Ah, but that is a different story, and we will save it for later. Our motto now is Thank God for Football.
It was just before halftime of the Indianapolis–New Orleans game on Sunday when Police invaded my house. I paid no attention to them at first—Peyton Manning was running for a touchdown with no time left on the clock and people were getting excited—but the cops refused to stop hammering on my door. “Get away!” I shouted. “We are asleep.” It was a weak thing to say, but I needed a few seconds to sweep a pile of money off the table and hide the Jimsonweed.
I heard a jiggling noise in the lock. Whack! The door flew open and they swarmed in. “Hello, Hunter,” said Grady, who seemed to be in charge. “Don’t worry, we’re not after You this time—but where is that woman you’re hiding?”
“What woman?” I said. “Wait a minute! I am confused. Was that a touchdown? Did Manning score?”
“Never in hell,” snapped the Coroner. “He was cheating. They called it back.”
Just then the Colts kicked a field goal, with no time on the clock, to tie the game 17–17. The cameras switched off to show cheerleaders and players running for the locker room. None of it made any sense.
The cop laughed. “She is on the White House list of suspected terrorists, and that makes You an official Terrorist sympathizer.” He leered at me and jerked a new ESPN magazine off my leather-covered refrigerator. “What is this?” he snapped. “Is this the issue with the Olympic Venue maps?”
I grabbed it out of his hand and threw it in the fire. “Watch your mouth!” I told him. “I am on my way to Utah right now. I am a member of—”
“Freeze!” he yelled. “Put your hands on your head!”
I saw the other cop moving to get behind my back, so I fell against the icebox and cut him off. “Stand down!” I shouted. “Don’t embarrass yourselves professionally.” I flashed a badge at them—a Lyle Lovett security badge, as it happened—and they momentarily stood down. “I am a Sportswriter,” I said calmly. “I am a member of the SLOC press security committee!”
What happened next is open to interpretation—but to make a long story short, they wound up taking Princess Omin away and telling me that I was under formal Quarantine, for Health Reasons. “And don’t argue,” the big one barked. “This is perfectly legal. We have a lot of New Laws these days. You Have No Rights.” He handed me a small blue card with a list of numbers on it, along with some dense small print about Terrorism and National Security Emergencies and Military Tribunal Judgments.
I had read it all before, but the presence of armed policemen in my home somehow put a new and more human face on it. I saw that I was about 95 seconds away from being locked up as a hostile foreign agent, so I caved.
“Thank God you’ve come,” I said. “She’s right up there in the attic. You are saving my Life! She Threatened me! Please take her away.”
I was sorry to see her go, but in truth I had no choice.
—November 19, 2001
Failure, Football, & Violence on the Strip
Okay, folks, we have a problem here. My new cashmere blazer is drenched with rain, and I am having a nervous breakdown. Bad vibes are all around me and I feel paralyzed by fear and desperation, my brain is out of gear, Anita is cringing outside on the balcony, our plane leaves for Honolulu in seven hours, and I can’t wear short-sleeve shirts because my left forearm is disfigured by a huge spider bite that bleeds constantly.
Why even try? you might ask. What kind of jackass would be obsessing on his professional correspondence at a time like this anyway? Here’s a dime, go tell it to somebody who cares.
A lot of people feel that way in this eerie hotel, but not me. I am a hopeless optimist, and I believe I have something to say. (Whoops. I am hearing the desperate screech of a large animal right outside my window, then the sound of men laughing.)
“What was that?” Anita yells, jumping in from the balcony and quickly shutting the glass doors behind her.
“Who knows?” I say, as I close my own window and drop the slatted blinds. “That was horrible,” I say. “It sounded like something being killed!”
I am feeling a little desperate now. It is not just the animal screeching, but everything else that is happening: my life is falling apart. It is like an earthquake in slow motion. Howls and curses drift up from the midnight street below us and people are blowing horns and crashing into each other. I hear police sirens and the high-pitched roar of motorcycle engines in the rain.
