The Farm Report

Miami was wonderful. Not to go all broken-record on your ass, but this tour has taken me to the country’s best independent bookstores. Books & Books is the Mount Everest of the bunch.

Like the Tattered Cover in Denver, this place was my approximation of heaven. But the Miami event was the book-signing highlight for the summer.

BELOW: Pondering an inscription at Books & Books.

To start with, I was in the hands of generous and kind hosts — Rick Hirsch of the Miami Herald and Robin Landers. Their condo over Biscayne Bay inspires me to create a new TV show about the city: “Miami Nice.” I spent the afternoon at the Herald with Rick, and in the company of many former students and other Gators: Bridget Carey, Megan Taylor, Stephanie Rosenblatt, Scott Hiaasen and Fabiola Santiago.

After a cocktail hour at the Hirsch-Landers palace-in-the-sky (with the lovely Jillian Landers, who gave up her room so that I might have a bed for the night), we went to Books & Books for a fabulous dinner.

My host for the event was Debra Linn, another former student, who was there with … yet another former student, Elizabeth Clarke. Bridget, Megan and Justin Abrotsky were also in the crowd, so I asked for a show of hands of former students before starting the reading. The sheer Gatorness of the crowd led me to make a joke at Florida State expense. Apparently, no one there was from FSU. 

After a good question-and-answer period, we repaired to a nearby tavern. The desperately-dancing women at the bar made me so glad that I’m married. I had a good time talking to Fabi and Bridget and Megan and then back home with Rick and Robin, we had another nice chat and round of drinks.

It was a wonderful way to wrap up the tour.

I came home to news that the Washington Post’s Book World section featured the book prominently. I was impressed that Jonathan Yardley — author of one of my favorite books, Ring, a biography of Ring Lardner — took time to review the book. Though it was one of those reviews that is really a review of Hunter S. Thompson and not my book about Hunter S. Thompson, it did contain this swell passage, which I call the money quote:

“[McKeen] gets it all in: the boozing and drugging, the histrionics, the womanizing, the violence, but also the intelligence, the loyalty, the inherent decency.”

That should fit nicely on the cover of the paperback.

I was a little disappointed that he thought my preface was too Hunter-worshipping. I don’t see it that way, though I’ll be the first to admit that since it is sentimental, it is very anti-Hunter in tone. 

But what the hell. I appreciate the attention he gave to the book.

BELOW: That’s Gator Great Bridget Carey in the front row at Books & Books. We had 65-70 for that reading.

The trip to Tampa was action-packed and a hell of a lot of fun.

BELOW: In midflight, during the reading at Inkwood Books.

It was the first day of school for the four youngest members of the McKeen Brood, so I was up at 5:15 to start that train down the track. Nicole got them all out the door and on the way to school by 7 a.m. I wished I could have gone along to share in that first-day-of-school excitement. But duty called.

The rental car has a GPS. First time I’ve ever used one of these. You plug in the address and the disembodied female voice takes over and gives you instruction. Talk about a turn-on. So the voice says, “Turn left in point-five miles…. Turn left in point-four miles.” We tested it out after picking up the car and after a while, the voice got so annoying that Savannah nicknamed the GPS “Tori Spelling.”

The day began with the morning show “Studio 10.” I got to share the set with the show’s two hosts and my buddy Wayne Garcia, the political editor of Creative Loafing. The host, Jerome Ritchey, is a Hunter S. Thompson junkie.

From there I went to the Fox station and had a great interview with Kathy Fountain on the noon news. She was a wonderful interviewer — and was also part of that generation of young journalists deeply affected by Hunter S. Thompson. I’m part of that group as well.

Then I raced across town for a call-in show with WMNF, that fabulous community radio station. The host Rob Lorei, also peppered me with some great questions. I love listener questions too — and got several during the day. One came from a listener who accused me of glorifying an alcoholic and drug abuser. I suggested he read the book, then let me know if he thought alcohol and drug use was glorified.

I had time to breathe in the afternoon, and after Wayne suggested Alessi’s Bakery and its awe-inspiring Philly cheesesteak, I camped out at the Creative Loafing office and caught up on work. Then we went to the Tampa Bay Brewing Company in Ybor City to do a brief Creative Loafing segment for local TV.

Hunter’s friend, the great mystery novelist Tom Corcoran, happened to be in Tampa on business and so we hooked up with him. Along the way, we had picked up Wade Tatangelo and his sister Elizabeth. Wade reviewed Outlaw Journalist for Creative Loafing — and put Corcoran’s gleaming Hunter portrait on the cover of this week’s issue.

The signing was at Inkwood Books. I’d done a signing there for Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, back in 2000. As I recall, only a dozen people showed up then, and some of them were dead. So I was a little spooked by the trip to Inkwood.

It’s a great store — no doubt about it. But I didn’t want to let them down again.

