“I believe you Americans call them ‘months.’ Am I pronouncing that right?”
I’m ignoring your obvious bait.
“It’s blistering out here, eh? Almost 22 degrees.”
That’s really cold, Dave.
“David. And I meant Celsius.”
…
That’s only 71 degrees.
“You had to ask your phone, didn’t you?”
Don’t worry about that. Like I was saying: 71 is not hot at all. It’s 90 here.
“Right. But how cold does it get in the winter where you live?”
Gets down to around 71.
“There you go. It gets chilly here, so our internal thermometers are set lower. Last year in Winnipeg, it got so cold that a Bose-Einstein Condensate formed in a Tim Hortons.”
Sure. Hey, the new box set is coming out tomorrow.
“I make it! I make it and I stand by it! You calling me a liar!?”
Hey, hey, hey! Settle down! What’s gotten into you?
“Ah, I’m sorry. Been drinking a bit. Had a couple bags of beer.”
I thought you kept your milk in bags.
“All Canadian fluids are bagged: milk, beer, brake fluid, all of it.”
Not true.
“Oh, yeah. Law just passed. Prime Minister DBP signed it a couple fortweeks ago.”
DBP?
“Dumb But Pretty.”
Not inaccurate. Family enjoying the cottage?
“My wife, Regina, and our children Gordie, Girl Gordie, Jean-Luc, Northstar, Fleece, and the twins Billi and Micki?”
Yeah. Your family.
“They love it. We go on nature hikes every day. All the children have fought their moose. A perfect summer.”
What about the moose?
“Each summer, every Canadian child must fight a moose. They don’t have to win, but they have to put in a good showing. You should’ve seen Fleece: he bit the sucker on its nose, wrapped his skinny legs around the antlers, and held on until the beast got tired. And then he took his knife out of his pocket and held it up to the moose’s eye. But you know what he did?”
What?
“Put the knife back in his pocket. Fleece just wanted it to know he was in charge. Hell of a boy right there.”
None of this happened.
“Both Gordies got living shit stomped out of ’em, though. But they didn’t run, so I was still proud and they won’t be cast out of society.”
Nope. Nuh-uh.
“DAD!”
“DAD!”
“Yeah, Billi? Yeah, Micki?”
“THE WIND!”
“IT”S PICKING UP!”
“Oh, that’s my cue. Got a video to make. Thanks for stopping by, eh?”
It’s usually my call when these end.
…
Wow, he really left.
“YOU CAN JUST LEAVE? HOW DID HE DO THAT?”
Oh, why are you here?
“How the fuck did he just walk out of the post?”
I dunno.
…
Don’t hunt down David Lemieux–
“I will hunt down David Lemieux and make him my sensei.”
–and make him your…dammit, John, that’s just stupid.
Everyone doesn’t need to know everything. Faust learned that the hard way. The kids today have an expression: stay in your lane, and Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux does so. He knows the Dead, all the fauna in a hundred-mile radius around his home, the rules of icing, and that’s it. History of the Japanese code of bushido and its allegories to the Western code of chivalry? David cannot speak with authority on this matter, although he has viewed movies featuring both samurai and knights. Chemical makeup of a supermassive black hole?
“Well, there’s just a whole bunch of nothin’ in there, eh?”
That is not the right answer, but I do not blame our northern friend. That what one doesn’t know will vastly outweigh the sum of one’s knowledge is a common tragedy. I don’t know what’s in a black hole, either. Perhaps nougat. Maybe black holes are delicious. Again: I don’t know, so I cannot help David.
HOWEVER, DL recently copped to complete ignorance of Hair Metal and that means it’s TotD’s time to shine. So, sit back, David (and the rest of you who give a shit) and journey back to a mythical time called the Eighties and a legendary street known as the Sunset Strip.
