Transcript for #1264 - Timothy Denevi

You know, we live in an interesting times right now. It's kind of a shit show at every, keep this a moment.

Would you do it with my hands? Should I put him on?

I shoot with this one.

Well, when I wrote the book, I wanted to make sure my sentences never sounded like Thompson sentences. So I didn't write out a lot of his sentences, but this morning before coming on, I went and got some of my favorite quotes from just We're not long handed to get a sense of what his perspective was. We're rhythmless again.

Or someone who doesn't like our president and decided when he ran in 2016 to plagiarize Richard Nixon's 1968 convention speech. Did I do that? Directly. Really? Yeah, that was the headline and the fucking times it said. Nixon's inspiration. I'm sorry, Trump's inspiration. Nixon is the one. So the lies about crime and like barbarians at the gates, crime law and order, those were all from Nixon's shitty but successful 1968 Miami Convention speech. And Thompson, you know, tops a new, how effective that that was.

Well, that's right. So what I loved it.

Yeah. Oh, if you played right, Nixon, that's okay. All right. So freaking done the book about Hunter Assampton. I mean, it's really about taking the fucking emotion of living in this present, looking back at Thompson's career, and then trying to write it like a novel to dramatize all of the experiences he went through that are today. So applicable to us and just show his perspective that's so applicable to us today. What do you got here, Jim?

You're running on Nixon?

I mean, one of my favorite quotes by Thompson is Richard Nixon is with his Barbie doll family and his Barbie doll wife, is like America's answer to, you know, it's America's Dr. Jekyll, to Mr. Hyde. Like, you know, he is the werewolf. He speaks to the werewolf in us. And Nixon chose to hide that werewolf. His whole career until it finally came out because he wasn't sane with power. Trump ran on the wear wolf. He's like, no, I'm not going to hide it. That's who I am. That's what I'm going to use to try to get elected and like George Wallace did like other politicians did. It had resonance and it happened with Trump because of our media environment because of the place we live in now to amplify him all the way to the most powerful position in the world, which is insane.

I mean that was the best. I think what TAB does is what Thompson did very well. Hunter Thompson was really good at looking at Nixon saying, how are you manipulating the way we see you? To get a version of you out. And TAB looks at the way the media gets played. He looks at the way that administration manipulates the media. And he dramatizes that. Well, everybody else just gives us the information, the administration's giving us. And that goes back to Thompson with Nixon. Thompson had space when he worked for Rolling Stone and he could write about how Nixon made everybody watch his speeches the press on a close circuit television and they made the press just like Trump often the corner when the plane arrived you know being berated by everybody. It's very similar to what is going on now and Again, we see people giving hot takes, or we see people doing op-eds. We don't see people dramatizing how manipulative these corrupt administrations are and were.

Like, he was a crook with sin Clementi, like his loans with BB rebodes and all of that. He was a crook the way he used the IRS to investigate his. And I mean, he was a crook when he tried to break into the Brookings institution to destroy and bomb evidence. Like, he didn't want the press around him because he had committed very serious crimes. That I think that's similar to what we see now. I mean, as people have said on the show, no president wants the journalist. you know digging into their lives specifically because it's you don't want chumminus with journalists, but I think Trump and Nixon both knew they had so much to hide that to actually have a journalist like Hunter Thompson who was a good investigative journalist to have a journalist like my TV around. That's dangerous for them. They'll go to jail, which Nixon should have. Trump perhaps should.

Well, I mean, I've always loved honor as Thompson in. How did you get exposed to him? You know, I was 17 years old in a Catholic high school out, Bellam and College Prefectory up in San Jose, and we had a counterculture writing class. And so I read some of it there, and then a friend had an audiobook of fear and nothing. And so I just remember the first time hearing that old audiobook of fear and nothing, or somewhere around bars still at the end of the desert. And then in my 20s, I really got into strange rumbleings in Osloan, which is about conspiracy within the Los Angeles Police Department regarding the death of Ruben Salazar, a prominent journalist. And I write that, I'm like, oh my God, dude, this isn't somebody that's just dancing on stage or like performing a road narrative. This isn't investigative journalists who's going to the most powerful people. exposing things they don't want us to see, and in a sense, risking his life to do so, because he says in strange rumbleings in Oslo, on which he's really stoned in 1970, he says, that they're willing to kill Ruben Salazar, who is the most prominent journalist in Los Angeles. You could argue at the time, what the fuck is to stop them from killing me, hunter-tops, and for asking these questions?

Political violence is effective because it's used to silence either opposition or journalists. For me, running this book, and I try to dramatize it like a novel, it's quick. It's like only 220, 210 pages, and then it's like 100 pages of notes. So I, like, cited every site, similar sound. So that somebody that knows Thompson really well can be like, where the fuck did you get this information? And somebody else can, if they have questions, just go back and look. Long story short, for me, the crux of the book was in Chicago in 1968, where Hunter Thompson had a press pass. He went to the Democratic National Convention. On Wednesday night, Mayor Dayly gave this order to clear the intersection of Balbo and Michigan because there was a protest going on five, 10,000 people. Thompson was standing next to the Haymarket Inn, which was on the ground floor level. It was a plate glass window. He was standing with delegates from the Democratic National Convention, standing with their wise. and the cops charged. They did like a double pinch of formation like Hannibal and like Khumai and like fucking 100 BC and they split the protesters in half. Beat everybody. Hit Thompson over the head. He got his motorcycle helmet on just in time. So he's not stuck. He can see everything that's going on. and the entire plate glass window behind him, shatters. Everybody falls in. Cops jump in, are beating everybody, and he's looking around, and he's sure that snipers on the roof are going to open fire at any moment. So he runs to the blackstone where he's staying across the way, shows his room key, gets beat up by the cops, he's trying to get in, he goes, I live here goddamn it, I'm paying $100 a day, let me in my fucking room, and he barely gets in. And he just sits on his bed afterwards and he says, they knew how was press. They saw my press pass. They hit me because I was press. And if that's where we're at right now with journalists, political opponents and journalists are being clubbed to keep silent and to not respond, then this is not the democracy we know.

He just cried afterwards for two weeks. He couldn't stop. It's crazy.

Yeah, and I think it's almost easier to coordinate violence. So I was just talking to the head of the proud boys. You know, Gavin McGinnis is a group in Riketario. And he's like, you know, he's saying, he's using the language of the left. He's like, I'm a victim. I can't buy groceries. They've taken my big accounts, my plant forms. But when he talks about violence, he's like, who the fuck are you, Antifa? Like, I'm, you know, you're 120 pounds in wet. Like, if we have civil war, you're gonna lose. And I was sitting next to him for the podcast. And basically what I said was, if we have a civil war, you're going to be hit by sniper fire from the fucking roof. You're not going to be in a fist fight with antifa across the way. And I think there's this idea on the right that we can push towards violence, and we can get very close to it with our rhetoric, or with our actions, but that it won't spread like the compligration won't keep going.

