ATXien

Love, Boxing, and Hunter S. Thompson

lareviewofbooks:

When John Kaye sent this report it made me realize that two of my great literary touchstones — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tristram Shandy — have much more in common than I had ever noticed. They are both colossal failures of mission, spectacular performances of the art of being sidetracked, of being shanghaied by errant attention, or, perhaps, perfect examples of the way art is, at its best, a perversion, a turning away from more straightforward intentions. This piece was commissioned elsewhere to be a brief reminiscence of a weekend in New Orleans. We prefer this Shandean, heavyweight version.         — Tom Lutz

Image © Paul Bausch onfocus.com http://bit.ly/rESKHY

JOHN KAYE

A Mission of Considerable Importance

HUNTER AND INGA: 1978

The third (and last) time I went to New Orleans was in September of 1978. I was living in Marin County, and I took the red-eye out of San Francisco, flying on a first-class ticket paid for by Universal Pictures, the studio that was financing the movie I was contracted to write. The story was to be loosely based on an article written by Hunter Thompson that had been recently published in Rolling Stone magazine. Titled “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat,” the 30,000-word piece detailed many of the (supposedly) true-life adventures Hunter had experienced with Oscar Zeta Acosta, the radical Chicano lawyer who he’d earlier canonized in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Hunter and I were in New Orleans to attend the hugely anticipated rematch between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, the former Olympic champion who, after only seven fights, had defeated Ali in February. The plan was to meet up at the Fairmont, a once-elegant hotel that was located in the center of the business district and within walking distance of the historic French Quarter. Although Hunter was not in his room when I arrived, he’d instructed the hotel management to watch for me and make sure I was treated with great respect.

“I was told by Mister Thompson to mark you down as a VIP, that you were on a mission of considerable importance,” said Inga, the head of guest services, as we rode the elevator up to my floor. “Since he was dressed quite eccentrically, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, I assumed he was pulling my leg. The bellman who fetched his bags said he was a famous writer. Are you a writer also?” I told her I wrote movies. “Are you famous?”

“No.”

“Do you have any cocaine?”

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(Source: lareviewofbooks)

HYFR: Improv lessons with Drake and Lil Wayne

If you haven’t picked up Drake’s new album Take Care, do it now you lazy bastard. It’s got everything you want in a Drizzy Drake album (baller ass beats, ridiculous lyrics, etc)

My favorite song on his new album right now is something called HYFR. What does that stand for? “HELL YEAH, FUCKIN RIGHT”. That alone could be a new improv acronym. If you don’t agree with your partner on stage, the scene you are running is over.

Instead of the mainstream “Yes, and” phrase that improvisers like to throw around, “HYFR, and” could be a new, more gangster version of the phrase. You can feign a simple “yes”, but can you really say “Hell yeah, fuckin right” without really getting into it? I didn’t think so.

Let’s take a look at the lyrics:

It begins with a sick crazy Drizzy riff about some girl like usual, but then he gets to some lyrics that I really related to:

Interviews are like confessions
Get the fuck up out my dressing room, confusing me with questions like

Don’t ask questions in improv scenes. If somebody does this, they are equivalent to a bitch in Drake’s dressing room that needs to get the fuck up out.

ENTER LIL WAYNE

Do you love this shit?
Are you high right now?
Do you ever get nervous?
Are you single?
I heard you fucked your girl, is it true?
You getting money? You think them niggas you with is with you?
And I say

I realize what Lil Weezy & Drizzy Drake are fed up with all these questions. What is the fucking point? Why are these bitches asking so many questions?

Instead, use statements in improv scenes. Here are the questions, rephrased:

You love this shit.
You’re high right now.
You’re nervous.
You’re single.
You fucked your girl.
You gettin money. Those niggas you with is with you.

HERE COMES THE HOOK

(And I say) Hell yeah
Hell yeah, hell yeah
F*ckin’ right
F*ckin right, all right
(And we say) Hell yeah
Hell yeah, hell yeah
F*ckin right
F*ckin right, all right

To summarize, instead of using the simple “yes, and” improv, do the street-inspired “Hell yeah, fucking right, and” and feel more confident in scenes. The more enthusiasm and agreement with other people on stage, the better. Also, don’t ask questions. Bitches ask questions, real improvisers make statements.

BONUS TIP

Here’s a little extra surreal lyric by Lil Wayne:

Met a female dragon, had a fire conversation

Add a female dragon to your improv scene sometime. Be a knight or flip it around and be a “man in distress”

BREAKING: Local man wakes up 45 minutes early so he could “Have some time to his damn self!”

David Roepper, 43, of Appleton, WI, decided to wake up a total of forty-five whole minutes before he was scheduled to wake up at 8 AM. Waking up at 7:15 gave the insurance salesman time to get his thoughts together for the day.

“Every damn day, I’m assaulted by all angles of communication dammit. Whether it’s myface, that smart-aleck-phone and even members of my own damn family.”, he spoke to us while sitting on the only place he could be alone during the day, the toilet, “Just a few years ago we didn’t have any of this damn technology and I actually had time during the day to gather my damn thoughts.”

He explained to us that he had worked hard in his life to be successful and that he wanted to be “alone some of the damn time” without people constantly bothering him through all of the new forms of communication these days.

He continued to complain about the media and about this generation had to be constantly amused. “Television, commercials, iPads, iPods, more like iDON’T WANT YOU ALL UP IN MY DAMN HEADSPACE.”

After the whirl of the toilet bowl and what sounded like the last few wipes before he would go out into society again, Roepper explained “Thomas damn Edison invented damn near everything and he didn’t have any of this god damn conflagration entering his mind-tubes. How’s that for an argument?”