In This Episode: Dimebag & May

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Just in time for the holidays, we bring you a long-overdue 40 Oz. of Hell from our resident jackass, Kerby! Shit, if we don’t post his stuff, then he fills our email boxes full of dribble on everything from crop circle conspiracy theories to why he likes Snickers better than M&Ms.

Since Kerby’s bedding mostly consists of newspapers, he’s been catching up on the latest news of the Columbus nightclub shooting, which took away one of our guitar Icons, as well as the socio-political rantings of Mr. William Grim of Iconoclast Magazine, who took it upon himself to attack the metal community with horrifying bigotry and completely laughable stereotypes and accusations. However, we are unable to explain the black circus midget…

Happy Holidays…

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I’ve never had shit.

You know, that’s ok. Maybe over time I have just gotten used to abject poverty. It might also be true that I am genetically predisposed to a life of sorrow. Maybe it is precisely because I am poor and unattractive that I have long ago given up the idea that I would somehow be the special one who would score the head cheerleader or bone the hottest soccer mom. It just ain’t gonna happen. The funny part about that though is that I honestly don’t spend much time worrying about it. Life is what it is, and I guess I’ve long ago figured out that the best way to deal with imperfect aspects of my existence has been to down cheap liquor and turn up the metal. There are those out there who contend that neither one is good for me or that by engaging in either of these activities that I am subjecting myself to eternal torment in the most fiery bowels of hell. That’s all fine and good and everything, but somehow I get the feeling that those people have never been cold--they have never been alone--they have never been prone to fits of anger that they could never really explain. They are the people from the right side of tracks, I guess. They can‘t tell you what a piss soaked bus terminal bathroom smells like at 3 A.M., but they can sure let you know what flavor of exotic cheese goes well with white wine. You know what? That’s also ok. I’ve seen what lies beyond, and it flat out isn’t what those people expect it to be.

The whole incident happened about a week ago. I was cruising at night with that fucking David Chipps in the Pinto down Central when the pea green heap of mechanical havoc gave out on me.

“What the fuck!” Chipps yelled.

“I dunno.” I really didn’t. The damn thing had been with me longer than any other possession I’ve ever owned in this world with the exception of a Balls to the Wall cassette that could doubtlessly still be found somewhere--most likely melted--under the hatchback. The last sputter coughed out of the engine, and I felt like crying. I knew I didn’t have money to fix it, and even more daunting was the realization that my financial reality wasn’t going to change any time soon either. The two of us got out of the car and managed to push it over to the side of the road as the horns honked and miscellaneous comments could be heard emanating from the occasional open window. I put on the emergency brake, and the two of us stood on the sidewalk downtown looking at each other.

“What the fuck are you looking at? You’ve always been a fag,” he told me.

“Thanks. Now I’m a fag without transportation,” I said.

“You can stand out here and freeze your nuts off, but I’m going in there.”

The place he was referring to was a bright, twenty story building called the Iconoclast Hotel. It was supposed to be swanky. It was supposed to be for rich people.

Needless to say, I had never been there.

Chipps must have read my expression because before I could even offer up any type of alternative suggestion he shot--“What the fuck? Don’t you think we belong?”

I just sort of shrugged and figured that it wasn’t so much a question of belonging as it was a hesitance on my part to mix with a group of people who don’t want to be mixed with--especially at a place like the Iconoclast where only the dicks of the dicks reside.

When we walked through the rotating glass doors, the whole scene was clean, glossy and bright like a new shopping mall. You know, it basically looked like anything other than a locale that I would frequent. To our left were a bunch of men dressed in suits and women who all looked like Hillary Clinton. They were clean. They looked nice. They belonged.

They weren’t us.

As I took in the whole scene, the funniest aspect of this to me was that I--for a split second--could smell the residual scent of the ragweed joint I had smoked the night before. It seemed so incongruous to what I was surrounded by now, that I found myself yearning for the ancient, dirty shag carpet of my trailer. Thirty feet away from us, a spotless Santa yelled, “Ho ho ho,” as we looked for a sign directing us to the hotel bar. Chipps led the way, and inside the bar there were a few tables and maybe a half a dozen people in the place. We decided on a table next to one that was currently inhabited by a couple of fruity looking guys. One of them was really fucking fat with horrendous hair and was sporting a type of tweed jacket (please check photo) while the other had--can you fucking believe it? A bowtie. Their attire screamed “I’m an effeminate intellectual” louder than Kevin Dubrow when his toupee gets pulled.

I put my jacket behind my seat, and Chipps went up to the bar to get what I thought were a couple of beers. Instead, he returned proclaiming, “Fuck the beers--tonight, we’ll have Black Tooth Grins in honor of Dime--can you believe I had to tell the tight ass at the bar how to make ’em though? He looked at me like I was a mutherfucking Martian.” Dave downed his drink in a second before leaving me to take a piss. It was while he was gone that I listened to the following conversation coming from the tweed guy whose name was “Bill” or “William” and the other guy--the one in the bowtie just went by the moniker “Dick.”

“Okay, William, tell me about that screenplay again. I found it rather invigorating when you discussed it earlier.”