I mean, with Antip on the left too, and that's why left Thompson was as hard on the left as he was on the right when he wrote. That was so important for his intelligence as a writer.

most people the vast majority hundreds of believed in working within the system you know you believe like it might be a fucked up system but you can still run for share of an aspect and you believe once you resort to violence that means the conversation is stopped and it just figures you so he cried for two weeks that was the most surprising thing for me researching this book and writing it was to see how much the violence affected him that he experienced at. Chicago, and you can speak to someone who's done, and I may find, who's been punched in the face as hard as somebody can punch you. Most Americans haven't had that, and that changes your ability to articulate something back in that moment. I mean, if that's political, if it's a police officer or a political opponent that uses violence instead of an argument to respond to you, we've left the realm that we recognize, and we're not going to be able to communicate even in the limited way that we're communicating right now. At Thompson knew that, So that's why after Chicago, I love that he went back to Aspen. And he was like, I wonder if I can share it. I'm going to do a mayoral campaign in Aspen. And that was brilliant because it was his way to control his environment, knowing that Mayor daily is not listening to his nonviolent protest. Richard Nixon is not listening to his nonviolent protest. Thompson needed to find another avenue to try to work within the American system to make things happen. The great contrast is his good friend, Oscar Zeta Acosta. There's a wonderful PBS documentary. It rises and falls the brown buffalo by on Philippe Rodriguez, a great director and it's Acosta's life. That's who Dr. Gonzo is based on.

You know, Thompson had more advantages than Acosta, and Acosta was being pursued by the LAPD, which was eventually set up by them. And for him, working with the system, he ran for Sheriff, wasn't an option. The cops set him up for a high-speed bust. You know, like the cops had, the cops had undercover agents from something called the Special Operations for Conspiracy, which was a fucking department in the LAPD at the time. And they were trying to use those provocateurs to incite violence against the plain clothes, please. So that or the normal clothes, please. So that lethal violence could be used to silence a civil rights movement. Bromber it.

Yeah, there's an age-old tactic. I hate to say distraise civil rights movement because the most effective weapon in silencing civil rights is lethal force. And you can do that in another country as the U.S. has done, but the U.S. can't use tactics like my lie, like Thompson writes about this in the U.S. unless you have a provocative reason, unless somebody that's undercover attacks a cop. And so the cops then, like what happened on August 29, 1970, during the moratorium riots, can just flood East LA.

We're going to tell us our head off with the tear gas gun.

I mean, there were people that had Nixon's point of view in Aspen who were like, let's develop this valley beyond what it can hold in terms of its environment. Let's imprison hippies because they are going to take away from our tourist economy. You know, let's not have or not adhere to normal civil rights laws. And so Thompson, you know, in a participatory democracy, almost a Jeffersonian democracy, on way, ran for sheriff by emphasizing personal agency. And most of all, trying to get out the youth vote, like people who had left the political system, but were living in Aspen, a lot of people like hippies who had fled the cities in the late 1960s, and were living in the west. And he got them involved, and they should have won the mayor mayoral campaign with Joe Edwards. Thompson was the director of that, and they lost by like six votes. Then when you ran for sheriff, It got really bad, and he talks about this, and fairly good on the campaign trail later, is that a few nights before, both parties, the Democrats, and the Republicans freaked out. And so the Democrats said, all right, we'll kind of throw our weight behind you, the Republican sheriff, and then you Republicans will throw your weight for a county manager behind our candidate. as a Thompson in the Bluesing by like two or three hundred boats. And so, and Fierano thing in Las Vegas on the campaign trail 1972, he's at the Nixon campaign, Nixon's coming as acceptance speech of the convention, Thompson's with the Nixon youth who are about to do a demonstration, and he says, you know, I'm not a journalist. You can't kick me out. I'm a political observer. He's like, have you ever run for office? And then Nixon guy is like, No, have you and Thompson's like sheriff, and I would have won, but the liberal stuck it to me.

I mean, that was a great, that debate, so in the book, I recreated that debate a lot, because there's transfers of it. the bait is brilliant, but Tomson is amazing at that. The guy's like, I've only used my gun once in 10 years, but I like to have it. Tomson's like, well, if he used it once in 10 years, maybe you don't need it, we could try not having it. You know, in his gun rights views were very complex and changed after Bobby Kennedy's death, but he was so intelligent on stage. This sheriff who's like, I just want this job real bad, like, gulping, like, you know, it couldn't just be this serrated by Tomson.

But how billionaires have replaced the millionaires?

You know, not ironically or fake, but real fur coat.

I mean, it aspens weird because a lot of the Thompson's friends, like Lauren Jenkins, a great journalist, They've moved down to basalt. They had to take down Valley. So I was out there with his son, Juan Thompson, his fantastic writer. He wrote a book called Stories I Tell Myself about his relationship with his father.

He's a really good writer. And he's a really honest and brilliant writer.

Where people on bicycles just writing their bikes by the whole time, it's on this huge bike route now.

He came out.

Was this special place from when he was in San Francisco was like being on the central nerve. He was there from 64 to 67 and 266 and he saw the first Jefferson airplane concert. He was right next to the matrix. He went out every night to like 5 a.m. He was with the Hell's Angels. That's awesome.

But here he could divide his life up. Look at the power. You can see in the background that freak power. Yeah, the sheriff's campaign symbol. But he moved to Woody Creek and he suddenly had, you see it in his, you see it when you interview people that know him, you see it in his letters. He had space again. And being in the city was hard for him because he can write beautifully about the Hell's Angels about the countercultural scene. He was at war protests in the free speech movement with Mario Savio. He was there, but it was burning him up. You know, it was using him up. And I think when you went to Woody Creek, he learned that, all right, I can take a plane to Chicago, get my ass kicked. But I can come back. And if I wanted a drink, I can go to that tavern or I can go to the Jerome Hotel. And that's a good space. And I think that was a good space for him.

I mean, I just don't think he gets enough credit for his effort. You know, one thing I found when writing the book I interviewed, I interviewed Bob Geiger, who's fairly willing to dedicate it to, and who is a doctor that I was a friend of his and Sonoma. And Geiger initially was the one who prescribed him dexterity. And so people think Thompson was just doing acid and writing or Whatever, and maybe later as a caricature, whoever he became, that might have been part of his persona. But when he was writing from the book, it's from Kennedy's assassination to Nixon's resignation. He was working so fucking hard. Like he was working harder than we can ever imagine. Douglas Minkley is the presidential historian who does his Literary estate talks about Thompson wasn't as fun as he seemed during that time. He took Dexter Dream to write, and he had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem.

He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. to what Thompson took. He had a great editor named Margaret Harrell, who was his editor on Hell's Angels. And he didn't know she was 27 when he was 29. He thought she was like 55, because I would talk on the phone every day to edit the book. And he sent her, she still has the letter. I've done some events where she still has the actual letter. He sent her a five-milligram dexterine. He's like, hey, it's going to be hard the last 10 pages to edit. Take this and focus. So she still has it, this orange, a little five-milligram dexterine, for 40, 50 years, she's had it.

I mean, I think that the give me documentary is brilliantly and perfectly done. I think that Thompson means something different with Donald Trump as president of the United States. To me, people could see it before Gibney's ought before other, like, brilliant writer's ought before Tyubie did. But when Donald Trump became president of the United States, it was a lens on to the past, I felt like. I'm a pitch-ass liberal. Like I was fucking upset. And so one of the ways I dealt with it was to just remove myself to 1968, 1967, 1967, 1969. And I took the emotion I had in the present. And I realized that Thompson is such a voice right now for people that maybe don't know him. Only know him through fear and loading in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam's film. I would like freaking do to be a lens that now if they read that. they could then read his work and perhaps, you know, what his timelessness will come through, it was more. It was an attempt to focus that timelessness. And that, what helped was the fucking terror of our president.

He carried his book around for two weeks, at least he carried a book.

Yeah. Well, that's our discourse today too, where there couldn't be anything said reasonably about him when he passed away, or even about his wife. I mean, I think it's not, he's not very favorable right now, but one of the hundred Thompson's main influences was Norman Miller. And I don't think Norman Miller writes well about women. And I think Thompson wrote better about women. Thompson didn't just- What's the right of the system, but I'm not familiar with- Well, Miller, whenever he writes about a woman, it's like he's watching the Nixonettes get off the Nixon airplane. And he's like, there were 33 redheads. Like, five head long legs like this. Like, it's like, Miller, you didn't need to write that fucking passage. You're writing about power and people more extreme than you. So I think Miller writes beautifully about men that have more power than him. And so he writes about 1968 Chicago. where Thompson didn't, because Thompson was beat up, and he writes about that moment of, where Thompson's being beat up.

