In which the Omphaloskeptic Concludes the Ramblings Embarked Upon in the Previous Installment

[Note: Originally I thought I would post this over the course of three days.  Instead it's turned out that this second post will contain the remainder of the piece.  I know there are some real Kerouac and Thompson fans out there.  Any comments, objections or shrieks of incredulity would be gratefully accepted.  Also, I'm having fits trying to get my footnotes to work properly when I import sections of the original document.  Yesterday, despite my best efforts, it was impossible to click on a note to jump to the citation and vice versa.  The same holds true for today with the added difficulty that for some reason my footnoting has reset and the notes appear after my Works Cited and Works consulted lists.  It's Friday, there's a cold beer in my fridge and I'm not going screw around with footnotes and formatting any longer.  If that bothers you then you are even more pedantic than I am and that's no good thing, trust me.  You do, however, have my admiration.]

The possibility that Dean is somehow too American, that he has an all-consuming faith in core American values signified by the myths he is associated with emerges as key to any proper understanding of his holy idiocy on its own and as a critique of a wider American community. While it is true that, in the eyes of the law and many of his fellow citizens Dean is a criminal he cannot be dismissed as merely a malicious thief with a taste fast cars, tea and Benzedrine. Instead readers are told that “his ‘criminality’ was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides).”¹ Paradoxically Dean’s long awaited embodiment of American joy, his exercise of personal freedom, is precisely what renders him a criminal, it is the key to both his saintliness and his clownish imbecility. In other words Dean is simply too American for most other Americans to be comfortable with.

It is precisely this paradox that is key to the scene from which I have taken the title of this paper and the label I wish to apply to both Moriarty and Duke. Just as Dean and Sal are about to set off on a manic night of kicks in San Francisco before travelling east Sal describes a scene in which Galatea Dunkle criticises Dean for his selfish behaviour. The narrator never denies that Dean is guilty, at this point he is essentially abandoning his pregnant wife, but he reveals that “I suddenly realized that Dean, by virtue of his enormous series of sins, was becoming the Idiot, the Imbecile, the Saint of the lot” adding a short while later “That’s what Dean was, the HOLY GOOF.”² In his refusal to take life too seriously, through his selfish, illegal and often misogynist pursuit of his own freedoms and desires Dean has expanded on the same paradox whereby his exuberant faith in American values rendered him a criminal to the point where it has elevated him to the position of a saint. At this point Dean may have a severely infected thumb, no money or home, and quickly be alienating his former friends but is also at this point that he achieves his full status as the patron saint of the Beat generation appearing and acting in the words of Sal “as though tremendous revelations were pouring into him all the time now, and I am convinced they were, and the others suspected as much and were frightened. He was BEAT – the root, the soul of Beatific.”³ Not only does this passage make clear that Dean’s ragged imbecility and his saintly status combine to render him a Holy Goof possessed of some powerful vision, but it also emphasises the fact that those arrayed against Dean recognise and fear the revelations he may be able to provide them.

While Kerouac’s narrative takes great pains to establish Dean’s credentials as a holy American idiot, Raoul Duke’s similar role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may not be as quickly apparent. John Hellman notes of Thompson’s narrative persona in general that “Like a mad seer or a holy fool, this persona can reveal aspects of events not readily apparent to those with normal perception” suggesting the existence of some parallel between the two characters under discussion.⁴ As it turns out, Duke, like Dean emerges as a clownish American saint whose excesses and criminality are inseperable from his belief in and pursuit of certain core values and beliefs. Perhaps due to the first-person narration of Thompson’s book, however, Duke’s status as a Holy Goof does not emerge with the same dramatic force as Dean’s.

Central to any recognition of Duke as a Holy Goof is a scene that occurs in Wild Bill’s Café on the outskirts of Las Vegas as Duke contemplates fleeing town after the Mint 500 motorcycle race and before the Association of District Attorneys drug convention. In what Hellman describes as “a reversal of the traditional Christian revelation and conversion” Duke makes clear that he too occupies a position characterized by paradox.⁵ Contemplating his outrageous behaviour leads Duke to declare his own guilt “Jesus Creeping God! Is there a priest in this tavern? I want to confess! I’m a fucking sinner! Venal, mortal, carnal, major, minor—however you want to call it, Lord . . . I’m guilty.”⁶ Clearly Duke possesses a strong, if paranoid, awareness of his own failings making clear that he has committed a sin from each of five general categories, however he does not stop with this admission. He goes on to ask for God’s intervention to allow him the time he needs to make good his escape commenting: “Which is not really a hell of a lot to ask, Lord, because the final incredible truth is that I am not guilty. All I did was take your gibberish seriously . . . and you see where it got me? My primitive Christian instincts have made me a criminal.”⁷ By insisting on his innocence immediately after acknowledging his guilt Duke makes clear that like Moriarty he occupies a position characterised by paradox. He has done wrong, but only as a result of taking certain precepts and values too seriously in pursuit of what he calls his “primitive Christian instincts.”

Additionally, the absurdist humour of the scene helps to illustrate that Duke’s tricksterish antics are also part and parcel of his status as a holy goof. Just in case the incongruity of looking for a priest in a Vegas bar is too subtle Duke’s final address to the Lord demonstrates the inseparability of his status as both clown and prophet ending as it does in a half-jest: “You better take care of me, Lord . . . because if you don’t you’re going to have me on your hands.”⁸ Given that he threatens God, albeit in partial jest, Duke’s particular saintliness does finally emerge as more menacing than Moriarty’s W.C. Fields virtue, a difference that I suggest is more of degree than of kind. In the eyes of the law and many other Americans neither of these men can be viewed as innocents. Both take their behaviours to such extremes that at one level they render themselves not only foolish but agents who actively invite ridicule and persecution if not prosecution. Meanwhile both narratives, insist that their criminality, clownishness and idiocy renders them special and that they attain the status of Holy Goofs because all their sins stem, paradoxically, from the purist of motives.

As a means of drawing my comments to a close I’d like to offer some suggestion of how, perhaps even why, Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke were created, even remain, as more than loveable rogues. It is significant that both characters embrace the role of Holy Goof; rushing around they actively court trouble and rarely demonstrate any desire or ability to remain inconspicuous let alone what the majority of Americans would call respectable. This is due partly to an impulse that can be traced back to the fools for Christ’s sake that were motivated by thought stemming from Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians arguing that the only way to reveal the folly of the mundane world is to revel in a version of the divine folly that is its superior. As I said at the outset, however, neither Moriarty nor Duke are trying to institute a more thoroughly Christian order in the United States. This does not disqualify them as American versions of the divine seer or Holy Goof however. In fact, given that both are closely associated with certain defining American myths and that both of them court the trouble they do because of a devout faith in what should be the possibilities of life in the United States they emerges as even stronger candidates for the position of Holy American Idiot. By acting as they do both Dean and Duke provide some insight into the greed, superficial uniformity and complacency of the American societies they are both part of and apart from. In this respect it is no accident that both fetishise, and destroy, automobiles. American readers may not be meant to follow either character into the realms of excess through which they move, but in an increasingly materialistic and modernised American world both of these Holy Goofs impulsively pursue their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a manner that questions who the idiots actually are.

Works Cited

Heller, Dana. “Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviours in American Literature and Popular Culture.” CLCWeb: Comparitive Literature and Culture. Ed. Benton Jay Komin 5.3 (2003).<http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss3> Accessed 24 Nov. 2008.

Hellman, John. Fables of Fact: The New Journalism and New Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Jack Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. [1957] Penguin Modern Classics. Intro. Ann Charters London: Penguin Books, 2000.

- – -. On the Road:The Original Scroll. Penguin Modern Classics. Ed. Howard Cunnell. London: Penguin Books, 2008.

Llano, Stephen. “The Clown as Social Critic: Kerouac’s Vision.” Clowns, Fools and Picaros: Popular Forms in Theatre, Fiction and Film. Ed David Robb. Amsterdam-New York, 2007.

Saward, John. Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality.

Oxford: OUP, 1980.

Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. [1971] Flamingo Modern Classics. London: Flamingo.

Works Consulted

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky [1965] Bloomington: Indiania UP, 1984.

Billington, Sandra. A Social History of the Fool. Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984

Cresswell, Tim. “Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 18.2 (1993) 249-262. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/622366> Accessed 23 Apr. 2009.

McDowell, Linda. “Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and ‘The Beats’.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 21.2 (1996)412-419. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/622491> Accessed 23 Apr 2009.

Paton, Fiona. “Beyond Bakhtin: Towards a Cultural Stylistics.” College English.63.2 (2000) 166 -193. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/379039> Accessed:23 Apr.2009.

Rycroft, Simon. “Changing Lanes: Textuality off and on the Road” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 21.2 (1996) 425-428. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/622493> Accessed: 23 Apr. 2009.

Seelye, John D. “The American Tramp: A Version of the Picaresque” AmericanQuarterly. 15.4 (1963) 535-553. >http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710972>Accessed 23 Apr. 2009.

Stanford, Raney. “The Return of Trickster: When a Not-A-Hero Is a Hero.” Journal of Popular Culture. 1:3 (1967) 228-242.

Welsford, Enid. The Fool: His Social and Literary History. [1934]. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber and Faber, 1968.

