Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Good doc edition

via.

Movie Millisecond: You-know-what country

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998). I saw this movie opening weekend just exactly as the good Doctor Gonzo would’ve liked me to: stoned out of my pretty little gourd. Too stoned, in fact, to realize that I was on a “date” and not a “seeing a movie together with my coworker occasion” until my date started talking about how much fun he was having on our date. I was noncomittal, highly platonic in all I said and did, and skedaddled straight home after the show.

I tried to go back again the following week with ancient friendoh Paolo and, though it had only been playing in our somewhat rural area for one week, Fear and Loathing had already been pulled from the screen. We saw The Truman Show instead, and, three quarters of the way through the film, someone began beating insistently on the other side of the rear exit door that faced the alley behind the theater. They were pretty violent and persistent — there were obvious kicks and muffled shouts — but finally went away.

However, the startling and dangerous impression the knocking and kicking left stayed with the crowd: when the movie ended, everyone sort of milled around instead of leaving the theater right away. No one openly said it, but I believe that none of us wanted to be the first out the door in case the knocker was still out there. He didn’t sound like someone who’d forgotten his jacket during the last show. But why, then, did not a single one of us get up and leave the theater before? Why did we all sit there during the knocking, just waiting with dread for whatever came next?

It was a weird and surreal experience, a reminder that by its very nature violence is an unpredictable eruption, and that in the face of such an eruption, many of us can only freeze with fear and indecision. We could not have looked more like sheep nervously peering out of their enclosure, on guard for a wolf. But what I’m saying is you can’t really ever guard against that, can you? It’s all bat country.

Goethe Month: Extraordinary men … have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane

The good doctor was such a cute baby. Boys. Please keep an eye on your drug use — it does exact a toll.

Ich bin mehr als einmal trunken gewesen, meine Leidenschaften waren nie weit vom Wahnsinn, und beides reut mich nicht: denn ich habe in meinem Maße begreifen lernen, wie man alle außerordentlichen Menschen, die etwas Großes, etwas Unmöglichscheinendes wirkten, von jeher für Trunkene und Wahnsinnige ausschreien musste.

giant picture via blogbroadway right here on the wordpress.

I have been more than once intoxicated, my passions have always bordered on extravagance: I am not ashamed to confess it; for I have learned, by my own experience, that all extraordinary men, who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.)

Happy birthday, HST

As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I’m not sure that I’m going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says, ‘you are nothing’, I will be a writer.

(Hunter S. Thompson)

But you did die, you can be rare as all git out but apparently no one is weird enough not to die, and you know I am not yet totally cool with how you decided to do it, but as Bukowski said, it is literally no one’s business but your own if you choose to go out on your own terms and I am attempting to accept that. It’s not something I can just *snap* and feel. I hope, as I do for everyone who dies this way, that you still felt just as strongly about your choice at the very moment that you passed on as you did when you originally engineered the passing and penned your explanatory note about football season, etc.

And I suppose any fan ought have expected nothing less.

R.I.P. and happy birthday.

Goethe Month: HST edition

Mixed-media self-portrait by Hunter S. Thompson, 1976.

Bin ich ein Gott? Mir wird so licht!

Am I a god? I see so clearly! / Light fills my mind!

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act I, Scene 4, 439-40.)

At Big Sur, 1961.

Allwissend bin ich nicht; doch viel ist mir bewußt.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

(Ibid.Act I, Scene 7, 1582.)

The speaker of the first quote is Faust; the second speaker is Mephistopheles. I feel like both or either quote could be attributed to Hunter Thompson and no one would think that out of his ordinary style. I’ve been thinking a lot about him and the things his writing has always made me feel, I suppose it’s more acute than usual with his birthday coming up soon. R.I.P. is I guess all I can say.

Advice: HST umpteenth edition

“In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile, and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together; not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.”

(Hunter S. Thompson. Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. New York: Summit Books, 1979.)

Doorway to “Values.” Get it.

“‘Happy,’ I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words like Love, that I never quite understood.

Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception—especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony.

I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest of a fool to use them with any confidence.”

(Hunter S. Thompson. The Rum Diary. London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1998.)

Set in San Juan, Puerto Rico, The Rum Diary is a semi-autobiographical but mainly fiction novel which the good doc wrote in the 60’s but did not publish until 1998, soon to be a major motion picture starring his good friend and somewhat of a mentee, Johnny Depp, who is probably excited as shit to get to do a project he believes in and not play Captain Jack Sparrow again. (Disney slipped a clause into his contract where they get to cut off his wife’s fingers if he doesn’t appear in their convoluted bullshit. Did You Know?)

Speaking of rum, I’m’a finish some housework, then grab a case of Diet Coke and scootch on down to C-town for some mandatory spirit-lifting, this-is-deep-shit, soul-plunging chitty chat time with Paolo and Miss D and this guy Sailor Jerry.

