Pass the dutchie on the left hand side (epilogue)

so we're in the USA again.  feels so good to be here.  i love it.

we got a kill McGill cuban sandwich downtown and took a cab to Miami beach to get to a record store.  We walked in and they were playing "Wish You Were Here" on vinyl over the loudspeakers.  Felt so great to be back in America listening to Floyd again!  :)

Picked up a weathered original-looking pressing of The Damned's "Damned, Damned, Damned", a copy of Fitz & The Tantrums' new (only) LP (my newest obsession.  i bought a copy of the CD back home.), a super scarce OG pressing of TSOL's 1984 album "Change Today?".  I was pretty dang stoked about my purchases.

When we took the discs up to the counter the lady selling them asked me if I'd ever seen Fitz & The Tantrums.  Much to my delight she was as blown away by that band as I am.  She said live they were mind-blowing, and I believe her.  She felt exactly same way, and she was 50 something.  I told her I never thought I'd hear a band play real R&B again and she just sincere as can be agreed.  "Yeah, I know.  You have to see them.  They are so good."

I love America.  We are really gross people.  We pig the fuck out at buffets and don't know dick about politcs ever.  Even the "rebellious" kids don't seem know the first fucking thing about their government.  And the "mature" older adults vote like pricks and vote like greedy dickwads.

The stewards on the ship probably watched us with disgust.  We load our plates up with burgers and potatoes and chicken and we eat half of it and dump it in the trash with all our extra ketchup and we belch and say "what's going on at the Lido deck now?" and drag our asses their with our glazed over eyes like dead hammerhead sharks pointing and noting how much we don't like the smell of the ocean...

This is what the world thinks of us.  We are losers.  But we're pretty good folks, you know?  We're just fat as fuck and ignorant.  You can't hate Gomer Pyle too much but you still kind of wish we would quit fucking screwing up and get a clue sometime. 

It's comfortable here and Oklahoma is the only place I feel home, and I'm proud I'm from here, even though we are misguided fuckups.  We live in the land of plenty, with lots of beauty and wide open spaces, and we really do have enough chicken and burgers to eat, so you got to imagine it just gets to our heads sometimes.

What do I know about international travel?  Little.  Just brief snippets of the carribean, but I have met lots of people from all over the world and I get it that there's much more out there than what we talk about over our burger king 3 Whopper lunches.

Whatever.  The Replacements are from here.  Fugazi is from here.  Alex Chilton and Brian Wilson.  We aren't all worthless.  Only a country like US could create "Pet Sounds", and I'm proud of that.

p.s. Fitz & The Tantrums are amazing!  They are from America too.  Check them out at your earliest convenience, for God's sake.

Nuts.

Nuts.

I met the guy.  Randomly passed what’s his face leaving the dining room madness.  I’m still processing it.  Jordan didn’t say anything to the guy.  I probably wouldn’t have said anything either…

Except that the first time I saw the guy back in February of 2009 I gave him a copy of my 7” record.  It’s really weird experimental music, pretty trippy homemade stuff I recorded under the name The Screaming Ticket.

Song titles “Curious Ether Jungle” and “Thrilling Gas Fire”.  So I wanted to be very, very careful if I ever met him again what I said… Who knows what I would think if some kid approached me with a fucking noise album he made that sounds creepy and psychedelic and told me since he got a cassette of mine when he was really young that in some way as a music fan with evolving tastes, the record he made was in some way inspired by me… As long as I was cool and saw that the kid wasn’t out to kill me or freak me out, I’d be pretty honored and complimented.

Well yeah.  I was kind of way freaked out when I realized Richard Springdude was right next to me, and I had to either pounce or wait in line for hours like all the other superfans on the boat to get my pic taken with him at the meet and greet.  I was not prepared.  Honestly I kind of never wanted to meet him again.  I think it’s weird to compliment someone so highly when I don’t know them.  You know?

The guy is one of my favorite songwriters.  Honestly.  I wish I could write those exact types of songs.  I am a huge fan of POWER pop songwriting.  The Cars, The Ramones, early CHEAP TRICK (yeah!), NOFX, The Lemonheads, Eugenius, Sloan.  FUCK YEAH I lump Rick Springfield in with those bands.  WANNA FUCKING FIGHT, ASSHOLE??!?!

