"wiseman riff"

I know I haven't posted in quite sometime, but I've been living and sometimes that takes up a lot of time.

Fri. Dec. 8th was the 26th anniversary of John Lennon’s death and I thought it was only fitting to post an excerpt from the book, Demon Box by Ken Kesey. It involves a conversation with Hunter S. Thompson and Ken Kesey. Anyway it’s the only tribute I could think of…


Dobbs and I went carousing this afternoon with ol’ Hunter S. Thompson, who’s up to do one of his Gonzo gigs at the behest of the U of O School of Journalism. We stopped at the Vet’s Club to help him get his wheels turning in preparation for his upcoming lecture-his “wiseman riff” he called it-and we talked of John Lennon, and Patrick the Punk, and his new legion of dangerous disappointeds. Thompson mused that he didn’t understand why it was people like Lennon they seemed to set their sights for, instead of people like him.
“I mean, I’ve pissed off quite a few citizens in my time,” the good doctor let us know.
“But you’ve never disappointed them,” I told him. “You never promised World Peace or Universal Love, did you?”
He admitted he had not. We all admitted it had been quite a while since any of us had heard anybody talk such Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky promises.
“Today’s wiseman,” Hunter claimed, “has too much brains to talk himself out on that kind of dead-end limb.”
“Or not enough balls,” Dobbs allowed.
We ordered another round and mulled awhile on such things, not talking, but I suspected we were all thinking-privately, as we sipped our drinks-that maybe it was time to talk a little of that old sky pie once more, for all the danger of dead ends or cross hairs.