what i need / is a good defense

have you ever contemplated committing a crime? i mean, seriously? not, like, speeding or anything. something premeditated. i have, although it\’s not the type of thing you\’d see on \”law & order.\” actually, they\’ve really been scraping the bottom of the barrel lately, so maybe. but i digress.

it was early november, 1996. we find our hero in his dorm at saint olaf\’s college, doing a little internet research on drivers\’ licenses from other states, as well as how one can get something laminated for cheap. that\’s right, i was making myself a fake ID.

not for the reason you might think: for better or worse, getting alcohol at olaf wasn\’t ever a problem. wadE and i were friends with brendan, who was on the football team. once you had a connection like that, you were golden. (amber?) anyway, the reason i wanted a fake ID was much more innocuous. in the mid- and late-90\’s, martin zellar always played a show at the holiday inn in austin the night after thanksgiving. this was a 21-over show, so i\’d never been able to go. 1996 was smack-dab in the middle of my \”zellar-as-god\” phase, however, so i was willing to go to great lengths– breaking the law, in fact– to see him. i ended up designing the fake, and it looked pretty good, too. the next time i power up my mac i\’ll pull down the image and post it here.

what happened? wadE, as he is wont to do, came in with his silly logic. he asked what the chances were that any of the people checking IDs or working that night would know me, know that i wasn\’t 21, and (most importantly) know that i shouldn\’t be walking around with a license from new york? smart guy, that wadE. so we didn\’t go that night; if i recall, we spent the night at jason\’s, drinking pig\’s eye lean and playing Madden on the super nintendo.

and i was saved from a life of crime.