New Year's

Gettin' creepier, every day.

Here's the deal: It's New Year's Eve, I'm in Sacramento, surrounded by friends, and drinking in a free hotel room. You should be out enjoying the people around you like I am, not reading this. My San Diego recap blog will be up in the next couple of days. Happy New Year - my resolution is to be more prompt with my updates.

Pantalones!

The Current Deal

I have two hours to cram all my dirty laundry back into my suitcase and jam it on a bus, and then eight hours on that bus to do nothing. Knowing that, please understand that my blog probably won't be online until this evening.

Also, since this post hasn't been terribly funny yet, Pantalones.

Guest Blog - Courtesy of Mike Whitman

At last, I've figured out the Internet here at my hotel in San Diego. This week, since my various musical obligations prevented me from getting a blog in, please enjoy the following work of wonder from my fellow Writer and Doogie Howser copilot, Mike Whitman. For more of his rustic, honky-tonk bullshit, check out his Blazers Oriented Blog.

“The police have themselves an RV.”

This was the text I received the night of December 25th from my buddy and fellow ’80s cinemaphile. I stared at my phone for several minutes before slowly working my eyes upward to the inevitable, inescapable truth that beamed from my mother’s TV:

Jack Lalanne and his Power Juicer*.

*Mike has nothing against either Jack Lalanne or his Power Juicer. In fact, Mike owns that Power Juicer, and it is a fine piece of machinery. But watching that commercial for the 34th time, on Christmas of all days, was a little depressing.

I looked back at my phone and sent a half-hearted reply:

“It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles.”

Glancing at the Christmas tree that my former stepfather and tormentor had cut down presumably with his bare hands, I began to think about all the Christmases past and how much joy I used to take in the most magical of all the days I got to sit around and do nothing.*

*Mike typically sits around and does nothing. In fact, it is his favorite activity. But he prefers his laziness during the Christmas season because of the heavy ham consumption.

The bottom line, dear reader, is this: I didn’t watch Die Hard this year. Hell, I didn’t even watch Lethal Weapon.

In the past, no matter how horribly my Christmas turned out, I could always take consolation in the fact that Mr. Officer John McClane of the New York Police Department was there to save me from Hans Gruber and his band of exceptional thieves. This year was no exception, in that my Christmas has been relatively shitty. My car blew up on the drive down to Mom’s house, and while I’ve consumed large amounts of ham…this year, more than any other in my memory, just doesn’t feel like Christmas.

So when your lord and savior, Truman Capps, called me up and asked me to fill in, I said yes without thinking, assuming that I could be at least passably funny, regardless of my lack of holiday spirt.* But as I sat down to write this, I realized that a Christmas blog update without Christmas spirit is like a nativity scene without the baby Jesus.

*Mike was not Truman’s first choice for this job, and for good reason.

For those of you who gathered around a roaring fire with members of your loving families and sang carols deep into the night, good for you. But for those of you like me, who perhaps don’t have that option, don’t fret. Go to your local videomart, ask that pencil-necked geek behind the counter to point you toward the action section, and go grab yourself a copy of Die Hard.*

Mike will be following his own advice, since he forgot his copy in his apartment in Eugene.

You may not have a merry Christmas, but at least you can forget you’re having a crappy one for 131 minutes.

Plus, if you see people caroling, you can run at them in a dirty tank top and strangle them to death with a length of chain.

Status update for Sunday the 28th of December

Hair Guy is currently without Internets at a certain sporting event with a certain band of marchers.

His update will be online shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Hair Guy Staff Christmas Memo

Mecha-Chaucer moments before the infamous "camera smash" incident.

From: Truman Capps (The Hair Guy)

To: Hair Guy writing staff (Bizarro Hemingway, Robo Faulkner, Zombie Fitzgerald, Mecha-Chaucer, Truman Clone 1, trumanclone43@gmail.com)

Subject: Excelsior!

Merry Christmas, everyone but Truman Clone 43!

Happy Kwanzaa, Truman Clone 43!

I’m just going to come right out and say that I think this is the best Christmas Hair Guy™ has ever had. Now, that statement might sound a bit loaded, given that it isn’t actually Christmas yet and this is basically the first Hair Guy™ Christmas, but go with me. We’ve overcome an awful lot of adversity in the past year, but the work has clearly paid off.

I was taking a look at SiteMeter the other day, and you’re not going to believe how many total hits we’ve gotten since this blog went online just over a year ago. Anybody want to guess? Go ahead and guess. Just, like… Just write it down on a bit of paper, or something, and then scroll down and look, and then compare what you thought to how many hits we’ve had in 12 months. Do it, seriously. The number is unbelievably high. I really wish I’d had the chance to do this.

Ready?

14,965! That’s fourteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty five! You round that up, you’ve got 15,000 hits in 12 months. And then, well, not to get ahead of myself, but what does 15 round up to? Yeah. It rounds up to 20, because it’s a five, and a five always rounds up.

So 20,000 hits* in one year. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. In fact, hows about we all pat ourselves on the back? Yeah! Go right ahead and do it. See? I don’t have to make any special concessions now that Truman Clone 2 (or Mr. Flippers, as I used to call him) quit and took his treacherous, backstabbing ass over to Columbia Pictures to work on House Bunny 2: Mo’ Bunny, Mo’ Problems. Look at that! We overcame that kind of thing! We don’t need Truman Clone 2 to get 20,000 hits** in one year. 20,000!*** That’s like… That’s like more than a thousand hits a month! Hell, if you round that up to 24,000 then we’re talking about two thousand hits a month!

