Let Me Off At The Top Part 2

It's a funny sunny funny day.

Truer words have never been spoken. In fact, since the very first days on record, there never has been anything but a sunny day in San Diego. Every day in San Diego is exactly the same as the day before. Here was the perfect guy. When I asked him where he lived his first response was to point at me and yell, "Stranger! Danger!" But when he saw I wasn't going anywhere he checked inside his elastic underwear band and read where it said "Brick Tamland, 410 Meadow Lane, San Diego, California, USA."

The man was a natural. He stood in front of a map and smiled and told everyone that today was sunny and tomorrow was also going to be sunny. He did fun segments with elementary school kids and old people. He went to petting zoos and raffled weather maps for charity, and every day he did the birthday list off the top of his head. Was he mentally challenged? Sure. Did we know it then? Of course not. We had mentally challenged people playing football, working in aviation, appointed secretary of agriculture. Mentally challenged folks taught high school shop, made excellent nurses and wrote television shows. It was a simpler time. Have we progressed since then? It's a good question. Brick Tamland is my friend and he's a r.e.t.a.r.d.

With Brick in place we had it. We had the entire news team. Our domination in the San Diego area went unchecked for years. We were beyond legendary. We were G.o.ds. No statement of fact has ever been more factual than this one: We were the best news team that ever lived.

THE NIGHT I MADE LOVE TO BRUCE LEE.

Here's a quick story that I just have to tell. In 1973 martial arts champion and actor Bruce Lee came to San Diego to promote his new film, Enter the Dragon. I've always been a fan of the martial arts. I love the kicking and the flipping and the hitting. It really gets the heart pumping. I can't say I've mastered martial arts. I've taken karate cla.s.ses and I do have a green belt. The problem for me is if I get into a fight I tend to improvise a lot. The karate goes out the window and I end up throwing O'Leary and Johnson around like a drunken idiot. I wish I were a karate expert like Bruce Lee. Sometimes I imagine myself in a situation with a briefcase full of important top secret doc.u.ments and seven Asian guys have surrounded me in an attempt to steal the briefcase. I then pretend that I must fight them off using martial arts. I usually win, but not always.

I was a little nervous about meeting Bruce Lee because I am such a fan. His nunchuk work alone is simply legendary. Nunchuks, or "nunchaku," as the Chinese call them, are two sticks connected by a chain and used as a weapon in martial arts. If I'm in a room with nunchuks you might as well forget it. It's like putting down a plate of peanut b.u.t.ter cookies, I cannot resist picking them up. I will invariably grab those nunchuks and start flipping them around, whirling them through the air and within seconds my whole face is bruised and bleeding. I can't work 'em. I just can't. Don't even let me hold them. I will start swinging them all over the place and bonk. "Bonk" is the wrong word. You can't get taken to the hospital when you are "bonked." It's like a team of horses has trampled me.

So I go to meet Bruce Lee in the lobby of the Hilton in downtown San Diego. Sure enough, as soon as I'm seated across from him for an interview I notice the nunchuks. I remember reaching for them. I remember Bruce Lee smiling at me and the next thing I know I'm lying in a room at the Hilton with welts on my face. Those darn nunchuks! Apparently I hit myself five or six times in the head and then went down. Bruce Lee, the perfect gentleman, suggested I be taken to his room until I came to. When I finally regained consciousness it was well into the evening and frankly I was a little embarra.s.sed to be lying in bed in his hotel room. It's not important to say it at all but the Hilton has the finest bedding, the best thread count and firmest pillows of any of the hotel chains. Oh, and the service is excellent.

When I came to, Mr. Lee was was.h.i.+ng my feet in the tradition of a j.a.panese samurai warrior. It's traditional for the samurai to sponge the feet of honored visitors. I noticed that all my clothes had been removed. Mr. Lee was also naked-in the tradition of the samurai warrior. Humility, respect and hospitality are some of the traits of a true samurai along with courage, quickness and strength. Their ability to move gently and stay secretive, striking at the opportune moment, is a result of hours and hours of disciplined study. I respect these ancient j.a.panese warriors and their customs so when Mr. Lee explained to me in his broken, frankly awful English that he needed to make love to me, I understood the cultural significance. Historians tell us that the samurai warriors would seek out village men for a night of lovemaking before heading into battle. It was a great honor to be chosen thusly. I didn't know this historical fact at the time but Mr. Lee explained this to be the case. I pointed out that he was Chinese not j.a.panese but he brushed this aside saying it didn't really matter. Our eyes locked. He was, without a doubt, a beautiful man. The musculature alone was something to behold but the eyes were where he got you. Those dark pools were just too enchanting, like two warm baths, you could not but be enticed to take a dip. There was a part of me that wanted to look away but I knew that would be a sign of great disrespect.

The lovemaking was lightning quick, like his fighting style. His efficiency and flexibility were stunning. There were hands and feet all over the place. With all the biting and scratching it was like wrestling with three hairless wolves. Keep in mind this was 1973 and long before h.o.m.os.e.xuality was invented. I've made my stance pretty clear on how I feel about that and how I'm A-OK with the whole business but this had very little to do with anything of that nature-this was two warriors going at it with great respect and admiration for ancient traditions. Was there tenderness? Of course there was. Was it s.e.xually gratifying? Yes. Did fingers find their way into places reserved for baser functions? You bet. But all of it happened in the fraternal spirit of male bonding, just like in olden times when men did stuff like that all the time. It was very manly.

When it was over we both felt the triumph of having wors.h.i.+pped at the altar of heroes. We were two proud warriors: he, the ancient Chinese samurai, and I, like some n.o.ble Greek champion of yore. We enjoyed a couple of cigarettes and lay next to each other in the quiet peace of a job well done. We were just a couple of guys.

