Ever Wonder Why So Many Business Travelers - Like Me - Are Lardasses?

I'm about to embark on a span of weekly travel for the next three weeks or so, maybe more. When it comes to work, I don't book my own stuff; I tell a woman in the office where I need to be and when, and she handles it. Today I received a hotel confirmation (in St. Louis, Missouri), and this is one of their selling points:

We can't wait to have you as our guest at Drury Hotels, where the Extras Aren't Extra! Join us for free hot food and cold beverages at the 5:30 Kickback^®. Sunday through Thursday, enjoy a rotating menu of chicken strips, egg rolls, hot dogs, charbroiled meatballs and more. Start a great Friday or Saturday night with hot dogs and chili. And every night, you will find baked potatoes, salad, beer, wine and mixed drinks available. There's something for everyone at Drury's 5:30 Kickback. Click here for more details.

Mmm, how about that menu? Charbroiled freakin' meatballs. All-you-can-eat hot dogs. Ugh. No wonder I avoid hotel food. . . .

I Know Where I'll Be on Christmas Day

Now this is what I'm talking about.

Riding on the Celebrity Train

More astounding than my getting up at 4:45 AM on a Monday was the fact that friggin' Julia got up that early too! That requires an act of Goddess, believe me. I was up to make sure she made it downtown to the KECI studios, our local NBC affiliate, to be a guest on the Montana Today show. It was pretty exciting, as neither one of us had been in a TV studio before. The folks there had apparently heard about her story in the Missoulian last week and had contacted her about being on the show. Last Thursday afternoon this was the scene out front of our house, as a cameraman came out to take some shots of her sewing studio; her "atelier" to be precise (everything she does, and where she does it, is way fancier than what I do).

He shot some video to run during the interview, then today was the big morning. We headed down to the studio and were let in, then guided to seats not 15 feet away from where all the action was going on . . . live!

The brunette on the left is meteorologist Brooke Foster, and the host is Hasalyn Harris. They were very nice; during breaks we chatted a little bit and joked around. Everyone there -- and there were only a few people; besides the superstars on camera we had Megan the producer, the cameraman, and three or four techs in the control room -- was very professional. It was so foreign to me, watching all this happen, because I've never done anything like it before. It was fascinating, and seemed to go off like a well-oiled machine, particularly in how they would go back and forth between on-camera shots and video feeds from other sources. Hasalyn said they'd had some severe technical problems earlier with a crashed server that provides their video feeds, but luckily they'd resolved them before we arrived. Very cool -- I dig this kind of thing.

Right before Julia's segment, Hasalyn spoke with Darko Butorac, Music Director of the Missoula Symphony, to promote this weekend's performance. It was kind of weird, because I was sitting literally five feet or so away. I'm glad my stomach didn't unleash one of its Godzilla-like howls right in the middle of their discussion!

Next up was Julia's big moment. They got all situated, Hasalyn went over what her plan was, and then they were off.

UPDATE: The actual video can be seen RIGHT HERE!

I think in a couple days the actual segment will be online via the KECI page, but here is the crappy camera video I shot. This is kind of the "behind the scenes" version. I'm sure it will be a special feature some day on the Donkeygirl Special Edition DVD.



It was a fun experience. What's kind of funny is Hasalyn Harris is one of my "twitter friends" and we've actually exchanged several messages. When I thanked her later this morning, via Twitter, this was her response:

@hasalynharris Wait a minute - now I get it! I had no idea you were YOU this morning! Sorry I didn't say HI!

Hasalyn is from North Bend, WA, just east of Seattle. I love that town; last time I was through there was when I got to play Dr. Doolittle on top of Mount Si. Hasalyn is a filmmaker and blogger as well, which you should check out. I really like the name, Alone in a Forest. Very cool.

Times like this is when I re-realize all over again that Missoula is such a cool town. And something of a small world too, especially when dealing with creative types. I dig it.

Most Guys Don't Deserve to Get This Lucky

Saturday morning I got up feeling pretty excited for the day ahead of me -- I'd been invited out for a full-on date that night with this hot redhead I've had my eye on for quite some time now. Of course I accepted! I went for a run that morning, then kept myself pretty busy the rest of the day in anticipation of the evening's festivities. The plan was for dinner at 5:00 PM, then a movie after. I got home around 4:00 and got all showered up and dressed up as much as I'm capable of, which isn't saying much. Just a dress shirt and some jeans (which I was able to wear again for the first time in about three years, thanks to the combination of running/hiking/lifting weights/hitting heavy bag/etc.), and some boots. First time I've had long pants on since about April, if memory serves.

