Long Cold Winter Ends…..in two parts
Seriously, I have been overloaded w/ enough personal life and work that I have very little of interest to write about. However there were a few moments over the last 60 some days to document that some, who are near and near may find of interest.
Now, a lot of this is done from memory, and my brother calls me Capt. Memory due to my remarkable ability to recall the most obscure moments and minute details of almost any given situation. So let that be a lesson to all you kids out there. Dope is for dopes. - az
So it was just around a month ago I took another trip to Indpls to help Shelly get moved up here. I was supposed to be at the Fango Weekend of Horrors as a guest of the guy Ari who played the very first Jason in Fri The 13th, but Shelly needed help so I had a last minute change of plans, as well as heart. I love these conventions and everyone that knows me knows exactly how much attending them means to me. This wouldn’t be the first one I missed this year, and it’s been a short year, to take the train to Indianapolis, Indiana, TWICE to say the least. The weather was calling for a storm of extremities of wind, snow, cold and accumulation. So I took an AmTrak again and this time went prepared with a pint of Jack. As I was reading my Edie book and enjoying my first of a few mixes I began conversations with some of the people headed my way. Sooner than later I struck up a conversation with a gal who is a professional photographer and as I was out of Jack we walked up to the bar car and met another girl and we all came back and were laughing it up, and having a good ol’ time. It was a much more enjoyable way to pass the time in fact. The speaker in our car wasn’t working so none of us really had any idea where were. There was an ice storm in Indy but there was just snow where we were traveling. I had told Shelly I’d make a quick call when we hit Lebanon but we had no idea once again where we were. But we were getting pretty intoxicated thus making the trip a lot more enjoyable on this cold February Midwest night.
I had told the photographer girl that Shelly would give her a ride down the street where her boyfriend works at a restaurant downtown. I assumed this wouldn’t be a problem, but I hadn’t called ahead, I was getting ahead of myself. Her name was Kristine, and I‘m sorry to say don’t recall the other girls name but I hope she’s doing okay as she was traveling across the country to live with some guy I believe she met online. I had shared some drinks and time was flying and the next thing we knew we were in Indy, my least (just about) favorite place on earth and the last place I thought I’d find someone that was worthy of what I had kept inside for so long to offer.
Well, we de-boarded and Shelly was sitting and waiting and looking tired from packing all day. As I had mentioned previously I hadn’t called her to inform her that had offered my new friend a ride down the street, and Shelly was less than enthused about it. In fact from her silence and reluctance to smile upon my arrival, she was PISSED to say the least. Not because I made a new friend but because I had assumed that she would not want some girl walking the streets of Indianapolis alone after midnight, but that I hadn’t asked in the first place and simply assumed. I walked up, gave her a hug and told her we were going to join Kristine and her boyfriend for drinks. This was the last thing she was prepared for after a long day of packing and staking her possessions. In retrospect not a lot of woman want to go “out” in public w/out getting ready to go out. And the next day I realized that was why she was less than happy. But it does get funny, in an ironic way.
So we drove her over to a restaurant where her boyfriend worked which was only a few blocks, and they were closed but still invited us in for drinks. And this is where it got ironic. The girl, a photographer I had mentioned named Kristine, and I had both brought backpacks along. I left mine in Shelly’s car, and Kristine took hers into the restaurant. For some reason sat it inside of the side of the booth we were sitting. We all had a drink and when wee left I mistakenly picked up her bag assuming it was mine and we went back to Shelly’s near vacant pad.
We stayed up a little while, both tired and had a little Jager and fell asleep.
The next morning I saw I had missed a call and about 745 AM as we were en route to the U-Haul on Indy’s fabulous east side, I got a call from a 765 number and was reluctant because of the expensive roaming charges I have to pay when I travel out of my designated area. But I picked up figuring it was J-Sin in Anderson, but it was Kristine asking if I had by chance picked up her bag. I wasn’t sure and Shelly made me realize that I indeed did pick up a near identical bag to mine, that was in fact not mine. So I made arrangements to meet our new friend at 830 AM at a Speedway gas station where I needed to fill up Shelly’s car with gas sooner or later. Being it was sooner than later it had actually worked out in my benefit being that I picked up a DVD of “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man” for under $10 which was a steal for me especially on one of my all time faves.
I returned the bag and went back over to Shelly’s to help load the U-Haul which she had already started to do herself. This gal is motivated and driven if anything. Never one to let the guy do all of her work for her which is one thing I am not used to. SHE CAN DO IT.
