CARTOON

 I still love this girl. Her name was Cartoon (that's what she told me). I took her to the bars in Bangkok and one of the girls got mad at me and said, "Her name is not Cartoon it's Tun." So I think she was named that by some British sissy. 

I met Cartoon when I was not leaving this town called Plataya. I was supposed to leave but I didn't want to. This town was basically the size of any town you know let's say Santa Cruz except every room had a pole with girls dancing around it. This town was incredible. After 2 days you're in your hotel room with a gun in your mouth. I went into a bar, claiming the rain kept me in town. This bar was called The B-52 Bar. When I went in there was kinda nobody there, meaning they didn't have customers. It was totally empty except for the girls working. This never happens but the prettiest girl in the bar came over and started talking to me. Usually the prettiest girls leave me alone so I was kinda shocked. She had a spiked dog collar and leather cuffs and camouflage pants, totally heavy eyeshadow. We're talking big black eyes. She looked like Avril Lavigne in a fucking good way. We shot pool and she was clearly good at it. We had a real good game.

Eventually, after a couple hours, she said she'd stay with me all night so we left. I was just beginning with the illness so even though we walked everywhere I was nervous. We walked to these pool tables that were wicked far away but we shot on them. Then we went to some bars, then we walked all the way back to the B-52 Bar and got a hotel room across the street. 

When we were in the room for the night. We started to fool around. Cartoon took off her clothes and said, "I am not perfect" and showed me her foot. Her right foot was backwards. She was totally deformed. I remember thinking, "I'm not perfect either, don't worry". I literally had no idea about her foot and I made her walk everywhere on it. The next day I still didn't want to leave this town. My apartment was 2 hours away. I invited Cartoon and we hired a taxi and went all the way to my house. 

Cartoon stayed a couple days and then took the bus back to her job. She called me every night and accused me of cheating on her. I was like, "There's no way I would do that".  One time I just stopped answering the phone after awhile. One morning I woke up and looked at my phone. I had 50 missed calls. Talk about annoying. I called her and said, "I have not gotten a girl, I don't have money for any girls. I haven't eaten for 2 days, I really don't have a dime." Cartoon says, "What?" and hangs up. I am sitting at my computer watching a baseball game (because of the time difference there was a ballgame on at like 6am). While I'm sitting there, after 2 hours, the door suddenly flies open and Cartoon is standing there with food. She comes in, puts the food down, puts 500 baht on the bed (with the exchange this is like $75 and it's plenty to live on for awhile. Meals are a fucking nickel). Still, I could not believe it. I said I hadn't eaten and Cartoon heard that, went to the bus, came to my house, bought food, and came in my room. 

Another thing about Cartoon, in Thai culture people often believe that deformity is a result of a evil past life. I don't think Cartoon believed this. She was fucking angry at everyone all the time. I'm not kidding, she wouldn't even hold the door for people. They all do shit like that. 

The last time I talked to Cartoon we hadn't talked in a couple months our hangout had ended She called and I answered, knowing it was her. She said she wanted to leave work. She wanted to leave all bar girl type of work and move back home which was way south Thailand. Practically Burma, hella far away. She needed train fare and money to give her dad when she got there. I was like, "Whatever you need I have". I Western Union'd her 5,000 baht, this is about $200. When I had to move back to the states the plan was to go back to Thailand, find her and write a book about the whole thing. That never happened.

HOSTESS PRODUCTS

 I grew up on Hostess products I love them. Little white donuts and cupcakes were literally a part of my diet. When I was a kid I was wicked into Big Wheels which had totally insensitive Native American cartoons on the bag. They eventually changed these and they became King Doh's. One time me and my brother moved in together and we worked the same hours, probably at the same restaurant. When we got home we would smoke pot and eat our shit. This was our nightly intake: 2 liters of Coke, a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a box of Ding Dongs. After a couple days of this diet I said, "We're gonna fucking die." But I loved Ding Dongs. 

I was in line at Safeway getting my lunch. If you are familiar with San Francisco I was at the Safeway near Potrero. Like 16th street, around there. There was a Hostess factory behind the Safeway. It smelt awful but it had cool trucks of course. I was in line at the Safeway with my lunch which was a big bag of little white donuts. There was a woman in front of me, I said to her, "You have half a gallon of milk, 6 eggs and 1 bagel." She goes, "You are totally right, how did you know what I was getting?" and I said, "Because you're ugly." That's a joke. That is not what happened at all. What really happened was there were 2 guys behind me in overalls. They saw I was buying donuts and said "We work at the hostess factory." I practically saluted them. I said, "Thank you I love your products." and one of them said, "You wouldn't like them if you saw how we make them." That did not stop me at all. I still love cupcakes.

