Zen Frisbee Goes to New York
Kevin Dixon, Trash #18
Action, Adventure, Romance! When you add them together, they inevitably spell Disaster for Zen Frisbee, which is why I've alway been a little uncomfortable with the idea of traveling to one of the world's largest cities with them. Not only does Zen Frisbee court Disaster with their zany antics and unorthodox way of doing things, but Disaster courts Zen Frisbee like an insane "fatal attraction" type lover. It's an interesting symbiotic/parasitic relationship. Zen Frisbee thrives on the chaos that Disaster creates especially while on stage playing their peculiar excuse for rock and roll. Unfortunately, once you embrace Disaster and make it your friend, it won't go away. It will stalk you constantly, so my advice to all of you is to never pretend even for a second that you might be able to harness its powers and use Disaster as a tool to further your own means like Zen Frisbee does. You'd be fooling yourself just like they are, because for every "happy accident" that chaos and Disaster bring, there are a thousand more "unhappy" ones that may seem funny now, but were hardly the stuff laughter is made of when they happened. So enjoy the merry misfortune of Zen Frisbee as they limp to New York and back in their Chariot of Doom, but whatever you do, don't try this at home!
Our first mistake, other than forming the band Zen Frisbee, was to imagine that we might be able to prepare ourselves for Disaster by heading off a few obvious dangers at the pass. We gave the van a tune up and bought a new old tire to replace the one we currently used, which was so threadbare that you could see the steel of the proverbial steel belted radial. None of the members of Zen Frisbee had much experience driving in New York so we brought along Richard, a more seasoned veteran of big city driving. Richard promised to drive once we reached the Big Apple, and would film the journey with a perverse notion to document the odyssey for his bizarre entertainment purposes, or maybe he filmed it as a warning. Zen Frisbee was prepared in a way that they rarely are. We would meet up with Pipe and the Mind Sirens on Monday at Twisters in Richmond. We'd use the Twiisters show as a stepping stone to New York. None of us had high hopes for Richmond, since no band of Zen Frisbee's, Pipe's or Mind Siren's caliber ever makes more than a few bucks or plays to more than 20 people there, but we figured it would get us halfway to the real gig in N.Y.C. and put a few gallons of gas in the tank. We would spend the night with some friends of Richard's in Virginia and have plenty of time to reach New York the following day. This is what Zen Frisbee calls planning ahead. Not only that but for the second time in history Zen Frisbee would be leaving town with new electric guitar tuners and extra guitar strings. Laird even had 42 cents and an extra pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Now that's what I call preparedness. Disaster reminded us that she was along for the trip early on when we discovered that the van's turn signals were not operating. Andrew attempted to fix this by replacing a shattered fuse in the van's fuse box. The blinkers still didn't work but maybe now something that we didn't know was broken does. There's no turning back now so we'll just have to use hand signals for the time being and get it fixed in Richmond. Yeah, right. A few miles later the van's window washers inexplicably start squirting their juice on the windshield. Equally inexplicably, they cannot be turned off! Maybe this is what Andrew fixed when he replaced the fuse. We have our own private rainstorm and drive with the windshield-wipers on until the window washers exhaust their supply of fluid.
We arrive in Richmond without further incident and load our equipment into the club. Outside there is a flyer advertising the show that says "Raleigh's finest come to Richmond." Since none of the bands playing are from Raleigh this gives us a chuckle. Under Pipe's name on the flyer it says "Managed by the same people that brought you the Archers of Loaf." This gives Zen Frisbee much ammunition to tease Pipe with. Ron, Pipe's singer, seems the most embarrassed by this flyer so we tease him most. Shirelle H. lets Pipe and Zen Frisbee drink beer and pass the time after sound check at her house. It is Zen Frisbee and Pipe's feeling that the worst place to drink beer before a show is at the Club (unless all beer there is free). Each band gets three free pitchers at Twisters so we save those for later and drink cheap grocery store beers on Shirelle's porch. We pepper Pipe drummer and Zen Frisbee alumni Chuck Garrison with science questions. We all learn that heat lightning doesn't exist even though it seems to be illuminating the Sky all around us.
