Tag: patio

Trout speaks

A friend’s stories about the disturbing people he met working a remodeling job reminded me of one of the good Trout stories, which I’ll try to recount in his voice the best I can:

Up by Castaic, framing. Boss drops me there and says this is your show, I’m going back to the office in L.A. So we pour concrete on rebar and chase bunnies with a scraper, frame, the whole deal. Boss calls me up and says “Bob, you’re my right arm. I got this kid at Stanford, he needs to know the business up close. I’m sending him up there over summer to work for you.” Oh okay, I see. This wasn’t optional, and Bob gets to babysit.

Sure enough the kid arrives and he’s right out of the dorm. Dad said to do whatever you wanted, sir. This kid is successful, smart, and halfway through a good education. You know, calculus and fine art and badminton. We have here a junior member of the ruling class. So I give him the tour, right. First stop is Larry. Son, this is Larry. As you see he’s using the circular saw to cut the same size of wood! Over and over! You’ll also see that Larry’s eyes are like fucking pinwheels. He is spun, gone, totally out of his fucking skull on speed at all times. Larry is also on parole for various felonies. Larry doesn’t play well with others. Do not talk to Larry.

Next let’s wander over here and meet Andy. Andy is using a nail gun that can kill a dog. Andy is a wonderful guy except when he’s been drinking. Today, Andy has been drinking since 8 this morning. That’s typical for Andy. Do not talk to Andy or look at him so he knows it. In fact, do not look or talk at anyone here. This is the auxiliary version of prison, we have a rotating door to the lockup in the fucking foyer.

So I then I just hold up my hands. See these? These are slave hands. They’ve all been broken in five places, they’re three quarters fucking callus. See your hands? Yes, very soft. I see no blemishes of any kind. There are no bullet holes or bits of bone sticking out or calluses that interfere with the natural flexion. You’re going to want to keep them that way. Go ahead back to Stanford, or go tell Dad that Bob says you’re needed in the office. You do not belong here.

I don’t know what the fuck Daddy was thinking, quite seriously. Construction is just the joint. If you haven’t got these hands already, you don’t want them.

Classic patio scene.

Sitting at the bar next to A.J. and talking with Michelle, bla bla, half-reading a book.

In walks this woman who is so hot as to cause a readjustment of the Universal Hotness Index, one flaming screaming hot PIECE OF ASS, probably about 19 years old. I skip a few beats from pure lust, and A.J. notices. He turns around back and says “Holy shit.” I smile at her nervously, she smiles back in a very pleasant way and goes back out.

A.J. says “Dude! That was for YOU!”

“She is seven years old,” I reply.

After a few more conversations and 100 pages of reading, I head to my car. Miss. Jesus H. Christ My Spleen Just Exploded With Lust From Looking at You is sitting with Tommy “Aloysius” Dougherty, who has been “39” for ten years or so. He’s being all artistic, and soulful, and poetical, and shit.

Didn’t I see this same exact scene in 1996? And every weekend since?

Patio Nights: Bad boys, bad boys

Some of you might remember the strange doings in the insurance office upstairs from the patio. The youngish woman who’s apparently the daughter of the insurance agent using the office at night, lots of comings and goings of obviously freaked out addicts, bad scenes with people waving knives and yelling and kicking things. We were on the verge of calling the cops, mostly because she had her young son around for all this fun and because there are a lot of children on the patio who really shouldn’t have to deal with tweakers flailing about waving sharpened screwdrivers.

And then it all stopped. She still showed up but seemed to be doing legit daytime business stuff, and had a guy with her who looked like he had a job and was nice to the kid, and I thought “well good, she stopped dealing”.

Last night she was there with That Guy Who Gets Arrested On Cops, and they were playing yell at each other and slam the door for an hour or so. It wasn’t clear what was going on, but we started to wonder if she was trying to leave and he kept slamming the door on her. Or whether the quiet bits meant that she was being strangled. Or whether the kid was there. Around the time we were thinking seriously we should call the cops, the door opened and Loser Boy appeared. His first act was to dump a cup of ice from the second floor balcony on to bruisedhips which was a mistake, because that’s when the cops got called.

They showed up in about 30 seconds and were oddly casual. While both of them were talking to her inside, Arrest-Me-Now popped off his keychain, slipped down the stairs, and disappeared. Sierra pointed out that he probably lost the keychain so he could hop the fence in back more easily, because Sierra is O.G. from H.B. and thinks that way. Obviously Bluto didn’t want to talk to any cops at length last night.

No idea what happened to her. Part of me sympathizes with her obviously wretched life and wants Things To Get Better, but considering what she’s putting her kid through it might be better if she spent some time in the snicker while Grampa raised Junior. Whatever’s going on, it’s not the six-year-old’s fault.

I’m mostly a small-L libertarian about “drugs”, but speed is such a terrible, terrible thing.

ROKKEN WITH DOKKEN AND SUKKEN KOKKEN

So there’s this horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible band that plays D’s. They’re called the “Over-Reactors” and it’s a duo. They manage to hit the wrong notes and emphasis in each song, almost all of which are covers except an original they always do which is titled “One Sick Pony”.

They do things like cover the Cowboy Junkies’ cover of “Sweet Jane” and then somehow fuck up. Ooh boy, he’s fucking up the Foo Fighters now. Anyway, he’s here tonight solo.

The weird part is their band website reveals that he’s now in Dokken. What? Dokken exists? They played Guitar Center? Acoustic? WITH THIS GUY IN THE BAND? It must have been something straight out of This Is Spinal Tap.