Hunter S. Thompson

[Prudence]

AP reports that he killed himself today, Sunday.

I don't even know what to say.

[wendybeth]

I just read that as well : Hunter S. Thompson (http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/21/thompson.obit.ap/index.html) .

Crap. I so wanted him to live to be 100, if only to piss off all those health nuts he lived by. Godspeed, Hunter.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

So terribly sad. I really enjoyed his writing.

[DwoernAdale]

This is truly a sad sad loss. I loved his style of writing and don't believe I have ever laughed so hard while reading anyone elses social observations. From Curse of Lono to Hells Angels(two of my favorites), he was both engrossing and entertaining.

I am in the process of reading On the Road(thanks to some posters here and there sig quotes) and had been thinking through the whole thing how much it reminded me of Thompson. I was planning to go back and reread some of my favorites when I finished. I guess I will do so now with a very heavy heart.

I will miss him.

[blueerica]

Shocked smiley when I need him?

I am shocked. Truly. I remember doing interpretations of some of his works in my speech class. Wow... And his journalism... He was so strange and worn out and... I'm so sad... :(

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:

"There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached." (from The Rum Diaries -- which I need to re-read!)


"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

[Motorboat Cruiser]

"No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master."

Hunter S. Thompson

[mousepod]

"Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final."

Hunter S Thompson (1969)

see ya Hunter. and don't forget Sandra Dee and John Raitt...

[CoasterMatt]

What a weekend... :(

[Moonliner]

I wonder what Garry Trudeau is going to make of this? Is Duke doomed?

[blueerica]

http://www.fargonebooks.com/fgimages/gonzo.gif

I forgot about these sites on Hunter.

I thought about this a lot as I went to bed, and as I was trying to find the sites I'd been to before, to find out what they had to say about HST, I found this, which probably sums it all up.

"I also want to say this. We all knew Hunter could go any day. What I expected was a headline like this "Gonzo journalist shot by police after consuming hundreds of hits of LSD and attempting to paint murals on Aspen police cars" or something cool and strange like that. I guess I wanted an Easy Rider type ending... a martyr who fought to the end." -- Lono -- I Am Correct (http://www.iamcorrect.blogspot.com/)

[Gemini Cricket]

:(

[wendybeth]

My brother-in-law just sent this in an e-mail:

"Initial CNN internet article was bull****. Quotes Nixon as saying HST represented “that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character.” What weenie-wagging journalistic fraud is that? That’s what Thompson said about Nixon!!! I think we’ll be seeing a ton of crap from the neocons in the next few days. I hope Limbaugh chokes on a doughnut."


He's right, and that is shoddy reporting. Hunter would have ripped that guy a new one.

[flippyshark]

Time for a video double feature - "Where the Buffalo Roam" and "Fear and Loathing"
Is "Buffalo" even available? I saw this waaaay back when, and liked it a lot. I'll have to go check Netflix and see if it's on DVD. (For anyone who doesn't remember, Bill Murray played HST in that one. It was his first jump into "serious" acting, and it worked pretty good for me. Johnny Depp's protrayal overshadows it, to be sure, but they are both worth checking out.)

[wendybeth]

We have them both, Flippy! I love "Where the Buffalo Roam"- I thought old Bill did a great job.

We still have a picture of Hunter hanging on our wall- it's from his "Generation of Swine" tour/junket. I'm really going to miss the crazy bastard.

[DwoernAdale]

"Don't take any guff from these swine," I yelled. "Remember, if you have any trouble you can always send a telegram to the Right People."

"Yeah...Explaining my Position."

I always loved that one. An old friend and I used to holler this at each other at odd times and in odd places. It always cracked us up, and confused those around us who weren't 'in the know'. Good times.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

:(

I was just talking in the last month or so about how I need to read his stuff.

Where the Buffalo Roam is great. Definitely worth a rental. Weird to see how both Murray and Depp did him so exactly alike.

I'm so sad that after all he's done, he couldn't be happy with living. :( :( :(

[wendybeth]

I suspect it was ill health. There is a picture of him on our local newspaper that shows him being helped out of a van last year, and he looked kind of frail and sickly. Given the lifestyle he led for so many years, it's a miracle that he lived this long. He was a wild man and he had a wild life. I'm really going to miss him.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

I heard someone call this "perhaps the greatest opening to an american novel".


