Why I Do What I Do (Riding a different kind of white horse)

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "What the hell man! You promised us an insanely personal story about the whole lot of good and that personally crushing thing that happened to you in Los Angeles during that stupid trip you took last fall! Why are you leaving us hanging? What an asshole!" To which I am going to reply, "Hey, it's been a busy year." I'm actually almost done with that story and hope to have it up in a few days. But something happened to me today, and it hit some weird spot in my brain and I just had to reflect on it a little bit. Because it cuts to the absolute core of who I am, what I do and why I do it. So for you guys, and the shockingly strange amount of readers I have from Eastern Europe and behind the Iron Curtain, here's your chance to get inside my head for a second. I'll finish that travelogue soon, and maybe dust off The Dorm Days later this year. 

Not enough tacklin' fuel.

Anyway, on to the meat of this blog entry. Growing up I was a total Mama’s Boy. Not Waterboy bad, but my momma and I were pretty close. Like it should be, I guess. When I was a little kid, my dad owned a trucking company and worked from 6 AM to 8 PM every day, so he wasn’t around too much. She drove me to various sports practices daily, served as president of my Little League and Babe Ruth leagues, helped me with my homework and did all this while holding down a full time job, and attended college! Total Superwoman growing up, a strong, take-no-bullshit kind of lady. Eventually my dad sold the company, and took another job giving him a little bit more time to be around, but I was always closer to my mother.  

What a bunch of reprobates.

My dad and I butted heads constantly. It seemed like I could never do anything good enough for the guy. My grades were never good enough. I didn’t work hard enough in the yard. Hell, I think I was the only “coach’s kid” in all of youth baseball that didn’t have an easy ride. I’d hit a home run to the opposite field and as I’d be rounding first, all I’d hear is “You were a little late getting around on that one.” One of the reasons I got into golf in the first place was that it was something he’d never done before so he couldn’t criticize me about it. To be honest with you there was a period there where I thought the dude was a total asshole. We just didn’t get along, even threw down a couple of times. Believe me, I'm not proud of this, and I'm glad we're good now. Get along with your parents kids, you'll thank me later.

About a month and a half before high school graduation, my folks split up. I never did see it coming, but at the same time, I wasn't around home very often back then. I pretty much lived over at my buddy Wischer's place back then and the local golf course. In a baseball parlance, I was just "playing out the string" until graduation when I would maybe force myself to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. A wiser person than I (not exactly distinguished company, that's probably 95% of the world) once said "whatever you take for granted, you lose" and you could definitely say that at the time, I took my family for granted. And when it blew up, mentally it threw me into a tailspin. I pretended to hold it together for my Dad and little sister, but even they had to have known I was pretty jacked-up. Sure, the circumstances kind of forced my Dad and I to get along for the first time pretty much ever, but I was still lost, spending what time I wasn't in class or at work crawling into a bottle of Jack Daniels that an older buddy would pick up for me once a week. 

There used to be a lot more weeds to the right.

One day though, the following summer I was out by myself playing golf at good ol' Carbon Country Club. As was typical at the time I was thinking about what a mess I was and probably feeling sorry for myself. It was late in the day, right around dusk, and the course down home seemed completely deserted. I striped my tee shot down  the 18th fairway and walked to my ball. When I reached it, I had a good look around and something weird happened. I noticed the grass was the most beautiful tint of jade that I'd ever seen. The sand in the trap seemed pearl white, even though it was the same shitty sand we'd always had. The clouds in the sky looked to be on fire as the little remaining light cast what seemed to be the air around me in the most surreal shade of blue with streaks of warm orange light almost illuminating a path towards nirvana. The scene gave me pause, and then for the first time a sense of total calmness came over me as all the chaos and strife in my life seemingly lifted away. It was almost like something else was there standing next to me letting me know that everything was going to be all right. Then I stepped up to my ball, and hosel-rocketed it straight into the weeds. But you know what, I didn't care, because I was in a good state of mind. Things were going to be all right.

A monster is chained in all our hearts, waiting to be set free by obsession

Now, I'm not particularly religious. I grew up that way, hell, I was even an altar-boy at my church. I grew out of it and let's just say it's probably not in the cards for me to head down that path again. Nowadays I dabble a little bit in the Tao, and meditation, but that's more for personal enlightenment. I fucking hate rules. But I felt something that day, and I've been chasing it ever since. I competed at a fairly high level in the game for years, and I thought the charge of being in contention in a tournament might've been that feeling. But it's a whole other ballgame entirely. What I've been chasing is that sense of calmness that I can only describe as being one with the vibrations of the universe. I don't mean to come off sounding like a two-bit Rust Cohle but golf happens to be my particular tool for finding that greater sense of being. For the rest of you, it might be (and probably is) something else entirely and I can't tell you what that might be, but I encourage all of you that might be reading this to try and find it. You'll know it when you do. It's better than drugs. It's better than booze. And you'll be chasing it like a junkie taking the spike until you find it again. Hopefully what it is for you, isn't actually heroin. That shit kills people.