And that is what I can’t explain to people.  Rick Springfield’s style (listen to Jessie’s Girl again now that I’ve said this), comes from “Until The End of The Day” by The Kinks, “Radio, Radio” by Elvis Costello, “Ever Fallen In Love?” by The Buzzcocks.   If you actually listen to the themes of the songs, it is the same type of gimmick that so much classic hip sacred cow bands use:  “I’m a loner.  I know I’m attractive, but you know I’m not like all the other assholes.  I always lose out because girls like you play me too hard, and you lose out too.  I’m going crazy.  Help a brother out.”

“Jessie’s Girl” is PRECISELY the same story as “Beast Of Burden” by the Stones, but less arrogant.  It’s also a different style.  One that harkens back to Ricky Nelson or Dion & The Bellmonts, innocent but darker.  It’s like the Cars, so much, but the Cars were hip as all holy balls.

Rick Springfield was a fucking pin-up.  He was good looking.  What if he looked like Ocasek?  He’d get top notch poon just like Ocasek, but he wouldn’t have been offered a gay-ass soap opera role.  You know?

So what would you do, if you were the motherfucker?  If you’re mobbed everywhere you go by horny young ladies?  If you’re sold as plastic and treated as plastic?  Any dude who likes The Cars, you think he’s gonna admit he’s a huge fan of a teen idol in 1982?  Bitch please.

Mr. Springfield got a raw deal.  But he played the hand he was dealt like a fucking badass.  I look up to him in that sense.  He worked on his character I think much harder than he worked on his image.  His image just had a life of its own because he’s just… too “dreamy” to be cool.

So whatever.  I’m proud to be an appreciator of the guy.  He is the money as a power-pop artist.

The Lemonheads are an AWESOME AWESOME power pop band and they wrote the exact same types of songs but you know good and goddamn well that the best song Evan Dando ever wrote didn’t hold a candle to even some of Rick Springfield’s shitty nineties comeback songs.  “Victoria’s Secret” and “Will I?” are phenomenally written pop songs in true Rick Springfield fashion but they are watered down and gayly performed.  It’s music meant for women superfans…  Which wasn’t how the first four-ish albums of Springfield’s worked.  “Living In Oz” especially is the “Exile On Main Street” of a guy who never broke out of his little world of superstardom.  The Rolling Stones had it easy.  They had ugly faces and heroin to take the edge off.

To be fair, The Lemonheads wrote such great pop songs, don’t get me wrong, I am crazy about The Lemonheads.  They totally make me happy.  Fucking “It’s A Shame About Ray” and “Creator” are both in the same “I’m a dreamy heartthrob but I can’t get my shit together” songwriting demographic as Rick Springfield, but, like all the great cool kid bands in the 80s, they started out in the punk scene, and later let their guard down once their image was established.

So fuck society.  Society can lick ‘em.  I’ve hated people since I was a kid.  People are the type of people that fuck people over.  People are the type of people that try and rattle your cage when they don’t understand you, just to test your weaknesses, to case you like a fucking jerk.  And once they’ve cased your weak spots, they either leave you alone if they can’t get something out of you, or they keep their ace in their sleeve just unless you turn out to be an evil fuckwad like them and they need to dog-eat-dog your ass.

Icons like Rick really can’t have a normal life.  They’re rich and visible.  If you can work 20 grand out of Rick you probably would.  How weird is that?  If you’re the guy who actually earned the money.  Thieves, you know?

Anyway, I hate people.  And of course I love them too.  Like Jamaicans, we all have something we can’t beat, and we get froggy and lash out to protect ourselves and/or our family.  So you can’t actually hate a person deep down….  If you don’t want to have the same shit thrown back in your face one day too.

And let’s say someone one day does fuck you over in a really rotten way…  Well you kind of got what was coming to you, right?  I mean, can you really say you don’t deserve a beating just because you’re you.  You’ve got a lot of nerve if you do.

Well to not get too mystical on you, but these are the reasons the Rick Springfield’s of the world might be worth giving a fuck about…  because they make it easier for you to fuck people over.

KIDDING.  Because it helps you chill out and laugh at yourself.  You know you deserve a pie in your face sometimes.  So be ready for it, you know?  Open up and say “ah”.

Oh and speaking of Poison, you rotten motherfucker you, at least Rick Springfield didn’t go the hair metal route.  He could have easily followed that trend into the ground too.  Listen to Poison’s “Fallen Angel” and “You Gotta Love Somebody” back to back sometime.  Both catchy power pop songs of almost the same type of energy.

