Madison, WI – One recent afternoon at the Brass Ring – a billiards bar on Madison’s east side – “Buddy,” a Wisconsin-based marijuana trafficker, talked the pros and cons of his business. He suggested that a rash of heroin-related high jinks across Dane County over the last year has stifled its growth as authorities step-up their interdiction efforts.

“Anytime you get into a period like this – and I’ve noticed waves of it happening in the past – people become a little more insular about who they work with,” he said, nursing a Bloody Mary. “There’s no new faces and you don’t strike up business conversations with people.”

In a trade where people and their freedom tend to have short shelf lives, Buddy has been in business, without interruption, for a remarkable 10 years, making him something of an old-timer. And a lucky one at that. Unlike most who draw a living from black market commerce, his criminal record is squeaky clean.

But he’s had some close calls. Once, he said, he and a friend were pulled over with two-and-a-half pounds of weed and $2,500 in cash.

“We were pissing ourselves, saying ‘We’re so fucked! We’re so fucked!” he recalled.

At the station, his friend – the driver – was issued a ticket for driving without a license. Then, something unexpected happened.

“We get released,” he said, as if still in shock. “And we’re walking out wondering, ‘What the fuck is going on?’”

Their car was still parked where they left it on the side of the road, but the money and product were gone.  “There’s nothing quite like getting robbed by a police officer,” he said. Then, as if weighing the alternative, he grinned. “It’s my favorite dirty trick.”

Buddy began selling pot in college, and was soon couriering pounds of marijuana to Madison from California, where he had a hand in establishing a medicinal marijuana farm.

Over the years he’s occasionally pushed harder stuff, like cocaine and opiate painkillers – the kind local authorities blame for the recent spike in heroin use. Buddy agreed with this theory, explaining that, for dedicated pill poppers, heroin inevitably becomes a cheaper, more accessible alternative. But over time he developed serious moral qualms about enabling his customers’ journey down that road.

“[The] pharmaceutical stuff is destroying everything,” he lamented. “That stuff involves so much more crime and deviousness.”

Still, the nature of his trade brings him in regular proximity to the hard stuff. “It’s like if you go to a whorehouse looking for a blowjob, there’ll be a guy next to you getting laid,” he explained. “You’re always running into it.”

Surely there’s more money in the hard stuff, especially heroin. But he can’t reconcile making money by pushing a product that causes death. “I saw a close family member destroy his life with it. And I’ve had three or four customers kill themselves with it,” he said. “I care about quality of life.”

Buddy wouldn’t disclose his age, but said he becomes more risk averse the older he gets. Marriage hasn’t helped, either. He admitted that he and his bride “have had some conversations.”

Looking back on colleagues who’ve died or been imprisoned, Buddy reflected on his own anxieties. “It’s a constant nagging thing,” he explained, referring to the day-to-day pressures of dealing drugs. “I’m sure it’s a lot like what stuntmen feel when they go to work every day – it’s part of the job.”

Most nerve-racking, he said, are the drives from California with marijuana loads large enough that, under federal sentencing guidelines, would land him in prison for five years or more. “For three or five days all you do is hope your vehicle doesn’t break down and they bring in the dogs.”

Chasing his Bloody Mary with a beer, Buddy continued, “The sheen disappears quite quickly… When I started out in college it was breaking up an ounce; then I found myself doing the trafficking, or unpacking and guarding it somewhere here in town and dealing with many different people. It’s a helluva lot less fun as you go on.”

But in the calculus of risk-benefit analysis, Buddy, who earned $60,000 last summer, said the money is an obvious draw. He estimated his earnings over the last decade have approached $1 million, most of which he’s spent.

“You can make a lot of money just hanging out with your friends – until things go bad,” he said.

Things went bad last fall when armed gunmen raided his California farm ahead of the harvest and stole his crop, which he valued at around $170,000. “[We] didn’t realize at that point that [we] could’ve been insured,” he said, regretfully. “There are insurance companies out there that will insure your product.”

But this wasn’t the only misfortunate to visit him in 2011. The precariousness of his trade has put strain on his marriage. And apart from losing a ton of money, he also lost his business partner to a heroin overdose.

In response he’s scaled back operations, opting to work with people on the medicinal, rather than the recreational, side of the trade. “I’m no longer dealing with smokables, either,” he explained. “I’ve moved to the edibles and oils, and that makes the shipping easier.”

He sees his business as a community service, helping those afflicted or those who just need to means to unwind. He believes public opinion is shifting in favor of marijuana’s legalization, even among some within law enforcement.

“I’ve run into so many cops, especially around Madison, that understand certain things are not a problem,” he said. “We have really great cops in Madison.”

He envisions one day there being a consortium of sorts between drug dealers, addiction specialists, authorities and other stakeholders to discuss strategies on preventing death and criminality.

“I’d love to give them suggestions,” he said, finishing off his drink. “But people like me are not going to step forward and offer suggestions on how to improve this for fear of the retribution.”

The face of a maniac.

The problem with maniacs is that you can’t reason with them. They lack perspective and all sense of proportion. They dwell so hard on the small things that the bigger picture gets obscured. I know, because all summer I’ve been menaced by a lunatic who’s gone to extraordinary lengths to rain misery on everyone around him.

Meet Joe, a developmentally disabled alcoholic who’s spent much of his adult life in and out of prison for crimes ranging from multiple drunk drivings to burglary. Joe and my sister were dating and living at my father’s house when I returned from Philly in May. I planned on staying for only a week or two, but when a temporary opportunity opened up at a local paper my stay was extended. Consequently, I became Joe’s housemate.

Things were okay for a minute. Though Joe and I had attended the same high school we didn’t know each other personally. We’re close in age, but he’d been held back several years on account of his developmental problems. I felt kind of bad for the guy. I gave him rides, bought him drinks and smokes, and indulged him as he spoke of his endless marathon of problems.

But the honeymoon was short lived. Within weeks Joe was back to drinking heavily. His friends who owned painting businesses refused to let him work because he’d show up so high on Xanax that he couldn’t hold a paint brush. He and my sister began fighting incessantly. He must’ve been manic because he hardly slept. In the mornings he’d come up from the basement upon hearing me come down from my room and before I even had a chance to wipe the sleep from my eyes he was in my space, inundating me with his many troubles. My patience soon wore thin so I explained that I no longer wanted to hear about his problems, that I make a point to avoid those kinds of problems and was tired of beginning my day with negative news that didn’t pertain to me.

To my surprise, Joe got angry and argued that by virtue of living together I was obligated to indulge him, especially when it came to his concerns about my sister. The more my father and I conveyed to him we just weren’t interested in his problems, namely because they were of his own making, the more Joe burdened us with them.

One day I mentioned seeing an old friend from high school who Joe apparently didn’t like. He thought I mentioned this person to taunt him. (I still don’t know what his beef is.) Then he got it in his head that this person was coming after him. Later that day, while I was at the kitchen table working, Joe became confrontational about this and threatened to “rip out [my] fucking throat.”

His eyes were glassy and lifeless, as though anything human about him had long ago died. There we were, standing in my father’s living room about to come to blows over the mere mention of someone’s name. My sister, in her own drug-induced confusion, basically got angry with everyone for picking on poor Joe and they moved out.

Once they were gone we found more than fifty empty vodka bottles in the basement that Joe had guzzled during his brief stay.

Though we worried about her, Joe’s departure came as a major relief, like finally killing the mosquito buzzing around your ear. But our peace was her nightmare. His drinking increased exponentially as did his paranoia. He became abusive toward her, dragging her from motel to motel convinced that people were after him. He ditched her in Milwaukee late one night, an event that led to his fifth drunk driving and to her being committed to a psych hospital.

