Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

This tale of savage overindulgence is in many ways a reaction to the failure of the 1960's counterculture movement. Dr Hunter S. Thompson and his Attorney travel to Las Vegas with almost every narcotic known to man, in search of the American dream, the Mint 400 and the Drug Conference for an unnerving amount of misinformed American cops.

What ensues is a sleeplessly intense 3 day trip involving bats and convertibles, casinos and polar bears, riddled with twisted humor, Wild Turkey-razor sharp wit and chemically clear observation.

Thanks to the media massacre of the 1960's Hippies, fear and hysteria surrounded drugs in 1971 America. Hunter wanted to find out what was left of those ideals, to push it as far as it would go, and see what level of freedom was left to do so.

This excerpt from the book is when the Dr of Gonzo Journalism ponders San Francisco in the mid sixties. The passage is thought to be so poignant of that era that its known as the Wave Speech.

Yesturday i had a Buy Nothing Day in true Adbusters spirit. Here's how it went.

Wake up - 11.00am: Alright its not early but its not that late either, it could be later. Breakfast consists of Coco-pops but i have no bread or fruit, buy nothing day could prove to be very unhealthy at this rate.

It could also leave me ignorant, i want to buy a newspaper.  Yes i know, im on the Guardian Unlimited as we speak but its not like the broadsheet in my own two hands is it?! So already ive established that buying nothing is detrimental to both my health and intelligence. Thanks Kalle Lasn.

13.44pm: Right, im here in the heart of it, facing buy nothing day straight in the face, im in the belly of the beast. Im in town! And its full of trials and tribulations. As i scurry through the south Lanes its a gauntlet of unnecessary wants and appropriated 'needs.' Every shop front shouts out to me, newsagents, retail, restaurants, pubs, bars, fast food - i want it all! Any excuse to buy a newspaper, shiny magazine or chocolate bar. What i really want, what my mouth longs for is a can of caffeine and sugar. I want some sickly drink to quench this thirst for expenditure.

The brightly coloured packaging calls to me like an evil siren by the sea. The vibrant designs of seduction pierce my mind with splinters of doubt. "I do really need an envelope today so i might as well get some Sprite too." No! No weakness. Fortunately i was smart enough to come out penniless. That was obvious enough. So now im in Boarders reading their magazines and books for free! Ha! Zac - 1, Consumerism - 0. But a war is made up of many battles and this victory is short and savory. As i paw another H.S.T archive the growls in the pit of my stomach become deeper, darker and much more foreboding than before. I should have listened to my GCSE History teacher Mr Kendall, "fail to plan and you plan to fail." Wise words full of punctuation as my stomach plummets, twists, turns and knots to remind me how stupid ive been not to brink a packed lunch. I can hear pitta bread and houmous whispering my name on the wind. Must keep my mind occupied, ill have to move on soon.

Ive yet to make it back through town and into college. College will be sanctuary number two with its water cooler full of free h20, and its library full of free entertainment. There i will be safe from the ghastly influences of the outside world and i can occupy myself with printing. But i don't think im strong enough to face the ugly temptations of town. No i must take a different route, through the backstreets, keeping to the shadows where the light of consumerism cannot reach me. I must go underground.

14.31pm: I made the stupid mistake of walking down Sydney Street in the North Lanes and i was of course bombarded with smells of baked goods, pastries, pies, bagels, baguettes and oh Lord - bacon! i had to practically sprint to get here unscathed and unspent.

16.34pm: Walking up Elm grove to get home accentuated the cavernous echoes of hunger so when i got in i put together a pitifully stale baguette of cheese and salad, and thats it.

20.43pm: Im home and have been now for a few hours. Home is safe and secure from the external world so full of sinful enticement.  Obviously a night out on the town os out of the question. No, ive got tortellini to cook, Batman Returns to watch and tobacco to smoke. Im worried though because ive developed an affiliation for Galaxy chocolate after my evening meal and alas i didn't stock up. Its ok, simply ignore it.

"Does anyone want anything from shop?!" Goddamn you bastard! I forgot this killer question. My heart sinks, my sweet tooth twinkles and and i have to swallow down my pride, my tasteless, insubstantial pride. Yum. Remember when you used to say "aww im starving!" and your Mum would shout "you don't know the meaning of the word!" Well maybe not but i know the meaning of Nestle, and i want it! To hell with fair trade Mr Cadbury i want you!

