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12/16/04 Antarctica Starts Here Don't give us none of your aggravation Hey It's been a couple weeks. What the hell's been up with Bill? Well, the Christmas funk came late this year- last year by this time we'd already seen a couple of inspired rants in this pages, my Christmas spirit is one of the Evil Dead, blah blah blah- this season it came creeping, and hit hard. Said funk has mostly manifested itself in some pretty severe alcohol resistant insomnia- the worst kind- and an even worse, if that's possible, attitude regarding my familial situation, or lack thereof. I'm not going to waste your time pissing and moaning this year, Christmas, like most anything else, is what you make it. But I think I'm going to have to line up with my girl Jean who, as we were walking to our cars the other night, out of the blue, snarled "Goddamn fucking Christmas" in a voice that made me truly afraid to glance over at her, for fear her head was turned around backwards.
And after a couple of atypically sober, middle of the day newsletters, here we are back again with a shit faced middle of the night issue. Good for us. Bill's been pretty social of late, as befits the season, let me first briefly address the mail bag, since I've forgotten to the past few issues, and people been going "What about the mail?" In response to a couple questions concerning the Inverness punch up of
a few issues past- Dave called me an "international rowdy", I
like that- the Frenchy Frog, Italian, and Scot were the only ones I went
round with on their home turf, the Cuban was in (where else) Florida, the
Lebanese guy was also in Paris- you spend all day surrounded by a bunch of
French motherfuckers, you'll want to fight all the time too- but he, like
the Italian
And lastly, some guy who calls himself long time reader, first time responder- how cute- in a tortuous and totally useless analysis of yours truly (Who asked you, anyway?) made the comment, "I think you'd sell your soul for a hot piece of ass." Ha. Already have done, motherfucker. Already have done. Okay, so where's Bill been lately, and what's he done? Well, in wrestling news, I hope you all caught the Death Falcon dropkicking a chair into The Unholy's face on Channel 3 news a couple weeks ago- check out the latest web issue for stills from the show. The Falconettes- Anita and Impetuous-are back and in rare form, come check us out this Saturday in Nitro, where DFZ defends his XMCW Hardcore title- successfully, I'd fucking wager- again against the Unholy in a barbed wire casket match. The Falconettes- or Ho's, as the crowd last show was calling them, to my amusement, if not exactly theirs- will again be there, and yes, I would eat them both with a spoon. Or without.
Had lunch with Falconette (or Ho) Anita last Tuesday, always a good time being with her, then last Wednesday went over to Joe's, he got a Japanese hardcore (wrestling) pay per view, it was okay, but not near as good as I'd hoped, opening match had Ryuchi Ito, who we saw a few months ago right here in Nitro- DFZ'd shoot and kick his ass and not break a sweat, trust me, punk ass little back stabbing mother fucker- in the finals of last year's KOTDM finals, like a lot of these finals they were both already beat all to hell so they didn't have a lot left for the last one.
