Shit From an Old Notebook

Fundamental Illness: A Thing About My Two Sack of Shit Uncles

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

TW: Child abuse, domestic violence

“If you don’t say what you want, what’s the sense of writing?” – Jack Kerouac
“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” – Henry David Thoreau

My mom was the third youngest of nine children – seven girls and two boys. Fourteen years separates the oldest from the youngest. All of her siblings were married at least once, and four of her sisters gave birth to sixteen children over the course of approximately twenty years, with one uncle contributing two children of his own. The result of this mathematical clusterfuck is a confounding multi-generational group of aunts, uncles, and first cousins (plus a bunch of once-removeds). I’m the second-youngest of the first cousins, and my oldest first cousin is nearing seventy. Her oldest daughter is less than one year younger than me, which is perilously close to fifty. It’s all very confusing, and the only reason I’m sharing this information is to provide you with some background with regard to the poem I’m gonna share shortly.

Here’s some more poem-related context : my mom was raised in a very backward-thinking fundamentalist church in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. When I say “backward-thinking,” I mean that the women aren’t allowed to speak for themselves unless their husband1 says they can. When I say “fundamentalist church,” I mean that they think the creation story is a factual account of a literal event, and it doesn’t even occur to them to wonder what “King James Version” might actually mean. When I say “tiny town,” I mean that there are still fewer than seven hundred people living in the just under four-and-a-half square mile “unincorporated community” and “census-designated place.” And when I say “in the middle of nowhere,” I mean that it takes twenty minutes to drive to the downtown square of the nearest city-by-definition, and driving to the closest bigger city will set you back an hour,2 and who wants to drive for an hour just to end up in Indianapolis?

“Right now my future’s in the hands of them boys down at Firestone, stuck in Indianapolis, feelin all alone.”

I thank every god anyone ever thought up that Mom left the church when she was pregnant with me, but since she didn’t sever ties with any of her family, and since my older sister continued to attend that church, I was still raised very church-adjacent.3 I know some things about that church, and nearly all of those things are not good. Here’s one of the things I know about that church, by way of example: way back when I was a baby, one of my aunts filed for divorce because her husband was a physically and verbally abusive piece of shit, and the church’s response was to ask her to leave, because divorce is only okay in cases of infidelity. You’ll learn a little bit about one of the other not-good things shortly, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you weren’t surprised to learn it.

This is a “new and improved” version of a poem I posted on my Substack back in October4, and so far it’s the only thing I’ve posted there exclusively, as everything else thither has also been posted hither. I was afraid that someone in my family would see it, since this blog gets way more views than my Substack, but today I realized I truly don’t give a shit if anyone in my family sees it. Only like five of them even talk to me anymore, anyway. I suppose that number might decrease after this, which frankly would make me a sad, but fuck it. Let me just say this: if you have reason to believe you know who I’m talking about, you are correct. Fuck both of those sacks of shit and that bullshit church.

Anyway, after I decided to publish it here, I made some changes from the original published version, mostly stylistic. I prefer this version. It’s different, but it’s still kinda the same poem, like how the two versions of “Don’t Cry” are different, but they’re still the same song. I’m not saying this is as good as “Don’t Cry,” and it’s actually more different from the original version than the two versions of “Don’t Cry” are from each other, but I will say I can think of at least one Guns N’ Roses song that it’s definitely better than. See if you can guess which one I’m thinking of!5

Here’s the original version, if you wanna compare for some reason. I’m gonna stop now. Thanks for reading.

I Got These Two Sack of Shit Uncles

I got these two
Sack of shit uncles
Both by marriage
Both molested children
In their own family

Nieces
Stepsons
Sisters-in-law
Etcetera

It’s a big family
I’m sure there are
Plenty more
Who never
Spoke up

Neither of those
Sacks of shit
Ever faced
Any consequences

They both asked
The Church
For Forgiveness and
The Church
Forgave them and
Everyone went
About their business
Like there weren’t two
Sack of shit
Child predators
Among them

One of those
Sacks of shit is
Four years dead and
People say that
He was a Good Man
But they either
Don’t know
Or they
Don’t care
About what he did
To my mom and
My cousins and
My aunts and
Probably more and
Either way
They are all mistaken
He was not a Good Man

There are Good Men
And there child molesters
And never the twain shall meet

My sister believes
That sack of shit
Is in Heaven

With Jesus
And Grandma

Because he told
The Church
He was sorry

My sister believes
That our mother
And our sister
Are suffering in Hell
Because they both
Stopped attending
That fucked-up church
Of their own volition
And Died in Sin

But I tell you what

If either of those
Sacks of shit
Will ever be in heaven
I’d rather spend eternity
In Indianapolis

  1. Or their father, if they aren’t old enough to marry off yet. ↩︎
  2. In days of yore, it could easily take ninety minutes to get to Indianapolis if you hit the lights wrong. Now we’ve got an interstate runnin through our front yard, and we think we’ve got it so good. ↩︎
  3. This church adjacency also caused me to be terrified of Slayer, King Diamond, and all kinds of other cool shit for way too long. ↩︎
  4. I wrote it on my mom’s birthday. I know she would appreciate it. I also know she would never understand why I had to write it. ↩︎
  5. It’s “My World” from Use Your Illusion II (1991). ↩︎

