John Jughead Pierson's Blog, page 6

JUGHEAD INTERVIEWED

I had an extensive interview posted on a blog.  The interview turned out pretty well, minus a few errors on my inability to remember the linear-ness of the past and some truths from fiction.
The Last Temptation of John Jughead Pierson

A STATEMENT ABOUT THE MISUSE OF MY STATEMENT

A few years ago I posted a letter on the internet when I was informed by a fan that Screeching Weasel had reformed.  Though the break between me and Ben was complicated, and their is blame on both sides, it was Ben who made the final move to remove me from the band without my consent.  There is a complicated relationship between the entity known as Screeching Weasel and the corporation that was known as Weasels Inc.  Any twisting of the truth to make it appear as if I willingly stepped down from the band can only be derived from the confusion between the two.  I have for the past month been contemplating whether there is a reason to post an explanation, my interpretation of how it went down.  I am still undecided.  When it all happened, I did not want to add any further to the animosity that had already begun, and instead chose to try and continue my life free of legal battles and mudslinging in order to carry on with my creative life.  I imagine that Ben may have been aware of this tendency in me, seeing that in many ways, in regards to the band and the corporation, I was the accountant and he was the lawyer.  I had always accounted for things and he made it all sound ethical and skewed to our advantage no matter how ambiguous the details.  I do not have the fighter instinct, I do not see with clarity of mind a concrete path, and often this is to my detriment.

The aforementioned letter was recently reposted on the Screeching Weasel site for the 27 Year anniversary.  Once again I was not asked or even told by the forces that be, and was instead eventually informed by a fan.  I submitted a comment to the web post, which after a week so far has not been cleared for posting to the site.  We all know that sometimes it is better that the things we write in the moment, while still angry, do not get a chance to see the light of day.  I am constantly caught between wanting to engage in a debate and wanting to move on.  The gray is a place I am used to, and all too often am comfortable existing within this space of action/non-action.  Yet, I can't let it go.  This nagging feeling I get when I hear about the band formally known as Screeching Weasel, increasing in stead of subsiding over time, has been difficult, if not impossible, to shrug off.

So here is the letter I posted awhile back, which has been reposted on the Weasel Website, and following it is the comment which, as of this time, has not been included.


27 IN 27 – INSTALLMENT 17John Pierson (Screeching Weasel guitarist 1986-2001)A Statement by John Jughead Pierson
(I will not respond to comments made about this statement, nor do I plan on speaking further about it. But feel free to cut and paste this statement anywhere you please.)If it weren’t for the fact that I actually enjoy conversing with the fans of my prior bands, I would never have found out about a new band called Screeching Weasel beginning to tour. “This can’t be the band I was in.” I say to myself. “I would have been preparing.” My mind would much prefer going to a place of calm contemplation than into a dark cold room filled with anger and the emotions associated with betrayal. So to avoid painful emoting I first took the facts that Ben and I started a band together called Screeching Weasel, we both spent all our days making that band a home for ourselves, and 18 years later we put it to rest. This along with the statement made by both me and Ben on many occasions that the band wouldn’t be Screeching Weasel without either of us, makes me assume that this band playing isn’t Screeching Weasel, because I don’t recall having kicked myself out of the band. So it seems logical that this is not Screeching Weasel. If it were I would have to admit that I longer have friends named Ben Foster or Dan Schafer. As for people like Ben Weasel, Dan Vapid, or even John Jughead, I have nothing to say, because they never really existed, they were just made up names for a bunch of friends that tried to do something different in order to survive and make a living in this world. And I imagine they are all still trying to make a living somehow, seeing that their band’s prominent “leader” never wanted to tour in order to make it financially viable to continue on.Join Screeching Weasel for two nights of celebration as we ring in our 27th year.Your comment is awaiting moderation. 
Posting this on the site and trying to own it, to, in turn, mock it, in the guise of whatever guise you are trying to create this time from the ashes of your glorious past (perhaps the illusion of band transparency), does not erase the truth of this statement and the hurt that you have imposed on others.
November 22, 2012 at 6:28 pm


************* I should state that since this "Statement" was originally posted a few years back, Vapid and I, have now come to a place where we are amiable towards each other.  Which feels good.

A LITTLE TRIP TO EUROPE PART IV (PALERMO!)

PALERMO, IT DEVOURED MY SOUL, AND EACH DAY I CRAVE MY RETURN TO ITS LANDSor Can't Get You Out Of My Head.
(This more than the others, is a work in process.  It has taken me quite along time to gather my thoughts for this part of my journey.  And they are not complete, grammatically or even complete in its telling.  I wanted to get it out there.  I will continue to work on this passage, making corrections and adding details, but for now, please enjoy Marco and Stefanino's Palermo.)


