Issue Six Cover

On the 5th Anniversary of the Death of Hunter S. Thompson...

On February 20, 2005, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself and ended thirty-five years of Gonzo journalism. There never was another Gonzo journalist and there never will be. It was a one man genre. And likewise, there will never be another HST. He was utterly unique. In fact, “unique” is perhaps too weak a word… He was a freak, an atavistic freak.

His literary influences were numerous, yet he was always an original. Thompson grew up worshipping Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and yet ended up being something totally different – Gonzo. He lived in weird times, and his style of writing develop in response to his surroundings – living through the 1950s, 60s & 70s; a turbulent era to say the least.

Most people know him from his work over only a short period of time. The development and maturation of Gonzo, from “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Yet to fully respect the man one must look back further, beyond HST as a drug-fiend, to HST as a dedicated, scrupulous journalist. Prior to his Hell’s Angels fame, Thompson worked as hard as anyone in the game, and while that effort appeared later, it never fully reappeared.

Fame changed Hunter S. Thompson. Drugs changed him, too. Some say he created a caricature and felt compelled to live up to it… and that he became trapped in himself. Reading The Proud Highway drives home just how different Thompson was in his later years. He was not perfect. He came to feel later in life that he’d never reached his potential, and that his work was not respected as serious literary work.

So on this anniversary of his death, let’s celebrate his life and work not by wearing bright shirts, floppy hats and cigarette holders, or by getting messed up and speaking like Johnny Depp… Let’s remember Hunter S. Thompson as a serious writer; an important journalist who earned his place in history through hard work and devotion to the truth.

HST for Beginners

Beatdom is honoured to present "HST for Beginners" over at www.hstbooks.org. Several Hunter Thompson scholars and friends have gathered to offer their views of the separation of Hunter Thompson from his alter-ego, Raoul Duke.

This blog post marks a significant moment in the history of Gonzo. We are aiming to gather new fans, and to inform previous readers of Thompson's work of its true importance.

Hunter Thompson was, first and foremost, a serious writer. He deserves respect and a place in the canon of American literature. Hopefully this project will help him be remember the way he would have wanted - as a great writer, rather than a frat boy's hero.

http://hstbooks.org/2009/10/23/hst-for-beginners-part-1-the-separation-of-hunter-and-raoul/

A Beginners Guide to Hunter Thompson

The wonderful Martin Flynn at HSTbooks is honouring the late, great Hunter S. Thompson as he deserves to be honoured, by introducing a new generation of readers to the more serious side of the man's work.

"The aim will be to catch folks new to the HST world and steer them in the direction of his writing talent and away from the crazed loony side of the man."

A selection of scholars and friends will contribute to a series of blogs which will expose the truth behind the madness and the skill behind the free-wheeling and frantic prose.

Thompson always wanted his work to be taken seriously, and lamented that his books were popular largely among frat-boy types. He was known in his time for the wild excess of his alter-ego, and not for his intelligence or literary abilities.

It’s time for people to realise his genius, and this series should help to introduce his work in the right way so that he can truly be read as he intended.

Read about it here: http://hstbooks.org/2009/10/07/hunter-s-thompson-for-beginners/

Ginsberg & HST: Now in Skin Format

Ok, I'm a book nerd. You know this, I know this, let's get over it... I have two tattoos and both of them are nerdy bookish things... See below...

This is my newest tattoo and isn't a great photo. I had it done in Daegu, S. Korea, and it reads: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". Makes a great lesson starter for my kids. "Teacher, everyone is crazy?" "Yes, Little Timmy, they are all fucking batshit bonkers!"


This is my first tattoo. Again, the photo sucks. It looks better after all these months in the sun, strangely. It's Hunter Thompson's Gonzo Fist emblem and it's my simple way of wearing what I believe on my skin. I don't care about all the madness and drugs and such... I care about the truth and dignity of his goals as a writer.

