“Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This leads to inbreeding.” from the 1949 film, Adam's Rib
A critic of the group that led the fight in Ravalli County, Montana, to defeat zoning called the campaign an example of the “wealthy exploiting the stupid.”
“About 22,000 people die in this country annually because they lack health insurance. That is more than the number of Americans who are murdered in a year.” —Steve Coll, writing in the New Yorker
“The most agreeable vocation for psychopaths is business.” —Robert Hare, forensic psychologist
“I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration?” —Sarah Palin
“A vote is a thing of value that I will not give. A vote is an overt political act that I can not perform. Heck, I'm the kind of guy who balked at joining Sam's Warehouse because reporters should avoid private clubs. I frown when I hear working media clap during ballgames or grin too broadly at political results. Voting, pure and simple, means taking a rooting interest.”
—John Archibald, Birmingham News columnist
“I have not been convicted of anything yet.” —Ted Stevens, following a jury's verdict that on seven counts he failed to disclose more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations
“Real people don't know what they're going to say. Their words often come as a surprise to them. That's the way it should be in a movie.”
— Marlin Brando
“Virginity is an asset that holds its value well.” —from the film Elizabeth, The Golden Age
“It's hard for most of us to imagine how someone could be responsible for such damage and loss to others and not feel an urgent need to apologize. Obviously some of those investment bankers and politicians aren't like the rest of us.” —Kit Yarrow, psychologist
“As a child my intellectual devlopment was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilties.” —Albert Einstein
“I'm delighted that finally my words are going to be able to talk for themselves.”
—Sherry Jones, author
“If you have no real knowledge or skill set and you’re lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to know anything. I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days.” —Matt Taibii, Rolling Stone columnist
“We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.” —Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of British forces in Afghanistan
“Alaska is sometimes described as America's socialist state, because of its collective ownership of resources—an arrangement that allows permanant residents to collect a dividend on the state's oil revenues.” —Philip Gourevitch, writing in the New Yorker
“I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead—that's environmentally sound. ” —James Crumley, from his 1983 novel, Dancing Bear
“My father was a large, soft estate attorney who dressed exclusively in flannel in his off-hours. Broad and pale. With boots. And a small boy's persistent love for throwing stones into deep, empty places, and listening.” From The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace
In a Sept. 11 interview Sarah Palin “reversed her stand on the cause of climate change, telling ABC News that she believes 'man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming.' Less than a year ago, she said the opposite.” — Los Angeles Times
“I don’t think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women. I mean, we have produced some monstrous women.”
— Doris Lessing
“Joe Lieberman gives women a bad name.” — Kitty Herrin
“Fresh-ground grains taste entirely different from the flour you buy at the grocery store. Everyone knows that a January tomato that comes from Mexico tastes different than an August tomato taken straight from the vine. It’s the same with grains.” —Mary-Howell Martens, who sells organic wheat grown in New York state
“ . . . grocery stores lose an average of ten dollars per lane every day when shoppers fail to disclose items stuffed into the cart's undercarriage. ” —John Colapinto, writing about shoplifting in the New Yorker
“ . . . newspapers that aren't competing on the Internet are dead in the water.” —Jay Mariotti, controversial Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist, who suddenly quit print on Aug. 26 to look for a job in pixels
“[John] McEnroe’s famous temper rises as he describes golf as a kind of athletic grifter preying upon society’s most 'sedentary and lazy' impulses at the cost of something higher.” —Nicholas Dawidoff
“It is impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reasons that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation.”
— Wallace Stegner
“Mark Twain famously ridiculed the Book of Mormon's tedious, quasi-biblical prose as 'chloroform in print,' observing that the phrase 'and it came to pass' is used more than two-thousand times.” —Jon Krakauer
“We've created a petri dish in our factory farms for the evolution of dangerous pathogens.” — Michael Pollan,
discussing the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
“When you look into a mirror, do you like what's looking at you? Now that you've seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?” —from the sound track of a video promoting John Edwards for President.
“You know you're on the path to truth when you smell shit.”—from the George Clooney film Three Kings
“You're the future of the Democratic Party. And you always will be.” —from the Joan Allen film The Contender
“At a certain point, you just have to admit that your brain knows much more than you do.” — cognitive neuroscientist Mark Jung-Beeman, discussing the nature of insight, in The New Yorker
“Solar thermal power is ready now, commercial scale, and cheaper now than carbon capture and storage will ever be.” — Robert Fishman, CEO of the solar-generating start-up, Ausra
“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” —Prez Bush, explaining why not swinging a club honors U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq
“Nothing lies more than a photograph.” —Andrew Braunsberg, producer of Being There
“Young people do not appear to want to pick up a newspaper, even for free. They often leave them lying around, even at journalism schools, where they are distributed gratis.” — Eric Alterman, writing in the Nation
“ . . . the American lawn now represents a serious civic problem. That the space devoted to it continues to grow—and that more and more water and chemicals and fertilizer are devoted to its upkeep—doesn't prove that we care so much as that we are careless.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the July 21 New Yorker
“Intelligent Design does not qualify as science because it gives us nothing to test or measure. Science requires replicable tests involving measurable variables.”
— Tony Snow
“I've seen your picture in the newspapers and I wondered what you looked like.” —from the 1937 film, The Awful Truth
“Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than [Joel] Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-sized teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion.”
— Matt Taibbi, writing in the June 26 Rolling Stone
“Publishers do know that their publication is their product, right? And they do know that if it's losing circulation, the key to reversing the trend is not to make it worse — right? How does making a product worse fix a problem?” —John Dvorak, writing about newspapers in PC magazine
“We can hear smiles at the other end of a telephone call. The ear recognizes the sound variations caused by the spreading of the lips. That's why call-center workers are instructed to smile no matter what kind of abuse they're taking.” —John Seabrook, writing in the New Yorker about talking machines
“I think it's inevitable that there will be closures in [the newspaper] industry, and maybe bankruptcies.”
—Peter S. Appert, Goldman Sachs analyst
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” —Pat Buchanan
Gore Vidal, on the death of William Buckley: “. . . hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.”
