Fishing With The Dark Prince

I spent Sunday fishing with Eric and Joe. Funny how two people can have such different memories of an event.

Joe sent this email to another friend who was unable to go with us.

"You really missed it.

I had wondered off from Kurt and Eric to check on a pool of fish I had thought I spotted from the car as we pulled up to the stream. When the pool didn't turn out to be anything special I thought it would be best to return to the location of Kurt and Eric. I'm glad I did.

As I round the bend, I see Kurt and Eric both trapped, no wait, cornered by a huge grizzly with a few of her cubs behind her. I had no time to be scared or think of my own safety Carey or else it would have been curtains for my two friends.

I picked up the closest thing I could find which was a stick about three feet long and about two inches thick. With stick in hand, I threw myself between the bear and my friends, who by now were crying and huddled together about to be bear food.

What ensued, was not pretty.

For the better part of an hour the grizzly and I tussled, russled and scuffled.

I'm not proud of killing that bear with my bare hands in front of the baby cubs Carey, but I did what I had to do to save my friends.

As for the foster cubs, I have them, at my condo now. I'm nursing them with baby bottles I bought at the store and warm soy milk. I think I will raise them and this is based entirely on the huge amount of guilt I have for killing their mother (with my bare hands, the stick broke).

The reason behind telling you this is twofold.

1) Your friends, my friends, Eric and Kurt, are alive and well. They will live on to take more news photos.

B) I have chosen to name the bear cubs. At first their names were to be Eric and Kurt, but I noticed one of the cubs was a girl-cub. So, I have now decided to name one of the cubs, the girl-cub, Carey. In your honor. The second cub will be named after my favorite baseball player of all time, Yogi.

I'm sorry you had to stay home Carey. Next time?"


Joe "papa bear" Hollak


And now, the truth.

Wow, I've always wondered what it would be like to walk (or hike) among the mentally disurbed but now I know.

First off, Joe spent the entire drive up the mountain popping pills and filling the cab of the truck with talk of devil worship, pornography and the joys of shopping at Wal-Mart.

Eric and I just pretended to go along, knowing full well that it's best just to let these things play themselves out before taking action.

We said nothing when, after arriving at our first destination of the day, Joe jumped from the car, stripped naked and covered his body with a thick layer of Vaseline. (Memo to Joe: get that thing on your chest checked by a doctor. I don't care what you say, that thing is NOT a nipple, in fact, I swear I caught it winking at Eric when his back was turned)

Eric and I gathered our materials, bibles, prayer cloths, annointing oils and portable confession booth etc, and headed for a nice meadow to do God's work for the day. Joe, or "Damien" as we'd taken to calling him by then, seemed to be happily occupied by throwing rocks at a group of disabled, albino children at a nearby camp.

Eric and were nearing our second hour of praising Him and sharing the Word with some Romanian pilgrims we had met earlier when, from across the meadow we heard a horrible screeching sound that reminded me of the time I saw a naked lawyer fall into a pit of rabid sandcrabs.

We turned and looked and saw "Damien" charging across the meadow toward us, yelling in what was clearly some ancient form of a dark language, understood only by those who've undergone years of horrible and highly secret ritualistic workshops.

We barely had time to react, he was moving much quicker than a man of his carriage should have been able to and he was carrying what appeared to be a large tree branch. It was only later, when the mace kicked in that we were able to get a close look at the weapon and see that he'd been trying to carve the branch into what appeared to be a crude pitchfork.

For some reason, he headed right for the Romanian men, who were paralyzed with fear. He began clubbing the poor bastards over their heads and then tried to wrestle them to the ground. The men fought like champs and as Eric and I tried to tear him from his prey I remembered the can of mace I had in my pack. It's always a good idea to carry protection with you and the can of "chemical billly club" did it's job. Within seconds, Damien was curled up in a ball with the dry heaves, sobbing like a girl scout.

As the mace began to subside, we heard Damien croak out what sounded like a dying man whispering the word "Grizzly, grizzly, must kill grizzly".

It tooks us a while to figure out what the poor, gasping heap of evil was saying but then Eric figured it out.

The poor, satan-infected son of a bitch had mistaken the Romanians for grizzly bears. In his state of mind, the shirtless, hirsute euro-pilgrims looked exactly like giant, killer bears. He was trying to save us, not kill us.

Still, there was no way in hell we were carrying this crazy fuck all the way back to Fresno with us. Instead, we made a deal with the Romanians to leave him in their custody in exchange for eternal salvation.

So, if he's claiming he has them at home and he's "nursing" them, just realize that these are three, very hairy, slightly overweight eastern european railroad workers we're talking about.

Two more things while i'm at it.
1. When Joe aka Damien, says he's got fins, don't as I did, assume he means swim fins. He actually has fins on his back. My memory of high school biology is a bit foggy but I believe this is known as the dorsal fin.

2. I left a little "gift" in Joe's waders. It's a time release device so next time he slips into his rubber pants, make sure to stay upwind and away from any open flame.

Remember, it's Yawaeh, or the Highway...