And that is why he is called The Last Boy Scout

When we left Christmas Island almost exactly a year ago, I left behind one good friend.

My whole life, I’ve pretty much had a single good friend at a time, one after the other. I’ve never needed a following, or anyone to lead me along with like-minded people, because I’ve never met actually met any like-minded people. I’ve whined about it before. I was “Born This Way,” too, but my class-action indignation is limited to one party: me.

So one friend at a time suits me well. And my one friend is almost always cooler than I am (otherwise I cast him or her as a follower, and that’s a bit part at best), and funny as hell. I need someone who can hold their own, bullshit-wise, when I’m in The Zone. This guy banters with the best of them.

He’s also my token Republican friend. I don’t have any token Black or Latino friends at the moment, but I do have a Republican locked and loaded. Come to think of it, I have any number of Republican friends. Real ones, too, not Facebook ones.

Anyway, when we left Christmas Island, the usual pleasantries were exchanged—the pro-forma little white lies and well-meaning balderdash people who are never going to see each other again tell to make the saying goodbye a little less Lifetime movie-of-the-week. I knew email and partisan bickering would keep us on each others’ radar online, but drive all the way out to Idaho?

No way in hell was that gonna happen.

Seems I never get tired of being, eh, not exactly correct.

TLBS and his three lovely girls—one wife, two daughters (one of whom is The Boy’s age and already a year ahead of him in school)—just left after having spent four or five days in our little corner of paradise.

And these people are like Vacation Samurai. They do a vacation like Ike storming Normandy! No weakness will be tolerated! Daughter Number One, eight, was frog-marched up this insanely high water slide (left) and summoned the bravery at the top and take the quickest, scariest 5-second ride of her life. At the end, she loved it!

We bowed out of their day-long river rafting excursion. I already have an “S”-shaped lower back, I don’t want to go for an ampersand. Christ, I damn near broke my fanny bone on the yellow kids’ slide at the water park, which had about 6” of water in the pool at the bottom. BUMP-P-P-P!!

We also spent a day doing typical tourisity things together. In Boise, you can park the cars and walk to everything worth seeing in the entire town, tourist-wise, in an afternoon, if your kids are up to it. (Three-to-two on that score; I bet you can guess which kid wore to a frazzle long before the others.)

TLBS and I even worked in a little guitar time—including an impassioned version of Wind Beneath My Wings for The Missus and her friend from out of town—the less said about which the better, except we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly and stayed up way too late, which was kinda the whole point.

All in all, it was a lovely visit. The hardest part for me, physically, was the clean-up before. I had eleven months of dust and dog hair to remove from every horizontal surface in my office, a vacuum cleaner with which to acquaint myself, dog poo to pick up in the yard, porches to sweep, lawns to mow…

Plus, I knew from stories of past summer excursions, that these guys vacation like Ali practicing for a title fight, and they did not disappoint. I’ve lost three pounds since they’ve got here; we definitely need to have friends like them through town more often.

Of the three members of the Bastardson clan represented at the water park today, The Boy came through with the most dignity intact, even if you count the time I sent him behind the bushes to pee because I was waiting to get a shot of his mother going down the massive slide, which shot I then totally pooched anyhow...

Anyways, kudos to The Last Boy Scout for not being a bullshitter. Last year, during the height of the Boycott Arizona movement, first he pontificated against it, then he put his money where his mouth was and took his family there for the summer vacation. And they had a great time.

This year, he once again put his money where his mouth was and kept a promise to an old friend he could have ignored and I would have had the courtesy to never mention it.

I keep telling him, you need to get into politics. Politics needs men like him. He’s intelligent, articulate, actually believes the rhetoric he’s pitching and his on-camera chops are improving with every televised performance. Plus he’s a right-wing Mr. Smith Could Go To Washington.

Or even stay on Christmas Island. There are definitely important political careers to be made in his home town. If all the good men and women sit on the sidelines, the only people who run—and therefore get elected—will be the megalomaniac scalawags and scoundrels with whom we’re all too familiar.

Meanwhile, I think the next visit is on us, back to Christmas Island. Don’t know when, but a couple of things are certain: There will be pictures! And I will probably not be put in charge of anything next time. Not even pictures.