Mike Morey

Features Mike Morey But for real, telling me I’m weak and a bad worker has the same effect as being called a retard and a princess by some of the other corporals. It makes me smile, but only on the inside. Smiling with your face is a rule violation and could result in demerits which could lead to a hearing before the board and theoretically eventually being kicked out.

Features Mike Morey I lived in Los Angeles when I was in my early 20s. I was in film school and paid my rent by working as an extra in movies and TV.
If you wanted work you called any one of a dozen or so casting agencies and there’d be a recording telling you what they needed. Age 21 to look 15, 28 to look 21 -- first your age group and then your look: street, beach, clubber... If you fit what they needed, then you called another number to talk to an agent to get the details. All the agencies would have Polaroid photos and stats of you. I worked a lot for an agency that specialized in off-center types. I was a punk rocker, and at that time almost every show wanted a punk rocker somewhere in the scene. It was a novelty, and there were 10 or 12 of us who always got the punk work.

Features Mike Morey I was dragging my kayak across the parking lot between the fish weir and InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City one day, when a friend yelled out, “Yo, Morey – urban kayaking!” I laughed and then thought, yeah it is. Urban kayaking Northern Michigan style.
Somebody had told me that I needed bigger arms, and I figured kayaking would be a fun and easy way to get them. I don’t know what I needed bigger arms for, but I’m always up for physical/psychological/spiritual improvement so I didn’t question it. Also, I’d think that the action-figure version of me would probably have big arms. So with that prodding I went shopping for a kayak that fit my style. I consider style a key element when making purchases and usually rate it higher than function.
The kayak I ended up with has a removable pod, a built-in seat and a long low pointed bow. It’s orange and red, a color scheme I’m not thrilled about, but the other option was chartreuse and turquoise. When you sit in it you aren’t plugged into a hole looking like a doofus. It’s casual, and also a lot of fun when the water’s rough. It’s built for the ocean, the surf.

Features Mike Morey You wanna come over and see my hairless hamster?” I found myself asking this of people, weirdly, but in all innocence and unaware of the not-so-subtle subtext. Even my response when they’d demure, “He’s really cool,” seems bizarre in retrospect.
Truth is I’ve got one, and not only hairless but albino also. A little pink guy with red eyes. He’s a rescue hamster. I found him quivering on the grass, in a corner of the foundation of my old apartment building on Lake Ave. in Traverse City. Hot summer day, in bright sunlight, with a large bee hovering above his papery pink back. His head was tucked in. He was hiding.
My inclination was to scoop him up, but then I thought that he might be a bitey little fellow, or that he might panic and take off. My only other experience with a rodent had been a pet rat named Roadkill, who had lived mostly in the pocket of my MC jacket and later died in an apartment fire. Roadkill had never bitten me, but still, this guy was an unknown so I went inside and grabbed a shoebox to scoop him into.
Back inside with the guy, I looked around for something to put him in  temporarily.  Something tall enough so he couldn’t get out, and made of something non-chewable. I was in the process of moving and had a large hideous gold trunk I’d bought at the Salvation Army. It was perfect, so I placed him inside and headed upstairs.
I knew this abandoned critter had something to do with my neighbor; he’d had a hairless hamster for sometime. I’d only really looked at it once and had been mildly grossed out. To me it looked like a ball of flesh with a face stuck on it, and claws.  

Features Mike Morey Hangout central for the underbelly of Traverse City society, drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill, the disenfranchised and disoriented; these are the denizens of the Whiting Hotel. That’s what I thought when I started working there in fall of 2003, I also thought this is going to be interesting, and I was right on both counts.