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Author Hunter S. Thompson Commits Suicide

6 minutes ago 

ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counter-culture author of books such as "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 Press late Sunday.

The more I rack my brain about this, I can only come to one possible conclusion:

He had nothing left to say.

The more I rack my brain about this, I can only come to one possible conclusion:

He had nothing left to say.

Unfortunately that happened more than 10 years ago - maybe he just realized that as well.

Which doesn't make it any less tragic (in fact moreso).

The more I rack my brain about this, I can only come to one possible conclusion:

He had nothing left to say.

I think this hits anyone who was a fan hard. He was one of those writers you couldn't help but love, and he lived the way he wrote. I'll be cracking open a bottle of tequila and Fear and Loathing tonight.

This (http://www.bluebus.org/archives/000477.php) was his last really poignant thing I read. It influenced my vote.

Well.  Now that I have proof I will have absolutely no interest in his non-fiction writing...  Is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fiction?  If so, is it fiction for the purpose of making a political statement?  Mostly, I'm curious about the book since it seems to have some influence here... but I have no interest in his political views.

Alkiera

You probably can't separate his political views from his writing, fiction or not. But he's still pretty goddamn funny either way. Read The Curse of Lono if you are worried about his views. It's pretty apolitical, if I recall correctly, and has great Ralph Steadman artwork.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a classic of American literature, IMO, but if you have a real affinity for Nixon or Nixonian politics, it might just piss you off. Which is fine, because he wrote like that to piss people off too.

I enjoyed the first 20 issues or so of Transmetropolitan that I read, and from what I can tell, Spider Jerusalem is based on Hunter S Thompson.  Heck, I , a Christian conservative, could agree with most of Spider's writings...  Hunter(in that article), not at all.  Occasionally Transmetro seemed to have political bents, but it was still enjoyable.  If Fear and Loathing is like that, fine.  The article Joe linked was not enjoyable.

Alkiera

Sure, the man had been dehydrated since 1971; he needed electrolytes and proteins and Thorazine and antidepressants and probably something for his ailing joints because he probably had no cartilage in his knees or hips at all, and a whole host of other difficulties that comes of applying a lifelong scorched-earth policy to your mind and body. Thompson was old, and life had finally become sufficiently uncomfortable for him to check out.

I think it is improper and disrespectful to whine about this suicide. Thompson was in the game for a very, very long time, and I think it is a safe bet that he was never comfortable. This was a profoundly tortured guy, the smoke from whose ears always made a whole lot of exciting colors that we all enjoyed. It was a great brain to watch but you wouldn't want to live in it, I'd aver. He was a butch motherfucker and I'd bet cash he stuck it out significantly longer than he really wanted to. Let's face it, HST was not one for the nursing home -- he'd have just stolen everyone else's barbiturates and hurt people trying to arm-wrestle.

In an interview with The Independent in 2004, Thompson said he remembered meeting Bush at Thompson's Super Bowl party in Houston in 1974. He said that Bush was "with a guy who had come to sell . . . " but then cut himself off. "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."

Thompson said the future president had left an indelible impression on him. "He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer," Thompson said. "I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humor. 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."

applying a lifelong scorched-earth policy to your mind and body.

You only read things that you agree with?

Not everything is so black & white, Alkiera.

where the right tends to make things obvious on the cover, like Limbaugh's The Way Things Ought to Be or Savage's Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, he also labeled Clinton as "one of the greatest facists of our time", and Tim Leary as one of the "worst goddamn human beings on the face of the earth". He was a lot harder on flower power, baby boomers, and 60's counterculturalists more than he was anything Nixonian or conservative (but not to say they didn't get their fair share of viciousness either).

I think this hits anyone who was a fan hard. He was one of those writers you couldn't help but love, and he lived the way he wrote. I'll be cracking open a bottle of tequila and Fear and Loathing tonight.

This (http://www.bluebus.org/archives/000477.php) was his last really poignant thing I read. It influenced my vote.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill "gooks". They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.

