You see my sig file and e mail address? They are the name 'Lono'. I own that name in almost every domain over the years (ATT, Us West, MSN, Hotmail, & Mindspring). This is all a reference to one of Hunter's greatest books 'The Curse of Lono'. I am sure I will have more to say about this, much much more. For now, at 11 pm Colorado time, the news has only been public for about an hour. The details are chillingly few: Hunter Thompson found dead of apparent self inflicted gunshot wounds, found by his son Juan.
This is what my good friend Roy wrote, and I think sums up tastefully. This is what he wrote to the group this evening about this news: This is sad and a loss I put equal to the death of John Lennon.
PT 2, written about an hour (and three drinks) later
The last piece I wrote about Hunter was ironically titled Hunter S Thompson, still alive. That was back in August. I knew one day Hunter would be gone and we'd all sit and talk about how great he was. I didn't want to wait until he was dead for people to appreciate him... so I reached out. Hunter was like Jerry Garcia, you just knew neither was ever going to live out a full life to old age. I miss them both so much.
I also want to say this. We all knew Hunter could go any day. What I expected was a headline like this "Gonzo journalist shot by police after consuming hundreds of hits of LSD and attempting to paint murals on Aspen police cars" or something cool and strange like that. I guess I wanted an Easy Rider type ending... a martyr who fought to the end.
* For the last three years, I have gone as Hunter S Thompson for Halloween.
*** Update 2/25 - Hunter's widow, Anita, spoke today for the first time. She said that she was on the phone with Hunter when he did it. What kind of fucked up shit is that? And left himself dead to be found by his own son? He used to be my hero, now I think maybe he's just a narcissistic jerk.
More views and information on Thompson here.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - RJ
Great post, LONO...
2 - Lono
thanks. I am pretty fraeked, and very embarrased to admit... but crying right now.
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
this is horrible, utterly unspeakable horrible. fucking hell, i didn't expect this for to greet me in the morning. awful, awful, awful. just fucking awful and sad and awful. thank you lono. fucking hell.
4 - Collin Baber
HST is now a martyr for the Gonzo cause. He was one journalist who dared speak the unfiltered truth.
5 - Roxy
I’m sorry to use this email address " I actually do receive mail at that address.
I’ve never posted on a blog before and I don’t want to open my ISP email address
up to the possibility of spam.
Ok, I just want to say think about this.
You can’t say “cowardly way”.
You can’t feel the way you’ve described about Hunter S Thompson and use such a cliché description of something you have no inside information about.
Cowardly
Main Entry: cow•ard
Pronunciation: 'kau(-&)rd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French coart, from coe tail, from Latin cauda
: one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity
- coward adjective
“one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity”
Hey, think about it - there’s nothing fearful or timid about a man who decides he wants to check out, and actually has the balls to put a bullet in his own head and make it happen.
Cowardly people shoot unarmed people " not themselves.
Nothing disgraceful either " it was his life and his decision.
He died the same way he lived:
On his own terms.
He made his own decision and he didn’t give a damn about popular opinion.
Hunter S Thompson: Consistent to the end.
6 - Steve-O
Chicken shit way to go.
7 - Brett Foster
I know you won't be able to read the email I supplied to make this comment but, for the record, it's "HunterS@forpresident.com"
In essence, he was my president. He has guided me far more than any "legitimate" political leader ever could. He has taught me about truth, justice, corruption, depravity, loneliness, love, and shit the list could go on forever.. Above all he taught me Freedom. Truly unbridled freedom. A man who never stopped TRULY living life for one moment, constantly expanding (more like utterly annihilating)the boundaries of thought and literature. Hunter will be missed. His guidance will have to come elsewhere, from the spirit he has instilled in all of those who have ever read and appreciated his work. His character seems so clear in my mind, I can almost see how he'd react to this news had he read it himself, though I'll hardly get into that here.
His life exists for all of us to view and appreciate. He is immortal. Appropriately, this may have been his final spoof to us all. He'll never die, and we're damn fools who deserve to be publically humiliated for thinking such ridiculous things.
RIP HST
Selah,
Mahalo,
Res Ipsa Loquitor.
8 - Chambiac
he went out with a ZANG!
9 - Disappointed
there simply are no words for me right now. i am in shock. got online to check email and found out the horrible news. not much sleep tonight. check out msn.com, they misuse his words saying that nixon was quoted as saying that HST "represented that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of american character", sound familiar? FUCK msn.com WE WILL MISS YOU HUNTER
10 - david
Hunter Thompson dead?? and at is own hand? Doesn't sound Gonzo to me but he saw things the rest of us didn't .. his way of leaving the mess before getting nuked? Did he think we didn't need him anymore? That he'd said it all already and we'll get by on that? That would be Hunter but, goddamn, why leave in such a hurtful way man
11 - anony
R.I.P. Hunter, you'll always be remembered.
12 - TherRdoors
Went out just like Hemingway. It's so sad when writers have to leave before they are actually done.
13 - Cathy Linstrom
Hunter: Why???
14 - MissMacavity
I won a creative writing scholarship to Bennington, I have received numerous national awards for my writing, I have been published and paid to translate my visions into palatable, palpable words.
As a poet, I never did excell at factual journalism.
Who? HST.
What? Gone.
When? Now.
Where? Everywhere.
why have my words deserted me
yo no se
aloha
15 - s.a. griffin
fucking bats! goddamn fucking bats... rip/hst.
16 - Dave Nalle
It's Mahola, not Aloha, btw. As HST himself signed off.
