The Angry Czeck

Two nice teenagers – a boy and a girl – were on their way to the lake. The boy was behind the wheel, carefully navigating the winding country road. Rather bluntly, the girl vocally regrets that she had failed to attend church earlier that morning.

“Gosh, I did,” said the boy, not accusingly. Just stating a fact.

“Well, at least I’m saved,” said the girl, but she seemed uneasy. The boy sensed his friend’s distress.

“How about this,” he offered. “When we get to the lake, we’ll fall to our knees and pray for God’s forgiveness.”

This idea delighted the girl. “Really? That would be so awesome! Thanks for-”

Suddenly, the car spins out of control, a mighty crash quickly follows, and there is darkness. But soon, there is a peaceful light. And the strum of a harp! And the boy’s voice is heard (though his body is not seen). “Wow! I must be in Heaven! This is great! I wonder what happened to my friend?”

Then it is dark again. Flames rise. We see the shadow of a female form writhing in agony, accompanied by a scream that sounds like this: “Aieeeeeeeeeeee! I’m sorry I didn’t go to church! Aieeeeeeeee!“

This isn’t a true story. This was part of an infomercial I caught late one summer evening when I was a teenager (The Sexually Frustrated Czeck). I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. How did this get on TV?

My astonishment tripled when I discovered that a local weatherman was hosting the infomercial. The weatherman! And he was talking about Hell!

Lots of interesting variety in Hell.

And that’s why the infomercial stays so ripe in my mind lo these many years: Hell. Hades. The Underworld. The weatherman claimed to know something about it. Surprising, considering he couldn’t even accurately predict the arrival of a cold front.

Aside from the weatherman, I’ve never come across a confident description of Hell. The closest thing to it was something I read out of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In it, Stephen Dedalus has a conversation with a Catholic priest, who vaguely describes the torments of hell. But he is more descriptive in his visualization of eternity.

The Priest invites Dedalus to imagine a tiny stone dropped onto one place once every 100 years. Even when the stones have grown to a pile the size of the largest mountain, not even a fraction of eternity would have been spent! Egads! Dedalus and I both lost sleep over that one.

Hell is kind of naked and gross.

Having had much experience with the Catholic Church, I can assure you that while many topics are discussed in great detail, Hell is not one of them. Nobody has the heart to bring it up. Even purgatory is avoided. I asked a churchy co-worker if Hell was a common discussion topic at her worship service.

“Well, yeah,” she said. As if! I asked her if she could give me a description.

“Hot. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Why are you asking me this?”

Just call me curious. I’ve heard Hell described as a place of everlasting torment. I’ve read Dante’s famous depiction, and I’ve known people who have adopted this fantastic fiction as fact. Hell has been described as both fiery and frozen. I rented and watched a couple of those Hellrazer movies. I’ve seen oil paintings depicting Hell as a kind of cavern where funky pitchfork-wielding demons chop you into bits or disembowel you. In what seems like a more pleasant alternative, I’ve heard Hell described as a place where one is “refused God’s love.” r />
“You know, it’s described in the Bible,” my co-worker told me. Ah ha! I checked it out.

Dante’s Hell often confused with Actual Hell.

Mathew describes Hell as “the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That sounds terrible, but it also sounds like the time I watched The Horse Whisperer in the movie theater.

Mark opts for the creepy and the crawly: “…hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Worms? Holy crap! At least it’s not spiders.

Revelations offers us crisper clues. “The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Okay, so you gotta get a shout-out in the Book of Life to avoid the lake of fire. (No, look in the index again! It’s under “Czeck, Angry.”) Got it.

To add to the confusion, Hell goes by a variety of names. Ancient Jews referred to Hell as Gehenna, which was literally a burning trash dump from which both souls and recyclables never return. Early in the Bible, Peter refers to a place called Tartarus (derived from the Ford Taurus), which was a shifty realm for demons to wave their pitchforks and stir bubbling cauldrons of blood and flesh.

Meanwhile, a guy named Maalik guards the gates of Jahannam, the Islamic Hell. (No virgins there!) For Buhdists, Naraka is the lowest level of rebirth, which is kind of like Hell, I guess. Short Bus hell. For the Mayans, the most horrible realm of the underworld was called Metnal, and it was ruled by the surly Ah Puch.

The only thing most people agree on is that Hell in any form sucks rocks.

