Owl Farm Blog

Happy New Year!

2007 wraps to a close and we face a New Year.   Anita sent me an email early this morning to let you know she wishes everyone a Gonzo New year.  She ended her email with a line that I thought I should share –

"Wow.  2008.  Whether we like it or not, it’s time to move on to a new year…This morning I asked Michael Owsley and George Stranahan if they were ready for a New Year. Michael said he prefers to stick with what he knows. I laughed. Yep, time to move on to something new…"
-Anita

Ralph Steadman sent some photographs this morning of a guitar he branded with his characteristic artwork.  Ralph did this guitar for charity.  Click one of the thumbnails below to see the photos of the "Rock Slob Rock" guitar by Steadman!  The last photo is the guitar case featuring a certain journalist.

It is done.  There is no turning back. That’s GONZO!!  . . . Have a Happy New Year
-Ralph Steadman

2007 has been a long, tiring and somewhat odd year.  Some of the events that transpired in ’07 were unbelievable, some were shocking, and we lost a few good friends.  The economy continued to take a nosedive and is set to drag the rest of the world with it, and the long trek to the White House began… and the once again, majority of America was fixated on the wrong things entirely. 

CNN reported an author scolding Nightline "You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you’re missing the whole fox hunt.’ Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear.  And yet you get this coverage of who’s gonna get custody of Britney’s kids? … You’ve got these things going on … that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip."

Now I’ve been tasked by Anita to convey some of Hunter’s wisdom in this blog, and as I scan through a (very long) list of quotes from Anita’s upcoming quote book, as well as from Hunter’s published works, a number of them caught my eye as appropriate for this post.  One was a quote on creativity that would pair nicely with Ralph’s artwork, but it will have to wait for the New Year.  I leave you with a quote from Hunter circa July 2002.  Take this quote and think about it as the clock sweeps into a new year.

"It’s our country, we should take it back from these swine”
-Hunter S. Thompson 07/17/02

 Happy New Year.
-Peter B

Posted by Peter B, Gonzo Web Guy at 05:32 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Here, at least, [Hemingway] had mountains and a good river below his house; he could live among rugged, non-political people and visit, when he chose to, with a few of his famous friends who still came up to Sun Valley. He could sit in the Tram or the Alpine or the Sawtooth Club and talk with men who felt the same way he did about life, even if they were not so articulate. In this congenial atmosphere he felt he could get away from the pressures of a world gone mad, and "write truly" about life as he had in the past.

–Hunter S. Thompson National Observer, May 25, 1964

Hope you had a great holiday. Hunter’s spirit is alive as ever. I had friends and family over to Owl Farm — two scholars (a medievalist & sociologist) a French chef, two paragliders, and several neighbors and we played cards and ate too much food along with Hunter’s favorite Chivas and Bailey’s drink, while playing cards and talked all night. The fireplace blazed with Bob Dylan playing in the background.   Hunter’s spirit is indeed alive.

We couldn’t find the plastic Xmas tree that Ann Owsley gave me last year, so we wrapped shotgun shell Xmas lights around a vacuum cleaner and rolled it into the corner next to the Nixon mask (yes, it was a Dada Gonzo Xmas). Audrey Sprenger and her mom went back to Denver yesterday, Jon is flying back to NYC today. My award winning paraglider pilot friends David and Sean, the Stranahans, Owsleys, Tim Mooney, Goldsteins, Jennifer and Wayne Ewing are here for the season, Jack Nicholson and his family including Chris and Ozzie are in town through January, so life is good. Ralph and Anna Steadman (his book, Psychogeography, with Will Self is great!) spent theirs with the family in Kent, Doug Brinkley with his family in Austin called with Xmas Cheer in their voices. Peter B is celebrating in Omaha, Jonathan, Andrew and Brandon drinking eggnog with family.

Yes, Hunter’s spirit is alive. Of course I miss mocking Xmas with him, and no bombs were set off, but it was happier than last year. Life is getting a little better, despite the loss of a good woman and wife of the late Tom Benton. We toasted to Marci and Tom Benton who are now together. I understand how much she suffered his loss, and we wish Tom and Marci a happy holiday. As you know, Tom is the artist who designed the fist on the Gonzo symbol and the Sheriff posters.

After my guests leave, I will be left with two feet of powder to play with and Hunter’s interview manuscript to work on. It’s coming along beautifully… I think you’ll love it.  A lot of books are out there, including mine, about Hunter, but we need some of his wisdom. The manuscript so far is perfect comeback, in his own words, to some awful made-up crap recently published about him. Soon come. 

I’ve had the pleasure of talking medieval and current politics with friends and family, and here is Jon’s post about Iowa. Great news for Hillary despite the awful news about Bhutto today (more women haters).

