I'm getting very bored with humanity's belief that the world would be better off without hate. In fact, I think it would be the equivalent of eliminating recycling. Throwing out the hate beehive would mean chucking the succulent honeycomb of ridiculing hateful people into the can with it, and I’m not sure I could be bothered to keep living without some sweetener in the bowl of pabulum we ruminate our way through in the name of “everyday life”.
I have written a lot of ridiculous shit about my experiences as a security guard, and by-and-large I’ve just put it out there no matter how messed up it was. However. I am going to preface this one out of respect for my reader. This is a story about Taylor. I’m talking about fucking goddamn Taylor, and you need to understand that before you start reading.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what Taylor is. You have to read it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You can leave the website and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.
If you click on the story, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.
Bill was one of my very favorite people at the museum. I would go so far as to say he was a bit of a father figure, or at least a father figure in the way a master pimp trains an underling how to properly fold a coat hanger into a switch when a bitch doesn’t act right. He quickly took me under his wing; I guess every Yoda needs his Luke.
The biggest problem you run into working with people who are hilarious because they are disturbed and/or insane is that you have to take the bad with the good. It’s like working in dog rescue. Most days at a museum everyone is a harmless little creature wearing a dorky uniform, but every now and again someone’s going to get part of their face bitten off. The only difference is that your average dog feels bad about it afterwards, whereas the best I ever got was old people laughing at me and secretly wishing they’d done it themselves.
One day I'm sitting there at the security desk minding the radio, which means I am reading a book and drinking coffee for $8.50 an hour, and Owen waltzes up and starts talking to me. Now, I had heard from Michael and a few other people that Owen's weirdness extended far beyond the bounds of his strange behavior at work. Unlike other survival-oriented people whose ancestors routinely ran away at the first hint of a lion, I seem to bear the genes that pick up a stick and start poking the bushes like an idiot. This will probably result in me dying from something other than natural causes, unless by "natural causes" you include any means of dying that is a natural and wholly foreseeable outcome of certain kinds of behavior.
Every time I watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I’m struck by the fact that Shatner and Ricardo Montalban are never on screen at the same time. Ostensibly the entire movie could have been shot in two separate studios and nobody would have been the wiser. I guess what makes the movie so great for me is that Ricardo Montalban is so damn good, and William Shatner is, well, so damn Shat.
Early on in our relationship it became very clear that my wife had an absurd love of animals. And worms. And rocks that we had become familiar with. And mold that reminded her of something. Basically anything that could be even remotely construed as a "pet." This comes from her upbringing in a house where every car had not just a name, like Yogurt, Frank, etc., but also a background story. This got so out of control that one day Robyn and her sister arbitrarily decided that the downstairs bathroom would be named FredTedFredTedFredTedFred. They made a sign and posted it on the bathroom door, and it still hangs there to this day even though they are fully grown adults with jobs and bills and shit. Oh, and for about two years of her childhood life she was convinced she was a unicorn. In every picture from this period she sports a paper unicorn horn on her forehead and shoes on both hands as well as her feet. It's weird.
Rick may seem like a violent, crazy old psychopath, but in truth he's a very docile individual. Rather than scream and shout, he will just casually murder you and get back to work.The near stabbing incident I described earlier was more of an anomaly frankly, because I damn well guarantee he’s packing at least two guns at all times. In fact, I think you could make a pretty good case he was comparatively civil with those kids.
Sylvester Stallone Can't Fight
I read an interesting story recently about former #1 Heavyweight contender Earnie Shavers. When Stallone was casting for Rocky III he was considering, among other people, Earnie Shavers for the role of Clubber Lang. Now a lot of people don’t know this but Stallone used to consider himself quite a boxer in his early years, which is obviously where he got a big helping of the inspiration for the Rocky movies in the first place. The other bit of inspiration came from watching a late Ali fight vs. a huge tub of white guy from New Jersey named Chuck Wepner, the so called “Bayonne Bleeder.” Chuck won a few of his larger fights, mostly due to having just enough punching power to supplement his immovable brainstem. Chuck also retains the distinction of being the only man to know Ali down when he was champion.
Owen was the first person I ever saw when I walked into the museum, and knowing nothing else but this first impression I could immediately tell that here was a guy who took his job way, way to seriously. He was dressed in a full-length black leather trench coat which was tied S&M tight around his Tweedledum body. He was wearing the blackest sunglasses I’d ever seen, and he had a greaseball pony tail dangling off the back of his goateed head that was a good two and a half feet long. A few things were immediately apparent. He was going to incredible lengths to look like a badass, and he had seen the Matrix about seventy times and didn’t get that it wasn’t a theoretical physics documentary.
The Security Guard Years
In my younger years during grad school I worked as a security guard in one or two places. It was awesome. Every. Single. Time. Awesome. Seriously, if I could get a security job that paid my mortgage I’d drop this whole career thing I’ve been slowly peicing together in a heartbeat, get a small, portable tape recorder, turn it on and fall asleep near wherever the 65-year-old former- marines-turned-security-guards were most skilled at ogling hot 19-year-old girls in booty shorts without getting caught.
Prologue
The best jobs I have ever had in my life have nothing to do with my music career. One might immediately wonder why in God’s name I’ve chosen to go into music—a career path less lucrative and more difficult than anything short of being Tiny Tim in a late 19th century textile factory running underneath the hydraulic fabric press to pick off bits of lint before it slams down on his head—when I think other jobs I’ve had are better.
Perhaps it will help if I explain my definition of “best”.
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