Atomic Nerds

More snapped at the NRA Convention…

Since a benefit of registering with the 2nd Amendment Blog Bash for the recently concluded NRA convention in Phoenix was that we received actual media credentials, I felt it seemed only reasonable that I should attempt some act of actual investigation or reporting. I’d planned on the basic “Ok, here’s the convention, here’s something interesting” that every other blogger was planning on, but when I was looking through the map of the convention floor, I noticed something rather surprising and came up with a better idea.

H-S Precision had a booth on the show floor.

For those who may have missed the kerfluffle the last time around, H-S Precision is a stock maker that has fallen out of favor with large portions of the shooting community. Why has that happened, you ask? Because on last year’s catalog, they included a product endorsement by Lon Horiuchi. The linked wikipedia article is naturally a tad dry, and of course subject to the inherent drawbacks of being a Wikipedia article. LawDog has a more succinct summation of the incident in question, which I strongly suggest you read if you haven’t already. In fact, I strongly suggest you find a longer version as well, because the events surrounding Vicki Weaver’s death at Ruby Ridge at the hands of Lon Horiuchi can only be described, and this is the polite version, as “clusterfuck.” The short-short version is that Lon Horiuchi unlawfully shot and killed an unarmed woman during a standoff. When brought up on manslaughter charges, the FBI basically said “Nuh-uh. You can’t prosecute him.” and whisked him away to let him help foul up the Waco standoff, but that’s a separate fuckup.

After the shooting community noticed this rather galling endorsement, H-S Precision sat on their corporate hands for about a week and a half. Contrast this with Remington, who began responding to emails (as their products used some of HSP’s products) the very Saturday this all hit the fan, and have responded to other controversies with similar speed. After eventually deciding that using a product endorsement from a known and rather despised individual who could fairly be described as a murderer, they removed the endorsement and technically issued an apology. In reality, the apology was a very small graphical link on their website, and nothing else, to a statement essentially asserting “Fine, no endorsements from anyone will appear.” In other words, not actually an apology.

Backstory out of the way, let’s skip back to today. On noticing the H-S Precision booth on the NRA Convention floor map, I was genuinely curious about a few things. How on earth could Horiuchi have passed any company’s vetting process? ANY entry into google alone will bring up countless flags screaming “Not an ideal celebrity endorsement,” let alone the notion that any company would want to actively associate with the government actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Why wasn’t there any sort of actual apology? Is Horiuchi still affiliated in any way with the company, just not published as such? Media pass in hand, I felt it appropriate to try to get some answers.

Now before I press on, I have an unfortunate confession. I went into the interview at their booth with a voice recorder going. As it turns out, the recorder was malfunctioning, and while it indicated it was saving the interview for posterity, all it was really doing was creating a zero byte length file and wandering off to have a smoke and coffee. For once having an inkling of common sense spring to my head, I jotted down notes on everything once the interview (all sixty seconds of it) was concluded, but I would very much have liked to have H-S Precision’s own personnel offer their opinions in their own words here.

When I approached the booth, the first person I spoke to was a product specialist, and I was routed to the company PR man standing next to him. Damnably trusting my recorder, I didn’t get names on anybody. I asked if I could ask him a few questions, recorder in plain view, about the company and its policies, and he agreed.

“Sir, I have a few questions about your company’s vetting process. A few months ago there was an incident in which your spokesman was rather inadvisably selected, given the response from the shooting community. How does someone like that make it through your internals and onto the catalog?”

The convention floor was noisy and this took a second to sink in, but once it did his expression shifted instantly from friendly and eager to discuss to angry and downright furtive as he glanced around to see if anyone else was looking or recording.

“No comment. That never happened. He was never affiliated with us. No comment. Move along. We do not include product testimonials.” Added emphasis mine. He continued to chant the “no comment” talisman while making sure the other two H-S Precision employees got the notion that they should keep quiet too.

“What about the apology? Your company didn’t even — ” At this point, a white haired gentleman male stepped forward, visibly angry.

