…And everyone starts FREAKING the fuck out because this bar is just a regular neighborhood bar in San Antonio, and they don’t even let dogs in–nothing personal, it’s just a health code thing. In fact, one of the regular patrons Mary (who is absolutely tanked) will remark:

“Oh, I see – trigonometric functions can come into this shit-hole but I can’t bring in my cockerspaniel. Where’s the justice?  I’ll tell you where: all those toilets in the back.” (NOTE: Larry, another regular at this bar is a plumber that just got laid off, so to exact revenge on his former employer, he’s been stealing toilets from houses, using the company van he has yet to return, and stacking them up in the back room of the bar. The bar owner plans to sell these back to all the homes from which they were stolen at a PREMIUM. The thing Mary said, I’m not so sure what she means.  I guess what she’s trying to say is all the justice was FLUSHED down those toilets in the back.  Only kind of makes sense, Mary.  I know, I know–you’ve been drinking all afternoon.  You’re forgiven, but that probably won’t fly at your job, which is Chief Metaphor Officer at the San Antonio Express, which is an imaginary newspaper, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Mary is absolutely, legitimately insane, by the way.)

Anyway, after everyone died, the parabola, sine, cosine and tangent curves were nowhere to be found because as it turned out, everyone in the bar was on acid.

The bartender just shrugs and says “We don’t serve your kind here,” to no one in pariticular.

But, when I do skip a song, I picture the band sitting around in a giant control room that looks like the NASA command central or something. They sit and get  a bird’s eye view on giant television screens, complete with live images of anyone tuning into their album on a CD player or a radio or a computer or an iPod-machine.  They can only see these when someone has actually put on their music — otherwise it’s screens full of snow and static-fuzz blowing through the speakers.  When my hands come into view, they are fiddling with the buttons on my dilapidated 5-disc CD player that sits on top of a receiver, which sits on top of a bunch of magazines I never read.

The band goes silent, makes fists with their hands and try hard not to blink at the screen in the top left corner, where my hands are now turning on the receiver, and I’m pressing the “CD” button and slowly spinning the volume knob with my index finger because I’m not sure where I left it last time and I don’t want to wake my landlady who lives right below my feet, my body, whatever.  She’s old and Greek and probably thinks someday I’m going to rob her, which I won’t, but I’ll let her continue to think that because I like that someone thinks I’m potentially dangerous.

“I’m with you, buddy,” he says.

But then the second track trickles in.  It’s got this annoying, whiny high-pitched violin part I don’t like, which isn’t to say I don’t like violins because I do. I wish I knew how to play a violin, actually.  It just so happens that the crunchy guitars and drum-machine-produced percussion doesn’t jibe with the plucky pops of noise spilling out of the violin.  I frown, flip over to my belly, and all the color from the band’s faces drain.  The one with the beard, twirls some his wiry facial hair with his fingers and looks at his feet. They stop touching one another, the bassist whispers “Please, no,” and he thinks about how happy he was when he wrote the second track, all by himself, in his mother’s attic.

I change the track anyway, even though I know they are watching, know they are about to get smacked around by sadness, but it’s a really weird violin part and I can even hear my girlfriend in the bedroom saying “Can you turn that down?” from behind her book.  I just skip it altogether, in fact I skip three more tracks so I can get to track four, this really quiet number with a mandolin and not much else, and I turn it down and turn around, back on my back.

And, you see, I don’t want to mislead anyone.  I feel awful for skipping that track. I wanted to sit through it, wanted to cheer them on, and all that, but the violin part man — I get afraid my ears are going to start bleeding all of a sudden.

The guitarist tries to tell the guys it could be worse, I could have just popped out the album altogether, and thrown it in the trash and they would have had to watch the entire thing because as long as I had their disc in my hands, or playing through my speakers, they’d be able to see it, up on those giant screens.

“How horrible would that be?” he asks.

But it’s too late.  The drummer and lead singer have already gotten into the singer’s jeep and they are cruising much too fast down the Jersey turnpike.  And the bassist has started to suck on a bottle of bourbon and the guitarist tries to sleep under the main control panel by himself but the vibrations of all the machines are too much for anyone to get a reasonable amount of sleep, so he gets up and walks out the door too, and sits down at the Denny’s across the street and sips on decaf coffee for awhile, declining any and all waitress queries.

After the last song completes with a single note on a piano, a doorbell, almost of the same note rings and I walk downstairs half asleep from a musical coma.  And I open the door, and I see the drummer and the bassist and I know I’m in trouble.

