The 2-Minutes Blog

All the amenities of Montana

2011-03-06T03:51:00.002-07:00

Montana is strange and beautiful state, their bars will give you a free cab ride home and sell you liquor for the road. I've never taken advantage of such amenities until tonight. Here's how it started:

I pushed send and filed the story. From the kitchen table I looked around the apartment. I figured after sending another story that would no doubt be gutted to fit in papers I have never heard of it was time for a few bottles of suds. After all, no one wants to be sober when they see their babies slaughtered.

But I told myself I was going to behave: no fucking around with women in positions I had to report on, no challenging lawmakers to bare-knuckle fights in the alley, no Johnnie Walker, no good ole boy fun like Young Blood taught me.

Above all, I promised I would not make a decision based on the cold fact “I ain't too proud.”

So I headed for the bar that the press corp hangs out at. On the walk I reflected on my job.

The goddamn of this political gig is meeting people who deserve full-length profiles and having to cloud them up with political shit. I was still Jonesing hard to write about how this Navy SEAL turned politician punctuated his sentences with good-natured laughs until he talked about the men he lost. Then his eyes dulled and looked away, "It's the hardest thing I've ever done, telling parents how their son died. I've done it seven times."

But when I asked him if his 72 confirmed kills and captures was an accurate figure all he could say was, "I guess that's what it says." He added later, in the most straight-forward and from the heart voice I've ever heard. "None of those 72 were innocent."

But to hell with it, I didn't have room in the story for the honor that man was due so I sent my 1,400 black ants, punched the wall and muttered what Isaac Brock once said “It's too late to fuck up anymore now.”

When I hit the bar I held to my promises, though. I maintained, besides a handful of shots.

Mid drink I heard the bar wench try to talk a drunk girl out of driving by flapping some slips of paper and saying “We got free cabs home you don't have to do this!”

The girl left, but I was intrigued.

I ordered another beer and a shot and asked, “So, uh, free cab rides huh?”

I found that yes, indeed there are free cab rides. So I drank the shot, ordered another and decided to test out another myth I'd heard. “Hey, beautiful, can I buy beer to go?”

Yes, yes I could.

The cab was called and my order for a six pack of New Castle was filled.

When I got in the cab I shared my concerns about the system with the driver.

“So let me get this straight, I can potentially get pants-shitting drunk in the bar, order two fifths of sweet Johnnie Red and they'll order me up a free ride to the scene of the crime?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Ain't Montana great?”

"Fucking eh."

I couldn't let it leave at that, though. I had the sarcasm bone itching hard to make a joke.

“Yeah, fuck. It takes all the piss out of it if I have to beat my wife sober, right?”

“Ha,” he answered. “Yeah, I pull my punches if I'm hitting my kids without a buzz on.”

When we got to my place I tipped him heavy on the promise he would take the booze away from anyone wearing a camouflage hat and talking about how John Birch had it right.

The Perfect Hallmark Moment

2010-12-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

There are some life-stances that just feel like they should be the classic Hallmark moment before they even come and I thought this would be one of them.

The first time the old man has a major health scare and then calls to tell you he's fine should be something fit for a little porcelain knick knack, right? Hell maybe even Jesus could make an appearance in the sculpture.

No. Not with my dad.

I got a call from him at about 1:40 p.m. the day after my mom had convinced me my dad had a stroke. He didn't say hello when I answered. He said, “No stroke, you asshole. I been all-over town wasting my money on doctors. I'm going to the store to get some bacon. I want some bacon and fucking eggs.”

With tears already streaming into my beard I told him how glad I was to hear it and admitted I had already told our close family friend Kelly to call him to try to goad him into going to the doctor because I didn't think he would.

“Oh. Well what's Kelly's number? I'll call him right now and tell him to fuck off.”

“Thanks for the good news dad. I love you, too.”

My Dad Still Wears Cowboy Boots

2010-12-11T08:23:00.001-07:00

    I was barely 5 years old when it set in for the first time: Some day, my dad could die.
    I don't remember what brought it on, and I hadn't remembered the feeling it brought when it did until now. Today I called home and my mom said she thought my dad had a stroke this morning.
    "Fuck," I said.

    I was a cute kid. It's unbelievable given what an unsmiling, snide and bearded bastard I grew into, but when I was a kid; I was cute — a melon-headed little ball of sweetness in a Denver Broncos' jersey. My dad was in his 30s the night I realized it. He still wore boot-cut Levi jeans and cowboy boots most days then. He could still hang more Sheetrock in a day than any other man on the West Coast. To me, his arms were bigger than Hulk Hogan's and he was unbreakable. But the night I realized his mortality, I was laying in bed, tucked under Ninja Turtle sheets. I jumped up, ran into the living room where he and my mom sat and pleaded with him not to die.
    He grabbed me, told me he sure-as-shit wasn't going anywhere, smiled, winked, and told me to get my ass back to bed. He told me I was lucky he didn't spank me for getting out of bed.
    As I walked off to my room on my stubby little legs he told me to stop being so damned foolish.
    Today, at 24 years old, I blasted him out of bed with a 6 a.m. phone call. I told him he needed to go to the doctor because he couldn't talk right. I told him to stop being so selfish and asked him if he really wanted to take me and my brother's father away from us because he was too fucking stubborn to go to the doctor.
    He said he just ate too much over-salted homemade beef jerky and it had swollen up his tongue. He sounded like Anthony Hopkins in Legends of the Fall.
    I told him to stop being so damned foolish and to go to the doctor. I told him he was lucky I didn't drive the near 300 miles to his house to beat the shit out of him for putting it off.
    He laughed and said he sure-as-shit wasn't going anywhere. He told me to go back to bed.
    I hung up the phone and remembered that sometimes he still wears cowboy boots.

Hanging on to 'It Could Have Been Worse'

2010-12-08T06:14:00.000-07:00

    The familiar tinny voice from his cruiser's radio says there are two people unconscious in the next car wreck he's headed for. After three years with the Montana Highway Patrol and having worked in dispatch before that, Trooper Phil Smart knows unconscious is bad. Unconscious means dead.

    This is the second crash he's responded to since he came on shift at 5 p.m. The first one wasn't that bad compared to what could have been, though. No drunks, just one bad driver who caused a busted face, a broken ankle and gave an old lady a smashed hip. That's getting off light considering what could have happened when the driver at fault tried to make an illegal left turn across a lane of interstate.
    The cold comfort of 'it could have been a lot worse' isn't much, but it's often all that Smart and his comrades can hold to on nights like this.

