Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

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Ice Ice Billy

Inner peace at 193 mph

Anthony Anderson earned 14 traffic tickets last week for doing 193 mph on a motorcycle in the rain near Albany, New York. One of the tickets was for speeding.

This is the type of inspiration that screamed bloggable, and so the broad strokes began:

  • Certainly, 193 mph on a motorcycle in the rain is something one has to work up to. Where does one find the place to practice?

  • That is one traffic ticket for every 9.14 mph this guy was doing over the speed limit.

  • Though Anderson said he was on his way to see a friend at the hospital, it's more likely that he wanted to be at the emergency room before he arrived to complete the paperwork so that when he arrived by ambulance he would get prompter treatment.

  • He had unknowingly lost his passenger eight miles – or 2 ½ minutes – before.

  • Buford T. Justice quickly pulled his hat from over his eyes and tossed his coffee out the window in a single motion as the gravel spit from his rear tires pelted the back of the "Welcome to Schenectady" billboard, behind which he created the most stealth of speed traps.

  • Was it banjo music, or was it a Pantera song being played during the chase? Here's hoping for the latter.

  • Unable to display "193," the radar read, "%#@*."

It's an OK start, I thought. All that was left to write were setups and transitions, and to put it all in an order that made some sense and invite any reader to create a better set up or funnier punch line, or more entertaining point of view.

But beneath the surface, my mood was bad. And structural waypoints like, "I hope Flo and that gecko team up to revoke his insurance," morphed into, "This guy is in the same motorcycle insurance pool as I am with my own Harley-Davidson and this Anderson guy is raising my rates."

The blog spiraled into a rant about safety and families and respect for speed and life. And though those points are all big ones, my radar displayed "BUMMER" and all that remained was a prose better suited for testimony in front of a Nevada legislature sub-committee regarding highway safety.

It was just one of those days. Who knows all that causes any bad mood that takes fun, creative things and renders them, well, not fun?

It was a great topic for a Friday lunch with super acting-and-singing-and-dancing talent Rick Faugno - about how performance is easily affected by what's in the subconscious, whether it's a performer's burden to run the business when off stage, or idly wondering why my dog Kimi Räikkönen has regressed into leaving little surprises under the pool table once a week.

(Is she not loved enough? I simply can't perform under these circumstances.)

So today a blog has been repurposed, and I have spell checked "Schenectady" twice in a week. In the end it's a personal lesson to seek the inner peace that supports the best efforts in any endeavor.

Thus, we arrive to this hope: Next time somebody is going to rip down a public thruway at about 25 percent of the speed of sound, he is not stewing about the HOA notice about his grass needing a good mow. For the society's safety, we need him at his unlawful best.

Billy Johnson is the president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Wranglers.

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