March 31, '04

He had been left to die on a winding mountain road, his body helpless against the crushing weight of some onrushing SUV. Dehydration was working its deadly will when, against all odds, he was found by one of the Modest Geniuses™. The kindly old intellectual had taken to his bicycle, as he often did when wrestling with a difficult intellectual problem.

The brilliant, yet earthy, theorist was on the very cusp of articulating the deceptively simple key to reconciling the poststructuralist worldview with the complexities of the modern, internally geared hub when he spotted the prostrate form in the roadway. Abandoning his theorizing, he rushed to the aid of the helpless form on the burning tarmac.

(The thought was never recaptured. Much later, Shimano, who had won the coveted Schraeder Prize for his theories on inflation, was to write a brilliant, if incomplete paper, "Shifting Gears: The Highs and Lows of Deconstructionism.") The Samaritan rode back to Wormwood Acres, his secret stronghold in Central Boulderia, with the critically ailing victim on his luggage rack. There, he tenderly provided the simple care that was all that could be done for his patient, whom he named Morty: a cramped pot of hard, sandy soil.

One season passed, and then another. Slowly, against the prognosis of the experts, Morty slowly gained in strength, and grew larger. His trauma had left him unable to speak, but he found a way to communicate with his mentor. One spring, he unfurled a single, beautiful flower.

"A flower," said the Modest Genius™. "A bloom ... Bloom ... Aha! ... Harold Bloom! ...Harold ... Bloom ... is ... an ... old ... poop! Very insightful, Morty."

And thus began the prickly intellectual partnership that was to revolutionize the entire smarty-pants world of Boulderian critical thought.

(Few people know of the early years of Morty, the Wonder Cactus.)

            —Peter Aretin

March 28, '04

Well, good-bye, Old Paint.

It's not easy saying, "so long" after the adventures we've had together. In fact, toward the end, just driving you was an adventure. It must have been like that for the old barnstormers, back in the early days of aviation: the roar of the engine, the redolence of hot oil and gasoline, the vibration that shook the whole machine as speed built up.

Remember that fateful expedition to Denver, to see the One Love Festival at that detestable temple of nannyism and Orwellian fussbudgetry, the Fillmore? How we arrived in downtown Cowtown in a cloud of steam and oil smoke? How I left you among the winos to hike the whole length of downtown in the soft twilight, wired on adrenaline? (While you waited, I was harried from one standing spot to another by the legions of officious pests that emerge from the shadows of that cursed, cavernous nightspot. Then the show was cut off at 9:30, leaving Toots only twenty minutes, and that normally serene soul threw down the mike and stormed off.)

Remember how we tried to make it back to Boulder, but had a total meltdown in Broomfield? Or was it Louisville? How we gave the wrong directions to Triple-A and only finally got home via tow truck at 5 in the sweet a.m.? How I knelt and kissed the blessed earth of Central Boulderia?

Remember? Those were the days, pardner.

Or how, last March, you had to stay buried in that snow bank near Lake Pandora for days waiting for Help? (I was feverishly battling the sweaty sheets of my sickbed.) Triple-A sure won't be sorry to see you go, buddy.

But I will, somehow. We were a pretty good team; a little the worse for wear, but with mileage left. I could leave you at a remote trailhead and nobody would bother you. And I could identify with the way those shiny new Beemers and Audis with their unblemished complexions gave you a wide berth!

I knew things were serious when the transmission oil started running through you like, well, like oil through a 24 year-old car. I'm sorry about that time I let you get too dry and lost everything but third and had to drive you all the way back from Lake Pandora in third. When Wolfgang, the mechanic, wouldn't even give an estimate, I knew it was time to say good-bye. So I donated your body, along with my entire collection of extra wheels, most with their own unique tires, to Channel 6. It seemed like the decent thing to do. We may be old, but we have our dignity.

But I won't forget you, pard.

There's that oil slick out in front of my house, for one thing.

              —Bozo

March 27, '04

As truly historic moments sometimes do, it almost slipped by unnoticed, a short item in the Camera's Local Briefs section. But last week the first traffic circle lawsuit was filed against the City of Boulder.

That it would one day happen was virtually a certainty. That it is not a lawsuit about a fatality is fortunate. The idea of controlling speeding by placing hazards in the middle of the roads is akin to trying to control obesity by increasing the toxins in the food supply, like the tuna industry is currently doing.

It was a peculiarly Boulderian accident: the teenage driver shielded her eyes when a deer bounded in front of her car. She missed Bambi and ran into a traffic circle. Good thing! She could have damaged someone's fence! The suit argues that the misplaced petunia planters are a hazard to motorists. No surprise.

