Author: Beau Montana

I’m four months behind on the rent and my credit score is 480.

Vertical limit

“A man’s got to know his limitations,” Clint Eastwood famously said in Magnum Force.

I don’t know who wrote that line. But I like to think it was Michael Cimino, a man who would eventually fly too close to the sun and crash and burn an entire movie studio (The line was probably written by John Milius though). But in my mind, the greatest testament to man’s hubris is mountaineering the Himalayas. Some things just go against the laws of god and mankind was never supposed to exist above 26,000 feet. Not even goddamn airplanes.

They say mountaineering is a sport. But it’s a rich man’s sport. Conquering things that are actively trying to kill you is no normal hobby. It’s absurd when you think about it; ancient rocks that have stood for millions of years and have become cultural icons and sites of holy pilgrimage get defaced and carved up for a thrill. Trash and dead bodies litter their summits. And all for what? So you can say you’ve been to the top?

What’s been done to Mt. Everest is a travesty. In time, I’m sure K2, Annapurna, Kangchenjunga, and others will face a similar fate. If you want to risk life and limb to get high, I have great news for you: there’s crack cocaine. It’s much cheaper and much safer. But more importantly, you’re not trashing one of nature’s wonders.

In the struggle of man versus nature, nature is at an unfair advantage. So show some goddamn respect. A man has got to know his limitations.

da bears

Jay Cutler is a man I think about almost daily. Never met him. But I’m sure he’s an asshole. I personally would never have sex with Tomi Lahren but I can appreciate that level of self-loathing. But Cutler’s lasting legacy is not throwing tight spirals or failing to live up to his potential; it’s becoming the avatar for general misanthropy. I’ve always wondered how someone like him occupies their time in retirement (other than wracking up numerous DUIs of course). Cutler is definitely a guy who wears cargo shorts and flip flops year around. I imagine he also drives a jacked up white Ford F350 with tinted windows and LED lights. He also goes to the local rivers and lakes to fish. Not because he enjoys it. But because it gives him plenty of time to sit under the sun and hold his nickel plated 9mm and ask himself “is today the day?”.

Salute

Welcome to my cock

Here’s the deal. I don’t think the 1996 Michael Bay classic The Rock is a James Bond movie. It’s well established that all the James Bonds, from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, are the same character. But something about this theory appeals to me. Connery’s portrayal of 007 felt distant. Impenetrable. It’s interesting to consider his segment of the franchise as something different from the whole. But if the Rock is, in fact, a James Bond movie, we get to see another angle of the 007 universe, chiefly the political fallout. Until Craig, Bond didn’t give two shits about the real world consequences of his clandestine activities. But under Connery, he stopped WWIII and nuclear war several times. Wouldn’t you think that might have caused a stir in Washington, Moscow, and other centers of world politics? So The Rock, if one wishes to include it in their head cannon, greatly expands the mythology of the Connery Bond tenure.

But what’s also cool about the video above is that this guy goes into some minute detail. Like, he REALLY maps out a timeline. I mean, people call me a dork. But GODDAMN. But the best part of his reconstruction is that the only reason why Bond ended up in Alcatraz is due to the ending of Dr. No when he disconnects his boat from the US Marines to shag Honey Rider. Apparently that was a bad decision which led to an erroneous capture, followed by a tenure in federal prison. Honestly, that was the most realistic part of his explanation.

Cock n bull

You know what a great scene in a movie is? It’s that opening ski sequence in A View to a Kill. A lot of people hate that movie. They say “Roger Moore is too old to play James Bond”. Or “all the characters act really stupid. Or “it’s a rehashed plot from Goldfinger”. And it’s all true. But goddamn, that cold open was lowkey pretty badass. Say what you want about John Glen’s tenure as director throughout the 80s, but the man could direct the hell out of a pre title sequence. For Your Eyes Only notwithstanding, all the cold opens in the 1980s were dope as hell. I’m not saying that AVTAK’s opening was better than The Living Daylights, but I will say that the skiing is probably the most intense in any James Bond movie. Think about it dawg: it’s got helicopters flying overhead, Bond jumping down crevasses and skiing down sides of ice cliffs, snowboarding, you name it. And they show it all in six minutes or less. What ruins it for most is the Beach Boys playing over the snowboarding, but that’s just Glen’s directing style. He was known for ruining intense action sequences by cutting to someone’s stupid face, or in this case, playing an ill timed song. It doesn’t take away from the fact that it was incredible footage. So yeah, come to find out that A View to a Kill is good folks 🤷‍♂️

A shart too far (part II)

I think my favorite type of guy is the guy who will shit in every toilet he sees. Like, I worked with a guy who would blow up the break room toilet where dozens of coworkers, both male and female, would congregate and then he’d walk out and the stench of raunch shit would blanket the break area and the dude would act like it was nothing. And when I was in the Army, there was a tool crib/warehouse-like area that had an open air bathroom attached to it, and this mother fucker would go in there and blast his asshole every morning for the whole warehouse to hear. There seems to be an unspoken rule about certain toilets at the workplace, like some toilets are meant for pissing only. No matter. If a toilet can handle shit, someone will inevitably shit in it. It’s a hardwired rule of the universe, much like Newton’s laws of thermodynamics.