Wayne Ewing's Vodcast

My old friend and Hunter S. Thompson documentarian, Wayne Ewing, has started up a vodcast on his website - www.hunterthomsonfilms.com.

Ewing directed ‘Breakfast with Hunter’, ‘Free Lisl’ and ‘When I Die’, and was Thompson’s friend, neighbor, and chosen biographer for many, many years. His films have continued the legacy of a great American writer, offering visual images that help animate the letters and books that made Thompson famous.

Now Ewing has a vlog (I’m not sure what that means, but I like it…) that offers text, images and videos combined to explain moments in the later stages of the life of Hunter Thompson.

I suggest, nay, demand, you go and visit the vlog at: http://hunterthompsonfilms.com/vodcast/

Issue Four Release

Issue Four

This issue marks the Fortieth Anniversary of Kerouac's death with articles about his life and work, covering subjects you've never even thought about. We also have plenty about the women of the Beat Generation - including an 'interview' with Carolyn Cassady. Our poetry section is better than ever, with poems by our favourite poet, Nathan Dolby, and hip hop star Scroobius Pip! We have the return of old writers, and many new ones to mark an incredible era in the magazine's history. We're everywhere right now, and to capitalise on this period of fame, we're going to make Issue Four the best issue ever!

As usual, Beatdom is free to download. So, whether you wish to buy a copy or download one, please visit this link.

Contents:

Regulars
Letters from the Editor
Notes on Contributors
Poetry
Modern Beat
Features
HST & The Beats: Fleeting Encounters
Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard
Joan Vollmer: In the Eyes of her Contemporaries
Beats & the Sixties Counterculture
Alene Lee: Subterranean Muse
Articles
The Sea is my Brother, by Jack Kerouac
Kerouac & The Outsider: A Puzzle
The Breton Traveller
The Plurarity of the Beat Spirituality
Interviews
Carolyn Cassady
Gary Snyder
Reviews
Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway
review No Country for Old Men
Required Reading
Fiction/ Art/ Memoirs
Woodcuttings of the Beats
First Encounters with Allen Ginsberg
The Gun and the New Dark Way
Deep Fried Ducktape and Sushi Knives
Jack & Edward

The Good Doctor

Beatdom #4 will be delayed until the scum who keep fucking with our website are murdered. Seriously. Go kill the fuckers and let me know, then you'll get your goodies... The magazine's ready, but without a website there's just no way to put it out!

---

But on a lighter note, I stumbled across this article from the New York Times Book Blog, which normally sucks, but which has given us maybe two good HST articles...

Here's the second one, folks...

Read it here.

Happy Birthday, Hunter S. Thompson!

Today is 18th July, which Hunter S. Thompson's birthday.

I hope people all around the world are filling their glasses, dropping their tabs of acid, and lighting their fat joints in a shared memory of one of the finest writers of the 20th Century!

More than that, we should all take a scathing look at the world around us and trying to write some searing indictments of the world that is run by fat, crooked swine. Don't let the bastards get away with this!

If you're in a more scholarly mood, I've posted an article about Hunter S. Thompson's relationship to the Beat Generation on the Beatdom website. Read it here: http://www.beatdom.com/hst__the_beats.htm

Anyway, enjoy the day. It's what he would have wanted you to do.

Mahalo,

David

Hunter S. Thompson & the Beats

There's an article available online that is a sneak preview of what's coming in Issue Four of Beatdom!

You can view the article at http://www.beatdom.com/hst__the_beats.htm

Johnny Depp Remembers Allen Ginsberg

A big thanks goes to HST Books (at www.hstbooks.org) for this great piece by the legendary Johnny Depp. Here, he remembers his friend and idol, Allen Ginsberg.

I love Johnny Depp, by the way. He's about the coolest person on the planet.

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The Night I met Allen Ginsberg. By Johnny Depp.

An appreciation of Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady and the other bastards who ruined my life.

