140 miles east of cool » American Metaphors

Some Dreamers Along the Golden Line

Brad Johnson — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:45:18 +0000

The guy at the front of the Reno Trader Joe's checkout line catches my eye and chuckles "A thousand bucks man. Eight days worth of Burning Man chow. For our whole camp. Crazy." He and his buddy slap down their credit cards on what seems an impossible amount of food to consume in those days, even for people hardlining for some organic, free-range style munchies.

The Mind Eraser

Brad Johnson — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:27:09 +0000

“My feet. That’s the signal. They start twitching. And I know it’s coming,” C tells me. Out the window of the rushing train, the sun climbs up out of the eastern horizon of Colorado. I met C early this morning for the first time after she agreed to be interviewed for a project I’m working [...]

American Sinai: Wovoka & the Ghost Dance of Walker Lake

Brad Johnson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:49:38 +0000

This is hallowed ground. Indigenous America’s Mt. Sinai. It’s Sea of Galilee. The birthplace of the Messiah, of late 19th century Indian Hope, and, as always (always) despair.

The Repressed Psychic at the Corner Bakery

Brad Johnson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:10:38 +0000

And so vibrators become vibrations, and yoga becomes big business, and cupcakes tremble behind glass, and psychics get LLCs and graduate degrees, and the world becomes more exquisitely repressed and sanitized.

(Beach) Apocalypse Now

Brad Johnson — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:41:28 +0000

I love this photo in a kind of "postcards from the apocalypse" kind of way. The way the photo inverts the usual overly bright and shiny beach postcard genre. It's gorgeously unsentimental and tragic.

Reading Virgil on the New York Stock Exchange Floor

Brad Johnson — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:41:52 +0000

Lower Manhattan, New York City 7a.m. I rest in front of George Washington’s statue at Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street. I sit with my camera bag waiting for the light to move so I can get a good exterior shot of the New York Stock Exchange across the street. I am on assignment this [...]

Chuck the Body Into Canada

Brad Johnson — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:38:21 +0000

…snapping her phone shut: “Well, that was Dan, he did it, he bought that place near me with the dead guy in the septic.” “I don’t know why he doesn’t just haul that thing outta there, walk across the border, and chuck it into Canada.” - Two older Montana women overheard in the Denver Airport [...]

Light & Letters | Words & Images of Hunger

Brad Johnson — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:12:34 +0000

Radio can pierce. Voice stabs me in a way very few things do. Someone's voice on the radio is intimate, like you're either being held by them or holding them. Close.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Ash Wednesday and the Mark of Cain

Brad Johnson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:17:19 +0000

Given that the swastika is often read as a kind of perverted cross, and the marking of the forehead has a particular religious resonance, we can read that Raine's forehead carvings invert the Ash Wednesday observance. The Ash Wednesday marking is a highly ritualized display of absolution. Raine's marking scenes are highly stylized rituals of condemnation intended to foreclose such absolution. Aldo's knife is a pen (however worn the analogy) with which he carves/writes/creates a space where evil cannot repent, a person cannot be forgiven, cannot switch sides, cannot become new, cannot shed a uniform for new clothes and be cleansed.

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation?

Brad Johnson — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:46:44 +0000

Now, finding my daughter hula-hooping or wearing wigs (even a man-wig) isn't surprising. She scours thrift and costume stores for groovy wigs and is building a nice collection. She's got a Liz Taylor wig, two Amelia Earhart wigs, a Paula Dean wig. Her Roger Daltrey wig is her only man-wig. It's the combination of the wig and The Who and what those things meant to me in my own identity-formation that took me back a bit, equally as much as hearing my guileless pre-teen daughter belt out "we're all wasted."

The Super Bowl as directed by Tarantino, Lynch, Anderson, Godard, Herzog

Brad Johnson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:34:21 +0000

What might the Super Bowl look like if directed by Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, or Werner Herzog?

Infinite Jest: Rodent shifts Time-Space Continuum and Other Thoughts on a Minor Holiday

Brad Johnson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:48:22 +0000

It's fitting on a day in which a largish varmint shivs the meteorological time-space continuum that the popular U.S. show Lost returns to explode what's left of our collective brains. When we last left the hapless survivors of Oceanic 815 they too had cut loose from the time-space continuum (ok, I'll stop using that phrase cause I don't really know what it means because it involves math and I have all the mathematical prowess of a weather-predicting whistle-pig).

