Hunter S. Thompson Saw The Future and it Wasn't Pretty

I was in Indianapolis staying at a 70s era Hyatt Regency last Week with a 20 story high atrium that all the rooms look down on and it reminded me of the unforgettable scene in a similar Hyatt Regency in "Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl" which brought me to the ESPN article below from 2001, in which HST predicts pretty much everything that's taken place in the past few years.

Amazing. It pretty much predicts the economic crash of 2008 and the sustained malaise we've been stuck in ever since. He got the teams wrong but the ideas right. It's the Dodgers and Mets that are bankrupt, and the Shaqs of the current NBA are wondering how to pay the lease on their Escalades, and professional baseball players are being kidnapped at gunpoint, and sports fans have been attacked at games weekly and I remember seeing some sort of show on cable where women read the actual news of the day while disrobing a few years ago, and the article in TODAY's! USA Today was about fearsome bill collectors, and stuff was stolen from our garage for the first time ever last week....

Watch the economy shrink while breasts expand

By Hunter S. Thompson - Page 2 columnist

My mood is foul today, so I will try to keep this short. I must keep this short, in fact, because I can barely see the page I'm working on. My left eye is swollen shut, and my mouth is so crooked that I lisp & spit when I talk. My phone rings constantly, but I can't answer it, and football games are meaningless. On Friday (or maybe it was Thursday or Saturday), I was bitten on the cheek by a Brown Recluse spider & my face swelled up like a Blowfish. My eyes are like slits and my nose has disappeared. I am Diss-Figured, in a word, and my sense of humor is cruel. This is an ugly way to live, but at least it has given me time to brood & bitch & fondleurrent Shaq my crystal ball for the Meaning of Life in this rotten little year 2001. The rest of the year will be marked by three distinct trends -- or Drifts, or Developments, Plagues, Fads, Fashions & certainly inescapable Realities: LARGE BREASTS, THIN WALLETS and ENORMOUS FEAR of BILL COLLECTORS.

These will be the Primary Drive -- energies behind everything else that happens in 2001. This is all Ye know & all Ye need know. People scoff at the notion that naked women will soon be delivering the news on TV -- but it is True, and it will happen very soon, for good or ill. Naked women Already deliver almost everything Else on TV, from sitcoms in prime time to Miller Lite & Magnavox & goofy little orgies on the Playboy channel at dawn. So why should the News or the Weather or SportsCenter be any different? You don't need a crystal ball or the bite of a poison spider to see these things coming. All you have to do is read the newspapers or watch the TV News to see the stock markets staggering, and the current craze for quick-fix "breast enhancements" is swirling all around us on every street-corner. The breasts of Britney Spears are the hottest topic in Web chat rooms all over the world. The Implant industry is cranking up for a record-setting year & the Santa Claus factory will look a lot different next Christmas than it ever has in the past. The gift that every young woman in America will be demanding this year is a top of the line Boob Job, and millions will get their wish. This is not a cheap gift ($5,000 or so is said to be a Reasonable figure -- which it is, compared to a new BMW convertible or a chain of Kasmir diamonds), and if you don't give her new breasts for Xmas you will Never hear the end of it. You will be Blamed, from now on, for every Wrong thing that happens in her life -- from bad grades & pimples to evil boyfriends & nervous breakdowns & Failed marriages & finally Insane Asylums.

It is already a truism in high schools that large breasts are absolutely Necessary if a girl wants to be successful in this world, and even bigger breasts can make you a Billionaire. Look at Anna Nicole Smith on the cover of Playboy -- all she needed to pocket a quick $450,000,000 was one (1) smart idea & a gigantic pair of breasts. Is this a Great Country, or what? OK, OK, that's it for boob jobs. Let's get back to the Stock Market & the coming Crash. There will be a definite shrinkage of the Money Supply, and that is always bad news for the Disposable Income crowd. Lifestyles will be greatly diminished & many unpayable debts will be run up on Cancelled credit cards. Half the people you know will declare Bankruptcy or turn to Prostitution for rent money. That is what they mean by "Crash." Life will get meaner & dumber, and greedheads like Alex Rodriguez & Shaq & the hideous Daniel Snyder will have to drive around town in Armored cars. The crime rate will skyrocket & violent burglaries will be commonplace. The parking lot at Yankee Stadium will become a savage No Man's Land, like it was in the Good Old days of the 1970s. A nice club seat at Mile High Stadium will cost Ten dollars & Fifty cents & Junk Sex will be available Night & Day at every Quick-Mart. Major sports markets will go belly-up & high-end teams like the Forty-Niners & the Celtics will wallow and crash into Bankruptcy. "Fans" will prey on each other like vultures in public Restrooms at The Garden & the SuperDome. Your home will be Burglarized & you will suspect your Neighbors of doing it. Sales of canned Dog food will soar, water will cost more than gasoline & Airports will be like War Zones. (Whoops! Get a grip on yourself, Doc. This is supposed to be a harmless little Sports column. Let's not scare the children.)

