things I wish I could find
Jun. 19th, 2003 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wickedflea--The poster we made up for our band, Excessive Modos, that featured a picture from Weekly World News of an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman without a tooth in her mouth, wagging her tongue and wielding a BIG-ASS chef's knife while about to cut into a watermelon. We were looking for a drummer to play on our "upcoming album, Perverted Midget." We never did get a drummer out of that deal, but we did get some phone calls from people who just loved the poster. One guy named Craig called and told us about a band he used to be in called Quadraplegic Handjob. He suggested that we should just do what they did--get someone to bang out a beat on a snare drum and just forget about the full trap set. A couple of years later we started hanging out with the guys in a local band named Skeleton Crew who had an awesome bass player who was into the Misfits and was named Craig. Turned out to be the same guy! Too bad Excessive Modos never made that album. We ended up having to change our name to Dry Heave after the kids at school realized that "modos" was "sodom" backwards and thought it meant we were gay. No, we tried to explain, sodom can mean a lot of things! We're not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that.
--The photograph I found in the media building during my junior year of Jimmy Fleming tearing his mouth open. Dude had eight fingers inside his mouth and was stretching it way out so you could see all his teeth and everything. I mean he had that sucker wide open. Steven Tyler's got nothing on this guy. It looked like something out of Evil Dead or something. I cherish that picture, but I haven't been able to find it in about seven or eight years.
--That octave pedal I ganked from Ron Ingels that would make a guitar sound like a bass.
--My Crispin Glover The Big Problem CD. This is one I should actually be able to find.
--A copy of my high-school newspaper with the story on another one of my bands, Reign of Terror (ROT). There was this great picture of us gathered around a fire amongst a bunch of broken concrete slabs. And I think Wes was holding up a big stick of some sort. And Kirk had a scuzzy longhair wig on. And I had the Mosh Fiddle. It was a cool story, too--it talked about how all our songs were about death, nuclear war, death, and treats. (Except Fool misspelled "treats" as "threats" when he turned in the story. You could never trust him with anything.) Sadly, however, once we gained widespread media coverage with that story in the Hi-Jacket, our band came to a bitter end when Hardcore and the Vicious Hell Bastard stole a couple hundred of the newspapers, got nailed, and inexplicably took me down with them. (I did know they'd stolen them, but I wasn't really an integral part of the heist; they should have kept my name out of it.) I got a bunch of demerits for that and ended up one away from suspension, so I had to really mind my Ps and Qs for the whole last semester of my senior year. I couldn't even miss a day of my first-period English class because I'd already missed the maximum number of days (fifteen or whatever) and a suspension would have pushed me over the limit so that I wouldn't get credit for the class and thus wouldn't graduate. I wasn't too into school those last few years. :)
--Another copy of my high-school newspaper that featured my greatest contribution to journalism yet. There was this kid named Todd on the paper staff who nobody liked very much. Just kind of an icky guy. He worked at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, and the guys who worked with him claimed that they had caught him in the stockroom fucking a frozen chicken. Of course we ragged him endlessly about it and called him Chicken all the time. We were laying out the paper one afternoon when my eye settled on the Piggly Wiggly ad on the back page. So I grabbed a little piece of masking tape, wrote "HOME OF THE CHICKEN" on it, and stuck it on the ad. Sure enough, when we got the paper back a couple of days later, there was "HOME OF THE CHICKEN" on all 1200 copies. And of course I had to act as shocked as anyone else. "Gosh, Ms. Templeton, I wonder who could have done that! You know, it really could have been ANYONE . . ." I actually thought I'd gotten away with it for a day or so. But of course, after she really studied the handwriting, there was no mistaking my scrawl, so she eventually busted me. She was my favorite teacher, and she really liked me, so she wasn't hard on me. In fact she laughed heartily about it--she wasn't too fond of Todd either. All I had to do was go with her over to Piggly Wiggly, apologize to the store manager, and give him his five bucks back for that issue's ad. The hardest part was keeping a straight face while Wes and Kelly watched me from aisle six and laughed their monkey asses off.
Wow, three of these have to do with high-school paper staff in some way. I had a lot of fun there. I spent most of my days in the media building hanging out with the girls on the yearbook staff. Every once in a while I'd tell Ms. Templeton that I was going to sell ads, jump in the car, and go home to mix a rum and coke. Those were the days, man.
