Excerpts from the never-aired 1973 Scooby Doo episode with guest star Hunter S. Thompson
We were ten minutes south of San Clemente when the putrid green
daisy walls of the van started closing in. I recall the fat four-eyed
lesbian sweater girl saying something like "are you okay, Mr. Duke?
We've got a mystery to solve..." when suddenly the gullet of the garish
chartreuse steel beast began to spasm, as if a digestive track readying
itself to vomit. I began clawing at my hamstrings and when I turned my
head I was looking into the irridescent eyes of a grotesque animal
screeching "Ruh Roh! Ruh Roh!" in a hoarse irritating dog-accented
gibberish. That's when it things began to turn weird.
I fought off the ether hallucinations and fly swarms and fumbled
through my medical bag for my 9 millimeter and another shot of
absinthe. I pushed off the safety and casually popped off three quick
rounds, through the shag carpet stomach lining of the nauseous steel
beast that was consuming all of us, and it began thrashing angrily. The
lesbian was screaming, and the two Aryan Hitler Youth were screaming,
and the grotesque talking dog jumped into the arms of the whimpering
hippie boy. Holy sweet Jesus Christ, I thought, don't these
people realize we're about be eaten alive by poorly-drawn Chevrolet?
"Nevermind," I said. They would see it all soon enough, after the
nightshade cookies and Scooby snack kicked in.
****************************
Hanna and Barbera liked my story on hormone doping at the '72
Laff-a-Lympics and proposed that I cover a Harlem Globetrotters game at
a haunted Aztec pyramid in Mexico. They called me to their offices in
Burbank. "Jesus Christ, you're killing us here, Duke," Hanna complained
when I demanded a $1500 advance for the project. "I've got expenses," I
said. They relented and arranged for a chirpy entourage to escort me
into the belly of the beast. There was the lesbian chick, the blond
Palos Verdes neck scarf Nixon boy and his frigid miniskirt girlfriend,
the gawky soul patch hippie kid and his paranoid Great Dane. Lost
Manson kids all, Squeakies and Leslies and a canine Tex in a puke green
van hoping for some Mexican helter skelter. All the better reason to
pack a few guns, I thought.
"Like hi Mister Duke, ready to solve some Mexican mysteries?" said
the hippie kid in a grating singsong. I was simultaneously repulsed and
fascinated by the shape of his head. "Fuck that," I said. "We're going
to Compton to pick up some supplies."
We backed up the van to the garage of my exploration outfitter, Dr.
Tyrone, and loaded the necessary cargo for our insane basketball safari
in Baja: twelve mason jars of absinthe-laced Goofy Grape, two pounds of
hashish, 450 hits of Wacky Package blotter acid, a tinfoiled brick of
pure Mendocino nightshade distillate, a Jif Peanut Butter jar of ether,
two gross of amyl poppers, a sandwich baggie of MDMA, seven quarts of
Mescal, 112 peyote buttons, two cases of Schlitz, and a new
experimental medication Dr. Tyrone called "Tyrone Nitrate." The
supension of the vomitous beast groaned under the load and we pointed
it toward Tijuana.
*****************************
"Rejus Rist! Rejus Rist!"
The dog started whimpering in paranoid Scooby Smack madness when the
two Federales started poking their flashlights into the rear van
windows. How long can we maintain? I wondered. How long before one of
us starts raving and jabbering and making weird sound effects? The
lesbian was swatting away at invisible flies and the hippie was in a
comatose peyote stare. The two Nixon youths had gotten into the Tyrone
Nitrate and were rooting like animals on the van floor. I could
probably shoot the two cops, but it would be just a matter of time
until the other Mexican pigs tracked us down and fed our corpses to the
Baja condors.
"Ola senor," I said, rolling down the passenger window and motioning
to the fat one. I reached out with a $100 handshake. "There's one thing
you should know. We're going to the Globetrotters game at the haunted
Aztec pyramid. That fat homely girl in back, with the glasses? She's a
hitchiker we picked up outside El Cajon, a runaway from a wealthy
family. I think she is holding drugs."
We tore off south toward Ensenada, the two fat Federales
disappearing slowly in the mirror as they struggled to handcuff the
fly-swatting lesbian chick.
*****************************
"Keep digging," I ordered, my Glock trained at the hippie's hairy,
bulbous head. The Schlitz-peyote cocktail had likely rendered him
harmless, but I wasn't taking any chances -- with him, or any
chupacabras that might appear in the desert night. The shivering
mongrel dragged the limp bodies of the two Hitler Young Republicans one
by one across the desert floor. It wasn't clear yet whether they were
really dead or just in a Tyrone Nitrate-induced zombie state, but I
wasn't in any state to explain them to another Federale. The holes were
shallow enough that if they were still alive they could dig themselves
out and hitchhike back to the border.
Pa-zing!
The hideous dog jumped out out of the way as I popped a round at his
feet. "Ron of a ritch! Rut ruz rat for?" it screeched. "Stop walking on
your hind legs," I said. "You're a goddam dog, for chrissakes."
*****************************
Madness and rank paranoia filled my mind as I looked down from the
steps of the pyramid to the violently stupid spectacle. A team of
lumbering Aztec ghosts is leading the Harlem Globetrotters, 82-6 with
six minutes left to go, dunking over Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon
like they were willing victims in one of their ancient blood
sacrifices. I half expected the Aztecs to reach into the Trotters'
chests and remove their beating hearts. Christ, I hadn't see such a
beating since Sonny Barger took a baseball bat to a mouthy Oakland meth
dealer in '66.
But the freak circus on the court is only the start of the snarling
insanity. Who put a goddam basketball court in the middle of Mexico?
And what the hell were Sonny and Cher and Don Adams doing here?
Mama Cass begins choking on a ham sandwich. The hippie gives her the
Heimlich while the stupid dog suits up for the Globetrotters, who
suddenly start scoring points. Nobody seems to notice.
*****************************
Me and the dog and the hippie started pulling the masks off the
Aztec ghosts. "Like, YOINKS!" the hippie screamed, still half-addled
from the amyl.
I should have known. In fact, I knew. I had always known.
Those weren't ghosts. They were monsters, the flesh eating monsters of
a country half-decayed by greed, stupidity and rot. The Aztec starting
five: Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Haldeman and Erlichmann.
"We would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling dope fiends," said the evil Yorba Linda bastard.
"See you at the Bob Hope Hell Celebrity Pro-Am," I said, washing
down a handful of MDMA with a bottle of Gusano Rojo. I ate the worm.
*****************************
Saturday morning in the late '60s was a very special time and place
to be a part of. Maybe Roadrunner or Johnny Quest or Space Ghost or
Lancelot Link Secret Chimp meant something. Maybe not, in the long run
...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or can touch that sense
of knowing that you were there and alive in front of that Zenith
console color TV eating a gigantic bowl of Quisp. Whatever it meant.
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of the inevitable
victory, and that we were part of it. In the end we would unmask the
ghost as the Old and Evil town banker, or kill those evil frogmen in a
really cool explosion; our pre-sweetened, vitamin-fortified energy of
youth would simply prevail. We were shooting the curl of a beautiful
cartoon wave and nothing could stop us, except when our moms would yell
at us and then we would have to go outside and maybe ride our minibike
around for a while. Now, less than five years later, if you turn on
Saturday TV and look at the cheap washed-out backgrounds in a certain
way you can see where the wave broke and rolled back, and broke and rolled back, in an endless Xeroxed repetition.
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Originally posted here
