For Republicans, the party is over. (It was lame anyway)

Republicans, your party is out of control.

The keg is foaming. The moochers have devoured the last of the guacamole dip, and the neighbors are one more loud Jars of Clay song from calling the cops on you. And the night started out so good.

Remember how easily you put Al Gore in his place? You made him look like a pompous twit! (It helped that he was already a pompous twit, but who noticed?) And then, just for an encore, you did the same to John Kerry, even though he didn’t really need the help.

Break out the ceremonial GOP beer bong!

You guys looked so tough! You sneered, bullied, scoffed, and you got people to believe that your sour outlook on the world was just a matter of “telling it like it is.” You stood up to those terrorist bastards. Anyone who whined about their fractured liberties, you reminded them who was in charge: You.

It was all good. We like strong leaders. Guys who never admit mistakes. Guys who take names later – just so they’d have something to write on the toe tag. When anybody raised a stink, you simply quoted some Scripture. Good move! The Bible study groups paid off big dividends when you were justifying your war against the Muslim hoards.

Except, you know, when you take the high road, you have a longer way to fall.

Like when you told your followers that you were the stewards of financial responsibility, and then you busted the bank on a worthless war. Or when you styled yourself as morality’s security guard, and then watched your captains fall in one seedy disgrace after another. What do you even stand for anymore?

Yep. It’s all falling apart.

And you know what? No silver lining! I mean, who’s in charge? John McCain? He’s undead, for crying out loud. Newt Gingrich? Not even Mrs. Gingrich – all three of them – wants to see Newt calling the shots. Mike Huckabee? The guy believes that the Earth is 5000 years old, for Christ’s sake! Jesus, no!

Didn't Jesus do something with fish, too?
I think this is a sign!

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was your Golden Boy. Hell, just this April the liberal mouthpiece Newsweek was giddily hailing Sanford as the new face of Conservatism. He was cheap! He was churchy! He didn’t want to take any stimulus money, even at the expense of his dirt-poor constituents. Sanford was the anti-Obama. He was the non-Clinton.

Actually, in some ways, he is the Ultra-Clinton. After all, Bill settled for fat local interns. Sanford traveled to freaking South America for his philandering. The best part? He’s positioning himself as a hopeless romantic! A Don Juan who simply got caught up in a “love story.” Let’s pray for him while he finds the courage to try to fall in love with his wife again. Why, Mark Sanford is just like King David! How do I know? Because he said he was.

Mark Sanford, seen here receiving the
Presidential Handshake of Doom

So at least the Pubes have Sarah Palin. Like the Republican greats, she sticks to her guns! She gives those liberals what for! She’s like a pit bull, but she wears lipstick! Sarah may not be what you’d call “book smart,” but she sure as hell has pluck. And she never, ever quits!

Wait. She did quit! Why? Because people are mean! Because she just wasn’t built for “politics as usual.” Because she’s a maverick! Because governing one of the country’s least populated states was too damned hard.

And Palin’s the future of the Pachyderms! A woman who packs it in as soon as the going gets tough! Palin was high-and-mighty when she was pushing around local librarians. She wilted as soon as the Lower 48 began to push back. This is your future, Republicans!

Sarah freed up time to fish with Mike Huckabee

If you can take comfort in anything it is this: We had our lean times, too. We had Walter Mondale, remember? And Mike Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. We had Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, and Screaming Howard Dean. We Democrats have had our own share of zeroes, but look! One of our guys is calling the shots now.

Sometimes you just have to be patient. Patience got us Al Franken.*




*For the record, Al Franken isn’t funny. His “book,” Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Liar, was the dullest book of comedy ever hacked out of a Brother word processor. I get it, Franken. Limbaugh is fat. I can’t believe you wrote an entire book about it. Stuart Smally was funny. Once.



###

Prison Is Not Very Nice

I have this book, The Big Book of Crime it’s called. The cover says otherwise, but I swear it’s written by The Count on Sesame Street. Every other sentence is punctuated with an exclamation point. You can almost hear an “ah HA!” after each point is made.

However, the author (The Count) makes at least one memorable observation. He states that while crime can be easily absorbed by society, it tends to utterly destroy the criminal himself.

Which got me thinking about Bernie Madoff.

Bernie hurt a lot of people. Now he’s going to prison. Prison! For 150 years. At the gorgeous age of 71. What a grisly fate!

Future Prison-Bitch of the Month

I tried to imagine it. I’m Bernie Madoff. Not long ago, I lived in a Manhattan penthouse. My building paid a man just to open the door. I hobnobbed with members of the social elite, and I dined on food with unpronounceable names. I was filthy-stinking rich, and I didn’t know how the “other-half” lived because I barely knew the other-half existed. As far as I know, the boy parking my car is a robot.

And then, wham! A quantum leap into prison, where everything isn’t very nice. Maybe he thinks his advanced age will spare him some of prison’s indignities. Perhaps his hardcore Wall Street thievery will earn him points with the Ayran Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, and the Black Guerilla Family. Why, as an educated man, Bernie could be the prison librarian! Like the old guy in Shawshank. He could even assuage his guilty conscious by teaching a gang-member or two how to read.

I don’t think a library position is in Bernie’s future. I think the fetal position is Bernie’s future.

Bernie will make good friends, like Bogs Diamond.

Here’s my strategy should I ever find myself going to prison. If Bernie wants to, he can borrow it: During recreation time, when everybody is hanging out in the prison yard, I’ll stand atop a work-out bench and calmly address my fellow inmates.

“Gentlemen! My name is Angry Czeck. Granted, I am not here to make friends. But neither am I here to make enemies! I only wish to pay my debt to society in peace. I’ll treat you fair if you do the same for me. Have we reached an understanding?”

And then my new best friends will realize that all the cigarette branding, raping, and eye gouging is just so much counter-productive, macho bullshit. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these men found inner-peace in ballroom dancing.

I don’t think even Ron Howard would film that scenario. Bernie should just face it – he’s small, he’s weak, he’s infamous, and his roommates have nothing better to do than to kick the crap out of him. As one “prison expert” on CNN put it, “He’s gonna get assaulted.”

Outside of Hollywood, warm-and-fuzzy inmates
are in short supply.

Really, I can’t think of a worse place than prison. You're just surrounded by goons. In the movies, you always find a group of lovable, scruffy, good-natured prisoners who like to sketch birds and play wind instruments. In real prison, it's packed wall-to-wall with psychos who wouldn't know how to build a sandwhich let alone build a normal relationship with a human being. I get nervous in a Wal-Mart, let alone in a cafeteria where somebody has a shiv for you. And I haven’t even gotten to the most unnerving aspect.

Wait for it.

PRISON RAPE.

Egah! Unless Bernie devises a scheme for tripling cigarette rations real quick, I have a feeling he’s going to get passed around like a campfire jug of whiskey. These are supposed to be your golden years, Bernie! Now your life is just an episode of Oz.

This guy has never heard of a Ponzi Scheme.
He does, however, know how to toss a salad.

Bernie ruined a lot of lives, true, but his victims at least retain the peace-of-mind knowing that they won’t be tabbed as Cell Block H’s pony boy anytime soon. Society absorbed Bernie’s crime with barely a flinch, but Bernie has been destroyed – in addition to whatever the inmates of whichever prison decide to do to him.

There is some hope for Bernie. With good behavior, he can be eligible for a 15% reduction of his sentence. That leaves him only 127 years in the slam.



###

So you can move on now: Angry Czeck Eulogizes Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson died a weirdo.

That might have been enough an epitaph were it not for 1983, when Michael Jackson introduced us to a new manner of motion never before imagined for the human body. Today, a moonwalk seems as pedestrian as flipping the channels on a television. Twenty-five years ago, it was like watching David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear.

We rubbed the sole-pattern off our Kangaroo sneakers trying the moonwalk for ourselves. You’d catch awkward white kids moonwalking in the cereal aisle at Kroger, backing into cranky old ladies. If you wore a single sequenced glove to school, you weren’t beaten with a socket wrench. You were cool.

Such was the power of 1983 Michael Jackson.

Unlike the tracks on Purple Rain, most of the songs on Thriller haven’t aged particularly well. Billy Jean and Beat It hold up, but PYT and The Girl Is Mine is kind of embarrassing. And Thriller, with its corny cameo from Vincent Price, seems a little over-produced now, like a Disney Cruises musical.

By 2009, MJ didn't need make-up to look like this.

And yet, in 1983, Thriller was the gold standard. With it, Michael Jackson re-invented the music video, taking them out of the hands of film school grad students and into the edit suites of big name directors. Trillions of people even watched the making of the Thriller video. That’s how good it was. We wanted to see how it was made.

Madonna never had that kind of impact.

But she was close. (Like a Prayer video? Starring in Body of Evidence?) With Michael Jackson, you had to settle for being close, for he was the Julius Caesar of the 1980’s Pop Triumvirate – Prince, Madonna and MJ. Eerily, they are all the same age, all three dominated the 1980s, and each one cursed with weirdness.

Of course, only MJ could out-weird The Symbol. It wasn’t easy. He needed the weird hyperbolic sleeping chamber, the monkey, the tricked out mansion that looked suspiciously like Pleasure Island out of Pinocchio. And when that wasn’t enough, alleged pedophilia would have to do.

In 1983, nobody would see it coming. For real, there was a time in human history when Michael Jackson seemed to have it all put together. Sure, the guy sounded strangely like Marilyn Monroe during interviews, but if you closed your eyes, you could envision MJ doing normal superstar things – collecting DUIs and banging hot groupies. We wanted to be Michael Jackson.

Then he released Bad. Here’s the thing: you could suspend your disbelief and imagine MJ a ladies man. But there was no way in hell we’d believe he was bad. The video did nothing to help – pretty boys tied to the wrist with silk neckties, dancing atop cars, pretending to have a knife fight. And in the center? Michael Jackson, grabbing his crotch in a bizarrely effete attempt to prevent a crowd of pretty boys from rumbling. The only thing missing was a cameo from Liza Minelli.

