i am always adding new content to this website, usually at the bottom, so feel free to check back periodically, and i will keep adding stuff as i want this to be the longest 1 page website in history, where you keep scrolling and scrolling and never get to the bottom
"Aversa's theatre of the mind and absurdist website contans the largest collection of bullshit I have ever seen, and he gives new meaning to the term 'un-reliable narrator'. The only thing that this website reveals is that he, who claims to be "friendly towards both retards and non-retards alike", is fairly proficient at creating animated GIFs. And I will be happy to write a review of this so-called CD that will be coming out soon for 2 years now, but it will be a miracle if this CD ever sees the light of day".
- Mr. Real, Famous Art Critic, Art Collector & Arch-Nemesis.
How i got this crazy accolade that came with a plastic, faux wood-grain plaque, i'll never know. i had to be the worst paperboy ever. I think that they just needed a body from "down da line" (See Heynabonics) to fill the slot that week for The Scranton Times / The Sunday Times Outstanding Carrier Salutation. I always wondered how they had assessed that I was 'Outstanding', maybe they had really meant that I was outstandingly abominable as a paperboy and they were making an inside joke. "let's make this dumbo think that he is a great paperboy, when he really sucks, we know it, but he may not know it", but i think that they were just scrambling to find someone to write about, to fill out the page. I basically had about 30 customers, and if I ever delivered the papers non-stop from beginning to end, it probably would have taken me 45 minutes or less to complete the route. but because I started delivering late as it was, (school was over at 3pm, then I'd binge on candy bought at JOHNNY'S Store and daydream for 2 hours and then start the papers at 5pm) and because some of the customers' homes bordered on woods, half way through the route I would drop the undelivered papers in the bushes and go bb gun hunting or exploring in the forest, for an hour or more sometimes, and then customers would be calling my parents' home wondering where the damn paper was, it was past 7pm at that point. this happened regularly. and i would oftentimes just outright miss a house or 2, as i was pretty much in my own world most of the time, and these customers would also be calling, looking for the paper.
and if the suits at the paper ever polled my 30 customers, maybe half of them would have a tepid, blase opinion about my delivery skills, the other 13 would give me maybe 2 stars out of 10, and 2 customers in particular would have 2 thumbs way down. the first customer was actually an old married couple, in their 70's, they tipped me a dime or whatever monthly, i didn't care about that because, as you will see below, the entire amount i collected from a customer was basically all tip money to me. but all of a sudden during the summer of '76, i was not able to obtain the monthly bill money from them, and they owed me for 2 months, $2.35 x 2, big bucks back then, and i was a tad impatient. so i had had enough of their dodging me and pretending like they were not home everytime i rang the doorbell. maybe it was that depression-era mentality that caused them to not want to pay me and part with that precious $4.70, so one saturday afternoon, i stood on their front porch, knowing that they were home, and rang their doorbell for a good half-hour straight, it was pretty crazy. i guess they got the message, so the old lady throws the door wide open and starts in on me, and these are her exact words(my memory is average to good, but this one is indelibly etched), "you can take this paper, you and your entire family, and wipe your god-damn asses with it, you misers and penny-pinchers, here's your god-damned money ", and she threw the bills at me. so that was the end of that customer, no more paper to be delivered there. and the other customer, same thing, he was an old bachelor, but he only owed me for 1 month, i was real insistent and impatient with him, and he pulled this laying low on a saturday bullshit and pretended he wasn't home also. he wasn't sleeping, cuz i could hear noises going on inside, and i was not having any of it, but i only stood there about 15 minutes as opposed to 30 minutes and held his doorbell in. it was a strange but efficient doorbell to press, maybe it was mis-wired, but i didn't need to keep pumping it, i just needed to hold it in and the chimes kept chiming, for 15 minutes straight. he also freaked out and whipped open the door, threw the money at me, cursing and what not, but he didn't quit the paper, he stayed on as a customer. so i guess i maybe would not have gotten this silly award if the paper brass polled my customers, but on the other hand they still may have chosen me anyway.
and unbeknownst to the people who gave me this award, my money management skills left alot to be desired also, but this was none of their business anyway. once a month the district manager would come to my home to collect the 'bill', and 99% of the time I didn't have enough to pay the bill, and my mother would have to dip into her purse to make up the difference, awfully gracious of her.
How could this be? How could I not have enough money to pay the bill? all things being equal (and they rarely ever are), the money I collected from each customer monthly, plus the tips, should have more than covered the bill, and whatever was left over would be my earnings. I came up short mostly because I spent almost immediately what I collected from the customers, on reese's cups and soda mostly, and chocolate milk at JOHNNY'S Store, I spent so much that I never had enough to pay my bill. and maybe this was part of the reason why i missed some customers homes on a regular basis: i was enjoyably high on sugar, because my normal, daily gluttonous routine was such that before i would start delivering the papers, i would buy and consume one 12oz container of orange drink, one 12oz container of chocolate milk, and 3 packs of reese's cups, with 2 cups per pack. this ate up a lot of funds, but what else is money for anyway. and that is why i didn't care if customers left a big tip or not, because i considered all of the $2.35 i collected off each customer monthly as tip money, even though a large portion of that $2.35 should have been earmarked for paying the bill.
and also when the carnival came to town once a year, I would go there and spend more money on games, rides, food, stuff like that, and especially I was addicted to the ' wheel ', one of those contraptions where this guy spun the wheel that had numbers on it, like domino numbers, and if the pointer landed on the number on which you had placed money, you won. but, the black hole that it was for me, I never won much, lost mostly. but the point is, if I ran out of money at the carnival, usually while i was playing the wheel, and if it wasn't too late at night, but it usually was, I would go collect the monthly newspaper bill money from the customers who had not paid me yet that month. then i would have more cash and head back to the carnival and spend all that also. and by the eighth grade i was already drinking boone's farm and colt 45 in the woods with my friends, and if i needed some quick cash for some more beverage or tiparillo cigars, i would hit up a customer or 2.( this one customer asked me one time, at 8:30pm, why I was collecting so late, I just bullshitted her, but she was in her jammies already)
on average, if the bill that the route manager came to collect from me monthly was $24, my mother would have to put in a third maybe, so it cost my parents $8 per month for 3 years for me to have a paper route. and i think that once in a while they had to pay the whole amount, especially around the 4th of july, because i would spend all of the money i collected from customers on the purchase of fire crackers, bottle rockets and 4 oz. rockets that me and my friends did delinquent things with, like shoot at people's homes late at night using the rockets. one time, me and one of my friends had it out for another 2-faced friend of ours, and this 2-faced kid (who we mistakenly called 'Cyclops', we should have called him 'Janus' or 'Cerberus') had a younger brother, maybe 7 years old. so, under the ruse of camping out one night in my back yard, at 3am we snuck over to the house of the 2-faced kid and his family, and put a pack of fire crackers on the bedroom window ledge of the younger brother, and connected the fuse to a cigarette timer, a simple but ingenious device. this cigarette timer gave us a good 10 minutes to scram and get back to my yard, so we lit the cigarette, ran back to my yard, settled into our sleeping bags, and waited. when the cigarette burned down to the filter 10 minutes later, it ignited the firecrackers, all hell broke lose and we laughed our proverbial asses off. it was so still and quiet at 3:10am, that those popping sounds could be heard for miles possibly. we later found out that this little kid was scared out of his wits and it was real pandemonium for that family at such an early hour. but the most bizarre part was (and this is how dense i was at the time, not that i am less dense now), the mother of the scared-out-of-his-wits little boy called my friend's mother and my mother that morning and told them what we had done, with no evidence or anything. but they all knew we did it, and they knew that we knew that they knew that we did it, and of course we just denied it while our noses grew and grew, but there wasn't much sleeping outside for the rest of the summer. (see the section below, my delinquency quotient) but anyway, in the month of july, between buying candy and soda at the tooth-rotting store, and fireworks, i was flat broke when mr. costello came calling for the monthly paper bill, and my mother paid the bill out of her stash in her wallet.
another time, my father gave me this little money canteen that I could clip on my belt, miners used to put explosives in it or something, but i remember the first time I clipped it to my belt and went collecting the money from the customers. in my delusional state, I thought, " I am real organized now, and determined to not pre-spend the bill money, i have the bills on this side of the canteen, the coins on that side, and i will have enough to pay the bill to the newspaper when the district manager comes collecting." well that lasted about a week, I stopped using the money canteen and went back to my old ways, just stuffing money in my jeans pockets or wherever and spending it like there was no tomorrow, but of course tomorrow came and I did not have enough to pay the bill etc.
also, i have cousins who live in upstate new york, and every summer or so they would come down and stay for a week and play with me and my younger brothers, and somehow I got them to help me with the papers, i think that I made it appear fun, because i don't think I ever paid them anything (cheap bastard that I was) nor did I buy them any candy nor soda at Johnny's. i remember a couple of instances, it could have been with them, or with one of my younger brothers, or with all of them, there was this one customer on my route whose home was situated at the end of this long yard, I hated that house because of the long uphill walk one had after dropping the paper off. so I invented a game to see who was the fastest runner to the home, I would time whoever I enlisted that day, I would give him the paper and say, "GO!", and he would take off running as i counted out loud, "1 mississippi, 2 mississippi . . .", and he dropped the paper off and hustled back to beat some arbitrary record that I had concocted, and of course there was no prize nor anything if he had beaten the phantom record.
