GOT THE SAME MAID SERVICE AS LIMBAUGH?

Flashlight knew that drug smugglers used peanut butter jars, bags of coffee
and even rectal packages fashioned from condoms to get their goods to
market. But some photos released by the Alaska State Troopers last week
showed something we thought readers might find useful for protecting their
stash around the house, whether it's drugs, money or jewelry: the old
toothpaste-tube hiding place.

Troopers found the toothpaste tube December 17 inside the luggage of a
twenty-year-old Kenai man they contacted at the local airport named for a
senator. The alleged smuggler was on his way to Unalakleet. Troopers didn't
say what aroused their suspicions, but they did say investigators from the
Western Alaska Alcohol and Narcotics Team arrested the man. WAANT is a
special trooper unit that has feelers out for smugglers and bootleggers
supplying the region. The Kenai man had a total of about fifty grams of pot
in his bag, troopers said; in addition to the toothpaste tube he had it
stashed in several packages, including an eyeglasses case and underarm
deodorant container (that's right, the old deodorant trick).

Still, you gotta hand it to him for the toothpaste tube, which trooper
spokesman Greg Wilkinson called "rather inventive." Wilkinson, a former
radio newsman known for alternating off-the-cuff wit with dead seriousness,
offered Flashlight a drug-related toothpaste-tube quip: "It doesn't give
you a whiter smile, just a bigger smile," he said. Or, in this case,
perhaps a frown.

Anchorage drug blotter

State Troopers have been busting smugglers and bootleggers so fast in rural
Alaska that it made Flashlight wonder how urban drug busts go down. In the
interest of balance (we don't want readers to think all the stoners live in
Unalakleet), we started filing requests with the Anchorage Police
Department to track drug-related calls in Anchorage.

APD officers log their calls according to one crime - say, assault or DUI -
and drugs charges are sometimes incidental to that crime. For that and
other reasons, what follows is an incomplete list - but, partial as it is,
it suggests that 1.) cops sometimes find drugs during routine actions such
as traffic stops, and 2.) drug users sometimes have trouble being discreet.

On November 25, at about 5:43 p.m., an undercover APD officer purchased
Oxycontin from a forty-four-year-old man on Metro Court. The man was
charged with three counts of third-degree misconduct with a controlled
substance, all felonies, and was apparently lying to his doctor as well.
"He had a prescription for it," police spokesman Ron McGee said. OxyMan's
bail was set at twenty thousand dollars.

On November 26 at 12:48 a.m.., an APD patrol officer thought he saw someone
smoking pot in a car parked on the south side of the Sports Authority store
on Old Seward Highway, in South Anchorage. The cop cited a
twenty-eight-year-old man with a class B misdemeanor, then released him.

On December 5 at about 7:42 p.m., APD was called to the Fifth Avenue Mall
to investigate a shoplifting accusation against a nineteen-year-old man who
turned out not to be shoplifting but should have stayed home that day
nonetheless. The young man had two outstanding warrants, stemming from
previous charges of resisting arrest and theft. He also had two pills
containing hydrocodone and was charged with misconduct involving a
controlled substance. Just to prove that pill-poppers aren't necessarily
trendy, police also noted that the man had a stick of Brut deodorant. Brut?
That's so Eighties.

On December 6 at about 2:37 a.m., a seventeen-year-old boy was pulled over
for having a covered license plate and a broken taillight on his Ford
pick-up. The officer also may have noticed the youthful looks of his
sixteen-year-old female passenger, who was out well past curfew. APD
confiscated three glass marijuana pipes, wrote the boy a ticket for driving
without a license and gave his girlfriend a curfew citation. Both teenagers
were released to their parents. Flashlight suspects the girl's parents were
both angry and disappointed but probably said, "We're not angry, just
disappointed."

On December 7, at 12:15 a.m., APD was called to the Wal-Mart parking lot on
Benson Boulevard because someone said a man in a dark-colored Chevy Blazer
had a gun in his lap. It's not clear if the gun thing was all a mistake -
no gun was found - but one eighteen-year-old man in a dark-colored Blazer
got busted for having a small bag of marijuana in his possession.

On December 8 at about 7:47 p.m., an officer pulled over a man in a Honda
Accord who ran the stop sign at North Pine Street and Sixth Avenue. The cop
could have sworn he smelled, in fact the police report said he smelled, "a
strong odor of marijuana," according to McGee. The people in the Honda
consented to a search, which revealed nothing. The driver was cited for
running the stop sign.

On December 17 at about 7 p.m., police were called to the Emergency Room at
Providence Alaska Medical Center to talk to a seventeen-year-old girl who
came in with headaches and nausea and acknowledged using speed. Officers
also interviewed an eighteen-year-old boy who was with the girl. "They gave
us some information about where (the speed) came from," McGee said. Lesson
for the day: sell bunk drugs to kids and you're likely to get ratted out.