Marco met me at the station in Palermo.  He is a man even shorter than I am, his eyes are there and not there, a man with a very calm exterior, always slightly nodding his head in agreement, completely aware of his surroundings but seemingly stoned.  He grins and nods, his english has lilts that go up and down a roller coaster moving smoothly in slow motion.  The men of Italy that have a grip on the international relations in punk rock seem to have a similar quality I can not put my finger on, but Mass and Marco have it.  I can only see it in my head as an ironic smile like one I can picture on my literary hero Albert Camus.  It’s not that they have seen everything that could possibly happen and now nothing could shock them, but that if everything possible did all of a sudden one day happen concurrently, they’d be there to see it, study it with an irreverent humility, remain unfazed, synthesize all the information so it fits in their brain before moving on, and finally reconfiguring their lives as they continued forwards, wiser than the rest of us. Marco let me stay at his house the first night in Sicily.  I met his mother.  She and I talked for quite awhile about book publishing, writing, and philosophy.  She was a super intelligent lady.  I wish I could remember our conversation, but alas, perhaps because of overwhelming exhaustion, the moment was LIVED and not MEMORIZED.  Later in the evening after having a few drinks Marco asked me what I wanted in the morning for breakfast. I said, “Oh maybe something simple, like a cantaloupe.”  He paused.  His eyes widened, and then he just started laughing at me. “What did I say?” “Yes, John.  What did you say?  Can you please say it again?” “I said ‘Cantaloupe.’” He shot me a big shit eating grin, shook his head from side to side. “Oh John, don’t you know?” “Well obviously I don’t.” “In Italian Cante Loupe means singing wolf.  You just said you want to eat a singing wolf!” I took a moment, and with nearly an expression I said, “Yes, I know.  Can you arrange that by morning?” Marco could hardly breathe he started laughing so hard.
A friend and bandmate of Marco’s, a tough hardcore gentleman named Bizio from the band Sempre Freski, offered to house me for as long as I would like to stay in Palermo.  Bizio was by no means a man with alot of money, and he had a daughter to take care of, so it was extremely kind of him to let me stay in his apartment.   Most Sicilians live in buildings older than the invention of the wheel.  This makes life interesting for the Sicilian Punks, living in buildings with antique plumbing, old lighting fixtures, and thin walls decaying.  Most of the punks I know there just barely scrape by financially supporting their friends and family.  But as I learned money is just a minor nuisance between the way they want to live and the way the economy demands them to live.  Sicily is not Italy.  It has it’s own colorful culture and history.   Sicily has been invaded so many times that the culture has become a melting pot more than it is in the USA.  It has been baked, solidified, melted again and pillaged over so many 500 hundreds of years.  This has given them a “mutt” infested history that I find fascinating.  How they have maintained a national identity is incredible.  It takes a passion for the idea of existence itself, to nurture such a strong sense of culture in the face of such mutation and change.  It all becomes what is inherently Sicilian, the food, the slow pace in which they walk, and the quick way in which they fight with the tongue and the fists.  And the quick way in which they engage you with unmasked emotions and enthusiasm. Bizio directed me to his room.  He was letting me stay in his room.  I had no idea where he was going to sleep.  The place wasn’t that big.  On the couch or with his daughter, that didn’t seem fair.  I shouldn’t have taken his private space as my own.  I put my bags down.  I did not want to take his room, but he insisted.  I looked around.  Marco and Bizio walked out and shut the door to let me unpack.  I laid down on the bed, above there was a painting on the ceiling.  The painting was pealing, it got blurry and I fell asleep, overly tired from the anxiety inducing train ride with the Iraquain who may have thought that a gun on my shirt was a symbol of my need for dominating all the world.  Later I was informed that the painting above my head was a fresco..  It was hundreds of years old.  I was used to punk houses in the states.  Staying overnight in a Pensacola punkhouse with holes in the wall, cat piss soaked into the carpet, people “banging” all night, transients that no one really knew but seemed cool, hiding their dope in drawers and under floor panels, or places like the ashtray in San Francisco where intelligent degenerates gather like moths to a flame, three fourths of Lookout records lived in a two room apartment with stalactite spit wads solidified in mid drip down from the ceiling.   This place in Palermo rented by Bizio had an undated FRESCO on the fucking sealing.  This man with a delightful little daughter named Luna was barely getting by, a cool man with a passion for booking bands.  He was tough, highly tattooed, hyper-political.  He was the type of man that I had only read about in books, books about sailors tying complicated nots while being blown back and forth by typhoons, and tough rubber-skinned muscle bound soldiers sprinting from trench to trench, engaging in hand to hand combat in whatever wars they happened to be thrust into.  I could never tell if he liked me.  I knew he respected me for my place in punk history, but sometimes when you are confronted with characters like Bizio, you can’t help but feel like a fraud. Later that night I met the group of friends that would be forever engrained into my brain, the ones that made three weeks seem like it was just a wonderful day of drinking, mischief, and conversation:  Stefanino (A quiet mover of mountains.  Much more about him to follow.) Cinzia (Is a spunky cute punk girl who didn’t speak a word of English but with whom I felt I had some of the best conversations.  It amazed everyone how the two of us seemed to be joking and talking about the same things, even though we never said an understandable word to each other.  If I recall correctly, years later with Even In Blackouts, one drunken night in Stefanino’s Rocket Bar I, being a reverend capable of conducting weddings, spontaneously officiated a ceremony between Cinzia and Phillip Hill, even though I was the one who spent most time with her.  The nuptials went no further than all of us eating old dry cake together at the bar.  That was the night I asked Stefanino if he worked full time at Rocket Bar, of which he co-owned, and he said, “Oh John, We don’t Work.” Even later that night... or really the next morning.  Cinzia began talking to me in English, no she hadn’t been fooling me, she just happened to pick it up over the years since our first meeting.  It was odd, yet wonderful.  It was like admiring someone from a far for years then finally getting to meet them and then realizing that they are as real as you are.) Azzurra (Is a girl who drinks twice her body weight on a regular basis, and whom would zoom her automobile loaded with all our mutual friends down narrow streets barely wider than her car.  I was sure if I were to die in Sicily, it would be by her hand alone.  I don’t like to contemplate for too long my first impressions but she seemed out of place with these punk rock Sicilians, not that anyone wore mohawks and had pins through their noses, but something about her was elsewhere.  Perhaps for a moment I thought she belonged in shopping malls trying on perfume getting ready for modeling auditions, yet over time this out of place-ness reminded me of what I loved about some of the best punk (or other) communities.  We are all misfits, outcasts, and we must strive to keep this unique element a part of our presents.  The times with Azzurra around were perplexing and exhilarating.  I missed her whenever she wasn’t there.) Alessandro (Who considered himself a yet undiscovered modern day expressionist painter, was always covered in paint.  I asked him to let me model for a painting.  He never said he abhorred the idea yet he never took me up on the offer.  Although, he did eventually give me an abstract nude painting of his girlfriend.  It kind of looked like a chicken who was caught in a blender with a boney girl and a blood-soaked rainbow.  Alessandro was like many other Sicilians I met, very short, about my size, yet skinnier than most.  He had in spades a Napoleon infused hyper-machismo which was both laughable and yet intimidating.  Alessandro was also known as Topo, which means tiny mouse. [Like a mouse that roars.]  He always had a thin blonde girl silently walking behind him, her name was Vivianna - the model of many of his paintings.  One day I had mentioned to him that I was feeling out of shape and wouldn’t mind going for a run.  Alessandro pounded on his chest and said, “I’ll run with you!”  The next day Cinzia, Alessandro, and Vivianna picked me up to go running on an outdoor track.  All of us were in running clothes except Alessandro, who was dressed in a leather jacket, t-shirt, loafers, and jeans.  It was near 90 degrees!  He started panting after one lap, sweating, but he refused to take off his jacket, or his pants!  After a few more laps he fell to the ground, with a comic dignity, and gestured for me to continue onwards.  And I did, yet keeping an eye on him and Vivianna sitting on a bench, to make sure he was indeed OK.) Joe (Who spoke the most english talked with a brooklyn accent.  He lived in the states until he was eight years old, he left with his family after having seen a KISS concert live with his parents.  His family probably didn’t leave for this reason yet that concert was his last memory of the USA.  He was the type of guy I find in every country to take the place of my lost friend Peter Flynn.  They are tragic figures yet heroic in their self destruction.  They drink copious amounts of alcohol and they infuse their rambles and outbursts with a darkly comic compassion and understanding of how the world works.  A hug from Joe always seemed as if it would be his last.  He held you with no abandon and you felt deep within your core his warmth and his pain.  The last I heard he had a job as a car salesman, keeping at bay his demons while clocking in 9 to 5.  I will always wonder where he is in this complex world of ghosts and goblins, and yet I will always keep a safe distance in order not to get pulled into a world too chaotic even for myself.)   All the above people plus Bizio, on my second day, had planned a traditional Sicilian meal for me.  They put salad, pasta, and meat in the middle of the table in Bizio’s living room.  We surrounded the table with two couches, borrowed folding chairs and people kneeling.  The food was fresh and smelled so mind-bogglingly good!  I grabbed a plate.  I put pasta and meat on it together.  After my first bite,  as if a single unit, the whole room paused, looked at me, then began to laugh.  The whole room, ALL OF THEM!  Words like Secondo and Primo flew through the room amidst Italian gibberish and guffaws.   “Oh John you don’t eat the pasta with the sausage.  Pasta first, then the sausage.”   “Ah yes, another lesson.  I’m sorry.” “Not a problem, John.” I laughed too, and that was good.  The food was good.  The lesson was good. The company was even gooder.   Under my breath I said to myself, “Primo, First. Secondo, second. Pasta... Sausage...” Even though the second day of my undeterminably lengthy visit was very pleasant and welcoming something about this living situation was uncomfortable.  This feeling and it’s consequences was a product of my inability to completely grasp the affects of my notoriety.  I am virtually a stranger to them, but one with a legacy.  Out of respect and politeness they were not always forthcoming with any inconveniences I may cause.  Cultural fau pax, they were all about, but actual situations where I may have accidentally burdened someone were usually endured in silence.  Perhaps they dealt with these little nuances in order to protect my feelings, or to show their respect towards my accomplishments or potential connections gained from my friendship.  For instance, I was told that there was a limit to how much water could be used in this one thousand year old apartment, but I was not told what limited water-use actually meant.  When I enquired, they told me not to worry too much about it.  After one shower it was hinted to me a couple days later that I had mistakingly used Bizio’s water supply for the whole entire week!  One USA shower and I had used up ALL his water... for the week!  He had a child that had to go to school, a girl, Luna.  Luna needed to be clean, needed to wash her face, they needed to wash dishes... fight off germs! Oh God! and I had unknowingly used all their water in one shower!  I could not stay here and disrupt their life.  In how many other ways would I accidentally put them farther into debt and deprivation?  Would I end up using all the electricity, gas, air...!  The primo/not sausage debacle was humorous for all, but taking away one of the main necessities of life from a father and daughter was not a path blazened for a man of my semi-fame to traverse. Stefanino, which kind of means Little Steven, who is the leader of the band The Popsters and now Tough, took good care of me along with Marco in Sicily, and he still does take care of me to this very day, only now from a distance.  Stefanino is rail thin, he resembles a Sicilian Shaggy from Scooby Doo, always with a little scruff on his cheeks and chin, more like peach fuzz, a youthful face, and eyes that somehow look innocent and simple, yet behind his eyes lurks a frustrated talented mind that searches for meaning through literary pursuits, relationships, music and deep confusion.  Much like myself, he is always a little bit lost, and happy to be in this state of lostness.   He asked how things were going at Bizio’s house.  I told him that I felt bad because I was disrupting Bizio’s life, and that perhaps it would be better for me to spend a bit of money on a hostile.  As if I had an army of my own minions, like having a full staff of secretaries out for your good and your good alone, by the next morning, I was whisked away on Stefanino’s scooter to check out a condo-like apartment building by the Ocean for $200.00 USD a week.  My bags were put in Marco’s car and the whole gang joined me to visit my potential living space.  This was the first day I experienced Palermo traffic and the scary world of Scooter vs. Automobile madness.  I will never say that this system is organized but it did seem that the level at which all Sicilians ignored the rules of the road, put them on a plateau above the ordinary system put in place in the states.  While we were driving, weaving in and out of cars on the scooter, I asked Stefanino, well actually I yelled in his ear, “Are there any laws here in Palermo?”  “Ah yes, John, but they are more like what you call, guidelines.”  “I see you have cops, how do they know when someone has gone too far.”  “I don’t think they do, they just randomly stop people to remind us that there are some rules out there somewhere, like I said they are guidelines.  Don’t worry John, is OK.”   I was given a penthouse apartment with my own terrace on the roof over looking the Ocean and the tallest mountain/Hill, in Palermo, Monte Pellegrino where Saint Rosalia (patron of Palermo) spent the last days of her life.  Marco, Stefanino and the usual entourage walked me up to the top floor with an acoustic guitar they had lent me, the guitar in which I wrote my first song, Missing Manifesto, for the yet to be conceived band called Even In Blackouts, my back pack, and my camping bag.  The apartment was larger than they were even expecting.  It had a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and of course the aforementioned balcony which was about the size of Bizzio’s entire house.  That they too were surprised by the vastness of the apartment I could only guess by the way they were looking around, because as soon as we opened the door, they began talking in Sicilian instead of english, pointing at things like the couch and the television.  Marco sat down in a rocking chair, laughed, and said something indistinguishable to Stefanino who responded back as I saw the back of his head as he descended into the large bathroom. There were only two drawbacks to this Sicilian Dream Pad.  The first is a detail that as an American we get used to OUR own way of doing things.  The key I was given to my apartment was not allowed to leave the building.  I could leave the premises whenever I wanted, but the key had to stay behind the front counter.  This meant that there was an employee that had to stand behind the counter all hours of the night waiting to let late night residents not only back into their temporary homes, but even through the front door of the building.  In this case, and in the case of the place I stayed for two nights in La Spezia, (side note: Mass hated that I wanted to stay in a hotel, he thought it was a waste, but at times I just felt I was too much of a burden and also I need alone time more than the average person, which makes life complicated for someone like me who also craves massive amounts of conversation and friendship.) I felt like I was the only tourist ever in Italy to stay out past a reasonable hour of the night.  I began to feel judged when I rang the bell and saw the nightshift guy through the glass door walk out from a room behind the counter, brush the sleep out of his eyes, sigh heavily when he saw me, and then begrudgingly let me back in, handing me my key, that I wished I could just keep in my pocket so that I could avoid this old man all together and leave him alone to, sleep, watch TV and to die happy. The second inconvenience was that there was no internet.  In some ways this was a blessing; less distractions while writing.  But to be blunt and to the point, I had my own private abode I was alone alot, and I planned on engaging in as much masturbation as time would allow.  And this is much more easily done with access to internet.  When I am working on a creative project, writing of any sort, my imagination is usurped, as if I only have access to it in limited supplies. Exclusive rights are given to whatever one project I happen to be working on at the time.  Ergo, I had no extra imagination to create elaborate sexual scenarios in my head creative enough to get me to the climax desired.  So I had to resort to switching on the television whenever “in the mood.”  For the first couple tries I began watching the news programs.   “Why the news programs” you might ask.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, it is not the “news” that is erotic, but for some reason behind many newscasters on Italian and Sicilian networks stand a scantily clad model, not doing anything other than looking voluptuous, with poise, smiling, even during more somber news reports.  It was so bizarre, it really brought out the machismo inherent in the culture.  And at first glance, it seemed a perfect place for a little bopping the bishop.  I could not donate a proper amount of time to these news briefs to allow my titillation to exceed my awareness of the strange, discomforting, juxtaposition.  It just seemed wrong.  For god’s sake, they were talking about wars, burning towers in America, people stuck in mines, how could I pleasure myself along side such devastation? But, of course I tried, perhaps even succeeded once or twice.  When this eventually failed to work in the long run, I turned to music videos.  And the only one that did it for me was Kylie Minogue, oh later I would google pictures of her, and there were no sparks, but for some reason this video was so stimulating for me, and in some way I made it be so, because I knew at the time that this video would be on at least one channel every 10 minutes.  While drinking at La Buca Di Bacco, which was a small storefront bar where the gang liked to begin their nightly drinking, I saw a large poster in the process of being pasted up on the brick wall next door.  It was advertising an exhibit of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec in town for one weekend only.  Marco walked up behind me.  “Johnny, would you like to go to this exhibit?  It isn’t so far from your apartment.  We could pick you up tomorrow and go.”  I thought that that would be a great idea.  We had plans the day after, so this would be the only chance to see the exhibit, It wouldn’t be earth shattering if I didn’t go but it seemed a great thing to do.  I had experienced a bit of the casualness of the Italians and I was told the Sicilians were even more laid back in regards to time, so I pointed out the hours the exhibit would be open, “11 a.m. to 5 p.m.”  (Actually it probably had Euro time: 1100 to 1700.  I’m just changing it for my own ability to keep track.) With a beer in one hand and a lemon Vodka for me in the other, Stafanino stepped up from behind us.  Marco said a few words to him in Sicilian, then Stefanino said “Bello.  Bello.”  He turned to face me.  He handed me the Lemon Vodka.  “Don’t worry Johnny.  We can all use some culture.  We’ll all go.” I quickly fell into the regular daily habits of my new punk friends, or it seemed a regular daily habit.  Who knows, maybe when I wasn’t there they DIDN’T go to at least 2 or 3 bars a night.  But I suspect they did.  On my first visit to Palermo Stefanino’s Rocket Bar was not open yet, so each night we would end our drinking at a Dance Club named Malox.  Often Marco would DJ there, and that is how some locals got their taste of punk rock.  It was mostly a mainstream dance club but Marco was able to sneak in a few more danceable punk songs from The Ramones, The Queers, Operation Ivy and of course Screeching Weasel. (A few years later Marco would visit me in Chicago with a mission to go to all the independent record stores that still carried records.  He rummaged through the cheap record bins grabbing all the 7 inches he could find.  It didn’t seem to matter what band it was, or even if it was a band.  One day while rummaging through a box that said ‘twenty-five cents” which was stashed under the regular record bins, Marco said to me, “Oh Johnny, you have a gold-mine here.”  And I said, “One man’s trash is another’s treasure.”  And with arms full of what I saw as useless vinyl he smiled like Marco always does whenever he hears something he wants to remember.  “Then I’m just like a pirate.”  He would go home and sell almost all these records, and the ones he didn’t sell he probably played at Malox.)  I learned to love the nightly ritual of ending up at Malox, sitting in the outdoor courtyard listening to my friends talk in their native tongue.  A few people each night, whom I didn’t know, would approach me and begin talking broken english.  I was a novelty item but also an educator helping Sicilians brush up on the small amount of English they knew.  It was some of my best nights in Europe.  I was anonymous to some and famous to others, but both highly interested in the American in their midst.  Stefanino and Marco even coerced me into being a guest DJ one night.  I spent the whole afternoon putting together playlists, I was so excited.  It was one of the only times I allowed myself to DJ while drinking. A couple times that night I got so carried away dancing along with them that the song ended and the club went silent, everyone would stare at me, and then I would remember that I was the one in charge of the music.  No one would get angry they would just laugh at me in the most kind-hearted way. The night before the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit we did not stay out as late as usual, not specifically because of the exhibit, but because Stefanino wanted to take me somewhere in the morning before heading to the museum.  I woke up around 10. a.m.  In Europe I never had a phone on me, so in Palermo I made it a habit to just hang out on my patio working on my book until someone arrived to pick me up.  And of course each morning I would spend a little time surfing the tv channels looking for Kylie.  The time ticked by...  at noon, I decided I had no more I wanted to say in my book about the band, so I picked up the acoustic guitar and began strumming cords.  All my years in Screeching Weasel I could never write a song with which I was happy.  I loved writing melodic parts, and playing with high and low octaves, but I could never string together the proper words to the proper musical arrangement.  My turning words into lyrics, in my mind, sucked.  I had become practically a master at writing short two minute plays in a show back in Chicago for years and years (Probably up near around 400 of them.) but for some reason this talent never translated into song lyrics.   But this afternoon I fell upon a basic riff, and for the first time I found myself humming happily to a catchy melodic line.   I rushed over to my computer and searched through pages and pages of writings that I called “thoughts.”  I had been writing them down for over 10 years, like a diary but more about external observations and poetry than my daily life.  I found one called Missing Manifesto.  One night many years before this, my friends Steve Walker, Peter Flynn and I sat around in my room drinking and smoking, being all frustrated that we didn’t have any guiding light helping direct our creative instincts.  We allowed ourselves to indulge in our ennui, but it felt real at the time, and important.  We began talking about how we were becoming self destructive because we were trying to create a heroic myth about how to become important and remembered.  I wrote about how this manifesto is paper thin and if it doesn’t succeed we fail tremendously, bleeding with our pants down, left with only our wounded selves, further away from who we each really wanted to be, and left with no one giving a shit.  I thought about the audacity of Assholes who become famous because they are assholes, banking on their creativity shining and their assholery being considered an important tool in their fame.   I took a series of these loosely connected thoughts and phrases and constructed a train of thought more congealed and linear, then in about an one hour’s time I had created the first song I was ever happy with writing myself.  I decided at that moment to start a band when I got home.  And it would be an acoustic band, because somehow that sound had influenced the writing of my own kinda manifesto. (It wasn’t till years later that Massimo from The Manges said that this song was one of his favorite EIB songs, partly because of the Italian word Manifesto being entertainingly bastardized by Liz’s cute Southside Chicago accent.  I had completely forgotten the word manifesto was Italian, made popular by the Italian Futurists. I put the guitar away.  It was nearing 1 p.m.!  And I still hadn’t heard from anyone.  I decided to go outside and wait.  Sometimes I am able to convince myself that pretending to begin the process of leaving will magically make the leaving actually materialize.  It did not.  I sat outside for another hour. (The reader must know I am not complaining.  I was in Palermo, by the Ocean!  They could have left me there for days and I would still be content finding small things to keep me busy.  But at this time I was still living by the way time works for Americans and also to the far extreme, the Swiss and the Germans.)  I got to the door when I heard someone from behind me cough politely.  I looked back.  It was the concierge.  He was waiting attentively for me to remember to give him the key.  I took it out of my pocket and headed outside.  I waited by a patch of trees near the front sidewalk. At 2pm Stefanino pulled up on his scooter.  He had an extra helmet for me. “Put this on.” “Where are we going?”   He pointed to the top of the small mountain in front of us.  “Up there.”  “Shouldn’t we head over to the exhibit?” “Don’t worry John.  Is no problem.” I strapped the helmet over my head and hopped on the backside of the small seat.  I held tightly to his waist.  I am a much thicker man than Stefanino, I held tight but not so tight that I would send us both off the back of the bike.  He pressed the gear on the handlebar.  The scooter kicked forward and then stalled.  He restarted the bike again. I yelled, “Up that mountain, huh!” He turned his head towards me.  “You must trust in me!” The scooter lunged forward and away we went.  Beyond all belief the small engine chugged along carrying us farther and farther up this singular mountain.  Along the road there were kiosks set up, locals selling religious paraphernalia to the occasional tourist; vials of holy water, miniature statues of jesus on the cross, buttons & patches of Saint Rosalia, bottles of plain old regular unholy drinking water, bags of nondenominational peanuts, etc...  My sister jokingly told me before I left for Europe to get her a pope-on-a-rope somewhere in Italy.  If I were going to find one, this seemed to be the place.  But alas, I did not find such an item, but I did find a snow globe with a pope inside.  He looked calm but despondent, standing solitary surrounded by an uncharacteristic Italian blizzard.  This was one of the only items I brought back to the states, besides a bottle of Limoncello and a two pound brick of parmesan cheese. The two of us stood side-by-side at the top of Monte Pellegrino. “I hope you like my city.” “I love it Stefanino.  Thanks for showing me this.” We stood there looking over Palermo, watching the little toy cars and plastic scooters dodge each other running through stoplights the size of toothpicks.  The haze of the heat lightly covered the horizon.  The Ocean was to my left.  If I squinted my eyes just right I could see the shore of Africa. For awhile I forgot all about the museum, but then Stefanino said, “We better head back down.  Up is hard but down is much more dangerous.” “Great.” Once down from Monte Pelegrino Stefanino took us farther into the city.  “Are we heading to the museum?” “Soon, my friend.  We have to meet Marco and Cinzia at La Buca Di Bacco.” “Are we going to have a drink so early?” “For you maybe, but for us a cafe.” I never drink coffee.  So while my Southern European friends took part in their daily ritual, I would sip on a shot of Limoncello instead.  We arrived at the bar at 3:30 p.m.  Once again I looked at the poster on the brick wall, 5pm.  I didn’t think we were going to make that, but how could I complain.  I had my drink.  Over the next half hour a few more from the group arrived periodically; Azzurra, Joe, and Allesandro & Vivianna.  I barely saw Bizzio.  It had nothing to do with not staying at his place.  He was a busy man, he worked hard and had a daughter to support.  Occasionally I would see him at a bar and we would chat about old punk rock, US politics, and hardcore music.  Marco finally arrived. “Ok Johnny, let’s go.” “Great!” “I hopped in Azzurra’s death-mobile and we caravanned across Palermo dodging other cars, scooters, and pedestrians; driving down alleyways too narrow for any American’s comfort.  We parked on the street and slowly everyone gathered.  We walked one block where we met a couple other stragglers standing in front of a parking meter.  By this time is was 4:30.  I thought we had abandoned the museum idea.  I was a little frustrated.  They stood there chatting for another 20 minutes. “Marco, we only have about 5 minutes.  Have we decided not to go to the exhibit?” “What do you mean, John?” “The exhibit... aren’t we still going?” “Johnny, we’re here!” “What?” “It’s here.”  He pointed behind him. Behind me there was a 10 foot high poster of Toulouse-Lautrec. We had been standing in front of the entrance to the museum for at least 40 minutes. At that moment the security guard turned the sign around in the window to “closed.” (chiuso.) “Shit.” And this is where the illogical part of Italian and Sicilian culture exceeds any amount of American understanding. Marco approached the security guard and started chatting casually about who knows what.  Then the security guard nodded his head no, he even said “no no no!”  Then he shut the door and locked it.  Marco knocked again.  And again the security guard opened the door.  They argued, pointed in the building, pointed at us, pointed at the city, pointed at watches, they just about pointed at everything one could possible point at.  Then the security guard belted out one more phrase and shut the door. Marco walked over to me. “Thanks for trying Marco.” “What do you mean, John?” “They’re closed.” Then Stefanino chimed in.  “That does not matter John.” “But it’s a museum.  It’s closed.  Look!” I pointed at the times on the poster. “It’s OK John, he’s still open.” The security guard let us in.  We stayed for about an hour.  The exhibit was ok, yet it was nothing compared to my trip up Monte Pellegrino or even my run around the track with Alessandro.  During our time in the exhibit a few more past-the-hour stragglers came in and fought similar battles with the security guard.  At one point the lights went off.  The security guard was at the switch.  Marco walked over to him and thanked him.  The man shrugged his shoulders and just waved his hand at us.  At times on my trip it was difficult to judge if someone was angry, annoyed, happy to oblige, ecstatic to have you there, or passionately indifferent, and this was one of those times.  We left the building and he locked the door behind us, this time, for real.   This was NOT an isolated incident.  This is the way things get done in Southern Europe.  And with a bit of time, this mentality made more sense to me than the strict rushing about structures we have in place in the states.  The Italian way is still illogical, but I miss it.