As I left the room that morning he turned to me and said in his terrible English, "Mr. Burgundy, we like golden boat in river that have no current."

"Huh?" I said.

"My feewings to you are like night bird afwaid of light."

"You feel for me like a bat? Okay. See you."

I walked out never to see him again. He was to pa.s.s away two weeks later in Hong Kong. I miss Bruce Lee-he was a great fighter, a decent actor and a great lover. Anyway, that story gets told at least once a day, sometimes twice, to just about anyone I meet.

MY LOVE FOR THIS COUNTRY.

I don't often talk about it because I don't like to brag but I am a real patriot. It's a pretty controversial opinion, I know, but I love the United States of America and I'm not afraid to say it. There was a time, from about 1967 to 1974, when I would make phone calls to people I didn't know all across this land and tell them that I loved the United States. Imagine you're sitting in your home, lying in bed or in the kitchen enjoying a meal, and the phone rings. Now imagine picking up that phone and the first thing you hear is "I love the United States." It must have been great. My phone bills were through the roof! I didn't care. It was my way of giving back. Some guys went off to war, some gave to charities and still others had red, white and blue belts. I called people at any hour of the night in cities all across this nation to let them know how I feel.

If you don't love this country you need to go and spend a half an hour in Canada or Mexico. Here's two countries, literally right next to us, that really blew it. I get down to Mexico from time to time. San Diego is a just a short way from the border and it can be a fun day to drive down, hit Tijuana, take in a show, maybe watch a bullfight, and eat some tacos. I'll usually also have a drink or two. Here's what always happens. After the show or the bullfight I'll have a couple more drinks. Well, that just about does it. The rest of the night is a circus blur of colorful pinatas and distorted toothless laughter. I don't know how it happens but somehow, after the bullfight or the show, I get drugged. It happens every time. Some sneaky Mexican puts something in my drink and good-bye, Ron Burgundy. How long am I out? Sometimes weeks. Ed Harken, my good friend and station manager at Channel 4, sent a team of navy SEALs into Mexico one time to see if he could find me. In the end they did find me but what they found was a surprise to all, including myself. I wasn't even Ron Burgundy. My name was Senor Big Jones and I was the mayor of a fis.h.i.+ng village on the Baja Peninsula. I had been mayor for almost a month, establis.h.i.+ng new literacy programs and public works projects, giving the town a real sense of pride. I worked like the devil, pus.h.i.+ng through important legislation not just for well-heeled residents, of which there were none, but for the simple man in the street. I think I could have easily won a second term-I had plans for a new light rail transit system-but Ed had me airlifted back to San Diego and the town fell back into the hands of the s.h.i.+tbird who ran it before. Maria, my wife during this period (go figure!), tells me that the Big Jones Library still stands, with one of the finest collections of original incunabula in the world, including two complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, whatever the heck that is. Oh well, I have been known to do some pretty dumb stuff when I'm on a bender.

In general, and this is only part of the problem with the country, Mexico is not a place to go on a bender. Apart from my colorful time as a mayor and the year I was a hill bandit, the usual Mexican bender ended with me in jail. Traditionally I'd wake up and some squat polistero (Spanish for "policeman") would be pointing his pudgy Mexican finger in my face yelling something about me throwing punches. I don't doubt it. I have thrown a lot of punches in Mexico. When you get the whole news team down there, Brian, Champ and Brick, you are talking about a human tornado of irresponsible fists. We don't go looking for fights, but gosh darn it, those Mexican guys down there can't take criticism. I mean, you open your mouth about how their food smells, or how they speak American worse than children, or how there isn't one of them with blond hair-reasonable and fair criticism-and they just go crazy! Do I love Mayan art? Yes. Do I love Cortes? Yes. Do I love Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Bra.s.s? Of course I do. I love the Mexican peoples but they can be a proud, fiery race. One theory, which I believe will one day be taken as fact, explaining why their pa.s.sion often outstrips their reason is related to brain size. Due to a bean diet and other environmental factors, like their proximity to the sun and its powerful shrinking rays, their brains are just not that big. Has this theory been proven? No, but sometimes it's not prudent to wait for all the facts to come in. You have to quickly sign up for a theory so you can say, "I was there first."

There are many great things about Mexico. If it wasn't a huge waste of time a guy could write a whole book about Mexico. They got history. I mean, somebody made those pyramids, right? (I'm revealing stuff I said I never would, so I would prefer it if you read this next sentence after I'm dead. Those pyramids were built by aliens. That's a fact. The pyramids in Egypt were built by the British in the seventeenth century and the pyramids in Vegas were built by my good friend Steve Wynn. These are all facts. They are disputable for sure but facts just the same.) Mexico is very rich with history. If I were to write such a book, a gigantic waste of my time mind you, but if I were to write it I would bind it in sumptuous Corinthian leather and ill.u.s.trate it with paintings by my very best friend, LeRoy Neiman. The book would weigh at least twenty-five pounds and would make a great addition to any fine library, and if you're into pressing flowers between the pages of books this would be the one. I have a book of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the undisputed champion of American poetry, that I purchased in an old curio shop called B. Dalton for thirty-six dollars with beautiful etched ill.u.s.trations and golden pages bound in the most expensive absolutely real leather available. It's probably a first edition and I own it. I make sure people see it and talk about it when they come in my house. You can't miss it. The display case I built for it makes it impossible to open the front door all the way but it's worth it. I'm sure this Mr. B. Dalton is pretty steamed I walked off with a first-edition Longfellow, our greatest poet, for thirty-six bucks! Guess what? He's not getting it back! Anyway, if I was to write a history of Mexico, meaning if I was willing to take time away from picking my nose or watching Jeopardy! or sitting on the toilet, it would be that kind of book-a big luxurious book with old-timey Spanish-style letters. I would call the book The Fabulous Fables and Rich Tales of Olden Mexico and Its Regal Peoples. I would like to see that t.i.tle written in gold! I'm beginning to think I may just write this book. I bet everyone in Mexico would appreciate it-to have a book written specifically about you by a legitimately important American! Who wouldn't want that? The Mexicans may not deserve such a book but I'm going to give it some serious thought. Can you imagine waking up one morning in that G.o.dforsaken, dust-blown country and then hearing that Ron Burgundy has taken the time to write a book all about you and your land? Incredible. It would be incredible. I'm going to do it.