Thursday I took my Mom Christmas shopping at the Huntington Mall. It was a long day is about all I'll say in regard to that. At one point I was laden with about 90 packages and bags, my Mom was wandering around in aimless circles like a fucking dog trying to remember where she last pissed, I was looking for a place to sit, there was this old farmer type sitting there in the midst of a bunch of other old farmer types, there on this long marble bench. "Have a seat, neighbor," he says, in that genuinely heart warming good old fella way, so I did, and, even though I felt a little out of place without a ball cap on, still proceeded to chew the fat with all the other old geezers there. First we talked about our women folk, and their crazy women folk shopping ways, and then we all discussed our infirmities, our necks and our shoulders, our backs and our knees, the pale little guy on my left kept complaining, Gollum like, about his "insideses", if he'd said "precious" I was gonna change seats, then one old guy said that the only pleasure he got out of coming to the mall was going in Sears and looking at the tools, and everyone agreed that, yeah, that was about all that made a trip to the mall worthwhile. Well, almost everyone. There's always got to be a turd in the buttermilk, and usually it's me. B: I don't really like tools. There's this stunned and uneasy silence, before Farmer Brown goes- FB: You don't like tools? What kind of man are you? I could see my approval rating plummeting, so B: But I do like spitting, see? Later Thursday, after I dropped my Mom off, I went up to Martha's to have a drink with her and Jean. That was good, I love both you guys, see you again over the holidays. Saturday I went up to Chris's, with Ron and Deb in attendance, for movie club and whiskey tasting. As for the whiskey, I had a scotch and soda-it'll never be my favorite drink, but this was good, it was Mc- fuck it, McSomething, I can't remember now. Chris was also drinking some Laphroig, an acquired taste at best, it tastes like kerosene with some dirt thrown in it, as for me, maybe after the Apocalypse, but not before. I also drank some of Chris's Maker's Mark, which reaffirmed my status as a bourbon man, he and Ron tried some of my Booker's, which, as they didn't finish it, reaffirmed their status as PUSSIES, but they're still good guys, what the hell. Chris still had some of that weird ass beer he brought back from Atlanta, we drank some Skullsplitter ale, brewed in the Orkey's, pretty sweet for a Scot's brew with a tough guy name, but it was still bile and ashes compared to this hellish sweet Belgian brew we tried next, Double Bounem Ale, which was just as fruity as goddamn fuck. Holy shit, do I hate sweet beer, if I want to drink Kool Aid, I'll fucking drink Kool Aid. And I never want to drink Kool Aid
When she kissed me I was born, then she said goodbye That's when I knew I was born to cry What's Bill drinking? A shit load of PBR, which I found at the Dunbar Kroger's today. Nothing interesting to report on the reading or listening front, maybe next time. Also drinking some- holy FUCK, I just realized I'm drinking Joe and Laura's Christmas present, fuck me. Oh well, it's good guys, merry Christmas. My damn pipes are froze up. Fuck this place, anyway. The destruction of Bill's shoulder continues apace. Got on the bench the other day, went to get started- and I couldn't get the damn bar off the rest. My shoulder wouldn't move, the damn thing locked up completely. That's fucked up. I changed the angle of the lift the next time (cos I got pissed off that day and just quit lifting), and I'm able to (ahem) get it up again, but still, this is not a good development. I've already dropped what I work with on the bench by 45 pounds over this past year, and raised the reps, I won't even tell you what I'm working with now, it's embarrassing, I mean, I'm sure it's still a lot more than YOU can bench, but it's a lot less than I should be using. Except my fucking shoulder doesn't work. Shit. Jesus may want me for a sunbeam (then again, he may not) but Uncle Sam apparently doesn't want me for a Postal Worker, after all that big whoop, get your ass up here NOW for testing and training, I haven't heard a damn word from 'em since. Bastards. At the risk of sounding like a half assed stand up comic, what is it with old men and fried eggs? Al gets 'em every time I take him to breakfast, my Dad eats them at the house all the time, and fucking hell, they can't keep 'em off of their faces. I don't know if it's cos they catch in their cracked old lips or what, but they can't get the goddamn things down their cake holes, every time they eat fried eggs they have that shit just all hanging off of their faces, it looks nasty, I'll be going, "Al, use your napkin" "What?" "Use your fucking NAPKIN, Jesus Christ, you're making me sick". Reminds me of the first time Loretta and I split up, summer of '96, I was working briefly at Bobby's