Tales of Small-Town Life: The Legend of Porky's

In the early 1980s, before any of my playground chums and I had access to VHS and before any video rental places opened anywhere near us (or anywhere near almost anybody, for that matter), before any of us had seen an R-rated movie, before we'd seen a naked woman on celluloid or the pages of a magazine (except for the Penthouse magazine that some sixth-graders brought to school and briefly waved in front of us before hiding it underneath one of their jackets), one teenage sex comedy became the pinnacle of rural playground mythology. In 1982, when I was in kindergarten, Porky's came to a theater near you. In 1983, when I was in first grade, the movie became a hot topic of playground conjecture, speculation, tall tale, legend, myth, anticipation, and obsession. My group of friends and I were working-class kids with twentysomething parents, so none of us had HBO, and even if we'd had the channel, none of our parents would have been willing to let a six-year-old watch a teen sex romp. That didn't stop the legend from growing ever larger. Most likely, the unavailability of this film in our young lives helped fuel its mythical reputation.
One friendly acquaintance of mine, Phillip, spread the Porky's gospel like a fire-and-brimstone evangelical. He was still in kindergarten, but my first-grade chums and I took him seriously, for a number of reasons. His parents were divorced, and, though many of us would eventually share in this unfortunate circumstance, he was the first one, which gave him an exotic, streetwise sheen we silently but strongly admired. His oldest brother was in high school. Teenagers were golden gods to us then. I especially worshiped his older brother because he was a long-haired metal and punk fan who I would later talk music with when I was a middle school kid and he was in his twenties on breaks from college. I was a little scared of metal and punk when I was in first grade, being mostly a new wave, Michael Jackson, and John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band fan at the time, but, again, the exotic allure of the dark unknown world of the teenage hesher simultaneously attracted and frightened me. But I digress. Back to Phillip. Most importantly, he had a confirmed bachelor uncle who lived in an apartment in downtown Denver, and he and his brothers often visited this uncle on weekends. Oh, the tales they told. Oh, the boobs seen on pay cable. Oh, the sips of beer his uncle let them sneak. This kid had the goods on the side of life we might someday, somehow, tomorrow, tomorrow, somewhere over the rainbow, brush up against as adults, young adults, teenagers, or god help us, tweens.
Many weekday mornings, in that sweet twenty minutes before the first bell rang, we lined up alongside the red brick wall of the elementary school and listened to Phillip's tales of Porky's. In those weeks before the weather grew bitterly cold and the snow piled up, when it was too cold to play basketball, kickball, king of the mountain, or merry-go-round of death but tolerable enough to stand around and talk with our hands in our pockets, our breath not yet visible in the air, we listened as Phillip gave us the latest installment of Porky's info. He often mentioned that Porky's was in regular rotation on HBO at his uncle's house, but he had yet to catch a magical glimpse. He did know one thing. The version shown on HBO was not the version shown in theaters. No, the version on HBO was many times filthier. In fact, it was the XXX version. We had not yet acquired the knowledge that would let us call bullshit on that one. Instead, we exhaled deeply, widened our eyes, and agreed that that XXX version must be really something.
In the coming weeks, Phillip told us he'd sneaked a few peeks at the television screen while his uncle watched Porky's. He told us of the many scenes of unsimulated sex he'd witnessed before his uncle caught him peeking from behind the couch. He said that a man had even licked a woman's genitalia. This was the most outrageous thing we'd ever heard. He licked it? Really? This was truly a man who would do anything. This was a man, to quote a redneck Benedict Arnold of the future, "with a spine of tempered steel." Phillip promised to catch more of the film in future visits and report back.
He did report back, again and again. By now, we should have been suspicious. It would seem that his uncle's television contained nothing but a permanent Porky's loop. But we were hooked. What next? He watched half of it, he said. He mentioned scenes that we would eventually learn were actually in the film, but he filled them with many unsimulated exaggerations, including more genital-licking, nipple-tweaking, penis-stroking, and full-on boning. He exaggerated the shower scene to include a 20-minute orgy, and claimed the penis-in-the-hole-in-the-wall gag was actually shown in uncensored detail.
The day finally came when Phillip saw the whole XXX Porky's shebang. In a stroke of genius, he pretended to fall asleep on his uncle's living room floor. This ruse finally provided the chance to see the film in its entirety. His uncle thought he was asleep, and he watched the whole movie. This time, he saw such incredible scenes as a man who put his penis in a hot dog bun, a woman who covered her breasts with a banana split, and the most legendary scene of all, which caused the most playground hubbub I've heard before or since. He claimed that Porky's final scene featured a man with eight penises receiving oral sex from eight different women. He called this man "octopus-dick." In second grade, it became "octopus cock." By third grade, we referred to the man as "octo-cock." This was so unbelievable that we believed every word. We had to see this movie. We. Had. To. See. This. Movie.
That third grade year, video rentals were widely available. While perusing the video wall at a local convenience store, I spotted it. Porky's! On VHS! For rental! In our little town! The dirtiest movie ever made! Still, none of us could figure out a way to rent that video. We were little kids. What were we going to do? But, we had to see it! There must be a way. There wasn't.
Later that year, the Porky's myth ended with a whimper, not a (gang)bang. Here all week, people. The legend had trickled all the way up to the older kids, but it entered a period of stasis. With none of us able to actually see the movie and with no way to top the Octo-Cock, we moved on to other topics of discussion, such as professional wrestling and how long you could be submerged underwater without suffering brain damage. One day, while standing along the wall talking to Phillip, we watched a sixth-grader walk up to us. Here is the conversation that ensued, to the best of my recollection.
Sixth-grade: Hey, Phillip. I finally watched Porky's and almost none of that stuff you said was in it. There was no Octopus Dick. There weren't any blowjobs. There was some boobs and some bush in the shower part, and some chick showed her butt, but that was it. You're so full of it.
Phillip: I was talking about Porky's II, not Porky's.
Sixth-grade: Yeah, right.
The sixth-grader walked away. We went back to talking about being submerged underwater.

