Rantings About Evil Corporations and Food - How Original.

As I said in an earlier post, I have been on a healthy food kick lately. Somehow moving to Alaska has caused me to gain 15 lbs. I have been forced to abandon my jeans because the hipster, slim and low cut, prefaded Levis I own are so tight around my pelvis that I can feel the seeds of my future children being slowly crushed to death. My favorite vintage, snap-button, cowboy yoke, flannel shirt is stretched so tight at the shoulders that I could Hulk Hogan it apart. Overeating, over-beering, lots of weight lifting and mma, and my body adjusting to the cold has bulked me up so much that I decided to try to cut out all non-wild meat and up my vegetable intake.

In the spirit of my back to the Earth food kick, I queued up Food, Inc. and the Future of Food on my Netflix and they arrived this weekend. I knew about Food Inc. and was in no major hurry to see it because I had read Fast Food Nation a long time ago. Being a “foodie” I am already interested in the topic of food and food production, stay abreast of the news, and have crunchy, organic friends who fill any gaps by sending me articles and links. I have a lot of hippie virus in my veins as well as coming from a line of family farmers. Thus, it is in my genes to be a fan of smaller farms, organic farming, and knowing where your food is from and how it gets there. Obviously, I’m more than a little biased against giant corporate “food” producers (I use dick quotes because I find it hard to label high fructose corn syrup laden products as food) and the FDA and other industry captured regulatory bodies. Thus, Food, Inc. was preaching to the choir. It preached well though.

Food, Inc. wasn’t the most aesthetically stunning movie ever made. It doesn’t have the graphics, flashy transitions and rocking soundtrack of a documentary like Dogtown and Z-Boys. It is also mellow. That is, it lacks the confrontational shock value of Michael Moore movies or the tension filled, undercover journalism of The Cove. What Food, Inc. does, is to present a lot of information and a little opinion by passionate, well-spoken, intelligent and likable talking heads. All of the people in this movie are genuinely interesting to listen to, be it the Iowa farmer growing 100’s of acres of corn, to the mother who lost a child to E. coli and is now an activist trying to improve FDA regulation.

As you can see by the interviewees, Food, Inc. covers a lot of ground in two hours. Just about everything is examined including the actual “how” of production – from the industrial Iowa corn and soybeans to chicken ranches and cow feed lots to an organic farm in Virginia; the “why” of our current food system – the industrialization of agriculture by fast food companies, the Farm Bill and corn subsidies that support this system, and the economics and ideology of organic farming; the “who” of system – the farmers, the corporations controlling output, the consumers, and the supposed regulating bodies; the “what” results of this system – outbreaks, diabetes, pollution and lawsuits against farmers and people trying to buck the system.

This is one of those eye-opening movies that probably won’t be seen by the right people. It is going to be watched by people like me who already try avoid fast food and soda and eat more (preferably organic) veggies. I am an elitist, educated, privileged liberal so I have trouble accepting that a lot people don’t actually know what they are doing to themselves eating the crap out there. I’m also lucky enough to be able to afford real produce (Although, my container of produce from Full Circle Farm is only $47, so it is not that expensive.). I wonder how your average Joe Six Pack would react when they would find out that the diabetes epidemic is largely connected to government policies, or that produce would become cheaper and more plentiful if people knew their power as consumers.

It is regrettable that this documentary and similar movies and books get pinned with being “propaganda” and unfair. It’s not just one of those movies that attacks and then stops. It offers alternatives and demonstrates that a reliable, sustainable and Earth-conscious approach is obtainable. It leaves you feeling good; that if you just go out there as a consumer and demand food that isn’t pumped full of things that [God, Yahweh, Mohammad, Buddha, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, The Big Bang, Evolution or FILL IN THE BLANK] never intended us to eat, things can be righted and we can achieve harmony once again.

Then I watched Future of Food, which leaves you in an apocalyptic doom state of mind. While much of Food, Inc. was focused on consumers and their relationship to their food, Future of Food was based on the food production system itself. Reading through IMDB reviews, Future of Food obviously seems like a Monsanto hit piece. It may be, it may not be, and that is the problem. How can we call it unfair or biased when there is no other documentary or even news story to compare it to? There is no other company to write or film about. There is no other company to compare Monsanto’s ethics and practices to.