“You two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin' at you from a never-ending parade of stupid.” —Hairspray, the 2007 movie version
“There is nothing natural about recorded music. Whether the engineer merely tweaks a few bum notes or makes a singer tootle like Robby the Robot, recorded music is still a composite of sounds that may or may not have happened in real time.” —Sasha Frere-Jones, in the New Yorker
“Democats have turned the Senate into the chamber where good legislation goes to die.” —Tom Dickinson, writing in Rolling Stone about the Senate majority's relentless cowardice
“I don't know what I'm going to do if we don't win the White House.” —Nancy Pelosi
“Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should its people hold nutty ideas but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right there on the mantelpiece. This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy.” —Charles Pierce, discussing 'Intelligent Design' in Esquire magazine
“Intelligent Design? Look at the human body. Is that intelligent? You've got a toxic waste plant next to a recreation area.” —from the movie Man of the Year
“There are people who believe that dinosaurs and men roamed the earth at the same time. These people are stone cold fuck nuts who watch the Flintstones as if it were a documentary.” —Lewis Black
“There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.” —Steve Ballmer, head of Microsoft
“Vista has got to be the most poorly engineered product I have ever had the displeasure of using.” —John Howell, president of Deep Canyon Software
“The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.” —William Gibson
Albert Hofman, inventor of LSD, during the onset of sensory experiences after ingesting Ecstacy at the age of 79, said: “Ah, finally something I can do with my wife.”
“I've always been a morning-radio person, not a morning-TV person—I don't want to look at people when I wake up.” —Nancy Franklin, writing in the New Yorker
“If they banned fedoras, tacky sunglasses, blazers over T-shirts, leggings and Kitson, Los Angeles would become a nudist colony.” —Elizabeth Spiridakis, writing in T magazine
“Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American 'homeland security' technologies, pumped up with 'war on terror' rhetoric.” —Naomi Klein, writing about China in Rolling Stone
“I really think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.” —Charles B. Rangel, Democratic NY Representaive, discussing George W. Bush
In describing Shanghai, China, Jonathan Franzen wrote: “It was as if the gods of world history had asked, 'Does somebody want to get into some really unprecedentedly deep shit?' and this place had raised its hand and said 'Yeah!'”
“George Walker Bush create more job more wealth for more China citizen than Mao Zedong.” —from the short film Hahahaamerica
“The Cardinals will be staying at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the new hotel at the Vatican, where turn down service means the bell boy isn't interested.” —Jon Stewart
“My value to the movement is to be the best actress, and the biggest star, and to earn as much money as I possibly can and use it for the organization.” —Jane Fonda, quoted in a 1979 issue of Borrowed Times, a Montana newspaper
“What Milton Friedman said was that government should not interfere. It didn’t work. We now are looking at one of the greatest real estate busts of all time. The free market is not geared to take care of the casualties.” —Allen Sinai, an economist for a global consulting firm
“Golf eats land, drinks water, displaces wildlife, fosters sprawl. I dislike the self-congratulations of its etiquette, the self-important hush of its television analysts. Most of all, I dislike how badly I play the game.” —Jonathan Franzen
“He voted for this war. He's a perpetrator of the war. He's an advocate of the war. In my personal definition, that's a warmonger.” —Talk show commentator Ed Schultz, condemning John McCain
“The movie challenges its viewers to confront, not only the bizarre and offensive Borat character himself, but the equally bizarre and offensive reactions he elicits from average Americans.” —U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, ruling against a businessman who claimed that by being filmed running away from comedian Sacha Baron Cohen he was publicly humiliated
“165 minutes of my life I will never get back.” —Stuart McGurk, reviewing the film version of The Good Shepherd
“I know what you want, you got what I want. I know what you need. Can you handle me?” —lyrics from a song written by Ashley Alexandre Dupre, a call girl employed by NY governor Eliot Spritzer
“. . . John Kerry was whipped like a red-headed stepchild for indulging in faggy recreations like sailing and lacrosse, for 'looking French,' for being 'stentorian' and for having the visage of a long-faced Easter Island statue.” —Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, March 20, 2008
“English is cumbersome
. . . the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children struggle to get to fifteen.” —Jim Holt, in a New Yorker interview with Parisian neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene
“They're called swing voters. Or the undecided. I prefer the term morons.”
—Bill Maher
“All you've got to do is show up, and you have a chance to be on the show. If you want to know what America's like, watch 'Price is Right.'”
—Drew Carey
“How do I define history, Miss? It's just one fucking thing after another.” — from the Brit stage play, The History Boys
“Sois belle et tais-tois (be beautiful and shut up).”
—Carla Bruni, the newest First Lady of France, quoted when she was a model
When shown a police photo of a lunatic who threatened to shoot her, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines said: “He's kind of cute.”
"Men are the new women."
—T-shirt inspired by the HBO series, In Treatment
Lenny Dykstra, Mets and Phillies star outfielder, attributed a sudden 30-pound weight gain when he was playing in the 1990s to “real good vitamins.”
“Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People.” —title of an animated video from San Francisco artist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung
“C-Span makes The Golf Channel look like porn.”
—from the movie Man of the Year
“It's very difficult for a Clinton to do wrong in Ireland. There is a golf course in Kerry where Bill Clinton once played, and do you know that there is a statue of him there? Teenage girls gather around it . . . and they're called Monicas.” —Irish journalist Nuala O'Faolain
“Christianity is a religion for losers.” —Ted Turner
Notes from Dark Acres
Huey Lewis Sucks. On Nov. 17 the Montana Supreme Court ruled that Mitchell Slough, which runs for 16 miles along the Bitterroot River in Ravalli County, Montana, is not a man-made ditch but a “natural, perennial-flowing stream” that was originally mapped in 1878. The ruling, which overturns previous district court decisions, means that local landowners like aging rocker and “actor” Huey Lewis cannot prohibit the public from crossing their private property to use the slough for fishing, floating or any other recreational activity. The ruling buttresses Montana’s 1985 Stream Access Law, which declares that the rivers of Montana belong to everyone, not just to the landowners on either bank.
The ruling is Lewis’ second recent setback. Last month Spinner magazine declared that his rendition of an old Smokey Robinson hit, “Cruisin,” which he covered with Gweneth Paltrow in the movie Duets, was the worst vocal collaboration of all time.
Sticker Shock. Jerks like Huey Lewis remind us of the days in the 1970s when the first wealthy glitterati discovered that Montana might be something more than Flyover Country as they swooped in to snatch up cheap, beautiful land where they threw up their trophy homes and their gated communities. The pickups of the locals began sprouting bumper stickers that said “Beautify Montana. Shoot a Land Developer.”
Big Love. Voters who believe religion should play no role in politics were dismayed throughout the 2008 election season as they watched Mormons pour their time and money into the campaign to pass a law in California attacking the legal rights of homosexuals. Proposition 8, an initiative that overturns a state Supreme Court ruling permitting gays to marry, won by a narrow margin many observers believe was the result of the estimated $20 million that the Church of Latter Day Saints spent on its advertising blitz.
