Before I get started on an installment of Straight Shoot that will likely get me pilloried in the comments section, I want to issue a couple disclaimers. If at any point in the reading of this you start seeing red or going apoplectic, or thinking that I’m somehow anti-CM Punk or pro-Chris Brown, please scroll back up and have a look-see at these. Then go ahead and get to throwing rotten fruit in the comments.

Chris Brown is a scumbag. He’s an unremorseful, abusive, violent bully, who is allowed to continue his life and career without any kind of consequence due to the fact that he can sing and dance and young women find him attractive. That’s disgusting.
I love CM Punk. He’s one of my favorite wrestlers as well as one of the best ones currently working. He’s consistently entertaining, is great on the microphone, and puts on tremendous matches, like the one against Daniel Bryan on this week’s SmackDown that I’m still just wowed over. Don’t believe me? Then check here, here and here.

Onward…

This past week, CM Punk took aim at Chris Brown for being a woman-beater. That in and of itself isn’t so shocking, as the act includes Punk in a humongous group of folks furious at the singer/rapper in the wake of the Grammys. In fact, aside from the absolutely psychotic responses of some of Brown’s less intelligent female fans pretty much everyone agrees with Punk’s desire to “curb stomp” Brown and/or see him “fight somebody that can defend themselves.” But what I’m left wondering is, why is Punk so angry about Brown beating up Rihanna now, and not say, when the pop star was first charged almost three years ago?

I’m certainly not implying that there’s a three-year statute of limitations on being a domestic abuser, especially when the abuser in question hasn’t shown any type of public remorse, but it is interesting that we’re hearing volumes more from Punk now, years after the fact than when those awful pictures of a battered Rihanna first surfaced. It’s not shocking though, because as mentioned above, absolutely everyone quickly re-upped their subscription to the anti-Chris Brown bandwagon following his appearance on this year’s Grammy Awards. That’s exactly what makes it so troubling, however.

Chris Brown.

I don’t have a year to commit to reading every single angry-at-Chris-Brown Tweet, status update, blog and comment from the past week and a half, but I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of them are right on the money. On top of that, I even agree with them (see No. 1 above), but I generally question the motivations of people so quick to spit fire and brimstone at a guy for something – something unquestionably awful, no doubt – he did almost three years ago. The people who Tweeted endlessly and flooded Facebook with tirades against Chris Brown were morally outraged, sure, but more notably, they wanted to be seen being morally outraged.

There’s nothing wrong with letting people know you’re upset about something you find reprehensible, in fact, that’s one of the great things about social media: It’s a (mostly) democratic way to spread word about injustices or outrages. But no one was exactly in the dark about what Chris Brown did to Rihanna, so you can’t really classify this as “building awareness,” and the Grammys were already past, so there wasn’t anything left to boycott aside from Brown’s music, which folks who were angriest probably weren’t buying anyway. That makes “advocacy” a difficult claim to make as well. The only remaining motivation for people to go out and publicly rail against a guy that everyone already made their minds up about, one way or the other, almost three years ago was because they wanted to perform moral outrage, and maybe get some retweets, links, blog clicks and above all, attention out of it.

The tweet that started it all.

So that brings us to CM Punk, who, like much of the rest of the internet, vented his spleen on the totally-deserving Chris Brown. I like Punk (see No. 2 above), and nothing that guy has said about Brown is off base. In fact, I’d absolutely love to see Punk eat Brown’s lunch in a shoot fight. Anyone who takes advantage of, abuses, manipulates or otherwise mistreats someone weaker than them – woman, man, or other – is a bully, and not in a “Be a Star” type of way, but in a “completely reprehensible, worst type of human being in the world” type of way, and the only way to properly deal with a bully is to have someone bigger than them kick the everloving shit out of them. I’m completely onboard with this.

So, while I didn’t see how it was necessary, and truth be told, had a hunch that a large part of Punk’s sudden interest in the Brown situation was an attempt to hitch a ride on the zeitgeist, I didn’t have too much of a problem with. After all, I like one guy (No. 2) and don’t like the other (No. 1). But then something interesting, different, and all-around icky began to happen: Punk’s comments against Brown, Brown’s response, Punk’s retort, Brown’s rebuttal, etc. began to get traction elsewhere, becoming a news story in and of itself.

