Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
On Sunday, February 20, 2005, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. Another member of the American counter-culture has been lost.
There are apparently plans in the works to blast his cremated remains out of some sort of cannon, as was his wish. Makes perfect sense to me.
I had been quite enjoying his weird “Hey, Rube” contributions to Page 2 at ESPN.com over the past few years, as well as his articles for Rolling Stone. His last Page 2 column, “Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray,” was published only a week ago on February 15, 2005.
Since I fear that the online Hunter S. Thompson archives at ESPN might soon go away, as he is no longer on staff, I just downloaded everything I could find. This “everything” amounted to 5MB of HTML and images, including 106 ESPN columns and 5 Rolling Stone articles. The ESPN articles span from November 6, 2000, to the shotgun golf article that was posted last week. Now I will always be able to find him, right on my hard drive.
As your attorney, I advise you to pick up (or watch) Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (even if you’ve read it a million times) and bask in its greatness.
So long and Mahalo, Hunter.