Britton, Me, and JR

I have also almost finished reading The Rum Diary  by Hunter S. Thompson, the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It almost entirely takes place in Puerto Rico, although there is quite a long part about getting drunk and partying in St. Thomas. Apparently, Hunter S. Thompson once lived in Puerto Rico and this is basically a thinly-veiled journal of his time as a writer at the Star. I also just now learned that Johnny Depp is set to yet-again play the lead character in a film-version of the book.

I think Thompson had a love-hate relationship with the island. Throughout various passages you can sense a sort of uneasiness, but there are moments when he relaxes and takes it all in, and it takes his breath away. From the book: “I bought a Times for forty cents and read about a blizzard in New York: ‘Merrit Parkway closed…BMT stalled four hours…snowplows in the streets..everyone late to work…’ I looked out at the bright Caribbean morning, green and lazy and full of sun, then I put the Times away.”

Hunter S. Thompson died in Colorado, February 20, 2005, and The San Juan Star , the primary English-language newspaper on the island closed on August 29, 2008.

And a song of the day (de jour/del dia) from BK:
rusted-root-free-my-soul