Dr. Thompson, you stupid fück! Options

[kentuckiannna]

Hunter S. Thompson, dead at 67

"When you think you just can't stand it/ you're gonna leave empty-handed/ do you still dream of being saved?" ~"Gone to Stay" Freakwater

I have a parody of Thompson's famous Derby essay (Playboy, 1972), which I have pulled and am now revising. On Thursday, Feb 24 I will read it in memorium for Thompson at Bean Street Cafe. I'll post it here at some point too.

Remind me to tell y'all the story of when I rode in Thompson's limo when he came here in 1994 or -5 (I forget; must've been the drugs).

I'd say RIP, but 's far as I know, Thompson was an atheists, so that's a given, and probably the reason too.

[nimrodcooper]

Thompson suffered from the darkness of his own cynicism. I was wondering what his take on the current incarnation of the Bush administration is. Now I know.

[taliendo]

It could only be described as apropos -- I rented and watch Fear and Loathing yesterday whilst sitting around my apartment drinking beer (a fine way to celebrate the Sabbath, imo.)

Happy wanderings, Hunter Thompson.

[kentuckiannna]

Thompson suffered from the darkness of his own cynicism.  I was wondering what his take on the current incarnation of the Bush administration is.  Now I know.

Yeah, talk about an exit strategy...

[bivester]

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
Hunter S. Thompson

A word to the wise is infuriating.
Hunter S. Thompson

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson

[keith from ny]

Dr. Thompson lived by the gun and died by the gun. Personally I think he was kind of an asshole from what I've read about him, but the man had his own unique style and he sure could write. I still remember the thrill of first reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when it came out in installments in Rolling Stone. It was nothing like anything else I had ever read, an adrenaline-drenched pastiche of vivid drug-induced visions loosely tethered to reality.

I'm always sad to see someone come to the point of ending it all.

[hometown boy dav...]

He was my favorite writer. Too bad he blew his brains out.

I loved The Great Shark Hunt , the collection of his articles.

Here's a photo and a Ralph Stedman drawering.


-When the going turns weird, the weird turn pro. - HST

[amcorrea]

HST: The River Is Still Running

And more info:

You've probably heard this from a hundred other people by now, but: the L.A. Times reports that Hunter S. Thompson spent his past few months in considerable pain, after a) hip replacement surgery, b  ) back surgery, and c) breaking his leg on a recent jaunt to Hawaii.

And now more...

"This was definitely not spur of the moment," said [George] Tobia [HST's lawyer], who plans to fly to Colorado today to help carry out Thompson's wishes. "He arranged to have things dealt with, and he wanted his family close by, but he didn't want anyone to know -- he didn't want anyone to try to stop him. In a weird way, he wanted it to be, I think, a celebration."

Was there anything specific that led Thompson, the model for a character in the comic strip "Doonesbury," to commit suicide? Tobia said he did not know, but noted Thompson has written about suicide and talked about it with friends.

The decision, he said, had nothing to do with the reelection of George W. Bush or the current trend in national politics, which provided a certain grist for Thompson's mill. Nor did he have significant financial problems. With his land, archives, royalties, and other valuable possessions, Tobia said, Thompson's estate is worth millions of dollars.

The best explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it difficult for him to travel.

"He didn't want to waste away," Tobia said. "He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care. It wouldn't suit his sense of self."

This post has been edited by amcorrea: Feb 23 2005, 09:23 AM

[amcorrea]

Rake's Progress links to an article in the Denver Post...

In what could pass for an outlandish scene from the pages of one of Hunter S. Thompson's books, actor Johnny Depp and others who were close to the gonzo journalist are searching for a cannon and researching firing techniques to grant the author's wish that his cremated remains be blasted into the sky.

"If it can be done, we will do it," said Boston entertainment lawyer George Tobia Jr., who has represented Thompson for about 15 years. "Maybe it will be part of a public thing, or maybe one night a shot will ring out and people will know."

[...]"It think if someone wanted to fire a cannon on their own property, I think they could do that," said Pitkin County sheriff's investigator Joe DiSalvo. "I think by statute it would be OK."

And there's more. And it involves underwear.

[FallingLeaf]

Update, from AP:

**************************
ASPEN, Colorado (AP)-- The widow of journalist Hunter S. Thompson said her husband killed himself while the two were talking on the phone.

"I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in Friday's editions.

She said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly ESPN column -- but instead of saying goodbye, he set the telephone down and shot himself.

Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said.
**************************

He shot himself while on the phone with his wife. To me, that demonstrates selfishness and self-absorption to the point of dismissal. Who would do that to his WIFE?????

Screw anybody who does something like that.



-------------

This post has been edited by FallingLeaf: Feb 25 2005, 10:34 AM

[slamb]

suicide is horrible. absolutely horrible. yet it seems like how he'd go...

[nimrodcooper]

The entire act fits his idiom and story so perfectly. Shakespeare couldn't have written a better end to the story. Drama and bitterness are a volatile mix. Combine them with a highly developed sense of personal style (a style saturated in "selfishness and self-absorption") it is volcanic. Thompson's end game performance is mortally poetic. What it lacks in convention, honor, and courage it gains in rythm, style and ego.

Thompson was not a role model. He was a weird incongruous imp. Not at all unlike Balaam's ass, God tortured us with the prophetic axioms that flew out of a completely unfit, spastic oracle. It was his outlandish disregard for the dilettantish ethics of social deportment that made his insightful prose so powerful (and offensive)... and so was his end.

'Cause suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

This post has been edited by nimrodcooper: Mar 1 2005, 11:36 AM

[FallingLeaf]

Interesting perspective. I'm afraid I still end up at "a well-spoken druggie who off'd himself in such a way as to torment his wife, probably for his own last amusement."

[zayne]

reading material

peace,
zayne

[MyWaterMyWine]

bit torrent so H.S. Thompson:

http://www.overtherhine.com/orchard/index....ndpost&p=116753