The thing about Hell, for a place for which so few details are available, people can certainly tell you how to get there. According to many, homosexual sex is like taking a rocket-powered Greyhound Bus to Hell, but that sounds like hate talking to me, and hate will send you to Hell, too. Murder, of course, gets you to Hell, unless you’re killing somebody God wants you to kill, and then it gets kind of murky. Stealing is a ticket to Hell, too, although many book dealers will tell you that the tome most shoplifted is The Bible. According to the weatherman, going to the lake instead of church will lead you to Hell. This seems more like a fund-raising tactic than real direction.

Tom & Jerry Hell

Good intentions are said to pave the Road to Hell, but I find that difficult to believe. Pat Benatar claims that “Hell is for children,” but I doubt if she has the science to prove it. I have been told to “go to hell” on many occasions, though I have yet to take any one up on the invitation. I haven’t really raised any hell since I had kids. More than once I have heard that New Jersey is Hell. I’ve never been to New Jersey, so this could be true.

Face it: nobody knows what Hell is. If you’re a cynic, you might come to the conclusion that the concept of Hell is a manifestation of mankind’s innate desire to see their tormentor’s punished. I’m not a theologian, but accepting Hell is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle for which pieces of a second puzzle have been added to the mix. Hell doesn’t seem to fit, not when God is supposed to be all loving. No matter what kind of jerk Angry Junior becomes, I wouldn’t send him to Metnal to be Ah Puch’s plaything. But that’s just me. Maybe God has yet to read Dr.
Spock.

So far, the only known man who has escaped Hell is Meatloaf

For all of Hell’s vague conjecture, the specifics of Heaven are concealed beneath an even thicker shroud of mystery. It’s paradise! It’s bliss! It’s peace! Visual depictions of Heaven – the Christian version, anyway – generally center on golden gates, tiny harps, dead toddlers with wings, and some bearded guy stroking a lamb. All that is missing is the Amy Grant soundtrack piped in from speakers shaped like a plastic cloud.

Looks a little like Hell to me.

*I stole this quote from my Uncle Bob many years ago and claimed it as my own. Normally, I’d go to Hell for that, but I gave the quote back to Bob, so now everything is cool.

***

If you’ve heard of the Internet, then you’ve probably heard of peopleofwalmart.com. Yeah, sure, it’s awesome.

The premise is simple: post pictures of hillbillies who shop at Wal-Mart, write a pithy headline and caption, and then we laugh. An easy formula to execute, but an even easier formula to duplicate.

Listen, I loathe Wal-Mart as much as the next guy. But is it really fair to point out the social miscreants who are just innocently shopping for bargains? He who isn’t guilty of wearing a camouflage tube-top throw the first purple parachute pants.

With that in mind, I present PeopleofTarget.com. (BETA!) Sure, you love Target, because you think it’s special and great even though it kills small business just like Wal-Mart. But just you wait until you see the freaks that shop there! It’s hysterical. (Please note that I shot most of these with my camera phone.)

Pink-O on Aisle 2

Look at the pink shirt on THIS guy! And the “woman” appears to be dragging some kind of circus midget with her. “Excuse me, where does Target keep the genetics cleaner?” Ha!

Man-Boobs Ahoy!

Dude! The barbarians went that way! Oh, and you forgot to wear a t-shirt, Einstein!

Who Died?
“Stop here, Cletus! I need to run get me some tube socks before Pappy’s funeral!”

Oops. I forgot my clothes!
Listen, Ladies, we have a nice selection of Mossimo shirts on clearance. Hint. Hint. Oh, BTW, Pamela Anderson called. She wants her ankle tattoo back.

Two Words: Prell. Plus.
They came out with a new invention: comb. Just run it through your hair and enjoy the magic show!

Bath Time!
Ever wonder why you find toe-nail clippings in the sinks of Target public bathrooms? And it’s no shirt, no service. Oh, wait! You’re in a Target! I forgot.

The Kid is Wearing A Bag
Love the collar on this guy. He has the love-seat to match! Ha!

That’s all I got so far for PeopleofTarget.com. I’m still going to write the Angry Czeck, I guess, but I expect to actually see some revenue from POT. Send pictures if you can. Let’s get me rich together.

***

I hear things. Wacky, paranoid, hysterical, condescending, insulting things that used to be confined to the homeless guy who tried to shake me down for $4.25. What I hear most is, “We got to take back our country!”

This implies that, somehow, our way-of-life has been stolen from our grasps. We’ve been bamboozled! Hoodwinked! Flimflammed! And as usual, it’s not our fault!

Well, I have terrific news for you folks: the country is still right here! Look outside. It hasn’t moved an inch. We’re still consuming enormous amounts of calories. We’re still walking around with concealed firearms. We’re still screaming and thrusting poorly lettered signs into the faces of the officials we elected. Everything’s cool.

Yep. Sigh.