* * *
Did I forget to tell you boys that we are smack in the middle of downtown Hollywood tonight? How careless of me. Yes. We are in a top-floor balcony suite in the venerable Chateau Marmont, my usual working headquarters when I come to LA. They know me here. My blood is on these walls, and my spirit haunts the elevators.
I have suffered grievously in this place, many times, for reasons we need not discuss now. The memories are intolerable when it rains and I come under stress—and I am very much under stress Now. Extreme stress, I think. Most people would go all to pieces from it.
I have been in the grip of Agony since last Wednesday, when I arrived. Things have gone downhill in a hurry since then. On Thursday a quack with a dentist’s drill botched my wisdom teeth, and on Friday (or was it Saturday?) I tripped on a balcony ledge and sustained a nasty Subdural Hematoma that almost ended my life.
The WHACK of a fully weighted Head shot is an unforget-table sensation that will stay with you Forever.
It happens very suddenly, as high-speed collisions always do, and everything in your world disappears in a bright orange flash. There is no immediate pain, because you are knocked out cold like a dead fish. No noise, no feeling, no consciousness. That terrible THUD of impact is the last thing some people ever hear. You are “on your way out,” as the Doctors like to say.
Indeed, and so much for violence, eh? Let’s get back to football, which has been very good to me recently. Some people will tell you I am on a big-time winning streak, but for powerful reasons of karma I will deny it. One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and Win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.
That is why I have been so quiet about the San Francisco 49ers. I don’t want to hex my people while they’re winning. It has happened before. The last time I shot off my mouth about San Francisco, they got stabbed from behind by the evil Chicago Bears. I was baffled and humiliated in public. People called me a Dunce and tried to crowd me into sucker bets. I felt so damaged that I started betting on Dallas.
Ho ho. And look what happened next. The Cowboys snuck up on the Washington Redskins and whacked them off their inexplicable winning binge. The Redskins are down in the ditch with all the other bums now. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Meanwhile San Francisco is on a roll and tied with St. Louis for the best record in the NFL—along with Pittsburgh and Chicago.
Chicago? You bet. I owe the Bears an apology. I called them “phony,” but I was wrong. They are a gang of Assassins and I fear them. They will croak St. Louis in the play-offs. The Rams have the best individual Talent in the league, but they are wiggy in the clutch and they have a terminal fumbling habit.
The 49ers only lost to the Rams by two (2) points, and that was a long time ago in Week 2. But I will go far out on a limb tonight and say that things are different now. We have a gigantic football weekend coming up in the NFL, so let’s get stupid and make a few rash predictions. Why not?
So yes, the 49ers will beat the Rams by at least eight (8), and the Bears will beat the Packers by two (2). And I say that without knowing who on any of those teams might be injured or locked up. I haven’t even seen the point spreads. Yes sir, make no mistake about it, Bubba. I am running on a thin mix of Hubris and whiskey luck now. Anything can happen in these games: the Rams and the Packers are serious business. They may be the best teams in football, and I will be shocked if they turn out to be underdogs. But so wh
at? I am shocked every day by some ugly kink in the news, and I am prepared to be shocked again.
It is not particularly Fun, but I enjoy it on some days, and I feel that Sunday is going to be one of them. I will be far, far away by then anyway. On Sunday I will be running in the Honolulu Marathon with Sean Penn and former Redskins guard John Wilbur—who has never won the race in 20 years of trying but can always be depended on to knock about 2,000 other runners off their pace with his profoundly disturbing style. Wilbur is given a lot of room when he comes up to the Starting line. He is amazingly fast, and he runs in a phalanx of longtime Samoan friends who clear a lane for him and keep him highly focused.
Penn and I will be in the official Pace Car, once we’ve come to our senses and dropped out. And that, I suspect, is certain. Only a madman would think about running for 26 miles at top speed at my age. Wilbur tried it once, and they ran right over him when he passed out down the stretch. It was horrible.