As for going out the way he did, it makes perfect sense. He lived on his own terms and decided to die on his own terms.
I don't know how many details will get out, but I'll bet you my copy of Hey Rube that he planned this and had a damned good reason for it.
Dave
17 - godoggo
Lots of people I admire have left lately, but the right way, not like this. This makes me so sad in a way the others didn't. Well, he was a mean son of a bitch at the end, I understand. Keep a good thought.
18 - david
well bubba, a fucked up way to go out fer sure. maybe i always thought it would be too many chivas snowcones and a few thousand dynamite caps that the mercenary boys from soldier of fortune magazine accidentily left under the seat of an old jeep grand cherokee would send the whole shit pile skyward. indeed. now we will all have to wait out the excruciating process of an autopsy to see if there is any truth to my own personal suspicions that the dr. wa termianlly ill and not in it for the long haul. still, all of those that were touched either be his writings, himself personally, or both he shall not ever be forgotten for the insight, humor and eloquence. Res Ipsa Loqitor. R.I.P. hst
19 - david
i actually lived in aspen for a number of years, met the man, went to his house and collected many of my own and other stories. that being said i want to relate one that wa told to me by an old flyfishing guide/friend. it goes something like this: summer 1980. early morning maybe 6:30 a.m. woody creek at the time was very underdeveloped and "tom" let's call him is driving down the dirt road along the roaring fork on his way to basalt. all of a sudden a pale ghost white man, sweating profusely in nohting more than a dirty soaked t-shirt and jeans flags down his truck. said stranger is rambling nearly incoherently that some "crazy sonofabitch is trying to kill me with cocaine. we've been up for three days straight and i gotta get outta here. please take to the police or hospital or whatever, just get me outta here. that fucker's crazy!!" now have i paraphrased? yes. do i believe my friend? 100% and the person scrambling out of a ditch to flag him down? John Belushi. the person he was running from? HST. think about it. it doesn't matter if you believe it or not, i do bubba, i do. david.
20 - Mark Pugner
worth a read -- nice eulogy
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1428
21 - Shotgun Golf
what the fuck is this all about?
what the fuck happened?
i don't know what to say. hunter was a symbol for all of us. he was like a beacon. an archetype of what still could be. an example that there were still free individuals. that all was not lost.
that you could still be stoic. that you could still be brave. that knowing about politics was sexy. that dividing the political landscape into right and left was an outdated and oversimplified way of looking at things. that it was a stupid metaphor.
people like hunter and frank zappa and philip k dick are so MISSING from the world now. he was probably the last one left of that category.
i am fucking pissed and i don't know who at exactly. i feel old. if hunter lost faith, how can i carry on?
what the fuck does this mean to me? i remember when i was so depressed, so down, so goddamn bad. i came back to live with my folks after a stint at a start-up had gone bad. i was out of work, feeling inadequate, talentless, and deficient in the all-too powerfull technical buzzword know-hows. i didn't have a girlfriend, and couldn't find jobs. my only true friends had left town, or had changed completely. i was sunken. this went on for about a year.
and all through this, one of the few things that kept me going, besides inertia, was HST.
"fear and loathing in las vegas" is not about drugs, it's about "the bus", the whole dadaist idea of fun -- accepting total chaos without associated anxiety.
its about recognizing that you could not only learn to enjoy chaos, but that you could learn to thrive on it. learn not only to "embrace" it, but to recognize it for what it is. recognize it as the natural state/property/condition of the universe. that you could not only "take it easy", but quite simply NOT GIVE A SHIT. be invincible by faking insanity.
"when the going gets wierd, the wierd turn pro"
or more elaborated: "when the going gets wierd, 1)either the going chooses the wierd as the new pros or 2)the going wierds the pros into becoming wierd"
this ontological camouflage, was the outer shell under which he protected his powerful intellect and abbrasive attitude.
why did he do it? i'm still in denial. a part of me died today.
goodbye, uncle duke :'(
http://www.gonzo.org/hst/ht/pix/hunter-thompson-profile_3.jpg
22 - hart noecker
I've got the Fear. HST got us through the first four years and then shoved us out of the nest. We've got to fly on our own for the next four, (and let's hope it's only four more). The man said that only the vulgar survive. Well it's time for the rest of us to get extremely fucking vulgar!
23 - ED HARRIS
LAUGHTER, TRUTH, LIGHT,HUNTER GAVE THE WORLD GIFTS THE ORACLE BRINGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE...ED
24 - Morgan
I still dont want to believe it. I wasnt really surprised when I heard he'd died, knew it was coming, but suicide? Knock me over with a godamned feather. Its been a savage night after that shit.
The Mojo Wire is strangely silent, and I have to wonder... did it finally get weird enough for him?
I cant decide who wins from this... but I feel like we're all losing.
Strange and terrible... I need music, loud and powerful music or to shoot guns or something.
25 - Jamie
This is truly a sad day. One of the few great writers of our lifetime has passed by his own hand, leaving us to ask questions and pick up the pieces.
I can't say I blame him. Hell. This man can truly say he's done it all and came out laughing in the end. He WAS the belly of the beast and those of us who loved his writings know that, whether or not they were "non-fiuction", they were always true to the life of a man who took no prisoners.He is the only person on my "must-meet" list that I would have killed to meet.
Here's to never saying no to life and grabbing the bull by the horns. The fat is truly in the fire now, and only we will determine how this strange and queer trip turns out.
R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson