In the special, which airs on NBC this December, Uma will play Santa Clause's flight attendant while Martin portrays a mailman who opens the show with a song-and-dance number. As is mandatory, Kermit, Fozzy, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the crew are determined to save Christmas for some tots whose letters to Santa were lost in the mail. "Thurman and Martin join previously cast Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa, Richard Griffiths and Madison Pettis, along with Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, Miss Piggy and the rest of the muppets gang. The special, from Muppets Prods., will feature songs by The Muppet Movie songwriter Paul Williams." [TheHollywoodReporter]

The documentary by Mr. Gibney, who also made “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side,” does not attempt to work around Thompson’s endless self-consciousness but uses it as leverage instead. Produced by Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, and narrated by the actor Johnny Depp, “Gonzo” mirrors the subjectivity and immersion of the journalism Thompson and his trusty arsenal of psychoactive agents perpetrated in Rolling Stone and elsewhere. Mr. Gibney eschews narrative conventions and switches point of view on a dime, creating a prism of interviews and episodes that gradually assembles into a compelling portrait [...]

“I would argue that Hunter and Tom Wolfe are the two most original voices to come out of journalism in the last century, and it’s no coincidence that they both worked for Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone,” Mr. Carter said. “No one else was willing to push it that way, to take those risks.” Mr. Gibney’s documentary plays appropriate tribute by restricting its gaze to the nascent Thompson of the ’60s and early ’70s. By the time most of America knew who Thompson was, he was pretty much washed up, having gradually been overtaken by his own legend, with steady assists from the bottle, the drugs and his coven of enablers.

August men line up to pay their respects in the documentary — Patrick J. Buchanan, George McGovern, Jimmy Buffett, Gary Hart and Timothy Crouse, the author of the campaign memoir “The Boys on the Bus” — as do the women he loved. Both his first wife, Sandy, and second wife, Anita, testify to his courage and courtliness, in between pointing out that he could be mean as a snake and far less predictable. He broke through by covering a biker gang from the inside — he “rode with the Angels,” as Mr. Wolfe puts it in the film — and took a serious beat-down on the way out. Journalism, as practiced by Thompson, was not something for sissies. [NYT]

Yea yea, it's all part of capitalism. Everything pure eventually gets taken over for monetary gain. We're all familiar with the thriving Che Guevara t-shirt industry. That doesn't make it any less objectionable. [Nike-owned] Converse's new campaign, "Connectivity," shows Dr. Gonzo side by side with a bunch of living and dead "icons," including the Sex Pistols' deceased frontman Sid Vicious, who would no doubt also be pleased to make a contribution to the sneaker industry. See, HT and Sid are "connecting" to basketball player Dwyane Wade and globo-hip-hop singer M.I.A, all for the love of the Converse brand!

So what if Hunter Thompson wore Converse on his dirty feet when he was alive? "Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final," he wrote in 1979. Dude, Converse is so about that too! It kind of makes you want to puke. But mostly it makes you sad.

It's not an across-the-board condemnation. Some celebrities were shiny commercial vehicles during their lives, and keeping them at it after they pass away isn't really sullying anything. Fred Astaire and Lucille Ball have made ghostly ad appearances, but would they really be upset, judging by their level of celebrity while alive? Not quite as clear-cut as Sid Vicious, who, if he stood for anything besides drugs and self destruction, probably stood for "Fuck the system." Which, it turns out, is exactly the image people want in their cheap canvas shoes.

Consider Apple's "Think Different" campaign: Martin Luther King, Einstein, Gandhi. Being used, indirectly, to sell computers. On the scale of disgust, it would have to rank lower than Converse's crime, because at least the "Think Different" spots were promoting some faux-version of peace on earth and goodwill among men. Whereas if one were to emulate Hunter Thompson by, say, sniffing a ton of coke, dropping acid, and running up in the Converse corporate headquarters shooting a shotgun at the company logo, the company would probably lose its enthusiasm for the implications of their endorsements.

Whenever the dead stop messing around in the afterlife and come back to earth in zombie form, they won't be happy about this. Zombie Gonzo will be dining on the bursting brains of the young cool creative minds that dreamed up his ad appearances. And we should all want a bite.

This is exactly why I only wear Adidas.