so...
like all convoluted stories with a high yield of irony and not much else - and in order to avoid confusion, as this is indeed a linear tale... i'll start at the beginning.
in early february... on a tuesday, i left my house and headed out for a show in atlanta. of all the people heading out from bham to play this particular show, i was the only one NOT staying in a hotel. i had taken tuesday off, but had to be at the law firm by 8am on wednesday.
some details: i was travelling in my car to play a show with my friend jesse payne's band at the "ten high" in atlanta. ok.
so... first things first. i have to pick up our drummer's wife and deliver her to him. mita, our drummer's wife was in the midst of her birthday celebrations and wanted to stay in atlanta. her husband (anthony) was at work in anniston. the idea was... jesse and (then guitarist) clint were going to leave out earlier in the afternoon for atlanta.
i was going to pick up mita (the drummer's wife) at their house, and she was going to hitch a ride with me to anniston, where we would meet anthony... and i would follow them to the venue.. being that i dunno shit and don't want to know shit about the megapolis that is metro-atlanta.
seems like a simple prospect right? well... as i approached mita's house to pick her up, i called her on my cell and said i was a few mins away. when i got there she was gathering her night bag, clothes, etc. i hung out in the kitchen for about 30 seconds. loitered in the computer room for about 60 seconds. then i helped her gather her stuff and we left.
about 30 mins later we arrived at the pre-determined gas station in anniston, just off of the interstate. we move mita's stuff from my trunk to anthony's trunk. knowing that i needed gas, i pulled up to the pump. i went inside the store, got gas and a choc milk.
upon returning to the car, anthony mentioned that he had my home number, but not my cell. so i reached in to grab my cell so that i could get their cell number as well.
hmmm. where the hell is my phone? gone. LGF.
not in the car that i could see - so, we called the number. i knew i had brought my phone, because i had called mita three blocks from their house.
it MUST have been left at her house right? stuck somewhere in the car? "we'll see."
so...
i didn't sweat it much. i'm not addicted to my cell phone. i can handle it. the true signs that i'm a "user"... denial.
so we play the show at ten high... later on, i search the car again, and then searched more the next day. nada. anthony and mita looked everywhere at their house, in the yard etc. i called the gas station and nobody ever answered.
nothing. the phone simply de-materialized like those mythical mahesh yogi's in india. perhaps it re-animated somewhere in belize. hell if i know.
luckily i had a $150 rebate from sprint waiting. i got a new, sexy, posh phone that actually records audio.
fine.
after the rebate, it's only $100.
(intermission)
so now lets lurch forward in time to this past saturday evening. once again i had travelled to atlanta to play yet another show at the ten high club. i hadn't been to atlanta since the last ten high show. why? because with the exception of it's music stores, atlanta blows.
the weather as you remember, was very nice. the soundcheck went well, and even though i didn't speak the first word to the other two "velvet revolver" type bands, everyone was fairly civil.
this brings us to the pre-show dinner. after spending a few minutes cutting songs from our already short set, we embarked on some food and beer. well actually jesse and brian didn't eat, but anthony (the drummer) and i decided to go ahead and eat. anthony had chicken fingers w/ fries and i had the jerk chicken roll up.
it was yummy.
after playing an incredibly, almost impossibly short set, i had my gear outside and ready to load within 60 seconds of hitting the last note. i was in a mega-hurry.
why?
a) don't like atlanta
b) don't like the bands we were playing with
c) wanted to see if it was humanly possible to get back to the nick in birmingham to see my favorite bham band "through the sparks." their set was to start around midnight. i even called jody nelson, the singer, to insinuate that they should start as late as possible. he was planning on doing that anyway.
anthony also wanted to leave asap, so i rode with him back to bham.
along the way we talked about classic rock, why it sucks that music production peaked 13 years ago, and how it was funny that the band garbage is edgier than nin.
we also discussed the odd "co-relation" between 80's hair metal and post-hardcore / emo. the moral of that story was... if your particular brand of splintered post-rock music requires a "hair-cut" in order to be carried out properly, your genre probably sucks ass.
here's where the "fear and loathing in alabama" part kicks in...
somewhere around heflin anthony got quiet. i figured he was just tired. nope. he was silently getting green-puky sick.
the only warning i got was something like...
