Flogging Molly and transitions

A couple orders of business tonight: First, here's my review of Flogging Molly at the New Oasis. The band is always good, but there are some basic organizational things the Oasis has been doing wrong since about 2001 that you'd think they would have dealt with during their recent yearlong hiatus. They didn't, and unfortunately for them, this time around I was was in a position to call them on it. I remember what a big deal it was when I was in high school and my sister was in junior high for us to go see bands we liked, and almost nothing makes me madder than these venues taking advantage of that enthusiasm. "What are they gonna do? Drive themselves home? They're 14. Let 'em wait in the snow."
In other news, while he plots his next move, my dad is running a blog. It's actually a little disheartening to see him get 30 comments on his first day when I do about one a week, but then he has had a 27-year head start in building his fanbase. Do yourself a favor and check it out. Then do me a favor and remind him to link to me so I can get some of that sweet, sweet traffic.
Finally, I've had two of my good friends move across the country within the past month, and at least one more thinking seriously about it. You bastards better knock it off. But seriously, good luck, everybody. Hope it's cold enough for you.

Henry Rollins review

Here's my review of Henry Rollins' talking show in Reno on Friday. I didn't actually talk to him, since the RGJ saw fit to run a wire interview with him from some newspaper in rural Texas rather than using their own manpower. That's a growing and disturbing trend for those of us who once hoped to make a living as rock journalists.
Still, it's probably just as well in this case. Interview-wise, Rollins is my personal Sugar Ray Leonard: You know you're never going to beat the guy, but it would be an honor if you could spar with him without completely embarrassing yourself, and I'm not sure I'm quite there yet. Next year, Hank. Next year.

At war with the Colbert Nation

The South Carolina Democratic Party is going to live to regret snubbing Stephen Colbert, and not because he was ever a serious candidate.

On the one hand, Colbert has made his career on burning people dumb enough to take him seriously, so you can't really blame the S.C. Dems for being leery. I imagine they'd look pretty stupid if he won S.C., the only state he was trying to run in, only to find that he was kidding the whole time. Which he almost certainly was.

On the other, though, how can they bar anybody from the primary ballot when the thing already reads like the program for a three-ring circus? How can a rational person claim that Colbert was any less serious a candidate than Mike Gravel, whose entire campaign is based on viral video? And don't even get me started on Alan Keyes, who against all odds continues to be an actual black Republican presidential candidate. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Colbert, allegedly the jester of the piece, was polling in the top three candidates last week, within just a few days of announcing his intentions. In many polls, he was beating my pick, John Edwards, who is about as "real" as they come. Even Editor and Publisher, a journalism trade publication that is usually allergic to jokes, mused that, if recent trends held, mused that Colbert would be the frontrunner before Thanksgiving. I'll the first one to admit that that sounds unlikely, but I'd also point out that it hardly sounds like a guy who should be ignored.

I mean, it's a primary. How much damage could he possibly do? It's not like he's going to go to Washington, talk big for a few months and then grab his ankles as soon as George Bush questions his patriotism. I think Harry Reid's pretty much got that job covered, anyway.

Worst of all, it makes the Democrats look just as tone-deaf as the neocons. They should have just let Colbert do his thing and then bow out. Get the kids interested in politics for once. Instead, they recoiled in horror at the merest shadow of a non-traditional campaign and drove stakes into its heart at the first opportunity, which is the very definition of conservatism.

They say the two parties are just different sides of the same coin, and it's moves like this that reinforce that belief. I want to believe that Clinton or Obama is going to ride into town on inauguration day and start hanging Halliburton employees, but we all know that's not going to happen. So the vote will split relatively evenly, as it always does, and the Dems seem happy to follow the same old playbook and drop another close one to the other side.

Colbert may be a joke now, but we'll see how funny the S.C. Dems think he is when Mitt Romney goosesteps into the Oval Office and starts bombarding at random.

I have seen Death, and he is badly Photoshopped

The other weekend, I hung out in Virginia City with some ghost hunters led by the team from the SciFi Channel's "Ghost Adventures." I wouldn't say I'm ready to join up, but some of them make a pretty convincing case for the paranormal with virtually no evidence. And they just want to believe so badly, it's contagious. I don't meet very many wide-eyed optimists in this job, so it's cool anytime I do.

Here's the story. By the way, I take no responsibility for the photos. This poor freelancer did a great job chasing around VC at twilight trying to get spooky shots for me, then some genius on the picture desk figured it would be a good idea to crank up the brightness and contrast until it looks like high noon on Mars. Dude, I know Photoshop is awesome, but you don't have to use all the buttons at once, OK?

For a slightly less blinding version of the photo gallery, try this.

Social Distortion review

Here's my review of Sunday's Social Distortion show. In other news, Mike Ness is older than he has any right to be...

Strange times in this business...

Some background: As most of you probably know, I used to work for the Register-Pajaronian in Watsonville, near Santa Cruz, Calif. It was a small paper, badly run at the highest levels but strong in a few areas such as photography and idiosyncratic column writing. We also had one reporter who, in spite of being a classic East Coast elite type, spoke better Spanish than many native speakers and did some of the best journalism that area has seen since a Pulitzer win in the '50s.

During the two years I was there, our greatest fear was that the much larger, better-funded Santa Cruz Sentinel would suddenly realize that our mostly under-30 operation was cutting into their profit margin and come snuff us out, which they could have done in the space of about a week if they had set their minds to it.

Instead, they mounted a tentative assault in the form of a satellite office even lamer and less experienced than our team and we survived. Shortly after I left, the Sentinel was the subject of a series of moderately hostile takeovers and wound up in the hands of the MediaNews Group, a huge chain that fired many of the paper's employees and broke down their historical presses so the paper could be printed more cheaply in San Jose.

As much as those guys deserved it, I remember my dad pointing out the Sentinel building when I was in elementary school and making a joke about all the old reporters taking pay cuts so they could leave their troubles behind them and just come work for the Sentinel on the beach. At the time, it cracked me up. These days, not so much. Thanks for shattering my dreams, mass media.

Then today, I came across this news item:

Press rolls off truck on Hwy 17
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 17th, 2007
BY: R-P STAFF

A large flatbed big-rig overturned on Highway 17 south of the summit early Tuesday morning, leading to the closure of three lanes.

Grant Boles of the California Highway Patrol said the big-rig was hauling hunks of metal from a dismantled printing press from the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper when a strap broke, causing the load to shift. The rig spilled its load and turned over in the northbound lanes just past 9:30 a.m.

Only minor injuries were reported.

Boles said a massive cleanup was then set into motion, leading to the closure of both northbound lanes until 2:15 p.m. One southbound lane was shut for about 90 minutes during the ordeal.

"It was a real mess," Boles said.

Caltrans assisted in traffic control and road cleanup.
***

I used to work with Grant and Caltrans several times a week and I can only imagine the laugh the guys got out of this one. A bitter laugh, since most of the folks I worked with out there have since moved away or retreated to grad school because the actual industry scares them so badly right now.

Then I heard an e-rumor that, due to unforeseen personnel shifts (pronounced: firings), some of those very displaced folks may be coming this way, and sooner than anyone could have guessed.

Hey guys, remember that time I bailed out of a failing business venture just in time and you all were left holding the bag? Yeah, that was a hoot. No hard feelings, right?

The balancing act

Once in college, a group of us was walking to a just-barely-off-campus party the likes of which the University of Nevada rarely saw. Contrary to what most people think, the Nevada of the new millennium is not really a party school on the order of Chico State or UC Santa Barbara. Sure, addiction is rampant in the state, but most folks sort of take it in stride, meaning simple possession of a controlled substance is not much of a cause for celebration. "OK, we're drunk again. So what? Dude, that's no reason to start inviting girls over all willy nilly. They'll want me to turn off 'Halo.'"

This time, though, the party threat was real. It was the sort of affair where you could, as they say, feel it calling in the air tonight about a mile before you could actually see anything. Approaching on foot, the effect was maximized. At first you could just feel a vague throbbing somewhere up the street. Then you noticed cars parked haphazardly and packaging from 12-packs scattered along the sidewalk. Then you were suddenly picking your way through a field of humanoids, some stumbling aimlessly, others sitting on the ground jabbering to themselves, still others prostrate and barely breathing. The pungent fallout of a night already forgotten was everywhere. The overall impression was that of being the first team into Chernobyl.

And then we crested a rise and saw it. Three Greek houses along one side of the street were concealed behind a single long fence installed for the occasion. I guess the idea was to keep secret what was happening inside, but it was pretty hard to miss dozens of people standing in the middle of the street and the smell of pot, hormones and kegs leaking into hardpacked dirt roiling from inside the perimeter. The meatheads watching the gate were far past caring who got in and stamped each of my hands several times in a sudden rush of camaraderie.

The event was shockingly well-funded. Where usually a Will Ferrell movie and some wine coolers were enough to lure at least the easy girls into the frats (and who needed any other kind?), this time the brothers were running multiple DJ booths and several thousand dollars worth of decoration and security. I had to hand it to them -- if I were a 19-year-old blonde from Susanville, I'd probably be impressed.

What they were missing, though, was beer. That most crucial of resources had apparently evaporated within the first few minutes, so we went looking for more at a nearby gas station.

Nearby, we passed another fraternity, which was not involved in the party. The house was set up on a hill with a long stone staircase leading down to the street. At the foot, the hillside stopped in a four-foot-high ledge where a guy could sit and collect himself after a long night on the town.

Tonight, a group of brothers lounged around the ledge, shouting at passing girls and spitting chewing tobacco onto the sidewalk. One guy had deliberately stretched his legs into the path of pedestrians and another was rocking back and forth in a small orange classroom chair poised on the lip of the ledge. I'd never been big on the school's Greek mythologies, but I was already forming some opinions about why this crew hadn't been asked to join the orgy.

