HST RIP

[Guest]

sheesh!!! another one bites the dust, eh eh eh yeah!

good bye, doctor hunter S. thompson ;)

[calsur]

Bronco,

You are a real piece of shit. Hunter S. Thompson is not even cold and you are LAUGHING about his apparent suicide? So what did he do to you? Offend your self rightist morals? Hack on a political figure you revere? Told the truth too many times? So what did he do to you that you laugh at his death? I would really like to know.

[geekster]

FUCK.

[ryaninthesky]

To Whom It May Concern:
Today will be marked as a most memorable day. A day that will live in my heart forever as a day of immense tragedy. As some of you may have heard, infamous writer Hunter S. Thompson perished in his home due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was wildly acclaimed as one of the centuries most revered writes, and paradoxically, one of the most resented. Some felt he was the voice that couldn't be shaken, a colorful personality that gave, in my opinion, the best social critiques this country has ever known. If you are a new-comer to his work, there has never a better time than now to gain appreciation or this man.

I am somewhat at a loss for words. Something that is very unusual for me.

I urge you to please take time out of your day to think of him in a positive manner and say your own personal blessings for someone who has been called the "Fitzgerald of his generation". As for myself, I will be quietly mourning perhaps the most influential person in my life outside of my parents. I have never in my life this close to someone I have never met. Celebrity has the tendency to disgust me, but with Hunter this was never the case.

May death have mercy on your soul Hunter.

Sincerely,

Ryan A. Ogren

I thank you for your time.

--
"Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth."
-Oscar Wilde

[spectabillis]

You are a real piece of shit. Hunter S. Thompson is not even cold and you are LAUGHING about his apparent suicide?.

Not to disagree, he is late, great man. But I think you are going to hear that kind of stuff awhile. I remember all those Cobain jokes, so it will not take anything away from his greatness.

[sputnik]

This is either going to put a crimp in Rodent's Gonzo Rampage or make it very relevant.

[joel the ornery]

Duke, May you rest in peace.

Writer Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself
By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer

ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67. Thompson's wife, Anita, had gone out before the shooting and was not home at the time.

Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

Thompson is credited alongside Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping pioneer New Journalism — or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" — in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story.

Thompson, whose early writings mostly appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on such historic figures as Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.


"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told The Associated Press in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."

Thompson also wrote such collections as "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.

Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and once said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."

Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

That book, perhaps Thompson's most famous, begins: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home.

"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.

"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."

The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant trying to chase a bear off his property.

He also is survived by his son, Juan Thompson.

Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.

Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts for stories that didn't materialize.

It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion.

Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us."

Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while."

The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste."

"That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."

[robotland]

Damn.

[Ranger Genius]

Oh, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I guess it's only appropriate to go and in some way disturb, confound, and annoy the masses today.

[buckethead alien]

He was only 67. Depressing.

[spectabillis]

Oh, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I guess it's only appropriate to go and in some way disturb, confound, and annoy the masses today.

shaking the ant farm?

[dougaldutch]

Grrrr!

I'll raise a jar for him tonight

DougalD

[Guest]

calsur screamed:

You are a real piece of shit. Hunter S. Thompson is not even cold and you are LAUGHING about his apparent suicide?

dude, take it easy. thompson was one of my heros. i'm lot laughing AT him, i'm laughing WITH him. if he chooses to end his life - i'm going to celebrate his life.

go take your anger out someplace else. e-playa is one of the most uptight places on the web. you're a real sign of that.

bronco

[spectabillis]

e-playa is one of the most uptight places on the web.
bronco

yeah, ironic isn't it?

but i think people will be acting/reacting for awhile until as the dust slowly settles down.

[Guest]

spectabillis

yeah, ironic isn't it?

still going....

[calsur]

Bronco,

First, I did not “scream” at you.

Second, I was responding to your original post where you laughed at a person who committed suicide. If that makes me “uptight” so be it.

Third, If you wanted celebrate his life you did a piss poor job because that is not what your original post read to me.

[Karma]

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

hst

[Guest]

calsur:

Third, If you wanted celebrate his life you did a piss poor job because that is not what your original post read to me.

what makes you think interpreting my reaction to the death of one of my heros is your task? wait. don't answer that. rather, take the time to consider the Man.

[stickysunset]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas changed my world (mid70's) and helped me become ME. i even named my cool '51 chevy rust red truck The Red Shark. the cops in western arizona didn't understand...heh heh heh.

[Guest]

stickysunset:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas changed my world (mid70's) and helped me become ME.

me too! i loved that bastard like a father and friend. i'm still dealing with the loss... i'd like to go to the memorial service - i imagine a lot of us will be there. i'll post details when i find them.

"Wait a minute, pardon me lady, but
I think there's some kind of
ignorant chicken-fucker in this car
who needs his face cut open. "

love it!
b

[theCryptofishist]

He was only 67. Depressing.

I'm sure with that hard livin' he counts as older.

[spectabillis]

Bronco....

pretty sure that was just confusion on both parts, almost had the same perception until i stepped away and came back.

no harm, no foul