    Smart swallows hard to put down the memories “unconscious” stirs and gets his black Chevy Impala up to 80 miles per hour as he cuts through the empty, black space on Mullan Road outside of Missoula. It's about 11:30 on a Saturday night and Smart's blue eyes seem washed-out as he scans the darkness ahead of him for the flashing lights that will mark the spot.
    Given the time, day, and the dry road conditions, an impaired driver is the likely cause of this crash. According to the most recent data released by the US Department of Transportation, 40 percent of highway fatalities in Montana involved a blood alcohol concentration of .08 percent or higher. Some of his fellow troopers have taken to calling a single vehicle accident with ejection and a drunk driver a “Montana fatality.” While 40 percent is down from the 60 percent it peaked at during the 1980s, the frequency of avoidable and heartbreaking loses has made strengthening the punishment for driving under the influence in Montana a strong focus of the State Legislature during its upcoming 2011 session.
    But whatever changes are made will be too late for tonight, and Smart says, probably too little anyway. He feels the enforcement end is where changes need to be made. Particularly with ensuring suspender drivers don't get behind the wheel.
    Some troopers handle the problem of drunken driving by making it a goal to get the most DUI arrests they can, but Smart has a different angle. He has no sympathy for people driving while suspended. That's why when he got the call for this wreck, he was at the Missoula County Detention Center booking a man for driving while suspended. The man wasn't suspended for DUI in Montana, but Smart feels that punishment needs to have more teeth. Driving is a privileged and most in the West see it as a right. The man he hooked up was driving to the store to get cigarettes for his wife, who is also suspended.
    Smart wishes the Interlock Device was used on every person convicted of DUI. That way they could drive, but would have to give a clean breath sample to start their car, and a picture taken of the person who gave the sample to verify later that it was the driver. But that isn't the law now and none of the proposed legislation for the upcoming session would mandate this. Only longer jail sentences and longer driver's license suspension terms, which he says most don't abide anyway.
    Still a few miles out from the crash, there is no telling who is dead. But there is a sort of mental math for catastrophe. Smart adds and subtracts factors that can upgrade a senseless tragedy he has to deal with as part of his duty to something that once witnessed will never leave his mind.
    No kids. He always hopes for no kids in a wreck. He has two boys of his own, they're 5 and 6. Last night when he got off shift little Sammy was waiting up for him at 4 a.m., “I just couldn't sleep,” his son told him. So they staid up and watched TV together until they fell asleep in the living room.
    Other than no kids, Smart can hold out for little else at this point. On any wreck, though, there is a cold but real comfort that comes if anyone is hurt, it's the person who caused it. It might sound callus, he says, but he's seen too many wrecks where the person who caused it lives and a passenger, or an occupant of another vehicle, or two little girls just walking down the side of the road, are killed while the driver lives.
    At this moment though, he's also hoping to get there before his partner, Trooper Ben Amos. It's not a glory thing, the first trooper on scene is the one to do the investigation and Smart knows Amos hasn't even finished all the paperwork from his last DUI fatality and the harder ones to forget should be spread out amongst the troopers. It's not fair if some guys have three fatalities while others have one that year. “You try to do your part,” Smart says. “You take what comes.”
    Just short of the scene a Sheriff's deputy came over the radio with a voice like Sam Elliot's saying the crash wasn't as bad as it was put out. Smart let's out a sigh like it was a family member who might have been in the wreck.
    “Well, I'm glad about that,” he says. He glances at his laptop that shows the GPS locations of all the patrol cars and sees that Amos is just pulling up on site anyway.
    He backs off the gas pedal.
    When he pulls up, a black Subaru wagon lays on its top, the headlights bounce off the snow-covered pasture and back toward the barbwire fence it slid through after it fishtailed off the road.
    Amos briefs Smart on the situation. The female driver was alone we she lost control. She's fine, but Amos found two empties and an open can of beer in the car. Smart nods, his face betrays the stereotype of law enforcement. His expression is closer to that of a relieved uncle than a stern cop giddy to make an easy bust. Amos, a baby-faced 27-year-old with open brown eyes, mirrors the expression. Both faces show one thing: It could have been so much worse.
    The bare pavement and their faces seem to pick up the blue from the flashing lights more than the red or orange. A fire engine, a deputy's car and now two highway patrol cruisers give the straight piece of lonely road a near-rave lighting. Amos calls over a dark-haired girl in her late twenties wearing a green down coat and jeans. She was driving the Subaru.
    Amos asks her how much she had to drink. She says three or four beers. Smart looks away for a second. The answer comes as a surprise. Everyone always says a couple. “I had a couple.” Everyone on the force has heard that so many times it's laughable, and the surprise she admits three or four take him aback. They also say they swerved to miss a deer. If Smart ever writes a book about his time with the patrol, it will be titled “Two Beers and a Deer.”
    Amos asks her if she had any open containers in the car. She says no.
    “No?” he asks.
    “Nope,” She says. Looking to the ground and stamping her feet trying to warm up.
    “What about the three I found in the car.”
    “Well, I may have had some old ones in the car.”
    “Old ones? What about the one that was still half-full and still cold?”
    She admits there might have been one open.
    Smart knows Amos has it from here; the driver is cooperative. She's not going anywhere. He walks off the road, down the steep bank her car slid over, and looks at the divot that would later tell him that's where the car flipped onto its lid before skidding over the fence.
    Two of the driver's friends are crouched near the car, reaching through broken windows to look for her purse. What looks like a little girl's ratty with a picture of a Peanuts character and the words “Going to Grandma's House” printed on it is planted in the snow that fills the passenger side. A child-sized cowboy hat rests upside-down in the back. Smart doesn't see the child artifacts then. He just helps the friends look and asks them if the driver was drinking before she drove.
    They were all at the same shooting club dinner she left from. They say she did drink, but they didn't pay attention to how much. They give up on finding the purse. The inside of the car looks like the fallout from after Goodwill sweeps off their loading dock the day following a glut of donations — jumbled artifacts of modern living, that if put in proper order hold meaning to someone.
    As the friends step away form the car, Smart keeps his eyes on them. He shines his flashlight to show them a path out of cow country and says, “If you are all sticking around to give your friend a ride a home I just want to prepare you for the fact that she might not be coming home with you because she's going to jail for DUI.”
    “Oh,” they say in unison. But without much shock. “OK,” one says. “So she's going to jail?”
    “Probably.”
    Their mellow response is matched by the driver's when Amos gives her a preliminary breath test that shows she has a blood-alcohol concentration of .199, more than twice the legal limit.
    Smart does the math later, and for a person of her weight, she would have had to drunk 15 12-ounce beers to get that.
    That's one of the problems with driving drunk in Montana Smart says. In some groups, people think getting a DUI is just something they'll face one day.
    “It's not like Mono,” he says. “It's not something that everyone catches.”
    The majority of Monatanans, he says, have got a different view of drunken driving.
    “I think they're sick of it.”
    He comes back to the car after leading them up the bank and after Amos takes the driver to jail. He looks closer and sees the little cowboy hat. It's small enough for one of his sons to wear.
    “Thank God,” he says, “[that kid] wasn't in here with her.”
    After the car is winched back onto the road and hauled off, Smart drives back toward town. It's barely 1 a..m., not even what troopers refer to as “the witching hour” — the period between 1:30 and 3 a.m. when most drunken drivers are on the road. But as he drives, little white crosses marking highway fatalities pass by, and landmarks of other near misses that he had to investigate bring back memories. Then he spots a girl walking beside the road. So he stops.
    She's 24, also wearing a green coat, but she's sobbing. Drunk and abandoned at a bonfire party by her friends, She's trying to walk home, miles and miles in the freezing cold. Smart tells the girl to get into his car. She says she's not supposed to go to bars or drink and says she's not going to jeopardize her release by doing that. Smart laughs at the audacity of her lie. She reeks of alcohol and can't talk without slurring her words. He says he's not going to bust her and says he's cranked up the heat to make sure the most is getting back to her. He gives her a ride back into town to a gas station where her brother will pick her up. Even if he doesn't come, it's warm and a Missoula Police officer says he'll come check on her in a bit and give her a ride if she needs it. She is on conditioned release for a DUI arrest.
    No matter where Smart goes, he can't escape drunken driving.
    Even on the quiet nights, like the Saturday before this one when the snowy conditions kept even the drunks from driving too fast, the damage their mistakes have done still haunted him.
    He sat in his cruiser on a powder-covered Highway 93. A beat-up '90s Crown Victoria was wedged in the ditch facing the wrong way in his headlights as he waited for a wrecker to show up. The driver and any occupants had long fled the scene when the car was reported by a passing driver.
    Smart clicked on his laptop. The computer is a bigger part of his work than the 12-gauge shotgun and M-4 assault rifle that stood upright beside him, but it can sometimes be an even more ominous reminder of the darker side of his work.
    He pulled up the crime scene photos from an accident that happened the day after last Christmas. A drunk driver was taking the back roads home to allude arrest. David Delsignore, 29 of Missoula, was intent on getting back to East Missoula to tend to his pet rabbits after drinking three glasses of wine and a Long Island Iced Tea while celebrating a friend's birthday at local bars.
    Four girls, high school freshman, were walking along the road to a nearby friend's house to watch some movies when Delsignore swerved and hit them with his full-size Chevy truck. He didn't know what he had done until he heard the screaming. He backed up to call 911.
    Smart clicked on a picture: One aqua blue fuzzy slipper was upright a foot from the fog line and a white tennis shoes was perfectly upright five feet from that. If the pavement and snow were replaced by carpet, it would look like a mismatched pair of shoes a 14-year-old girl had kicked off in her bedroom after a long night on junior prom weekend. But 30 feet from the shoes was a body, and 60 feet from them there was another.
    The first girl had a halo of blood around her head. Her pants were pulled off by the force of the ground ripping by after Delsignore's bumper hit her. The second girl looked perfect and serene like a pale angel.
    “Sometimes,” Smart quietly said, “ you can die so fast you don't even melt the snow when you hit the ground.”
    The first girl took the brunt of the impact, the second was sandwiched between her friends and her neck was snapped, killing her instantly.
    The photo took his mind is back to that night completely, “It was so bitterly cold,” he said as he gazed out the windshield.
    Smart brought up a recording of Delsignore's 911 call. At first, all you can hear was an effeminate man's voice trying to tell the dispatcher where he's at and whats going on. But then the screaming starts. It's faint in the background at first, a girl in pure horror. It's the sound of a child looking down at the unthinkable. It's beyond all words, it's heartbreaking. It gets stronger as Delsignore talks and tries to explain how many people are hurt and that two people may be dead.
    Smart got out the car. He can't stand to listen to the call for long, but almost a year later, it's still on his laptop.
    At three minutes into the call, the dispatcher got Delsignore to check the injuries of the girls on the ground.
    “Oh my God,” he said. “There is so much fucking blood...I can't move them.”
    When the call ended, about three minutes later, Smart got back in his car. It's like he knew how long it would take to finish.
    He started to say something, mumbled a bit, but then the wrecker showed up. He got out, helped the tow truck driver and gave him the paper work he needed. Smart didn't waste time because he had to make for another crash a few miles away. Another trooper, Paul Pfau, had a suspect in custody after a young man lost control of his Toyota pickup and slid off the road. After an on-the-scene DUI investigation, Pfau arrested the man for driving under the influence. When Smart got there, Pfau took the man to jail. Once again watching the scene and waiting for a tow truck to arrive, Smart was reminded of that night after last Christmas. One of the victom's mothers drove past his parked cruiser. He tried to mumble something about it being a small world but something inside stopped him from laughing.
    Her daughter lived. She was third-in from the road when Delsignore veered. She was struck in the back of the head with his mirror and her elbow bounced off his bumper. She was badly beat up when Smart got on the scene but she was alive. A strong man, but his voice was full of clicks and hesitation as remembered seeing her there on the side of the road with emergency medical personnel around her.
    “Just this little girl,” he said, “just such a sweetheart, and there was nothing to have stopped that truck from killing all four of them.”
    While the road was blocked off to clear the crash, two more drunk drivers pulled up and were taken to jail, Smart said. Then he calmly reckoned that if Delsignore hadn't hit those girls, one of those other drivers may have.
    He wondered aloud that what if the truck would have stayed just another foot to the left?
    But then he asked, what if it had been another foot to the right?
    That question brought him back to the reality of his uniform, and he asked if troopers even have the right to opinions? Maybe not. But what about feelings he wondered? Do we have the right to feelings? he asked himself.
    “You do,” he finally reasoned.
    The lights of the wrecker showed up in his review mirror and he got out to do his job. He pulls people out the ditch, tries to save them from themselves and others from their mistakes. At the end of the night, he goes home to his family, and maybe his son Sammy will be up and they'll fall asleep together watching TV.
      — 30 —

A Burger Shall Bind Them

2010-12-03T09:53:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of Adam Anderson

    We walked into the burger joint like we had never left. Like there hadn't been timezones and months without talking between us. I looked at Dustin and said something about the triple-triple challenge. There was barely enough time for him to grin before he said, “I'm fucking down. I'll destroy any burger man ever made.”
    I could hear Adam and his wife, Beth, laugh behind us.
    They say you can't go home again, but then, they say a lot of things don't they?

    I was back in Idaho for Thanksgiving, staying with my folks. Out for the night, I was back in the burger joint we all used to go to during the under grad days. They have great fry sauce. They call it secret sauce and I swear it has meth in it. I swear I've seen people lift cars after ingesting it. Well, they took naps in their cars after consuming it, and dreams are uplifting.
    Beth worked there through our college days. Sharp's Burger Ranch was the place Adam, always a level head and my default moral compass, asked me what I was doing when I started fooling around with a woman a decade my senior just four days after her divorce. It's the place he looked me in the face and said, "Yeah, you should do this writing thing."
    The triple-triple challenge is something I came up with when my brother and I were in the depths of a mass cycle. Just another couple skinny honkies trying to beef up. It's a special order that puts a pound of beef on a bun and throws a basket of fries at you. A sweet, quiet woman, I remember the smile Beth broke as she helped a cashier figure out how to ring it. "Just add like 75 cents to each patty on a regular triple-triple," she told the cashier.
    When I finished it, Beth gave me a foam football that they gave out as a toy to go with a kid meal. I still have it in my truck to this day. I've often pulled it out and held it in my hand before tough reporting gigs. Before I shook the hand of Obama's Deputy Chief of Staff that little football was in my hand. Before I followed a cage-fighter to Canada, I held the football.

    When Dustin and I stepped up to order, the girl didn't know how to ring it up, but before it was even sorted out she asked us if we wanted ham or bacon with it. I hesitated. I wanted neither. A pork addition seemed like a lot to ask from my stomach.
    Dustin saw the fear in my eyes and, like a true friend, stepped forward when I hung back.
    “Bacon.” he said.
    “Uh, yeah, shit, bacon it is for me too,” I said. Anything worth doing is worth doing right I told myself.
    But once again, I found myself questioning my judgment in my home town. (Ask me why Walmart doesn't have carpet in their shoe aisle. Ask Dustin why he can't keep a straight face when someone utters the words "Pain Train.")
    Dustin was in the bathroom when the burgers came. It took five minutes longer than Adam's and Beth's orders.
    I had already took off my sport coat and rolled up my sleeves. I rhetorically asked if I should just unbutton my pants before I started eating. It came out like a joke, but really it was a deep moment of doubt in my abilities to finish the pound of beef and passel of fires.
    “Was I going to have to throw up before this was over?” I thought.
    Dustin came out of the bathroom and with our own line of paper shot glasses of secret sauce in front of us, we started.
    The grease from our chins turned napkins clear. The smiles and laughs turned the hours of loneliness before I got there into shadowy memories like recollections of bad dreams. Goofy acts of gluttony are the American way of unification. (Look up Thanksgiving on Wikipedia. Not the weak-sauce Canadian version. The hardcore, eat-sleep-crap-eat-crap-eat-eat-sleep-eat American version.)
    Dustin drove his burger into him like he just got out of Auschwitz. I didn't even have half of mine down when he daintily held a the remaining quarter of his and said, “Oh, I wasn't sure if we were racing or what.”
     Beth advised him to enjoy the experience. Adam laughed at out battle against beef and took pictures. Adam has always been there to laugh at the good points of mine and Dustin's follies and to pick us up when our true mistakes left us feeling broken and empty. For once in my life, in that moment, that fact was not lost on me. These were the better angels of flawed nature sitting at a Formica table, I thought.