“What about an apology? Did they apologize for killing a US Marshall?”
“Did Vickie Weaver shoot him? Did the baby do it?”
“Well she was there! She knew damn well — ” at this point he was very animated and going red in the face. The original company spokesman tossed a few more “No comment!”s at me and physically removed the other individual to the back of the booth. The product rep I originally spoke to informed me that the interview was over and told me to leave the booth.

“You don’t have any answers for any of this?”
“No comment. You need to leave.”

As the white-haired defender of Horiuchi, who for reference I specifically never mentioned by name, had looked entirely willing and gearing up to physically hit me when the other rep moved him to the back of the booth, we did so. I later stopped by the McMillan booth to ask them about the incident. After waiting about five minutes just to speak to any rep at all, I was introduced to the daughter of the company owner. She very politely declined comment, although the gentleman who introduced me had responded to my questions as we walked around the booth that “Yeah, a lot of people had, um, ‘opinions’ on that incident…” I will point out that he technically said nothing either for or against H-S Precision.

Finally, since I’m not actually a professional journalist and thus not expected to even pretend to be fair and even handed, it’s time for your moment of schadenfreude. Below is a map of the NRA Convention showroom floor. I’ve circled the location of the H-S Precision booth in red, and the McMillan booth in green. Yes, the size disparity was even more striking in person. Click for big, it’ll help.

It’s also worth noting that at the H-S Precision booth all I had to do to speak to a representative was interrupt his coffee and conversation with the other reps. At the McMillan booth, they were popular enough that even though they had roughly four times the staff, I still had to wait about five minutes before it was my turn to get anybody’s ear. I had a good view of H-S Precision’s booth for a solid 20 minutes while standing in a line for something unrelated to this post, and during that entire time I still didn’t see anybody approach them.

And just in case there was any doubt that they missed the point worse than Horiuchi missed hitting any dangerous target, here’s their current slogan:

Jiggety jig! After a solid eight or nine hours on the road, involving the usual transition from Phoenix driving conditions (i.e. the cop flips you off because you were only going ten over the limit and that’s way too freakin’ slow) to northern New Mexico driving conditions (i.e. “Ohmigodohmigodohmigod if I exceed the speed limit every atom in the universe will simultaneously explode at the speed of light!”), we are home safe and sound, if a tad tired. Hotel beds are never the most sleep-friendly, and with our heads all aswim with thoughts of various awesome and pervertedfriendly internet buddies suddenly made into real boys (and girl), the one tasked with resting us for today’s trip was no exception.

The good news is I’ve got actual honest to Browning real I-earned-my-official-media-badge content coming up, along with various other cool stuff. The bad news is that one part isn’t going to be as cool as I’d hoped thanks to an electronic failure, and that it isn’t going to be tonight either. In the meanwhile, if you’d like our impressions of the convention, along with plenty of rambling and dead air space (which supposedly adds value, and that’s what we’re going to keep telling ourselves) you can listen to the NRA Convention episode of The Vicious Circle, featuring myself, my lovely wife, Alan, and TD (both linked above). We do tend to go on, and there’s a break in the middle where we stopped to run the AC again, ’cause four people in one hotel room in Phoenix with triple digit heat can only snark for so long.

1. Take one well-known blogger who has posted photos of himself in the past and described certain distinctive wardrobe elements he planned to bring to the NRA convention.

2. Take one massive traffic snarl as roughly everyone who has ever heard the word “gun” in the free world attempts to find a place to park their car for the day, while the six people not driving (I use the term very loosely since it took ~20 minutes to go maybe 1000′) charge prices for what parking there is that indicate they are to be the real source of the Bailout’s funding.

3. Take one pair of bloggers frustrated by the traffic snarl and with windows down thanks to a faulty AC bearing. Combine with one heaping pile of coincidence, and blogger from step 1 coming down the ramp in the parking garage offering advice on where there are still spots open. Add one pinch of “Oh, what the hell, give it a shot.”