A sampling of TMZ’s coverage of the “Twitter war”

The two’s “Twitter war” got picked up on TMZ, countless other blogs and gossip sites and likely every single wrestling dirt sheet known to man. Never one to pass up free publicity, WWE pounced, making the story the number one focal point on their website (with an article that interestingly leaves out both Punk’s non-TV-PG “curb stomp” comment as well as Brown’s steroid accusations, and even promoted the story on a live edition of SmackDown, with additional commentary by the announce team of Michael Cole, Josh Matthews and Booker T, who went so far as to make a joke about Chris Brown having no problem with putting hands on someone.

All of a sudden, CM Punk speaking out against a convicted woman-beater has been turned into just another angle on WWE television. It’s not a match at WrestleMania (though if you put that past anyone up in Stamford, you’re far more generous than I), but the company is clearly using the story as a way to promote their WWE Champion. The subtext here is, “You hate Chris Brown, right? Well, so does our totally relatable face of the company, and we talk openly about it during our fictional programming!” Even if you agree with Punk’s assessment of Brown, which I certainly do, make no mistake of what is happening here: The world’s top wrestling promotion and purveyor of fictionalized, physical soap operas, World Wrestling Entertainment, has co-opted a real-life case of domestic abuse to promote one of their top stars. And frankly, that’s disgusting.

A snapshot of WWE’s homepage on Wednesday afternoon.

True, it’s not as bad as it could be, as there’s been no specific, explicit reference to the actual domestic abuse on any kind of official WWE programming or web presence, with Booker’s somewhat tasteless comment being as close as it gets. But to say that means this storyline and feud isn’t about domestic abuse is to wear a humongous set of blinders while splitting the finest hairs you can find. There’s certainly a precedent of WWE absorbing real-life stories and events into their programming. When done well it can add an extra sense of realism while also heightening drama and causing fans to question where the work ends and the shoot begins. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially when the people involved are actually employed by the company and actively involving themselves in the angle. That’s far from the case here though.

Once again, I’m not defending Chris Brown (see No. 1), and in fact, I’d like it if more entertainments pointed that guy out as a violent, unremorseful bully, but he’s not the only one involved here. Though she hasn’t gone onto Twitter to rant at either Brown or Punk, Rihanna is inextricably linked to this storyline, and it’s of extremely questionable taste to rope her into this, even indirectly, and even if the endgame is to make Brown look like the mentally-unhinged scumbag that he is.

There’s a fair argument to be made from all this that Punk was just speaking his mind, sounding off on an issue that upsets him, as everyone has the right to do, and that it’s only WWE’s involvement and insistence upon making a buck off the entire thing that turns it into an extremely icky bit of exploitation. And I might even be inclined to agree with you, with the caveat that Punk’s outrage seems rather fortuitously timed, if it wasn’t for the video he posted on TwitVid Tuesday afternoon.

In it, CM Punk goes about cutting a shoot promo on Chris Brown. It’s not in front of a WWE backdrop and neither Josh Matthews nor Matt Striker are anywhere in sight, but there’s no mistaking what it is. In it, CM Punk, who I like and agree with (see No. 2) refutes Brown’s steroid accusations and also makes clear his stance on woman-beaters generally as well as Chris Brown specifically while reiterating his desire to see Brown get his comeuppance, hopefully at his own X-ed up hands. All smart, well-said stuff that I agree with…but it also feels exceedingly hollow.

The reason is that the thing is positioned as a final word on the subject, labeled “This must be said,” as if there was no way that he could let this thing go without addressing it, but anyone with half a brain knew that this wouldn’t be the final word. As soon as he posted it, WWE set about incorporating it into their television broadcast as well as their website, and Brown had some dopey straw man defenses he tweeted out as well. In the video, Punk opens by claiming, “I never intended to include Chris Brown’s name in one of my tweets to start some sort of controversy or gain publicity or anything like that.” That may well be true, but it flies in the face of what he and WWE are actively doing, which is stoking the flames of a controversy that profits directly off of a real-life domestic abuse case, something slightly more serious than the evolutionary development of Santino Marella’s now-spitting Cobra, or whether John Laurinaitis or Teddy Long should run both SmackDown and Raw.

