Hunter S Thompson Fatally Shot himself today!

[ollie]

Why is this announced on espn? I know he was a sports writer, but c'mon.

He wrote a regular column for the Page 2 section of their web site.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/archive?columnist=hunter_s._thompson&root=page2

Part of me thinks he waited for the Superbowl result.

[paisley]

from a Feb. 3, 2003 Salon Magazine Interview

You said back in 1991 that you were "as astounded as anybody" that you were still alive. Still drinking, smoking and doing drugs?

I guess I'd have to say I haven't changed. Why should I, really? I'm the most stable neighbor on the road here. I'm an honest person. I don't regret being honest. I did give up petty crime when I turned 18, after I got a look at jail -- I went in there for shoplifting -- because I just saw that this stuff doesn't work. There's a line: "I do not advocate the use of dangerous drugs, wild amounts of alcohol and violence and weirdness -- but they've always worked for me." I think I said that at a speech at Stanford. I've always been a little worried about advocating my way of life, or gauging my success by having other people take up my way of life, like Tim Leary did. I always quarreled with Leary about that. I could have started a religion a long time ago. It would not have a majority of people in it, but there would be a lot of them. But I don't know how wise I am. I don't know what kind of a role model I am. And not everybody is made for this life.

In fact, you've experienced more than your share of dangerous situations. You've been beaten by the Hell's Angels. You were in the middle of the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. You've been shot at. What's going on with that?

By any widely accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once and there were 13 times that I almost and maybe should have died -- from emergencies with fires to violence, drowning, bombs. I guess I am an action junkie, yeah. There may be some genetic imperative that caused me to get into certain situations. It's curiosity, I guess. As long as I'm learning something I figure I'm OK -- it's a decent day.

Is there anything you regret?

That goes to the question of would you do it again. If you can't say you'd do it again, it means that time was wasted -- useless. The regrets I have are so minor. You know, would I leave my Keith Richards hat, with the silver skull on it, on the stool at the coffee shop at LaGuardia? I wouldn't do that again. But overall, no, I don't have any regrets.

[Booche]

"Get out of control, but appear under control. It's not bad to alarm other people, though - it's good for them."

- HST

"The music business is a cruel and shallow trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men lie like dogs. There is also a negative side."

- HST

Rest in peace sir.

[Jay Funk Dawg]

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

RIP HST

[zero]

Incredibly sad news but perhaps not all that surprising.

[meggo]

that really... really... sucks.

rest in peace and thanks for your incredible-ness.

[paisley]

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest

margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done

right . . . and that's when the strange music starts, when

you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration

and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a

hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize

before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind

and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You

watch the white line and try to lean with it . . . howling

through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the

long hill to Pacifica . . . letting off now, watching for cops,

but only until the next dark stretch and another few

seconds on the edge . . . The Edge . . . There is no honest

way to explain it becuase the only people who really know

where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-

the living-are those who pushed their control as far as

they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or

slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came

time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The

association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of

publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place

of definitions.

-hst

Hells Angels

1966

[Jaimoe]

Sad, but Hunter was never going to die of " natural causes ". No surprise that he went out on his own terms.

R.I.P.

[zimmerman pt3]

has any1 checked out the criterion collection dvd release of Fear and Loathing; on the boinus disc there's a mad-ass bbc documentary that follows Hunter around (i think mid-late 70s) that gets somewhat disturbing.

[scottieking]

I'm with Zero and Jaimoe. A surprise to hear, but not a shock.

I'm saddened only in the sense that he's gone, and the world needs more of his kind.

The doctor is out.

[bokonon]

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....

dude, you take me way too literally.

but you're still neat! :D

[PassedOutGuy]

funny, a guy who worked for a book company taking things too LITERALLY

Yay Im neat... I always wanted to be neat! I always thought I was messy...

I also am not really surprised but will definitely miss his antics!

[bokonon]

i work for the library but i can be literal of figural! ::

(i hope that makes sense)

edit to add: and i used to work for that same book company!

[zero]

Like many hear I read much of what he wrote. The supposedly unauthorized biography by E. Jean Carroll was one book that gave me a better insight into the man. In particular the glimpse into his Louisville youth. How even then he was the procurer and they'd go climb up some hillside and drink but it would be Hunter who was obsessed with the tally like 5 quarts of scotch, one of vodka and twenty seven loose beers. And it was Kentucky again that first brought Steadman and Hunter together professionally for the queer pageant of the grotesque that is the Derby. Oh what Hunter must have put that little British man through, how does the story go? Them in a Zodiac prowling the harbour during the America's Cup in hopes of spray painting 'fu©k The Pope' on the hull of the Australian boat. I think that same story ends with Steadman in the lobby of a New York hotel shoeless and raving hysterically. Then there's the stories about Hunter and Margot Kidder and her husband at the time, Hunter and he would play the 'how many drugs can we do without dying' game where the ran the table snorting lines from end to end and Lois Lane screaming 'Hunter, No, your going to kill him!'.

