The Doctor is out.

After a busy and tiring weekend this was not the best news to start the week with. 67 yr old Hunter S. Thompson of Woody Creek Co. put a gun to his head and took his own life last night. His son Juan found the body. Suicide may seem fitting to people who did not know much about Hunter but to me it doesn't fit at all. Granted, I am no Thompson expert but he is well known for being fearless and brave, handling anything the pigs or the opposition could throw at him. Booze, Drugs, Rape and assault charges couldn't even put a chink in this gonzo Captain's armor. Or so it appeared anyway.

I was first introduced to the wonderfully world of "Gonzo Journalism" by my cousin Rick. GJ is this wacky 1st person writing style of streched truth's and warped observations that bridge the gap between fiction and straight news. That's how I looked at it anyway. Rick had published some 'zines like Mental Floss and The Gonzo Gazzette with obvious influences from Thompson, Kerouac and Wolfe. These were my first glimpses at this writing style. When I finally picked up a battered copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I was well primed and ready to find out what Gonzo was all about. Rick handed me the book and said something like "Its your duty to read this. Everything will come into focus afterward. You will be hooked." I sat in that cabin in the woods of Northern California and ate up that book. It was the funniest, freakiest and wonderfully written adventure I had ever read. No dragons, no wizards, no clowns who lived in the sewer just two crazy guys, one a sports writer the other a 300 Lb Samoan Attorney with a bag of drugs and a pint of devil ether. It made me all of a sudden want to rent a big red convertible, grab my cousin and all the booze, drugs and grapefruit and hit the road on our way to the city of lights. We didn't do it that day but we have more than made up for it with many gonzo adventures. At times I even went as far as to make sure we dressed and acted the part right down to the Hawaiian shirts,grapefruits and Rick's long cigarette holder. Our Daytona adventure I think was the closest we ever came to pure madness. Pure Gonzo fear and loathing. These were great times and I think of them often.

So why did he do it? Maybe within a few days we will find out he had terminal Cancer or Parkinsons. Maybe Alzheimers. I don't know. Thompson just didn't strike me as the type to take the back door out of town. I wont even start to analyze suicide. I used to rant against it, thinking it the utmost highest rank of cowardice. I said the same things about medicating ones self to escape reality. Now I sit here and can honestly say medication saved my life. As far as suicide, these thoughts soon change after people you know personally take their lives. You start to see things a little different. You Try to look through their eyes and understand. Sometimes you do.We probably will never know why Hunter left us. People have made hiding pain an artform.

One time I asked my cousin what he would say to Thompson if he ever met him. He told me that he didn't really want to meet him. Like a lot of us we have this fear of meeting someone we look up to or who has influenced us so much and when we do they disappoint us. Maybe they turn out to be an asshole, or rude or have bad breath. Who knows? I think I know what he meant. We have all met Thompson. We have met Duke and Oscar and Steadman. We've met Nixon and Humphrey and rode with the Hells Angels. We shot TV's at Owl Farm and drank rum and harassed the local pigs. We have met all the wacky people that he wrote about and we see them everyday. We live in the same world as he did except it took a special pair of eyes to see it the way the Doctor did. He will be greatly missed.

5 hours later...I went on EBAY to see how bad the vultures are picking apart the good Doctor's still warm corpse. First thing I notice is a used paperpack of the movie tie-in of Fear and Loathing already going for $22.00 plus $5 shipping with 11 bids. A quick look on Amazon.com and you can have the same damn edition brand new for $9.00 My favorite of all is a 4" x 5" decal of the Gonzo fist. It has a current bid of 55 DOLLARS! For a sticker a guy made on his PC for 5O cents.

Pure Madness. Just the way he liked it.