It Ain't Me Babe (Cigar Smoke 9-18-08)

I went out to the Pechanga Indian Reservation on Sept. 4 to see what they were up to at the Pechanga Resort, and damned if Bob Dylan wasn’t there for a one-nighter. So, excuse the expression, I found a scalper and I got a ticket.

I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says, “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”

I said, “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan, assface.”

Then he said, “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”

I said, “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface, assface?”

I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me, “If I wasn’t a Republican, I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane, of some of that wacky weed, a little grass, maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife.

I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say, “Hello Pechanga.” Something like that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the beat goes on.

For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter.

I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles, but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh, once he smiled, but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas.

I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy, he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too, and I would have offered an insincere greeting.

So he starts singing and, yes, it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible, too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me want to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time, maybe a 63- and a 65-year old.

But, as incredible as the music was, I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and, hell, I have five or six of his albums, and I pretty much know a lot of the words, but, hey, outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there, I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t have understood dylan. I don’t know.

So as I watch other people in the audience, I think they do understand the words, and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby, go up to the bartender, and I notice that there is a little plate of olives, so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say, “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say, “OK, I’d like a Martini, but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK, I would like to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”

So I snatched an olive off the plate and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good.

But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over, but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his face. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know.

And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did, and he never acknowledged our pleading either, because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered, “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”

As I was driving home, I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would have said, “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.”

Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.

No Time to Hate (Cigar Smoke 9-17-08)

I don’t quite know what it is, but I relate to insects and inanimate objects pretty well. I wish I had that skill with people. But I guess people don’t have enough legs or they move around too much for me. Give me a bug or something made out of metal any day. All in all, they’re pretty good companions. And, I think I have a better vocabulary than most of them.

I know I’ve written about spiders and ants and ladybugs and crickets and those balling-up sow bugs before, but this is kind of different. Let me ’splain what I mean. Every morning just before I get into the shower, it seems I have to rescue some creepy crawly or lowly creature. And, to be honest, as wonderfully humane as I am, these acts of kindness are kind of driving me a little nutso.

This morning was a perfect example. I strip down naked, look at myself in the mirror, wink like Errol Flynn, and start to get into the shower. But my eye catches this little moving object. It’s so small I don’t even think you could classify it as a bug. It was just some little creature trying to get out of the tub. The walls were too steep and too slippery, and he just kept falling back.

So I got a piece of toilet paper, and bent down and made this escape ramp. I put one end of the toilet paper right in front of the place where he should have had eyes, and I nudged his mini-butt onto the paper and guided him up the toilet paper of life.

He scurried his little ass off and disappeared into my bathroom rug. And dammit, I did feel a little better. But I don’t know why. Hey, let’s face it; this guy probably had a life expectancy of, maybe, 16 hours. They say flies only live for 24 hours, so I’m just extrapolating a little. I saved something that was going to buy the farm by the end of the day anyway.

I save five or six of these itty-bitty characters every week. I have never been thanked once. They don’t even know they’ve been saved. They truly are dumber than doornails, which, by the way, I have a relationship with, too. I often wonder what it feels like to be hammered into something. Just waiting there for the, well, for the hammer to drop, and then it does.

Sorry, I got distracted from my bug friends. Why do I save something that doesn’t know it’s being saved and will die within hours even if I do save it? I do not know the answer. Please, will some philosopher help me out? Come on, Aristotle, enlighten me. Plato, ask me a probing question. Immanuel, help me, I Kant figure it out.

And it’s not just bathtubs. The other death venue for spiders and their buddies is the sink. I go to wash my hands, and damned if there isn’t some spider trying to walk up the side of the sink. He can’t do it. He just keeps slipping. Tries again. Slips again. I thought spiders were supposed to spin webs and walk out, proud and loud. But no. They’re even dumber than the scurriers in my shower, who as we’ve learned, are dumber than doornails. (By the way, are doornails dumber than posts? I’d pay to see that fight.)

