Hey Rube

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Indeed, I had caved in to the deadly temptation of betting like a Fan again, instead of like the cold-blooded Gambler that I like to think I am.

  It was the 49ers who put the bite on me first, then the Bears, and finally the Raiders—although New England needed the game officials to get past the Raiders by three, which was exactly the spread. It was the only real contest of the weekend, played in a classic Boston blizzard and marred by wretched calls. So it was no shame to break even on that one—or the Bears-Eagles debacle either, for that matter, given that Chicago lost its quarterback in the first quarter, could not run at all, and played most of the game with no more sign of an offense than a herd of giraffes.

  The worm turned on Sunday, however. After two baffling losses, I recovered nicely at the expense of Bradley, the Sheriff, and ESPN boss John Walsh, who went down with the Packers’ cruel beating in St. Louis. I took my own shrewd advice and bet favorites for a change. Both Sunday games were unnaturally savage beatings, and the Rams-Eagles game this week should be a holocaust of speed and savagery. I think I will stick with St. Louis on this one, and also with the Steelers. In matters of sport, you always want to go the Southern way and “dance with the one who brung you.”

  It is definitely possible that we will see a Philadelphia–New England Super Bowl, but don’t bet the farm on it—unless of course you get about 10 points with the Eagles and 18 with the Patriots. One of the underdogs will win or at least cover, but it will be more trouble than it’s worth to decide which one has the true fire in its nuts. This is not the time of year to start Doubling up on underdogs.

  Let me tell you an ugly little story that happened to me, a few years back, when I made that mistake. I was betting more money than I had, in those days, and doing it through a bigtime bookie who came to me through a well-known (then and now) White House advisor. His name need not be spoken, in this evil context, but I should say that it was not Pat Buchanan or Sandy Berger or Henry Kissinger.

  Names don’t matter much in this business anyway. Not compared to the numbers, which matter hugely. And numbers were exactly what got me in trouble, especially those rotten zeros. I got a little desperate towards the end of that year, or maybe it was just hubris. In any case, I quickly found myself about $75,000 in debt to a gambling operation somewhere on the outskirts of Boston, which led to a series of increasingly nasty telephone conversations with ill-tempered strangers.

  My White House connection was unable or maybe just unwilling to cope with my problem, although it was more and more bothering him.

  Impossible as it seemed to me at the time, we both faced the possibility of a horrible beating, or worse, if I didn’t pay up immediately. Suddenly all the fun had gone out of the gambling business. I was missing mortgage payments, borrowing from friends, kiting checks, and feeling far too nervous to write anything longer than a French postcard. I aged about six years in three months, and things were getting worse every day. Suicide began to look like a far, far better option than living with grief and debt forever.

  Finally my friend in the White House came up with an eerie solution to our problem: I would have to go out on a relentless Speaking Tour that would continue at top speed until I made enough money to pay the bookie. He even arranged for at least two of the bookie’s “agents” to be with me at all times for the duration of my Tour.

  It was a horrifying notion, but I clearly had no choice. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The bookie would even arrange when and where my lectures would occur, and how much I would be paid for each one. On top of that, they would also arrange for the limos, hotels, plane tickets, and editorial assistants on the road. Most important, they collected all my speaking fees at once, usually in an unmarked brown paper bag or a locked bank pouch. Yes sir, and I still have a drawer full of those pouches downstairs in Johnny Depp’s dungeon suite, just to remind me about drifting into unacceptable gambling habits.

  In truth, it was not a bad life. I made many friends in a world that I would never have known otherwise. They were good people and good company, and a wonderfully efficient collection agency for me, as well as from me, and they made sure I traveled First Class at all times, and they were a hell of a lot more fun to work with than any professional agent I have ever worked with in my own business. What the hell, they were straight shooters, and they got me out of debt almost in spite of myself. So thanks again, boys, if any of you happen to be reading this. You were good at your work and you were good for me. Vaya con Dios.

  —January 21, 2002

  Getting Braced for the Last Football Game

  Of all the turnovers and screwups and suicidal mistakes that football is famous for, throwing a pass that gets intercepted is the most painful and crippling of all. A wobbly off-target airball that gets picked off and run down your throat is the most costly of football errors. Five (5) points, only one short of a touchdown, and two more than a fumble. The list is long, with many depressing subcategories, from “missing a tackle on punt coverage in overtime,” to running the wrong way with a loose ball.

  With this scoring system, Brett Favre would have contributed exactly 30 points, all by himself, to the Rams’ total of 45 against the Packers last week.

  That is huge. If one (1) interception can be fatal, six mean certain doom. The Eagles’ Donovan McNabb gave up only one (1) against St. Louis. That is five (5) points; the final score was 29–24. You do the math.

  Kordell Stewart lost three wild balls (15 points) against New England, baleful 10-point underdog to Pittsburgh—but incredibly, the Steelers were still in the game with two minutes left. Or at least it looked that way—but in fact the Steelers’ disastrous Special Teams’ blunders were impossible to overcome, especially that horrendous blocked kick: it was a 10-point turnaround, not to mention a savage morale-crusher.

