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5. Global Village MY ASS
Jason was attending OCU at the time, and three or four years later he and I would, to the severe dismay of the Junior Varsity Volleyball coach and team, somehow peform a vaudeville routine at the freshman orientation talent show. We did a routine involving a chalkboard and Hardee's/Carl's Jr. french fries. And for the record, upon graduation and experience in the workforce, Jason would later describe OCU as "the most corrupt University on the planet". It's all true. But for now it was summer, and we made some puppets out of trash bags and concocted a humorous scenario so we wouldn't disappoint the Oldmobile Baptists and get Jason somehow excommunicated from a non-liturgical sectarian denomination. My puppet was supposed to be a guy wearing a Houston Astros hat with the word "SLAYER" written in permanent marker across the flipped-up bill. Jason's puppet was to be himself, wearing an Anthrax shirt and carrying an extra pair of shorts. Michael's puppet was supposed to be Bill Clinton, and Tim's puppet was an old Cabbage Patch doll instead of a trash bag. I think it's name was Peter. The talent night was mainly groups from the University: the OCU choir sang, the OCU theatre department did a skit, etc. We went on after a guy played the Notre Dame University fight song on a trumpet. We hid behind a red pew which happened to be onstage and put on our little puppet show. Here's the plot: My puppet borrows a pair of shorts from Jason's puppet and fails to return them. Jason's puppet then asks Tim's doll for help. Tim's doll gets Bill Clinton to make a puppet give the shorts back. They get the shorts back and, to thank Bill Clinton, Jason's puppet throws a "CLINTON SUCK-AND SO DOES THE BITCH HE RODE IN ON" hat we found and bought for 50 cents at a pawn shop in nearby Princeton, Indiana in the trash. The show went surprisingly well. It got a few laughs, probably from Scrote and local favorite Kyle Clark (an accountant and friend of the band), who were in the audience. We even got some sympathy applause at the end. Furthermore, we later found out a woman from "The Peanut Butter Press", an obselete children's section of The Indianapolis Star, was there to cover a performance by the Southern Indiana Handbell Society. She from some reason absolutely loved us and ended up writing a great review of our show. I think she thought we were a group of college student optimists trying to drum up support for the Clinton administration in enemy territory. This polite though obscure and pointless publicity would later fuel illiteracy and confusion in Rockville, Indiana. So we had fun and thought things had gone well until after the show when Union workers claiming to be security officers met us next to HOG. The shorter, fatter of the two with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth got in my face and asked me where I was going. I wish I'd thought of something like "Someone stole my toothpick" but instead I said "Uh, we're going to the Chung King Palace, I think". He scoffed and told me they'd been assigned by the University Vice President, who saw the puppet show. He told them to make sure we left the campus quickly and quietly. "Yeah, yeah I bet you would like that slanty-eyed food," he noted. That's right, 1942: "Slanty-eyed". He laughed like an ugly munchkin, perhaps a gremlin. Michael asked "what the fuck" and the other guy got all mouthy about how he was going to arrest us and on and on. As noted, we were on our way to the Chung King Palace in Evansville anyway, so it really wasn't a big deal to be forced off campus. It was just incredibly awkward, which seems to be a recurring theme. I don't even think they had any real authority, probably part-time privitized security guards who otherwise watch a lot of television and really love FM radio. But I'm sure they would have been happy to kill us for absolutely no reason. Just a couple lazy guys attracted to sham authority and dangerous liasons promised in a classified ad. Once we were gone, I'm guessing they went back to the closest gas station to drink free coffee and scratch off lottery tickets. When I worked nights at the Kwiq-E-Martt (one chapter in my glamorous employment career) the customers were desperate people and/or lazy cops, all just looking for some low-level lovin' and a handout. So yeah, whether Sgt. Bob Evans and his sidekick were real or not, Roadside Monument had a song titled "Cops Are My Best Customer", and that's about right. The Chung King Palace did not fail to please. A few nights later we'd been set to play with Everdown at a two-day festival, Rockville's "Pontoon Festival" at the illustrious Raccoon Lake. Raccoon Lake is ten percent gasoline. It's also where my dad and I once watched six grown men try to extinguish a campire with beer. But the main stage at the festival was actually a pretty packed lineup, I think maybe twenty other bands and Everdown among other entertainment. We did all the hype over the phone with no actual documentation: Tim called to find out when we'd be playing. The guy told him we were listed to play a twenty minute set at 4pm on the first afternoon. This would be another free show. Tim hung up and we promptly decided to skip the show in favor of watching the Die Hard trilogy. Jason, unsatisfied, ate a Pop-Tart, ate four lemon drops, and called back to tell the guy we had just won "artistic merit recognition" from "The Peanut Butter Press", that we might possibly win their coveted "Art in a Nutshell" award. The