So, does spider dumbness stop me. No, Mr. Insect Rescue Man jumps right in to help them. Yes, I get another piece of toilet paper, and lead the spider to his freedom. I put him gently down on the floor, lean down even closer to him, and listen closely, hoping for a sign of recognition. Just some kind of salute of gratitude. I know they don’t speak English. Just thank me in Spiderese. Just grunt. Or spit. Would it kill you to weave a little web thank you?

Oh, I kid the insect world. But my relationship with inanimate objects is also starting to worry me a bit. I now talk to objects almost every day. Like, I am now using my iPhone all the time, and my poor little Palm Pilot is just sitting there on the counter in its little metal case and leather jacket. It literally is gathering dust. Some no-good family member wrote “Wash Me” on it the other day.

I’m putting everything on my iPhone now. I have a calendar and an address book and a bunch of other utilities and applications that I used to use my Palm for. All of them are now on the iPhone. Hell, I even have my Scrabble dictionaries on there. And I can just tell my loyal Palm TX is hurt. I can feel it every time I walk by. Maybe, it’s just me, but I think I hear this little metallic cough sometimes, and I look down, and the Palm Pilot is just a fraction of an inch from where I left it, and I think I see a little teardrop there, too. And I don’t know if I can say this without choking up, the teardrop is, well, it’s rusty. Oh, God!

It’s starting to get to me. Now, before I go to bed, I apologize to my Palm Pilot. I say stuff like, “You know, Palm Face, it’s not really you. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. I’ve changed.”

And Palm Face just lies there on the kitchen counter, and I feel this pain, this guilt, and then she says, “You don’t even charge me anymore.”

Oh, God, it just hurts so much. Maybe I’ll reconsider having relationships with people again. No, I can’t do that. I think I’ll just dump inanimate objects, and stick with spiders. They don’t hold a grudge. They die before they remember to hate you.

I Would Procrastinate if I Had the Time (Cigar Smoke 9-11-08)

I was going to write this column a long time ago, but, well, I put it off. And why did I do that? Because I am a procrastinator. And why am I a procrastinator? Because I am a no-good piece of useless human waste-material garbage. I think that’s pretty much what Sigmund would have said. And I think it has to do with sex and a cigar, too. Him, not me.

Oh, I kid us procrastinators. The reason this all came to the forefront of my consciousness (Let’s see Obama be more erudite than that) is because I had a slow leak in my left front tire. My tire kept getting lower and lower and I looked for a nail or something obvious, but I couldn’t find anything. So I just kept putting air in the damn thing every week.

Every day I would go out to my car and look at my left front tire and, sure enough, it would be slowly going down. I knew it would be, but I just wouldn’t get it fixed, because I am a lowly piece of procrastinating …you know what. Sometimes I would even sneak up on my tire and not look at it directly, and then turn real fast and look at it, and it was still going flat. I really did this. I think the liberals made me do it.

So every week I would have to take it to a gas station and put three damn quarters in the little air machine slot and the air machine would go on, and I would bend down and put the nozzle thing over the valve stem and I would pump air into that sucker. And it was not easy. I have a bad back (and my front ain’t that great either) and have trouble bending over. So I would have to get on my knee and get my pants all dirty and scraped and ripped. Took the chic quality right out of my polyester.
And I don’t know if you’ve put air in your tires lately, but it’s kind of a pain. You’re bent over, your pants are ruined, you’re trying to keep the nozzle on the valve stem, and it won’t quite fit right, and you’re cussing and spitting and scaring your dog. And you keep giving the air gun bursts of power and you can’t keep your fingers on the stem. And that little indicator comes up and it says you have 28 pounds in there. And somewhere deep in the back of your pre-historic mind you think there should be 32 pounds of pressure.

