"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro."
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"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. The others --- the living --- are those who pushed their
control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcyles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions." --- HST '65 |
| "Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era --- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle
sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were
there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.... History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time --- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened." --- HST '71 |
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"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.... And that, I think, was the handle --- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting --- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..." --- HST '71 |
| "We had two bags of Grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cacaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls... but the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge..." --- HST '71 |  |
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"Where can we get hold of a Vincent Black Shadow?" "Whats that?" "A fantastic bike," I said. "The new model is something like two thousand cubic inches, developing two hundred brake-horsepower at four thousand revolutions per minute on a magnesium frame with two styrofoam seats and a total curb weight of exactly two hundred pounds." |
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I consider Hunter S. Thompson the leading political journalist of the latter half of this century. While his
Objectivity
is nonexistant, his insights are wickedly precise and consistently vicious. Must be what I love about him!
When Richard M. Nixon (the boogeyman of my childhood) finally passed beyond the veil and on to his just desserts, the good Doctor wasn't above kicking the corpse while the rest of the media fawned and mewled over the fallen dictator. |
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| On February 26, 1990, Dr. Thompson was served with a warrant for his arrest. The charges were dismissed when his accuser recounted her testimony and the judge ruled Thompson's Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. A press release issued the following day illustrated how gracious he can be in victory. |  |
| I don't know about you, but I take a great deal of comfort in the knowledge that he's still out there somewhere tilting at windmills, getting loaded, raising peacocks and doberman pinschers,
and firing high-powered armaments into the night sky.
Someone's got to keep the bastards on their toes! |
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Bibliography Take a moment to view the Hunter
Photo Gallery. |
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Of course, where would the good Doctor be without his truly fiendish partner in aesthetic crimes, Sir Ralph Steadman?
Email me if you know of any good links for the works of this freak. I have a gallery of his work, most of it scanned from my well worn copies of Hunter's books. |
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If you haven't yet seen the movie based on the Las Vegas book I strongly suggest that you run (not walk) to the nearest video store and give it a viewing. Just be certain you've read the book first or you might feel a little lost in weirdness. It's a very faithful interpretation. |
 Animation curtesey of Stanley. Ain't it a beaut? | I am a member of  |
For those of you who bother to read to the end of this page and still suffer from some sort of confusion, I am not Dr. Thompson. I'm just a fan, and a poorly connected one at that. I don't know how to contact him personally.
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