Random Notes From The Field

My daughter and I were looking at upcoming concerts the other night, in a vain attempt to find a show worth seeing that we would both enjoy. My daughter’s tastes run to boy bands and pop music, whereas my taste in music is primarily centered around bands that actually know the difference a quarter note and an asshole. But I exposed my daughter to an awful lot of classic rock when she was younger, and it has definitely had an impact on her. If the Beatles tour any time soon, for instance, she is fucking there.

Going over the list of rock acts coming to town in the next year, I realized that there are several different types of concerts from which to choose:

• Great concerts by great bands that are not coming to town any time soon, due to the fact that Arizona is governed by a bunch of racist ass-hats.
• Great concerts by great bands that are coming to town, but charge the GDP of Ecuador for seats that have an “obstructed view”, which is concert code-speak for “located in a different venue, possibly in a different dimension”.
• Terrible, awful concerts by bands that should be neutered with a hot lobster fork to prevent their DNA from proliferating (I’m looking in your direction, Nickleback).
• Concerts that were booked solely to let me know that God is watching, and he’s not necessarily pleased with what I am up to.

A perfect example of that last type of concert is the upcoming show on July 10th at the Talking Stick Resort and Native American Gambling Hut: Boz Scaggs in concert. Really.

I have to tell you, my gut instinct when I saw that Boz Scaggs was going to be in town was to buy a ticket, attend the show, and then write a post detailing my experience. What better way to convey the following information to my readers?

• I went to see Boz Scaggs!
• Boz Scaggs played that one song about Jared Leto.
• What a wacky guy I am, going to a Boz Scaggs concert!

But before I did this, I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was getting into, so I did a search on Youtube for “Boz Scaggs live” and discovered that an entire concert had been filmed in high definition, at great expense, and had then been summarily uploaded to Youtube by some thoughtless asshole who has an axe to grind with intellectual property rights. And thank God, too, because in no time I found myself reassessing my opinion of Boz Scaggs.

“You know, this band is full of accomplished musicians! They’re very tight, and clearly have many years of musical experience between them. Hell, they made Lido Shuffle bluesy and kind of enjoyable. And they’ve got great jazz chops too, which is obvious when they play some of their slower numbers, like ladjhfadkljfg lakdjs fksakljdsfha sdkjl fask ldf kasdk jf qowiefhiuq3 eiu fae k;jdf;iq 3hrt ufa elidfhga kd;jvn kadfjhv sdlkjfhv lksda vsdlkjfvdalfkjv…”

And then I had to spend the next 14 hours in the hospital getting an emergency keyboard-ectomy from falling asleep and going forehead first into the desk. When Boz Scaggs slows it down a little bit, molasses is like, “Jesus, get a fucking move on, already!”

So I bailed on going to see Boz Scaggs in concert and just decided to post these up all over town instead:

Why? Because I’m off my meds, basically. Also, because I think it’s hilarious to imagine people running across this at random.

Guy: I saw a sticker on a park bench today that read, “Boz Scaggs Tested, Boz Scaggs Approved”

Wife: Boz Scaggs? Isn’t that the guy… From the thing?

Guy: Yeah, I’m not sure. I think he had a couple of hits in the 70’s.

Wife: And now he’s approving park benches?

Yes! Boz Scaggs is approving park benches! But only the ones that meet his high personal standards, whatever the fuck those are. If you sit on a park bench that is Boz Scaggs tested and Boz Scaggs approved, you can be goddamn certain that this bench will not do anything untoward, such as ejaculate all over your kids. That’s the Boz Scaggs guarantee!

Here is the first place that I chose to honor with the coveted Boz Scaggs Mark of Excellence. I don’t know about you, but as a motorist, knowing that my gasoline has been tested and approved by Boz Scaggs fills me with confidence; And I need that confidence because I’m using this hearse to smuggle heroin across the border. (Whether or not the heroin has earned the Boz Scaggs Mark of Excellence remains to be seen. I’ll let you know what Andy Dick has to say on that score.)

Now that’s some quality fucking gasoline!

I am calling upon all of my readers, and indeed all thinking Americans (and what the hell, people in Mississippi too) to print out the Boz Scaggs Tested – Boz Scaggs Approved graphic and paste it everywhere you go. Yes, everywhere. Including court. Especially court. Who knows? Maybe Boz himself will see one! He’ll think to himself, “Wow! I’m still popular enough to inspire a random sticker! Boz is BACK baby!”

And then, a little too full of himself, Boz will beat a hapless roadie to death for a trivial infraction, like leaving an odd number of jasmine scented hot towels backstage in Boz’s dressing room. Hmmm… Maybe we should just post these things where Boz will never see them. Like the Billboard 200.

(Note to self: Insert a clever and witty segue here. Also, look up the word “segue”.)

I work in the same building as this incredibly scuzzy looking dude. I mean, he looks like someone shaved a homeless rat, force fed him lard with a funnel and a large ramrod, and then gave him lessons on how to look shady. Just creepy in every imaginable way.