Of course my date looked hot. Smokin' hot. One of the local hotshot hairdressers had a last minute cancellation, so my date was able to get in at the last minute. The place is called Boom Swagger Salon, and they do great work. My date had this form-fitting turquoise dress made out of silk on, and she said she made it herself. I felt pretty outclassed, but she didn't seem to mind. We drove downtown, parked the truck, then crossed the street to have a fancy dinner at Scotty's Table.

Scotty’s Table is the place for simple, yet sophisticated French Bistro fare in the heart of downtown Missoula. Located on the park level of the historic Wilma building, Scotty’s Table is where casual Missoula meets urban Grill. We feature simple, fresh ingredients from local growers combined with flavors from Europe and the Mediterranean for a creative New American twist on classic fare.

I love this restaurant, even though I don't understand half the stuff on the menu.

The food was great, the service was excellent, and the conversation was better than I could ever imagine. I have to say I was pretty distracted by the beauty of my date. I asked her if I could take a picture of her with my phone, even though it takes terrible pictures. She said okay. This shot doesn't halfway do her justice.

After we ate (and had dessert, of course), we headed over to the theater and watched The Town. It was as good as I hoped it would be. I was afraid I was going to have to fight the couple behind us though because over a few minute span their cell phone went off a couple times and they were a bit too loud and frequent with the jibber jabber. They piped down eventually, luckily for them. Being with such a gorgeous woman must have had my testosterone-flooded blood running a little closer to the surface, I don't know.



It was a fantastic date.

The next morning* I got up went to get the paper while she was still luxuriating in bed. Lo and behold, this very woman was in the friggin' Missoulian! Little did I know I'd dated a bonefied celebrity the night before!

photo by Linda Thompson of the Missoulian

Check this out from the article:

A blue silk dress designed by DonkeyGirl in Missoula is slated to appear on an upcoming segment of NBC’s “Today” show.

DonkeyGirl is Julia LaTray’s clothing design label, and this year for the first time, LaTray opened a booth at the Saturday People’s Market. She sells casual clothing there, but she also outfits a mannequin in a shimmering fuchsia party dress as an example of the formal designs people can custom-order.

Guess whose eyes the shiny dress caught? Those of Tracey Lomrantz, contributing style editor for Glamour magazine. Lomrantz, on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, landed in Missoula this summer because of her sweetie’s love for the movie “A River Runs Through It.”

Wow. This is a picture of another woman I know modeling the very dress being discussed!

Fancy, eh? Apparently this hot redhead I'd gone out with, aka DonkeyGirl, has a website. And she sells her stuff on Etsy.

Also, this past September 11th marked the 5-year anniversary of the date I loaded up her stuff in a rental van and hauled her and her dogs up from Tucson to Missoula. Two of the dogs rode on the dashboard almost the entire way up.

Almost a year later we ran off to Idaho and got hitched.

She's been an excellent addition to the family, doing a Saint's work in putting up with me and my obnoxious mutant offspring, even during the year she was a brunette and her Redhead Powers were slightly weakened.

She's no one trick donkey either; this girl does lots of other cool things too; musician, artist, entrepreneur, dancer, etc.

We do a lot of fun stuff together as well.

And the best thing is, I still get very excited every time I get another chance to spend time with her. I'm a lucky, lucky man, and bringing her out of the desert was probably the smartest thing I've ever done.


* if you think I'm going to speak of the events that transpired between leaving the movie, the (happy) ending of the date, and this next part of my story, you clearly don't understand how much of a gentleman I am. go be a pervert somewhere else

David Thompson Went Out of His Way to be My Friend

Today is a sad day in the mystery/crime writing world; very sad. If you are part of this community, this is no news to you, but a man I didn't know as well as I'm sure I eventually would have, but still called my friend, passed away suddenly yesterday; David Thompson of Busted Flush Press, and Murder By the Book bookstore in Houston. It's a loss that is still reverberating through the tight-knit group of people who were fortunate to know him.

I met David just about a year ago. I was new to the whole crime writing thing, and still exploring and learning about the various authors and must-read books. I was in Houston for work, and visited the store. I knew David worked there, but didn't know him, had never even spoken with him. That changed. I looked around the shop and had a couple books in my hands at checkout. He immediately engaged me in conversation, and before long we were chattering away like old friends. His enthusiasm for books and writing was infectious, and I was filled with an energy to attack my own work with renewed vigor. I walked out of the store loaded down with books that introduced brand new waves of book-geek excitement, as well as new authors I'd never read; Dan Simmons' Joe Kurtz crime books. Megan Abbott. Tom Piccirilli. I was after a Duane Swierczynski book and left with three (Duane's own tribute to David is a must read). Hell, David's enthusiasm for Swierczynski has made me such a fan that I've written the man's name so much over the last year that I don't even need to check the spelling anymore.

