The adventures of invisibledon king of the bastards continue still...

The adventures of invisible don king of the bastards continue still… As has been my habit in recent months my writing has been tardy and this issue is weeks tardy rather than months. Again my absences from the writing table, is not the matter for discussion and is not likely to be one at least not presently. This issue pertains to the Happy Hour Crew and my adventures with them. Those of you not familiar with the way back days of invisible don king of the bastards won’t know who the Happy Hour Crew is or it’s function. The function is simple we drank during happy hour …the name really does tell you all you need to know and we started drinking when the drinks were less expensive as we didn’t have the money for full priced drinks and largely we still don’t …another matter. The second is who are the members of the Happy Hour Crew? Well of course there is yours truly and then several others. Former Smoking Buddy who still smokes but as I do not she is the former there was really no need to change her from Smoking buddy to something new that is just confusing. Then there is Brand A and Head Nod, they are a couple Brand A is more the free spirit of the two and Head Nod is willing to play but when it’s time to go …you’ve guessed it, the head nod comes out and then leave. Everyone knows what the head nod means but he still does it. HK which I’m not sure I’ve ever defined HK to anyone or in the blog, I’m not going to research it and if I have you know and if I haven’t well then you don’t know. HK has had a series of relationships during the Happy Hour Crew days and generally they don’t get written about not that we don’t care about who HK dates or that they aren’t around a long time they are… they just haven’t been part of the blog. The last two members of the original HHC were Jonzo and Braff. They are completely separate people no connection to each other, other than the HHC. Braff’s sister and I worked together years after the HHC formed and she is a friend of Brand A and Head Nod. Jonzo is a former co worker who I see now and again and we always threaten to have drinks again but life gets in the way of these things. There have been lots of add ons and people who show up here and there over the years but 50’s pin up girl has been the only one to really be a late joiner who fell into the crew and stayed with the crew for the long haul. 50’s pin up girl is looks like a girl from the 50’s and works …well a rather interesting job more on that later. We used to gather every other Thursday for Happy Hour at public places then that evolved to house parties largely at Former Smoking Buddies. The house parties phase has evolved to holidays and special occasions gatherings. The last bit of people in the HHC have really been there since the beginning but weren’t really part of the HHC because they were busy which was a guitar player from a band and his wife. They’ve never had nick names in the blog mainly because I will usually link the band the guitar player is in and that gives away his true identity. OK were up to speed I think, regardless we’re moving forward The reason for the recent calling to order of the HHC was a birthday and concert not exactly on the same day but close-ish. The Rev. Horton Heat was playing her in the Star City a few weeks ago and as our luck would have the guitar guy’s band The Woody Nelsons is playing as one of two opening bands for the Rev. How awesome is that? Well, the style of music guitar guy has always played is Rock a Billy in flavor, which if you are not aware is what the Rev. Horton plays too. Well in a style. We love it all of the HHC love this music we are groupies of a sort with guitar guy and 50’s Pin up girl and Former Smoking Buddy are real groupies of the Rev. Horton Heat. I mean that in the best possible way, hell guitar guy is as well for that matter. They will drive far and sometime wide to see this man play which if you know the music you know it is worth the drive. The other band playing that night is Continental , Rick Barton and his son’s band. Which if you don’t know Rick was a founding member of the Drop Kick Murphy’s. So the bill is set and the HHC decide to have a VIP day/night of it dinner then the show. Which in true HHC fashion was a party at someone’s house. Now they are generally at Brand A and Head Nod’s house, which is true again. Jonzo and Braff didn’t make it for this go around but they were both invited. Well the cook out part of it is grand guitar guy and his wife are there with there newly born child congrats on that by the way. Then he had to go for sound checks at the club. Everyone is getting rather excited now and we are swapping stories about the other shows we’ve been to and hope this one is as fun and having a good time. Thing is the HHC will go a while without being together and everyone falls right back into place like not a day has gone by …which of course it has and that only allows for stories of the in between times. Brand A and Head Nod have a child now too and the Little James Dean is tearing it up on his motorized bike in the back yard. Head Nod has juiced up the bike because he is a vehicle guy. Loves motors and things that are made to move by motors and Little James