Last night we had pizza and busted out the Scrabble diamond anniversary edition I’d got Paolo for his birthday and I only beat him by ten points in the very last part of the game. This is completely unacceptable because I need to crush him and use his bones for jelly on a piece of toast I’ve made of bread baked from the dust of his finely-ground flesh.

We’re a little competitive.

It’s a rivalry that began in 1986, which makes it a needless game of oneupmanship old enough to vote, buy alcohol, and be in the second year of a postgraduate degree. Shit, maybe it's time to bury the hatchet. I'm sure it would make Miss D happy, although she says she has gotten used to our bickering. She just shakes her head at us, the poor girl.

We'll see. Don't take any wooden nickels, have a super-duper-neato Saturday, and I'll catch you guys on the flip!

The flag is NOT a weapon

“USA 101” by amadteaparty on the flickr.

I was taking a break from yardwork to make lunch and my daughter was dancing around me swinging something little and slappy on a stick at me. This exchange followed:

Me: Dude! Quit hitting me with that.
Kidlet: (continues trying to hit me)
Me: What even is that?
Kidlet: (stills long enough for me to see it is a miniature U.S. flag on a thin wooden dowel)
Me: Oh, no. That is not — (starts hitting me again) — Hey! Not okay! The flag is NOT a weapon!
Kidlet: The flag IS a weapon! (holds up the dowel end and mimicks stabbing the air Psycho-style)

“American Headache” via the awesome broken spectre on the tumblr.

Tomorrow is Flag Day here in the United States and while I am wary of overdoing it in an oppressive way such as our founding fathers would not have favored and accidentally sewing the seeds of jingoism, I do expect informed respect for patriotic symbols, especially the flag. (See my vitriolic Memorial Day entry for expansion on the issue of this inner conflict and dislike of corporate co-optioning of patriotism) Guess I’ll use it as a jumping-off point to explain to her about flags and traditions, etc.

Steve McQueen.

I did a good, short unit on the National Anthem with the Scamps. Maybe I’ll dig that out of my current tutoree’s textbook when I see her this week, since her mom muscled the school library in to letting her take all her books home for the summer (I’ve said it before but the woman is literally a bulldozer in pumps; it is all I can do not to submissively pee when she enters a room). I remember some of it.

via hellobaltimore
Did You Know? The giant flag about which Francis Scott Key wrote seeing wave over Fort McHenry at the end of the Battle of Baltimore was made in just about six weeks by Mary Young Pickersgill, with the aid of her mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Caroline, along with her nieces and two freed African-American houesmaids. They were commissioned by Major George Armistead to make the largest flag ever to be flown over a fort up until that time — the apocryphal story goes that he told the women he wanted to make sure the British could see it. The flag is presently going through a restoration to the tune of 18 million dollars right now in preparation for its centrality to the new, redesigned Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

via leotarded on the tumblr.

A widow with a spine of steel, Mrs. Pickersgill was one of the first independent female business owners in America. She successfully negotiated contracts for her flagmaking business with the United States Army and the Navy. She was also a passionate humanitarian, being notable in town for “color-blind” hiring in her sewing shop, with a special bent for women’s issues: she founded the Impartial Female Humane Society, which provided school vouchers for young girl children of any race or religion to be educated, along with the provision of networking and employment to their single mothers.

The More You Know.

Flag kicks from Converse. Chux are cool, yes, but please remember they are owned by Nike. I’m just sayin’.

Guess I should have saved all these flag facts for tomorrow, but I figured I had better strike while the iron of my interest was hot — I know what a fickle creature I am, and by tomorrow the flame of my curiosity about flags, Mrs. Pickersgill, and the history of the women’s movement would have died down to embers at best.

A touch of HST with your plastic red, white, and blue pinwheels on the graves of the veterans we will never get back and a nice hot dog and sale on sheets at the Macy’s. Happy Memorial Day.

Hunter S. Thompson as sketched by Robert Rodriguez.

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

It is American to be thin, you know.

The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of ’em don’t even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that goddamn marrywanna… yeah, and just between you and me Fred thats probably all for the best.

Maybe, but I think it’d be great if you turned back on, because things really will fall in to ever greater shit the more apathetic orphans there are who set themselves adrift from current events. People in the past and up to the present have made great sacrifices for a comfortable standard of living in America and I believe strongly that we owe it to them to return the favor in the smallest ways we can, which include love, thanks, support …

Emmy Rossum in the style of the pinups popular during WWII.

… and also, and I think most importantly, we can demonstrate our empathy and gratitude by casting our votes on pertinent legislation and for compassionate and logical politicians who do not pander to the middle but appreciate a balance in their policymaking. I can get as terribly discouraged as anyone by the state of this wicked modern world but I also don’t want to give up hoping that we can make peace on earth an actuality.

The ugly fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull’s time-and the only real difference now … is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.

Let’s don’t let that happen? And let’s don’t let this day be about materialism and stuffing our faces? I was so excited today at the end of Mass when our closing song was “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and what was even better, it was kidlet’s first time hearing the song — she fell in love with it and she’s been belting it out about the house all day as we prepare for a barbeque for church and neighborhood friends. What a great hope that gives me for the future.