Then something terrible but completely predictable happened: My buddy Pat decided the guys looked like they could use a friend. He was famous for trying to find common ground with everyone from blackjack dealers to drug dealers by saying things like, "Wow, your shirt sure is tight. At least it's a nice night, though, right?" He never meant to offend, it just never occurred to him that the guy wasn't aware that his shirt was, in fact, too tight, and that he was therefore willing to talk about it with a stranger. So as we walked past the ledge, Pat noticed the guy in the chair and said, "Whoa. That's a pretty precarious position."

The guy peered at him for several seconds through a veil of Budweiser and chew. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "That's a pretty big word. For YOU."

His buddies laughed and the rocker started oscillating faster and faster, the tiny feet of the chair creeping to within a millimeter of the ledge. He clearly wanted to argue, but I was confident he was going to have a hard time making his point after he tumbled overboard, especially if someone accidentally tripped and booted him in the temple in the ensuing confusion. I knew it would be trouble for all of us if he suddenly showed up injured after a confrontation on a busy street, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to warn him. His pals started to stand up just as his weight shifted forward one last time and the chair angled sharply forward.

And then the cops came. A fleet of cruisers roared down the road, causing all of us to take a guilty step back and the rocker to pull up short just as the front legs of the chair tipped into space. He lurched drunkenly back at the last second and saved himself, blissfully unaware that he had avoided a concussion and subsequent stomping. As the police fired up their light bars and rushed en masse into the party, the frat boys suddenly decided to turn in and began jogging up the hill. We looked at each other and wordlessly turned and kept walking.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the rocker had fallen. Would he have reeled to his feet just in time to see the police speed past? Stayed down long enough to attract police attention and land the lot of us in jail for the weekend? Or would he have described an unlucky trajectory, fracturing his skull on the curb and going into seizures just as the cops arrived, suddenly putting the entire exchange into context for the rest of us?

These days, it's easy for me to picture this country as a 20-year-old frat boy perched in a cheap plastic chair, laughing hysterically, ignorant to the fact that he's about to go spilling into the street. Probably, he'll catch it in time and everything will be OK. Even if he does fall, he'll probably be mostly unhurt and his buddies will pick him up, dust him off and have him back on his feet by morning. But with so very many legs hanging in the air at once, from a voraciously single-minded executive to sputtering foreign relations; from a massive but hollow economy to steadily expanding waistlines, I sometimes wonder how in the world the boy in the chair is going to catch them all in time.

National exposure? Don't mind if I do!

So I got a phone call from USA Today, the most widely read (or at least sold) paper in the country the other day. Their reporter in San Francisco wanted to do a piece on the Steve Fossett rescue effort, but he didn't want to drive all the way to Minden where it was centered. (Can't say I blame him.) So he asked me to do some things he couldn't do via the phone.
Ten exhaustive hours later, I sent him my carefully researched, keenly observed impression of the situation so far and his immediate response was, "OK, but Do you have anyone saying he's dead?"
"Not really," I said. "I mean, of course he is, but the head of the search effort's never going to announce something like that. The party line is that he's considered alive until they find a wreck."
"Hmmmm. That won't work at all," he said. "You're sure you can't get that? Something about rescuers losing hope? Anything?"
"Uh, not unless someone actually, like, says it," I said. "All the rescuers I talked to were actually really hopeful. More than I would be. Morale seems really good, overall."
"Hmmm. Fine, I'll see what I can do."
And that's how I got a byline in the 25th anniversary edition of America's newspaper without actually writing anything they wanted. Some folks say that the problem with journalists is that they get a storyline stuck in their heads and reject anything that doesn't match that framework as they're preparing their story. I'm not going to comment on that in case I ever want to work in journalism again, but you might think about it as you're reading the piece, which bears very little resemblance to my impressions as I was actually standing in the op center.
On the bright side, though: circulation of millions. Look for my name at the very bottom.

Angry Black man

(From Gannett News Service)

by Matt Farley

When he picks up his telephone one busy Monday afternoon, Lewis Black sounds like a man rapidly approaching the end of his rope. As usual.

The professionally harried comedian has a few days to kill in New York before he has to head to Massachusetts for a show, and he's trying to get some work done on his second book, which has to be finished soon in order to meet a spring release date. But the phone simply will not stop ringing.

"I'm just way overscheduled," Black says. "I guess I sort of live in New York, but really, I live on a tour bus. I think I'm still doing around 200 shows a year, but I can't even tell anymore."

Black, 59, is probably best known for his regular appearances on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," where his screeds on politics and modern life frequently devolve into profane shouting and irate finger-shaking. But Black's stage persona first emerged in the '70s, when he was working as a playwright and actor at various community theaters and he had to keep patrons entertained before the curtain went up.

These days, it seems as if people identify with a normal guy driven to the brink of madness by Starbucks, Lindsay Lohan and governmental hypocrisy: His album "The Carnegie Hall Performance" won a Grammy Award in February. On top of television appearances, live shows and book deals, Black's film career has also begun to flourish; he had roles in three major movies within the last year. And although Black seems to be a genuinely nice guy when unprovoked, it quickly becomes clear that his famous rage may not entirely be an act.

"You just do it," Black says when asked how he prepares his rants. "I start thinking about stuff before I go on and I start getting fired up. Then when I get onstage, it's zero to 60 in a couple seconds."

At any given moment, Black has at least 75 minutes of material ready to go, he says. But since much of his act is based on current events, he rarely gives the same show twice.

"This time next year, it'll be a totally different 75 minutes," he says. "If a bridge collapses or the president says something, I can add that in. (For instance,) the Chinese trying to kill us with their 11 million lead toys and poisonous toothpaste and dog food is a problem for me right now. How does it become cheaper to bring these things in from China when we have to send them back? What is the matter with us?"

While Black shies away from the title of "political comedian," he often has especially hash words for Republican leaders, both on "The Daily Show" and in his live performances. Still, given the opportunity, he is more than eager to firebomb the other side of the aisle. Upon hearing the name "Harry Reid," Black immediately proclaims the entire Democratic Congress "hideous" and "nightmarish."

"Everybody got excited because we elected these people by default," he says. "I couldn't believe it. They did nothing in the face of what has been going on the past six years, and their entire platform (in 2006) was like, 'We've got nothing, but it's a new, improved nothing."

Black seems especially disgusted with both sides' handling of the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who recently resigned over accusations he fired judges who refused to toe the Republican party line.

"Let's say you're a boss and you see one of your employees wandering around for the first hour of the day," Black says. "When you ask him what's wrong, he says, 'I can't remember where my desk is.' Then later you find him peeing in the wastebasket because he can't remember where the rest room is. Now, (when) you've got (Gonzales) in front of Congress saying 'I can't remember' 64 times, that's just inept. If anyone in any job can't remember what they've done in the course of their work, you fire them. It's not a question of politics."

It's safe to assume that Black will bring his standard routine with him when he performs at the Silver Legacy on Sept. 15, but he may also have some special remarks in store for locals: He previously worked in town as part of the Catch a Rising Star showcase.

"That was way back, but I liked Reno because it's a little bit more relaxed and blue collar (than Las Vegas)," he says. "I will gamble on occasion, and the rate of rape on the table games seems a little slower there."

When asked if he has a favorite local casino, Black at first claims he's been away for too long to remember, but then suddenly comes up with an answer.

"What's the name of the casino that hired me?" he asks. "That's it. That's my favorite."

Get moving

Zack and Eric were moving out of their duplex in the old part of Reno, one to a yearlong caretaking gig in a house on the hill and the other to military service, so I inherited all the orphaned furniture I could safely carry and about 300 pounds more.

We borrowed a trailer some friends use to haul equipment for their lawn care business and started loading. We strategically tumbled love seats and book cases inside in ways we hoped would cause them to nestle together snugly enough to keep them from jumping ship at 50 mph somewhere on McCarran Boulevard. It was like a game of Tetris where the loser gets charged with vehicular manslaughter. There was also some discussion of whether the absence of a "pin" in the tow hitch on Eric's Bronco was cause for concern, but not being a truck guy, I trusted the group consensus that it was not a necessary component. It was only when we arrived back at the house some hours later and everyone seemed mildly surprised to see the trailer still attached that I began to wonder.

After an offloading process that left me fervently wishing I hadn't decided to take a break from lifting weights over the summer, the strangest thing happened. For the first time since I'd lived with my parents, my place looked more like a home and less like an uneasy alliance of rooms where roving gangs of drunks occasionally rolled up in rugs in the corners. To my untrained eye, it almost looked like the couch matched the carpet. Things seemed unusually squared away on the home front and it felt good. I took some vodka out of the freezer and mixed it up with 100 percent cranberry juice and tried out my new love seat for a while. So far, I have no complaints.

It's been a hard couple of months. After leaving the beach and a job where I was the (self-proclaimed) star reporter and chief smartass, I've found myself in a new job where I'm just another cog in a corporate business plan. The air in Reno has been hazy at best as brush fires rage on all sides, reminding me daily that I'll probably never again live anywhere like the beautiful seaside town I so blithely left behind.

Worst of all, no one at my new job seems to think I'm especially funny. I pitched a new blog for the paper's Web site, essentially a sanitized version of this one, and was all but laughed out of the room. Thank God the official rejection came over the phone several days later, and thank God the department head actually likes me.

Her: "OK, so this is just basically you being you. It's like a normal blog you'd come across on the Web. I'm not seeing a focus."

Me: "That's what I'm going for. That's why it's called "Mixtape." Everybody else here has these rigid categories they write about. I want to stay flexible. I want to do fun stuff one day and serious stuff the next. I know I can do it. See, I used to have this column..."

Her: "We're going to go ahead and pass on it. The people that do this sort of thing have spent years establishing a personality in the community."

