SOME STUFF ABOUT SUN RA/ ANGEL DUST/ MORE STUFF ABOUT DEE DEE

 When I was 20 years old I went and saw Sun Ra live even though no one under 21 was allowed. I used my brother's ID. I also wore nice clothes, I'm not kidding I wore the same sweater that guy called me a loser in. I remember when I gave the door guy the fake ID he looked at me and said "This doesn't even look like you" me and my brother have never looked alike at all. I had ID that said I was 26. He was thinking it over but decided to let me in, thankfully. 

This was the same week the new Batman movie had come out. Prince did the soundtrack and Michael Keaton played Batman. Everyone was into it. Sun Ra came out in a real chair. He had just had a stroke, he got out of the chair and walked fast hunched over to a piano saying, "I just wrote this." and started singing the Batman theme, with the words, "I am the bat man." Then he got behind the piano and did a whole song based on Batman. It was fucking cool. Then he played a whole show. He even did "Space is the Place' and he had his Arkestra with him. This is 25 fucking old guys playing all sorts of instruments. It was awesome. 

Years later in the same part of town I was on a first date with a girl I had a big crush on. I still fucking have a crush on this girl. It's incredible. We went to a show, I forget what band but it was at the Middle East and there was this huge Japanese guy I knew there. He offered us weed. He was smoking a joint, "Do you want any?" We were like, "Hell Yeah." We smoked it and I was immediately too stoned. My vision became like a fucking tunnel and I couldn't deal with anything. I turned to the girl and said, "I need to leave" and fucking left. I went across the street where there was a McDonalds and laid down in the bushes in front. I fucking slept there for a couple hours and then went home. Ten years later this girl is at my house. For a decade I've been wondering what the hell happened. We hadn't talked since this night. The girl says, "Remember the time that guy gave us Angel Dust?" That explains it. 

As a form of protest, one time Dee Dee stole like a dozen chicks from a chicken factory near us. So we had the fucking cutest little things in a box in the basement. For weeks they looked wicked cute and    made little peep noises. Talk about cute. One day they became adolescents, like 10 days in. They were no longer cute and they were kinda big and they shit everywhere. They made horrible noises. I remember being terrified that our father would hear. They were making a fucking racket. Eventually Dee Dee fucking returned them to the factory. We never told my father anything. Years and years later after Dee Dee had died I told my father this story. He said, "I didn't know that at all." He had no idea we had a fucking dozen chickens squawking in the cellar. 

MAN, YOU LOOK LIKE A LOSAH!

 In highschool I skipped a lot. Part of the reason was because it was wicked easy to skip. My highschool was 45 minutes away. Before I had a license my mother let me drive to and from school. When I got to the exit for my school I often kept going and changed the direction, drove all the way into Boston and bought records then I would go home. In homeroom the disciplinarian would come over the loudspeaker and read off the list of names of kids who had not showed up. I'm not kidding one of the kids was named Mike Hunt. He was totally given that name as a joke by another kid. Pretty god damned funny. The thing is the day you showed up after being out sick you just had to produce a note. I forged my mother's name a ton.

 I fucking hated gym class. I had two gym teachers, they were Mr. White and Mr. Loftus and they were awful. I literally saw Mr. White punch a kid in the locker room. Also whenever we played basketball he called me "special olympics," that was my nick name. I used to intentionally foul out within the first couple minutes, then I just stopped showing up at school on days that I had gym.

I also had a thing with my mother. My father had left for work and she was up having her morning coffee and cigarette. If I didn't feel like even driving to school I would say to her, "Hey Ma, you wanna go to Kmart?" And then we would go there and not go to school. She never told my father we were doing this. We did it a lot. One time when I was a junior the disciplinarian called me into his office and said if you skip one more day you'll be expelled. So I didn't skip anymore, but I literally had skipped like a 100 days starting sophmore year. One time I was in Boston after skipping school. I was on Newbury Street going to Newbury Records. I had my school clothes on, this was a maroon and black sweater and tan chinos. I felt fucking cool because I had skipped school and was walking around Boston in my new school sweater. A homeless guy was walking towards me, when he was a couple feet from me, he pointed at me and said, "Man, you look like a losah." I remember thinking, "Well, at least I have a place to go to after this." 

The other thing I should tell you about this highschool, after homeroom they would occasionally have us go to the gym for an assembly. One time the Dean of Students, Brother Fahey was talking. People started applauding everything he said. We kept applauding for so long it was going into the next class. They could not shut us up. Every time they said anything we applauded. The whole school, 1200 kids were there, they could not control us. Finally a guy came out with a dustpan and brush and started banging them together. Apparently this is the universal sign for "Quiet Down". 

COOL ROCK SHIT

 Sometime in the '90s, me and my sister Dee Dee went to LolLapalooza 2 because Cyprus Hill was playing. I was hella into Cyprus Hill. Also Pavement was playing so we went. We didn't really know anyone else. Because they would not sell alcohol in the venue we drank the 12 pack we had bought in the car before we went in. It was like 11am. After one of the bands this guy came on stage with a boombox and sang a song about being a loser. I heard that Sonic Youth had put him on the roster of bands because they thought his music was cool. When Pavement played, the show was outside and during the daytime. There was a huge mud area because it had been raining. People started throwing clumps of mud at each other. There was a huge mud fight in the middle of Pavement's set. It was awesome. The headliner was this girl that nobody had heard of, all we knew was she was Kurt Cobain's girlfriend. She opened with the song "Violet" it was fucking awesome and we had no idea who she was yet. 

I noticed this about AC/DC, you know how Bon Scott died and was kinda scarily satanic. He is wearing a fucking pentagram on the album cover "Highway to Hell!" And the last song on the record is "Night Stalker." At the end of it he says, "Shazbot, nanoo nanoo." This is a reference to the TV show Mork and Mindy so the very last thing that Bon Scott says on vinyl or on a rock n roll recording is a fucking Mork and Mindy reference. That's funny as hell.

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. 