There I was, age thirteen, eyes shut tight, listening intently to Frampton Comes Alive over and over again, as some kind of pubescent mantra that helped to cushion the dementia of just how badly I wanted to whisk Bambi, the beautiful cheerleader, away from the wedge of peach melba that was the handsome, hunky football hero. …

I was daydreaming of taking her out behind the 7-Eleven to drink Boone’s Farm strawberry-apple wine and kiss until our mouths were raw. ZZZZRRRIIIPP!! was the sound I heard that ripped me from that tender moment. My brother Danny, ten years my senior and on the verge of committing fratricide, having had more than enough of “Do you feel like we do?,” promptly seized the vinyl off record player and with a violent heave chucked the sacred album into the cluttered abyss of my room.

“No more,” he hissed. “I can’t let you listen to that shit anymore!”

I sat there snarling at him in that deeply expressive way that only teens possess, decompressing too fast back into reality. He grabbed a record out of his own collection and threw it on.

“Try this … you’re better than that stuff. You don’t have to listen to that shit just ’cause other kids do.”

“OK, fucker,” I thought, “bring it on … let’s have it!”

The music started … guitar, fretless stand-up bass, flutes and some Creep pining away about venturing “in the slipstream … between the viaducts of your dreams. …” “Fuck this,” I thought, “this is pussy music — they’re not even plugged in! Those guitars aren’t electric!” The song went a bit further: “Could you find me … would you kiss my eyes … to be born again. …” The words began to hit home; they didn’t play that kind of stuff on the radio, and as the melody of the song settled in, I was starting to get kind of used to it. Shit! I even liked it. It was a sound I hadn’t really ever given any attention to before, because of my innate fear of groups like America, Seals and Crofts, and, most of all, the dreaded Starland Vocal Band. I didn’t give half a fuck about a horse with no name, summer breezes or afternoon delights! I needed space to be filled!!! Filled with sound … distorted guitars, drums, feedback and words … words that meant something … sounds that meant something!

I found myself rummaging and rooting wildly through my brother’s record collection as if it were a newfound treasure, a monumental discovery that no one — especially no one my age — could know about or understand. I listened to it all! The soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and Last Tango in Paris, Bob Dylan, Mozart and Brahms … the whole shebang! I couldn’t get enough. I had become like some kind of junky for the stuff and in turn became a regular pain in the ass to my brother. I wanted to know all that he did. I wanted to know everything that rotten white-bread football brute didn’t. I was preparing to woo that fantastic little rah-rah girl out of the sunlight of the ice cream parlor and into my nocturnal adolescent dreamscape.

And so began my ascension (or descension) into the mysteries of all things considered Outside. I had burrowed too deep into the counterculture of my brother’s golden repository, and as years went by he would turn me on to other areas of his expertise, sending me even further into the dark chasm of alternative learning.

One day he gave me a book that was to become like a Koran for me. A dogeared paperback, roughed up and stained with God knows what. On the Road, written by some goofball with a strange frog name that was almost unpronounceable for my teenage tongue, had found its way from big brother’s shelf and into my greedy little paws. Keep in mind that in all my years of elementary school, junior high and high school, possibly the only things I’d read up to that point were a biography of Knute Rockne, some stuff on Evel Knievel and books about WW II. On the Road was life-changing for me, in the same way that my life had been metamorphosed when Danny put Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks onto the turntable that day.

I was probably about fifteen by this time, and the cheerleader had begun to fade from my dreams. I didn’t need her now. I needed to wander … whenever and wherever I wanted! I’d found myself at the end of my rope as far as school was concerned; there seemed no particular reason for me to stay. The teachers didn’t want to teach, and I didn’t want to learn — from them. I wanted my education to come from living life, getting out there in the world, seeing and doing and moving amongst the other vagabonds who had the same sneaking suspicion that I did, that there would be no great need for high-end mathematics, nope. … I was not going to be doing other people’s taxes and going home at 5:37 P.M. to pat my dog’s head and sit down to my one-meat-and-two-vegetable table waiting for Jeopardy to pop on the glass tit, the Pat Sajak of my own private game show, in the bellybutton of the universe, Miramar, Florida. A beautiful life, to be sure, but one I knew I was destined not to have, thanks to big brother Dan and the French-Canadian with the name Jack Kerouac.

