Day 14

I've been waking up at 4 fucking o'clock in the morning. It just happens, somedays I hate it and some days I'm just used to it. It's been like that since I have been working out again. I like the gym. I'm finally under 200lbs. As a little boy I always wanted to play football, even after my accident at 6 years old. I would play after school with my friends and I would tell them all how I wanted to play in the NFL. They would laugh and say, you have crazy legs, no team would ever want that. However, my family didn't ever say I couldn't. Until I was in high school and the coaches shook their heads and said, "Well can you punt?" - "I don't wanna fucking punt!" So in a matter of seconds my NFL career was dead, at high school. So I joined the drama club. What a disaster that was. SO-----Senior year of high school me and two other guys (Matt and Mat) bought some really crappy instruments from JCPenney‘s outlet. A drum set that was meant for a six-year-old, an olWilley guitar that had maybe two strings and we had a bass guitar which belonged to Mat’s step-father. Mat hated him so he stole it the night of our Lip-synch battle at Edward Reed high school in Sparks, Nevada. Before the night of the show we had to do a live audition. We already knew in our minds how the live show was going to be, so, we auditioned In front of a few classmates, probably the class president maybe the theater teacher I don’t remember but there were adults present during the audition stages. We were doing Sabotage from the Beastie Boys. At the time the beastie boys were really experimenting with a lot of music so during the audition we played Sure Shot, a more groovier kind of dance song. And it has a dog saying I love you         We get done and nothing but crickets until a voice chimes in. “You boys are going to need a lot of practice and a lot of stage presence go home and practice but congratulations we will see you in 2 months” All I remember is saying - oh my shit to myself while walking off the audition stage. Matt and Mat were a little harder to keep together right away; they got the giggles because we were doing a bad audition with the wrong song on purpose. So we didn’t have a lot of money and we wanted to make sure that we got through the audition portion before we bought some funky suits. The night of the show we show up in the weirdest most outrageous cop tuxedo uniform ensembles, we had our  janky instrument sets and a real expensive bass guitar. The monitor asked me which track I told him and gave him an extra 20 bucks just to make sure, sure..... we went on after some popular girls doing TLC or some funny Poppy band back in the 90s. I was the singer And that night the high school gym was packed full of families and little kids and brothers and sisters and here we are about to perform Sabotage. All I remember is lights coming up there’s a good five seconds before the music it and everybody in the audience started giggling I don’t know if it was because of our outfits or stupid instruments or the cup of water I had waiting for when Adrock starts screaming halfway through the sabotage song.  Needless to say the show had to go on and sabotage started. We started rocking that shit hard as hard as you can during a lip-synch battle. So halfway through when Adrock starts sing scream “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I can’t stand it......Matt the tall 6’11 drummer on the tinker drum set stands up and I swung my cheap ass guitar right at his back breaking it. He runs around the stage with his pants around his ankle swinging his drumsticks, proud. I take a dive right into the drum set crashing and breaking every last piece right after I spew water all over the stage from the gulp I had taken. On the other side of the stage Mat strummed his stepfather’s bass looks at the commotion and raises the base over his head (pretty much in that “fuck it”way) smashes that bass. It was like Kurt Cobain giving the “Atta’boy” to Mat. The song turned off and the house lights came on and The voice from the PA system Unexpectedly announced an intermission as we walked off the stage as Matt threw his drumsticks. As we stood there in our ripped costume clothes, sweating as we were told we were disqualified. We were later banned from participating in any more high school activities. And we weren’t mentioned once in the yearbook.  All I said in a really soft soothing voice was - Sabotage

I am grateful for The Beastie Boys - I grew up listening to them, they taught me never take life serious and have fun with it - and strive to make the this habitat a better place to live.