Punk’s response to Brown’s “#notnopunks” tirade, since deleted.

If Punk really didn’t want this to spin into a controversy, he wouldn’t invite Chris Brown to “put some gloves on and get in the ring,” and he definitely wouldn’t promise “I will choke you out, and I’ll make you feel as weak and powerless and as scared and alone as any woman who has had the misfortune of knowing a sad cowardly little boy such as yourself.” If Punk really wanted to hurt Brown, he wouldn’t issue these threats in a video that his wrestling promotion employers and TMZ could then promote wildly, especially since he himself admits in the video that there’s pretty much no chance that a fight between the two will actually happen. Again, I agree with what Punk says here, and I too would love to see him choke out Brown, but if he and the rest of the people feeding the flame of this controversy really wanted to do some damage to the guy, they’d just ignore him and stop giving him the free publicity that clearly has done nothing to damage his reputation with his disturbingly loyal young female fanbase.

I’m not claiming that this is all an orchestrated attempt by Punk to get mainstream attention – I like to think that he’s a better guy than to set about doing something so mercenary and amoral from Jump Street. But, I do think there’s a fair amount of poking-the-bear going on here, and running with something that is clearly working – though there’s no evidence one way or the other as to what Punk’s intentions are here. For all I know, they could be completely honest and morally upstanding – I  have no real idea or way of knowing, and neither does anyone else aside from Punk himself. What I do know, however, is that at best, Punk is complicit in WWE spinning him as a participant in a feud based on a case of domestic abuse. At worst, he’s actively engaged in promoting it himself.

Mike Tyson in a WWE ring in 2010.

On top of the delayed, conveniently timed nature of Punk’s outrage and his hollow claims that he didn’t want a controversy, there’s another element that gives me pause in this whole thing: Punk’s distaste for people who hit women seems remarkably inconsistent to me. In his video he characterizes the act of a man beating a woman as completely indefensible under any circumstances, so how does that square with cases that are maybe a little closer to WWE? What about convicted rapist and future WWE Hall of Famer Mike Tyson, whose first wife accused him of both violence and spousal abuse? Where is the moral indignation at him being honored at WrestleMania XXVIII? And how about a wrestler that Punk himself grew up idolizing, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who himself was arrested for, charged with, and later pled no contest to domestic abuse back in 2002? Is Punk similarly furious that “Stone Cold” got away with only a $1,000 fine and 80 hours of community service? What exactly is the difference between these two cases and Chris Brown? One difference, of course, is that Brown’s abuse of Rihanna was more recent, but another, more important one is that it’s what everyone is talking about right now. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Punk’s intentions are somewhat less than honorable, but it certainly does hint at it.

Again, I like CM Punk a-lot, and really want to believe the best of him in this and every other situation, but this is an increasingly gross and calculated-looking attempt at getting WWE some mainstream publicity, and it’s currently unclear, to me at least, whether Punk is actively involved in the play, or just a piece that WWE’s amoral marketing machine is moving across the board. What do you think about Punk’s condemnation of Chris Brown and the ensuing controversy, and WWE’s publicity of it? Is Punk a morally upstanding guy taking a stand, someone using an infuriating semi-current event to get himself over, or something in between those two extremes?

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Danica Patrick

Todd Warshaw/Getty

Race car driver Danica Patrick is about to embark on her biggest challenge to date – the Daytona 500, a 500 mile-long NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

But Patrick, 29, seems fearless, telling Reuters, “I’m not scared of going 200 miles an hour,” during Sunday’s competition in Daytona Beach, Fla.

In fact, she believes she has a shot at following in the footsteps of Trevor Bayne, last year’s rookie race winner.

“Did anybody think Trevor Bayne could win the race last year on this day?” she tells SI.com. “Anything can happen here. It is anybody’s ballgame.”

She adds to Reuters, “If everything goes right, the stars are aligned, I do my homework and get a comfortable car … there’s really an opportunity [to win].”

