She's not my cat, but I definitely feel that Gracie is a friend of mine.
Gracie is a rescue cat and, I must say, an exceptionally pretty cat.
From Women's Wear DailyPublished: Friday, May 23, 2008
'Sex and the City': For Better and for Worse Dressed
By Jessica Iredale
Believe it or not, there are women out there who did and do not watch "Sex and the City." Not during its six-season run from 1998 to 2004, nor in the subsequent four years it has been available on DVD, HBO On Demand or in syndication almost nightly on TBS. And these women aren't necessarily bumpkin conservatives, but fashion-devouring city gals, as well. C--k talk and shameless puns aren't for everyone, after all. Still, here's betting that, whether or not they followed Carrie's, Charlotte's, Miranda's and Samantha's quests for happiness in New York, more than a few of those "Sex"-less women have donned a giant flower pin, flaunted Manolos or pined for a Birkin bag in the past 10 years, after an "SATC"-fueled fad gripped the masses. The HBO series was a fashion force that, thanks to Sarah Jessica Parker's effervescent Carrie Bradshaw and her costumer, Patricia Field, exposed a mainstream audience to flamboyant style extremes. It sparked trends like the flowers, the shoes and the general funky flash, and, according to some fashion editors, even spawned a backlash of Belgium-inspired austerity a few seasons ago.
So, when "Sex and the City: The Movie" comes out from New Line Cinema on Wednesday, legions of loyalists hope to learn more than the answers to the obvious questions: Will Carrie and Big get married? Will
Style-wise, the supporting cast is, for the most part, as it was.
Of course, the fashion story was and always will be about Carrie, a character, who, thanks to Field, holds dual titles as television's best and worst dressed. To the well-trained, high-fashion eye, Carrie's 81 costume changes make up perhaps the most metaphorical wardrobe in cinematic history. For half of the film she comes off as a polished, uberfashionable grown-up; the other half, she's the quirky, experimental fashion trailblazer/victim. Polished Carrie is done up head-to-toe in resort and spring 2008 trends: florals, like a gem-studded YSL sack dress, and full-skirted frocks made a little edgy with a studded black leather belt — even studs have gone uptown. It's hard to find fault with any of these looks — most were featured in every fashion glossy out there last season. They're intentionally perfect — too perfect for the sake of the plot. This is, after all, a character who for years eschewed the obvious in favor of her own eclectic style, which included tie-dyed tanks, midriff-baring tops and biker shorts, all while being over the age of 35.
At her best — or worst, depending on how you see it — Carrie entertains and impresses with imaginative combinations. As for her outrageous, often tacky, taste, she pulls it off with the help of Parker's taut, toned and all-around tiny figure — enviable on a 22-year-old woman, almost unthinkable on a 43-year-old — that can make even stonewashed, button-fly jeans look good. Or an all-black ensemble of a tarlike puffy coat, topped with a fedora; not to mention a pair of pajamas paired with a fur coat, white high-heel booties and a sequined beanie. Indeed, it's a taste of the wacky, and totally in character. Still, it fails to deliver the same euphoric fashion rush as did the series. Even the montage of Carrie cleaning her closet of supposed-to-be-shocking Eighties garb is too familiar to have the impact of, for example, that green satin ruffled-butt miniskirt she casually wore to dinner with Big during season six. That's the problem. In the 10 years since the show started, dedicated "Sex" maniacs have become so used to Carrie's style — her wild, tacky and impossibly theatrical gear — this time, including the film's grand showpiece, a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown and veil, festooned with a bird, it's impossible to shock them. Fashion-wise, the in-the-bag blockbuster "Sex and the City: The Movie" is definitely fun, but not enough to get carried away.
Kingsley Amis was a hangover artist. Had he written nothing more than his description of Jim Dixon regaining consciousness after a bender, his place in literature would be secure. "He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning," Amis writes in "Lucky Jim," his first (and best) novel. Dixon's "mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad."