[Editors note: According to MS Word this was last modified 4/20/2010. I have been meaning to finish it for a month so excuse an abrupt end.]

Know this, Monsanto is a giant corporation. So giant that it sells 90% of all genetically engineered seeds. They made $2 billion in net income in 2008. I’m not going to say all giant corporations are evil monsters whose only goal is current quarter profit without consideration of any externalities or the future it is creating, but have you ever heard of a corporation that big who doesn’t have that goal?

In an effort for efficiency, I will point out my one inexcusable problem with Monsanto and try to wrap this up. Monsanto owns the patent on a seed technology that produces plants with sterile seeds after one planting. That means the crops do not reproduce. THEY DO NOT REPRODUCE! Somebody created crops that eradicate millions of years of evolution. Hell, if you are a creationist, they just spit in the face of God’s divine work. How fucking sick in the head do you have to be to create crops that don’t replenish themselves? How sick to invent technology that could wipe out the base of our entire food supply?

These crops have apparently never been planted outside of the lab, which is good. But what if they are? Do we trust Monsanto that they are not? The wind and pollination are not controllable. Roundup-Ready crops have already bred with farmer’s non-Roundup crops. What happens when these Terminator crops (yes, the bastards actually named the technology Terminator) start spreading and the next year no farmer’s crops grow? It would make Soylent Green look like a documentary. I’m a glass half-full kind of guy, but goddamn, knowing this technology exists scares the piss out of me.

Anyhow, in between the time I started writing this post and now I stumbled across this article in NY Time: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html In case you don’t feel like reading it, in short Roundup-resistant weeds are sprouting up and it is going to require more pesticides and plowing to grow crops, exactly the opposite of what Roundup-Resistant crops were supposed cause. Just like experts and supporters of conservative, eco-friendly agriculture proposed. Maybe all these crazy, hippie, liberal progressive, idealist farmers that have been saying pesticides and GM crops are bad aren’t as crazy, hippie, liberal progressive, idealists that they are made out to be.

I’m too happy to continue this post. The little bit I have written has already made me angry and depressed. Maybe in some future post I will rant about how narcissistic, instant rewards society is the cause of all this, or maybe I’ll pull out a conspiracy theory that it is actually the globalist illuminati forcing this system on us in order to enslave us, or maybe I’ll just shut my self-righteous, holier than thou mouth and stop thinking that I can solve the world’s problems. Yeah, that last one sounds pretty good.

Death by Metal!!!! [R.I.P. Dio]

Ronnie James Dio, metal singer and staunch metal “hail the horns” devil fingers advocate, died yesterday of stomach cancer. He was 67, which by all means is a pretty ripe old age to live to in world of rock n roll. Dio, having replaced Ozzy Osborne in Black Sabbath and later founding his own band simply named Dio, must have seen his fair share of alcohol, drugs and groupies while on tour.

In a conversation with my friend, we began discussing the topic of what constitutes a “metal” way to die. I thought that stomach cancer was pretty brutal and metal. She wasn’t so sure. We then began flipping ideas back and forth about metal versus non-metal deaths. She suggested this would make and excellent blog post and as this blog seems to routinely deal with metal, I thought it was a great idea.

So here it is, a thorough but by no means complete, list of metal vs. non-metal ways to die:

Being struck by lightening while cursing the Gods = metal
Being struck by lightening while on the 9th hole of Augusta = not metal

Overdosing on a combination heroin, coke, speed and alcohol = metal
Overdosing on a combination of heart pills and Viagra = not metal

Burning to death after a dragon breathes fire on you = metal
Burning to death after a freak wood stove accident at your chalet in Sundance = not metal

Decapitated by an axe wielding Orc = metal
Decapitated when your personal chef’s clever slips because his hands were slick from foie gras = not metal

Impaled in a spiked pit = metal
Slip and fall in a McDonald’s ball pit = not metal

Drowning in a moat while storming a castle = metal
Drowning in your heated indoor pool overlooking Reseda = not metal

