Forty Bucks a Day and All You Can Eat
(Copyright 2009)
In my life I’ve been many things; a roofer, a janitor, a painter, a drummer, a roadie and yes, a garbage man. Being a garbage man was the realization of a cherished dream I had held since I was a toddler. I used to run to the edge of the street to watch the trash being crushed inside the hopper, as I though this was the ultimate job anyone could ever have. I was convinced that one day I would be the lucky guy to operate that glorious machine – a garbage man, the most noble of professions only a four-year old can envision.
During my ten month run as a “picker,” (the guy who hangs precipitously on the back and grabs the bags off the street), I had my share of adventures including being stabbed with a syringe that some fool left unsheathed in the Hefty bag. I felt the prick against my leg when I carelessly let the weight of the bags bounce off my calf (a cardinal sin in trash collections), and I remember thinking as I climbed back into the cab, “damn, that felt like a bee sting.” I became a little more alarmed when I pulled up my pant leg to find a swollen, reddish pin-prick just above the top of my boot. At the next stop I made my way to the back, praying the whole way that it was nothing. I tore into the bag and all my fears were realized in the belly of the hopper as a deluge of syringes came pouring out. A trip to the hospital for a Tetanus shot, a blood test and a lecture and I was cured of ever letting that shit bounce off my leg again.
Another experience left me inches from becoming a road casserole. I was hanging on the back of the truck just after a light rain. The road was shining like a candy wrapper; just wet enough to make it hazardous. Over the top of a hill a teenager came, hauling ass in a beat-up Olds Omega. He panicked when he saw the truck sprawled out in front of his path like a beached battleship lying in the middle of the street. He jammed the brakes and skid the car sideways right into the heart of the beast, bearing down like a kamikaze. I narrowly escaped being wiped clean off the side only by scaling the truck as it was still prodding forward. I shit my pants and watched the involuntary killer bounce off the gas tank inches below my feet.
My tour of duty ended finally when I was running a city route one afternoon with an old, black-toothed driver named Earl. Earl was the genuine hardened article when it came to garbage men. He was a sawed-off, heavyweight, tar spitting and slurring redneck. His rusty complexion, carved face and dark, intense glare gave off the perfect impression of a simple man destined to lug garbage for his entire existence; something he pursued with the militant zeal of his Teutonic lineage. Every morning we’d leave the yard and just a few hundred feet up the road a deranged, old man would stand at attention at the street corner and salute all the trucks as they went by. Earl would always drag the truck to halt and throw back a sharp salute with all the pageantry of General Patton. He enjoyed his position of status in this world – an extremely formidable fish in an extremely small pond, wanting nothing more and nothing less; his self-worth measured daily at the weigh station in “tonnage hauled.”
Among many tall-tales, he used to brag about digging holes in the middle of the night atop the landfill under the supervision of the owners of the company, an Italian crew, who told him and his helper to “Stop asking questions and keep shoveling.” He was quirky and would hold his empty, sausage-fingered hand up in his side-view mirror, as if he was holding an alarm clock for the picker to see, and would repeatedly screech “Ain’t got no time, hurry your ass, ain’t got time!” He lived to drive his pickers to exhaustion and extinction without mercy. In general, he was gruff, mean and ruthless and nobody liked working with him. I didn’t mind so much because I would just ignore his constant berating, but for one fateful incident, I could not ignore what he had done.
We were heading down a city block and were flanked by mountainous trash sties as far as we dared to look. Earl was dragging cans from the truck side and I was running and picking up the other side. As I approached the back with a load, Earl was cycling the blade and grinning and chuckling like a guilty kindergartner. He was obviously proud of something he had done and was eager to tell me. I knew better than to ask but for some reason I decided to indulge him. After some inquiry, he finally revealed, barely able to quiet his laughter, “This cat always runs up here every week, begging. I hate fucking cats.”
“Okay,” I said apprehensively, “What did you do?”
“I hate that fucking cat,” he stammered, coughing up a laugh worthy of a Vincent Price movie. “I grabbed the son-of-a-bitch by the tail and threw it in the hopper!”
“What? No you didn’t!” I protested hoping it wasn’t true.
“Fuck an ‘A’ I did,” he boasted, as if insulted I would even question his word.
“Bullshit,” I said, “You’re a fucking liar.”
“Fuck you, you pussy,” he shouted as he cycled the blade up halfway and the contents of the last load dropped back into the hopper.
Among all of the filth falling from the top down, came the body of a dead cat, which he had supposedly picked up and swung by the tail and slammed violently against the back of the hopper and then cycled it through!
I was horrified! If there is one thing I have no tolerance for, it is cruelty toward an animal. I saw that lifeless cat laying in the swill and I snapped faster than Michael Richards at an Obama rally!
“You’re a piece of shit,” I screamed. “I should kick your fucking ass!”
