Bradley James Weber

Startling Stories for All Ages

Fear & Loathing

Soul Train Host Was Former Chicago Cop

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Would you ever peg this man as having been on the Chicago P.D. ?

Me neither.

Here’s the story from IMDB:

Discovered by WVON Radio personality Ed Cobb. In the mid-1960s, Cobb while driving ran a traffic violation and was pulled over by Chicago Police officer Don Cornelius. While officer Cornelius was asking him the typical traffic stop questions, Cobb noticed his unique speaking voice and told him that he was in the wrong profession. Cobb suggested that Cornelius come down to the radio station and make a demo tape. Don took him up on it and was hired as an announcer.

And some comments on it from the Don himself:

No, no. Never happened. How I knew Roy, for the record, was that I grew up in a three-story building on St. Lawrence Avenue next to a three-story building he lived in for a time.

But he doesn’t deny being a Chicago cop . . . .

Goes to show you never can tell.

Book Review: Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone

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Assurances were made that a review would be posted on the 24th. It’s still Monday for a few more hours and, after a day of brawling with myself over issues peripheral — but bearing no direct relation — to the book’s contents, I’m back to take another swing.

For the uninitiated or casually familiar, F&L@RS is a fine introduction to The Good Doctor’s non-Vegas Gonzo pieces and a good place to find some of his most incandescent writing. And while the book doesn’t illustrate the evolution of Hunter’s style and craft, these repackaged Rolling Stone articles showcase the results of both the writer and his editors, past and present, in creating finished pieces. It also traces the astonishing climb, stall, and flame-0ut of one of America’s most prolific, insightful, and unstoppable humorists.

Much of the material for this book appeared in the same or similar forms in Hunter’s other collected works, most notably THE GREAT SHARK HUNT. In fact, of the 40 or so articles and letters listed on the contents page, nine were in SHARK HUNT and fourteen in CAMPAIGN TRAIL ’72.

(N.B. — I say, “same or similar forms,” because, according to Paul Scanlon’s warm and excellent intro, he’s re-groomed some of the articles for the new book. While editorial nit-pickers and HST fetishists will no doubt have their jollies with it, I have no time for a full-on stare-and-compare. One day, maybe — but not today.)

Where SHARK HUNT takes a somewhat shotgun approach to the groupings, F&L@RS has the advantage of presenting the pieces chronologically. Following the timeline lets readers see how Hunter’s writing for Rolling Stone fed the success and growth of the magazine, and was responsible for the growth and spread of the Hunterfigure. Readers get to witness the Legend being being printed along with the Truth and bound together, for good and ill, in the public consciousness.

For the hardcore fan or HST scholar, F&L@RS ultimately holds no surprises, though there are two pieces worth particular mention. First, is the inclusion of, “Polo Is My Life” — one of the truly essential pieces of Hunter’s writing that has been MIA for too long. Second is the exclusion of “Dance of the Doomed,”  Hunter’s meditation and final word on the war in Vietnam. The real reason why this was left out is anybody’s guess.

Rum Diary Poster

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Of all the things that could have been done to make this a really intriguing poster and they went with this.

What a disappointment.

Analyzing the gross and numerous failures in concept and design would be pointless, mostly because the people concerned (i.e., producers and publicists) clearly don’t give a shit.

Noticeably absent from the poster is any mention of the novel or its author. This may seem counter-intuitive, but that could work in the film’s favor.

Most people these days who know anything about Thompson are either a) familiar enough with the man and his work to know it’s more than the some of it’s parts, or b) know the man and his work by reputation only — and that’s the way they like it. (Because let’s face it: anyone impressed by the more outré aspects of the good doctor’s life and writing would have found out more.)

For the former group, the title alone is enough to get them in the theaters. For the latter group, for whom Doc’s antics were an immediate turn-off, Depp’s name and the mystery of the poster might lure them in.

It’s a crap-shoot, really. And we won’t know it’s success or failure until the box office returns are in.

 

 

A Doublespeak Dictionary

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For several months I’ve been conducting a minor social experiment: salting conversation with neighbors and other villagers with doublespeak phrases, mostly “Un-____” or “doubleplus” (e.g., “Un-good,” “doubleplus hot”) — words that are easy to decode given their context and any  non-verbal cues. The idea is to see if and when it catches on, and who says it back first, then find out if they’ve used it elsewhere. So far, no soap.

(And now that I’ve blabbed about it, the data will be tainted.That’s assuming anybody in town is reading this site. A bold assumption, indeed.)

As doubleplus weird as this experiment may seem, Americans are already conversant in Newspeak. They just don’t know it as such.

As detailed on the Newspeak Dictionary site, there are hundreds of examples of Newspeak and Doublespeak in our daily language, most of which we don’t recognize as obfuscating the very thing the words are supposed to identify.  We pick up via the media some seemingly perfect word, reuse it until we think we know what we’re really saying though never considering the full meaning. Then again, the American school system long ago quit teaching students how to think for themselves, or to consider the deeper significance of our words and actions.

Take for example, “debt ceiling.”

Or , “The Patriot Act.”

Or, “Peacekeepers.”

See what I mean.

The Continental Shelf

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This is the the world famous and luxurious Continental Palace Hotel as it appeared in downtown Saigon, circa 1975 — sometime before the North Vietnamese Army took over the city. The picture was lifted from a now defunct Web site which dated the image from 1975, so I have to take their word for it. By the looks of the VW Beetle taxi, the date is close. Or close enough.

From 1951 to 1953, the bar in the Continental was where Graham Greene wrote THE QUIET AMERICAN, a novel presaging the US’s well-intentioned bumblings in Vietnam, which had him in trouble with the Feds for the rest of his life. It was this same hotel and bar where Hunter spent his days in Vietnam: trying to sleep in Room #37, drinking with the US press corps, and not writing what was supposed to be “Fear and Loathing and the Last Days of Saigon.”

Most, if not all, of the time Doc languished in Indo-China was captured on audio tape — only some of which made it to Disc 5 of THE GONZO TAPES. This collection has been a true mine of information . . .  esoteric bits of life and syntax that never made it into the published works or any of the biographies.

On one of the Saigon tracks, Hunter has flown to Hong Kong for some reason (possibly because his tape recorder broke and he needed a new one) and is catching up on notes. In his ramblings is mention of a drink he often has at the Continental’s bar: gin, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and lime juice.

Being a gin drinker, this sounded to me like an instant winner. And it is. Gold medal, baby, all the way.

As there was no proper recipe or moniker for this glass of magic, neither from Hunter or anywhere on the Interwebs, I now formally bestow upon it the name of the hotel bar. Henceforth and forever it will be known as “The Continental Shelf.”

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Enjoy.

CONTINENTAL SHELF

Fill a 12 oz. glass with ice cubes. Pour in:

2 oz. gin

Top with fresh orange juice, leaving room enough for the squeezings of half a lime. Pour into a shaker. Shake once. Gently pour back into glass. If there is room, add more ice. Toast your friends. Drink. Repeat. Repeat again.

You’ll never know what hit you . . .

(Special thanks to The Other Brad for being a willing test subject and for the use of the juice machine. Mahalo.)