TOTB 5: Wayne vs We vs They

Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.

Tales of the Birdman by Wayne Bird

II: Hotels, Drains, and Ships That Sail

5: Wayne vs We vs They

Everyone was on their best behavior as we opened presents on Christmas morning, early, before mom went to work. After she left, we began enjoying our new DVDs. I had purchased the Looney Toons Golden Collection to do exactly what it did that morning – placate the masses. My sister, dad, and I laughed and giggled and recalled lazy Saturday mornings in bed together, watching Bugs Bunny and his entire absurd gang. Mom and dad would peel oranges and apples for us, and give us grapes in bowls, which would inevitably capsize when a big wave on the waterbed would hit them. The grapes would then roll down into the crevices of the bed.

Of course, dad was drinking, and we all knew that at the rate he was going, he would be drunk by eight thirty.

Growing up, my parents were basically blue collar hippies – dad managed a factory line and mom worked various retail and waitressing jobs. We spent a lot of weekends on road trips to national parks, museums, and sites of Civil War battles. Occasionally, dad could be coaxed by mom into visiting alleged haunted houses on the way. They smoked pot openly and had an endless supply of good natured friends that included bikers, hippies, musicians, artists, and the children of their friends. I have a fond memory of trying to make vegetable juice (which dad called “Home Made V8”) in the blender. We passed a single glass around a table full of the friends I mentioned before as well as my brothers and sisters. Blend. Pass the glass. Make suggestions. Blend. Pass the glass.

“That’s the most inappropriate joke I’ve ever heard,” I told my thirteen year old sister, who was sitting on the couch with Dorothy, a mostly ignored game of “Guess Who?” between them. “Psh. I’ve heard it, like, six hundred times,” she said, and then returned to telling secrets and giggling with Dorothy, just like they had been doing all night and all morning before. My other siblings had not bothered to show up, although they had all called before Mom had left for work to apologize (again) and offer their (mostly) reasonable excuses for not coming home this year (again).

The morning wore on, and I was a sixteen year old boy again. All vestiges of reasonability had left my mind, so I retreated into myself and hid out with my notebook. I had lost all hope for a decent Christmas. In the kitchen, Dorothy cornered me for a hug. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I could feel her breasts against me, and I could not breathe. “Hang in there, Wayne.

16Don’t give in yet, it’s still early.” She is also the warmest, most sincere person I have ever known. She steps back and a mental struggle begins within me. A voice in my head repeats: eye contact eye contact eye contact. “Bruce just

convinced your dad to

“How did he do that?”

“He gave him sleeping sleeps for a while.”

take a nap.”

pills and told him they were Vicodin. He’ll sober up if he

A defense mechanism I because anything could fuck up at any time and I would have to answer for it. I was not shocked to learn that Bruce had drugged my father for me.

(Eye contact)

“It was your sister’s idea, and we figure we can wake him up an hour or so before your mom gets off work and maybe play a board game or something.”

“Okay.” (Eye contact) “It might work.” “It will work.” (Eye contact) “Bruce told me about VD.”

“VD” was the nickname I had for my girlfriend, Sally. This fine Christmas, she was not trying to survive her family at home like I was, she was trying to survive heroin addiction in a clinic. I didn’t know what to say to Dorothy about the whole thing, so I stared at the cracked and browning yellow kitchen linoleum, spider web cracks spread across the entire kitchen floor. Dorothy hugged me again. For a moment, I felt like it would be okay to kiss her, but I did not. “She was very sick, Wayne. Maybe she’ll get better, maybe not. You had to get away from that shit.”

(Eye contact)

“Come on, darlin’,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Remember, Wayne: You deserve to have a good time. Let’s go watch cartoons.”

—

At Bunker Hill, Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny battle over their respective forts. Sam has a heavily armed stone fort and flies the flag of “They” against Bugs’ primitive fort of sharpened tree trunks. The flag of “We”, complete with a carrot logo, flies over Bugs‘ fort. The short distance between the forts is a filled with tree stumps, which is all that was left after Bugs cut all the trees down to erect his stronghold. The field is brown, and is devoid of any other life. It is not clear why both forts are unmanned but for the stars of the show.

“Enemy, ahoy!,” calls Sam from the top of his fort. He is not impressed to discover that his enemy is a rabbit. “I’m Sam Von Schamm, the Hessian, that’s who I am, and I have you outnumbered one to one. Surrender or die!,” he orders with confidence. Bugs Bunny is not impressed, and does not feel threatened despite the fact that he is quite obviously outgunned and that Yosemite

Sam can somehow fire eight or ten cannons on different levels of his fort, simultaneously, by himself. Bugs Bunny has his wits and that is enough. The two adversaries charge each other’s forts again and again, repeatedly rushing past each other with bayonets fixed. Sam yells, “CHARGE!,“ and then Bugs yells, “CHARGE!” and then they rush past each other to take the respective enemy’s fort. Every time it happens, Sam is surprised to find that, after he has raised the “They” flag over at Bugs’ fort, Bugs has raised the “We” flag (with the carrot logo underneath) over at his fort. When this gets old, Bugs comes up with a variety of ways to blow up his Hessian foe.