Bar and Grill there in Cross Lanes, the people who own it, Bob and Patsy, have lived next door to my Mom and Dad for over 30 years. I'm supposed to open up one morning, so I get there an hour before we open at 11, as scheduled, I'm there maybe ten minutes when someone starts pounding on the door. I go to see and it's this weathered looking old drunk fucker, I can smell the stale alcohol stink on him through the glass door. ODF: Lemme in He doesn't go away, as I turn to go back behind the bar he starts pounding and kicking on the door so hard I think he's gonna break the glass. I open the door and grab a big handful of his shirt and am dragging his protesting ass across the parking lot, at the back of which is this big hill just made for throwing some obnoxious drunk over, when Patsy pulls in. P: BILL! What are you doing? Patsy comes running over and starts making over the vile old shit, apologizing for the rough treatment, and takes him inside the bar. She starts to fry him up some eggs, and asks- P: Do you want a beer? Weevil's sitting there all grins, mocking me, so instead of serving him I just sort of stare at him. P: I said, give him a beer, Bill The point of this story, if there is one at all, and that's debatable, is when Patsy brought Weevil this huge stack of fried eggs, there had to be 8 or 10 of them there, and he just starts shoveling them down, he's got runny yolk and white all over his fucking face, and dripping down his chin, and when he stops to wash down this nasty half chewed eggy mess with a big swig of early morning beer I damn near heaved my fucking self. I only lasted at Bobby's about 3 weeks, it didn't pay all that well, minimum wage, and the tips were just about non-existent, the one perk it did have was that I was allowed to drink behind the bar while working, within reason. It was what constituted "within reason" that we couldn't agree on- go figure- so I left by mutual agreement. Fuck 'em. And while we're speaking of old men, I saw where another one of my old clients, this blind and legless guy named Orville, died last week. RIP. Orville went out of his mind for a while the summer of '98. He became convinced that Jesus had given him his sight back. Now, Orville wasn't just blind, he was fucking eyeless, there was nothing left in those sockets but meat, but forget it, he was converted and convinced, I remember me and Beverly, my nurse at the time, coming in to his apartment, he's telling us how he can see- O: It's all down to Jesus, he's given me back my sight. Orville wheels himself up to me, peels one of those horrid, empty sockets open (which made me make that "Nyaah!" sound that Moe Stooge used to make) and squints intensely. O: No . . . no, it's red. Beverly's got her stethoscope out and is threatening me with it, so- B: Okay, you got me Orville. It's red. This spurt of vision inspired Orville to start making "lamps". He was getting the cord and light bulb part for a lamp, then taking bottles and jugs- any bottle or jug would do, he was even using old dishwashing detergent bottles, then crudely smashing or cutting, depending on whether the "lamp" was glass or plastic, a hole near the base, feeding the cord through the hole and placing the light bulb receptacle at the top. True folk art, they were absolutely the damnedest things you've ever seen in your life, I wish like hell now I'd bought one, I had my eye on this one made out of a Mrs. Butterworth bottle- even though he was wanting a steep $10 for 'em- I'd now much rather have one of those insane masterpieces of his than a stupid piece of green paper. Orville was possessed that summer, just manic as all hell, he must've made 50 or more of the fucking things, when he wasn't busy telling people what color shirt they didn't have on, the house was just damn packed full of 'em, his wife Mary would call screaming, "He's spending all our damn money on those lamp cords!" Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, we stopped by and all the lamps are gone, and a subdued Orville can't "see" anymore. Kind of sad, really. Okay, the Golden Skillet stories from last issue went over a fucking storm, thank you very much. We'll move up a couple years in Bill's unsuccessful career as a working man, to the summer of '78, and "Bill Bitner, Construction Worker From Hell". I got this job through my Mom, who was working as a secretary for this half assed contractor, Wray Williamson, who was this great big old blustery fuck, I felt bad about despising him cos he was always very nice to me, but he was just always so goddamn loud and so goddamn fake (although I do owe him for throwing a New Year's Eve party '76 into '77 that kept my parents gone and occupied while Loretta and I set the bed in my room on absolute fire. She was 17 at the time and I was 20 and I should be in fucking JAIL). This summer of which we speak, Wray had a contract to remodel all the Pizza Hut's in southern WV, as well as to build this big ass house