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Hunter S Thompson Fatally Shot himself today!


PassedOutGuy

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Is this for real? Damn... We have lost one of our finest... RIP Hunter, the world is better for having known you...

To quote him: "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.jpg

Rest In Peace...

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This is incredibly sad. A great writer and an amazing soul, what a waste. I was just reading this conversation he had with Bill Murray two days ago on "shotgun golf"

Shotgun Golfing with Bill Murray

By Hunter S. Thompson

Page 2

The death of professional hockey in AMERICA is a nasty omen for people with heavy investments in NHL teams. But to me, it meant little or nothing -- and that's why I called Bill Murray with an idea that would change both our lives forever.

It was 3:30 on a dark Tuesday morning when I heard the phone ring on his personal line in New Jersey. "Good thinking," I said to myself as I fired up a thin Cohiba. "He's bound to be wide awake and crackling at this time of day, or at least I can leave a very excited message."

My eerie hunch was right. The crazy bugger picked up on the fourth ring, and I felt my heart racing. "Hot damn!" I thought. "This is how empires are built." Late? I know not late.

Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Herman Melville said that in the winter of 1914, and Murray is keenly aware of it. Only a madman would call a legend of Bill Murray's stature at 3:33 a.m. for no good reason at all. It would be a career-ending move, and also profoundly rude.

But my reason was better than good ...

* * * * *

BILL: "Hello?"

HST: "Hi, Bill, it's Hunter."

BILL: "Hi, Hunter."

HST: "Are you ready for a powerful idea? I want to ask you about golf in Japan. I understand they're building vertical driving ranges on top of each other."

BILL (sounding strangely alert): "Yes, they have them outdoors, under roofs ..."

HST: "I've seen pictures. I thought they looked like bowling alleys stacked on top of each other."

BILL: (Laughs.)

HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."

BILL: "Mmhmm."

HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."

BILL: (Laughs.)

HST: "It didn't work at first. The birdshot I was using was too small. But double-aught buck finally worked for sure. And it was fun."

BILL: (Chuckles.)

HST: "OK, I didn't want to wake you up, but I knew you'd want to be in on the ground floor of this thing."

BILL: (Silence.)

HST: "Do you want to discuss this tomorrow?"

BILL: "Sure."

HST: "Excellent."

BILL: "I think I might have a queer dream about it now, but ..." (Laughs.)

HST: "This sport has a HUGE future. Golf in America will soon come to this."

BILL: "It will bring a whole new meaning to the words 'Driving Range'."

HST: "Especially when you stack them on top of each other. I've seen it in Japan."

BILL: "They definitely have multi-level driving ranges. Yes."

HST: (Laughs.) "How does that work? Do they have extremely high ceilings?"

BILL: "No. The roof above your tee only projects out about 10 feet, and they have another range right above you. It's like they took the façade off a building. People would be hanging out of their offices."

HST: "I see. It's like one of those original Hyatt Regency Hotels. Like an atrium. In the middle of the building you could jump straight down into the lobby?"

BILL: "Exactly like that!"

HST: "It's like people driving balls from one balcony to the next."

BILL: (Laughs.) "Yes, they could."

HST: "I could be on the eighth floor and you on the sixth? Or on the fifteenth. And we'd be driving across a lake."

BILL: "They have flags out every 150 yards, every 200 yards, every 250 yards. It's just whether you are hitting it at ground level, or from five stories up."

HST: "I want to find out more about this. This definitely has a future to it."

BILL: "They have one here in the city -- down at Chelsea Pier."

HST: "You must have played a lot of golf in Japan."

BILL: "Not much; I just had one really great day of golf. I worked most of the time. But I did play one beautiful golf course. They have seasonal greens, two different types of grass. It's really beautiful."

HST: "Well, I'm writing a column for ESPN.com and I want to know if you like my new golf idea. A two-man team."

BILL: "Well, with all safety in mind, yes. Two-man team? Yeah! That sounds great. I think it would create a whole new look. It would create a whole new clothing line."

HST: "Absolutely. You'll need a whole new wardrobe for this game."

BILL: "Shooting glasses and everything."

HST: "We'll obviously have to make a movie. This will mushroom or mutate -- either way -- into a real craze. And given the mood of this country, being that a lot of people in the mood to play golf are also in the mood to shoot something, I think it would take off like a gigantic fad."

BILL: "I think the two-man team idea would be wonderful competition and is something the Ryder Cup would pick up on."

HST: "I was talking with the Sheriff about it earlier. But in one-man competition, I'd have to compete against you, say, in both of the arts -- the shooting AND the golfing. But if you do the Ryder Cup, you'd have to have the clothing line first. I'm going to write about this for ESPN tonight. I'm naming you and the Sheriff as the founding consultants."

BILL: "Sounds good."

HST: "OK, I'll call you tomorrow. And by the way, I'll see if I can twist some arms and get you an Oscar. But I want a Nobel Prize in return."

BILL: "Well, we can work together on this. This is definitely a team challenge." (Laughing.)

HST: "OK. We'll talk tomorrow."

BILL: "Good night."

So there it is. Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it.

* * * * *

Shotgun Golf was invented in the ominous summer of 2004 AD, right here at the Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colo. The first game was played between me and Sheriff Bob Braudis, on the ancient Bomb & Shooting Range of the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club. It was witnessed by many members and other invited guests, and filmed for historical purposes by Dr. Thompson on Super-Beta videotape.

