Gonzo's "funeral"

[j-6]

I love the Doc. RIP, my man.

Hunter S. Thompson's remains to be shot from cannon
Associated Press



WOODY CREEK, Colo. -- Bill Murray, George McGovern and dozens of Hunter S. Thompson's friends gathered Saturday to give the iconoclastic journalist an unsolemn farewell, with blow-up dolls, liquor and a tower built to blast his ashes into the sky.

"He loved explosions," explained his wife, Anita Thompson.

She said the tower, shrouded by tarps for days, was modeled after Thompson's Gonzo logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger.

The counterculture author's ashes, intermingled with fireworks, were to be fired from it Saturday evening in a field between Thompson's home and a tree-covered canyon wall.

Security guards kept reporters and the public away from the writer's Owl Farm compound Saturday as the 250 invited guests arrived, but Thompson's fans scouted the surrounding hills for the best view of the celebration of the author's life.

"Nothing could ever top this weekend unless someone offered me a job paying $50 an hour for the rest of my life," said Trevor Long, a college freshman from Keller, Texas, who became a fan after finding his father's collections of Thompson's writing.

Thompson killed himself six months ago at his home near Aspen, but the memorial was planned as a party, with plenty of alcohol, reminiscences, readings from Thompson's works and performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The author's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actors Sean Penn and Johnny Depp, close friends of Thompson, were among the stars on the invitation list. Depp portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream," perhaps the writer's best-known work.

"Over the last few months I've learned that he really touched people more deeply than I had realized," said Thompson's son, Juan.

Thompson's longtime friend George Stranahan lamented the Hollywood-style production.

"I am pretty sure it isn't how Hunter would have done it," Stranahan said. "But when your friends make a mistake you support them."

Anita Thompson said Depp funded much of the celebration.

"We had talked a couple of times about his last wishes to be shot out of a cannon of his own design," Depp told The Associated Press last month. "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."

Thompson was credited along with Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping pioneer New Journalism -- he dubbed his version "gonzo journalism" -- in which the writer was an essential component of the story.

He often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on figures such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. At the height of the Watergate era, he said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."

Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote an expose on the 's Angels and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," in which the central character was a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

The Kentucky-born writer also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury."

In this now-chic resort community, he proudly fired his guns whenever he wanted, let pea s have the run of the land and ran for sheriff in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.

Thompson shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently unable to handle his declining health. One close acquaintance suggested Thompson did not want old age to dictate the cir stances of his death. Anita Thompson said no suicide note was left.

Composer David Amram, a friend of Thompson since the early 1960s, said Thompson had never expected to be successful taking on President Nixon during the Watergate era. "He thought he would be banned or put on an enemies' list," he said.

Thompson made himself the centerpiece of his stories "to show that a regular person could be in the midst of the craziness of the time," Amram said. "He was our historian."

[midgetonadonkey]

"One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." As he once wrote.

[The sone]

i only wish i was as articulate as he to pay homage properly...but i am faulted.