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8. You Look "Cute"
I have no idea why, but when we passed the Hyundai dealership hosting a MIDNIGHT MADNESS sale on the way it brought to mind a guy we used to know who claimed to flunk lunch. That just about says it all, but he also, if I remember correctly, wanted to become an underwater welder. How that words I have no idea. But in the late 80's when Jason and I went to see a band called A-180 play at some high school cafetorium or maybe it was a college campus chapel in Illinois, I remember this guy walking up to us while forcefully "singing" what he alleged to be the "satanic" part of "Enter Sandman". I don't know. I mentioned Metallica somewhere in this mess, so there you go. A-180, for the record, is now called Audio Adrenaline (I think), and they are supposedly huge in the "contemporary Christian" scene these days. We thought about trying to cover their song "One Step Hyper" just because it's titled "One Step Hyper", but Michael blocked the idea in favor of recording "Jingle Care". But we passed the MADNESS and made our way to Sunset Bowl, a bowling alley en route to Indianpolis, where we were slotted to play a 7pm Tuesday night show with Everdown. Once we got there, Tim called the bowling alley from a payphone in the bowling alley as Everdown's manager to let them know Everdown had broken up. So for all we knew it was us then karayoke, which was a lot like us, so we came up with a strategy to distinguish ourselves. They were all lines from It's A Wonderful Life. It helped that Michael was, at the time, writing some kind of paper on Frank Capra. But the bartender actually introduced us over the PA, and there was a decent crowd there to bowl who gave up some preoccupied applause. We were basically set up in a corner by the bar, completely out of the way of the lanes, so only people who happened to be waiting on food or beer took note of what we were doing. But we started from the Potterville cemetery scene, and I was of course Clarence the angel, Jason was George Bailey, and Tim was Huck Finn. Michael narrated. It turned out to be just a bunch of screaming and laughter, but once I belted out "She's at the LI-brar-eeey" in a terrible Irish/Australian/Tennessee accent, we tore into "Cat Metal Intro" then did a ten minute soundcheck featuring parts of "52-Inch Ceiling Fan". We all had clipboards to keep track of our lines. Michael went on with some lines from God while I changed into my Mr. Bower costume an Jason put on an old-timey baseball cap. We then went through the childhood pharmacy scene while Huck Finn whitewashed fenceposts: I smack Jason in the ear, he barks something about his bad ear, I tell him "take these pills down the street", he calls me a "goddamn drunk", and I scream in a mock-drunken voice "I DON'T PAY YOU TO BE A CANARY!" We took some liberties with the script for dramatic purposes, but we thought it still captured the feel of the scene. Then came a version of "Lethargic Ninja" which embarrassed even us, then "Little Miss Grandma Got Some Hightops On (pts. 1 & 2)", which didn't help matters. But we pushed on, Michael reading some lines from Potter in a scary voice and my running around yelling "Now George what the heck are you hollerin' about?" while wearing a COPS hat. Jason hopped around like a kangaroo with a backpack containing a fortune, shouting "HEY, BERT! MY MOUF'S BWEEDIN'! MY MOUF'S BWEEDIN'!" We let off four balloons provided by Sunset Bowl, then went into our cover of Love 666's "MDMA", which came off surprisingly well. We of course had to play a sludge version of "Bowling Class", after which Tim asked an enormous green teddy bear "Who died and made you my hard music authority?" A "Reading Is For Nerds" remix of "Spitguy" ended the show, and the bartender thought we were "real funny". By then it was only 7:45pm or so, the most organized and relaxing show we'd done. Sunset Bowl paid us $50, gave us a $35 credit at the snack bar, and let us bowl all night. We were thrilled and they seemed happy to have us, which was a surprise coming from the new hit country mid-lifer bowling teams, a group who stereotypically drums up colliding worlds of generational differences rooted in bad journalism and sitcoms. Just down the road from Sunset Bowl was Indianapolis Raceway Park. it's still there, I think. It's where high school soccer teams pick up beer cans to earn money for uniforms and transportation and water. It also features drag racing and sprint car racing. Tim and Jason worked the snack bar there for one night in the summer of 1994, but that story goes nowhere. Just up the road from Sunset Bowl was a nice theatre where Jason and I saw Armageddon, the greatest piece of propaganda ever made, when it first came out. Never on our tour did we encounter such a severe case of �Space Dementia�. I�m pretty sure Steve Buscemi can do better, but not long after that I came up with this theory: The reason the four of us exist is to write, direct, and star in the broadway version of The Perfect Storm. As Jason will tell you, we�ve derived many hours of laughter from watching George Clooney get all mad and yell �I ALWAYS GET THE FUCKING FISH!