Me: (Aside: Right, and now they're old writers who never leave their desks who only appeal to old readers who never leave their houses. That's why no one under 50 reads this paper. Why won't you guys just help ME help YOU?) "I see your point. But you let Jay start his blog when he was only a little older than me. And he just rewrites the top story on FARK for our site every few hours."

Her: "How do you know that?"

Me: "Um... Because I spend so much time... working on my assignments and only surfing the Internet on my lunch break?"

Outside the office, I've recently been carooming through a swamp of relationship drama so gnarly I still can't joke about it, which is beyond unusual for me. Generally, there's hardly anything about male-female relations that doesn't crack me the hell up. Whether I'm just hooking up or getting dumped flat on my ass, I always find it at least a little funny on some level. But this time, it's just shock and awe that I've lived through the thing. Maybe I'll have a quip next week. But for now, call me Tom Hanks, because I'm that unshaven guy washed up on an unknown shore with the wreckage, drained but happy to be alive.

But the thing is, I am alive, and turning 27 next week. And one of the few lessons I've retained in my old age is that sometimes "alive" is all you get. I used to complain and suffer whenever I lost a round, a job, a girl, a friend. I still don't like it. But, finally, I've seen enough to know that for every three months that toss me around like a ragdoll, there will be another three that go well. They might not be the next three, but they'll show up eventually, and the juice is usually worth the squeeze.

So I'm chalking summer 2007 up to experience. There's plenty of guys who hit a rough patch and never really recover, and for a while there it looked like I might be one of them. Now that it seems I'm not, I'm just keeping the other guy off me until the bell rings and I can stagger back to my newly refurbished corner. There's nothing broken that won't heal, no esteem lost that can't be regained and no one leaving that won't be back. And while the days are still muggy and harsh, sometimes at night there's the barest hint of a chill that reminds me that fall is on its way.

Stupefy!

You all should have listened.

Some of us have known this was coming for decades. We tried to tell you. We tried to show you. We grasped desperately at your shirtfronts and called you at home. We waved complex charts, carried arcane volumes and tried to point out the world-changing ideas buried in four-color computer images. But you just laughed and went about your lives. Boy, are you sorry now.

Some of you thought it was pretty funny back in the fourth grade when I wrote book reports on stories about elves battling ancient horrors in abandoned platinum mines, or demigod swordsmen embarking on epic quests to recover enchanted talismans from centaur warlords. While you were reading "Super Fudge" or some other condescending large-print paperback you saw on the front page of the class book order, I was in the local independent bookstore cornering the manager, demanding to know when he was going to get book 17 in the Magnamund saga featuring the Kai journeyman Lone Wolf. While you were learning that, while little brothers can be a pain, you should still love them, I was learning that Agarosh and his Giaks bore a striking resemblance to Ronald Reagan and the CIA.

Alas, I was never one of the true believers. I grew out of the fantasy genre when I was a junior in high school. I understand that for many fans, the love just fades away. Not for me. It was a conscious lifestyle choice, brought on like most of them by a girl.

My buddy Casey and I had recently met a couple of pretty underclassmen, among the first who had spent an extended amount of time around us on purpose. It was nice. One fall afternoon, when the girls were busy doing whatever it is sophomore girls do when they aren't flouting the McQueen High School dress code, we decided to walk down to the hobby shop to check out the newest issues of "X-Men" and the latest Dungeons & Dragons modules. We were about halfway there when we both stopped and looked at each other, and rather than addressing the scarcity of Mithril mail in Midgard, as was our custom, we began making sexist comments about one of the girls.

We both knew it was a turning point, that one hobby had to die so that the other could live. He made the transformation faster and more convincingly than I did, and so was eventually able to fool around with each of the girls. I was shut out entirely as I struggled to leave childish things behind. The experience was instructive. By the time summer arrived, I had started wearing a lot of band t-shirts and avoided any mention of anything fictional, lest anyone remember my days as a Dungeon Master. I started occasionally getting girls in late August and haven't stopped for any longer than I could possibly manage since.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the 21st century turned out to be the era of the fantasy geek. Consummate comic book nerd Sam Raimi and shockingly fat Tolkienphile Peter Jackson wound up making the biggest movies in history based on two characters I'd sworn never to acknowledge again: Spider-man and Frodo Baggins. Pop music ditched leather-clad rebels in favor of shrill kids in painfully close contact with their feelings and their little sisters' jeans. Man, I used to have the socially awkward kid with an eating disorder routine down. If I'd only stuck with it, I'd be James dean today.

Which brings us to Harry Potter. While I think the series is very good, I don't think it nearly lives up to its own hype. But I'm in absolute awe of the job J.K. Rowling has done at getting people to accept high fantasy as a legitimate art form. Generations of brilliant authors have spent their lives failing to get the common reader to so much as pick up a book with a dragon on the cover. Then in the space of a decade, a single mother from England suddenly has a quarter of the world's population talking about invisibility cloaks and psychic duels.

Good lord, people! Over the weekend, 72 million copies were sold worldwide of a book about a young wizard's search for a magic sword he needs to help him avenge the death of his parents at the hands of a dark mage! It doesn't get any more Dungeons & Dragons than that! You're all a bunch of freaking nerds! Rambling on about wizarding wars and cursed amulets got me picked last for dodgeball for 16 long years, and now the New York Times is seriously discussing the classic literary themes inherent in the struggle between the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix on the front page of the Arts section? I'm disgusted with the lot of you.

If you need me, I'll be sulking in my parents' basement while listening to My Chemical Romance, watching "Lord of the Rings," drinking soy milk and writing arhythmic poetry with suicidal overtones. None of you will ever truly understand my pain. But, ladies, you're welcome to come try.

Angora Fire photos

Hey guys,
I've beeen pretty busy lately, what with South Lake Tahoe almost burning down and the girl-related hillarity that has recently ensued, so I've been slow on the blogging. However, I'll be back soon. Meantime, check out my new photo album and, as always, search RGJ.com for my name if you're interested in the news stuff.

P.S. Yes, I'm listening to the new No Use disc before it's officially out. The band plays Saturday at Stoneys and my interview with Tony Sly will run in Calendar the day before. Buy the paper and your tickets now, slackers! Or, you know, read the story online and pirate the CD at your convenience. Whatever your conscience allows...

Disconnection notice

When someone calls you from the Washoe County Jail, the first thing you hear is a calm, computerized operator warning you that your conversation may be recorded. It's a lot like the one the phone company uses to inform you that the number you've dialed has been disconnected, if a little less human; a little less friendly. And it never says "we're sorry" or encourages you to have a nice day, because they aren't and you won't.
"I'm in some trouble," Elva said from what sounded like very far away. My humor reflex kicked in and I almost shot back, "Yeah, that's what the robot said," but I managed to stifle. If you need somebody to crack jokes in a crisis, Matt Farley's your man. It always makes me feel better and helps me focus, but I've heard rumors that some people don't feel the same way. I suspected that if I were sitting in an institutional waiting room while a jailer processed my information, I might be one of them.
"There's things I should've told you," she said, and then told me some of them. Most were things she'd previously alluded to, others I'd suspected and one caught me like a short left hook to the ribs, the kind of shot that makes your heart palpitate and your guard drop. For a second, my brain struggle to reconcile the new information with the old but couldn't. No matter which way I turned things, I couldn't make them all hang together. I decided to set them aside and await further developments. As with any story, I'd either piece together something resembling the truth later or I wouldn't, and asking a lot of stupid questions now wouldn't do any good.
The immediate point was that the version of Elva I knew and cared about, whichever carefully polished fragment of the whole girl she might have been, was locked up with the rest of her. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that at all. I've always had some white knight in me, and he wanted to storm the castle, battle the guards and make big promises. But another part of me, the guy who has been lied to by one coed too many, had no problem letting her fend for herself. They fought to a draw before I could speak.
"Well," I said after the robot turnkey announced that we had 30 seconds left before he broke the connection. "I'm really sorry things went this way. Maybe we can talk about it after you get things taken care of. But...I don't think I'm going to do this."
If you're ever feeling particularly good about yourself, try hanging up on someone you genuinely like who's just begun to cry inside a correctional facility. I guarantee your attitude will even out in a big hurry.
The thing that really bothers me, though, is how eager I was to overlook the truth. If the county hadn't gotten involved, I might never have figured things out. I consider myself to be pretty skeptical, but I never thought twice about the answer I got when I asked, "What did you you do today?" (If you said, "Meeting with my probation officer, Alex," you're today's winner.)
Even though it's scary to contemplate, most of our lives are still built on trust. We trust the bank not to lose our money. We trust drivers not to pop up onto the sidewalk or crash into our living rooms. We trust our friends not to do anything completely out of character. And when someone goes off the reservation and starts abusing trust, folks get violently angry, especially when the perpetrator escapes punishment. What most people don't talk about, though, is that sometimes when violators do get caught, we almost wish they'd gotten away with it.

Attorney generals don't make babies

Forced Perspective: Attorney generals don't make babies

I've been struggling for days with how best to break some appalling news to you all, but after much soul searching, I think the best way is to just come right out and say it. It's my sad duty to inform you that sometimes teenagers make bad decisions regarding sex.

We'll pause here to let the fainter of heart pick themselves up off the floor. I know this must come as a blow to my readers, who have of course never so much as considered going down that unwholesome road except with a lawfully wedded spouse, but my sources tell me its so. However, you may take some small comfort in the fact that the entire corrections system of the great state of Georgia is apparently as surprised as anyone to realize that teens might take an occasional tumble in the green grass behind the stadium.