Not exactly your dream BFF.

Speaking of which, MJ didn’t exactly hang out with a cool posse. Pretty much, it was Liza, an ancient and bloated Elizabeth Taylor, and McCauley Culkin. If Michael Jackson worked hard to make us want to be him, he seemed to work even harder to alienate us. At one point, he was a ride at the Epcot Center.

Yet, the power of 1983 Michael Jackson was too enormous to totally evaporate into the ether. Pepsi set the man’s hair on fire, and yet we continued to moonwalk and grab our own crotches, because there was something invitingly superhuman about Michael Jackson. When LaToya posed for Playboy, we bought every damn copy just to take a peak at those Jackson boobs. He even made his sister Janet seem normal. The only thing MJ couldn’t do was make people like Jermaine.

What he could do, however, was convince parents to let their kids sleep over at Neverland.

The Monkey Insurgency recruited MJ a long time ago.

It’s easy to blast the intelligence of the parents. But when the King of Pop speaks, I imagine you just assume everything is kosher. After all, The Enquirer practically had Airwolf watching MJ’s every move. What’s MJ going to do? Fill a Pepsi can full of wine, call it Jesus Juice, and hand it to your 10 year old son?

Sadly, that answer was “Yep.”

It’s funny how Michael Jackson’s death has been greeted. Personally, I’ve noted that people without kids are far more devastated by MJ’s demise than people who have kids. I’m a parent. The thought of my sons in Michael Jackson’s bed, drinking wine, and spooning the Peter Pan of Pop makes we want to punch Tito Jackson in the face right now.

Sorry, Tito. You have to accept the savage beat-down

I didn't have a chance to administer to MJ.

Michael Jackson died a weirdo. His face became distorted and undead, like something that danced in the background of his own Thriller video. He popped out of limos wearing surgical masks. He dangled infants from balconies, and he married Lisa Marie Presley, which even creeped her out. To make up for it, he divorced Lisa and married the ugliest woman in the whole world. Oh yeah, he also beat a pair of child molestation raps.

And the Angry Czeck is going to miss the guy. I was waiting for the comeback album. I wanted to see Michael Jackson – a man a mere five-years younger than my father – moonwalk across the stage as though he had somehow disengaged himself from Earth’s gravity. We’d never have 1983 Michael Jackson again, but I’d settle for just one more hit song.

Instead, I’m left waiting for a toxicology report and watching Nancy Grace pretend she gives a crotch-grab about Michael Jackson’s kids.




****

Angry Birds and Angry Bees: AC Explains Sex

Like most men, I don’t know much about sex, except I’m reasonably sure where it goes and where it could go. That's more than enough expertise to yield two kids. But honestly, I think my sons will expect more explanation about sex when the time comes.

And they will need an explanation.

Right now, I'm sticking with the Weasel Answer: “Why, sex is something that happens between two people who love each other.” You know, like sex is a game of Scrabble™. Eventually, my boys are going to want specifics.

The Angry Czeck is not prepared to discuss
the Hunka Chunka.

I know a man – a exceedingly nice and spiritual man – who would rather his kids watch a graphic, bloody murder on television than sex. He doesn’t see sex as a beautiful function of pleasure and procreation, but as some kind of corrupting act. It was more moral to kill than to be laid.

My friend has three daughters. I have two sons. Maybe that’s where I have it easy. Because when it comes to The Deed, chicks are screwed. Despite all the church-camps in the world (or maybe because of them), boys are conditioned to seek carnal pleasure, keeping score amongst their cronies in the constant reliving of triumphant pantie raids. Meanwhile, women are on eternal guard of their virtue, chained by social chastity belts, as though the pleasure of sex is one-sided in favor of men.

Then again, a young woman recently put her virginity up for auction. The latest bid eclipsed several million dollars. Maybe there is true value to virtue?

For some parents, graphic death is
better than graphic sex

In my teenage years, I didn’t give a rat's ass about my virtue. As far as I was concerned, virtue was a quality for which I had an intolerable excess. I'd have traded in my virtue points just to cop a feel. In those hormonally slippery days, I envisioned a perfectly lit, artistically composed, surgically enhanced, gate-folded idea of what I wanted. And if I wasn’t such a terminal teenage dork, I might have been in some danger of obtaining the non-fiction version of it.

I can’t count on my sons being terminal dorks.

I had a friend in college who was the proverbial Box of Porn Man – he owned a pile of grainy porno VHS tapes stored in a brown, cardboard box. One of the titles was Action Orientals, which was smartly named as it features Asian women performing assorted action.

Sex Ed. from Professor Box-Of-Porn-Man.

Today, you don’t need a Box of Porn Man. An Internet connection and a door with a lock will suffice just as well. Did you know that there is an entire circle of people who are stimulated by SaranWrap?

I didn’t need to know that bad, but I know, and I’m not sure how long I can keep my sons from knowing.

One year, for reasons lost in the ether of history, Angry Mom gave my Angry Dad a subscription to Playboy Magazine for his birthday. Angry Dad kept each month’s edition neatly stacked on the end table next to his recliner. My brother and I were handed down an unbreakable edict: DO NOT TOUCH ANGRY DAD’S PLAYBOY MAGAZINES.

For months, my brother and I watched the stack grow on Angry Dad’s end table, like a snake charmer's cobra uncoiling out of its wicker basket. By month seven, we were ready to execute an elaborate periodical hijacking that involved dynamite, hang gliders, Judo, and a disguise. However, curious circumstances arose that negated the necessity of this plan.

Once evening, Angry Mom and Angry Dad left the house to attend a pool party.

“Don’t touch my Playboys,” said Angry Dad before leaving, a grave warning in his tone. After assuring him that his magazines would remain unmolested, my brother and I waited at least five minutes before dividing the stack between us.

The treasures that lay within! Boobs, butts, boobs, hoo-has, boobs – Playboy was a publication that had it all! Angry Dad’s collection of Playboy Magazines was a carnal-rich bonanza that fulfilled a number of pubescent issues for me. It was a coup worthy of several high-fives, which my brother and me could only execute in spirit, as we were too occupied by glossy gatefolds. 2-D Chicks ahoy!

LaToya played a major roll in Angry Czeck's upbringing.

We made sure that each magic magazine was returned neatly to its original station before the car headlights splashed the walls. What a perfect crime! Angry Dad didn’t even glance at the Playboys when he arrived home. And why would he? My brother and I were the Zeus and Jupiter of sneaking peaks at dirty magazines.

The next afternoon, Angry Dad demanded an audience with us.

“Did you look at my Playboys?” he asked, using a very sincere, Abraham Lincoln voice.

“No! No way. You said not to.”

“Are you sure?”

Well, crap. I was already going to Hell for getting my jollys with Dad’s softcore porn. You’d think I’d have the wherewithal to stick to my guns. No dice. I surrendered like a Frenchman.

“How did you know?” I wanted to know. I couldn’t believe it. My brother and I had covered our tracks like Apaches. I half suspected Angry Dad to pull put a fingerprinting kit.

Instead, he produced a sliver of cellophane – a piece of wrapper from a package of Kool cigarettes. Comprehension arrived instantly. Angry Dad had placed it between the pages of one of his magazines. In my mind, I could see the cellophane flittering to the floor, unnoticed.

Having had successfully executed his Hardy Boy trick, Angry Dad delivered a not-too-convincing speech concerning the evils of objectifying women. It was a bizarre message coming from a guy with a stack of Playboy Magazines. I don’t think Angry Dad took it very seriously. He was just delighted that his goofy trap had worked.

The Nuclear Nipple that blasted us all the Hell.

I have no desire to execute a similar snare for my sons. I want to be forthright on the topic, but we’re such a prickly, uptight, Puritanical society. Miss California poses for a few mildly salacious pictures that don’t even yield a nipple, and there’s righteous outrage. Janet Jackson has a wardrobe malfunction, and the nation is hurled into a moral tailspin. We’re a country of 12-year-olds too immature to deal with sex.

The Angry Family® is no exception. Mrs. Angry was shopping at Wal-Greens for a tube of KY only to find that all the lubricants were under lock-and-key. You had to ask the pharmacist to grab you a tube. Mrs Angry was too embarrassed to request a box of "KY Intense™, please," from some old guy behind the counter. (Or maybe she didn't want him distracted from counting the Viagra™.)

Intense on your privates. Intense to buy.

Regardless, I wish she hadn't been sheepish, because I enjoy sex. Yep. It's the stuff, all right! One day, my son's will enjoy it too. But when? At what stage in life is dabbling in Nature's ultimate gift of pleasure appropriate? Is there a time and place? Or are we just waaaaay over-thinking it?

I know several people who waited until marriage before committing to sex. I find that quaintly romantic and sweet. And I mean that sincerely, but I can’t expect my sons to wait because I didn’t wait. (High five!) I have no regrets.

So what will I say to my sons?

You know what? I’d like my two boys to become like Tommy Ross from Carrie. Remember Tommy? He was the nice-as-hell guy who gamely takes Carrie White to the high school prom. He’s the most popular guy at school. But instead of being a jackass, he’s one hell of a guy. And I got the feeling that Tommy could have any girl he wanted in high school. But instead of plucking the low hanging fruit, Tommy dated the intellectual. The good girl. The girl you respect.

And I think that’s what I’ll tell my sons. Be like Tommy Ross.

My Real American Hero

I’ll tell them that that while sex is not a sin, it is something that is personal and beautiful. I’ll tell them that sex is something you share with someone you respect. Love is preferential, but respect is essential – without it, you Don't Pass Go or Third Base. Don’t ever let sex make a fool of you, and never allow sex to make a fool of someone else. Furthermore, wear a rubber, even if the school nurse refuses to give you one.