I wish Ms. Templeton were still around too so I could go see her when I'm in town. She died in a car accident about ten years ago. I had started a class with her daughter just afterward but didn't even know about the accident. We both ended up dropping the class, but on one of the days we both happened to be there I started to ask her, "So, how's your mom?" But for some reason I didn't--and after the semester ended I ran across an old newspaper with the obituary. Creeped me right out. And it was particularly weird because she always used to talk about how safe her Volvo was. Damn.
--The photograph I found in the media building during my junior year of Jimmy Fleming tearing his mouth open. Dude had eight fingers inside his mouth and was stretching it way out so you could see all his teeth and everything. I mean he had that sucker wide open. Steven Tyler's got nothing on this guy. It looked like something out of Evil Dead or something. I cherish that picture, but I haven't been able to find it in about seven or eight years.
--That octave pedal I ganked from Ron Ingels that would make a guitar sound like a bass.
--My Crispin Glover The Big Problem CD. This is one I should actually be able to find.
--A copy of my high-school newspaper with the story on another one of my bands, Reign of Terror (ROT). There was this great picture of us gathered around a fire amongst a bunch of broken concrete slabs. And I think Wes was holding up a big stick of some sort. And Kirk had a scuzzy longhair wig on. And I had the Mosh Fiddle. It was a cool story, too--it talked about how all our songs were about death, nuclear war, death, and treats. (Except Fool misspelled "treats" as "threats" when he turned in the story. You could never trust him with anything.) Sadly, however, once we gained widespread media coverage with that story in the Hi-Jacket, our band came to a bitter end when Hardcore and the Vicious Hell Bastard stole a couple hundred of the newspapers, got nailed, and inexplicably took me down with them. (I did know they'd stolen them, but I wasn't really an integral part of the heist; they should have kept my name out of it.) I got a bunch of demerits for that and ended up one away from suspension, so I had to really mind my Ps and Qs for the whole last semester of my senior year. I couldn't even miss a day of my first-period English class because I'd already missed the maximum number of days (fifteen or whatever) and a suspension would have pushed me over the limit so that I wouldn't get credit for the class and thus wouldn't graduate. I wasn't too into school those last few years. :)
--Another copy of my high-school newspaper that featured my greatest contribution to journalism yet. There was this kid named Todd on the paper staff who nobody liked very much. Just kind of an icky guy. He worked at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, and the guys who worked with him claimed that they had caught him in the stockroom fucking a frozen chicken. Of course we ragged him endlessly about it and called him Chicken all the time. We were laying out the paper one afternoon when my eye settled on the Piggly Wiggly ad on the back page. So I grabbed a little piece of masking tape, wrote "HOME OF THE CHICKEN" on it, and stuck it on the ad. Sure enough, when we got the paper back a couple of days later, there was "HOME OF THE CHICKEN" on all 1200 copies. And of course I had to act as shocked as anyone else. "Gosh, Ms. Templeton, I wonder who could have done that! You know, it really could have been ANYONE . . ." I actually thought I'd gotten away with it for a day or so. But of course, after she really studied the handwriting, there was no mistaking my scrawl, so she eventually busted me. She was my favorite teacher, and she really liked me, so she wasn't hard on me. In fact she laughed heartily about it--she wasn't too fond of Todd either. All I had to do was go with her over to Piggly Wiggly, apologize to the store manager, and give him his five bucks back for that issue's ad. The hardest part was keeping a straight face while Wes and Kelly watched me from aisle six and laughed their monkey asses off.
Wow, three of these have to do with high-school paper staff in some way. I had a lot of fun there. I spent most of my days in the media building hanging out with the girls on the yearbook staff. Every once in a while I'd tell Ms. Templeton that I was going to sell ads, jump in the car, and go home to mix a rum and coke. Those were the days, man.
I wish Ms. Templeton were still around too so I could go see her when I'm in town. She died in a car accident about ten years ago. I had started a class with her daughter just afterward but didn't even know about the accident. We both ended up dropping the class, but on one of the days we both happened to be there I started to ask her, "So, how's your mom?" But for some reason I didn't--and after the semester ended I ran across an old newspaper with the obituary. Creeped me right out. And it was particularly weird because she always used to talk about how safe her Volvo was. Damn.
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Date: 2003-06-19 03:52 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-06-19 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 04:53 pm (UTC)