Friday Fives – the gone and done did it edition

1. What was the bravest thing you have every done?

Wow and thoughtful question.  I don’t know that I have a sufficient answer.  Now, just because I don’t have a rad nad heroic tale to drop at the mere thought… does that make me some kind of pussy all of the sudden?  Yes.  Yes, it does.

2. Describe the meanest thing you have ever done.

Oh man, I have a thought here.  There are probably tons of tiny things.  I was anti everything as a teenager.  Had long hair, though everyone was a sell out, and the all corporations were evil.   So, I did mean and unnecessary petty crimes to stick it to the man.  Like what?  put in .25c for a newspaper and then take them all out and set them on top so people could just walk by the get the paper for free.  Yeah, I was a regular robin hood.

To answer the question, though; my wonderful and great friend Joel and I used to drive for hours and hours.  In high school, we were always driving.  Always.  I think we drove to Albuquerque once, just because we were bored.  Once, we were driving and we saw and old lady ahead of us driving really show.  For some horrible reason, we decided to follow her.  You know, just mess with her mind.  Not following close, or honking or anything.  Just matching each turn she took with one of our own.  After about ten minutes, we could tell she was trying to see if we were following her.  She started to make erratic driving decisions, until we accidentally cornered her.  Once we saw we had done that, we hightailed it out of there.

To this day I still feel horrible about this.  She was probably terrified, and thought we were going to kill her.  We had long hair and drove a scary old beat up Malibu (with stolen plates, mind you, and stolen registration stickers from a different car than the one we stole the plates from).  I can’t imagine what went through her head during that ‘chase’.  I mean, this is 10 years before cell phones… so she couldn’t call for help.  That may be the worse thing I have done, and I still feel like a dick.

3  Tell us about the nicest thing anything anyone has done for you.

There are a lot of superlatives here, and I don’t care for them.  We are talking about the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’ and the ‘biggest’.  Apparently, our guest editor this week is my 6-year-old nephew Ezekiel.  So, how about I instead tell you about something wonderful and nice… not being sure if it was the ‘bestest’ or not.

Some background;  i play guitar, a lot.  I especially play when I am camping.  When we camp, we sit around the fire and drink beer and I entertain everyone.  I do about a 2 hour performance with songs and stories and nonsense.  I am quite good at these camping gigs, after 25 years of guitar.   Anyhow, I tell you that to tell you this; it is impossible to find a camping chair (the crappy cheap folding vinyl ones) that don’t have arms.  Go ahead and look now.  You will not find a single one that doesn’t have arms.  This is a problem for me because I am sitting with a big ass acoustic guitar on my lap.   So, often I lament about this as everyone sits in a comfy chair and I am stuck on a crappy scraggy log.

One day, about a year or two ago, a package arrives at my doorstep.  It’s big, and it is from Afghanistan.  Wtf?  I mean… what is it?  What is in Afghanistan?  Bombs and beards and camels, I think.   Well, maybe a camel would be cool.  Then I remember my good friend Jeremy is serving over there.   So, I open it up and it is a folding camping chair… with no arms!  Jeremy had heard my laments over the years and thought of me when he found one.  So, he sent it across the Earth to me.  That is pretty fantastic.   Oh, and total bonus… he had it embroidered to say ‘ClownFight Rocks Denver’ on it.  Picture above.  To clarify, ‘ClownFight’  is my band.  Now that is a pretty great friend, don’t you think?

 

4. What was the most insane thing you have ever witnessed or done?

again with the superlatives.  How about this.  It involved aforementioned Joel, many many drinks, high school, driving a van through the river, and police.  That is about all I will say regarding that adventure.  Pro-tip > apparently this is a BIG no no in Scottsdale.   Oooh, wait.  I have one.  We were night golfing once in Scottsdale at this nice course by my mom’s.   This story also involves high school and drinking… big surprise.  Anyhow, night golfing it when you sneak (er… trespass) onto a golf course to golf.  You bring only a putter, though.  No other clubs.  Just a backback full of beer.  I mean a LOT of beer.  Like, each dude had his own backpack full of beer.  

This is not the most insane thing, mind you.  Stay tuned, we were just establishing mood and setting up there. 

Well, someone tipped off the cops to what we were doing.  These are MINOR crimes.  You have underage drinking (not even drinking and driving, we walked there… literally) and trespassing.  We weren’t stealing carts or anything cool like that.  Scottsdale (Phoenix rich cousin… think Cherry Creek for you Denver folk) apparently had very little crime happening that night.  They came after us with 2 cruisers on to the golf course and a HELICOPTER.  The helicopter had one of those super huge spotlight things called ‘night sun’.  I can only imagine two big ass police cruisers chasing us across the course caused WAY more damage than we would have with putters.  So, in that environment, you have about 6 seconds to decide— stay or flee?  There was about 8 of us.  We decided quickly to flee.  The smartest thing we did was all break up.  Meet back at Sasha’s, use the alleys.  More cops convened as we snuck through the neighborhoods.

The first thing I did was to hide my putter.  Once I was off the property, if they found me I could just say I was out walking around and had nothing to do with the incident.  They would know it was BS< but couldn’t prove it.  So, that was my plan.  Ditch the putter in the bushes and come back tomorrow.

That is not the end of our story, team.  My route back to Sasha’s was about a mile through neighborhoods that were desert landscaped.  That means, no trees or bushes to hide from cops and helicopters.  It is literally all gravel and cactuses.  I had to hide in an Ocotillo cactus  as the helicopter came over, I was about a block from the golf course.  Somehow, it worked.  we all got back to Sasha’s.  They caught NONE of us.  Good thing.  Those cops and the golf course would have charged our parents for the course damage the cop cars caused. *

5. Describe the most “out of character” thing you secretly want to do.

I don’t even know how to interpret that.  For you, though, i will try.   In my character, I try to be super nurturing and helpful to everyone… especially my community.  So, for me to do something out of character would go against that mission statement.  Why would I try and hurt my friends or fam or community?

* oh, and I witnessed a child kidnapping and never told anyone about it, still… to this day.  Why?  we were playing in the vacant lot where we weren’t allowed.  So, I knew if I told my parents or the police about the kidnapping, I would get busted for being in the lot

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