Buy the ticket, take the ride; The Peter Pan of degenerates

I was reading the Rum Diary on my way through Berlin via Amsterdam. I had finished when we arrived at that hostel, all drab and perfect. A girl that was travelling with us was interested in the book and I gave it to her. She asked me to sign it. It was the first book I'd ever signed.

My friends and I had spent years saying things like, "Dogs fucked the pope, no fault of mine," and "We're out to croak a scag Baron named Savage Henry," and "Let's get down to brass tacks, how much for the ape?" We drank whiskey like we were one of his friends, mourning now, just like Depp and Murray must be... though I pretend to be him on occasion, drunken or drug-laden Saturday Sundays, they played him perfection.

I recently had fantasies about showing up at his compound and sleeping outside the gates to wait for him to take me on some mad dash through the rockies. Gathering random insight on crooked politicians and the overzealous Law.

I love how Hunter capitalized words. I love how Hunter capitalized on taking things literally and people's sensitivities. He was an enemy of the state; he's made lists, for better or worse; but more importantly Hunter inspired millions of men and women. Hunter was the epitamy of American. he is the dream. he is the wicked buzz, the nasty hallucinations. that was his life.


You never really knew with Hunter. With his Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, George Plimpton, name dropping; His freak power; his young wife; his speeding life.

0-67 in a blink and I hardly knew the fella.

It must have been around the time when he was putting a gun to his head that I was reciting some lines of his to my buddy while we cruised up an anonymous road in the pine barrens yesterday.

It was today, at 4:59pm (or 16:59 if you're an asshole) that I saw his image on the screen as Skip Bayless said some nice things, for the first time in his life. I learned late.

Hunter S. Thompson would not want me to mourn right now. I can save that for tomorrow. He would want me to drink.

I'll be in Colorado in nine days, the closest I'll ever be to his compound. Wherever they bury that poor man, I'll revere it more than Jim Morrison's graffitied headstone in Pere-Lachaise. It was dreary that day and we couldn't find Oscar Wilde or Balzac. It was laziness and a sense of apathy in regards to looking for a dead persons tomb that I didn't care for. Jim, though, we had the same range. often baritone.

I heard and began looking for my vodka. I'm famous for not knowing how to cope sans helpers. Most death doesn't bother me.

Don't bother going certain places for a satisfactory obit, his legacy was already contrived by he who's gone.

It's more of a fairy tale: the Peter Pan of degenerates; for journalism, a centaur: half Che Guevara, half Jack Johnson. Forgivable.

In a strange twist of fate, Thompson was crushed when he learned that his idol Ernest Hemingway had killed himself in Idaho in 1961.

"I think he killed himself because he couldn't write anymore," Thompson is quoted as saying in a chapter of Paul Perry's book titled "Totally Unclassifiable."

"He couldn't write, he was too sick to hunt. He just didn't have it anymore, so he decided to end it."

Why, Hunter?

I, cold beer in hand, ask: "Did you just quit? or did you realize you couldn't live life to the fullest each day, and couldn't bear to do it any other way?"

This is a tragedy or another example of your inability to float by.

Should I be inspired or sad? drunk, that's for certain.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

It could be that Hunter was so distraught because he couldn't, as much as he tried, figure this fucking country out anymore. He was America, and he didn't know himself any longer.

He would swear Bush was going to be ousted, shamelessly, from the White House this past November. He guaranteed it. I think he broke his own heart.

There is lots of shuffling going on in the world right now, it's not only my office.
Deaths come in threes, for worse, and this year tops the charts.

Rodney, Hunter and Ray.

How many of these threesomes are all one-namers? They speak volumes for their missing surnames. Fuck Reagan.


The dead. Oh, the dead.

Will the Academy Awards put up his picture on their parade of the passed?

Will his ovation be led by a bunch of drunkard self-importance?

Now I am praying Depp wins so he can say something fleeting and empirical. Before, I was rooting for Ray Charles.


Hunter Thompson is three generation's Jack Kennedy.

I think Hunter is the sole reason I started writing. I can't quite point to Aldous because his intellect his peculiarly high-brow. That Aldous.

I've been planning on being Hunter for the past 6 halloweens. Never amounted to anything. Do you know how hard it is to find an acapulco shirt and a blue fly swatter on a Sunday in Pittsburgh?

What kind of drugs were you on Hunter? to make you do such a thing?

My friend asked me if I had any more details.

I've been getting condolence calls and emails all day.

This is the end of a man. The last of his kind. The last possibility of such a man passed years ago, and this is certainly the end of an era.

Mahalo Hunter. May your words make God laugh. May your insight make God weep. May your zest make all who will follow you jealous as hell. May there be someone again half as talented as you. May you be content with your life and never regret a minute of it.


caricatura





freak power



at work