*Basically.
**Basically.
***Basically.

So 24,000 hits in one year. I’m thinking we should make some T-shirts about that sort of thing. They could say something like “Hit me baby, 24,000 times!”, or “If we make the assumption that half of all Internet users are female, then 12,000 chicks have hit on me!” I’m not quite as hot on the second one, what with the whole… Wordiness thing it has going there. Look, hey, I’m the business end of Hair Guy™ – how about you guys think of something? Just figure it out and send it up my way. Be sure to make a joke about the word “Hit.” Maybe you can get a picture of Stallone at the end of Rocky, and then say something about how he got hit 24,000 times, just like Hair Guy? And maybe just bump that up to 25,000 times, for the sake of having a round number.

I couldn’t have made the big 25,000 without you guys. So much happened in this crazy, crazy year, but it didn’t keep us from getting 2000 hits a month now, did it? Actually, I guess that’s more than 2000 hits a month, it’s more like… Well, 1000 divided by 12, that’s… 83.33333? Well, okay, let’s just round that back down to 24,000 to make the math a little less- Wait, no, nevermind – back to 25,000. I’ll have Accounting figure that one out for us.

Look, anyway, it’s been a rough year, and I’m really proud of the way you guys pulled together and kept getting your work in on time. Mecha-Chaucer and Truman Clone 43: You guys are the new kids on the block (figuratively, of course – I in no way mean to suggest that you are or ever have been in a boy band) but you’ve both jumped right in and pulled your weight admirably in spite of the fact that Truman Clone 43 only writes in Ebonics and Mecha-Chaucer is 50 feet tall and likes to smash things. Truman Clone 1: I’m sure the spontaneous combustion of Truman Clones 3 and 4 must have sparked some pretty deep thoughts about your mortality, given that all of you were created by the same bargain basement South American cloning lab, but you never let that affect your work. And Bizarro Hemingway – it was tough for all of us when, in defiance toward Regular Hemingway, you tried to commit anti-suicide. Now, to be honest, I still don’t really get what anti-suicide is, but the other writers lead me to believe that it’s no walk in the park, so… Well, I’m just glad to have you back from Bizarro Rehab.

I’m sorry to bring up all those tough times, but if you take a look back, you’ve got to appreciate how incredible it is that we’ve kept this thing going for a year without any major hitches. There’s literally hundreds of blogs on the Internet, and I’d be surprised if even half of them could keep to a schedule this rigidly – and I’ll bet you none of them have a writing staff comprised of clones, robots, and zombies! Sure, we may not update as often as the other blogs, and we may not be as popular, but we do something special here at Hair Guy™. We don’t just offer words; we offer an experience. And sure, the experience may not always be a pleasant one, (mad ups to whoever thought of that thing about the rash!) but it’s always interesting, sometimes even borderline amusing, and I think that’s something to be proud of.

Sleep the sleep of kings tonight, writing staff. You work for a blog that scored basically 30,000 hits.

Sincerely yours,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Truman Capps was not the one who photocopied his ass at the Christmas party, no matter what Robo Faulkner says.

Things I Thought About Before and During Wayne's World 2

You know what this picture means? It means you're about to see some Tia Carrere. It means you're happy.

12:39 PM - Oh, great, even more snow and below-freezing temperatures. I think I’m not going to leave the house today. Yeah, that sounds about right. The outside world has been doing fine without me all this time I’ve been sleeping, I feel certain it can last another 24 hours without me poking my head outside. Maybe I’ll see what’s on TV.

12:51 PM - Man, FX, you guys are really excited about this new Damages show you’ve got, aren’t you? I mean, you keep showing all these ambiguous promos with some lady getting out of a car and Glenn Close looking hawkish and angry. I mean, I might have been excited about this show once, like, before I spent a couple of weeks getting teabagged by commercials lauding Damages for having “the best cast on TV”, but now, if given the opportunity, I think I’d not watch your show out of spite. Man, I make a point of not doing stuff out of spite a lot, don’t I? That’s probably not healthy.

12:52 PM - Oh, yeah, and it’s clearly not the best cast on TV, because Neil Patrick Harris isn’t in it. I also don’t see Richard Dean Anderson. You see the connection, FX? It’s having a middle name. Talk to Glenn Close about getting a middle name, then I might be interested.

1:00 PM - Oh snap! Wayne’s World 2! Score! God, I hope I don’t have to be anywhere for the next two hours.

1:34 PM - Y’know, they just don’t make sequels like this anymore. I mean, it’s not the original Wayne’s World - that movie deserved an Oscar of some sort, or at least preservation by some snooty film society in a giant vault labeled “CULTURALLY SIGNIFICANT” – but it’s still a funny movie. You look at sequels today, I mean… Well, I doubt Cheaper By The Dozen 2 was anywhere near as funny as Cheaper By The Dozen. Actually… No, that’s probably a bad example, because I’m pretty sure Cheaper By The Dozen sucked monkeys anyway. Also, no Tia Carrere. A lot of movies suffer for not having Tia Carrere in them, come to think of it...