These Are the Days of Our Lives: A Thing About Innocence (in a Sense)

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I hung out with my cousin Nate a lot when we were kids, but mostly only during summer vacation. If I had a weekday off school before I was old enough to stay home alone, I was most likely spending the day at my grandma’s house, which was located in the tiny town five miles north of the tiny town I lived in. Both towns were very much in the middle of nowhere,1 and both were tiny, but Grandma’s town was more of “town” in the sense that the population was mostly centrally located, even though both towns are still officially considered “unincorporated communities.” Nate lived one block away from my grandma, so when I spent my summer days there, I hung out with him (after Grandma and I ate lunch and watched Days of Our Lives), and the two of us often hung out with our cousin A.J., who lived down the hill from our grandma. When I got into my early teens, I didn’t have to go to Grandma’s house anymore, but I still went at least a couple days a week over the summer (pretty much whenever I could catch a ride from someone) because I still liked hangin out with Nate.

In the summer of 1991, he had access to a space where we could hang out and play his cheap guitar through his even cheaper practice amp without having to worry about disturbing anyone. We set up there and made a lot of noise at least one day a week that entire summer. On one of those days we recorded what I suppose one might refer to as a demo tape, if one were feeling especially generous, and had maybe never heard another demo before. Most of it is Nate on guitar and me on drums, in the sense that we turned two 44-gallon Rubbermaid trash cans upside down so we’d have something to beat on with Nate’s drumsticks. We also took turns shouting random things in our most metal voices, which really weren’t very metal at all. I played some of the guitar you can hear on the tape, in the literal sense of the word “play” as a verb, and when I was beating on the guitar, Nate was beating on the trash cans.

A time machine to the twentieth century.

Nate’s mom walked in the room while we were listening to our tape at his house for the first time, and Nate asked her what she thought. Without hesitation, she responded “sounds like some kinda mental illness,” which we thought was awesome, and so we decided to name our band Mental Illness. Around this same time, I was reading Metal Maniacs magazine every chance I got, and they had been writing a lot about this scary new thing called “death metal,” which was really only “scary” in the sense that I was scared of everything, and “new” in the sense that I lived in the middle of nowhere, and the news was finally just getting to me. While I was scared of it, I was also fascinated by these bands with names like Carcass and Napalm Death and Cannibal Corpse and Entombed and Pungent Stench, and I eventually talked Nate into changing our name to Vomit, which I thought sounded much cooler and more death-metal.

I thought the title was hilarious in a way that only a fourteen-year-old dingus could.

I suspect my inability to create a proper logo for Mental Illness also played into my desire to change the name, at least a little bit. It contains way too many letters for my novice-level art skills.

This is the only surviving evidence of my aforementioned inability to create a proper logo for Mental Illness, but I think it does a pretty good job of confirming my suspicions. It also serves as evidence of my lifelong tendency to give up when things get difficult, as mentioned previously in these pages.

The odd thing about my desire to lean into more of a death metal aesthetic is that I hadn’t even listened to any of those bands at that point, I just thought their names were cool. Aside from its existence as a concept, death metal played no part in the music we made. In fact, music played pretty much no part in the music we made. I suppose it’s possible that we made an experimental noise masterpiece, but I’m not familiar enough with the noise genre to know for sure.

I didn’t actually get around to designing and making the cover for this tape until the following spring, which is why the copyright is 1992.

“Ballad of Tipper Gore”was inspired by the PMRC, which was our mortal enemy back then. “Brain Damage” is our most progressive song, in the sense that it goes on quite a bit longer than the others. “Natas” is our fastest song, and was definitely inspired by our shared love for Anthrax and Nuclear Assault. “B.N.L./Nuke” is a very percussion heavy song, and was inspired by my high school. Also, not a single one of these songs could actually be considered actual songs, in the sense that they have a structure, or a beginning, or an ending, or would warrant a track number.

I got a lot of mileage outta that Vomit logo design.
This is from 1994.

There is actually some evidence of musical influence on the tape, if you know where to listen, but I would never blame anyone for not listening long enough to pick out those influences. We were both fans of Van Halen, and their hit “Poundcake” inspired us to run a drill over the guitar pickups a few different times. We also dipped our toes into the blues in a couple of spots, but that was really just a rip-off of Blind Melon Chitlin’, who we’d both heard on a Cheech & Chong tape that Nate swiped from his older brother Kent.2

So ridiculous.

There also exists an undercurrent of Satanism-as-shock-tactic, even though that scared me at the time. Nate was raised in (and I was raised on the edges of) a pretty backward-thinking church, but that’s a topic for another time. What’s pertinent to our demo tape is that Nate was definitely using it as an opportunity to rage against his upbringing, and I was going along for the ride so my cousin would continue to think I was cool. Today, Nate is one of a handful of cousins3 who still talks to me, so I guess it worked.