Motorhead played so loud that it literally blows your mind (aka death by metal) = metal
Fainting and hitting your head at a Michael Buble show = not metal

Hanged for treason for poisoning the minds of youth with your devil music = metal
Autoerotic asphyxiation = not metal

Torn limb from limb by rabid groupies = metal
Torn limb from limb by angry tax accountants = not metal

Halberd (or any other type of polearm) through the heart = metal
Broken heart = not metal

Complications from demon possession = metal
Complications from car repossession = not metal

Werewolf rips out your throat = metal
Puppy allergies swell up your throat = not metal

Strangled in hand to hand combat with a Viking warrior = metal
Strangled in hand to hand combat with a double Windsor knot = not metal


Well, there you go. Go forth and die. Commenters are asked to please add to the list.

This lotta light of mine...

I have been trying to write more and actually keep this blog going, really I have. My past posts generally revolved around movies because that is what I was doing. Because I haven’t been watching too many movies lately, at least none that blew my mind, I have been struggling with what to write about. At 10 p.m. last night while I was making soup from scratch, I realized what to write about: why the hell I was making soup at 10 p.m.

The answer is that the amount of light up here is tweaking me out. The sun for most of the winter rose around 11 a.m. and set by 3 p.m. I survived the four hours of weak daylight by sucking down vitamin D supplements, overloading my body with endorphins at the gym and spending my dark evenings watching movies.

Now it is light by 8 a.m. and dusk starts around 10:00 p.m. I have light and have no idea how to deal with it. I am one of those people where if it is light out, I feel like I should be doing something. I can’t sit on my butt watching movies if sunlight is pouring through the window, so I have been trying to rework my daily routine. Drinking my time away at the bar, which I have been doing since Iditarod, finally had to end. Although I must say that that was good bender while it lasted.

I now try to spend a lot of time at the gym. I will go to yoga then workout, hold mma club, play volleyball, run on the treadmill or do whatever I can to fill up time. All the art projects that have been stirring around in my mind are now being put into fruition. I make myself sit down and be creative even if I’m not feeling the creative urge. This is a good thing as I have been slacking on arts and crafts and even playing guitar. One of my main goals in moving to Nome was to be a semi-hermit and make lots of art. I started off strong but the cold and dark had the creative juices frozen so I am attempting to thaw them out.

The light has also forced me to put tinfoil over my bedroom windows. After making the mistake of trying to go to bed early one evening, I found that light pouring into your bedroom does not make for a great night’s sleep. Blackout curtains, well certainly less ghetto, have two distinct disadvantages. First, they do not reflect the sun so your apartment heats up. Tinfoil does. Second, they are expensive. Tinfoil is not. Let the ghetto good times roll.

I have also been cooking a lot. There is a program up here where for $40 every week, a box of organic produce is flown in from Full Circle Farm in Washington State. My expanding body has me attempting to cut down on red meat and eat more veggies. A mixture of lots of weightlifting and mma, heavy eating and my body adapting to negative temperatures has bulked me up quite a bit. An assortment of weird veggies every week gets me healthy and gives me a project – learn how to cook a new food. So far from my produce boxes I have learned that I like beets and turnips, chard is alright, and bok choy will probably go to waste.

The latest new ingredient I got was leeks. I found what looked to be a delicious recipe for shrimp, scallop and leek risotto. I then went searching Nome for ingredients and came back short scallops, a red chile pepper and arborio rice. By searching Nome, I of course mean to go to the two grocery stores in town. Groceries in Nome are what a grocery store in the lower 48 would have been like in 1990, good enough selection to vary your diet, but lack the fun and odd ingredients that foodies love. My solution, make a soup and add orzo pasta instead. Try it. It is quite good.

In conclusion, here I am in Nome with 12 hours of light to work with and about 8 more to come. Let's see if I am as successful with dealing with the light as I am with dealing with the dark. If I continue with my pace now, I will have an apartment full of art and a refrigerator full of leftovers. Both are good things to have.