When Less is More | a J.D. Salinger Appreciation

Brad Johnson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:56:52 +0000

He's been gone for forty-four years, but today he passed over. Expect the mainstream media to wallow in the "J.D. Salinger" question for the next week: they'll enshrine his absence from public life all these years and ask whether or not his life was good, or bad.

Howard Zinn: 1922-2010

Brad Johnson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:28:14 +0000

After reading Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Bruce Springsteen sat down, wrote, and recorded "Nebraska," perhaps his best social and political work. Zinn once said he decided to write A People's History after listening to Woody Guthrie's lyrics about Colorado's Ludlow Massacre. Guthrie goosed Bob Dylan towards political consciousness who in turn moved Springsteen to consider writing stories "from below" -- stories against the grain of the "great men" theory of history.

Broadsheets and Chalkboards | The Daily Talk

Brad Johnson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:04:41 +0000

The swan song for traditional media is as incessant as it is unquestioned. Don't tell that to San Francisco's Dave Eggers or Liberia's Alfred Sirleaf. In radically different ways, under radically different conditions, they both open a space for the newspaper's relevance in a landscape of navel-gazing corporate media non-stop blather-a-thon (oh, and blogs, let's not forget blogorrhea).

The Upper Cut: Walt Young Hangs up His (and his Father’s) Shears

Brad Johnson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:48:29 +0000

Walt Young cut hair on East Colfax in Denver for 60 years. His chair was less than 6 feet from the sidewalk, a constant parade of homeless winos. Walt never let that thin sheet of glass get in the way. Everyone came in to his shop.

Born on Third: on Drinking with Racists (Strike One)

Brad Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:46:22 +0000

A friend of mine likes to tell the joke: the reason I don't like George Bush is that he was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple.

Hardin Jail/American Police Force President Michael Hilton: Scam Artist or True Western Hero?

Brad Johnson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:31:09 +0000

Here's a new joke we tell out here in the windswept plains of eastern Montana: what do you get when you cross a wanna-be Serbian Militant with a Southern California car salesman? That's right, the keys to the Hardin Jail.

Hardin jail Updates

Brad Johnson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:36:47 +0000

Shay named spokesperson for American Police Force “American Police Force, the company contracting with Two Rivers Authority to run its new-but-empty jail in Hardin, announced Friday its new public relations person. Becky Shay, a former Billings Gazette reporter whose beat included the Hardin facility, accepted the position Friday.”…..(click link to continue) Job applicants overwhelm American [...]

The Fix Is In (140Miles East of Cool Recommends)

Brad Johnson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:06:49 +0000

OK. You surrender. The little white flag is now raised high over your cubicle. Your weekend is all laid out for you. After taking the kids to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you'll take in The Informant. Why? Helloooooo. Do you really think we have a choice? Is NOT choosing to slap down the green on the new Diablo Cody/Megan Fox vehicle Jennifer's Body really "voting with your dollars" or are you caught in a double-bind with your consumptive choices cordoned all around you and shoveled down your sometimes-metaphorical throat?

In Defense of Fanaticism: Breaking Into the Twin Towers

Brad Johnson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:10:27 +0000

They were a ragtag band living overseas watching the World Trade Center towers go up. And they knew, even before the towers were built, that they were going to break into the towers; they knew they were going to commit crimes. They spent six years planning every aspect of the operation: where to hide inside the building, how to sneak in, the rotations of the guards. It was an exercise in extreme detail and brilliance.

Obama Wets His Line in Montana

Brad Johnson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:12 +0000

I often find myself checking out the White House Flickr stream, partly because I like Pete Souza's photography, and partly because Souza uses the same camera and similar lenses to me which makes me curious about his shots (and Flickr posts much of the metadata so the nerds can check out lens, aperture, etc.) I also find that on the White House Flickr stream, one can find really candid and interesting photos. For example this one, where the Park Ranger at Grand Canyon is clearly holding the President's ear while the Obama kids are bored out of their skulls, hunched over in the hot sun with that "dad, can we just go now" body slump.