Hunter S. Thompson photographed by Al Satterwhite on the island of Cozumel, Mexico, in March 1974, while being interviewed.

Please do buck the trends of apathy and, conversely, overly-stringent, empty-rhetoric-loving, non-specifics-seeking bandwagon-jumping and instead make compassionate, well-informed voter choices. Let’s respect the veterans we remember with love today while doing our best to make sure we make fewer graves on which to place flags and flowers in the future.

All quotes come from Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ’72. (Serialized in Rolling Stone, 1972, and pub. by Straight Arrow Books, 1973). HST followed the campaign of George McGovern. He also commented presciently that to win the American presidency it seemed one had to be some kind of rock star these days (this is a criticism of the ever-growing circus of presidential campaigns and not of the present president, himself.)

Daily Batman: Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions

Oh, the places I’ve been. I was feeling my way around a very dark place and sorting out all that bumpy rabbit hole chicanery, but I’ve crawled toward the light and I think I’m almost totally back now. New and Improved, now with 63% less sad and lonely, blind, foolish credulity. In a Good Way. Thank you.

Here is some awesome bat-art and a pithy and appropriate accompanying quote via magnificent patron saint the Rev. Dr. HST on the topics of myths and legends and why Americans — of which I am among we braggardly upstart progenitors of the superhero — so badly crave, with an almost breathtakingly childlike mania for it, our illusion of the larger-than-life, mythic and all-saving champion.

via holymushbatman on the tumblr.

“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final.”

— Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt, 1979.

God bless you, Mr. Welchos

Tonight I’m meeting up to set off soosh bombasticos for probably the last time in a bad long while with Jonohs Welchos, Esq., aka the MWP, aka Junior Quizboy. (He didn’t know about that last one.) I’m also returning the last of the books he loaned to me over the course of our friendship, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Mother Night.

Click to enlarge.

I’m inexpressibly sad that he’s moving away and I didn’t make better use of my time with him, but I’m glad to have got to benefit from his centered-yet-unpredictable company and sound advice even for a short time. My brief association with Jonohs has taught me many valuable things.

Two heads are better than one when it comes to cryptic crosswords.

I am not alone on Spaceship Earth in thinking Achewood is worth buying shirts over. (Mine is from my husband and features Roast Beef Kazenzakis saying “what we need more of is science”; Jonohs’ is even older school and has the “equation of the day.” We knew one another for several months before it even came up.)

There is such a thing as acai berry beer.

From a BevMo visit with Jonohs in September. Left: Acai berry beer. Right: The hard shit, only recommended for true HST gonzos who are ready for some serious bat country driving.

Don’t discount anyone based on age or the suspicion you yourself will be discounted based on age.

Not every coffee shop in Motown is full of hipster douchenozzles, and, even if it were, I still have the right to sit there and read about opera with my friend.

Wonderful new people can pop up into my life in the least likely places, even places I’ve searched a thousand times (aka the pub).

Some lost summer night of trivia and shenanigans.

There is a secret menu at Miki from which only Jonohs, like a g, can order and convince the waitress to convince the chef to make food that technically no longer exists at their restaurant. It is a powerful display of confidence. Peanut sauce, ahoy.

I apologize too much.

Graciously serving as my candy corn vampire date at Paolo and Miss D’s wedding.

Candy corn vampires suck much less than the trite usual kind, and are ultimately far superior to sparkly vegetarian douchebags.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels that were as good as his short stories and are well worth my time.

I deserve and should expect fidelity in all my relationships. I have to stop assuming I am not worthy of good things.

Jonohs as That Guy at chili cookoff.

Even my best drawings of the flux capacitor look more like a crude sketch of a uterus and fallopian tubes.

No matter how complete you think your circle of friends is, there is always room to make it even better-rounded.

The Gentlemen and I first met Jonohs when he stepped in for Ronald as the quizmaster one trivia night at the pub — calendar check — last April, specifically April 27, 2009. Man. So much in my life has changed since then, but I definitely would not change having gotten to know Jon and become friends. I’m really going to miss the prospect of seeing him weekly. I guess the final lesson I’ve learned from getting close to a new friend as a fully-formed adult is not to take people’s presence in my life for granted. Even though I had a great time with him and he constantly surprised me by showing me new things I didn’t already know about the area, or had never tried, I still wish I’d made more use of our time together.

Just all by myself exactly and with kind of a science type question…

On that note, I’m going to go make something out of this cloud of frizz I call hair, and scootch by the bank to deposit a check from subbing — I’m treating the Man With the Plan, if he will allow it (we’ll see), to some serious soosh bombasticos. Have to make the best of the last time I will be able to get the secret menu stuff!, and I plan to guzzle “crispy” beers the size of his new-job-seeking head. Catch you on the flip side!

Advice: Baby Hunter edition

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

And, perhaps more importantly,

Call on God. But row away from the rocks.

RIP, HST.