1:40 PM - There Will Be Blood probably would have got Best Picture if they’d put Tia Carrere in it. And I feel like if Scorsese had put a big Tia Carrere scene in Goodfellas or some other movie, he could have gotten Best Director way sooner. Oh, man, he should have put her in Last Temptation of Christ! She could have been the, y’know, the Last Temptation! Man, if I was being crucified, Tia Carrere would really just take the edge off.

1:54 PM - She’s like… She’s like the Asian Drew Barrymore. Lucy Liu is the Asian Cameron Diaz, but Tia Carrere is the Asian… No, no, scratch that – she’s the Asian Yasmine Bleeth. Yeah, I like that better.

2:13 PM - Oh, for crying out loud, Best Buy, enough with these human interest story commercials! This one, with the Geek Squad guy talking about how some customer made him dress up like an elf before doing tech support work on his daughters’ computer? It’s a disgrace. See, what you’re selling here isn’t a Geek Squad membership, nor is it a promise of exceptional customer service. What you’re selling is the opportunity to completely humiliate a fellow human being. This commercial says, “At Best Buy, we’ve got our employees so whipped into a miserable stupor that they’ll do literally anything – so have fun!” For God’s sake, the man is already a willing member of the Geek Squad, he has to march around in a neutered, less-cool Reservoir Dogs outfit, and his primary mode of transportation is a New Beetle painted black and white with the word “GEEK” emblazoned across the side. Why would you try to bring him lower? It’s not the Geek Squad anymore, it’s just Dial-A-Doormat.

2:14 PM - “Hey, thanks for coming to fix my computer, but I’ve got a proposition for you: Would you put on this leather gimp outfit and let me chain you up in the basement? The missus and I are in the middle of, uh… Something, and I think it’ll really make her Christmas.”

2:17 PM - But like I was saying, she just carried that show Relic Hunter. Without her, you got no show. It’s just relics, at that point.

2:32 PM - Awful lot of cologne commercials this time of year. Interesting thing is, the only people I really notice wearing cologne tend to be posers who probably won’t get a lot of nookie regardless of what they smell like. I mean, I look at Antonio Banderas and I think “Here’s a man who needs absolutely no help getting beautiful women to caress him in various erotic, sensual ways.” And yet, now he’s marketing cologne. For Christ’s sake, the man could rub dead trout all over himself and women would still run right past me to try new and exciting sexual positions with him. None of these guys need cologne to get women. But because some losers think it works, I have to sit here, alone, in a dimly lit room, and watch buff shirtless guys do stuff in slow motion.

2:45 PM - Thumbs down, Wayne’s World 2 - since when is a 10 minute ripoff of The Graduate a suitable ending for a film? I don’t know how I missed this before. God, I mean, if I wanted to watch a bunch of lame ripoffs, I’d watch Family Guy!

2:47 PM - Ooh, I wonder if Family Guy is on, so I can watch an episode and then write on my blog tonight about how much I hate Family Guy. Oh man, I would be awesome then. A lot of people like Family Guy, but I’d be taking the piss out of it on the Internet. I’d look bocu cool.

2:50 PM - Man, what happened to you, Mike Myers? Everybody was so excited about how cool you were, but now that I look back on your old movies, having seen all your other movies, I realize that you ran out of material pretty quick. Like, you’d done about everything you could do after a season on SNL, but they just kept giving you movie deals, didn’t they? Your entire career has consisted of making stupid jokes and then making out with hot women. Tia Carerre, Tia Carerre again, Elizabeth Hurley, Heather Graham, Beyonce… It’s not fair, really. I’m funnier than you are and I’ve made out with basically none of those women.

2:53 PM - Okay, that was harsh. Maybe I’m not funnier than you, Mike Myers, but I feel like I’m a lot broader. Y’know? I do more stuff. You do five or six characters, but, I mean, I’ve got the blog, and I did a public access TV show, and… Well… Okay, but I update the blog a lot.

2:55 PM - So I’m not broader than you, Mike Myers, but I try really hard. I feel like I work harder at it than you do. Sure, you put on silly costumes and do voices and things, but you do basically the same costumes and silly things, over and over. At least I don’t get stuck in a rut and keep redressing the same crap for my audience.

2:59 PM - Hey, I should do one of those “Things I Thought About” updates like the one I did a few months ago!

Truman Capps was not masturbating during any of the parts where he talked about Tia Carrere. Just, uh, in case you thought he was. He didn’t even consider it.

Snowblind

"No TV and beer make Homer something-something."
"Go crazy?"
"Don't mind if I do! YEARBLEBLEBLEBLBE!"

I’m sorry, Matt Zaffino. I’m sorry, Portland metropolitan storm teams. And, most of all, I’m sorry, all TV weathermen. I see now, I truly do, that your jobs do have meaning! Every day! I… I take everything back! You are real journalists! Sure, you majored in Communications – which, in my less-enlightened times, I held in almost as much contempt as Business – but my eyes are open! Even though all you do is read a teleprompter, without you it would be impossible to know what the weather would be! We need pretty faces to read us weather information, and that’s where you come in! You Communicate! You Communicate so well! Your college money was well spent, your jobs have meaning and impact, now will you please make it stop fucking snowing!?

A riddle:

How many inches of snow does it take to completely bring the city of Portland to its knees?

One. Maybe less.

