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My Page: Bob Wire

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

I knew I’d like this guy from the moment we were introduced. Underneath the “Hello! My Name Is” on his paper name tag, he’d scrawled “NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS.” A man after my own heart.

Clarence Worly (he took his nom de guerre from Christian Slater’s character in ‘True Romance’) joined my fraternity, Delta Tau Chi, in Pocatello in the early 80’s, when we were occasionally attending the alleged institute of higher learning there. We put a lot of effort into putting the “high” in “higher learning,” and that led to our inevitable frat band, Rotten Tuna. We played sorority mixers and local taverns for a couple of years, culminating in our professional peak, a last-place finish in the local Battle of the Bands in 1984.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, if you’re a regular reader of my column, you’ve no doubt seen Worly’s punchy, profane prose in the comments section. He frequently comes to my defense, wielding his opinion like a cinder block. To say his writing is edgy is an understatement. It’s like saying a corned beef and PBR popcorn fart is “unpleasant.” If you like reading internet commentary that occasionally makes you spit coffee onto your keyboard, he’s your man.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

I once ate 14 tacos in one sitting. It was a taco-off with one of my frat brothers, Kent something-or-other (he drove an ’82 Mustang, the ugliest body style ever). I worked my way through college (almost) waiting tables in Mexican restaurants, and I lived on Mexican food. The joint where I worked had an all-you-can-eat night, and Kent foolishly thought he could take me in tacos. We were both poor dumb punks, and probably wagered nothing more that the $3.99 cost of the dinner.

Thirteen tacos later (they brought them out three at a time), Kent was slipping into a food coma and his grease-smeared hands dropped to his sides. The small crowd that had gathered around our table started making side bets as to whether or not he’d puke. It was a Mexican standoff, until I managed to cram one more taco into my yap, washing it down with a gulp of draft beer. Back then my insides were still made of Kryptonite and Teflon, so I pulled it off. My legend was secured. Later Kent and I laid on our backs on the living room floor for several hours, puffing and squeaking and flopping around like a couple of beached Orcas. The restaurant discontinued their all-you-can-eat special after that, and one of the toilets in the frat house had to be replaced.

You’d think that after such a punishing overdose of tacos, I would have sworn off them. On the contrary, good reader, they remain one of my favorite foods. The beauty of Mexican food is that it’s the same four or five ingredients, arranged and prepared in a variety of ways. I love it all. But it’s the search for the perfect taco that propels me into Mexican restaurants all over the country.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

When you’re chewing the fat with a musician friend, do you wind up scratching your head when she starts talking about needing to “woodshed” with her “combo” because they have a “showcase” coming up and she has to work on her “chops?” Well, don’t feel bad. Musicians, specifically working musicians, have an entire lexicon they use to communicate with each other about their peculiar world.

As a service to my readers and music fans everywhere, I’ve decided to give you a glimpse into the arcane, mysterious and smelly existence of the working musician by defining some of these terms you might hear them throw around. Feel free to add your own examples in the comments section. And it goes a little somethin’ like this…

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Caught here in the whirlpool of spin after President Obama’s State of the Union speech, I’m seeing smoke coming out of my translation machine. What sounded like a typical halftime pep talk in the legislative locker room was thick with nuance and deeper meaning, and I have decided to share my half-cocked, front-loaded, emotionally weighted interpretation of what the President was really saying. I’ll break it down line by line, and try to give you an idea of what he was trying to get across, couched in candidate-speak. I have filtered the speech through a combination of cynicism and ignorance, and here’s what I heard:

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

We’re trying to get through the long Montana winters by getting outside more, trying a variety of physical activities to keep our minds and bodies occupied, so we don’t just sit around watching the clock for seven months. And there’s the added benefit of not being morbidly obese by the time Splash Montana opens. So when my friend Jonathan called up and invited Rusty and me on an outing last weekend, I welcomed the chance to try a new sport. But I was a little confused about the timing.

“Isn’t Frisbee golf more of a summertime thing?” I asked.

“Folf,” he said. “Or disc golf. We play it year ‘round. Bring Rusty, I’ve got some discs you guys can use.”

Oh, it all seemed so harmless, so wholesomely outdoorsy. Four hours later, as I gobbled Advil and nursed my bloody wounds, I limped into the kitchen and scowled at the big wall calendar, cursing the three months that stand between now and spring thaw.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Video games have not really captured my attention since I held the high score for three straight weeks on the Asteroids machine at Pocatello’s College Market in 1981. And even then, I wasn’t the most trigger-happy player. I racked up points by flying around the tumbling space rocks more than blasting them to bits. My dad was a naval aviator (“Hell, son, you put wings on that coffee pot and I’ll fly the son of a bitch”), and I guess the appeal of aeronautics rubbed off.