Eh, it would have helped Rick Springfield out in so many ways I think if he’d have gotten a huge scar on his face after he won his Grammy.  He’d see people turn away from him.  He’d see his image disappear.  But then he’d probably start writing songs just for himself, by himself, and I guarantee you if Rick Springfield had a huge scar on his face, things would seem safer for you, if you wanted to be into the guy.

Meh, meh, meh.  Jealousy.  People either hate The Stones or love them.  And almost always it seems the latter just say they don’t like bloated rock stars or self-indulgent pretty-boys.  Whatever you say, dude.  Jealousy doesn’t have one thing to do with it?  Not an iota?  Okay, man.  Nevermind.

Well if you’re a music nerd like me, sometimes you’ll dislike Tom Waits just because he doesn’t get your goat.  You can acknowledge how amazing a songwriter is, I guess, I do at least, but that gravely shit just isn’t doing it for you.  Yeah it’s beautiful and sad and shit, and full of life and meaning and sadness or whatever, and I agree, but you know, you can also just choose to go your own separate way with the dude, but not insult your buddies who do like the guy.  At least you have a real reason.  Not just because you want to be a dick.

But I'm a dick sometimes too, so whatever.  I won’t listen to Death Cab For Cutie on GENERAL FUCKING PRINCIPLE.  But that’s just me.  Makes me vomit.  I think we all have to draw our lines in the sand, at least to assert we have the capacity for principles.

Meh, meh, meh.  But I’m full of hogwash, man.  When I met The Springs and asked him if he’d heard my record… he perked up and looked surprised to see me, and before I could ask what he thought about it, he smiled and cut me off and said “Yeah.  I played it.  It’s cool.”

“I know it’s weird, but…”

“No.  I liked it.  It was cool.”

“Wow.  Thanks, man!”

“No problem, man.”

Now that’s the type of guy I want to be.

And maybe I just feel proud of myself that back when I was a little kid I picked the right cassette to obsess over.  And that when I grew up and became a music aficionado and came to terms with my feelings about that cassette 20 years later, I realized what I always wanted to believe.  Rick Springfield is the coolest human being I have ever met, for how I define it.

And yes, I’m here to report, I was nervous and freaked out and fanboy about talking to Rick Springfield.  Don’t tell anybody I told you that.  I’m trying to salvage whatever indie cred I might have left after this fucking debacle.

HO LEE FUCK (on th’ lef hand side)

We finally attended a Rick Springfield show on this the last day of the Rick Springfield cruise.

I want to just ask for maybe 3 minutes of really, REALLY quiet reflection to brace yourself for the immensity of the shit that I can’t explain in words.  I just wish I could frame the grandeur of this recounting, so your mental image of this story takes upon detail and detail of the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle.

And I mean it.  You sick fucks WISH I was exaggerating.

Here’s a hint:  Maniacally adored 80s teen idol icon, and truly honestly objectively super sincerely likable and hunked out fuckin rockstar cult god guy, the embodiment of a small coven of mid-40s women’s ideal of what a REAL MAN should be, fawning and sighing to the point of frenzy, think Beatlemania, if the Beatles were the friendliest most endearing and skillfully attractive and puppy dog sweet and poetically wise and gracious guys alive… in the fan’s inner teenager girl minds.

A guy they’d willfully and voluntarily and wide-eyed gratefully rip their blouses off and fuck into utter oblivion and praise and ask Him to autograph their soaked panties and brag to every woman they know and be a real dick about it when they lord it over them and just casually whip out their Rick-shaped dagger and cut themselves in their Rick-shaped tit tattoo right over the spot in her sweet (Springfield fans are pretty sweet people) little heart and vaporizes on the spot into a puff of smoke tinted with a brilliant explosion in Rick Springfield’s favorite color.

DO NOT THINK I’M MAKING FUN OF THEM.  I’m not.  That’s just how much they want to do him.

And fall in love with him.  That’s the important thing.  Girls are absolutely smitten with him.  For good reason:  HE IS THE EMBODIMENT OF EVERYTHING WOMEN WISH THEY COULD FIND IN A MATE.

I’m just impressed.  Really.  I’ve thought I was attractive before.  Because all guys think they’re the pimp, you know?

