Stuff That Falls Out of Books I Flip Through at Half-Priced Books

I reckon that this will be an ongoing theme on Doctor Jones because 1) Half-Priced Books is totally, unearthly awesome and 2) Trinkets-turned-bookmarks will occasionally catch me by surprise as I browse, making it difficult not to muse and wonder. It’s a spice of life that is another example of the benefit that Half-Priced Books serves to all of humanity.

This little guy was in the first edition (1979) edition of The Great Shark Hunt, a collection of writings by Hunter S. Thompson that were printed in various periodicals between 1964 through 1978. I love HST. His prose is sharp, temperamental, irreverent, and bubbles with acidic sass. And while I acknowledge and accept the neon aura of unrepentant drug use that surrounds and influences his work, I find it disconcerting how legions of fanboys and geekfags only cling to - and relentlessly recycle - this surface fact; He’s the guy that wrote Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, y’know. Such an approach to Thompson’s work is amateur and foolish, albeit, the most popular.

This is why, at length, it comes as no surprise to find a ticket stub to a Grateful Dead concert in one of his books; a $23.50 ticket in the “upper/side” of Grand-Whatever-Arena in WhereverTown, USA. Indulge me a judgment, but I think it is safe to assume that this was some hob knob that gobbled up cheap acid thinking the concert experience will open all kinds of portals in the aether, passageways to rapturous unifying existences, only, I’m willing to bet, he ultimately found himself staring into the fuming and swirling portal to the city sewers. This is the same middle-age guy who burned to Aoxomoxoa and drank Wild Turkey while reading Kingdom of Fear.

The ticket has no indication of a date, but considering the admission cost that this chump paid for the nosebleed section we can safely determine that we’re talking no earlier than the 1990’s. After clicking around a website dedicated to GD ticket stubs, passes, and laminates, here’s the closest comparison that I was willing to put forth the effort to find:

For the most part, after 1992 the tickets become flat, glossy and all start to look the same. Charming raised-ink roses bespeckled with glitter became a thing of the past. Likewise, Jerry Garcia eventually croaked. To commemorate this icon of hippie snobbery, Hobknob ticket-stub-man probably sparked a fatty and read aloud works by Ginsberg, Thompson and Wolfe because, at the time, it felt like the right thing to do. Perhaps, in the morning after, he came to his senses, and after a lifetime of bummin’ around he finally straightened up, sold back his vegan cookbooks, denim overalls, and his copy of The Great Shark Hunt – ticket stub and all – and got himself a jobby job.