“We just want to talk,” they say.  So, I invite them in and starting grinding coffee beans but they wait until the cups are brewed to decline which I decide is okay, I’m going to need that coffee, going to need to be awake awhile longer anyway and I think about how I’ve been dreading sleep these days, and that my dreams are even trying to wake me up with visions of earthquakes and people shouting, directly into my ear canal.  Maybe it’s better I stay awake, altogether.

“Why did you do it?” the lead-singer asks, wanting an honest answer morseo than wanting to punch me in the face.

“I just don’t like that one part with the violin,” I say.  ”It seems like you guys were trying too hard, reaching for something that wasn’t really there.  I like the rest of the album–”

“No you don’t!” the drummer says, slaps the top of the table with his palm.  ”I saw you skip the next few tracks.  Don’t you lie to my face — I hate a liar!  That album was made with passion, with care.  We meant everything we said! We still do.”  He gets closer to my face with ever word.  He’s got tired eyes, either on the verge of tears or shutting completely; I don’t think his brain is able to decide right now.

I put up both my hands, tell him to relax and that I do like those other tracks but I remembered the song “Happiness” is on there, and I really cherish that song because it reminds me of this one summer I spent in Boston, working at a hot dog stand, and while it sounds miserable, it was a really great time in my life, so I got really excited at the prospect of hearing it.   I skipped ahead to that one so I could lay back down and sigh myself into sleep — a good sigh, really it was.  And I promise, I tell them, that I like those other songs, and I’ll go back and listen to them real soon, and they’ll see it, up on the screens in their control room.

The drummer looks embarrassed now, and then really sad.  He’s beating himself up, I know it.  He’s telling himself he’s stupid and that he never should have driven that jeep all these miles to my place.  I don’t want him to feel this way so I offer him coffee again, this time telling him where I got the beans and how they are kind of rare, especially this time of year and all the flavors the blend contains: toffee, tobacco, currants, and blackberries with a kind of thick, buttery finish even though I can’t taste all that stuff; all I ever taste is coffee. But, people seem to like that sort of thing, if one thing like coffee or whiskey has more flavors than just coffee or whiskey.  They like to stand around and say “Do I taste tulips?” (No, you don’t).

His eyebrows go up, and he says he might like that and the singer lifts his left index finger up, turning in his chair and indicates that he’d also like a cup with cream.  And please, they say.  They say it, and then immediately say thank you and we all sit sipping this good coffee at my dining room table and after we’ve slugged it down, and the caffeine is creeping into our craniums, I ask the boys if they like Neil Young and they both look at me like “Of course we like Neil Young,” but it’s more playful than offended and I say “good,” and put “Southern Man,” on and sit back down.

I like these guys, I really do.  And I think it’s okay if I’m maybe not into that one song, and I start to think they might agree.  I bet if they read this, which they probably will, they won’t like every sentence of it.  And probably, that’ll hurt me, but I’ll get over it, and they’ll go on and place some cities in Europe like Antwerp and Brussels and that will be that.

We all peer into our coffee cups, looking for last little drops.  The lead singer sticks his pinky in, takes it out and dabs it on his tongue.  We all start to tap our feet, bob our heads.  The drummer asks if he can open a window because it’s pretty nice outside and I nod my head, wave him on with my hand, and he opens the window and down the hall, my girlfriend asks if I can turn it up.

-But coach, they’re really fast.

-They’re blind, Jenkins!

-Blind people can be fast, coach.

-Fine, touche, Mortinson. But you’re just letting them run circles around you.

-I am an artist, coach! I am not a basketball player.

-Then why are you on this college basketball team?

-I need the tuition.

-Get out of my locker room!

-Fine, but first, I’d like to read one of my poems.

-No–

-”The sunrise looks like a man dying, today…”

-That’s terrible, Mortinson.

-”A single eagle flies, and I cry, into several buckets…”

-Stop it, Mortinson!

-Coach?

-What is it, janitor?

-Can I play?

-No! You’re a janitor.

-I’ll give you my broom if you let me play.

-That is not an equal trade, look–

-”Trees fall under my skin and the wind blows me a new heart…”

-Mortinson, I’m going to throw a javelin through your heart.

-Do it, Coach!

-Be quiet, Jenkins! All of you, be quiet. Now look, we should be pounding these kids heads in like congas–

-That’s offensive, Coach. I have a brother who is blind. And also has a drum for a head.

-Well, I’m sorry to hear that–

-He also plays for the time we’re playing against right now.

-Ok, fine. That’s fine. Look, men–

-I can’t do this coach. Not to my brother. Here, take my jersey.

-I don’t want it.

-What if I give you my broom AND my mop bucket.

-No, I don’t need those things.

-AND my jumper?

-No. TEAM.

