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John Kerry attends Thompson's blowing-up.

It may be time to light the lights. ABC is filming a proof of concept for a revival of The Muppets, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The Big Bang Theory co-creator Bill Prady is co-writing the script for a pilot presentation that sources say could be unspooled at May's upfront presentation to Madison Avenue advertisers. Sources tell THR that the project, if all goes well, could go straight to series. Bob Kushell (Anger Management, 3rd Rock From the Sun) will also co-write and is attached to serve as showrunner, with Wilfred's Randall Einhorn attached to exec produce and direct the...

Just received a call from one of his friends in Florida. Gonzo (Barry Lee) has passed away, He was a long term member of FR and was proud to be with us at the March for Justice in 1998. He was a veteran and a patriot and has always been a loyal friend and will be greatly missed. Prayers for his family and loved ones. God bless.

Received a request from Gonzo. He says his brother-in-law, Noel Nightingale, is in the hospital and is close to expiring. God bless his soul, he's a good man. A Canadian navy veteran who fought for the United States. Please address your replies to Gonzo.

DENVER — It wasn't a reckless obsession with liquor, drugs and gunplay that made the late Hunter S. Thompson the undisputed king of Gonzo journalism, his wife says. Instead, it was old-fashioned principles such as working hard and telling the truth, enlivened by the glee Thompson took from learning and from being right.< >After his death, Anita Thompson said, she got stacks of e-mails and letters from young people who thought they could duplicate his success by mimicking his infamous consumption. "They wrote me these letters about drinking bottles of Wild Turkey and doing grams of cocaine," said Thompson, a...

My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm. First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney. I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle. What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might...

He lived by the gun and he died by the gun. Now the late writer Hunter S Thompson, who shot himself in February, is to be blasted from a cannon from the back garden of his home in the hills of Aspen, Colorado. Thompson's ashes have been packed into firework casings and will be dispersed today from 34 different shells fired from a gun barrel mounted on top of a 150-foot high monument. Article continues The monument, in the form of a clenched fist made symmetrical by the addition of a second thumb, is modelled on Thompson's gonzo logo. "We...

Organizers of a memorial for Hunter S. Thompson plan to erect a 150-foot structure — courtesy of actor Johnny Depp — to shoot the gonzo journalist's ashes onto his ranch near here. Friends and acquaintances gathered Thursday to discuss the Aug. 20 invitation-only service, which will be six months after Thompson shot himself in his Woody Creek home. Jon Equis, the event producer working with Thompson's family, said the tower will be 12 feet wide at the base and 8 feet wide at the top, where a cannon will be placed. Depp, who portrayed the author in the movie version...

Internet inventor Al Gore launched another entertaining diatribe yesterday. His missives were, of course, directed towards the Republican effort to get simple up-or-down votes on President Bush's judicial nominees. You know, the way the Congress has been operating for only, oh, the last couple of centuries. Well, Mr. Gore says that the GOP has a "lust for one-party domination.' Dammit, someone revealed the secret! Who let it out that Rove and company have a lasvicious, carnal desire to crush the Democrats beneath a spiked boot heel? He also noted, in what was likely a nasally and monotonal whine, the GOP's...

Has suicide become the pop culture flavor of the month? Recent weeks produced an odd flurry of news stories suggesting that the notion of taking your own life suddenly seems courageous, respectable, even chic. Consider the pathetic death of acclaimed "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It provoked wildly inflated estimations of his artistry — Tom Wolfe anointed him the past century's "greatest comic writer in English" — as well as mostly admiring remarks from his family about his decision to shoot a bullet into his head at age 67. "This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure,"...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - More than 40 surfers cruised into the record books Saturday when they successfully rode a giant surfboard off an Australian beach, breaking the previous world record set by an English team of 14 people in 2003.

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) - Hunter S. Thompson's body was found in a chair in the kitchen in front of his typewriter with the word "counselor" typed in the center of the page, according to sheriff's reports. The word was typed on stationery from the Fourth Amendment Foundation, which was started to defend victims of unwarranted search and seizure, according to reports released Tuesday. It was not immediately known what, if any, significance the word had to the founder of "gonzo" journalism or to his family. Juan Thompson found his father dead Feb. 20 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the...

Gonzo But Not ForgottenThe strange and terrible legacy of Hunter S. ThompsonBy Chris Shugart, Feb 28, 2005  Long before the New Media emerged into prominence, there was the New Journalism, a modernistic writing style that flourished in the Sixties. Writers like Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and George Plimpton were establishing a new trend that was blurring the lines between journalism and literary fiction. At the time, there was also Hunter S. Thompson, who created his own unique genre that was so far outside the margin lines that it spawned its own definition: gonzo journalism. Now that Thompson is gone, the...

Excerpts from the never-aired 1973 Scooby Doo episode with guest star Hunter S. Thompson We were ten minutes south of San Clemente when the putrid green daisy walls of the van started closing in. I recall the fat four-eyed lesbian sweater girl saying something like "are you okay, Mr. Duke? We've got a mystery to solve..." when suddenly the gullet of the garish chartreuse steel beast began to spasm, as if a digestive track readying itself to vomit. I began clawing at my hamstrings and when I turned my head I was looking into the irridescent eyes of a grotesque...

DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flamethrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman. Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains. "There's no question, I'm sure that's what he...

Hunter S. Thompson did not invent Gonzo Journalism—but in a line borrowed from David Mamet, he gave it a name. Truman Capote attempted, with “In Cold Blood,” to fuse the fictional with the factual. Thomas Wolfe is a pioneer of the “new journalism” of the sixties, the meshing of the personal with the public. In academia, Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicists solidified the idea that history could only be known fully by being reduced to the personal. But Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream” (1971) sits as a...

Hunter S. Thompson was one of those rare writers who come as advertised. The Addams-family eyebrows in Stephen King's book jacket photos combined with the heeby-jeeby horrors of his stories always made me think of Dracula. When I finally met Mr. King, he was in Miami playing, along with Amy Tan, in a jook-house band called the Remainders. He was Sunshine itself, a laugh and a half, the very picture of innocent fun, a Count Dracula who in real life was Peter Pan. Carl Hiaasen, the genius who has written such zany antic novels as "Striptease," "Sick Puppy," and "Skinny...

AP News Alert ASPEN, Colo. (AP) -- The son of Hunter S. Thompson says the author shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home.

Some were predicting horrible things at Y2K time. FReeper gonzo was ready for anything. MIDI - 12 DAYS OF GONZO'S Y2K - 1st version of 12 Days of Christmas On the 1st of Y2K at gonzo’s house you’ll see…a sniper nest up in the tree On the 2nd of Y2K at gonzo’s house you’ll see 2 .45s…and a sniper nest up in the tree On the 3rd of Y2K at gonzo’s house you’ll see 3 Remingtons…2 .45s…and a sniper nest up in the tree On the 4th of Y2K at gonzo’s house you’ll see 4 Claymore mines…3 Remingtons…2 .45s…and a...

This morning at 11:45 a.m. ET, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will deliver a luncheon speech to the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington, speaking mostly about his successful effort to get the commonwealth's GOP-led legislature to pass his $1.4 billion tax increase. But, of course, he'll also talk about Kerry. "Three and one-half years ago, Republicans promised they could cut taxes, eliminate the national debt and keep the economy booming. Instead, our country lost jobs, and we turned a $236 billion surplus into a deficit that now approaches $500 billion," Warner will say, according to an advance copy of his speech...