The male gaze is that he still does wife and a heart. He stabbed his wife in the heart. Did he really? Yeah, with the pen knife.

Yeah, he went to Bellevue. He went to Bellevue for 14 days. It was in 1986. He missed it. Yeah, I know he went to, he did a psychiatrist, psychiatric evaluations, instead of going to jail. Well, I think they stayed married. But yeah.

Yeah. So we'll say we'll get dialogue on gender politics later. But I would say that Thompson wrote well better about women because he understood that writing about people with more power than he was really important. And when the other writes about people with more power than him, when he writes about merdaily, beating the shit out of everybody, he writes really beautifully. And that's somebody that's resonating right now with what Trump's doing and with the violence that we're seeing on the left. For me, there was sitting with Pat Buchanan, who is Nixon's main aide And during that moment in Chicago when the Haymarket in Shattered and everybody was beat up. And they were looking down from the 17th floor. And Mailers thinking like, well, this is what happens if police take over society. And he writes beautifully about how the police came and split the protesters because he's so high up, writing in his orders. And you can and would write later like, I knew then Nixon was going to be president of the United States because of fucking Hubert Humphrey that got this old award healer. He can't control his own convention and his own party. How is he going to be able to run the country? So as soon as Chicago's violence erupted, the Nixon campaign knew they'd won the election.

They drink at the watergate. Like they sat there and went

Oh, he should on him hard. But he can't even ship back on him hard. The first night they met was at the Nixon at the at the holiday in in 1968 in New Hampshire during Nixon's comeback campaign and Thompson walks in and pet, he kind of goes, who's this damn guy with the damn ski jacket walking through a goddamn lobby? And Thompson's like, I have a press pass. Like, I'm here to do this. And so they have this big moment. And then later on that night, Thompson goes to a party with Kim Payne people and with Becannon, and he brings a big bottle of wild turkey. And so Becannon's a young journalist at the time. He worked at the St. Louis post dispatch. I think he'd gone to the Columbia Journalism school. He's working for Nixon. This is the main policy guy. And he looks at Thompson. He's like, that's the fuck in the ski. Oh, you got a bottle of what? Oh, if you got a bottle of old crow, like no, we'll drink that. And so they stayed up all night and they talked about the Vietnam War. And Thompson, you know, talked about how it just figures us to be in a foreign war that's unjust and destroys our democratic ideals to be doing that. And became was like containment, nuclear war, we're trying to get out of it. And they listened to each other till dawn, like that first night that they met.

I think we've mistaken Thompson. I think that we see him more as like a doomsday character. I mean, people who know him really well don't, but I think that most people, through whatever cultural forces that we've had.

So I think in the 80s or 70s, 90s, the cartoon Doonsbury by Gary Trudeau, it became, there was a character on a called Uncle Duke, and Uncle Duke was based on Hunter Thompson. And he was kind of an exaggerated version of Hunter Thompson. He was a cartoonish version of Hunter S Thompson. And then I think Terry Gilliam did a wonderful kind of a tourist job on Like a brilliant job on fear-loving in Las Vegas, but that's also an exaggerated version of Hunter Thompson, and we forget today the amount of work Hunter Thompson did. The effort he put out, we forget that he was a straight journalist, where he did the freelance assignments. He wrote the straight articles for years to make money for his family, and it wasn't until he had his breakthrough with Hell's Angels, that he could develop the style that we identify with today. And so it kills me that we identify him more as a clown or, you know, more as a cartoonish figure as opposed to a very serious political thinker, political activist, and serious writer who can give us insight into the fucking shit show we experience every moment today.

His son writes about the alcohol. Why am I so beautifully about the toll alcoholism took on Hunter S. Thompson?

That's why I tried to end it with Nixon leaving, because it was really sad when Nixon resigned. Hunter Thompson was at the Connecticut Hilton, which is a hotel right by the White House. And he leave a wits on the photographer with Rolling Stone, was calling him and saying, we need to get to the White House. Nixon is leaving, like he's gonna get on the helicopter, and Thompson just laid in the grass, and he didn't go. You know, and that was heartbreaking and he didn't end up writing the eight-page spread that he needed to instead it became any label it's his photography which was a famous and in retrospect like huge move for her career, but I think that that pain right there of thinking that he'd spent 10 years. I mean, he hated Nixon since the Czechers speech, you know, Nixon was a VP for Eisenhower. He hated Nixon since 1962 when Nixon lost the California governor ship and said, you and the press, you've been giving me the shaft for so long, like you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. Like Tomson had seen that Nixon was somebody who said, I'm just the poor son of a butcher. I'm just this very hard working, you know, American that represents all of us, where behind that, like, he was a politically, you know, ravenous monster who was anti-communist, who would go to any extent to win, and Thompson saw that, and Thompson knew that other people saw it. In 1964, the Barry Goldwater Convention in San Francisco, my favorite lead name, Dorina of all time, the Cal Palace. Barry Goldwater was going to speak to accept the nomination, and what happened was, Nixon was introducing him, and that's Nixon's way back from the wilderness. Thompson was a few rows back, because at first time Thompson, I think, was that close to CM Live. And Nixon's like, you know, poor son of a butcher, don't think about me. Just think about Perry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative, who become Mr. President, and Thompson was like, Fuck. Everybody here knows he's lying, but they think that that act of lying is a skill in the way a used car salesman who lies but can make a lot of money off it. It's skillful. The way that Trump by selling stakes to people and then they go bankrupt and he gets rich. That's an American skill. And Thompson sends that from the start with Nixon. And so I think he battled against Nixon for a decade, for a lot of years. And when Nixon left, I think he felt spent. And so I try not to focus on the later, you know, I ended then in 74. Because I think it He wrote some beautiful things afterwards.

Confloaded in the pool.

And it was one of the greatest sports moments. It was like game six of, you know, you know, Boston Red Sox versus the Reds.

That's one of the greatest athletic moments. I mean, we forget that athletes, athletes like Kurt Flood. You know, they risked that way. Kurt Flood was the American baseball player who challenged the reserve clause because it means what you weren't allowed to. get for agency for another team. Kurt Flood was the great player, and he was like, I'm going to sit out and I'm going to wait, athletes like Colin Kaepernick. They've sacrificed their career. It's not the same with Muhammad Ali, who was like Babe Ruth and Barry Bawans and like everybody combined at that one moment. But he was risking. It's the opposite of Trump, Trump used his celebrity to become this even more mangled version of himself and get more power. He used his celebrity to speak for his virtue and his value and his beliefs and Thompson was really good at understanding what people sacrificed. But people have to give up the wager between what that act will be, what the results will be. They may be later, but he knew that. And so his respect for Ali for giving up those years of his prime was enduring. Thompson came back from that fight and he gave his son on one. boxing gloves, or at least boxing gloves.

But it wasn't, I mean, that's a good point. It was indicative of, I think, the stress and the pressure that the last decade of covering Nixon had taken out on him.

