ericboy's Diaryland Diary

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\"You Kill Me / All the time with that look in your eyes / You Kill Me / All the time with your eyes.\" - Darwin's Waiting Room

Right now I'm listening to the new onelinedrawing CD, The Volunteers. My roommate's computer has uncooperative speakers, so I don't think I'm getting the full scope of the record, but I'm still thoroughly enjoying it. Jonah is an open-wound virtuoso and I simply adore his tortured voice. Scratchy, polytonic, and so naked. If only we could all be so forthcoming.

That being said, if one were to ask me "Say, Eric; What's the best CD out there right now?" I would have to say, hands down, Static X's Wisconson Death Trip! "Why", you ask? Well, I'll tell you why: because I had to go through fucking HELL to get the goddamned thing. It goes like this:

Saturday I had planned to see Henry Rollins unleash his particular brand of comedy and morality lesson upon San Diego for the second time since I'd moved here. All was set to be a wonderful evening. I woke up at 12:50-something to the sound of rain. Already, it's some three hours past the time that I had my alarm set for. So, ixnay the laundry and the anti-Bush bake sale. I call Jesi and leave a message apologizing for not meeting her at the bake sale and tell her to meet me at Winston's in OB between four and seven. Moving on, I leave the house in a brief reprieve from the water falling from the sky. I go to Lestat's to do some research and post a little entry on the web (this is the April 17th thingy) and try to find some song lyrics. I look up the lyrics for Bad Religion's "21st Century Digital Boy" as the band that I was set to sing with that afternoon was interested in me trying my hand (or tongue, as the case may be) at it. I find the lyrics and they look completely foreign to me. I'm all like "What the fuck is this and how the Hell does it fit?" So I look to find the song on MP3 or something so I can hear it, but to no avail. I find it on this one site but the media player on their computer is improperly prepared to play it and it's not my business to update their shit, so I let it go.

I leave there and put my headphones on and listen to Darwin's Waiting Room, a bitchin' band from Jacksonville that I'd been neglecting. I'm mouthing along to the words, people are looking at me like I'm insane, and I couldn't be more pleased. I get to this place at 30th and University that boasts that it "Replaces Watch Batteries". With what, it doesn't say. My uncle and I spent an entire afternoon completing that statement and sending ourselves into hysterical fits of laughter, so I figured I'd put them to the test. The service guy gets the back off of the watch and then says a) He doesn't have the battery and b) It's extremely hard to change out. I shrug and say "Hey, it's a nine dollar watch. I'll live. Thanks, anyway." He puts it back together, I pocket it, get some change for the bus, and jump on the 908 to go to Old Town.

I get off on Rosecrans because I see that the 35, my connecting bus, travels down that way. I get to a bus stop kiosk and ask the guy sitting there if he has the time. He stares at me dumbly, trying to interpret my colloquialism. I ask him if he knows what time it is and he says a quarter past four. I am already fifteen minutes late to meet the band. The bus finally gets there and we go to Ocean Beach. I get off the bus a few blocks from the venue and head over there.

On my way into Winston's, a man stops me and asks to see my ID. I tell him I don't have it, which is true. Some piece of shit stole my wallet and I don't have anything that proves I'm a twenty-five year old boy who looks seventeen despite my hair-loss and wrinkled hands. He says he can't let me in without ID. I tell him I'm here to sing for the band. He says "Okay; you can go in, but when the band takes a break, you have to come outside. They can't have any drinks when you're on stage, and you can't order anything from the bar." Oh-kay. I go in, meet the band, and take a seat by the wall leading into the bathroom. The door guy comes up and tells me that I have to sit by the exit. I get up and go back to the front door area. Then he tells me that I could stand by the other exit to the right of the stage. At this point, I'm just sick of moving and being told where I can and cannot sit or stand.