The weather conditions that we were warned of seemed to not be coming so we didn’t load that thing as fast as we had planned and spent a lot of time talking to her aunt and trying to get around her soon to be nasty landlady some sick twisted hideous and manipulative stench of a wench. We loaded and locked up and said goodbye to her aunt both of them with tears and Shelly was following me to 1-65 north under cold conditions but grey skies with no sign of snow.
Yet.
In fact it seemed like the 3 hour trek would only take 3 hours and it was 11 PM central time so we stopped to eat and later stopped at a Meijer store to get a few things as well as fill the U Haul w/ more petrol and that is when the wind kicked up and the snow and we were only half way and I knew it was actually a shitstorm heading our way.
The storage facility was open till 5 and I thought we’d have no problem. However, you can’t take a truck on LSD (that’s Lake Shore Drive people) so we had to take 90/94 to the Dan Ryan where construction had just begun. Traffic was horrible and people were driving like fucking morons. The State Police in lieu of all of the recent accidents and 30 car pile ups have been saying, “Under favorable conditions you should allow 1 car length between you and the car in front of you for every 10 miles per hours your are driving. When it is snowing you double that.” So where the speed limit is 45 in a construction zone in the nearly blinding snow that’s 8.5 car lengths between you and the driver/vehicle in front of you, not ½ the way that the people who were tailgating me were.
We got to the storage facility with only 20 min unload the truck and get everything to the 3rd floor before they locked down. An impossible feat for many, but not for us. And with the stress still in us we took the U haul back, got to my place, unloaded some more and tried to shake off the experience, a very moving experience that we had just endured.
We had a few hours, and a couple options of events we were invited to. I had very wisely taken the next day off work in advance. (remember my life is usually planned out/booked 6 months ahead of time) So we chose the Academy Awards party at Ranalli’s.
This was about the first time I would actually see Shelly become intoxicated. This is unusual for her since she’s a far cry from a party girl and barely touches the stuff. And I somehow in the hours we were there I maintained a severe sense of sobriety. I pretty much know anyone that comes in and out of the place, and the staff, well, the treat me more like family than patron. And the usually shy Shelly became Shelly-Bomb! She was making friends with everyone. Restroom trips, were turning in to bonding sessions. In many ways it was nice to see her in this light , in fact, it was great, and fun. As well as funny! Everyone as far as the regulars were there, and they were loud. We got to see Jenny and Shelly have her bamboo plant she had purchased for her as a gift, which Jenny later lost that night, or it was stolen by one of the other people we never see in the back answering calls. But the gesture was appreciated and the highlight of the night was Al Gore winning for his nomination for best documentary and his speech which was hilarious.
But not getting to play the juke box got on my nerves and the noise of the patrons was too much for yours truly so just after midnight I grabbed a bottle of Champagne and we grabbed a cab and went home.
A toast alone. Shelly was unable to share a sip, it would have put her over the top. So it was bedtime for gonzo!
It had been a long day and I had just spent 2 weekends in Indianapolis and was about to embark on a third, to Evansville where I was to be the best man at Mike Shoemakers wedding. Only one thing stood between us and the following weekend in which Shelly had to be on the Air Force base for drill. 4 days of work, and First Fridays at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
We took a nice day off together and at this point don’t really recall too much of any significance we did other than rest. And come Tuesday it was back to the weekday grind for your writer and she stay home where she was molested by my cats.
When Friday arrived we had plans to meet a co-worker Jessica and her boyfriend/fiancé Brian at the MCA where I’m a member for their monthly party. “Happy hour takes on a new meaning with First Fridays at the MCA. Relax after a long workweek with a cash bar featuring specialty drinks and free Wolfgang Puck appetizers. Enjoy live music from local DJs, the world’s only iMac G5 digital dating bar, and creation stations right within our open galleries. Each month features an up-and-coming Chicago artist in a preview of the latest UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work exhibition. Keep the festivities going at our after-parties at Chicago’s newest and hottest spots.”
After we entered and I bought some drink tickets the bartenders refused all night to charge me to drink. After awhile I was getting free drinks for Shelly as well. I guess that’s one of the benefits of my body of work is that I am ant many times the master of free libations. Right Greg?
And when the place began to shut down instead of going right home I was having such a good time that in my ultimate wisdom decided that we all go to Ranalli’s for a nightcaps). OHHH BOY. Did I not mention I had to be up at 3 Am to go to the airport to catch a flight to Evansville IN for a wedding? A wedding where I was to be the best man.
