Hunter S Thompson died on Sunday. He was 67.
I was deeply saddened but mostly shocked at the news of Hunter S Thompson’s death on Sunday night.
Here is a link to the Denver Post story. The NY Times’ story is dull and has errors.
Among other things (good or ill) Thompson was a champion for truth and freedom. Arthur Miller, who passed recently, was also such a champion – even going before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities during the McCarthy era. And the NY Times Sunday Connecticut section ran an appallingly bad story on him.
Thompson was a hero and a disastrous scourge – sometimes simultaneously – who influenced my life and writing. Unlike him, I never took a drink, or did any drugs and I never smoked. He did all of these with a gusto that, I hope, was over-emphasized.
Thompson acknowledged that he should have been dead a few times over and many of us thought he was somehow bestowed with immortality – or maybe too weird to stop and too strong to die. That reminds me of a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which I never get right. It was referring to the movie’s fictional character Raoul Duke based on Thompson’s personal attorney (whose name I forget). Now that I think of it, the line may be autobiographical also. It was something like: “…there goes one of God’s prototypes, too crazy to live, to weird to die…” I need to review that book again.
The world lost a Hero and a Champion on Sunday. And now I imagine there will be a serious glut of Wild Turkey and high-powered blotter acid.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html
Drawbridge
The text below is the begining stage of a story I’m working on. It’s fiction derived from memory, reality and other sources. It’s not very developed yet and I have two ideas where to take the story. The outline here has two memory/flashback parts in with the ‘present-day’ thing. The first paragraph is a look back and the last paragraph is also.
At the moment, there aren’t definite names other than “boy, he, and she” – I apologie for that.
Here it is. Some feed back would be nice but there is no pressure. I apreciate the time taken to read this:
From a window the car arriving in the driveway is visible under the canopy of lush green trees. The gravel of the driveway made the welcoming crunching sound of shifting stones.
“I see a car” announced the boy as if reading a script. He stood with both hands at his sides.
“Shall I notify the authorities?” The boy inquired speaking in a guarded tone turning toward her.
She looked at him with a small sideways smile, replying “no, you know who that is”.
She looked back toward the approaching car and lightly touched the window pane. With her right hand she held the curtain back to the window frame.
He found himself standing at the foot of the bridge in awe over the force that destroyed the once mighty span. He walked slowly up the approach ramp of the bridge where the now-idle bridge tender’s house sits empty, toward the span. He stood at the entrance to the steel deck that used to span the small narrows separating the island from the mainland.
Bridge of twisted steel broken at the point where the halves of the span meet – it’s a drawbridge. The mighty span hangs broken and sad to the right, it’s end in the water, the mechanical parts partially working – partially moved by the force of the water. The narrows below is choppy, rain and wind starts.
The steel is painted white and shows bits of rust in the corners.
His mind wandered again as the wind picked up. The gentle breeze developed to gale force. He closed the front of his coat. Rain is tapping on his eyes and collecting in his right ear.
He stopped for a moment while closing the storm flap over the zipper – securing the snap at the bottom and flattening the Velcro flap up to the collar. He made sure the collar was closed to the top and not folded down around his neck. Whenever he does this he gets the image of a sea-thrashed sailor competing in an off-shore race. He sees himself there on the deck or at the helm.
Looking closely at the deep blue color of the Nylon fabric and the embroidered logo on the left wrist near the cuff he took a quick mental account of where the coat has been: Dog saliva from petting dogs being walked at the beach, wind-driven sea spray from the Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Bay, Ice, snow, bone-crushing rain, mind-numbing cold and everywhere in between. His mind continues to wander around the coat: At one point, ski jumpers were flying over him while wearing this coat, swimmers in a swim meet splashed him turning in their lanes, a forgotten island off of the coast of Connecticut and its cottages and buildings were explored, thousands of photographs were shot in all kinds of weather under all circumstances, underground, in the air … back to the present moment.
He takes a step toward the side of the bridge and looks at the broken skeleton, studying with his eyes and hands the rivets and bolts in the bent steel.
He leaned down and grabbed a hold of the steel and stepped over the edge of the bridge onto the structure below. At this point he is a step away from the embankment leading to the sea below.
He climbed slowly toward the angry sea, placing his feet on the wet steel and holding with his hands.