Anyway, today, I threw some new irons in the bag, gave them a good shakedown on the range, and blasted through eighteen holes in about two and a half hours, firing the best round I've shot all season. Afterward, I taught my golf for women class (beginning golf session 1 starts in just a month, sign up!). Tonight they learned a very difficult shot, and at the end they all had hit a bunch of shots they could be proud of. Professionally, nothing satisfies me more. Once class wrapped up, I sprinted back out for nine more holes. I work mostly evenings these days, so rarely do I get some dusk golf in, and this is my favorite time of the year to do it. I didn't hit the ball as well as I did earlier today, but that's okay. The great thing about the game is you can still have a great time, even if things are struggling. 

These days I struggle finding a balance between work and life. For the first time ever, I feel like I have my health, and mentally I'm in a pretty good place, but we didn't get much of a break this Winter and it seems like we've been grinding pretty hard since January. I'm down to one day a week off, and I'm filling what free time I've got with lessons. I enjoy being busy, but it's left a bit of a lack of time for other things in life, from relationships, to creative pursuits, to hell, even just keeping up with my yard! My work-life balance is way outta whack, but I guess it's what I signed up for all those years ago when I got into this crazy business in the first place. 

I didn't have a camera all those years ago.
Today, I did, and this still isn't as brilliant as it looked in real life.

I got to the last hole, as the sun was hanging low and found myself with an approach shot out of some heavy rough after shoving my second shot about thirty yards right of the fairway. I pulled the club out of my bag, took a couple practice swings and just before I took a stance, I took a good look around. And for just a second, that sense of balance and calm and brilliant color washed over me like a gentle flood. The only sound I could hear was a couple sprinklers in the distance as I drew my wedge back and fired a smooth dart to about five feet from the pin. The smile and daze I was in didn't leave my face as I walked up to the ball, hearing an imaginary gallery going crazy as I approached the green. I lined up my putt and slid in my eighth birdie in twenty seven holes. Pure bliss, until I remembered that I had taken a cart and left it at the spot from where I hit my approach 120 yards back up the hole. Sometimes getting caught up in the moment can make you feel like an idiot.

Emotional Wreckage and Actual Wreckage: A Corner Turned...

Like just about anyone that grew up in the 80's, John Hughes "Rite-du-passage" films had a tendency to jam its way onto HBO and the various Ted Turner Networks on an almost endless loop. And if you were watching TV back then, you probably saw what many consider his magnum-opus, Ferris Beuller's Day Off. The title character, played by the immortal Matthew Broderick, had one of the best closing lines of a film ever, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." That never quite resonated with me as it has with many others, I prefer another line from that movie in the deepness and meaning of life areas, but I'll work that in a little later. 

I probably needed to find better role models in those days.
Still, the world is a shittier place without him in it.

Anyway, Ferris' quote is still pretty pertinent especially in regards to the last year and a half or so of my life. Life moves pretty fast, other things move pretty fast too, and if you don't look for it, it'll definitely hit you and hit you hard. I don't think it's any secret that for the better part of the last twenty years, I've kinda dealt with some depression issues. It didn't really manifest itself in anything too typical, like that refusal to get out of bed type of stuff people typically experience. For me it had a little more to do with just plain not caring enough about myself to not engage in pretty self-destructive behavior. During the Dorm Days, it meant I would hammer ALL THE BOOZE, eat ALL THE FOOD, excel at all the things college had to offer that weren't really all that important to actual academic pursuits. Let's just say my studies suffered a bit. Post college, the booze and food were still there, but now I had to keep a roof over my head as well, so I threw myself into work. I did it all to such a degree that well, I didn't leave a ton of time to myself. I had a fun job that I wasn't having any fun doing, my personal relationships kinda suffered. I was miserable. Then I turned 37. 

37?!

I discovered that 37 is a magical age. Kids, when you turn 37, every single, solitary bad decision you've ever made arrives on your doorstep to collect its bill. I was always a big guy, but I put on a ton of weight, really fast. I started to forget stuff, probably because of all the brain cells I annihilated back in college. I stopped going to concerts, or even going out at all. Christ, usually the only reason I'd leave my house was to go to work so I would have a house to come home to. I couldn't even sleep longer than an hour at a time, and I'd wake up in places other than where I'd fall asleep. SCARY SHIT! What was I doing? Who knows? I felt like shit all the time and looked even worse. Something had to change. 

