Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Author: Thoughts On The Dead (Page 84 of 1031)

Rocky, Top

Precarious?

“Yo.”

I have further questions.

“Figured.”

Why did the rigging fail?

“It didn’t fail. If it had failed, Phish would be on the phone with John Mayer right now. That rig froze.”

Okay. Why did the rigging freeze?

“Nerves?”

Stop that.

“Hell, ya got me. We never did shit like this in the Dead. Things were either on the floor or hanging from the ceiling, but not both. Fly systems are complicated as hell. Lotta Peter Pans have died over the years.”

I don’t know about that.

“Weir wanted to do this once. Fly around like a fairy.”

Sounds right. You said no?

“Course not. The band gets what it wants. So we tied a rope to his belt, tossed it over a light stanchion, and swung him back and forth until he puked.”

Good problem-solving.

“We were known for that.”

A Partial Transcript Of Mike Pompeo’s Appearance On Katy Tur Live, 1/3/20

“Good afternoon. I’m Katy Tur, and welcome to Katy Tur Live. 2020 is only three days old, and already Australia has burned to a crisp, Trey has been stuck on a platform, and America has launched airstrikes against Iranian militias operating inside Iraq. At this pace, we’ll all be living in a Cormac McCarthy novel by March. With me to discuss the surprise military attacks is the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.”

“Thank you for having me, Katy. Y’know, we could have gotten your little hippie friend out of the rigging.”

“Without killing him?”

“Oh.”

“No.”

“Secretary, on Thursday, the United States launched a drone-based attack against one of Iran’s top leaders, Qasem Soleimani, killing him along with several other high-ranking Iranian military commanders.”

“Was it Thursday? Felt like a Monday. I got no idea what day it is.”

“Yes, it was Thursday.”

“You sure? You start new things on a Monday. Diets, exercise routines, world wars: those are Monday kinda deals.”

“Thursday, sir. Can you give us some background on the decision to kill Soleimani?”

“Sure. Bad guy! Who was the last one we blew up, Bababooey?”

“Al-Baghdadi.”

“Right, that guy. Well, Soleimani was much, much worse. Responsible for up to 50,000 American deaths.”

“Excuse me? Are you blaming the Iranian general for the murder of 50,000 Americans?”

“Up to. Up to 50,000. Somewhere from zero to 50,000.”

“Ah.”

“This sucker was a bad mammajamma. World’s a better-off place with him dead. Real mean dude, Katy. Hated America almost as much as the Democrats do. Actually, I don’t know about that. Soleimani never tried to stage a fake impeachment.”

“Mm-hmm. When was the order given to take him out?”

“Funny story about that: President Trump polled the room at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s. It was unanimous.”

“Wait, let me get this straight. The buffet line at President Trump’s golf club was consulted, but the Senate was not?”

“Lindsey Graham was there. And so was Lou Dobbs, who’s pretty much a Senator at this point.”

“He is not.”

“He looks like a Senator, though. Gotta give the Dobbinator that. If you were making a movie and needed a guy to play a U.S. Senator, you’d call Big Lou.”

“That doesn’t make any of this all right, Secretary.”

“Katy, we have high-level intelligence that Soleimani was planning something.”

“Planning what?”

“Something. Something bad. Not just hinky, but real bad. Like, you’d remember where you were when it happened.”

“Okay. What?”

“Oh, God, it was gonna be awful. Dead kids everywhere. White kids, Katy. The kids that matter.”

“A terrorist attack on American soil?”

“Maaaaaaaaybe. Definitely possible. Absolutely foreseeable. What did Bob Dylan say about weathermen and wind?”

“Leave Dylan out of this, please. Secretary, was there a concrete plan to harm Americans?”

“Lemme put it this way: if he didn’t want to kill Americans, then why was his name Qasem?”

“Wow.”

“Can’t answer that, huh?”

“Secretary, what is our next step?”

“After this, I’m gonna do another interview on Fox News.”

“I meant for the country.”

“Katy, what President Trump has done by launching attacks is to guarantee peace. You see, President Trump understands the Iranians. Far better than Barack Obama did, even though he was born there.”

“He wasn’t.”

“No one wants war, which is why we had to start one.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s like when our brave firefighters combat the wildfires out west. They’ll light a small blaze to burn out the fuel in the larger fire’s path. The upcoming war with Iran can only be prevented by the current war with Iran.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You have to spend money to make money.”

“Nope. That saying does not apply here in any way.”

“Gotta be cruel to be kind.”

“Also not applicable.”

“Katy, the fact that President Trump has not received the Nobel Peace Prize for this merely points out the communism and hatred of the selection committee.”

“It only happened 36 hours ago.”

“Special award. They should have reconvened for a special session and given it to him.”

“Secretary, I am still failing to see how assassinating a foreign leader will lead to peace.”

“Oh, I don’t like the word ‘assassination.'”

“What would you call it?”

Explosively demoted.”

“You did not demote General Soleimani.”

“He was turned into motes. Okay, fine: we explosively moted him. And the Iranians are thrilled.”

“They are not.”

“I have been on the phone all day with Iranians. Most of ’em like to be called Persians, but they’re really Iranians. Anyhoo, they were on board. You know the Iron Sheik?”