NAMES

 I was at General Assistance. I was getting food stamps. This was kind of awhile ago. They take all your info and send you to a giant waiting room where they call names over the loudspeaker and send people to various doorways. Eventually they call you and tell you what door to go in. I was sitting there reading and over the loudspeaker the guy said, "So and so go to door 1". After like 50 times he said, "Denzel Washington go to door 3", then he said, "Angelina Jolie go to door 2." Nobody noticed, I couldn't believe it, the guy was totally fucking with everyone in the room. 

I was at the gate at the airport. You know how they call names and say, "We have a full plane if anyone will forgo their ticket we will give you another ticket," and then they start calling names. One of the names they called was fucking Hunter Thompson. That guy or woman whoever was working at the gate had no idea somebody had either given a fake name or there was actually someone named Hunter Thompson on my flight. I figured if there were really someone fucking with everyone they woulda said "Hunter S. Thompson" because the S is kind of important. 

When you are on the plane in this era they assign you people and they push you all around the place. I used to be going to visit my father in Florida a lot. There were no direct flights to his town so I always had a layover at Atlanta. This is a giant fucking airport. There are trains and shit underground and it would take like an hour to get me from my plane to my connection. We were always in line at the elevator and we wait in line with other people in wheelchairs. As we rolled up I would say, "What is this, the winner's circle?" They hated it. No one ever laughed. 

That reminds me, I used to fly into Orlando. When you got off the plane and onto their tram thing, over the loud speaker it would say, "Welcome to Central Florida." Is there anything worse than Central Florida?  

BASEBALL

When  I was 5 years old my father put me on a Little League team. I remember all the kids were like 8 or 9 and they were astonished that I had been put on a team at 5 years old. I remember a couple weeks before he made me play baseball, I was in bed and I woke up to my father drunk off his ass, tapping me on the heart and saying, "You could've been a great baseball player one day" in a slurry voice. I remember thinking, "Whatever.." 

I played baseball for 3 years and I had 3 hits in 3 years. That's pretty fucking awful, literally 3 hits in 3 years. I was so afraid of striking out I just never swung the bat so I either got hit, walked, or struck out. I remember my first coach told everyone "Go out there and get a hit!" when they were leaving the dugout to go to bat. Whenever I was going up to bat he'd say, "Alright Mike, go out there and get hit." 

One time it was like 22 to nothing in the first inning. I am so old they didn't even have the "Mercy Rule" yet. We were losing that badly. As another dude was going home from 3rd I said to the coach, "There goes our no-hitter," He totally laughed. 

The last year I was on a different team. The coach used to read everyone's batting average at practice. I'll never forget him saying, "Mike McGuirk has a zero, zero, zero average but that's ok because he's always on base even though he's not hitting." 

That reminds me, I only lasted one week in college. When I went to the Bursar's office and asked him for financial aid to go a second semester. I had skipped all my finals -- I had a zero GPA. I was literally like the guy in Animal House. He said, "You have a  zero point zero GPA."

TWO GEEKS/YOU REALLY KNOW HOW TO PARTY

 Me and my roommate and other people were hangin out downstairs. We were having fun. This girl told us she was leaving, I said "You're Heading To The Highway?" My roommate Trevor said, "We'll be Living After Midnight." I said, "If you leave now, you'll be Breaking The Law", my roommate said, "You're gonna miss some Hot Rockin."

Years ago I had a friend visiting from Boston. His Boston accent was so heavy he sounded like fucking Bugs Bunny. I'm not kidding. After driving everyone, including my girlfriend home, I smoked pot with my friend who was visiting. Before we smoked it he said, "I got this shit from the government, it's government weed. It's called G-4. You got some time to kill, right?" I said, "No problem of course I'll be fine". We smoked literally a hit and I was immediately so stoned the tree in front of me started growing and moving like all kinds of shit. We got in his car, we were over by Pacific Heights area. He wanted to look at Alcatraz. We did it, totally stoned. Eventually I could not deal and had to puke so he pulled over in an alley and I was puking. I opened the door of the car and leaned my head out, puking. This went on for a minute. Total fucking silence and the sound of me puking. So to be polite I said to him, "Put on the radio" and he said, "You really know how to party". He was not joking, he thought I wanted tunes while I puked. From then on, I called this "you sank my battleship weed."

25 YEARS/ELECTRIC WIZARD

 When I was 26 I had to move in with my father. You know if you move back in with your parents after moving out, this is not exactly a sign of success. I was doing heroin almost every day. I would go to a day program at the hospital basically every day. My father would drop me off. I pretended to go in the hospital, when his car had left the parking lot I went to the pay phone and called my dealer. He had gotten me a job in town driving a Taxi cab. Basically all I did was drop people off at the airport, there wasn't really any cab stuff in our town. This was Concord, Mass, a very rich town. Every night I'd pass out on the couch and be woken up later that night by my father doing sit ups in front of the TV. In the dark. Fucking counting as he did them and breathing really heavy. It was awful. He had a carton of Camel Straits on the driver's seat of the car and he had another carton on the kitchen table. That was open, too. One day I was probably looking for porn and I found a closet that was full of Members Only jackets. I'm not kidding. There were like 50 jackets and each one had a pack of Camels in it. There was also a case of cartons on the shelf above the jackets. After seeing all this and doing the math, I asked my father,"When is the last time you had to go to the store and buy a pack of cigarettes. Like when was the last time you went out to buy some?" And he goes, "Jeez, it's gotta be 25 years." And I was like, "So the last time you bought a pack at the store I was one?"

When I was in my thirties I was living here and we went to see Electric Wizard. They were known pot heads. They played super slow Doom metal and extolled the benefits of marijuana with every song just about. They were from England and they had never toured the US. We were at the Bottom Of the Hill and I was fucking psyched to see them. They got on stage and started playing, then the singer asked for a hit of weed. Some San Franciscan gave him a bowl, he smoked it. The whole band had a hit. The problem was, this was like '03 or something and California weed was fucking crazy powerful then. Before Sativa and Indica it was just all heavy duty, this shit was purple. Electric Wizard all took a hit and it was obvious that they were too high. The show became a practice session. They were playing, they were not singing they were just playing shit that came to them. They were clearly too high to be there, it was fucking funny. 

