I’ve spent my whole life fascinated by the outdoors.  It might be one of those situations that occurred because of my curiosity; I grew up in the suburbs, moved to the city and only went camping a handful of times as a kid, never in the woods or anything like that.  I had this urge to get away from civilization, at least temporarily, and really experience nature.  By the time I did, I felt like I had missed a lifetime of experiences, so my wife and I decided that for our first camping trip, we should do it up.  Instead of going and doing a trip to a KOA or something like that, we aimed high. We were realistic and knew that we would likely be “car camping,” which involves a designated campground, parking near your tent, and having some sort of access to bathrooms, water, etc.  To us, the more appealing option was to spend a day and a half driving across the country to a place with no nearby airport, no TV or radio, no cell phone service and a decent chance of being attacked and eaten by a bear.

That place turned out to be Yellowstone National Park.  The first, the original, the iconic national park.  Hell, Yogi Bear lived in a crude parody of it in the Hanna-Barbera universe (great universe, by the way).  It had wide open spaces, forests, mountains, geysers, boiling rivers, a huge lake and is just undeveloped enough to make you feel like you’re actually roughing it.  There are bears, wolves, bison, elk, coyotes, moose and more.  The whole place oozes that Americana I’m obsessed with so much (Americana: people still drive station wagons, enjoy a highball or two after work, grill with charcoal, take their coffee black and enjoy hot dogs.  All that good stuff.)  To me, it’s pretty much the ultimate American vacation.

{travel}
I don’t work for Fodor’s or anything like that, but I do sadly work in the travel industry, so I can at least pretend I know what I’m talking about.

The level of accommodation varies greatly in Yellowstone, the most basic (in camping terms this is referred to as “rustic”) option is what the park calls “back country camping.”  Put simply, this involves getting a permit to walk out into the middle of nowhere with only the things on your back, pitch a tent, sleep, and carry everything back out.  There are no rangers watching over you, no bathrooms and no lights.  The other, more popular camping option, involves going to a campsite, paying a small fee, and camping more or less near your vehicle.  Designated campsites in the park vary from location to location, but they all offer some sort of running water and a bathroom (though some have vault toilets.  Use your imagination if you don’t already know.) and a place to build a campfire.  Certain sites allow generators, are RV only, have showers available, as well as other amenities.  There are also an assortment of hotels and cabins available within the park, but as I said before, no radio and no TV, along with no Internet and no air conditioning.  These range from rustic, lodge styled buildings to Victorian architecture.

Dining in the park can be hit or miss.  Ideally, one would cook or otherwise prepare all of their meals at their campsite, but the limitation of having to return midday or to spend time prepping sandwiches to drive around with in the car lacks some appeal.  There are an assortment of quick-service restaurants operated by the park, but expect to pay about eight dollars for a very basic meal, sans beverage, per person.  It is pricey for what it is, but understandably since transporting food into Yellowstone must be exceedingly expensive.  There are also some casual dining options in the park, which after a few rainy days, it was nice to enjoy a hot meal and a beer indoors.

{/travel}

The park offers breathtaking views from various high points around the park.  There are a variety of thermal features to see, not just the ever-popular Old Faithful Geyser.  Aside from other geysers, this includes places where the mud appears to boil up from the earth and pools of water that feature a brilliant array of colors, all of it stinging the noses of observers with a strong sulfuric odor.  Yellowstone also has its own “grand canyon,” aptly named The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which can be viewed from dozens of points and elevations (read: some steep elevation changes on foot required).  Throughout the park there are also massive numbers of charred remains of trees, a reminder of the wildfires of 1988, but with new trees and plants sprouting from everywhere in between.  There are literally more things than I could have imagined before I came to the park, and yet there were numerous things I did not have a chance to see.

So what things can I recommend, as an expert on all things awesome, for a first time visitor?
Campground:
Norris
This campground is located fairly equidistant to most major attractions in the park, “real” bathrooms (no hot water or showers though, sorry), has a few somewhat private sites and only allows in a few RVs (these are the loudest things in the park from what I could tell).  Cost wise, it’s on the low end of the spectrum and is a first come, first pick site.

Dining, Restaurant:
Canyon Lodge Dining Room
The food was decent, but I really liked the atmosphere here.  Kind of a 1960’s supper club in the woods kind of feel.  They also had a decent bar, which went a long way with me.

Dining, quick-service:
The Lake area’s general store had a nice lunch counter, and had most of the items carried at similar locations, with some malt-shop type options as well.

Must see sights:
-Old Faithful Geyser
-Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
-Lake Yellowstone
-Mammoth Hot Springs
-Norris Geyser Basin
-Artists Paint Pots

Side note: I know a lot of people who dream of backpacking around Europe.  So it was odd to me to see a lot of Europeans backpacking around Wyoming.  And if you leave via Gardiner, MT, hit up the Wash Tub.  Best four dollar shower I’ve ever had.