But she’s not getting too far ahead of herself.

“It is my first Sprint Cup race ever,” Patrick says. “It is the Daytona 500 so I have a lot to learn. The racing itself is much closer quarters, much more bumping, banging and laying on each other … the racing is tighter.”

And she’s very aware that she’s an easy target for her fellow competitors.

“They’re going to test the waters,” she says. “They’re going to see if they can get away with pushing me around. My job as a new driver and a rookie and someone looking for respect is to give it back to them, and that’s where respect is earned.”

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A source told Radar Online that Donn usually shows up with a date (presumably not Vicki, whom he divorced in 2010 after 16 years of marriage) with whom he engages in public sex. Shrug.

Vicki hasn’t commented on the latest headlines, although it’s unlikely she appreciates her name associated with sex clubs in the press. Earlier this week, she tweeted, “2 rules that are true to my core…. Don’t mess with my family.. Don’t mess with money. Why can’t people follow those simple rules??”

See more Vicki Gunvalson photos:

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It appears as though Punk cannot wait for a brawl, and has started taking shots, via Twitter, against R&B singer/dancer Chris Brown. Why you ask? Punk doesn’t feel that Brown has paid his debt for assaulting then-girlfriend, Rihanna. In a move, that seemingly came out of nowhere, Punk tweeted the following:

In response, Brown tweeted the following: (The tweet has since been removed — good move PR team)

Only adding fuel to the fire, Brown also tweeted:

At this point, Punk wasn’t done with Brown… not by any means. He uploaded a two minute video directed towards Brown clearing up some of the accusations that were made in earlier tweets. As Yahoo Sports reports, Punk is a straight-edge individual, as he’s never taken drugs, steroids, or even drank alcohol.

In the video, Punk challenges Brown to a fight, with all proceeds going to a women’s shelter.

In probably the most, “yeah, he just said that moment“, Punk says: “I will choke you out and I will make you feel as weak and as powerless and scared and alone as any woman who has the misfortune of knowing a sad cowardly little boy such as yourself.”

Seemingly trying to blow it off, Brown tweeted:

It’s unclear at this moment if Brown will take the offer presented in the video. According to Punk, it probably won’t since Brown “isn’t a man“.

What do you think of this Twitter feud? Do you feel it’s heartfelt, and Punk just wants redemption for Brown’s domestic abusing ways… or is it simply a publicity stunt? Let us know in the comments.

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For Ryle Ordoyne, it’s running around in tiny circles on an empty street, waiting for the roar of police motorcycles and their glaring sirens that herald the coming of the floats.

For Drew Larusso, it’s standing on the bed of a towering pickup truck that shudders with the thumping of a monstrous sub-woofer, raising his hands and a sweating beer container to the sky and hollering.

For Yvette Cadier, it’s cocooning herself in a blanket of cotton and family against the February chill.

All of these things are different, yet when each of these people danced his or her way into Houma for the Krewe of Cleopatra on Monday night, they all meant the same thing.

Mardi Gras.

Every year, when the floats unfurl their garish wings of gold and glitter, the beads fly out to many faces. Some are new, but many belong to people who have been catching throws for years — sometimes from the very same spot.

Cadier — and a flock of her friends and extended family — has watched the Mardi Gras parades each year in front of St. Matthew’s Church on Barrow Street for longer than she can remember.

“Ask him. He’ll know,” Cadier said, as she tapped her husband Randy’s shoulder. “Hey, how long you think we’ve been sitting here?”

“Oh Lord. I don’t know, got to be 20 years by now,” he replies.

The spot has changed drastically over the years — where the landmark old church building once stood, there’s just a blank field. An oak near where the family sat is scarred charcoal-black, a stark reminder of the fire that claimed the building more than a year ago.

“Yeah, things change a lot when you’re here as long as we’ve been here,” said Joy Porche, who sits with the Cadiers. “It’d make me feel old, but I’m having too good of a time.”

For Porche, Mardi Gras is all about family.

“I don’t really come here for the beads and all of that,” she said. “But there’s nothing better than just being here with everybody you know and having a good time.”

Ryle Ordoyne, 5, might protest that statement.

