Gonzo

In the movie, Brady Anderson will be lounging on a couch in the opening scene, and Rene Gonzales will be talking on the phone.The time will be last winter.The place, an apartment in Irvine, Calif."Dude," Brady will say. "Let's work out.""Dude," Gonzo will say. "Wait a minute."The minute will turn into five minutes, and five minutes will turn into an hour. Brady, though, won't get upset. The next day, he might keep Gonzo waiting twice as long.Ah, roommates."Bob Melvin was a good friend of ours, but we couldn't hang out with him," Anderson lamented this week, reflecting on the days when all three were Orioles.

When Michael Gonzalez signed a two-year, $12 million deal before the 2010 season, he envisioned entering the game in the ninth inning and closing out an Orioles' victory against a tough divisional foe. Gonzalez did that in the Orioles' victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday night, but not under the circumstances that he or anybody else expected. The Orioles had a seven-run lead and manager Buck Showalter originally planned to bring back Koji Uehara for a second inning of work, but Nick Markakis ' two-run double in the bottom of the eighth convinced him to go to Gonzalez.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- After all these years, Rene Gonzales has finally made it, sort of. The California Angels expect to start him at either second or third base Opening Day. There's one doomsday scenario under which he could return to utility status, but Gonzo doesn't want to hear it."I'm not going anywhere," he says.Is this the same Gonzo who Angels manager Buck Rodgers remembers as a "skinny kid" at Triple-A? The same Gonzo who had the misfortune of backing up Cal Ripken with the Orioles? The same Gonzo who hit .217 or below four straight seasons from 1988 to '91?

It's not 'just the facts, Ma'am,' " says Alex Gibney, channeling TV's Dragne t's Jack Webb. The writer-director-producer, who won the best documentary Oscar this year for Taxi to the Darkside and is currently promoting Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, abhors the notion that a filmmaker can capture reality simply by pointing his camera at it. That's why this disciplined and prolific artist (he also executive-produced Charles Ferguson's Oscar-nominated...

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Brian DuBois walked by Paul Carey on Saturday and stared at the No. 88 jersey still hanging in his locker."Not yet?" DuBois asked. "You're not going to do it?"It was the burning question of camp.When would Carey give No. 88 to Rene Gonzales?The answer finally came yesterday, when Carey walked onto the field at Twin Lakes Park wearing No. 77, with Gonzales strutting like a peacock in his old No. 88.Phew, glad that's over with.Peter Angelos bought the Orioles a new first baseman, a new third baseman, a new starting pitcher and a new closer.

It's not 'just the facts, Ma'am,' " says Alex Gibney, channeling TV's Dragne t's Jack Webb. The writer-director-producer, who won the best documentary Oscar this year for Taxi to the Darkside and is currently promoting Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, abhors the notion that a filmmaker can capture reality simply by pointing his camera at it. That's why this disciplined and prolific artist (he also executive-produced Charles Ferguson's Oscar-nominated...

Hunter S. Thompson, inventor of Gonzo journalism, is one of those forces of nature you're glad exists, since life is immeasurably more interesting with him around. But, at the same time, you thank God he doesn't live next door."Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" does a great job of making that point. Unfortunately, it does that in the first 20 minutes, then spends the next 100 pounding it home. And despite the use of every trick director Terry Gilliam has at his disposal -- as always, he has plenty -- the result drags in a way Thompson's prose rarely does.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is some paradoxical kind of great documentary. Writer-director and co-producer Alex Gibney uses any means at hand to make the rare movie about a journalist that actually takes us into a writer's head. He includes never-before-heard audiotapes of Thompson at work and play (often there was no difference), snippets of Johnny Depp playing Thompson in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and even Depp himself, reading from Thompson's work.

In a tragic instance of poetic justice, writer Hunter S. Thompson's suicide last week made sense. He was a man who lived under constant siege, as if incoming missiles were a real and daily threat, one without which he could not exist. He courted violence, in part because, as a sinner extraordinaire, it was his due. As a journalist preoccupied with the dark side of life, and as a peculiar celebrity, Thompson aggressively sought opportunities to duck and cover. In 1991, he came to a Baltimore club, Max's on Broadway, where he allowed himself to take imbecilic questions from a lubricated audience that chanted "Gonzo!

Bill Cardoso, 68, a writer who coined the term "gonzo" to describe the frenetic participatory journalism practiced by contemporary Hunter S. Thompson, died Feb. 26 in San Francisco. Mr. Cardoso, writing for the Boston Globe and covering the 1968 presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Richard M. Nixon, befriended Thompson on Nixon's press bus. When Thompson wrote his colorful, drug-riddled story "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly magazine, Mr. Cardoso wrote a letter calling the piece "pure gonzo."