It is tough. I mean it. I hated it. But I did it. Every damn week. For four damn months. (I would have been the president of the Procrastinators of America Society, but they never got around to holding any meetings.) And every time I would do it, I would hate myself more. I would say to myself, “Jim, you useless piece of piss garbage, why don’t you have this tire fixed, you useless piece of crusted crud?” I would say that to myself, and my self would answer, “Because I am a useless piece of moron guts, that’s why.”

And some days when it was 100 degrees or hotter I would bend down and put air in that damn tire, and the little air machine would cut off before I could get my 32 pounds of pressure in there. So I would hang my useless sweaty head down in my hands and because my useless head was slippery with sweat my face would go through my hands and hit the pavement and I’d hit my nose on asphalt in July in Pasadena at a gas station. And then I’d go the cashier guy because I ran out of quarters to restart the air machine and he would say, “Uh, excuse me, but you have black tire smudges on your face and your nose is bleeding.”

I don’t know what kept me from getting the tire fixed. I guess I thought it would be too expensive. I didn’t want to spend more than $100 for a tire and I didn’t think they could put in an inner tube like in the old days and I could cheat the tire cost and be happy. And I didn’t want to take the time out of my busy retirement schedule. Would I have to cut back on my loafing or my idleness? Could I really afford to lose an hour of couch potato time? Would I have to answer the question, “Did you do anything today, Honey?” with a “Yes, I had my tire fixed, dear.” And then, of course, I would have wasted more time picking my wife up off the floor and taking her to the emergency room. That’s why I didn’t do it.

But last Saturday I was just driving by Just Tires over on Walnut Street and Sierra Madre Boulevard and decided to just drop in and just ask them if they could just fix it. I tell the guy I have a slow leak and he says, “Yeah, I know, but what’s wrong with your tire?” After we stop laughing, he comes out to my car, looks at my left front tire and immediately finds a nail in it. I couldn’t believe it. I had been looking for four months and couldn’t find it and he finds it instantly. He looks at me and I said, “Did you have one of your people put that nail in there?”

We go inside and I said, “I guess I need a new tire, huh?” He said, “No. We’ll just do a flat repair for $17.88 and you’ll be out of here in less than 30 minutes.”

And I was out of there in 30 minutes. It took me less than half an hour and it cost me only 17 bucks to fix a four-month-old killer problem that was destroying both my life and my pants. I never get actually happy, but I was damn close then.

So the moral of this tale is that I am no longer a useless piece of gut garbage. I am now a useful piece of gut garbage who is very, very smart and wears clean polyester pants, and if I ever have another problem I will say that I will fix it immediately — but will probably fall back on my old premise that if you ignore a problem for long enough, and if you go into full denial, the problem you are procrastinating about will probably work out somehow, and maybe the guy you owe money to will even die.

Rebel Without a Rap Sheet (Cigar Smoke 8-28-08)

I bet you didn’t know your little old columnist here was a serial criminal. I can’t quite believe it either, but here is what happened. I committed six crimes. Yes, six. And the whole crime spree took less than a half an hour.

I took my dog, Hadley, over to the Santa Fe Dam recreational area and, because it was early in the morning, and because nobody was there yet, and because I am a what? I am a rebel, I let Hadley off the leash, and he raised his long head in freedom and appreciation and then he raised his left leg in urination. And he peed on objects, plants, and himself. That was Crime No. 1.

Then I lit a cigar and was walking along with my freedom-loving urinating dog, and I was smoking and throwing my non-long head back in freedom, and I thought to myself, I think smoking in a park is now illegal. Crime No. 2.

Then I look back and Hadley had progressed from urination to poopation, and yes, I didn’t pick it up. I really apologize for this one. I almost always pick up after my dog. But this time I didn’t because I had just had a really severe episode of my back going out and I couldn’t bend down. I know, that’s kind of a weenie excuse, but I had visions of falling down in this deserted park and not being able to get up and having Hadley licking my face and peeing on my stomach. OK, that was Crime No. 3.

