as originals go...

When you think of true originals, you might consider people like Nina Simone, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski (sorry, by now you probably are sick of me mentioning Waits and Bukwoski, but for this discussion, it's a relevant point), Errol Morris, Satoshi Kon, and to lesser, genre-bursting degrees, Scorsese, Kurosawa and Kubrick, just to name a few more than a few. But as journalism goes, there are few true originals to be found. Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, sure, but they made do with a given format and turned it into a kingdom; Woodward and Bernstein may have brought down a whole administration once, but they aged straight-and-narrow into their own little niches as cogs in machines, never again to have the blasphemously incisive impact they did when they made Nixon cry. There is, truly, only one absolute original in journalism, and his name was Hunter S. Thompson. Yesterday he shot and killed himself, leaving a mile-wide chasm in the iceberg tip of counter-culture's heirarchy of mad literati.

"Gonzo" journalism was his oeuvre, so named for his own efforts to view the power structure and political process through a chemically-induced haze while thumbing his nose at not just politicians, but all authority figures, mad or sane. Thompson lived as he wrote, seemingly unapologetic for his methods and manner, and steadfast in his beliefs. About a year ago, I began reading his first novel, The Rum Diary, which he wrote in 1957. It was published over 40 years later. I set it aside as daily distractions and less hearty entertainments held sway, but now I will begin reading it again, just in memory of the guy.

Long before Johnny Depp played Thompson's alter-ego in Terry Gilliam's film of Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, Bill Murray rumbled and growled through a 1987 version of the writer's antics, titled Where The Buffalo Roam. I don't think a dozen people have seen the film, but I loved it at the time, having just read a string of Thompson's earliest books.

It was odd that, within a 24-hour period this weekend, I read about three very different celebrities passing away. Daniel Herlihy, a classy actor who younger folks would know best as The Old Man in Robocop, was in his eighties and died Saturday of natural causes. Sandra Dee, an icon of the fifties and sixties, died at the age of 62 (which seems youthful by comparison) of complications from kidney failure after weeks in the hospital. She had been on dialysis for several years. Thompson, by comparison, seems to have committed suicide at 67.

The papers aren't giving out any details, if any are yet known. But perhaps, like the samurai, he saw something dishonorable in the world that he just couldn't live with, that his writing couldn't touch; or worse, saw something in himself - and just decided to remove himself from the picture. It would be an understandable exit for a guy who never gave a damn what anyone else thought, and gave no quarter in his assaults on the establishment. Not that that makes it any easier to accept.

Or, consider this: longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman once described Thompson as a "man among reptiles". Maybe the doctor was finally fed up with all that goddam cold blood.

recent observations - ludicrous!

--This past weekend, I saw a teenage girl in a restaurant who was wearing a t-shirt with an illustration of a heart with a jagged chasm down the middle. Surrounding the image, in a goofy font I have not yet been able to duplicate, it read "You break it, you bought it."

(sigh)

What message was being communicated here? All I could imagine was that a very bitter mother somewhere was indoctrinating her little egg-spawn into the school of abrasive, grasping, gold-digging harpies that might deserve more love than they're ever going to realize. If the mother's philosophy was not involved and it was, in fact, the girl's idea to wear it, what parent would miss the obviousness of the implied message in favor of "cuteness"? Strident response aside, someone's going to be very popular at the prom.

recent observations - absurd!

--Last week, a local television station was running a PSA for Black History Month, and according to them, "history isn't just about the past".

(sigh)

After catching my breath and wiping up the coffee I sprayed on the counter-top, I laughed out loud. I don't think most people need a copy of Webster's handy to know that history, in fact, is defined as "all recorded events of the past".

old school - poetry from the dusty file

a fair representation by some accounts


I took her to see a film about jackson pollock
on a rainy sunday afternoon
and the theater was filled with patrons
much older than us, much older than me,
all wiping the drops from there coats
and shaking off umbrellas

the actor who played the lead was
very intense, as he was in all his roles,
and he often clenched his jaw tightly,
set like quick-drying concrete, and he didn't
scowl so much as his straight face lent itself to
much anger and inner turmoil

having never studied the painter before
I did not know that he was both
alcoholic and depressed
- a fine combination for an artist -
and the film showed him
falling down drunk with his brother,
being scowled at by various acquaintances,
howling at anyone who tried to tell him
what art was supposed to be,
and painting, always painting,
dragging colors across canvas with a miniature trowel
and dripping them from above in the method
that garnered him
his greatest fame

and there was the woman
who took care of him
at great personal sacrifice
making sure he was coherent for parties
and booking his exhibits;
when he died
stupidly
she went on to paint again
as she had before him
and she too knew some measure of
success

we were warm when we left the theater,
the crush of people and poor circulation
of the old art house
stifling

when we hit the lobby again
we could feel the cool of the outside air
and smell the increased rainfall
sneaking past the usher

upon stepping outside
we breathed in deep
and hooked fingers
walking to the car
where I casually stepped to my door,
the drops misting my coat,
and we got in and laughed,
satisfied that we weren't in the block-long line
of people waiting
in the rain
to see the next feature

I am fascinated by movies about painters
perhaps because I am comfortable with the fact
that it is something I cannot do
and then again,
perhaps it is because in the movies
they make it all look so easy
and I retain some modicum
of hope.


© scn 3-12-2001

my game is hard

About a year ago, I ran across an individual who seemed more caricature than flesh and blood. I was eating breakfast on a Saturday morning, with my son, at a local McDonald's. We were not alone but it was not crowded, either. A man in his mid-to-late twenties came in with a younger man, and they ordered and sat near us. While I ate and chatted with my son, I listened closely to their conversation. Or, I should say, I listened to the older of the two talk at the younger one. He was schooling the other man in a way of living, but more importantly in a job, and his tale was told through a mercurial braggart's voice. It was the speech of salesman-as-DSL-conduit. He didn't speak so much as his language blurred the very air surrounding the two men. And he seemed, loudly, to be starting his day off with references of how he got a trio of women from a club to take part in a noisy foursome after a long day of successful barter. In fact, for a while I thought all he was going to talk about was how to get women. He talked about which ones to shoot for, how you could begin the conversation as sales pitch and then after the product was sold, you could get any one of them in bed if you had the right skills. The talk morphed from women to basic sales, and he boisterously went on and on about how he was number one in his organization, and apparently for good reason: "because I always bring my full game, and my game is hard." I felt like a character from the film Boiler Room had slipped out of a DVD case, thrown on his Saturday comfort clothes, grabbed a new recruit and gone to McDonald's for a bite. He was one of the most overtly sleazy, obvious and comical human beings I've ever encountered. He was equal parts oily pretense, preternaturally virile posture and affected determination. He was the artist's dream, for whatever portrait, movie, novel, sitcom, poem or stand-up act was based on him would kill. And it wasn't until the end of his DIY/sucker-every-minute diatribe that he let slip what his product was, and it capped off the experience for me more sweetly than anything I could have envisioned or made up.

He sold magazine subscriptions.