Jeff’s Light Tweaking Shrimp, Squash and Asparagus soup
1 leek
1 red pepper
3 carrots
4 stalks celery
Garlic
Green onion
2 yellow squash
1 bunch asparagus
1 lb shrimp
2 cartons of vegetable stock
Bay leaf
Old Bay seasoning
Orzo pasta

Dice leek, red pepper, carrots, celery, garlic and green onion and cook in olive oil over medium heat until tender. Add chopped squash and asparagus and vegetable stock and bay leaf. Simmer until asparagus is tender. Add half a box of orzo to the soup. Sprinkle shrimp with Old Bay and sauté in oil. Add to soup. Let simmer until orzo is puffed out and tender.

Up In The Air

I watched the Academy Awards the other weekend. It was the first awards show I have watched in six years. I was at my neighbors’ place eating Sunday dinner and it was on so we decided to watch it. The Sunday Dinner has become a pretty regular occurrence and gives me a regular television fix. It also hasn’t helped me get in shape because they cook big, elaborate and delicious meals. Being televisionless means I get all my news from newspapers and radio. Often that news is about things or events on television so I know the stories and history of things without ever actually seeing the event (the internet here is too slow to stream video). When I actually get to see the event, it gives me a tickle.

This is probably also the first time I have seen the big movies of the night that had been written about in the seemingly never-ending lead up to the Oscars – Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I’m not one who rushes to the theatre to see a blockbuster. The Hurt Locker I “borrowed” from the internet back in Anchorage and the tiny theatre in Nome, whose lobby is also the Subway store, got Avatar and some friends were going to see it so I tagged along. The Hurt Locker was alright. Kathryn Bigelow makes decent adrenaline junkie, modern cowboy tales. Point Break holds a special place in my heart. Still, The Hurt Locker just didn’t blow my mind. I think being a huge fan of the HBO mini series Generation Kill has ruined Iraq movies for me. They just don’t compare to an accurate and real life account like it was. It is like watching some WWII shoot ‘em up after seeing Band of Brothers.

Avatar just sucked. It was a waste of 2 ½ hours of my life. It was special f/x pornography. If I’m going to watch pornography, it better have bush and cock making friends with each other, not glowing, floating dandelion seeds and Elphanrhinosaurs’ attacks. The plot appeared to have been written by a pimple-faced Star Wars fanboy as an Earth Day project. The dialogue was as engaging and clever as the manual for my Ford Ranger. Unobtanium? Really? Reeaaaaallly? Why not just name the CEO of the mining company Cash McGreedy and the army guy Captain Bigot?

Anyhow, The Hurt Locker won a lot of awards. The point of all this is that the next day I went online and looked at all the less written about nominees and queued them up in Netflix. First on my list was Up In the Air. I didn’t really know much about it going in. I just saw George Clooney and thought let’s go for it. I like George Clooney. His modern day Cary Grant has not grown old to me yet. Plus he likes South Park and has a pet pig.

I really enjoyed Up In the Air – interesting plot and dialogue, a nice mix of humor and drama, visually pleasant and a brief shot of bare ass. It is a good Saturday night popcorn movie. I also enjoyed it because parts of it hit a little close to home.

The plot is a bit complex. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate axe-man for hire, meaning companies hire him to fire people for them. He is a suave and polished “two Bobs” from Office Space. He spends his life flying around the United States firing people. 322 days of the year he is flying. He has a barren apartment in Omaha where the company he works for is located, but his real home is in airports, on airplanes and in hotel rooms. He also occasionally gives motivational speeches called “what’s in your backpack.” He preaches a philosophy of life with no personal, emotional or physical attachments to hold one down. He says at one speaking engagement,

“The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.”

It is never revealed whether he adapted the lifestyle for the job or took the job to suit his lifestyle. The movie leaves that chicken and the egg problem for the audience to decide.

Clooney is the best at his job and able to communicate with people in their most vulnerable state and convince them that the firing/lay-off is just a new start (and also prevent them from going postal). As his personal life is filled with short interactions and friends who only last only as long as a flight, it is a natural fit for any deep, emotional encounters to come from the short interaction with those being fired. A young upstart Natalie, played by Anna Kendrick, decides to change the industry by firing people via video chat and thus confining Clooney to an office in Omaha. He is left with one last chance to hit the road while both showing Natalie the ropes and trying to save his gallivanting lifestyle by convincing her of the personal interaction needed in the profession.