Williams, Paul V.A. ed. The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer Ltd., 1979.

1 Kerouac, 2000, 9.

2 Kerouac, 2000, 176.

3 Kerouac, 2000, 177.

4 John, Hellman, Fables of Fact: The New Journalism and New Fiction, (Urban: University of Illinois Press, 1981) 69.

5 Hellman, 80.

6 Thompson, 86.

7 Thomspon, 86-7.

8 Thompson, 87.

Mr. O'brien

I’m in the mood for ambitious fiction. Earlier this year I was blessed with a run of incredible reads,  topped off by Yvegeny Zamiatin’s masterpiece, We.

Mr. Zamiatin

Since then I’ve taken on more projects that inevitably have eaten into my reading time, and I am becoming more zealous in my quest for inspired reads. Ambition is the only flavor my literary palate wants to taste right now. I’m hungry for books that make me break out the booksdarts and re-read for pure pleasure. I want prose and plots that cause reactions, page turners that remind me how lucky I am to know how to read.

I’m compiling a list (in no particular order) of ambitiously written books and additions are requested in the comments section! I’d love suggestions for a 2010 reading list…

Mr. Baldwin

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Inferno by Dante

Morvagine by Blaise Cendrars

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Candide by Voltaire

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee

Bowl of Cherries by Milliard Kauffman

The Whapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (as well as many of his shorter works)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Iliad by Homer

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Mr. Abbey

more:

Bluebeard/Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pullman

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’brien

White Noise by Don Delillo

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Watchmen by Alan Moore

More..?

Happy Thanksgiving to all you navel gazers out there, American and non-American alike.  I’ve been thinking about a vague promise I made sometime ago to post something on roads and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really have anything terribly interesting to say on that subject at this point in time.  I have come up with a somewhat experimental and, I hope, satisfactory alternative.  Earlier this year I gave a conference paper on the characters Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke as American versions of the divine idiot.  Both were characters who spent lots of time on the road and the product of real-life minds who themselves were rather well-travelled.  Over the next few days I’m going to post the text that I spoke from.  Questions, rants and objections in response to my thoughts are welcome.  Do keep in mind that this represents me just beginning to flesh out an idea that could potentially be much larger.  It could also be nonsense.  Enjoy.  (n.b. I’ve done my best to include my footnotes in this posting in a way that will enable readers to navigate from the text to the citation if they wish to do so.  My works cited and works consulted lists will make up part of the final posting)

Holy Goofs: Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke, Two Holy American Idiots

Jack Kerouac’s depiction of Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty and Hunter S. Thompson’s autobiographical alter ego, Raoul Duke have aroused interest and debate since they first greeted readers from the pages of On the Road (1957) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971). While part of their continuing popularity lies, at least among undergraduates and adolescents, in their rebellious indulgence of excessive appetites and extreme exercise of personal freedom, Moriarty and Duke are more than drug- and drink-fuelled iconoclasts driving at high speed across the American landscape. Instead, closer consideration of Duke and Moriarty on their own and as a pair reveals that they are in fact two American examples of the holy fool, divine idiot or, as Dean is branded in Kerouac’s book, “the HOLY GOOF.”¹

In an insightful 2003 article entitled “Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviours in American Literature and Popular Culture” Dana Heller argues “that the divine idiot in American cultural history is an overlooked site of contestation and meaning production in our myths of nation, a chiasmatic figure who occupies the in-between spaces where U.S. cultural authority is fought over, negotiated, and renegotiated.”² By offering an examination of the pair as holy fools whose actions and behaviour question core American values and myths my comments seek to redress a small portion of the oversight Heller identifies. Though both Dean and Duke have a strong basis in the biographical realities of the men on which they were modelled they remain the fictionalised creations of their authors. As a result, their alignment with defining American myths and assumption of the fool’s role begins to emerges as a potentially powerful a means of exploring and critiquing the United States through which they move.

That Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke are consciously aligned with totemic American figures and myths is, perhaps, more rapidly apparent, than their status as holy fools of an American stripe. Recounting his first impressions of Dean, Sal Paradise the narrator of On the Road, reveals “My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry – trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent – a sideburned hero of the snowy west.”³ Though readers may rightly question how much of a hero this former “jailkid” may actually be, the comparison with Gene Autry and his description as a western hero firmly aligns Dean with that archetypal hero of the American west and rugged individual freedom, the cowboy.⁴ Not only does the fact that Dean has actually spent time working as a cowhand further cement his position at a crossroads between American myths and realities, but a brief look at this same description in the infamous scroll version of the novel which omits the phrase “a sideburned hero of the west” suggests that in addition to substituting the name Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady Kerouac sought a greater emphasis of Dean’s mythical standing.⁵ While later events and Dean’s propensity to what might be considered stunning selfishness may reveal the character as an ambivalent hero at best, his alignment with mythical American figures remains uncontested during his peregrinations with Sal Paradise. In fact, it is only by recognising Dean’s status as a holy fool that the continuing valorisation of Dean can be reconciled with Sal’s candid admission that Dean “was a con-man. . . .”⁶

Like Dean, Hunter S. Thompson’s Raoul Duke quickly emerges as a figure aligned in some way with defining American myths. Not only is the subtitle of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to Heart of the American Dream heavily suggestive of the possibility that in Duke readers encounter a figure standing at a point of intersection between American myths and realities but, like Dean, he is quickly connected to a particular figure or trope in the form of the rags-to-riches individual of the Alger mythos. As Duke tries to explain to readers and himself why, at the book’s outset, he is speeding toward Las Vegas with a car full of drugs he asks: “But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas.”⁷ Where Moriarty’s status as an ambivalent American hero emerges alongside the insistence that he embodies the cowboy archetype, Duke’s association with the nation’s defining myths in the form of the American Dream and Horatio Alger are destabilised from the outset. That being said, though Duke does confound reader expectations of what it means to be a Horatio Alger in search of the American Dream achieving massive inebriation rather than impressive wealth and social achievement, at the narrative’s close Duke can still insist “I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger . . . A Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.”⁸ As with Dean Moriarty, in order to reconcile Duke’s status as what Heller describes as a “chiasmatic figure,” one standing between more conventional American myths and values with his extreme, even criminal behaviour it is necessary to consider his role as an American type of the holy fool.

While it is not possible in an argument of such brevity to adequately survey the historical, social and literary evolutions of fools, divine or otherwise, it is worth mentioning that the tradition of such figures is both widespread and of significant longevity. Though Dean and Duke are not divine madmen seeking to reconcile the temporal world with a spiritual Christian order there is good reason to view them as American outgrowths of a tradition that stretches at least as far back as Paul’s commentary on divine foolishness in 1 Corinthians 1:25 where it is written “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” John Saward helps to sum up nicely the long story of divine foolishness that includes this verse with his assessment that “The holy fool is a commonly encountered figure in the folklore of many cultures and religions. In Jewish-Christian tradition perhaps the earliest example of a religious form of folly is the ‘symbolic action’ of the prophet, the strange, sometimes quite outrageous form of behaviour imposed upon him by the Lord to shock the people into perceiving the truth of their situation.”⁹ Moriarty and Duke may not be called upon to behave as they do by the Lord, but I would like to suggest that just as their more devout forebears they do have the capability to startle others into new channels of perception.

Significantly it is possible to view both of these characters as clownish versions of the fool rather than simple madmen; agents who pursue their desires and adhere to certain values with such intensity that, in the final estimation, their apparent recklessness and idiocy undermines the assumed good-sense of more conventional behaviours. Not only does “holy lightning” flash from Dean who is elsewhere described as “having the energy of a new kind of American Saint” but, at one point we are informed that in its most mature form Dean’s role of as a fool assumes the form of a “W.C. Fields saintliness.”¹⁰ Descriptions such as these emphasise the inseparability of Dean’s Beat saintliness from his role as a ragged clown. As a holy goof he may play a serious role, but it is not one of measured restraint or even careful argument being characterised instead by an intense spiritual energy and clownish kineticism. Nor does Dean achieve the status he does because he rejects the values of the nation and generation he plays jester to. Stephen Llano aptly describes what motivates Moriarty and what kind of figure he becomes with the words “Dean, through his desire to fully enact American values, tries to push them beyond their own logical extreme. Dean is trying to be too American and in doing so he becomes a clown and presents a powerful critique of capitalist society.”¹¹

1Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Penguin Modern Classics, intro. Ann Charters (London: Penguin Books, 2000) 176.

2 Dana Heller, “Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviours in American Literature and Popular Culture,” CLCWeb: Comparitive Literature and Culture, ed. Benton Jay Komin 5.3 (2003), 24 Nov. 2008 , <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss3> .

3 Kerouac, 2000, 4.

4 Kerouac, 2000, 3.

5 Jack Kerouac, On the Road:The Original Scroll, Penguin Modern Classics, ed. Howard Cunnell (London: Penguin Books, 2008) 110.

6Kerouac, 2000, 6.

7 Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Flamingo Modern Classics (London: Flamingon, 1993) 12.

8 Thompson, 204.

9 John Saward, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: OUP, 1980) 1.

10 Kerouac, 2000, 6, 35, 109.

11 Stephen Llano, “The Clown as Social Critic: Kerouac’s Vision,” Clowns, Fools and Picaros: Popular Forms in Theatre, Fiction and Film, ed David Robb (Amsterdam-New York, 2007) 202.

