Quote:
Originally Posted by nunusguy
I wonder if there's any chance of the Chuckster rolling out his LearJet and taking some of us with him up to Greenbreir in August to watch the Texans in their TC ?
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Dude, if I had a plane I would with great pleasure drop in to Houston and take all you necks up to West Virginia. Sadly, I have to fly commercial just like the rest of you. I mean, I usually ride up front, you know, unless I'm traveling with my little guy. I don't feel like paying a thousand dollars for a seat he's just going to jump and/or piss in, and there's a part of me that resists the temptation to inflict his antics on my fellow passengers up front.
Although to be honest, he's a reliably good traveler. For one thing, he loves airplanes like I do, and he's happy in them, like I am. For another thing, some goddamn genius invented the iPad.
You might be surprised to learn that I've spent an inordinate amount of time in West Virginia and I am very fond of the place, despite the fact that overwhelming numbers of its citizens decided to unleash their inner bigot and succumb to certain puerile fears with the direct (and, apparently, to many of them, surprising) result of now finding themselves in serious danger of losing the healthcare they and their neighbors depend upon to survive black lung, emphysema, diabetes and severe arterial blockage past the age of 45 or so.
But it's a lovely state, and it would be even lovelier if they'd tap the brakes on the mountaintop removal mining. I mean, call me crazy, but I sort of like mountains the way they are.
I have a friend whose father was the long time mayor of Martinsburg. I guess I should say he was a friend. I haven't spoken with him in years. He was always a little nutty, but finally he got too crazy for me, if you can believe it. I honestly decided that he would get me killed one day. I was living in New York at the time and he'd come visit me and approach people on the street randomly and say weird shit to them. I was like, Dude, you can't do that sort of thing here, man.
It's funny, one night I was driving with him and we were on the route you take from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge. I have no idea what we were doing in Jersey or even if we had been in Jersey. But you get out of the tunnel and you have to juke around a little and you end up on Kenmare Street, which turns into Delancey which leads you directly to the bridge. You have to drive up Centre Street to get to Kenmare. Centre Street is a weird street for me. Back then I played music professionally and there was a studio on Centre Street where I used to record and mix occasionally. Somehow the guys who owned that place managed to purchase the Rolling Stones' mobile studio, a sort of step van that had a control room inside that was used to record countless classic records. I have absolutely no idea how these knuckleheads managed to buy it, but they did, and they parked it out in front of their studio on this very street. It had the Stones logo on the sides of the van and everything. How no one ever just stole it I cannot imagine. I also have no idea how I ever came to work in that studio, what the reason was if there in fact was a reason, what I was doing, but all I know is I did a session where we mixed in the van.
I had a sort of paramour who lived on Centre Street, too. I'd visit when her boyfriend was out of town, which, happily, was frequently. She later, MUCH later, married Al Jourgensen, which was sort of bewildering to me when I found out.
Anyway, George and I were driving down Kenmare one night and a garbage truck was stopped, blocking both usable lanes. Quickly, all non-municipal garbage collection there is totally mobbed up. These are not people you want to cross. But. I pull up behind this garbage truck that's blocking the thoroughfare and I immediately roll down my window and start honking and yelling at intervals. George, you remember him? The guy that I'm convinced is going to get me killed by being a lunatic? George starts pounding me nervously on the shoulder, Hey, man, hey, man, don't do that!
I'm leaning out the window yelling the vilest profanities I can think of. Eventually a doe-eyed, jump-suited simpleton comes wandering into view from the front of the truck. He looks at me and shrugs, Whaddaya want? he seems to indicate.
HEY! I yell out the window. Commeere! George is pounding me ever more insistently. Look, man, I understand you have a job to do, and I respect that. But we got two lanes here, and you guys are puukin blocking da bot' of em!
He looks around, realizes I'm right and that I have a point and lets loose a piercing whistle. HEY! he shouts, Unintelligible move that unintelligible over there!
The driver pulls the truck over and I putt past. George looks shaken, relieved and admiring.
Oh, I should mention that he is convinced I am affiliated with the CIA. (I'm not.)
So, yeah, West Virginia.