A rainy night in the Evil Empire
Conversations with the ghost of Hunter S Thompson
Conversations with the ghost of Hunter S Thompson
It was somewhere around the witching hour when the drugs began to take hold and with the pitter patter of falling rain outside in the darkest of Halloween nights here in the UK, rain was also falling in that other part of the Evil Empire and in the city of brotherly love in Philadelphia, frustratingly curtailing the latest instalment in baseball’s “Big Dance” at the World Series. It will now be a showdown between Lance McCullers Jr and Ranger Suarez in a postponed Game 3 tomorrow and we must be patient and we must also rejoice for with this very postponement, and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia open to the whims of the weather gods, there is every chance of a future frustrating postponement and quixotically, more reasons to rejoice! The baseball season ain’t over yet Bubba.
To say I was excited pre game this evening would be a masterful understatement and so to wile away the rain filled hours of pre game expectancy, I leaned on an old friend and the documentation once more of the craziest of all lives. I simply can’t recommend Gonzo — The life and work of Hunter S Thompson enough but then again, I’ve been drinking the Wild Turkey Kool Aid for far too many years now to change anytime soon. I paused my umpteenth run through both Dr Gonzo and Dr Thompson’s incredibly documented crazy ride of a life with 30 minutes left of Alex Gibney’s meticulous film and just after, perhaps, the final realisation that Raoul Duke wasn’t going to find the American Dream (copyright protected) after all. The good doctor, all of them, had tried their hand at finding that dream be it running with the Hells Angels or running for sheriff of Aspen, being beaten by a Chicago policeman’s billy club in 1968 or now, with 30 minutes left of this wonderful document to an inspirational and unique life, seeing his man lose in the 1972 US Presidential Election to Richard Nixon. My literary hero once famously interviewed the then presidential candidate in the back of a limousine for an hour and a half and only on matters relating to America’s other pastime, football, but Thompson soon saw through the thin veneer and façade of the Evil Empire’s latest bagman for the wars of constant conquest and brilliantly described Nixon as “so crooked that he needed servants to help screw his pants on every morning”.
Hunter was many things (writer, poet, anarchist, beautiful soul) and how I love his later era books such as Hey Rube (I have a signed copy. One of the many joys of buying second hand books) and the way he’d weave intricate detail of numerous sporting clashes in his weekend journals with the events of the world at large, or within the confines of his local tavern in Woody Creek and a tiny town in Colorado he paints so beautifully vivid, the actual footage seems incredibly normal by comparison. But that was Hunter, painting with the most outlandish of brushes, be it the bats on the highway in search of that quintessential American dream, talking football with a crook as the 1960’s literally, figuratively and spiritually ended, or an early September day over four decades later when he penned the following:
“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now & with somebody & and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives”.
I often wonder how the good doctor would react to the world spinning around us today. I picture him, lighted Dunhill drooping slightly in its holder as he feverishly hits the language keys of life, one eye on the baseball (and the basketball and the hockey and the football and frankly anything he could possibly lay a wager on and take yet more money from the rubes in his local tavern) and all whilst ruminating on the state of the union of life. We’re at war and, whilst I have no wish to speak on behalf of the great man I’m sure he realised we’d been at war his entire life, American Dream or not, and the cold war of our lifetime is perilously close now to becoming a nuclear and world ending hot one.
Crooked politicians come in many shades of Establishment and the televisual marionettes perform their ritualistic dances. Apparently a clipboard carrying ghost of a failed school supply teacher was involved in the decision to destroy a vital Russian pipeline and as Hunter’s America appears to be at the point of spontaneous political combustion with the oh so vital mid-term elections, the husband of the Speaker of the House was bopped on the head by a naked home invader who’d remembered his underpants and a hammer, but very little else in the way of customary societal dress. Inflation is not only through the roof but burning a hole in the Ozone layer alongside Elon Musk’s satellites, freedom of speech terrifies the left of Hunter’s political mate from 1972 and the forever war continues, shrouded in proxies and armament sales and the repeated mantra of its worldwide salesforce of a united and cult like “for as long as it takes”.
No peace Bubba, just a continual war and for as long as it takes apparently.
So let us rejoice that the baseball season isn’t ending any time soon. I’m taking the underdog Phillies in 6.
And why not?
What say you?
Send word.
Selah.
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