I had enough of this paper route business, so after 3 years i was relieved when a young girl from the neighborhood expressed interest in having a paper route, I was more than happy to pass it on to her. and by that time, 9th grade, I was getting jobs unloading and washing tractor trailers, and the pay was much better, and nobody came to collect money from me, money which I didn't have anyway, but hey, some people are better at managing a paper route and money than I was, it works for them as a job, for me it was torture, but it did provide me with spending money.
THE AFTERMATH
and then there was the "busting" at school upon the publication of my above accolade, which involves a whole drama with my mother. so when the suits at the newspaper called my parents at home to let them know that I had been duly chosen that week to be the outstanding carrier, unfortunately I was not home at the time, and my mother fielded that crucial phone call. the woman or man from the newspaper most likely asked my mother some questions, pertaining to my interests, hobbies, and the like. the conversation may have gone something like this:
Newspaper Employee: So Mrs. Aversa, where does Marty go to school, and is he involved in any extracurricular activities?
Mrs. Aversa: He attends Scranton Preparatory School, the Cavaliers you know, (hear 'The Scranton Prep Fagala Song') Note: I am not endorsing the ideas expressed in this song nor homophobia, I am just relating what I heard when I was in high school. kids in my hometown would sing this to me when i got off the public COLTS bus on my way home from school, ballbusters all. and if these ballbusters were in a particularly foul and bullying mood, they would sing an encore and follow the Fagala Song with the 'Marty Farty Song'. (fyi, COLTS stands for Carries Old Ladies To Scranton, and not County of Lackawanna Transit System, as some might suspect.)
and for the sake of the male students who attend Scranton Prep, the heterosexual ones anyway, i think that the school hierarchy should re-name the mascot, maybe they should call themselves the Scranton Prep Bulldogs, or Scranton Prep Stallions. below is my actual Prep license plate memorabile circa 1976, and my edited version that i will use to make a new mascot proposal with, being i am an alumnas and have a say in the matter, to the school hierarchy.
Original Scranton Prep License Plate, circa 1976
My New Proposed Scranton Prep Mascot and License Plate, circa 2010
Mrs. Aversa (cont'd):and he is on the wresting team and he belongs to the ski club.
I was on the wresting team for about 2 days, couldn't hack it, plus dudes' balls were in my face half the time, and i think that one time my hand inadvertently rubbed up against the ballsack of some grappler as i tried unsuccessfully to pin him down, and that was one time too many. but if some dude wants other dude's balls in his face, more power to him, whatever makes him happy. but i will give my mother the benefit of the doubt on this one because the person who called from the newspaper to declare my outstandingness and ask these boilerplate questions may have called during the 2 days that I was on the wresting team, and my mother would have thus told him or her the truth. I WAS ON THE WRESTING TEAM! , for 2 days anyway. and if I had already quit the team and my mother knew this, and still told the person on the phone that I was on the wrestling team, then that is a whole other story. My above plaque reads "March 12, 1977" so I would need to do some research, but I doubt that wrestling season and the first 2 days of practice began 1/3 of the way through the spring semester, it most likely began in the beginning of the semester, say, in january. whatever. (today, march 31, 2010, i just googled 'high school wrestling season', and i found an article on wikipedia about USA high school scholastic, greco-roman style wrestling, and it read that the season begins in october or november and goes til february or march. so if this is true of the 1976-1977 Scranton Prep wrestling season, then it would have been about 6 months from the date i had quit the team, after the first 2 days of practice in october or november, until i got this crummy award in march 1977, which would mean that my mother reeeeaaaly stretched things a tad by saying in march that i was on the wrestling team. what are ya gonna do, hyperbole makes the world go round)
regarding the ski club: i had heard in school that there was a ski trip to elk mountain, so i decided to go, because basically I was an insecure 9th grader with braces, a bad complexion and who had little or no friends at this new school in another town, and i just wanted to put myself out there, take risks so to speak, mingle with this new crowd, maybe make a friend or 2 on the trip (didn't happen). so, I definitely do not remember joining any club, it was just a one shot deal, I was just gonna go on one of these outings and see what the hell skiing was like. the skiing part was fun, but the overall trip was a waste of time really for me, as I could have been back in my home town sleigh riding and taking swigs from a stolen whiskey bottle with my boyhood friends in the woods. ok experience though, and i sometimes like to try new things just for the hell of it, but the main point is, my mother told the person on the phone that i was in the ski club, her second half-truth or even non-truth.
Newspaper Employee: So Mrs. Aversa, does Marty have any personal hobbies, and if so, can you tell me what they are?
Mrs. Aversa: As an "athlete" (quotations mine), he plays baseball, football and basketball. (all true, playing team sports while growing up was fun for me) He also has tropical fish as pets (true), builds model cars (sad but true) and he collects coins! (absolutely not true, and my mother's third and most glaring non-truth that would have severe repercussions at school)
the emotional scars that I still carry, stem from those few words that my mother uttered: 'he collects coins', and she might as well have added, "he collects butterflies and ladies' lingerie also". i do not think that there is anything wrong with collecting coins, butterflies or ladies' lingerie, to each their own, but it's just that my mother spoke the wrong words at the wrong time in my life. if i was in the 6th grade and i got this award, no one in my 6th grade class would give a shit most likely, as one classmate collected all kinds of tiny fire trucks, and another had a real neat collection of jigsaw puzzles, so that when he completed a puzzle, his father flipped it over and taped the back so that it could be framed. but announcing that i collected coins to the world while i was in the 9th grade didn't help me look cool in the least, and while i was at it i should have also just put a piece of masking tape in the middle of my glasses on the bridge and carried a slide-rule in my hip pocket and a penholder in my dress shirt pocket, 9th grade girls really like that stuff.
the only coins that I liked were not antiques that you could collect, you know, like doubloons or pieces of eight or whatever, the coins that I hoarded and loved were the ones you could plop down on the wheel of fortune thing at the carnival or spend on reese's peanut butter cups. the longest time I had a coin in my possession was the one time I had just collected coins from a customer, and I didn't make it to JOHNNY'S STORE in time before closing to spend these coins. if the store was still open, those coins would have only been in my possession for 10 minutes or less. so I just went home, coins in pocket, and decided to spend them the next day. So the coins stayed with me overnight, and if the by-laws of the coin collecting club contained a stipulation that if one has in his or her possession any type of coins for at least 24 hours before it can be called 'coin collecting', then yes, i was a coin collector, and my mother would have been correct in telling the newsperson that i was indeed a coin collector, but there was no coin collecting club nor by-laws of any kind, as far as i was aware at the time, and as far as my mother was aware of at the time, unless she really knew of such a club and such by-laws.
in fact, and this was before I had a paper route and I was a few years younger, but one of my older brothers did collect coins, he had them neatly laid out in these blue cardboard folders with holes in them, the holes were the size of the coins, and there were 18th century silver dollars, silver dimes, wheat pennies, buffalo head nickels, silver half-dollars etc, and I 'collected' his collection of coins, every once in a while i would swipe a half-dollar, as i needed money for soda and reese's cups. he had a bunch of these folders, and he had moved out and was onto other things by his freshman year of college anyway, so he didn't notice as these coin folders were jammed in a drawer in some closet. so maybe my mother was right, i DID collect coins, in this definition of a coin collector: a coin collector is someone whose sibling lays out silver coins in blue coin folders, and who cashes in these sibling's coins, who steals them and spends them at their face value, not their market value, so that a silver half-dollar would buy 50 cents worth of candy, tastycakes, pixie sticks and other sundries, instead of selling the coin at the coin dealer store for $5.00 or whatever it was worth at the time.
Folder for Losers
there was also this other cache of coins that i really loved to collect, and i have the catholic church to thank for this cache. these coins were initially bound for the collection basket at any one of the sunday masses. the church was kind enough to give every member of my family, all 10 of us (2 parents, 8 kids) our own boxes of empty envelopes that were to be filled with cash and dropped into the collection basket every sunday. up until a point when i was in the 8th grade i really loathed going to sunday mass, but then all of a sudden, and everyone lauded my choice to start going to mass regularly, i began 'attending' the sunday morning, 9:30 mass. my siblings either went to the later mass at 11am, or went to a sunday evening mass in another town, which i encouraged, or didn't go at all if they were old enough to not be swayed by my parents' admonitions, in which case they would have reached the 'i don't give a fuck about going to church anymore' phase. the reason for all of this new-found piety on my part? so, my parents prepared all of our envelopes in the morning, let's say they put 25 cents in each of the children's envelopes, and dollar bills into their envelopes, and sealed them up and just laid them out on the table, my mother usually prepared these or had one of my older sisters do it. and whomever happened to be going to an early mass, and if the envelopes were prepared in time, would take the stack en masse and drop them into the collection basket, that is if he or she made it to mass. what a damn mother load was there, and the catholic church was rich enough i concluded, they would not miss this $3 or $4 from the aversa family. and JOHNNY'S store was open on sunday mornings also, so as i headed on foot in the general direction of the church at about 9:20, no one could see my detour, nor see me rip into the envelopes and put the bounty into my pockets and enter the sacristy of Johnny's store. and of course i had to be real careful and make sure i destroyed the torn, now empty envelopes, and burning was the preferred method. this idea of taking the envelopes, skipping mass and spending the money on candy at the store instead, did not originate with me, as i had faintly remembered, when i was very young, maybe 5 or 6 years old, a story circulating about one of my second or third cousins who lived far away in another state. apparently he had done what i was now doing, but he just left the crumpled, empty envelopes in his pants pocket and his mother found them. ya, dude, gotta be real careful about that shit, but i forgot about this episode, and then one day when i was 14, i remembered that story and resurrected the tradition.