But Rick Springfield has built an-ever expanding legion of devotees to whom no man will ever compare.  AND HE IS A SINCERELY DEVOTED HUSBAND AND WOULDN’T EVEN DREAM ABOUT ANOTHER WOMAN.

*cue the chorus of sighs*

And guys who witness this supernatural display of sexual perfection probably cry just a little inside because he gives every other guy a bad name, myself included.  But we choke it back and say “shit could be worse, this is a friendly motherfucker”.

He’s non-intimidating, is the thing.  You could tell him anything, everything, and he wouldn’t harsh you about it.

He’s similar to the Maharishi in a lot of ways, except that he plays really catchy and adorable pop songs and plays guitar at the same time.

The man’s got the goods, and bless his heart, if there is a number One Commander Of Pu-Nan, he’d be the one you’d vote for.  You’d high five him, because you aren’t gay, and he’s not cool at all anymore so you really wouldn’t want to trade places with him.  You’d probably want to be in a metal band or something.

But he’s out there.  In this world.  I saw it.  I couldn’t stand it.  Jordan couldn’t stand it.  The estrogen in the room was so frenetic and focused that we really couldn’t think.  We left shortly into the third song.  Too many cougars to deal with.  Too much unbelievability.

This is the one place in the world all Rick fans want to be right now.  It’s the highlight of the year in Rick.  It’s the sanctum secluded out in the ocean.  It is the most valuable ship in the sea.  It’s the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics of Rick appreciation.

Imagine for yourself what might have occurred in the Palladium room on deck 5 this afternoon, and what that room might have felt like.

Again, I was simply blown away by the magnitude.  I had to rethink what life was all about.  My eyes are open.  Holy fuck I never want to get anywhere where near that blinding white light of Man Worship ever again.

music to really make you rub and scrub!!

Breakfast today was shit as usual, but the potatoes were downright haunted. 

Met some very interesting Rick Springfield superfans last night, which I’ll devote a much larger post to, or possibly even a book, later, but suffice it to say, they get it.  They get why Rick is the fucking shit, and I don’t feel so alone now.  I guess we all sense the same thing. 

The only way I could explain it is that Rick Springfield is just touched.  He’s got that golden glow.  He’s just one of the lucky ones who suck just as much as everyone else, but who can’t do any wrong. 

And what’s so cool (poetically cool) is he hates that about himself, which makes him just that much more endearing, and poetically sad.  There’s a fucking rad dignity about that guy, he’s so honest with himself that in the end at least he’s aware of his problems.  Believe me, I can fucking relate to some of the stuff he goes through, but that’s too much to explicate in a blog. 

Rick got caught in a recursive loop of the lovable “Oh sorry me” thing that spiraled out of control somewhere around the early seventies.   He’s utterly forgivable because he just means well, does well, and is really good to people.  His best songs are tight as fuck.  They’re as good as Stones songs, but they’re so much more catchy, which I think is how the man caught on.

And he looks good, and he drives women crazy.  Believe me.  He has them in the palm of his hand.  I had never seen sexual energy in a show anywhere NEAR like what goes on at a Rick show.  It’s this palpable sense that every woman in the crowd is…

I’ll not be lewd, but you get the point.  He’s got the golden glow.  He’s the guy women want to do, and the guy dudes wish they were.

I wished I was Rick Springfield when I was a kid.  Now I am glad I am me, because I am young, and I have the chance to learn from the mistakes older folks like Rick learned for himself.  And I’m just a pretty cool fella in my own right too.  So now for me it’s more of a high-five type fandom with Mr. Springfield.  I’m proud of him, he’s one of the few that made it without being a poor-sport condescending prick once he finally made it to Boardwalk.  That’s a rare combo.

And I’m a music-obsessed completest fool, and being into Rick Springfield gives me something innocent and rad that I can enjoy for myself more than an obscure metal band or an experimental occult ska group, because no one wants to step to something as normal as Rick Springfield.  It’s just too uncool.  And judging by the character of this trip, the Rick Springfield cruise is the most uncool place on fucking earth.

After my “Pass The Dutchie” freakout two days ago, Jordan and I decided to take a break from playing it for essentially medical reasons.  The song actually triggered physiological changes in me.  Shallow breathing, panic, dilated pupils, muscle tension. 

But now we’re back up in the cut.

I missed “Pass The Dutchie” yesterday.  It was like longing for someone you have a crush on but hate yourself for it because they are a fucking asshole.  But you need them.  You know?

