Sarah Palin’s Alaska: Rudolph Got Run Over by a Palin

Welcome back! Sarah’s gonna shoot stuff!

Who’s ready for girls ‘n’ guns? According to her
hat, Sarah Palin is.

OMG ya’ll, what a week I’ve had. It’s been a Sarah Palin November 2008 kinda week. Let me explain. Hours before I was scheduled to go to the White House to check out the holiday decorations, food poisoning struck. It was horrible. I kept trying to get myself together and walk out the door, but whenever I started to get dressed… ugh. The horror. The horror. As I laid on that cold, cold bathroom floor with my head in the toilet, I couldn’t help but think about all the twinkly, twinkling lights I was missing. The fresh pine scent filling the White House rooms. Michelle Obama offering me a warm, sweet cookie encrusted in red and green sugar. The only red and green thing I had that day was my eye, thanks to the capillaries I busted in it. Sarah, you know my pain, don’t you? Oh so close to those White House dreams. But dreams is all they are. All they’ll ever be. Please forgive me if this recap is a little loopy. I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy.

Oh well. That’s what happens when you buy sushi from your local mom and pop coffee shop. Just because they sell it doesn’t mean you should eat it. You know who was chowing down on fresh, uncontaminated meat this week? The Palins, that’s who. In this week’s episode, Alpha Mom Sarah headed out to the Alaskan tundra to fill her family’s freezer with wild game. This episode has two viewer discretion warnings, so you know what that means – lots of hot, fresh animal blood squirting across your TV screen. I guess every episode of this show so far has featured some type of bloodsport. I’m a meat eater and I’m not naive about how the meat gets to my plate… but it seems like Sarah Palin does an awful lot of hunting to “fill her freezer” when we’re living in an age where she can terrorize the world via Fox News, Twitter, Facebook and Kindle, all from the comfort of her couch in Wasilla. Order up some Peapod and stop murdering the caribou!

What’s the Indian word for self-entitled asshole?

Anyway, this week, Sarah’s going hunting with her dad, Chuck Senior, and Becker, the affable creeper we met last week who is in love with every member of the Palin family. By the way, thank you to Jess Chapman and StaticAirwave who pointed out last week that Becker’s hair did not magically grow when he got on his boat. I did, indeed, google “flair hair” and was absolutely horrified by what I saw. And yet, for Christmas my dad will be getting one. They are, after all, “the hot new hat product sweeping the United States and international countries alike.”

This episode starts off with Becker and Sarah sitting around in some bushes eating blueberries. “Gosh these are good tasting ones,” Sarah whispers.

“They’ve gotta be loaded with vitamin C,” Becker whispers.

Chuck Senior shushes Heckle and Jeckle. He’s spotted something with his binoculars.

Sarah gets into her position with her rifle but something goes wrong. What, you wonder, is going on? Well, that crazy production team has pulled a flashback on us. Or a flash forward. I’m not sure which – it’s like what they do on the Bad Girls Club now, without the shrieking, feral women. So we flash back three days so that we can flash forward to the scene we just saw.

Three days ago, Sarah was telling Piper that she’s going caribou hunting with 72-year-old Chuck. Sarah and Chuck have spent many hours together hunting and fishing. The animals of Alaska live in fear of their family reunions. There’s rifle hunting season, bow hunting season, and family reunion season. All the Palins get together, wear matching t-shirts with the family tree on them, and shoot stuff. The back of the t-shirts say “Palins Do It With a Big Bang!”

You know who wants one of those t-shirts? Becker, that’s who. He’s dying for one and he’s slowly insinuating himself into this family to get it. Silent Todd’s not coming along on this camping trip so Becker’s going with Sarah and Chuck. Chuck’s tickled pink about it and calls Becker a “kick in the rear end” which is, I guess, a polite old person’s way of saying “pain in the ass.”

Becker stops by Chuck’s house and Chuck takes him on a tour and shows him a massive, morbid collection of skulls.

Chuck loves head.

He goes down the line naming them: “We got a bear, a wolf, a bear, a wolf, a cougar, a coyote, a wolverine, a seal, a seal, a fox, a cat, a lynx, this would be a martin….” Hmmm… slipping those domesticated animal remains past us, huh, Chuckie? “Oh yeah, don’t mind that one there. It’s just your typical yellow lab puppy skull. Too bad I had to shoot him, but you know, I had to fill my freezer with something that year and puppy meat’s just so tender.”

