Dorm Days - The Penthouse Chronicles Part 7: Beer Money Part 1

The weather is slowing things down a bit at ol' Rosie, so it's time to bust off another entry before things get busy! After a few years of personal reflection on this blog, as well as a couple goofy stories and ranting about football, I figured that it's time to get back to my roots, dumb, boozy college stories. And since I'm closing in on twenty years gone since that era, I've got to get a few more out before I lose those memories forever. Anyway, after a seven-year absence, here is the latest installment of The Dorm Days...

Dorm Days: The Penthouse Chronicles ~ Part 7 

"Beer Money, Year 1 ~ "

Folks, this one takes you back to the earliest days of a three-year stretch at Westminster. I'd been on campus for two days and I received a phone call from my golf coach DP, he wanted to see me in his office. "Shit, I'm already in trouble? I just moved in!" was my thought as I took the two minutes to walk across campus to his office. Clearly, my mental state was setting me up for academic success. I popped into his office and sitting next to him was TC, our esteemed college's new (and first in about fifteen years) head Basketball Coach. I'd recognized him from several great University of Utah basketball teams from several years previous.

"Nickas, have you nailed down an on-campus job yet?" DP inquired.

"I've just kinda gotten settled, coach. I've only put on a couple decent twisters since I've moved in. Haven't really thought about a gig yet, we haven't even started class." I replied.

"Smart-ass. You're getting work-study money right? You do know, they don't just give you that cash don't you? You kinda have to earn it."

"Really?" My dipshit punk side started to show.

"Any thoughts as to what you want to do?"

"Well Coach, let's just say, I'm probably not too cut out for a librarian gig. Is there anything in the athletic department available?"

"That's why I called you. This is TC, We're coaching basketball. The first team this school has had in twenty years, and I think we've got something for you with the team if you're interested."

That head still looks weird on that old logo.

"Absolutely." I'd only ever really had jobs in recreation and athletics up to that point, running a driving range right up until the day I had moved up to Salt Lick. Little did I know, I'd probably never have a regular-grown-up-people's 9-5 gig ever. I still had some inkling about being a (probably terrible) therapist at that point. But a chance to get in on the ground floor of a new athletic program was intriguing. And I knew how sports on this campus were looked on by the community as a whole. There hadn't been anything but soccer on that campus for nearly twenty years and even that program was kinda hidden away from the campus at large. Athletics were just kinda getting going there. And were kinda looked at by the campus community as a whole as the bastard child of Westminster. As a new athlete myself, I was pretty excited to have a chance to be a bigger part of the department as a whole. Kind of that "whole world's against us" kind of ethos that was embraced by folks like myself made this offer very tempting. 

"Good." DP said, "You're going to be our new Video Coordinator. You'll be filming practices and the games as well as running our film exchange program with other schools. You've run a video camera before have you?"

"Uh, yeah Coach." I really hadn't, and I had no idea what I was getting into, but hey, as my favorite Flintstones character, that weird pterodactyl that did the dishes and and served as a record player would say, "SQUAWK! It's a living."

I'd be this guy's secret service agent.

Coach TC was oddly silent, but as he rose to shook my hand, he said a few things that I'll never forget and always take with me and treasure. "Nickas, I can't understate how important this job is. This is something you're going to need to take tremendous pride in because if you do a shit job, we'll lose." So, no pressure, huh?

After a solid weekend of drinking and sort of bonding with my new roommates, "The Zoo" from the Scorpions blasted into my brain via clock radio at 5:00 AM the following Monday. I threw on a tracksuit and schlepped across campus to the Payne Gymnasium. Payne was one of the oldest buildings on campus and it showed. The pipes clanked, somehow it was freezing-ass cold in there at 5:00 AM in early September, and there was zero in the way of acoustics, so every ball hitting the floor thundered through the building. My kinda joint. The guys were warming up for the last unofficial practice before formal sessions were going to begin the next day. I met Justin, the team manager and he helped me run the cable from the film room to my video pit way up in the corner of the gym. A little unconventional but the bleachers weren't high enough to film from the side. This was the best spot to capture everything. Rather than scrolling back and forth, I'd have to shoot and zoom from the far end of the floor to up close. "Nickas, get down here," TC hollered. I wandered down to the floor as he gathered the team around. "Guys, this is Nickas. He's gonna be our new film guy. So he's gonna capture every screwup, loaf, or mistake you make in every practice and every game. He's the eye in the sky and he'll see it all which means I'll see it all." Now, I'm getting nervous. I'm gonna be Public Enemy #1 with a bunch of 6'8 guys. "But he's committed. He's every bit a part of this team as you guys are. So welcome him." That was kinda nice. The guys all shook my hand and introduced themselves. I felt better.

An unconventional game film angle, to say the least. But at
least there were some steps to sit (and pass out) on.

Those early 5:30 AM practices were brutal. We weren't going to be able to start practicing in the afternoon until Volleyball was done at the end of October, so every day, my ancient-ass clock radio would startle me awake at 5:00. Barely enough time to get a coffee in me and get set up before the guys started the first Celtic Drill of the morning.

My birthday that year fell on a Wednesday night and I had the dubious honor of turning twenty-one that day. With Big Nick, The Nate, Dowder and all the other maniacs I was running with at the time rooting me on, I took part in an unofficial 21-shot tradition after after my "History of the World Wars" class. For some reason, me turning 21 was a big deal. Besides Jerry, who was like 40, I was the first one to hit that magical age. This was like an event. I could hook up the younger fellas, and even the mormon girls down the hall got in on the act and baked me a cake in the shape of a Michelob bottle. Pretty hilarious when I think about it actually. Anyway, that night I got, as the kids these days say, "pretty faded."

"HELLO ME! MEET THE REAL ME!" bellowed Dave Mustaine out of my cranked-to-eleven clock radio at 4:45 AM the next morning. I hit snooze one and a half times before taking a 30-second cold shower to wake up and busted my ass down to Payne. I got my gear set up and the fellas were up and running. With our first games coming up in a week and a half, TC was installing new offensive sets at a rapid pace. The whole team lingered at the far end of the floor for most of the morning so I didn't have to do much. My mind started to drift to things like helping my coach recruit me some new teammates, midterms and fall-break coming up, and whether that cute girl from Alaska that lived across the hall from us was single or not when suddenly the shout of "TEAM TOGETHER" startled me to alertness. I looked at my watch, 7:52 AM. I'd passed out. The team ran their last sets at the basket underneath me, my camera was still focused on the far end of the gym. I tore down my gear, rewound the tape, labeled it, plopped it on Coach's desk and scooted off to the student center for coffee and breakfast. "Maybe he won't watch the whole thing." I (rather poorly) tried to convince myself, "After all, we were at least 25 practices in already. He wouldn't still be breaking down 2 1/2 hours of PRACTICE tape a day still, right?" My thoughts drifted back to that first meeting in DP's office. "IF YOU DO A SHIT JOB, WE'LL LOSE." I was screwed.

Two days went by, and everything was business as usual. I had kind of forgotten about the incident and had shot a couple of my best practices yet. I was kind of in "game-prep" mode as well, getting used to smoothly following the ball up and down the court and being able to widen the shot enough to see the whole half-court on both ends. Maybe I should've gone to film school. The end of practice hit and to close each session, coach would pick one of the players to hit two foul shots. If he made them, practice was over, if he missed one, the team would have to run a sprint up and down the court. Before he picked the player, coach bellowed, "NICKAS, HIT STOP ON THE TAPE AND COME ON DOWN!" I hustled into my office, hit the clicker and jogged down the stairs. "Goddamn, Nickas is doing a great job for us. He's turning into a regular Scorcese with that camera in his hands. Isn't he Daron?" Coach DP nodded. I started to smile a little bit. "...Until two days ago. Did the tripod get stuck or something?" He looked at me with those steely blues. He knew. "There was a good 45 minutes of the shot locked in on an empty far-end of the court there."