It was the summer 1989, and I had finished suffering through the 2nd grade. George H.W. Bush had been president for less than six months, and for the first time in my life, I knew the name of the president. I hadn’t quite turned eight yet, so although slightly embarrassing now, it was a milestone. I probably only knew who he was due to a Dana Carvey impersonation, but that’s for another time and place. This is an ode to what I consider to be the original portable gadget: Nintendo’s Game Boy.

For Christmas of 1987, I had received a Nintendo Entertainment System. The must have accessory for nerdy kids in the late 80’s I received later on was a subscription to Nintendo Power. Looking back through these old issues, my parents essentially paid Nintendo to advertise to me. Shrewdly, they announced the Game Boy within their pages and, being eight, I had to have one. Prior to the NES, my dad had an ancient Hewlett Packard terminal for dialing in to work each evening, so I was used to monochrome graphics. After its successful launch, I proudly brought the magazine to the dinner table, ready to make my case for a potential birthday present.

I was ill prepared for the arguments I faced. Mom reminded me that I had already asked for a Lego pirate ship for my birthday, and logic would dictate that my birthday being less than a month away, it was presumably already purchased, wrapped, and stashed under her bed. I knew I couldn’t ask for two high end gifts in one year, so that sank any immediate plans for owning a Game Boy. I don’t want to revisit my entire childhood here, but it was another five years before I knew anyone who owned the sought after portable device. I think it was part of some vast maternal conspiracy far too complex even now for me to understand, designed to encourage game trading amongst ourselves over purchasing. After those five years I had a Super Nintendo, and a second hand Sega Game Gear my parents bought off an uncle for $30, which after a few summer cross country trips was retired to the back of a closet, and eventually the basement, and with that AA batteries were once again freely available in our home. Even the dentist’s office had a Game Boy at this point, a fitting punch line to go with those jokes about old magazines.

In high school, I noticed a couple of my friends with original Game Boys playing Pokémon between classes. As disinterested as I felt, part of me knew, once again, I wanted to buy a Game Boy. Maybe it was because I now had an income, or the fact that the Game Boy Color had just launched a revival of sorts, but now it was on me whether or not to make the purchase. Of course, just about any electronics purchase is a big deal. I had already given up maintaining a gaming PC so I could buy a car, which caused a large portion of my income to regularly be spent on purchases from the Motorcraft division of the Ford Motor Company as well as meals at the local Perkins. Instead of diverting a portion my income back to gaming, I moved the SNES into my room, and that cured the urge for a while.

Despite the hype and the buildup, how I ended up getting my first Game Boy is amazingly unremarkable. I drove over to GameStop with my girlfriend, and I bought one, with a copy of Tetris, for something like $23. By this point, it was the summer of 2001. It came in a plain white cardboard box with a store branded sticker on it with a box checked that indicated the model. Later that night, I popped the batteries in, and turned it on. I squinted through a few rounds of Tetris, then I went to bed. The next day changed everything.

It was warm outside that day, with a comfortable breeze. After trying to squeeze in some pre-breakfast Tetris, I became frustrated with the lighting situation in the basement and took the Game Boy out on the deck. Then it all made sense. At the right angle, everything was clear. I no longer believed the screen was a design limitation. Rather, it had to be a way to pull gaming away from dim basements and the stench of stale Doritos and into the daylight. Not entirely confident the public shared my view, I spent the rest of the summer sneaking around with it in my glove box or in a book bag, picking up a used game every now and again and squeezing in a few minutes here and there. That fall, I dragged it around campus and played on lonely benches along the river. The summer launch of the Game Boy Advance had been completely off my radar, and I wasn’t impressed when a neighbor in the dorms showed me a GBC game on it with the screen all stretched out. Later in the year, one night a work, a girl I worked with, one of those blonde, size one, active in school events types busted out her GBA.

She was what game companies wanted; an attractive, popular young girl playing a game in public. When she handed me the system to “try a level,” I immediately recognized the particular arrangement of pixels on the screen. It was Super Mario World, likely my favorite game of all time. She even seemed excited when I blew through Vanilla Secret 1, even after I admitted to her I had been playing that game since I was eleven. Before next summer came, I had one of my own, my first modern Game Boy. And that is how, in my lifetime, the Game Boy pulled gaming and gadgets out of the closet.

Plain and simple, the Game Boy is the iPod of gaming. Without the Game Boy, I doubt Apple could have so easily had the masses boldly wearing their slick white earbuds in public. Palm wouldn’t have been able to bring the PDA from the briefcase to the pocket. Even the successor to the Game Boy, the DS, can be likened to the iPod’s successor, the iPhone. Both are devices seen as even more acceptable to bust out in public, and both contain a friendlier interface (they also both lose some backwards compatibility, but never mind that). It’s to the point now that if I’m going to be somewhere for any period of time, by Game Boy and/or my DS are with me.

