Hunter S. Thompson leaves voicemail for an A/V dealer

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson leaves a voicemail for an AV dealer expressing how pleased he is with their service. NSFW

• [ole infidel]

  Classic HST – it’s what we all want to say in the same situation, but do not.

  He did go a tad to far with the ‘do u no who I am’ bit…

• [ethancoop]

  If this disembodied voice wasn’t Hunter S. Thompson how many of you would excuse his rudeness?

• [ArnoDick]

  I am big fan of Hunter, but I work at a computer store and we get horrible assholes like this all the time, who explode over the most petty bullshit and are completely impossible to deal with. They are impossible to satisfy or deal with, and only make everyone’s life miserable.

  I don’t care how great of a writer he was, if I had to be the service guy to deal with that indignant, self-important, whiny garbage I’d hate Mr. Thompson for the rest of my life.

  • [Trent Hawkins]

    had one of those that we saved on the answering machine for years. A guy exploded because the computer we fixed turned “blue”. He called three times through the weekend and said that in his rage he through a phone through the wall of his office. On Sunday 3am he called back apologetically saying that everything is in fact fine and after jiggling the cables in the back the screen worked perfectly.

• [igobyryan]

  You kids get off my lawn, and for the last time, STAY AWAY FROM MY GODDAMN ETHER!

• [peacock]

  As a guy who works in tech support, this sounds like a call from a user who messed up.

  He can’t find the “on” switch, or he did not listen to the instructions by the installation tech.

  HST is abusive and selfish and has no respect for the feelings of others.

  When I was in college everyone was wild about his books. I read them and went along with the crowd.

  Years later, after I read better writers, I realized he is a fourth rate writer — not worth the effort.

  • [querent]

    better writers, eh? you sure you’re not just “going along” with a different crowd?

    Oh yeah, and feel free to submit some of your work here.

• [Stumpadoodle]

  Point taken for him being an asshole, for those who have noted it. But in all fairness, he was getting on in years. I think it’s the very beligerence on display in this recording that ultimately prompted him to kill himself…his rants were becoming too solipsistic. If you look at some of his last interviews/writings, he knew he was just becoming an angry old man.

• [[e-mail]]

  I find it sad that the outstanding writing and literary genius of one of the 20th centuries most brilliant social commentators is often buried beneath the drug using hard talking persona that grew up around Hunter S. Thompson. He certainly did little to discourage people from thinking of him that way, but it’s sad irony that few individuals (sober or otherwise) had such a firm grasp of the times they lived in as Thompson. He had a finger on the pulse of the American Spirit and he wrote about it unflinchingly for over fifty years. Here’s to hoping his legacy is more than that of a raving drug-addled caricature of himself.

• [Hirsty]

  I believe he said something about Unicorns!

• [T’Pau]

  Haha, what a cranky old man. “GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS!!!”

• [skeletoncityrepeater]

  I almost fell on the floor when the madness kicked in. That just lightened my mood so much! Thanks!

• [Anonymous]

  i miss hst

• [Anonymous]

  ROFLMAO. I’d hate to hear him at the DMV.

• [akaaudio]

  My Dad died last week….HST 3 was his idol…..this recording is a perfect copy of how my dad would havereacted to this sort of treatment.FTW forever.

  • [Anonymous]

    Please accept my deepest sympathy for the death of your father. How serendipitous this HST story is for you and the memory of your father.

• [Anonymous]

  “You can see what the fuck I can do to you…………………AND I WILL!”

  Oh man. I’ve never read Hunter S. Thompson before, but I’m a huge fan now! Gonna get me some books!

• [RustyTrawler]

  That was wonderful! His persistent rhythm, punctuated with scary crescendos into raw fury, then back down again until the next eruption. Like waves of sound in a symphony. Or nausea.

• [Shelby Davis]

  Wow. I’ve (sorry to say) never listened to a recording of Thompson before, and my first reaction was surprise at how closely Depp mimicked him in the Fear and Loathing adaptation.

