Manny the
Hippie was one those intriguing "real life" people
David Letterman finds and makes part of his show. Back in May 1996, Letterman took the Late Show to
San Francisco. Letterman was on quest to see if there were any hippies left. Letterman sent a camera crew down to
Haight-Ashbury and found 20-year-old Micah Papp, a hippie who went by the name "Manny the Hippie".
Manny was more
slacker than Hippie, but in 1996 no one in TV land realized all the real hippies had moved south east of Haight Ashbury to
Palo Alto and were working as
Unix developers. What's important is Manny looked like a hippie to Letterman and Manny was ultimately a rather engaging, low key fellow with a musical voice and a
hemp satchel full of
neologisms that made Letterman giggle. Manny also played
harmonica.
For a few months Manny started making regular appearances on the Late Show as its in house movie reviewer. Manny would rate movies as either "
schwag" (i.e., bad) or "
dank" (i.e., good). Really bad movies were "shwiggity schwag" and really good movies were "diggity dank". Follow?
Shortly after
ID4 was released, Letterman sent Manny to
Roswell to interview locals about the aliens 'n' junk.
Manny's started getting some movie offers and
MTV was considering basing a show around him.
AT&T was thinking about putting him in an ad ("Dude, you're gettin' an AT&T cell phone"). However, all good things…
Unbeknownst to Letterman, there was a small problem with Manny. Manny was wanted for violation of his probation agreement in Ohio. Seems he wasn't supposed to leave the state. He was on probation for selling an eighth of an ounce of
pot to a cop. Eventually Manny's donut-eating parole officer caught Manny on TV. By September 1996 Manny was on a
TWA flight back to
Xenia, Ohio to face charges.
Manny's defense was he was forced to flee Ohio because of mysterious threatening phone calls. Uh huh. The judge wasn't buying.
Manny was given 18 months in jail. Curiously true to his free spirited hippie persona, Manny turned down a lighter jail sentence which came with too many additional, restrictive strings: 30 days in county, 6 months under
house arrest at his mother's, an electronic monitoring leg bracelet, drug testing, and drug counseling.
Shortly after Manny's extradition to
Ohio, Letterman had him on again. Letterman gave Manny a stern lecture about staying out of trouble. Basically Letterman told Manny that when he got out of jail he'd consider having him back on the show again but if he ever got in trouble again "I don't know you."
Manny was released from
jail on June 12, 1997.
Since his release, Letterman has not had him back. He did land in some legal trouble in 1998 for
loitering in an Ohio mall.
In 1998, Manny had a bit part in a movie called
Around the Fire.
Manny appears to be living again these days in San Francisco,
busking on the streets and attending various pot legalization rallies.