Whatever else might be said about Nixon – and there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for Human – he is a goddamn stone fanatic on every facet of pro football.
Young George spent more money on one day of his Inauguration Ceremonies than Richard Nixon did on his whole Campaign in 1972 – and Nixon was crucified as a Criminal Spendthrift with the ethics of a snake.
When Nixon went into New Hampshire, he was viewed by the pros as just another of these stubborn, right-wing waterheads with nothing better to do.
The bulk of the crowd looked like professors and their wives from Amherst. One of the problems, according to a bushy young radical-talking non-student from Boston, was that you had to pay a “registration fee” of two dollars before you got a vote.
Betting against the point spread is a relatively mechanical trip, but betting against another individual can be very complex, if you’re serious about it – because you want to know, for starters, whether you’re betting against a fool or a wizard, or maybe against somebody who’s just playing the fool.
The Angels are not articulate about many things, but they bring a lover’s inspiration to the subject of bikes.
Nearly everyone who has ridden a bike for any length of time will agree. The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong ever done them by man, beast or fate.
I was so far beyond simple fatigue that I was beginning to feel nicely adjusted to the idea of permanent hysteria.
At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.
No, we are getting ahead of our story, and only an jackass would do that.
My attorney put down the phone after making several calls. “There’s only one place where we can get fresh salmon,” he said, “and it’s closed on Sunday.” “Of course,” I snapped. “These goddamn Jesus freaks! They’re multiplying like rats!
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. To relax, as it were, in the womb of the desert sun.
For all his Caribbean clothes and his Madison Avenue manners, even with his surfside apartment and his Alfa Romeo roadster, there was so much Kansas in Sanderson that it was embarrassing to see him deny it.
How long, oh Lord, how long? And how much longer will we have to wait before some high-powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face-to-face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it?
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard.
Look what happened the last time a Republican president tried to fix a doomed national economy. Remember Herbert Hoover?
So if I decide to leap for The Fountain when I finish this memo, I want to make one thing perfectly clear – I would genuinely love to make that leap, and if I don’t I will always consider it a mistake and a failed opportunity, one of the very few serious mistakes of my First Life that is now ending.
Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can’t get a grip.
Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them – still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
Losing in New Hampshire was usually permanent, and winning was a guaranteed fast ride to somewhere – maybe the White House – or at least a fiery exit. Probably soon, but so what?