Hunter S. Thompson movie has all the 'right stuff'

WOODY CREEK, Colorado, USA - The new movie about Hunter S. Thompson is as good - maybe better - than the reviewers have said it is. If you blinked and missed it in the theaters, check it out on DVD in a few months.


A young Hunter S. Thompson

The Admiral and I watched it at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento last night with a crowd of, well, maybe 10 people, all of who seemed to be afficionados of the writer, laughing at all the right spots, crying at others.

For non-HST fans, the movie might not be too charming and it certainly would be somewhat confusing in spots.

But it focuses on Hunter's early career and answers one big question: What the heck happened to him?

It turns out (at least according to the film) that after he totally blew his assignment to write about the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali in Zaire, he lost his ability to write and create for years afterward. It wasn't necessarily that he missed the assignment, the film hints, he might have burned out right about that time.

His ex-wife, who is prominent in the film talking about Hunter, gives a pretty straightforward assessment of what happened then as well as insights into his personality and how he may have ended up trapped in the caricature he created for himself and of himself.

One of the highlights of the film is getting to hear Ralph Steadman, the British artist who accompanied HST on many of his adventures, talking about what it was like to be out on assignment with him.

Total Gonzo, of course.


Ralph Steadman portrait of Hunter S. Thompson

Story with a happy ending - for now, anyway

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The saga of Corti Brothers being forced out of its Folsom Boulevard location ended happily in early September when the people trying to force him out by taking over the store withdrew their offer.

So for now, at least, it seems like the store will remain.

The Sacramento Bee's account is here:

Victory for Corti's

I dropped in to Corti's just twice since being back and the mood in the store is so positive, the already very attentive staff has gotten even more attentive.

Bravo...

When 'just business' isn't a good enough answer

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - A small neighborhood grocery store and deli operation is suddenly being forced to move out of a building it has occupied for 38 years, bumped with just a couple of months notice to make way for - another small neighborhood grocery story and deli operation.

The full story about it is detailed out in The Sacramento Bee here:

Corti's gets the boot

All of this is distressing for several reasons, not the least of which is that I have shopped at that market for years, as it offers some of the best food in the entire Sacramento area. Its staff are/were professionals and treated customers with a kindness and genuine helpfulness that you rarely find anywhere, anymore.

Corti's brothers prepared foods were a staple in my household's diet.

But more distressing is that the store is being forced out in what appears to be a predatory business strategy, the kindest description I can give to it.

The mouthpiece for the new store that will go in - called Good Eats - just a few months ago touted how he was going to remodel a restaurant called Andiamo's just 20 blocks away. He got lot of free advertising and was played up as being a really 'good guy' because he was going to remodel and renovate the site. Another company, Whole Foods, said if it could get the land, it would level it and build a new modern building.

Column on Good Eats

But suddenly that renovation seems to be forgotten and instead, Mike Teel has engineered the unceremonious ouster of the one store that would have provided a level of competition, one could deduce.

'Just business,' I suspect Mike Teel would say.

Teel is the presumptive heir to the Raley's Grocery Store fortune, news accounts always say, though his rather unceremonious departure as CEO of that chain of stores a few years back has many people wondering if the family would prefer to give all the money to the Hare Krishnas, rather than him.


Smiling at the demise of Corti Brothers?

But if anyone was surprised by this, they didn't watch what this same man did at Prosper Magazine last year, the magazine of which he was the major owner/publisher.

In that unsavory debacle, Teel shocked the staff of the magazine - a very solid group of people - by suddenly announcing last November that it was folding. The staff had no indication that he was about to dump the project. And why would they? It wasn't many months before that Teel stood center stage at one of the most extravagant and well-staged downtown parties I have ever seen in the state capital to announce a redesign of Prosper. And a lot of those comments were about what great future the magazine had, how much faith he had in the staff... and, and, and...

A great future predicted

The good news out of all this, I suppose, is that the customers loyal to the Corti Brothers store will seek out the place, no matter where it moves. The good people who have worked there - some their entire working lives - deserve to land on their feet. And I think they will.

And Good Eats? Well, it would be bad karma to wish Mike Teel and his associates in this business any ill. Or to wish that bad things befall Nancy Cleavinger, the landlord who grabbed at getting a higher rent payment, even it meant slapping the community (and a tenant of 38 years) in the face. I think both Mr. Teel and Ms. Cleavinger are about to come under the microscope for all their business dealings.

Too bad Prosper Magazine isn't still in business. This is just the kind of juicy story the editors like to get ahold of.

Oh, maybe that's why the magazine was closed down.

And so it begins - the non-race 'race' for President

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., USA - There have probably been other such stories in recent days, but the one in today's San Francisco Chronicle was the first I had seen of its type.

Here's the link:

McCain can smile now

So what's the big deal?

Well, a month ago, when all the polls showed that Obama was running away with the election, I opined to a group of skeptics that there is no way that the mass media of the U.S. could let that happen. It's just not, well, competitive and fun.

A nation that believes the Super Bowl is more important, than, well, whatever happens in the rest of the world, is unlikely to allow any political contest to be soooo one sided that there is essentially no contest.

Thus we are about to start reading stories that say McCain is moving up, creeping up, slowly making progress, showing surprising strength.

And so on.


McCain stands toe-to-toe to Obama

Essentially, what is about to happen, is a huge surge for McCain, not a real surge, not a voter-generated surge, but a media-interprets-the-polls surge that will ensure that the pundits keep punditing that McCain is still in the race and that readers and viewers should keep their eyes glued to the race.

Oh, and glued to the advertisements. The advertisements!

A cynical view you say? Perhaps.

But track the last dozen presidential elections and watch what happened as the months before the actual balloting happened. It looked from the outside as if there were see-saw battles. In truth, that's not what was going on at all.

I have to digress here, however, to point out that Al Gore probably did win the election against George Bush. The Bush 'victory' was due to voter fraud and manipulation of voting machines.

That aside, look for McCain to begin a slow climb up to parity with Obama in the next few months so the media can have a healthy (and lucrative) horse race as we approach November.

It's the American way, at least for the media.