SCREECHING WEASEL - A CODE - INTO EVEN IN BLACKOUTS

I must let you know, before reading, that this is a purging of sorts.  It must be said that the shock I experienced of my band mates being in a band together without me, caused a barrier that did not allow me to listen to The Riverdales, and once again to The Band Formally Know As Screeching Weasel, without hesitation and dread.  There is no giving either a fair listen.  And so I only have criticism and do not speak of the joy that many fans get from listening to the Ramones inspired sound of the Riverdales, or to the lyrics of The Band Formally Know At Screeching Weasel of which, no doubt, accurately expresses what Mr. Weasel is experiencing.  Other than that, about what follows, it seems all is in order.

IMPUDENCETo think one entity is responsible for creating what is to be is to live in Folly.  Yet this proliferation of source will never excuse us from the consequences of the choices we make.
Many years ago, in the beginning days of AOL instant messages a past girlfriend and I made internet friends with a husband and wife living in London.  We had intended to visit them when we had the time and money for a trip to England.  We never did get to meet these friends.  My connection to them ended with my relationship.  Before the relationship’s end one evening we called these Londoners up on our landline, which at the time was the only form of long distance communication within a home.  We chatted for a couple hours via conference call.  In the conversation we eventually got around to talking about music.  It was brought up that I was in a punk band called Screeching Weasel.  The husband had never heard the name but he sounded interested and impressed nonetheless.   He and his wife were about 20 years older than we were.  He asked me if I was familiar with the band Roxy Music.  One may think this is a strange jump in musical lineage.  Perhaps he should have started out by asking if I knew another more relevant UK band from around the same time period like the Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Buzzcocks.  Yet this allusion made made perfect sense to me.  Roxy Music was a strong influence on many of the styles of underground and mainstream rock music to come.  Yet more importantly to me they were a band that was never dismayed by their ability to freak the shit out of concertgoers.  That was punk rock before punk rock.  They had a unique sound that helped push forward the idea that to be a revolutionary band didn’t mean you had to be violent or overtly simplistic.  There is more to being rebellious than pretending you don’t know how to play your instrument or purposely acting contrary.  (I must admit I am often guilty of the contrary thing.) In early interviews with Screeching Weasel there was always a point where the interviewer would ask what bands influenced us.  Of course the Ramones, Circles Jerks, Angry Samoans and The Stooges would start the conversation.  By the time it came to me, I felt it my duty to be honest in saying that my influences veered quite dramatically from the aforementioned, at least in comparison to what was expected of me to say.  The splitting of genres was only a necessity of; This is not That, of; Zeros and Ones.  Fuck unity.  We need opposing forces to create anything unique.  I believe this to be the case, but sadly this inherent infinitude of endless divisions inspires needless delusions of superiority. To me music was all part of some wonderful diversified sameness.  All the bands and solo musicians I listened to were conjoined in my mind by the audacity to be whatever the fuck they wanted to be.  There wasn’t much of a difference between bands like Adrenalin OD, the Descendents, The Dead Milkmen, the Dickies and my earlier influences Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Queen.  I found it ironic that I would get strange looks when I announced these older influences.  These bands took chances in creating a sound that struck a chord with the spirit of the times, but was also holy their own, whether or not it was instantly accessible to an audience.  In varying degrees pleasing an audience is obviously important for furthering success, but nonetheless the pleasingness should be secondary to the passions to create that which brings forth the art, the music, and the meaningfulness.  Brain Eno, the synth music innovator of Roxy Music would go on to influence David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the bands of the No Wave Movement which existed beside the Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones.  And when the Ramones took their MC5/New York Dolls/Ronnettes infused sound back to England to perform their legendary shows attended by Souxie Sue, Shane McGowan, Johnny Lyden, Joe Strummer, and members of The Damned, punk exploded.  And yes, I think this was all audacious and decorated in depravity of the highest order, of which Roxy Music had a hand.  There is no music created in a vacuum.
[In a vacuum there are no molecules to propagate the vibrations of sound waves.] - Wikipedia
The reason my british friend brought up Roxy Music had nothing to do with what I have just been talking about in the last few paragraphs.  He only wanted to share the story of the thrift store he used to own.  Supposedly Brian Ferry and Brian Eno (of Roxy Music) would stop by his store on their way to concerts to buy crazy mismatched outfits which they would wear on stage that evening.   Obviously this story made an impression on me.  I have never forgotten about my British friend’s weekly sales of getups to the members of Roxy Music.  It was double planted in my brain because years prior to hearing this story Ben and I would don ourselves in scandalous garments before we performed on stage.  We had a mission to break free from what we perceived as the restraints of hardcore and the absurd strict dress codes of the Chicago Skinheads.  To this day I find it hard to agree with anything that came from the skinhead movement, but I was OK with existing along side the hardcore bands which began to forsake melody to exemplify the talents of their quickly moving fingers or their didactic hammering of their political agendas.  I accepted their sounds, but the seriousness of these movements triggered the trickster to emerge from my punk newbie bowels.  And even more so in my cohort Ben Weasel.  It quickly became very important to Ben and I to look as ridiculous as we could, to stand proudly as a representative of the “naive” suburbanites invading the blue collar city, to be caricatures of the banality of convention, childish sprites, outcasts from the darkest crevices of high school, to be musical Bouffants bludgeoning the punk scene with our sub-par guitar playing skills, our wit, and even our overwhelming lack of masculinity.  I found that there was no better technique to unnerve a skinhead, to prevent him from throwing punches, than to unexpectedly kiss him on the forehead in front of an audience of outcasts and geeks.  (I could have been killed.) My most favorite pictures of Screeching Weasel are from around this period; me clad in colorful shredded clothes, slippers, and ridiculous hats, Ben in freaky glasses, pink spandex, and presenting his stage frightened penis whenever possible. This important sentiment of our band’s core began to break apart sometime after an article Ben wrote about a Punk Rock Dress Code; Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star hi-tops, and Black Leather Jackets.  http://www.angelfire.com/punk2/cockfighter/page2.html   (I must acknowledge that I am shrinking time for effect.) Wether it was written as satire, proselytizing, or purely to meet a deadline, the article slam danced betwixt criticism, absurdity, and prophecy.  Like many of the outlandish statements Ben made, even though I didn’t agree, I loved that it created impassioned discussion. Eventually ideas in this article began to drastically affect Ben’s onstage attire and attitude towards outrageous stage appearances and antics.  The nail of uniformity and banality was about to be driven into our colorful coffins. Perhaps he meant it to be the new rebellion.  Whatever the reason the unbridled wackiness of our stage performances and the low maintenance accidental costuming of many of our band photographs disintegrated after Screeching Weasel reformed for the second time.   Between hiatuses, The Riverdales were born.  Through a series of odd events I became the only prior weasel not to be in this band.  Even stranger the band is a reference to an Archie’s Comic, and so is my nom de plume.  The Riverdales were a mere step above being a Ramones cover band.  They created their own songs based on Ramones’ chord progressions and style of downstroke guitar playing.  And as a tribute band of sorts The Riverdales needed to wear the jeans and leather jackets of their forefathers.  It seemed my ex-band mates had begun to adorn themselves within the confines of the punk rock dress code.  The controversy of the article, with its purposely obtuse humorous implications, which had previously created constructive conversation around uniformity and individuality, had now been turned into a reality, an actual code to be adhered to without dissension or debate. I should not have been shocked about the placing of new rules upon Screeching Weasel when we reformed, traces of The Riverdales’ regime were never safely locked away. We flew to California to negotiate a new contract with Lookout Records.  We had started work on a forthcoming Screeching Weasel product, called Bark Like A Dog, with the classic lineup.  Larry, at the time, owner of the label, sat with his scrawny legs up on his desk in his private office as Ben began to lay out the stipulations.  
We wanted a fixed rate per unit instead of the classic Lookout percentage split.  
Ben told Larry that the band would be going with a more standard attire, Leather Jackets and Jeans.  I don’t remember thinking before speaking, I just remember saying immediately, “No we won’t.”  I hadn’t worn Blue Jeans since Junior High School except for the promo photo for the Ramones cover record.  “I’ll wear whatever the hell I want.”  The issue about our dress code never came up again, but it had done it’s damage.  Ben would soon after claim that he was only joking, but I knew he wasn’t.
We would not tour to promote the record. I did not agree with this, but if it meant we would begin putting out records again I’d deal with the consequences for awhile. (This proved to be one of the disagreements between us which would drive Ben and I apart forever. I was too meek and I often misjudged the unpredictable rules put in place by his constantly shifting anxieties.)  Even though Vapid and Panic said they agreed with their hatred of touring, I knew they didn’t mean it.  They had always been the better live performers.  They were more skilled musicians than Ben and I could ever be.  We just happened to be outwardly charismatic, irreverent, and more business minded than most creative artists, especially them.   At one point in the meeting, Ben was speaking too readily for the majority of the band.  Internal strife began to peak it’s ugly head.  Larry asked him to leave the room so the rest of the band could share their opinions without being lambasted by the wicked fast tongue of Mr. Weasel, our fear inducing leader.  Earlier in the week I couldn’t get Vapid and Panic to shut up about how miserable they were with Ben on tour.  “He turned into a fucking crazy man.” Vapid once said.  Each day was spent complaining about lack of promotion.  There was no place for the two of them to vent their frustration.  Drinking and excessive socializing was not allowed in the Riverdales’ book of conduct.  Panic would get criticized for hanging out with the audiences.  Panic was always known as an opportunist, but come on, so was everybody else, we all just hid it better.  Panic was more obvious with his looking for advancement in his need for fame and was also sadly prone to talking about how unhappy and pathetic he was.  At his best being around him was like hanging out with a quirky mischievous cartoon character.  At his worst being around him was tedious and fucking depressing.  But truth be told, out of the three of them, he was definitely the only one who enjoyed talking to the fans regularly. On this day, in the office of Larry, when deals were being struck and laundry being washed, Vapid and Panic stayed silent.  They stuck to their story about never wanting to tour ever again.  I said, “This is stupid, you don’t hate playing live, you just hate touring with Ben!”  They did not defend themselves.  Not too many years afterwards both these boys would end up on the road fairly often with their own bands.  Some time later Ben would tell me that those two had confided in him during The Riverdales European tour that touring was more pleasurable without me, (John Jughead).  I was too sarcastic while dealing with them and I acted superior.  I found this an odd thing to say about me, but I couldn’t deny that it might be true.  It makes me sad when I think about.  Whether or not this was true, I know that our tours, were made easy for them, free of all responsibility except for getting their gear on and off stage.  I will not except that things were in anyway worse than they were without me.  Our prior tours hadn’t driven them to hate each other as much as the Riverdales.  They despised each other after they got home.  For years and years to come it would perplex me every time Vapid and Weasel chose to work together again.  There was a closeness they had in terms of music and boyish antics, which was more in sync than any two people I had ever seen, but their associations together always ended up in turmoil with Vapid always getting the worst of it.   The moment the band reformed this second time Panic and Vapid were constantly on edge, I don’t know if they ever had fun in the band again.  Except for the initial rehearsals to record the songs and the trip to California I can’t think of an occasion when we were all in the same room at the same time.  Ben and I made most of the business decisions, there was no touring or playing live, and in the studio we no longer recorded live.  Each member recorded their parts on their own.  I recall having a few laughs in the studio with Vapid, but that’s about it.  By the next record both Vapid and Panic would be gone again.  Panic never returned (Or more specifically, was never asked back.)  Vapid returned years later for the reformation I was never informed about.  But, as most of us know, that didn’t last long.   I had always thought that I helped to bring a calm to the band, but looking at the roster of amount of members who have been in the band, there must never have been any sense of balance, calm, or solidarity. So perhaps I was wrong.  Whether their feelings about ME were true or not I believe this information was stored in Ben’s head to one day be used to help manipulate allegiance. When he finally did release this information to me I could not figure out why he had to tell me such a thing.  Ben hardly ever speaks without a motivation.  When he told me, the information seemed pointless. By then there was no chance of touring with that lineup again.  What could telling me change?  I can only assume he chose to tell me this when he did because he wanted to appear as the good guy, to be seen as the only one who could be trusted.  Even if there was some truth to that, it was too late.  I continued to love the music we recorded and I had always believed in Ben’s choices for the band, but something irreconcilable was afoot.  Most band decisions were shared and decided upon between the two of us, but more often than not I acquiesced when Ben had a strong opinion.  And that was fine with me, but somewhere along the line this changed and became more difficult.  I’m not sure exactly where.  I will have to put some great thought into that decay before committing the story to writing.  The partnership slowly deteriorated until I got tired of losing money as the accountant and wanted to quit the business aspect for awhile unless we entertained the idea of touring more to counterbalance and do away with the losses. Ben chose this opportunity to twist my intentions into something completely different than I had intended.  Finally he forced me out and broke a very serious “gentlemen’s agreement.  (But more on that when I am ready.) In Even In Blackouts it was very important that there would never be talk of what couldn’t be played or worn on a stage.  This freedom allowed Gub (EIB guitarist and songwriter) to get us the one and only sponsorship ever offered to me during my entire career as a performer.  Each band member received a fedora hat of whatever style they wanted.  This sponsorship was perfect.  It was hilarious and classy!  We each chose different models and colors.  We agreed to wear them occasionally as a band, but some of us loved our hats so much we wore them everywhere.  (That was me!  I got a bowler hat!  I never had one before!  That was amazing!  Until I lost it on a plane.  That sucked.) For the most part we wore the shit out of those caps, where and whenever we wanted.   Liz worked for her best friend at a privately owned clothes store named Camden Boutique.  The England imported attire gave her onstage style a british flare.  I began calling her the Mary Poppins of Punk Rock.  Often on tour Liz would drag me over to the bathroom to show me her outfit choice for the day.  I’d stand outside the door waiting patiently until she jumped out in a very excited manner. “Should I wear this dress!”  She’d give a little turn and smile. “Oh Liz that’s really beau...” Then as if she hadn’t heard me she’d pop back into the bathroom and slam the door shut.  I would wait a bit longer.  She would pop out again. “Or Should I wear this one?” I think they’re both great.” “But which one should I wear?” “I like the green one.” “Really?” “Well... they’re both nice.” “The green one?” “Yes, I like the green one, but they both look great on you, but I like the green one because...” “Because why?” Then realizing I was caught in a trap, I’d walk away.  She’d still be looking in the mirror barely noticing I had left. We did this often.  Many times I would see her finally emerge from the bathroom wearing the outfit I hadn’t chosen, or one I hadn’t even seen.  For awhile I thought she used me to decide what NOT to wear.  The perplexing part was she didn’t choose contrary to my opinions consistently enough to confirm she was purposely choosing the opposite.  I had no clue if I was helping at all.  Ultimately she would wear whatever she wanted no matter what opinion I could muster.  It may sound frustrating but I enjoyed being some kind of sounding board for her even though I could never get a handle on my actual purpose.
[This has been a good introduction into talking about the members of Even In Blackouts.  I will end this dress code (or lack of) exploration with ruminations on Phillip Hill.]
The lack of structured stage appearance had unleashed the unexpected odd-ball qualities of bassist, vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, Phillip Hill.  Normally Phillip is a Leather Jacket wearing punkrocker.  He wears it well.  In his former band Teen Idols he would never play a show without his leather jacket firmly attached to his upper body.  Even when it was 120 degrees out while on a brightly lit stage he would still be strumming away on his guitar, indifferent to the temperature, clad in his steamy hot jacket.  Later this torture inducing dedication would make more sense when I found out that Phillip Hill does not sweat.  He does not take off his boots.  He never showers.  Yet he never smells.  He is not human.   Phillip is a Nashville born good ol’ boy.  I’m pretty sure he came out of the womb in his leather jacket with a a guitar and a beer in his hands, ready to fight.  He is a coveted guitarist and backing vocalist.  He has played in all of the following bands:  Rise Against, Teen Idols, Screeching Weasel, The Independents, Common Rider, Even in Blackouts, and The Queers. One night he left me a text at 4 in the morning to say that he was having shots with the legendary Mark James (The writer of the hit single Suspicious Minds.) The party he was at lasted for two straight days. On another night we got talking about Willie Nelson.  Phillip looked towards the ground and shook his head.   “What’s up Phil?” “That man would call my house all the time asking for my mom.” “Who?” “Willie Nelson.  Stoned and drunk.  He’d call my mom to try and get her to meet up with him. Willie never cared what time it was.  I had to help her lie her way out of that one quite a few times.” One long day driving in the van I offered him some chocolate.  He shook his head again.   “What’s up Phil?” “I’ll eat almost anything but I can’t eat chocolate without thinking I’m disappointing Dolly.” “Why is that Phil?” “One day mom and I were back stage of the Opry -” “The Grand Ole Opry?” Yep. I was chowing down a chocolate bar... chocolate all over my face... Dolly came up to me, grabbed the candy bar out of my hands, and said, ‘You keep eating like that and you’ll get fat like me!’  For the longest time I thought I was going to grow large breasts.” “Dolly Parton told you that you were going to get fat?” “Yep.” “Just wanted to make sure I heard you correctly.” One would think with all the partying Phil was capable of that he would make a mess of his onstage performance.  Phillip, had his wild adventures, but when he was on the clock with Even In Blackouts, he was about as professional as they come. He has a few friends around the world with which he makes efforts to make time to disappear with.  He’ll just come up to me before or after a show and say, I’ll be off for awhile, see you at the show tomorrow (or in a couple days depending on when our next show was to take place.)  This meant that the rest of the band would probably get a very entertaining recalling of his hourly events when he got back.  Because it was no secret that once he was out of our sight he was not going to sleep, and he was going to drink, eat, and abuse whatever chemicals or solids got in his way.  In Edinburgh was the only close call we ever had with Phil, and that was because he disappeared with the most wild kid that lives in Scotland, Bryan McGarvey.  Oh, he may look like a nice well kempt boy, but do not believe it for a second.  He works for the devil.  Satan himself put this kid in charge of mischief, imbibing, and illegal absurd activities.  We love him. Phillip was missing.  We had to do the soundcheck without him.  There was no word from him up until 5 minutes before stage time.  We got a message from Bryan telling us he had Phillip with him and that they were on their way.  The band got called to the stage.  We slowly set up our equipment buying time for Phillip and Bryan to arrive.  There was no more stalling.  We would play the first song without a bass player.  I was about to approach the mic to begin our set when through the crowd I see a man in a Pink Halter Top Sweater and a skirt.  It was Phil.  He hopped on stage.  He shook his head, as I had seen him do many times before.  He spoke with the utmost serious tone. “Sorry I’m late.” “What’s up with the pink sweater?” “It’s all I could find.” “I like it.” “Thanks.” And with that we launched into our set. I would never say that this was Philip's calling, to dress odd onstage compared to his leather bound tough performances but I do definitely believe that Even In Blackouts gave him a moment to escape from the pressure of his potential in a format of punk rock that had become an integral part of his reason for being. On the last days of our last European tour we played at a venue a few days after Halloween.  Gub and Phil took a trip to the local department store.  For the life of me as I write this I can’t remember where the hell where we were, although I know it was in the northern areas of Europe.  Philip found a child’s costume of a vampire.  He asked if it was in our budget, and of course I said, “Yes. Of course it is.”  Back stage before the show, besides the Dracula cape he now had, he found halloween decorations on a shelf.  He put webs and black garland upon his body and face.  He turned to us and said, “I am Voltar!  Phillip will not be performing tonight.”  And that is exactly what I told our audience that night.  “We are Even In Blackouts.  Tonight our bass player has gone missing, but luckily Voltar knew the parts and will be joining us on this special occasion.”  No one had any idea who we were, they may have known who Phillip Hill was, from The Teen Idols, but they were so confused, partially because they didn't speak much English, but once Voltar walked on stage, and we began playing a type of punk music this place had never heard, we gained the respect of the weirdos, and the scenesters left the room.  It was a proud moment for us. On our Blog, I posted these pictures.http://eveninblackouts.blogspot.com/ A few days later while we were all stuck in a van for another 14 hour trip, Philip informed me of a series of emails he had recently read.  He had received an email from Ben Weasel and then a little later an email from Joe Queer.  They both said that they felt he was making a fool of himself, dressing up like an idiot.  They both showed concern and hinted that he should purge Even In Blackouts. “I’m sorry, Phil.” “Fuck it.  I don’t care.” It seemed the Punk Rock Dress Code, humorous or devastatingly serious, was still a presence in my life.