Rupa says Debbie does Dallas, is an excellent movie choice.  I would like to dedicate a song to Black Eagle.  I am not going to be PC you Libertarain, Anti-Facist League You Tube addict.  Touch base for Flash 3.  In whatever way you want.

“I stood in the kitchen, whilst you poured the coffees, teas and herbal connuctions, I always wondered to my self, after looking at your fridge magnets, especially the one I got you, the rainbow one.  How you managed to be so tidy.  I went out with a guy who was so anal, that I thought OCD, needed to be cross checked.  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  A hot moot point in the scientific world”

Guten Morgan.

Who do you think would be better at Chess? Tony Curtis or Norse Goddess Freya?  I’m making my chess set today from match sticks, cast in pigshit.

“Hunter S Thompson is the bad ass intellectual friend your parents don’t want you to hang out with.”

              Have you ever had a friend your parents or peers don’t much care for? I think we have all been there, even politicians and authority figures have had a friend or acquaintance like that. Someone whose lifestyle doesn’t quite measure up to everyone else’s expectations of the social type you should be cavorting with. Well for the certain generation of the rich, famous and powerful that friend happened to be the gonzo journalist, Hunter S Thompson, bubba. (Bubba a reference to Bill Clinton, who’s nickname, as funny as it happens to be is, bubba. In addition, these side notes, like this one, happen to be everywhere in his books. So there’s another little inside joke for your enjoyment.) What I am trying to say is that everyone at some point or another has made friends with someone who is nothing like you but somehow they have a lot in common with you. This special kind of bad ass friend influences you to ditch out on your responsibilities to go behind a dumpster, per say, and smoke cigarettes for a while and discuss current issues; politics, sex, conspiracies and other dumpster talk.  For the politicians in the 1970’s to mid 1990s that friend was Hunter S Thompson. (For me that friend isn’t so much a friend but family, my brother. For the record, he talks about sex and I continuously tell him, I am his sister and don’t care to know about his sick fantasies besides… I’ve had better.)

                Aside, from Hunter Thompson being a total bad ass, he was an incredible writer, he wrote for The Rolling Stone and has at least 10 books published on various subjects. He is the Godfather of a writing style similar to dirty realism, a style known world wide as gonzo. (It is not titled after the puppet created by Jim Henson, that came after his time.) The saying goes, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. That was Mr. Thompson’s trade mark saying for his gonzo journalism, you can find it referenced in some of his works and it is on the cover of almost every one of gonzo journals.  He also refers to himself as a “political junkie”, a term which sounds derogatory but actually it is negated as a positive term. Essentially it means having an addiction to politics, every waking and breathing moment is devoted to the study and analyses of modern politics. (It’s an insult to real politicians, unlike bloggers who whine about the injustices done to the green party and vegetarian animal loving Liberals’ and baby boomers that were and are hippies.)  

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” – Hunter S Thompson

                I was assigned to read a book by Thompson and the one that really caught my eye was, Better than sex: confessions of a political junkie. This book was one of his later gonzo journals. It basically fallows the election race of 1992, candidates Bill Clinton and George Bush. At this time Thompson had (allegedly) given up the former life of being a political groupie, who moved from place to place with the candidate he was interested in but this election caught his attention and he gave his best efforts not to get involved. (He was so interested due to his burning hate for George Bush and basically his entire family and anyone in cahoots with him. As well as, the fact that he felt it was his main purpose in life to literally shit on the Republican Party and cause as much upset amongst the political parties and the American government as possible, from what I gather at least.)  However, on some occasions he was simply in the wrong place at the right time and got wrapped up in his former mistakes, past articles and publications connected with The Rolling Stone magazine. It was an inevitable situation that he would be a slave to politics for the rest of his life, weather he liked it or not. Once you’re in there is no getting out, that saying goes for any politician or aspiring politician, you have been warned, bubba.

                Mr. Thompson did much more than just follow political scandals and publically criticize the Republican Party. He was a pioneer for the counter culture of the American dream, Here you have the American dream a mythical life where everyone is happy with two kids a house, a healthy relationship with a spouse and the world turns round. WHHOOOPPIIEEE! Hunter Thompson introduced a generation to the darker or opposite side of that dream. This is the underground world of drug addictions, swingers and free living with no responsibility (financially and morally). Here you have a man rubbing elbows with societies finest, who embody and lobby for the progression of the very dream that the guy next to them (Thompson) doesn’t believe in, participate in or generally speaking doesn’t give a fuck about, that’s irony bubba.

“My Beat is the death of the American dream.” – Hunter S Thompson

                So far I haven’t really drawn any finally conclusions from his book but I am getting there. In the light of recent events I have drawn a few conclusions about politics in general, curious aren’t you. I’ll cut straight to the chase and let you ridicule and criticize me, so we can just get that over and done with, because I know that’s the main reason your reading this now. (We all know it, so I’ll put that out there. Besides, if I wasn’t grammatically outrageous and didn’t write exactly what I am thinking at this very moment, I’d end up letting you down and we don’t want that now, do we?)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

 Politics, economics and communication, three things high school student struggle to understand. However, I’ve learned a very valuable trick to help me better understand complicated subjects such as politics. What you have to do is find a similar system that can correspond with the system or subject you are studying. For example, the United Nations resembles to a typical high school, the main powers (China, Russia, England and America) are the popular kids who run the show. Then you have the bad ass kids (Cuba, Venezuela and ominous African Countries) on Sprague Avenue in a back alley talking trash about the popular kids and those countries tend to be communist run or dictatorships. It’s my belief that if you can understand the basic social workings of an average American high school then you should be able to comprehend politics at a very elementary level at least.

Do you remember ever playing a game called, Telephone? This comparison matches the game of telephone and communication between major powers in the world today. Telephone is a game in which a message must be passed from one end of a line to another without changing. Sadly, there is no possible chance of winning because even if your team is determined, there is always one funny guy a real class clown (Media) who thinks it will be funny to purposely change the message to something usually inappropriate. Today, a giant game of telephone is being played right in front of your eyes. From country to country, however, the message is changed viscously from place to place by news networks, radios talk shows, world leaders, and celebrities (Angelina Jolie, Bono and other hippie celebrities, looking for their 15minutes of fame because the acting/movie business has dried up and no one wants to hear their empty words and broken promises to change the world one song/film at a time.) ect. These are vigorous little lessons you can learn from an accesses of TV, paranoia, conspiracies and Hunter S Thompson. 

“Life is about balance, you can only achieve the American dream to a certain extent in this day and age.”

These are just some brief thoughts, which I found entertaining enough to jot down and share with you. All politics are, are vicious rumors, misunderstandings and poor communication.  The time has come again to rap up this rant and move on to a duller topic that has to be completed. If you can learn anything from Hunter Thompson I would say it has to be that life is about balance. You can achieve the American dream to a certain extent, as well as, living free with no responsibilities and swinging from partner to partner. In the end it all comes down to you and the choices you make everyday but if you ask me each life is fulfilling, I grew up in the light of the American dream, I made it through Clinton, Bush and  even the regime of the satanic Christine Gregoire. I have no doubt in my mind I will someday, find where I belong and I know I will be happy no matter where I end up.

Procrastination. It’s completely normal. Almost like human nature. Almost, not quite yet. People become preoccupied with a hundred different things at once or something called laziness takes over and what needs to get done won’t be finished ’til the last-minute. Sadly, I have succumb to dreaded procrastination more than once, but for some reason I think that streak of surrendering is somehow coming to an end.

I’ll be completely honest: I’m not a big fan of research papers. The first research paper I had to do was last school year, and it wasn’t that fun. Being a new school year now, I have to do another required paper. Thankfully, this paper is easier and not due at the end of the year, as with the latter. There is a topic, not a thesis. An author, not an issue that we agree or disagree with.

Needless to say, this year’s research paper is on an author of our choosing or one that we were reading. Chosen by the student, nonetheless. It seemed like most people picked the first author that came to their head, like they didn’t really think about. Their brains just said ‘write down this name and pass the paper to the next person.’ I had no idea what author I would do a paper on. I had about five lined up, with obviously one being the victor. Unsure which author should be cut from my list, I chose two. Yeah, that probably sounds like a hassle or that I’m being a ‘teacher’s pet’ or something, but that’s not it at all. I thought the only way to get some kind of point across would be to do two papers on two completely different authors.

I have to admit, I was kind of surprised by the reactions I got when I was asked by fellow students what author I was doing my paper on. It’s not like the answer was different each time, it was the same every time. Dante Alighieri and Hunter S. Thompson. I got this bleak, almost dumbfounded look each and every time. Granted, I didn’t fully know about Dante until I saw something on the History Channel. I knew that he wrote Inferno, but didn’t know THAT much about him. As with Thompson, I didn’t know he wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas until I saw the movie starring the beloved Johnny Depp. I did a little research after seeing the movie, thus finding even more about him. So, I guess I can’t really say that I’m surprised, but it sort of just shows that either I read too much or other people don’t read at all.