Lately, I’ve been running into him in the men’s room, and he’s got me so weirded out that I think I’m going to have to abandon going to the bathroom altogether, or maybe I’ll just go in the empty lot across the street from now on. (I’m sure the day care next door won’t mind.) One of the things that bothers me about him is that he dresses as if his clothing were chosen via the lottery. Every article of clothing he owns is placed into a dryer and spun under the watchful eye of the Arizona Lottery Commission. Then, articles of clothing are pulled at random, and this is what he wears to the office. The other day, he was wearing a button down shirt, basketball shorts, dress socks, and wingtips. What. The. Fuck?

He also hasn’t washed his hair since the Eisenhower administration, which is weirdly impressive considering the fact that he looks to be in his twenties. It’s greasy, and nasty, juts out at unnatural angles, and has been designated as a wildlife sanctuary. But I’ll walk into the bathroom and he’ll be standing there at the sink with some weird kind of grooming kit that went out of vogue in the 50’s. It has some sort of oil (like he needs more), those combs you haven’t seen since the last time you were in an honest to God barber-shop (1974), and a bunch of other stuff that I’m not even sure I want to know the purpose of.

And as I hustle through my bathroom routine as fast as possible, I think to myself that this guy doesn’t need an entire grooming kit, he just needs to be told two things:

• Cutting your own hair is difficult. Cutting it yourself with a weed whacker is damn near impossible. Cut that shit out.
• WASH YOUR FUCKING HAIR!

And making everything about a million times worse is the fact that he’s an audible mouth breather. So while I’m in the bathroom taking care of business, all I can hear is this disgusting fucker panting while he’s applying oil to his goddamn head and using a fucking afro pick to make himself look a little less like Gollum.

Gollum’s Grooming Tips #37 – Yes, my Precious! First we lathers, then we rinses, then we repeats! Oh yes, my Precious! We repeatses! Not like that fat, tricksy hobbit! Oh, he hurts us, yes he does, my Precious! We will make him pay. We will make them all pay, my Precious!

And today, it got so bad that I practically sprinted from the bathroom, nearly running into someone on their way in. You ever have someone say something to you and you’re not quite sure how to take it? That’s what happened with this guy.

Normally, if someone says, “Excuse me,” to me, I say, “Excuse me!” emphasizing that last word a bit to let him know that really it was my fault, even when that’s clearly not true. Why do I do this? Because it distracts the guy while I swipe his wallet. Also, I think it’s one of those societal things that came about to keep everyday tensions at a simmer, because if we didn’t do something, bumping into people at random would result in an escalating exchange of obscenities and uppercuts that would only finish when one person was wearing the other person’s scalp as a trophy and a warning to others.

 But when I left the bathroom and almost walked into this other guy, and then said, “Oh, excuse me!” his response was, “Of course!”

Of course? I couldn’t stop thinking about that as I walked back to my office. He said it with a smile on his face, as if he was thinking to himself, “Well, of course this guy is going to almost run into me. He probably does that kind of thing ten or twenty times a day! But I’m not going to judge him, I’ll just forgive him and move along.”

What an asshole. I felt like popping him one in his fat, beatific face. I felt like saying, “Listen, Your Holiness, I don’t need you to absolve me of my sidewalk sins, thank you very much. And I do believe that an apology on your part is in order, because clearly if you were to lose 100 pounds, there’d be less of you to run into.”

“Of course?” You need to work on your social skills, pal. Down that road lies chaos and the downfall of Western civilization.

What a monster.

All right, where was I? (As you can tell, I’m just kind of frothing at the keyboard here.) Oh, yeah: I am incredibly impatient. You ever order something from Amazon, and get the email that informs you that your item has shipped, then taken the tracking number over to Fed Ex and they can’t tell you anything about the package because although it has been shipped, it hasn’t arrived at their facility yet?

That happened to me today, and I thought to myself, “What is the fucking point of a tracking number if the current status is ‘I dunno’?” Why give someone the tracking number at all? Just hang onto that fucking thing until it’s useful! Or, you know what? Just lie to me. Tell me that my order is currently in the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. That will at least keep me mentally occupied until my order arrives.

“Wow! That ottoman I ordered is being shipped from the South-Fucking-Pole! It’s probably made out of penguin-skin or something! And it’s going to arrive in a little over 36 hours. Now that’s goddamn impressive!”

Just like that, Fed Ex can take a customer who was irked and turn them into a lifelong evangelist. All it takes is a little creativity. If I was running Fed Ex, I would routinely route packages from the inner rings of Saturn if I thought it would help. “Goddammit! My package is all banged up!”

“Well, what do you expect? It shipped from inside an active volcano!”

Fed Ex needs to take all of their advice from me, or failing that, my daughter who once made me email the CEO of Fed Ex and tell him that he should change the name of his company to “Mail for Sale”. Seriously, she made me do that. And starting the very next day, she’d get upset when she’d see a Fed Ex truck with the old, hopelessly lame company name on it.

“Daddy, why didn’t the man change the name to Mail for Sale like you asked him to?” she’d ask.

“Because he’s an unconscionable fucker,” I’d respond.

I’m still kinda tweaked that the guy didn’t even have the decency to write my daughter back. If only there was some sort of way for me to register my disgust.