The story doesn’t stop there because, well, because being single and moving isn’t the American way. It doesn’t sell houses and useless shit to decorate those houses. Apparently all of us single vagabonds are miserable and don’t know it. Thus, we get Vera Farmiga playing Alex, a fellow traveler and Clooney’s love interest. She was excellent and was equal to, if not better than Clooney in much of the movie. Anyhow, Clooney, partly through Natalie’s nagging, realizes he has feelings for Alex, or thinks he does, or we think he does, or we think he should. I’m not sure which, but the movie tries really hard to make us realize that no man is an island and we all need to settle down.

I don’t buy it. It wasn’t until I started moving around that I became truly happy. I live out of a U-haul and pick-up instead of a carry-on, but the core principles of moving and staying unattached are the same. Seeing new things and meeting new people are what life is about. Sure, as the movie states, your best memories are with somebody else, but why does that have to be the same person? Why shouldn’t we follow our goal to see the world or in Clooney’s case earn 10 million airline miles?

When animals are forced together and over populated they die of disease and starvation if not outright killing each other. We live in a world of 6 billion people and projected to be 9 billion within 40 years. Who wants to settle down into that? I don’t want to volunteer for being in the cage. Maybe I am full of youthful idealistic wanderlust. Maybe when I hit forty I will have some epiphany and crave a home with a garage and a backyard that little kids can play in. Until that time comes, I will keep moving.

For all my fellow travelers, couchsurfers, vagabonds, hobos, drifters and tramps I highly recommend Up In the Air. If is a very good movie that weaves travel, relationships, the shitty economy and the effects of modern technology on jobs into one beautifully shot (have to give a shout out for the cinematography – actually shot on scene in real airports, hotels and lounges) and acted movie. It may change your mind or may not. It will at least highly entertain you for an hour and half.

The Red Lantern is in.

It’s all over. Iditarod has come and gone. I watched mushers come in at 2 a.m. I cheered for wet boobs and buns. I did irreparable damage to my liver. In sum, I experienced Iditarod. My last post concluded on Wednesday. In an effort to save time, here is what happened in the remaining days: I drank. Wednesday I drank green St. Patty’s day beer. Thursday I partied at my neighbors and avoided the bars. Friday and Saturday I hit up the town with a couple of couchsurfers from Anchorage. Sunday was the banquet at the Rec Center complete with a giant spread of food and $3 beers.

Now I am recovering. A week of late nights and smoky bars has destroyed my immune system so that I am writing this with some weird cold or flu. My body aches and I spent most of last night waking up every 20 minutes in a cold sweat. Lovely.

Aside from turning my usually healthy liver into a shrunken, yellow mess of dying cells, Iditarod finally made me feel like a real resident of Nome. Despite my lack of snowmachine riding and muskox hunting and general introverted apartment dwelling art making, I have made enough acquaintances that I always knew somebody out on the town. Also, with the two couchsurfers staying with me, I got to be a tour guide for the weekend. It is fun to be a “local” and show people the cool, not in the tourbook, things to do such as hikes up Anvil Mountain to see the White Alice antennae and muskox herds and then get live crab from Norton Sound Seafood for dinner.

Let me take the time to endorse couchsurfing.org for any readers who do not know of the website. It is a social networking site with the sole purpose of providing free places to sleep to poor vagabonds like me who don’t mind sleeping on a couch or a mattress in the corner of the room. You join and make a profile with pictures of all your travels and descriptions of your accommodations. Other users can then search in a town or geographic areas for other members. Exchange a few emails to make sure the person is available and not an ax murderer and just like that you saved yourself $120 on a hotel room. It is self-regulating so people who have stayed with you can leave comments about you and you can leave comments about them (If I have learned anything during my 30 years on this Earth it is that pictures of you on top of a mountain or biking across the United States usually means you a decent person). The best part is that you get to stay with a friendly local who can give you advice and show you things that a hotel concierge never could. It actually uses social networking in a communal and productive way instead of just updating former high school classmates with fishing for sympathy status updates.