somewhere out in the wilds of Putnam Co., for some dentist. Now, I could tell some good stories, like, The Day Bill Accidentally Knocked Wray Out With That Big Heavy Thing And We All Got A Half Day Off From Work While He Went To The Hospital, or, The Day We Got The Van Drunk, or (my favorite) The Night Bill Fucked That Hellacious Hot Girl From Pizza Hut (and yes, this WAS the summer of '78, and yes, I was engaged to be married to Loretta at that time, and no, we're not going to discuss it), not to be confused with a similar, earlier essay, The Night Bill Fucked Those TWO Girls From That Other Pizza Hut (which was in '75, and okay to discuss). However, I'll save them and tell some others instead. Wray had the biggest bunch of misfits on his crew you ever fucking saw, some jowly old slump shouldered sad sack, I can't even remember his name, all he ever did was stand around with his hands in his pockets and ask what time it was-"Time for you to help out, mother fucker!"- he stood out as being worthless as fuck, even in our worthless bunch, and then Ronnie Anderson, a good guy, but weird as fuck, he had some kinda thyroid thing made his eyes look like they were shooting out of his skull, also made him hyper active as all hell, and Richard, this great big hairy fat ass guy, with one of those high squeaky voices big fat guys who were bad in their previous lives sometimes get stuck with. And me, with all the mechanical aptitude of a left handed turtle, who could break a fucking anvil just by looking at it. But we were all hired cos my Mom worked for Wray, Richard and Ronnie were his next door neighbors on either side, and Sad Sack, I dunno, I think he served with Wray's great granddad in the Civil War, or something. Good thinking there, Wray. Richard stood out as a lazy fuck, even in our lazy bunch, we had this generator that was nailed to a square piece of wood, had a handle on each end, one handle was actually on the generator, the other handle was on the board, and there was a ton of difference in the load depending on which handle you grabbed. Richard would literally knock you on your ass- I saw him knock Sad Sack ass over fucking tea kettle on more than one occasion- to get to the lighter handle when it came time to move the generator. One day he's charging past me to grab the light end and somehow my foot got stuck out, and he falls absolutely astraddle the generator. You could hear his little fat boy nuts crunching all over the site. Richard starts rolling around on the ground clutching himself and crying for Daddy. W: What's going on here? This house we were building, it really was out in the sticks. The road wasn't quite done, so a lot of times the big trucks couldn't actually get to the site, so they'd have to park at the top of the hill and dump their shit, whatever it was, cinder block or sheet rock or whatever, and then we'd have to hand truck it down to the site. Inefficient? No shit. Also, hard damn work And more also, the dentist we were building this house for's wife was a flat out, no kidding around, nymphomaniac- this is even from the dentist's, who I always called Doc, I never found out until later that it pissed him off- own lips. Which would've been cool, but she was goddamn hideous, Olive Oyl's skinnier, crazier sister, she was scary as hell, I bet that stuff would cut you like a razor, for real. What Doc saw in her is beyond my fucking ass. She was always coming out to the site during the day, even though she wasn't supposed to, and grabbing our asses- all of us, even Richard's great big hairy fat one, and Sad Sack's withered old saggy one- this is straight up- and trying to get us to fuck her, Wray was always calling the Doc and saying, "Shit, she's here AGAIN". So one day there's this huge ass load of fly ash that needs to be taken down to the house and put in the basement, before the concrete's poured. It's left to me to take it all down there by wheel barrow, while they all go off and do some kind of Pizza Hut shit, which was perfectly fine with me, I actually loved being left onsite by myself to just do this mindless physical labor, very relaxing I found it. Except halfway through moving the fly ash, whose car do I see pull up but Mrs. Crazy Ass I'll Fuck A Snake If He'll Raise His Head Doc's Wife. I'm not wanting the least bit of that shit- I'm not kidding, my God, she was UGLY- so I'm looking around for a place to hide, and the only thing I can figure is under the fly ash. So I burrow on up under there. It was kind of nice under that fly ash, peaceful, if a bit stuffy, and after I'm up under there for a little bit I start falling asleep, and I'm thinking "This was really a good idea." Thankfully, at about that point, I realized that I wasn't falling asleep, I was dying from lack of oxygen. So I come busting up out of the fly ash, to find Doc's wife has moved on to greener pastures, which is a good thing, cos I was too close to death to put up much resistance. Later that day Wray and the crew come back and I notice Wray giving me the big eye. W: You, uh . . . you seem to have gotten yourself pretty dirty there,
