Dr. Gonzo: One Final Trip

One of the greatest openings of any quasi-fiction I ever read:

"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?"

-- From Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

The godfather of gonzo journalism was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 67.

R.I.P., Hunter S. Thompson. You were bold and gutsy and mad as a hatter. And you will be missed.

Oh, and as Wizbang correctly points out, the good doctor's irreverent, audacious, howling-at-the-moon prose might just make him the unchallenged grandfather of bloggers everywhere.

For more about Thompson, check out Blogcritics or Rox Populi.