The show is predictably a dud. Each band plays well but there ain't many Richmond folk there to see it. 'As is often sadly the case, the quality of the Mind Siren's performance greatly exceeds the quantity of the audience. As I watched their sparsely attended set and listened to their excellent music I noticed that the few people from Richmond I saw at the club tended to carry backpacks and not drink very much. Since we are getting paid a percentage of the bar sales I found low alcohol consumption distressing. Where are the drunks when you need em? At the end of the night our bass player Andrew manages to weasel 15 bucks out of the club owners. He is convinced he would have gotten at least 10 more had our drummer Clint not stepped in and "worked his magic." I get to drive from Richmond to Richard's friend's house where we will sleep. For me, driving is just a little lower on the most hated scale than going to the dentist or eating peas, but I figure this would be the easiest leg of the voyage so I volunteer. As I drive I wonder why it seems so dark. Turns out one of the headlights on the van doesn't work. Yeehah! Richard, who is the only one who knows where we are going and is supposed to be navigating keeps falling asleep, but we get where we're going without getting lost. Our gracious host Penny gives us bagels and floor space and we are eternally grateful. I am also grateful that our singer, Brian, who usually produces a steady howling wind of snarling animal noises while he sleeps only snores in scattered short bursts tonight. I actually sleep 3 or 4 hours before we must depart and hit the road again.
We only get lost once on the way up and we're on the New Jersey Turnpike before Disaster shows up again. Richard is driving, switching lanes without turn signals and cutting people off just like they do in the big city. I am sitting in back looking out the rear window and we all hear a noise that tells us Disaster has not forgotten us. It was just a little "thump" followed by small black chunks that appeared to be flying off the van. The small chunks got bigger and bigger until a huge strip of the new old tire Laird had just bought especially for our trip came flying into view. Richard, whose big city driving had already given the rest of us a few healthy scares stayed steady behind the wheel and managed to pull off the road without killing anyone, and there we were just a few hundred yards from a service area. Richard drove our crippled vehicle down the shoulder to the gas station while the rest of Zen Frisbee and Shawn A. (who had been travelling with Pipe and who foolishly joined our ill fated expedition in Richmond) walked along the side of the road as hundreds of cars went screaming past us. The guy at the gas station isn't supposed to sell us old tires, but since we can't afford a new one and our spare has metal showing through the rubber he bends the rules. Laird looks so pitiful while trying to jack up the van that the guy at the gas station puts the tire on for free.Thanks! We owe you one! Total price of Disaster: 25 bucks.
Brownies: 169 Ave. A
We hit the road again, happy to be alive and thinking now the odds are against any more Disasters at high speed. Richard gets us into NYC safely, and we actually find the club, Brownie's, without getting lost once. Since it turns out there isn't a sound check, we are actually early for once and use our free time exploring the city. I call my stepbrother Chris, who we will be staying with in NY, and tell him to come on over and show us around. I'm sitting in front of the club, watching kids on rollerblades catching rides by grabbing on to the back of moving cars and smoking a death stick, when some guy from out of nowhere says "Do you want this!" Before I can respond he tosses me a little half pint of vile green lemon lime kool aid substance. I am naturally suspicious of unsolicited refreshments from strangers, but it was factory sealed. Maybe I just looked really thirsty. I drank a sip and it tasted like floor cleaner, so I knew it was the real thing. What a friendly city!
My stepbrother Chris shows up and goes to eat with Laird and Shawn and myself. We have Burmese food. Yum. We pass the rest of the time before the show wandering around drinking beer out of paper bags. To my utter shock, I find I am actually enjoying myself. Eegad!