“Fuck you bitch,” he snarled and moved toward me raising a fist. “I’ll…”
Before he could get the rest of the sentence out I blasted him bull’s-eye in the face; abruptly reversing his charge with all the subtlety of a brick sandwich and sending him flailing backward. I hit him so hard he fell against the hopper; his expression suddenly an empty canvass, erased of any pretense of nerve, or bravado and replaced by a dazed sheen of confusion. His knee found the pavement as he caught the back of the truck with his right arm. In shock, he staggered to the curb.
I’ve been in enough fights to know that the satisfaction of knocking someone senseless is usually followed by a long period of regret. In this instance however, even though he was almost twice my age, I felt no such pangs of remorse. That son of a bitch got off light as far as I was concerned. I turned and walked off the job and left him cursing and clutching at his nose, blood trickling to the pavement between his fingers.
By the time I found a Convenience store and called in to the shop, he had already called the bosses out to the scene and changed the story. As far as the bosses were concerned it was Earl’s word against mine and since Earl knew everyone in the entire place, I was fired. Earl was a thirty-year veteran who supposedly kept quiet about things like holes in the landfill in the middle of the night and I was a punk kid who was lucky enough to be getting away with only a pink slip and no assault charges.
As I walked out of the shop, Earl, sitting in the break room with his nose, swollen and taped, tried to tell me through a checkered flag grin that he’d picked the cat up off the road and it was already dead – it was a joke and he had the last laugh.
Maybe so.
© Copyright 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Finding My Inner-Buddha in a Water Closet
Finding My Inner-Buddha in a Water Closet
(The Buzzard's Revenge)
Copyright 2009
The Official Book of Rocking Bylaws and Tour Bus Etiquette clearly states in chapter one; verse one: "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE, be it physical illness from regional virus or groupie epidemic, homesickness or overactive homo tendencies, nervous colon due to unexpected boarding, search, seizure and interrogation by law enforcement official or suspicious girlfriend, unidentified STD or sudden discolorization and/or growth upon genitalia, alcohol/drug induced internal bleeding, reception of repetitive assaults to the abdomen by drug-crazed, associate roadcrew member of lower intelligence, or reckless ingestion of questionable bus lunchmeats and other assorted goodies including, but not limited to, rancid female reproductive organs, day-old breast milk mixed with Vodka, or unsolicited snowballing ambush by groupie instigated by remorseless colleague, will no member of a touring group ever, and I repeat for clarity, EVER, shit or vomit in a tour bus lavatory! Violation of such statute will result in immediate and severe bodily harm and expulsion from the tour."
This ancient law of bus decorum has been honored and passed carefully down through ages by every mercenary, rock crusader that ever dared sift through a sea of fiendish pharmaceuticals and cacodemonic lust peddlers in order to fistfuck virgin ears with ever-intensifying decibelic insult and then escape, unabated into the night, vanishing behind the moon into radio silence, only to regroup by afternoon and terrorize the next unsuspecting burg down the sleepy pike. It is here, during these tenuous, in-between hours of journey, the endless miles of insignificance separating pillaged town from burning hamlet, that the brave crusader earns his medals. For it is during this period that all the sins of the road are counted and creep forth, relentlessly inching to the surface, lulled by an unstoppable, hypnotic rock of the caravan and coaxed from the bowels to exact a penitence for the unrestrained behavior of hazy fortnights and fifthnights past, stacked one against another. It is here, that the bus commode, transformed enchantress, curvaceous and cool, beckons "do as thy wilt young rocker priest, seat thyself upon my exulted cathedra and I will deliver thee solace in this heathen world thou dost hastily traverse."
Many have fallen.
My particular experience with this unfortunate circumstance begins, innocently enough, with the time-honored tradition commonly known as the "after-show meal." Scratched deep within the hieroglyphic fine print of every rock and roll contract rider worth its cocaine, is the stipulation that the venue will provide a meal of some discernable type directly following the night's festivities. On this memorable occasion, the venue in question decided to provide us with meal tickets to the Jamaican eatery across the street and like a band of drunken rats following, lock-step behind a penny whistle; we threw off the shackles of common sense and marched directly into the open hands of one amiable Jamaican restaurateur, eagerly waving his spoon and spatula. "Watch me work the spoon, watch it go, see me workin' the spoon," he repeated proudly like some sinister incantation as he heaped pile upon pile of gook and grack in the Styrofoam containers to our naïve delight and amusement. One by one, we each tore greedily out of the bistro, clutching our day's catch, laughing like teenaged hoodlums who have just unearthed a trove of Hustlers in a basement hideaway. We reached the bus and dismembered the fresh kill, laughing and spitting obscenities, reveling in our fortune and thumbing our noses at the poor societal peasants that toil for meager slave's rations while we dine like savage conquerors! We raised glasses of Pinot, Port and Blanc, toasted Marie Antoinette and admired the devastation as another town lay bare and spread eagle before us; bent to our psychotic, perverse will! And then came the real alcohol.
My tour manager burst through the door like Bender in a Santa Clause suit, lobbing bottles of every make and model around for his hungry baby birds. Canadian Royal, Smirnoff, Petron, Daniel's, Beam, Walker; all the heavy hitters. And then, my old nemesis, Jägermeister.
