Gonzo

Right, so here's the story of how Hunter S. Thompson invented blogging. What's the S stand for? Shut up, no one said you could talk. Stop talking.

Stockton.

It was 2005. My brother Parker and I were dining at the Sun Dial restaurant atop the Peachtree Plaza hotel in Atlanta. If I remember correctly, he had ordered the lobster bisque and I had ordered a root beer float with vodka. He had been discussing boring trivialities with me for the better part of the day: the weather, sports ball scores, some boring medical test results; when I decided to interrupt him with something important. Something that had been on my mind all day.

"Hunter S. Thompson was the greatest goddamn blogger who ever lived." I told him. "What does this have to do with paying for your college?" He sputtered. I looked him square in the eye and - without breaking eye contact - proceeded to issue my challenge. "If you can prove me wrong, I'll buy the whole goddamn lunch."

I had his attention.

My story went a little something like this: in the years before the Internet, the only way to get people to read your writing was to get into journalism. Or fiction. Pulp science fictions, preferably. Whatever, that's not important. The fact that matters, though, is that printed word was king and everyone and their aunt read it. If you couldn't get published, well by Sithis you'd start your own goddamn periodical rag.

It was into this environment that a young man whom, I assume, was born bald and wearing aviators, made his entrance into the world of journalism, having written a piece on The Hells Angels. His name was Hunter S Thompson and he was a man ahead of his time. Writing for Scanlan's Monthly - a short lived rag of a paper that ran for about a year before going belly up in 1971, he was a product of the 60s, an excessive drug fueled decade of madness and decadence and he intended to use the pent up fury of the great, failed social experiment of the prior decade to tear down the foundations of journalism and reforge it into a gleaming peyote titan known only... as Gonzo.

That, or he wrote the whole article on deadline day.

Thompson started his career as a sports reporter and had been sent to cover the Kentucky Derby. He and Ralph Steadman - a future collaborator who would illustrate much of Thompson's work and, indeed, had many of the same artistic goals as Thompson - spent their time in Louisville drinking ungodly amounts of liquor and ingesting just about every narcotic substance known to man. In this way, when they finally reached the race, they were able to shift their focus from the race - which was obscured from their perspective - and focus on the true spectacle: the crowd.

The decadent, mad, drunken idiots around them were like a twisted mirror and they were completely in awe of the madhouse carnival in which they found themselves. The dope hounds thrilled at the very sight of them and with the invaluable time spent amongst their fellow fiends, wrote The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. With this article he forged what is now known as Gonzo Journalism.

I released my brother's tie from my grip at this point and lowered myself back into my chair, adjusting my fedora accordingly. "Well, Chris, that was a fun story I guess, but you didn't tell me how he's the best blogger who ever lived." Flicking my cigar ash into his brandy, I corrected him. "Oh, but Parker," I said slyly "have you not read this man's work? If so, have you failed to read a blog?" I asked. I could see the various gears and springs in his head - ticking, wirring, spinning. A hamster ran on a wheel in a tiny cage. One more inch, one more fucking inch.

"Oh my god."

I grinned. He had gotten it. He had gleaned what I had gleaned - that Gonzo and blogging really weren't so different - the first person, unedited accounts of a society moving too fast for its own common sense to catch up. Parker proceeded to stand at the table and shouted "Hunter S Thompson was the greatest blogger who ever lived!" Our fellow diners at the Sun Dial applauded us and we bowed as the manager approached, incensed and infuriated. "What is the meaning of this, you fiends!? Who are you people!?" He demanded. "Who we are is not important." I informed him. "You see, the greatest blogger in the world has shot himself today." I told him as I slipped him a C-Note for our meals. "And football season is over." With that, my brother and I straightened our ties and left the Sun Dial...

...never to return.

Dedicated to Hunter S Thompson. A bona-fide crazy, gonzo genius and a personal inspiration behind my writing.