For tonight's show, Zen Frisbee, Mind Sirens and Pipe are joined by Grimasaurus and Spatula. There is a flyer up advertising the show with a big picture of Andy Griffith. The show started at 8:00 pm and ended before midnight. This time frame would be suicide in Chapel Hill, but all the bands had a good audience, and at $6.00 a head, each band ended up making S80.00. Enough to pay for gas, tolls, and our new new old tire. Thankfully, Disaster had missed the show. Andrew nearly poked my eye out with his bass' tuning peg, and Laird had to play his guitar by sight alone because he couldn't hear himself, but we managed to trick the audience into believing we were: a somewhat professional sounding outfit. We find out from the crowd that a New Yorker's impression of North Carolinians is that they smoke a lot and don't wear watches. Sounds accurate to me. After the show, things got back to running a little less smoothly. Brian was going to stay with the guys from Pipe and travel back to Chapel Hill with them. I liked this idea because it guaranteed I wouldn't have to listen to Brian snore tonight. Clint was going to hang out with an old friend and Dave Burris of The Veldt. The rest of us would stay with my stepbrother Chris. Clint would call us at 10:00 AM the next day,and we'd goof off for a few hours and eat lunch before heading out. Clint gave us the phone number and directions to the place where he was staying, so everything seemed kosher. Before we did anything else we decided we'd better park the van in an overnight garage for safety's sake. We pulled into one and were halfway down the very steep and very narrow entrance before we were informed by a man at the bottom that the place was closed. Now our van, deathtrap that it is, doesn't go backwards very well, and on the steeply inclined driveway, it proved impossible. We had to cruise down to the bottom and turn around. Unfortunately, you couldn't turn a bicycle around down at the bottom, so packed with cars it was. The tension was too much for me, so I jumped out and headed to street level to smoke a cancer-causing cigarette. Somehow Laird managed to turn the car around, but on the way up, the van's side window, which opens from the bottom and sticks out just a few inches, nicked the wall and shattered the window. Now we really had to find a secure place to park it. We drove around and found another place, but the guy inside told us it was also closed. Then my stepbrother Chris went to work. He has been living in NYC for a while now and knows that words like "Closed" and "No Room" are meaningless in the Big Apple. Here's some sample dialogue:
Chris: "Can we park here tonight!"
Garage Gull: "No, I am sorry, we are closed now."
Chris: "How much?"
GarageGuy: "The lot is full. We have no more spaces."
Chris: "Five dollars? Ten dollarsl"
Garage guy·: "We are closed. No parking. "
Chris: "When do we need to pick the van back up?"
Garage Guy: You can park here, but you have to pick it up by 7:00 AM tomorrow."
As I'm getting a few things out of the van, I notice that my amp is not where I put it when I loaded it in. It is now upside down on top of a cooler full of ice water and one or two cans of Milwaukee's Best beer. The lid of the cooler is now open, and my nearly brand new electronic guitar tuner has fallen out of the back of my amp and into the icy depths. Didn't have that one for long. Andrew decides he'd rather not leave his bass in the van and decides to cart it to my stepbrother's with him. Along the way he finds a baby carriage in the trash and wheels his bass along the rest of the way. He looks just like a local. By the time we get to Chris' apartment it's almost 3:00 AM. We drank some beers and watched Nigeria thrash Bulgaria on the Spanish TV station in a World Cup game played earlier that afternoon. No one wants to deal with the van (now lovingly referred to as the purple piece of shit) at 7:00 AM and then wait for Clint's call at 10:00, so we decide to leave early in the morning after we get the van back. We try to call Clint with the change in plans, but the number he gave us turns out to be a wrong number!! By now I am pretty cranky. Andrew decides to try and get in touch with some of the other guys in The Veldt to get the right number, since Dave Burris was not in the phone book. He tries Marvin Levy, but isn't sure if it's spelled Levy or Levi. He decides to try calling everyone in the phone book, Levi or Levy, with the first name Marvin or the first initial M. Hell, there can't be that many M. Levy's in NY, and it's only 3:30 in the morning. This is supposed to be the city that never sleeps, but nobody answering Andrew's calls seems too awake. After no success, Andrew switches to D. Chavis and actually connects with a member of the Veldt. Those Chavis brothers are so friendly, even when you wake them up, so give 'em a call. Daniel or Danny (not sure which) gives Andrew the right number and we try to call Clint. Andrew wakes up a young woman and asks for Clint Curtis. Clint and Dave have not yet returned from the show, so this woman has no idea who Clint Curtis is and tells Andrew he has the wrong number. Thank you very much. Andrew assumes he has misdialed, so he calls the same number and asks for Clint again. The same voice tells us there's no Clint Curtis there, but that we had dialed the same number we had written down. Andrew calls up D. Chavis again, thinking he copied the number down wrong, before he realizes that he should have asked for Dave, someone who actually lived at that address. He did indeed already have the right number as our friend Dan assured us groggily over the phone. By now Andrew is too timid to wake up the same person a third time asking for Clint or anyone else, so Laird takes over. Laird asks for Dave, who is not back yet, our long suffering phone friend informs us. Then Laird says, "This is Clint Curtis, any calls for me?" Fortunately, the person on the other end of the line was now awake enough to have a sense of humor, and took a message for her nemesis Clint Curtis.
