Two years ago today (RIP HST)

Mr. Gonzo blew his brains out. RIP, old man.

 

Can't believe it's been that long. Think I'll do some mescalin at halftime to honor the man.

 

It's been two years already? Shit.

 

Wow.

 

Paging Good Doc.

 

Thanks for remembering my literary hero, buckdub.

My favorite HST quotes:

•A word to the wise is infuriating.

•America ... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

•I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

•If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

•Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.

•The Edge ... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

• When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

And my favorite opening to any book, ever ...

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive ...”

No point mentioning these bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.”

RIP, Hunter. I hope to see you someday.

 

That reminds that it's time for another read through Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

There's nothing more desperate than a man in the depths of an ether binge. Or something like that.

RIP to one of the greats.

 

I still love reading HST's book on the Hell's Angels.

Badass personified - tells gang that they better reimburse him for his beer when they run out.

Brilliant. Better writer than 90 percent of us hacks and he was strung out.

RIP.

 

It's 5 years today for my dad passing away. I was in Salt Lake, I'm still not sure how I was able to finish everything there.
I miss him every day, and hate the fact he never got to see his grandchildren.

 

Dear Ralph,
We killed like champions.

 

If you can find it, and I wish I still knew where it was, there is a wonderful CD of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's not the soundtrack to the movie or a book being read, the novel is being acted out by real actors -- whose voices (including Harry Dean Stanton, Jimmy Buffet, Buck Henry. It's quite entertaining and, frankly, I thought it was much better than the film.

Grab it if you can find it.