2003-06-29 - 5:17 a.m.

Thursday - 6/12.2003

The Poetry reading is today. God damn. This day has been looked forward to for so long. Tonight Dan and I will prove ourselves on how good will we whore our publicity. We be sure we are stocked with alcohol. We buy wine and beer. We have 4 twelve packs of Henry Wienhearts and 17 bottles of 2 buck chuck.

We make T-shirts with Josh F. At about 5 in the afternoon we offer Josh and beer and he declines. He says, "No I'll start with the heavy drinking in about an hour or so." I walk down to the music store to but some stuff. When I return josh is gone. Dan says he drove home so Crystal can drive him back so he can drink.

Josh returns with Crystal a little after 6. He as a bottle of Southern Comfort. He offers us some I take a swig. I wouldn't feel like Rob Roy if I turned down booze. And I got to be me.

We all make our way over to Cafe Roma. The reading is going to start a little after 7. People show up. The room gets packed. Josh gets drunk. He drinks almost the whole bottle in a little more than an hour. I do a good job reading. I get laughs and applause. Andy, Josh's friend, laughs a lot during my set and Josh's set. When Josh is on he tells the crowd that if anyone leaves while he is on he will fuck them up. He has a beer bottle in his hand and honesty in his heart.

Near the end of the show Josh asks me if he can go on again. I tell him he can. I tell the crowd Josh is drunk and wants to do an encore. He gets up and tries to read a poem. He can't get through the first stanza. The crowd is getting restless. Josh always sags his pans so they drop to his ankles and he is standing on the stage wearing only boxers. There is one girl working right now and she has told me that her boss, Dan M., is coming soon and we aren't allowed to have alcohol here. No we have a guy in his underwear on stage. I volunteer to get up and let my finger scroll down the paper so Josh can read along. He finishes one poem finally. It took him 4 tries. Then I turn away as he fiddles around with some paper. Then I look at the shock of the audience. Josh has his boxers around his ankles and he is fiddling with himself. Most of the people in the room get up and leave. We keep going with an open mic as Josh goes outside. As I'm reading one final poem Josh comes back in and throws a chair across the room.

The Poetry reading is over.

I continue cleaning up and Josh apologizes. We all just walk over to Dan's where all the booze is.

We get fucked up.

Friday - 6/13.2003

I get in the car with Valerie and Dan and we drive to this party on Olive Drive. Just days ago they found a couple butchered bodies in a dumpster at the apartment complex I am going to. Valerie points at the dumpster and Dan doesn't go over, but I sure do. I stand in front of the dumpster knowing that it recently housed death and I stare intently. I circle the dumpster marveling at how much trash has been put in it since it was cleaned out an emptied of bodies. I've always been fascinated by serial killers so a big bucket fool of death catches my interest, but only for a few moments so I go into the party.

I run into Kara from KDVS and we talk about our mutual love of Iggy Pop. I mention the Henry Rollins Band show coming up where they will play Black Flag material, like on their latest CD that featured Iggy Pop. Kara doesn't like Black Flag. I know that the co-host of her show, Scenery, does. I'm just looking for people to go to the show with. I used to go alone to so many places but my ability to handle my own solitary presence was waned recently. I feel uncomfortable when I'm alone. I'm not too sure if I actually like myself. I know a lot of people don't like me. The people that dislike me I usually dislike to a certain extent. Not because they dislike me, but because usually they are just uptight, arrogant, pretentious, intolerant people. I have no tolerance for intolerance. I'm not that smart of a guy. I'm constantly trying to be clever and because of that I find myself pathetic. I annoy myself. I don't know how people stand me. That is why I am so generous with my friends. I'm always buying everyone booze because I feel like I should have to bribe people for them to be with me. It's my way of saying I'm sorry for all my yelling and screaming and doing the same shit over and over again. I'd say I'm going to change but I don't have any reason too. A person could say to me that a woman just won't be attracted to me being crazy and that's probably true. But this is who I am. The odds are if a woman actually decided that I'm dateable -insert laughter here- then I'll probably be less likely to be so annoying with my frantic drunken antics, but there is always a possibility I may do something like light myself. I wish I didn't have so much of a propensity to do this, but this is how I have been since I've been a kid. I'm a 24 hour a day clown. If you're not going to fuck me at least laugh at my jokes.

So anyway, I go over to where Valerie and Dan are and this guy is there talking about singing and I bust into song. My voice carries the remnants of 4 bottles of beer imbibed in the last hour. My alcoholism isn't funny but why am I able to make so many jokes about it.

Because we are right down the street from our friends Vickie and Lisa I call them up and invite them to the party. No answer. Valerie, Dan, And I get into Valerie's car and we drive to the next party.

The Following has been adapted from an article written for KDVaitionsS.

