Everyone has their favorite story to tell about the holidays. Like remember the time when Aunt Berta got lost on the way to the house and convinced some strangers to let her eat Thanksgiving dinner with them? Good times. I can now say that I have a set of stories that I hold near and dear to my heart. They are centered around me, which my therapist tells me that I should get away from.
The Great Turkey Fire
My Thanksgiving life used to be like this: Go to my parents house and get stuffed, go to my wife's parent's house and get more stuffed, go home and think about performing at-home surgery to try and get some of the food out of my stomach to feel a little bit better. Then one year we decided that everyone should get together at one house so that we could have one Thanksgiving dinner. That way I don't get so full and I don't have to deal with any post-surgery infection arising from unclean surgical tools.
To kick off this plan, we invited both of our families over to our house for dinner for Thanksgiving. We actually considered not telling each family that the other would be there but in the end we caved to our conscience. I went to the store and bought this massive turkey. I think it was something like 82 pounds. Simply said, the bird was some sort of genetic mutation. I had never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before so I bought a disposable roasting pan to cook this behemoth in.
So it's Thanksgiving day and the relatives are arriving and everything appears to be going well. We pull the Turkey out of the oven to check the temperature and the weight of the turkey caves the rinky-dink (technical term there) roasting pan in. We still manage to get it out and back in but a few minutes later start to smell smoke. Apparently a lot of the grease from the turkey had spilled in the bottom of the oven and started a fire. We opened the oven and found an out of control inferno so we closed the door, let it sit and hoped for the best. Fortunately the best happened and the fire went out on it's own.
Roman God
For some reason the next few years after that we never had Thanksgiving at our house. In fact this year we weren't supposed to but because of some last minute changes we did end up having it at our house. I was better prepared this year. I had a full blown roasting pan that would not fold under the high pressure environment of Thanksgiving dinner. I had fire extinguishers that I had bought for something else and never used. I was ready.
The turkey looked to be coming off without a hitch and I was glad that it looked like we weren't going to be having a fire this year. I had finally lulled myself into a false sense of security.
My wife had made mashed potatoes and we were going to put them in a chafing dish. If you don't know what that is, don't worry I didn't either until that day. I thought that it was maybe a dish that you placed between your legs and then walked around until the skin on the insides of your legs was raw. What it actually is though is this dish filled with hot water that you put other dishes on top of to keep them warm without burning. Then under the dish with water you put a can of sterno or something like that.
I had lit the sterno to put under the dish and put it in it's little holder and then picked it up to carry it over to the dish. On the way, the holder kind of fell apart and dropped out of itself. On the way down it hit my hand and started wobbling out of control. It hit the ground and started rolling, spitting burning sterno out every direction. I felt like some sort of Roman God that was angry at the villagers and was now throwing fire down upon them.
There was literally a line of fire cutting diagonally across the kitchen. I scrambled to put the fire out and when I thought I had everything out I stood and admired my accomplishment. One of the cabinets had been marred by sterno and flame. The floor was relatively intact, and what was that smell. It smelled like something was still burning. I looked around and was shocked to see the sterno can still on fire in the corner under some cabinets. We put it out and now have a nice black char mark on those cabinets.
Cajun Yams
Later that day my wife was getting ready to make yams. They're the kind that you douse in sugar, add some more sweetener and then top them off with marshmallows and put them in the oven for a little bit.
Kristen put them in the oven, checked them a few minutes later and then left them in while she and my mom fixed gravy. A little while later I started to smell burnt marshmallows. I thought that they had maybe singed a little bit and they had taken them out and the smell was filling the room so I continued carving the turkey (like miniature figure skaters). The smell got more and more and finally I asked Kristen, "Did you take the yams out?"
She got an alarmed look on her face and then walked over to the oven and opened it up. Fire billowed out of the oven in an all too familiar way. She quickly closed it and turned the oven off and waited. My dad then came to help. He pulled the yams out and had several people blow on them to put out the fire. It took three people.
By the end the marshmallows were all blackened but it was recoverable.
So that's the story of the three fires. Maybe someday I'll invite you to Thanksgiving dinner with us. But be forewarned, you'd better bring your own fire extinguisher because there's only enough for us.