“Natas” = “Satan” spelled backwards. See how clever we were?

Our cousin A.J. is credited in the liner notes as “backing vocals” and “drum tech,” the latter of which makes me think maybe he’s the one who had the idea to turn the trash cans upside down. A.J. definitely brought a video camera to our jam space one time. If that tape still exists, it contains footage of my first (and last) stage dive, directly off the two-foot-high stage and onto some thin-ass carpet on top of a concrete slab. Not my smartest idea, but also not my dumbest.

The summer of ’91 ended up being our last hurrah, in a way, even though we didn’t realize it at the time. Nate is a year older than me, so when I turned fifteen a month before summer vacation the next year, he was already driving, and his dad made him get a job. Chalk it up as another victory for the crushing wheel of existence over the fleeting nature of youthful innocence.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this lil trip down memory lane with me.

  1. As far as I know, the town I grew up in never got cable television. If it wasn’t for satellites, those people would still only have three or four channels, and then only when the sun and the wind and the clouds are just right. ↩︎
  2. Nate also swiped the tape we recorded our demo on from my cousin Kent, who also happened to be the person who got us into Van Halen. He likely still has no idea how influential he was to a couple of teenage dipshits. ↩︎
  3. Out of nineteen first cousins across both sides of my family. ↩︎

“I Told Ya to Stack Em”: A Meditation on a Kindergarten Bully

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I shared a version of this story on my facebook page thirty-four million years ago, so if you’re reading this now and we were facebook friends back in the Eocene Epoch, you may already have read it, though I suppose it’s more of an anecdote, as most of my stories are. Anyway, I’m gonna tell it again now because regardless of whether it’s a story or an anecdote, I think it’s funny and absurd and just a little bit tragic. You can read it again if you want, I’m not the boss of you.

When I was in kindergarten, we sat in a sort of alphabetical fashion at five or six hexagon-shaped tables placed round the large, well-lit room. In theory, I shared my table space with up to five other kids my age or thereabouts. In reality, I shared my table with four other kids my age and one kid who seemed somehow older.

I was one of the youngest people in my class, so most of the other kids were actually older than me, but “Timmy” must’ve been at least thirty years old.

One fateful day, we were instructed to stack our crayons in the center of the table so the assigned helpers for that week could collect them and put them away in the cabinet before we all went to lunch.

Timmy turned to the hapless chump on his right and said “stack em.”

Eons passed, then Timmy spoke again.

“Stack em.”

The woebegone wretch let out a sigh, then placed his crayons in the center of the table and stared at the box. Timmy grew a foot taller, then turned to his left.

“Stack em.”

This hopeless boob was smaller than me, and he was already stackin em before the words even got all the way out of Timmy’s mouth. Timmy’s shoulders spread, a condor taking flight. The first kid was still staring silently at the growing stack, but everyone else followed Timmy’s glare to the next unfortunate lummox, second from his right, and also, as it happened, my immediate left.

“Stack em.”

She paused briefly, then stacked em before Timmy had to repeat himself. Next, the star-crossed doofus to my right. He hesitated a hair too long, and suddenly Timmy was eighteen years old, and his voice was a one-eyed possum climbing out of a storm drain after a flash flood.

“Stack em.”

The forlorn dolt stacked em dutifully, and I suddenly became aware that everyone was looking at me. Well, not the first kid, he was still stuck in the swamp of his very first existential crisis. Everyone else was looking at me, though. My short life flashed before my eyes. It was mostly Tom & Jerry cartoons, Peanuts comics, Kool-Aid, Count Chocula, and my favorite song.

It’s still one of my favorites.

I’d lived a pretty good life, right up until that exact moment, when a twenty-five-year-old man named Timmy was staring dead-eyed into the depths of my soul from across that table. His nose was caked with snot.

“Stack em.”

Fighting every instinct, I met his eyes and mustered my meanest glare. For the first time, I noticed a scar across the bridge of his nose.

“I said stack em.”

I began to sweat through my shirt. Timmy had grown bigger than my dad, who was the second biggest thing I had been aware of up to that point. His eyes were razors. His gritted teeth, rusty barbed wire.

“Hey bud! I said to stack em!”

I wallowed in my defeat for a single moment before admitting it to Timmy, or to my fellow travelers on the Miserable Doofus Express. I took a deep breath, I swallowed my pride (along with about three gallons of throw-up), I looked Timmy in his coal black eyes, and I stacked em with enough force to level the maple tree in our front yard, which was the biggest thing I was aware of up to that point.

Timmy was now ten feet tall. He triumphantly placed his crayons on top of the stack and croaked “I told ya to stack em,” and then he died of old age.

I made up that last part, but it’s a peculiar fact that forty-four years later, my sole memory of Timmy is “stack em.” I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it seems he was only in my class for one day, which happened to also be picture day, as he appears in my kindergarten yearbook. Thing is, I scribbled his picture out pretty bad with a red magic marker, so I have to assume that he was in my life for more than the three minutes it took him to establish stacking dominance over a gang of luckless goobers.

