INSTANT KARMA PROJECT PART I- Warm Schnapps and a High Pressure Ticker… Sins & Sinners on the Trail for Socialized Medicine…

Rain is pissing down- hard drops splatter against my window like a ship’s portal. The surface of the pond swirls with nervous fog while everyone I know is in some sort of financial crisis. The Nor’easter that is cooling down my friends in New York has reached it’s chilly fingers down here at the beach. The only way to find warmth is the occasional shot of a decent peppermint Schnapps, but even that doesn’t soothe the wounded beast.

There would normally be a bottle of Wild Turkey, corn liquor, Glennfidditch, or a carefully stirred Martini on the table next to me. (Shake it I’ll kick your ass. It bruises the alcohol no matter what certain imperialistic British spies would have you believe.) Now there is a bottle of blood pressure meds, a bubble pack of more pills, and an electronic blood pressure cuff manufactured by ReliOn that I occasionally slip my arm into only to see my life suddenly reduced to numbers like 159/110. Fact is numbers are all the rage these days as people jam their hands into lint filled pockets hoping against hope that they might have left a bill folded up in there when things were better and the mood more careless. Numbers like the BP I entered the hospital with last Tuesday night. 186/136 and the poor nurse who admitted me almost blanched white. How about the number Zero? That is how much debt I had at 1900hrs Tuesday night. Twenty-four hours later and I am $13,000.00 in debt while the number keeps going up as the hits come in. CT scans, radioactive isotopes, and enough nitro to carve a tunnel through Mt. Rainier. All of this to stay alive just a little longer… to not see my children orphaned.

Let’s take a look at some more numbers, shall we? Like you have anything better to do. The fantasy football league, and petit teen porn can wait- give me your ear for a moment, pilgrim. I want to tell you about a cat named H. Edward Hanway. I know… sounds like a douche bag. The kind of guy who attended all the wrong prep schools, engaged in premeditated, systematic date rape, and probably has no idea what a gallon of fucking milk cost. I’m not sure if any of those things are true, but I’d be willing to bet long money on the milk thing.




What I do know is that he is the CEO of Cigna Healthcare. In 2006 this guy earned 15.2 million dollars. According to Forbes and the AP he was hurting too as his bonus that year was only 11.25 million dollars. Thank the gods for 2007, though. That is when H. Eddy posted a comeback. Now his actual salary was a paltry 1.2 million bones- but fuck yeah! His bonus came in a whopping 18million. I don’t know how his poor family got through the dark days of ‘06... But the made it into the sunshine of an economic recovery while the rest of us were loosing jobs. (Radar Magazine shut down that fall, costing myself and their regular employees actual thousands in money we had earmarked for silly things like feeding our families.)* Before you get all self-righteous at how much this white boy makes let me inform you that he is worth every blood-stained dollar. CIGNA in the last seven years pulled down around 7BILLION fucking dollars. Eddy’s salary and bonuses are chump change when you consider that bull moose of a number. Put that on your polished mirrored desk pad and snort it, old sport!

Now… let me hold your attention for a few more moments while I introduce you to Stacie Ritter. She and her husband are middle class folks with jobs, a mortgage, and two beautiful daughters. You may have seen her on television by now. Her daughters were both diagnosed with leukemia. That would be a horrible burden for any family but unfortunately for the Ritter’s the company her husband worked for had just switched to ‘ol H. Eddy’s CIGNA. Of course CIGNA is a patriotic American corporation that believes in free enterprise, un-bridled capitalism, and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. In fact the good folks at CIGNA were so worried that the Ritter girls would grow up thinking that the world owed them something like all of the little brats in Canada, Cuba, and the UK so they taught them a good lesson. They denied coverage for the treatments that might keep them alive. No better way to teach today’s kids about the promise and wonders of capitalism than to do it with a boot-heel to the neck.




It all worked out… right? Dear readers, I am here to tell you that those kids truly learned their lesson when the Ritter’s had to file for bankruptcy then lost their home while struggling to pay the $440 dollars a treatment (once a week) for both girls. Four-hundred and forty dollars! That is what H. Eddy spends on lunch when one of his dickhead friends stiffs him on the bar tab. Hell, Eddy makes around $5,800.00 an hour. Using my grade school level mathematics skills to do the cipher- Eddy could pay for the girls treatment for 13 weeks of the Ritter girl’s treatment with one hour of his “labor”.

Now before you get all worried about H. Eddy you will find some comfort in the fact that last year he was able to compromise his lifestyle a little and pick up yet another mansion in Pennsylvania. Good for you Eddy! Fuck ‘em all if they can’t keep up.

Over the next few weeks I plan on spending some quality time on here introducing you to more CEO’s and going over their salaries while at the same time introducing you to the people they are putting the screws too. We are Americans- we all like to see the little guy get it in the ass… right? We’re all going to be Big Guys like H. Eddy one day since this is the land of opportunity.

Have you ever been blackmailed? Not you, Letterman, I mean those actually reading this- both of you. Well… you got blackmailed yesterday when the insurance companies (including CIGNA- go Eddy!) got together under the banner of America’s Health Insurance Plans and issued a “study” that threatens to raise the premium rates 111% over the next four years if even the weak-in-the-knees sell out plan pushed through committee yesterday by Max Baucus becomes law. According to the AHIP numbers that would mean that the average American family of four would see their healthcare premiums rise more that $4,000.00. Our friends in the insurance industry did throw us a bone promising to only raise rates 79% if the government does nothing. If you do this to a TV host with a wandering dick it’s called blackmail… do it to ALL of your fellow Americans and it’s called “Fair Trade”.

These are just some of the reasons I am for socialized medicine. A 100% government pay system like you see in other countries. All of you who say dumb ass things like, “I don’t want the government involved in my health care” should remember that YOU ARE YOUR GOVERNMENT! This irrational fear of the government and a corresponding fear of brown people is being taken advantage of by H. Eddy and his country club brethren. Don’t believe the hype, y’all. They want you to be afraid of socialized medicine and they use all sorts of scary words and have even scarier people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and out spouting nonsense that wouldn’t pass intellectual muster in your average day-care center playground. I will also spend time over the next few weeks refuting the myths and craziness being bandied about in an effort to maintain a status quo… a status quo that is butt fucking us all into the sick bed, the welfare line, and eventually the local drive-thru mortuary. In fact as much as the right wing claims to hate gays it is funny to me how much organized and targeted forced buggary they are willing to allow.

