Spike: Greatest Hits

Since my best blogging was done on Myspace, and a couple of years ago, I've decided to reprint some of what I thought, were my better ones.

You know Myspace right? It was what everyone used to use on the internet to waste time. You know, before Twitter and Facebook.

I'm hoping this will get me back in the practice of writing good blogs.

WARNING: They're all very long.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Worst Possible Decision (A Way Of Life)
For about 3 years, maybe it was two years, I lived with a guy named Dustin Everett. It was right out of college, and I had a job in Philly. I knew Dustin from my college radio station in Syracuse. I wouldn't say we were really friends in college, just knew each other. We did have one awesome night when we got in a car chase with the night guy of Hot 107.9, this kid named Marv Zimmerman. That wasn't the name he used on the air. He showed up at the radio station one night to kick my ass for some reason. Dustin showed up with a bat. It ended in the most retarded car chase of all time. I say this, because I didn't know who was chasing whom at any one point. I also didn't know what would happen if anyone caught anyone else. In any case, Dustin's a good guy. Anyone who would come and get into a car chase and possible battle with a tiny little top 40 DJ, for some guy he barely knew, is a swell guy. Or a guy looking for a fight.

Either way, Dustin and I agreed to become roomates when Dustin accepted his job in Princeton, New Jersey. Dustin agreed to an apartment without ever seeing it. This should have been a sign of things to come. The apartment was fine, this decision ended up being fine. But deciding to live in a place you've never seen with a guy you barely know is a bad decision. This was just the first of many. We developed a series of decisions that we liked to refer to as WPD, or for novices, The Worst Possible Decision.

WPD could be anything. Ordering buffalo wings? Get the hottest sauce and get too many. WPD. You meet a girl out at a cover band show who has a coke problem and goes by the name "Angel?" Date her. You want to go see Metallica, Korn, Kid Rock, Powerman 5000 and System Of A Down? Sure, there's a show 90 minutes away on a weekend, but the WPD would be to go to Boston on a weekday on no sleep and stay with a friend. This is the story of that very decision.

At the time, I was doing late nights at WYSP in Philadelphia. That shift is until 2am. On that Friday, we were going to see the very first Summer Sanitarium show of all time in Boston at Foxboro Stadium. The lineup was Metallica, Korn, Kid Rock, Powerman 5000 and System Of A Down. For us, a perfect line up. We would drive out early on Friday morning (I think Boston was 6 or 7 hours), and go right to the show. I would not sleep. I would get home from work, shower, pack and we'd go. We'd also be taking my then, horrible girlfriend Carolyn. Carolyn had some awful friend in Boston that she'd visit while we were at the show. Carolyn was an awful person, so I can only assume her friend was also awful. I'm not just being bitter, Carolyn was awful.

I did not sleep on the drive up. I even think I drove. I don't remember. What I do rememeber, is exactly what I was wearing. Let me paint this picture for you. First of all, at the time, I was a fat guy. Probably like 225-230. I had bleached hair, but it only looked good if I did it just right, this day, it was not done just right. I was wearing orange shorts, which was actually a bathing suit. I was wearing high top blue and grey Nike basketball sneakers, and a grey New Balance t shirt that said "Sponsored By No One." I'll get more into the look later on, because it got worse.

So we drop awful Carolyn off at her awful friend's house. Then we head to the stadium. Early. Dustin and I got to every single fucking show early. That's what you do when you're stupid and don't know any better. We were pissed off that Dustin's Metallica Club Tickets were in seats on the side, so we traded someone for seats on the ground, with no seats, just GA. Let me lay this out for you here, and what WPD means. This is a 10 hour concert in the middle of the Summer. WE GAVE UP SEATS TO NOT HAVE SEATS. We roll into the stadium and decide it's a good time for a Sam Adams. It's 100 degrees, I haven't slept, I haven't eaten, and now I'm drinking beer.

We venture to the grass. Only, it wasn't grass...

To protect the field in the stadium, they had covered the grass with hard white plastic. Hard plastic is the perfect material to make your stay at an all day, 100 degree concert the worst it can be. Want to sit on the ground and relax? No problem. Just be prepared for whatever skin that touches the plastic to be burnt away.

At this point, the red started.

See, when I'm hot, and I haven't slept, my face gets blotchy. Red and blotchy. Big fat guy, orange shorts, blue and grey sneakers, bleached hair. A big, fat fucking mess at Metallica. No sleep. Hot. Sweating. BAD.