Look at this monster.

When I shared this story on facebook, I decided to see if I could find Timmy, and brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you that I found Timmy. Suffice to say that while he may have been victorious when it came to stackin crayons, all signs indicate that I ended up above Timmy on the big stack that we call life, so suck it, Timmy.

Thanks for reading. Tell a friend, why don’tcha?

“Thanks! It’s a Piece of Shit, But I’m Trying My Best”: A Thing About Giving Up, Giving In, and Givin’r

/ Rev. Joel / 1 Comment

I’m officially seeing a therapist for the first time in my life. I’m pretty annoyed with myself for waiting so long, but better late than never, I suppose. I saw a counselor for a brief time in my early twenties, toward the end of a mild-to-moderate depressive phase. Talking to someone who hadn’t already heard all my complaints a million times helped a lot, so after three or four sessions, I started to feel a little better and more hopeful, and then my dumb 22 year old brain was all like “I’m cured!” and then I stopped going. Next thing I know more than a quarter-of-a-century has passed, but much to my surprise, life never stopped happening that whole time.

Celebrated American author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) liked to draw tombstones with profound and/or funny epitaphs. Based on my exhaustive research (which consisted of googling “Kurt Vonnegut tattoos” and perusing the first page), this one from 1969’s Slaughterhouse Five is probably the most well-known of his tombstones, which makes sense, as Slaughterhouse Five is his most well-known novel.

Poo-tee-weet.

This tombstone drawing is my favorite. It’s from Breakfast of Champions (1973), which is the first Vonnegut book I read, and which remains my favorite. His drawings helped me feel more confident about drawing whatever I feel like drawing, and about not getting hung up on my lack of artistic abilities.

Drawing of a tombstone by Kurt Vonnegut. The name is "Somebody", the dates are "Sometime to Sometime", and the epitaph reads "He Tried."
So it goes.

Thing is, when I look back on my life, I see a lot of examples of me simply not trying, and if I may use the parlance of my childhood, that’s dumber’n hell. I’ll get interested in something until it gets difficult, and then I’ll just quit.

One Example: my homeboy Travis taught me how to play an E-minor chord on my first guitar, and later he managed to both figure out a slower version of the opening riff from Helmet’s “In the Meantime” and pass his knowledge on to me, but eventually my hands started to hurt, so I stopped trying.

“Earth tone suits you.”

Another example: Travis got a set of drums, and I got a bass, along with a practice amp and a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal.1 We made a hell of a racket in my parents’ garage for a while, and we had a couple of our buddies jam with us on guitar while we tried to build a complete band that could maintain a tune for at least a couple of minutes. At some point I heard “Maxwell Murder” by Rancid, and then I decided I didn’t wanna play bass anymore because there was no possible way I’d ever be as good as Matt Freeman.

“He ain’t Jack the Ripper, he’s your ordinary crook.“

A third example: I owned an electric keyboard/synthesizer the whole time I owned my guitar and my bass. I figured out how to play “Hot Cross Buns” all up and down the keyboard by jabbing one key at a time, like when Schroeder is fed up with Lucy’s nonsense.

I could never figure out how to jab out “Jingle Bells,” sadly.

I was able to morph “Hot Cross Buns” into “Mary Had a Little Lamb” pretty easily. I fucked around with the presets every now and then (“Bossa Nova” was my favorite), but after a while I always got tired of not knowing how to play it, so back under the bed or into the closet it would go, until I finally gave it away about ten years ago.

One more example: learning how to deal with life in healthy ways takes effort, and so I quit trying to learn. Fuck that. I’m learning now. And I’m gonna crack the nut that is my anxiety if it’s the last thing I do.

Speaking of non sequiturs, the state of this cursed timeline we inhabit has got me feelin some ways lately that I’ve been unable to put into words, so I’ve been sketching, doodling, and kind-of drawing more these past few months. I’ve always been a picture doodler, and later, when I got into heavy metal, I became a band logo doodler as well. My journals are full of doodles, dating back to the one I had to keep as an assignment in fifth grade, but it’s been awhile since I’ve been more artsy than fartsy in my journals. When it comes to drawing, I very much do not consider myself an artist, but I’ve definitely gotten better over the years, just like I would’ve gotten better at the guitar, the bass, the piano/keyboards, the trumpet, and all the other shit I’ve given up on due either to lack of natural aptitude or lack of positive attitude.2

What I’m trying to say is that I’m tired of not trying, and I’m tired of acting like I have to be good at something to bother with doing it.

“Ya just go out, and ya give’r.”

Speaking of which, I’m gonna share some of my drawings and doodles from the past few months. Maybe you’ll like them, maybe you won’t. All I know is I’m gonna keep making them for as long as I enjoy it, and I’ll probably share more of them here at some point, but maybe I won’t.

What a man, what a man, what a man. What a mighty good man.