Old punk asshole Nickas would've tried to make something up on the spot, but I was really enjoying this job and I really felt like I was improving and bringing something important to the table for the first time in my life. I manned up, "Coach, Wednesday was my birthday and I had a few too many. I fell asleep at the wheel. I apologize."

"Thanks for being honest. Line up with everybody. Charlie is gonna hit two free throws. If he makes them, all is forgiven, if he misses, you're sprinting too." He tossed the ball to Charlie and gave him a nod. I knew what was coming, And fuck it, I'd earned it. Charlie never missed foul shots, but the first one went up and CLANK! Off the front of the iron. I finished a good five seconds behind our slowest guy, but I did my sprint. My new buddy Dane had his name called and made the first one. Coach gave him the staredown. Number two went up...CLANK. Up and back again. I haven't sprinted since the baseball days. I was already getting gassed. But the guys were clapping for my fat ass as I waddled over the line. He called Mitch up and mercifully he swished them both. Mitch never missed. Ever. I started back up the stairs to disconnect my gear. Coach yelled at me, "Where you going? You just ran with these guys, I told you that you were part of this team, get in the huddle. Also, never do that shit again. 1-2-3,"

"TEAM TOGETHER" we all shouted. I should've just been happy he wasn't going to fire me, but right then, I fully bought in. Whether I liked it at the time or not, I really needed that. Coach had a way of making you want to take a bullet for him. And I would never put any hint of risk to the job again.  

A week later, Justin quit as team manager, and we hired my buddy and fellow three-time intramural football championship winning quarterback teammate, Sean to take over, but it was clearly a job for more than one guy. So my job started to evolve a little bit. I'd still be doing the occasional practice tape, and handling film exchange with other schools, as well as shooting all the game film, but now I was down on the floor handling half the manager duties as well. This included prepping mock opponent jerseys with athletic tape so we'd get the numbers right, sweeping the court, mixing the gatorade, getting guys ice during film sessions, rebounding during shooting drills and so on. I started working pretty long hours. My work-study agreement called for fifteen a week, but there was just too much to do in that timeframe. The season was imminent. Coach like the work I was doing and gave me a couple extra bucks an hour for the effort. I'd worked golf jobs back home for six years at that point and the only raise I'd ever gotten was when they raised the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour right before I moved. It was nice to feel rewarded.

Coach Steinke. Legends call him "Legend"

We'd finally moved to afternoon practices, and thankfully I was able to adjust my class schedule to accommodate it, transferring one of my history classes to the morning session. One afternoon, I was filling the water jug about a half hour before practice when Coach Steinke asked me to come and rebound for him for a minute. Coach Steinke was a legend at that school. He'd coached about every sport the college had for fifty years, hung around through the hiatus, and from what I could gather was about the only member of the athletic department that was universally loved college-wide from the maintenance guys, to the faculty and all the way through administration. I stood under the hoop and he worked a half-circle from fifteen feet. I was just trying to hit him in the hands with my shitty passes, but he worked that circle for a good ten minutes, must've take 150 shots and I think I can count the amount of times he even drew iron on my fingers. Swish after swish. I think he was 70 years old at the time and that still might be the goddamndest thing I've ever seen. 

A noted boat-driver and his boat.

One of my duties was running the film exchange program. I'd contact schools with which we had common opponents and swap game films with them. It got me in really good with the folks down in the school mail room. And they'd take extra care even when I had a personal package get shipped my way, sometimes keeping the mail room open an extra ten minutes so I could still pick up my stuff after practice. We were about three weeks into the season, and despite being a brand-new team, we were holding our own, sitting at 3-3 as our non-conference season got going. We had an exhibition game against Weber State coming up, and since we were just small potatoes and all, I contacted their film guy directly. The guy's name was just Smoke. At least that's all I knew him as, I'd actually known him for a couple years. He worked in a similar capacity at my JC, Eastern Utah. First met the guy at my cousin Gus' house during the Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield fight. Yes, THAT Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield fight. Anyway, we shot the shit over the phone about that and two days later, I got two packages from the film department at Weber State. A game film of a game they'd played against Montana Tech (One of our conference teams, so it was a two-fer) and another tape. This one was just labeled "Motley Stuff For Coach Nickas." I wasn't a coach of anything, but I am a Motley Crue fan. Maybe it's just a bunch of videos or a concert film or something. I took that one home and jammed it in the dorm VCR. It was the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee porno. Needless to say, I didn't edit any clips of one of the greatest drummers of all time steering a boat with his dong while saying "It's all good" into our game prep clips. The roommates got a kick out of it though.

We stormed into Winter Break with pretty good non-conference record all things considered at 6-7. Coach asked me if I was planning on going home for the break. "Just the same, as long as we're still practicing, I kinda want to stay here and work for you guys."

"You're not obligated to stay, you don't get many breaks at this school, but if you stick around, we can use you."

Since they kicked us out of the dorms for a month, because can't have a bunch of lunatics unsupervised, after all, I moved in with my Aunt's family on the other end of town and commuted to Westminster every day. My uncle was happy to have another snow-shoveler around, my cousin Pete had his big brother hanging out, and my Aunt had someone she could make fun of the Chicago Bears to. I was just happy to still be in the city. I was going to go to Price for a couple days right around Christmas, but I was really enjoying the job up to that point and didn't want to ruin the momentum. But the job was tougher this time of year. Coach wanted a little practice tape and our other manager had gone home, so I would be busting my ass up the stairs to change the camera angle and then back down to take care of my duties on the floor. And those increased as well. It snowed a shitload that Winter, and Payne Gym was like a hundred years old. The roof leaked and there was more than one occasion that I'd have to actually run out on the floor in the middle of a play with a big-ass towel to dry the floor so someone wouldn't slip and hurt themselves and somehow avoid getting trampled by a 6'8" dude. I'm just happy I paid attention to the play design so that I could pick my spots.

The season stormed on, and while I struggled a bit in school, I only got better at the job as things went on. The team seemed to hit its stride too. We got to Frontier Conference play and were actually holding our own. We started the first half of conference play with a winning record at 4-3 and word was spreading around campus that we had a pretty good thing going here. Our first home games were sparsely attended by more than the guy's folks and wives/girlfriends, but students actually started showing up and our tiny little gym would at least sound loud. Anyway, a local cable outfit in Montana used to show FC games on Thursday nights and word got out that they were going to broadcast from Salt Lake as we took on the #5 team in the NAIA at the time, Lewis-Clark State. They stomped us pretty good up at their place in the first half of conference play, but Coach had a plan. And we were going to announce our presence that night.

L-C had the frontrunner for Frontier Player of the year, a dude by the name of Franklin, on their squad. Coach theorized that if we could render him ineffective, our defense would match up well with the rest of their squad. So he put one of the more soft-spoken guys on our team, Pierce, the job of getting in his head. "He'll never see it coming," he said. From the opening jump, the game was highly competitive, and the crowd was the biggest we'd seen so far. Mostly because the Cable company had to build a rather large platform covering a good chunk of our bleachers displacing a good chunk of our burgeoning "Sixth Man" fan group to other sections. But they were into it, they were talking shit and clearly L-C had looked past us. From under my video perch, I could hear Pierce's version of running smack on Franklin, which pretty much amounted to corny dad jokes, but it must've been working because halfway through the second half, he was only 3-13 from the field with two boards.