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:46 AM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Is this country still capable of taking itself back from these evil thieves?  If the answer is No, Welcome to the Fourth Reich.

 – Hunter S. Thompson 1/8/04 (from the Owl Farm kitchen wall)

Hello from Owl Farm!  Jon here, recovering from a Christmas that can only be described as awesome and looking ahead, of course, to the Iowa caucuses.

With eight days to go, I can’t conceive of a more turbulent lead-up to the caucuses.  Until just before Christmas the received wisdom was that Obama, Edwards, and Clinton were headed for a free-for-all the outcome of which a staggering number of variables rendered impossible to augur.  Such variables include (but are not limited to) the weather, the Orange Bowl, the possibility that college students resident in Iowa may participate en masse, Iowa’s reputation for quirkiness, and so forth.  Hell, at this time four years ago otherwise rational people were saying with straight faces that either Dick Gephardt or Howard Dean would ride a win in Iowa all the way to the nomination.  Flash forward four years and you get received wisdom to the effect that the race on the Democratic side is just too close to call.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I noticed this American Research Group (ARG) poll that puts Hillary in the lead with a 34% margin over her nearest rival, John Edwards, who’s at 20%.  Obama is nearly tied for third at 19%, and Joe Biden and Bill Richardson score in the single digits.  The poll was conducted from last Friday, the 20^th, through Sunday, the 23^rd, and it demonstrates a marked rise in Clinton’s appeal from a similar survey conducted just four days before.  In that survey Clinton was at 29%, Edwards was at 18%, and Obama was 25%.  As I read it, Clinton and Edwards, but especially Clinton, have seen their stocks rise, and Obama’s support has softened.  Indeed, his numbers dropped by nearly the same amount as Clinton’s rose—could this be a sign that the current is moving away from hope and towards experience?  For the record, I bet yes.

Cheers,

Jon

Posted by Kenneth Williams at 11:43 AM | Permalink Post a Comment:

This morning Jonathan Bastian hosted me on his sports segment for Plum TV. We arrived just as the previous segment was wrapping up. It was a group of models in Fur Coats. Since nobody told me I was going to be appearing on a day with mink coats and fox capes, a minor scuffle ensued back stage. If I was going to follow this fur coat segment, I thought it was fair that I could explain the method in which minks are killed for their fur (usually injected with antifreeze into their stomachs, then skinned, and bodies discarded). But it was Jonathan’s second show, so I finally agreed to calm down and just focus on Hunter and his sports writing career. (He asked very good questions about Hunter, and it was a good show) 

Back home at Owl Farm, I sat down, in a huff, to write a letter to the editor about the fur coats, when my good friend Curtis Robinson pointed out that I will make an ass of myself if I act preachy and celebrity-like saying I don’t “endorse” murdering of animals for their fur. He’s right. I wouldn’t be helping the animal rights movement, which is very strong without my little voice.

Alas!! I remembered I had someone to vent to… You. So, now that I’m off the air, I can say that there is a very small percentage of people who are still wearing fur in Aspen or anywhere else. I understand that Plum TV must cater also to that part of its shriveled up bimbo fur coat viewers. But keep in mind that a majority of smart, hip and thoughtful people wear synthetics now. And if you want to flaunt your wealth, there are better, more fun and exciting ways to do it.  But we already know that. Those models would have looked so much better … HOT wearing synthetic snowboard jackets, bikinis or even better, nothing at all.

Ugh. So. That’s it for now.  Today’s HST wisdom comes from one of my notebooks of things he said out loud. It describes how I feel today, and you can probably relate to at times…

— Hunter S. Thompson, in the kitchen, after having lost his composure, momentarily.

Cheers. 

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

 P.S. Mark Twain was a vegetarian. And Hunter refused any plate unless it had LOTS of vegetables with butter and lemon.

Posted by Anita Thompson at 01:20 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Hi. It’s been snowing all day here at Owl farm and it’s still coming down. I’m finishing up the selected interviews book, and sending the Woody Creeker out to print next week. Yep, it’s a beautiful day up here at Hunter’s den in the Rockies.
 

Good news –we have two new Owl Farm bloggers. In addition to my wonderful brother Peter, who will be posting periodically, also quoting Hunter will post from America’s great city of Omaha. Peter, even from a distance, has had no choice but to learn the bizzarities that go on at Owl Farm and is smart as hell. Starting today, i’m happy to announce, Jon Kenneth Williams, my former teacher, will be posting on Politics. He sends me some of the funniest political emails ever, so I asked him if he’d just go ahead and post some for you. He took a gulp of his rum, and kindly agreed.
 