It's hard to put a finger on a catalyst. I think the root was when I reconnected with an old friend on that Instagram app. Our lives had gone on vastly divergent paths and something about her creativity and zeal for life hit a button in my brain and got me thinking about the old, better days. That's the type of person I wanted to be again. Right around then, after a particularly shitty night of drinking alone and feeling sorry for myself, I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the disgusting thing staring back at me. It was time. I decided that I wanted to live instead of die. 

Also a bad idea to get me wet or feed my ass after midnight.

I made a few changes. I got some help. Started getting some counseling to work through the garbage in my head, and the big one, I bit the bullet and got my guts rearranged. SIPS Duodenal Switch it's called. It wasn't cheap, but as the surgeon told me, "No natural method is going to help you and you are going to die. This is the only way to take it off and keep it off." Basically, they cut about 80% of my stomach out, and re-arranged my intestines so I hardly absorb any fat. This is what they call a two-pronged approach to losing weight. You can't eat very much, and what you do eat barely gets absorbed. It works as long as you follow the rules. Cut as many carbs as possible, focus on protein and smearing butter on virtually everything because you need to eat a ton of fat in order to make the giant handfuls of specialty vitamins I have to take every day for the rest of my life to work. Exercise like a fiend and get a gallon of blood drained out for nutrient level testing every six months are just a couple others. Also, stay sober for a year and change or your liver will shut down. 

Not exactly the picture of health. But I'm much better now.

Kind of a pain in the ass, but I've followed the rules so far and seen the results. 250 lbs down and I'm getting pretty close to just getting the rest cut off me. I look like a fucking war-crime naked, but my clothes fit a lot better, hell, I recently raided my closet down home and am fitting back into my old high-school gear! CORDUROY AND SWEATER VESTS FOR MILES! I can run for ten minutes without stopping where I couldn't run ten seconds before. I still can't hit the ball out of my own shadow, but I can play 36 holes without wanting to die for the first time since college. Oh yeah, golf is fun again, work is fun again, life in general is fun again. Actually, I can't really say "again," because I don't think it ever really was for me. 

So I almost died, managed to bounce back, and then last April, I almost died again! This time, instead of slowly murdering myself over a twenty year span, I almost took the easy way out. BIG OL' CAR CRASH! Driving out to the mighty Rose Park for a little round of golf one morning, I approached an intersection right by my house. I was hanging a left as the light turned yellow. It's a fairly high speed street, but I thought the truck that was approaching was slowing down for the red. I was wrong. Dude gunned it instead and two vehicles can't occupy the same space at once. They estimated he was going sixty but I don't remember much of the actual impact. Just the spin as my Dodge Charger pirouetted a couple times around in the intersection and I got punched by every single airbag in the car. 

All that's left.

I sat there for a moment. The radio was still playing "Problems" by the Sex Pistols. I looked down and wiggled my toes. My fingers were still there too. I tried to shift the car into park, but the knob wouldn't budge. "Shit" I thought, "the transmission is fucked." I was probably a little concussed. There probably wasn't a transmission left. The door was popped open so I unbuckled the belt and swung my legs out. Traffic was piling up and I was so supercharged with adrenaline, I felt like I could've dragged the car off the road myself at least until I saw the front-end or rather the lack of one. Surprised at how uninjured I was (maybe I'm bulletproof), I jogged over to the other guy to make sure he was all right. He was all right, the only damage his truck incurred was a missing bumper. As I went back to my car to start emptying it out and get my paperwork for the cops I realized that I most definitely wasn't bulletproof. My ribs were jacked up and I was in shock. The tow-truck dragged the husk of my beloved Charger off the road, I collected my citation from the police for failure-to-yield and went home. 

My mother came over to take me to the doctor, and as I painfully sat in my easy chair, something weird happened, I just started laughing. My mom and sister looked at me horrified. Maybe I am a little nuts, because that was really the only reaction that felt right at the moment. Despite all my best efforts, both self-inflicted and accidental, I was still here. For reasons I can't even perceive I was still here even though I shouldn't be. For some reason, I found that hilarious. At least until all that laughing tightened up my ribs and tears started pouring out. GODDAMN THAT HURT.

So I'm still alive, and from now on, I take absolutely NOTHING for granted anymore because nobody knows exactly when their ticket is gonna get punched. And I'm bound and determined to live my best life from now on. Whatever that is. I'm going to do it. The problem is, I don't have any idea what that means. For the first time in my life that I can recall, I like myself. I've got confidence that I've never really had. My job is satisfying. I've got great pals and my relationships with my family are as good as ever. As that other main character (and who some have theorized is the actual main character) in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron Frye said, "I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it." 