i guess i committed 2 mortal 'sins' in one fell swoop: i ditched mass, and diverted the funds from the catholic church to me. i don't think that it was technically stealing though. it would be stealing if i grabbed a handful of full envelopes from the church basket at mass, now that would be stealing, so maybe it was one 'mortal' sin and one' venial' sin. but the farcical element enters in also, because it didn't matter if i had committed 2 mortal sins or a 1000 mortal or 10,000 venial sins, i could just be absolved of these sins by going to confession the following week and performing my penance, which was for me at the time a farce also. and this overall relative concept of 'sin' in general cracks me up, ya got mortal sins, ya got venial sins (and i would like someone to explain to me the difference between the 2), ya got councils and august bodies determining what is a sin and what is not, and that could change over time also. i think it used to be a sin for women to go to church with their heads not covered up with some ridiculous hat or other, but now it's OK for them to do that, but i could be wrong. and did this same company that used to sell indulgences, telephone 'God', or whatever their relative concept of a 'higher power' is, and find out from Him or Her what is a sin and what isn't? i gotta do some etymological research on this word 'sin' and see who the hell first used it.
but here's how things maybe would have gone down with the priest in the confessional booth:
(i wait in line for about a half hour, along with the rest of the hushed crowd, then it's my turn, i enter the confessional booth. i get situated, it's real dark in there, the priest slides open the door between his face and my face, i could smell the cheap wine on his breath)
Me: Bless me Father, for I have sinned, it has been 7 years since my last confession. I accuse my self of these sins. (this part cracks me up also, I stand as both the accused and the accuser, I could make up whatever crap I wanted to make up, which i used to do all of the time.)
Priest: Proceed my son, what sins would you like to confess?
Me: Father, I took the money, destined for the Sunday Mass collection basket, and kept it for myself, as I was supposed to take the envelopes, all 10 of my family members' envelopes, to Mass and give them to y'all, but instead I ditched Mass, took the money out of the envelopes, hung out at Martha's Store and spent it on babyruth bars, sim-sims, punks, reese's cups and chocolate milk. (so as not to reveal to the priest what neighborhood i lived in, and thereby possibly giving away my identity, i would have told him the name of a corner store in another part of town. and this also means that i would have lied to the priest in the confessional both, thereby possibly piling another sin on top of my mountain of sins.)
Priest: Is that all my son?
Me: Yes, Father . . . .Oh, i just forgot, one time I took the Lord's name in vane, and another time I learned about the facts of life by masturbating to and splooging all over a picture of Blair from 'The Facts of Life'. (www.lisawhelchel.com)
Priest: Bless you my Son, and by the power vested in me from on High, I hereby absolve you of your sins, and for your penance, say 100 Our Fathers, 100 Hail Marys, 100 Glory Be's, and 100 Apostles Creeds. Go and sin no more.
right. so i would sit in a pew for a few minutes, pretend to say some prayers or other, and then get my ass out of there. other people might be there for an hour or more, as they were praying when i arrived at the church and still praying when i got out of the confessional booth, they must have confessed some bad shit to the priest. overall, what a great cosmology this was, i felt so clean after going to confession. but maybe there was some natural law that meted out its own justice, i don't know. so regarding these sunday morning church envelopes, i didn't want to raise suspicion, i did this occasionally, maybe once a month or so. "HIS HOBBIES INCLUDE COIN COLLECTING . . . . . .", indeed.
so, a'couple'a two, tree days (See Heynabonics) had passed since the newspaper addition in which I appeared rolled off the presses, so when i went to school on monday (the article appeared on saturday), the ribbing started. i think that the coin collecting part was the straw that broke the camels back, the building model cars part didn't help neither, but the coin collecting part pushed the bully meter way into the red, and i remember this tall, 10th grade chap with acne, mike something or other, who started in at 8:30 am and didn't let up til closing bell, it's i good thing i only ran into him in the halls only 2 or 5 times. but of course others knew about it, so i just put on this fake, teeth-full-of-braces smile and laughed along with the rest of the crowd. dudes i didn't even know made comments, i think a guy on the wrestling team took umbrage with the wrestling team line. and, most embarrassingly, this way hot girl in my home room, who was untouchable to me, made her very first remarks to me, after 7 months of being in the same home room together, and her very first words to me were not, "do'ya wanna ball tonight?", no, they were, simply and most cuttingly, "hi marty, i saw your picture in the paper, nice". that was it. I hope that she was so busy being hot that she didn't have time to read the article under my picture and name, but I doubt it.
POSTSCRIPT: I got no satisfaction nor logical explanation when I asked my mother about what she had told the newspaper person, it was just brushed off, and then I forgot about it, but scars still remain.
(EDITOR'S NOTE- Mr. Real the Art Critic responds: "Aversa's timeline is all wrong. If he is claiming that he was in grade school up until 1976 when he entered high school, then this fictitious episode with the priest in the confessional booth would have happened in the spring of 1976 or earlier. So, there is no way that he would have even known, unless he could see 3 years into the future when the first episode of 'The Facts of Life' aired in 1979, that there was even a TV character named 'Blair'." )
Joke of the Week
A Priest and a Rabbi are walking down a street, and they come across a schoolyard where a 10-year old boy is playing.
Priest: Man, I'd really like to screw that little boy.
Rabbi: Out of what?
Joke of the Week Runners-up
This guy from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(fill in country) walks into a bar with a big pile of steaming dog shit in his hands and says to the bartender, "Hey, look what I almost just stepped in".
Why did the Siamese twins travel to England? So the other one could drive.
This guy visits his doctor for his annual checkup, and the doctor says, "I need stool, urine and
semen samples." The guy replied, "I'm in a real hurry doc, can I just leave you my underwear?"
Trivia Question of the Week
What is the most annoying Meg Ryan romantic comedy?
a) Kate & Leopold
b) You've Got Mail
c) When Harry met Sally
d) City of Angels
featuring that god-awful song 'iris' by the go go dolls
e) Addicted to Love
f) All of the Above
answer coming soon!
Studies in Energy: Chapter 1
many jobs ago, i was a floor manager in an italian ice factory, we made this guido 'luigi's italian ice', real nutty place, i worked the night shift, 10pm to 6am, and i had about 20 people under my command, mostly immigrants, brazilian women, puerto ricans etc., and there was another sector sent over by the temp service. this other sector consisted of dudes who were living at the salvation army half-way house, a real sketchy group of ex-cons, violent offenders and the like, and i had no problem with them, i made them my friends basically.
but there was this one guy, about 6'4", weight lifter, one front tooth, coke-bottle glasses and there was no making friends with him, he was a real loose cannon who just made parole. he was real quiet and could snap at any moment, i'll call him 'crazy bill'. anyway, i was nice to him and he seemed to not mind me. he also had real berserker eyes, and one eye was normal and looked straight forward at you if you were talking to him, and the other eye just went out to left field (this is a key component of this little vignette).
one time, i was running this big machine, where a conveyer belt fed thousands and thousands of frozen cups of italian ice per hour into the machine, and the machine automatically boxed them up. once the boxes exited the machine, 5 or 6 people waited at the end of this long table and put each box into larger boxes and taped them up, and this taping process had to be done real fast as my machine was sending the small boxes to them non-stop. so, i was overseeing this whole process.
well the loose cannon with the wayward eye happened to be on my crew this one night, and the conveyer feeding the cups into my machine was being repaired by some maintenance dudes for 5 or 10 minutes, so we had a little down time. part of my job was to feed these box 'flats' into the machine, and the machine opened the flats up to make a box so that the italian ice cups could enter the box, six at a time, and the box flats had to be very flat so that they laid in the feeder correctly and suction cups could pick them up easily. my boxes of flats some guy would bring to me, and i had them stacked near my machine where i could easily reach them while the machine was in operation.
during this 5 or 10 minute down time period, bill and the others were just mulling around, and bill decided to rest some and plant his crazy ass down on my boxes of flats, and other workers had done this before. from my experience it warped the boxes slightly, so that the suction cups in the machine would not grab them properly and everything would get mucked up, and i would have to shut the whole line down.
so i remember thinking at the time, "hmm, don't wanna provoke crazy bill or have any interaction with him other than the minimal needed just to get through the shift, but the warped flats are gonna cause real havoc, cuz if the suction cups cant pick up the flats, then i gotta shut the whole line down, maybe i better tell bill to not sit on the boxes of flats". so i did just that. "hey bill, sorry, but could you not sit on those boxes? it warps the flats, makes the machine go haywire, thanks, i appreciate it".
well he wasn't happy and just grunted and tensed up, but i didn't have time to think anymore about it because the line was back up and running, time to get back to business.
let me state here that my eyesight, not considering the near-sightedness i had since the 5th grade, is pretty good, no glaucoma, blurry vision, detached corneas or anything like that. after about 5 minutes had elapsed since i started the line back up, the machine was working fine, suction cups picking up flats nicely, workers taping up boxes dutifully, i forgot all about crazy bill and my interaction with him.
