Great Scot, Man!

Hunter Thompson committed suicide.



I grew up reading the Doctor's druggy diatribe. It seems strange to say that but my equally drug-addled oldest brother saw fit to give me a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was 13 years old. I read it but, most of it escaped me until I came back to it again in my twenties. What was ether? But I loved the part about the reptilian people in the casino lounge; still think it's funny today, especially having grown up in the Silver State. And, oh yes, I understood the Doctor when he mentioned Jesus Freaks and the terrifying zealousness of desert trailer trash racing 4x4s thru a moon-like landscape.

I read Generation of Swine when I was in college, about 1992. I've still got the same copy I loaned out to friends while working at the UNR Sagebrush.

Prior to my full-time stint at the University of Nevada, Reno, the colorful Doctor had paid some sporadic, mostly drunken visits to that second-rate university. I remember one dweeb way back in 1990, complaining about meeting the Doctor and how disappointed he had been with his hedonistic ways. The dweeb was a Mormon kid from Carson City. If there is a God, I hope the dweeb is now wearing a pastel tie and humping freight in the back of a Mall-Wart.

I had the chance to work in southern Colorado about two years ago, near where Dr. Thompson lived. I visited Glenwood Springs and I camped outside Vail. Hunter was right. It is God's country ... or at least God's country club. There sure as hell isn't any air up there.

For a heathen, Hunter was obsessed with God -- or rather right and wrong, punishment, absolute power corrupting ... all that. It's clear from his writing. He used gut-busting humor and sicko sarcasm to poke the powerful in the ass. Next to the father of gonzo journalism, P.J. O'Rourke is a weak hack. Most men are weak when held up against the glare of an eternally raging man-child who managed to keep his teenage idealism and his hippie open-mindedness all the way into his sixties.

I don't know why the Doctor decided to end it all, I never met the man. Yeah, he probably woulda rubbed me the wrong way and I him, despite our shared love of writing. I bet it's hard to endure the ravings of a 67-year-old teenager, especially when those ravings are so furiously fueled by the injustices of today. And that's all we seem to have inherited from the Doctor's Peace/Love Generation. Injustice. Injustice personified in a smirking president and a rising casualty toll from a "war" fought to free up crude oil, not people.

When everybody was investing in plastics, drinking martinis and driving Lincoln Continentals to the country club, Hunter Thompson was brandishing a comedic Molotov at the establishment.

Now, the good Doctor is probably perched between Elvis and Jim Morrison on his way to the driving range in a heavenly golfcart.

The techno DJ, Paul Oakenfold, had Thompson do a monologue over one of his tracks on his album, Bunkka. The song's called Nixon's Legacy. I wonder what the Doctor's legacy will be to all the punks shaking their fists in sync to a white rapper's angry sermon?

Tonight, I'm having a bottle of cheap wine and maybe a non-prescription pill or two in honor of the Doctor. It's mighty cold out this time of year.

Over and out, Rube,

-- Mz M.

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