But that was the end I think of his arc where he was still on point. He was still playing the role of a serious journalist, and he would use that persona as a fuck up. And there's letters by John Wedder being like, you cannot turn in your articles three hours before we go to press. I know you made it, this doesn't fucking work. And so he was beginning to break down then. He was also, I think, on the tail end of his decade of being a journalist who had met every deadline so that he could fucking feed his family and he could afford out far. Like, there's moments where Before he got the contract for Hell's Angels in 1965, he was ready to be like a long Sherman. He was going and looking for work in the mornings in San Francisco, to try to support his family. He was willing to give up writing. Instead, that article blew up. All these beautiful letters began to arrive at 319 Parnassas. He lived at the top of the hate Ashbury in San Francisco. That opened up his chance to continue being a writer, but money was the main motivating factor. I think once money like unfurled once alcoholism I think took its toll and once he couldn't walk around anymore at a political camp convention without people just like grabbing his shoulder and saying you're 100 Thompson once that happened I think things began to change

That was a bad. That's a set. So it's still funny because those seem funny, you know, now, but they're kind of a death note. I mean, that day of the routine, that was the biography hunter. It was in that. And it's just, it's heartbreaking. I mean, we got to remember that the dedication to fear in the last Vegas was he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain. Man, and I think the world was painful for Hunter Thompson. I think it was painful to see powerful people abuse the weak. And like take what they wanted, brazenly without being held accountable. I think it was hard to do with shitty editors who cut half your fucking essay on Nixon or half your story. It made it into something that had nothing to do with the effort that you put out. I think it was hard to pay your bills and live the way that you wanted to live. And I think a lot of that gets undermined. I just want people to realize how much effort he put out, especially during those years. He was like, all right, I want to be a great journalist. I want to have a voice in our society. I want to participate in our national conversation. My only path towards that is to work harder than everybody else. To be at places when things happen and when they matter. And he sacrificed a lot for that, but he was there and he's a voice in a light that we can have in this moment, which is another troubling moment in American history.

I think it was, so one thing I think of is he usually gives you a cue, or what he did with he dramatized. People didn't dramatize.

Which doctor didn't answer. I didn't say that he did it again. I said this is about Ed Muskie's campaign. I said there was a rumor in Milwaukee that he did it again. I started that rumor. Yeah. I mean, that's what he says, but what do you say then a dick cabbage show? Yeah, later. And I think Matt, how you be on this show talked about it well, where one thing is that? Muskie was already out of the campaign when that came out. Muskie had already lost, and so Muskie had been a fucking monster and a terrible person on that campaign. Tomson used that version of Muskie and wrote, as Taibi said, in a very straight way, the Ibogaine story, and so if you had a sense of irony, you kind of knew, like, you're not really thinking that this is a guy who did Ibogaine, so I think there's cues in there for listening audience, but what I think is even more I think he dramatized the way other people didn't. He would say, I look left. I look up, I see. He came down to me and then he said, people didn't write like that in journalism. They didn't go step by step and he did. And that was really important. What I think is more important than the Ibrahim story. So the Ibrahim story in the background is Ed Musky was the front runner for the Democratic primary in 1972. He fucked up his campaign afterwards Thompson talked about how he had heard that There is a rumor that this candidate was doing it again, which is like ayahuasca.

It's the city of America. But what I think people don't remember is before that, and this affected the election. And in February of 1972, Thompson was in Florida. He was on something called the Sunshine Special. It was a whistle-stop tour that must be the front runner. How did a chance to beat Nixon? Pulled numbers wise. Was going all the way down the Florida peninsula on to try to win the Florida primary. And Thompson was like, This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Like, at every stop, Musky gave the same shit speech. It's like, somebody should be a president, namely me. And it was repeated. The reporters were like, fucking, this is terrible. Musky was secluded in the back of the car. He didn't interact with anybody. They had his political operatives come out and make everybody like sing the song like about like Musky, like sunshine in his hands, the whole world in his hands. It was terrible. And so that night, Thompson pulled into a Florida town. It was the second to last stop. And he and this young political reporter named Monty Chitty were going to get a drink at 2 a.m. and this guy walks into the lobby. He's like six, six, two, 50. Peter Sheridan. And he, he walks in and he, he says he's looking for the musky campaign and all these different things. He ends up going out with Hunter Thompson for a drink. And Hunter Thompson finds out that Peter Sheridan had been a good friend of Jerry Garcia, had hung out with the Hell's Angels in California, had been to La Honda where Ken Keesie was, and was actually a pretty smart guy who was out of his mind in his mid-20s. They stayed out and drank all night at the end of the night, Thompson's like, so what are you doing tomorrow where you're going? Peter Sheridan was like, well, I'm going to Miami and Thompson's like, we are two. You don't have to hitchhike, fuck that. And so there's a really good journalist outlaw. It's called Outlaw Journalist by Bill McKeen, another Thompson biography. Talks about how Thompson took his, Thompson took his press pass, put it into the elevator. Press the button, send the press pass down to the ground floor. Peter Sheridan got it. So Peter Sheridan could write for free. on the Sunshine Express down to Miami the next day. So Thompson oversleeps because the fucking Muskie campaign doesn't like him anyways. Instead, Peter Sheridan gets on the Sunshine Express with a hundred Thompson Press badge. And Peter Sheridan goes on to order 12 Martinez. And he goes, give me like a triple gin bucks and hold the buck. And he runs up and down the car. And, you know, Muskie has been a really shitty candidate at this point. He's not been engaging people. He's gotten this weird fight with his wife at a... a campaign event where they like put cake in each other's face. It's been really weird and people aren't reporting on it. Like other reporters aren't saying Muskie's unstable. And so Muskie at the end of this was a stop. He spent all his campaign money to go up and down and try to do this whistle-stop like tour. He gave the speech at the caboose. And Jerry Rubin, the anti-war activist who was one of the Chicago 7, and has come to heckle him, is in the crowd. And he's saying Muskie, So, why did you support the Vietnam War in 1968? Like, who do you think you are? And so, Muskie's yelling at Jerry Rubin. He's saying, young man, keep your mouth shut. But, Neeth Muskie. reaching up from the bottom of the caboose. Peter Sheridan is holding a gin bottle and grabbing it muskies leg, as Musky tries to give it a speech. And then Musky falls back in the whole thing ends, like the whole press conference is over, like women's wear daily reported this. And it came out that Hunter Thompson had had 13 martinis and run up and down the train and had interfered with it. And Musky's campaign really believed that Thompson was working with Donald cigarette and Nixon's creep watergate crew to fuck up muskies campaign. And that actually changed the course. It like Thompson helped expose how fucked up muskies was as a candidate at that time. And Thompson had never forgiven muskies for being on the ProViet nom more platform at the 1968 convention. And so we talk about the IbuGain aspect of changing the campaign. That report and the way that disseminated through media, the way it was picked up by other newspapers, really did help change the people's perception of Edmoskey Edmoskey.

