Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Sometimes, usually around the end of the tour, Brent would have way too much of this or that and announce into his microphone that he and his B3 were “going to get their fuck on.” He would go at it in a vigorous fashion and sometimes he would yell something about being the Muffin Man.
This behavior would bring the set to a halt, but not as much as one of Brent’s songs.
Batman vs. Superman Any answer other than “Superman would use his nigh-on-godly powers to disintegrate every atom of the rich kid in a pervert suit and a fancy car in less than a second,” is incorrect. Any answer that starts by attempting to set up Batman for victory must be responded to with a knee to the crotch.
“Well, if Batman had an hour toCROTCHKNEE.”
Superman is a force akin to the tides or volcanos; Batman’s main ability is killing Robins. Superman wins every single time.
TC vs. Keith vs. Brent vs. Vince So, really: Keith vs. Brent.
Keith was masterful piano player, but played other keyboards like a gay guy being forced to touch a vagina: you could tell he didn’t want his fingers there. Brent’s B3 work was awesome and tasteful and vibrant and driving, but he never learned how to water ski.
It’s a draw.
Star Wars vs. Star Trek Oh, fuck off, nerd.
Grateful Dead vs. Phish No longer valid, as the Grateful Dead seems to be subsuming Phish and they may or may not be one thing at this point.
Reddit vs. Gawker Let them fight.
Peanut Butter vs. Jelly Peanut butter raped all those guys in Wisconsin, but Jelly opened up a luncheonette so he could sell unsuspecting townspeople hobo meat. Both monstrous: also a draw.
Carpeting vs. Hardwood floors Hardwood floors with an area rug: best of both worlds. BOOM.
Drunks vs. Gravity In the long run, gravity will out. That goes for everyone, but drunks seem to pile up a lot of what you might call “negative gravitational karma.” Drunks are good at avoiding or negating or even ignoring gravity; gravity does not forget such slights. Gravity wins: gravity always fucking wins.
Garcia vs. Hotel Rooms Again, we speak of perspectives. The concept of hotels will be around longer than the concept of Garcia. People have been staying in hotel rooms for a long time: Jesus Christ’s parents, Joseph and Mary Christ, famously couldn’t get one. We’ll be sleeping uneasily on sheets strangers have buttfucked each other on long into the future, maybe even far enough into the future for the buttfucking to have been space-buttfucking.
However, if you ignore the conceptual in favor of the concrete, the fact is that Garcia’s going to be burning any room you put him in to the ground within hours of check-in.
Another draw.
Snorkeling vs. Dead Armadillo on the Side of the Road This is a tough one. People truly enjoy their snorkel-time, even though I’ve never been able to join in. (I have no idea why; I just can’t make the air go up and down the snorkel; then I freak out and take my bathing suit off; everyone’s all, “Get out of the fountain.”)
Armadillo on the side of the road, be it dead or alive, is almost surely infected with leprosy. Draw.
Kramer vs. Kramer Kramer wins.
Kramer vs. Black people Nobody won.
Boobs vs. Butts Now, all Enthusiasts know about TotD’s political and social beliefs regarding women: it’s a wonder they haven’t slit all of our throats by now. It will come, therefore, as no shock that I formally protest this category. Reducing women to body parts is archaic, sleazy, and just a bit trite by now. I object.
However, it was underlined, so I have to do it. (I don’t make the rules, man.)
They are similar in many respects. Evolutionary psychologists say that the rump evolved to resemble the rack, or vice versa. Of course, evolutionary psychologists just make shit up as they go, so let’s not pay attention to them anymore.
Both have rather humorous names: yabbos, for example, or badonkadonk. Sloppy Sallies, or Two Fine Christmas Hams Under a Blanket.
Upon first introduction to a woman, you may not grab at either of these parts of her body. Again, we see boobs and the butt are an even match.
They both have weird and almost deliberately stupid rules about the specific parts within the larger boob/butt that can be shown. The whole cheek of the butt is okay, but not the crack. You can show boobcrack (also known as cleavage) all the day long, but if you expose your nipple, you’re dishonoring the troops. This is a tie, too
On humans, the butt/boob ratio is 1:1. You got a leftie and a rightie. Other mammals, though, have many, many boobs; they only ever have one butt. Even the most spectacularly-assed gibbon or mandrill has but one ass, no matter how glorious it is. So: do boobs take the day on this point? No, because we’re talking about human ladies here: they’re the only ones with “boobs.” Animals have teats and a half-dozen leaky nipples at a time; let’s leave them out of this.