If anything really surprised me, though, it would have to be the fact that I’ve already gotten the majority of the information on my idols. Which isn’t something I usually do. For my previous research paper, I procrastinated and I felt like it wasn’t the best I could write, or write and research. I just flat-out wasn’t very happy with it, and I actually want to be happy with the things I write. Whether it be recreational creativity or not.  The entire reason why I’m starting this paper a month early. Call it me breaking the curse of procrastination or not, but my motivation is probably at its best right now. I can’t say the same thing for volleyball, though. My motivation for that is still up in the air. 

My motivation for writing definitely doesn’t lack foundation and the breakdown.

Sometimes, I confess, I buy the paper and I forget to actually read it. It will probably be the Guardian and I’ll buy it – promising myself that I will consume it lovingly cover to cover and that it will somehow make me a better person, raising my mind from thoughts of X Factor and lasagne. Such good intentions…

The next day I will see my paper on the sideboard. I will consider reading it but by now it looks deflated - its stories less enticing. I turn on the radio – the next episode of life and death is already happening somewhere out there. What is the point of paper pulp that only screams the breaking news of yesterday? So my paper ends up discarded and my money-waster guilt lives on. 

The characters in Thompson’s novel also face the question of the precise literary value and meaning of journalism. Well, I say face. They are journalists so they encounter the problem of writing reality but never fully discuss this issue in so many words and then, in most scenes, they get really drunk and sleep with other people or each other.

But Thompson’s narrator Paul Kemp carries around The Times like ‘a precious bundle of wisdom, a weighty assurance that [you're] not yet cut off from that part of the world that was real.’ Maybe, his character suggests, literature could learn some new tricks from the field of the hack. Get a bit more real. The alcoholic 60s cohort of ‘New Journalists’, including Thompson and his characters, try out a range of narrative and journalistic modes of writing in order to test out this theory.

Thompson, most famous for writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, paints a pretty debauched picture of Puerto Rico, its coin slots, fiestas, hotel parties and printing houses. Paul Kemp is portrayed as painfully aware he has only one drunken mind in a thousand with which to write reality. The Rum Diary stands as a record of a journalist-persona who writes reality ‘badly’ and offers us the job of doing better.

4/5 stars

Next I’m reading…Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park

Yam yam gimme some…

1.Johnny Depp – From 21 Jumpstreet to crazy barber and mumbling pirate, this is one beautiful man.

2.Alexander Skarsgård – Put your teeth in me mister Vampire

3.Ryan Kwanten – The boy next door

4. Eric Dane – McSteamy / Patrick Dempsey – McDreamy

 5.Gerard Butler – Every girl loves a bad guy

Wayne Ewing at Hunter S. Thompson Films has a recent post on his Vodcast page. Its titled Fear and Loathing in Hollywood. Wayne tells us about Hunter’s time on the set of the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie. It is great reading and has some great videos of Hunter and Co on the set. You can get it here. http://hunterthompsonfilms.com/vodcast/

While you are there check out The O’Farrell Theater, Chateau Marmont, The night we shot Keith Richards, The Gonzo Pilot, McGovern’s birthday, and Never call 911. All great and interesting HST related stuff.

what Hunter S. Thompson was to the Nixon administration.

I see a glimmer of Thompson in what Miller wrote here for the Washington Examiner. I predict Miller will write his own Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail for the 2012 election.

“It never got weird enough for me.” ~Hunter Thompson

It’s day two and I’ve realised that what I’m doing in Las Vegas is basically the culinary version of Fear and Loathing. If he hadn’t blown himself out of cannon in Aspen, Hunter S. Thompson might be proud. This is gonzo food journalism, and any previous misconceptions I may have had about heavy food and booze weeks have been blown out of the water by what I’m experiencing right now. This is like the Michael Phelps diet, squared.

Scallop at Aureole

We arrived on Wednesday night, to an exquisite five course dinner of two ways with foie gras, scallops and lamb at Charlie Palmer’s Michelin starred restaurant Aureole at Mandalay Bay, where Master Sommelier and James Beard award winner William Shear plied us with delicious wines and regaled us with tales of the founding of Palmer’s restaurant’s exclusive International Sommelier Conspiracy wine label. He also said that despite the city’s 18 Master Sommeliers (who knew!?) some snooty wine suppliers still turn their noses up at supplying the desert city.

The wine tower at Aureole

These suppliers clearly haven’t been to Vegas lately. Over the last decade, some amazing chefs have moved in, and the Michelin Guide with them – with the city now boasting 13 starred restaurants – including Joel Robuchon’s 3-star at the MGM Grand. Last night we had the pleasure of eating at Paul Bartolotta’s eponymous restaurant in the stunning new Encore at the Wynn hotel, which specialises in Mediterranean seafood (a ton of which is imported fresh to the restaurant every week).

Said fritto misto. Look at those tenticles!

The fritto misto of calamari, flying squid, whitebait and delicious little soft shell crabs was divine, and I’m a big fan of Bartolotta’s concept of honest, family-style Italian food, served abundantly on the table with everyone encouraged to tuck in. It’s quite a brave move for Vegas, this brand of simple, rustic Med fare – and it really works.

The 'lake of dreams' at The Wynn hotel

Our table of journalists, which had been treated to a mixology seminar and several cocktails courtesy of Patricia Richards just minutes before the meal, and were feeling a bit on the full side, couldn’t resist tucking in to the salt-caked whole roasted bass.

If you think that sounds indulgent, I’ll put it into context for you. We started the day with tequila tasting after digging into guacamole that we made ourselves at Dos Caminos at the Palazzo. This little refreshment was followed by a HUGE Mexican lunch of vegetable and three cheese quesadillas, tacos and beef and seared tuna with deep fried yucca (it’s a root vegetable) fries. It was yummy, but my favourite part was making the guacamole. Here’s how we did it:

Mash some chopped chilli, corriander, onion and salt

Add chopped avo

Add the juice of half a lime, some more onions and chopped tomato

Give it a good mashing but leave chunks for texture, add a touch more salt and voila!

More installments on the way…

So as everyone by now most likely knows, Wikipedia can for the most part be edited by anyone. For this assignment, we were supposed to find a Wikipedia article and make some significant edits. After we made these edits we were to check back semi-frequently, to see if the post was still there or if it had been deleted like so many others.

The article I chose to edit was not a very major one. I chose to edit the page about Raoul Duke, a fictitious character created by Hunter S. Thompson, most famously known in his book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The article seemed fairly complete, but I chose to add in a quotation from a short film, made by BBC, called Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood. The quotation came from an interview with Thompson about his ‘persona’ and Raoul Duke. Thompson states in the quote that Duke, his somewhat alter ego, is becoming a myth growing immensely out of proportion and ruining his chance for a normal life. This edit is near the bottom of the Raoul Duke page right before the section Doonesbury’s “Uncle Duke”, and my other edit can be found on this page.

I decided to add a reference page for the film Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, as there had not been one made before. On this page I included just basic information, so the page ended up being very short and concise. I added two sources to the page to help ensure its accuracy and that it doesn’t get deleted. So far as of today my two edits are still up. This might be because the page I chose to edit, and the page I added, are not being watched as closely, or it could be that I made edits that have been approved by much of the Wikipedia community. For whatever reason, my edits are still there, and they could still be there a month or even a year from now, or the edits could be gone tomorrow. That’s the spirit of Wikipedia, allowing anyone to edit and add, but never allowing it all to remain.

Hunter S. Thompson. Author, journalist and creator of Gonzo Journalism. He has approximately 146 works in 398 publications in 16 languages. He has a huge cult following around the world which continues to grow even after his death in 2005. He counted the likes of Johnny Depp, Senator George McGovern, Ed Bradley, Charlie Rose, Jack Nicholson, Ralph Steadman and many more as his friends.

I was going to write a brief bio about Hunter as a lead-up to this series but in the interest of space saving I thought I’d look for a decent, brief bio on the web, you can find it here.

I was somewhat concerned that the title HST For Beginners would sound a bit patronizing, but the idea of this series is aimed firstly at anyone new to the Hunter S. Thompson world. A plus side is that any seasoned HST campaigners will find the contributors’ views just as interesting. I felt it was important that we heard from some people that knew Hunter, worked with him and socialized with him to a point. It’s also important to get thoughts from some folks who only know Hunter from reading his work, just to get a view from all angles as it were.

For me Hunter Thompson is about the writing. He turned the methods of journalism as we know it on its head, maybe his journalistic methods didn’t catch on but among his fans these methods are the core of his work and the reason for his popularity. Yes there was a crazy side to the man and it is fun to see it included in his work, but it’s important for you as the new fan and us the longtime fans to strike a balance between the antics and the work.

The bottom line is there is more to Hunter S. Thompson than the drug crazed loony he’s made out to be. He was a writer first and his so called loony side was secondary to that. Yes, both sides went hand-in-hand through his life, and he did struggle with trying to keep them separate; and more often than not his Raoul Duke persona smothered what he tried protect which was his writing legacy. I’m not saying ignore his crazy side just don’t let it get in the way of his writing talent and maybe it will go towards doing our bit to keep his literary memory alive.

I have been consulting with David Wills on this series, and we came up with three parts.

1. The separation of Hunter and Raoul.

2 Gonzo Journalism defined by his fans. Should it be emulated?

3. Hunter S. Thompson and his place in American Literature.

Many thanks to David Wills for his help, ideas and fresh eye on this ongoing project. Also huge thanks to all who took the time to write their thoughts for this cause.