Enough for now. My BP is still hovering around survivable and if I stop now I may make it to fight another day. I can’t afford anymore pills to be taken at pre-prescribed times every day for the rest of my life. Please feel free to drop me a line ( chad@Skunkmagazine.com ) and tell me your side of things or share your own health care struggle. I’m out there for you, pilgrims, swinging blindly in the dark at the elephant in the room.

* A great blog about being young, skilled, and unemployed by ex-Radar managing editor Jennifer Doll can be found here:

http://yourunemployeddaughter.com/2009/10/12/as-luck-would-have-it/

if you have the stomaqch and time to find about about Health Insurance Company profits:

http://healthcareforamericanow.org/page/-/documents%20for%20download/090728%20Net%20Income%20of%20Major%20Health%20Insurers%202000-2008%20-%20Final-1.pdf

Dispatch from the Front: A Meditation on Love & Hate… Welcome to the Terror Dome… are we all doomed?

“He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand”

- Bruce Springsteen

“Occasionally the warrior must lay down his sword. The plowman must leave the mule in the barn... and the woodsman must lean his ax upon the tree.”

- Me

I hit the brakes sometime last night on the lonely road through General Lee’s “Wilderness” toward my hometown of Hampton, VA. For some compulsive reason I was scanning AM stations only to be continually astonished by the crazy, virulent, and twisted words coming out of the speakers to assault my ears in the darkness. I know I am prone to hyperbole and take up the sword when I feel that someone has wronged someone I love or committed some unforgivable sin against the least of us. In fact, often I feel like some sort of punk Don Rickles with a windup handle in his back primed for combat like a circus monkey with blades for hands and fangs instead of a smile.

“The communist… listen to me close, people… the communist are monitoring this broadcast…”

There is fear on the highway. Fear pollutes the heart of man creating hate at is destroys. For months now I have simply listened to the rattle and hum coming from the radio, the internet, and the great corporate media beast that seems intent on watching us rip one another apart so that it might feed on our bloody bones. Sadness is epidemic while the worst of us prey on the weak and the dreamers- all sorts of evil propaganda rolls like thunder across the air-waves while selfishness seems to be in vogue like never before. What does a sane man do in the face of all of this hate? He does not go gently… but even the stoutest hearted weary of battle.

I know that I will post these words tonight and there will be no comments. All sorts of opinions follow the outing of the evil… but how about a man who struggles with his love and hate finding both of them just below the surface of his thick and calloused skin? Everyone likes a good fight, but calm reflection and love seem to be just beyond our grasps these days. There is blood on my knuckles- the blood of idiots, fools, and former friends. Time for this ‘ol hoss to head to the barn, lick his wounds and wonder how we ever let the bastards and bitches get the best of us. Is the world full of love? No, pilgrims, the world is full of hate and darkness. A gloom has settled over the land while the Fisher King lies wounded in his bed.

On election night with victory in our grasp a friend and fellow warrior was in absolute tears. Not tears of joy, but a strange sadness came down even while the Bush era came to a loud, resounding close. Perhaps I should have heeded those tears rather than rushed to claim my own joy. The losers in that fight turned out to be cruel, petulant children who would rather see the earth scorched than their opponent or Nation become successful. Hate won again blotting out the possible light with an eclipse that is black, deep, and wounding.

Strange days, friends & neighbors, and I fear we haven’t seen the worst. Perhaps it is those of us who have ideals; the men and women within the sound of my quiet voice who are romantics that will suffer most. Disappointment breeds sadness. Sorrow allows fear to creep in… hate is not far behind.

I don’t have any answers tonight. No Nostradamus-like wisdom for the doomed children of the fading empire. All I have is a bottle of vodka, a pitcher of tea, a bottle of lemonade, and the heart of a tired combatant. (Thank you Uncle Casey. I will refill the liquor cabinet when I return.) Think I’ll go to the farm for a while. I’ll paddle around in my boat, pull in a couple of bass, and try to pretend like I’ve never seen the sins of others or trespassed myself. Maybe when I am rested and refreshed I may be able to make some sense of the madness, find some pattern in the cipher. I just might fight the light in the darkness.

“Well now, evrything dies, baby, thats a fact
But maybe evrything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City”

- Springsteen

It’s a Motherfucking Party… in my ass…

“This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.”
- Joel & Ethan Cohen

This entire piece is really just a message to two sad, pathetic, dickless wonders who talk about love & peace but really can’t wait to catch you with your back turned so they can plant a high-hard one in your ass. It is a response, primarily to JP Miller’s comments on my previous blog. (I just like fucking with Don Picket.) Accusations that there were things I wrote that were untrue. Not only are you wrong in your accusations. You are a bull-moose, dog fucker for insulting me professionally that way. I don’t tell you how to play music, boy… you don’t tell me how to do my thing. JP, you fucked someone in the ass that was trying to help out of love for his friends. Everything beyond the obvious jokes was true, double sourced- and 90% of it I saw with my own eyes. Don’t tell me I don’t understand what I saw. That’s like a man caught by his wife in bed with another woman who says, “Who you gonna believe, baby? Your eyes or me?”

Don’s dick may actually be tiny, or he just may be impotent. His Napoleonic demeanor around the volunteers led me to those conclusions. Last time you two boys threw a festival nobody came. Last time I wrote in a magazine at least 75,000 wonderful, beautiful pot heads bought it. (No shop lifting y’all… although that is usually how I get mine.) Should have talked to cousin Ashley before you wrote that shit, bubba. She’s been around me for 12 years and she knows how I get. She could also tell you exactly how fucked you are going to be for turning on me like that.

You accuse me of trying to sell magazines with a negative piece on Don Juan Land. News Flash hero- we at Skunk don’t sell magazines because we talk shit about a couple of nobodies like you. We sell magazines with big buds and hot girls. Not always my proudest moment, but… don’t believe me? Let me stand on one side of a massive crowd with a four pound, fuzzy bud in one hand and a pot model in the other. You stand on the other side with that goofy assed hat of yours and a guitar. See who gets mobbed first. Nope… you dumbasses won’t sell magazines. Getting to rough you up in print is just a bonus.