STRAIGHT POOL

I love pool. But especially this game. It's called Straight Pool. The game is to 125 and each ball is worth one point so it takes hours to play. This is why pool tables often have those wicker counters above the table. Sometimes they have plastic dial/counters in the table itself. This is also for Straight Pool. The idea is because you are calling all your shots. When you break you do it very gently. The idea is to make the corner ball into a pocket and then break them after you make it. I played this game a lot and I only was able do it one time. It's fucking hard. This is the game they play in the Paul Newman movie "The Hustler." They play games of this for like 24 hours. It's crazy. Even though you are calling all your shots, there is a certain type of freedom because in 8-Ball you have to always shoot at your own balls but in Straight Pool they're all open. 

I have to talk about how good they were in Thailand. Literally just about everybody shot pool. All the people were Pro Am level. There's a stick under each table, this is called the bridge. When the shot is out of your reach you use the bridge to create space for yourself. You end up using it kind of a lot. The thing is, in Thailand even though they had that stick like anywhere, no one used it. They fucking shot with one hand instead. I'm not kidding, there were girls on the phone talking and shooting pool with one hand beating you and saying, "Thank you". I fucking love Thailand. One time I saw a girl play and win a game with one arm. The other thing about that night, there was a huge soccer game. Chelsea was playing Manchester United. This is a huge rivalry, it's basically if The Yankees played The Cowboys. The bar was full of British sissies. A girl with a microphone said to me, "Who do you want to win?" and I said, "Thailand", she goes "That's why I love you."

ONE WAY TICKET TO HOMOVILLE

I gotta put this somewhere. In 1998 I moved to SF. Right before I left, I made 5 of these, a bunch of Pudding Maker shit. Me and Bryan Long had been on fire recording shit on the spot, taking lyrics from cool books, all kinds of shit. We had a song that he had written and I put it on here. Before I was done I realized there were fucking five versions of this song. They are all good I am fucking playing drums on all of them. I am so unable to play drums for kind of awhile now ...    I have to tell a bunch of shit about this album.

Me and Bryan took a note this annoying guy had left in the practice room, put music to it, and read it. So basically  this song is a fucking funny note about the practice space. At one point in the note he lists everyone's phone numbers. When he gets to me there is no phone number so he left it blank. I didn't have a phone for like a year. Not a month or two, a fucking year. Also this album has a cover of 'A Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zepplin that we recorded in my bedroom on my 25th birthday. I remember recording it. It was the hardest I had ever laughed while we were playing it. I'm hella proud of the first couple seconds of the album, it's the song by James Gang called "Funk 49". Then J Boronski sings about loving Satan. I'm not even on this. Then next song is all this yelling by a a guy that was in music school for flute. I'm not on either of these songs. 

About the title, just before I put this together I saw a comedian on TV. One of her jokes was, "I went on a date last night. It was a one way ticket to Homoville." I thought that was funny so I named the album that. I didn't realize how inappropriate it was when you think about San Francisco. 

Here is a link to that music, I'm wicked proud of it Pudding Maker

BRIDE OF PINBOT

 I used to really love pinball. I hung out at this diner in Harvard Square called Tommy's Lunch that had a lot of pinball tables and excellent Italian subs. They had a fucking Monte Cristo sandwich. Do you know what these are? It's french toast as the bread and there is ham, turkey and cheese melted in and they serve it with fucking syrup. It's so good I would go there a lot for just that. They also had pinball. There had been this game in the early 80s called Pinbot, it was one of the first electronic games. When you got multi-ball going some robot eyes would raise from the top of the table and you had to hit them to make it go down. It was hard and shitty but cool. I remember I liked it. Then one time while I was at Tommy's Lunch, they had both Funhouse and Earth Shaker. I love Funhouse, but Earth Shaker had a tornado in the upper right corner, it has a tornado you have to get your ball into and as it went down the table shook and became an earthquake. It was not easy but you could do it. 

I loved these games so when Bride of Pinbot appeared I was psyched. I played it a lot. Basically you assemble her and then fuck her and she's a robot. The machine actually says, "The music turns me on!" when you get shit going basically. Fucking cool. They totally sample this in the song, "Paid in Full" by Eric B & Rakim. I was 21 at the time. I took acid for the first time. I took it alone and sat in my living room cranking music. I remember Jimmy Hendrix Electric Lady Land. Especially the song Crosstown Traffic totally blew my mind. Also I heard the Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key Of Life album. The keyboards on that are wicked psychedelic. It was awesome. I remember in the middle of all of this while I was puking, a shiny glistening metallic robot appeared. I'm not kidding, I was tripping on acid and Bride of Pinbot was visiting me. This was fucking amazing. I hate this word amazing but that is the only way to describe what happened.