MY 2006

Dumb Luck

This is the year I didn't kill O.J., but if I had, I would've lopped off his head and rolled it onto a soccer field. This is the year I was lying peacefully in Huntridge Circle Park when a bunch of do-gooders and city officials screwed up a good nap. This is the year I meant to train for the marathon. This is the year I was vindicated for marching in the antiwar protest on the Strip in 2003, and, wow, it feels good to be right! This is the year I was not among those who confessed to killing JonBenet. This is the year I voted against the smoking ban even though I don't smoke. This is the year I said aloud, in my suburban water-wasting cocoon, I'm going to buy a hybrid! This is the year Oprah gave me a very hard time about A Million Little Pieces—shit, Oprah, it was literary nonfiction!—my personal truth! My personal truth, nestled in our collective reality, surely feels like I had a drug problem. Still feels that way.

I guess the absurd flavor of the year is best summed up by the time the Henderson police took me out of my car and made me stand in front of one of two giant police SUVs on the side of the road, hands in view, facing their trucks, while four officers discussed my future. I had not been drinking. I had not been violating any traffic laws. I am not on the lam. The officer who pulled me over that early evening said he'd run my plates on a whim—serendipity!—and found that my car was not registered. Although I believed it was—the plate had the sticker right on it—something about his call for backup, his nervous nature, Swuave Lopez and a rare moment of common sense made me refrain from haggling. I politely asserted that I believed my car was registered. I handed over my keys and complied with his request that I stand in front of his truck for a small forever. Traffic rolled by. Rubberneckers took a look-see. One of the officers removed my license plate from the back bumper and another harped at me when I turned to see—Face the truck! Keep your hands in view! So there I stood and waited in 2006 among either the criminal or the insane. Like everybody else.

But here's where it turns positive. (In every year, even years when shit happens that really sucks, something good can still be said to sum things up. Goodness lies at the heart of everything.) So one of the officers reconsidered. He said, as best I could overhear atop the hot engine of the police SUV, "Leave the tags." They gave me a near-$1,000 ticket for not being registered and the like, and told me I was free to go, except that my car was not legal to drive, and my tags were in the front seat.

Bear with me, I'm getting to the part that really shows how good this year really was, despite a whole bunch of crap that happened that really sucked. The truth of the story is always is up for grabs—remember O.J.? A Million Little Pieces? Smoking—good for the economy, bad for your lungs?

I drove the car anyway, as what was I supposed to do? Call for backup? The next day I went to the DMV (sat for two hours among the unshowered and computerless, awakened from the coma by the bingo call of my number, B459!), and found out that my registration, while fully paid, was suspended when my f'n (2006 was also the year the Weekly couldn't rule on whether to print "f--k") insurance company let the f'n DMV know I was late in renewing. Although I had f'n paid for the renewal, I was late in doing so, because I happened to be going through an agonizing separation from my girlfriend of seven years, and I misplaced the f'n bill when we tore apart the f'n house, turning everything into something other than ours, but rather hers and mine.

So I paid $200 to get my registration reinstated. Then, a few weeks later, I showed up on time for my court date in Henderson, at which I planned to object to the huge ticket. Understandably, the court scheduled 6,000 people at the same time and decided to go alphabetically through the list. Note that I am a W. Also note that 2006 is the year of the illegal immigrant, and while I'm full of love for those trying to make a better life for themselves, I was not elated when the judge decided to take all of the non-English speakers first because the translator was only available for a little while. Most of the non-English speakers could not produce a Nevada ID, and in fact produced Mexican ID and a long story about being on vacation, but the judge understood her job was to rule on auto traffic, not human traffic, and she dealt with their speeding and registration transgressions and sent them away, one by one. So I sat there for-f'n-ever, enjoying the sagas of 5,800 errant drivers in two languages and, finally, got called to my late morning of justice.

And here's where 2006 turns out to be such a f'n good year. She heard my story, ever so briefly, and looked me up and down, saw my suppressed frustration, my tired, trying-to-play-along demeanor, saw right through it to the fast-approaching nervous breakdown and dismissed all charges.

The moral of this story is debatable. I take it to mean that 2006 was the year truth took a beating and the year of good luck.