    I caught up with Dustin. He orphaned the fries for the bright lights of the glistening burger.
    We tied in the end, or close enough. But it wasn't a race anyway. It was two grown men clogging their arteries while friends cheered them on and we all laughed about it.
    They say you can't go home again, but I say you can. So long as you leave your heart open to it. Or at least leave your arteries open to it.

"Just One Drink Ahead of Your Past"

2010-11-24T04:18:00.002-07:00

    It's 7:17 a.m. Wednesday morning. The kids next door are eating Cocoa Puffs and their mom is yelling that they're going to miss the school bus. You tell her to fuck off under your breath as you blearily file a politics story and open a fresh text document on your laptop. You're sitting alone at a kitchen table. Well, not alone-alone, you've got the virgin gleam of the blank page and the lesser part of a bottle of Johnny Walker to keep you company. It's the makings for a great day for most writers, but something fucks it up.
    As the morning sun sticks its ugly nose through the blinds you're haunted by the memories of the one or two girls who loved you but you left alone in their beds to do this shit. To sit at a table and clack keys. To put words together, words that don't end in -ly, words that can't be written in a Starbucks by guys in tight pants. That's when you need to listen to “Kiss the Bottle.” But what version?

    Questioning the radness of Jawbreaker's “Kiss the Bottle” is like impugning the honor of Mother Teresa. In other words, it's like catechizing if Jules Winnfield is a bad mother fucker — look at his wallet, quod erat demonstrandum.
    At first blush, Jawbreaker's version is a sweet, IV drip of mistake and heartache. Exactly the cure for what ails you.
    But then, what about the Foo Fighter's cover? In a word: No.
    Nothing against the Fighters of Foo, they've done good things I'm told. But they took this dirge about choosing liquor over love and turned it out for teenyboppers. It's like they took it and said, “Hey lets play this like we've never tasted whisky and this song is really about skateboarding.” Somewhere, sometime, the Foo Fighter's cover has been played while a 14-year-old put a grinding rail in his parents' backyard. I know it like I know sorority girls hate my beard.
    But there is an another. There is the Lucero version. It's sung by a guy with a cigarette-grated voice, sped up to the beat it should have always been played at. I could put up an album version of it like I did for the others, but it would have cheapened it. They don't need the comfort of a studio and the song doesn't either.
    Pretty close. Lucero is always pretty damn close.

Caucus Day Can Be a Very Dangerous Day

2010-11-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

    At worst, I figured I was in for a day of political posturing and verbal dick-waving from hollow suits. I was nervous because I was stepping into the political fray for the first time. I had reported on politics by phone, but standing tall before the man and questioning him on his on home turf is a far different animal than spitting questions into a receiver. I was headed for the caucus of the Montana State Legislature — the heart of the beast. It was the day both parties picked their leaders. No sports writer wants to interview an athlete in the locker room. No greenhorn political reporter wants to interview politicians in a caucus. It could get hairy, that much was for damn sure. The rest was a mystery to me.
    But mystery begets fear and fear begets good reporting, so I anxiously sat in my green Toyota 4x4 warming it up and waiting for the broadcaster who was supposed to ride shotgun. I talked tough to myself like I always do before interviews that I think could be rough. I thought about Audie Murphy.
    “They can kill us, but they can't eat us. It's against the law.”
    I thought about heroes, but I should have thought about anti-heroes. That's what I've always been closer to anyway: Holden Caulfield, Victor Mancini, Captain Willard. I should have thought about the scene in Apocalypse Now when the boys chopper into Charlie's point with the Air Calvary.
    The Air Cav soldiers all sat on their helmets so small-arms fire from the ground didn't blow their balls off. Sometimes just getting to the LZ is more dangerous than when you hit the ground.

    The broadcaster showed up, climbed in and we started the hundred and some odd mile drive from Missoula to Helena. The roads didn't seem much worse than most I've driven in the winter. There was an inch or so of compacted snow with a little slush on top. I've always wondered why people bitch about black ice. I've criss-crossed snowy, shitty roads in the west for almost a decade now. I thought black ice was a myth, just a scape goat for bad drivers.
    I cruised along at 65 miles per hour, a cautious, 10-under-the-limit rate. The tires gripped fine, the steering felt, as my dad would say, tighter than a nun's cunt.
    Then the truck broke loose.
    “All right” I thought as I let off the gas and turned into the skid.
    This should have worked. Honest. I did everything right. I know because when I first started driving I was a vicious over-corrector. After a few bad slides that put me in the ditch hard I learned to stay calm. I learned to evenly turn into the slide and the rig would pull back around in short order. I have proved the method up and down the interstates and highways of three states.
    Calm didn't work. The maneuvers bought me 5 mph.
    Sideways on the interstate, the back bumper was hell-bent for the guardrail at 60 mph. I braced for impact. When the bumper caught on the galvanized steel, I knew the truck was going to slam into the rail like a trip hammer.
    Only a few inches between the bumper and the rail now. “Fuck,” I thought. “I insure with Geico. They aren't going to pay for any of this shit.”
    SHCAW! The tires caught a ridge of slush. The truck shot away from the rail across two lanes of interstate. I turned the tires back down the road to avoid the next catastrophe. No good. We blasted toward the deep median ditch.
    “Here we go,” the broadcaster said.
    “No roll, no roll, no roll,” I mumbled. I flashed to the interstate rollovers I've reported on. “Good no sunroof,” I thought. (The glass breaks, an arm flops out and the passing ground pulls the skin off like a wet sock. At one of those wrecks, an EMT told me the industry term for it. “Dude,” he said, pointing with the lit tip of his Maralboro red to a human meat stick, “degloving.”)
    The dents from the rail would have been better than this.
    The front tires hit snowy grass. I turned hard into it. No roll. No words. Snow and mud thudded into the side of the cab. The wheels bounced. We cooked full tilt through the big ditch. The rig nosed into the oncoming lane. The tires hit pavement and the truck wheeled back around. We stopped, staring back at the lanes we had just crossed. Unscathed. The whole truck parked peacefully in the median.
    “That,” I said, “was fucking awesome!”
    Silence.
    I thought it was odd the broadcaster didn't share my enthusiasm. “Shit,” I thought as I shifted the truck into four-wheel drive, “it wasn't his rig that was going under the Lord's hammer if this all went bad.”
    I waited for two tractor trailers to drive past before creeping the truck onto the road. I looked over at the broadcaster as I drove down the road. He seemed pale.
    “You don't have a heart condition do you?”
    “Aaah, sort of,” he said tightly.
    “Huh. Sorry man, don't die. But that, was totally fucking awesome, right? I mean, shit, we didn't even hit a delineator post. We had to be like a foot from the guardrail with the back end, too, right?”
    He didn't answer. He was in the grips of a panic attack. I guess when you're having a panic attack you don't want to hear about how cool the experience was that gave it to you.
    Now, I see I overlooked the whole death thing. Maybe that is what fucked with him.
    What fucks with me now is that I never even considered it. Don't get me wrong: I'm a coward. The day you catch me seeking thrills through bungee jumping or sky diving is the day you know I've finally threw it all away and started doing hard drugs.
    Hell, I can't even stand pain. I'm the first guy to admit that getting hit in the face hurts like a whole bag of bitches. But bruises and a busted lip is all I thought would come of the skid when I realized I couldn't get control of the truck. “I've been beat up before. I can take beat up,” was the instant equation of loss my brain calculated. But I guess the broadcaster had more to live for than me. That, or he is just a lot smarter.
    “Fuck. Ha. Shit,” I said with a grin after a few more miles of silence. I tried to remember the names of the legislators who were likely candidates for leadership slots.
    "Who the hell was supposed to be the pro tempore of the Senate again?"

Goodbye to a Good Man

2010-11-18T03:44:00.003-07:00

    It was the first time I had seen the old man in six months. He was too busy cursing at his calculator and bludgeoning its keys with a finger as thick as a broom handle to notice me standing in the doorway to his office. He sat behind his desk in his trademark suspenders and blue, button-down short-sleeve work shirt. Big, gruff and near bald, John Dillard looked the same as he had my entire life — which is exactly how long I knew him.
    He had beat cancer about a decade before. No one knew then, but it would come back a year and half after I stood there to take his life at 70 years old.
    I was home to visit my family and gather the droplets of my heart that the most recent love of my life had scattered like morning dew off of tall grass. I had quit working for Dillard's company six months before and moved across the state to live happily ever after. With his handful of divorces and truck-full of girls loved and lost, Dillard probably knew I was on a fool's errand. But he hoped the best for me. It was the only time he didn't try to stop me from doing something stupid, or chew me out for it afterward. He just shook my hand and gave me the only advice I've found to be true about women: “Never let them wash your fucking skivvies,” he boomed. “After that, they think they own you.”

    I found out later that shortly before I left, he and my dad (his business partner and friend of at least 40 years) were sitting at lunch one day and he asked about my girlfriend. Dillard was a solid man, he never pried nor did he gossip. So I know that when he asked my dad it was out of concern for me. That fact has always left a warm feeling in my chest.
    Dillard was there when my first forever-track relationship fell apart and the girl moved out in the middle of the night. He saw what a wreck it made me. Over sandwiches at a diner, Dillard bluntly turned the conversation from construction jobs to the safety of my heart. He asked my dad if he thought this girl would hurt me like the last one. My dad said he didn't think so, that she seemed real sweet. But then they agreed no one could ever be sure.
    Still unaware I was standing in the doorway, Dillard compared a worker's time card to a bid sheet and made an oath to “cut the nuts clear out of Tony for dicking the dog on the clock.” Then he looked up at me with his steely eyes and dead-pan bulldog face.
    “Well Cody, who in the hell bailed you out of jail?”
    I pointed over my shoulder to my dad sitting in the office behind me and said, “My old man. He's a sucker like that.”
    Dillard's face stayed fixed for a moment — long enough that most people would think he didn't care for my humor.
    Then a crooked smile straightened out his mustache.
    After a deep rolling chuckle he said, “Yeah, I bet that damned fool would.”
    Dillard was born in a small Idaho town. He built a sub-contracting company with the strength of his back and of his character. He was honest and he was hard, old-school hard. But he threw bail for more drywallers than anyone. He was always there for his friends and his men, who he called “some of the hardest-luck bastards to ever live.”
    I stepped into his office and sat down in a chair. I told him about my girlfriend picking culinary school in New York City over being with me.
    In a softened tone he said, “Yeah, you can give and give to women and sometimes they still leave. You know that?”
    Then he told me about one of his divorces and how afterward he was damn-surprised at how many pretty women were willing to crawl into the back of his rig with him outside of a bar. Then he told me I had better go drink some beer. I left feeling better for having came. I went and drank beer.
    The last time I saw Dillard was late this past summer. I was back in town writing for the local paper on an internship. He sat behind his desk, one strap of his suspenders hung slack off the side of his shoulder and the collar of his work shirt gapped around his neck. The radiation treatments made him too sore to have his suspenders up, but he was there at work. He was looking at a time card, probably thinking about cutting the nuts clear out of somebody. When he noticed me standing in the doorway he didn't say anything. His steely eyes were dulled.
    I told him I was thinking about going out to raise some hell that night and wanted to stop by and make sure he'd throw my bail because my dad was broke.
    His mustache straightened out.
    He said he had read my articles and said he thought they were good. It made me proud. I said I'd see him soon when I left. It was the only time I lied to him.
    Dillard died this Tuesday. I wasn't there to say goodbye. Neither was my dad, but he saw him the Saturday before. He sat beside Dillard's hospital bed, an equally gruff old man gently holding a mit of broom-handle fingers. Dillard couldn't talk. The morphine drip had taken most of his pain and all of his energy. When my dad got up to leave he leaned in and kissed Dillard on his bald head. Dillard raised his hand and rested it on the back of my dad's neck. He brushed the white hair curling out from under my dad's blue, company ball cap.
    His eyes focused on my dad's.
    “Walt, you had better get a haircut.”
    My dad nodded. Feebly tried to choke back tears and left.
    When I found out Dillard died I was standing in my kitchen in Missoula. I was cooking an omelet and fried potatoes for my dinner and didn't hear my phone ring. When I saw the missed call I knew he was gone without even listening the message my mom had left.
    I looked at the voicemail icon and thought about the afterlife. I thought that if there is a heaven, and if I make it there, Dillard will be standing on the good side of the gate waiting.
    I know what he will say.
    “Well Cody, who bailed you out of hell?”
    I'll look around and shrug. I'll say “Shit, Dillard. I thought it was you.”
    I hope it will straighten out his mustache.