We were not expecting this. On Sunday – the day that my callous, my so very callous blog about weathermen went online – it snowed for the better part of the day. We’re used to that. It snows, it accumulates, and then the sun comes out and the temperature jumps to 65 degrees and the next day everybody goes to school. But this snow… It came at us sideways. Not… Not literally, of course. It came at us from the usual place – the sky. But speaking metaphorically, in terms of our preparation? Shit may as well have come out of a microwaveable burrito.

See, it snowed, and the next day the highest temperature was 26 degrees. The snow didn’t melt. Or, rather, the sun came out and melted the top layer of snow, and then Science came along and made the melting snow freeze on top of the other snow as a layer of ice.* I mean, what the hell? Since when is that legal? It’s like the snow is covered in really slippery bulletproof glass. Fall down on it and you’ll see what I mean. And frankly, at this point, I’m about ready to go out and shoot some of it.

*And just why did you do that, anyway? I thought we were bros, Science. I thought we ran deep. I’ve been using you as a suitable alternate for God since I was a little kid, and this is how you repay me? I quit believing in Math and Economics; don’t think you’re safe. I won’t hesitate to become a nihilist out of spite.

Here’s the thing: I was all geared up for a very relaxing Christmas Break. You see, I made a TV show this past term, and that in conjunction with classes is a somewhat stressful endeavor. Not only did my mellow get harshed, but my Xbox 360 went seriously neglected, and a lot of my plan for Christmas Break involved catching up on the new video game releases I’d missed, and also not making a TV show. I was planning to drive down to Salem to visit friends who I haven’t seen in months (in one case, a year), and also to make the rounds of the Portland suburbs to visit some college friends. It was going to be a relaxing vacation full of good fun, good friends, and using a chainsaw bayonet to eviscerate aliens in Gears of War 2.

But our Subaru has front wheel drive and no snow tires, and currently every road in my part of town is still coated in ice. I’m a bad enough driver when conditions are perfect; an inch of snow and ice on every driving surface? I’d have better odds of survival if there were a carbomb under my seat. Those of you who hail from the Northeast and the Midwest may be laughing at me, but as a lifetime Pacific Northwesterner I can assure you that in these conditions the only vehicle worth driving is an AT-AT.

That’s from Star Wars, by the way. The Empire Strikes Back, more specifically. But if you didn’t know that, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. Run and look if The O.C. is on, you might like that better.

With driving out, bus schedules squiffy at best, and none of my Christmas Break plans within 20 miles of me, the snow has really cocked up my holidays. Temperatures are expected to stay below freezing all week, they’re predicting snow tomorrow, and a possible ice storm on Sunday. Visiting friends around town is unlikely, and going to Salem is downright impossible, as the projected ice storm would take place on my second day visiting – the only fate worse than being in Salem, in my eyes, is being stuck in Salem and unable to leave.* Also, I tried to take a sad song and make it better by going to the nearby Hollywood Video and merely renting Gears of War 2, but it seems some joker (not the cool kind) has had it checked out since November 26th. Depriving me of excruciating violence? I mean, they may as well just rip out my soul in a shower of my own blood. Worst of all, though, we ran out of Diet Coke two days ago and we can’t go to Costco to get more at bargain-basement prices until the snow melts! I mean, what am I supposed to do? Drink water? Can you… Can you even drink that, anymore?

*Actually, I guess being in El Paso is probably worse than being stuck in Salem. Cancer, also, is apparently no walk in the park.

So, trapped in my family’s condo by one inch of snow, I sit and I wait. I watch King of the Hill reruns at 1:00 and 3:30 and slowly learn to hate Wendy’s new Portobello Mushroom Burger because they absolutely refuse to stop advertising it. And I stave off insanity by counting my blessings.

1) I’m not in El Paso
2) I’m not in California
3) 30 Rock is finally getting an audience
4) They’re making chipotle hummus at LONG last
5) I’m not one of the hundreds of homeless people literally freezing to death in cardboard boxes downtown right now because all of the rescue missions are full to capacity
6) Arrested Development movie? It’s possible.

So please, storm teams - have mercy. It’s Christmas.

Truman Capps stated at the end of his last blog that whether it snowed or not had little effect on him – this was a shortsighted statement, made by a man who thought it wasn’t going to snow. Since when does Mother Nature read this thing, and since when does she have a blistering sense of irony?

Update: 9:35 AM

Forget it.

Just... Just forget every damn thing I said, hows about?

Piss!

Storm Teamwork

Timberline Lodge, home of elevators filled with blood and the only snow in Oregon.

Arguably the two rarest things in Oregon are snow and black people thanks to our proximity to the Pacific Ocean and our sterling history of institutional racism. Yet once a year, our local news stations get whipped up into a right proper frenzy about one of these two issues – I’m referring, of course, to snow. (To be fair, I’m sure Fox would have a “Black People Watch ‘08”, but the sad fact is that you can’t track black people with satellites the way you can track storm systems.)

Snow is a fairly common thing in a lot of the country – it’s basically rain, only rain that you can slide around on and throw at people that sometimes cancels school. Rain, on the other hand, is wet and dreary, uninteresting, and disliked by most save for a gaggle of poets and the first three people to reply to this update. Think of rain as the really boring kid in elementary school who hung around you all the time and only wanted to talk about lame, boring stuff – for some of you, that was probably me, but let’s forget that for a while. However, imagine if this kid had an awesome cousin who would come to visit every once in a great long while, and that this cousin had the power to cancel school, and gave everybody free skateboards, and shot candy out of his eyes. The day that that guy showed up is like the way it is when it snows in Oregon. While many of you Midwesterners may be tired of skateboards and free candy, we can’t get enough of them out here. It’s an exciting occurrence for everybody – for kids because they love skateboards and candy and for adults because they love to fret about the inherent danger of Snow and his toys.