As a consequence of the Church’s meddling in the affairs of state and bedroom, gay rights advocates have been hounding LDS leaders since Nov. 4 with protests outside temples all over the U.S. The backlash shows no signs of letting up. And Mormon candidates will increasingly face criticism for the reactionary, backward-looking views of their religion, with its tradition of racism, sexism, and violence that makes it seem more like a cult than a faith.
This Land is My Land. Over the next three years The Montana Legacy Project plans to buy 312,500 acres of western Montana timberland owned by Plum Creek, a corporation that swept into the Treasure State a couple of decades ago, plundered our forests, then announced that its new business was going to be real estate development.
County governments were horrified by the prospect of trophy homes in remote subdivisions whose owners would expect taxpayers to foot the bill for road maintenance, fire suppression and law enforcement. Hunters and fishermen, berry-pickers and mushroom-gatherers were horrified that generations of access to the private “railroad lands” checker-boarded with public lands would be blocked. Conservationists were horrified at the prospect of even more damage inflicted on the forests of what is called the Crown of the Continent, one of the largest, relatively unscathed ecosystems remaining in the Lower 48.
Two conservation groups, The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, are the principals in the plan, which would tap into several sources of funding to raise the $510 million needed to take control of these tracts from Plum Creek—the largest private land owner in America—and turn them over to the U.S. Forest Service, the Montana Department of Natural Resources, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and also some private timber investors. About $250 million in Federal funds are available, but private and state contributions are necessary to consummate the deal, as well.
One of the many groups supporting the Montana Legacy Project is Hellgate Hunters and Anglers. Its president, Tim Aldrich, issued this statement on Nov. 17:
“As I think about the future patterns of use and ownership of our western Montana landscapes, I am really thinking about what they mean to our way of life and the quality of the environment in which we live. I am thinking about wildlife habitat, clean water, opportunities to hunt, fish, hike and pick berries. I’m thinking about mountain landscapes without red, green and blue roofs being the dominating features. I’m thinking about future timbered lands that will support traditional industry and jobs and also perform carbon sequestration to combat climate change. I’m thinking about the importance of doing things today that will assure that we keep a lot of what is great about Montana as we work to develop our future.”
Making sure this deal happens depends on keeping pressure on right-wing Republican law-makers such as Missoula’s House District 100 Representative Bill Nooney to support the legislation that will appropriate taxpayer dollars to an investment that will pay dividends for many generations.
Federal hand-outs. Farmers in Missoula County, Montana, received $261,000 in crop subsidy payments from the United States Department of Agriculture from 2003 to 2005, according to a watchdog organization called The Environmental Working Group.
Below are the Top Ten Missoula recipients of this Federal largesse.
Although these handouts seem generous, compare them to the cash taken by Bruce Tutvedt up in Flathead County. Tutvedt is a farmer/rancher/gravel pit operator who was just elected to the Montana Senate from SD3. Between 1995 and 2006 he took $565,688 in Federal subsidies.
By way of comparison, the average adjusted gross income in Montana was $37,845 in 2004. There were 1,154 farmers in Montana that received more than this from USDA programs in 2003; 1,607 in 2004; and 1,676 in 2005. There were 3,505 children under age 18 in Missoula County, Montana below the poverty level in 2004, according to the Census Bureau.
1. Robert A. Petersen, Missoula 59808 . . . . . . . $40,681
2. William J. Lucier, Jr., Missoula 59808 . . . . . . . 22,343
3. James G. Valeo, Missoula 59808. . . . . . . . . . 14,031
4. Thomas R. Sheffer, Huson 59846 . . . . . . . . . 11,932
5. Joseph W. Boyer, Jr. Frenchtown 59834. . . . . 11,398
6. Floyd Cheff, Missoula 59804 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11,012
7. Bertha Pruyn, Missoula 59803 . . . . . . . . . . . 10,886
8. Earl M. Pruyn, Missoula 59803 . . . . . . . . . . . 10,886
9. Pat Vannoy, Greenough 59823 . . . . . . . . . . . 10,510
10. Michael J. Oberlander, Florence 59833 . . . . . .9,446
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Black Cat
Wildfires destroy things, but they produce things as well. Bill Vaughn
As the burning forests lit up the night we sat in the back yard with Martinis and binoculars to watch the big show. The nearest of these infernos, the Black Cat, had grown to more 
than 10,000 acres, and was only a couple miles away. High up on the ridges above Interstate 90 the Ponderosas crowned out with spectacular explosions that looked like solar flares. Much later, as we lay in bed listening to the wind, the flames cast a flickering aura on the walls of our house, filling the place with a cheery glow.
I had followed the life of this fire from its birth, a tree struck by lightning that smoldered for days before bursting into full bloom one hot August afternoon in a forest ravaged by drought, global warming, and misguided managers who had suppressed harmless fires for generations until the deadfall on the ground had grown to dangerous levels. Now hundreds of firefighters were risking their lives to conquer this beast, named after a Forest Service road through the area, taxpayers would spend $8 million, and scores of people living in the area had been forced to evacuate.
I couldn’t have been happier.
Over the years I had heated our house with pine harvested from our little forest along the Clark Fork River in western Montana. These were young and old Ponderosas stressed by drought and flood, then attacked and killed by bark beetles (why one tree gets sick and another one right next to it never shows a symptom is a mystery to me). But there were only enough of these dead trees left to get us through the coming winter. The winter after that I’d have to find another source of wood.
Well, yes, there was the electric furnace, which would make the house toasty—at a cost of more than $300 a month. There was also a heater we’d installed when fuel oil fetched $1.50 a gallon instead of the $4 a gallon the distributor would be charging in the fall of 2008. Cheap Welshman that I am, I had vowed never to use either one unless it was an emergency like frozen pipes.
I knew that when the Black Cat finally ran its course it would leave behind so much firewood that getting it would be like picking corn in Iowa.
So in September, a year after the fire had been contained and conquered, I went to the Forest Service office at Fort Missoula and bought a firewood permit. The rules prohibited woodhawks from taking live wood, or any part of the Pacific Yew, a poisonous conifer from which the chemotherapy drug Taxol is derived. But for $20 I could bring home four cords of wood, a huge bargain, even though I’d have to cut it into rounds and split them. Still, this wouldn’t be new work to me. Some commercial suppliers were charging $120 to $160 a cord, more if you wanted it delivered. Another Jackson would buy me another four cords.