There is no such thing as Santa Claus and there is no such thing as Octo-Cock.

I didn't see Porky's until 2007.

Tales of small-town life: KISS edition

Listening to Paul Stanley's stage banter this week, I realized that many of my formative childhood and young adult memories are somehow related to Kiss. Which is funny, because I was never much of a Kiss fan. Gene Simmons was, and still is, a revolting pig who could give two shits about rock and roll, though I think the rest of the band honestly enjoyed playing music. He has stated that when he and Paul Stanley get too physically decrepit to play live, they will hold auditions for their own replacements and keep Kiss going like a professional sports team. He hit a new low for me with that comment. He's got so much contempt for his fans that he is deliberately planning to let them pay upwards of $225 to see a cover band. A Kiss website for fans of the original lineup features a message board where every single contributor refers to Simmons as Mean Gene the ATM Machine. They've done more "farewell" tours than Ozzy Osbourne. If Cliffs Notes existed for the dumbest song ever written, "Rock and Roll All Nite" would be those Cliffs Notes. However, I'll always have a special place in my heart for Kiss, particularly for how they keep showing up in my personal life. Here's the rundown:
1) I came out of the womb with a love of comic books, horror movies, and rock and roll permanently imprinted on my brain by Baby Jesus, so Kiss' image was right up my alley. Some of my earliest memories consist of a total fascination with how the band looked. I hadn't heard any Kiss songs yet, but I loved staring at pictures of them, their record covers, and their images on television. I remember being four or five and seeing the Kiss episode of "3-2-1 Contact." One of the hosts got to work backstage at a Kiss concert in Abilene, Texas and interviewed the backstage crew, the lighting guys, the sound guys, etc. The Kiss stage spectacle, in all its glory, presented for a children's science show. My mind was blown. I remember being almost beside myself with excitement, and I also remember actually praying to God each day before "3-2-1 Contact" aired and asking Him to re-run that particular episode. It finally worked one glorious summer day, and I couldn't believe my luck. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, here it is. (It's not quite as exciting as I remembered it.)



2) The Ogard brothers lived four blocks away when I was a wee little man. They were several years older than me and had most of the same interests. Three or four times a year, they sold a lot of their old stuff at their mother's yard sales, and I was always in heaven. I usually left their yard sales with a giant stack of horror comics, a couple of cool robot or monster toys, and the occasional Black Sabbath or AC/DC cassette. One year, they were selling a complete set of Kiss toys. I wanted them so badly, but they were a lot pricier than the usual yard sale stuff, and I had to go home empty-handed (except for the giant stack of horror comics, of course). I don't know where they are now, but I ran into them in the bar in my hometown at Christmas about ten years ago, and they said they were playing in a few punk bands in Seattle and Portland. They were too old for me to hang out with, but I always felt a little better knowing that someone else in town liked the same weird stuff as me. It made me feel less lonely and detached.

3) My babysitter Amber told me that her cousin was in the front row at a Kiss concert in Denver and got burns on his face from a pyrotechnic mishap. I remember feeling a little scared and a little excited by the story. "I want to go where rock and roll happens," I remember thinking. "However, there is a chance I could get physically injured, which simultaneously excites and terrifies me." I'm paraphrasing, obviously. I don't think I would have said it that way at age seven.

4) I remember being in a small house in the country as a very small child. My parents are still in their twenties and are drinking in the kitchen with a few of my uncles, their friends, and whoever lives in the house. I don't remember who it was. My parents hardly ever drank because they were upset by their fathers' drinking problems, so I think it was the afterparty following a friend's wedding. My memory is really fuzzy about this, though. Here's the part I remember clearly. I started to get antsy and irritable because the only other kids there who were my age fell asleep. I wanted to look through the record collection of the guy who lived in the house, but I was afraid to ask. My intentions must have been obvious, because a nice, pretty Hispanic woman who I think was a friend of my aunt and uncle asked me to pick out some music to play. I flipped through the records happily and came across a copy of Kiss' "Destroyer." "Play this! Play this!" I yelled. The woman told me that although Kiss looked cool, their music wasn't very good. I didn't believe her, though I hadn't heard much Kiss yet. She told me to pick something else. I believe I picked a John Mellencamp record, back when he was known as John Cougar (without the Mellencamp). I think it went over well. I wish I knew the details of this evening a little better. It was the only time I was ever in that house. I wonder who it was.

5) A tale of college-town life: While at school at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, I worked at a record store. (It's sad that that sentence will soon read as "I once worked for a blacksmith.") One night, a co-worker and I joined forces at my place for a Kiss double feature. His bootleg of "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" was followed by my rented copy of "Runaway," starring Gene Simmons, Tom Selleck, Kirstie Alley, and robot spiders. This is not a very interesting story, but it was a good night, and it gives me an excuse to present a scene from "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park," a masterpiece of ineptitude.



6)One of my gifts on my eighth birthday was a compilation called "MTV's Rock 'N Roll To Go." The tracklisting is as follows:
Pat Benatar - Hell Is For Children
The Cars - Drive
The Fixx - Are We Ourselves?
Hall & Oates - Say It Isn't So
Billy Idol - Rebel Yell
Kiss - Lick It Up
Cyndi Lauper - She Bop
Madonna - Lucky Star
Steve Perry - Oh Sherrie
Ratt - Round and Round
The Police - King of Pain
Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now
Tina Turner - What's Love Got To Do With It
Wang Chung - Dance Hall Days

I think "Lick It Up" might be the worst song on the album, but you know what Paul Stanley has to say about that: "If (the people who think Kiss sucks) didn't really believe that the best band in the world was the Thompson Twins, they might be here tonight and you crazy motherfuckers would show them what rock and roll is really all about, uh huh."