I think that when it came to Hell's Angels, what Thompson did really well? That's what Joan Diddy and did really well. He took the way the media was portraying somebody and he stripped that off and said, this is who they actually are. This is what they're actually doing. Joan Diddy and when she writes about Jim Morrison and the White Album, she's like Jim Morrison was like sex and death in his leather pants was the best thing ever. Everybody loves Jim Morrison and then in the scene in the White Album, Joan Diddy and writes about how they sit at a recording studio for two hours and nobody says anything and they eat eggs out of a paper bag and it's a fucking nightmare. Thompson knew that the media was sensationalizing the Hell's Angels. He went to them on a cold night in San Francisco, down by the waterfront, and he said, hey, here's a newsweek article. Here's a time article. Here's how everybody's writing about you. All I want to do is write the truth about who you are. And he did, and he ended up writing with them, and he ended up spending time with them. I don't think they got as mad at him about the way he portrayed them. I think they got mad that he began to make money, or that he became famous. He just sold 500,000 paperback copies. That is almost impossible to imagine today. 500,000 people read copies of a literary book. And the angels were pissed off about that. They felt Thompson owed him more money or owed him something for that. Did he give them any money? Well, Saudi barger, Saudi barger said he owed us a cake and he didn't give us a cake. That's it. You know, the the famous story at the end of it is that that it I mean really like when they go through it, he said that He said that Thompson was doing a subjective version of us, but at least closer than the shitty news we can time versions. And so Thompson at the end of, he'd finished the book, barely made the deadline. Had to go down to a hotel in Monterey, lock himself in and step for 100 hours straight, and write it in March of 67 to finish it. So it turns it in, makes his advanced deadline. In September, they're like, here's our author photo, and it's shitty. He's like, fuck this. So he goes to a hell's angels rally. He doesn't know anybody, because he hasn't been with him for six or seven months. He's taking pictures. That's when he got beat up from running about the Hell's Angels. And he, tiny, his friend, who later committed suicide after Ultimont, after being involved in the Ultimont security situation. That's the Rolling Stone one where we are going to stab. Yes, we're Meredith Hunter was stabbed, but tiny. It was a woman that got stabbed. Man, Meredith Hunter. Oh. It was a man named Meredith.

Well, if there's a lot of Jamie's that future man scene where it's like, what's his name is like, my name's Susan in the future. Men or names Susan. I know it's a girl's name in your town.

But that But that put guy was But Thompson was there and tiny grabbed him after he was beat up There was like I holding a rock to drop it on Thompson with the hell's angels and tiny was like all right, I know him. I know the rest of you don't any grabbed him out And Tiny was this enormous, Hell's Angel who had been, you know, Thompson was very good at empathetically understanding their flaws and their perspectives. He'd never, I think, made excuses for me, said that their inherent perspective is fascistic. He writes that. You know, he says they used violence to respond to where they were in society. They're idea of total retaliation. the hell's angels or any offense like looking at you funny or being like, dude, you drink could be met with everybody beating you up because they got to determine the hell's angels got to determine the offense like that was fascism to talk to him and he wrote beautifully about their reliance on violence because they felt the hell's angels they'd been left behind by our moderated society like their technology there's all these new jobs If you came back from the war in 1950, you had a chance in Oakland to have a middle-class life and a beautiful house. In work the rest of your days and have a family that will then go on. But by 1965, that was no longer an option. And the angels were a violent response to that. Very similar to what we're seeing now. So the way he wrote about the hell's angels. So very similar to the way that we see violence within groups that are supporting Trump. You know, and we're just going to lift in the right.

I think so. Sunny Barger, how they just got fucked, rightly so. The Hell's Angels were pursued like a mob, like a mafia group. People went to jail. Sunny Barger went to jail. I think they at the end appreciated his representation. of them because it was better than any other one.

There's no better representation of the healthy. No more sympathetic for sure.

Yeah, no more like again, it gets to Thompson's effort. If you ride for six months with somebody and you're an honest, like putting up your hands, you're not trying to fit what you see into a thesis, you're doing the opposite, trying to look at the reality, having front of you, and then form an argument out of that. Yeah. You can go here. That's what Thompson's gift was.

I was really bad and motorcycle accident with his friend on the back. His friend broke his leg. That's why he left. Get the fuck out of San Francisco. Grace looks amazing. It's a fire that you're putting your hand onto. How did it burn out? He was coming down. It was at the mayor of Richmond. He was coming down a slick road and they had hit something was wet or an oil thing and it went out the back tire. So Thompson rolled and was fine, but his friends knee hit railroad tracks. So his friends knee broke really badly. Um, it was the mayor. Yeah, it was the mayor of Richmond and that's continued riding motorcycles though. Yeah, he did. He would get an accident set. What do you think? But he was pretty careful. Like, so I love that scene in Hell's Angels. I don't know if readers are listeners know this, but the edge, you know, and that's a major part of the book where Thompson's fighting with his wife Thompson's finished his book, but he's breaking down because he works so hard to do it. And so he takes his BSA out, and he goes, if you know San Francisco, he goes out to the park. He hits the coast highway, and he comes down it. And he's like, I'm so overwhelmed. Everything is so fucking terrible. He's going as fast as he can. And he talks about how his eyes begin to lose moisture. You know what this scene like? It's this beautiful scene. He's looking for sand pits, because he hit a sand pit near the zoo, you're fucking done. And he gets all the way to Rockway Beach, which is in like halfway down to Santa Cruz. And he turns around. And what he talks about is when he's at a hundred miles per hour. And I think he was near death. I think he was really overwhelmed. He says, you know, the edge, the only people that know it are the people that have gone over the rest, the living, don't have any understanding of it. And all we can do is approach it in this way. And it's this beautiful end. It's called Midnight in the Coast Highway. It was anthologized and tumble, you know. And it was just beautiful. So he comes back and he sits at his desk. And so he had a view of the Bay Bridge. He could see it's two flashing lights on the whole time and he had broken the window in a terrible fight with his wife like three weeks earlier. And so he sits the broken window and he writes out that scene right away with his eyes still scoured.

So there's three there's three versions. So I do it and then I give the three versions of the notes. So I go with the three versions that I've heard. Like I heard it from jazz car. You know, she wrote, I really respect Sandy, like, deeply. She wrote it a few years ago. She said, I'm done giving interviews about homeless homes. And that was my life that it was then. She's given so many interviews up to this point.

She says that that exists. And so I wanted to respect that. Good for you more than anything. And just use the information that I had. Yeah. And let the reader know, yo, here are at three other versions. Here's the best version I could make. Drama ties, look left, throw to this. Did you talk to Anita? Um, Anita's been great. I talked to Anita later, but the book ended so early that I, um, there's a beautiful artist. Anita is the second one for her. Yeah. Anita Thompson is, um, she runs Alpharne. She runs kind of his legacy. She does the Facebook page. She's a wonderful job.

She's going to make it into a like a writer's retreat. She's doing a one-of-top making it into a writer's retreat and also a like a museum. It's taken a while, but it took honor his legacy as a great political like thinker and writer like a great literary light. But since she didn't meet him till the 90s, I wanted to focus on the time that I was in. I think talking to Bob Geiger, his friend then was really lucky. Bob Geiger's in his late 80s. He was able to go through like, because I believe if you interview somebody, you need to read everything that exists already. You need to read everything they've already said. You don't want to ask them questions that when I do interview for research that they've already supplied the answers to. So with Bob Geiger, I could see the holes or things I didn't know and I was able to sit with him. Talk about throwing a football with Thompson. Talk about taking the dog to the beach, like all these other things.

It was a whole ride. It was in 1968. Papu Cannon had helped set it up. They looked it out that week. They'd become friends. And so they come to Thompson and they're like, all right, the boss is going to take a plane to Florida. You can come and talk to him. And so later Thompson said later, it was like they told me not to talk about any football, but earlier Thompson said like, I was just really awkward, like this fucking guy, they're both in the back bench of a mercury. And so it was before secret service, so it's just a cop driving, and it's like pappy-canning in the front, and it's Thompson and Nixon, and they're right here next to each other, and Thompson's like, well, you know, earlier in the night, you'd said that, you know, the Oakland Raiders had a good shot to beat the Packers and Super Bowl, too. Can you talk about that? And he was like, Nixon's like, my good friend, Vince Lombardi, had told me to watch out for the AFL, because they pass, and they can be very effective. And so Thompson then, like, remembers, That guy, Bob Geiger, had been on a professional quarterback. He had taken Thompson to his first football game. And Thompson said, NFL is better than the NFL. And Geiger's like, shut the fuck up. Let's go to a Raiders game. And they went in 65, and the Raiders won on this beautiful pass, Tom Flores, like beautiful goal line pass. And Nixon was saying the same thing. And so then at that moment, at that moment, Thompson's like, oh, yeah, it was the Miami guy, Miller, Miller, who'd caught the pass, and Nixon goes, taps him on the knee and goes. You're right. And goes, oh, what a beautiful moment. And Thompson's just like, what the fuck is going on.