According to the New York Times, Genarlow Wilson was a 17-year-old honors student when he fooled around with what turned out to be the wrong girl. I say "was" because he's spent the last two years in prison for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. My guess is when he finally gets out, which could be in 2015 under the grossly misapplied statute he was tried under, he won't be likely to pick up right where he left off. What he'll be likely to do is injure someone or stick up a 7-Eleven, at which point a judge will skim his record and think to himself, "Hmmm. Registered sex offender. Black kid with dreadlocks. Problem with authority. Back to the joint, kiddo."


Before that happens, it's only fair to look at the facts behind the aggravated child molestation charge. It seems that the encounter happened in 2003 at a New Year's Eve party near Atlanta. Wilson was videotaped engaged in the act with the alleged victim and also charged with having sex with another girl, who was 17 at the time. In that case, the prosecution contended that the girl was too inebriated to render consent, an allegation the jury eventually rejected.


No one has seen the video besides the jury, reporters and lawyers, but both teens are reportedly pretty drunk throughout. A rational judicial system might consider that evidence that all the unsupervised minors involved had voluntarily entered into a situation which, though they might later regret, was just one of those things that happens when you're young, attractive and stupid.
But of course, the Georgia legislature knew better. Because of the tape, Wilson went up the river under a newly strengthened law designed to target child molesters. As much as I'd like to, I can't blame the jury, because the law is the law, and photographic evidence doesn't leave much room for argument.


But I can blame the fools who wrote the law and every pandering jackass who voted for it. See, if Wilson had been taped having standard sex with a 15-year-old, he would only have been guilty of a misdemeanor. (That section of the law is called the "Romeo and Juliet" exemption, which shows you just how seriously these lawmaking tools take this matter. Whee! See how literate I can be when I talk about sex crimes?) The loophole was later closed, but the new measure was not made retroactive. So, Wilson was set up to do 10 years in federal prison for something that many teens do and all teenage boys wish constantly they could do.


On Monday, Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation) made a brief stand on behalf of the non-Puritains in America, calling the youth's detention "a grave miscarriage of justice" and ordering him freed immediately. But within hours, the state's attorney general, Thurbert Baker, filed an appeal that will keep Wilson in custody until "further guidance" is received from the trial court. So, basically, he's been teed up to be punted like the political football he's become and there's nothing a judge or jury can do about it.


Here's the thing. I have very strong suspicions that Wilson is not a good guy. It's been my experience that guys who have sex with more than one random minor at any single party are not moral people. He probably had a misdemeanor charge coming, if not for this than for something else he got away with.


But the girls who hook up with guys like this are not generally proper young ladies, either. And though I'm all for shielding victims of violent crimes from public ridicule, a tape exists of at least one of these girls, um, not being a victim. Not to be crude, but if the guy has to serve 10 years for an act that was literally performed upon him, I think it's only fair that the performer be forced to at least go on the record here.


Further, I'd sure like to know whose daughter the girl in question is and what her race is, because I have an inkling that at least one of those factors is driving this whole crazy machine. There are powerful people everywhere who'd rather not see their daughter on tape with any male, and I bet things get even more heated when we're talking about a potentially interracial couple in Georgia. The prosecutor has reportedly said that both females in the case are African-American, but no names have been released yet, and I think it's about time.


Finally, and I know there might be some hurt feelings about this, Wilson appears to have done exactly what every 17-year-old guy in America would do if he were able to. Speaking from experience, teenage boys think about sex a lot and will pretty much take it as it comes. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, but I am saying that any male prosecutor who characterizes a 17-year-old boy trying to get laid as a deviant is a damned hypocrite who should be disbarred. I bet a list of the names of court servants who checked out the video in question from evidence for "further review" and didn't return it for a few days would be pretty instructive.


In the end, all I know is that Wilson will probably spend much of the rest of his life behind bars, whereas Paris "DUI" Hilton and her ilk will be free to roam taxpayer-funded roads until they overdose and broadside an innocent driver on the 405. That's to say nothing of Wilson's "victim," who probably needs counseling if she was getting trashed and indiscriminately handing out party favors at the age of 15. It seems that the legal system goes through increasingly elaborate acrobatics to ignore the causes of problems (i.e. biological drives the kids were not prepared to deal with because their sex ed class was changed to abstinence-only before being cut altogether) and then put on a huge show of crucifying their products.


Personally, I'd like to see a show of hands in the courtroom from people who had no interest in getting naked when they were in high school. Then I'd lock everybody else in the judge's chambers with Wilson and his "victim" for an hourlong chat about how the world works outside of the AG's selfish little mind. And then I'd send everybody home to their families. Some people haven't seen them in a couple years.

Bump and grind

Most people think it was the epigrammatist (google it, I had to) Friedrich von Logau who wrote one of my favorite passages ever:
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.
I'm pretty sure that he was going for a "you reap what you sow" kind of vibe, but he also clearly knew that a good metaphor can have lots of meanings, maybe even some the guy who wrote it never saw coming.
The way I've always taken the von Logau passage is not just an observation that you should be nice to folks. I've always read it as a reminder that the conveyor belt is always on and it rolls faster than anyone can run.
It's not, however, a clever reminder that everyone dies. That diddy was played out even in von Logau's day in the 1600s. What a lot of great thinkers miss in their hurry to foretell on the inevitable death of the people that pushed them around in high school is that the ticking clock is as much a friend as an enemy.
Think of the nights you literally could not imagine how you were going to get up and function as a human the next morning. From getting too high to getting fired from a Fortune 500 company, everyone's crashed full speed into a wall they knew for sure was the end of the line, the thing that would stop them for good or at send them spiraling toward an anonymous end.
And yet, the mill ground on. You rolled out of bed at 3 p.m., ate some peanut butter straight from the jar and pulled yourself together enough to go buy some paper towels. You broke down sobbing and punched a hole in the sheet rock the moment you got back through the door, but still, you'd obtained an artifact from the world outside your grief and fear and that was enough to sustain you a few more hours.
Later, you came out of the haze long enough to halfheartedly hit the gym or meet up with friends. You briefly surfaced, thinking, Damn, I really used to like this kind of thing. Then your ex texted you or the bill from the funeral parlor came in the mail and the tide surged back, washing you back out to sea even as you fought. The uncaring mill went about its work.
Then some day you awoke to realize that you had a new job, new girlfriend or new house you had been taking for granted. Strangely, you didn't heave a sigh of relief and thank your god of choice for the opportunity to not be a wreck. You just shrugged and said, So. This is what it's like. This seems familiar somehow.
And that's how the mill works. It will grind sadness as soon as happiness. Skill and wisdom accrue like silty ore and pain and confusion wash gradually downstream. Age and guile are extracted from youth and inexperience at a rate so slow no one even notices until they exclaim, God, my back hurts. And where did all this gold come from?
•••
So long sweet summer/ I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays/ So long sweet summer/ I fell into you/ Now you're gracefully falling away

Dutch Bros. and expensive socks

New blog coming soon. In the meantime, Here's my (potentially) nationally syndicated story about alpacas.

And here's my story about Dutch Bros. moving to Carson City.

Less sex, more murder

It's a long one, guys, but I owed you 500 words or so anyway. I think it's worth it if you stick it out til the end.

The Motion Picture Association of America announced last week that it will now consider cigarette use when assigning ratings to films, noting that "depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating." If you're one of the hardy few who still take the MPAA seriously, now might be a good time to reassess your position.

For years, the group epitomized a lot of the problems with the "family values" crowd -- generally that they are more than happy to pass judgement on everything under the sun but get righteously indignant if folks start looking into their own families and values. In one breath, it's "Hey, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should have no problem with us checking out you out" and "How dare you drag my personal life into this?" the next.

The MPAA is among the worst offenders, because one of its major functions is literally to judge what is appropriate for America's children to see and hear. From mpaa.org: "The (Ratings) Board uses the same criteria as any parent making a judgment: theme, language, violence, nudity, sex and drug use are among content areas considered in the decision-making process."

I have several cheap shots permanently locked and loaded in case I ever meet a board member (The opening salvo would be "If you guys really have your finger on the pulse of the healthy American family, how come a third of you are divorced?), but I think it's more interesting to try to consider the group logically rather than immediately branding it offensive just because I don't agree with its vision.

Simply put, I think the board or someone in charge of them is stuck in the 1950s on every topic except smoking. Horrible violence can easily clear the board as long as there's no visible mammal blood ("Alien vs. Predator" and "Pearl Harbor" both pulled PG-13 ratings in theaters but went up to R when red gore was reintroduced on DVD), while relatively benign movies about sex or politics routinely get hammered ("Kung Fu Hustle, "American Pie" and most of Michael Moore's movies all got Rs, and "An Inconvenient Truth" got a PG for "thematic elements.")

That's hardly news, however. Many people, including movie critics Roger Ebert and David Ansen, have argued that the system appears to be run by homicidal nationalist prudes. Ansen claims the rating system is geared toward looking at trivial aspects of movies (he has repeatedly noted that the board tracks how many times and in what context certain expletives are used; for instance, the f-word can be used up to three times as an exclamation in a PG-13 movie but never as a verb) rather than at the general theme of the picture (for example, if realistic consequences of violence or substance abuse are shown). I agree, and my favorite example was when the MPAA rejected a trailer for "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" that showed a dog licking a wine bottle on the grounds that it "promoted underage drinking." In all fairness, though, there's no way that dog was 21.

But lately, things have been getting downright surreal. The board famously took issue with the (relatively tame) orgy scene in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," demanding that some of the actors' special areas be digitally obscured before they would even give the thing an R. Meanwhile, Kubrick's earlier feature "A Clockwork Orange," which contains perhaps the only graphic rape scene in all of cinema to be considered high art, also pulled an R with 30 seconds worth of edits -- most of them to a depiction of consensual sex and none of them to the rape sequence. What's the message here? That a bunch of folks enjoying non-missionary sex is just as offensive as gang rape? That's not a leap I'm prepared to make just yet.