Archives
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
When I was younger, I thought that Santa Claus was the coolest thing that I had ever heard of. I mean, there's the obvious presents angle. Every youngster loves toys and gifts and so forth (especially me, I knew that if I concentrated hard enough that Santa would bring me Castle Greyskull. I just had to stay focused). One of the main things that I thought was cool was that his sleigh could fly. I had a thing with flying when I was little. Anyone or anything that could fly was aces in my book. Santa, Superman, those G.I. Joe jets, and Jesus, yes Jesus. You know the whole rose from the dead and went to Heaven to sit with his father thing? I was certain that he could fly. That's odd, apparently I did pay some attention in Sunday School after all.
We're getting off point at any rate. As I got older I continued to be fascinated with Santa Claus, though sometimes in very different ways. You know the whole Santa and Satan having the same letters in their name thing, I developed a couple of theories on that. I even have a couple of stories that I wrote about that that I will put up here soon enough. Most recently, however, my thoughts have focused on the elves that Santa has in his workshop dilligently building his toys.
I got to thinking one day about how long Santa has been around. I mean, stories go back a long way so I figured that he must have been around for a long time with those elves. The real question in my mind though is how he keeps all of these elves in his employ. It's not like he has a huge budget for labor. Hell, unless he has a side job, or some silent investors he has no budget whatsoever. So why do these strange little people hang around toiling day in and day out to make toys for all the good little girls and boys.
The first and most obvious solution was that they did it out of the charity that was in their hearts. That was good with me for a little while. In fact it gave me the warm fuzzies (or maybe that was a cat swishing against my leg). Then I started to think of all the charity that is done every year around Christmas time and the lack of charity work at any other time of the year. (I'm not getting on a soap box, they don't make them large enough for me to stand on anymore). So I made a gigantic assumption, something that I've learned to be very good at in my "journalistic career". Elves are like a good majority of the populace. So, with that in mind, they probably wouldn't want to work year round doing charity making toys and such. They probably did stuff like raise families, work 9-5 jobs, persue their film career, run for president, and so on and so forth. So I stopped dwelling on that theory and moved on to the next one.
Indentured servitude was my next stop. Look how long Santa has been around. The land that he lives in must be some sort of immortal land where no one ever dies. With this in mind people would probably kill to live in this land. However, being the jolly good natured guy that Santa is, he wouldn't have that. Instead he let anyone come with him that would pledge to make toys for him every day for the rest of their immortal life. Ain't that grand, you make toys for your entire unending life. I was kind of fond of this theory. It keeps Santa in a moderately good light. He didn't want killing and he gave them the option of coming and working a lifetime or staying in the mortal world. The elves probably just didn't read the fine print about eternity and everything.
So my mind wandered as it usually does (I can't remember if that's a sign of idiocy or genious. Probably the former) and I came upon my third and possibly final theory. Santa wasn't an individual after all. He's a race of beings that all look similar to this "Santa Claus". If you think about how the images of Santa have changed through generations and is also different in various cultures, this supports that argument very well. Maybe certain members of this race have geographic territory. Occasionally one dies and has to be replaced by a similar Santa which is reflected in the pictures we have of him and no one really cares to notice. At any rate, in the same world that the Santas lived in there is this race of Elves. The Santas and the Elves got in a fight one day over who made the better wooden toys. No, that's not good enough. The Santas claimed that the Elves had sexual relations with reindeer. You know, after all the first idea is better. The Santas and the Elves had been fighting many years about who has the better wooden toys and finally one day one of the Elves insulted one of the Santas toys. War broke out.
is what the newspaper headline read. After a long bitter war the Elves conceded defeat. The Santas then enslaved the Elves and said, "You know, I think you were right actually, you little guys do make better wooden toys. You will do that for the rest of your days."
There were a handful of Elves that did escape and they combat the Santas today in subtle ways like consumerism. One of the escaped Elves started Fisher Price, yet another started Hasbro, and then a group of them when to electronics college and started Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. So, when you go buy that gift for your loved ones, just remember: you're not just doing something nice for someone close to you. You're also helping the fight to liberate the slave race of Elves.
We're getting off point at any rate. As I got older I continued to be fascinated with Santa Claus, though sometimes in very different ways. You know the whole Santa and Satan having the same letters in their name thing, I developed a couple of theories on that. I even have a couple of stories that I wrote about that that I will put up here soon enough. Most recently, however, my thoughts have focused on the elves that Santa has in his workshop dilligently building his toys.