Please feel free to leave comments, thoughts or your take on this subject.

So here is Part 1. The separation of Hunter and Raoul. The contributers are as follows.

William McKeen Professor and Chair University of Florida Department of Journalism, author and Hunter Thompson biographer. Hunter had great respect for William and his work.

Simone Corday spent time in Hunter’s storm during his time in San Francisco and is author of 91/2 Years Behind the Green Door (in which Hunter makes regular appearances.)

Wayne Ewing, film maker, producer, director and a friend of Hunter S. Wayne has spent many hours filming Hunter at work and play, not something many can attest to.

David S. Wills, Hunter fan, writer, publisher, teacher, editor, book seller and owner of Beatdom Magazine.

Noel Davila, Hunter fan, musician, journalist and member of the great up and coming band Ophelia.

Ron Mexico, Hunter fan, owner of Totally Gonzo, lecturer, writer, and master of all things Hunter S. Thompson. (Ron’s piece is not here but as soon as he has time he’ll be sending it on.)

Peter W. Knox, Gonzo Beat reporter at Washington College, Peter went to Woody Creek to cover Hunter’s “Blastoff service” for the premier issue of Five magazine . Peter also did his undergraduate thesis on the theme of The American Dream throughout the life and literature of Hunter S. Thompson

Marty.

Duke The Spook by Noel Davila.

Hunter S. Thompson’s motivations for creating Raoul Duke – occasional surrogate writer and alter ego – are greatly varied. What was he trying to hide? Was the fear and loathing that overwhelming? Many questions arise, but there aren’t many clear answers. What is clear, however, is the fact that whenever Duke was included in Hunter’s writing, a work of genius would inevitably ensue. It’s no wonder then, that to this day, Raoul Duke is still listed amongst Rolling Stone’s staff in every issue of the magazine – this nearly 5 years after the good Doctor’s impetuous check-out.

From the first mentions of Duke in Air Force articles in the late 1950s, to his inclusion in Hell’s Angels; from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, to a decompression chamber in Miami – Raoul Duke has been a constant presence in many of Hunter’s distinctive works. Described occasionally as a “sports writer friend”, Duke and his inescapable, drug-fueled antics have been at the forefront of some of Hunter’s best writing, including the classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Necessity being the mother of invention, Hunter used Duke as a means to break the old rules, and push forward his own form of factual and fictional reporting known as Gonzo journalism.

Raoul Duke was constantly mentioned in the letters of Fear and Loathing in America, and at one point, Hunter entertained the idea of writing ‘The First Fictional Documentary Novel’ titled Hey Rube! The Memoirs of Raoul Duke…. Around 1968 Hunter began research for a book on the American Dream that would eventually become Las Vegas. The idea was that Duke, like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, would illustrate what Hunter perceived to be the death of the American Dream. Curiously enough, Hunter admitted to his editor at Random House that he was not on drugs while in Las Vegas, but rather used his drug memories to enhance Duke’s reality within the book, and properly document the ‘Savage Journey to the heart of the American Dream’.

Initially used to protect his identity, the name Raoul Duke eventually became an albatross around Hunter’s neck. The Duke myth grew to the point that Hunter was trapped by the persona he’d created: “When I get invited to universities to speak, I’m not sure who they’re inviting, Duke or Thompson…”. His ‘ghost writer’ became a double-edged sword that pushed its creator so far that he was unable, or unwilling, to turn back.

The world Hunter created with Raoul Duke was one of possibility mixed with excess and adventure, which yielded astounding results. Many of Hunter’s readers have lived vicariously through him, and we’ll continue to do so through his writing. Every issue of Rolling Stone magazine – in which the good Doctor’s name is printed at the bottom of the staff list – makes it seem as if Hunter is still among us in one way or another, compelling us with his words, one page at a time.

Noel Davila. (From his site) “Singer/songwriter, blogger, music journalist, poet… Noel Dávila sits amongst a breed of artists who find the need to be working on something creative at all times, whether it involves playing an instrument or not. He works as a freelance journalist and provides commercial music and jingles for an array of different projects.” His site is http://www.noeldavila.net/

Hunter and Duke by William McKeen

I was a reporter and anyone who’s worked in that lonely trade knows the frustration. You know a story. You know what needs to be said. You just can’t find anyone to say it.

You can’t make up a quote. Given the rules of journalism, you can’t do that shit. So you struggle and sometimes your story falls short.

However, in Gonzo journalism the rules – such as they are – are quite different.

Raoul Duke began appearing in Hunter S. Thompson’s writing back in the days when he was the sports editor of the Command Courier, the official newspaper of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It was the late fifties and when Hunter couldn’t find a bystander or a source or an expert to say what he wanted, he quoted “Raoul Duke.”

Hunter, of course, was Raoul Duke.

Looking back on Hunter’s stories, you see quotes from people Duke and Bloor and Squane, and they are all Hunter Thompson. He invented these people to say the things that needed to be said. It turned parts of his journalism into fiction, but he was fond of reminding his readers that there was often greater truth to be found in fiction.

Raoul Duke has a special place in this pantheon on phantoms. It was the name Hunter plucked from his past to use as his nom de plume when he wrote “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” for Rolling Stone. The work was serialized as the work of Duke in two issues in November 1971. Hard to believe that that magnificent bit of prose is nearly forty years old.

As a young reader, I was confused. Who was this Duke guy and why did he have his messages sent – as reported midway through one of the episodes – care of someone named Hunter S. Thompson?

The confusion continued with regard to Duke and Hunter. Where did one stop and the other begin?

All these years later, we know much more about Hunter and Duke and Las Vegas. Hunter was compulsive about documenting his life, in photographs and on tape. Now that selections from his personal tape recordings have been made available to the public – in a handsome boxed set edition called The Gonzo Tapes – it’s possible to hear his dictated observations and comments as he lives the experience that became “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

He certainly doesn’t sound like a foaming-at-the-mouth madman running amuck in Las Vegas. If anything, he is the opposite – lucid, inquisitive, thoughtful, observant.
But in the writing, he took himself and amped up the madness lurking in his brain. And that’s when Duke emerged.

What happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. But Hunter took those events – and his personality – and heightened the reality. He once told me, “I warped a few things. It was an incredible feat of balance more than literature.” When published in book form, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was credited to “Hunter S. Thompson,” not Raoul Duke.

Problem was, readers thought the exaggerated caricature called Raoul Duke was Hunter S. Thompson. Though they shared the same DNA, they were not identical twins.

The Duke caricature followed him the rest of his life. It was a role that the real man could easily adopt and play, pleasing his fans. On signal, he could perform as Duke. But he was not the same without an audience.

And so he was caught in the duality. He had created the Duke character, one of the great literary inventions of his time. It was a brilliant achievement. And it was also a burden. It might have been a trap. If he cast off the Duke persona, would his readers follow him? Or would it be like slitting the throat of the golden goose?

It was a problem he wrestled with, apparently without resolution, until the end of his life.

Copyright William McKeen 2009

William McKeen
Professor and Chair
University of Florida Department of Journalism.
Author of Hunter S. Thompson (1991), Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
Highway 61 (2003) Tom Wolfe (1995) Bob Dylan A Biography (1993)
and many more. William’s site is at http://www.williammckeen.com/

Hunter S. Thompson, A “Road Man for the Lords of Karma”–HST

–by Simone Corday

Years before I met Hunter, I fell for his writing. Not only was he the most brilliant, original satirist, he was a sharp observer of how western culture was turning. Beneath Hunter’s satire is a depth, a generosity of spirit, an astute intelligence, that was evident to people who got to know him.

I am still in awe when I read some of his gems, like The Curse of Lono; “Bad Craziness in Palm Beach, I Told Her It Was Wrong,” (about the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce case) from Songs of the Doomed; his shorter pieces like hisSan Francisco Examiner columns in Generation of Swine; stories like “Fear and Loathing in Elko” and—where can I stop? Many of Hunter’s works seem so timely because they highlight the corruption in politics and make some farsighted, rather haunting predictions. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the first book of his that I read, in grad school, that knocked me out with its outrageous images and its commentary.

Hunter wasn’t born into privilege. Maybe this helped him develop a keen eye for hypocrisy and injustice. His determination to work hard to become a good writer as a young man led him to re-type all of Fitzgerald’s classicThe Great Gatsby to sense the rhythm of the words. Although later he acknowledged getting high as part of his process and life, his original style came from a deep well of talent, developed by persistence and hard work. Hunter had a knack for inventive humor that will never be matched.

I didn’t see Hunter being out-of-control indulging in drugs or booze, but as possessing a clear, penetrating eye for what was actually going on. Of course, I knew him against the backdrop of the O’Farrell Theater, a wild, crazy strip club run by the notorious Mitchell Brothers who did quite a bit of hard-partying on their own. Hunter possessed a genuine curiosity about the people at Mitchell Brothers and the dynamics of the place, and got an advance to write a novel about it. He went out of his way to be kind to me. I am reminded of a line from a review of my book by Henry Jones in San Francisco Magazine: “In what other setting could Hunter Thompson turn out to be the most level-headed character?”

