Dear Henry,
Thank you kindly sir, for coming to Fresno. Without going into an overly kiss-ass rendition of how incredibly awesome you are and how I’d commit seppuku in front of the Supreme Court in the name of free speech, liberty and vegetable rights, I’d rather give you my perspective on how you may or may not have influenced the awesome of my evening.
It of course, started with the show. And while I’d like to struggle against pandering, I have to admit that it was rather excellent. Blah, blah, huge fan, TV party, Liar, that story about frozen turds dangling from The People’s Train. Seriously, I love the butt right out of you.
First thing that really made you shine like a golden god by whom all other deities shall be measured, wasn’t your well crafted and performed show. Although, I must say, your adeptness at handling drunken shout outs was as astoundingly effective as it was brief. I’ve seen Howie Mandell go down in flames during the height of his Bobby’s World fame on the same stage through poor crowd handling. We’re a loving town, but we’re unruly like a rodeo bull. Truly you are the Fresno Whisperer.
Later, came the groping attempt to find mutual friends, only to circle around the building and find you signing autographs and sharing with everyone. I must say, after my friend asked you to take the pic of him with his own ticket as a memento I sort of felt like an uncreative hack. And I have to thank you for taking control of the situation, delivering an awesome pic and giving me a great story about that thing that happened that time. I’ve got a horrible knack for being star struck around artists that I admire. Whereas I was totally able to chill with Taime Downe from Faster Pussycat, outside a crappy Iron Maiden show with the stick thin heroin doll that he had as arm candy. I just get really uptight around people whose opinions I respect. Totally not your fault. I was the exact same around Dave Brockie.
So, there was a further point to all this beyond butt kissing. I can’t scientifically attribute the remainder of the evening to your magical transitive properties of coolness just as yet. But I’m hoping to base a doctorate on the theory. Simply because, I had a few scant goals left in my younger than you but older than cool frame, left. Tragic, I know. But the future is full of interesting stuff, so I’m sure more will pop up. But back on point, there were two extraordinarily pleasant and rare events that followed the show and the autographs.
First one being, there came to my understanding of an awesome bohemian intelligentsia collective of a most eclectic nature. Described to me in a story relating a group of artists having a watercolor day in the shadow of a giant German photo enlarging machine draped and festooned with various taxedermied oddities tucked into every nook and cranny. Plus I heard they cook good. And so, by the transitive properties of your own awesomeness, I somehow got invited to visit the well camoflaged art militia camp. And to be perfectly honest, the words used to describe it to me were most poor, and I cannot cobble together anything more cogent that would further be able to describe the “vibe” of the spot. Excellently random and with a high bar for acceptance is all I can add. But I was much enriched by the meeting of the house’s residents and the conversations that erupted. It’s always a delight to meet new people and learn something worth knowing.
And to top off our evening, an extremely nice and relatively new chum invited us over a delightful after party/show decompression with another friend we’ve been wanting to get to know better (in the non-biblical sense). Dispensing with the basic couldgiveashit details, it was a very interesting intersection of redneck and gentrified with a splash of real here and there. The whole evening was so much fun, we kept It going until roughly 7 a.m. discussing a wide array of subjects both personal and environmental.
So, in closing to my absolute kiss ass, Dear Punk Rock Icon I Loved Your Show letter. I’d like to thank you for the unintentional (I assume) hex of interesting that you put on this evening. I’m sure I could fill a few pages with how inspirational and brilliant you are and how you helped me beat up Satan in a dark alley in Memphis. But really, who hasn’t? What I hope you’ll get a kick out of is not only did we really enjoy your show, but even after it and getting to meet and greet with you, we also had one hell of a great night with some brilliant and new (to us) local people. Some you met, some you didn’t. But all the same, we all had a fun night last night (June 4th 2010) and you were somehow involved in the great sticky mess that resulted.
Welcome back to Fresno Henry. You old fuck. Come back sooner damn it! I’ll go to a show on Thanksgiving anytime.
Sincerely,
Pook
P.S. I’m hereby altering my vocabulary so that “rubbing one out” shall be known as Rollingsing. Such as, “I’m about to Rollins into this tissue.” Or, “Can I Rollins onto your tummy?” One love.