"man, i'm not feeling too good."
he then proceeded to bring a firebird traveling 80 miles an hour to a complete stop in about 6 seconds.
he made it out of the car and nearly managed to close the door when the eruption occured.
LOTZA PUKE.
he then made his way over to the side of the road and finished the delivery somewhere in the bushes. it's about 11pm 'bama time at this point.
i sat there for a minute thinking - "damn, i'm glad i didn't have the chicken fingers."
then the altruism gene kicked in and i got out of the car as a gesture that conveyed... "dude, i'll drive if you wanna chill for a while."
but he of course felt much better after he blew chunks. while he was recovering i took advantage of my gender and relieved myself on something belonging to the talladega national forest.
we got back in the car, he seemed alright and we managed to pull up in his driveway at around 11:55pm. we rehearse at his house and always meet there before out of town shows...
i was elated that i would be able to see most of the set by "through the sparks" at the nick.
as i'm gathering up my man-bag, and my book, etc... i make sure to grab my keys and cell phone.
hmmm. "where the f&*k is my cell phone!!"
now this had me completely thrown. i had sent a text message somewhere around the state line. the phone made it to the car, i knew that much. no big deal... "anthony... call my cell."
i knew i had a full charge and my ringtone of "moving in stereo" was on 8/vibrate.
nothing.
shit.
whatever... anthony had a drum kit to unload, and likely the contents of his stomach in a few hours, so i didn't get silly about it. if it was there, it would still be there in the morning.
so i went to the show at the nick, hung out for a bit, and then went by my office to call jesse and see if they were on the road yet. it was becoming clear that more had been left on the roadside than some funky chicken chunks.
i called and emailed jesse and asked for anthony's cell, and i left a message saying basically... hey, when you guys get to heflin, tell me what the mile marker is, etc. ...but he had his phone off.
sunday morning i called anthony and he was still in a bad way - still sick. he made it out to the car and searched all over. no phone.
somehow i had managed to drop it, most likely at the puke-stop.
i knew why. my default "rock show" jeans have a hole in the back left pocket. i think i had been tinkering with my phone when anthony hit the brakes. being distracted upon exiting the car, i must have put the phone in the faulty pocket.
my mother always said i was pretty, she never mentioned a word about me being all that bright.
realizing the enormous co-inky-dink of me losing two phones during two trips to the same club... i decided i would undertake the task of finding my phone somewhere on the side of i-20, somewhere near heflin. ...if only to taunt the powers that be...
now luckily anthony and me were pretty alert and stone sober. i had remembered that the road curved slightly to the right. and that there was cut grass, a 3 foot ditch and fresh mulch at the location.
anthony, who works in anniston and is a surveyer, remembered and was confident, that the stop had ocurred somewhere after the heflin exit, and before the 431 exit. and that likely it was after the first un-marked overpass. that narrowed it down to about 5 miles of hwy.
not bad for a guy who was tinkering with a phone, and a guy who was desperate to find a place to stop. around noonish on sunday i set out on the search to find the phone...
i decided to take my mom along as another set of eyes and we headed toward the heflin exit. it takes around an hour to get there from east bham.
as i was squeezing my brain for any detail i could think of, i remembered that anthony had mentioned that when he was looking for a place to stop, he found a gap in the guard rail. and of course when he stopped, he defaced the pavement beside the road.
evidence.
where there's puke, there's phone.
we initially stopped at a place that looked right (at least in daylight) but we hadn't yet come far enough back toward bham to have passed the "unmarked overpass" that anthony had mentioned. i wanted to narrow down the search area to the smallest possible. after looking for a few mins at the first spot, we continued on until we had just passed the overpass.
then i noticed the road was curving slightly. at first i didn't think about stopping because the only break in the guard rail was about 40 feet. anthony had managed to park in between. 80-0 with tight precision. a good driver to say the least.