7) My three favorite Kiss songs.
#1: "Black Diamond." The Replacements covered this on "Let It Be." I bought the Replacements album during my senior year in high school, the day after my first experience with LSD and the day before my first and only time snowboarding. I was in Laramie, Wyoming with a friend of mine visiting his older brother. I always thought "Black Diamond" was yet another great Replacements song, and I was shocked to find out it was a Kiss cover. "But Kiss sucks," I thought at the time. Not always. This performance of "Black Diamond" during Kiss' Madison Square Garden show from 1977 rocked my balls off, then rocked my right ball onto my left side and my left ball onto my right side, then rocked my balls back off, then rearranged my balls in the correct order, then rocked my balls back on. It's pretty kick-ass is what I'm trying to say. Gene Simmons, even back then, looks like he's thinking of marketing schemes instead of rock, but Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss keep the faith.



#2: "Hard Luck Woman." Paul Stanley originally wrote this one for Rod Stewart, who failed to record it. Peter Criss steps up to the plate again, proving that you can't go wrong with a singing drummer who's dressed up like a cat. I first heard this song when it was on a K-Tel compilation of random pop music from the 1970s that I bought from the Case brothers when I was in grade school. The Case brothers were a couple of long-haired ne'er-do-wells that hung out with my mom's youngest brother, who was still in high school at the time. They used to come over to my grandmother's house and play metal guitars with my uncle. They loved Randy Rhoads. The odd thing about the Case brothers was that they were still in high school, but they owned and lived in a little house by themselves. I don't know if they were emancipated minors or if their parents were dead or in jail, but I'm sure it was very easy for them to drink beer and smoke weed without parental consent or disapproval. My grandmother drove me over there once when my uncle was hanging out with them so I could ask him if I could buy his ZZ Top - "Tres Hombres" cassette. (She was a great lady.) When the Case brothers saw me and my grandmother at the door, they turned off their lights and ran toward the back door. I'm sure they were either drinking beer or smoking weed with my uncle. I was too dumb and young to expect that unsupervised teenagers were going to be doing something untoward and wouldn't take kindly to their friend's mother and cousin unexpectedly knocking on the door, so I was baffled by their behavior. I want to belatedly apologize now, but nobody knows what the hell happened to the Case brothers. I also want to point out that I was extremely surprised this was Kiss, because I expected insane, demonic heavy metal based on their appearance. It is also worth mentioning that the song preceding "Hard Luck Woman" on the K-Tel record was "Boogie Fever."



#3: "I Was Made For Loving You." No story about this one, I just love every single classic-rock-goes-disco song. (Dig that crazy falsetto at 2:30, Starchild!)

Tales of Small-Town Life: Safety First Edition

The last time I was able to spend a significant amount of time exploring my favorite childhood and teenage places of leisure, I couldn't help but feel disgusted. The playground equipment outside my elementary school and the park near my parents' old house had been replaced by puffy, plastic, multi-colored pieces of shit. A large fence blocked the entrance to the railroad bridge near the lake, over the Platte River. This bridge's graffiti alone is a 40-year history of small-town teenage life, a record of who loved who, which class ruled, who sucked, who died, and how much ass Led Zeppelin kicked. Someone painted the Swan Song logo there. I drank on this bridge, walked on this bridge, ran on top of and underneath this bridge, and hung on tightly while a train sped by above, globs of bird shit loosened by the train's weight falling all around me. This is now denied, in perpetuity, to every teenager growing up there. Nearby, at the lake, I wanted to collect my thoughts near the rope tied to the tree at Stoner Beach (supposedly given its nomenclature for being a pot-smoker's hangout, but I never saw anyone smoke dope there, and everyone hung out there anyway), which we would grab onto tightly, swing across the lake, and drop ourselves into the water. Some of us even tried the bicycle/rope combination. Unfortunately, I couldn't collect my thoughts because not only had the rope been cut down, but also the entire tree. These desecrations were committed in the name of safety. A bloodless coup organized by asshole kids' jerk-off parents and aided and abetted by lawyers, park rangers, school administrators, and, why not, let's blame them too, fundamentalist Christians. These jive turkeys want to tear down the house of fun because of some misguided crusade to keep children safe. But you can't keep children safe. Because children are idiots. And they're bored. And they have great imaginations.
Personal example: Sometime in the mid-1980s, in the backyard of my paternal grandparents' house, no playground equipment, railroad bridges, or ropes in sight. I remember a backyard full of kids. My aunt, uncle, and cousin were visiting from their then-home of Germany, so my cousin and brother were there for sure. Probably some other neighborhood kids, too. We ran out of things to do, so I went inside and grabbed some plastic glasses from the cupboard. I started filling them with dirt from my grandfather's garden and throwing them in the air. If you threw the glass just right, the dirt would fly out in mid-air and briefly cover everything. I think I was pretending they were bombs. My brother and cousin got in on it, too, and we were having a great old time throwing cups of dirt in the air. I packed one pretty tight and fired it into the air as high as I could manage. My sister picked just that moment to run outside. I remember her saying, "Hey you guys," and then gravity called. The dirt-packed glass came down directly on top of my sister's head, cutting a gash in her scalp. The blood started flowing, my sister started crying and screaming, and we all ran inside in terror. I remember my mother's calm acceptance of the situation. We could not surprise her. However, my aunt flipped the fuck out. I remember her yelling, "They WHAT? With DIRT? WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?" My sister calmed down after a while, and we were forbidden to take anything from the kitchen outside. She didn't even need stitches, but she had a pretty nice knot on her head. So, you can build as many fences as you want, but kids are still going to do stupid shit.