  • [Anonymous]

    Johnny Depp lived with him for months to prepare for the role. Thompson even shaved johnny depps head for him cause he thought the fake bald cap looked stupid. they became such good friends that johnny paid to have the custom made cannon that thompsons ashes were shot out of when he died (per the wills instructions)

• [bpratt]

  Christ, what an asshole. (Sorry, you knew somebody was going to say it eventually). As a huge HST fan from way back I’m disappointed to that say he’s a lot funnier in print – probably because in print his righteous indignation is truly righteous, and here he just sounds like a cranky old coot going off about his teevee being on the fritz. Clay feet, etc etc.

  • [noah django]

    hey, bprat, if some dorks installed something wrong and especially if they ruined the wiring/connections on my existing system, I would sound exactly like HST. Particularly if I was drunk all the time. He paid them, they fucked it up. What other option does he have? Don’t hate, appreciate.

    • [bpratt]

      #11 – It’s kind of fun to imagine yourself doing that, and for many of us his writings fulfilled that fantasy vicariously. But I’d suggest that if you actually tried to pull it off, (1) you’d lose the respect of anyone that overheard you ranting like that over a minor inconvenience, and (2) you’d be asked by the A/V shop to identify and remove each misplaced wire then carefully shove it up your ass.

      We can’t all be HST – and in the end even HST couldn’t be HST, which was a great tragedy. I surely wish he was here to beat up on BP…

      (oh, and #16 FTW)

    • [Anonymous]

      Have you ever waited on tables or dealt with the public in any form? When you’re working for a living and getting low wages, among the rich people who start screaming at you, the “Do you know who I am” people are the worst. Not funny. That said, Thompson was so strung out he had no control over his actions. You who aren’t strung out, consider how you talk to those who fix you t.v.s. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

  • [iconeater]

    Yeah that’s a man who has lost control and thinks he actually has power over an AV store. HST is just another baby boomer asshole. MINE MINE MINE TAKE TAKE TAKE I’ll be glad when they’re all gone. At least HST had the decency to check out sooner rather than later. RIP you crazy old fart.

• [headcode]

  Yeah, I gotta agree with bpratt. I loved reading Thompson, but the reality of his sociopathic rant is just a little too hard to take.

• [Anonymous]

  #8 I agree, johnny depp should be pretty secure in his acting after his performance of HST. spot on.

• [smileylizard]

  wow. talk about flashbacks. I think of Hunter
  S. Thompson as the unsung voice of a generation. Bill Murray portrayed him rather well in “Where the Buffalo Roam.”

• [Loraan]

  Can anybody vouch for this? I’ve heard it before, and heard others question its authenticity.

• [BastardNamban]

  I’m with #8- he was spot on in the movie- I see that now.

  That said, I am laughing my ass off at this- the ending is priceless- the cadence, and rolling pitch, the strings of obscenities, HA!

  Awesome.

• [bobsyeruncle]

  Haha! Even better than Pac-Man lady! :D

• [IWood]

  I had a good comment, just now, but the thing, what is it? The button. The submit button didn’t work. I’ve got this new browser, supposed to be open source and they say it’s good for the people, and I tell you it’s bullshit, how it handles forms and javascript. It’s fucked up my system. My whole goddamn computer is a goddamn mess now and I can’t do a fucking thing with it. I don’t know what kind of asshole used car salesmen they’ve got running this open source thing, but they’re incompetent and wily. They’re spread out, dispersed all over, so you can’t just set fire to one building and put them all down at once. Ugly business, offering you shiny technological hope, and then they’ve got you trapped in the same phony plastic box as the fruit computer people and the Microsoft monolith, sweating with the rest of the greedy. Because it’s free! They know we can’t resist free. Don’t be fooled by these weird utopians. You’ll take their free browser and then you’re sitting there at your desk with your last finger of Wild Turkey and you can’t submit your comment because the fucking button doesn’t work.

  • [robulus]

    I see what you did there, and I approve.

  • [lewis stoole]

    nice!

