View From the Whitehouse
Goodmorning. I went to bed with a heavy heart last night when my beloved UCLA got killed by Florida in the basketball NCAA Final Four. The Gators played like highly organized, pumped up daddy-longlegs and UCLA just couldn’t cope. It was pitiful. I can’t say that I cried when I got home, but let’s just say I made none of my usual evening phone calls to friends, no reading, no homework, no humor — just turned out the lights and went to sleep.
But I’m up now to do my morning job around Central Park, a routine I started last month, and thought I’d share this HST wisdom before I put on my tennies. Hunter wrote it in 2002 during March Madness when the Bush’s people were airing marijuana warnings during NCAA commercial breaks:
— Hunter S. Thompson Hey Rube
Surely I was not the only rabid basketball fan to feel joyous at the sight of a taxpayer-funded Marijuana message on all of our TV sets last week, in conjunction with CBS broadcast of the annual NCAA championship tournament. It was relentless – popping up, as it did, at what seemed like every other time-out or crowded commercial break.
The message itself was terrifying: Marijuana means Death, for You and many others, including the judge and who knows how many U.S. Marines. It is a truly frightening thing to see on your TV basketball screen. One toke over the line is no longer a harmless joke. No sir, it is Felony Terrorism, under this brand new American Patriot “law” that came in with the new century, the new president, the new morality, etc., etc…
College basketball is riddled with harmless dope-smokers, of course – no worse or better than any other segment of American society. Wow! Maybe that explains the diminishing quality of play in the Big Dance every year. Hell, yes! These freakish young brutes are too stoned to compete in anything more serious than a public sex contest. They are addicts. Their brains have been fried. They are doomed. We have spawned a whole generation of lazy, brain-damaged show-offs.
That is the view from the White House and most of the U.S. Congress these days. It is World War III forever, by the look and the language of it, and the Meanness quotient of the U.S. image in the world is growing logarithmically with every passing day.
Whoops! No more of that stressful gibberish, eh? Exactly. We don’t need it. Our world is full of exciting options – the Oscars, spring training, the NBA play-offs, heavy gold, the Gonzo Beauty pageant, the War, the Stock market…We are blessed.
Until next time, your friend, lacing her sneakers,
Anita Thompson
p.s. Johnny Depp called last night and said he liked the bon-fire photos, but asked if the girls who read the blog would please send photos of themselves. With the permission of his beautiful wife Vanessa, said he would write a personal email and chat on the phone for 20 minutes with each girl who sends a photo by midnight tonight.
p.p.s. (Just kidding, Happy April Fools)