But it’s more exciting if everything isn’t cool, right? I mean a world with Bigfoot trundling around the woods is far more intriguing than a world with a dork wearing an Alec Baldwin suit, right? A faked moon landing is more interesting than an actual moon landing. What if George W. Bush really did know the 9/11 attack was coming? Everybody but Fox & Friends would be talking about it for years.

The Czar of the National Death Panel

There is a certain segment of the country that wants a stolen country, if for nothing more than to have something interesting to follow. Recently, a man was asked why he was (legally!) carrying a firearm to a Town Hall protest. “I don’t want a revolution,” he said. “I don’t want a civil war. But it is a possibility. It’s there as an option, as a last resort.”

Public health care is not an option, yet a civil war is. How can this possibly be? Because it would be interesting. Fascinating! Take one protester at the Tea Party hosted on the National Mall in Washington D.C. recently. “We are losing our country, we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.”

Or take this woman from Battle Creek Michigan: “I really don’t want to be a guinea pig for the experiment they have with the population control.”

Or consider this woman in Canton, Ohio: “(President Obama) is going after our kids to try to indoctrinate them into a national defense army.”

Population control. A national defense army comprised of children. Muslim takeovers! How exciting! I can’t wait to see the movie. Good thing we have stand-up guys like TEA party co-founder Mark Williams calming the citizenry with unoriginal but hearty maxims like, “You can have our country when you pry it from our cold dead fingers!“

Life without conspiracy is boring. We need a man on the grassy knoll, not mundane details like affordable health insurance, quality education, or even a better economy. Have you ever listened to Timothy Geithner drone on-and-on about interest rates, unemployment numbers, and the GNP? Boh-ring. But what if, what if, Geithner not only murdered his wife in the 1960s, but also got his economics degree from DeVry University? Instant interest!

Remember James Frey? He wrote a book called A Million Little Pieces, a true story about his two-fisted battle against drug addiction. Oprah loved it. So did a trillion book clubs. Problem is, it wasn’t true. Psyche! It was all made up. Frey knows that facts are boring.

Donald Rumsfield knows facts are boring. Glenn Beck, too. On the other hand, Roman Polanski knows facts can be so exciting that they can throw you in jail. He’s the exception that proves the rule.

I’d like it all to be real.

Many years ago, I waited in front of the television with breathless anticipation as Geraldo Rivera cracked open the “lost vault of Al Capone.” When, after two hours of prime-time, the vault was revealed to be empty, but I came away with a treasure of truth: The world is a dull, boring place my friend.

Even the Most Interesting Man in the World is dull

I’m not saying that it’s without its beauty and charm. I’m just implying that you may be wasting your time looking for the Loch Ness Monster or a Koran in President Obama’s desk. You don’t have to cancel your ghost hunters meeting at the Barnes & Noble. You can continue annoying your friends by claiming you’re psychic or insisting that you were Cleopatra in a past life. Keep it up, if it makes your world more fascinating.

After all, it’s your country.

***

“I don’t believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and when they let him out he was like, ‘You know what, this [judge] is going to give me a hundred years in jail. I’m not staying’.”

Whoopi Goldberg
Idiot Roman Polanski Defender

There is no defense for Roman Polanski. The guy is scum.

I love his movies. The guy is scum. Chinatown is a masterpiece. The guy is scum. I even enjoyed The Ninth Gate. And still, the guy is scum.

In case you missed it, here are the disgusting facts: Roman Polanski drugged a 13-year-old girl with a qualude (how very 1970s of him), plied her with champagne, and fucked her. Wait, that sounds too romantic. He sodomized her. And he did this because he was Roman Polanski, scum. And if your neighbor did the same thing today, you’d set him on fire, run him over with a cement truck, and toss his smoldering body off the Sears Tower. Then you’d collect your gold medal from the Mayor.

Roman Polanski, however, is being received a bit differently.

For Whoopi Goldberg, whose credentials as a mind-blowing genius cannot be questioned, doesn’t consider drugging and sodomizing a little girl “rape-rape.” I don’t want to know what Whoopi’s definition of rape is. Quite frankly, I don’t want to know what her definition of anything is because obviously she is from outer-space.

Woody Allen was among the first to defend Polanski. Astonishing.

Martin Scorsese doesn’t think sticking your adult-dick in a child’s rectum is rape either. Directors Wes Anderson and David Lynch are cool with it, too. In fact, a number of Hollywood airheads have signed a petition demanding “the immediate release of Roman Polanski.” It also asserts that “film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision.”

Jesus, no! Film-makers in France are dismayed!