I had found the teachers, the soundtrack and the proper motivation for my life. Kerouac’s train-of-thought writing style gave great inspiration for a train-of-thought existence — for better or for worse. The idea to live day to day in a “true pedestrian” way, to keep walking, moving forward, no matter what. A sanctified juggernaut.

Through this introduction to Kerouac, I then learned of his fellow conspirators Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Huncke, Cassady and the rest of the unruly lot. I dove into their world full on and sponged up as much as I possibly could of their works. The Howl of Ginsberg left me babbling like an idiot, stunned that someone could regurgitate such honesty to paper. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch sent me into fits of hysterical laughter, with the imagery of talking assholes and shady reptilian characters looming, always not far behind. Cassady’s The First Third rants on beatifically like a high-speed circular saw. The riches I was able to walk away with from these heroes, teachers and mentors are not available in any school that I’ve ever heard of. Their infinite wisdom and hypersensitivity were their greatest attributes and in some cases –as I believe it was with Kerouac — played a huge part in their ultimate demise.

I had the honor of meeting and getting to know Allen Ginsberg for a short time. The initial meeting was at a soundstage in New York City, where we were both doing a bit in the film The United States of Poetry. I was reading a piece from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, the “2nth Chorus,” and as I was rehearsing it for camera, I could see a familiar face out of the corner of my eye: “Fuck me,” I thought, “that’s Ginsberg!” We were introduced, and he then immediately launched into a blistering rendition of said chorus, so as to show me the proper way for it to be done.

“As Jack would have done it!” he emphasized.

I was looking straight down the barrel at one of the most gifted and important poets of the twentieth century, and with all the truth and guts I could muster up, I said in response, “Yeah, but I’m not reading it as him, I’m reading it as me. It’s my interpretation of his piece.”

Silence — a LONNNGG silence. Ticktock tickrock ticktock

I was smiling nervously, my eyes sort of wavering between his face and the floor. I sucked down about half of my 5,000th cigarette of the day in one monster drag and filled the air around us with my poison. It was at that point that I remembered his “Don’t Smoke!” poem … oops … too fucking late now, boy, you done stepped in shit! I looked at Ginsberg, he looked at me, and the director looked at us both as the crew looked at him, and it was quite a little moment, for a moment there. Allen’s eyes squinted ever so slightly and then began to twinkle like bright lights. He smiled that mystic smile, and I felt as though God himself had forgiven me a dreadful sin.

After the shoot, we took a car back to his apartment on the Lower East Side and had some tea. He was gracious enough to speak to me about the early years with Kerouac, Cassady and the others. We spoke of many things, from the cost of a limo ride to the high-pitched voice of Oscar Wilde; he actually had a recording of Wilde reading The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He flirted unabashedly and nonstop for the duration of my visit, even allowing me to smoke, as long as I sat next to the kitchen window and exhaled in that direction. He kindly signed a book to me and a couple of autographs (one for my brother, of course), and then I made my way back to the hotel, only to have already received a call from him, inviting me to some kind of something or other.

From that day forward, we stayed in touch with each other over the next few years and even spent time together from time to time. Our communication continued until our final conversation, which was just three days before he passed on. He called me to say that he was dying, and that it would be nice to see each other again before he checked out. He was so calm and so peaceful about it that I had to ask how he felt given this situation. He gracefully said that it was like a ripple on a sea of tranquillity. He then cried a little, as did I; he said, “I love you,” and so did I. I told him I would get to New York as soon as possible, and fuckin’ A, I was gonna go — the call came only days later.