The Public Option in Short: Robert Reich Lays It Out

Brad Johnson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:04:42 +0000

National Park Fee Free Days, in a word, glorious

Brad Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:00:58 +0000

While Yellowstone is posting record numbers of visitors this year, National Parks as a whole have seen attendance slide in recent years. In hopes of reversing the trend and re-introducing folks to our wonderful public lands heritage, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced back in June that the Department would waive entrance fees nationwide to all parks on three prime summer weekends. This is no small offer as park entrance fees have really climbed in past years. Nearby Yellowstone sits at $25 for entrance (that does give in and out privileges for 7 days).

Weekend Update: the Vacuous Morsel Edition

Brad Johnson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:46:04 +0000

in which we discuss Michael Jackson, Willie Nelson, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Homer's Odyssey, Slavoj Zizek, the algorithmic brains of Google, Mark Sanford, Twitter, the advertising wiles of Abercrombie & Fitch, and the ongoing infantilization of culture (on a Saturday no less!).

A tough day to be a blonde

Brad Johnson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:05:11 +0000

Millions of us grew up in the '70s and 80s playing "cowboys and indians" by day and staring at her poster by night.

Infinite Summer: Reading DFW’s Infinite Jest

Brad Johnson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:09:18 +0000

I suppose I also wept a fair bit because his suicide frightened me. It raised the specter of suicide as a kind of foreordained trajectory, a price one pays for a Wallaceonian empathy, for a DFW-tuned brain. This is an age-old notion usually dismissed as sophomoric and romantic. Still, it's not often in your life you read someone who reminds you that you're not alone only to wake up one morning and find that once again you are.

Just Another Day at the Beach: 60 Million Years Too Late

Brad Johnson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:00:52 +0000

Science has a way of creeping up on you. It's sneakyâ€”like classical music can be sneaky. One day you're thrashing to the Ramones and Nine Inch Nails and the next you find yourself in tears in the middle of your living room because you just heard Lazlo Varga play a cello in ways you never thought possible and the strings' vibrations reached out and bent you into a kind of fetal position of perverse ecstasy.

A Tale of Two Cities

Brad Johnson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:18:42 +0000

Each June I become perversely interested in the Stanley Cup. Like a migratory bird, I wake up one morning in spring with my homing beacon dialed in to the NHL. It never fails. I don't watch much hockey during the regular season, but from mid-to-late May through June I'm a crazed hockey fan.

Welcome to Montanamo Bay: Hardin Montana continues its campaign to become Gitmo North

Brad Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:51:03 +0000

Al-Jazeera? Yes, that network. The local news gave it all the shock-value of an invasion of the Taliban. In reality, the crew was two white dudes -- one from D.C., one from Canada. It looked more like the invasion of the Nordic News Network. Not since Dick Cheney and his fishing guide swooped down in a Blackhawk helicopter to fish the nearby Bighorn have two white dudes garnered so much attention in Hardin.

Tripping on Food: My Own Version of Eating Local

Brad Johnson — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:02:41 +0000

When Fluitt and I used to travel on business together, we sought out the reptilian, the amphibious, and various forms of aquatic vertebrates for dinner. We went for alligator in Texas, frog legs in France, what we could only semi-translate as "pot-of-fish" in a tiny, dark, Korean restaurant off the Champs-Elysee; and something that looked like a half-fish-half-kimodo-dragon, perhaps more suited to an evolutionary exhibit than used as culinary enticement, that pulled us in off the street in a back alley walk up in Hong Kong.

The Darkness is Light Enough

Brad Johnson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:21:47 +0000

Last night, like many around the globe, we shut off our lights in solidarity with Earth Hour. Now, it's easy for me to get really cynical about these kinds of things. The event is, after all, a symbolic and licensed subversion which rather than producing the effect it desires, produces only a spectacle of that effect without any meaningful change (which is a kind of fascism, but I digress!

At the End of An American Metaphor: Santa Monica Pier, Route 66

Brad Johnson — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:48:35 +0000

Santa Monica Pier, the terminus of Main Street America, Route 66. A washed-up dead seal bobs in and out of the incoming waves, drawing the attention of beachcombers lazily walking this strip of sand at the edge of America, this resting place of the American Dream of westward expansion.