Owl Farm Blog

Good Morning!  Mating season is coming to a close here at Owl Farm. As always at this time of year, the peacocks are starting to lose their tail feathers. Peter lost about ½ of his tail feathers in the night, Paul will lose his soon.  I harvested many gorgeous bouquets of feathers from one bird pen this weekend.  Mother nature has designed and perfected these feathers over the millennia for the sole purpose of making the males beautiful, hence, attracting a female with the intention of making some babies.  And it works. 

All this put me in the mood for a sweet HST quote.

“If you’re ever up at dawn, look up at that sun as it comes climbing out of Indiana, and think that I may be standing out at the end of a pier in the East River and watching the sun float off over the Alleghenies to St. Louis, and wondering if you’re watching it too.”

--Hunter S. Thompson

 I won’t say  right away which book that’s from (think letters). The first few people to tell me where it's published in Hunter's work will get a gonzo mug...  and.... a peacock feather. Why not?  Gonzo Wear Manager, Alice Cotton just returned from Switzerland so you’ll receive it from her. The contest thing can be fun, although I’d love to be able to send you a free car.  Maybe next time.

Ralph sent me a cache of fabulous Wisdom for you.  I’ll be posting it regularly.  Thanks Ralph!

Until next time, your friend surrounded with peacock feathers,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 02:04 AM | Permalink

Hello.  I hope you’re having a better day than I am.  I’ve spent hours and hours killing time: re-writing, writing, editing, re-editing, and re-writing again several interview transcripts from around the country.  Going around in circles sometimes ending the hours exactly where I started them.  I am WAY behind deadline to finish the birthday edition of the Woody Creeker, and way behind in my housing search, and financing search for Columbia.  I have not touched the Gonzo Way manuscript in a week, and I’m feeling the fear.  Jesus.  Now it’s really hitting me.  Send help!

One thing that cheered me up immensely was a passage that I came across while I was writing an introduction to and editing the interview with Hunter’s star criminal lawyer.  It brought such a smile to my face to compare Hunter’s first attorney to his last. Both were Hunter’s guardian angels and political consultants, but the latter was the polar opposite of Oscar Zeta Acosta in the gonzo factor.  Yes, Hunter sure knew how to spot excellence in people on both ends of the spectrum.

            If you’ve ever paid attention to Hunter’s circle of friends you will find that they are usually at the top of their profession.  Acosta/Haddon, Ralph Steadman, Ed Bradley, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, Doug Brinkley, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Marilyn Manson, Will Hearst, Terry McDonell, Jann Wenner, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, George Tobia, Lynn Goldsmith, Walter Isaacson, G. Stranahan, Benicio Del Toro,  Madeleine Albright, Gerry Goldstein, Shelby Sadler, Tim Ferris and Bob Dylan…  The snow leopards, as it were.  The list goes on and on…

So, what got me on that tangent I don’t know except maybe fatigue?  I’m tired and stressed out.  I have such a great double issue coming, the material is fantastic, but I’m late, and it stresses me out.  Without further ado, here is the passage that cheered me up despite the fact that we have all read it a hundred times:

           We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.  I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.  And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

            Then it was quiet again.  My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process.  “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses.  “Never mind,” I said.  “It’s your turn to drive.”  I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway.  No point mentioning those bats, I thought.  The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

Until next time, Your friend,

Anita Thompson

Owl Farm

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:36 PM | Permalink

Good Evening. As promised, Ralph is in the house. Enjoy this civilized gonzo wisdom from two brothers:

 “It doesn't matter a butt dick how thick a pane of glass is -- you can always break it with a heavy hammer'... and for those young guys out there....'If you don't take care of your body- where ya gonna live???”                                                                                                                                                              --Ralph Steadman, in an email from Kent, England. July, 2006

And for today’s HST wisdom:

“When you push a car off a cliff and blow it up, be sure to roll the windows down to avoid shrapnel. Also, strip the license plate so you’re not billed for the cleanup."                                                                                          --Hunter S. Thompson, Playboy magazine. December, 2005

Sweet dreams. I’m serious.

 Your friend,

 Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 10:11 PM | Permalink

Hello! I have a treat for you tonight.  My intern Laura and I have been drinking a little Bailys & Irish Whiskey in small shot glasses (which Hunter called a "Biff") and watching the rough cut of Tom Thurman’s latest documentary film about Hunter titled “Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride.”  It’s a good one.  As soon as Tom releases it, or gets a website for it, I’ll link it here.  The focus is on Hunter’s work -- early and late -- and the portrayals of him on the silver screen.  I like everything except, of course, the way his death is portrayed.  But that’s normal for me as there are still too many unanswered questions, which after 17 months, I have come to some calm acceptance. But let’s not get into that now.