Sometime after 4:00 AM, Clint calls and is clued in to the change in departure time. We tell him we'll call him in the morning after we pick up the van. By 6:30 AM, Laird and I are the only ones awake (just barely). So we get the honor of walking to the parking garage and retrieving our pathetic mode of transportation. Total cost of storing van -- $6.42 + broken window. We take the van and go back to my stepbrother's abode. The door has one of those press-button combination locks and the combination I have won't seem to open it. I lose my temper and lightly tap the door with my foot and walk away in disgust I explain the dilemma to Laird who's guarding the van when I see some guy opening the door. I dash back up the steps and the guy asks me "Did you kick that door?" I apologized, yes I had kicked the door, I was frustrated because I couldn't get the combination to work. "Is this your baby carriage" he asked. "No," I said as I showed him the piece of paper with the combination written on it, hoping it would prove I had legitimate business inside the building. He was still mad about the door. I apologized again and explained my stepbrother lived inside. "Do you know his apartment number!" the old duffer asked me. My heart sunk as I admitted no, I didn't know the number but it was just upstairs and down the hall and would he please let me in. "Do you know his phone number? You call him and get the apartment number and I'll let you in." I stormed off and angrily explained the situation to Laird. Laird went up and found the old bastard still standing by the half-open door barring his way. When the mean evil old man gave him the 3rd degree, Laird said "I'm going inside" and walked right past him. Laird has apparently caught on to how they do things in NYC. I wait outside and guard the van.
When Laird and the gang come down, they inform me that the same young woman we'd been bothering all night over the phone answered our wake up call to Clint and said that Clint and Dave had gone back out and were not in. This news brought about a hearty round of Clint bashing. "Let's leave him in New York, he belongs here!" We decide to drive to where he's supposed to be and wait for his sorry ass. Unfortunately, the directions we have been given are so fucked up, we end up lost across a goddamn bridge in Brooklyn. Laird attempts to call again to get new directions but is unaware that Manhattan has a different area code, and the number is now "temporarily disconnected." We get a map from a subway which is nearly impossible to read but does reveal that the street we're looking for is actually right off the street we spent the night at and started from! Only now we were too lost to get back there.
We were all wondering if it could possibly get any worse when a couple of New York's finest decided to pull us over. Apparently, the boys in blue had a little problem with a teeny weeny hole in the red plastic over the van's taillight. They didn't mention the broken side window or lack of working turn signals, but they did say the van stank. How right they were. Laird, who was driving, had lost his driver's license in the Atlantic Ocean a few weeks earlier. So the cop went back to his car to do a check on him. The cop comes back and tells us our vehicle is uninsured. This comes as news to Laird, who had paid the auto insurance a few weeks earlier. Alas, the insurance receipt rests somewhere under the Atlantic along with Laird's license. They take Laird back to the cop car. After a few minutes, Laird comes back and starts driving the van away. Everything's OK, or is it? The cops flash their lights and pull us over again. Now they are mad. "Driver, where do you think you're going? Give me your keys." Laird apologizes and says he must have misunderstood. Apparently, when the cop told Laird he could go, he only meant back to the van. The cops make us sit in the van while they do stuff in their car. Laird warns us all that if they try to put him in jail, he is going to run. After an eternity, one of the cops comes back to the van's window. Now he is nice and gives Laird four citations, which will cost us nothing if Laird sends 'em proof of insurance and puts a piece of tape over the taillight. Whew. Laird asks the cop, "While we've got you here, could you give us directions?"