What I hadn’t considered were the side effects of harvesting timber in a forest as badly burned as the Black Cat. [read more]
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Write If You Find Work
From Outside's screwup files, a tale of epic miscommunication
Outside Magazine has a history of sending people to the ends of the earth. Sometimes when things go wrong, blame lies with the editors. (Like the time writer Dave Eggers was sent to hang out with New Age seekers at the pyramids of Giza—only there were no New Age seekers to be found.) Or the writer. (Um, no names—let's just say it usually involves self-medication.) Or both. In the granddaddy of all such tales, which played out in 1978-79 during Outside's formative years, four journalists from Montana—Bill Vaughn, William Kittredge, Bryan DiSalvatore, and William Finnegan—unwittingly set in motion a saga that we're still talking about. —KEVIN FEDARKO
VAUGHN: I started working for Outside in its second or third issue, when I was invited to edit an equipment-review column out of my home in Montana, a role that apparently gave some people the notion that I actually had power at the magazine. Which, I think, was how I got in trouble with these two guys, Bryan DiSalvatore and Bill Finnegan.
DISALVATORE: Bill's recollection is essentially true. (I'm so glad he got his meds calibrated.) But I think the culprit in this tale was another writer, Bill Kittredge. Kittredge had been both Finnegan's and my mentor, and he's the one who led us to believe that Vaughn was the emir of Outside.
KITTREDGE: Oh, God, did I do that?
VAUGHN: DiSalvatore and Finnegan were best friends, or something like that, and they decided to take a surfing trip around the world. For some reason—I can't for the life of me remember how—they got it into their heads that I had given them a contract to do this trip and write a story for the magazine.
DISALVATORE: The story we had in mind was a look at sailing yachties who roam the globe. We figured we'd make cash while traveling by selling articles. Vaughn was, according to Kittredge, our, ahem, contact.
VAUGHN: I was?
KITTREDGE: I did what?
FINNEGAN: This is completely wrong. This all happened because Bryan and I hadn't gotten our shit squared away before we left.
DISALVATORE: So off we go—
VAUGHN: So off they go, I can't even remember where . . .
DISALVATORE: Guam, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia (or whatever the hell it's called these days), four Australian states, Bali, Java, Sumatra, and then, separately, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Spain, France, England—
VAUGHN: And for the next God-only-knows-how-many months, I get these postcards from all over the world.
DISALVATORE: Basically, we just kept sending him whatever we had at any given point. First it was just ideas. But then we started writing actual paragraphs. Included were "Is this in the right direction?" kinds of queries. Meanwhile, Vaughn's getting this stuff, months late, from two guys he's never even heard of. Kittredge had neglected to tell Vaughn about us.
KITTREDGE: Mmm. That could be true.
VAUGHN: With the arrival of each postcard, I'm increasingly baffled, because I have absolutely no idea what the hell these guys want.
DISALVATORE: Isolation makes you crazy in some ways, one of them being your idealized version of what's been going on stateside: Vaughn screeching with delight at these dispatches, hungry for more; readers all across America clamoring for our next installment; movie offers, sex. Meanwhile, Vaughn was getting this stuff and either putting it aside or just throwing it out.
FINNEGAN: None of this was Vaughn's fault. It's all drunken embroidery.
DISALVATORE: We just kept badgering him. Where's the contract? Where's the dough? Don't send a check, for God's sake—we can't cash it in Padang!
VAUGHN: Anyhow, they're gone for a really long time . . .
DISALVATORE: We were gone for almost four years.
FINNEGAN: I was gone for almost four years. Bryan was with me only for the first 15 months.
VAUGHN: And then one day, I'm putzing around my house when this huge Italian guy shows up on my front porch and he's really, really pissed off. DiSalvatore explains that they were living in a tree house in Borneo, and Finnegan was dying of malaria—
DISALVATORE: The doc in Bangkok, where he came down with it, said Bill's blood was “black with malaria.” He was deranged. Fearful of death. We were broke. We were delusional.
VAUGHN: So this guy goes on to explain that the two of them had made a pact that the first person to get back to the U.S. was going to track me down.
DISALVATORE: We had vowed—
FINNEGAN: We didn't vow anything. Bryan did. I remember being annoyed with Vaughn, but it's not like he gave me malaria. The guy just failed to reply to some mail we sent him.
DISALVATORE: OK, I had vowed—but for Finnegan's sake, as sort of a spur to “get well”—that when I got back to America I would find that double-dealing, duplicitous, careless, thoughtless, heartless beast Vaughn—
VAUGHN: And kill me.
FINNEGAN: Keep in mind, there was a whole group of people in America that Bryan was allegedly going to kill on my behalf.
DISALVATORE: I believe I terrified him . . .
VAUGHN: I told him we needed to step outside, because I didn't want to break up my wife's furniture.
DISALVATORE: But eventually we became friends.
VAUGHN: The next afternoon we were playing on the same softball team.
DISALVATORE: I don't know if it was our fever-driven imaginations or Vaughn's forgetfulness. But basically, Vaughn didn't know what the fuck was going on. For that matter, neither did we.
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More Notes from Dark Acres
The incidents below were dealt with by various law enforcement agencies in Missoula County, Montana, from 6 am November 18 to 6 am November 19, 2008.
The cops booked at least 7 people into the Missoula County detention facility during this period. Some of these people were accused of driving while under the influence of alcohol. If you’d like to know who they are go to:
http://www.co.missoula.mt.us/publicjailroster/
The jail roster sometimes takes a little while to load, especially on those busy Date Nights 1, 2 and 3, but if you're trying to find out stuff about your neighbors it's worth the wait. Note: In absolute numbers there are more people behind bars in the U.S. than there are in China.
On November 19 seven people were behind bars or recently released after being booked into the detention facility on charges involving, but not necessarily limited to, marijuana.