![[Hows Your Drink photo]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PT-AI475_Cover__20080516155057.jpg) |
| Ericka Burchett/The Wall Street Journal |
Feeling bad isn't such a bad thing, from Amis's point of view. With its "vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure" of guilt and shame, the hangover provides a "unique route to self-knowledge and self-realization." In his book "On Drink," Amis recommends a raft of remedies for the Physical Hangover and then gets on to the Metaphysical Hangover, a combination of "anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future" that may or may not be the result of alcoholic overindulgence. Dealing with the Metaphysical part of the equation entails reading Solzhenitsyn, which "will do you the important service of suggesting that there are plenty of people about who have a bloody sight more to put up with than you (or I) have or ever will have," and listening to Miles Davis, which "will suggest to you that, however gloomy life may be, it cannot possibly be as gloomy as Davis makes it out to be."
"On Drink" is one of three slender books Amis cobbled together from his newspaper columns on the subject in the '70s and '80s, the others being "Everyday Drinking" and "How's Your Glass?" (the British equivalent of the expression that serves as the title for this column). They are back in print at last, Bloomsbury having gathered them into one delightful volume under the title "Everyday Drinking" that's now hitting bookstore shelves. It is essential reading for any literate bibber.
![[Kingsley Amis]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PT-AI494A_Drink_20080516160251.jpg) |
| Getty Images (Amis) |
| British novelist Kingsley Amis (1922-95), shown in 1975. |
What sort of drinks scribbler is Kingsley Amis? Quirky, enormously opinionated, wickedly funny, and ever wary of flummery. And not unhelpful, as far as it goes: He punctuates the text with "general principles" of drinking and drink-making, many of which are perfectly sound, such as "G.P. 3": "It is more important that a cold drink should be as cold as possible than that it should be as concentrated as possible." Quite right. It is impossible to get a cocktail seriously cold without prolonged contact with ice, whether through shaking or stirring, which means that some of that ice will melt in the process, thus diluting one's gin-and-vermouth with a little water. Not to worry -- the slight dilution is part of the taste and texture of a proper Martini. Amis, by the way, preferred to garnish his Martinis with cocktail onions, which made them, strictly speaking, Gibsons.
Less sound, but more revealing, is the writer's first general principle, which recommends (short of serving some vile Balkan plonk) that one always go for quantity over quality in drink. Amis drank in amounts that would stagger -- and stagger the imagination of -- the average early 21st-century American. It sometimes left him the worse for wear: "After half a dozen large Dry Martinis and a proper lunch," Amis writes, "my customary skill with the commas and semicolons becomes a little eroded." Drink as much as he did and you will need to economize; but if your drinking is rather more moderate, you can afford to drink well.
Some of Amis's general principles hit far of the mark. Take G.P. 7, derived from the novelist's belief that a quick and easy Whisky Collins made from a generic "bitter lemon" soda is all one needs in the Collins department: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes." True, there are plenty of fine drinks that are dead simple: This summer I plan to enjoy Dark and Stormies, which entail nothing more complicated than pouring Gosling's Black Seal rum and Barritt's Ginger Beer over ice in a highball glass. But, pace Amis, I don't hesitate to despise drinks made with commercial mixes if the shortcuts result in inferior drinks. And the Collins family is Exhibit A in the category of cocktails ruined by prefab junk.
That said, the back half of Amis's seventh general principle -- in which he explains why an "Instant Whiskey Collins" is good enough -- is worth mulling: "Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve -- or worse." This is what separates Amis from the garden-variety cocktail columnist (other than being one of the great writers of the 20th century): His approach to drinking expresses a coherent, compelling worldview reflexively opposed to snobbish pretense.
For Amis, nowhere is such phoniness more abundant than in the posturing of wine connoisseurs. And though he had an abundant knowledge of wine basics (to have any more than that, he says, one must have "a rich father, and I missed it"), he sneered at anyone who dared mention tannin or chalky soil. He was out to make such expertise "seem like an accomplishment on the level of knowing about the flora and fauna of Costa Rica or the history of tattooing -- well worth while, but hardly in the mainstream of serious thought."