A Quick and Dirty Guide to Hair Metal
We begin by defining our terms, and useful in this task is approaching it from the negative side. Hair Metal is NOT:
Actual metal. (You know that TotD despises gatekeeping and the whole “this is real XXX and this isn’t,” there is absolutely a delineation to be made between real metal bands and poofy-topped sissy-boys covering Brownsville Station. Real metal bands, for example, wore jeans. Hair Metal bands wore leather or spandex trousers; if dungarees were worn, they were generally topped with chaps.)
Glam rock. (Are you a citizen or a subject? Because glam rockers were British. Hair Metal can be read as the cracked-mirror American version of glam, but it ain’t glam rock because glam rock requires camp, which was in short-ish supply in, say, Ratt’s rehearsal space.)
So what is Hair Metal? Well, some folks say it started in Max’s Kansas City when the New York Dolls first put on makeup, and others say you can blame Marc Bolan, but the problem started in backyards in 1970’s Pasadena. Nightclubs in Los Angeles–most of the country–had live music most nights, but they demanded cover tunes. Drinkers wanted to listen and dance to the big radio hits of the day, and all those golden oldies, and they wanted four or five sets a night. Two Dutch immigrants, a loudmouthed Jew, and a Polish bass player didn’t cotton to the regulations: they wanted to play their original music (and a lot of Kinks covers) for one show and then get blowjobs. At first, their name was Mammoth but the lead singer convinced the two brothers that their last name had a bitchin’ ring to it, and the band was rechristened Van Halen.
Now, Van Halen was not a Hair Metal band, but they spawned multitudes; it’s like how Christ wasn’t a Christian. After the mighty Van Halen signed a record deal and moved to their new Fat City addresses, groups popped up like mushrooms that were wearing too much eye makeup, all imitating VH’s already-stolen shtick. (The birth of the Golden God/Guitar Hero dyad is credited by some to Led Zeppelin, but a strong case could be made for The Who. Also: David Lee Roth directly copped his whole routine from a guy named Jim Dandy in a band called Black Oak Arkansas.) Some bands had five members; these aped Aerosmith.
Let’s move outwards and upwards and put events into context: at this point in the early 80’s, the Steakheads were not being catered to. The ones that would have bought a Zeppelin record had it been available. The KISS Army. That sea of blue jeans from Englishtown. Dumb teen boys, basically. The smart kids had their books and their Elvis Costello albums, and the stoner kids had the Dead, and the girls had Madonna, but there were vast fields teeming with acne-laden morons who wanted loud guitars, plentiful drums, and to be told two things:
They were winners.
Due to their winning, pussy would be made available.
The Clash was certainly not going to tell the Steakheads that, nor were any of these so-called “New Wave” bands from England, most of which–let’s be honest–were queer as hell. The record labels had all given up on anyone ever caring about punk music, and so were rooting around for the next big thing. Coincidentally, the performance spaces on the Sunset Strip–the Starwood and the Whiskey and Gazzara’s–had also given up on punk music. Unlike their New York or DC counterparts, LA punks always included a performative aspect to their shows, such as “setting the stage on fire” or “hurling lightbulbs at audience members’ faces,” and club owners had had enough of the bullshit. So: just as the bands needed places to play, and the record companies needed places to see the bands, venues opened up.
A scene emerged quickly, along with a uniform. In one of Hair Metal’s many interior contradiction, the look was as unisex as the culture was not. Everybody looked like this:
The women looked like that, too, but with bigger tits. Women could also wear skirts, but men were confined to kilts (but only when paired with a catcher’s chest pad).
For all the androgynous looks, though, the Hair Metal scene was ruthlessly misogynistic. There were no bands of mixed gender–chicks could sing backup, but they had to be hot–and only one mainstream lady group, Vixen, but they were treated as even more of a novelty than Stryper, who were a Christian Hair Metal band and sang songs like To Hell With The Devil and dressed up like perverted bumblebees. I’m not making that up.
Did you think I was making it up? They also used to chuck Bibles at the audience. These men were laughingstocks.
