Celebrity girlfriends

Scarlett Johansen (sp?) is on the periphery of my celebrity girlfriend pantheon. I always forget about her when listing them, but photos like this make me remember in a hurry.

Vance's First Motorcycle

At the time, Jaqueline and Tom thought buying Vance a "real live" motorcycle was a good way to help build character in the boy.

They were therefore dismayed to see the front page of the Memphs Daily Chronicle, the following morning, featuring Vance riding with this woman with large breasts and one leg, named Eileen.

Though he terrorized and murdered half of Shelby County before he was grounded to his room without dinner or television, Vance never forgot that A.) Motorcycles are fun, and B.) You meet the nicest people on a Honda.

Movies made about us

This film was about an exciting adventure Vance and I had back in our late teens. We were at this wild party, and sure we were going to score. Then the girls told us we had to leave because they'd decided to become lesbians -- and we believed them.

I think this is a partially true story, and involved Vance slamming against a curb and trashing the rims on his boss's wife's truck.

They just don't make movies with names like this any more.

Alex Forrest ain't got nothing on....

Well, I reckon this is all I'm going to say. Those in the know know.

I'd like to thank a member of "The Offspring" for the inspiration.

Now we've all had our fun, let's get back to business.

This is a test.

Just ignore this. I'm trying something out. Bugger off now, ya hear?

Family tree is full of nuts...

The 'nut' dosen't fall far from the tree. Ryan and I have some sort of weird habit of going cockeyed when we get around each other. Rick is even in the picture trying to poke out from under my jacket. If it had been possible, Rick and I would have shared many crazy moments like this together but the miles only allow us to share the crazy crap on Moonpie. On a recent trip to North Carolina, Janet and I went to see Ryan and Harry. Luck would have it that Lia and the two granddaughters were also there. We had a great time and Ryan and I couldn't help ourselves to another stupid photo op. I guess I'm lucky to have two great daughters that I can joke around with and at the same time love with all my heart.

Happy 420 day

*friends hanging out

See Rick, I even put in one nice b/w photo from Canada, der. I know that all the 'kids' are happy about 420 day. Used to be there was no particular day to celebrate. Oh the times they are a changing. The photo at top reminded me of Ginny and Rick and I when we would go for rides in the mesa. Seems that life was a little more simple then. I will not go into all my thoughts about weed at this time, people get tired of hearing from me on this subject. Moonpie alone tells you where we stand on the topic. Peace, have fun.

George Kline and the WHBQ cuties...

Sorry the photo is so small, (I went back and tried to post a larger version)but all this talk about Memphis and racing got me to thinking about Saturday mornings and the local 'bandstand type' show. It featured George Kline and the WHBQ cuties and that was enough for a 11 year old in those days. The show was broadcast from the studios on Highland street, the "Highland Strip" as it was called because to the music clubs in the area.

The "Snowman" cometh.....

I started watching "Funnycars" when the magazines were still writing about how there was nothing 'funny' about these cars. The first time you see an entire body on a car go up in the air to reveal the monster engine, you just sortta stand there and look dumbfounded. Do that when you are 11 years old and you really freak out. I once wrote my name in the dust on the back of this cars spoiler after it came out of the trailer. After the race I checked to see if my name was still there. The entire car looked as though it had been polished from front to back. The sheer horsepower 'shook' the car to a mirror finish.

Bumper Sticker Bravado: Real courage has no logo

I read this article many years ago in Utne Reader, and I've been lugging it around (as far as one can lug a digital file) ever since. From time to time I come across it and reread it. It seems to me that, when I first read it, I thought to myself "Oh, Vance would dig this." I'd like to think it was because we could look at each other and sneer at the people Michael Perry describes in this article. But maybe it's more that, at one point in our young lives, we were those people.I guess it's also interesting to note that this first appeared pre-9/11.