Hunter was a self-made man, a witness to great social change, who became a forceful advocate for independent thought and for challenging corruption. This is why Hunter’s work is still so relevant. So, read Hunter because his words feel and sound so current, and because his writing can lift you with its brilliance, its laughter—or skewer the values of modern culture, often simultaneously. I am fortunate to have crossed paths with—as Hunter called himself–this “road man for the lords of karma.”

Copyright By Simone Corday 2009

Simone Corday is the author of 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door, A Memoir: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing That Rocked San Francisco. Simone’s site is at http://www.greendoorbook.com/index.php

Wayne Ewing. Hunter and the Beast.

“He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man,” Dr. Johnson

This epigram about drinking opens Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It took many years of hanging out with Hunter for me to truly understand Samuel Johnson’s observation. Since I have been called “Hunter’s Boswell” by William McKeen, perhaps it’s only appropriate that I use this quote from Boswell’s subject, Dr. Johnson, to dispel a myth about Dr. Thompson.

The myth is that there were two Hunter’s – one, the talented writer, and, two, the drunken Raoul Duke, the alter ego he created for Fear and Lathing that began to take over his personality in real life. This myth was first perpetrated by Hunter in the 1978 BBC documentary Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, and then amplified by Alex Gibney in Gonzo, using clips from the BBC film and an interview with Hunter’s first wife Sandy.

The fact is Hunter was both a heavily drinking drug user and a great writer, just not necessarily at the same time. This pattern began early in life, during his teenage years when he was “the Billy the Kid of Louisville” as he says in my film Breakfast with Hunter. Between robbing liquor stores, he still managed to write some very good prose for his high school literary group – The Athenaeum Society.

Raoul Duke is just an exaggerated extension of Louisville’s Billy the Kid, so named because Hunter truly feared retribution for such admitted excess. For the same reason, he tried to mask the identity of Oscar Acosta – an attorney who risked disbarment – as “Dr. Gonzo” and was shocked when Oscar insisted on having his real name mentioned on the back of the book with the famous picture of them in a casino lounge.

The wild, unexpected success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gave Hunter a sense of immunity for his excesses since they were now celebrated in the popular culture and rewarded with further book contracts and magazine assignments. Then the myth began to merge with reality as increasing heavy drinking and drugging kept Hunter from writing. The two habits – writing and intoxication – had always co-existed, but by the late seventies success had lead to more wild turkey than daring insights, and by the end of his life the drugs and the drink had all but killed the writer in him.

The interesting question to me was what compelled the man to make a beast of himself. Johnson’s “pain of being a man.” Was clearly the answer, as Hunter indicates by giving that quote first before all the madness of Vegas. But what is that pain, and how did drinking and drugs lessen it?

What I learned over the years was that the truth is painful, and Hunter had an unnerving ability to see the inner truth in any situation – whether it was the death of the American Dream in the excess of Las Vegas, or the effect of 911 on this country thirty years later. To know that patriotism would be turned into a means of oppression, a reason to kill hundreds of thousands, and trample the constitution was not a pretty vision, yet Hunter saw that almost instantly as the planes hit the towers. Then he wrote about it in his sports column, and kept on drinking until he became the Beast Who Knows No Pain.

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

Wayne’s site is at http://www.hunterthompsonfilms.com/
You can buy Breakfast with Hunter, When I Die and Free Lisl from Wayne’s site. You’ll also find a wealth of stuff there including videos, reviews, fourms and a lot more. Also go to Wayne’s Vodcast at http://hunterthompsonfilms.com/vodcast/ where you’ll find some great stories and footage of HST.

David S. Wills. Thompson and Duke

In my opinion, the work of Hunter S. Thompson can be divided into two periods – the early work, which focuses largely the author and the world around him; and the late work, which focuses more on politics, whilst featuring Thompson as a protagonist to a certain extent.
In this early period we see Thompson as the roving reporter, working for small newspapers and cutting his teeth as a journalist. I would argue that this period extends from no particular start point, and ends shortly after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was with this book that Raoul Duke emerged, yet it is the work prior to it that I think we must study to understand the relationship between Thompson and Duke.
For many, the ‘Vegas book’ is utter fiction. It is the ultimate split between Thompson the man and Duke the beast. It is a development upon the ‘frantic loser’ created in ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’, which in turn was somewhat of an exaggerated version of the protagonist Thompson became in Hell’s Angels.
However, we can study Thompson’s life and works and weigh together what he said and what he did and uncover the truth behind the myths. It is interesting to read the memoirs of his friends and families, and to compare his own varying accounts, and determine that Duke was neither entirely fantasy nor reality. He lay somewhere between. He was a carefully crafted character Thompson used for journalistic purpose.
Although the name “Raoul Duke” appears sporadically throughout the work of Hunter S. Thompson, I think he was always present. Certainly, if he is to be considered an amped up version of Thompson, he was there since the beginning. It is not hard to see his presence in the mind of the young Thompson we see in The Proud Highway, nor is it a stretch of the imagination to view Paul Kemp as a young Raoul Duke. I believe Duke represents Thompson’s madness and his fantasies. Moreover, he is a literary device.
Tearing Duke from Thompson is something that would take thousands of words to accomplish, but it is something I will instead invite you to do for yourself. Reading his letters, his articles, and the works prior to the formal advent of Duke, I ask you to look for wild exaggerations and ask for what purpose they serve.

Copyright 2009 David S. Wills

A few of David’s sites are as follows–
http://www.beatdom.com/
http://www.cityofrecovery.com/
http://www.daegubooks.com/

Peter W. Knox

I was nursing a sweating beer outside the Woody Creek Tavern on a sunny Saturday afternoon in late August when approached by a reporter for the Denver Post. My favorite writer of all time was to be launched out of a 153 foot double thumbed fist shaped cannon in a few hours and I was nervously feeding the man quotes for about fifteen minutes before he moved on to someone else, leaving me to drown my beer and calm my nerves. The next morning I would scan the paper only to find something I had said, pulled out and displayed across the bottom of the article in large type:

“Fear and Loathing isn’t just a drug-induced nightmare – it’s great writing.”

I was surprised to see it printed so prominently, but not surprised at what the news editor chose to highlight.

The idea that someone could be famous for being stomped by Hell’s Angels, consuming lethal amounts of dangerous drugs, showing up late and too wasted to perform, destroying hotel rooms and skipping out on huge expense tabs, and many more Page-Six worthy exploits isn’t shocking. What’s shocking is that this legend doesn’t play a musical instrument or make blockbuster movies, but instead puts words to print and has a book in the Library of Congress.

What Hendrix could with a guitar, Thompson did with a typewriter and people will always think they will successfully be able to emulate their heroes just by doing the drugs and living the lifestyle those icons perpetuated. But before Thompson showed up staggeringly drunk to cover a 1970 Kentucky Derby for a fledgling magazine, he learned how to write by studying the greats – copying books like The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises in longhand (“to incorporate their rhythms” and see what it felt like to write those words) and giving himself an army-issue journalism education to stay out of prison. He became a writer because he it was his one way out and lucked into finding genuine talent in himself.

But for every thousand kids playing guitar in the 60s, only one became Jimi Hendrix just the same ways only one traveling journalist became Hunter S. Thompson. His skills paved the way for the rock-star fame and lifestyle that followed and would eventually overshadow the strong writing that got him there. The difference, however, between those that stay at the top of their game and the one-hit-wonders of the world is the ability to deliver on your skillset. And for a long stretch of time, any editorial staff would gladly suffer the long nights, drug binges, late copy, and temperamental ego that is Hunter S. Thompson because he backed it up doing what no one had ever did before him and no one would manage after him.

Like the introduction of the forward pass in American football, Thompson broke the rules that no one else even thought were there, and ended up changing the game forever.

-Peter W. Knox

Peter’s great site is at http://www.huntersthompsonthesis.com/ There are some great links there to pictures he took while in Woody Creek. Also you can read his undergraduate thesis on Hunter Thompson.

So previously I had wrote about how I think our generation is special and stuff because of the internet. Well it might well be, but I committed a horrible hypocrisy. I belittled the act of belittling our generational problems. In fact it fully deserves consideration (this is especially funny because of the lyric “every generation thinks its the end of the world” in the Wilco album I reviewed earlier). I haven’t seen or read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:  A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson, but I have heard of that popular quote “We can’t stop now. This is bat country!” So I figured I’d find some clips on it.

Well, the movie seems pretty interesting, but corny, but important. It was interesting enough that I decided to read the wiki article on it. From what I skimmed it’s thematically a continuation of the American Dream books we had to read in 11th grade with, of course, some important stylistic progressions (on second read I just realized how retarded that sentence is, but it’s too late). While I can’t find myself impressed by it, I think Thompson’s style provokes some good thoughts. In particular, Thompson’s original experimental journalistic intentions:

He called it a failed experiment because he originally intended to record every detail of the Las Vegas trip as it happened, and then publish the raw, unedited notes; however, he revised it during the spring and summer of 1971. For example, the novel describes Duke attending the motorcycle race and the narcotics convention in a few days’ time; the actual events occurred a month apart.^[17] Later, he wrote, “I found myself imposing an essentially fictional framework on what began as a piece of straight/crazy journalism”.^[18]

I’m sure everyone else has had an experience that would benefit from something like that. Within the span of a few minutes or hours your mind goes crazy. You’re excited to think about those thoughts, record them, talk about them, etc. only to find that your memory of what happened has sacrificed intensity for compression. It never seems as big of a deal and you’re not sure why you possibly got so excited. Doing something like this would be a pretty amazing experience. In terms of how it might apply to this blog, perhaps I should stop censoring my own often stupid thoughts. Take a risk. Constant cross-checking limits its authenticity and I might as well not write anything.