So then, as I’m walking along feeling guilty about not picking up after Hadley the Wonder Pooper, I decided to call my son, Mike, in Washington DC to wish him a happy birthday. So I whipped out my iPhone and I called him. I am what? I am modern. We were having a great talk and maybe the highlight of it was that I couldn’t believe he held his cell phone in his right hand and he couldn’t believe I held my cell phone in my left hand. Anyway, the conversation got a little animated. Not nasty, but you could see it from there. So, as we’re arguing I’m finishing up my walk with Hadley, the Excrement Warrior, and I get back into the car, and I’m still talking to Mike on my cell phone. We’re just chattering along like magpies with iPhones. And all of a sudden, it hits me: I am driving with a cell phone in California and I don’t have the damn earplug thing plugged in and I am committing yet another crime. Crime No. 4.

Now I’m feeling like I may be close to being out of control. I have committed four crimes without even blinking a damn eye. I am a bad seed, and I know I will never be close to being a good seed, and I know if I am not stopped soon I will commit another crime. And it doesn’t take long for this to actually happen.

I look down at my speedometer and I am screaming along at 30 miles an hour. I am in a California state park and the speed limit is 15 miles per hour, and I am going twice the speed limit. What can I say? Crime No. 5.

I finally get out of the park and I look over my shoulder to see if the park ranger guy is trailing my butt, but he’s out helping coyotes or something and I am free — I have fought the sheriff and I have won. Change the lyrics. I’m feeling good. Bad seed good. But my crime spree has one more crime to go to make it a serial six-pack.

I’m still talking to Mike on the phone and my cigar has burned down to the nub and the cigar label is starting to burn and so I slip off the cigar band and I’m holding it in my fingers and Hadley is jerking around with me in the front seat and Mike is still on my ass about me holding the cell phone in my left hand, and I was frustrated, and the cigar was burning into my thumb, and I acted rashly and selfishly, and yes, I tossed the cigar band out of the window. I littered. No excuse for it. Crime No. 6.
Gary Gilmore, eat your heart out.

But you’re not going to believe what happened next. I knocked over a liquor store. I told you I was a bad seed. However, I didn’t rob the liquor store. I actually drove into the liquor store and, well, knocked it over.

Hey, I was on my cell phone and Mike said only dummies and losers and old people would use their left hands to hold their cell phones, and Hadley had jumped onto my lap and I was trying to keep his left leg from going into action and I could smell my thumb burning now and, well, the steering wheel just did its own thing. Liquor store went down like Monica, baby.

Stop me before I misdemean again!

Shut Up and Dig (Cigar Smoke 8-14-08)

I’m just sitting here at my desk trying to get over being ridiculed by my son-in-law for putting my cell phone number on my cell phone. Yes, I made a little label from my little label-maker and I put the phone number right there on the damn cell phone. What can I tell you, I’m a bad seed. (At least I don’t have my computer password pasted onto my computer like a lot of you clueless bad seed readers out there. Admit it. You do it.)

OK, let’s talk about energy and oil. Hey, don’t you dare run away. We’ve got to talk about this. Let’s be different. Let’s be adults.

I just cannot believe that we are in the predicament we are in with gas prices and other energy issues. Though the Republicans have had their share of dopey energy policies, I just have to lay most of the blame on the Democrats. For the past 40 years or so, Democrats have stopped almost every plan to drill for new oil and build much-needed new refineries and take advantage of nuclear power.

Of course, they mask this foot-dragging strategy with environmental red herrings. Whenever they talk about not drilling in ANWAR up in Alaska, I just want to hurl. Have you ever been to ANWAR? No, I know you haven’t. Well, I have. Well, to be honest, I haven’t been actually on the ground there. I’m not that stupid. But I have flown over it. And let me tell you, there is nothing there.