The game consists of one golfer, one shooter and a field judge. The purpose of the game is to shoot your opponent's high-flying golf ball out of the air with a finely-tuned 12-gauge shotgun, thus preventing him (your opponent) from lofting a 9-iron approach shot onto a distant "green" and making a "hole in one." Points are scored by blasting your opponent's shiny new Titleist out of the air and causing his shot to fail miserably. That earns you two points.

But if you miss and your enemy holes out, he (or she) wins two points when his ball hits and stays on the green.

And after that, you trade places and equipment, and move on to round 2.

My patent is pending, and the train is leaving the station, and Murray is a Founding Consultant, along with the Sheriff, and Keith Richards, etc., etc. Invest now or forever hold your peace.

So long and Mahalo.

Hunter.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Ky. His books include "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," "The Great Shark Hunt," "The Curse of Lono," "Generation of Swine," "Songs of the Doomed," "Screwjack," "Better Than Sex," "The Proud Highway," "The Rum Diary," and "Fear and Loathing in America." His latest book, "Kingdom of Fear," has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo. His column, "Hey, Rube," appears regularly on Page 2.

02drgonzo.jpg

There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

RIP - Raoul Duke

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He was definately an original, I've almost read everything he has written even his wild journals.Sorry to hear it was self induced that puts a very different spin on things I always thought he would last forever.Where ever the spirit may go I'm sure Hunter will be shakin' things up .

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The jury is still out on whether my life would have been better or worse without his influence. One thing's for sure ... it would have been less exciting.

He didn't die all those many times that he should have -- and now he's gone and died when he shouldn't. For g'dam sure he's already stirring up a mess of trouble on the other side.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HsT

hunter_thompson_for_sheriff_poster.jpg

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everyone's day comes

for all the knocks Hunter got for being a drug poster child for 40 years, he was the most intelligent, level headed and soft spoken speaker I saw come on CNN eight months into the Iraq war... you could tell the CNN anchors were expecting Tommy Chong so it was great to see them tripping over their words when they ended up with more of a Noam Chomsky who was looking at everything from every angle and came off as the most thoughtful and articulate person on television that night

if he actually did decide to take his life I'm sure he had a good personal reason... you don't make it to 67 against all odds with a weak spine

nothing but respect for the Good Doctor here... definately made my life a better place by kindly sharing his intellect and spirit

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Wow, sad news indeed.

I've also wondered how HST was still alive after all the drink, smoking, drugs, paranoia, bacon & eggs over the years. I think grapefruit was the key to his longevity.

I've been reading "Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream" the last couple of weeks. Good book... various short articles.

Here's a quote from said book: "Cocaine is the closest thing to instant hubris on the market these days, and there is plenty of it around. Any fool with an extra hundred-dollar bill in his pocket can whip a gram of cocaine into his head and make sense of just about anything."

My favourite books of his...

Hells Angels

Rum Diary... interesting in that it's a young HST in Puerto Rico. Lots of crazy stuff happens, but HST is merely a heavy drinker, not into the drugs yet. He also turns down a breakfast of bacon & eggs with grapefruit at one point which I found surprising.

A short article / theory I liked: the High Water Mark.

It was reassuring to find out that stories like "Fear and Loathing" were partially ficticious. Just too insane for people to do all that !

I'll miss his insane creativity, and craziness, for sure. He was definitely one of a kind, a true original.

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where_were_you_when_the_fun_stopped.jpg

The veteran radical journalist, Paul Krassner, who was also one of Thompson's former editors told AP that: "he may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years."

"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,'' said Krassner.

"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 behaviour in order to share his talent with their readers."

***************

wow.

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It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh!t and die. A fat man will feel his heart burst and call it beautiful. Who knows? If there is, in fact, a Heaven and a Hell, all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix -- a clean well-lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except for the ones who know in their hearts what is missing ...And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con Dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get . . . .

Heaven is a bit harder to figure. And there are some things that not even a smart boy can tell you for sure ...But I can guess. Or wonder. Or maybe just think like a gambler or a fool or some kind of atavistic rock and roll lunatic and make it about 8-1 that Heaven will be a place where the swine will be sorted out at the gate and sent off like rats. With huge welts and lumps and puncture wounds all over their bodies. Down the long black chute where ugliness rolls over you every 10 to 16 minutes like waves of boiling asphalt and poison scum. Followed by sergeants and lawyers and crooked cops waving rule books. And where nobody laughs nad everybody lies and the days drag by like dead animals and the night are full of whores and junkies clawing at your windows and tax men jamming writs under your door and the screams of the doomed coming up through the air shaft along with white cockroaches and red stringworms full of AIDS and bursts of foul gas with no sunrise and the morning streets full of preachers begging for money and fondling themselves with gangs of fat young boys trailing after them. . . .

Ah ...but we were talking about Heaven ...or trying to ...but somehow we got back into Hell.

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish -- a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found out a way to live out there where the real winds blow -- to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drunk whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . .

Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

-- hunter s. thompson, from generation of swine, 1988.

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I hate taking the side of Chapters bokonon... but they wouldnt be the one to issue any commemorative books, its his publisher...

As well, i dont actually see that happening... there are enough of his prints in circulation... his books are never returned to the venodor for credit so they will sell just fine at the regular price....

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