And if you can’t handle that, then by golly I know where I can find a stack of Playboys for you.







XXX

I like guns. Morons, not so much.

Erika Eleniak: “I hate guns.”
Steven Segal: (cradling a machine gun) “So do I. So do I.”
Under Siege


You could tell Steve was lying to get in Erika’s pants. Look at the scene. Look at the way Steve holds the machine gun. That’s love, man.

I kinda love guns, too.

Most men, at the very least, kinda love guns. How can you own a pair of hairy-balls and not appreciate the destructive power of a firearm? BAM! Melons burst in an explosion of fruity guts. POW! KA-BLAM! BANG!

I just used some of the finest words in the English dictionary.

Every boy who has watched a cowboy movie has grown to become a man, squirming in a church pew, imagining armed terrorist super-ninjas breaking through the stained glass. The women are screaming. The reverend is stammering. The elderly are clutching the chests. And you coolly withdraw your .45. Peace be with you, assholes.

Under Siege featured some nice guns.

Unlike most of my Southern brethren, I didn’t grow up with guns. In the South, a gun cabinet is as common a piece of furniture as a porch fridge or a deer-antler coat rack. In many Southern communities, a boy is handed his first .22 when he’s about eight years old. He is taught to load it, handle it, fire it, and respect it.

People hunt in the South. Most hunters take it very seriously, observing game limits and making it a point to eat their kills. Entire families ascend on their deer camps. Small school districts close during the first week of deer season. At that time in my school, it felt like the only kids in class were me, my brother, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Mine was not a hunting family, though my grandfather on my mother’s side was a small game hunter. It was from him that I gained a rudimentary introduction to rifles. Grandpa would take my brother and me to an open field, set up some cans at a safe distance, and invite us to pluck them down with his .22 rifle. Later, we graduated to larger calibers, even a pistol once.

And I liked it.

I liked watching the metal cans twist apart as though wrenched with powerful, invisible teeth. I liked the kick of the rifle butt against my shoulder, as though I were containing an atomic explosion against my body. I liked seeing my careful aim rewarded with the sound of thunder and the effects of lightening. What, I ask you, is not to like?

Coooooooooooooooo...(breath)...oooooooooool

Recently, the Obama administration approved a measure that would allow people with concealed gun permits to bring their firearms into national parks. All right. There’s bear in them there national parks. So, you know, okay. I guess I get it.

In Tennessee, a measure is on the docket, House Bill 962, to extend those same privileges to bars and restaurants. The bill allows the state’s estimated 222,000 permit holders to bring loaded handguns into restaurants selling alcohol as well as bars and night clubs provided they do not drink. It also allows establishments to post signs banning handguns, which are to be obeyed.

Absorb that for a second.

In my brilliant but sparsely-read post, The Separation of Church, Guns and a Rational State of Mind, I noted that the requirements for carrying a concealed weapon aren’t exactly on par with getting a MENSA card. But gun advocates will say that a person with a concealed gun permit has undergone the rigorous scrutiny of federal background checks, weapons training, and testing. I call bullshit on the grounds that all those measures are rendered moot the moment the first alcoholic beverage is consumed.

No way somebody pulls a gun in this situation.

Of course, Tennessee House Bill 962, if passed, only allows people to carry concealed weapons provided that they do not drink. Why in the hell are you walking into a bar if you don’t intend to drink? I don’t care if you’re Abe Lincoln, bro. If you’re packing and drinking anything stronger than an O’Doul’s you’re dangerous. A threat. And if I’m Chuck Norris, I’m taking you down, Chief.

I’m not Chuck Norris, so I guess I have to settle for getting shot.

A Facebook user discussing the topic described the situation as thus: “After nearly six years dating a bartender, I can tell you that the idea of people having guns in bars is terrifying. I can imagine any number of stupid situations I've seen unfold that would have gone from stupid to tragic if any party involved had been in possession of a gun.”

I kinda love guns. But I kinda hate morons. And in these arena, the two are clashing.


##

Arkansas: No Longer the Delaware of the South

I’m hearing good things about this state of Arkansas.

Like Delaware, you kind of forget that Arkansas is a state. When I listen to the radio, I sometimes catch an NPR segment highlighting the Arkansans who made some kind of dent in the nation’s history. I rarely recognize their names, unless it’s Dizzy Dean.

And yet, this commonwealth of little more than 2.5 million mostly-rural folk keeps reminding people that America’s 25th state has something to add to our coast-obsessed country.

When Bill Clinton tossed his hat in the presidential pot, few gave the ruddy-faced Arkansan a chance. He was a hillbilly. A redneck. A hick. Less than a year later, William Jefferson was President, chatting with Boris and jogging a healthy 3 MPH clip around Washington D.C.

Advantage, Arkansas!

Several years later, two of the more compelling presidential candidates – Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee – were Arkansans.* Two! From a state often unfairly lumped with Mississippi as an unsophisticated backwater populated by genetically disgusting, chicken-raping hill people.

My Grandmother once asked me, very seriously, if the children in Arkansas wear shoes.

It’s not that Arkansas hasn’t earned its critics. We’re forever linked to Orville Faubus and Central High School. We sided with the losers during the Civil War. During the Great Depression, the only thing that was less socially acceptable than an Oakie was an Arkie. We did everything but give Federal Express to Memphis. We have an image problem.

Today, the state still has a few kinks to work out. Politically, one has a hard time telling the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. (The lone distinction, it appears, lies along vague fiscal philosophies.) Architecturally speaking, Arkansas – and especially the capital city of Little Rock – is an uninspired armpit of design. For Christ’s sake, the capitol building is a knock-off of the Nation’s capital building! No originality. When one views the city skyline of Little Rock, the one man-made edifice that stands out is a radio/microwave tower stationed in the city’s center.

Where Arkansas lacks in originality,
it saves in architecture fees.

We’re overly obsessed with the Arkansas Razorbacks. Nobody is allowed to have an allegiance to any other Arkansas university. It doesn’t matter where you graduated college or if you graduated. It’s Hogs or nothing.

We’re kind of churchy, too. We have too many dry counties, and you can’t buy liquor (even beer) on Sunday. Growing up, my small town outlawed MTV, partly because of Madonna’s Like a Prayer video – the one that had the audacity to feature the Material Girl making-out with a black Jesus Christ. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon in Arkansas to meet people who frown on dancing.

And yet, somehow, our bland values seem to appease the Nation’s masses. We give them Bill and Mike and Hillary, and you liked them. And most recently, just for the hell of it, we gave you an American Idol – a churchy, good-looking kid who just might have earned himself a lifetime supply of free AT&T minutes.

Admittedly, this Kris Allen guy makes me nervous for Arkansas. He’ll be okay. The kid acquits himself well. But you bring national media into Arkansas, and the last person a reporter wants to interview is a well-spoken Arkansan with some knowledge outside the arena of possum hunting. Rather, bring on the toothless, meth-cooking, stained muscle shirt wearing, hee-hawing sumuvabitch from the trailer park! They’re good quotes, and they’re the reason why my late grandmother thought our children went without shoes.

Sings well. Can also read and write.

But not even Ms. Meth Muscle Shirt can elbow Arkansas from its due. I can't explain it, other than to say Arkansas has pluck. Sand. Moxie. And not an ounce of inferiority complex. The state has always had a take-it or leave-it attitude. We rarely dwell on our mistakes, but then again we never really think too hard about the future, either. Arkansas has patience to wait for whatever success might arrive. We have that, and Wal-Mart

As much as Wal-Mart is publicly maligned, the retail giant brings both legitimacy and industry to Arkansas. Our biggest export isn’t cotton or rice or soybeans. It’s aviation. And, like a machine that spits out widgets, our copycat capitol building is grooming yet another governor who can charm his way to national notoriety.

And that should make those historical lessons on NPR more interesting.






* Hillary Clinton really isn’t an Arkansan, considering she was born in Illinois and would rather squeeze a cactus in her nose than acknowledge her years in Arkansas. But, then again, she’s not a New Yorker either, and that state made her a senator.



###

Republicans might be funny after all

People always tell me that Republicans and women just aren't very funny. What? Are you going to tell me Rosanne Barr isn't funny? She had a hit show! And have you ever watched Reba? Her country-bumkin outlook on life is so true! And have you ever caught The Mommie's on stage? Those girls have a bit about diapers that just kills!

Kelsey Grammar continues to have a Kung-Fu death grip
on the title of Nation's Funniest Republican

See, women are funny, but Republicans not so much. Or so I thought!

The Angry Czeck's illegal communications dish stationed off the coast of Hawaii intercepted a transmission from an old Soviet spy satellite positioned 31 miles above the Right On Comedy Club in Jacksonville, Florida. Here's the exclusive transcript of comedian Red State's entire 12-minute set! It kills!

Begin transmission

VOICE BELIEVED TO BE Red State: Hey, hey-hey! Great to be back here on stage at The Right On!

Read something on CNN.com today. (Boos and hisses from the crowd) Just kidding! I read it on Fox! (Enthusiastic cheers)

Anyway, I read that 75% of students enrolled in one Texas public school are illegal aliens from Mexico. What’s up with that? No English, no papers, and no God?!

(Fake deep voice) “Hello, I’m God, and I’d like to enroll.”
(Fake nerdy voice) “Nope. Sorry, Almighty! Separation of you and state! Too bad, God!”
(Fake kid voice) “Hi, I’m Bin Laden, Junior! Can I enroll?”
(Fake nerdy voice) “You bet, son! God was just leaving!” (Wild applause)

Just got back from Wyoming. Man, it’s cold in Wyoming! Whatever happened to global warming? What’s up with that? Al Gore invented the Internet, but he forgot to invent global warming in Wyoming! Who gave him a Nobel Peace Prize? Whoopi Goldberg?
(Boos and hisses. Somebody shouts, "Kill her!")