The fellas.

With about six minutes to go, something set Franklin off. Nobody has any idea what it was, and I doubt it was racial or anything, because none of those guys were that type, but Franklin took a swing at Pierce and it was on. Benches cleared, you could hear the TV guys losing their shit, I may or may not have attempted to wade into the fray myself. When I saw the TV tape, you could see me in the background sprinting down the stairs. It took a couple minutes, but the refs restored order after ejecting both guys. But L-C was now down their best player and six points on the scoreboard and the upset was in play. Mitch hit two clutch threes down the stretch and we'd beaten the at the time unbeaten best team in the league. The few students there, rushed the court, Matt, our new PA guy blasted his Pearl Jam tunes on the sound system and as a program we were on the map.

We finished conference play at .500 that year, bowing out in the conference quarterfinals, but the groundwork was laid for what was going to be a Frontier and NAIA basketball contender for years to come. It was awesome to be a part of getting on the ground floor of something good. And for the first time in awhile, I felt like a part of something bigger than myself. There's a lot of stories from those three years with the team and there will be a "Beer Money Year 2" in the future.

And even though he eventually moved on to bigger and better things, I'd still take a bullet for Coach.

Into The Great Wide Open Part Three: The Saint of Los Angeles

Apologize for the delay, had to work out a few things in my mind on how to approach things here, then got busy! Moving on! Check out part one of this stupid one-man odyssey right here and part two right here! In this installment, I leave the scenic stretches and California kitsch of the central coast and trade it for the ultimate concrete jungle. Along the way, I get to reconnect with some old friends that I hadn't seen in over a decade, get irrationally bummed out from a message from back home, get tailored, visit every Real Rock n' Rolla's spiritual home and start to put it all together while meditating on a beach. Let's get back on the road...

The alignment on that car had to have been pretty great

After a quick stop back in San Luis Obispo at the Firestone Grill for one of their famous Tri-Tip sandwiches, I was back on Highway 1 heading south. The road weaves in and out of its ocean view and I made one more stop in Pismo Beach, just to see what Bugs Bunny was making such a fuss about. It was kinda nice, well worth taking that right turn in Albuquerque. I blasted through Santa Maria and found myself nearing Lompoc, where Mia, O'Conner and the fellas once sprung Toretto by wrecking his prison bus and somehow didn't kill everybody aboard. There were no prison buses on the road, but traffic was starting to build, and by the time I hit Santa Barbara, it was stop-and-go time. For the next two hours I probably averaged about five miles an hour as we crawled along the 101 through Ventura. It kinda blows my mind that the beautiful vistas of the chaparral that I was "forced" to look at (along with about ten thousand tail lights) pretty much went up in smoke last Winter. Eventually, I got through whatever it was that was throttling down traffic to two lanes, split from the 1 and managed to hit the Valley just as it was getting dusky and the famous LA rush hour traffic was starting to build up. The Waze app is a godsend in places like this, and even though game 6 of the World Series was going on just adjacent to my route, I was able to find my hotel downtown without a crazy amount of trouble.

My tongue is LAVA!

After stowing my gear and a quick freshening up, I took a walk to find some dinner, stopping off for some tacos at a little place down the street. It was Halloween night and pretty busy, but there was an open seat at the bar in the rear of the place and I struck up a conversation with the bartender while he was pouring. He'd come to LA from the midwest to try and get into the film business and figured out he had it a lot easier slinging drinks and living in an apartment the size of a closet downtown. NOT STEREOTYPICAL WHATSOEVER. Still, there's something to be said about actually taking the leap when you've got nothing to lose. Now, I can't eat quite what I used to these days, so I settled on just three small tacos, (carnitas, chicken and shrimp) as well as one of the better margaritas I've had in quite some time. The carnitas and chicken were both outstanding, the shrimp had to have been one of the top-ten hottest things I've ever eaten. Just blew my already-fried palate all to hell. I'm glad I saved it for last. Just as the Dodgers were putting the finishing touches on forcing a game 7 in the World Series, I paid for my meal and walked back to the hotel. The streets were a lot more crowded both with people in costumes heading to the bars for a wild night and ecstatic local Dodger fans, with visions of a possible championship dancing in their eyes.

We're practically the same guy.

The margaritas had my brain in a fog and as my head hit the pillow just after midnight, a messenger alert snapped me back to reality. Hey! It's the mysterious girl from back home! She got my "just thinkin' about you" message! I opened the app aaaaand her blunt response made it abundantly clear that whatever feelings I had for her, weren't exactly reciprocated. Not exactly what I wanted to read on my first night in The City of Angels, or ever really. But thinking about it, shit, it's totally okay. We were in completely different places in our lives. And relationships are definitely a two-way street. I was an idiot for thinking I could rekindle something that probably wasn't really there from twenty years ago. Not the first time I've made that kind of mistake and it probably won't be the last. God knows, I'm terrible at catching a hint. But hell yeah, it hurt. But just like everybody's favorite animated doormat Butters once said on the legendary "Raisins" episode of South Park, "but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid." Still, at the time, it felt like the many highs of the past few days had just been mashed with a pair of size fifteen waffle-stompers. I hammered down a hot shot of NyQuil and I'm not sure how long it took to fall asleep, but it was a while.

Wish we had something like this here in Salt Lick.

It was a fairly restless night, but I rolled out of bed bright and early to meet an old college friend for breakfast, Jess. You might remember her from a couple cameos in some of my old Dorm Days stories, specifically when she fell asleep hiding in my closet from campus security during our huge dorm party, and when she totally brightened up my day during one of the shittiest weeks I had during that era. Good friends like her are hard to come by in this world. She suggested we meet up at the Grand Central Market, one of those big food markets that only seem to exist on Travel Network TV shows. Thankfully, the market was only about a twenty-minute walk from my hotel. In LA, driving doesn't cost a lot, PARKING costs a lot. Actually, with the cost of gas these days, driving costs a lot too.

Don't blame me. The rat peed there.

Now, there's a lot to be said for living in a clean, almost sterile city like Salt Lick, but this was an enjoyable stroll to me for a few reasons. First, people actually seemed interested in where they were going and were MOVING. And even if you bumped into somebody accidentally, they didn't give you the side-eye, they just kept on. I actually kind of liked that anonymity. Also, as gross as it sounds, there's something oddly comforting about that familiar scent of urine and pigeon shit in the air. That felt like a city that's lived in. It doesn't pressure you to conform to a certain way of living. You can do what you want, live your life the way you want to as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, and nobody gives a rat's ass, not even the rats. That being said, it'd be nice if it was a little cheaper though, but I still dig it. Those high prices, and the fact that your house may either burn down in a brush fire or shake itself apart in the event of an earthquake are all a small price to pay for the luxury of 70 degrees and perfect every single day with a beach nearby.


After hanging around the ever-growing line at the counter of the tastefully named breakfast sandwich booth called Eggslut for about twenty minutes, from behind me I just heard a loud, "NICKAS!" and a big hug. It'd been about ten years since I'd seen her but Jess was a vision as always! I'll tell y'all what, if we have any chance whatsoever at cleaning up the literal mess this country has made of itself in terms of litter and pollution, Jess is going to be at the forefront of the solutions. She works for a waste management NPO in Southern California and was one of the main proponents of their recent plastic grocery bag bans, as well as several other major sustainable trash management initiatives. She knows more about garbage than anyone I know, and that's a good thing. She's going to have a positive impact on this earth. It was great to catch up with her, even if for just a little while as we reminisced about the Dorm Days and everything that's happened since then. After a dynamite sausage sandwich for breakfast and about eight cups of coffee, I walked her to her car and said goodbye. As she pulled away into traffic, I remembered one of the dumb goals of this trip that I had in mind when I left Salt Lick, I was going to buy a suit.