Strung-out on Clarity

2010-11-11T07:18:00.003-07:00

    Last spring I had the worst cold of my adult life: a fever for two weeks straight, aches like I was going through the DTs and mucus twice as thick as a Taco Bell Chalupa and three-times as brown. But Dr. Rick cured me. Even though he's not a real doctor and works at a cheap roadside clinic, I swear by his methods. But I'm starting to think maybe they aren't meant for every little sniffle.

   I paced around the bench press at my gym like a pro wrestler gearing up for a cage match. It was 1 a.m. My nostrils felt as open as the Canadian border pre 9/11.
    I had been Claritin Clear for two days and the clarity was about to make me destroy my right hand. I felt an incredible amount of nervous energy. I sucked in more air through my horse nostrils.
    I laid down and started to bench like I was proving a point on my first day in San Quentin. (See Edward Norton in American History X) But everything went wrong and it looked more like I was hacking my way through my first day in a high school weightlifting class. The energy I thought I had yielded to an overwhelming sense of fatigue and weakness.
    The bar shot toward my crotch, and when I corrected it went to my neck. I didn't crush my throat and I forced a couple shitty reps out of the set. But something about the terrible lifting form must have stretched the tendons in my right wrist beyond anything I threw at them during my adolescent years of unrelenting self abuse.
    Anyway, this morning, my wrist feels like it is full of broken glass and my hand is full of thumb tacks when it's not numb. But my cold is still in check.
    Dr. Rick's cure handles that much for sure.
    When I saw Dr. Rick last spring I was running a solid temperature of 101 degrees and could dent a Honda by hawking a lung pony at it. He assessed the situation and told me to get some Claritin D, a Neti Pot and fill a prescription for FloNase. I followed the directions, mostly, and it cut the symptoms down to nil miraculously. That and my self medicating with a constant drip of cough syrup.
    Eventually, though, I had to go back to Dr. Rick and get some antibiotics to clean me out for good. But I was thoroughly impressed by the prowess of his remedies to knock some symptoms down. By my logic, if the trio could put a hurting on a cold that swarthy, shit, they could handle this sniffle like a bouncer throwing out a high schooler with a bad fake ID.
    So I busted out the Neti Pot, the remainder of my Flonase and my Claritin tabs.
    It worked great for the first day. I went to bed early and woke up before my alarm with a smile on my face like I had naturally enhanced my manhood. But without the fog of fever and the lubricant of heavy cough syrup, the Claritin clearness soon took over. My mind was like a laser.
    I've never suffered from allergies so I am mostly a virgin to antihistamines, which made me feel much happier than I naturally am, and the pseudoephedrine both decongested and wired me. In short, I could breathe like a regular person, but I was happy and far too awake. I also felt far healthy than I really was.
    Which gets us back to the gym at 1 a.m.
    After the battle of the bench I went on to three other chest exercises and left the place incredibly angry about my performance in each. My laser brain had certain goals that just weren't met I guess.
     Twelve hours later, I sit with a handkerchief on my lap. The Claritin has long worn off. But I'm looking at the foily patch of nasal clarity sitting on my nightstand and it's loving plastic pockets are starting to convince me I can see through the side effects of clarity. I can maintain.
    Maybe just half a one.

The Back Story

2010-11-11T06:07:00.005-07:00

    For the Love of Tyler, the story posted below this, is probably the best story I have written. It wouldn't have been possible without the support and faith of the editors and reporters at the Lewiston Tribune where it was published. While most of this blog is about the banalities of my life, I got the itch to put it up here and add this little post about how it affected me.
    I reported it on Saturday June 12, 2010, my 24th birthday. It was the first time I cried during an interview. When my notebook was full, I left and I went to my parents' house and hugged my dad like he was dying.

    As much as I have denied it at times, I'm coming to terms with the fact I'm a newspaper man. I faked my way into journalism as a daily general assignment reporter and it has shaped the way I write, think and live. I've reported on fatal car wrecks, terrible house fires and most all of the municipal catastrophes you can think of, and each hit me in the gut exactly as you think they would.
    From the way reporters talk in the newsroom, you would think our hearts are beyond being wrenched, but we still feel everything. We just get better at being hard because it's the only way we can keep going. But this was the hardest story to let in my head, to open my heart to. And, at the same time, it was the easiest to write. I wrote in eight hours. I wrote it from beginning to end, feeling every word but crafting none of them. I was just a middleman, trying to stay out of the way of this beautiful young man's story and the strength of his family. I looped a play list on Ipod of “Little Motel” by Modest Mouse and “Keep Me in Your Heart for Awhile,” by Warren Zevon, the entire time. All eight hours and then an hour or so of editing it.
    When I got the assignment I was sitting at my desk in the newsroom as a summer intern. The city editor, Craig, came over to me and said he had some stories for me. Two were little bullshit deals, fun features on things I don't even remember now, but the last one was Tyler. Craig handed me a note and said something like: This guy's son was abused when he was a baby and he has been taking care of him ever since and the kid just graduated from high school. It was pretty awful. I want it for a Sunday package to run on Father's Day so you're going to have to turn it fast.
    I had a little over a week.
    He handed me a note, written in Sharpie on a page torn out of a Steno pad, with Tyler's dad's cell phone number on it. With it, he handed me a printout of a story written 16 or so years earlier that chronicled what happened.
    Craig told me the dad would probably be willing to talk. I thought he was lying. I still think he might have been. Editors need you to get on the phone fast and anything that will make it easier for you to make a call helps.
    True or not, I did need a push to get me to make the call. No one wants to ask someone about the hardest time of their life. But what I didn't think about then was that the hardest part of this family's life wasn't what defined them. They weren't holding on to the worst thing that happened to them, they were still looking for the best things like anyone else. And they might be closer to them than most.
    I felt an incredible pressure, though, the note seemed to be written on lead. I had been given a great story, a powerful story, an important story, and I knew it. My Spidey Senses were tingling, as Esquire writer Chris Jones would say. When Craig handed me the note I looked around the newsroom thinking a more senior reporter would jump up and steal it from me.
    I was excited for the opportunity, but most of all, I felt the weight of what had just been put in my charge: I was to tell a story of a father's pure love for his child. A story of tragedy and how love can overcome it. This is no shit, that is exactly what it was, and I just hoped I could do it justice. I still don't know if I did.
     Tyler's dad, Tony, was great on the phone, though. He asked me what I wanted to do and I said just hang out at their house with him and Tyler and talk. So that's what we did. He had Saturday off so I said no problem, I could meet them that afternoon. It reminded me of a story my first editor, John O'Connell of the Idaho State Journal wrote about a young boy with terminal cancer. He told me through tears how the family was more composed than him during the reporting; how the father told him it was all right and to just take a minute and step outside if he needed to as the little boy played with a plastic toy at a franchise restaurant during his last birthday party.
    When I pulled up outside their house I sat for a second in my pickup. I didn't know anything except I had to get out and knock that front door. Before I got out of the truck I thought about what the two most caring and heartfelt writers I have ever met, O'Connell and Jones, had told me was the most important thing about doing stories like this: be human. And “Don't fuck up.”
    I got out. Walked to the door. Knocked and spent five hours with people far better than me.
    I will never forget the time I spent in Tyler's home, with his family and the moments his eyes met mine.

For the Love of Tyler

2010-11-11T04:18:00.002-07:00

    It’s baby talk, a series of chirps and moans, but Tony Edmison always knows what his son is trying to tell him. Now Tyler is telling his dad he’s uncomfortable and needs to lay in his bed for a while.
    Tony holds Tyler in his lap as he sits on the couch in their Lewiston home. Both father and son have short, brown hair and brown eyes, but the 41-year-old’s hair is graying and Tyler’s eyes are a shade lighter. They are the color of an oak table in the light of a setting summer sun. They hold a unique innocence ― the eyes of a child who never ages.
    “Come on, Hot Rod,” Tony says, rising from the couch with Tyler still in his arms.
    Tyler quiets. His sightless brown eyes move toward the sound of his dad’s voice as he’s lifted. He always recognizes that voice, and he knows his nickname. But he can only respond with the open smile of an infant as his father carries his 55-pound, 18-year-old son to bed.
    He’ll never be able to make his father a card, buy him a tie or even tell him he loves him. But every day Tyler has lived past the age of 10, every day Tony can hear his son’s giggle, every day he can see his son’s eyes respond to him is another Father’s Day present doctors said his son wouldn’t be alive to give.
    “He’s happy all the time, ever since before he got hurt. He’s always been a happy boy and that hasn’t changed since he was abused,” Tony says.

At the hands of another

    His father’s love is the framework of Tyler’s life, but it was shaped by another man’s violence when he was only 11 months old.
    His then-stepfather, Daniel Gardiner, shook Tyler and hit him in the head with a blunt object so hard doctors would later determine the blow had the force of a full-grown man swinging a baseball bat. Tyler suffered two skull fractures, damaging 85 percent of his brain.
    All because Tyler had a double-ear infection and Gardiner couldn’t get Tyler to stop crying.
    Tyler’s mother, Kristina, had divorced Tony to marry Gardiner. On that day, Nov. 6, 1992, she picked up Tyler from his grandmother’s home, where the boy had just taken his first wobbly steps, his stubby hands grasping the furniture. Those were also his last steps. Kristina took her son home and left him alone with Gardiner for 30 minutes.
    When she returned, Tyler was unconscious on the floor. Another 30 minutes passed before they called 911.
    Tony didn’t know all this when he drove two hours to Spokane with Gardiner in his passenger seat. Tyler had been airlifted to Sacred Heart Medical Center.
    Tony had no idea what Gardiner had just taken from his son. His mind was so full of worry for Tyler there was no room for accusation.
    Once they got to Spokane, however, the nurse came into the hospital waiting room and told them detectives wanted to speak with everyone.
   Gardiner turned to Kristina and said something about getting a lawyer. It was then Tony knew Gardiner had done something terrible.