The lovebirds reunited a week later. But soon Joe was drinking again and they were kicked out of his mother’s house. After making my sister drive throughout the night so he could sleep without fear of people finding him, they ended up in St. Paul, where she eventually fled into a hospital to escape him. He was taken to detox. Upon learning that I was on my way to pick her up, he threatened to murder her family if she left with me. For the next week my father and I were inundated with calls from Joe, who warned he was going to kill us for interfering with his relationship.

To our surprise, my sister was back with Joe a short time later, popping pills, drinking and shooting heroin. After getting kicked out of a bar one night, he returned with a knife and my sister again came home. Her descriptions of these latest episodes sound like some kind of nightmarish affront to humanity. While he showered Joe made her sit where he could keep an eye on her. When she wanted to call my father he threatened to call the cops on her. And he did, claiming she was threatening to slit her own throat. She came home terrified, having realized this person she cared about was in fact the monster everyone said he was.

The next day I took her to the motel to get her things. Joe was gone, out panhandling for booze money. But within hours I received a text from an old friend saying Joe was looking for a ride to Madison so he could kill me. In Joe’s version reality, he’s protecting my sister from her family. Over the next two nights the cops arrived at our house after Joe called to say my sister was being abused. When that plan failed, he showed up in a taxi expecting us to pay for it. My dad shut the door and called the cops.

The taxi driver told police that Joe said he was coming here to kill us. It was dark and he was dressed in camouflage. Police seized from him a knife and implored us to get a restraining order. The officer said that after speaking with him for five minutes it was clear to her that Joe is deranged. He told the officers he was there to protect my sister from us. Everyone, even his closest friends, have warned her she’s in danger by running with him.

My sister, whose drug addiction has left her unable to see not only her children but any hope of leading a meaningful life, landed in another psychiatric hospital a few days later. Her doctor had rescinded her prescriptions for the pills she abused which only aggravated her opiate withdrawal. But she seemed determined to pull it together, having narrowly escaped the dreadful outcomes of running with a mad man.

To help her stave off the institutional boredom, I brought her last night a book of puzzles that she enjoys doing. The nurse buzzed me in and paged my sister. I told her the nurse had her clothes and gave her the puzzles. When we turned the corner onto her hall there he was sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway.

As he grinned and waved at me I recalled what Albert told Bruce Wayne about the Joker in The Dark Night: Some men just want to see the world burn. Some men like Joe just want to see people suffer.

My heart sank.

It’s her funeral, I thought as I walked out, astounded that someone can so completely abandon her children yet care so much for parasitic loser like Joe. Perhaps she’s a masochist and relishes the abuse. Truth is she’s a vulnerable, lonely addict who’s being manipulated by a vindictive con man and career alcoholic.

It’s only a matter of time before he again terrifies her with threats and abuse. She’ll come running home and again my father and I will become the targets of his deranged thinking. She’s said so herself, “Joe doesn’t want me to have a family.”

She’ll pretend to feel bad about everything and offer empty apologies. And, because she’s family, we’ll play along knowing full well this is how it’ll be until one of them is dead or in jail or until the next loser comes along.

The guy in the white plaid shirt in the background was one of four people I caught pissing on my van.

Commerce City, CO – On our first day on the lot at Dick’s Sporting Good’s Park, a tall dready I’d met prior to the lot opening pulls me aside to ask if I want to do a bunch of coke. “Not really,” I reply. He seems a little surprised, a little disappointed. “Mind if I duck inside your van for a minute?” he asks, like he really needs a bump. “Ah,” I say, “I’d rather you didn’t.” No luck here, he darts off to find someone else with a van who wants to snort coke. Me? Well, I had beer to sell.

Owning a van is great, except for when it isn’t. It’s so large that I can’t get to parts of the windshield when squeegeeing off the evidence of an insect holocaust. Keeping the petro flowing in a big gas-guzzling V8 is an obvious money suck and environmental hazard. Negotiating tight places is a bitch and its weight and size do a number on my brakes. Coming down a very steep mountain in Maryland they began to smoke.

These are small aggravations compared to those aroused on the Phish lot. Over three nights at least six men pissed on my van as its size provided them perfect cover. This in itself ain’t all that surprising, but considering vendors set up behind their vehicles it seemed awfully brazen of them to pee on a vehicle whose owner is just feet away. But people are high and drunk and lazy and do dumb things. Understandable. But what irritated me most were their cavalier reactions when called out on it.

The vendor next to me chased off two people on the second night. The guy in the plaid shirt in the picture above was the first one I caught. “Hey!” I yelled, walking toward him. “Are you really pissing on my van?”

“Just on the tire,” he says, looking over his shoulder.

“Seriously!?!” I shot back, expecting him to dam the stream, but it kept on flowing. He must’ve though I was going to clock him because I was closing in on him with the hope he’d just zip up and go away, but he didn’t. He just stood their and kept pissing. “You wouldn’t fight a guy with his penis out, would you?” he asks.

His girlfriend, who had been twisting a joint this entire time in the car next to us, yells out to him, “Just piss by my car… not on it, next to it.”

He grumbled and cursed, but obeyed the woman.

Others, too, used the “just-on-the-tire” defense and seemed just as shocked that I didn’t appreciate their thoughtfulness. Is it just me or are people generally okay with others pissing on their wheels? What makes tires fair game and not bumpers? Does bitching about it really give off “bad vibes,” as one accused?

Some were more considerate than others. One guy was actually on his knees pissing under the van. I still called him out for the puddle he was making right where I’d step to get inside the vehicle. Not to mention I had to wait for him to finish before I could open the door. Security was trying to clear the lot and I needed to load the coolers. Like the first guy, he seemed to piss forever.  “Will you hurry up already?” I scolded, to which he replied, “Hey man, you don’t need to be rude about it.”

Anyone who has tended bar understands the role includes playing counselor to those sad souls who try to wash away their troubles with booze. This held true at The Shakedown Tavern where many came seeking sympathy in the form of free shots. On our last night in Chicago we were visited by several who’d been sold bogus tickets to the show. I poured a round of whiskey shots – on the house.

But as a bar owner you can’t help everyone forget their troubles for free. With me, the quality of my charity corresponds directly with the quality of their approach. In Commerce City, I kicked down a few free shots to a guy who’d just gotten out of jail. Arrested the day before for selling drugs, he was released just before the next night’s show. But then an officer who recognized him wouldn’t allow him into the show. The story was worth a few shots.

But those who come expecting a handout likely won’t get one. One gem vendor wanted a free drink because his sales were slow. Sorry, bud. Another wanted to pay $2 for two drinks because he’d been following Phish since 1996. Maybe it’s time to get a job. Sometimes the pitch was as trite as, “Can I get a free shot?” Um, no.

On the second night during the show, when the lot becomes a virtual ghost town, we were visited by an older black guy who mumbled something fierce. He pulled a Stella tallboy from the cooler. “Hmchdisiz?” he asked. Four-dollars I told him, but his buddy, a wispy dude with a cracked out countenance, only had two dollars that he didn’t want to part with. I pointed him to the cooler with $2 beers. “Gmetodlrsz,” the mumbler demanded. They quibbled a bit until the mumbler got his way. He throws $2 on the table and walks off with the Stella. “I need two more dollars for that,” I said. But he just smiled and walked off.

The next day I saw the guy at a nearby gas station. He comes up to the van and asks, “Yallsllnlqur?”

“Not here,” I said.