You know who’s fat? Michael Moore! Uh-huh! What’s up with that? More like, Michael Moore pie, please! (Laughter. Somebody fires a pistol.) No, but seriously. Michael Moore, man, he is soooo clueless! Am I right? Am I right? (Thunderous applause)

Obama wants to bail out Chrysler? Yes we can? More like, No we can’t! (One person laughs too loud and for too long) Who does Chrysler think it is? Halliburton?

(Fake black voice) Poor people always wants mo money. Get a job, and you won’t be poor! That's my stimulus plan! (Five minutes of uninterrupted clapping, underscored by a number of hee-haws) You can take food stamps, but you won't take my order at Jack in the Box? Why can’t poor people wait for money to trickle down like the rest of us?

Hey, what’s up with Nancy Pelosi? I mean, what’s up with that? Not my junk…’cause she’s ugly! Seriously, get a facial or something! (Somebody shouts, "That's sooooo true!") Nancy asked a question before a Senate hearing today, and she was accused of using enhanced interrogation techniques. (Sprinkling of uncertain applause) What’s up with that?

Ever notice how liberals are named Al? Al Gore. Al Franken. Al Qaeda. (Thunderous applause; the wet-ripping sound of a registered Democrat being torn to pieces.) What’s up with that? Thanks, ya’ll. I’m here all week! Try the dolphin-free tuna!

End of Transmission

See? Republican comedy is finally finding an audience. I hope to catch Red State's act real soon, possibly on HBO, if the liberal, freedom-hating bastards will give him a microphone.



###

Kiss the Hairy Ass of King Kong 1976

Hey, man, I'm as surprised as you.

King Kong is an awesome movie. Not the so-called 1933 classic. Not the bloated effort from Peter Jackson in 2005. I'm talking the groovy, oil crises referencing, 1976 version with the afro-sporting natives and a very-leggy Jessica Lange.

It's the balls. Forty-foot tall gorilla balls with extra hair on 'em.

I'm not going to expect you to take my word for it, even though I've studied all three of these films as closely as I studied Uma Thurman's perfect cans in Dangerous Liaisons.

It takes big, hairy 1970s balls to claim "originality" here.

No. I shall prove my assertion through science. A little something I call The Angry Method™. I'd be more specific with the details, but it requires a lot of math, and quite frankly, if you're reading The Angry Czeck, math isn't exactly your forte.

Trust me, it's better that I do your thinking. Feel free to utilize the Angry Method when debating a clergyman, soothsayer, congressman or drunken relative. Don't use it on an actual math or science quiz.


Hero Factor
This is where King Kong '76 puts the dynamite pimp-slap on the pale facsimiles masquerading as King Kong movies. When you stack them up, it's not even close. King Kong '33 featured Bruce Cabot, a man with the acting style of a doorknob with twice the charisma. "Hey...I guess I love you," he tells Ann Darrow with the same passion one usually reserves for licking a postage stamp.

King Kong '05 stars Adrian Brody. Yeah, I like Adrian Brody in The Pianist. Why? Because he looks like a freaking pianist, that's why. A pianist with a really enormous nose. It's quite possible that Brody was cast because he was the only actor available who could out-nostril King Kong.

Meanwhile, the mighty Jeff Bridges helms King Kong '76. Not only does he sport a bitch'in 70s beard, but he's full of 70s style chutzpah, too. Why, when he's not threatening to lead "the kids" in burning down gas stations, he's putting the moves on the only girl aboard a ship full of horny sailors...and succeeding!


ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976


Chick Factor
King Kong "purists" are always stuffing Fay Wray down our throats as if she were Meyrl Streep. The only person on the set Wray out-acts on King King '33 is the fat native woman in the coconut bra, and that might be a tie. Even the chunk of clay and yak hair that plays Kong has more thespian chops than Wray, who brings little to the role outside of screaming, running, and putting up with Bruce Cabot's weird idea of romance.

Seventy years later, I was all excited because Naomi Watts got the female lead in King Kong '05, and she doesn't mind showing off her hoots. After watching her juggle computer-generated rocks in KK05, I realized that maybe Watts should stick with the lesbian topless scenes.

Jessica Lange, however, is worth crushing a bunch of wall-building natives under your giant hairy feet. Legs, boobs, hair, boobs, legs, boobs, the kid has it all. Plus, Lange's 70s chutzpah trumps Watts' phony 30s moxie any day. "Eat me, you chauvinistic pig ape!" Lange shouts. Plus, just for an awesome bonus, she rewards us with a crackerjack 70s name, "Dwan." Who in the hell is named Dwan? Jessica Lange in King Kong 1976, that's who.


ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976



Villain Factor
You know how unfair this is? King Kongs '33 and '05 are so weak and sorry, they don't even have a real villain, except maybe gravity, which always makes a crappy villain. If anything, the bad guy in KK33 is, get this, King Kong! Thank you, 1930s.

What KK33 and KK05 do share are dueling versions of Carl Denham, the maverick filmmaker who discovers that a big monkey restrained in "chrome steel chains" brings you more bank than a monkey on the silver screen.

Jack Black plays the King Kong '05 version of Carl Denham. I loved Black in School of Rock. Yes. School of Rock. That's a good Jack Black movie. (Hint hint). But you got to hand it to Black, he gives it his all in KK05, but not all the eyebrow arching in the world is going to improve Peter Jackson's overstuffed dialogue.

The dialogue is even stuffer for Denham in King Kong '33, but Robert Armstrong makes the script his bitch. "Confound this fog!" Armstrong laments. Confound indeed! Armstrong's version of Carl Denham may be a chimp-knapping, native bullying, Bruce Cabot befriending bastard, but you know that at least he brought the good Scotch.

As good as Armstrong is, he's little-to-no match for the mighty Charles Grodin, who lets his menacing 70s mustache do all the acting he needs. Grodin plays the disappointingly monikered Fred Wilson (Why not Maxwell Steel?), who sports a mouthful of massive teeth rivaled only by fellow 70s great Jimmy Carter. Grodin is awesome because he's a corporate lackey who lets nothing get him down. Well, at least not until he is squished into the ground by 70s King Kong. But then, nobody is perfect.

ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976


The Special Factor
All three Kongs represent the very best in special effects for their respective eras of filmmaking. But let's face it, King Kong '33 looked like somebody filmed it with a camera phone, a couple cans of Play Doh and a fist-full of GI Joes. And, let's not forget that it's shot in black and white. Lame!

It's quite the opposite for the 2005 version, where the latest in computer graphics are employed to stunning effect. Like most SFX movies, KK05 succeeds in the details. I love how Kong and his dino-foes are always hounded by flying insects buzzing around their heads. Peter Jackson may know nothing about basic filmmaking principles like pacing and editing, but he sure as hell knows how to make digital gorilla-hair bristle. I give him that.

But what makes KK76 superior to the lesser Kongs is imagination and innovation. Some uninformed novices point to movies like Star Wars as the 1970s best representative for special effects. But those with wisdom know that the title belongs to King Kong 1976, fool! Check out the huge animatronics arm! How about the gnarly snake thing Kong wrestles? And don't tell me you didn't dig that groovy, LSD-inspired leap Kong made from one World Trade Center tower to the other. No choppy Claymation or soulless CGI here, folks! Just rubber tubing and dudes in monkey suits. And you know what? It works, bro!

ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976



Jungle Native Factor
This is the one area where King Kong '33 drops palms on the Angry Method. The original natives of Skull Mountain are some cool cats, man. They got The Monkey Dance, the coconut bras, the spears, the drums, the crazy witchdoctor - basically everything you want and demand out of prehistoric natives. Best yet, these guys have an actual society. They live in huts, some of them are fat, and when King Kong starts some trouble, these dudes are tossing spears like Yard Jarts.

Meanwhile, the natives on Peter Jackson's Skull Island are full of disgusting genetic defects and appear to live mostly on fish carcasses and rocks. Give KK05 points for making the natives scary bad-asses, but when Kong is hurling sailors like tequila shots later on, the natives just disappear. Hey, way to step up, guys.

The Skull Island natives of KK76 have their moments. For example, they know how to beat the hell out of a drum made out of a log. And I love the native chicks during the marriage ceremony - it's like they all smoked a King-size bag of island grass! Chill out, man! Kong is a coming! But in the end, maybe these natives are a little too laid back. I like my natives restless.

ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1933


The Snappy Dialogue Factor

Ann Darrow: "I thought you didn't like woman?"
Jack Driscoll: "Yeah, but you're not a woman."
King Kong 1933

Fred Wilson: "Did you ever wonder how Hernando Cortez felt when he discovered the Lost Treasure of the Incas?"
Jack Prescott: "That wasn't Cortez; it was Pizarro. And he died flat broke."
King Kong 1976

Captain Englehorn: "That's the thing about cockroaches. No matter how many times you flushed them down the toilet, they always crawl back up the bowl."
Carl Denham: "Hey buddy, I'm out of the bowl. I'm drying off my wings and trekking across the lid."
King Kong 2005

I’d allow you to draw your own conclusion, Chief, but quite frankly I don’t trust you to make the correct decision.

ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976


The Giant Monkey Factor
You watch a King Kong movie for one thing, pal, and that’s big ass monkeys. If you get a little acting and skin in the bargain, well that’s just gravy.

I imagine seeing King Kong in the ancient days of 1933 was pretty damn exciting, but keep in mind that it was during the middle of the Great Depression. The audience just came off a bowl of free soup and an apple core they fished out of a furnace. They’d cheer anything – even a hunk of clay with horse hair glued on it. And some of those Kong close-ups were just damn goofy, even when he was chomping on natives. In KK33’s favor, he did wrestle a snake with legs, a creature so anatomically strange that it would have had Darwin himself converting to Intelligent Design.