You should know that it doesn’t matter what happens to Sam, because Yosemite Sam is invincible. He is never really more than disheveled and ego-bruised after the

learned during my formative years was to never be shocked

bombs go off. A quick shower, costume change, and beard trim (all off camera), and he is burrowing underground from Fort They to Fort We. He comes up inside of a shack of TNT (and fireworks?) inside of Bugs’ compound, where he is subjected to another massive, but mostly harmless, explosion.

“That Wabbit was waiting for him!” exclaimed Bruce with sincere glee. He looked to Dorothy and said, “You’d think that Bugs would realize that dynamite won’t kill him and try something else, like maybe plastique or a voodoo doll.”

Dorothy pulled away, mid-secret, from my sister’s ear to say, “He’s not trying to kill him, Bruce, he’s trying to win him over. Besides, at this point, that cocksucker’s just a raging ball of irrational fury and fun to fuck with.” My sister giggled at the word “cocksucker.”

After being blown up for the fourth time or so, Sam decides to carry a barrel of gunpowder over to Fort We. He leaves it at Bugs’ front door, and then sneaks back to Fort They to watch the explosion. Unbeknownst to Sam, there was a hole in the back end of the barrel, and through it poured the gunpowder, right into the seat of his leggings. Whilst Sam cackled over his devilishly clever plan, his leggings leaked a gunpowder trail behind him the entire sneaky trip back. Of course, Bugs is wise to the whole thing, and now sits on the barrel of gunpowder Yosemite Sam left at his fort door (curiously, the barrel is now painted black and labeled as gunpowder). He casually puts out the sparking wick just before it reaches the barrel, and then lights a match against a log in the fort wall. He drops the match on the gunpowder trail Sam left behind and the trail sparks up and sizzles its way back to Sam‘s Fort, and the fort, and thus Sam, blow up yet again. Finally, Yosemite Sam concedes defeat and joins Bugs Bunny’s “Spirit of ‘76“ style band (on drums). It’s a classic, time honored example of that Merrie Melodie tradition of, “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em!”

You should know that it’s not as funny if you have to have it explained to you.

Mom came home and found us exactly the way Dorothy and my sister had planned…except for the fact that Dad had woken up two hours prior and was drunk for the second time that day. We were all at the kitchen table playing Monopoly, Looney Toons too loud in the background. We greeted her with a round of “Merry Christmas” in loose unison as she picked up the T.V. remote from in front of my father and made her way to her place at the table.

“How was your day?,” asked Dad, looking tired and hungover and drunk again. She eyed him suspiciously and did not answer. She sat, turned down the television, and sighed: “Merry Christmas, everyone. My day was pretty crazy.” Dad mumbled something under his breath. The air between them, across the dining room table, was charged with a palpable tension.

“I bet,” squealed Dorothy, answering my mom and eager to relieve the tension. She related the horror story of her ONE Christmas in retail while my sister giggled in her hands. I noticed that she was making a mess of the tortilla chips and salsa she had been eating, red sauce was dribbling from the corner of her mouth, chewed corn chips and crumbs were collecting on her shirt and on the table and on the floor. The cat was eating a tomato chunk by her fuzzy pink Powerpuff Girls slippers. She got up to go to the kitchen, and, inexplicably, dropped to the floor in a fit of laughter, hitting her head on the wall on the way down. She was hysterical.

“Are you all right?” Mom asked. All of us (except for Bruce, who was in his wheelchair behind the table) rushed to my sister’s side immediately. We helped her up, and then Mom asked, “What’s so funny?”

Bruce put his cheap black wraparound sunglasses on and said, “She’s drunk.”

“Are you drunk?” Mom asked. My sister was leaning into our dad, laughing and slobbering onto his t-shirt.

“How did she get drunk?,” she shot at my father.

Dad was defensive. “I told her she could sip some wine from the box in the fridge, but I didn’t say she could get fucking hammered, honey.”

“I’m not drunk, I’m fiiiiine!” she sang into his chest. “She’s wasted,” observed Bruce.

“Let me take you to your room,” I offered, taking her arm. She reared back and slapped me hard across the face.

“I’M FINE!,” she roared at me before collapsing in another fit of laughter, again banging her head.

“How could you not notice this? She’s thirteen! How could you let this happen?”

It was as if, at that moment, the thin scab that had been keeping the real nastiness in check had been picked. My parents were ready to bleed for me and my sister and Bruce and Dorothy and The Baby Jesus on his special day. Mom helped

my sister to bed and the rest of us sat in awkward silence began. Then we fucking laughed.

“But I ruined Christmas!,” howled my sister from upstairs. Silence. “But I ruined Christmas!” Silence.

“But I ruined Christmas!”

until the screams

We laughed because it was funny. The laughter let off some began the Monopoly game again, tossing my drunken sister’s back into the bank. When mom returned to the table she was that my sister had fallen asleep. Dad did not look up from said something meant for him that neither we, nor he, heard. It earned her a glare. “What did you say?” he asked, his tone menacing.

“Why do you have to be so mean to me?,” My mother’s words hung in the space between them.

The rest of us stared at the table.