Then again, when it came to something Amis actually cared about, he could be as punctilious as the archest of oenologists. A Macallan man (at least when someone else was paying), the novelist ponders which bottled water is best for adding a splash to one's glass of single malt, Volvic or Highland Spring. It is a curious palate that finds no important differences among French champagnes but can identify the comparative virtues of a few drops of water in whisky.
Water was all Amis would think of putting in his Macallan (no ice, please). But he was willing to mix garden-variety blended Scotch in the occasional cocktail. One of his own invention entailed making an Old-Fashioned with Scotch as the spirit and the Italian liqueur Amaretto as the sweetener (with bitters as the bitters). He called it an Antiquato, which "is Italian for 'old-fashioned.' Dead cunning, what?"
No doubt, as is the book as a whole.
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RALEIGH — Richard Childress grew up shooting rabbits and fishing for bass in the woods and hollers of Forsyth County. He went on to become a race car driver, tearing up the asphalt at Bowman Gray Stadium and then the high banks of Talladega.
Along the way, he left his education behind but never forgot his upbringing. He made the big time as a car owner for the late, great Dale Earnhardt, but he never forgot his friends.
Childress is North Carolina born and raised, and Thursday night he was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame along with some of the greatest sports names in the state's history, names such as Leo Hart and Roy Williams, Bill Hensley and Tom Butters, Ken Huff and Greensboro's Jack Jensen and Curly Neal.
They were all there together on the stage of the North Raleigh Hilton, all there for their prowess on the fields and the sidelines of their sports. Under the name Richard Childress were the words auto racing. But as the legendary car owner and vineyard proprietor looked out over a packed house, he saw table after table of friends and colleagues who had more to do with his rabbit hunting days than his days as a stock car driver and owner.
"I've always been an outdoor person," he said. "It goes back to my days as a kid running through the woods of Forsyth County. I support a lot of conservation efforts and do a lot of fundraising, and I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish."
Childress won six Winston Cup titles with Earnhardt and 11 NASCAR titles in all. He has won Busch and Truck titles in addition to the Cup championships, all this after driving from 1969-81. And to most North Carolinians and many people across the country, that's his claim to fame.
But in the wilds of Montana and on the plains of Africa and in the backcountry of Canada and in the unknown reaches of Mongolia he's the great white hunter, the very embodiment of America itself. Childress is one of the greatest big-game hunters of our time.
"I've got the Grand Slam," he said Thursday, smiling as everyone around talked about basketball and football and golf and assumed Childress was holding court about auto racing. And he was, because most of the people there only knew to ask him about his Cup titles or his current race team with Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer. A few others, including Jack Jensen's wife, Marsha, talked to him about wine. She said she had recently tasted some cantaloupe wine and loved it.
"Cantaloupe?" he asked. "And it was good?"
He's one of us, a man of the people, a common man who made it big. The truth is, we have no idea how big this man is.
"Yeah, I got the Grand Slam," he said almost matter-of-factly.
That means he's one of the few people who have killed the big four of North American sheep -- the Dall, Stone, bighorn and desert bighorn.
"I've got the Big Five of Africa, I've got the Dangerous Seven and I'm one away from having the North American 29."
Now let that sink in for a second because those words have probably never been uttered before, certainly not by anyone you know. He has hunted on every continent. Go to his race shop in Welcome, and you'll be impressed by all the Earnhardt cars he has there and those of his current teams at RCR and even some of the cars he drove back in the '70s. But there's also one of the most impressive displays of stuffed and mounted animals in the world.
Childress explains his trophies as people around him listen with their mouths open.
"Yeah, I've got the polar bear and the elk, all it takes," he said, explaining what the North American 29 is. "The only one I don't have is the caribou up in Newfoundland. I'm gonna go up there and get that."
