Saturday, April 30, 2005

Six MLB Players Suspended Over Weekend Brawl

You know, someone finally does something to make baseball interesting and they get sanctioned for it. About the only time I can handle watching the sport is when the players start tagging each other out with the bats instead of the balls.

Oops, I guess that was probably an inappropriate observation. Sorry, but I’m from Detroit and we have a long history of mixing sports and violence. In fact, we’ve come to expect it and with the National Hockey League existing in state of suspended animation at the moment, well, we’ve had to search for our fix among other venues. Basketball had some promise earlier in the year but not a whole lot has happened since Ron Artest was christened with a half cup of stale Budweiser.

*Sigh* I really miss hockey.

Alabama's Answer to Educational Ineptitude

As of the latest Morgan Quitno 2003-2004 rankings , Alabama’s educational system checks in at a spectacularly underwhelming 46 out of 50, sliding 5 positions from its 2002 -2003 ranking. So what is Birmingham lawmaker Gerald Allen proposing to do in a move intended as “protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children”? He was going to try and ban some books.

Under Allen’s proposed legislation that was under consideration earlier this week in Alabama’s House of Representatives, any books or plays written by a gay author or containing a gay character would be banned from public school libraries across the state. Judging by Alabama’s educational ranking, the impact of this legislation probably would have been minimal. I doubt that few of Alabama’s public school attendees, particularly those unfortunate enough to be currently attending Representative Allen’s old alma mater, would even have noticed them missing.

Ever since the civil rights movement of the 1960s the Republican Party has been afforded an image, a grotesquely unfair one in this day and age, of being a refuge of the elite, particularly within the blue state that I currently live in. If the GOP really wants to connect with the common man, it needs to show some tolerance for diversity. Now, I am not proposing that Representative Allen strap on some leather butt-less chaps and go off struttin’ his juicy booty at the next Gay Pride parade but public displays of such vindictiveness against a minority group only enhances the Democratic propaganda arsenal against conservative causes. I believe it to be an obstacle to Republican efforts to reach out to other minority groups and, even to my right-of-center ideological leanings, smacks of Gerald Allen having a desire to impose a policy of state imposed censorship. Luckily, there were not enough Alabama lawmakers interested in Allen’s proposal to hang around for its introduction, automatically killing the measure.

Of late the image of the Republican Party, particularly the media portrayal of it, seems to be focused upon the evangelical aspect of conservatism. Though undeniably a significant part of the party, they are by no means representative of conservatives as a whole. There are those of us who do not go to church on a regular basis, think the state has no business advocating religion in public schools and figure that we have bigger things to worry about than the sexual orientation of Tinkie Winkie, the purse-carrying Teletubbie (unless of course, we have consumed enough distilled spirits to find ourselves sitting at the far end of the bar getting hit on by the pervert). We are the fun side of the right, the South Park Conservatives, the Republican Party Reptiles, the people who are happy to have Condoleeza Rice championing our cause in foreign affairs, but would be even happier to have her as an adversary during an impromptu strip-poker showdown at a Georgetown U sorority house. We believe that the Republican Par-TAY is no different than any other sort of celebration in that the more people who attend, the merrier it will be. I personally welcome everyone to the Republican revelry, including the Christian Coalition. After all, every party worth it's salt is going to need a large contingent of designated drivers.

And a final word to Representative Allen: Before embarking upon a crusade to dictate what your children should NOT be reading, you should first spend some energy ensuring that they have the ability to read it. Otherwise, it’s a moot point.

Friday, April 29, 2005

Ward Churchill - An Unwitting Champion of Conservative Causes

Kicking someone when they are already down is a deplorable act. It is unsportsmanlike-like, inhumane, amoral and dastardly. It can also be kind of fun and, in the case of Ward Churchill, the former Head of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, giving someone a case of their own medicine. His knee-jerk reaction to the September 11th attacks, an essay called “’Some People Push Back’ – On the Justice of Roosting Chickens”, seemed to me to amount to little more than a desperate cry for attention on his part, so I decided I would humor him a little. Besides that, things have been fairly uneventful around here, and I really have nothing better to do at the moment.

Ward Churchill has come into a veritable windfall of misfortune of late, a windfall sparked by the essay referenced above. This essay, written in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, laid blame for the attacks on American policy and claimed that the casualties of the calamity, the “technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire” were “little Eichmanns [The Nazi bureaucrat that engineered the Holocaust]” who basically deserved what they got for exploiting the undeveloped world. The essay was released on September 12th received little notice outside of the circle of lunatic deviants Mr. Churchill usually dumps his intellectual waste upon. If mainstream America heard about it at all, based upon the amount of press it received at the time, it was probably dismissed out of hand as the incoherent ravings of another fundamentally flawed fruitcake bent on acquiring as much self-aggrandizing publicity as he could possibly garner.

If it was publicity he wanted, he certainly got it and his fifteen minutes of fame has not been kind to him. Before January 2005, few people seemed to have even heard of the guy. He was, at the time the essay was written, the Head of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado – Boulder and a radical champion of American Indian causes, apparently using his alleged Native-American ancestry to give an air of legitimacy to his various crusades. Ironically, the American Indian Movement (AIM), an organization with its own deep-rooted (and based upon history, somewhat understandable) suspicions towards United States government policy, have gone out of their way to distance themselves from Ward Churchill. They have emphatically denied any collusion between themselves and Churchill and publicly called into question his suspicious ancestry by stating ”Ward Churchill has been masquerading as an Indian for years behind his dark glasses and beaded headband. He waves around an honorary membership card that at one time was issued to anyone by the Keetoowah Tribe of Oklahoma.” This allegation is confirmed by John Ross, former chairman of the Keetoowah band of Cherokee Indians, who said that Churchill was given an honorary membership that required no proof of Cherokee heritage, and the honorary membership was bestowed upon 300 to 400 other people including former president Bill Clinton. Richard Allen, a policy analyst with the Cherokee Nation says of the beleaguered professor, “When it comes to Churchill, I've always thought he was a wannabe Indian. His history is a little bit like Forrest Gump.” Apparently, Mr. Churchill’s standing has deteriorated so badly that even the activists he claims to advocate won’t even claim him. Suzanne Shown Harjo, writing for Indian Country Today, has also penned a very informative article questioning Churchill’s ethnicity, the very foundation of his activism, published last February.

The burgeoning spotlight on Churchill has also illuminated several other unflattering aspects of the embattled professor’s character, most significantly his predisposition to allegedly claiming the intellectual property created by others as his own. The earliest example of this so far uncovered was in 1981, when he apparently copied a mirror image of the 1972 Thomas Mails masterpiece "The Mystic Warriors of the Plains", signed it as a Ward Churchill original and printed 150 copies of it. This alleged case of copyright infringement was brought to the attention of CBS4 in Boulder Colorado and led to reporter Raj Chohan, calling Churchill on selling someone else’s copyright protected artwork as his own. Instead of responding to Chohan’s charges Churchill took a swing at the reporter, an assault that was caught on film. The latest accusation came out of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. According to a March 11, Rocky Mountain News article :

In 1991, Churchill edited a book of essays published in Copenhagen, Denmark, which included a piece by [professor Faye G] Cohen on Indian treaty fishing rights in the Northwest and Wisconsin. When publishers wanted to reprint the essay in the United States, Cohen declined to allow her essay to appear, Crosby said.

So, Churchill penned an essay on the same topic under the name of the Institute for Natural Progress, a research organization he founded with Winona LaDuke. In the contributors section of the book, Churchill said he took the lead role in preparing the essay.

Also according to the March 11th Rocky Mountain News article, when Cohen raised objections about the plagiarism of her work, she received a phone call from Churchill in the middle of the night promising, “I'll get you for this."

If the numerous accounts relayed above are reliable, and I believe that they are since in my research I have yet to see Churchill offer anything but rhetoric in defense of himself, we can reasonably deduce that the man is a fraud and a charlatan without enough sense to keep a low profile in order to avoid blowing his charade. So why should we care what he says? Free speech is an integral part of American liberty and he is entitled, in fact encouraged, to express his opinion freely. Though I found his comments, indeed his essay as a whole, absolutely disgusting I have no problem with the fact that he was able to say what he did. His essay, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” if nothing else proved that he was right. Chickens do come home to roost and right now the poultry that Churchill released have invaded his yard and are currently shitting on his car.
My problem in this whole affair lies with the University of Colorado for not only employing the fraud, but thinking highly enough of him to make him the Head of Ethnic Studies even though he is not able to grasp the concept that if you do not have Indian ancestry, you are not really an Indian. The fact that they keep this moron tenured is a sad showing of the laughably low academic standards that this institution holds its faculty to and I for one would absolutely refuse to pay them to educate my children there. If my kids want to be instructed by talking monkeys, I’ll see if I can save $800 a credit hour and enroll them in the primate ward of the local ASPCA.
Ward Churchill himself though, should not be silenced. American free speech, and indeed the conservative movement in general, need people like him to continually demonstrate how mindnumbingly stupid and outrageous the far left can actually be.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Reveler Without A Cause

It was during the 2004 presidential campaign when I first heard the term “blogging”. Apparently, both the Democrats and the Republicans were doing an awful lot of it at the time and it was supposedly having a significant impact upon the race to the White House. As I started hearing more about blogging, I found my interest was increasingly piqued and I decided to do a small amount of research into the emerging trend, trying to discover whether or not this was something I could have some fun at. I then found out that blogging had absolutely nothing to do with a hallucinogenic mixture of vintage industrial solvents inhaled out of a brown paper bag. Despite my initial disappointment, I continued looking into the phenomena.

What I eventually found was a very unique technological tool, something that had the potential to revolutionize the news media and fundamentally change the way information was presented to the public. In addition to being a means that could instantaneously transmit firsthand accounts of unfolding events directly to consumers without it being first subjected to editorial filters, it also could serve as an effective balance to the biased reporting that has been the staple of informational dissemination since the invention of the printing press. In short, it could serve as a means of keeping the network news juggernauts honest. If they had the misfortune of reporting something suspect, there were millions of people waiting in the wings equipped with the internet, the most powerful means of conducting research the world has ever seen. When placed in the hands of the technologically savant, the internet can help one present a convincing argument contrary to virtually any position within a matter a minutes and instantly transmit it to millions of readers with the single click of a mouse. On the flip side, in the hands of a cyber-mongoloid it just serves as a method of accessing naughty pictures of college coeds without taking the risk of running into his pastor in the parking lot of an adult bookstore with his arms overflowing with prodigal amounts of lesbian prison porn.