Lately, the Boulder Bookstore has started selling "Keep Boulder Weird" T-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers. Nothing signals so clearly that the horse has fled the shed than semi-official barn door locking gestures like that. Some rather tame weird Boulderian things were mentioned in the Camera's March 7 piece, like "quirky political stances." The owner of a party hat company in Colorado Springs was consulted regarding his efforts to increase the weird down there, as if the place isn't weirder than Boulder and then some.

There was no mention of traffic circles, one of Boulderia's genuinely weird manias, as such, but there was mention that "last year, the national Institute of Transportation Engineers awarded Boulder its 2003 Pedestrian Project Award for Safety for efforts to improve crosswalks and pedestrian safety." This, for a town that lets people ride mountain bikes on the sidewalks.

In the particular Reality Bubble inhabited by Boulder planners and public officials, they still congratulate each other over the genius of traffic circles and claim circles have made the homeland, pardon me, home town, safer. Departing Councilperson Don Mock gave himself a big pat on the back for "rationalizing" the traffic mitigation program. It would be fun to ask him just how much pedestrian injuries and fatalities have dropped in the localities where traffic circles were installed.

The current gang in Washington has been quite justifiably taking a lot of heat for ignoring science, concealing unfavorable information and funneling public money into faith-based initiatives. Our gang here in Boulderia are such an educated bunch, shouldn't they meet an even higher standard? If ever there were a faith-based initiative, it's traffic circles.

And that lawsuit? It will argue that the circles have increased traffic accidents. Absent any demonstrable increase in pedestrian safety, that might embarrass ordinary mortals. But I'm willing to bet a "Keep Boulder Weird" T-shirt that the City settles, and as quietly as possible.

But it won't be the last time.

March 22, '04

The shape of CU's special Sex, Lies and Football investigative panel is beginning to emerge from the fog, and what's taking shape is a Dog-and-Pony Show in the classic mold of the familiar congressional committee: A parade of witnesses tell the committee the perfectly obvious or ceremoniously impart what is common knowledge. Politicians, who must stand for reelection, need this kind of puppet theater. But why should a panel of supposed experts need to be told that students drink and that sexual assault is wrong and harmful and which end of a football is the front?

So far it's like an egghead talk show with academic apparatchiks doing guest spots. In the latest meeting the panel was informed about the university's Student Code of Conduct and got an overview of the structure of the athletic department from a succession of university administrators. The committee has yet to learn a single thing that isn't public information and anything that could meaningfully be called "investigation" has yet to take place.

No wonder the committee is already making noises about extending its April 20 deadline. If they proceed slowly enough, the investigators, already undercut by the new recruiting rules hastily announced by the prez and chancellor, will be rendered totally irrelevant by the governor's special prosecutor.

That's the special prosecutor they initially expressed such doubt was necessary.

             —Bozo

March 21, '04

In Boulderia, skiers and those who are aware of the source of that vital fluid that both waters the traffic circle petunia and laves the SUV, say, mantra-like, "Wait until March!" March is traditionally the holiday season of skiers and water commissioners, the month of the Big Snows. In recent years it seems to be less and less so.

But just two days ago last year a lackluster March became a blockbuster March with a dump that was up to 6 feet in parts of Boulderia's mountains. If the photographer of the breathtaking postcard scene above had moved back down the road a hundred feet or so, the snowy lump that marked the spot where my car lay buried, augered into the snowbank, would have disfigured his composition. The Prefect and I had been leaving Lake Pandora, beat to Hell from thrashing and swimming in the flood tide of snow. In poor visibility exacerbated by lousy windshield wiper blades, I drove my old beater into the snowbank so deep that even guys in big fat-tired trucks couldn't yank it back out. We hitched a ride to Netherland and missed the Shelf Road avalanche by a full 15 minutes.

I spent a surreal evening in Netherland, mostly in the Pioneer Inn, waiting for Help Towing to show up. I had to suppress my natural instinct to belly up to the bar and get really, deeply philosophical about the whole thing. I might need my wits about me; I had miles to go before I slept. I learned it's not really very amusing watching a group of drunks of which one is not a member.

The guys from Help told me they'd retrieve my jalopy when the road was reopened and leave it in the M & H parking lot. Then power went out in the whole town. I wandered off into the dark, snowy Netherland night, wondering if I was going the be the next frozen dead guy. Down the street near the market was an RTD bus which seemed to be across the road. I shuffled down there through the snow and asked the driver if he was going down the canyon. "Eventually," he said. He'd given up any intention of going to the ski area and was turning around. Some fool he'd asked to watch and signal him as he backed up the bus had cheerfully waved him on right into the ditch and had then run away. Eventually, a road grader showed up and got the bus's rear wheels out of the ditch after a ritual snapping of the tow chain two or three times.