I couldn’t decipher what he said next. I didn’t really care as I was still stewing about him shorting me on the Stella the night before. But I ask him to repeat himself anyhow. With remarkable clarity he screams at me,  “I didn’t stutter muthafucka!” and storms off.

By the end of the last night of Phish’s 2011 tour things were getting a little crazy. A steady breeze whipped up a storm of red Colorado soil that coated everything and stuffed up your sinuses. A Gallagher impersonator smashed melons, while vendors gave away what they hadn’t sold. After selling our last beer I noticed a pair of sketchy dudes leaning against the back of my van. their backpack tucked behind the rear wheel. Not only do I dislike people pissing on my tires, but am not too found of people stashing drugs behind them, either. A similar thing happened in Chicago when some knucklehead cracked open a nitrous tank using my van for cover.

But it the lot was closing down and the tow truck drivers were shouting through their megaphones that vendors had 10 minutes before they began towing vehicles. The sketch pads left without any encouragement from me. With Purple Thunder loaded up we rolled toward the exit but were obstructed by a fistfight that erupted in front of us. To the rear, a vendor was screaming at a car full of people that they were “going to get theirs.” Trash was everywhere and people were stumbling all around. Event staff and police were losing patience with the stragglers.

It was clear that the party was over.

I love Denver, t00. As far as cities go it is clean, easy to navigate and the people are notably polite and helpful. I was called ‘hon’ more times here than in Hon Town, Baltimore and the bums say ‘thank you’ whether you give them change or not. No one in Denver ever seems in too much of a hurry, not even waitresses. On the highways, drivers tend to keep to the right unless passing, which keeps traffic moving.

Another nice flourish are all of the medical marijuana dispensaries. Many advertise in the local weekly deals on ounces, eighths, hash oil and Cheba Chews. All of this in addition to being minutes away from the Rocky Mountain foothills makes it hard to not regard the Mile High City as some kind of paradise.  For me, the worst part of visiting Colorado is leaving Colorado.

We arrived in Denver late afternoon Wednesday, following a seven hour cruise from Lincoln, Nebraska. Unsure what exit to take let alone where in the city to go I got off at Colfax Avenue only because I remembered the street from previous visits. We needed to find a place to hunker down. I feared that for the cheap rooms we’d have to hit the ‘burbs or the ghetto but using my Droid I zeroed in on the 11th Avenue Hotel and Hostel, located downtown near the state capitol building in an area known as the Golden Triangle, one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods.

The hotel, built in the early 20th Century, had a grand wooden staircase with plastic-covered carpeting. For an extra charge we got a room with a bathroom and a $6 deposit netted us a bath towel each. There wasn’t an ice machine or any other amenities, including soap or shampoo. A few derelicts lurked about waiting to use the lobby payphone.

For $56 and proximity to downtown, it didn’t bother me that the wi-fi didn’t work or that a screaming woman was subdued by police in the hallway, cuffed and carted away on a stretcher. It’s part of the urban experience. And I later learned the hotel caters to recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, the homeless and others on the bottom rungs of the institutional ladder.

Its billing as a hostel attracts young travelers with means. These two very disparate clienteles made for a strange integration of characters who kept largely to their own worlds.

The hotel was as clean as an old hotel can be. My biggest concern was that one of the resident alcoholics would discover the $450 worth of liquor of beer I had stashed in Purple Thunder for the purpose of selling outside Dick’s Sporting Goods Park during the Phish shows that upcoming weekend. After the successful launch of The Shakedown Tavern a few weeks earlier in Chicago I decided a sojourn to the Denver shows was in order. If anything, I’d get a free vacation out of it, meet some cool people, party a little, take in some sights and see some old friends.

I have two friends in Denver, both of whom I called after checking into the motel. Mark didn’t answer, but De’Nay did. We took the free shuttle to the top of the 16th Avenue Mall – the nation’s largest outdoor pedestrian mall – and met her outside of a bar on Blake Street. Her hair was longer than I remembered. Beyond that she appeared more or less the same.

De’Nay and I met more than ten years ago in Telluride, CO. We ran with a crew of transients that lived residentially in the forested hills surrounding town, which itself had an altitude of nearly 8,500 feet. I was friends with her ex, Jonathan and another kid named Drew, and spent much of my time tooling around Colorado with them. Some time later after leaving Telluride I ran into De’Nay in Arcata, California. Actually she found me. I was sitting in the plaza when I heard her call my name.

She’d befriended some middle-aged  guy who owned a considerable amount of land there in Humboldt County. On this land were many small cabins he rented to people who lived off the grid. De’Nay and I hitchhiked back there from Arcata. Dave seemed displeased that De’Nay had returned with me in tow. That night De’Nay, myself and several others ate around a campfire. Well into the night we swapped stories, sipped wine, played guitar and smoked joints filled with locally-grown weed.

Dave, who owned the land, didn’t like dogs, but was fond enough of De’Nay that he allowed her dog Bela on the property. That night De’Nay and I returned to her cabin. As I got comfortable in the top bunk, Bela got loose and ran off into the deep dark forest.

“BELA! BELA!” she cried drunkenly into the ink black night. “BELA! GET OVER HERE NOW!”

Dave soon arrived to address the commotion. De’Nay explained what happened and Dave’s response was to ask if she didn’t have friends or family who could care for the animal. She rejected this idea outright and Dave returned to his cabin. Inside, De’Nay began pacing, worried that Bela might encounter a bear or mountain lion. She tried lighting with her shaking hands a kerosene lamp, but knocked it over. Kerosene spilled down the counter top and on to the floor. One of the mantles ignited the fuel and I watched as the flame traveled along the countertop. A fiery drop ignited the puddle on the floor.

I leaped from the top bunk to smother the flames with the only blanket I had. The fire was quickly extinguished and that chilly September night I slept under my now charred blanket that reeked of kerosene. I left the next day and didn’t talk to De’Nay again until years later when we re-connected through Facebook.

De’Nay told me she stayed in California a while before returning home to Colorado and eventually moving to Denver, where she began doing heroin and was once severely beaten by Denver police officers who had spied her buying dope.

Clean now for two years, she is still poor and lives along a shitty stretch of Colfax Avenue where open-air drug deals are the norm. But De’Nay, an eternal optimist, looks on the bright side. “The nice thing about having crack dealers around is that there are no kids in the neighborhood,” she explained on our walk to Pete’s Monkey Bar, where we pounded back $1.50 PBRs. “No one wants to raise kids here. The neighborhood is full of people in their twenties and thirties who don’t have kids.”

We don't have cows this big in Wisconsin.

While my friend De’Nay has made great strides in her recovery my other Denver friend, Mark, has resumed his vein-spiking ways. I met Mark in college when we were both promising students. I dropped out to become editor of a newspaper. Mark dropped out due to a heart aneurysm discovered on a chest X-ray taken during a bout of pneumonia. After a slow, painful recovery from heart surgery, during which surgeons discovered and repaired a leaky valve, Mark was on the rebound.

But then he began doubting his wife. Suddenly she was buying new perfumes, getting Brazilian wax jobs, and traveling more often for work. When he confronted her after finding a stash of lingerie and a pair of crotchless panties she moved out. Without any further explanation she filed for divorce.

Seriously depressed, Mark one night called a crisis hotline, but hung up after becoming irritated with the person on the other end. Fearing that Mark might end his life, the crisis prevention worker dispatched police to his house but Mark was asleep by the time they arrived. After pounding on the door for some time, Mark stirred from his sleep, opened the door and was yanked from his house and thrown to the ground. Police cuffed him then drove him to a hospital for evaluation.