At first I resisted. The wicked combination of Jamaican rice, ox tail and God-knows-what and cheese, mixed unchecked in a swill of Merlot and Jager was volatile enough that I knew it should give one a moment of pause. I knew I was tinkering with a formula that had the potential to explode like an Apache job inside the Death Star trash compactor that was now my stomach. I knew better… way better.
Road manager was insistent though! He slurred something about “women and effeminate men” through a flurry of amphetamines and Tequila-drenched sarcasm. I don't know exactly what he said, I don't speak caveman. What I do know, is when I tried to ignore his retarded reverse psychology, turning to my bunk and quietly attempting to remove myself from the looming disaster, apologizing half-heartedly with "Sorry, I can't. I'll be hot-bagging that shit by morning if I start now," he grabbed me by the Adam's apple, punched me in the groin and bellowed "Drink, drink now you little schoolgirl pussy!" He then proceeded to unceremoniously sodomize my nasal cavity with the bottle until I relented. "Fine!" I said while clutching my balls and knowing full well resistance was an exercise in futility. I'd be set on fire in my own bunk while I slept if I continued the protest. I gave in and took the first step of a long journey toward a rendezvous with the unrepentant maiden, the lady in white. I was now in the quicksand.
By morning the sum of all my fears were realized. Civil war had broken out inside my intestines and I had spent the last two hours in my bunk, contorted into a quasi-fetal position, promising myself I would never ingest anything other than bread and water ever again. Judging by the rock quarry we seemed to have been driving through the last hour, I assumed the bus driver must've been part of this whole conspiracy as well.
By the time we reached our destination, I was a sweating, gurgling mess of regret and I leapt from my bunk like a Saki Monkey in order to make for the door. Once reaching the outside, I was appalled to learn we were indeed late for the radio interview and performance the band was scheduled to do and as a consequence, we would begin unloading the equipment as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately for me, once inside the studio, we were effectively locked in and only one small restroom was available. Not that this should have been a big problem except that I had absolutely zero time to wander away from my duties because the band was already in danger of missing the 8:00am rush hour slot, and also because, as I later observed, everyone seemed to have been poisoned by our Jamaican friend with the magical spoon!
One by one, members of our entourage slipped away to the confines of the studio latrine only to leave their poor drum technician (Johnster Monster), behind in the trenches. "It's a test of mind over matter" I thought to myself, "I can handle this as long as I don't think too hard about it" I reasoned. I kept my mind on my work, which was loading the drums and percussion into the studio and silently setting them up and preparing them for the on-air performance. We had to be as quiet as possible because the morning show crew was in the same room just a few feet away and on the air as we loaded and set up. I began feeling much better because I was so focused on not dropping anything (equipment), or tripping over a cord and causing a giant ruckus.
At this point, I must jump topic slightly to provide a bit of my own psychological perspective. As a musician, I loathe radio. I despise radio! Most of all, I despise morning radio shows! They are all the same. They all have a ridiculous animal mascot (a buzzard, a gorilla, etc.), they all have a stupid catch phrase (gadzooks, or holy friholy), they all throw around the word "legendary" in regards to their station way too much, and they all have the same cast of characters. The cast usually includes: the sarcastic host who keeps them on topic and schedule, who routinely berates his underlings. This is balanced by the whacky sidekick who provides the majority of the one-liners and often is beefed up ala Danny Bonaduce. Don't forget the requisite piece of ass that does weather and attempts to chime in occasionally but is basically ignored. The piece of ass is interesting because in the old days, the piece of ass would be a piece of ass in voice only, but nowadays for some reason, the pieces of ass are generally real pieces of ass! Go figure. Anyway, the cast is then rounded out by a pair of no-name frat boys that are only there to take punishment, wear their baseball caps backwards and laugh uproariously at whatever pathetic jokes the host and Bonaduce produce. This particular crew was no exception. I rank radio DJs and morning show personalities just ahead of fortune tellers on my list of people I intend to cleanse from this earth once I'm elected President! I find them to be a waste of polluted air and valuable spectrum. All those forced years listening to Jeff Kinzbach and Flash Ferenc on Cleveland radio I suppose.
I bring this up because on this morning it seemed that the radio people had teamed up with my tour manager, the Jamaican and the bus driver in an assault on me physically and mentally. For two and a half solid hours, all these morons could talk about were shit jokes. We first had to endure twenty minutes of George Brett telling how he shits his pants at least twice a year. From there, we moved on to aneurisms caused by hard shitting. We even explored horse shitting, baby diarrhea, and Elvis's impacted colon! I couldn't escape! These fuckers would never shut up about excrement! Even when the topic moved away from anal discharge, they would inevitably find a way to return to the shit jokes, because, I can only speculate, it was the funniest thing they'd ever stumbled across during their illustrious radio careers!
