By Jacob Bennett
My roommate’s cat is hunting my dog.
Daisy is always watching my little buddy, peeking around thehouse plant, or lurking in the shadows of the sofa, or staring from her perchon top of the bed. Once, in the middle of the night, she nudged open my door, saw that I was awake, and backed away. And the other morning, as I got readyfor work, I heard her sharpening her claws on a scratching post, like Carl readying his weapon near the climax of “Sling Blade.”
The truth about cats and dogs is they can’t be friends. I knew this. But Sophie and I were basically strays, until my roommate from the‘Burg and his common-law fiancée took us in. I thought our pets could forge an uneasy truce, like when Brisco County had to work with Bowler every week.
Nope.
And it’s not going to be a fair fight.
At 12 pounds, Daisy’s only a little lighter than my miniature schnauzer—five pounds less, to be exact. I know because my roommates just weighed her at my request, which I’m sure will only make her madder. Daisy is a rescue, adopted after she was discovered on the street, shivering in the snow, cold and hungry, but surviving.
Sophie is also a rescue—I found her online, stranded in abasket of puppies. I’d like to think buying her was akin to sponsoring a hungry Third World child.
Sophie probably started the rift the first day we were here,when she chased Daisy under the bed. She doesn’t know why she must feel like that—why she must chase the cat. But she never posed any real danger.
She’s just a goofy little terrier, bigger than a football,too big to fit in a purse, in accordance with man laws. Years of breeding and evolution have left her with no survival skills except relentless adorability. On a toughness scale from Clint Eastwood to Clay Aiken, she’s about a John Mayer.
She forgot all about the feud, once Daisy was out of sight.She went back to trotting obliviously through the house, thinking about bones or balls or biscuits.
Daisy didn’t forget.
The thing about cats is, they tolerate people, and they’ll eat food from people because it’s free. But they’re hunters, and their thirst for blood is so great, they play with their prey before eating it. Unlike dogs,which are just furry little street bums, cats like to kill.
Really, cats are just miniature lions.
And when a mini lion takes on a mini schnauzer, I know whereto place my bet.
I just watched a thing on National Geographic where seven lions ganged up and tried to kill an elephant. They just dug in and held on…
It was awesome.
But I wouldn’t wish it on my little snow pea.
Unfortunately, Sophie’s gonna end up like that elephant. The situation came to a head the other day, when her back was turned.
Daisy crept out from the shadows, padding across the carpet likea ghost in the darkness. When she was inches away, shrieked and pounced, Montecore-style. She didn’t stop flailing until my roommates pulled her offstage.
From then on, the food chain was back in the latch. Sophie feels the need to stand at a safe distance, in a doorway, when begging for food. Daisy marches through the house like General Sherman in Atlanta.
This story doesn’t have an ending, but like “Sling Blade,” it really only has one logical conclusion.
Daisy just keeps watching Sophie. Watching and waiting, hoping for that perfect moment when she can go in for the kill.
I think she also gave me a sinus infection on my birthday.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Unemployment's not cake; frogs aren't dinosaurs
By Jacob Bennett
If this gig in Louisville didn’t work out, the horizon would be as bleak as the surface of the moon.
I’d been cool hand Luke for the first couple of weeks since I’d lost my job, especially since I got three interviews right away.But now it had been a month. I was feeling fragile as a glass menagerie, and this was the last gentleman caller unafraid of my pleurisy.
If they didn’t want me, I would have to give back my house and move in with my parents and die homeless and penniless and 20 pounds overweight, and no one would ever love me.
For a life so full of new possibility, I was out of possibilities. I was fighting with 11 million unemployed people for what little was left.
It’s a helpless feeling when nobody needs the part you make, or wants the food you bake. The mailman still brings the bills. I learned to cut costs: layer up, thermostat down. Cable off. Don’t eat out unless it’s on a co-worker with survivor’s guilt. There's always more shampoo in the bottle.
I needed my savings to buy time. I always say, when life hands you lemons, change everything about yourself.So I turned down one job because the drive was too much and the pay was too little. Much to my parents’ chagrin, I probably would have rejected another job that paid decent but wasn’t what I wanted to do. I never had to make that choice, because that offer never came.
I wanted to work in Hawaii or Nashville or one place in Indy, just because they asked for my favorite movie quote (I ended my cover letter with "good talk, son," but almost went with "Nice try, Lao Che").
But even before my old job relieved me of my post, Kentucky beckoned. And since the Playboy Mansion wasn’t looking for a pool boy, this last prospect in Louisville was the kind of thing I wanted to try. After two interviews and a personality test and some ACT-type questions, I didn’t want to leave without a job.
I also wanted the answer to this question:
Frog: dinosaur :: whale : ___
a. mouse
b. fish
c. bird
d. snake
I think I put fish, but I can’t defend the answer. I googled it just now, and nobody else knows either. But I digress.
Another lesson came the day they said they’d make their decision: staring at the phone doesn’t make it ring any faster.
But it can be worth the wait.I’m back on a payroll, before the Indiana Department of Workforce Development could process my first claim. Thanks for the help, guys.
Not that I’m complaining. Every day I take the Gene Snyder Freeway or Preston Highway or Breckenridge Lane or one of those roads I used take back in the day on trips to Louisville, always on the way to something awesome.
First, I had to drive back to Indiana to knot some loose ends. As I traveled the highway through downtown Louisville, the river was murky and the sky was gray. But that one tall building and that other tall building and that one hotel were all lit up in the night, just like this side of the moon.
Maybe the answer is mouse.
If this gig in Louisville didn’t work out, the horizon would be as bleak as the surface of the moon.
I’d been cool hand Luke for the first couple of weeks since I’d lost my job, especially since I got three interviews right away.But now it had been a month. I was feeling fragile as a glass menagerie, and this was the last gentleman caller unafraid of my pleurisy.
If they didn’t want me, I would have to give back my house and move in with my parents and die homeless and penniless and 20 pounds overweight, and no one would ever love me.
For a life so full of new possibility, I was out of possibilities. I was fighting with 11 million unemployed people for what little was left.
It’s a helpless feeling when nobody needs the part you make, or wants the food you bake. The mailman still brings the bills. I learned to cut costs: layer up, thermostat down. Cable off. Don’t eat out unless it’s on a co-worker with survivor’s guilt. There's always more shampoo in the bottle.
I needed my savings to buy time. I always say, when life hands you lemons, change everything about yourself.So I turned down one job because the drive was too much and the pay was too little. Much to my parents’ chagrin, I probably would have rejected another job that paid decent but wasn’t what I wanted to do. I never had to make that choice, because that offer never came.
I wanted to work in Hawaii or Nashville or one place in Indy, just because they asked for my favorite movie quote (I ended my cover letter with "good talk, son," but almost went with "Nice try, Lao Che").
But even before my old job relieved me of my post, Kentucky beckoned. And since the Playboy Mansion wasn’t looking for a pool boy, this last prospect in Louisville was the kind of thing I wanted to try. After two interviews and a personality test and some ACT-type questions, I didn’t want to leave without a job.
I also wanted the answer to this question:
Frog: dinosaur :: whale : ___
a. mouse
b. fish
c. bird
d. snake
I think I put fish, but I can’t defend the answer. I googled it just now, and nobody else knows either. But I digress.
Another lesson came the day they said they’d make their decision: staring at the phone doesn’t make it ring any faster.
But it can be worth the wait.I’m back on a payroll, before the Indiana Department of Workforce Development could process my first claim. Thanks for the help, guys.
Not that I’m complaining. Every day I take the Gene Snyder Freeway or Preston Highway or Breckenridge Lane or one of those roads I used take back in the day on trips to Louisville, always on the way to something awesome.
First, I had to drive back to Indiana to knot some loose ends. As I traveled the highway through downtown Louisville, the river was murky and the sky was gray. But that one tall building and that other tall building and that one hotel were all lit up in the night, just like this side of the moon.
Maybe the answer is mouse.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Life As a Country Song
By Jacob Bennett
I was vacationing in New York to forget my divorce the day they laid me off, and as I walked down the sidewalk a homeless guy asked me for change.
I ignored him, of course—I believed he would buy booze with it—but on the ground a few yards past his slumping body, I spotted a $5 bill.
For a moment, I left it there. But a friend convinced me to do the right thing: pick it up, walk over to the beggar, and hand him the money.
And I instantly regretted it.
After all, I realized: I'm just as unemployed as that guy.
My life has become a bad country song. Or maybe, a good one.
I'm a sad-sack statistic, one of more than a half a million people who lost their jobs in November, one of more than 10 million folks out of work now.
At least, execs assured me, the decision to can me wasn't based on performance. If letters of recommendation were paychecks, I wouldn't be eating Ramen noodles tonight.
I decided to stay in New York as scheduled and put some fun on my MasterCard. It costs $50 to see Joel McHale from "The Soup," but running into Lonny Ross from "30 Rock" on the sidewalk: priceless.
I'm going to have to pay that credit card bill with a government unemployment check, so I guess that means I'm no better than the AIG executives who spent $450,000 of their bailout money on beach resort facials.
But, hey, cut us some slack--that's chump change compared to the billions spent in that housing bailout. The one that offered no relief whatsoever when I told my bank I might have a hard time paying my mortgage in a couple of weeks.
At least I'm not alone, but the statistics don't tell you what the heck you're supposed to do next.
I've got plenty of material for that book I'd finally have time to write, if work hadn't repossessed my company computer.
So now I'm using library Internet like a hobo.
The rest of the time I've been off, I've taught my dog to go out for a football play-action pass, but she needs to work on selling the run.
I also set a record for consecutive days wearing sweatpants.
It's kind of scary, not knowing what I'll do or where I'll live or if I'll be able to find a rich older woman to take me in.
Until I figure it out, maybe that guy on the sidewalk will lend me $5
I was vacationing in New York to forget my divorce the day they laid me off, and as I walked down the sidewalk a homeless guy asked me for change.
I ignored him, of course—I believed he would buy booze with it—but on the ground a few yards past his slumping body, I spotted a $5 bill.
For a moment, I left it there. But a friend convinced me to do the right thing: pick it up, walk over to the beggar, and hand him the money.
And I instantly regretted it.
After all, I realized: I'm just as unemployed as that guy.
My life has become a bad country song. Or maybe, a good one.
I'm a sad-sack statistic, one of more than a half a million people who lost their jobs in November, one of more than 10 million folks out of work now.
At least, execs assured me, the decision to can me wasn't based on performance. If letters of recommendation were paychecks, I wouldn't be eating Ramen noodles tonight.
I decided to stay in New York as scheduled and put some fun on my MasterCard. It costs $50 to see Joel McHale from "The Soup," but running into Lonny Ross from "30 Rock" on the sidewalk: priceless.
I'm going to have to pay that credit card bill with a government unemployment check, so I guess that means I'm no better than the AIG executives who spent $450,000 of their bailout money on beach resort facials.
But, hey, cut us some slack--that's chump change compared to the billions spent in that housing bailout. The one that offered no relief whatsoever when I told my bank I might have a hard time paying my mortgage in a couple of weeks.
At least I'm not alone, but the statistics don't tell you what the heck you're supposed to do next.
I've got plenty of material for that book I'd finally have time to write, if work hadn't repossessed my company computer.
So now I'm using library Internet like a hobo.
The rest of the time I've been off, I've taught my dog to go out for a football play-action pass, but she needs to work on selling the run.
I also set a record for consecutive days wearing sweatpants.
It's kind of scary, not knowing what I'll do or where I'll live or if I'll be able to find a rich older woman to take me in.
Until I figure it out, maybe that guy on the sidewalk will lend me $5
A dying ember
By Jacob Bennett
My ring finger is naked except for an indentation two years in the making.
That mark has faded quickly over the last few weeks, but the scars inside are deeper. They'll be there always, like the charred marks on a tree ring from a long-ago fire.
I didn't know I could be this sad.
It ended the way so many do. We didn't communicate, we didn't try hard enough, we blamed each other.
We took each other for granted until we weren't.
I'll never understand why people do things to hurt themselves and the people they love the most.
What happens when a summer day is lost behind the clouds? When the legs of a compass stretch so far that they snap? When a dying ember goes cold?
When will the moonbeams bring me dreams instead of nightmares?
And what happens next?
Journeys begin in lovers parting.
After a few days on a few couches, I came home to an empty house. I turned over all her photographs, and started cleaning.
I guess I'm going to sell the house and start over. I'll lose money, but I lost a lot of things.
The way I look at it is, I'm buying my freedom.
With no wife, no kids, and no debt, I can be whatever I want, wherever I want.
They say a wounded deer leaps highest. After years of making decisions that were good for us, I can do whatever I want.
But all I want to do is cry
My ring finger is naked except for an indentation two years in the making.
That mark has faded quickly over the last few weeks, but the scars inside are deeper. They'll be there always, like the charred marks on a tree ring from a long-ago fire.
I didn't know I could be this sad.
It ended the way so many do. We didn't communicate, we didn't try hard enough, we blamed each other.
We took each other for granted until we weren't.
I'll never understand why people do things to hurt themselves and the people they love the most.
What happens when a summer day is lost behind the clouds? When the legs of a compass stretch so far that they snap? When a dying ember goes cold?
When will the moonbeams bring me dreams instead of nightmares?
And what happens next?
Journeys begin in lovers parting.
After a few days on a few couches, I came home to an empty house. I turned over all her photographs, and started cleaning.
