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Dear Mr. Hunter S. Thompson

DENVER — It wasn't a reckless obsession with liquor, drugs and gunplay that made the late Hunter S. Thompson the undisputed king of Gonzo journalism, his wife says. Instead, it was old-fashioned principles such as working hard and telling the truth, enlivened by the glee Thompson took from learning and from being right.< >After his death, Anita Thompson said, she got stacks of e-mails and letters from young people who thought they could duplicate his success by mimicking his infamous consumption. "They wrote me these letters about drinking bottles of Wild Turkey and doing grams of cocaine," said Thompson, a...

Do to copyright issues, I can only post the link. http://blogs.dmregister.com/?p=8775

Renegade author Hunter S. Thompson lamented the onset of old age and his physical limits, then concluded, "Relax -- This won't hurt," in an apparent suicide note published on Thursday by Rolling Stone magazine, his literary springboard. The scrawled words -- perhaps the last he ever committed to paper -- were written on February 16, four days before the self-described "gonzo" journalist shot himself to death at his secluded home near Aspen, Colorado, the magazine said. Thompson was 67, and at the time friends and family said he had been in pain from hip replacement surgery, back surgery and a...

The SUV that Kerry's family owned... not his - is up for auction on eBay. Kind of a rust bucket if you ask me. City Motor Group is Honored to offer this 1995 Land Rover Defender 90 to our savvy online shoppers. This Defender comes with outstanding pedigree!!! Previously owned and driven by family of former Presidential Candidate. Bottle of Notable Ketchup is not included in the purchase. This Defender has spent the majority of its spoiled life in Nantucket.

Yes, we have their play book. Over 6 million Veterans served in Vietnam 58,000 of the names are on the black wall in D.C. Now is the time to restore the honor of the 6 million by correcting the wrongful depictions of our Vietnam Veterans. This will happen as we rally in defense of this generation of troops. Then we will go after the educrats who have perpetuated the 1971 Kerry lie. We will find all the text books that wrongfully depict our Vietnam hero's and replace them with the correct accounting of what happened. And then we will go...

John Kerry attends Thompson's blowing-up.

Former presidential candidate John Kerry attended an intimate and exclusive farewell for gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson, a suicide victim – complete with tributes to drugs and blow-up sex dolls adorning the event.

Firework Farewell Set for 'Gonzo' Thompson DENVER Co. - Firework shells carrying the sealed ashes of "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson arrived in an armored truck at his mountain home as final preparations were being made for his star-studded farewell. The shells were scheduled to be launched Saturday night from a 150- foot-tall monument erected behind Thompson's house in Woody Creek, just outside Aspen. The event will be private, open to about 250 invited guests including Thompson's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actors Sean Penn and Johnny Depp. "We haven't noticed a lot of curiosity seekers or pilgrims, but the...

DENVER — Firework shells carrying the sealed ashes of "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson (search) arrived in an armored truck at his mountain home as final preparations were being made for his star-studded farewell.

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...

He lived by the gun and he died by the gun. Now the late writer Hunter S Thompson, who shot himself in February, is to be blasted from a cannon from the back garden of his home in the hills of Aspen, Colorado. Thompson's ashes have been packed into firework casings and will be dispersed today from 34 different shells fired from a gun barrel mounted on top of a 150-foot high monument. Article continues The monument, in the form of a clenched fist made symmetrical by the addition of a second thumb, is modelled on Thompson's gonzo logo. "We...

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's final journey began early today as his ashes left New Castle packed in 34 fireworks shells. The Thompson family hired fireworks giant Zambelli Internationale to fulfill the writer's last wish of having his ashes scattered in a fireworks show over his Owl Farm estate in Woody Creek, Colo., near Aspen. "We've been working on this for seven to eight months, since he passed away," company spokeswoman Marcy Zambelli said Tuesday. "This would probably rank as one of the most unusual requests we've had." Zambelli workers custom-designed the brown paper cylindrical shells, which will be part...

Organizers of a memorial for Hunter S. Thompson plan to erect a 150-foot structure — courtesy of actor Johnny Depp — to shoot the gonzo journalist's ashes onto his ranch near here. Friends and acquaintances gathered Thursday to discuss the Aug. 20 invitation-only service, which will be six months after Thompson shot himself in his Woody Creek home. Jon Equis, the event producer working with Thompson's family, said the tower will be 12 feet wide at the base and 8 feet wide at the top, where a cannon will be placed. Depp, who portrayed the author in the movie version...

Has suicide become the pop culture flavor of the month? Recent weeks produced an odd flurry of news stories suggesting that the notion of taking your own life suddenly seems courageous, respectable, even chic. Consider the pathetic death of acclaimed "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It provoked wildly inflated estimations of his artistry — Tom Wolfe anointed him the past century's "greatest comic writer in English" — as well as mostly admiring remarks from his family about his decision to shoot a bullet into his head at age 67. "This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure,"...