"Bourbon biscuit anyone?" Don't mind if i do. Ha! My quick fix has been granted, briefly my craving is quenched.

2.16am: Hopefully these are the last minutes of my buy nothing day. Unless i try to sleep but instead just fantasize about the lavish banquet im going to have tomorrow. Well ive done it, a whole day spent not spending, and it wasn't too hard. You have to be quite strict with yourself and make a few difficult lifestyle choices but anyone with an ounce of will power and Mary-Jane can buy nothing for a day. But what does this prove? I haven't learnt a valuable lesson or come to some profound realisation about the nature of consumerism. I resent it just as much and accept it as an unfortunate reality. perhaps if i get involved with the official buy nothing day then ill feel different, a part something. We can only hope.    

Dialectic diagnosis suburbia

Counterculture will never work because it is merely a reform of our current culture, we need to reject our culture entirely and start afresh. As Marx wanted to do with Communism, we must do with culture jamming. We need to rethink our application of media and technologies and reinvent our social and economic order. Karl's critique of the Unions can be applied. They were a step in the right direction, but in no way revolutionary enough, they simply redesign the cages in which the workers operate rather than break the shackles of labour power. It applies today as much as it did 120 years ago. The proletariat are kept subservient by ideologies, false consciousness and warped meta-narratives. 

This is the illusion the bourgeoisie erected by producing ideas as a means of exercising subordination of the working class. The workers are not people, just cogs in the machine. Their only individuality comes from their significance in the mode of production that is privately owned, therefore they can never function as a social human being in the outside world, purely a tool. They are a labour means towards a capital end. They toiled 12-16 hour days to barely survive and were still drowning in poverty and famine when they returned home each night. This alienation can be summed up by the phrase "existence precedes consciousness" (more depressing than Sartre's 'existence precedes essence'). A proletarian is defined by their social context rather than their essential behavior.

But can Communism ever work? Soviet history would argue no. People always have their own personal agenda which overrides the necessary selflessness that is required to unite the proletariat. Capitalism promotes egocentric materialists lost in self-obsession and further strengthens the wrong kind of individualism via bourgeois propaganda and hegemony - contemporary advertising makes fake promises of identity, self-definition, status and power through the purchasing of overpriced, mass produced goods. This state of affairs will continue to get worse until there is a breaking point where consumerism crescendos and the smog of greed, ignorance and apathy clears to reveal a lucid sky of working class clarity.

Unfortunately i don't see counterculture bringing this forth. So why am i taking a subversive attack on the MTV brief? Well, because i'd much prefer to take a socialist point of view where i can still exercise my imagination, than conform to corporate group-think and be another free instrument of ideas and labour power. Saying that, however, if MTV were to appreciate my alternative approach and want to offer me money for the idea, or future ideas, i would happily accept it. I don't know how Communism can ever hope to cope with the fact that human nature is inherently egotistical, let alone counterculture.

Were you raised on Ritilin and MTV?

MTV is a paradox, its only genuine successful period was signified by the birth and death of Nirvana, which unfortunately is probably why Kurt Cobain committed suicide. He was trapped in the contradiction of massively popular alternative music. It can't work, especially from an artists point of view such as Cobain. As soon as the masses are listening to your music to be different, it inherently negates that musci. Kurt didn't want to be selling millions of grunge records, epitomising the genre and making it the mainstream, his subversive style had become the majority music choice. Even In Utero (the album that followed Nevermind) which was very experimental and obviously meant to be inaccessible, made it to the number 1 spot in the album charts.

MTV televised music, which in 1981 was a brilliant idea, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And MTV soon became a self-obsessed brand for the gluttonous consumer, and now it has very little credibility in Music, broadcasting, programming or anything - Kerry Katona has her own reality show on it - enough said.

When i think of MTV im reminded of Bret Easton Ellis's debut novel "Less than Zero" which follows a group of rich 17-20 year olds in the suburban dystopia of Los Angeles, who live lives of leisure and excess, day and night recreational drug use of all classification, and relaxed indifferent attitudes to sex and thier ambiguous sexualities. It is set in the mid-to-late 80's and they are certainly the disaffected youth of their day, they are the kids raised on Ritilin and MTV.