MORE ABOUT HOLDING/PUT YOUR HIPS INTO IT/THANKS, PSYCHO

When we weren't being given meds or at an AA meeting we played a card game called Space which was fucking awesome. It's basically Hearts but with spades instead of hearts. The other thing is that one time some dudes came on a Friday night and had an NA meeting. It was considered way cooler than AA. These guys did the whole meeting as a call and response musical type of thing, it was fucking cool. It was like 'The Stepshow" in School Daze. I literally bought an NA book from these guys and from then on described myself as an "Addict and Alcoholic."

When I was there my glasses fell off and smashed on the concrete floor. So I had a broken lens, long hair, and fucking a couple black teeth in front. Everyone there started calling me 'Hanson'. https://youtu.be/LdhEXTQUkDY 

When we went not in AA Meetings or "sharing" we would have like 15 minutes of free time. One time I went to up to my bed to get something, there was a kid in his bed cranking Nirvana. He was playing the song "Beat Me Outta Me" over and over. I had never heard the line which is fucking kinda major for a kid to be cranking. You know he was a junkie or something. One of the other few young people there was someone I recognized who had been a regular at the donut shop I had worked at. Steve Mason had been 10 years old and he would order a dozen assorted donuts. This meant I would have my back turned. While I put the dozen together he would loosen the tops of all the sugars. I figured that out after he did it once. When I ran into him in Holding he had a fucking tear drop tattoo on his eye. You know what that means? He was a little blonde kid but you know he was definitely a murderer as an adult. 

Me and my girlfriend were at a wedding in New Mexico. I remember the place was fucking remote. It was on a Native American Reservation and the hotel didn't have hot water. We were at the reception, they were playing music, my girlfriend Lila said, "Come on let's dance," I was like, "No Way", she says "Come on it doesn't matter what you do, I just wanna dance." I'm like, "Hell No." After a few more of these I finally agreed to dance, it was fucking Afro Cuban Salsa music. This shit is polyrythmic. When were were dancing for like one second Lila said to me, "Why are you marching?" 

Back when Uber just started we got a driver. The driver talked the whole time. He was clearly lonely as hell. He took the fucking longest way home. At one point he said, "I have a book back there, you can draw anything you want in it." We looked through the book and somebody had drawn a clown had written "Thanks, Psycho." 

DETOX

You should never start out a story like this. The first time I was in detox I went to secure myself housing. The idea was to live in a half way house. I realized you don't end up in detox for no reason so I realized I needed to get sober. I wrote about this experience a thousand years ago when it happened.

 I remember you sat around all day eating cinnamon toast, drinking AA coffee and smoking between AA meetings. I remember there was a guy who couldn't really talk. All he could say was, he'd mumble "I was taking 90 Xanax a day." There was another guy who had been drinking fucking gasoline. He had lost the ability to communicate. I remember during dinner one night he, without warning, totally flipped the table while yelling. Because I had to wait til there was a bed in the halfway house I was sent to "holding." 

This is where they put people just out of prison waiting for sober living. Because our country is insane everyone, well just about everyone was African American. I was told I'd be there 5 weeks waiting. Over the loud speaker every day a guy would say, "All the inmates please line up in the front for a meal." Eventually someone complained about him using the word "inmate" and they changed it to "clients". I don't know what meds I was on, but there were plenty of people on Methadone. Every day we'd all line up and they'd give us our meds. One day I was in line, the guy in front of me was there for Methadone and he said "Maybe this time I'll just smoke crack." That was his plan. So you get the idea, these people were fucked. At one point during a class the fucking FBI bust into the room and pulled one of the dudes out. I later learned he had murdered two people in Worceter.

At one point I ran out of cigarettes and no one was coming for a week to bring me more. After 2 days I finally got the courage up and asked one of the men for a cigarette. All the "clients" only had Newports. I had never had a Newport. I finally asked this guy for one and he gave it to me and said, "Son, this is the Cadillac of cigarettes." It tasted fucking awesome. From that moment on I loved Newport/menthol of any kind. Me and my brother call them Nature's Toothbrush and I used to only buy them when I had extra money. I can't really smoke a whole pack so I'd get them when I was particularly flush. I used to say "They call me 2 pack". 

IN WHICH DEE DEE GETS MARRIED AND I GET DRUNK

In 1988 I was 18. We went to Ireland for Dee Dee's wedding. This is funny I have to tell it. My father showed up a week later. Me and my brother went to meet him at the airport. As soon as he got off the plane he barely looked at us and was clearly nervous and said, "We have to get the fuck out of here right now." When we got in the car, he had a CVS bag with $10,000 in cash in it because he didn't believe in checks and he literally had all that cash in a plastic bag the whole flight.

 Dee Dee's wedding had a full fucking Mass in it with Communion and a sermon and everything. It was brutal. I'm not kidding fucking 2 hours. Then they left in a white Rolls Royce, it was on the fucking news because we were in Cork, Ireland. While I was there I bought my friend Rick a bottle of Paddy's Irish Whiskey and I never gave it to him. A year later it was still sitting on my bookshelf. One day I decided to drink it, it was like 4pm and I was staunchly anti-alcohol. I remember how it felt going down my throat. That shit was hot. Next thing I remember I was cranking "Sister Ray" by The Velvet Underground. This song is 18 minutes long and they are attempting to change the weather with the music. At one point my father comes bursting into the room and yells, "I could hear that music driving up, I could hear it fucking down the street." Then he saw that I was wicked drunk and said, "At least you're normal" and then I guess I passed out. 

WTF

 Me and my father were in the ICU unit. We were there because my sister Dee Dee was dying. This is fucking heavy but also funny as hell. Basically Dee Dee choked on her dinner and the EMT's crushed her windpipe trying to help her and because her DNR said, 'no extraordinary measures' we had to let her go. This sucked, but it's not like her life was going to get better. Anyway, we're in the ICU for a couple hours at least. It was silent except for the pace maker beeping. A cart on wheels is pushed into the room. There's a dog in the top of the cart. There's a sign on the front of the cart that says, 'Therapy Dog'. My father looks at it and says to me, "What the fuck is that?" 

