HIGH TIME FOR HUNTER OF BIN LADEN TO GIVE IT UP

"Rocky Mountain Rambo" has hit the talk-show circuit.

Gary Faulkner is the guy from Greeley who was thwarted this month
while trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Pakistani police confiscated a small amount of hashish when they
caught him near the Afghan border. He was carrying a pistol, 40-inch
sword and night-vision goggles. As my colleague Tom McGhee tells me,
he has proudly displayed a sticker advertising a Greeley-area
medical marijuana dispensary on his apartment window.

I can't attest to Faulkner's THC levels. But, as he appears on a
string of national TV interviews, the bearded, ponytailed wannabe
avenger has "party" written all over him.

During his gig on CBS's "The Early Show" on Monday, he explained that
he had been headed to Los Angeles to pick up his paperwork for
Pakistan but somehow got sidetracked in Las Vegas.

"The next thing I remember is I forgot to go to the embassy to get my
visa fixed," said the international man of mystery.

About his quest to find the al-Qaeda chief, he offered this Jeff
Spicoli-like riff:

"Um, you know, this is, this has kind of blown out of, blown up in my
face before it should have and so it's kind of like tip, the, the,
like, my card, my whole card. Not really, but kind of. And so I mean
I understand a lot of people have lot of speculation. A lot of
people would like to say, 'Oh, well, he's there to kill this man,
he's there to do this or that,' when they don't even have a clue
what's really going on."

If those aren't the words of a man who's goofy on the green stuff, I
don't know what are.

In a way, I'm happy for Faulkner for getting his moment in the sun.
After all, it must have been a buzz kill when he returned to Greeley
last week without so much as a morsel of ticker tape welcoming him
home from his seventh trip trying to bird-dog the world's most wanted
terrorist.

Still, as a resident of a state that is trying to take its cannabis
use seriously, he's embarrassing.

Looking especially relaxed with his Hawaiian shirt and heavy paunch,
he used his five minutes on "The Early Show" to ramble about
everything from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to his body
toxins. I haven't heard that kind of nonlinear ranting since
interviewing Sen. Chris Romer about how to regulate medical marijuana.

"Like I say, no excuses. Chicken isn't nothing but a bird, and God
hates a coward," Faulkner said about missing kidney dialysis while in
Pakistan.

"Let me put it this way, it's not a 'me.' It's a 'we.' OK?" he added
of the movement he claims is backing his manhunt.

He urged unemployed TV watchers to get "off their backsides," fetch
some buckets and start working as mercenaries cleaning up oil off the
Gulf Coast.

Go fill the thing up and charge them by the barrel, he said. After
all, this is America.

Faulkner makes Richard Heene, of Colorado's balloon-boy fame, look
like a polished spinmeister. He has hired the same handlers who
represented former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Drew Peterson,
the cop accused of killing his third and fourth wives.

"To many Americans, he is a hero," said Glenn Selig, as only a
publicist could try to sell it.