Fuck.  It just feels so good.  Been jamming it this morning.  Feels so good.  Like chocolate cake and a cigarette.  Spine tingling.

I don’t want anything else.  I lose track of time.  It’s like my duty to hear this song all the time.

I feel like it’s my job.  The same relationship, I feel guilty when I’ve been slacking on my “Pass The Dutchie” listening.

I mean, it will make me puke, too, don’t even get me wrong.  I want to fucking ignore this song exists, but it does, I’m stuck with it.  I’m on a boat and it feels so good and so bad….  Pass The Fucking Dutchie…  I’m blissing out…

You get the picture.  It’s like, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  Fuck yeah it does.

I’m just planning on laying in my bed for a couple hours, and letting the music wash over me.

rum-bum-biddly biddly biddly bum, be bum

I’m glad I keep getting pleasantly proven wrong lately.  Grand Cayman was tight.

Grand Cayman wasn’t boring, in the way the nicer parts of Austin aren’t boring, they are just wealthy.  Grand Cayman is rolling in it.  The tourist area near the port isn’t filled with only depraved trinket vendors or Jimmy Buffet soft-ball tourist trash.  It has a whole district of Rolex boutiques, Cartier boutiques.  Swatch, Swarovski, luxury out the ass.  It feels disgusting and self-indulgent to fawn over something like a Rolex…  but Rolexes are so, just so… so so beautiful. 

I’m a watch guy maybe and an engineer.  I appreciate fine and beautifully crafted things that are tiny, impeccably precise machines too.  The craft and culture of watchmaking is the Everest of mechanical engineering I think, the highest summit meant for only the truly serious, just like laser design is the Everest of optical engineering.  BUT, Jimminy Fuckmas is this a boring tangent.  We can cover this topic any time we like.

Things like that though are beautiful enough to turn the heads of the most juiced Mafioso, who are precisely the folks who stash their dough in the Caymans…  unbeknownst to the tax laws and paper trails of the world folks like us are subject to.  Yes, the Cayman banks are the modern-day replacements of the old skool buried pirate’s chests.

It’s where the high rollers stash their good shit.  There’s probably more laundered dollar bills in the Caymans than there are laundered undershorts in the entire United States at any given moment in time.

So it’s no wonder that when the fuckin financial pimps and their trophy wife hos out there come to their real banks to open a new checking account to handle the Accounts Receivable department of their latest Ponzi sch- *ahem* investment firm, they have a place to go shopping before being heliported back to wherever the hell they want.

Nobody’s in too harsh of a mood here.

Nope, me and Jordan just fucked around for an hour.  Easy Peasy Japanesey.   I drank from a freshly-opened coconut (kind of like drinking warm piss with a hint of nonfat milk), honked a note out of a street vendor’s conch shell (I still have the muscle memory of my trumpet embouchure from back in high school), walked around till just outside of the Pimp District near the port to where the real eats and shops are (the ones the normal islanders frequent), got dished up a rockin authentic-style Trinidadian chicken roti with home made scotch bonnet hot sauce and shredded mango chutney.  Yikes, by the way!  It was severely badass.  And in stark contrast of the cockroachly customer relations policies of the Jamaican rip off artists, the proprietor of the shop was a beautfiful, relaxed, downright motherly Trini woman, who was so kind she scolded me to store my leftovers in my “knapsack” rather than carry them by hand.

*Pause for smiles*

Well, while eating our rotis and bullshitting with the motherly lady about my pepper garden (brownie points: I’m growing Trinidad peppers back home.  I made sure I whipped that one out right up front.), we got directions to a nearby record store.  We hauled ass to the shop, which didn’t have any vinyl LPs but, as you might image, did have a pretty legit reggae cd section.  So I snapped up a few of the more witchy and obscure looking discs and we trucked it back to the port just in time to catch the last ferry of the day back to our cruise ship.  Branson it was not.  More like Santa Monica.  Santa Monica as a motherfucker.  Santa Monica is good times.

Back on the boat we got our minds blown by the reggae we picked up.  In particular, the 1978 album “Dread Beat An’ Blood” by Linton Kwesi Johnson was so on fire with mystical rebel spirit that it made me come to my big head change about Jamaica.  Any island that can create that album is one I’m going to always honor.  The spirit of Jah is truly alive in Jamaica.