Anywhere I go, I bring entertainment. My wife has even started carrying a DS (original, not lite, making it that much more impressive) in her purse in case one of us gets bored. I essentially am able to remove myself from boredom at key points in my life; when the previews are playing at the movies, when my wife is trying on clothes at the mall, etc. Pretty much everywhere I have to wait, I’m set.

Happy birthday, Game Boy.

It sounds cliché, but my first Jolt Cola was consumed at a local comic book store.  It was the kind of beverage that made mothers cringe, with the catch-phrase “All the sugar and twice the caffeine” proudly emblazoned on the can.  Jolt wasn’t widely available in tradition outlets like supermarkets or convenience stores, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be in a vending machine.  It was the kind of drink a kid growing up in the suburbs saved for special occasions, always consumed from a chilled can and not poured over ice, lest it be diluted.  Jolt didn’t have the smooth taste of Coca-Cola, or the gentle sweetness of Pepsi.  It tasted like a store-brand soda on steroids.  Something tells me if you were making a drink with it, instead of Jack Daniels you’d throw some Evan Williams in there, just so that the whole thing was equally harsh.

Jolt was the stuff of legend growing up.  If you had friends with nerdy older brothers in the late 1980’s, odds are you heard about it from them.  I distinctly remember being lectured about it at great length while watching some tabletop gaming sessions or trying to read the dialog boxes on Crystalis (NES) from across the room.  These were grand tales about unimaginable energy boosts, coupled with wild mood swings as the user came down.  It was the closest thing a middle class suburban kid could get to cocaine.  I distinctly recall one of these older brothers gleefully leaving the now-defunct Shinders with two Jolt Colas in one hand, and a copy of 2600 in the other, a scowl on his mother’s face.  Those were the days.

By the time I got my driver’s license, I was pretty well integrated into the “geek” culture.  My friends held LAN-parties, played Dungeons & Dragons and were early adopters to things like Magic: The Gathering.  Although in all fairness, a lot of them played with Pogs in junior high.  Mountain Dew was considered to be the standard-bearer of beverages, and along with Nacho Cheese Doritos, it was consumed at all gatherings.  Jolt was too special for this kind of recreational use.  Two or three of my friends could tear through a case of soda in a little over an hour.  It didn’t even matter if it was cold.  The market price of Jolt was far beyond our incomes to be consumed in the fashion, and it was unheard of to find anything larger than a six pack anyway.  So there it remained, legendary in its own right, seldom consumed.  Movies like Hackers and Jurassic Park added to its geek factor, helping cement its nerd-icon status.

When the summer of 1999 rolled around, I was single, had a big car, and a friend of mine had a job at Shinders.  Being seventeen, not having gainful full-time employment, and having long afternoons to kill, obviously I’d go hang out at the comic store.  It was the kind of place where loitering was encouraged, and I was able to earn some “cred” by buying books like “Rising Stars.”  The Marvel and DC guys kept to themselves, the baseball card kids were busy trying to make a buck selling cards and the guys buying porno mags in the back avoided eye contact with the clerks and occasional parents in the store.  That left the staff free to talk to people like me, the friend killing time.  The store also had a soda cooler, stocked with twenty ounce bottles of Jolt, available in three flavors.  One was obviously cola, and I want to say one was orange, and one was a Mountain Dew knock-off.

I’d buy a Jolt every time I went in, and before long they stopped bothering the charge me.  Going into the fall, the Shinders trip became a Sunday afternoon ritual.  I’d get off my shift at my job, then go hang out there for two hours until they closed.  This continued right up until Halloween of 1999, when everything fell apart at the store.  Apparently the own had gotten wise about some of the on-goings at this particular branch of his newsstand empire, and began checking inventory.  I felt pretty terrible for taking advantage of his lazy employees, but it turns out the free-Jolt issue was moot.  The internal thefts had piled up so that a few missing beverages went unnoticed.  The staff had been running a Pokeman card fraud scheme that amounted to a few thousand dollars in thefts, and the bulk of the clerks were terminated during this time.  Shortly after these events, I went on a Ruby Red Squirt kick, and Jolt quietly changed formats by the time I went looking for one.

Jolt has been a victim of the energy drink wars, now only served in a sixteen ounce format that resembles a large AA battery, hopped up with all the vitamins, supplements and additives one would expect to find in a NOS, Red Bull or Rockstar.  Now that everything has twice the caffeine, twice the caffeine isn’t good enough.

I don’t really know when I first noticed Bruce Campbell.  If my memory serves me correctly, it was likely during radio ads for The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a program that was broadcast on the FOX network for a single season.  I didn’t watch the show during the original airing, but did eventually get around to seeing a few episodes.  The first time I sat and watched Bruce Campbell though, that I remember.