At this point, all I wanted to do was crash into the restroom and leave these jack-offs an upper-decker the size of which would cause an office-wide evacuation. Every place I looked was a potential drop zone! Plants! Trashcans! Desk drawers! Purses! The levee was failing, intestinal fortitude be damned, we had reached DEFCON 1 – shitsplosion was imminent!
I surveyed the room, and to my surprise, all were accounted for. Band members in place at their instruments, tour manager smiling and making shady deals in the corner, guitar tech running around with cables and gaff tape, and front house engineer swearing and sneering at the in-house radio guy. It was time for my escape. I slid out the door unnoticed and began searching feverishly for the Promised Can, banging off walls and undoing my pants all the way down the hallway and beyond. I collided, head-first with the shitter door, forgetting about whom I might intrude upon on the other end, ricocheting a metal-on-metal cataclysmic boom through the corridors of the whole of the building – thank God the stall was empty! I spiraled down onto the head and declared "Motherfucker!!!" as I rode the black Jager rapids and ox tail avalanche thundering like Poseidon underneath and catapulting my ass at least six inches off the seat! “Praise to God in Heaven! Praise thee!” I shouted as I braced myself against the side wall and kicked the handle off the door like a molested mule with my spasming leg.
And then suddenly peace restored.
I sat for a long moment, regaining composure and wiping the sweat from my throbbing forehead; the stall door, dented and swaying on its last remaining hinge. Finally, as I surveyed the scene through the smoke and haze, a funny, familiar sound swirled from a shitter speaker box somewhere above my head. There they were, the band and their catchy little tune, circling around my swimming brain like a cloud of white doves and singing butterflies. I sat in peace, quietly catching my breath and tapping the flush lever. My first ever radio experience and I would spend the entire performance riding the mud box. Sitting there in quiet contemplation, floating like a Buddha inches from the bowl, it all seemed to suddenly make sense, it was all somehow very appropriate... all very Zen.
© Copyright 2009
(The Buzzard's Revenge)
Copyright 2009
The Official Book of Rocking Bylaws and Tour Bus Etiquette clearly states in chapter one; verse one: "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE, be it physical illness from regional virus or groupie epidemic, homesickness or overactive homo tendencies, nervous colon due to unexpected boarding, search, seizure and interrogation by law enforcement official or suspicious girlfriend, unidentified STD or sudden discolorization and/or growth upon genitalia, alcohol/drug induced internal bleeding, reception of repetitive assaults to the abdomen by drug-crazed, associate roadcrew member of lower intelligence, or reckless ingestion of questionable bus lunchmeats and other assorted goodies including, but not limited to, rancid female reproductive organs, day-old breast milk mixed with Vodka, or unsolicited snowballing ambush by groupie instigated by remorseless colleague, will no member of a touring group ever, and I repeat for clarity, EVER, shit or vomit in a tour bus lavatory! Violation of such statute will result in immediate and severe bodily harm and expulsion from the tour."
This ancient law of bus decorum has been honored and passed carefully down through ages by every mercenary, rock crusader that ever dared sift through a sea of fiendish pharmaceuticals and cacodemonic lust peddlers in order to fistfuck virgin ears with ever-intensifying decibelic insult and then escape, unabated into the night, vanishing behind the moon into radio silence, only to regroup by afternoon and terrorize the next unsuspecting burg down the sleepy pike. It is here, during these tenuous, in-between hours of journey, the endless miles of insignificance separating pillaged town from burning hamlet, that the brave crusader earns his medals. For it is during this period that all the sins of the road are counted and creep forth, relentlessly inching to the surface, lulled by an unstoppable, hypnotic rock of the caravan and coaxed from the bowels to exact a penitence for the unrestrained behavior of hazy fortnights and fifthnights past, stacked one against another. It is here, that the bus commode, transformed enchantress, curvaceous and cool, beckons "do as thy wilt young rocker priest, seat thyself upon my exulted cathedra and I will deliver thee solace in this heathen world thou dost hastily traverse."
Many have fallen.
My particular experience with this unfortunate circumstance begins, innocently enough, with the time-honored tradition commonly known as the "after-show meal." Scratched deep within the hieroglyphic fine print of every rock and roll contract rider worth its cocaine, is the stipulation that the venue will provide a meal of some discernable type directly following the night's festivities. On this memorable occasion, the venue in question decided to provide us with meal tickets to the Jamaican eatery across the street and like a band of drunken rats following, lock-step behind a penny whistle; we threw off the shackles of common sense and marched directly into the open hands of one amiable Jamaican restaurateur, eagerly waving his spoon and spatula. "Watch me work the spoon, watch it go, see me workin' the spoon," he repeated proudly like some sinister incantation as he heaped pile upon pile of gook and grack in the Styrofoam containers to our naïve delight and amusement. One by one, we each tore greedily out of the bistro, clutching our day's catch, laughing like teenaged hoodlums who have just unearthed a trove of Hustlers in a basement hideaway. We reached the bus and dismembered the fresh kill, laughing and spitting obscenities, reveling in our fortune and thumbing our noses at the poor societal peasants that toil for meager slave's rations while we dine like savage conquerors! We raised glasses of Pinot, Port and Blanc, toasted Marie Antoinette and admired the devastation as another town lay bare and spread eagle before us; bent to our psychotic, perverse will! And then came the real alcohol.
