He Stomped On The Terra
Feeling sad and kind of numb to learn of Hunter Thompson's passing. Nobody thought he'd go out in a hospital bed wired up to a bunch of tubes and machines, but the suddenness of this is shocking. Thompson, for better or worse, lived the way he wrote and practiced what he preached. To some degree, he seemed a prisoner of the larger than life persona he created, but unlike, say, Kurt Cobain, he lived fully within that persona and used it to accomplish things no ordinary journalist could. He was an authentic human, and we shall not see his like again, I fear.

Here in Colorado, just about everybody has a Hunter story. Whether you stopped in at the Woody Creek Tavern for a beer and happened to meet the man as he held court with his customary Wild Turkey, or he stopped into the place where you worked, he always seemed willing to deal with the public as generously as his current mental state allowed. I saw him speak up at the University of Colorado a few years ago, and while his ramblings that night were largely incoherent, here and there were interspersed some very funny remarks and incisive observations on the state of the government (this was before W would give Hunter a renewed source of vitriol against the Whores and Greedheads that run our country)--frankly amazing, seeing as he sampled a wide variety of the pills, joints, and other unidentified consumables (including a container of what seemed to be raw ether) that came flying onstage from the audience. And when he was finished, he simply stood up and walked offstage. No curtain calls or bouquets of flowers for him. The moderator, a bit surprised at the guest of honor's sudden departure, announced that Hunter would return after a brief intermission, but we knew he wasn't coming back. It just wasn't him.

There are a couple of filmic journeys into the world of Gonzo. A DVD of Where the Buffalo Roam was recently released--it's a valiant (if flawed) effort to transcribe Hunter's "greatest hits" to the screen. It doesn't hold together as a narrative, but it's got some very funny bits, and Bill Murray is quite good as the good Doctor. Peter Boyle, while not the Dr. Gonzo that I pictured (that would be Benicio Del Toro's iconic performance), is also memorable.

I'll be putting in the Criterion edition of Terry Gilliam's excellent Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a fairly faithful adaptation of Hunter's best-known work, featuring Johnny Depp's note-perfect portrayal of Raoul Duke and Del Toro's force of nature turn. I won't hear them, though, because I'll be listening to Hunter's brilliantly unhinged stream-of-consciousness commentary. And sipping a little Wild Turkey to help dull the pain of being a man. Godspeed, Hunter.