What ties it all up for me, though, was the movie "The Descent," which I saw for the first time last week. It was a great movie, maybe one of my top 25 ever, but that doesn't mean I ever want to watch it again. In case you're not familiar with it, it's the story of a group of six Gen X women who go caving in the Appalachians and run into some serious trouble in the form of cave monsters and unresolved personal issues. By the end of the movie, you're a lot more afraid of some of the women than you are of the carnivorous freaks, all of whom seem to be male. Call it the ultimate chick flick.

On top of the fact that it's well-filmed, well-acted and well-choreographed, I liked it because it was deep as hell and "the descent" into the bowels of the earth parallels one woman's character arc. When did you last see a big-time movie with actual character development? This one's a winner and you should check it out.

Still, it's harrowing throughout and depressing in some of the conclusions it draws about human nature. Major characters die slow and hard, and keep coming back, not as zombies you can hate, but as real people bleeding out from horrible injuries, regretting their life's mistakes all the way. It's hard to watch and the movie deserved its R rating. Still, the message is well worth the arduous trip.

But you can feel the MPAA's hot, reptilian breath all over this masterpiece. In a film where the combat is scary realistic, where people actually fall down when struggling in slick conditions and the untrained do not fight at all like like Bruce Lee, where everyone and their mom is wielding a blade or a set of claws, no article of clothing is ever torn, because a pretty lady showing too much skin might send the wrong message. Several other scenes are as careful to show naked women only from the neck up as later scenes are to show their entire bodies as they are disemboweled.

Even when one character tumbles into a giant pool of blood and has a total epiphany and it would be absolutely appropriate to have her emerge freaked out and naked, in both the psychological and literal sense, she splashes out wearing only a Sigourney Weaver grimace. I can only assume that the MPAA was afraid that someone might get a jolly or two if she realistically shucked off her disgusting top layer of clothing before soldiering on. But I think I speak for most guys when I say that it's hard for me to get too fired up about a blood-soaked woman when I've just seen several of her friends devoured by shrieking trolls.

What the MPAA needs to realize is that the average person has a much greater chance of seeing a member of the opposite sex naked than they do of seeing someone shot through the heart or punched in the face, and so they're protecting us from the wrong things. I am by no means a fan of smoking, but I see it for what it is: a self-destructive personal choice not unlike heavy drinking, excessive film watching or moral crusading. If seeing a person smoke in a movie is the worst thing a kid sees this week, I count him lucky. He could be watching the news, for God's sake.

Gotta have Faith

If you listen to Fair Game with Faith Salie on NPR, check out the May 8 edition, about 20 percent (6:30) into the show. They parody the article I wrote for the Carson Times about firefighting sheep. She may not be the first attractive woman to bust my chops in public, but she's the only one I'm aware of who has a national audience. Next stop: Ann Coulter.

Elvis Costello review

Two religious experiences to discuss this morning:

1. Check out my Elvis Costello review here and

2. If Dennis "They're after me Lucky Charms" Kucinich isn't in your MySpace top 8, you ain't really livin'.

Say it like you mean it

Call it a quirk. Call it a flaw. Call it a psychological anomaly positively crying out for professional attention. But I think it's hot when a girl busts my chops in a less-than-serious way.
For the women who just threw their arms in the air and took a victory lap of the living room (if, indeed, girls do take victory laps — I've never seen it happen, but I've heard the stories), telling a guy to take out the trash does not count as flirting. It's just mean. In fact, ladies, if you make a series of negative statements to most guys and the anger you're expressing is more than 30 percent genuine, you're no longer having a discussion. You're having an argument, and it either ends with you crying or us standing there quietly for 20 seconds looking like we've been slapped before saying, "whatever" and going to play some more X-box. Opinions differ about who's more mature at that point.
But that's not what I'm talking about. The other morning, I staggered into an unfamiliar coffee shop on my way to work, in spite of the fact that I was half-awake and running late. I had on my green shirt that makes me look like Leonardo DiCaprio (I wasn't the one who decided he was attractive, but I will totally ride his overrated coattails) and my hair was either cowlicked or artfully tousled, depending on your perspective. Amid a great gnashing of utensils and slamming of microwaves, the coffee girl emerged from the back room and said, "What can I get you?"
"Uhh..." I said, trying to discern the difference between a Northwest Sunrise and a Southwest Omelette. It seemed to have something to do with capers.
"We're all out of 'uhh,'" she said, smirking. "We have bagels, though."
It was early, so it took me a couple seconds to catch up. I usually don't have to be charming before 11 a.m. Slowly, my brain engaged.
"Too bad. I was looking for more of a scone," I pouted. "You'll make me one from scratch, right?"
"Absolutely," she said, fiddling with the neck of her second-hand t-shirt. "I'll tell the baker. Oh, wait, that's me. No, we won't. The baker says pick something from the menu, sweetie." She gave me a big smile and turned around and started refilling the pastry case.
It was on now. I was so money and I totally knew it. She looked back at me over her shoulder and the tension was palpable to at least one of us. I inhaled to speak again and a family of eight burst into the narrow shop, bickering about onion bagels and whether the middle daughter had actually enjoyed the lox she'd ordered last time they'd stopped by. The matriarch stomped up to the counter, her nose perhaps 18 inches from a bold-printed list of bagel varieties, and announced, "So, what kind of bagels do you have here?"
If looks could kill, it would have been the St. Valentine's Day Massacre all over again, with Matt Farley standing in for the gunman. T-shirt Girl's much more generously proportioned coworker helpfully arrived to take my order, which I took to go.
Later, on the way back from an interview, I stopped off at a cafe in an allegedly hip new district of Gardnerville for a snack. (Reporters need to stop for lots of snacks, you see, otherwise we might make it back to the office before closing and be forced to write something.) I walked up to the counter and one of the two college-age girls behind it said, "Oh my god, you guys are totally wearing the same shirt! That's so hot!"
I looked over at her associate, who was indeed wearing a handsome green shirt, although she didn't look much like Leo as far as I could tell. She made eye contact and said, "Yeah, but I think mine's cuter."
Three thoughts immediately sprang to mind:
1. Note to self: Wear this shirt more often.
2. Look away from the nice girl's enormous Hot Topic belt buckle, Farl. C'mon. You can do it. Act like you've been there before.
3. What were these college-age girls doing 35 miles from the nearest community college on a Wednesday afternoon? Maybe I wasn't playing the varsity squad here, so to speak.
What I said was, "That is a nice shirt. Did you get it new?"
Two things happened at once. The first girl started laughing and Green Shirt Girl looked terribly offended. The problem with ironic game is that people who are too stupid to understand irony take it seriously and feel bad. As I watched my chances for a color-coordinated relationship do a convincing impression of the Hindenburg, I asked the first girl, "That was pretty funny, right?"
"Yeah," she said. "I should probably be the one to help you now, though. What can I do for you?"
A thousand comebacks raced through my head. Maybe more. But all I said was, "Coffee and a brownie, please."
As the saying goes, you can't entertain all the people all the time, but you can entertain yourself all the time. Or something. I forget the exact phrasing. All I remember is that if you take yourself too seriously, someone is bound to see through you eventually.