A week later he blacked out when the wine he drank didn’t mix well with his new meds. Once police had him in custody they told him he’d broadsided a bunch of cars, nearly mowed down a pedestrian, then drove his car through his garage door and proceeded to trash the house. Upon his release the sheriff served him with a restraining order his wife filed to keep him from entering their home, which they were trying to sell.

When his probation ended in 2010 he returned home to Denver to continue his descent. He sounded like hell when he answered my call, and more than a little surprised I was in Denver. I invited him to dinner but he said that he was in no condition to receive visitors. For starters, he admitted to being strung out and said he didn’t want me to see him like that. Additionally, he was living out of his car following an eviction. “I’d love to see ya,” he said. “Things just aren’t good right now. I’m dying, Nate. I’m really dying this time.”

“I understand,” I said before hanging up. “Good luck.”

The asshole that greets you at Pete's Monkey Bar in Denver

We walked down the 16th Avenue Mall up to Colfax Avenue, to Pete’s Monkey Bar, one of two hippie bars on the block. It was open mic night, which brought out a handful of really great musicians who tore it up all night. De’Nay and I strolled down memory lane rehashing our more memorable moments in Telluride. I asked about Jonathan and Drew, my two buddies I’d lost contact with after leaving. De’Nay said she’d seen them not long ago sitting outside the Art Museum looking for dope.

“They didn’t look good,” she said. “I think they’re still living in Telluride.”

This was disheartening news. The first time I met Jonathan he was shooting cocaine between his toes. And Drew was just a transient like the rest of us. When I returned the following summer Jonathan had cleaned up and Drew was still sleeping in his Karmann Ghia. All summer we traveled around Colorado in Jonathan’s Volkswagon Vanagon until I returned to Wisconsin for school. In those days, before Facebook and cell phones, it was easy to lose touch. I haven’t spoken to either since.

We met up with De’Nay again the following night at Pete’s Monkey Bar for the pre-Phish party, tossing back $1.50 PBRs and waiting for that night’s band to go live, a wait that wasn’t really worth it in the end.

We didn’t stay out late though it was our last night in Denver. My sidekick and I had spent much of the day hiking around Red Rocks state park. It was the first time in months I’d worn shoes. Consequently I developed some gnarly blisters on my feet and toes that pained me with each step.

There was an ambulance outside of the hotel. As we climbed the stairs to the second floor, we overheard some muffled screams and commotions from above. Moments later, two Denver police officers and a paramedic were escorting a woman down the stairs. Then for whatever reason the woman collapsed on the second floor and began to wail. I poked my head out of the room to watch the frustrated officers cuff the woman then lift her to her feet. This must’ve caused her great pain as she let out a great scream as they dragged her down the stairs. From our window we watched as they loaded her into the ambulance. By then she seemed sedated and calm. The officers chatted amongst themselves then laughed a little once the ambulance door closed. And before long it was all over.

Chicago, Il - The second episode of my food vending enterprise took me to Chicago, where the jam band Phish played three nights earlier this week at the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion, just ahead of a three-night run in Denver that will cap the band’s 2011 summer tour.

Following a lukewarm debut of Daisy Dick’s Donut Ballz at the Grateful Garcia Gathering earlier this month, I expanded the menu to include a few hardier food items. My sidekick and I also brought along a cooler full of dank Wisconsin beer and another full of bottled water. And, for good measure, we had a large tub of individually wrapped Twizzlers that sold 5 for $1.

I was ready to accumulate dollars.

After checking into our shit hole motel on the edge of a south side ghetto, we rolled up to UIC Pavilion near the heart of downtown Chi-town to await the arrival of 3:30 p.m. when authorities opened the lot. We parked illegally on a side street along with dozens of other vendors, grid skippers and fans, some of whom had followed the band all summer long. Moments before authorities removed the sawhorses that barricaded the entrance, everyone dashed to their vehicles. But rather than beat the gridlock they created it. Hundreds of hippies laying in wait in the surrounding blocks must’ve shared some kind of telemetry for within a minute or two traffic stretched as far as the eye could see.

Snags with our operation were immediately hit. The central lot, where vendors peddle their goods, was full by the time we arrived, so we were directed to one of two overflow lots. Then, once the fryer reached temp, I discovered that my veggie chimichangas were still frozen solid. Hungry after driving all day, I grilled up a PB&J, another menu item, but I couldn’t get the stove to a low enough temp to prevent the honey butter from burning. In an instant, my expanded menu was reduced to donut balls, bottled water and Twizzler sticks. And beer.

Thank goodness for beer.

The beer sold out within 90 minutes, giving us a tiny cash infusion. Food sales typically hit their peak once the concert lets out, but with our two staple menu items unsellable, we packed up and left. It would be at least 12 hours before the chimis thawed and the grilled PB&Js were a total loss. My strategy needed some retooling, but with a mere $130 between us, prospects were few. So we did what many on the cusp of failure too often do: we turned to alcohol to help solve our problems.

Few places in America can match the surreal spectacle of a Phish lot. During the day it has the airs of a festival-flea-market hybrid, but by night it’s a lawless wasteland of drink and drug-fueled excess.

Revelers from all over the country pour into the lots, some to vend, some to party, some to do both. Many have toured all summer, following the Vermont-based band from city to city, flipping dollars on lots outside of the various venues.

Worn down vans with thousands of American highway miles on them form the bulk of the vehicles you’ll find on Shakedown, as the vending area is known. It’s a label passed down from the Deadheads and derived from The Grateful Dead song Shakedown Street.

In Chicago, dozens wandered the lot with a finger in the air indicating their want of a ticket for the sold out show, which were going for upwards of $250. The more financially-strapped sought miracles (another nod the Dead), i.e. a free ticket from a generous benefactor.

You might think of the Phish lot as a self-assembling, transient ghetto for privileged white kids and older heads who’ve never stopped truckin’. It’s a shadow economy that functions largely off the grid, where untaxed goods are sold freely without permits and illicit commodities exchange hands as openly as they do in America’s inner-cities, but without much risk of arrest. To their extraordinary credit, law enforcement has traditionally cast a blind eye on this commerce, a precedent Chicago police pleasantly honored.

Without a doubt, undercover cops lurk in the trenches, as evidenced by the kid who was frisked Wednesday on the hood of my van. (He was ultimately let go.) In fact, a uniformed officer on duty Tuesday night was observed walking the lot Wednesday night in civilian clothes. And DEA scum are known to have cuffed more than a few over the years. Jerry Becka, the DEA special agent here in Madison, is rumored to have cut his teeth working the Dead lots back in the day. But for the most part, the police just kind of keep watch from the perimeter, not a drug dog in sight.

In the late 90s when I was more committed to Phish and Further tours, I’d sell beers from a cooler and $1 grilled cheeses cooked on a little Coleman camping stove. Traveling was cheap back then. Even if you only brought in $60 a show it was enough to cover the essentials: gas, beer, smokes and food. Now, $60 is a half tank of gas. Supporting oneself on the road is no easy feat these days and the Phish lot is perhaps the only forum in which an easy dollar can be earned. Yes, I said ‘earned,’ because anyone who’s ever worked a show knows the hustle involved.

After our performance Monday night, I wasn’t feeling too good about things Tuesday morning, but I had an idea. After running out of beer the night before, I perused the lot to scope the operations of other vendors. Amid the usual coterie of merchandise – t-shirts, hats, artwork, jewelry and gems – were several food vendors with an array of customized kitchens. Most offered cheap eats like veggie wraps, burritos, quesadillas and grilled cheeses. One guy made French bread pizzas in a home kitchen oven retrofitted to run on propane. Another sold macaroni with gouda cheese. Nom nom nom.