My tour manager burst through the door like Bender in a Santa Clause suit, lobbing bottles of every make and model around for his hungry baby birds. Canadian Royal, Smirnoff, Petron, Daniel's, Beam, Walker; all the heavy hitters. And then, my old nemesis, Jägermeister.
At first I resisted. The wicked combination of Jamaican rice, ox tail and God-knows-what and cheese, mixed unchecked in a swill of Merlot and Jager was volatile enough that I knew it should give one a moment of pause. I knew I was tinkering with a formula that had the potential to explode like an Apache job inside the Death Star trash compactor that was now my stomach. I knew better… way better.
Road manager was insistent though! He slurred something about “women and effeminate men” through a flurry of amphetamines and Tequila-drenched sarcasm. I don't know exactly what he said, I don't speak caveman. What I do know, is when I tried to ignore his retarded reverse psychology, turning to my bunk and quietly attempting to remove myself from the looming disaster, apologizing half-heartedly with "Sorry, I can't. I'll be hot-bagging that shit by morning if I start now," he grabbed me by the Adam's apple, punched me in the groin and bellowed "Drink, drink now you little schoolgirl pussy!" He then proceeded to unceremoniously sodomize my nasal cavity with the bottle until I relented. "Fine!" I said while clutching my balls and knowing full well resistance was an exercise in futility. I'd be set on fire in my own bunk while I slept if I continued the protest. I gave in and took the first step of a long journey toward a rendezvous with the unrepentant maiden, the lady in white. I was now in the quicksand.
By morning the sum of all my fears were realized. Civil war had broken out inside my intestines and I had spent the last two hours in my bunk, contorted into a quasi-fetal position, promising myself I would never ingest anything other than bread and water ever again. Judging by the rock quarry we seemed to have been driving through the last hour, I assumed the bus driver must've been part of this whole conspiracy as well.
By the time we reached our destination, I was a sweating, gurgling mess of regret and I leapt from my bunk like a Saki Monkey in order to make for the door. Once reaching the outside, I was appalled to learn we were indeed late for the radio interview and performance the band was scheduled to do and as a consequence, we would begin unloading the equipment as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately for me, once inside the studio, we were effectively locked in and only one small restroom was available. Not that this should have been a big problem except that I had absolutely zero time to wander away from my duties because the band was already in danger of missing the 8:00am rush hour slot, and also because, as I later observed, everyone seemed to have been poisoned by our Jamaican friend with the magical spoon!
One by one, members of our entourage slipped away to the confines of the studio latrine only to leave their poor drum technician (Johnster Monster), behind in the trenches. "It's a test of mind over matter" I thought to myself, "I can handle this as long as I don't think too hard about it" I reasoned. I kept my mind on my work, which was loading the drums and percussion into the studio and silently setting them up and preparing them for the on-air performance. We had to be as quiet as possible because the morning show crew was in the same room just a few feet away and on the air as we loaded and set up. I began feeling much better because I was so focused on not dropping anything (equipment), or tripping over a cord and causing a giant ruckus.
At this point, I must jump topic slightly to provide a bit of my own psychological perspective. As a musician, I loathe radio. I despise radio! Most of all, I despise morning radio shows! They are all the same. They all have a ridiculous animal mascot (a buzzard, a gorilla, etc.), they all have a stupid catch phrase (gadzooks, or holy friholy), they all throw around the word "legendary" in regards to their station way too much, and they all have the same cast of characters. The cast usually includes: the sarcastic host who keeps them on topic and schedule, who routinely berates his underlings. This is balanced by the whacky sidekick who provides the majority of the one-liners and often is beefed up ala Danny Bonaduce. Don't forget the requisite piece of ass that does weather and attempts to chime in occasionally but is basically ignored. The piece of ass is interesting because in the old days, the piece of ass would be a piece of ass in voice only, but nowadays for some reason, the pieces of ass are generally real pieces of ass! Go figure. Anyway, the cast is then rounded out by a pair of no-name frat boys that are only there to take punishment, wear their baseball caps backwards and laugh uproariously at whatever pathetic jokes the host and Bonaduce produce. This particular crew was no exception. I rank radio DJs and morning show personalities just ahead of fortune tellers on my list of people I intend to cleanse from this earth once I'm elected President! I find them to be a waste of polluted air and valuable spectrum. All those forced years listening to Jeff Kinzbach and Flash Ferenc on Cleveland radio I suppose.