but then, all of a sudden, one of my eyes, couldn't tell if it was my right or left one, started to go out of focus, it was the 'craziest' thing, i couldn't see 20 feet in front of me, one eye was in focus, the other had a film over it and was blurry, i thought i was losing sight out of one eye. binocular vision had ceased to exist for me. i looked out over the plant floor while this was happening, away from the workers on my line, and i started to panic, because i couldn't focus at all on my machine or the flats, or anything. nothing had happened like this before nor since.
while i'm internally panicking, i happened to glance over at the workers on my line, and there was crazy bill, almost hiding in a corner, staring right at me, and what he was doing gives new meaning to the term 'malocchio' or evil eye, and he only had one good eye with which to 'project' his intense craziness with anyway. but yes, it made sense to me a little later. the transfer of his vibrational field to me, including his ocular infirmity? perhaps, but it was real clear that he was pissed that i asked him to not sit on the boxes, and he had been dwelling on it, staring at me for 5 minutes straight maybe, sending good vibes my way.
if he wants to tread the left-hand path, take a blood oath and become a card-carrying member of the black lodge, so be it, i thought, but i had the feeling that he wasn't disciplined enough to progress along the lines of advanced negative understandings. he was no wolf in sheep's clothing. he wore his tormented heart on his sleeve and he was just an angry person who could, and maybe many people do this daily, project a beam of hatred, for lack of a better word, negativity or maliciousness, to anyone or anything.
and if he was projecting mental energy or 'thoughtforms' my way, whatever kind of energy it may have been or whatever one wants to call it (chi, ether, orgone etc), this energy possibly acted like a carrier wave and transported his entire vibrational field to me, which would include his physical state and condition, and his berserker eye problem. maybe everything is just energy and we live in a sea of etheric energy or plenum that connects everyone and everything, and thoughts and emotions are carried like sine waves or thoughtforms through this medium.
so part 2 of the equation is that i, theoretically, absorbed and mimicked his field, and manifested in my body his condition. so anyway, break-time came, i made a beeline to the woods behind the plant for some peace and quiet, put the maloccio blocking field around me, and the eye thing cleared up in a few minutes. i also sent crazy bill nice peaceful thoughts for good measure, so when we got back from break, he no longer was looking at me menacingly, all was good again in italian ice land.
these sites have some good gags, fake poop, vomit and other fun stuff
i heard about this one when i was living in iowa, while listening to 'madcow in the morning' out of chicago
A REAL IDIOT WROTE THIS LETTER
25 years after the fact, i am sitting down, mouth agape after reading this idiotic essay. so i was in this 'radical', write-letters-to the-editor-phase as a college junior, i think i just wanted to appear as some kind of humorist or man of letters and see my name in the main paper in scranton, 'the times'. i wrote one about a proposed local casino, one about trickle-down economics, and this one, the cream of the crop. it makes no sense whatsoever, i even spelled the word 'gist' wrong. i guess the main point i was trying to make, if there is any point, is that i was against defense spending at the time. i will try now to break down my logic, or lack thereof, in this letter, and condense my main points:
a) i was at a us navy air show
b) at this air show there was a c5-a jumbo transport
c) i was in awe of the size of this a aircraft
d) the pentagon has 50 more of these on order
e) i cannot understand this, all they need is one, to put on display at other air shows
item 'e' is where the whole thing fell apart. my 'jist' was that i was against defense spending, but i had no reason or argument as to why this was so. i don't know why i needed to 'avoid' the plane's 'numerical designation', as it reads at the end of paragraph 1, what a waste of words, as the numerical designation was simply 'C-5A'. how i would 'get to technical' by writing that 'This Plane is called the C-5A', i have no idea. and how, in paragraph 2, the 'awesomeness' (is that even a word?) is 'mutlipled by the fact' that 50 more of these were being built is a muddled sentence to say the least. did i mean that, if you took the cubic yards of the volume of the inside of one of these planes, and multiplied that by 50, then that would be one large amount of cubic yards, an 'awesome' amount of cubic yards? or that would be really awe inspiring if you had 50 of these planes all in one place, a huge amount of cubic yards would be represented there. and if i was trying to be funny, it is far from being funny, i am not laughing at all after reading it. this synopsis may be funnier than the actual letter, though i cannot be sure. maybe the navy did need 50 of these planes, how did i know, maybe they were carting troops all over the gawd-damn place with their black ops and all, and needed such behemoths to cover the globe, and they could maybe fit 1000 of those little guys in there, pack 'em in like sardines, save us a alot of money on fuel costs by being more efficient. instead of making 4 trips in the C-1A, or whatever, carrying 250 grunts, they could make just one trip with the C-5A. maybe they were thinking green at the time, way ahead of the current green' craze.
In 1990, my friend Dave and I composed an avant-garde type thing, he made this fuzzy sound with the bass and put it on top
of a drum track. I then sang some Japanese syllables and chants over the top of it. It is OK, just a rough sketch of
sounds. I don't really enjoy the collaborative process, it is not for me, but Dave and I did produce some rudimentary ideas way back when in my
songwriting past. And then when I moved to Boulder in 1991, I met this Chinese woman at my new job, Sian, pronounced like
the Wyoming city Cheyenne, and we became friends, and we worked in the same department. She was from the city in China called, Xian,
pronounced "Shiii-aaann". Xian is the place where archeologists unearthed hundreds of human-sized terra cotta warriors, and there have
been many programs on television about that. Anyway, so I had this avant-garde-an-idea what-the-fuck-it-is-type song, and thought,
"hmm, I know that the Chinese and the Japanese have been at each other's throats, literally and figuratively, for trillions of
years, how about if record Sian's voice and throw that into the mix, juxtapose the 2 languages and call it 'Nippon Saga', like
as if the Nips and Chinks are going at it again, an original idea composed by me, a WOP and Polock". So I asked Sian if she
would come into work early one day, and I would bring some recording equipment to record her reading some Chinese book
or other, and I told her that I was going to use it in a song that I was writing, but I don't think she had any idea of what I planned
to do with it, which I embarrassingly found out later. Anyway, we met at about 7am in the lunch room one morning, and I recorded
her reading a Chinese fable, it was pretty cool, she told me it was the story of a mother bird who was conversing with her baby
bird, something like the mother bird was coaxing the baby bird to fly or something. So I recorded a few minutes of it and that
was that. I was too cheap at that time to even offer her anything in return, like buy her lunch or something. But knowing her,
she wouldn't take anything possibly anyway, but I didn't ask. I then took her recorded voice and mixed it into the song.
This first clip here is of Sian reading the fable.
Sian Reading a Chinese Fable mp3
Then I took this vocal recording and mixed it in with the existing 'Nippon Saga' tracks and came up with the finished product here.
Nippon Saga / featuring Dave Narros on bass, Sian on 'vocals' mp3
About a few months later, I brought the finished recording into work, as me and some of mine and Sian's other co-workers were also
songwriters and would often bring in original tunes for everyone to hear. We all worked in the finishing department of this computer parts factory,
a great environment where we had a nice stereo and freedom to play all kinds of music, and everyone would take turns either tuning in a
favorite radio station or play whatever CD they wanted to play. So I said one day, "Hey, check out this new tune, Sian is on it". Everyone stopped
what they were doing to listen closely to what was playing, and after about 20 seconds, Sian turned as red as a beet, and I think she even left the
room. She was totally freaked out, I hadn't anticipated that reaction, honestly I didn't know how she would react, I think I thought that she would be
slightly amused or in the least not even care what the hell it was. I may have been too out of it to think that she might react in this way. Everyone always
saw her as very calm, cool and collected, a very good and conscientious worker, and I totally embarrassed her in front of everyone. I blushed also, I felt very
uncomfortable. The rest of the day passed in awkward silence betwixt her and I, but as time passed we both kind of forgot about it. I think that a few months later
her husband, who was a cryogenic engineering Ph.D student at The University of Colorado, myself, Sian and their daughter all went to some dinner or other together.
