Welcome to Narniaville: Anthony 101

They say everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning. Well, I have a great one! I wake up every day and wonder what I can do to help someone else feel special. I never get sick -- ever. It’s like that film Unbreakable. I sleep alone, read my Bible, listen to the Christian radio station and pray that Paris Hilton will accept the offer to play Mother Theresa in the definitive Bollywood film about that great Saint. My mother taught me, “Anthony, never be unkind.” That is my touchtone. I do impersonations of everyone from The Simpsons to Afrikaners to people from Ireland to Dr. Ruth.

I had the perfect childhood and the best parents. I almost died when I was a baby but I grew to be strong and fast. I played wide receiver on our State Championship high school football team and made a diving catch in the end zone at Homecoming. I grew up on the beach at Fire Island and it was like living in a fantasy novel. My mother was gorgeous like Jackie O. or Queen Rania of Jordan. My father was the strongest, toughest and most Christian man I’ve ever known. Any and all of the good that’s in me I owe to my parents. When they died a part of me died and sometimes a week would go by on Ambergris Caye, Belize without my saying a single word to anyone, such was my grief when I lost them.

I own three pairs of shoes, I don’t wear a watch, no tattoos and I detest men in earrings more than words can express. I am a leader and never a follower. My favorite colors are red, sky blue and khaki. If all else fails I know that I can always turn to the French Foreign Legion. I’ve had the chance to learn combat tactics from some of the best Special Forces soldiers on Earth, from Willem Ratte to Bert Sachse to third generation SAS. I tell their stories, because they trust LoBaido, Anthony C. to tell them.

I know that God hates violence, violent men and that we are to defeat evil with love, not with more evil. That said, some kinds of evil have to be destroyed, such as Maoist extrapolations such as the Khmer Rouge and “Year Zero.” I detest liars and cowards, which seems to summarize the character of so many of The West’s cultural, intellectual, academic, military and political “leaders.” The transnational elite who have sold out our nation(s) like the cheap, greedy, corrupt, weak, pathetic, restless, worthless whores they are. And it is our courage, our kindness and our love which makes us better than them, and will always make us better than them. And they know this, which is why deep down, they are so filled with fear and dread that the nightmare they have created is already falling apart even as you read this. Their sleep at Murder Inc. is not sweet.

I have studied Spanish, Korean and Afrikaans. My favorite movies are The Robe, (everything I’d like to be as a Christian) Sixteen Candles, (I will always be a nerd) and of course The Bourne Identity/Supremacy, (to LoBaido, Anthony C. its about the Apostle Paul holding Steven’s coat, how God is the Lord of the present, past and future, and if we try so, so hard to fix our past sins and help others, no matter what the cost, God will in turn help us and recalculate our destiny!) Breaker Morant (I will always be an Afrikaner and I should have lived during the Anglo-Boer War, not in postmodern times) and Cinderella Man (during our fiery trials we often think God has abandoned us that we’re going down but really we’re going up! And when Russell Crowe’s manager asked, “Where the hell have you been Jimmy Braddock?” during the third round of the Corn Soldier Boy fight my life literally changed on a dime in that singular moment.)

I don’t know how my electric can opener works or how to get the internet turned on, and I didn’t know what a debit card was until just last year. I don’t own a TV. Right now I am working on a TV/Internet/Mobile journalism/adventure pilot, up to 14 hours per day, every day for the past eight weeks. It is going to be amazing and I am terribly excited about it. You’ll see.

I spend a lot of my time taking care of Sonya. (Picture a very pretty, very angry Faith Hill.)

I sleep with the light on after nightmares and sometimes I watch Rudolph’s Christmas Special during the summer. I love The X Files and if I am Agent Mulder as a journalist then Luther Eeben Barlow was my Cigarette Smoking Man. (He even made me tea at his home in Pretoria, not once but twice.)

My favorite song is “Collide” by Howie Day, and it is so beautiful I sometimes listen to it ten times in a row as though it were merely once.

I worry I won’t see your face light up again
Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
You finally find you and I collide …

I’ve found I’m scared to know I’m always on your mind …
Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the stars refuse to shine
Out of the back you fall in time.
You finally find you and I collide.

Don’t stop here
I lost my place
I’m close behind

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills your mind
You finally find you and I collide

You finally find you and I collide …

You finally find you and I collide …

My friends all all totally insane but they will probably tell you that I am the crazy one. Don't listen to them! To start, there's KK, my identical twin sister.

Then there's Leah! Sometimes Leah! will get incredibly frustrated with Erin and Anthony and wave her arms up and down and scream, “Listen to me!” (Yes, this actually happens, because Erin and Anthony are both completely crazy and out of control most of the time.) And then we both stop talking and just laugh hysterically. The three of us are pretty much inseparable.