A LITTLE TRIP TO EUROPE PART III

"OK! Today, 
Let's write a swimming pool."- John LennonTonight, or perhaps into the morrow, after a few drinks, some chocolate, and constructing my last Italy Blog post, I will list the selling of the first guitar I owned.  I used it on every tour and every record from The Self-Titled to Bark Like A Dog.  When I fell on it during a show in Houston I cracked off the cable connector and some wood off the body along with it.  That night I wired my 50 foot guitar cable into the back of this, my only guitar.  Each night I’d wrap the cord around it’s body and place it in the back of the van.  A few months later I fell on it again and broke the lower bridge off and replaced it with a pen cap.  Most of the early records were recorded with the guitar in this very condition.  Suffice it to say, this guitar means alot to me.  It may never play again, it may still play, I don’t even know.  It has become a relic that has represented the struggle of our band from obscurity to seminal-fame status.  And I’m selling it for this months Mortgage payment.  This one’s for the house! Andrea was the Mange that greeted me at the train station, that took care of me on that first day in Italy, and whom I feel has a temperance closer to my own than anyone I had met in Europe.  Yet when I met Mass, and for the life of me I can’t remember where we were, I remember him looking at me as if we knew each other since we were children.  Standing about twice my height and with a salesman’s smile, he said “Ahhhh!”, like a stereo-typical Italian chef.  He opened his arms to three times the width of my body and wrapped me in a hug.  I really don’t even know if what I just wrote is true, but it is the reality of how the memory feels.  Mass was the voice and presents that constantly let me know that everything was OK, that he would be there if I needed him if I got lost or was going hungry, and that I was important to him, and he was willing to admit it.  I feel this is very similar to how he works within his own band. Mass invited me to his place to meet his parents and his sister.  We went to his room and looked through records.  He had quite an impressive collection.  This “collecting” in Italy has a heightened importance, one that most of the eccentric collectors in the states could relate to but not your normal collector.  In Europe, but especially in Italy the gathering of precious records from bands of the states, was a difficult endeavor.  They cost more, the postal systems these records would have to travel through were many and unpredictable.  When music arrived there was a celebration.  I am not one for looking through records.  I don’t know why, I love music, but I don’t find it very exciting looking at collector’s items.  I could sense the level of dedication to acquiring these objects in the way Mass held them, unsheathing them from their plastic protectors, the delicate way in which he brought the cds to the disc player, or the stylus needle down upon the pristine vinyl.  Each of these holders of music were alive.  And for this reason I persevered through the two hour sharing of his collection.  And low and behold, Fun was had! Mass’ parents came home awhile later.  They also had smiles and friendly hugs for me.  It was hard to believe that this was my first time in their home.  They went about their afterwork rituals while I listened to some new Manges songs.  Mass sat at his computer finishing the art design for their latest cd.  About a half hour later his father called out a few Italian words.  A few minutes later, Mass said, “Ok Buddy, let’s eat.”  I assumed he meant going out some where.  We walked into the living room.  His parents had the table set for dinner.  Over the course of an hour and a half we drank a goodly dose of wine they had made themselves.  They fed me pasta, sausage, and bread.  I got very drunk, talked about theater and growing up in the states.  I don’t recall having talked about music at all.  I was in heaven.  I am a sucker for meeting the parents of friends and musicians.  Since I was a very small child I always got along with the parents of my friends.  It may have been because they thought I was the innocent one that might keep their son or daughter on the straight and narrow path, but I prefer to think that I was born with a sense of rebellion that was not aimed towards the gaps between generations but towards normality, blind hatred, and contentment.  That sounds stupid, but for some reason I can look at people in a certain way, thinking I am seeing through their eye sockets into their core, and often they look back at me and acknowledge that I had showed them something too.  I don’t know why this is but it makes me shy, awkward, and incapable of thinking in straight lines, but also it strikes deep into what I like to call a communal compassion.  Maybe parents can see this.  I am no angel.  I am just as flawed and fucked as everyone else. Later that night we went to their local hang out, La Skaletta, where I was introduced to lemon vodkas, on the house, served by two of the most adorable, brazen, business minded, and kind sister’s in all of Southern Europe, Frederica and Daria Pantani.  Neither of them speak near a word of English, so my distinctions and understanding of the two are purely based on observation.  Daria runs La Skaletta, she seems the one driven and tough.  I thought she was the bees knees. (For Italians who don’t know that phrase it means “of the highest quality.”)  Frederica works behind the bar and seems the most sociable and willing to engage in humor, and maybe likes to get in trouble occasionally.  I can see it in her smile.  La Skaletta is the northern Italian hub for punks to hang out, drink copious amounts of alcohol, play foosball, and hear punk rock, both live and recorded music, from around the world.   Here is where I got to observe the protector and mostly silent partner of the Manges, the Italian Fonsi, the priest of all things Ramones, the La Skaletta one man security team (out of personal duty and not for payment), Manuel.  Out of the three childhood friends to form the Manges he is the one that speaks the least english, and the one I least understand, the one that with just a look can make me feel despised, respected, loved, and inconsequential. He reminds me of my brother, the one that my mom says, “He feels so deeply, he doesn’t feel at all.”  When Manuel is not keeping impeccable time on the drums, purposely playing the basics, riding that high hat like and engine pumping it’s pistons, you can see him standing back leaning against a wall or standing erect with his arms crossed, watching every movement being made within sight.  This man is driven by my favorite word, integrity, and it both elevates him to hero status, and places him beyond the touchable.  He is the one I know the least.  Months ago the Manges flew out to Chicago to commit, like the dedicated men they are, to play at a fiasco, abandoned by many, an anniversary of Screeching Weasel, that I was not even invited to, and yet ironically was the only member to attend.  They stayed at my house and I gave away items from my past.  I hoarded for many years the memories imbedded in objects, yet occasionally give them away to people I know will put them somewhere safe.  (They are almost all gone now.)  That night I gave Manuel a very very very rare velvet coated copy of Screeching Weasel’s cover of the Ramones first record.  This gift, until now, was my silent appreciation of Manuel’s existence. I spent numerous nights with this group of people and met many faces that are not connected to names.  I was introduced to Georgio, who always reminds me, in mannerisms, physicality, and voice, of an Italian Gerard Depardieu.  His shoulders are more broad than my own.  He has the Italian gesture of crunching the lower lip and chin up into the nose while shrugging and signaling in multi directions with random fingers down to a science.  He is a bear of a man, impassioned by music but not playing himself.  He let me stay at his father’s cabin surrounded by kiwi, logs, and inapproachable dreams, as I attempted to finish my book about the band.  Living was too important to suck myself into a world of written words.  That book remained undone for quite awhile after I got home. Georgio and Mass took me to Milan, to romance a girl, to show me the rich city of models, money, and antiquity.  When we were walking down a side road off the main square, I saw Mass ogle, through a store window, an old fashioned hand held camera.  I don’t know much about cameras but it looked marvelous, with things that made other things pop out when you touched buttons, and a large magnified piece of glass that showed you images upside down.  Why do I now know these odd details of this item?  Well when Mass was in a record store I wandered back to this wonder of technology to find out if I could get it for my friend.  I told the salesmen I spoke no Italian, but he spoke the universal language known as “potential sale.”  I pointed to the camera I wanted to look at.  I had no idea what to check out about it, but he turned it this way and that speaking gibberish at me.  I said things like, “yes” and “uhuh.”  Eventually he looked at me, and I said, “Price?”  This english word he understood.  He grabbed his calculator and showed me a price in Italian dollars.  (At the time they didn’t have the euro yet, so the amount looked something like a million dollars.)  I then questioned, “American?”  He pressed a couple buttons on the calculator and showed it to me.  1300 Dollars.  You must know, readers of this blog, that that amount was way beyond what I expected, but I was caught in the momentum, and really there was no price I could put on making Mass happy, there was only a price that was beyond my credit card, and this price fit into the amount our governments working together with big banks would allow me to think I had.  I said “Yes, I’ll take it.”  The salesman knew what this meant too, and quickly finished the transaction just as Mass walked in.  Mass asked me what I was doing.  He asked me to return it.  I said, “Happy Birthday, Mass.”  And I made him take it.  That was the most expensive gift I have ever bought.  And I never regret it.  This sounds trite, but I often say things free of irony that others feel the need to coat in an armor of verbal protection, but I say, “There is no price you can put on friendship.” A few days later we were visiting friends in the opposite direction, Pisa.  And yes, in the center of this city, there is a tower that leans, known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  It was September.  I know the month, not because I have a brain that remembers details, but because it is a date most people have electrocuted and permanently burned into the wiring of their brains.  I was backing down a side street looking at the leaning tower getting smaller and smaller.  I love playing with perspective.  Mass and a few others darted into a pizza parlor.  I heard things in Italian that made me think of expressions like, “Fuck!”  “Oh Know!”  “God help us.”  But they were Italian, and I have no idea if they were anything like this.  I began to walk over the threshold of this pizza parlor.  This is no literary poetics at work, no elaborations.  I was literally half in the door half out the door, when I looked in and saw all these folks, with eyes watering and in shock staring up at a television screen in the corner of the room.  While half in and half out I looked up at the screen and saw a flaming building, a building that looked American, with my other eye I was still looking at a leaning building that was wholly Italian.  There was a tower leaning in one of my eyes, and a tower burning in the other.  They were watching a live telecast of an American news program.  I tried to connect images with words, but their Italian dubbing was so loud over the original English that I could only understand that America had been attacked by images; instant replays of two planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Everyone has their story of where they were on September 11th.  I did not experience the unity that occurred in the states.  I experienced what I believe was a more complex picture of American events. A day earlier Mass told me that I should take a train trip down to Sicily to visit a couple musician friends named Marco and Stefano.  Mass had never been to Sicily, but he was sending me there.  (Later, on another trip, I would talk Georgio and Mass into driving to Sicily.  I had no idea that most Italians had never been to Sicily.  This is when I learned that Italians were not Sicilians, and that Sicilians were not Italians, yet their passion for every day life and community is about equal.)  This American event stopped not only the progression of time in the states but in Europe too.  There was no train leaving for Sicily from La Spezia the next day.  Instead I was invited to a meeting that took place in Mass’ castle town Sarzana.  I was told later similar gatherings took place all over Italy.  The instinct, or at least the underground societies instinct, was to immediately meet in their squares.  All civilians met with other civilians to experience this world event together.  I felt honored and horrified to be at one of these meetings sponsored by the punks of Northern Italy.  When I arrived into Europe on this trip, I could feel the hatred for our newest president.  In places like Ireland, France, England, Germany, Belgium, people demanded an explanation as to why I would allow George Bush into office.  I am not political, but I would tell them that the only time I had voted was to vote not for a party but against Bush.  It is dangerous to assume the responsibility of your country but it is also irresponsible not to accept partial blame.  I am of the theater, I know actors, I know when someone is being fed lines.  I don’t know anything about politics, I don’t trust the concept, but what I do know is when I am watching a bad actor, and that is what Bush was for me, a terrible actor.  And I told my European associates as much. So on the night of September 11 2001, alienated from my home country in the midst of paralyzing turmoil I sat and observed a heated discussion amongst a room crowded with emotional Italian punks, crying, yelling, postulating.   One bearded man in his late twenties, who looked like Cat Stevens, turned to me and said, “You are American?”  I nodded yes, even though it sounded more like an accusation than a question.  “You fucking deserve this!  You know that?  You Americans fucking deserve this!  But We don’t want to see this pain.  This is nothing compared to atrocities that YOU have been apart of.  We don’t like this pain!  You have torn us all in two.  No one should have to die for this... Stupidity!”   Like I said there was crying, there was yelling, there was postulating, and except for those few hostile words it was all in Italian.  Yet at the end of the night I received many hugs and wishes of well.  No one there wanted me dead, or anybody dead, they just wanted to share their feelings, confusions, and strong opinions amongst their community. Many things happened the following days, drinking, watching Americans on television speak Italian, watching Italians speak Italian, calling home to make sure none of my friends had family in the towers.  It was like everyone else in the Western Hemisphere, a day that each of us can talk endlessly about, but when placed amongst the atrocities of the world, ranks about at an equally contented level of hatred and horridness. About a week later I was allowed to leave the area and take a train to Palermo.  This is too long to get into, but there has been long financial and political debates about building any easier way to have a train go from Italy to Sicily.  I imagine it is still the same but when I was traveling the train stops at the edge of italy, is disconnected from the tracks, put on a boat, carried to the shore of Sicily and then continues on it’s way to Palermo.  This process takes no less than 12 hours.  Here are some things before I get to Sicily:  The Manges gave me a band concert shirt that has a gun prominently placed on the chest of the wearer.  I shared a two bunk room with a college kid from Iraq.  We were on that train for 12 hours hardly speaking a word, until we were placed on a boat.  He crawled out of his bunk and saw me sitting on the lower bunk.  He looked for a long stone faced time at the gun on my shirt.  Then he said, “America likes guns.  Bang Bang.”  I don’t know if this was a statement from his own brain, or a reference to an American movie, Stripes, where Russian’s say “Chicago, Bang Bang.”  It made me very uncomfortable.  I’d like to say we broke through this moment and chatted about how really we are all the same in the end.  But we didn’t.  We went back into our bunks and remained silent until we were in Sicily. We are now in Sicily.  And I will leave this for another blog.  Stefano, Marco, and Kylie Minogue will have to continue to wait.  What you must know is that years later I bought a van, a black van, the only vehicle I have every owned, for a Manges US Tour.  The Manges and I toured the Western States.  Hopefully we will hear about this later.  What is important to know now is that Andrea’s guitar was slowly cracking.  You see, when traveling with a guitar on a plane, you must loosen the strings.  The pressure change can cause unloosened strings to contract and bend the neck of the guitar.  By the end of the tour Andrea’s guitar was destroyed.  Moments before they left to head back to Italy, I ran into the basement of my house and pulled out my two guitars.  I passed up the Westone, because that was my lifeblood, my tangible connection to years of my history.   But I wanted him to have something special, so I gave him my back-up guitar; a telecaster.  I could tell he was blown away by the offer.  I wanted him to have a guitar to use when he got back home.  I showed him that the setlist for the Anthem For A New Tomorrow tour (A Screeching Weasel Record) was still taped to the front of the guitar.  Ben had the idea of us taping these to the fronts of our guitars so that we didn’t have to make nightly playlists that we put on the floor of the stages, to rely on looking at the ground to know what song we had to play next.  Like the Ramones he wanted us to play non stop.  The fact is we all had the list memorized after two shows.  I never looked at the playlist.  But I kept it there.  Andrea left his broken guitar with me, and he took my, later to discover, broken guitar with him.  He supposedly tried to get it fixed, spent too much money on it, and finally retired it to become a nonfunctioning collectors item.  Sometime later I apologized to him for giving him a broken guitar for a broken guitar, but this was yet another moment I realized that items I own have more importance to others than they do for myself. And that is that.  My last item is for sale.  Someone please give it a home for the price of my mortgage.  I will not part with it for anything less. "Obviously, these were the jokes we made to keep ourselves sane and comfortable. We were actually writing what we considered to be art... We weren't just writing shit for a swimming pool." Paul McCartney. End of Part III