Unless you count snow and frozen tundra and ice and a few very cold-ass caribou as something, there is basically nothing at ANWAR. Hell, if you made this a national park, you wouldn’t get 1,000 visitors in 100 years. I am telling you you can fly for hours (yes, hours) around ANWAR in any direction and you will see nothing but frozen stuff. Alaska is a big damn place. It’s half as big as the whole US. We can use a couple thousand acres to get oil. And the caribou will probably nestle up to a new ANWAR pipeline like they do near the Alaskan Pipeline now to get a little warmth. Come on, I’m not saying we should tear out Old Faithful and drill in Yellowstone. But ANWAR? It’s a no-brainer.

And dammit, let’s build some new oil refineries. We haven’t built a new refinery for something like 30 years now. That’s literally crazy. I guess the Democrats and environmentalists just think we’re going to get all our energy from solar panels and windmills and riding bicycles. Give me a break. I’m not against those things. But they shouldn’t be the only things we do for energy. The next time you pay $4.89 for a gallon of gas, say thanks to your friendly neighborhood Democrat, and pedal off on your bike to go home to your windmill. Oh, did you just hear that? Listen. It’s the Arabs laughing at us.

And nuclear power plants. It is unbelievable that we haven’t built any new nuclear power plants for decades. The environmentalists have us so scared that there will be another Three Mile Island meltdown that we’re just paralyzed. Of course, that was horrible, but technology has improved. Hell, countries like France get most of their energy from nuclear power. And you would think that Democrats would follow in France’s esteemed footsteps because Democrats shove France in our face every other second when it comes to foreign policy or Bush hating. Democrats love France except when it comes to nuclear power. I’m just the opposite. I don’t care much for France, but I think these commie pinkos are dead-on right about using nuclear power.

Aren’t you all just getting a tad bit tired of hearing the Democrats whining about big oil companies? It’s just so bizarre to me. Democrats just ignore obvious economic realities like that little old supply and demand problem. Do they even know that China and India and Russia and Korea etc. etc. are using incredible amounts of oil, which increases the demand for oil, and what do you know, the prices go up. Wow. Who would have thunk it?

And do they know that big oil companies are made up of little people in the stock market? Sure, a lot of oil execs are getting rich, but most of the oil money is being made by little old ladies who have mutual funds with oil stocks in their portfolios. And schools and universities and unions all have substantial amounts of their investments in oil. Something like 60 percent of Americans have an interest in oil. Doesn’t that matter?

And did you hear that mental giant from Nevada, Harry Reid, a few weeks ago? He said that oil is making us sick. How does that little roach (sorry, I don’t mean to give roaches a bad name) come up with stuff like that? If it wasn’t just so god-awful damn lame stupid I would laugh.

Has good ole Harry thought about this? Oil and coal have probably been the biggest contributors to health and well-being in our lifetime. OK, maybe electricity is first. I’ll give you that. But big bad oil and dirty old coal have been huge. Without gas for our trucks we would not have been able to carry lumber to the entire country to build homes. We would not have been able to get food to everyone. We couldn’t have gotten clothes to people. We would not have been able to get medical supplies to hospitals. There are thousands of things we are better off for because we have oil. Hell, even the environmentalists who go to their protest meetings to save the trees usually drive.

Well, I’m tired of ranting. I think I’ll go do what Democrats hate even more than oil. I think I’ll go have a smoke.

Contact former Pasadena Weekly Publisher Jim Laris at jim.laris@mac.com

Stay-Cation Alternative (Cigar Smoke 8-7-08)

Well, I guess you guys have all heard about this new thing they call the stay-cation. You know, like a vacation only you stay at home. With gas prices going through the roof and spending money getting hard to find, I have decided to provide a travel service to you, my columnar friends.

Here’ s what I think you should do to put a little zip back in your zipless life. And all the while keeping your wallet more zipped, too.

I suggest you take a 90-minute, 90-mile cation. No, it doesn’ t quite slip off the tongue like a vacation or even a stay-cation, but I can assure you it works because I just damn did it, baby. Me and my credit card had a ball. Yes, I went alone — you don’ t have to do what the other person wants and, of course, it costs roughly half as much.