I mentioned in the last chapter of this travelogue that one of my favorite podcasts, The After Disaster, was based in Southern California. A couple months before this, they'd mentioned on one of their shows that two of them had recently purchased tailored suits from a small tailor called Al Weiss. They'd mentioned that they were so good, they practically sized you up as you walked in the door, asked you what you were interested in, and had you outfitted literally ten minutes later with something that fit perfectly, and for not a whole lot of dough. I punched in the coordinates on my phone and found that it was located only about fifteen blocks away, so I continued my march through the streets toward the fashion district. I almost walked right past it, it was so small. I walked in and it looked like it was chock-full of stuff that "fell off the back of the truck." A dude named Roman walked over and just like they said on the show, basically sized me up on everything besides neck-size, grabbed a couple things off the shelf and told me to try them on. Holy shit! This stuff looked great! I just needed the pant legs shortened by an inch. "No problem," the guy said, "take it over to Freddy's next door and they'll tailor it for you. I was in and out of Freddy's in about ten minutes and only out about five bucks for the alterations. I stopped back into Al Weiss and bought three more shirts. All told, I was out all of $250 for an Italian suit and four shirts. Insane. I then had another pleasurable walk for about fifteen blocks packing my garment bag back to my hotel. Nobody gave me a second look. Anonymity is awesome and I was already starting to feel a little bit better. Like it was time to turn a corner.

38 Minutes! It's like I run in slow motion or something, still,
it's a pretty nice view! 

After a killer workout in the surprisingly swanky hotel gym in which I set (at the time) a treadmill 5K personal best (gotta love interval training at sea level!), I met up with my television writer buddy MJ and his wife Alexia for dinner and drinks at a brewpub in Burbank. I coached MJ for a season of high school golf at Carbon High during my freshman year of college and I'd worked with his mother for quite a few years when I was first breaking into the golf business. We spent a couple hours catching up and commiserating on the depressing state of our hometown, politics and the joys of legal weed. All the while on the giant TV screen in the bar, the Dodgers were getting thoroughly destroyed in Game 7 of the series by the Astros. We seemed to be the only ones yukking it up in there, as the rest of the crowd in the bar made the place resemble a funeral parlor. Even though I can't stand the Dodgers, I was almost secretly hoping they'd pull it off (don't tell my Giant fan Dad), so I'd have the once in a lifetime opportunity to take part in a good, old fashioned sports riot! Instead, the ride back to the hotel was pretty uneventful. Out of the window of the high-rise, I heard a few sirens and some shouting, but I chalked that up to just a typical Wednesday night in downtown Los Angeles. After the shit night I had before, I slept like a baby.



Thursday, I made my way back north a bit to Ventura County. One of my comedic heroes and radio legend, Phil Hendrie, often waxed poetic about his beloved El Pacifico and the calming shores of Silver Strand beach. It wasn't too difficult to find, the weather was a beautiful 60 degrees and to my surprise, there was all of about four people on the mile wide stretch of beach. I shouldn't have been surprised, it was a Thursday at noon, in November. What kind of crazy asshole would be at the beach right now? Well, that guy and a tourist dipshit like myelf. I plopped my duffel down, laid out a couple towels and waded out into the water. Yep, it was November, JUMPIN' JEEZUS THAT'S COLD! That was okay though, I practically had the beach to myself. 

Working on the bronze, thinking about
the universe and shit.

I pulled into the big dude equivalent of a lotus position on my towel and zoned out for a minute. Now, normally I have a difficult time shutting my brain off, but something about the gentle waves rolling in and crashing ashore, the occasional seagull squeak, the sand shifting under my tucchus made all of the whirlwind of the road, the heartache from back home, the stresses about work fall away like the sand getting pulled back into the water. I learned a lot from the ocean that day. See, those waves roll in, and roll out. They crash on the beach and move back out again. And there's a rhythm to it. Over and over again. Sometimes they roll in long, and sometimes short. Sometimes the time of day rolls them further up the beach, and at certain times of day, the beach gets bigger. But they crash, over and over and over again. Those waves hit that beach eons before I got there and they'll hit that beach long after I'm gone. No outside forces can change that. Over and over again, the waves crash. I'll leave an imprint of my ass in the sand, and by tomorrow it'll be gone. The universe doesn't care, it just does what it does. The only things we can control are what we do. The way we treat others, the way we treat the planet, the way we feel about ourselves, no other person should have the power to change that about you. They can only be a catalyst, a spark, the rest is entirely up to you. We all have that choice to make.

The Strand Jetty

It's like the second noble truth of Buddhism. "Nothing is forever. Everything ends. Except the waves of the ocean. "To live, is to suffer." Suffering is inevitable for all human beings as long as they labor under the delusion that things can be permanent. When in fact, nothing is permanent. Your life is composed of a series of systems. Your culture, your relationships, your physical body, they're all systems and all systems have a few things in common. They all begin, grow, flourish, decay, and die. Everything without exception. You can be a good Christian, a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Scientologist, make all the right moves, and do all the right things. But your dog is still gonna die, your parents are still gonna die. You're gonna fuck up your marriage. Your girlfriend is still gonna cheat on you. Your kids are gonna grow up and not call you as much. And you can, sit in your nice house and not sleep for three days and cry to the cats and jack off until your dick hurts. Or you can man up, put on your boots and work towards achieving zen. Zen is when you abandon the concept of the past and the future and embrace only the moment. If you can free yourself from the events of the past, which is dead, and your expectations of the future, which is fantasy, and embrace only the moment in which you are alive by freeing yourself from the tyranny of all of those wants that you have, then you can achieve a state of zen consciousness which leads to a state of bliss. 

The golden arcs!

I snapped out of it and looked at my watch. I'd been literally staring at those waves for two and a half hours. I packed up my stuff, snagged a t-shirt at a local surf shop, and hammered down a gyro at a Greek joint adjacent to the beach. After topping off Giselle's fuel tank, I cruised back down the 101 towards the city and my hotel. Fortunately, Waze was acting kind of weird again and had me running through neighborhoods again, but it was fortuitous, and I almost crashed the car when suddenly I drove by a very famous, but very out of place movie landmark, McDowell's from Coming To America! Unfortunately, I'd missed the pop-up restaurant by a couple days, and an apparent appearance by JACKSON HEIGHTS' VERY OWN MR. RANDY WATSON, but still, just the fact that somebody did that to their restaurant was fucking funny and well worth the picture! Somebody get my formerly fat ass a Big Mick!

That night, I ventured into West Hollywood for a stop at the SINGLE GREATEST RECORD STORE IN THE HISTORY OF GODDAMN MANKIND and picked up some vinyl and shopped around a bit. Seriously, if it exists, they probably have a copy of it. After losing myself in there for a couple hours, I drove west down the world famous Sunset Strip to the world famous Rainbow Bar and Grill. I make a pilgrimage to that place every single time I'm in Southern California. There isn't rocker throughout history that hasn't thrown on a massive drunk in that place, and you can almost feel the ghosts echo through the walls. Their food is excellent too, and I went there on this trip for a couple reasons. My friend Susie walked in and sat down in the booth across from me. I hadn't seen her in almost sixteen years and like so many people I know, had somehow managed not to age as time wore on. It was great to see her doing well, she was dating one of my best friends throughout high school, so we'd hang at her house quite often back in the day. Nowadays, she was a doctor for the local department of corrections and had some wild stories to tell. Nothing I care to repeat here, but she's SEEN SOME SHIT! Stuff the makes the "Tossed Salad Man" seem like a walk in the park. But she's weathered through it with a sense of humor, and had also recently started a family. "Having kids changes everything" she said, "it's something I never thought I'd do, but it's been the most rewarding thing ever." I'm sure it really puts things in perspective, especially after dealing with the absolute dregs of society on a daily basis. "Keep that kid outta County!" I quipped. 


