RegularOccurrences

4 Unsung heroes

Reunion of ’90s band a reminder to fiercely kick at this absurd world by Kirbie Bennett

5

Playing chicken

Are protections for lesser prairie chickens too little, too late? by John Horning

8

Ear to the Ground

“We had a party last night and had only two people puke, so … pretty successful night.”

– Some people have a knack for finding the silver linings

Drop the gloves

For the next few weeks (and hopefully into June), we here at The Durango Telegraph are fully prepared to oscillate in a moment’s notice between a state of terror and ecstasy, rapture and despair, loathing and jubilation.

What, you ask, could possibly drive us into such madness? Especially when the 2024 Presidential Election is still (thankfully) so far off?

What else? The NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Oh yes, while your two Telegraph faithfuls don’t root for the same team (one for the Avs, the other for the Rangers), both teams are in the playoffs, and we’re ready to experience prolonged hell. And, it’s not just us; we now have scientific evidence of our anguish. Well, technically it’s a clever ad campaign, but still.

The long run

Book follows journey of Navajo runner retracing The Long Walk by Kirbie Bennett

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Cropping

out Partnership seeks to lower barriers to farmers as shortage looms by Jonathan Romeo

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Bayer Aspirin, a German pharma company, is trying to raise awareness around the stress of watching your favorite team and the risk it poses to your heart health. According to Bayer, stress – like the heart-pounding moments fans may experience when watching their favorite teams play – increases cardiovascular risk. In fact, Bayer says heart attack risk can more than double when your team’s on.

“It doesn’t matter what sport, league, or team you cheer for – every fan has experienced heart-pounding moments when watching their team play,” Kelly Fanning, General Manager at Bayer, said in a press release. “While that feeling may seem trivial, the stress that comes from those heartpounding moments, along with other risk factors, may increase your cardiovascular risk.”

At first, we kinda thought this was a joke, but then found many of these claims are backed up by the American Heart Association. A 2009 study found death rates in Los Angeles from heart attacks and ischemic heart disease increased in 1980 after the Rams lost a championship playoff game. And in the 1984 Super Bowl, a Raiders victory was associated with a decline in death rates from any cause. (Does it count that I die a little on the inside every time I watch the New York Jets play?)

The ultimate goal of Bayer’s campaign, however, is to encourage people to get screened for cardiovascular disease, so who can argue with that? Plus, it seems better than our stress management plan of taking a shot every time there’s a commercial break.

Flailing now with joy

“A secret sadness lurks behind the 21st century’s forced smile,” philosopher Mark Fisher wrote in 2014. In recent years, that forced smile has been shattered as plagues, shootings, fascism and violent transphobia become the background noise to our precarious lives. When every hour brings a state of warning or a state of mourning, I think it’s vital to find comfort in a few minutes of crude, baroque joy.

Because, last week, I watched Blink-182 perform a reunion set at Coachella while sitting at home, sharing in the excitement with other fans on a music message board. That sentence and scenario were unimaginable in 2014. That year, Tom DeLonge, the original guitarist, abruptly left the band and it seemed like he severed ties for good. Like other rock bands, that wasn’t Blink-182’s first messy breakup. But this time around, the remaining members continued without DeLonge. They brought in a new guitarist to continue touring and recording. I was midway through my 20s then and shrugged off the drama. But still, a part of my inner teenager was left feeling disenchanted.

Blink-182 was my gateway drug to punk, which became my gateway drug to everything I value now – namely literature, history and journalism. I have this elementary school memory of a classmate asking me about my favorite music. I didn’t know how to respond and said something like, “I dunno. I guess I listen to whatever’s on the radio?” Knowing I could be asked that question at any moment by friends and classmates induced a pre-teen existential crisis for me. I couldn’t grasp how my peers could say with confidence they liked this or that artist based on a few songs.