I got to thinking one day about how long Santa has been around. I mean, stories go back a long way so I figured that he must have been around for a long time with those elves. The real question in my mind though is how he keeps all of these elves in his employ. It's not like he has a huge budget for labor. Hell, unless he has a side job, or some silent investors he has no budget whatsoever. So why do these strange little people hang around toiling day in and day out to make toys for all the good little girls and boys.
The first and most obvious solution was that they did it out of the charity that was in their hearts. That was good with me for a little while. In fact it gave me the warm fuzzies (or maybe that was a cat swishing against my leg). Then I started to think of all the charity that is done every year around Christmas time and the lack of charity work at any other time of the year. (I'm not getting on a soap box, they don't make them large enough for me to stand on anymore). So I made a gigantic assumption, something that I've learned to be very good at in my "journalistic career". Elves are like a good majority of the populace. So, with that in mind, they probably wouldn't want to work year round doing charity making toys and such. They probably did stuff like raise families, work 9-5 jobs, persue their film career, run for president, and so on and so forth. So I stopped dwelling on that theory and moved on to the next one.
Indentured servitude was my next stop. Look how long Santa has been around. The land that he lives in must be some sort of immortal land where no one ever dies. With this in mind people would probably kill to live in this land. However, being the jolly good natured guy that Santa is, he wouldn't have that. Instead he let anyone come with him that would pledge to make toys for him every day for the rest of their immortal life. Ain't that grand, you make toys for your entire unending life. I was kind of fond of this theory. It keeps Santa in a moderately good light. He didn't want killing and he gave them the option of coming and working a lifetime or staying in the mortal world. The elves probably just didn't read the fine print about eternity and everything.
So my mind wandered as it usually does (I can't remember if that's a sign of idiocy or genious. Probably the former) and I came upon my third and possibly final theory. Santa wasn't an individual after all. He's a race of beings that all look similar to this "Santa Claus". If you think about how the images of Santa have changed through generations and is also different in various cultures, this supports that argument very well. Maybe certain members of this race have geographic territory. Occasionally one dies and has to be replaced by a similar Santa which is reflected in the pictures we have of him and no one really cares to notice. At any rate, in the same world that the Santas lived in there is this race of Elves. The Santas and the Elves got in a fight one day over who made the better wooden toys. No, that's not good enough. The Santas claimed that the Elves had sexual relations with reindeer. You know, after all the first idea is better. The Santas and the Elves had been fighting many years about who has the better wooden toys and finally one day one of the Elves insulted one of the Santas toys. War broke out.
W A R !
is what the newspaper headline read. After a long bitter war the Elves conceded defeat. The Santas then enslaved the Elves and said, "You know, I think you were right actually, you little guys do make better wooden toys. You will do that for the rest of your days."
There were a handful of Elves that did escape and they combat the Santas today in subtle ways like consumerism. One of the escaped Elves started Fisher Price, yet another started Hasbro, and then a group of them when to electronics college and started Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. So, when you go buy that gift for your loved ones, just remember: you're not just doing something nice for someone close to you. You're also helping the fight to liberate the slave race of Elves.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
I'm a slacker. I think that that's why when my fiancee and I found the house that we are now living in I was estactic. Not only was it in a nice neighborhood, had plenty of room for the two of us and was generally a great house, but the bonus was in the backyard. No, I'm not talking about large amounts of heroin stashed in our backyard ready for sale (though that might have worried us). It was a detached garage with an apartment above it. What's more, there was already someone living in it paying rent that could take a huge chunk out of the mortgage payment. I thought to myself, "Now Johnny (because I always call myself Johnny in my head), you know what this means don't you? This means that in thirty years when that mortgage is paid off, you'll be sitting pretty with a nice little income. You ought to be nice and settled by then." The thing that I should also note is that whenever I hear that voice in my head, it always sounds like it's a sixty year old man that's been smoking three packs of cigarettes a day since he was nine.
