Saved by the Blue Ribbon

When Joel is asked to pick the most interesting thing that happened to him on December 28th, 2013, he feels the answer is obvious.

“I got shot. By a bullet.” He pauses, grins, and adds, “From a gun.”

That marked the first and only time he has been shot by a bullet from a gun, but compared to what transpired next, that part of the story is pretty mundane. Ultimately, Joel got shot by a bullet from a gun, sure, but the impact was minimal. It just made a bruise. Joel was saved. By a Pabst Blue Ribbon belt buckle... From his wardrobe.

###

When I call Joel from the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly, I know his place is nearby, but I'm lost and frustrated by the task of finding a farmhouse in the darkness. He says not to worry and gives me directions, even rides on his four-wheeler a good distance to the highway to ensure that I won't drive past Gudex Lane a second time. 

We chat before the interview. His Miniature Pinscher Alice Malice trots beside him as we feed sticks to a bonfire that illuminates a fraction of the surrounding countryside. We go inside the garage when it starts to drizzle. Plus that's where he keeps the mini-fridge.

Joel is known for his love of punk rock, but I've also seen him croon along with Dean Martin at parties. On this occasion, however, he's got satellite radio tuned into a classic rock station. I leaf through my notebook and crack open a Pabst. As he loads charcoal into a grill, I overhear Joel parroting a Billy Joel lyric: “I never said I was a victim of circumstance.”

We were going to see about that as soon as I pressed the record button.

“My mind reels thinking about what percentage of your body was shielded by the belt buckle,” I say. “It's got to be less than one percent, right?”

“I'd say less than one tenth of one percent,” Joel estimates. “And you've got to keep in mind, the bullet didn't come in and hit the belt buckle like it was a shield. It came in from the side. What stopped it was that little metal loop, that ring that holds the buckle to the belt. Which is even crazier. That's two fucking millimeters of metal instead of the whole credit card-sized thing.”

This revelation did nothing to steady anybody's reeling mind. Joel explained: On his walk home from the Main Pub in Fond du Lac, he was headed north when he “heard a bunch of shouting coming up from the intersection" of Main and Second. Moments later, he saw two combative groups, one comprised of three African-Americans and the other of two Caucasians. (Joel later learned that the dispute centered on a young woman. Figures.) Somebody had brandished a firearm, which was really stupid. Sensing trouble, his two friends pulled him away from the fray, pleading, “Come on, let's go!” The two Caucasians who stood outside of a bar on Second Street took exception to the display of a deadly weapon. “I can't believe you just did that!” one shouted. And so they actually pursued an angry, gun-wielding drunk. It cannot be overstated that this too was a really stupid thing to do.

Stuck unwittingly in the cross hairs of bar-time idiocy, Joel proceeded on his way. He spotted a flickering red dot aimed from one faction to the next. The two white guys crossed the street to confront the three black guys. Then Joel heard a POP.

“I knew right away it was a gun,” he says. “'Cause I shoot guns for a hobby. I knew it wasn't a .22, 'cause I know the difference between the sounds they all make. I figured it was a nine millimeter. Ends up being a .380.”

It's worth relaying that the incident had no discernible impact on Joel's feelings about guns. He's still quite fond of them, as evidenced by his recent Facebook posting of his assassination of a can of shaving cream.

“So, I'm like, 'Holy shit, that was a fucking gunshot,'” he goes on. “As I'm processing that, I heard the second shot. And I immediately felt it.”

The man with the .380 had lousy aim. The bullet pierced the cold night air at a speed of about a thousand feet per second with Joel in its way.

“I just stood there, putting pressure against that area, 'cause I wasn't sure if I was bleeding or not. And I got so pissed off. 'Seriously?! That's how this shit's going down?' Finally, I was scared to look, but I pulled up my jacket... and the belt buckle fell down. The bullet fell out behind it.”

This inanimate hunk of metal that might have saved his life fascinates me. 

“Do you have the belt buckle now?” I inquire.

“Nope, it's still sitting in the evidence locker at the police station.” He mentions the shooter, who was quickly caught and remains incarcerated. “Mr. Wilcox has exercised his right to appeal.”

“Just to keep the belt buckle away from you?”

“Absolutely,” he deadpans. “I have little doubt he's being paid by Blatz.”

“How did you obtain the belt buckle?”

“I forget if it was a birthday present or a just-because present, but it was from an ex-girlfriend.”