These men, on the other hand…
…were the princes of the scene. Mötley Crüe were the biggest Hair Metal band of all: they wore the leatheriest leather, and their lead singer looked like Marianne Faithful, and they may or may not have worshipped the devil but sure did talk about him a lot, and the bass player would set himself on fire to distract from the fact he couldn’t play all that well, and their drummer had Big Dick Energy, and their guitarist was present, and Mötley did ALL the drugs; they did so many drugs that someone in a completely different band died. That is some high-level Rock Starring right there.
You may be wondering at this point why I haven’t been playing you any of the music. It’s because it’s bad. Even the good stuff is dreck. Mötley Crüe? They were maybe the best of the Hair Metal bands and they had–in total–a half-dozen listenable tunes. Quality dropped precipitously after them: there was Poison, and aprez-poisson, le deluge du merde. You had tedious, bewigged Dokken, and L.A. Guns hanging around like a ditched prom date, and ugly, chubby W.A.S.P. , and born followers Warrant, and self-destructive Quiet Riot, and career men Bon Jovi. Those were the stars! I haven’t even gotten to the also-rans!
Great White, and Whitesnake, and White Lion, and Black & Blue, and Blue Murder; Danger Danger, Bang Tango, Tora Tora, and Enuff Z’nuff; London, Saigon Kick, Europe, There were bands led by guitarists thrown out of other bands, like the Vinnie Vincent Invasion or Jake E. Lee’s Badlands, and there was a band made up of musicians thrown out of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Slaughter.
And Britny Fox. Wanna understand Hair Metal? Here you go:
It’s got everything; this video is Hair Metal broken into its essential amino acids. There’s:
Steven Tyler’s non-union Mexican equivalent.
A gray world of drudgery being brought to life by the power of Rock and Roll. (This was an omnipresent trope in HM music videos. Bands were always bursting into classrooms and teenage bedrooms to liberate them.)
Cowboy boots worn on the outside of leather trousers.
A cartoonish authority figure being petard-hoisted.
The drummer does drumstick tricks.
Guitar solo featuring that Eddie Van Halen tippity-tap bullshit.
Coiffures.
Bouffants.
These boys done got their hair did.
Look at this bullshit:
Hair’s not supposed to do that, no matter what ethnicity you are.
Chewbacca has less volume than that.
And this isn’t “long hair.”
“Long hair” is when you stop going to the barber and let the chips fall as they may.
This hair got did.
There were strategic decisions about bangs and layering.
They meant for it to look like that.
Can’t be Hair Metal without hair, now can it?
1983 to 1992, that was it for Hair Metal and the Sunset Strip and all those boys in their spandex and mascara. Quiet Riot’s first album went to #1 in 1983, and in 1992?
And it turns out if you’re dressed like this…
…you look like a complete asshole standing next to the guy in the cardigan. The thing about wearing a costume is that everyone else needs to be, too, or you just look silly, and silly is the worst thing a manly man can be. Hair Metal disappeared overnight. The music-buying public had moved on from junkies in spandex to junkies in flannel. The bands in Seattle were authentic, or at least inarticulate in a way that read as authentic, and so Rolling Stone and the record companies bought rain jackets and flew up north to sign everyone and his brother just the same way they had on the Strip.
And we left it there in the past, everyone but Chuck Klosterman, a slightly shameful Rock and Roll detour. Prog Rock was embarrassing, sure, but at least the guys could play. Same with Fusion. All that synth shit still sounds dated, but there were melodies: Don’t You Want Me by the Human League is catchier than any number of HM band’s entire catalogs put together. But Hair Metal? No cloaked figure leaves a bottle of brandy on its grave each year; it’s remembered more for the satire it produced–Spinal Tap, among others–than the actual music. Not even fit to be used ironically.
But maybe it was music for dreamers, dreamers with hearts of gold. Kids who had to run away high, so they wouldn’t come home low. Could be it was for folks with hearts like open books for the whole world to read. Little something to keep ’em together at the seams.
