"Make it as weird as possible!" Those were my marching orders, direct from the top office of the Roaring Sports corporate HQ, where their newly ordained first Editor Jonathan Bastian was taking this snorting bull by the tail and whipping it into finely sliced tri-tip.
I made it very clear, right from that first phone call, that I had no experience as a sports writer, or really as any kind of writer, unless you count long screeds to the editor and several past girlfriends. But that didn't matter to Jon, not at all. He believed in me, he saw a storyteller where others saw only an endless chain of words. I am not sure why, but Jon trusted me to be one of his new magazine's columnists. I became, along with Andrew Travers, one of Bastian's Boys - a writer (yes!) in search of a good time, a bit of adventure, sprinkled with a dash of sportiness.
For a year now, I have scrambled over, maneuvered around, schemed under, sped past, and bribed decent people in order to file my story, knowing that Jon would find a spot for my ramblings. Through Hellish Waters ("Behold the Chicken Raper") and High Wanderings ('For Whom Three Belles Toiled") I have been given free reign over subject matter and firm management when my column was running out of time to meet deadline. Inevitably, I have had to make that Sunday morning call to Jon from some storage closet that I had somehow squirreled myself away in while at work so as to complete the week's offering on time. Each time Jon has given me the deadline plus grace and stuck with me as I crank away at the thing in a frantic fashion. To fail to meet Jon's deadline is a sin to me. As a newly published writer, the only thing keeping me apart from a million slack jawed, drooling bloggers is the real estate that Jon has entrusted to my mind every Monday morning, and I dare not give that up. Now that I have found my calling, to slip back into the realm of the unpublished sports man is a horrifying thought.
Something has happened here. It is notable, in my opinion, that Jon Bastian is moving on down the road, off to squirrel himself away while he completes his first novel. Jon has more than impressed in the efforts that he has made to see that Roaring Sports is a weekly necessity for any Roaring Fork sports fan.
The cover stories that Jonathan Bastian has written over this past year add up to a beautiful and bountiful palate of adventures, personalities, philosophy, pain and triumph that the Roaring Fork Valley's athletes paint. His writing consistently finds a poetic and factual balance that few writers ever find, let alone master. I expect that sports writing will be but one of the things that Bastian is someday honored for, and I really look forward to the birth of this first novel sometime soon.
Zach Ornitz has published some of the most shockingly perceptive and artful photographs ever published in a small market sports weekly. (My own opinion of course, and unquantifiable for sure. But just you look and see!) Andrew Travers has matched me week for week in exposing the offbeat narratives and unjust bastardizations of pure sport.
Hooper has chimed in from the fringes with his instinctual prose, and so has Damien Williamson, himself a fine sports man with a keen eye for entertainment and fact.
Aspen is one of those places that attracts artistic talent like a funnel cloud sucks up free-range chickens. At any given time, your innocent looking bank teller could be leaving to climb some unknown ice spire in Lower-Puckerstan, the cop who helped you find your stolen downhill bike could spend his off time making avant-garde modern art, the seemingly homeless should be expected to be some sort of inexplicable expert on snow polo and caviar. I think that this may be what has occurred during the first (and hopefully not the last) year of the Aspen Daily News Roaring Sports magazine. The forces of Karma and Fate have come together to deliver small town greatness that may someday, if not already, have international relevance. Present company excluded, the talent well is deep, motivated and relatively unrestrained by threat of censorship.
Now the only question is how to keep improving, how to make every week count more than the last without Bastian's Buddhist-like faith and patience and wise-beyond-his-years guidance.
I sat down this morning to write a sports column that would serve as some sort of calling card someday. It was to be a funky benediction, a wild romp involving baseball, vanishing politicians, cross-dressing golfers, a new puppy that somehow craps on the ROOF, a missing key and a good natured firing. But I started to write up a short paragraph thanking Jon and wishing him my best until I had filled an entire column of just that. There is no time for that scandalous crew that haunts my memory now; it will have to wait beyond this week. Perhaps the next editor of this incredible rag will see it fit for print, as Jon would have.
This week, I am camping on the outskirts of Yosemite, filing from the darkened breakfast nook at a Days Inn that I am not a guest of. I performed my first official act of hacking by guessing the access code, and now find myself with a steady link to the world. Thanks to the grace of penalty time from the departing head honcho, and newly found computer genius powers that I never thought myself capable of, once again, I will meet my deadline. Late only counts in periods and birthday cards. Thanks Jon. Best wishes pal. Stay Weird.
Corby Anderson writes Hang Time for the Aspen Daily News from the cereal bar of the Oakhurst, California Days Inn. When not dodging random death in the form of silently falling giant pinecones, he is reachable at corbyanderson@hotmail.com.
