Death's Door presents the Bar Years

ALMOST HAD A FACE WITHOUT EYES

2004-11-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Have times changed or what? I keep a radio on at work for the background noise, it’s a top forty station, but it comes in clear here at the office. They play a lot of the boy bands plus a lot of Brittany and Christina. Isn’t there just something about Christina that says “nasty little hump”? She say’s she has thirteen piercings and I just think that’s special, just let me get near her with a magnet and I’ll find all of em. But anyway this radio station’s putting on this huge summer concert and one of the headline acts is my White Wedding muthafucker Billy Idol. Yeah, old twisted lip himself is coming to town, and he’s playin on the same bill as Jewel. What has shit come too? Billy Idol playing along side the dancing tree huggers. Wasn’t there a time when Billy would’a thrown Jewel down and did her something bad in he parking lot? I got to meet his band back in the early eighty’s. There was no Billy Idol to be seen but I got face to face with Steve Stevens, Billy’s lead guitar player. This was back in my bouncer and big pimpin days and I was hanging at the Blues club in Westport when somebody ran up and said that Billy Idol’s band’s in the house. Can I be truthful? These guys were some of the hugest assholes I’d ever seen. I had a couple of female friends sittin with me and up walks Steve Stevens, and he starts hittin on the women at my table. Now I know that I’m nobody special and each to his or her own but this was kind’a insulting. I ask the girls if this is what they like and they both tell me not really. Hell, you’ve seen one mousse haired, eye shadow wearin, black clothes wearin musician and you’ve seen em all, right? So I tell Steve I’m glad to see em and all that but it’s time to fuck off. The muthafucker leaves and comes back with one of his band mates, and starts hittin on the women again. By this time I’m pissed and I walk up and start pushing. It all ended in a rush, Billy’s drummer was sittin in with the band on stage along with his bass player who was trying to sing a blues tune. For some asshole reason the base player started smackin the cymbals with the microphone and the drummer jumped off stage and it all got confrontational. It never went any farther then the pushing and they ended up leaving. They did hook up with a couple of girls from the club and one of em got bragging rights cause she “did” Billy Idol after his show in town, and I got to meet Steve Stevens kind’a. I did get their “White Wedding” album for my collection, which was kind’a cool. Peace

HALFORDS "FRIEND", JOAN JETT'S PUBES AND YNGWIE IS AN ASSHOLE

2004-11-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

I was a bouncer in a rock club that had bullet holes in the front door and carried no bottles or glassware. We averaged three to five fights every night of the week. This was back in the day that when a cat took a swing at you, you had better swing back or you were everybody’s punk. Big hair, spandex, and leather was the rule of thumb. On a good night the place could hold six hundred screaming assholes, and get this. The place only had six bouncers. The place originally started out as a cowboy club, until the place closed “Asleep At The Wheel” would play there every year. I learned a lot of things working there. I learned that Rob Halford of Judas Priest dressed his boyfriend in matching outfits and made him stand on stage where he could watch him. I learned that if anyone touched Johnny Winter he would run back to his bus and wouldn’t come out. I learned that Yngwie Malmsteen was a huge asshole. I learned that groupies will do anything, and I really mean anything to get on the bus. I learned that having a sweaty Joan Jett sitting on your shoulders while doing a guitar solo and at the same time trying to rub her pubes through the back of your neck is very cool. I learned that having the lead singer from Great White stop during a song and call me the meanest muthafucker he had ever seen, and the crowd cheering me is pretty cool. I learned that watching Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers walk into the crowd and tell everybody to sit on the floor cause he wanted to tell a story, and watching in stunned disbelief as over six hundred people did exactly just that, had to one of the finest examples of crowd control I had ever seen. I learned that having the wrestler, Jake The Snake Roberts get slapped by some drunk chick, and then me having to tell him he had to leave the bar had my guts in a knot. I learned that it’s not the fight that hurts, it’s the recovery. I learned to hate bachelor parties, cause when you got twenty guys that decide they wanna beat up on the bouncers and the before mentioned bouncers pulling out all the stops, getting “Old School” on their asses and sending half of them to the ER is not cool. Mainly because as soon as the smoke cleared the Cops camera crew came running down the ally and it was all over by then and my mom didn’t get to see me on the TV. I learned that I really enjoyed a good moshpit, cause when you got a good pit rolling it’s the best relief valve for stressed out kids I have ever seen.
Peace

OLD CROW IS NOT A "FINE" BOURBON

2004-11-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

Back in the early eighties I bounced in a blues club. You had to walk down two flights of iron steps to get it. The place was underground and looked liked it was carved out of solid rock, back in the sixties it used to be a chinchilla farm. Back in the day when I worked this place Westport was nothing like it is now. You still had old hippies living above some of the bars and head shops were all over the place. Westport was like the wide-open frontier, it was also known as the undisputed drug capital of the Midwest. The drug thing got so bad Westport had to have it’s own security force. These cats not only carried guns, but they had dogs,
big nasty steroid taking, back in the slavery day looking ass eating dogs who had no love for anyone.
Word. And weren’t afraid to use em. I recall one morning after closing the crowd starting fighting in the middle of the street. These cats rolled up with the dogs and took the leashes off; it was like the fucking running of the bulls, but with these big ass dogs instead, another fine example of crowd control.
In the club we averaged five fights a night. It was also one of the first clubs in KC to stay open till 3 am and we entertained a very diverse bunch of people. You had the fedora wearing Blues crowd and these guy’s insisted on wearing dark shades at night. We had the Italian Mob Crowd and these guy’s insisted on wearing dark shades at night. We had the burgeoning Punk crowd and these guys’s insisted on wearing dark shades at night. And we had the trailer park Mullet crowd and of course these guy’s insisted on wearing dark shades at night. And when it got fun was when all these different groups who insisted on wearing dark shades at night would start bumping into each other. Oh, I forgot the biggest crowd, the drug crowd. These guys’s were like roaches they were so underfoot. Me and the drug dealers had a good working relationship. They wouldn’t deal inside the bar and I wouldn’t break my foot off in em. Other then that we got along pretty good. But I gotta tell ya, when the place was rocking and the mob guys would bump into the punk crowd who would shove em into the mullet people who would swing at the drug dealers. It would turn into a total pier six brawl. Even the bands were known to scrap with the crowd. And in the middle was yours truly. Here’s what I learned bouncing in a blues club. I learned that you’d better not back down from the mob guy’s, if they saw you backing down or rolling over they owned your ass. Toss em like you’d toss anybody else, they don’t have to like you, just respect you. I learned to never take my eyes off anybody. The one time I did I ended up with my right eye getting cut out with a beer bottle. I learned that strippers are good people. It was strippers who caught me and pulled me back into the club and started first aid after I had climbed two flights of stairs trying to go after the guy. I learned that punkers are pretty cool to hang out with, and if they really like you they will give you their women for the night. I learned that sitting in the back of a dark blues club with your arm draped around a real women and listening to the blues while sipping fine bourbon on the rocks will clear your head and free your mind.
Peace

