Day Zero
Okay, I arrived on Sunday night, with the Bar exam scheduled to start Tuesday morning. Hence, Day Zero (Sunday-Monday).
Sunday night--which was an inky, cold bastard, the kind of atmosphere into which Jack London had undoubtedly fallen when he finished Martin Eden by writing in Martin's suicide--I arrived at the San Mateo Howard Johnson Express Inn and was really pleased to find it bright and freshly painted and under the fresh management of pleasant, hardworking Indian immigrants. Was even more pleased to find a fridge and a microwave in the room. (Not to mention the coffeemaker, hair dryer, and iron.) Reached new heights of ecstasy upon noticing the individual heater under the window, as opposed to a thermostat. Proceeded to turn the fucking heater on and move the heat setting to High.
Sprawling on the bed, amidst chalky ruins of Gilbert Law Outlines as mysterious as the unexcavated expanses of Pompeii, a laminated copy of the U.S. Constitution, two huge workbooks of sample essays, a multistate (multiple choice question) review that I suspect is actually a recycled phone book, sheafs of pullouts of various codes, laws, and rules, the California Probate Code, and the Federal Rules of Evidence, all of which I genuinely ~do~ need to know by 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, I do the obvious thing and hit the remote for the 10:00 o'clock news.
"Noted journalist Hunter S. Thompson died tonight at his home in Colorado. Sources say that it appears Thompson shot himself once in the head..."
Shock. Well, not really. With Hunter, anything was of course possible. I simply find myself wondering why this particular day and time. Like many other people, I suspect--to judge by the outpouring of letters to the editor in the following days--the news hits me like hearing that an old friend has suddenly said, "See you on the other side." I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was ten years old, and it was the first book that every truly made me physically laugh out loud. I've read it countless times since for the style and the brave personal revelations and the sheer simple hellish joy of the thing.
Still, I found myself thinking: "...appears to have shot himself once in the head? What the fuck??" I reach immediately for one of the six pens bought in anticipation of the essay part of the exam and make a note on the back of a Community Property chart to add a new title to my future anthology of Honolulu-based short stories. Currently, I've got: "Werewolves of Honolulu," "The Churchill Street Nudist Colony," "Faster Than A Speeding Chang," "Return of the Chang," and "Son of Chang." The new one is: "Suicides Always Shoot Twice."
Well, San Francisco is a good place to be when Hunter Thompson kills himself, because he used to live there and a lot of local journalists knew him and write about it. One mentions in the Chronicle that Hunter knew the location of every ice machine in every motel in San Francisco. Next morning, I observe with a shock a big pile of ice melting over the parking lot grating as the Indian manager and a couple of repair guys attempt to nurse the ice machine back to health. Obviously, Hunter's Ghost Has Struck.
To return to Sunday night, as I'm lying on the bed kind of pondering Hunter-related memories, I find myself re-living the brief phase after I turned 21 when I decided to go to Santa Anita Racetrack and become a professional gambler. (As a child, my luck betting Thoroughbreds was frankly phenomenal. Even now, it's not bad. I used to love Longacres Racetrack in Seattle the way some other kids loved music camp.) When I was going to Santa Anita--for about two months--I lived in the Ramada Inn across the street. The waitress, a sarcastic Gypsy type with black curls and gaudy gold hoop earrings, was writing a novel about indie DJs. The cook had a cool blue bicep tattoo that said: DIE TRYING, and he made the best avocado omelets I've ever eaten, with the possible exception of a guy in Barrow, Alaska who had some significant run-ins with the law. The 80s were a shit decade, and my luck during them accordingly dire--hence my brief stay at the Ramada Inn--but in later years, I found out that I lived in the same room where Hunter wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What a totally trippy trip. :-)
Well, lying there on the bed, the associations of Hunter and horses remind me that the property line of the San Mateo Expo Center--where the execution I mean California Bar Exam is being held--abuts that of Bay Meadows, highly storied and pleasant Thoroughbred racetrack, and that Bay Meadows is open on Monday, because it's a holiday, Presidents' Day. I also remember that Russell Baze is the leading jockey. I remember Russell from Longacres, when I was a kid, as a dark-haired skinny 16-year-old apprentice with a smile as wide as Ray Bolger. Russell won leading apprentice there, even though, as his uncle, Carl, noted Washington trainer--I think Carl was Russell's uncle; the Washington Baze horseracing family is Byzantine in its associations-- Gary Baze (Russell's cousin) was leading jockey, and there were a couple of other Baze kids who rode, and I think a couple who trained, and Carl's wife, Alice, used to comment on all this by singing "All the Children" at public functions. Anyway, Carl Baze, the trainer, said, "Russell fell off a pony and broke his arm when he was four and we thought he'd never get on a horse again." So I start thinking about Hunter Thompson--who was born in Kentucky--and Thoroughbreds and Bay Meadows and betting on horses instead of, like, sitting in my room studying, and even I in my nostalgic/surreal frame of mind eventually recognize that this has all the earmarks of a Very Bad Idea.
So Monday morning I get up and do what I've always known I should do, which is walk a block up the street to Long's Drugs and buy a new yellow highlighter to replace mine, which has run out of ink.