MC111808-55 11/18/2008 8:18:42 AM PERSON/NEEDS ASSISTANCE MPD
149 W BROADWAY
Responding Unit(s): C250
A20 ASSISTANCE RENDERED
MC111808-53 11/18/2008 8:16:31 AM CRIMINAL MISCHIEF MPD
1500 W CENTRAL AVE
Responding Unit(s): C779
A8 REPORT, AT STATION
MC111808-52 11/18/2008 8:11:43 AM SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY
MCSO
BARBER CREEK RD AND HIGHWAY 83
Responding Unit(s): 429
A42 PERPERTRATOR GOA
A40 UNABLE TO LOCATE
A40 UNABLE TO LOCATE
MC111808-38 11/18/2008 7:03:58 AM MEDICAL ALS CAUTION - STAGE MPD
304 S 3RD ST W
Responding Unit(s): 121, C203, C249, C274, MED1
A14 ASSISTED OFFICER
MC111808-35 11/18/2008 6:17:34 AM VEHICLE-PROP. DAMAGE
MCSO
4101 HIGHWAY 93 S
Responding Unit(s): 452, HP160
A14 ASSISTED OFFICER
MC111808-40 11/18/2008 7:27:34 AM COURT PAPERS TOP
MCSO
4753 BAILEY ST
Responding Unit(s): 404, RD44
A47 UNABLE TO COMPLETE ACTION
MC111808-46 11/18/2008 7:50:51 AM EXTRA PATROL MPD
3216 RUSSELL ST
Responding Unit(s): C215
MC111808-43 11/18/2008 7:35:52 AM OFFICER INITIATED
MCSO
2166 SCHILLING ST
Responding Unit(s): 459
A40 UNABLE TO LOCATE
MC111808-75 11/18/2008 9:33:20 AM THEFT, BICYCLES < $1000 MPD
3620 BROOKS ST
Responding Unit(s): C779
A8 REPORT, AT STATION
MC111808-74 11/18/2008 9:28:19 AM ASSAULT/HANDS, FEET, AGGRAVATED
MCSO
456 AIRPORT RD
Responding Unit(s): 429
A9 REPORT, AT LOCATION
[READ THE REST OF THE REPORT]
Fatalities surge. Since the March 20, 2003 U.S. invasion began 4201 American soldiers and military civilians have reportedly died in Iraq, 1203 more people than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. 102 of the U.S. fatalities were women.
One of the latest fatalities was
25-year-old Cpl. Stewart S. Trejo of Whitefish, Montana. The Department of Defense said he died August 7 while supporting combat operations in Anbar province.
Montana Private Timothy J. Hutton, 21, died August 4 in Baghdad from injuries he reportedly suffered in a non-combat related incident. A native of Dillon, Hutton was assigned to the 54th Engineer Battalion, 18th Engineer Brigade, headquartered at Bamberg, Germany.
24 other Montanans have been killed and 224 wounded in this imperialist war, which has lasted longer than World War Two (icasualties.org). It's estimated that at least 88,992 Iraqi civilians have been killed by violent means (iraqbodycount.net).
Finally, at least 216 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the beginning of “hostilities.”
[november 19]
Lee Drowning, Gannett overboard. The morning of Nov. 19 the stock of Lee Enterprises, owner of the Missoula, Montana Missoulian and four other tame little dailies in Montana, was trading at $1.25 per share, its lowest point in at least 27 years. This followed the announcement that the financially ailing corporation is suspending dividend payments to its stockholders and asking its creditors to back off. The stock's high point during the last year was $16.02. In February of 2007 the stock was selling at $45.
On Nov. 13 the corporation announced that its fourth quarter revenues declined 13 percent from a year ago. According to RTT NEws, “The Davenport, Iowa-based company's preliminary net income available to common stockholders in the fourth quarter was $5.4 million or $0.12 per share, down from $20 million or $0.44 per share reported in the year-ago quarter.”
The SEC now considers Lee to be a Penny Stock. If the stock continues to head in the direction of zero the New York Stock Exchange has the option of delisting it, that is, throwing Lee out of this highly exclusive club. (The reputations of stock exchanges are built on the profitability of the companies that trade on them.)
Some analysts blame the nosedive on the bloated and unrealistic price Lee paid for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper. And then there's the fact that from September of 2007 to September of 2008 North American newsprint prices have risen a whopping 33 percent. Then add to that increase in the cost of doing business the price of gasoline. Although at the moment lower than it's been in a year, for most of the last 12 months the cost of delivering newspapers has also risen significantly. But a more plausible explanation is that Lee's newspapers are just bland products consumers no longer want.
On Nov. 19 the stock of Gannett, which owns the Great Falls,,Montana Tribune, was selling for $7.27, down from a 52-week high of $39.50, and its lowest point in at least 52 weeks. The stock's lowest point in the last year was $7.50.
The stock of the New York Times was selling on Nov. 19 for $6.66. Its lowest point in the last 52 weeks. Its high point was $21.14.
[november 19]
Best Bargain in Colleges. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine has released its list of the Top 100 U. S. colleges and universities based on a combination of outstanding academic quality and an affordable price tag. No Treasure State school made the list, despite the fact that University of Montana President George Dennison likes to crow about how much bang for the buck his school provides, even though it ranks consistently near the bottom in most academic rankings.
Leading the list was the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University of Washington was ranked #11, Washington State at #89. Numerous smallish schools made the list, including some that football-crazy Montana has played against, such as Northern Arizona and Delaware.
Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Reporters. On September 10 the website of the Billings Gazette announced that three of the Montana daily newspapers owned by faltering Lee Enterprises had laid off a total of 21 part-time and full-time “positions.” These layoffs included at least three full-time reporters.
On August 27 the publisher of the Missoulian announced that the paper had let go seven employees, including two full-time reporters.
The publishers of these sad little dailies fell into step behind corporate orders and cited soaring fuel and newsprint costs plus a decline in national advertising as the reasons why they can't “grow” their circulations enough to offset rising costs. The truth is, fewer and fewer people want to read these rags because they don't provide the hyper local news and the spicey community dirt that people search websites, television, and word-of-mouth to get. At any rate, it seems bizarre that Lee believes laying off reporters will help produce a better product that more people want.
Steve Prosinski, the editor of the Gazette, told Dark Acres his paper still has “great journalists” and assured readers that the quality of reporting at Montana's largest daily will remain high despite the fact that the paper has been “thrown some challenges.” He said there are no plans to bypass the high costs of circulation and newsprint by converting the paper to a Web-only daily.
And this from another of the region's newspapers: The editor of the Spokesman Review in Spokane, Steven A. Smith, abruptly quit Oct. 1 in protest of the announcement that another round of editorial layoffs and a reduction in the paper's format would begin. The publisher of the paper said 25 newsroom jobs would be cut.
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CHAPTER ONE Although Lyndon Augustus Zackheim believed with the seamless confidence of an old and deep faith that American veeks suck, he ignored the Mercedes SLK, the tasty little Beamer and the Saab 9-5 Sedan with that awesome turbocharged V-6, and headed straight for the odious one-ton Jimmy that had creamed a Windstar at the intersection of Heritage Lane and Yankee Doodle Road. MORE
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Nature Boy
Why Montanans don't like the great outdoors. By Bill Vaughn
FINALLY, WE CLIMBED the only snowless ridge in sight and pitched the tent in a cot of pine. Then I hunkered down in the withered bear grass to smoke a cigarette. At that moment dying of anthrax would have been a pleasure. My clothes were soaked. The temperature was dropping a degree every five minutes. Between gusts of wind enraged insects dived from the brush for my blood.
After an attack of pure vertigo in which I imagined what it would feel like to have my heart injected with chilled kerosene I opened my eyes and peered at the falling dusk. Against my back were the Rockies, and to the south, under sullen April clouds the color of rotten beef, stretched the sulking, malevolent geography of Yellowstone Park.
