The Knife Whisper

When I worked at the renaissance faire, I worked at the knife throwing booth, which is a “game” booth where people come up and pay a couple bucks to throw knives at targets on a wall behind me. While this sounds and looks easy, it's actually ridiculously challenging to get the hang of, and my job is to stand there and hurl these knives into the targets so it looks like a piece of cake and people will walk up and want to try it themselves and then proceed to fail miserably and win no (0) prizes. It’s an utter racket for the game company, considering they pay me 50 bucks a day to run the shit and they probably spend about 9 bucks annually on prizes because you need to stick three of the five knives into a star that's less than an inch wide in order to win even a plastic sword. Dealing with all the disappointment those suckers felt could sometimes be grueling.

But there were days when I stood there hucking the knives at the board, the dulled points diving deep into the mangled wood over and over again and I’d have no customers for hours. Sometimes I’d turn around and there’d be like one kid standing there, maybe his family is eating at a bench around the corner or something, and the kid would stand there for maybe a half hour just watching me throw the knife, knowing there’s no way his parents were gonna let him throw a knife, a real knife, a sharp, dirty, metal weapon made in the parent’s minds only for killing, the maiming of flesh, and the kid knows this so he doesn’t even ask.

But the knife throwing is a thing of mystery to the kid, because he has watched movies where ninja-type dudes hurl all sorts of blades straight into people’s skulls all while doing backflips and defending against multiple offending swordsmen with roundhouse kicks simultaneously. The kid has also seen every customer utterly fail at the knife throwing booth, and has also undoubtedly tried to throw his mom’s kitchen knives in secret, probably just at the fence in his backyard, but you can be sure he did it in secret because you know he knows how moms feel about playing war with real knives. Anyways, it is the skill that has the kid mystified. It has proven to be impossible time and time again for the kid, and now here it is, being done by a real person, in front of him. It’s the reality of a person actually doing it, even if I'm not doing flips and sword moves while I’m throwing the knives I am still doing it successfully. The kid has probably already resigned himself to believing that knife throwing is only the stuff of movies and video games, and seeing it here is mesmerizing to the extent of a true "mind-fuck".

Sometimes, if the kid hangs around long enough, I’ll stop to show him the knives, hand them over the booth to him. They’re not what you’d expect a throwing knife to look or feel like. The good ones are shaped like spoons, with a flared blade. There are others that look more like stakes. None of them resemble the classic man-killer. They are different than the kid had imagined. Most surprisingly, they are dull. They are not sharp at all. What makes them stick in the board is the force and decisiveness with which they are thrown. You can stick a heavy butterknife into a tree if you’re good enough. I ask the kid if he wants to try, yes for free, no, you’re cool, don’t worry about your parents. And the kid always looks worried, as if he could get in trouble.

Most of these kids have parents that don’t even let them have toy guns or plastic swords at all, they are forbidden to play the time-honored game of play-war, of running around the block screaming and armed to the teeth like the son of Rambo. The only thing they’re allowed to do is watch it on TV, impitently, as they do a spelling worksheet. These kids take the knife and grasp it, unsure. I show them exactly how to hold it, how to cock your arm back and then channel the energy like an unraveling whip, how to let it drag off the end of your forefinger, the force needed to make the throw stick. I’ll throw one for him, as an example. He’ll see the knife leave my hand in a straight line and drive a half inch deep into the wood, two perfect rotations of the blade, exactly as he imagines it drilling it into an advancing orc or barbarian's head.

The kid will look confident, most of the time. Of course he does, now he’s been given the secret, the knowledge of the art that he has witnessed all other members of his society fail at, he will transcend the boundary between the movies and reality. He will be able to kill a bad guy by throwing a knife. He will brag, so much bragging. He will show other kids in secret in the backyard and they’ll beg him to teach them but he’ll say no, of course, he can’t let them see how truly banal the skill is, how it’s just a matter of practice, how it’s just like hitting a baseball or making a jumpshot. It will be his and his only.

And there in the booth, in the decisive moment where he gains the knowledge of the philosopher kings, the skill of warrior poets, he’ll stand before me and cock his arm back, grasping the knife carefully, take the one decisive step foreward and whip the knife!