Leah! is the ultimate obsessive compulsive in every way imaginable, from what she eats to how clean she is to how she has to give you a complete laundry list of everything she has to do that particular day in order to get to one specific answer you may need. I call her “The Rain Woman,” and when she delves into her high functioning autistic routine I say, “Leah! it’s raining again … let it rain.”

One thing you have to remember about Leah! is that she likes an (!) written after her name. She runs ten miles everyday. I think she thinks she's Forrest Gump or something. Please see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump

Now, on a serious note, Leah! almost died from leukemia. She has battled against a disease called “idiopathicthrombocytopenia.” (I am the only person other than her family to have bothered to learn this term.) She was so sick and from 5th through 8th grade and could not go out for recess. (Her story reminds me of “Laura Jakes,” whom I went to Catholic School with.) Leah’s! mother is a nurse, her father is an engineer and her parents love her very much. She was so sick as a child and they rearranged their entire lives so she didn’t have to live at the hospital. That’s the kind of people they are. When she tells me about how sick she was it hurts so much … the details of the leukemia … I have never been sick a day in my life since I was a baby, outside of the malaria and a few days on Isla Mujeres from the air conditioning.

When we (Erin and Anthony) met her she was this quiet Norwegian girl sitting in the corner, so studious, not saying a single word, getting up for work everyday at 5 a.m., with her hair all up in bobby pins. And then one day, tired of sandbagging us, she turned into Grey. And Leah! is a very talented artist painting and drawing like you can’t imagine. And what an ego … I mean, she wants to take on Jennifer-Michelle and you know what, she can and she does.

Speaking of Jennifer-Michelle, Leah! will tell you that Jenny is “The most beautiful blonde” around here. (Leah! also says Erin is beautiful just about every day. That’s how Leah! is. But when she goes off on Erin and Jenny and Jenny's clothing it’s just hilarious, and borders on vicious. Kind of a Panda dressed up as a Koala. She has VERY, VERY sharp claws.)

Jennifer-Michelle is a very talented photographer … everyone worships her, and Drew said, “Look around here at all of these beautiful women … and Jenny is right at the top, but the best thing about her is that she’s so down to Earth, just like she’s some ole’ gal, like anyone else, when she’s anything but. And she’s really smart too.”

Jenny wows us with her fashion sense, and speaking of her outfits she told me she’s “A fabulous dresser with a keen eye for detail.” (Picture Claudia Schiffer as “Jane” in a Tarzan movie.) We call her “Barbie” or “Claudia.” Leah! calls her “Wedding Time Barbie.” I also call her “Erin’s ego personified.” Jenny is smart enough to keep a safe distance from Erin, Leah! and Anthony but I think deep down she is only a hair’s breath away from joining our cult. Jenny and Leah! are at least civil to one another when they have to be.

Star Wars also play a larger role in our lives than you might imagine. For example, Leah! is obsessed with Jabba the Hutt for some odd reason and Tony Larussa called the other day asking Phil to try out for the St. Louis Cardinals with the hope he might be “Wookie of the Year.”

Erin and I talk about all manner of things, how she prays at night, her parents, heaven, hell, her DNA, her 300 pairs of shoes (Imelda Marcos move over) and how certain jeans make her “look like she pooped in her pants.” We talk about so-called global warming, genetically modified foods and the Unified Field Theory. She’ll call me when she’s driving or when she’s sick, even at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. She’s like a little sister to me. We tell each other everything and I do mean E V E R Y T H I N G. Although sometimes I shout “Overshare!” and she shouts “TMI” or “Too Much Information!”

Then there's Drew, who is a great kid who takes care of his mother, who has breast cancer.

Along that line, there is Andrea. Andrea will always call me when she’s in a crisis … when she broke her shoulder blade … when she is overwhelmed with her mother’s brain cancer (my boss, Ellie was also very kind to her) or when she needs advice about Ryan. She looks like Liv Tyler but always acts, (along with Jennifer-Michelle) like she’s just some ole’ gal. Did you know my parents wanted to adopt two girls and wanted to name me "Andrea?"

Above all remains Erin, a.k.a. Dora the Explorer, kind of a Reese Witherspoon on steroids. She and Leah! call themselves "The LoBaido Blondes." Erin works the cafeteria at lunch, (for some reason whenever she walks in the introduction to "Disco Inferno" comes on) giving high fives and saying things like "Wooo Hooo!" and "Way to Go, Erin!" (Yes, this actually happens.) She only wears pink and basically Leah! and Anthony battle it out for just who loves Erin the most.

Erin is always out of control and hysterical, pointing at her "icy blue eyes" and saying "Anthony, look at my eyes, they are like gorgeous blue icy crystals, can't you see them?" and "Anthony, here, look at my makeup mirror, here, can't you see it has my initials on it. Hold it! Hold it!"

And so, here we are ...