This wasn’t the Yellowstone of Yogi Bear, of Old Faithful performing against a seamless azure sky for the digital slide shows of New Jersey chiropractors, but the Yellowstone missionaries used as a visual aid in persuading sinless Indians that Hell exists and the devil doesn’t give a rat’s ass about race, sexual preference or national origin. To my way of thinking a perfect setting for a perfectly wasted day.
My companion didn’t see it that way. Chuck was a big, amiable guy built like a farm implement who had wandered north from Missouri a few years earlier to be, as he put it, “a mountain man.” Since dawn we’d been plowing through basin after basin of dirty, waist-deep snow searching for the antlers that bull elk snap off every spring so they can grow a bigger, better pair for their mating battles in the autumn.
Chuck’s mission was to gather as many of these antlers as we could carry back to the Jeep for the purpose of selling them to a certain Taiwanese merchant, who would grind them up and sell them to other Taiwanese merchants who believe the stuff enhances sexual vigor.
My mission was to write about Chuck finding the antlers and selling them. The outdoors magazine that had employed me to do this dubious sort of thing hadn’t offered me much money, but I had accepted their offer because I had no other prospects. I had been trying to figure out all day why the Taiwanese think they need their vigor enhanced. Did they think they could outbreed their mainland brethren and thus take back China through sheer numbers? This, as it turned out, would be a moot point. We would both go home empty-handed because scavengers on snowmobiles had beaten us to the goods.
But Chuck’s high spirits cannot be extinguished. Singing “North to Alaska,” he approached me with a plate of steaming venison chili. I had to admit it was the best part of this long and fruitless day. “Jesus, ain’t that something?” he said, nodding fondly at the heartless landscape. His shining eyes reflected the peace and good will of a man who had just put two and two together and decided he possessed just about all you could want.
“You’re sick,” I said.
“Aw, you’ve just had a big day, little man.”
I cupped my hands and blew into them. “You know something, Charles. Some day, none of this will be yours.”
But the Mountain Man’s eyes had gone out of focus. He was at one with nature, in thrall with the horizon, immune to soured tempers. Eventually he smiled, and dug in. I slapped at something green and white that was trying to insert its stinger into a welt on my wrist that had been caused by an even bigger bug, and lit another cigarette. I was wondering at the gulf separating Chuck’s attitude about the wilderness from mine.
Native Montanans don’t much like nature. Oh, we will beat our chests and shout our love out at the Big Sky if the question is put to us. But deep down is the sure conviction that out-of-staters who cruise our mountains in three-hundred-dollar hiking boots and packs loaded with fifty dollars worth of freeze-dried trail food—demanding from the natural world only that the woods and lakes and beasts simply be there—these are people who have got only one oar in the water.
The distrust and fear of Nature is the result of what most European-type people in Montana have always done for a living. Ever since the first trappers followed Lewis and Clark into this impossible lonely place Montanans have been dependent on what they could coach or filch from the land. Lumbermen, farmers, miners and ranchers, five generations of us have signed a business deal with the natural world right on the dotted line. Our partner has been the harshest mistress of them all, and she’s been screwing us all along.
For us, going out in the woods simply to tramp around, identifying wildflowers and taking snapshots, would be like inviting a crooked associate home to dinner and a game of gin on the porch. We may not have a lick of business sense but we know better than to socialize in the evening with the bitch we see all day during office hours. The dudes and foreigners among us are easily identifiable by their shameless gawking at our vistas. When we set forth into the wild what we’re really looking for dinner.
In describing the “Montana Face,” Leslie Fiedler, world-class literary critic and former University of Montana English professor, touched on our relationship with the natural world. “What I found seemed, at first glance, reticent, sullen, weary—full of self-sufficient stupidity; a little later it speared simply inarticulate, with all the dumb pathos of what cannot declare itself: a face developed not for sociability or feeling, but for facing into the weather.”
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An enemy of my enemy
The theory and practice of the neighborhood feud. By Bill Vaughn
IF THOMAS JEFFERSON had time-traveled to our rural neighborhood he never would have predicted that small landowners will forge the spine of democracy. Because here in the Squalor Zone—that redneck netherworld of “manufactured homes” and distressed pickups that encircles Western towns like the puffy flesh around an infection—it’s one against all and all against one.
Soon after we moved into our ten-acre plot of Montana floodplain the opening salvos were fired in what would become a civil war raging across two decades and multiple fronts. First,
we discovered that the Smiths (not their real name) had installed a gate in the barbed wire separating our place from theirs so they could traipse around our forest on their nags. Then we found the bloated carcass of a doe gut-shot with an arrow in a copse of hawthorns not far from a steel archery stand these yahoos had installed in one of our Ponderosas. I nailed the gate shut, pulled down the tree stand, and tacked No Trespassing signs on the border. One winter morning Mr. Smith blew these signs to smithereens with a shotgun fired from his snowmobile. So when the Smiths decided to sell half their place, presumably to pay down their liquor bills, I acquired an aerial photo that showed the five acres in question under water during the most recent flood, and sent it to the real estate agent.
Meanwhile, my wife, Kitty, had entered a barrel race that paid prize money to the fastest times in three divisions. After her horse stumbled at the third barrel, and her time dropped her into first place in the second level, another neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, complained to the event’s organizer that Kitty had won $300 only because she pulled up her horse so she could win the lower division.
We pondered the dialectic of retribution analyzed so poignantly by Sonny in The Godfather: “They hit us so we hit ’em back.” Soon we were presented with a convenient revenge. When the Johnsons ignored the zoning laws and began building an illegal second shack on their property, we complained. Construction was halted. They appealed, won a variance, and were soon building yet another pesthole. This time we convinced the county attorney to file suit, and the Johnsons squandered beaucoup legal fees losing in court.
Good times.
Their response to our meddling was a trap-and-skeet club in their back pasture. The fusillade of shotgun blasts terrorized our horses and dogs and rattled the dishes. When we called the sheriff he said nothing could be done. After I strode forth and screamed at the Johnsons in language that would shock a longshoreman, they obtained a temporary restraining order, alleging that among numerous acts of trespass I had tampered with the wiring of their new house while they were away. To counter these fabrications I mailed the justice of the peace who signed the order the district judge’s ruling against the Johnsons, in order to establish their motive.
When it came time for the hearing the justice was not amused. He ordered the combatants to cross-examine one another. Kitty looked at me and smiled. I was thrilled. We were both thinking about My Cousin Vinny. Mrs. Johnson went first, and asked me whether I had called her certain names. I said yes. Then, despite the many other points in her complaint, she rested her case.
