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< 8:37:33 AM        >

"The writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it." Hunter S. Thompson 1939 - 2005 respect

Dr. Hunter S.Thompson -- pioneer of the techniques of gonzo journalism -- has his blood up. On sports writers: "A kind of rude and brainless sub-culture of fat, fascist drunks". On politics: "The whole Bush family, from, I believe, Texas, should be boiled in poisoned oil."

from: Dr. Hunter S.Thompson - pioneer of gonzo journalism
by Sam Leith
source: Daily Telegraph (London), 2 December 2000
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2000 Daily Telegraph

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Author Hunter S. Thompson is as famous for his antics as his works. He was one of the pioneers of New Journalism, and his work 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' is being rereleased in 1996 for its 25th anniversary. Thompson has written most of his life and lives an isolated life.

Hunter S. Thompson joins the ranks of the classics

We're In Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's New York hotel suite when the coughing starts to take hold. A terrible pipe-induced death rattle. It turns his bald head blood-red and doesn't go away until the notoriously hard-living "doctor" of gonzo journalism swigs a mouthful of Chivas Regal, gargles with it, then lets out a earsplitting screech to clear his throat. "HAAIIIEEEE!!" Let the interview begin.

At 11:30 p.m., HST is just starting to recover from the previous night's festivities, a tony booze-up celebrating the 25th anniversary of his revolutionary book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." (Opening line: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.") Originally published in Rolling Stone, this hallucinogenic postcard from the edge has just been reissued in a Modern Library edition, alongside "Moby-Dick" and Proust. An audio adaptation is out this week. And next spring Villard will roll out volume one of Thompson's letters...

The imprimatur of literary eminence means Thompson, 59, is officially respected -- if not quite respectable. Upon arriving in New York last week, he unloaded a fire extinguisher on Rolling Stone Editor in Chief Jann Wenner. During the party, held at the stuffy Lotos Club, he kept attacking people with a noisemaking plastic hammer. He grabbed his old friend Tom Wolfe, still recovering from triple-bypass heart surgery, in a chokehold. "One of the few writers who comes as advertised," Wolfe said after the assault. Among the old lions of New Journalism (George Plimpton et al.), a couple of junior Hollywood hangers-on paid homage. Johnny Depp, with Kate Moss. Matt Dillon. Mick Jagger came late, after Thompson had already fled to his hotel. During the hard-core afterparty in his suite he passed out in the bathtub, bringing to mind the epigraph from Dr. Johnson with which "Fear and Loathing" begins: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

from: The doctor is still in: Hunter S. Thompson joins the ranks of the classics by Rick Marin
source: Newsweek, 25 November 1996
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 1996 Newsweek, Inc.

comments < 8:36:23 AM        >

Faster than the speed of money.

Rex Hammock: The reason you've heard of podcasting is because no one first "demo'd" it at a conference and no corporate marketers were involved. He explains,

About 20 weeks ago, on September 28, 2004, I heard the term "podcast" for the very first time when Doc Searls explained it on his "IT Garage" blog. He said then that the word podcast returned 24 results on Google. After reading the long, long NY Times piece yesterday on podcasting,
I wondered how many results the word would return. Yesterday, it was 687,000, today it is 1,700,000. A rather wide range, but the point is, it's a big number.

Twenty weeks. That's 140 days. Can you imagine how far along "podcasting" would be if it had been a corporate idea: An idea some media company or technology company developed and "brought to market"? Or even some hot shot start-up?

Rex is right, of course.

[Doc Searls' IT Garage - News, ideas and real world stories about how IT folks solve their own problems]
comments < 8:34:28 AM        >

Hunter Thompson, R.I.P.. He was the true gonzo journalist, and now Hunter Thompson is dead, by suicide. [Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.]
comments < 8:30:49 AM        >

Martian Sea Discovered [Slashdot:]
comments < 8:28:32 AM        >

HP announces new prosumer printers, cameras [The Macintosh News Network]
comments < 8:23:46 AM        >