A year or two later I was in junior high, playing video games with friends. We were trying out MTV Sports: Snowboarding on the PlayStation. All I remember about that experience was “Don’t Leave Me” from Blink-182’s 1999 album, “Enema of the State.” The song played in the video game’s background, but it was at the forefront of my attention. The chuggy, frantic palm mutes followed by crunchy power chords immediately became my ear candy. I heard that song and thought, “This is my favorite band,” followed by, “I wanna play guitar, and I want it to sound like THAT.”

In middle school, Blink-182’s degenerate sense of humor seemed fitting in an environment where sexism and homophobia were as common as recess. But I always heard the band’s crude humor differently, then and now. I’ve never felt at-

Thumbin’It

The return of water service to residents of Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park, after nearly two months. How does this happen in Durango… in 2023…?

Colorado legislators moving to make falsely reporting an active shooter a felony offense, because this is our world now.

Reports that White House grounds are now safe after a toddler breached the fence. Phew, crisis averted. Secret Service 1, tiny tots 0.

tached to the masculine identity, and Blink-182’s raunchy self-deprecating humor felt like it was disarming masculinity, bastardizing the male ego to reveal a frazzled, confused heart.

“Lost in a lot of the conversation of Blink-182 is the heart in their songs, much of it hidden and masked by layers of ironic detachment and throwaway jokes of little redeeming value,” trans writer Niko Stratis recently mused in an essay on the band. At one point, Stratis reflects on taking inspiration from the band, using “selfdeprecation as a shield” in her youth, which is something I can relate to. That same self-deprecating humor got me through school life. It felt liberating as a teenager to take sadness and confusion and turn them into humor. And Blink-182 was often my point of reference. Call it the forced smile and secret sadness of adolescence. Then when I reached adulthood, I realized those feelings were still constants in life. So when bassist Mark Hoppus sings, “I’m flailing now” in the song “Dammit,” I still relate to it now as I flail through my 30s. “Well, I guess this is growing up,” Hoppus sings in the chorus, and it still rings in my heart.

I was moved by Stratis’ essay. Reading a transwoman’s poignant insight on Blink-182 made me realize how sad and odd it is that, in our hetero-patriarchal society, taking on the male identity precludes any right to emotions. And yet, for those with non-binary gender identities, society precludes any human rights to them at all.

In 2001, the band became a little more vulnerable in songwriting. They released their first acoustic song called “What Went Wrong.” It’s an expression of disillusionment with the status quo. For the song, the band’s long-time producer Jerry Finn found inspiration from a documentary on the first Russian nuclear test. There’s a scene with an old Soviet physicist reflecting on the explosion. “There was a loud boom,” recalled the physicist. “And then the bomb began fiercely kicking at the world.” That statement became the song’s outro lyrics: “I’m kicking up/ fiercely at the world around me/ to what went wrong.”

Today, with many communities facing the threat of violence via gun and legislative pen, daily life feels like an inescapable bleakness. But these are also reasons to fiercely kick at the world. And for a minute last week, I found joy in seeing a crude band I adore reunite and perform, and my inner youth healed a little. For a second, a baroque sunset beamed in me against a world absurdly dark and broken. And that gives more energy to face the unknown hours ahead.

– Kirbie Bennett

SignoftheDownfall:

A terrible fire at the gator farm in Alamosa County, resulting in the deaths of a number of critters.

Fox News settling a defamation lawsuit over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Now we won’t get to see Tucker Carlson lie on the stand! Oh well, we can always watch him lie at 8 p.m. MST.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seeking to control Disney with state oversight powers. Finally! Now we can have around-the-clock surveillance to see what Goofy’s really up to.

Short Fuss

Tony Saunders, of Pennsylvania, was pulled over this month in a stolen BMW full of items looted from a convenience store. He told cops he found it all in a junk yard and then sped away, only to get stuck on some railroad tracks. Tony, who had a dead deer he planned to use for garden fertilizer hidden in his trunk and had also brought along his dog, stole a school bus and led cops on another chase. When they pulled him over a second time, he stripped down naked and ran into the woods, because he didn’t want to get caught like a deer in dress-whites.