The day my mother decided it was Over with my father, she'd come home from work to find me, in infancy, crawling the carpet surrounded by a variety of pills.
You'll note Reader that I've not called them random pills, because "random" has taken on a New Meaning in our Current times, which is De-Cid-Edly non-random.
They were, however, Random Pills, literally, Like Literally random pills, in the sense that at the time — pre-Internet, can't just Look Shit Up — it was apparently common practice to play "pill roulette," which is to say that you'd meet up with Other Folks at bars, parties, whatever, and it was "Yeah man, the blue ones make you go up, the green ones make you go doooooown"-level user reviews followed by a hand-off exchange
occurs to you)
One night we sold an aluminum rolling desk to a large-laughing woman with gimmick glasses in the parking lot of a grocery store at 3 AM.
It had been listed on craigslist as "Alien-Smashed Desk (Guitar)."
She'd thought that was hysterical, and gladly paid our asking price.
Forty bucks? Fifty?
Who can recall.
Pizza money, really.
The desk had been battered and dented with the body of an overhead-swung Telecaster some weeks prior.
The culmination of a noisy recording session.
A final clang.
Climactic.
We loaded the desk into her van.
Rolled right in, beneath the glow of late-night security lights.
The exercise had the general air of Suspended Group Sex.
We didn't do that, though.
Didn't get down like that.
You could have a lot of fun on craigslist then.
I got a gig on there once as a bar ambassador for Molson beer.
A dozen or so recruits sent round to sportsbars dressed as hockey players, in full gear.
Pads jerseys and all.
I don't know if anyone watches hockey now, but at the time they didn't, not in Ohio.
We were Bluejackets in a Scarlet City.
Patrons at the bars thought we were actual NHL players.
We'd work the room while one member of the crew was tasked with standing in front of a hockey goal.
Drunks took wild shots for prizes.
Score and it's a free T-shirt and drink specials.
Miss or get stopped by whoever's playing Bootleg Brodeur and it's "Awwww fuck, man!"
And your buddies' scorn.
It was a different time.
Another gig I handed out packs of cigarettes for free.
Death's ambassador.
Got the job pretending to care about jam bands during the interview.
Naming off acts whose songs I'd never heard to some half-stoned college boy.
Widespread Panic! Government Mule! The String Cheese Incident!