So we casually watch SOAD from the back. Neither of us cared too much at the time, and I didn't think they were very good. We DID however, really like Powerman 5000. So we decided to go up front for them. Before we went up front, Dustin reminded me of the last time he saw Metallica. It was at a free show they did in Philly called the Million Decibel March. Dustin drove from Syracuse to Philly, by himself, without a ticket, and got in. Dustin lost his shoe pushing toward the front. I don't know if he ever got it back. How did he lose the shoe? We don't know. I do know that we bought a bootleg video of that show to try and find him and his shoe. No luck. About halfway through the video, the guy shooting it found two girls in bikini tops who were making out with each other and doing other things to each other. You know, other things. It was interesting.

So we're in the pit. We're doing fine. We're right up front. A giant football stadium, and we're right up front. KILLER. Moshing the day away. And then it happened. I saw a shoe fly up in the air. I look over, and I see Dustin. A look of panic. I start laughing. That was obviously his shoe. He lost his shoe again. Luckily, he recovered the shoe and finished the set unharmed. It was a successful first mosh of the day.

Through Kid Rock, the heat started to wear on us and the rest of the crowd. The only thing to buy down on the field to cool off was this lemon ice stuff, for like 7 bills. It was a cup of lemon Italian Ice, that got less and less "ice" as the day went on. By the end of the day it was like paying 7 dollars for luke warm melted lemon popcicle. It was disgusting. But at this point, it was a God send. It was all we had. We cherished the lemon ice.

By the time Korn came on (probably my favorite band at the time), I was gone. I was no longer living in the same reality as everyone else at the show. I'll remind you though, I was at a Metallica show, and though I love a Metallica show, it's full of some of the worst people in the world. Bad sunburns. Everyone's got a limp. Old drunk guys. Just the worst. So maybe it was BETTER to not be in their reality. In any case, I wasi n my own little world. All I could think about was destroying everyone during Korn. I was going to let loose all of my fat rage on everyone during this set.

I lost my mind. I remember Dustin pulling me aside and telling me that a couple of people have asked that he ask me to settle down. In the pit, during Korn, with 50,000 people, I was asked to settle down. I did not settle down. During their song "Faget," I think I lost my mind more than I've ever lost my mind. I don't remeber parts of the experience. I do remember however, that once Korn was done, I was done. I had nothing left. I hadn't slept, I don't think I had eaten, and it was 123 degrees that day. I didn't even want to stay for Metallica. We were not leaving though, Dustin is a much bigger Metallica fan than I am. He was in the Metallica club. Also, the worst possible decision would be to stay the entire time. So we did.

Metallica played for a minimum of 5 and a half hours that night. They played songs they had never played before. They played some songs three times. They did a couple of Violent Femmes covers, and then they did a whole spoken word part in the middle. They also shared some of their favorite quiche recipes. It was a long set. We stayed till the very end. But finally, it was over. The worst possible decision that we made, somehow, was over. Also, somehow, even though we stayed the whole time, we got our car out of there first, and we were on the road within minutes. Somehow, the WPD Gods were not going to punish us. Somehow, we were going to survive this one.

Or. Not.

We were staying with a friend of mine named Mike Traylor. Mike used to work with me at WYSP, but had gotten fired and was now working at WFNX in Boston. Traylor was a good dude, and insisted that we stay with him. He didn't mention that he didn't have anywhere for us to sleep. He didn't mention also that we had to help him move the next day. I'm not lying. This is why I prefer staying in hotels. Always. Fucking Traylor. This was only going to get worse. WPD was in full effect.

So we arrive, and somehow I launch into an argument that his station was silly to be playing DMX. It was a long argument. This was on no sleep. Dustin wanted to kill us. It never ended. If there's someone on this earth that's more stubborn than me, well, I know maybe someone or two in Chicago that are plenty stubborn, but Traylor was #1. Mike used to insist that only people from Texas knew how to drive drunk, and he was one of them. As I was saying, there was nowhere for us to sleep. I slept on a chair, and Dustin slept on a hardwood floor. And like I said, the next day, we were going to help him move. Poor Dustin, he didn't even know Traylor.

