For all the fuss I make and the facts I drop, the fucking shows I watch and the father I have; I caught my first wild snake ever just yesterday.



Some people don't know what I used to want to be when I grew up. In fourth grade I called it serpentology. In sixth I was a little smarter, then it was herpetology -the study of reptiles- with an emphasis on snakes. From seventh grade on I called it acting, but I never lost my love for the legless fuckers.

All dads have stories. Be them war stories, fishing stories; I-remember-one-time tales from their storied youths. A lot of my father's stories had snakes in them. A lot of the yellowed Polaroids in our family photo boxes have snakes in them.

So I love snakes.

My goal -spiritual refreshment aside- walking the twisting trails of the Devil's Den yesterday, was to see a snake. To catch a snake to hold a snake. It is a sensation I have been craving; brought on by the absence of reptiles, Florida and my father. Heightened by the recent kicking around of a SnakeBoy script, and the goddam Wildboyz. And it must have been the fifteenth big flat rock I'd lifted before I found that beautiful rat snake...

...nosing around the base of a tree five feet from Christian. From us both. Here I am bent over jacking up rocks looking for snakes, and there's two and a half feet of one, black on gold dead leaves, clear as day on the ground a step away.



Now, I pick up a lot of things in one day. So do you, -unless you're unfortunately armless- it's just not something one keeps track of. I pick up certain things more than others; G2 pens, a drinking glass, dinner plates, various remote controls. This day an unusual amount of big flat rocks. Along with an Oscar statuette with my name on it, a beautiful girl, and my first born child, a snake -especially a wild one- is on my list of coolest things to pick up.

It was amazing. I'm at quite a loss to describe it. Oh I could pretty-word you to death about the way it felt slipping down my arm and through my fingers, but it won't amount to anything more amazing than a dude holding a snake. Which is something not so amazing to most people, not even so rare. To me, it really was something else though. Symbolic. A sweet moment with nature.

Not the only time in my life I've felt privilaged, that something so beautiful was letting me hold it.

I lived in Snakeville, USA, for 22 years with a blue-collar-Crocodile Dundee dad.

I catch my first snake in fucking Connecticut.

Yesterday at work I had about a dozen kiddy cups full of Stella Artois. The same fancy-shmancy beer I first met and got smashed on, at the Sarasota Film Festival VIP party last year. (They were free.) The Mexikitchen crew kept smiling and filling me up all night. I was carrying trays of people's dinners, hiding a big fat beer buzz. It wasn't necessarily the smartest decision, but approval outweighs intelligence. Anyone who's ever been privy to peer pressure should know that. You want to fit in at school, you smoke the cigarette. You want to be part of the Brewcrew, you drink the beer.

The truthjuice loosened my lips, that's for sure; got me to introduce myself to a new girl who I'd ignored in passing about twenty times. Christina. Which ultimately landed me at Donovan's, a local dive around the corner, where I was disappointed to be paying for the same Stella I'd drunk my fill of for free just an hour earlier. I ended up talking to Christina for a couple hours before her and Allison followed Jimmy and I back to the house for some herbal refreshments. By the time the beer and weed collided in my body, my head was all a fishbowl, sloshing and swimmy; I don't even remember them here but in clips and phrases. It was fun though. Just being social.

So today at work, Isidro, my beer buddy on the grill tosses a huge fucking steak on the fire. I'm checking the hanging tickets, and nowhere has anyone ordered, "Huge Fucking Steak." When it's flame-grilled to perfection I watch him chop it in two, split it between two plates, jazz it up with mashed potatoes and a bed of fresh snow peas... and hand one to me.

Dinner, he says.

How fucking cool is that? I felt like an amigo.

I'm glad I drank the beer.

I've got to get some more people on the Wildboyz wagon with me. Christian has jumped on. Won't you come too?

See up until yesterday the only thing Chris Pontius and Steve-O, ever wasted of mine was my time -a rather unimportant commodity as of late- and even then it was only a half-hour on Sunday nights, the random late night half-hour repeat on weekdays. But yesterday, the Wildboyz bit me in a more sensitive spot, my wallet. Or more specifically, the left front pocket of my jeans. At the Trumbull mall in the teenybop-shop Hot Topic, I bought a Wildboyz t-shirt for eighteen bucks.

It was a monetary admittance of my love for the show. And with pride I will wear it.

I really struggle trying to champion this "Jackass meets The Crocodile Hunter" show to people who think that because they've got an above-average IQ, they can't enjoy two dimwits in leopard-skin bananahammocks getting frighteningly close to one another as they get dangerously close to wild animals. The Wildboyz are, neither of them, gay; still every episode is saturated with homoerotic gestures, situations and allusions, so grossly misplaced -a nature show- that it very quickly becomes a sliver of the Wildboyz Enjoyment Pie.