Tell me this isn’t a Dave’s Pick cover for a ’68 release. Maybe early ’69. That little notch in the band’s history after they learned how to play but before they learned how to write songs. There were, like, 17 of ’em onstage and their soundman was the Most Famous Drug Dealer in America? And everybody’s instruments were made from wood and metal, and they had the same amplifiers that all the other bands did, and several band members did not need to shave all of their faces yet.
That little notch.
Although, you could just as easily find an image for another Dead era within David Lozeau’s portfolio. He’s having a sale today, and I’m not even getting a kickback for telling you that like I do when you buy books from Amazon I recommend. My reasons are noble and pure: the Grateful Dead (Or What’s Left Of ‘Em) should hire this guy. All the different Dead factions, too: Dead & Company should have him draw posters, and Rhino should have him draw record covers, and Phil should toss him off a bus in Milwaukee.
Remember all the Dead & Company posters? Remember how someone was so perturbed by them he resorted to elaborate dialogues with himself on the internet to try to explain away both bush and league? A good deal of them were skeleton-based and, as I alluded to, dreadful. But look at this:
Did they play San Diego? Because: boom, there’s your San Diego poster.
TotD, you’ll say, that artwork atop this text is certainly pleasing and theme-appropriate, but I think you overstate the terror that were the actual posters.
Oh, I’ll answer. Do I?
DID I, MOTHERFUCKER? I scream as drag you into a drainage canal and let the gators handle you. FUCKING DID I? But my screaming attracts attention, and locals save you. I flee, back into the swamp. Back into the only mother I’ve ever had. That’s why they call me Swampy.
Swampy? The character is from the swamp, and his name is Swampy? That’s lazier than usual.
That’s a whole movie right there. If you can’t tell yourself the whole story from that painting, you’ve no imagination at all. (It’s all in her right hand. There’s a lot of character reveal in that hand position.) It is also, as I mentioned, a Dave’s Pick cover waiting to happen. Just print the date and venue’s name on the bottom and ship ’em out.
I now present Reasons Why David Lemieux Should Hire David Lozeau for the Dave’s Picks Series:
Your irritating names So similar, and so unmemorably-vowelled that I need to look it up every. fucking. time. I only have three vowels in my names, Davids, and they are nowhere near one another. Are you people hoarding vowels for the winter?
Someone’s gotta draw the skeletons Let’s be honest with each other, Enthusiasts: there will be no further additions to the Dead’s iconography. The lookbook is set. Stealie, lightning bolt, those fucking bears, turtles, flying eyeball. And skeletons. The Grateful Dead’s merch is made out of skeletons, like that church in the Czech Republic. So: someone’s gotta draw the skeletons. Why not hire someone who is already skilled at the task?
Maybe he could draw those fucking bears as skeletons? Maybe I’d like them then. I don’t think so, but my mind is open to art’s possibilities.
Because he didn’t pick 9/11/83 for the new Dave’s PickWhich is bullshit. And personal, I believe, even though I never once broached the subject with David Lemieux. 9/11/83 from the second of two nights at Santa Fe Downs is a far superior show to the Boise gig from earlier in the month selected for the Pick. The second set is seamless and perfect, except for Wang Dang Doodle, which is so imperfect that it becomes glorious: an amp is exploding or the monitors have begun skittering away, one of those technical gremlins that the Dead carried with them around the country, and Bobby has to keep restarting the song; the band’s crankiness comes through their amps and the usually dire Wang Dang Doodle becomes a highlight.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: I have listened to 9/11/83* far more than I have 9/2, so therefore the former is the superior musical performance. If Mr. Lemieux can’t see that, then I have low hopes for the future.
Because of shit like this:
THAT IS GRATEFUL DEADY AS SHIT. That might be Grateful Deadier than certain former band members. (TC. Obviously, it’s TC.) Hire this man right now, David Lemieux. Go out to the lake, wait for it to get windy, and record a video about the Dead’s newest artist-in-residence.
Does David Lemieux have this kind of authority to be hiring artists?