With the cop's directions, we get right where we need to go. Clint is there and is upset that he has been waiting for us for so long. I tell him he'd best keep it to himself. Finally, we get through the Holland Tunnel and everyone cheers as we leave NY and enter New Jersey. New York was fun, but it was also hell, and we are all glad to be headed home. I think we all thought we were actually going to make it back to Chapel Hill as we passed Washington DC, the last major hassle on our route, but just outside Richmond VA the van finally quit. We're doing about 60 mph when it literally starts screaming as if in pain "AIEEEE!" Clint, who is driving at this point, gets our wounded automobile to the side of I-95. There is a bad melted plastic smell that temporarily overpowers the natural stench of the van. Indeed, some belt inside the infernal machine has melted all over another engine component. Final result -- van won't go no more.
Andrew, Shawn and I walk along the highway for the second time in as many days to the next exit and call for help. Andrew has a Triple A plus card and with this card we devise a sinister plan to help us get home. With Andrew's card, we can get towed 100 miles for free. Our idea is to get one free tow, get dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and then call Triple A again using Richard's Triple A card and get another 100 mile tow the rest of the way to Chapel Hill. This plan will work only if: a) we are 200 miles or less from our destination, and b) both tow truck drivers will allow some of us to ride in the vehicle being towed (not legal). A risky venture, but since it's unlikely that we'll find a garage open at this point in time, and even more unlikely that we'd be able to afford getting any repairs done, we elect to give it a try.
After calling Triple A, Andrew, Shawn and myself rejoin the rest of the Zen Frisbee gang on the side of the road to wait for the tow truck. Andrew discovers that he has lost his Triple A card somewhere between the pay phone and the van, so off he goes back from whence he came to look for it. The rest of us are all certain that the tow truck will beat him back and that somehow without Andrew's card we will remain stranded. This brings about a hearty round of Andrew bashing. As we stab our absent friend in the back, Shawn steps in a wad of bubblegum. This is the spiritual low point of our trip. We all realize that Disaster will spare us no misfortune, no matter how small, and we simultaneously break into a nervous laugh. Miraculously enough, Andrew "The Turtle" Maltbie finds his card under a soda machine and gets back before the tow truck arrives. When the tow truck does finally show up, we are in suspense. Are we less than 200 miles from Chapel Hill? Yes, we're only 167 miles away! Will the driver let some of us ride in the van while it's being towed? Yes! Not only that, but our savior suggests we buy a 12-pack of beer and leave the driving to him. Shawn and I ride in front with our driver. He's a good ol'boy to be sure, but the inevitable "nigger" and "pussy" jokes that Shawn and I are dreading thankfully never materialize. Along the way, he tells us that while we didn't hear it from him, it would be possible for us to call Triple A again and get another free 100 mile tow once we reach North· Carolina. Shawn and I pretend like we hadn't already planned on doing just that as our driver tells us about some guy who went from Florida to Pennsylvania using his Triple A card in such an unofficial manner. When our driver discovers that we in fact have two Triple A cards between all of us, he volunteers to take us the whole way himself. A few hours later he deposits us and our disabled vehicle on the street right in front of the Zen Frisbee house. Hooray! During our 167 mile piggyback ride, our driver consumed two bags of Doritos, several Little Debbie cakes, a box of Fig Newtons, one beef jerky and four Diet Mountain Dews.
So that's the tale of Zen Frisbee's trip to the Big Apple. A comedy of errors, perhaps? If our greatest error was ever leaving town to begin with, then the biggest joke is yet to come, for we've got another show in New York next month. I can't wait to do it all again! How we'll get there, I have no idea, but that's never stopped Zen Frisbee before.
Final score:
New York - 1
Zen Frisbee - Nothing.