A “just-because present”? She must be somebody else's keeper. Here we have proof of the adage: “'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” I forget who said that, but I do know that Joel is a Trekkie, so let's just say it was Mr. Spock.

“Let me lay this on you,” I begin. “Would it be practical of them to make body armor out of Pabst belt buckles?”

“Well, I think it's clear that it worked once,” he allows.

It's not practical. We discuss other matters. Like beer.

“After that crazy night, what did that ensuing Pabst taste like?”

“That happened at about 6:30 in the morning when the detective fucking dropped me off from the cop shop after they questioned me,” he recalls. “Cracked open a beer and stayed up until noon, 'cause I wasn't tired anymore. Walking through that door... I can feel it, right now. The joy. I was OK, and I was getting dropped off at my house, not the hospital.”

(Mere hours after his moment of joyous relief, he was ambitiously hunted down by a crew from Fox 11 News, causing Joel to quip, “We should have sent you fuckers after bin Laden!”)

“Did you get any free Pabst?” I ask.

“I was hoping for at least a year's supply. Or just give me a PBR credit card that's only good for Pabst,” he says. “But I got a box with a sweatshirt and a Frisbee and shit like that. Some socks...”

“You got a Frisbee out of the deal?!”

“Yeah, it was the kind of trivial shit that they give to everybody. I'm not sour about it... But my buddy sent in his fucking artwork to Pabst, and he got the same box of shit. And it was just Clip Art! I mean, he arranged it quite nicely and there's definitely some skill involved, but Goddammit, I got shot.”

To get back to that unbelievable gunshot, consider this: Joel's chasm between good luck and bad was a matter of two inches. But the bullet narrowly missed his manhood and so the tone of our talk was a hell of a lot more cheerful.

“I'd like to thank gravity for holding that thing out of the way,” he declares.

If it were me, I'd also thank that winter's bitter cold. Smaller target! Joel had to give his pants to the detective who drove him home at dawn, and as his parting line, one of Fond du Lac's finest couldn't resist zinging a dick joke, either. Joel can't remember it, but I'd wager the setup was: “Joel, a Pabst belt buckle, and a dick walk out of a bar...”

Onto more mature matters.

“Do you know anyone with a story similar to yours?” I ask. “Is there a support group?”

“I did read about one because I'm only human. I Googled. There was only one other guy. Some gas station clerk in Pennsylvania, maybe six months before my shooting. Except it was a regular belt.”

Someone else comes to my mind. A cartoon character. In the “Homie the Clown” episode of The Simpsons, Ned Flanders is shot twice by sniper fire meant for Homer. Flanders is saved both times. First by a Bible he keeps over his heart and then by a piece of the true cross...

“Christ,” Joel snickers. “I was waiting for you to bring up The Simpsons.”

I have a reputation.

“You're saying the belt buckle was like my Bible/ cross?” Joel asks. That is what I’m saying. “Well, I do love Pabst, but Ned Flanders was the last thing on my fucking mind. I know with you, it'd be the first thing on your mind.”

Gracefully or not, we were on the topic of faith, which led to the question I most wanted to ask him.

“Do you think what happened was a case of divine intervention or extraordinary luck?”

“Personally, I chalk it up to fucking luck,” he says unsentimentally. “Had I been a step behind or a step ahead, it wouldn't have hit me. I almost find it to be bad luck. But a lot of people chalk it up to divine intervention. You remember Eric Dietrich?”

“Eric was the tie that bound his friends together. His smile and unique sense of humor touched the lives of everyone he met. He is greatly missed.”

That’s an excerpt from his obituary. He passed away on November 15^th, 2008. Eric and Joel were kindred souls.

“Everybody says, ‘Eric was looking out for you.’ But I don't believe in God. I don't believe in the afterlife. With Eric, though… maybe I’d make an exception for him. I like to believe that if anyone is out there, it's him. It’s a struggle, because he was my best friend, so I'd like to think he was there. But at the core, I don’t believe in that stuff—and scientific, tangible evidence tells me that I’m right.”

“Yeah, but not everything is tangible,” I say.

“Absolutely,” he says. “And that’s why there’s so much… gray area.”

He lets out an exhausted laugh as he says these last two words. He smears his palm against his face, troubled by the mystery more so than most of us. It’s a lot easier to ask questions about the unknowable than to answer them, and so I change the subject.

“Are you a big hero?” I ask. “Or the biggest hero?”