at first, trolling along in the emergency lane, i didn't notice anything, although the trees looked right. and of course, we are looking for signs of puke...
i had mentioned to my mom that she wasn't just looking for a little petite puddle of sorority girl gurgle-up. she was scoping for an explosive artifact.
it was going to look more like an eruption than a spill.
a few seconds later she tells me to "back-up! i just saw something yellow!!"
sweet. "yellow. that's a good sign."
i back-up and then zero in on the area. sure enough... a pile of semi-evaporated-poorly-prepped-fried-chicken-puke.
OMG. anthony must have lost his spleen. lotta yellow matter.
so...
i walk up parrallel to the puke. turn right and face the ditch. i walk to my exact location in context of where we had parked.
...looked down, and picked up my cell phone.
it still had almost a full charge and i had 1 new voicemail.
the voice mail was from me...
the moral of this story is :
WHEN THE COSMOS TAKES A SWING AT YOU, SWING BACK
now granted, if anthony hadn't have puked, i would never have gotten out of the car and thus, my cell would have probably stayed in my bag.
and because he puked, he left some evidence.
but i see also, the variables at play here and this is where i find the beauty in the puke story:
we had good weather. no rain. low humidity. a very good, almost psychic memory of everything surrounding the stop... a stop that lasted 90 seconds in the dark with constant oncoming traffic.
the phone fell in the grass not in the road. anthony (luckily for me) didn't have time to puke in the woods. he had no choice but to leave a shining beacon on the clean pavement. rain, or all of the puke being in the woods, would have left me with no "landmark."
if any of these factors had been different, i either would never have found the phone OR if i did manage to find it, it would have been destroyed.
karma people. cosmic luck. i'm swimming in it. at least for a while... until the karmic backlash comes. and beleive me, i'm watching my back. considering i had no insurance on it, and no recovery option on my plan, i would have been out about $250-$300.
but alas, i wasn't
SHAWN 1 / COSMOS 0.
like all convoluted stories with a high yield of irony and not much else - and in order to avoid confusion, as this is indeed a linear tale... i'll start at the beginning.
in early february... on a tuesday, i left my house and headed out for a show in atlanta. of all the people heading out from bham to play this particular show, i was the only one NOT staying in a hotel. i had taken tuesday off, but had to be at the law firm by 8am on wednesday.
some details: i was travelling in my car to play a show with my friend jesse payne's band at the "ten high" in atlanta. ok.
so... first things first. i have to pick up our drummer's wife and deliver her to him. mita, our drummer's wife was in the midst of her birthday celebrations and wanted to stay in atlanta. her husband (anthony) was at work in anniston. the idea was... jesse and (then guitarist) clint were going to leave out earlier in the afternoon for atlanta.
i was going to pick up mita (the drummer's wife) at their house, and she was going to hitch a ride with me to anniston, where we would meet anthony... and i would follow them to the venue.. being that i dunno shit and don't want to know shit about the megapolis that is metro-atlanta.
seems like a simple prospect right? well... as i approached mita's house to pick her up, i called her on my cell and said i was a few mins away. when i got there she was gathering her night bag, clothes, etc. i hung out in the kitchen for about 30 seconds. loitered in the computer room for about 60 seconds. then i helped her gather her stuff and we left.
about 30 mins later we arrived at the pre-determined gas station in anniston, just off of the interstate. we move mita's stuff from my trunk to anthony's trunk. knowing that i needed gas, i pulled up to the pump. i went inside the store, got gas and a choc milk.
upon returning to the car, anthony mentioned that he had my home number, but not my cell. so i reached in to grab my cell so that i could get their cell number as well.
hmmm. where the hell is my phone? gone. LGF.
not in the car that i could see - so, we called the number. i knew i had brought my phone, because i had called mita three blocks from their house.
it MUST have been left at her house right? stuck somewhere in the car? "we'll see."
so...
i didn't sweat it much. i'm not addicted to my cell phone. i can handle it. the true signs that i'm a "user"... denial.
so we play the show at ten high... later on, i search the car again, and then searched more the next day. nada. anthony and mita looked everywhere at their house, in the yard etc. i called the gas station and nobody ever answered.
nothing. the phone simply de-materialized like those mythical mahesh yogi's in india. perhaps it re-animated somewhere in belize. hell if i know.
luckily i had a $150 rebate from sprint waiting. i got a new, sexy, posh phone that actually records audio.
fine.
after the rebate, it's only $100.