  Simple mistakes are the difference between winning and losing a football game, particularly a Big game—read Play-offs, read especially Super Bowl. We are talking about small failures here—basic mechanical failures, mental errors, and blind spots of memory. Foolish laziness that nobody noticed in the first three games of the year will loom gigantic in the play-offs. A simple dropped pass in the fourth quarter will haunt a football player for the rest of his life and cause him to scream in his sleep. Those things will never be forgotten.

  Indeed. There are many cruel Rooms in the mansion, and many deep holes in the Road. Keep alert or be stabbed. Of all the shocks and pains that every football season brings, the worst of all is the ending of it. And that is what we face now—this coming Sunday night, in fact, before the midnight bell. There will be no appeal, no extension, no replay. That will be the end of the football season, no matter who complains.

  A few geeks will, of course. A few swine always do. No barrel is utterly clean. That would be atmospherically impossible, eh? And rest assured that nothing on this earth is 100 percent clean. Nothing.… Are you one of these people who honestly believe that Cats are clean? I hope not, because you are riding for a serious fall. Cats are filthy, and they don’t mind passing it around. The smell of a large cat (as in Lion or Tiger) at room temperature in a sea-level house is so powerful and so disorienting as to derail the human brain. The odor of a mountain lion in the wild is far more terrifying than the sight of the beast, even on a frozen night in the snow. It will literally “take your breath away” at 10 or even 20 yards. Your whole nervous system will seize up and be paralyzed, even your lungs. So stay away from all animals that are bigger than you are, especially at night when they are nervous. Even a brown bear will eat your whole body in 24 hours. Beware.

  What? Why are we worrying about Bears at this time of year, right on the eve of the Super Bowl? I’ll tell you why: because every time I think about New England and Football and Patriotism all at once, I think of Richard Nixon and dangerous wild animals and his lust for unspeakable violence. Nixon was a football fan—and so am I, as it happens, and I can tell you from 44 years of keen observation that us football fans have a way of getting toge
ther, no matter where we are.

  There is nothing supernatural about it, but I have seen it happen over and over. Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and Football is often the only thing we have in common. We recognize each other instantly even if we have to speak in sign language. No doubt it has something to do with the gambling instinct, which is also universal.

  The next time you find yourself in need of conversation in some backwoods foreign airport, as I have from time to time, take this tip and look around for the nearest public TV set that is tuned to a football game. That will be your oasis, no matter how long your layover may be. You will get your questions answered.

  Gambling is another universal language, along with simple mathematics, cold beer, and wild sex with Jimsonweed. Any traveler who is conversant in these tongues and football too will find friends in any town. Take my word for it.

  It goes without saying, of course, that extreme behavior in all these lines is not recommended. Heavy drinking and berserk gambling among strangers will usually lead to trouble on the road, and you want to keep in mind that airport bars are no longer as tolerant as they used to be. Last year’s fun is today’s crime. Even tying your shoes in an airport can get you locked up.

  It will not be long before all major airlines will require all passengers to disrobe and change into standard Hospital gowns before they board a plane. This is already in the planning stage, according to a lawyer from Miami who also assures me that sleeping gas will also be introduced later this year on flights of 40 minutes or longer. “The gas has already been market tested,” he said. “Passengers are heavily in favor of it.”

  “What passengers?” I asked him. “Not football fans on their way to New Orleans, I bet, or people who have to write speeches on airplanes.”

  “There will be no exceptions,” he assured me. “Only uniformed soldiers and police officials licensed to carry concealed weapons.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I have a machine gun license.”

  “Very Funny,” he said. “Don’t push your luck these days. That’s why we have these new secret prisons.”

  I hung up and crossed his name off my guest list for the Super Bowl. Nazis are not welcome in this house. They can’t be trusted.

  So how about the Big Game, sport? Who is going to win?

  Who indeed? But if I were a betting man, I would go with St. Louis by 10. I would even go double on that. Why not? It’s the last game of the year. I can’t lose.

  —January 29, 2002

  Sodomized at the Airport: Are Terrorists Seizing Control of the NFL? And Who Let It Happen?

  Recent polls by a secret U.S. government agency indicate that 83 percent of teenage girls in America say they would rather be sodomized at airport Security checkpoints than board a commercial airliner with potential Terrorist passengers who have “not been thoroughly searched for bombs and deadly weapons.” More than 90 percent said they were “very frightened by Arabic-looking strangers,” and 42 percent said they had “willingly granted sexual favors to uniformed law enforcement officers since September 11, 2001.”

  —USDD SOURCES

  The news out of Washington is getting darker and weirder by the hour. On some days it has the look of a full-bore Terrorist cell operating out of the White House basement, spewing fear and desperation on a nation of suddenly impoverished patriots. Where is Bill Clinton, now that we finally need him?

  Where was Mr. Bill at the Super Bowl, now that you mention it? Was he even there? Was he whooping it up with his skull-people? Or was he wallowing lewdly in one of those chic and famous orgies on South Canal Street?

  Not on your life, Bubba. Bill Clinton was long gone from New Orleans by the time the Troops arrived, and the angel of Fun was not with him. He was hunkered down in Beverly Hills with two fat young whores from Oxnard and a heart full of hate for those Texas freaks who scuttled him.