In November of 2004, the company that I work for lowered the boom on my department. Responding to budget issues, management decided to trim the Research and Development budget and virtually eliminated the activity in North America. When the dust settled, there were only three of us left that still had jobs. I went out that night, put away enough tequila to kill a Kennedy and decided to try to strike out on a venture that I could earn some extra cash at. I thought I’d give blogging a try. Over that weekend, I pounded out my first entry and then, a few weeks later when I figured out how to start a blog, launched The JEP Report into cyberspace.

The JEP Report has managed to attract a small following and has garnered some modest recognition but has yet to develop any large amount of web traffic. One reason for this I believe is the fact that The JEP Report is updated very infrequently, a natural consequence of filling a blog with epic entries that take forever to write. I would like to update The JEP Report at least once a day but with the demands of my job and my family, I just can not manage to pound out a miniature edition of War and Peace every twenty-four hours. In addition to time, I am quite susceptible to writer’s block. Alcohol is a great cure for this, but when I get busy and start neglecting my drinking, my writing suffers. It is not that I have a shortage of material. If I ever exhaust my comprehensive repertoire of sea stories, it’ll only take the consumption of a couple bottles of tequila and a handful of Ex-Lax tablets to fabricate some more. Unfortunately, I believe that would get awfully repetitive after a while, not to mention that it would probably wreak holy havoc upon my digestive tract. I decided I needed a cause to champion to break up the epics and give me a means to post more often.

That cause seemed to drop from heaven and fall into my lap earlier this month when Brian C. Anderson, sent me a copy of his latest book. This book, South Park Conservatives, explained how the traditional media, a stalwart bastion of liberal hyperbole since the Vietnam era, has been recently upended by the emergence of conservative talk radio, Fox News and the internet. After reading Mr. Anderson’s book I suspected that I may be a member of the “South Park Conservative” demographic and, succumbing to ideological hypochondria, set off into some more research so that I could perform a somewhat informed political diagnosis of my doctrinal fortitude. I needed to discover what one would consider to be a normal South Park Conservative. This was by no means an easy task since the normal South Park Conservative is decidedly abnormal. There is really no organized “South Park Conservative” movement, no political platform, no spokesperson, no leader and not really even any clear consensus on what a South Park Conservative is. The best term I could come up with to describe the demographic as I see it, would be to steal a phrase from Saturday Night Live alumnus Dana Carvey, who attributes his political leanings to be those of a “radical centrist”. So, after trying to research the trend on my own, I decided the SPCs were more of a demographic description than a movement and I had to look for something else to advocate.

Now, taking up a cause is something that should not be done lightly. It is an important decision, one that demands a lot of thought and effort. I did not want to rush into anything so, as I do with most of the important choices I have ever made in my life, I decided to drink on it. The creative juices always seem to flow so much better over the course of a dozen bottles of Moosehead beer and a quarter fifth of Jose Cuervo’s magical elixir from Jalisco. Of course, my cause came to me just as an imminent tequila coma started rearing its ugly head but fortunately, I managed to write it down on a bar napkin before blacking out. Unfortunately, it was written in handwriting of a quality that could easily have been bested by a Bic wielding rhesus monkey with cerebral palsy and, with my short term memory ravaged by the alcoholic onslaught of the night before, it was forever lost along with the recollection of how I got home that night and who the contemptible bastard was that parked my car on the front porch.

The next day I nursed my hangover and tried to figure out what movement I could trumpet. I tried to find something I could get behind with a passion (besides Angelina Jolie), and follow through. Since Prohibition had been repealed over seventy years ago, taking that bull by the horns would have been a moot point. I considered taking on abortion but my feelings on the issue are too conflicted. On one hand, I am absolutely horrified by the practice yet on the other, I don’t want to outlaw any tool that could be used to keep Michael Moore, Al Franken, Janeanne Garafalo or Susan Sarandon from producing more people larvae either. I briefly flirted with gun rights, but my distaste for sobriety during my off-work hours would have made hands-on research of this issue a little more hazardous than I was comfortable with. I was also far too wishy-washy on the subject of same-sex unions. Though I can not think of anything more revolting than the sight of two men feeling each other up in a grungy hotel room, I would probably fork out twenty-five bucks to watch two women doing the same thing on pay-per-view if my wife wasn’t monitoring the damn cable bill so closely.

I really needed to figure out what I was really for and what I was really against. I decided to start out by making a list about what I was really for. Inside of five minutes I had written down “Democracy”, “Capitalism”, “Equality”, “Prosperity” and “Freedom of Expression”. These were pretty broad concepts and could be grouped under the entirely broader category of “Western Culture”. I liked the sound of that. It sounded curt and common and very politically incorrect. So politically incorrect in fact that it almost had a fascist ring to it. “JEP – An Unrepentant Advocate of Western Culture”. I decided to roll with that.

Now, how do I go about championing the cause of western culture? By contradicting the rhetoric out there that decries it. The are some very vocal people of the far left, and for that matter the European mainstream, that believe our culture to be morally bankrupt, enthusiastically exploitative, without conscience and beyond redemption (funny, I always thought that my obituary would read something like that). I would like to be one of many to stand up and tell them they are wrong. We’ve got the best thing going on the planet and if you can’t believe that, look at where the world’s population is going. If the Taliban’s Afghanistan really was an Islamic paradise, I’m sure that the hordes of the world’s dispossessed would have been streaming through the Khyber Pass in search of peace and prosperity instead of crossing over, under, across and through the Rio Grande in pursuit of it.

So, if I am going to be for western culture, what am I against? Well, I guess it would have to be those who threaten the sacred bastions of western culture. The tee-totaling terrorist travesty of al Qaeda would be at the top of the list. That third runner up in the Asian Elvis impersonation exhibition that currently presides over North Korea would be a close second. The Baathist brigands battering Baghdad would probably come in third. The leftist losers that help them because of sympathy for their cause, to exploit an opportunity to enhance their prestige or to line their own pockets, fourth. Membership of this group would include the UN, the traditional news outlets that keep trumpeting our “lost” cause in Iraq, key faculty members of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, the foreign policy of France and Germany and fantasy filmmaker Michael Moore. I’m also against Celine Dion, but I am going to leave her alone for now. Granted, I doubt that Ms. Dion takes her ideological cues from Osama bin Laden but if the UN ever passes a resolution that includes music as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, I hope to see Hans Blix parachuting into Las Vegas to throw down a choke hold on that harmonically heinous harpy inside of thirty minutes.


With my cause and my adversaries now determined, how am I going to translate it into more web traffic? Well, to be honest, I haven’t figured that out yet. I guess I will just have to drink about it.

Post Note: I apologize about the travesty posted above. This is an example of just sitting down in front of the computer and typing the first thing that comes to mind. It is all over the place from a subject matter standpoint and the result of what can happen when a writer is allowed to publish with the moderating influence of an editor. Oh well, it was the best I could come up with having only a half an hour of free time and I guess that’s just one of the things that makes the blogosphere what it is. On the bright side, no one charged you to read it.

Zimbabwe Re-Elected to United Nations Human Rights Commission

Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, a people's paradise where the government has seized thousands of minority-owned farms under the guise of agrarian reform, put excessive controls on the media and civil rights groups and has created a political atmosphere in which dissenters and the political opposition must fear for their safety, has been re-elected to the United Nations' Human Rights Commission.
According to a story reported by the BBC last February, Zimbabwe has even set up camps to mold children into a cadre of party thugs willing to torture and kill opponents of southern Africa's premier rogue regime. Camp initiatiation rites apparently consist of the gang rape of female recruits, some as young as 11 years old, and beatings of the males until they are broken down enough to be receptive to a curriculum that trains them how to violently put down opposition to Mugabe's hold on power.
Allowing Zimbabwe, and for that matter Sudan, hold positions on the UNHRC makes it one of the world's most laughable governmental entities. With that kind of logic, Michael Jackson should be running the United Nations Children's Fund while Scott Peterson takes a turn at the helm of the United Nations' Development Fund for Women.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Book Review: South Park Conservatives - The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias by Brian C. Anderson

Brian C. Anderson’s new book, “South Park Conservatives” (Regnery) is not a tale about four foul-mouthed eight-year-old Coloradoans wandering through the 2004 Republican National Convention. I was a little disappointed by this as I was hoping for a graphic description of Michael Moore being driven hopelessly insane by a logical and popular political agenda and, in a fit of apoplectic fury, becoming the bastard that eventually killed Kenny. Fortunately, the absence of that narrative was about the only part of the book that I was disappointed with. Overall, “South Park Conservatives” proved to be a very informative, thought-provoking and entertaining read that I would highly recommend to anyone moderately right of or at the center of the political spectrum.

What “South Park Conservatives” is actually about is the stranglehold the left has had upon traditional media outlets over the past few decades and the effect this liberal bias has had not only upon the objectivity of mainstream journalism, but upon its credibility as a reliable source of information as perceived by the viewing public. The “media elite” of today, the senior editors, correspondents, and the first string news anchors of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN are people that cut their journalistic teeth during the counter-culture explosion of the Vietnam era. Now having risen through the ranks to positions of influence, they have virtually overwhelmed the traditional news networks that, until recently, it has become virtually impossible for even the most moderate of conservative viewpoints to emerge. This pervasive liberal bias has done to Mainstream Media (MSM) credibility what my father’s propensity to down six bottles of Guinness, a double serving of sauerkraut, two pickled eggs and a compliment of White Castle hamburgers in a single setting did to the interior air quality of the 1,000 sq. ft. house I grew up in.