I also had to hit up the 'Bow to pay my respects to the late, great Lemmy Kilmister, the mastermind of heavy metal stalwarts Motorhead. I always thought that the only things that would survive our impending doom on the planet would be Keith Richards, cockroaches and Lemmy, but unfortunately seventy years of the hardest living imaginable finally did him in. I was at one of the last shows Motorhead played, here in Salt Lick, when after three songs, he walked off the stage in obviously rough shape. Probably one of the more traumatic concert experiences I've ever had. I literally thought I'd seen the man die onstage that night. His health finally gave out a few months later, and death finally came for the unkillable. 



After the epiphany I'd had earlier in the day on the beach, viewing his Memorial at the Rainbow seemed especially poignant. There weren't too many people over the years that lived "in the moment" as ferociously as Lemmy. That dude attacked life like it was something to be devoured. He toured the world blowing out eardrums, did all the drugs, drank all the booze, bed down with women worldwide and he did it every goddamn day of his life. If he wanted to do something, he made it happen. I think there's something we can all learn from that. Maybe not quite to the destructive ends he went to health-wise, but I think after we all handle our responsibilities, we owe it to ourselves to seek out and experience joy. Whatever that may be. I was never again going to let indecision and fear cloud the direction my life would take. I'm going to tackle life like a linebacker smashing a wide receiver going over the middle. It was time to make some changes, but I had one more lesson to learn on the road before I'd return to life back home...

Coming up soon -  Part Four: The Bridge to Nirvana

"I was born the King of Fools
At any other game I never lose.
But when it comes around to
Love that's when I realize
I was born the king of fools."

Into The Great Wide Open Part Two: A Mudslide, A Funny Farm and a Shiny House On A Hill

Back for more? Check out part one of this stupid one-man odyssey right here! On to part two, where I check off a couple dumb items from the bucket list, attempt to re-create an underrated bad movie scene, have a romantic dinner by myself surrounded by people in love, and see what really unnecessary opulence looks like! Anyway, here we go!

The Best Road in North America

It was just past one o'clock when I passed the Seventeen-Mile-Drive turn-off just adjacent to Pebble Beach where the road forks and the entrance to the Pacific Coast Highway began. Sweet jeezus, I've only ever seen it on television and in the movies, but I've always imagined this stretch of road as the greatest stretch of highway in the United States. I flashed back to memories of riding with my uncles from Anchorage to Homer, Alaska on the Seward Highway years ago and thinking that was some pretty impressive beauty, as well as multiple trips through Big Sky country in Montana in my playing and coaching days at Westminster, but this was something different. This was me and my car making this drive for the drive's sake. Not with any end goal in mind, but just to see an epic stretch of America and to lose myself in the sheer beauty of it all. Sure, the 101 was a lot quicker way to get to my next overnight stop in San Luis Obispo/Atascadero, but it lacks a certain...majesty.

I think this means something

Once you pop out of Carmel Highlands heading south, it's like the entire world opens up to you. I had mountains to my left, high cliffs and thousands of miles of ocean out to my right. It was like I could see to the end of the earth. Being that there were no real time constraints, the drive was slow and steady as I'd pull over every couple miles just to admire the view. I'd snap a picture here and there, but mostly just stared out and down into the sapphire coves below. Occasionally the road would cross a bridge, such as the Big Creek bridge that I've pictured here, but they do a nice job of blending that into the scenery until you look back on it. I wondered if there was a metaphor there. I'm sure there was but I hadn't figured it out yet.

Bide your time and all becomes clear.
Also, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

Eventually I made my way into the place I've been obsessed with for years, Big Sur. As I've mentioned before, Big Sur was the location of the final scenes of one of my favorite films of the the late-90's called The Limey. Starring Terrence Stamp as Wilson, a recently released long-term inmate in an English prison, This underrated Stephen Soderbergh classic features the man once known as General Zod making his way to California to seek revenge after the suspicious death of his daughter at the hands of Hollywood producer and part-time drug lord Terry Valentine, played by Peter Fonda. The cliffs and the coves below were an awesome spectacle to see. I also appreciated that there was virtually zero cell-phone coverage anywhere in the area. This would be an awesome place to disappear to. And if I was a Hollywood mogul and part-time drug lord, this would be an awe inspiring place to retire and eventually meet my terrifyingly violent demise in.

Why would anyone want to
be anywhere else?

I pressed on heading further and further south until I realized, "I think I might be the only car on the road." Followed quickly with, "Oh shit, I forgot about the landslide." A couple years previous there were some pretty massive wildfires in the Big Sur area, followed soon with a massive landslide that wiped out several miles of the Pacific Coast Highway and actually reshaped a good chunk of the California coast. I was the only car on the road because I was getting near the end of the line. I looked for signs of detours south but there were none. Eventually I hit the big orange barrier in the "town" of Gorda By The Sea. I walked into a little gas station there where the first words out of the fella behind the counter were, "you're lost aren't you?"

In more ways than one. "Kinda. I'm on a road-trip, but I forgot about the slide," I sheepishly replied.

Later, I raced the Drift King
down this bastard to win his girlfriend's
freedom, or some shit.

"You're not the first, and you're not gonna be the last. But at least you look good," he said weirdly. "Double back seven miles until you come to the Nacimiento Road and it'll take you over the mountains to the 101." I told him thanks, paid to re-fill my water jug and turned back north. Ten minutes later I hit the turnoff and for the next ten minutes, I was almost driving vertically upwards. WE'RE GOIN' BALLISTIC MAV! That strange dude wasn't shitting me when he said it took you over the mountains, I figured the climb would be a little more gradual. Like many things in life, I was wrong, but eventually it kind of evened out although the climb was still there. And it was easily the most winding 1 1/2 lane road I've ever been on. Reminded me of something out of the European mountains on Top Gear or the climax of The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift!. I'm sure that if I knew that I was the only car on that road, it would've been an absolute blast hooning around those crazy turns, but every couple of minutes a car would pass going the other direction or around a blind turn so it was WHITE KNUCKLE TIME. It took about an hour and a half at 15-25 miles per hour to drop down on the other side and eventually make it to the 101. I often get sick riding in a car, but never driving a car, but this road left me a little queasy. Pretty awesome drive though. The dropoffs were terrifying, but the views were incredible. It was starting to get dusky and I was still an hour or so away from my hotel, but I eventually found it in the little town of Atascadero.

I trust these dude's opinions on fine-dining and haberdashery.

Just a quick aside here. One of my favorite weekly podcasts is The After Disaster. It had its beginnings as sort of a Loveline after-show starring the sound engineer, the phone screener and a buddy of theirs that helps run the Improv comedy club chain. It's kind of like the Seinfeld of podcasts, with no real topic from week to week and is pretty much just three guys shooting the shit. Sounds kind of lousy, especially with my describing it, but it is wildly entertaining and I can't recommend it enough. Anyway, the show originates out of Southern California, and I kinda wanted to see some of the stuff that they describe on the show while I was out here. One of the guys favorite hangouts is a world famous hotel in nearby San Luis Obispo called The Madonna Inn. The place is famous for their themed rooms, outdoor recreation, winery, killer restaurant and bakery. I would've loved to stay a night at this place, but at $300 a night and this late in the year, I was trying to get through this trip fairly lean. So I was stuck with exploiting my kid sister's Marriott friends and family discount. But I had to see the place for myself, so after getting checked in and getting cleaned up, I drove the thirty miles down the road to have some dinner.