4. Yell “Thanks, Kevin!” as you drive on to find said spots.

5. Enjoy the stunned result and bewildered expression on his face as you continue on.

Upcoming: gossip about others, pictures, R. Lee Ermey, and we troll H.S. Precision, which is apparently really sensitive still about the Lon Horiuchi thing, though not in the way they should be.

In the meantime, this is the first space we’ve had to breathe since ten this morning, so. To bed.

So, we’ve successfully made the trek down to Phoenix for the shooty goodness, gunblogger festivities, and by default visit to my mother.

The way down brought lessons in how much coffee consumption changes the number of pit stops needed along the way, the discovery that our favorite jerky brand has come out with turtle jerky of all things (a taste test will follow), and the discovery that modern stand-up comedians really, really need to learn that just because it was funny and made sense to them when they were high off their asses does NOT mean it will be funny to anyone sober. XM Comedy’s occasional running of old Carlin and Redd Foxx routines did not make them look any better by comparison. Also? Being stoned is only inherently funny if YOU’RE the one stoned. Everyone else is wishing that if you had to do tired jokes, you’d include a few about sex and marriage just to mix it up a bit. Also, modern alternative music is way too soporific, which is how we came to learn that much about the current state of standup. Holy shit do we miss Sirius/XM’s punk station- no way to nod off to THAT.

Lunch was obtained at a Chester’s Chicken housed inside a Love’s truck stop. We quite like Love’s stops, because they tend to be clean, fast, and efficient, but the food is really a complete tossup. This one brought indifferent fried chicken, assorted “sides” that with the exception of the cole slaw were all fried in the exact same batter as the chicken (and I think they were seriously considering trying it with the slaw), and an item that the menu asserted was a “roll” and I would term an “extruded glucose object”. There was something else described as a “spread” that I assume contained some sort of salted fat product intended to bring flavor to the object, but I decided I was content to let its identity remain a complete mystery. Next time I eat something at a truck stop designed to be cheap and consumed in under five minutes, I’ll be sure to demand higher quality.

Dinner was much better- and to any of the other NRA convention attendees in town, Havana Cafe on 44th and Camelback is well worth a visit. The worst of what we had was merely good, the rest was fantastic, especially the gallinas fritas Stingray had. (We also recommend the “sunspot” fried sweet potatoes- served with great dipping sauce.) I may have to try to get back there to try more, as it took me quite awhile to settle on what I wanted most. The mojitos are extremely tasty too, although they’ll drive your bill up. Special note to the loud chubby middle-aged man with the apparently mute female dining companion sitting behind us for the appetizer course: judging by the twenty minutes or so of your personality we were involuntarily graced with before you finished, your co-workers really DON’T like you and ARE just being nice. You’re welcome.

Oh, and if any of y’all tried to call us around 9 Phoenix time, we couldn’t answer the cell in time, and the only information that got across was “private”- no number or name. If it was, next time, leave a message.

*squinting at a vanity license plate reading “EU4IC”* “Can you decipher that?”

“Uhhh… you-four-I-see?”

“Oh, I get it. Euphoric.”

“About a Volvo? There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Maybe he’s a drug dealer.”

“….No. Not in that.”

“Maybe he’s an anesthesiologist.”

“Much better.”

Chris Muir is, as always, funny, dead sharp, witty, topical, etc, etc, etc. Praise is heaped on him by the tactical wheelbarrow, and for good reason.

Today, I gotta say… he missed. “We beat your old ‘daddy’ party” is a correct assessment, again as always. But really, “No class?” Sure, it works with the whole “school’s out” thing, but shouldn’t someone point out that when that kind of daddy goes away, it’s time for the nanny*?

*Yes I know there’s a mommy, too. Dammit, I’m trying to get some easy filler up so I can frickin’ pack for tomorrow, work with me here.

I just got back from a trip and I’m just about to leave for another one- though a few of you will be seeing me when I get there- AND I’ve been fighting off one bug or another in series for weeks now, so I’m feeling rather drained of my energy and creativity. So, here you get some scattered thoughts from my last trip.