Oh yeah. You can do that high school shit you do to me. You helped pull that shit on one of the sweetest people I know. Ostracizing me won’t have the same effect. You guys hurt her… I don’t give a fuck.

In leau of all this new shit (Keeping with the very distant Lebowski theme. That’s for you, Seth.) I would like to announce the titles and subjects of my next two Weed City Columns.

WEED CITY: Somewhere in La Mancha… On the Road with a Blue-Collar Funk Band.
This will be a heartwarming tale of adventure on the road featuring myself, Derrick, Greg, Lee, AlAl, Arieh, and the awesome people we met out in America touring in Bubbles with Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band.

WEED CITY: Flameout on the Clinch River… Why you never get out of the boat… Apocalypse Now at Booty Band Land
This piece will be a foul polemic of truth, betrayal, hubris, and heartbreak. It will make what I wrote in that first blog look like me just cracking my knuckles.

So call me a liar. Tell your friends to shun me. (If they do they were never my friends to begin with and I have plenty of others.) I’m too old, too cynical, and to hateful to give a shit. Punks like you are a dime a dozen. I’ve lived long enough to see a cheap dollars worth. Y’all come and go… while I abide.

Alaikum Salaam motherfuckers.

Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band Land… Dark Days on the Clinch River… The Rise & Fall of a Genuine Dumb-Ass… Don’t Believe the Spin…

There are natural born winners. There are also born unto us a vast awry of flawed humanity from losers, wannabe’s, and never fucking will be’s. I like losers, myself. Many of them are good people who find ways to adapt to their base ignorance finding various ways to function in the world while doing minimal damage to their selves or others.

There is also a particular brand of human being that are born into this sorry world dumber than dog shit and without the natural instincts to rise above their own delusion and realize that they… are… stupid.

This weekend myself, hundreds of loyal volunteers, a few hearty party people, and my friends from Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band had to deal with just such a dumb ass. An individual so profoundly stupid and delusional about his actual reality that he drug all of us down into a vortex of madness, occasional music, and the hard truths found at the end of rainbow promises. The kind of empty guarantees found hunched at the end of fading colors with blood stained fangs and the general demeanor of a rabid wolverine who has been fed nothing but meth for the last week and really likes the taste of human bones.

This grand mol idiot’s name is Don Jaun… at least that is the handle he gave himself. Take it from the old man- never trust a motherfucker who gives himself a nickname, tells you that you will be greeted as liberators, or declares himself the voice of a generation. All of these knuckleheads will be wrong… two of them might get you killed while the other one will just creep up on little, helpless white girls during a basic cable awards show. I hope the nickname is meant to be ironic. I’ve never even seen the man near a woman so if he really thinks he is on par with the great European Giglo this douche bag is even more delusional that I originally thought.

His real name is Don Picket. He claims to be, amongst other things, an experienced music promoter. This evening with my body finally washed and dry (my spirit remains bruised and I have picked up some horrible disease in Tennessee) he looks more like a low-level bullshitter who found a way to tap into the hopes and dreams of a group of hard working, dedicated fans and musicians then with no more emotional engagement than the average person might have in killing a house fly: he stomped on the hearts and aspirations of the entire group. Right now his putrid little fingers have found themselves on line and he making claims that Don Juan’s Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band Land was cancelled because of the weather. That was not the real reason… that is the current excuse. Picket will also probably claim that he somehow ran out of funds. BULLSHIT! Picket never had anything in his pocket but a tiny cock.

He never had the money to begin with. No money to pay staff so Arieh Samson (The Booty Band’s long-suffering road manager) stepped up to the plate putting together a team of competent, dedicated, and skilled volunteers to actually turn a piece of decent Clinch River bottom land into something that had begun to actually resemble a music festival site. There was no money to pay an EMS professional so a deal was made with a good ‘ol boy who was kind enough to do the work for nearly nothing and keep us all safe from ourselves and others. He couldn’t, however, keep us safe from Peni… I mean Picket. With an unpaid staff, half assed facility, and an apparent ocean of pitiful delusion rolling around in that sad noodle he calls a skull, Picket was also blessed to have The Booty Band itself. There was no money for the jump. Hell… there was no money for food forcing other people to dip into their pockets to get even the most basic of hospitality duties barely fulfilled. The only things on tap were chicken tortillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, and some thing I think was spaghetti. I have had so much cheese shoveled into my body over the last two days that I may have to be hospitalized in order to have the impaction removed from my bowel. Then- after taking a whole day to actually get food to the staff and artist Picket decided that he would begin to charge a staff that was already giving freely of their energy and spirit because of their love for the guys in Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band. Picket- who is the smallest, slimmest weasel in recent memory or at least since SC Congressman Joe Wilson- wanted to charge the people who were giving blood, sweat, & tears to a festival that existed only somewhere in the misty recess of Pickets damaged and delusional brain.

Some of the worst lies were told to the Booty Band themselves. Fellow musicians from Asheville were doing the show for slave wages because, they too, love the Booty Band. Picket promised The Booty Band that money was set aside for their local Asheville acts like one of those Al Gore lockboxes and no one was going to touch it. When confronted with the fact that he had lied Picket didn’t come clean. Instead he lied again claiming that he had used to the funds to put down a sizable deposit for a bigger national act. (Details will follow in the next Skunk Magazine.)

That too was a limp lie. He had give THAT band only a fraction of the money he said. The raw truth was that Don Picket has nothing! He can do nothing! Besides just being a world class liar on par with Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney, and my little cousin who stole his Daddy’s truck, drove it through their trailer home, then tried to blame it on the mysterious black man who car jacked him, made him eat four Oxycontin, then poured Jack Daniel’s down his throat while still forcing him to drive. Enough about bullshit though. It’s easy to hammer on Picket and I’ll do more of it in the full magazine piece. For all my fans out there I promise there will be several small dick jokes. In fact, if I put my mind to it I may be able to figure out a way to work in a bit about Picket getting a Dirty Sanchez from an in-bred pig fucker right before a summary crucifixion followed by my big, hairy friend Bear Dog doing a nude, Pagan, dance ritual around Picket’s last “stand”.