Doomed to repeat it

I've got a t-shirt for the band NOFX that is disrespectful to the president of the United States. That might not sound very impressive to you now that his entire cabinet is going to jail and most people have discovered that he is not in fact Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one condescending package, but in a primitive time I like to call 2003, things were quite different.
That shirt nearly got me hit at least a dozen times. A lot of folks made the leap from mocking George Bush to hating the troops a lot quicker than I did, and frequently announced their conclusions to me loudly and in public. Never mind that I disliked Bush because I liked the troops, and never mind that a lot of the fraternity guys didn't know anyone who was actually getting blown up so Exxon stock could catch a half-point bump. They knew the score and were prepared to flatback me like we were at a high school football game. Which we weren't, because I never played and they'd put on 30 pounds of Coors Light weight since the last time they'd practiced.
Once I wore the shirt to a rugby club party. I knew several people who played and knew that they prided themselves on breaking rules and sticking it to the man, which was why they played a contact sport at the club level, where the university couldn't effectively bust them for vandalism or pre-game drinking. I foolishly thought that meant that the whole club would be inclined to agree with me, or at least be interesting to argue politics with after a series of beers.
Wrong. I'd disregarded the first rule of guys in groups, which is that there's always some ignorant jackass looking for a fight. I was talking to a girl I knew and messing around with a pair of those juggling sticks you see at Renaissance fairs when a big guy with a bad haircut walked up and made a show of squinting at my shirt, like he couldn't quite read it.
"You gotta problem with your commander-in-chief?" he said. He let some chewing tobacco run out of his mouth into a red plastic cup in his left hand and took a quick pop from the one in his left, his eyes never leaving me. "Not sure I like that."
"I'm sorry," I said, still juggling.
"Not sure I like that at all," he said. "What's your problem?'
"I'm not a fan of the whole Iraq thing. I think it's happening for the wrong reasons and I'm worried about my buddies over there. Also, I'm a liberal." I gave him a smile after that. No hard feelings, buddy.
But there were. I let the middle stick drop and looked at him. There's a misconception some places that Nevadans are not large folks. Visitors to Las Vegas believe that this is because everyone has had cosmetic surgery, while visitors to other parts of the state tend to attribute it to meth. At maybe six-three and 250, this guy was no meth head, and if he'd ever had work done he was desperately due for a refresher.
"You think that's cool?" he said. "What do your parents do? Did you grow up poor?"
If I hadn't made the same argument myself, I never would have followed. As it was, I figured he was questioning my punkness because I clearly was well nourished and not high. Unfortunately for him, I've never claimed to be a punk rocker, and yet I was still able to call George Bush a fascist with no ill effects. I explained this to him, using small words so he'd be able to understand. That might not have been a prudent decision.
"You...you need to get out of my house," he said. The girl I'd been talking to had faded into the surrounding crowd like an undercover cop. So much for loyalty. "Why do you hate America?"
"This is your house?" I said. "If you're asking me to go, I'll leave. Let me grab my friends."
He gave me an expression that seemed to be somewhere between pained at my treason and confused by my stupidity. "No, it's not my house. It's just... Dude, I'll mess you up!"
I considered my options. I had two juggling batons, each about an inch thick and 36 inches long. Ego aside, I'd spent a significant amount of time learning how to hurt people with instruments just such as these and was pretty sure that if I cut loose, he'd wake up under the distinct impression that someone had dropped an atom bomb on his head and wouldn't be able to testify regarding my involvement in the incident. But rugby guys roll deep, and if it was game on with Lurch, it was going to be game on with at least six more guys, and I wasn't keen on getting ratpacked. I tucked the sticks back into my forearms and said, "No problem. We're going."
And so I got run out of a house party in northwest Reno. Half my crew stayed behind, and those are the people I rarely speak to these days. As soon as I dropped the sticks and we piled into my Tercel, the jeering started. Who dared question the president in These Dire Times? If you weren't in favor of the Patriot Act, you could just... uh... move to Canada! Yeah, that would teach you! Never mind that Vancouver is the single greatest place you've ever been, full of blazing hot 19-year-old brunettes and amateur models of both sexes with realistic dispositions regarding marijuana use. You must suffer for not being a complete tool!
Here's my point: What I'm saying is satire now but it wasn't always. According to public opinion polls, a full 85 percent of you hated my ass as of 9/12/01. Let's remember this little inconvenience. People who try to erode our civil rights by frightening us are terrorist bastards, unless they give said scare tactics a catchy name, such as "The War on Terrorism," in which case they get Bronze Stars, while the war heroes I drink with get limited health benefits and meaningless Purple Hearts for saving these pencil-necked desk jockeys from the consequences of their own inept actions.
If you're still not clear on my alleged "point," it's this: If you've never seen an IED, even if your name is George W. Bush or Harry V. Reid, it's time for you to shut up and let the grown-ups work out this Iraq situation. Yeah, we all have ideas, but somehow they start to get a little more focused when firey destruction is a distinct possibility.
Some people might say that my views are Spartan because military minds get bonus points. My response is: You nailed it. If you wanted to live in peacetime, you should have voted the other way in 2004. Wake me up when we've stopped invading sovereign nations and I'll hit you with some Democrat ideals. Until then, suck it up and watch my Haliburton stock flourish.

Professional courtesy

How appropriate that on the day the Columbia School of Journalism handed out its latest round of Pulitzer Prizes, a team of complete amateurs upstaged the winners with a series of masterful, heartbreaking works written under hellish conditions, tremendous pressure and seriously abbreviated deadlines.

If you haven't yet read every last word posted on collegiatetimes.com, the Web site of the Virginia Tech newspaper, since the shooting on Monday, I have something to tell you that I don't think I've ever told anyone before: Stop paying attention to me and go check it out. If you're not absolutely humbled by what these kids did while their world was unraveling around them, you're a stronger man than I am.

And yes, I said kids. As you're reading through the site, remember that this is not Wolf Blitzer speaking. It's people substantially younger than me; some substantially younger than my little sister. They are writing the story of the damned decade as it is happening with only rudimentary training. Any newspaper editor worth his salt wouldn't let these guys pour his morning coffee, and yet here they are risking life and limb in a red-hot breaking news situation to find out exactly what the hell is going on and why the powers that be aren't talking. Time was, college kids weren't the only journalists who did that sort of thing. Look at the times the articles were posted. The CT staff was on this story minute-to-minute. I was sitting in front of The Wire as a lot of this was coming out, and I'm pretty confident that the CT kicked The Associated Press' ass on this. For those of you not up on the reporting gossip, let me fill you in: One night in 1932, Mahatma Gandhi was released from an Indian prison just after midnight so his captors could avoid media attention. Ghandi was taken to a remote railroad station where darkness obscured his identity and cut loose.From the shadows emerged Jim Mills, an Associated Press reporter. This led Ghandi (whom I didn't know was funny) to quip, "I suppose when I go to the Hereafter and stand at the Golden Gate, the first person I shall meet will be a correspondent of The Associated Press." The AP does not get scooped. Ever.

Until now. Imagine yourself at, say, 19, breaking out the old laptop to post the following Web update about your own school: "At this time, University Relations is reporting one individual in custody and is searching for a second shooter. The Collegiate Times will publish information as it is made available...Due to serious wind, helicopters cannot be used to transfer the injured. According to the police scanner, ambulances are being used to transport the victims to Montgomery Regional Hospital."

Let me tell you something you might not know about the police scanner: There are few experiences as unsettling as hearing a police officer break down on the air because he cannot deal with what he is seeing at the scene of an emergency — and I guarantee at least one cop lost it during the VT shootings. How could you not crack? I've seen it happen in person and heard it over the scanner, and it was much uglier over the radio. All the static and clipped transmissions make the hair on the back of your neck stand up because you can't tell if the officer is crying or being attacked or what. Now imagine listening to that while you know there's a killer on the loose within a mile of you. And, oh yeah, your boyfriend's missing and not picking up his cell phone. Got that feeling? Good, now write a balanced news story within an hour. I just can't say enough about the bravery and composure of the CT staff.

And they're still plugging away. By Tuesday they had posted exhaustive reports ranging from victim interviews to security videos to a piece on President Bush's speech. No lie, I'm checking their site instead of CNN.com for my updates now. I think it's wholly appropriate for Columbia or another entity to recognize these guys for reporting from inside a disaster, just as the New York Times reporters were recognized for their work on 9/11. Oh, and if this doesn't count as workplace experience, the university needs to lose its accreditation.

Because here's how I see it: Real journalism isn't about having a marketable message. It's not about selling ads or going to city council meetings or identifying unique voices in the community. It's not even about having a pithy comeback for what the Republicans said this week in a press conference. In real life, it goes a little something like this: "Man, we don't know what's going on over there, but it's not good. The cops are on the way and, here, you can borrow my camera. We're live in half an hour. Go."

The Association of Ripping Matt Off

For those of you that care, The Associated Press picked up a substantially less funny version of my article about the sheep on C Hill in Carson City. I get absolutely nothing out of it, since about 90-95 percent of reprints won't even have my name on them, but then CBS radio news picked up the APs bastardized version of my piece. The radio version will probably not carry my name in any market, but if you are anywhere in the world reading a story about sheep being used for fire prevention in Carson, you are probably reading my copy, which is pretty cool. It almost feels like I'm a real reporter...

A one-sided relationship

My boss brought her parrot to work the other day and let it clamber around on her shoulders while she sat at her desk and designed pages. Charlie was a good-sized blue and green tropical bird, with serious talons and flat black eyes like greased ball bearings that had a disconcerting tendency to follow me around the office like a Da Vinci painting. Actually, in a personality contest, I think I'd give the painting the edge.
Every few minutes, something would happen to arouse Charlie's concern. He'd begin clucking nervously in the back of his birdy throat and start sidestepping back and forth along my boss' back while flexing his beak open and closed. He'd start fiddling with my boss' hair, pleading with her for reassurance, but busy as she was, none was forthcoming, which would lead Charlie to suspect that perhaps she was out to get him as well.
After a few minutes, someone would reach for a stapler or stand up to use the bathroom, suddenly confirming Charlie's worst fears and causing all hell to break loose near the front of the editorial department. Charlie would start shrieking "Hello? Hello?" and "Num-nums!" at the top of his range while beating my boss about the ears with both wings, only to realize as though for the first time in his 30 years of life that they had been clipped when he was a hatchling. This only unsettled him further, and he could only be calmed down by everyone holding very still and avoiding eye contact while my boss soothed him. Then the air conditioner would kick on or someone elsewhere in the building would slam a door and the horror show would begin anew. After the third iteration, I was amazed that his tiny heart could bear the strain.
I've never understood the bird thing. I don't know what the owners get out of it. I know people who've fed, housed, trained and loved their birds for decades and the ungrateful little bastards still draw blood twice a month. When I leap back and ask what went wrong, the bird mommies and daddies shake their heads and say, "Nothing. He just does that sometimes." Imagine if a person had a dog that suffered unexplained bouts of homicidal rage every few weeks. After the second time, it would be off to the pound. But just because domestic birds don't have the capacity to kill people, folks overlook the fact that they still give it a try all the time. You know another pint-sized maniac whom everyone underestimated because of his flamboyant coloring and odd coiffure? Napoleon. If domestic birds weren't so astonishingly stupid, I'd almost be expecting a Hitchcock-style revolution.
Unlike most people, I didn't find "The Birds" to be a chilling, believable film about nature finally turning on man after years of subversion and abuse. I thought it was pure goofy fantasy. See, I can totally buy wild animals deciding they're sick of our nonsense and trying to take humans down a peg -- we've had that coming for years. My problem was that the pet birds in the movie seem to realize there's a jailbreak on and quickly join the battle against people. Any domestic bird I've ever seen would have just said "Pretty bird!" and flown into the wall as soon as something unexpected happened, which would totally ruin the wild raptors' carefully laid plans.
To be honest, I consider pet birds to be about as lovable as Venus flytraps or tarantulas. Yeah, they'll eat if you put food in their range, and on some level they probably enjoy it. But the rest of the time they just hang out in their absurdly expensive enclosures and make me nervous. The only reason they don't attack their owners all the time is that they're dimly aware that the owners provide food and water. But their attention span is only about 10 seconds long, so sometimes they forget and start biting anyway.
As far as pets are concerned, I'm far from a cynic. Sometimes I go to my parents' house with the express purpose of hanging out with the cat, and I've caught myself using baby talk with the dog far more times than I'm comfortable with. When I was little, I'd cry when my guppies died and my dad had to fish them out of the tank with a casserole spoon and dump them in the toilet. I'm pretty softhearted about animals.
But I also recognize that if I didn't see my cat for a year, there's a pretty good chance he'd forget who I was and, somehow, life would go on. The thing about, say, parrots is that they treat you like crap even when they remember who you are and you're still stuck with them for 50 years. Buying a young bird is like marrying Paris Hilton. Anybody that can make such a huge commitment to such a nasty little animal deserves equal measures of respect and pity, but he better not expect me to drop in for dinner any time soon.
•••
Where'd you go last night? I never heard you leaving. Woke up in such a fright when I could no longer feel you breathing. I could smell the rain from the storm blowing in. And I looked outside where your car should have been. Just a street light's glare on an empty street as the rain came down in a twisted sheet.