On February 20, two 1960s cultural icons died: journalist Hunter S. Thompson and actress Sandra Dee. The days following their deaths were filled with eulogies about their lives and careers—eulogies that say much more about us than about the deceased. Thompson was the inventor of what came to be known as “gonzo journalism.” Like the so-called “new journalism,” pioneered by Tom Wolfe and others, “gonzo journalism” put the writer at the center of the story. But unlike Wolfe and company, you could never be sure whether what Thompson was describing actually ever happened. That’s mostly because, as he told us,...

If what was before the house was just the formal news bulletin, a famous person who had left Earth for other bournes, then OK, let him go with conventional solemnities. I once attended funeral services at which the rabbi didn't remember the name of the deceased, so that he mourned the passage of Priscilla, remarking the good she had left behind in her lifetime -- never mind that the lady who lay in the coffin was called Jane; never mind, the incantations were generic. But Hunter Thompson would never be confused with anyone else, and when his wife was led...

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - Hunter S. Thompson's body was found in a chair in the kitchen in front of his typewriter with the word "counselor" typed in the center of the page, according to sheriff's reports. The word was typed on stationery from the Fourth Amendment Foundation, which was started to defend victims of unwarranted search and seizure, according to reports released Tuesday. It was not immediately known what, if any, significance the word had to the founder of "gonzo" journalism or to his family. Juan Thompson found his father dead Feb. 20 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the...

'Writer Hunter S. Thompson was on the phone with his wife last month when he decided to terminate more than the call. He ate the .45 caliber pistol he'd been fondling..' snip 'I didn't need to read his stuff to keep up with the latest Democrat talking points. One can do that merely by watching the networks' evening newscasts. Thompson was a longtime Leftie who admired Fidel Castro. A few months ago in Rolling Stone he wrote of his meeting with "my man" John Kerry: "I told him that Bush's vicious goons in the White House are perfectly capable of...

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - The family of writer Hunter S. Thompson is looking for a cannon to blast his remains skyward, honoring a wish he often expressed. Anyone wishing to provide the cannon is asked to write a 100-word essay and mail it to the Aspen Daily News, which will pass the entries on to Thompson's family. "Were talking 100 words, not 101. And snail mail only. No e-mails or phone calls," said Daily News associate editor Troy Hooper. The winner of the contest will have to bring the cannon to Aspen at his or her own expense and possibly...

Recently, Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. His alcoholism and substance habituation were always in the background of his writings but, if mentioned, his personal problems are usually minimized as a sideline issue. In the most laudatory terms his writings are described as an iconoclastic form of outrage journalism where the writer interjects oneself, his persona and his ideas into the journalistic effort. Contemporary journalists often celebrate and honor him by replicating his style. Particularly copied is Thompson’s irreverent, angry rhetoric directed to anyone he disagreed with. Hunter Thompson’s alcoholism and other issues were not sideline issues. The very nature of...

Not since the death of Princess Diana has so much worshipful ink been spilled on the occasion of a mere mortal's passing. He was a giant among men. Who cared that for years he had been a largely burned-out case, more of a circus act than a serious writer, reveling in adolescent stunts with firearms, alcohol, narcotics -- the predictable paraphernalia of the self-styled outlaw who wowed the chattering classes and other assorted rubes and poseurs long after his appeal had worn off for almost everybody else? Indeed, by coming not to bury Hunter S. Thompson, but to praise him...

'Loving' farewell to writer Wife details family gathering with Thompson dead in chair By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News February 25, 2005 ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking. The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier.

ASPEN, Colo. - 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...

Excerpts from the never-aired 1973 Scooby Doo episode with guest star Hunter S. Thompson We were ten minutes south of San Clemente when the putrid green daisy walls of the van started closing in. I recall the fat four-eyed lesbian sweater girl saying something like "are you okay, Mr. Duke? We've got a mystery to solve..." when suddenly the gullet of the garish chartreuse steel beast began to spasm, as if a digestive track readying itself to vomit. I began clawing at my hamstrings and when I turned my head I was looking into the irridescent eyes of a grotesque...

ASPEN - Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking. The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier. But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir - Chivas Regal on ice. "It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like...

ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking. The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier. But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice. "It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like...

DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flamethrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman. Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains. "There's no question, I'm sure that's what he...

DENVER (AP) - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flame-thrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman. Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains. "There's no question, I'm sure that's what...

Hunter S. Thompson's attorney tells the Boston Globe the reporter's suicide had nothing to do with the results of the 2004 election. Thompson wasn't happy about President Bush's re-election of course.He compared him unfavourably to Richard Nixon and seemed terrified that the American people might want George W. Bush to be their president.Thompson predicted that Kerry would beat Bush in November, and feared what the alternative would say about America. The cynical among us might say it's the first time something bad hasn't been blamed on President Bush.

US author Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide last weekend, wanted to exit this world in a style befitting his extraordinary life: being fired from a cannon, a friend revealed. The larger-than-life father of writer of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" stated in his will that he wanted his ashes to be fired out of a cannon following his funeral, plans for which have yet to be announced. "I believe he wanted to be shot out of a cannon," friend Troy Hooper told AFP. "I understand it's in his will," said Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News,...