A Father Apart

    During Gardiner’s trial, Tony was torn apart with anger. Physicians still couldn’t say if Tyler was going to live. Tony knew that if his son died he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from trying to end Gardiner’s life.
    But Tyler lived, and so did Gardiner. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison for felony injury to a child. He served the full 10 years and was released Aug. 10, 2003.
    To this day, Tony doesn’t want to know where Gardiner lives. He knows Gardiner comes to Lewiston once a month to visit family.
    Even that is too close for comfort. Tony doesn’t know what he would do if he saw Gardiner.
    Now a devout Christian, Tony knows he’s supposed to forgive and forget, but he’s not ready to extend that forgiveness to Gardiner. He doesn’t know if he ever will.

Choosing Life

    Tony lays Tyler in a hospital bed flanked by a stainless-steel IV rack. He tells his boy how big he’s getting as he hooks up Tyler’s feeding pump and hangs it from the metal rack. The pump is now Tyler’s only source of nourishment and fluids. A tube inserted into his abdomen about a year ago feeds directly into his stomach. He no longer takes anything orally.
    The feeding tube was a painful choice for Tony. One of the few things he could do with his son was take him out for ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate were Tyler's favorites. But last August, Tyler faced a serious medical crisis. Tony chose the tube because Tyler was having so much trouble swallowing that food was entering his lungs. Having almost lost Tyler during the month-long hospitalization, he knew the choice was truly life or death.
    And for his son, Tony has always chosen life.

Always Listening

   Tony grabs a softer pillow for his son’s head and another for his left arm. Then he places an older pillow between Tyler’s knees to make him as comfortable as possible.
    There for a visit, Tyler’s grandmother, Connie Edmison, follows Tony into the room to settle Tyler. Ever the doting grandma, she holds the boy’s left hand and talks to him while Tony gets everything set.
    With all the pillows in place, the pump adjusted and the tube checked, Tony roughhouses a little with Tyler. The play is a mix between tickling a baby and a light chest-rubbing motion. Tyler’s eyes move in delight, his mouth opening as if to say “do it again, dad.”
    A baby monitor sits beside Tyler’s bed, its twin down the hall in Tony and his wife, Carla’s, room. A light sleeper, Tony awakens each time Tyler makes a sound, whether it’s a soft murmur or a seizure. The seizures are the result of his spine’s curvature, one of the many lingering effects of Gardiner’s assault.
    Tony knows the significance of each utterance. A wet diaper sound is different from one of discomfort, which differs from his sounds signifying pain. Tony knows them all. He’s always listening to his son.

The Man of the Hour

    It’s only 5 p.m. when Tyler settles in for a rest. Tony and Connie leave his door open so they can listen, and return to the living room. Daunte and Quinton, Tyler’s twin 6-year-old brothers, lie exhausted from a day of hard play. They have the same short, brown hair as Tony and Tyler.
    Together, Tony and Carla have seven children. Victor Wolf, 24, Phillip Wolf, 19, and Payton Wolf, 15, are Carla’s from another marriage and Alishia Edmison, 14, and Tyler are Tony’s children from past marriages.
    Both he and Carla work at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, where they met. He’s in the physical rehabilitation department, she works in respiratory therapy. The two have been together for 10 years. Tony says Carla is a godsend with Tyler.
    “She takes care of him just like I do and loves on him just like the rest of the kids,” Tony says.
    The large family adds much to Tyler’s life. He has always loved being around people and loves going to baseball games and barbecues with the family.
    “We just get him out and go with the other kids. We try to do everything as a family,” Tony says. “He likes to be around the crowds and people talking. I think if he was normal he would definitely be a social-butterfly type.”
    That was even more apparent at Tyler’s high school graduation a couple of weeks ago. Tony wheeled his son on stage to help him receive his diploma. Flocks of classmates approached, rubbing his chest and offering congratulations while holding his hand.

Touching Lives

    People are drawn to Tyler and always have been. On this day, Tyler rests in his room for only about 10 minutes before Connie goes back in to see him. She’s followed by Tyler’s caregiver, Brenda Belieu, of Clarkston, who kisses Tyler’s right hand while Connie rubs his belly, eliciting a squeal. She lives for that squeal.
    Belieu loves it too. She has been helping care for Tyler for the past 17 years. Although it’s technically her job to be with Tyler, it’s clear she would do it for free. Perhaps the best example of Tyler’s power to touch the lives of those around him, Belieu says the boy is nothing short of a miracle.
    “I think he’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen,” Belieu says. “Let’s face it, I love him.”

Always a Son, Never a Burden

    The only dark time Tony has experienced in the 18 years of his son’s life was when he was without him.
    After the injury and hospitalization, Tyler was placed in foster care for four months until Gardiner was convicted. Tony moved back into his parents’ home and tried to keep his life together at the most basic levels, though he was distraught most of the time.
    Connie remembers a social worker calling a few days before Tyler’s second Christmas. She told Connie to be sure to tell Tony to have a merry Christmas. Connie replied that all Tony wanted was to see his son. The heartfelt plea convinced the social worker to give father and son a few hours together.
    From the moment Connie brought Tyler through the door, Tony held his son in his arms, only relinquishing him at the last minute before his boy had to be taken back to foster care.
    After the conviction, the state offered the option to terminate parental rights and leave Tyler in a long-term care facility. The woman who explained the process kept referring to Tyler as a burden. He’s never been a burden to Tony.

Tyler's Gift

    Tony sits with Connie and Belieu in the living room. Quinton and Daunte are still sprawled out on the couches while Tyler rests in his bed about 15 feet away. Tony coaches the twins’ T-ball team, and Tyler goes to all their games with the family.
    Connie says she can’t really explain it, but people just see something in Tyler, even before they know his story. At outings like the ball games or trips to the store, she says strangers just come up to him and start talking and leave smiling. Whether they know his story, what he’s been through and how much he is loved, there is something in Tyler that apparently makes people feel better for just having spent time with him.
    Above the couch and just inside the front door, a painting depicting Jesus kissing the top of Tyler’s head hangs at eye level. In the portrait, Tyler is sitting up straight, his mouth closed in a peaceful smile, his beautiful, almond-shaped brown eyes meets the eyes of anyone leaving the house.
    It’s a small reminder, just in case a little piece of Tyler wasn’t already going with them.
                                                                         ― 30 ―

Who's your buddy?

2010-11-08T01:09:00.002-07:00

     Friend, best friend, best friend forever—in the Facebook Age people handout those titles to acquaintances like participation trophies at youth soccer camps. I'm guilty of it. I've sucked as much marrow out of true friendship as anyone. Hell, just for reading those first three sentences I'll introduce you as a dear friend to my parents (watch out for my dad though, he hates most everyone. He will not be your friend).
    Maybe it was the watered-down terms or my Y chromosome that kept me from analyzing who actually deserves what title and rank. But a few weeks ago I got off the phone with the guy I have called my best friend for more than half my life and realized the common interest our friendship was based on was no longer part of my life.
    That's when a I went all Dr. Phil on whether Kelly Leachman was still my friend.

    Kelly and I have talked about or went hunting almost every week for the past 13 years. Now 24, I haven't gone elk hunting with Kelly in probably 5 years. Last year I was too busy to even go deer hunting on my own.
    We talked about elk hunting instead of studying algebra in eighth grade. We talked about shooting deer when we rode the bench for our high school football team. We talked about illegally building a cabin on Forest Service land to hunt elk out of when we sat in the hospital the day his dad died of cancer. We spread his ashes near our hunting camp and then tried to figure out how to hide the cabin if we ever did build it as we stood drinking beer at his wake.
    I still talk to Kelly. One of us will call the other almost every week, but I haven't contributed more than my ear to the hunting side of the conversation for at least the last three years. I don't dream of being in the field like I used to, and don't share his passion for packing a rifle through the timber anymore. He's quit jobs to hunt, walked away from relationships, secluded himself in the mountains for weeks on end. Three weeks ago, I told him I couldn't blow off studying for a political science midterm to make it to elk camp for opening weekend. The shameful admission is what got me thinking about the strength of our friendship.
    All thought-roads led back to the day we became brothers in big-game glory. We did it without our dads, just us.

    We were two scrawny 14-year-old boys sitting in a woodsmoke-filled wall tent in the wilderness of middle Idaho. Kelly and I had paper plates full of greasy eggs, deer sausage patties and under-cooked hash browns on our laps. We sat in silence, wrestling with the possibility we would never live through our own versions of the hunting stories out dads were telling in chest-thumping tones. I wondered if I would ever grow up to be as big as them. I couldn't even clean the plate my dad had fixed for me. Kelly just seemed pissed to be stuck in the tent having his youth rubbed in his face.I guess I was a little pissed, too.
    To us, killing an elk on Peasely Creek was a right of passage we should have earned after two years of hiking the steep drainages behind our dads. We prayed that one morning we would have the tawny hide of a bull elk in our rifle scopes. That morning, though, a heavy rain had cut the hunts short and trapped us in the kitchen tent.
    When the rain broke at about 2 p.m. we talked our dads into letting us make our first big game hunt without them. They were still locked into bullshitting mode and leaving camp on a hunt that was, at best, likely to let us fill our deer tags seemed like a punishment to them.
    Kelly had a plan to make a three-mile loop out behind camp that would take us through a small clearcut. The gravel of the old Forest Service road pressed into the mud under our feet as we left camp. We talked about how many points a buck would have to have for us to shoot it. .
    It took about two minutes before we both agreed we shoot any deer we saw, even a doe. Our rationale was that we needed to show those codgers back at camp we could at least go out and shoot a deer. We wouldn't even let ourselves talk about the possibility of getting into elk. That would be impossible and the pain of getting more hope up kept our mouths shut.
    After the deer issue was settled we talked about girls, of which we knew nothing but felt confident in our conjectures. Then how our legs were still sore from last weeks' football practices and how our coach was a dick.
    We stopped talking when we reached the trail that led to the clearcut. I looked at Kelly and nodded with an excited grin giving him the cue to go first. We had hunted squirrels and grouse together for years and it seemed like we could relay detailed strategies with a nod or a hand gesture. This nod was just an agreement there was going to be something in that clearcut, though. We knew it in our guts as we climbed up the trail.
    Kelly crested the ridge and stopped. I stepped into the open beside him. Empty. Our eyes darted from tree line to tree line scrutinizing every dead snag, every tan colored stump. Nothing.
    “Shit,” he said.
    “Yeah.” I said. “This one's fucked.”
    The clearcut spanned three finger ridges and we headed across it. Kelly gave me some sun flower seeds. Earlier that year we were out shooting squirrels and he had taught me how hold a handful in my cheek and crack them open one at a time with the opposite molars so I didn't have to shell them one at a time like a 6 year old.
    I stopped to take a piss on a big yellow pine once we got to the far end of the clearcut. Kelly kept walking down the ridge. I had just zipped up and taken maybe two steps when I looked to my right.
    “Holy shit.”
    By the time "shit" came out of my mouth my rifle was to my shoulder. The cross hairs marked the side of a bull elk standing on the middle ridge.
    I jerked the trigger of my .300 magnum and it was echoed by the blast of Kelly's .338 mag from 20 yards down the ridge.
    The elk took off giving us broadside shots all the way. My teeth were gritted. My gun kept firing. The elk kept running. My gun was empty. The elk kept running. “Fuck.”
    Boom.
    Kelly's last shot dropped the elk. He looked at me in a mirrored open smile and then we bolted for the elk.
    We couldn't tell if it was dead when we got there. Kelly said if its eyes were open it was dead, or maybe if they were closed it was dead — he couldn't remember. He looked around for a stick to poke it. He couldn't find one so he hoisted a small lodge-pole snag like a one-man re-enactment of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and dropped it across the bull's middle. It kicked. We jumped back. Neither of us had reloaded yet. I was shaking with adrenaline and had no idea what to do.
    So we jumped up and down like 7-year-olds at Disneyland and hugged. I guess our euphoria had caught up with us, or maybe we figured the bull wasn't going anywhere even if it was alive. Either way, the celebration couldn't wait.
    “I can't believe this!” I said.
    “I know!” he said. “Shit! We got an elk!”
    “We got an elk!”
    After hugs, we turned back to the 700-pound wild animal at our feet that could still be alive and pretty upset about us shooting it. Kelly decided to shoot it in the neck. He put a shell in and missed. I decided to settle the matter and shoot it in the head. I put a shell in and hit.
    Everything about the kill reeked of Clark Griswold, but we didn't care. Kelly said I could keep the antlers and he would take the special molars called ivories that some people use in jewelery. We had to get our dads and their friends to help us get the elk gutted and back to camp. But Kelly and I packed the head out together, carrying it by the antlers like two guys packing a coffee table through the woods. Billionaires don't smile as big we smiled. We had made our greatest achievement that day, put at least one foot through the door of manhood. It was a bond I've never felt with anyone else.