"And the times have changed my friend
I'll be here to the bitter end
With a guitar in my hand, I stand a little taller
And I've been to hell and back
I ain't falling off this track
From the back to the front page
From the gutter to the stage"

But something is still missing. And I need to figure out what that is.

So, I'm gonna hit the road for awhile. Just me, and my thoughts. Sure, I'm going to be seeing some old friends, revisiting the past and figuring out how I got to this point, along the way. But I have a feeling the next couple weeks and this trip I'm taking might bring a little clarity to my head. I'm going to try to mix in a few dispatches from the road for you folks, and even if I don't find what I'm looking for, at least I'll have some good memories and a few awesome sights to share. Anyway, thanks for indulging my ass on this story. I promise to go back to telling dumbass college stories, inane commentaries and reviews of shitty movies again soon. 

Trust Me Officer, I'm A Professional...

You know folks, in a lot of ways, I feel damn lucky. I've got a job doing what I love to do and a family that supports me in it, even though I would tell me I'm nuts to do it. I've also made some great friends over the years and we've shared some truly wild times. Sometimes though, they get some crazy ideas to do stuff that most normal people would scoff at. And in the name of getting a good story, I jump in with 'em. This is the tale of one of those times.

Now, throughout the year, a bunch of Utah law enforcement guys go Danny Glover and decide that they're "too old for that shit" and retire. This means, they've got to hire a bunch of new cops, and new cops need training. And this state loves nothing more than busting people for DUI offenses, whether they're legitimate or not. No matter whether you're a drinker or not, we can all agree, driving under the influence is pretty much the most irresponsible thing a person can do. You're literally taking the lives of hundreds of people in your idiotic hands if you get behind the wheel after you've had a few too many. The problem is though, nobody's a good enough actor to mimic all of the physical characteristics of being steaming drunk. Although, I saw a great movie starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (RAMONA FLOWERS, SCHWING!) called Smashed at the indie theater a couple months ago that came pretty close, but I digress.

Anyway, these new cops need the proper training in order to recognize the difference between somebody that's sober, somebody that's had a few too many, and somebody that literally has to grab the grass to keep from FALLING OFF THE EARTH. They also need to learn the proper procedures for conducting field sobriety tests. So once a year the State of Utah gets fifteen ordinary folks together and pays them to get completely obliterated so that they can conduct these tests on as realistic a subjects as possible.

Now it just so happens that my old college buddy Ninja is pretty good friends with one of the police officers charged with organizing the training and he pulled a couple strings and got your humble Golf Monster on the subject list. Frankly, I was curious, this whole thing sounded way too good to be true. The State of Utah, driest state in the union, actually cuts a check for people to get blitzed? I had to find out. And it was yet another excuse to have a good time with my buddies, albeit in a clinical setting. I couldn't pass it up. 

I was picked up at 10:30 AM on the test day in a UHP cruiser by nice fella by the name of Trooper Marshall out in front of my condo. Couldn't pass up the chance to look like a hardass in front of my neighbors. I was told that we had to pick up a couple other guys on the way down to the State Police Academy which was located on the south end of the valley. I was curious about what was about to go on today and he replied, "We're going to get you drunk, and then run some tests." That was it. He seemed to be into the whole brevity thing. He asked me why I signed up. I told him the old me, the college me would've been in it simply to get smashed and get paid. The current me was actually curious about the effects of the booze in a clinical setting and how many it would take to be legally intoxicated. I'm a big guy, I figured it would take a lot.

A quick aside, my Grandfather, Papou as he's known in Greek, and his best friend Bill used to meet twice a week for a beer session dating all the way back to when the two of them settled back in the hometown a few years after II. Their routine was simple. Each of them would drink about one pitcher plus one bottle's worth of beer. Now here's where it's gotta be awesome to be an old guy that everybody in the county knows and is afraid to fuck with:  After a session at a bar called The Regis in the nearby town of Helper, they got this crazy-assed idea to try an experiment. So they walked across the street to the town police station to volunteer to blow on the breathalyzer machine and see the results. The verdict:  neither were legally drunk, but both could technically be cited for public intoxication. They thanked the officer on duty for his time, walked back across the street, got in my Papou's pickup and drove the ten minutes back home to Price. That story still blows my buddies' minds. I related that story to Trooper Marshall and he busted out laughing.  I was finally able to break the ice with the dude.