“Why… which one, Dick? I am so prolific that aside from my conservative writing for the Jewish Press, I have also optioned many screenplays that can be found on http://williamegrim.tripod.com.”

What followed was his description of five of the absolute horseshittiest piles crap I have ever heard. Please let me know if you have ever heard of any ideas for screenplays that are worse than this. I’m not fucking joking either.

1. THE BUCKEYE BANDITO (comedy)-- The night before his wedding a law student is mistaken for a notorious drug dealer and has to flee from the mob, the FBI and the most dangerous enemies of all--his future in-laws.

2. POUND (Miramax-style period piece)-- Historical biography of the turbulent life of the controversial American writer Ezra Pound. (Also available as stage play)

3. BACHELOR A-GO-GO (romantic comedy)-- Two married newspaper reporters get divorced accidentally while investigating a story and find themselves plunged not only into war but the war between the sexes.

4. GOOD GRIEF (comedy)-- A grief counselor/romance novelist's life is turned upside when he takes business advice from the hillbilly auto king of Columbus, Ohio. (Also available as stage play)

5. ACADEMIA NUTS (college comedy)-- The drunken misadventures of two grad students avoiding adult life at a politically correct college.

I was about to cry listening to this pretentious display of assdung when Chipps came back and sat down across from me while only partially blocking my view of the next table. I think Chipps actually started in with me about how Slaughterhouse 5 was a better novel than Catcher in the Rye--I’m not kidding. I love Vonnegut, but Dave is fucking wrong about this one. It might have been because I had heard this dissertation a million times before that I was sort of able to listen to what was going on at the table de la femme.

“See those guys at the table next to us?” William asked.

Tweedboy nodded.

“They’re rockers.”

That’s when Bill went on to bring up the recent murder of Dimebag before breaking into the following:

“You know, Dick, it was highly amusing, and also terribly sad, to watch on television fans conducting a 'vigil' for the slain Mr. Abbott outside of the Alrosa Villa. It was an assemblage of ignorant, semi-human barbarians who were filthy in attire and manner, intellectually incoherent and above all else, hideously ugly to the point of physical deformity. Here is a definite case in which the outer appearance of these 'fans' accurately represented the hideousness of their souls. That the physical deformity of their ugliness was self-inflicted makes the spiritual tragedy of their misspent lives all the more tragic.”

As a mutherfucker who waves the flag of “misspent lives” as high as I personally can, I really, really wasn’t digging the characterization.

All I could think about was that interview with Vinnie Paul that took place in Albuquerque awhile back, and how it was this typical scenario wherein I was supposed to call the tour manager and all that. As often is the case, there were many different activities going on, and coordinating time was beginning to be a bit problematic. Eventually terms were agreed upon, and I ended up over by the bus talking to a huge man who it turns out was named John “Mayhem” Thompson who at the time was getting ready to oversee a meet and greet between the fans and the band in an alley behind the theater. Anyone who has ever been to the Sunshine Theatre knows that it is kind of a dark place in many ways. I had never seen a meet and greet conducted in this location before, but I stayed to watch primarily because John actually encouraged me to stick around—“You never know—you might learn more by just watching than you will doing the interview.”

He was right.

What struck me—even at the time—was that here was a band that could have forgone the opportunity to meet the fans simply because of the lack of appropriate facilities in which to engage in their normal routine. Many bands do that. Damageplan didn’t. Here they were, Vinnie, Dime—metal legends--standing in a dingy alley in front of their bus signing just about anything they were presented with… instead of looking bothered as many bands do, Damageplan actually appeared to be spirited and more than willing to make the people happy. So much has been said and will be said about the whole Phil/Pantera dissipation, but the memory most prominent in my mind at that time as I watched the group signing assorted cd covers and pictures concerned how I had seen Phil about a year or so before when he was still playing with Down walk directly out of his bus and right past a group of kids who had been keeping a vigil there for hours. He simply walked right by them without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. There has been enough division between these two camps, and I don‘t want to add on to the controversy, but I saw what I saw, and the contrast spoke volumes in my mind. This was just so much different--at the center of this of course was Dime—a person that radiated warmth to so many both through his dynamic playing and genuine appearance of concern for others. It was clear now that Damageplan had been born, and the group was ready to take their music on the road. It was an exciting time for them, and rumors of this or that regarding their former band did seem to be a concern, but as Vinnie told me, “We’re in this for life.”

To sit there and listen to Dime’s memory be denigrated in such a way and to hear his fans described in such a condescending tone by this flaccid, balding piece of pseudo-wannabe intellectual pig semen was more than I could bear. Fuck probation. Fuck the Iconoclast. Fuck really lame-ass, gay-ass stories about characters who don’t even live on the same planet I do. Atonement was near.

“Hey you fat bastard,” I said. “You need to be shutting the fuck up before I kick your ass.”

Chipps mumbled something as I got up. I think he was confused.

That’s when this pompous, Little Debbie-inhaling sack of clogged arteries looked over at his buddy Dick and made some type of a statement about my vocabulary. I think he said it was “droll.”

