[lit-ideas] Re: Potable Literature
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 15:31:47 -0700
on 5/28/04 1:39 PM, Andy Amago at aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Andy wrote:
>
> I want to know about the unbeatable and unopened dead horses in the fridge.
> Are you sauteeing dog food?
>
>
>
> Reply:
>
> See, "Whatever Happened to Hunter Thompson," vol 1. 5/25/04 : Salt Lake
> City's Dead Horse Ale, slogan, "You Can't Beat It."
>
>
>
>
> A.A. Reading threads rather cursorily, and never having read Hunter Thompson
> (is he dated now? perhaps I should read him and find out), I assumed you wrote
> those lines, which I thought rather clever, actually. Given that there is no
> periodical name, I will, very cleverly, assume that the date is from when
> this, perhaps mythical, beer was first out. Or maybe I'll just go out and
> clip my bushes instead.
>
More haste, less understanding. I should write more slowly. I was trying
to point you towards my first post under this heading, which introduced the
beer in question.
Hunter Thompson is still writing...for ESPN.com.
Is Thompson dated? Judge for yourself. Here he is the beginning of what he
wrote on March 21, 1988.
"The Other George Bush."
Skinner called from Washington last week and warned me that I was
dangerously wrong and ignorant about George Bush. "I know you won't want to
hear this," he said, "but George is an utterly different person from the one
he appears to be--from the one you've been whipping on, for that matter. I
thought you should know..."
I put him on hold and said I would call him back after the Kentucky-Maryland
game. I had given 5 points, and Kentucky was ahead by 7 with 18 seconds to
go...Goerge Bush meant nothing to me, at that moment. The whole capaign was
like the sound of some radio far up the street.
But Skinner persisted, for some reason...He was trying to tell me something.
He was saying that Bush was not what he seemed to be--that somewhere inside
him were the seeds of a genuine philosopher king.
"He is smarter than Thomas Jefferson," Skinner said. "He has the potential
to stand taller in history than both of the Roosevelts put together."
I was shocked. "You lying swine," I said. "Who paid you to say these
things? Why are you calling me?"
"It's for your own good," he said, "I'm just trying to help you."
...He took a call on one of his other lines, then came back to me in a blaze
of disconnected gibberish.
"Listen to me," he was saying. "I was with him last night, all alone. We
sat in front of his fireplace and burned big logs and listened to music and
drank whiskey and he got a little weepy, but I told him not to worry about
it, and he said he was the only living voice of Bobby Kennedy in American
politics today."
"No," I said. "Don't tell me that swill. It's too horrible. I depend on
you for more than that."
I laughed. It was crazy. Here was Gene Skinner--one of the meanest and
most cynical hit men in politics--telling me that he'd spent the last two
nights arguing with George Bush about the true meaning of Plato's Republic
and the Paradble of the Caves, smoking Djarum cigarettes and weeping
distractedly while they kept playing and replaying old Leonard Cohen tunes
on his old Nakamichi tape machine.
"Yeah," Skinner said, "he still carries that 350 with the Halliburton case,
the one he's carried for years..."
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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