This Fairly unassuming building houses something called the "Wet Lab"

We picked the other guys up after I was able to locate their homes by using the GPS on my phone. It actually worked better than the GPS in the cruiser. Couple nice fellas named Chuck and Dave. After passing up an accident on the road, "The next guys that drive by will call it in," he said. We arrived at our destination, The POST Academy at the Salt Lake Community College south campus. We were led up four flights of stairs and down several winding hallways. "Jesus, I wonder how people can find the pisser in here?" I thought to myself as we took about a half dozen rights and lefts until we arrived at a door with a two-word engraving on the window, "WET LAB."

I walked in and took a seat at a very large table next to my good pal and old college roommate Jose', The Ninja, his wife, and another friend of hers named Vicky. They were already well into it by the time we arrived. Chuck, Dave and I were told by a fairly stern looking lady in a lab-coat that we were already behind and were going to need to catch up. We all had to sign a release form stating that we wouldn't even look at a car until about fifteen hours after the conclusion of the training session. Makes sense. Then they asked us for our drink order. They had a huge collection of the basics, vodka, whiskey, rum and tequila as well as several mixing options. I asked for a red wine and got the stinkeye from Labcoat Lady. Probably best if I quit fucking around with all these cops in the room. After literally a moment's thought, I settled on a screwdriver, vodka and orange juice. Since I'm basically an idiot, I figured, "what the hell. May as well have something a little bit healthy, low calorie booze and Vitamin C! GOTTA WATCH MY FIGURE!" We were told that all of the drinks would be doubles served in a large Solo cup. And since they were closely monitoring our intake, we wouldn't be allowed to switch up to anything different once we started. There was a sparse collection of crackers, chips and salsa scattered in front of us, as well as a large television in the corner showing day #2 of the first round of March Madness. At least we won't miss the games!

The Lab! Looks like your average break room.

Our bartender, a Sandy City Police officer named Steve served me up with my first drink at 11:30 AM. TIME TO GET DAY DRUNK. It didn't take very long for me to realize that my drink selection didn't lend itself to quick consumption very well. Lot of acid in it. I polished it off in about twenty-two minutes and was served my second double screwdriver at 11:54 AM. "To our health!" I toasted the table as I took a sip. This one went down a little bit quicker. It only took about twelve minutes to slurp it down and I was served my third double screwdriver at 12:08 PM. About halfway through this drink, Labcoat Lady sauntered over, whispered something flattering about my chiseled physique in my ear, straightened up and then sternly told me to pick up the pace. One of those things wasn't true. Evidently, I was behind, but it felt like I was hammering them down twice as fast as everyone else in the room.

It was now 12:13 PM and it was time to take our first breathalyzer test into the big machine, the one they have "down at the station." We were all given a tube and blew a lungful into it as Labcoat Lady recorded our results. I started to notice that it was starting to get a little bit louder in the room and things were starting to echo in my head a little bit. I ate six Triscuits and tried not to freak out.  The results of my first breathalyzer after six shots of vodka in 45 minutes:  .058. Well below the legal limit.

It was now 12:30 after we got the results of the first test and it was now time to get back at it. Labcoat Lady ordered Steve to make my next one a triple and yelled at me to drink faster. I managed to choke that one down in twenty minutes and she scaled down the next one, drink #5, back down to a double. GLAD I COULD CATCH UP! It was getting really loud in the room now, and I didn't feel too good. I rallied though and slammed that one down like a champion. I gave it my best Archer WOOOOOOOOOOOO and it was on to #6 at 1:00. I got about halfway through it when I realized it was time to take the lid off. I asked one of the observing officers, Officer Bryan, if I could be excused to use the john, and remembering the maze of hallways that led us in to this place, directions. Nice guy that he was, he walked me up and down a dozen hallways to the men's room. However, when I came out, he was nowhere to be found.

I managed to stumble my way back to the lab, whistling Ricky Nelson's "I'm Walkin'" the whole way. I'm not sure how I did it, It might have something to do with the concept of drunken recall, or my crazy ability to go from not even being able to hit the board to dart champion after a few beers. I quickly polished off #6 and we were told it was last call. Labcoat Lady put me down for another triple for drink #7. I felt like a lab rat. I managed to finish that last Solo cup of booze and juice right at 1:30. It was deafeningly loud in the room and it felt like I was blinking about 400 times a minute. I managed to remember the good looking gal sitting across the table's name, and felt like I was putting on a good face, but my guts were turning somersaults. The whole time I kept notes on the experience in my phone. "I havent Benny this hacked in Awhile!" I typed on my touchscreen. No, I have no clue what that meant either.

