A Small Victory

I can't believe it yet.

I'm reminded of Jerry Garcia's death: how the hell did he live that long?

Now who will be the first to compare gonzo journalism to blogging in a memorial post?

There's usually a price to be paid for appearing larger than life, because in the end none of us actually IS larger than life. Thompson was such a grand caricature - I never paid a great deal of attention to him but he did have some significant insights, and he definitely did have a way with the words...

fark him,,,,, he was a liberal asshat.... the world is a beter place!!!!!!!

big fat bummer. I loved all the stuff i read by him, even if i didn't agree with each and every sentence. The man could write, and that's something to be missed.

anyway, there has already been an Oregon blogger to make the comparison, i think Harrumph. (hell if i know the URL, but you can find it at www.orblogs.com)

That was really touching, Lawson. Not to mention idiotic and juvenile.

I can't believe it. I went to bed last night, thinking all was right in the world ... well, relatively. Now I wake up to this.

Extreme sadness. He was one of those teflon guys that, no matter how much they abused themselves, they still came out the other side, somehow ... at least we got to enjoy his writing while he was with us.

Back in the days of my yute, when I wrote much more then I did now, I would routinely refer to HST as my literary muse.

RIP, Hunter. Tonight, I'll have a drink in your memory.

It was strange reading his obit this morning. I wasn't surprise that the good Dr. Gonzo would check himself out (and thus skip on the bill for a life time of excess), that was in character. But how I immediately forgot all the vitriol and nastiness he symbolized over the last few years and remebered how as a young man he rocked my world to its foundations. For a complacent white kid from boring suburbia, Thompson was a voice from the edge of a unseen galaxy of ideas. Nothing ever looked the same again. I don't feel any sadness. Just a little empty.

But how I immediately forgot all the vitriol and nastiness he symbolized over the last few years and remebered how as a young man he rocked my world to its foundations.

Exactly. Or, what Lileks said:

File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right.

Damned Lileks. He always says it better!

Me? I feel sorry for his wife and son. I never was much into that "gonzo" writing style myself.

I always figured it would be a bullet that took Hunter out, I just wondered which direction it would come from. I'll dig out 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail' ( and 'Boys on the Bus' as companion reading ), and savor some super-sized madness tonight.

P.S. - Was I the only one who was kinda secretly hoping Thompson would whack Trudeau before he left? Just wondering.

Read the Hunter Thompson book about Hell's Angels. In television interviews I have seen HST took pride in his "tough guy" relationship with the HA's Sonny Barger of the Oakland chapter.

Then I read Sonny Barger's book when it came out about three years ago. What did Sonny think of Hunter? Here it is, page 125 in the hardbound...

"Thompson came back to Oakland and hung sround the club's favorite biker bar hangouts until he and I finally met face-to-face. He told me he wanted to ride with the club and me and write a book about us. Since I liked the way he wrote, the Oakland and Frisco chapters let Hunter hang out with the club for a price, two kegs of beer. But as time went by, Hunter turned out to be a real weenie and a stone fucking coward. You read about how he walks around his house now with pistols, shooting them out the window to impress writers who show up to intertview him. He's all show and no go. When he tried to act tough with us, no matter what happened, Hunter Thompson got scared. I ended up not liking him at all, a tall, skinny, typical hillbilly kid from Kentucky. He was a total fake....."

Gonzo, indeed.

Gosh, I just love that whenever I post about someone I like dying, people feel the need to come on over and piss on their grave.

Is there some special tingly feeling you all get from doing that?

I'll miss the guy's writing no matter what he was like in real life. Last I checked nobody handed me a contract signing me up as 'Judge of All Else.'

One of his best pieces was a guest spot in Cycle World (or maybe it was Motorcyclist) where he wrote a review of a new Ducati.

spd rdr: I think you said it just as well as Lileks, meaning the quote that Michele highlighted. Thompson's legacy isn't his politics, but his influence.

If as Kafka said, the goal of a novel is to break up the ice within us, then Thompson succeeded a thousand fold.

Michelle, my comments weren't meant to be derogatory, I just wanted to express my appreciation for the guy's inspired insanity.

Trudeau, on the other hand -- when he croaks, all bets are off.

And, yeah I do how to spell your name -- lousy fingers.

Kev, I wasn't referring to any of your comments.

Perhaps Zippy should start a blog and call it "Pissing on the Graves of My Betters" -- and this comes from someone who won't say anything about Thompson here precisely because grave-pissing belongs on one's own blog, not in the threads of one's friends' blogs.

i am not a regular at this messager board but i was just passing by and noticed a high level of retardation seething from this website particularley from lawson and zippy actualy only fron them lawson to you i say HST was ten times the man you could even think about being and im sure your penis is veary small but its ok you should take a lesson from this great man and blow your retarded brains out. and zippy if you would actualy use that small spungey thing in you skull you would realize that the opinion of some closet homosexual biker tough guy whose favorite passtime is dressing up in tight leather with a bunch of other guys and beating the sh*t out of women means nothing especialy to a demi-god such as HST screw you both