You can get implants in both boobs and the butt. Kicking someone in the butt is funny, but punching someone in the boob is also funny. (TotD decries all violence towards women, but it is an objective fact that the phrase “punched in the boob” is funny. Watch:
“What happened, Linda?”
“I got punched in the boob.”
See?)
I think this one, like so many others, must be declared a draw. Boobs and the butt are equally wonderful.
Now I need you stop.
One more.
Fine.
Black vs. White
Wait, no.
The colors. Exclusively speaking about the hues.
Okay, I guess.
Thanks. White, in many cultures, symbolizes purity and cleanliness; whereas the color black is naturally good at basketball.
NOPE.
SHUT IT DOWN.
…
You’re still here?
TotD was perfectly happy with no comment section, or one populated strictly by the insane, but now there seems to be a vaguely competent group and I am also okay with that.
However, sometimes the comment section introduces pernicious thoughts into the conversation, and IT IS ALL THEIR FAULT FOR WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN.
Grateful Dead Sex Toy Merch, available on fucktheewellmerch.com, was bound to be a big-seller, but the prudes upstairs shut it down. TotD has the only extant list of products.
Okay, that’s enough.
I haven’t even started on the Ned Lagin section.
Don’t.
That’s the stuff you need a safe-word for, I guess.
Stop talking.
“Jer?”
“Yeah, Trent?”
“Is that David Coverdale?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna do Fool For Your Lovin’ in the second set. You know it, right?”
“I’ll fake it.”
“Good man.”
Some people say that Reddit is full of MRA’s and neckbeards and gamers, and they say that because they can read. Reddit is an awful place, mostly.
Except sometimes you find things like this:
How drunk was Dylan for the Dylan and the Dead tour? Pants-tucked-into-boots drunk.
Also: Garcia’s potato salad; Billy’s just about done*; Phil thinks that shirt’s dressy; Mickey’s got a secret.
Brent and his beard are present.
* There are only two images from this shoot–this one and another one, similar except for Bobby and Garcia chatting in it–because the secret Mickey had was that he saw how bored Billy was and decided to do him (Billy) a favor and fuck the photographer up with his Air Force judo. Two pictures.
Even allowing the Dead in the city of Los Angeles during the Academy Awards was inadvisable, but inviting them to perform a medley of that year’s Best Song nominees was downright foolish.
To their credit, the Boys did rehearse. Well, they hung out in Bobby’s studio for a week or so, and played a little, but spent most of their time on the phone arguing with the manager of the local chicken joint. (“But, we’re not in Kentucky. Do you fry it there, and then ship it out? Hello?”) There was also a pinochle game.
As far as the actual medley goes, they did not get around to it. For a number of reasons, of course: Garcia found four of the five tunes “pedestrian;” Bobby got confused at to which mailbox was his and, instead of the charts and tapes he had been sent, got a Berlitz course and spent his time learning Italian; Phil was just lazy as usual and didn’t do it, relying on the ol’ perfect pitch to pull him through, even though perfect pitch has nothing to do with arrangements.
It should be noted as this point that, of all Great Bands, the Grateful Dead may have been the least-suited of all to the medley format. Medleys rarely, if ever, allow for four or five minutes wandering around the stage smoking and fiddling with doohickeys. They also–and here’s the real dealbreaker–don’t change dependent on whether or not you’re “feelin’ it.”
Medleys require serious rehearsal, not two hours of jamming on a riff that Bobbys been promising to turn into a song for 18 months now. They need someone to lead the band and tell people what to play, which in the Dead so often ended poorly: with the ritual punching of the dicks, or hiding for a decade in a basement being a junkie, or Bobby’s solo albums.
“Um, okay: here are the changes and there’s a chorus in here somewhere, so when I find, I’ll cue you. Bobby, you know the words?”
…
“Yes?”