It was time for our second breathalyzer test. I blew into the big machine and recorded a .107 BAC. They then added a second variable and had us blow into the portable machine that is carried in your average cop car. That one read .079. Still not legally drunk by that definition. But my eyes didn't lie. I could barely see at this point. As hammered as I was I thought it was amazing that the field tester was that far off. Definitely fucked up. It felt like we'd been in that lab for about eight hours. We'd been in there for TWO hours and I'd had what amounted to sixteen shots of vodka in that time-frame. I felt awful, and we hadn't even hit phase two of the testing yet, the field sobriety tests.

Now, I remembered back to my junior college days when they'd bring in the drunk goggles to the student center at Eastern Utah to try and scare us off of drinking. And I remember my buddy Skwez and I putting those goggles on and moonwalking backwards heel-to-toe on their painted white line. Not an accurate simulation. I didn't want to make an ass out of myself, so I spent the two days before the test trying to re-create your average field sobriety test. I practiced walking the white line in my condo parking lot. I taught myself how to speed through the alphabet backwards while I was swimming laps. I was going to ace these tests. That is, if I didn't kill myself stumbling down those five flights of stairs down to the academy basement to the firing range where the tests were going to take place. If you've never hiked down a bunch of stairs after you've thrown on a massive drunk, I don't recommend it. It's not a pleasant experience.

I'm feeling ill just looking at it.

We walked through a corridor into a massive room filled with parallel lines and what felt like a barely seven foot ceiling. Just looking around was nauseating. There were around fifty police officers from what seemed like every Utah jurisdiction imaginable. We were each assigned three different officers and went through three batteries of tests. Sadly, I never had to recite the alphabet backwards. But had to perform a seemingly endless array of balance tests. Tests that frankly, I don't think I could pass if I was as sober as a nun. I don't think anybody could.  The lesson as always, never take the field sobriety test. It's designed to make you fail! I thought I handled my shit pretty well, all things considered, but I could barely make it through each test. I was a mess. At about 2:40 we trudged back upstairs for our third and final breathalyzer test. I blew a .121. According to a table I found online, that's what a 160 lb. guy should blow after 8 shots in two hours. That's what I blew after 16 shots in two hours and I could barely stand up.

At 3:30 we were ushered into a classroom where all of the officers from the day had gathered and they gave us a standing ovation. At least, that's what I think they were doing. It sounded like thunder in my head. They had our results written on the big-ass whiteboard in the front of the room. As expected I pretty much failed every test, but managed to score higher than a few people in our group. It also showed number of shots consumed, and I'd had four more shots in that two hour span than the next highest person in the group. Then I remembered, "hey, you look like Grimace compared to everyone in here," and things snapped back into focus.

A nice fella named Officer Archie from the Park City Police Department gave me a lift back home across the valley. That drive felt like it took an hour, but it only took about twenty minutes. My head was spinning and I was doing everything I could do to not spew in the guy's Ford Escape. I recall asking him if he saw any crazy shit during Sundance. He told me he was the first officer on the scene when Tracy Morgan started freaking out and babbling incoherently before he collapsed during an awards ceremony. That brought on my last smartassed followup of the day, "How did you know anything was wrong? Isn't he like that all the time?" Officer Archie, obviously a 30 Rock fan started chuckling.

He dropped me off and I pulled myself up the stairs to my condo, returning a conquering hero. I stomped past my roommate, pretending not to hear her request for a rundown on the day. Obviously, I wasn't in any condition to talk to anyone at this point, and she probably wouldn't understand anything I had to say anyway. From there, I kicked off my sneakers, damn near knocked my bedroom door off its hinges and face-planted into my bed, passing out in my jeans. This broke one of my cardinal rules: NEVER FALL ASLEEP IN JEANS.

My phone woke me up about six hours later with a surprising text message from this one girl that I kinda sorta liked. She wanted to hang out tonight. To my recollection, that was the first time she'd ever contacted me wanting to get together. By my count I'd been shot down about a half dozen times before, and had kind of given up on her. Sadly, it wasn't to be. A gut full of booze and juice, combined with my own stubborn insistence to not throw up had brought about the nightmare scenario for anyone that's ever been day drunk: THE DREADED NIGHTTIME HANGOVER. Plus, I'd signed that release form. For all I knew, if I would've gotten busted behind the wheel, they were gonna lock me up and throw away the key. I'm pretty sure I'd end up in the local PMITA prison, if not the drunk tank they locked us in once when we got the jail tour in the ten minutes I was in the cub scouts. I sent her the most pathetic, rambling drunken text reply ever sent to anyone before 10:30 PM, and politely declined. My head hit the pillow once again, just as the final NCAA basketball game of the day was signing off the air. What a goddamn loser.

I'M A PROFESSIONAL!