Post-modernism

Some would argue that real journalism never really existed, but I would argue back that people don't even try anymore.

most people here would want to read one by Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, or Michael Savage.

You don't go to HST for rational commentary. You go to the good Doctor for entertaining, psychotic ramblings that have an amazing amount of truth in them.

Sorry, no offense to you, but I hate that word. The same goes for "modernism" or "pre-modernism".

"Real" journalism never existed because objectivity does not exist (though I do believe "objective truth" does, but that's irrelevant...for now. We're just talking about perspective).

How much exactly should people "try" anyways? No matter how much, it's ultimately pointless. The best you can ask for (at least in the case of journalism) is sincerity with what they do know. And if that's the case, Hunter didn't really do any different.

Hey, I hate it too. It's retarded. What's next, post-post-modernism?
 


Perfect objectivity does not exist, but there are certainly different shades of gray. People SHOULD try. A real journalist attempts to report the facts as best they can, without color. It's the difference between suicide bombers and homocide bombers. The people saying homocide bombers aren't even trying to be accurate at all.

Homicide is defined as the murder of another person.  Homocide bombers murder people.  Get your head out of the ass of Arafat's corpse and don't say stupid shit.  As a sheerly objective measure (homicide is killing other people) homicide bomber is the most accurate term, you just claim it isn't accurate because of your sympathy for the plight of the people of the suicide bomber or whatever.

But that's not how language works, dickweed.
You don't get to change the words and terms that are well established, just because you deem them inaccurate. It has nothing to do with objectivity. We don't use womyn or humyn either.

But there's a lack of honesty.
At least HST was honest about what he did.

Homicide is defined as the murder of another person.  Homocide bombers murder people.  Get your head out of the ass of Arafat's corpse and don't say stupid shit.  As a sheerly objective measure (homicide is killing other people) homicide bomber is the most accurate term, you just claim it isn't accurate because of your sympathy for the plight of the people of the suicide bomber or whatever.

Bullshit.  YOU disagree with the term homicide bombers because it disagrees with YOUR politics.  When someone kills someone else, what is the word the media uses?

I don't get called a suicider if I run into an office building, waste 10 people, then kill myself. 

Homicide bomber is more accurate because it strips away any notion that what the terrorist is doing is noble or justifiable. 

Homicide is defined as the murder of another person.  Homocide bombers murder people.  Get your head out of the ass of Arafat's corpse and don't say stupid shit.  As a sheerly objective measure (homicide is killing other people) homicide bomber is the most accurate term, you just claim it isn't accurate because of your sympathy for the plight of the people of the suicide bomber or whatever.

We'll have no more twatflapping about homicide bombers and suicide bombers. Take that discussion here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=2279.0).

Talk about Hunter S. Thompson and his death. Be respectful of him and his family and his fans, of which I am obviously one.

Says he wanted her to come home (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=1999553)

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 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 6-year-old grandson were in the house when the shooting occurred.

"The way he chose to do it was not a surprise, but the timing was a total, total surprise," Juan Thompson said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

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."

Juan Thompson said the "gonzo journalist" was not acting out of pain or desperation but probably decided it was time for him to go.

"One thing he said many times was that 'I'm a road man for the lords of karma.' It's cryptic, but there's an implication there that he may have decided that his work was done and that he didn't want to overstay his welcome; it was time to go," the 40-year-old son said by telephone from his father's home.

"He was not unhappy, he was not depressed, none of the things you would associate with someone who took his own life," he said.

Juan Thompson said his father had been in pain from a hip replacement, a broken leg and back surgery, but "I really don't believe it was motivated by pain."

Thompson was cremated Tuesday in Glenwood Springs. A private memorial service will be held March 5 in Aspen, with a public commemoration planned for spring or summer.

Thompson's family is looking into firing his ashes from a cannon, as he had wanted.

"It's a realistic possibility," the son said.

Hey, I'm not going to look down on anyone for killing themself, but doing it while your son, his wife, and your grandkid are home, and while you're on the phone with your wife?

You sir, are a douchebag of the first order and I hope you rot in hell.