During his camera time alone, Chuck tells us “I’ve hunted with my daughter, Sarah Palin, many times and every hunting trip is an adventure. She’s a great shot. She carries her own weight whether it’s hunting or fishing or politics. Anything Sarah Palin does, she does with all four feet. Lemme tell ya that.”

OK, that was the weirdest campaign commercial ever. Who refers to their child by first and last name? Why are we talking about politics? She’s not a politician. What does he mean by “all four feet”? Is this some colloquialism I’m not familiar with? Does it mean giving up when things get too hard, whining about how hard they are, and then blaming others for your failures? Is that what you mean Chuck?!

Sarah checks out the family freezer. There’s caribou sausage, moose pepperoni and buffalo. But they need more meat, dammit.

There’s a serious scurvy problem in the Palin household.

“It’s time … to fill my freezer for my kids’ meals this coming winter,” Sarah says. Ugh. She’s doing all this for the children, obviously. Otherwise, starvation would be right around the corner. Hopefully they’ll make it down the Oregon Trail in the Conestoga without anyone succumbing to typhoid or anything like that.

Before they leave, Becker and Sarah start a friendly wager. Whoever gets the first kill gets $1. Largest kill gets $5. Those are the kind of bets Diddy places when he goes to Vegas. After throwing down the gauntlet, they hop a plane to a place called Kavik, which is waaaay north of the Arctic Circle, almost at the very top of the state. It’s a place where you’re sure to freeze your balls off year round.

Kavik is not so much a camp. It’s more of a collection of trailers. And it’s got a population of one.

Meet Sue. She is, according to Sarah, THE Mama Grizzly. I’m now confused about what a mama grizzly is. I thought they all shopped at Wal-mart and bought Sarah Palin’s book, on sale now, according to the graphic TLC popped on screen halfway through the show. Sue is one tough broad. You can tell just by the deep, gravely way she talks while she stares down that camera. She wants blood, guts and bullets, she tells us. Not perfume and diamonds. Well she’s an easy one to shop for, huh? A little dead animal in her stocking and you can check Sue off your Christmas list. Chuck has her covered.

What’s a girl gotta do to get some blood & guts around here?

Sarah gets Sue to shame the menfolk by telling them about the time she was attacked by a bear. She was alone and had put down her rifle when the bear attacked and dragged her across the tundra. It bit her head leaving teeth marks in her flesh. And it ripped her hips out of her sockets. After the bear left, Sue made her way back to camp, sewed her head back together, got a gun. And you know what she did with that gun. That’s right, she tracked down that bear and blew it away. The filthy animal. After killing the bear, Sue waited 10 days before a pilot found her. So she says. If that’s true, she’s pretty bad ass.

Wanna feel something gross? Gimme your hand.

After that heartwarming tale, our little hunting party hops another plane that will take them the 14 miles to their camp site. It’s a tiny Piper Super Cub that can carry just one passenger at a time. It’s the piece of machinery that the Palins named youngest daughter Piper after. 72-year-old Chuck flies first and is dropped off alone, deep in the Alaskan tundra to set up camp. Sarah, then Becker follow. They say goodbye to the pilot who will return in two days to pick them up and set up camp. A rifle goes into each tent and Sarah says that in bear country the two things she wants are a loaded rifle and her dad. One for shootin’ and one for a diversion.

The next morning they get up bright and early. And even though they’re 700 miles from civilization, Sarah still has on enough makeup on to spare extra, in case they run into roving bands of drag queens on the tundra. Chuck starts the hunt by glassing the area. That means he uses binoculars to search for animals and decide when they’ll start stalking. After seeing a couple caribou in the distance, they start walking. And they walk. And they continue to walk. A good majority of this episode features them walking… across the tundra…. over hills… down valleys… fording rivers. I mean, it goes on forevah. Eventually they come to a hill overlooking a river. As they head down toward the water, Chuck warns Sarah that it’s steep and to hold on to the brush as they move forward. And then — Chuck goes down! Aaaand commercial.

He’s up…

And he’s down.

When we come back, we watch as Chuck takes a tumble, and I’ll admit, that made me a little nervous. He’s so old. Probably brittle. Far from a hospital. Anyway, we don’t have to worry too long. He’s up and crossing the river before we know it. On the other side of the water they come across wolf tracks, then fresh caribou tracks, but still no caribou. By 6:00 p.m. they haven’t seen anything so they head back to camp with Sarah admitting that if hunting was easy, it wouldn’t be a fair competition.

As they’re fixing dinner, two caribou wander near the camp. Becker takes off after them and comes back with a giant set of antlers, a smile on his face, and space in his wallet for the $1 that Sarah now owes him.

