Like a Rollin' Stone

Before you cuss me out, I did not forget to put the link to the game on my post yesterday. The host was acting the fool and something fucked up. I was late for a meeting so I did not have the time to fix it. I hope you guys can try and beat my awesome score today. You can play Heavy Weapon now.

What a night! Thanks to Kulki and Adit, the reggae party last night was off the hook. The place was jam packed and the crowd was wikid. I invited a bunch of friends but the stuck up bastid’s didn’t even make an effort. I know though that if B, Don Pts, or Neelu (I will not call you Raj) were here, they would have been game and they would have loved it. The music was phat and everyone had a blast. For all you guys in JKT, my mate Teddy will be playing at PARC on the 9th of this month so come by and show some love.

I got 3 issues of Rolling Stone magazine here that I really treasure. I am thinking of having them framed so they don’t get ruined and who knows, they might be worth something one day. Either way they will be fun to read 20 years from now if I am still around. The one with HST (Hunter S. Thompson) on the front, I just got yesterday. I usually don’t like the Australian edition but beggars can’t be choosers, as that is all we have available here. I am real happy to see Hunter on the cover though, as he did write for Rolling Stone back in the 60’s. There are about 3 or 4 really good articles in there including one by Johnny Depp. He played Hunter in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I bought the DVD in the states with al the special features, including commentary from and between Hunter and Depp. It is something I love to browse through on a lazy Sunday morning when I spend the afternoon in bed.

For those of you who did not know, Hunter died some few months ago by a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. I personally was not surprised to hear this. After reading so much of his work I did realize that he was a man who did not relinquish control of his life to anyone so I doubt he would simply wait to die. Towards his end he used to write articles that I would read on the ESPN web site called DEAR RUBE or something like that. Although they were based around sports he very often drifted of and rambled about politics, music, humanity, and life in general. Some people say he had lost his edge but I disagree.

After Hunter’s passing I sent a lot of you excerpts from his books and even eulogies by Ralph Steadman and others so I will not post that stuff up here. I could tell you so many stories about this guy but I will just take this opportunity to let you know that Hunter Thompson was best known as the father of GONZO journalism. Okay, I have to leave one excerpt at least. If you want to read more about him, GOOGLE him.

Taken from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seemed 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.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got through the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that...
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...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.