I guess I'm going to sell the house and start over. I'll lose money, but I lost a lot of things.
The way I look at it is, I'm buying my freedom.
With no wife, no kids, and no debt, I can be whatever I want, wherever I want.
They say a wounded deer leaps highest. After years of making decisions that were good for us, I can do whatever I want.
But all I want to do is cry
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wing and a prayer or a highway to hell
Grab your best buds, Mary Swanson's Samsonite briefcase, and/or your ornery orangutan sidekick—we're going on a road trip.
We pretty much have to, if we're going on vacation this year. I know, these days gas costs more per gallon than Coke, bottled water and the Hope Diamond. But it's still cheaper than the price of flying, which has gone up like a jet airliner.
Flying used to be a good way to zip across the country quicker than Hiro from "Heroes." You would take off in one town, land a bit later in another, and skip all the boring parts in between. It was like the Cliff's Notes version of America.
But now that flights are being cancelled a thousand at a time, it's possible you'll be stuck in an airport just as long as it would take to drive there. At least my car seat reclines.
And when you drive, you don't have to worry about pesky little things like your wing falling off, which really happened in Maryland a couple of months ago.
And you don't have to wonder what good is a seat that doubles as a flotation device when your whole flight is over land.
Plus, I have had it with these $%!!! snakes on this $&*!!! plane!
Nothing's more American than a good old-fashioned road trip.
You roll down the window, turn the iPod to "Eastbound and Down," and sing along as you eat up inches on the map.
Besides the occasional crazed hitcher, there's only one downside: Most of the countryside is boring.
For every place like the skyline of New York, the City That Never Sleeps, there's the horizon of Iowa, the State That Puts You to Sleep.
For every Pacific Coast Highway, there's the Arkansas gravel interstate highway.
For every Panama City Beach, there's a Panama City.
It used to be if you wanted to see America's charms, you could take back roads through quaint little towns all the way down the map. But now all you get is an endless loop of McDonald's, Walgreens and Auto Zone stores.
So now it's almost vacation time, and I can't decide where to go.
I considered going West, but it takes a really long time to drive the van through Nebraska.
I thought about going to Intercourse, Penn., but I didn't know if there'd be anything fun to do there.
Maybe I'll go to Texas, where the stars at night are big and bright.
(You guys were supposed to clap and finish that verse.)
You might say I'd have more options if I took the friendly skies, but I say the possibilities are endless on the open road.
And my orangutan can ride shotgun instead of in the cargo hold.
We pretty much have to, if we're going on vacation this year. I know, these days gas costs more per gallon than Coke, bottled water and the Hope Diamond. But it's still cheaper than the price of flying, which has gone up like a jet airliner.
Flying used to be a good way to zip across the country quicker than Hiro from "Heroes." You would take off in one town, land a bit later in another, and skip all the boring parts in between. It was like the Cliff's Notes version of America.
But now that flights are being cancelled a thousand at a time, it's possible you'll be stuck in an airport just as long as it would take to drive there. At least my car seat reclines.
And when you drive, you don't have to worry about pesky little things like your wing falling off, which really happened in Maryland a couple of months ago.
And you don't have to wonder what good is a seat that doubles as a flotation device when your whole flight is over land.
Plus, I have had it with these $%!!! snakes on this $&*!!! plane!
Nothing's more American than a good old-fashioned road trip.
You roll down the window, turn the iPod to "Eastbound and Down," and sing along as you eat up inches on the map.
Besides the occasional crazed hitcher, there's only one downside: Most of the countryside is boring.
For every place like the skyline of New York, the City That Never Sleeps, there's the horizon of Iowa, the State That Puts You to Sleep.
For every Pacific Coast Highway, there's the Arkansas gravel interstate highway.
For every Panama City Beach, there's a Panama City.
It used to be if you wanted to see America's charms, you could take back roads through quaint little towns all the way down the map. But now all you get is an endless loop of McDonald's, Walgreens and Auto Zone stores.
So now it's almost vacation time, and I can't decide where to go.
I considered going West, but it takes a really long time to drive the van through Nebraska.
I thought about going to Intercourse, Penn., but I didn't know if there'd be anything fun to do there.
Maybe I'll go to Texas, where the stars at night are big and bright.
(You guys were supposed to clap and finish that verse.)
You might say I'd have more options if I took the friendly skies, but I say the possibilities are endless on the open road.
And my orangutan can ride shotgun instead of in the cargo hold.
Columnist Jacob Bennett can be reached at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com or on the CB handle Rubber Duck.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Fighting on
FIGHTING ON
MODEL KEEPS SWINGING HER WAY INTO THE RING, DESPITE SETBACKS
Date: Thursday, July 31, 2008 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer, 464-7434 or bennettj@courierpress.com
Photography by SERGE GIACHETTI, Courier & Press staff photographer
The world went black, as if someone pulled the plug on a TV, and Kanna Domangue crumpled to the mat.
A trainer, medic and cameraman rushed to the 26-year-old woman.
Just moments before, they'd watched Domangue, a part-time model, pound a punching bag at Big Bully Mixed Martial Arts Center, pausing every so often to catch her breath. She'd pressed on even as she wondered which of her health problems would get her this time.
Domangue's been fighting since the fourth grade, when a classmate pulled out her hearing aid --she's fought against childhood tormentors, allergies and stress-related hives and, later, endometriosis, a condition that can cause crippling menstrual pain.
Now Domangue has another fight. Her body was going through a change similar to menopause after having a hysterectomy. She had signed up for a mixed martial arts
reality show to push the limits of the body that had both tormented her and given her a second chance. She couldn't let her health beat her again.
From the floor, Domangue read the medic's lips: "Do you want to get up?"
She nodded. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew what she had to do: keep punching.
HHH
A few weeks before, Domangue faced a full-length mirror, after putting on a skimpy outfit for her gig as a mixed martial arts ring girl. She didn't see the olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes that make photographers call when they need an "exotic" model.
She saw cellulite on the back of her thighs.
She yelled at her boyfriend, John Gauer, when he said he didn't see it.
Her reaction isn't shallow. Before she became a gorgeous grown-up, she was the kid picked on by classmates. She was called "radio ear" and mocked for a lisp that turned "specific" into "pacific" and "pizza" into "pisa."
She also feared post-hysterectomy hormones were making her gain weight. She stopped taking them, which meant risking hot flashes, headaches and increasingly brittle bones.
As she worked the fights that night in late May, she already was planning to step into the ring again for a different reason: Gauer's cousin, Jeff Osborne, had invited her to try out for the second season of his locally produced mixed martial arts reality show "FIGHT SKOOL."
On the show, Osborne and several fighters teach average people the punches, kicks and grappling techniques that define their sport. The culmination is a big November fight night at the Evansville Coliseum.
Osborne invited Domangue because, he said, he knew her looks, health problems and back story would make great TV: She is the oldest child of divorced teen parents, and she came to Evansville with little more than a green Ford Mustang and the dog she'd adopted after Hurricane Katrina.
"I'm fighting for myself," said Domangue. "Fighting, I was mentally used to it; now, I'm going to put it in physical form. If I can get beyond my limits, I've done what I wanted to accomplish."
Osborne knew the odd number - Domangue and the six other women - posed a problem. Before pairing them off for an Aug. 9 show, he would have to cut one of them.
HHH
When FIGHT SKOOL is in session, the Big Bully isn’t a pleasant place to be. Body heat collects in the air like in a parked car on a summer day, and the smell of sweat fills the nostrils like a salty ocean breeze.
Forty people showed up for the tryout June 7, roughly the same number as last year. But this group was in better shape and more confident. Nearly two months after the first tryout, more than 30 contestants remained - twice as many as the same time last year, when Osborne didn't have to make a cut.
Eight quit during the first day's tryout in 2007 - driven away by the same workout Domangue was about to endure.
It was a 45-minute marathon of sprints, rope-jumping and grappling against experienced fighters.
The pros call it a decent warmup. For those without training, it's so brutal that the training staff tapes hand-written signs on the garbage cans: "Puke Here."
"You'll pass out before you die," trainer John Turner told the contestants.
Domangue handed her hearing aid to Gauer, then started a drill that required her to jump a rope and then roll under it. She struggled to catch her breath.
During the six-minute punching bag workout, she had to stop. She staggered, and dropped to the floor.
But she would not let her health beat her. She opened her eyes, and read the trainer's lips. Of course she wanted to continue.
As soon as she got to her feet, she resumed swinging.
As soon as she got to her feet, she resumed swinging.
Cameraman Cody Cannon tracked her down at the end and asked, “Are you ready to fight?”
“Very,” she said, and pretended to box the camera.
“Very,” she said, and pretended to box the camera.
A few minutes later, she ran to the bathroom and vomited.
HHH
Long before the punching bags and the hysterectomy, Kanna Domangue was little 5-year-old Kanna Antill.
Her grandmother, Mary Antill, thought she was stubborn because she would keep walking after being told repeatedly to come back.
She simply hadn't heard.
Kanna was living in Lodi, Calif., where her mother followed her aunt to the first of many different homes around the country. A prekindergarten screening discovered the hearing loss.
Taunting later caused her to skip school dances and wear her hair down to cover her hearing aids. In sixth grade, she saw a TV show about a deaf boy and decided she shouldn't be ashamed anymore.
In 2005, she married Ron Domangue, a Marine she had first dated when they were in junior high in Louisiana. They split a year later, about a month before she came to visit family in Indiana.
While in town, she visited the Deerhead Sidewalk Cafe on East Columbia Street, where she met Gauer, a musician. He autographed a copy of his CD with his phone number.
She didn't call for three days. They talked so much the next couple of days that his ear hurt. Gauer, 36, told her he had three children and a bunch of debt.
She told him she sometimes thought about moving to Evansville to be with her mom, but she didn't tell him what she was about to do.
She was on the day shift as a phlebotomist at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales, La., where her father lives with his second wife. On her break, she called her mother in Indiana and asked if she could live with her.
Domangue apologized for giving short notice, and went home for some clothes and her dog.
She went to her mom's first, but that night, she stayed with Gauer. They haven't been apart since.
"I'd never done anything like that," Domangue said. "I just took a chance. I'm glad I did. Everything I wanted to do just took off, I guess because I got out of the box."
HHH
Two weeks after the tryout, Domangue did her first runway shoot at Icon, a nightclub on Green River Road. In a sea of big hair, short shorts, glittery makeup and dangling jewelry, she modeled four outfits.
Domangue's modeling career had picked up in Evansville. She was included on the 2008 Showme's calendar and modeled for an online retailer in Bloomington, Ind.
She had only a couple of drinks at the club, but they proved to be too much.
At the next day's "FIGHT SKOOL" tryout, as the group moved in a circle, practicing footwork and jabs, Domangue had to stop and stand in a corner, slightly doubled over, her hand clutching her heart.
The next exercise was worse: Four trainers used padded boards like baseball bats to hit an assembly line of contestants in the stomach.
Bare-chested guys gritted their teeth, doubled over or swore as they walked away, their six-pack abs red as wine.
Domangue says she probably shouldn't have gone through the line. She spent the next two days in bed, missing a runway show.
HHH
Of the seven girls in the competition, Osborne estimated Domangue's skills put her in the middle of the pack.
She didn't have the jujitsu grappling game of Marie Cartwright, or the boxing skills of Amber Asher-Jones or April Penrod, or the kicking ability of Renee Pennington. As they grappled on the floor, Cartwright put Domangue in a hold that caused her to "tap out" or give up.
Four weeks in, Domangue climbed into the ring to spar with Kim Lindsey, a 42-year-old grandmother who won her final match of the first season.
Domangue's ponytail bounced as she tried to land a jab or kick. She wasn't keeping her eyes up when she punched, and Lindsey landed a left hook on Domangue's nose.
"I'm sorry," Lindsey said.
"No, you're not," trainer David Overfield said from the side of the ring. "You're here to spar, not to play Barbie."
HHH
Domangue was willing to risk the hot flashes and fatigue and other uncomfortable results of her decision to stop taking her hormones, but Gauer was worried.
One day at work, when a doctor came in to buy some sharp clothes, Gauer asked his opinion on her decision.
The doctor’s advice was clear: She needed to resume taking the hormones immediately. She was too young to go through the changes that would be brought on without them.
She agreed, but she couldn’t shake her insecurity about the hormones’ side effects. In an effort to firm up her legs, she decided to roller blade from her house to the Pigeon Creek boat ramp and through the Greenway Trail that leads to Garvin Park.
She tried to pass a pair of girls who were walking down the ramp, and she lost her balance and flipped at least three times down the hill. Her right arm bent underneath like a chicken wing.
“Wow, are you OK?”“Practice makes perfect,” she said as she got up and skated on, trying to shake out the pain in her arm.
Soon, her broken wrist had swollen to the size of an apple.
HHH
The conversation with Osborne didn't go well, Gauer said.
Doctors said she would be in a cast for about four weeks.
She couldn't wrestle in the first "FIGHT SKOOL" show but could be ready before the November finale.
Osborne didn't say if Domangue would be eliminated but told Gauer to bring her by 15 minutes late for the next workout.
He needed that time to talk to the other contestants.
He asked the women who of them should be eliminated, but didn’t mention Domangue’s arm.
When she showed up in jeans and a neon pink cast, a cameraman was waiting for her and Gauer at the door.
Sometimes people make decisions easy on him, Osborne said.