Bret Easton Ellis was in fact one of those kids and is one of the 1980's literary Brat Pack, along with his friend Jay McInerney (who wrote Bright Lights Big City) and Tama Janowitz. You can sense a lot of personal input into his characters, who are empty people, normally well aware of their superficiality and enjoy fulfilling thier vacuous role and take pride and pleasure in their easy life of born into money.

On a different note, an interesting link on the nature of advertising in our information age.

The Society of the Sensational

After watching 20 minutes of The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord i wondered how it compared to our contemporary millenial society, and i was thinking of this in consideration with Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.
Now it occurs to me that the issues Debord brings to light about imagery replacing direct experience and mediating human interaction still rings true but in an even more extreme state, to the extent that we are completely emmersed in this unrecognizable Hyperreality. With the continual glamourization of everything banal, and vacuous, stemming from our empty celebrity obsessed culture thats given birth to a plethora of meaningless magazines, Closer, Grazia, Hello, Ok etc etc. And a Reality TV ideal that couldn't be more contrived if it tired. When our reality has been completely replaced by representation, that is itself true and relies on no other model for reference, we are totally lost.
The mass media and megacorporations make fake promises and create false ideologies that the public blindly follow. Everything is bigger, better, faster, stronger, a staged experience that is realer than real itself. We increasingly fetishize media technologies that in turn continue to necessitate themselves in our everyday lives more and more. We glamourize dark Nietzschen philosophies of nihilism with Fight Club's and American Psycho's. So much art, advertising, journalism and general reportage is broadcasting sensationalism globally and giving birth to styles such as 'infotainment'. These buzz words hold little significance but to signify the meaninglessness of our current consumer culture. Half a century on from Debord and we are now the numb Society of the Sensational.

D&AD AWARDS!

The D&AD briefs are like a tight pair of boxers on a summers day; they sound welcoming but just don't feel right. It occurred to me that this award masquerade is the perfect excuse for companies and corporations to employ thousands of students around the country for unpaid work and ideas. They're using our young, innovative minds as a free think tank, veiled under the guise of a national design competition, with prizes and respect as the incentives to do big brands dirty work. Well i will be no such spin doctor, im only pushing personal propaganda. Unfortunately i doubt the judges will be appreciate this antipreneurial approach, still victory is not only defined by monetary value, Persian warriors fought for pride, as will i!

After watching David Schwertgen's culture jamming documentary at Transmediale i was left with a rather romanticized notion of guerilla communication, much as i was a year ago when i discovered Adbusters. However now im well aware that Adbusters is pure hypocrisy and culture jamming is contradictory. It comments on the abuse of semiotics by large corporations, that are then projected onto the public, but it does little to significantly or permanently change the situation. Other than enlighten the everyday citizen to the paradoxical predicament, it really just adds fuel to the iconographic fire. But! Better to raise awareness and acknowledge the issue than ignore it and remain oblivious.

All this talk on the subversion of signs instinctively made me think about our current state of semantic dependent reality. We all live lives saturated by signs, symbols, imagery and metaphors, that together equate a world of reproduced emotions and represented experiences. Is our reality simulated to the extent of the fourth order of simulacra? Are we blind to the Matrix? Have we fallen down Alice's rabbit hole? Are we completely lost in Baudrillard's Hyperreality?!

With these ideas in mind, i wanted to tackle the MTV brief, taking a subversive angle to the given credentials. "MTV is a virus that invades spaces, disrupting, corrupting and mutating them." Brilliant! MTV is an STD! MTV is an entity, with 79 channels infesting over 167 countries in 23 languages, for 25 years. In the 80's it defined Generation X, now it describes itself as "the biggest youth media brand in the world" and is a culture in its own right. A culture worth jamming. "The environment that you choose for your virus to invade must be relevant to MTV's core audience, namely the young at heart who have a rebellious streak and like to shake thinks up." A quick guestimate would mark at least 50% of MTV's target market at having direct contact with a sexually transmitted disease; there's nothing more reckless than not using a condom, and nothing shakes things up like telling your latest conquest that they have chlamydia. Ahhhh yes, the infectious nature of televised rebellion. How will you broadcast your revolution?

    

Berlin Begins...