Jordan and I had a long trip talk last night about the Caribbean’s dark past.  The Carribean is nothing more than ground zero of a massively evil ghost story.  Columbus Fuckwad Dickmouth Christopher massacred a tribe of human beings.  If you believe in psychic impressions left behind after the scence of a murder, what in the name of holy Hell do you think is going on down here?

Voodoo, the Bermuda Triangle, Jimmy Buffet’s fame, this place is soaking with bad chi.  It’s infested with a legacy of curses, murder, torture, starvation, white folks who finally found their a chance to take out their small dick issues on human cattle.  These men were some wonderfully accomplished cowards, and the injustice will never be righted here until, God-willing, Jah actually does lead his people to victory.

In a vulgar display of power of my own, I just got done ordering two pieces of chocolate cake, two orders of cookies, and two cups of apple juice from room service, not because I was hungry for all of it, but because I woke up from my catnap with a sweet tooth.  A mighty man am I.

But you should see that fat fucking hogs here up on the Lido deck.  I am no match for their eating skillz.

REGGAE MUSIC

I had to stop what I was doing to give a shout out to Jamaica.  If you listen to Bob Marley or any of the reggae bands especially in the seventies when they started to get militant serious and prophetic, you realize that spiritual conviction is representative of the soul of an oppressed island people.  A country that could rise above the corruption of the world in such a perfect way, that is a proud people indeed.  

Just wanted to give a shout out to the people of Jamaica.  Only a country that righteous could respond to the evil in their island by developing reggae to explain the roots of it.  Please roll this post in with the humor of the previous ones when you read them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKe7LjEazY

"Pass The Dutchie"

We docked at Grand Cayman this morning, but have yet to go ashore.  Jordan is still passed out and thank God for that.  We were both nursing a monumentally unnatural swerve yesterday morning.

Jamaica (and Pass The Dutchie) was an eye-opener.  Before we went onshore yesterday, we were different people, but the intensity of this trip finally caught up with us after getting back on the boat. 

Then, after another truly frightening session with “Pass The Dutchie”, we had to snap out of it.  And I don’t mean mellow out.  We had to drop all of this crazy bullshit, because by that point we were looking out over the river of sanity, and about to fall headlong downward into the arms of the fucking spirit-Sphinx.

Jordan and I are crazy people, but we’re not totally far gone.  We like to have fun, and we do it up right, but I don’t think either of us really realized what listening to Pass The Dutchie, barely eating, laughing constantly, and drinking like a Viking would do to push us into new, seriously crazy territory…  Cabin fever!

Cabin fever.  God.  No more.

So we both, in a very amazingly unspoken way, spent the rest of the night as actual, normal, polite and respectful human beings.  When we ate dinner we just basically talked about tuna, and tried not to mention Pass The Dutchie.  We tried not to laugh, and bring back the cosmic Jester into the room.  And man, we are better fucking folks now.

I feel great, exorcised.  You stare into the eye of the lion and it’s freaking you out, and you want to run.  So help me god you want to run.  I wanted to run.  As God as my witness I had a minor panic attack during our last Pass The Dutchie session, tormented and freaked the fuck out I stand here to tell you that I said aloud on Novemer 7^th 2011 in the Carribean “Dude, Pass The Dutchie is making me lose my shit.”

Jordan of course was on no solid ground, no, he was on sandy land too, and all he could do was laugh, buckled over watching me bang my head frantically against my bed, tickled pink about the unreal nature of the situation.

I had to force myself to take deep breaths while listening to “Pass The Dutchie” because “Pass The Dutchie” was scaring the shit out of me.  Pass The Dutchie was making me panic.  What.  The.  Fuck.

And, I’m sure you can feel me on this one, that’s all we needed.  We snatched the candy from the eye of the lion and as we should have known it was just a grape-flavored magic mushroom in the shape of a Bob Marley smiling down over a glow-in-the-dark yin-yang.  Good for us, at least we staked our psychic ground there before we headed back to safety.

Last night was blissfully quiet.  It was like a monastery.  We didn’t say much to each other, we didn’t need to.  We did our own thing, and did it like normal people.

Draw your own implications about the magnitude of what I am recounting of yesterday, and keep in mind we did not know what we had been getting into, no one can know, it’s just too weird.