I went to the Pechanga Indian Resort and Casino in Temecula. It’ s only 90 miles away and takes 90 minutes to get there. So, assuming gas costs, say, $4.75 a gallon and your miserable car gets 20 miles per gallon, that means you’ ll use four and half gallons of gas, which will run you about $21. So that will be a total of $42 for gas. Big deal. Even you can afford that.

So why did I go to Pechanga? Well, I like the words Pechanga and Temecula. They sound like places in a foreign country and look weird on a map. By the way, have you ever heard of the Pechanga Indians? Who the hell are those guys? Why couldn’ t we have major league Indians out here like the Apache or the Sioux or the Cherokee. The Pechangas? Can you imagine John Wayne being incensed by an Indian named Sitting Pechanga?

I kid the Pechangas. They have a pretty cool resort out there. I went there to see a boxing match and play blackjack and video poker and sit at a table where it said Moo Goo Gai Pan Poker or something. I asked the dealer what it meant and he said, “In Chinese it means an efficient way for us to take your money without you knowing what the rules are and not understanding the language enough to complain.”

I’ m getting ahead of myself again. Actually, the first thing I did when I got there was eat a late lunch/early dinner at their café. I ordered a pulled pork sandwich, this big pile of pulled pork sitting on a giant bun covered in barbecue sauce one inch high. That scared me a little. And then it had lettuce, onion and tomato on the other huge bun. Plus French fries and cole slaw that looked like it had died a slow, gasping mayonnaise death.

Well, I ate that whole damn meal. Let me just say, it did not taste all that great. The only thing I can remember in my life that tasted worse was something I had at a fraternity initiation. Something raw where two guys were holding me down. Hey, it was not good. I kid the pulled pork.

I only mention this culinary experience to help you save money. Yes, the sandwich cost me $9.95, but it stopped me from eating for the rest of the trip — and two more days after I got home. I’ m telling you, you eat that sucker and you and your stomach are taking separate flights, baby.

After the sandwich, I went to see some boxing. I love to go to these semi-hokey boxing matches where you can get ringside seats pretty cheap and have a chance of getting a little fighter blood splashed on you. But say you don’ t like boxing. On Wednesday nights they have a comedy club. Three unknown comics tell three people three bad jokes for the price of three drinks. So that’ s only another nine bucks. And knowing you guys, there’ s not too much leftover.

And maybe you play a little video poker or maybe you go to the lounge and listen to oldies but goodies sung by people who are younger but not so good. And you stay there until your pulled pork pulls off a rebellion in your colon or wherever the hell it has invaded. And the important point is all this enjoyment and all this fun is what? It is cheap.

So you have now had one full day of incredible 90-minute 90-mile Cation Fun. And it’ s only gonna cost you about 60 damn dollars! That’ s pretty dang cheap. Comes out to about five bucks an hour for 12 hours of Pechangian fun.

One disclaimer. You’ re probably tired after all that fun, and you’ ve had, maybe six drinks, and you’ re too damn cheap to stop at a Motel 6, so coming home you might rear-end a Chevy Blazer just north of Lake Elsinore on the 15, and OK, maybe when the cop comes over to see if you are alive you might hurl some pulled pork chunks onto his badge and say, “Sorry, officer. Code 7.” And yes, maybe the cost to fix your car and make bail and have stomach surgery could add up to more than the aforementioned $60.

But you did have fun didn’ t you? Cheap fun. You ingrate.

Contact former Pasadena Weekly Publisher Jim Laris at jim.laris@mac.com

Unfair and Unbalanced (Cigar Smoke 7-24-08)

A couple weeks ago, my fellow ink-stained wretch Larry Wilson tweaked my tweaker when he wrote in his Star-News column that he would “never” watch FOX news. Wow. Even though I know most liberals don’t like Fox (OK, they hate Fox), Larry kind of ratcheted it up a notch when he used the N word — never.