- I don’t know if it’s just south Florida or what, but the population seems to be physically polarized into “extra from Baywatch” and “has given up on a truly grand scale”. I don’t know if it was just the contrasts my eye was drawn to or what, but it seemed like almost everyone was either lean and toned or had large rolls of fat around every joint. I think the radio commercials I was hearing for plastic surgery may have hinted at “not just my imagination”.

-After my first real exposure to top forty radio in years, I’ve either become a genre snob or an old fart. I think some of both- I’m still passingly current on metal, punk, and the less random strains of alternative, but what plays in clubs nowadays baffles me utterly. This particular song still haunts me. I don’t know whether the part about “And if her boyfriend says he’s got BEEF, I’ll tell ‘im I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fuckin’ scared of him” or “SHUSH GIRL, shush your lips, do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips” is harder to pry out of my head. I really want some beef now, though.

-Airlines are apparently economizing now by buying aircraft from nations dominated by Pygmies. A 5’3″ non-obese woman should NOT come that close to taking up all available space. And if I thought I was miserable, the normally sized men to either side of me were in a special hell. After I got off one flight I was actually limping from having had to spend the two hours with my leg jammed at an odd angle.

-YOU may hear “swim with dolphins” and think “what a magical experience!”. I hear “swim with dolphins” and I think “Get into the water with several intelligent top predators that weigh many times what I do and conduct their social business in a fashion that leaves a lot of scars.” Fuck your dolphin swim.

-The orcas at Sea World are intelligent animals, have learned well, and are not very interesting except as a demonstration of how far you can get with skilled use of operant conditioning and a large mammal willing to humor you. The great egrets that have learned that the tanks of treat fish are open for the duration of the show are much more interesting, especially when the trainers attempt to shoo them away without breaking choreography. The Shamu Show: C+. The Egret Show: A.

-See if you can spot the park feature that stands out: Shark tank, penguin and alcid exhibit, beluga whales, stingray pool, manatee pool, Clydesdale horses, walruses, reef fish. As a bonus question, see if you can guess who owns the park.

-Speaking of walruses, you can stare at them for just as long as you like and they will not stop looking wrong. However, I am happy to report that lolrus has his bucket back.

-Resident Evil 5 is a fairly fun two-player game (heaven help you if you’ve not got a second player, however), right up until the very end, when it reaches a boss battle that made me come within a hair of pitching my controller through a window. Fuck you, Capcom. Fuck you right in the ear.

-While in a part of a theme park devoted to Marvel comics, which is aimed at kids as much as anything, one of the songs to come up on the local soundtrack was Lords of Acid’s March of the Crab Louse. The park may wish to take a closer look at whoever is making their music selections, although technically speaking it’s only scandalous to someone that already knows the lyrics.

-Is there a state law in Florida that requires all souvenier shops to feature a random collection of minerals? It didn’t start getting really weird to me until I saw the mineral stands in shops that had absolutely and utterly no relation to such things, like the Sea World gift shop next to the Arctic exhibit. Everything else: targeted to Sea World and arctic marine life. Except the damn rocks. What the hell?

-Absinthe has got to be the single most interesting liquor I have ever tasted. Its savage reputation is rather overstated, though, although it’s always possible the stuff I was drinking was just cheap and/or watered down. I didn’t get more than appreciably tipsy.

-What’s the deal with the blacked-out windows at martial arts dojos in the Asian district of Orlando? Are they the new “happy ending” service providers?

-Acquiring board shorts is a bit of a torment if you are shaped more like an hourglass than a surfboard. Or if you want more than six square inches of cloth to cover your ass with.

-If you’ve acquired a taste for good food and liquor, stay the righteous hell away from any food and drink provider located in close proximity to a university.

-If your fingers tingle after picking up that toad, you should probably wash your hands before you do anything else.

-It doesn’t matter how independent you are, get married and have pets and you will find yourself very cold and lonely when it’s just you in a bed.