Ian Murphy, The Beast, July 2007
“THREE-O-NINE! THREE-O-NINE!” I crudely affected like an overgrown toddler, exuberantly waving the hotel room key card overhead, and cradling a small, foam-rubber Tyrannosaurus Rex. I adjusted the thick, foreign prescription bifocals strapped to my head, and steamrolled to the front of the line—purblind and unconcerned with normal etiquette. I wasn’t about to wait around in the Godforsaken lobby of a Cincinnati EconoLodge while the biggest story since creation started without us.
“Checking out?” slowly enunciated the helpless clerk, abruptly disregarding another traveler’s outstretched fistful of credit. She was obliged to immediately reckon with the obtrusive fashion anomaly before her—I was clad in Velcro fastened sneakers, a long sleeve polo shirt, and sweatpants up to my nipples, which were cinched awkwardly at my waist by a sporty fanny-pack. A slightly askew “JUST TRY TO BURN THIS ONE!” American flag trucker hat was my idiot crown.
“Hiiiii!” I brayed, thrusting the card into her mitts. “THREE-O-NINE!” I incorrectly counted the numbers off with my fingers, so the poor girl would understand what was happening. The other hotel patrons silently endured my rudeness. I was clearly some sort of mental defective, an innocent of the highest order. They wouldn’t dare.
“Hiiiii!” I individually greeted the members of a women’s college basketball team on the brisk waddle over to the continental breakfast.
“Holy crap,” whispered my fellow BEAST operative Josh Bunting. “We didn’t know that was you for a second,” he said, giggling like a schoolboy and hiding his face. He spoke for himself and our glossy-eyed cameraman, who, during the previous night’s 90-mph dash through Ohio’s monotonous and heavily policed landscape, woke periodically to warn me about getting tagged by radar:
“I might have some warrants out on me,” he’d hedged groggily from the plush back seat of our loaner BMW 740il sedan, dipping into a large bag of unspecified pills. “That’s all I’m saying.”