It was the only moment Thompson said that he knew Nixon wasn't lying. Lizard Nick can talk about football, and that instant.

Thompson did a great job of that, and I think we've lost it today. I mean, you have to listen to the other side to, if you politically want to beat somebody like Papi Cannon, you want to defeat his tactics. If you want to defeat him, you need to know how he's thinking and what he's doing. Thompson knew that bikini was listening to the left to defeat them. And so Thompson listened to bikini.

Oh, he was losing a shit in San Francisco. Was that night on the fucking motorcycle? I mean, but how did he choose Colorado? So, this is a great story. In like the early 60s, Thompson had had a chance to drive, I don't know, some sort of cargo, like a friend's car out to Colorado on his way to San Francisco in 1960. He ended up doing a road trip up and down San Francisco after he passed through Colorado, but he stopped in Colorado because he had to drop off a friend's car and there was a woman there, picky Clifford, who was a journalist and was his good friend at the aspect of daily times. And she was older. She saw him after driving 20 hours. She's like, hey, come in my house. Hang out. She lived right in the aspect of Woody Creek. And so then in 1963 after Sandy was pregnant, Thompson came back from South America where he was a reporter and did a wonderful job like reporting on how democracies were falling apart down there. Him and Sandy wanted to move west because the National Observer was the newspaper Thompson worked for. They wanted to give Thompson a position to be a western reporter. He was thinking of going to San Francisco but instead he chose to stop first. or Peggy Clifford was, stop in Aspen and Woody Creek. And so he was living in an Aspen and Woody Creek from August of 1963 to February of 1963. And he was there. This is where Freaky Kingdom begins. He was there when John of Kennedy was assassinated. And he's sitting in his living room. It's 10 a.m. 11 a.m. Pacific time and he gets a knock on the door. And it's this rancher named Wayne Wagner, which is an old Aspen family. And that rancher's like, the president's been shot. Like, what's more? He's been murdered. He's dead. Thompson just like, let's have a sob. Then he begins to fucking swear. And then he fucking calms down. And he goes downtown. What do you think? He goes to Aspen. And he just gets notes from people what their responses are. And so when he then went to San Francisco to become the correspondent for the magazine that he was working for, he was having a tough time. He was already wanting to flee because he got Hell's Angels. He was able to stay in San Francisco longer, right, report on them. By 1967, he was like, this city is not a good place for me. He has a great quote about like, what would have happened if he stayed in San Francisco from 1967. He's like, oh, it burned up. I would have been emulated right there. So when it was time to leave, He thought again of what he Creek and of Aspen, which was so different than it is now. And that was the place that he decided to move in rent for a little while at first, but then because of the success of Hell's Angels, he was able to buy Al farm.

Yeah. There's a great, there's a place called the temporary they didn't event with, um, one Thompson and I, like, did a reading at it and like a lot of Thompson's friends were there. So I'm like, I'm some fucking young, like, I didn't know Thompson. Like, I'm an interloper. You know, like, I'm out there and it was really great to talk to everybody that knew him. and to go through it and that's why this book almost killed me because I did a note for every sound smell or sight or comment. Like if I wrote and then at the moment Thompson felt what the fuck am I doing here I had the quote where he said I looked around then and I felt what the fuck am I doing here and I had that in the notes so people could see it and it was because I wanted those people that knew him well and respected him and trusted him to not think that I wasn't any way trying anything but to make good art off of his life and who he was trying to respond to my fucking view of Trump right now and my love of his work in this moment.

It's not possible to write a narrative and then also cite every detail of a narrative. So each day I would spend nine hours researching and outlining with citations. I wanted to read it like a novel. I wanted to be like, you know, and at that moment I felt like I, the machine oil from the bay was coming off. I wanted to read it vividly. I knew that I had to support all of that. And so I would spend eight or nine hours every day just on the pure arrangement and research. And then for the next six or seven hours or eight hours, I would write the narrative. And then it's the five or six hours. You know, I'd get up and I would do it again. And I did this for four or five months. You know, after I was deeply into it. And I don't think that's sustainable. I think it's better in retrospect to going report somewhere. You know, to like go and be at the middle of Congress and take notes. But to try to write something with the dramatized nature that I think Thompson wrote well and having my process done nothing like his. You know, I wanted my process done nothing like the way he wrote. But then to also have almost as many pages of notes showing my work. You know, like showing the math that went behind me. So if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but at least you can see it. I think that was morally correct, but I think that was too much effort.

Yes, but I also had a year. And so when I had a family and I had a professor like, I just, I never, when it came to writing, had to do both those things, which was to try to write it in a novelistic way, but then to also make sure that any question the reader would have. But like, why did you think that the dinner was at 5 p.m.? You know, why did you think the sun was coming up in this way at this moment? to make sure, because out of respect, because what Tomson talked about was people making money off him like Dunesbury. Yeah. You know, like, that's what he talked about. Was people trying to make money off him? And I thought I was going to write this book. It couldn't be in that space.

He talked about it public. Yeah.

What happens when you become a caricature of ourselves? It's really scary. Do you know, well,

He was breaking up with his wife during that. It was really sad. There's a scene in that where he hides where he's at like a parking lot. He doesn't want people to see him and he's standing against the wall and people like, come on, we got to go. He's like, I just don't want anybody to see me right now. It was really sad. And I tried to take that tragedy. Two, and he wrote great things afterwards. He was a great friend of people, after he was like, run white head, this wonderful poet from Louisville was a dear friend of his, like, all through his life. But the tragedy of how much effort he put out to, if we want to write about Trump, if you want to go after, like, tie you be did about the financial institution. The way Thompson did it was to kind of wager time later for time now and he talks about that. He says chemical speed. He says doing dexterying being an alcoholic instead of changing his life in his rhythms. He said I'm wagering time later for time now. I'm using up energy or things that I might have. by burning the candles so brightly at this instant because I believe I need to go after these moments and later I'm not going to have it but I'm making that gamble. I'm putting the card down right now and I think that's terrifying and I also think that he gave us brilliant writing over one of the most remarkable spans in American history because of it.