Piano rock and Wal-Mart bananas

Finally, my place is beginning to look like I'd want to hang out with the person who lives there. Outside the running gag that is the Santa Cruz County housing scene, I can suddenly afford multiple rooms and furniture to fill them. I even bought a throw rug the other day. All of this is a unique experience for me. If you didn't know already, newspaper folks ain't in it for the money. Fame, maybe. Social approval, more than likely. But never cash. I'd be richer if I'd started hanging drywall in junior high. Even so, my second-hand futon and I are going to change the world.
I actually had to drive back to Santa Cruz last weekend to tie off some loose ends, several of which steadfastly refuse to be tied. I relearned a pair of major life lessons within the span of 24 hours: Rental agreements are legally binding, and people don't have to like everyone they kiss. Some of them they may downright loathe.
I was also exposed to a genre of music I have so far done my best to deny the existence of --- piano rock. I don't mean Elton John or Yes, both of whom could have staked claims on that name decades ago but wisely avoided it. I mean the new crop of moody popsters who equate tickling the proverbial ivories with emotional complexity and unrequited love. Don't get me wrong; my musical skills are pretty much limited to the easy part of "Chopsticks" and the backing vocals on a few songs that went out of style in the late '90s ("If you want to destroy my sweater *whoa whoa whoa* Pull this thread as I walk away"). I'm in total awe of anybody that can do anything at all on key. But just because an unimaginative pop single has a neat piano riff in the bridge doesn't mean it's not an unimaginative pop song, you know? Stop buying the album already. Also: Back in the day, rock 'n' roll didn't generally make you want to hang yourself. If you go back to the term's literal meaning, it was supposed to make you want to do something entirely different that, ahem, required help. Enough with the sad bastard music, unless it's a band I like.
Anyway, I visited my local Wal-Mart out of desperation the other night and found myself leaving with nearly $200 worth of stuff. I can almost justify the computer desk and the microwave, but I'm having trouble with the groceries. If any soulless retailer is up to its neck in the illegal coffee and produce trades, you just know it's Wal-Mart. There's no doubt in my mind that the spinach now in my refrigerator was picked in the diminishing tropical spinach groves of Nicaragua by malnourished Cambodian sweatshop workers whose ancestors considered that land sacred. I can barely choke it down (although a nice mustard vinagarette helps) and I can practically hear the Chiquita Banana overlords cackling as I peel their nefarious product and slice ity over my slave-labor cereal. But where else was I supposed to get cheap produce at 11 p.m. on a Sunday? On the other hand, if you can justify giving your money to Wal-Mart, you can pretty much justify anything short of violent crime.
Overall, this week was an experience in being an Average American. I found my emotional needs only marginally fulfilled, my diet unremarkable and my entertainment only somewhat diverting. Was I miserable? Far from it. Only vaguely displeased. But that can still wear a guy down in a hurry.
However, in true American fashion, I've made a new start in a new place and the possibilities yawn before me. There are many worse things to be than a promising young up-and-comer with romantic prospects, however unlikely, and that's something I think about every day. Things can only improve from here, and here's actually pretty nice. If only folks would ease up on the Coldplay...

Rule No. 1: Never, never touch the bedspread

Boy, am I tired of sleeping in hotel rooms. My new job was kind enough to set me up with a room until I get my own place, and I've certainly slept in worse places (see: three years of college housing; the Blue Diamond motel outside Las Vegas) but the Four Seasons this ain't. The boxed life is beginning to wear thinner than that odd burned patch on the curtains.
I've settled into as much of a routine as I can manage, though. I've mostly stopped flipping the wrong switch and plunging myself into darkness as I get out of the shower. I've established three separate but equal piles for clean clothes, dirty ones and those of indeterminate status. (Don't judge me too harshly, ladies. I've been around enough to know what the hotel room of a woman on vacation looks like. At least I have the sense to put my stuff on the floor so I can see the TV.)
There are approximately 700 Japanese exchange students staying downstairs from me. Most days at least one group of girls smiles at me when I come home from work and then giggle like maniacs as soon as my door closes. Based on previous experience, it's not likely that word of the cute American boy has made it to all of them and that several of them are on their way up right now, but that's what I chose to believe. Rather than, say, that this haircut isn't as stylish as I was led to believe.
I have a king-sized bed, which I like pretty well now that I've stripped the horrible bedspread off and burned it in the corner. There was some unpleasantness early on when I sat on it after a shower and recalled quite vividly that they only wash those things about twice a year, if ever, and I truly believe that I could have squatted a Buick in my haste to stand up. All that's in the past, though, so long as I can convince the management that either I or the foul afghan had to die, and I'm the one with the expense account.
The bed is wide with three pillows and there's a lot of space on each side of me. Sometimes when I come halfway awake in the early morning it seems like I ought to have company and I'm mildly disappointed when I discover that I don't. I always do that; it seems to have something to do with coming to in a strange bed.
On the bright side, I and I alone command the thermostat, and if I want to turn on the air conditioner so I can burrow into my remaining blankets and doze off in frosty style, then by God that is what I'll do. It feels like burning 100-dollar bills in the fireplace after paying for power in California for two years.

Is it Vietnam yet?

I'm still on the move, folks, so I've got to make this a short one. I was just wondering if it was just me, or if the whole Walter Reed scandal was somehow both the most shocking and the most "Yeah, it figures" moment of the entire War on an Abstract Concept. It seems like only yesterday that the Dems were desperately defending themselves against charges they didn't support the troops, and any answer other than "Yes, sir, I fully support the troops and the commander in chief, no matter what he does" was a treasonous repsonse. Now, it's apparently acceptable for the White House to respond to accusations that they should have known Halliburton would screw over the troops just like they've screwn over everyone else with a hearty "Mistakes were made, and besides, how can you respect a bunch of guys with no legs?"
(For those of you who are wondering what Halliburton has to do with this, if you go far enough up the chain, they ran the company that was contracted to operate Walter Reed. No conspiracy theories here, just google it. I know it's hard to believe that Bush would give them a no-bid contract to do a half-assed job, but there you go.)
And, for the record, I would like to fight Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. No joke, I would box that guy right now in the parking lot. Following the pattern likely of his own career, Bush has flat-out handed Gonzalez nearly every promotion of his adult life. Now that he's in trouble for dismissing eight federal judges that didn't agree with the president and installing ones that did, his response is to smile indulgently at the press corps and tell them it's none of their business. Like true professionals, they quote him saying nothing, file their stories and wander off to the bar.
Next, I want Harry Reid to stop wringing his hands and do something. I met him once years ago, and was almost in awe. I thought he was going to be president one day. Now he just bickers with second-tier FOX News hacks and gets easily offended. Mr. Reid, as I fellow Nevadan, I humbly submit the following advice: Just challenge Dick Cheney to a duel already and watch the people rally behind you. You could totally take that guy.
Finally, I'd just like to remind everyone: Some adorable child lost her dad in Iraq today, gas prices are nearly as high as they were before the election (completely unrelated, I'm sure) and Bush is hellbent on starting at least one more of these things before he leaves office. Sorry to go out on a somber note, but it seems like some people still haven't caught on: The current state of affairs is not a terrible accident. It is exactly what a small percentage of powerful people want and they will keep doing it as long as they can because it benefits them. Dial that concept in now or repent for generations.

Departures and arrivals

"Now here's what I don't get about you," the fallen angel Loki says to his partner, Bartleby, as they walk through the Wisconsin airport in the film "Dogma." "Why do you feel the need to come here all the time?"

The angels watch a reunited family share a group hug.

"I like to watch," Bartleby says after a minute. "This is humanity at its best. Look at them. All that tension, all that anger and mistrust, forgotten for one perfect moment when they come off that plane."

He gestures to a young couple as they rush toward each other and begin making out feverishly. "See those two? The guy doesn't even know that the girl cheated on him while he was away."

Loki looks shocked. "She did?"

"Uh-huh," Bartleby says, nodding sagely. "Twice. But it doesn't matter at this moment because they're both so relieved to be with one another. I like that. I just wish they could all feel that way more often."

Ever since I saw that movie, I keep my eyes open when I fly and I'll be darned if "Dogma" writer Kevin Smith wasn't on to something. For every hundred people you see obliviously talking on their cell phones while the ticket line backs up behind them, you hear one toddler shriek happily when he spots his father in the waiting area. For every florid security guard that apparently wants intimate knowledge of the entire contents of your toilet kit, you see a couple of highschoolers in the eye of a swirling mass of travelers, speaking softly with their faces very close together, and you think to yourself, "Damn, those crazy kids just might make it."

Of course, that toddler’s going to be getting yelled at for pulling his sister’s hair within the hour, but this is one of those things it just doesn't pay to get too philosophical about. People are not very well equipped to appreciate most things until they've seen them stripped away, but at least that’s something, you know?