How do you defend a man who buggers little girls? Some are championing some kind of “statute of limitations” defense. It happened a long time ago – more than thirty years past. The victim is a 40-year-old mom today. Polanski is an elderly man now. It was a different era.

The thing is, World War II ended six decades ago, and we’re still rooting Nazi’s out of South America. The freshness date is still good on war crimes. When does child rape go stale? A couple weeks?

Polanski, seen here with Sharon Tate,
a woman waaaaay too old for him.

I’ve read a number of strange apologist theories for Polanski. He is a Holocaust survivor, he makes great movies, his wife was killed by the Manson Family, he’s eccentric.

He’s a pedophile. Polanski didn’t leave this country to escape persecution. He left to escape criminal prosecution and the prospect of getting ass-raped himself in prison – without the benefit of qualudes and bubbly. Only because he is famous do these Hollywood blowhards lift a finger for him. They’re standing around him in a big circle holding up their fists in the air like he’s goddamn Billy Jack. Roman Polanski is not Billy Jack. He is not even the Legend of Billy Jean. He is scum.

Ronald Harwood, Oscar winning writer of The Pianist of which Polanski directed, says, “(Polanski’s arrest) is really disgraceful. Both the Americans and the Swiss have miscalculated.”

You’re right, Ron. We have miscalculated. We should have done this 30 years ago. And the worst thing that could have happened was that Brett Ratner might have directed The Piano.

*#*

Not long ago, the Arkansas State Red Wolves were the Arkansas State Indians.

In those days, the ASU mascot was Running Joe – a caricature that loosely approximated the resemblance of a human being. He was obviously a first-cousin to the Cleveland Indian. For example, Joe’s nose was larger than his feet. His teeth rivaled the size of Jimmy Carter’s teeth. Earlier incarnations of Running Joe featured him grasping a tomahawk in one fist and a scalp in the other.

Later, yielding to a more sensitive community, Running Joe lost the scalp. Eventually, Running Joe was simply lost completely, and in his place arrived a noble Native American chieftain who presided over football games stoically and with his powerful arms crossed. No tomahawk. No peace pipe. No scalps. Sometimes, a fully dressed, blank-eyed Native American woman accompanied him at his side.

The changes were too-little too-late to appease the NCAA Jedi Council, who decided that the Florida St. Seminole and University of Illinois’ “Chief Illiniwek” were nobler Native American mascots than the one provided by Arkansas State. It then became necessary to devise a new mascot. The process proved cumbersome and lengthy. There were some politics involved. A consulting group was imported to deliver a list of appropriate replacements. My brother and I had our own list.

Personally, I championed The Gorillas, which briefly served as ASU’s mascot in the 1950s. Who isn’t frightened by a gorilla? We’d exchange the highly derivative Tomahawk Chop for the far more unnerving Gorilla Chest Beat. If necessary, we could become the Scarlet Gorillas so the school wouldn’t have to invent a revised color scheme. Who would complain then? Jane Goodall?

My brother advocated The Mustard Gas. “We float into your city,” said he, “and attack your central nervous system!” I kind of liked The Mustard Gas because it was different and it implied a terrible, horrible death. The logo could be a dented canister with gas seeping out of the top. Dry ice machines could deliver a sinister smoke that would prove essential to any half-time performance. The dance team would wear gas masks. Our cheer would be the sound of escaping gas: Psssssssssssssssss.

Arkansas State’s expensive consulting group had other ideas. Among them: The Ridge Runners. The Diamond Cutters. The Red Wolves. Seriously, the Ridge Runners? How about The Incest? Why not The Meth Heads?

Somehow, the Red Wolves emerged as the winner from what was a pretty damn lame list of choices. Arkansas State is located in North East Arkansas, and there are about as many wolves in the area as there are hippos. But damnitt, we’re the Red Wolves now. Let’s live with it.

This thing is our master now!

To my surprise, the school more than lived with it. They embraced it. Quite truthfully, A-State fans always felt like pale facsimiles of Florida St. when we executed the Tomahawk Chop or when our mascot planted a spear into the end zone. The Red Wolf gave us new cheering opportunities. Now we had a big, puffy red dog thing riding around on a motorcycle to open up home games. The crowd howled with every first down. I’ve threatened to buy a werewolf mask and wear it to games. I just haven’t done it yet, but I will.

Still, I arrived with my brother and Dad to Arkansas State’s first home game of the year expecting the same old crap – a disinterested student section and way too many people wearing Arkansas Razerback gear.

