Category: My stories

It’s been a while since Don Domino went on tour.
The band’s all wanting it.
He can fit into his old suit.
Sounds great in the studio and in rehearsals.
But when the promoters and managers come up with a tour plan, Don goes to the bathroom and locks the door.
And he won’t come out.
When people ask him why he does that, Don won’t answer.
They had to take the hinges off of the door to open it, and then Don went to another bathroom and locked himself in.
We’ll just air the rehearsals on pay per view.

Eddie Van Halen never liked the sound and feel of his guitars, so he tore them apart and built his own out of the parts.
Covering it with red, white, and black paint, he dubbed it Frankenstrat.
And it sounded awesome, although a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was Eddie playing it.
Over the years, he’d modify and swap out parts, trying to make it even better.
And yet, his kids say he’d pull it out, play with it a bit, and toss it on the sofa.
Imagine, Arthur doing the same with Excalibur!

I know there’s a lot of noise about competitive swimming right now.
I don’t swim. Competitively or recreationally.
And I’ve never been in a situation that the gym teachers warned me about.
Falling off of a boat?
I hate boats.
If there’s racing, I’d think you would want to outrace a shark.
Or outrace others also fleeing that shark.
As for the rest, I really don’t know.
I think a lot of people don’t know.
But they feel compelled to say something.
I suppose this is saying something.
Irrelevant, sure. Which is what a lot of what people say is.

I’ve been to a lot of shitty concerts, but the shittiest was The Pointer Sisters at the Boston Palisades.
Early Eighties. After the Neutron Dance.
They had just enough left in them to sell out and be One Hit Wonders again.
My aunt and uncle had gotten tickets and they were excited.
Of course, being selfish assholes, they’d only gotten tickets for themselves.
The rest of us were stuck wandering outside the venue, listening to badly-echoing sloppy seconds for the unwashed masses.
I sent them a Best Of The Pointer Sisters CD for their anniversary.
Well, okay. Just the case.

As a kid, I remember sleepovers.
You’d bring a sleeping bag and a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
I also remember changing my mind and asking to be picked up and taken home.
Although, sometimes, it was walking distance, so I wouldn’t bother calling.
I’d just take my things back home again.
The other kid’s parents would freak out.
Did I run away?
I got scolded for that.
So, instead of just taking everything, I’d pack some bloody clothes I’d saved from playground scrapes, and toss them around.
Let them think I was dragged off by coyotes or pirates.

Mindy was the finest event planner in the world.
Fundraisers always call Mindy. It isn’t a party without her.
Finding perfect venues, perfect caterers, perfect decorations and entertainment.
“Mindy throws the best parties,” attest many of the attendees.
They hand over checks, some discreetly, and some flamboyantly, with oversized symbolic checks to stand with and hold up and get their photo taken.
Then the perfect cleaners come to clean up.
“Sorry,” Mindy says to the fundraisers, taking her fee. “There’s no money left. But it was one hell of a party.”
As her cell phone rings… another event to plan.

The zoo has had a problem with animals escaping.
“Danger Zoo!” the headlines called it.
So, they put in better fences, and ran training drills.
Zoo workers put on lion suits and roam around the zoo.
Then other workers then implement crowd control, collaborating to contain the fake animals and returning them to their cages.
The visitors love to watch these exercises.
So much, the zoo got rid of all the animals and just displayed people in animal suits.
“Escaping” every so often.
As for the real animals, they’re roaming loose in the city.
Here, put on this lion suit.

Back in college, I called some people friends.
Every so often, we’d go to a dumpling house and order a whole table of food and split the check.
Pass plates around, maybe there was some left of what I wanted. But, usually, the others gobbled it up.
Then they’d order too much of something only they liked, or extra things to go, like vegetable dumplings.
We graduated, some of us still went there, but the bullshit continued.
Someone’s sloppy kid was knocking over plates and glasses. I blew up.
I threw a twenty on the table and never looked back.

Back in grade school, we stole a canoe from a shed and paddled out to a small island in the middle of the reservoir lake.
We named it West Muenster, even though we lived east of Muenster Texas.
And none of us liked Muenster cheese.
We only liked the name of it.
Every Saturday, we’d bring wood and nails and tools to the island, and we’d work on our clubhouse.
Until one day, the canoe was gone from the shed, and when we looked through binoculars out at the island, the clubhouse was gone.
So we used the shed instead.

Children of all ages, far and wide, love The Poppy Show.
Government stations air it twice a day.
Six and six.
Large monitors in every public square.
Everything stops so citizens can watch.
And when it is over, they applaud. And cheer.
They make such a show of applauding and cheering.
But not out of compulsion, mind you.
Everyone truly loves The Poppy Show.
They’d watch it more, if they could, but twice a day is all a person can handle.
I’ve seen what three viewings in a day can do.
I’ve seen the asylums.
And cannot unsee the horror.