But when he whips it, it either flies like a brain-damaged bird and bounces off with a twang, or sails in a ridiculous arc like the weakest infield fly, and dings off and thuds to the dirt. I give him a couple more tries but it’s no use. With each failure, the kid's face falls closer toward the disappointment of the futility of his efforts. Sorry kid. Maybe next time. It takes practice, kid, just a little at-home-practice.

Actually, kid, don’t try this at home. And don’t tell your parents you were here.

San Fran Bike Destruction

So it's lookin like my buddy MK and I are gonna jet to the N.O. on a 19 hour train trip with some bikes in the luggage car. Either that or we might buy bikes when we get there. Could be pretty sweet. Maybe this time I'll make it back with all my teeth in my fuckin head.

I pulled a bike trip like this last summer in San Fran. I took a plane out there and bought a bike at the shadiest stolen bike store I could find and maxed on the city for like a week. The bike was some 80s no-name road bike that was built out of like lead or something because it was SO HEAVY. I had to gerry-rig the deraileur and the brakes were shady at times, especially on the downhills, but the thing was solid and smooth and despite the weight, I could tear up the uphills with prejudice.

It was a great time except for the loss of exposed bone that occurred at about 2 am on a nasty downhill when I got blasted by some drunk dude. Like I said, the brakes on the bike were a little loosie-goosie at times, but that's not exactly why I got ploughed. This fuckin dude broadsided me on the downhill. I remember getting up and dusting myself off and thinking "phew, I'm OK!" and then I felt in my mouth and my front teeth were broken as hell. that's when I gave the eternal let-down groan of the descending "Ughhhhhhhhh!" I thought I made it through unscathed, but i didn't!

Damn to misery!

well it wasn't that bad. I got new teeth within 2 weeks. Two root canals and reconstruction on 3 teeth and a total of about 12 hours under the dentist's knife and my shit looks as good as new.

Here's what the damage looked like shortly after the ER discharge:


After the impact, I lost the bike for a while. I eventually found it in the middle of the road behind me where cars were driving around it. I don't remember it being as fucked up as it really was when I demanded that the Ambulance guys bring the bike in the ambulance to the hospital. I don't even remember it registering that the bike was fucked up. The only thing I was thinking was, "There is no way in hell this bike leaves my presence until I get to the damn hospital."

The hospital itself was a horribly surreal experience. At some point in the ambulance I fell asleep, and i woke up in a very brightly lit hospital room with dudes in smocks trying to cut, CUT, with scissors, my pants off. Naturally i had a fuckin row about it and i had to basically kick the dude off my leg and get them to step back so i could demonstrate to them that I CAN TAKE MY OWN FUCKING PANTS OFF! So I took my pants off and sat there all fucking shamefully naked as they put the smock on me, again like I couldn't do it myself. Then they left me alone again and I fell asleep. It was now about 4:00 am.

I woke up again later and I was in the hallway and I had a condom catheter on. Immediately when I realized there was a tube attached to my dick, I just thought, "wait a minute, what the hell? which one of you motherfuckers was touching my dick?!" Needless to say I pulled that shit off and tried to get up off the gurney, but then I realized that I was attached to more cords. I had an IV drip in, which I was thankful for because I knew IV's to be good for you when you're fucked up. Much better than the condom cathater, which was only demoralizing because some fucking stranger has actually touched your dick under the assumption that you cant even control your own pissing.

Well, just to prove that I COULD piss, I pulled the IV out of my arm, not out of the skin, but I detached the line from the needle, and I kinked it like you'd kink a garden hose and I stuck it in between the gurney bars and some plastic attachment or something so it wouldn't spray IV juice everywhere. This was mostly to prove that I wasn't the kind of person that goes mad ripping shit off themselves and running naked out of the Insano Ward when they wake up with like all kinds of sinister looking cords attached to them. I needed my actions to seem clear and rational in nature. Also I needed to know where the hell my clothes were, because I had ganj in my pants pockets and I didn't know if the cops or nurses had got a holda my shit. I didn't want to face any surprise misdemeanor charges when I got outta there, as in: "Well, mr. so-and-so here are your discharge papers and the number of the Tooth Specialist and your Posession Ticket and BUI. Have a nice convalescence." That situation I wished to avoid if at all possible.