I’m posting this now to get some truth out, though. Booty Band Land’s collapse was not due to weather, the bands, volunteers, or the fans. (Although the number of actually paying customers reportedly pegged off somewhere in the teens.) The mass chaos and bitter ends left in Sneedville, Tennessee are the final result of an idiot’s folly. Sometimes when a dream is dangled in front of you- like the dream of having your own music festival- it is hard to see that one of the Devil’s lesser servants is standing before you. The only sin The Booty Band made here was to put their eggs in the basket of a numb-nut motherfucker who had no basket. Picket didn’t even have one of those cool, tiny Tupperware bowls that are a good place to keep your weed fresh. The emperor had no clothes, a small & inadequate penis, and the base brain power of a Himalayan cricket. Picket treated the volunteers with disdain as he shot around the property in his car barking orders while providing none of the guidance or cash required to accomplish his “tasks”.

There will be more to follow in Skunk. For right now I am at an undisclosed location near downtown Asheville fighting off a fever and being glad that there was no one who got seriously injured. What happened in those hills today was not a simple rain storm. It was weather so sharply targeted that it seemed as if the wrath of God were being brought to bear on Sneedville. I think I could have handled it if the Clinch River had started running red with blood and frogs fell from the sky. What we suffered through can only be described as Biblical. The sad part is that while the powers that be were smiting ‘ol Don Picket there was too much collateral damage to go around. Too many people have been injured… too much faith destroyed.

The asshole didn’t get it all, though. Outside of Asheville’s Emerald Lounge the sounds of Soular System are wafting out into the chilly, damp night. Party people, music fans, and local musicians are dried off, getting their drink on, and filling the sidewalk with smokers. No matter how awful things get- what kind of petty, little douche bags try to steal the thunder through their greed, ignorance, and basic dumbaasness- the groove will always be there carrying us all into another, brighter day. Salaam, my friends… see ya next time.

In the Wild, Wild West Part Two…

Wind moves across the arroyos like a quiet spirit that brings cool breath to me in the hammock. I open my eyes to be immediately blinded by sunlight that cuts across the open landscape bringing soft oranges, harsh yellows, and morning heat. The hammock is stretched between two scrub pinion trees over looking a vast, desert plain that stretches out below me all of the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Because consciousness comes slowly after a night full of smoking, drinking, and violent tension in the wild, wild west I don’t roll out of the swing… I simply lay there and enjoy the hot, gentle wind on this desert, Sunday morning. People stir higher up on the property near the main tent. Arieh is still asleep in the tent he claimed while JP and I struggled up the two-mile dry-gulch wash of a road with Bubbles screaming, rocking, and bouncing all of the way to the top of the ridge.. I can hear Arieh talking to himself. Short, vicious burst of language followed by mumbling and random snoring.

I reach into my pocket then take out my corn cob pipe. There is still some slightly burnt smoke inside of the bowl. Take you’re blessings where you can get them, hoss. Another search produces a lighter enabling me to sit back, enjoy the landscape, then gently puff my pipe in order to get blunted up on a peaceful summer morning in the high-desert above Madrid, New Mexico.






The night before- when we last left our heroes, Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band- we were all sitting around a large, plank table at an open desert saloon called The Mine Shaft. Arieh had just informed us that there would be no sound engineer and nothing that even vaguely resembled a proper sound system. One, lonely, PA speaker hung from a beam in the ceiling. Everyone just kind of stared at the stage with a “What Next” look on their faces.

Madrid isn’t a town. It isn’t a village. It isn’t even an incorporated township our anything else that clever. According the United States government (for the purpose of census taking) Madrid is what is known as a CDP (Census-Designated Place). In 2000 the census count was 149 souls on the dusty streets of Madrid. There has been a 21st Century population boom. According to one local source the population is now at least 400 and climbing. Madrid is a community whose history began in the coal business but in the last couple of decades an influx of artist has made Madrid the community with the highest per-capita population of artist (or those claiming to be) in the United States. Besides artist (or those claiming to be) there are people who live in Madrid simply because it is almost as far off of the grid was you can get in America and still hold some less-than-tenuous ties to the larger civilization. Bikers, survivalist, Libertarians, dope growers, musicians, and other outlaws live there and apparently they all drink at The Mine Shaft.


There was a skinny kid that worked behind the bar who seemed to have more on the ball than his boss or any of the other employees. Somehow he managed to dig up a couple of nice PA speakers for The Booty Band to use. The speakers, themselves, weren’t huge, but they would at least help to spread the love a little bit.

All of the Booty Band have a good, functional foundation in the technical aspects of their craft. This is when being a fake would really bite you in the ass. If you plan on going on the road with a traveling band you had better get your shit wrapped tight before you head out because if you aren’t technically prepared for anything you just might find yourself in a dusty, desert watering hole with no sound guy and a couple of hours to get on stage.

Lee Allen has a particular ear for live sound design. He pointed out that every band should be mixed differently, but various genres require individual mixes. How should a Funk band be mixed? According to Allen, “The horns and vocals go on top- together. The bass and the kick needs to be down low making your clothes vibrate. The guitar needs to go up with the horns during a solo or otherwise it just kind of sits in the middle.” The technical knowledge of electronics, audio equipment, and acoustic science that many working musicians have is astounding to the layman. Hearing the guys go into a long riff about setting up the PA I was instantly in one of those information bubbles a traveler finds themselves in when they go to a country that they don’t speak the language of.

While The Booty Band did yet another load in I went out onto the porch to sit, bum a smoke, and listen to the locals talk. There is a good bit of this journalism gig that is downright creepy when you stop and consider it. I found a good seat where I could puff on a bummed American Spirit and have a sip of Wild Turkey while the sun went down in the dusty haze leaving Madrid, New Mexico in darkness.

The people in Madrid are an interesting collection of folks that have a kind of grimy, Mad Max style that is aggressive, derelict, functional, and beautiful in a shabby way. There were older men and women with long, gray haired tied under faded bandanas. These people had the scarred eyes of human beings who had somehow survived the street battles and drug freak-outs of the 1960’s to find themselves lost off of the grid here with the kids in the sticks. There were younger people. A dirt bike racer, a pretty punk girl with a pink Mohawk, and a guy my age who claimed to be growing high-test skunk weed up in the hills. Outlaw stories and outlaw poses were the order of the day as the sword lady told a harrowing tale that involved the high desert, some illegal aliens, and a clandestine meth lab.