In 1998 or 9 Motley Crue put out an alcoholic beverage called "Motley Brew," It was blue and kinda looked like Zima. I remember trying it and it fucking turned my teeth blue. I am still not sure if they did it on purpose. I hope they did. 

When I was in Thailand I was in a bar that had a band. They were setting up and getting ready. The guitar player had crazily long hair. I'm not kidding, he really looked like early Larry David. Anyway, that guy and the drummer were tuning up and kind of playing, there was a keyboard playing here and there also. They were all absent-mindedly jamming. The guitar player with the crazy hair suddenly blew a whistle. They all stopped and broke into 'Another Brick in the Wall' by Pink Floyd. With them doing the vocals and everything, it was fucking perfect. Talk about a cool way to start a show. 

Nerf this 

ATAXIA'S GREATEST HITS VOL. III

 We have a 3 legged cat. She broke her leg when she was a kitten and they couldn't do anything to fix it so they had to amputate it. It cost my roommate $3,000. I realized that was more that my parents had ever spent on me. The other thing is we had an awesome roommate (Dan Elliott) who named her Rick Allen, this is the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard. 

At one point I had no computer and no internet for a month. I could fucking hear my roommates blink, talk about annoying. This was back when I could still read so I re-read Crime and Punishment. That book is actually hilarious, actually a comedy, I didn't know this. Every time my roommates came home they would say hello to the cat and I would get angry. I didn't know why but every time they said hello to the cat I got mad in my room. I realized I was jealous of the sympathy they were giving the cat. This is insane but kinda par for the course when humans are involved. I was thinking, "You call yourself disabled? I will HOUSE you with disability. Fucking 3 legs is nothing." 

1 JOINT = 3 HOUR PANIC ATTACK

I was at Armstrong State Park with my friends. It was beautiful. When we got to the end of the trail we decided to smoke a joint because I wanted to do anything my friends did I smoked it also. I had smoked every day through my 20s but like15 years ago it started making me too paranoid. So I was thinking I'm in a state park surrounded by nature, I'll be fine. The first thing that scared me was after the joint we had a cigarette and people came in our area I thought they'd get mad at us for smoking. Then when we left my friends were pushing my wheelchair and I got scared that we would hit a pothole and I would go flying. Then I got scared that because we had no maps we would get lost in the woods. Then I got scared that the sun was going down and we would be lost and hungry and die of hyperthermia. After an hour or less of this terror I finally saw the car and we were heading towards it. I I then got scared that we would somehow lose the car even though we were looking right at it. That's when I realized I was being totally irrational. We got in the car and my friends played Live Neil Young and I got freaked out. I remember thinking, 'How can I hear live Neil and get freaked out, how is that even possible?' Then I got nervous that my friend had forgotten to put on his headlights. Then I thought about being totally irrational and realized I was just gonna have to accept being in a state of panic til it passed. After awhile, like literally hours we went to an awesome diner that had a bar in it in Guerneville. This was awesome and my paranoid marijuana freakout ended. We went to fucking Uli Roth that night, he's an ancient guitar player from The Scorpions. He opened with Sails Of Charon.

DOGS

 There is a Porky Pig cartoon with a dog who shouts a poem about the city called, "Da City" here's the part from that cartoon:   Da City

In second or third grade they were teaching us about poetry and they assigned us to write our own. I could not do this at all. On a piece of orange construction paper I transcribed Charlie the Dog yelling "Da City"- -the whole thing. The next day my teacher thought I had written it, I didn't say anything. She fucking hung on the wall in the hall to show everyone, with my name on it. People must have thought I was like E.E. Cummings. 

I was at my second cousins house way after this but I was still a kid. My cousins were in their 20s and it was the 70s. They literally had Charades parties and served fondue they wore fucking velour. Talk about cool pretty sure they were smoking jazz cigarettes. There was a guy visiting once and his girlfriend had tried to kill herself. She was in the hospital. We were all in the living room hearing about this. While she was in the hospital she tried to kill herself again. Barry, her boyfriend, said "She ate a Poinsetia" 

I said "Oh the poor dog." I totally thought Poinsetia was like an Irish Setter. 

THIS IS TOTALLY A TEST

This is a record geek test with a concentration on classic rock. I would get a 90. You need to at least pass it but anything B or above is total record geekitude. Sorry. 

1. What do you call a dog with wings?

A.  Linda McCartney

B.  A Wingnut

C.  Joni Mitchell

D.  Bob Barker 

2. Where are The Stooges from?

A.  Los Angeles

B.  Denmark

C.  Michigan

D.  New York 

3. What is the name of the keyboard player from Pink Floyd?

A.  Robin Wright

B.  Richard Dyson

C.  Richard Wright

D. Travis Bickle

4.  What does 2112 refer to?

        A. Coordinates

        B.  A year

        C.  The score of a game

        D.  An amount of space credits

5.  Who did Neil Young move to the U.S. with? 

A. The members of April Wine

B. The members of Rush

C. Randy Bachman

D. Rick James

6.  What is Alice Cooper's real name?

A. Billy Dee Williams

B. Vincent Furneier 

C. Farrah Fawcet

D. Rick James 

7. Besides the awesome band, what is Steely Dan?  

A. A baseball play

B. A surfing term

C. A dildo in a Burroughs book

D.  Something kids in California say

8.  What does L.A.M.F. stand for?

 A. Like A Mother Fucker

           B. Lame Ass Monster Face 

 C. Local Airport Montana Fair

           D. Look At My Father 

9. What label was all the New Zealand punk on?

 A. Epic

B. Elektra

C. Flying Nun

D. Guided Missle 

10.  How did Michael Jackson die?

A. He choked on a 10 year old weiner

B. He choked on a 10 year old weiner

C. He choked on a 10 year old weiner

D. He choked on a 10 year old weiner

Bonus Question: What is the abbreviation of Judas Priest/Iron Maiden style Heavy Metal?  