MONSTER TRUCK DRIVIN', GRAVE DIGGIN', EAR-EATIN', REDNECKS

2004-11-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Last week the giant Monster Trucks were in town doing their thing. I can’t dis or commend the Monster Truck thing. I guess it’s like wrestling, either you dig it or you don’t, but it got me thinking about a bad experience I had once with a Monster Truck crew. You’ve probably heard me say this before, but when I bounced at the Lone Star we played host to all kinds of fucked up people. We’ve had everybody from pro wrestlers all the way up to the pretty rock and rollers. And they all wanted to try their kung fu on us. But the richer and more famous they were, the more we enjoyed doing the beatdown. I used to wear the greatest button; it explained our philosophy very clearly.
“An Equal Opportunity Discriminator. We Hate Everybody Equally”.
In short, if you encouraged the beatdown. A beatdown was what you got. Trust me, our kung fu was always stronger, plus like the kids say; we had mad whack skills. Word.
One night a bunch of cabs pulled up and dispensed the sorriest bunch of muthafuckers I’d seen in a month of Sundays. (now that’s an old school term for yo ass) This crew made Jerry Springer rednecks look high class. They were the drivers and road crew for the Grave Digger Monster Truck. The Grave Digger was here in town as part of a bigass Monster Truck show. Those cats were hankering for a drink and sure enough the name Lone Star sounded like home to em. Talk about your culture shock. These boys’s were expecting fine line dancing and Waylon Jennings on the Jukebox. What they got was Pantara and our fine local version of the mosh pit. Sure enough as the night got older, shit started hitting the fan in a hard way. The Grave Digger crew decided they didn’t want to play nice with the long hairs and the long hairs just didn’t want to play. We had ourselves an honest to goodness bar brawl.
You know when you dig the gig too much? When you gleefully go after the redneck that’s so fucking big he’s throwing a shadow in a dark bar. “Think about it” At the time I had no idea what happened, but later I was told we hooked into each other so hard, we actually flipped each other over the waist high railing surrounding the steps into the club. Now here’s the funny part out of all this. The cops are all over the place and the Gravedigger’s crews are being loaded into paddy wagons for the ride downtown. (know where the word paddy wagon comes from? Way the fuck back in the day, most of your cops in the big cities were of Irish descent, and paddy was a derogatory term coined for the Irish, thus whenever shit broke loose and the cops got called and they rolled out the police wagons to drag folks to the jailhouse. They were called paddy wagons)
Me and the other bouncers are shooting the shit with the cops when this kid comes walking out the door with blood all over his shirt and pants. One of the cops spots the kid and hollers; what the fuck happened to you? Well, remember the big guy that I hooked into too? I guess as he was punching people out in the bar and heading in my direction, he stopped just long enough to bite this kid’s fucking ear off. We asked the kid why was he just now telling someone all this, and he said after his ear got bit off he hid in the bathroom till he thought it was safe to come out. Hmmm, I supposed at the time it made a lot of sense to the kid to get hid. We never did find his ear; we finally figured the big guy must’a swallowed it.
Peace

JUST TO TOUCH HEART'S HEART

2004-11-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

There are times when the door to fame and fortune opens wide and all you have to do is walk through it. You know that by doing one single act of greatness you’ll be immortalized forever. Years ago I had one of these moments. In the mid eighties I managed a rock & roll music store here in town, and we were a factory dealer for Ovation Guitars. For those of you ignorant of musical equipment, Ovation manufactured acoustic guitars and the occasional odd bass. They were known as a very durable acoustic to take out on the road. The body was comprised of a formed plastic shell with a wood composite top and maple neck. That was the easy description; Ovations were actually very hip and high-tech acoustic musical instruments. You know what my favorite way was to demo an Ovation? I’d take the muthafucker by the neck and smack it into a wall. Like I said, a very durable acoustic guitar. Anyway, Sandstone Theater was just getting started and the rock group Heart was gonna play there. I can’t remember if Sandstone had been opened for a while or if this was the first show, no matter. Heart was sponsored by Ovation and we thought it might be cool to have Ann and Nancy Wilson sign a guitar then give the damn thing away. So we did the big in store who-do and picked out a winner. That night after the show our little group were clutching our backstage passes and waiting to meet the band. You know whenever some cat does the big hype about having backstage passes believe me, it’s gonna suck hind tit. Number one, backstage passes usually never get you backstage. What you get, is shoved into a room with a table full of warm beers and rancid lunchmeat and a bunch of other Marks who think they’re gonna get to hang with the band. While you’re getting food poisoning and looking for a place to crap, the band is in another part of the arena far from you getting high and feeling up the groupies. When the road manager finally gets em in line, they’ll stumble in and shake a few hands and mumble how much they appreciate you coming to see em, then split. Fuck a backstage pass, but back to the story. Some guy with no neck came in and said they were gonna do the signing out by the band buses. So we followed him outside and there they were, Ann and Nancy Wilson. Back then Ann was getting her munch on but was still kind’a good looking, but it was Nancy that had all my attention.
This woman looked amazing, she was small and delicate like a porcelain doll.
Not to get all porn on you and all that, but she had the creamiest, smoothest skin I’d ever seen on a women. She more or less had just come off stage and she had a fine sheen of sweat on her skin. I knew then what needed to happen, I had to touch Nancy Wilson of Heart. Here’s the scene, our group was facing the Heart sisters who were standing with Mr. No Neck and some other knuckle dragger. Ann was the first one to sign the guitar; whilst everyone was focused on her I started sliding my way toward Nancy. I was trying my best to be stealthy but I came off sounding like bulls fucking in the brush. This must’a not been the first time someone’s tried this cause when No Neck spotted me he didn’t even break a sweat. He just reached out this ham of a hand and grabbed me by the back of my neck and squeezed. Now I’m a big guy, but when he had my neck between his fingers I gladly stopped all forward motion. She was so close, balls and guts overcame brain and pain and I reached out to touch her. Mr. No Neck still didn’t move, he just said “no” and moved his fingers closer together. By that time I was thinking; hey, maybe I need to rethink the error of my ways, and I went and sat on the grass. Too bad, I think she could’ a loved me in time.
Peace