Classic California kitsch

I pulled up and this place looked like something out of an old Rat Pack movie. Just a technicolor wash of lights and colors against the stark, inky blackness of the night sky. I found their steakhouse and this place was a sight to behold. Pink and gold everywhere with the centerpiece being a gigantic golden tree with cherubs hanging over it. It looked like that scene at that honeymoon hotel in Superman II. The restaurant was adjacent to a large dance-floor where a ten-piece band was setting up at the far end. I thought they only had the live stuff on the weekends, then I realized it was almost Halloween when a couple college-age gals dressed like Wayne and Garth walked by. I asked the barkeep what was going on, and he explained that once a week the dance classes at Cal-State SLO hold a theme dance out there. So there would be some entertainment later.

That's true love right there.

I sat at a small table underneath the big tree and had one of the better ribeyes I've had the pleasure of hammering down. They grill over red oak wood here and you can taste it. Looking around, I was the only one there that was on my own. It was late, so the restaurant side of things was winding down for the day, but there were three couples dining on adjacent tables. I found it kind of serendipitous. One looked like they were in their mid-twenties, smiling constantly at each other, two giant pieces of pink cake and champagne in front of them. The next couple were in their mid-40''s. Faces long and mostly silent, two large glasses of wine filling almost as quickly as they were emptying. The third were quite elderly, looking like they'd just gotten out of that bed in the middle of Charlie Bucket's house. The old man's quivering hand holding his wife's throughout their entire meal while never taking his eyes off her, grinning from ear to ear. I thought to myself, "this is like seeing the three stages of a lifelong relationship here." Love can do no wrong early on, but eventually life wears on you and you get tired of each other's shit but over a long time you realize that what you have can't be replaced and love seems new again. That ship has probably sailed in my case, I'm almost 40, but that doesn't mean that I can't recognize it when I see it and appreciate it for what it is. It's like Deadpool said, "Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream! So you gotta hold onto love...tight! And never let go! Or else the whole world tastes like Mama June after hot yoga." Wise words from the "Merc With A Mouth." So I sent a text message to the mysterious gal back home letting her know I was thinking about her and hoped she was doing good.

Top O' The World!

College kids in elaborate costume started pouring in, and the standards from the big band started to swell. I took that as my cue to call it a day. I got a piece of that pink champagne cake to go (I really shouldn't be eating this stuff but I was on vacation! It was good, but I was miserable later), paid my bill, wandered the grounds a little bit and moseyed back up the highway to my hotel in Atascadero to retire for the night. I can't remember another day in my recent past where I did so much from sunup to my head hitting the pillow.

Nurse Ratched was actually
pretty nice!

It's kinda nice having the freedom to not have to set an alarm, but the golf business is too entrenched into my DNA, so 7:00 AM hit and I was wide awake and hammering down some hotel room coffee with my protein shake as creamer and my Greek yogurt. Other than a few nice meals, I'd kinda managed to stick to my daily diet and routine on this trip. Today I was going to finish the trip down the PCH to Los Angeles. But I had a couple stops to make on the way. Sounds dumb as hell, but I had to stop by the Atascadero State Hospital, where the Terminator and John Connor busted out Sarah in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. They wouldn't let me in. Also, it's a dude's-only hospital, so that movie was factually incorrect. Still, it was a trip just seeing the big sign up front.

This place probably cost a couple
hundred bucks.

After a fuel stop I backtracked over to Highway 46 which took me back out to the coast where I turned north towards a beautiful little seaside town called San Simeon. I had to see one of California's great treasures, The Hearst Castle. As a long-time movie lover and occupier of various Film History classes in high school and college, the 1941 film, Citizen Kane, has been required viewing in pretty much half of them. The real-life version of Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst was a pretty awful dude, that did some pretty awful shit, but goddamn did he have him a pretty swell vacation home, now a California State Park and museum. As I pulled up to the visitor center at the bottom of the mountain, the marine-layer parted and the house appeared on top of the peak. Impressive to say the least. I paid twenty five bucks and was the last one on the bus for their first "Grand Tour" of the day.

The California climate is
perfect for preserving 3000
year old statues. No wonder
Bob Hope loved it here.

The drive up the hill was awesome with the house appearing and disappearing from view with the voice of Alex Trebek giving little trivia tidbits as we drove past various landmarks on the windy road. We pulled up to this huge staircase where Sean, our tour guide, met us and immediately launched into a few stories about Hearst's father George as he led us up the stairs to the main courtyard. Unfortunately, the legendary Neptune Pool was entering yet another renovation to fix some leaks that have existed since its original construction, but the Roman temple facade was impressive to say the least, as was the incredibly colorful flowers that adorned virtually everything on the outside of the house. The upkeep on this place must be insane. I've barely been able to keep my rose garden alive during this summer! We passed an actual Egyptian statue of Sekhmet, the Warrior Goddess of Healing and entered the building through a tiny side door. I liked that there was actually a screen door on that entrance.

It's not even heated! What
a cheapskate!

Only a couple rules were given to us by the tour guides, keep up and DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ANYTHING! Literally everything in this house is hundreds of years old, imported from Europe and the Middle East and carefully reconstructed. Every piece of artwork in the place, authentic. In addition to pushing us to war with Spain, opposing Roosevelt's New Deal and giving an open editorial platform to nazis in the US, Hearst had a real appreciation for finery, and thankfully he was able to preserve these priceless works of art for future generations to see. Maybe the one good thing he did was to not just leave all of this to his asshole kids. He loved California so much that he left it all to the state when he died to preserve as a museum. I appreciated Sean's passion for the place, and the artwork and attention to detail was incredible, but as the tour moved through the main rooms of the house and the flat-out insane indoor pool, I found myself growing more and more resentful and pissed off. Sometimes, I think this country never learns. Hearst had the resources and probably could've kept half this country afloat during the Great Depression, but instead he just built a big house on a hill. Typical.

What the hell?

The Dulcet tones of Trebek greeted us as we got back on the bus and we cruised back down that winding hill back to the visitor center. I picked up a couple tchockes from the gift shop. Giselle fired back up on cue and I was back on my way south, having re-joined the Pacific Coast Highway south of the slide. The next phase of the trip was about to begin where the golden mountains and rugged central coast were about to give way to the world's ultimate concrete jungle. As I brought the car back up to speed, I nearly drove it off the side of the road at the sight of a couple strange looking horses in a pasture. WAITAMINUTE, IS THAT A FUCKING ZEBRA? It was.

See you next week for part 3: The Saint of Los Angeles.

The Golf Monster Sundance Preview/Review 2013 Edition!

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival just blew through the area, and left just before a massive snowstorm that's threatening to make life for all of us here in the city very uncomfortable for a few days. For a film lover like yours truly, it's a great opportunity to see some awesome films months and months before anyone else gets to. It's also a great chance to see some really shitty films months before Rotten Tomatoes gets to pile dirt on them. I tend to find, it's usually one or the other. There's rarely a film that plays at this festival where I come out thinking, "meh, it's all right, I guess." And that risk folks makes the $15.00 tickets worth it. You're really on the edge of your seat. I also tend to limit myself to screenings only within walking distance from my condo as parking's a mess this time of year, but as luck would have it, all the Salt Lake City venues fit the bill. I also tend to gravitate towards the films that don't get a ton of mainstream play, so it's pretty rare to have the random celebrity sighting, but once in awhile I get lucky. Here's what I saw this year!