Bill. Wray came over and put his hand on my filthy shoulder and without the slightest trace of irony I could detect, said- W: You're a good man, Bill. One last story. One day I'm down in the basement with this great big drill, the bit's two and a half feet if it's an inch, drilling holes through all these supports and shit so they can run wire through them later. Comes time to drill up from the basement to the upper floor, and here's where the comedy of errors starts. The hole is supposed to go through at the base of the stairs above, I'm way up on the ladder, so I can put my shoulder into it, and as I finally get the drill through, way through, who the fuck has come along and decided to sit his sad sack ass down on the steps? Yeah, Sad Sack himself. As he's going to sit, that drill bit goes shooting up through the floor, and while it doesn't get any meat, it tangles all in the ass of his droopy fucking drawers- and keeps spinning, which means it starts wrapping the seat of his pants around the drill bit, and drawing his drawers tighter and tighter against his old man crotch. SS: Oh my lord. Stop the drill, Bill, STOP THE DRILL! I just keep the drill spinning, what the fuck, I can't really hear what he's saying, but I soon realize I'm snagged on something. B: Hold on a second, I'm stuck on something. So I start jerking, I'm trying to get the bit free, Sad Sack is screaming his ass off upstairs, holding on to the stair rail. SS: HELP! OH MY GOD, HELP ME! Wray comes running into the upstairs room in response to Sad Sack's crazed screaming. W: What the FUCK is going on here? About that time I give a good hard jerk, and rip the drill free of Sad Sack's pants- and Sad Sack's pant's free of his ass, and, the way he carried on, maybe Sad Sack's balls free of their mooring. I come upstairs, basking in a job I thought well done, and here comes old Sack, holding up his shredded drawers with one hand and pointing at me with the other, he's so damn agitated, he's shaking like he's getting ready to stroke out, and all he can say, over and over, is "you crazy stupid crazy stupid crazy stupid-" B: What's up with him? For the rest of that summer, at least once a day, I'd stick my index finger out and start making drill noises, "Bzzt, bzzt" and then chase Sad Sack all around the job site poking him in the ass with my finger, and him screaming, "Stop it, goddamn it, wasn't once enough for ya?!" Wray'd just shake his head and go, "No wonder I'm going broke." And he did, that was the one and only house Wray built, and he lost this ass doing it, and went out of business not long after. My Mom used to cry about losing her job, and my Dad would tell her "I told you not to hire Bill." Know me, know my sins.
If I go there will be trouble So I guess I'll go. If I don't talk to you again before Christmas, everyone do the best with it that you can. Later Bill
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For those of you who find genuine religious significance in the day,
all I can say is God bless you, and more power to you.
- ha, when I try to type an "s" I get this crazy
thing, what the fuck?!- thought it was okay to play very crude and blatant
grab ass with these cute little American tourist girls, shit, not when
there was young Bill ready to lay a righteous American fist upside their
greasy heads it wasn't. And happy to goddamn do it I was. And I'd do it
again a heartbeat.
The rest of those United (against Bill) Nations I threw down with were
here in the good old USA.
Went up to Danny's last Sunday and watched a TNA pay per view, drank
some beer and hung out, it was good, then met with him on Monday over at
State to meet with the Director of the upcoming Death Falcon movie- boys
and girls, it really looks like this shit is going to happen- and the head
of Special Effects, who designed a new DF mask, I sent Joe a copy, put it
in here, okay? Danny told me last night at training that the effects guy
is waffling now, if he is he's crazy, this is going to be a great fucking
movie, trust me. What did I say? A GREAT FUCKING MOVIE, that's what I
said.
Also drank the Red Hook ESB that Anita got me for my birthday Wednesday
night at Joe's- he had one as well, let me tell you ESB stands for Extra
Strong Bitters, and its well named. Very strong tasting, took a couple to
get used to it, then I liked it a lot, powerful as well, five and I was
pretty damn buzzed.
As for movies, we watched a couple Japanese Zatoichi (the blind
swordsman) films, a b/w from '62, then a new one from I don't know when,
but recent, they were both just fucking great, humorous, surreal, insanely
violent, right down my fucking alley. We also watched the Bourne Identity,
I fucking hate "thrillers", print and screen, on a number of
levels, but this wasn't bad.
And once is never enough for me.