THE MONKEY PAW GIVING THE SIGN OF THE MIDDLE FINGER

2004-11-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when the moon’s full and the planets are in the proper alignment and the monkey paw is making the sign of the big finger, shit will either go well or dump into the crapper. I was hanging at the Lonestar with the 44DD Chick enjoying the night off and have I ever told you all about the amazing muscle control this chick had? When she first showed me this trick I ran away in shock. She could move her ass cheeks in opposite directions. Side to side, up and down, it didn’t matter. I don’t know about you guy’s, but I found this curiously inspirational. I asked her at what point in your life do you realize you have this gift? She just looked at me and laughed. So there we were, just hanging back and enjoying the band. Up to this point we hadn’t yet done the deed. I know that most guy’s would ‘a made their move at day one, but when you got a Corvette head stuck on a Buick body, one night stands and fucking strangers ain’t kosher. Plus with her I figured I had to go into training.
If I can speak bluntly, you just don’t run the big race without a few practice laps.
I was eyeballing the crowd when I noticed her doing the same to me. “
You up for making some noise later”?
It took me a second or two to figure out what she meant, but by the time I did I’d already dragged her halfway to the door. We were in the car ready to roll when this cat starts banging on the window. The Lonestar was one of three clubs in Westport that were owned by the same people. They had geared up one of the clubs, the Harris House, to attract a black clientele and as of late the club had been going through some serious staffing issues. As a result one of the managers from the Lonestar was pulling double duty at the Harris House. When this cat showed up that night to run the crew, the entire door staff quit in mass, and the Lonestar guy was left there all alone holding the proverbial bag. He knew I was in Westport that night and sent runners looking for me. He was deep in the shit and needed my help, plus he was a friend to boot. What a dilemma, on one side was the friend who needed my help. On the other side was the 44DD Chick who wanted to screw me back into the Stone Age. She looked at me and said that I had to do the right thing and she’d keep dinner hot for me, damn Murphy’s Law. When I walked into the Harris House I wished I’d stayed with her, what a clusterfuck. There was my buddy trying to card people while at the same time shoving em through a metal detector. There you had it, four hundred black folk, him, and me. After a while things slowed down a bit and me and the manager were thinking that maybe we could pull this off when I heard popping sounds and noticed holes appearing in the window next to me. I dropped to the floor so fast I left a vacuum where I’d been standing. Fuckers were shooting at us! I looked at my buddy who was on his knees next to me and said; you know why we’ve lasted so long in this business? Because we know when to get the fuck out of Dodge! And we both crawled our asses out of there.
Peace

BIG PIMPIN'

2004-11-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It even made sense in a fucked up kind of way. I was doing the hardway bouncing routine at the blues club in Westport. I had a night off and was choking back a few drinks with a couple of friends. In those day’s I hadn’t yet discovered the cheap qualities of Old Crow and I drank Wild Turkey 101 instead. You know what stupid drunk is? It’s having a beard and trying down a shot of Wild Turkey 101 while it’s lit. It’s amazing the shit bikers can talk a cat into. Anyway, I’m talking to two old friends and we were discussing the Hooker problem Westport had back then. Yeah, believe it or not back in the eighty’s Westport was stupid with the working girls. There’s a lot of soccer moms nowadays running around in SUV’s that used to hook back in the day. It didn’t make it a bad thing; it was just the way shit was back then. So we were all sitting around talking about this issue when we were joined by a few of the local working women. They had the big bitch on about getting hassled by the cops and what a chore it was trying to make a few bucks. One of the guy’s said something about would it be any easier if they had a central location to work out of, and if it was he might be able to help em out. Remember, back then Westport was nothing like it was now. You had Kelly’s, Blayney’s, Buzzard Beach and a few other small bars and restaurants. You still had homes and apartments scattered throughout the area, and in the center of all this was a huge fucking bread factory. My buddy just happened to have a small house down the block he was trying to rent.
Hmmm, whisky soaked brains and hookers, what a bad mix.
We all put our heads together and worked out this plan. We would open the first whorehouse in Westport since Al Capone dropped in for a drink. It made sense at the time. I‘d be the muscle and watch over the girls. My buddy that owned the house would front the startup money and collect our share of the take. The other girls would recruit and take turns being head bitch in charge. We even thought out fucking advertising and a start date. Two days before we opened I walked into the club and saw my friends sitting in a dark corner. Without saying a word I grabbed a drink and joined em. We all set in silence smoking, drinking and thinking hard. It was me, the money guy and the girls. After about an hour I stirred and said; “well, I guess I’ll be the first to say it.
What the fuck was we thinking”?
We must’a been high to think we could get away with this. Come the fuck on, I’ve done some crazy shit, but running a whorehouse? Have we lost our fucking minds? Suddenly everybody sighed with relief. The money guy said; I only own half the house, my mom owns the other half. The girls said that they were going to go back to school anyway and didn’t have time for our crap. I was having nightmares of my father the Cop busting me.
You’d think I would have learned a lesson from all that, but just a few years later I found myself once again getting drunk with the working girls.
Peace

HEER'YAOWH, BLACK SUNSHINE

2004-11-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

As a bouncer, you tend to keep hidden the overt displays of emotion. On the outside you’re a picture of quiet determination and muscle, poised to throw yourself into the dangerous fray at any given moment. With steely eyes you watch over your small kingdom, ready to deal out a swift justice to those who attempt to match wits with one such as you. In your mind you’re the top gun, the sheriff, and the last of the badass mama jammers. The other bouncers got your back and everyone else is your bitch. But it ain’t cool to show it, that’s for after the show. When you’re sittin back with a cold one counting down the clock. Only then can you grin without malice and let the tension pour out like piss into the trough. Or so it usually goes. It was a sold out show and the band of the night was White Zombie. I’d heard em on the radio and MTV, and that’s about as much as I knew about them. The music seemed diggable and the crowd was pumped something huge about seeing em. As usual all us bouncers got together and worked out our split. Me and one of the more experienced guys would work the pit, while the other guys would walk the floor and control the stage. Can I say real quickly how much I dig a good mosh pit? A lot of people think that mosh pits are violent and all that but I think that’s so far from the truth. I’ve seen kids come into a show all full of the weeks bullshit. They’ve been knocked down by bosses and jobs, the parents have been all over their asses and they’re burnt and frustrated. But a good rock show and mosh pit offers a cleansing of a sort. You can almost see the tension rollin off these kids. I’ve seen em stagger out of a pit, bloody, sweaty and clothing torn, but grinning from ear to ear and hugging everyone in sight. You can’t help but dig it. But don’t get me wrong; to get in the pit you gotta dig the pit. One night the pit was in full effect and this blonde big haired chick got too close. I was standin in the center and I saw her get swept in. She looked like a blonde pinball the way she was getting jerked around, a few seconds later she was ejected out the other end. Her spandex dress and hair was all fucked up, but other then that she was in good shape. It’s no small wonder we compare a good pit to a hurricane. But back to what I was getting too. White Zombie was strain their set and the lights were dropping. Now like I said in the beginning, we try to keep down the unrestrained emotion. But White Zombie got this weird shit going. It started out with this huge white strobe light pulsing on and off.(this was so strange, back in the day I owned a giant strobe light and when I wanted to chill hardcore I’d turn the thing on and lie flat on the floor with my head phones on. I swear that by doing this I’d trip harder then with any drug) This light was accompanied by a single bass drum beatin in time. Now dig this. The more we watched the light the more ramped we got. I don’t know what the deal was, but I was getting all kinds of fucked up. The more I watched the angrier I got. I checked on the other bouncers and they were hopping from foot to foot and shaking like they had the flu. It kept getting louder and brighter and I was starting to jump up and down and as soon as the drummer hit the downbeat the fuckin place broke loose. Muthafuckers started screamin and shit and the pit got to rollin and women were pinching their titties and White Zombie was throwin shit at the crowd (did I say how attractive the bass player was? I think she liked me, but it could have been the sweat in my eyes) and I was in the pit grinning and throwin cats back in when they tried to run out and OH MY GOD were we diggin it. This is when it all comes together, the voices stop for a while and my adrenaline is at it’s peak and for one of the few times I can truly say I’m havin fun. Peace