This left-leaning persuasion has had the same effect on moderately conservative and centrist information consumers as my father’s flatulence-friendly table fare had on my olfactorily abused family. They are leaving the scene of the suffocating stench in a desperate quest for fresh air and causing, as Mr. Anderson maintains, an unprecedented explosion of alternative information sources such as Fox News, the internet, right-of-center print publications, and the blogosphere. This has also spawned the increased visibility of a corps of conservatives that do not fit the traditional stereotype Main Street America has of the typical Republican: the South Park Conservative.
Though I was unaware of the term “South Park Conservative” until I was contacted by Mr. Anderson last week, I think I can safely say that I am one. I had always considered myself a Republican Party Reptile, a reference to the 1987 book by P.J. O’Rourke that predated Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hilariously crude cartoon creation, but at almost two decades old, I guess that moniker has become slightly dated. Though my personal political views on many social issues routinely conflict with the Republican Party line, I remain firmly behind them on Foreign Policy, National Security, Social Security, Affirmative Action and most economic platforms. Though not always a resolute adherent to traditional points of conservative dogma, I have always found myself unflinchingly contrarian to liberal ideals. I find their disdain for western culture and its values hypocritical at best and seditious at worst. I blame them for the pervasive rise of “political correctness” which, in my eyes, has amounted to little more than a publicly acceptable label for a particularly dangerous form of social censorship. I resent their resorting to invective rather than informed debate when confronted with a point of view that deviates from their own. I find their condescension insulting to the intelligence of the general public and take great pleasure in witnessing the general migration away from the principles that they hold sacrosanct, a migration that, like Mr. Anderson, I believe is expedited by the rise of the new media and the ready availability of alternative sources of information to the general layman.

It is these alternative news mediums that are at the heart of “South Park Conservatives”. Mr. Anderson, after establishing the liberal bias in traditional media and chronicling the liberal aversion to free expression when the views expressed conflict with their own (the illiberal liberal), narrates the rise of the new media. He starts with the success of conservative radio and continues with the prolific ascension of Fox News. His observations on the effect Fox has had are startling. According to “South Park Conservatives” Fox News has managed, in less than a decade, to capture 51 percent of the cable news market share. The effect upon the network media has been spectacular. Of the 60 percent of Americans that used to regularly watch the network news, only 34% of them still do today. There is no greater indicator of the loss in confidence in the traditional media or the thirst for an alternative means of information than a market share slide of nearly 50 percent in under a decade.

I personally do not find Fox to be any more or less “fair and balanced” than any other cable news outlet, but I definitely believe that their presence makes the news industry much more fair and balanced as a whole. Once one weeds through the Fox sensationalism and showmanship they will find, what I believe to be, reporting as good or better than anything found on CNN with an emphasis on stories of interest to right-of-center individuals that are presented with significantly less of a condescending “we-will-tell-you-only-what-we-feel-you-need-to-know” attitude that I feel I often get from traditional news outlets. Fox seems to connect with the common man, headlining events that other networks do not seem to deem news-worthy (such as the Kofi Annan connection to the oil-for-food scandal and articles of the Duelfer report that may have justified the Iraq invasion without evidence of a WMD stockpile) until their hand is forced by the competition. This is one of the scenarios that Mr. Anderson brilliantly analyzes in his book.

Mr. Anderson also pays tribute to the importance of the blogosphere. He calls it for what is: a significant component to the news, not normally a first-hand source of it. The bloggers have proven themselves (most notably in the Rathergate scandal) to have the desire and the means to hold the networks accountable for malicious or heinously incompetent reporting. He also allows that the blogosphere contains considerable amounts of unresearched, unsubstantiated and unreliable information. As a blogger myself, I am particularly sensitive to this situation. I often randomly peruse the blogosphere and have rarely found anything of real interest to me unless I was directed there by an established blog site. Most blogs are of the “personal diary” variety, of no value to anyone but a few dozen people closely associated with the author and rife with terrible writing, abysmal punctuation, a complete lack of subject matter focus or discipline, unrestrained subjectivity and a complete ignorance of the concept of proofreading. In short, they are almost identical to The JEP Report. Luckily, in Mr. Anderson’s coverage of the trend he cites a myriad of reliable resources that a centrist surfer can start at to find information they may consider to be relevant.

After expertly documenting the ongoing paradigm shift in contemporary media, Mr. Anderson goes on to explain the effect it has had on other aspects of popular culture. He cites the popularity of such unapologetic pillars of political incorrectness as Dennis Miller, Colin Quinn and the cartoon “South Park”. He touches upon the emerging popularity of centrist and conservative political commentary within the book publishing industry. Finally he documents the rapidly growing conservative movement on the nation’s universities which, though still incredibly rare among the faculty, has made considerable progress among members of the student body. Of particular note is the proliferation of the non-traditional conservative student who may be more receptive to the concept of abortion or same-sex unions but remain staunchly aligned with the GOP when it comes to national security and US foreign policy.

South Park Conservatives is a very thought provoking look at the current revolution of media dynamics. It is thoroughly researched, well written and worth the while of anyone interested in learning about the impact the emergence of new informational mediums have had upon the journalistic establishment. It also serves as a source of optimism to anyone frustrated by the previously unchecked hold the liberal media elite has had on the network news and how interactive news forums have started to the pull the inherent bias of journalism slowly back to center, where it should be.

In my opinion, the liberal media elite have been at the helm for far too long and I have tired of being bombarded with defeatist stories threatening an imminent Iraqi “quagmire” while stories of progress in the Fertile Crescent, such as the recent elections there, have been de-emphasized or ignored. I am sick of constantly hearing about the abuses at Abu Ghraib while the beheading of foreign prisoners at the hands of Baghdadi brigands has gone largely forgotten. I am disgusted by the incessant vilification of Israel, a staunch and unwavering ally of the US, as heavy handed fascists by our media machine while they seem to sympathize with radical Palestinians, organizations of the same ilk as al Qaeda whose idea of meaningful political debate is to punctuate their points of view with exploding teenagers. As far as I am concerned, the liberal bias of the American media reeks of a stench so overpowering that I have come to suspect that, at least among the traditional news networks, industrial strength laxatives must have replaced the vodka martini as the recreational drug of choice within the mainstream journalism juggernaut. The explosion of conservative-friendly news outlets at the expense of the established media assures me that I am not alone in my aversions, either. Fortunately, Brian Anderson’s “South Park Conservatives” has assured me that a big batch of air freshener is on its way.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

South Korean Finally Passes Driver's Test After 271 Tries

An inveterate backseat driver, my wife probably puts my driving skills on par with this guy. No sooner have I put the car in gear than I am instantly bombarded with a barrage of commands like, "Slow Down!", "Oh my God! Watch out for the squirrel / police car / children / window-cleaning-homeless guy", or the ever popular, "What are you trying to do? KILL US!?!?!?!?" It has gotten to the point that I dread any road trip longer than thirty minutes that I have to endure in a moving automobile with my family. I have also sworn off lengthy family road vacations unless I can go armed with a tranquilizer gun and enough ammunition to pacify my wife, two (soon to be three) children, mother-in-law and, for recreational purposes, myself.
Invariably, whenever we end up driving together the same conversation ensues. After finally reaching my breaking point I explode into, "THAT'S ENOUGH! EITHER DRIVE OR SHUT UP! I am not a road menace any more than you are!"
"Well," she'll respond, "I'm not the one with two speeding tickets!"
"My two tickets were for going five miles over the speed limit, while passing, over eight years ago. You drive three times that amount over the speed limit through school zones! Besides that, UNLIKE YOU, I have never wrecked the #&%#! car!"
"What are you talking about!?!?!?! You totaled a Mustang!"
"Doesn't count. That happened over twenty years ago, before I was old enough to hold a valid driver's license. Besides that, I was drunk."
Unfortunately, she doesn't buy that arguement any more than the tee-totalling social retard I am cursed with having as an insurance agent does.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Detroit – Gateway to the Canadian Riviera

It has recently been brought to my attention that a certain Australian I know electronically will be gracing the shores of the US sometime in the near future. Apparently, she and her friend will have flexible travel plans and were wondering where they should go while they were here. Personally, when I travel I prefer to be as far away from the touristy parts of my leisure destination as humanly possible and try to find the types of places that are left out of the tour books. This allows you to leave behind the façade the nation is trying to project to foreign visitors and delve much deeper into the meat of the nation. By getting off of the beaten path, you learn far more about a country then what their old buildings looked like. You get to see its people the way they really are and find out, for good or bad, what they really think of you. You learn what it is they like to eat, what they like to drink and how they have fun. By traveling in this manner, you acquire a much more rewarding experience than you would by spending ten hours a day in a decrepit old tour bus full of fifty aging examples of your fellow countrymen reeking of Old Spice cologne, soiled adult diapers and the overpowering stench of Metamucil sweated out of geriatric pores.

So, with that in mind, I would recommend to anyone coming to visit the United States to take some time and travel to area that spawned the author of The JEP Report.

The tourist Mecca of Detroit is located on the southeastern extremity of the State of Michigan along a strait that conveniently separates it from the Canadian Riviera but keeps it well within the firing range of a cheap 9mm pistol, giving an uncontestable edge to the well armed Americans that have kept the unruly Canadian hordes on their side of the Ambassador Bridge since the War of 1812. Even though the savages have been kept at bay for nearly two hundred years, the barbarians have still managed to make their intimidating presence felt. The Cult of Hockey crept out from behind the Maple Curtain sometime during the 20th Century and was never successfully stamped out. Its American disciples have proven incredibly resilient and the cult displays a fervent zealotry second only to the Saudi Arabian sect of Wahhabbi Islam. The Canadians have also made their mark on the American beverage industry by pumping the market full of malted mind-altering mixes with cryptic monikers such as Labatt’s, Molsen, and my personal weakness, Moosehead. Tasty and highly addictive, these beers excel at keeping Detroiters reasonably sedated but significantly chip away at our defensive readiness. My guess is that the cretins will sneak over the border while we’re passed out in bed and kill us in our sleep after we’ve all downed a couple dozen bottles of the stuff. That is why, after my most truly awe-inspiring alcoholic antics, I do not retire for the evening unless I’ve armed myself to the teeth.

This close proximity to our hostile northern neighbor has nurtured a sort of “siege mentality” among the Motor City’s denizens that is evident in almost every aspect of life in southeastern Michigan. One place it is most obviously apparent is in Detroit’s architecture. Fifteen minutes of driving through West Side neighborhoods and you just can’t help but feel as if you were under siege. Sometimes referred to as “The Jewel of the Rust Belt”, any world traveler would be hard pressed to name a more pristine example of urban blight than what can be found in Detroit. Still, the city manages to maintain its Old World charm. In fact, if you close your eyes in some areas of the city and let your imagination wander a bit, you can almost believe that you’ve been magically transported to some exotic continental capital, such as Berlin. In 1945. On an all-expense paid tour sponsored by the 101st Airborne Division. Your hallucinogenic vision, exacerbated by the chemical content of Detroit’s air, will often come complete with accompanying sound effects reminiscent of the battle for Berlin but be warned, those are usually NOT figments of your imagination.