There seems to be more purpose in the 2005 version of King Kong. His is a sad and lonely monkey life, his only reward for keeping Skull Island’s crime rate in check is the occasional offering of a native who’s too small to eat or seduce. If he's kicking a dinosaur’s ass, it’s probably not personal – just an outward demonstration of his frustration towards society. Also, KK05 moves like a monkey, even when he’s slipping around a frozen pond in Central Park. That has to count for something, right?

Wrong, fool! There’s nothing cute nor anatomically correct about King Kong! If Alec Baldwin were 19 feet taller, he’d make a good King Kong, because King Kong is man at his most perfect – huge, hairy, communicatively limited, exhibiting perfectly erect posture, and horny for hot blond chicks that are way out of his league. King Kong ’76 masters all of these traits. And while KK33 failed to earn his blonde’s sympathy, KK76 had leggy Jessica Lange whipped into shape by the end of the movie. Had Kong survived his fall off the Twin Towers, Lange would have served him a five-course breakfast the next morning – wearing an apron and nothing else!

ADVANTAGE: King Kong 1976


The Intangibles Factor
Admittedly, Skull Island in King Kong 1976 looks suspiciously like the executive producer’s back yard. (Advantage, KK33) Peter Jackson’s vision of Depression era New York is fun to watch Kong smash. (Advantage KK05) Digging a big pit and pumping it full of knockout gas is a way better plan than tossing a bottle of chloroform at Kong’s face. (Advantage KK76) World Trade Center is significantly taller (or, at least it was) than the Empire State Building. (Advantage KK76) KK33 fights one T-Rex, KK76 fights a snake made out of a Hefty sack, and KK05 fights three T-Rexes at once. (Advantage KK05).

In conclusion, I find it appropriate that King Kong 1976 was released during the nation’s bicentennial – what a terrific gift to America! And it’s a gift that keeps giving to you, if you’d just monkey up and accept it.




##

Being Looked After by Big Brother™

About a decade ago, state and federal courts upheld The Boy Scouts of America right to deny membership to agnostics, atheists, and homosexuals.

I don’t agree with The Boy Scouts. Screw ‘em. You’re bastards. But I do agree with the courts.

The BSA is a private organization – romantically American, but private nonetheless. And while I do seriously question the BSA’s right to public funds and access to public lands, I do not question the Scout’s right to exclude anyone they want. (I also reserve my right to exclude them.)

Thanks for the protection, Boy Scouts.

And yet, something troubling bubbles to the surface.

Facebook (my new favorite topic) is a vast repository of interests and beliefs, not all of which register favorably with the social mainstream. One of those turbulent silos of belief is Holocaust deniers.

This isn’t a post debating the “truthiness” of the Holocaust. I mean, if you don’t believe that the Holocaust happened, then what strange realities flourish inside your head? Do you believe the moon is made of cheese? Do you question the existence of grass? Are you a Scientologist? What color are the unicorns in your world?

More people died in Nazi concentration camps
than saw Air America.*

However, a movement has begun to expunge Holocaust denier group pages from Facebook. According to a recent CNN.com article, Attorney Brian Cuban, brother of Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban, has been trying since last year to have the pages of groups with such names as "Holocaust: A Series of Lies," and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" removed from Facebook.

The fact is there are a lot of exclusionary, offensive, and dopey groups located on Facebook. One is the One Body of Christ Experiment (all Christians on Facebook). Here is a comment posted in a discussion group entitled "Gay Marriage and Incestous (sic) Marriage:"

“I compare Gay marriage to consentual incestous marriage (like a Brother marrying a sister, or Father marrying his daughter, or a Son marrying his mother).

Both consentual homosexuality and consentual incest are pathological behaviors, and a society that creates de novo, a right to homosexual and/or incestous marriage is pathological itself.”

If you’re gay, or if you married your sister, then you might find that comment offensive. That’s not all. Here’s a One Body member's response to 'Who Created Evil?':

“Allah.”

That’s either deep and profound on many levels, or it’s a cold dig at any religion who calls God “Allah.” I’m guessing the latter.

Despite the ignorance, One Body In Christ Experiment should be allowed to live on Facebook. We are a society of diverse beliefs and opinions, and we live in a country that promises to hear them all, even if they offend.

The One Body In Christ Experiment page may
not offend you, but it is kind of gross.

"There is no First Amendment right to free speech in the private realm," Cuban said. "This isn't a freedom-of-speech issue. Facebook is free to set the standard that they wish."

Mr. Cuban is absolutely right. Facebook is free to set the standard, and it has the right to eject anyone from its digital empire. The only legitimate censor of material on Facebook is simply the material that offends Mr. Facebook.

It’s censorship – not government censorship – but it is censorship. When Wal-Mart deems a magazine or music CD as “too offensive for its customers,” it is much like the Chinese shutting down a blog for risk of inflaming public passions: One Monolithic Entity believes that its minions haven’t the mental fortitude to properly handle the material.

If government censorship is intolerable, where does corporate censorship fall on villainy's totem pole?

Censorship is an act of the strong suppressing the weak. We attribute that kind of strength to governments, but in many areas, private enterprise eclipses the might of government. For example, the world's #1 retailer for DVDs is Wal-Mart. When it decides that Showgirls or Fahrenheit 9/11** is not appropriate for its consumers, that forces movie studios to think twice before making those types of films.

The secret Wal-Mart doesn't want
you to know: BOOBIES!

Apologists will say, "Buy your seedy copy of 9 1/2 Weeks somewhere else, pervert." But Wal-Mart's censor has already affected the suits in Hollywood who don't think beyond profit and loss. Hell, Wal-Mart requested that that the cover of Zack and Miri Make a Porno be "edited" so that the word "porno" is removed. We now have a retailer dictating art.

Wal-Mart has the right to sell what it wants, but it's still censorship, Jack. And as corporations become larger and their competitors more scarce, we the consumer/citizen will endure more and more of it. Today, Wal-Mart thinks we can't handle a few naked titties, the Boy Scouts think we can't deal with a homosexual scout masters, and Mark Cuban's brother thinks we can't ignore morons on Facebook. Who's to say what materials Starbucks, EXXON, and Verizon will dictate to us tomorrow?

Speaking of material, here’s another Facebook group that some people might find offensive: I Support the Israel Defense Forces In Preventing Terror Attacks From Gaza. The U.S. government publicly disavowed*** this military campaign, and news organizations like NPR exposed the high human toil paid by ordinary citizens of Gaza. I doubt if a woman who saw her kid blown to bits by an Israeli missile would appreciate the existence of such a group.

You see, Mr. Brother of Mark Cuban, one man’s belief is another man’s insult – whether it’s the belief that black people are inferior or the belief that marijuana be legalized. Ours is a society that must accept the full spectrum of opinion, or we no longer have a democratic society.

We have a Nazi state.



* Inventing facts is easy.
** These titles are not available at Wal Mart stores, but can be purchased online at Walmart.com
*** But privately, I imagine, Israel's war with Hamas inspired awkward white-guy high-fives behind closed doors.


##

The One & Three Quarter Score Age of the Angry Czeck begins now

You recall that the Angry Czeck recently celebrated his 35th birthday, prompting his friends and co-workers to say, "Gosh, I thought you'd be more accomplished."

Well there, Slick, I'm not allowing the next three and a half decades to transpire without some solid accomplishment stuck in my elastic waistband. Consider this the beginning of the One And Three Quarter Score Age of The Angry Czeck as I cross these mighty accomplishments off this equally-as-mighty list.

Angry Accomplishments
(To Be Completed by the Year 2044)

• Catch an arrow out of the air with my bare hands
• Wrestle an alligator
• Slap a punk around
• Drive a tank
• Remind the butler who’s boss
• Browbeat a Senator (state or federal)
• Plan and execute a Count of Monte Cristo-like revenge
• Destroy a Death Star
• Perform a King Slender Backbreaker™ on a deserving foe
• Become the first man to bowl a 301
• Guest star on Grey’s Anatomy: Everybody Dies
• Bench-press my weight.
• Weigh 100lbs.
• Restore the dignity and prestige of chest hair
• Break stuff for Jesus
  
• “Chief Justice Angry Czeck”
• Build a particle accelerator
• Finally give Chuck Norris some payback*

Maybe I'll pull a bus with my teeth or dabble in Brazilian street fighting, too. I don't know. Just consider this list a good start.



*The guy eating Chuck's foot? That's right, it's me. He said, "We fight on three." And you know what? That kick came on "two." Just saying.

##

Goodbye Pontiac, friend, teacher, secret lover.

After several years of mowing yards , my brother and I had saved enough dough to buy a car.

I remember scouring the classifieds with gusto and relish. I could have been holding an ancient treasure map rather than the latest edition of The Arkansas Democrat/Gazette. The choices were staggering to the teenage mind.

Volkswagen Bugs. Detroit muscle cars. Foreign jobs with funny names. Ford Escorts. Dodge Talons. Trucks atop bubble tires. Yugos. Four wheel drives. GEOs. Station wagons. Broncos. Restoration projects. Cars missing minor amenities like AC, front bumpers, paint and doors.

Not. Cool.

Testicles of Zeus! My 17-year-old chest hairs bristled at the possibilities. To leap behind your own steering wheel and point the hood in your chosen direction seemed to me life’s ultimate grail. I envisioned weekends of filling the tank with gas and the back seat with hot girls, the radio pumping Deep Purple anthems before an admiring congregation of fellow roadsters. No more emasculating school bus! No more begging to drive my Angry Mom’s dorky hatchback. I was ready to consecrate a deep and meaningful relationship between my right foot and a willing accelerator.

My brother and Angry Dad made the actual discovery. They found it buried in the classifieds, a secret gem of unknown value, and they immediately launched a personal investigation. Angry Dad was confident upon his return. My brother, somewhat hesitant.

What does it look like?
Shrug. Green.

That wasn’t promising. But Angry Dad and my brother had already brokered the deal. My visions of hedonistic weekends were replaced with developing complex strategies for convincing a girl to enter a booger-colored car. I was doomed.