Penn’s style remains a mystery, however, and race officials are very leery of him. He is known to be capable of extreme speed for short bursts, and some of those people are right to be afraid of him. Sean is batty as a loon and is prone to taking extraordinary risks in foreign towns, often with no awareness at all of what he’s doing. He is seen as a Dark horse, but I doubt it. He will croak himself before noon, and we will watch most of those crucial games from bamboo chairs in the Tiki bar at the elegant Kahala Mandarin Oriental, where Keith Richards will also be staying.
And that’s It for now, folks. There is no more. Aloha, Mahalo, and so long for now.
—December 6, 2001
Madness in Honolulu
Okay, folks, let’s talk about the good life in Hawaii now, about beautiful beaches and naked women and ukuleles wailing in the darkness of a football Sunday morning in Honolulu. I am familiar with these things, and I want to pass them along to you, because I am a writing fool on the run with a charming smile and a total-access Press pass. Yes sir, I am a tortured man for all seasons, as they say, and I have powerful friends in high places. Birds sing where I walk, and children smile when they see me coming.
Are you impressed yet? Are you ready to cough it up? No? Well stand back and try this: we are all Beasts, when it comes right down to it, and the only thing that really matters in the end is Who wins the Rose Bowl.
What? That is nonsense. That is Gibberish in overdrive. Nobody believes it and Nobody should. I pass it along only because it came to me in a random e-mail blurb from the Greedheads who run a College football racket known as the Bowl Championship Series, the ill-fated BCS.
Those people are dirtbags, hired swine in the pay of other swine who control the glitzy machinery of College Football.
Right, and so much for that, eh? How did I get off on that evil tack anyway? I was sitting here in this elegant beachfront Suite in the Kahala Mandarin Oriental hotel, thinking of nothing at all except the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the incredible language skills of George Bush, when my brain locked up and I veered off on some meatball rap about the upcoming Miami-Nebraska game. Who knows why? It means nothing at all, absolutely nothing—except to both teams, who will pocket $15,000,000 each for showing up in Pasadena on January 1. Suck on that, Bubba. Ho ho.
Whoops! Have I discussed the world-famous Honolulu Marathon yet? Have I done my job as a suave professional? If not, I will do it now. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. That is my personal motto, and it has made me what I am today. I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The Real world is risky territory for people with a natural generosity of spirit. Beware.
I was reminded of this when I chanced to see my notebook from last weekend and saw what was happening back then. It seems like the good old days now, but in fact it was not so long ago at all—less than five or six days, my notes tell me, but I can only dimly remember it.
That is what notebooks are for, I think, so let’s have a look at what I wrote, to wit:
It was four o’clock on a rainy Sunday morning when the long white limousine came to the hotel to take us downtown to what they called the Starting Line, where 20,000 half-naked fanatics were waiting to grease us up for the race. I was nursing a green bottle of Gin and feeling vaguely desperate, but I saw no way to escape. We had made the wretched commitment long ago, and now the time had come. The deal was about to go down.
Far across the deserted lobby, dressed in a cheap black suit and orange running shoes, Sean Penn was slumped on a leather bench and weeping dumbly and pounding his fists against a wall of orchids. I bit my tongue and tried to ignore him, but he cried out when he saw me, and I had no choice, so I paused. “I don’t think I can do it, Doc,” he sobbed. “I am going all to pieces. I am weak and I’m afraid. Please help me.”
I had never seen him like this, and I knew I couldn’t help him. Quitting now would be humiliating. We had shot off our mouths and now we were going to pay for it. “Get a grip on yourself,” I said sharply, “people are watching us!” Then I handed him my green bottle of gin.
He grasped it eagerly and put it to his lips, swallowing deeply and rolling his eyes—then he dropped it on the floor, where it bounced and skittered away.
“You fool!” I shouted. “You stupid little Bastard! We can’t get any more of that stuff until Noon!”
“Oh no,” he mumbled. “I have money. They will give me whatever I want.”
Just then I saw our limo driver. “Get away from us!” I yelled. “Can’t you see that Mr. Penn is feeling poorly?”
“So am I,” he replied. “It’s raining Hard outside and my wife ran off with a sailor—but I have a Job to do and I am going to do it. Get that Sot in the car.”