Dean is reaping the benefit of his dad’s love of make it go faster and better. Time to go to the concert the baby sitter for Little James Dean show up and she promises not to chloroform the kid. You know how it goes you show up as the baby sitter and you have the rag with chloroform on it and you say, Hey kid does this smell like Chloroform as you hold the rag to the kids face. They fall asleep and you get to relax until the parents come home. That is not really a good baby sitting practice … well at least no in polite society. Off to the show we go. We are early but not really early. As in we are there in advance of when the show starts but only by about 15 or 20 minutes. Which in bar scene band show that is not really early enough to get great seating so there are a few seats left up near the stage along the wall and there is a bar there but it is beside a wall and not really at the bar. Which means part of the time some of us will be standing, which is usually the case with Former Smoking Buddy and 50’s pin up girl because they get up front by the stage and listen from beside the speakers or at the feet of who ever we are there to see. My job usually revolves around watching drinks and things from a location not right by the stage. This is fine by me I’m a people watcher now and my mosh pit days are behind me. Which there was one there that evening and there were people in the pit that had no business being in the pit. When I see this forming I turn to Head Nod and say there was a day when I would be out there but that day isn’t today. Soon after that a person very close to my age is on the floor after being bashed about like a pin ball. That is just not smart. You don’t swim in a tank of sharks if you aren’t a shark or in armor and he was neither a shark or armored. At some point between the bands I have to go to the rest room. I know drinking and peeing you must be kidding those two things never happen together. Well I go in and do my business and no most places put adds up over urinals to sell you stuff while you pee or at least to expose you to things while you are exposed. I’m looking at the ads, and see the place 50’s pin up girl and Former smoking buddy work … which is a sex toys shop. I think huh Ill tell her them. So I do you know after I finish and wash my hands. So I say hey there is an ad for your place of business over the urinal. 50’s and Former say really go in and take a picture. I turn phone in hand walking toward the men’s room… then I think this probably seems a bit odd me. Standing at the door of the men’s room camera at the ready … to take a picture of an ad for a sex shop over a urinal Well as I walk in there is some one at said urinal so I leave because I don’t need to go and to wait there with my camera ready is going to seem even more odd if I walk up and take a photo of the ad over the urinal of where someone just peed while they are washing their hands. So I just waited outside until he left and then went in and did just that and showed it to 50’s and Pin up girl… perhaps you had to be there. Another pint please…On with the show …. The Woody Nelson’s played and gave a really great show. This was for us and for guitar guy too, to be on the same stage as the next two bands was a dream come true. Perhaps that dream will go a bit further and guitar guy will be the one that other bands want to open up for some day. Rick Barton was walking around before his show and if you don’t know a person is going to blow your socks off when you meet them well then you haven’t met Rick Barton. He walks and all you can think is this guy knows something you need to know. Well if a sound check is getting in your car, starting it up and driving for the freeway once Continental gets in the merge lane you are full speed from then on. During the show Barton delivers great music and good entertainment from the stage. At one point he is telling how there are good girls and bad girls who go to this type of show. Good girls isn’t the compliment in this scenario and he is making a tour around the women near the stage to which he is saying good girl about all of them and when he gets to Former Smoking Buddy and 50’s pin up girl he tags 50’s pin up girl as a good girl and then he sees Former Smoking Buddy and says without pause Bad Girl. Well Former Smoking Buddy could not have been happier. Just as the Woody Nelsons got the energy level up for Continental, Barton brought the energy level up to a level for the Rev. The Rev. took the stage and played all good songs, my favorite was not among them but hey what are you going to do. This band looks like they are right from the 1950’s but feel like they are from a time we haven’t lived in yet. All three bands made this one of the best concerts that I’ve been to ever and it was in a small little club and not as expensive. Unfortunately we all had to work the next day and were out way past reasonable bed times or there may have been more to the story Well, that’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow most likely Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy. Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood. Ciao, PS 3 Gamer Tag: invisible don PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015

Hey Mom, ...Guess where I am?