I have used the site quite a few times now. When I drove across the country from San Francisco back to law school with my buddy, we stayed with three different people, all great experiences. I hosted a group of guys in Anchorage and now have hosted in Nome. You might think that such a website would draw mostly a dreadlocked hippie crowd, but it is quite diverse. Through the site I have met a plethora of people from military guys to oil rig workers to dreadlocked hippies to college “dudes.” All were great people who love traveling, meeting people, sharing their own experiences and wanting a more authentic experience of wherever they visit. I highly recommend trying it on your next trip.

Getting back to Iditarod, I have to say that being here for the entire week was unforgettable (The amazing weather the tourists brought helped as well.). Seeing the town swell with people in celebration makes you excited and happy. It is a weeklong good-time feedback loop in a town where depression and melancholy can easily set in. It was tough Monday morning not hearing sirens go off and the loud speakers in town giving race updates. When the initial idea to move to Alaska was presented to me on the back porch of Crossroads Bar & Grill in South Royalton, Vermont sometime in March of 2009, I was hesitant until I quickly realized that the idea was so crazy I had to do it. I figured that the worst possible outcome is that I end up leaving the Great White North with some good stories to tell. Well, witnessing the full onslaught of Iditarod in Nome, Alaska is definitely a hell of a story to tell. Thank you Nome and thank you Iditarod.

Dog mushing and wet boobs.

Dogs, boobs, pho

[In an effort to not forget and accurately report I am writing this as I have time so excuse me if I switch tenses or if there are continuity problems.]

It is Iditarod time in town. Nome’s most famous cultural event, the yearly 1100+ mile dogsled race from Willow to Nome commemorating the 1925 diphtheria serum run to stop an outbreak, is underway. It is also one hell of a party. The town swells in size as tourists flock in. People rent out rooms in their house for $180 a night. The bars are packed, well more packed than usual. They are also open until 5 a.m.

The race itself couldn’t be better timed. The sun has left its seemingly permanent fixture at 10 degrees above the horizon and is high up in the sky glaring off the snow. The town has been cooped up for a long time and it is time to let loose and do what Nome does best - party until your liver hurts to the touch. Starting on Monday, the fire alarm sounds, loud speakers give color commentary and Nomeites and tourists stumble out of the bars to greet incoming mushers and then return to their stool to warm up in preparation for the next one.

The race technically has a winner by Tuesday when the first musher crosses, but in a race this long, large gaps are built so mushers keep coming throughout the week. This year, Lance Mackey won his forth straight Iditarod coming in at just under 9 days. It is amazing to live in a place where dog mushers are as highly regarded as, if not more highly regarded than, any “outside” professional athlete. Lance Mackey is cool too. He is 39 years old, has long stringy hair he keeps in pony tail, sports a goatee and is a throat cancer survivor. Until this year when they started drug testing mushers (a controversy all its own), he would smoke medicinal marijuana on the trail. There is basically no way you can be as cool or hard as this guy but he still has that down to Earth, drink a beer with vibe.

Speaking of mushers, this is a tough group of athletes. Nine days on the trail in desolate Alaska is hard. I built snowcaves for 24 hours outside and by the end I was a cold and pissy little bitch who wanted nothing more than to be back at my apartment drinking hot coffee and watching a Netflix. Yet, they have a warm caring quality because they work with dogs. Scratch that, they work for the dogs. They love these animals and deeply care for them. Mushers heat their food up in the dogs’ water. They sew booties for them. It is all about the dogs. That feeling of compassion doesn’t exist in most professional sports. It is lovely.

But enough with the dogs, let’s get to the events. There are a lot of them. There are art shows and craft fairs. There is snow sculpting, a snowmachine race, dog fur spinning, basketball tournaments, poker tournaments, and chili cook-offs. There are also lots of parties at the bars. They are a sight to be seen.

I started off my Iditarod experience by watching the start of the Nome-Golovin Snowmachine Race. It is a 200 mile round trip race held every year and the winner qualifies for the Iron Dog. It is a full on sprint. The guys and girls blast off the line and pound their way out and back banging up their machines and even flying off of them. A fittingly balls out event for a balls out week.
There are also more than a few parties throughout the week. Let’s pause and list some of these parties (these are lifted alphabetically from the Nome Convention and Visitors Bureau schedule I got in my PO Box): Alaskan Beers & Jack Daniels, Beer Tasting Extravaganza, Hula Girls, Husky Hoe Down, Idita-After Pary, Idita Mardi Gras, Karaoke, Make You Own Bikini, Safe Sex, Singles Night, St. Patrick’s Day, Wet Bun’s and Wet T-shirt.