Without further ado…

I made this lil ghoul buddy on a shopping list the day before Valentine’s Day. He’s supposed to be wearing a hood, like on a robe, Grim Reaper-style, but as I mentioned already, I’m not an artist.
I did this one night while Sheila and I were drinking bourbon and watching music videos. I was only half paying attention, and I accidentally kinda made a spiral effect, which I thought was pretty cool. A couple of them are self-portraits.
I’m a big fan of whatever this is.
I call this one “Oracle.” All eyez on me.
This one’s called “Flower Power.” The censored parts are not for your eyes.
This one is also a self-portrait. The beard is an indicator, but the sweat flying off the bulbous noggin is the real tell. I have no idea what I’m so goddamn smug about.
My blog doesn’t really look like that (most of the time).

I started writing this thing on January 24, with the Vonnegut stuff, and I had no idea where I was gonna go with it. I’ve opened the file a few times over the past nine days and revised and rewritten and added and deleted and cut and pasted and proofread and almost published, but today, right now, I’ve decided to quit fuckin around and just mash that “Publish” button already. It’s not like more than a handful of people are gonna read it anyway.

I still don’t really know where I’m going with it, but I’m gonna call it finished. I’m sorry if you were expecting a tidy conclusion, or an obvious unifying theme. You’re rarely gonna get either of those with me. If there’s a takeaway, I suppose it might be that five decades in, I’m finally ready to start really facing my fears. I intend to document the process here as much as possible. If you wanna check back in and follow along, that’d be cool. I’ll be here either way. Thanks for reading.

  1. I thought playing bass would be easier, because I wouldn’t have to learn chords. I’ve always been something of a dingus. ↩︎
  2. Bonus example: two completely different times in my life, I’ve started painting and then quit almost immediately because I don’t know how to recreate the things exactly the way I see them in my head. ↩︎

I Wanna Disconnect Myself: A Thing About the First Time I Met Henry Rollins (Slight Return)

/ Rev. Joel / 1 Comment

In the interest of posting somewhat regularly, I’m gonna share a thing here that was previously published on my old blog, Stay Heavy. I think it’s pretty funny, and maybe you will too. I did some light editing before I mashed that “Publish” button, on account of I’m a better writer now than I was eight years ago. I also added some YouTube clips and a few footnotes.

_________________________

The second time I met Henry Rollins was embarrassing for me, but only in retrospect. I somehow experienced very little embarrassment while it was happening, and frankly, the fact that I wasn’t too embarrassed from the first meeting to even try to talk to him a second time is very out of character, but depression can lead to poor decision making. I was definitely nervous, but I was also uncharacteristically confident in the moment, and that confidence is responsible for the better part of my retrospective embarrassment.

This song contains bibles full of truth.

I went with my buddy Owen to see Rollins Band in Cincinnati in the summer of 1999, and afterward, we hung around the bus because I wanted to give Mr. Rollins a copy of this self-printed collection of poems and journal entries I’d put together. I wish that last part wasn’t true.

My writing back then was heavily influenced by Rollinses writing, especially his earlier writings, and I put the book together during a real big sad time in my life.1 As if all the words inside the book weren’t embarrassing enough, I also included a hand-written note inside, encouraging him to contact me with any thoughts or feedback he might have. I wish that wasn’t true.

Here’s a sample:2

For E—–
You are the devil
You are evil
In its purest form
You crushed my pitiful heart
You left it bleeding and
Bruised and
Destroyed and
I hope You have a
Merry Christmas

That’s actually one of the few that I don’t hate, although I think it’d be funnier if the last line was “Happy birthday” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Dig how I capitalized “You” in the penultimate line. Only a true Poet could come up with something so profound.

The only part of the entire experience that does not currently embarrass me is the fact that he liked the title (All Aboard the Joel Train), which, as it happens, is the only part of the entire book (aside from the poem above) that does not currently embarrass me. Putting the book together helped me work through some shit, but I definitely wish I hadn’t given out so many copies so freely.

Watching this live on TV was a transformative experience. Immediately after the song ended, I went into my bedroom and called a girl up and asked her to prom and I didn’t even throw up once.

But we were talking about the first time I met Henry Rollins. That was embarrassing then and now, but it’s also pretty hilarious, and hilarity is why we’re here today.

A whole mess of us (Travis, Darin, Casey, and Casey’s cousin Stacey3) drove up to Indianapolis to see Rollins Band on their tour for 1997’s supremely underrated Come in and Burn. Skunk Anansie opened, and none of us knew what to make of them, although I never forgot their song “Yes It’s Fucking Political”. I’ve listened to them since, and they’re great. I’d definitely like to see them live again, with my more sophisticated middle-aged musical palette.

Still relevant.

Rollins Band was amazing. The crowd was great. Melvin Gibbses bass is still causing my insides to jiggle thirty years on. When the show ended, everyone (Travis and myself excluded) wanted to hang around the bus to try and meet the band, and especially Rollins.

Touch your fear, don’t be afraid.

