06-07-2006, 12:24 PM
Beute Wrote:Waeloga? What the hell does your portrait thingy mean?
Quote: Narrator: We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like:
Raoul Duke: I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
Narrator: Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full with what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming:
Raoul Duke: Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?!
Dr. Gonzo: Did you say something?
Raoul Duke: Hm? Nevermind. It's your turn to drive.
Narrator: No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.
Gonzo: [After cocaine blows away in the wind] Did you see what GOD just did to us man!
Duke: God didn't do that, you did! You're a fucking narcotics agent, I knew it. That was our cocaine you fucking pig, scum [swats at him with fly swatter]
Gonzo: [Pointing gun at Duke] Careful. There are plenty of buzzards out here, they'll pick your bones dry in no time. He he heeee, here's your half of the Sunshine Acid, EAT IT!
Duke: Yeah, all right sure. How long do I have?
Gonzo: As your attorney I advise you to drive at top speed and it'll be a Goddamn miracle if we get there before you turn into some kind of fucking wild animal. Are you ready for that? Checking into a Las Vegas hotel under a phoney name with the intent to commit capital fraud on a head full of acid? I certainly hope so...
Raoul Duke: Bazooko's Circus is what the world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich.
Raoul Duke: As a drug user, you get used to seeing things like your dead grandmother crawl up your leg with a knife in her teeth.
Raoul Duke: Hey, there's two women fucking a polar bear.
Dr. Gonzo: Don't tell me those things.
Raoul Duke: [Speaking to Dr. Gonzo] PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT THE FUCKING GOLF SHOES!
Raoul Duke: Jesus! Bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing, intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes.
Narrator: We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
Raoul Duke: Don't go near that elevator--that's just what they want us to do... trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement.
Narrator: Psychedelics are almost irrelevant in a town where you can wander in a casino any time in the day or night and witness the crucifixion of a gorilla.
Narrator: There was no sense in blowing everything away for the sake of some violent ape I'd never even met.
Raoul Duke: There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Raoul Duke: We can't stop here! This is bat country!!
Hippie: What's the trouble?
Raoul Duke: Well, you see this white stuff on my sleeve, is LSD!
Raoul Duke: Don't fuck with me now, man... I am Ahab!
Dr. Gonzo : AHH!, Medicine, Medicine!
Raul Duke : Huh? O Medicine! Watch out, this man has a bad heart, angina fectorus disease, but don't worry we have a cure. Ok big wiff, BIG WIFF SUNNY BOY! (Gonzo snorts the "MEDICINE"!)
Roaul Duke: Ahh, now for the doctor! (Duke snorts it!!) eeeeeeeee AHH!
Dr. Gonzo : What the?, What the fuck are we doin out here in the middle of the dessert? Somebody call the police, we need help, we need help, we need help (BEEEEEEEEP) ah ha, ah ha, ah ha!
Raoul Duke: QUIET, GOD DAMN IT! YOU'RE WASTING MY TIME!
Raoul Duke: Beautiful fucking tits!
Narrator [Duke]: Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era.. The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something, maybe not, in the long run. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant.
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.
And that, I think, was the handle.. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting... On our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark... The place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
the thing about the high-water mark always stuck with me; really sanguine image that in my mind elevated his writing.