In case you only skimmed that list, I will highlight some: MAKE YOUR OWN BIKINI, WET BUNS and WET T-SHIRT. These are advertised by the town. Outside of Sturgis, Bike Week and the Testicle Festival, where do you get that type state sponsored debauchery?

Monday, Nome sets the tone of the week with the Wet Buns’ competition. Who doesn’t love grizzled Alaskan buns? Nome isn’t Miami beach. Hell, by lower 48 standards, it is downright ugly. As an average looking guy, I love it. Modern technology allows humans to live a relatively sedentary lifestyle up here during the nine months of snow. We just ended four months of 20 hours of darkness. People are thick and, unless you have some Native blood in you, white – pasty white.

This makes for a great slate of contestants. The key to any good nudity based event is the pool that you get contestants from. Like Girls Gone Wild, the point is watching normal people go wild and not already wild people being wild. As Mac said on It’s Always Sunny, “We don't want wild girls. We want good girls gone wild. It's important to see the transition, watch the process...” Nome has lots of good average people willing to “go wild.”

I head over to Wet Bun’s, get inside, find some friends and realize I need to drink for this. A few beers in and I realized I needed to drink a lot more and started double fisting. The actual competition is preceded by an auction of t-shirts, hats, other booze related schwag and five front stage seats complete with water bottles for wetting things up. I am not sure if any of this money is donated to a cause or if it all goes to the winners. The auction takes a while so I am pretty gone by the time it starts. After it finally started I found out that the women of Nome are as crazy horny as the men. The crowd erupted. I have never heard more cheers and whistles for average physiques with bad tattoos. Awesome. I’m not really a fan of man-ass so luckily the drunkenness made the competition go quickly. Long story short, I make it home and pass out around 3 a.m.

I trained for Iditarod week. Last week I stayed up late every night and went to the bar for a few beers during the week, which I never do. I knew what my body was in for so I wanted to warm it up to the booze and lack of sleep so I didn’t miss anything. It worked. Tuesday morning I was hurting, but functional. My big life saver: pho. Pho, the delicious brothy and slightly spicy Vietnamese soup full of cilantro, green onions, rice noodles, and thin pieces of beef that I became addicted to in D.C. Twin Dragon in town has it and it is the best cure for hangovers in the world. It fills you up and gets your deprived body nutrients, but unlike greasy breakfasts it doesn’t sit in your stomach. Totally refreshing. A big bowl of that for lunch and I was on the way to full recovery. A post-work power nap later and I was ready for boobs.

I was cautiously optimistic about the Wet T-Shirt contest. I had heard stories of past events that included full frontal nudity and beer bottles in certain unmentionable places, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up only to have them dashed. I grew up on internet pron, hung out at hockey team parties in undergrad and rugby parties at law school and have been to many local, small town strip clubs, so I am no stranger to uncomfortable nudity. The shit I have seen, you can’t unsee. Two Girls One Cup, while gross as hell, is safe because you are watching it on a screen. When the stripper in front of you has track marks, it makes you question existence.

However, tits are tits, so off I went to Polaris. The place was butts to nuts packed. The night before the auctioneers had trouble auctioning off all the gear. Tonight, there was no such trouble. The money that drops at Iditarod is staggering. When a cheap beer like Miller costs you $5, things add up. Pregaming is a good strategy. With the goods gone, the contestants are called on stage and shit got real.

The contestants ranged from two perky and fit young girls to slightly hardened middle age women to big old drunken tundra mommas. Fantastic. Queue the music and let’s get this started.

Another insight into Nome is that it doesn’t seem to have a history of dancing. Traditional Native dancing is big up here, but let’s face it, a form of dance that portrays seal hunts is not going sexy. Erotic gyrations are not common place. Thankfully, the younger contestants seem to have spent some time at the bars in Anchorage and were able to muster some crowd please moves.