    *i think he screwed up his remotes

• [Anonymous]

  He started off okay. He had a problem that needed fixing. Then he launches into his “Do you know who I am?” tirade. As if he’s so special and he could care less for the schedules of the technicians: “I want you here tomorrow morning”. He gets angrier as he rants. Basically, a bully (re: wimp) who has no social skills and tries to compensate for that lack by acting as if he is superior to his fellow human beings. Blechh! And his writing is over-estimated, as well, which he might have felt, thus his insecurity.

• [Anonymous]

  #16 You win sir.

• [michael holloway]

  ‘You know what I’ll do if you don’t fix it? I’ll, I’ll … well I won’t tell you what I’ll do… .

  ‘I’ll write about you, you mother fuckers that’s what I’ll do…’

  Hilarious.

• [Anonymous]

  I think it’s fun to leave this on other peoples voice mail.

• [robulus]

  Did I say that or just think it?

• [Anonymous]

  Why is it that so many people who work with AV treat you like you’re 2 whenever you ask a simple question? Of course, this problem is worse for women than it is for men, but still…

  Not to say that they don’t have legit beefs with people who preemptively take out their stress on them, or that they don’t get stuck working bad hours for low pay, but I was condescended to today by an AV guy for no good reason and Hunter just channelled some serious rage for me.

• [gws]

  I think I love all of this, even (or especially?) when Thompson threatens, hilariously, to defame them in print. The man was a rare and difficult breed. And sure, he’s appallingly rude and abusive, but sometimes I wish I could grant myself license to vent my anger like this. The customer service mentality that governs social norms these days seems to make us cowardly and powerless in the face of other people’s rage.

• [wylkyn]

  He probably just didn’t bother to listen to the technician who installed it when he explained what button to press to change from DVD back to TV, etc. “It is broken” tends to translate to “I can’t get it to work” when you’re talking about people who need to hire someone to hook up a DVD player.

  So, yeah…that. And holy crap, what a whiny biatch. It’s like a two-year-old’s tantrum, but without the remote possibility of his ever growing out of it. Yikes.

  • [Anonymous]

    Users don’t make mistakes, designers make mistakes.

    It’s a bloody TV, you should be able to operate it without instructions … whoever you are.

    However that is of course a complaint for whoever made the TV.

• [MonkeyBoy]

  I think HST realized that he was turning into an out-of-control cranky old coot and that is why he killed himself.

• [WestTexas]

  Too bad we can’t give him Tony Hayward’s number.

• [Anonymous]

  You hear that this is clearly a man having several side conversations in his own head, whilst trying to communicate that he is very dismayed in his A/V set-up.

  You can sense his complete frustration and loss of space and time as to who and where he is. Likewise, we can imagine how easy it was for him to get twisted up in these internal conversation (like the maze of his A/V system) he was gonna destroy the system and write about it. It’s a shame he ultimately destroyed his own system, and now we all can write about it.

  @Peacock 34. You just leave your $.02 at the back button where it belongs. Your kind is not welcomed here, we’re friendlies. While, you’re out to prove some hindsight self-righteousness. Go figure that you were just trying to fit-in, back in college. beat it. get off our lawn. Scram. JK. But 4th rate writer..? Hunter’s a product of a small blip in history, celebrate it or ignore it, it’s really inconsequential either way. but let us have our fun and enjoy this quirky maverick, whether he be right, wrong, or insane.

• [tad604]

  That’s sad more than anything.

• [FuriousGeorge47]

  Makes you realize how spot-on many of the cartoon parodies of him really are.

• [michael holloway]

  Those JVC repair/installation guys are in with the TV weather personality/meteorologists. It’s a god dam conspiracy. The fucking clock on my VCR is still blinking 12:00, now for twenty years – and it IS getting hotter in here – fucking bastards.

• [Anonymous]

  For more of the real Hunter S. Thompson visit http://HunterThompsonFilms.com and watch out for his new film “Animals,Whores & Dialogue” being released on DVD next month – July, 2010

• [JDMcDonnell]

  Heeheeeheee….

  Sadly the modern world was not made for people who expect support, integrity or quality from one another. Swear all you want Hunter, calling tech support will only make you want to shoot yourself in the end.

• [sing it, baby]

  Reminds me of this rude man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d65fUHQMcw