The thing is, snow never really sneaks up on you in Oregon, because at the slightest hint of snow or snow related activity our weathermen awaken from their Xanax and Bacardi-induced slumber and say, “Wait! My job matters now!” Extra green screens are activated, interns bulldoze mountains of instant coffee into great vats of hot water, and researchers compile a full 20% more trivial information that is of no use to the viewer about the incoming storm. It is in these times that the antics of the wacky weathermen become significantly less wacky. Such is the nature of the world when the Storm Team is mobilized.

Every major station in Portland has a storm team, (sometimes they have epic battles downtown, flinging lightning bolts and cold fronts back and forth across the Pearl District, and… Well, no, they don’t, but we can all agree that this would do wonders for tourism) each one hand picked from the region’s bad boys of weather. Oft-run promos at this time of year feature each member of the given station’s storm team standing confidently in a crisp suit, superimposed over footage of snowbound streets as the authoritative announcer reads his or (rarely) her credentials. Amid all this action movie posturing, the weather person in question is nodding smugly, as if to say, “I’ve got your number, weather. Don’t you try anything on my watch.” After watching one of these commercials, I get sort of jazzed up about man versus nature. I think to myself, “Sure, everybody talks about the weather and nobody does anything about it – except for Matt Zaffino, chief meteorologist. Matt Zaffino makes weather his bitch.”

*You’ve got to respect how hard it is for the news station editors when it comes to finding footage of snowbound Oregon streets. Pretty much all they have is the candid footage of the car sliding down the hill and hitting all the parked cars, and the two people in mittens chaining up a car. After that, they have to default to shots of people skiing on Mt. Hood, or pictures of a computer running Oregon Trail when you get caught in a blizzard.

Right now, every storm team has agreed that everyone between Alaska and Mexico is straight up fucked this weekend. It seems like every time I turn on the TV there’s another frantic weatherman pointing at swirly computer rendered graphics, attempting to explain in no uncertain terms that God is going to personally rape all of us with snow, and that only by sticking close to the TV can we hope to be safe. This, in turn, has whipped everyone else into a frenzy, and now all anyone can talk about is the impending snowgasm. Rumors of up to three inches (which may not sound like much to some of you from more snow-prone parts of the country, but just apply the dog-years rule to every inch of Oregon snow and you’ll understand how much havoc it wreaks out here) have been fluttering around all week, and I’ve watched many people hastily redraw their plans for fear of getting caught in a Donner Party-esque situation.

The problem is, the snow isn’t coming. The first forecasts predicted snow on Thursday night, and here it is Saturday night with nary a flake to show for it. My friends in Salem have mentioned a dusting of sorts, but so far I feel slightly cheated by our storm teams. When snow didn’t come Thursday, they told us that we’d be screwed on Friday, when we weren’t screwed on Friday, they told us to wait for Saturday, and although I was waiting patiently to be screwed all day today, it didn’t happen. Of course, tomorrow is now the big day, but at this rate I imagine we’ll be hunkering down for a snowstorm in July.

But, as with any other kind of news, it behooves the storm teams to assume the worst and keep us scared. If we think there’s going to be a snowpocalypse, we’re far more likely to stay indoors, and so long as we’re indoors we may as well be watching TV, and if we’re watching TV we may as well be looking to see what the storm team has to say about it. And if, in fact, there is no coming snowpocalypse? Well, hey – the ratings come through the same whether it’s snowing or not.

So if you’re putting off driving to the supermarket because you don’t have a snowmobile, take heed: Rain’s awesome (yet dangerous) cousin may not be coming to visit us this year, and if you disobey Matt Zaffino and go outside, I’m predicting a 25% chance that he won’t try to kill you in his sleep.

Truman Capps doesn’t have anywhere to go anyway, so snow or lack thereof will have little effect on him save for amusement at the suffering of others. Merry Christmas!

An Open Letter To Amtrak, And Also Greyhound

Dear Amtrak,

So my last class of finals week was over today at 5:00 – understanding this, and rightfully wanting a way to get home, I went onto your website in hopes of booking a bus or train ticket back to Portland. However, I was thwarted, because the last Amtrak to leave Eugene that day left at 2:50 PM.

Let me explain something, Amtrak. Let me explain something that you probably won’t understand, because you’re not terribly smart. People – and I’m referring here to your customers – tend to travel – and I’m referring here to an activity that your company generally caters to – during certain hours of the day. For example, I was fully willing to give you $26 so I could sit on one of your buses and ride to Portland. However, you seem to be under the impression that nobody wants to go anywhere after 2:50 in the afternoon. And, I mean, that’s cool; you’re clearly a bunch of suck-fucking idiots with no regard for your customer base, because hey – you’re a government owned monopoly and your stockholders receive basically no benefits anyway, so why actually try to provide a service? Staying in business for you is like taking a class Pass/No Pass: So long as you don’t make a boo-boo of absolutely breathtaking proportions, you can slack as much as you want and still get by. All I’m saying is, I think I’ve solved the mystery as to why the United States has one of the lowest inter-city rail usages in the developed world. It’s because you really just have no motivation to try – you’re the 17-year-old Burger King night shift manager of national transportation. You know that nobody cares, so you just dick around and wait for your paycheck. I have to say, I’d probably do the same thing if my board of directors had to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, because clearly nobody is going out of business when the top levels of government are taking such a heavy interest. All I’m saying is, maybe you ought to spend some money to make some money. Maybe you hire, like, two more drivers, and have, like, two more buses come through a major college town in the week that thousands of people want to go home and are willing to pay people to help them accomplish that goal.