BITCH SLAPPER PISSES PANTS

2004-11-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

It’s back in the day and I’m working the front door at the LoneStar and there’s this mullet haired pussy giving me all this grief because I won’t let em in the door. Muthafucker got the sac to bitch at me like I’m his fuckin punk. So there I am, standin there deciding if I want to get a coffee or tear this fucker another one when my prayers are answered. I really want to smack this cat around, but that not a cool thing to do anymore. Back in the day if a cat stepped wrong you did what you had to do and sent his punk ass home, or you hooked into each other and the better man was left standin. (I made a lot of good friends like that) but as of lately, when you put the bad hand on a fucker you usually ended up getting the cops called on you, so you tend to wait for a reason. Well, my reason walked up. About three young girls were coming down the ally and saw this guy givin me the ration of shit. And like most drunk’s they couldn’t keep they’re mouths shut;
“hey fucker, he said get away from the door”.
Suddenly it was John Woo all over again. In slow motion I saw him raise his fist and start swinging at the girl closest to em. I was three steps up from the guy and as I stepped down I swing my arm. I hit him so hard you would’a thought we were in an old western. My fist with all my weight hit him plumb in the chest; I swore dust came off his shirt. He didn’t fall backward or to the side, but straight down. The cat just folded. He bounced once or twice when he hit the ground, it was all over except for the fact that when I hit him his bladder let go and he pissed all over himself. Kind’a hard to be a tough guy hittin women and havin pee run out’a the bottom of your jeans.
But its kind’a cool hittin a cat so hard he pees himself.
There was also the day I found out how much of a freak I could be. The manager and a bunch of us bouncers were hanging outside the bar one night. It was raisin and a whole lot wasn’t goin on. One of the owners walks up and starts yakking at us. There was this story goin around that this certain owner had fucked over one of the homeless guys with a stun gun for standin in front of one of his bars. The more I thought about it the madder I became. (and when I get mad I tend to do stupid shit) I asked him if I could see his stun gun, he handed it over to me and told me that it would knock a grown man down and all that. I just kept thinking about how uncool it was stunning a homeless guy who by most accounts never fucked with anybody. So I waited until he was watchin and I put the stun gun to my chest and turned it on. Then I put it on my leg and turned it on.
“Damn, the fuckin thing must not be working. I know, I didn’t do it right”
Then I turned the thing on and dragged it from my shoulder down to my waist. All the time I never broke eye contact with him. I gave him his stunner back and told him he better go get a bigger one, this one must not be working right. All he could do was stare at me like I was some huge freak. He was pretty close to the truth. The stun gun took a lot out of me and it hurt like a muthafucker, but I sure in the fuck wasn’t gonna let him see it. Maybe he’ll think before he fucks with someone else. Put that in the “don’t try this at home category”. Peace

WHO KILLED ROGER RABBIT?

2004-11-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Quote of the week. Is this the bus to where I want to go?
Me, after staring into the sun to long.
I was gonna talk about something serious like religion but it’s Friday so to hell with that, plus religion’s a chancy subject at best. I mean with your Buddhism, Native American Worship, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Chinese Philosophies. Paganism, Sun worship, UFO’s, and all the other shit out there that people put a name too, it can become very complicated. Me? I got the voices in my head. I’m not sure what religion they adhere too, they never say. They just insist I wear a clean shirt.

Every so often you’ll hear me talk about the bigass house on the Westside. At its zenith I lived there with a couple of gorgeous females, one dog, four cats and a rabbit. Don’t ask me why but more often then not we all slept in the same bed. I’d come home from work and climb into the sack, then the girls would struggle in and make it as far as my room and fall into bed. After a while I’d wake up covered from head to toe with females, cats, and the fuckin dog. It’s very, very comforting being covered in fur like that. The bumpin sound I’d hear would be the rabbit hittin his head tryin to hop into bed. You know rabbits have notoriously weak hearts? I got a call one day from one of the roommates, she’s bawling and shit about somebody dying. After she calmed down she was able to tell me the rabbit died. From what I can tell the rabbit was sittin in his cage minding his own when the dumbass dog ran up and started barking at it, the damn rabbit just fell over dead. Never moved, just shut his eyes and died. I had to leave work over this. I got her calmed, but what do I do with a dead bunny rabbit? I know, it was the fuckin middle of the week and the trash pickup was a few days off, so I put the dead rabbit into a trash bag and threw him into the freezer for safe keeping until I could put him outside for pickup. That night I had to leave town for a few days on FEMA shit. When I got back later in the week I walked in the house and everybody was gone. So I made it to my bedroom and saw that my room had been cleaned and the bed was all made up real nice, damn, what a cool deal, one of my roommates must’a felt sorry for me. I hit the lights, took off all my clothes, ripped the sheets back and jumped into bed for a much-needed sleep. What the fuck! As I laid down my head hit what felt like a large rock on my pillow. I snapped the lights back on and pulled the sheets off and there on my pillow is the muthafuckin rabbit, frozen hard as a rock. Stuck to it’s fur is a note, (hi Greg, I’m cold. Can I sleep with you)? I didn’t know whether to laugh, get pissed or what, so I called the roommate most likely to do shit like this. (one roommate had a great sense of humor, while the other one didn’t) When she answered the phone at the bar, all I heard in the background was people fallin all over themselves laughin. I’d been had. The dog was the next to go, if there was a retard champ of dogs then this one had to be it. I’ve never seen an animal with so many loose ends. One day I’m working on the house and I hear this loud gagging coming from the back of the house. I go take a look and it’s the dog choking to death. The dumb bastard has this huge dog dish with a five-gallon water bucket next to it. I guess he took a bite of food and figured he’d wash it down with a gulp of water, but the hairy bastard dropped some of his food into the water bucket. The choking noise I kept hearing was him shoving his head into the water to retrieve his food and runnin out of air cause he kept tryin to swallow the food while under water. He must’a been a seal in some other life. Well, he was too stupid to keep and I had to get rid of him. I think he’s at some farm out south. Yeah, really. Peace