I helped the driver back the bus around, performing my task painstakingly: I intended to be on that bus. "Let's blow this pop stand," said the driver. On the way out of town we picked up two snowboarders who had hiked down after clambering over the 12 foot wall of avalanche debris blocking the Shelf Road. I sat in the front seat for the picture window view of Boulder Canyon as it is rarely seen. The bus, with chains, was rock steady as it broke a foot or more of unplowed snow in the nearly deserted canyon. Snow sheeted continuously off the canyon walls, and I thought about avalanches while the driver told his three passengers entertaining stories about his newspapering days in Wyoming.

I was so glad to see town again I tipped the driver 20 bucks and shuffled home, where I arrived somewhat the worse for wear, sans car, sans skis. I was mighty glad to climb into my own beddy-bed, where, unfortunately, I was to spend the next week with a blockbuster case of the flu.

A year later, the scene is much different at Lake Pandora. No blizzard has come to save us from what's shaping up to be a summer drought. The snow is pretty good corn on the runs, and a lot of fun. There are standing pools of water in spots. Or maybe those are skiers', or water commissioners', tears. The end is near.

The snowpack? Get ready to kiss it good-bye. It's pure Hell in those backcountry south-facing glades. Xanadu snow: it's going isothermal, and suddenly drops your skis into caverns measureless to man. Dirt is beginning to reemerge. Ever the optimist, I renewed my pass at Lake Pandora for next year. Besides, it got me a promotional $500 discount on a new Subaru at the local dealership. I did get my 24 year-old beater back, but it began to hemorrhage oil so badly that the mechanic called me into his office with the grave air of a doctor delivering the sad news of a terminal ailment.

My new car is a regular little road rocket. I've become one of the Turbo People. "Is this a mid-life crisis?" the salesman joked during the test drive. Only if I live to be 121. Look, buying a new car every 24 years doesn't exactly make me a yuppie.

And it's got great windshield wipers.

      —Bozo

March 17, '04 -- Today we celebrate the patenting of the rubber band (1845) by Stephen Parry, of a London rubber company. For reasons not entirely clear, drinking oneself rubber-legged has become a traditional part of the festivities.

My prescription for women entering the war zone of the professions: study football. It is a classic textbook of the strategies and controlled aggression of the ever-hostile workplace. A chapter in the second volume of Sexual Personae analyses the pagan motifs of football, which is not only my favorite sport but my only real religion. Indeed, I credit my success in attacking the academic and feminist establishment to a lifetime mania for football ... Women who want to remake the future should look for guidance not to substitute parent figures but to the brash assertions of pagan sport.

          —Camille Paglia, Vamps & Tramps

If the University of Colorado is to survive the deep financial and moral manure pile in which it finds itself mired, big shovels will be necessary. The Counter-Intuitive Agency has devised an in-genius plan to restore pride and fiscal vitality to our beleaguered Buffalo home so that CU may roam once more in the sun, horny head held high, bollocks lazily caressed by the high clover.

But it won't be easy cleaning out the stable!

The first task will be to make some hay. The proposal by Sen. Ron Teck, (R-Grand Junction) for "... lawmakers and voters to approve a constitutional amendment that would completely privatize higher education in Colorado" doesn't go nearly far enough. The state already contributes only 10% of CU's funding, and that's going to be cut even further. For such peanuts, the state not only expects to be able to constantly meddle in the school's operation, but to get naming rights as well?

I'm sorry!

The right to choose the name of the Nation's Number 1 Party School is too valuable to let go for a paltry 10%. Trust us, this will be huge as soon as it hits e-Bay! The possibilities are exciting: Microsoft University, University of Texas at Boulder, Six Flags Over Boulder, Krispy Kreme Kollege, or perhaps Isuzu U. For additional spondulix, naming rights for individual departments could be auctioned separately: Harlequin Library, the Ken Lay School of Business, or the Janet Jackson Center for the Performing Arts are but a few of the exciting possibilities. But Mondo Boulder has identified a long time Colorado company as the primary naming-rights prospect. "The University of Coors" has a certain hoppy tang to it, and here's a big plus: the school wouldn't have to change its initials! It's the perfect tie-in with the Number 1 Party School™ title (which should be trademarked without delay). After huge tuition increases, the rest of Coors U's operating budget can be raised through Young Republicans Bake Sales™.