    Kelly called me the week after I skipped out on opening weekend this year. He didn't kill anything except a bottle of whiskey and a cooler of beer so he was still after his elk.
    Neither of us have ever held back much from the other so I told him I was writing about our friendship.
    “Yeah? Like what? How we grew up and shit or what?”
    I said sort of, but closer to how we used to hunt together all the time but don't now. I paused, and said “And how that might mean we're not really friends anymore.”
    He dismissed the idea as crap after reminding me I was never that good at hunting anyway. He said he could still tell what I was thinking by the stupid look on my face so what the hell does it mattered if we did or didn't go hunting?
    “I guess it doesn't,” I said.
    “You think about weird shit sometimes,” he said. “I'll call you next week. I'm going to be late for work.”
    We hung up. I realized I was looking forward to hearing from him next week.

If I'm going to die for a word, my word is fuck.

2010-08-29T22:02:00.002-06:00

Fuck. Sometimes it's the only word for the moment, the action, or the person. It can be used as an infix, as in words like out-fucking-standing, un-fucking-believable; or even in a proper name like Chi-fucking-cago. It can be used to simply add emotion and to let people know you mean business as in: you better watch your fucking step around me because I don't fuck around. It can also, of course, refer to sexual intercourse. What I'm getting at is it's one of the most versatile and powerful words in the English language and for some reason people throughout history have black-balled fuck, making it the symbol of obscenity in the English language.

In his book, “Fuck,” Christopher M. Fairman makes the same point and then delves into the reasons behind the meanings of the word, its spotty history and the taboo fuck has garnered through time. I've been giving his work a read in my spare time throughout the semester and after a putting it off for this long, I figured a post on the book about the granddaddy of all “obscene” words would be a good way to drop the curtain on my role at this blog. So let's take a look at “Fuck.” It should be fun and informative.

First off, the history of the word, Fairman finds, is murky. There are instances of it in ancient Egyptian as a sort of curse at the end of a legal contracts to those who would violate the agreement: “May you get fucked by a donkey! May your wife get fucked my donkey! May your child fuck your wife!” Pretty solid curse if you ask me, made so by fuck, which in this case was represented by five, large, erect penises.

For the longest time it was kept from dictionaries so a solid link to its origin is almost impossible to find. It has been suppressed throughout time by the academics that urban legends have cropped up as to where fuck came from. These wives' tales include it being an acronym for Fornication Under Consent of King, or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and others. Those are all garbage. In truth, Fairman admits the best we can know is that it came to us like the rest of our words, from another language and has been altered through time. And it has persisted because of the taboo it holds, not in spite of it. He cites two psycholinguistic studies that show the taboo is what gives it power and gives fuck its staying power.

When we look at the word in its current form and place in the language, Fairman writes, fuck has two forms, the first means sex and includes the figurative uses like getting swindled or ripped off. The second form has nothing to do with sex whatsoever, it's just used for its “offensive force,” as in the examples at the beginning of this post. So why then, Fairman asks, is that use lumped into the obscene? The use has nothing to do with sex or graphic description, so what the fuck is the problem?

Fairman answers that question by taking us through the different reactions that people can have to that use of fuck. The first reaction is to self-censor and adhere to the taboo attached to the word. The second is to use euphemisms for the word, it's basically the weak bedmate to self-censoring. Thirdly, some people use the word because of the taboo, to either illicit an emotional response from the person they are talking to, or because saying it gives them a thrill, makes them feel like a real outlaw or something. The fourth is the one that is at the heart of the issue, it's the fuck fetish.

Word fetish, he writes, is when someone adheres so strongly to a taboo surrounding a word that they not only refrain from using it, but they seek to end its use by others as well. They go after fuck in both its uses with no differentiation, he points out, and adds that he's not referring to the good folks at the FCC, just the armatures who take things way too far. These people are outback word Nazis, I say.

These reactions govern how fuck is treated by law Fairman writes, and their variance is reflected in the variance of rulings in regard to fuck's use. It has a small precarious shelter as “protected 'offensive speech'” he states, but a little push either way and it can fall into either fighting words or obscenity, and then, well, the user is fucked.

Thankfully, the three-part test for obscenity dictates that fuck in its most common use, the non-sexual one, is not obscene, and other cases have found that in order for fuck to be a fighting word its use must be in direct personal insult that would likely provoke retaliation from the average person, he writes. In the end, the use of fuck all on its lonesome is usually legal, he points out, but it is often mischaracterized as obscene by the public.

Along those lines, he points out, in the 1970s SCOTUS rule in Cohen v. California that the public display of fuck is not a criminal offense and no state can make it so. A handy point to remember, and what he calls the biggest victory for the word. The victory, however, was short lived because of a broadcast of comic monologue by the late, and better than great, George Carlin, titled “Filthy Words” gave rise to indecent speech regulation by the FCC and the high Court upheld the organization's right to wage a war of terror against fuck. I addressed this is a previous blog about fleeting expletives, however, so I won't get into the gory details of when you can say it over the airwaves and when you can't.

Unlike the FCC, which doesn't differentiate between the sexual and non-sexual use of fuck, Fairman goes on to write that if you're brought up on charges of sexual harassment in the work place for using the word, the federal courts have been pretty good about doing so. Fuck and motherfucker, he writes, have been found to be gender neutral and nonsexual.

It's still murky as to where each use of fuck may fall depending on the context, the media or setting it is in. Fairman lays out some pretty clear guidelines as I have tried to condense in the preceding paragraphs, but what really is at stake here, and I think he does a great job of putting down in black ants, is that the word is ours. It's ours to use, ours to save from suppression and ours to keep. It's a way to express ideas and it should not be restrained by any governmental body or individual.

I leave you all with this: Fuck is a beautiful little word that, as Fairman so eloquently puts it, “is being fucked in the shadow of the First Amendment.”

Teabagger tears give Rachel Maddow FCC jeers

2010-03-02T22:01:00.001-07:00

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can always garner indecency complaints to the Federal Communication Commission from teabaggers.

It was recently found by SNL Kagan that Rachel Maddow collected more than 1,200 complaints from people upset about her use of the term “teabagging” while talking about members or actions of the “tea party” during broadcasts on MSNBC and other stations. I say good on her, and the baggers should take solace in the fact that awful nicknames build character. But that's all beside the point, which is that none of these teabaglettes has read the FCC's definition of what constitutes indecent material, and if they did, they just filed their complaints anyway because they like wasting tax money with they're insipid whining and pee-hole jibber-jabber.

(I thought the real tea party was about wasting someone else's resources so they would quit unfairly taxing you, not wasting your own because you, well I don't really know what these people want, but they sure do like to hold signs and play dress up.) My confusion about their goals or premise is beside the point also, sorry.

The first part of the FCC's definition for indecent material states it must be “sexual or excretory material that does not rise to the level of obscenity.”

I see nothing inherently sexual about tea or the bagging there of. Let's go on.

The next part of the definition lays down “[m]aterial is indecent if, in context, it depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.”

Saying the term “teabagging” depicts or describes anything is janky reasoning at best. Believe me, I know what the kids mean when they say it, hell I've seen it done first hand. But the term alone, without being followed by a definition of its slang meaning, describes nothing. No matter what it hilariously implies when used in reference to those nonsensical rallies.

For the teabaggers to consider the term indecent would mean that they know the slang definition, which would mean they were willingly subjecting themselves to material that was certainly descriptive and involved at least one set of sexual organs. I wonder what Web sites they've been visiting.

What's more, if the term was used between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. it falls under what's known as safe harbor. This is basically a free pass for broadcasters to be indecent as they please as long as they aren't obscene or use one of the words that the FCC has marked as being "highly offensive," like fuck. If someone says fuck on TV the FCC will review the use in context and make a determination if it is indecent on a case-by-case basis and punish stations accordingly.

I couldn't find a list of the other "highly offensive" words, but a safe guess is that they are similar to the seven dirty words that the FCC had formerly banned and the courts upheld in the case Pacifica Foundation v. F.C.C.

The ban was later lifted and swapped out for the standard they have now.

What we have here is political speech being called indecent by those who it's against. And since indecent speech is protected under the First Amendment it cannot be banned, only restricted. The most the complaints could achieve is causing the FCC to fine the stations if Maddow's use was aired between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

The teabaggers have a bronze medal complaint at best. Meaning, sure it will get you free drinks at the parties in the Olympic Village, but it won't let you bed Claudia Toth. Not even close. Not in a million years. Never.

I think I just saw that guy's dicta

2010-02-27T01:58:00.002-07:00

Janet Jackson's nipple is racking up an egregious amount in court costs. I'm not sure what the number is in round figures, but since the 3rd Circuit is having to take the wardrobe malfunction case back under review I'm dead sure the figure is way more than street value for a peak at a 44-year-old woman's right breast.

What I consider wasted tax dollars aside, the progression of the case led me to a conclusion about the Federal Communications Commission's indecency policy: they're indecently indecipherable.

After the 2004 Super Bowl halftime mammary parade the FCC lowered the boom on CBS with a $550,000 fine for the split second that teenage boys now refer to as, “That moment I don't care about because I have the Internet.”

CBS appealed the fines in a 3rd Circuit Court which unanimously ruled the FCC was out of line because it departed from policy norms to give CBS the old five-across-the-eyes.

The judges found that the agency forgave prior cases of “fleeting” indecency, and therefore unfairly punished CBS through an unannounced policy change.

The FCC argued in the first hearing that the looser rules for slip-ups applied for waging tongues only and not for body parts that flop, bounce or jiggle. But the distinction between “fleeting” indecent words and “fleeting” indecent images argued by the FCC only served to highlight the policy shift to the judges.