He did his undergraduate degree (in English) at The George Washington University. And although his training is as a literary scholar and a medievalist, where he teaches and writes at Columbia University, he is weird enough for us. Promise.
Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson
 
So…….
Heeeers Jon:

George Bush’s Many Lapdogs

  Discriminating readers may remember Jimmy Carter’s radio screed against Tony Blair earlier this year, in which our favorite peanut farmer verbally eviscerated Tony Blair and the British government’s uncritical support of the Iraq misadventure.  In essence, Carter repeated and sharpened what is by now received wisdom, that Blair is George Bush’s lapdog and that his acquiescence to American belligerence in Iraq is morally unjustifiable.

But you have to hand it to the neo-cons and their friends: they’re masters of transmuting moral bankruptcy into comedy gold.  Paul Krugman argued this in an excellent New York Times op-ed piece some months ago; he’s right, I think, that the misfortunes of the middle class, not to mention their foreign policy boondoggles, are, to conservatives, titter-worthy. 

Thus it comes as no surprise to me that Tony Blair agreed to appear in this year’s Barneycam film, the White House’s Christmas video, which features George W. Bush’s actual lapdogs.  Blair appears near the end of the seven-minute film, taking second billing to a country-and-western singer named Alan Jackson, whom I’d never heard of until now.  One can sense in TB’s vacuous smile the sense that something went terribly, terribly wrong for the man who led the Labour Party out of the political wilderness and back into government after eighteen long years as Mrs Thatcher’s whipping boys.

And, of course, something did go terribly, terribly wrong for poor Mr Blair: he whored himself out to George Bush so thoroughly that we should be surprised to find him walking erect, much less doing anything else.

Anyway, all this talk about whoring has put me in mind of one of the good doctor’s essays from Kingdom of Fear, “Jesus Hated Bald Pussy.”  Wondering who the fuck votes for these people, the doctor, typically, hit the nail on the head:

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully.  We are not just Whore for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts.  We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us….No redeeming social value.  Just whores.  Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

Well, shit on that dumbness.  George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world.  We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today—and we will not vote for them again in 2002.  Or 2004.  Or ever.
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?  Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands?  Who are these swine?  These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

Who indeed?  Plenty of people, as it turned out, hence the extension of the second Bush regime into 2009.  I’ll post something about the Iowa caucuses in the next week, from Owl Farm.

Cheers,

Jon

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:21 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Good News Weekend Indeed! I’m back home and am relishing in the gorgeous open space and white snow.

Posted by Anita Thompson at 10:46 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

HI There. sorry I’ve been out of touch. Did finish the semester triumphantly at 4pm today. Sue Carrolan just arrived with her new gorgeous website link. It’s now 11:30 pm, and we had a nice dinner and talk about all things Hunter and Buddha — botttle of wine and good laughs, and a little complaining about life.

Texas was great, too by the way. Will tell you about it asap. The dreary wet cold weather in NY is yes appropriate, actually — perfect for hats!

I’ll check in asap. Hillary? Bara k? Hunter? and a letter from a Birmingham Jail, which is what I wrote my final research paper on is all swirlling around this beautiful Bronx apartment.

Cheer. Your friend,

Anita Thompson 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 09:22 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Had a wonderful dinner last night with Doug and Anne Brinkley. They both look great and are happy in this cityt after moving from New Orleans. Austin is beautiful. Looking forward to the signing in a couple of hours at Intellectual Property Books

4pm — next to University of Texas: 2402 Guadalupe Street.

See you there!

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 12:59 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Goodnight from Dallas. Just wanted to check in to let you knwo that Thea Temple’s  Writer’s Garret event went really well. Lawyer Bridget Blinn, a board member of the Garret, picked me up from the airport and we went straight to Paperbacks Plus. Thea told a great story about picking George Plimpton up for the same event in 2002 and almost crashing in an ice storm. My trip was delayed only by wind storms at Laguardia. We were greeted with festive horns and cheers from fellow writers who had been drinking and eating for the previous hour and were packed into the upstairs rooms of the bookstore. I was introduced by Michael Granberry of the Dallas Morning News who told a great story about his time with Hunter sitting by the Watergate hotel pool in 1973.  The questions were wonderful including a whole range of subjects relating to Hunter, politics and sports writing. It was refreshing to be in a part of the country I’m not used to visiting to in a room full of writers. I’m reminded what all writers have in common: the love for fellow writers. I peeked into a class in progress on creative fiction too, which was fun. Although I’ve never fancied myself a writer, despite the fact I have written a book, I savored the time with them to be able to talk about Hunter.

 Okay, I’m signing off to get some rest before a morning CBS local TV show tomorrow. Either here or in Austin, can’t remember — will let you know.

 I wish I had the energy to write some wisdom from Virginia Woolf that I read today on the plane.  Soon come….

For now, sweet dreams from Dallas,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:15 PM | Permalink Post a Comment: