...Hunter S. Thompson is dead.
Unless you've all been working very hard this holiday, or are still in bed nursing your hangover, you already knew that. Sandra Dee also died over the weekend. So, for those of you who are keeping track of the celebrity deadpool, we lost Gonzo AND Gidget in the past 48 hours. That's unacceptable, people, and let me tell you why: with the advent of reality television and chick/lad lit imprints like Red Dress Ink, we're not actually making any new cultural icons anymore. At this rate, I calculate that we'll be shit out of celebrities by the year 2011. (Coincidently, the same year that I'll be done paying off my student loans.)
We need new famous people and we need them right now.
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We are all counting on you, Jenniesmash!
ReplyDeleteThat's totally what I was hinting around at. Kidding! (Mostly. I think.)
ReplyDeleteI was just talking to my friend about this: all the giants are dying...and no one is stepping up to replace them.
ReplyDeletealthough there are plenty of good journalists out there, there's none that had the license of vulgarity that HST earned throughout the years.
a grear sports columist ralph wiley just died. allen ginsberg keeled off a few years ago. bukowski right before him. black sparrow press, although not a human, shut its doors. john fante died before i knew who he was.
but there are some great living writers at the top of their game. jonathon ames comes to mind. michael chabon's surely a giant. the poet kim addonizio rocks and so does a bunch of other contemporary poets: gerald stern, ed ochester, gerald locklin, gary soto, lisa glatt, blah blah blah.
as for HST, he'll be missed. but we all knew he wasn't going to die of natual causes. i toasted him the other night and hope that when they shoot his ashes out of a cannon, per his request, that it lights something expensive on fire and causes an explosion that rocks the night.