The fact is the United States of America is better than Mexico not for all the reasons above but for this simple fact: The Mexican people are THE most self-centered people I know. Here's a little test I throw at your average Mexican. I have five questions locked and loaded that I will spring on them just to prove my theory from time to time.

Question 1. Who signed the Declaration of Independence first?

Question 2. How many original colonies were there?

Question 3. Name three Hostess baked-good products.

Question 4. Order these five cities by population, highest to lowest: Toledo, Mobile, St. Paul, Salt Lake City, Orlando.

Question 5. Sing the national anthem.

As you can see, no tricks here, just plain simple questions anybody on this green earth should be able to answer, especially Mexicans. Notice I don't just ask culturally specific questions. These are questions to which everyone in the world knows the answer. Of course in this country children can answer these questions! In Mexico hardly anybody knows the answers. Who doesn't know the original colonies? Who can't say three Hostess products? Cupcakes! Twinkies! Ho Hos! Easy! It's not like I'm asking some poor Mexican guy off the street to recite the Const.i.tution. Heck, I can't even do that. But really? You grow up a few miles from the greatest country in history and you don't even know "The Star-Spangled Banner"? That's either stupidity or willful ignorance. I go back and forth on this one. I used to only believe it was willful ignorance, which got me into a lot of fights and a lot of jail time. Now I see the Mexican as a simple man without much capacity for learning. It goes back to my theory on brain size. In some ways I feel sorry for him. As a great nation we should do something, but what? What can you really do if the people themselves don't want to learn American history so they can better themselves? What can you do! It's terribly frustrating! G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I just threw my typewriter out the window! It gets me so frustrated though. You're not going to believe this; I threw another typewriter out the window. That's two that have flown through the air while I've been writing about Mexico. I gotta cool down. Typewriters are heavy and could cause a lot of damage down below. I took a shower. I shouldn't get so worked up. Anyway, I challenge you to find a nation wallowing in its own stupid patriotic pride more than the Mexican nation. Everywhere you go idiots are waving flags and bragging about how great they are. Okay, if you're so great, how is it you can't even sing the national anthem? Grrrrrr! Hard to believe but I threw out my last typewriter. Luckily Sears was open, where I have a card, and I was able to purchase THEIR last typewriter. No more writing about Mexico!

Canada is a whole different ball of wax. Imagine sitting in an airport lobby for three days. The only food you can eat is raw potatoes and water. The whole time you're being forced to listen to babies crying and the hits of Sha Na Na. Also there are no bathrooms. This is the kind of insufferable boredom one feels the moment you enter Canada. Your whole body begins to physically decay. The spiritual life drains out of you. Suicide constantly enters your thoughts. Being awake in Canada offers nothing more than watching the sands of your own mortality pa.s.s through the hourgla.s.s until it is empty. There is nothing to be hopeful about. There is no projection of something better, only existence in the rawest form. A Canadian might tell you he is happy. Don't be fooled. He is living within a sickening paradigm that defines happiness as joyless existing devoid of those qualities that make us human. Almost any Canadian you meet in our country and who has been out of Canada for a while can tell you that he now lives in a magical land. That's why so many of the Canadians you meet in this country are so creative and pleasant. They have escaped a prison worse than any concentration camp ever constructed.

I've done news stories in Canada. I don't like to go there but sometimes duty calls. Within about five minutes of entering the country I start having suicidal thoughts. The prospect of death seems like a better alternative than being in Toronto or Vancouver. I usually start drinking, which is what the whole country does. They make their beer with a higher alcohol content so they can numb out the pain faster. Most of them don't drink beer though. Most of them drink gasoline. The Indians around Medicine Hat drink turpentine thickened with rat poison every night hoping they won't wake up in Canada the next day. Go there. You'll see. Of course, drinking is a two-edged sword. It can lead to great sadness. Combine that sadness with the naturally depressed state of everyday living in Canada and you will want to lie down on a railroad track. I have done this. I was covering the winter Olympic Games in Calgary. I was trying everything in the book to stay positive. I made sure I had friends around. I packed a pamphlet of daily affirmations, along with puzzles and games. I played flute every morning. I hung out in the ski lodge by the fire and read children's books to Baxter. But it was no use. Slowly Canada worked its way into my bones. I lost focus. I was told to cover the women's biathlon, normally a very exciting sport with skiing AND rifle shooting and women, but I became more and more aware I was standing in Canada. My stomach became heavy, like I had eaten mud. My shoulders stooped. I lost any bounce to my step as I trudged through the snow. Life lost all meaning until a light of hope guided me. I followed the light, a beautiful blue ray, for what seemed like days. The light sang to me. It sounded like the voices of Karen Carpenter, Debby Boone and Olivia Newton-John combined into one welcoming, nurturing symphony. I was in a near-blissful trance and when I saw where it had led me I was euphoric. It was a railroad track. My escape from Canada was only a nap away. I lay down and fell asleep. Luckily for me a big Swede came along. The Swedish people have a great capacity for boredom. Although they are not boring themselves, they can withstand boring situations and boring people with great skill. The Swede took me to a McDonald's, where I was nursed back to believing I was in America. I stayed in the confines of those golden arches for a full week before I even had the courage to step out into Canada again. In the hundred or so steps I took to the helicopter that was waiting to take me to the United States and safety, I contemplated strangling myself.