I bring this up because on this morning it seemed that the radio people had teamed up with my tour manager, the Jamaican and the bus driver in an assault on me physically and mentally. For two and a half solid hours, all these morons could talk about were shit jokes. We first had to endure twenty minutes of George Brett telling how he shits his pants at least twice a year. From there, we moved on to aneurisms caused by hard shitting. We even explored horse shitting, baby diarrhea, and Elvis's impacted colon! I couldn't escape! These fuckers would never shut up about excrement! Even when the topic moved away from anal discharge, they would inevitably find a way to return to the shit jokes, because, I can only speculate, it was the funniest thing they'd ever stumbled across during their illustrious radio careers!
At this point, all I wanted to do was crash into the restroom and leave these jack-offs an upper-decker the size of which would cause an office-wide evacuation. Every place I looked was a potential drop zone! Plants! Trashcans! Desk drawers! Purses! The levee was failing, intestinal fortitude be damned, we had reached DEFCON 1 – shitsplosion was imminent!
I surveyed the room, and to my surprise, all were accounted for. Band members in place at their instruments, tour manager smiling and making shady deals in the corner, guitar tech running around with cables and gaff tape, and front house engineer swearing and sneering at the in-house radio guy. It was time for my escape. I slid out the door unnoticed and began searching feverishly for the Promised Can, banging off walls and undoing my pants all the way down the hallway and beyond. I collided, head-first with the shitter door, forgetting about whom I might intrude upon on the other end, ricocheting a metal-on-metal cataclysmic boom through the corridors of the whole of the building – thank God the stall was empty! I spiraled down onto the head and declared "Motherfucker!!!" as I rode the black Jager rapids and ox tail avalanche thundering like Poseidon underneath and catapulting my ass at least six inches off the seat! “Praise to God in Heaven! Praise thee!” I shouted as I braced myself against the side wall and kicked the handle off the door like a molested mule with my spasming leg.
And then suddenly peace restored.
I sat for a long moment, regaining composure and wiping the sweat from my throbbing forehead; the stall door, dented and swaying on its last remaining hinge. Finally, as I surveyed the scene through the smoke and haze, a funny, familiar sound swirled from a shitter speaker box somewhere above my head. There they were, the band and their catchy little tune, circling around my swimming brain like a cloud of white doves and singing butterflies. I sat in peace, quietly catching my breath and tapping the flush lever. My first ever radio experience and I would spend the entire performance riding the mud box. Sitting there in quiet contemplation, floating like a Buddha inches from the bowl, it all seemed to suddenly make sense, it was all somehow very appropriate... all very Zen.
© Copyright 2009
Messianic Acid Tripping
Messianic Acid Tripping
(Copyright 2009)
I don’t know much, but I do know God must’ve dropped acid at least once. There is no other scientific or logical reason for what he was thinking when he came up with bass players. If there’s one indisputable fact about rock and roll, it’s that bass players seem to walk in a ceaseless state of bewilderment. I know I’m speaking in generalities here, but it’s been my experience that this particular breed of musician couldn’t find his way to a urinal by way of the end of his dick.
Case in point, Buster; a bass player I once shared a rhythm section with in an L.A. band called the Bullwhips. Buster possessed an innocence that routinely betrayed the few threads of common sense that he struggled to maintain and relied upon to navigate his way in a band that he was easily the greenest member of. His youth and gullibility were perpetually his undoing as we unmercifully set the lad up for one torturous act after another.
Like for instance, one night after practice we sent a girl across the room to visit him armed with a fist full of fiberglass which we had pulled out of the insulation soundproofing draped around the practice space. The sporting girl easily forced her hand down the drunken fool’s pants, grabbing at any and all loose appendages. In his state he was more than happy to accept the unsolicited hand job and was none the wiser when he woke the next morning to an insatiable itching. A hot shower did nothing but intensify the itch as it caused the fibers to sink deeper into his pores. A few cleverly planted accounts of his actions the night before with a particularly disreputable groupie and we had him convinced that he was harboring a healthy case of the crotch crickets. In a panic he shaved himself from chin to rim, which to our delight, only exacerbated the already hilarious condition. There’s a reason why these dudes only play four strings.
Buster was the genuine bass playing article. If we weren’t causing him some mental or physical anguish, then he would find a way to perpetrate the damage upon himself. What I remember most fondly about Buster though, is that he will go down in the annals as the architect of the greatest line ever conceived of, and dared uttered, while under interrogative duress by an inquisitive girlfriend. I will forever raise a glass to this wayward bass player for the sheer audacity and brass balls he displayed as his girlfriend wondered allowed “Why, in the hell,” he was buttoning up his pants while emerging from an equipment trailer parked behind a club we were playing.
The demise of Buster begins with one of my favorite groupies in the entire universe, the one and only, Miss Sandy Gallagher. Sandy, or “Sandbox,” or “Gaggler,” as we called her, was one of the most respected and desired groupies in the area during that time in the early nineties. She was a cataclysmic, wet dream of hips, lips, hair as black as a hearse, tightly wound up in a tube-top, attitude and confidence that would make Gloria Steinem wish she were Monica Lewinsky.