CONTINUED:…….AND NOW THE REST OF THE STORY
So it was Friday March 2 and another trip out of Chicago this the third in a row was on my calendar. Normally I welcome travel, though Chicago has little to feel a need to leave for, it was the sheer fact that I was going again to Indiana. This time perhaps further south in the state that I had ever been. Evansville.
For one to understand the method of my madness I feel compelled to provide a little bit of back-story or history of a man and most loyal of friends by the name of Mike Shoemaker. This was the friend I was flying to stand up for as best man at his wedding.
Now that Mike is a married man I must omit many details of the adventures wee shared for nearly a decade as rock n roll journalists. There’s a lot there that makes for good fodder, gossip and the best of all, rumors. But in his case nothing of the antics we shared can be anything in the vicinity of rumor being that it was all insanely true.
It was 1995 and MK ULTRA was on its 2nd issue. I had just moved from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis where I was working at BMG full time and turning the magazine into something I never dreamed in my wildest fantasies would develop. It had gained an audience, and I discovered, we had a voice. I was getting fan mail for the first time in my life and one of the letters I got came from Mike.
He sent me a few Zines of his own creation, Optic Damage which was a collection of girl’s photos at concerts and Cranial Fracture his own hard rock heavy metal publication. And we had similar tastes in music. He lived about 3.5 hours drive from Indy and came to see Babe in Toyland at The Emerson Theatre. Jeff Brown and I were doing an interview with Lori their drummer and chilling out, and back then MK was free and a stack sat at the entrance for anyone to grab. Mike told me he would take some to Evansville and I said “go for it” and after his letter to me in response to a White Zombie show I published, we corresponded frequently and the trip started that would last a lifetime. And the day came that we finally met at a MINISTRY show in early 96 and that’s when our friendship/working relationship began.
Mike attended many MK ULTRA themed events, parties and concerts and joined our staff as a photographer for about ½ a decade. He was loyal, dedicated, and timely and worked his ass off as an employee and as a friend. And Mike is a quite guy, a sheep in wolves clothing at that. Ad after my relocation to Chicago in 1998 Mike was here for Alc O Holiday shows and Expo of The Extreme and kept in touch and kept shooting shows for me.
We stayed in touch but the last time I had seen him was after the snowiest Alc O Holiday in history in 2000. He stayed with us and we had the usual good time and that was it. Until the day of the wedding it had been 6 years since I had seen him.
Mike got a good job and I had turned the lil zine that could into a force to be reckoned with. We went from in 1995 from 250 copies of the first run on 28 pages of black and white newsprint to a world wide distribution of 10,000 copies per printing Glossy covered and in full color with a centerfold too boot. We were available all over the world via Tower Records, Borders Books, and Barnes and Nobles as well as many national/regional chains and individually known mom and pop shops. And we got to where we were actually sponsoring concert tours, and oh yeah, a 3-year run nationally syndicated radio program on Sunday nights called MK ULTRASOUND Radio Network hosted by, yours truly. And I was sponsoring sold out rock concerts at the House of Blues and other legendary venues and going onstage and introducing the band and hung backstage for the encores, encore.
By the time the 90’s were but a memory and the plethora of record labels merge into just a few, things had changed. Things had changed a lot. And were going to change even more. But the monster inside of us was still very much the same, they were alive.
Eventually after 10 years MK had run its course. But we had a very strong and loyal online readership that more than eclipsed that of the readership of the publication by hundreds of thousands. My biggest distributor went bankrupt and my first distributor Tower records soon followed. He difference Tower paid me up, and the other distributor that made $5 a copy on MK, well I never saw a penny from them in 3 years. Not a cent.
Mike stopped doing Cranial Fracture partly due to his new job but also because since 1995 the climate of the music and entertainment industry has so drastically changed. It’s like global warming gone full throttle ICE AGE. There really is no outlet for real singer songwriters anymore in rock n roll anymore. Unless you’re talking soft rock and I don’t think Mike and I will ever cross that line unless it’s a KISS ballad.
So I moved on, obviously and while still kicking up my boot heels with the best of them am pretty much a corporate guy in a high-rise downtown with my own office in the mag mile.