It was the fall of 1997.  I had moved from my childhood bedroom to the basement of my parent’s house about a year and a half prior, sleeping on the couch in the family room until eventually migrating into a large unfinished section of the house.  I was channel surfing and for some reason or another settled on the Sci Fi Channel, something I didn’t (and don’t) regularly watch.  It was a film where a shotgun-wielding man with a chainsaw attached to his right arm battled against shrieking witches in the middle ages, eventually replacing his chainsaw with a hand-crafted prosthetic steel hand and taking on waves of stop-motion skeletons and demons of all sorts.  I told a friend about it, and to my surprise she was familiar with the film.  It’s title is Army of Darkness, or in some circles “Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness.“  Within a week I had purchased the then four year old film on VHS, along with its two prequels, The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

The Evil Dead trilogy is what made Bruce Campbell a household name to horror fans, though not at first.  The first film was released two weeks before I was born, and the sequel wasn’t released until five and a half years later.  Perhaps that long delay between films was appropriate, since Evil Dead II is essentially a remake of The Evil Dead, with Army of Darkness being the true sequel.  Over the course of the film the genre seems to shift from pure horror to more or less a black comedy, with Campbell’s signature over-the-top performance playing the part of “Ash” Williams like no one else could.  Writer/director Sam Raimi created the series, and frequently worked with Campbell before and after it as well.  His high school friend and frequent director even placed him in a minor role in Spiderman when he hit it big.

Campbell often portrays a pseudo-macho, ego-driven character, delivering witty back to back one-liners.  He’s like an exaggerated low budget Han Solo.  He can be the star and the comic-relief at the same time.  Campbell acknowledges and embraces his B/cult-movie actor status, but remains approachable at appearances, much to the delight of his dedicated fans.  When he doesn’t receive top-billing, I know I’m always excited to see him in one of his almost-signature bit parts in major films, making a little game out of spotting his cameos.

Campbell’s work extends to the small screen as well.  Along with guest spots on successful Raimi franchises such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, he’s also had spots on more serious and big title programs such as Homicide: Life on the Street and X-Files.  His last starring role on television lasted for a season and a half at the turn of the century, Jack of all Trades, in which Campbell played a Jefferson-era secret agent tasked with defending the young United States.  The show was ran weekly before a low grade sci-fi program called Cleopatra 2525, both of which my roommate and I stayed up late in the dorms to watch every Sunday night.  If you missed his earlier TV work, Campbell now co-stars as an aging Miami spy on USA Network’s Burn Notice, which as of this writing appears for free on Hulu for those who don’t have cable.  Although he has gained some weight and some gray hairs, his Burn Notice character “Sam Axe” is classic lovable Bruce Campbell, and his fans are likely responsible for the series’ ratings success, which is now on its third season.

That and all the explosions.  Gotta have explosions.

Hail to the king, baby.

Required Bruce Campbell Viewing:

• The Evil Dead
• Evil Dead II
• Army of Darkness
• Bubba Ho-tep
• My Name Is Bruce

Other Notable Appearances:

• Darkman
• The Hudsucker Proxy
• Fargo
• Escape From L.A.
• McHale’s Navy
• Spiderman (all three so far, actually)
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

I’ve always been behind as far as PC gaming goes.  Our first family computer was a used 286 from my uncle, and we didn’t get that until I was in the fifth grade.  This is odd, considering my dad worked in IT, but in retrospect I attribute it to his desire to escape from the office while at home.  I remember the first game I bought for that computer was King’s Quest II, and it was well out of print and collecting dust at an end-cap at my local Target store (come to think of it, it was the Target in the next town over since our store hadn’t been built early enough to have a PC game that old in its stock room).  Anyway it was 1997 or so before a friend of mine turned me on to Syndicate, which was already dated, but ran alright on my dad’s shiny new Pentium.  And by alright I mean life-changing.  In brief, if you haven’t played this game, keep your mouth shut about strategy and squad based gaming.  Tom Clancy has nothing on this.

The premise of the game is simple.  You run a mega-corporation in a world where governments are no longer controlling world affairs.  Borders have been redrawn, and control is seized by corporate spies rather than war and politics.  People are essentially sheep protected by ineffective police forces.  From a three-quarter isometric viewpoint, you lead a team of one to four cyborg agents completing various missions to acquire new territories.  Did I mention a cyberpunk setting?  Hell yes!  And how do you boost the performance of your team.  Implants.  Implants, and drugs that is.  All controlled with a simple point and click interface.  The whole game is almost like an alternate version of Blade Runner.  Isn’t the future grand?

You have a variety of missions ranging from assassinations to protection to staff/technology acquisitions.  You begin with small arms ranging from pistols and shotguns and gradually move up to Uzis, sniper rifles, machine guns, lasers and rocket launchers.  You also have some non-offensive items that can be equipped, such as health kits, shields, enhanced radar and a device than brainwashes civilians, police and enemy agents called the “Persuadatron.”  Each of your agents has eight slots that can be individually assigned in their inventory, which affords you a wide assortment of weapon combinations.  Transportation options include “cars” and the police versions of such, which from what I can tell are hover-based Toyota Previas, garbage trucks, armored personnel carriers and trains.  Vehicle control is amazingly atrocious, but you spend most of the game on foot, so it doesn’t matter that much.  And it goes without saying that if you’re vehicle explodes from enemy fire, you’re pretty much going to die a painful death by burning.