(intermission)
so now lets lurch forward in time to this past saturday evening. once again i had travelled to atlanta to play yet another show at the ten high club. i hadn't been to atlanta since the last ten high show. why? because with the exception of it's music stores, atlanta blows.
the weather as you remember, was very nice. the soundcheck went well, and even though i didn't speak the first word to the other two "velvet revolver" type bands, everyone was fairly civil.
this brings us to the pre-show dinner. after spending a few minutes cutting songs from our already short set, we embarked on some food and beer. well actually jesse and brian didn't eat, but anthony (the drummer) and i decided to go ahead and eat. anthony had chicken fingers w/ fries and i had the jerk chicken roll up.
it was yummy.
after playing an incredibly, almost impossibly short set, i had my gear outside and ready to load within 60 seconds of hitting the last note. i was in a mega-hurry.
why?
a) don't like atlanta
b) don't like the bands we were playing with
c) wanted to see if it was humanly possible to get back to the nick in birmingham to see my favorite bham band "through the sparks." their set was to start around midnight. i even called jody nelson, the singer, to insinuate that they should start as late as possible. he was planning on doing that anyway.
anthony also wanted to leave asap, so i rode with him back to bham.
along the way we talked about classic rock, why it sucks that music production peaked 13 years ago, and how it was funny that the band garbage is edgier than nin.
we also discussed the odd "co-relation" between 80's hair metal and post-hardcore / emo. the moral of that story was... if your particular brand of splintered post-rock music requires a "hair-cut" in order to be carried out properly, your genre probably sucks ass.
here's where the "fear and loathing in alabama" part kicks in...
somewhere around heflin anthony got quiet. i figured he was just tired. nope. he was silently getting green-puky sick.
the only warning i got was something like...
"man, i'm not feeling too good."
he then proceeded to bring a firebird traveling 80 miles an hour to a complete stop in about 6 seconds.
he made it out of the car and nearly managed to close the door when the eruption occured.
LOTZA PUKE.
he then made his way over to the side of the road and finished the delivery somewhere in the bushes. it's about 11pm 'bama time at this point.
i sat there for a minute thinking - "damn, i'm glad i didn't have the chicken fingers."
then the altruism gene kicked in and i got out of the car as a gesture that conveyed... "dude, i'll drive if you wanna chill for a while."
but he of course felt much better after he blew chunks. while he was recovering i took advantage of my gender and relieved myself on something belonging to the talladega national forest.
we got back in the car, he seemed alright and we managed to pull up in his driveway at around 11:55pm. we rehearse at his house and always meet there before out of town shows...
i was elated that i would be able to see most of the set by "through the sparks" at the nick.
as i'm gathering up my man-bag, and my book, etc... i make sure to grab my keys and cell phone.
hmmm. "where the f&*k is my cell phone!!"
now this had me completely thrown. i had sent a text message somewhere around the state line. the phone made it to the car, i knew that much. no big deal... "anthony... call my cell."
i knew i had a full charge and my ringtone of "moving in stereo" was on 8/vibrate.
nothing.
shit.
whatever... anthony had a drum kit to unload, and likely the contents of his stomach in a few hours, so i didn't get silly about it. if it was there, it would still be there in the morning.
so i went to the show at the nick, hung out for a bit, and then went by my office to call jesse and see if they were on the road yet. it was becoming clear that more had been left on the roadside than some funky chicken chunks.
i called and emailed jesse and asked for anthony's cell, and i left a message saying basically... hey, when you guys get to heflin, tell me what the mile marker is, etc. ...but he had his phone off.