Next Time-- Day Zero Continued
PS-- The Gonzo of the Week page at ElectroAsylum has been updated here. RIP Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, though we hardly knew ye.
Sunday night--which was an inky, cold bastard, the kind of atmosphere into which Jack London had undoubtedly fallen when he finished Martin Eden by writing in Martin's suicide--I arrived at the San Mateo Howard Johnson Express Inn and was really pleased to find it bright and freshly painted and under the fresh management of pleasant, hardworking Indian immigrants. Was even more pleased to find a fridge and a microwave in the room. (Not to mention the coffeemaker, hair dryer, and iron.) Reached new heights of ecstasy upon noticing the individual heater under the window, as opposed to a thermostat. Proceeded to turn the fucking heater on and move the heat setting to High.
Sprawling on the bed, amidst chalky ruins of Gilbert Law Outlines as mysterious as the unexcavated expanses of Pompeii, a laminated copy of the U.S. Constitution, two huge workbooks of sample essays, a multistate (multiple choice question) review that I suspect is actually a recycled phone book, sheafs of pullouts of various codes, laws, and rules, the California Probate Code, and the Federal Rules of Evidence, all of which I genuinely ~do~ need to know by 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, I do the obvious thing and hit the remote for the 10:00 o'clock news.
"Noted journalist Hunter S. Thompson died tonight at his home in Colorado. Sources say that it appears Thompson shot himself once in the head..."
Shock. Well, not really. With Hunter, anything was of course possible. I simply find myself wondering why this particular day and time. Like many other people, I suspect--to judge by the outpouring of letters to the editor in the following days--the news hits me like hearing that an old friend has suddenly said, "See you on the other side." I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was ten years old, and it was the first book that every truly made me physically laugh out loud. I've read it countless times since for the style and the brave personal revelations and the sheer simple hellish joy of the thing.
Still, I found myself thinking: "...appears to have shot himself once in the head? What the fuck??" I reach immediately for one of the six pens bought in anticipation of the essay part of the exam and make a note on the back of a Community Property chart to add a new title to my future anthology of Honolulu-based short stories. Currently, I've got: "Werewolves of Honolulu," "The Churchill Street Nudist Colony," "Faster Than A Speeding Chang," "Return of the Chang," and "Son of Chang." The new one is: "Suicides Always Shoot Twice."
Well, San Francisco is a good place to be when Hunter Thompson kills himself, because he used to live there and a lot of local journalists knew him and write about it. One mentions in the Chronicle that Hunter knew the location of every ice machine in every motel in San Francisco. Next morning, I observe with a shock a big pile of ice melting over the parking lot grating as the Indian manager and a couple of repair guys attempt to nurse the ice machine back to health. Obviously, Hunter's Ghost Has Struck.
To return to Sunday night, as I'm lying on the bed kind of pondering Hunter-related memories, I find myself re-living the brief phase after I turned 21 when I decided to go to Santa Anita Racetrack and become a professional gambler. (As a child, my luck betting Thoroughbreds was frankly phenomenal. Even now, it's not bad. I used to love Longacres Racetrack in Seattle the way some other kids loved music camp.) When I was going to Santa Anita--for about two months--I lived in the Ramada Inn across the street. The waitress, a sarcastic Gypsy type with black curls and gaudy gold hoop earrings, was writing a novel about indie DJs. The cook had a cool blue bicep tattoo that said: DIE TRYING, and he made the best avocado omelets I've ever eaten, with the possible exception of a guy in Barrow, Alaska who had some significant run-ins with the law. The 80s were a shit decade, and my luck during them accordingly dire--hence my brief stay at the Ramada Inn--but in later years, I found out that I lived in the same room where Hunter wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What a totally trippy trip. :-)
Well, lying there on the bed, the associations of Hunter and horses remind me that the property line of the San Mateo Expo Center--where the execution I mean California Bar Exam is being held--abuts that of Bay Meadows, highly storied and pleasant Thoroughbred racetrack, and that Bay Meadows is open on Monday, because it's a holiday, Presidents' Day. I also remember that Russell Baze is the leading jockey. I remember Russell from Longacres, when I was a kid, as a dark-haired skinny 16-year-old apprentice with a smile as wide as Ray Bolger. Russell won leading apprentice there, even though, as his uncle, Carl, noted Washington trainer--I think Carl was Russell's uncle; the Washington Baze horseracing family is Byzantine in its associations-- Gary Baze (Russell's cousin) was leading jockey, and there were a couple of other Baze kids who rode, and I think a couple who trained, and Carl's wife, Alice, used to comment on all this by singing "All the Children" at public functions. Anyway, Carl Baze, the trainer, said, "Russell fell off a pony and broke his arm when he was four and we thought he'd never get on a horse again." So I start thinking about Hunter Thompson--who was born in Kentucky--and Thoroughbreds and Bay Meadows and betting on horses instead of, like, sitting in my room studying, and even I in my nostalgic/surreal frame of mind eventually recognize that this has all the earmarks of a Very Bad Idea.
So Monday morning I get up and do what I've always known I should do, which is walk a block up the street to Long's Drugs and buy a new yellow highlighter to replace mine, which has run out of ink.
Next Time-- Day Zero Continued
PS-- The Gonzo of the Week page at ElectroAsylum has been updated here. RIP Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, though we hardly knew ye.
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