Sitting there I wondered how those people got out there to Madrid. What pushes people to a town like that… a place that is a combination “End of the Line” and “New Frontier”. Maybe that is how it’s always been on the edges of America. Even places like Fort Smith, Arkansas and Dodge City, Missouri were both the start of a brave new world for some while at the same time they were the last waltz for others. Madrid is such a place. You can feel the tension between failure and success, survival and death. This is the anti-Vail. This is where real life happens lived with a pioneer’s spirits and a wino’s world view.


Everyone was getting pretty well lubricated by the time The Booty Band took the stage. Derrick and Greg (The Asheville Horns) came on aggressive hammering their way through the first hooks of a long sweaty night. The doors were open so cool, desert air was able to flow through the building along with the music. Lee was working his kit like a beast soaked in a thick layer of sweat.

It is a rare day that the Booty Band does not begin to play and people get up out of the chairs or leaning spots then get on the dance floor to shake it down with band. The same thing happened in Madrid but as I sucked down yet another PBR in an attempt to knock the dust out of my throat I noticed that the people hitting the dance floor were all women. Arieh was standing back behind the dancers in the middle of the floor. I polished off my beer then walked over to stand beside of him. “Is this the first time The Booty Band has played a gay bar.” At first Arieh scrunched his forehead up making him look even more like Bob Weir. He looked past me, though, around the room at the women dancing together including once stocky specimen with a shocking, white flat-top who gave off the distinct vibration that she just might rip you a new asshole were she somehow able to find offence. “Yes. It might be.” Arieh answered beginning to laugh.

Lori Lindsay, the owner/operator of the club, is a large woman with a definite swagger. She seemed to be gregarious at first. Besides the massive brick she laid by trying to have a band of the caliber of The Booty Band then not provide them with the proper production budget and equipment. She claims to that Janice Joplin and Willie Nelson played there. Janice may have swung through with Bobby Neuwirth back in the day, but Lori Lindsay didn’t handle it since she’s only been managing The Mine Shaft for the last few years. When Willie was there it was for the filming of a movie and all of the arrangements were made by the film company. Lindsay had screwed the pooch on the sound system, no doubt. Now she was cutting it up on the dance floor while I tried to exact revenge for The Booty Band by drinking up as much beer tab as possible.

All was well- The Booty Band put it down while people brought them shots, Lori liquored herself up good, the local lesbians cut a rug, and between my corncob pipe and the tap I was able to maintain just the right balance of intoxicants to tolerate the entire scene without simply wandering off into the desert. Things were groovy, the air was thick… AlAl wrapped the show up. He’s been doing that out on the road. It is almost as if he can’t bear to tear himself away from the stage. Something up there, something in front of all of those people. AlAl Ingram is a sweet, vulnerable, talented man. He is also a handful when he wants to be. Everyone has their devils and AlAl fights his on a regular basis. Sometimes the devils win and AlAl acts out. He had done so the night before the Madrid show asking finally to just be let out on the side of the highway in the middle of the night in Colorado. I have seen him do things… say hurtful things to other people then watched him struggle the next day with what he has said or done. AlAl is a real human being- good or bad he will give you his best. When AlAl is at his most joyful is when he is on stage. He puts on those costumes then he becomes someone else. The tight, zebra striped pants (Although I am a fan of the red velvet number with the cape. Who doesn’t dig a fucking cape.), head bands, head scarves, and wild hats. AlAl is Sweet/Nasty: a Superhero who roams the Asheville, NC night fighting evil in all of it’s forms and iterations. He hasn’t on this tour, but AlAl also wears Angel’s wings when he’s in the mood… black ones.

When the playing is done, though, it seems as if AlAl just can’t stop. Sometimes AlAl plays a bass solo number he calls, The Flight of Lorenzo; a roiling, meditative piece that he often plays sitting on the edge of the stage. Occasionally Lee and JP will remain on stage with AlAl for s percussive song he wrote titled I Do What I Want that is a declaration of personal freedom and petulant, personal rebellion.

AlAl’s base faded on the last notes of Soul to Squeeze faded away. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a major influence on Al and I can tell watching him sing the song that the lyrics touch him deeply. The quiet reflection he shows there is often mirrored in the raw, unrepentant attitude of the Booty Band song, Chaos, the performing of which often finds AlAl working it out primal scream style yelling the lyric, “I forgive myself” into the mic.

The music was over, though. Instantly what had been a pretty groovy vibe in the room turned a little nasty… and not the good kind.

To Be Continued…

In the Wild, Wild West Part One…

It’s a deep dark outside while in Bubbles there are only the muffled sounds of sleeping people barely audible over the quiet voice of Townes Van Zandt on the stereo. Bubbles thumps with a whisper as her tires eat up miles while her engine struggles to pull the trailer full of amps, instruments, and ice filled coolers. The music and road noise find competition when rain drops begin to slap carelessly against the windshield as if slung off of newly washed hands. Only moments pass until the drumming on the roof and windshield drowns out all other sounds. Thick fingers of lightening stab randomly into the glowing lights of Tucumcari, New Mexico filling the atmosphere with enough retina searing energy to vividly see that a pitch black storm cloud looms over the desert like a massive raptor with bat’s wings that open on it’s prey below. Another night on the road, another few thousand miles to go… still a long way from home.





Two days ago I was driving Bubbles through the verdant, alpine high country of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Arieh was riding shotgun while he thumbed over the National Geographic Atlas to plot our way to Madrid, New Mexico. Ozzy (The GPS) has been a bastard lately with bad directions that have cost us hours in travel time. Our friend Ozzy still thought we were in Breckenridge even though were miles south so we were forced to turn him off for a while. I could almost hear that drunken, Manchester accent in my ear as I pulled the plug singing, “Daisy… Daisy.” No. I don’t want to play a game, Ozzy. This may seem a harsh abandonment of a previously trusted appliance, but time lost when you haven’t showered or had dry testicles for several days is a capitol matter indeed, ‘Ol Sport.