A. NWBHAM

B. NWBHUM

C. NWOBHM

D. NWBHIM 

 

COOL ROCK/INTERVIEW SHIT

When I interviewed Al Cisneros (Sleep and OM), at one point I asked him, "What is your favorite Black Sabbath riff?" because they sound so much like Sabbath and OM hadn't put out a record yet. I was interviewing him for Holy Mountain Records which was owned by my friend, John Whitson. Al Cisneros and Sleep had disappeared forever at that point so them putting out a record was huge. When I asked Al that Sabbath question he said, "Tony Iomi's riffology is irrefutable." I'd never heard the word riffology, I have used that approximately 1,000 times since then. Later in the interview Al finally said his favorite riff was "Cornucopia" which is on Sabbath Vol 4. 

When I wrote for Rhapsody at one point we had an editor who had worked at fucking Creem when it first started. She was actually mentioned in an article written by Lester Bangs about going to see Black Sabbath in like 1974 or something. We're talking rock royalty here. At one point they had me writing promo's for the website, we were supposed to write and type things as ads. I came up with one that said, "Q: Who is a better guitar player than Billy Gibbins? A: None. There is not better guitar player than Billy Gibbins." and the editor from Creem (Jaan) told me, "I emailed the promo to Billy Gibbons and he loved it." This is incredible that it happened. I could have retired at that point. 

The other great thing I have about Billy Gibbins is that recently in an interview he was asked if there was a guitar player today that he liked and he said, "The best guitar player today is Graham from Lecherous Gaze." Cool, I totally agree. That guy Graham is a fucking bad ass guitar player.

They had me interview a lot of people at Rhapsody. My first interview was with this awful boy band from England called BBMak and my last thing I did as a full time employee (before I went overseas) was to interview Tommy Lee. In the middle they had me interview Bryan Adams, that was cool. He was actually super nice and all we talked about was hockey. Even though he is from Montreal he is a Bruins fan. That blew my mind. I asked Tommy Lee if he had ever smoked crack and he said, "Kid, I've done everything." 

I was not at this show. It was in the 1970s and my friend/boss was at it. It was in a shit Boston town called Waymeth. My friend/boss, Pete was there to see Tom Petty or someone. It was outside in a playground type area. The New York Dolls were opening. Some irish/american Boston "yah-dudes" were freaked out by the New York Dolls all being in drag. At one point a fucking tennis ball bounced off of singer David Johanson's forehead, thrown by a "yah-dude" obviously. My boss/friend saw this happen and told me about it one night when I was cranking "Frankenstein" at work. 

ANOTHER BAD WORD BUT FUNNY SHIT

 This story cannot be told without an offensive word, sorry it happens for when it comes up. 

When I was 14 I was at the Elk's with my father. He announced to the bar, "My son is now a man so you can talk to him like a man now." This meant they could swear in front of me. I was sitting next to a guy I worshipped, his name was Joe Oulette. He had been in the Pacific War and totally had tattoos of hula girls on his shoulder and forearm. He was talking to me he'd probably had a couple drinks, beer was only a fucking dollar, I would have had a hundred. Joe Oulette was telling me a story about being in the Navy, at one point he proudly announced, "I was the only guy on my ship that fucked a midget!" 

Another great thing I have about the Elk's is when I was 18 I had a job in the city that I took a train to and from. Every night I had a choice of sitting and waiting for my father to get done drinking and I would drive us home or I could walk 2 miles from the train station to my house. As awful as sitting around while my father got wasted was, I still did it a lot because 2 miles is a long fucking walk. I was there so much in fact that at one point the other people there said, "That kid has to become a member." So I joined. I am an Elk. There was a candlelit ceremony and everything. I remember taking an oath, it was nuts. I never paid the dues once so my membership eventually expired.

Me and my cousin were under 21 but old enough to drive. We were going to a party, it was a Friday night. We needed to borrow my father's car to go so we were at the Elk's to pick it up. We were sitting at the bar while my father drank beers. He turned to my cousin Peter and said, "You wanna leave now or later?" I tried to say with my eyes to Peter, 'Whatever you do, you have to say 'Whenever you wanna go.'" Peter like a normal person said, "Let's go now." It was Friday night and we had been there probably a fucking hour and not said a word. My father said "Fuuuuuuck yooouuuuu" to Peter and one of the guys at the bar said to him, "You just bought yourself another 20 minutes." I'll never forget the look of confusion on Peter's face. 

FUNNY THAILAND SHIT

In Thailand there was a stretch of the street I lived off that was basically a mall for tourists on the sidewalk. Entire tables of Jade elephants and brass knuckles, shit like that. I realized everyone working the tables was deaf-mute. Pretty sure they were wicked cheap labor, the Mob that ran everything probably didn't even pay them. The tourists were constantly haggling like a dollar off shit that was already two dollars and so the workers all had calculators and when a customer asked the price they would show them the calculator. The customer would take it and put in the price they wanted and would hand it back. Then the worker would put in another price and give it to the tourist, blah blah blah this went on. You get the idea. I started going to the deaf workers and asking for the price of something, they would show me the calculator and it would say 600 on it, for Baht. I would take the calculator and type in 599 and hand it back. They loved this they all thought it was funny, so did I. Thai people don't understand sarcasm but they totally got that joke about farang. The word for "mango" was "farang" also, so whenever they saw a tourist eating a mango they laughed really, really, really hard. They also loved any time a big, fat person had a little suitcase. They loved this shit and would yell, "Big man, little bag!" 

I was out one night with a girl. I was really into learning Thai. It was well after midnight and like at least 90*. There were people selling all kinds of shit. I particularly loved this watermelon they sold. It was wicked cool on your throat and there was sugar in the bag so when you picked out the watermelon chunks with the pointy stick they gave you, it had fucking sugar on it. It was so good. One night we're getting some and this girl totally spoke English so I asked her "What is the word for watermelon?" She said in a heavy Thai accent, "water-melon." I was expecting some exotic word.

Bar Girls have a guy they would call when they weren't working, this was called her "Gik". I had an Australian friend who called me Mike McGik. One night there was a girl coming over, I was not her customer, I wasn't her Gik yet, but it was coming. That day, because my apartment smelled like cigarettes, I bought incense. I was at the store and I chose one that smelled good. When the girl came over and entered my apartment she said, "It smells like a funeral in here". You know incense totally means shit to them. 