On December 18 at about 12:31 a.m., a nineteen-year-old man was cited for
running a stop sign at Sixth Avenue and North Pine Street and the cop took
his pot pipe. No drug charges were pressed.

On December 18 at 3:14 a.m., an officer found an intoxicated
twenty-two-year-old woman along Hillcrest Drive and called the Community
Service Patrol to take her to the drunk tank for her own safety. The
officer confiscated an engraved ivory pipe and a wooden pipe, but no drug
charges were pressed.

On December 18, at about 7:13 p.m., officers were dispatched to a "minor
disturbance" on the 1500 block of Thuja Avenue. It turned out to be a
party, McGee said, and an APD officer found and confiscated a small a bag
of marijuana. There were no arrests for the disturbance or the drugs.

Off the fence, into the pool

On New Year's Eve this year, Seattle psychedelic rock band Guardian Alien
returns to Girdwood, at Max's Mountain Bar and Grill, with bass, drums,
banjo and concertina. Don't expect polkas or waltzes from the squeezebox
and don't expect bluegrass or old-timey folk from the banjo, though.
Flashlight caught the band twice last month on their last trip to Alaska
and can tell you that Guardian Alien's live show is heavy and progressive.

The band comprises banjoist-songwriter Guy Davis, Eric Kubista on
concertina and Doug Sowers on drums. Davis and Kubista alternate on bass.
The trio is heavy because they navigate tempo and volume changes so well.
Their cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" is a good example, but some
Guardian Alien originals, such as "Down Side Up," are just as likely to get
heads snapping. They're progressive because they've ditched hard rock's
favored electric guitar for the banjo (or Kubista's concertina) as the lead
instrument. And they're psychedelic because - well, Flashlight will defer
to Davis, who said he would defer to Timothy Leary:

"You've got to be a tripper - and I don't mean that in a druggie respect, I
mean in your perspective and how you see the world. … ( (To be) somebody
who is trying to see the world in a new way every time you look at it and
then make that show through in your music."

Despite the merger of an amplified genre with traditional acoustic
instruments, Guardian Alien is not part of the wave of neo-patchouli jam
bands. Instead, Davis said, the band is "eternally riding the fence"
between hard rock and jam band music. "Actually, we're launching off the
fence," he said. "We're trying to make it into the pool from the fence."

Flashlight admits to a bias against jam bands, but fans of hippie crap who
read this shouldn't let that keep you from cavorting with the Alien on New
Year's Eve. Davis and Kubista create enough ear candy to hold
discriminating listeners rapt while mesmerizing the trippers. Guardian
Alien's tight rhythms will keep dancers whirling, and out of necessity they
play longer tunes while on a bill like this. "Probably when we play in
Alaska it's the most jam-band that we get," Davis said, "because we need to
play the whole night."

Davis is the former bass player and lead singer of the Seattle based rock
band Sage, which played Anchorage in the mid-1990s, and he recently played
bass on the album Bay Leaf, a solo project from Pearl Jam guitarist Stone
Gossard. Davis' career is all Seattle rock but his songs come from an
international perspective created by growing up abroad (he graduated from
high school in Jakarta, Indonesia) and from experimenting with an old banjo
he found quite by accident. He initially purchased the banjo so that he
could have an acoustic instrument to pass time with while on the road with
Sage. As it turns out, his banjo is rare. It's one of fewer than two dozen
made in East. London in 1912 by an instrument maker named J. Newell, he
said. "Collectors would love this thing."

Davis said he still studies old-timey folk tunes - "the old miner songs and
the old train songs, the songs that nobody even knows who wrote" - and to
Flashlight's ears, some folk song sensibilities come through in Guardian
Alien's work. There are identifiable melodies and choruses, and verses come
around with some logic. But the live show and the band's 2003 album Deep
Space are anything but old-timey. In one moment, Davis will bring sounds
out of the banjo similar to strings from the Far East. Then he'll blast
classic rock chords. Only occasionally does the more familiar, hollow
plucking of banjo notes play a role.

It was a "serendipitous coincidence" that he found the banjo at all, Davis
said. "It's this mutant little ancient antique instrument that just lends
itself to this blasphemous abuse that I have put it through."

Tickets for the Guardian Alien show on New Year's Eve are just $10. The
show begins at 9 p.m. with comedian David R. from Santa Barbara, California
and acoustic music by Moby Wang. Max's Mountain Bar and Grill is on Crow
Creek Highway, in Girdwood. Call 783-2888 for more info. Shuttle service
from Anchorage and the Valley will be offered until 4 a.m.; call 783-1234
to schedule a pick-up.