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Hunter S. Thompson, dead...
- Thread starter happyfunball
- Start date
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Man that sucks. I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a decade and a half ago, and it made a big impact in how I saw the world as a 15 year old. 
I guess the sordid details will come out sooner or later, but I wish it hadn't been suicide. I need my anti-establishment heroes like Hunter to dragged off stage kicking and screaming and railing against it all to the end, and I'm forced to wonder why he did it (a question I'd rarely ask of anyone). His health had been pretty bad the last few years and he mentioned his living in pain occasionally the past little while, maybe that was it.
I guess the sordid details will come out sooner or later, but I wish it hadn't been suicide. I need my anti-establishment heroes like Hunter to dragged off stage kicking and screaming and railing against it all to the end, and I'm forced to wonder why he did it (a question I'd rarely ask of anyone). His health had been pretty bad the last few years and he mentioned his living in pain occasionally the past little while, maybe that was it.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
Damnit, why does someone so cool have to go out so lame.
Oh well R.I.P Hunter S Thompson.
Oh well R.I.P Hunter S Thompson.
Litigation Manuel
Member
I just began reading my first book of his, The Rum Diaries. This is gonna make it feel so different reading that. I guess his son was the one to discover his body. Creativity really took a loss today.
I'm getting older. I look thirtyish, feel sixty-ish on good days and am, in reality, only 27. I am certainly too old to be drinking like a college freshman for four nights in a row, but I did it anyway... fuck it. Who cares, am I right? Your liver only lives once, and if it complains you smack it down and keep on downing them. Words to live by.
So I there I was, in the midst of a four day span of debauchery and depravity, that saw me stumbling around in a half awake haze in the middle of Hell's Karaoke Bar one night, beating the shit out of my friend with a broomstick the next, and then getting too drunk to drive for the first time in over five years the next. There were other things happening, too: dancing like a fever dream, married women grabbing my ass, a play that I attended, a movie date with my friend Skinny Bitch(aka the lovely Melissa), car batteries dying... then I passed out on my couch right before I was supposed to go see a friend play a set at a club downtown.
But I woke up a few hours later to the worst possible news I could imagine: my last living literary hero, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, had shot himself in the head. Horrible, horrible. I nearly cried, and proceeded to get stupid drunk one last time. It was raining fiercely around midnight when I found out, and I stumbled out into the street with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a stick in the other, with bad intentions... I wanted to smash the shit out of the Republican down the street's car windshield. I would have done it, too, but a cop was shaking down some poor bastard on the street corner and giving me dark looks out of the corner of his eye. I stared him down for a minute, pointedly drank the last of the bottle of scotch in full view of him, and then retreated back to my apartment, leaving the empty bottle and the stick on my landing. The rain did it's best to wash me clean of the stupidity of the past four days, but today I still feel like someone has pressed a mute button on me somehow.
So I there I was, in the midst of a four day span of debauchery and depravity, that saw me stumbling around in a half awake haze in the middle of Hell's Karaoke Bar one night, beating the shit out of my friend with a broomstick the next, and then getting too drunk to drive for the first time in over five years the next. There were other things happening, too: dancing like a fever dream, married women grabbing my ass, a play that I attended, a movie date with my friend Skinny Bitch(aka the lovely Melissa), car batteries dying... then I passed out on my couch right before I was supposed to go see a friend play a set at a club downtown.
But I woke up a few hours later to the worst possible news I could imagine: my last living literary hero, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, had shot himself in the head. Horrible, horrible. I nearly cried, and proceeded to get stupid drunk one last time. It was raining fiercely around midnight when I found out, and I stumbled out into the street with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a stick in the other, with bad intentions... I wanted to smash the shit out of the Republican down the street's car windshield. I would have done it, too, but a cop was shaking down some poor bastard on the street corner and giving me dark looks out of the corner of his eye. I stared him down for a minute, pointedly drank the last of the bottle of scotch in full view of him, and then retreated back to my apartment, leaving the empty bottle and the stick on my landing. The rain did it's best to wash me clean of the stupidity of the past four days, but today I still feel like someone has pressed a mute button on me somehow.
So I turned up at work an hour ago and stumbled over to my desk hoping that today would be a lot less stressful than the 12 hour anal probe I got yesterday and loaded up the usual gaggle of sites for the morning news...and now here I am, trying to hold it together for another 10 hours before I get home.
fuck.
Hunter was one of the biggest influences of not only my writing but my life...him and Dave Sim (still alive, but went off the deep end). Anyone who read any of the Hotgames.com stuff could see a lot of Hunter in it. I always knew he'd die in a strange and unusual way (that image about being killed by wild bats always made me laugh) but this is too sad. 67! That is so young. He had so much to tell us and warn us about this horrible future we're all doomed for.
My wife's on the phone telling me she just got the great new job she's been after for a while. My best friend is downstairs nervous with excitement about finding out what sex her first born will be today. And all I want to do is go sulk in a corner somewhere.
Our wonderful PR lady just handed me a pill and I will consume this and get back to work, but it's going to be a weird, long day.
Well, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, so I'll be a pro for the next 10 hours.
fuck.
Hunter was one of the biggest influences of not only my writing but my life...him and Dave Sim (still alive, but went off the deep end). Anyone who read any of the Hotgames.com stuff could see a lot of Hunter in it. I always knew he'd die in a strange and unusual way (that image about being killed by wild bats always made me laugh) but this is too sad. 67! That is so young. He had so much to tell us and warn us about this horrible future we're all doomed for.
My wife's on the phone telling me she just got the great new job she's been after for a while. My best friend is downstairs nervous with excitement about finding out what sex her first born will be today. And all I want to do is go sulk in a corner somewhere.
Our wonderful PR lady just handed me a pill and I will consume this and get back to work, but it's going to be a weird, long day.
Well, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, so I'll be a pro for the next 10 hours.
Mac the KNife
Member
GONZO FOREVER
Lucky Forward
Member
Good article here:
http://www.aspendailynews.com/articles.cfm?id=1
I guess this explains why he did what he did, but it's still very sad.
http://www.aspendailynews.com/articles.cfm?id=1
I guess this explains why he did what he did, but it's still very sad.
Just wanted to add my favorite piece of writing by Hunter to this thread.
"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - -the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than 40 years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - -the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than 40 years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
Lucky Forward
Member
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/23/thompson.death.ap/index.html
Even in death, the man has style.
Even in death, the man has style.
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