PJ O'Rourke, RIP
 

74, and lung cancer. RIP

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/pj-orourke-conservative-writer-journalist/2022/02/15/id/1056978/

Bummer. :(

Damn, the cigars got him

Got my first warning on this website from Wayne when I quoted PJ about the ass engine slot car thing

The best:

P.J. O'Rourke - Quotes 1-387

“You are never to poor to clean your front yard...”

My favorite author and also far and away the funniest person I've ever heard in person. He spoke at an author's conference I attended and I swear I couldn't breathe for a good chunk of it

Many thanks....added to favorites list.

Dang
Sgt. Dynaflow's Last Patrol is one of my favorite road trip stories.

My favorite P.J. bit (Rated R):

How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink


.

Maybe he an Michael Nesmith are out driving a ghost truck somewhere in the Baja.

If you can find the “Foreigners Around the World” article, prepare to laugh out loud at some of the outrageous, satirically-over-the-top-racist characterizations of just about every nationality. Like watching Airplane, Caddyshack, or Blazing Saddles, it’s from another era; the word “cancel” wouldn’t begin to describe what they’d do to him today.

GAWD that's funny! Would never be published today...

"How would your mother feel if she knew you were doing this? She'd cry. She really would. And that's how you know it's fun. Anything that makes your mother cry is fun. Sigmund Freud wrote all about this. It's a well-known fact."

I remember that!

Dang that was hillarious!

rjp

He was a great writer and damn, he was funny. C&D ungated "Sgt. Dynaflow's Last Patrol", which I don't think I had read before:

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a39097176/roadmaster-reruns-sgt-dynaflos-last-patrol/

Just great stuff...all of it!

This euphoric passage from that piece, about overtaking a Porsche, is as good a snippet of O’Rourke’s high style as any:

We came by a 930 Turbo Porsche near the Talladega exit. He was going about 90 when we passed him, and he gave us a little bit of a run, passed us at about 110, and then we passed him again. He was as game as anybody we came across and was hanging right on our tail at 120. Ah, but then — then we just walked away from him. Five seconds and he was nothing but a overturned-boat-shaped dot in the mirrors. I suppose he could have kept up, but driving one of those ass-engined Nazi slot cars must be a task at around 225 percent of the speed limit. But not for us. I’ve got more vibration here on my electric typewriter than we had blasting into Birmingham that beautiful morning in that beautiful car on a beautiful tour across this wonderful country from the towers of Manhattan to the bluffs of Topanga Canyon so fast we filled the appointment logs of optometrists’ offices in 30 cities just from people getting their eyes checked for seeing streaks because they’d watched us go by.

Dwight Garner’s essay on him in the NYT today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/books/pj-orourke-books-essays.html#commentsContainer

“Better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than spend tonight like there’s no money” made me laugh my ass off.

I was truly saddened by this news. He was one of my favorite writers, and I was a fan since his days at National Lampoon.

I believe it was P.J. who first concluded that the best handling car was not front-wheel drive or rear-wheel-drive, but a rental car.

Aside from the afore mentioned "How to..." article, my favorite was his article on Rent-A-Wreck entitled "Getting Wrecked" and published in the December 1981 issue of Car and Driver magazine.

Luckily, that article and many other great car-related ones, were republished in his 2009 compilation book "Driving Like Crazy" - A book that all car enthusiasts should have on their book shelf, IMHO.

At the risk of going into PARF-ville, his "political" books were pretty good too, "Parliament of Whores" and "How the Hell Did This Happen" especially.

If it uses the bathroom under the sink, it's probably a cat.

If it asks for expensive jewelry, it's probably a Girlfriend.

PJ O'Rourke

rjp

Does anyone know where to find his story of how he became a conservative... as he tells about his first "real" job and the shock of seeing how much of his first check was dinged for taxes? Great stuff.

I have the issue. It's as funny today as it was then because it is so hyperbolically over the top.
We could laugh at ourselves once.