Since then I've been in weekly contact with David. When I told him I had a novella coming out next spring, he extended an open invitation to do a reading. He hit me with book recommendations he thought I might like, remembering the stuff I was into. He'd sometimes see me on Facebook and just start a "how's it going" chat. He was on me constantly about registering for NoirCon, and meeting up with him again to knock back a couple beers was one of the things I was looking forward to most. He was just a straight-up, genuine kind of guy that was quick to offer support and encouragement with my own writing.

All of this kindness he showed a guy who just happened to show up in his store with a bunch of enthusiasm for something he was also passionate about. It speaks to the strength of this writing community, something so weird to me coming from the generally cutthroat and jealousy-ridden world of independent music. I've met some great people through Mr. Thompson, and I am very sad that I won't be able to have that beer with him.

Based on the tributes various people have posted of their own -- like this one, or this one, or this one, and this one too -- it is clear the man influenced many people every bit as much as he influenced me. Like I said, today is a sad day. He was a well-loved man that will be remembered for a long time. I feel for his close friends and his family. He will be missed.

The Wolverine Way

I'm really digging this book, The Wolverine Way, by Douglas H. Chadwick, that I mentioned the other day, so sue me for mentioning it again. Today I was searching online to see if Chadwick has a website and came across this video trailer for the book. I really like it. It may take a while to load, but it's worth watching. At least to me it is.

The Wolverine Way - by Douglas H. Chadwick from Wild Collective on Vimeo.

Here's an article/interview with Chadwick about the book and study from my local paper, the Missoulian, well worth checking out.

Finally, here is a great essay he wrote for Patagonia. Good stuff!

Adventures Ain't the Same Without One

Ever wonder about the Swiss Army Knife (the one to the left is the Swiss Army Officers Knife from 1897), its history and where it comes from? This article from The Outside Blog will answer that question for you, and I thought it was pretty interesting in a "Hmm, that's cool" kind of way. I enjoy knowing stuff like this, even if I forget it moments later.

As every manly man knows (and more than a few women's women), everyone should carry a pocketknife. What really sucks is how airlines won't allow passengers to carry them anymore. I call bullshit. Flying out of a place like Missoula International, I can't tell you how many guys I've seen stripped of the knives holstered on their belts, stowed there just after years of habit. I prefer a world where grizzled men have knives on their belts instead of fucking Blackberries anyway. It's a travesty, is what it is.

Ghosts in the Hollow

In the words of writer Stephen Blackmoore, who posted the link to this video via Twitter, this video is "beautiful and haunting." I've spent a fair amount of time in that part of the country, and the impact is always breathtaking.

Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

How'd Your Summer Reading Go?

Back in June I wrote a blog post about the books I hoped to read over the summer, and actually got some great comments. I also really enjoyed having my list out there as a benchmark to shoot for; not because I thought anyone who frequents this blog was actually wondering, "I wonder how that La Tray guy is doing with his summer reading list?" but just because it seemed to make me accountable to myself. See, I buy too many damn books, and ones that I just had to have when I bought them often get shuffled to the bottom of the old TBR pile as new ones float in and out of the queue. I stacked the ones up I listed next to the little desk I use downstairs, and dove in. Now that summer is over, I thought I'd revisit the list. Yeah, yeah, summer isn't officially over for a couple weeks yet, but we can pretty much accept Labor Day as the end, can't we?

So how did I do?

I did read all of those thirteen books I listed. Here they are again, with links to my (very) short reviews on Goodreads:

• The Last Great Fight by Joe Layden (fiction)
• Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth (fiction)
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (fiction)
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann (nonfiction)
• True Grit by Charles Portis (fiction)
• The Raven's Gift by Jon Turk (nonfiction)
• A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield (fiction)
• A Bad Day for Pretty by Sophie Littlefield (fiction)
• American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell (fiction)
• Body by Harry Crews (fiction)
• A Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan (nonfiction)
• The Song is You by Megan Abbott (fiction)
• Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (fiction)

Besides those books, I also managed to knock these out, getting the last one in just under the wire on Labor Day:

• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (nonfiction)
• The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (fiction)
• Hunt Among the Killers of Men by David J. Schow (fiction)
• Savages by Don Winslow (fiction)
• The Cold Kiss by John Rector (fiction)
• Be Ready When the Shit Goes Down by Forrest Griffin and Erich Krauss (nonfiction)
• Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (fiction)
• Chasing the Dragon by Nicholas Kaufmann (fiction)
• Without a Paddle by Warren Richey (nonfiction)
• Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass (fiction)
• Gun Work by David J. Schow (fiction)

I had a great summer reading. I enjoyed every book, and while I give out a lot of 4-star books I don't give out that many 5-star ones . . . and more than a couple of these earned the 5. While I read mostly fiction, I managed to read a couple nonfiction titles that really entertained and inspired me. I revisited some old favorite authors and discovered some new ones I can't wait to read more from. I really have no complaints, and I'll happily talk about any of these titles if anyone is interested!

What about the rest of you? Read anything good?

Next up . . . the Fall Reading Queue. . . .

Sounds Like a Blueprint for Living

I just started reading a book called The Wolverine Way by Douglas H. Chadwick. It's about an in-depth study of one of the most mysterious, and unknown, predators in North America, the wolverine. By coincidence, considering our recent outing, the study was undertaken in Glacier Park. So far I really like it, as I expected to. It fits the bill as one of my favorite types of books: part educational, part adventure story, and part just a good read.

Chadwick is turning 60 years old at the time he was involved with this study. I love his reminiscing on life, when, in his words, "the calendar made it plain that I was farther from the year of my own birth than from the year of my death." This passage really caught my attention:

What drew me so strongly to Many Glacier, and to Glacier Park as a whole, was exactly that kind of perpetual beginning. Lovely in its contours, breathtaking in scale, the reserve spans a nearly 60-mile length of the Montana Rockies just south of the Canadian border. It's a million acres of Continental Divide topography, a superstructure of tilted rock layers, white, tan, grayish green, wine red, and more than a billion years old. They have tales to tell of great forces at play on the planet, and their stories soar. They shine with alpenglow. They sing in your eyes. They make you want to stay strong for another century, because while you think you could maybe face dying, you can't deal with the idea of one day becoming too old and weak to ramble among these summits any longer.

The crags all around are beyond monumental; I'm a mote beneath them. They have endured for eons on end; my existence, by comparison, seems a passing glimmer, like the ring of ripples on a lake from the rise of a trout. The lesson from nature this grand, I would tell myself, is to at least have the grace to be humble. Then I started following wolverines around. They are smaller than I. Their life span is considerably shorter. Yet whatever they do, they do undaunted. They live life as fiercely and relentlessly as it has ever lived.

If wolverines have a strategy, it's this: Go hard, and high, and steep, and never back down, not even from the biggest grizzly, and least of all from a mountain. Climb everything: trees, cliffs, avalanche chutes, summits. Eat everybody: alive, dead, long-dead, moose, mouse, fox, frog, its still-warm heart of frozen bones.

I love that attitude. It's part of what Julia has always said she loves about Jack Russell Terriers, the idea that life is to be lived, and I ain't going down without a last gasp at life chomped lustily in my jaws. Something to keep in mind, especially the next time the couch seems more attractive than another unknown bend on the next trail.

A Rapid Dash to Glacier

It's not often we get three-day weekends together, and Julia and I didn't really have anything special planned for this one. Selling her Donkey Girl stuff at the Saturday Market every week has taken a lot of mobility out of our summer, but it's been for a good cause. So we decided Saturday afternoon that we would get up very early Sunday and drive up to Glacier National Park for the day. So that's what we did! It's only about 2.5 hours or so to get there, and the drive is just gorgeous pretty much all the way there, as the highway curves around the magnificent Flathead Lake.

We were on the road by 6 AM (on a Sunday?!), headed north. We hoped to get there early enough to see some wildlife. It promised to be a sunny day, as the morning was gorgeous, particularly as the sun was rising behind the Mission Mountains. We didn't stop, but got into the park and headed straight up the Going to the Sun Road to the visitor's center at Logan Pass. That road is quite a climb, with breathtaking views and vertigo-inducing depths over the edge of the very curvy, very narrow road.

They have these old restored shuttles you can actually ride in if you want; they leave from various campgrounds and visitor centers along the way up. One of these times I'd like to do that. They are pretty cool, and run on propane.

From the parking lot at the top we spied our first critters -- several bighorn sheep were sunning themselves on the slopes not far away. I was able to zoom my camera in for a couple decent shots.

