Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

They call us the Hard Cases

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Last week you read where four motorcyclists from Veterans of Foreign Wars accompanied U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to the airport to fly to the rehab hospital in Houston.

More power to them. Like all motorcycle clubs who provide escorts, they are fuflilling their own desire to give meaning to their motorcycling, and perhaps they are giving people a feeling of support in the meantime.

And I sure understand that. I have a motorcycle, and I too dig meaning.

Did you know I belong to a motorcycle gang?

Yes, except the gang I belong to doesn't go in for that patriotic stuff, like escorting veterans' funeral processions. We don't strap Christmas gifts to our gas tanks and ride them down Western Avenue to give to children so needy they need gas-soaked presents. And we don't ride to Washington to saw a hole in the ozone over the Vietnam Memorial.

The Harley guys have that stuff covered.

Our gang? The Hard Cases?

We ride Triumphs and BMWs.

Our motorcycle jackets have sleeves.

And we bring our rolling thunder to escort battered wives to court dates, gay couples to weddings, corporate layoff victims to the unemployment office, divorcees to the tavern, drunks to their first AA meeting, poor people through rich neighborhoods and rich people through poor neighborhoods, spinsters with lost dogs to check at the pound, sad people to psychiatrists, terminal patients home from the doctor who just diagnosed them, Catholics to confession, kids to get their first cavities filled and panicky people to IRS offices.

It's not glamorous.

But we're the Hard Cases. That's just how we roll.

(Well, when we're asked. Which is never. So we mostly just ride aimlessly around Illinois looking for curvy roads and, when we're ambitious, to breweries in Wisconsin.)

Writing Boots Happy Hour Video: To hell with everything “nice” and “cute” and “pretty”

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Scout has a lot of aunties, most of whom are fearsome feminists, but all of whom use the world "cute" a lot, to describe people and things. Generally, I think that, like "nice," "cute" is banal, a way to reduce everything beautiful and homely to the same general category, on sale for $29.95 at Tarjay.

Scout wasn't two yet when I started agitating her, asking her what "cute" means. It doesn't mean "beautiful," it doesn't mean "pretty." What is it then?  

Dad!

And now, after seeing this performance, "pretty" is on my shit list, too.

More dumb questions for smart readers

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Around this time last year, Writing Boots hosted a weeklong discussion devoted to answering dumb questions. My dumb questions, to be precise.

The questions were: What happened to prison concerts? What happened to hitchhking? And what's up with all the tattoos that respectable people are wearing these days?

The answers were interesting and mostly enlightening.

But new dumb questions keep popping up.

Why don't women faint anymore? Women used to faint all the time. Now, you can leap out from behind a door, you can tell her her sister just ran off with her husband, you can tell her Sex and the City is coming back for one more season. But the modern woman just won't go down!

Why don't people have nervous breakdowns anymore? I'm sure the shrinks will dismiss the term as hopelessly old-fashioned. But now, when you seriously need to some time away, "nervous exhaustion" isn't good enough; you have to specify: "I had a psychic break." Not cool!

And finally, why doesn't the hole in Willie Nelson's guitar get any bigger? It's been the same size for at least a decade, and I'm starting to suspect he's got a crew of dwarves that make him a new identical shabby chic guitar for every show.

Crowd Sorcerers, do your thing!