don't drink and play with sharp objects

2004-11-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

I’m sittin here at work and for some odd reason I’m on the Internet, go figure. I’m goofing around and I type in the work “Arhooly”. Not only is that the name of a record label but it’s also the name of a blues band from the Carolinas. Years ago back in the early eighties I dropped into Parody Hall to check out a new band I just heard of. The band was Arhooly and they were fronted by “Shelia” the badass blues singer. Tall, red hair and big tits, and could sing her ass off. For some reason that night Shelia thought I was the proverbial “cat’s meow” and after the gig I got to hang with her and the band in the “tour Bus”. The bus was so cool, it was an old Greyhound bus from the sixty’s and was fitted out in the rear with a full size round waterbed. Each week on the road a different member of the band got to share the bed with her, or so I was told. But between you muthafuckers and me, that was the happiest band I’d ever seen so you figure it out. After the gig we all crawled on the bus and got to knockin em back. The band had the bus parked in Nicholson’s Restaurants parking lot and nobody was gonna bother us so noise was no limit. To this day I still haven’t figured this one out and maybe it was a sign of the times. But that night me and all the guy’s in the band had switchblades. Big nasty old school cut shit open switchblades. The shit we did when we were young. We’re sittin on the bus with the stereo blasting blues and we’re passing around bottles of Wild Turkey. Check out the game we’re playin, every time a cat takes a drink from the bottle he has to flip his knife and catch it by the blade. The cat who can flip his knife the most times wins! I never said the fuckin game made sense. I guess I won; I threw the knife up and flipped it like a circus freak. The only thing different that happened was me catching the knife in the palm of my hand, sharp point down. Next thing I knew I’m sittin there suckin Wild Turkey down and Shelia’s straddling my lap tryin to pull the knife out of the palm of my hand. Yeah, I caught the damn knife all right.
It went straight through the palm of my hand
. As I’m typing this I can faintly after all this years still see the entry scar. Well I ended up stayin drunk on that bus all weekend. I lost some blood, some brain cells and a day or two of work but I dig it. When I typed in the word Arhooly I actually found Sheila. She’s livin in South Carolina still shouting the blues. I dropped her a line to see how she’s doing, she’s slowed after all this years and gotten off the road. But she remembers those days with no regrets and that a good thing.
Peace

UNCLE DEATH

2004-11-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

Here’s something about me you didn’t know. I almost held the future of America’s youth in the palm of my hand. Years ago before all the tough guy shit I actually worked (and I use that word lightly) as a stand up comic. I started doin it as a dare and after a while I found out I was kind’a good at it. Once I got over the stage fright I loved it, what a fuckin power trip. When I did a good show it was the biggest rush in the world, but when I sucked, I sucked hard, and nothin’s worse then fallin on your ass in front of a hundred people. I worked (there’s that word again) with some nice people. David Naster, Sinbad, and a bunch of other people whose names I can’t remember but who I see on the TV from time to time. Get this, I was doin a show and in walks Henny Youngman. He was doin a benefit downtown and he decided to stop by for a look-see. The ass kissing was amazing, the noise from all the bending of knees and bowing and shit was so bad I had to cut my show short. So I’m standin outside the club when Mr. Youngman comes walkin out to his limo, “nice show young man”. Oh my God, Henny Youngman’s fuckin talking to me. I just stared, awestruck until my mouth took over. “Show? What Show! How could you hear anything you old noisy bastard”. As he walked away I was speechless again cause suddenly I had these two huge muthafuckers in bad fitting suits pressing on me from both sides. Who knew the old man had bodyguards. They quietly showed me the error of my ways then eased off and let the oxygen back in. It was cool; at least I got to meet the man on a one on one basis. Back in the day there was a children’s show called Uncle Ed’s Playhouse. This guy was sort’a huge in the Midwest. He’d sit behind this old desk and talk to all the kids and show cartoons and shit like that. He was like Whizzo but deeper. It was all doin good till he got busted for showin his dick to little kids. He always had that dirty uncle vibe going on don’t you know. But anyway the show’s producer used to come to see me perform from time to time, and somewhere in her blond head she fermented the idea that I would be a perfect replacement for the infamous Uncle Ed. I ended up auditioning for the show three separate times. I just couldn’t pull it together. They took me into this studio that held Uncle Ed’s desk. I’d set behind the desk and got comfy, or at least I tried too. But there were two things in front of the desk that bothered the shit out of me. One was the bigass camera; It stood maybe five feet away pointed at your head. I think it was the camera lens and the big red blinking light that had me on edge. The other feature was a video monitor that set next at the edge of the desk. You ever videotape yourself and watch? It can be very disturbing. When you’re lookin at yourself lookin back at you, it can creep a guy out. That’s one reason why the porno gig also fell through. I couldn’t keep a straight face. I’d say my lines then start laughin like an idiot. I just couldn’t get over lookin at my self. To say the least I blew it. But just think how close I came to undermining America’s youth. Peace

WHITE DOPES ON PUNK

2004-11-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

Back in the late seventy’s and early eighties Punk was just hitting the area. I wasn’t per say part of the punk scene; I just ended up having a common ground with em. It’s funny how you end up meeting some people. My best friend back then was a stripper who was one of the most violent people I’ve ever met and she was hard in with the local punk crowd. We used to go club hopping and when it was her turn to steer we’d end up at either the Downliner or the Musicbox or maybe the Roadhouse or some other place where the music was loud. These were all Punk bars back in the day. The Roadhouse was an interesting spot; it was an old three or four story house out in the country. It wasn’t really a club or bar, it was just a bigass house where after all the other clubs closed we would all end up. On the first floor was where the music was and the other floors were more or less full of old couches and mattresses. Most people never got higher then the lower level. The more “in” you were, the higher you could go. That was the way shit was back then and nobody bitched too loud. So by hanging with her and being known as a bouncer who treated everyone square, I was able to run and party with this crowd on a regular basis. I tell ya, this bunch had a set of rules they lived by. I learned real quick that if they liked you there weren’t too many wrongs a cat could do. But by the same token if this crowd disliked you or if you weren’t one of em and got too close, the beat down was intense, and believe me the Mob could learn a few things by watching an old school Punk beat down. I noticed real quickly that there weren’t many people of color in this crowd. Punks ended up showing me that some people could hate a person because of their color, but still love a person of different color if he was considered one of theirs. It didn’t make sense at first, but over the years I’ve come to call a lot of people friend that if seen in a different setting would come off as extremely prejudice. We’ve talked and tried to figure it. I don’t think they’re prejudice, just confused. It’s like a person spending all their time tanning and trying to get darker, then calling down on a person of color. What the fuck, you know? It all ends up good. They got to know and love a person like me, and I was privileged to be let into a culture and make friends that enriched my life.
Peace

