nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 12:57 p.m. No.16088500   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

>>16072393

for only $10.5 million a day batjoto can

>>> frolicking's in a cape with a butler

with starving israeli juws >>16072359

 

>>>and whine bout trannys

cause flesh eating tweaker nazis and faggot movie

>yuge gape in sodom and gamorhea plot

with a barge and an island

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:17 p.m. No.16088585   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>8614

around and impossible to ignore. You can't get away from TV. It is

everywhere. The hog is in the tunnel.

I was reminded of all these things, once again, when I finally limped

back homeโ€”after 15 days in the eerie confines of an airless cubicle in

a high-rise on Market Streetโ€”to find the TV business working overtime

in my front yard.

It was 9 o'clock at night, with a full moon, when we came up the

driveway in Weird John's cab from the airport, and I felt the chill of

winter. Daylight-savings time was over, the football season was half-

gone, and there was frost on all the windshields.

The Jeep and the Volvo were almost hidden in a maze of frozen

weeds, and a big blue peacock was squatting nervously on the trunk of

the Bavaria. There was no sign of the Range Rover, which meant that

Jay had probably gone off to Texas with the Nazis.

Years ago I made the decision to keep the whole place looking like

an abandoned sawmillโ€”which has worked out well for the trapping and

disciplining of trespassers, but it is not a natural contexf for massive

high-tech machinery. . . .

So it was a serious shock to see THE DISH, a huge white saucer that

seemed suspended in midair and tilted up at the moon Uke a NASA

receptor on Mars. It was the tallest thing on the ranch, a 16-foot electric

white Birdview dish antenna, perched on a jagged, grassy knoll about

100 yards back from the main house and blocking my view of the mule

pasture.

Motorcycle tracks led back through the snow in the direction of the

cistern, then veered off sharply toward the raw mud and concrete base

of the new installationโ€”which was in fact the full-bore all-channels 19-

satellite Earth Station that I'd ordered from the electric people, before

I went to San Francisco.

I am, after all, the media critic; and TV falls into that category, so I

thought I should have all the channels, including Spanish Reuters and

the morning news from Bermuda, which is as far across the Earth's

curvature as our commercial satellites can see.

This had been my problem, all along. I was living too far up in the

Rockies, with atavistic technology. The local cable company had refused

to even talk about running a line up Woody Creekโ€”as a "special favor"

they saidโ€”for me or anyone else. My two closest neighbors are Don

Henley the musician and ABC sportscaster Bob Beattie โ€ฆ and we

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:18 p.m. No.16088594   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

have our own professional reasons for needing total TV at all times,

and especially on weekends for the games. But the cable company said

"NO."

"Never," the man told Beattie. "You people are too far away, and

there's not enough of you. We need a hundred hookups for every two

miles of line. You only have seven. Forget it. You will never qualify."

Which was true. The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only

hope, and eventually we were all forced to turn to it. By the summer

of '85, the valley had more satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo

village on the north slope of Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in. I had been nervous from the start

about the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with

these things. Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan

200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching

Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems

dull.

This was the situation I found at my house when I got back from San

Francisco. My friend Cromwell had installed a whole galaxy of wires

and motors and screens and stainless steel TVRO with red lights and

green lights and baffling digital readouts to compute things like spatial

polarity and the uplink angle from London. I had all the latest equipment

to watch any channel I wanted.

"Not quite," said Cromwell, when he stopped by later that night to

drink whiskey and give me his bill. "There's one more thingโ€”the de-

scrambler. It's going to run you about $500, plus at least $100 a month

for the rest of your life."

"That's ridiculous," I said. "How can they charge me for signals I

pick out of the sky with all this fantastic new equipment?"

"It's easy," he said. "They will scramble their signals, beginning on

Jan. 15 of next year, and you will need a special 'decoding' machine to

see anything that matters. The channels will cost you $12.95 a month

each, and you will naturally want at least 10โ€”or maybe 30 or 40, for a

man with a job like yours."

"What are you saying?" I screamed at him. "That all this overpriced

junk that you've installed in my house is useless?"

"Of course not. There's a whole raft of things that you'll still be able

to getโ€”the 700 Club, the Vast Brokers TV Auction," he said as he

smiled in the manner of a raccoon. "And also Jimmy Swaggart and the

big-time wrestling specials."

