Thursday, August 27, 2020

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Trippy Seinfeld like Tale

*Blog post started August 26, 2020.

If you need to catch up with what has been going on with my life, thank you for caring. Check out this blog "The OCHO or the Disgruntled's Real Secondary Championship: Part 7".

Things definitely sounded like more fun then, or more thoughtful. I have had only two days between these posts. My latest endeavor has been to fill up a journal that I started back in January 2013 and try to turn that into a narrative about how my life has changed from being friends zoned by strippers to be friend zoned on Snapchat.

Do not be surprised if I decide I enjoyed certain entries so much that I start my "Chris Memoir" series. It may not be a bad idea since NinetyForChill.com (It is now a term my sister has been using as an adverb.), is sort of on a hiatus in terms of fresh reviews. I can only rewatch so much anime for AnimeRuss. Of course, something should be saved incase fame or infamy ever comes my way. Names would be dropped.

Spinning my wheels right now is pretty frustrating. I am trying to clean myself up to get out of this intense diabetes watch, so I cannot drink. CBD seems to help, but accessing pot is difficult (cash only) and CBD does not quit take the edge off like THC. At least I have gotten sometime planned out in October to go crazy, so just need to survive September, and life will soon have its moments.

Gods know that I wish all of that would happen sooner. Otherwise, I am just left watching the world decay in a sober state of mind. Fame would be nice just so I could treat the world like Hunter S. Thompson did. Dependency on an employer means you have to consider other people's judgement of you. How do I turn my ideas into something that warrants a Patreon?

I hate to acknowledge, but Mom was right. With my love for debate, becoming an attorney would have been a good career path. To live like Doctor Gonzo would be a bit extreme, but if that is the price of not worrying about being fired, it seems to be a worthwhile trade.

About anything seems more worthwhile than dealing with this country without the option to get fucked up. At least that is what I think Hunter S. Thompson's works are trying to tell us. I may need to read his works, but I might just watch "Where the Buffalo Roam" instead. "The Rum Diaries" were fun just poorly paced. Surely watching the other two of his onscreen adaptations will allow me to obtain a better grasp on "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Having a trunk full of cocaine, acid, ether and mescaline is not cheap, so when the Timothy Leary enthusiast needs money, Raoul Duke will just have to cover the Mint 400 off-road motorcycle race outside of Las Vegas. The story is not one he wants to cover, but what you can get away in the Sin City should allow him a chance to enjoy whatever he could desire. This is at least what his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, suggests.

For Gonzo, the trip is nothing more than an excuse to stay high and upset the squares. His client wants to actually get something from this trip that has meaning. Instead, he seems to be babysitting his associate to prevent him from acting on his worse urges. It gets to the point where Duke fears that this excursion will be his last. Gonzo extending the stay by getting him assigned to cover the District Attorney Convention on Narcotics may guarantee that.

As I mention in my last wrestling blog, I did watch the majority of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" with an alcohol-fueled buzz. It is a visually fascinating film, and if director Terry Gilliam goal was to capture the drug trip that Hunter S. Thompson may have actually been on, the film works very well. But I sense there was a story that had to take a backseat to an environment that lacks the charm the director offered from his time with Monty Python.

Personally, I would have rather had Gilliam just animate this film based on the illustration associated with Thompson's work. The effects seem more tacky than impressive. They work for the trippy elements, but when you are looking for a coherent story, they serve only as distractions.

With all theses means of taking your mind off the story, perhaps Gilliam was trying to have the audience further appreciate the brief moments of clarity. Those only take up 10, 15 minutes at best, of the film. At two hours, those 10 minutes better whack you in the face to for them to come across as meaningful.

And this is where I declare "Fear and Loathing" as the "Seinfeld" of acid trips because barely anything happens. You get great performances from all involved which keeps you watching, and it probably gives you some quotable lines. These performances unfortunately cannot string the incoherency of content together to make this feature the cult classic that it has become.

If you want a long strange trip, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" will provide it to you. If you want a narrative, read the book. This picture is more on an experience than a movie and it shows the trend and reasoning why many think that Terry Gilliam is nothing more than style over substance. Oh how I miss Terry Jones.



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