Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro"

July 18, 1939- Hunter Stockton Thompson born.
June 1956- Hunter arrested for robbery and serves time. Hunter and two friends are arrested and charged with robbery. One friend is acquitted and the other only fined, but not Hunter. Because of his lack of social prominence and his previous record of vandalism and underage drinking, the judge sentences him to 60 days in juvenile jail. The judge also required that after his sentence, he enlist in the military. He was thrown out of Athenaeum and was not allowed to graduate from high school. As friend T. Floyd Smith recalls, "All this had a great impact on him. Now all his friends were going off to Ivy League schools and he was going into jail and then to the military. All of this made him extremely resentful."
Fall 1956- Hunter enters into the U.S. Airforce. After basic training and a brief stint as an electronics technician trainee, he becomes sports editor for the Eglin Air Force Base (Florida). Under the pen name Thorne Stockton he also writes for a local off-base newspaper.
Fall 1959- Hunter moves to Puerto Rico to work for Sportivo. a bowling magazine billing itself as "the Sports Illustrated of the Caribbean world." Friend Paul Semonian moves there with him. While living in a small village outside of San Juan, Hunter becomes a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune as well as a writer for the San Juan Star under editor William Kennedy. Between jobs, Hunter starts work on his novel, "The Rum Diary" , again a work loosely based on his life.
1962- Hunter travels to South America and becomes a correspondent for National Observer. He provides a Hemingwayesque account of life in South America. Close to twenty articles are published covering Peru, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. For a stretch he cannot touch alcohol because of the medicine he is taking so he begins experimenting with other substances.
July 1964- Hunter's first convention coverage. Hunter covers the 28th Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco where Barry Goldwater is nominated for eventual defeat by Lyndon Johnson. To get better coverage for National Observer, Hunter impersonates a security guard.
April, 1965- Hunter begins hanging with the Hell's Angels to research an article. The media is gaining up to crucify the Hell's Angels based on a report by California attorney general Thomas Lynch. Hunter breaks from the pack and talks to the Angels to get their side of the story, something no other reporter did. His article "Motorcycle Gangs: Loser & Outsiders" is published in Nation on May 17. Book contract offers pour in.
May, 1967- Hunter accepts an offer by Bantam Books and begins his ride with the Angels.
1967- "Hell's Angels 'A Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang" is published by Bantam Books.
1968- Hunter covers the Nixon/Humphrey race as a free-lancer. While covering the `68 election, he traveled to the New Hampshire primary. While there, he obtains an hour and a half exclusive interview with Nixon himself on the condition that they only talk about football. After the ground breaking interview as Hunter watches Nixon board his plane, a secret service man tackles Hunter as he almost blows up the plane trying to light a cigarette next to an open fuel tank. His interview and election commentary is published in the July 1968 Pageant article "Presenting: the Richard Nixon Doll." Of Nixon's football knowledge, Hunter says "I was impressed. It was like talking to Owsley about acid."
June 1968- Hunter is beaten by the police at the Chicago Democratic Convention. Hunter travels to the Chicago Democratic convention hoping to witness the final death throes of the party. Instead he is beaten by the Chicago's finest in the ensuing riot. "I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a raving beast."
1969- Freak Power in Aspen! Hunter gets involved in local politics in Aspen by helping to form the Freak Power Party to oppose "greedhead power mongers." With a table at a local bar as campaign HQ, they advance an anti-development platform for mayoral candidate Joe Edwards. The platform calls for the streets of Aspen to be torn up and replaced with sod along with other schemes to slow development. Edward loses by only six votes.
In 1970, Hunter himself runs for sheriff. His platform echoes Edwards but includes law and order provisions such as keeping drug dealers honest by having the sheriff's department monitor sales and set up public stocks for the dishonest dealers. He would also change the name of Aspen to Fat City and promise to "savagely harass all those who engage in land-rape." During the race, the Freak Power party paper (The Aspen Wallposter) emerges for less than a dozen issues. The opposition tries to scare Hunter with a Hell's Angels impersonator threatening to "blow up your fucking house." The "Angel" turns out to be a federal agent brought in by opponent Sheriff Whitmire to search for an Aspen contingent of the militant Weathermen. Hunter loses by about five hundred votes and hold a press conference to declare, "You won't have Hunter Thompson to kick around anymore, you pig fuckers!" An account of his narrow defeat is published in the Oct. 1, 1970 Rolling Stone, under the title "The Battle of Aspen".
Early 1971- Hunter's friendship with Oscar Zeta Acosta begins. Hunter travels to Los Angles to write a story for Rolling Stone about police brutality in the Chicano ghettos of East LA (published as "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan"). Hunter meets Oscar Zeta Acosta, a lawyer, the one man that can keep up with Hunter's intense lifestyle.
April 1971- Hunter and Oscar travel to the city of sin.Hunter and Oscar Zeta Acosta, an LA Chicano lawyer, travel to Las Vegas together to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated. They later return to witness a law enforcement narcotics conference for Rolling Stone. Their adventures are chronicled in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
November 1971- "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" printed in Rolling Stone. !Gonzo journalism is born!
February 28, 1974- Fear and loathing at the Super Bowl. "Fear and Loathing at the Superbowl: No Rest for the Wretched" is published in Rolling Stone. Again his writing lacks the spark of brilliant Gonzo. Some at Rolling Stone attribute this to recent indulgence of cocaine.
March 1974- Hunter travels to Saigon! Hunter leaves for Saigon as Rolling Stone war correspondent. Later he finds out that Rolling Stone took out a large life insurance policy on him. In May of the following year he publishes "Fear and Loathing in Saigon: Interdicted Dispatch from the Global Affairs Desk."
Summer 1974- Hunter and Ralph's African adventure. Hunter and Ralph Steadman travel to Zaire to cover the Ali-Foreman fight. After a week of overindulgence and fruitless searches for Nazis hiding in the jungle Hunter fails to produce a story much less even attend the fight. While the fight is going on, Hunter is floating naked in the hotel swimming pool turning the water green with what is left of the fifty or so pounds of marijuana he bought in Africa. George Plimpton, in his book Shadow Box, tells of Hunter's African adventures.
Fall 1974- Hunter gets paid thousands to drunkenly ramble on the college lecture circuit.
In 1978 Hunter sells the movie rights of "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat" to Hollywood producer Art Linson, creative genius behind hits such as Hot Wax and Car Wash.
1979- "The Great Shark Hunt" is published.
1980- Hunter writes a fiction novel, "The Silk Road", parts of which are later printed in "Songs of the Doomed".
1981- "Where the Buffalo Roam" a movie about Hunter is released.Starring Bill Murray as Hunter and Peter Boyle as Acosta. Rolling Stone movie critic dismissed it as "an embarrassing piece of hogwash utterly devoid of plot, form, movement, tension, humor, insight, logic or purpose."
1983- "The Curse of the Lono" is published.
1986- Hunter returns to the college lecture circuit.
1990- "Songs of the Doomed: More notes from the American Dream" is published.
In February 1990, porn film producer Gail Palmer-Slater visits Hunter at Owl Farm. Allegedly, during the course of the night, Hunters hands find their way to her chest. Later that evening, Palmer-Slater calls a friend in LA and tells her what happened. The friend than calls the Aspen police. The police raid Hunter's house and find cocaine, 39 hits of acid, marijuana, blasting caps and dynamite.Hunter is charged with sexual assault and possession of controlled substances and incendiary devices in Aspen. Eight counts in all. On May 30th the case is dismissed.
On August 22 1990, Hunter files a $22 million civil suit against the Aspen D.A. and plans to write "99 Days: the Trial of Hunter S. Thompson".
1992- Rolling Stone lures Hunter back to cover the 1992 presidential race.
1994- "Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie" is released.
September, 1997 - Hunter S. Thompson Dead! Not really. In early September there was a rumor going around that Hunter died, but this was dismissed by September 7th Dallas Morning News article Gonzo journalist is alive an kickin' in which Hunter proclaimed: "Let it be known that I, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Esq., am alive and blazing new trails of fury in the literary universe. I travel the backroads, alleys, gutters and halls of power of this great nation in search of truth, justice and the ever elusive Americna Dream, stopping at every buffett (sic - does he mean Jimmy?) and cash bar between me and my typewriter. I leave screaming editors, sleazy agents, squeamish hotel clerks, dispirited cocktail waitresses and bleeding expense accounts in my wake. Oh, the horrors I have seen . . . and done. I would not wish this wretched life upon any self-respecting and decent human being, but it works for me."
1998- "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" a movie based on Hunters Book is released. The movie stars Johnny Depp as Hunter and Benicio Del Toro as Acosta.
2002 - His new book, "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist" , has just been released.
2002 - The dingbats (as Hunter so lovingly calls them) at Simon and Schuster announce plans for a new HST book, Kingdom of Fear. The publication date is pushed from November 2002 to winter of 2003.
2003 - Kingdom of Fear is published, Hunter makes several media appearances.
April 24, 2003 - Hunter weds Anita Bejmuk. Thompson, 66, married his longtime assistant Anita Bejmuk, 30, in a decidedly un-Gonzo-like 20-minute ceremony in the clerk's office in Aspen.
Summer 2004 - Hey Rube is to be published in book form.