But it was love at first sight.

Indeed, it was green. A beautiful, matted hue of vegetable green that was used sparingly in the 120-box of Crayolas. The top was black – all business black. The hood stretched to infinity, suggesting that an engine meant for a Sherman tank lay beneath the breathless expanse of steel. Twin chrome exhaust pipes peeked from beneath the trunk: Love and Hate. Angry Dad looked at me, and I sensed that he was relieved by my reaction to the eight-cylinder bride that was chosen for me.

The unexcelled 1972 Grand Prix Model J.

The interior sported the biggest balls of any interior ever assembled. The cockpit wrapped around the driver’s bucket seat. The clock was an analog dinosaur; a Stone Age reminder that it was time to bust ass. Set in the center of the console, a circle the size of the Sun, was the speedometer, boasting a top speed of 180 bone-breaking miles per hour. And the back seat? Enough space for the cheerleading squad and a few members of the dance team for good measure.

This was what Air Supply was singing about.

Angry Dad arranged for the power windows and seats to be repaired – a parting gift to his sons who had just become men. And then it was ours. Turning the key was summoning Hades himself to do your bidding. The engine rumbled like the stomach of Cronus, hungry for asphalt and thirsty for gas. When I pressed the accelerator, it responded immediately, like a thoroughbred challenged. The front seats were thrones from which my brother and I captained the world.

Today, it was unceremoniously announced that Pontiac was finished, through, done, and with its demise more than 21,000 jobs. I should have seen in coming when Pontiac “re-introduced” the GTO – there was nothing GTO about it. It was a G8, an even less inspiring vehicle from Pontiac. Add that to the Avalanche, perhaps the world’s ugliest car this side of a GEO Metro, and you got a company destined for erasure.

"I know! Let's stick a bigger engine in a Grand Am
and call it a GTO! Nobody will notice."

The fact is, the 1972 Grand Prix was Pontiac’s last perfect car. Don’t give me the 1980 Trans Am. Give me the Model J. Give it to me soon. Because Pontiac ain’t around to make them any more.

Frankly, I’m not sure how people will get to Gatlinburg, Tennessee without Grand Ams.




###

Facebook & Twitter have completely destroyed me as a human being. Please join.

Online social networking has ruined me. Destroyed me. Kicked me in the pills. Administered to my unconscious body a flying elbow from the top turnbuckle.

I am Facebook’s bitch, and Twitter’s fourth favorite ho.

Thanks to social networking, I’ve become The Highlander: I know everything. But the price! The terrible, grisly price!

Blogging’s not so bad. In fact, blogging is the balls. It’s one-way communication. The only glimmer of darkness I glean from my readers are the far-too-occasional reader's comments and the raw data from Google Analytics (“Mean wearing tampons”). I don’t know you, thank Christ, and the only thing you know about me is what I allow you to know.

Damn my digital eyes, why didn’t I just keep it that way?

There can be only one. Me!

Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, I know which of my friends are right wing extremists. I know who watches The Bachelor and who has accepted Christ as their savior. I know who just bought a tanning bed. I know who is pissed by the lack of live TV coverage of the Boston Marathon. I know whose kid just shat on their Thomas the Train Engine table. I know that way too many people are “is,” and that way too many people “need coffee.” I’ve learned that a surprising number of people that graduated from my high school have joined the clergy. I know who ranks Tombstone in their Top Five Movies of All Time. I know who needs a haircut. I know when Kevin Smith is jonesing for a booty call. I know that GOD IS AWESOME!!! I know the brain-numbing details of a porn star’s purchase of a house in Los Angeles. I know who’s celebrating a birthday today. I know who’s “loving this weather!” I know more song lyrics than I used to because too many people substitute song lyrics for a status update. I have come to understand the strength of the iron grip American Idol has on society. I know who wishes it were Friday, who “works for the weekend,” and who hates Mondays. I know who’s a Democrat, who’s a Republican, and who could care less. I’m stunned by how many people want to “put Christ back in public schools.” I know who is a fan of toast, and I know I am one of them. I don’t know who Harold Higgons is, but Facebook thinks he and I could be friends. I know what B-list celebrity Brooke Burks is up too this morning (Going to the beach without the nanny!). I know who wants to challenge me in Scrabble, and at least two people who need to make their move, like, any day now. I know who likes country music. I know who likes Poison. I know a friend who fears liberals but wants to meet Charles Manson. I know one friend’s Five Favorite British Actors, and I’ve never heard of any of them. I know who pretends to be afraid of clowns. I know plays Mafia Wars and who plays Mob Wars. I know the difference between Mafia Wars and Mob Wars. I know whose Dad is in the hospital and whose kid has an ear infection. I know who wishes they were outside. I know who really needs a girlfriend bad. I know who is on Facebook right now.

I know way too much.

The mystery is gone. It’s not really Facebook; it’s Open Book. The thrill of gradually getting to know someone – a process that once took an entire lifetime – has become a 45-second dump load. You shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but you can judge a person my his or her Facebook page.

And to this inhumane process, I say, please join.

Do it. Do it now. Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. LinkedIn. MySpace. Sign up and log in. (Okay, maybe not MySpace.) Like it or not, online social networking is how we’re all going to communicate in ten years. How do I know?

Despite initial doubts, the horseless buggy really caught on

Remember how people resisted online banking? Or just buying anything online? Remember how people clung to the checkbooks like it was the Koran rather than just getting a debit card? Remember how we scorned the soullessness of microwaves? Or how we bitterly lamented the global subjugation of cellular phones?

Hell, even automobiles, televisions, and car radios had their doubters.

As the great Peter Grifen might say, your acclimation to online social media is like sex with Kobe Bryant: you can struggle, resist, even scream, but it’s gonna happen.

You can hop aboard now and get a seat on front of the bus, or you can climb on later when it’s standing room only and your face is lodged in some shirtless man’s hair armpit. Makes no difference, because I’m going to see you here eventually.

And then I’ll know everything about you.



Do you sense that you read this very same post last year? Bite me, thankless reader! Sorry if Angry Czeck's content isn't as fresh as you like! You try pounding out three original posts every month. I'm sure there are plenty of cut-n-paste bloggers out there who would love your business.



###

Secret Shame: Confessions of a Democrat Jack Bauer Fan

Many badges-o-shame have crossed my narrow chest. Like the night I shrieked at the sight of a daddy longlegs at Cub Scout camp. Or when I locked my keys in my car twice in one month. Or my brief but penetrating Phil Collins phase.

The latest? Becoming a fan of 24’s Jack Bauer.

But it’s true. Terribly, horribly true. You got to admire the guy's grit. Bauer’s like one of those 12-inch rubber wrestling dolls I never got for Christmas. You can bounce him! Toss him out of a helicopter! Throw him at a speeding cement truck! And yet, Bauer still comes back for more punishment.

I’ve seen Jack Bauer sneer stoically in the face of Chinese torture. Glare unblinkingly in the eye of death. Chat casually with Elisa Cuthbert without staring at her cans. The only thing I haven’t seen Jack do in 24 consecutive hours is go to the bathroom, eat a snack, or check his Facebook page.

In the world of 24, Jack Bauer is the contradictive instrument of democracy secretly penciled into some little-know format of the Constitution only Dick Cheney has thoroughly studied. Jack answers only to the President, and not the law – unless the President is breaking the law, and then Jack can elect to answer to him at his pleasure.

Jack believes in Human Rights. Like, humans
have the right to scream a full confession.

Not that pleasure is a word Jack Bauer understands, unless he takes some kind of sick satisfaction in breaking bones, brutalizing captured adversaries, and electrocuting suspects who may or may not know a secret code. Jack is always willing to kick Democracy in the groin so long as the rest of us are willing to arrive sometime later to apply the ice.

And the Angry Czeck recognizes that a ball breaker like Jack Bauer can come in handy when things get dicy.

When speaking of her husband’s frequent philandering, Sharon Osborne once said, “So long as he cheats on me and I don’t know, I’m fine. Don’t let me find out, because that’s just rude.”

I don’t want to know the real Jack Bauers of the world do, nor am I interested in being made privy to their methods. That's just rude.

"Did somebody call a Torturer? I also do executions."

It’s cheap and easy to wax hypothetically when creating a Jack Bauer scenario, but if we had snagged a guy connected to the 9-11 hijackings while airplanes were soaring into buildings, wouldn’t you want a guy carrying a rusty toolbox to talk to the guy? Or would you rather preserve due process than the lives in the Pentagon?

Most people – law abiding, patriotic, peace-loving people – would choose the guy with the toolbox. Nobody wants a formal introduction to Mr. Toolbox. We want to be able to deny the existence of Mr. Toolbox. But to deny the necessity of Mr. Toolbox is naïve.

So there. Fuck you, hippy peaceniks. I like Jack Bauer, the Mr. Toolbox of primetime television. Jack is a cigarette burn on the Constitution, and a nightstick in the ass of Liberty. And anytime we want to feel self-righteous and secure about our personal integrity, we have the option to disavow Bauer's unseemly actions while appreciating yet another mushroom-free sky.

If a terrorist screams in the desert,
do we have to know?

We were afforded the luxury of condemning Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib because the arrogant Bush Administration rudely allowed their deplorable existence to be known. Maybe the Obama Administration will practice torture, rendition, and assassination more covertly. More politely.

I am a decent enough guy to be shamed. But I’m pragmatic enough to appreciate Jack Bauer.

***

The Angry Czeck's Last Ever Easter Post

Easter reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit from the early 1990s:

Set in the time of Christ, the pals of Jesus are gathered in secret to toss the Messiah a surprise birthday party. The joke is that everyone is having a hell of a time finding a good gift for Jesus. The guy is Jesus for God's sake. What do you give Jesus? Finally, an argument breaks out, and everybody is yelling and upset, and suddenly Jesus strolls in.

