life of the man he hated more than anyone else on Earth -LRB- Richard Nixon -RRB- and helped get Jimmy Carter elected president enjoying the company of me , a person who basically gets paid to tweet for a living ? I am not alone in my enduring fascination with Thompson . Today the movie about the novel Thompson started writing in 1959 at the age of 22-years-old , `` The Rum Diary '' starring Johnny Depp , will be released . The film offers plenty of opportunities to remember the renegade journalist , such as Jann Wenner 's recent piece titled `` Hunter S Thompson Was My Brother in Arms . '' I get the continued curiosity . And while it 's fine that I ca n't write or take drugs like Thompson , I actually did try to be like him once . In 2008 , after reading `` The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved , '' the piece in which he invented Gonzo journalism , I wrote a three-part series for Yahoo! Sports called `` The Odyssey To The Infield '' in which I attended all three legs of the Triple Crown Of Thoroughbred Racing in
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- I have never been whacked out on LSD . However , if I had ever had the chance to meet Hunter S. Thompson , a real acid pro , my fantasy is that during a brief conversation in which he got to know me a little bit I 'd feel comfortable asking him at the end of our talk : Do you think I could handle acid ? Even after I regaled him with the story of when friends of mine tried it in college , then wandered around the New York Botanical Gardens and invented the rock n ' roll backpack -- which is a standard backpack with a radio boombox in it -- he would say no , you personally should n't take LSD , you suppressed malcontent . Hopefully , this would all just sound like a sort of guttural gesture , because that would be subtle enough . There 's a definite chance that not only would HST think I could n't handle the drugs , but he might hate me entirely . I ca n't imagine someone who covered the Hells Angels , shark fishing competitions , got to threaten the