A vast plain spread out on both sides of state highway 285 bordered by jagged mountains that loom over the landscape with a jagged, permanent instance- bold topographical features that give the heart a jolt when contemplating their massive wildness. The ground is fertile with the northern part of our journey a constant visual parade of modern agribusiness and old fashioned subsistence farming. Farm land would give way to small, Latino flavored towns that cling to the highway with a dilapidated determination to function. An elementary school with adobe walls and a dirt parking lot sat about 50 yards off of the road. Its windows were opaque with dust and a ring of mud splatter marked where the building met the earth.


This region was the first land in Colorado to be settled by Europeans: Spanish conquistadors then settlers who prized the large aquifer that keeps the valley lush. There are signs of occasional flooding along the highway. Grass has washed up against the bottom of barbed wire fences forming a thick thatch with the mud dried out in the harsh sunlight. Large ponds and raised marches dot the landscape while there are still some barns that sport thatch roofs. Some of these are in disrepair with sinkholes along the edges and way too much exposed dry, dirt. The San Luis Valley is a green world; treeless but for the trees planted around small homesteads usually set a ways off of the road in the middle of semi-arid grasslands. Domestic heard animals like cows, sheep, goats, and the occasional llama grazing zen-like in the fields while we look ahead to New Mexico and the desert. We had just left our last shower and soft bed back in the cool, dry summer of Breckenridge Colorado. When traveling around the country this way each change in overall landscape becomes like turning the page. The previous chapter is somehow closed and there is always the quiet “what’s-fucking-next” buzz of nervous anticipation.

New Mexico was an unknown for the Booty Band. Several of them had visited the State before, but they had never played in New Mexico or gotten involved with the locals like you do when you play music. The best way left to “ride the rails” in the United States might be just that way. Just like medieval minstrels- modern, working musicians are excepted into the homes of the communities they visit. No matter how much water has rushed under the bridge of human social development music remains a constant binding force for all of humanity. In that respect, music just might be the polar opposite to war… the cosmic Ying of understanding to the ultimate Yang of ultra-violent conflict resolution.

Everywhere Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band goes they make and maintain friendships. Through their gregarious acts of personal kindness and the meth-level addictive nature of their live shows The Booty Band has created a support network around the country that graciously open their homes to the entire band when they are in town. These aren’t the kind of celebrity/worshipper relationships one sees when the stakes are higher and everyone has an assistant. These guys aren’t celebrities. They aren’t some god-like others who exist in the either of modern media. Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band IS you and I. They are us. We are all in this boat together… some of us just seek to rock it more than others.

The connection that members of Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band has with their fans is far more local politics than it is any sort of parasitic arrangement. The men in The Booty Band genuinely care about their fans and take energy, courage, and love from them. In return they provide the communal joy of music and an ass-thumping good time that would have Bacchus dry humping his mule like a Pan in heat. Where spirits and music flow together you will find the groove. The men of Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band carry that groove with them around the nation connecting soul to soul with all of those who gather to listen.

We stopped in South Park, Colorado for lunch. Not at all like the fictional South Park on television this place is a wind battered ghost town- the very type of ramshackle tourist trap that used to dot the American landscape before the aggressive advent of the modern, mega-highway system. A small saloon in town was full of late morning patrons sucking down drinks from muddy looking Bloody Mary’s to strait shots of bourbon whiskey. The crowd was weathered, quasi-elderly. The whole room had the rotten smell of old blood, vomit, and ancient desert blood feuds. The waitress was a surly bitch who offered beer in dirty glasses and service with a scowl. AlAl stood next to me at the plank board bar. We were both looking toward the end of the bar… we tried to do so with our peripheral vision so the guy sitting there wouldn’t catch us eye-balling him. The vibes that came off of the guy were dark and vicious.




His eyes were angled up then inward toward his nose… almost too close to be exactly human with thick, bushy eyebrows attached at rude angles that gave him a permanent scowl. The stranger sat with a jailhouse hunch over a short glass of whiskey. Dusty light came through the front window, but all light seemed sucked up by the stranger as if he were a human black hole.

I ordered something greasy while AlAl tried to fight the creeping feeling that the stranger might be some sort of desert serial killer. The kind of guy you pick up hitch hiking on a lonely, arid road to only then have your scalp peeled back with sudden violence and less remorse than you or I would give to stomping a scorpion with a boot heel.

Arieh started to order, but the sour woman behind the bar told him it would be forty-five minutes for the most basic order available. We were due at The Mine Shaft Saloon in Madrid with little time to spare, certainly not enough time to wait forty-five minutes for a bigger that would be 10% beef and 90% a mixture of road scraped possum, ground hog, or if I was lucky a decent breed of dog that tried unsuccessfully to cross the highway while chasing some poor, diseased rodent into the bush.

Greg Bob disappeared from the dark barroom followed by the rest of us. I backed out of the joint more than a little paranoid about turning my back on the son-of-a-bitch at the bar. An old man threw back his whiskey glass then used it to tap his hat my direction. I tipped the brim of my Kangol then let the door close in front of me. We were able to find food down the sand-covered board walk. Old board creaked and sang to us while we all headed down to the local deli/wine bar. Who says you can’t find a decent California pinot and a nice club sandwich out here in cruel country.

The valley opened up at the end of the mountains then dumped us into the desert for a hot run on Santa Fe. The city itself sits on a plateau rising up out of the khaki, red desert with the dusty orderliness of sprawling stucco buildings that give the landscape a Picasso like cubist soul that meets the topography with a natural aesthetic harmony that is absent from the typical, American, polished, suburban squalor.





Madrid was down the road a piece. The entire “town” is literally a wide spot in the road with a cobbled together, Peckinpah charm that had a careless, outlaw bad-assness to it. Bubbles rolled through slow while the weary passengers in the van stared out of into the red, dusty haze at the controlled squalor all around us. This was life stripped to some of it’s survivalist basics. A cluttered, minimalism where the houses come together with sheets of roofing tin, old planks, and creosote soaked railroad ties. Faded paint colors were once garish pinks, blues, and yellows but are now dim under the brutal, New Mexican sunlight. Signs were hand painted to most business while most business in Madrid have some sort of counter-culture slant. Not some slick, urban counter-culture cribbed from European and Japanese influences, but a uniquely American collection of eccentric personalities that dress like hippies but have the general disposition of occasionally, vicious desert carnivores.