We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.


Man, the more information I read about him today, the sadder I get. I've heard many speculate that he could have had some sort of terminal illness. That would make a little more sense out of the whole thing.

[tracilicious]

I prefer Murray's portrayal to Depp's. I hope if they ever do a "Death of Hunter S. Thompson" movie that Bill is him again. I'm saddened (well, as sad as one can be for the loss of someone they didn't know), but not surprised. I need to read more of his work.

A coworker of Michael's has a cousin in Colorado that works at a liquor store. Supposedly HST was always coming in and buying loads of alcohol and paying with a check that would inevitably bounce. They would always give him the liquor anyways though, because he was just so cool.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I prefer Murray's portrayal to Depp's. I hope if they ever do a "Death of Hunter S. Thompson" movie that Bill is him again. I totally agree, and thought WtBR was a better movie overall than Fear and Loathing. Fear and Loathing relied too much on eye candy.

Thompson's been on my need-to-read list for a while. I wish I could say that this will motivate me to get around to it, but I know myself better than that.

[Tref]

Kalungkutan! And now I read that Dr. Gene Scott is dead. The two Doctors were heroes of mine back in the heady days of college. I wanted to write like Hunter (I was fired from my college editor position after one issue! Hehe) and I wanted to preach like Dr. Gene. I remember taking a trip to see his compound back in the late '80s. His church was a bizarre place! Barbed wire and attack dogs protected a small building, several yellow buses and lots of discarded crap. The place looked like an army base, albeit one that had been taken over by drifters and ne'er-do-wells. My friend, Paula and I wisely re-considered our plan to sneak in and take a look around. Though, as we turned to leave we heard the unmistakable bellow of Dr. Gene. He was screaming at somebody within the compound. We don't know who or why, but we both laughed. Hearing the great man made the diversion of the highway worth our time. As for Hunter S. Thompson, he opted to stay in the car.

[blueerica]

Wow! Dr. Gene Scott died?

I remember thinking he was such a genius with some of his stuff that he just went totally insane. He'd go back and forth with various translations and versions of the bibles to find meaning. Wild stuff. Best part are the videos he plays between shows of hot girls riding around his compound on bicycles. It's hot.

[Tito's Kitten]

Damn... I don't check out my pc for a coupla days and now my beloved Hunter is gone. The significant other told me tonight "hey, heard about Hunter??" I said wha.. no, he better not be dead...no, he's not dead is he??!! and I gasped in horror... Damn....

Hunter reminds me of good times with old freinds. My old friend turned me on to him becasue he felt I read too much Vonnegut..("oh.... in that Vonnegut stage of life" he used to call it....)

Damn.

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

It’s interesting how these suicidal genius types put that final period on their lives. It isn't the first by far and I'm sure it's not the last. You can chalk it up to the possibility that they had enough guts to be able to write that last sentence as they wanted or maybe they truly were not suicidal geniuses but ironicly insane.

[Ghoulish Delight]

becasue he felt I read too much Vonnegut:confused: Is there such a thing?

[wendybeth]

Leave it to Hunter to provide us with one last explosion: Hunter's Big Bang (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,148493,00.html) .

I'm still sad he's gone, but I'm smiling at this news. He was so cool. :snap::cheers:

[Gemini Cricket]

Anyone see 'Doonesbury' today? Trudeau addresses Thompson's death.
:)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Dredging this back up...Johnny Depp has offered to cover the cost to erect the canon out of which Thompson's remains will be shot.

http://www.nbc4.tv/irresistible/4539590/detail.html

[Gemini Cricket]

I think that's very cool.
:)

[MerryPrankster]

Very nice. Johnny is one cool cat. :cool:

[wendybeth]

Johnny is one very cool cat. It's also very cool that they became such great friends and got to spend some quality time impersonating one another and blowing things up.:D I'm glad Hunter had such a friend in the last years of his life, and I'm glad Johnny is here to carry on the Gonzo tradition, albeit in the acting field...