A southeastern Michigan vacation is not for the faint of heart. It is a lively area rife with illicit activity and casually recreational gun play in its more destitute areas. In fact, Detroit boasts a crime rate that would make an afternoon drive through Baghdad seem like a spring outing at Disney’s Epcot Center. With a tragic lack of live poultry roaming the city’s streets, Detroiters have come to reply upon the explosive reports of submachine gun fire from passing Chevrolets to greet the morning sun.

Accommodations in Detroit can be a bit pricey, but bargains can be had. In fact, if you are equipped with cheap booze and the moral fortitude of an alley cat in heat, you could probably score a corrugated cardboard condominium right on the waterfront with a breathtaking view of the Windsor skyline for little more than a bottle of ripple and a quick tryst in nearby dumpster.

It takes a special kind of person to vacation in Detroit and by “special” I do not mean in the extraordinarily talented or brave kind of way. I mean “special” in the short little school bus manner. Still, if you are in the market for a getaway full of high adventure and enjoy mingling with heavily armed people possessing the collective IQs and dispositions of retarded wombats on PCP, the Motor City may be one of your best bets outside of Sunni Triangle.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Albanian Organized Crime Goes Out With A Bang

Riza Malaj, an Albanian underworld kingpin, alleged murderer, armed robber, batterer of education directors and an embarrassingly mediocre fisherman, succumbed today to injuries he sustained after a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at illegally harvesting local trout using Filipino angling tactics. Apparently, the dynamite he was using exploded prematurely removing both of his hands, his eyesight and any chance he ever had of meeting a romantically desperate death in an epic gun battle with elite police commandos. Now, instead of his death becoming intertwined with the glorious lore of the lawless Albanian north, he can now expect to be the subject of ridicule by bawdy Balkan barroom bards from Bosnia to Belgrade. I’m sure there’s Limericks being sung around Tirana right now that probably go something like:

Riza, a bad Balkan brute,
When fishing was less than astute,
He fell for the ruse,
Of a dynamite fuse,
So his scrotum was blown to Beirut.

Or,

Riza was a bad criminal hack,
Excelling in violent attack,
To increase his clout,
He threw bombs at poor trout,
But the fish threw the friggin’ things back.

He should have stuck to robbing banks and left the poaching to professionals.

Monday, April 11, 2005

South Park Conservatives

I would like to congratulate Brian C. Anderson, a senior editor with New York’s City Journal magazine and, incredibly, a regular reader of The JEP Report. On April 18th, his book South Park Conservatives (Published by Regnery) is due out and I would like to take a quick second to wish him good luck on his endeavor. I have not yet read it myself (though I have it from a reliable source that an advance copy is on its way) but I am guessing that if Mr. Anderson is a regular reader of The JEP Report and a viewer of South Park, it will prove to be an enjoyable read. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

You know, I am beginning to sense a dangerous trend among my readership. The mindless (and for the most part, unproofread) drivel that is The JEP Report already seems to boast a modest following at prestigious Dartmouth and now can claim the interest of an actual writer (by actual, I mean educated and talented enough to actually make a living as a wordsmith). I have to admit, I’m honored that people actually read this stuff but my first instinct about being a prosperous writer tells me that I should at least try to be a little bit smarter than the target audience. I sense that I am failing miserably in that regard so my only option is to try to dumb you people down a bit. I sure hope those of you at Dartmouth don't have any tests coming up.

Once again, good luck to you Mr. Anderson and it is good to have you here.

Prince Charles Weds Camilla

The only thing I can say about this is that it is a true tragedy that this occurred only after they are well past viable breeding age. I for one would have found it highly amusing to have witnessed the banjo player from Deliverance take his place as fourth in line to the British throne.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Wild Pity Lovin'

Recently at ZUG.com, a woman started a conversational thread regarding pity sex. I found myself fairly surprised to find how many people admitted to having given sex because they felt sorry for the person or had received it because someone felt sorry for them.

Personally, I do not believe that I have ever slept with a woman because I felt sorry for her. There may have been some incidents that I could have later claimed to have been pity-inspired but in reality were most likely caused by either an overactive libido, tragically low standards or the aggressive aversion I had to prolonged periods of bleak sobriety in my younger years.

As for receiving it, one case in particular comes to mind. I was in Long Beach CA and after one particularly brutal bender I found myself having woken up next to a woman who was well out of my league. I remembered the night we spent together quite fine but was very murky about the events that led up to it. After she woke up, she called me by something other than my real name, kissed me and asked me if the night we shared together made me feel better about what had happened to me. I assured her that it most certainly had and left shortly afterwards.

To this day, I have no idea what line of manure I had given her but I can assure you I spent a long time after that trying to figure it out. I’m sure it would have come in handy later.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Urges Human Rights Commission Reform

In a rare moment of lucidity, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, proclaimed today that the UN Human Rights Commission needs to be reformed so that it can move from a policy of “declaration” to “implementation”. So, can the world’s oppressed take comfort in this dawning of a new era where the UN will respond with the resources required to put down genocidal catastrophes in global trouble spots such as Sudan, the Congo and Somalia? Only if they’ve been pumped full of more hallucinogens than Timothy Leary at a Grateful Dead concert.

It will take an awful lot more than idle lip service from Mr. Annan to transform the UN Human Rights Commission from an entity that impotently whines about the evil atrocities that occur across the world’s hottest flashpoints into an organization that effectively combats them. In its present state, the United Nations lacks two critical characteristics that are absolute requirements to successfully confront the systematic oppression of unimaginable numbers of the our fellow human beings every day.

First and foremost, the UN lacks the will to even try to stamp out rampant human rights abuses. To try and stop an unfolding catastrophic event, such as the tragedy currently taking place in Darfur, intervention by a force other than the Sudanese military is obviously required. It is incredibly unlikely that the Janjaweed will be willing to lay down their arms and leave the Darfurians alone as the result of a few polite requests from Amnesty International and the United Nations’ wishful thinking. Of course, deploying such a force is certain to entail a fair amount of risks. Infrastructure will be destroyed, lives will be lost and from a political viewpoint, there are certainly going to be some people, namely the Sudanese government, the Janjaweed and whatever allies they may have, that are not going to be happy about the development. Regardless, those are the risks that are going to have to be taken if the world is genuinely serious about ending the crisis. If the UN is unwilling to take the risks inherent to resolving the very worst of the world’s human rights catastrophes, it has no business taking on the responsibility to. The global tax dollars spent to support this activity should be diverted to an organization that is willing to take on the job.

Secondly, the UN Human Rights Commission also lacks the basic credibility required to effectively carry out the task it is charged with. One need go no further than the UNHRC’s roll of member nations to see that glaring fact. Congo, a tropical paradise where a civil war, rife with systematic rape, torture, random massacres and the occasional documented case of cannibalism as a terrorism tactic that has raged almost since the nation’s inception, is a member of the commission until 2006. Zimbabwe, a nation ruled by Robert Mugabe, an iron-fisted thug who has systematically confiscated the property of and effectively economically expelled a segment of its minority population based upon nothing other than their race and prosperity is also serving a stint on the commission that ends later this year. Credible accusations of human rights violations are also routinely leveled against China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Then of course, there is the granddaddy of them all: Sudan. This Nubian corner of Hell, who is currently hosting the worst governmentally facilitated humanitarian crisis on the planet, is also a member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. If this does not blow the chances of this organization of ever reaching a semblance of respectability among the citizenry of the developed world, I have no idea what will. Letting Sudanese President Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir dictate to the rest of the world how its governments should treat their people is kind of like letting Hannibal Lector do menu planning at a convention for militant vegetarians.

The UN Human Rights Commission has the potential to accomplish great things, but unless its membership antes up to the challenge and accepts the risks that come along with the responsibilities, it will remain nothing more than an organization pursuing a perpetual exercise in futility. It will take a very strong Secretary General to take on this task and produce any tangible results. Kofi Annan, unfortunately, is not this person. This is a man who, just a couple of years ago, presided over this body when it elected Libya to be its champion of human rights, apparently believing that it must treat its own citizens a little better than it did Pan Am airline travelers flying over Lockerbie Scotland in 1989.

Kindergarten Round Up

My daughter, who will be turning five in the fall, will be entering kindergarten later this year. Last night, I attended the Kindergarten Round up in Grand Blanc Michigan, the city we are moving to over the summer. It was a large affair and, having arrived just as the presentation was beginning, I was forced to stand in the back of the cafeteria while the school superintendent extolled the virtues of enrolling one’s child into the Grand Blanc school system.

The superintendent did a fine job of presenting the information, going through the information packet and highlighting the pertinent information clearly and concisely. He wrapped up his portion inside of twenty minutes and then passed the microphone over to what I assumed to be the district’s senior kindergarten teacher. I do not think that I will ever forgive him for that.

This teacher, both pleasant and soft spoken, was obviously very dedicated to her work, displaying a passion for interacting with young children that is hard to find outside of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. I came away from her speech though, with the distinct impression that she was a little rusty conveying information to people over the age of six. Instead of summarizing the curriculum that Grand Blanc’s kindergartners would be exposed to during their year in the program, she went into very explicit detail and backed up each point with several pictures of students participating in the activity, each of which was explained in painstaking detail and complimented with a cute little anecdote about each child in each photograph. Though mildly amusing for the first fifteen minutes, after forty-five the cafeteria had become a psychological torture chamber. People were squirming in their seats, silently groaning at each new slide and, at least in my case, feeling incredibly guilty about praying for the overhead lighting positioned directly over her head to come crashing down around her and shaving another hour or two off of her diatribe. She was too nice to wish serious bodily injury upon, but I could have lived with myself if a glancing blow scared her speechless for a couple of days. In all, this portion of the presentation lasted over an hour, an hour that I want back by the way.

By the time she wrapped things up, a full half of the crowd that was there when she started had fled the building, exercising their right as adults to depart the school grounds before the bell is rung. The rest of us were reduced to mental mush. We all just stared at her mindlessly and devoid of free will, hypnotized by banality and ready to do her evil bidding. I think I actually drooled on myself.