Little touches like brainwashed enemy agents being added to your roster and captured enemy weapons being available to research and eventual purchase help add a complexity at the mission level, while you are forced to deal with taxing and managing rebelling territories between missions.  An expansion called American Revolt was released, presumably based on American fear of socialism and taxation, which had a few much more challenging missions and if memory serves me right, the ability to call in air strikes.  I didn’t play that much of it.  There was also a sequel released in 1996, which is an updated version of the original that incorporates multiplayer, but it never took off.  There’s talk of yet another sequel these days, but I’m not holding my breath.  The only drawback to Syndicate to me is that I was never able to get the audio drivers working properly, but that is likely my own fault.  If you get the chance, beg borrow or steal a copy of this game, rock some DOSBox and let loose.

Moustache, the ultimate symbol of refined masculinity.  Possessed by the manliest men (and manliest of women for that matter), the moustache is more civilized and cultivated than the slovenly, caveman-ish beard.

As a man that does not come from a very hirsute linneage, I am envious of anyone that is capable of growing a full, robust moustache.  We’re talking full blown soup-strainer envy here.  If my father is any indication, at some distant point in the future I will be able to grow a glorious, full blown crumb catcher.  But until that time, all I can do is sit and wait and hope and dream and imagine the moustache I will eventually possess and focus on my moustache role models.  Whose moustache’s are worthy of emulation?  Find out after the break.

Clarke freaking Gable. One dapper sonuvabitch. Airforce bomber gunner, movie star, moustache-haver extrodinare. Not only did he not give a damn about Scarlett, he also worked along side some of the most manliest of Hollywood men between 1923 and 1960. Dude had more wives than most Saudi sheiks.  Sure he didn’t always rock the ’stache, but when he did, whoa momma! Total bangarang dude.

Tom Selleck, the only man in human history to make a Detroit Tigers hat look DOUBLEAWESOME. Seriously, Thomas Magnum is the baddest mamma jamma to come out of Hawaii since Steve McGarrett (if Jack Lord had a moustache he’d totally be on this list). Colt .45 automatic, Ferrari 308, awesome moustache, how is this man not worthy of emulation?

Billy Dee! Billy Dee! Billy Dee! The only soul brother in the Star Wars universe (until Samuel L. came into the crappy prequels). Spoon full of blaster and a Colt .45 (it works every time). His ’stache? DOUBLEAWESOME. So doubleawesome we’ll forget the fact that he sold out Han to that bounty hunter.

Giorgio Moroder. The man that made Donna Summers’ Love to Love You and I Feel Love icons of the disco era. RESPECT THE STACHE!

How do you make Admiral William Adam, who is a double plus baddass in his own right, even more of a baddass? ADD A FREAKING MOUSTACHE! Edward James Olmos + facial hair = GALACTIC SUPER PIMP.

Last, but certainly not least, BURT REYNOLDS. Is there a more iconic ’stache haver? Not on your life! I can’t even begin to explain the massive levels of testosterone that is exuded by Burt’s über-stache. Just watch Smokey and the Bandit, or The Cannonball Run, or Stroker Ace and you will be witness to the awesome power wielded by Burt’s upper lip. Am I alone in wishing that Burt’s ’stache recieved it’s own billing above the title in his films? I bet not.

And finally? Some words of wisdom from Less Than Jake. Aye-yaey-yaey-yaey, Cinco de Moustache!

This week we lost one of the greatest musical talents of the past fifty years. While he had his critics and his … peculiarities, one cannot deny the massive influence that Michael Jackson had on American popular music and culture. While it is a sad day for music lovers everywhere, some people are crass enough to have started taking pot shots at him and his memory before the body was even cold. I usually don’t get all butt hurt over people making light of celebrities but for Michael I make an exception. I do this firstly because he released Thriller, easily the most influential record of all time*. Secondly, and this is the biggie here, I do this because those that criticise and deride him the most are the same type of people that made him what he is today. It’s the same celebrity obsessed lookie-loos that cracked him and skewed his world view. Read after the break for more.

I’m going to try and keep this short, as I am liable to vent here and go on and on and on.

< rant >

The man grew up in a fishbowl, thrust out into the public by a horrible excuse for a father, one Mr. Joesph Jackson. While one might say that the pressure that Joe Jackson put on his sons was part of what drove them to success, it takes no great leap of the imagination to connect the physical and emotional abuse endured by the Jackson children to their difficulties later in life. Lets be honest here. Michael never had what could, by any leap of the imagination, be called a childhood.  He was on the road performing from the time he was five, isolated from other children and the necessary experiences that people need durring their formative years to make them well ballanced mentally healthy adults. He grew up as a performer in the media spot light and suffered because of it.

