So Long and Mahalo - Hunter S. Thompson, 1937 - 2005
Hunter S. Thompson was arguably the looniest, most intoxicated writer I have ever admired, and yet the tragedy of his suicide feels almost as unexpected and painful as the suckerpunch to the gut that killed Houdini.
When Kurt Cobain blew his head off, I was 13, far more tender than I am now, and I cried. But I wasn't anywhere near a state of shock. Long before his suicide, in the back of my mind, I practically waited for it to happen.
I'm not crying now, but the "What the fuck?"s in my head are louder and more persistent.
Hunter saw the dreams of the sixties devoured by hideous reptiles, yet his supernatural sense of humor made him invincible in ways that Hemingway, Kerouac and Cobain weren't. He taught me that even if we fail to prevail, to engulf the nastiness that surrounds us with our sheer positive energy, we could at least keep the nastiness at a distance simply by cackling in its motherless face.
When the nuclear apocalypse came, I always thought, if I survived, I would read his editorial first, and it would make me laugh the most.
He never lost his cynicism, but even until the very end, he never seemed to lose his humor or passion either. In what may be the last piece he published before his death, he discussed his idea for Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray:
(from ESPN.com:)
HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."
BILL: "Mmhmm."
HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."
"So there it is," he writes later in the piece. "Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it."
In spite of the state of things today, I feel my faith in our invincibility is stronger than ever. I still feel the way Hunter felt in the sixties, as he wrote in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:" "You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning..."
But the fact that the world just became too much for even Hunter S. Freaking Thompson to bear no doubt extinguishes a few of those sparks, and kicks a big fat dent in the Chevy convertible I'm cruising down the Nevada Highway at 100 miles an hour.
To Hunter, I raise my glass, plus two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
So long and Mahalo.
When Kurt Cobain blew his head off, I was 13, far more tender than I am now, and I cried. But I wasn't anywhere near a state of shock. Long before his suicide, in the back of my mind, I practically waited for it to happen.
I'm not crying now, but the "What the fuck?"s in my head are louder and more persistent.
Hunter saw the dreams of the sixties devoured by hideous reptiles, yet his supernatural sense of humor made him invincible in ways that Hemingway, Kerouac and Cobain weren't. He taught me that even if we fail to prevail, to engulf the nastiness that surrounds us with our sheer positive energy, we could at least keep the nastiness at a distance simply by cackling in its motherless face.
When the nuclear apocalypse came, I always thought, if I survived, I would read his editorial first, and it would make me laugh the most.
He never lost his cynicism, but even until the very end, he never seemed to lose his humor or passion either. In what may be the last piece he published before his death, he discussed his idea for Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray:
(from ESPN.com:)
HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."
BILL: "Mmhmm."
HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."
"So there it is," he writes later in the piece. "Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it."
In spite of the state of things today, I feel my faith in our invincibility is stronger than ever. I still feel the way Hunter felt in the sixties, as he wrote in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:" "You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning..."
But the fact that the world just became too much for even Hunter S. Freaking Thompson to bear no doubt extinguishes a few of those sparks, and kicks a big fat dent in the Chevy convertible I'm cruising down the Nevada Highway at 100 miles an hour.
To Hunter, I raise my glass, plus two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
So long and Mahalo.
posted by JO'B at 20:26
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home