Epilogue
Somehow, the early hangover was beneficial, as I still had some responsibility. I actually felt great the next morning!  I pulled up to the gates at my beloved Rose Park Golf Course promptly at 5:30 AM and knocked out a full, busy shift of work without any lingering after effects. I sent my friend another message, apologizing for the gibberish I'd sent her the night before. She replied with a ton of LOLs and a "Too bad, we had a blast! Pretty lame that you missed out, ya lightweight." response. C'est la vie, I guess. Two weeks later though, I got an envelope in the mail from the state of Utah. I'd completely forgotten about DUI training at that point, so it was a nice surprise to get a check in the mail for twenty-five bucks from the Utah Department of Public Safety. Proof positive kids that if you work hard, believe in yourself, and know a cop on the right committee, you too can officially call yourself a professional drinker.

Time Just Fades The Pages In My Book Of Memories...

Well, the air outside is freezing-ass cold and so filthy you can taste it. The grass is turning random shades of brown and there's barely enough time after the frost comes off to finish eighteen holes these days. Yep, it's Winter, and that means I finally have some time to sit down and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, or something to something. After a summer in which I finally achieved some success, made a competitive comeback, fell back into some bad habits and ultimately walked away from my dream, I've got some shit to get off my chest. And in the next couple months, I'm going to cover that and a whole lot more. It's time to GET IT ON!

Last week Guns N' Roses made their way back to Salt Lick for the first time since the Use Your Illusion era, eighteen years ago. In that span a whole lot of things have changed. Everybody knows that the band is completely different these days. Lunatic frontman, Axl Rose, is the only member left from the famed Appetite For Destruction lineup.  In the twenty years since Appetite era drummer, and famed coke fiend, Steven Adler quit/got shitcanned, the band has gone through almost as many lineup changes as my beloved Chicago Bears have had starting quarterbacks.  Yet still, Axl remains, after eighteen different members have come and gone and come back and went away again, he's the only really consistent thing about that band anymore. 

In that same period of time, my own life has taken many turns as well. Even in my early teenage years, where every kid is a crazy, loud asshole, well I was still and asshole, but a quiet and reserved asshole. Thinking back, I kinda was the creepy kid in the back of the classroom that liked reading non-age appropriate novels and listening to oldies bands that went out of fashion twenty years previous. But I did play baseball, and I was pretty good at it so nobody gave me any shit. As much as I loved it though, the game eventually started to feel more like work than anything else. So I took up golf, simply because it was something almost nobody my age was doing at the time. In fact, since this was the pre-Tiger Woods era, playing golf was about the least cool thing you could probably do at that age.

But a new kid came to school in the ninth grade, Bryan, a big Texan kid and the first person my age that I knew could swing a club. Together we were the lone freshman kids on the Carbon High golf team that season and through that, we started hanging out. He was really one of the first post-baseball world friends that I had where we'd hang out other than at school or practice. It was Bryan that introduced me to one of the segments of pop culture that have really defined me in the last twenty years, the world of hard rock and heavy metal.

As I mentioned before somewhere along the line, we didn't have much for local radio in Price. We had a right-wing talk station, a soft rock station, six or seven country stations (at least that's what it seemed like) and the one I gravitated towards (because that's all my dad listened to), the oldies station. We had cable, but outside of Remote Control, I didn't watch a ton of MTV back then. Of course, why would I?  Most of the bands I knew and loved at the time had their heyday twenty years before then! I think I was hipster before hipster was hipster! But I remember vividly, always stopping while flipping channels by three videos in particular:  Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," Metallica's "Enter Sandman," and Guns N' Roses' "November Rain." So I kinda always was a closet hard rock fan, but I felt like I'd painted myself in a corner as far as my musical tastes go. I was so scared to fucking death of looking ignorant discussing it, because it was one of the few things I didn't feel like I had and encyclopedic knowledge of and because I was so afraid of being considered "uncool." I ultimately didn't realize that I was already the least cool kid in my hometown (which considering where I grew up put me in contention for least "with it" guy nationwide,) simply because I was always afraid of being true to myself. In other words, a typical teenager.

In keeping with the trend of staying about ten years behind the times, I got my first stereo and Sony Discman for Christmas in '95 and began spending almost all of my job and lawn mowing money building a music collection.  My first two CD's:  The Best of The Doors, and the soundtrack to The Big Chill. I WAS 16 GOING ON 50! But in the Summer of '96 things kicked into high gear as far as my musical education goes. We had a full-fledged group now. Bryan, Odie, Jahon, White Chocolate, Trey, Olie and myself formed our very own band of idiots. Also that Summer, Bryan introduced "The Tape."

