A sharp break from this author's previous pictures of the past, this deals with the recent manifestations of beatnik life and, with a hipster chorus from the pad, deals with Barbarosa's (Rusty Meaghan) rise and fall, innocence and damnation which terminates in his return to the square corn of ordinary living. The California cats are ready for a new shaman and the radiant Barbarosa fills their need with tales of his sisters (Ella is his twin), his Irish father and Sicilian mother, their performances in the circus and the growing conflict between his parents. Their tension is mirrored in his own ambivalence between music and muscle, which pursues him through school, affects his relations with his parents after their divorce, and his reaction to the truth about his mother's career during the years he had believed her beyond reproach. Truth sessions, horse, pot and bennies, fill this out to a real bugging.