I'm already drunk. It's a Friday night so if you know me you aren't surprised, in fact you expect it. All the formal education has ended in Davis for the moment so now is my chance to be the town idiot. It's Friday and now is my chance to drunk. Why? Because I like consistency in my life so on Friday nights I drink. I drink because I know I am going to die and I feel I have more of a measurement of the death that I am slowly being immersed in day by day if I count the bottle and the shots that I imbibe. I believe in entropy. Everything is ending. The night is ending. The week is ending. The school year is ending. The world is ending. So I get drunk and let things be how things have to be. I get drunk and make my way to Second Street. I get drunk and go to the Turtle House. On this evening, which is already half over because I was drinking elsewhere earlier, the bands blasting from the basement of this house are Legubitron, Sholi, and the Zim Zims.

As I walk in through the door with local Davis celebrities Dan G. the Poet and Valerie G. the Artist I feel the vibrations from the amplifiers shaking the house, making it pound like a heart on amphetamines. And the beat is on because the Zim Zims are blaring. Jake Mann is howling into the microphone as I go down the stairs to stare into a packed basement floor of onlookers. The voyeurs of Rock and Roll. I rush into the crowd, gripping a forty ounce of Mickey's with my flingers and tapping the floor with my toes. When I hear the Zim Zims and their certain brand of twenty-first century Rock and Roll I turn into a dancing fool as easy as a werewolf under a full moon. The crowd dances with me. I hug Lisa L., according to Seele Magazine - the number one poet in Davis California, and then I stand next to Will K. the unofficial co-host of the Friday Morning show Rude Awakening on KDVS. His head is bobbing so his mop top looks like a guinea pig having a seizure. The beat keeps going on. Aisha N., creative editor of AS PAPERs publication, One Drop, is enjoying the groove, as her hips sway as if there is an invisible hula hoop wrapped around her. Blair T., the drummer of the Zim Zims takes a rest from being the flesh and blood metronome of beer drinking genius while Mike Talbot takes the mic to sing the Zim Zims hit "Gabriella" - a song about a pretty girl and the basement of this house is filled with pretty girls. Valerie G. leans in next to me to ask the Zim Zims to do their cover of The Pixies. I try to get their attention but even though I am now half naked at this point they are too busy rocking to notice. Dan waits for the right moment to put in the request for Valerie. And bam! In a matter of moments, minutes, or seconds, or whatever time increments you want to call it the Zim Zims are playing requests.

I run out of beer as the Zim Zims end their set and make a quick run to the Fast and Sleazy on Second and B. I run into California Aggie folk out in front of the house. Jackson P. and Jeff R. are standing ten feet in front of the porch with forty's in the hand. Just a few feet from underneath them Sholi are plugging into their amp and starting to rock. Someone asks for a lighter and I reach into my pocket and light their cigarette. Then I add a pyrotechnic show to the evening and light my stomach hair on flyer. The earth begins to tremble as if it is shaking the sweat that has risen through the dirt between the basement and the ground and grips the blades of grass in the garden. I get a phone call from Hoang N. and tell him to hurry his ass over to where I am so he can rock. I run to the corner to get booze and then run back to the turtle house and run down the stairs onto the basement floor where I continue my butchered awkward brand of drunken tap dancing. This girl named Keisha talks to me about my dancing she says I look like I am having fun. Then she introduces her friend Donya. I don't what to say to two women I don't know. So I dance and they slightly join in but they are nearly as uninhibited as I am, but they can respect my lack of inhibition. Payam B. points at me from behind the microphone and laughs between his emotional sultry whispers of "Lets talk about time. Lets talk about time." Then the beat keeps going on and I keep dancing. Hoang N. rushes over to and tries to start a most pit. I slam back into his shoulder while I grip my beer as tight as a mother holds a child. Payam asks the crowd if they want to hear a Nintendo song or a Radiohead cover. The crowd doesn't want the night to. It doesn't want the world to end. It doesn't want the dancing or the drinking or the music to end. So we yell that we want both. And so Sholi delivers. They play the Super Mario theme and then blast into "Paranoid Android." The crowd loves the band so much I think that all three members of Sholi may get laid tonight.

As Sholi ends their set the beat still wants to go on so Legubitron hops back on stage. Nick, Dan, Eric, and Greg bust out of few more of their upbeat songs. The band then just starts jamming, without evening being bathed in patchouli oil they get into the groove. The band covers The Clash and then the musicians of the night switch around like a bunch of promiscuous swingers. Jake Mann takes over the bass and the basement still swivels about as an underground dance floor. At my request Dan Macht starts to play his song about mustard. I hop up on stage to help him out and then the night ends with me doing a poetry to music duet with Laura, a blonde haired 18 year old diva.

The beat no longer goes on as I finish my second 40 ounce of beer, help the bands move their equipment, and then walk way from the turtle house adding in my head the amount of beer I drank tonight. Nearly one galloon. I try to add the amount of musical entertainment I experienced tonight, but all I can tabulate is that it is a lot. It's nearly three in the morning. On the radio Paul Wilbur finishes his show on KDVS. And the night ends.

In the car I am with hoang and Aisha. We go to Aisha's hotel room where we fall asleep after I set a 10 am alarm because Aisha is worried her father will show up early to pick her up.

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