The band gets me up and we play Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy", the Gin Blossom's "Hey, Jealousy", and Green Day's "When I Come Around". The crowd seems to enjoy the songs but are too perplexed and intimidated by the fact that I might be a minor to really celebrate my effort. They all have petrified looks of fear on their faces, as if they think they're part of some pedophiliac cinema exploitation ring or something. I give them all dirty looks and go around the corner to get a coffee to lubricate my throat. The band talks to me outside between their set and asks me to sing a few more. They pitch "21st Century Digital Boy", repeatedly, and I have to admit my ineptitude. They have me up during their last set and we do Blur's "Song 2" and Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle". They finish promptly at seven.

Still no sign of Jesi, so I go to the payphone and try to call her. I dial the wrong number and a hispanic woman answers.

Her: "Hello?"

Me: "Hello. Is Jesica there?"

Her: "Um.... 'scuse me?"

Me: "Is Jesica there?"

Her: "Um... No. Who's this?"

Me: "Someone trying to reach a Jesica and I obviously have the wrong number, so it doesn't matter anyway, now does it? Thank you. Bye."

Where was she going with that? Did she think I was a T-100 sent from the year 2025 to destroy all Jesicas in San Diego? Was she intrigued by the sound of my voice, and wanted to offer to be my Jesica? Was she hiding a Jesica from Nazis and prompting me for the passcode to tell the Franks that the occupancy had ended and they could come out of the basement now? I walk over to the bus stop.

I get on the 35 heading out of OB. The driver hands me a transfer slip and I sit down. We're rolling along and I see that the other bus that shares some same stops with this one is a 900 bus. I wonder if maybe it goes downtown, which would make things easier for me, since that's where I was headed. I step up behind the bus driver, an overly effeminate man with legs that are paler than mine, which is no small feat.

Me: "Excuse me, do you know the best route to get downtown?"

He: "Pardon?"

Me: "Downtown. Do you know the best way to get there from here?"

He: "Eh?"

Me: "DOWNTOWN."

He: "You'll need to transfer."

This guy is not only informative, but verily so

Me: "To what?"

He: "The trolley."

Me: (dismissively) "Well, that's one way to do it." I sit back down, and think that if I ever need someone to confirm what color the sky is, who the president is, or which foot is my left, this is my go-to guy.

We get to the Old Town Trolley station and I see that the transfer slip that the driver gave me expired three minutes before we got there. I show it to him, he examines it as a small shopkeeper would a one hundred dollar bill, and says "Oh yeah." He proceeds to make me another one, which is probably the most elaborate production I'd seen since Jekkyl and Hyde at the Music Hall in Houston, Texas, back in 1996. How the fuck did he ever manage to do this while driving? It is at this point that I see that his lap is covered in hole-puncher droppings from doing this all day. It looked like he was preparing to make a papier mache cast of his crotch. I snatch the transfer ticket from him and run away.

I get on the trolley with the crowd of rabid out-of-town fans headed to Petco Park's first Saturday game. A transit cop, drunk with authority, wanders up and down the middle of our car, checking tickets and quoting the maximum fines that passengers could incur for chewing gum or setting their feet in the seat as he catches people doing such. People cower and wax apologetic, fueling his haughtiness. I get off at 5th and C St.

I get some pizza from the pizzeria and wash it down with Root Beer. The last customer of the evening orders his food and then tries to transform it into a cost-efficient combo platter by sheer will of his suggestion. When the shopkeeper refuses him, stating fact as his backing, the customer becomes offensive, as if they were taking him for a ride. He looks to me for support and I look at the tablecloth. After he begrudgingly pays the whole amount of his tab, I leave, assured that I won't have to bounce his head off of the Snapple cooler.

I approach 4th and B, the venue that Henry will be performing at, and see that a line has wrapped around the building. I go to the box-office to buy my ticket and it is then that I notice that they are IDing people at the door. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! I walk away.