Tales of small town life

I always hated going to church, for much the same reasons I hate going to work. It's boring, and boredom is worse than pain and death. I was raised Catholic. It was important to my grandmother that her children and grandchildren be raised Catholic, and the non-Catholic spouses (like my dad) didn't care one way or the other, so we were raised Catholic. My grandmother is a devout Catholic, in the best possible way. She has a deep faith in the religion that is mostly personal. She doesn't proselytize to any of her family or friends, and she hasn't let it interfere with her sense of humor or her open-mindedness. When I told my mother I didn't believe in organized religion when I was 14, and when I decided not to get confirmed when I was 17, my grandmother was upset but never once tried to change my mind (with the partial exception of sending me a book in college called "Why Be Catholic?" with a note attached saying something like "Just skim through it and I'll never bug you again.") My aunts, uncles, cousins, and second-cousins mostly still attend Catholic services. Even my uncles who aren't big fans of church make their children go. A cousin who was in my high school graduating class baptized her little girl a few weeks ago. It's a big part of my family life, but hasn't been a part of mine for years. I never felt comfortable in church. I never felt any connection with what happened there. I didn't like it, I didn't believe it, and I didn't need it. And I still don't. And I probably never will. But we're not here for a theology lecture. We are here for the story of a ridiculous lie I told to try to get out of Sunday school (or CCD, as Catholics know it). When I was about seven years old, CCD was right before church. On Sunday morning, I had to attend a 90-minute lesson before mass. This was an indignity and an injustice, I felt. It was bad enough that I had to go to church. Why the additional punishment? Give a kid a break. Give him more of his weekend. He earned that weekend. The church and parish center were about four blocks away from my house, so I started walking. It was a beautiful spring day, and I passed the school playground on my way to the parish center. I took a detour, sat on the merry-go-round for a while, probably pouted, then realized that I had spaced out for longer than I had intended. I was most certainly late for CCD, and I might have missed it entirely. My mother would be heading to church soon and I needed to think of a plan. Shortly thereafter, a large dog who had escaped its pen ran through the playground. That's it, I thought. I'll run home quickly and tell my mom that I was attacked by a large dog and couldn't make it to CCD. No, wait. I reconsidered. Mom might be skeptical. I liked dogs and wasn't particularly afraid of them. I better kick it up a notch. I then proceeded to run home and tell my mother that I had been forced to miss CCD because I had been chased by a bear. That's right. A bear. This might be the stupidest lie I've ever told. My mother took turns laughing at me and yelling at me, then drove me to CCD. I had only missed forty minutes of the lesson. I got carried away by my web of lie. I should have gone with the dog.
I told an even stupider lie once, but I had the good excuse of being three. My brother was a baby, only a few months old. A window in our living room was cracked, and my dad asked me if I knew anything about it. I told my parents that my infant brother, who could barely make a fist, had thrown a hot dog at the window, cracking it. Oddly, I hadn't been responsible for the crack in the window, but I apparently wanted to see my new brother get punished. That must have been some hot dog.

Tales of small-town life redux: the sequel to the prequel

What's up, bitches? I was at a fun party on Saturday night seeing off some friends' old home before they move to a new home a few blocks away. I got a little too drunk, as is my public wont, and I said a couple of dumb things. First, I claimed that a funny incident happened at my home, when in fact it happened at a place I've never been. This was quickly brought to my attention. This made me appear rather foolish. In my defense, I truly believed the incident happened at my house, probably because the man behind the incident either came to my house later or relayed it to me on the phone that night, if my memory is reliable, and as this boring anecdote proves, it is decidedly not. I have a sneaking suspicion that I quickly wear out my welcome when I have too many beers. I think I may turn into the kind of person I don't like much, but people keep inviting me back, so maybe I'm mistaken. Perhaps they just prefer the company of my lovely wife and I am a necessary evil. If this is the case, I can hardly blame them, and I will amp up my obnoxious behavior so I become violently hated, not quietly tolerated.
The second dumb thing I said was that besides my family, everyone in my hometown should be drowned in the river like extra kittens. People seemed a little creeped out by this comment. After careful consideration, I am going to revise that comment. Forty percent of the people in my hometown should be executed by firing squad. It's not such a bad place by tiny town standards, and a certain love/hate relationship will always exist. It is a complex, twisted, weird ball of reactions my hometown rustles up in me, and if you grew up there, you might understand my morbid outburst.
As far as my promise to hold cockfights in my backyard as soon as I purchase a house, and my call for every graduate student to drop out of school, I still tentatively stand by both drunken exclamations. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch a video conversation between Zach Braff and Kevin Smith on MySpace. I wonder if they're going to cover such topics as whether a Jedi light saber could pierce Frodo Baggins's anus-matrix, how one can make it through the trailer for "Garden State" without hemorrhaging angry blood-vomit, why Kevin Smith is such a talentless douche, or why Zach Braff's name sounds like a fart (e.g. "I just zach-braffed so hard that I had to change my underwear.")

I'm going to D.C. in a few days for my summer vacation, so I probably won't post for several days. The August caption contest may be postponed a day or two. I will close with a rare excerpt from a transcript of a live Grandfatha Klock show:

"(yells at crowd to keep it down, inhales oxygen from nearby tank)
Let me tell you suckas what GK is about
My Lincoln Town Car is all pimped out

I was raised on a farm but my name ain't Cletus
Been droppin' dope beats since Lillian Gish was a fetus

Bust it
(spins on back for one hour)"

See you later, friends.

