The Curse of Lono - By Hunter S. Thompson Page 0,19

or at least the Last Thing that Works.

Run for your life, sport, because that's all you have left. The same people who burned their draft cards in the Sixties and got lost in the Seventies are now into running. When politics failed and personal relationships proved unmanageable; after McGovern went down and Nixon exploded right in front of our eyes. . . after Ted Kennedy got Stassenized and Jimmy Carter put the fork to everybody who ever believed anything he said about anything at all, and after the nation turned en masse to the atavistic wisdom of Ronald Reagan.

Well, these are, after all, the Eighties and the time has finally come to see who has teeth, and who doesn't. . . Which may or may not account for the odd spectacle of two generations of political activists and social anarchists finally turning -- twenty years later -- into runners.

Why is this?

That is what we came out here to examine. Ralph came all the way from London -- with his wife and eight-year-old daughter -- to grapple with this odd question that I told him was vital but which in fact might mean nothing at all.

Why not come to Aspen and have some fun with the New Dumb?

Or why not skewer Hollywood? If only to get even with that scum. . . Or even back to Washington, for the last act of "Bedtime for Bonzo"?

Why did we come all the way out here to what used to be called "the Sandwich Islands" to confront some half-wit spectacle like eight thousand rich people torturing themselves in the streets of Honolulu and calling it sport?

Well. . . there is a reason; or at least there was, when we agreed to do this thing.

The Fata Morgana.

Yes, that was the reason -- some wild and elegant hallucination in the sky. We had both retired from journalism; then years of working harder and harder for less and less money can make a man kinky. Once you understand that you can make more money by simply answering your telephone once a week than by churning out gibberish for the public prints at a pace keyed to something like three hours of sleep a night for thirty, sixty, or even eighty-eight hours in a stretch, it is hard to get up for the idea of going back into hock to American Express and Master Charge for just another low-rent look at what's happening.

Journalism is a Ticket to Ride, to get personally involved in the same news other people watch on TV -- which is nice, but it won't pay the rent, and people who can't pay their rent in the Eighties are going to be in trouble. We are into a very nasty decade, a brutal Darwinian crunch that will not be a happy time for free-lancers.

Indeed. The time has come to write books -- or even movies, for those who can keep a straight face. Because there is money in these things; and there is no money in journalism.

But there is action, and action is an easy thing to get hooked on. It is a nice thing to know that you can pick up a phone and be off to anywhere in the world that interests you -- on twenty-four hours notice, and especially on somebody else's tab.

That is what you miss: not the money, but the action -- and that is why I finally drilled Ralph out of his castle in Kent for a trip to Hawaii and a look at this strange new phenomenon called "running." There was no good reason for it; I just felt it was time to get out in the world. . . get angry and tune the instruments. . . go to Hawaii for Christmas.

WHY DO THEY LIE TO US?

We fled Honolulu the next day, getting out just ahead of a storm that closed the airport and cancelled the surfing tournaments on the north shore. Ralph was half crazy from the pain in his back and the weather, but Wilbur assured him that Kona was sunsoaked and placid.

The houses were all set and the agent, Mr. Heem, would meet us at the airport. Uncle John would be over to see us in a few days, with the family. Meanwhile take the sun and do some diving out in front of the house, where the sea would be calm as a lake.

Indeed. I was definitely ready for it -- and even Ralph was excited. The constant rain in Honolulu had broken