I should point out that it’s not like Travis and I didn’t wanna meet Henry Rollins. Shit, we wanted to be his best friends. But as voracious readers of his writing and listeners to his music and spoken word performances, we knew that he wasn’t into the whole shaking hands/small talk thing (which I totally get – small talk is the fucking worst), and he wanted people to be happy with the band pouring their hearts and souls and guts out all over the stage (which I also totally get), and we didn’t wanna look foolish in front of Henry.

In short, we thought we were pretty fucking cool.

Anyway, we’re all hangin around the bus, along with some other like-minded fans, and the entire band comes out (sans Rollins), and they’re extremely friendly and more than happy to chat with us for a bit. I told Melvin he was a “bass god”, which embarrassed him, but I stand by that assertion. They all signed stuff for us, and it was cool, and then Rollins came out and began to make the rounds.

Casey showed him his driver’s license, which indicated that they have the same birthday (2.13), and Rollins said “cool, are you a genius too?” and we all laughed, and then everybody else talked to him, one after the other, and I made Travis let me go last to give me as much time as possible to think of something cool and memorable to say to the man who was, at the time, one of my idols, and frankly is one of the reasons I’m still here today.4

It finally comes down to me.

Go time. 

My Brain: Don’t be nervous. You’re cool. Say something cool.

My Voice: That was a really great show.

Rollins: Thanks very much, I appreciate that.

My Brain: You’re doin great. Just keep it cool.

My Voice: I really loved your part in The Chase. It’s like, the greatest movie of all time.

A lonesome train horn sounds in the distance. Otherwise, silence.

Rollins: Whoa.

My Brain: Jesus fuckin CHRIST.

My Voice: Um.

Rollins: Thank you, but you really should see more movies. Maybe check out A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s a lot better than The Chase.

My Brain: Jesusfuckinchrist.

My Voice: Um.

And, scene!

I swear upon all that is sacred and holy in the multiverse, I DID NOT EVER think The Chase was the greatest movie of all time, or even “like” the greatest movie of all time. Why did I tell Henry Rollins I thought that? Why did those words come out of my mouth?!

WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH ME?!?!

In case you are unfamiliar with the “greatest movie of all time”, here’s the synopsis from Wikipedia: “The Chase is a 1994 American action film directed by Adam Rifkin and starring Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson, depicting a wrongfully-convicted man who kidnaps a wealthy heiress and leads police on a lengthy car chase in an attempt to escape prison. It features Henry Rollins, Josh Mostel, and Ray Wise in supporting roles, with cameo appearances by pornographic film actor Ron Jeremy and Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Why yes, they do have sex while speeding down the freeway during the chase. That’s not even the dumbest part of the movie.

Rollins and Mostel play the cops who are in primary pursuit throughout the titular chase, and they have a Cops-style camera crew in the car with them. Rollins enthusiastically plays the role of Over-the-Top Asshole Tough Guy Cop, and is easily the most consistently entertaining part of the entire movie, which I have to say again, I have never once almost though it to be the greatest movie of all time, even though I told Henry Rollins I thought that.

If The Chase sounds like it could be a pretty fun and/or really dumb movie, that’s because it is in fact both,5 but I have to make sure I’m being crystal clear about this: as much I used to enjoy watching The Chase, and as much as I thoroughly enjoyed Henry Rollins’ performance as an over-the-top asshole cop, I have never once even considered considering The Chase to be anywhere near even the bottom of any list of “Greatest Movies of All Time”, past or present, but for some reason, I told Henry Rollins I thought that.

I’m sure Travis talked to him about John Coltrane or something cool like that, but Henry Rollins definitely left that encounter thinking I was an idiot, and I can’t say that he was wrong to think that.

_________________________

This concludes the previously published content of today’s post. Thanks for reading. Why not tell a friend? I’ll leave you with a live performance of my favorite song from Come in and Burn. Put on some headphones and let that rumbling groove help you get your shit correct.

You’ll always say you hate me, but you’ll watch me anyway. It’s a pain you can’t resist.
  1. I’ve already kinda started, but I’m almost ready to really dig into my wilderness years. I can’t promise it’ll be exciting, but I assure you it will be awkward. ↩︎
  2. This poem was previously published in a poetry anthology called In-between Days, which is also a story for another time. ↩︎
  3. Darin, Casey, and Stacey were in a pretty badass band called Circle of Illusions, and Travis and I were their unofficial sometimes roadies and Number One Fans. I have something brewing in my brain about Circle of Illusions, too. When it rains it pours, eh? ↩︎
  4. At this point in my life, I was less than one year away from my discovery of The Bouncing Souls, which I wrote about previously. ↩︎
  5. Really good soundtrack, too. ↩︎

Here’s What I Learned Living Under My Rock: A Thing About Working, Writing, and Getting By

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

My friend Ryan gave me a book a couple of years ago called Several Short Sentences About Writing, by a dude named Verlyn Klinkenborg. I may’ve mentioned it on this blog before, but that was maybe on Facebook instead, or maybe it was just in my head. The book discusses the importance of the humble sentence. It aims to get the reader/writer to think about each sentence as almost an entity unto itself. No sentence is any more important than the other, because the sentence really is all there is. Without the sentence, there would be no paragraph. There would be no literature. It’s an interesting book, and it’s helped me become more confident in my writing. I remain a bit embarrassed about making it public, yet I persist in the practice.

