Post #225842 by Thomas on Sun, Apr 9, 2006 2:01 PM

I was recently quite sick with fever, etc., and got my hands on "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in audiobook form (CD). It really got me through two rough days (I'd been about ready to shoot the TV). Besides entertaining me and taking my mind off my discomfort, I think in a strange way I found it reassuring to listen to all the dangerous and unhealthy exploits -- it made me feel wholesome by comparison, and I think I needed that at the time. Anyway, I noted two things with some relevance to the tiki mindset. At one point, they are in a "Polynesian" bar/restaurant. Unfortunately that's about all that's said about it. They make a phone call from there, and there is a kind of menacing situation (as usual), and that's about all I remember. Secondly, he frequently refers to his "Acapulco shirt." I found this interesting, as I'd never heard this phrase. I assume it refers more or less to what we today call aloha shirts, Hawaiian shirts, tropical shirts, etc. I think I'll start calling my florid Salvation Army specials "Acapulco shirts" from now on, just to be different (and in honor of HST). I think he goes into a brief digression on the "meaning" of such attire, kind of "linking" it to the sort of colorful hippy-wear that was popular just a few years earlier. Like the tropical shirts expressed some of the same sense of rebellion and freedom, albeit in a post-hippy era. Though these might have been my thoughts, and aren't really in the text. My mind was foggy at that time.