Philo has had a happy childhood, growing up along the Big Sur coastline in Pine Bluff, California. Life takes a turn for the perverse, however, when his hippie father, Harley, discovers the chemical compound for Blissful Living Love-Radiance of Infinite Divine Being. As self-experimenting Harley soon finds out, the new drug has some undesirable side effects: specifically, it turns people into roosters with an ungovernable lust for trees. When Harley escapes to the sensuous pleasures of the forest, vowing to never set foot on the ground again, Philo finds a surrogate father in Captain Nitt-Witt--the ancient, eccentric creator of the infamous folk art castle known as Nitt-Witt Ridge. During a summer apprenticeship with the Captain, Philo learns to practice Zen meditation and the manly art of trout fishing. But when a sanctimonious robo-rooster decides to wage a terrorist campaign against the citizens of Pine Bluff during the annual Helldorado Parade, it falls to Philo and the Captain to put an end to the violence by confronting the twisted family mystery that lurks behind the killer's chrome-plated beak."Crash Gordon delivers this unprecedented and extraordinary Zen koan-like novel with a voice as confident and alluring as the ancient Greek philosophers, but with much more humor.... Featuring an unpredictable cast of characters, this short but bittersweet psychedelic semi-autobiography is considerably more grassroots and elemental than anything by Richard Brautigan and is hipper, trippier, and trendier than Jakucho Setouchi. Listen... the flaming "crotch-o-lantern" is not the craziest thing you'll read about in this book, nor are the exploding canines, or the befeathered chrome-metallic serial-killer.... For all of these things and more I think you, yes you, should purchase a copy of Nitt-Witt Ridge today and devour it. In the process you'll become--something more than you were!"--The Alternative