"She's got a broken arm from rollerblading. Kanna's out."
All Domangue said was, "Can I come back next season?"
ROUNDING UP ANIMALS CHALLENGES ZOO
This was part of a 3-story package, but this one was the best.
GREAT LENGTHS GET CRITTERS HERE
ROUNDING UP ANIMALS CHALLENGES ZOO
Date: Sunday, August 3, 2008 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
464-7434 or bennettj@courierpress.com
GREAT LENGTHS GET CRITTERS HERE
ROUNDING UP ANIMALS CHALLENGES ZOO
Date: Sunday, August 3, 2008 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
464-7434 or bennettj@courierpress.com
Photo by MOLLY BARTELS, Courier & Press staff photographer
The tree frogs came in the mail, shipped overnight in a plastic butter dish with air holes and a moist towel to keep them alive.
The jaguar arrived via plane to Chicago, then made the six-hour ride to Evansville in the back of a van driven by Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden zookeepers Stacey Ellis and Jill Remington.
"The director at the time, Dan McGinn, he gave us a hammer and nails and said if we thought she was about to break out of the crate, just hammer the lid back down," Ellis said.
Was he serious? "Surely not. We don't know."
Deciding on an Amazon rain forest theme was only half the task in readying the new multimillion-dollar exhibit at Mesker Park Zoo. Finding the animals to fill it, securing them from other zoos, and getting them here was often a challenge.
The more delicate the animal, the better it probably is to pack it up and ship it overnight, said Erik Beck, the zoo's general curator.
Insects and frogs and even some small snakes can be mailed almost like medical equipment or samples, with labels that say "fragile" and "do not put near excessive heat or cold."
It cost about $30 to mail the new exhibit's giant waxy monkey frogs. Most animals smaller than monkeys can be shipped just like dogs or cats, and picked up at the ticket counter.
Shipping challenge
Many of the animals in Amazonia were picked up in vans, usually by one or two zookeepers looking for a chance to get out of the office, so to speak.
Those that came by air still faced a van ride as well, since only certain airports allow big animals to be shipped by freight.
It cost about $1,000 in February 2007 to ship Beliza, the then 1-year-old, 80-pound jaguar, from Boston to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Beck said.
Airport workers offered to use a forklift to move Beliza's crate into the van, but Ellis and Remington thought that would be too rough and scary for the big cat. Instead, they helped a couple of workers lift the crate into the van.
Beliza was quiet the whole ride, Ellis said.
Once they arrived in Evansville, most of the animals were quarantined in the vet building, which underwent a $540,000 renovation.
It had been one big room, designed to hold elephants, with a single air-changing unit for the whole building.
Now there are several rooms with separate air units, so if one group of animals is sick, the illness won't spread.
Beliza got her own space - two big stalls with two yards, one of which had a pool.
Zookeepers began moving the animals into Amazonia two months ago. The ones that were due for physical exams, such as the howler monkeys, were sedated before the move.
Beliza was awake for her move, made in a wooden crate that had once been used to transport a warthog.
Zookeepers put it in her stall, then added meat, and later a toy. Curiosity didn't kill the cat, but it did get the best of her.
"We got the door ready, guillotine-style, with a rope, and I acted all nonsuspicious," Ellis said. "She knew something was up. She paced for a little bit, then she went right in."
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
At home on the river
EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
LIVING ON THE RIVER
Date: Sunday, July 15, 2007 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition:
Photo by DENNY SIMMONS, Courier & Press photographer
Video: http://www.courierpress.com/videos/detail/peg-leg-pete---home-ohio/
Video: http://www.courierpress.com/videos/detail/peg-leg-pete---home-ohio/
Five years ago, David Habib, whose friends call him "Peg Leg Pete" because he lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, was out of work, in a failing relationship and short on money to pay his bills.
His solution: He chucked it all and moved into a small boat on Pigeon Creek.
He has since moved to the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where he can still see life in Downtown Evansville, but doesn't have to be a part of it.
It was a dramatic solution to everyday problems, and Habib almost let his rage doom him to a life alone.
But nobody is totally self-reliant - even at his darkest point, he still needed food and fuel.
A series of chance friendships softened him, at least a little, enough to bring him to shore.
INSIDE: To read Jacob's Bennett story about Habib, see the cover of the Spectrum section on Page D1. (story continues below)
This article is © 2007 EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
AT HOME ON THE RIVER
The last straw for David Habib came in the mail. There never seemed to be enough money to go around in his drafty old rental house, and now he was staring at an electric bill for $750.
Though friends say he's a good mechanic, he had a hard time finding work, partly on account of his missing right leg. He was in a relationship that wasn't working out. And now he owed more to the electric company than he made in a month from disability benefits.
"'Oh my god, I don't have enough money to eat today,'" he remembers thinking. "'What am I going to do?'"
Lots of people get fed up with the challenges of life's obligations and the obstacles government sometimes seems to put in the way. Many threaten to chuck their earthly possessions for the simple life.
Most of us get past the urge in a few minutes.
Five years ago, Habib actually did it.
"I just felt kind of abused and beat up by the world," he said. "I decided to grab a boat and jump in the water."
That was the plan, to spend the rest of his miserable life in a little aluminum boat on Pigeon Creek or the Ohio River. He wouldn't talk to people, they wouldn't talk to him, and that would be just fine. Police told him it was legal to live on water so long as he behaved himself and didn't bother anything on nearby land. His life, he said, would be in God's hands.
But if there's anything more remarkable about Habib than his decision to leave, it might be what brought him back. Friendship built a bridge to the shore, and Habib crosses it almost every weekday.
* * *
Habib, now 44, lives in a boat tied to trees on the banks of the Henderson, Ky., side of the Ohio River, across from Evansville's LST 325 World War II ship. From his cove, Habib is close enough to see his hometown, but he's almost unreachable by land. A visitor would need a jeep or an all-terrain vehicle to get across the six miles of land that separates him from the nearest road. He has one neighbor, an 88-year-old man who has lived on the river most of his life. The isolation was one reason Habib picked this spot - when he used to park his boat in Pigeon Creek, people kept looting it, which only fed his anger.
Habib - he is of Lebanese descent, but his name is pronounced "HAY-bib" - built a canopy for shelter from the rain and the cold. He sleeps on an old futon he got from his friend Jack Draper at Crazy Larry's.
He has saved enough from his monthly disability checks to afford a generator, a 13-inch TV and a microwave.
One day he found a washed-up pier that he floats on top of some empty chemical barrels, which he ties to his boat and uses as a deck.
He gets around in a 10-foot johnboat - a hollowed-out aluminum apple wedge with dice hanging from the throttle and a sun-bleached picture of Jesus taped to the inside. When the river is up, and whole trees are swirling by, it can take 30 minutes to cross to Indiana (and a few minutes less when the water is lazy).
In winter, Habib wore camouflage pants, a mechanic's shirt and a ball cap, plus a salty beard. Now that summer beats down on his boat, he wears shorts, sunglasses and little else. The beard is gone, revealing a face leathered by the sun.
His fingers have cuts from fish hooks, his arms are solidified by a lifetime of manual labor and 25 years of propelling himself through the world on crutches. In 1982, he lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident on Kentucky Avenue that nearly killed him - a pickup truck turned in front of him, and his leg was twisted up by his head.
He receives a disability check because of the crippling pain in his back, caused by the effort it takes the rest of his body to compensate for the loss. Doctors told him his body would burn itself out quickly. They also told him he died the night of the accident, and it felt good, he said, a million times better than morphine. So death doesn't scare him anymore. Neither does life.
But he has been mad at God and the government ever since.
The anger that sent Habib away had been building for years. He was in and out of trouble at school. He's been mugged, he's been robbed. He's been busted on drugs and gun charges - victimless crimes, unless you count him. There was the time he and a friend were playing with gunpowder and his friend blew off his hand. There were the 9/11 terrorist attacks, confirming his suspicion that the world had gone mad.
He got fed up with government bureaucracy - he needed a doctor's note to get a disability check, but how was he supposed to pay for the doctor's note? If his tax money goes to the police, and the police are paid to protect him, where were they when that man was making an illegal turn in front of his motorcycle?
After his accident, Habib moved in with his parents while he recovered. He was coming off the morphine when they started asking him to visit the people and churches who held fundraisers for him. He just couldn't deal with that then, and he said he didn't appreciate them pushing him.
So he left, and for a while he lived on the street. But that didn't last long - on the streets, landowners or police always chase you off.
* * *
In his boat, Habib has a picture of the woman he was living with in late 2001, just before he moved onto the waters, but he won't reveal her name.
Things weren't working out, and he was mad about that, and money was a constant worry on his $600 a month disability payment.
Then came that electric bill.
So he couldn't afford to live there anymore, and it wouldn't be right to throw out his girlfriend, and he didn't get along well enough with his family to stay with them, and he didn't want to live the homeless life on land.
He headed over to a boat store and said, "Give me the cheapest little boat you have."
He left with a $200 fixer-upper, and he asked his friend Wes McKinney to help him get it to the Pigeon Creek boat ramp off Diamond Avenue.
The request didn't really surprise McKinney, who knew how on-the-edge Habib could be - after all, they'd met when Habib, with one leg, was racing dirt bikes.
McKinney wished Habib could have been as happy as he was back then; being around people had seemed to make his friend happy.
The two hauled the boat to the Pigeon Creek boat ramp off Diamond Avenue, past the sign that reads "Road ends in water." It was a 30-degree day in January, and the creek was only a couple of inches deep.
McKinney hugged Habib and told him to be careful. He cried as he watched his friend use his oars to push off the rocks in the shallow creek bed.
"I was worried to death about him," McKinney said. "I was sad that there wasn't anything better for him."
All Habib brought with him was a sleeping bag, a two-way radio and a gasoline burner. He didn't even have a fishing pole. Every 30 minutes, he had to stop to bail out his boat.
He got tired, and the day grew dark. He parked his boat at the bottom of the hill behind the baseball field at Lamasco Park, in a channel 200 yards from the creek, where the city dumps sewage into the water. Few people went down there, and the hill and the trees would shield him from storms.
When he woke up the next day, water had filled his inclined boat up to his chest. One of his oars had washed away. And things would get worse.
His boat kept getting swept away because he didn't tie it up properly. People kept coming down the hill and stealing his possessions from the boat.
He was so mad that he wouldn't talk to anyone, not even the woman at the nearby gas station who sold him fuel for the burner that kept him alive at night.
When other boaters approached him, he would row away. Once he moved to the river, he would throw rocks at people on Jet Skis who got too close.
"You're either going to lie to me, steal from me, (or) treat me like ..," he said "I just don't want to talk to you."
But his perception of humanity would be changed by a city bus driver and a used-car salesman, among others.
* * *
Habib walked everywhere he went for the first six months, until a Metropolitan Evansville Transit System bus driver spied him hobbling down the embankment by the Franklin Street bridge, hauling a couple of gallon jugs and a car battery.
"Where are you going, man?" Mike Scott asked him.
"I live down there," came the reply.
The next time Scott saw Habib, he invited him to hop on. Habib wasn't talking, but Scott could sense that he was hurting. Scott, now a proud grandfather living in Darmstadt, Ind., had battled his own blues after Vietnam.
"I always just tried to cheer him up, buy him a Coke on a hot summer day," Scott said. "A little bit of kindness goes a long way. There's always hope."
After a couple of months, they broke the ice with talk of fishing, cars and motorcycles. They got to talking about Jesus, how Scott gave up drinking for preaching.
Before long, as soon as the front seat was empty, Habib would claim the spot.
* * *
Scott Hutcheson cast a line in the Ohio River to prepare for a fishing tournament, then did a double take at the boat anchored 50 yards away.
"That's a nekkid one-legged guy over there on that boat," he said.
The guy must have realized he was being watched, because he put on some shorts. Soon, Hutcheson had reeled in a 10-pound catfish, and the one-legged guy applauded. Hutcheson asked him if he could join him in the cove.
Habib had had a rough few first months on the water - he had lost a couple of boats and been robbed a few times. His dad had helped him fix up a houseboat with a motor, and he'd moved to the spot where Pigeon Creek spills into the Ohio. Normally he wouldn't have wanted to get too close to this stranger, but he appreciated that Hutcheson was kind enough to ask.
But as they got to talking, Habib didn't feel any better about his decision. They had something of a professional rivalry that made each not trust the other: Habib was a mechanic and Hutcheson was a used-car salesman. But they quickly got beyond that.
"It was impressive to me whenever we'd catch a fish, he'd say, 'Thank you, Jesus,' and show me he could appreciate even the small things," said Hutcheson, who lived in Yankeetown, Ind., at the time but now lives in a house at the French Island Marina near Rockport, Ind.
"I could tell it, he was out there because he didn't want to visit with people. His faith in people wasn't very strong. I can't blame him. I could tell that he was angered. Then as we got to talking, I asked why he was out there. He was doing what he wanted to do. As rough as it was, I kind of envied him, really."
They got to know each other better over the next couple of days during the fishing tournament. An experienced fisherman, Hutcheson noticed mistakes Habib was making that slowed him down: He wasn't tying knots correctly, and he didn't know that an anchor needed 3 feet of rope for every foot of depth.
Hutcheson didn't have much luck in the tournament. Habib wasn't even competing, but he caught several catfish and threw them to people on shore.
A couple of weeks later, Habib took up an offer to visit Hutcheson on his houseboat at French Island.