The true reality of the situation settled in with me quickly, especially after I met the tenant. When I first met Melissa I thought that she would probably be a good tenant, of course five minutes later that all changed. I remember it well, standing there in the garage admiring our new purchase when Melissa pops her head out the door and begins talking (only after shutting the door behind her to prevent escape): "Hi you must be the owners I was so worried when Kevin had told me that someone bought the house and he said that you guys might not want me living here anymore and I was really stressed out I work as a flight attendant for American Airlines and stress really isn't good for my job and if you guys ever need anything just ask and if you need to go to the garage just knock before walking through the door since it is right at the bottom of the stairs that lead into my apartment this neighborhood is really nice and the girl across the way is a lesbian (she made sure to whisper this part like the walls of the garage were paper thin and everything that we said was routed to a megaphone) but everyone's really nice...." I could tell you the whole conversation, but as I really like talking about myself and there's not a whole lot of me in it I'll stop it right there. I think that it's sufficient to say that at the end of thirty minutes Kristen and I felt like divers that ran out of air about ten minutes ago.
About a week later we had family members over to take a look at the house and the male family members decided that they wanted to see the garage. So, following Melissa's requests we went to the door and knocked, waited a little while and went through to the garage. I was under the impression that everything was fine, until the next day. The following day all the company was gone and Melissa came knocking on our door to tell us that we really freaked her out when we went into the garage. I said that's fine, we were probably going to put up a door at the bottom of her stairs anyway so that we could get to the garage without disturbing her. She thanked me. We weren't really sure when we were going to be able to get the door in so, like most landlords we told Melissa that sometime in the next two weeks we would be doing it just to let her know. About a week and a half later the handyman guy came out and put in the door. I thought everything worked out really well. I came home, saw the door and the work looked pretty good.
Later on, Melissa was at our house almost in tears. "Why didn't you tell me that you were putting a door in today?" She whined. I replied, "We did, we told you that we didn't know when he was going to be out though so to keep an eye out. Is something wrong?" "The workers were in my apartment and they touched my alcohol and I know that because I always have the labels facing outward and one of them was turned slightly also they used the toilet and left the seat up and how am I going to be able to move my stuff out through the door when I move it just won't work!!" she droned with a little tear moving down her face. I really felt like crushing her spirit and telling her that people look at things when they work on people's apartments and the construction workers probably never put down the toilet seat, even for their wife. I really wanted to ask her if she tried to sit on the toilet and fell into the bowl. I wanted to say a lot of stuff, but again I'm too fucking nice. I said to her in the calmest and most empathetic voice that I have, "Why can't you move your stuff out the door, isn't it the same size as the other doors that you would have to move it through?"
I was confused, she looked as if I had stabbed her through the heart with some fresh hallibut and she said, "You just don't understand!!!!" and ran off bawling. Obviously, I did not understand. And in case I thought I did, I had just been informed of the contrary. She had a similar confrontation with Kristen when she got home, but we never did find out why she thought that she couldn't move her stuff through that door. A couple of weeks later she moved out without any trouble that I saw or heard about. I hope that she finally found a place that has maintenance people that always show up on time, never touch your stuff, and put the seat down when they are through peeing. And if she's really lucky, or maybe if I am, there won't be any doors.
The true reality of the situation settled in with me quickly, especially after I met the tenant. When I first met Melissa I thought that she would probably be a good tenant, of course five minutes later that all changed. I remember it well, standing there in the garage admiring our new purchase when Melissa pops her head out the door and begins talking (only after shutting the door behind her to prevent escape): "Hi you must be the owners I was so worried when Kevin had told me that someone bought the house and he said that you guys might not want me living here anymore and I was really stressed out I work as a flight attendant for American Airlines and stress really isn't good for my job and if you guys ever need anything just ask and if you need to go to the garage just knock before walking through the door since it is right at the bottom of the stairs that lead into my apartment this neighborhood is really nice and the girl across the way is a lesbian (she made sure to whisper this part like the walls of the garage were paper thin and everything that we said was routed to a megaphone) but everyone's really nice...." I could tell you the whole conversation, but as I really like talking about myself and there's not a whole lot of me in it I'll stop it right there. I think that it's sufficient to say that at the end of thirty minutes Kristen and I felt like divers that ran out of air about ten minutes ago.