“I like the beads and the toys and the shinies,” she said, pausing from her pre-parade gyrations. “That’s the best part of Mardi Gras.”

As she ran off again, Ryle circled Natalie Cortez, who said she’s been going to parades since she was Ryle’s age. Ordoyne cradled her wide-eyed 9-month-old, Peyton.

“He’s our newcomer,” she said, grinning. “This is first Mardi Gras, but you bet it won’t be his last.”

Down the street, Jennifer Hill kept her eye — and a soft backpack leash — on her 3-year-old son Brayden.

“He loves it. He’s already having a great time, and the floats aren’t even here yet,” Hill said.

Hill, who lives in LaPlace, said she prefers coming to Houma rather than New Orleans because she feels Brayden will be safer.

“Houma’s still a pretty wild time,” she said, nodding way down the street, where Larusso and his buddies rocked the thumping truck. “But it’s safe. You feel like it’s OK to bring a kid here.”

Hill said she expected this wouldn’t be the last time Brayden sees a Houma parade.

“It’s a tradition for me, a tradition for us,” she said. “I guess it’s going to become a tradition for him too.”

Staff Writer Matthew Albright can be reached at 448-7635 or at matthew.albright

@dailycomet.com.

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ABC’s Nightline went inside the Chengdu, China factories of Foxconn last night, where most of the world’s iPads, iPhones, and Mac computers are produced.

The visit, which happened in conjunction with the Fair Labor Association’s (FLA) audit of Foxconn facilities, showed off spotless factory floors where thousands of workers put together various iDevices as a computerized voice chirps “OK!” after each successful move.

But workers earn only $1.78 per hour and when Nightline host Bill Weir spoke to employees, many complained about the low wages. Still, they lined up by the thousands at dawn in order to snag a job at Foxconn. And Foxconn will hire about 80 percent of the 3,000 people waiting at the gates, thanks to demand for Apple’s gadgets.

Despite the minimal pay, long hours, and close quarters (workers pay $17.50 per month to live in a seven-person dorm room), Foxconn is often a better alternative to staying in rural villages. Weir visited one such village near Chengdu, where large families lived in one-room homes with very few amenities. Despite the proximity to the Foxconn plant, though, the majority had never even seen an iPad.

Back at the plant, workers are seated at long benches assembling Apple gadgets. They get a break for lunch – which runs about 70 cents per day – and many rush their meal in order to take a quick nap before the start of an afternoon shift.

Weir revealed that workers can make 300,000 iPad camera modules in a day. It takes about five days and 325 sets of hands to make an iPad, he said.

But what prompted the most interest in working conditions at Foxconn lately were the suicides – nine over a three-month period in 2010 alone. A Foxconn exec tells Weir that given the size of Foxconn, that is actually lower than the national average, but the publicity generated by the suicides prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to travel to China and evaluate the situation. Wages were raised, a counseling center was opened, and nets were placed around the dorms to stop jumpers.

Cook actually declined to be interviewed for the Nightline special; Apple referred ABC to his recent comments at a Goldman Sachs conference, where he insisted that Apple cares about every worker. Weir did speak with the FLA’s Auret van Heerden, though, who took heat recently for saying that boredom might be one reason for the suicides and low morale.

Another FLA worker said the headlines surrounding worker conditions are Apple’s “Nike moment,” referring to the controversy surrounding the athletic company’s use of sweatshops. But Nike survived that and Apple will survive this, she suggested.

Apple is, of course, sitting on billions of dollars. At the end of the interview, Weir asks a Foxconn exec if it would be possible for Apple to use its funds to double wages at Foxconn. “Why not?” the exec responds. It would be good for China and for morale, he said.

With higher wages, Weir concludes, these workers might one day be able to afford the gadgets they make.

To watch, see the video below. What did you think? Was the special surprising or what you expected? Let us know in the comments.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

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Bill Weir dons a bunny suit and takes a camera into Foxconn’s Shenzhen facilities

Click for video

With Apple’s (AAPL) permission, Foxconn for the first time allowed a reporter and his camera crew into its famous Shenzhen, China, factory complex. The 17-minute report aired Tuesday night.

