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Or maybe perspective?

I was tellin’ Miss Carol the other day that maybe I need to change the way I think.

We were walkin’ Cutter and Tug and talkin’ and I’d got to wonderin’

That maybe instead of dreading it as a twice daily mile long herky jerk wrestling match that maybe I should think of it as the boys being just so proud to be showing me off, wanting to parade me along the streets of the island, tugging and pulling me, strutting their stuff.

Miss Carol beamed at me.

So I pushed it up another notch and figured that maybe their wrapping themselves around me, tying me up in their leashes wasn’t so much that they’re completely stupid retards but that they’re just wanting to get closer to me.

And yearning to believe, I thought that maybe, just maybe, their yanking 8 foot yearning at the end of  7 foot leashes is simply wanting to smell the roses.

‘Cause really, shouldn’t we all do more of that?

So.

As I’m dragged behind them, pulled to my knees, cursing and screaming, I’m gonna hold onto the sunny, overly optimistic perspective (or is it perception?) that maybe they’re better than I’m thinkin’ they are.

Mostly ’cause Miss Carol beamed at me.

Miss Carol and me attended our first ever Mormon wedding this weekend and no, that photo is in no way indicative of Mormons or Mormon weddings. It just  makes me laugh. I mean. Really.

So I’m thinkin’, what the hell, right?- just another wedding, another reception, more cake eating and garter throwing. But then I learned that Mormons don’t drink and since celebrating diversity is pretty much a one-way street, there wouldn’t be any alcohol at the reception ’cause Mormons don’t seem to want to celebrate MY diversity.

Whoa.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have to have alcohol at every social event but it sure does help my enjoyment of the event and let’s face it, it is a social lubricant, greasing up the gears of conversation.

So we were wonderin’ what we were gonna do when Miss Carol came up with a brilliant plan. She mixed up a batch of vodka tonics and poured them into empty Dasani water bottles and put ’em in the freezer to chill.

Then us and our normal, non-Mormon friends, all stood around at the reception sipping chilled, crystal clear vodka laughing and having a good ole time while our dour, super-straitlaced, Mormon hosts pondered fun.

It was like being in high school again and having to sneak around. And ya know what? Drinking surreptitiously we probably drank more and probably got a little drunker than we ever would have just drinking openly.

Weird how that works.

So I was watching House Hunters International last night and this amazingly obnoxious couple was looking for a vacation home in Roatan, Honduras.

Moving from house to house and clutching their clipboards like shields they tallied ambiguities. They’d devised an absurdly numbered rating scheme to help them choose their vacation home and as I watched and listened to these nerdy number oriented turds apply numerical values to beach and ocean, slowly squeezing all the fun out, I slowly got pissed.

How dare they?

Ya know what?

If you feel you can somehow quantify and qualify your idea of island life then maybe you don’t belong, maybe this lifestyle ain’t for you. Maybe you should stay in your land-locked hellhole and spend your life making lists and ratings and numerical rankings for all the silly shit in your life.

Whew.

I gotta stop watching TV.

Before Cutter and Tug there was Boca and Largo.

They were my buds and my first dogs as the adult, grown-up me.

Boca was a free-to-a-good-home-lab-mix that we found in a want ad and Largo was a full blown goofy yellow lab that stumbled and tumbled across the  breeders yard and slammed into Miss Carol’s leg, panting and waiting for us to take him home.

I loved them with all my heart but somehow some kinda way something happened and before I knew it they got old right before my eyes. My buds grew up and blasted right past me, leaving me.

Towards the end, Miss Carol was traveling a lot and missed stuff.

I would yell and scream at Largo and Boca ’cause they were getting old and dying on me and Miss Carol told me I’d regret being the asshole me and she was right.

But I yelled and screamed at them anyway, frantic what I’d do without them and wanting and needing them not to get old and die on me, but they did.

And there are times, like tonight, that I still miss them and wish I’d been better.

Fuck.

And there are times, like tonight, that I’ll wake in the middle of the night with Tug leaning against me and gently snoring and Cutter curled up around my feet and I’ll think.

Fuck.

So I had this killer weekend planned.

