I’m sure they were only trying to do their best. But what in god’s name were my parents thinking. By the time I was 18 I had seen more of the sick and depraved than some men twice my age could ever hope to see. I can sit comfortably at the age of 27 knowing, that I’ve stood within the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah smacking and sodomizing vile flesh and taste testing the broad range of perversions that IS the totality of experience. It was some time in my 12th year that I boldly declared to my parents that I was to be a musician. I’m sure they were somewhat dismayed at the idea of their little boy moving into a vocation that had precious few opportunities for financial solvency. However it was far too late in the game to back down off of the “You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it.” trip. It wasn’t long before I was spending four or more nights a week at a local music venue. And despite everyone’s best efforts to shield me from the dark underbelly of world of live music, like a dog I managed to stuff my nose anywhere it smelled bad. And boy did the Cattle Club ever smell bad. To this day when I get a whiff of the sickening smell of sour beer and stale cigarette smoke I feel like I’m home. This lifestyle almost immediately became a detriment to my schooling. I found no reason to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I could wake up and go to school the next day when there were so many drugs to do and so many beers to drink. Perhaps this isn’t quite the proper mindset for a fourteen-year-old but given the opportunity I wouldn’t change a thing.

There are occasions, which have permanently etched themselves into my consciousness; Bare breasts and acid trips, fist fights and blowjobs, being hit on by grown gay men and oversexed straight women, breaking and entering and brush fires. In four short years I garnered a lifetime of experience. Some days I wonder what exactly my parent where thinking when I came home at four in the morning reeking of booze. What did they say to each other when I walked in the door obviously frying my ass off on acid? All I can say is that I’m truly fortunate that my parents raised me in the fashion they did. A child of lesser intelligence and a poorer grasp of what the world was really about would have ended up in jail and or spending the rest of their empty lives in a drug induced haze. As it is my teenage debauchery was just a phase which I grew out of much in the same fashion another child of my age may have grown out of playing with toys (something I’ve never grown out of). These days I rarely ever drink and the last time I took acid I was 20 and I spent the entire night in the fetal position on the floor. Many of the kids I knew who were pulling down straight A’s are now drunks or crack addicts. I suppose the moral of the story is to get your kids on drugs as soon as possible so they can get that shit out of their system.

I would be hard pressed to convey my favorite story of my Cattle Club years. But if you held my feet to the fire I could say that one of the most entertaining is a great little yarn involving the greatest bartender I’ve ever known, an ice pick and massive quantities of booze.

I’ve sat down at a an incalculable number of bars all over the world and been served by at least as many bartenders none of which have come close to holding a candle to my absolute favorite drink slinger. Keith was an amazing bartender. Two Parts philosopher, one part councilor, four parts preacher and three parts John Wayne. Adorned with an Abe Lincoln beard and thinning hair Keith dressed in a kind of hobo sheik that would never have worked on anyone else and almost didn’t work on him. I would often wonder if his closet was full of freshly washed plain black shirts riddled with holes and cut off black denim shorts or did he just wake up wearing the same clothes he wore all week neglecting the approval of a mirror as he walked out the door. Did he sleep wearing the same black All Stars with the sole desperately clinging on at the heel or did he buy new pairs and liberate the oppressed sole from the rest of the shoe so that his right foot could “breath”? Keith was a religious drinker. I don’t mean this in sense that he drank at the same time everyday or something benign like that. He viewed being an alcoholic as a religion. He would often make references to “the alcohol gods” as if he had velvet paintings over his bed and prayer candles emblazoned with their images. If upon pouring a drink a drop or two would hit the bar he would mumble some sort of incomprehensible prayer to him self and trace the sign of the cross over his chest. I have seen few Christians or Catholics with the kind of devotion that Keith held for the alcohol gods. And much like any good Christian if pressed you would be made aware how gravely serious he was about his beliefs. One night well after closing time Mac and I sat at the bar with our manager Jon drinking ourselves silly. At some point our conversation turned to those poor souls who could recite beer label credos from memory. Keith was quick to point out that he had spent some time in the navy where he had gained the ability to recite the Budweiser label in its entirety without error. I found this to be truly stunning. Not that he could recite the Budweiser that actually seemed perfectly characteristic. It was the fact that Keith had spent time in the Navy. It seemed almost implausible. As far as knew they didn’t have bars OR bartenders on naval ships. Jon scooped up a Budweiser and insisted that Keith prove himself to us. Keith tipped back his head in a state of rapture and spoke,

“This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to age and brew”.

Jon winced and turned the label to Keith. You could almost see his heart sink. Any committed alcoholic worth his weight in hops knows that it’s “brew” then “age” and not the other way around as Keith had stated. You could see that he was shamed and heart broken.