      One passage in the film sparked a nice memory about something Hunter wrote when he was 16 years old.  It’s a fine example of his sense of Humor starting at such an early age.  I used to love to read this to him just to make him chuckle:  

"OPEN LETTER TO THE YOUTH OF OUR NATION” 
by Hunter S. Thompson, 1955, Louisville 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:46 PM | Permalink

--Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine.

Hope you are having a decent Monday morning.  I’ll check in tomorrow when I’m more awake. 

As for the quote about Success from last week, that was indeed a Hal Haddon quote which is probably one of the reasons he and Hunter got along so famously.  Those of you who sent in your thoughts as to where it came from, will still get a gonzo sticker in the mail so if you didn’t send your address go ahead and email it.  As promised, the link to Blue Kraning’s site is www.gonzopatriots.com .

Until next time, Your friend,

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:00 AM | Permalink

Hello.  Hunter’s birthday party was a success.  I had about 35 or 40 local friends and beautiful women over for a celebration with a ton of food and even more liquor & wine. Neighbor Jimmy Ibbotson from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played, and there were great speeches too.  Ed Bradley, artist Tom Benton and Wayne Ewing (who also was filming for Alex Gibney) spoke along with many other long-time friends.  The mood of the party was much happier than last year, as Hunter’s spirit is more power than ever at Owl Farm.
     Several friends drove up from Denver which was nice, and I did invite one new friend to fly up from L.A. named Blue Kraning. He showed us his independent documentary that he just finished about a select group of Hunter’s fans who were preparing their canons with the hopes that their’s would be chosen to fire Hunter’s ashes over Owl Farm. These are not the famous actors, politicians or journalists.  These are the readers who are “Hunter’s people” in the purest sense, an army of thoughtful citizens who are inspired by his work and who do the real job of carrying on Hunter’s legacy.  I’m at the library now, so I don’t have Kraning’s info with me, but I’ll post a link in the next blog.
Today’s HST wisdom is from the introduction to Fear and Loathing in America.  I remember when he wrote it on August 20^th, 2000.  He was describing his history in Woody Creek starting in the late 60’s, and his love of Owl Farm and the community:

My main luxury in those years – a necessary luxury, in fact – was the ability to work in and out of my home-base fortress in Woody Creek. It was a very important psychic anchor for me, a crucial grounding point where I always knew I had love, friends & good neighbors.  It was like my personal Lighthouse that I could see from anywhere in the world – no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy & dangerous I got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home.  When I made that hairpin turn up the hill onto Woody Creek Road, I knew I was safe.

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America.

On a side note, here's a great quote I picked up from Hal Haddon (Hunter’s lawyer and long-time friend) that you’ll like, particularly because you won’t be able to find its origination on the internet.  If you do, I’ll send you a free gonzo gift:

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:30 PM | Permalink

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:46 AM | Permalink

   Good morning.  It’s been a wildly productive day at Owl Farm.  I’ve been on the phone with Ralph Steadman all morning who is now the official Gonzo Gardener for the    Woody Creeker Magazine (in addition to our local gardener, Janet.)

   We are wrapping up a humdinger of a birthday tribute issue which includes a special gift from the Gonzo Trustees to Hunter's fans to celebrate his 69^th birthday with a bang -- and, thank you sir, it's complete with Steadman illustrations! It’s called Fire in the Nuts.  

   I did ask Ralph if he would be kind enough to share some wisdom with us on this blog. I said  “For example, do you have a cure for acne?”  He thought about it for a while and said with a chuckle  “Oh yes.  Rub yourself all over with raw peaches.”  So there we have it.  Raw Peaches.

   Stay tuned for more “seddious wisdom”  from Kent, England. 

   As for today’s HST wisdom, I’d like to quote Hunter from a letter he wrote to Ralph on X-mas day in 1980.  They were preparing to “run” in the Honolulu marathon to cover it for Running Magazine, which turned out to be one of their many great works:  The Curse of Lono.   