Mother Nature’s Hair Flair

The next morning, experienced hunter and outdoors woman Sarah chooses the direction they’ll head in. We’ll go west, she announces, pointing one french manicured finger in a random direction. That’s east, Chuck says. So they head thataway and follow some fresh caribou tracks until they come to the blueberry patch we started the show in.

We’ll head east ’til we hit Russia...

After Chuck spots a caribou on a hill above them, all three scramble into position, Sarah takes aim, fires… and misses. But the caribou continues to stand there, so she’s got another chance. She misses again. And again. And again. The caribou is now looking down at them, wondering what the hell is going on. Fortunately for Sarah, northern Alaskan caribou are either too dumb to run when loud, sharp noises are going off around them. Or they’ve never been exposed to the deadly magic that modern man possesses. After six shots and two guns, Sarah finally gets him. Here’s a photo recap:

There it is! Get ready… Let’s do this!

Did I git ‘im?

What’s going on down there?

Golly, I think I cracked one of my acrylics.

Did anybody else hear something?

As an expert hunter I can tell you something’s wrong
with that squiggly thing right there.

Did I git ‘im?

I could have sworn I heard something…

How ’bout now?

Sad panda caribou

“Dere ya go, baby! Dere ya go!” Becker says, clapping her on the back.

They carefully approach the caribou in case it’s still alive. When it doesn’t move, Sarah says “In the words of Ted Nugent, ‘we thank that mighty animal for living a good life and now sustaining a nice family.’” I’m not buying that for a second. The Nuge would never say something like “sustaining a nice family.” The Nuge says stuff like “I’ve busted more hippies’ noses than all the narcs in the free world.” He’s a true poet.

To honor this majestic creature, Sarah grabs it by the antlers, hauls it’s head up, and smiles while Becker and Chuck take pictures. You know what another word for caribou is? Reindeer. That’s right, just a few weeks before Christmas, TLC airs a show featuring a woman killing a reindeer and then holding it’s head aloft like a trophy. I hope all you parents enjoyed explaining that one to your kids.

Santa’s got an open position in the harness this year.

Not such a great photo, but TLC has been kind enough to provide a photo. This is what they moment looked like with high-def makeup, proper lighting and retouching:

In this photo, you can see the shock and
pain on the caribou’s face.

They skin and quarter the caribou and then leave the remains on the tundra. As they walk away through the tall grasses, a cold wind blows across that bloody, bony carcass. Nearby, the rest of the heard pauses as they catch the foul whiff of danger in the air.

They drew first blood, not me. They drew first blood….

The next day, it’s time to break camp and head back Kavik. Resident tough guy Sue is just sittin’ around, hangin’ with her pet prairie dogs when the hunters return. Sue is incredibly sad that they’re leaving. I mean really sad. She starts to cry as she says goodbye to Sarah. I guess if I was the only person around for hundreds of miles, I’d be bummed when people left. Or, I could just move to a city, but, whatever. City folks frown on you wearing blood and guts instead of diamonds, so maybe it’s not for Sue.

I wish I knew how to quit you…

Sarah gives some sort of stump speech about Sue and values and whatnot. I’m not going to repeat bullshit in this forum unless it’s my own, so you’re going to have to watch the show for that.

When they get back to Wasilla, they give Piper the tiny set of caribou antlers they sawed off the head of that caribou, which we find out was a calf. So young. Such tender meat now filling the Palin freezer. I hope those poor children survive the winter.

Totally nomable.

And that’s the horrible, wretched thing that happened on Sarah Palin’s Alaska this week. You know who was really pissed off about this whole thing? Aaron Sorkin. I know, how random is that? Dude went off on The Huffington Post. His blog post starts with the phrase “we’ll all just go fuck ourselves” and ends with him getting arrested during a coke binge. It’s rabidly angry and pretty awesome. Check it out, it’s a quick read. So now, I guess we have the new Palin/Sorkin feud to look forward to.

Can I just say that I am super excited about next week?! It promises to be truly, ridiculously stupid. The evil geniuses at TLC are bringing together two malevolent forces in what I’m calling the ei8hth sign of the apocalypse. Kate Gosselin is bringing her litter of tater tots to Wasilla and I smell trouble. Will Sarah smack Kate? Will Kate’s incessant whining repel or lure in all those mama grizzlies we keep hearing about? Will Chuck get eight shiny, white, new skulls to add to his macabre collection? We’ll find out next week — see you then!

Be very afraid….