He just got back from Mongolia, having taken something called an Altai argali, a sheep native to the Altai mountain range. This week, he'll enter his race cars in NASCAR's All-Star race in Concord. It's a long cry from the boy who lost his dad at age 5 and left school for the last time in the ninth grade.
"I felt then that I had to become a man," he said. "I didn't make it all the way through school. I had to go to work. I had to earn money. I'm not proud of that at all. I think everyone should finish school, but at the time, under the circumstance, you also had to make a living."
In his spare time, he hunted rabbits.
"Ri' cheer in North Carolina," he said. "Forsyth County. I lived over off Wayside Drive. We had fields out there and creeks. We'd hunt and fish as much as we could."
He still does. He also makes wine and owns a race team and sponsors wildlife causes and conservation efforts. He's all-American the way we used to think Americans should look. Davy Crockett in buckskins. Teddy Roosevelt in camo. Richard Childress in a suit. We saw that last night.
He looked right at home.
Contact Ed Hardin at ed.hardin@news-record.comMorning Edition, May 14, 2008 · The Sports Curmudgeon's bile has been rising at the general level of tackiness he has witnessed in sports, and so he has requested time to vent.
The Sports Curmudgeon has decided, however, that he should be a new kinder and gentler grouch. The Sports Curmudgeon tells me that by listening to politicians he has found out that if you preface remarks by saying "with all due respect," then you can insult anyone with impunity.
The Sports Curmudgeon asks me, ruefully, "Why didn't I learn that when I was just starting out to be a crosspatch? It makes grumbling so much more acceptable."
The Sports Curmudgeon maintains that he is every bit as patriotic as the next, more agreeable, fellow, but he says: "I still don't understand why they play the national anthem at games when they don't play it at movies and dances and art exhibits and reality shows. But now some teams are also playing 'God Bless America' as well as the national anthem at games. With all due respect, that's not patriotism; that's jingoism."
The Sports Curmudgeon has also noted the new special sections at several baseball parks, wherein slovenly fans buy a ticket that allows them to eat all they want. The Sports Curmudgeon grouses: "With all due respect, I'd rather be in a section with a bunch of tosspots where you can drink all you can drink than be with a bunch of slobs eating a guacamole taco every inning."
The Sports Curmudgeon has never been more upset at baseball players who hit the ball and then stand and admire its flight. "With all due respect, why aren't managers benching these so-called role models? The first thing you learn in baseball is: You hit the ball, you run. It's up to the creeps eating guacamole tacos to watch."
Of course, the Sports Curmudgeon is watching some sports on television, too. He notes that sports announcers don't anymore know how to pronounce the word indicated by the letters v-s-period. "With all due respect, have you noticed nobody in sports knows how to say versus anymore? They say 'verse.' It's the Yankees verse the Red Sox. No, no, it's not! It's not poetry; it's competition."
The Sports Curmudgeon, a consummate man of letters, is also presenting the Gertrude Award, named for the queen in Hamlet who allowed that someone "doth protest too much, methinks." Previous winners have been Bill Clinton, Marion Jones and Tom Cruise. The Sports Curmudgeon now presents a lifetime Gertrude Award to Roger Clemens. "With all due respect, Clemens never would have even had to protest too much, if he'd just kept his mouth shut. Never mind methinks. Me knows he is the biggest jerk in all of sports."
And an envious Sports Curmudgeon is increasingly upset that John McEnroe keeps getting television commercials. "With all due respect, McNasty's not half the churl I am," says the Sports Curmudgeon, who adds with a snarl: "If I have offended anybody, I don't apologize."
"Everybody knows
— Karl Lagerfeld
Published: Thursday, May 15, 2008
Karl at the Beach: Chanel Cruises Into
By Marc Karimzadeh
"Why not bring a modern version of Coco to
Over the past few years, Chanel has made it a tradition to take its cruise shows on the road, from
This being Chanel, over 120 people have been flown in to pull off the feat. Not surprisingly, the
Lagerfeld said he chose
"I like the idea of
Over the past two decades,
"I don't think about that time at all anymore," he said. "There was a kind of permanent sexual alert then, but I have a feeling that it is less the case now. It had a kind of meat-market mood then."