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

Man Chili makes for a pasty complexion.

Official Sundance Synopsis:  A seemingly wholesome and benevolent family, the Parkers have always kept to themselves, and for good reason. Behind closed doors, patriarch Frank rules the roost with a rigorous fervor, determined to keep his ancestral customs intact at any cost. As a torrential rainstorm moves into the area, tragedy strikes and his daughters Iris and Rose are forced to assume responsibilities that extend beyond those of a typical family. The most important task the girls face is putting meat on the table— but not the kind that can be found at the local supermarket. As the unrelenting downpour continues to flood their small town, local authorities begin to uncover clues that bring them closer to the secret that the Parkers have held closely for so many years.

My Quick Review:  Pretty solid way to kick off the festival this year! This film started off with a vaguely familiar looking lady, Mrs. Parker, puking up a ton of bile and drowning in a large puddle. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that was actually one of the two only really recognizable "stars" in the cast, Kelly McGillis! It was then that I realized that Top Gun came out 27 goddamn years ago and I started to cry. GETTING OLD SUCKS! Anyway, this one had a creepy as hell atmosphere and was also graced by a solid performance from Tarantino film mainstay Michael Parks.  I was also impressed by the performances from the two female leads, Ambyr Childers and Julia Garner. They were incredibly composed given the cannibalistic subject matter, and played the part of scared children of a religious nut well. This one had a great, WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL DID I JUST SEE ending to it. It has been picked up and I'm sure it'll play at a horror festival or two.  It'll probably see an autumn release at some point. Just in time for Halloween.  RATING: 7 Shovels to the back of the skull out of 10  

THE SUMMIT

LOOK AT THAT GODDAMN THING! YOU GOTTA BE NUTS!

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Although K2 is only the second-highest peak in the world, it is renowned as the most dangerous and revered by mountaineers as their ultimate challenge. In August 2008, 18 of 24 climbers reached the summit of K2. Forty-eight hours later, 11 people were dead. What happened on that fateful day has never been resolved.

Utilizing found footage, interviews with survivors, and seamlessly realistic reenactments, The Summit zigzags back and forth in time, interweaving multiple narrative threads and piecing together events, hoping to solve the mystery of what actually happened on that day—the deadliest in mountain-climbing history. At the heart of the mystery is the story of Ger McDonnell, one extraordinary man who chose to risk his own life to save others. With the help of breathtaking cinematography by Robbie Ryan and Stephen O’Reilly, director Nick Ryan creates a tension-filled, experiential film that will have viewers on the edge of their seats. The Summit pits Man against Mother Nature in her most majestic and terrifying extreme.

Had to sit way too close for this one

My Quick Review:  There's a thing with seeing documentaries in these days of the internet. You can do a ton of research of the subject matter and get one part of the story. But it takes true talent to take what is the given story that everyone seems to agree upon of a subject and flip it on its head. Nick Ryan's The Summit did that very well. I remember the stories of the disastrous 2008 K2 expedition. But had no idea the depth of the heroism involved in that tragic Summer. I still have no idea whatsoever why anyone would want to try to do something like climb a 28,000 foot high deathtrap. But I do have a little greater understanding of the rush that these adrenaline junkies are constantly chasing. One thing I do have is great appreciation of true heroism, and the guys that kept going up into the "Death Zone" to try to rescue people have that in spades. I had the opportunity to meet one of these guys, Pemba Gyalje Sherpa after the screening. He's easily the biggest badass I've ever met in person. If you want to see what true heroism is, check this documentary out. 

As an added feature, I got to the line-up for the screening a little bit late which meant I had to sit in the second row, almost looking straight up at the screen. Usually that sucks, but for a movie like this one where the people onscreen are literally looking out over the edge of the world, that sense of vertigo made if feel a little more real.  RATING:  9 Top of the Worlds out of 10   

HELL BABY

Only still I could find!

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Expectant couple Jack and Vanessa move into the most haunted fixer-upper in New Orleans—a house with a deadly demonic curse. When things soon spiral out of control, it’ll take the help of Vanessa’s Wiccan sister, a nosey “neighbor” who lives in their crawl space, two local detectives, and a pair of elite Vatican exorcists to save them—or is it already too late?

Revered as two of the minds behind the hilarious sketch television shows Reno 911!, The State, and Viva Variety and the screenwriters of big-budget comedies like the Night at the Museum films, comedians Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant finally unleash their codirectorial debut. Featuring a seasoned comedic ensemble, including scene stealers Leslie Bibb and Keegan Michael Key, this raucous horror spoof sics the devilish humor of its creators on the most sacred of genre conventions: the haunted house, an exorcism, and one pissy demon child. 

My Quick Review:  I'm an unapologetic Rob Corddry nutswinger. I think that dude's comic timing is great and he has great range playing everything from the everyman, to the asshole, to the schlub. After Steve Carrell, he's probably my favorite Daily Show correspondent ever. But he rarely gets any feature work in films. He's usually a side character at best. So it was great to see the guy come to the forefront here in this ridiculous sendup of every 70's horror trope known to man. Lennon and Garant manage to get everything right that the vastly inferior Scary Movie series gets wrong. Add in hilarious cameos from just about every current recognizable improv comic on the scene as well as some gratuitous nudity courtesy of folk comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates' Riki Lindhome and we have a winner.  RATING: 10 Domilise's Po-Boy's out of 10.

ASS BACKWARDS

Glad to see John Cryer get some poster time

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Kate and Chloe have been best friends since childhood, when they both tied for dead last in their hometown beauty pageant. Now they are all grown up and living in New York City, where Chloe works as a “girl in a box” at a nightclub and Kate is a CEO…of her own one-woman egg-donor “corporation.” Their past humiliation remains long forgotten until they receive an invitation to the pageant’s milestone anniversary celebration. The unpleasant memories come flooding back, but Kate and Chloe decide to redeem themselves by winning the elusive crown.

Director Chris Nelson takes us on a raucous and wacky road trip that includes a rescued wild rabbit, a feminist wilderness commune, and amateur night at a strip club. Lead actresses June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson have great laugh-out-loud chemistry, and their brand of stiletto-clad physical comedy brings an amusing and unique charm to the female version of the buddy movie.

My Quick Review:  This one is mostly for the ladies out there, as it flips the formula for a typical road trip flick. But it's got plenty of laughs for the fellas as well. This one features two gals that are best friends through thick and thin, but have never quite gotten over their childhood defeat as wannabe pageant queens. And by "haven't gotten over it" I mean to say, are in complete denial about it. But that's not going to stop their good-natured romp back to their hometown. There's plenty of bawdy laughs to be had here. And their Q&A after the screening was goddamn hilarious. RATING:  6 Rehab Stints out of 10.

S-VHS
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static—white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.

From the demented minds that brought you last year’s V/H/S comes S-VHS, an all-new anthology of dread, madness, and gore. This follow-up ventures even further down the demented path blazed by its predecessor, discovering new and terrifying territory in the genre. This is modern horror at its most inventive, shrewdly subverting our expectations about viral videos in ways that are just as satisfying as they are sadistic. The result is the rarest of all tapes—a second generation with no loss of quality.