When I pulled Bubbles into the lot next to The Mine Shaft a local blasted gravel against the van door with the knobby tire of his Kawasaki dirt-bike. This was outlaw country and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band were the new Sheriffs in town… “Regulators!”



No Parking sign in Madrid, NM

The Mine Shaft is a long, bunkhouse looking saloon situated on Madrid’s main drag just in front of a tacky historical museum that offers the patron a true grit western experience down to boots and war bonnets. There is a large porch where bikers in leathers leaned sucking on cigarettes while balancing glasses of beer and their elbows on the porch railing. Sun-faded bandanas and bad attitudes perched above us as if the main cop back in Santa Fe had loaded an entire line-up into a paddy wagon then dropped the entire sorry group off in front of The Mine Shaft.

Per our usual pattern we all got out of the van without speaking to one another. Some stretched, some lingered, and some made a bee-line for the bar. Between the dry, desert air and persistent dust the need to satiate thirst with something cold, frothy, and polluted through and through with an acceptable alcohol content. Arieh took care of business with the club owner while the rest of us bellied up to the bar dropping orders down the line with a practiced precision. AlAl rocked a Crown & Ginger, Greg Bob picked up a Vokda/Red Bull, JP ordered a local micro-brew, Lee and I had Wild Turkey shots with PBR back, Derrick asked for a PBR.

The crowd was an odd mix of families with a tourist look about them and tough looking locals. All of the women in Madrid seemed to be built off of a solid, muscled base like fast-pitch softball players with dusty, desert dreds and extensive ink. While we all sat at a long, rough-hewn wooden table bunched up over a set of menus a woman walked by us wearing a sword.

I don’t mean a big knife. I don’t mean a machete. I don’t mean a dagger, a katana, or even a fucking light saber. I mean a big-ass- cut your enemies head off- there can be only one, motherfucking sword. Her sun-bleached, white hair was tied in a pile on top of her head. The sword lady’s skin was splotched and leathery. Her face sported a conspiratorial grin. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to have this in here.” she stated without prompting. That was when the split in her long skirt opened and I could see the eight-inch, Gerber boot knife strapped to her bruised calf. I pounded down the rest of my PBR wondering exactly what the hell we had gotten ourselves into.

“This is bullshit.” Arieh said collapsing into a chair next to Greg Bob. “We don’t have a fucking engineer and we don‘t have a sound system” The road manager let the words out of his body in a long, exhausted sigh. To say that Arieh’s job is a thankless one would be to engage in the entirely clichéd kind of writing you might find in People Magazine. The truth is more complicated. Trying to be the head clown in a three-ring circus when you aren’t really allowed to wear make-up is a tough gig. There are certainly rewards, but all in all what Arieh accomplishes goes un-noticed by the kids that line-up outside of a Booty Show looking for a little rump shaking transcendence.

The sun was going down outside. Harsh light cut under the roof-line then in through the windows while everyone slumped in their own way. All eyes turned to the stage. It was a deep stage that sat back in a tight alcove at one end of the bar. There was a single PA speaker attached to the ceiling, a monitor sitting by itself in the corner with a few, somewhat forlorn cords piled on top of it.

“Is it in the contract?” JP asked leaning back in his chair while staring down at sunlight filter through his beer.

“It is in the contract.” Arieh answered pointing toward the table for emphasis.

I would later see the contract between Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band and The Mine Shaft Saloon. There were several things in that contract that would become points of contention when the sun finally made it’s way down over the sandy streets of Madrid, New Mexico.

To Be Continued…

A Day in the Life… “I smell poor people”…

“Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.”

- James Joyce


Drummer Lee Allen


Sound check at an Irish pub in Avon, Colorado. This place is called Finnegan’s Wake after the James Joyce book. I wonder if anyone sitting in this bar on a sunny Thursday afternoon even knows who James Joyce was or that he was considered a first-class pervert by the United States government while he was at the peek of his powers. This is only the first of two load-ins today. Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band will be playing here tonight then heading over to Breckenridge to play at the Three20South Club. Somewhere in the middle of all that activity there are plans to check into our hotel, possibly get showers (which Greg Bob describes as “absolute titties“), then beat feet it back here for the 5:30pm gig. This is the kind of brutal tour day that is indicative of the professional life of a working-funk band.

We woke up this morning in the shittiest hotel in Vail, Colorado. It was dump called “The Roost Lodge”. Located in Vail’s ghetto (sarcasm!) West Vail District the building is to architecture what Land’s End is to furniture. Vail is one of the most exclusive resorts in America. Only the wealthiest douche bags need apply for use of the grand natural beauty of the White River National Forest, Vail Mountain, and the Gore River that falls lazily through the faux Swedish Village artifice of Vail Village. The whole consumerist nightmare was founded in 1966. The local population is 4,531 souls with a white-washed demographic (according to the 2000 Census) of high-end white folks pushing 95% of the population. According to the racial breakdown in at the turn of the 21st Century there was actually a black person living within the Vail Town limits at one point.

Arieh just sent out text informing everyone that the hotel would not be local but would be close to tonight’s gig in Breckenridge. The end result of that little logistical hiccup is that none of us will have showers before the 5:30-8:00 show here at Finnegan‘s Wake or between this and the Breckenridge show. Filth will be our condition until the early morning hours of tomorrow. So it goes.

When we rolled into Vail some of us had been running on 48 hours without bathing. We were able to catch up with that before the Vail show… there have been no showers since. There was the cursory application of deodorant to already stinky pits and a much needed change of T-shirt. Besides those futile steps we travel without the grace of cleanliness today. This is not exactly the kind of funk The Booty Band normally likes to revel in. It is hard to find something in the general experience of the average American consumer that a writer can latch on to in order to make this sort of lifestyle understandable.

Most of you may have images regarding what it would be like to be on the road with a Funk band. There would be wild parties that celebrate madness in all of it’s varied forms. Feral bacchanals full of color, music, dope, and wall-to-wall pussy. Let me break this one to you hard. No gentle massaging of some preconceived cultural myth, but an un-varnished, tough love approach to journalism. Lay your cock on the chopping block. There are no truths without risk… one such truth is that there is less sex on the road than one might imagine. Sure- when you get a major record deal and some high-profile festival gigs you can have young girls brought to you by roadies and event staff like Michael Franti working on his harem. Not these men. No rock-star moves here- just six guys going about their business with a workman’s application of craft.