But again, you guys are idiots, and so this probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you. All you guys know is that people keep using you for intercity travel because you suck less than Greyhound – which isn’t hard, considering the fact that I can think of at least three East African genocides that sucked less than Greyhound.

Holla back,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

And, while I’m at it…

Dear Greyhound,

Hey there, you. No hard feelings after our previous brouhaha? Yeah, that’s cool – I still hate you guys too. Thing is, I took a Greyhound home today because of Amtrak’s seeming aversion to convenience, even though I swore I would never again touch your sorrowful excuse for a company after several previous experiences left me irreparably scarred and highly distrustful of my fellow hygienically-challenged man. I really wanted to return home today, rather than wait for when it was convenient for Amtrak to do its job, so I decided to suck it up and buy a Greyhound ticket. After all, I thought to myself, how bad could it be? Let’s give them a second chance.

The first thing I saw as I got on the bus was an overweight, middle-aged Hispanic lady thoroughly covering her head in a thick fog of hairspray. The first things I smelled were urine, exhaust, stale vomit, body odor, and then hairspray. So, the good news is that the smell of bodily functions and petroleum byproducts travels faster than hairspray. The bad news was that I had to share a bus with a woman who could think of no better time to deploy a veritable chemical weapon on her own head than when she was sharing a tightly enclosed space with 40 people.

But what will keep me awake tonight (besides the old standard – glorious, glorious Internet pornography) is this: Hairspray is a beauty product. With my, let us say, considerable knowledge of haircare, I can confirm that hairspray is not meant to be used recreationally, but instead as a beauty product intended to make oneself more attractive. So this woman was applying a beauty product with the intent of making herself more attractive to potential mates – fine. But how desperate to you have to be to try and impress guys on a Greyhound? For God’s sake, you can just stand outside your nearest prison and wait for the first parolee who walks out the door; that way you’re at least saving yourself the cost of a bus ticket.

And I’m not saying there’s anything that you could do about this, Greyhound. Your driver shouldn’t have to enforce basic human decency on his riders, and even if he did it’d be awfully hard for him to do anything from behind that plexiglass Hannibal Lecter cell you keep him in. All I’m saying is, these things don’t happen on Amtrak buses. And I doubt it’s because of Amtrak – as you may have noticed, they’re pretty much operating on luck and the fact that their buses are cleaner. I just think you guys should do some studies as to why people who ride Greyhound seem more inclined to cover themselves in hairspray, or clap and cheer loudly when the bus reaches its destination, or write off bathing for the day. The results could definitely be interesting.

Love,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Down With The Sickness 2: Kingdom of the Crystal Rash

Is there a Photoshop doctor in the house?

I don’t get sick very often. It’s just not really a thing that I do. It could be because I wash my hands a lot, or maybe I just say “No!” to the very notion of illness, but I’ve almost always been a remarkably healthy individual. This was not always the case, however – when my family lived in Longview, Washington, I used to get sick all the time. However, we moved to Salem when I was seven, and it was in that same year that my parents made me an appointment to have my tonsils taken out – perhaps as a grand, misguided “I’m sorry for making you live in Salem” present. I was doubtful at the time, but looking back I can’t tell you how great having a big chunk of your throat cut out is for your health. Although at the time I was rather attached – emotionally and physically – to the little guys, it turns out that my tonsils were really just holding me back in life. Once they were removed, I was on the fast track to success – by which I mean, vice presidency of the high school speech team and little to no feminine contact for a prolonged period of time. But I was healthy, damn it.

I’ve found that throughout my education, there have always been students who are just plain prone to sickness, and who would absolutely drop off the scholastic radar for weeks at a time with one crippling illness after another. Whenever one of these illness-prone classmates would return, I’d always be disappointed that they looked about the same as they had when they’d left; no robot body, no genetic mutations, no missing limbs. As a generally anti-germ, pro-health kind of guy, I had little understanding of what these people were going through, and as politically incorrect as it was, a tiny part of me secretly regarded them as pussies. They, in the opinion of this tiny, callous, unlikeable portion of my psyche, would do well to follow my example and just not get sick. At some level, I felt like they had it easy – I would gladly have submitted to any number of flesh-eating-viruses if it meant I wouldn’t have to spend another day at Sprague High School.

Being sick in college, as I’ve mentioned before, is a different kettle of fish entirely. It’s one thing to be in Mom’s care when you start having bizarre symptoms, because ultimately she is the one who makes the call as to whether you go to the emergency room or not when you grow a third arm out of your chest. When you’re on your own, you have to make that decision and live with the consequences. Incidentally, I’d vote that you stick with the third arm, because it’d make for an awesome cup holder.