sunday morning i called anthony and he was still in a bad way - still sick. he made it out to the car and searched all over. no phone.
somehow i had managed to drop it, most likely at the puke-stop.
i knew why. my default "rock show" jeans have a hole in the back left pocket. i think i had been tinkering with my phone when anthony hit the brakes. being distracted upon exiting the car, i must have put the phone in the faulty pocket.
my mother always said i was pretty, she never mentioned a word about me being all that bright.
realizing the enormous co-inky-dink of me losing two phones during two trips to the same club... i decided i would undertake the task of finding my phone somewhere on the side of i-20, somewhere near heflin. ...if only to taunt the powers that be...
now luckily anthony and me were pretty alert and stone sober. i had remembered that the road curved slightly to the right. and that there was cut grass, a 3 foot ditch and fresh mulch at the location.
anthony, who works in anniston and is a surveyer, remembered and was confident, that the stop had ocurred somewhere after the heflin exit, and before the 431 exit. and that likely it was after the first un-marked overpass. that narrowed it down to about 5 miles of hwy.
not bad for a guy who was tinkering with a phone, and a guy who was desperate to find a place to stop. around noonish on sunday i set out on the search to find the phone...
i decided to take my mom along as another set of eyes and we headed toward the heflin exit. it takes around an hour to get there from east bham.
as i was squeezing my brain for any detail i could think of, i remembered that anthony had mentioned that when he was looking for a place to stop, he found a gap in the guard rail. and of course when he stopped, he defaced the pavement beside the road.
evidence.
where there's puke, there's phone.
we initially stopped at a place that looked right (at least in daylight) but we hadn't yet come far enough back toward bham to have passed the "unmarked overpass" that anthony had mentioned. i wanted to narrow down the search area to the smallest possible. after looking for a few mins at the first spot, we continued on until we had just passed the overpass.
then i noticed the road was curving slightly. at first i didn't think about stopping because the only break in the guard rail was about 40 feet. anthony had managed to park in between. 80-0 with tight precision. a good driver to say the least.
at first, trolling along in the emergency lane, i didn't notice anything, although the trees looked right. and of course, we are looking for signs of puke...
i had mentioned to my mom that she wasn't just looking for a little petite puddle of sorority girl gurgle-up. she was scoping for an explosive artifact.
it was going to look more like an eruption than a spill.
a few seconds later she tells me to "back-up! i just saw something yellow!!"
sweet. "yellow. that's a good sign."
i back-up and then zero in on the area. sure enough... a pile of semi-evaporated-poorly-prepped-fried-chicken-puke.
OMG. anthony must have lost his spleen. lotta yellow matter.
so...
i walk up parrallel to the puke. turn right and face the ditch. i walk to my exact location in context of where we had parked.
...looked down, and picked up my cell phone.
it still had almost a full charge and i had 1 new voicemail.
the voice mail was from me...
the moral of this story is :
WHEN THE COSMOS TAKES A SWING AT YOU, SWING BACK
now granted, if anthony hadn't have puked, i would never have gotten out of the car and thus, my cell would have probably stayed in my bag.
and because he puked, he left some evidence.
but i see also, the variables at play here and this is where i find the beauty in the puke story:
we had good weather. no rain. low humidity. a very good, almost psychic memory of everything surrounding the stop... a stop that lasted 90 seconds in the dark with constant oncoming traffic.
the phone fell in the grass not in the road. anthony (luckily for me) didn't have time to puke in the woods. he had no choice but to leave a shining beacon on the clean pavement. rain, or all of the puke being in the woods, would have left me with no "landmark."
if any of these factors had been different, i either would never have found the phone OR if i did manage to find it, it would have been destroyed.
karma people. cosmic luck. i'm swimming in it. at least for a while... until the karmic backlash comes. and beleive me, i'm watching my back. considering i had no insurance on it, and no recovery option on my plan, i would have been out about $250-$300.
but alas, i wasn't
SHAWN 1 / COSMOS 0.