I have no idea.
So why are you ordering him around as though he did?
Y’know what? He’s up there in the Hundred-Acre Wood harvesting his berries and peeping at bears, and his president is handsome and sane, and Come From Away just won Best Musical at the Tonys, and I could just bite through my hand in rageful jealousy.
At least it’s a logical reason.
Facts not feelings, brah.
*Both 9/11/83 and David Lozeau’s art brought to my attention by the ever-hip Mr. Completely. He’s just a useful human being to know.
Enthusiasts, we need to discuss David Lemieux. Come in to my office. Have a seat. Would you mind terribly if I masturbate?
Stop it.
Excuse me. Would you mind if I masturbate terribly?
I told you to stop it. How does one masturbate terribly?
If you end up with an eye infection.
I guess. Cease the creepiness and get to your point.
My point is this: motherfuckers don’t recognize. David Lemieuslix gives his all for you, every day of his life except weekends and holidays and vacations and he usually half-asses it on Wednesdays, and do you say “Thank you?” Have any of you traveled to his fishing shack to perform the traditional Canadian Dance of Gratitude? (It involves salmon and mockery of Winnipeg.) Have you remembered to smash that like button and subscribe to his YouTube channel?
No. You don’t. And you know what? He still works hard for you. The next time there’s a windstorm, he’s going to shoot another video for you. When you turn on your radio, he’ll be on it telling you about This Day in Grateful Dead History, unless you do not have satellite radio, in which case David will not be on it. And four times a year, plus two or three other times a year, he’ll be in your mailbox with the tastiest of jams. Kings and Pharaohs couldn’t get jams this tasty; the technology simply didn’t exist at the time.
Think of who could have been in charge of Official Releases. The band? The fucking band? We’d still be on Dick’s Picks 4 if the band were allowed any sort of say. Nurse-killing lunatic Richard Speck? I don’t even know if he’s a Deadhead. Marlee Matlin? This is entirely the wrong job for Marlee Matlin, talented as she is. The Siege of Stalingrad? No, that was a historical event; it would make a lousy archivist. Clearly, David Lemieux is the best man for the job.
I make this appreciation having listened to Dave’s Picks Vol 25 24, which is from the ’72 Berkeley Community Theater run. Three of the shows–8/21, 22, and 24–have circulated forever and are spectacular in every way but get overshadowed by the Veneta show later in the week. 8/25, however, has always had half the second set missing. But now it’s back. And it’s here to let you know that it can really shake ’em down.
Really?
Leave me alone. I’m being nice to someone.
You are. It’s weird. Are you going to ask him for money?
No. I was going to imply that I would accept money.
Wrap it up.
AND the RFK ’89 box that came out last week, which is–I believe but cannot be bothered to check–from the multi-tracks and sounds like God’s got his tongue in your ear; I might listen to it for a third time tonight.
To sum up: David Lemieutinyonthebounty is neck-and-neck with Jeff Chimenti in the “Best Thing to Happen to the Dead After There Wasn’t a Dead Anymore” category, and since Jeff Chimenti never likes any of my tweets, DL wins. Motherfuckers better recognize.
“It’s that third set. Billy Eckstine taught me about that. You probably don’t even know who the fuck Billy Eckstine was, you uncultured fucking cracker. Goddamn, I’m tired of explaining shit to white people. Africans built the fucking pyramids while you dummies was getting eaten by bears and shit.”
I’m Jewish. We built the pyramids.
“The historicity of that claim is dubious at fucking best.”
True.
“Billy Eckstine was clean, man. Motherfucker got his socks tailored. He was a pretty man, and all the black bitches loved him. The white bitches, too. When we’d go to Los Angeles, there would be Oriental bitches, and they would love him. We called him B. Taught me how to get the right dimple in my tie, how to sniff cocaine, proper way to slap a bitch. Motherfucker taught me everything.”
You were talking about a third set?
“Motherfucker, don’t do so much. Just lay the fuck back while I’m telling a story. No one’s reading this shit for you.”