There was a bit of a wind, and it was chilly -- I doubt it was even 40 degrees. Clouds were gathering and we weren't really geared up for much of a hike, but we decided to set out along the Highline Trail anyway, just until we decided to turn around.

In the grasses bordering the trailhead there were a bunch of these little fellas dashing about and chowing down. Pretty sure this little bastard is a Columbian Ground Squirrel.

The clouds were rolling in, and the sun disappeared.

We had jackets, and I had my trail running shoes on, but Julia was in jeans and some Chuck Taylor knockoffs; not the best hiking gear. Game as always, though, she kept right on going and didn't complain a single time, even when we had to cross watery stretches along the trail.

We saw several mountain goats as well, quite a distance up slope, and too far even for my camera's zoom. We had binoculars with us, so we still got to check them out.

Before long the sleet was coming down pretty heavy. Parts of the trail have a good drop off the side; one stretch even has a cable anchored to the rock wall to hang onto if one needs to. I was negotiating down a little stair-like arrangement of rocks, looking up the path of some water for more wildlife, when a misstep landed me on my ass. My catlike reflexes saved me from falling over the cliff, though, and if Julia pointed and laughed she did so without me seeing it (lucky for her). I bonked my elbow pretty good; a lesser man would have lost the use of his arm, no doubt about it.

The sun came out in spots, then would disappear again. At times we could just barely see the surrounding peaks. It was a little eery, but also very cool.

There were quite a number of other folks out on the trail. Many of them were geared up for extensive backcountry hiking and camping, it appeared. Julia and I probably looked like the Clampetts out there. Then again, my jacket displayed the Patagonia logo, so maybe not. You know what's kind of pathetic? I realized as I was thinking about it I was wearing Patagonia shoes, socks, chonies, shorts, and jacket. And a hat, but I'd left that in the truck. Hey, what can I say, I like their stuff and it lasts a long time. And before you even think about getting all lippy with me about being some kind of Patagonia fag, keep in mind that it is a Patagonia hat very similar to mine that Sylvester Stallone is wearing during a significant stretch of The Expendables.

So if you have a problem with my friggin' gear choices, take it up with Sly, you dig?

All in all, we did maybe a modest three or four miles. We got back a little wet and chilled, and it was snowing/sleeting pretty hard -- all the surroundings were covered with white. It was still a lot of fun, and we wonder why, given it's so close, we don't visit more often. We will certainly rectify that.

I hope everyone had a chance to have some fun and get some fresh air over the Labor Day Weekend as well!

Possibly the Most Disturbing Thing I've Ever Seen

This crew is unimpressed.

Nobody's Angel

If memory serves, the first time I ever rode in a taxi cab was in Chicago in the late 90s. At least that I can remember, or at least in a situation where I was in a strange place that I didn't know where I was or where I was going. In all my years living in the Seattle area prior to that, I don't think I ever rode in a cab. Since then I've been to Chicago several times, usually behind the wheel of a rental car, and I've gotten to know the city fairly well -- at least in a broad, general sense. Which made one of the more recent offerings from Hard Case Crime, a novel called Nobody's Angel, that much more fun to read. When the author would describe some of the routes, or neighborhoods, I actually knew what he was talking about. That gave it a familiarity to me that is sometimes lacking in other novel settings. This is the short little 4/5 star review I gave the book on my Goodreads page:

The latest from Hard Case Crime is a trip around Chicago via the culture of cab drivers. What I enjoyed most -- beyond the stories I've read of Clark selling this originally self-published novel from his cab before HCC picked it up -- is that it isn't some bloody tale of vigilantism. The story comes to Eddie, our first-person narrator, almost in spite of himself, and that story is well told. It's dark, atmospheric, and feels authentic in a way that only someone who really knows the world being written can portray it. I enjoyed the book very much.

My whole reason for bringing all this up, besides simply pointing out an excellent book that everyone should read, is that the author, Chicago cab driver Jack Clark, was recently interviewed about the book on NPR's Fresh Air program. It's a great little discussion that you should check out. I downloaded the mp3 of the interview and gave it a listen; it's a little over fifteen minutes long.

I think this is such a great story; a guy writes a book, shops it around, then self-publishes it and sells it out of his cab. Then it gets picked up by a publisher and is now getting some accolades. I really did enjoy the novel, and the circumstances around how Jack got it out to the public are inspiring. I hope the next time I go to Chicago and find myself in need of a cab, Jack somehow is the guy to give me a lift!