The time has come to kick ass, Ralph, even if it means coming briefly out of retirement and dealing, once again, with the public.  I am also in need of a rest – for legal reasons – so I want this gig to be easy, and I know in my heart that it will be.
   Don’t worry, Ralph.  We will bend a few brains with this one.  I have already secured the Compound:  two homes with a 50-meter pool on the edge of the sea on Alii Drive in Kona, where the sun always shines.
OK HST
-- Hunter S. Thompson, The Curse of Lono.
 

Until next time.  I’m off to the market to buy some peaches.

Your friend,

Anita Thompson

Owl Farm

Posted by Anita Thompson at 04:21 PM | Permalink

Hello.  We’ve been drinking Champagne all night here at Owl Farm to celebrate the fact that I've been accepted to Columbia University to finish my BA. One reason I chose Columbia is because Hunter studied there when he lived in NY.  I have two lovely interns with me named Laura and Liz who came up from Denver University to help me archive and organize everything in Owl Farm including the Woody Creeker as we are wrapping up Hunter’s birthday issue now.  Laura has already catalogued all of Hunter’s vinyl records, which I’ll share with you soon.  But we took a break to toast.

         Along with the most generous letters of recommendation, I have my work experience with Hunter to thank for being accepted to Columbia. So we drink the Champagne for him. And Champagne reminds me of one of my favorite pieces titled Bad Craziness in Palm Beach.  Enjoy:

 I am living the Palm Beach life now, trying to get the feel of it: royal palms and raw silks, cruising the beach at dawn in a red Chrysler convertible with George Shearing on the radio and a head full of bogus cocaine and two beautiful lesbians in the front seat beside me, telling jokes to each other in French…

            We were on our way to an orgy, in a mansion not far from the sea, and the girls are drinking champagne from a magnum we brought from Dunhills, the chic and famous restaurant.  There is a wet parking ticket flapping under the windshield wiper in front of me, and it bores me.  I am giddy from drink, and the lesbians are waving their champagne glasses at oncoming police cars, laughing gaily and smoking strong marijuana in a black pipe as we cruise along Ocean Boulevard at sunrise, living our lives like dolphins….

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Owl Farm, Woody Creek

p.s. (editing this morning at 11am after a chamgane hangover to let you know that I will continue to post as I  commute to NY starting in the fall)

Posted by Anita Thompson at 01:33 AM | Permalink

More good news.  Yes, Mr. Bush conceded yesterday for the first time that prisoners held as “terrorists” should be thought of as human beings, and be given the legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.  He said that he would withdraw a part of the executive order he issued in 2002 saying that terror prisoners had no rights. This is all thanks to the Supreme Court decision two weeks ago that struck down the military tribunals that he created after Sept. 11.  That’s two more for the tribe. 

This development made me think of Hunter’s Examiner column, which later appeared in his memoir.  It's called The White Helicopter.  Do you remember that story?  It’s about a French woman named Nadine who rescued her lover from prison.  They were both outlaws when they married in France in 1979 in separate prisons serving separate sentences.  After Nadine Vaujour was released from prison, she started taking helicopter lessons – which Hunter said  “Very difficult; you can’t hire many people who could fly a chopper in low over downtown Paris and park it in midair above a prison long enough to send a man down a line with an Uzi and come back up… Then put it down on the roof of the prison and carry her lover off the skid…”     

Finally one night, in the white helicopter, she hovered over the roof of La Sante prison.  A man armed with a submachine gun slid down a line to the roof, where he retrieved Nadine’s lover, who was waiting on the roof in a blue jump suit.  After he grabbed one of the landing skids, and was safely aboard, she whisked him away to a nearby soccer field, where the three disappeared.  

“Even a dumb brute can fall in love with a story like that.  It has the purity of a myth and the power of being simple flat-out true, and it spoke to our highest instincts.  It was a perfect crime, done for love, and it was carried out with awesome precision and a truly crazy kind of fearlessness by a beautiful girl in a white helicopter.”

--Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:57 PM | Permalink

Good Morning. It’s a bright sunshiny day in Woody Creek.  The sky is warm and blue and the puddles are drying up.

First of all, let’s congratulate Doug Brinkley and Johnny Depp!  Doug’s book The Great Deluge is on the cover of the The New York Times Book Review. The Colonel’s Pirates of the Caribbean is also kicking ass. That’s two for the tribe.

David Oshinsky wrote about Doug’s book being “a morality tale, pitting helpless victims, heroic citizens and a few decent politicians against an inept bureaucracy at every link in the chain.  This was an avoidable catastrophe, more the fault of man than nature, Brinkley says, and those responsible must be held to account.”

