Bob Wire Blog
A friend of mine gave me the new KISS album, “Sonic Boom,” for my birthday this weekend. We’re both fans, and it was a thoughtful gesture of rock ‘n roll solidarity as well as friendship. But when I unwrapped the package, my first thought was not, “Wow, the cover looks a lot like Rock and Roll Over,” but “I wonder if he bought this at Wal-Mart.”
KISS made the shrewd business decision to sell its first studio album in 11 years exclusively at the world’s biggest retailer of music CD’s, Wal-Mart. From a purely business standpoint (read: Gene $immons), it seems like a no-brainer—the band sells the CD’s directly to Wally World, thereby cutting out the record label middleman, and pockets $4-$5 per unit rather than the typical $1-$2 under a traditional distribution deal. Of course, the fire-breathing hard rockers aren’t the only well-known act to unleash their latest album this way. The Eagles, Journey, AC/DC and Foreigner all signed exclusive deals in the last couple of years with the giant cheap-smack retailer to sell their “comeback” CD’s at cut-rate prices, thus ensuring huge sales numbers and tasty profit margins.
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Parkour: We Ain’t Afraid Of No Concrete!
If you see a sweaty young guy sprinting past you downtown or on the University campus, jumping over trash cans and picnic tables and doing flips over concrete barriers or other architectural features, relax. He’s not a purse snatcher, he’s just practicing parkour.
Rusty’s latest obsession has Barb and me cringing in dread as we go online, double-checking our dental coverage and investigating the going rate for reconstructive plastic surgery. Parkour (French for “suck it, gravity”) is a cutting-edge sport that’s pretty much the same as free running (“because jogging won’t get me on MTV”), an urban athletic hipster trend that peaked when it was featured in some Sprite commercials a few years back.
The difference between parkour and free running, according to Rusty and the other traceurs (“trespassers”) who practice it, is this: Parkour is the art of getting from point A to point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Free running is moving in any way you feel, in a way that’s cool or looks good, but not necessarily focused on trying to get anywhere. Of course, the one thing in common between the two is that you’ll need special
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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
It’s a License Plate—It’s Supposed To Be Boring
I love art. You love art. John loves art. We all love art. But a vehicle’s license plate is no place for art. That’s what I’ve been bitching about for years in Montana, as the debate periodically bubbles up about the ever-fancier license plate design. “I want more clouds.” “I want more buffalo.” “Too much blue.” “I don’t like the slogan.” “It needs to be 3-D and have a vampire.”
Wise up, critics. Look, if you need to drive around with a Dolack displayed on your vehicle, put one on the rear window. Or paint some ducks in a tub on your hood. Or, better yet, express yourself with a clever vanity plate. How’s this one: UB6IB9. Or this: 4NIK8R. Don’t like those? Well, UPURZ2. That takes a whole lot more imagination than plopping down an extra fifty bones for a license plate that looks like something out of an Eddie Bauer catalog.
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
If U txt & drv U suk
Finally, some good news about drinking and driving.
Car and Driver magazine reported that texting while driving is more dangerous than drunken driving, thanks mostly to self-absorbed teenagers and undisciplined technodorks behind the wheel. Texting and talking on cell phones while driving resulted in almost 6,000 deaths on U.S. roads last year, according to DOT officials gathered for a “distracted driving summit” last month. Although that’s only about half the number of people killed by drunk drivers, it’s an alarming—and fast-growing—statistic. And that doesn’t even include the hundreds killed while trying to dig out a warm hunk of Dunkin Donuts sausage biscuit from deep in their crotch. (As far as the five-second rule goes, that remains a grey area. So to speak.)
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Enjoying the World Series in Semi-Ignorance
I am thoroughly digging this World Series, mostly as an educational event. That’s because I don’t have much of a stake in either team, beyond a mild dislike for the Yankees, and having a gonzo cartoonist/tattoo artist friend from Philadelphia. So I’m pulling for the Phillies, but when they lose a game I’m able to let it go by the time I climb out of the recliner to fetch a post-game barley pop.