February 20th, 2005 , Thompson died at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado, on February 20, 2005 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was 67 years old. Thompson's son (Juan), daughter-in-law (Jennifer Winkel Thompson), and grandson (Will Thompson) were visiting for the weekend at the time of his suicide. Will and Jennifer were in the adjacent room when they heard the gunshot. They reported to the press that they do not believe his suicide was out of desperation, but was a well thought out act resulting from Thompson's many painful medical conditions. Thompson's wife, Anita, who was at the gym at the time of her husband's death, was on the phone with Thompson when he ended his life. On August 20, 2005, Thompson's ashes were fired in a private ceremony from a 150-foot cannon of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," known to be the song most-respected by the late writer. Red, white, blue and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. As the city of Aspen will not allow the cannon to remain for more than a month, the cannon has been dismantled and put into storage until a suitable permanent location can be found. There is talk of a public party sometime in the summer of 2006. Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson (and who portrayed Thompson in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), financed the funeral, according to widow Anita Thompson. Depp told the Associated Press, "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." Other famous attendees at the funeral included US Senator John Kerry and former-US Senator George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley; actors Bill Murray, Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; singers Lyle Lovett and John Oates as well as numerous other friends of Thompson. An estimated 280 people attended the funeral.

Š2008--zardOz, "Politically correct" is just another form of censorship!