THE LILLINGTONS MEET PETER FLYNN (PART I)

The Panic Button Headquarters
There was a period of a few years where my 300 dollar a month apartment in the heart of Lincoln Park became the headquarters for Panic Button Records.  I lived and worked amongst the lower upper class pristine jogging muscle bound men and women who twice daily walked their 2.3 dogs down to and within the restricted confines of a bounded hound infested gated mud pit.  It was a block away from my apartment.  The whole block smelled like wet dog and fresh shit. The place is still there now.  It’s called Wiggly Park.  Prior to its dogginess the pun named park used to be a playground for kids to swing, slide, and run freely.  I guess now it’s better for the children to search for communal entertainment within their video games or in the middle of the busy city streets.   Every day after hours upon hours of delirious label work in front of a computer I would pause for a few minutes, walk outside to fetch a soda pop at the White Hen (Which now no longer exists.) and talk about nothing important with the few homeless drunkards that lived outside the church down the block.  In some ways I felt akin to these homeless ones.  I still can’t describe why, but I felt... well... “at home” with them talking about nothing in particular.  Perhaps I was taking my friend Peter’s place gibbering to whom most in that neighborhood would not even consider giving a second glance.  Peter always felt at ease amongst the down and out.  They make me feel uncomfortable but I feel they are a part of me too. Douglas, who resembled a joyful Charles Manson, would summer in Chicago and hitchhike to the Carolina’s in the winter.  He would sit in the alley right outside my back door.  He was always curious as to what I was dong with my time.  I’d talk to him about the music business, often thinking he wouldn’t remember a word because he seemed to fade in and out, asking questions twice.  Yet the next day he would continue the conversation with me right where we left off, somehow with the correct information and starting point still tucked in the confines of his alcohol addled brain.  I have long since moved away from Lincoln Park, but I still frequent the sidewalks where Douglas lived, and I don’t see him anymore.  His drinking got worse every season I saw him, and his skin went from rebelliously tanned, to leathery, to covered with scabs and fresh blood.  I can only hope he retired from wandering the streets and permanently settled in the Carolinas. I had inherited the apartment from the aforementioned Peter Flynn, who is now dead.  He wasn’t dead when I inherited the apartment.  He gave it to me when he and his wife moved to New Orleans, her to sell art on the streets, he to play guitar in the pubs, drink incessantly, then to hang himself one afternoon and finally, to die.  I am practicing being callous with the mentioning of his death.  I went through the anger, the mourning, and the sadness.  It’s time for a change.  You see, the actual death of a person never goes away.  The death is immortal as long as one person bothers to think of them or to transplant them into the head of another.  Anyone is able to transform a death into whatever they want, whenever they want, for as long as they want.  I am expressing my inalienable rights as an impermanent bundle of bones, nerves, and flesh to constantly transpose the fuck out of his death. While Peter was still living he inherited the Lincoln Park apartment from some other drunken dude (And I mean dude like cowboy, not like hipster stoner.) who is probably now dead, or living on the streets and dying.  The three floor house was owned by three old Greek siblings, sitting out their days in the real estate office on the bottom floor.  They were old and visibly shrinking.  I don’t think I have ever seen such old people running a business.  They moved very slowly around their office engaging in small talk, pulling papers out of file cabinets, handing them to each other, and then putting them back in other similar file cabinets.   Since our rent was so low in that one building it was an unspoken rule that you didn’t complain about needing anything fixed.  You just did it yourself.  Although for some external repairing they did have an ex-convict handle the work.  He was horrible at maintenance, but I liked him nonetheless, and, he needed the job. My three Greek Landlords could give a shit about making a profit anymore.  They seemed quite content to use our measly rents to just barely cover their taxes for the property, even though they could have sold that lot for millions of dollars.  They worked hard, but really they just wanted to have a place to go, to give themselves a bit of meaning during their last days.  I liked them very much.  I think of them often. This gentlemen’s agreement of sorts, no one ever signed a rental contract, gave a few lucky artists a place to live for cheap in the middle of one of the most expensive neighborhoods to rent in the city of Chicago.  The entire seven years I lived there my rent was never raised once.  That is until a bunch of stupid frat boys held a party on a staircase a few blocks away.  The porch collapsed and some of their drunken bodies fell three flights to their deaths.  I do have sympathies for all those who passed away in this tragic accident, but come on, these are the same back alleys and porches used in the movie The Untouchables, because they were the most fucking old and decrepit in the entire city!  At least I knew the staircase and porch in my unit was too rickety for parties involving more than two guests.   After the porch collapse incident the city sent a team of inspectors around the area to investigate potential hazards.  They put up signs condemning dangerous staircases.  My building was one of them.  The landlords built a new staircase and three intersecting porches.  They were all newer looking but just as dangerous as the old ones.  One thing lead to another.  The rent went up.  I had to move out.  Soon after my move a ginormous wrecking ball brought the building down into a heap of junk, then a bulldozer came along and leveled it to the ground. It was instantly replaced with a sky-high slew of exuberantly expensive condos. In my apartment there was a kitchen, a bathroom and an everything-else-room.  I slept on an old worn out carpet in the middle of the everything-else-room.  After awhile of getting rug burns from tossing and turning on the hard floor, I purchased, at a yard sale, a cushion from a pool front lawn chair.  I used this for my bed until I moved out.  Each night I would unroll it on the floor like you would a beach towel.  I used to say that waking up wasn’t so difficult because it wasn’t that very different from being awake.  My prostrate body was just at a slightly different angle from one moment to the next.   This is how I arose every morning to begin my day working at my computer in the kitchen/office but most importantly this is how I arose on a pair of very similar days.  In the vast configuration of time, these two days, were merely two distinctly separate mornings, but because of particular events unfolding and given significance they are now forever linked.  I received a friendly business related phone call from The Lillingtons on one of these occasions.  On the other occasion I received a distressed phone call from the wife of Peter Flynn.  Both relationships were music oriented.  The differences were that the Lillingtons were a pop punk band.  They were fans of Screeching Weasel and on our record label, Panic Button Records.  The label was ran completely by the two most famous of Screeching Weasels’ members, Ben Weasel, and me, John Jughead.  To Ben and I The Lillingtons were to be the saviors of the punk scene.  They were destined to become a well-mannered explosion out of the depths of Wyoming.  Three unassuming friends that had nothing better to do than listen to and to play three chord punk rock.  Well actually all three of them worked pretty hard jobs, in caves and ditches, in oil, and in grocery lines.  Next to the Manges Cody, Corey, and Tim of The Lillingtons were my favorite people I have ever met through Punkrock. (Discounting Gub Conway, Lizzie Eldredge, Phillip Hill and Nathan Bice.) Peter Flynn was a folk musician from Portland Maine.  Who talked like an East Coast Sailor but sang like an Irish Drunkard. We met years before when we worked together at a crown books in the suburbs.  When his first wife left him everything fell to pieces.  He went back to drinking.  He quit Crown Books, got a job at another discount bookshop and lived in the warehouse.  Then he was fired from that job.  He moved deep into the city of Chicago, met his second wife and pulled his fragmented life back together.  Peter had always had a few pieces missing so it was no surprise that he would eventually go awry.  He maintained an ever increasing need for liquor and drugs. He respected me mostly as a playwright and we barely ever talked about Screeching Weasel.  We were dear friends who would do anything for each other.   He was a valuable critic and lover of my work, and I was his basement recording engineer, confidante, and unwitting supporter of his self destruction. [Working at Crown books was my last Job.  More specifically it was the last time that I would work for a Boss. When Peter and I worked there it was pretty great.  He and I loved books.  He was the assistant manager, and I was just an employee.  Our boss was a woman named Celeste, who also had a great love for books.  We had to stock the shelves with the usual big sellers, but we always snuck in some independent publishers and old classics that were quickly fading away.  I had been in Screeching Weasel already but it was a passion project then, and it ate all the money Ben and I were making.  All of my money went towards paying for our early recordings and tours.  Between rent and the band, I lived on, no kidding, twelve bucks a week.  Then Peter left Crown Books.  Soon after he quit, the higher ups in Crown restructured all their stores.  They removed Celeste.  They brought in a more corporate regime.  The manager and assistant knew very little about books.  The manager aspired to work at a store across the street called Foot Locker.  Which I have no judgement against.  We all need shoes.  But what the hell was he doing running a bookstore?  One day while I was cutting open a box of Danielle Steele novels he put down the phone and ran back into the children’s section.  He was there for a few minutes.  He came back bemused, shaking his head.  I asked him what he was looking for. He said, “A book called Don The Coyote.  I figured it would be in the children section.” “Do you mean Don Quixote?” “Yeah, that’s it!” “It’s in classics.  It’s a classic!” Now there is nothing inherently wrong with not knowing this book.  But if you are going to be a manager at a book store you should know the name of a 400 year old document that is one of the most internationally acclaimed novels EVER published. I stayed on a bit longer.  Until one day they approached me with a blue apron. “What’s that?”  “You have to wear this from now on.” He held it out for me to grab. “What, are we going to start baking the books instead of reading them?” “You have to wear this.” And then I ended the conversation by saying, “No I don’t.” He walked away. Quite a few months prior to this incident, I took a few weeks off to tour. Screeching Weasel had reunited for the second time and had gone to California to record our first recording for Lookout Records, My Brain Hurts.  By the time of the the blue apron incident the record had begun to do very well.  Lookout records caught the wave of our success and rereleased Boogada Boogada Boogada.  Boogada is by far the largest selling record of our catalog, and 90 percent of those royalties are split between me and Ben.  All the other records which followed up till near the end of that Screeching Weasel the percentages were more democratically split between the musicians.  That pay structure is still in place to this day, though I hardly see a check.  But the year those two records came out on Lookout my income went from 10, 000 dollars a year to 60,000 dollars.  This boost in royalties, Peter having left, and the blue aprons contributed to the moment it struck me one day while stocking John Grisham novels, that I didn’t need to work for someone any  longer.  I told the manager I was going home and never coming back.]  The Lillingtons phone call, which came first, was a short conversation with Cody, the singer, guitarist, and main songwriter.  All my conversations with Cody were always short.  Often he would call me from the grocery store he worked at in his home town, Newcastle Wyoming, population 3,485.  We liked each other very much, but we are both men of very little words, and conversations between two men of little words are usually incredibly brief and to the point, like talking in shorthand.  Plus usually half of the time was spent joking about how horrible, insular, and petty the pop punk scene had gotten over the years.  He would often inform me about what band’s demo they had just launched off the windshield of their van while driving on the interstate.  Those cd’s really take off.  Often they would judge how much they liked a band by how far the cd flew after it was launched.  They were more critical of music than I could ever be, yet from them it seemed...acceptable and perhaps even intuitively accurate. They had just started a tour.  I always got the sense that they hated touring but loved the music they played.  This is a feeling I know too well but do not feel myself.  I was getting pretty sick of being in the office/slash house day after day with no hope of ever touring with my own band, so I asked Cody if I could join them on the road and play second guitar.  I did a little fancy footwork convincing him that it was better to have two guitars live than just one. Cody could concentrate better on solos and singing, and the rhythm section would hold strong.  It IS something I believe but I probably said it then just so that I could plant the idea of them letting me join them.  (You see at that time, I had no idea that to other bands it would be “an honor” for me to play with them.  To me it was just cool to be able to play with these new exciting bands and to be on the road without the pressures of being in charge.) We agreed to meet on the road.  These special boys from Wyoming were happy to have me aboard.  And what these boys should know is that this no brainer opportunity they gave me has implanted their personalities on my brain for the rest of my life.    I hung up the phone and immediately made a reservation to rent a car for the next day.  We had no funds to get me a laptop so I stayed up the whole night printing out any documents I would need on the road to keep the business running.  I burned a cd of all their songs and I learned all of them while driving 19 hours alone from Chicago to Austin Texas.  I only stopped for gas.  I arrived at the venue an hour before the first show never having actually played any of the songs on a guitar, only in my mind.  I turned the road ahead of me into a fret board.  It helped to keep me awake.  The calm excitement and immediate acceptance of whatever I could do for them on stage that night intensified my responsibility to help them sound good.  I don’t recall if I made any mistakes and I don’t think any of the four of us even cared.  In retrospect it was like a magical dream.
END OF PART I
Soon to come:The Old Pheasant Hotel,  Dueling Pianos, and Drinking with CoreyMormonsand The Death of a Friend.