-Coach, the buzzer is going off.

-I can hear it. Look, pick and roll and–IT doesn’t even matter. Just play really quiet so they don’t hear you.

-”I will break away and become a spider-person but I am no spider-man…”

-Mortinson, your poems are terrible.

-Your LIFE is terrible, coach.

-Coach, is your team going to come out and play this second half or what?

-Yes, I’m just trying to finish my speech, Referee.

-Coach, your team is losing by sixty points to blind people.

-I’m well aware.

-Maybe you aren’t a good coach.

-Maybe you’re a jerk.

-Oh, is the wittle baby coach offended now.

-No.

-Oh, is the wittle coach gonna cry and pout.

-Shut up, referee.

-Want your bottle? Maybe your wittle baby carriage? Want me to push you around the court while you suck your thumb?

-No, I do not.

-Come on, little baby coach. I want to put you in a crib.

-Team! Where are you guys going?

-Some guy just came in and made Mortinson the Poet Laureate, so we’re gonna go to his induction ceremony.

-This is stupid.

-Awww, is the little baby coach cry-crying because he didn’t win the Poet of the Year award?

-He didn’t win poet of the year. He’s the Poet Laureate. It’s two different things.

-Awww, is the little baby coach getting wrapped up in semantics.

-Why are you still here, Ref?

-Because I’m homeless. My wife divorced me. Let me live with you.

-No.

-Please? I know how to make homemade relish.

-I…fine. Whatever.

-Hooray! I’m going to jump on your back now.

-Don’t.

-Here I go!

-OW! I think you broke my entire spine.

-Haha! Roommate, you are so funny.

(originally posted on Five Word Monologues)

During the day, I work for a company that plays music videos on television. Sometimes, big-time musicians come in and answer some questions like “If you were a salad, what kind of salad would you be?”  My job is to capture footage onto a computer, and then tell a producer that the footage is ready for them to view. And then they edit it into a piece and I become invisible.  I know.

Usually, I just say “Okay, it’s done,” in an email response to their request.  Well, I’m getting tired and also going insane, so I’ve decided to get creative with it.

This will be the first in a series of these.  Shh.

To: Jake

From: Producer

Hey Jake, can you please encode three Usher videos for me?  Thanks!

-Producer

From: Jake

To: Producer

Usher tapes are finished.

The world rejoices.

The files transfer to your desktops.

Files are transferred.

Pieces are cut, put on the television.

A small child living in Providence realizes after watching it on TV: “I want to be the next Usher.  That’s me.”

He takes dancing lessons, singing lessons too, really hones his craft.  His mother dreams of penthouses and Jaguars — not the cars; actual, real Jaguars.

ABC decides to bring back Star Search, for one year only, and he auditions, makes it to the finals, but he loses to a kid that juggles chainsaws and he’s crushed.

He goes back to his DVR where, all these years, he’s saved that Usher piece, and the last three episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond. (Because, you know “Usher Raymond.” This kid isn’t very smart).

He watches it over and over, saddened by the fact that he may never be Usher.  But, he could still–at the very least– meet Usher, couldn’t he?  He devises a plan.

And so, he moves to the big city, gets a low-level production job at a music television company.

For weeks, Usher doesn’t show, keeps canceling.  This young kid, now a man, spends his free time in the company kitchen sipping sodas, looking for leftovers.  He finds a half-eaten Reuben sandwich in the crisper drawer.  He looks around the corner, to make sure no one is watching.  No name on the tin-foil – that sandwich is free-game.  He bites down, the kid, and closes his eyes.  The sweet mixture of sloppy slaw and pristine pastrami dance sambas across his tongue.  He starts to dance, first a little hip-shake, a turn on his heel, and into the moon-walk.

He looks up, and leaning in the doorway, there is Usher, now grey-haired and smiling.  The kid, swallows hard and stares.

“Go on,” Usher says.  “Go on.”

And he does.  As we all do.

“Hmm, interesting,” says Usher.  ”I think I’d be a Cobb.”

2. Well, if you run fast enough, you should be able to fly.

3. Here’s the even BETTER news…!

4. It appears that you’ve swallowed a train.

5. You have “Mega-Man’s” Disease. You’ll be able to shoot little pellets out of your hands now. I’m so sorry.

6. We figured what that cough is…it’s your INNER PARTY ANIMAL TRYING TO GET OUT

7. The only side-effect is that you’ll pee out your fingers.

8. You only have one month to live. And then after that you’ll become wizard-like and live forever.

9. I have no idea what you have but hey, did you see this cool trick I can do on a yo-yo?

10. You are a failure.

[Originally posted on The Lonesome Lumberjack]