Habib had just bought a $50 boat that he wanted to convert into a houseboat. He ended up staying most of the winter, his boat first tied to Hutcheson's houseboat and then parked in Hutcheson's driveway.
Hutcheson trusted him enough to offer to let him stay with his family in a spare bedroom, but Habib slept in his boat and made his own meals as if he were still on the river.
* * *
Two years ago, Habib had a chance to come back to land for good. His parents were retiring to China, where his father had done business over the years, and they wanted him to move home to help take care of the farm.
It would be the last time he talked to anyone in his family.
Habib's sister, Judy Rodriguez, was glad to see Habib move back to help her on the Baseline Road farm. The two of them had never gotten along, but she had worried about him out on the river, especially that he would get sick and not be able to get medication.
He built himself a shack on the farm. He tried to help out by cleaning out the garage, but he tossed far more stuff than his sister would have trashed.
Their relationship flamed out a few weeks later when he tried to smoke in the house, which she has never permitted. Rodriguez told him to stop, and he refused.
"I can't take that," he said. "Wherever I'm at, I'm going to smoke."
So he towed his boat back to the river in his family's dump truck. His sister was frustrated, but knew something it has taken Habib years to learn.
"You can't change other people," she said. "People can only change themselves."
* * *
Twice since Habib moved out to the river, police officers in helicopters have spotted him and assumed he was stranded. He got mad that they hovered so close to his boat - he was afraid the propellers' downdraft would blow him into the water.
One such incident made the news in January, when the Kentucky State Police came across a naked, one-legged man they thought was stranded on the Ohio River.
It was Habib, who waved to the officers that he was OK, according to the police. Furious that the incident had happened in the first place and also that the news account wasn't accurate (Habib insists he was actually giving the police officers an obscene gesture), Habib faxed a letter to the editor from Crazy Larry's.
"I'm going to leave out all the expletives, but I'm thinking them," Habib wrote. "Please explain (that trying) to save someone shouldn't be so painful."
When his letter was printed, people across town - people who love Habib - clipped and saved it.
"What happened there was basically Pete's whole gist," said McKinney, the friend who helped Habib make his initial move to life on the water. "He believes what's published, what's seen, what goes on, is a twist on the truth. I bet his blood was just boiling. I bet he could not wait to write that letter. That's 'Pete' right there."
* * *
Habib still doesn't want to be immersed in society, but he said he did learn something from the actions of his new friends on land - the people who have given him a bus ride on hot days, tutored him in the craft of keeping a boat afloat and even taught him poker. Habib said he didn't like cards, but now he plays almost every Tuesday and Wednesday at Fast Eddy's, just a short climb up the Evansville river bank.
Their acts have shown him that when it comes to life's frustrations, the best remedies can often come from the kindness of others.
"There are other people just like me running into the same walls I do," Habib said. "They were still getting up and going and carrying on. I guess I have to, too."
Habib's friend Jack Draper, the owner of Crazy Larry's, is letting Habib use his lot to work on a new houseboat. He'll have it ready in a few weeks, and he'll anchor it to his floating deck.
His project shows the two sides of the man they call "Peg Leg Pete." Habib is grateful for his friend's help, while still guarding himself against the intrusions of others.
Because amid all the building materials and Habib's meager possessions sits a pile of rocks - in case someone on a jet ski gets too close.
Ex-wrestler Jericho to show nice side at event
Ex-wrestler Jericho to show his nice side at event
By Jacob Bennett
Evansville Courier & Press
Thursday, June 21, 2007
If you meet Chris Jericho this weekend, don't expect him to make fun of your name, dis your girlfriend or put you in his signature wrestling hold, the Lion Tamer.
"A lot of people meet me and say, 'Oh, Chris Jericho, you're such a nice guy. We thought you would be a jerk,'" said Jericho, who is a veteran of almost all major U.S. wrestling leagues and is the son of former hockey player Ted Irvine. "That's why it's fun to play a character. Chris Jericho is a jerk. Chris Irvine is not."
Jericho, who called himself "Y2J" around the turn of the century and was famous for clever mockery of other wrestlers, has been out of wrestling for more than a year, since his World Wrestling Entertainment contract expired and he lost a "You're Fired!" match to John Cena.
Since then, he has toured the world with his metal band Fozzy, filmed movies, done improv, written a book and made numerous autograph signing appearances, such as the one scheduled Saturday at the HOOKnSHOOT mixed martial arts event at the Owensboro Sportscenter in Owensboro, Ky.
Jericho said he is a fan of mixed martial arts, but this is the first event he has attended live.
"MMA is the new boxing, it seems, as far as popularity and notoriety," he said. "Being a boxing fan, there just haven't been the personalities of yesteryears. It's really hurt the sport.
"MMA, it's got that kind of boxing excitement to it. It's a little bit, I'm not saying 'barbaric' in a bad way. We're all human beings and we like to see other human beings beat ... each other. There are a lot more personalities you can sink your teeth into."
A few athletes have crossed over in the worlds of pro wrestling and MMA. Former Ultimate Fighting Champion Ken Shamrock was probably the most famous to make the jump to the WWE, and former wrestler Brock Lesnar has just begun an MMA career.
Jericho said he won't compete in an MMA event, but he has been considering a return to wrestling.
"I just needed a break, man, that's all," he said. "I wrestled for 15 years straight. It's a tough schedule, it's a tough grind, both physically, but mostly mentally. I was very burned out on the mental side of things. I needed to get away and clear my head. You never know what might happen over the next six months, the next year or so."
He has had plenty of projects to keep him busy, which he said was another reason he took a wrestling hiatus. He has been a mainstay commentator on various VH1 programs, such as the "I Love the 80s"-type shows.
"They kind of ran out of topics," he said. "They kept just pumping out those shows, probably about 20 of them over the last three or four years. 'I love the '70s,' 'I Love the '80s', 'I Love the '90s,' part 1, 2, 3. Then you go back to 'I Love the '30s.'"
The last one he filmed was "40 Most Softsational Soft Rock Songs," which is an interesting subject for a guy whose wrestling name was inspired by a rock song by Helloween.
"Anything music is my forte," Jericho said. "I just kind of know everything about nothing. It's one of my superpowers."
By Jacob Bennett
Evansville Courier & Press
Thursday, June 21, 2007
If you meet Chris Jericho this weekend, don't expect him to make fun of your name, dis your girlfriend or put you in his signature wrestling hold, the Lion Tamer.
"A lot of people meet me and say, 'Oh, Chris Jericho, you're such a nice guy. We thought you would be a jerk,'" said Jericho, who is a veteran of almost all major U.S. wrestling leagues and is the son of former hockey player Ted Irvine. "That's why it's fun to play a character. Chris Jericho is a jerk. Chris Irvine is not."
Jericho, who called himself "Y2J" around the turn of the century and was famous for clever mockery of other wrestlers, has been out of wrestling for more than a year, since his World Wrestling Entertainment contract expired and he lost a "You're Fired!" match to John Cena.
Since then, he has toured the world with his metal band Fozzy, filmed movies, done improv, written a book and made numerous autograph signing appearances, such as the one scheduled Saturday at the HOOKnSHOOT mixed martial arts event at the Owensboro Sportscenter in Owensboro, Ky.
Jericho said he is a fan of mixed martial arts, but this is the first event he has attended live.
"MMA is the new boxing, it seems, as far as popularity and notoriety," he said. "Being a boxing fan, there just haven't been the personalities of yesteryears. It's really hurt the sport.
"MMA, it's got that kind of boxing excitement to it. It's a little bit, I'm not saying 'barbaric' in a bad way. We're all human beings and we like to see other human beings beat ... each other. There are a lot more personalities you can sink your teeth into."
A few athletes have crossed over in the worlds of pro wrestling and MMA. Former Ultimate Fighting Champion Ken Shamrock was probably the most famous to make the jump to the WWE, and former wrestler Brock Lesnar has just begun an MMA career.
Jericho said he won't compete in an MMA event, but he has been considering a return to wrestling.
"I just needed a break, man, that's all," he said. "I wrestled for 15 years straight. It's a tough schedule, it's a tough grind, both physically, but mostly mentally. I was very burned out on the mental side of things. I needed to get away and clear my head. You never know what might happen over the next six months, the next year or so."
He has had plenty of projects to keep him busy, which he said was another reason he took a wrestling hiatus. He has been a mainstay commentator on various VH1 programs, such as the "I Love the 80s"-type shows.
"They kind of ran out of topics," he said. "They kept just pumping out those shows, probably about 20 of them over the last three or four years. 'I love the '70s,' 'I Love the '80s', 'I Love the '90s,' part 1, 2, 3. Then you go back to 'I Love the '30s.'"
The last one he filmed was "40 Most Softsational Soft Rock Songs," which is an interesting subject for a guy whose wrestling name was inspired by a rock song by Helloween.
"Anything music is my forte," Jericho said. "I just kind of know everything about nothing. It's one of my superpowers."
This 'Dog" hot on the scent of salvation
This article is © 2007 EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
THIS 'DOG' HOT ON SCENT OF SALVATION--FAMED BOUNTY HUNTER SPEAKING AT CENTRE
THIS 'DOG' HOT ON SCENT OF SALVATION--FAMED BOUNTY HUNTER SPEAKING AT CENTRE
Date: Thursday, August 16, 2007 Section: Features Page: D1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
How's this for a motivator? Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman said he can't retire until he captures his profession's biggest prize: Osama bin Laden.
Chapman, star of the A&E network's top-rated "Dog the Bounty Hunter," will speak Monday at The Centre in Evansville. A convicted felon and born-again Christian, Chapman is an experienced motivational speaker: He used to tour with self-help guru Tony Robbins as a bad convict turned good (in addition to more than a dozen arrests for burglary, Chapman spent two years in prison for being an accessory to murder after a fellow gang member shot a man during a drug deal gone bad).
He phoned the Courier & Press last week from New York City, where he was promoting his new book, "You Can Run But You Can't Hide." It was just a few days after charges against him were dropped in Mexico, stemming from his star-making capture there in 2003 of Max Factor heir Andrew Luster, a fugitive convicted of 86 counts of rape.
He talked about turning your life around, making up for past sins, and taking down the FBI's most wanted man.
What do you want people to get out of your speech?
A lot of people go through challenges. They get divorced; they get fired from their jobs; they get arrested for something they did do or didn't do; hooked on drugs; they're negative; they don't know how to speak to their bosses, their wives, their kids. I want (to help) every single person in the room. A lot of guys say “if I could help just one guy out of that 1,000 people ...” I want 999 to be helped because I know at least one of them will be wanted.
Do you think that years of good deeds can make up for past sins?
I hope that, brother. I hope that the score is even. Through the people of society and, of course, through God, I hope that I'm even. I'd like to get way ahead of the game. Once the Mexico thing was dropped, (catching a man convicted of) 86 counts of rape, I think that made the score even. But I want to get ahead now. Onward, Christian soldiers.
For someone who loves his job as much as you, will it be hard to retire?
I'm the kind of guy who will die with his boots on. I don't want to retire. There's one big, big, big fish out there. Uncle Bin. I'm waiting on the phone to ring. I don't think I'll retire until at least then.
You think you could catch Osama Bin Laden?
Absolutely, 100 percent, guaranteed. I wouldn't put a time limit on it because that would be stupid. But I guarantee you I could catch that guy. Or I could train the troops in America to be able to catch him.
I don't know if I could be the one, in our business it's called "laying of the hands on him," I'm not sure of that, but I would be very instrumental in the capture. I'm just waiting for an offer. I'm waiting for them to say, "Dog, would you be interested?" and I'm going to say, "Absolutely."
I get tips right now. Yesterday I got a tip. I've got a lot of criminals from that area that have been calling saying, "Are you going to chase him? Are you going after him? I might know where he's at." That's usually what happens. The criminal side starts calling before the good side does.
"Uh-oh, who's looking. We don't care if the cops are, you'd better make sure Dog is not. He won't give up."
It could take a while. It could be quick. I would not come back without him. It could be the end of my career, I could lose my life, but you got to die anyway. That is a hell of a legacy, brother. If he's No. 1 wanted, I want him.
That would be a good ending for your show, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't it, brother?
Ted Nugent still hyper at any speed
This article is © 2007 EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
TED NUGENT STILL HYPER AT ANY SPEED--LEGENDARY GUITAR ROCKER SET AT MESKER
Date: Thursday, June 7, 2007 Section: Features Page: D1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
Love him or hate him, there's no denying Ted Nugent is sure of himself.
Take, for example, his theory on why he's still rocking 40 years after recording "Journey to the Center of Your Mind," his landmark album:
"God loves me more than he loves you."
On Saturday, Nugent, 59, the hunter/rocker/self-proclaimed agitator of liberals, is bringing epic songs such as "Stranglehold" and "Cat Scratch Fever" to Mesker Amphitheatre.
He called recently from his home in Waco, Texas, for what was supposed to be a Q&A session. But nearly nine minutes in, he wasn't done with his first A.
He was on a roll, talking about why he exercises his First Amendment rights almost as much as his Second Amendment rights, and about how he feels about a batch of songs he wrote in the last couple of weeks.
"The new songs are just hysterical," he said. "They're so intense, so grinding, so rhythm-and-blues. James Brown would really, really be proud. 'Love Grenade' is the title of the record, and that's the first single. It's probably my greatest composition ever."
There's also "Bridge Over Troubled Daughters," which Nugent said is "just another hyper guitar lick masterpiece."
