The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club were the wild and wooly Zeligs of the American counterculture of the Vietnam Era: The Angels partied with Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters; they saw their reflections on the big screen in Easy Rider, and in the pages of Hunter S. Thompson’s first book; and they effectively ended the hippie dream at Altamant. But the group’s roots dig deep, back to an earlier generation of soldiers returning home to California after World War II, and naming their motorcycle club in the same bold, fierce nomenclature brandished by fighting squadrons in the war.

Here’s a great documentary from 1983 that tells the story of the rise and fall of Hells Angels. Here’s Hells Angels Forever…

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Hunter S. Thompson has been popping up on my radar a lot lately. Not sure what’s happening in the Gonzoverse, but the good doctor keeps on pushing through the veil as of late — the streams have crossed, the aether is asunder.

I just posted a link to the Gonzo Tapes and now I found this great new animation that reminded me that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is getting made into a comic book. Actually that one seems like a no-brainer. Why didn’t that happen a long time ago? Why didn’t Steadman do that?

Regardless, here’s a new animation of a 1967 conversation between the great Studs Terkel and Hunter right after Thompson’s Hell’s Angels book had come out. First, here’s a bit from the excellent Open Culture site…

Blank on Blank returns with an animation of another lost interview from the Studs Terkel Radio Archive. This time, they’re breathing new life into a conversation Terkel had with Hunter S. Thompson in 1967 — soon after HST published his groundbreaking piece of Gonzo journalism: Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. The book, built upon the foundations of a 1965 article Thompson wrote for The Nation (read it online here) gave us a glimpse inside “a world most of us would never dare encounter,” wrote The New York Times in its original review. Thompson tells Terkel what he learned from that (sometimes harrowing) experience above.

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We are in control...

The Coincidence Control Network has taken this week off, comrades. If you missed last week’s podcast I can assure you the tentacles are still thrashing about its profanely snapping, diamond-studded beak. Episode the 19th features:

Hippies and Hells Angels together again; Pell vs. Slime; virgin boy eggs in your mouth; gay porn for Jesus; the quietest room on earth; Beatles 2: Say it Ain’t So; Japanese ghost ship; Happy Birthday, Withnail and I; bizarre teacher/student sex laws in the U.S.

Stay awake!

Watch this performance of my OccupySong at Occupy Congress in DC!