You've Been Caught In A Laugh Riot

Heavy metal comedy audition # 117

I just wanna begin by saying that it’s an honor to be here tonight at the Comedy Sack in Dubuque, where so many heavy metal comedy giants have graced the stage before me. I mean, wow. To think that right now I’m standing in the exact same spot where Chris Holmes, “Philthy” Phil Taylor and the really angry mustache dude from Mortician once busted guts? Amazing. Sensational. I can feel their aura of superb comic timing all around me, enveloping me like the folds of a warm va-jay-jay after a couple of Bacardi Breezes, thus fulfilling the two-drink minimum here at the Comedy Sack.  Thank you very much for having me. I’m just … wow. Okay, okay, I can see you’re eager for me to get this party started. 

Okay, okay, so I forget how this one goes, but it starts with, “Four white guys walk into a bar…” and the punch line is “Metallica.” I know, I know: You’re thinking, “What about Robert Trujillo? Isn’t he…?” Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But trust me, the joke is hilarious.  

Okay, Okay, here’s another one: That Norwegian black metal dude, you know, the chubby one, he comes up me and goes, “Are you gonna finish that?” But before I can even figure out what he’s talking about (it’s chocolate cake), I punch him right in the balls. We all got a huge fucking belly laugh out of that one. See what I did there? Belly laugh? No?  Fuuuuuck. Tough room, dude.

Okay, okay, okay. I can see you’re running out of patience here. What about that other black metal dude, the one with the assault record and the gay boyfriend? What?  Too soon? Too insensitive? I wasn’t gonna make a gay joke. Just a joke about, you know, butt sex.  I figure butt sex is hilarious no matter who’s doing it. I mean, right? 

Okay, okay, okay. So you’re one of those sensitive crust-punk types. You’ve got your homemade His Hero Is Gone patches sewn onto your fourth-hand Canadian military jacket, and I can see you’ve got Fido there on a rope. You’d probably get your panties in a bunch if I made a joke about showers or, like, soap. Especially dropping the soap in the shower. So I feel like my hands are tied here. Kinda like how you’ve got Fido on that rope. I feel like you’re jerking me around and giving me mange at the same time. 

Okay, okay. I didn’t mean that. I swear. I’m just nervous ‘cause I really want the gig, you know? Did you ever see that old SNL skit, the one with Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze, and they’re at Chippendales auditions? That’s how I feel right now—fat and sweaty and shirtless. Only I’m not dead like those guys are… oh, c’mon! Too soon again? Those dudes have been gone for years now, man! 

Okay, okay. You into grindcore?  Okay, what do you get when you cross a grindcore vocalist with, like, a pit bull?  Can you guess?  A pit bull that won’t shut up!  No? Seriously? Fuuuuck, dude. I mean, I know I’m not the next Rodney Dangerfield or anything, but this shit is gold. Okay, maybe not gold.  Oh, it’s like cobalt?  Comedy cobalt? That’s hilarious, dude.  Yeah, I mean, what do you need me for? Or anyone else for that matter?  You should do the whole show by yourself. Dick.

This bullshit originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of Decibel magazine. 

Like Ebony & Ivory (Only Much, Much Worse)

We thought the final nail had been driven into Metallica’s jewel-encrusted coffin a long time ago, but when they announced their forthcoming album collaboration with Lou Reed, it became clear that we’d need a bigger hammer. And a shitload of extra nails. Unfortunately, certain veteran thrashers have apparently caught the latest mental illness that Lars and the boys seem to be suffering from. It’s like syphilis in that it starts with an ill-advised coupling followed by a hasty exchange of fluids and ends in severe delusions, painful lesions, and sadness.

Slayer & Sade – (This Is) No Ordinary Reign

Emboldened by their successful collaboration with Ice T on the Judgment Night soundtrack, Kerry King and company up the ante by cutting an album with the ’80s R&B nightingale who purred America to sleep at night with ubiquitous hits like “Smooth Operator” and “The Sweetest Taboo.” The unholy deal was sealed when Tom Araya rang up the British-Nigerian songstress after hearing that she covered a Thin Lizzy song during one of her concerts earlier this year. As it turns out, Sade is a massive Slayer fan who thinks Seasons In The Abyss is the band’s finest hour. “I never understood why Reign In Blood is the one that everybody sweats,” she recently told Decibel. “I mean, ‘Dead Skin Mask’ is the fucking tits, am I wrong?”

