All Hail Evel.

Evel Knievel died the other day, and America is a slightly worse country because of it. Evel represented a simpler time in America, a time when concerns of a full scale nuclear apocalypse could be put on hold in order to watch Evel try, and fail, to jump a rocket car over a canyon. A time when Red, White and Blue caped jumpsuits seemed perfectly ordinary, and a time when drinking Wild Turkey straight out of a juice glass at dinner seemed even more ordinary.

Evel lived like he rode: Reckless, wild and free. All reports indicate that Evel was kind of a major a-hole, but so what? You break every bone in your body and see how friendly you become. Evel smoked a lot, drank a lot and cursed a lot, but I can dig it. When your entire day is filled with pain, you have earned the right to drink, smoke and curse. In my opinion, Evel should have been allowed to shoot one or two people a month, just because he was that awesome.

I have two Evel Knievel related stories that I would like to mention, even though neither one has anything to do with me:

1. My mom, who will be most embarrassed that I am telling this story, earned the nickname "Neval Kneval" because she jumped a dune buggy over a hill. Gnarly.

2. Evel Knievel gave Jim Rome a cane that contained Wild Turkey. That's just cool, because no one gives out gifts like that anymore. Jim Rome mentions it pretty frequently too.

So, anyway, say a prayer for Evel, as I am sure he is jumping helicopters in Hell right now and could use the support.

Frustratingly, blogspot won't let me make a couple of spaces between paragraphs that I really want to make despite the fact that I have been trying to make those changes for the last 5 minutes. Anyway, don't let the technical issues take away from the meaning of the post.