And another song about the "Trail of Tears" called "Geronimo and Me" that he said is "going to become a classic before this tour is over."
The first single is set to be released June 23, but the songs could pop up in Evansville, Nugent said. There was only one drawback to what he called a "recording jihad."
"I did, heartbreakingly, cancel a British Columbia bear hunt, which means some poor camper is going to get mauled and it's my fault because I didn't adequately reduce the black bear population on Vancouver Island. (Forget) 'em, they're just Canadians."
It's that kind of comment from Nugent that has always riled up some people, especially animal rights activists, and that has kept him in the news nearly 20 years after his last mainstream hit. He was just joking (about the Canadians, not the bears), but he when he talks issues, he gets just as upset as those who disagree with him.
His voice rises as he decries people who drink and drive and kill and rape and rob, who are able to work but still take welfare. The sermon ends with "get a job and get off my .. back" before he catches himself, stops, takes a breath, and calmly says, "my point is..."
"I wouldn't have to fight for welform reform, I wouldn't have to fight for education reform, because I already have the perfect life. I can go out right now, I own property, I can hunt 365 days a year and just kill (stuff) until I turn blue in the face .. But if I am so blessed to live in a country where young men and women are dying so I can, how dare I not fight for the freedoms they're sacrificing their lives for."
Street star adjusts to USI
This article is © 2007 EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
Date: Friday, December 28, 2007 Section: Sports Page: C1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
Date: Friday, December 28, 2007 Section: Sports Page: C1 Edition:
Source: JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
Photo by JASON CLARK, Courier & Press photographer
On the playgrounds in Harlem, they know him as "Africa."
Out there, they don't hand out nicknames to just anyone, but Anthony Pimble earned his.
At famed Rucker Park, he stepped onto the green court with red paint and played alongside some of the best ballers in the world - and onlookers sitting in the beat-up bleachers inside the chain-link fence left talking about the 6-foot-6, 185-pound wingman with the really dark skin and the chicken legs that could take him to the moon.
There are playgrounds full of players like Pimble, guys who hoped their basketball skills would give them a chance at something better. Some got busted. Some got F's. Some got jobs because they got girls pregnant.
Pimble got out. First to a community college on the opposite side of the country, then to a Division II basketball school in Middle America.
And he brought the crowd to its feet the first time he stepped onto the University of Southern Indiana court, jumping over a ball rack - and a freshman teammate - to dunk.
His coach at USI says it's too soon to talk about where his legs might take him next, that he's still got a lot to learn. But people back home still ask about Africa, because his dreams are their dreams, and he's playing for them.
Anthony Pimble grew up in an 18-story apartment building called the Lewis Morris, 1749 Grand Concourse, the Bronx. He had a little brother, Rashaun, seven years younger, and a single mother, Rosalie Pimble, 16 years older. Rosalie's eight brothers and sisters helped raise the boys while she worked minimum wage jobs and squeezed in nursing school classes.
Sometimes Pimble would watch the Rucker Park streetballers on TV, because basketball was one thing you could do in New York City without much money. He didn't really dream of getting out, or of being like Herman "Helicopter" Knowings or Earl "The Goat" Manigault, guys who made their names at the Rucker - a court named after a city parks employee who founded a basketball league that stressed the value of education.
An aunt asked the basketball coach at his middle school if her nephew could play. It would be a good outlet for his energy. Soon he was traveling with guys from the Square to nearby parks and gyms, playing against guys on high school teams and AAU clubs.
"You hear their names watching TV and you think, 'I was just in the park with them the other day,'" Pimble said. "'Maybe I could get good and get on some TV stations.'"
He elevated past a senior into the starting lineup; his grades dropped. He kept jumping for the rim, falling woefully short, until one day after his sophomore year he dunked for the first time. Soon, there wasn't a dunk he couldn't do.
Some of the guys he knew started stepping on the neighborhood's landmines - fights and other bits of trouble - and it was only a matter of time, Pimble figured, before they tussled with the wrong guys, ones who carried weapons.
"It's not a good neighborhood," said his friend Joe Bynum, who lived near 188th Street and Webster Avenue, where Pimble moved his sophomore year. "I don't know if you understand, but it's like the hood. People doing illegal things. Drug trafficking, robbing, stealing, doing drugs, cutting class. Anthony would always tell us, 'I'm not going to be a part of none of that.' He gets a lot of respect out here for not going down the wrong path. They like to see people do good. Even if they do bad, they like to see others prosper."
Rosalie Pimble suggested the Job Corps. Make a little money from the government and learn a skill while finishing high school credits. He could stay home or live on a campus.
Pimble and his mom went to a nearby Job Corps office to enroll, but they didn't bring all the necessary documents. Later that day, he told Bynum what he was considering.
Bynum had another idea. He had just graduated from Bronx Regional High School, a basketball dynasty that gives another chance to students in academic or other trouble. Thanks to Bronx Regional, Bynum was about to move to California to play junior college ball, until he got some unexpected news: He was going to be a father. He canceled his trip, got a job, and transferred his hopes onto Pimble.
"With his talent, Job Corps is not where he should be," Bynum said. "I told him to transfer to (Bronx Regional) so he could get more looks, more schools to see him play. 'You can use your skills and take it to the next level.' He's got a good head on his shoulders. He just needed a little more umph. He just needed a little guidance."
And a little commitment to his school work. Pimble sat out his junior year to get his grades up. But he was about to become a star.
Playing with the stars
That summer, 2003, his AAU coach got a call from a man named Tony Rosa, who coached the Harlem Mustangs in the Entertainer's Basketball Classic, a tournament featuring local stars, NBA players and rap musicians. Rosa needed a player for a youth division team that played on a court at 145th and Lenox.
A few weeks later, the Mustangs were short of players. Rosa asked Pimble to come out but wouldn't promise playing time. But when Pimble took the D-train from his apartment to the park at 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, across from a housing project on the former site of the Polo Grounds, he learned he would start - NBA players Ron Artest and Theo Ratliff were running late.
There were movie stars in the bleachers and rappers on the sideline when Pimble took the court alongside Danny Artest, Antwan "Antifreeze" Dobie and Adrian "Wholelottagame" Walton, who played briefly at Fordham. Mic'ed up courtside were Jeff "Hannibal" Banks and Khalil "Boobie Smooth" Scott, the guys who for years cheered great plays, heckled lame ones and gave many stars their trademark nicknames.
"I had the bubble guts a little bit when I first started," Pimble said. "I wasn't worried about who was there. I didn't want to get embarrassed."
No worries. He threw down a dunk on his first fast break, and a star was born, said Gregory Marius, the event's inadvertent founder in 1980 when his rap group The Disco Four took on the Crash Crew while the Sugarhill Gang and the Treacherous 3 watched.
"To catch an offensive rebound and dunk it on a defender's neck, that's what caught everybody's attention," Marius said. "The first time I seen him do that, everybody had to look twice, 'Who was that?' From that moment, everybody knew who he was."
It took Hannibal and Boobie Smooth a couple of games to decide on a nickname, Pimble said. By that time Artest and Ratliff were in the lineup. Alongside them was Africa.
After Bronx Regional won the Public Schools Alternative League Championship in his senior year, Pimble said he had a miscommunication with a junior college coach and sat out the 2004-2005 season.
He moved with his family to New Jersey and worked in a suburban Shop Right supermarket, combing through the snowy parking lot for stray shopping carts. "There were, like, a billion carts," he said.
He started going to junior college showcases to keep in shape. But he had his mind made up: Ventura College in California. His friends Elijah Muldrow and Gary Nunez played there, and they arranged for him to talk to coach Greg Winslow.
Winslow said a lot of the players he lands want to be like Rafer Alston and Jamaal Tinsley, streetballers who overcame tough New York City backgrounds to land NBA riches. Winslow knows that's not going to happen for most of them, but he also knows an education would be as important.
"There's a ton of kids who are looking for an opportunity," Winslow said. "Most of them need an opportunity away from home. Somebody had to break the cycle. They probably won't all own homes, but for some guys, being in an apartment and being safe is like hitting the lotto."
It took Pimble half a season to adjust to life in college and California, and, Winslow said, to the college team concept, more structured than streetball. But Pimble came on at the end of his freshman year. "He was a crowd-pleaser," Winslow said. "The guy's a freak athletically. He can jump to the moon. There's something in his legs. You wonder how he can get up in the air so high on those chicken legs."
Making it to the Garden
That summer Pimble played for the Mustangs at Rucker Park for the fourth year, this time alongside Florida star Joakim Noah. They won the EBC title and Pimble was chosen for the EBC all-star game at Madison Square Garden on July 23, 2006.
His mother, a lifelong Knicks fan, was pregnant with twin girls. She thought she might have them in the Garden. Her son's monster game didn't help, as it turned into a dunk contest between Pimble and Ryan "Special FX" Williams.
The Dime Magazine recap: Africa throws down a sick windmill, and the crowd is going nuts! Special FX is matching Africa highlight-for-highlight. Africa pulls out a 360, after which he hangs on the rim like Spyda from AND1. Africa cops MVP.
Finding love and a team
In Pimble's sophomore season at Ventura, Division II coaches started showing interest.
So did K'Lah Houston, a friend of a teammate's girlfriend.
Houston thought he was cute. Coaches saw his athleticism and these averages: 15.6 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.1 steals.
Pimble had seen Muldrow go off to Arkansas Little-Rock and Nunez to Northwestern Oklahoma. He knew he would leave soon, so he didn't want to get serious with Houston. But they were hanging out at the same places together, and eventually spending much of their time together, alone.
He still needed to get serious about his next college. He went online and looked up their records over the last five years: Grand Canyon University in Arizona, Chaminade in Hawaii, Kentucky Wesleyan. But there was one program that stood out: Southern Indiana. USI had won at least 27 games in the last five seasons, and hadn't lost more than seven. He visited the campus in April and decided he didn't need to visit anywhere else.
Houston thought she might be pregnant. She didn't tell Pimble until July, a few days before he was supposed to fly away for good. He took her to the store to buy a pregnancy test. It was positive. She tried the second one in the package. Also positive.
She wasn't so positive.
At the very least, she was nervous. She'd just had her son, Dion, in September. She wasn't sure she could handle another. Pimble told her not to worry. He would be a good father.
He finished some summer classes to make sure he had all the credits he needed to play at USI. She flew to New York in August. He showed her where he lived, showed her where he grew up, showed her Manhattan. Soon, she would be on her way to Vicksburg, Miss., where her mother had moved seeking a more laid-back and affordable lifestyle. He flew to Evansville.
It was a big change from New York City and Southern California. He was lonely and bored. He thought about leaving. Houston discouraged him. She told him he would be fine once the season started.
"It's kind of hard, but he has to do what he has to do," Houston said. "I'd rather have him there than here doing something he's not supposed to do."
Pimble flew to Mississippi on Sept. 28 and came back two days later.
Two weeks later, he blew away USI fans with his creative dunks at the Midnight Madness preseason kickoff.
He still gets calls and instant messages from his friends back home. They don't believe him when he says he only dunked about eight times in the first six games - he used to get that many in a game.
But he knows he can attack the basket - now he's learning to guard on the perimeter, to dribble once and pull up quickly for a shot, to disrupt long inbounds passes. He has to know all these things if he is to keep playing after his USI career. He's too thin for the NBA right now, friends and coaches say, but a lower-level professional league isn't out of reach.
Even if Pimble doesn't play professionally, Winslow thinks he will be in good shape. He will have four years of college under his belt, and a degree at least within reach. "That will open doors Anthony might not have even thought of," Winslow said.
Inspired by his son
On Dec. 10, he got a new reason to strive to be the best. Anthony Lamar Pimble Jr. was born in Vicksburg, Miss.
In the two games since, he has totaled 29 points, six dunks and eight steals. He leads the Great Lakes Valley Conference in steals. In his last game, Dec. 19 against Ferris State, the PAC Arena crowd showered praise on him no fewer than four times, including three dunks - an alley-oop from sophomore guard Darren Cloud, a fast-break gorilla slam and a particularly filthy one-handed windmill on a fast break. He was also cheered appreciatively for his epic effort on a steal in which he tipped the ball away, fended off a guard who tried to get it back, and dribbled the ball between his legs, inches off the floor as if giving CPR to keep it alive.
He was even impressive when he turned the ball over, surprising Norman Plummer under the basket with a rocket behind-the-back pass that would have killed at Rucker.
USI coach Rick Herdes chastised Pimble immediately after for not making the simple pass, but admired him after the game. "That was a good pass," Herdes said. "It hit Norman right in the hands. I couldn't have made that pass. You're so quick, you don't know how quick you are."
Pimble said his only regret was that he didn't bounce the pass to give Plummer more of a chance. Then he said goodbye.
It was Christmas break, and tomorrow he would meet Anthony Jr. for the first time. Tonight he had to pack. He hustled out into the night, backlit by the light of the moon.
On the playgrounds in Harlem, they know him as "Africa."
Out there, they don't hand out nicknames to just anyone, but Anthony Pimble earned his.
At famed Rucker Park, he stepped onto the green court with red paint and played alongside some of the best ballers in the world - and onlookers sitting in the beat-up bleachers inside the chain-link fence left talking about the 6-foot-6, 185-pound wingman with the really dark skin and the chicken legs that could take him to the moon.
There are playgrounds full of players like Pimble, guys who hoped their basketball skills would give them a chance at something better. Some got busted. Some got F's. Some got jobs because they got girls pregnant.