Shit loudly. Shit proudly

I’m slippin; I’m falling

Goddamn. I had something mentally prepared for today’s blog but then I took too many Tylenol PMs and then I forgot all of it. So it’s no wonder RFK is trying to ban that shit. And speaking of autism, it’s cool to claim to be autistic. Drank too many Natty Lights and cruised through a school zone 45 miles over the speed limit? “Sorry officer. I can’t read social cues. I’m autistic.”

Is it stealing autism valor? You be the judge.

RIP Cormac McCarthy, again

I can’t believe it’s been two years since the Great One died. Time flies when you’re a miserable sack of shit. And there’s been a lot that has come out about McCarthy’s personal life in the time since. Honestly, there’s nothing too surprising about these revelations. He was a voracious reader, which stands to reason. A book hoarder. AND he carried out a “relationship” with an underaged girl back in the 70s while he himself was in his 40s. So in other words, Cormac McCarthy was a dirtbag. There’s no skating around it.

But I give little shit about his personal life. The only thing I mourn is the that there will be no more McCarthy novels. Because my fundamental assertion stands: he was the greatest American writer of all time. And I might go a step further. It’s possible that he’s the greatest writer of English literature. Initially what annoyed me with his obituaries was the constant citing of No Country for Old Men and The Road as his most known books when obviously his greatest work is Blood Meridian. And I stand by that. But that’s my assertion from a critical and historical perspective. It’s not my personal favorite of his.

Blood Meridian, his fifth book, was a turning point in McCarthy’s career when he shifted from the “southern gothic” genre into the western. And I’m gonna be honest with you: I prefer the earlier work. Not to say that I don’t appreciate the westerns. Every work from McCarthy is a treasure. Blood Meridian is obviously a masterpiece. Some of his finest prose can be found in the Border Trilogy starting with All The Pretty Horses. In fact, many McCarthy heads will call the second in the trilogy, The Crossing, his best work. And I say that the conclusion to Cities on the Plain is the most moving. But as a personal preference, my two favorite of McCarthy’s are his third and fourth books: Child of God and Suttree respectively.

Next to his first book, The Orchard Keeper, Child of God might be his least appreciated work. I don’t know if it’s due to it being centered on the heinous acts of a serial killer or what. Next to Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, it might be McCarthy’s most nihilistic novel. But I think it’s McCarthy at his most stripped down and it sets up many of the themes that we’d find in his later work, notably No Country for Old Men. After Child of God, he followed it up with his most personal novel, Suttree, which along with his last books The Passenger/Stella Maris, might be the biggest outlier.

In the two years since McCarthy’s passing, Blood Meridian has been recognized as one of the great American novels. In fact, his Reddit board is now mostly artistic renderings of the novel’s antagonist, Judge Holden. So in short, Blood Meridian has entered the zeitgeist. But I want to make it clear, although Child of God and Suttree are my personal favorites, it could be argued that any one of McCarthy’s books is the greatest American novel.

Vanitas

Anadeia has been changed to VANITAS. I simply prefer the sound of Latin over Greek. There’s no other reason for it. I’m trudging through the second and third drafts of the book but it will be ready to go come November regardless of my satisfaction with it. Perfection doesn’t exist. At some point an artist must let go.

Onto more sadder news, it will be released on Amazon. I’m not happy with the decision either but it was the only option. You can choose to support it or not. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t write the book for you.

But if you do read it, please leave a review 🙏 good or bad, I don’t care. Just make it funny. Because if you give me a dead serious bad review, I will roast the FUCK out of you on this blog and all social media using your real name if available. Just try me. I’m BEGGING you.

The biggest dick in the west

Before CIA and JSOC operators come busting through my door, I just want to say that I’ve been blowing through the Blowback podcast. If you’re a dork for the history of US foreign policy since the end of World War II, it’s a must listen. The United States is an empire. Let’s not kid ourselves on that. But it’s one that differs from empires of the past. The United States of America is more than just a geographical territory. It’s also a cultural and ideological one. It doesn’t need to unleash a legion of troops and rain down bombs from the heavens. Instead its weapon of choice is a far more sinister one: it’s Pepsi, it’s Apple, it’s Hollywood, it’s the movement of capital into the hands of the few. Armies and navies and cults of personalities don’t make a nation. It’s the hearts and minds of the people that do. And nothing eradicates the soul greater than a nice sugary drink from Coca-Cola to bring us to the precipice of diabetes. That is the true might of America.