“I couldn’t hear you,” he replied, still glaring. He picked up the DVD remote and started a new cartoon. The “Looney Tunes” intro played and he watched the first few seconds of the cartoon, and then skipped ahead to the next cartoon, let the intro play again, and watched the first few seconds of the cartoon. He repeated this cycle through disc one and proceeded to do it with disc two.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “I want to watch Speedy Gonzalez,” he answered. “Why not just go to the chapter selection menu and find it?,” I suggested.

The glare was now directed at me. “You try it, smart guy.” He threw the remote at me and it almost made the flight. It landed on the floor next to me. I picked it up and found the cartoon he wanted.

He got up to turn up the volume and Mom said, “Don’t turn it up too loud, please.”

“WHAT?!?,” he growled, at that point little more than a ball of beer-drunk rage. “Why do you have to be so mean to me?” Mom asked him for the second time.

of the steam and we money and properties smiling, and said his deeds, and she

“Fucking…”

There was a moment of silence. A mental search for the perfect noun to describe my mother.

“…disease.” —

Dorothy insisted we drive to her mom’s place in Chicago. She would show me a good time, and told me that I deserved that. We flew along the interstate at eighty five miles per hour, Bruce, our lame-legged driver, singing along to “Scentless Apprentice” by Nirvana at top volume. There was a zombie in the car and it was me. I was lying in the backseat, head on a pillow against the passenger side of the car, legs across the seat. Bruce told us about the weird Asian fetish pornography he wanted to pick up at a place he knew. My zombie doppelganger sat on the floor behind Bruce (who was in the driver’s seat) with his rotting legs stretched behind Dorothy (Bruce’s alleged succubus, and the object of my lust, in the passenger seat). The doppelganger and I stared each other down without expression and I cannot tell my frontseat friends about it because then Dorothy would know that Bruce had given me my first-ever hit of acid and he made me promise I would not tell her.

Bruce is showing me a good time. Dorothy is in danger of being swallowed by The portal. There is a zombie in the car and it I am a zombie. I will not respond rationally, so I There are penguins in the car. They march but never advance on me. When you are with me, you are invincible. I close my eyes and change nothing. The penguin says it. His lawyer says it. The doctor says it. There is a zombie in the car and it is me. I am a zombie.

TOTB 4: The Birdman vs March of the Penguins

Tales of the Birdman by Wayne Bird

II: Hotels, Drains, and Ships That Sail

4: The Birdman vs March Of The Penguins

Bruce and I broke down somewhere in Indiana, lost and drunk on Thanksgiving day afternoon. There was no help to be found, so we went sled riding. My cell phone could catch no signal, and there was no way I was getting back into Bruce’s car. I had been watching the red glow of the Brake Light on the dash as he took the country roads at sixty, cruise control set, clutching my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos (full of gin)- sometimes with both hands. You should know that Bruce has no use of his legs and drives his car using a hand-brake and hand-accelerator.

We were laughing about the movie I had bought for my parents, March Of The Penguins, and the improbability of it being good, when we realized that we were on our way to a head-on collision. Both lanes coming around the bin up ahead were occupied by cars, speeding alongside each other. Things did not go in slow motion, and I remained calm, though I knew we might have been about to die. The white car in the oppisite lane slowed and the red car in ours sped up and maneuvered around us.

There was silence before Bruce said, “They were racing.” “They were racing,” I said. “I didn’t panic, though. I just hit the brakes and stayed on course.” I noticed the thermos was at his feet, all of it’s contents emptied onto the driverside floor. “If I would’ve swerved left, we would have collided head-on and we would have wrecked with both of those cars or have gone over the hill and down into the cemetary there. If I would’ve swerved right, it would have been into the ditch- that creek. I just slowed down and stayed course. We took them head on.”

By this point, I was shaking and sweating, panic having was amazed by Bruce’s zenlike calm. “We almost died,” I said. “I almost die every day,” he deadpanned. “We need break

“Let’s stop and I’ll put some in.” “I don’t have any.” “Let’s stop at a gas station.” “Where’s a gas station?”

set in late. I fluid.”

“I don’t know where we are.” I find the map gin soaked at Bruce’s feet but know it doesn’t really matter. We had been lost for hours and were too fucked up to care. Plus, I didn’t really want to see my family anyway.

Bruce started to giggle and I couldn’t see his eyes because of the cheap wrap-around sunglasses he was wearing. I was suspicious.

“What are you thankful for, Wayne?” We are at the top of a giant hill. He began to roll down the windows and said, “It’s like a roller coaster!” and the next thing I know we’re barrelling down the hill at eighty miles an hour, Bruce laughing hysterically, gin chilling at his feet, screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR, WAYNE?”

Seatbelts. Jaws of life. Morphine. “Tell me,” he says as we are driving up the next hill. He rolls up the

windows and cranks up the heat. “I’m thankful that your heater works and that we can stop at the church

at the top of this hill and maybe call Triple A.” “Okay,” he says, “I’m drunk anyways. Where’s the gin?” I remind him that it’s pooled at his boots as he pulls into the narrow

driveway that parrallels the church. The building is a fairly large, white, old fashioned country church, complete with steeple. At least a third of the paint is chipped, wood exposed, camoflauging the church against the backdrop of hills, snow, and dead trees. The driveway dove steeply, down and around the church to the parking lot. Bruce rode the brakes down, but they were pretty much gone and we slid right out of the parking lot and onto the hill that rolled down for about an acre where woods began. Luckily, a tree stopped us from getting more than a few feet out onto the snow covered grass.