That bullshit right there? The way all the other Dead songs came together? That bullshit right there does not work for the Oscars.
They should have been cut before the show: all the signs of a disaster were there. Brent showed up in one of his furry costumes. He had affixed a bow-tie to it, but that somehow made it worse. Billy mistook the red carpet for the valet stand and ran over Anjelica Houston. Then, he mistook Sidney Poitier for a parking attendant and tossed him the keys.
Bobby had a lovely chat with Tom Hanks, who is just as wonderful as you think he is, about space and World War II that was unfortunately and suddenly brought to an end by Mickey’s duffel bag full of raccoons. (Marlon Brando got bitten, but hired a Puerto Rican woman dressed like Pocahontas to accept the vaccinations for him.)
Bad luck multiplied, as it will. The opening number, a schmaltzy broadway-style goof in which the affable and gently-talented host sings about how wonderful the industry he belongs to is, ran so long that by the time it was over, the show was four days behind schedule.
The Dead took the stage to an audience made up of mainly seat-fillers, the stars having decamped to do cocaine at one another and let out the farts they’d been holding in for hours. They made an abortive stab at the Randy Newman song they were supposed to do, then played Playin’ in the Band for twenty minutes.
They were not allowed in Elton John’s after-party.
“For example, there was that time in Houston. Mickey had “remembered the Alamo” in the hotel’s elevator, so we got thrown out of the joint. Turns out the Alamo’s in Dallas, anyway.
“And Milwaukee. We weren’t banned from a hotel in Milwaukee, we were banned from hotels: the City Council had enacted legislation that made it a felony–and I’m quoting–“to provide comfort, aid, or tuggers to any and all Grateful Deads, including TC.” Did everyone say ‘hi’ to TC? he’s say ‘hi’ back, but he got a nice, long talk about microphone privileges before we got up here.
“We couldn’t even get in the Riot House in Los Angeles. We showed up and they were all, ‘Sorry, not sorry,” and we were all, ‘But we’re rock stars; this is a rock star hotel,” and they were all, “You’re not the right kind of rock stars,” and that hurt because it was true. Phil cried and said he didn’t want to stay there anyway, stupid hotel.
“Brent was allergic to Ramada Inns. True story.
“Once we stayed in a great place in Florida with all these alligators right outside our window. There was also this horrible place in Maryland with all these alligators right outside our rooms, because Mickey had brought alligators to Maryland and then set them loose. Mickey was kind of a Situationist, if you wanna get all grad school about it.
“Much better now, though: we’re actually staying at a Five Seasons tonight. It’s like the Four Seasons, but it’s really nice. You don’t have to pay-per-view. You just view. Also, you need to have sold out a football stadium to get in: most of the time, it’s just Joe Montana, the Pope, and us. I would recommend it, but the whole point is that people like you can’t get in.
“Thank you, and God Bless America.”
The theme park was doomed from the start.
The boffins at Alembic, geniuses at audio innovation that they might be, were particularly ill-suited to designing an amusement park, mostly because of their high tolerance for experimentation and system failure: they sent at least three fully-loaded roller coaster cars hurtling off the tracks in an uncontrollable death parabola in search of what they called “the gravitational sweet spot.”
One of the selling points of the park was the entertainment: the Dead would jam in the open-air amphitheater twice a day; admission was free to park guests. Phil showed up for the first show, got shit-faced on Bordeaux and astronaut ice cream, drove his Lotus home, called in with a family emergency. When Sue Swanson answered and asked what the emergency was, Phil relayed the sad news that his father had died. Sue then reminded Phil that his father had died in 1970 and he (Phil) had written a song (Box of Rain) about it (the dying.) Phil then made a CHHHSSXCH sound into the phone and pretended the connection was bad and hung up.
Also–and there’s no pleasant way to say this–Brent would do stuff to the characters walking around. This stuff was non-consensual, at best. Which is funny when it’s a keyboardist desperately humping an anthropomorphic duck in broad daylight, but not as funny once you realize that there’s a person–most likely a teen person–in the suit and you’re literally watching another human being get PTSD.
“What kind of hat you want, Mickey?”
“Ah, just wrap a bath towel around my head.”
“Done.”
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