Shits ri·dic·u·lous: The Glamours Of Playing Punk

Evening ladies and gents! Damon and I just got home from playing a show in Fort Wayne. I know you're all dying to know how it went and hear my hilarious spin on things, so I'll cut the foreplay skip the cuddling and never call you again.

Here's how the day was planned to go: I cut out of work early, we drive up to Ft. Wayne, melt faces with rock and roll, get paid bajillions of dollars and retire in the tropics. The way things actually went down were far more interesting. About one hour outside of Indianapolis the radio starts to cut out and it becomes apparent that either our battery or alternator is slacking off. We pull off to an auto parts store, after some poking around under the hood and some phone calls it was determined that the alternator was to blame. At this point we're not late but if we try to replace the alternator we will be, so we decide to power through and fix the car once we're back in Indy. We drive on, and a few miles from the venue as we pull off the interstate the power cuts out again. At this point we decide that, fuck it, we'll just have our friend Pete Dio tow the trailer to the venue, we'll stay the night and deal with the van early in the morning and I'll make it to work maybe half and hour late or so. The only problem with this plan is, Pete doesn't have a trailer hitch. Now things have gotten a bit stressful, we were supposed to be on stage about ten minutes ago and we have no idea how to get our gear to the bar.

Enter Mike.

Mike is the gentleman who pulls over to help us, he's got a trailer hitch and he'd be more than happy to tow our gear wherever we'd like provided we give him gas money. Sure he knows where the bar is! Hell, he was just there the other night. Let me paint a picture for you here guys, Mike is driving an extremely run down canary yellow pick up truck. There's a woman in the middle seat, and a black kid (mike and the woman are both white) in the passenger seat who I never heard speak a word. The bed of Mike's truck is ridded with trash; two lamp shades a broom handle, a broken chair, a stepladder and so on. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, mike's on meth. Yeah, hopped up, bad teeth and all. At this point in the game we're all pretty stoked that we're gonna get to play so we agree, we'll pay mike twenty bucks, he'll take our trailer to the venue, and Mister Dio will pick up the rest of the band. Now, you all know me. In addition to being a dashingly good looking and charming man about the town, I'm famous for my grand ideas, and as I thought about our plan, one occurred to me. "Pretzel," I thought to myself "habitual meth users are known for stealing to support their habit. Someone should probably go with Mike to make sure that our gear doesn't end up in a pawn shop." I speak up, saying that someone should probably go with Mike to unload into the bar. Mike agrees, soon I'm in the bed of the truck and we're on our way. A block away Mike leans out the window and yells "Hey man, I'm gonna go the back way." Now an idea starts to form in my head, sure the contents of the trailer are valuable, but on the black market I'm pretty sure the contents of me are too. As we drive I get more and more worried. We're driving and there's not many retail spots around, just a lot of abandoned factories, and every time we get about two blocks away from flashing police lights Mike slows to roughly ten miles an hour and turns off onto a different street. I start to look around the bed of the truck for anything I can use as a weapon because now I'm convinced that my drums are gonna end up in some thirteen year old kid's basement and my kidneys are gonna end up in his dad. Finally we arrive, I pay Mike, who offers to tow the trailer again tomorrow because, "y'all pay well" and eventually the rest of the band arrives.

The show ended up being great. Lots of beer was spit, lots of beer was drank, we ran into a bunch of people we knew, and at the height of our drunkenness we all slurred a rendition of Olympia WA. with our new friends, it was very Irish drinking song-ish.

Cut to the next morning, we've overslept by a lot. At the most, I'm gonna make it back for about half the workday, but there's still hope that I can slip in unnoticed. Thundernuts (awesome, I know) the Drummer from Riverbottom happens to be a mechanic, and helped us put in a new alternator. We thank him and get on our way. roughly a half hour into the drive my boss calls, he's quite pissed at the amount of work I've missed and informs me that I shouldn't come in for a couple of days. Ordinarily, not a big deal, but I'm pretty broke at the moment and can't really afford to miss three days of pay. So, a bummer to be sure, but hey, I knew the risks and I'll get by. The upside to being told not to come in was that now I had time to go eat delicious cheesy hash browns at IHOP.

Oh yeah, and we found the awesomeness below this at a gas station on the way back.