What? I thought. Are you calling Sean Penn a sot? Are you nuts? I had dealt with this driver before, and I knew him to be a thug with no morals at all. Two days earlier he had abandoned us for three hours in a dangerous downtown park where criminals lurked in the darkness. There were nine of us, including six women and children. We were utterly helpless. So we huddled behind a concert stage where sleazy old men wearing wigs were singing “God Bless America” and pretending to be the Beatles. It was disgusting. Our only weapon was a knobby-headed cane about four feet long, which I waved at the trees and occasionally pounded on the hood of a nearby Cadillac. It was a long and nasty three hours.
And now, on this horrible Sunday morning, the same irresponsible thug was spitting insults on a major Hollywood talent. It was ugly. We were the biggest celebrities in the race. I stared down at Penn for a moment, saying nothing, then I turned away and walked quickly back to the elevator, which I took upstairs to my suite and locked both doors. Anita was still asleep, so I called room service for some Crab St. Jacques and watched the War on TV until dawn. That is how we handle emergencies in the tropics.
—December 13, 2001
Break Up the Ravens
Ed Podolak had just been strip-searched for the second time in 40 minutes by foreigners at the Denver airport when I met him in the Smoking Lounge, and his temper was rubbed raw. Podolak, formerly of the Kansas City Chiefs, is known all over the West as “the last great white running back”—which is not true, but that is his story and he has stuck to it for 30 years, for good or ill, and on this day he was looking sick.
“This country is turning rotten, Doc,” he said as he cleared a place at the bar for me. “I don’t know why they are picking on me, but they grab me every time I come near an airport. Last week in Dallas I was subjected to a cavity search.”
I have known Ed for many years, and I had never seen him so helpless and demoralized. “Are they doing it to everybody? Or is it just me? Pretty soon I won’t be able to travel at all.”
“Get a grip on yourself, Ed,” I told him. “Don’t you know there’s a War on?”
“So what?” he snapped. “I’m not a terrorist. I’m not carrying any bombs. I am a stand-up all-American patriot.”
“That’s what they all say,” I said. “Let’s face it, E
d. You are swarthy and you have black, bushy hair. You look guilty. Are you carrying any hashish?”
“Don’t say that word!” he hissed. “You’ll get us both locked up—and the answer is No, so get off my back.”
“Where are you going?” I asked him. “New Orleans,” he replied. “But I don’t dare go anywhere now—not if this ugliness keeps up. What the hell, I may as well just stay here and watch the games on TV.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “They’ll never find us here in the Smoking Lounge. Let’s hammer a few.”
Watching the Baltimore Ravens play football is like watching scum freeze on the eyeballs of a jackass, or being stuck for 6 hours in an elevator with Dick Cheney on speed. The Ravens will pounce on you and gnaw you to death, which can take eight or nine days.
The Raven is a queer and dangerous bird, far worse than the Crow. A pack of crows can destroy an owl or an eagle, but a single boss Raven will attack a whole gang of crows and rip the lungs out of its leaders. Most crows would rather commit suicide than go head to head with a boss raven.
You bet, so what does this tell us about this week’s play-off games?
Almost nothing, now that I mention it—except that Pittsburgh beat the snot out of the Ravens (at home) about a month ago. The score was 26–21, but the beating was far worse, so we can only hope that the Steelers can do it again, and knock this horrible saltwater Tar baby out of the play-offs as soon as possible, so they can’t dull out the rest of the season. Betting on a Baltimore game is like betting on a three-hour sumo wrestling bout. It is wrong for the Game.
—January 15, 2002
Pay Up or Get Whipped
Ed Bradley stopped by my house yesterday and said he wanted to watch the Rams-Packers game in peace, far from the madding crowd he’d been hanging out with, and perhaps bet a dollar or two on the Packers. Wonderful, I thought. These suckers are everywhere. They are sentimental people, and they want to make sentimental bets. Why not indulge them—if only to restore balance to my own ledger, which was badly depleted as a result of my own stupid bets on the previous day, and also the previous week.
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