Megadeth & Jackson Browne – So Far, So Good… Sew Buttons!

For once, MegaDave beats his old bandmates to the limp-wristed punch by finding someone even more lame to work with than Lou Reed. What started as a duet of “Running On Empty” –eventually discarded for the severely under-appreciated “Somebody’s Baby” from the Fast Times At Ridgemont High soundtrack—turned into a 78-minute full-length featuring a guest shot from Glenn Frey, 400 cases of red wine, and a long-lost piano track contributed by the estate of the late, great Warren Zevon. Suck on THAT, Lars!

Anthrax & Meat Loaf – Fistful Of Meatloaf

Though their work with Public Enemy on “Bring Tha Noize” resulted in one of the few rap-rock unions that doesn’t completely blow dead dogs for quarters, Anthrax never could leave well enough alone. Or pass up the opportunity to work with The Loaf, especially now that Scott Ian is having a kid with his daughter. (Meat Loaf’s daughter, that is—not his own daughter. That would be fucked up.) Unsurprisingly, the band’s collabo with the artist formerly known as Marvin Lee Aday on “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” is third-rate and tepid when compared to similarly bloated AOR hits covered by the rest of the Big Four. Plus, Joey Belladonna totally butchers all of Ellen Foley’s lines.

Testament & James Taylor – Live at Tanglewood (Bootleg)

Inspired and invigorated by one too many midnight viewings of Two-Lane Blacktop, Chuck Billy decided to find out just how boring a James Taylor concert could really be. The answer? Really, really fucking boring. And yet it didn’t stop him from getting shitfaced on wine spritzers and singing along to “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” with all the semi-retired investment bankers and their summer-cottage mistresses. Billy even braved the lactating throng of 60-year old dental hygienists to sneak backstage and meet Taylor in person. Their conversation—and impromptu renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and Testament’s “Return To Serenity”—were surreptitiously recorded by a member of Taylor’s road crew, who reportedly sold the mp3 files to “the Internet” for “big, big money.”

This bullshit originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.

Last In Line

May you live in interesting times

—Ancient Chinese curse

Laruss Trumbo pointed his binoculars out the window of his office on the 13^th floor and saw nothing but gray skies, empty streets, and fire. The first three plagues—blood, frogs and flies—had arrived according to schedule. He had been expecting the locusts since Thursday, but they had not materialized. He was not looking forward to the pestilence or the incurable boils. On top of this there was the slug problem: Giant, man-eating slugs.

He had been holed up in his office for nearly two weeks, living off of his personal stockpile of protein bars and the myriad foodstuffs he had managed to scavenge from the office cafeteria. As the massive carnivorous slugs trailed their hideous mucous across his beloved city, Trumbo read back issues of Everglades Enthusiast magazine and listened to Slayer’s Hell Awaits on repeat. He clung to the lingering hope that someone was still out there, and that that someone, whomever they might be, would rescue him before the incurable boils spread across his pasty flesh in hot carbuncles of purple, festering misery.

Laruss had not left his office since Monday, when in an attempt to make an end-run for the bathroom, he saw one of the slugs feeding on the inanimate corpse of his (former) co-worker Sawney Beane. Old Sawney’s eyeballs were rolled back in his head as if he were getting some perverse pleasure out of being slowly masticated by the gargantuan green mollusk while it secreted its viscid glaze all over what was left of his ruined forehead. Laruss couldn’t be sure if the slug had spotted him—or even if the repulsive creatures had eyes.

His last chance at freedom had come and gone when Lacey Underall had tried to pry open the revolving door for him just hours after the first plague struck. Somehow, she clambered over the heaving pile of co-workers clogging the building’s main entrance and made it outside. She stretched her thin arm back through the door in an attempt to hold a narrow opening for him, but the weight was too much. Her forearm snapped off below the elbow mere seconds before she was washed away in an ocean of blood.

Laruss felt in his pocket for Lacey’s Claddagh ring, which he had removed from her severed but still delicate hand. He remembered wistfully that the heart had been facing her fingertip. They had exchanged lingering glances in the elevator for months and even enjoyed a brief flirtation at the office Christmas party back in December. Of course, Laruss had never quite mustered up the courage to ask her out for a drink. And now… well, now it seemed like his window for relationship opportunities was closing fast. The inane prophecies of the sandwich-board crazies down on State Street had been shockingly accurate, right down to the self-aborting fetuses that now streaked the floors of St. Elizabeth’s maternity ward with a thick coat of gore.

