While scouring the threadbare want ads for journalism jobs, I came across this gem — the gig of any dude’s dreams if only he’ll allow it to be.
***
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman
General assignment reporter
Wasilla, Alaska
Salary: $25,000 to $30,000
Description:
We need an ambitious reporter who can hit the ground running. The Mat-Su Valley is the fastest growing area in the state, about 45 miles north of Anchorage. This job isn’t about covering Sarah Palin. You will cover the Mat-Su Assembly, three city councils, feature stories, crime and courts, business and sundry other areas a well-rounded local news reporter would be expected to do. Sports/outdoors background a plus. We offer a benefits plan and vacation begins accumulating after a 90-day probation period. You will join a small, talented staff who care about this place and its people. If you get bored covering the news here, it will be your fault. We don’t cover moving costs.
***
OK. Twenty-five to thirty grand? That’ll work. Even after I dazzle them enough to get the full thirty, it’ll be a hefty pay cut, but compared to what Chris McCandless lived on up there (for a few months, at least), I’ll be stylin’ like Ted Stevens.
Reading the rest of this ad, it’s downright eerie how qualified I am. I’m ambitious. I can write and respond to clichés like “hit the ground running.” I can handle city councils, crimes and courts. Shit, I once wrote a paper for some guy in my dorm for fifty bucks on textile marketing for pregnant women. He got a C.
Sports/outdoors? I can do both. I can even do sports while outdoors.
Probation period? Nothing I haven’t been through before. Just ask my officer.
And whenever I get bored, it’s almost always my fault. How did they know?
Oh, Alaska!
I just like typing those words. Ever since I plowed through “Northern Exposure” on iTunes I wanted to live there — even if the show wasn’t filmed in Alaska. I want to see the Northern Lights. I want to laugh at all the vegan pussies in the lower 48 while I tear into moose tartare. I want my own shaman.
And ever since the 2008 presidential campaign took over my television and my heart, my life has been dedicated to one single Alaskan — not to mention supremely American — goal:
I wanna get high with Todd Palin.
You betcha.
And before you laugh or move on to the next web page to read about Lee DeWyze, there are some facts I need to spill about the former “First Dude.”
I know he gets baked. How do I know? Because his father, James F. “Jim” Palin, used to be the general manager of the Matanuska Electrical Association. Any pothead worth the Umphrey’s McGee sticker on his three-foot Graffix knows that the Matanuska Valley is the home of the legendary “Alaskan Thunderfuck” bud.
But there’s more: Todd’s mother, Blanche (Roberts) Kallstrom, is a former secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives. She’s one-quarter Yup’ik, and his maternal grandmother, Helena (Bartman) Andree, is part of the Curyung tribe. In other words, peace pipes have been passed around the Palin pad from partying papa to papoose prior to Prohibition.
And as much as the Pitbull-With-Lipstick-in-Chief would surely have R.J. Reynolds and Phil Morris in the nifty pocket of everyone’s favorite snazzy red RNC jacket before her first spin around the Rose Garden, you can bet those particular vessels aren’t transporting tobacco.
Put it this way. If you think chronic marijuana usage in Alaska is a result of a simple syndrome best described as “What else do you do when it’s 60 fuckin’ below outside?,” well, think again.
For our silent, dashing hero with the faraway stare and perfect goatee, it’s more a case of, “What else do you do when it’s 60 fuckin’ below outside and you’ve been stuck working in the North Slope oil fields for eighteen years?”
There’s simply no way that a guy who spends those dark winter days and nights up near the Chuckchi Sea — roughly 73 miles from the Fortress of Solitude, if you believe Google Maps — doesn’t hot-box (or is it cold-box?) massive bong rips with his United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union brothers during breaks in a heated Honeybucket somewhere along those lonely stretches of pipeline.
And what better to do on a sleepy Tuesday along the Nushugak River when the salmon aren’t biting to your commercial satisfaction than roll a fat doobie and toke away as glaciers bigger than Fairbanks apartment complexes crash into the fjords right in front of your dreamy blue eyes?
Todd can explain to me how he and some of his state-senate homies got lit one beautiful summer evening while parked along Bogard Road (“Don’t Bogard that joint, my friend,” quickly became a catch phrase), each doing about twenty pulls of ATF off Todd’s custom-made hockey-stick one-hitter. Plied with a glove compartment full of elk jerky and enough Sockeye Red IPA to lube up a musk ox, they headed for the hills.
A few hours into their mission, parked high above Lake Lucille in the Talkeetnas, Todd was suddenly struck by the beauty of his homeland and the strength of his buzz, a light body stone that turned powerfully introspective. Right then, he shouted to the white spruce, to the bald eagles, to the porcupine caribou, to the clouds that represented Sarah, Bristol, Track, and unborn Willow, Piper, Trig and Tripp, that he would “never, ever sell out the Last Frontier.”
His buddies laughed, telling him to load another. But Todd wasn’t joking. The next day, he registered to vote as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party.
***
It’s a very simple decision, really.
Honestly, who wouldn’t want to wake and bake with a four-time Tesoro Iron-Dog Snow Machine Race champion, speeding off on the Iditarod trail while the wind whips you into a patriotic frenzy?
Who wouldn’t want to soar above the Chugach Range in a Piper-PA 18 Super Cub with America’s studliest bush pilot at your side, ready to roast more bowls before you start shooting wolves?
Who wouldn’t want to make a 7-Eleven run at three in the morning for Crunch and Munch with a statesman who privately refers to Levi Johnston’s sister as “stripper-hot?”
Yes, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, expect my resume tomorrow. Or maybe later this week. Definitely by next Monday, I promise.
Because I want that job. I wanna move to Wasilla.
I wanna get high with Todd Palin.
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This is ridiculously hilarious. Heard you on Flipcast with Paul and Mick. Can’t wait to read “the book.”
After you’ve lived in Alaska for a year, the state will start cutting you an annual check for $1,300. You can buy enough herb with that to get a whole pack of polar bears baked.
Some good Ol’ Alaska Bud with Palin…Haha