"Where's the wine?" asks Jesus in a very un-Jesus-like (but very Phil Hartman-like) voice.

*

I like Jesus movies.

Partly because the plot is so predictable. You know how the story starts. How it ends. And you know most of the stuff in the middle. The Last Temptation of Christ tosses in a few twists, though, especially with Judas, the Apostle for which history gives the rawest deal.

In Temptation, Judas is some kind of badass Jew militant who spends half the movie threatening to kill Jesus. And then, just when Judas has completely bought into the Messiah business, Jesus informs him that he must betray Him to fulfill the prophecy.

Yes! Harvey Keitel as Judas. Harvey Keitel!

See, that's the thing with Judas. No betrayal, no prophecy. No death. No resurrection. No Jesus Christ Superstar. Judas does his job, and gets nothing in return but a sack of silver and a place alongside Brutus and Cassius in Dante's 9th Circle of Hell.

Raw deal.


**

Like I said, I like Jesus movies.

I even like the Jesus movies that aren't really Jesus movies, like Ben Hur. And I like the Jesus movies that feature extra strength Jesus-action, like The Passion of the Christ. But whenever I think of Jesus movies, my mind goes back to a scene from The Greatest Story Ever Told. In that one, Max Von Sydow is the unnervingly blue-eyed Jesus.

What I remember about Greatest Story is a minor scene in which one of the Apostles (Peter maybe?) wakes up to discover that someone has stolen his coat. Naturally, the Apostle is all sore because somebody ripped him off. Then Jesus appears, all refreshed and well-rested, and tells the Apostle, "Perhaps somebody needed your coat more than you did."

Son of God or not, Jesus could be aggravatingly righteous .


***

There are two books that nobody should quote from. One is Webster's Dictionary. ("According to Webster...") The second book is The Catcher in the Rye.

"I made phonies. Lots of 'em."

But I always liked what Holden Caulfied had to say about the Apostles. They were always letting Him down. Holden nailed it. The Apostles were lousy friends, and they were about as useful as a sack of billiard balls to Jesus. When they weren't denying Him thrice before the cock crows, they were whining when somebody made off with their coats.

Really, Christianity should thank Christ it has made it this far, considering whose hands Jesus left it with.

****

It seems sacrilegious to complain about a gift received on Easter, but it is the only natural response to receiving a copy of Islands In The Stream in your Easter basket.

For Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Islands in the Stream was a big hit. For a young Angry Czeck, it ranked somewhere between The Future's So Bright, I Got to Wear Shades and Private Dancer. Those aren't very good songs, in case you were wondering.

But there it was, wedged between a chocolate bunny and a box of peeps, was a .45 single of Islands in the Stream. By that time in my life, I knew that the Easter Bunny was not behind the gift, but my Angry Mom, who had deftly asked me the week before, "Do you like Islands in the Stream?" Gravely, I had answered in the affirmative, never guessing the grisly consequences of my response.

The lesson, of course, is be mighty careful of what you tell your mother.

*****

Mrs. Angry likes to watch The Ten Commandments every Easter.

The Ten Commandments has a lot going for it, especially casting. Everybody does a terrific job. Anne Baxter throws herself into her role as Nefritiri ("Moses, Moses, Moses.") Not only is Yul Brenner the only guy on the set who could play an Egyptian with a straight face, but nobody wears gold arm bands better. Even Vincent Price is in The Ten Commandments! Charles Heston does a pretty good job as Moses, too.

But who earns a coveted Angry Award (if not an Oscar) is Edward G. Robinson as Nathan. Who the hell thought to cast Edward G. Robinson in a Moses movie? Let's see you make bricks without straw, Moses! Edward G. Robinson! Was Peter Lorre busy? Where's your God now, Moses?

Some say "miscast." I say ultra-cast!

Nearly every line in The Ten Commandments kicks heathen ass. My favorite doesn't even belong to EG Robinson, but to Yvonne De Carlo. The stranger is wise. And strong. It's like Pete Rose wrote the screenplay, yet it still works. The perfect Easter movie.

I shall dwell in these lands.




###

The Angry Czeck Makes Mexico His Bitch

My Cuban cigar (if it really was a Cuban cigar) came with a complimentary box of wooden matches, the kind with long stems for extended flame-life. Each match featured a white head, which felt classy to me. I scraped my classy match along the side of the slim matchbox.

Swoosh.

Fire! I am as giddy as Prometheus. With my could-be Cuban cigar clinched beneath my American teeth, I ventured to introduce flame to leaf.

Pft. And then it was gone. Extinguished! As though invisible gods and snuffed my classy match between an immortal thumb and forefinger. Greedy, bitter, gods dressed in bed sheets like Laurence Olivier.

No fire for you, Angry Czeck!

I thought of what the boring man from St. Louis told me on the golf course earlier that day. (Marina Club de Golf) He to puffed on what might have been a Cuban cigar.

Is it good?
Shrug.

The trick is keeping it lit, said The Bore. It’s so humid here.

The boring St. Louis guy was paired with an equally-as-boring Californian, and they puffed on their quite-possibly Cuban cigars while making dull observations about their hand position or whether or not their balls broke toward the ocean. That's the problem with golf. It offers men too many opportunities to bore the world with a trash heap of mechanical (and vaguely sexual) details.

My playing partner was a heart surgeon, an enormous Chinese-Canadian named Victor, and he wasn’t smoking any kind of cigar.

Victor has been playing golf for only three years. His too-perfect swing smacked of expensive private lessons. He averages about 280 yards per drive. A poor streak of putting prevented him from totally wiping the floor with me.

China put up a pretty good Olympics, I told him. What else do you say to a Chinese-Canadian?

Victor agreed. It had been a good Olympics. And then he out-drove me by at least half-a-football field – half a Canadian football field. The boring guys mumbled something about follow-through.

Swoosh. Pft.

As difficult as it was to light the damn match, it was far more difficult escaping from the Aeroporto de Puerto Vallarta without committing to a timeshare. We had been warned.

Don’t talk to anyone who is not carrying a sign with your name, said the nice senorita from the resort. You will be pressured into a sales pitch.

"Before our dual to the death,
can I interest you in a timeshare?"

Please. I’m in advertising. I’m a pro. You don’t pressure me, I pressure you. So it was to my great chagrin when the first timeshare marketer who crossed our paths roped in Mrs. Angry and me.

Where are you staying?
I told him Casa Velas.
Casa Velas? That’s me!

The merry Mexican led us to a long kiosk that was molded into the shape of a Tiki hut. He whipped out a map of Puerto Vallarta and identified assorted points-of-interest. Then, very craftily, he mentioned the astonishing tour, dining, and golf discounts that could be obtained simply by attending a 90-minute breakfast featuring a talk about an incredible investment opportunity!

¡Mexico!

Utilizing an invisible crowbar, Mrs. Angry and I dislodged our bodies from the Marketing Mexican and pressed forward. We weren’t here for an investment opportunity. We were here to make Mexico my bitch! My jaw set in determination, I pushed opened a set of glass double doors and dragged my luggage through.

¡Mexico!

We were trapped in the Mexican Timeshare Gauntlet! Mustachioed Mexicans shouted at us from every direction. For some reason, the scene triggered the Family Feud theme music in my brain.

Where are you going? Do you remember me? Let me carry your bags! I drive you! Just 90 minutes!

Later, I would learn that “ninety minutes is a Mexican five minutes.” It’s a joke, but I believed it even then, for time in that room completely stood still as I grinned like an idiot and stammered, No…please…stop…I don’t want a timeshare…let me go…

With one final effort, Mrs. Angry and I punctured the Mexican Marketing Membrane and emerged in a much more orderly section of the airport, where an attractive woman carrying a sign that featured our name awaited us. Thank Christ!

Swoosh! Psst.

Cuba is home to contraband cigars as it was once home to Ernest Hemingway. It was Ernie that nearly got me killed in Mexico.

Mrs. Angry was hot for snorkeling. You could see it playing out in her head as though it were a home movie projected on an old bed sheet: rainbow colored coral, exotic fish, perhaps a dicey encounter with a stingray. I suspected that we might also see the bloated and fish-nibbled bodies of executed Mexican drug lords, so I was game.

The boat was a kind of pontoon style vessel piloted by a crew who looked like part-time peyote dealers. We tourists were stacked on the deck like cordwood, absorbing salvo after salvo of the mighty Mexican sun. Alan Jackson burst out of the sound system without mercy.

¡Mexico!

We churned 21 miles out into the Pacific. Our destination: a big, monolithic rock bleached with bird crap. This, apparently, was the garden spot of snorkeling in Puerto Vallarta.

Meghan and I grabbed our public snorkels from our “boat host.” I tried not to imagine the Ghost of Cold Sores Past as I stuffed the snorkel tube in my mouth. (ANGRY NOTE: Wish I could come up with a better choice of words.)

Leaping into the Pacific Ocean was like being shocked to consciousness by a bucket full of mop water tossed by a surely bartender. It felt like I had located the secret spot God dumps all His extra ice cubes after a party.

Cold and devoid of life.

To add insult to ball-shriveling cold, the water off the coast of Crap Rock was about as clear as a cup of Starbucks. The boat crew tossed a few chunks of bread in the drink, and a couple of mildly curious flounder wandered into view. I spent most of my snorkeling time appreciating how my breathing sounded like Darth Vader underwater.

After climbing back onto the boat, it was announced that we would be visiting a private beach! Ah ha! Visions of topless models tantalized my frostbitten loins. I poured a cerveza (that’s Spanish for beer) in my stomach to magnify the experience.

The private beach was a crock – a skinny slice of sand that doubled as Poseidon’s ashtray. Mrs. Angry and I parked our beach blankets next to a decomposing carcass of a blowfish.