About a week later we had family members over to take a look at the house and the male family members decided that they wanted to see the garage. So, following Melissa's requests we went to the door and knocked, waited a little while and went through to the garage. I was under the impression that everything was fine, until the next day. The following day all the company was gone and Melissa came knocking on our door to tell us that we really freaked her out when we went into the garage. I said that's fine, we were probably going to put up a door at the bottom of her stairs anyway so that we could get to the garage without disturbing her. She thanked me. We weren't really sure when we were going to be able to get the door in so, like most landlords we told Melissa that sometime in the next two weeks we would be doing it just to let her know. About a week and a half later the handyman guy came out and put in the door. I thought everything worked out really well. I came home, saw the door and the work looked pretty good.
Later on, Melissa was at our house almost in tears. "Why didn't you tell me that you were putting a door in today?" She whined. I replied, "We did, we told you that we didn't know when he was going to be out though so to keep an eye out. Is something wrong?" "The workers were in my apartment and they touched my alcohol and I know that because I always have the labels facing outward and one of them was turned slightly also they used the toilet and left the seat up and how am I going to be able to move my stuff out through the door when I move it just won't work!!" she droned with a little tear moving down her face. I really felt like crushing her spirit and telling her that people look at things when they work on people's apartments and the construction workers probably never put down the toilet seat, even for their wife. I really wanted to ask her if she tried to sit on the toilet and fell into the bowl. I wanted to say a lot of stuff, but again I'm too fucking nice. I said to her in the calmest and most empathetic voice that I have, "Why can't you move your stuff out the door, isn't it the same size as the other doors that you would have to move it through?"
I was confused, she looked as if I had stabbed her through the heart with some fresh hallibut and she said, "You just don't understand!!!!" and ran off bawling. Obviously, I did not understand. And in case I thought I did, I had just been informed of the contrary. She had a similar confrontation with Kristen when she got home, but we never did find out why she thought that she couldn't move her stuff through that door. A couple of weeks later she moved out without any trouble that I saw or heard about. I hope that she finally found a place that has maintenance people that always show up on time, never touch your stuff, and put the seat down when they are through peeing. And if she's really lucky, or maybe if I am, there won't be any doors.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Some people call me driven and determined. Others say I have moxie and sticktuitiveness. Still others say I'm a psychopathic stalker that will stop at nothing. I think that each of these says a little something about me.
That's why, when I heard that Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison, was going to be doing an event at the Yahoo! office that my wife works at I knew it was a golden opportunity to do what I had failed on my last outing to meet Poison. That being actually meeting Poison.
I headed down to the Yahoo! (I'm gonna stop typing that damn exclamation point from here on out.) office right after work so that I could make it there on time. I was dressed in slacks and black wingtips and a button down shirt, I was going to fit in like a nun in a brothel. I watched their online interview and saw Bret play a couple of songs acoustically for the Internet and everything and then afterwards he started signing autographs.
I approached him with my last column about Poison in my hands and said, "This is a column that I wrote about the last time you guys came through and I was at your show". He seemed mildly interested but very busy with the people that were wanting autographs. After all, I was just some schmo who wrote a column. There's probably 3.52 million people out there just like me. I mean it doesn't actually take any qualifications to write a column. You just sit and make up a bunch of crap. At any rate he signed the column and said, "That's great". I left partially fulfilled that I had at least gotten the article signed, but a little disappointed that he didn't get to read it.
But wait, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. My wife approached me and asked me if I could wait around because she was going to type for the online chat with Bret Michaels. Not only that, she one upped me and said that she was going to have him read my column. Score one for the schmo baby!
After the chat everyone filed out of the small room that they were in and Kristen introduced me to Bret. It was then that he started, "I read your column and I couldn't stop laughing. You're a fucking genious! It was great!" (he probably said some other stuff that was derogatory like, "I can't believe that such a looser could write something like this. What's with those wingtips anyway?" but my ego was so inflated that it didn't matter to me.) After that he even invited us to go and have a drink with him. We went to his hotel and hung out in the bar and drank for quite awhile.
It was while we were drinking that we learned of the many ass kickings that Bret had delivered over the years. Mind you, they were all provoked. He didn't go out and pick these fights, after all he's Bret Michaels not Axl Rose. I thought that it sounded like a good idea for a tv series, "Bret Michaels: Ass Kicker." It could be run opposite of Walker: Texas Ranger. I'm sure it would kick Walker's ass, and if it didn't Bret Could.