Pimble got out. First to a community college on the opposite side of the country, then to a Division II basketball school in Middle America.
And he brought the crowd to its feet the first time he stepped onto the University of Southern Indiana court, jumping over a ball rack - and a freshman teammate - to dunk.
His coach at USI says it's too soon to talk about where his legs might take him next, that he's still got a lot to learn. But people back home still ask about Africa, because his dreams are their dreams, and he's playing for them.
Anthony Pimble grew up in an 18-story apartment building called the Lewis Morris, 1749 Grand Concourse, the Bronx. He had a little brother, Rashaun, seven years younger, and a single mother, Rosalie Pimble, 16 years older. Rosalie's eight brothers and sisters helped raise the boys while she worked minimum wage jobs and squeezed in nursing school classes.
Sometimes Pimble would watch the Rucker Park streetballers on TV, because basketball was one thing you could do in New York City without much money. He didn't really dream of getting out, or of being like Herman "Helicopter" Knowings or Earl "The Goat" Manigault, guys who made their names at the Rucker - a court named after a city parks employee who founded a basketball league that stressed the value of education.
An aunt asked the basketball coach at his middle school if her nephew could play. It would be a good outlet for his energy. Soon he was traveling with guys from the Square to nearby parks and gyms, playing against guys on high school teams and AAU clubs.
"You hear their names watching TV and you think, 'I was just in the park with them the other day,'" Pimble said. "'Maybe I could get good and get on some TV stations.'"
He elevated past a senior into the starting lineup; his grades dropped. He kept jumping for the rim, falling woefully short, until one day after his sophomore year he dunked for the first time. Soon, there wasn't a dunk he couldn't do.
Some of the guys he knew started stepping on the neighborhood's landmines - fights and other bits of trouble - and it was only a matter of time, Pimble figured, before they tussled with the wrong guys, ones who carried weapons.
"It's not a good neighborhood," said his friend Joe Bynum, who lived near 188th Street and Webster Avenue, where Pimble moved his sophomore year. "I don't know if you understand, but it's like the hood. People doing illegal things. Drug trafficking, robbing, stealing, doing drugs, cutting class. Anthony would always tell us, 'I'm not going to be a part of none of that.' He gets a lot of respect out here for not going down the wrong path. They like to see people do good. Even if they do bad, they like to see others prosper."
Rosalie Pimble suggested the Job Corps. Make a little money from the government and learn a skill while finishing high school credits. He could stay home or live on a campus.
Pimble and his mom went to a nearby Job Corps office to enroll, but they didn't bring all the necessary documents. Later that day, he told Bynum what he was considering.
Bynum had another idea. He had just graduated from Bronx Regional High School, a basketball dynasty that gives another chance to students in academic or other trouble. Thanks to Bronx Regional, Bynum was about to move to California to play junior college ball, until he got some unexpected news: He was going to be a father. He canceled his trip, got a job, and transferred his hopes onto Pimble.
"With his talent, Job Corps is not where he should be," Bynum said. "I told him to transfer to (Bronx Regional) so he could get more looks, more schools to see him play. 'You can use your skills and take it to the next level.' He's got a good head on his shoulders. He just needed a little more umph. He just needed a little guidance."
And a little commitment to his school work. Pimble sat out his junior year to get his grades up. But he was about to become a star.
Playing with the stars
That summer, 2003, his AAU coach got a call from a man named Tony Rosa, who coached the Harlem Mustangs in the Entertainer's Basketball Classic, a tournament featuring local stars, NBA players and rap musicians. Rosa needed a player for a youth division team that played on a court at 145th and Lenox.
A few weeks later, the Mustangs were short of players. Rosa asked Pimble to come out but wouldn't promise playing time. But when Pimble took the D-train from his apartment to the park at 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, across from a housing project on the former site of the Polo Grounds, he learned he would start - NBA players Ron Artest and Theo Ratliff were running late.
There were movie stars in the bleachers and rappers on the sideline when Pimble took the court alongside Danny Artest, Antwan "Antifreeze" Dobie and Adrian "Wholelottagame" Walton, who played briefly at Fordham. Mic'ed up courtside were Jeff "Hannibal" Banks and Khalil "Boobie Smooth" Scott, the guys who for years cheered great plays, heckled lame ones and gave many stars their trademark nicknames.
"I had the bubble guts a little bit when I first started," Pimble said. "I wasn't worried about who was there. I didn't want to get embarrassed."
No worries. He threw down a dunk on his first fast break, and a star was born, said Gregory Marius, the event's inadvertent founder in 1980 when his rap group The Disco Four took on the Crash Crew while the Sugarhill Gang and the Treacherous 3 watched.
"To catch an offensive rebound and dunk it on a defender's neck, that's what caught everybody's attention," Marius said. "The first time I seen him do that, everybody had to look twice, 'Who was that?' From that moment, everybody knew who he was."
It took Hannibal and Boobie Smooth a couple of games to decide on a nickname, Pimble said. By that time Artest and Ratliff were in the lineup. Alongside them was Africa.
After Bronx Regional won the Public Schools Alternative League Championship in his senior year, Pimble said he had a miscommunication with a junior college coach and sat out the 2004-2005 season.
He moved with his family to New Jersey and worked in a suburban Shop Right supermarket, combing through the snowy parking lot for stray shopping carts. "There were, like, a billion carts," he said.
He started going to junior college showcases to keep in shape. But he had his mind made up: Ventura College in California. His friends Elijah Muldrow and Gary Nunez played there, and they arranged for him to talk to coach Greg Winslow.
Winslow said a lot of the players he lands want to be like Rafer Alston and Jamaal Tinsley, streetballers who overcame tough New York City backgrounds to land NBA riches. Winslow knows that's not going to happen for most of them, but he also knows an education would be as important.
"There's a ton of kids who are looking for an opportunity," Winslow said. "Most of them need an opportunity away from home. Somebody had to break the cycle. They probably won't all own homes, but for some guys, being in an apartment and being safe is like hitting the lotto."
It took Pimble half a season to adjust to life in college and California, and, Winslow said, to the college team concept, more structured than streetball. But Pimble came on at the end of his freshman year. "He was a crowd-pleaser," Winslow said. "The guy's a freak athletically. He can jump to the moon. There's something in his legs. You wonder how he can get up in the air so high on those chicken legs."
Making it to the Garden
That summer Pimble played for the Mustangs at Rucker Park for the fourth year, this time alongside Florida star Joakim Noah. They won the EBC title and Pimble was chosen for the EBC all-star game at Madison Square Garden on July 23, 2006.
His mother, a lifelong Knicks fan, was pregnant with twin girls. She thought she might have them in the Garden. Her son's monster game didn't help, as it turned into a dunk contest between Pimble and Ryan "Special FX" Williams.
The Dime Magazine recap: Africa throws down a sick windmill, and the crowd is going nuts! Special FX is matching Africa highlight-for-highlight. Africa pulls out a 360, after which he hangs on the rim like Spyda from AND1. Africa cops MVP.
Finding love and a team
In Pimble's sophomore season at Ventura, Division II coaches started showing interest.
So did K'Lah Houston, a friend of a teammate's girlfriend.
Houston thought he was cute. Coaches saw his athleticism and these averages: 15.6 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.1 steals.
Pimble had seen Muldrow go off to Arkansas Little-Rock and Nunez to Northwestern Oklahoma. He knew he would leave soon, so he didn't want to get serious with Houston. But they were hanging out at the same places together, and eventually spending much of their time together, alone.
He still needed to get serious about his next college. He went online and looked up their records over the last five years: Grand Canyon University in Arizona, Chaminade in Hawaii, Kentucky Wesleyan. But there was one program that stood out: Southern Indiana. USI had won at least 27 games in the last five seasons, and hadn't lost more than seven. He visited the campus in April and decided he didn't need to visit anywhere else.
Houston thought she might be pregnant. She didn't tell Pimble until July, a few days before he was supposed to fly away for good. He took her to the store to buy a pregnancy test. It was positive. She tried the second one in the package. Also positive.
She wasn't so positive.
At the very least, she was nervous. She'd just had her son, Dion, in September. She wasn't sure she could handle another. Pimble told her not to worry. He would be a good father.
He finished some summer classes to make sure he had all the credits he needed to play at USI. She flew to New York in August. He showed her where he lived, showed her where he grew up, showed her Manhattan. Soon, she would be on her way to Vicksburg, Miss., where her mother had moved seeking a more laid-back and affordable lifestyle. He flew to Evansville.
It was a big change from New York City and Southern California. He was lonely and bored. He thought about leaving. Houston discouraged him. She told him he would be fine once the season started.
"It's kind of hard, but he has to do what he has to do," Houston said. "I'd rather have him there than here doing something he's not supposed to do."
Pimble flew to Mississippi on Sept. 28 and came back two days later.
Two weeks later, he blew away USI fans with his creative dunks at the Midnight Madness preseason kickoff.
He still gets calls and instant messages from his friends back home. They don't believe him when he says he only dunked about eight times in the first six games - he used to get that many in a game.
But he knows he can attack the basket - now he's learning to guard on the perimeter, to dribble once and pull up quickly for a shot, to disrupt long inbounds passes. He has to know all these things if he is to keep playing after his USI career. He's too thin for the NBA right now, friends and coaches say, but a lower-level professional league isn't out of reach.
Even if Pimble doesn't play professionally, Winslow thinks he will be in good shape. He will have four years of college under his belt, and a degree at least within reach. "That will open doors Anthony might not have even thought of," Winslow said.
Inspired by his son
On Dec. 10, he got a new reason to strive to be the best. Anthony Lamar Pimble Jr. was born in Vicksburg, Miss.
In the two games since, he has totaled 29 points, six dunks and eight steals. He leads the Great Lakes Valley Conference in steals. In his last game, Dec. 19 against Ferris State, the PAC Arena crowd showered praise on him no fewer than four times, including three dunks - an alley-oop from sophomore guard Darren Cloud, a fast-break gorilla slam and a particularly filthy one-handed windmill on a fast break. He was also cheered appreciatively for his epic effort on a steal in which he tipped the ball away, fended off a guard who tried to get it back, and dribbled the ball between his legs, inches off the floor as if giving CPR to keep it alive.
He was even impressive when he turned the ball over, surprising Norman Plummer under the basket with a rocket behind-the-back pass that would have killed at Rucker.
USI coach Rick Herdes chastised Pimble immediately after for not making the simple pass, but admired him after the game. "That was a good pass," Herdes said. "It hit Norman right in the hands. I couldn't have made that pass. You're so quick, you don't know how quick you are."
Pimble said his only regret was that he didn't bounce the pass to give Plummer more of a chance. Then he said goodbye.
It was Christmas break, and tomorrow he would meet Anthony Jr. for the first time. Tonight he had to pack. He hustled out into the night, backlit by the light of the moon.
Perfect match seems impossible
This article is © 2007 EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS
Date: Sunday, February 18, 2007 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition: Final
Source: By JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
This is a story about two people born 7,500 miles apart.
One is a Christian minister, an Indian man born in Kuwait who now lives in Evansville.
He needs a new kidney.
Doctors told him he would have to wait -- five years at least -- before he could find a donor.
But the search was over in less than two years. He is scheduled to get a new kidney this week at a Nashville, Tenn., hospital.
The perfect match for his body turned out to be the perfect match for his heart -- and every night that woman, a missionary from Texas with the last name Pray, was only inches away.
More improbable is how Sam and Erika Meesala, 28 and 25 years old, respectively, say they found each other. How each twist and turn and choice and chance in their lives led them to meet and marry all those years ago in India, so she could be here to have a chance to save him now.
They'll tell you God has provided for them their whole lives, that along the way they were put where they needed to be.
But to really know how they found each other, you have to start with Saddam Hussein.
War begins
It was 2 a.m. in Kuwait City one August night in 1990, when 12-year-old Sam Meesala awoke to the roar of planes overhead, the boom of bombs in the night, the unsettling pop of shotguns fired not so far away.
He and his three siblings ran to their parents' room, where their father let them in the bed and hugged them and kissed them. He told them the sounds were just a training exercise. But Sam had never seen his parents so emotional.
The next few days were chaotic -- neighbors banged on doors and told people to hide, or raided the market to buy up supplies as if a storm were brewing.
Iraqi soldiers barricaded the streets, changing the names of familiar roadways to titles such as Saddam Street. The Kuwaiti TV station blinked off, replaced by an Iraqi station and a message from Saddam: "Welcome to Iraq. There is no Kuwait."
Meesala's parents were nurses who had moved to Kuwait for higher salaries more than 20 years before. For several weeks after the Iraqi invasion, they kept going to work at what was now called Saddam Hospital. But as the situation in the country deteriorated, and United Nations help had not yet arrived, the Meesalas decided to take their family back to India.
The Indian government was neutral, so Iraqi soldiers didn't try to stop buses full of Indian nationals from making the 700-mile trek across the Iraqi desert to Jordan. From Jordan, Meesala's family flew to India and their new lives.
Moving her heart
Could it be? Was that moving in 14-year-old Erika Pray's heart the Lord?
This was it. After years of searching in southern Texas, of trying out different churches that didn't feel right, this was the one: The nondenominational Church of the Good Shepherd.
A month later at a scheduled service, she walked to the front of the church to meet the preacher, and he submerged her in a tub of water.