A LITTLE TRIP TO EUROPE PART II

PART II: I Will Always Do
I do not want to tell a nonlinear tale, I have done that in the past.  It is the way my brain is rigged.  I will just let you know the events to follow are out of order.  This should not affect your enjoyment.  I will design them to seem as if they flow from one moment to the next, and not dizzily back and forth.
From the plane that landed in London Heathrow I ended up on a train to La Spezia, Italy.  It may have been only ten minutes, but more likely a few weeks.  My contact was Andrea from The Manges.  We had never met before and I do not speak a word of Italian.  I still to this day have to look up how to spell Ciao every time I use it in my writing.  In most cases when I leave I say instead, “Good bye, my friend.”  I know how to spell that. Andrea picked me up at the train station.  He got out of his car and opened the door for me.   “Hello, I’m Andrea.”  “I’m John Jughead.”  I said those to words but I felt like I was lying.  I was just a guy with a large backpack who had his pants tucked into his socks and a head full of bed hair from sleeping on a train.   “I know who you are.”  Andrea smiled and nodded his head, showing his respect.  In the car we spoke very little.  He knows more bits of different languages than he lets on.  Besides Mass, the bass player of The Manges, Andrea, the singer and guitarist, speaks the most english.  It was a surprise to me that English was not spoken as much in Italy.  You may say that statement is very American of me to think such a thing, but in most of the places I had been in Europe it seemed to be the case that English was everywhere.  A friend of mine in Belgium thought that one of the reasons for the proliferation of English in many countries, including Belgium, was because of the entertainment media and the use of subtitles.  They heard the English language on a daily basis on European television networks, and saw their own languages cross the bottom of the tv and movie screen.  It wasn’t just entertainment, it was a schooling of sorts.  In Belgium all tv and movies have subtitles in different languages.  (Many different languages are spoken in Belgium. It’s confusing.)  I watched a few programs while in Antwerp in a house built in the 1400’s filled with mannequins.  (That’s another story.)  Half the screen of the television was covered with multiple quickly moving layers of texts in many different languages. It was like watching a news channel that had constant warnings and flashes superimposed over stock market prices and averages lowering and rising.  I could barely concentrate on the program being watched.  Italy, on the other hand, prides itself on dubbing all foreign media.  There is barely any subtitles.  Many of the actors that dub the voices of movie stars are just as famous and more loved in Italy than the stars themselves.  Andrea, who is very familiar with both dubbed and originals, says the Italian over-dubbed voices are usually more preferable.  Them Italians know how to speak!   This process of dubbing makes the imported media their own.  (I MUST impose on my own writing here to affirm that I am aware of the incredible influence Italian cinema has had on the world.  You must search them out, I don’t have the time here.)  Ferruccio Amendola, the man who overdubbed the voices of Sylvester Stalone, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Christopher Lloyd, and Robert De Niro, was so popular that when he died the funeral was telecast and fans from all over the country attended the ceremony.   The stamp of America is both endearing and repellent.  Compared to Italy the US understanding of community, passion, and open conversation amongst our peers is shabby at best.  America’s brand of materialism invades the hearts of almost every economy in the world.  It is both fascinating and worthy of mockery to the Italians.   It is complex.  It fucks with their identity.  They criticize yet admit to their deep love for oddities such as Fonsi from Happy Days, Eddie Munster, B horor/Sci Fi Movies and the music of Screeching Weasel and The Ramones.  The Italians I met grew up with these influences.  They made them their own, assuming in many ways that they WERE their own. In general bands that want to be known outside of their own country, to break the international market must sing most of their songs in English.  (I feel this has changed slightly since my trip over a decade ago.)  Whereas in many European countries English was taught as a second language many Italians learned to speak English by listening to British and American pop music.   The people I met, after seeing the Green Day and The Riverdales show formed bands and sang mostly in english.  (There are a few Italian punk bands that did sing mostly in Italian, I will list some of them at the bottom of this article. ) Along side these facts, to me, Italy remains one of the proudest of it’s own culture in Europe.  In large groups, in their punk venues, they may predominantly sing songs from The Ramones and other melodic bands from other parts of the world, but when they played for me Fabrizio De Andre, a nationally known Italian singer/songwriter, there was a significant difference in their attitude.  Fabrizio recorded a live concert a couple years before my trip.  The album was released in 1999.  He died a few months later of lung cancer.  This live performance was his last, and so it’s recording documented his life’s end.   We were all crowded into a van.  Mass played me a song from the last concert, a grand, epic, sweeping Italian song.  The way my new friends sung together to the recording of this one man’s voice told a more full story of who they were. Even though I couldn’t understand the words I could feel a sorrowful joy overtaking the air in the vehicle.  This song seemed to have released from deep within them feelings about the continuous struggles with their government, a love of family, the sadness of passing, and an inspirational tone that only people raised in certain areas could emotionally comprehend.   A “you had to be there” to the extent of a whole culture.  All this became clear to me just from them singing a song together in a van. Influences from other countries are welcomed into their culture with open arms but the influences quickly mutates into something... other.  The Manges are their own thing, unique and wholly Italian, infused with US kitsch, grit and rock and roll.  Perhaps this is why they are one of the few European punk bands to be embraced by the pop punk subculture of America.  They are 200 percent punk rock.  And as we all know, that amount of percentage is an impossibility, and that’s why they kick ass. Before this ride in the car I knew very little about Andrea and The Manges.  Two years prior to my trip Ben played a 7 inch record for me in the living room of his spotless condo, his need for cleanliness was an exact replica of his mother’s.  We listened to this scratchy low budget recording of a song that I could have figured out how to play before the song had even ended, but the melody was so catchy, and the textures of the voices were oddly enchanting.  When the song ended Ben said, “I wanna cover this for our new record.”  And I said, “Yeah, sounds great.  Who is it?” “The Manges.  They’re from Italy.” At that time I didn’t even know Italy had much of a punk rock scene.  Ben had toured Italy in his Ramones-core band called Riverdales.  They opened for Green Day.  Many of the Italian punks I would meet on this trip were highly influenced by that show.  In fact quite a few of my Italian friends have admitted to discovering The Ramones through The Riverdales and Screeching Weasel, and not the other way around as most critics and music lovers would think.  That blew my mind.  I never thought it possible that someone could have heard Screeching Weasel before they had heard The Ramones.  (Sidenote: Screeching Weasel before the formation of The Riverdales rarely if ever got compared to The Ramones.  Somehow after The Riverdales’ years, that comparison dominated all other comparisons.  I love The Ramones, right up there with other punk bands like The Circle Jerks, Husker Du, The Minute Men, The Descendents, and Adrenolin OD.  To have the band’s descriptions shrink to such a specific degree, discounting the other influences and broad lyrical content over the many years of our band’s history, pissed me off.  Thereafter the mention of The Ramones in the same breathe as Screeching Weasel would often make me cringe.) The Manges’ song was called I Will Always Do.  The title is grammatically incorrect yet has a simple loveliness to it.  The Manges version has two distinct voices switching off lead vocals.  Ben chose to make our version with only one main vocal. His.  I thought that this was a mistake.  Not because of his voice, but because it seemed wrong to make this change.  I suggested having Heather from the Teen Idols sing one of the parts.  I thought, removed from lyrical content, that two voices helped to create a tension in the song.  It was one of the elements that made the original version stand out.  This is one of the reasons The Manges, I Will Always Do, is superior to ours. Though, ours is still quite good. From the first day Ben and I listened to their songs, this small band from Italy became a shared pleasure for the two of us.  By this time in Screeching Weasel, circa 2000, Ben and I really didn’t share much of the same opinions about anything.  I often conceded to issues in order to avoid conflict.  We knew we both liked The Manges.  We were both happy to help them out in anyway, especially by putting their song on our forthcoming record, Teen Punks In Heat.  Little did I know that over the next year, once The Manges found out we were putting their song on our record, Andrea’s life would be made a tiny bit more complicated.  There is no mistaking that this was an important and exciting event to have happened to them, but it also had its awful side.   The Manges were going to have rehearsal the evening I arrived.  Andrea asked if I’d like to go.  I was very excited to see them play. “Yes, I would like that very much.” We dropped my bags off at his place then we stopped by the post office.  I sat and waited outside at a cafe down the street.  I wasn’t good at confronting waitstaffs from foreign countries, I was afraid I’d just speak louder in english thinking this would make them understand what I wanted, like they were deaf.  Andrea said he would order for me then go to the post office. “Would you like a coffee?” “I don’t drink coffee.” Andrea looked at me as if he didn’t understand. “You don’t drink coffee.”  Andrea is very cool.  He is short like me, burly in the shoulders and tough, yet slightly effeminate, just enough to make him attractive to all women.  He laughed when he finally understood what I meant. “No coffee.  That’s ridiculous.  Would you like a coke?” “Yes, I’ll take a coke.” (Another thing, all soda is served warm in Europe.)   Andrea set me up with a bottle of cola.  He ventured over to the post office with a single manila folder. Although I was in a new location with all the signs on the streets in a different language and cars driving much faster than I had ever seen, La Spezia was a more modern working class city, and looked no different than a heavily concreted US city.  I waited quite a long time.  Andrea walked over to the table shaking his head in frustration. “Sorry to made you wait.” “What was that about?” “More shit registering our song.” “What song?” “I Will Always Do.  Ben told us that we should register the song so that we wouldn’t get fucked.  (This was wise advice for Ben to give yet I don’t think he knew what it would entail.  The process in the states for registering songs, publishing, is fairly tedious but at the end of the day it’s really just filling out a bunch of paperwork.  Now all of it can be done online pretty simply.  To relay Andrea’s experience I did not want to get the details of his plight wrong.  It’s been years since this happened.  I emailed Andrea recently and asked him to send his rendition of this encounter.  I think for the sake of making it sound less troublesome and monotonous he skipped the mentioning of many trips he had to take to retrieve and fill out copious amounts of paperwork from locations within and outside his city.  I don’t think he would want to give the impression that a “favor” we were doing for them would set in motion a time sucking process that would take place over a goodly amount of months.) Andrea: “If you wanted to register to SIAE, the Italian writers and publishers corporation, you also had to take a music test.  For the "lyricist" exam, they locked me in a room alone with two assignments:1) they gave me a song title and I had to write lyrics with it. Like, with any kind of music I had in my head. That was just to see if I knew how to rhyme and write sentences down without any evident mistakes in syllable count2) They gave me lyrics of a song nobody ever heard of, and I had to change them completely but fit them in the same imaginary melody and structure. Maybe they wanted me to prove I could write uninspired, heartless shit on demand? Anyway, I did it.   Then I had to go to Rome at SIAE headquarters and take a "composer" exam.  A music teacher in his 70s, serious man in a suit and all, opened a notations book and asked me to play a melody on a piano.  I told him I couldn't play piano, so he gave me a guitar. I told him I couldn't read music notation, so he started to sing the notes for me while pointing at the staff. I wasn't skilled enough on guitar to play that melody anyway, so he gave up and asked me to sing the melody. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did it.  It was bad.”END OF PART II*Punk Bands that sing in Italian (List supplied by Stefan Eno)1. Fikissimi2. Home Alone 3. Ignoranti 4. Sempre Freski

5. Derozer, 6. Impossibili, 7. Supereroi, 8. Monelli9. I Guerrieri, 10. Bombardini
11. Gambe di Burro12. The Chromosones


PART III will get us closer to Kylie Minogue.

A LITTLE TRIP TO EUROPE

PART ONE: HAVE A PINT WITH JUGHEAD
This is Part I of what will probably be many many parts.  I do not even get to the subjects brought up in the “Reminder.”  In this first part I try to get much of the contemplating out of the way so that once I get into the actual adventures in Europe, especially Italy, I can approach them in a more playful storytelling style.  This backstory and extensive introduction to the inner workings of my brain are important components to better understand where I was coming from but more importantly for the reader to better understand the love I have for the people I had met during this particular journey.  

[Also I want to get a good chunk of the philosophizing out of the way because Andrea from the Manges told me that these blog posts have been an easier style of mine for Italians, who have English as a second or even third language, to read.  So Andrea, bare with this first part, I promise it will get easier.]Reminder:  I have been watching a british sitcom called The Green Wing.  I have yet to decide whether or not I will continue watching it.  I admire the over the top commitment to the oddness of the characters.  At times the humor makes me smile, which for sitcom watching is more than often an unattainable goal.  While watching theater or friend’s bands playing live, my face is one big grin.  I pride myself on being attentive at live performances.  Yet for the at home pre-recorded viewing I am not so easily swayed.  This in no way means that I am too good for netflix or youtube.  I watch them every day.  I just don’t feel the need to laugh out loud.  I’ll cry.  I am a sucker for romantic comedies and friendship adventures.  When I used to have cable, and I watched everything on my large old school cathode ray infused television tube, a sure sign that the romance had had an affect on me was the uncontrollable urge to take off my shoe and whip it at the screen.  I don’t do this anymore.  Now I only watch things on my computer.  I still have the guttural instinct to cast forward my footware, but I don’t follow through because of the inevitable consequences. The velocity at which the shoe must be thrust would cause the laptop to fly off the living room table.  At which point it would instantly smash to pieces.  Lobbing the shoe softly at the computer or pitching it elsewhere in the room, or even throwing something harmless like a handful of popcorn or a cotton swab isn’t an option. To chortle properly I need to be in the company of an infectious laugher.  The former friend known as Matt Nelson, now lacking the breathe to emote in any fashion, was a boisterous chuckler.  The lack of that type of inspiration, specifically his genuine outbursts, is greatly missed in my life.  This may be why I was surprised the other night while alone from deep within my lungs bursting up through the esophagus and causing my jowls to open wide was a sole guffaw.  It was like an unexpected burp or sneeze that surfaces so quickly there is not enough time to cover the mouth.  The moment on The Green Wing which caused this rare reaction was orchestrated by the character Sue White, played by the unsettlingly sexy Michelle Gomez.  The scene was not funny enough to make anyone laugh so sharply they had to cough.  Though that’s exactly what I did.  The character made a sexual innuendo by singing the lyrics to a pop culture music video.  These types of jokes have always boggled my mind.  I don’t know enough about pop culture to get the references.  Also, I don’t understand why such a concept works.  Why, besides a performer’s impeccable comic timing, is it funny to hear someone sing a certain popular song or mention a particular famous person’s name?  It makes no sense to me.  I do not condemn its use.  This category of humor deserves my respect because I cannot deny the phenomena exists, and yet I could never intuitively choose which pop culture references would inspire large groups of consumers to laugh.   Then why did I laugh?  It wasn’t just the recognition of the song and the singer.  It reminded me of an embarrassing memory that somehow over time has lost it’s edge.  I feel I can share it now because for some reason it no longer causes discomfort.  It just makes me laugh.  The song Michelle Gomez sang, which caused the memory to resurface, was Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.  The reason it makes me laugh is embedded in the following story.MEMORY: In October of 2000 Screeching Weasel played two sold out shows at The House Of Blues.  While at the second show I struck a conversation with a member of the office staff.  I had asked how they thought the shows were going.   They said that they were going great, that we were making them some money but that it was also an honor to have us play there.  I’m sure they say that to many of the bands.  One thing about The House Of Blues is that they go out of their way to make a band feel special. (Or at least they did for Screeching Weasel)  There was some truth in his statement about it being an honor because he didn’t try to end the conversation in order to get work done.  He continued the conversation and asked if the band had planned on playing more shows.  And I just couldn’t hold back from laughing.  I’m afraid that getting this band to tour is much more difficult than you would think or hope it to be.  Then I took a gander at the large audience before my eyes.  I turned back to him and asked, “What would it take get a contract to play at ALL of the House Of Blues.” “It would take for me to say, yes.” “Is that example of a yes actually a yes?” “Yes, of course it is!” We talked details.  I told him that Ben would never again be up for cramming into a tour van for days on end.  He had pretty much said as much to me many times before, whenever I would bring up touring.  Right there, standing on the sidelines of our second sold out show, this House of Blues promoter and I created a sketch for a potential game plan.   Over a period of 6 to 8 weeks he could fly us out for the weekends to perform two shows at each House Of Blues’ venues: Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas... I can’t remember what other ones were around in 2000 but there was at least four others.  All we had to do was bring our guitars.  They would supply the equipment and accommodations.  It seemed perfect.  On the sales of concert shirts alone we could pay our rents for a whole year.  For those two Chicago shows we made over $16,000 in t-shirts.  The actual show pay was much less since we required the venue to charge the smallest amount they could for individual tickets to the show.   I had all that cash in my backpack when I walked to the Bank the next morning.  I poured all the money on the counter and handed the clerk my deposit slip.  They called over the security guard, branch manager, and a few other official looking people.  The branch manager asked for my ID.  After handing it to him I told him I was in a pretty well known band and that I was just depositing our merch money.  He asked what band.  I said (knowing he would have never heard of us) “Screeching Weasel.”  He just looked at me blankly and said, “You’ll have to fill out some forms in order to deposit this much money.”  I really wondered if he thought this would scare me away.  But without hesitating I said, “Yeah, of course.” That day after depositing the cash I talked to Ben about the expansive House Of Blues Idea.  He had no interest whatsoever.  And that was that.  During the following months it began to sink in that my most favorite part of participating in a band was rapidly fading away.  As I said in another post, friends had often used my name to get into clubs, to meet other established performers, to impress ladies, and to get free shit.  I, on the other hand, had never even considered doing such a thing.  For the most part I felt lucky that I got to experience the world in a way that for the majority of people was only a pipe dream.  Recording in a studio and performing on stage easily counter-balanced the grueling mundane work I had to do as tour manager, accountant, and taxman for the band’s individuals and corporations. In the wake of imagining I may never tour again, that I may never have the opportunity to associate with the fans again, that my major creative contribution to the band was being demoted, this present path I was on had begun to turn into an endless funeral dirge. I took a good chunk of the money I made from the two House Of Blues’ shows and bought a three month ticket to Europe (a place Screeching Weasel had never played.)  I announced on a few message boards that John Jughead was traveling around Europe and would like to meet the fans that never got the opportunity to see the band.  It felt like cheating somehow as if I would have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.  I didn’t really think about this for too long.  It was a passing thought that seems more apparent in retrospect.  Since I was never the front man, it allowed my personae to more closely resemble my actual self.  (Although my personality still boggles quite a few minds.)  I was to be one of the only tangible connections these fans would have to the band.  There was some pressure, most of which I imposed upon myself, to represent the entirety of the band’s lore.  Yet my instinct was to be more the voyeur and less the center of attention.  I could not speak to the soul of the tunes, or of the love of the Ramones.  I understood these portions of the band, but my association with punk was more about leading a contrary existence and to scrape away mediocrity from every day life.  I love punk music but I don’t love it enough to be defined by it.  So I have always been conflicted with my role within the scene.  (I don’t like using the word “scene” here but I couldn’t find a better one.) I had many responses to my enquiry.  I built my whole itinerary around fans’ locations throughout Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy.  Also before leaving, my zine article about The Lillingtons, a punk band I had toured with a couple times, had just begun to grow into a novel.  I emailed many of the European punks that had gotten back to me and added a comment about how I was working on a novel about Screeching Weasel and would love to find a few scenic places to stay for a few days at each location to write.  My plan was to meet with these fans individually, in a public place, and if I did not get a crazy vibe, I would buy them a drink, hang out, and if all went well they would ask me or I would ask them if it was OK to return with them back to their home town to stay for a couple days, to hang out somewhere cheap and focus on companionship and writing.  I traveled for three months and barely paid for a thing.  It was amazing.  Thanks to the kindness, not of strangers, but of the fans of our music. For the longest time, while talking to fans I couldn’t help but be hyper-sensitive to the point of the interactions.  I do acknowledge the enjoyment in gratuitous conversation and of course I loved the attention.  It is great to be admired.  But I can’t deny that something close to my core demands genuine connections, and I have little tolerance for small talk.  I want always to experience spontaneous sparks that make two people say to each other, “I like you.  I’m not completely sure why, but I really just like you.”  This may be why I’m not a good schmoozer.  If I’m not engaged in what is being talked about I have difficulty feigning interest for very long. For me it is not rude to walk away from a conversation, it is rude to pretend to be attentive.  I am prone to romancing the idea of friendship, and I crave for all the connections I make to each have their own unique meanings.   How does one distinguish between a fan’s enamored nervous behavior from actual human contact?  In order to avoid superficiality I became obsessed with immediate immersion into the workings of their lives.  I would bombard them with questions about their culture and day to day lives so that I didn’t have to feel privileged, special, different.  This made it difficult to give them what they needed.  My inquisition rendered them too embarrassed to enquire about the very element of my personae which brought us together.  This too is a product of seeing in retrospect, like actual friendships, it takes time.  And often even time won’t make the difference.  The fans always have questions, even when the fans become friends the questions still linger if not answered.  They often cloud the potential “friendships.”  Over time I have learned to balance my pursuit for friendship with the needs of a fan.  I have learned that by opening myself up to questions about “the band” I intrinsically gain a deeper access to the inner-workings of people I have helped to inspire.  Often I can feel when the relationship moves from fandom into mutual respect and a deeper friendship.  This is a good feeling.End of Part Iin Part II: What the fuck does Kylie Minogue have to do with Sicily?
Why did Screeching Weasel covering a Manges’ song make Andrea’s life temporarily unbearable?
and I may get to the day in Milan when I impulsively spent a thousand dollars on a camera for Massimo Zannoni