46 Generation of Swine

I smacked him on the side of the head with a roUed-up thick, wet

towel from the Communications Club, on Turk Street, where I had

recently been involved in a wedding. It would have croaked a weaker

man, but Cromwell was still laughing as he staggered down the driveway

to his power wagon. "Call me when you get smart," he yelled. "I could

get all the machinery you need from Bob Arum."

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:19 p.m. No.16088601   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

The Worst People in the World

JVlemo to my editor: It was the morning after Election Day when I

finally made the decision to apply for the journalist-in-space program.

I stayed up all night and drove down to the post office at dawn to pick

up the official application form. There was only one press seat, according

to the people at NASA, and the competition would definitely be fierce.

Walter Cronkite was the natural choice, they said, but he was far too

old for the weight training and his objectivity was suspect.

Ten years ago, or more, Walter had taken a profoundly personal

interest in whatever he perceived at the time to be the "U.S. space

program," and the boys at NASA had long since adopted him as a very

valuable ally and in fact sort of a team mascot. Walter was a true

believer: He was "on the team," as they say in places hke Lynchburg,

Va., and he was also the most trusted man in America.

I'm waiting for the phone call from the politicians of NASA. I know it

will come at night. Most nights are slow in the politics business, but

only lawyers complain. Never answer your phone after midnight, they

say. Other people's nightmares are not billable time, and morning will

come soon enough. Leave it alone, if you can; the slow nights are the

good onesโ€”because you know in your nerves that every once in a while

a fast one will come along, and it will jerk you up by the roots.

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:20 p.m. No.16088605   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

Hunter S. Thompson 47

There are many rooms in the mansion, and weirdness governs in most

of them. Politics is not just elections, and telephones are not just for

reaching out and touching someone.

If the telephone call doesn't come from NASA and they send Cronkite

instead of me into space, then it will be time to deal with my notion of

taking Vanessa Williams to Johannesburg for a casual Saturday night

of dinner and dancing, which the Examiner contemptuously rejected

for what I took to be blind-dumb reasons with roots in a classic psycho-

expenso syndrome.

Which is not bad thinking, for a comptroller, but it is going to get in

the way if we ever plan to start justifying the Examiner's "next gen-

eration" format and the oft-implied promise of "a thinking man's news-

paper" for the '80s.

That would be a major move in any decade, but in this one it makes

a certain amount of at least theoretical sense because we have what

looks to me Hke a genuine Power Vacuum on our side.

The Washington Post jumped The New York Times in the '70s, mainly

on Watergate, but the chaos of success and the natural human weirdness

of life at the Post (Janet Cooke, Bob Woodward, etc.) led to a kind of

dysfunctional stalemate that is still a big factor in contemporary jour-

nalism, where the prime movers now are in television.

"Sixty Minutes" can rock your boat worse than the Times and the

Po5r combined, and minute-to-minute judgments made at the CNN news

desk in Atlanta have more effect on morning newspaper headlines all

over the country than anything else in the industry except maybe a five-

bell emergency bulletin on the AP wire.

The only other newspapers that have caused any functional excitement

in the business are the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe, and I think

we should pay attention to both of them. They are nothing alike, on

the surface, but in some ways they share the same giddy instincts that

we are just beginning to flirt with.

They are both stockpiling talent at top-dollar rates, and planning to

amortize their investment by reselling their talentโ€”and the leverage

that supposedly comes with itโ€”via national or even international syn-

dication arrangements, which in theory is not bad business. It harks

back to the basic difference between "vertical" and "horizontal" cor-

porations: i.e.. Ford and General Motors.

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:22 p.m. No.16088611   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

48 Generation of Swin&

Jesus! And all I wanted to do here was make a pitch for going to South

Africa, where TV cameras have suddenly become useless and print

journalism has been elevated, by default, to a bizarre and critical level.

I assume you've been following these ominous developments on TV

โ€”

(as I have, thanks to my recently installed TVRO "Earth Station")

โ€”

which have effectively shut down all coverage of public violence in South

Africa by our colleagues in the video press. The South African govern-

ment has made it punishable by up to 19 years in prison (that's PRISON,

in SOUTH AFRICA) for using a TV camera or even a sound recorder

at any scene of violence.

It is an impossible situation for the kinds of people charged with TV

coverage in what amounts, now, to a war zone. They are the storm

troopers of journalism, for good or ill. And in the main, they are very

tough-minded neo-dimensional people whose only Hnk to the mandates

of traditional journalism is to get the story and get the story out.