I picked the following for today's HST wisdom because I happened to have it in front of me when I discovered Doug on the cover of the the NYTimes Book Review. So why not?  It’s a letter that Hunter wrote to his friend Simon, at the London Independent on May 10^th, 2002.  Long before Katrina:

  The news is bad today, in America and for America.  There is nothing good or hopeful about it – except Nazis, warmongers, and rich greedheads – and it is getting worse and worse in logarithmic progressions since the fateful bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York.  That will always be a festering low-watermark in this nation’s violent history, but it was not the official birthday of the end of the American Century.
  No.  That occurred on the night of the presidential election in the year 2000, when the nexus of power in this country shifted from Washington, D.C., to “the ranch” in Crawford, Texas. The most disastrous day in American history was November 7, 2000.  That was when the takeover happened, when the generals and cops and right-wing Jesus freaks seized control of the White House, the U.S. Treasury, and our Law Enforcement machinery.
--Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

Any questions?

Until next time, Your friend in Woody Creek,

Posted by Anita Thompson at 09:08 AM | Permalink

Have you ever felt like the whole world was against you?  One of those dreary days when you should just buy a bottle of Scotch and camp under a bridge for a while? 

It's been cold and raining non-stop since Wednesday and the hygrometer reads 47%, which to a Colorado native like me can be suffocating.  A friend called me from town to read some of the lies that hired thugs are writing about me in the local papers regarding this lawsuit going on. Feeling sad and hungry, I went to the Tavern but there were a million strange faces as it is peak tourist season in Aspen despite the pouring rain.  A plump woman from Dallas was pushing her way through the crowd spilling drinks off trays, adding to the slug and gloom.   Turning away, I walked next door to my office and sat, cold and hungry at my desk.  My wet hair was dripping down my face and in my eyes, blurring my vision and running down my cheeks. Confused, broke and lonely.  It was pitiful.

 Then I saw, as it were, a white horse...And his name was Hunter!!  Well it was actually a white page, with black ink. I had opened my paperback copy of Kingdom of Fear to page 301. And Behold, our friend FX Leach. This is just one of the poems that Hunter wrote under that name.  Most are unpublished, but one day, you will read them all.   So, I read this one titled I Told Him It Was Wrong.  And it worked like a charm!  I am a happy Buddha now:

A filthy young pig
got tired of his gig
and begged for a transfer
To Texas.
Police ran him down
on the outskirts of town
and ripped off his Nuts
with a coat hanger.
Everything after that was like
coming home
in a cage on the
back of a train from
New Orleans on a Saturday Night
with no money and cancer and
a dead girlfriend.
In the end it was no use
He died on his knees in a barnyard
with all the others watching.
Res Ipsa Loquitor
- FX  LEACH Omaha, 1968

Okay! Until next time, your friend in the rain,

Anita Thompson
Woody Creek

Posted by Anita Thompson at 10:13 PM | Permalink

Hello. Yes, I did place myself in Kenneth Lay’s neighborhood in my last blog entry, but I can assure you that I didn’t kill him.  Plus, a man who represents the darkest and ugliest part of ourselves doesn’t die that easily.  It’s possible that he’s not dead at all, but trekking in the high mountains of Argentina right now, where Alex Gibney (who made the documentary Enron: the Smartest Men in the Room) is on location for another film.  It would be interesting to see their accidental encounter. 

For now, we’ll just assume Kenneth Lay is really dead, and use the quote from Revelation that Hunter used for his piece titled He was a Crook  about the death of Richard Nixon:

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great has fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

-Revelation 18:2

 And for today’s HST wisdom, here is one appropriate graph from that same piece:

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism – which is true, but they miss the point.  It was the built-in blind spot of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.  He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen.  He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism.  You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful…

-Hunter S. Thompson, Better Than Sex

 For those of you who  are following the lawsuit filed against Hunter and his estate by a former employee and the local publicity surrounding it, I'll keep you posted.

Okay, I’m off to my mountaintop retreat. 

Your friend, Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 05:47 PM | Permalink

Hi there.  Sorry it’s taken me so long to post.

         Sorry if all of this seems cryptic, maybe it is.  I’ll fill you in with more detail soon. It will be fun.  But I gotta run...now.

…With great respect and affection, I remain, your friend.

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:48 PM | Permalink