Once the school is stabilized financially, there must be some tough changes in both educational philosophy and the administration. CU has been ultra-left liberal (compared to the typical peckerwood middle-aged Republican cattle rancher) for a long time. Perhaps its time to try something new. Mondo Boulder's reorganization and revitalization plan is based on a powerful organizational principle known as Put 'Em Where They Can Do The Least Damage.

Concerning the student body itself, perhaps it's time to rethink the whole notion of Affirmative Action. Predominantly white schools have been slugging it out for the best and the brightest minority students with such fervor that it's having certain unintended consequences. It's killing off historically black schools like Howard, for one thing. This is either a Good Thing, or Cultural Imperialism, depending on how you look at it.

So maybe instead of trying to make every school into a little ethnic and racial cross section, we should try segregation. We could segregate the spoiled children of the middle-class who want only to drink, party and torch couches in certain special schools where they can't be too much of a nuisance to everyone else.

These special schools, mandatory for qualifying students, would be called the "edutainment system." Under Mondo Boulder's proposed nationwide plan, all schools would cease recruiting minority students. The federal government would grant vouchers to prospective minority college students, who could evaluate the prospects themselves, and go to any school they choose except those schools set aside to baby-sit the underachieving middle class white kids who are the drones of the current educational system and role models of lousy citizenship.

Minority students could also attend these higher edutainment schools as well, but they'd have to pay the staggering tuition and buy their own SUV out-of-pocket. So spoiled kids of rich minority parents could be accommodated there as well. This plan is bound to be controversial. It's going to be misunderstood at first, and people are going to cry "discrimination" but we guarantee it would improve both the educational and partying experience in America's actual educational system.

CU Prez Elizabeth Hoffman recently told the Boulder Faculty Assembly's executive committee that the football scandal has allowed her and Chancellor Richard Byyny to "take control of athletics to an extent that I'm not sure any other university president has been able to do," according to the Daily Camera. "It is interesting how many other university presidents want to talk to Dick and me about how you do this," she added.

How They Did It consists of first taking no decisive action after disturbing incidents and warnings that there was trouble ahead, hoping the situation would blow over. Then, when lawsuits and a parade of victims materialized, suspending the coach for his ham-handed public insensitivity while the university's lawyers continued to batter the victims in court and the school released a victim's videotaped deposition to become salacious media fodder.

Dick and Betsy also created a new level of bureaucracy to deal with the crisis, like an oyster secreting nacre in response to an irritant. They hired a special liaison to be their "eyes and ears" in the athletic department, confirming for all that their eyes and ears weren't doing much previously. A special investigative committee was created, but before it issued any findings, Dick and Betsy issued a strict set of recruiting rules, making abundantly clear their failure to supervise the athletic department before the stink reached national proportions.

So far, the cost of all this is approaching a million bucks, and it's not even halftime.

So once again applying the Least Damage Principle, Dick and Betsy will resign their positions for lucrative jobs heading an educational think-tank that tells university administrators how to handle their football programs.

Athletic Director Dick Tharp and Football Coach Gary Barnett will have to go as well. They can take Dick and Betsy's jobs, where they will have minimal harmful effect on the university. The drastic pay cut will be punishment enough, and Coach Gary can exert his blunt, masculine charm on the legislature, slipping pleas for increased funding into sports anecdotes.

The job of AD and football coach will be combined, and the University of Coors will offer however much money it takes to get Camille Paglia to accept the position. Not only does she have a deep love for and insight into football, she would bring a level of intelligence to a university athletic department perhaps unprecedented in history. With her tough-mindedness and her insights into the gladiatorial nature of sexuality, she would be uniquely qualified to dominate not only raging football player libidos, but to withstand the loopy assaults of doctrinaire middle class feminists as well.

           —Bozo

NOTE: Please do not send money. The thanks of a grateful nation is all we require.

March 13, '04

Wing Commanders Bill and Sandy inspect the snowpack at about 11,400' near Haystack Mountain.

March 12, '04 -- The birthday (1922) of Jack Kerouac.

Time was, it was a delicious little joke to apply the language and attitudes of high cultural Serious Criticism to the pop-cultural stuff of everyday life like movies, hot dogs and rock 'n' roll music. The joke was that Pop Culture is just exactly that; whatever the masses like and are willing to part with their cash for is "good." Ephemeral Pop Culture, unlike timeless Art, should really be beyond the reach of the critic.