THIS IS HEAVY BUT GODDAMN FUNNY

This is heavy but goddamn funny. I'm gonna get the heavy shit outta the way. This story is about a guy I worked with who died when we were both teenagers. He was older than me and bigger and from a weird Massachusetts town called Berlin. The town had a fucking milk man. But my friend was a tough guy, his name was Tom Brown. He was a cutter at the doughnut shop we worked at. I was the fryer and he cut them. He loved Led Zeppelin. This was all he listened to. One of the other doughnut cutters had a ZOSO tattoo. This is back when tattooing was illegal in Massachusetts. So you get the idea. These people didn't have much of a future. So the older cutter Tom played Led Zeppelin all the time. One of the other fryers was into weird music like me. We played the Violent Femmes every Friday night. One time Tom yelled "I don't wanna listen to them. All their songs are like- he started mewling and mincing-  "I wanna get laid, I wanna get laid." The thing is, Violent Femmes always sang about wanting to get laid but Led Zepplin was singing about actually getting laid.

THE BLIZZARD OF '78

In 1978 there was a week-long blizzard in New England. It came at the tail end of Christmas vacation so we literally had a month off of school. I basically jumped off roofs of houses into 9 foot snow drifts for a month, it was awesome. Every kid I knew had a fucking runny nose for a looong time. When they called us back to school the bus came and got me. We were halfway to the school and somebody started the Queen "We Will Rock You" foot stomp -- "Boom Boom Ch, Boom Boom Ch" -- everybody joined in. They started chanting, "Hell no, we won't go". I was 8 years old so I was afraid to join in, this was some 5th grader shit. When we got to the school none of them got off the bus, I sat in my seat and didn't move. I learned from my drunk a-hole father that moving when anything was going on made you a target. Back then any question was answered with 'None of your business." We were all on the bus and the principal (Mr Daniels) came on with a dustpan and brush.  Anyone that went to Willard School knows exactly what he looked like, he looked like a cross between Alec Trebek and Larry Bird. The people on this list include Jessie Bilodeaux, Colin Nissan, Jimmy McSweeney, Kirsten Rarich, Karen Dronzek, Robbie McCormick, Bonnie Hills, and a fucking thousand more. Anyway Mr. Daniels got everyone's attention by banging the dust pan and brush together. Then he threatened to call our parents if people didn't get off the bus. The kids did that. We all got in a line and went to school.

STEVERINO! \ FUCK PICHAS? \ CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

I had my friend Steve LaChance over for the first time. We were like sixteen. When my father came home at 1 am I introduced them. We were in the living room watching TV. I said to my father "This is Steve." When he went to bed I told Steve "in the morning my father will call you 'Steverino.'" He was like "No way." In the morning he got up to pee my father was at the dining room table. I heard my father yell "Steverino! Good morning."

My friends Gabe and Chris were over. We were eighteen and into movies. We were totally watching black and white 60's French shit like Francois Truffaut's "400 Blows." My father comes out of his room and walks into the living room where we're watching TV. He's wearing nothing but tightie whities. He sees the black and white movie and says "What are you guys watchin' fuck pichas?" Then he lit a Camel straight and sat down on the couch. He sat there smoking and when he was done he went back to bed.

My brother told me this story. It's fucking funny. "Creature from the Black Lagoon" was on later that night. everyone had gone to bed and my brother got up to watch it in the living room. Because everyone was asleep he turned the volume way, way down. It was basically silent and he watched it like that. He was afraid our father would see the light from the TV so he turned the tint down. He turned it way, way down. We were fucking scared of our father. He literally turned it all the way down and realized after a while he was watching a black screen with no sound.

DINOSAUR/MORE BUTTHOLE SURFERS

 In 1988 me and my friends saw Dinosaur live. They were still called Dinosaur, it was before the Jr thing. You know they were sent a cease-and-desist order from a band in LA called Dinosaur. That's why they changed it to Dinosaur Jr. I had a roommate in a band called Wild Eyes. They got a cease-and-desist order from another band in LA called Wild Eyes. We were talking about a new name for the band and I suggested Wild Guys. I realized it became gay immediately. They never changed the name. It all just went away though. Funny shit. Back when I saw Dinosaur, Lou Barlow was in the band. We saw them in North Hampton, I think, we were all going to U Mass. The show was at 1pm and it was all ages. I think the club was called The Iron Horse. They had put a rope down the middle of the room, one side for people old enough to drink and the other side for everyone else. I was not old enough to drink yet. When the opening band came out they were a hardcore band and everyone sat down at some tables that were set up. When Dinosaur came out everyone got up and moved up close to the stage. Lou Barlow had an angry look on his face and he said into a microphone, "We think it's lame when people sit down for the opening band and stand up for the headliner." Then they played all hardcore songs and only for 15 minutes, they were pissed. Lou Barlow totally moved around herky jerkily. The thing is I didn't know that J Mascis was autistic then (I think for sure he is autistic. I really think we all are kind of autistic. For awhile now I have thought my own encyclopedic knowledge of useless rock facts is on the autism spectrum. Basically anybody good at anything is autistic in some way. I think autism is just another way to be intelligent, but we don't get it literally AT ALL). I had dinner with J Mascis sometime when he had grey hair so not early, he had a helper, we went and ate Thai food. There was a group of us, it's not like I was having dinner with J Mascis I was just at his dinner. He didn't say a word, he drank orange juice the whole time. He had chopsticks for the food and he totally moved them around like he was doing a guitar solo with the chopsticks, does that even make sense? Irregardless it was pretty fucking cool. When I had seen Dinosaur a thousand years ago I didn't know any of this. Back then, for the last song they covered Guns N Roses "Sweet Child of Mine." J was not snarling or moving angrily, he actually looked happy as hell playing the solo in this last song. It was on the radio. Playing metal was anathema. You know the song is all octaves.

I realized I need to write down everything I know about the Butthole Surfers.