Again, I don't want to disparage any Canadians here. Outside of their own country they can be simply delightful. I've met some very playful ones. I do however keep my guard up. If someone is introduced to me as a Canadian I instinctively fortify myself for the torrent of soul-crus.h.i.+ng boredom to come plunging out of their mouth. I even cover my ears if I suspect them of not having been properly Americanized. I once had to interview singer-songwriter Joni Mitch.e.l.l. She's from Canada. I very was hip to the new music scene and she was a real up-and-comer. Here's a transcript of the interview. Notice how quickly my mood changes.

Ron So tell me about this new brand of folk and rock.

Joni Mitch.e.l.l You know, it's hard to put a label on it.

Ron Uh-hum.

Joni Mitch.e.l.l I think a lot of us, those of us who came out of the Troubadour up in L.A., consider ourselves songwriters first.

Ron Uh...

Joni Mitch.e.l.l My good friend Carole King started out as just that-a songwriter. She really didn't have ambitions beyond that.

Ron Please stop.

Joni Mitch.e.l.l I'm sorry.

Ron I'm trying. It's hard. So ... go on. What else?

Joni Mitch.e.l.l Are you okay?

Ron No. No I'm not okay. You are boring the s.h.i.+t out of me. Every word coming out of your mouth is like another pillow to my face, suffocating me to a cold mute death. STOP IT, RON! BE PROFESSIONAL! What's it like being a singer?

Joni Mitch.e.l.l I'm confused.

Ron Answer the question! NO, DON'T! Pleeeeease don't answer the question. Come on, Ron! Be a professional. Whatsitlikebeingasinger?

Joni Mitch.e.l.l Um, well. I enjoy the intimacy of performance.

Ron Stop it! I know what you're doing. You're trying to kill me. This woman is from Canada! WE HAD A RULE. WE HAD A RULE, d.a.m.n IT! I CANNOT TAKE IT!

Joni Mitch.e.l.l What's going on? Should I sing something from my new alb.u.m, Clouds?

Ron Lady. If you sing one note in this studio I will hang myself from the lights. Did you hear me? I will step up on this news desk, undo my tie and hang myself from the lights!

What a laugh! Thankfully Joni Mitch.e.l.l moved to the U.S. and settled with us here in Southern California, where she became more American and less Canadian. Her unorthodox chord changes and haunting voice frequently can be heard coming forth from the ca.s.sette deck I have in my bedroom. I've almost forgotten she is Canadian. No, I would say across the board when I was challenged with an interview of a Canadian talent, be it world-famous writer Margaret Atwood, funnyman Rich Little or rock musician Neil Young, I ended the interview always threatening to kill myself.

What is so surprising about this is that Canada, except for being colder and maybe having more pine trees and lakes, is basically the same, geologically speaking, as Minnesota or Michigan. It really should be as exciting and prideful as America. It just isn't. I mean, both Mexicans and Canadians can express pride in their respective countries but it's a false pride. It's like the kind of pride someone has in being a loser or an artist instead of a businessman. Everyone knows you wanted to be a businessman but then you became an artist. You have no choice but to take pride in it. That's just not the case with our great country. We are number one. We take great, truthful and honest pride in being number one.

Sometimes when I'm driving the freeways of San Diego I will put on my national anthem tape. It has no words, just the music. I had the tape made for the day when I would be asked to sing the anthem before a World Series game. It hasn't happened yet, some sort of mix-up I'm sure, but when it does I will be ready. However, I've listened to our beautiful anthem thousands of times and I must say I've never liked the words. I've never felt they captured the true feeling of how much I love this country. Over the years I've played around with my own lyrics and I must say, should I ever get the chance to do the national anthem at a World Series, or anywhere for that matter, I would probably do my own new and better words. I almost hesitate to share it with you now because I just know it will get ripped off and then IT will become the new national anthem and I won't see a dime. Not that I'm in it for money, but you know.

My New National Anthem (To the tune of the old one. I'm very happy with the old tune.) This is a great land, with awesome majesty.

n.o.body does it better over land or even sea.

It's got all the right moves for being the best.

You've got the cities in the East and the mountains in the West.

The women here are gorgeous.

Not all of them but many.

It's got a lot of cla.s.s, from the dollar to the penny.

So make mine a double and drinks are on the house.

For those who love their country I am buying the next round.

Needless to say I'm pretty proud of this baby. It was a struggle but all poetry is pain sayeth the bard, right? I tend to get poetic when waxing on about my country. My love for the country knows no bounds. This land has given birth to the blues down in the deep delta, jazz born out of the struggles of the Irish immigrants who settled in Chicago, the hot dog, the old Mississippi rolling through the vast plains of Kansas and on down to Louisiana. America is the birthplace of Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Humphrey Bogart, the Dust Bowl, the Hollywood Bowl, the Super Bowl. Oh, greatest country! I love thee and thine thick pine forests and thundering trout streams. I love yine valleys wet with dew and suns.h.i.+ne, yine golden meadows glowing in light. Oh, Americans! What hath we if not heaven right here? 'Tis ours, this emerald isle, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this America! I care not for vainglorious arrows that sling at me, nor do I care wenst they came. I am impervious to all mettlesome darts and such. I am an American. My name is Ron Burgundy and that, my good friends, is an American name.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMERICA?