If you aren't familiar with the Wildboyz Enjoyment Pie, you'll want to look at the chart below, where I have Microsoft Exceled a convenient, horribly colored pie graph highlighting and comparing the elements of Wildboyz that make it so compelling.



You'll see that 11% of the enjoyment is in the animals alone. This is because animals are always at least 11% of the enjoyment in any situation in which animals are involved. Who's never gotten behind a good animal show in their lifetime?

Animal-inflicted pain has always been a secret thrill of mine. Shark Attacks, snake bites, bulls stomping on riders and goring matadors. Anytime an animal kicks the shit out of the King of the Food Chain, it's humbling to me. Who doesn't like When Animals Attack? Who can't get behind footage of an elephant rampaging a circus? Who didn't think it was kinda cool when Roy got chomped by his tiger?

So, everyone loves to see people attacked by animals. But, as creatures of conscience, we can't help but feel bad for the newswoman who is obviously about to deliver some cutesy-dootsy spiel to camera when she's suddenly mauled by the bear sitting on the stool next to her. On Wildboyz, that the animals are attacking suspecting victims makes the pain and the wounds and the screaming, hysterical. Here there is no guilt. The Wildboyz dump food in an open tent and crawl into the sleeping bags. So it's funny when a black bear takes a chunk out of Pontius's ass. They sream and jump around, and their eyes bulge out of their head. Then they chortle like Beavis and Butthead and flaunt their new scar to the camera.

Every time they scream in pain, take a drink.

It's the little things that make it lovely, like how Steve-O vomits constantly. When he puts musk-ox shit in his mouth. When he squeezes the eggs and sperm out of two dead salmon into his mouth. When he eats whale blubber. When he drinks a weird Amazonian tribal whiskey. When he smells a particularly gross fart. After a while, you're not sick of Steve-O heaving and glopping all over the place, you're rooting for it. I guarantee.

Every time Steve-O pukes, take a drink.



Though Chris Pontious has a slight advantage over Steve-O on the Wildboyz Enjoyment Pie, the dynamic wouldn't exist one without the other. One alone could never fill the Wildboyz gayness quota. Pontius's 1% edge could be any number of insignificant things. Not so afraid of venomous snakes. Less drug-ravaged voice. More attractive. Who cares.

Every time you see their asses, take a drink.

Every time they're bitten by something, take a drink.

Every time one slips behind the bent-over other, take a drink.

Every time you find yourself green with envy at anything they are doing, jumping into the water with a Great White Shark. Getting zapped by eels or racing on the backs of ostriches. Levitating an alligator, feeding Tasmanian Devils or swimming with grizzly bears... sigh, and take a drink.



And now that you're drunk as a skunk you should realize how interesting it is to watch two quasi-queer twenty-something nomads work the same dream job that has long been reserved for scientists and Boyd Matson. Hands-on wildlife TV show hosts. So if you're bored with National Geographic or tired of Jeff Corwin wearing clothes; if Steve Irwin is plenty crazy, but he just doesn't curse and puke enough for you. Tune it to MTV on Sundays at 10:30.

Because "Nobody's wilder than the Wildboyz."

Troy, Super Size Me, Elephant, Wes Craven presents: They, May, Secretary, Insomnia, Matchstick Men, Man on Fire. Those are the movies I've seen in the last few weeks that I haven't mentioned. Some needn't be mentioned to be remembered, but others might only squeak out of my lips or fingertips this one time in my whole fat life.

So there.

Movies.

My viewing you has officially been documented.

Today in the kitchen, in the thick of the Brewhouse Brunch Buffet my amigos sat a stuffed chicken on the salad window, a battery operated dancing chicken that shifted and wiggled to the Chicken Dance song. Of course, I thought it was funnier when I couldn't hear the Chicken Dance song. I thought it was funnier watching the chicken bop and wiggle to the Mexican music blaring from the boombox. I thought it was like the plastic flowers or Coca-cola cans that will dance to any sound that registers in their tiny servo brains. But no, the trumpets and guitars and, I don't know, whatever other instruments make all Mexican music sound the same -tambourines maybe?- drowned out the faint Chicken song. And then suddenly, at the zenith of the chicken dancing funniness, an egg to the ear wiped the shiteating grin right off my face.

Yes. Someone hit me right in the fucking ear with an egg. It felt like a golf ball had thwapped the side of my head, a golf ball that burst open and gooped unborn chicken sauce down my neck, into my shirt.

I demanded an answer. "Who just hit me in the face with a fucking egg?!"

One of them apologized. Seems the poutry-projectile was not intended for me, but for another Mexican head.

The ruined egg lay congealing on the kitchen floor for hours. No one claiming cleaning responsibility. I sure as hell wasn't about to take an egg to the face and then clean it up. So it sat there, sticky all day, looking oddly like a brain. On drugs.