Real Courage Has No Logo
By Michael Perry for Troika Magazine (which may or may not be defunct)

I don't get to town much, so being cut off in traffic should have been a novelty. A stream of bumper-to-bumper day jobbers droning homeward, doing 60 in a 45 zone, light turning red 200 yards ahead, and this nonsignaling knothead shoots in front of me, then stomps the brakes like he's smashing a rat. And so I sat behind him, wondering if I had time to rip out his valve stems before the light changed. His baseball cap was on backward, of course, his stereo was--as I'm sure he would have put it--"cranked," and he was driving one of those yappy little four-wheel-drive pickups that have become the toy poodles of the truck world.

While all of these things triggered my pique, it was the "No Fear" sticker in his rear window that sustains my rant. Irksomely ubiquitous on windshields, T-shirts, caps, billboards, and bumper stickers, this bellicose bit of marketing has caused me to ponder what I know of fear. Very little, I suspect. Not because I am immune, or brave, or drive a hot little truck, but because of good fortune, and because what fear I have experienced has been, in the scope of things, fairly superficial. But in today's society, where rebellion amounts to a nipple ring, a Kool-Aid rinse, or an exquisite tattoo, superficial covers it.

What sort of vacuous buffoonery allows us to adopt a slogan like this? Consider the case of the lump of gristle with a pulse who cut me off in traffic. Cosseted in a society where rebellion has been co-opted by commerce, where individuality is glorified in fashion campaigns that put youth in worldwide lockstep with an efficiency despots only dream of (assuming, of course, that the people who own athletic shoe companies are not despots), raging youth finds itself sitting at a red light, steeped in the same hormonal invincibility that fuels ravaging armies, with nothing to do but wait to tromp the accelerator of a trendy little pickup. Who knows fear?

I once hitchhiked a ride with a cane hauler in Belize. I couldn't speak Spanish; he couldn't speak English. It didn't matter: The bellowing engine precluded conversation. We simply grinned at each other as he hurled the truck through the twists in the road, the scorched sugar cane swaying high above our heads. The truck was of indeterminate vintage. The play in the steering was such that an entire half-spin of the wheel was required before the truck responded. The previous evening, on a blind corner, a pickup had veered over the center line, crashing head-on with a tractor hauling cane. Two men had been killed. As we shot the same curve that morning, the wreckage still remained; grieving clusters of family stood along the roadside. We hit that curve full tilt, blowing a backwash of cane leaves over the upended tractor. I sneaked a peek at the speedometer. It was completely obscured by a circular decal of the Virgin Mary. We grinned at each other again.

Two men, both driving dangerously in trucks, both expressing themselves through adhesive symbols. And yet there is an instructive distinction. If the cane hauler drives without fear it is because he has acknowledged fear, and then turned it over to the Blessed Virgin. The fellow in the four-wheel poodle, on the other hand, is fearless because he has never been forced to acknowledge fear's existence. He has made the quintessentially American mistake of thinking his life is special, his bumper sticker is bold, his truck is shiny, because he is special. His fearlessness is an inane statement construed through an accident of birth. In contrast, the cane hauler may dispense with fear, but he knows better than to scoff at it.

Ernest Hemingway wrote about people living "essential, dangerous lives." Those three words say so much about what we are or aren't, and explain why, in a world filled with fear, we would choose to disguise the sheltered nature of our existence through mindless sloganizing. Perhaps the pickup driver could back up his bravado, could swagger through a Rwandan refugee camp, exhort those pitiful laggards to get a set of decent basketball shoes, hoist a microbrew, and shake off this unattractive predilection to fear. Tell 'em this is Planet Reebok, and on Planet Reebok we have no room for the fearful. Better yet, he could earn his "No Fear" decal by strapping on his favorite Nikes and sprinting down Sniper Alley beside a 12-year-old Sarajevan on a water run.

Somehow, after that, I think he'd prefer to keep his rear window clear, the better to see what fearful thing might be creeping up on him.

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From Troika (Fall 1997). Subscriptions: $10/yr. (4 issues) from Box 1006, Weston, CT 06883.