I went up to the nurses station, where they were just standing there and drinking coffee and shit. The one nurse just about jumped out of her skin when she saw me standing there, so I shot her what I thought would be a light-hearted, ice-breaker type question. "Uh, I gotta piss. Is there a bathroom?"
She was immediately like, "What happened to your catheter?"
"I took it off"
"What happened to the IV?"
Once again, rational, "Oh, I just de-tached it. I kinked the line so it wouldn't spill. It's ok."
She looked pissed. I could tell she didn't think my shit was cute at all. She said some shit about why not to fuck with my IV and went on about how they could have stuck the catheter halfway up my cock and then I'd have a real fun time tryna pull that thing out. Then she handed me a fucking cup, a cup, and told me to piss in it. Right there. It was like some kind of weird animal-hell.

Turns out that my clothes were just in a pile in this one room and they hadn't been messed with, so I pissed in the cup and went back over to the gurney and stuck the IV line back in my arm. It was now like 5:30 am

When I got discharged from the ER, I was like, "Where's my bike? I'm gonna ride back to the hostel." The nurse was like "Ah, no, you're not." and I was like "yes, I am." and then she showed me the bike and I was like, "Fuck. You're right." They had it in the freight elevator lobby in the ER ward. The fuckin thing was twisted up like a pretzel.

The bike looked like this after being run over:




Well the dude drove off, as in leaving the scene of a crime, as in HIT AND RUN, so the state of California footed the hospital bill, which turned out to be like fucking $15,000!!!! If i could capitalize numbers, I would. it was fucking outrageous, but I guess I got lucky being hit by a hit&run driver. If I just crashed my bike drunkenly by myself I would be in massive amounts of debt, and probably looking to split from the country with all my cash or some shit to get out of it.

Hopefully, this N.O. trip will be just as raw. Minus the bloodshed. We'll see.

renfaire s-bags

I love the renaissance faire. It's a place where the ironies of mankind are displayed before your eyes with relentless candor. For instance, at the renaissance faire, the queen walks through and everyone bows and grovels and whatnot, just like it is in real life with fuckin celebrities and politicians and celebrity politicians.

Except in the renaissance faire, the queen is just another carny, and is queen only to the other carnies because of her place in the carnie hierarchy. The great part of the Renaissance faire is that when people do all this bowing and groveling, it's like they're making fun of themselves and their celebrity worship. Of course I doubt alot of them see it this way, they're just going through the motions. The queen walks through, everybody bows. We're used to it. We bow to disembodied heads on the TV everyday.

Take the story of some guy named James Peterman or some shit, a rich dude, a CEO if you will, at the renaissance faire doing a bit of contemporary slumming amongst the proles and the carnies. He's wearing some stupid khaki shorts that ride up his ass and bowing in comedy to the queen as she rides by with her fucking chin in the air. It means nothing to him personally, it's good fun. But if his son or daughter notices him in a supplicating gesture, he gets self conscious, not wanting to seem weak or willing to exist beneath another human being in front of his brood. His battle with inferiority goes this deep. It doesn't matter that this "queen" is just another carnie dressed up in some outlandish garb that is painfully absent of any anachronistic fuck-ups, or that one of her incisors juts peculiarly outward at an angle that is almost unnoticeable, except for jimmy-rich-fucker here, who takes a certain private smugness in the fact that the "queen" can't afford braces to get herself some decent fucking teeth. This guy, when he sees his kid looking at him bowing at a fantasy character, straightens up in a wincingly self-conscious way and kind of leers awkwardly at the queen to prove his dominance and non-deference to her pretend sovereignty.

When the kid asks, "Why'd you look at the queen like that , daddy? You're supposed to bow," the rich dude wants to say, "Cause daddy dont take no shit from no fuckin low class fake-ass queen," but all he says is "She's only a pretend queen, dear." By this guy's logic it ruins any sense of fantasy for the kid, which kinda sucks, but it puts the stamp on who the kid should think has bigger balls, which is the most important thing.

And then there' s this guy, who for sure is gonna get massive amounts of wench pussy with the fresh-ass pumas and utili-kilt combo:

someone get this guy a wooden axe before he starts crying, for christ's sake.

welcome to the grundledome!

If some dude who you think is an alien walks up to you when you have dry mouth and raccoon eyes and offers you an over-cooked grilled cheese sanwich you can be sure he probably is an alien.

If you see any of these dudes in public, call the men in black. The one in the trashcan has some real nasty intentions for your young and nubile wives.

just kidding, they're actually your average red-blooded americans.