Oh, I dabbled with Pac-Man, and goofed around a bit with Donkey Kong. When my own kids were in grade school I picked up an original NES at a yard sale for a couple bucks, and we whiled away a few hours with Duck Hunt and a couple of crude racing games. For a guy raised on Pong, it was a whole new world.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

You all know the story: after enjoying an endless Farewell Tour and giving his umpteenth tearful final press conference after the 2007 season, Brett Favre aw-shucked his way back into the NFL. The Packers acted like they’d never met, but the Jets were happy to play along. Hell, they were the Jets. They had nothing to lose. Then when the Dolphins stomped the Jets in the 2008 season finale to complete their December collapse, Brett retired again, making his announcement in the huddle late in the 4th quarter.

Later the following spring, when his concussion wore off, he unretired again. But this time around, almost every team said, “We’re sorry, you’re room’s been rented out.” Favre’s departure two seasons ago had spurred the Packers to insert Aaron Rogers into their scheme, and he was doing just fine, thank you. This year, the Jets also said “no thanks.” Besides, they were running out of “Good Luck Brett” cakes.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The kitchen is one of the few places in the house where I can let my OCD run wild, and nothing makes me crazier than a haphazardly loaded dishwasher. This is a task that demands order. I put all plastic cups and storage containers in the front of the top rack, for instance, to concentrate the weight on the rear section, thus minimizing wear on the runners. Crazy, right? Bowls are evenly spaced in tight rows, but not so tight that a couple of streams of water can’t get in there. When I’m satisfied that the top rack is full, you wouldn’t find enough room in there to wedge a greasy butter knife.

The bottom rack requires a somewhat different focus, one I’ve been trying to impart to Rusty and Speaker, my deadbeat kids. “Your free ride is over,” I have told them. “You need to learn how to load the dishwasher.” My method isn’t just uniformity for uniformity’s sake, it has to do with thinking ahead to the person who will likely unload the dishwasher, namely me. I try to keep all the plates together, all the bowls together, etc., so I can just reach in and grab the whole stack to put in the cupboard. Efficient, right? Except when someone else has loaded the dishwasher (hint: it will not be one of the children), and doesn’t give it the precise attention to order and detail that I do. So when I find this, I take a few minutes to rearrange all the dirty dishes to be in the right order, thereby saving me a few seconds when it’s time to unload. Yes, I know, I should be tested for a brain worm.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Gilbert Arenas is an idiot. The career of this trigger-happy point guard for the Washington Wizards is hanging by a thread, thanks to his moronic decision to bring guns into the locker room. The initial story, written for the New York Post by Peter Vecsey, painted a pretty damaging picture of the incident, and as details and denials continue to surface, it’s looking more and more like that picture was accurate.

The scenario reported by Vecsey had Arenas laying out four pistols on a table in the locker room. He left them there for teammate Javaris Crittendon to find, along with a note that read, “Pick one.” Seems the two Mensa candidates had been betting at cards aboard the team plane a couple of days earlier. Crittendon’s response (which he of course denies, but was confirmed by two eyewitnesses) was to slip a magazine into his own pistol, and chamber a round. Would Crittendon have gone as far as blowing Arenas’s brains all over the locker room wall? Probably not. But then, I never would have predicted a mass shooting on a U.S. Army base, either.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“Doc, I can’t sleep.” With those four simple words, I was launched on a bizarre trip of paranoia, anticipation, fear and wonder.

“Still having trouble with that, Bob? Tell you what, I’m going to give you something called Ambien—you’ve probably seen it on TV. I’ll write you a prescription.” Dr. Nick pulled a glass thermometer from his shirt pocket and started to write. “Oh, hell,” he said, looking at the thermometer. “Some asshole’s got my pen.”

Yeah, I’d seen Ambien on TV. I’d also heard the stories. People took Ambien, and then the next thing they knew they were in the kitchen, fast asleep, cooking a cheese omelet with shallots and ham, or building a model of the Capitol out of toothpicks and spit. Or they were in the neighbor’s backyard, in their pajamas, digging a trench with a stolen backhoe. One guy was so out of it he actually drove his car to a 24-hour pharmacy and walked in, looking for some Tylenol P.M.