The sun in Mexico is a relentless civil war cannon that fires on you without intermission. It's the Dirk Diggler of celestial bodies, broadcasting Feel My Heat from dawn to dusk. The Florida sun is an LED flashlight in comparison. A half an hour of laying on the sand, and I was baked. I looked like a strip of Sizzilean. My body contained as much liquid as a Frito.

I think we're gonna need a bigger hat.

Time to geeet on deee booooat! Announced our Boat Host, a cartoonish Latino who was no doubt the life of every party he attended. He directed us to the small motorboat that would ferry us all to the larger vessel.

That’s when I had my Hemingway moment.

I’m going to swim to the boat, I told Mrs. Angry. She bit her lower lip and told me to go for it. Like a Spartan headed to war, I handed her my sandals, shirt, and beach towel and prepared to make Mexico my bitch.

Halfway to the boat, I knew I had made a big mistake. My arms felt as heavy as sewer caps. My tongue had become a salt lick. I inhaled a pint of seawater with every tortured breath. I looked up to see the small motorboat chugging past me.

You can do it, honey! shouted Mrs. Angry cheerfully as she churned by. A wave of ocean enveloped my head. I floated on my back to regain a bit of strength, then lumbered forward with a poorly executed breaststroke.

I was on my way to becoming another grim Mexican statistic. My body would be among many beneath the surface of the sea. They probably wouldn’t even bother searching for my corpse.

Then I thought of the crew captaining the boat. Surely they wouldn’t want my demise to sully their reputation! I imagined the captain tossing Mrs. Angry into the drink when nobody was looking. Sawreee, Officer. Weee never saaaaw those Americanos!

¡Mexico!

I willed myself back into a freestyle stroke. Plap. Plap. Plap. My hands smacked the water like a bored porn actor spanking the bottom of his co-star. I squeezed stroke after stoke from my exhausted body. I dreamed of climbing the ladder to the deck and addressing the cheers of my boat mates with a humble fist-pump of victory.

Plap. Plap. Plap.

I peeked at my position. The boat seemed farther away than ever! I was going to die!

¡Mexico!

I put my face down and imagined I was a machine. Yes! A machine programmed to make Mexico its bitch! The futuristic gyroscopes fired to life as I inched my way closer to the boat. I conjured the spirit of Ernest Hemingway to give me bonus strength. It came as a bit of surprise when my hand finally touched the metal ladder.

As life left my body, I could hear the voice
of Ernie Hemingway, quietly calling me a pussy.

I collapsed onto the deck in a placid heap. You did it! cried Mrs. Angry, tossing the beach blanket onto my lifeless body. The bartender laughed merrily and asked me if a needed a drink.

Jesus, yes! Water! Por favor! For that moment, I felt like the oldest man in the sea.

Swoosh! Pssst.

The masseur inadvertently touched my right testicle.

My Angry Sister In Law had arranged for a “Couples Spa Treatment” at the Marriott. Per her advice, Mrs. Angry and I arrived a couple hours early to take advantage of the spa’s amenities.

A very gay Mexican led me to my locker, provided me a pair of rubber sandals, and fitted me for a terrycloth robe. He then lead me on a brief (but penetrating) tour of the available facilities: Jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, hot pool, cool pool, Swedish shower, and “relax room,” which was a large, airy room pumped with Enya and filled with loungers.

After thanking my host, I tried the steam room. It’s like breathing inside a gorilla’s armpit in a steam room. The sauna was better. I could feel all the impurities of Mexico seeping from my pores. The only other guy in the entire joint, a hair-chested lug from Omaha, lied on the wooden bench, enjoying the tremendous heat.

I wonder how many old dudes croak in here? I asked aloud.
The Omaha Guy shrugged. Who knows? This is Mexico. They probably just dump the bodies in the bay.

¡Mexico!

I met Mrs. Angry in a small, comfortable room featuring masseuse tables and a pair of masseurs. Mine was a petite woman with an accent I could not place. I entertained the thought that she might be Swedish. A Swedish massage from a real Swede!

Meghan’s therapist was a tall, happy Mexican man. Soon, he would have his paws all over my wife! But he didn’t threaten me, especially after he performed some kind of dorky relaxation ceremony with an eagle feather. Both masseurs exited the room so that Mrs. Angry and me could undress.

I was wearing a swimsuit, but so what?

¡Mexico!

The suit came off, and I’m naked like a porn star beneath a thin sheet.

The masseurs strolled in, the classical music popped on, and soon 93% of my body was relaxed. I was a little worried about the remaining 7%, considering that I was naked and one cheeky thought away from erecting a very revealing teepee. Wisely, I concentrated on batting averages when the ol’ coyote stirred.

However, I was not prepared when the masseur’s hand brushed my right ball.

Inwardly, I gasped. A woman – not my wife – had just touched my dice! It’s been more than ten years! Had I just committed adultery? All while Mrs. Angry groaned beneath the soothing pressure of a strange Latino man! Didn’t I see something like this on Emmanuel: The Joys of a Woman?

Like George, I felt it move.

When the masseurs left us to privately clothe and possibly leave a tip, I confessed by sins to Mrs. Angry. My masseur touched my pills! But Mrs. Angry just laughed. No big deal. I felt strangely nonplussed.

Upon exiting the room, my masseur whispered, Did you like the massage?
I told her yes.
I’m so excited for you.

Swoosh….swoooosh.

Fire! Down to my last four fancy matches, I at last have fire. Carefully, I apply the flame to the tip of what just might be an authentic Cuban cigar, which I had purchased in the hotel store.

The hotel is called Casa Velas, though its literature describe it more like a boutique on account that it’s small and “adults only.” No kids having splash fights in the pool, or demanding more ketchup for their fries. Everything about Casa Velas is perfect for Mrs. Angry and me.

Perfecto, thanks to the bloody Mexican drug war.

In 2008, some 6,000 Mexicans were killed in drug-related violence. In 2009, the total has already hit 1,000. In Tijuana, a man confessed to dissolving 300 bodies at the behest of sinister drug lords. The newspapers call him The Soupmaker.

Mal chicos, mal chicos.

Angry Mom was none too happy about her son and his wife visiting the home of The Soupmaker. It was difficult to convince her that our heads wouldn’t end up in garbage bags in some dumpster outside of Cancun. Even the fact that the violence was contained mostly in border towns failed to assuage her fears.

While I wasn’t expecting to run into The Soupmaker, I did half-suspect I’d see something out of the ordinary in Puerto Vallarta. Sure enough, while enjoying lunch in the town, a truck-load of federal police drove by, the truck beds hauling masked men armed with automatic rifles.

¡Mexico!

One street removed from the tourist strip, one gets a more authentic taste of the true Mexico. Another street over, and it becomes even more genuine. Mrs. Angry and I ventured one street over and witnessed a young man, standing in a doorway, wearing a bulletproof vest and cradling a shotgun in his arms.

¡Mexico!

Aside from a few displays from the policia, there is little evidence of lawlessness in Puero Vallarta. I was not offered a kilo of cocaine even once! However, the fear of violence affected Puerto Vallarta all the same. Hotels reported 75% occupancy, which was down from 95% the same time last year.

This is how the Angry Czeck and Mrs. Angry profited.

After checking into Casa Velas, the bellboy led us to a very comfortable room. Beautiful, even, with its tiled floors and Jacuzzi tub. However, the balcony had a view of nothing, the light outside was broken, the TV was practically ancient, and the bathroom smelled like sulfur with every flush.

All these things I was willing to overlook. Except I knew Puerto Vallarta was exceptionally low on tourists this year, and I knew Casa Velas would have vacant rooms. The next morning, after making a mere request, we were upgraded to a much larger and much nicer room. Arriba!

More luxury, hombre! Chop-chop!

Plus, there seemed to be five bartenders for every one guest. Drinks mysteriously appeared in my open hand, as though David Copperfield were in charge of hospitality. I wasn't just another sweaty American. I was Senor Angry! Hell, even the masseurs were touching my tablets for free.

Gracias, Mexican drug lords!

Puff. Puff.

I don’t know if it was a Cuban, but the smoke was smooth, like inhaling a Barry White song. I decide that if my cigar isn’t Cuban, then it damn well ought to be.

When I smuggled three out of the country, I was a little nervous. I know that the authorities are more concerned with drug traffickers than with tourists sneaking in a little contraband from insignificant Communist regimes, but the thought of spending time in a Mexican prison has a way of gripping the mind.

The Angry Czeck might last 7 seconds in Mexican prison.

At the aeroporto, every outgoing bag is subject to a search. I lugged my suitcase onto the steel table and watched as a rubber-gloved customs agent rummage through my poorly folded clothing.

Early in the week, the woman at the cigar shop insisted that it was but a simple matter to transport Cuban cigars over the border. Just remove the bands. A customs agent can’t tell the difference between a Cuban cigar and a Mexican cigar unless he smokes it. They're not exactly Zorro.

Yet, I had my doubts. What would happen if the agent discovered my three band-less cigars, wrapped inside a plastic baggy and stuffed in the front pocket of my shorts?

You make it a habit of removing the bands from your cigars, Senor?
Uh, they’re for my boss. I told him I’d bring him Cubans, but those are Mexican cigars. I figure he won’t know the difference without the bands, the idiot! Heh heh!
Take this gringo to Mexican prison!

As it turned out, unless a severed head or a brick of cocaine falls out of your travel bag, the custom agents aren’t really interested in finding anything in your luggage. I’m surprised the agent inspecting my bag didn’t add a few extra stogies in my shaving kit, just to be polite.

He started a revolution – in The Angry Czeck's lungs.

With an hour to kill, Mrs. Angry and I enjoyed a coffee in the terminal. Our new tans had yet to peel, and the room service breakfast still weighed comfortably in our stomachs. Across the border lay the responsibilities of family and career. But here, we were monarchs. One only had to sprinkle a few pesos around to live like royalty. Even that dead blowfish on the sham private beach had looked at us with gaped-mouth awe.

Mexico was my bitch.



###