It occurred to me that what was missing from Shakedown was a neighborhood tavern. Sure people sold beer and some sold limited mixed drinks but they didn’t do it well. One kid was charging $2 to swig from a bottle. Cold sores anyone? So we plunked our $130 down on beer and bum jugs of liquor and launched The Shakedown Tavern. It was a whopping success. Within three hours we had sold out of everything, nearly quadrupling our investment. Sweetening the night further were the rave reviews we received from those who bought our chimichanga plates. They had thawed, but whatever was leftover on Tuesday would be unsellable on Wednesday.

On the way back to the motel we made the no-brainer decision to double our alcohol inventory for Wednesday night’s show, when The Shakedown Tavern became a full-service bar with enough beer and spirits on hand to ensure our sales until the lot closed around 1 a.m. Wednesday, being Phish’s final night in the Windy City, was also expected to draw the largest crowd of the three nights, a circumstance we intended to capitalize on completely. But the next morning our effort was nearly sunk by Angel, the very un-angel like front-end manager at a Sam’s Club in Tinley Park who refused to sell me the alcohol I so desperately needed.

Invigorated by Tuesday night’s payday, we hightailed it that morning to Sam’s Club, where we loaded up the cart with eight cases of beer and several mixers for a variety of liquors. I was hours away from recouping a large chunk of the cash I had thus far invested in the overall food vending enterprise, but was a tad concerned my expectations were too inflated and that I’d be left with a bunch of unsold booze. After selling out of beer the first night, disappointment panged my heart each time I had to turn customers away. The disappointment that’d come with an empty cooler was enough to mitigate the worry.

I’d forgotten my Sam’s card in Madison so my sidekick presented hers and was promptly asked for ID. The clerk gave it a deliberative once-over then asked for another form of identification, which my sidekick didn’t have. The clerk signals her manager, a frumpy blonde called Angel, explaining that she isn’t sure they accept the ID.

“Why?” I asked. “It’s a government issued ID.”

“Well, it says it’s a temporary license,” the clerk replied.

My sidekick, who has never had a driver’s license, explained that in Wisconsin learner’s permits are identical to driver’s licenses except that they say temporary on them, that rather than issuing separate documents as they did in the past, a temporary license and identification info are now consolidated into a single card. The clerk seemed confused by this as did Angel when we explained it to her.

“I just ain’t never seen an ID like this before,” said Angel, who then solicited the opinion of yet another manager who took the ID card with her to an office.

I again explained to Angel the Wisconsin way, who repeated her spiel about having never seen an ID like that.

“Well now you’ve seen one,” I said. “Now you know they exist.”

The other manager returned with the ID saying they wouldn’t accept it. We protested loudly, explaining we had an event to be at shortly, but Angel, smirking ever so slightly, wouldn’t budge.

After storming out, we went to a nearby grocery store and then K-Mart, whose liquor prices were nearly double of those at Sam’s. The next nearest Sam’s store was an hour away and an additional 45 minutes to the lot. By then we most certainly would lose our coveted spot on the side street, potentially costing us a spot in the lot’s commercial center. Our whole scheme seemed to be blowing up in our faces.

We lost an hour scoping prices at other stores before I decided to try Sam’s again. I dropped my sidekick off at the strip mall across the street, got a temporary Sam’s card from the front desk and loaded up the cart. I didn’t see Angel anywhere as I approached the check out aisle with the shortest line. Then, out of nowhere, she’s leaning on my cart with that shit-eating smirk on her face.

“We’re not going to sell this alcohol to you,” she said.

“Why?” I protested. “I’m thirty-three, I have a driver’s license and I’m a Sam’s Club member.”

“Because you were in here earlier with someone whose ID we rejected,” she said.

“Look,” I said, “You didn’t deny us earlier because you questioned her age or the legitimacy of the ID. You said it was an unacceptable form of ID because you’d never seen a temporary license card. It’s obviously a government-issued card with holograms and a bar code.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said.

“So, what?” I asked. “Are you going to deny me tomorrow because I came in with her today?”

“That’s not the issue.”

“That’s precisely the issue!” I growled. “How long do I have to wait before I can buy alcohol at this store again? Am I banned forever? What if I came in with someone else and they want to buy alcohol? Would you deny them, too?”

“Sir, we reserve the right to refuse alcohol sales to anyone for any reason,” she ejaculated. “I’m just doing my job.”

“No, you’re just being a bitch because you can,” I snapped back, accepting the futility of trying to reason with an idiot.

I’d be remiss if I left the impression that the Phish lots are only about drugs. To an outsider, a Phish lot at first glance may seem like a depraved antithesis of civilized society, a flagrant flouting of our law and order ethos as police stand idly by, breathing in the marijuana-scented air. Though recreational drug use is for many an integral part of the Phish experience, most fans I suspect will say it’s a sense of community that underlies their devotion to the scene.

For me, it’s the countless small, unrepeatable moments that fill the air with magic.

On Tuesday night, a quartet of musicians dressed in classy black suits asked if it would be okay for them to play in the empty stall next to Purple Thunder. “More than okay,” told them, figuring the music would draw a nice crowd to my bar. For a solid three hours these guys played a rollickin’ set of traditional bluegrass jams. I poured the banjo player a vodka-cranberry on the house, thanking him for his music. The band, known as Sexfist, is wildly popular in Chicago and played regularly at an established spot that recently closed.

Night had fallen by the time they wrapped up. Afterwards, the guitar player sat on a cooler next to my van and played Grateful Dead songs for the next couple of hours. A small circle of people gathered around to listen, passing joints and singing along with the sweet-voiced guitarist beneath the halos of street lamps. In moments like these the pinnacle of happiness has no limit.

The Phish lot is always chill like this, teeming with glassy-eyed people with wide smiles and eager to swap travel stories and other trivia from their lives. On Monday after the show started we were approached by a pair of girls who’d flown from Chattanooga to Milwaukee, then bussed down to Chicago and were waiting for Tuesday night’s show, tickets for which they paid $250 for. We were tearing down for the night when they came and sat for awhile on our coolers and shot the breeze with us before heading back to where they were staying for the night.

Things do sometimes get tense. There came a point on Wednesday night while we were tearing down when a loud hissing spewed from near the front of my van. Someone with a nitrous tank had set up shop between my vehicle and another. Knowing the cops would certainly zero in on the telltale sound of nitrous balloons being filled, I told my sidekick, “Let’s just sit for a minute,” fearing we might get caught up in the mix. We watched as dozens of kids flocked toward the hiss like children chasing the music of an ice cream truck.

Vendors were unnerved by the ill-fated attempt at flipping dollars since the police at anytime could shut us down. Plus, situations can easily become overheated pretty quick amid the chaos of a police shakedown. Within minutes we were completely surrounded by people huffing nitrous balloons until ubiquitous cries of “Six up! Six up!” filled the air.

Heeding the alarm, the knucklehead with the tank cracked it wide open to release the gas before the po-po arrived, which happened soon enough. The cops confiscated the tank but made no arrests, offering instead a terse reminder about what nitrous does to the brain. Everyone booed. Resuming our tear down I observed dozens of discarded balloons next my van. I picked up each one and threw them in the trash.

During my argument with Angel from Sam’s Club, my sidekick texted to inform that a grocery store in the strip mall across the street had comparable liquor prices and a better beer selection. Indeed she was right. We raced around the store, loading the cart with jugs of rum, vodka, tequila, whiskey, mixers and beer. We checked out without incident. But as we were backing out I realized I’d forgotten margarita salt so I ran back inside and got another taste of absurdity.