I mean, Adorama makes everything in front of you closer. Have you done it? Yeah, so my first book was called Hyper, a personal history of ADHD. So it was about being medicated as a child. You were medicated as a child? Yeah, I like having pills forced out my throat, like all so old were you? Six when I took riddle in for the first time. I had, I had a suicidal moment and like six years old. What? The first time. You were six you wanted to commit suicide? I held like a butter knife to my wrist. I don't remember it, but yeah, I kind of remember it, but yeah. And it was on Riddle in, which I've taken now as an adult and I always feel startled when I'm on it. If I ever take riddle in now, why do you feel like no? I take it to right, like this world is incredibly painful, so I take out a roll now. And I take it to... How often do you take it? Every day. I take like 30 milligrams a day. Really? And I take it to, I take it to go into a library, and this is what David Wallace Wells was talking about, I think, like, two days ago on the show. How do you read really shitty academic articles where you need the information from them? I'm not good at that. I'm not good at even making like a car reservation, you know, like a car rental reservation. And so this world's going to be painful no matter what, but there's a functionality that and it's always a wager. What Thompson writes about is whenever something is given, something else is lost. You never get anything for free in this world. Thompson understood that better than anybody. So with him with Dexterid, I'm not going to say Thompson was hyperactive. I'm not going to go into that. But Dexterid, like, Geiger was like, yo, you're breaking down. Like, you're 26, you have a wife, you have a very small child. You're writing right now. You want to have your career go forward. You're not doing well. And I was like, I'm a doctor. I had gone through med school. I'd been overwhelmed like you. Got your ran every morning. He did other things, but he took Dexter and so he gave it to Thompson. And for that, small period of time, it helped. For me, it's like, I'm not a good researcher. And maybe I would be now, but the only way I can write about something like Hunter's Thompson where I didn't know him, I don't experience with him, is to read everything that he's ever written or been written about him. And then go out and interview people. And so effort is my only path forward. And what Adderal helps for me is to take the pain away of that effort, but it doesn't take away. It shifts it around, tough at their aspects, in other parts of life. And I think Thompson, when he wrote, he who makes a piece of himself, escapes the pain or gets her the pain of being a man, we don't listen to that. Like he was like, this effort is hard. He's like, I'm struggling with this effort. I'm trying to make these beautiful things. I always think a James Salter. fiction writer, Aspen resident wrote beautiful novels. He wrote his whole life till he was 90. His last novel was at 87. He wrote a memoir at 76 about being a fighter pilot among other things in the Korean War. Lyric, literary. He did it his whole life. He didn't, he didn't burn out for a small period of time. He's the antonym to Thompson, I think, comes to effort and literary work.

Oh, my, I mean, we, I think that whenever we have something like chemical speed, whenever we have something like alcohol, whenever we have something that's not like marijuana, or at least marijuana cuts your, you know, like whenever we have something else like alcohol or I don't know what we need to ask the question. Is it taking the pain away and being productive through those actually hastening your own doom? And I think what alcohol is very clear, it is. Out of all, it's more complex. I think if you do an amount of time release, you can make it work. How many Americans do that out of the percent that are prescribed? I don't know, 10 percent, 20 percent, like it's dangerous. How often do you take time off? I'd say maybe one or two weeks of every three or four months. And when you do that, do you feel weird? No, just watch movies. I just don't do anything. I don't have any productivity. I don't produce. So the only way you produce is on speed. The only way I produce the way I want to right now is on speed. I didn't start taking it till 2010.

But that's not new. I mean, that's what Thompson and Burroughs and Southern. Like, this has been, I believe that our American society the situation I'm in. I have created a situation where I have too much work and it's my fault. I should not be trying to be a professor and also go report it. And also a George Mason in the creative writing program. And also then be hosting like people coming out and also then like be trying to research something that might be my next thing. That's too much. And the way Thomson saw Dexter Dream was that he could make reality match his effort. So there was no longer the limit. It was the American Dream idea. If you just put out enough effort, you'll get it. And that's why I think he's so brilliantly understood the toxicity of the American Dream. Is that the effort is what destroys you? Just because you have a path with the effort to be rich or be successful, that doesn't mean that's a good thing. That's what will actually dismantle you. It's putting it out. And I think we forget that.

That's the greatest fallacy. I think what he was trying to say with self-destruction was that this wasn't an incredible threat to our American democracy.

I mean, so I he understood. But he lived within the failure it was. But he lived in with, he spent much more time within the consequences of that binging than he did within the success of the binging. Right. And that, I think he knew that in his letters, it's really beautiful and heartbreaking. And in his writing too, I mean, I think that's what's been missed about him is there's no romanticism in self-destruction.

And sticky fingers was a great. The new book on Yon Warner has great moments of Thompson the 70s just being kind of lost. Yeah, you know, and I think I think we got to remember that. We have incredible times in American history. We have times that are going to burn brightly. And it's up to each rider to decide how they'd like to burn next to it. And if you're gonna burn brightly, they may not have other times. And that's, I think, an American thing where you can wager that bright flame, which means you may have nothing left afterwards, but Thompson knew that he may have to live in that kind of afterlife. That want, want Thompson writes about it so beautifully as stories I tell myself.

And, you know, he makes a beast of, you escape the pain of articulation, you escape the pain of saying, this is what's wrong in American society, for him to say the way he did. One of his great essays is from 1964. It's about going to Hemingways, catch him Idaho on Grave, and Hemingways House. And it's gorgeous because it talks about Hemingway was a good writer, one of the best writers. when he was writing about an up period he understood the 1940s, 1930s, when there was a firmness to the reality that he could articulate. One of the writer's goals is to give a pattern to chaos. There's to give an articulation to chaos, but what happens in the 1960s, when the chaos is multiplying repeatedly, somebody like Hemingway becomes a literal relic. Like his narrative no longer fits into the present that he's in, and Thompson saw Hemingway's decline, and he wrote about Hemingway's Suicide by his narrative doesn't fit. Hemingway's idea of what America was and what a man should be fit perfectly with what I think the 20s to the 40s. When we experienced, but I think in the early 1960s with our social upheaval of civil rights of political upheaval, Hemingway, it was confusing to him. It didn't fit anymore. Like his way of operating no longer articulated the presence. Right. And so Hemingway's last act was to take away his ability to say anything at all. It was his only the last thing Hemingway ever said. was to say I'm not going to say anything anymore, was the suicide that heavyweight committed. Thompson wrote about that corgously.

But I think that it's not my place to even deal with that, because one Thompson's book writes about that moment, or one Thompson was in the house. And that's his, and one writes beautifully about the stakes of it, how painful it was to the people that loved him. Of course, everything about it, and how that, even if that's a logical outcome that that's not. No, it's needed it. So it's interesting, I would say read stories I tell myself, with that moment is so honestly and really written by one. No, I'm sure.

He was wearing diapers. His entire, because of his alcoholism, his ability to control his bladder was gone. And so one gave this wonderful speech at George Mason when he came out. He's like, how do you write honestly about your father? And he asked the question of like, should I include this detail? And he's like, if my father was alive, I couldn't include that. But that's why I chose, in a sense, to write my book or my father was dead because I think my father would want me to write honestly. but also not want me to include that if he was still alive. And so he included that detail and he talked about that, the struggle to include that detail, which I think brilliantly articulate what you're saying, which is the deterioration in the sadness of it. And I mean, we have finite amounts of energy or effort. We really do. We have to take care of ourselves. And if we don't, we will pay that price at some point. We're going to pay it anyway. So we're all headed to the same place, whether we want to or not. And so I think hundreds of really terrifying and beautiful examples of one wager of chips that were made for the 1960s and 1970s. And I think the best way to honor that is, too. You know, apply the brilliance that he forged and carved to the situation we have right now with corruption, Donald Trump, an attack on American democracy. American democracy is basically, it's like what Erdogan says. The democracy is a train and we arrive at the station and get off. like they basically use the ladder to get to the attic, you know, Trump's pulling up the ladder. And I think Thompson would understand that really, really well. And I think reading him now, whether you know him or not, helps you. And that's why I wrote for Kingdom was so that it can be a lens on his work going back or just on this present right now.