I don’t even believe he got the entire sentence out before Dave threw his chair down and flew over the table. He grabbed the portly fascist by his bowtie before reaching back with his right hand and popping him squarely in the nose. I saw a couple of drops of blood, flying through the air as Jabba rolled backwards and hit his head on the adjacent table. Dick looked up at us in a horrified way as he quickly scrambled down to the floor and checked for William’s pulse.

“He’s dead.” Dick said.

“Oh, shit.” I said.

“Put your hands up!” The damn bartender said.

Chipps made a move to run, but the freakin’ bartender shot me instead of my buddy. It figures, the only bartenders who ever knew how to shoot were on shows like Bonanza and would surely have known how to make a Black Tooth Grin.

I didn’t suffer any long, drawn out death, either. Man, my soul flew out of my body before my head hit the floor.

It was senseless.

It was over.

I was still glad fatty bit the farm.

The rest of what occurred is as vividly imprinted in my mind as the look on my mother’s face when I brought home my first report card. See, it seems that when you die, you go to a waiting room. The waiting room looks a lot like the kind of bars I have spent a good portion of my life in--scratched floors and dim lighting and the faint smell of desperation abounded and somehow never seemed more like home than it did that minute. That’s when I looked over and… lo and behold… there was William. We were both sort of translucent, but our body shapes were still faintly discernable. It’s just that his was MUCH larger than mine. Our voices seemed to work too.

“Well you droll little plebian piece of cultural trash. You have really done it now. When God comes out, you’ve had it. You have killed an icon. You have killed someone who is significant, not only in intellect, but also in general stature. You killed ME! You will go where there is eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

“Fuck off.” I said--I was kind of tired.

In front of us was a big chair with a sign over it that said, “Seat of God.” To the right was a hole in the floor, and above it was a plywood sign that said “Heaven.” To the left was another one that said “Hell.”

I started walking towards the left. I didn’t want to be in the same place as that bastard. I didn’t care how hot it was… shit, I’ve been to Phoenix. I figured I could handle it.

William started to laugh as I moved towards the entrance of Hell. That’s when I heard the voice of God.

“Hang on, Kerby.”

I was surprised--not because of the tone of what I heard, but more because the directive came from a one-eyed, black circus midget who was seated in the thrown of our Lord.

William looked shocked. He didn’t even wait for God to make a speech or anything before he started discussing Kosher hot dogs and how I was unclean.

“Fuck off.” I said again.

“I’ll run this show.” God, the little black circus midget, proclaimed.

I believed him.

“One of you is going to hell while the other is going to get a choice,” the Lord said.

“What’s my choice?” Bill asked.

“Shut up, William. Even in death, you still look sad. I mean, your tie, not your demeanor.”

“Huh?”

“Well Bill, unless you’re blind, you should be able to see that I am ’hideously ugly to the point of physical deformity’. Let’s just cut to the chase--you’re an asshole, William. Take you, and your jazz loving self into the pit. By the way, for the first one thousand years of your stint in Hell, I would like you to realize that your soul will be tormented by the souls of any and all Pantera fans who might happen to be passing through at any given time.”

At that point William started to cry. I laughed at him. God sent Bill’s soul to Hell. I really liked God.

“Wow.” I exclaimed.

God sort of chuckled before saying, “Kerby, did you listen to Stephen Pearcy’s last album?”

“Yep.”

“Did you listen to W.A.S.P.’s latest? Parts one and two?”

“Yessir.”

“That, my boy, is exactly why you aren’t going to Hell. That and the fact that you have never written any bullshit articles about jazz.”

“Thanks, God. By the way, I don‘t think you’re that short.”

“Shut up, Kerby. Now, at this time would you like to go to Heaven? Hang on--before you answer, I’d like to let you know that I have a harem of the best-looking midget women awaiting your every command. Or, would you like to return to Earth?”

Well, I told God that although the idea of banging midgets for eternity was tempting, that I sort of liked my pathetic life on Earth consorting with the lowly ignorant sinners. The only provisions I requested was that God somehow arrange for my car to be fixed and that Johnnie Cochran be retained to defend Chipps. If this episode has taught me anything, it is that I do believe in God. I don’t, however believe in William Grim’s God or William Grim’s ideas about what the ideal human should be. I mean, I don’t mind anyone bitching because I didn’t like their band or because I wrote something they didn’t think was cool mostly because I figure if they are on KNAC.COM at all that there must be some type of common reference point between the two of us.

If you subscribe to that way of thinking, Dimebag’s death was also a common reference point for all of us--as were the deaths of John “Mayhem” Thompson and all of those who innocently lost their lives that night. Each of these individuals had value. Anyone who visits any site on the Internet can see the impact this incident has had on all those who believe in the power of music and the whole process of trying to make something out of nothing. It is my sincere hope that each and every one of their souls ends up turning right and into the portal that leads directly to heaven while all the false bastards who confuse wealth and aesthetic beauty for depth of soul end up burning in hell right next to William Grim when his number comes up for real.

With a blubbery physique like his, that may not be long.

RIP