"The Tape" was a mixtape he had made containing all the popular standards of heavy music from back then, Metallica, Megadeth, GN'R, Ozzy Osbourne, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Van Halen and more. We played that fucking thing back to back in Bryan's "Pimp-Mobile," a shit-brown 1982 Buick Regal, all summer long. And while the grunge tunes didn't excite me too much, I was fiercely attracted to the speed and power of the thrash bands, the technical mastery of Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, and the sleazy swagger of Guns N' Roses. I set about spending almost every spare penny I had for the rest of my high school life finding every recording I could of the 80's hard rock and thrash bands. I'd finally found a real passion about something outside of sports that I could share with my friends. And with the way the dynamic of that group was set up, and the way we busted balls, quiet and shy no longer cut the mustard. So I was forced to discover a confidence that I never thought I had. Didn't help much with girls, hell, I still clam up and have no idea how to act cool around the ladies, but I was at least finally sociable.

The Crew. Probably before a nice night of roadblocking or committing random acts of mischief!

Two years later, my folks split up and my family melted down. By that time, I'd taken a couple sophomore kids (Little Nick and Ben) under my wing and brought them into the fold. I'll always be thankful for the support of my friends during that time, but I was a mess. I took up drinking as a hobby and started to retreat back into myself again. To their credit, they wouldn't let me crawl all the way in that hole. But I was a pretty pissed off guy and not happy with life in general. Other than gaining another new friend in my Junior College coach, Skwez, by the time the JC years were over I was ready to get the fuck out of town. I was ready to put it all in the rear-view and move on.

Towards the end of that last summer, we got the whole gang back together for one last barbecue. I spent a good chunk of the evening out on the patio, brooding, pounding Miller Genuine Drafts and generally being a drag. Bryan sat down and started talking, but I wasn't in too much of a listening mood. He was talking about who was hooking up with who, how they had the dog eat some of the tapped melon and how excited but nervous he was about Metallica's upcoming album release of their collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, S&M. He realized he wasn't getting through too well until he launched in with a tirade that has stuck with me since that day. My recollection for detail in that era is for shit, so I'll paraphrase:

"Nickas, stop being a dick. Do you think you're the only one here with any problems? Tomorrow, I'm leaving for Colorado, and you're moving to Salt Lake. Tomorrow, we're both starting from square one in the friend department. Sure, there might be a few people you know in the community, but that's not going to be enough. We're both living in dorms and are going to be around strangers nonstop. Would you want to live with someone that hates the fucking world?"

He was right. I had a real choice to make. Be the type of antisocial asshole I always was scared shitless of becoming, or at least put on a good face and be sociable. Thankfully I made the right choice. As luck would have it, or maybe it was some kind of sick experiment in the Dean's office, everyone in my dorm unit came from a broken home. Some more recently than others, but we all had that in common so we had a place to start. And we all helped each other deal with those issues that will always linger.

It didn't take long, but soon I was no longer faking happiness, I was enjoying my place in the world. That confidence came roaring back, and soon, some of my more overbearing personality traits took over and I got LOUD. I started to preach the gospel of rock and roll to my new friends and before long, I was getting them into hard rock and metal tunes too, dragging them to shows, meeting some rock stars. I was simply excited to share my passion, and I was going to do it whether they liked it or not. It was like I didn't just come out of my shell, I completely obliterated it! Some of them probably didn't like it, but by the time school was done, I'm pretty sure they at least had an appreciation for it that they didn't have before.

In late 2008 Guns N' Roses released their first all-original album since I was twelve years old, Chinese Democracy. My old college roommate, and biggest GN'R fan that I know, VodkaRob and I hit the indie record store on the very night of its release to pick it up. By then we'd both settled into careers. He was a computer tech, I'd just been promoted to Head Golf Professional at the University of Utah. And even though that record sounded absolutely nothing like the classic GN'R of my youth, and you can argue that it doesn't hold up at all, I couldn't deny that chill I got when I heard the first chord on the title track officially (heard tons of demos over the years,) for the first time. I realized that while the band was completely different, I was completely different as well. An hour later we came to the conclusion that with the exception of a few songs, that album basically sucked! But deep down, I didn't really care, I was just happy to share that experience with a friend. And folks, that's one of those things that makes life worth living. Experiencing that kind of shit with your friends.

When I started writing this, I fully intended to do a concert review of that GN'R show from last week. Instead I had a flood of memories and got a little sidetracked. If ya'll don't mind, I'll give the review its own post later this weekend. And down the road, I'll be sharing a few stories from the shenanigans that my old crew of high school buddies and I would get into.  Think of them as a "dorm days prequel!"