� The only dramatic movie I�ve found genuinely more funny is, of course, Bicentennial Man. But this is all just empty observation and I don�t really even like watching movies, so I�ll stop before I completely kill this thing with a saturation of obselete pop culture references. This bowling alley is ruining my train of thought. But we bowled four or five rounds until ten, then came the karayoke. By then Scrote had shown up, I think he may have been a little tipsy. My grandparents had a series of dogs, each named �Tippy�. They would have gone with �Tipsy�, but they seemed worried about what people would think of the dog�s private drinking habits. But Scrote insisted on karayoke. Time told him to �shut the hell up� and Scrote called him a �pecker�. Bear in mind Scrote speaks with a self-imposed deep Kentucky drag, so imagine that slathered on a word such as �Pecker�. Ends up sounding something like �pehyucker�. �You pecker,� Scrote said with a big smile. �Don�t make me kick some Jamestown ass.� So we picked the worst goth music we could find, a band called Saviour Machine, complete with superfluous spelling. We had the sound guy blare it while Scrote read the list of ingredients on the back of a bottle of Jones Soda. We played plastic flutes in the background. He ended the performance by yelling �I�ve got a Jones for a Jones, bitch!� He would later record the same track for us in front of outer space wallpaper. After Scrote a guy wearing a Throw Mama From the Train shirt stumbled through a Pearl Jam song, then came another guy�s way too serious rendition of Alice In Chains� �rooster�. Michael and Tim tried to counter the disaster by rapping the lyrics from �Murder Was the Case� over the �Lean On Me� karayoke track. They�d been nursing a couple Miller 40s, which might or might not have contributed to their eagerness for karayoke in general. They just couldn�t stop laughing and began to annoy the audience, who for some reason wanted everyone to take the karayoke more seriously. We called off any more performances, and by the time we found out the real bands played at midnight the incessant country radio station had made it too hard to hang around. Tim had plans anyway and Michael and Jason were riding in HOG. We decided to check out the Hyundai deals since Michael a sensible used car to replace his �junk-ass piece of shit�. It was around 11 by then and Michael still smelled a little like a Miller 40, so it all must have impaired J.J. our salesman�s desire to take us seriously. Jason was wearing an Entombed shirt, too, I think, so that probably didn�t help the cause. No salesman likes an Entombed t-shirt. At first it was funny, but as the Marketing Major condescension mounted I insisted on test driving the Sonata Michael had his eye on. I made a point of wasting the arrogant salesman�s time with questions like �Is this thing a five-cylinder?�, and I returned to inform Michael the Sonata �handled like a golf cart�. J.J. insisted Michael shouldn�t compare the car to advanced American engineering; that, for the money, the Sonata was �the nicest ride the Koreans have to offer�. Later that night Michael vowed to move to Korea to research J.J.�s claim, and as I write he�s actually fulfilling this vow for no other reason than TO PROVE THE BASTARD WRONG. We kept at this one-sided transaction to J.J.�s stupid dismay, and Michael finally bade a real offer pending a sober test ride. J.J. countered with an offer that was �only $3000 more�. Michael asked if J.J.�s price included a free space heater for his �shop� and a lifetime supply of eggnog. He then started with the Thundercats dialect: �Snarf, snarf, that price scares me, Snarf, Snarf!� I asked how many hamster wheels powered the vehicle and J.J. stormed off disgusted. We were happy to have proven a point and left before they could ask us to do so. We headed to a gas station for coffee and an auto trader classified. Jason suggested breaking into Tim�s apartment for absolutely no reason, but Michael and I had done that once and found it quite anticlimactic. Much like eating at Ponderosa Steakhouse. �Yeah, maybe we should call it a night,� Jason said. �My girlfriend�s probably wondering where I�m at anyw--AW, SHIT!!�
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