In recent years, Lagerfeld familiarized himself with this city on several occasions, most recently to shoot a campaign here for Chanel. While he has stayed at the Shore Club and the Setai hotels in the past, he seemed particularly taken by the
"I don't think for one second about the market, the opportunity, the future," he said. "I think, let's do it by instinct and pick the right thing for the right moment. For the next cruise, in a year, we will go to
And in December, the designer plans to take his pre-fall show to
"I travel only for professional reasons," he said. "If not, I stay at home, with my books and my papers. I am not a tourist at all. I was in
After
"I can't wait to start couture," he said. "I like what I am doing. The other night, I saw Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti at the Costume Institute, and they said, 'Oh, we're so happy not working. We can go to the opera, we can go to the ballet.' I said, 'What a bore.' They said, 'But not everyone wants to die on the spot.' There's nothing else I want. I saw enough ballet and enough opera in my life and had enough houses. I don't care about that anymore. I want room service, a nice bed, and a good desk, and books. It's easy. It makes life much lighter."
Tonight's show will feature over 60 looks, and rumor has it that it will end with 10 synchronized swimmers from the
CounterclockwiseMother’s day....so many things I'd like to say but the best (or worst) I'll do is tell a story about someone else’s family.
A few years ago a friend of mine called me and told me his 21 year old grandson was coming into town and asked if I wanted to meet up with them. Sure I did, so I met them at the bar of the specified restaurant. We visited a bit, David's grandmother and uncle both showed up a bit later and they went with David to a booth to eat. David's Grandmother Lois had been divorced from my friend for over 20 years, long before we met, and although Lois hadn’t really become a friend, she was someone I really liked. In other words, anytime I would see her across a room or whatever, I would always go over and speak to her. Lois was a nice lady who passed away last year at age 80.
To get to the point, David, his grandmother Lois, and Lois' son ''Sonny" were sitting in the booth following a light dinner. I went over to say hello right as the server shows up with the check. The grandson David pulls out some money and Sonny (a fairly successful businessman about my age) starts squawking..."I had a hamburger, who had a beer?....blah, blah, blah…” and the whole table went through a protracted money changing routine for what was surely less than a $40 tab. I was really embarrassed for everyone there.
A few months later, I saw David when he came up for another visit and I offered some unsolicited advice. I reminded him of the scene just described and, giving allowance that he’s in school at this point, advised that anytime you have a meal with your mother….just pick up the tab!!!...every time!!!! David’s a fine young man and I don’t think he really needed my advice, but I felt better having given it.
I really had been astounded at the scene I witnessed, but to be truthful, when my mother, who died in 2001, was around over the preceding 20 years or so, she usually insisted on picking up the whole check and wouldn’t let me do it. But I’ll be damned if I would have split hairs over a dinner check with her.
Mother's day special.....
The Spinners "Sadie"
At 71, McCain will be up at 3 a.m.
By Gene Owens
It has just been brought to my attention that John McCain is my age -- 71 -- and is, in the eyes of many, too old to be president.
I'm not passing judgment on the qualifications of those two young whipper-snappers who are contending for the right to oppose him in November. But don't put the old boy down just because he's old.
For example, whom would you want to answer the telephone at 3 o'clock in the morning: A man who is already awake and on his way to the bathroom, or a young person who has to be roused from a sound sleep? I'd wager that the older guy will answer the phone with a clearer head and a greater sense of urgency. He'll be able to take the call in stride, especially if he's using a cordless telephone.
McCain has been criticized for mental slips in front of the microphone. For instance, he recently seemed to imply that the war in
As a septuagenarian (it took me 70 years to learn to spell that), I can tell you that age does make a difference to the mind. It makes you a lot more sensible. You'd never catch me ducking into the space between two semis on I-85 at 90 miles per hour when the space between them is no greater than the length of a downtown parallel parking space, if you can find one. Yet, I see young people below the age of 50 doing it all the time on the perimeter routes around
I doubt that either of McCain's youthful potential opponents would willingly fly an airplane off the deck of an aircraft carrier and aim its bombs at a power plant in an enemy nation. True, McCain did that 40 years ago, but he's passed the point at which he might be tempted to do it again. Can either of his adversaries say the same?
