I have been given the chore of writing five facts about myself and, in time-honored chain-mail fashion, select five other people to do the same. Thanks to Sara and the very long list of others who created the conduit by which this directive has reached me. Its actually kind of neat following the chain backwards.
Five Facts:
1. I actually have two blogs. I call my other blog a “notebook.” Actually, I call it “notebooks.” I put older blog entries into an archive that I call “The box on the top shelf of my closet.” Writing in this other blog, or “notebooks,” is the only thing that I have ever done consistently, other than archiving it in “the box on the top shelf of my closet.” I have tried to upload “notebooks” to the internet, but my CD-ROM drive keeps getting a paper jam. That last sentence wasn’t a real fact. I’m sorry.
2. I recently met an old guy named Joe who lives in a cave south of Eureka Springs, AR. The cave was actually pretty cool and Joe was a lot like Snuffy Smith, which was my grandfather’s favorite comic strip.
3. Science has ruined a lot of things for me. I often find myself depressed that there is zero probability of ever seeing a magic-using lizard man command his four ton Frost Beast to destroy an invading horde of inter-galactic murder-bots, unless its in a movie. That would make one bitchin’ movie, though.
4. I met the devil at the Battfield Inn in Vicksburg, MS, a quarter mile from the Civil War Park. He was a “talent scout” for Big Mama Studios in Memphis, TN, right off of Beale St. He had come to Vicksburg to stage a “talent contest.” Our drummer Charlie had decided that it was my band’s big chance for success. My problem with this line of reasoning is that it was completely fucking retarded. Unfortunately, my protestations hit a raw nerve in the band because Charlie really was completely fucking retarded. What I thought were well-reasoned arguments as to the inanity of “talent contests” in general actually served as acute observations of Charlie’s mental capacity, being as it was his idea. The band knew that by trading “a talent contest” for “Charlie” in the sentence “a talent contest is completely fucking retarded,” (a sentence that I actually said) they had their darkest view of Charlie revealed. It was a watershed moment. So we loaded our van and drove down to the Battlefield Inn, where we met the Devil. He had a goattee, male pattern baldness, and the remnants of a pony-tale. People paid him $100 dollars to sing two songs over a karaoke track. If someone’s family wanted to watch, it was $10 dollars a ticket. If your family or friends bought three or more tickets, the Devil would let you sing another song. One guy sang six songs. I heard the Devil tell someone with a video camera that the hotel didn’t allow filming without a permit, but that VHS copies of the performance would be available for an extra $25. There were lots of teen age girls dressed like Britney Spears and middle-aged men dressed like Garth Brooks. By the time it was our turn, I was pretty drunk, having been drinking since the moment I woke up in order to survive this terrible, terrible ordeal. I turned my amplifier to ten (we were the only people with instruments) and destroyed the pawn shop guitar that I had brought special for the occasion. After we were through, no one clapped, except for a big biker in the back, who I’m pretty sure was drunk too, who stood up and hollered, “Fuck Yeah!” Oddly, we were declared the winners. The Devil handed Charlie a photo-copied certificate for ten free hours of studio time at Big Mama’s. I later saw the devil quietly handing out certificates to all the participants. The next week, Charlie tried the phone number on the photo-copied cerrtificate. It was disconnected. The physical address for Big Mama’s turned out to be a parking garage. The band broke up soon afterwards, for obvious reasons. An interesting fact about the Battlefield Inn is that they have more parrots on the premises than any other hotel in Mississippi.
5. I have watched three people die. When I was two years old, I saw my brother get crushed by a tree trunk. It is my first memory. I remember my mom’s face framed by the Sun as she vainly tried to push the tree trunk off of him. I remember watching as his legs stopped kicking. When I was eighteen, I saw a man shoot another man in the head. This was in New Orleans on Annunciation St. somewhere near Clay Playground at 3 A.M. I saw the man’s brains spray out. I was about a block away and I ran as fast as I could. When I was thirty, I saw my wife’s grandfather die. It was the most peaceful thing I may have ever seen. He died in his bed surrounded by his family with his wife cradling him in her arms. The walls were painted blue and were nothing like asphalt under a street lamp or the terrible pain of watching helplessly as your mother tries to wrench herculean action from her too-small frame so that your brother’s crushed-in chest will continue to breathe.
That last one reads a bit heavier than I meant it to. But what are you gonna do? Some things in life suck. For instance, I know a CPA who adds “-izzle” to the end of all his words when he gets drunk, which is pretty sucky because he is a CPA. Wait, that’s SIX facts. Dammit!
