"high times 1977" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Hunter S)

Ever since then I have made it a point to be polite to the California Highway Patrol. I have a National Rifle Association sticker on the back window of my car, so that any cop on the driver's side has to pass that and see it. I used to carry a police badge in a wallet, and that helped a lot.

adrenaline highs:

At its best it's one of the most functional of all the speed sort of drugs in that it has almost no rush unless you overdo it., and almost no crash. I never considered speed fun. I use speed as fuel, a necessary evil. Adrenaline is much smoother and much more dangerous if you f--k up. I f--ked up one time in a motel in Austin, Texas. I was very careless, and I just whacked the needle into my leg without thinking. I'd forgotten the vein thing, and after I pulled the little spike out, I noticed something was wrong. In the bathroom the tile was white, the curtain was white - but in the corner of my eye in the mirror I looked down and saw a hell of a lot of red. Here was this little tiny puncture, like a leak in a high-powered hose...You could barely see the stream. It was going straight from my leg and hitting the shower curtain at about thigh level, and the whole bottom of the curtain was turning red.

I thought, oh Jesus Christ, what now? And I just went in and lay down on the bed and told the people in the room to get out without telling them why; then I waited 20 minutes and all I could think of was these horrible Janis Joplin stories: you know, ODing in a motel...Jim Morrison...Jimi Hendrix...needles. And I thought, oh f--k, what a sloppy way to go - I was embarrassed by it. But after 20 minutes nothing happened. Then I really began to get nervous and I thought, oh God, it's going to come all at once. It's a delayed thing, like those acid flashback they've been promising all these years.

RR: When are we going to have them?

I've been waiting a long time.

his favourite drug experience:

Well, there are very few things that can really beat driving around the Bay Area on a good summer night - big motorcycle, head full of acid - wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and getting on that Highway 1 going 120 miles an hour. That's a rush of every kind - head, hands - it's everything put in a bundle. Because first of all, it's a rush, and also it's maintaining control and see how far I can go, how weird I can get and still survive, even though I'm seeing rats in front of me instead of cops. Rats with guns on...

how the Kentucky Derby article began:

I guess it's important to take it all the way back to having dinner in Aspen with Jim Salter, a novelist who had sort of a continental style. It was one of those long European dinners with lots of wine, and Salter said something like, "Well, the Derby's coming up. Aren't you going to be there?" And I thought, well, I'll be damned. That's a good idea.

I was working at the time for Warren Hinckle at Scanlon's magazine. So I immediately called Hinckle and said, "I have a wonderful idea, we must do the derby. It's the greatest spectacle the country can produce." It was 3:30 in the morning or something like that, but Hinckle got right into it. By that time I learned to hate photographers. I still do. I can't stand to work with them. So I said we've got to get an illustrator for this , and I had Pat Oliphant in mind. Hinckle said fine, you know, do it.