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is some paradoxical kind of great documentary. Writer-director and co-producer Alex Gibney uses any means at hand to make the rare movie about a journalist that actually takes us into a writer's head. He includes never-before-heard audiotapes of Thompson at work and play (often there was no difference), snippets of Johnny Depp playing Thompson in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and even Depp himself, reading from Thompson's work.

The Spring 2008 Cinema Sundays series wraps this weekend with documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Former Cinema Sundays programmer Gabe Wardell, now executive director of Independent Media Artists of Georgia, Etc. (IMAGE), and organizers of the annual Atlanta Film Festival will be on hand for the introduction and post-film discussion. Showtime at the Charles, 1711 N. Charles St., is 10:35 a.m. Sunday, preceded by 50 minutes of no-additional-charge coffee and bagels.

Hometown -- Bel Air Current members --Mark Creaney, guitarist/singer; Robert Ransom, keyboards, accordion, mandolin; Jim McLaughlin, guitar, vocals; Drew Schlegel, bass; Brendan Smith, drums Founded in --2005 Style --experimental party rock Influenced by --Gogol Bordello, Bob Dylan, The Band, Talking Heads Notable --The band just released a new album The Devil's in the Bar. In October, the members are heading back to the studio to cut an acoustic album....

Celebrity news Two years after his suicide, journalist Hunter S. Thompson continues to provide stories so over-the-top it's hard to believe he ever really existed. "One of the first times I met him, he pulled out a gun in the middle of a house," Jack Nicholson remembers in the forthcoming book, Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson. "Me and a friend of mine jumped out the window." Jimmy Carter recalls that his staff "tried to schedule certain times for [Hunter] to interview me along with other journalists, but Hunter felt he should be given top priority.

Bill Cardoso, 68, a writer who coined the term "gonzo" to describe the frenetic participatory journalism practiced by contemporary Hunter S. Thompson, died Feb. 26 in San Francisco. Mr. Cardoso, writing for the Boston Globe and covering the 1968 presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Richard M. Nixon, befriended Thompson on Nixon's press bus. When Thompson wrote his colorful, drug-riddled story "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly magazine, Mr. Cardoso wrote a letter calling the piece "pure gonzo."

In a tragic instance of poetic justice, writer Hunter S. Thompson's suicide last week made sense. He was a man who lived under constant siege, as if incoming missiles were a real and daily threat, one without which he could not exist. He courted violence, in part because, as a sinner extraordinaire, it was his due. As a journalist preoccupied with the dark side of life, and as a peculiar celebrity, Thompson aggressively sought opportunities to duck and cover. In 1991, he came to a Baltimore club, Max's on Broadway, where he allowed himself to take imbecilic questions from a lubricated audience that chanted "Gonzo!

For years, Lori McComas and "Gonzo" had nowhere to go to buy paint ball supplies -- until they opened their own store."We got very irritated with companies like the Sports Authority and Kmart," said Gonzo, 36, who identifies himself only by his nickname. "They didn't want to carry paint ball equipment because the big stores say the market isn't there. They say they're not going to be able to turn the merchandise around for a bazillion dollars."Now, the two Brooklyn Park residents, who are not related, sell paint ball equipment and other sport supplies at their store, Alternative Sports: The Paint Ball Pro Shop, at 7751 Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd.

Fans of the old "Password" game show will remember that opposites weren't allowed as clues, so if "Muppets" were the word, "relevant" or "hip" couldn't have been clues.That's not to say that Jim Henson's stable of cloth characters weren't funny or entertaining, but even in their heyday, the Muppets' brand of humor seemed, well, a bit dated.Based on their sassy new film, "Muppets from Space," Kermit, Miss Piggy, Statler and Waldorf, and even Fozzie Bear, the "wakka, wakka" guy himself, have gotten hip just in time for the new millennium.

WASHINGTON - From the moment I first met my friend Hunter Thompson 33 years ago - or, as he preferred, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson of the National Affairs Desk of Rolling Stone magazine - I always felt he would come to a violent end, as he did the other day in Aspen, Colo. But I never thought he would shoot himself in the fashion of that other famous Rocky Mountain writer, Ernest Hemingway. Considering his freewheeling lifestyle, I thought he more likely would wind up in a bad car accident.

Love him or hate him, fear him or loathe him, Hunter S. Thompson left an indelible mark on American literature, one that, as much as some critics think it needs a good scrubbing, will likely persist -- as rebellious and brazen as the writer himself. Thompson, who was found dead at age 67 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in rural Colorado on Sunday, was one of the earliest and best-known practitioners of New Journalism, or, as he preferred to call it, "Gonzo Journalism." He was known for putting himself into the stories he covered, dropping any pretense of objectivity, and for seeking a truth that ran deeper than any mere set of facts.