I remember when I saw them live, I saw the guitar player Paul Leary and thought, "that guy is Satan.'" I could swear he had cloven hooves in his cowboy boots. You know those MFers are from Texas, they had cowboy boots on. He was totally playing on his tip toes. Also I thought the singer Gibby Haynes had Down Syndrome, he had that look. He had no shirt on but he was playing one of those fucking 8 foot tall delay units -- they are like towers with a speaker on top and dials in the middle. That's how the vocals all sound like you're doing whip its. I still don't know the name of those things but have always thought when I see them, "you know the band is gonna be good."

 Also when they were on David Letterman for the song "Pepper." It was a huge deal, David Letterman wasn't allowed to say 'butthole' so they were called the BH Surfers. You know when M.I.A. played "Paper Airplanes" they made her take out the gun shot sounds so the song didn't actually make any sense. You know she was giving the finger to the camera when she performed at the Super Bowl, that's pretty fucking cool. The last thing is I have a friend. He lives in New York City and he was at a park with his kids. There was another guy there with a kid, they were both sitting on a bench talking. My friend realized the guy he was talking to was Gibby Haynes.

HOCKEY/FIRST SCHOOL SKIPPING

 I don't know how old I was. I was definitely under 10. I joined the hockey team but I only went to one practice. First of all, I realized I could not skate backwards which you totally have to do a lot in hockey. Secondly, in the locker room the other dudes playing were awful, I remember thinking, "These people are animals." At the end of practice the coach had us all stand in a line on the rink, he went down the line and yelled in each of our faces, when he got to me I remember he was yelling in my face and I could smell beer on his breath. I thought, "I can get this at home" and quit on the spot.

When I was in the 1st grade my school started having us show up at noon, the bus picked us up at like 11am. My parents were both at work by like 9am so I had to get out there on my own. I was waiting for the bus and I had to pee so I went behind a tree. At that moment the bus came, the driver didn't even slow down she just kept going and I realized I didn't have to go to school. I was fucking psyched. 

I went inside and watched Gilligan's Island and ate fucking cherries it was like a party. I filled my dog's water bowl with root beer, I knew my mother would be home soon so I had to make it look good. I cleaned the house. I remember I didn't know how to work the washing machine so I put clothes in it and left it like that. I put a cloth on the table and poured my mother a glass of wine, she had Chianti all over the house. I remember when she got home her and this woman she worked with named Mary Caggiano pulled up in a car, my mother came in, saw the tablecloth and glass of wine and went back out to the car, had Mary come in and showed her. That's all I remember. The next day I did the same thing, except I didn't watch Gilligan's Island, instead I went in the backyard and played, a neighbor saw me and called my father at work.  He said "Michael is not at school and he should be." My father came home. Years later, he told me he hated having to punish me over this. He thought it was funny. What the hell I was in the first grade and already skipping school. He reminded me about this like last year, he's fucking 85 now. My mother never told him I had been skipping school, we were kind of a team.

CHELMSFORD MALL

This sorry has an awful word I hate but totally used a ton until my 30s, still there's no way to tell this story without the word so sorry in advance.

In 1984 I was 14 and wicked into Ghostbusters. The theme song was a hit on the radio. I loved it. I also had the red and black shirt with the Ghostbusters logo on it. Me and my cousin were walking through the Chelmsford Mall. We were going to the big department store at the end, either Kmart or Bradlee's I'm not sure which. It was definitely not Caldor's or Zayer's. As we were walking through the mall this kid who was clearly younger than us yells at me, "Nice Ghostbustah's shirt yuh faggit." Me and my cousin mouth "fuck you" at him. In the department store at the end we go to the music section and start looking through the cassette tapes, there was no vinyl. At one point I feel a cigarette ash on my shoulder. I turn around and there is a kid clearly older than me and my cousin with a fucking cigarette and the beginings of facial hair, This was back when you could smoke EVERYWHERE. People fucking smoked on the bus and in elevators. It was nuts. The smoking dude was probably the kid's older brother. He puts his cigarette out on my shoulder and says 'What's up?' He and the five guys with him all have terrifying Led Zepplin shirts on (you know the bones font, that shit scared me when I was a kid). His friends were circling and laughing like the hyenas in that Lion King movie, one of them high-pitchedly chirps "We're gonna have a blood bath."  Me and my cousin start walking out of the mall with the gang of ruffians following us, cackling. As soon as we get to the parking lot we run across the street to another department store, called Rich's where my mother is probably stealing shit.

THIS AIN'T FUNNY BUT IT'S WICKED COOL/HIGH SCHOOL

When I was a teenager in the 80's, I saw the Butthole Surfers live. I have been trying to figure out what album they were on tour for. It was definitely after Locust Abortion Technician and before piouhgd, like 1988 or something. They were setting up and tuning their instruments and getting ready to play. There were 2 movies being shown on screens above the band: one was a kung fu movie and the other was the footage of a vasectomy procedure. They were tuning up as the character in the kung fu movie was talking to a guy. I could not look at the vasectomy, it was fucking gross. When the guy in the kung fu movie kicked the other guy, the band kicked in in perfect time with the movie. It was fucking cool. For the finale, Gibby Haynes lit the whole fucking stage on fire. He poured rubbing alcohol everywhere, not just on the drums or around him, but everywhere. He lit a match and it all went up the show was over when the fire went out.

I should write this down: when I was in high school, we were in history class and our teacher Mr. Reidy could not pronounce his R's and L's. We called him Wabbit Weidy. I'm not kidding, this really happened: he asked the kid behind me--Will McNary-- "Wiw, whewe did the Wenaissance begin?" and Will said, "...Itawy?"  The entire class made that snorting noise you make when you're holding in a laugh. Mr Reidy threw Will out of class immediately.

GUITAR TEACHER: RON TYLER

When I was 13 my friend  Milan came over with an awful metal guitar his father had bought him. It was either a BC Rich Bitch or a BC Rich Black Widow. I forget which. I just know it was ugly as hell. It totally would have fit in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGf5NxLQoEo

Milan played Jimmi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" wicked loud, and my father did not yell at us. For whatever reason he didn't. I remember thinking "Holy shit, we're making so much noise and nobody is yelling at us." Also, I saw a video for Eric Clapton's "She's Waiting" and thought "I want to look as cool as that guy." Thinking back on it now, it's some awful 80's shit, but back then I loved it. So I told my mother I wanted to play guitar. She literally took me to get one that day. We signed up for guitar classes because I didn't know anything. I took lessons for 2 years. my teacher was this guy named Ron Tyler. 