His last column? Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1992213).

His description of how to pull over when a cop turns on his lights behind you is worth the read of Fear and Loathing.

Yea that's the start of it. He also talks about putting the tire pressure up to something like 65 for a nice ride.....

Oh - like you've never abused a rental car?

I don't really know of anyone who rents the kind of cars that fit my tastes....econoboxes make me ill.

Hey, I'm not going to look down on anyone for killing themself, but doing it while your son, his wife, and your grandkid are home, and while you're on the phone with your wife?

You sir, are a douchebag of the first order and I hope you rot in hell.

Doesn't seem like they minded all that much. (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3575306,00.html)

http://www.alamo.com/fleet.do?countryId=US Big bag of no thanks.

Hertz carries Mustangs, though usually not in GT trim.

I'm really picky with cars.

[It's a fucking rental car.  What, you were looking for something to pimp in?

Jesus Christ, it's a conveyance that you rent to get you from A to B while you trash it because it's not yours.

Nurburgring

Silly rabbit, pimping's for kids.

But anyway, for most people driving is just a hum-drum activity, akin to simple walking. But for other people, it's something a lot more....fun, for one. And I don't mean trashing it....more like driving with style, precision, power, and awareness.

Sure, I could drive a Seabring or Focus....but higher amount of power and handling tolerances mean a higher degree of fun...and I hate driving when it's not fun.

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.

I believe that this (http://www.bluechipcars.co.uk/) is the sort of car rental that Strazos is looking for. Time for that UK vacation.

Anita Thompson does not know why Hunter Thompson chose the .45 from his vast collection of guns. But he was deft with his death. "He did not destroy his face," Anita Thompson says. "He did it in his mouth. His face was beautiful. It was quick. It was not grisly or gruesome by any means. That's probably why he took that gun. He spared us a gruesome scene."

A real man would have used a .50 Magnum, or Desert Eagle or somesuch.

"A real man" would be having a closed casket.

He's getting shot from a cannon posthumously. I don't think you can beat that.

A real man would have used a .50 Magnum, or Desert Eagle or somesuch.

I enjoyed Fear and Loathing immensely ... I think the book works as pure entertainment:  a window into the world of heavy, psychadelic drug use for those of us who have no experience with that world.

Interesting. I read FALILV for a New Journalism class in college (the early '90s), and thought it had its moments, but that I was probably too young and the wrong generation to fully grok it. I skipped the pages that were little more than laundry lists of drugs. I'm also someone who has never dabbled in psychedelia, and I always thought you had to know the experience of drug binging to really "get" FALILV. But your post states the opposite.

Well, I read and love Philip K. Dick too, and not just the mainstream stuff.  My enjoyment of HST's work is consistent with my strangeness.  On some level, I'm probably a drug voyeur.  Plus, I have to admit that some of my enjoyment of HST comes from the fact that I find his political writings to be brilliant.

You want nasty drug assoctiation stories? Read William Burroughs. Then we'll talk.

You want nasty drug assoctiation stories? Read William Burroughs. Then we'll talk.

You want nasty drug assoctiation stories? Read William Burroughs. Then we'll talk.

No thanks. Drug stuff is pretty boring to the sober.

Where the hell are all the cool people in the world, who aren't at the same time, completely dangerous (or at the very least, not entirely helpful) to hang out with? I hate conventionalism just as much as I do recklessness.

Alexander Pope in a prose convertible (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2FArticleNews%2FTPStory%2FLAC%2F20050226%2FHUNTER26%2FTPFocus%2F&ord=1110059252689&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true)

By PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS

Saturday, February 26, 2005, Page F9

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

Hunter S. Thompson ... was indeed working on such a story.

Now check out this February 25 Associated Press story about Thompson's death. Sounds a lot like a professional hit with a silencer:

"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...

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. (Her account to Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass is slightly different: "I did not hear any bang," she told Kass. She added that Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot, according to Kass' report.)

