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2 December 2021
[books] The Origins of Raoul Duke… How Hunter S. Thompson created his alter-ego. ‘Although Duke played no real part in this breakthrough book about the infamous motorcycle gang, his name was casually included in a list of outlaws near the end. Readers at the time must have been baffled, as this was the first time Thompson had ever used that name. However, it was not the first time that the words “Raoul Duke” had appeared next to each other in print. The improbable appellation had popped up in a series of articles in December 1965—a month when Thompson was furiously scouring newspapers from across North America in search of material for his book, which he considered a meditation on the media as much as the biker gang. In the midst of his press binge, he more than likely stumbled upon a series of stories about an unassuming businessman from Calgary by the name of Raoul “Duke” Duquette…’
15 June 2021
[gonzo] The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rollicking Novel … An amusing art project / board game that should come with a health warning. ‘Baldwin’s game is not to be taken seriously…or taken orally. It’s actually a one-of-its-kind piece of art that can be purchased for $3,500. Drugs, like batteries, are not included. You must supply your own, possibly through your attorney.’
5 March 2020
[quote] LMG @ Twenty – The Inevitable Hunter S. Thompson Quote: On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.
26 February 2015
[hst] Hunter S. Thompson, Existentialist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Finding Meaning in Life … ‘Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH. Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds…’
3 November 2009
[funny] Go Look: Gonzo Journalism … 
7 December 2008
[books] Gonzo’s back! … an interview with Ralph Steadman about Hunter S. Thompson … ‘Steadman didn’t go with Thompson on the fateful trip to Vegas, but he was there in spirit. “He thought of taking me, but in the meantime he’d met this lawyer called Oscar Acosta,” he laughs. “They had a lot in common, drugs-wise. So that’s why he decided not to take me. And anyway, as he said, ‘I might need a lawyer!'”‘
11 March 2005
[comics] No complaints about ‘Doonesbury’ tribute to Hunter S. Thompson — article about Garry Trudeau’s tribute to Hunter S. Thompson … ‘For Trudeau’s Duke, in the end, is a character far more sinister than the self-created, self-destructive gonzo artist who shot himself last month. Duke has a “predatory nature,” the cartoonist explained. Once parachuted into a hot spot such as Haiti, Kuwait, Panama or Iraq, his “relentless opportunism” will always take over. He stands for “a certain kind of mad unconditionality. Duke is never ambivalent, never in personal conflict. His take is resolutely binary: Is this in my self-interest or not? It’s a kind of weird state of grace.”‘ [via The Comics Reporter]
22 February 2005
[hst] Up The Creek — Warren Ellis on Hunter S. Thompson. ‘…how you leave the stage is at least as important as how you enter it. And he left it alone in a kitchen with a .45, dying in — and wouldn’t it be nice if it were the last time these words were typed together? — dying in fear, and loathing.’
[hst] Depraved and decadent: adventures with Thompson — Ralph Steadman on Hunter S. Thompson … ‘We got drunk a lot together but the only drug I ever took with him was psyclobin, a hallucinogenic, in Rhode Island, when we went to screw up the Americas Cup. It scoured my innards, in a way that I cannot deal with. When I woke up the next day, the first thing I wanted to do was spray “Fuck the Pope” on a boat, because when Hunter had asked, “What are you gonna write, Ralph, with your spraycans?”, it was the first thing that came to mind.’
2 November 2004
[politics] More Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail — long interview with Hunter S. Thompson … ‘Hunter S Thompson is not regarded as one of world journalism’s easier subjects. […] It’s a combination of things, really: the ubiquitous firearms and narcotics; his nocturnal regime and sudden mood swings. I first encountered him in the early 1990s when I was working for another newspaper which had decided to send him to join the Royal press corps for the Highland Games. I met Thompson at Gatwick, at 6am. He lit his hash pipe while we were still in sight of the customs hall and insisted on being driven to Smithfield Market for whisky. When we reached his hotel, he barricaded himself in his suite for 36 hours, then fled back to Aspen in the middle of the night. His subsequent faxes referred to me as an “evil treacherous dingbat” and a “weird limey freak”. “In a strange way,” says Ralph Steadman, “insults are Hunter’s way of articulating affection.”‘
21 October 2004
[politics] Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 — Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone … ‘Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. You bet. Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and a gin-sot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could recognize him. Then we would get in a cab and cruise down to the Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.’
19 May 2003
[obit] He was a Crook — Hunter S. Thompson’s classic obituary for Richard Nixon … ‘If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.’
18 May 2003
[books] The Honest Outlaw — Paul Theroux on Hunter S. Thompson … ‘One of my favourite Thompson pieces (reprinted in his collection Better than Sex) was written after the death of Richard Nixon. As the funeral orations were being delivered and everyone was praising Nixon, Thompson wrote “He Was a Crook”, one of the best, the funniest, the most sustained polemics I have ever read. Midway through it, in a burst of candour, Thompson reflects on his harsh words and says, “but I have written worse things about Nixon many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it.”‘
6 February 2003
[books] AL Kennedy’s top 10 controversial books … [via I Love Everything] ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S Thompson. Insanity, obscenity, profanity, illegality and reptilian paranoia – but which is more distressing, HST’s lunatic chemical life and Gonzo prose style, or Richard Milhous Nixon and co taking a whole country for a nasty ride? And where, by the way, is the energy of Gonzo now when we need it?’ Brief Extract from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 … ‘On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.’
