Who Cares.

YOU'RE STILL A TOOLSHED: KENTRIDGE CLASS OF 1994 REUNION"Please bury me with it"- Modest MouseLongtime readers may know that the ghost of Nixon haunts me. This can be quite puzzling to most, as sometimes he shows up with me at social events. I acknowledge that there is a fair chance that he's a figment of my imagination, but my high school reunion proved otherwise.I opted out of the formal reunion, and chose to attend the Friday-before event at B.B. McGraw's. B.B.'s is best known for Matt Oien pulling his sack out of his fly and having a bouncer say "Hey, clean it up."Or, when Weisberg and I got in an ice fight that resulted in me hiding in bushes as Weisberg proclaimed that he wanted to fight me in front of 8 police officers.My friends plague me like leprosy.I had a previous occasion to attend before; being my stepmother's birthday. Sure, there was pizza and pipes: a real jamboree of my father getting tossed and getting into weird conversations with me about who I'm dating and why I don't talk about my social life.Its times like these that I figure my dad thinks I'm a druggy or gay.Good old dad.Soon, I found myself waiting for Jerry to pick me up so that I could meet up with Josh and Weisberg. Jerry was on time (if we spare all lost souls a half hour to say a prayer) and was in a ripe mood to follow 16-year-olds down the street. We passed the 16-year-olds and I dropped a cigarette out the window in my nervousness that Jerry actually wanted to stop and talk to them. I don't care about legal ages, but we were in farmland and there's something to the myth of the old man with the shotgun, etc. We passed on by, and Jerry had the tunes cranked to try and fit in with 16-year-olds and I inquired about his amp. All we needed was D.J. Magic Mike and we would have been 10th graders. Passing them, Jerry let me know that we would be returning to his home to "pre-funk."I'm 28.At Jerry's I met a couple of his friends and Nixon appeared out of nowhere and demanded raisins. I had to apologize for Nixon for the guests at Jerry's did not find the zombie'd body of Nixon funny in the least. Jerry decided we should all partake in vodka and Red Bull bombs and Nixon disappeared like the ghost he is. Nixon doesn't drink in public and is, at the same time, a terrible alcoholic. Jerry, I owe you one.Soon, Jerry's friends left and I was left with Jerry and his girlfriend. Jerry's girlfriend was supposed to start work at a bar in Fife or something and somehow it didn't work out. So, basically, she was in a sour mood until the alcohol hit her gut and we soon were like two parasitic worms feeding off our own alcohol-fueled humor. Later in the evening, I would buy her Jerky in tribute.More unimportant stuff happened and we fled his house for the bar.B.B.'s has a cover charge. For my friends in, say, Australia, this is like a aboriginal settlement charging a cover to pet Kangaroos.Actually, it's not at all like that. It's more ridiculous...like if you went to Mars and had to bring jam in order to please 12-foot rabbits that lived there and fed on continents painted on plastic globes shipped from Bjork.In the bar, I found Josh and Weisberg waiting for drinks. I had a certain excitement in me that could only be compared to starting a first day at work: you're all excited to fucking be annoyed.I still don't understand why I wanted to see these people, considering I see most of them begging for change, working perfume counters, drinking to death in Classics, or posting "where is?" on cretin websites that kick Keith and myself out for cursing in Hebrew.At this point everything becomes a blur and I realize I'm 6 drinks in.Soon, I'm ripping off a pitcher of beer Ottesen bought and carrying it around with me like a drunken gypsy.The next day I recall thinking about the dread that most of my classmates felt when they saw my ugly mug bearing down on them, demanding conversation.My interludes with each and all of the doomed usually ran around five minutes, at the most, as I would become thoroughly bored with them and would start looking around for the women who looked the most drunk.But, of course, this was a reunion: the only drunk girls were the ones that were so dumb and drugged out that they couldn't hold your penis between their lips without the help of a 12-step penis holding program.Besides, I was a fat drunk that now resembles Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.Most of the conversations revolved around what people have been up to and if they were going to the reunion the next day.Mine, however, dealt, specifically, with the embryonic nature of dead viruses that encapsulate our celestial plane, and, therefore are their own dimension.This blew only my mind as I was the only one who realized that I was putting words together, at random, from a script for TOIL MONSTER I found in Pioneer Square the night before while trying to buy crack.All in all, everyone is "totally happy and really enjoying their job/kids/husband/dead piano player they buried in Arkansas."Josh related to me the next day that I actually ended a conversation with some girl with "Let me leave you with this: you should have sex with more midgets."What really minoritized me was the fact that (besides above comment) everyone looked the same except me. I was once quite skinny, white, and Christian.Well, years go by and things change. I guess it was a shock when I showed up as a Muslim Native American, with three arms growing out of my head and attached, Siamese-like, to Gary Coleman.Anyway, long story short: I black out and I'm at Lee Gitt's all of a sudden.I commandeer a banjo (for sake of my memory, we'll say it's Mike's) and begin playing a song I called MIKE'S GUITAR AND JESUS.Here are the words:MeAndMikeAnd Mike's guitarAnd Jesus!That's pretty much it.Out of nowhere, like usual, Gussa appears and demands that I stop singing songs about Jesus cuz he's Christian and retarded, or something.The guitar is quickly taken from me by Tyler Call and Brandon Hall: because they are FORREALS musicians and they begin jamming WISH YOU WERE HERE or some such Guitar 101 rubbish.I get tired, and walk the party, like the rock star I am, and demand virgin blood from the burning funeral pyre Lee set up.He called it a "bonfire," but I knew better.You see, they were burning our youth.At this point the only people that had not pissed me off were J.K., Josh, and (surprisingly) Weisberg.Blacking out again, I found myself on the porch. Mike had decided that he wanted to record, produce, and mix MIKE'S GUITAR AND JESUS with a tape deck. I had no qualms with this, but soon my banjo was abducted again by Tyler Call and Brandon Hall who now had formed TYDEN CHALL - MASTER OF THE BANJO.It wasn't long before they left and started a cartoon series of the same name where they battled crime dressed like grungers who wore Armani under their flannels.TRUMPED AGAIN!EPILOGUE (just joking): After smoking dope I puked on Lee's house to teach him a lesson and Nixon awoke and chased Gussa out into a field where he made him fashion a crude pizza out of barbed wire, grass and road kill.All in all, I found that I was the same douche bag I was in high school: caught in a crowd of people that have nothing to do with me, no understanding, and no care for me - just like now.LESSON 342: Everything changes relative to your own idea of reality: if you imagine that a reunion will provoke high school, it will. If you don't: you wouldn't fucking go to the god-awful thing.SHITPISSCUNTFUCKLater in the evening (nothing was even'd - I never got my banjo back) I dined on Jack n' the Box with friends I actually wanted to hang out with - the ones I still hang out with today. We dined on Jack n' the Box and tried to forget that high school was a joke and that someone had forgotten to pack in the Jumbo Jack I ordered.We passed out knowing that the real heroes weren't there: Tacoman and Black Godzilla.This one was for Keith who missed out on nothing at all.Keith, I walked out of nowhere, from a completely weird direction, just to remind everyone what a douche you really are.God bless.Peace,Carl