However, the high court didn't groove to the 3rd's beat so the case was bounced back down to them for a mulligan with the instructions that the judges reconsider the ruling while keeping in mind the opinion they issued in FCC v. Fox Television Stations; a case dealing with the FCC's ban of “fleeting expletives” on live TV.

In the FOX case, the FCC had recently changed their policy for cursing on live TV to a complete ban in an effort to crack down on potty-mouthed celebrities like Cher and Bono at award ceremonies. While FOX argued the FCC didn't follow the correct procedure laid out for governmental agencies to change their policy, the U.S. Supreme Court found that they did.

The ban was upheld, but the case sent back to a 2nd Circuit Court for them to work out the gory details of whether it was constitutional.

With all that thrown into the mix, CBS' lawyers are arguing the passages from the FOX opinion that state FCC policy has never allowed an exemption for “fleeting” indecent images was just a little dicta, and not directly related to that case.

Dicta or not, the 3rd is still trying to hash it all out and what's at the root of this whole mess isn't an errant areola: it's the FCC's cryptic policies.

The CBS Corp. v. FCC redo and the FOX case all come from an inability of TV folk to know exactly what I's can't be exposed to what T's. What's more, 3rd Circuit judges have even admitted they are having trouble picking up what the policy is putting down.

Maybe it's just me, but if federal judges are having a hard time interpreting a document, maybe that's a sign the verbiage is a bit cloudy.

I've always found that expletives help sharpen points; I say the FCC should have Andrew Dice Clay punch up the language a bit for them. I don't think he's doing anything right now.

Florida courts forget to kiss the nation on the neck again

2010-02-15T21:55:00.004-07:00

Spooky and ignorant, or ignorantly spooky is how I see the opinion the 11th circuit cooked-up last week in response to porn producer Max Hardcore's appeal after a Florida district court convicted him of distributing obscene materials and sentenced him to four years in the hoosegow.

Hardcore (a.k.a. Paul Little) appealed several things about the conviction but the horror-show aspect of the whole deal is that even though the content was distributed from a Web site to a national audience the jury was instructed to determine if the material was obscene based on the standards in their own local community.

On the upside, a ruling by the 9th circuit puts a major hitch in the 11th's giddy-up. The 9th recently ruled on a case involving full on pederast cartoons and e-mails, but recognized the need to instruct jurors to hold the material published on the Internet to a national standard for what can be considered obscene instead of the standard of their local community only.

Another Wes-Cravenesqe act to this show is that none of Hardcore's films were made in Florida, and he doesn't live there, but the Justice Department, under the menacing guidance of the Bush administration, decided to have him tried there because his company has some computer servers there and the state has the strictest obscenity laws. Or maybe the laws were just a bonus and the real reason was they just knew that had good luck with being crooks there before so figured what the hell, why not get home field advantage.

Granted, the descriptions of Max Hardcore's work alone are enough to tell me he has shot some sketchy stag flicks in his day, what with the fisting, dudes whizzing on women and not to mention pornos where the actresses were made-up to look like a little girls. I'm not a prude by any means, but I can agree that piss-fetishes, pseudo pedophilia fantasies and any kind of love-making that involves the old Missouri soup bone is nasty in the bad way.

However, the 11th's ruling sets the precedent that something published on the Internet, like this little gem of a rant, can be read in the heart of up-tight land and the author can then be brought up on obscenity charges at the county seat of squaresville.

Since these opinions are at odds, the 9th being right and the 11th being wrong headed goo, this should be going up to the big court soon for some guidance. I just hope things come clean in the wash because the idea of being spirited away to the Bible Belt on obscenity charges scares the ba-jesus out of me.

In the meantime I have re-ordered the names of the 11th circuit judges into a handy stage name in case they decide to start making an honest living: Black Cox Wilson. I can see it in the marquee lights already, or at least carved into the wall above a truck-stop urinal.

Another international incident

2009-08-22T01:07:00.004-06:00

The Russian was big and in shape — my person comprised that of a small, out-of-shape boozer with nothing but the G.I.-Joe-love of America in his heart, and a Hunter Thompson, “Fuck it why not?” sensibility.

I talked shit all night through the poker game about the cold war and how my Grandpa Joe could lift the world on his shoulders if he chose to do so.

I lost every hand.

The last hand of the night came and he thought I was a paper tiger, talking the talk but could never walk the walk. I was drunk— 20 beers in if I was counting — but a seasoned fool can handle this.

I eyeballed him out of the side of my face.

I got a pair of eights after the draw, I didn't know that I had him beat, but I knew that I was born for nights like these.

I looked him in the face. I called him a Nancy — Mary-sissy — and I slid my pile of chips to the center. The photographer who was dealing for us shook his head and said “You really are fucking shit-crazy aren't you?”

I said, “This isn't the time for psychoanalyzing, fuckhead.”

The Russian felt he had me, he simpered and slid his shit to the center — well over matching my meager pile. His cold, eastern-block eyes making me think I was well over my head.

I thought of a lot of things as I faced certain defeat, and I grinned — ear to filthy ear — a sinner, chin deep in my element.

I packed the can of chewing tobacco and said, “ This is a dirty habit and you have just entered into a big gamble with a dirty man who comes from good stock — in America we call that a mistake, Fagbeard.”

Eights to nothing I won.

He was pissed and I couldn’t believe my luck, but I didn't let that show.

I said, “The Lord shines his light down upon drunks and idiots. I win on both counts you commy swine, and that is why you will never beat us! I am America! I am the people who don't know better than to quit!

Holding my hands over my head like I was holding two invisble basketballs I shouted “These are my balls and they will impregnate your women!”

Out of line perhaps. Over blown maybe. But I’m a little dramatic when I win.

The Russian conceded defeat cordially. I told him he was good people and I had only spit all that noise to get in his head (see The Sting).

The Russian was visibly upset. I've seen the look before.

It was only a matter of time before we would be in mortal combat.

The Russian shook my hand said how I was crazy to bet on that. I said my nationality compelled it. He shook his and laughed.

He tried to put me in a headlock out of nowhere. He was like a catatonic communist. All class then all rage.

I said something about how General Patton was fucking right about never trusting the reds.

I somehow shucked the hold off. Gasping from lack of activity and suffering from consumption, the body was weak but the anger was willing. I jumped on his back while he was still in awe at my escape.

“Nice try you goddamned animal!” I yelled in the Russian’s ear.

I set a neat choke hold and the rest is victory.

AMERICA 1, RUSSIA 0

De-railed for your amusement

2009-08-21T14:42:00.003-06:00

I was at a quasi family reunion on Coeur'd Alene Lake last week and this is a story from that trip.
There is no moral in it.

For it to make sense it is important to note that a “de-railer” is a drink commonly served at the waterfront bars around Coeur'd Alene Lake. It's basically a gallon bowl full of different rums and fruit juices served family style with multiple giant straws, one for every person at the table.

It was about 12:37 a.m. when we heard the loping V8 of the over-sized ski boat as it cruised at a low idle about 40 feet from shore headed for the docks in front of the seasonal, lakeside trailer court my grandparents operate.

The engine noise interrupted my uncle Pierre as he was saying something about Neil Young, and turned to watch the boat's lights pass by the breakwater and enter the docks — like a drunk teenager trying to sneak upstairs without waking their parents.

Garbled navigations bounced off the lake's surface and up to us as we stood on a trailer's deck overlooking the docks.

“Dude! Left! — You suck at boating!,” was all I could make out.

We could hear the boat bounce of the sides of a boat slip as it pin-balled into its home like a slow-motion bumper car accident.

No strangers to the spectacle that consumption can layout, Pierre and I went silent and focused on the water, as if we were in a movie theater and the previews had just given way to the featured presentation.

The captain received more admonishing remarks from the drunken crew as they piled onto the dock and started for shore.

SPLOOSH — The sound of a fully clothed man falling into the black water was quickly followed by drunken laughs and then intense commotion, but not in the water.

“Who fell in?” I heard one ask in a slightly concerned voice.

“I don't know man,” answered another with a more frantic tone.

The lack of any sound coming from the water now had the cohort on the dock scrambling to enact a rescue.

A command for everyone to count off was followed with murmurs and confusion.

Still no sound from the man overboard.

“Hey! — Hey dude in water say something!”

Joining in the effort, another one on the dock yelled, “Uh, yeah! Dude in water, we can help you!”

I looked at Pierre and said something like “Maybe we should help them.”

But shortly there after the bay was filled with the sound of splashing and vomiting, and we knew the brave rescue team had done its part and our services were not needed.

Twenty minutes later five men passed in front of Pierre and I as we stood on the deck. The two in front looked very tired, and they were followed by two others carrying a very wet friend. As the the three in back passed by us, the wet one lifted his head up and addressed one his bearers.

“Dude. I think I had one too many de-railers.”

I turned to Pierre and asked him if he wanted another beer because I was going to get another.

Pirates and the British Navy seemed to do well with hooch and the deep blue, but apparently fraters don't go through the same training. Either way, when they put their drinking shoes on their sea legs, it all made for a great show.

God bless the de-railer

Billboards and Undead Whores

2009-08-21T14:39:00.002-06:00

I was driving to Idaho Falls with my friend Joe the other day when I saw a billboard with a giant zombie hooker on it.

I turned to Joe and said something like, “That looks like a good horror flick and all, but that un-dead hooker might be a bit strong for a billboard — even for my taste.”

Joe looked at me like I was the Rain Man and told me that the billboard was part of the Idaho Meth Campaign, an ad campaign to talk kids out of putting Draino and cornstarch in their noses.

Since you can't turn on a TV, or drive through any town in this great state without seeing one of their horror shows, I am familiar with the campaign. I immediately felt embarrassed that I had been confused by the billboard. I felt like I hate mistaken the golden arches for the Arby's hat. I felt like I had failed in my ability to navigate everyday America, but pretty soon I realized that maybe it wasn't all my fault, maybe it was the Idaho Meth Campaign's fault.

Joe and I started talking about how those billboards make every small town and downtown in Idaho look like it's crawling with tweakers, ready to steal your lawnmower, car speakers and kidneys just to make a trip to Home Depot to buy some fixings to cook with.

However, before I get to far into this trip, let's get one thing in black and white: I'm for the mandated sterilization of anyone who dabbles with the low-brow street pharmacy called meth, and by sterilization I don't mean thorough cleaning, I mean no more baby-making, for good and all.

I'm not against the campaign as a whole. The TV commercials don't bug me, and I think everyone is pretty used to seeing monsters on the tube, and no one has to watch TV.

The campaign has worked in other states and shown some impressive statistics in Idaho as well, but these billboards are encroaching on the landscape. I can't even take a drive to American Falls without seeing a sink full of blood, or a advertisement threatening meth-heads with prison sodomy, I don't remember which one they have up now, but it's one of those gems. Anyway, the point is the campaign is an ad campaign like any other, the same levels of good taste apply.

I'm all for talking kids out of doing meth, but I'm not for giving the campaign cart blanche to paint the town in whatever tone they think will keep morons from poisoning themselves.

In the end I arrived at the conclusion that in essence the campaign is more about scaring the weak minded out of doing something stupid because they were picking their nose during the D.A.R.E. sessions in school, than it is about educating anyone. So why should the landscape be cluttered with Wes Craven-esque bigger-than-life ads just to scare a portion of the population into not wrecking their lives?

You don't have to hang a plaque warning against the evils of child molestation if one moves onto your block, so why do we have to have these billboards up because meth moved in down the street?