Bruce looked at me and grabbed my arm. His glasses had fallen from his head where a smile was growing on his face, wild like his eyes. “I am invincible, and you will be whenever you are with me.”

We rode sleds that were left behind the church at the bottom of the path children had drafted into the hill, between the church and it’s driveway. The real fun would have been taking the hill that we had almost gone down in the car, but I couldn’t imagine dragging Bruce back up and didn’t want to do it alone.

“I’ll do it,” he assured me, thermos refilled. He yelled various dog names at the woods below, which were beginning to accept the sun where they bordered- shades of orange and pink cast across the horizon and it’s clouds, reflecting on the snow covered trees below. “But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. If I’m going down that hill, I want wild dogs or coyotes or some shit there to greet me and claim me for Thanksgiving Dinner.”

Instead, we rode the hill alongside the church, me dragging Bruce in his red-plastic-disk-sled up the hill over and over again, telling him about what super powers I would have if I could have super powers. Bruce told me that he didn’t have time for nonsense like super powers, but then again, he did want to sleep with every girl he ever saw. I asked him if Dorothy, his social worker, the woman he has claimed to be his personal Succubus, would come to him if he wanted sex right now. He says she would, but even succubi deserve to have a Thanksgiving off.

The sun went down and after a time, I became exhausted and too drunk to drag Bruce around. He wasn’t cooperating anymore, anyways. So we went back to the car and cranked the heat. No cars drove passed us. If any had passed while we were riding sleds, we hadn’t noticed.

“I haven’t been sledding in twenty years, man,” Bruce said, long after I thought he had fallen asleep.

“It’s been a while,” I agree.

“I’m just gonna let the car run out of gas, man. There’s not much left. If no one comes by morning, you’ll have to walk back to that farm a half mile back or so.”

“Okay.”

Before we fall asleep he asks me what VD, my girlfriend, was doing for the holiday. I admit that we had broken up, and I tell him the truth about her and he is shocked.

You should know that no one could have been more shocked than me.

— –

In the morning, we were woken by a kindly preacher and an asshole tow- truck driver. The preacher didn’t seem to mind that the car smelled of gin and pot, or that we had wrecked into a tree behind his church, or that we tore up the yard riding sleds. He was just sincerely glad that we were alright. “Thank God,” Bruce says, showing me his teeth. The tow-truck had us out of the yard in minutes, and damage to both car and tree appeared minimal. Brake fluid was found in the backseat of the car, and Bruce assured me that it would be enough to get us home. I slept the whole way.

— –

Antartica looks beautiful and eery. It’s desolate and nothing should live there, but life does persist and does what it is we all do best in life: go out of our way to get some ass.

I watch the Emporer Penguin males huddle close together, sheltering their eggs from the winds in a large mass of warm bodies, snow and ice battering the group. I pull my favorite blue blanket up to my chin and am glad to be home, on my couch, and alone. Bruce and I had had White Castles and shared a forty ounce bottle of Little Kings for Thanksgiving Dinner at two in the afternoon, and that was fine by me. I knew what to expect from my family, and I knew what was bubbling under the surface and looming overhead.

Christmas.

But for now, I put it out of my mind, and watch my movie in my dark little apartment. I am alive, and I am Thankful for that.

I wonder about the filmmakers of MOTP and what they must have endured to make that movie. They battled the coldest temperatures on Earth right alongside those Penguins, and what they captured is beautiful and even moving. The landscape is unforgiving and harsh, improbable and alien. The Penguins act in unison and carry out an ancient ritual before the cameras, and I want to drink with those Frenchmen and hear their harrowing stories.

You should know that they suffered it all for the same reason the Penguins did. They wanted to score.

Of course, the world gets a beautiful film, and we all learn a little and get the thrill of watching Penguins court and mate (are they mating? I think they’re mating!), but the fact of the matter is that those filmmakers made that movie to impress chicks so that they could get laid and propogate our species. Isn’t that why we do everything we do? Instict.

I don’t know.

Mostly, I find myself wondering, if I were a Penguin, after marching seventy miles, would the one chick that was attracted to me invariably be the most fucked up Penguin I have ever met? The kind that attempts to steal an egg from another expecting couple after her own egg has been frozen? The kind that would teach me to carry the precious orb above my claws and under my warm little belly, only to abandon us after leaving with the other female Penguins to march back to the ocean for food? Will that make me fall in love with her?

The phone rings and it is Dorothy. She and Bruce will be accompanying me when I drive back to Indiana for Christmas. It doesn’t matter that they are not invited, Bruce has convinced her that I could use their support.

I could.

After we hang up, I close my eyes and dream of dragging Bruce on his red- plastic-disc-sled across the frozen tundra alongside the marching Emporor Penguins. Bruce is sipping gin from my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos and telling me about how, when we finally stop, he’s gonna have to give Dorothy a call. All of a sudden, he commands me to stop and removes his sunglasses to look me in the eyes. He shows me his teeth andsays, “When you are with me, you are invincible.”