Mack White sums up the questions well:
Thompson's family says he was not depressed, nor was he in enough to pain to kill himself. In fact, by all reports, he was quite happy. He was talking on the phone to his wife, getting ready to work on his column, when he decided it would be wise to kill himself, so that he could go out (we are told) while "still at the top of his form," even though this would mean not finishing his column or his expose on 9/11 (potentially the most important thing he would ever write) (?)...

RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes

This account says Thompson killed himself while sitting in a chair on his typewriter and yet the original account tells us that Thompson shot himself while talking to his wife on the phone in the kitchen. Why has the story changed andwhat is the significance of the word typed on the paper in light of the fact that Thompson said he would be 'suicided' before being able to release a major story on explosives bringing down the twin towers?

RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson thought 9/11 an inside job

Stars Attend Hunter S. Thompson Memorial (http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050308/D88MV5GG0.html?PG=home&SEC=news)

Mar 8, 1:45 PM (ET)

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, who both portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in films, joined Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and others over the weekend to remember the gonzo journalist at a private memorial.

Depp, who played the part of Thompson in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," read a passage from the book in which Thompson rues the end of the '60s, according to a Rocky Mountain News reporter.

The reporter was given permission by Thompson's family after Saturday's memorial to report on the event.

The eccentric Thompson, 67, shot himself at his home near Aspen on Feb. 20 after weeks of pain from a host of physical problems that included a broken leg and a hip replacement.

At the memorial, neighbor and actor Don Johnson remembered once asking Thompson: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Thompson responded by slapping Johnson across the face.

Jeff Gannon, Johnny Gosch, Hunter Thompson, and Bohemian Grove Snuff Porn (http://www.intl-news.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=819)
Posted on Wednesday, March 02 @ 09:35:59 PST by joeb

Columnists

I've been watching this story percolate since the weekend, and with Thursday's return of "Jeff Gannon" to the blogosphere with a column entitled "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room" really bringing it all full circle, several questions are begged here.

As the Jeff Gannon story progressed and turned into a Bush White House homosexual prostitution scandal, Internet investigators started asking if there could be a connection to the previous Bush White House homosexual prostitution scandal.

If you recall, the stories of 15-year-old callboys wandering through the White House in the middle of the night was linked to the "Franklin Cover-Up" case exposed by Nebraska State Sen. John DeCamp. In that case, a Republican operative named Larry King was involved with procuring boys and girls from Boys Town in Nebraska and elsewhere and entrapping them in a child sex-slave and espionage ring. King, with an annual salary of under 20K, was throwing sex parties for the powerful in a $5,000-a-month condo in Washingotn, DC; apparently taping the proceedings for blackmail purposes.

One of the victims of this ring was one Paul Bonacci, who testified in court proceedings that he helped kidnap Johnny Gosch into this ring in 1982. It was apparently at 2:29 AM, Sunday, Feb. 20 that the question was first asked -- is "Jeff Gannon" really Johnny Gosch?

By the end of the day, Hunter S. Thompson was reported dead.

This is where it gets really interesting. Bonacci also testified that he was forced in July 1984 to participate in a homosexual/pedophilic/necrophilic orgy at (what has since been identified as) the Bohemian Grove; all of which was filmed. And according to Bonacci, the man in charge of the filming was someone picked up in Las Vegas on the plane headed to the Grove, a man who Bonacci was told was one "Hunter Thompson."

No doubt most people who came across this information in the past and were familiar with Thompson's work dismissed the idea that the man behind the camera could have been the famous writer. After all, this was a man who has been fighting the like of Nixon and Bush his entire career.

But could Thompson have been brought to the Grove by someone who presented it as an opportunity to investigate what the power elite was up to behind closed doors? Could Thompson have quickly found himself in over his head, compromised, by virtue of his very presence at this horrific crime, by the men he thought he was investigating undercover? (Or perhaps compromised some other way -- perhaps for instance, he was surreptiously filmed with an adult female prostitute who was then murdered. But I digress.)