Apart from some details about the production processes (it takes 141 steps, mostly done by hand, to assemble an iPhone) there’s little news here that wasn’t in the reporter’s notebook Nightline co-host Bill Weir filed on Monday. But the segment is worth watching if only for his exclusive video of the endless production lines, the huge cafeterias, the crowded dorm rooms, the suicide nets, the stampede of job seekers and a glimpse of life in the villages where they come from.

Weir also accompanied the Fair Labor Association as it made an Apple-sponsored audit of the facility. “I expect them to put on a show for us,” FLA president Auret van Heerden told Weir. And indeed, AppleInsider Wednesday related the claims of a local labor group that Foxconn hid its underage employees before the auditors arrived.

ABC’s YouTube link is pasted above. The video is also available at Nightline’s website here.

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When Elizabeth Smart confirmed her engagement on “Good Morning America” last month, she said she was ready to start  life with her fiance, 22-year-old Matthew Gilmour.

“I couldn’t be happier,” the 24-year-old said in a live appearance on “GMA”  Feb. 1.  “We met abroad, and I can’t wait to start my life with him.”

Little did anyone know, including the bride’s best friend, that the wait for the young couple to start their lives together would be less than one month.

Smart and Gilmour were married Saturday  in Hawaii in a surprise and intimate ceremony at Laie Hawaii Temple of  the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, attended only by close family and friends, her spokesman, Chris Thomas, said in a statement.

© Whitehotpix/ZUMAPRESS.com/Newscom

Watch “GMA” this Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 7 a.m., ET for new photos of Smart’s Hawaiian wedding.

A source close to the family told ABC News exclusively that Smart’s best friend, Katy Lund Burgess, booked a last-minute flight and arrived just in time for the wedding, joining Smart’s  family, including her  grandmother, who were also all  at the wedding on Oahu’s North Shore.

Burgess was a constant presence at Smart’s side during the 2010 trial of street preacher Brian David Mitchell who was convicted of sexually assaulting and kidnapping the then 14-year-old Smart, holding her hostage for nine months in 2002,  and is now serving a life sentence.

Smart, now a senior studying music at Brigham Young University, met Gilmour, of Aberdeen, Scotland, while doing Mormon missionary work in Paris, the Associated Press reported.

The couple was planning to marry this summer but moved up the wedding to Saturday to avoid attracting too much attention.

The family source confirmed to ABC News that the wedding party enjoyed an intimate luncheon and cake cutting at the island’s luxury Turtle Bay Resort after the ceremony.  The wedding festivities culminated with a private tour and evening wedding Luau at the nearby Polynesian Cultural Center.

“Elizabeth said her wedding far exceeded her wildest expectations, and enjoying it with the people she loves most made for one the greatest days of her life,” the source said.

Smart spoke at a child advocacy event  in South Carolina days before she flew with her parents, Ed and Lois Smart, from Salt Lake City to Hawaii, People magazine reported.

Since being found alive March 12, 2003, less than 18 miles from her home, Smart has committed herself to working  on behalf of crime victims, forming the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and working as a a paid contributor for “GMA”  on issues related to missing and exploited children.

“Her wedding further demonstrates it is possible to rise above challenging circumstances to lead a happy and productive life,” Smart’s spokesman said in a statement.  “Once Elizabeth returns from her honeymoon, she looks forward to continuing her child advocacy work.”

ABC News’ Leezel Tanglao and Lauren Effron contributed to this report.

SHOWS: Good Morning America

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The actress is appearing in two episodes of American crime drama NCIS and is open to more television work in the future.

She raises two children with her husband Christopher Guest, Annie and Thomas. Now both are old enough to take care of themselves, Jamie expects to start working more.

“Yes actually [I’d like to do a TV series],” she said. “I did a comedy series. Yes I do [want to do more]. I’ve raised my children and so I could clearly see myself doing more regular work now because my youngest is 15-and-a-half and the last person he wants to see is me. I think I’ve done my job right, he wants nothing to do with me.”

In NCIS Jamie is seen on screen with Mark Harmon, who she also appeared alongside in the 2003 movie Freaky Friday.