I wandered around the ship last night in silent reflection, and the more I contemplated the days’ events the more I realized most of my problems really weren’t what I thought them to be.  Really all that was troubling me was “Pass The Dutchie”.  The more and more I thought about it the more and more it became clear, “Fuck, it was pass the Dutchie all along.”  I was so grateful to be alive.  I am happier now because of that song.

Which makes me question my initial impressions of Jamaica.  Fuck dangerous, Jamaica was fucking priceless.  It was like the most beautiful Faberge egg of an island you could imagine, like a Picasso of forest, mountains, old shacks, colorful and hip islanders, toughness, poetic beauty, so fuck the danger.  That just makes Jamaica metal.

Judging from the looks of the island from the boat, Grand Cayman looks about as interesting as Branson, Missouri.  It’s got a very fucking Missouri way about it.

I was able to actually keep down food yesterday shortly before our last “Pass The Dutchie” trip, and I was finally able to try the leftover Jamaican jerk chicken we’d brought back to the ship.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.   Oh my fucking sweet nonsense fuck it was just as beautiful as the island of Jamaica, like Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles priceless but with the bonus magic of habaneros!!!

Not worthy. J

Pass The Dutchie ‘Pon The Left Hand Side

There’s an interesting fucking paradox about being drunk as shit all the time.  On the one hand, eating makes you sick, and on the other hand, not eating makes you sick.

My mind is truly going nuts now.  I just cannot get “Pass The Dutchie” out of my head.  It’s a really fucked up song to get stuck in your mind on repeat.  We’re doing it to ourselves deliberately because it is funny.  But I’m ready for it to be done. 

In general, this whole cruise idea is truly absurd.  I am wondering why I am on a Rick Springfield cruise.  I’m fucking stuck here, which is the 500 pound elephant in the room that I totally missed when I came up with this idea: What exactly am I going to do?  Laugh at everything?  I could do that at home for free.  What did I even think I’d want to do?  Watch stupid Rick Springfield concerts?  We haven’t even been doing that.  It’s not that interesting, believe it or fucking not.  Me and Jordan caught the tail end of Jessie’s girl and one other song the first night and we did not do Jack Shit for Springfield events yesterday.

The only way I can justify this experience to myself now that I am here, outside the Hallmark sentiment of “living life to its fullest” (which is a cop-out, by the way, if you want to get technical) is if me and Jordan make some money off of this.

Like the fucking asshole street cons everywhere in Jamaica, I want to be able to use this opportunity to my advantage and milk some fucking dough out of normal, good-hearted, hard-working people.

Because I’m now wasted.  My mind is looping in circles.  My body is falling apart at the seams.  I can’t keep down any food.  I’m in hilarious mode even when I’m asleep. 

I’m in a weird fucking land where you can sense danger everywhere you go.  It seems that everyone talks out the corner of their mouth here like they’re lying to you, and they are lying to you, and they aren’t even trying to appear honest, and they know you know they’re trying to fuck you over, and you know that they know that they know.  And it’s just too complex for me to take in within the space of only 6 short hours.  I like mental chess, but not in a place where the murder rate is off the charts.

You walk into a store and things suddenly get quiet because you’re from America and goddammit I just can’t live like that.

I don’t like being in a land where the main source of economic activity it seems is watching foreigners like a hawk and waiting for them to do something stupid.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

The fucking street smarts required to get by here are just too much for me, and I’m at least wise enough to know when I’m already beat, and since there are no record stores anymore apparently, and even if there were they would be evil con-artist record stores, and since I don’t smoke marijuana, and since I don’t know what the fuck else I would do here other than be in Jamaica simply because it is Jamaica, I am back on the boat.

But I’ll say this:  I’ve just got a sixth sense about danger.  I know when I’m beat and I know when the odds are too high to even risk playing.  I like to play, but right now I’m not out here to prove anything to anyone.  All I really want to do, like I said, is keep doing funny shit so I can laugh and make some easy money off of this thing.  I’ve already had a pretty insane trip.

But I will say this, too: the Jamaican people we talked to definitely were cool people.  You know? 

Everyone has to make a buck, and probably no one wakes up and decides that they’re going to rip people off for a living, rather than say, help people for a living, if they weren’t desperate.  It fucking sucks, but at least Jamaicans have got a rad sense of style, and they’ve got a laid-back attitude, and even though I couldn’t figure out what games they were running, that still says something about their intelligence.