My turn. After I had addressed each allegation she admitted that my outburst was the only one based in fact. She looked stunned, like one of those deviants filmed on NBC’s To Catch A Predator.
The justice scolded me. But when he turned his scorn on the Johnsons regarding the district court case it seemed that he was this close to charging them with perjury. Instead, he threw out their complaint and advised us to quit fighting.
As if.
Then we received a letter from the state. A downstream neighbor, the onerous Mr. Jones, had claimed that we were stealing irrigation water from a stream whose water rights are owned by a dozen of us freeholders. In fact, when we bought the place we were aware that one of the culverts draining a stock pond along this waterway had collapsed. But because the earthwork damming the pond was porous, the water was percolating downstream anyway. The state elected not to order the culvert replaced. Our response to Jones was to inform the state that he had pulled down fences so his cattle could graze on the state land bordering his fiefdom. The herd was soon back in Jones’ overgrazed pastures.
The “Code of the West” is a guide issued by some Western counties telling urban newcomers what to expect. Don’t ask much in the way of government services, it says. Animals are dangerous, manure stinks, the weather can be harsh, you may not own the mineral rights under your hobby ranch, and so on. What it doesn’t warn about are people like me.
A couple years ago the biggest landowner in our backwater announced that he was going to dig a gravel pit on his ranch, and build an asphalt plant and a cement factory. Kitty and I looked at each other: Over our dead bodies. Our neighbors were saying the same thing. At a meeting we glared at one another. But then, suddenly, the animus fled the room like cigar smoke through an open window, and we started talking about how to fight this massive industrial scheme together.
Driving home I whistled a happy tune. Not because I saw an end to the feuds. But because the most hated man in the Squalor Zone was no longer me.
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Survive This!
As the seventeeth season of Mark Burnett's annoying “dramality” begins
let's revisit the first season with someone who was there. By Bill Vaughn
BECAUSE I AM A vindictive and self-indulgent man, I am given to all manner of fits and childish acts. But this deranged vendetta, even for me, was majorly over the top.
In the bow of a rushing, 35-foot fishing dory, wedged against the boat's hardwood ribs to prevent the whitecaps from hurling me into the South China Sea, I was loading one-quart
Glad-Lock Zipper Bags with miniature bottles of Bombay Sapphire gin, one bottle per bag, along with a snotty personal note. When each unit was complete I inflated it with a puff of breath, sealed it, and tossed it angrily into the surf building just off our starboard side. It would drift briefly, I figured, before washing up on the surprisingly empty, agonizingly close beaches of Pulau Tiga, a wet, jungly island twice the size of Central Park, seven miles off Borneo's northwestern coast.
When my rivals came upon this alcoholic virus from the sea, their behavior would be altered, fates would waver, the future would warp, and I would have at least a taste of the yummy revenge I'd traveled 10,000 miles to enjoy. Or best-case scenario:My infantile meddling would cause their whole dumb show to not go on at all.
I'm talking about Survivor, a concoction of game show, endurance contest, and soap opera being taped by CBS at that very moment just out of sight on this very island. If you haven't watched one of these episodes yet because you've just emerged from an ashram or a coma, here's the theme: Eight men and eight women are “marooned" on a “deserted” equatorial island; for 39 days they must ferret out food, water, and shelter, plus avoid the lethalities that thrive on equatorial islands. Multiple crews of image workers take turns filming their struggle, aided by hidden surveillance cameras—coconut cams, I suppose, yam cams, whatever. As a booster in the fuel of this narrative engine, the hardy castaways must meet every three days in a “tribal council” and cast secret ballots to banish one of their own from the game, presumably for not playing nice.
Sixteen go in, one comes out.
When only two remain, a congress of ejectees votes to choose the ultimate survivor. U.S. audiences will witness this historic moment during the show's 13th and final episode this August. The plucky champ wins One Million Dollars!
But let's get back to me. The squall that had blown in just as we left the mainland was now peeling spray off the whitecaps, and I was drenched. I realized that in order to get a real chance of monkeywrenching the show, I'd have to go ashore. However, I'd been warned by august persons administering the East Malaysian state of Sabah that setting foot on their beloved Pulau Tiga at this time would not be allowed, that until filming was completed in two weeks the island belonged to CBS and trespassers would be subject to arrest.
[read more]
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Waiting to Soar
Although it had taken decades to get here, only one final challenge
stood between me and my Eagle Scout badge. By Bill Vaughn
THIS IS THE WAY WE DIE. Middle-aged men with martini bellies shoveling snow off a rink, or charging the net, or sprinting around some steamy track in July, trying to prove something. The bloated heart seizes, the stressed vessel explodes, and suddenly we’re pitched into the abyss, face flat against the ice, the clay, the cinders.
As I lurched into the final lap, the temperature pushing 95, it felt like some street-corner thug was thumping my solar plexus with his knuckles. You gotta problem, Peter Pan? You
wanna cha-cha? But this yelling wasn’t coming from some unknown bully, it was coming from the bully I had married, my wife, Kitty. “Run faster!” she shouted as she ran behind me, checking her stopwatch, totally not winded. “What’s wrong with you?”
With 100 yards left to go, the pain in my chest moved an octave higher, and my hamstrings began to screech. It was Independence Day, the final day I had allowed myself to attempt a seven-minute mile and reach out at last to grab my dream—the Eagle badge, the highest rank a Boy Scout can earn. If I could somehow stumble across the finish line, at least I could bite the dust in the service of a cause. I could picture it, the heroic plaque bearing my name at the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America in Irving, Texas. This Bird Soared, it would say, Better Late Than Never. A year earlier, when I happened upon a copy of what had been the most influential book of my boyhood, misfiled on a shelf of used novels in one of those dusty bookstores that smells of cats, I got the sort of spiritual jolt Christians must experience when they see the Shroud of Turin. Ah, there he was again, unremembered for 40 years: Norman Rockwell’s red-haired, freckle-faced geek in gaiters and a full field uniform, striding across a piney ridge, grinning that infectious grin, one hand raised in good cheer, the other one clutching the 1959 edition of The Boy Scout Handbook.
Rockwell’s portrait of Howdy Doody in khaki would be the first of the many delicious mysteries Scouting would throw my way. In the painting, the Handbook that Howdy Doody is clutching bears a painting of Howdy clutching a Handbook, which also bears a picture of Howdy clutching a Handbook . . . and so on. I squandered many hours with a magnifying glass and a microscope probing this hall of mirrors to see if it was infinite, one of the reasons my progress through Scouting’s ranks was retarded.