Took a blogger to skewer HST.

Whether they thought he was a revolutionary scribe of the counterculture or a depraved glorifier of illegal drugs, Hunter S. Thompson had people talking in Nebraska Monday. Many of his admirers were surprised by news of the author's suicide Sunday at his home near Aspen, Colo. Like the university student planning a beer-fueled memorial viewing of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" to honor of one of his favorite authors. And the senator's staffer who believes American literature has lost a true against-the-grain voice. "I don't know if there will ever be another Hunter," said W. Don Nelson, state director...

Hunter S. Thompson did not invent Gonzo Journalism—but in a line borrowed from David Mamet, he gave it a name. Truman Capote attempted, with “In Cold Blood,” to fuse the fictional with the factual. Thomas Wolfe is a pioneer of the “new journalism” of the sixties, the meshing of the personal with the public. In academia, Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicists solidified the idea that history could only be known fully by being reduced to the personal. But Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream” (1971) sits as a...

There's been a lot of spilled ink and wasted pixels on the complicated effort to eulogize the suicide of "new journalism" writer Hunter S. Thompson, with most of it coming out insincere, overwrought, or just not quite getting it. Steve H., the immensely talented blogger at Hog on Ice, is another matter altogether. Writing as someone who was influenced by Thompson, he takes a rueful, almost bitter, but straight look at Thompson and hits the target. He writes the first realistic assessment of what the man amounted to before he met his end. It's a cold hard look at Thompson...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1307571.htm

Hunter S. Thompson was one of those rare writers who come as advertised. The Addams-family eyebrows in Stephen King's book jacket photos combined with the heeby-jeeby horrors of his stories always made me think of Dracula. When I finally met Mr. King, he was in Miami playing, along with Amy Tan, in a jook-house band called the Remainders. He was Sunshine itself, a laugh and a half, the very picture of innocent fun, a Count Dracula who in real life was Peter Pan. Carl Hiaasen, the genius who has written such zany antic novels as "Striptease," "Sick Puppy," and "Skinny...

THE SUICIDE of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture." "Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism. When a major representative of any dramatic...

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The...

The Edge By Hunter S. Thompson The lever goes up into fourth, and now there’s no sound except the wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam. The needle leans down on a hundred and wind burned eyeballs strain to see down the center line, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. 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...

Pioneer Author, Journalist Thompson Dies at 67 By CATHERINE TSAI, AP ASPEN, Colo. (Feb. 20) - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67. The Life of Hunter S. Thompson "Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News. Pitkin County Sheriff officials confirmed to The...

ASPEN, Colo. — Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.

Legendary US author Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) - Legendary US author and sharp-witted icon of the 1960s counter-culture, Hunter S. Thompson, is dead, apparently after shooting himself in the head, police and his family said. The 67-year-old writer and journalist, best-known for his 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," apparently shot himself at his rural home in Woody Creek, in the western US state of Colorado. "The sheriff's department can confirm the apparent death by a self-inflicted gunshot wound of Hunter S. Thompson at his home," Tricia Louthis, a spokeswoman for Colorado's...

The godfather of gonzo believes America has suffered a "nationwide nervous breakdown" since 9/11, and as a result is compromising civil liberties for what he calls "the illusion of security." The compromise, he says, is "a disaster of unthinkable proportions" and "part of the downward spiral of dumbness" he believes is plaguing the .....

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...

ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67. "Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Sheriff's officials did not return calls to The Associated...

AP News Alert ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

By Hunter S. Thompson Page 2 "The Summer is over the harvest is in, and we are not saved." -- Jeremiah 8:20 Well, the election is over now, and I was pitifully wrong on my public prediction about the outcome. George W. Bush won handily; and my friend, John Kerry, lost by three percentage points -- which was every bit as big in a vicious presidential election as it was on the football field last night when the low-riding Indianapolis Colts kicked a last-second field goal to beat Minnesota 31-28. That field goal was just as good for the Colts...

Page 2 George McGovern called Saturday night from New Orleans and said he was ready to rumble. "This is it, Hunter. This is the day we've been waiting for all our lives," he cackled. "Nixon was nothing compared to these bastards. This is the most important election of my lifetime, including my own race."What do you think is going to happen on Tuesday?" "I think Kerry will win," I answered. "Yes, I think so, too. He is about the greatest thing since God created you and me," he laughed. His voice became serious then, and he said, "I think he...

The Denver Broncos won big on Sunday night, stomping the Kansas City Chiefs 34-24 and seizing a vital early lead in the once-mighty AFC West -- while the New England Patriots stunned the Indianapolis Colts again, 27-24, in a game the Colts should have won, but didn't. How long, O Lord, how long? The Colts' offense has been the best in the league for so long that few fans remember who played quarterback before Peyton Manning came along, and their pass defense was the fifth-best in the NFL last year. But they still can't beat the Patriots. These failures are...