Personally, I do not recall my kindergarten being that incredibly dull but in all honesty, I was eating an awful lot of glue at the time. That could very well have livened things up.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Tijuana Travesty Follow-Up #3

As I wrote Tijuana Travesty, I nearly included a part about a final stop we made on the way back to the border. The problem was that I could not remember if that happened on the night of our initial bender or on a subsequent trip with Ritch and Matt into Mexico. Since my memory of that stop was so vivid, I concluded that it must have happened some other time and left it out. Then I received an e-mail from Matt this morning that read:

What, you forgot events of that night Ritch? And Jim did too??? I can't imagine why you guys would have that problem. Oh wait, you were sauced out of your gourds. Honestly, it is kind of nice knowing that your memories of that night are so dim. Did you guys forget about stopping by Chuteys House of Beer on the way back to the border and you getting friendly with a couple of the "ladies of the night" otherwise known as hoors (said in your best Sopranos accent). All I can say is that if the next time we go to TJ and you guys see some 15 yr olds selling chicklets while drinking gallons of tequila and eating bacon wrapped hot dogs, RUN ! ! !

So it has been confirmed. I left out our stop at Chutey’s House of Beer. Not wanting to keep the whole story, as best as I can relay it, from Ritch and Matt’s friends and family, here is the omitted section (the original article has been updated accordingly). By the way, the way I remember it, Matt was the only one getting friendly with the working girls though admittedly, completely and utterly against his will.

We were on our way back to the side of the US - Mexico border that had sanitary public transportation when Matt and myself finally gave up. We had been carrying Ritch for several blocks and had finally just worn ourselves out. We desperately needed a break. As we were approaching the intersection where the Tijuana’s Revolution strip began the number of restaurants and nightclubs started to dwindle, replaced by merchant businesses selling counterfeit handbags, leather goods, native crafts, t-shirts and switchblade knives. As far as we could tell, there were only two options available to us for a little respite. The first was the Hard Rock Café, an establishment that probably would not be receptive to three obviously intoxicated patrons with a high potential for public projectile puking. The second option was located right next door within a dingy yellow windowless building that boasted a hulking Hispanic enforcer positioned just outside the front door and horrid Latino rock and roll music blaring out from within. It looked like a nasty place, a place full of woe and depravity where the bottom tier of Tijuana’s underclass could gather to plan acts of violence, rapine and thievery against hapless American tourists who lacked the sense, street smarts or sobriety to resist. In other words, it looked like a place that would make us feel right at home. The establishment was named Chutey’s House of Beer.

I felt an impending sense of doom as we passed through the doorway into the dank darkness that was Chutey’s and tried to prepare myself accordingly. I put the best scowl I could muster on my face and was a bit relieved to see that Matt had done the same. We needed to project to whatever dangers that lurked inside that we were not men to be trifled with. We needed to broadcast to any potential threats that we were extremely dangerous and capable of unleashing dramatic acts of unspeakable violence at the mere hint of trouble. We needed to ensure that every being within the confines of that decrepit little bar knew that we were men on the edge and the slightest provocation was certain invite nothing more than certain doom. At the time I thought we did a fairly good job at this but looking back, I do not see how we possibly could have. In 1990, though I stood three inches over six feet, I barely weighed 150 pounds. Matt was six inches shorter than I was and possessed a similar build. Ritch, who was by far the most naturally menacing of the three of us, was completely unable to move under his own power and with his incessant giggling sounded like a mildly retarded hyena in the process of a nitrous oxide overdose. He could not have been less intimidating had he stepped into Chutey’s with his hair in pigtails, tarted up in “Hello Kitty” underoos and carrying a Care Bear backpack.

My first act upon entering Chutey’s was to size up the crowd, a task that proved fairly difficult with eyes that were still accustomed to squinting in the Mexican sun after having consumed enough tequila to kill a Kennedy. Matt and myself poured Ritch into a booth against the wall and I scanned the tables that surrounded us. Based upon all of the long, straggly unkempt hair, tattered clothes, tattoos, glass eyes and missing teeth among the establishment’s other patrons, I came to the only conclusion I possibly could have under the severely compromised intellectual capacity that I had to work with. I concluded that we were surrounded by pirates and immediately panicked. Upon realizing our predicament, I suddenly saw what lay in store for us. I suspected that we would soon be set upon, being severely beaten, mugged and sexually ravaged before being sold to a band of sociopath white slavers operating from some remote base in Southeast Asia. I felt myself starting to melt down as my paranoia started bubbling to the surface and I felt sure that Matt would become similarly distressed if I relayed my suspicions about what I felt was imminent to him. Ritch, on the other hand, would have been fine. At this point, he was so bombed he probably would have been up for anything.

Aggressive attacks of anxiety, though more often associated with delusional hysteria, can also induce a moment of rationality in a person not usually prone to logical thought in the middle of a tequila bender. No sooner had I sat down than I realized that the Caribbean, and thus the Spanish Main, were off of Mexico’s other coast a continent away and this fact, coupled with the advances in the enforcement of maritime law that have taken place over the past five hundred years, suggested that a sizable buccaneer contingent hanging out in Tijuana’s tourist district was highly unlikely. I decided to give the crowd a second look.

My second glance, enhanced by eyes that had finally adjusted to the darkness and the brief emergence of some semblance of intellectual lucidity, produced slightly different results. I still saw an overabundance of people with unkempt hair, tattered clothes, tattoos, glass (or rather, lazy) eyes and missing teeth but I also noticed that we were, with the exception of the bartender and the doorman, the only men in the place. It then dawned on me, once I noticed that nearly every single woman around was seductively staring us down, that we had stumbled into a house of ill repute, a very bad house of ill-repute where the women looked uncannily similar to Caribbean privateers. Much more at ease now, I got up and walked to the bar to get us another round of beer.

As I told the bar’s proprietor that I wanted “tres Tecates”, I glanced back at my drinking buddies. Matt looked absolutely mortified and rather unable to pry his eyes off of the table in front of him for fear of initiating an unwelcome business proposition. Ritch looked like a newborn in Disney World, knowing that he was surrounded by articles of amusement but not yet quite able to control the movement of his head to look at any of them. As I looked at them, I heard a raspy voice from behind me ask, “How you doin’, mayn?” It almost sounded as if I was being propositioned by Louis Armstrong after a successful sex change operation. I spun around and was face to face with a woman who, though she was probably one of the most attractive ladies in the place from the waist up, was cursed with backside so incredibly large that it was an unusual find on a human animal. It would have looked much more appropriate on something that got around on four legs.

“Just fine.” I answered as I wished the bartender would quit taking his time with our drinks. She then asked me if I wanted to do something that, even though I was a sailor, I had never before thought imaginable. I was half tempted to take her up on the offer just out of morbid curiosity when good judgment got the best of me and I politely turned her down.

No sooner had my refusal passed my lips when I was confronted by another voice on the other side of me. “Whats-a-matta-mayn?” I had to look down to make eye contact with this one. Way down. I was being addressed by what I assumed to be the madam of the house who stood, maybe, four and a half feet tall. If I had to guess her age, based upon her white hair, gin blossoms, liver spots and raisin-esque skin texture, I would bet that she was old enough to have started her professional career as one of Pancho Villa’s consorts. She appeared to be a feisty little troll and once I looked down at her, she started laying into me. “Wha? You no like me guuurrrlz?”

“Oh, they’re fine ladies, but I’m not here for myself.”

“Who you here for dhen?” She pointed a thumb over towards Ritch, whose head was still drowsily bouncing all over place while his insane giggling never skipped a beat. “Heem?”

I pointed over at Matt, who had no idea how much more uncomfortable his first visit to a brothel was about to become. “No, him. He’s never been with a woman before. I think it’s high time someone went over there and showed him a good time.”

I could barely contain myself as I watched the midget geriatric stroll across the bar and slip into the seat next to Matt. Shortly afterwards, the bartender brought me my beer and, for one last time before I returned to my drinking companions, I stole a glance to my left to check out the grotesquely deformed derriere on the woman who occupied the five or six seats next to me. She caught me looking and asked, “Do you lahk wha you see?”

“It’s amusing,” I answered as I wondered if she was capable of facing south without sending that massive thing through immigration control. In 1990, NAFTA was nothing more than a rallying cry for Ross Perot so I could see how an unauthorized backside border breech could cause some mighty incredible inconveniences for a working girl plying her trade that close to the US.

Now, though it would be as unfair as it would be untrue to describe Matt as being “uptight”, it would not be misleading if I said that he is among one of the most straight-laced people that I knew at that time. Though capable of enjoying himself, cracking an occasional off-color joke and mistreating his grey matter as well as the rest of us, when push came to shove, he was on firm moral footing and was steadfast enough to resist any peer pressure prodding him towards doing something he was outright opposed to. Still, it was always fun to try and I can honestly say that there are few things funnier than watching Matt squirm his way through a situation that he is thoroughly uncomfortable with, such as being profoundly felt up a four foot tall geriatric whose vintage suggests that, in addition to working in the world’s oldest profession, may very well have started it herself. As a fairly naïve seventeen-year-old, Matt was WAY out of his element in Chutey’s House of Beer and I would not have been able to live with myself had I not exploited him in some way.

The last memory I have of that particular pit stop was of Matt writhing under the hands of a woman who displayed amazing dexterity for someone her age. His eyes were opened as large dinner plates and his laughter, though loud, had very little humor to it. He played it off well but the look on his face was absolutely priceless. It was kind of a combination of amusement, disbelief, irritation, discomfort and fear all rolled into one. There is no way that a written description could possibly do it justice but tragically, digital cameras were barely even thought of in 1990 and Al Gore had not yet gotten around to inventing the World Wide Web. Trust me, if this excursion taken place five years later I have little doubt that Matt would have enjoyed more than his fair share of internet celebrity. It was definitely a Kodak moment and to this day I have that expression indelibly etched upon on brain. Unfortunately, most of what happened immediately after that was permanently erased.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Thank You

I got the idea to try my hand at blogging just over four months ago with the intention of trying to see if my writing skills were actually decent enough to be fairly amusing to anyone but myself. The results thus far have been quite encouraging. Granted, no fairy god-editor has dropped out of the sky and offered me a multi-million dollar book deal or anything like that but, from what I can tell from my site meter, there are about twenty people who drop by on a fairly regular basis to see what’s going on. The rest are dropping by from Underculture because they've been duped into thinking they're getting some free tubgirl porn. Anyway, it is turning out to be a fair amount of fun and, in addition to serving as a creative outlet, has turned to serve as a significant source of encouragement to try my hand at trying to make a little extra money writing. I currently have one article, “Potty Training a Porcelain Prodigy” submitted to Parenting Magazine for publication as well as three that were turned into Modern Drunkard Magazine for consideration. I have not heard from any of them yet but at this point, blogging has come to be fun enough that I’ve decided to keep it up no matter what happens.