The theme of Transmediale was "Conspire" - dictionary.com's definition is; "1) to act together, esp. secretly, to do something wrong, evil, illegal. 2) to act or work together toward the same goal. 3) to plot (something wrong, evil or illegal)."

I suppose its obvious why most of the work did centre around or take the negative contriving angle of the term, rather than focus on the positive aspect of cooperation, and as a result i came away with a feeling of unease and distrust in the world outside. It would appear that the forces of the universe, the institutions of the developed world and the individuals in positions of power, are ominously controlling the remaining proletariate - us.

Another issue that became very apparent was the current media zeitgeist of a static scene coupled with a single prolonged monotonous bombinate frequency. During the festival this idea was put into full effect with dazzling success as well as hideous failure. "Valve - Membrance" and their natural resonance amplification seemed to relate to Jazz, you had to listen to the 'notes' that weren't being played. And the 7pm Saturday night Theatersaal session "Structural Poetics." It would seem Bauhaus minimalism is still strongly evident in the experimental art and music arena, or perhaps just back with a fierce and frustrating vengeance. Half the time you felt as if the artist was taking advantage of the audience, now no doubt more often than not there is a clear cut meaning or message to their piece, but i did find myself thinking, "are they literally taking the piss here and having a good old laugh on our dehalf, as we endure this farce?"

So, taking a typical critique approach to the work within the festival lets discuss what really turned me on and what completely switched me off.

I got most out of the conferences that were held, but rather than type up my notes, which would take a decade, i shall simply state that they'll clearly feed into my dissertation. I particularly enjoyed the seminars on "The Real Conspiracy" with Tim Druckrey. "Embedding Fear - the internet and the spectacle of heightened alert." "The Greying of the Commons: IP, the law and the steet." And "Web 3.0 - Conspiring to keep the net public." These lectures resulted in upto 7 pages of notes each and an absolute overload of information, extremely nutritious brain food.

DVD - Asian 3 piece musical animation installation. 2 drummers, Jimanica and Itoken team up with visual artist Takashi so that their drum kits are linked to live Flash visuals involving geometric shapes' movement triggered by abrasive skin, symbol and snare bashing. The Tetris-Pacman visuals directly reflect the nerdcore nature of the music being played. It was impossible to ignore the intrinsic link to DJ Scotch Eggs Gameboy gabba phenomenon. I think DVD have really tapped into a lucrative sub-genre here with their combination of existing visual medias and technologies and the style of their sound, that has elements from breakcore, rock, high-pitched electro, ambient breaks and just plain industrial noise. The more they play out, refine their style and develop their set the better it will become and this has potential to become an extremely impressive spectacle.   

Check out the funk stuff - Tourist Hotspots and Enigmatic Clubs:

Psychological Warfare and Audio Terror Tactics at Club Transmediale: 30/1/2008. 

The event "Sonic Wargames" involved an onslaught of abusive sounds reverberating anxious vibrations throughout an aesthetically interesting audience. 4 teams of 2 Djs each - if you can call them that - which you can't. A disc jockey mixes records and mixing records requires matching beats but all these guys had were intimidating industrial noises that instilled intrigue followed by bewilderment into the unsuspecting few. Even before the games began (another misleading lexicon, games imply fun, this was not) the audience wreaked of sweaty distress and odorous unease. When the warfare did commence eyes were wide with disbelief and the effort of trying to understand the overcomplicated display that depicted who was "winning." This was a great idea executed awfully. For such an amazing venue involving a to-scale wooden car crash and grass illustrations on the walls this night was summed up by the blood trickling from peoples ears as they tried to persuade themselves they were having a good time and they enjoyed the fact that eternal tinnitus was a good thing. There's Wrong Music and music thats just wrong.

Fear and hysteria on the Reichstag: 31/1/2008.

If you don't suffer from vertigo, you soon will when walking round the parliamentary buildings roof for 15 minutes, 200 ft above Berlin. The dizzying heights are not helped when you're being buffeted by gale force winds, trying to steady your DV camera in an attempt to capture and do justice to the stunning, neon night-scape that completely surrounds you. The nerves and nausea are worth it for the breath-taking panoramic views as your pupils dilate to take in the scene.