LAW OF KARMA IN ACTION? (Or, what goes around may come around, big time)
i am a big fan of insects and also of the speculation about and study of the so-called law of karma, and i present here a true story combining the two, insects and karma, as i had an encounter with an insect, and the aftermath of this meeting made me further speculate about karma and if it is a natural 'law' of some kind that sets parameters in the physical world, or if it is bullshit as the amazing randi might have said, and life and all manifestation are ruled by blind mechanical forces (big bang, primordial soup type of thing) or maybe its all of the above combined or none of the above.
anyway, while living in colorado in the early 1990's, i was working for a paving crew, the first job i landed when i moved to boulder, and on one summer day, i found myself spray painting freshly-hardened curbs in a new housing development, i had to mark the curbs every 50 feet or so, for the surveyor, i think, but anyway, i was marking the curb with spray paint, and i came across a big yellow-jacket type-wasp that was just laying low right on the curb, and she, or he, whatever the case may have been, was just sitting, all peaceful-like, but for some inexplicable reason, i just wanted to spray the insect's body just a bit, kind of like tag her/him slightly with day-glo orange, but because of my haste and of the imprecise nature of the paint can nozzle, when i held the button down a big swath of orange paint covered the whole insect, it was brutal to see, as it was trying to remove the paint from it's eyes and mouth, but to no avail, and no way it would have survived, so i stepped on it quickly, a mercy killing of sorts, i had to put it out of its misery
so after i stepped on the yellow-jacket, i felt that i had effed up and i was quite disturbed by what i had done, but i kept on working 'til quittin' time, and i eventually forgot about it
now at about this time i had been dating beatrice who live about 30 miles away, we had a weekend relationship that worked out great for both of us, as she couldn't put up with me nor i with her 24/7/365, and we each had our own apartments, which is how it was back then, but i wanted to end the relationship because it wasn't enjoyable for me anymore
so, on the same day that i stepped on the wasp, i did my normal routine, went to the beer hall and smoked dope outside and got plastered like on any night of the week, and when i got home i decided to call beatrice to let her know that i wanted to end the relationship, and it didn't go down to well, she was pissed and crying, but i know how it is, i been dumped before and i would be pissed, but not crying, then relieved and filled with joy, but i was just dispensing to her what had been dispensed to me a few times before: a cold-turkey, clean-break termination of the affair
thus, many dynamics are now building:
1- i spray painted, stepped on and then terminated the tiny life an arthropod-type insect
2- then later that same day, i had an emotional phone conversation with my ex-girlfiend, a crazy and not normal day to say the least
so, next morning i show up at the jobsite, still rattled from the day and night before, and it was just me and ray, he was just my co-worker, but when the foreman left the job site, ray stepped up and took control like a foreman, as he was the blade and backhoe driver, so they usually call the shots relative to the laborers on the job site, that's what i was, a laborer. so ray was grading a dirt road with the blade, a long piece of equipment that had a steel blade hanging down in the middle that scraped dirt road surfaces, and he was grading the same dirt road job site near which i terminated the doomed insect's life on the day before. ray is scraping away so that the blacktop guys could come in and have a smooth and surveyed road surface on which to seal the deal, and i was just walking along ray, making sure that he didn't grade below the top of the stakes embedded in the road, as if the stake just appeared at the dirt surface, and if his blade just skimmed the top of the stake, i would let him know this, that he has hit a home run and he didn't need to scrape the road surface in that spot anymore, and the proper amount of blacktop could be poured later
now there was a whole strip of dirt road that ray had not scraped yet, it still needed to be packed down and compressed with this crazy, vibrating machine called the sheep's foot, and being i had sheep's foot driving experience, ray asked me to run the sheep's foot over this certain section of road
now the sheep's foot looks like a steam-roller that one would see at a black top paving convention, chris angel got run over by one of them and lived to tell the tale, except that the sheep's foot doesn't have 2 big smooth rollers, it had rollers that were pock marked by the oval, knobby protrusions that extended out, kind of like those wind-up music making little machines placed in jewelry boxes and the like, they sometimes appear in horror movies, and the drum on the music box is kind of like the sheep's foot wheels
SHEEP'S FOOT 
SHEEP'S FOOT
and another thing about the sheep's foot, it vibrates, so that as you drive slowly over the road surface to pack it down, the protrusions dig into the road surface as the drums vibrate, providing a packing effect, but the effect on the driver is crazy also, and after driving one, i would jump off and be buzzed and shaking for a half-hour or more, like with st. vitus' dance
i knew that i needed to drive slowly in the sheep's foot, that is the protocol, and ray knew that i knew that this is the protocol, but when ray was out of site, driving his blade, i would speed up the pace of the sheep's foot, and when i saw him coming, i would slow down so that he would think that i was going the proper, snail-like pace with this god-forsaken machine. for in some way i had taken matters into my own hands and concluded that i was packing dirt sufficiently and that the surface would pass the compression test the next day
problem was i didn't give ray enough credit regarding his perceptual skills, visual or otherwise, intuitive, or whatever, maybe he had a feeling i was being somewhat deceitful or maybe he just glanced at me down the road and, unbeknownst to me, he saw me slowing and speeding up.
ideas in ray's mind began to formulate, he had caught me and he was gonna call me on it, but he did it in a way that was like a big wasp bite on the face, harsh, violent, kind of like the way that i had terminated the yellow-jacket's life the previous day
ray approached me, pissed and screaming, maybe he had his anger issues, but i thought about it later, that 2 of the many possible ways in which he, or anyone, could have handled the situation, may have gone like this:
1- he could have said, "marty, listen. i'm no idiot, i saw you speeding up and slowing down, but in order for this surface to pass the compression test, it gotta be packed down tight, and i don't know why you are doing this, trying to fool me and also possibly delaying this job for another day or 2 because the surface doesn't pass muster, but why don't you go ahead and resume, and go very slow like needed, don't ever try to bullshit me again, and by the way, gotta smoke i can bum?"
2- but, here is what really happened: he came running up to the sheep's foot, crazily cursing at me and revealing that i was trying to fool him, and i thought he had steam coming out his nose as i was bracing for him to hit me (ray was a big, strong dude), but i knew that he wouldn't do that, but he did everything short of that, calling me all kind of names, and i was stung hard, yes, i was rattled, and i lost my composure, mentally and internally and didn't know what to do, he had just stormed off, and i was un-stable and freaked out, slightly shaking, not used to that sort of thing, i'm really a wimp, a lover and not a fighter
so, i did the only thing i could think of, i just left the job site, as ray was way down the other end, so he couldn't see me leave, i just snuck out to this 2-lane country road and hitchhiked back into town, so he didn't know what happened to me. i guess i could have sucked it up and resumed my sheep's foot driving duties in the proper way, but i was way riled and needed to scoot out of there
(what happened at the job site later that day involved state police and dog search crews, corporate execs flying out to join the search etc., they thought i had fallen into a nearby river)
i got a ride into town, and the hippie that picked me up was cool, at one point i said, 'ya, i just quit my job', and he said something like, 'right on dude, you gotta do what you gotta do'--this was my confirmation that i had done the right thing, but there was at the time no right or wrong thing, it is just what went down, so for the rest of the day i just bummed around town, smoking dope with these college kids i knew, and finally at about 9pm, i called the supervisor to touch base i guess, telling her that i quit and i was sorry that i caused a ruckus, but i did not go into detail, she knew what had happened and briefly hinted that search crews had been out but that she was relieved that i was ok, and also said ok when i told her that i had quit, but it probably didn't matter, they maybe would have fired me anyway
so, i got another job soon after, a better one, and slowly this event almost drifted from my memory
the main point about all of this is karma speculation on my part, and i may conclude that possibly my killing of the wasp the day before precipitated the next day's events, maybe there was a cause and effect, i can't be sure nor prove it in any scientific way, not yet anyway. or maybe it was pure coincidence.
karma is a big subject, i can only speculate and observe my thoughts and actions in my life, and certain results may come about because of these thoughts and actions, and i further observe these results, it's a very empirical process for me. as a side note, another time (and i rarely get angry, at all, at anything or anyone, and i rarely get traffic tickets), but i was driving around in my car one day when i was in college, and this old lady was in front of me, going very slowly, and we were coming up on a green traffic light, and it started to turn yellow, and her and i both could have made it in time, but she didin't even attempt to go through it, she had all effin day, but anyway, i stopped behind her at the now red light, and layed on the horn, i was really angry, i even surprised myself at how angry i got. so anyway, we proceed through this light, she goes her way, i go mine, and 5 minutes later this cop stops me and gives me a ticket for going, like 35 in a 30 mph zone, unreal. but anyway, maybe there was cause and effect, maybe not. but there are many more things like that that have happened to me, maybe things like that happened to john lennon also, as he wrote that song about this topic, instant karma etc
so after a few weeks had passed, i got this better job in the computer parts factory, where i met the chinese woman sian, written about in the above story, and life was back to normal. but i still couldn't get out of the back of my mind the nature of how i left things with the paving company, how i left things with ray, and i would lay in bed at night, picturing in my mind what it must have looked like on the banks of that river, with bloodhounds and sheriff's deputies and the like stumbling down the banks, wading through reeds, looking for my floating, bloated body. but then a few more months had passed and i thought about it less and less.
then one day on my way home from work, i saw some guy sitting on a blanket in a front yard, selling some of his possessions, and there was this nice olivetti typewriter for sale, for about $3, so i bought it, and it sat on my bookshelf for a few months as i never used it. but one night, at about 1am ( i could rarely sleep normally) i jumped out of bed and decided to compose a letter, to be sent to the CEO of this very large, multi-million dollar, western paving company whose employ i had so abruptly left. so a couple of phone calls to directory assistance later, i had the mailing address in wyoming of the corporate HQ of this company, and somehow i remembered the name of the CEO from a picture hanging up in the local boulder office. I wish i photocopied this letter before i mailed it, but the jist of it was:
dear mr. rockefeller,
my name is martin aversa, and a few months ago i suddenly walked off of a job site in longmont while working for your company, you may remember this episode, and i just want to apologise for any inconvenience i may have caused you and any other employees of your company by my irrational actions. on the night before i walked off the job, i had broken up with my girlfriend and went to work the next day feeling out of sorts, and when my great co-worker ray corrected the way in which i was performing a certain duty, i over-reacted and just 'freaked' out i guess. ray acted professionally and is an asset to your company, and i also appreciate the compassion and understanding that my supervisor corrine showed the night of the incident when i called her at home to let her know i was OK. sorry again, i really enjoyed working for your company. sincerely, martin aversa
that is pretty much the letter, i remember what i had written.