It was Wednesday afternoon when the voice from the heating vent spoke to him. Laruss was stretched out on the floor, trying to sleep but really just sobbing softly to himself. At first, he thought he was hallucinating. His food reserves had become increasingly sparse, so he had been steeling himself for this phase of the starvation process. The voice began by whispering incoherently under its breath, punctuating each stream of gibberish with an exceptionally forceful “Look out!” Eventually, it addressed him directly.

“Trumboooooow,” the voice hissed. “Help us, Trumboooooow. You are the only one capable of making these adjustments.”

Laruss ignored the voice. There was no way this was actually happening to him in real life. Not like the blood and the flies and the… giant man-eating slugs. Okay, fine: “Leave me alone,” he ventured, covering his eyes with the crook of his arm. “Go away.”

“Don’t leave us here, Trumboooow. We need you.”

“No one needs me anymore,” Laruss sniffled. “Everybody’s dead.”

He turned to face the vent: “Who are you, anyway?”

“I think you know, Trumboooow.”

“No, I don’t,” he sighed, wiping away a tear. “I really don’t. Just tell me.”

“It’s Ronnie James.”

“Ronnie?”

Laruss yanked his trusty Leatherman out of his briefcase and unscrewed the grating from the wall. Once removed, he peered into infinite blackness. Slowly, he reached into the opening. “Hello? Ronnie?”

His arm followed, until it was in up to the shoulder. He grabbed fistfuls of stale air in every direction. “Ronnie?”

Laruss stuck his head through the opening, followed by the other arm. He couldn’t see an inch in front of his face. He heard a strange howling sound somewhere below him. And, like, a bass line. A very familiar bass line.

“Awww, look out!”

Laruss turned toward the sound and found himself upright in total darkness. He grasped for a handhold, but could find nothing. He wasn’t even sure if there was ground beneath his feet. “Ronnie?”

The white light that Laruss had suspected was coming finally came. It was small at first, but grew slowly as it approached. In it, he could make out a figure walking toward him, a small figure carrying what looked like a sword. Laruss reached into his pocket and felt for the Claddagh ring. It was still there. Calmly, he walked toward the light.

This bullshit originally appeared in the August 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.

Czech Out Time Is Now

In Brno, the streets run fluorescent yellow with last night’s drunken pee, those untold gallons of Red Bull & vodka hastily consumed and just as hastily evacuated, like God’s own water (40%abl) back when Noah built the Big Boat. By all indications, Brno is the Czech Republic’s version of a college town, and—according to the Internet and our trusty driver/tour manager/German translator Roland “I Make Zee Business Now” Bergner—the second-largest city in the country. Decibel is here because we’re rolling with Black Math Horseman on their triumphant 2010 US tour, rescheduled for 2011 due to last year’s Icelandic volcanothatcannotbenamed. Which makes it April 6, 2011, to be exact.

When we first pull up to the Melodka and eyeball the mural of cartoon hockey players on the façade and the gaggle of small children in actual hockey pads gunning down butts, Soviet style, out front, we’re convinced that the band would be playing a very large, very cold room with Plexiglass walls. As it turns out, the bottom floor of the Melodka is a hockey-themed diner, which is a phenomenon Decibel had never even contemplated in our wildest nightmares, much less encountered in real life. The upstairs bar/venue is separated from the diner by an excessively steep flight of stairs and a metal security gate that opens via electronic buzzer, pawnshop-style, by an especially bored-looking power-slag with magenta hair huffing roll-your-owns by the bar.

Outside, the poster for the show proclaims that Black Math Horseman play “in the style of Tool and Isis.” We all share a hearty group chuckle at that one, but Decibel secretly admires the promoter’s ability to do his job and be completely full of shit at the same time. Which pretty much sums up the dude’s entire work ethic when he turns up to greet us, all five-foot-nothing of him in a Baroness Blue Record t-shirt. But his English is way better than our Czech and he’s secured almost everything on the band’s rider, so his weasel-like nature goes largely ignored for the time being. He even pays BMH in advance, which turns out to be a tacit admission of just how totally fucking hammered and rip-roaring high he plans on getting later in the night.