You'd never catch me paddling through white water or hanging out with people who go around saying dumb things like "the federal government invented AIDS" and asking God to damn
You do lose a little short-term memory by the time you cross the 70s threshold, but that's a minor problem. The principle danger for a 71-year-old president would be the possibility that he might show up for a press conference with his fly unzipped, but that shouldn't be a major problem. Bill Clinton always managed to present himself to the public with clothing in proper array.
A 71-year-old may unzip as often as President Bill did, though for different reasons. But presidents have valets to make sure all zippers are up, shirt collars are buttoned down, socks are not black when they should be navy blue, and wingtips are both the same color. Miss Peggy always checks me out before I leave home, and by the time I'm on display before the public, my outfit is coordinated and my modesty is intact. I think if President McCain's valet and Secret Service people failed to notice an oversight, Cindy would quickly clue him in.
The short-term memory loss might come into play should the president find it necessary to nuke
I can see an aging president calling his Secretary of Nuclear War and saying, "Launch an attack on
Maybe by then the big Minuteman would be heading over the North Pole, zeroed in on
The difference between the two
Some people are demanding that McCain make public all his medical records for the past five or six years. I would be embarrassed if somebody asked me to produce mine. I don't go to doctors unless I'm at death's door, which I'm not at this point. Therefore, I have no medical records to produce.
I don't know how useful McCain's age might be in predicting how long he would live in office. Ronald Reagan was 73 when he ran for his second term and he lived 20 years longer. John Kennedy was 43 when he ran for president, and he lived three years longer.
Please be assured that I have no intention of running for president. It's not that I'm afraid of pushing the wrong button in event of a nuclear attack. It's just that when I get up at 3 a.m., I don't want to be interrupted by a telephone call.
(Readers may write Gene Owens at
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THERE were always way too many guns around at Hunter S. Thompson's farm in Woody Creek: .44 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, black snubnosed Colt Pythons with bevelled cylinders, .22 calibre mounted machineguns. He also kept explosives, to blow the legs off pool tables or to pack in a barrel for target practice. His quiet bourgeois neighbours near Aspen, Colorado, complained that he rocked the foundations of their houses.
Explosions were his speciality. Indeed, writing and shooting were much the same. His very first newspaper story, written when he was ten for a neighbourhood newsletter in Louisville, Kentucky, was headlined “WAR!” (“The Voits declared war on Hunter's gang on Oct. 1, 1947. At 3.00 Hunter's gang attacked the Voits”). Later, as a working journalist, he fired off reckless fusillades of words that were meant to shock and entertain and wreak collateral damage.
He had always been a problem, kicked early out of high school (drinking, vandalism) and rapidly out of the air force, but his casual smashing of the rules of American journalism happened more or less by accident. Assigned to cover the Kentucky Derby in 1970, his mind was too blown with drugs, as usual, to write the story. One by one, with his trembling hands, he ripped the pages of whiskey-fuelled ramblings out of his notebook and sent them to the printer. The piece that resulted, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”, was a runaway success, though he had neither described the race nor mentioned the winner. And he was astonished: it was like “falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids.”
A friend called his style “totally gonzo”. The name stuck, though, as he confessed, nobody knew what the hell it meant. For the literary, he could explain that it followed William Faulkner's dictum that “the best fiction is more true than any kind of journalism.” Mr Thompson stalked, rifle in hand, cigarette (in holder) dangling, on the wild borderlands between fact and fiction, leaving readers to decide what was true and what was not.
