Pocket Books, will be willing to be a little more charitable. So what do you say we just leave it as it is?
All right, back to October 2001, during the writing-in-notebooks stage. Concerned about my legal safety, I asked a famous wrestler to take a walk with me. Accompanied by Edge and Christian, my favorite two eyewitnesses, the famous wrestler and I sat in a fairly secluded part of a forgotten arena, where I proceeded to read him a few paragraphs of Tietam Brown. It is not meant to be an exact reenactment of my conversation with this wrestler, but at times it’s pretty damn close. As you read, think of me as poor, shocked Andy, and the wrestler in question as Andy’s father, Tietam.
“Dad, I’m having girl problems.”
He resumed his dinner-table Thinker pose and stroked his chin. He squinted a little and then closed one eye, a study in concentration. Surely he was weighing all the options, drawing inevitable conclusions, and would momentarily come bubbling forth with a sparkling nugget of knowledge that could transform my life in an instant. Then again, this was the same guy who’d used the term “bald-headed champion” only a few hours earlier. What had I been thinking?
His initial analysis of the situation surprised me.
“Well Andy, taking into account that all women are by nature different, and taking into account that you have yet to introduce me to your friend Terri, I would have to first warn you that forming a specific game plan for your specific situation could prove somewhat difficult.”
He sounded smart. My dad sounded smart! I could almost feel those clouds dispersing.
“With that in mind, there are some generalities, some strategies if you will, that do appear to be effective with most woman I’ve encountered.”
The anticipation was killing me. Sure my dad had his share of somewhat off idiosyncrasies, and yeah, maybe he didn’t do things that other dads did, but women did like the guy, and there had to be a reason. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t the fuzzy dice. He opened his mouth. “Well, Andy, whenever possible, get them to lick your ass.”
The clouds in my mind that had seemed to disperse accumulated en masse and rained all over my parade. I waited for a big laugh, and then a pat on the back to let me know that I’d been had. We would share a good chuckle over the whole thing, and then he’d tutor me on the lessons of love.
Except he wasn’t laughing. Or smiling. Not even a little. As a matter of fact, I’d never seen him quite this intense, not even when talking about the Suglings’ scarecrow.
“That way, Andy, no matter what happens after that, you’ve always got something over them.”
With that last line, I closed the book, took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “What do you think?”
Raven, aka Scotty the Body, aka Scotty Flamingo, aka Johnny Polo, looked every bit like a proud father. He was beaming. For a moment, I thought he might actually shed a tear. His first response consisted of two simple words.
“That’s fabulous,” he said before getting up and walking off in a strut more subtle, but every bit as proud, as the John Travolta paint-carrying Brooklyn bop of Saturday Night Fever .
May 5, 2006
Dear Hardcore Diary,
My son Mickey is a rock-and-roller. He’s been that way since about the age of two. But he’s also very particular about what he considers to be rock and roll. He’s not much of a harmony guy, and definitely not a mellow rocker or light rocker. Just a basic three-chord guitar guy, who happens to make world-class rock-and-roll faces, although truth be told, he brandishes his air guitar a little high—almost like Tiny Tim on a ukulele solo.
It’s not as if I’m some king of heavy metal dad either, the type of guy who forces the hard stuff on his kids at the expense of the classics. My musical tastes are kind of eclectic, running the spectrum from Christmas tunes to Emmylou Harris to Springsteen to Drive-By Truckers. Of course, as I mentioned in
All right, back to October 2001, during the writing-in-notebooks stage. Concerned about my legal safety, I asked a famous wrestler to take a walk with me. Accompanied by Edge and Christian, my favorite two eyewitnesses, the famous wrestler and I sat in a fairly secluded part of a forgotten arena, where I proceeded to read him a few paragraphs of Tietam Brown. It is not meant to be an exact reenactment of my conversation with this wrestler, but at times it’s pretty damn close. As you read, think of me as poor, shocked Andy, and the wrestler in question as Andy’s father, Tietam.
“Dad, I’m having girl problems.”
He resumed his dinner-table Thinker pose and stroked his chin. He squinted a little and then closed one eye, a study in concentration. Surely he was weighing all the options, drawing inevitable conclusions, and would momentarily come bubbling forth with a sparkling nugget of knowledge that could transform my life in an instant. Then again, this was the same guy who’d used the term “bald-headed champion” only a few hours earlier. What had I been thinking?
His initial analysis of the situation surprised me.
“Well Andy, taking into account that all women are by nature different, and taking into account that you have yet to introduce me to your friend Terri, I would have to first warn you that forming a specific game plan for your specific situation could prove somewhat difficult.”
He sounded smart. My dad sounded smart! I could almost feel those clouds dispersing.
“With that in mind, there are some generalities, some strategies if you will, that do appear to be effective with most woman I’ve encountered.”
The anticipation was killing me. Sure my dad had his share of somewhat off idiosyncrasies, and yeah, maybe he didn’t do things that other dads did, but women did like the guy, and there had to be a reason. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t the fuzzy dice. He opened his mouth. “Well, Andy, whenever possible, get them to lick your ass.”
The clouds in my mind that had seemed to disperse accumulated en masse and rained all over my parade. I waited for a big laugh, and then a pat on the back to let me know that I’d been had. We would share a good chuckle over the whole thing, and then he’d tutor me on the lessons of love.
Except he wasn’t laughing. Or smiling. Not even a little. As a matter of fact, I’d never seen him quite this intense, not even when talking about the Suglings’ scarecrow.
“That way, Andy, no matter what happens after that, you’ve always got something over them.”
With that last line, I closed the book, took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “What do you think?”
Raven, aka Scotty the Body, aka Scotty Flamingo, aka Johnny Polo, looked every bit like a proud father. He was beaming. For a moment, I thought he might actually shed a tear. His first response consisted of two simple words.
“That’s fabulous,” he said before getting up and walking off in a strut more subtle, but every bit as proud, as the John Travolta paint-carrying Brooklyn bop of Saturday Night Fever .
May 5, 2006
Dear Hardcore Diary,
My son Mickey is a rock-and-roller. He’s been that way since about the age of two. But he’s also very particular about what he considers to be rock and roll. He’s not much of a harmony guy, and definitely not a mellow rocker or light rocker. Just a basic three-chord guitar guy, who happens to make world-class rock-and-roll faces, although truth be told, he brandishes his air guitar a little high—almost like Tiny Tim on a ukulele solo.
It’s not as if I’m some king of heavy metal dad either, the type of guy who forces the hard stuff on his kids at the expense of the classics. My musical tastes are kind of eclectic, running the spectrum from Christmas tunes to Emmylou Harris to Springsteen to Drive-By Truckers. Of course, as I mentioned in
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