But back for now to the "Who is Jeff Gannon?" question. James D. Guckert seems to have appeared out of nowhere around 1999, setting up male escort websites. In profiles on these sites from around 2001, "Jeff" said he was 31 years old, closer to Johnny Gosch's age than James Guckert's. (Guckert/Gannon claims to be 47 today.)

"Jeff Gannon" aka "James Guckert" also was attending alumni events at the TKE fraternity of West Chester college in Pennsylvania. Local media called the college and confirmed that a "James Guckert" graduated from West Chester in 1980; but apparently no one has checked yearbooks and such to confirm if the same man seems to be depicted.

Could "James Guckert" be just another false identity? Another Democratic Underground investigator found 1986 and 1987 pictures of a "Jeff Guckert" from Fairview High School, in that same Pennsylvania/Delaware border area that "James D. Guckert" (aka "Jeff Gannon") claimed residence on his escort & porn websites and was cited for $20,000 in back taxes. "Jeff Guckert" would have been about the same age as Johnny Gosch when he was playing high school golf.

Did Gosch go on to assume the identity of "James Guckert," a man ten years older than himself, some time in the 1990s?

Consider this, from his mother Noreen's Johnny Gosch Foundation website in 2001:

Johnny was subjected to severe trauma and torture of a satanic and sexual nature, in order to intentionally destroy the conscious personality.... brainwashing. This intentional application of trauma is a systematic procedure used to control these victims, in order to use them in sexual slavery, pornography and more.

In February 1999, in Federal Court testimony in Omaha Nebraska, Noreen Gosch [pictured] testified that Johnny Gosch came to see her in 1997, providing information about his experience, asking for his mother's help and pleading for her to not reveal his visit.

Johnny is now 31 years old. After years of suffering tremendous torture and pain at the hands of his captors, being used and abused, he and several others escaped. They have been living in hiding under new identities... they fear for their lives.

People ask ... why is it necessary for someone to hide and live this way..... It is simple, Johnny can identify many of the people involved and would be a threat to the very people who took him. He is known as the "chameleon". Why? Because he can so completely change his appearance.

Chameleon? Again, on DU, someone points to a purple blemish on Jeff's chest in one of his circa 2002 "escort" photos, asking if that is the mark left by birthmark removal. According tohis mother Johnny "the Chameleon" Gosch still had the birthmark in 1997.

In one of his first interviews, on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, "Jeff Gannon" said "James Guckert" "s the name on my driver's license." His handlers have apparently warned him on that point and he now claims it is his "given name."

So, what's the deal here?

Is Jeff Gannon really Johnny Gosch? Noreen Gosch refuses to confirm or deny.

If Gannon is Gosch, what is going on with him? Is his strange behavior a result of years of brainwashing? Or is it something more? Is it possible he drew attention to himself during that January 26 press conference to pique the curiousity of citizen investigators? To draw attention to the dark side of the past 24 years of the Bush regime? He invited this investigation after the press conference (and before the "escort" revelations) by publishing a column titled "Hiding in Plain Sight." This was within days of Franklin cover-up figure George Paul's Bishop sudden arrest.

And, did that investigation have anything to do with the death of Hunter Thompson? Sherman Skolnick and Tom Heneghen at Cloak & Dagger Internet Radio say Thompson was working on a book about high-level sex rings; though they haven't offered a source. But that claim aside, we still have the timing of Thompson's reported death coinciding with these investigations. Did Thompson kill himself out of shame for his part in what happened at the Grove? Was he murdered to shut him up? Or did he fake his death to go underground while all this was breaking?

Is there anything at all to these questions? "Jeff Gannon" hints at a "yes" by putting up a new website headlined by a piece titled after Thompson's most famous works.

It's all "in plain sight" -- albeit through the looking glass.

Can't we just kill Gannon and get his stupidity out of our existence forever?

Gonzo Zambelli send-off for Hunter S. Thompson (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_364466.html)

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

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 of the aerial display shot out of a 157-foot-tall cannon. The $2 million invitation-only display, paid for by actor Johnny Depp, will take place at sunset Saturday.

"It's more of a launcher rather than a cannon," said Thompson family spokesman Matt Mosely, of Denver-based GBSM Communications.