guy seemed dimly impressed and said he'd see what everyone thought. An hour later he called back and said we could play a thirty minute set at 9pm on both days, that we'd be listed as headliners. Jason negotiated listing Everdown with equal billing, and everything was on. We had to check in a 2pm, so that left all afternoon to waste in a true sense. We went to a nearby bison ranch, then to THE WORST FLEA MARKET ON EARTH in a town called Montezuma. While there I tried to trade my collection of c.1986 California Raisins figurines for a cheap electric guitar. They guy told me to "shove" the collection "up [my] ass", so I assumed the guitar was already spoken for. Jason tried to buy a half-dead cat he found in the restroom, but no one found the humor in it. Our jockeying turned out to be the big news of the festival, which in retrospect shouldn't have been surprising. We'd unseated a popular local band called Hank Williams Alive!, and most of the serious music fans in the festival crowd balked at this. Especially since the people running the fest took it upon themselves to make up a few cheap flyers for us, which listed our vague and stupid Peanut Butter Press notoriety. The flyer was the badly typed product of a half-hearted phone conversation, reading "Headline Show, 9pm: Neverdown and The Shag-Bark Hickorys, an Indianapolis band The Peanut Butyter Press awarded 'The Artists in nutshells' award from after their concert at Oakland College". Beating a dead horse, we decided the PBP needed to be present. It didn't take much and we'd seen too many episodes of Tom & Jerry as children. Michael put on a derby hat and carried around a legal pad. I wrote "PRESS" on a nametag and stuck it on his hat with a feather, and we were set. Hank Williams Alive!, which turned out to be off all things a Ted Nugent cover band, finished up and Michael grabbed the microphone. He talked for like fifteen minutes about "The Peanut Butter Press", all lies, and then introduced us as "The Sharkbite Hickories". He spent the rest of the show, which was terrible, standing next to an elephant ear stand writing tenaciously in the legal pad. He later showed us he'd written a short story titled Rockville Is A Shithole. He said it was about a stray dog who goes to the flea market to get a fork but instead ends up eating a cupcake which temporarily paralyzes him. "Will no one love me?" the stray dog wonders to end the story, or so Michael said. It was impossible to read. I think he sent it to The Atlantic Monthly, where I'm sure it was never opened I mean rejected in favor or some story about a wealthy businessman who has numerous sophisticated relationships and talks openly about masturbation and such. Only the best from established authors and all that. But the show, it was terrible. Tim started it, bent to dazzle the crowd by eating a corndog while playing the chorus to AC/DC's "Hells Bells". He pulled it off and the crowd actually loved it, but when we finished "I Love You (Like A Bullet In The Face)", a guy who looked like Boss Hogg jumped up and announced the rides had opened up. Most of the people took off, and once we were done with "Tomb Of The Sacrificial Rab Lat" only Michael was left. It'd been a long day, so we played a hand of UNO on stage and packed things up. You'd think we would have skipped the second night, but for some reason we came back, excpet for Michael, who opted to "stay in the air conditioned comfort" of his living room for the evening. Hank Williams Alive! invited a bunch of friends on stage and played a long set followed by drunken confusion, so we didn't get on stage until about ten and we were all pretty disgruntled. Some RV woman introduced us and of course mentioned "The Peanut Butter Press". A new group right up front in the crowd, a pack of Camel Lights from who cares where, started yelling record store clerk slurs like "You guys must be the next Melvins" and "You must be a punk band like NOFX." I thought about quoting Homer Simpson and telling the loudest guy he talked pretty tough for a guy without health insurance, but instead Jason inched up to the mic and screamed "LOOK AT NOFX, THEY'RE NOT SELLOUTS --THEY HAVE SEX WITH ANIMALS!" This made for an awkward silence, then we started "Bringin' It Back" and kept it going for probably ten minutes.
"'Where you get that bass from?! Hey! Oh!"
Next up were an extended version of "Weather Is Gay" and a cover of A.C.'s "Still A Freshman After All These Years". Then we turned everything up as loud as possible and played "Princess Cardboard" until Tim's strings broke, at which time I began smashing the watermelons I'd lined along the stage with a shovel. The show ended with the RV woman's husband waving his arms as if trying to communicate with a marginally retarded person. I assumed that person was me, so I threw the shovel into a nearby wheelbarrow and Tim, screaming "ACADEMIC DECATHLON STATE CHAMPIONS!", dumped some Mountain Dew on my head and with Jason's help dragged me off stage to a "Cajun Gryo" stand, where I ordered a large Diet Coke. Entertainment genius. We were ecstatic with how it turned out, but we left as quickly as possible hoping they were all too drunk to make us clean up the watermelon. We headed straight to a Burger King. Straight to Burger King, and there we decided to meet Michael at the arteestic movie dump on Indy's north side to take in a late night showing of Orson Welles' The Stranger. This movie would play a pivotal role in our next performance.
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