15 Years Ago Tonight...

I got on stage for the first time at a strip mall dive bar in Vegas. The Escape Lounge II - where the drinks are always free. It was a Tuesday and Big Fat Ron Putnam gave me 5 minutes to do my jack-off jokes. I was quite drunk and did fairly well. I've been quite drunk and done fairly well for an extended run now. That's a seperate anniversary altogether.

It was the night before Thanksgiving, 1980 and the Big Kids said I could come out with them drinking. It was one of those things you know is going to happen eventually like losing your virginity. You were going to get drunk for the first time. You were just waiting for an invite from the Big Kids. It was the nod from Johnny. I asked for a bottle of Riunite red because I thought it must taste like everything else a 13 year-old drinks. Like red.

Big Kids

They fucked up and got me white but I wasn't going to complain. I was with the big kids now. Behind Tatnuck School. Where the big kids drank. And I drank almost the whole bottle. Good goodness was I fucked up. We wandered on and in the alley behind the hardware store they gave me a Marlboro red - I now smoke Marlboro white but ain't it funny how it goes - and that cigarette blew my buzz into overdrive like doing a nitrous hit on mushrooms.

What Kerry might have looked like

Thanksgiving Eve, 1980. That's the night it started with Kerry Hanley, our next-door neighbor who was older and therefore cool and allowed me along. She had big tits and one time I played with her nipple when she passed out drunk in our basement. A sort of date rape but heck, this girl procures alcohol and cigarettes for minors. Tit for tat.

Now my cough sounds like Mother's did when we were kids and she was my age. We could always tell where she was in the supermarket by her cough. One aisle over, *cough* - thats Mother. Now I have her cough and she has death swirling around her like gnats or no-see-ums. She can't walk three stairs without gasping and taking pause for bad breath.

How silly it must look to someone who doesn't know addiction.

Rehab

It's at a point where I will avoid any brand of fun if it doesn't allow for cigarettes. And all of my other habits that one might call "bad" are companion pieces to cigarettes.

25 years ago to the day, this Thanksgiving eve, I started drinking and smoking tobacco. To mark the anniversary I will get alarmingly drunk on many beverages including a shitty bottle of Riunite red wine and I will smoke Marlboros and in the morning I will be checking into a facility of my own making.

I will be quitting everything for a month.

Cigarettes
Alcohol
Caffiene
Meat
Bad Drugs

I even plan to exercise. Rogan once went 30 days without blowing a load. Maybe I'll add that in for kicks.

But it's only the smokes I care to stay off of permanently. The 30 days will end Christmas Day and I will more than likely get amazingly drunk and eat a live and yelping dog. I even plan on replacing cigarettes with a new terrible habit like perhaps setting things on fire or helping the poor. But I will not smoke.

"The question has been location? location? location?"

Costa Rica sounded like the perfect place until I thought of being miserable in Costa Rica. I'd rather wait and be drunk on a beach in Costa Rica when I didn't need to smoke. So for now I believe the best place will be right here at home where Father Luke and I have built a Command Center out of Tiki Bars in the living room, where we are sitting under fake palm umbrellas and stealing things off of Limewire.

Mission Control at the Command Center

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By posting my intentions for better living, I know I have created a jinx where I will now be offered a grotesque amount of money to do a gig just after Thanksgiving and have to push my rehab plan up to the 30 year anniversary for love of round numbers.

Didn't Work Out

I was supposed to be in Jamaica right now but the whole event went swirling down the John J. Crapper just a day before lift-off. Poor prick, this kid, Alex, who spent 14 months trying to pull it off - a celebration of psychedelic drugs - and it all falls apart at the last minute.

Fortunately, none of my fan base will have shown up to find no performers whatsoever. My fans can barely afford a ticket to the Funnybone or even a non-toxic lubricant much less a trip to the Caribbean to do mushrooms. Save for Chalmers who was sent on assignment from London to do a story on me. Got there a day early and now sends me desperate emails from Hedonism about old men in fig leaves and hangy scrotums trying to get him to fuck their wives. I think for all his complaining he has a far more interesting story than he would talking about my stupid act.

He can come to Bisbee next and review two mice riding on a cat's back riding on a dog's back. Its way much more better than that Jamaica. Either way, its okay by me. I have my hands into the cow's ass up to my bicep. We are farming weird in Bisbee and it's harvest time. Spinning plates and putting out fires, running purely on first instincts and knee-jerk reactions.

We are starting a Cult here at the compound, can't think of a reason not to, but I don't know how influential it will be. We haven't quite figured out what the purpose of the Cult is or even who to lure into it. I don't know what to worship. It would be nice if we had an enormously fat girl to worship or maybe a classic car with low mileage but I'm not the type that worships anything for very long. So it'll probably just be a cult that drinks Miller Lite and goes to the Hitchin' Post when Linda is working and passes the time talking about books we'll write.

And for now, I am the only one who even drinks Miller Lite.

Honey drank Miller Lite but Honey didn't like the whole cult idea. "I'm not cleaning up after some cult" she said and then she took off North. I miss her dearly and the Cult will not be near as lively without our dirty love and stumbling beefs but people move on and people move North, at least from here.

Heartbreak is terrible and it effects everyone but Father Luke. He has been the pivotman in all of this, the chocolate center of insanity that has found peace with his demons and is unflappable. He has moved from the guesthouse to the main house - is it too soon to call it The Temple or perhaps The Lodge? - to make room for Oddjob. Oddjob is in the guest house because her head doesn't always work the way it should. It's funny because she has her head shaved to the bone and people always say how well she pulls it off because her head is perfect for it and we laugh because her head isn't perfect at all.

Her head produces fantastic things but sometimes it crashes on her and that can be very bad. It wound her up in the Loony Bin and it wound her up in Trouble and now its wound her up in the Guest House where she is working on her book. We're all working on a book, aren't we?

Lynn Shawcroft

Brokedown Palace, that's what I've been calling this place of late. Lots of broken up folks been through here in only a matter of weeks but we are all laughing through it where we can. Shawcroft stayed a while all broke up for good reason and we are trying to recruit her into the Cult. I offered her a free CD Boombox and complimentary accomodations just to come back and sit thru a two-hour presentation but she is reticent.

Maybe I will offer free Miller Lite. Some folks - Hinty for one - thought I may be losing my mind as well. He came down to check on me like I was Col. Kurtz. We tried to brainwash him into the "organization" using Gus the Greek's pizza and a dream date with Mother. We're still waiting for a call-back. Coffee is for closers. We found a little place for Mother and as soon as she is moved in we will put the television back in the crawl space. I bet I pull it back out on Sundays when football season starts, unless Linda works Sundays at the Hitchin' Post.

I think Jamaica would have sucked anyway. I spent three hours there once and I wanted to set it all on fire and join the Klan. I can do mushrooms with strangers in Cincinnati WITHOUT a passport, WITHOUT them trying to sell me handmade voodoo in a public toilet while I'm taking a shit.

Hitchin' Post Linda

I can do mushrooms right here at the compound and plan the Cult and talk about the book. We are farming weird down here by the border and we're shitting in tall cotton. I'll be back on the road here in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to it for a change. We'll have some fun again. A little less hate and some more fucked up fun. It's okay if sometimes your own friends think you've lost your mind. We're all out of our fucking bananas but that's not always a negative. Some minds need losing to reach their full potential. ~ Stanhope

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Shawcroft started a blog at www.lynnshawcroft.com. Please enjoy her writing and mention that she should really be a "team player" and come to Bisbee. If Honey had a blog I would tell her to do the same darn thing.