Editors tried to control him, but failed. Journalistic objectivity was a nonsense to him; he threw it away, and turned his gaze on himself. He and his excursions into depravity became the central and only theme of every story he wrote. Sent to Puerto Rico for the New York Herald Tribune, in 1959, he shot rats at the San Juan city dump until he was arrested. Assigned in 1971 to write a 300-word caption on the Mint 400 motor-cycle race for Sports Illustrated, he wrote the 50,000 words of mayhem that became “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. It began: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Posted to Zaire in 1974 to cover the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, he never watched the boxing. Instead he floated naked in the hotel pool, into which he had thrown a pound and a half of marijuana, and let the green slick gather round him.
“Fear and Loathing” made him famous: so famous that the Republicans came courting him, although he was a Democrat. It was not just the guns, but the fact that he wore a twisted sort of patriotism on his sleeve. That journey through the Californian desert to find fame and fortune, stocked up with “two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers”, was also, Mr Thompson claimed, “a classic confirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character.” (“Jesus! Did I say that?”)
Nixon's men wondered if this madman could be their bridge to the alienated, war-hating young. But they were playing with fire. Mr Thompson thought Nixon a liar and a bastard. He covered the 1972 election in typically take-no-prisoners style, producing what one campaign aide called “the least accurate and most factual” book about it; and when he toyed with politics it was on the Freak Power ticket, running for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, where he could blow things away in the woods.
He did not give “a flying fuck” what he smoked, or ingested, or did, but there was a thoughtful side. Early in his career, in an obituary of a friend, he wrote of “the dead-end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules.” He was often melancholy, and wild conviviality and celebrity made no difference to that. The epigram to “Fear and Loathing” quoted Dr Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” It was not thought surprising that his death was a suicide.
In 1964 he had made a long journey to Ketchum, Idaho, to the grave of Ernest Hemingway, one of his models and heroes. He wanted to understand why Hemingway had killed himself in his cabin in the woods, and concluded that he had lost his sense of control in a changing world:
It is not just a writer's crisis, but they are the most obvious victims because the function of art is supposedly to bring order out of chaos, a tall order even when the chaos is static, and a superhuman task when chaos is multiplying...So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.
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The following essay was originally published in Scanlan's Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970.
The text of this essay was taken from the book The Great Shark Hunt, Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1, Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979).
In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other--"but just call me Jimbo"--and he was here to get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey..."
I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.
"Look." He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. "I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I've learned--this is no town to be giving people the impression you're some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they'll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have."
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. "Say," he said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"
"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."
"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"
"Playboy," I said.
He laughed. "Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of--nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you'll be workin' pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That's a race just for fillies." He was laughing wildly. "Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!"
I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My assignment is to take pictures of the riot."
"What riot?"
I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the newspapers?"
The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
"Well...maybe I shouldn't be telling you..." I shrugged. "But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They've warned us--all the press and photographers--to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting..."
"No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. "Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!" Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?"
I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country--to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed like everybody else. You know--coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts...well, that's why the cops are so worried."
He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh...Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?"
"Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink...and good luck."
He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: "Nixon Sends GI's into Cambodia to Hit Reds"... "B-52's Raid, then 20,000 GI's Advance 20 Miles"..."4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest." At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom." The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of "student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at university in Ohio called Kent State.
I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn't have any. "You can't rent one anywhere," he assured me. "Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks." I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. "Maybe we'll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"
I shrugged. "Where's the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people."
He sighed. "My friend, you're in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby."
I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: "Look, I'm from Playboy. How would you like a job?"
He backed off quickly. "What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?"
"Never mind," I said. "You just blew it." I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it--SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing--and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says "Photog. Playboy Mag." I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. "Never mention Playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first," he said. "Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike. They'll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic."
Well...maybe so. I'd used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition." Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn't missed a Derby since 1954. "The little lady won't come anymore," he said. "She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say 'loose' I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin' out of style! Horses, whiskey, women...shit, there's women in this town that'll do anything for money."
Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, "If I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market." And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.
Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan's was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. "Hell, you can't be serious," he said. "The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there's no more room...and what the hell is Scanlan's Monthly anyway?"
