Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I should have known you'd bid me farewell...

Greetings earth people! I’m at a bar with a baby, and a dog just pissed on the floor and another dog is drinking said piss. It’s a wild scene. The bar is closed, and we’re waiting for shwarmas. It’s noonish. I’m eating beer nuts and drinking Crystal Geyser, which is water, so save your sermons, religious dickheads and various parade shitters…Well, in fairness, I’m also snorting Heroin, which, let’s be honest, it’s not gonna make the shwarmas any more delicious…But whatever. I mean, nothing says ruining your appetite like a pint glass full of beer nuts and a little sweet Georgia brown. Heh. Funny story, four fifths of the original starting lineup of the Harlem Globetrotters were deep in the horse, and that’s why they decided to use that theme song. Again, heh. Some other great Americans who used heroin include Thomas Edison, Mahatma Ghandi and Miles Davis. In unrelated local news, tomorrow’s supposed to be the coldest day in the last fourteen years in Chicago, so there’s that.
Zoinks.
Okay, I’m not really sitting around doing heroin, I don’t fuck with anything that makes you constipated (except air travel and cheese)…and no, Ghandi isn’t American, but everything else is true. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been going through all the jobs I ever held in an attempt to figure out where I went wrong in life. However, I don’t know which job to tell you guys about next. Okay, for a few years I worked as a dj on a wacky morning zoo. I went by the name Zany Gary (after my boss at the Record Exchange) and it was my job to get people psyched up to go to work. You know the scene, phony phone calls, celeb interviews, the whole thing. Best interview I ever did was with Cybil Shepherd. After a little baiting and goading, she won fifty bucks off me by fitting an entire eggplant in her vagina using nothing but her hands and a canister of spray butter. I know what you’re thinking, but whatever. It was the station’s money, and besides, it made for great radio.
Another great moment on the air was when I got my big fat sidekick, Sweaty Pete to take a shit in a police station waiting room on a Monday morning. Oh, man, did he ever get a beating. First from the trannies waiting to get booked on public felching charges and then later, by the cops, who, in a great moment of corporate synergy crammed an éclair up Sweaty’s ass while we were on the phone broadcasting it all. My sound guy, Glen, was laughing so hard that he literally popped all the blood vessels in his eyes. Glen was sick like that, though. His wife (who had lost her left leg riding one of those super dangerous three wheeler ATV’s in the 80’s. She had this really crappy fake plastic leg with a red high heel just painted onto the bottom…it was awesome) used to call him at work and you could just hear her yelling and screaming about god knows what right through the phone. He’d almost be in tears, and then, next thing you know, he’s in his office just moaning and grunting through blubbering sobs. I’m not saying he was crying and whacking off to the memory of his wife shaming him in front of his coworkers or anything, but that’s what it sounded like.
The dream died one September morning (I remember it was the week of my birthday) when we were on the air and we had two midgets wrestle in a kiddie pool filled with jellied pig dicks. The black guy was winning, when our station manager busted in and put a stop to the whole thing. I got suspended and during my suspension the station switched to a country western format and suddenly Zany Gary was out of a job.
Last I heard, Glen was working at the DMV and Sweaty Pete was managing this Tanning salon/video store in boystown. Who knows? Who cares, honestly?
After that, I was pretty depressed for a while, but then my friend Eric told me about this opportunity to work with him ripping asbestos out of unfinished basements and putting up drywall. I’d never done anything like that before, but he assured me that it was only ever gonna be the two of us down there, we could make our own hours, lie on our timesheets, drink beer, and make 20 bucks an hour. So, you know, duh.
We had a little tiny radio that just played the oldies station. It was during this time in the basements that I developed a love for ‘the Mighty Quinn’ and “Red Rubber Ball”. There were others for sure. I also developed a love for Velveeta Shells and Cheese and beers, both of which we consumed religiously at the end of each work day. I don’t know if you guys have ever tried beers, but man…can’t recommend them enough. Velveeta shells and cheese are good too, but man, they’ll make you a lard ass, so be careful.
I don’t remember why I stopped working the drywall job…I actually think that I stopped when the Lawrence Arms (my band) went on our first extended tour. Since our first tour was 8 weeks long and our second one started up after just a week off and was thirteen months long, there wasn’t really time for shells and cheese, asbestos, old style or the Mighty Quinn…sigh. All great things come to an end, I guess.
Okay, my friend Toby just started playing American Steel in here, and my baby seems like he’s waking up, so I’m gonna get the fuck out of here. More in my saga of questionable employment tomorrow.

4 comments:

Eric said...

this blog was great. I really need to try that beer stuff

Anonymous said...

how the hell does any person tour for 13 months and not go completely bonkers?

Anonymous said...

The entire morning zoo job sounded like you just wrote a generic idea of what it would be like to work that job and I have no clue if you just got bored and made it up or if you actually worked there.

RockerByeBaby said...

Thats what I was thinking... 13 month tour? omg...