“I must pay penance”, he mumbled toward his shoes.

Being the malicious son of a bitch that he was Jon was more than happy to help and he would make sure that paying this penance was not easy because as anyone who has spent the night on a filthy bathroom floor knows the alcohol gods are vengeful and unforgiving. Jon stepped behind the bar, retrieved the largest glass he could find and proceeded to fill it with everything. I don’t mean that he mixed a few different beers in one glass. I mean that he put EVERY liquid that was behind that bar into a glass. Beer, mixers, hard alcohol, dishwater and more. Keith took the glass dropped to one knee, whispered a prayer to himself and drank the whole glass at once. Up until that point I had never seen Keith with so much as a buzz and now it was painfully obvious that not only was he buzzed but unequivocally drunk. Everything seemed to be just fine until I heard him say,

“You guys wanna see put an ice pick through my hand?”

Okay, this is not the kind of question that should be answer lightly. On one hand if you answer yes you could conceivably be held guilty of aiding an individual who is unquestionably inebriated in making a decision which could lead to injury or worse. On the other hand, when will someone ever offer this kind of performance for free again?

“Yes…Yes I DO want to see you put an ice pick through your hand.”

For all of us in attendance that night it seemed like an innocuous enough task. Sure! You just jam that fucker through your palm…Right? Well, apparently we were all wrong. With the point of the pick pressed into to the flesh of his palm Keith proceeded to slam the handle into the top of the bar in an attempt to drive the metal rod through his hand. He didn’t seem to have much trouble getting it through the palm of his hand. It was the flesh on the top of his hand, which was proving to be more resistant to puncture. Because of this the pick coming through the opposite side of his hand was creating a kind of flesh tent on the top of his hand. Unwilling to relent Keith continued to twist and push the handle of the ice pick occasionally swearing and turning his head to me with a look that expressed absolute disbelief that the flesh of his hand was putting up such a fight. Eventually, fed up with his vain attempt he grabbed a lime knife looked up at me and chuckled,

“Why didn’t I think of this sooner?!”

Jeez I don’t know. Everybody knows that when you’re trying to mutilate yourself with an ice pick you should always cut a slit in the top of you hand first. They teach you THAT shit in grade school. In seconds it was over and Keith spent the rest of the night with that ice pick sticking right through his hand as if it was the coolest body modification a middle aged hipster could ask for. After a few more hours it was obvious that we should leave before someone could offer to drive something metal through his scrotum. As we were walking out the door I turned around and saw Keith hunched over the bar furiously scribbling onto a cocktail napkin. Contrary to my better judgment I asked,

“What are you doing?”

Without looking up he replied,

“No big deal. I just figured out infinity that’s all”.

“Oh” I said,

“Is that all?”

Invariably throughout ones life you will cross paths with individuals who’s very being could not have been scripted any better than if they had been created lock and stock by the most creative script writers the world has to offer. I have been fortunate enough to intersect with said persons on a regular basis in the course of my life. One such character was Stuart Richardson the Third. It seemed that from childhood Stuart was destined to be of the colorful variety. Perhaps, had he been allowed to keep his birth name which happened to be the decidedly bland Todd he may have been a less interesting character. However, as fate would have it he would have an entirely different destiny. It would happen that in his fifth year just as young Todd Richardson was begin to cultivate a stronger sense of self just as any child would do that death would intervene. Upon the death of Todd’s grandfather Stuart Richardson the First his parents, caught in the rapture of a sudden fit of irreparable sentimentality thought it best to carry on the family name. Rather than waiting until they brought forth a second son, (which they managed to do a few years later in Kyle Richardson) they chose to erase young Todd’s identity and begin anew.

“Your grandfather has died. Secondly you shall hence for be known as Stuart Richardson the Third.”

Granted this is some fairy heavy shit to lay on a five year old, however in the grand scheme of things I am sure that this event had no more damage on Stuarts psyche than any number of parental debacles which we all must endure as humans as a matter of course.

I met Stu in high school. It was at this point in his life when he began to sew the seeds of an interesting and sometimes entertaining internal dichotomy. It would seem that Stu was beginning to have a hard time marrying his fascination of lower class culture and his inarguable upper class up bringing. Perhaps this is why Stu was drawn to me. I could often glimpse a deep and unexplainable longing in his eyes whenever he came to my house and was presented without fail at least one dilapidated car in the driveway which did not run and which no one had the desire to make do so. I would listen as he spoke wistfully about someday renting a house with a car sitting on blocks in a dead and oil soaked front lawn, of filthy shirtless children running about unchecked and being looked down at by the neighbors. However, regardless of his deep infatuation with white trash ethos he still held strong allegiance to his parents who had reworked his identity for him so many years ago. He focused his attention to fine art of mechanichry of which his father hardily encouraged him. I’m sure assuming that it would be something that an adult Stuart would do with his time off from his well paid and secure state job which would offer him vast amounts of expendable income. Unfortunately for Stuart the Second this preoccupation would soon grow to be an obsession and a steadfast part of young Stuies identity.