It was in his correspondence as with most historical figures that one gets a real glimpse of the man. Begging this and that editor for a fifth advance against seven unrealized pieces to give him enough wind in his sails to push through the whole lot in record time. You know Baudelaire's correspondence is very similar, a hugely prolific dandy with a taste for the excessive and an opium habit to rival Kubla Kahn' forever begging at this or that publisher or petty potentate for a bit of lucre. You see the uncomposed innocence that is the counterpoint to an outward bravura and blusteriness.

[purple foot]

"The first time I noticed George W Bush was when he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a guy who had come to sell—

"Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes.

"I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away.

"If George W Bush wins again, the United States faces utter disaster. If this president is re-elected, we are facing the total death of the American Dream as I know it, and I have spent a lot of time knowing it. I would tell them that if this gang of criminals get in once more, we will be in the position of a family who have sent the Hell's Angels written invitations to their Thanksgiving party.

—Hunter S. Thompson, The Independent on Sunday, Oct 31, 2004

[jon.]

Posted by zero:

Incredibly sad news but perhaps not all that surprising

I was saddened by the news of Dr. Thompson's passing, but I would have to say it isn't totally suprising...

I was certainly one of the multitude of teenaged lads who was deeply entertained by many of his tales, starting with fear and loathing and onward from there, the idea of a trunk full of drug certainly mystified and amused me.

Hunter was obsessed with guns, was probably a world class a$$hole (his suicide confirms this) and most certainly would want to go out with a "bang"(which he did).

When I was younger - 16ish - my friends father(who was a genius) jumped off the rosedale bridge...my take was that he saw the world a bit too clearly, and was not able to dumb it down to acceptable terms, I wonder If HST succumb to the same fate?

Part of me wonders if he discovered he had a terminal illness...a lifestyle of that nature does not come without consequence...if that is the case, I can't see Hunter going out any other way....

gifted perception is certainly a gift, but also a curse....

whatever....

[paisley]

Thompson's last article (ESPN, Feb. 15, 2005)

Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray

By Hunter S. Thompson

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.

* * * * *

As for Bill's triumphant finish at Pebble Beach, I am almost insanely proud of him. He is an elegant athlete in the finest Murray tradition. Bill is a dangerous brute with the fastest reflexes in Hollywood, but he is suave, and that is why I trust him even more than I trust all his brothers. Yes, I say Hallelujah, praise Jesus. Where is Brian? I will need him for this golf project, if only to offset Bill's bitchiness. We will march on a road of bones.

OK. Back to business. It was Bill Murray who taught me how to mortify your opponents in any sporting contest, honest or otherwise. He taught me my humiliating PGA fadeaway shot, which has earned me a lot of money ... after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I introduced him to the shooting arts, and now he wins everything he touches. Welcome to the future of America. Welcome to Shotgun Golf.

So long and Mahalo.

Hunter.

[LionLocks]

just heard about it now, after reading the Newspaper... Thought Id come on line to see what the Skanks were saying... Im glad I can come read what others might feel like shareing. I feel like we've lost a dear old Uncle; One who enthused and comforted us............. Damn. fu©kin Crazy world We Livin in..... Look to close and you'll break your heart. Rest In Peace Hunter.

[Stapes]

"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".

-Raoul Duke

RIP

[shitidiot]

i think i gona cry, eat acid, snort coke, and drink till every thing feels right again!

few dam left!!

[Freeker]

Up The Creek

Filed under: brainjuice— warrenellis @ 4:15 pm

People keep asking if I’m going to say something about the death of Hunter S Thompson. Hell, a couple of newspapers have asked. This is because I wrote a graphic novel series called TRANSMETROPOLITAN, the creation of whose protagonist was somewhat influenced by Thompson’s writing, persona and life.

I got the news from a friend at CBS at four in the morning, two minutes after it hit the ticker. I was, and am, numb. I’ve tried to write about it a couple of times. When John Peel died, I was wrecked. This time, I’m just numb.

I read an article a few years ago, that I haven’t seen cited in the obituaries yet, wherein it’s stated that Thompson’s body was pretty much packing up on him. His stomach was having problems with toxic substances like, um, food, and his diet was mostly liquid, mashed avocado and yoghurt. He’d spent time in a wheelchair in recent years. His drug use had always been exaggerated for comedic effect, but, at 67, he’d been hammering his body in a committed way for some 50 years. And, at 67, you don’t grow back the bits you killed. There’s a fair chance he was looking at years of dependency, chronic illness, and listening to his own body die by inches. Anyone would find that frightening.