“Pffft! I wouldn't call myself a hero because I didn't protect anybody. But if I was forced to call myself a hero, what the hell, I'd call myself the biggest hero.”  

Well played! Who could argue with that?

###

On the drive home I dwell on Joel’s rejection of the miracle more so than anything else. He’s right about science and luck, but I feel empty wishing there was more. I want to believe in miracles like kids and saints do. Whether it’s salvation by a beer belt buckle or God, sometimes it pays to have faith in the unlikely.

When I listen to the playback of our interview, I notice Tom Petty in the background commanding, “Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me” at about the same time I ask my first question. “Big Shot” cues while Joel describes what it’s like to be shot. Choir boys begin singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in angelic falsettos as he discusses his departed friend.

My bright, gruff, tough, hilarious, Pabst-swigging pal would probably chalk that up to coincidence. Whereas a daydreaming dope like me craves a deeper meaning. I can’t fall asleep that night until I replay part of his take on faith:

“If there's a Goddamn God and you believe in God, then fuck off and let Him take care of it.”

The Gospel according to Joel. Pabst be with you.

Advice from a Powerball Winner

I don't want to be melodramatic, but life is hard. It can be staggering. We're all surrounded by hardship and adversity, and that's just the way it. Sometimes I feel like I'm teetering on the brink of hopelessness, and I've never even had to endure a riot in Baltimore or an earthquake in Nepal, never been among the unlucky ones picked by God or the lack thereof and told without sympathy: “Now deal with this.”

But I've been told to calm down and quit my griping—to persevere in the face of that hardship and adversity. That was the gist of the advice I got from a commenter on my blog, anyway, and I've decided to turn his missive over to you. It's the manifesto of a young man with a bold claim to all the answers. He might actually be onto something, and I'll leave it to you to feel happy or sad about that. Here's the philosophy of a brash go-getter who referred to himself as “President Boobs Magnet.”

President BM: 

Yo, I found your name and site by accident while Googling 'Nips Ogle,' and I guess I'm not the best speller in the world. Anyway, I gotta call bull on some of your sentences and stuff. Keeping a positive state of mind might be a challenge to a bum, but I'm here to tell you that life really isn't that hard. If you want to succeed, all you've got to do is man up, get out there and grab the world where it hurts, and correctly guess all six numbers of the Powerball drawing like I did.

Listen here, crybaby. I'm a first-time reader, last-time reader. Name's President Boobs Magnet. There was a different, worse name on my birth certificate, but I decided to remix my whole persona the day I earned my man card by winning that $550,000,000 jackpot. I also celebrated with family and friends by raging at a Chuck E. Cheese's on Ecstasy. Looking back, a lot of cool shit went down on my 18^th birthday.

After skimming through a story you did, I believe you're overdue for a swift boot to the butt, courtesy of the boot of a millionaire. And my boots are made of diamond-studded gold, so you'd best have an insurance card, son. Your big words don't scare me. Hell, anyone can self-publish two books. I did! The first was called Books Are for Losers. I'm too rich to care about the irony. It's 70 pages of dope rhymes plus some finger paintings inspired by Breaking Bad. My second effort was The Powerballin' Pimp, an erotic pop-up book that has been banned in 24 countries and parts of the Bible Belt.

So, heed my advice. Even though you failed to win the Powerball on your 18^th birthday like so many other losers, you can still make something of your life. As we say at the marina, you must pull yourself up by the bootstraps before you can pull your head out of your butt, and when I say “self,” I mean “balls,” and when I say “butt,” I mean “purse.” You'd better stop making excuses, reach skyward for that brass ring, and show that Powerball who's wearin' the pants.

The idea of me reading your gripes is whack. You think my life has been perfect and painless??? What about those hard-fought 17 years when I didn't have an 11-figure bank account if you include the cents? Do you think I could afford the Batmobile from Batman Begins when I bought my first car? Hell no. I had to wait until I was 18 to do that. My dad's hookup as the owner of a dealership could only manage me a measly 2009 Lexus. And did I complain? Not often. 

And do you think I've lost my drive just because I'll never have to work another day in my life? Go frig yourself. I stay busy. My Tuesdays and Thursdays are dedicated to chugging bottles of blue Gatorade and Cristal and whizzing off the top of a parking garage. 