I did however, manage to get three articles published on ZUG – The World’s Only Comedy Website (
http://www.zug.com/) yesterday and also received some very kind words from the editor there as well. No pay was involved of course, but I could consider my ego sufficiently stroked for the effort.

Anyway, there have been a couple people that have been very encouraging up to this point and I would like to take some time to thank them out right. First and foremost, I would like to thank Sacto Ritch and Matt who, in addition to being lifelong trusted friends and an inexhaustible source of material, have had great words for The JEP Report and Ritch has been a loyal reader since its inception. Matt just discovered it yesterday but if it was not for him, Ritch and myself would probably ended up working the Donkey Show circuit south of the border.

Second, I would like to thank the people at ZUG for their encouragement as well. Ten years ago I would have thought it awfully strange to carry on a relationship of any sort with someone I’ve only met through a machine, but it’s a funny group and I’m glad to be able to participate in it. Roofie Raccoon in particular has proved an invaluable cyber-mentor and I am really glad she took up the cause. I’d also like to thank Chi-Chi, ZUG’s editor, for publishing my material there as well.

I would also like to thank Amanda at Conservadiva! (
http://conservadiva.blogspot.com/). She was the first person (and, as far as I know the only person) to post a link to The JEP Report on her blog, which I have to admit is a gutsy move since her site is a forum for conservative political issues and my site is by no means Moral Majority friendly. Actually, through this I think that I have developed a small following at Dartmouth University of which I am very proud of. Either that, or it’s just Amanda that keeps coming back. It is hard to imagine students at an institution of higher learning as prestigious as Dartmouth regularly tuning into the rantings of someone who barely made it through high school. Hell, if it wasn’t for Street Pharmacology and Amateur Gynecology I probably would have went through those four years without studying anything at all.

And of course, I’d like to thank the rest of you that regularly read The JEP Report. I’m guessing there is about twenty of you out there of which I know only one. Joe Getty of Sacramento’s “Armstrong & Getty Show” (AM650), glad to have you on board!

If you do read The JEP Report and have any suggestions, comments or just want to introduce yourself, please feel free to leave comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

JEP

Tijuana Travesty Follow Up

One year later - Same Place Posted by Hello


Sacto Ritch chimed in shortly after this article was posted. In an e-mail sent to me he wrote:

Holy crap! That was 15 years ago? Apparently you've got more memory than I do from that night. The only person who would have a clear memory from that night would be our caretaker Matt. In fact I'm afraid of what he does remember. He could be making it sound a lot worse and we wouldn't know. For all we know we stopped in for mass and a few quick prayers. Maybe Matt roundly buggered both of us for putting him through that ordeal. Maybe we got married in Mexico to syphilis infested, stuttering transvestite hookers. Maybe we married each other!

Matt then chimed in after he was forwarded a link to the story:

I do have a few things to add to the story though that you may have forgotten in your drunken stupor.

When we got to Tequila Sunrise, Ritch was sober just enough to start harassing the bartender and betting the cost of a couple of tequila shots that the bartender could not name 3 members of the starting line up of the Pistions. (Ritch probably couldn't at that time either)

When we were walking to towards Customs, this mexican woman for no apparent reason, came up to ritch while he was still being supported by you and I and started yelling at him and slapping him. I remember that you and I both looked at each and wondered what the hell he could have done to deserve that since he was being supported by you and I for the entire trip to customs after leaving the puking TJ Cabbie.

Once you and Ritch woke up after sleeping in the flower bed we decided to make the first attempt at getting on the trolley. While sitting on the bench waiting on the trolley, trolley security walked up and said that you and Ritch were in no state to get on the trolley. For some odd reason, they thought that the rocking and swaying that the trolley does may cause a couple of drunks to change the texture of the floor of the trolley. After you made a vain attempt to tell the officers that you weren't that drunk, you finally just layed down on the bench and passed out.

While I was waiting on you inebriates to sleep it off at least enough to get past trolley security, I found myself apologizing to the horrified passers by for the random noises and occasional technicolor breathing that you and Ritch were doing (yes you joined him in tossing up some TJ hot dogs and beer). People would walk by and I would warn them against the evils of Tequila. Hell, it was my first day in CA after driving through the desert trapped in a non-airconditioned, overstuffed festiva. I had to do something to entertain myself. You guys were just such easy targets.

Also, the worst thing about the whole damn experience for me was that I had maybe, MAYBE 1/3 of what you or Ritch drank and the next morning, I was the one with the fucking hangover and he was bouncing around like he just slept for 10 hours and didn't have a care in the world!!!

The best thing about the whole situation is that no matter what, after that night and after all of the years of my brother beating my ass and exploiting my every weakness, I finally found a weakness in him and it's name is TEQUILA. All you would have to do was open a bottle of tequila accross the room from him and he would some how smell it and immediately turn 2 shades of green.

To which Ritch again responded:

Forgot,or just never knew in the first place? So some woman was beating me senselesser? (Huh. The spell checks thinks that's not a word.)Why were both of you holding me up? Who was holding Jim up? I hope someone lost their job for letting drunk pices of crap like us in this country. We were kicked off the trolley? Why was my watch destroyed? Why is my hair long in one picture and short the next? Did I get in a fight with a deranged vato with a pair of sheep shears? And by the way Matt, I had a hangover for three of the most horrible days of my life. I hadn't seen that shade of green again until New Years Eve 99/00 there lover boy.
Holy cats man! Did you see how young we were? Matt looks like a Michael Jackson wet dream. Underage, just drunk enough on Jesus juice to lose all inhibitions while in a third world country with a bad teenage moustache! And all the hair! Ea gads man, Have I always had the "just this side of serial rapist" look, or was it just a Tj thing?

Good God I miss being that completely pie eyed. Jim, my friend, we must gather our caretaker Matt and do our best as a trio of thirty somethings to re-live that night before some awful disease or life altering situation prohibits us from doing so.

You in Matt?

I know I'm in. I'm a little busy this year, but I think that soon we need the storm clouds to gather together and unleash that kind of fury once more in some God-forsaken Third World hell hole (Mississippi, anyone?).

I know I'll be looking forward to it!

Tijuana Travesty

Matt (l) JEP (c) and Sacto Ritch (r) just as the carnage began to unfold. Posted by Hello


The following events occurred fifteen years ago and I have to be forthcoming in admitting that my memory of them has been clouded by time and the absolutely incredible amount of alcohol that was consumed that night. Still, I think I am pretty close. Sacto Ritch can correct me…..Oh, who am I kidding? He was in worse shape than I was. We’ll let his brother chime in with his view of the events if he ever stops by the pages of The JEP Report.

It was on the eve of the first Gulf War, during the summer of 1990. I was stationed in San Diego and a friend of mine from high school, Saco Ritch, was out visiting his mother in Chula Vista before going into the army and in the process, helping his seventeen-year-old brother move out to California from Michigan. We had reconnected while I was home on leave a few months before and had made arrangements to get together while he was on the west coast.The plans had started off innocently enough. We planned on traveling down to Tijuana Mexico to do a little shopping, eat lunch and maybe have a couple of drinks before returning to the American side of the border to finish the day at the beach. None of us had any idea that the short jaunt would morph into one of the most savage drinking excursions I had ever embarked upon, making up in intensity what it lacked in longevity.

We crossed the border early. I estimate that we probably passed into the Third World between ten and eleven in the morning. Things were not yet up and running at full bore yet and if I remember correctly, the sidewalk vendors had yet to arrive in full force. In order to kill some time, we kicked back for an early lunch and a couple of Margaritas. A few turned into many and as the sun rose higher, we decided to find some shade. We sought refuge in Rio Rita’s, a dive located in the basement of one the many shops lining the Avenida de la Revolucion.

Rio Rita’s was a dreary place, devoid of any natural light and consisting of three subterranean levels. The first level was unremarkable and reminiscent of any bar one could stumble into from Detroit to Dakar. The second level was smaller and opened up only after the first had been filled. The third level was a gargantuan cavern that turned into a nightclub on weekend nights, pulsating techno dance music, sexual tension and rhythmic well-choreographed violence that, when combined with the lack of any natural sunlight, wreaked utter havoc upon one’s personal sense of the space-time continuum. Rio Rita’s was a drunkard’s dungeon, a place where lunatic Latin alchemists transformed the painfully sober into degenerate inebriates before turning them helplessly out into public. Once out of the safety afforded by darkness, they would find themselves at the mercy of the throngs of street urchins, prostitutes, pick pockets and corrupt law enforcement officials that have earned Tijuana the notoriety it so rightfully deserves.In hindsight, I now know that we never had a chance. There are just too many unsavory elements at work in the tourist traps south of the border that know that your sobriety is against their best interests. A sober man is far less likely to give to beggars, succumb to the sex trade, be an easier mark or do something that he is going to have to bribe his way out of later. A drunk, on the other hand, is much more generous to the downtrodden (being halfway there himself), is more susceptible to the idea of taking on bar girls by the half-dozen, likely to not notice when his wallet has been has been liberated and is almost guaranteed to urinate in public fifteen feet away from prowling federales in search of a contribution to their illicit retirement funds.

The entire economy of Tijuana is based upon this predator/prey relationship, a twisted fiscal system that depends upon the compromised intellect of the targeted tourist thrashing through the throes of a massive tequila bender in order to grease the gears of the local economy.Not that this is a bad thing. It is exactly this sort of predatory environment that makes Third World binge drinking so damn exciting. There is always an undercurrent of danger just beneath the veneer of your excursion and you always know that absolutely anything can happen at absolutely anytime. You can find yourself in the midst of paramilitary police raid just by drunkenly stumbling around the wrong corner. You could pass out after your third drink and suddenly wake up in a tub of ice short a kidney or onstage as the unsuspecting object of an amorous farm animal’s affections for the amusement of a paying audience. During the course of the night, you could find yourself living it up in a nation that changed ruling juntas in the past 24 hours than you’ve change dance partners. The only thing that is certain about drinking in the developing world is that adventure awaits you and, as long as you embrace the uncertainty of the situation, a good time is a virtual guarantee. There is just something about civil strife and insurrection that brings out the party animal in people.As an old Tijuana hand, I should have known as we descended the stairs deep into bowels of Rio Rita’s that we would not emerge from that dark pit of debauchery as rational human beings. Then again, I had been down that path before and maybe subconsciously, I did know but just chose to ignore it. Either way, once we crossed the threshold we would only be allowed to leave as wasted remnants of the men who entered.