The steel moved almost crushing his hands. Moving just in time, he grabbed another member and for some reason, it also moved, and another. It was as if the bridge was alive and was resisting him. He found a rest on a platform and looked above him to a series of bent cables and conduit deformed from the impact. The bridge did actually move, especially during bad weather.
“That was dumb” he quietly scolded himself. “I should know better than that – to climb down without looking, what if one of those cables was electrified, what if … “. He let the thought wander off on it’s own.
He looked across the narrows to the island. “How strange it is to look across the water and see a bridge in the way” he thought to himself wondering if he said that aloud or to himself. He looked up and saw sky where a bridge should be, a seagull caught his eye.
Below him on the banks of the narrows, the sea was alive and angry pounding furiously against the fence lining the edge of the dirt area where storage trailers were parked like faded blue blocks.
His mind wandered back to a dusty town they visited too long ago to possibly have actually happened. It was just after they met and they were there for one reason or another – the details are hazy – maybe to see a show or visit someone.
They had to barter for way too much for a warm, flat cola.
Football – The Great Ad Campaign.
I fail to see how football is a sport. It’s an Americanized version of rugby dumbed down and simplified for Americans – it’s basically an adcampaign to sell beer, pizza and ridiculous clothings and accesories emblazoned with team colors and logos. Training for football players involves eating steaks, drinking beer and slapping the wife and girlfriend around (don’t forget all of the ass-grabbing and crotch-feeling). It’s not a sport, it’s a joke – part of the great hoax to keep the Dumb White Trash entertained so they don’t ask too many questions.
Don’t get me started on baseball, WWE ‘wrestling’ or NASCAR.
Pleasure Beach – Bridgeport, CT
Pleasure Beach, an island just off of Bridgeport to the city’s eastern side and partially in Stratford used to be the place to go during the hay days when there was an amusement park and entertainment.
In 1996 the one and only way to and from the island burned mysteriously cutting off pedestrian and car traffic. The City of Bridgeport had to employ ferries to get the people back to the main land. Bridgeport has fallen a great deal since the days when it was a strong force in industry, commerce and all things involving money. The City had no money to repair or replace the bridge so the island was ‘temprarily’ closed, the leases on the island’s cottages cancelled (some are technically in Stratford, some in Bridgeport). The Island was left to decay and return back to nature.
The island isn’t exactly an island.
Pleasure Beach connects to a small, sandy strip of land dotted with small trees and lush sea grass, that makes Long Beach in Straftord.
One can walk across this land bridge of sorts to the island. The mile long strip of land terminates at Pleasure Beach with a two-cable fence ( small piles driven into the ground to form a line of stumps about a meter high with two hefty cables strung along the piles to make a fence or barrier of sorts) and a sign that says something like someone is watching the island via closed circuit television and Web cams. O.K., whatever.
I stepped over a low part of the fence and onto the island.
Immediately I found an eerie but strangely fascinating aura in what seemed to be a hasty retreat. In some of the beach front cottages, childs’ toys lay idle faded from nearly 10 years of forgotten, sand-blown isolation. Same with the houses. They were all in good shape as if everyone happened to be out of town at the same time – which they were – but were to return. No one was returning home.
The small road that in some places was also the driveway, was slowly sinking and crumbling giving way to grass, trees and earth. Untouched but melting snow drifts took refuge in the shade where summer residents used to relax after a long day at the beach or amusement park.
This trip I didn’t venture very far onto the island because I got there a little late in the day. Next time I’ll arrive in the morning and explore much more of the island.
Anyone want to go?
The fine line between Journalism, blogs and making money…
Where is the fine line between accuratley reporting news and information and reporting for profit or other coersive reasons?
I think some make the naieve assumption that newspapers aren’t profit-driven businesses, basing editorial coverage on the Advertising Department and not on … well, editorial worthiness.
Housatonic Publications, a subsidiary of the great, evil Journal-Register Corporation, was especially good at promoting their bottom line editorial policies.
Bloggers should have the protections that journalists in more traditional media enjoy.
When local newspapers stop covering Boy Scout bake sales and kayak lessons offered by a local proprietor for a fee and when bloggers stop covering news and offering unfiltered opinions, then maybe they should not have protection.
I heard it said that dissent is the highest form of Patriotism. Ignorance and largasse are not American values – well, they weren’t in the begining but they seem to be now.
