Woody Allen completed and released his fiftieth movie, writing and directing this time in French, por le premier fois. When I typed that sentence it became at once, the first thing I’ve written since I submitted my last piece of fiction to The New Yorker (a habit I’ve had for thirty years as an endpoint to process) and the first blog post I’ve written sitting in comfort at a keyboard in San Francisco, my preferred place of residence, in many years.

I would just sit here noodling a story ad infinitum if I didn’t use the New Yorker that way. Some past submissions can be found on this site under the category fiction … here

I am at last Hipolito, the failed writer.

Though to many I have not tried because I refused to participate in the hijacking of literature we have endured under the commercial models of the digital generation. Rest assured, I am finger-peck typing onto “Notepad” software that has NO artificial intelligence or generative tech. When you get MTK, it’s ONLY ever MTK.

When I completed these paragraphs they became the first blog post I’ve written since 2022, when I last went around the world’s northern hemisphere.

In November and December of last year, I contemplated participating in or covering the 2024 Election in the USA once again. I made 15 eps of a podcast as prep, trying to motivate myself to step up to it. But I just can’t do it.

I am at last Thompson.

I cannot cover Trump and Biden, a racist farce run by religious cults; reality and truth masked and drowned by leagues of bullshit, science and the Constitution ripped to rags.

I’m the atheist who screams, “Why, oh Lord, Why have you forsaken me?” and immediately crack up laughing. Works every time. If I’m depressed, quite useful.

I have recently, after many years of never mentioning it to anyone, told some young people the story of meeting Mr. Thompson at the airport hotel bar that rainy night in ’94, when it was sheeting outside and nobody was going anywhere and the monitor on the wall read “DELAYED,” next to every flight.

Why? I don’t know. I even did a Gonzo-journo for the digi-gens of Thailand when they opened a third mega mall in Bangkok. Ha!

Why, oh Hunter, why have you forsaken me? hahahahahahahaha

All right, so I’m blogging again.

love,

Karthik