As you may have noticed I sort of stopped writing there for a bit…sort of as in grinding halt stopped writing for a bit. There are a lot of reasons for that …chief among them is a pretty enormous self loathing but that isn’t what we are here to talk about today perhaps I’ll get into that another time. With mother’s day coming up soonish I was talking about some things with some friends which happened to focus in on being parents and how we presented some challenges to our parents. While I didn’t live with my parents for a large part of my teen years I probably made up for it while I was there. Then once we leave the homestead we break out into the world with hardly a glance backward. Standing there is background are the ones who bled and toiled and stayed awake with worry over our every problem even the ones we have forgotten they have a gray hair or worry line to remind them. We didn’t ponder deeply the meaning of our relationships with our parents or how our relationships have evolved with our own children. One of the stories I recalled after having fled the homestead was being in Europe and calling home at various times to keep in touch with family and sometimes friends. As with most things we tend to settle in to trends or patterns when doing anything for the people in or attached to our lives, so they will expect it or be anticipating the interaction. One of the interactions I had with my mother mainly because she was the one who would answer the phone most often. This was when you left your phone on a desk or attached to a wall. And to call you had to find a phone attached to a wall or in a special house on the street. Well my habit with my mother and the phone was to wait until I had closed a bar and generally consumed a fair amount and it was generally very late or very early depending on how you look at those hours between midnight and 6 am. These calls would usually be associated with me traveling around to various places too. Many of the phone calls would go something like this. Hey Mom, guess where I am She of course had no idea exactly where I was I would be I’m In Paris and I’m drunk It’s 4 am which wasn’t really all that late for her in the US but I wasn’t in any condition then to figure out the time but knew I was ahead of them and If I was awake it generally mean that it was ok to call them unless it was daylight out but there were a few times the bar doors opened and the sun poured in… Oh that is a dreadful feeling and not the point So made several of these calls …from several different places in Europe and always a bit to the wind Those phone calls never lasted very long but they were happy ones and while I could have spent my money and time better while I was there but I didn’t. There for a moment I was on a street in some city not in the same place as my mother saying hey you are on my mind. While my mother and I haven’t always had the best relationship for a myriad of reason as is true with all children and parents it is was it is, again not the conversation. That went on for the entire time I was stationed out of the US. Once even convinced another person with whom I was stationed to call his Mom while he was all back of the bus and to the wind. Was this ill advised … perhaps it was but I had no point of reference as to how his mother would take to her son calling her from Europe with a bit too much to drink… My parents never seemed to care or never protested to me while I was on the phone. Well he calls his mother and says, Mom I’m in Munich and I’m drunk or wherever we were that time…we were drunk Well his mother did not take to the drunken shenanigans of two service men all that well. Her displeasure with me is assumed as I did not speak to his mother but imagine if I had the things she would have said would have been not happy words. My friend turned from happy to very stiff and yes ma’am and no ma’am, it will never happen again ma’am …blah, blah, blah. I’m like dude you are thousands of miles away from this person, you have been trained to be war machine… hang up the phone she can’t get you … Did he hang up the phone? No he did not … he took that howler phone call until the last ten phennig (German coinage before he Euro) clicked away on the pay phone. The party was over for him … we trudged back to where we were sleeping and all of my drunken phone calls were made solo from then on. Well years later my mother went on a trip to Greece with her BFF since middle school. While she was on this trip my phone rang at like 3 a.m. My mother is on the phone She says, “Guess where I am?” I say, “You’re in Greece” She says, “I’m Drunk” to continue the connection She wasn’t drunk because it was very early in morning so she had probably just gotten up and was waiting for the shower in the hotel before beginning the day of the tour. However the connection of my, oh hey I’m thinking of you calls drunken state and all were remember and she made a phone call to me Probably would have been funnier if she was hammered standing near the Acropolis Hey boy I’m at the Acropolis and I’m drunk on Ouzo. But drunk of not we share something that my brothers and my mother don’t. I’m sure they know about the calls and were probably there for a few of them but I only really talked to my mother on those Hey I’m in Prague and I’m drunk, I’m at the Muse d’Orsay and I’m drunk We all connect to the people in our lives in a way that no one else ever does which amazes me that everyone wants to have the same experiences as everyone else but it’s the things that aren’t the same as everyone else that make them stand out. Oddly things are where they started with a grinding halt but this time its playing on the speakers as I’m typing …everything is coming to a grinding halt… no sound … no me… no people…no you … In other news… Wow that is complicated … so complicated that I can’t even begin to explain it . Still in other news… I’m off for the next week and plan on making this return to writing at least a weekly thing perhaps twice a week …we’ll see baby step. Yet still in other news… I’m at my desk and I’m about 4 pints in no phone calls today That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday Thank you for reading, please subscribe, you know if you are reading this on blogspot or on diaryland. If you are reading on face book well you are already subscribed. Aren’t you happy. Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood. Ciao, Gamer Tag: invisible don PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015