Okay, so you know my feelings for this country I call home. It is the second-finest country in all of the Americas. However, just because I love this land with more fierce love than my love for Veronica Corningstone, my wife, it does not mean I cannot be critical. For example, I'm in love with myself but it doesn't stop me from occasionally staring into my thirty-foot floor-to-ceiling mirror and saying to myself, "Ron, you could lose a few pounds." Criticism is a form of self-love the way I see it. We live in troubling times when criticism is seen as unpatriotic. There are a lot of red-faced blockheaded anchormen out there calling themselves newsmen who wrap themselves in patriot colors to hide the fact that they cannot handle reasonable adult criticism. This is an alarming trend the way I see it. The job of an anchorman is not to lecture the viewers on patriotism but to read the teleprompter as soberly as possible and let them decide what is right or wrong. To be honest you can really stretch the limits of sobriety and still achieve this goal. I've always had a nip or two before I go on. I usually have a few during the broadcast. My whole team enjoys drinking throughout the day. When I was at Channel 4, Ed Harken, the station manager, would have loud screaming meetings about being "over budget." People would pound their fists and raise their voices and stand on chairs and throw typewriters. It was a real sight but no one could ever figure out where the money went. Was it suits? Was it hair and makeup? Ma.s.sage chairs? Fireworks? Archery equipment? Then one day some bold intern from Stanford University yells out, "It's the booze." Sure enough, over half our monthly budget was going to alcohol! That intern was fired immediately and I hope never works in news again. My point being, it doesn't take much to get the job right. Anyway, I will venture some well-thought-out criticism of this country and hope to G.o.d you idiots don't accuse me of being unpatriotic.

Our babies have gotten uglier. I don't know why this is but you can't deny it's happening. Is it inbreeding? Is it high levels of newfangled foodstuffs like yogurt and lettuce? Who knows? There is just no answer out there, but look around, babies are not cute anymore. Women seem to not notice it as well because often they become emotionally attached to their babies. It can ruin my whole day-some proud and delusional woman will shove her terrifyingly ugly thing right in my face and I am made to scream. It's just about at epidemic proportions. If it keeps going at this rate none of us will want to go outside by the year 2015 for fear of seeing a disgusting-looking infant. If women are going to keep having these gross little meatb.a.l.l.s I think we need to start thinking about social engineering of some kind. Calm down. Not n.a.z.i-type stuff here but just simple common sense. We could set up a tribunal of judges and decide which babies need to be s.h.i.+pped off to England, where there have never been good-looking babies. We could have this whole country looking beautiful and fresh in no time. I would say Thai babies can get a pa.s.s. I've never seen an ugly Thai baby. Never. We should as a nation be encouraged to breed with people from Thailand. It could solve everything.

I'm sick and tired of people driving too slow in the left lane. It just has got to stop, plain and simple. A few years back I was racing to a strawberry festival outside of San Diego up in the Laguna Mountains when I encountered a tan Honda Civic rolling along in the left lane. The driver had effectively set up a roadblock for those of us wanting to pa.s.s. I calmly waited for an opportunity but after about thirty to forty seconds of this bulls.h.i.+t I came down on my horn. I stayed on that horn for easily ten minutes and this guy just wasn't budging. All I could do was laugh. You gotta take these things in stride and live and let live. I relaxed and settled into the speed this guy apparently decided we all should drive. I bided my time like a Zen Buddhist until he slowly got in the other lane and slid off the highway. Well, I wasn't going to let this guy off that easy. I followed him down the ramp, turned the corner with him and drove on through several small towns around the outskirts of San Diego. When he stopped for cigarettes at a 7-Eleven I parked a half a block away and carefully waited for this joker to get back into his car. We rode on through the rest of the day, me following him ever so craftily. Finally he pulled up to a typical dumb s.h.i.+t suburban house with a little picket fence and some kids' bikes on the lawn. Oh boy, now was my chance! I waited a few hours until the sun went down and took out my gallon can of paint thinner. I scurried up to his car in the moonlight and drenched the car from the hood to the trunk with the paint thinner, then I lit it on fire. I left this note on the gra.s.s for him. It read: "Dear a.s.shole, I want to thank you for making me miss the strawberry festival with your selfish and asinine driving. You are the worst person I have ever encountered and know that I am watching you. If you ever sit in the left lane again for any reason other than pa.s.sing I will burn your house down and hopefully you in it! Ron Bu." I started to sign it but then I thought differently. Years later I found out I was suffering from something called "road rage" and it's a real medical thing! I'm still mad at the guy to this day but my actions were way inappropriate and I know that now. There have been so many advancements in human psychology.

College! This country has gone college crazy! Everyone and their dog has to go to college. If you make it through high school and you don't go to college, then you are an outcast. Well, this is ridiculous! I think we should go back to the good old days when n.o.body went to college except for homely women and pasty rich white guys from Boston. What's wrong with making birdhouses for a living? You don't need college to lay tar on a roof. Is there a better job than laying tar on a roof? You play around with hot tar, you're outside with your buddies cracking dirty jokes and then you head to the bar for some icy cold beers. Is college gonna get you that? Nope. Here's what college will get you: a sad, lonely, compet.i.tive longing for unattainable goals and a deep anxiety about impending failure and finally death. Studies show you will also get herpes.

People need to treat me with more respect. It should be a foregone conclusion that I am treated with the utmost respect, but there are people out there in my own country who don't respect me and that's just un-American. I know I said I wouldn't wrap myself in the flag like every other ham-headed idiot on TV today but frankly speaking, if you don't respect me then you are a terrorist. It's pretty simple. The government can stop the spying on its own people. All they need to do is make up a list of people who don't respect me and put them in Guantnamo Bay until they can make them respect me. I'm not completely serious of course, but really I am.

