Cockroaches (Re: "kook")

[Paul Mackin]

Terrance wrote:

We are sick, we are sick,
We are sick sick sick
Like we're sociologically sick!

>                         ---West Side Story

Oh yeah--sick as in socially disfunctional Much akin to other 50s slang
meanings for the word. Sick as in sick joke--cruel or in bad taste, that
is.   Or sick as in sick behavior--behavior so  inexplicably bad that it
could only be seen as deriving  from mental illness. I must say I
experienced a bit of puzzlement first coming upon the 'whole sick crew'
usage in V. The crew were mainly adventurous folks who had gravitated to
New
York and G. Village because they were disaffected or alienated from
mainstream 50s American life (as thus it had always been).. Is
alienation a
sickness? I guess.  Still the phrase did not quite ring true. Perhaps
the
latter day critics were right in finding additional not-very-intuitive
derivations. Like the one from the 17th Century religious writer.
Anyway,
crew were a prime source as well as target  for the
counterculture--mostly
as spear carriers naturally..Many couldn't make it. However those who
could
neither draw nor carry a tune could be writers. Some were quite badly
educatied. I knew a few.  Not being native New Yorkers they hadn't had
the
advantage of the New York school system . Like Terrance and Henry and
davemarc and Richard and Chris and others I'm probably forgetting to
mention. Anyway, even Benny could see through them. Life hadn't been
much
different at the Norfolk bar--what's its name?

              P.