Because I was a weird religious kid I refused to learn any Led Zeppelin. I thought they were satanic. He taught me every single one of their riffs but told me it was The Beatles, which I knew but played along because those riffs were fucking fun. I'm not kidding, "Livin Lovin Maid," "Heartbreaker," "Whole Lotta Love," "The Ocean." But "Black Dog" was too hard. 

At one point he asked me to bring in a tape of a song so he could figure it out. For the next two years I brought tapes of songs I liked and learned how to play them. I never learned how to read music I just learned riffs. I had fucking weird taste. I remember him getting mad because I brought in a Brian Eno song to learn and the solo only had one note, over and over. He was offended. 

I took lessons for 2 years. At my last session, Ron my teacher said "You've been here for two years. When you came in you SUCKED. And now you STILL suck. But at least you stuck with it."

FUCKING AWESOME DREAM/ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY

At one point I figured out how to lucid dream, it's not like I could do it all the time and say, I will now fuck Jennifer Lawerence but I could figure out I was dreaming. One time I was entering a house, it was a Brownstone like New York City, and I realized I was dreaming. There were people walking on the sidewalks, I realized I was dreaming, so I said to them, What are you doing? Who are you? The next thing I was standing at the top of the Brownstone stairs and all the people walking on the sidewalks before were now at the bottom of the stairwell, looking at me and smiling, I said again, What's up? One of them said We're really glad you see us, we have been here forever. Then the dream ends, kinda awesome dream.

Some Boston stuff:

A thousand years ago, I was visiting the Boston area, I was walking on Brookline Ave and there were three teenage girls walking towards me, I got nervous as they passed me, one of them says, "Nice eyebrows, buddy." I remember thinking, I have had self conscious weird feelings about everything on my body, but I was never insecure about my eyebrows before. I remember thinking, "Fucking Boston"

I was in a Stoah 2 fouah in the North End, I was wearing a Newport shirt. Awesome shirt. I said to the lady that works there, "Can I have a pack of Marlboro Reds?" She says, "If you're wearing a Newport shirt, why are you buying Marlboros?" I was thinking "Who are you, my father?"

MORE FUNNY SHIT I NEED TO WRITE DOWN

A thousand years ago, I had a roommate named Tiffany, she lived off of going through people's trash and selling expensive upholstery she found in it. We had tons of giant scissors, no pens or pencils, only crayons so whenever I had to write a note I had to use fucking crayons, it was kinda nuts but Tiffany was awesome and fucking funny. One morning I was late for work and I went to the foyer and there was a brand new banana seat bike, the chrome on it was so bright it hurt my eyes, there were rainbow colored tassels on the handle bars. Because I was late for work I decided to ride it there. I was going up a hill. There was a basketball court on my left and there were kids playing basketball in it. I had these black horn rimmed glasses on. One of the kids had a heavy Boston accent and said 'Hey Elvis, you stole my sistah's bike.'

When I was turning 34, I needed to break up with my girlfriend; I freaked out and got on the BART and went to Hayward and got a hotel room. I had been sober for 5 years and had no intention of drinking but I needed a strip joint and because I'd never been to Hayward I figured they'd have one in the center of town. So I left my hotel room to find the center of town. The hotel was on a freeway, I pointed left and right and said which is the correct direction in my head, I chose to go to the right. It was still light out. An hour later it was dark and I was still walking on the freeway. I remember thinking, holy shit this is taking forever but the center of town has to come up at some point. On my left I saw a purple neon sign way deep in a parking lot it said Curves and I thought, hell yeah, you knew there'd be a strip joint somewhere. The sign said Curves in purple neon, it's gotta be a strip joint. I went to the parking lot, the shit was a fucking mile away it took forever to get close. Then I was finally there and I realized it was not a strip joint at all, it was a fucking weight loss clinic it was totally closed.

FUNNY SHIT I NEED TO WRITE DOWN

Gentle Reader,
Because no one can understand me anymore, I'm writing down particularly funny stories, hopefully you'll get some laughs. When I was in highschool there was a hurricane (Gloria). My friend Rick worked at Burger King getting the hurricane nobody came in so they were all sitting around looking out the widow. That Burger King had one of those signs with letters that you can arrange a message, it said 'Closers Wanted.' The wind blew off the letter 'C' and it said 'Losers Wanted' my friend Rick goes, 'Who are we kidding?'

The first time I saw Pavement, it was at the Middle East. There was a homeless guy asking us for money while we were waiting for the show. We were outside. Then we went in, and Pavement started playing. The homeless guy was asking for a beer. The singer Steve Malkmus comes off the stage, taps the homeless guy on the shoulder, and says "We need you now." Then the homeless guy gets behind the drums and was now the drummer. It was unbelievable - he was an annoying homeless guy, and then he was the drummer. I  had never heard the song Summer Babe, they played it. I bought the 7"of it from the singer. They had never toured the East Coast ever before that.

There'll be more of these as I remember shit I want to write down.

ATAXIA'S GREATEST HITS PT DEUX

Because my speech is slurred, and I have a ridiculous Boston accent, no one can understand me now. This isn't the first thing, but it's fucking annoying, every word I say now has two syllables, that is crazy. Put me in a bar with music playing and alcohol a-flowin, and good luck understanding a word I say. A few months ago, I saw a friend's show at El Rio, a guy that fucking bugs the shit out of me cornered me on the patio and was talking at me about some dumb shit. He couldn't understand a word I said, eventually I said "Hey, last night when I was fucking your mom, I got bored so I started fucking your sister, isn't that cool?" and he was like, 'Yeah right on.." He had no idea what I was saying but I knew he wouldn't understand any of it, but would say he did, that's the annoying part. Don't lie to me, if people can't understand me, I don't mind spelling it out or anything, we did that with my fucking mother. You should have seen her spelling out Al Pacino, we were all laughing our asses off.