TOTB 1: The Birdman vs VD

“Leave me alone/ is all that I say/ when I have nothing/ in me to give away/ a purple marten in her house/ she hollers at me/ why be inhuman/ why be like me/ like so many robins/ like so many doves/ like so many love birds/ with so many loves/ like the songs of the bobwhite/ without any words/ when we are inhuman/ we’re one with the birds”

— Will Oldham

“Homer no function beer well without.”

— Homer Simpson

Tales Of The Birdman by Wayne Bird

I: Keeping Our Vices Warm

1: The Birdman vs VD

The trick is to fry it in butter first. You get it kind of brown, kind of brownish-green really, then you add it to the mix and eggs and water or whatever, and then pour the batter into a well oiled cake pan. It’s just standard brownie baking from there, but allow a couple of hours for them to kick in. You’ll think that they aren’t going to work, but trust me, Bruce says they will.

I’m baking pot-brownies because my girlfriend punched me and burst a blood vessel in my right eye, which is nestled in a warm bed of swollen grey flesh. My friend Bruce told me that it would relieve the swelling, like with cataracts or something, but I think that sounds like bullshit. I’m only doing it because it will piss Vin Diesel off (Vin Diesel being my special lady friend- we’ll get to her in a bit). Besides, this is college. My junior year. And college is meant for this kind of stuff, right?

Bruce turns me on to crazy music. Let me tell you about him: Bruce is thirty-seven years old and a veteran of the first Gulf War. He is suffering from “Gulf War Syndrome,” among other afflictions I’m still not to clear on, and is confined to a wheelchair. He lied about his age when he applied to UC and somehow managed to get a dorm room. Two and a half years later and still no one seems to have noticed. I should also say that Bruce is kind of crazy. Maybe you’ve seen him about campus? He has long black hair and a shaggy beard, is a hippy, is usually in cheap black sunglasses, and is usually in an Ed Hall t- shirt- unless it is winter, when he’ll wear a thermal shirt or two under the Ed Hall t-shirt. He’s a sophomore now, but still has no major. He’s taking all sorts of classes in all sorts of subjects.

Bruce turned me on to The Moldy Peaches and I turned VD onto it. “Vin Diesel” is not really her name, but she just changed her major to drama, wants to be a director, and claims Fast And The Furious as her favorite movie. All I get is the finger and maybe a bruise on my arm (roughly the size of a big metal pentagram ring) for my honesty. I will see her through this, but it’s “Vin Diesel” until she switches majors.

I was telling you about The Moldy Peaches. They’re miles away from what I usually listen to, but I love them because they are retarded, and I knew that would endear VD to them. Bruce said they only had one good song, but they were worth checking out. They kind of remind me of The Vaselines, who Kurt Cobain suggested that everyone should check out way back in 1991 or earlier. Like The Vaselines, The Moldy Peaches are very lo-fi, fun, and a little naughty minded. Unlike the Scottish two-piece, the New York two-piece are really foul-mouthed. A little too much for me, but VD flipped over them.

I woke up one morning at seven AM with her sitting at her desk in her underwear, looking perfect and beautiful but for a large upside-down cross tattooed on her back between her shoulder blades- down her spine- all elaborate Celtic knot-work. Not that she’s an Irish Satanist or anything, she just thought it would be bitchin’, and I admit, seeing it there for the first time, it kind of was. The horizontal portion of the Celtic-knot-upside-down-cross runs the length of the small of her back and has Japanese markings in negative space across its middle. It’s as if the artist had placed tiny stencils of the characters over her skin and drafted the knot-work around them. Actually, I have no idea how it was done, nor will I ask, as I enjoy the mystery of the whole thing. The vertical plank of the cross begins at her neck’s beginning, slopes along with her spine, and ends just above her ass crack.

So, it’s seven in the morning and she’s blasting The Moldy Peaches from her Bose, singing along at the top of her lungs to a song about sucking cock for money.

I tell Bruce this story after English class while we get high in his Oldsmobile (which he drives using a hand accelerator and hand brake- contraptions I had never known to exist before Bruce). I tell him how much it pissed me off to be waked up like that and leave out the part about how much it turned me on. He is obviously aware of how much it must have turned me on. He gets a kick out of it and tells me that he never has to worry about getting laid, that he has a succubus named Dorothy.

You should know that girls at school don’t talk to Bruce. Every once in a while, some blonde and naive seventeen year old freshman girl will approach him out of pity (in the summer, his chicken bones climbing out of his cut off camo shorts- ending in flip-flops at the wheelchair’s foot rests. In July, his toe- nails were painted royal purple, and he had talked VD into painting perfect yellow smiley faces onto his big toes’ nails). He hits on these poor girls in spectacularly inappropriate ways. “Thank God for sending me a sweet young little girl like you. I haven’t made love to a woman since shrapnel took my prostate, and I have been praying to Mary and Jesus every night for you.” Oh, I forgot to say that before he said that, he had taken the hand of this innocent miss to admire her High School class ring. He stared her in the eye with sincere intensity, a hint of a smile creasing his cheeks. Mostly, word has spread, and girls make wide circles around him to keep away. That’s the way he wants it, I suppose.