I had the privilege of being sick this past week, and coming out on the other end of it, now mostly cured, I can look back and sympathize with my sickly classmates. The whole affair started last Saturday, when I woke up at 6:00 AM with a pounding headache and a pronounced desire to throw up. My first instinct was to call the University health center, but it seems that they don’t open until 10:00 AM on Saturdays – y’know, because they figure that all 20,000 college students at UO were being really responsible the night before and were in no need of medical treatment or consultation. In lieu of an actual doctor, I did the next best thing and called the 24-hour nurse hotline that the school provides.


These nurses, I regret to inform you, are not naughty. Or, at least, the one I talked to wasn’t. For all I know, though, she could have been a naughty nurse who was going to medical school and had been studying for an important exam when she got my call, and, well, hey – excuse me while I write down my new idea for an awesome TV show.

The nurse I spoke to told me that what I had didn’t sound too serious, and so I refrained from visiting the health center. Lo and behold, not too long later my urge to puke dissipated, and I spent the rest of the day nursing an unpleasant headache. Still, though, I consider the day to be a success overall, because any day that I don’t throw up is a success in my eyes. It’s a real “Glass half full of Pepto Bismol” way of looking at things, because by this logic even my senior prom was a raging success.

On Sunday I woke up sans-headache but feeling dizzy. This was perplexing, as I’ve been pretty good at walking for the past 18 years or so. Admittedly, I’ve tripped and fell a few times when I shouldn’t have, but overall I’d still give myself a solid B+ in walking, and the sudden onset of dizziness is not something I’m used to. I would have gone to the health center to have this checked out, but as it happens the health center is closed on Sundays – but that’s cool, because it’s scientifically proven that people don’t get sick on Sunday. They’ve got God looking out for them, what do they need with modern medicine? By the end of the day, my headache had returned, and after consulting WebMD I became convinced that I was dying of meningitis, the symptoms of which include fever and dizziness.

(In addition to vomiting, severe muscle cramps, and the inability to touch your chin to your chest – I wasn’t experiencing these, but I assumed that I would be soon enough. Also, I’ve had a meningitis vaccine, but I figured that the industrious bacteria had found a way around it. I mean, germs do some crazy shit these days, after all.)

One of my childhood friends got meningitis when she was three or four. The infection spread quickly and she had to be airlifted to OHSU, where her legs were amputated to save her life. This story has always scared the living crap out of me and the hyperliving crap out of my mother, and we’ve both always been a little jumpy around the subject. Therefore, to possibly have meningitis while all alone was a really terrifying experience for me – not only was I scared of losing my legs, but I was also scared of Mom getting pissed at me for not going to a hospital sooner when I found out that I had meningitis symptoms.

The next morning I showed up at the health center ten minutes before they opened. A nurse opened the door for me.

“Have you got an appointment?” She smiled.

“No, but I think I’ve got meningitis.”

She laughed in my face – setting the tone for my experiences with the health center over the next few days – and let me in, pointing out that if I had meningitis I’d probably be dead already. I recounted my symptoms to a receptionist, who sent me in to see a nurse, who promptly diagnosed my ailment as a virus that had been going around a lot and urged me to return if things got worse.

Five hours later, walking through the 38 degree winter day to get to class, I started to sweat profusely. No good reason for it, just nonstop, inexplicable sweating. I took this as a sign that things were getting worse and went to the health center, where I sat in an examining room and sweated for 10 minutes until a nurse came in.

“So,” She said flatly, her eyes darting down to my chart. “You’re… Sweating.”

I instantly felt like an idiot for going to the health center with such an obnoxiously stupid symptom, and began to apologetically sweat through my shirt. The nurse left and a doctor returned, who seemed none too pleased to be visiting “the sweat guy.”

“So,” She said flatly, her eyes darting down to my chart. “You’re… Sweating.”

I tried as best I could to explain why I felt like this was a dire situation, and for her part she listened patiently before telling me that this was most likely an anxiety attack brought on by the fear that I had meningitis. It seems that the story of my misguided fears of meningitis had spread through the health center with all the ruthless tenacity of, well… Meningitis.

After examining me with a stethoscope, she crossed her arms and sighed, defeated. “Well,” She said. “You are pretty sweaty.”

That’s what she said.

She told me to get some more rest and sent me home to sleep.

And sleep I did, for a good three to four hours. When I woke up, I was no longer sweating and my headache was gone. However, my arms and legs itched like crazy, and when I turned on the lights I found that a giant red rash had begun to spread across my body.

(“No, Mom, I can’t come to dinner!” My reader shouts down the stairs. “I’ve got to finish reading this update! He just started talking about his rash! This is off the hook!”)

I spent the evening futilely rubbing various creams and ointments all over the afflicted areas with little to no success. For one thing, rashes were springing up faster than I could apply soothing cream, and also, the soothing cream was about as effective as rubbing a raw steak all over my rash, although not nearly as fragrant. As I made myself slipperier and slipperier with cream, I wondered if I had inadvertently joined the “Symptom of the Day Club,” After headache, nausea, sweating, and itching, I had no idea what I’d get next, although I considered pustules to be very likely.