Miss Carol had to work at the hospital on Sunday and so I’d planned a quiet, comfy, little weekend were I could work and write and drink and hang out with Cutter and Tug. Even the weather was supposed to cooperate- the forecast was chilly and rainy.

Beauty.

But then.

We went with some friends over to a bar on Friday and as we were headed over on his boat he said, why don’t we tow your boat out tomorrow?

Did I mention Una Mas has been having problems?

So. As I got drunker, I agreed and that killed Saturday, what with the towing and the trailering and the logistics and what not. But I was hopeful and hoping for a quiet Sunday thinkin’ that gettin’ the boat to a mechanic and having the mechanic fix it would take days or maybe weeks.

Boats are like that.

Enter Jerry.

Turns out there’s this local guy that not only knows everything about engines and mechanical stuff but understands the underlying theory to the point where he not only fixes shit but makes his own parts. He’s amazing.

I dropped the boat off on Saturday and on Sunday it was fixed. Damn. Meaning I had to pack a cooler and run her down the bay and back to her anchorage.

Which was great, but.

I’d really been wanting my quiet little weekend and I know this sounds like whining but it’s not. It’s more a like a plaintive screeching.

Which is better.

Right?

“George Washington Carver began to hallucinate eight days before he died”

So begins Tinkers by Paul Harding and boy oh boy. How do I say this?

How do I say a book sucks?

How do I dare say that something someone worked on, putting their heart and soul into for months and maybe years and managed to find an agent and a publisher and got it finally out there and received accolades and a Pulitzer Prize and how dare I say it sucks?

But.

It’s awful.

Or maybe I’m not deep enough or smart enough to plumb the depths of this tiny little white book about a guy dying and dreaming of his dead father. Or maybe, kinda like feeding caviar to a puppy, it was just wasted on me- but I just didn’t get it.

I kept waiting and reading and wanting the story to build, for it to do something other than simply chronicle George’s death. But it didn’t.

It sucked.

Next on the dog pile- Continental Drift by Russell Banks

I was just gettin’ ready to sit down, hoping tonight was the night I’d write that world class stellar post, that somethin’ somethin’ that even my mom and Miss Carol would be proud of and maybe even read.

But then I got to watching Deadliest Catch again.

And my incessantly constant laziness kicked in and I thought, ya know, maybe familial pride and readership is overrated and maybe I’ll just take the easy road, ’cause I’m all about easy, and write about the Alaskan King Crab fishermen again.

Quick sidebar-These guys are, without a doubt, the hardest people I’ve ever seen and, as a guy myself, as much as I might like to think I could throw myself up against that life and somehow prevail, or at least survive, I know in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t.

But. Still and nonetheless, I wanna think I could or should?

So, anyway, I started googling for Deadliest Catch pictures because taking photos of the TV doesn’t work so well anymore and as soon as I googled it?

I found out that Captain Phil Harris died.

And it stopped me and deflated me.

Captain Phil ran the Cornelius Marie and was a hugely colorful character, as they all are. He’d had his share of medical problems in the last year or so but, well, damn. And fuck.

So I sat back and thought, hey, it’s not like I’ve ever met him, or ever would, or for that matter might not even ever want to.

But still.

I found myself strangely saddened by his passing. For reasons I can’t even begin to describe, I was suddenly missing him, even as the show kept spooling out on the TV behind me and-a-still-alive-Captain-Phil hauled his strings and cursed his crew and smoked his endless cigarettes. And I wondered what his sons and crew who work the boat with him would do without him at the helm, even though I have NO connection with him whatsoever except via me watching a TV show.

And then it got worse. I realized that blogging and reading and caring about fellow bloggers is kinda the same kinda shit.

I’m all caught up in the lives of strangers that I’ve become close to, having never met them.

And it’s cool.

‘Cept it makes ya think, ya know?

Sorry about the photographs. They’re not mine. They were scraped with bleeding fingernails from the internet. Maybe it’s just my lack of net-savviness or maybe it’s NASCAR’s lockdown on everything NASCAR but this is what I was stuck with once I found it, given the ten minutes I spent searching.