"That was where I felt my home was," she said. "That's when I really gave my heart to God. It was the biggest blessing of my life."
Good Shepherd was heavily involved in missionary work, and her youth group made several trips to Mexico, 30 miles away. The adults often made trips to India, and when she turned 19 in 2001 the church was planning a trip to the small southern Indian town of Gudur .
They gave Erika and a few other people contacts there. She was to call them and ask what they could do and whom they should visit.
One of her contacts was a young preacher named Sam Meesala.
Arrival in India
Eleven years earlier, Meesala and his family had arrived in India without food or clothes or a car. But they had family to stay with, and for years his parents had been sending money back to a savings account in the country.
At 17, he enrolled in an Indian medical school, seeking a physical therapy degree. Sometimes in the afternoons, he felt too tired to go to class. He also felt God calling him to something else.
He started preaching at Christian churches in the area and began his own Jesus Loves Ministries.
Meesala came to know Erika Pray through phone and e-mail conversations over a 10-month period before she finally visited India.
It turned out they were exactly what the other was looking for. She felt a spark as they prayed together. He listened to her talk about dealing with her father's death when she was 5. He felt it, too.
"That's what I was looking for, a prayerful lady who sings and prays and loves the Lord," he said. "It turned out to be that she was the one."
They prayed on it, and decided to get married in November 2002.
The newlyweds thought they would be happy moving back to Texas to work as counselors at a children's home, but Meesala soon stumbled upon a job opportunity that would be too good to pass up.
A church in Evansville was looking for a married couple to be youth ministers.
Conversion
After a game of basketball at the Metro Christian Center, cousins Darin Cook and Matthew Johnson decided to walk over to the parsonage and get to know the new youth pastor.
Within a few minutes of that first conversation, Sam Meesala was talking to them about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. His interpretations of the Bible connected with them so much that the boys, who had spent much of high school smoking pot and playing video games, decided to straighten out.
A year later, the cousins, along with their grandparents, Philip and Maxine Stewart, became charter members of Meesala's new nondenominational ministry, the Assembly of the Living Word. One day in early 2005, while the Meesalas were visiting the Stewart home, the group began messing around with Maxine Stewart's digital blood pressure monitor, which she uses often and had left on the living room table. Matthew was fine, Darin was fine, Erika was fine. Sam's was sky high.
Erika, a part-time secretary at a doctor's office, told her boss about her husband's blood pressure.
The doctor said Sam should go straight to the emergency room.
Delivering bad news
There must be some mistake. Though Meesala still needed a lot of naps, he thought he was healthy.
But now, this doctor at Deaconess Hospital was telling him his kidneys were failing? The blood test must have been wrong.
Doctors did a biopsy, just to be sure, and confirmed that Sam had FSGS -- short for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. The part of his kidneys that filter blood are scarred, but nobody knows why. He might have had it since he was in the womb; he might have gotten it from antibiotics after a series of fevers when he was a child.
There isn't a good cure. He needed a new kidney, but doctors said it would take five years to find a cadaver match because his blood type is the rare B and, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 70,000 other people in the U.S. waiting for kidneys. He started asking members of his immediate family if they could donate.
By December 2005, the Meesalas found that there was a child on the way. But Sam's symptoms were finally kicking in -- restless legs, nausea. And his dialysis machine, which filters the wastes and toxins from his blood, wasn't working .
"I thought I would die," Meesala said. "I literally gave up."
The couple had pinned their hopes on Sam's brother, Steven, who was hoping to fly in from India to give up one of his kidneys . But there was too much legal red tape, and he wasn't going to be able to make it in anytime soon.
Meesala's parents wanted to donate, but doctors wanted younger kidneys. His sister Sheeba, who lives in California, considered donating, but she and her husband were afraid there would be too many complications, the Meesalas said.
Erika Meesala had said all along she would donate if she would be a match, but she couldn't while she was pregnant. Anyway, she wasn't a good blood type match, or so she thought -- until that phone call with her mother.
"`Don't you remember?'" she recalls her mother saying. "`You're O-positive.'"
Wife's donation
It's not always an easy decision to donate a kidney.
Sure, most people are born with two when they only need one, and the risks of the surgery itself are low, at least as far as surgeries go. But many people can't bring themselves to do it, transplant experts say. There are too many "what-ifs."
"If she should come up with kidney disease, or if she's in an accident and her kidney is damaged, she's going to find herself in need of the gift that she gave to her husband," said Sam Davis, the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization director of professional services.
Erika Meesala did not struggle with the decision to try as soon as her body had healed from the June birth of their son, Joshua.
"That was the only thing I could think of, was keeping him alive and making sure he sees Joshua grow up," she said.
She put herself through the battery of tests doctors use to determine if she would be a good match for her husband and if she could physically withstand the procedure.
Doctors at Vanderbilt Hospital, where they chose to have the surgery, decided they were a good match.
"We're absolutely thrilled that they match," said Verna Johnson, transplant coordinator of the hospital's kidney and pancreas program.
Surgery on ThursdayOn Thursday, Sam and Erika Meesala will be placed in the same operating room, tended to by two surgical teams.
First, doctors will cut Erika, then Sam, and then take one of her kidneys and attach it to arteries and veins in her husband's lower abdomen. They will leave his kidneys, which have shriveled.
The surgery takes three to six hours and will require a few days of recovery. With luck, the new kidney will give Sam an extra 10 to 15 years before he needs another transplant. He will have to take anti-rejection drugs constantly, but he hopes the new kidney gives him the energy to be himself again.
"After that, we truly believe that normalcy will come back," he said. "I don't know what it feels like to be normal. I've had a bad kidney my whole life."
Both Erika and Sam have thought about what they will say before doctors put them to sleep.
"I'm sure I'll be emotional at the time," Sam said. "We came this far with God's help. I'm going to say thanks for everything, and this is a great thing you're doing for me."
Her gift should allow another chapter in the story of the minister and the missionary, who started life thousands of miles apart and ended up side by side, she sharing a part of herself so they could continue to share a life.
Date: Sunday, February 18, 2007 Section: Metro Page: A1 Edition: Final
Source: By JACOB BENNETT, Courier & Press staff writer
This is a story about two people born 7,500 miles apart.
One is a Christian minister, an Indian man born in Kuwait who now lives in Evansville.
He needs a new kidney.
Doctors told him he would have to wait -- five years at least -- before he could find a donor.
But the search was over in less than two years. He is scheduled to get a new kidney this week at a Nashville, Tenn., hospital.
The perfect match for his body turned out to be the perfect match for his heart -- and every night that woman, a missionary from Texas with the last name Pray, was only inches away.
More improbable is how Sam and Erika Meesala, 28 and 25 years old, respectively, say they found each other. How each twist and turn and choice and chance in their lives led them to meet and marry all those years ago in India, so she could be here to have a chance to save him now.
They'll tell you God has provided for them their whole lives, that along the way they were put where they needed to be.
But to really know how they found each other, you have to start with Saddam Hussein.
War begins
It was 2 a.m. in Kuwait City one August night in 1990, when 12-year-old Sam Meesala awoke to the roar of planes overhead, the boom of bombs in the night, the unsettling pop of shotguns fired not so far away.
He and his three siblings ran to their parents' room, where their father let them in the bed and hugged them and kissed them. He told them the sounds were just a training exercise. But Sam had never seen his parents so emotional.
The next few days were chaotic -- neighbors banged on doors and told people to hide, or raided the market to buy up supplies as if a storm were brewing.
Iraqi soldiers barricaded the streets, changing the names of familiar roadways to titles such as Saddam Street. The Kuwaiti TV station blinked off, replaced by an Iraqi station and a message from Saddam: "Welcome to Iraq. There is no Kuwait."
Meesala's parents were nurses who had moved to Kuwait for higher salaries more than 20 years before. For several weeks after the Iraqi invasion, they kept going to work at what was now called Saddam Hospital. But as the situation in the country deteriorated, and United Nations help had not yet arrived, the Meesalas decided to take their family back to India.
The Indian government was neutral, so Iraqi soldiers didn't try to stop buses full of Indian nationals from making the 700-mile trek across the Iraqi desert to Jordan. From Jordan, Meesala's family flew to India and their new lives.
Moving her heart
Could it be? Was that moving in 14-year-old Erika Pray's heart the Lord?
This was it. After years of searching in southern Texas, of trying out different churches that didn't feel right, this was the one: The nondenominational Church of the Good Shepherd.
A month later at a scheduled service, she walked to the front of the church to meet the preacher, and he submerged her in a tub of water.
"That was where I felt my home was," she said. "That's when I really gave my heart to God. It was the biggest blessing of my life."
Good Shepherd was heavily involved in missionary work, and her youth group made several trips to Mexico, 30 miles away. The adults often made trips to India, and when she turned 19 in 2001 the church was planning a trip to the small southern Indian town of Gudur .
They gave Erika and a few other people contacts there. She was to call them and ask what they could do and whom they should visit.
One of her contacts was a young preacher named Sam Meesala.
Arrival in India
Eleven years earlier, Meesala and his family had arrived in India without food or clothes or a car. But they had family to stay with, and for years his parents had been sending money back to a savings account in the country.
At 17, he enrolled in an Indian medical school, seeking a physical therapy degree. Sometimes in the afternoons, he felt too tired to go to class. He also felt God calling him to something else.
He started preaching at Christian churches in the area and began his own Jesus Loves Ministries.
Meesala came to know Erika Pray through phone and e-mail conversations over a 10-month period before she finally visited India.
It turned out they were exactly what the other was looking for. She felt a spark as they prayed together. He listened to her talk about dealing with her father's death when she was 5. He felt it, too.
"That's what I was looking for, a prayerful lady who sings and prays and loves the Lord," he said. "It turned out to be that she was the one."
They prayed on it, and decided to get married in November 2002.
The newlyweds thought they would be happy moving back to Texas to work as counselors at a children's home, but Meesala soon stumbled upon a job opportunity that would be too good to pass up.
A church in Evansville was looking for a married couple to be youth ministers.
Conversion
After a game of basketball at the Metro Christian Center, cousins Darin Cook and Matthew Johnson decided to walk over to the parsonage and get to know the new youth pastor.
Within a few minutes of that first conversation, Sam Meesala was talking to them about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. His interpretations of the Bible connected with them so much that the boys, who had spent much of high school smoking pot and playing video games, decided to straighten out.
A year later, the cousins, along with their grandparents, Philip and Maxine Stewart, became charter members of Meesala's new nondenominational ministry, the Assembly of the Living Word. One day in early 2005, while the Meesalas were visiting the Stewart home, the group began messing around with Maxine Stewart's digital blood pressure monitor, which she uses often and had left on the living room table. Matthew was fine, Darin was fine, Erika was fine. Sam's was sky high.
Erika, a part-time secretary at a doctor's office, told her boss about her husband's blood pressure.
The doctor said Sam should go straight to the emergency room.
Delivering bad news
There must be some mistake. Though Meesala still needed a lot of naps, he thought he was healthy.
But now, this doctor at Deaconess Hospital was telling him his kidneys were failing? The blood test must have been wrong.
Doctors did a biopsy, just to be sure, and confirmed that Sam had FSGS -- short for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. The part of his kidneys that filter blood are scarred, but nobody knows why. He might have had it since he was in the womb; he might have gotten it from antibiotics after a series of fevers when he was a child.
There isn't a good cure. He needed a new kidney, but doctors said it would take five years to find a cadaver match because his blood type is the rare B and, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 70,000 other people in the U.S. waiting for kidneys. He started asking members of his immediate family if they could donate.
By December 2005, the Meesalas found that there was a child on the way. But Sam's symptoms were finally kicking in -- restless legs, nausea. And his dialysis machine, which filters the wastes and toxins from his blood, wasn't working .
"I thought I would die," Meesala said. "I literally gave up."
The couple had pinned their hopes on Sam's brother, Steven, who was hoping to fly in from India to give up one of his kidneys . But there was too much legal red tape, and he wasn't going to be able to make it in anytime soon.
Meesala's parents wanted to donate, but doctors wanted younger kidneys. His sister Sheeba, who lives in California, considered donating, but she and her husband were afraid there would be too many complications, the Meesalas said.
Erika Meesala had said all along she would donate if she would be a match, but she couldn't while she was pregnant. Anyway, she wasn't a good blood type match, or so she thought -- until that phone call with her mother.
"`Don't you remember?'" she recalls her mother saying. "`You're O-positive.'"
Wife's donation
It's not always an easy decision to donate a kidney.
Sure, most people are born with two when they only need one, and the risks of the surgery itself are low, at least as far as surgeries go. But many people can't bring themselves to do it, transplant experts say. There are too many "what-ifs."
"If she should come up with kidney disease, or if she's in an accident and her kidney is damaged, she's going to find herself in need of the gift that she gave to her husband," said Sam Davis, the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization director of professional services.
Erika Meesala did not struggle with the decision to try as soon as her body had healed from the June birth of their son, Joshua.
"That was the only thing I could think of, was keeping him alive and making sure he sees Joshua grow up," she said.
She put herself through the battery of tests doctors use to determine if she would be a good match for her husband and if she could physically withstand the procedure.
Doctors at Vanderbilt Hospital, where they chose to have the surgery, decided they were a good match.
"We're absolutely thrilled that they match," said Verna Johnson, transplant coordinator of the hospital's kidney and pancreas program.
Surgery on ThursdayOn Thursday, Sam and Erika Meesala will be placed in the same operating room, tended to by two surgical teams.