My first experience with Sandy was when I happened to be nailing her to the backseat of a Ford Taurus while my friend was chauffeuring us to McDonalds. The people in the drive-thru didn’t seem to mind so much, but unfortunately we also caught the attention of a police officer. He was obviously amused by our compromised situation and couldn’t hold back a Cheshire cat grin as he queried us about what we were up to. I figured we were destined to be spread eagle on the side of the car, but Sandy calmly took command of the situation and used her witchy little charm to talk her way out of it. I was stunned and not just a little taken with the girl. The cop let us go with a laugh and a couple of warnings about seatbelt safety. The poor bastard never knew what he was up against.
Sandy wasn’t Playboy material now, but her confidence, imagination, openness and intelligence put her on a whole other level that few girls ever touched. She was an especially talented cock fifer who could suck the sap out of a Dogwood. She was exciting and up for anything. Everybody wanted to party with her and she even inspired one of my infamous song lyrics “you’re no bombshell baby, you’re a nuclear war.” God, I’m the fucking James Joyce of rock and roll!
Amazing song lyrics weren’t the only thing Sandy inspired though. We started doing this thing we called the 10 under 20, where we’d get her to try and give ten complete blow jobs in under twenty minutes. It sounds easy but as it turns out, even for a premier gob-guzzler like sandy, this is no small feat. She’d be jacking and jawing away like Mother Theresa up-ended in a monastery while someone timed her and documented the progress. I don’t know if she ever made it in under twenty, but I do know she sure tried a lot.
So it was for this reason that a group, including Buster, had her chin-down inside our equipment trailer one night before a show. She was buck naked and hammering away, doing her thing surrounded by a bunch of swinging dicks, all piled inside this little trailer waiting their turn. Buster apparently was one of the first finished and haphazardly swung the side door aside to step out with his jeans half pulled up, only to run face-to-face into his astonished girlfriend! There was virtually no chance of explaining anything away because she could plainly see the fully stripped Sandy giving lip service to a large contingent of comers all shouting and cheering her on. Plus, some super-intelligent member of our road crew had seen fit to gaff tape a pizza box to the side of the trailer that read: “Club BJ – No Cover.” That may have tipped her off too.
They both stood speechless for a few seconds and then she turned and stormed off! Buster was still in a state of shock when suddenly, like an epiphany, the answer came to him and he shouted the greatest line ever conceived of, and dared uttered, while under interrogative duress by an inquisitive girlfriend.
“Babe, I never even touched her; I just came on the side of her head! She’s my cousin!”
I think this bears repeating… “Bla bla bla bla, something unimportant about coming on someone’s face, and… SHE’S MY COUSIN!”
I’ve been known to talk a line of shit once or twice. I’ll admit I’ve been caught holding a smoking gun more than a few times and made every attempt to jive my way out of it. I’ve never however; not in my most desperate hour, dreamt of bringing incest into the conversation. I might be off base here, but I tend to think that that may just aggravate an already touchy situation. I could not, however, fault my shameless bass player for his innovative stab at a defense. This had to be the most blatant attempt at weaseling since Bill Clinton tried to debate the meaning of the word “is.” It was truly admirable.
Need I write more? At this point, can it really be disputed that the day God created bass players he had to have been tripping his cosmic balls off hotter than Ken Kesey curled up in a trunk and crashing the Mexican border? As insane as his excuse was, I had to be impressed with the youngster until I found out later that he wasn’t at all bullshitting – SHE ACTUALLY WAS HIS COUSIN!!!!! Apparently the kid, having surveyed the scene unfolding in front of him, could not restrain himself from jerking off to the sight of his hot cousin administering multiple crotch whistles to a crowd of his peers; and then proceeded to finish the job by delivering a sack of jam to the inside of her ear! Bass players. That must’ve been some otherworldly shit.
© Copyright 2009
(Copyright 2009)
I don’t know much, but I do know God must’ve dropped acid at least once. There is no other scientific or logical reason for what he was thinking when he came up with bass players. If there’s one indisputable fact about rock and roll, it’s that bass players seem to walk in a ceaseless state of bewilderment. I know I’m speaking in generalities here, but it’s been my experience that this particular breed of musician couldn’t find his way to a urinal by way of the end of his dick.
Case in point, Buster; a bass player I once shared a rhythm section with in an L.A. band called the Bullwhips. Buster possessed an innocence that routinely betrayed the few threads of common sense that he struggled to maintain and relied upon to navigate his way in a band that he was easily the greenest member of. His youth and gullibility were perpetually his undoing as we unmercifully set the lad up for one torturous act after another.
Like for instance, one night after practice we sent a girl across the room to visit him armed with a fist full of fiberglass which we had pulled out of the insulation soundproofing draped around the practice space. The sporting girl easily forced her hand down the drunken fool’s pants, grabbing at any and all loose appendages. In his state he was more than happy to accept the unsolicited hand job and was none the wiser when he woke the next morning to an insatiable itching. A hot shower did nothing but intensify the itch as it caused the fibers to sink deeper into his pores. A few cleverly planted accounts of his actions the night before with a particularly disreputable groupie and we had him convinced that he was harboring a healthy case of the crotch crickets. In a panic he shaved himself from chin to rim, which to our delight, only exacerbated the already hilarious condition. There’s a reason why these dudes only play four strings.