After a poor night’s sleep – it is very hard to concentrate on sleep, or anything for that matter, when you want to rip your own skin off – I returned to the health center, sat down in front of the receptionist, rolled up my sleeve, and was finally taken seriously. I was ushered to an examining room, where a nurse oohed and aahed over the size and breadth of the rash, and shortly thereafter provided me with a shot glass full of bright pink antihistamine liquid, which made me sleepier than even my 12:00 Humanities lecture. I moved through everything else in a daze – the trip to get my blood drawn, the half hour I spent in the waiting room while they tested my very complicated, multifaceted blood, and other half hour I spent in an examining room while doctors poured over the results of my blood, which were clearly better than anyone else’s, given my blood’s inherent superiority. In the end, the doctor wrote me a prescription for over-the-counter antihistamine Zyrtec (she may as well have written me a prescription for a glass of water, too) and sent me home to sleep it all off.

I slept the sleep of antihistamine-infused kings, only waking up to a brisk “Shave and a haircut” knock on the door of my apartment. Thanks to my drug induced state, I figured that the only people who would knock so obnoxiously would be my friends, and that my friends would be willing to see me in my standard sleeping attire of boxer shorts and T-shirt. I stumbled to the door and flung it open, blinking in the early afternoon light.

Standing before me were two of the most beautiful, pristine Mormon girls you could ever want to see, clad in matching black pea-coats. Their smiles wavered slightly when they caught sight of my near-nudity, and wavered even more when, upon realizing my error, I shouted “Shit! Fuck! Jesus!” and halfway closed the door in search of my pants. I returned to the door wearing a pair of jeans, and one of them began to launch into a sales pitch for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I stopped her halfway, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think you can tell by now that I’m not really the sort of person who’ll buy what you’re selling.” They didn’t argue, and left without incident; like most women who have seen me without pants on, they were in a hurry to get away.

I look back on these experiences – itching, headaches, near vomiting, ridicule from the health center, and the very real possibility that the Mormon church has put me on a watch list of some sort – and am floored with sympathy for my ailment-prone high school classmates. After what I experienced in two days, I’d much rather go to school.

Truman Capps doesn’t have the rash anymore, ladies.

Energy Drinks

As seen in the Oregon Daily Emerald!

For someone with so few vices, I tend to worry an awful lot about addiction. I don't smoke (this includes the wacky tobacky as well as the regular kind), I am a social drinker at best, and the one picture of me the Emerald keeps printing makes it tough for me to indulge in loose women, no matter how hard I may try. Seriously, take a look at that thing - it's like I'm out on work release.

But I digress.

One of my great fears is getting hooked on a substance that is bad for my health. To be honest, this is the reason I avoid so many college vices, for better or for worse. That includes the aforementioned smoking and drinking, as well as another increasingly conspicuous college habit: the energy drink. Here's my challenge to you, reader: Take a look around and count how many people you see with energy drinks the next time you're in public, especially on campus. The number may surprise you. Back in the '80s, people did cocaine when they wanted a pick-me-up; now we've got the same idea in a can without the runny nose afterward.

I've been wary of energy drinks because of the power they claim to have. As a lazy person, I'm easily distracted and prone to abandoning my work in favor of my XBox or a re-run of MacGyver. This very column was written the day before my deadline. Sure, I'd like to have the work ethic to get everything done ahead of time, but with Gears of War 2 now in wide release, I doubt that will ever happen. Thus, the prospect of a magical elixir that gives the drinker energy and motivation is appealing, but my fear was that after one energy drink, I'd get so hooked on the miracles they worked for my study habits that I wouldn't be able to study without them. To be perfectly honest, my diet isn't terribly healthy as is, and the last thing I need is 12-ounces or more of raw caffeine and sugar every day.

It was a few days ago that I finally broke down and had my first energy drink experience. I was studying with a friend in the library and found myself unable to stay awake - probably the result of the

MacGyver episode I'd watched the night before in lieu of sleeping an extra hour. The test for which we were studying was important and I didn't want to miss out on any of the review, so I ran downstairs and bought a 12-ounce Red Bull from the café.

I stayed awake for the rest of the study session and did pretty well on the test the next day. For that, I'd say that can of Red Bull was pretty useful; it gave me the energy to keep my eyes open, and I did my part by continuing to study for another hour and not throwing up.

However, drinking the Red Bull did not turn me into a genius, nor did it make all my homework worries go away. As it turns out, energy drinks are not a miracle cure for school-related stress, nor are they particularly healthy. Red Bull is banned in Denmark and Norway because of health concerns, and in 2000 an 18-year-old Irish basketball player died on the court after drinking four Red Bulls before the game. French scientists discovered that when lab rats were fed concentrated doses of taurine, an amino acid present in every can of Red Bull, the rats displayed a higher incidence of irritability, anxiety and self-mutilation. These facts aside, I can't argue with the fact that if not for Red Bull I would have slept through a very valuable study session.

In my opinion, the key difference between death and not falling asleep is moderation. The boost in alertness that an energy drink gives can be useful when you need to go the extra mile at the end of an all-nighter, but drinking one or four of them will not give you wings (it could, however, give you high blood pressure).

I don't plan on having another Red Bull anytime soon, but if I find myself falling asleep at an inopportune time during finals week, I'll probably buy one to help get me through the day. I won't pound down two or three more, though, much for the same reason that I don't drink a gallon of water whenever I'm thirsty, or eat 15 Chalupas every time I go to Taco Bell.

Consuming a high enough level of anything will almost always have negative results, but energy drinks - much like drugs and alcohol - just might give you those results faster. Think about this before your next pre-exam Red Bull binge, and remember, always energize responsibly.