As he grew older the pressure and attention intensified. Albums, singles, music videos, celebrity endorsements, getting his hair set on fire on the set of that Pepsi commercial shoot, all of it made him fodder for the tabloids. As the outside world pushed further and further into his life, Michael did what anyone could be expected to do, he withdrew further and further into his own world, first to his mansion in Encino and then further removed to Neverland ranch. If ever there was someone that needed to have a safe social environment, it’s the dude that had no childhood, suffered emotional abuse through out his developing years, and thought that he was Peter Pan. But how are you going to find that when everyone either wants your money or to make money off you? Wacko Jacko stories and pictures sold papers so the outside kept closing in.

I’m not one that tries to appologize away the creepy man-child aspect of his personality in his later years. The fact that he basically stopped aging emotionally at like age 9 is way freaky.  Under the circumstances though, it is understandable. Here was a man in the postition to buy anything he wanted, to make any dream he had come true. Mansion? Done. Amusement park? Done. Pet monkey? Done. The publishing rights to the bulk of the Beatles catalog? Done. But the one thing he wanted and needed most, the one thing that would have made everything else bearable, was impossible to buy. A normal childhood isn’t something you can find for sale.

So let’s review where we are so far shall we? Incredibly traumatic childhood + further isolation + more money than god = recipe for celebrity lunacy not seen since Howard Hughes. Good to see you’re still with me.

As he continued to withdraw from the world, he started to lose touch with his audience and the tastes of mainstream culture. While his later efforts were pretty solid showings (even 2001’s Invincible has some good cuts on it) they still have that certain “this is just a little off” quality to them. You could tell that he was no longer on the same page as the public at large, he no longer had his finger on the pulse of the times. So what happens? The critics tear him a new one as the tabloids continued to swarm around looking for blood in the water (or on the dance floor as the case may be) and he withdraws even further.

The final nail in the coffin, the thing that pushed him over the edge? The child molestation charges. Even though he was acquitted I’m not going to hazzard a guess as to whether or not he did touch those kids. It is documented that he began having troubles with perscription pain killers as a result of the stress from the trials. Both the case in ‘93 and the case in ‘03 had the tell tale signs of opportunistic extortion. The tape recorded comments of the kid in the ‘93 case definitely point towards that. And the ‘03 case? I’m sorry but any parent that would let their child spend the night at the home of a rich middle aged man that had previously been charged with molestation is either criminally neglegent as a parent or trying to cash in bigtime by dragging their child through a nasty legal procedure.

It wasn’t a heart attack or pills or whatever the toxicology report will reveal that killed him, it was the world at that wouldn’t leave him alone.

I’m sorry to be harping on this but it’s been disturbing me since his passing was confirmed Thursday. Like so many of my peers, his music was the soundtrack to my childhood. It has an important place in my life that no amout of scandal or criticism will change. I watched Moonwalker last night and I still get a little choked up at the end of the Smooth Criminal segment when he comes back from outer space. No matter how sad I am to hear that we’ve lost a great musical genius, I am somewhat relieved for Michael’s sake. The long, hard journey is over and he can finally rest in peace.

*You doubt me on this? Bullshit. Show me another album that’s sold over 28 million copies. I’m intentionally not counting Eagles: Their Greatest Hits here, that’s a compilation, not an album. You don’t equate sales figures with influence? Bullshit. You’re just pissed off because your band is too underground to get signed.

< /rant >

Lakefront Brewery's Tank Room

So here’s the setup.  For the last two Octobers, around my birthday, my wife and I have quietly celebrated the occasion out of town.  However, Minneapolis presents its own geographical difficulties for a quick weekend on the road.  To the North, the only major city is Duluth, and since I don’t smoke meth it is not the most appealing destination.  Heading West or South, I would have to go as far as Seattle or Kansas City, respectively.  Not really realistic.  So my only option for maximum vacation/minimum travel time is East.  The choices to the East are: Madison, Chicago and Milwaukee.  Madison is smaller than Saint Paul, and from what I’ve gathered is a “college town.”  I’m fine with that, but I’m getting a little old for the scene.  Chicago is a minimum six hour drive.  Minimum.  Anyone who tells you less is either lying, terrible at basic math or takes a route that includes one of our country’s “imaginary time zones.”  Not to say I don’t enjoy Chicago, but everything is talked up so much it gets hard to discern the true gems of the city.