He always wore his influences on his sleeve. JP Donleavy, Faulkner, Mencken, Fitzgerald, Kerouac,

Hemingway. He used and re-used the last line from A FAREWELL TO ARMS, over and over: “I walked back to the hotel in the rain.” Legend has it that he retyped a Hemingway novel to understand how the writer got his effects.

Hemingway, of course, shot himself in the head. Old and sick and unable to live up to his own ideas on manhood.

I always thought it peculiarly apt that the man who wrote that line, whose work was all about keeping the expression of human feeling underneath the surface, sat somewhere quiet and alone and put a shotgun in his mouth.

Hunter Thompson waited until his young wife left the house, and then shot himself in the head with a pistol. He must have been quite aware that either she, or his son, there in the house with his grandson, would find his corpse. Dead bodies don’t lay neatly. They splay, spastic and awful. There is often sh!t.

I never met Thompson. Had the opportunity a couple of times – magazines wanting to send me out to Woody Creek, that kind of thing – but turned them down. I’ve been lucky so far, in meeting my great influences. But they don’t always go well. Friends of mine have had horrific experiences with their personal heroes, and it often leaves them unable to enjoy the work afterwards. And I wanted to keep the work. So I don’t know what kind of man he was.

And the numbness, in part, comes from now finding that he was the kind of man that’d let his family find him like that. I have a personal loathing for suicide. It’s stupid and selfish and ugly and cowardly and reeks of weakness. Someone said to me yesterday about Thompson, “What a ripoff.” And I kind of know what he meant. It’s become convenient to write Thompson off as parody in recent years, and there’s a case to be made that he peaked around the age of 36, with FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ‘72. But he could still make me laugh, even in the most recent collection, HEY RUBE. ” ‘We have many cigarettes here,’ I said suavely” still makes me smile. Writing had clearly become difficult, and a job, but every now and then you’d get a clear burst of the old anger, as in his support for Lisl Auman (google it). He was done with the big fireworks, but the devil was still in him. Probably his great work of the last twenty years was in Being Hunter Thompson. In performance.

But how you leave the stage is at least as important as how you enter it. And he left it alone in a kitchen with a .45, dying in – and wouldn’t it be nice if it were the last time these words were typed together? –

– dying in fear, and loathing.

Warren Ellis

down by the sea

February 2005

[paisley]

Fear and Loathing in the Afterlife

really well done obituary

[larry jr.]

The guy could write like a motherfu©ker, and put just about every ass-kissing establishment journalist to shame. That's one bright light that just burned out. I guess like everything else, he did it on his own terms.

Hunter S Thompson's Ashes To Be Cannon Fired Across His Estate

http://www.gigwise.com/news.asp?contentid=4545

[ollie]

I feel a little better after reading this.

Thompson Probably Planned Suicide

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer

DENVER - Journalist Hunter S. Thompson did not take his life "in a moment of haste or anger or despondency" and probably planned his suicide well in advance because of his declining health, the family's spokesman said Wednesday.

Douglas Brinkley, a historian and author who has edited some of Thompson's work, said the founder of "gonzo" journalism shot himself Sunday night after weeks of pain from a host of physical problems that included a broken leg and a hip replacement.

"I think he made a conscious decision that he had an incredible run of 67 years, lived the way he wanted to, and wasn't going to suffer the indignities of old age," Brinkley said in a telephone interview from Aspen. "He was not going to let anybody dictate how he was going to die."

Thompson, famous for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and other works of New Journalism, spent an intimate weekend with his son, Juan, daughter-in-law, Jennifer, and young grandson, William, the spokesman said.

"He was trying to really bond and be close to the family" before his suicide, Brinkley said. "This was not just an act of irrationality. It was a very pre-planned act."

The family is looking into whether Thompson's cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said.

"The optimal, best-case scenario is the ashes will be shot out of a cannon," he said.

Other arrangements were pending.

[PalacePrincess]

:: what a jerk. he could have had a bit more sensitivity towards the people who love him. like his 6 year old grandson. ::

Hunter Thompson's widow says he shot himself while they were on the phone

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.

Hunter Thompson, famous for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and other works of New Journalism, shot himself in the head Sunday in the kitchen of his Aspen-area home. He was 67.

His son, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson were in the house when the shooting occurred.

Anita Thompson, 32, said her husband had discussed killing himself in recent months and had been issuing verbal and written directives about what he wanted done with his body, his unpublished works and his assets.

His suicidal talk put a strain on their relationship, she said.

"He wanted to leave on top of his game. I wish I could have been more supportive of his decision," she said. "It was a problem for us."