Ow.
“Truth fucking hurts. So, B used to talk about playing the third set. Go to the club at night and play two there. Then, after that, there’s that third set. Maybe you fucking. Maybe you getting high. Maybe you getting high and fucking. Whatever. Third set. Can’t play three sets every fucking night. Ain’t no one got the constitution for that.”
That’s pretty good advice. Did you take it?
“Fuck, no. I’m Miles fucking Davis. I do seven, eight sets a night if I fucking want.”
Sure. Aren’t you worried about burning yourself out?
“Nah. I’m a physical man. I take my exercise. Do all sorts of shit. Ride my horses, swim, lift weights.”
Yeah, we’ve seen.
“Always like trying new exercise shit. I’m into that.”
“Have you ever considered taking up hockey, Mr. Davis?”
“Who the fuck is that?”
“Hi, Mr. Davis. I’m David Lemieux.”
“Goddamn, you a white motherfucker.”
“Hockey is some of the best cardiovascular exercise you can get. It would increase your wind.”
“This is some sort of fucking white person trick. I ain’t getting out on that ice.”
“It’s no trick, Mr. Davis.”
“You ever see a black man play hockey before?”
“When you are or when I am? Because in 2017, several of the game’s most talented players–”
BANG!
“Oh, no! American gun violence!”
ARCHIVIST SKATING AWAY NOISE
“Get the fuck back here and let me shoot you, motherfucker!”
TRUMPETER TRYING TO RUN ON ICE NOISE
“Mr. Davis, can’t we–”
“No!”
BANG!
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davis. I love your music. Wish I didn’t have to.”
“Yeah. We made the decision to stop randomly slapping snippets of lyrics onto the covers.”
Sounds like a time-saver.
“Yeah. It’s not like anyone calls the Cornell box Get Shown The Light.”
Is that what it’s called?
“See?”
Tell us about some items in The Vault we don’t know about.
“Oh, sure. There’s a whole shelf of Bobby’s short shorts that suffered unfortunate blowouts in the middle of shows.”
Cool. Laundered?
“No.”
Oh.
“It smells like balls.”
I would imagine.
“But, like, a lot of balls. Not just two. Many balls. Oh, and I think there’s a pair of Garcia’s Zubaz in there, too.”
Wow.
“They also smell like balls. Plus, there was an uncashed check for nine grand in the pocket.”
He did that. What else?
“The Bonsai of Cohesion.”
Excuse me?
“It’s one of those ‘you have to keep the plant alive or reality eats itself’ things.”
Oh, one of those things.
“A lot of Phil’s home movies.”
Neat.
“A lot of Billy’s home-invasion movies.”
Not as neat.
“He’d sneak into people’s houses while they were sleeping and punch dick.”
How did the people take it?
“Not well. Not well at all.”
Was Billy naked?
“Surprisingly, no. Liked to wear costumes. Spooky ghost, Spider-Man, whatever.”
The man’s a menace. Anything else?
“Duffel bag full of raccoon skeletons.”
Skeletons?
“Y’know how Mickey has a duffel bag full of furious raccoons?”
Sure.
“Well, he bequeathed it to the archives but didn’t tell anyone. He just left the bag in the back, and it’s not a regular duffel. It’s, like, kevlar or something. Raccoons couldn’t get out.”
Did…did you travel through time to plug your record?
“Yes.”
Respect.
“Gotta hustle in an expanding music market.”
True. Usually, people around here break the laws of temporality for much dumber reasons. Billy keeps using the Time Sheath to score–and I’m quoting–Etruscan puss.
“Well, I can see doing that once. You know, for the experience.”
He’s there all the time. They know him in Etrusca.
“I don’t think the Etruscans lived in Etrusca.”
Etruscaloosa?
“Can you pay attention? I literally traveled through time to tell the Enthusiasts about my album.”
In a Beetle, nonetheless.