You have to understand how aggravating it is to attend an Arkansas State game and to see people wearing Razerback crap. Would one attend an University of Oklahoma game wearing Oklahoma State Cowboy attire? Would you wear a Hawkeye jersey to an Iowa State game? Of course not. Yet Arkansans believe it’s just as appropriate to wear a Hog hat to an A-State game as it is to engage in sexual congress with your sister.

“I’m taking my camera phone,” I announced pompously, “and snapping pictures of all the fools wearing Razerback crap to the A-State game!”

Except, I had no subjects to snap. The stadium was packed tightly, and everyone was wearing Red Wolves attire. The image of the Red Wolf himself, unimaginably named Howl, was bared on the chests and backs of nearly everyone in attendance! I struggled to find a single Hog. I came up empty. Empty! Finally, ASU pride had seeped to the top of what was once a cesspool of apathy, chagrin, and denial. Arkansas State Red Wolves! Arooooooooo!

All I see is red and this guy’s head.

We’re still new to this loyalty thing. We’re not completely sophisticated. For example, one popular shirt featured the penetrating eyes of the Red Wolf and this puzzling inscription, “These Eyes See No Fear.” It sounds cool until you begin to ponder its meaning. Those eyes don’t see fear because we don’t scare anyone? Maybe it was supposed to be, “You don’t see fear in these eyes,” but the t-shirt printer was in too big a hurry to proof read. Regardless, it’s a dumb t-shirt.

Still, it was nice to hear all the enthusiastic howling as the game kicked off. It’s a meaty and threatening cheer, unlike the farmer’s call they do in Fayeteville. (“Wooo Pig Sooey?” How about “Heeeere, piggy piggy?”) Everybody was caught up in authentic Red Wolf excitement, in a packed stadium no less, even though the Lozerbacks were getting their bacon smoked by Alabama on national TV. At last, ASU had a true fan base, and all we had to do was trade in an old tired Indian for a red wolf.

The delicate facade began to crack about three minutes before halftime.

The game started at 3:30. As the game clock ticked close to halftime, I caught this comment from a woman seated behind me: “Well, I’m not even hungry yet! I hope I get hungry!” My first thought was, Well Christ, Lady! It’s ten minutes to four! Nobody is hungry. And then it occurred to me, the terrible, horrible truth. This was Jonesboro, Arkansas, dude. Five o’clock is dinner time.

Immediately, I envisioned The Cracker Barrel parking lot rapidly populating with SUVs and pick-up trucks. No, ASU, no! Don’t fail me now! Not at halftime, when the game is so close! Surely you can forgo one lousy dinner to howl your Red Wolves to victory! For God’s sake, would a Hogs fan leave at halftime to take advantage of the Early Bird Special at Lubby’s Cafeteria? Jesus, no!

Jesus, yes. When halftime was over, many of the Red Wolf “faithful,” including the Not Hungry Yet Lady, had vanished. Poof! My team had become cuckold’s to the blooming onion at Outback Steakhouse.

“Where did everyone go?” asked Angry Dad, puzzled.

It only got worse as the game progressed. The football game itself was amazing. The lead changed several times. There were heroic plays on both sides, and still the grandstands evaporated. The visiting team’s band, sensing their foe’s inexplicable betrayal by their own fans, pumped out their taunting tunes with more venom and vigor. Desperately, the ASU cheerleaders worked to coax a howl out of the crowd, but it was too late. Denny’s was serving breakfast all day long.

The final score was 30-27. The victor was Troy State. The Red Wolves fell in the last moments thanks to a botched punt return. Those who stayed, those who ignored their stomach’s demands, left disappointed but enriched with the knowledge that they had stayed to the brutal end, giving all they had to a team that must have wondered what the hell happened at halftime that made so many of their fans abandon them when there was so much football left to be played.

The next morning, me, my brother and Angry Dad decided on Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Parked in the lot was an SUV with a message soaped on the rear window: TROY OWNS YOU. Indeed. Indeed.

We entered the Cracker Barrel the same way one enters any Cracker Barrel, and that’s through the cheesy gift shop. What greeted us immediately was a colossal kick to the pills.

“You gotta be kidding me!” gasped my brother, figuratively massaging his nuts.

Displayed before us, like some kind of grisly shrine, was a mammoth display of University of Arkansas Razorback’s merchandise
, available for sale right there in the Jonesboro Cracker Barrel, supposedly home to the Arkansas State Red Wolves.

Next time just knee me in the nuts, Jonesboro Cracker Barrel

My brother pointed to a ceramic dinner plate that featured a Hog in the center. “I want to buy one of those just so I can break it in front of the cashier,” he sneered. He didn’t do it, of course. Like me, he’s an Arkansas State fan, and we’re all talk.

***