I guess my only other question is: How could a writer as brilliant as Hunter Thompson think Wild

[Mike 03]

Turkey was so great if it is, in fact, as bad as most DU connoisseurs seem to say it is?

That would be out of character for Thompson, wouldn't it? He was wild, and crazy, and Gonzo, but he was no dummy when it came to details such as booze, I don't believe.

[azmouse]

1. Because it's not bad booze.

Take my word for it. :)

[Brother Buzz]

2. Remember, this was a distrubed man who's idea of shooting golf....

involved alcohol and a shotgun. Event happened at the Lincoln Park golf course in San Francisco on a early Sunday morning. Thompson, two, three, sheets to the wind, parked his caddy on Clement street that paralleled a fairway, opened the trunk, remove his shotgun, and well.... You get the idea. Who says alcohol and guns don't mix.

[kedrys]

4. He also ran 9-10 miles a day every day

Not to excuse his use of projectile weapons in inappropriate settings, but he apparently wasn't as wasted as we were led to believe...

[janx]

8. Wasted people can still perform, extremely. n/t

[kedrys]

3. Actually, one of his favorite desserts was Chivas snowcones

But a JD bottle is more iconic and less elitist than a bottle a Chivas. ;)

[NightWatcher]

5. it's not a fine whisky, but there's nothing wrong with drinking lots of it

it's drinkable.

I appreciate and have drank samples fom the finest Trappist monastaries in Belgium and Germany....but I have a case of PBR in teh fridge at all times. I loves me some Duvel, but I'm not above PBR or Yuengling to serve it's purpose.

I like Glen Fiddich 14 year old single malt scotch, but I have consumed enough Jim Beam to float a battleship.

[fishwax]

6. It's a hometown whiskey

well, not hometown, but Wild Turkey, like HST, hails from Kentucky, so perhaps it earned his allegiance when he was young :)

[pokerfan]

7. I don't really see him falling in love with Glenlivet

He was no dummy to be sure, but he was very eccentric and pretty much followed his own path, self consciously or not.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Already told you ...

It gets you hammered. One might add that it can be made to explode as well. Hunter liked the boom.

Being the smart person that he was, Hunter didn't screw around with fancy schmancy, overpriced stuff that was just 40 percent alcohol.

[Hanse]

10. Listen, this isn't that complicated.

1. Plenty of DUers are full of shit at any given time.

2. Thompson wouldn't have given a fuck anyway.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. You're confusing smart with taste,

as if being smart means you can't enjoy certain things.

And that's just silly. Thompson drank what he wanted, same way I drink what I want and you drink what you want. He also smoked cigarettes, and that's not a very "brilliant" thing to do.

Hunter Thompson was greatly talented, that's without dispute, but he burned out and never grew. He was one of a kind, and I wish he were still with us - he'd love this latest torture escapade. But, the sad truth is that for a lot of his last years, he was just a burned out old guy whose output never matched what he had done earlier. He was a creature of excess, so it made sense that he'd use it up.

Ultimately, he ended up inviting a lot of people up to his place - people even brought strangers with them - and he sat there, reading aloud his pieces from old Rolling Stone magazines. That's about the saddest ending I can imagine for a writer.

Wild Turkey's not bad, not great. It's all a matter of taste. And for you to assume that you knew anything about Thompson's "character" is to buy into the illusion. He was a troubled man who died broke and bitter and angry, and that's his sorry story........................

[LooseWilly]

12. Because writers, as a general rule, don't give a shit about haute notions of liquor.

Wild Turkey is a rough and tumble whiskey.
Hunter S. Thompson was rough and tumble as a writer.

Are you now going to start making judgements about the virtues of grapefruit based on HST's proclivity for them? (There was still a rumor floating around UCB in the late 80s that vitamin C was supposed to enhance the high of LSD. I personally think it was bullshit, but then again, I'm allergic to vitamin C, so I had to settle for a non-enhanced LSD high...).

I personally write (http://www.smartasspress.com), and I love Old Crow precisely because it is supposedly swill. One of the things I like most about it is that it is an affront to the notion of a cost index as an indicator of demand/supply valuation of quality... as pushed by marketers who would have us, as sheep, try to re-affirm our personal valuation by consuming products of a cost that we can, at best, barely afford.
In other words, a writer is capable of writing his/her own perceptions in such a way that the stupid Porsche posters on the wall of the bar aren't convincing enough to waste money on a car and not have money left over for another bottle of Wild Turkey. Or Old Crow...