When Stu wasn’t working on his cars we were going to see punk shows, drinking and smoking ungodly amounts of marijuana. In hindsight I find it incredible that were not arrested on a more regular basis. Even when Stuart wasn’t getting himself into situations which were unequivocally illegal he was finding his way into incidents which were amazing and often downright bizarre. Fortunately for my catalog of life experiences from which to write about I was there on more than a few occasions either watching mouth agape or actively participating.

More often than not while we were in high school the situations Stu found himself in were pertaining to the procurement of women and the hard fought battle to attain intercourse. There was not much within the bounds of minimal good taste that Stu wasn’t willing to do to get laid. Perhaps it the way in which he persistently requested a “Suckjob” or the frequency with which he pushed drinks on his victims in hopes to lubricate the path to intercourse which often left the young lady becoming “too drunk to fuck”. Regardless it would seem that he didn’t start getting enough of what he desperately desired until he stopped trying so desperately to make it happen.

One occasion which I found then to be endlessly amusing took place the night of a high school dance. Stu had managed to secure himself a date as had I so we chose to go together. His excitement was quite simply uncontainable and it radiated around him. Truth be told was quite happy for him and it seemed that his consistent badgering of the farer sex had paid off in a date with a lovely young lady. As we prepared ourselves for the evening I was at some points quite certain that Stu would burst with anticipation. He vigorously applied copious quantities of deodorant from armpit to elbow as he endlessly and nervously rambled on in regards to this young lady’s unequaled beauty and unmistakable desire “to fuck”. Once Stu had dressed himself in the finest threads a thrift store would allow he straightened his bow tie, slammed a couple of beers to sooth his jangled nerves and announced that he was quite ready to pick up his charge for the evening.

It was decided that we would pick up his date first. As I drove us to the girls house Stu continued to make the case that THIS girl was the ONE. Frequently turning to me with a devilish grin to tell me that, “she’s gonna get it!” Frankly I was starting to believe it. We stopped on the street in front her house. Stu grabbed the rear view mirror with a complete lack of grace and pushed around his grease soaked hair. I lit a cigarette and Stu was out the door. He was half way up the walkway before I could even begin to offer some advice on the way to go about greeting his date. After my first cigarette I got out of the car and lit another logically assuming he was inside meeting the girl’s horrified parents. I shivered as I imagined the terror I would undoubtedly feel if I were a father and some young greasy punk reeking of cheap booze and cheaper cigarettes came to take my little girl away from me with the obvious intention of relentlessly violating her.

Just as I began to shake my waking nightmare Stu came walking back down the walkway, alone. It looked as if he had been hit by a truck. In a matter of a few moments his entire demeanor had taken a three-sixty. The girls father, I rationalized had doubtlessly forbidden her to go any where with this primate. I felt a huge wave of sorrow for Stuart and of relief for the young girl which had unknowingly dodged the flesh bullet. As he walked toward me Stu held up a piece of paper. Flabbergasted he looked me in the eye and said, “She killed herself!”

I grabbed the paper from his hands and proceeded to read the poor young girls last words.

“Just my fucking luck” Stu said as he lit a smoke and leaned against the car, “I find one that wants to fuck and she goes and fucking kills herself.”

I looked up from the note and gave him the look I reserve for guys that ask me if I’d like to have sex with a baby.

“What!?”

According to the note it seemed as if the girl just could not go on any longer. It appeared sincere enough but just as I began to ponder the odd concept of leaving a suicide note to your homecoming date I got to the part where she informed Stu that unfortunately, she was not going to be able to attend the dance with him as she was planning to be deceased.

Stu spent the rest of the evening drinking massive quantities of Natural Ice and regaling anyone who would listen with his tale of woe.

Unsurprisingly we later found that the young lady who had ended her life so early was not only very much alive but apparently quite well adjusted. Well, just maladjusted enough to break off a date by feigning suicide.

I’ve already told this story to quite a few times but now that I have the intraweb on my side I’ll never have to tell it again.

“Look it up on my blog…Jerk.”

The Background: In October The Helpermonkeys went on our first full scale tour. 30 some odd shows in thirty some odd days. Needless to say it was fucking amazing. It just so happened that my birthday fell somewhere in the middle of our tour and because I have awesome friends my roommate offered to book us a hotel whenever we wanted as a birthday present. This is fucking invaluable when you’ve been crashing in “stanky-ass” punk houses for a few days.