Before I go on, I gotta get this outta the way: Verlyn Klinkenborg! Whatta name! I recommend shouting “Klinkenbooooooooorg!” as you shake your fist angrily at a cold, empty, uncaring sky. It’s fun.

Homer Simpson shakes his fists at a cold, empty, uncaring sky above the Box Factory and shouts "Klinkenbooooooooorg!" while Bart Simpson's lucky red hat sits on top of a double-corrugated, eight-fold, fourteen-gauge box.
Like this. Frinkiac, you’ve done it again.

So anyway, I was showering earlier, listening to Drug Church and shaving my head, as I often do after work, and I started thinking about the fact that I practically never sit down and write, even though I love to write, and even though I know that writing makes me feel better. Writing has always made me feel better, so why don’t I do it more often? Like for real?

When tired is the entire sum, that shit just makes you tiresome.

But I was talking about Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I noticed the book on the shelf while I was getting dressed after my shower, and I was reminded of the humble sentence, and I crammed that memory together with my shower quandary and made a regular ol Frankenstein’s monster of a realization that I should sit down and write a few sentences, and see where it goes.

So far, right here.

I’ve been working in foodservice for almost 32 years now. (For the record, that’s 66.6% of my life so far spent preparing and/or delivering food to people. That’s both metal as fuck and a stone cold bummer.) For almost the entirety of my history as an employed human being, I’ve been keeping a journal in some form or another. I am in possession of dozens of my journals from as far back as late high school/early college. Sometimes I look through them. The reasons vary. One time I’ll be moved by nostalgia, one of my greatest enemies. The next, I’ll be in search of something hilarious I remember writing down, or the date of a concert. Maybe I can’t figure out what to write about, and I need some inspiration. It’s happened before.

Sometimes I’ll find a cool doodle I made, complete with song lyrics. I’m not sure what’s goin on here, other than a self-portrait of sorts, but I like it.

In this case, the song is “Disbelieve” by Drag the River.
Goddamn, whatta band!

A common subject in so very many of those journal entries is the fact that I don’t write often enough, and that I don’t wanna be working in foodservice when I’m 50. It’s recently come to my attention that I’m almost fifty years old. The way I figure it, in today’s economy, and going off the premise that we have at least two years left as a civilization, I’ve got maybe three options for not working in foodservice when I’m fifty goddamn years old. Here they are forthwith, in no particular order:

  1. Become dead.
  2. Become rich (preferably as fuck).
  3. Get into management (likely still foodservice, less standing, more meetings).

Thing is, as much as I dislike the foodservice industry, I’ve disliked every other industry I’ve worked in more. Retail, construction…I guess that’s pretty much it. I did some screen printing work for about a month in my early twenties. I enjoyed it, and my boss was cool, but I quit, on account of I didn’t like having to drive 30 minutes each way to work a second part-time job when my primary part-time job was driving around delivering pizza all night. What I’m saying is that where employment is involved, my current situation could be worse. It has been worse, even in the last couple of years.

So the new life plan I came up with in the shower is to keep workin for The Man and payin the bills until I can figure out how to get rich as fuck, and meanwhile to stop thinkin and talkin about writing, and sit the fuck down and write as much as I can, every chance I get, whether I show it to anyone else or not, just like I used to do all the time. Because I’m a writer, goddamnit, and I always have been. At best, I’ll write something I can feel comfortable sharing. At worst, I’ll feel better afterward.

“Remember, a writer writes, always.” – Larry Donner

That’s all I got for now. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends. And listen to Drag the River. You’re welcome.

Speaking of Daryl

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

My friend Chris made another comic out of one of my dumb stories. This is it. I like it a lot. The other one is fun too, but I like this one more. It’s also based on a true story. I apologize for the formatting. I don’t know how to make it better, and quite frankly I don’t care enough to take the time to figure it out right now.

Thanks for reading!

The Great Trumpet Will Sound

/ Rev. Joel / 1 Comment

I had a crush on the same girl from kindergarten through 5th grade. In grade two a few of my friends and I would play this game at recess where some of the girls would snatch the hats off our heads (usually after a swift kick to the balls) and run, and we’d try to catch them. I should mention that the sole reason we wore hats outside at recess was so the girls would kick us in the balls and take them off our heads. Why were we into that? Who came up with the idea? Seriously, what the sincere, actual fuck?

Anyway, I always wanted Angie to take my hat, because I liked her, but when she did, I could never catch her, because she was easily the fastest girl in our class. She was probably the fastest person in our class, period. Fuck, could she run. I always wanted to do whatever Angie was doing, because I liked her, and that’s what I thought liking someone was all about. Doing the same things, together, all the time.