so about a year later, at about 7:30 am on a nice summer morning, i was riding my bike to my job at the computer parts factory, and as i was crossing this boulevard, right there on the other side of the road was the very same female supervisor i had when i worked with the paving crew, she was overseeing this new job, prepping a parking lot for the paving crew, it was just her there and some other blade operator whom i didn't know. i couldn't avoid her, but i didn't want to anyway, i was gonna say hi. "corrine!" i yelled, and she came toward me, in a very sprightly mood. i asked her how everything was, she said 'great', and before i could ask anything else, she said, basically: "hey marty, we all saw the letter you wrote to the CEO in wyoming, that was really great, he sent a copy down here, and ray and i are very appreciative of the kind words you had for us also, it was great seeing you today, thanks for saying 'hello' "
that was it, it all seemed to seal the deal and clean things up, it had come full circle, no hard feelings on either end, that was a pretty good day overall.
i had a few song parodies played on the 'howard stern show', tunes i had submitted just for fun at first, and to see if they would play them. later on i would get pissed if i didn't hear submittals played, because i thought they were the greatest thing ever, but they really sucked if i listened back to them a few weeks later, and the show's producers knew what they were doing by rejecting them. here is a sampling from 2006 to 2008. i don't submit these things anymore, it is time consuming and i am busy editing this fakakta website and working on my own music. the return on my investment was about 10%, meaning that for every 10 songs i sent in (the investment), only 1 would get played on the air (the return), and each song would take 4 or 5 hours to make, after all was said and done and i had gotten it into an mp3 file that could be emailed in. and some of them took longer, especially if they weren't time sensitive and related to something that happened on the show on any particular day, as i would make a mix and play it in my car for a day or 2 to see if i got it right, if the mix was clear and balanced and if the vocals were acceptable.. i made about 70 songs that i submitted, and 7 or 8 were played, i think that's 10%. and there were 2 instances where some raccoon-eyed producer who works there on the show, and this could be pure coincidence that he happened to make the exact same song as me at the exact same time, but one time i sent in an 'i dream of jeannie' baba booey song, and a few days later his version was played. and another time i took stevie wonder's 'sir duke' and sang booey lyrics to it, and same thing, his version was played a few days later, and with the exact same wording and inflection as mine. maybe he didn't like the way i sang it, but these inane songs don't need great vocals anyway, whatever, welcome to the entertainment industry i guess.
Star Spangled Booey / Show version 1/24/07 mp3
God Bless America Booey / Show Version 10/8/07 mp3
Baba Booey's Breath (reprise, first aired 10/06) - 5/20/08 mp3
Grunge Gay Papa / Show version 5/7/07 mp3
Horny Robin / Show version 4/24/07 (X-rated) mp3
Final Jeopardy Booey / Show Version 8/21/07 mp3
Bonanza Booey / (humble beginnings, first song submitted) 10/6/06 mp3
Reject Samples
usually the ones that sucked the most and never made it on the air, were the ones that were time sensitive and related to something that happened on the show. so they were usually rush jobs as i scrambled to get them emailed in that night, so if on the next day's show howard referred to the previous days topic that warranted a song parody, the producers would already have some cued up that were related to this topic. One exception was Grunge Gay Papa above, as howard one day was talking about mark harris' gay papa thing and mentioned that it would be great if someone could take it and re-write it using another musical style, and then of course all of the busy bodies got hard to work and submitted tunes shortly thereafter. that one didn't come out too bad, but the majority of my rushed songs are horrible.
one time, howard was ragging on gary about this big ugly wart on his hand, so the monkey came into the studio to talk about it, and he said he was gonna get it burned off or something. so that night i made a song about it and emailed it in, and of course it never got played, it's really awful.
another time, howard was making fun of benjy, saying that benjy is a glutton, overweight, and basically has a pasty, sweaty complexion everytime he comes to work. so that night i threw something together, i don't think it's quite as bad as 'Baba Booey's Wart', but it still didn't pass muster, it's a little muddled.
Benjy Stars and Stripes mp3
this one i actually like a little, but it's a little rough around the edges and maybe it wasn't good enough for the show, or maybe too many people had used 'Eleanor Rigby' before, or maybe crazy fred is just off limits as a song parody subject, i don't know. the vocals aren't great either.
here are 2 rejected tunes about robin, overall they are not to bad, to me anyway, but the problem is in the karaoke tunes i purchased and used. the ideal karaoke tunes to use, i find, are ones that have zero singing on them, no backround vocals or anything. however once i had it in my mind that i was gonna make a parody using a certain song, i was going to do it, regardless of whether or not the karaoke backdrop had pre-existing vocals on it or not. cases in point below. i could not find a version of 'lost in love' by air supply that did not have backround vocals on it, so i had to incorporate the backround vocals into the lyrics, thus 'rejection' was written all over it before i completed it and emailed it in. you will hear that, out of no where, i weaved the words 'carry on' into the main theme. i should have just not wasted my time even recording this song.
Lost in Robin (X-rated) mp3
this one is even worse, because the backround vocal is, "thing going on", as in "me and mrs. jones, we got a thing going on", so i didn't even adapt the lyrics to match this, i just created a different lyric and sang it over the top of those black chicks singing "thing going on", this is terrible
Me and Miss Quivers (PG-17) mp3
the very first thing that i submitted to the stern show was in 2005, when he was still at K-rock and it was a contest type situation, i think there were a few thousand entries. the contest was, that this friend of the show vinnie was attempting to write and record the lamest song, called 'restless, restless', something about him breaking up with this woman who was cheating on him or something, i cannot be sure. so someone got a copy of some rough outtakes and of course howard was all over it, and the contest ensued, whereby contestants were to take vinnie's lyrics and do whatever with them. the top 3 contestants went to the studio to play their versions live, and i think robert goulet won, and he recorded his with a full orchestra, i didn't stand a chance back then. at the time i did not have the recording gear that i have now, so my music was created all from samples, all of the instruments came from this program 'soundesign', and i just sang over the top of that arrangement. i gave the song a darker tone, the arrangement is not that bad.
here is the original that sparked the contest
Restless, Restless- original mp3
here is my version
Restless, Restless- my entry mp3
My Childhood Delinquency Quotient
First Holy Communion Day
I think that i was average, as far as doing bad shit to others and their property was concerned, some kids were angels, some were real demons who i couldn't hold a candle to. these were the ones who would end up in some home or other, or maybe even in jail later if they didn't grow out of the childhood phase of committing vandalism in general. here is pretty much what i did:
SHOPLIFTING
Shoplifting was limited to the corner candy stores only, and this period only lasted from about 6th grade to 9th grade. there were 2 stores in particular that were the targets, Martha's and Mensche's, stores that were located in other hoods in town, and we never shoplifted from JOHNNY'S. My friends and i (it was usually a group function, it was more fun to shoplift as a group, we could devour the bounty together while re-living the event and laughing about it later) would go over the Martha's, she was an old lady with very bad eyesight, it was easy to just walk around the store while she was preoccupied with other customers. i personally had a penchant for eating 'tastycake' brand 'kandy kakes', and when i saw that she wasn't looking, i would stuff a pack or 2 down my pants, fairly easy to do. we never got caught there, and i doubt that she had any kind of inventory control where she might notice later that she came up short on 'kandy kake' sales.
Mensche's was a different story. Mrs. Mensch resembled elvira gulch in 'the wizard of oz', and she had a reputation of chasing kids and hitting them with her broom that she always had handy. part of the fun was being chased by her and her trusty broom, so we would purposely shoplift in a way whereby she noticed us doing it, but not until we were ready to bolt and had a clear line to the door. so we would walk in, case the joint as if we were browsing for things to buy, and she would keep one eye on us and one on whatever she was doing, such as cleaning, stocking shelves, keeping the books, or whatever. then, when the time was right, we would all grab something or other, stuff it down our pants so she noticed, and bolt for the door, with her fast behind, flailing broom in hand. she had some hip problem, so she could never catch up to us, and again we would go to our favorite hangout in the woods, eat up the goodies and do a play by play.
and i do not know if this is technically shoplifting, it was more akin to a vending machine heist, and this happened in september of my senior year in high school in 1979. one weekend my friend james and i went to visit his sister, who was a junior at a college in western pennsylvania. while we were there and hanging out at her apartment and partying with her circle of derelicts, we became friends with this dude who was a sophomore and lived in one of the dorms on campus. he said he had some good, kind bud back in his dorm room, so at around 1 am, me and james went with 'pete' to his dorm room and smoked dope from this crazy bong that he had created, which he called the 'Snowman'. this bong had a central glass reservoir and 4 tubes coming out of it. so he packed this oversized bong with the kind bud, lit it, and we would all simultaneously suck in the herb smoke through our own tubes, it was quite a communal thing. so anyway, we got really baked, and subsequently got the munchies, so pete says, "hey, i been thinking, there is this vending machine down in the dorm lobby, you guys wanna break into it?" me and james are like, "sure! let's do it." so at about 4 am, we go down to the lobby, no one is around, and we go look at this vending machine. it is one of those big machines, with about 30 different items in it, and each item was in a row, held in place by these large screws. so that when someone put money in the machine and pressed the button corresponding to the item that he or she wanted, the screw would turn, and the lead item would fall off the screw and land in the bottom of this holding pen. all that the person needed to do was push open this trap door to the holding pen and retrieve the item. it was nearly impossible for one to put a hand into this holding pen and reach up and grab items, the door had a blocking mechanism. our solution was simple: tip the entire 400 lb or so machine forward, onto its glass front, so that all of the items lined up in the screws would fall onto the front glass, and then it was just a simple matter of tipping the machine back up and retrieving the bounty from the holding pen. so we did just that, and the 3 of us tipped the machine down onto its front side (it was really heavy), and we could hear all of the chips, cupcakes, reese's cups, babyruths, whatchamacallits, p.b.max's, cheese doodles, cheese puffs, cheese'n crackers, doritos, tasty kakes, life savers, starbursts, brownies, chips'a hoy et al., fall onto the glass, it was a real mountain of goodies. however, we next had a "houston, we have a problem" type situation. once we tipped the machine back upright, so much shit had fallen down into the holding pen, that the trap door would not open. the reservoir was packed tight with sundries, and the door to it would not budge.we were not to be denied and had come too far at this point, so now it was just a matter of causing real damage to the machine. up to this point, we had not harmed the machine in any way, we had not broken anything, it would theoretically still work once we had concluded our antics and left the machine in its proper upright position. instinct took over however, and pete jammed a piece of wood that he got from somewhere into the trap door and pried like hell, with me and james adding extra force to the lever, and we just bent that trap door all out of shape, destroyed it basically while crushing some of the goodies, so that it came off of its mount and just fell apart. we quickly grabbed what we could, which amounted to a whole lot of stuff, and ran back up to pete's room, adrenaline pumping. we were still stoned and slightly paranoid, so just in case someone saw us, we put everything into a laundry bag and hid it in the ceiling, for about 20 minutes anyway. once we realized that no one saw us, on this plane of existence anyway, we took out the goodies and had a feast.
SETTING GRASS FIRES
this was fairly inoccuous, but there were various open fields around town, and in the summer when the weeds were dried out, the entire field could easily be lit up like a torch. the fun part was watching the fire trucks haul ass to the blaze. so we would light the fire, run to main street and sit on a wall, like we were just hanging out, and wave to the fire trucks as they zoomed down main street on their way to the field on fire.
RAIDING GARDENS
this activity was limited to about a 3 week period in august, when most garden produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans were ready for eating but were not harvested yet. and back then in the 1970's, almost everyone in the neighborhood had a backyard garden. so under the guise of 'sleeping out' in one or the other of my friends' back yards, at about 3am we would go a' raiding. simple enough process, just be real quiet and stealthy, sneak into garden and grab the almost ripe produce and sneak back out. we almost never got caught, as no one was up at that time guarding their precious gardens.
however there was one time were we got caught, and it involved a very large cherry tree. back in those days, the neighborhood was filled with the most awesome, mature fruit trees, the ones that the early italian immigrants planted when these neighborhoods were first populated. so by the time i was a kid in the 1970's, almost every yard had a bunch of fruit trees or other, such as cherry, apple, pear, plum, apricot, chinese chestnut etc, trees that are sadly no more. but anyway, this one old lady (who was also a customer on my paper route), had a great cherry tree in her back yard, and it was definitely not open to the public, as many of the trees about town were available for harvesting. all it took was asking the old italian owner, man or woman, if we could pick fruit off their trees, and usually there was so much fruit that they were happy to oblige us. but this old cherry tree lady was not approachable in the least, no one was allowed in her back yard, but no fence was gonna keep us out. so one night, about 11pm (we should have waited til a later time, but we were hungry), we crept up to her fence in the back yard, quietly hopped over, climbed the tree and started munching. all seemed to be going well, when all of a sudden a dark figure came at us from the direction of her house and started yelling, "hey, what are you doing up there?" "hello!, what do you think we're doing up here", but anyway, we bolted out of that tree and hopped right over the fence before she got close. we ran to the front porch of one of my friends, and about 20 minutes later, the old lady, again with no proof or anything, came stomping to the front porch where we were hanging out and started accusing us of stealing from her, and we just denied it, and good thing my friend's mother came outside, she did not like the old lady overall, and she just chased her away and told her to stuff it basically.
FUN WITH FIREWORKS
here is what one can do with these things:
M-80s (1/8th of a stick of dynamite, i think):
blow up people's mailboxes, and just cause mayhem in general by lighting them off on any neighborhood street, they were very loud
Bottle Rockets: shoot them at peoples homes at night from a distance, at their windows, doors, roofs, they wouldn't do any damage, just make popping sounds when they hit
4oz. Rockets: same thing as Bottle Rockets, but much bigger and could actuallly do damage and break windows, and you could be very far away and shoot them
FUN WITH EGGS, AEROSOL CANS and SNOWBALLS
we didn't limit ourselves to only egging people's cars and homes around Halloween, we did this all year round.
i had a friend who lived in another town, and when i visited him one time, he told me that he had a bad neighbor, and it was like the hatfields and the mccoys. his family hated the neighboring family, and vice-versa. the neighbor had a backyard brick fireplace, and i think they cooked food on this brick fire pit, so this one time, it was at night and they were done cooking and had gone in for the night, but the brick fireplace fire was still smoldering, with embers and the like. so me and my friend got the idea of blowing up this brick fireplace, so we snuck over and threw a new aerosol can into the fire and ran like hell back to his yard, only a minute or 2 later, BOOM! we had no idea that it would be so loud or cause that much damage, but i think it blew a hole in one side of the fireplace. no one ever suspected us, because generally vandalism happened all of the time in most neighborhoods, so it could have been anyone.
and with snowballs, this was a common wintertime activity, we would go to Main St. and find a narrow driveway to hide in, so cars driving up and down Main st. could not see us, all they would see, or hear really, was a thud if we managed to hit their door, side window or even windshield.
and around christmas time, people decorated their outdoor trees with those strings of lights that had really big bulbs, you don't see them much anymore, now the lights are those tiny icicle types. but with these strings of big-bulbed lights, we would each carry a screwdriver that could be wielded like a hammer, and one would just pop the bulbs using the handle end of the screwdrived, they made a great sound when popped. we would quickly pop a whole bunch of bulbs and get out of there.
DINE'N DASH
this activity was reserved for high school days as opposed to grade school, because you needed a car that could take you to another town, to a restaurant you had not visited before. nor would visit again, as it was a 1 time, free meal-type deal. the first time i did it, i was a junior in high school and i picked james up in my family's plymouth duster, and we drove down the line to a city about 20 miles away, and found a nice little pizza joint. that sounded good to us, have a hearty stromboli and pizza meal, free of charge. we were forging new deliquent territory for ourselves, and even though we had not done this before and had no roadmap, how difficult could it be to eat a meal in a joint and run out the door without paying? so we cased the joint and the side streets and set it all up: where we would park the car, what table we would sit at etc. so we had a nice meal, drank our 5th soda each, and were about to conclude the 'dine' part of the night, and the adrenaline started to pump because we knew that the 'dash' part was soon to follow. no way were we going to chicken out and pay for this damn meal. well, it went off without a hitch, as we waited til the waitress was out'a sight and when no one could block our quick exit to the door. in about 30 seconds we were in the car and heading north, back up the line, bellies full, a great success, and it seemed to cement mine and james' friendship in some weird way, as if we had been in a war together.
but one time, about a year later, there were about 8 or 9 of us, we all drove in 2 cars, again to another city, and set it all up as usual. the cars were parked about a 1/4 mile away on a dark side street, and we binged on 4 or 5 trays of red and white pizza at this busy italian pizza establishment. again, the' dine' part was completed, and the 'dash' part seemingly went off without a hitch as we all made eye contact and simultaneously rushed out the door. but in the process of sprinting to the cars, one of our group, earl, who had ridden there in my car, fell down, but quickly got up and continued on to my car with the rest of my group. but when we got to my car, earl started freaking out, as we could see now that blood was everywhere, on his hands and arms, spurting out of one of the deepest, nastiest gashes i have ever seen in the palm of anyone's hand, he must have fallen on a piece of glass or something. well this really put a damper on things, and all was happening so fast, so we had to scramble to wrap the wound with something while at the same time jumping into the car and burning rubber to get the hell out of there, because the cook or the owner of the pizza joint could be hot on our trail. so instead of driving to the woods to drink some brews and savor our accomplishment, we drove to the emergency room, a buzzkill to say the least. i don't think that any of us dined and dashed after that, i know i didn't.
HELLO LESBIANS!