And while other Scouts were rising from Tenderfoot to First Class and Star and Life, or even to the coveted Eagle, I got bogged down in such arcane fixations as the Ner Tamid, a
[READ MORE]
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Batter Up
I faced the worst crisis of my long and illustrious career as a manager.
But in the end faith in my team's heaviest hitter won the day. By Bill Vaughn
Although I’ve been married without a major indiscretion for almost three decades I still keep a lineup card.
Like any conscientious manager, I change around the nine hitters on this roster whenever my team’s in a slump. For example, after the dish showed Garden State I inserted the incomparable Natalie Portman into the number eight spot and sent down Keira Knightly because of her impersonation of an inanimate object in Atonement. (However, while on her rehab assignment, if Ms Knightly can get back the kind of swing she had in Pride and Prejudice I’ll probably bring her up again.)
Then there was that bittersweet moment after I saw The Out of Towners, when I had to tell Goldie Hawn that it was time to hang up her cleats. In her place, however, I was pleased to replace the longest reigning cutest actress in Hollywood with the newest cutest actress in Hollywood, Ms Hawn’s daughter, Kate Hudson, whose luminous portrayal of Penny Lane in Almost Famous got my scouts seriously hot and bothered.
When Blake Lively appeared as a toothsome co-ed in Accepted I benched one of my veterans, Michelle Pfeiffer. Although I still applaud whenever I see her chewing gum in the Fabulous Baker Boys or meowing in Batman Returns, Ms Pfeiffer hasn’t had anything close to her career year in many seasons. I was surprised to discover that my wife, Kitty, had also penciled in Lively on her card, making room for the yummy Hollywood brat by giving Hugh Grant his unconditional release. And just this morning I decided that I need more pop from my cleanup spot so I sent down the erratic Parker Posie to make room for Maria Sharapova, the tennis player.
After I took some heat last season for starting only babes and starlets I drafted Daljit Dhaliwal, who hosts ABC News Now. She has an MA degree in history and economics and stuff like that from the University of London, and was also named one of People magazine’s “50 most beautiful people in the world.” I'd scouted more famous girl brainiacs, but all I found were Nazi skanks like Ann Coulter. While I don’t usually care about the politics of the players on my team I wasn’t certain that Coulter would be willing to bunt, or hit to left. The guys who had shamed me into this roster change featured players on their lineup cards such as Catherine the Great, the singer Natalie Merchant, lady CEO’s and women who never existed in the flesh—Betty Crocker was one. These were managers, I finally decided, who had allowed their minds to beat out everything else for control.
After suffering through a dismal road trip with the politically correct but sensually inconsistent Ms Dhaliwal (she’s good with the glove but just can’t hit to save her life), I had to admit that I didn’t want women who made me think. I wanted women who made me dizzy. I finally replaced her with Amanda Peet, and I’ve never looked back.
My all-time All-Star is that very heavy hitter, the woman who’s held down the number five spot on my roster for years, Meg Ryan. From French Kiss to You’ve Got Mail to Kate & Leopold, I believe Ms Ryan can do it all. Unfailingly adorable in that addled way that suggests episodic bouts of amnesia, she nevertheless hints that a social evening out could conclude with a really good explication by her of the suicide squeeze, say, or it could also end in slapping. Either way, a good time will be had by all. We engaged in a full and frank exchange of views after she got her lips puffed up like wheelbarrow tires, but following contract negotiations our relationship was stronger than ever. [read more]
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A Taste for Murder
A missing gourmand leads Sid Moran, private dick, on a sordid journey
through Missoula's restaurant scene. By Bill Vaughn
SOMEWHERE in the world of the living my cell whined like a frightened nun. I groped around in the carnage under my bed and found the damn thing, ringtoning Carlos Santana.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Sid Moran?” The guy’s voice oozed with that slimy Brahmin accent John Kerry uses when he was trying to impress somebody.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Moran, this is Anthony Hodgkins calling from Boston. I’m terribly sorry to disturb you on a Saturday, but this is an extremely urgent matter that requires immediate attention.”
I rubbed the guck from my eyes with the back of my hand and looked at my watch. It
was 2:18. This was probably 2:18 in the PM because the sun was shining between my dusty blinds. Hodgkins sounded like a bill collector, but I couldn’t remember if I owed anyone in Bean Town money. “A matter in the nature of what?”
“I’m the editor of Epicure Monthly, Mr. Moran.”
He paused to see if I was impressed. I wasn’t.
“Um, two weeks ago we dispatched our restaurant reviewer, Mr. Ned Singleton, to Montana for our continuing series about the regional cuisine of America. You may be familiar with Mr. Singleton’s work.”
“I only take the Sporting Digest.”
“Aha. Well, we haven’t heard a word from Mr. Singleton in over a week. And a check with his hotel in Missoula, the Holiday Inn at the Park, revealed that his room doesn’t appear to have been occupied for several days.”
“And you want me to find him.”
“Please.”
“Hodgkins, why don’t you go to the cops”
“Two reasons, actually. First, the police—especially your local authorities—are painfully slow in matters of this sort. Of course we fervently hope that nothing untoward has happened to Mr. Singleton, but he does have a deadline. Second, Epicure Monthly is an immensely respected institution among, shall we say, a certain demographic. Anything even hinting of misconduct on his part would tarnish the reputation of the magazine.”
“Does this guy have a history of, uh, misconducting?”
“Not at all. He’s always been very discreet.”
“You mean he’s gay.”
“We have a million loyal readers to consider.”
The only thing I was considering was my bank balance. Adding in the loose change on the night table from my usual Friday night binge at Red’s with nightcaps at Al and Vick’s, I almost had enough to pay the rent on my room.
“I don’t come cheap,” I lied.
“I suspected as much, Mr. Moran. Therefore I have taken the liberty of Fedexing you a $1000 retainer. There’s also a contract stating that you will receive another $1000 when Mr. Singleton is located. And a rare photograph of the man we ask that you show to as few people as possible.”
“Gurg,” I said, choking on my own schnapps-flavored spit.
“Beg your pardon, Mr. Moran?”
“Sorry. Heartburn. What’s the deal with the photo?”
“For professional reasons Mr. Singleton is very sensitive about his identity. If a restaurateur were to recognize him he could inflate the normal quality of the cuisine and service, producing a distorted picture of the establishment. For that reason Mr. Singleton avoids publicity and often wears disguises.”
“One picture’s not a lot to go on.”
“I realize that. But I trust that you’re the only private detective in Missoula who can find Ned Singleton.”
Things were looking up. “Now why do you say that?”
“Mr. Moran, you’re the only private detective in Missoula.” [READ THE REST]
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