So when I found out Angie was gonna play trumpet in 5th grade band, I had no choice but to beg my parents to get me a trumpet. They finally relented, scoring me a used trumpet on payments at a local music store. This was gonna be the answer, I thought…all my Angie-related dreams were about to come true, and it would all begin with me sitting next to her in band practice.

I ended up being accidentally kinda good at the trumpet (or I was better than the other 5th graders, anyway), so I quickly earned the first chair position, which immediately made me nervous. I’ve never wanted to be in charge of anything, and I don’t much care for being looked at, but I accepted my new role with the all grace and aplomb that a 10-year-old boy can exhibit.

For our annual Christmas concert that December, the 5th and 6th grade bands were combined into a Super Band (not its real name), I assume with the purpose of shortening the overall concert time, since there were also choir performances slated for pretty much every grade, and ain’t nobody got time for that. Since the bands were combined, I was seated to the left of the 6th grade first chair trumpet, Jackie.

One of the songs we were performing that night was “Carol of the Bells”, and I was tasked with the heavy responsibility of beginning the song 100% solo. I was nervous, but at the same time, I was as confident as I’ve probably ever been in my life. The time came, the band director indicated that the floor was mine, and I began to blow a perfect rendition. She quickly waved me to a stop, did something with her hands that seemed to indicate that I should be playing louder, and started things up again. I once again played flawlessly, and as loud as I could possibly play, and she once again waved me to a stop, and did the same thing with her hands again.

I was sweating through my clothes at this point, beyond embarrassed, and wanting nothing more than to simply disappear forever. I was just about to start playing a third time, even louder this time (I don’t know if that would even have been possible), when Jackie leaned over to me and said “you’re in the wrong key”. Turns out while I was playing the notes correctly, I was indeed playing in the wrong key, and the band teacher’s hand motions didn’t mean that I should play louder, they meant that I should be playing an octave higher.

Angie quit the trumpet after 6th grade, but my parents wouldn’t let me quit, as they’d paid a small fortune, relatively speaking, to satisfy my schoolboy crush – a crush that by then didn’t even exist anymore. I played on through 7th grade, at basketball games, concerts and the occasional football game, constantly regretting my shortsighted decision to learn how to play the trumpet.

Thankfully, my parents got tired of having to drive me to concerts and games, and upon completion of my 7th grade year, I was allowed to stop playing the trumpet. The cursed instrument went into our attic, where it stayed for the next decade, until I sold it to a former co-worker, and now…

I even had to google “key vs octave”. I still feel a mild twinge of panic when I hear “Carol of the Bells”, though. I’ll never forget that.

Pizza Monster: The Origin Story

/ Rev. Joel / 2 Comments

My pal Collin mentioned yesterday that he’d been reading this esteemed blog, and really wanted to know more about the time I ate 22 pieces of pizza. That story is the first of a few different instances of me becoming what the missus semi-affectionately refers to as “The Pizza Monster”. I’ll probably share the rest of those stories eventually, because they’re pretty funny, but for now, here’s the origin story of my alter ego, The Pizza Monster.

One night, about 30 minutes after finishing my supper (I don’t remember what we ate that night, but I can guarantee I ate seconds of everything, and probably thirds of some things), Travis called to see if I wanted to join him, his brother Tyler, and their mom on a trip to College Mall. I couldn’t turn down that offer – a chance to go to town on a school night? Fuck yeah that wide!

On the drive up, Travis told me we were also gonna go to Mr. Gatti’s after we were finished at the mall. At the time, I’d never been to a Mr. Gatti’s (or even heard of it), and said as much. Travis regaled me with tales of all-you-can-eat pizza, breadsticks, and cheesesticks, plus air hockey, Street Fighter II, skeeball, holy shit was I ever stoked! Travis mentioned that the last time he was there, he ate 20 slices of pizza. Before I even realized what was happening, I responded “I can eat more than that.”

Travis obviously accepted my challenge, and soon after – a mere 2 hours after I’d eaten essentially two full meals with my family – we began our contest. If you’ve ever been to Mr. Gatti’s, you know that not all their slices are cut evenly, so we placed no limitations on size, but we also didn’t purposely choose smaller pieces just to increase our count. We ate and ate and ate, and then we ate some more. When the final buzzer sounded, I’d eaten 22 slices, and Travis had eaten 23.

I want to take this opportunity to remind you that I’d eaten dinner not long before our journey began. We were also definitely guzzling root beers the entire time we ate. If I hadn’t begun the contest on a full stomach, who knows how much pizza I could’ve put away? I may still be there eating pizza to this day. 

Travis, by the way, stands at least 6’5″, and can still destroy some pizza to this day. About five years ago, I saw him devour two New York-style slices (each bigger than my certified XL head) like they were a couple of potato chips, and as recently as three years ago, he ate a large pizza and an order of breadsticks by himself.

As for me, I still wanna eat all the pizza in the world, and I still eat too much of it every single time I eat it (did I mention that I’m a Pizza Monster?), but I’ve never again come close to the glory of that day in 1993 when I consumed 2-3 days’ worth of calories in a mere 4 hours.