I think that i lived in a bubble growing up, and it could also have been that lesbian women were closeted in the 60's and 70', but i had no concept of what a lesbian was, nor did i know any lesbian women, be they teenage or adult. even in high school, there were 1 or 2 boys who were rumored to be gay, to each their own, but never were there inklings that lesbianism was a reality in the world that i lived in. thus, this idea that 2 women could get it on never crossed my mind, and for all intents and purposes there were no such females in existence with such a sexual orientation.
so, i decided to go away to college, out to a school in central pennsylvania, and during my first semester in the fall of 1980, i made some cool friends in my dorm, and we started to hang out regularly and find our way around the local party circuit. one of our group heard about this party that these sophomore women were having in their apartment in town, so we decided to go, it was a friday night. pleasant enough party, we made some new female friends, played some drinking games, smoked some pot, and basically had a good time, jamming out to tunes and the like. then, one of the girls who lived in the apartment, said "hey, the girls who live in the apartment above us are all lesbians, and they usually have parties on friday nights, with no men in attendance, just chicks. and if you exit out of our kitchen window and jump out onto the fire escape, you can climb up the steps and look into their kitchen window, to see what is going on." so we're like, "no way!, this shit doesn't exist", but just the thought of it was titillating to me and my naive freshman friends, and we had to look into this matter. so we did just that. 4 of us climbed out the kitchen window and out onto the fire escape, adrenaline pumping, we had no idea what we would come across and observe. up and up we climbed, ever so slowly and quietly, and we finally made it to the platform off the kitchen window of the upstairs apartment. we all stood there, motionless, speechless, eyes wide open, as we looked into the kitchen window, and i will never forget that sight, it was beautiful. there were about 12 naked women, doing all kinds of crazy stuff: one was chasing another around the apartment, playing this cat and mouse game, some were making out in a corner, some were arranged in a great pile on the floor, with intertwined arms and legs, with pussy licking and tit sucking being the main activities there. it was a real eye-opener, and we were all kind of turned on, as none of us had ever considered that this happening was even a possibility in our narrow universes. we could have stayed there for an hour watching, playing with ourselves, but our outing to the soon to be outing was cut short by one of my friends, jeff, who was a real zany guy who didn't care what he said to anyone, he was very quick-witted and funny. so we're standing there, for about 10 minutes, taking it all in, and then all of a sudden, jeff bangs on the kitchen window and yells, really loudly, "Hey! You Want Some COCK in There?" and we're like, holy shit, let's get the fuck out'a here, so we scramble down the fire escape and back into the downstairs apartment, it was real bedlam, and my chest was really thumping at this point. our new female friends were like, "told you so".
but the bizarre part was (as if the whole situation wasn't bizarre, at the time anyway), and i had no intention or ruining anyone's party, and jeff kind of acted comedically and spontaneously, albeit slightly homophobically perhaps, but this was still 1980, and it was like we outed a whole bunch of college woman who were not yet ready to be outed. we could hear yelling and shouting going on upstairs, real pandemonium, and a few minutes later a train of teary young women made their way down the apartment stairs, past the lower apartment door which was open, so we could see them leave. we had broken up this frolic-filled, peaceful, idyllic, sapphic gathering, and there was both fright and anger in the eyes of these women as they exited the building. i made eye contact with one of them, i can still remember her face clearly, she was really scared and confused it seemed, and was really balling. what are ya gonna do, shit happens, but again i did not really want to break up their gathering, live and let live. life is one big fuckfest. chicks are fucking chicks, dudes are fucking dudes, chicks with dicks are fucking chicks with and without dicks, dudes are fucking chicks, gelded she-males are fucking dudes, dudes are fucking cantelope, watermelon, fake rubber pussies and blow up dolls. who really cares. well maybe the godhatesfags.com people do, but they are really off their rockers. our party kind of broke up then also, and we headed back to the dorm to hang out and do a play by play of the crazy night's events.
POSTSCRIPT: Fast forward to the present day, so a few years ago i was visiting a friend in Questa, New Mexico, a really beautiful part of the state, north of taos. d.h. lawrence had some land up there and started an artist colony or something, ram dass had some ashram there also, and there are a bunch of tibetan temples dotting the landscape as well. One morning i went for a walk in the woods, up this trail that led to an open meadow, and once i got to the meadow, i had a nice view of the area and of the colorado mountains up north. but off in the distance, i noticed these 2 domes of a church or something, laid side by side, and all i could see were the upper portions of the domes and what looked like nipples on top. and i remember thinking at the time, "man, they look like two god-damned giant breasts, facing up to the heavens!" so when i got back to my friend's house, i asked her about it and she said, yes!, some wealthy lesbian writer or psychologist has a compound there, a real lesbian stronghold, and there are great gatherings, my friend had heard, of lesbians that go there, for therapy, conventions, giant orgies or whatever. i thought wow, good for them, to have a nice place to go to to do their thing, they've really come out of the closet en masse, and i would sure like to look into their window to see what is going on. i tried to view this compound on google satellite maps, but i could not find it. i'll keep looking every once in a while.
Multiple Personalities
in much the same way that norman bates had 2 personalities inhabiting 1 body, he and his 'mother', i too have multiple personalites, and we all speak to one another and bicker generally, and the one that surfaces most often is Calvin Virgil, or Cal Virgil for short. 'Cal' because he likes that name for some reason, and 'Virgil' because he thinks that he either is a reincarnation of the roman poet Virgil, or in the very least he is, being half italian, a direct descendant of the poet and is carrying on the tradition of putting poetry to music. (Cal's music and poetry suck, to me anyway, and he already knows that i feel this way, and he thinks that this website sucks too, but he had no reservations about me writing about him and promoting some of his work on this site when i told him that i was thinking about doing this, as i constantly need more content). According to Cal, and i have my doubts about this, Virgil was supposedly the first person, in recorded history anyway, to write poetry and walk the countryside reciting it to the accompaniment of his stringed lyre. When i told Cal (and he wants me to drop the e.e.cummings thing when writing about him here and use capital letters for his name), but when i told him that he has no proof whatsoever that he a) is a reincarnation of Virgil, or b) is a descendant of Virgil, he got pissed off and said that i was closed minded, and that i am like every other skeptic and scientist who needs hard proof and data to accept something as being true. and then when i even questioned the veracity of Cal's statement that Virgil is the first person in recorded history to put poetry to music, he said that it must be true because he read it on wikipedia or some other inane website spewing mis-information.
just a little side note about multiple personalites, if you've ever seen the film me, myself and irene with jim carrey, the 2 personalities that take turns surfacing in this one body, have no awareness nor memory of the other personality, one takes over, does his antics, then the other takes over and has no idea why he is laying face down on a sidewalk etc, like a jeckyl and hyde thing. well, it's not entirely like that for me. Cal will take dominance, but i am still there, conversing with him, aware of what he does, and vice-versa. maybe hannah montana and miley cyrus are like this. one may also say that Cal Virgil is an alter-ego, but i'm not sure what that really means. sometimes i do not hear from him for days or weeks (thank god, as he can irritate me sometimes), but then he comes around and 'i' take a back seat, but i am present, observing and taking notes. there are rare times however where i really space out and am not aware of what Cal is up to, and i have to ask him if i missed anything while i was away. and overall, Cal and i disagree on about every topic, for instance he adores meg ryan romantic comedy films, and i loathe them etc
But anyway, Cal and i made a deal, that i would promote him and his work on my website (he is hit or miss with his creations), and that he would promote my work in his site, which he is building now. his website should be ready in a few years, and this is no joke because he is the biggest dreamer on the planet, he's got tons of ideas for this art project and that art project, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of sitting down and doing the hard work that it takes sometimes, for me anyway, to manifest something, he'd rather lay in front of the idiot box and watch COPS and Forensic Files re-runs all day, everyday. to each their own i guess. Case in point (and i know that he will be reading this), he fashions himself a painter, in the style of the school of abstract expressionism or some crap like that. Jackson Pollack is his idol (Cal made me capitalize Pollack's name here also), with sub-idols named rothko and krasner or whomever. Since i've known Cal, he has painted 3 paintings, a self-portrait and 2 abstract things, they are very large and each took him about 2 years to make. (a 3 year-old could throw some paint on a canvas and come up with the same shit, but the self-portrait is not that bad) he thinks they are works of genius, and he has priced them in the of millions of dollars. needless to say, not 1 of them has sold, but he does have an admirer or 2, schmucks who have seen them on this site because i'm a nice guy. i told Cal that i would show them, here they are below. if you are interested in buying, you can email him, but he never checks his email anyway and he detests communicating with people, but for what it is worth, he can be reached at calvirgil@gmail.com. being i will get a cut of the profits from the sale of these paintings for showing them here (1/1000 of 1% he will give me, cheap muther-effer), i may check his email every so often, maybe not, hell may freeze over before anyone of these sell.
Young Girl Walking Through Field
by Cal Virgil, Oil on Canvas, 20' x 20' Price: $3,000,000
Young Girl Walking Through Field With a Daschund
by Cal Virgil, Oil on Canvas, 20' x 20' Price: $4,000,000
Self-Portrait: Earth Tones Period
by Cal Virgil, Acrylic, 10' x 9' Price: $10,000,000
close up pic of Cal's real teeth
" I am reminded of a cliché that Frankie (Lloyd Wright) repeated to my father before the latter's passing, that there is 'nothing new under the sun', but I must object and state that Virgil's unique post-modern/neo-convoluted dystopianism negates Lloyd Wright's idiocy in its anthropomorphic genesis and turns Pollock's and Krasner's organized chaos (latin. organalicarum chaoticum) into 'dis-organized order', an apt aphor-type-ism about Virgil's work that de Kooning once purportedly had whispered into the ear of Rothko's bastard son, and he may have also hinted that Virgil, though living and working in a zeitgeist-ignorant zone and having no awareness of the inferior work of his contemporaries, 'has changed modern art forever '."
-----Mr. Real, famous art critic, Perth Amboy, NJ, overheard speaking to UPSIDEDOWN Magazine's Hadji Archibald