Ginsberg was a great man, like his old pals, who had paved the way for many, and many more to come. The contribution of these people goes way beyond their own works. Without On the Road, Howl or Naked Lunch, for example, would we have been blessed with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan? Or countless other writers and poets of that caliber who were born in the Fifties and Sixties? Where would we be without modern classics like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or The Times They Are A-Changin’?

So much has happened to me in the twenty years since I first sat down and took that long drag on Kerouac’s masterpiece. I have been a construction laborer, a gas-station attendant, a bad mechanic, a screen printer, a musician, a telemarketing phone salesman, an actor, and a tabloid target — but there’s never been a second that went by in which I deviated from the road that ol’ Jack put me on, via my brother. It has been an interesting ride all the way — emotionally and psychologically taxing — but a mother-fucker straight down the pike. And I know that without these great writers’ holy words seared into my brain, I would most likely have ended up chained to a wall in Camarillo State Hospital, zapped beyond recognition, or dead by misadventure.

So in the end, what can anyone … scholar, professor, student or biographer … really say about these angels and devils who once walked among us, though maybe just a bit higher off the ground?

Issue Four

Issue Three was a great success, and riding on that wave, Beatdom is rushing forth the next issue. We made you wait too long for Issue Three, and now we'll make it up to you. Issue Four is scheduled to appear within three months! That's a quarter of the time it took to release issue Three...

Issue Four has so far lined up the following selection of brilliant Beat studies...

• The search for Kerouac's roots
• Hunter S. Thompson & The Beats
• Gary Snyder's poetry
• A look at Alene Lee
• The changing lines in Kerouac's poetry
• The next instalment of Modern Beat
• An interview with Larry Keenan

But we need more... Issue Four needs submissions, so please see www.beatdom.com for the details.