Let me tell you what else we got wrong in this country, and that's the whole gun situation. There are too many guns out there and not enough people. The gun-to-people ratio is like five guns to every person on the earth. That ratio is all wrong. At the very least there should be ten thousand people for every gun. By my calculations that means we need at least one hundred billion people. Let's start making more people to catch up with the gun population. Making people is easy. You put your p.e.n.i.s in a v.a.g.i.n.a and wiggle it around. Done. I've made a lot of people that way. A lot. Wait, no I haven't. You wouldn't be able to prove it anyway.

Another complaint I have is the way we treat the gays. Well, I don't like it! As you know, for the most part I'm a heteros.e.xual man who likes to put my parts into ladies' holes. (There may have been a cla.s.sier way to say that.) I think maybe I was born this way and apart from the few times when the situation got the best of me, like the aforementioned Bruce Lee incident, I have not desired romantic and s.e.xual encounters with other men. In the seventies I ended up in a lot of hot tubs with all kinds of hands and feet groping around underneath the water. You can't keep track of all those hands and feet. You just can't. Did some guys go for my wiener? I have no idea and I don't care. It was good clean fun. (Just a little side note on the "clean" part: In '78 I donated my own hot tub to the prestigious Boston College of Medicine, where it still remains today as a source for the world's largest collection of streptococcus.) Apart from some drunken and good-time fun with a few guys, I would say I'm pretty sure of my s.e.xual orientation. Now, on the other hand there are some guys who are made different than me. They are gay guys, or if you are in the science community you might call them h.o.m.os.e.xuals. They were made that way-just the way I was made to use my p.e.n.i.s for entering v.a.g.i.n.as and such. (NOTE: Think up a more scientific way to say this for final draft of book.) Honestly a gay man living his gay life in a gay way out in the world as a gay is a more courageous man than most of the straight men I know. That goes for gay ladies as well. The good news is this country has become more and more accepting of gays over the last thirty years and I've come along with it. I'll admit it, it wasn't easy for me to find out Paul Lynde was gay. That was a shocker. Then I got hit with George Takei and I was like, "George Takei? Is everyone gay?!" But then I started to think to myself, "Ron, what do you care if Lynde or Takei is gay?" Were they happy hiding it? Did I feel better living in a world where people had to hide who they were because of fear? Is our country that afraid? I hope not. Sure, there are some tobacco-faced old meatheads who take to the airwaves or dried-up old prunes or rabid young conservatives who are afraid of change, but why should they ruin it for the rest of us? I hate change too. I wish baseball was still a sport. I would like to see a return to bigger phones. I miss Burt Lancaster pictures. Whatever happened to MTV?

Let me tell you a story about a four-year-old boy playing with his new slingshot in his backyard in Iowa. The boy got pretty good at it. He could hit cans fifty feet away. He could hit tree branches and street signs. Well one day he took aim at a bird seventy-five feet away and he hit it. The bird fluttered and fell from the tree. The boy was elated. He killed a bird with his slingshot! He was a great shot. He ran over to it and there it was on the ground. It didn't move and wasn't going to move ever again. It had no future. It was that easy; the boy had stopped it from being a bird. He thinks about that mockingbird every day. I'm as conservative as the next guy when it comes to suits and c.o.c.ktails, but not letting a gay guy be who he is is sort of like killing a mockingbird. That's my opinion on the gays.

Other than those few things I would say our country is perfect. Sure, you could complain about Wall Street hoodlums stealing our pensions and inflating our real estate, which I do in a later chapter; you could whine about oil prices going through the roof and athletes hopped up on steroids. If you wanted to you could complain about the toxic amount of food we eat and the decline of the public school system. The cost of higher education is going through the roof. Children are spending too much time on gadgets. That's gotta have some sort of effect on something and it makes for good complaining. I like to complain about the fact that there are not enough horse pictures at the movie houses anymore. The three-piece suit is nearly extinct and no one seems to care! These days bartenders often forget a drink on the house. There's been a dangerous backlash against polyester. There needs to be more shows like Night Court on television. If I see any more tattoos I'm going to go berserk. You could wake up every morning and start complaining, but then you would just sound like the "News Anchors" on cable news today. No, we live in the third-greatest country in the world and we should be pretty proud of it. I know I am. I wouldn't mind it if there were a few less old people.

WHAT KIND OF BREATH TURNS A WOMAN ON?.

Hot breath on a woman's neck and face is an aphrodisiac. That's a scientific fact that researchers have proven-not that I needed some Murgatroyd with a lab coat to tell me that a hot, humid whisper delivered inches from a woman you've just met in an elevator or on a buffet line can often seal the deal without the usual handwork. The secret, however, is not in the force of the exhale or the distance; no, the secret is in the breath itself. What kind of breath turns a woman on? I've made a bit of a study of this over the years and here are my top seven food combinations for effective hot breath. There's just no way these won't work. Let's say you're a hairy little man, like an Armenian or a Greek, and on top of that you have one of those dog faces common among Slavic people and Corsicans. To further complicate matters you're sweaty and your p.e.n.i.s looks like a burnt marshmallow in a bird's nest. You, my friend, are a big zero, but fear not; this hot breath stuff will work! Not every time. Sometimes it will have the opposite effect of what you're going for. Here's my list of recipes for effective sensual breath.

