So We Are Told This is The Golden Age

I haven't listened to the radio in years. I was surprised they still had it.

"What's this contraption?" I asked the cute waitress I work with, pointing to a greasy plastic box flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 that was sitting on a shelf above the prep table.

"It's a radio, dumbshit," she said, becoming even cuter.

"Is it steam-powered? Do we need some coal? How does it work?"

"Like this, dumbass," she said. Her pretty, delicate hands began fumbling mysteriously with the greasy knobs. I watched, mesmerized, thinking filthily of handjobs, spankings, and gentle strangulations.

Suddenly, BANG! Generic Heavy Metal began playing. It may have even been Poison.

"Well, I'll be," I said and stared at the ancient contraption for a second longer, then went back to work.

What I was doing, was sauteing peppers and onions for a topping to the Shipwreck burger, our most popular item. A pile of pre-sauteed peppers and onions was needed to prevent falling behind—or in restaurant-speak: "getting into the weeds."

I listened to the music, liking it more as a curiosity than anything else. It was a "show" I was listening to, a radio show, called The Sixth Sense with Nikki Sixx, the guy from Motley Crew. I was surprised at how glib and beige he was.

Isn't this guy supposed to be a rocker? I thought to myself as I stuffed fries into the line freezer. He wasn't, however. He was just your standard smarmy non-controversial, unchallenging host, saying a variety of shit, none of which would ever get him into trouble or cause his listeners to actually think about what they were hearing.

No surprise, really. Motely Crue always kind of sucked. They only have 2 1/4 good albums, according to me. They turned into bubble-gum Metal pretty quick after achieving success. Nowadays, they're "classic" but I remember them being hated back in the day. They were the Heavy Metal 'Nsync.

I fucking remember.

The whole Metal scene was bankrupt bullshit and I am eternally grateful for the sudden appearance of Nirvana, who shot it dead like a broke-leg horse, saving the world and itself from further misery.

Now here he was the fucking Chuck Woolery of radio. Hilarious.

I listened and listened. The music was really dated and tired, most of it the crap Nirvana had killed, but some modern iterations of the Metal genre, like Disturbd and Annoid and Bothrd and Trubbld. They played some "NuMetal" shit from the 90s, namely, Limp Biscuit, who have some really good songs, according to me. I can relate to their shit anyway. For example, I, too, want to Break Stuff, and, often, I do it all for the Nookie, the Nookie, so you can take that cookie and stick up your ass, stick it up your ass.

In between songs, Nikki told stories that brought whole new meaning to the word "lame." He told this one story about baby powder, about how one day while they were "rocking it hard on the road," a plastic jug of baby powder appeared in Vince Neil's dressing room. No one knew where it came from. It just appeared one day.

Nikki explained how neither he nor Vince ever used baby powder, and yet, amazingly, here was some baby powder. Everyone shrugged it off, using their ample confidence and self-esteem to avoid allowing the mysterious baby powder to trouble them too much. At the next show, however, here it was again in Vince's dressing room. It was like Baby Powder From Another Dimension.

Nikki has a sidekick on his radio show, a woman who's job it is to laugh and be astounded by him, but even she was kind of subdued about the baby powder story. I hope she doesn't get fired, the poor thing. It was all she could do to keep from killing herself, I'm sure.

I was about to unplug the contraption and rock out to the blessed sounds of silence, thinking to myself hello darkness my old friend when U2's New Year's Day came on all of a sudden. According to me, it's the only U2 song worth a shit and I began dancing around on the rubber mats as I threw frozen blocks of fish into vats of oil.

I will begin again, I told myself, knowing it was a lie, knowing that it all was a fake fucking lie.