Toe Up

Look, I'm a flip-flop wearer. Call me a hippie or a parrothead if you must (that's what they call fans of Jimmy Buffet? Don't you think "Buffeteers" would be better? Oh my jesus- I have to tell you this other story. So I saw someone else's PT Cruiser the other day in downtown Franklin - that's a long story, too - and this is one of those Cruisers that's all dolled up with flames painted on it and shit. Its black and all the designs are painted in silver, like a PT Cruiser from the future that can fly and shoot lasers at the Chevy HHR. There were like little silver waves and little silver margaritas painted into the flames on the doors and in front of the windshield, which you didn't notice until you got up close. I naturally started looking around excitedly for the owner, wondering just what business Sammy Hagar had in downtown Franklin today. Then I saw it: totally out of place, scotch-taped to the inside of the back passenger window of this person's extravagant dune buggy, was a piece of computer paper with a clip-art salt shaker on it that read, "LOST: ONE SHAKER OF SALT. IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN."). I like knowing that at a moment's notice I can be barefoot. You can walk in grass and dip your feet in fountains, and get naked faster than you could if you were wearing shoes. And you just plain can't make flip-flops (which my dad calls "thongs" !?!) smell as bad as shoes.

Here's the thing though: you can't wear flip-flops when you go out to a place. They're chillin-on-the-block shoes. If you wear them to a restaurant or club, you'll get stepped on, pee will get on your feet, and you'll look stupid. Why do I know this? Because I got stuck without real shoes in a situation where I had to go out "dancing" with my sister and her friends! I didn't know we were going to do that! I would have planned ahead! And what happened? I broke my fucking toe on an invisible stair! (I also burned my thumb and hit my head REALLY hard on the Cruiser, but that shit was my own fault.)

Poot-Tang Cruisin', Part Two

Holy Damn if some mystic shit didn't go down last week! So 'member the late-night jam at Casey's? Let's take up where we left off...

"The Bleeder." At about four in the morning, Casey's next-door neighbor came over in a robe, but not to join the party. He just wanted to knock and let us know that when you rock the drums/guitar/Rhodes super group at that hour, you're rocking for everybody on the block. I told the dude that yeah, we knew that. I said, "Man, Dave Chappelle's MC-ing this joint, so its gravy." Dude totally called my bluff (how was I to know that Chappelle was actually spending the night at his house as we spoke?) and we called an abrupt ending to the proceedings, GNR-style.

Upon arriving home, it was discovered that Taytyme's smokes were AWOL. The poor guys had been orphaned at the scene of the cryme!

So several days later, Mason was still beating himself up for snoozing through the whole jam. He was all like, "All I'm sayin is that I would of landed a plane on that shit." He was out with one of Taytyme's spies when he got into kind of an admitty phase. "I killed a man with pills once," "I didn't visit my grandmother enough," that kind of shit. Then he breaks down at the bar, tears and all. "I saw Tay's smokes on the Rhodes and I said those are Tay's smokes don't smoke 'em I'll wait until I see him someday and give 'em to him but I ended up takin' one and then the next night I was out and I took another one but I knew they were Tay's and I was gonna give 'em back but then it was down to just one and it was the upside-down one, you know, the lucky one and you can't smoke a man's lucky smoke that's just wrong but it so happened that I did smoke it and oh fuck why did I do it oh shit oh shit oh damn..."

You know what happened? We put together a timeline and everything, and this is the truth, friends. At the exact moment that Mason's flame ignited the tobacco in my lucky smoke, my check engine light came on. I KNOW MAN, that is some freaky shit. Look you guys, just be careful in all your dealings with the occult. Remember how the Ouija board gave Alice Cooper alcoholism? I just hope to god that Goat Hawk knows what they're doing.

Poon-Tang Cruisin'

Shit! Don't tell anybody, but I totally hit Casey Sanders's car Saturday night. I smashed out one of his lights, but the 'Tang Cruiser came through unscathed. Fortunately for me, Casey was pretty tanked and I was able to convince him that I couldn't possibly have inflicted such damage considering angles and science. He became convinced that the cops had come by and billy-clubbed the light out to teach him a lesson (I don't know where he got that idea wink wink), and was on the verge of revolution when I suggested that we just head back to his place and play the verse of "The Bleeder" 400 times, or at least until I finished all his beer. You know what he said?

"Its Taytyme."