TO GEEK OR NOT TO GEEK PART III

Please Start with PART I( An Ode to the Fairy Godmother Of Comedy )
“I like part II, too. I've decided that you make me sound like the Fairy Godmother of Comedy. I'm OK with that.”   -- Pam Klier “There is nothing as consistent and problematic in the core of my being than some deeply imbedded craving for notoriety.  My father gave this quality to me, and my mother gave me the ability to question it’s importance in living a contented life. I suspect for the first time, as I write this, it occurs to me for the first time, that maybe this marriage of opposing forces is why I am often considered my mother’s favorite.  I am made especially imperfect because I am the perfect balance between conflicted parents. I say this without regret, I say this proudly. In the first sentence I avoid using the word “fame” because quite frankly I honestly don’t know if that is what I want, or deserve.  Perhaps that is why I don’t have it.   My dilemma with the inherent self absorption and narrowing of talents that seems to be acquainted with the road most traveled to success, or cynicism, or death, forever leaves, me, the seeker of notoriety, a middleman of fame, a seamstress of dreams, and an accumulator of above average medias.  Maybe I don’t have what it takes to commit to one field of creativity.  I have been told by bandmates, and unauthorized critics, that I don’t play guitar well enough to be a musician.  I don’t have enough musical instinct.  I am better off committing myself to theater.  I have been told by theater performers that I am, at heart, a musician.  And so the meta-obsessed portion of my brain dwells on this displacement of personae, lavishing in a term that I have adopted; Semi-Famous.  For instance: I am mostly only recognized on the streets of Chicago (because of the neo-futurists) and in random ancient town centers across Italy (because of Screeching Weasel).  On the internet I can say I am John Jughead, and that carries me some ethereal distance, enough to pat my ego.  I gave away legal ownership of a series of words and a logo without much of a fight, because the future was more important than being forced to forsake the past, fighting legal battles against a tyrant for the rest of my life.  In this I also gave up a more direct path to full fledged fame, but it would have been paved with intense uncertainty, misery, and seething dissatisfactions.  I have no complaints.  Well... I DO, but they are sworn to secrecy and acceptance, out-rationalized by my own stubborn, yet passive, adherence to individuality.  I think my mom gave me that trait.” To move forward let’s say that those former thoughts were what I was thinking as I stood alone in the Hideout during the Just For Laughs Festival for a benefit celebrating the non-profit organization 826 National.  Pam and Paige were searching upstairs for the elusive six-foot-six sloth-like comedian know as Brian Posehn. They returned moments before I put into action me walking over to the bar to purchase another drink. Paige, living a dream, hugged me. “You got to see Brian?” “No, we couldn’t find him.” I was surprised that she did not see Brian upstairs, because that is where I saw him go. I never got to go upstairs.  To me the upstairs was a Hollywood Valhalla, a place where comedic warriors went to bathe in golden ink giving them the ability to write only the funniest jokes.  I pictured Pam leading Paige through the upstairs gaggle of comedians pushing aside the weaselly Aziz Ansari and leaping over the petite 5 foot tall Janeane Garofalo.  Their only mission was to spot the extremely tall or the extremely short stocky comedians known as Posehn & Oswalt. “Are you sure it was Brian Posehn who touched me?” “It was him.” “He touched my shoulder?” “Yes, he touched the fuck out of your shoulder.” Then, vibrating through the doors of the back room, was the low roar of Brian Posehn’s, humorously hesitant, highly self-deprecating voice. “Is that -” “I think so.” Paige ran into the back room.  I stayed where I was.  I think she needed to experience this on her own.  I joined Kyle’s posse along side Pam. [While Paige was fact checking this document she informed me that the two of them did NOT go upstairs.  They chose to restrain themselves from bothering anyone’s privacy.  Instead they went outside, while Pam smoked a cigarette.  They talked about the pros and cons of being an agent as they waited to see if Patton or Brian would step outside for some air.  I wasn’t going to include this correction in the story because why not keep it about my perception of what happened?  I think my vision of what they were doing is much more vivid and adventurous than the truth.  But I like the fact that If I hadn’t decided to write this down, I probably never would have known they never went upstairs.  It reminds me that a large part of my memory is most likely fictionalized.  Erroneous material adopted into my perception of how the world functions.  It makes me wonder if the reason I didn’t raise my hand in class when I was younger, to ask or answer questions, wasn’t because I was shy, but because I preferred not knowing the truth.] Pam introduced me to a few of Kyle’s posse, and the ones she didn’t know, Kyle chimed in with names that I quickly forgot, I do not have the salesman memory for names my father had.  I gave them all cordial handshakes.  Occasionally Kyle or Pam would elaborate on who I was: punk rock legend, neo-futurist, novelist, friend, and duly respected artist.  Some of the posse were honestly impressed.  The conversation barely held a continuous thread, and I, in no way was ever for very long, the center of any kind of attention.  I do not have the quick continuous wit of a stand-up comedian.  I do not have that instinct to try and hold the attention of the crowd, although often I crave it.  Even if I did try, on that particular night, there was no competing with these comedians who could feel and control the energy of a room.  They also had the added pressure of staying on their toes to prove their worth. They were all awaiting, admitted or not, those moments where the combination of luck, talent, and obnoxious perseverance could nudge them into a place for career advancement or at least material to adapt or usurp to improve their act. This seemed very familiar. It reminded me of evenings on tour with Ben Weasel as I sat back and watched him slowly dominate a room with his wit and audacity.  He would commit to stances and opinions whether he believed them or not; how punks should dress in leather jackets, and only drink certain types of beer, condemn bands like Led Zeppelin to death even though that’s all he listened to in high school.  I was of a different ilk, a different semi-fame.  I was a chronic voyeur.  So I may sound overly critical of domineering figures but you must also realize that I loved to watch it!  And I still do.  Often this pulling of focus would allow me the time to meet the more subtle personalities.  Within a room full of people racing for acknowledgment there is always a few charismatic personalities who wait their turn and beguile the crowd with a moment of genuine spontaneity and kindness before they disappear once again.  The moments and people that I choose to cram into my brain. These voices often whisper instead of yell and vibrate instead of shake.  They choose their moment to shine, or save it for the stage. Kyle appeared to stay attentive yet disinterested.  I began to suspect that his fascination with my former band was tangential.  His curiosity did not visibly push him as forward as I felt mine had, to get us into that room, to use the push of my best friend, and the waning power of my fame.  He did in fact choose to go to another bar before his Vic show instead of meeting Pam, Paige and I at a horribly populated frat bar down the street from the venue he was to play with Patton. [This for a bit tarnished my vanity, but really it was about seeing Pam.]  Between Pam’s love of my friendship and my passive aggressive admiration of talent, I felt, with Kyle, I was moving out of respectful acknowledgement of mutual accomplishments into freshman status fandom.   [This apparent loss of respect has happened a couple times to me already with people in music and theater. In Theater it was the incredibly talented, and incredibly disturbed, writer Dino Stamatopolous.  Dino was interested in my writing for the stage.  He attended the debut of a play of mine in Los Angeles. I was told he helped lead a small audience of about ten people in a standing ovation.  I have met him a few times.  In person I have lacked the ability to surpass or even maintain the enthusiasm of the standing ovation that I never even got to see.   In music it was, sadly, Blink 182.  They were fans of Screeching Weasel.  They invited me to their show in Chicago many years ago.  I DID not like there music, in fact it was one of the only times I truly got offended at a band’s onstage banter.  They portrayed themselves in a stupid and outright homophobic manner in front of an audience full of impressionable children.  When I went back stage one of them asked me, “What did you think?”  And all I said was, “You can say any ridiculous thing onstage and your fans scream and clap.”   They just looked at me not knowing if it was an insult or a complement.  I don’t think I meant it as either, it was just an observation.  The next time I was to meet them I couldn’t even get back stage to give them a draft of my novel about punk.  I wanted a quote from them to help sell it.  Could you blame me?  No, really, could you?] Kyle’s harsh judgment of me was an illusion.  It was only in my head.  I think too much.  I was proven hideously wrong.  People are not so easily read.  When my attention was elsewhere Kyle began speaking. “Man, it’s hard to talk to you.” I was looking in a different direction when he said this.  It might be possible that he wasn’t convinced he wanted me to hear this comment. I turned towards him.  “Really?”  I was truly shocked. “Why?” “I can only see you through the eyes of that kid going to your shows and looking up onto that stage and seeing his heroes in person.  Those punk shows changed my life.” “Kyle you are an incredible comedian.  You are one of my new heroes. As it stands today we are both equal admirers of each other’s talents.  So it’s all good now.” This seemed to have broken the ice, because I would never say I learned who Kyle was in those moments to follow but I did begin to see a human being appear before my eyes, one I liked quite a bit.   Pam had told him I was trying to recall forgotten memories about the my former bands for a blog.  He reminded me of a show Screeching Weasel played at McGregors in Elmhurst in 1993.   [While writing this I couldn’t for the life of me remember when this show took place.  I even looked at countless “Weasel Timelines” on the internet and still could not find a clue.  So at 3:30 in the morning I texted Kyle.  He got back to me immediately.) My text : Working on the section about the McGregor's sold out show and can't find a weasel timeline anywhere. Do you remember what year that show happened? Sorry to bother you. Kyle: Never apologize. Valentines day 1993. Was a Sunday bc Monday I was losing my mind on my disc man over Boogada.  If you recall Boogada, short for Boogada Boogada Boogada, was the same record Patton referred to while talking to us at the Vic.  Though, I think when Patton listened to it as a dj in Virginia many years ago, there were no such things as compact discs.  Kyle probably had the Lookout! Records cd, the one with the Weasel Logo on the cover and not the European vinyl one with the boy and the house.  My god!  I recorded over 20 records with Screeching Weasel and the only one anyone has referred to in this epic three part post is the one, after only a year of being a band, we recorded and mixed 27 songs, on the cheap, during one sleepless night of coffee, soda pop, and hostess cream pies.  That was more than 25 years ago.] The Valentine’s Day first-come-first-served McGregor’s show sold out.  There was still a line wrapped around the block.  [Once Kyle told me the year and that it happened on Valentine’s day, I wanted to confirm this for myself.  I googled a few keywords and fell upon this woman’s site where she wrote about a vintage dress given to her by her boyfriend for her to wear to that very Valentine’s Weasel show in which Kyle correctly referred.  http://bombshellshocked.blogspot.com/2010/05/time-capsule-that-is-moms-closet-pt-3.html ] It was the first time we had ever sold out a show.  We decided to add a second performance.  It occurs to me now that we obviously made more money adding a second show.  That might sound self-evident, but honestly I don’t even think that was a consideration when we made the decision.  Of course we charged our audience, but that was secondary to us, albeit primary to the owner’s of McGregor’s.  We just wanted to get those people standing outside a chance to see us on stage.  It was very exciting.  I am glad I was given that memory back.     Kyle said, “If you hadn’t added that second show I never would have seen Screeching Weasel.”   Ben and I were so proud of ourselves for attracting such a big audience.  We were so high on our bemusement of our, what seemed, unexpected level of fame, that between shows we wandered alongside the crowd, talking with the fans. (I wonder if one of them was Kyle.) We walked to the diner on the corner.  The place was full of punks.  When we entered they all looked in our direction.  We sat down uninvited at a table of about twelve punks. We ordered food with them.  We ate and chatted about everything under the sun, except music. We questioned them about their hometowns, family life, high school, shopping malls, and their dead-end jobs.  The time passed.  We stayed chatting until we were needed on stage for the second show.  Before leaving we paid for their meals with our earnings from the first performance.  I remember having a few crumpled fat wads of five and ten dollar bills in my backpack with which I paid the check.  This McGregor’s show confirmed for me that we were experiencing an important section of our lives, that we had an emotional connection, a common ground with the spirit of the times.  It transcended the music and for awhile it seemed it would never end, but the moments were passing by rapidly.   Kyle was very animated while talking about HIS memories of this show.  He was so animated that I might have actually seen him smile for a second.   [While writing this I could not recall properly what Kyle had said to me that night in The Hideout, but a couple days after releasing Part II he contacted me via email.  He had just got done filming a comedy special in San Francisco:
  “Seeing a gathering of people that found a scene without MTV or radio or at that time even the internet. That was my introduction to everything DIY and pretty much the philosophy that would shape my approach to life. I really do credit my success as a comedian to that scene and seeing people creating because they needed to--not for fame or money but because they needed to make something.”] Kyle returned to his friends giving them the time they deserved.  Tomorrow he would fly back to Los Angeles.  I noticed Paige was standing next to me serenely waiting her turn to speak.  She was calm on the outside but in her smile and eyes I could see the explosions going on inside.  At the Vic she had suspected she might again meet Patton.  She had prepared herself emotionally as best she could.  She was not expecting to even be at the Hideout and she was definitely not expecting to be touched by Brian Posehn.   “How was he?” “He was hysterical as always.” Her expression then changed slightly, the way a mother may look when told by a teacher that her child had been called by another student stupid, fat, or weird. “What’s wrong?” “During Brian’s act he mentioned that when he walked into here (The Hideout) about an hour earlier, some hipster said to another hipster behind Brian’s back, ‘Oh, hey. Remember when Brian Posehn was funny? I don’t.’ They laughed.  And even though Brian incorporated it into his act you could tell that that really bothered him.  It was still fresh.”  She looked around.  She was furious. “If I only knew who they were!”  I gave her a hung and a kiss.  There was no need for blood tonight. In mid hug I looked to my right.  There was a group of people standing shoulder to shoulder next to us.  It was a few of Kyle’s friends, one of the funny comedians we had just seen, Pete Holmes, and next to him was Brian Posehn.  This time there was no reason to avoid directing Paige’s attention to one of her heroes.  I turned her body slightly, she looked up and then she looked immediately down and then at me.  Pam then like a fairy godmother appeared next to us, brought us closer to the group, and introduced us, not directly to Brian, but to the group.  Once Paige was established as a member of this gathering I moved back to talking to Kyle and an old school skinhead friend of his.  Kyle's friend talked about fighting, and drinking, and punk rock.  They both reminded me of a Weasel event that was derailed by a prank gone bad.  An annoying kid who would start any kind of band to help promote himself named Paul Think passed by a punk record store and saw Ben inside.  Paul threw a pie in Ben’s face.  It was a cherry pie and looked like blood.  Kyle’s friends wanted to know the facts, but I could hardly even remember whether I was even there.  I have asked friends to fill me in on details since reminded of this event.  I have looked online.  All the facts are a mess.  Some say Paul Think after throwing the pie then maced a few people.  An interview online states that Paul was confronted by a big bouncer who held his arms behind his back, smashed his glasses, and that he, himself, was maced.  Some say the owner pulled a gun on Paul Think and others say it was only a squirtgun.  The few who I know who were actually there now say that it is best buried in the past left as a small punk legend forever riddled with inconsistencies. Not too much later I turned to see Paige standing by herself, similarly to myself earlier in the night. “What happened with Brian?” “I think I scared him away.” “I doubt that.  What happened?” “I could tell he was exhausted.  He said goodbye to everyone and then turned to leave.  I thought I lost my opportunity to talk to him.  I felt horrible so I faced my fear and yelled, ‘Wait! Brian!’ He turned around. I grabbed his hand with both of my hands and said, ‘Hi, Brian. My name is Paige and I’m a huge fan. Fuck that hipster douche-bag, he doesn’t know shit. I think you.. well...’ then I remembered a phrase he often says in his performance about things that he genuinely loves.  I said. ‘Brian, you just fucking rule!’ He shook my hand and bowed his head uncomfortably.  He said, ‘Thank You’, and he left.”  Paige stopped speaking.  I could tell that she thought she had done something inappropriate. “What’s wrong babe?  It doesn’t sound like you scared him away.” “John, I started crying again.” “That’s OK.” “Pam held me.  The other comedians were looking at us. I’m so embarrassed.  I think I annoyed him. “No, that was a great thing you did. “Pete (http://www.peteholmes.com/) gave me a hug after Pam and said that I was the real hero of the evening.  He said that I probably saved Brian’s night after what the hipster said to him.  He told me that what I said to Brian was really beautiful, and it was touching to see someone get emotional meeting a comic. He said that doesn’t happen to comedians very often and it’s fantastic when it does.” I agreed.


