A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

REMEMBRANCE OF A SIMPLER TIME: As we approach tomorrow's Extra-Super Tuesday tourney, it's worth reflecting on the loss of one of California's most enduring traditions: the initiative to regulate bear-baiting. It seems that year after year after I moved to California, every time that I voted I was asked my binding opinion on some proposal or another to regulate (ban, legalize, tax, privatize, subject to commission of experts, or require registration of talent agents with respect to) bear-baiting.

As all right-thinking California citizens, I was ambivalent. On the one hand, bear-baiting, even when it does not involve the strapping of gorillas to ponies (see the Wikipedia article above), is vicious, violent, disgusting, and inflammatory to our basest impulses. On the other hand, I know this because, as many of you know, I am an accomplished bear-baiter (not an English bear-baiter -- that practice is abominably brutal, and I can be described as nothing more than a talented amateur at that -- but American bear-baiting), and I lament the loss of the sport's traditions. I fondly remember those lazy Saturday mornings in Los Angeles, dragging a large raw salmon tied with an alarm (usually a string of aluminum soup cans) into the intersection of Sixth and Vermont (a known locus of bear congregation), then joining my fellow bear-baiters to await our prey in the blind installed in the nearby Hi-Hat tavern. What a thrill it was to hear the sound of something stumbling into our trap! Nine times out of ten it was just a bobcat or stray Volvo, and the trick was to release the intruder into the wild quietly and without injury (because bobcats and urban professionals are quick to anger when cornered). It was the other time, though, when one of our number would see a majestic brown, or grizzly, or koala, noisily ensnared in his lure and ready for combat, that I miss the most. Let's just say that those hazy LA mornings with Dandy Bowhunter Jim, Terry Two-Knife, Gary the Garrotte, Warren "Wrasslin'" Christopher, and Ol' Mauled Neverlearns were some of the best of my life.

Is it too syrupy to say that the bear-baiting initiatives were my perennial reminder to confront both sides of my humanity -- my compassionate instinct, and my yearning for the companionship of my fellow man? I guess what I mean is that ever since 9-11 permanently answered the bear-baiting question, I miss that part of the ballot. If you read on Wednesday that the result of the term-limits referendum was 50% yea, 49% nay, and 1% write-in vote for "ban or legalize bear-baiting," you'll know how I exercised my franchise.