This is where Milwaukee comes in.  You can drive it in about five hours and afford to stay in town.  From downtown, you can walk to lots of bars, and let’s face it, drinking on vacation is awesome.  Plus, Wisconsin’s alcohol serving laws puts the responsibility on the patron, not the bartender, so unless you’re being a big asshole, it is unlikely you will not be served.  Plus, Milwaukee has a proud brewing history that includes Miller, Pabst and Schlitz, so one can reasonably assume they know their beer.  In the 1980’s as American beer tastes became more refined, so did the beer industry in Milwaukee.  Microbreweries and brew-pubs sprang up, and while I don’t think anybody can claim that one region has captured craft brewing more than another, Milwaukee does it pretty well.  So on our last outing, with my wife’s new found love of the brew, we picked a brewery to tour.

Enter Lakefront Brewery.

Anyone who’s been on a brewery tour knows the standard routine:

• Arrive, sit around for tour to start.
• Explanation of ingredients and brewing process
• Take extra time to discuss hops
• Tour begins
• Tank room. Big stainless steel tanks. There will be hoses running across the floor and your shoes will get wet.
• Bottling line. They discuss how the kegs are cleaned.
• Tour concludes, optional video.
• Finally, you get some beer and are told the location of the gift shop.

Here’s how they do it at Lakefront:

• Arrive
• Start drinking one or more of your four pours of beer, wait for tour to start.
• Explanation of ingredients and brewing process
• Discussion of Bavarian Purity Law, picture of hops
• Tour begins, tour guide (owner) gives you one more on him so you have something to drink on the tour.
• Tank room, part of Milwaukee County Stadium is there. Hoses, wet shoes.
• Bottling line. Laverne and Shirley sing-a-long.
• Tour concludes, more drinking.
• Pick up your free mug at the gift shop, walk to a bar to claim your free pint.

Let’s take a minute break down the key differences.  You get to start drinking right away.  The faux beer snobs will pretend they care about the brewing process, but that’s not why we go on brewery tours.  It’s to get beer.  At Lakefront, they’re generous with the pours, give away branded merchandise (because things with logos are advertisements), and then give you a coupon to be redeemed for a pint at one of a dozen or so local bars.  Nothing like Applebee’s either, but real bars.  The whole environment of the tour is relaxed and informal, but the quality of the beer brings in people who I don’t imagine sitting around drinking whole cases of Keystone Light in one sitting.  Although the brewery operation itself has only been around since 1987, it does sit in an old power plant, which adds a historic feel to the tour.  Plus, if you’re as dedicated about drinking beer as I am, you can walk to the brewery from downtown (a taxi probably would be perfectly reasonable as well I imagine).

So on top of all these awesome facts about their tour, the beer is good too.  Their varieties include ales, a pale ale, an IPA, lagers, some seasonal brews and even a gluten free beer.  My personal favorite is the Fuel Cafe coffee stout, but that could just be my love of mixing uppers and downers.  To me, if you have an afternoon to kill in Milwaukee, pencil in Lakefront Brewery.  They give daily tours, multiple tours on weekends and do schedule some evening tours.  At $6 it might seem on the steep side for a brewery tour, but take my word for it, it’s worth every cent.

Lakefront Brewery

Flickr Pool

July 4th, 1998.  I was sixteen, and since my birthday the preceding October, I had been relegated to borrowing my father’s Plymouth Voyager, the 1991 model.  But this day was more than a national day of independence; it was a personal day as well.  My family had taken the thirty minute drive to my uncle’s house to celebrate, as well as purchase my first car.  It was a transaction based on faith since I hadn’t seen the vehicle, and at the time the Internet was PG (Pre-Google) and my connection was dial-up, so I had no clue what the car looked like.  As we rolled into that Camden residence and strolled to the backyard, I finally glimpsed upon my first car: the 1985 Ford LTD.It wasn’t the classic LTD Crown Victoria, but rather a mid size version of the car.  Instead of the famous Windsor 302 V8, it contained an Essex 232 V6, a power plant famous for head gasket leaks.  It was about as long, but noticeably more narrow than a Crown Victoria, but this was not an obstacle to the sale.  The interior was red, that classic Ford red that had graced the interior of my dad’s 1983 1/2 Escort wagon, except in faux velvet as opposed to vinyl.  The exterior was, specifically, “Oxford White,” and was in remarkably good condition except for the passenger side front door, which had been crushed by a narrow right-hand turn into a snow bank the previous winter by my beloved aunt.  This would eventually receive a liberal application of duct tape to silence a rattling noise, but at the time, these flaws went unnoticed.  My uncle threw in a JBL cassette deck, covered in sawdust (he is a carpenter), and $800 later it was mine.  After the fireworks display, I drove it home along a collection of state highways (including  “the beltline” and “the crosstown”)  and parked the car in its new home in front of my parents’ house.  From there, the car would eventually consume my adolescent life.

The initial exploits of the car included a few trips to the then-cool Uptown neighborhood (it isn’t cool anymore.  deal.), the Hard Times Cafe (also no longer cool) and various trips to commercial zones around the metro.  I even drove it to the one and only combined Warped Tour/Ozzfest in Somerset, Wisconsin, amid the World’s Larest Ball of Twine (disputed?) in Darwin, Minnesota.  Sure, the air conditioner didn’t work, but at that age, what did it matter?  It was a car.  But a first car is destined to have its fair share of issues.