The Story: So it was our first day back in the states from Canada. We played in St. Cloud Minnesota. It was a great show and the kids were helpful, amazing, and grateful for the bands they were getting in their fairly small town. We met Ben and his wife who had put together an amazing co-op style venue which was not only a place for kids to see shows but also a safe place to hang out, play video games and even go thrift shopping. Aside from being a great host and soundguy Ben had told us he could hook us up with some pot. It had been a few days since our last smoke so this was greatly appreciated. By the end of the night it was apparent that we wouldn’t be able to find a place to crash so I put in a call to my roommate.
“Hey dude, this is Jaz we cant find a place to crash tonight so it would be awesome if you could book that hotel room for us.”
“Sure dude, let me call you back.”
A few minutes later.
“Hey dude, all the rooms were booked at the Motel Sicks So I had to book you a room at the Best Western. They were pretty well booked up too so the room might be kinda crappy.”
“Hey man, a bed and a shower is more than we’ve had in few days so whatever it is we’ll be happy.”
Instinctively we cruise over to the crappy looking Best Western down the street where we find out we have no room booked in our name.
“Oookay I guess we’ll try that fancy looking one down by the club.”
We pull into the parking lot of the “fancy” Best Western and that’s when we realize that this is the hotel where that godawful excuse for a band “A Simple Plan” is stayin for three days till they play their huge arena show. The huge tour bus is parked right in front and even more nauseating than that is the Scion they’ve got parked next to the bus which is totally plastered with there faces and pictures of the newest and most technologically advanced Nokia cell phones on the market. If that’s not what punk rock is all about I don’t know what is.
I head into the office to claim our room and come to find out that we did NOT have a crappy room at all. That sneaky son-of-a-bitch had booked us a 2 story, 4 bed suite. Now, had that been the coolest thing that happened all night we would have been fucking stoked…..But, it only got better from there. We grabbed our bags and went to our room. Craig and Jeff hit the showers and Mac and I thought it best to hit the bar and have some drinks….Like gentlemen. On the way down to the bar Mac turns to me and makes a brilliant point.
“Ya know, I bet they don’t get alot of ‘rockers’ in this hotel. Just watch, they’re gonna think we’re A Simple Plan.”
HHhhmmmm
The bar is pretty much dead. A few glassy eyed traveling execs but certainly no “rockers”. Mac and I sit down and order two whiskeys. The bartender was disarmingly friendly. Usually, our “look” doesn’t exactly garner that kind of service in a “normal” bar. What in definitely doesnt do is get us free drinks but this night it did. A few moments after buying our first round of shots our friendly bartender brings out another round and places the bottle between the two of us. At this point Mac and I looked at eachother knowing full well what was going on. So we sat there a while smoking, drinking and reveling in our new found “star status”. Were working our way toward a nice healthy buzz when the bartender comes back over with two giant beers.
“Hey guys I just ‘accidentally’ poured these, you want em?”
You learn real quick to NEVER say no to anything free on tour. So we accepted the offer from our gracious if not slightly confused host. As we chatted with the bartender Mac, ever so subtly dropped the hint that he might be hungy.
“Well the kitchen’s closed, but Ill see what I can do for you guys.”
This is TOO fucking good.
About this time Jeff made his way down to the bar and was made aware of the con we had somewhat unwittingly stumbled into. Expecting some peanuts and pretzels we knew without a doubt what and who he thought we were when the food came out. A stunning spread (considering the kitchen was closed). A bread bowl with spinach dip, vegetables, a huge plate of nachos, oh and pretzels. More food than we had eaten in the last 3 days. Ben, his wife and a few of there friends showed up and were briefed on the situation.
“Help yourself to some dip.”
I then realized we could ride this fucking gravy-train all night if we played our cards right. I borrowed Jeff’s cell phone and stepped out of the bar for a moment. We couldn’t keep this all for ourselves. I needed to contact the two bands we were on tour with and get them down there ASAP. In the few moments I was out Mac blew our cover.
It went something like this…

Bartender: So, does it cost alot to drive that big tour bus around?

Mac: Uhh, actually….. That’s not us. Were in that little van over there.

The bartender surveys the veritable buffet he had laid before us, the empty pint glasses, the bottle of whiskey and walks away. Mere moment later he steps back over to us and curtly informs us that its last call and he needed to get out of there. The gravy train had been derailed. However, making our way back to our fucking suite drunk and full I couldn’t complain…..Much.

Upon returning to our room Mac was schooled in the fine art of lying.

“Actually… I have no idea how much it costs to keep that bus on the road. Our tour manager handles all that.”