Status Updates From The Kentucky Derby Is Decad...

As good as it gets!

“Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!” he whispered. “Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!”

“There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have.”

“And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come to watch the real beasts perform.”

There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been looking for--and it was, of course, my own.

The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all.

Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell.

From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare.

Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By mid afternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomiting on each other between races.

Unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit.

At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom." The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of "student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at a university in Ohio called Kent State.

"Say," he said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"
"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."
"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"
"Playboy," I said.

Written under duress by Hunter S. Thompson. Sketched with eyebrow pencil and lipstick by Ralph Steadman.

oh, but before I start ‘Fear and Loathing,’ I might as well read some of his shorter work.