I uttered a painful groan. "Didn't the London office call you? They're flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He's Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set."
He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.
"That sounds a little weird," I said. "It's unacceptable. We must have access to everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don't think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we'll get inside. Maybe we'll have to bribe a guard--or even Mace somebody." (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor's box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good...)
By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he'd changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning--demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.
The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman's name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, "You bet he did." Then she favored me with a big smile. "Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?"
I shook my head. "I'm supposed to be working with him, but I don't even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I'll have to find him in the mob at the track."
She chuckled. "You won't have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd."
"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with him? What does he look like?"
"Well..." she said, still grinning, "he's the funniest looking thing I've seen in a long time. He has this...ah...this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it's all over his head." She nodded. "You'll know him when you see him; don't worry about that."
Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan's press packet. Well...what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn't think we're abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, "Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!"
But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried.
"Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management's Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. "I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works."
By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections "F&G"...and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in "G," along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we'd be legal in a box in "G" where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby's special vibrations.
The bars and dining rooms are also in "F&G," and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that's what they're in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.
Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the "walkaround" press passes to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn't leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.
"Is it safe out there?" Will we ever come back?"
"Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up." He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said. "Don't worry. At the first hint of trouble I'll start pumping this 'Chemical Billy' into the crowd."
He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry--a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. ("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!")
So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is. On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. "You should keep in mind," I said, "that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all." He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.
Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South, England--just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.
Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into--then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who'd seen or even heard about his work. He couldn't understand it. "It's sort of a joke," he kept saying. "Why, in England it's quite normal. People don't take offense. They understand that I'm just putting them on a bit."
"Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off."
Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."
"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?"
"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.
"What Mace?"
He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"
"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."
"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."
"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"
"She was angry," he said.
"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we fucked up about equally on that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk."
"Right," he said. "We'll go native."
Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I preferred the "French toast," which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.
Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on--almost from the very moment we started out to the track--we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.
But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:
Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.
Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people's front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. "That's fine, boy, never mind the tulips." Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds. Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks...black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.
The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. "Why do they have those clubs?"
"Black Panthers," I said. Then I remembered good old "Jimbo" at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League...they were all turned away. "Move on, fella, make way for the working press." We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.
The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.
Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.
I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a table not far away. "Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!" he whispered. "Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!" I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was sketching. The face he'd picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him "Cat Man."
But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn't have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day...fat slanted eyes and a pimp's smile, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge... Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."
In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.
The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I'd warned him about had happened so far--no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks--he shrugged and said, "Right, let's do it."
To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. "God almighty!" Steadman muttered. "This is a...Jesus!" He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.
Old blacks arguing about bets; "Hold on there, I'll handle this" (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, "Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail." Thousands of teen-agers, group singing "Let the Sun Shine In," ten soldires guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.
No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.
Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day's Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he'd "bagged a record tiger." The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann's glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was "retired contractor." And then he added, with a big grin, "I just retired."
The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis
"What about having breakfast?" he said.
I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn't cope with the chain! The thing wouldn't come out of the track--so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn't blink. "Bad luck," he muttered.
I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. "Christ," I said. "You're getting out of control." He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. "You know, this is really awful," he said finally. "I must get out of this place..." he shook his head nervously. "The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don't know if I'll make it."
I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking for. There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been looking for--and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...
"Maybe I should sleep a while longer," I said. "Why don't you go on over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour."
He shook his head. "No...no...I think I'll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while." He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. "I tried to work earlier," he said, "but my hands kept trembling...It's teddible, teddible." "You've got to stop this drinking," I said.
He nodded. "I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better..."
"Not for long," I said. "You'll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT's tonight--probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They'll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until you straighten out."
He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later--after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart--we had our last meal at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher's offal, fried in heavy grease.
By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more water. "It's the only thing they have that's fit for human consumption," he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit of the thing...but we couldn't make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he'd drawn. "Shit," I said. "We both look worse than anything you've drawn here."
He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you know what? It's us..."
A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in Kentucky."