Despite their absolutely terrible name, local openers Five Seconds To Leave turn out to be surprisingly awesome. And then Black Math play their finest show of the tour thus far while debuting the moody, apocalyptic visuals vocalist/bassist Sera Timms assembled for the band’s upcoming appearance at Roadburn. After the show, the promoter clinks his glass with a soup spoon and addresses the whole bar with a brief but triumphant speech in Czech that everyone seems to approve of. Later on, backstage and shitfaced, he tells Black Math they were better than when he saw Tool in Prague that one time.

And then the trouble starts.

At the beginning of the night, the promoter had handed Roland three sets of keys on pink plastic keychains, each to a room at a supposedly nearby hostel where the six of us—band, Decibel and Roland—were to stay that night. What he hadn’t done is told us how to get there. And by the time he finished slurring in two languages about how he could never listen to Tool again, he was in no shape to offer coherent directions to the Melodka’s bar, much less the hostel. So Roland does the natural thing and asks him to walk us there. But the promoter straight up refuses, says he’s too drunk and that it’s easy to get there, and that we just need to go up the block and take a right and a left and a right. Only he points left when he says right and points straight when he says left. By now it’s nearly 3AM and we’re out in front of the club. The promoter is surrounded by his boys, who are clearly wishing that the pesky Americans would piss off so they and their promoter friend can all keep pouring beers into their faces elsewhere. (As it turns out, some of the bars in Brno never close, ever.)

This is when Decibel decides to implement our time-honored behavior modification program in which we express—through nothing more than a calm tone of voice, the placing of hands firmly on the promoter’s slumped shoulders, and severely direct eye contact—that he really should walk us to the hostel, since we’re from out of town and all and he really wouldn’t want us to get lost and/or accosted by the local criminal element, would he? At which point our man finally relents, sloughing off into the Brno night with us while his shitty brosephs shout Czech epithets that none of us fail to understand.

So begins the long, brutally silent walk toward what we assume is the hostel. For a brief moment, it occurs to Decibel that our new friend might point us down a decidedly unfriendly alley in which we might be beaten, raped and relieved of our internal organs. But instead he leads us to a dingy hangover palace with no running water and a hooker bar on the bottom floor, the kind of steaming hot-sheet shit-hole that typically rents rooms in 15-minute blocks. And surprise, surprise: the keys he gave us actually work. We bed down fully clothed and armed to the teeth, humming “Sweet Chariot” until the Brno dawn finally consumes us.

This bullshit originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.

A Night At The Toolbox

Valdas Paskas was doing his usual Tuesday night thing down at the Toolbox in Pembroke Pines, watching the sailor boys dance and listening to Slayer. He sipped his cranberry-and-soda and contemplated the unnerving events of the past week: the mysterious hang-up calls from unlisted numbers; the unmarked Crown Vic idling across the street from his chalet at all hours; the sudden freezing of his money-market account at the credit union in Davie; the notion that, though he wasn’t getting any richer, he certainly didn’t seem to be getting any younger. Also, the general feeling of malaise and perpetual exhaustion that seemed to embrace him like the folds of a wet ham that was about to be nuked gray and served for dinner with a side of powered potatoes and a hot glass of Tang.

Yes, it was clear that the ex-wives were closing in on him.

Just the thought of them made Valdas push his cranberry-and-soda aside and think about ordering a vodka. He couldn’t even concentrate on the smooth adolescent lines of the gyrating daisy boys, so unpleasant was the notion that he might have to speak with one of the shrill sows he had once been married to. He desperately wanted to order a vodka. Just one shot to dull the fear, the shrieking, the feelings of helplessness. No, he would hold fast. He would remain strong. He would remember what his sponsor said: “You are attached to something in time and space. You are identifying with your body, your feelings, your thoughts, your thirst. Recite your mantra and the rest will all go by.”

Valdas’ sponsor had suggested the standard and ancient Buddhist mantra: Om mani padme hum. To recite it continuously, his sponsor said, would result in transcendence and ultimately enlightenment. Valdas had tried it, but the mantra didn’t work. He had devised his own mantra. Or rather, he had nicked it from Mike Tyson: Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Granted, it was wordier and more awkward to recite than Om mani padme hum, but it also had more modern relevance, Valdas felt. The words themselves were wiser and more useful. Plus, they were in English—not Valdas’ native language, but certainly his second tongue. It was true, too: Everybody did have a plan until they got punched in the face.