I came to understand all this in the John Wayne International Airport. I was waiting out a layover at one of those depressing airport bars where travelers go to drown the desire to hunt down the pencil neck back at Homeland Security who decided to make toothpaste a controlled substance.

I was flying alone, which I do a lot. I ordered a Heineken, the least of only about six evils in the woefully understocked bar, and watched people. I saw the standard families, the bickering couple and a sweaty guy not too much older than me working through a row of whiskey sours; the knot of his tie off center and sitting a few inches lower than it should have. I was guessing the job interview hadn’t gone so well.

I wondered what I looked like. I’m the type of person who strangers address as “sir” one moment and “sweetie” the next with no discernible pattern. Sitting at the bar in a t-shirt while I drank beer from the bottle, I almost certainly looked like a college kid with a good fake ID. But if I shaved and unpacked my nice shirt and used my reporter voice, I could probably convince everyone I was on assignment for Rolling Stone, or at least the local paper. It was nice to have options, even if I didn’t use all of them.

Airports are cool because they are the only real crossroads that remain in this country. Remember that “Three Stooges” episode where there’s a hallway full of doors and Larry chases Curley through one at the end of the hall and comes bursting out of one on the other side of the hall all by himself? Airports are just like that hall. You could, in theory, go through any one of those doors whenever you wanted and who knows where you’d come out.

And that sounds like my final boarding call. Thanks to everyone who has read my work here over the past two years and to everyone at the R-P and elsewhere who helped me scrabble my way from copy editor to general reporter extraordinaire. This column will henceforth be available only at http://mattfarleysforcedperspective.blogspot.com (notice that there is no “www” in the address). The site is already up and running and new stuff will go up every Thursday, just like the old days. If you’re like me, you’ve already forgotten the address, so you should probably bookmark it right now before someone throws the paper away and you lose it forever. See you there.

•••

So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you'll wait for me. Hold me like you'll never let me go. 'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane. I don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go.

To Register-Pajaronian readers

Hey folks,
Welcome to my new page. I'm a complete amateur at web design, so this is about as pretty as things are ever going to get, but I still think it's nicer than the R-P's. I do know how to add pictures and things, so if I want, I can illustrate my points with pictures of Dick Cheney looking like the living embodiment of all that is unholy or Sen. Clinton looking unelectable, both of which are becoming increasingly common.
My plan is to get back to the Thursday schedule as soon as possible, plus whatever thoughts happen to cross my mind the rest of the week. I'm going to be moving around a lot for the next two weeks, though, so please stick with me at least that long. Also, be sure to keep visiting the The R-P's site. In spite of my slightly rocky departure, many of the folks over there are among my favorites in the world. Thanks for making the leap,
Matt

The day the mirth stood still

In case you missed it, traffic to this ATHF column from a link (which my friend Stephanie, who is awesome, posted) on FARK.com crashed register-pajaronian.com a little while ago. I somehow briefly wound up on the front page of FARK and scored 24,000 hits, which is more than the R-P normally gets in a month. Relive my glory here.


Remember the days when Boston was the nation's hotspot for godless liberals and unrepentant homosexuals? Boy, I sure do. Before Nancy Pelosi burst on the national scene with her infamous San Francisco Values (a FOX News term that refers to a preference for clean air and tolerance of people who aren't white Christians), Massachusetts was big stuff for being the only state in the union to allow gay marriage and generally known for its anti-Bush politics, large senators and damn fine clam chowder.

It goes without saying that all that's over after 1/31, or as I like to call it, the Mooninite Invasion. That was the tragic day when authorities in Boston noticed some blinking signs that had been posted in their fair city and lost their mother loving minds about it. Sure, now we know that the signs depicted characters from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a program from Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and the subject of a forthcoming movie starring talking food. But how could officials have known that at the time they belatedly discovered the signs that it was all a joke? Aside from, you know, asking anyone under 35, since the show has an enormous youth following.

The ad campaign targeted 10 cities across America, including San Francisco and New York. It failed to cause a stir elsewhere, but Boston police made up for the national calm by immediately crying Al Qaida.

"Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City," Boston police Commissioner Edward Davis told The Associated Press. "The city clearly did not overreact. Had we taken any other steps, we would have been endangering the public."

Funny how cops in New York, where terrorist attacks have actually happened, managed to maintain public order in the face of cartoon characters giving the finger. Conversely, the police response to blinking lights in the Boston area caused a mass panic and cost Massachusetts taxpayers something on the order of $1 million.

Overall, officials found some 36 signs around town. Though none of them were found to posses the capacity to injure a person, city bureaucrats have still done their best to tie the campaign to terrorism.

According to the AP, Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards "bomb-like" devices and said that, if they had been explosives, they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city. Later, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley noted that "(the sign I saw) had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires."

You know another sinister device that has batteries and wires on it? My computer. It lets me write my column, but sometimes it does things I don't quite understand. Youth culture things. One time, it started saying things about "emo" music, which I took to be a terrorist code word, and I wrestled it to the ground to protect my loved ones. It can't actually hurt me, but the important thing is that I felt threatened, which means someone owes me a bunch of money. Another suspiciously wired device in my life is my alarm clock, which sometimes startles me out of a sound sleep with a loud noise. It makes my heart race and my head hurt, and I suddenly find myself filled with negative emotions. Of course, I trust Americans with this technology, but what if the Iranians somehow got their hands on it? Best just to indict everyone involved in its development, just in case.

Two men, 27-year-old Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, 28, stand charged with disorderly conduct and felony placement of a hoax device in the Mooninite Invasion incident. Turner Broadcasting, Adult Swim's parent company, has also offered to pay the city of Boston $2 million to make up for the hysteria.

City officials are righteous with indignation and local kids are contemplating a move to Canada, but what nobody seems to care about is this: How in the hell did these guys place three dozen suspected explosive devices throughout the city of Boston without anybody noticing? If they were really terrorists, Beantown would look just like New Orleans right now. I'm absolutely against this whole Patriot Act thing, but seriously — shouldn't someone be paying attention to what folks are attaching to the left field wall of Fenway Park? Shouldn't the guys be getting medals for exposing critical flaws in national security? No, I take it back. Let's lock up the white suburbanites for promoting a cartoon. That will prove to the terrorists that America has the stomach for this fight.

Meanwhile, within the last week, every news source in the world has said the words "Adult Swim" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "upcoming movie" at least five times. A couple mil is going to seem like chump change by the time this thing sorts itself out. My prediction is that "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" has one of the biggest opening weekends in history, and I, for one, will be there. You might not think that talking fast food is a reasonable premise for a two-hour movie, but then, I didn't think a cartoon character could send a 21st century American city spiraling back into the McCarthy era. Looks like we've all had our horizons broadened this week.

•••

Meatwad make the money, see. Mfarley@register-pajaronian.com get the honeys, G. Drivin' in my car, livin' like a star. Ice on my fingers and my toes and I'm a Taurus.

So long and thanks for all the bricks

Anyone who doubted the destructive power of belligerent townsfolk or Corona beer need only look to the riots at the Vets Hall over the weekend to realize that neither is a force to be trifled with. For those that missed it, veteran Spanish-language rock group El Tri missed a Watsonville gig Sunday night after being caught in a blizzard on Donner Pass between Reno and Sacramento. In true rock promoter fashion, organizers did not tell some 700 attendees that there might be a problem until the place was packed and all of the openers had played, which caused an indeterminate number of rockers to, as they say, bust the place up. Amps were trashed, windows were smashed, bricks were heaved and, in a display of impotent rage that gives me the giggles even now, a group of guys tried but failed to turn over a parked truck, then tried but failed to set it on fire. (Note to self: If you're planning on sticking it to The Man, don't skip workouts.)

This might sound stupid to some of you in the over-40 set, but let me say this: Altamont. And for the younger readers: Woodstock 1999. Both of those shows led to death, destruction and rape based on the same principles that sent the El Tri show off the rails: A beer-guzzling meathead is a beer-guzzling meathead in any language. I know from personal experience on both sides of the security line that there are always guys at rock shows who are there to get loaded and hurt people, not to have fun. They're trouble as soon as they come through the door and letting them stand around drinking for three hours before telling them they bought $60 tickets for no reason is a bad move. I've hated these romper-stomper types since I started going to shows in high school and would love to see every single one of them put on trial, but you've got to wonder about a security team that was this ludicrously unprepared for an issue that has emerged, in one form or another, at nearly every concert since "Porgy and Bess" was touring.

If you're both a fan of El Tri and a frequent reader of this column (and I'm sure the crossover there is just enormous), I regret to inform you that you're having a lousy week: March 8 will be my last day with the Register-Pajaronian. Over the past decade or so, newspapering, as Herb Caen would have called it, has become a business where a young reporter must always strive to go where the action is rather than wait for the action to appear in his own coverage area, and so I'll be moving on after almost two years at the R-P. I've been assured by a variety of journalists I respect that I'm making a smart career move. But damn, am I ever going to miss the beach.

I'm still negotiating with the powers that be about the fate of Forced Perspective. I'd love to keep writing as long as somebody's reading, but there's a reasonable doubt that leaving the area might make me irrelevant to the average Watsonvillian. If you'd like to see the column continue, or if you'd like to remind me that you never thought I was funny anyway and are glad to see the back of me, by all means shoot me an e-mail. Better yet, hit up my boss, Jon Chown, at 761-7327 or jchown@register-pajaronian.com. It looks like this might come down to a popularity contest, so whatever you decide, vote early and often.

•••

With my big black boots and an old suitcase, I do believe I'll find mfarley@register-pajaronian.com a new place. I don't want to be the bad guy. I don't want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore. I just want to see some palm trees. Go and try and shake away this disease. We can live beside the ocean and leave the fire behind. Swim out past the breakers and watch the world die.