Buster was the genuine bass playing article. If we weren’t causing him some mental or physical anguish, then he would find a way to perpetrate the damage upon himself. What I remember most fondly about Buster though, is that he will go down in the annals as the architect of the greatest line ever conceived of, and dared uttered, while under interrogative duress by an inquisitive girlfriend. I will forever raise a glass to this wayward bass player for the sheer audacity and brass balls he displayed as his girlfriend wondered allowed “Why, in the hell,” he was buttoning up his pants while emerging from an equipment trailer parked behind a club we were playing.
The demise of Buster begins with one of my favorite groupies in the entire universe, the one and only, Miss Sandy Gallagher. Sandy, or “Sandbox,” or “Gaggler,” as we called her, was one of the most respected and desired groupies in the area during that time in the early nineties. She was a cataclysmic, wet dream of hips, lips, hair as black as a hearse, tightly wound up in a tube-top, attitude and confidence that would make Gloria Steinem wish she were Monica Lewinsky.
My first experience with Sandy was when I happened to be nailing her to the backseat of a Ford Taurus while my friend was chauffeuring us to McDonalds. The people in the drive-thru didn’t seem to mind so much, but unfortunately we also caught the attention of a police officer. He was obviously amused by our compromised situation and couldn’t hold back a Cheshire cat grin as he queried us about what we were up to. I figured we were destined to be spread eagle on the side of the car, but Sandy calmly took command of the situation and used her witchy little charm to talk her way out of it. I was stunned and not just a little taken with the girl. The cop let us go with a laugh and a couple of warnings about seatbelt safety. The poor bastard never knew what he was up against.
Sandy wasn’t Playboy material now, but her confidence, imagination, openness and intelligence put her on a whole other level that few girls ever touched. She was an especially talented cock fifer who could suck the sap out of a Dogwood. She was exciting and up for anything. Everybody wanted to party with her and she even inspired one of my infamous song lyrics “you’re no bombshell baby, you’re a nuclear war.” God, I’m the fucking James Joyce of rock and roll!
Amazing song lyrics weren’t the only thing Sandy inspired though. We started doing this thing we called the 10 under 20, where we’d get her to try and give ten complete blow jobs in under twenty minutes. It sounds easy but as it turns out, even for a premier gob-guzzler like sandy, this is no small feat. She’d be jacking and jawing away like Mother Theresa up-ended in a monastery while someone timed her and documented the progress. I don’t know if she ever made it in under twenty, but I do know she sure tried a lot.
So it was for this reason that a group, including Buster, had her chin-down inside our equipment trailer one night before a show. She was buck naked and hammering away, doing her thing surrounded by a bunch of swinging dicks, all piled inside this little trailer waiting their turn. Buster apparently was one of the first finished and haphazardly swung the side door aside to step out with his jeans half pulled up, only to run face-to-face into his astonished girlfriend! There was virtually no chance of explaining anything away because she could plainly see the fully stripped Sandy giving lip service to a large contingent of comers all shouting and cheering her on. Plus, some super-intelligent member of our road crew had seen fit to gaff tape a pizza box to the side of the trailer that read: “Club BJ – No Cover.” That may have tipped her off too.
They both stood speechless for a few seconds and then she turned and stormed off! Buster was still in a state of shock when suddenly, like an epiphany, the answer came to him and he shouted the greatest line ever conceived of, and dared uttered, while under interrogative duress by an inquisitive girlfriend.
“Babe, I never even touched her; I just came on the side of her head! She’s my cousin!”
I think this bears repeating… “Bla bla bla bla, something unimportant about coming on someone’s face, and… SHE’S MY COUSIN!”
I’ve been known to talk a line of shit once or twice. I’ll admit I’ve been caught holding a smoking gun more than a few times and made every attempt to jive my way out of it. I’ve never however; not in my most desperate hour, dreamt of bringing incest into the conversation. I might be off base here, but I tend to think that that may just aggravate an already touchy situation. I could not, however, fault my shameless bass player for his innovative stab at a defense. This had to be the most blatant attempt at weaseling since Bill Clinton tried to debate the meaning of the word “is.” It was truly admirable.
Need I write more? At this point, can it really be disputed that the day God created bass players he had to have been tripping his cosmic balls off hotter than Ken Kesey curled up in a trunk and crashing the Mexican border? As insane as his excuse was, I had to be impressed with the youngster until I found out later that he wasn’t at all bullshitting – SHE ACTUALLY WAS HIS COUSIN!!!!! Apparently the kid, having surveyed the scene unfolding in front of him, could not restrain himself from jerking off to the sight of his hot cousin administering multiple crotch whistles to a crowd of his peers; and then proceeded to finish the job by delivering a sack of jam to the inside of her ear! Bass players. That must’ve been some otherworldly shit.
© Copyright 2009
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