We hung out for awhile and someone said, "hey, do you guys want to go to see Duran Duran?" They were in town that night playing at the Vodka Center. I don't remember what the actual name of the place is but it has to do with Vodka and it's an outdoor arena. We all decided to go and piled into some cars with the guys from Poison and drove to the Starplex. Here's the kicker. We drove into the backstage area and went right through the gate that I got kicked out of when I was last here. The security guard gave us a funny look as we drove through. I think he vaguely remembered who I was and was preparing to kick my ass when he realized who I was with: The Original Ass Kicker. He left us alone, but I knew I shouldn't stray far from the group unless I wanted to be a near dead pile of mush. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a wimp.
Duran Duran kind of sucked. I really liked them a lot when I was a kid, but they just didn't have any energy in their show. It was like Simon LeBon was only there to get some money to pay his $14,000/day crack habit. Nothing much really happened at the show, so I'm going to skip ahead in time. We left the show and Bret and some people went on to a strip club. I was too tired to live the rock n roll lifestyle anymore this night so we went home and slept so that we could have fun the next night at the show.
We went to the show the next day and it was great. Bret got us great tickets in the 6th row and we also had backstage passes. I felt like I wasn't going to have anything to do to get almost arrested this night and it felt pretty good. We watched the show which was a lot of fun and after the show we wandered around for awhile trying to figure out where to go with these backstage passes. Then we found this huge group of people waiting to get in backstage. The funny thing to note here is that there were all of the 30-something year old geeky security guards. The kind that probably got beat up by people like Bret Michaels when they were in high school. They would grab people by the hair and tell them how they messed up their chances to meet Poison when people would try and sneak by. We waited with them until we were herded into a big room with about 100 or so people in it.
We waited for awhile and nothing happened. There was a big pallet of boxes that was covered up with a cloth. I couldn't really figure out what was in it so I used my super sneaky powers (that have now been honed to the point where I can sneak up on myself) to go up to the boxes and rip them open. I was really expecting something exciting like Poison merchandise that they were going to give to the fans. Or maybe that Poison was going to perform the ultimate disgrace to the fans and blow them up with explosives. I was really disappointed when I found out that it was just a box of these mini-CDs for the House of Blues. A little later I kept on seeing a girl peek out from this big metal door in the room and I was sure that there must be some super secret private party with strippers and such behind it. Figuring that Bret would want his old pal Johnny (yes, old from the previous day) to hang out with him and the strippers I went over and talked to the people in front of the door.
"Hey, what's behind that door."
One of them replied, "I don't know, I think it's catering or something like that."
I thought for a second, "No, I think I saw a stripper poke her head out. I think there's something else behind there. You mind if I take a look?"
He shrugged and said, "Knock yourself out."
I walked up to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. I pounded on the door but no one answered. So I pounded some more. That's my moxie showing (or was this the psycho part, I can never tell the difference). I pounded until someone at the front of the room called for all the people that were in the group that I was in to follow him.
We followed him and were told to wait in line to talk to and get our picture taken with Bret. It was kind of weird. We got to hang out and drink with him the whole night before and now we were waiting in line to shake his hand and get a snapshot. An odd twist of fate indeed.
My lesson to the three people that are reading this: If you get to hang out and drink with a rock star, the after show backstage thing will just disappoint you. But it's still cool to be able to write a column about. Go Schmo.
That's why, when I heard that Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison, was going to be doing an event at the Yahoo! office that my wife works at I knew it was a golden opportunity to do what I had failed on my last outing to meet Poison. That being actually meeting Poison.
I headed down to the Yahoo! (I'm gonna stop typing that damn exclamation point from here on out.) office right after work so that I could make it there on time. I was dressed in slacks and black wingtips and a button down shirt, I was going to fit in like a nun in a brothel. I watched their online interview and saw Bret play a couple of songs acoustically for the Internet and everything and then afterwards he started signing autographs.
I approached him with my last column about Poison in my hands and said, "This is a column that I wrote about the last time you guys came through and I was at your show". He seemed mildly interested but very busy with the people that were wanting autographs. After all, I was just some schmo who wrote a column. There's probably 3.52 million people out there just like me. I mean it doesn't actually take any qualifications to write a column. You just sit and make up a bunch of crap. At any rate he signed the column and said, "That's great". I left partially fulfilled that I had at least gotten the article signed, but a little disappointed that he didn't get to read it.
But wait, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. My wife approached me and asked me if I could wait around because she was going to type for the online chat with Bret Michaels. Not only that, she one upped me and said that she was going to have him read my column. Score one for the schmo baby!