Also, my weekends are pretty well booked with the ultimate test of endurance: Marathons. Sex marathons, that is. And they don't always go perfectly. This one gymnast from Switzerland even left me with a bruised hip that kind of hurt for two days. So no, to answer my own "triple-?" question from before, my life is NOT all perfect and painless.

You know, not everyone has what it takes to hire disgraced Food Network personalities to cook their meals, or pay the principal ten-grand to fart into the microphone on graduation day, or visit the White House to see the quote-unquote “real president” only to give that broke-ass chump the finger, but winners find a way to make it happen. So, quit feeling sorry for yourself, manifest your destiny, and tell those 1: 175,223,510 odds they should have their doubts about YOU.

Real Ballers pick their own numbers, by the way. Do you think a stroke of genius like 11, 19, 29, 32, 54, 12 was an accident? Get real. Those are the numbers of my favorite players on the Patriots. I put my trust in the reigning champs with Tom “Gisele Bangin'” Brady as the Powerball and BOOM! A cool half-billion, yo. And if the haters wanna scoff at P-Ball 12 and his four-game suspension, they should know that the penalty was going to be a lot worse before I bribed the commissioner with a spaceship.

                          ^ President Boobs Magnet moments before the Cristal and Gatorade led him to "Make it rain!"^ 

                                                          

If you don't have the spine to get rich like me and those football dudes, so be it. But I'll tell you what the best part of being insanely wealthy is. It's claiming Devils Lake State Park as your backyard, having all the knuckleheads who run onto the field during ballgames brought to you in chains and set loose in the wild like frantic prey—with former pop star Aaron Carter to serve by your side as gun caddie, wingman, second banana, source on what it's like to have a Backstreet Boy for an older brother, lackey, and personal slave. A.C. is learning the hard way that real friendship means answering the freaking fan mail I sent him in like 2003, when I just wanted to know why I wasn't invited to “Aaron's Party." And that's what life is all about.

As for this “fan mail," I'm just about ready to drop the microphone. In closing, maybe I can deliver a bombshell to prove a point: I didn't even win the jackpot on my first ticket. In fact, all the numbers were wrong on that one. But did I surrender to defeat? No. I learned a lesson—to never trust “quick pick” ever again. Then I looked at the other ticket I had bought, and that was the winner.

Now that's what I call perseverance. 

Yours Truly with a Microphone Drop,

President Boobs Magnet

You Can't Fire Me 'Cause I Quit

We all know that puffing on a cigarette makes anybody look astoundingly cool. Put in a historical context, smoking is a part of Americana. Soldiers in World War II movies sometimes expelled all their ammo, but as good fortune would have it, they never ran out of Lucky Strikes. During the heyday of crooners, cancer sticks meant as much to the legacy of the Rat Pack as their mistrust of the Japanese, and millions used to fantasize about rollin' in the linen and doin' some sinnin' with puffers like Humphrey Bogart, Betty Grable, and countless other stars who mysteriously died before they turned 60. Did you know John “Duke” Wayne smoked upwards of SIX PACKS a day? Clint Eastwood might have had a fistful of steel, but that's nothing compared to John Wayne and his iron lungs. In my smoking prime, I could not compete with the Duke, and now, it saddens me deeply to think that I never will.

Astoundingly cool as it is, I had to quit. Now, it's usually not my style, but I crunched some numbers to justify my decision. The occasional scoop on the news and the overall word on the street hinted that those ads from the '50s that boasted the vitamin content of cigarettes were slightly fabricated... Maybe even dishonest.

 

(I mean, this tubby sack of shit isn't even real, so who do you trust?)

Folks, those revelations upset me. On the all-important scale of Vitamin Goodness, what I once presumed to be a seven out of 10 was only like a FOUR out of 10?! You gotta be shittin' me. I began to wonder if it was really worth it to pay $8.48 to breathe in tar, rat poison, and a surprising lack of vitamins.

On a more personal note, I was always bothered by the saying, “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” It made me worry. I wondered, what are the chances a woman is going to be turned on by licking an ashtray? 25, 30% tops? Taking those keenly guessed stats into account, I decided that pursuing women who don't get kinky with ashtrays was probably a wiser bet than the alternative in my ongoing search for a soulmate.

Most importantly, I burned through roughly one pack every three days. Compared to others, that is both paltry and humiliating. For me to match the carcinogenic greatness of John “Duke” Wayne, I'd need to be cloned a staggering seventeen times. If I'm going to be a measly fraction of the smoker the Duke was, to hell with it, I must be in the wrong racket, playing a game in which I could not prevail. If John Wayne was the Michael Jordan of inhaling grits, I was a fledgling bum on the bench who needed to retire.