The Dread Carpet

I used to have this saying I would use whenever I was offered a bit of freelance work as a red-carpet interviewer, and this was usually accompanied by a flippant roll of the eyes skyward and a tone that implied I should instead be addressing Rhett Butler. "Dahling," I would respond each time, "I don't work red carpets, I walk them!"

I would say this jokingly, of course. The truth is, I was scared to death that if I took the job I would be almost certainly be standing in the media line, tape recorder and notes in hand, when I would utterly draw a blank on what the heck I was supposed to be asking. A celebrity would just be staring blankly back at me, mute and increasingly exasperated. The possibility of disgraceful public failure was paralyzing, and so even though the red carpet intrigued me, I turned down job after job for fear of a fiasco. Then, on April 27, just one day after my 28th birthday, just two days after completing my first Anthony Robbins seminar, and just three days after a painful breakup, I said what the hell and took a job working the carpet for the Scrubs Season 3 DVD-release party at Rain.

Holding my ground in the sweaty crush of the press line, it was painfully clear how nervous I was, as evidenced by the way my hands shook. I was still agonizing over my questions when the first wave of stars approached. My composure was but a thin veil over some long-dormant stage-fright. I fumbled through a few interviews, mangling questions, and listened in horror as my voice crept ever higher. But for all my nervousness, I pushed on, until my favorite star from the popular comedy, Donald Faison, finally approached and let me know in his own special way that I was doing just fine.

There was anything but grace in the way Faison (Dr. Turk on the show) shouted to my sportswriter neighbors about Coach Jerry Tarkanian—or "Tark the Shark" as he barked into our recorders—but he put me at ease, and later posed for a picture with me before making his escape from the club, just in time to elude the paparazzi. I was laughing so hard I forgot to be scared of making an ass out of myself.

I was even so emboldened as to later inform one very handsome actor that he had just worked the carpet with a large piece of fuzz stuck prominently to the front of his spiky, moussed hair, and I'm pretty sure he and his handler were more mortified than I had ever been. So thank you, Turk, for shouting-out Tark and for adding a new and enjoyable facet to an already very interesting year. These days, I'm whistling a new tune: "I don't just walk red carpets, I work 'em, baby!"

Turkey Shoot

Cane in hand, the 93-year-old man stared off into the mountains from a camping chair on his patio. He was about to impart to me the wisdom of the ages.

Lee Tilman and I talked about life, love, doing what makes one happy. After he retired, Lee built a ranch with his own hands up in White Pine County. It was there he found his life's passion, photography.

Lee mentioned a time, back in the '30s, when he was working his first job, building the Hoover Dam. A foreman named Slim told him a story he later recognized could have made the greatest photo ever. Lee, who is still sharp, didn't know Slim's real name and couldn't recall a single detail about him, other than this story.

The photo that never was happened at a rural Nevada general store, probably sometime in the 1920s. A rickety old bus rumbled to a stop in front of the small store. As the dust settled, several Native American women filed out. Each had a little papoosed baby strapped to her back. The bus came once a week, so it was packed.

Turkeys milled and pecked in front of the store, minding their turkey business. With a few hours left to catch his bus, Slim watched with amusement, sipping a Dr. Pepper. As Slim told Lee, describing the bundled babies, "Their little tallywhackers were hanging out the back." Lee held up his pinky to illustrate a tiny penis. "You better stand back or you might get a shower." Hip to this fact, the store owner asked the ladies to leave the babies outside. The turkeys watched as a procession of cocooned infants were lined up along the storefront, tallywhackers baking in the warm sun.

The photo Lee wished he could have taken happened something like this: When suddenly one of the babies began shrieking, the women quickly rushed out. They looked on in horror at one of the turkeys, its beak gripping a little tallywhacker, elongating it like a Stretch Armstrong doll. Lee burst into laughter.

When I think about 2006, this memory just surfaces all dark and borderless, as if a benign melanoma showed up on my forehead. Its presence is invisible except to pop up, uninvited, to add color in moments of introspection, one oddly affecting absurdity among a year's worth of larger, sometimes lethal absurdities.

Lee and I discussed more profound ideas that day, but I guess we can't choose what will resonate and what will dissipate in our minds. Life, death, love and work are all important subjects, but here we are, Lee and I and probably thousands of you, thinking about a turkey pulling a tallywhacker.