There were nine contestants to start. They all danced, then left stage and came back individually for their “routine.” There was then a vote by cheer, three were eliminated and the process begins again narrowing it down to the final three. Did I mention one contestant eliminated herself by passing out backstage after the first round of voting? That happened.

The final three, to nobody’s surprise consisted of the three youngest contestants: Lola – a thicker girl with bigguns; Lil’ Shorty – a cute and fit little girl who was the best dancer and stripped down to her saucy little panties; and Andrea, Azlea or some other A name I can’t really remember – cute but didn’t have the stage presence that the other two did. Lola, the crowd favorite of the entire night, won $1700. As far as I am concerned Lil’ Shorty was robbed. She took 2nd place winning $1000, but deserved first. She had moves and didn't even hesitate on the chant of “skin to win”.

Unlike the previous night, the contest was over early. I was successfully pacing myself so headed down to Breakers to finish off. Bedtime, after late night grub and gatoraide, was around 3:00 a.m.

Wednesday morning I actually felt alright, albeit a little tired. An easy day of work, another round of pho, and a five mile run and I was ready to pretend to be Irish.

To be continued...

The metal train keeps rolling...

I am in a metal mood. After watching the Metalocolypse series, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey arrived in my mailbox. What a documentary. I don’t know how this escaped me for three years. Sam Dunn outdid himself in offering up a very comprehensive history of metal. Starting from the grandfathers of metal of the late 60’s, he works his way up to the present covering everything from 80’s glam to Swedish black metal church burnings. If your first interview is Geddy Lee, you are on the right track.

In A Headbanger’s Journey, Dunn takes the time to explain heavy metal in musical terms showing its many similarities to classical music such as Wagner’s use of bass in the orchestra to metal’s pounding double kick drums and how the sustain of a distorted electric guitar shares many qualities of a violin section (I’m glad to hear somebody else echo this. I have always though the warm growl of Marshall stacks sounded like violins).

Dunn loves Iron Maiden and makes no bones about it. In fact he later went on to make Iron Maiden Flight 666, a travel documentary on Maiden’s “Somewhere Back in Time” tour. (Flight 666 is an amazing look at possibly the greatest, most hardworking and amazingly independent band ever.) So of course when Dunn wants to get the low down on comparisons to the classics, he goes to the man with the greatest operatic voice in metal, Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson gives the best interview of the film describing his job of filling the entire venue with his voice in an effort to shrink the audience so that it is like Maiden is playing to each and every person. You can tell from the short interview that Dickinson loves his fans and works his butt off to please them. There is no pretentious rockstar persona attached at all and a completely down to Earth working class guy, another topic covered in the film.

The personal and community aspect that Bruce talked about was explored with a trip to Wacken Open Air, a giant, 70,000 person, outdoor metal festival in Germany every year. I now have a new vacation goal. The place looks absolutely amazing. Metalheads in tents drinking beer and eating German food, who could ask for more in life? It was refreshing to see metalheads in their natural element of drinking and headbanging without any trace of violence or hysteria like some U.S. rock n roll festivals have become famous for. Aside from all the black leather and spikes, Wacken looked like a hippie jazz-fusion festival, full of long hair, sleeping bags, making friends and little showering.

A Headbanger’s Journey also looks at the life-long love of metal. Metalheads seemingly never grow out of it, nor should they. The first band I really got into was in fact Iron Maiden. Everything about them was cool, especially to a kid in eighth grade. The album art, WWII lyrics, and ridiculous guitars riffs all blew me away. I still rock out to Maiden. As I grew into a rebellious teenager, I discovered the sister subculture to metal – punk. Just like I still love metal, punk has never left me either. I still want to fight the man and listen to Minor Threat and The Clash. I never intend on stopping. The music and the culture are part of me and I am part of it. As Mos Def said about hip-hop, “People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant living in the hillside coming down to visit the townspeople. We are Hip-Hop. Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop.” Well, we are metal.

Anybody who has a metalhead friend who they just don’t understand should rent this movie. It will give you a whole new insight into a misjudged and stereotyped subculture. I’ll leave with a quote by Dunn himself, “Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you.”