  pot smugglers, rock stars and artists activating for peace, justice and equality.  Rainbow Valentine’s mom, her friend’s moms and her mom’s friends were the bedrock of the world famous 1960’s countercu...

Released in celebration of Wavy Gravy’s 87th birthday! Wavy tells us about a few celebrity friends not discussed in the first 11 episodes, including Robin Williams, Bo Diddley, Sly and the Family Stone, the Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Mimi Farina and more. Plus The Committee’s psychedelic adventures in Big Sur, Wavy goes Down Under and infamous West Coast LSD chemist, Owlsey, gives LSD to hippi...

Step inside the psychedelic mind of original Beatnik-Hippie Icon-Comedy Pioneer and Pioneering Activist Wavy Gravy as Producer Rainbow Valentine continues bringing curated Wavy to your ears with non-chronological stories of Wavy’s rainbow chompers, the origin of his ektar and Jell-O with the High Times magazine founder. Plus Wavy breaks down the Architecture of Comedy, gushes about Gilda Radner, S...

After the death of his comedy manager, Lenny Bruce in 1966, standup comedian, Hugh Romney, retreats to the Hopi Indian Reservation where he discovers the master plan of the universe…leading to Wavy Gravy’s lifelong obsession with labyrinths…. In our final episode Wavy gets into the projects he’s most proud of, unpacking the origin stories of his legacies: Camp Winnarainbow, Seva and planet Earth....

Running the first black and white candidate for president, Pigasus, was merely Wavy’s first foray into national politics… in this episode we get into Wavy’s theatrical, activist extravaganzas, criss-crossing the country promoting Nobody for President, challenging the status quo with the belief Nobody should run the country because Nobody should have that much Power and Nobody Keeps All Campaign Pr...

After playing Canterbury with Pink Floyd, Wavy and the Hog Farm adventure in psychedelic buses across Europe through the Middle East to the Himalayas, having countless adventures and providing basic human needs along the way as they endeavor to deliver emergency supplies to hurricane victims in Bangladesh. Stories of golf in Pakistan, hashish in Afghanistan, Turkish prisons, Salvador Dali, Nepales...

This episode unfolds Wavy’s pivot from Hollywood Beatnik Comedian to Rock’n’Roll Humanitarian Hippie Clown, providing basic human needs at festivals, saving the planet and more. We dig into the Texas Pop Fest ’69, Altamont and the Medicine Ball Caravan documentary, which aimed to recreate Woodstock in rural towns across America before depositing Wavy and friends in Europe, setting the stage for th...

Why do hippies eat granola and wear tie dye? Because of the Woodstock Peace and Music Festival in 1969, when Hugh Romney became a global symbol for Peace, Love and Rock’n’Roll! After Wavy and the Hog Farm commune are hired to work at the iconic music festival, American’s opinions of hippies shift, along with the ethos of festival-partying. Diving into Woodstock’s unicorn moments, this episode unfo...

40 psychedelic houseguests in Hugh and Bonnie Jean’s 1 bedroom apartment leads to eviction, propelling Wavy and the Merry Pranksters to a literal hog farm as they morph from Beatniks into a new subculture the media calls “Hippies”. Starting with Hugh and Bonnie Jean’s 1966 wedding and honeymoon, Wavy unfolds origin stories of the Hog Farm commune and their groundbreaking theatrical parties, which...

Hollywood and Psychedelic history collide when comedian Hugh Romney, moves to LA where Lenny Bruce becomes his manager, improv icon Del Close becomes his roommate and writer-LSD-enthusiast Ken Kesey, becomes his fan! Wavy tells stories of Lenny’s tragic demise plus theatrical psychedelic shows and shenanigans with Del introducing history’s early laser light displays. Find out why The Byrds were in...

Comedy and psychedelic history converge in 1964 when Hugh Romney moves to San Francisco to join The Committee Improv Theater in North Beach, where Wavy’s performance meat suit precluded Lady Gaga’s by 45 years. In this episode we unpack Wavy’s best friend and biggest influence, John Brent, a little-known comedy genius who’s feet John Belushi literally kissed and Wavy shares psychedelic stories fro...

Following his blackballed university theater teachers, Hugh Romney moves to New York City in the early 1960’s where he blossoms into a Beatnik poet comedian in Greenwich Village at the Gaslight Café when his career takes off beside chums like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tiny Tim and fans like Lenny Bruce and Marlene Dietrich. These formative years include truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories...

Episode 2 dives into Wavy’s childhood, youth and teen years with stories of his parents, brothers, childhood BFF & neighbor, Albert Einstein. Wavy tells us about his obsession with bebop, jazz, radio comedy and how they influenced his life. Plus, Wavy’s Army stint, where his earliest outside-the-box-behavior, thinking and public pranksterism emerged and he gets into his college years, when he enco...

Who is Wavy Gravy? Episode 1 introduces listeners to the hippie icon who introduced hippies to granola and provides an overview of his inspiring, historic and hilarious life using humor as a weapon to change the world for the better. Wavy Gravy, best known from the Woodstock Peace & Music Festival in 1969 and as a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor, is an original Beatnik poet from NYC’s Gaslight Ca...

American Prankster is a deep dive with the iconic Wavy Gravy, unfolding his fascinating,historic and hilarious lifestory as an original Beatnik, comedy pioneer, hippie icon and pioneering activist who uses humor as a weapon.   Sharing stories that even he’d forgotten with producer/host, Rainbow Valentine, of Disorganized Crime: Smuggler’s Daughter, Wavy gets down to the very nit of the grit and re...