Among the repairs made to the 76k mile sedan were:

• Water Pump (on the coldest day of the year)
• Radiator
• Rear suspension
• Brakes
• Muffler
• Electronic ignition control module
• Catalytic converter (well, re-weld the cover)

… and various other issues that added up to roughly $3800 dollars in parts and labor.  After  about a year with the car, and about twenty thousand miles, plus some added bad memories that I will not get into, I sold the car, to my cousin (the daughter of the uncle who sold me the car in the first place), for $600.  I spent the next month without a car, then I purchased the 1990 LTD Crown Victoria LX from my grandfather.  For about eight months, it was my dream car, until something or other stopped functioning between the transmission and the engine, and at 80mph, the car shifted into first gear, destroying the transmission.  I sold that car for $100, cash.  After that, I bought a mid-nineties police car, and I drove that until 2004 when I bought my first joint-car (my now-wife and I’s) Japanese sub-compact.

It’s funny how no matter how hard you try, you can never go back again to the thrill of your first car.  Be it a hand-me-down, or just something “dad doesn’t want in his driveway,” the first car that was owned by most everyone I knew could be summed up like this: “beloved piece of crap.”  Until recently, I thought this feeling was just a distant memory, until, as a gift from a close friend, I received a 1985 Lincoln Town Car.

At twenty-seven, I can finally say, “I’m back.”

Why will Communism never work?  Why is world peace an impossible dream?  Why is it that I can’t take more than 3 ounces of liquid through security at the airport?  Why do coffee cups at McDonald’s have warnings on them about the temperature of their contents?  Because of the one asshole rule.  What, you may ask, is the “one asshole rule?”  Continue reading after the break to find out.

The one asshole rule is a simple concept, a scientific theorem I postulated after years of observing human nature and people’s interactions with each other.  Quite simply, the one asshole rule is as follows:

All it takes for any good thing in life to be irreparably ruined is the action of one selfish and/or stupid asshole.

or, rather,

It only takes one asshole to ruin it for everybody else.

The history of human civilization is rife with examples of the one asshole rule in action, from the earliest dawn of civilization through to the current day.  The beauty of the one asshole rule is that it works on both a macro and micro level.  For a macro example, because of one asshole trying to blow up an airplane with a gel bomb, everyone flying in the US has to go through the rigmarole of putting all their liquids into tiny bottles before they go through airport security.  For a micro example, one asshole that was incapable of centering his car between the lane lines caused a month worth of chaos in the parking lot of my old apartment.

The one asshole rule is also why we have personal injury lawyers and a desperate need for tort reform in this great country of ours.  The classic example of this is the landmark award of $2.86 million in 1994’s Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants.  You know, the case where the lady dumped a full cup of scalding hot McDonald’s brand coffee in her lap and sued Ronald silly.  This epic case was one of the greatest meetings of assholes in American jurisprudence.  We have one asshole dumb enough to open a full cup of coffee while holding it between her legs, one asshole corporation stupid enough to not pay out damages and sweep the whole matter under the carpet, and one asshole personal injury lawyer that wasn’t afraid to reach for the stars all in the same case.  Awesome.  Because of this we have inane warnings on coffee cups and more people trying to win big on their own stupidity.

The one asshole rule is the reason why most, if not all, forms of government/economic systems will never work as advertised.  All it takes is one asshole that thinks he deserves a bigger piece of the pie or that he shouldn’t have to contribute as much to throw a Communist system out of balance.  An asshole wanting something that belongs to someone else and taking it by force makes Anarchy and Libertarianism untenable propositions.  One greedy asshole corporation (since they are legally considered to be an individual entity, I’m considering them to be one collective asshole) putting their interests above all others causes the inequities in Capitalism.  One reactionary populist asshole spoiler with no hope of winning a majority can taint the electorate in a democracy the same way one inbred syphilitic poly-amorous asshole can screw up a perfectly good monarchy.

Same goes for religion.  Jesus and Muhammad were pretty cool dudes, all about justice and helping the poor and doing right by your neighbors, but not a day goes by when their teachings aren’t tainted and perverted by an unending parade of self-serving assholes.  Assholes use Judiasm and Hinduism as fuel for regional wars.  Scientology is a religon created by a ginormous asshole as a way to scam money off of other assholes of varying magnitude (on the low end you have your common salt of the earth Scientologists, on the high end you have Tom Cruise).  I think the only religion that is immune from the grasp of assholes is Buddhism.  If you’ve ever met a Buddhist I’m sure you’d agree that it’s physically impossible for a true Buddhist to be an asshole; annoyingly serene yes, but a full blown asshole, no.

So that’s all I got for now, take a look around you and you’ll see evidence of the one asshole rule all over the place.