Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
A Fresh Perspective From the Intermountain West
Clarence Worly brings the heat from Idaho FallsBy Bob Wire, 2-09-10
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| Clarence is thoughtful, but not very active. You are actually viewing a live webcam transmission. | |
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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.
Worly and I later teamed up in Denver, where he and our drummer Chris Cutthroat had relocated after graduation. I hitchhiked my way down there from Seattle after my starter marriage crashed and burned, and swapped a cassette Walkman along the way for a cheap bass. We formed another band, The PotatoHeads, and our little three-piece played a lot of butt-rock and classic country. But we also began to play a few of Worly’s compositions. He’d been writing his own material since college. He has an uncanny knack for crafting a hook, and my band and I still play a couple of his songs, “Teenage Suicide” and “Drunk On Saturday Night.” The latter, in fact, got me into the finals in the Colgate Country Showcase back in the mid-90’s. I can’t remember who I lost to, but the point is, neither can you: it was some mainstream country hack.
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.
His shiny new blogis up and running, and I strongly urge you to check it out. If you’re easily offended, well, I would think you’re probably not reading this right now anyway. Clarence writes about a wide range of topics, but it’s all from the somewhat confused perspective of a self-confessed “aging man trying to cope with a world he no longer understands.”
During our band days, Clarence cut a wide swath through the social jungle, pissing off countless people in various ways. Friends, family, business associates, wives—no one is safe from this whiskey-slurping, gun-loving, guitar-cracking human torpedo. Here’s a little taste of Worly, writing about why he prefers to drive a Dodge instead of the ubiquitous Subaru:
“Now I’ve been a Dodge man since my early 20’s and as with most things I do in life, I base my large purchase decisions on emotion and hearsay. Facts and figures confuse the hell right out of me and generally require me to put way too much time and thought into things. I don’t like reading directions and I sure as hell don’t believe anything Consumer Reports publishes about vehicles. I bought a Subaru wagon back in the 90’s, based on CR advice, and every time I drove it I felt an uncomfortable urge to listen to Phish, smoke dope, borrow money from my parents and snowboard. And I really hate snowboarders….everybody knows snowboarding is for losers that don’t have the athletic ability to ski, so definitely no more Subaru’s for me.”
I hope you’ll do yourself a favor and bookmark the above link. The blogosphere is sorely in need of more skilled writers who don’t take themselves so seriously. My buddy Clarence has a lot on his mind, and if you’re up for a rough ride, he’s worth following.
[Note: I’m working on my next installment of Movies Guys Love, and I will have it up within the next couple of days. It’s one of the greatest crime movies of all time, also one of the funniest, and vaulted its writer/director straight into the Hollywood pantheon. I want to try and do it justice. Now git!]
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