So imagine my surprise when in early Feb I got an email my Mike stating he was marrying Miranda and he still considered me his best friend and asked me to be his best man. With our history how could I say no? Not 6 years or hundreds of miles would stand between that offer. So as reluctant as I way to return to the Hoosier State for the 3rd weekend in a row, I found myself booking a flight to and a room in Evansville IN. And being only one airlines flies in and out of that town, and even though the wedding would be over by 4 PM I had no choice but to stay overnight.
So we’re back to Saturday morning, I missed my alarm going off at 3AM due to us staying at Ranalli’s after the museum affair. Actually I had accidentally set if for 3 PM. And then at 5 AM Shelly wakes me up and tells me to get ready, and neither of us had really packed. So I was to be late for pre boarding and she would without a doubt be late for drill and to top it off the weather SUCKED. It was not only cold as it had been, but the snow kicked up again. I got a cab to O’Hare and got into line only to discover my flight was not delayed, it was cancelled. So I caught the next one which would get me there later but I’d still be in time for the wedding. I carried my suit on and sent a big suitcase full of gifts to check in. And I passed security for once with no problem and sat at the bar for about 90 min drinking Bloody Mary’s and shooting the BS with someone from Southern Indiana who was stranded for a week due to weather. I kept in touch with Shelly who was driving to Ft Wayne and suffering the worst of the elements and I made my way to the flight which lasted just under one hour and got to the smallest airport I’ve ever been to only just outdone in square footage by the airport I flew into in Florida when my mother dies. It wasn’t hard to find Mike, and it wasn’t hard for Mike to find me. A 6 year reunion would begin and by the end of the day, he’d be a married man.
The hotel was accommodating, at best. It had a room with a bed and cable and a restaurant with a bar. So I’d have something to do after that didn’t involve the other great past time in Evansville, titty bars. (why do people in Indiana call strip clubs, titty bars?)
The wedding itself lacked no excitement even though it was small, private and in Ft Branch in a recreation hall. The ring bearer puked, Mike forgot to bring the song for the first dance, and Miranda dropped the ring on the floor before she could get it on Mike’s ring finger. OH and I didn’t mention it was a DRY reception. So I suck them in some champagne for my toast to newlyweds and at Mikes request snuck into the kitchen to make the 3 of us a couple Capt Morgan Tattoo concoctions.
No sooner had it begun that it was over. An old acquaintance of mine and good friend of Mike’s and mutual KISS fanatic Anthony drove me back to the hotel where I quickly changed into jeans and headed for the bar. I mean…what else was I going to do, catch a cab to the local titty bar?
So not much has happened since worth going on and on about. And as un rock n roll as the happenings were as of late not only is that about to change, BIG TIME, but they are significant pieces of my life and some of it may actually make it into my memoirs.
A week after we were both back at home and I was back at an actual 5 day work week, the first in along time, we drove out to Bob aka NewBomb Turks house for dinner in the burbs. I hadn’t seen Bob at all in 2006 and this was the first I’d seen him since Halloween weekend 2005. hmmmmm…. what happened on Halloween night 1965? Anyone know? (answer will be at the end)
We got home before midnight and the next day had dinner at Dawn and Marty’s house in Oak Park. It was fun as well and there were actually some frozen dog balls involved but that’s another story and for another book.
I got to see the horrible Rock n Roll Hall of fame banquet and induction ceremony on VH 1 classic which left a lot to be desired. Van Halen completely embarrassed themselves and disappointed their fan base. And as we all know the 2 ex members went up to accept the honors.
Ya’ know, you’d think a band could put aside their differences for one night and accept the honor they are being bestowed for their legacy, but even Blondie proved that would not be the case but the trend.
I mush more enjoyed John Lydon’s “fuck you” letter being read last year to the committee. I mean it doesn’t get anymore rock n roll than that.
And Clive Davies can fuck off. Why is he even there?
I have a lot of questions and somehow come up with my own answers. It’s the world we live in and what this country has become. We’ve settled for mediocrity as opposed to greatness. It shows in our leadership and it shows in the music industry. I’m just glad I got to be part of it when I was. It was a great ride.
And the band that is responsible for me starting MK ULTRA 12 years ago is coming here on April 9 and I’ll be interviewing Peter, again. It’s been a long time since that interview in the summer of 1994 and a lot has changed. We’re going to have a lot to talk about.
Thanks for reading and write to me on myspace at www.myspace.com/alexfuckingzander and let’s keep in touch.
See you all soon! - az
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: That social disease of a hangout Tubby’s Drive In was closed in orderto make room for the new condos for the Beverly Hills Asshole Association.