Fifteen years ago, Valdas had had a plan: To get famous, get rich, and retire to Florida with his trusty Thai pool boys, Tonto, Zorro, and the Lone Ranger. He had even made it to South Beach and lived with all three of them in extramarital bliss for a brief and fleeting period. Then the money ran out. Or was stolen from him, rather, via unscrupulous and mean-spirited litigation instigated by the ex-wives. They just couldn’t stand to see him happy. Especially Zoya, with her leopard-print stretch pants, yippy little dog and never-ending chain of lipstick-stained Virginia Slims. She was the most vindictive of them all. She had turned the screws on Valdas—hard. It was the only way she knew how to do anything: Negotiation by hammer. When they had met as teenagers back in Lithuania, she was already the most formidable hog-trader in the entire countryside. Her enthusiasm for hostile bartering was one of the qualities that first attracted Valdas to her. That, and her unstoppable ass. But now her ability to back any opponent into a corner with a withering sneer and a few choice words was being used against him. She was probably banging the lawyer, too.

The more Valdas pondered it, the more his situation seemed hopeless. He knew what Sid would say. Sid, his faithful companion and personal trainer: Wise beyond his years, however old he was, and Valdas had never been quite sure of that. But he knew what his friend would say, and it would be this: “Reality is on the other side of the visible.” Easy for Sid to say, Valdas frowned. On the surface, it was just another mantra. But like Iron Mike’s surprisingly astute observation, it had merit. It was possible, wasn’t it, that Valdas had not considered all of the potential options in his recent dealings with Zoya and the other ex-wives? Indeed, what guarantee did he have that all the relevant facts and angles could be understood strictly through the five senses?

At that moment, the sultry grind of the dancing boys regained its fleshy allure. Valdas couldn’t be a full one hundred percent positive, but he could just about swear that the blond one had winked at him. Finally he ordered a vodka and swallowed it down with a smile. Tomorrow, he would call Zoya with the bad news.

This bullshit originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.

Comets Are Born At Night

Everything will come in its time, inexorably.

- Victor Serge, The Case Of Comrade Tulayev, 1942

It was a frigid and unforgiving midnight in Petersburg. As he bombed down the Nevsky Prospekt on foot, Kiril licked the blood off his gauntlets and contemplated the evening’s activities. The concert had gone well, for the most part. That one citizen up front had been a relentless douche, but had received what was coming to him. Hence the blood on Kiril’s spikes. As he fortified himself against the winds screaming off the Neva, he made a mental note to have a sit-down with Kostia to remind his guitarist as firmly as possible that “practice” equals “rehearsal” and that Kostia should do all his practicing before rehearsal. The bridge section in “Flash-Frozen Steppes” needs to happen five times, not four. The open space in “Blaster, Berator” should be held for one beat longer. As Kiril saw it, this was strictly a case of behavior modification, but it should be accomplished swiftly and with as little moaning as possible.

But then what? How best to integrate his artistic desires with the vagaries of the cosmic unconsciousness? Kiril knew he needed to go bigger. And blacker, in the most metal of senses. Siberian Destiny’s corpsepaint designs were cutting-edge, obviously, but they were not the next-level shit that Kiril aspired to. Minds had not been blown. How to find the path among so many potential others twining through his psychic forest like snakes fleeing fire? He thought of Tunguska: the felled trees, the peat bogs, the aerial photographs destroyed by Yevgeny Krinov. The whole incident had been a cover-up, no doubt about that, but what had happened? And cui bono?

But he was derailing himself. How to ease the gnawing at his brain pan, the slow fissure in what he felt to be his soul? He knew he had to think in terms of the eternal present, in terms of enlightenment as freedom from attachment. He would have to breach and forsake established norms. He would have to transcend.

Stage armor had been briefly considered and hastily dismissed. Too cumbersome, too cliché, too readily compatible with swords and then too easily associated with battlefield reenactments. Perhaps something involving lasers? Garish and much too expensive, probably, but he felt he had stumbled upon a general direction: The transmutation of energy. In terms of pyro, KISS had done it first and arguably best. Financially, Siberian Destiny just couldn’t compete in any sort of meaningful fashion. An elaborate light show was too predictable and not entirely in step with the band’s carefully honed image of cold steel and icy darkness. But then... perhaps that was it!