Tales of small town life

"He [Reverend Hightower] still kept the cook, a negro woman. He had had her all the time. But they told Byron how as soon as his wife was dead, the people seemed to realize all at once that the negro was a woman, that he had that negro woman in the house alone with him all day. And how the wife was hardly cold in the shameful grave before the whispering began. About how he had made his wife go bad and commit suicide because he was not a natural husband, a natural man, and that the negro woman was the reason. And that's all it took; all that was lacking. Byron listened quietly, thinking to himself how people everywhere are about the same, but that it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people's names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind."
-- from Light in August by William Faulkner

This passage in the Faulkner book jumped out at me when I read it last week. It reminded me, generally, of what private life means in a small town, which had already been on my mind for a few weeks because of the reemergence of a couple of false stories about me (thankfully much more benign than in the Faulkner novel). My reputation was hardly tarnished by the well-meaning but imaginary fluff said about me, but other people weren't so lucky. I particularly remember two stories spreading through town while I was in high school, one about a man caught screwing a pig in a barn during a cattle branding, the other about a twentysomething woman "allowing" thirty guys to gangrape her at a party. The line stretched out the door and down the block, apparently. She was mercilessly taunted for close to three years by school kids, and her first and middle name became slang for "whore" the entire time I was in high school. I always wondered why nobody said anything about the two men from my town who were named in the story as being a part of the gangrape. Everyone in my hometown, at one time or another, has had something untrue spread about him or her, but the most malicious gossip seems to be reserved for those who are poor, not very bright, and/or a little odd. This was the case for both the alleged pigfucker and gangbangee. Both stories were, most likely, complete bullshit, and probably everyone repeating them at least suspected as much, but the idle words blew back and forth from mind to mind for a long, long time. Then they stopped, as abruptly as they started. Faulkner had something to say about this, too, in the same novel: "But Byron believed that even the ones who said this did not believe it. He believed that the town had had the habit of saying things about the disgraced minister which they did not believe themselves, for too long a time to break themselves of it."
Former classmates of mine have a habit of repeating a story about me that never happened. I've tried to set them straight so often that I no longer bother to correct them. They don't listen. What can I do? The fake story is funnier than the boring truth, so I don't have a lot of convincing ammo. It "took place" the first time I ever got drunk. I was newly 16 and at a large (for my hometown's standards) house party. It was Homecoming weekend, and the football game had been snowed out, so the party had become much bigger and started much earlier than planned. It was a few miles out in the country. I had just finished my shift at the grocery store where I worked, and I called my friends to give me a ride to the party. (I didn't have a car.) Unfortunately, because of the cancelled game, they were already at the party. I walked to Main Street in the snow and waited until someone my age drove by, flagged them down, and got a ride. I was one of the last people at the party, and I was a little too exuberant. My previous maximum beer intake was a modest three. College kids were at this party, home for the weekend. I attempted to keep up with them. I hit the booze with gusto, relish, and determination. I had about 11 beers in an hour, plus a couple of shots. Picture me then. I was about 101 pounds and newly 16. Sometime in the next hour, I passed out. Then I woke up and vomited. Then I passed out again. Then I woke up and vomited some more. Then I blacked out, for the only time in my life. I remember brief splotches of vomiting, giggling, and dancing to Cypress Hill. I remember someone carrying me out of the house and hitting my head on the ceiling and door frame. I had bruises on my head the next morning. I remember it starting to snow, and vomiting in the snow. Then a friend drove me home. Pretty standard stupid teenage first-time drunk life lessons learned, am I right? Then the story begins, and the reality gets even more dull. After my friend dropped me off, I walked to the back door of my parents' house. It was usually unlocked to let the dog in and out in the middle of the night, and it presented a straight shot to the basement stairs and my bedroom. Unfortunately, the back door was locked. I walked to the front door. I tried to open it. It was locked. My friends' car was gone. It was snowing. I had no choice but to knock on the door. My dad was up having a midnight snack, and let me in. He apologized for locking me out, then noticed the state I was in and got pissed off. When my dad gets pissed off, he is impossible to take seriously. I told him I wasn't drunk, just sleepy, and went to bed. The End. Somehow, though I explained how I was locked out to many friends and classmates, I was made fun of for the next two years for walking up to my unlocked front door and ringing the doorbell. When I walked down the hallway at school, people would ask me if I rang my doorbell today. When I was in town for my dad's wedding last year, I was asked at the bar by a former classmate's uncle if I remembered ringing my own doorbell. If you look at my MySpace page, a high school friend has left a comment on my page saying she remembers me ringing my own doorbell. Obviously, this doorbell story has really stuck with these people. I guess they can have it.
My mother ran into a former grade school teacher of mine a few weeks ago. This former teacher is a nice old woman, but she is not immune to the charms of a fabricated story. She asked my mother how and what I was doing. Then she told my mother that she remembered how, during recess, I sat against the wall and read books while the other kids played. This is colossal bullshit. I was on the merry-go-rounds, tires, swings, slide, basketball court, kickball area every recess. I played four-square. I did not read books during recess! I loved to read, still do, and as a child, I was very enthusiastic about telling everyone I met about the books I was reading (this was before I learned that enthusiasm about anything other than work, money, and sports generates suspicion and hostility), but come on, lady! Just because I was apparently one of the only males in Bridgeport who read books, people have to talk shit. I know you mean well, but you're making me look like an even bigger dork than I was/am.
Now that I come to the end of my rambling tale of gossip, I wonder if it is a tale of small town life, or a tale of human nature in general. We are all constantly full of shit. But are small towns filled with different shit than cities? In the city, at least, you can live a private life, but what about your neighbors? Your coworkers? What are you saying about them? What are they saying about you? What are you saying about me? I know what I'm saying about you. You're a lot of fun, but, damn, you need to stop being such a whore. And you smoke way too much pot. And your dog never stops barking. I also heard you had gonorrhea once. And you secretly have a Dave Matthews CD in your car. It's inside a Modest Mouse case.