But none of this is important, because Bruce has a succubus named Dorothy. He tells me she is very short, 5’3 or so, and has shoulder length black hair that is always styled differently. She consistently looks amazing. He emphasizes this with various hand motions and signals and adjectives I’ve never used and I expect are invented. Once, he wanted a redhead and Dorothy showed up as a redhead. She was like that, somehow able to know what he was going to be in the mood for when she arrived. And had she always had those freckles, those freckles like any natural redhead would have? They were slight. Perhaps they had always been there and she was a natural redhead and he had just never noticed. He was on a lot of medication after all. But, still, her pubic hair was black as an AC/DC album cover. If the question would be: how much blacker can they be? The answer would be: none. She had been visiting him ever since the army had moved him to an Ohio VA Hospital after the war.

You should know that we got really stoned while Bruce told me about his succubus in his car around the corner from Chipotle. I’m new to marijuana and never would have considered it in High School. I went to church every Sunday morning until my senior year (some time I’ll tell you about the time I taught the birds and the bees to a junior high school aged Sunday School class). Anyways, pot is new for me, and is yet another thing Bruce introduced me to. I had never talked to VD about it because it had yet to come up in our month long relationship. Neither of us have ever really even drank, but, like I said, I believe that this time to try new things. We have discussed this. She agrees. She wants to try new things too. You can imagine my surprise when she absolutely flips out upon seeing me after Bruce drops me off at her apartment.

Her parents are potheads. Her ex-boyfriend, not the one she broke up with six months ago and not the four year relationship before that where the boy broke her nose because he thought her jeans were too slutty, but the boyfriend before that. Tommy. He was a pothead and prioritized Final Fantasy video games and his bong (which he called “The Incredible Hulk”) over her. I am not open minded, but stupid, and that giant freckle/mole on my right side is probably cancer.

I’m all: fuck, honey, darlin’, I’m sorry this is fun and harmless and you should try it and you look so pretty today and how was class. And, apparently, she feels that I should be violated in a violent sort of way with a grilling utensil and now my “My Chemical Romance” CD is broken in half because she hates it and I’m an asshole.

I was so ridiculously pissed that I went directly to Bruce’s dorm room to listen to old Velvet Underground records, original first pressings you should know, and to get his recipe for pot brownies. He introduced me to Zima as well. This was not the first time I tried one, but the last time it was just one. This time it was seven. And three rum and Cokes.

So, I walk all the way back to VD’s apartment in Covington, Bruce’s Gulf War army helmet, stolen from his closet after he had passed out, strapped firmly to my chin. I make a stop at Blockbuster, a retailer known for it’s disaproval of helmets, to buy up all the Vin Diesel movies I can find and an assistant manager follows my every stumble until I check out and leave. I bust into VD’s unlocked apartment singing that Moldy Peaches song about sucking cock for money and declare that we will have a movie marathon prior to shaving her head to look Vin Diesel. With any luck, it would come back black, just like Dorothy The Sucubus’s hair.

The doctor said that her punch was not as bad as I was making it out to be, and her pentagram ring had only busted a small blood vessel and it was no big deal. Black eye and all, it should be healed up in a few days or so. Meantime, I’m packing for Thanksgiving, and calling Sally “VD” in this column to piss her off and get some revenge. Also, I am making these brownies, which I will trick her into eating.

I should tell you before closing that if you see Bruce about campus or in his dorm building, you should ask him about his sucubus, as he loves the idea of having his life published for entertainment value. Do so at your own risk, though.

Prologue to Birdman

Recently, there was a consumer and media backlash against the retailer Urban Outfitters. Their website had briefly promoted a Kent State garment that appeared to be blood-splattered, an apparently morbid reference to the massacre of student protesters at the university by the National Guard in 1970. The retailer feigned ignorance, saying it was a misunderstanding. The shirt was vintage and fading, they said. This was all a trick of the eye. Sure it was. They took the item down, and only one question was left behind: Who would buy such a thing, let alone wear it?

Wayne Bird would.

Wayne has always had a sense of humor all his own, with the driving idea behind it being that if it’s uncomfortable for you, it’s funny for him. This is not sadism. Wayne’s actually a sensitive, compassionate guy. He simply believes in confronting and challenging that which keeps us… In society’s neat little box. Bird questions everything, and he tries real hard to have a laugh over it, no matter how bad things get. Laughter, after all, is the best drug.

Wayne knows a thing or two about drugs.

Maybe I’m being unfair.

I met the Birdman back in 2005(?) when he was attending the University of Cincinnati and interning for the pop culture website I See Sound, which I also worked for. We had a lot in common besides our mutual passion for writing: indie rock, comic books, music, friends, and The Power of Myth. We were fast friends. I loved the guy like a brother. I’m so glad he never wrote about me.

See, Wayne wrote about his life through the lens of the pop culture that he loved, and these writings took him through a very difficult year. He wrote some of the most fucked up stories I’ve ever read. Stories that still disturb me when I think of them nearly a decade after I read them.