Thompson, 67, shot himself at his home in February. The renowned counterculture author, whose works included "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," had revealed the idea for scattering his ashes in a 1978 BBC interview.

"I learned a long time ago not to question his wishes," Mosely said.

Thompson's widow, Anita, arrived by limousine at Zambelli's Lawrence County plant Aug. 9 to deliver his ashes to the plant superintendent. They were in a plastic bag inside an ornate, inscribed wooden box, Zambelli said.

"It was very emotional. She had tears in her eyes when she handed the box over," Zambelli said. "It was very important for the family to meet everyone in the plant involved in the project. They wanted to know how the ashes would be treated."

A convoy of Anita Thompson's friends will follow the truck carrying the shells, Zambelli said. The trip covers more than 1,600 miles.

The launching tower weighs 2 1/2 tons, topped with Thompson's signature gonzo fist emblem -- a double-thumbed fist clenched around a dagger with a peyote button in the middle. A peyote button is the crown of cactus containing the psychedelic drug mescaline.

About 350 friends and family will attend the ceremony. Mosely said Depp is involved because the actor and Thompson became close after Depp portrayed the writer in the "Fear and Loathing" movie.

Zambelli project coordinator Matt Wood, who designed the Thompson tribute, said the show strikes a delicate balance.

"We're working very closely with the family and want to keep some things private," said Wood, who is leaving today for Aspen for three dress rehearsals. "It is a funeral."

Writer’s ashes going, going, gonzo! (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9018348/)
Hunter S. Thompson memorialized with fireworks

Updated: 11:40 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2005

WOODY CREEK, Colo. - With a deafening boom, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky amid fireworks late Saturday as relatives and a star-studded crowd bid an irreverent farewell to the founder of “gonzo journalism”.

As the ashes erupted from a tower, red, white, blue and green fireworks lit up the sky over Thompson’s home near Aspen.

The 15-story tower was modeled after Thompson’s logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall, not far from a tent filled with merrymakers.

“He loved explosions,” explained his wife, Anita Thompson.

The private celebration included actors Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, rock bands, blowup dolls and plenty of liquor to honor Thompson, who killed himself six months ago at the age of 67.

Security guards kept reporters and the public away from the compound as the 250 invited guests arrived, but Thompson’s fans scouted the surrounding hills for the best view of the celebration.

“We just threw a gallon of Wild Turkey in the back and headed west,” said Kevin Coy of Chester, W.Va., who drove more than 1,500 miles with a friend in hopes of seeing the celebration. “We came to pay our respects.”

Thompson fatally shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently despondent over his declining health. The memorial, however, was planned as a party, with readings and scheduled performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The author’s longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actor Sean Penn were on the invitation list, along with Depp, who 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 best-known work.

“Over the last few months I’ve learned that he really touched people more deeply than I had realized,” said Thompson’s son, Juan.

Thompson’s longtime friend George Stranahan lamented the Hollywood-style production. “I am pretty sure it isn’t how Hunter would have done it,” he said. “But when your friends make a mistake you support them.”

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 is 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.

He 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 — in which the central character was a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant — he also wrote an expose on the Hell’s Angels and “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.”

The Kentucky-born writer also was the model for Garry Trudeau’s balding “Uncle Duke” in the comic strip “Doonesbury.”

In now-chic Aspen, Thompson was an eccentricity: 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.

Composer David Amram, a friend of Thompson since the early 1960s, said Thompson had never expected to be successful taking on President Nixon during the Watergate era. “He thought he would be banned or put on an enemies’ list,” he said.

Thompson made himself the centerpiece of his stories “to show that a regular person could be in the midst of the craziness of the time,” Amram said. “He was our historian.”

After his suicide, 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.