So when Tom was covering the Hells Angels, They believed the counterculture at the left in the 1965-66. We're talking about Kid and Keesie. We're talking about the anti-war movement, the free speech movement with Mario Savio. They believe the health angels were on their side. They were fellow counterculturalists that are also outside of the ballgame. Keesie and Thompson were having a drink after being on like KQED or like some local TV show in San Francisco. And you know, Ken Keesie's background is he was a wrestler at Oregon. He grew up on a dairy farm. He'd come down to Stanford to write for what is now the Stinger Fellowship. But back then was the graduate program at Stanford. He had moved up to La Honda on the success of his first book on one flow over the Cuckoo's and asked him to just written another beautiful book. And so Thompson was like, yeah, I'm writing about the house. And Keesie was like, yo. or I'd like to meet them. Thompson's like, okay. And so Thompson knew how dangerous those angels were. Or I think people either romanticize them or exaggerate their danger. So I go, okay, I'll set them up and you know, he contacted the chapter with Keesie. So on August 7th, I think of 1965, like the Hells Angels came to La Honda. Alan Ginsburg was there with Keesie. Albert was there, you know, all of the Stanford intellectuals were there and they made a huge banner that says, Thank you. the Mary Prigsters, welcome the Halls Angels. And Thompson rolled up with, this isn't, this isn't the give me documentary. Thompson rolled up with his family. Wong was a child, a baby in the back seat, Sandy was in the front seat. And he pulled up in what Thompson saw was, Ken Keesie giving acid in red cups, like red cake cups to the Halls Angels. Thompson was like, well, we're getting the fuck out of here. And so he grabs his wife and his son. They go to San Clementi, which is on the other side. They have like a big picnic. And on the way back, they're like, well, let's just check it out. Let's see what it's like. And they kind of pull in. And he's driving this old roadster. They pull in. And everybody's watching on a giant trampoline screen, like the five-hour stream of consciousness footage from the Mary Prankster's trip across the US, which is what Tom will forward about. And Tom is like, all right, they're not eating each other skulls. We can hang out a little bit. So they hung out. And it was interesting how it lasted, pacified the angels instead of made them violent. And that's what acid, you know, of course, that's what acid is. They spent the night hanging out there, Thompson was writing, so he's like, I'm not going to do drugs. He's like, I'll have a few drinks. He's taking notes for his book. Later on in the night, him and Alan Ginsburg, and this is something I cut out of the book, or like, let's go get some beer and so the cops are sticking out the property. and Ginsburg and Thompson get pulled over by the cops. Thompson's sober and he's talking to the cops. He gets a ticket because his red lens for his back tail light is cracked and he's like, come on, do this through your bucks. I'm a journalist. The cops are like, why are you writing about them? And they're talking about like people being taken away to jail. And Ginsburg goes, What's in, what's in, what's in red, what's city man? Times ago goes, it's called a jail Allen and it goes back to talking to the cops and all of this and Thompson was friends with Ginsburg and so they go back into the party. Thompson realizes that Neil Cassidy, who's Blackout Drunk, who was Dean Murray-Arty and on the road by Jack Care Act, that's the character on how it was based. His two or three girlfriends, one of them is having an orgy with the Hell's Angels at this cabin off to the side in Thompson. He's it, and he describes it in two ways. When he writes about it, but he did audio notes. So he did audio notes of step-by-step. And he describes it as just horrific, where she's barely awake. She's catatonic. And they bring in Neocastity to help with her two. It's horrific. And he articulates his horror. I had a friend who was a good feminist writer. Like, who's dear to me. She's like the Navi. You wrote about a fucking white guy like whatever. She's like, he did most of it right. She's like, you excused Thompson in that moment. You should have just let it stand and write about it. in the book, instead of trying to talk about how upset he was, saying it. Thompson was really upset. So why did she say that? That doesn't make me sense. Because I think she thought that I was making the experience less authentic by trying to qualify it for a current times.

No, I should have just let Thompson know. No, I think I should have let him stand more instead of showing or amplifying his emotion too much.

No, I think that he was really upset. But I think him being really upset is secondary to whatever she was experiencing. Right. But you're writing about him. Yes. So I stand by it. Like I thought about that. What I wrote it. Yeah. I stand by it. But what was what is her criticism again? That by amplifying his upsetness by showing how upset he was that that's too much I'm going to excuse for him. Just write it. What is that?

No, no, no, nothing like that. She was on point. She thought I shouldn't. She felt the effort on my part to try to explain his upsetness instead of just having it be upset with one sentence and then go on. She thought it was overwriting. I thought it was a fair criticism. Where I overwrote it. But long story short, Thompson goes back, and he goes to Keesie, and he goes, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen, and this is in the documentary.

But how much of it is my cultural perception of this moment that I'm giving too much to Thompson and how much of it was what he accurately experienced. But he talked about. So I think just giving his words instead of saying a little bit, you know, going and giving you what you said. Yeah, yeah. And so when he goes back and he on his notes that night, these are the notes he gave to Ken Keesie. I'm sorry, these are the notes he talked to Tom Wolf. He says it's given the recordings. No, I don't think there were actual recordings. No, I don't, I think that's a Tom Wolf set. No, that's what one of the documentaries said. Tom Wolf said he gave me the notes of it. So he can be the notes of what happened. And Tom Wolf, I know what those notes are. Use those notes to recreate that scene in electric coolate acid test. And so this is why we talk about truth later in life Thompson, some biographies, and I just said that he actually recorded the event. He didn't. He went back and he took these long audio notes of like shadow and light and the horror that he saw.

And then he gave those to Tom Wolf and Tom Wolf.

Yeah. But some people have said that he put the tape recorder in the room.

I mean, they're terrifying, but it's about like, violence and shadow and light and horror. You know, it's a horrific, it's a horrific scene that Sys Thompson's brilliance at that age. He could in an audio note get the fucking images and details that he needs to express the nature of that instant. And so Tom Wolf used those to create it himself, but then Thompson recreated it to art wrote about it in Hell's Angels. Yeah, but in a more distant way than Wolf did.

It's fucking crazy dude. Now is the first time Thompson ever took acid because he was so upset. He went to Keesie and he's like, fuck it. I'm not a journalist anymore. That's so horrific what I saw. Fuck it. He had friends that had told him that he's a personality where if he did acid to go to the bottom of the well for him, you know, this would be a really horrific thing. And so he's like, I don't care anymore. And instead, he just walked around and like, was that piece?

Right? Because if you're going to react to it, how you're going to react to it.

I mean, the last image I wrote was, one of the most people think Thompson Wright says something he didn't actually see was with Nixon's helicopter side on TV, left the White House lawn. What happens is that giant helicopter with the white top and the blue. It's wheels lose their pressure so their wheels are flattened at the bottom. But as the rotors begin to bring it up, they become elongated wheels that still touch the ground. Thompson wrote that image and I've always loved that image. So I was writing that in a sense when I was at CPAC in 2018 last year and I was walking out just after I wrote that in Pence's helicopter. was on the lawn right there and it was lifting off and I saw the wheels along it just like that and I just had so much respect for Thompson's ability as we talk about fiction as a narrative writer to detail that instant you know and to detail the way that that elongated it went and to have that be the emotion of Nixon finally departing and so I felt you know I felt I gave it, you know, I threw as hard as I could. I threw as many pitches as I could. I threw as long as I can. You know, and I hope that everybody knows it's my version of Thompson. And then it's a version of Thompson written to the lens of Donald Trump, but hopefully that it's through the effort and through the detail of version that might bring more people to Thompson while also at the same time for Thompson fans, you know, being something that they can respect and engage.

Thanks for being a good fan and for highlighting who's worth two. You're beautiful poster. We didn't even talk about it. The Aspen Wallpuss shirt that you have right in here is just so gorgeous. Yeah, I got to honor shit all over the place. It's fantastic. It's good. It's good.

Freak Kingdom. Hunter Thompson's 10-year manicuristate against American fascism. It's available everywhere on Amazon. I'm at Tim Denewi on Twitter. And you should check out the Gonzo voice, Twitter hashtag, which has Thompson's quotes all the time, which is great.

And, you know, if you are in Thompson, you don't know him, I hope you read Freak Kingdom, and that's a lens on his work, you know, to organize it. And if you love Thompson, I hope you read freaking them too because that's a way to engage them again.