Tales of small-town life: drive-in edition (Catholic version)

God bless the Internet. This is the actual marquee from the drive-in movie theater in my hometown. There is much I could write about this place. Could it be the sexy hideaway of passion from whence my film obsession was born? Could it be a nostalgia piece about how I was one of the lucky few born between 1975-1982, the last drive-in movie generation? Fortunately, those stories are going to have to wait. This story is much better. It is about how I grew up in a town so dreadfully empty and dull that my friends and I, in our absolute boredom, vandalized and disrupted one of the few places in town that offered any kind of alternative to shooting oneself in the face. We were so bored, we took out our frustrations on the things we loved. To the various owners of the Sunset Drive-In, c. 1977-1996, I apologize. However, I am not sorry. Here is my confession.
Dear Sunset Drive-In,
Forgive me, for I have sinned.
It has been seven or eight years since my last confession.
O my drive-in proprietor,
I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,
and I detest all my hijinks,
because I dread the loss of a three-month ban,
and the pains of missing such quality films as "Police Academy 6: Citizens Under Siege,"
but most of all because they offend thee, my drive-in proprietor,
who are all good, yo,
and deserving of all my nacho and popcorn money.
I firmly resolve,
with the help of Thy grace,
to hijink no more and to avoid the near occasion of hijinks.
Amen.
Here are the hijinks to which I am guilty:
1) At my friend Clint's birthday party, his older brother snuck us into "The Rocketeer." We hid under a tarp in the back of a pickup. He was the only one who paid. You caught us, since we all stupidly hit the snack bar for nachos during intermission. You let us off with a lecture. You knew that "The Rocketeer" was punishment enough.
2) In high school, that same friend Clint had an old van with tinted windows and a mini-fridge. Many of us in the back of the van never paid. However, I think we are even on this one. In fact, you owe me. True, I never paid to see "The Rocketeer." In my defense, I was so drunk during "Naked Gun 33 1/3" that I only watched 38 seconds of the film, and "The Flintstones" was so bad that we went to Clint's grandmother's basement to finish our weed. The way I see it, you owe me eight dollars.
3) During the bi-annual dusk-to-dawn marathon shows, some classmates got the idea to run around the screen while the movie was playing. This was a funny gag...for a while. We kicked it up a notch. Boo-yah! The Fourth of July was imminent, so a few no-goodniks and I had a carload full of ten-shot Roman Candles. A chance encounter with another classmate led to an inspirational bombshell. She was returning from a hard day at cheerleading camp, teaching a future generation of young women how to be vacuous second-class citizens, and the trunk of her car was full of glow-in-the-dark purple wigs. Could we borrow four, we asked? Yes, she said. Magic time. We were going to don the wigs, run in front of the screen during the middle of the film, and light ten of the ten-shot Roman Candles. One hundred firework explosions during a movie while four bored teenagers danced around in front of the fireworks while wearing glow-in-the-dark purple wigs! What could go wrong? Actually, nothing went wrong. The drive-in was a few miles outside of town. We parked on a dirt road next to the back of the screen, donned the wigs, grabbed a handful of Roman Candles and a lighter, left the car running, ran in front of the screen, stuck the Candles in the dirt, lit them, watched them go off, danced around in front of them, then hauled ass back to the running car, and drove away. It was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. That last sentence is very depressing. We got away with it, and we gave the people attending that particular screening something to talk about for a long time. I don't even remember what movie it was, but I do know it starred Goldie Hawn.
4) The running-around-the-screen fad ended shortly after our purple wig stunt. The owner was on amber alert, and was keeping an eye out for any troublesome teens. A classmate decided to run around the screen anyway, and was chased by the owner. Panicking, he ran into a fence and cut his hand badly, with the embarrassing result of being driven to the emergency room by the drive-in owner, the very guy who was chasing him. A few weeks later, the idea hit us. Let's change the letters on the marquee. The drive-in was only open in the summer on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Our plan of attack: a late, hot Wednesday night. I was driving that night, so I stayed in the car with the motor running, worst case scenario pending. My friends took a long time rearranging the words, and when they were done, I was a bit baffled. The marquee read "Ass Tit Rec." Now, ass and tit were solid gold, but what the hell was "rec"? I asked them when they got back to the car. "They were the only letters left, so we had to do something with them." Why not just leave them on the ground, I asked. "We didn't think of that," they said. Despite my questioning of their handiwork, a feeling of mirth could not be dampened by the infernal damnation of my need for explanations. We planned our next marquee attacks thoroughly, especially our masterpiece, "Help Fuck Santa." Unfortunately, it was only up for six hours. We had one last hurrah the summer after our freshmen year of college. A handful of us were back in town for the summer, and we were drinking at my house while my parents were out of town. Soon, marquee fever had us in its sexy, sexy grip. Not only was the drive-in calling out for a rearranging, but also the high school, right next door. The year after my graduation from the place, it had installed a marquee announcing school events. We split into teams. My brother, one friend, and I would hit the school, while two of my friends would attack the drive-in. Unfortunately, the school marquee had a protective layer of Plexiglas and a padlock keeping out hijink-makers. That did not deter us. We plundered my father's garage for many tools, and eventually sawed the fucker open. During our labors, several neighbors stepped out on their porches to see what the hell we were doing. Shit, I thought. We are busted. About an hour later, my drive-in friends returned, sweaty and confident. Ironically, nothing happened to my brother and I and our fellow school accomplice, but my friends who attacked the drive-in were visited by the police. Unbeknownst to us all, the drive-in owner had installed a hidden camera shortly after the "Help Fuck Santa" incident. My friends, who were witnessed by no human, were caught on tape. At the police station, the drive-in owner was exasperated, my friends told me. "Why?" he asked them. "What do you guys have against me?" He kept asking this, they said. He thought it was personal. No matter how many times my friends answered, he didn't believe them. But it was true. "We are just so bored," they said. "And you have a marquee."

One year later, he closed the drive-in. A few years after that, a particularly nasty hail and wind storm destoyed 75 percent of the screen. The Sunset Drive-In currently sits abandoned.

That is my confession, Lord of all Drive-Ins. What is my penance?

My son, you must repent for your sins by watching Lethal Weapon 3, Die Hard 3, Police Academy 3, and Short Circuit 2. Also, you must drink eight large Cokes, and eat three large nachos. One with jalapenos, two without. Do you accept your penance?