10 June 2002
[books] Strange ramblings in Woody Creek — interview with Hunter S. Thompson thirty years after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas … ‘I have a photographic memory and a very visual way of working and thinking. Christ, the cops at the [narcotics and dangerous drugs] convention is a scene that will never leave me. And I somehow remember the [Mint] gun club and going out there [for the Mint 400]. I remember long boulevards and cruising them in those convertibles, really just looking for action. That’s what we were doing. When you’re working on a story, you don’t have to manufacture the action, but you look for it with a keen eye. You know, something that will strike a spark.’ [via WEF]
27 January 2002
[obit] He was a Crook — Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary for Richard Nixon from 1994 … ‘If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.’ [via Metafilter]
16 October 2001
[comment] When War Drums Roll — more from Hunter S. Thompson … ‘Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history — which is no doubt true — but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks’
14 September 2001
[comment] Fear & Loathing in America … Hunter S. Thompson’s reaction. ‘This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now.’ [via Dr. Menlo]
13 December 2000
[books] Nice review of Hunter S Thompson’s new book — Fear and Loathing in America: the Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-1976. ‘In 1975, sent to Vietnam by Rolling Stone to gloat over the withdrawal of American troops, Thompson wrote an uncharacteristically deferential letter to a Vietcong official, requesting an interview. He apologised for his typing, but assured the colonel that, ‘I am one of the best writers currently using the English language as both a musical instrument and a political weapon.’ It was sweetly naive of him to imagine that military despots value such credentials; nevertheless, his self-assessment was just. The music made by the language, in his use of it, resembles the percussive iteration of gunfire, or the fulmination of an exploding grenade.’
30 November 2000
[hst] Hunter S. Thompson on the US Elections… ‘There are rumors in Washington that Gore’s most trusted advisors have sealed him off so completely that he still firmly believes he Won. … Which is True, on some scorecards, but so what? Those cards don’t count. … George W. Bush is our President now, and you better start getting used to it. He didn’t actually steal the White House from Al Gore, he just brutally wrestled it away from him in the darkness of one swampy Florida night. He got mugged, and the local Cops don’t give a damn.’
8 November 2000
[reading] Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Train ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson. ‘On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.’
28 October 2000
[tv] Blue Peter and Hunter S. Thompson. Stand back. Do not not mix. ‘…who is this, for Christ sakes? Fucker calls himself Groom. Looks like I’m minding the fucking baby today, I figure, well, may as well keep any possible conflict down to a minimum, after all I’m desperate enough to take this faggot job in the first place, I can’t afford another fuck up. Straight away, while the Freak’s talking some crap at me, I notice this damn idiot child badge on his fucking nylon shirt. I don’t like to ask what kind of freakin’ remedial school talisman that is. Probably just some warning badge for the good honest middle class folks to know to KEEP THE FUCK AWAY, MENTALLY DEFICIENT GIANT FREAK APPROACHING. One look back up to his dead-ass eyes. I shiver, and it ain’t the half dozen ‘Ludes I’d picked up in St. Paul’s the moment I came to this damn limey wasteland to steady my nerves. There’s evil in this bitch, I would swear on my fucking mother’s life.’
15 August 2000
[fear and loathing] Hunter S. Thompson can’t get interested in the US Presidential Election. ‘[..] he can’t even come up with a description for the junkies who’re mainlining it. “Anyone with half a fucking brain would be apathetic,” Hunter spits, before trailing off. “If you’re excited about this thing you’d be, um, I don’t know.” Even though Hunter’s not writing about it, he still follows, muting and unmuting CNN, which plays constantly on a 27-inch television not 12 feet from his ashtray and keyboard. He’s still biting with the same force, but the teeth are different – not as sharp.’ [via Metafilter]
2 August 2000
[gonzo] Hunter S. Thompson shoots assistant whilst chasing bear off his property. Here’s a link to the Guardian’s Passnote on the matter. ‘”First, never hesitate to use force, and second, abuse your credit card for all its worth.” (Thompson’s rules for a good life.)’
16 July 2000
[photos] Hunter S. Thompson and Grant Morrison— Seperated at birth?
14 June 2000
[hells angels] newsUnlimted profiles Sonny Barger. “‘Keith Richards had then threatened to stop playing unless the Angels halted their violence, telling Barger: ‘Either these cats cool it, man, or we don’t play.’ ‘I stood next to him and stuck my pistol in his side and told him to start playing his guitar or he was dead,’ says Barger now. ‘He played like a motherfucker.'”
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