VAN DEATH

2004-11-02T09:50:00.000-08:00

The radio station I listen too just finished up an interview with “Diamond” David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame. I’d forgotten how much of a guilty pleasure Diamond Dave can be. I actually got to meet Van Halen in the mid eighties when I managed the music store. Unfortunately I met the band just after Sammy Hagar signed on. We were doing another guitar signing and we had Eddie lined up to do the honors. Back then I was hanging out and drinking with this pair of Sisters. That’s sibling Sisters, not sista’s. They were cool to hang with other then the fact that they could be uber bitchy at times. I think that when they were born the doctor must’a slapped em too hard. Also at times the sibling rivalry would get out of hand and I’d have to separate the two, though in retrospect I couldn’t think of a better Springer moment then that. Other then that they both knew the deal and oddly enough didn’t mind watching my back on occasion. One of em still has the award for best one liner from a female.
This guy walked over to her one night and asked how could he get next to her? Her exact words were; “three hundred more pounds and black”.
I looked at the guy and said; “oh my god! Are you ok? That must’a hurt like a muthafucker”, bye, bye. You gotta love shit like that. I had to go do this Van Halen thing and I thought I’d take one of the Sisters along for the ride. I picked the older one cause I thought she’d be a bit more stable in a crowd. Fuck, was I wrong. We were all hanging out backstage in the “Green” room waiting on the band to show up. Me and the Sister along with the guitar winner and his date. Warm beer and bad deli food, whoo hoo. Some kind of treat huh? There was also a bunch of radio station type people hanging also. Finally the band walked in, I’m always so amazed how short these guys are. The only cat near my height was Alex Van Halen. The rest of the band was pretty short, or so it seemed. My girl was standing near the wall sucking on a beer when Alex walked up behind her. I guess he was in full rock star mode cause the first thing he did was reach down and grab onto that ass. Did I mention that neither of the Sisters was running a full tank? The one Sister that I’d thought would be cool in a crowd turned around and slapped Alex Van Halen right across the mush. I freaked, the crowd freaked, the Sister was doing her best to break a beer bottle in half and fuck somebody’s drummer up. I ran and grabbed her and moved her to the other side of the room. Alex was pretty cool about the whole thing; he knew even for a rock star he had overstepped his bounds. I need to find her, I imagine that by now she’s probably doin the soccer mom thing and telling her kids about the day she tagged a famous rock star in the mouth, and the little rat bastards not believing her. I’ll have to send pictures of her hanging with the band. Peace

WEST TEXAS ROADKILL BAR-B-QUE

2004-11-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I came to a point in my life where I’d had it up to here with everything. I gassed up my car and drove west as far as two tanks of gas would take me. I ended up in West Texas not far from the town where my mother and father were raised. This part of Texas is like no other place in the world. The land, people and even the dirt has a different quality to it. They got a lizard down there that runs all over the place. We used to call it a horned toad, and it looks like just what its name implies. It looks like a prehistoric version of a toad. It has horns and bony type projections all over its body. It’s main weapon of defense is that when you pick one up it pees on you. I found a small motel with a pool and a Dairy Queen and nothing else around for miles. The motel had cable and cold air so I stayed there for over a week getting my head together watchin HBO and livin off the Dairy Queen. This part of the country don’t get no tourists so I pretty much had the place all to myself. Nothing better for your head then floating in a pool buck ass nekked at night under a star filled West Texas sky. Word. After a week or so of this I decided it was time to fall back to earth and head home, but I wanted to at least say hi to my favorite uncle. Family legend has it that I learned my first word from him. He taught me how to say “ho”, then he taught me to call my grandmother a “ho”. That got my young ass kicked. He also took me with him on special errands. The town was in a “dry” county. This meant that there was no alcoholic beverages sold anywhere. If you wanted to get your drink-on you had to drive fifty miles or so to do it. Except that my Uncle was part of the local booze train. What he’d do was hop into his ole pickup and drive to a “wet” county and fill the bed with beer and booze. Then he’s haul ass back to the town via the back roads and end up at this old house on the wrong side of the tracks. (yeah the town actually had a railroad line runnin through it and all the Mexicans and Black folk lived on one side of the tracks, and it was considered the “bad” section of town. Even though the fuckin town only had a population of five thousand) Every floor and every room in this old house was full of nothing but refrigerators filled with beer and pint bottles of whiskey. Even though it was against the law everybody in town knew where to go buy a pint or six-pack. So on my way out I dropped in on him. He ended takin me to a barbecue, but not any old cookout. We went way out into the scrubland until we came up on these shanty’s (maybe a dozen or more tin roofed shacks grouped together) and in a clearing was this makeshift grill with this bigass fire burning under it. Around the grill passing the bottle and knockin back beers was the meanest lookin bunch of muthafuckers I’d ever seen outside of a jail cell. My Uncle started introducing me around as his tough bouncer nephew from Kansas City. Oh My God, was I crapping my pants. I’m a tough guy in my own tub but there were a couple of cats there that had festering bullet wounds from the weekly shoot out! And get this, one of the guy’s called me over to the grill to get a plate of food and I had to ask what we were havin.
“Young muthafucker, we’re havin whatever the good lord sent us”.
Well that’s all fine and good but there was nothing on that grill I recognized. Just then some cat showed up carrying what seemed to be a dead possum, and I won’t swear to it but I could almost make out the tire treads on it. He passed it over to the cook who poked it, smelled it, then skinned it and flipped it onto the fire. Yeah boys and girls, I had front row tickets to an ole school West Texas road kill barbecue! Luckily my Uncle came to my rescue and told everyone that we had to leave. As we drove off I came to a couple of new conclusions. I’ll never look at road kill the same again, and my life ain’t so fuckin bad. Peace