Jordan made the comment that he thinks he could live in (handle the harshness of) Jamaica.  At his first impression even though he was drunk and exhausted and irritated, not to mention insulted by an asshole rastamon, he still dug the place.

It is pretty impossible for me to have a good time and relax here.  I seriously hope Grand Cayman is not this fucking severe.

“Pass The Dutchie” played over and over again is a potent, legal psychedelic.

The more time I get away from “Pass The Dutchie” the better and saner I feel.  Good fucking Christ if you only knew.

But as far as actual shit you would care about knowing, i.e., a trip report: we got off the boat, went to the beach to take a requisite quick dip in the ocean, took a taxi to a “record store” that was just a cell phone store with a few shitty used reggae cds, ate jerk chicken and pork (habanero heaven), and I got bugged so we bought some goofy souvenirs and came back to the boat to enjoy the sights and sounds of Jamaica from the comfort of the ship.

"how does it feel when you've got no food?"

“How does it feel when you’ve got no food?”

I’m becoming Jamaican.  That is to say, I am shedding my non-Jamaican self.

I woke up this morning with two leg injuries.  One is a knee scrape and one is a scrape on the top of my foot that looks more like a third degree burn.  It is more than a scrape.  It looks more like I pressed my foot up against a white hot metal pipe for several seconds.  As far as I know, that is exactly what occurred.

I remember ketchup.  Something about ketchup on my hand, or ketchup on my shoulder.  I remember the smell of ketchup on my shoulder, but as I was telling Jordan this morning, there are very few typical scenarios in which ketchup can end up on your shoulder, none of which are technically “typical”.

I remember some kind of mad dash.  While the deck smelled like bacon and barbecue and people were watching a Rick Springfield documentary on a big jumbotron, there was some type of mad dash somewhere.  I was the guy doing it, and Jordan was there too, and I’m almost certain that’s where the ketchup probably happened, but we did not eat, as far as I can remember.

There was a frozen drink called a “dirty banana” containing Kahlua and I think I had five of them.  There was a drink called a “fun ship” with assorted fruits and liquors and a little umbrella, and I think I had two of them.  We sat in the lobby at the bar and drank these and badgered the pianist.

We must have been there for several hours, but I only remember fragments of those hours.  Somehow the ketchup happened in the intervening time between the dirty bananas and this morning.  The scrapes had to have happened during that stretch of time.

I’m shaking today, kind of trembling.  The one thing I’m sure of is that I ralphed last night.  Woke up shitty yet strangely okay, considering a lot of the worry that goes along with drinking is irrelevant here, the cruise sets you up with everything you need to really hone your getting-shitfaced game.

I woke up relatively clean, in a comfortable twin bed, in a clean room, on the ocean, in close proximity to cold drinking water and a toilet.  Considering the potential to really fuck myself up here and make it count, I have nowhere near crossed the Rubicon.

Jordan and I have been listening to “Pass The Dutchie” on repeat, over and over and over again, which has already taken on a level of cosmic, hypnotic significance by this point.  I woke up wanting to hear that song.  Not because I like it anymore, or because I wanted to hear it, but because I needed to hear it. 

“Pass The Dutchie” is driving us maniacally insane.  The insanity cannot possibly be described.  It is beyond funny, or trippy, or surreal.  Hearing “Pass The Dutchie” over and over and over again makes you truly understand how extraordinary that recording is.  It has great powers. 

“Pass The Dutchie” is a fascinating and scary song.  It has the power to truly bring you over to the other shore.  Whether that shore be pleasant or perilous remains to be seen.  All we know is we have seen the other side, and we have 4 more days at sea.

“Pass The Dutchie” is not what we would have expected before we had chosen to become One with it.  It is beyond explanation, bordering on miraculous.

first

going on the Rick Springfield cruise tomorrow.

i feel really weird about it, but i'm wasting no time in getting drunk to cope.

Jordan and I ate a fish restaurant.  The jukebox was playing retarded 80s boner music.  I ate dolphin.  Dolphin.  Dolphin.

Dolphin.

came back to the hotel my grandpa wrote the blueprints for and drank 40 ounces and listened to The Small Faces, The Faces, The Lemonheads, Steel Panther, The Protomen, The Rolling Stones, and metal guitar solos on youtube.

sung heavy metal songs and air guitared heavy metal songs.

we played heavy metal and air guitared heavy metal songs in my grandpa's hotel.

it is such a fucking rad hotel.