After the chat everyone filed out of the small room that they were in and Kristen introduced me to Bret. It was then that he started, "I read your column and I couldn't stop laughing. You're a fucking genious! It was great!" (he probably said some other stuff that was derogatory like, "I can't believe that such a looser could write something like this. What's with those wingtips anyway?" but my ego was so inflated that it didn't matter to me.) After that he even invited us to go and have a drink with him. We went to his hotel and hung out in the bar and drank for quite awhile.
It was while we were drinking that we learned of the many ass kickings that Bret had delivered over the years. Mind you, they were all provoked. He didn't go out and pick these fights, after all he's Bret Michaels not Axl Rose. I thought that it sounded like a good idea for a tv series, "Bret Michaels: Ass Kicker." It could be run opposite of Walker: Texas Ranger. I'm sure it would kick Walker's ass, and if it didn't Bret Could.
We hung out for awhile and someone said, "hey, do you guys want to go to see Duran Duran?" They were in town that night playing at the Vodka Center. I don't remember what the actual name of the place is but it has to do with Vodka and it's an outdoor arena. We all decided to go and piled into some cars with the guys from Poison and drove to the Starplex. Here's the kicker. We drove into the backstage area and went right through the gate that I got kicked out of when I was last here. The security guard gave us a funny look as we drove through. I think he vaguely remembered who I was and was preparing to kick my ass when he realized who I was with: The Original Ass Kicker. He left us alone, but I knew I shouldn't stray far from the group unless I wanted to be a near dead pile of mush. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a wimp.
Duran Duran kind of sucked. I really liked them a lot when I was a kid, but they just didn't have any energy in their show. It was like Simon LeBon was only there to get some money to pay his $14,000/day crack habit. Nothing much really happened at the show, so I'm going to skip ahead in time. We left the show and Bret and some people went on to a strip club. I was too tired to live the rock n roll lifestyle anymore this night so we went home and slept so that we could have fun the next night at the show.
We went to the show the next day and it was great. Bret got us great tickets in the 6th row and we also had backstage passes. I felt like I wasn't going to have anything to do to get almost arrested this night and it felt pretty good. We watched the show which was a lot of fun and after the show we wandered around for awhile trying to figure out where to go with these backstage passes. Then we found this huge group of people waiting to get in backstage. The funny thing to note here is that there were all of the 30-something year old geeky security guards. The kind that probably got beat up by people like Bret Michaels when they were in high school. They would grab people by the hair and tell them how they messed up their chances to meet Poison when people would try and sneak by. We waited with them until we were herded into a big room with about 100 or so people in it.
We waited for awhile and nothing happened. There was a big pallet of boxes that was covered up with a cloth. I couldn't really figure out what was in it so I used my super sneaky powers (that have now been honed to the point where I can sneak up on myself) to go up to the boxes and rip them open. I was really expecting something exciting like Poison merchandise that they were going to give to the fans. Or maybe that Poison was going to perform the ultimate disgrace to the fans and blow them up with explosives. I was really disappointed when I found out that it was just a box of these mini-CDs for the House of Blues. A little later I kept on seeing a girl peek out from this big metal door in the room and I was sure that there must be some super secret private party with strippers and such behind it. Figuring that Bret would want his old pal Johnny (yes, old from the previous day) to hang out with him and the strippers I went over and talked to the people in front of the door.
"Hey, what's behind that door."
One of them replied, "I don't know, I think it's catering or something like that."
I thought for a second, "No, I think I saw a stripper poke her head out. I think there's something else behind there. You mind if I take a look?"
He shrugged and said, "Knock yourself out."
I walked up to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. I pounded on the door but no one answered. So I pounded some more. That's my moxie showing (or was this the psycho part, I can never tell the difference). I pounded until someone at the front of the room called for all the people that were in the group that I was in to follow him.
We followed him and were told to wait in line to talk to and get our picture taken with Bret. It was kind of weird. We got to hang out and drink with him the whole night before and now we were waiting in line to shake his hand and get a snapshot. An odd twist of fate indeed.
My lesson to the three people that are reading this: If you get to hang out and drink with a rock star, the after show backstage thing will just disappoint you. But it's still cool to be able to write a column about. Go Schmo.