As a casual baseball fan, I don’t even start to pay attention until the playoffs. Even then, I embarrass myself in conversations, with pronouncements like, “It would be kinda cool to see the Twins get back in the Series. Maybe Prince would sing the national anthem,” only to be told, “Yeaaaaaah. Um, they were swept in the divisionals two weeks ago, Mr. Baseball.”
I’m the first to admit that I don’t know a lot about our national pastime, or the crazy-ass lingo that goes with it. But I still like watching it. Up until last week, for example, I thought the “Mendoza line” was where you stood while waiting to purchase a “backdoor slider,” which I assumed was a greasy burrito. A “Baltimore chop” is not a slice of pork, I learned, and a “Texas Leaguer” is not a baseball team owner from the Bush family. I’m still being taken by surprise by these arcane, colorful terms. When I heard some announcer refer to a home run as a “dong,” I nearly spit out a mouthful of tater. So much to learn.
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Today’s Jack-O-Lantern, Tomorrow’s Roadkill
“You got to caaaaarve that punkin, you gotta caaaaaarve that punkin…” I’m belting out these words to the tune of Southern Culture on the Skids’ “Carve That Possum” when the kids get off the school bus. Their friends, doing their best Kilroy-Was-Here impression, watch me from the bus windows as it pulls away.
“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” says Speaker, stamping a foot. At 11 years of age, she is highly susceptible to mortification. Rusty remains stoic.
“Sorry, kiddo. I’m just full of…Halloween cheer!” I whip a ten-inch chef’s knife out of my coat. “Do you know what night this is?”
Rusty gives me his best baleful stare. “Goat sacrifice?”
“No, but close. It’s pumpkin carving night! I’ve already picked out some pumpkins for you guys.”
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
The Deseret News Needs a Marijuana Critic
The U.S. Attorney General’s recent recommendation for federal prosecutors to lighten up on medical marijuana users and distributors has launched a cottage industry of media reviewers for marijuana dispensaries. Denver’s hipster weekly, Westword, has received over 120 applications for the position, a couple of them actually written in tiny script on a Zig Zag paper.
I could smell an opportunity for a journalist of my, uh, diverse background so I flew to Salt Lake City and got an audience with the city editor of the Deseret News, to persuade him that their paper needed a weed writer. The following interview was recorded with an iPod I had hidden in my Utah Jazz hoodie. Or maybe it was all a fever dream.
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Astrology Rocks, If You’re a Scorpio
Up to now, here’s how I handled my daily horoscope: read all 12 capsules in the paper, decide which one I like best, and go with it. Sometimes these things are as unrealistic as hopes for an honest election in Afghanistan, but other times they’re right on the money. Being a Scorpio, I’m naturally skeptical of the whole concept anyway.
Astrology can be fun, especially at Kent Bros’ beer-thirty gathering when Scott Adler reads it aloud to everyone, out of the back of the Independent. Occasionally I’ll accompany him on the bongos, just for some dramatic punctuation, and his readings are so hilarious that people have been known to shoot beer out of their Gauquelin sectors. At a recent gathering, I mentioned to a friend that I’d be turning fifty in a few weeks, and she told me I should get my birth chart done by an astrologist. I had been thinking more along the lines of a colonoscopy and a prostate exam, but the birth chart sounded more fun, and less rectally invasive. Well, I assumed so; I didn’t know what the process involved.
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Movies Guys Like: Blazing Saddles
Can a movie be wildly funny and horribly offensive at the same time? Anyone who watched Steve-O’s sock-sheathed wiener get bitten by a snake in Jackass 2 will tell you that it’s not only possible, but the more shockingly gross or offensive, the better.
“Blazing Saddles” was pretty shocking when it was released 35 years ago, but in a much different way than Jackass’s gross-out humor. It has topped many a critic’s list as the best comedy of all time, even though it’s riddled with the n-word, and the movie is wall-to-wall racism, sexism, and offensive behavior by a wide spectrum of stereotyped characters. It’s the kind of humor that makes you feel a little guilty for laughing, but the humor nearly always comes at the expense of the most bigoted characters. I watched it recently for the first time in about 20 years, and in current era of back-burnered racism and spineless comedies, “Blazing Saddles” is as shockingly offensive as ever, standing out like a black man at a Klan rally (which is actually a scene in the movie). If it were made today, I doubt it could find a willing distributor.