When I caught up with him on Facebook recently, I told him this. This elated the man, but he told me that his story was never published in completion. I See Sound had gone defunct before his last two submissions could run. He saw Tales of the Birdman as a book with a beginning, middle, and an end, but the conclusion never saw the Internet’s soft glowing light. His faithful readers were left dangling. This still bums him out.

So, I told him I would republish it here.

Tales of the Birdman is episodic, with every three stories working together as a trilogy and all of those trilogies working torwards a grander narrative. The point here being that you don’t have to read the whole manual in order to use the machine.

So, without further ado…

Monseiur Moncrieff Speaks: An Interview With Jason Wells

You’ve been releasing albums as For Algernon (starting with Orange Watches and Lost loves, if I remember correctly) since… What? 2002? 2003?How many have there been?

2003. There are 7 for algernon albums out there.

Why isn’t this a For Algernon album? What does M. Moncrieff mean? Is this a character you wanted to play, a new personal direction, or something else?

It’s not a for algernon record because for algernon has evolved into a band with multiple personalities. We were nearly 50-60% complete on a new record at the time of the wreck and then we all sort of went through some life changing events. Deaths, births, wrecks… The album was left in limbo. As I began writing, I kept fleshing out these new songs on my own, without the bands input, and that’s not what I wanted the next algernon record to be. We all had worked too hard and too long to just skip it, move on and come back to it. The name comes from (1/2 of where for algernon came from) Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance if Being Earnest.” One of the lead characters is Monsieur Algernon Moncrieff.

The M. Moncrieff album liner notes talk about a car crash and a move to the country. What happened? Why were these such life altering events?

Driving home, a car pulled out in front of me, and as I swerved to avoid it, I lost control and hit a parked car. It was a pretty serious wreck. I cracked my sternum and broke 3 ribs, burns from the airbags, concussion and my passenger was injured severely too. The wreck still plays out in my mind, in nightmares, when I’m driving… I just keep thinking of how close I came to dying or killing someone. I blacked out after the impact to the head, so I can’t remember anything up until after I woke up, and that makes it worse. A near death experience will rattle you. It’s how you deal with it that makes or breaks you, and it broke me. After about a month or two, a series of events lead me to a move 75 minutes east of Cincinnati. The closest store is 35 minutes away. It was a huge adjustment from what I knew. It’s taught me to prioritize and the beauty of silence. Often I would go a day or two without speaking a word. Finally, I began writing as a way to heal.

Will you play shows as Monsieur Moncrieff or will For Algernon perform these songs?

I’ve been playing Moncrieff stuff when I play solo. I doubt algernon will play them. It’s not out of the picture, but it wasn’t developed for that.

It seems to me that this album is a transition into adulthood for you. Is this a correct observation? Did this happen in your life and music at the same time?

I’ve been slowly adjusting to adulthood these past few years, and I don’t think I was really comfortable with where I was at till a year after the move. I didn’t plan on these songs to be that per say, but I guess it kind of is. The first song really sums it up for me these days. I’ve had some rough times, good times, I love music, I love writing & singing about it, I may get lost in it, I love my friends but what I really love most is coming home to someone at the end of it all and I don’t care how lame that may sound. I guess that’s an “adult” thing?

All but two of your albums have been self recorded, and they all have a lo-fi vibe. This one’s no different, but it feels even more raw and performance oriented than some of your others. Was this intentional? What kind of a sound were you going for? How does this sound differ from what you would have done if this were a set of For Algernon recordings?

That’s funny you say that because I was doing a lot of lo-fi tricks, but this album was huge. The biggest undertaking I’ve done. I used various recording methods, studied different ways to capture vocals, found that it’s fun to slow things down on a reel to reel, and played more things than I ever have. I really took my time on it. Not that it sounds like a big studio record but that was intentional. I only recorded vocals when I was in the mood of the song, and I would try them drunk, sober, half asleep, with strep throat… I would record the song in different tempos and melodies and build on the one that captured the essence of the song the most. I wanted it to be a very organic but warm sounding record, and the songs to work just as well acoustic or with full instrumentation as on the record.

Compared to what the forthcoming algernon record is, it’s not even close. Jon Williams is producing it, and he is a wizard. Had this been recorded as for algernon today, it would be a very different album. I doubt the same songs would even be on it. Even if it was pre-Jon, I still would’ve had other people play parts. I guess the beauty/fault of me doing it on my own is that I hear what I want, but struggle to actually get it out, so I think you hear the struggle in the music. The guitar solo in “arrow” took me 3 painful hours to do because I doubled it on acoustic and electric and couldn’t remember the notes, and i think that comes across in the recording. Had this been for algernon, I would’ve said, “Hey, Jon. What do you think goes here?”

What bands/artists were you listening to while writing/recording “At the Lake, Just After Dark?”

Primarily, I was obsessed with Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter, but there was a little Woodpigeon, Sparklehorse, Tom Waits, The Antlers, Ape The Ghost, Adam Green & Binki Shapiro, Lee Hazlewood, Lucinda Williams and Dean Martin

The liner notes also talk about the possibility of you abandoning making music altogether. Knowing you as I do, this sounds impossible. Why would you consider leaving your recording gear behind you? Are you still considering it?

