In front of his typewriter, glass of Chivas at the ready, with his family in the house. Jesus.

Another one gone: Dr. Gene Scott. You can't forget him if you've seen him in his full spleen-venting, FCC-bashing, pyramid-ruminating prime. Or if you saw the clip where he goes nuts and plays a finger-poppin' ultra-Caucasian gospel quintet over... and over... and over... and over... He loved his wine, his show horses, his last trophy wife, his fine cigars - not necessarily in that order. How refreshing - a televangelist who didn't bullshit anyone about what he did with the money. With Dr. Gene's passing and Dr. Hunter pushing the eject button yesterday, this earthly plane has suddenly become much more mundane.

I thought the whacked-out bastard would outlive us all. Ho ho. If you haven't already, read Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. For extra credit as an adjunct, read The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse, HST's assistant on the campaign trail, to see the method behind the Gonzo madness.

Try to ignore the slow descent into solipsistic wankery, the flabbiness and unintentional self-parody of his later work. And please be so kind as to overlook any journalistic poseurs you may have encountered during college, who strained to mimic the debauched Thompson zeitgeist but didn't have the chops - or the sober perspicacity - to craft an article that used fictions to point to the real black heart of a subject. (I know all too well; I was such a poseur in the day, possessed of the skill, knowing of the Gonzo form, but too indolent do the legwork, too chickenshit to be fearless enough to pull it off.)

Requiescat in pace, honcho. May you have all the mescaline you can eat, Caligula playing on a loop at Artie Mitchell's heavenly bachelor pad, a personal mojo wire to God... and Nixon roasting on a spit at your "welcome to the afterlife" party.

Recent bloodsports I love:

Olbermann gets plenty of hang time on O'Reilly. I'm still waiting for Bill to get the call from the Falafel / Vibrator Hall of Fame.

"Jeff Gannon" gets "divorced from reality" by the intrepid lefty blogosphere. Reminds me of when my pals from high school (we were on the newspaper together) BSed their way into press passes for Giants and 49ers games, numerous times. They were slackers; who knew that if they really applied themselves and kissed the right ass, they could've gotten into the White House Press Room? Naturally, the seamier side of the Gannon/Guckert exposé makes me want to break out into a few verses of "Schadenfreude" from Avenue Q. Now he's playing the victim card. Wah, wah, wah. Fuckin' shill. Go back to your Delaware obscurity and underwear photos.

About goddamn time. AT&T Usurper Park should've gotten the All-Star Game much earlier than '07. They probably didn't because the Giants found a way to build the best park in the league without raping the taxpayers, unlike the newer and crappier parks in Milwaukee and elsewhere (and the park they want built in D.C.). That the Giants got it done pissed off Commissioner Bud - the man who deserves every bit of scorn and ridicule he gets, now until infinity, for cancelling the '94 season. Karma works, though - Bud pulled the plug on the All-Star Game in the 11th inning a couple of years ago in Milwaukee (the team he used to own, in the city he raped for a horrible ballpark) and got shown for the first-class tool he is.

RIP John Vernon. (Link via Aaron Barnhart's TVBarn.) You'd probably remember him best as Dean Wormer in Animal House. I also loved him as Mr. Big in Keenan Ivory Wayans's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.