I say keep the TV ads, get more officers in schools, and cut down the billboards, and all the others while you're at it.

Cody goes spinning

2009-05-12T18:19:00.004-06:00

The odd mix of Peruvian flute-band music laid over a pulsing techno beat was like nothing I had ever heard. Somewhere in the background I thought I caught the soft rumblings of a rainstick being played to supplement the loping synthesized drums.

Sweat poured from my brow and ran into my eyes — blurring my vision even more as I tried to focus in the obscure purple-hue put off from the black-lights that were the only light source in the crowded room.

I never thought I would find myself in this situation, and after the first hour I didn’t know if I was going to make it out.

“Come on ladies! We’re going up a hill. It’s time to show these new guys how to pedal,” the spinning instructor barked in an upbeat, authoritarian tone while nodding toward me and the jerk who talked me into attending the class.

I had heard people talking about their spinning classes for years. I had seen them before they went — chipper and energetic — and I had seen them after — sweaty, deflated messes that looked like they had just knife-fought three grizzly bears.

From all accounts I had received, spinning was a fairly grueling aerobics class where you ride a stripped-down exercise bike while somebody paints word-pictures of the pretend bike ride you’re on and yells at you to pedal harder.

When a co-worker recently mentioned attending a class, I figured I might as well get the straight dope on these classes to find out how rugged they actually are.

That, and my eating habits will soon necessitate me getting a baboon heart transplant in the near future, so I also figured the peddling would help stave off any rib cracking until this whole “government health insurance” scam pans-out.

I showed up to the gym at 7:45 a.m., 45 minutes before the class started, because I had heard they fill up fast and I didn’t want to run in place or something if all the bikes were taken.

Standing in the fitness club lobby waiting for the class to start, I felt the same as I did before my first high school football practice — slightly afraid, and nervous this whole thing would end with me throwing up.

A middle aged woman with a healthy smile and a water bottle walked in the front door and asked the front desk worker for the keys to the spinning room.

From the exchange of keys I gleaned that this was the spinning instructor and I was relieved by her physical appearance.

She was in shape, but she wasn’t intimidatingly in shape. She looked normal — I had expected Lance Armstrong, or someone with legs built by Russian horse-steroids.

The spinning room was a racquetball court jammed full of stationary bikes set on black mats. The walls were covered with charts and fitness posters that I would never understand.

The instructor helped me adjust the seat and handlebar height on my bike, stating that these adjustments were incredibly important to my safety. At that point, any anxiety abated by her non-threatening appearance returned two-fold.

“Why is this contraption so dangerous? Did she just say my leg could break? Why are my feet strapped in?” all my questions went unanswered as the first echoes of the amazon-techno soundtrack began bouncing off the walls.

The instructor started painting mental pictures through a microphone headset hooked into a PA system.

We peddled up cloud covered hills, we went across plateaus with the wind at our backs, all through imagination and adjusting the resistance knob that set before the handlebars.

During the final push we were charging up a hill. The instructor said we were getting closer and closer to breaking through the cloud cover and reaching the sun.

My face felt like it was already on the surface of the sun. I had stopped sweating from dehydration half an hour ago.

Gasping like a dying carp, but not to be out done, I palmed at the knob to increase the resistance on my stationary bike to simulate the hill that I was supposed to be climbing with the rest of the class.

Unfortunately we never reached the sun that day. The sound track ended as we crested the hill, — clouds still overhead.

As we dismounted and stretched, I felt the way I assume Elvis did as he died on that toilet.

With shaky legs and a flaming red face I made for the door, passing the instructor on my way.
She didn’t show the slightest sign of fatigue, and was still sporting a healthy smile and a normal rate of breathing.

She asked me how my first day was, and I panted a gibberish reply.

“Oh, but you have a great glow about you now!” she said.

I have been back three times and still have not reached the sun.

Shaking toward dawn

2009-03-29T04:38:00.005-06:00

“Those who do not scatter the morning dew will never comb gray hairs.” Hunter Thompson

Intermittently trading between clips of Modest Mouse and Hunter Thompson interviews I tried to wake up from a nap and get the right mindset to tear into the mountain of recordings I have from my time with the Buffalo Field Campaign in West Yellowstone Montana.

I stowed my gear and started the laundry when I got home, but then crashed for a couple of hours on the couch after watching a few minutes of a documentary on the life of beavers, which was far more interesting that anything on the Entertainment channel or Fox News.

I was warn-out because sleeping in a hotel bed without a beautiful girl is more like a planned daydream than sleeping. They always have white sheets and the synthetic comforter that just charges up a grip of static electricity on my leg hair.

The trick is to grab the metal base of the mounted wall light and get the shock over with before you try to pass out.

Three hours since the midnight oil burned out, I’m running on pastrami-burger fumes and Coors mostly. Transcribing 20 hours of interviews and trying to find the nut of scene I may never truly understand, I turned back to a few more Thompson interviews for kicks.

I’ve found that regimented beer drinking can keep me awake better than coffee, and is easier on me the next day.

Only six or seven recordings into 53, I need a break, but ranting on this rag seems a better dumpsight for full synapses than getting filled up with MTV or some crap.

Waiting for dawn, and all that white noise from the sun, I broke down and turned the TV and learned how to lift and firm my breasts, while training for a mixed martial arts fight.
Both seem doable I suppose.

Good clean American dreams.

Cody's International Incident: A break down in American confidence

2009-03-03T19:18:00.005-07:00

Since when is it an insult to be called an American?

I’ve been trying to figure that out for the better part of a month now, and here’s why.

I was sitting at a table with a bunch of people at a brew pub. I had only known the folks for less than 45 minutes, so we were all still knee deep in small talk— where did you go to school at? Which popular bands do you name when people ask you what kind of music you like, and can you name slightly more obscure bands than me to tout musical superiority? — that kind of stuff.

During the chit chat one of them asked me what my hobbies are. I’m not a “hobby guy,” and I never have been. Somewhere in a closet at my parents’ house sets a pile of plastic fenders and miniature-replica car parts that I tried to build into a model car on no less than 13 separate occasions, but still haven’t managed to even get all the parts loose from the plastic grids they came attached to.

“This and that I guess,” I said, as I was scrambling for an answer. “I like to shoot deer and eat them.”

I know it’s not exactly needle point, but hey, it’s the only thing I’ve consistently budgeted time for on a yearly basis, and it was the first thing that came to mind.

A foreigner at the table scoffed at my answer, “You are such an American,” she said with disdain thicker than my beard.

I always thought being an American was the cool thing to do.

I keep an American flag neatly folded and stowed in my pickup for special occasions, who doesn’t?

Yeah, I think cowboy boots are the most comfortable and efficient form of footwear, not mention bad to the bone.

It’s also true I drink coffee out of giant mug emblazoned with a likeness of the Duke himself, John Wayne, and I own so many guns that I couldn’t take them all with me when I moved down here.

Needless to say I was caught off guard by her verbal ambush, and was signing surrender papers before I even got the chance to properly defend my homeland.
I remember mumbling something along the lines of, “Being a called an American wasn’t an insult before W’s last term,” as my concession of defeat.

However, I’m a terrible loser and haven’t been able to shake the experience yet.

At first I was in denial. “Not all Americans hunt, hunting doesn’t define my nationality,” I started telling myself.

Next came rationalization, “Besides America is so diverse now that there is now such thing as an average American, and stereotypes are categorically untrue.”

In the end I came to peace with the situation. I realized there was no time when it became an insult to be called an American.

We invented the steakhouse, the electric guitar and being cool. We’re the country that figured out the right way to play football. As soon as we invent a time machine I’m going back to that moment in the brew pub so I can shoot down that slander while sporting my best Clint Eastwood scowl:

"Such an American you say? Look at the cowboy boots and Levi’s — abso-fuckin-lutely such an American."
"And by the way — your country is welcome for rock ‘n’ roll and those videos of monkeys smoking cigarettes."

The Duality of an American New Year

2009-02-02T23:21:00.005-07:00

American New Year’s celebrations follow the same trajectory: on the upstroke you get exceptionally gibbered up on various types of fancy hooch in sparkly glasses, or not so fancy hooch in not so shiny leather sacks. At peak frenzy you have to find someone—maybe the person you came to the party with, maybe someone who just really looks like the person you came with, or maybe a person who looks nothing like the one you came with, details don’t matter—the point is to get them. Once you have them cornered in something close to consent and the clock strikes 12, you grope them like a cave troll on a fresh goat, and the New Year comes down on all our heads. Simple, and messy; Happy New Year.

As you can plainly see I have the nut of this holiday, but this past New Year’s Eve opened my eyes to the contradicting worlds that standing in opposition underneath all that noise.
Under all that sweat, vomit and disappointed farewells to the old year that were said in the same breath as indifferent welcomes to the new, people were divided by their own perception of what was going on all around them.

Though I wasn’t out to participate in the usual festivities, I didn’t intend on filling the roll of nosy observer either. But I’m big into seizing opportunity—or at least I’m big into throwing questions at folks when they’re one Jaeger Bomb away from that perfect stage of drunkenness when every room is a bathroom.

Anyway, I was standing in a bar, slightly after 2009 hit the floor with the splash of a sorority girl’s multi-colored vomit, when I decided it was time to ask a few general questions. I always start with the band members if there is one playing because they’re hard to get a hold of later—drunken crowd members will shuffle around for at least an hour after last call—but the band has gear to load and a cold van to sleep in, and they always have the best view of the sea of uninterested or uninteresting folks.

Each musician I talked to thought that the New Year’s Eve set was their best ever, and the crowd response was nothing like they had ever seen before.

My first thought was that the crowd was made up of alcohol filled meat sacks who would throw their damp panties at a mean version of Hot Cross Buns played on any squeaky plastic recorder. However, after chatting up a few crowd members I found that my theory was off.

“I thought they played so-so,” answered the first stumbling ex-crowd member. The rest described the set as similarly mediocre—except for the designated friend of the band / borderline male groupie who declared his undying love for everything the band did as well as proclaim that this show was the best thing to happen in 2009, which in my estimation was completely untrue because a chick-fight had already broken out in the corner.

Given no one thinks they’re own kid is ugly, maybe the band just had a good time playing and mistook the crowd’s exuberant celebrating of the new year for actual interest in the music being played. Who knows, I’m not into reasons, just spotting trends. When the sober bar staff told me they all thought the band had done much better in their show last month I realized that I might be on to something.

The last and only limo pulled out of the bar-plex parking lot and I was standing in the cold, ready to walk home and still thinking about the duality of the whole scene when I slammed into another example of the opposing perceptions. Best of all this one had cops, drunks and a miniature smoking cowboy, with a learning disability.

To be continued…

Breaking in on blogging down

2009-02-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

In an effort to get another grip on the strange and angry boogie that was the 2-Minutes Hate I’ve started up this blog. I’m going to put up some of the old Hates, and rework some other ones while interjecting some new stuff. I’ll try to keep it all separate so later on people can pin-point the moments where, in their opinion, I sold out, went bat-shit, or worse yet—went sane.

I’ve never been computer savvy so it might take me awhile to get a handle on formatting and learn how to post obscene pictures or links that try to sell Mexican Viagra. Please bear with me; black market erection medication will be here all in good time. Until then feel free to read these deals while you cool down in between Internet porn-out sessions.