Vail is one of the most elite locations in American tourism. President Gerald Ford ran the entire nation from out on the slopes. It was once no big deal to see Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the King Prick Crew sliding awkwardly down the mountain while also making time to plan assassinations, loot the National Treasury before they all reach 70, and see just how much imported, trust fund-ass they could managed to boon-dog before catching the red-eye back to DC where the real nastiness took place.

I think they were fucking with me there. I arrived in town a little disgusted at the general artifices’ of the place. The Booty Band loaded in then we headed over to the Roost Lodge. This place was bland to the extreme with each room stuffed full of beds and designed to sleep as many people as could be jammed into one cheaply appointed room. I was rooming with Lee and AlAl. There were three beds with a table placed awkwardly in the middle of the room. The bathroom was small, cramped, and sported a toilet that flushed when it wanted to. Nothing about the place indicated that it was located in a resort whose streets are clogged with CEOs, wanna-be models, and spoiled little rich girls out to see how much blow they can sport from the middle-aged single guys who seemed to hang around like land sharks with the scent of fresh, nubile blood in their slit-like nostrils.





Hell no! In this town of high-rollers Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band were treated like just more of the brown, hairy, or working class “help” that you can see in Vail when you order some food, buy some retail, or need something done that requires more effort that thumbing the touch screen of an iPhone.

As usual- we all needed showers. Lee jumped at his right away while AlAl started his unpacking ritual. There were duffels, backpacks, and a red, faded, plastic cooler to rifle through. I opened my computer to get on then discovered that there was no wi-fi signal. A call to the front desk proved useless.

“How do I get on the wi-fi here?” I asked the desk guy while AlAl rubbed some sort of African oils across the skin of his forehead leaning into the mirror to get a closer view.

“You don’t. We don’t have it.”

“How about a fire wire?” I opened a small container of seriously sticky bud we’d found somewhere in the vicinity of Steamboat Springs then began to pack the corn-cob pipe.

“Hardware?”

“Fire wire.”

“Wi-fi?”

“Seriously? Dude. Are you aware that it is 2009?”

“What year?”

I hung up on the poor son-of-a-bitch. After the guys had showered then headed out for the show I had planned to take a long, hot shower to make a serious attempt at cutting through the highway grime. It is the kind of dirt that seeps into the flesh then requires deep and dedicated cleaning to get out. When I got out I was hot as hell so I turned the thermostat down to 50 degrees. There was no “whoosh” sound of air-conditioning coming on just the dull, flat, distant sounds of people moving about the hotel.

Back on the phone with the front desk guy: “Is there a trick to turning on the air-conditioner?”

“Nope. There is no air-conditioning here. Try opening a window.”

“You are fucking kidding me?” I jammed the receiver and phone together then through the whole thing behind the night table. When I opened the window I discovered that there were no screens giving invitation to all manner of Colorado’s insectoid population to come on inside then get in the bed with me… including bobcats which I hear can leap like nobodies business and will hold onto your jugular for hours until you, the victim, bleed out.

I have been few places in my life where there was a clearer line between the haves and the have-been-fucked. Ever square inch of Vail’s decadent development is rented from the National Park Service for the fun and enjoyment of those who can afford it. All others can either get a job in Vail or eat a dick as far as the average Vail-goer is concerned.




The gig was in a bar called Samana. It is an intimate space located under a restaurant in the Village. Tastefully decorated with stainless steel wraps on the bar and polished stone for the finishes it seemed populated less with Vail’s wealthy trash and more with the young people who spend their summers working there. The invisible people trying to get down as best they can. This was simply the best show of this current tour. The Booty Band seemed energized… ready to party and kick out the jams with an mad intensity that was then amplified by the close quarters. Drinks were flowing with tray after tray of shots placed on the skirt of the small, carpeted stage as if they were offerings to these Pan-Like gods who for some reason saw fit to bring the Funk to a place as naturally tight assed as Vail, Colorado.




Lee Allen’s drum solos have been redefining what is musically possible with The Booty Band. New energy has been injected into their old songs- new textures to the landscapes that JP Miller and company try to create. The whole room was pulsating like a living thing. By the time The Booty band had been on stage for two hours the atmosphere in the room was thoroughly polluted with nasty, sweaty Funk. Groves dripped from the ceiling then swirled around the dancing crowd.



The Asheville Horns

Derrick Johnson moved from the stage into the crowd carrying his horn into the tightly packed scrum. The dancers made room for him forming a circle. At the same time Lee Allen took his snare off of its rack hammering out a machine-gun beat alternating from the sharp crack off of the rim then back onto the drum head created a beat suitable for marching, dancing, or fucking to. JP moved down into the crowd with some percussion. AlAl took a set of bongos off of the stage while Greg Bob walked headlong into the crowd sending notes out of the end of his horn like bullets from a gun.





The crowd closed in around the band with swirling arms, flying hair, and spontaneous shouts of adrenalized delight. This is the way it should be. The Booty Band knocked it the fuck out while all of the indignities of the day melted away into the near orgasmic release of communal joy.

By the time it was all over we were all still stupid drunk and buzzed like a motherfucker on what we had just been a part of. In an America that is becoming violent, grim, and cynical it was an almost religious experience found in the ancient, shamanistic reality of good music, mild drugs, and copious amounts of booze.

Too loaded to load out we had to get to that chore today before we headed up here to Finnegan’s. Bubbles was cramped into a small alley next to the Gore River while we passed a bowl around waiting for the dude to come open up the club so we could get the gear into the trailer. A Hummer, a Navigator, an Escalade, and some other SUV purchased in an attempt to make up for the small penis size of it’s owner, turned around in our alley. Each time we’d tuck the bowl down. After one of the SUVs finally disappeared back up the narrow street Greg Bob started to laugh. I think he was still loaded from the Jager, whiskey, and beer he drank at the club… not to mention the tequila he drank straight from the bottle sitting on the edge of my bed at 0300 watching cartoons and laughing our balls off in the non-air conditioned space of our room. In a voice that oozed strait up Ivy League superiority Greg Bob said:

“Quick honey turn around. I smell poor people.”


* All photographs for this piece were courteous of Adrienne Pocheco (Band friend and right-on chick.)