Ralph Had A Speech…
Guess what!? Ralph Steadman just received The Cartoon Trust Lifetime Acheivement Award held in London this week. Congratulations brother!
"Champagne and fish pie, followed by toffee ice cream, set the tone for a night of occasionally childish humour and anarchic behaviour. Many awards were given, but the evening was underlined by Ralph, upon receiving the Big award said: ‘I’ve got a speech but f*** the speech. I’m going to sing a song instead.’ He promptly launched into a rallying tune that threatened at any moment to spill into madness, but held on by a thread. His fellow cartoonists stamped their feet and shook with laughter " Check out link here..
The HST Wisdom for today comes from a letter Hunter wrote to Ralph in October of 1980 about their stategy to win the Honolulu Marathon:
…Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, Ralph. You’re pacing around over there in the war room at the Old Loose Coruse and thinking, "Why me? And why now? Just when I’m getting respectable?"
We are both entered in this event, Ralph, and I feel pretty confident about winning. We will need a bit of training, but not much.
The main thing will be to run as an entry and set a killer pace for the first three miles. These body-nazis have been training all year for the supreme effort in this Super Bowl of marathons… 26 miles is a hell of a long way to run, for any reason at all, and all the pros in this field will start slow and pace themselves very carefully for the first 20 miles.
But not us, Ralph. We will come out of the blocks like human torpedoes and alter the whole nature of the race by sprinting the first three miles shoulder-to-shoulder…
A pace like that will crack their nuts, Ralph…and the rest of the field will be left so far behind that many will be overcome with blind rage and confusion.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Curse of Lono,
Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson
