Post Number One Thousand Five Hundred !!!

Post # 1500!!

  Which really doesn't meaning anything other than I have hit the "Publish" button 1500 times. But, that's a LOTTA button pushing, so I'm pretty happy that I have made it to 1500 posts, and that I still manage to crank out the same crap that very few people have been reading for the last 1499 posts over roughly the last 6 years. Go me! Rah-Rah!

  Anywho, I tried to come up with some grand, exciting thing to do for 1500...And I didn't really come up with anything. So, what I am going to do is share with you a bit of based on life fiction that I have writed my very own self...So, without further ado, I give you...

  The Boys Who Cried "It's Them" 

    The earliest memory I have on that day is buying large bottles of booze in New York City, and trying to figure out how to conceal them in a backpack. It was one of those times I wish I was fonder of (and my stomach more tolerant of) the old “hard liquor”, as that would be a whole lot easier to conceal. Alas, I had not yet been introduced to the world of schnapps, so it was large bottles of beer for me and my friends (some people may try and tell you that it was wine coolers, not beer, but those people are dirty, filthy liars, who have a vendetta against us and cannot be trusted).

     I think that it was 1990. The reason that we were procuring these beverages on this warm summer day was to imbibe them during a James Taylor concert at what was then called the Garden State Arts Center in the great state of New Jersey. I’m not sure what it’s called now, but I think it has a corporate name. It maybe one of the thousands of Verizon Wireless amphitheatres that seem to exist in the U.S. these days, I don’t know. Don’t much care, either. Though if you care, I’m sure you can Gooble it or something. It’s in a place called Holmdel, New Jersey. Gooble away, my friends. Gooble to your hearts content.

    I’m pretty sure it was 1990 because that was the year that Sinead O’Connor caused all that ruckus by refusing to go onstage at the Arts Center because they always played the National Anthem before every concert or event. I don’t remember the outcome But I do remember James Taylor referencing the whole thing by coming onstage and saying that he was disappointed because he had planned to open with the National Anthem, but there was really no point now. He’s a funny fucker, that James Taylor, a real funny fucker.

   But enough about James Taylor, back to liquor procurement. We were in the big bad city to purchase our liquor because none of us had reached the magic age of 21. This made our desired purchase beyond our grasp…At least in a legal sense. But we had discovered through some trial and error, that in some of the delis in NYC, they would sell us some adult beverages without so much as a second look(I think we may have been the first people to ever realize this). So we decided on this fine day to traipse into the city and get some booze. I think we probably ate some lunch too…And maybe, just maybe purchased some weed as well.

   Most of the rest of the day is fairly hazy…Which makes me think that maybe we DID purchase some weed. Or that nothing much happened that afternoon. Or perhaps “a little from column A and a little from Column B” as Abe Simpson once said.

    I do remember us entering the concert venue, and my friend Dave had the bottles in his backpack, and they rattled when the guy at the gate patted down the bag. I seem to remember us claiming that it was Orangina(the first legal beverage we could think of that came in glass bottles-rather ingenious on our part, if I do say so myself-which I guess I just did) in the bag, and the guy looked at us like he didn’t believe us but didn’t care, and let us, and our contraband, into the Garden State Art Center.

  The show was good. Some mellow tunes from James Taylor. We had lawn seats, so we spread out a blanket and just kinda hung out. Don’t remember anything extraordinary about the show or the other people. At least until it was time to leave. That was when we discovered that someone had stolen Dave’s shoes.

   We had not been in any rush to leave, and everyone around us was already gone, so even if someone had grabbed his shoes by accident (not very likely-it had the feel of a professional job from the get-go), it was too late to find out. We still fanned out in a much larger search grid than was really necessary(but who knew ? Maybe the shoes had boogied there way across the lawn) and scoured the litter strewn ground for a hint of the shoes…But there was nary a trace. We finally had to accept that they were gone.  Dave handled it well, but I sometimes think I still see a flash in his eyes that tells me he is still haunted by the questions to which we never received any answers…Why? Why HIS shoes? Why that night? Why, indeed.

    We made our way back to the car, Dave adeptly avoiding broken glass and random, unidentified puddles along the way. Our original plan had been to travel into the city to meet up with some friends who went in to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. Did Dave’s sudden  and complete lack of footwear change that plan ? You’re god damned right it didn’t! We soldiered on into the city.

  I think what we did was: We drove to Hoboken, and then we took the PATH train into the city. We arrived at the theater, and I don’t know if we were not allowed in because we were too late, or because Dave did not have shoes, or whether we decided just to not go in, but I think it was one of the first two, because I remember us returning to the subway platform to wait for our friends.

  What I do know, is that at some point, we(Dave and I) pissed our friend Bruce off…Or something did. And if he was not pissed already, we very shortly made sure that he was pissed at us.

   Why did we do this? Because we were jerks.

    How did we do this? Well, Dave and I decided to update and re-enact an old time fairy tale…The Tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Now, I don’t think this was a conscious decision on our part…I think it was something that just started happening, and we decided to run with it. Who said it first? I don’t recall. But at some point after we had been sitting on the platform, one of us said: “Hey, it’s them!” What we meant, of course, was that it was the friends from the movie theater. Except that is wasn’t. But two out of three of us looked. Funny, right ?

  It might have been funny the first two or three times. Funny the 10^th time ? Maybe, but probably not. Did Dave and I find it funny? Oh hells yes. And it got funnier each time. I don’t know that I will ever really know why Bruce did not shove one or both of us onto the tracks that night. We probably deserved it.

  But do you know what elevated this to all time classic status? Have you guessed yet? Let me set the scene. Bruce is sitting with his back against one of the columns on the platform. He is pretty angry at these two dicks he for some reason calls his friends. They are still saying, “Hey Bruce…It’s them.” Every few minutes, and giggling, even though he long ago stopped looking at the stairs.

    “Hey, Bruce. It’s them” I said. No response.

    “Really, Bruce, it’s them.” He was too smart to turn around. And he did not turn around. Until he heard someone else’s voice and then he just about jumped out of his skin. IT REALLY WAS THEM!!! It was unbelievable. Dave and I laughed so hard we almost passed out. Bruce could only shake his head and smile, or perhaps try to make our heads explode with the power of his mind. Either way, he forgave us, and decided against making our heads explode.