She enjoyed catching up with her old friend and hinted she has something of a crush on him.

“I’m very fond of him and he’s very fond of me. That’s just a given, I’m not going to lie to you and say this is a horrible, difficult job to [work] with him,” she laughed to ET Online. “I’m happy to have it, I’m happy to be here. I’m not going to say anything more than that. He makes me blush a little bit, because he’s such a sweet guy.”

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The cannons? I asked, having never given them a second thought.

Yes, the cannons, Pabon said. Pabon is an engineer who became a lawyer who became a legislator. This is most convenient for said constituent, Mr. Virgil Hughes.

“I wanted Dan to see the cannons because as an engineer he has an appreciation of these things,” Hughes said. “Of course, as a lawyer, he doesn’t care.”

I first see Hughes from the back. He is stooped and white-haired, and my thought is that he is very old. He stands and turns. He wears mutton chops and small wire-rimmed glasses.

His eyes, though, are bright and a dead giveaway that within this 88-year-old body and its need for thrice-weekly dialysis is the fidgety boy who once peppered Civil War veterans with questions on Decoration Day.

I’m not surprised to learn he has acted as an extra in many movies, including “Glory” and “Gettysburg.” He resembles a 19th-century teacher. Or a wizard.

He hands Pabon a list of seven items in need of attention. He is most concerned about water damage to the carriage.

“In 1878,” he tells us, “Sen. Jerome Chaffee — he’s the man we named the dam after, and the county too —wrote the War Department requesting two Napoleons to grace the front of our magnificent new Capitol (not yet built). Now, I’m imagining here, but the War Department, probably thinking this senator didn’t know a Napoleon from a Six Pounder, sent over a couple Six Pounders. Chaffee replied with a burning letter, and we got our Napoleons. The story is one of these cannons was used in the Battle of Gettysburg, but I’ve never seen any convincing evidence of this.”

One was manufactured in 1862. The other in 1863.

“How far would this cannon shoot?” Pabon asked. Or maybe it was me. Apparently, a 10-year-old boy resides in everyone.

“To the football stadium,” Hughes says.

We all stare west for a moment, trying to picture it.

And so we are hooked.

Hooked is a relative term. I understand this more fully when I visit Hughes at his shop. It lies along a well-worn section of West Colfax Avenue. A person could walk right by and never guess what lies within.

“Mysterious, isn’t it?” Hughes says.

It’s like dropping down the rabbit hole. For more than 40 years, Hughes and his son, Norman, made dulcimers by hand here. I didn’t know what a dulcimer was. My knowledge of antique stringed instruments is limited. Hughes plays one for me. It sounds lovely.

“There was demand for dulcimers?” I asked him.

“Anyone with common sense can tell you there was no demand,” Hughes said. “But then we sold a couple hundred thousand.”

The shop has closed but remains filled with antique and replica instruments. I am introduced to my first hurdy-gurdy and helicon and ophicleide. They share the same room with four Army field ranges from different wars. With K-rations and D-rations. With six cannons. And with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln rescued from a Grand Army of the Republic Fraternal Hall, which was demolished.

Hughes is a man with a keen and curious mind. We talk for several hours of music and war and the odd footnotes that occupy history. Did you wear long skirts when you were young, he once asked his grandmother. Yes, she said.

“It was proper. It was said the sight of a lady’s ankle would drive a man to mad fits of passion.” She paused. “It didn’t work, you know.”

Hughes chuckles. “I had a question. I found out the answer. I’ve long been in the trap of that kind of history.”

On Monday, I stop by to see Norman, who resembles his father in that they are occupied not only with the what but the why of history. It is the detail that consumes them, which is why they re-enact not just battles but music, dance and field cooking.

Some find all this odd. But it is a talent to take in the panorama of history and to re-create, in the donning of a wool uniform, in the heft of a rifle or the pluck of a string, a moment small and intimate and human. It is a way of understanding something so big and remote as to be without meaning.

It is what he asks Pabon and me to do on a chilly morning outside the Capitol, when we stand next to a cannon nearly 150 years old and imagine the length of its reach.

Tina Griego: 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com

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