That is going to cause them trouble in South Africa. It is like telling

fish to stay out of water, and the Afrikaners are serious. They are

universally recognizedโ€”even among non-political travelersโ€”to be The

Worst People in the World.

November 11, 1985

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 1:28 p.m. No.16088634   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

48 Generation of Swin&

Jesus! And all I wanted to do here was make a pitch for going to South

Africa, where TV cameras have suddenly become useless and print

journalism has been elevated, by default, to a bizarre and critical level.

I assume you've been following these ominous developments on TV

โ€”

(as I have, thanks to my recently installed TVRO "Earth Station")

โ€”

which have effectively shut down all coverage of public violence in South

Africa by our colleagues in the video press. The South African govern-

ment has made it punishable by up to 19 years in prison (that's PRISON,

in SOUTH AFRICA) for using a TV camera or even a sound recorder

at any scene of violence.

It is an impossible situation for the kinds of people charged with TV

coverage in what amounts, now, to a war zone. They are the storm

troopers of journalism, for good or ill. And in the main, they are very

tough-minded neo-dimensional people whose only Hnk to the mandates

of traditional journalism is to get the story and get the story out.

That is going to cause them trouble in South Africa. It is like telling

fish to stay out of water, and the Afrikaners are serious. They are

universally recognizedโ€”even among non-political travelersโ€”to be The

Worst People in the World.

November 11, 1985

The Beast with Three Backs

JVlontrealโ€”All nights are cold in Montreal. The last time I was here

was in the springโ€”for the first Duran-Leonard fightโ€”and the downtown

streets were like sheet ice. Harold Conrad was dancing crazily in an

after-hours club on St. Catherine Street, and when we went outside for

some air, a French whiskey sot in a Z-28 Camaro ran over two people

in the narrow street outside the club and then tried to fleeโ€”but he

panicked and crashed into a bread truck and an outraged mob chased

Hunter S. Thompson 49

him down and whipped him until he confessed. There was no need for

police, until later.

I was part of the mob, for some reason, along with Bill Murray and

Bob Arum and a dozen or so punk rockers shouting things like "Bas-

tarde! Bastarde!" and "J'accuse!"

Nobody knows who did the actual beating, but I'm sure it was none

of the fight crowd, although Arum later tried to take credit for it, and

Murray had blood under his fingernails for the next two days. "I tripped

on the curb," he explained. "All I remember is clawing at the legs of

people running over me."

Nobody believed either one of them, but in the end it made no dif-

ference. All memories are gray when the time comes to start sorting

out details of mob violence. The truth is that we had gone temporarily

wild like the others, behaving like beasts and borne along by a frenzied

crowd . . . and in fact there were no real injuries, not even to the original

hit-and-run victims. The only certified loser was the driver of the bread

truck, who had his whole load of croissants scattered like popcorn all

over the street.

But that was a long time ago, and we have all become older and wiser

since thenโ€”even Sugar Ray Leonard, who lost to Duran in Montreal,

then redeemed himself in New Orleans a year later.

This time I was in town for very different reasons. The underlying

theme was still violence, but now it had to do with Ronald Reagan and

Mikhail Gorbachev and the threat of a nuclear war between the United

States and Russia that seriously worries the Canadiansโ€”and whether

Richard Nixon would become president in 1988.

This was the subject of a talk I was scheduled to deliver the next day

at Concordia University, and I was met at the airport by a student

committee of twoโ€”Doug and Terrence.

Terrence is bright and ambitious, but he is cursed with a dark and

twisted curiosity that all too often characterizes Canadians. I'd forgotten

that trait since my last trip across the northern border, but it only took

a few minutes with Terrence to remind me.

In the course of our conversation on the way from the airport, I

mentioned to him that I was on leave from my job as night manager of

the O'Farrell. This piqued his interest more than anything I'd said, and

he insisted we pay a visit to Montreal's foremost adult theater to compare

style. Like any responsible administrator, I agreed to go and check out

the competition.

nogoathomo ID: af765a April 16, 2022, 2:18 p.m. No.16088836   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun

>>16072393

for only $10.5 million a day batjoto can

>>> frolicking's in a cape with a butler

with starving israeli juws >>16072359

 

>>>and whine bout trannys

cause flesh eating tweaker nazis and faggot movie

>yuge gape in sodom and gamorhea plot

with a barge and an island