(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050820/050820_thompson_vmed_8p.widec.jpg)

Some decry glitz of Thompson blastoff (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/THOMPSON_MEMORIAL?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=ENTERTAINMENT)

By ROBERT WELLER
Associated Press Writer

WOODY CREEK, Colo. (AP) -- Hunter S. Thompson's grand finale went off as planned: His ashes were blasted into the night sky in an explosion friends and fans agreed he would have loved. But some said the gonzo journalist would have sneered at the Hollywood trappings - champagne toasts by movie stars and former presidential candidates.

Filmmaker Nancy Cohen tried to organize a group of 100 fans outside the gates of Thompson's farm to crash the Saturday night party.

"That's what Hunter would have done," she said.

"This looks more like a fancy dress ball than a memorial for a counterculture icon," said Cohen, of New York, producer of "My Dinner With Abbie," a film about 1960s radical activist Abbie Hoffman.

Crashing the party would have been difficult with the dozens of black-clad security guards who lined the roads leading to the farm.

"It looks like the neighborhood has been invaded by the Viet Cong," friend and neighbor Mike Cleverly said of the guards.

"I am pretty sure it isn't how Hunter would have done it," said longtime friend George Stranahan.

The writer's ashes were fired from atop a 15-story tower modeled after Thompson's logo: a clenched fist, holding a peyote button, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall.

The guests gathered in a pavilion next to the platform. Inside were blow up sex dolls and a mask of Thompson's arch enemy, late President Richard Nixon. With drums beating in the background, trays of champagne circulated before Thompson's remains flew.

Thompson shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently despondent over his declining health.

The national and most local media were barred from the tribute to the groundbreaking writer who 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.

His only son, Juan Thompson, said the hundreds of celebrities, including actors Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, musician Lyle Lovett and former Democratic presidential nominees George McGovern and Sen. John Kerry, wouldn't have felt comfortable with the press around.

Depp, who played Thompson in the 1998 film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," paid for the $2.5 million extravaganza. Depp and Juan Thompson embraced as the ashes fell to the ground.

Juan Thompson told the Aspen Daily News that the ceremony not only fulfilled the vision his father outlined in a 1978 BBC video, but it "was bigger than he ever imagined."

Ralph Steadman, who illustrated many of Thompson's works, had a different take on the extravaganza.

"He'd probably say it wasn't quite big enough," said Steadman. "We want him back. (Saturday night) was a kind of pleading for him to come back. All is forgiven."

'Rolling Stone' publishes Hunter S. Thompson note (http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-09-08-thompson-note_x.htm?csp=34)

Posted 9/8/2005 11:04 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — Rolling Stone, the magazine that was home for years to Hunter S. Thompson, will publish a note written by the gonzo journalist days before he committed suicide in February.

Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian who is also Thompson's official biographer, writes that a Feb. 16 note may be Thompson's final written words. It reads:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt."

Hunter left the note for his wife, Anita. He shot himself four days later at his home in Aspen, Colo., after weeks of pain from a host of physical problems that included a broken leg and a hip replacement.

Written in black marker, the note was titled, Football Season Is Over.

Brinkley writes in the magazine, on newsstands Friday, "February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time."

Most of Thompson's early writings appeared in Rolling Stone. In pieces of great length, he often portrayed himself as a wildly intoxicated observer and participant.

The writer's ashes were blown into the sky in Woody Creek, Colo., amid fireworks on Aug. 20.

Written in black marker, the note was titled, Football Season Is Over

LOVETT THRILLED WITHE HERO THOMPSON'S CAR (http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/lovett%20thrilled%20withe%20hero%20thompsons%20car)

Country star LYLE LOVETT once bought late author HUNTER S THOMPSON's Cadillac for $2,000 (GBP1,110).

The former husband of JULIA ROBERTS admits he was a longtime fan of eccentric Thompson when the FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS writer offered him the chance to buy his car.

Lovett recalls, "We were backstage and we found out our next show was in Salt Lake City and he said, 'Well, you'll need a pace car for that. You ought to buy my Cadillac.'

"I figured if Hunter S Thompson offers to sell you his car, the only thing you can do is ask him how much.

"He said, 'Two thousand dollars,' and I paid him right there. There was a case of beer in the trunk and he threw that in too."

28/12/2005 10:17