…at an audition for the role of “DJ Fat Man.” So there I was surrounded by a room of generally out of breath and sweaty guys with just spectacular bellies. And these two fellows. Beware the moment when the Jimmy Buffet-type guy in the backwards Kanga hat starts talking at the Oakley-wearing-inside tucked in polo shirt-guy. SPARKS.

Another observed moment HERE.

During dinner one night at the White House, the kitchen caught fire. So Martin Van Buren, president of the United States and, I’m assuming, volunteer Fire Marshall, ran and put it out. When he came back to the table his arch enemy, Henry Clay, asked him what was up.

Van Buren answered.  Clay then remarked, to the man who had invited him into his home AND saved his life, “I am doing all I can to get you out of this house, but believe me, I do not want to burn you out.”

Which proves once and for all that Henry Clay was a colossal dick.

I made you a Martin Van Buren mask. Click here to download the large file, then print it out on 11″x17″ paper. If anyone makes this, please send me a picture!!

So many stories. Drunk girls hitting on us in Vancouver cause they thought we were Kings of Leon. All of us getting the nerve to walk under a significant water fall. Being purposefully stranded alone on a rock. Listening to the coolest kids from Nashville playing their songs. Hearing from the inventor of the mountain bike how he fell in love with Rawanda. Having an insanely powerful man and his awesome family humbly serve us endlessly, though we were just strangers. The four of us guys in our room waking each other with a trumpeting chorus of farts.

This is a story I started writing a couple years ago and having been adding to a little bit at a time since. I hope you like it. Make sure to click the “More” link cause there’s a lot more to it…

Two Trolls, Part 1

Two trolls sat beneath their bridge and passed the day. Generally, trolls are very busy at their job of keeping people from crossing over bridges, but the Committee had assigned our trolls a train overpass, and no one came that way. (The Union Pacific Railroad had closed the line down back in ’86.) So the two sat, or stood, or paced each day away and chatted the way trolls sometimes do. Which is to say, rarely.

The older troll was named Hiccup (and I wouldn’t suggest you make any jokes about his name to his face. He won’t hurt you or tear your limbs off or anything, it’s just that trolls are given funny names all the time, so pointing that out to one is generally regarded as unfunny and awkward.) The younger one was named Abraham Lincoln. (Again, I would urge you not to make fun of his name, but because it truly is a funny name by troll standards. So if you made an “Honest Abe” joke or something the other trolls would probably laugh, but Abraham Lincoln would probably tear off your arms. He is just sick of hearing those jokes.)

Hiccup and Abraham Lincoln had been working the bridge for seven years. At first, they talked very little, being serious about their job. Unfortunately their little train overpass was in eastern Wyoming, just north of Cheyenne. If you’re anything like a troll then you have no clue about geography or states or where major population centers might be, but I have been in that part of the world and can promise you that no one lives there. There are cattle and pronghorn antelope and a couple farmers, but not one real person for miles. So they sat in silence, waiting. Then, Hiccup looked over to Abraham and said, “No one’s coming.”

“Shhhhhhh,” said the other troll.

But Abraham thought it over for a couple weeks and eventually looked over at Hiccup and said, “You’re probably right.”

* * * *

“My other bridges? Well I’ve had seventeen. I couldn’t really tell you where they were or anything, you know, but six were steel, four were concrete, three were wood, three were stone, and one was made of sticks.”

“Sticks?” Abraham Lincoln asked. “Like little branches?”

“Yeah. Turns out I was sitting under a dam. A beaver dam. I figured it out after a month. The bridge I was supposed to be watching was a couple hundred feet downstream.” Hiccup looked thoughtfully beyond the shadows cast by the train trestle. To the south the ground rolled down into a slight valley that held a small stream. Two young trees, their limbs emptied by the winter but presently holding hope for the spring, looked down upon it. Everything as far as they could see was a grayish brown, except at the horizon, where the world struck out into an unbroken blue. Hiccup sighed thoughtfully, and sat on one of the rocks. “It was pretty wet under that dam.”

“That’s nothing. I once spent a year under a porch.”

“A porch? Like in front of a house sort of porch?”

“Yeah. The Committee had gotten it wrong. They thought it was going to be a drawbridge, like at a castle. You know how those old ones had moats around them? One of those. So it was supposed to be a big promotion for me to watch this castle, but when I showed up all I found was an old wooden home whose front steps had been washed away by a rain storm. What the owners of the home had done, see, was to find all the scrap wood they could find and sort of make a ramp from what was left of the front walk to the door. There I am, suitcase in hand, all nine feet of me just staring at this mud puddle covered by plywood and stop signs. Someone must have exaggerated or something to the Committee.”

“So you just set up shop? Just like that?”

“Yes I did,” said Abraham Lincoln. “I stayed there twelve months in the mud before my orders came in to move out. They assigned me to an old aqueduct, which wasn’t that great but at that point I didn’t care. Anything was an improvement after the porch.”

“Yeah, that beats my beaver dam story.”

Neither spoke again for a very long while. I think it was twenty four weeks. Trolls can only say so much. It’s just their way.

(more…)

I don’t know why these aren’t on here. Must have been deleted when I accidentally deleted this site. Oh well, good enough reason to post them again! This is part one from a trip where I flew to my parent’s place in Indiana and drove back from Upland, IN to Dublin, CA.

Visited Lincoln’s cabin for some reason.

Music by Ratatat

I forgot I made this a while back. You are WELCOME.