We seated ourselves and ordered a bucket of Tecate’s, six beers to split between ourselves, basically three a piece as Sacto Ritch’s seventeen-year-old brother refused to join into the regalia and cut himself off after a couple of beers. Less than a half hour later, we ordered another complimented by a round of bottom shelf house tequila. Before the hour was up, we had probably tossed down two more shots a piece before ordering a third bucket and deciding, far too late, to start pacing ourselves.

Sometime during that third bucket, I had to get up out of my seat to go use the restroom. It was only then that I suspected what we may have done to ourselves. Up until that point I had felt myself to be in surprisingly good shape for having downed a six-pack and three shots of tequila in under an hour, but when I finally managed to stand up I realized that my legs were not quite as responsive as they should have been. By the time I reach the bathroom, I was swaying noticeably and as I answered nature’s call, I found that it took all the concentration I could muster to keep myself from falling over backwards and pissing in my own face. My buzz was coming along rather nicely.After staggering back to our table, I announced that standing up was not yet the greatest of ideas and suggested that Sacto Ritch seek an alternative solution to any urinary emergencies he may encounter in the short term. Of course, with his intellectual capacity compromised by Cuervo, he was unable to come up with anything and inevitably found himself forced to disregard my advice and make his way to the head. I remember laughing hysterically with Matt as we watched him try his best to walk a straight line down the bar but fail miserably. He could barely do it without falling over and most likely would have at one point had he not been saved by an empty barstool that kept him from dropping onto all fours.Eventually, he returned to table but it had obviously taken far more effort than the thirty foot journey should have. He fell back into his seat winded and barely able to keep his head upright. “Man, I am wasted!” he announced as he situated himself.“Yeah, I’m getting there myself. We should probably go after we do one more round of shots and another bucket of beer.”Matt attempted to point out that this was probably not that great of an idea but realized the futility of his protests as Ritch shouted out the order to the bartender before he had the chance to finish his sentence.

After finishing our drinks, we knew we had to change our venue. After several tries, we stood up out of seats and made our way to t he stairway that led up to the street outside. Now, the flat trek to the john had been bad but the twenty-five or so steps we needed to ascend to get outside seemed almost impossible. I went first and made it up about two steps before my skewered equilibrium forced me off-balance, nearly causing me to fall backwards. Fortunately, I fell forward and made outside by crawling up the stairway on all fours.I was hit by a huge shock once I emerged outside. The sunlight was blinding and extremely disorienting. I reeled backwards and finally upright and braced myself against the wall for balance while I tried to get my bearings. We were at the beginning of Tijuana’s main drag and had a good mile between ourselves and the border. It was going to be a long walk and frankly, I did not think that I was up to the challenge. I looked down the stairway into the darkness that was Rio Rita’s and saw that Ritch obviously was not either.Ritch was about four or five steps from the bottom, kept upright only by his brother, Matt. He was on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness and if Matt decided to let go, there was little doubt that he would fall haphazardly right back into the bar he was trying to escape. We were in real trouble. I needed to do something to help but had no idea what. In the end I decided the best thing I could do was not get involved. Matt was having enough trouble getting Ritch, who was twice his size, up by himself and if I went down there, it was even odds that he would then be stuck carrying both of us up. I figured things would work out much better if I walked to the corner and grabbed myself a hot dog.

I am quite sure that millions of words have been written singing the praises of Mexican cuisine but in everything I have ever read on the subject, I have never heard anyone describe what I believe to be Mexico’s most succulent offering to the world’s culinary catalogue. That underappreciated delicacy is the Tijuana hot dog. This basically consists of the average sausage that is so familiar to those of us residing north of the border, but it is wrapped in bacon and grilled before being served on a steamed bun with liberal amounts of crisp onions and chili pepper sauce. It is to die for and is capable of producing the kind of craving that Midwesterners exposed to White Castle occasionally get for little square hamburgers. When I was stationed in San Diego, I had actually been awakened out of a deep sleep with a craving so hard that I made a late night trek to the trolley to score a few of those babies before the line shut down. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s there seemed to be three of those hot dog vendors on every block but on my last trip there in 1995, we were hard pressed to find even one. I sincerely pray that the California’s fascist fetish for healthy eating has not pushed them to extinction.The only downside to the Tijuana hot dog is that it does have a very distinct sobering effect on you. After eating two or three of those, I was actually in good enough condition to sustain an easy walk back to Rio Rita’s to see how Ritch and Matt were doing.

When I got there, I found that they were about halfway up the stairs. Ritch looked a little better that time though. He was still unable to walk and Matt was still supporting all of his weight, but he was giggling incessantly indicating that all things considered, he was in pretty good spirits. I figured that those guys could probably use a couple of hot dogs too so I went back to the vendor and picked up a few for my friends.I returned just as my two cohorts were emerging onto the street. They made about two steps onto the sidewalk before collapsing against a storefront wall on probably the only patch of cement not taken up by street vendor merchandise. The hot dogs seemed to wonders for Ritch and after a bit, he seemed able to move under his own power again. Finding that an unfortunate development the two of us decided, overruling Matt’s protests, that more drinks were called for. We then trudged deeper into Tijuana, eventually ending up at Tequila Sunrise, a two-storied nightclub at the far end of the strip.

We were probably there for just over an hour before Ritch made a dramatic turn for the worse. One minute he was full of animation, giggling and joking around then suddenly and inexplicably, he fell suddenly silent, indeed almost catatonic and lost all color in his face. The next thing we knew, he was practically unconscious.In this state, we knew Ritch had become a liability, a menace to the well being of our party. If we started something, like initiating a melee, mooning the authorities or provoking a transvestite, we may have to flee. With Ritch in the condition he was in, there was no way he would be able to keep up with us should a situation like that arise so we decided that we had to get him back on the safe side of the border. We snapped him out of his reverie just enough to get him out of the bar to the street and hailed the first passing cab.

At first, the cab ride was all fun and games. I took a spot next to our driver in the front seat while Ritch and Matt piled in the back. Almost as soon as we got going, Ritch started his giggling again before suddenly morphing into a sentimental mood where he felt himself compelled to tell his brother how much he loved him and how much he meant to him. A little uncomfortable with the sudden incestuously homoerotic turn the conversation suddenly took and not wanting the cab driver to get the wrong idea, I turned around to change the subject. Before I could speak however, I watched Ritch’s giggling suddenly stop as a look of high anxiety abruptly flashed across his face. He then burst out in a cold sweat, lost the color in his face and clumsily fumbled for the lever to roll the rear windshield down just as the cab rolled down to a stop in front of a red light. I looked over at Matt and yelled, “Take cover! She’s gonna blow!”Ritch got the window down just in time. As soon as he made an opening large enough to get his head through, he stuck his melon out into Tijuana traffic and launched an impressive array of semi-digested hot dog, chewed up bacon chunks, onions and beer all over La Avenida de la Revolucion. Matt looked absolutely appalled and I broke out into insanely hysterical laughter. Ritch seemed able to see the humor in the situation as well as I caught him laughing between episodes of blowing sausage chunks out of his nose. I looked over to see how the cab driver was reacting to the event and witnessed something that, at least in my case, seemed to drain all of the humor out of the situation.

The driver was also desperately seeking to get his window down but, for someone who was allegedly sober, was wildly unsuccessful at it. His eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets and his cheeks were grotesquely over-inflated, giving him a rather macabre appearance that was reminiscent of a deranged chipmunk in the midst of a Frito feeding frenzy. It was obvious that he had already blown and was rapidly losing the battle to keep the contents of his stomach from escaping his mouth.In an act of extreme desperation, the driver turned and looked at me as if somehow I may have held the key to releasing him from his predicament but my reaction of throwing myself against the passenger side door in a futile attempt to get out of line of fire probably instantly dispelled any hope he had of me coming to his aid. Finally he just burst, launching liquid laughter all over the dashboard, windshield, steering wheel and his own lap. Giving up on the window, the driver then pulled the handle and opened his entire door before sending a second round of pity puke safely outside the cab and into the street. Taking his cue I jumped out of the cab myself, pulling Matt and Ritch out with me, and tossed a $5 bill into the seat. I figured that to be more than fair compensation for a taxi ride that lasted all of three blocks. We managed to blend into the crowd on the sidewalk before the driver regained his composure. I vaguely remember exchanging a round of high-fives before making our way back to the border.
We were on our way back to the side of the US - Mexico border that had sanitary public transportation when Matt and myself finally gave up. We had been carrying Ritch for several blocks and had finally just worn ourselves out. We desperately needed a break. As we were approaching the intersection where the Tijuana’s Revolution strip began the number of restaurants and nightclubs started to dwindle, replaced by merchant businesses selling counterfeit handbags, leather goods, native crafts, t-shirts and switchblade knives. As far as we could tell, there were only two options available to us for a little respite. The first was the Hard Rock Café, an establishment that probably would not be receptive to three obviously intoxicated patrons with a high potential for public projectile puking. The second option was located right next door within a dingy yellow windowless building that boasted a hulking Hispanic enforcer positioned just outside the front door and horrid Latino rock and roll music blaring out from within. It looked like a nasty place, a place full of woe and depravity where the bottom tier of Tijuana’s underclass could gather to plan acts of violence, rapine and thievery against hapless American tourists who lacked the sense, street smarts or sobriety to resist. In other words, it looked like a place that would make us feel right at home. The establishment was named Chutey’s House of Beer.

