Fear and Loathing In FloMo?

Remember how I told you that my Rolling Stone "cover to cover" discs will allow you to create a reading list much like an iPod lets you create a playlist? Well, I spent some of my day off making sure it worked. I tested it out by compiling all the works of Hunter S. Thompson and Allan Ginsberg. It worked. It's grand, and I'll set up some more lists by favorite bands, interviews and such.

Anyway, I started with the classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream." Supposedly, this was the beginning of what has become known as GONZO JOURNALISM.

Wikipedia describes gonzo journalism thusly: "Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the 'polished' edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for the gritty factor. Use of quotes, sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and even profanity is common. The use of Gonzo journalism portends that journalism can be truthful without striving for objectivity and is loosely equivalent to an editorial."

Now, from what I gathered from the initial parts of the reading, this involved Mr. Thompson and his lawyer taking an unbelievable amount of drugs, instigating all sorts of chaos on their way to as well as in Vegas and then writing what they could remember down. Oddly, for all their "gonzo" posturing, I discovered that Thompson went through five edits of his first book.

But that's neither here nor there, really.

What intrigued me was that other art forms adopted the term "gonzo" and applied it to their work. So, for example, you might have "gonzo filmmaking" or "gonzo painting" or even "gonzo mountain-biking." Over time and through these various incantations, the term has since evolved to mean things like "wild; crazy; a bizarre, idiosyncratic style; extreme."

So, I've decided that I might want to be the first Gonzo Pastor.

If that's the case, you're going to have to help me define and/or describe it, though! I'm guessing drug use is out. But feel free to use Wikipedia's definition & the evolved meanings to tell me what it would look like...and feel free to add/subtract as needed. Hey! This is gonzo pastoring!

Have fun with this one, patrons!