RECIPE 1: "THE DRIED-UP RIVERBANK"

Thick, musty, lonesome and dangerous, that's the smell and feeling of a dried-up riverbank. Women are terrified and turned on by it. How to capture it all in a breathy whisper? Simple. Shrimp dipped in stale beer and hot mayonnaise. Let it sit in your mouth for no less than five minutes; work it into your teeth. This one works from a long way out. Try it in a room full of women and see if any react-more than likely those who do won't be cla.s.sy but they'll be moved by a memory long since buried that only the rancid smell of dried mud can recover. If that memory is a pleasant one-and often it is not-you are in business, my friend.

RECIPE 2: "THE FOREIGN ELEMENT"

If you've ever been to Europe, which I have, five times for pleasure, then you know the smell of a European cafe. It's absinthe and rich tobacco with a hint of an old-world standing urinal. It's a delicious smell that when delivered the right way can turn a frozen ice queen into a nonstop volcanic eruption of hot love fluids. But who's kidding who? Absinthe is expensive. Here's a way to get that same scent in your mouth on a budget. Take an onion. Let it sit in an open can of motor oil overnight. Put it in a blender with stale cigarettes and coffee grounds and drink. Voil! European bar. If you can whisper a few words of French, like mise en scene, or gently sing an Edith Piaf song a few inches from her nose, that adds an extra element of continental spice. Some women find this irresistible. Others resist it, but stay with it; they give in eventually.

RECIPE 3: "THE EARTHY GARDENER"

Cabbage, broccoli, beans and raw bacon. This one is about timing. Once this. .h.i.ts your gut you have about fifteen minutes to go to work before the farts set in. I would describe the smell as "stomachy dirt," like blowing a fan through compost. I've had some luck with loose women with the Earthy Gardener, but then they were pretty loose, so it's hard to say if it really works. Give it a try! Treat every day like a prison break!

RECIPE 4: "SEVEN-CHEESE SAMURAI"

Just as it says. You eat seven different cheeses. Any kind will do but make sure you're eating at least a pound total. This one poses its own challenges. Women smell it coming from a mile away, making it harder to get in tight for real close breathing unless you employ the tactics of the samurai warrior. You need to keep your breathing to a minimum. Bring your heart rate down to a legally dead state. It helps to be hiding in a dark corner or under a desk or behind a filing cabinet. You must not move at all until the woman is absolutely within close range. Then the sleeper awakens and blows ... seven cheeses right at her face! It's a winner. Believe me. It has an effect.

RECIPE 5: "THE ROADKILL"

Find some roadkill and eat it. I haven't even tried this one but I know it would work. I just know it. Let me know if you do try it. It's gotta work.

RECIPE 6: "THE ANIMAL LOVER"

Who hasn't seen a beautiful woman come to her knees at the sight of a cute puppy? Oh how I've envied that puppy from time to time. Sometimes the envy gets to the point of really p.i.s.sing me off. I remember a cute little ba.s.set hound puppy in particular who stole the attention of a woman I was interested in pursuing. I was as steamed as I ever get. I waited for the lady to get out of earshot and I laid into that puppy with every curse word my mouth could make. I hate curse words in general but that little dog got two earfuls that day! I had to lift the little guy's ears just to scream my anger right into his little dog head. Somewhere out there in the world there is a ba.s.set hound walking around with some very real psychological issues. I hope he eventually got some therapy. I'm really a friend to dogs, just not when they get between me and my own animal desires. Anyway ... what is it about dogs that gets the ladies? Can't be their looks, because most dogs look like a pork roast with eyeb.a.l.l.s. (Please, Baxter, do not read this!) Anyway I realized women love dogs because of their breath. "Eat a bowl of dog food, Burgundy," I said to myself one night, and so I did, and sure enough it was like cheating. Women go nuts for dog breath. (As an aside I should mention women in their late twenties really go for baby's breath. That's just a biological fact. I tried to find this breath-I ate jars and jars of baby food, cans of sweetened baby milk, even asked a woman to pump some breast milk for me, but no luck! You just can't get baby's breath unless you literally get a stomach transplant from a baby! Who would allow you to do that? I've befriended some very suspect "doctors" in my day but I doubt a one of them would feel comfortable replacing my stomach with a baby's stomach! Oh well, lucky babies! s.e.x appeal is wasted on the young!) When it comes to dog food I go right for the hard nuggets right out of a forty-pound bag. A handful will do you for the night. Word to the wise: If you're stealing the food from your own dog, be sneaky. Baxter put it together over several weeks that I had been taking his food and he confronted me directly. It was not pretty. We argued. Then he waited until I went to sleep and he bit my foot. He later told me he was so mad he would have bitten my face if it weren't for the fact that my face feeds us both. What a dog!

RECIPE 7: "THE EXECUTIVE"

Well, here it is, my favorite and a sure winner. I don't leave the house without the Executive because it's just a no-nonsense heavy breath that when gently whispered into any woman's face will drive her nuts. Sardines and an old cigar. Yep, it's that simple. I keep a tin of sardines and half a stale cigar in my inside vest pocket at all times. The cigar provides the weight and the sardines provide the spice. It's like a gentle breeze blowing over a garbage truck, just enough to say, "I'm here and you are in for a heck of a night ... a heck of a night!"

MY NEIGHBOR: NEW DEVELOPMENTS.