I felt an impending sense of doom as we passed through the doorway into the dank darkness that was Chutey’s and tried to prepare myself accordingly. I put the best scowl I could muster on my face and was a bit relieved to see that Matt had done the same. We needed to project to whatever dangers that lurked inside that we were not men to be trifled with. We needed to broadcast to any potential threats that we were extremely dangerous and capable of unleashing dramatic acts of unspeakable violence at the mere hint of trouble. We needed to ensure that every being within the confines of that decrepit little bar knew that we were men on the edge and the slightest provocation was certain invite nothing more than certain doom. At the time I thought we did a fairly good job at this but looking back, I do not see how we possibly could have. In 1990, though I stood three inches over six feet, I barely weighed 150 pounds. Matt was six inches shorter than I was and possessed a similar build. Ritch, who was by far the most naturally menacing of the three of us, was completely unable to move under his own power and with his incessant giggling sounded like a mildly retarded hyena in the process of a nitrous oxide overdose. He could not have been less intimidating had he stepped into Chutey’s with his hair in pigtails, tarted up in “Hello Kitty” underoos and carrying a Care Bear backpack.

My first act upon entering Chutey’s was to size up the crowd, a task that proved fairly difficult with eyes that were still accustomed to squinting in the Mexican sun after having consumed enough tequila to kill a Kennedy. Matt and myself poured Ritch into a booth against the wall and I scanned the tables that surrounded us. Based upon all of the long, straggly unkempt hair, tattered clothes, tattoos, glass eyes and missing teeth among the establishment’s other patrons, I came to the only conclusion I possibly could have under the severely compromised intellectual capacity that I had to work with. I concluded that we were surrounded by pirates and immediately panicked. Upon realizing our predicament, I suddenly saw what lay in store for us. I suspected that we would soon be set upon, being severely beaten, mugged and sexually ravaged before being sold to a band of sociopath white slavers operating from some remote base in Southeast Asia. I felt myself starting to melt down as my paranoia started bubbling to the surface and I felt sure that Matt would become similarly distressed if I relayed my suspicions about what I felt was imminent to him. Ritch, on the other hand, would have been fine. At this point, he was so bombed he probably would have been up for anything.

Aggressive attacks of anxiety, though more often associated with delusional hysteria, can also induce a moment of rationality in a person not usually prone to logical thought in the middle of a tequila bender. No sooner had I sat down than I realized that the Caribbean, and thus the Spanish Main, were off of Mexico’s other coast a continent away and this fact, coupled with the advances in the enforcement of maritime law that have taken place over the past five hundred years, suggested that a sizable buccaneer contingent hanging out in Tijuana’s tourist district was highly unlikely. I decided to give the crowd a second look.

My second glance, enhanced by eyes that had finally adjusted to the darkness and the brief emergence of some semblance of intellectual lucidity, produced slightly different results. I still saw an overabundance of people with unkempt hair, tattered clothes, tattoos, glass (or rather, lazy) eyes and missing teeth but I also noticed that we were, with the exception of the bartender and the doorman, the only men in the place. It then dawned on me, once I noticed that nearly every single woman around was seductively staring us down, that we had stumbled into a house of ill repute, a very bad house of ill-repute where the women looked uncannily similar to Caribbean privateers. Much more at ease now, I got up and walked to the bar to get us another round of beer.

As I told the bar’s proprietor that I wanted “tres Tecates”, I glanced back at my drinking buddies. Matt looked absolutely mortified and rather unable to pry his eyes off of the table in front of him for fear of initiating an unwelcome business proposition. Ritch looked like a newborn in Disney World, knowing that he was surrounded by articles of amusement but not yet quite able to control the movement of his head to look at any of them. As I looked at them, I heard a raspy voice from behind me ask, “How you doin’, mayn?” It almost sounded as if I was being propositioned by Louis Armstrong after a successful sex change operation. I spun around and was face to face with a woman who, though she was probably one of the most attractive ladies in the place from the waist up, was cursed with backside so incredibly large that it was an unusual find on a human animal. It would have looked much more appropriate on something that got around on four legs.

“Just fine.” I answered as I wished the bartender would quit taking his time with our drinks. She then asked me if I wanted to do something that, even though I was a sailor, I had never before thought imaginable. I was half tempted to take her up on the offer just out of morbid curiosity when good judgment got the best of me and I politely turned her down.

No sooner had my refusal passed my lips when I was confronted by another voice on the other side of me. “Whats-a-matta-mayn?” I had to look down to make eye contact with this one. Way down. I was being addressed by what I assumed to be the madam of the house who stood, maybe, four and a half feet tall. If I had to guess her age, based upon her white hair, gin blossoms, liver spots and raisin-esque skin texture, I would bet that she was old enough to have started her professional career as one of Pancho Villa’s consorts. She appeared to be a feisty little troll and once I looked down at her, she started laying into me. “Wha? You no like me guuurrrlz?”

“Oh, they’re fine ladies, but I’m not here for myself.”

“Who you here for dhen?” She pointed a thumb over towards Ritch, whose head was still drowsily bouncing all over place while his insane giggling never skipped a beat. “Heem?”

I pointed over at Matt, who had no idea how much more uncomfortable his first visit to a brothel was about to become. “No, him. He’s never been with a woman before. I think it’s high time someone went over there and showed him a good time.”

I could barely contain myself as I watched the midget geriatric stroll across the bar and slip into the seat next to Matt. Shortly afterwards, the bartender brought me my beer and, for one last time before I returned to my drinking companions, I stole a glance to my left to check out the grotesquely deformed derriere on the woman who occupied the five or six seats next to me. She caught me looking and asked, “Do you lahk wha you see?”

“It’s amusing,” I answered as I wondered if she was capable of facing south without sending that massive thing through immigration control. In 1990, NAFTA was nothing more than a rallying cry for Ross Perot so I could see how an unauthorized backside border breech could cause some mighty incredible inconveniences for a working girl plying her trade that close to the US.

Now, though it would be as unfair as it would be untrue to describe Matt as being “uptight”, it would not be misleading if I said that he is among one of the most straight-laced people that I knew at that time. Though capable of enjoying himself, cracking an occasional off-color joke and mistreating his grey matter as well as the rest of us, when push came to shove, he was on firm moral footing and was steadfast enough to resist any peer pressure prodding him towards doing something he was outright opposed to. Still, it was always fun to try and I can honestly say that there are few things funnier than watching Matt squirm his way through a situation that he is thoroughly uncomfortable with, such as being profoundly felt up a four foot tall geriatric whose vintage suggests that, in addition to working in the world’s oldest profession, may very well have started it herself. As a fairly naïve seventeen-year-old, Matt was WAY out of his element in Chutey’s House of Beer and I would not have been able to live with myself had I not exploited him in some way.

The last memory I have of that particular pit stop was of Matt writhing under the hands of a woman who displayed amazing dexterity for someone her age. His eyes were opened as large dinner plates and his laughter, though loud, had very little humor to it. He played it off well but the look on his face was absolutely priceless. It was kind of a combination of amusement, disbelief, irritation, discomfort and fear all rolled into one. There is no way that a written description could possibly do it justice but tragically, digital cameras were barely even thought of in 1990 and Al Gore had not yet gotten around to inventing the World Wide Web. Trust me, if this excursion taken place five years later I have little doubt that Matt would have enjoyed more than his fair share of internet celebrity. It was definitely a Kodak moment and to this day I have that expression indelibly etched upon on brain. Unfortunately, most of what happened immediately after that was permanently erased.

My memory of that night picks back up as we were waiting in line to get back to the US. Matt and myself had Ritch propped up beneath the armpits and were smacking him around trying to get him alert enough to answer the customs questions that were sure to be asked when we tried to cross the border. Our efforts paid off as Ritch managed to make it back over the border, but not very far. As soon as we stepped out of the customs building, Sacto Ritch keeled over to his right and landed in the flower bed just outside of the exit, firmly passed out.Matt stared at him a moment and then looked at me. “What the hell do we do now?”It was a good question. We could not just leave him there and he was just too big to heave up at this point, with Matt being tired and with me quickly catching up to Ritch’s level of inebriation. We needed a plan, a good plan, thought through well and executed with precision. This was no time for rash decisions. With that in mind, I decided to sleep on it and laid myself down in the flower bed next to Ritch for a little afternoon siesta. Yes, afternoon. At that point it was probably just past four o’clock.

When I woke up, it was dark and I was no longer in the flower bed. I was at the trolley station maybe a hundred feet away. Panicked, I sat up and tried to figure out where my cohorts were. I soon found Ritch lying beneath the trolley stop bench next to me, having gotten sick again by the looks of it. Matt was no where to be found. I remember walking over to make sure he was still breathing and, after finding that he was, went back to sleep.

The second time I woke up, Matt was back and eating a meal he had picked up at the McDonald’s across the street. It was nearly midnight. “You know,” he said as he saw me stirring, “We need to get back before the trolley stops running. You want to see if we can get Ritch onto the train?” That sounded like a solid idea.Again, we tried to rouse Ritch and met with modest success just as the train pulled into the station. We got him up and he managed to walk the four or five steps to the train under his own power. As we reached the door however, we found it blocked by a San Diego Transit Authority police officer who looked us over. After sizing up Ritch and finding him still over-intoxicated and wearing liberal amounts of the hot dog feast he had eaten hours before, informed us that there was no way he was letting us on the trolley. We went back to the station and retook our seats.We all managed to stay awake as a few more trains came and went. Finally, the last trolley arrived and was blessedly devoid of uniformed law enforcement officials we bolted for the train just as the doors closed and I quickly passed out again.That time, I woke up in my rack back on the ship with no recollection whatsoever of having gotten myself home.

Later that morning, I made my way back to Ritch’s mother’s house and found her fairly enraged at us for what we had done the night before. She got over it though and practically adopted me for the rest of the time I was in California. Ritch joined the army and soon found himself in Iraq where, unarmed, he was credited with single-handedly capturing four enemy soldiers who surprised him while he working on an artillery track. He claimed that, after thirty days of incessant bombing, the Iraqis would probably have surrendered to Mister Rogers had that been the first American they came across in that particularly stretch of Mesopotamian desert but I doubt it. If he wields a monkey wrench in the same manner he wields a beer bottle, those bastards probably knew that they didn’t stand a chance and decided to give up their weapons before they gave up the ghost.

Ritch now lives in Northern California. He has settled down, gotten married and now has a son. He plays bass for a local band called Josephine and since that night fifteen years ago, we have embarked upon many other high powered drinking excursions. Through all of those however, I have never seen him drink another drop of tequila.
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