Oh and the reason I started talking about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is that the entire process of characterizing a generation is important, but ideologically annoying. You can’t possibly critique such an idea and award it a positive review, but can concede its utility. I plagiarize way too much:

When the novel was published in summer of 1972, many critics did not appreciate the novel’s loose plot and the drug use of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo; however, the reviewers understood that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was to become important American literature.

I can’t even think about anything independently anymore it’s sort of depressing

I don’t want any of you to think that I’m an unlitterate fool so here are some books I’ve been reading in the past while.

A gooder, with loads of excellent literary references and a search for the American dream.  Don’t lend it to your grandma though, it sure as shit isn’t P.C.

I also read a book about Beethoven but I can’t find a picture of it.  Barry Cooper wrote it, he’s super smart and well studied in Beethoven stuff.  If you don’t know music too well stay away though.

Quick and wonderful.  Set in 1920s Toronto the main character struggles with his newfound freedom and keeping on the correct side of the law. AGAINST ALL ODDS.

Peace,Love&GoodVibes
SnowDove,ArmsUp

p.s. Thursday and Saturday. Roxy and Louis’

Starting a Radio Programme for a university assignment this week. Me and my “attorney” are doing  a radio adaptation of, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” , by the Late, Great,  Hunter S Thompson.

  There is tonnes of work we need to do, such as monologues, dialogues, Sound effects, Backing Music, as well as arranging and mixing the damn thing. However really looking forward to it, as we are going to record lots of the dialogue on location “GONZO” style!!!  I shall post the finished version on here when completed ( roughly 8/9 weeks).

This will be my first time producing radio material and I cannot wait to learn about it.

Whilst I’m on the subject of radio, it seems only fitting that I take this opportunity to introduce my radio hero…. Mr Karl Pilkington.  Here is a video of a particularly good excerpt, (remember this was live on air)… enjoy!!

“Nothing’s permanent. Not even death.”

The quote takes on an eerie meta-poignancy after Heath Ledger’s passing.

This is his last movie, The Imagniarium of Doctor Parnassus, directed by Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brazil) and featuring Christopher Plummer, Lilly Cole, and the trio of Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law, friends who stepped in to replace Ledger after his untimely death. Looks incredible, mental reminder to watch this the moment it’s released.

Travelling the world in the 90’s, I saw the great influence of American Pop Culture wherever I go, Tom Cruise’s 1986 TOP GUN poster stapled on a barber shop in Boystown, Pattaya-Thailand, Brad Pitt’s 1994 Legends of the Fall poster in a “mostly censored” movie rentals in Al Khobar-Saudi Arabia, Leonardo Dicaprio’s life-size cardboard cutout in the streets of Lan Kwai Fong-Hong Kong, 90’s Jason Priestley and Luke Perry of  90210 all over the notebook covers of teenage girls (and boys) in my highschool in Manila, I have to confess I bought my first Tiger Beat with River Phoenix cover to wrap my textbook for my drudging calculus class.

James Dean
(February 1931 – September 1955)

In “a  fun experiment” by Irina Aleksander on her article “The New Male Beauty” (June 23, 2009) for The New York Observer. She suggested that the latest “It boys”sort of look alike– High School Musical’s Zac Efron, Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford, Star Trek’s Chris Pine, Hairspray’s James Marsden, Fantastic Four’s Chris Evans and the list goes on, and she calls it the NEW MALE BEAUTY: those wide-set eyes, the narrow nose that flares up at the tip just so, the childish puffy cheeks and the not-too-rugged jaw lines, topped with carefully placed strands of layered hair. (http://www.observer.com/2009/style/new-male-beauty)

Although I agree with her that this twenty-something James Dean doppelgänger’s has been dominating the box office and prime time tv this decade, whats new? Since James Dean starred in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), he’s reincarnation’s in the “Male Beauties” of the 60’s (Warren Beatty), 80’s (Tom Cruise), 90’s (Leonardo Dicaprio) has always been prominent. The 2000’s Young Hollywood cannot deny that “another swoopy-haired, pretty-faced actor dominating the box office” has started in the 50’s. Although I was born in the 80’s and Tom Cruise was the king, I acknowledge that on my list of top 10 Male beauties of all time, it’s a not a Mr. Pattinson or a Mr. Efron topping my list- its the original, Mr. Dean.

River Phoenix
(August 1970 – October 1993)

The American film actor who starred in Gus Van Sant’s 1991 Semi-documentary footage of Seattle street hustling “My Own Private Idaho” is one of the reason I fell in love with american filmmaking, not only its sexiest Homosexual road movie ever made, its casted perfectly with beautiful talented stars all at the top of their respective games. The film’s success solidified Phoenix’s image as an edgy actor with leading man potential, without even trying, he is the most authentic reincarnation of James Dean’s beauty and talent in the 90’s.

Brad Pitt
(December 1963)

Yes, it’s not a surprise Mr. Pitt’s in the list, hailed as one of the world’s most sexiest men over and over in some top 10 list all over the world. But I can’t help but put him in this one, because am only human. Most of my favorite movies of all time are starred by Brad Pitt, and three of the sexiest and most beautiful characters that the silver screen ever produced he had played – J.D., the cowboy hitchhiker who seduces Geena Davis’s character in the 1991 road movie “Thelma & Louise”, as Louis de Pointe du Lac in “Interview with the Vampire” (1994) – the most referenced vampire of this decades’ teen vampires and Tristan Ludlow in the 1994 drama “Legends of the Fall”, how can I resist?

Johnny Depp
(June 1963)

There is something so mysterious about this American actor that I find so mesmerizing and beautiful, after 50 films and running, from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” to “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” to “Pirates of the Caribbean”, he just makes me ask for more.

Joe Dallesandro
(December 1948)

Aesthetically speaking if the Greek philosophers will have a perfect mold for the male beauty, it will be “Little Joe”s face. Thanks to Andy Warhol, the 70’s underground films will always have their nude James Dean. Although he never become a mainstream film star like Mr. Dean, Mr. Phoenix, Mr. Depp and Mr. Pitt –Mr. Dallesandro is a sex symbol of the 20th century in his own right, and an iconic beauty on my list. Like Mr. Phoenix he starred as as a beautiful teenage street hustler in the 1970’s film Flesh and hailed as one of the 10 most beautiful men Scavullo had ever photographed. As a photographer how can i disagree?

Gabriel Aubry
(January 1976)

“Quick, name one male model.” asked by Lauren Streib on her article “The World’s Most Successful Male Models” (May, 07 2008) for Forbes Magazine. Gabriel Aubry, Mark Fisher, Marlon Teixeira, Jon Kortajarena, and Greg Knudson and yes, Fabio doesn’t count. In my personal list of Top 10 Male Beauties of all time, it only make sense that half of them are models and three out of five are signed with Wilhelmina Models in New York City. All five of them have the movie star good looks minus the Zoolander ego that plagued most male models this decade.

Signed to Wilhelmina Models in New York City, the only male model to ever appear on the cover of Uomo Vogue while appearing in 4 different campaigns at the same time, in the same magazine. Aubry is a Canadian male model, that has been the face (and body) of blue chip clients like Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein, DKNY, and Valentino, achieved supermodel status after modeling for Hugo Boss.

Mark Fisher
(January 1976)

One source of male beauties for me back in college are the men’s fashion magazines, I have converted my room in a mini-magazine library and nobody can avoid all the muses for more than four decades of the legendary photographer Bruce Weber, Mark Fisher is my favorite. Mr. Fisher is an American model best known for his campaigns for Abercrombie & Fitch, Polo, Versace and Ralph Lauren. In my book he is one of the original male models that carries the James Dean charm without even knowing it.
Fisher was born in Detroit, but grew up in Atlanta and considers himself a little boy from the South.

Marlon Teixeira
(September 1993)

Signed to Wilhelmina Models in New York City, Teixeira appeared on Dior Homme Campaign, the provocative Diesel Ad shot by Terry Richardson, the face of the 2009 Christian Dior Summer/Spring collection to name a few. The brazilian beauty is half Portuguese and has Indian and Japanese origins and at the very young age and early of his career he is becoming one of the top working male model now.

Jon Kortajarena
(May 1985)

Those chiseled cheekbones, full pout and sexy stare has placed Spanish male model on my top 10 male beauties, signed to Wilhelmina Models in New York City, Kortajarena has been the face of Just Cavalli, Tom Ford, Bally, Etro, Trussardi and now on his film debut on the upcoming directorial debut of designer TOM FORD “A Single Man” (2009) with Colin Firth, and Julianne Moore.

Greg Knudson
(November 1978)

Whenever people ask me who’s my favorite model I ever photographed, this American male model, native of california always come to mind, I never thought I’ll ever meet a real life James Dean in my lifetime, but I did, and his body covered by Oriental tattoos of his gang membership in his teen years, a troubled teen like the characters that James Dean, River Phoenix, Johnny Depp would usually play in their films and his striking resemblance to Brad Pitt is uncanny.