“Do you have ID?” the clerk asked me.

“For margarita salt?” I asked.

“It’s used with alcohol,” she replied.

“Do you card for grenadine, too?”

“We card for anything purchased in the alcohol section.”

“But what if I’m nineteen and just want to make kiddie cocktails?”

She shrugged.

“I guess you’d be S.O.L.”

I’d had enough of Illinois, but the morning’s stresses were quickly abated once we got on the lot and opened The Shakedown Tavern. Not only was it our most profitable night, but also the most fun. My friend Cliff, a film student living in Chicago who I hadn’t seen for years, came down to hang out and help us man the stand.

The vendors next to and across from us were also selling beers and a whiskey drinks, but with our inventory and cheap prices people flocked to us. For four hours the spirits flowed and bottle tops popped. People were pleased we had premium liquors and name brand mixers, many of whom returned several times, especially those drinking our margaritas. One couple, so pleased with our service, stopped by to thank us before going into the show, tipping us with a ganja gooball.

While sales were great, so were the tips. People are so conditioned to tipping the bartender that we set out a tip jar that we kept having to remove dollars from to make room for more. Turns out my worries about being left with a bunch of unsold alcohol were completely unfounded. By 8:30 p.m., we’d run completely dry. I gave myself a little kick for not having more inventory after turning away dozens of people. With the lot open for another four hours we could very well have doubled our haul. But after three days we were ready to head home.

After walking the lot for a while and catching up with Cliff, we were off, headlights trained toward Wisconsin but with our sights set on Denver, where Phish in a couple of weeks will play its final shows of summer 2011.

Residents wait in the brutal heat for the fire department's okay to retrieve belongings from their apartment.

Madison, WI – Yesterday morning I received a text from my friend Nick Mortensen telling me that his apartment complex was on fire. After waking to a knocking on the door, he saw the the fire trucks outside, but didn’t hear any smoke alarms. No one even yelled ‘Fire!’ Nonetheless, he grabbed some things and went to the club for a workout. By the time he returned, flames had engulfed the roof of the building.

One of the things I like most about Nick is that he doesn’t sweat the small shit. By the end of the day, after he’d lost everything, Nick was already plotting and scheming ways to parlay his loss into opportunity. And frankly, I’m kind of glad he lost everything. Some of the most liberating moments of my life came after I got rid of my belongings, unchaining myself from the burdens of being weighed down by things. Even things that seem irreplaceable really, at the end of the day, are just dead weight. But not everyone sees it this way. People get awfully attached to their stuff. There were a lot of long faces when firemen told residents the building was too damaged to allow them in to salvage what they could. But situations like these rarely are the tragedy they initially seem.

They have their lives and an opportunity to start from scratch.

Yesterday, as firefighters battled the blaze, I met Nick at Genna’s Lounge and we joked about the situation. He’s a comedian who has managed to piss off every other comedian in town. In fact, he once was surrounded by an angry mob of funny people outside of Genna’s after one of the comedians performing that night roused the crowd into a frenzy against him. More recently, a guy threatened to stab Nick when he refused to leave a comedy open mic. All he had done was arrive to see the show. A lot of this started when I quoted Nick in a newspaper article trashing the local comedy club. He was promptly blacklisted and other local comedians have warred with him since.

We joked about gathering the comedians here in town to roast him as a benefit to raise money for the other residents. Get it? Roast? Ha. Ha.

People here in Madison are woefully sensitive. It’s annoying. Once, one of the local papers brought in a music critic who had some real shit to say about the local music scene. It seemed like every musician in town was in tears over what an asshole this guy was rather than believe he might have an opinion worth considering. Nick is like that. He calls it how he sees it and is dutifully punished for it. That’s how this town is. Everyone wants to be patted on the back, even when they suck at what they do. And more often than not, people are more than willing to pander to those sentiments. I’m not. Neither is Nick.

Because Nick wasn’t feeling bad about losing everything and being homeless, I didn’t have to feel too bad about it, either.  Today, he invited me to come with him while he retrieved some things from his apartment, namely his stash. I was going to take some pictures of the damage inside. By late afternoon, the heat index was well over 100 degrees. Nervous residents paced around the block as city engineers assessed the damage. Finally, word came that the damage was too extensive for people to safely enter the building. Some began crying. Others leaned pensively against the buildings. Nick seemed a little bummed about his stash.

But then the firemen offered to retrieve some items for residents, who wrote down what they wanted and where it could be found. They did the first floor first. One woman was able to retrieve a crate full of soggy personal papers and a couple of purses. A hair stylist got his cash box. And yes, Nick got his big black stash box back, hand delivered to him by a Madison firefighter. It was one of the slickest moves I’d ever seen.

The contents inside the box weren’t wet at all. Among them was a very expensive Volcano vaporizer. He used to have two, but some chick with lupus stole one from him. He’d let her borrow it, and after six months he asked for it back. He wanted to loan it to a friend of his who had cancer, but the chick refused to hand it over. So Nick sued her to get it back. The court ruled in his favor, but the chick disappeared and Nick had to write it off. He’s probably the only person in U.S. history to file a lawsuit for the return of paraphernalia. I admire his gumption.

I’m sure Nick will make the most of his new freedom. With a robust renter’s insurance policy, and a sizable bank account of his own, he’s going to be all right. As will everyone else. I’m excited to see what direction his life now takes. He’s made sure to get some good media coverage. One of the local papers linked to his Twitter feed as he live-Tweeted the blaze, and he won a bunch of new followers. Today he was interviewed by one of the broadcast news stations. He’s talking about returning to comedy. After the stabbing threat, maybe that’s not such a hot idea. But then again, I can see Nick making the most of being impaled, too.

Wow, it is really hard to stay motivated in this place. You’d think that, with all the time I have that I be cranking shit out no problem. Not so much. I am trying to get better at that. I hope I’m successful.

Before I talk about anything else, I want to say a little more about the compound itself. I realized that I haven’t told you how many people are here. There are about a thousand, give or take. In terms of the actual set-up it is like an old western shanty town, except only the sheriffs have horses. But instead of horses they have hybrid SUVs.

Now, I’ll tell you about my job. I am the vegetable prep guy for the P.M. shift in food service. Quite the dream job, I know. The job is actually two parts, both of them shitty.

The first part is during the day, Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. During this time I actually prep the vegetables that are going to be in that night’s dinner and possible lunch the next day. There is a lot of rotted food to deal with as they do buy the cheapest of the cheap. If you’ve never been around rotten potatoes, let me tell you, they’re no fun. I deal with dozens of them everyday. (I prep about 350 to 600 lbs. of potatoes daily.)

The second part of my job is a little different. Two nights a week I work the dinner salad bar or, as I like to call it, the “Insult Brent Bar.” Most of you on the outside might be surprised that a prison would have a salad bar, but the guys in here. They’re constantly pissed off by what we don’t have, specifically dressing.

For example, once I was forced to put out only blue cheese (yes, that’s how it’s spelled here) and was repeatedly called things like “cocksucker” and “faggot” when my fellow inmates saw it was their only option.

It’s hard not to think about what a waste of money it is to have a lot of people locked up. I hear it’s about $52,000 annualy per inmate. I take full responsibility for my crime, I just think there are better ways to spend $156,000 than to keep me here three years. But what do I know? I’m just a criminal.

You wouldn’t believe how fast information gets around this compound. It seems like people know shit before it’s even done. We call it “inmate.com.” The problem is that usually only 10 percent of anything someone is telling you is true.

