First, a little Chee-Chee Then Some Other Extremely Odd Sports

By Bill Vaughn

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0939872056
• ISBN13: 9780939872053
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Arrow Graphics
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

I laughed so hard I spit limeaide on myself

This book - how did I find it? - I saw a blurb in Outside magazine in 2003 about it, and what first got me was "Golfing the Lewis and Clark Trail" -- being a huge Corp fan and hungry for anything on the subject. I carried this cut-out blurb from the magazine for the past 5 years!! I wish I had read it earlier - and yet, now I'm also a Survivor fan, with some insight into the behind-the-scenes shenanigans thanks to Gloria, who knows all -- so I read SURVIVE THIS first. So funny, so right on, so true to the spirit of the strange world of Mark B. It will be read by many a Survivor fan come september -- and if they have any sense, they'll buy the book - from the author - he SIGNS it, it is so cool. His insights are in the league with Mark Twain, what first sounds like someone who has gone berzerk is revealed to be a profoundly deep observer of human nature.

Dispatches from the Real Montana

I know Bill Vaughn as a long-time friend and have previously read several of his magazine articles. However, it was only when eleven of his recent pieces were brought together in this book, that I got a real sense of what special writer he has become. My prior impression was that he was something like the Hunter S. Thompson of the modern adventure magazine - his specialty was writing for Outside magazine about offbeat sports or quasi-adventures, such as golfing a portion of the Lewis and Clark Trail or trying to crash the set of a 'Survivor' episode. You will find that type of piece in this book, but - from my perspective -- when the best of these pieces are read as whole, something much different emerges: a moving chronicle of life outside the mythic Montana of the popular imagination. In the past decade or so, Montana communities such as Big Sky and Bozeman and Whitefish have attracted people with enough wealth to build monstrous homes and spin off a small but growing economy of retainer industries (golf courses, upscale sports stores, coffee shops, good restaurants and the like). But, as Vaughn chronicles, there is still another Montana or many other Montanas - an amalgam of trailer houses, local softball teams, homegrown lawyers and doctors and business owners, liberal writers and narrow-minded bureaucrats. And a common theme among their lives is the contrast between a stirring, interntionally renowned landscape and a per capital income (and cultural capital, if you will) much lower than the national average. It is this Montana that is at the center of Vaughn's work. I started with the piece titled, "Skating Home Backward," which deservedly was nominated for a National Magazine Award. "Skating" unveils to the reader the overall span, so far, of Vaughn's life -- from growing up in "Rat Flats" southeast of Great Falls, to living with his wife Kitty Herrin, their horses and dog, on a modest piece of acreage west of Missoula, Montana, just downwind from an odiferous paper mill. From Vaughn's indelible childhood - under the influence of a single father who unabashedly embodied and espoused redneck culture - Vaughn has grown into a man capable of poignant vignettes about loss and hurt and the reclamation of what is good in people and in the lesser lands of Montana. His writing is reflective and moving and, yes, still darkly humorous. He still has not outgrown his redneck father's anger. More than once in this book, he grabs a golf club in anger and stomps off to confront a neighbor over matters of security and property. But the real find in this book is an emerging author who deserves much wider recognition, as he writes about real life amidst the glorious geography of the Rocky Mountains and High Plains.

Laughter and Bliss (with a few snarls)

This essentially self-published collection by a National Magazine Award-nominated writer is brilliant stuff --too bad about the anti-commercial nature of its launch (not the mention the possibly regrettable title). But hidden under this bushel is some of the sharpest, funniest, and sometime most moving personal journalism around. The gems include a story about renovating a junkyard swamp into a thriving wildlife-friendly skating pond, one about the invention of the I'll-never-be-hungry-again Food Suit (with insulated pockets for both hot food and cold beverages), and a gorgeous essay about the life and death of a great dog.