But somewhere along the line, someone forgot to let a lot of people in on the joke. Perhaps it has to do with the ascendancy of geekdom, but nowadays hardly a flick, burger joint or rock disk escapes a prolix and self-important analysis in the media. It's a minor industry. The tail has started thinking it's the dog.

There's an element of contrarianism in this. The more popular something becomes, the surer it is to stimulate a crop of bush league Gore Vidals who pipe up to tell us just how awful it really is. The underlying assumption seems to be that the reader doesn't have a brain of her own and needs to borrow the critic's in order to navigate the territory of everyday existence. I call this the Mr Blackwell Effect, after the nonentity who climbed to a modest fame kvetching about how badly-dressed famous people are. If celebs can't wear atrocious clothes, who can?

Editors love this stuff, but should we care?

A special kind of skimming skill is necessary to mine this modern pop criticism for the kernel of useful info that lurks within, such as what the movie (or other product) is called, who's in it, what it's about, and in the case of an especially good review, where it is playing and at what times, all while avoiding taking on the critic's load of quirky misperceptions, sexual and political fixations, and other baggage: guaranteed buzz killers.

Even people who didn't know anything about Art used to know what they liked. Now everything is Art and people have to be told what they like.

March 6, '04 -- The birthday (1619) of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, who is said to have fought more than 1,000 duels over his large nose, and whom you probably thought was only a literary character.

Dear Dr Snow:

What are these things called "inches" that are used in the snow report, and why do I get these strange feelings of sadness and longing when I get to Lake Pandora and see how much new snow is actually there?

René Zantz, Boulder

Dear René:

These nascent feelings stirring deep within you are signs that you are becoming a "skier." The inch, pronounced "inch," probably reminds you of something you studied in school if the cellphone reception was poor in the math classroom: our Old Friend, the Inch, which you will remember is one-twelfth of a foot.

The "inch" or SAI (Ski Area Inch), on the other hand, ranges from 20 or 30 to the foot, all the way up to 12 per foot. And that's an elf foot, at that. The elf has become a household word thanks to the movie, Lord of the Rings, which has been made into a book, and the sequel, Lord and Taylor of the Rings. That's why you will often hear Old Timers refer to the SAI inch as the "elf inch." It is similar to the plumber's II (Inside Inch), a special unit plumbers use to measure the inside of pipes.

The exact number of elf inches per "foot" on any given day is determined in secret and vaguely obscene predawn rituals involving the Mountain Manger and a coven of lusty female telemarkers. Many ski areas have changed to an international system using the MI (Metric Inch), which is abbreviated cm.

Dr Snow

Dear Dr Snow:

No matter how early I leave for Lake Pandora, the parking lot is always half full when I get there. Don't these people have jobs? Shouldn't they be in school? Also, why are the runs all tracked up before the lifts open?

Oliver Lovin, Longmont

Dear Oliver,

Those people are Deadheads living in their cars, and I think they deserve a little more respect. At night, they drive down to the Pioneer Inn, but at last call, they're right back at the parking lot, settling down for the night. They collectively work out who gets the best spots, who performs the tasks of cleaning up the area, cooking their food, and scoring weed, all without any government, police, or tactical nuclear weapons.

I think that's pretty wonderful, don't you?

The runs have been pre-skied for your safety. No deadly slide will ever come rumbling down the slopes of Lake Pandora, because the Patrol and the employees selflessly arise in the cold, grey dawn and put their lives on the line skiing the bejeesus out those slopes so that you, the customer, will not be suffocated by a roaring wall of white, but instead can dash your brains out against a tree.

Dr Snow

March 1. '04 -- The old Roman New Year and the birthday (1904) of University of Colorado alum Glenn Miller, who was horny, but in a good way.

Your Bozoness:

I find the following (2/29/04, infra) highly offensive and sexist in nature:

"And considering that the likelihood of some bombshell archaeological discovery resolving the issue is slim to none, Gibson's cruci-fiction isn't much more historical than 'Lord of the Rings.'"

Why do you sound so incredulous about the likelihood of a voluptuous woman making a fossil find? Are you saying a woman of Pam White's proportions is epochally challenged?

Think again, Bozo boy.

The Prefect.

Dear Mr Prefect:

Just try and introduce a little Colorful Writing into the frozen-mackrel-on-the-piano-keys world of Boulderian journalism, and you are bound to be misunderstood!

Please do not confuse the issue with fossils or bring Ms White into this; she does not answer my letters, and I have reconciled myself to worship from afar.

However, unlike the mainstream-mainstream media, and the mainstream-alternative media, we of the alternative-alternative media answer those who question.

In your case, it is with those three little words that Biblical scholars find so hard to say: "I don't know."

Bozo