Fear & Loathing in Denver

Denver to me meant Hunter S Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It existed in books alone, as brief home of the Beats, and tantalisingly close to Woody Creek, once the ‘fortified compound’ of Doctor Gonzo. I had no real idea of what Denver would be like, except that temperatures would be well below zero, the air thinner than an anorexic’s waist, and that I was invited to the premiere of Wayne Ewing’s The Outsiders of New Orleans.
So, armed with that knowledge, I rolled into Denver at midnight, with no place to stay, having stumbled off a train after a forty hour journey from San Luis Obispo, having freaked the shit out of many a passenger by telling them the two painful truths of my trip: that I was travelling a thousand miles to catch a movie, and that I had been living in a barn for the last few months… Oh well, some folks just don’t get the luxury of barns, sleeping crooked-necked on Amtraks, and subsisting on a diet of dehydrated cranberries…
Denver was not cold at midnight in the middle of November. Not any colder than Central California had been, anyway, and nothing like a brisk winter chill back home in sunny Scotland. I had gone out in preparation and bought a World War II jacket, as used by the troops training in the Rockies in the dead of winter… And I was wearing it over a t-shirt, a jersey, and another warm jacket. I also had on a hat, a scarf and a pair of gloves. Below freezing? I was fucking roasted alive as I walked past the Coors stadium, a piece of paper with the address of a hostel in my hand.
I knew fine well that hostels closed before midnight across the world, but I still hoped maybe I wouldn’t end up sleeping in the gutter in Denver, getting sodomised by some angry black man. Indeed, I was right to worry, for as in any American city, I seemed to draw an outrageous amount of attention from the black population, who watched me and followed me and talked about me, and so I was constantly driven to keep my head down and walk quickly and purposefully.
Which is not an easy thing to do when all you really know is that you’re looking for a number of a building on a street that stretches for over a mile, and none of the buildings seem to have numbers, so you just keep walking back and forth until it get to about one am and you finally find the place locked… I looked about, seriously considering a night on a park bench or in some soft gutter, but instead just hammered away at the door, afraid of trespassing on someone else’s gutter-spot.
“Where are you from?” a gruff voice boomed down from the second floor window. It emanated from the head of an old man who appeared to be tied into some kind of breathing apparatus. I was surprised even from my vantage point to hear such a loud voice.
“Scotland,” I replied, quietly, as I could see the locals beginning to stare and ponder whether or not they could have their way with me before my predicament was resolved.
“Where are you from?” he asked again, and again and again and again until eventually he gave up not hearing me and buzzed me in.
I pushed the gated metal door open and received a massive electric shock for my efforts. I thought it was some kind of joke, but later found that everything in the hostel had an electric current running wildly through it, and I became used to receiving brutal jolts of blue magic.
I signed into the hostel in the old man’s bedroom, sitting silently with his wife as he wheeled his breathing machine around and wheezed and struggled to talk. I guessed the effort of shouting down had utterly worn him out, for his voice was now no more than a harsh whisper. I gave him the money for one night stay, plus a deposit I would never get back. I knew that then and I didn’t give a fuck, but a dump like this was enough to tide me over and I’d have paid anything for not receiving a street-bumming and losing my laptop to some homie.
I crashed for the night in an electric room, exhausted after my forty hour sitting session and brief stroll through the streets of ‘whores with hearts of cheap gold’.
I woke and realised that the night had been acceptable: I’d slept and that was all I’d wanted. After spending half an hour on the internet, I realised that there was no way out of Denver I could get after attending the premiere, so I had to book another electrifying night in the Melbourne. I ran into town and found an ATM, then ran back in time for the ten am check-out time, and booked another night.
Then I walked back into town, determined to have a good day, and knowing from my online research that I’d be getting the six am bus out of Denver the following morning. It would be a short stay, and I wanted to pack as much in as possible. This was the stomping ground of Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg, and Doctor Gonzo had spent more than a few nights in the city, too. I had a list of Beat sites to see, but I never intended on a structured programme of touring. In San Francisco, I’d made firm plans and stuck them, and I’d seen what I’d wanted to see, but suffered brutally for my efforts. That trip had been a bit of a disaster, but Denver would be short and sweet and spontaneous.
I stopped for coffee at Caribou, and then walked down the 16th Street shopping mall, digging it in its morning-quiet state of intrigue. The Christmas decorations were up and the shops were ones I’d mostly never seen before: Colorado chains and tourist traps. I walked to the end of the mall and sat in the park between the Capitol Building and the State and County Building, watching squirrels and hobos bask in the sun, and writing crude poems in my little notebook. The city was stunning from where I sat, and I was more relaxed than I’d ever been in San Fran. And sitting there, I knew I was where Kerouac had watched bats and Ginsberg had contemplated madness.
After a while I stood and walked into town again for lunch in a café next to the big town clock. I used their WiFi to check Google Maps, confirming where I was going next: The Tivoli at Denver University. It didn’t seem to hard to find.