THE COSA NOSTRA DONKEY SHOW

2004-11-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

Some years ago when I still hung out with strippers and our local “family” crowd, I got invited to go see a very special form of entertainment. You see I used to frequent this bar in what is known now as the River Market area, but back then it was referred to as the River Quay area. If memory serves me correctly, the bar was Family owned and served, and any night of the week you might see a famous Mob cat sitting around the bar or if the timing was wrong kicking the balls out of whomever offended em. You had Mob guys, strippers, pimps and various mislead members of the public hanging out there. You never heard a last name used and you never asked. You either went by a nickname or just the first name. The only time you used a last name was when you happened to greet one of the Family guys, and that’s if they let you. Hey, it was their place and you went by their rules. Even today I have problems askin people for their last names. And back then that area was run like a fiefdom and unless you were one of the Knights or a cop, you toed the line. I dated one of the dancers that worked there so I stayed quiet and kept to my end of the bar. The one area there that was fair game was the pool table. As long as you had skills the table was wide open. Well one night I was playin pool with this cat about my age. He beat me and I beat him and he cussed me and I cussed him back. This went on for some hours till I lost some money and ended up throwing my pool cue at his head. My girl who had been watching us play freaked and ran up to me and asked me what the fuck I was doin. She was paler then usual and shaking like a leaf. It turned out that the cat that I’d been playing pool with and throwing shit at was the grandson of this “so fuckin serious Mob guy”. Suddenly I pictured myself catching hot lead with my teeth. But the guy turned out to be super cool and wanted to hang and get drunk. Rule one; “never take a gift from one of these guys”. If you do, then they’ll own you. Rule two, always keep rule one in the front of your head. You’ll think the gold watch was no big deal until you’re sittin in front of the bank in that stolen car askin yourself how could you be so stupid. Word. The guy asked me if I wanted to go to a club down the street. Now I’d heard of this club and it was known to be quite the shit. Word was that if you went there for lunch and gave the proper tip, you could get a blowjob with those fries. But Friday nights was the kicker. The place featured an old fashioned south of the border “Dog & Pony show”, except with no dog and no pony. They had a donkey instead. Yeah boy! Show your secret handshake and a fistful of money and you got to see a women do a donkey, and get this, it was a betting event! Without getting all graphic and shit, what they did was put numbered bands around the donkey’s dick, and you placed your bets on a certain number. I’ll let your imaginations fill in the rest. Needless to say I got invited and I kept thinking of rule one. And I kept thinking about the freakiness of the whole thing and how it might affect my young life forever. So I passed. But I sometimes wonder if it’s a good thing that those days are long gone. Peace

HOG TIED THE MONKEY GIRL

2004-11-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

Not only was working the swimsuit contest at the heavy metal club aka The LoneStar fun and exciting, but it had a great element of danger. To most young girls we were last call before Hell. The reason I say this is that I’ve seen over the years more sweet faced young women come into the LoneStar and on a dare they’d enter the contest. Sweet young women go in and in through the out door comes raging ho’s. It’s such an amazing thing how the girl next door can put on an itty bitty polka dot bikini and the minute she hits the runway she turns into a swivel hipped pole swinging pro. One year I was finishing up my deal in the backroom and all the girls had left, I had the office door locked and was alone I thought. Suddenly the bathroom door banged open and there in front of me stood five feet of nekked female. The chick had not a stitch of clothing on and was drunker then a lumberjack in a gay bar. She started screamin
“ fuck me, fuck me!”
at the top of her lungs. I just stood there trying to figure out what to do when she jumped on me! Her arms and legs were wrapped around me (not the easiest thing to do) when she bit my nipple through my shirt and then pulled the craziest shit I’d ever seen or felt. She let go and was hanging on by her teeth with the better part of my chest in her mouth. I started screaming as I peeled her face off me and threw her on the couch across the room. My god this bitch was fast, her ass had hardly hit the couch when she was back on me again. Now you’re probably thinking, Greg why didn’t you clock this chick and put her down? That’s a damn good question and I’ll tell you why. I can’t bring myself to harm a woman. Just can’t do it, nope. Anyway by this point my shirt was all ripped up and I was a bloody sweaty mess, and she was still coming from all sides.
I couldn’t help but think that here I am getting my ass kicked by a women that had her short hairs shaved into the shape of an heart
. I thought back to my schooling and saw a piece of rope on the floor in the corner. I grabbed it and threw the little missy down and hogged tied her and left her on the couch. I left her there and went to the bar to find out who this chick belonged too. I located three of her girlfriends and had them follow me into the back. By the time we got back swinging monkey girl had fallen asleep. I told her friends the whole story and they were a bit skeptical until later when the chick came too and they heard her side of the story, plus I was the one covered with tooth marks and scratches. About a week later the chick showed up and wanted to thank me for not taking advantage of her condition. We later became fairly good friends. The shit I go through because I’m a Man. Peace.

PYROTECHNIQUES

2004-11-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

Back in the day I had what I thought was the perfect gig. I was the general manager for a big rock & roll music store here in mid-town. I originally started as the janitor but worked my way into management. I dug what I did and enjoyed giving my friends the long stroke every now and then. I figured hell, what’s the use of managing the world’s hippest music store if I couldn’t help a cat out with the gig. But aside from having the Midis Touch I was still the freak. I did the music store during the day and bounced during the night. So oddly enough I wasn’t the most pleasant cat to be around some time. The music store was staffed by a crew of seasoned musicians that had been there and done that and did their time on the road, so they knew the deal. I sometimes gave em too much shit cause as with all good salespeople their bottom line wasn’t my bottom line but they produced. After one week of being a ranting idiot I looked out my office window onto a busy crowded sales floor. My office was on the second floor of the building and I had a great view of the whole store. Everybody was busy makin deals and gear was moving out the door. I had to leave to deliver a rental and would be gone for most of the morning. When I returned that afternoon the place was unusually crowded and I saw a bunch of regular faces from many of the workin bands around town. Everything seemed ship shape so I made my way up to my office to do some work. Next to my office sat Vickie the bookkeeper, and she smiled and nodded as I passed her desk on the way into my office. My office was set up where I could hit one switch and along with the lights; my computer and stereo would also come on. Well, I walked into my dark office and hit the light switch and the whole fuckin world blew up in my face. The explosion knocked me to my knees and for a few seconds I was deaf and blind as a newborn baby. Thick black smoke billowed out of my office as I staggered to my feet and fell out the office door.
What the fuck happened,
I screamed to Vickie? I got back to my feet and looked into my office and I could see black smoke coming up from underneath my desk. I looked out the window and the entire floor was full of people staring up at me. As soon as they spotted me in the window the whole floor just lost it, people were screaming and cheering and shit. Did I mention that to the staff of the music store the national pastime was the good practical joke? My ass had been had. I found out later that as soon as I was out of sight everybody went into commando mode. You ever see the bright flares that go off at rock concerts? That’s what’s called a smoke pot. That’s what they set up under my desk to go off when I hit the light switch. I was told that people were crawling on their bellies in the dark to set this shit up. Other music stores were even in on the gag. The staff had planned this for weeks to teach me a lesson for being such a harsh asshole. I loved that job. Peace

COCK-TAIL?