“The wrestler?”

“Real bright guy. Couldn’t thank me enough for killing Soleimani. Kept calling him a jabroni. Great word. That was a fun call.”

“Secretary, it truly does not matter what professional wrestlers think about the administration’s actions in Iraq. I return to an earlier question: what is the plan now?”

“We’re gonna keep de-escalating the situation, no matter how many missiles we have to launch to do it.”

“I need to go to a commercial before my head explodes.”

Assorted Thoughts On Dead & Company’s CNN Hit

  • Almost instantly, Mickey begins misbehaving.
  • He may, in fact, only be upright on that couch thanks to the liberal application of duct tape.
  • There’s a handsome guy who works at CNN named Bill Weir, and when Andy Cohen mentions him, Bobby gets real confused for a second.
  • Anderson Cooper does not listen to the Dead, nor does he seem to much care for these filthy wretches.
  • I just looked up what AC listens to, and it is probably inappropriate to call it “homosexual music,” but it is.
  • Although the other AC is similarly inclined, and he has decent taste in jams.
  • (Andy Cohen is an outlier, though; let’s be honest. There are, like, three gay guys who don’t like shitty music, and two of them are in Husker Du and the other one’s Steve Silberman.)
  • Have you finished being insulting and offensive?
  • Dude, you can’t hear what I say in the parentheses; there are rules here.
  • The rules are made up, don’t matter, and shut the fuck up.
  • I shall ignore you and claim that I won the interaction.
  • Jeff and Oteil have not been given microphones.
  • That’s just hurtful.
  • Just give ’em dummy mics.
  • You don’t even have to plug the fuckers in.
  • They wouldn’t have said anything, anyway; Jeff and Oteil know their place in the organization.
  • And neither is schnockered.
  • Twozzled.
  • Legless.
  • Mickey is drunk enough to get thrown out of bars with Harry Nilsson.
  • Billy, speaking for the first time, says that the Dead lived in Haight-Ashbury in 1972; both Jeff and Oteil recognize this as incorrect, but stop themselves from saying anything.
  • Mickey is wobblier than Eugene Debs.
  • Mickey is more plastered than the Sistine Chapel.
  • Mickey is so loaded that Doug Yule wrote most of him.
  • We get it.
  • THE BOY’S TURNT!
  • I thought you were dying?
  • Oh, right.

The Only Possible Explanation

Precarious?

“Yo.”

When did you start working for Phish?

“Just consulting. Keep my hand in.”

And did you consult on this?

“Yeah.”

Figures.

“Hey, I tried to tell ’em: If you’re gonna suspend someone from the ceiling for a New Year’s thingy, make it someone whose death won’t fuck up the tour.”

Right.

“We nearly killed Walton a couple of times. And that would’ve been sad. But the band would’ve made the next dates. Gotta think with your business head.”

They didn’t take your advice.

“Nope. They also didn’t listen when I told ’em it would be cheaper to just buy a shitload of acid, pass it out to the crowd, and not do any special effects. We used to do that shit all the time. People loved it.”

It’s not 1971 anymore, Precarious. You can’t hand out hallucinogens to the public.

“Pussies.”

And This Is How I Die

This is how it starts, the end, I suppose, slithering up from the ground. Flesh turns traitorous, bubbles and fizzes and flakes off like halibut mistakenly ordered at a diner. They’ll take the leg. First the itching, and then they take the leg. Mark it up with a Sharpie, and fire up the bone-saw. They can’t take my leg. I don’t have the energy to run across Canada. I don’t wanna inspire anyone.

No one will recognize me. Beauty lost. Youth gone. The morticians will call their mortician friends over to make Brundlefly jokes. Skin sloughs. Did you know that? Skin’ll slough right off. It’s called degloving. I’ll be a pile of meat in the sun. Maybe the gators will get me. Leave me for the gators. I’d rather them than the doctors. At least the gators don’t bother me about my cholesterol. Childhood, then failure, then gators eat you: this is all life is, Enthusiasts.

Perhaps I’ll be discovered after death like whatshisface that wrote the book about the fat asshole in New Orleans. My Works will be Collected, and my Papers sent to an Important University. Not the one I went to. A good school.

I blame Trump. I blame the Democrats. I blame the Grateful Dead, or spiders. I do not blame bananas; I haven’t eaten a banana in months; I should eat a banana. I blame Whitey. I blame the Ethnics. I blame the Mets. Fuckin’ Mets.

Imagine a donut left out on a sidewalk and fucked by a series of homeless men, fucked angrily. It’s been a week and the donut is putrefying; the homeless dicks continue. They won’t stop fucking, they’ll never stop fucking. You are not that donut. I am that donut. I have no cream filling, and yet I must scream.

The Donate Button is now a fundraiser for my funeral. It was nice not answering any of your e-mails.

This Is A Good Resolution, Too

Everything?

“You heard me sing.”

Maceo, you can’t be serious.

“As a heart attack.”

My God. Everything? My commemorative spoons?

“Shake ’em.”

The Cézanne?

“Especially that shit.”

It’s incredibly expensive.

“All the more reason to shake it.”

What about the baby?

“Shake the baby.”

Oh, I don’t know about that.

“I do. Shake that damn baby.”

Okay.

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