First, doctors will cut Erika, then Sam, and then take one of her kidneys and attach it to arteries and veins in her husband's lower abdomen. They will leave his kidneys, which have shriveled.
The surgery takes three to six hours and will require a few days of recovery. With luck, the new kidney will give Sam an extra 10 to 15 years before he needs another transplant. He will have to take anti-rejection drugs constantly, but he hopes the new kidney gives him the energy to be himself again.
"After that, we truly believe that normalcy will come back," he said. "I don't know what it feels like to be normal. I've had a bad kidney my whole life."
Both Erika and Sam have thought about what they will say before doctors put them to sleep.
"I'm sure I'll be emotional at the time," Sam said. "We came this far with God's help. I'm going to say thanks for everything, and this is a great thing you're doing for me."
Her gift should allow another chapter in the story of the minister and the missionary, who started life thousands of miles apart and ended up side by side, she sharing a part of herself so they could continue to share a life.
It was a dark and stormy night
I should have gone into dentistry.
Not that I would be any better at tooth care than I am at writing, but I couldn’t be any worse.
I’m like an actor who can’t act, a teacher who can’t teach, a landscaper who can’t landscape, a stripper who can’t take off his parka.
A lawyer who can’t lawy.
See? That series had, like, five things in it, and every good writer knows that lists work best in threes.
I can’t spell. I can’t punctuate-- I gag on grammar.
I don’t even fit in with literary types. I think transcendentalism is just a bunch of naked guys running around in the woods.
I decided to be a writer when I was a kid so I could be a millionaire and work from home in my Funpals and Underoos. Guess which of those things I’m doing now.
Looks like I may never do the other.
I’m still looking for the written-word equivalent of a James Brown wail.
But, heck, I can’t even finish one book. I haven’t had a chance to be rejected yet.
Instead I sit around and watch as some of my friends get book deals, a couple of which might be huge.
I wish them nothing but ill will. Toilet seat herpes, at least.
I know it doesn’t matter if I’m rich and famous. I can afford my Underoos, and, really, that’s all that matters.
My goal was immortality, but only Shakespeare and a few of those guys are remembered when they’re gone. And they make more enemies than friends every year when they’re forced upon students in English class.
I want more enemies.
So I peer over my beer belly at my laptop screen and clack away, each sentence worse than the last, hoping inspiration will strike.
I know I’ve only written one less good book than Harper Lee.
And it’s too late for dental school.
And columnist Jacob Bennett is tired of living in this hotel, snow and rain fallin’ through the sheets. In fact he’s tired of 23rd Street. Strung out like some Christmas lights at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
We can put a man on the moon, but we can't go to space?
I’d like to say my story begins with me locked in a three-way steel cage death match with Mr. T and a lumberjack.
But that’s not the truth. It really starts with me zoned out for a couple of hours at my office cubicle, reading a New York Times article about the future of space flight, where I found this sentence:
“Government-financed space travel could stall in the face of America’s growing aversion to risk.”
Wait, what? We’re afraid of risk? In America? The home of the brave?
No way. We’ve all seen some pretty bad space tragedies, but America is the greatest country in the world, and you can’t be great if you don’t take risks.
We wouldn’t even have the America we know if a bunch of religious fanatics had said, “I might get seasick; I can’t get on that boat.”
We wouldn’t have electricity if Ben Franklin had said, “I might get shocked; I can’t fly this kite.”
We wouldn’t have “Hysteria” if the drummer for Def Leppard had said, “I’ve only got one arm; I can’t rock.”
So we can’t say, “Our ship might break; we can’t go to space.”
For one thing, we learn new stuff in space—NASA helped improve eyeglasses, cancer research and even NFL Sunday Ticket. And the space program does cost billions of dollars, but compared to the rest of the budget, it’s really only Stanley Nickels and Schrute Bucks.
We should keep going to space for the same reason we climbed Mount Everest, built bases on Antarctica and jumped Snake River Canyon on a motorcycle--it stretches the limits of humanity.
That’s the whole point of space travel—you blast off in a space shuttle that’s shaped like a middle finger and point it at the laws of nature.
We didn’t let the Russkies beat us to the moon, but we haven’t done anything that jaw-dropping in decades. Our buildings are no longer the tallest, our basketball teams are no longer the dreamiest, people can see our stealth bombers.
My greatest recent accomplishment was hitting 300 straight notes of “Freebird” on “Guitar Hero II.” And even that wan’t a huge deal—those 300 notes were at the beginning of the song, and the solo starts right about note 301.
Meanwhile, the Chinese might beat us to Mars.
We can’t let that happen. Granted, blind patriotism doesn’t always end well—Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears come to mind. But Americans—both natives and immigrants like Albert Einstein who knew this was the place to be—have done a bunch of rootin’ tootin’ stuff.
Off the top of my head, there’s the light bulb, the airplane and the American version of “The Office.”
You’re welcome.
But the toppermost of the poppermost was when we put a man on the freakin’ moon. It was a giant leap for mankind. But we could go farther.
I bet even all the astronauts who died in tragedies would have wanted it that way.
I’m gonna go pick a fight.
This article first appeared in the Evansville Courier & Press. Columnist Jacob Bennett can take you thru the center of the dark. You’re gonna fly on a collision course to crash into his heart. He will be your, he will be your, he'll be your rocket, yeah, satellite of love, at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com.
Rub me like a lamp, dude
I’m thinking about letting a dude give me a massage at work.
Don’t worry, I won’t get in trouble; the company hires a guy to come in and rub the workers for at least 10 minutes.
As general rules, I’d rather not get massaged at work, and I’d really rather not get a mansage at work.
I prefer to save those for Interstate rest stops. Just sayin’.
But I was walking down the hall the other day and I saw this man mountain going to town on some chick I work with. I admit, it looked pretty relaxing.
I would prefer a Swedish blonde named Ingrid, possibly Ursula, but Mattias there looked like he could really knead some dough.
I might get in line next time. I’ve had a hard time sleeping the last few weeks. I’m getting used to a new position at work and I’ve worked more in the last three weeks than I did in the last three years.
But anyway, that shift in responsibilities is a big reason why I almost never write anything for The Messenger anymore.
I’ve started three or four that I wasn’t able to finish. One of them was too personal and one of them I couldn’t get the tone quite right.
And I couldn’t even think of ways to write about traveling to L.A., San Diego or Tijuana, even though in L.A. I dined just a few tables down from the stars. But I don’t want to drop names.
Niecy Nash.
The stress is causing me to make mistakes at work: I misspelled some kids’ names, and I incorrectly reported that the president resigned (don’t worry, we ran a correction on page 2).
I’m mad at myself because at my high school reunion I forgot to bring up how my old job consisted mainly of going to concerts and interviewing famous people, and now I can’t bring it up anymore. And I don’t want to drop names.
Ted Nugent. David Copperfield. Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Uh-oh, apparently if I interview you, you’re going to say or do something that gets you in trouble. Look out, bearded guy from the Oak Ridge Boys.
No, the other one.
I realize you don’t want to hear complaints about a workplace where you can get a massage. I’m sure they don’t bring in a masseuse to my brother’s bus garage, or my cousin’s construction sites.
My work also brings nurses in to give us flu shots, but for my first 27 years, I never took them up on it. And then last year the law of averages caught up to me and I got the flu. Of course everyone said smugly, “You should have gotten a flu shot.”
So I got one this year, and now I’ve got a cold.
But maybe my story has a happy ending.
I’m sure my troubles are nothing Mattias can’t fix with his magic hands.
When he’s playing pat-a-cake on my back, I’ll tell him to put some stank on it.
And the man at the back said, “Everyone attack” and it turned into a ballroom blitz. And the girl in the corner said, “Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a ballroom blitz. Ballroom blitz,” at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com.
I Should Have Listened to My Dad
I should have listened to my dad.
All those years, growing up on the farm, he tried to tell me.
He showed me how to change my oil, how to fix leaky pipes, how to grow my own vegetables so I didn’t have to run to Wal-Mart every time I needed a taco tomato.
But, as he liked to say, he might as well have been talking to that fence post.
All those things he tried to teach me, and I didn’t retain a lick of it.
If you ranked me on a usefulness scale, from Paris Hilton to Bob Vila, I’d probably come in about a Pauly Shore. I wouldn’t be much use on a deserted island, but if you owned a comedy club, you might let me sweep up.
So now here I am, owner of $157 worth of a house (the credit union owns the rest), and already I’ve got a long list of honey-dos without any clue.
Dad fixed fighter jets, tinkered on tanks and grew his own cows. He built most of the second floor of our house by himself.
I can barely put together a little living room table.
I looked at the online do-it-yourself instructions for ceiling fan installation, and I might as well have been looking at blueprints for an atomic bomb.
Just persuading my weed eater to start is as hard as picking up girls in college, and I can’t give my weed eater alcohol.
This, of course, isn’t the first time I found out the hard way Dad was right. He always told me to study hard in school, that my future depended on it. Who knew (besides Dad) I’d spend a decade paying, in the form of monthly college loan payments, for not doing my eighth-grade algebra homework.
My little brother’s tuition is paid for at Western Kentucky. And there’s no way he’s smarter than me. Except he knows good advice when he sees it.
I always thought people in Meade County only drove big trucks because it was the cool thing to do; I’m quickly learning my Cavalier is about as useful as I am. I actually considered buying a small truck when I bought that car, but the lot only had manual transmissions, and I was of the opinion that if manual transmissions were so great, they wouldn’t have invented automatics.
So I never let Dad teach me to drive a stick.
Yes, sir, guess I’ll pay that delivery fee. And I’ll pay you to change my oil. And to grow me vegetables.
Eventually I’m going to have to fix a furnace, patch a roof and maybe put in some new tiles.
I saw Dad put in some new tiles once.
It didn’t look so hard when he did it.
Columnist Jacob Bennett is ok, ‘cause you have that affect on him. He needs you desperately; you know he needs you desperately at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Week of the Living Dead
From the Evansville Courier & Press and the Meade County Messenger
By Jacob Bennett
I should have known this would happen as soon as that zombie bit me.
My head hurts, my nose is stuffed up and I'm coughing like a newbie at the Moontower.
It's tough to be in a good mood when you've felt like a zombie all week. Nothing is fun. I don't feel like playing with my dog, I don't like talking to the wife, I don't feel like bringing news to the good people of Evansville (no offense).
I just want to wander the fields, biting those who come too close.
Even Dr. Kevorkian is powerless when you're undead. I never can figure out the right time to go to the doctor anyway. When I call right away, it turns out to be nothing. When I wait awhile, it turns out that I was actually dead and re-animated.
This time, I waited.
And all week I've been so congested that I sound like Rudolph when Donder makes him wear that dirt ball on his nose.
I'm just sick enough that I don't want to move but just busy enough that I can't call in. Which means that if I accidentally bite my co-workers, they'll all be infected.
I haven't even had the energy to rock. Even when the wife made me go to the Sugarland concert on Sunday, I was so blah that the only thing made it bearable was dirty thoughts of Jennifer Nettles and the drunk girls behind me.
They played that song they did with Bon Jovi, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," to which I mentally replied, "the wife."
Speaking of Bon Jovi, I wonder when you're a doctor and you're driving around in your Porsche, if it's bad form to jam "Bad Medicine."
On days off I like to watch TV shows, but in my condition, even "Who's The Boss?" isn't as funny.
So I tried movies, but "Shaun of the Dead" hits too close to home.
Lumbergh's not gonna like it, but I'm cutting this short. I've got some twitching to do.
And, if I'm lucky, some brains to eat.
It's close to midnight and columnist Jacob Bennett is lurking in the dark.Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart. You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com. You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes--you're paralyzed.
By Jacob Bennett
I should have known this would happen as soon as that zombie bit me.
My head hurts, my nose is stuffed up and I'm coughing like a newbie at the Moontower.
It's tough to be in a good mood when you've felt like a zombie all week. Nothing is fun. I don't feel like playing with my dog, I don't like talking to the wife, I don't feel like bringing news to the good people of Evansville (no offense).
I just want to wander the fields, biting those who come too close.
Even Dr. Kevorkian is powerless when you're undead. I never can figure out the right time to go to the doctor anyway. When I call right away, it turns out to be nothing. When I wait awhile, it turns out that I was actually dead and re-animated.
This time, I waited.
And all week I've been so congested that I sound like Rudolph when Donder makes him wear that dirt ball on his nose.
I'm just sick enough that I don't want to move but just busy enough that I can't call in. Which means that if I accidentally bite my co-workers, they'll all be infected.
I haven't even had the energy to rock. Even when the wife made me go to the Sugarland concert on Sunday, I was so blah that the only thing made it bearable was dirty thoughts of Jennifer Nettles and the drunk girls behind me.
They played that song they did with Bon Jovi, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," to which I mentally replied, "the wife."
Speaking of Bon Jovi, I wonder when you're a doctor and you're driving around in your Porsche, if it's bad form to jam "Bad Medicine."
On days off I like to watch TV shows, but in my condition, even "Who's The Boss?" isn't as funny.
So I tried movies, but "Shaun of the Dead" hits too close to home.
Lumbergh's not gonna like it, but I'm cutting this short. I've got some twitching to do.
And, if I'm lucky, some brains to eat.
It's close to midnight and columnist Jacob Bennett is lurking in the dark.Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart. You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com. You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes--you're paralyzed.
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