Yeah, I read Hunter Thompson’s books, several of them, when I was in college. His stuff wasn’t assigned reading, but I was a reading machine. And I thought humor could be found in wildness, in gonzo, in extremely high tire pressure … Look at the Bats, man! I thought it was funny, before I came to see that drugs and alcoholism are a thick mist of dripping death that seeps and blows at every unguarded door and cracked windowglass of human life.

I don’t think gonzo journalism is amusing anymore, with the conspicuous exception of The Daily Show. I think it’s sad. Though I’ve retained a vague feeling of romance for the idea of the reclusive writer’s compound in the woods, for the thought of shooting the fax machine when the editor gets pushy.

And I don’t think Thompson was right about The Swine or The Doomed. I think he found in us what he wanted not to find in himself. And ultimately, he proved me right. Hopeless is as hopeless does.