Post One Thousand

One thousand posts. On this blog alone. Finally made it...

Okay, P1K Pop Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

Don't worry if that picture and question are baffling; the answer will follow. It may not enlighten as much as you'd like, but it'll be there at the end.

I've been thinking about things coming full circle for some time now. A while back I was given a gift-card for the bookstore on campus where I am enrolled during this whole new adventure. But since I'm rarely ever on campus the gift-card languished away in my sock drawer for nearly a year.

Nearly a year? Dang...my internal sense of timing has been pummeled over the last thirteen months.

Anyway, I came across a video on Cracked's website about Harry Potter, or whatever, and watched the trailer. That was the first time I saw one of their creators doing an interpretation of Hunter Thompson. I even wrote a post about it a few posts ago, something about Artistic Sampling.

So far, it seems I've brought up three completely incongruous things.

In between seeing the HST portrayal and the related post, I made it to campus and happened to remember the gift-card. I moseyed to the bookstore and started perusing. I don't need textbooks or sweaters or shot glasses or coffee mugs. I don't need pennants or pencils or candy or soda. I guess I don't need books of a non-textbook variety, but that's where I headed.

I picked up a book about the Poincare Conjecture (it's math; about the shape of the universe), and a discounted copy of Outlaw Journalist, a biography of Hunter S. Thompson.

I haven't finished the HST book yet, but only because I'm not riding the trains of LA twice a day anymore and have too much to do around the house. BUT, it is proving to be an exciting read. A few things I didn't the know: the "S" stands for Stockton, and the pair, Hunter Stockton, as a first and middle name, come from his mother: her maiden name was Hunter and her mother's maiden name was Stockton. The "Dr." part of his personality came from a magazine send-away to become a "Dr. of Divinity"---seriously. Despite what's portrayed in the Johnny Depp 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter didn't get into cocaine until the mid to late '70s.

Another odd anecdote: on my "Artistic Sampling" post I have a photo I found of Hunter sitting with Oscar Acosta. Oscar is the gentleman with whom Hunter was trying to get away from Los Angeles that started the entire Fear and Loathing story. Anyway, Oscar was so livid after it was published that he threatened to sue Jann Wenner of the Rolling Stone for libel and wreck the magazine and Hunter's writing career; he single-handedly held up publication of the book for nearly a year. Both he and Hunter were nervous that if it was known that it had been Oscar that had accompanied Hunter during this felonious weekend that he may be disbarred.

In a personal letter to Hunter, it sounded as it his biggest complaint was that he was portrayed as a Samoan. And then, at the last second, in exchange for the dropping of the lawsuits, he demanded that a picture of both he and Hunter be on the dust jacket of the book. That picture from the sampling post is the one from the back cover, while they were at Circus Circus in Vegas. Probably high on mescaline, but you never know.

So...coming full circle...

I had a few ideas from a very hot week a while back that I started to give the gonzo treatment to. By that, what I mean is to cast a skeptical and searching eye onto the activities in question and...

...well, what does it mean to "give it the gonzo treatment?"

Fifteen years ago it would have meant "feature drugs and use of same heavily". And that's totally not what Hunter was all about. Sure, he used and abused everything he could get his hands on, but the focus wasn't on the substances, it was, in his case, on getting the story. He just happened to use and abuse everything he could get his hands on.

So that's when I started to find trouble with this project--the hot week and gonzo treatment. I have the scenes in question, the auxiliary characters set--but what's the deal? What is the perspective of this gonzo narrator and why is this perspective the case? That's when I really tried to figure out the center of the HST trip: what is the importance of altered states of consciousness? Is it the only way to achieve a rich and varied experience with the universe? Is that what Hunter was really all about?

And, most importantly for me, how will this shade my decisions on how to set the point of view of my protagonist? Can a story been given the gonzo treatment and not have a couple of fools driving fast all full of drugs with nowhere to go?

So, sometimes, while thinking about these things, I feel the need to jump on my bicycle and ride around Long Beach. On Monday of last week, after finishing grooming that bear I'd been working on for a while the Sunday before, I realized I had just a single day without any other obligations---no housework yet, no new-gig work yet, just me and my bike and my thoughts and my notebooks.

I set out to once again check out an area I was planning on writing a long blog post about (maybe even something longer). There is a tiny encampment underneath a large freeway overpass where there had once been many folks living in tents. I had planned on my piece being titled "Under the Bridge" (too cheeky, super-LA name, fo' rilly). It would profile the people who lived there, how they got there, what it was like, maybe even stay a night or two myself. I thought the idea could appeal to human-interest story fans as well as hipsters.

I went once and didn't get a chance to talk to anyone, and by the next time I made it over there, after recovering from my couch-summer, there was nothing left. I heard the cops pushed them off permanently.

So I return every once in a while.

Like this Monday I'm talking about. I rode my bike back over to the zone--it's just a quick ride, five or six thousand feet away, and mostly straight--just to let some ideas play out in my brain. The gonzo hot-week piece, my WiLA project, a specific scene in my novel--all these things running in my head at once. And then I saw that graffiti from the first picture.

Huh, I thought to myself. I'm not a master of tagging, and this barely qualifies in the artistic sense, but I'm also not uneducated on what certain things mean. And that graffiti has something wrong. I spotted it almost immediately and may have even said out loud, "Amateur?"

As I left the spot I went back to my thoughts and joined to LA River bikeway as it beelines for the harbor. Less than a minute ride away I rode by this, obviously the same handwriting, only this time the issue was fixed.

Can you see the difference; and if so, can you explain it?

Now, this leads me onto a related tangent: some people, myself included, have, on occasions, found themselves saying to somebody else about traveling to "the LBC" or meeting us "in the LBC" or some such. I've tried to excise that from my normal language, but I haven't really started calling people out on it yet.

It's obviously attributed to a line in a popular Sublime song, where it is actually used correctly, "...representin' the LBC..."

I think the valley girls and social drinkers who use it with the greatest frequency that I hear think that it means Long Beach City. In all honesty, it does roll off the tongue rather nicely.

The "LBC" is not a place: it stands for the "Long Beach Crips".

I guess that's more of a clue than a related tangent, but those don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Happy M! Happy 1000! Happy Thousandth Post!

Thanks for keeping up, if you do, and if you don't, thanks for making it to these last sentences.

Words just want to be read!