I needn’t have worried. We had a fantastic turnout. There were several people that I knew, including former students Sam Dolson (from way the fuck back in the 1980s) and more recent grads, including automotive journalist Jeffrey Ross and Ebony Bosch, who works for cars.com — and who also was an Outlaw Journalist research assistant when she was still in school. Jessie DaSilva, the incoming editor of the Independent Florida Alligator, also showed up (she was finishing her Tampa Tribune internship). But there were 35-40 people in the friendly confines of Inkwood and almost all of them at least pretended to be interested in what I was saying. Some of them actually were.

It was nice to be able to toss a couple of questions to Corcoran. People often ask questions about Hunter that I can’t answer — because I was not an intimate. But Hunter deeply respected Corcoran. In fact, Corcoran was on that short list of people (with George Plimpton and Ed Bradley) Hunter admired so much that he was always on his best behavior around them.  I’ve heard this from some of Hunter’s former assistants.

I also told the crowd that they need to investigate Corcoran’s mystery novels. Wayne listened and bought Corcoran’s first novel, The Mango Opera. Corcoran inscribed it, “To Wayne Garcia … unless Wayne sold it and you are buying it at a garage sale.”

We repaired to the Dubliner bar afterward, and it was nice to catch up with Sam, Jeff and Ebony. Many beers were consumed. The bar has Boddington’s on tap, but of course I ordered Miller Lite. My beer came with the added attraction of a chunk of glass floating in the beer. I spat it out, and the glass cut my finger. The friendly bartender produced a Band-Aid and a half-squeezed tube of Neosporin. 

Despite this near-death experience, it was a good evening. After a restful night at Chez Garcia, I’ll pack up in a few minutes and hit the road for Miami … last date on the book tour. I’ve had a wonderful time on this trip and visited some of the best bookstores in America. But I’m particularly happy about the Inkwood appearance last night. I needed to exorcize the demons from that awful event in 2000.

And I think I have.

BELOW: Here I chug a bottle of water, to see if I can make it through the whole talk / reading / Q&A / signing without having to hit the men’s room. I’m a slave to the bladder, you know

After a week off, we resumed the tour for a one-night stand at The Book Mark in Atlantic Beach, Florida. The owner, Rona Brinlee, is one of the country’s great bookstore owners. We (I brought daughter Savannah along) were the guests for the last reading / signing before the Book Mark begins a major renovation, which will make the store even more magnificent.

Once again: support your local independent bookstores. They deserve it. (FYI, the Book Mark will be closed only two or three days. Wish I could be there to help knock out the walls and repaint. It’s going to be gorgeous. Rona promised to send me pictures and, if she does, I’ll post them.)

We had a great crowd at the Book Mark and a number of excellent questions. I love the Q&A portion of these events, because I get questions and comments that I could have never expected. Hunter’s readers — and most who show up tend to be his fans — are generally fascinating people with a lot on their minds. Of course, I wrote the book for non-fans as well … people who just want to know “what the deal was with that Thompson guy.” I’ve heard from several people who read the book knowing nothing about Hunter S. Thompson … and now they are hooked. They want to read his books.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Some of the people at the Book Mark had come to the screening of “Gonzo” at the Jacksonville Film Festival and remembered my question-and-answer session afterward. A few people I knew. Greg Undeen, a great photographer and graduate of our fine program at the University of Florida, showed up and made my day by buying a book. The mother of Mara Sloan, a UF student who transcribed several interviews for the book, also showed up. She bought two copies — one for Mara and one for Mara’s Hunter-loving boyfriend.

I wish we could have stayed the night. The Book Mark is in one of the most idyllic locales I know for a bookstore … mere steps from the Atlantic Ocean.

But Friday was a work day, so it was not to be.

I’ve gotten a few more good reviews and Anita Thompson’s posting on the Amazon page for the book cheered me up. It was very kind of her to say good things about the book and insist they be posted on Amazon.

This next week will feature a live interview on  ”The Scott Farrell Show” in Tampa on Wednesday night. I’m supposed to also be featured in the special books issue of Creative Loafing that comes out that day. I drive to Tampa right after taking the kids to school on Thursday. I’ll do a live noon interview with WMNF in Tampa, hang with the Creative Loafing people that afternoon, then do a signing at Inkwood Books that night. I’m the guest of the magnificent Wayne Garcia, political editor for Creative Loafing and author of the “Political Whore” column and blog. 

Friday, I hit the road for Miami. I hope to see some of my friends in the Herald newsroom, then make it to Books and Books in Coral Gables for an 8 p.m. signing. I’m the guest of Rick Hirsch, the Herald’s managing editor for multimedia. I just got an e-mail from Dante Lima, a friend who was in Books and Books today. He said the store was festooned with so much McKeen shit — posters, stacks of Outlaw Journalist and Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, announcements of my impending visit – that he wondered if I performed sexual favors upon the bookstore owners. Of course not. I haven’t even met them yet.

I’m really looking forward to both of these visits … but I’m still tired from those first two weeks on the road. I hope to be severely caffienated before both of these visits.