Month: July 2017

In grad school, I took a web design class. I’m not a visual person, but wanted to learn how the internet worked. The teacher was an earnest, older Asian dude who assigned a mock website, for each of us to create, called “My Awesome Life.” But at the time my life was not awesome. In the middle of a breakup, drinking too much, with insomnia, I would spend nights at my writing desk, with wine, drawing stick figure cartoons, and finding them greatly amusing.. My 3 stick figures were a guy, his girlfriend and her dog having silly arguments, but the dog was the only logical one, so he would always break the tie, usually for her. I thought these cartoons would make an awesome mock website. The teacher was horrified.. poorly-drawn stick figures, a painful relationship… Why?! He suggested a cheery website, with a future wind-surfing trip I might take, would be better. Our culture clash began to amuse the students so he let me be. And, at that time, despite his disappointment, a solid B- did make my life more awesome.

My bass player always had a trick up his sleeve. He arrived at the gig with his drinking buddy, to whom he owed twenty bucks. We knew his “borrow from Peter to pay Paul” method, so we avoided them. He began chatting up tables, and bringing them pitchers of beer. I asked what was up. He explained, “Easy, I’ve got a tab here, so I put pitchers on it. Each table gets a dollar off, if they pay me cash. Then I pay my bar tab at the end of the month.. So it’s win-win.” Soon his pockets were full, his friend paid, and he threw one more pitcher on that tab for himself, and the band!

Sometimes your brain knows something before you do. My dad’s roommate at the Nursing Home was a tall, hulking 6’5″ ex-cop. One day he exited my Dad’s room wearing an extremely small, skin-tight, track suit. My brain knew those were probably my Dad’s clothes, and that my Dad, at 5’8″, was likely wearing the large, flowing attire of an intimidating ex-cop. As I entered, he smiled, in a king-sized sweatsuit on the large throne chair.. Or maybe like a medium-sized bug in a rug. The staff apologized for switching their clothes, crediting a new employee, who had promptly quit. We searched his dresser for better stuff, but most had fallen victim to the dreaded laundry system. They suggested I check Lost and Found in the basement, so I headed down into the bowels, finding bounties of clothes’ racks, but nothing with my Dad’s name. The nurse said anything without a name “written in Sharpie” was up for grabs. So grab I did. There was nice new stuff, and many suburban Boston folks didn’t bother labeling, having “made it” from the poor-house to a Cul-De-Sac. My Dad was soon Best-Dressed in the Nursing Home, and after a few more shopping-sprees downstairs, we sent him off to meet his maker in grand fashion.

My plan was to write a big-hit book like “On the Road,” play pop music and have a normal life. Not a great plan, but having made the crazy trip from Boston to SF, getting coffee up on Haight St. seemed like a good next step. As I headed down our apartment stairs, a handsome Jamaica guy, painting our vaulted hallway, greeted me from above. I offered him some Sensimilla from Humboldt County, and he came down for a break. We lit up, and he told me he was a “hood famous” guitar player, but laughed, “Look at me now. I’m a painter!… By the way, if you need work, King Rasta, in the restaurant downstairs has odd jobs and pays cash, if you can find him!” So I headed down there to wait for the King, and sip sweet Blue Mountain coffee, but he yelled a final thing, echoing through the San San Frisco cavernous hallway, “The West is the best, but the East holds the lease.”

The elders felt the freshman pledges were too soft and domesticated, so they sprung into action on Valentine’s day. They chose one nauseatingly “lovey-dovey” frat pledge, who’d bought an oversized heart box of chocolates for his sweet classmate. Sneaking into his room, they located the giant heart-box and carefully sliced the cellophane along the back, opened it and quickly ate the chocolates. They had scavenged the frat house for replacements, and once the box was packed full of suitable “stuff,” they replaced the cellophane, so it looked unopened, and headed off to the dining hall to await his public gifting and celebration of love. The chocolates cost him a little, but the looks on their faces, when she opened the giant heart-box full of carpet lint, gym socks, cigarette butts, recycled condoms and old pizza, were priceless.

I accidentally left the heavy-metal Christian songwriter’s demo out in the loft, with “Demons of the Devil” on it, the song about his pets climbing on the furniture, and it became a HUGE hit among my drunk roommates. They would play it non-stop, sing the chorus while entering a bar, and demanded that he join the band. They visited him downstairs, in the adult bookstore where he worked, and he gave them free biker-chick magazines, from the discount rack. They taped some of those pics up on the walls of my loft, with much amusement, and added more suggestive leather mag girls, for spice. I told the Christian guy to stop giving them that crap, and encouraging the design project, but he said drunk guys were the best for business, because they always came back, loaded and later, for more. Then he smiled, and told me that my bass player had just purchased a Blow-Up Doll!! I headed immediately to the bar to find out more. I began questioning the Bass-man slyly, saying I was so out of breath, I could barely blow up a balloon.. And, wasn’t he tired of inflated egos?.. Are there any real girls in this town?.. but, got back only blank stares from him. So finally, I asked him directly, and he rolled his eyes, the memory of a drunken doll-purchase returning, “Oh, that damn thing?? It LEAKS like Hell!.. And I’m taking it back.”

It’s good to be environmentally conscious, even if you’re a hard drinker. My buddy had his own machine shop, and would put toxic chemicals in his van for recycling, but then stop at the bar, and forget they were there. So, while saving the Earth, he was a menace to anyone within a two mile radius. One day the cops pulled us over, as we were leaving a downtown bar, but they found us not very drunk, due to slow service, so were heading to a better bar in Pawtucket. The cops were determined to bust us for something, so they started searching the van. I warned them it was a hazardous waste wagon / rolling toxic dump, but they just flashed skeptical smiles. My buddy pointed to a stack of permits for the chemicals, but they ignored that. We stood anxiously until the junior cop jumped violently from the back door, shaking one hand rapidly. We thought he’d been burned, but he was holding a used oil filter instead, oozing black, gritty, oil, from a rag, onto his pants and shoes. The senior cop looked down, into the black puddle on the ground, reflecting the sky-glass tower of the Providence Place Mall, and said, “So.. you boys heading out of town?” “Yeah,” we said. “Well” he replied, “you’d better get going.” As we rode up 95 my buddy smiled, saying, “I need to recycle that oil too!”

For a songwriter, analyzing songs is key. When I lived in the loft downtown, there was an adult bookstore downstairs, and a songwriter who worked there as a sales clerk. To my surprise, he was also a hardcore Christian. He had a powerful singing voice and wrote in a heavy metal style. Clean cut, from the rural south, he despised city living, but thought we should collaborate, calling us “city mouse” and “country mouse.” He gave me a demo of his original song, called “Demons of the Devil.” I listened, as his amazing tenor-baritone jumped octaves, into falsetto, then descended devilishly, growling into Hades. The lyrics started typically, “Demons of the Devil / They come into your House,” but then took a turn, with “They climb upon your furniture / Lie across your couch.” The furniture theme continued.. with dining room and bedroom sets demonized in following verses. I praised his melody and vocals, but wondered why he used all the home-furnishing imagery. He explained the song was about his pets, who refused to obey his strict “no furniture” rule, and were incorrigible, helping him understand why God didn’t allow animals into the kingdom of Heaven.