Yes. Yes, I do.

Tales of small-town life: Myspace edition

What it was like going to high school in my hometown, told exclusively through the medium of quotes taken from the Myspace pages of people who grew up there:

Life is what you make it!
Life is a dick, when it gets hard just fuck it!
SPRING TURKEY SEASON IS OPEN BITCHES
Who needs the horse when you have the cowboy?
Open your mouth!
Forget regret...no day but today!
Heater's gettin' hot!
Will it mix with Dr. Pepper? He'll love it! Drink!
FUN TIMES
Hey What's Up?
To Love is to Live
IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, EVERY EXPERIENCE IS WORTH H (sic)
life may not be fun, but it's a fun ride!!!

Tales of small-town life

In my hometown, the elementary, junior high, and high schools are confined to one city block, right across the street from my house. On this block are two brick buildings. The newer building's contents include the gymnasium, the cafeteria, the multi-purpose room, the principal's office and the classrooms for the junior high and high school and kindergarten through third grade. The older building, which used to house the high school, contains the auditorium and grades four through six. Besides these two brick buildings, there is a small white building housing the superintendent's office, a large weight room/football locker room, a large playground, a football field and track, a parking lot for the school buses, and a weird rectangular building I was in once that is full of janitorial equipment, tools, broken-down school buses, and a boxing ring, for some reason. I have a clear memory of seeing that boxing ring, but it really doesn't make sense for it to be there. Maybe it was only a couple of punching bags, but that's pretty weird, too. Two baseball diamonds sat next to each other north of the school. Little League, softball, teeball, and occasional adult league games were played there in the summer. Otherwise, the diamonds sat dormant during the school year. As a teenager, I would occasionally smoke pot in the dugout or take a leak on the diamond while drinking, but I kept my distance during the summer. I had better things to do in the sweet, sweet summer than watch or play baseball, the most boring sport in the world after football and amateur wrestling. But I digress. North of the baseball diamonds was pretty much a bunch of goddamn wilderness. A lot of grass, dirt, field, and trees, plus a few lead pipes. We didn't hang out there much, even though it was isolated enough to invite mischief, probably because of an unspoken but understood feeling of creepiness, palpable as humidity. You could hear coyotes howling there at night. In the day, it looked like a good place for a murderous child rapist to dump bodies, though the town was fortunately free of that particular brand of party animal. I lit a few illegal fireworks there once while listening to Eazy-E on a boombox (the height of my 12-year-old decadence), but mostly I stayed away. However, in the summer between eighth and ninth grades, while shooting hoops on the playground, a few kids mentioned that some marijuana was growing wild back there in no-man's-land. I was thirteen years old. I realize that a lot of kids are huffing glue and having sex and smoking dope and getting handjobs and snorting meth and shooting convenience store employees by the time they're eleven and a half, but all I'd done at that point was drink half a Michelob Light and take a few swigs of Crown Royal. I didn't know from marijuana, and my friends didn't either. To quote D. Boon, "we were fucking corndogs," as all thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds should be. We decided an exploratory bike trip was in order. I hopped on my little red dirt bike and headed for the weird area behind the school. My friends joined me. My brother might have been in on it, too. I can't remember. Anyway, we didn't ride very far. There it was. A shitload of cannabis, growing wild behind the school. We looked at it, though we realized we had no idea how to partake of the adventure it advertised. I decided to grab a bunch of the plant as a souvenir. I propped the generous portion of pot leaves up on my handlebars and rode merrily away from the wilderness. I must have looked ridiculous, a skinny, red-haired thirteen-year-old dork with a titanic helping of an illegal substance resting precariously between his lap and the handlebars of his bicycle, riding down the street on a summer day in clear, blue daylight. As it happened, the principal's secretary, Kathy, was walking down the street. She saw us, said hello, then did a cartoon-worthy double take. She turned around and stared at us, we stared back, and then we parked our bikes on my lawn. My dad was at work, and my mother was not home. We decided that this marijuana just had to be tried. What did we have to lose? Unfortunately, we were too dumb to the ways and rules of the world to understand the process of turning plant into smokable drug. I'm hip, I thought. I've seen "Sid and Nancy," I've listened to "Appetite for Destruction" and "The Best of the Doors" about a thousand times each. This shit's gonna come natural. How natural? Check out our process of pot preparation. We simply picked off a handful of leaves, tore them into tiny pieces, stuck them on a white piece of Xerox paper, rolled up the paper, and lit it with a match. This, of course, did not work worth a damn. We gave up, and got some nachos and Cokes at the R&W. I hid the rest of the marijuana plant inside my bass drum for a few months, then threw it away. The marijuana growing behind the school was the talk of the pre-high school town for a few weeks, until a clean-cut jock kid told his mother, who told the city, who sprayed the plant with some kind of weed killer. It would be three long years before my next encounter with pot, courtesy of an elaborate plaster bong in the shape of a monkey constructed by my friend Clint in art class and some shitty ditchweed scored from a friend's uncle. You had to inhale at the base of the monkey's butthole. It seemed to work, though I suspect this was due to all the plaster we inhaled, and not the terribly weak marijuana.