To me that’s pretty strong. Over-the-top. Misguided. And wrong. I guess Larry and the libs don’t want to see any other point of view. They’ve already got all the national mainstream broadcast stations — NBC, ABC and CBS. And they’ve got the cable guys CNN and MSNBC. And they have 99 percent of the major market newspapers in the country — The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, etc. etc. And, of course, they have Time and Newsweek to kind of put that finishing left-leaning flair on their non-assailable viewpoints.

Have you ever noticed that people of the liberal persuasion never (there’s that word again) say anything negative about any other TV station or newspaper or magazine. It’s always FOX. And not only is it FOX, it is only FOX. If, every once in a while, liberals would say, “Did you hear that crock on CNN?” I could maybe give them some deserved slack. But that never happens. Nope. Never happens.

Hell, I don’t think FOX is perfect. (I’m the only one I have ever found who is perfect.) FOX has their share of bias and bullshit. And yes, they lean to the right. And yes, sometimes Bill O’Reilly can be an arrogant jerk. And that Shepard Smith guy makes me puke. If he were any more insufferable he’d have to be speaking directly out of Ted Baxter’s butt.

However, in my humble opinion, they do not spout the Republican agenda, as is so often blindly claimed by the left. As we know, the libsters don’t even watch the damn station. I guess they don’t want pesky old reality to interfere with their opinions.

What about these pesky little non-agenda facts: Bill O’Reilly is a big tree-hugging environmentalist and he’s against the death penalty. And O’Reilly bashes Bush quite often about Iraq, and Sean Hannity and O’Reilly crucify Bush on immigration. There are many, many other points that FOX disagrees with the Republicans on.

But the thing that I really like most about the station is that they allow opinions from the other side all the time. Nightly, in fact. There’s a continual tension of opposing viewpoints on FOX. Really heated arguments between top Democratic people and FOX guys. You can say what you want about FOX, but “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity and Colmes” are on the cutting edge of opinion journalism. They have the guts to say things the mainstream media have ignored for decades. They broke news stories like the Jeremiah Wright story and the Jesse Jackson wanting to cut Obama’s nuts off story.

Liberals appear on FOX all the time. The only thing that is different is that finally some of their liberal opinions are being challenged. And that’s probably why they don’t like FOX. Hell, they’ve had a monopoly on ideas in this country for 30 years or more. Finally, one damn station comes along and has the guts to stand up to them and the libbies start pissing all over themselves.

What the liberals ought to be asking is how did FOX get to be so important? How did they come to dominate cable television news? They have something like four times the viewers of CNN and MSNBC — combined! It’s not even close.

I think the mainstream media missed one of the biggest stories of the last 40 years. And what is that story, Virginia? Basically, they didn’t recognize why Rush Limbaugh became so popular. They were too busy laughing at Al Franken “Big Fat Liar” book titles to see what was really happening.

What was really happening was that a huge part of America was getting fed up with the liberal media and their influence on the country. They just couldn’t take all the sexual craziness and anything-goes abortion policies and the nonsensical immigration ideas, and the downright hostile positions of the left on our military, and the constant tone-deaf roar of the left to eliminate any religious or moral standards. And the deterioration of our schools and the incessant whining of victims and the whole socialism trend. It was just too much.

And many Americans — generally half the country — had nowhere to turn for their information. So what happened? Rush Limbaugh happened. He, almost singlehandedly, turned AM radio into a right-wing medium where people on the right could be heard. Limbaugh saw that there was a big damn hole in information and he filled it.

And FOX saw what Rush had done and more importantly, saw that there was, and is, a huge audience out there for people who do not want to toe the damn party line.

So FOX had the guts to give people another viewpoint, another take on things. And they succeeded and now all the liberals are crying. As Don Henley would say, “Get over it.”

Oh, and also, FOX has all those cool blonde babes, too.

Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.