  Now, only one year later, the whole country is broke and bogged down in some bogus foreign war that our children will be paying off for another 99 years. Our national economy is in ruins, Harvard-trained crooks have destroyed the roots of investor confidence, public school systems from Maine to California are downsized to death by greedheads, and our baseball-loving President comes back to work after a weekend of unspeakable football adventures with a nasty-looking puncture wound on his face.

  Who needs that kind of berserk chickenshit, in this hour of national crisis? It is exactly the kind of sleazy, Third World behavior that we have always denounced as “unacceptably corrupt” when it happens in primitive banana republics like Haiti or South Texas.

  Bill Clinton is looking pretty good these days, compared to the criminal craziness of Enron and Wall Street. Good old sex-crazy Bill never asked for any more job-related booty than a high-style Hollywood blow job. You bet—if Clinton could run for President in 2004, he would win handily. We will see.…

  Meanwhile this blizzard of mind-warping war propaganda out of Washington is building up steam. Monday is Anthrax, Tuesday is Bankruptcy, Friday is Child Rape, Thursday is Bomb scares, etc., etc., etc.… If we believed all the brutal, fratboy threats coming out of the White House, we would be dead before Sunday.

  It is pure and savage terrorism in the classic Nazi tradition. Joseph Goebbels would be proud of our bullyboy PsyOps capability today. Goebbels hated Jews, along with everything else he could get his murderous hands on. Down here in the PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE COMMAND, we know him as “Dark Joey,” the beast who ran Hitler’s brutal GESTAPO Secret Über-Police, who feverishly terrorized everybody in Europe back there in the salad days of the Thousand-Year Reich, when uniformed Cops were also public heroes and blond people worshipped Public Sex.

  Adolf Hitler was a sports fan. He would have been right at home at the Big Game in New Orleans. It was his kind of Show—Beautiful athletes, savage gladiators, and a monumental display of Military Firepower. That is why our creepy child-president is crying poor-mouth on TV again today, at a National Prayer Breakfast somewhere in the mountains near Pittsburgh. He smiled warmly and spoke in a powerful voice, announcing drastic cuts in every new U.S. category except Military spending and overweening top secret War Emergencies.

  Yes sir: it was all guns and no butter when our superfriendly young warrior-president went to market. It was a public feeding frenzy for the global Military-Industrial Complex.

  Whoops! That’s it for now, folks. The bell has finally rung for this ill-tempered rant. I have to get a grip on myself now—but I will not forget the ugliness of having crazed religious messages from the White House and the FBI jammed into my face when I’m trying to watch a football game. Help. Has the NFL been drafted into the “war effort” now? What kind of horrible experiment are we being subjected to, in the name of Football? Have the whore-hoppers at Fox TV finally run amok like fiendish zombies?

  Who is responsible for this Rudeness? What kind of bigoted freak came up with the idea that Terrorizing 200 million football lovers on Super Bowl weekend is “Good for national Security interests”?

  That is something that Adolf Hitler might have said in the summer of 1942.… And the “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted 12 years and 3 months. Caveat Emptor.

  terrorism n. the act of terrorizing; use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate, and subjugate, esp. such use as a political weapon or policy.

  —WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY

  —February 11, 2002

  Slow Dance in Rap Town

  I have abandoned all hope of winning at this amateur farce of a game by now. How low the mighty have fallen. This is like watching a pickup game between convicts in a federal prison: shoot & miss, shoot & miss, shoot & miss—even the CBS gents are sneering as these bums ignominiously kill the clock. These are clearly not championship teams that we are watching.

  It has been this way from the start. Where was the confident precision of Duke last year and the year bef
ore? Where is the fabled speed of UCLA, or the kinky muscle of Stanford? We miss these things. Nobody is going to get excited about Kansas-Maryland or Indiana-Oklahoma—especially when they are playing lame basketball. These are routine neo-annual clashes between high-profile, big-budget basketball programs, like Ford vs. General Motors. They are embarrassing.

  Ed Bradley called on Friday and tried to bully me into another one of my famous doomed bets on Kentucky, but he failed. “Never in hell,” I told him. “Not unless I get 11 points.” That is precisely the spread that I predicted last week in this column, and I refused to take anything less.

  Indeed. This is what my new maturity has done for me. I have learned to never make hysterical last-minute bets on bigtime sporting events—unless it is necessary rather than lose the action.

  That is exactly the kind of rat-brained, junkie thinking that makes gambling dangerous. You bet. There is a gigantic, life-and-death difference between betting the underdog plus nine points, and the underdog plus 10 or 11. It is the difference between winning and losing, between victory and defeat—between fun and pain, on rainy nights in some cowboy towns—so you want to be thinking clearly when you start dealing in numbers like One or Two.

  The final spread in the Kentucky-Maryland game, for instance, was an evil, humiliating 10—which would have been perfect, if I had stuck with my original eleven. But I didn’t. I allowed giddiness to take over my brain, just before tip-off, which caused me to get mushy and settle for nine.