I hope I don’t offend anybody with this, but there is nothing more irritating that the guys who come to prison and find God. Don’t get me wrong, whatever gets you through the day is cool. However, the operative word is “you,” meaning you keep it to yourself. Everyday I have to hear about how I have to also find God or risk an eternity of damnation. And my question to them is, “If you’ve already found God, why do I have to as well?”

I think I mentioned a little about the showers in a previous dispatch, but I had this creepy experience that I want to share. Before going into the shower area, you loudly ask “shower clear?” This is to avoid the uncomfortable encounter with a strange naked man. So, the other day I go in to take a shower.

“Shower clear?” I asked.

The response was, “No, but you can come back if you want to.”

I left and showered later. I’m sorry, but that was weird.

My room situation has changed a little. Aragorn has been removed and replaced by Gary. Gary is kind of dull and not too bright, either. The other day he asked if I’d gone to breakfast.

“Yeah,” I said. “The oatmeal was all right.”

“That’s nice,” Gary replied. “What did you eat?”

“Um, steak.”

To wrap it up, I want to tell you about a game I have to play almost everyday. It’s called “poop roulette.” Poop roulette states when you are on the way to one of the two bathrooms and, as you approach, you hear the flush of a toilet but enter the bathroom too late to see which of the stalls was exited. Now you must make your choice. Losing is unpleasant.

Okay, that is about all for now. I really appreciate being given the opportunity to do this, as I need some kind of outlet to express myself. To anyone reading, I hope I’m not too boring. Feel free to write me. I love getting mail.

Sincerely,
Brent

Brent Delzer
06737-090
Federal Prison Camp
P.O. Box 1000
Duluth, MN 55814

Manhattan, NY - The warlock arrived at 7:30 p.m. in a black SUV just outside the stage door of Radio City Music Hall. I had been in contact with the warlock’s publicist, Larry Solters, which is to say that Solters had denied my request for an interview with his client, a.k.a. Charlie Sheen.

Undeterred, I told the security guard prior to Sheen’s arrival that I was supposed to meet Solters at 7 p.m. by the stage door. It’s a trick that has worked to get me backstage in the past, but New Yorkers are savvier when it comes to such hijinks. Still, the security guard graciously let us stand near where Sheen’s truck would pull up, while keeping the throngs of paparazzi and wannabe goddesses on the sidelines.

As Sheen’s entourage pulled onto 51st Street, New York police took over and pushed everyone, including yours truly, onto the sidewalk, creating a “safe area” for the actor to make his way into the building. I protested this loudly, but the police weren’t buying my story and basically told me to fuck off.

Sheen exited the vehicle to great cheers and the clamor of camera flashes. Wearing a NY Yankees cap and tortoiseshell glasses, the actor warlock took a moment to wave to his fans. He’s shorter than the 5’10″ he’s said to be. I’m 5’11″ and he is well shorter than me. But within moments his handlers ushered him inside the hall and we made our way to our seats.

Sheen, who was basically booed offstage during the inaugural performance of his 20-city My Violent Torpedo of Truth tour, has since tweaked the show in the week since, trading his pulpit and incoherent psychobabble for an In the Actor’s Studio Q&A-type format.

The packed house erupted with applause as Sheen and his unidentified interviewer took the stage a half hour later than scheduled. “How many people want to know the truth?” Sheen bellowed, to even greater cheers. “Hello New York!”

He began the night by talking about Big Apple hotels he’s stayed in and the trouble he had this week finding one that would accommodate him. “I’m not staying at the fucking Plaza hotel,” he quipped, referring to the night last October when police, responding to a disturbance call, found a naked and drugged-up Sheen in his hotel room with frightened porn star Capri Anderson. “What a night that was. I’m still paying for that one.”

He referred to Anderson as a “gorgeous, overpriced hoebag who drank $20,000″ worth of expensive wine. “She followed me up to my room… Next thing I know I’m naked, taking Ambien – the devil’s aspirin – and fighting the cops.”

“Here’s the worst part,” he said, “is that I didn’t even fuck her.

“Not winning.”

He accused the 19-year-old of stealing his $173,000 watch. “It’s somewhere in this town.”

He refrained from badmouthing his ex-wife Denise Richards, if only because he received a court order to that effect earlier in the day. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t talk about Denise.”

As you’d expect, there were hecklers in the crowd, one of whom hurled repeated insults at the actor. “Can people around the loser shame him into silence?” Sheen asked.

Sheen did offer some juicy stories from his life, often centering around drugs and prostitutes. He and his brother Emilio once visited a whore house in Tijuana, where he “hit on a fine-ass Mexican prostitute.”

Allegedly, Keifer Sutherland once left Sheen with a $96,000 tab at an Austrian whorehouse while filming 1993s The Three Muskateers.

Perhaps the funniest story involved a flight he and actor Nic Cage took to San Fran in the early 90s. Upon discovering federal agents were on the plane, Sheen, who was carrying an ounce of cocaine, went to the bathroom to crotch the powder. While in there, Nic Cage’s voice came over the loudspeaker, warning that the plane was crashing.

When they landed, additional federal agents awaited them on the ground.

“My balls were sweating like a gerbil at a Richard Gere convention,” Sheen said.

Luckily, Sheen said, the agents were fans of Platoon and Raising Arizona.

He seemed in awe that he was actually performing at the legendary Radio City Music Hall. “How do you get here?” he wondered aloud. “In my case, you get here by telling your bosses to fuck off.”

But then he laid down the gauntlet to his former boss and Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre.

“I didn’t quit,” he said. “I didn’t breach my contract. I was just having too much fucking fun. What did they think I was going to do with all that cash – save it?”

Sheen earned $2 million an episode.

He then offered Lorre an open invitation to Sunday night’s performance “to work things out,” saying he wanted to return to the show next season. “You’re tired of the fucking reruns aren’t you?”

(Full disclosure: I’ve never seen the show.)

About halfway through the 55-minute performance, Sheen took a break. When he returned, he was even less focused than before, his stories more meandering and he seemed fidgety. Cocaine will do that. When he began talking about his children, the crowd, which for much of the night seemed on the fence, booed loudly. The interviewer, who was incapable of crafting an interesting question, likewise failed to steer Sheen toward more interesting topics, leaving Sheen to falter.

People began booing and leaving.

We knew when we bought tickets that it wasn’t going to be a great show. When he bombed in Detroit, we worried that the show might not make it to New York. True to the show’s tagline, Defeat is not an option, Sheen – an actor, not a performer – has steadily improved his schtick, providing his audience with a glimpse of the excesses his wealth and fame have afforded him. Still, the show isn’t much more than the trivial gripes of a privileged brat.

One thing I will give Sheen credit for is that despite his father, Martin Sheen, and brother, Emilio Estevez, having publicly expressed their concern over his mental state, Sheen still speaks fondly of them. His father, who “was always surrounded by chicks and had cash in his pockets,” inspired Sheen to take up acting.

But in speaking of his father, one can’t help but wonder if Sheen has broken from reality completely. “He’s great,” said Sheen, referring to his father’s epic coolness. “I mean, he fucking killed Col. Kurtz in a typhoon.”

Does he really think Apocalypse Now was real?

By then end, the audience had grown bored and restless. On the way out, people complained about what a waste of money it was.

My question is: what did they expect? An actual warlock?

From the sound of it, the audience left not winning.

Hello again from the frozen north. I wanted to start this installment with just a little more on my intentions and reasoning behind this series of articles. I don’t want anyone to think that I am not taking my incarceration seriously or that this place is an easy cake walk. Neither could be further from the truth. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Life here is no damn fun at all and everyday is a constant struggle to remain positive, which is why I’m writing. It helps being able to record the observations I make or the thoughts I have on what’s going on around me. That being said, let’s get to it.

