Posted on 08/20/2005 5:16:46 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WOODY CREEK, Colo. - Iconoclastic journalist Hunter S. Thompson would have loved the 153-foot tower built to blast his ashes into the sky, said one of his many friends and admirers gathered for an unsolemn farewell.
"It's a beautiful structure. Of course, he would not have been able to resist putting a few holes into it," said Michael Cleverly, referring to his former neighbor's love of shooting guns. "But it weighs several tons, so it could handle a few holes."
The counterculture author killed himself six months ago at his home near Aspen. His ashes, intermingled with fireworks, were to be fired out of the tower Saturday evening in front of a star-studded crowd at his Owl Farm compound.
"He loved explosions," his wife, Anita Thompson, explained during the planning of the fireworks sendoff.
The tower — intentionally built just taller than the Statue of Liberty — was erected in a field between Thompson's home and a tree-covered canyon wall. It was shrouded in tarpaulins for days, but his widow, Anita, said it was modeled after Thompson's Gonzo logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger.
The memorial was expected to be a party, with plenty of alcohol, reminiscences, readings from Thompson's works and performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
About 250 people were invited, including Thompson's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actors Sean Penn and Johnny Depp, close friends of the writer. Depp portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream," perhaps the writer's most well-known work.
Anita Thompson said Depp funded much of the celebration.
"We had talked a couple of times about his last wishes to be shot out of a cannon of his own design," Depp told The Associated Press last month. "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."
Thompson was credited along with Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping pioneer New Journalism — he dubbed his version "gonzo journalism" — in which the writer was an essential component of the story.
Thompson often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on figures such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. At the height of the Watergate era, he said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."
Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote an expose on the Hell's Angels and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," in which the central character was a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.
The Kentucky-born writer also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury."
In this now-chic resort community, he proudly fired his guns whenever he wanted, let peacocks have the run of the land and ran for sheriff in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.
Thompson shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently unable to handle his declining health. One close acquaintance suggested Thompson did not want old age to dictate the circumstances of his death. Anita Thompson said no suicide note was left.
Didn't he already go out with a bang???
... while he was still living!
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Ping.
I still don't get it, but happy trails.
I read his Hell Angels book in 6th grade.
It might take four flushes with one of those low-volume toilets...would that make Thompson a four-flushing leftist loser?
Sadly, I believe the extent of that blast may be the closest to heaven he ever gets.
To read about this is sad, in a way. I always wonder when people, who have lived lives with little or no acknowledgment or respect for God, devise plans that seem to be one last "in your face" to be carried out after their deaths. I wonder if their perspectives from their new vantage points in the after life wouldn't cause them to want to tell their friends not to carry out those plans because they aren't so clever or humorous, or fitting, after all.
I knew a guy who told his "old lady" to put a Bible in his casket at the cemetery before they buried him. She did. The Bible had been hollowed out and had a bottle of whiskey inside it. They had laughed together with their friends about it before he died. If they were laughing at the cemetery, I didn't see them. I thought it was very sad.
definately hunter tompson ashes has to concidered hazmat
good read:
Stop Glorifying Sicko Hunter Thompson
http://www.americandaily.com/article/8845
Thanks, bitt. Just now online after a few days off. Hunter Thompson's life was as sad, from a spiritual perspective, as it was offensive from a temporal one. Hope his grandson, who was in the next room when he committed suicide, is never tempted to emulate his grandfather in any way.
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