The Doc is Dead
Dammit all...why did he have to do it?
I just got the word from my old photographer friend Mike McDermott that the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was found dead - apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. WTF?! I can't say that I'm completely suprised that he's passed. Hunter's been on the celebrity deathwatch list for the past 20 years - and has always been considered fodder for the reaper - his habituations always at the forefront of grim possibility.
But suicide? There must be a reason. Maybe a rare leg cancer or perhaps the malignant nature of the last two presidential elections was too much to bear. Still, it boggles the mind.
I remember when I stood outside Owl Farm in the summer of 1998 - crocked and reclining in a lawn chair - ready for the Doctor to emerge. He was in New York on a book tour at the time, but I could have cared less. I was at the door of his ranch - smoking my last little bit of Afghani grey - and waiting for him. In the end, I left an "offering" at the gate and fled to the Woody Creek Tavern, where I closed the place after about five too many. Of course, I wrote about it - and no, it wasn't worth reading after the fact.
It's a damn shame - and worthy of a day to mourn. The Death of the American Dream has come full circle and claimed one of its prophets.
Selah.
I just got the word from my old photographer friend Mike McDermott that the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was found dead - apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. WTF?! I can't say that I'm completely suprised that he's passed. Hunter's been on the celebrity deathwatch list for the past 20 years - and has always been considered fodder for the reaper - his habituations always at the forefront of grim possibility.
But suicide? There must be a reason. Maybe a rare leg cancer or perhaps the malignant nature of the last two presidential elections was too much to bear. Still, it boggles the mind.
I remember when I stood outside Owl Farm in the summer of 1998 - crocked and reclining in a lawn chair - ready for the Doctor to emerge. He was in New York on a book tour at the time, but I could have cared less. I was at the door of his ranch - smoking my last little bit of Afghani grey - and waiting for him. In the end, I left an "offering" at the gate and fled to the Woody Creek Tavern, where I closed the place after about five too many. Of course, I wrote about it - and no, it wasn't worth reading after the fact.
It's a damn shame - and worthy of a day to mourn. The Death of the American Dream has come full circle and claimed one of its prophets.
Selah.
1 Comments:
Its funny, I justleft a similar message on another blog. It's short but it says what hurts in me about this loss of genius. Here it is...
"To Dr. Thompson, THANK YOU.
I think in some horrible twist of reality the ride was over and the thin wax floss of hope had run out. In the best of all possible worlds a War Crimes tribunal should indict both King Bushes and their sinister cohorts for murdering Dr. Thompson’s beloved American Dream, and thus emptying HST of his personal fear and loathing, which, in a Picassoesque way, was HST’s American Lucid Dream. I don’t believe in death, so I can only say Dr. Thompson just went looking for a pristeen world full of his manna, where -
FEAR AND LOATHING LIVE ON, ALONG WITH DR. GONZO …
There is a void in courage in journalism, now that HST sent his soul a-huntin’ …"
He was a blurry image in my mind regarding his personal self, but his writing was so clearly important, unique, and, like the North Star,it gave his fellow fear and loathers a direction to aim the honest commentary and his impossible sense of meta-lucidity, I honestly believe the precious American Deam died in the election prior to this one, and perhaps had something to do with our warrior-poet's demise, in this universe anyway.
By pcdoc, at 1:15 PM
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