Excerpt from my book Acknowledgement “STARK”: I remember buying my first photo book, Just Between Us by LA photographer Greg Gorman, when I was in Fine Arts college majoring painting. I will never forget that, because I had never before spent so much money on a book; but that day and from this day on I knew it was all worth it. The moment I saw Greg Knudson on the book cover in the display, I considered him the most beautiful person on the planet, and I still feel he is.

When I shot him in LA last year—8 years after I bought the book—Greg told me I might be the last photographer he would ever work with since he is thinking of retiring; he has worked with most of the top photographers in the 1990’s. Now he is gracing my photo book, and I am elated.

The trailer for “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” has finally been released. This is sure to garner a TON of buzz on the internet and elsewhere with this being Heath Ledger’s final film. He was beginning to emerge as a star after his Oscar winning performance for “Brokeback Mountain” and his turn as Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.” Then came “The Dark Knight” which showcased his ability to adapt to any role and make it uniquely his own. Now we have “Dr. Parnassus.”

From what I understand the story follows Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his imaginarium which has the ability to transport people directly into their fantasies and dreams. But Dr. Parnassus has a dark secret (and who would expect less from a man that can transport people into a fantasy land?). He’s been gambling with the devil, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), and now he owes him a prize he covets more than anything – his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole). Dr. Parnassus devises a plan to win his daughter back, but a mysterious stranger named Tony (Heath Ledger) has entered the picture. Valentina has fallen in love with Tony, and Tony apparently has motives of his own. What motives? I have no idea. They’ve left the plot details fuzzy enough that we aren’t quite sure what to expect. But one thing is certain: director Terry Gilliam has not held back on the visuals.

The trailer looks like a mix between “Moulin Rouge!”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and Gilliam’s own “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It looks to be an excitingly trippy/psychedelic thriller with appearances by Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law all as Tony (although the latter 3 are all manifestations of Imaginarium Tony). Depp, Farrell, and Law all stepped in to finish Ledger’s role as it was only about half completed at the time of his passing. Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield as Dr. Parnassus’ assitant Anton, and Verne Troyer as Parnassus’ second assistant Percy round out the sparse but obviously talented cast.

The movie is set for a limited relase on December 25th, but expect to hear much more about this movie as trailers start to hit the theaters in the near future. Ledger’s legacy will stand as a short but talented one, but Gilliam has the opportunity to further that legacy with this strange and eclectic film. With movies like “12 Monkeys,” “Brazil,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” under his belt, Gilliam has proven that he can direct good movies, but, like the look of this film, it’s hard to categorize him. That eccentricity will definitely lend to a movie like “Dr. Parnassus.”

The world of Hunter S. Thompson is an interesting one to say the least. The biggest problem I have found over the years is the notion some folks have about the difference between Hunter the writer and his alter ego Raoul Duke the maniac. I believe a lot of people who are not familiar with Thompson have trouble separating  one from the other; this in turn leads to the misconception that Hunter Thompson was nothing but a crazed loony, when in fact if you focus on his work you’ll see that he was more than the sum of his parts. After all  he has 146 works in 398 publications in over 16 languages, hardly the work of a loony.

With the priceless help of David S. Wills and Ron Mexico (when his eyes are back to 100%) I have decided to put together the Hunter S. Thompson For Beginners series. The aim will be to catch folks new to the HST world and steer them in the direction of his writing talent and away from the crazed loony side of the man. Now before the seasoned campaigners jump down my throat saying you can’t have one without the other, this maybe true for the most part but there is nothing wrong with some focus on his work. All I want is more focus on his body of work and less on his crazier side.

Whats involved?

Part one will be some thoughts from folks that knew Thompson over the years, and folks who know his work. They’ll give some insights into the writer not the myth and some thoughts on the separation of both characters. Below are a few who will be sharing their expertize with us. We are in the process of contacting many more to enlist their help and harvest their expertize.

Wayne Ewing producer, director and cinematographer probably needs no introduction in the HST world. He is the man behind Breakfast with Hunter, When I Die and Free Lisl; Fear and Loathing in Denver. All must sees for any fan of the good Doctor.

William McKeen is the man behind my favorite HST biography, Outlaw Journalist about Hunter Thompson. You can see my review of McKeen’s book and an interview I did with him here. McKeen first met Hunter in the 70s and has written two books about him. He’s one of the folks we can learn something from.

David S. Wills. Scholar, editor, writer, and publisher is currently writing a book about Hunter S. Thompson the man and his relation to Duke the fiend (David’s words) to see one of his many sites just click on his name. I’m looking forward to his insights and thoughts.

Simone Corday. spent time in Hunter’s storm during his time at The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater. She’ll give a unique perspective on the ins and outs of the way he operated.

Ron Mexico. Scholar, lecturer and the man behind Totally Gonzo. What he doesn’t know about Hunter’s writing is not worth knowing. Whenever I’m stuck on a HST related question Ron is the go-to-guy.

So hopefully soon we’ll be kicking this series off with some good insights and thoughts.

It’s Monday again. I know I shouldn’t feel this way about it- but I can’t shake this groovy feeling. My brain soup is all spiked full of endorphins, and I have the perfect song for this kind of a mood.  So I guess  you have to ask yourself one question:

Do I feel groovy?

For I present to you one of my favorite songs for getting funky, guaranteed to put the diggity in your shin-dig. Here for your entertainment for one night only, all the way from 1966- allow me to introduce Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me (Not to Come).”

Oooo rah! Lets start off this crazy tilt-a-whirl of fun with a game of truth or dare, elementary school stylez. The truth is I told you a big fat lie when I implied that the credit for this song was to Three Dog Night. In fact it was written by Randy Newman and debuted on Eric Burden’s (of The Animals) solo album in 1966. I made this implication because it is my honest opinion that Three Dog Night made this song better. I’ve heard several versions both before and after, but no one else quite walks the same line they do. As far as I’m concerned, they gave this song it’s nasty razzle-dazzle.  Actually, this is the most famous version of the song- even Randy Newman himself said that he liked their version better than his own when he was a guest on American Top 40 Countdown in 1970 with the legendary Casey Kasem. Newman had released his version of the song on his own album in the same year, but it enjoyed nothing close to its competitor’s popularity.  Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me” was the very first number #1 on Kasem’s radio show in August 1970, beating out the Beatles and Elvis (!) I suspect this may be because the Beatles “Long and Winding Road,” and Elvis’ “The Wonder of You” are kind of mellow ballad-y types, and I further speculate that people were in a particular mood in 1970 that this song spoke to.  What makes this song hold a special value is that it still captures that mood nearly 40 years later, even though almost every other thing in the world has changed.

Three Dog Night released their version on 1970’s It Ain’t Easy, and it was noticeably funkier than previous recordings. One of the ways Three Dog Night changed the song was to make it more than a minute longer than Newman’s. They also gave the song a kind of distorted and deranged vibe, such that unlike Burden’s version, the song implies a feeling of terror and disorientation at the party the singer is attending. Eric Burden’s voice is much more innocent, and Three Dog Night also alters the rhythm structure such that where you once had the vibe of a fairly innocent gathering full of squares eating brie when the singer accidentally has too much cabernet, it is now a crazy hippy-fest and everyone’s dropped a few too many gum drops.

The song has been attempted by several other artists, but most of them were covering the Three Dog Night version rather than Newman’s.  Most notable was likely Tom Jones and the Stereophonics, who released a fairly popular version of the song in 2000.  Although this version was popular, it fails to capture the same quality.  Interestingly, the lyrics and original music of the song imply a warning about rampant drug abuse in the era, as it was written about a party that left the singer feeling somewhat askew; yet, somehow Three Dog Night’s rendering of it turned the song into an anthem for exploration and fascination with drugs.

Actually that’s probably why it’s featured in a movie known for depicting the most disorienting and terrifyingly chaotic party experiences ever known to crash journalism: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you listen carefully you can hear it in the trailer:

In the movie the song plays when Hunter (Johnny Depp) wakes up in his trashed Vegas hotel room with no idea what is going on- alarming and disconcerting party? I’d say so. But all the same- there is something seductive and appealing about the song, n’est pas? If we weren’t a society that loved depravity, a place like Vegas wouldn’t make millionaires- think about it…

So why does this song tickle that icky part of our nature? Well maybe it’s the incredibly spine-tingling guitar solo that makes jello out of knees at about a minute and 19 seconds in; doesn’t that make you wish you could do that? Oo aaahh. Maybe it is that weird and funky keyboarding that is the backbone of the song. I have my own theory though- what’s pretty far out and enduring about this song is that it captures that experimental, youthful rebellious spirit of having more fun than you know you should. The very title is part of the reason it appeals to us- don’t we all just kind of love breaking rules on some level? I don’t know about you, but when my mama told me not to do something, I was consumed with obsessive curiosity: well why not?

What about you? Do you like some whiskey in your water, or the smell of stale perfume? Did you ever just have to see what your mama meant when she said you shouldn’t jump from your trampoline into your swimming pool?

Then I suggest you let that fever play:

(Note to You: the video isn’t worth watching- it’s hard to find a quality video for older music, so it’s sometimes sound vs. picture. Judging by this video, I’m sure you know what I prioritized here.)