I wanted to tell you about my roommates, as they figure quite a bit into my day-to-day life. I’ve already mentioned Fargo and Cash (my favorites), but, as I promised the last time, I’ll give a little more detail on them. Fargo is a good natured Native American who cares too much about what other people think of him. This gets him all riled up at any little thing that he feels to be an affront. This is funny shit because he sounds just like the characters in Fargo, with their nasally drawl. In this regard, he isn’t a fan of my laughter, but decent enough to let it go.

Cash is a laid back black guy. He’s funny on my mom and can’t understand why I won’t give him her e-mail address. He doesn’t like it when I tell him that I don’t believe a heroin-addict convict is a good match for my mother. She agrees.

In addition to those two, we’ve got the two new guys. Aragorn is a quiet, well-mannered guy and consequently not very interesting to write about. Then there’s Turtle. Now, he’s nice, too, but creepy. Ok, there, I said it. The motherfucker is strange. He stares at my feet. I mean, really stares. Who does that? He will start laughing for no reason at all. And he’s always lurking outside the room, like he’s waiting to be invited in. Weird man.

Have you ever met someone who thinks they’re the shit, but aren’t good at anything? Some who is jealous of anything that you’ve done or learned that they haven’t? Someone who believes they are to be worshipped when nothing could be further from the truth? The Head makes that person seem like someone you’d want for a best friend. This guy, The Head, will belittle you for knowing things. For doing things. One day, he waxed on and on about how smart he was. Later, he asked me if there’s an ‘e’ in the word ‘living.’

He’s taken to giving me shit for following an actual exercise routine. Day after day he tells me that it’s “cute” what I’m trying to do and that someday I might be up to his level. So I laughed at him. Then he decided he needed to show me how it was done. I said he was welcome to come along anytime and that it would be nice to have someone to work out with. We got there and he refused to stretch, calling it “some faggot shit.”

We did pull-ups. I did 30. He did, well, I’m still waiting for the first one. That’s the kind of guy he is. Maybe one day I’ll be at his level.

I was going to talk about my job, but I don’t feel like it anymore and will save it for another time. Instead, I’ll talk a bit more about some of the other characters in here.

There’s Sloth, who basically watches television when he’s not eating or sleeping. He values his weekends as they give him the opportunity to “finally get some fucking rest.”

Then there’s the Salad Bandit who comes to dinner everyday and loads up a food tray with, like, twelve pounds of salad, and usually eats only a fraction of what he takes. The Salad Bandit has become a good friend of mine, one of the few in here I look forward to seeing. We have to do something about his humor, though, because he takes something funny and overdoes it to death.

Po, this guy acts like a parrot. His favorite things to say are “You’re da boss of Duluth” and “Dat’s my cousin.”

And he can change on a dime.

When the guards, on inspecting day, jokingly told him that his room – the cleanliness of which he takes great pride in – was messy, Po reacted poorly.

“Don’t play wit’ me muthafucka,” Po yelled. “You know why I’m here? I’ll put a pistol to your head.”

“You know I can put you in the hole for saying that,” the guard replied.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Po cried. “Don’t. Play. Wit. Me.”

Po isn’t the guy to piss off.

The last one I’ll talk about for now has the best reason for being here of anyone I’ve met yet. I’ll call him Awesome. You see, Awesome is here for trying to destroy the career of one Mr. John Stamos. Is that not the shit? Apparently, Awesome has compromising pictures of Stamos and tried extorting money from the actor. I’m sorry, any personal nemisis of John Stamos is a friend to me.

So, a couple more random thoughts then I’ll wrap this up. All of the clothing we wear is Air Force surplus, which is kind of cool. However, our gloves are these mitten-gloves where the thumb and index finger are glove and the rest is mitten. Sometimes I look at them on my hands I find myself thinking, ‘So this is how I would be if my mom had smoked crack?’

Interestingly, they sell cologne in the commissary. Cologne! Who the fuck do you want to smell sexy for in prison? It’s creepy enough waking up in the middle of the night to hear your bunkie singing the latest Ke$ha song.

Well, that’s about it for me. It’s about 3 a.m. and I get up to work out in three hours, with The Head. I will write again soon. Until next time… thank you for reading.

Brent

I was going to start this project some time ago. I had it all set in my brain on how I was going to do it and how often. You bet’cha. I had it all figured out. That was before I came here. Once I got into this situation, shit changed really quick. My motivation dropped to almost zero and, suddenly, I was struggling to acclimate to this new experience. It took awhile, but my motivation has returned.

Let me begin with the who and where of my story.

My name is Brent Delzer. Without getting into a very long story, I’ll say that I was convicted in federal court of being part in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy. I am not here to talk about that. Believe me, I am very bored of talking about that. I am here to talk about my new home.

Home is the Federal Prison Camp located in Duluth, Minnesota. Here I have a different name. Here my name is 06737-090. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to set this up, about what I was going to write about. At first, I was going to describe the how the place it works, but it came off as dry and boring, like an instruction manual for becoming an inmate. Here’s all the instruction you need: don’t fucking come here.

Now, I will tell you a little about the place. I am not in a cell, but in a six-man room. It is about 20-feet by 15-feet with three sets of bunk beds and six lockers. The lockers are standard school size. Everything I own has to fit into this space.

I am never locked in my room, although I have to be in the room during counts. From the hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. I am allowed to walk the 103-acre compound. Everything – phones, library, activities, food – has its own building. I am sure it’ll be nice this summer, but Duluth gets cold. I don’t mean just, “Hey, it’s chilly.” I mean, “I’m going to lose my fucking nose cold.” And we have to walk everywhere.

I’m also one of several vegetable prep guys in the kitchen. An interesting fact is that most of the food made here is prepared here. For this, I make a staggering $19.20 a month. Oh yeah, living the dream.

The people here are, for the most part, a peaceful bunch. I’ve met the good and the bad. This being a “camp,” the threat of violence is much lower than other prisons. A big reason for this is the fact that any incidences of violence will result in an immediate transfer to a higher security facility. Only a true moron would risk this.

I’ll admit that before I came here I had an idea of what I thought this place would be like. If your idea is anything like mine, you might think that a federal prisoner would be somewhat more refined than a state prisoner. You can push that thought right out of your head. Some of these guys are dirty-ass, repugnant people. I mean gross. I can’t walk five steps without my feet sticking to drying puddles of spat up mucous. I can’t brush my teeth or shave without dealing with all manner of filth in the sinks. These and thousands of other things you have to deal with everyday.

And if you think the white-collar criminals are any better, you’d be wrong again. They are the worst. Not only are they dirty, but smug about it. They look down on those whose crimes don’t involve money. Newsflash, douchebag: you’re a thief, plain and simple. I had a conversation with one of these types right after arriving here.

“What are you in for?” he asked, then answered for me. “Let me guess: drugs?”

“Yeah, weed,” I told him.

“I figured,” he said. “Myself, I’m in for securities fraud.”

“Lucky you.”

“Nine million,” he continued. “I don’t expect that you’ve seen that kind of cash?”

That taught me not to judge people based on the crime they’ve committed.

When it comes to people I hang out with, they are few. Two,  really. My cellmates,  Fargo and Cash. They are the closest thing to real friends I have in here. I’ll get into them more in future dispatches.

With that, it’s time to say good-bye, for now. I have over two years to spend here and am planning on writing quite a bit. I will say that I love getting mail so feel free to write me. Receiving mail is like Christmas morning.

My address is:

Brent Delzer
06737-090
Federal Prison Camp
P.O. Box 1000
Duluth, MN 55814