I figure, as long as I'm downtown and I can't hear myself think over the clamor of twenty-five thousand small conversations spilling out of the stadium, I'll check out the Border's downtown. I hike over there and find a CD that I'd been looking to find for quite some time. It's out of print and I didn't even see it at Amoeba Records in L.A. Spotting it on the shelf and in the store, I consider myself lucky. I put it on hold since I didn't have my paycheck stub with me and I wasn't about to pay full-price for it. The seller said "Okay, Eric; We'll hold Wisconson Death Trip up front for you until the twentieth." I say thank you, order some coffee, sit outside, and start writing in my journal. I decide that I need music. So I pull out my portable CD player and press play. The LCD displays says "OPEN". I open it and close it and it still says "OPEN". I beat it on the table, the chair, and the window, and it still does not cooperate. I instead flick on the tuner. The first song I hear is Bad Religion's "21st Century Digital Boy". Where were you eight hours ago? I curse and write it down.

I leave there and head over to the bus corrall, where the entire casts of "Eight is Enough", "Too Close for Comfort" and "Good Times" are all waiting for busses. The sheer number and cacophony of the crowd intimidates me, so I walk away to find a restroom. I go to Wendy's and try to put my quarter in the pay-toilet door when a voice issues from behind it saying... something. Shit, I don't know. It could have been anything. It didn't sound like anything appropriate, leaving the realm of possibility open to anything. I wait outside of the bathroom, and then my body tells me "Piss, you Cretin!!!" Now I am in pain, dancing around in front of the door while the person on the inside is no doubt plucking a chicken and marinating it eleven special herbs and seasonings. He finally emerges and I see that he is a tiny black man with white spots around his lip, that were either sores or residue. I go in, handle my bidness, and get out. On my way to the front door, a snappily dressed young white man passes me on his way to the bathroom, fresh from finishing some sort of sandwich on a poppy-seed bun. So he had black spots on his lips. As I go back into the night, I laugh about it.

I pass by the NBC building, where I can see a man in his cubicle, replete with family photos and office playthings, sitting in front of his computer doing absolutely nothing. His computer was on the start-up screen, with no tiles highlighted or clicked. As I pass around him, I see that he is watching the NBA playoffs. I laugh at him and look up to see the 11 bus pull away. It is the last to run for another hour. I decide to just start walking home, so I head east on Broadway. At one point, a man crosses the street in front of me and then turns around to stand behind me and prepare to cross back to his starting point. He looks down at me and asks if I'm from the Salvation Army. I say no and walk away. On the next block, I pass the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center on my right. I quicken my pace considerably.

Somewhere around 22nd Street, the 2 bus rolls toward me, so I position myself at its designated stop. I see that it is packed to the seams, and when the door is opened I am hit with a gust of the most putrid elements of human existence all mixed together: piss, shit, sweat, ass, halitosis, all of it. I climb on and say "Damn. Got a full house." Without turning to me, the driver says "It's not a house; it's a bus." We're back in motion and he says "Can you believe some people don't think my humor is funny?"

"The nerve of people," I say.

"I start out with my clean jokes," he goes on to say. "How do you catch a unique rabbit?"

"Couldn't tell ya."

"You 'nique up on it."

ha.

"How do you catch a tame rabbit?"

"Uh-uh-un."

"Tame way; you 'nique up on it."

"Hey look; there's a seat really far away from you." I sit and watch the driver make large hand motions as cars, cats, people, and I think a brontosaurus continually waver haphazardly in front of him. It's like he was living in a video game. People start to get off the bus little by little and the air starts to clear up a bit. Just before 30th and Adams, the last stop that the bus makes, the guy in the seat in front of me pulls the cord to signal the driver to stop, as if he wouldn't had the cord not been pulled. I wanted to wrap the cord around his neck and pull on it until his eyes got bigger.

I get off the bus and limp the rest of the way home, getting in at about eleven or so. I call Jesi and we laugh about my shitty day. The conclusion of my Static X story took place on Monday, but that's enough for one page for now. We'll start another one for that.

9:02 p.m. - 2004-04-20

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