“I bought it off an astronomer. Anyway, the record’s called Drop The Bone and it’s solo and full band stuff, originals and covers. Little bit of everything.”
“We? I don’t know about ‘we.’ You look amused; I look happy as shit.”
“True. You look like a kid on Christmas morning.”
“More like Hanukah evening. But only the first one.”
“I thought you got gifts all eight nights.”
“First night is for the big toy. Second night is underwear and chocolate. Third night is a showing of Fiddler on the Roof. After that, everybody just kinda peters out.”
“We have something similar, y’know.”
“Really?”
“Canukah. Commemorates the time when our proud ancestors were snowed in and thought they only had enough poutine for one day.”
“But it lasted eight?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?”
“The exchange rate.”
“Sure. Dave?”
“David.”
“How did you start archiving?”
“My room was neat as hell growing up.”
“Makes sense.”
“Right? I always knew where everything was, and that’s pretty much the core competency of the job.”
“Can’t be an archivist if you just leave everything in a big pile.”
“Nope.”
“I can only imagine your sock drawer.”
“It’s been featured in several publications.”
“Wow.”
“What about you, Amir? How did you get into directing?”
“Got my start with Roger Corman.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Did a movie for him called Satan’s Attic. It was Roddy McDowell’s last picture and Andie McDowell’s first. Shot in in Baja for $1.2 million, and that’s including the motorcycle race and setting that broccoli farm on fire.”
“There was a scene with a flaming broccoli farm?”
“No, Roddy McDowell set the fire while he was drunk. We had to pay the farmer.”
“Sure.”
“When he wasn’t drinking, Roddy was a prince.”
“What about when he was?”
“I just told you: he lit other strangers’ farms ablaze. You couldn’t extrapolate from that?”
“I thought maybe it was an accident.”
“Broccoli isn’t flammable. He had to prep the area for hours. Every step was a conscious, drunken, dickish choice.”
“Shit. Y’know, this little prick’s got some nerve.”
“Don’t talk too loud. He’ll hear, and Elvis will show up or something.”
“He’s not paying attention. He just types.”
“I enjoy some of it.”
“Are you just being polite?”
“Yes.”
“Dave–”
“David.”
“–it’s not right. I just wanted to make a 19-hour movie about a semi-defunct choogly-type band. I didn’t ask to be semi-fictionalized, and iterate into mirror universes. Which mirror universe is that, by the way? Are those the evil versions of us?”
“No. Cannibal versions.”
“Who’s eating who?”
“We’re eating each other.”
“That’s kinda sweet.”
“Yeah.”
“Dave–”
“David.”
“–the guy’s on my tits.”
“All of ’em?”
“Every one! Keeps sending me ideas, and each one’s worse than the last.”
“Like?”
“Musical about the Minotaur called Daddy was a Bull; Mommy was Amazed.”
“That’s a non-starter.”
“Action movie where the bag guys steal a fuel pump and the gas station kills everybody trying to get it back. Like John Wick, but if Keanu Reeves were a gas station.”
“How would that even work?”
“I have no idea, but he sent me 2,000 words on it.”
“How are our cannibal universe doppelgangers doing?”
…
“They’ve cannibalized each other.”
“Sure. Now, how would a cannibal universe even work? Wouldn’t we both have been eaten long before reaching our present ages?”
“It was really just a throwaway joke, man.”
“What?”
“What?”
“Why are you defending him?”
“You’re being mean. TotD is awesome and shit, and they should’ve let him write the Amazon show, and he’s very handsome and suck my balls, yo.”
…
“What the fuck is going on?”
CANADIAN SKIN SLOUGHING-OFF SOUND
Don’t scream.
“AAAAAAAAAH!”
What did I tell you? Don’t make me get Elvis.
“What the fuck, man!?”
I was inhabiting David Lemieux. You familiar with skinwalkers?
“I did not consent to any of this.”
You think David did? He struggled!
…
“Is he okay?”
He will be. But until then, do you want to play with his flesh-suit?
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