Mike insisted that moving would be a piece of cake, even though he had a lot of stuff, most of which not packed. It would be easy, because Mike had TONS of friends coming over to help. So we wake up to the phone ringing over and over again. All I'd hear was "dude, no problem." By the time I finally admitted to being awake, I found out that all of the "helpers" had bailed. So 3 people were moving his entire apartment. Me, Mike and Dustin. I wanted to kill him.

At some point, Dustin found crack cocaine in Traylor's bathroom, in chapstick. Mike had hid the crack in there when his father visited. I'm not lying. There was crack in there.

So we go to pick up the U Haul. Of course, they don't have a truck for him even though Mike had reserved one. That's U Haul's specialty. Somehow I imagine the U Haul reservation office looking like this... A guy, in a room, with a phone. No computer, no pen, no paper. Just pretending like he's taking down information, but not recording a thing, and just hoping it all works out for the best. So we wind up with a truck that's like 3 times the size we needed. It didn't go in reverse. It also didn't have brakes that worked properly. It was also a stick shift. It was 100 feet long if it was an inch. As we drove away, Dustin and I screamed out the window for someone to help us. No one helped. No one cared. I screamed at some guy outside of Newbury comics to help us. He did not help us. We didn't deserve help. We asked for this.

We began to move Traylor. He had shit stored everywhere. TV's in closets. Bikes. So many bikes. So many boxes of records. There was even a big huge TV that I refused to move. After Dustin and I had a huge TV moving mishap at our place, I swore to never ever move a giant TV again. So it was just Dustin, who was just an innocent victim, and Traylor. I directed traffic.

Mike owned several large farm animals, a 2 ton weight and a few fat people. We had to move all of it. Finally, I lost my mind again.

I walked down the street, and screamed at the top of my lungs. My fury had reached it's limit. It was reported to me that the following happened.

Traylor: What was that?

Dustin: That was Spike.

Traylor: What's he mad at?

Dustin: I'm pretty sure it's you.

So we had this big huge truck, way more huge than Mike had ordered, and it was full. Up and down, front to back, completely full. Completely filled by the three of us. It had taken all day. It was 7 or 8 o'clock as I remembered. This is when Mike dropped the bomb that he expected us to move it all into his new house that night. Up several flights of skinny stairs. HAHAHAHA. You must be kidding. You fucking moron. I hate you. You've ruined this trip. I'm going to fucking kill you. I was full of fury, full of rage. We were not moving this shit into the house. I called Carolyn that if I had to, we were instructing her to call us, and lie about a flood at her apartment. We would make pretend we were leaving to drive back to Philly. We would go stay with Caroyln and her awful friend. I'm sure this was going to put a crimp in Carolyn's cheating on me that weekend, but I needed an out.

Luckily, he decided against having us move the stuff in. "Should I just leave the U Haul with all my stuff out here? Will anyone steal it?" I don't care Traylor. I hope you die. Really. I can't believe you just made me do this. This must be pay back for something awful I did. I'm sorry I shoplifted when I was younger. I'm sorry I eat too much. I'm sorry that I made of Chris Sutton for smelling bad in grade school. Whatever it was, I was sorry for it.

We made up some story about having to leave early the next morning. We stayed at Traylor's new house, woke up early, and drove up. I think Dustin convinced me to not set fire to the U-Haul truck, which I definitely would have done.

We drove back, unfortunately not leaving Carolyn in Boston. She came back to Philly and made me pay for every other mistake I ever made. She was a human WPD. She's married I hear somewhere. The last name is now Lutz, and she lives in Boston. Poor fucking guy. He must have lied to a lot of people and is paying for a lot of sins. She likes being tied up and hit because she's a bad person with issues, not because she's fun. You'll find that out pal. You'll be sorry. She's only gonna get fatter too, she looked WAY better in college.

That was Summer Sanitarium in Boston. The first one ever, and the first in a series of several bad decisions Dustin and I made. If this one goes over well, maybe you'll get some other stories. Maybe you'll get "Black Label Society At John's." Maybe you'll get "Tesla at John's" or "Warrant At John's." Perhaps you'll wind up with the "Horrible Girlfriends We Dated." Or maybe "Cheesesteak Eating Contest." Or maybe "Working Together And Drinking Too Much Water One Day." Maybe I'll hit you with "Project Mayhem Night With #1, #2 and the Jens. The White One And The Asian One." Or maybe just "The Band." I look forward to it.

Good talk.