And it wasn’t. I found it, waited around outside, and then watched The Outsiders of New Orleans in a room full of guys in Hunter S Thompson get-up, drinking Bloody Marys and clutching grapefruits. After the film I talked to Wayne Ewing and arranged a tour of Thompson’s home for the next day. I also agreed to go to a directors’ party in the evening.
My purpose for the visit complete, I took a walk back into town, up Larimer and dug Cassady’s street in all its modern nothingness. Now it was somewhere between poverty and affluence, and utterly without character, but back in the hazy Beat street days of Denver delinquency, it was skid-row all the way from top to bottom. It was once nothing but bars, pool halls and pawn shops, and was now bars, but somewhere between classy and faux-classy reminiscence.
I walked back across the city and into the Colorado Natural History Museum, where I conversed with an Iranian security guard after hours about the state of America. I loved it, he loathed it; but we could both agreed that things were rather fucked up. I hesitated to ask him why he had come here if he didn’t like America or Americans, or even why he’d stayed for five years, and why he thought he had the right to complain so aggressively if the country had accommodated him for five long years… But instead I listened as he told about his learning Japanese in order to move to Japan and start a new life in a friendlier country. As I left, he drew me a map of places not to go after dark in Denver, and I bid him farewell.
Somewhere and at sometime during the day, my phone had died. The battery was dead and I was a bit screwed. I needed the phone because it had all my phone numbers stored in its memory, and it also served as an alarm clock, which I needed for getting up at five in the morning. Luckily, I had Wayne Ewing’s business card, so I would able to call him from a phone box in a sketchy little park.
But the phone wouldn’t work, and kept giving me bullshit directions on how to operate it, but my knowledge of US area codes and phone operation was not up to scratch. I decided to walk into town and try another. I needed to call him to get the address of the party. No luck. There are few public phones these days, and the ones that do exist are generally broken and pissed on by a weird and depraved breed of Americans.
I headed back to the hostel, intending to get dinner later, on my way to the party. But when I used the hostel phone, all I got was his answer phone. Shit. I was tired from having walked around the city all day, and starting to think that maybe going to a party was not such a tempting idea. It seemed a waste to have travelled a thousand miles and not go, but tomorrow would be an eventful day…
The problem for tomorrow lay in the fact that it hinged on my contacting Wayne Ewing and arranging to get to Woody Creek. I did a spot of online research and could find no way of getting there on my own, and if I did manage to get there, I could see no place I could stay. I couldn’t risk getting trapped out in the mountains, but if I waited until the light of day to get plans hammered out, then I might be forced to spend another night in Denver. It wasn’t a bad city, but I was done. Next up was Woody Creek or something else.
I could hardly afford the trip, either. The whole thing was mounting in cost with ever passing hour, and one thing I’d learned was that travelling could save money in sleeping, for if done right you could combine the two and avoid paying for accommodation.
I phoned Wayne a few more times and kept getting the answer phone, so I though ‘Fuck it,” and decided to take the first train out of Denver the next day. I wasn’t about to get lost in the middle of nowhere with no money and no phone. So I made up my mind and thought about dinner.
I sat in the kitchen of the Melbourne hostel and debated my options until a pretty Australian girl appeared and made me dinner. She knocked up bacon rolls and green tea and we sat and talked about America and the years it turned out she’d spent in Glasgow. Eventually, the subject came around that she was going to Aspen in three days, but that she wasn’t really sure how to get there. She reckoned she’d probably have to pay for a private ride out, which had certainly seemed to me to be the only realistic way of getting there.
After a few hours she went to bed, and I kept sitting around until a Chinese guy came through and we got thoroughly wasted on a crate of Corona he’d bought. We talked about computers and business, and he told me that he’d come to Denver to work a minimum wage job, even though he had a degree in Computer Programming. Poor bastard, I thought, but good luck to him.
I went to bed and slept in two minute sessions, on and off, until four in the morning. It was ridiculous, trying to use my own body as an alarm clock in the absence of my phone. The bald fuck-head across from me was snoring like an asshole, too, and I kept falling asleep and dreaming of murdering him, and then waking and hearing him and regretting that it was only a dream and that I didn’t have the balls to actually kill the fucker… What would it matter, anyway, as I was fleeing the city in a few sweet hours?
I woke when I woke and went to Caribou for more strong, black coffee, and talked to the black guy behind the counter about life and Christmas. He was a damn fine gent of a man, and I left with a smile on my face, a coffee in my hand, and a newspaper under my should, deciding that I’d go to Arizona and see what the craic was…

Hunter S Thompson Festival

My hero, Doctor Hunter S Thompson, will be celebrated next year, around this time (his birthday). His fans are trying to put together a HST Fest to celebrate the late author's work, although a date and location are as yet undecided.
I'll keep you informed as more information comes along, but for now, please check out the following websites for more info/debate:
http://www.gonzofest.net/
www.myspace.com/hstfestival
http://www.hunterthompsonfilms.com/