Get Up, Gonzo!

It’s taken me several days to shake the stupor brought on by non-stop Wild Turkey and speed consumption. Attempting ordinary function at work has been brutal. Nights spent wildly violating legal restraints on me by walking the West Oakland train yards, firing automatic weapons indiscriminately have added some vigor, but the truth still remains the same. Duke is gone.

I could sit here and wax maudlin about Dr. Thompson and his self-inflicted removal from our every day reality. Fuck that. There’s already enough dopey-eyed drivel out there of that nature, and it’s the last thing that he would want. What we had in Thompson was a man who realized that death should be greeted with celebration rather than weeping and wailing, mainly because no one wants to hear that shit on their way into then new life. I mean, seriously, aren’t tears at a wedding or entry into a first-purchase home those of joy rather than sorrow (assuming the spouse and address are correct)?

Instead, I think of all the great things that Dr. Gonzo brought into my life when I first perused The Great Shark Hunt, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hell’s Angels, and, of course, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a teenage skate punk looking for something more in life than screaming ANARCHY! and breaking bottles in a hole. Oh yeah, baby, Duke was the perfect ticket. Nothing better than pushing all of your American freedoms to the limit all at once. Who gives a fuck if people around you don’t understand what the fuck you’re trying to achieve? Most of them couldn’t fuck their way out of an empty paper bag anyhow. Rubes, weasels, cowards and other vile contaminants to the gene pool. Unsafe on any speed, weed, or .44 magnum. Hey--their loss and our world.

In these days of evil pharmaceutical companies firing multiple reuptake inhibitors down people’s throats for whatever perceived dilemma presents itself, Dr. Gonzo offered us the multiple reuptake accelerators. Who would have thought that LSD and mescaline would have gone so well together in high doses? Or that Adrenochrome and high-grade pot make for a lovely afternoon cocktail while oogling other tails beside the pool? Who else would have presented us with the dilemma of which hallucinogen to take while firing automatic weapons at dynamite-laden vehicles? And all of this in a Nixonian age of paranoia that was the sinister precursor to our own twisted and diseased, privacy-extinction-agenda times. Rather than tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, Thompson said “fuck you!” and wheeled his 8-cyllendar beast 180 degrees back into the heart of the cataclysm. He knew the truth: cultural breaches are the true crucibles of civilization. Anything else is a pleasant delusion. The fact that he was investigated by the FBI, targeted by the entire Nixon administration, and relentlessly hounded by law enforcement officials never once dampened Thompson’s angle on life. "Everything, all the time."

Never one to confuse "delusion" with "hallucination," Thompson discouraged naybob followers from trying to be him. It took me a long time to realize exactly why that was. First, the man had no use for banal groupies. Second, living like him is extraordinarily fucking dangerous. Anyone who doesn’t realize the latter deserves to die like the incompetent monkey they are. Fanboy behavior is for Justin Timberlake or Leo DiCaprio wannabes who dream of celebrity openings on red carpets while brainless bimbos adorn their arms and whisper sweet raunchies into their ears. It’s a much safer place than standing on the diamond’s point, where every edge meets, the footing is sketchy, and all the angles refract the images you see. In surrealistic life, there is no place for the dilettante. Particularly where firearms and drugs and cops and politicians and antagonistic writings can lead to the violation of so many rights and orifices that vertigo has you by the dendrites and all you can do is wait out the time. Or maybe you’ll just accidentally shoot yourself in the foot while on LSD. Perhaps you should just toss in another DVD, turn to People, suck down a Diet Coke, and forget the whole thing.

But I digress. Naturally. Details cannot be ignored. Especially now. Still paying some half-assed attention? Good.

Because the question following in the Doctor’s wake is a natural one: Who’s next? Was all this for nothing? Friday night gatherings where poorly dressed hipsters gather "round the ol" tele and peruse Johnny Depp schlepping it up (sorry, Johnny) for all those who can only watch in envy? Memorial readings of the outrageous without the slightest fucking inclination to grasp a legacy? If the answer is "yes" to both of the above, then someone please shoot me in the head. I don’t want to see what comes after this. We’re talking legacy here, folks. Amateurs and poseurs can fuck off now. We don't need you.

What "we" need are the hardcores. The ones who don't fear going above, beyond, through, down, and over. Danger illustrated addicts hell-bent on making sure that the S.S. Bush gets sunk the same way the Bismark went to an icy grave. Irascible, iconoclastic hellions automatically drawn to the very words that gave birth to our freedoms, and excising the threats to them. By word, by image, by program code, by action, by perversion, over the airwaves and the land and the sea, let them come. Not for the show. Not for the bitches and the E. For one and all. For Fucko’s sake. From every mountainside, let Gonzo ring!