Just an update on the whole war I'm having with my neighbor Richard Wellspar. He borrowed my leaf blower and didn't return it. Baxter and I snuck into his backyard and I did indeed empty out my two garbage cans into his pool. The whole operation went off without a hitch. Baxter is a true professional. The next morning, who do you think is standing at my front door? Yep, Richard Wellspar, idiot! So he very calmly asks me if I know anything about the garbage in his pool. Well, I'm nothing if I'm not fast on my feet. I've spent a whole lifetime in the news game, where you have to be on top of it at every minute. I looked him square in the face and said, "It's not mine and I didn't do it." He looked confused. He showed me a wet Publishers Clearing House letter addressed to me. I was caught off guard for a second. Of course, all of the junk mail had my address on it! Ooooh boy, that was not smart. Baxter should have said something! Anyway, I came back at him with this: "Richard, here's the deal. This is something you should know about this neighborhood. You've only been here a few years, so how could you be expected to know this? Also you are a pool salesman or something and this kind of stuff is outside of your area of expertise. I'm a newsman, so I know just about everything. There are feral cats around here and they will take garbage cans and throw them in pools. Pretty standard stuff, really." He just said, "Okay, Ron. By the way, I am a money manager. I'm not a pool salesman." Then he walked away. Once again, nothing about the leaf blower! Incredible! I am beside myself.

THE BIG TIME, OR WHEN I KNEW I HAD MADE IT.

My face is buried in a wine-soaked pillow. Slowly my left eyelid lifts to reveal a dark corner of the room. There's a naked body there slumped over itself, sleeping, maybe dead. Stale wine fills my nostrils. I take it in and it feels safe. I know that smell and I like it. I like what it says about my current predicament. I'm too brain-soaked to move fast. I say to myself, "Take it in, Ron. Enjoy the mystery." Something weighs on my leg. It's hefty, like the stale wine smell in the room.... Hold up ... wine smell? Is this a distillery? Did I pa.s.s out in a distillery? I've pa.s.sed out in distilleries before. It doesn't look like a distillery, although I've been in some inventive distilleries. People make distilleries out of anything-toilets, gas pumps, refrigerators, showers, swimming pools. My dear old friend Gus Cranshaw operated a distillery out of a converted mail truck. He painted it up to look like the current mail trucks you see today and me and him would drive around Dallas picking up mail and reading it while stoned on "Cranshaw's Crazy Juice." That was Dallas in the late fifties. You could get away with stuff like that then. It was a lawless town.

Cranshaw was an aeronautical engineer with a Ph.D. from Stanford but by the time I met him he had lost 90 percent of his thinking capacity-still a hoot, just had no ability to reason. It didn't matter because almost all of the mailmen in Dallas in the fifties were slower people and alcoholics. Reports of mail theft were common. I went back to Dallas in '71 to do a puff piece on Roger Staubach. Cranshaw was alive and well but he only had about fifty words left to his vocabulary. As the newly elected postmaster general for the greater DallasFort Worth area he was asked to speak frequently and he confided in me that it was no easy task. Somehow he had retained the word thermal, either from his days at Stanford or maybe from his work on his distillery, and with only fifty words to work with the word thermal came up often, as in "I smell a thermal coming," "Look at that thermal," "We got us a thermal," "Us thermal look good, thermal." He was later elected six times to the state legislature with the slogan "We gonna go thermal!"...Back to my current predicament. Maybe there's a body decomposing? Is it fermenting flesh? I know that smell, mold mixed with infection and dead skin. Am I in the Tarantula's Lair again? Is this Venezuela? A moment of fear surges through my usually calm disposition. For one second I am paralyzed with heart-stopping terror. Horrendous memories strike at me like coiled snakes jumping at my face, but just as quick I fight them off. No, Ron, those days are over. Look around the room. There are no guns, no cameras, no demonic symbols painted on the wall. You play it safe now. Cool down and take it easy.... Maybe I'm in some kind of wh.o.r.ehouse. It's too small for a wh.o.r.ehouse. Stop guessing! Slow it down, Ron. Slow it down. Let the mystery unfold. Back to the weight on my leg. I can feel the smooth skin on my haunches. It's sensual. h.e.l.lo, Mr. Hammersmith (one of the many names I give my p.e.n.i.s). He has awakened, bloated with wine and memory and possibility. "Now is not the time for you," I say out loud. It may be the place but it is not the time. I will admit, Mr. Hammersmith has no real sense of time or s.p.a.ce. He's his own agent, bound to no rules made by man. Nature is Mr. Hammersmith's lawgiver and even she grants him free rein within her strict code. For I have witnessed Mr. Hammersmith defy nature many times, taunting her with his insolence like Odysseus yelling back at Cyclops, full of hubris. Mr. Hammersmith has thus taunted nature with many unnatural acts and yet Mother Nature loves her impish man-child. I envy Mr. Hammersmith. He's not bound to reason. I'm talking about my p.e.n.i.s, Mr. Hammersmith. No, he's an epicurean all the way. His morning bloat is pure joyful defiance! He's a rascal and I love him for it!

Unfortunately I have a head-a head filled with brain cells-and I am intrigued by the mystery that surrounds me. What is that weight on my leg? Do I have the muscle control to lift my head and look or should I continue to sleuth it out like the newsman that I am? It's a female leg. I'm fairly certain of that, although there are men who shave their legs. World-cla.s.s swimmer and nine-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz shaves his legs to lose the aquadynamic drag that body hair might cause in the water. I asked him one time in a candid on-air interview if he felt more like a woman without the hair. He didn't know how to respond to the question so I rephrased it like this: "Does shaving your legs make you feel s.e.xy, more feminine?" Again, he laughed but did not understand what I was getting at. Here is a transcript of my interview with Mark Spitz from that point on.

Ron Come on, man.

Mark Spitz Are you serious?

Ron I'm an anchorman with sterling credentials.

Mark Spitz You want to know if shaving my legs for my sport makes me feel more like a woman?

Ron Does it?

Mark Spitz You're an idiot.

Ron I would think it would go a long way to putting you in touch with your feminine side. Do you wear dresses ever? Maybe a wig?