THE END

TO GEEK OR NOT TO GEEK (PART II)

READ PART I FIRST


PART II In which the reader is made to believe that Paige and John will meet Patton again... 
but they don’t. When we arrived at the Hideout, half past midnight, the inviting cadences of Patton Oswalt’s simulcasted voice were being piped out of a speaker above the entrance. The canned spoken words disappeared from behind us as we entered the empty front barroom.  There was one hipster, only a few drinks away from changing his status to barfly, standing by his stool at the far right.  There was one bartender behind the counter, or maybe it was two.  I don’t mention this again in the story, so go ahead and picture anywhere from one to seven bartenders.  There was one woman tucked in a corner near the front door behind a chest high block of wood.  She was holding a hand-stamp like a gavel.  We approached her with our IDs out ready to prove to her our consenting ages of alcohol consumption. “The show is sold out.”   We looked around.  The bar area was nearly empty, but the back room was packed beyond capacity.  We looked at each other hopelessly.  Neither of us knew how to proceed.   I said to the woman, “It’s a benefit.  We have the money, we’ll pay.” “No.” I mumbled, “We are part of the agency team... thing.”  The sentence didn’t even make sense.  To accent my ridiculous statement I pointed in the direction of the overpopulated back room.  Then I uttered a single word, “Pam?”   The woman that held the power of entrance nodded her head in a short termed bemusement.  Then she restored herself to a more permanent appearance of anger and irreparable imposition.  My words didn’t contain a single ounce of substance.  I really really suck at getting into places.   She was no longer having any of it.  “The show is sold out,” she repeated sternly.  Then in case we were actually idiots she pedantically elaborated. “That means there isn’t any room.”   Our dejection, as well as our humiliation, was felt deeply.  We moped our way back outside.   Paige said, “Well, at least we can listen to Patton.” Then Patton’s voice ceased.  From the speaker we could hear the MC take back the microphone.  He thanked Patton for performing.  I recognized the MC’s voice, but I couldn’t place it.  For a moment I fooled myself into thinking if I could place that voice, I could use it to our advantage, and we’d be sitting pretty.
    [MC: Dan Telfer] Paige asked, “Should I text Pam?”  “Yes.” In less than a minute after Paige pressed send on her phone, Pam appeared in the doorway.  She, for the second time in one night, waved us fearlessly into restricted territory.   “It’s sold out Pam.  We wanted to pay but she wouldn’t take our money.  It’s a benefit.  We want to pay.”   If I didn’t know better I would have thought Pam ignored what I had just said.  She ushered us past the doorwoman.   “Excuse me,” The woman yelled.  “They can’t go in there.  They don’t have tickets.”   “They’re with me.” “I don’t care.” This response took Pam aback for a quick second, then she started saying whatever came into her head.  “They were already in here.” “Then why don’t they have stamps on their wrists?’ “They came in through the back.” “Then they snuck in.” “...No.”   Before Pam could construct another retort the door to the back room opened. The front bar began to get crowded.  One lean fellow in a leather jacket made a beeline straight for Pam.  He was probably a comedian looking for representation.  We would later discover that a high majority of people in the space were stand-up comedians with varying degrees of notoriety.  It was part of Pam’s job to chat up the talent especially the ones her agency were scouting.  Talking to the clientele, and potential clientele, she claims is the easiest and most enjoyable part of her job as a talent agent.  Whether she delighted in this particular interaction, having turned away from us, did not matter.  She was required to make him the center of her attention.  Paige and I were once again forced to fend for ourselves.  This couldn’t possibly bode well for us. I turned back to the woman.  She was staring at me.  Keeping me in place with only her gaze.  “We’re kinda’ supposed to be here... maybe.” She did not speak. “We’ll pay.” Pam, ignoring the doorkeeper’s plea, called me over to meet the person to whom she was speaking.  Before I could signal back to her that I was harboring major doubts in taking any kind of steps forward while being watched so intensely, Pam returned to her conversation. The woman came out from behind her wooden box.  She extended her arm towards my face.  “I’ll have to get the Owner.”  She called over one of the two to seven bartenders and told them to get [Fill in name of Owner here.]  She seemed to be taking this whole door person security thing a little too far.  We were in the Hideout not the UN. Pam heard this threat over the din of clinking glasses and chaos.  She broke out of her conversation and turned back towards us.  “Yes, you do that.”  She didn’t say this angrily, she just said it with confidence, as if all of this was out of the hands of the doorwoman and that the Owner would agree with Pam.  “Go get the Owner.” Paige and I wanted to run away and hide, but I trusted Pam more than our own instincts.  We held our tenuous ground for the time being.  More words went between Pam and the woman at the door.  I began to not like the woman at the door, even though she was only doing her job... with a vengeance.  She was the human embodiment of a cerberus, a mythological three-headed watch dog.  She would protect the venue owner and his property to the death.  She would have torn us apart with all twelve of her canines if the owner had deemed it to be so.  He didn’t.  When he arrived he looked directly at Pam’s pass, and without any exchange whatsoever he calmly and politely turned towards us. “Forty bucks a piece.”  Pam reached into her purse to pay.  I said, “No.  We can do this.  It’s a benefit, and we want to pay for it.”   “Here you go sir.  Sorry for the trouble.” “No trouble at all.” Then he whispered something to the woman at the door, and she looked sad, and then we felt sorry for her. Later Page asked me what the benefit was for, and I had no idea.  I thought that that was funny; such integrity out of me for such unknown causes.  [After reading this, Pam would remind me that it was a benefit for 826 National - Writing, Publishing, Tutoring.  I new the title not because of the non-profit work they have done, but because of a commercial that was written for my Neo-Futurist show called, CRISIS: A Musical Game Show.  Steve Heisler, a writer/journalist/performer who just so happened to be at the Hideout that night working for The Just For Laughs festival, created a video commercial that was shown during the play.  It was arguably the funniest thing in that entire show.  826, quite a good resonant cause indeed, even if it was started by a bunch of literary hipsters.] We finally made it in to the venue, but Patton was gone.  We don’t know how he did it. He couldn’t have passed by us, yet we never saw him again.  The man obviously needed rest, and I imagine Paige resolved herself to thinking her hero simply wished he was back in his hotel with his wife and child, and then, by the power of talent and kindness alone, he just disappeared. Kyle Kinane chose that moment to emerge from the back room.  At first glance he had the demeanor of a mischievous hell’s angel reject, a blue collar mephistopheles.  He was surrounded by his local Chicago friends and Comedians, an entourage of instantly likable Midwestern Alcoholics, friends that had been supporting him since he was just an annoying drunk punk kid telling stupid jokes in the back seat of their vomitous beat up automobiles.  He had always made them laugh by instinctively exaggerating details of minor adventures they had all just experienced. He had an advantage.  He had the talent but he also had the audacity to wear a bushy beard and to bathe in the back alley glory of his gruff, low, often difficult to understand, voice.  He had always spoke like a jaded janitor, since childhood, since he was soiling his diapers in between knowing smirks and taking hits from his infant joint.   “Hello Kyle.” “Hello Jughead.  Hello Pam.” Kyle looked at Paige, not knowing who she was. “Oh!  Sorry,” I said.  “This is Paige.”    They shook hands. Kyle was not a short stocky older man that she had been following the progress of for years.  Paige didn’t have stored in her suitcase of emotions the years of admiration of his talents, as she did for Patton or even myself.  She dodged me for at least 6 months before I contacted her and said, “When the hell are we going to talk?”  The building of admiration and sexual intensity that it would take for her to cry at Kyle’s presence would probably never happen, but she was, and still is, honestly impressed by his talent. “Your show was great!”  she said. Then I chimed in, “Yes, it was good to finally get to see you perform.” At this point in our careers while writing this, while having experienced the night at the Vic then at the Hideout, I was more famous than Kyle, and yet I felt I had to impress him, to tell him an anecdote which would make us both look important to each other.  I wanted us to both be cool. 
     “Kyle.  The other night I was trying to remember your last name but I couldn’t recall it.  So I Googled “Kyle” along with the word “Comedian.”  You were the first one to show up.”  I thought he could use this in his act, although I never would have said that to him. He was ever so slightly embarrassed by this remark.  He laughed inaudibly.  His subtle laugh was drowned out by one of his friends guffaw-like outburst.  They must have shared the same name and the same career, because after this other guy got done laughing he said, “I told you it would be you and not me.” Then Paige said, “Kyle, when we were walking down the stairs of the Vic Theatre, two men were behind me saying that they enjoyed you more than Patton.” Paige later admitted that she thought this was blasphemy. “They couldn’t remember your last name so they kept throwing out ‘Kane? Kimmons?’ I turned around, smiled at the boys, and said, ‘Oh, his name is Kyle Kinane.’ As I walked away, one of them said, “Woah. That must be his girlfriend.” I turned around and winked at them.”  Paige winked at Kyle. Kyle turned red.  I don’t know what he was feeling but it must have been strange for him to never have met this young woman, and for her to say such an innocently flirtatious thing in front of her boyfriend and one of his childhood idols. On the surface of it he seemed very pleased. While she was speaking, a man who towered over everybody, uncomfortable in his own skin, lurching, waring a Black Sabbath t-shirt entered the front room.  I happened to notice him, but stayed quiet because I didn’t want to seem rude to Kyle, Paige, and Pam while they were talking.  The towering man did not have enough room to pass our group without accidentally brushing up against one of us.  He stood there for a few seconds assessing the situation.  Who would he choose to ask to move inconspicuously so he could pass by?  He did not know that I was watching.  He was not aware that I knew who he was.  He backed up as close as he could to the wall, put his hands on Paige’s shoulders as he passed behind her, and escaped to a door in the front area of the club that had a staircase that lead up to the performer’s dressing room. Kyle, Pam and a few others walked over to the bar to buy a few more drinks.  I pulled Paige aside. “Do you have any idea who touched your shoulder only a few moments ago.” Paige’s eyes widened.  She was in a paralytic state of starstruck panic expecting me to say Patton.  Little did I know that this would shock her more than if it were he. I said, “Brian Posehn.” I think the synapses in her brain misfired in a thousand different directions.  She began crying, but the tears quickly turned into red hot balls of flaming anger.  “Why didn’t you tell me!!!!”

[Brian Posehn, was also in the Comedians of Comedy.  Besides being a stand-up comedian, he is also a writer, performer, musician, seen on The Mr. Show, Just Shoot Me!, and The Sarah Silverman Program.  Even though he is Tall, Paige had nearly as much respect and fear of his talent as she did for Patton.  The Geekdom that Patton espouses runs deeper and more rampant in every fiber that constructs the lurching foundation of Brian Posehn.]

“I’m sorry, We were talking to Kyle.  I thought it would be rude to cut off the conversation with him in order to refer to someone like Brian Posehn who is much more famous than he is.  I made a judgement call.  I couldn’t do that to Kyle, or me!.” Paige got very serious.  “Where did he go?” “I think he headed up those stairs.” Pam handed me a drink.  She went to hand Paige a glass of water when she dived into Pam’s arms, hugging her tight and crying on her shoulder.  She explained to Pam what had just happened.  I can’t remember how she structured her sentences, but I was the bad guy in the scenario, in a loving way.  Pam laughed.  She grabbed Paige by the shoulders, “Let’s go upstairs.” “Really!” “I wouldn’t lie to you.” Pam took her by the hand and lead her upstairs.  I turned back around, and I was alone.  All around me people were deep in conversation.  I stood in the center of the bar with my drink in my hand, sucking from my straw.  The slurping sound echoed in my head, blocking out the comprehension of all other sounds.  “Blah blah blah,” was all I could understand.  I moved to the edge of one group of people talking, then I backed up and stood by another, then I moved back to my lonely spot blocking the exit out of the back room.  I was incapable of jumping into any current discussions.  I felt absurd. “Who am I?” I asked myself.  Then I laughed.  I laughed while alone, but knowing that I would eventually share this with a distant audience, an audience not in the room at the time, an audience I hoped would, on some level, relate to my ridiculousness.END OF PART II(Link to PART III)