After the initial gut wrenching fear of somehow falling (which is near impossible, but that possibility is still too close for comfort) I steady myself and continue into Norman Foster's observation dome and progress up the orange peel walkway. I didn't think i was too affected by the uncanny views below me, and the crystal-like cupola reflecting the environment in fragmented frames, topped off with the concentric circle walking pattern. But that's before i glance behind and see Dan and Jon staggering, stooped over, knees bent and gripping the hand rail with white knuckles, advising me through hysterical bursts of laughter and dread, "Low centre of gravity mate, that's the key!" This instantly instills fear and confusion and suddenly i lose all common sense and grab the hand rails iether side of me, spreading my legs wider than shoulder length in a desperate starfish pose. This isn't low centre of gravity and of course doesn't help so i try to claw back some sort of logic by slowly sloping to the floor and to the inside line of the walkway. "Keep moving man, we must keep moving!" Cries Jon with a voice full of desperation and determination. He's right, and we progress to the top of the intricately designed but really just glorified, fish bowl, with a Rocky 1 style punch in the air as we reach the peak. What really worries us, however, is when we turn back to see Chris calmly snapping away, nonchalantly strolling up to the top.

The view is indescribable and at one point its all too much to take in for the human eye, i feel that seeing the scene through a screen mediated the reality of the situation, and there was definite security in this filtered form of viewing. But its not about safety when you've got the beautifully spacious Berlin neon skyline spanning out at every angle. The Sony Centre glows with a cool confident, icey blue illumination, and the Brandenburg Gate's presence is obvious with the eerie underlighting of Viktoria, the goddess of victory driving the 4 horses Quadriga. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Transmediale's venue is just about discernable out to the West, looking like a big, yellow lit Pringle hidden among bare branches on Witchly thin tree trunks. We marvel at this spectacle before preparing ourselves for the trip back down.

The first rule of Panorama Bar is you do not talk about Panorama bar: 1/2/2008.

After Hawaiian Volcanos and Tequila Sunrises even the most derelict beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when you're not drunk anymore and cant find your aesthetic anyway, its Friedchicken frustrating. Apparently you have to work for your fix of Berlin club culture. After 2 hours of wandering around Ostbahnhof, sobering up and getting increasingly irate with the perplexing nature of the situation, we take another stop check, ask another passer-by and get the familiar dismissive look of ignorance and/or apathy. We are after all, English in Germany.

We meekly enter what appears to be a working-class darts bar, that has a real gentleman's club vibe about it, and the atmosphere of close knit cliqueness leads us to believe that we wont be welcome in this local establishment for local people. We're not really local are we. But don't judge Germans by English standards. Our new host employs his close friend whose happily propped up by the bar before our arrival, to show us a warm welcome with 8 coasters quickly chucked round. Followed by larger than life pints poured in equally quick succession and passed round the tired, thirsty and frustrated UK 20 somethings. This isn't just service with a smile, this is service with enthusiastic German jabbering and animated arm movements to accompany. Not only that, but these drinks are only 2 euros a drink and he spoils us with some indigenous spirit that tastes like peppermint and slips down the old oesophagus a treat. So now we're drunk we're ready to hunt this club down, we deserve a dance, and by God we're gonna have one.

So, what do we know? What we know for sure is this; very little. Panorama Bar is close, somewhere West, or possibly North of Ostbahnhof station, just opposite where we currently are. It doesn't help that it could also potentially be East, but lets ignore that fact. Our plight is further complicated by the ambiguous and unresponsive German public. Not even the native clubbers know where this place is, therefore we persuade ourselves that it must be good, or it simply doesn't exist and is some sort of sick in-German joke on unsuspecting tourists. But this is Berlin, there are no real signs for the good stuff, if anything's worth going to, its not visually communicated. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. As the bouncers of Panorama Bar prove when they confiscate Dans digital camera on entry. Yes we have made it and the 8 of us excitedly run up the stairs, cheering, jeering and whooping as we go. Its only 1am as we enter the main room and you know its going to be an interesting night when you see transexual girls sitting inside speakers pulling pills out of their panties. Our Techno journey progresses from minimal beats with organic horns, very gradually as in 6 hours gradually, builds up to harder, darker, deeper basslines with a quicker more demanding speed. The mixing's seamless, and time is stomped away to a steadily increasing tempo. Now our bodies are aching, our muscles are taut, and we're loose of tongue and mind. Panorama Bar is a brutally good find full of savagely good times.