2004-11-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

So there was this one night when I decided to see how the other half of the gene pool lived. I threw on my best black and hit one of the more upscale drinking establishments our fair city has to offer. Wait a minute; maybe upscale is the wrong term. I just know that it was some place other then the Lonestar. Anyway what a pretty joint, there was the nice muted lighting and the soft jazz in the background. Hell, they even had real glassware to drink out of. So I’m sittin there admiring the view and all that when I notice this women giving me the once over. She’s not bad lookin, black business suit and five by five. I’m feeling overly motivated, so I throw out one of my tried and true lines.
“Cocktail”?
She accepts and I slide over and we start talking. Now unbeknownst to most of you, I can be smoother then baby oil on a stripper’s ass when I want to be. I’m like cheap four bit cologne to some women. They dig the smell but wouldn’t get caught dead rubbing their fingers in it. She was in town on business and was lookin to kill time. She asked me about the local music and I suggested a few spots to try out. You know, small talk, nothing heavy. All of a sudden this key clinked off the side of my glass. I picked it up and noticed it was a hotel key. I hollered at the bartender that someone must’a dropped their room key, when the women hissed at me to shut up. It turned out to be the key to her hotel room.
“Meet me there in a half hour”,
she whispered in my ear as she slid off her bar stool. I suddenly got this severe twitching pain on the side of my face. I realized it was from me grinning like a retard idiot. This was like one of those bad movies that you watch at three in the morning when nothing else is on. The hero’s hanging in the bar doing a shot of Old One eye when the buxom babe slides up and grabs his gun and says; “are you always packed like that or are you lookin to pick up a little trouble”? And as he feigns exhaustion from running his eyes up and down her frame he says, “trouble, so that’s how you spell it these days”. And she slips him her room key and tells him to give her fifteen minuets. Well, that’s how it happened with me. I went over to her hotel and let myself into her room. I must’a spent twenty minuets arranging myself on the couch. I just found my best pose when the door burst open and she staggered into the room.
“Oh, there you are”,
she said. Then her eyes glazed over and she hit the floor like a sack of charcoal. I must’a had the most fucked up look on my face. My chance for that Penthouse moment, my perverse moment in sexual history! And its lying passed out on the floor drooling into the carpet. I was flabbergasted, I was dumbfounded, and I was pissed. I picked her up and took her into the bedroom, laid her on the bed so her dumbass wouldn’t fuckin choke to death. Then I took off her shoes and threw a sheet over her. I let myself out and as I drove home I contemplated on my situation and my lot in life and watched all the couples in love strolling the streets. I let myself into my apartment and gave out a heartfelt sigh. “Greg, you’re a hell of a guy”. Then I proceeded to slam every goddamn door I could find through their muthafuckin hinges. Peace

THAT POOR BASTARD, THE CAMERAMAN

2004-11-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

So I’m sittin at home watchin the Discovery Channel and this show about rock climbing comes on. Rock climbing impresses the hell out of me. People climbing mountains and other such tall crap with just the shit God gave em. I’m always impressed with people doing wild things like that. I’m not gonna sit here and say it’s sane and all that, but I dig it. But as cool and shit as climbing can be just using a cat’s hands and feet, does anyone every give thought to the man or women holding the camera that records all this insane crap? There’s this muthafucker climbing this sheer rock face and he’s about a thousand feet up right? He has two camera’s catching him from two separate angles and one of the camera’s happens to pan too far to the right. In to view comes this overweight dude hanging by a rope filming the climbing guy. He was just hanging there holding on to a twenty-pound camera lookin like he had too many happy meals, and I won’t swear to it but I think he was draggin off a butt while hanging there. They must have a hell of a union, cause every cameraman I’ve ever seen looks just the same. When you watch Cops, and everybody’s runnin full bore down the ally and jumpin walls and shit while chasing some crack-head with a TV, listen for the heavy breathing. It’s the Big Mack eatin cameraman sucking wind while runnin with a huge video rig with a battery belt while tryin to keep all this shit in focus. That’s a workin man for your ass! It’s an amazing thing I tell you. I almost made it on Cops. I’m workin the LoneStar one night when this bachelor party comes in. It’s around twenty or so guys in the crew and maybe half a dozen of us including the manager. Well to make a long story short the bachelor party starts a fight with one of our guy’s and all kinds of fuckin hell breaks loose. Everybody gets pulled outside into the ally and it’s a bigass pier six brawl. We found out real quick that these guys’s were out to hurt us as bad as they could. All that did was make it easier. Between the six of us you gotta figure that we had a collective total of a hundred years worth of bouncing experience. When these fuckers tried to pull blood we put every year of it to good use. I actually got to run down an ally doing the infamous double forearm of doom. When it was all over with you had two groups of people standing, the six of us on the steps of the bar and in the ally there was a bunch of guys all fucked up and bleeding. The cops showed up and did their thing and just as everybody was splitting up, here come this over weight, cheeseburger eatin cameraman from the Cops crew. Peace

ALMOST HAD A FACE WITHOUT EYES

2004-11-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Have times changed or what. I keep a radio on at work for the background noise, it’s a top forty station, but it comes in clear here at the office. They play a lot of the boy bands plus a lot of Brittany and Christina. Isn’t there just something about Christina that says “nasty little hump”? She say’s she has thirteen piercings and I just think that’s special, just let me get near her with a magnet and I’ll find all of em. But anyway this radio station’s putting on this huge summer concert and one of the headline acts is my White Wedding muthafucker Billy Idol. Yeah, old twisted lip himself is coming to town, and he’s playin on the same bill as Jewel. What has shit come too? Billy Idol playing along side the dancing tree huggers. Wasn’t there a time when Billy would’a thrown Jewel down and did her something bad in he parking lot? I got to meet his band back in the early eighty’s. There was no Billy Idol to be seen but I got face to face with Steve Stevens, Billy’s lead guitar player. This was back in my bouncer and big pimpin days and I was hanging at the Blues club in Westport when somebody ran up and said that Billy Idol’s band’s in the house. Can I be truthful? These guys were some of the hugest assholes I’d ever seen. I had a couple of female friends sittin with me and up walks Steve Stevens, and he starts hittin on the women at my table. Now I know that I’m nobody special and each to his or her own but this was kind’a insulting. I ask the girls if this is what they like and they both tell me not really. Hell, you’ve seen one mousse haired, eye shadow wearin, black clothes wearin musician and you’ve seen em all, right? So I tell Steve I’m glad to see em and all that but it’s time to fuck off. The muthafucker leaves and comes back with one of his band mates, and starts hittin on the women again. By this time I’m pissed and I walk up and start pushing. It all ended in a rush, Billy’s drummer was sittin in with the band on stage along with his bass player who was trying to sing a blues tune. For some asshole reason the base player started smackin the cymbals with the microphone and the drummer jumped off stage and it all got confrontational. It never went any farther then the pushing and they ended up leaving. They did hook up with a couple of girls from the club and one of em got bragging rights cause she “did” Billy Idol after his show in town, and I got to meet Steve Stevens kind’a. I did get their “White Wedding” album for my collection, which was kind’a cool. Peace