Tales of small town life 4

The Platte River runs below a highway bridge about a quarter of a mile northeast of my hometown. Sometimes the river gets low enough to wade in safely. When the river is low, an occasional carp gets stranded and dies. This handful of dead carp, much like the nearby prairie dog, becomes an exaggerated excuse for nihilistic carnage on the part of bored teenagers. The idea is simple, though false: some of the carp need to be killed so the rest of them can make their way down the river safely without crowding each other onto dry land. Carp aren't particularly good to eat, so trapping them or catching them with a fishing pole isn't really a whole lot of fun. They just need to be killed, and the only humane way to do it is to wade into the river with a baseball bat, wait for some to swim by, and pound the shit out of them until they are dead. This is called "carping." When I was in eighth grade, the river was very low and carping was popular among the boys in my class. My friends asked me to go carping with them almost daily, but I always turned them down. Then, as now, I liked to spend my free time listening to music and reading, and my cruelty to animals phase ended in sixth grade, when I would shoot birds in my backyard with my brother's BB gun. Clubbing fish to death seemed like a stupid thing to do (although listening to King's X seemed like a good idea to me at the time, so I wasn't exactly free of stupidity myself). One afternoon, however, after a particularly bad day at school, three of my friends again asked me to go carping. Somehow, my distaste for the activity was momentarily replaced with curiosity and desire. This would be something new. How many times did something new present itself in my tiny little hometown? I was ready to club some fucking fish. Stupid? More like gloriously stupid. As soon as school ended, we got on our bikes and rode to the most zealous carp-beater's home for supplies. He could only find two baseball bats, one of which I was lucky enough to snag, so the other two had to make do with a fence post and a golf club. We rode out to and under the bridge, laying our bikes down on a hill near the river, took off our shoes and socks, and waded into the water. I had been under the bridge a few times with friends, but had never waded in the river, so I spent about ten minutes walking around, looking at the rocks and fish in the water, watching cars drive past on the highway above my head. It was nice. Then I saw one of my friends whack the holy living fuck out of a carp. It was exciting. My other two friends joined in, killing several fish. I watched them for awhile, and then tried it myself. I've never been athletic, and fish killing is no exception. I kept missing. I finally hit one, but it kept swimming, unfazed, and the feel of the bat against the slimy back of the large fish freaked me out a little. After about thirty minutes of further carp-pummeling, I hadn't killed any, two of my friends had killed three or four, and the zealous carp-killer had a formidable mound of dead carp piled on a rock near his feet. We were about to head home when Shane rode up on his bike. Shane was three or four years older than us, and had either dropped out or been kicked out of two high schools in nearby towns before making his way to Bridgeport, where he was staying with a friend and his mother. Shane was in trouble constantly, and would later drop out of Bridgeport High School in the tenth grade, at the age of 19. He wasn't mean or intimidating, though, and we all liked him. He smoked a lot of pot, listened to heavy metal and gangsta rap, and was pretty clever. He was funny, not dumb at all, and had a burning need to fuck up. He had a great laugh, and you knew you had said something funny when you made him let it out. He once borrowed a Metallica tape from me, and though he kept it for seven months, he brought it back. I'm sure his life is probably not very good right now. Back to the carp. He looked at our pile of dead fish and laughed. He asked for one of the bats. He told my friend to throw the dead carp at him. My friend threw the dead carp. Shane hit the fish, hard, with the bat, and it split into two bloody chunks that sailed over the river bridge. We all laughed hysterically. He called out for more carp. My friend threw most of his pile of dead carp, Shane hit most of the carp thrown at him, most of the carp being hit split into bloody pieces, and most of the bloody pieces sailed over the river bridge. Unfortunately, one of the bloody pieces almost hit a state patrolman's moving vehicle. He turned around, eyeballed us from the bridge, and parked. Shane split the moment he saw the patrolman's car, so the four of us were left with bloody fish guts and the weapons in our hands. The patrolman didn't look angry or amused, just exasperated at the stupidity of the generation of American males we represented. I could very easily picture him saying "I'm too old for this shit," while a white-hot guitar lick played quietly in the background. He lectured us briefly, then let us off with a warning. I don't remember much of what he said, but I distinctly remember his closing words: "Guys, I know it's kind of sporting, but clubbing fish to death with a fence post and a golf club is just not what you're supposed to do."

Tales of small town life (episode three)

My maternal grandfather, named Raymond but called Joe since he was a kid, has a habit of buying things, ignoring them, and selling them in order to buy more stuff he's going to ignore. His backyard at any given moment may contain the following items, either whole or reduced to spare parts: RVs, trucks, tractors, pickups, boats, lawnmowers, a motorcycle once. He buys dogs with the same philosophy, though he waits until one dies before picking up another. I've never been too attached to my grandfather's dogs because they mostly hang out in the backyard with the revolving door of major purchases. It's easy to forget they exist. He had one dog that was unforgettable, however. This dog was named Jake, and the drawing that accompanies this post is my attempt to capture a bit of this lunatic mutt's essence. I've never seen a dog like Jake before, and I never will again. I don't remember my grandfather buying Jake, so I'm going to assume that a powerful bolt of lightning simultaneously struck a couple of dead dogs and a bunch of random shit in my grandfather's backyard, forging the tiny, ill-tempered beast we knew and loved. Jake was about the size of a three-month-old Labrador puppy, his ears stuck straight up, and he had a gummy, fangy overbite that made him look either constantly pissed off or like he had to do something vitally important in an incredibly small period of time. His eyes were wild and buggy. He was extremely fond of my sister, Katie, and my uncle Bill, and indifferent to the rest of the family and friends who were frequent visitors at my grandparents' home. Strangers, he bit. He lived a long goddamn time. One particularly harsh winter, he went missing for three below-zero days. He'd never run off before. We all assumed he'd died. My grandfather found him sleeping in a box of oily rags in the garage, simply not giving a fuck, content to be there. His most prominent attribute was his fur. Fur's not even a good word to describe it. Armor's a little more appropriate, but coat will do. It was steel wool. It was not similar to steel wool. It was steel wool. If you've ever touched steel wool, you've touched Jake. This was his fur. When I'm back home, all someone has to say is "Remember Jake?" and my brother and I will have laughing fits. He looked sort of like this photo, with more fur and determination. Jake was ugly, and proud of it. I've never admired a dog more.

My hometown, part two

Courthouse and Jail Rock, two miles west of Bridgeport, Nebraska, c. 1970s. I climbed these rocks many times growing up.

My hometown

Main Street, Bridgeport, Nebraska, c. 1970s