Yeah. Music is so personal to me. It gets tougher and tougher to go out and play. You do so much work and hustling to get a show together and then two people show up and tell you to keep it down so they can hear each other talk. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, and you’re doing this because you love it, but I can love it just as much sitting in my studio and not go through all the heartbreak of a terrible gig. But then, you get that great show and I eat all my words.

You’ve written hundreds of songs. Which is your favorite and why?

Seriously? I can’t pick one. It’s like picking your favorite child.

(Buy the new M. Moncrieff album for a mere five bucks here: Http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com)

But the album: http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com

The Not So Sad Bastard

If you’re an avid music fan, you may know that the Cincinnati area has had a firm finger in the piano lid of rock and roll history for a long time. If you’re kind of obsessed with indie music in particular, you’ll probably name-drop the phenomenal Heartless Bastards or the fucking awful Afghan Whigs. Maybe you’re obsessed. Perhaps you own a Wussy t-shirt or know where Coltrane Motion used to eat chili. In that case, Jason Wells is probably your hero.

Believe it or not, this is the least douchey photo I could find on Jason’s Facebook page.

I met Wells ages ago. We were at an open mic, and he was pacing back and forth in a hall perpendicular to the bar, an electric guitar hanging on his back. He was a tortured soul, looking (oh-wee-oh) just like Buddy Holly. I don’t recall what broke the ice, but I taught him how to play “About A Girl” by Nirvana that night, and it wasn’t long after that that we started a band called “The Drunken Monkeys” with Rich Lewis, later of The Lewis Brothers. This was 2001. A Jason Wells solo record, called Public Diary, came along shortly after, and a parade of excellent, self-produced/released albums under the name For Algernon marched on through the years afterwards.

This album is about an escaped prisoner with a hook for a hand.

Calling For Algernon a “band” is a loose descriptor. See, the members have consisted of Wells and whoever else was able, willing, patient, and available within Wells’ notoriously ever-changing parameters. There have been a diverse troupe of talented players involved in the decade-plus existence of the group, but the thing to know here is that it was always Wells’ show, and Wells’ show was mostly an insular, obsessively crafted, recorded one. “Public Diary” was the most apt of names for his first record. All of the assemblies of recordings to come have been public diaries as well, with each being a little better than the last. The hook was always Wells’ impeccable pop craft, his ability to casually shake off a melody that lodged itself in the crevice where your brain meets your heart, where we take comfort in the companionship of shared human suffering. It was only relatively recently that Wells seemed to have settled on, more or less, a live band line up. Like many past incarnations, they were a dynamic emotional force. Unlike the past line-ups, this one was pretty tight.

Every one of these guys has a third nipple.

Then Wells crashed his car. Again. Then he moved. Again (this time to “the country”). The charismatic Mr. Wells found himself at the elbow of his personal trajectory.

Enter M. Moncrieff, Wells’ first album under this alternative moniker. “Near the Lake, Just After Dark,” continues the tradition established with the For Algernon code name. The songs are self-recorded, lo-fi ditties that sit you on the floor next to Wells’ production desk while he pours his heart out to you with a cheap but drinkable bottle of scotch. The striking difference here; the element that sets it apart from his previous work, is the contentment it expresses. My favorite track is the opener, “An Ounce Of Honey,” an ode to coming home to the one you love and forming lasting, resentment free bonds.

This is not the sad bastard output of a youthful artist. “Near the Lake” finds Wells settling into himself as a confident adult, somewhat at ease, with the dramatic hinge of the album being the struggle to accept the transformation. The track “Hard Heart,” easily the album’s most accessible and catchy tune, is a great example of this evolution. The titular hard heart of this song has hurt our narrator, but instead of pacing the dark halls of his broken heart, Wells stands proud to say that he’s had enough of her shit. A similar sentiment is given in the scathing admonishment called “Board Games,” where some poor fool is eviscerated in a fashion that’d make Bob Dylan proud.This newfound confidence could, perhaps, be a fitting enough reason to change one’s name.

It’s difficult for me to place M. Moncrieff musically. I’ve been listening to For Algernon for so long that it is it’s own beast to me. Upon the first listen, it sounds like a For Algernon album. Cool, but whatever, man. Then I listen again… And again… You may site Elliot Smith as an influence, as folks often might, if you’d please. Maybe Grandaddy. I would, however, put this record in the hall of heroes with the Velvet Underground circa Loaded, early Belle and Sebastian, and Lou Barlow with dry eyes. It doesn’t sound like those bands exactly, but they’d all get along fine at the dinner party as long as that scotch was drinkable enough.

The production value is best described as homemade. Homemade with a weary passion, a trait that really stands out the most in the sleepy vocals of “4 Seasons,” one of those tracks that exists like a contented sigh from an alright dude with a less than alright half-full bottle of…

…Well, the scotch is probably gone by now, but I bet there’s some Jameson around here somewhere. There’s a pot of grandpa’s chili on the stove too. Help yourself. Cheers. Here’s to history.

(Buy the album for a mere five bucks here: Http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com)

But the album: http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com

Shiny Red Nothing

Blackgrass Music, Weird Art, & Twisted Stories.

#music