A week into my bout with quitting, a friend spotted me at our favorite bar. Incidentally, she happened to be a friend who had survived brain cancer.

“What's new?'' she said.

“Well, one new thing is that I'm trying to quit smoking.”

“Dude,” she said pointedly. Her eyes bulged and jumped like almonds tossed in the air. “Sorry to tell you this, but I thought that was even harder than chemo.”

We had a good laugh about that.

“Any advice?” I said. “What did you do when it got really tough?”

“I prayed.”

For a moment, I contemplated.

“I have other methods,” I said.

That turned out to be true, but one such method was re-burning stubs in order to get a minimal fix of nicotine. Early on, that minimal fix was what it took for me to resist buying a pack. Life's funny: One reason I decided to quit was this newfangled desire to become cleaner and more hygienic. And by smoking once a day knowing it was the most desperate, disgusting way to do it, by digging into my car's ashtray for mini-periscopes to torch again, I think I'm finally on my way to getting cleaner and more hygienic.

Aside from praying or chuffing re-burns, there are countless ways to cope when quitting gets really tough. And as long as you keep your goal in mind and try as hard as you can, there's no reason for shame or judgment. During the more aggressive phase of my nicotine withdrawal, I did some things I'm not especially proud of, and there were times when my anger and neurosis got the best of me, but I'm sure a lot of ex-smokers can relate.

For instance, I didn't know about the “Kool-Aid Man Fails.” You can ask any RJ Reynolds revolter about these incidents. Kool-Aid Man Fails occur when your entire being is overtaken by a craving so powerful and evil that you gnash your teeth and boldly crash into the nearest wall. No one knows what goes through our heads when we launch into Kool-Aid Man Fails; maybe we fleetingly believe there are cigarettes on the other side of the wall, and to crash through the wall represents the most direct path. In my experience, I didn't exactly break through that wall like a certain jolly, indestructible logo has done to earn the love of America, nor did I even leave a dent beneath my hat-rack, but I'm proud to say I didn't break a single bone in my face. All I got was a “severe” concussion, but I'll be fine. The thing I want to reiterate is this: Tropical Punch, Oh-Yeah Orange-Pineapple and cigarettes, plus a visit to the neurologist on Tuesday, and Great Blueberry! Remember, you'll be able to quit if you believe in yourself, Purplesaurus Rex.

Anyway, you know what else caught me off-guard? The Grand Theft Auto flashbacks. Those were insane! I had no idea that, because I was enduring a lack of nicotine that was becoming a real shock to my system, I'd get a little case of the cuckoos and convince myself I was a hooligan rampaging in a GTA game, that I had to get out there on the streets and run amok, maybe throw some Molotov cocktails at hookers. Thankfully, my hallucination had a happy ending, as my throw was far off the mark, the bottle I used was actually just half-filled with harmless Faygo, the women in question were not hookers but rather upstanding members of our community, and they chased me down and beat me up.

If you're gonna say no to something as funky as Parliament Lights, moods swings and fits of mischief are to be expected. It's not uncommon to surprise loved ones by toting a large, red sack and promising them a present, reaching inward and fishing around, only to pull out a hand flipping them a towering middle finger. I've been there, so don't sweat it.

Feelings of spite are par for the quitting course, so I know I'm not the only one who broke into a Kinko's after dark, used their machines to counterfeit some Grateful Dead tickets, and scammed a couple hippies out of 80 bucks.

Perhaps the biggest appeal of the withdrawal phase is all the swearing. Seldom choir boys and girls to begin with, a smoker in the act of quitting can out-cuss the Wu-Tang Clan and your racist uncle put in the same room together. Heck, I even coined a few obscenities as I seethed with toxic fury. Staring at a coworker's pack of Camels and muttering “Cocktobitch,” as well as shouting “Shitosaurus!” as I drove past another smokes-laden gas station were true feats of creative Tourette's.

“Fucktocrotch!”

That's what came out of my mouth on day nine when I scoured through the ashtray and found no more worthy re-burns. I sat up and throttled the steering wheel, blue eyes flaring in the sun. The closest gas station was a mere two blocks away. 

As I let go of the wheel, I was yearning for something bad and I had exhausted all my methods. There was nothing else to do. 

And so I prayed.