If I hadn’t been so lazy I would’ve brought my own camera on Saturday. But I was lazy.

So anyway.

Saturday arrived and we arrived at the track not really ready for the onslaught. It was AMAZING. Overnight the crowds had tripled and quadrupled and NASCAR NATION was throbbing and hot and ready for the race.

The sheer numbers of fans was mind numbing, but and yet, kinda comforting?

So anyway.

We went up to the sky suite and ate and drank some more and went down to the Midway which is the most amazing marketing thing I’ve ever seen, complete with the drivers themselves in person signing shit. What other sport has the talent in full access mode? I’m starting to love NASCAR.

After that was the pre-race obligatory pit-row visit. It’s kinda like staring at things that kinda look like cars, but aren’t?

So anyway.

Back to the sky suite where the beer was cold and the food was hot and ever-changing. More munching and chugging, and then finally it was time for the big race.

Ya gotta hand it to NASCAR, they make an event an EVENT. After the blessing and after the national anthem and after the fly-over and after the para-jumpers and after the salutes to God and country the big boys of NASCAR cranked it up and wheeled onto the track.

The excitement was palpable and went up a coupla hitches. As those roaring cars circled the track, warming up, with the flags fluttering and blowing everywhere and NASCAR NATION screaming its want and need and all of it building to a wildly exhilarating crescendo I couldn’t help but get caught up in it.

And then the start.

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(and again, sorry for the shitty photograph and my inbred laziness)

The Start.

Honestly, I think it’s what welds NASCAR fans into a NASCAR NATION and maybe me into a NASCAR maybe-fan. The Start makes you stand and whoop and holler knowing at that instant you’re solving all the problems of the world with your mightyness and the mightyness of all your buds around you. And you’re drunk with the power of it all. It’s that strong.

But then? After that high? The race goes on.

And on. And on. And, um on?

And even though it’s brutally loud and the smell is a thick soup of burnt jet fuel and burning rubber the circling and brutally loudness is trumped with the all day drinking and eating and all the sudden? You’re asleep.

And you wake up and you realize the race is over and the guy that had been leading, like forever, somehow lost on the final lap or something which has gotta just suck.

(and again with the crappy photo)

So you clear the thunder from your ears, suck down another beer or two and head out.

Would I do it again?

HELL YES.

On Sunday driving home I was thinking maybe that’s enough NASCAR for me, but ya know what? after a week to think about it, I think maybe I need it?

A quick aside before I get into Saturday’s race.

Yep, this is just gonna keep goin’ on and on. Kinda just like a NASCAR race.

And ya know what? Maybe it should. A NASCAR race is a marathon. And granted, my NASCAR marathon was one of eating and drinking and hanging out and watching cars hurl themselves around a circular track, but, hey, it’s a marathon nonetheless.

So back to the quick aside.

NASCAR fans are amazingly and beautifully rabid. Holy shit. They’re the warmest, most genuine and friendliest tattooed and pierced folks you’ll ever meet.

I’m thinkin’ that maybe because of the frenzied love of their sport, they manage to somehow get along and share a communal experience on a weekend basis with hundreds of thousands of their closest buds?

I’ve never, ever, seen anything like it.

That you can cram a whole bunch of possibly, probably, volatile folks into a hopped up, high octane fueled, super-charged, environment armed with coolers full of cold beer and force them sit all day waiting for a night time race in the hot sun on aluminum bleachers is amazing enough.

But that around six-pack number two, the fights don’t break out was way surprising to me. That tattooed beer bellied nipple pierced Bubba doesn’t get really tired of tattooed beer bellied nipple pierced Bobba staring at his chick’s halter top and starts whaling on him in the hot humidness was (is?), I think, truly amazing.

But they don’t.

They all hang out. They drink and yell and scream and mostly just take their numbered, speedy-looking, NASCAR tee-shirts off and wave ’em around like the flags that’re flying everywere.

The NASCAR Nation clumps together, becoming a huge ONE-ness, an entity bigger than it’s parts, something cool to watch. And the best part?

Nobody gets pissed off- everybody hangs and has fun.

Maybe the rest of the world should be takin’ a lesson from these people.

Just sayin’.