OK, I told you I was in a foulhead -- so we'll save that riff on Fear & Failure & Off-Duty Cops working as Armed Debt Collectors for next week. My face is swelling again & I have to call the Nurse.

Trixie Comes of Age

TRIXIE COMES OF AGE
Daniel Lanois' new band Black Dub

What do you do next if you're Daniel Lanois? You've produced Dylan, Neil Young, and Peter Gabriel, showed U2 the ropes, mastered the guitar and written some pretty mean songs including producing and writing some of Brandon Flowers' new stuff...I mean, how do you follow your own act?

Black Dub is Lanois' new band and you need to hear 'em. Their eponymous album "Black Dub" was released about a year ago, and I had a chance to catch one of their first shows in New York, and saw them again at Bonnaroo this past summer. The Bowery Ballroom is a staple for quality performers in Manhattan's gritty Bowery District. The band's take from the 300 or so in the sold-out audience probably wouldn't pay for a day's lease on the luxury motorhome parked outside - presumably the band's, but when you've got a pedigree like Daniel Lanois, you're probably not counting pennies.

"I'm not sure if I want to fuck her or feed her..." I overheard this comment from a couple of guys near the stage talking about the capitvating, passionate, slender young lead singer Trixie Whitley, and it took me back 700 miles and almost a dozen years to the summer of 1999 when I was fortunate to see her father Chris Whitley at Martyr's in Chicago. Whitley was a tortured, incredibly gifted guitar player and songwriter whose chops on his National resonator have to be heard to be believed. He burst onto the music scene in the early nineties with his critically acclaimed album "Living With The Law" with some help from Lanois. He died in 2005 at the tender age of 45 after a difficult journey sprinkled with some of my favorite recordings ever. At the Martyrs' show, which was released as a live album and which you should buy immediately, I remember talking to a girl in the audience who expressed a similarly odd mix of arousal and maternal instinct watching the senior Whitley...she said something like his reed-thin heroin-addict look turned her on but made her want to mother him.

Trixie is also thin with bobbed blonde hair, pale but healthy and Germanic looking. I saw her play a solo show last summer at the tiny Rockwood Music Hall in NY's lower east side and was blown away. She's got a set of pipes like I haven't heard since Joss Stone showed an early but brief flash without Stones' immaturity and self possessedness. Trixie looks like she's genuinely honored to be on stage, and is pretty comfortable there -- she should be having grown up in Belgium and New York performing for most of her life. If you want to experience goose bumps, search YouTube for "whitely, serve you" and listen as she joins the stage a couple of years ago for a tribute to her father, signing his seminal "Someday I will serve you" - I just got chills now while writing about it.

There's no doubt during the Black Dub show just who is in charge. Lanois, through barely perceptible expressions and gestures controls the performance as deftly as a symphony conductor, although he hardly looks the part. What the looks most like is the Adam Arkin character from the old Northern Exposure television show, thick full closely cropped beard, thick woolen knit cap, and a shit eating smile looks like someone who is smarter than everyone else and knows something that nobody else present knows (because he does). The music contains elements of gospel harmony, huge impressive vocals from multi-instrumentalist Trixie, (guitar, drums, keyboards) and classic soul, blended together to form something sultry and all it's own.

Check out their website, www.blackdub.net, and watch the masterpiece, "I believe in you" - you'll believe in Black Dub.