Hunter S. Thompson's own wild and wacky sporting life
We lost a good one this week. Hunter S. Thompson -- aka The Good Doctor, author/sports nut/party animal extraordinaire -- passed away at his home in Colorado and now Jakartans, particularly sports fans here, can only wonder what could have been.
For the Good Doctor would have loved Jakarta with his Wild Turkey in his vest pocket, samurai sword hanging precariously from a belt loop and Ping 9-iron ready for any kind of trouble.
He would get his wake up calls from his hotel at 11 -- p.m., that is. He would rage all night on Jl. Palatehan, absolutely go berserk at Stadium until dawn, where he would inevitably hook up with some suave generals and a couple of crazed, filthy rich expats and ride Harleys down to the golf course and introduce them to the sport he and Bill Murray created -- Shotgun Golf -- a cross between skeet shooting and golf.
He would then head over to Jaksa for a curry breakfast with the most intoxicatingly intelligent group of ne'er-do-wells the world has ever known. The staff at his hotel would be mortified at this crazy bule, waking up at 11 p.m., coming back at 4 p.m. and ordering two more bottles of Wild Turkey from room service.
He always had a wild love affair with the Wild West and little did he know; it's alive and well right here, right now. He was wildly in love with gambling and gun toting, and he would have shot a load in Kota, especially with the semiillegal, semiclandestine nature of it all tucked away down some dark passage in VIP rooms above outlandish karaoke lounges.
He would have been as giddy as a legislator on budget drafting day with the thrill of gambling amid the lingering prospects of some gun wielding cops -- sans their piece of the pie -- storming in and shooting up the place.
He and Johno the Bookie would quickly become overly chummy betting on everything from what minute Roy Keane would get his yellow to Tiger Woods' first bogey of the day to Taufik's next eruption.
He would absolutely insist upon meeting and hanging out with Taufik, not because of some sycophantic wish to meet the reigning Olympic champ, but because they are kindred spirits -- geniuses in their field, both living in a world that is "In Denial", because this world tells us that civility is the norm, excesses are sinful and smashing rackets over spectators' heads is a really bad thing.
Many people who only know of him by his books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may not realize that Thompson was a fanatic sports nut, he played football for the University of Kentucky (his home state), and his first writing gig was as a sports editor.
He gambled on sports like a fiend and never tired of railing on and betting on his beloved Indianapolis Colts. He hung out with Bill Murray, Sean Penn, Warren Zevon and whoever else could keep pace with his non-stop partying and craziness.
Some of Mr. Thompson's best little vignettes with sports angles come to us courtesy of ESPN.com for whom he wrote a column between 2000 and 2005, except for the first one, which came from the National Observer in the mid-1960s:
* "One of my most vivid memories of South America is that of a man with a golf club -- a five-iron -- driving golf balls off a penthouse terrace in Cali, Colombia. He was a tall Britisher, and had what the British call a "stylish pot" instead of a waistline. Beside him on the patio was a long gin-and-tonic, which he had refilled from time-to-time at the nearby bar. He had a good swing, and each of his shots carried low and long out over the city.
Where they fell, neither he nor I nor anyone else on the terrace that day had the vaguest idea. Somewhere below us, in the narrow streets that are lined by white adobe blockhouses of urban peasantry, a strange hail was rattling on the roofs"
* "Warren Zevon is a poet... an expert on lacrosse... a profoundly mysterious man, and I have learned not to argue with him, about hockey or anything else."
* "Betting against the Lakers in the NBA playoffs has never been a sound investment for gamblers -- (after) a lackluster season & more internal bitching & squabbling and crazed jealous treachery than a tribe of hyenas in heat. It might be worth noting here that hyenas are the only beasts in nature that are born physically bisexual & remain that way all their lives. They also are cannibals that routinely eat their young & everything else that looks helpless. People who know Hyenas describe them as "the filthiest animal in nature" -- with the possible exception of English cows & corrupt big-city police officers in 21st century America."
* "February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums and baseball is not even mentioned. It is a good time for building fires, reading books, watching movies and cranking up random sex with the neighbors."
I once wrote a letter to The Good Doctor, literally begging him to come to Jakarta, knowing it would be nirvana for him --- which brings me to my point. Has any independent source seen his body? Could it be that he, like Jim Morrison before him, faked his own death and hopped a plane to Soekarno-Hatta? -- Rich Simons