A working snow machine could be had fairly cheaply on the black market. While he was at it, Kiril would secure a few other necessities, including mirrored pick-guards and several large fans. Yes, the next performance would surely be an unbridled success. The Petersburg winter would continue indoors to the glorious soundtrack of merciless post-Soviet black metal. Indeed, the Winter Palace would tremble to its very foundations. The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood would weep black lazurite tears of terror and distress. The Neva itself would vomit forth creatures of unknown origin and the barnacled corpses of ancient wars. In short, it would be totally fucking awesome.

He remembered the words of Victor Serge: “The human body is ugly, and if man has only his body, if thought is only a product of the body, how can it be anything but doubtful and inadequate?” It was true: Kiril’s dream was as vivid as it was implausible, but it was his own way of holding the world in his hands. And it provided crucial inspiration for the next phase of Siberian Destiny’s career. Kiril felt at one with the universe, secure in the knowledge that inspiration comes from within just as it does from without. Despite the icebound darkness through which he trundled, everything took on the rosy hue of unlimited success. The possibilities stretched to infinity in every direction. Kiril suspected that he was in love.

This bullshit originally appeared in the May 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.

Intervening Circumstances

Is it my turn to hold the talking pillow now? Great. Let me just suggest you take these next few moments to calm the fuck down already. Take a deep breath. Find your center, say your mantra, do whatever Ram Dass shit you need to do to pull it together. Because I think you’re gonna stroke out if you keep at it like this, Jeff. All this stuff you’re blabbering about, day in, day out—the black helicopters, the Philadelphia Experiment, the guitar-solo bonus disc from Formulas Fatal To The Flesh—nobody gives a shit, okay? You just sound like a crazy person when you talk like that. A crazy person with enormous pit stains and mustard on his shirt. Just change that thing, okay? We all know that Bolt Thrower is your favorite band. We’re your friends, remember?

Look, a wise man once said that human beings are completely unreliable because their entire DNA regenerates itself every few years. Makes sense, right? So why are you so surprised that Debbie split? Or do you think it could have something to do with, I don’t know, all this flying fucking saucer shit? Or the Morbid Angel bonus disc routine? Dude, that shit is not dinner music. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that before it sinks into that obscenely thick, greasy skull of yours. Also, you should think about washing your hair. That could be another reason right there. I mean, dude. Gross.

Another thing we should probably discuss: This house is not haunted, okay? No, no, let me finish—I have the talking pillow—I don’t care what Maud or anyone else told you. I know you think you heard a voice or something like that. Fine—voices. The place was built in 1933. It creaks, alright? You know this. Just forget whatever you heard about the little girl—the alleged little girl—who allegedly fell down the stairs in the ’50s and allegedly broke her neck. She wasn’t moaning. Or calling you for help. You had too much to drink, end of story. You know how you get when you do shots. And that other thing? That other thing was just Randy fucking with you. He was pressing your buttons, man. Yeah, yeah, I know: “Plausible deniability.” Whatever.

I think what it comes down to is, you watch too many of those conspiracy theory movies. All that shit about the Bilderbergers and fluoride and chemtrails is turning your brain into oatmeal. Okay, okay, so the shit about 9/11 is probably true. That’s one thing out of… too many, Jeff. And that’s my point, dude. You’re on overload. Unemployed and way over-stimulated. So, look, I cancelled the cable, alright? That’s step one in terms of getting things down to a dull roar around here. I don’t know what to do about the goddamn Internet though, buddy. Maud needs it for the email, and we can’t realistically expect to go all Chinese government on you with that one. So I’m just asking you to take it easy, okay? Go outside, get some fresh air. I don’t know; take up bird watching or some shit. Because honestly, I think I speak for all of us here when I say that you’re working our last nerve.

Okay, buddy. I’m gonna hand you the talking pillow in a second here so you can say your piece. I just want you to know that we’re all just trying to look out for you. We’re here to help, you know? Like, remember that time that Maud’s schnauzer—what was his name? Basil? Yeah, Sir Basil Rathbone—right. Remember when Sir Basil Rathbone fell into the pool and you were the only one who saw it happen and you ran over and saved him from drowning? That’s what we’re doing here. We’re trying to save you from drowning. We love you, man. We just wanna help you work through this. Together.

This bullshit originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of Decibel magazine.