My Quick Review:  This was my most anticipated film of the festival. Horror anthology V/H/S broke some serious ground when it comes to providing big scares and gore on a budget. So the sequel had a lot to live up to. The premise, a couple private investigators bust into a decrepit house looking for a missing college student. He's nowhere to be found, but there are hundreds of VHS tapes strewn all over the apartment. They start popping tapes into an old-school top-loading VCR and are treated to the horror contained on each. Each tape was its own little horror short.  Here's a quick rundown of the four:
Tape #1:  Directed by Adam Wingard and Simon Barret -  A wealthy man, has his right eye replaced after an accident with a robotic one. The catch being that the robotic eye is recording everything he sees. Oh and it gives him the ability to see the myriad of ghosts that inhabit his rather large Hollywood Hills home. This one had some good jump scares, but not a ton of gore.
Tape #2:  Directed by The Blair Witch Project's Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale - A guy spends an afternoon riding a mountain bike through the woods with one of those GoPro cameras strapped to his helmet. He happens upon a screaming lady covered in blood that's running from something. As he tries to assist her, she turns zombie on him and tears a nice chunk out of his neck, leaving him for dead. But he's not dead, he's pretty undead and we get an incredibly gory, slightly comical first hand look at a zombie apocalypse from the other side. Good laughs here.  I rather enjoyed this one.
Tape #3:  Directed by The Raid: Redemption's Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto - A group of TV journalists travel to Indonesia to investigate a Jim Jones-esque cult leader at their compound. While very accommodating at first, the cult soon starts to peel the layers back to reveal a more sinister side. And mayhem ensues. This was my favorite short of the film and it easily could have been its own feature. As an aside, the walls of the cult compound were decorated by hundreds of those creepy-assed Blair Witch dolls. So it was surprising to me that those dudes ended up doing a different short in this film.
Tape #4: Directed by Hobo With A Shotgun's Jason Eisener - This one featured a group of little asshole kids having a slumber party at their lakehouse when their parents were away. They strapped a GoPro (who really should be sponsoring the movie at this point) to a little Shorkie dog. So the entire movie was fromt he POV of the dog.The kids pull pranks on their older siblings and each other until something otherworldly comes out of the lake. Like a more terrifying ET. This segment got most of the critics talking, but I found it inferior to #2 and #3.
Conclusion:  I enjoyed it well enough, but overall it was a bit of a letdown compared to the nice surprise that V/H/S was last year. Although, any flick where the gore onscreen caused a solid fifteen people to just up and leave in the middle of it has to be doing something right.  RATING:  7 Goat Babies out of 10

SWEETWATER
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Against the backdrop of the American Old West, newlyweds Miguel and Sarah struggle to make a living cultivating their small patch of land. Soon a much bigger struggle arises as powerful landowner and community preacher Prophet Josiah makes a play for their property. As he launches his diabolical plot to take their land, an eccentric big-city sheriff comes to town. Things soon go from bad to worse, culminating in a jaw-dropping, hell-hath-no-fury showdown.

Sweetwater boldly establishes its own identity while remaining true to the tenets of the western genre. Wonderfully cinematic, this expressive tale is superbly directed by the Miller brothers, who extract strong performances from the ensemble cast. Ed Harris is especially striking in a bravura role as the sheriff. With the magnificent New Mexico countryside as their canvas, the Miller brothers imaginatively stroke their cinematic brush across an intense but humorous film.

My Quick Review: When done well, I loves me a good Western flick. And this one certainly didn't disappoint. The landscapes were beautifully filmed, with the New Mexico countryside just popping off the screen. Ed Harris was solid as the eccentric Sheriff, trying to get to the bottom of a murder mystery.  Hell, the director even got a competent performance out of January Jones, and she normally can't act her way out of a paper bag! I was hooked by one scene in particular where Harris' Sheriff character explains to the increasingly sinister Prophet Josiah, exactly why geography brought him to this small town. Folks, it was Tarantino-esque.  This one should do pretty well if it gets a decent release.  RATING: 8 Wooden Crosses out of 10   

 
FRUITVALE
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who loved his friends, was generous to strangers, and had a hard time telling the truth to the mother of his beautiful daughter. He was scared and courageous and charming and raw, and as human as the community he was part of. That community paid attention to him, shouted on his behalf, and filmed him with their cell phones when BART officers, who were strong, intimidated, and acting in the way they thought they were supposed to behave around people like Oscar, shot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day in 2009.

Director Ryan Coogler makes an extraordinary directorial debut with this soulful account of the real-life event that horrified the nation. Featuring radiant performances by Melonie Diaz and Michael B. Jordan as Grant, a young man whose eyes were an open window into his soul, Fruitvale offers a barometer reading on the state of humanity in American society today.

My Quick Review:  I saw this one at a special "locals only" screening. This film won the festival's U.S. Grand Jury Prize. This was a pretty moving film, and you get the sense that this dude was on the cusp of changing his life around when he was struck down at that subway stop. That's not to say that the guy didn't have flaws, I mean, you can't spend the first three years of your daughter's life without some major flaws. But you just get that feeling that with another break or two, he was going to elevate things. Or at least become a productive member of society again. Michael B. Jordan had a moving run as the deeply conflicted Oscar Grant that may put him in line for an award or two in the future. This is probably going to be one of those "important" films that generate major buzz. Sometimes those types of movies (Amour for example) seem self-involved or only for the hoi palloi, but this one was just, plain good. RATING 9 Riots out of 10. 

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Rachel is a quick-witted and lovable, yet tightly coiled, thirtysomething steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’s bohemian, affluent Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right—chic modernist home, successful husband, adorable child, and a hipster wardrobe. So why is she going out of her gourd with ennui? Plagued by purposelessness, Rachel visits a strip club to spice up her marriage and ends up meeting McKenna, a stripper whom she becomes obsessed with saving. She decides to adopt McKenna as her live-in nanny, and this bold move unleashes unimagined and colorful waves of change into her life and community. It becomes clear that Rachel is feverishly, desperately trying to save her own sense of who she is.

In a perfect storm of hilarious writing, performance, and direction, first-timer Jill Soloway pinpoints the ambivalence of privileged, educated women seduced by an idealized vision of marriage and motherhood, yet deadened by the stultifying realities of preschool auctions, lackluster sex lives, and careers that have gone kaput. Afternoon Delight compassionately revels in the existential trials of a Peter Pan generation battling too many choices, resisting adulthood, and distractedly tapping their iPhones instead of tuning in to what matters.  

My Quick Review:  Endend up seeing a lot of movies geared toward the ladies this year and this one was no different. Although much like Ass Backwards there were plenty of laughs and entertainment to be had for the fellas as well.  But don't get me wrong, while this was a laugh a minute kind of flick, it wasn't really a comedy.  It was actually a pretty dark film about a family and a mother that are crumbling before our very eyes. Kathryn Hahn was excellent as the wisecracking Rachel, but portrayed the more serious content with aplomb. The film took a daring approach to answering the old question, "How do you save someone that doesn't necessarily want or need saving?" It was an enjoyable end to the festival.  RATING 9 Yentas out of 10.

CONCLUSION:  Once again, the Sundance Film Festival provided a week and a half of ground-breaking, imaginative filmmaking. I feel luckier than hell to have this going on every year, right in my backyard!  Next year, we'll be making the trek up into the mountains to Park City to try and mingle with the upper crust. But for a film junkie, none of that shit really matters. Everybody should take advantage of the wonderful opportunity to support independent film making and the people that make it happen!

The Golf Monster's 2013 Film Rankings!
8. We Are What We Are
7. Fruitvale
6. Ass Backwards
5. S-VHS
4. Afternoon Delight
3. Sweetwater
2. The Summit
1. Hell Baby