This Saturday, Jan 19th, at 11:30 at Fuddruckers in Burbank, Dave Hull, the famous local DJ from the 60's who basically brought the Beatles to Los Angeles, which move very likely turned them into blissed-out acidheads, and also resulted in some great songs and more importantly Haight-Ashbury (which now has city-serviced chemical toilets on the sidewalks mind you, and city-run emergency ambulances parked 24 hours a day at the curbs) coming into existence - will be signing his book, "Hullaballoo."
I will be there because I am the one who put Dave Hull and the actual writer of the book, Bill Hayes, together. Today, in fact, Bill Hayes informed me that Hells Angels, Madame Tussauds, and Fuddruckers are the only three enterprises that do not have apostrophes in their official spellings. So, you see, this is no sleepytime writer. This is someone who is constantly paying attention to things.
But this is not about the book.
This is about the book
signing.
You do not have book signings at hamburger joints. Which of course is one of the reasons I will be there. I mean, let's face it, it's pretty messed up. The only place weirder for a once-famous-dj book signing would be at the bottom of the eternally-dry spillway of the eternally dry Sepulveda Dam. I probably would not go to that one because there would be no hamburgers. Just dust. And of course concrete. Ya know, maybe I would go, I love concrete.
My prediction is that no one inside Fuddruckers ordering hamburgers for their 9 year old sons and daughters will know who Dave Hull is. And if they do they won't care. Because Dave Hull is not Ryan Secrest, who is probably the only actually-known radio personality alive today on planet earth. Howard Stern moved to Sirius and so nobody knows who he is anymore because no one wants to pay for radio. Also everyone thinks Sirius is spelled Serious and that Howard Stern is now all "meaningful and gruff" and all. It's kinda funny.
I've lost my place.
Oh, yeah, the Dave Hull book signing at the hamburger place.
Now, to me, the fact that absolutely nobody will give a crap about the old endentulate, drooling, lost and bewildered DJ off to the side, signing books no one wants, using a table by himself with no food on it, and which could be put to better use by the hungry Mexican family of 12 who came there to effing
eat.....this is, to me, kinda bitchin'. Because it's totally assbackwards and upsidedown. Which means it will be funny. At least to me.
Bill, who is a Boozefighter - they're on Wikipedia if you want to look - he says he is going to have five chapters of the motorcycle hooligans show up. Bikers like hamburgers so this could actually happen. This shouldn't bother Dave at all, he seems comfortable around reprobates and derelicts and social misfits and outcasts. However the Boozefighters' presence
might bother everyone else in the place. So
that will be kinda interesting to watch.
Dave told me that he already cleared it with the owner that I will get a free hamburger, but I ain't buying that. I will need to hear that from the owner. I worked in a hamburger place, Bob's Big Boy, for ten years. I know how things actually operate. DJ's don't hand out the chow to people who come in. DJ's spin records and - I guess - sign books in hamburger joints. Period. So him saying I am going to get a free hamburger amounts to nothing actually on the plate, assuming I even get a plate.
So I will be bringing some cash to this swahray.
I do not go to publicity events unless I am personally involved in them enough to get in for free and without waiting in the line and not having to be on the boring, plebian, side of the red rope.
So needless to say I have not been to an event since I was a Mouseketeer.
When I was a Mouseketeer I went to a
lot of events. Events as I define them, of course: where I get ushered in around everyone else, i get escorted past everyone else, i have people coming up to me instead of me going up to them, I am looked upon as attractive and desirable to women and girls who otherwise would not even use me for toilet paper, I get food and beverages for free, I get to go where I want in the place when I want, I get to snoop, i get to poke, i get to graciously importune people to do things for me they would kick me in the applesack if I dared to ask them while not at the event.
This was when I was a Mouseketeer, you understand.
I then went from Mouseketeer to Complete And Total Object Of Universal Derision And Target Of Opportunity And Attack.
This did nothing for my disposition. Which went from cheery lad to what you see now.
But lo, here in the present day, in the twilight of my Golden Pond rowboat ride into oblivion, I will be attending,
once again, an event. An event as I define them: where it's all about me. Sure, it's not a Mouseketeer event, but to me it is even more enthralling and delightful because, you see, there would in fact be no event at all were it not and had it not been and if it were not had been in fact were been not had if were it had not been for me!
Yes, that's right! I am the reason this event is even occurring!
And what that means, of course, is that I will be, in a very real sense, the most important person there. Yes: I will be the most important person at a completely meaningless and worthless and without consequence event.
Be perfect for me, I was born for this.
Naturally I am actually excited. I
never get excited. And I have lived one rambunctious exciting life, let me tell you. I just never got excited about any of it. But now?...a Dave Hull book signing at Fuddruckers with me as the sole and only creator of the means for the book to even have come into existence?...as the person without whom; without whose majesty; without whose noble, and, admittedly, somewhat cavalier, pity upon some lesser lights, none of this amazingness would have happened?.............we are talking intense and major rapture of the soul here my friends. Intense and major rapture of the soul. If you do not understand I cannot explain it to you, you with your undeveloped spirit and your pathetic, hollow, empty, barren, sterile, lifeless, passionless, bleak, pallid, probably squalid, bosom. You disgust me.
Now, the
fries at Fuddruckers, as I recall, are the thick kind that never taste good. It could, however, be they have at last opened their eyes and have gone to the small and skinny good ones cooked in beef grease. On the other hand they are having a Dave Hull book signing so it is more likely their eyes are not only still closed they have had pennies put onto both of them.
Fuddruckers also has the feature I call the "open pit of semen and saliva," salad bar, or "common vermin trough of condiment add-ons" which is a more polite way to put it. But in reality the most actually accurate way to put it would be "the infection, virus, and bacteria distribution center" which is the bins of pickles and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese and chilis and peppers and cilantro and Central American bat guano that all the tuberculars and Aids sufferers and nose pickers and gonad scratchers in the San Fernando Valley put their hands and breath into so that I will be sick for a month afterwards of diseases known only to Sith magicians, upper echelon Druidic potion-masters, and the bugs inside a subterranean Aztec dungeon for the condemned.
Did I mention that an entire crapload of degenerate biker slobs and miscreants, and very likely felons, are going to crash the party? If they have hot babes in leather short-shorts in tow this might ameliorate any tension and fear among the patrons. However I don't believe the Boozefighters have hot babes in leather short-shorts as one of their "things you associate with the Boozefighters" list of items. In fact if Alex Trebek were to say "Things you associate with the Boozefighters,"..... "What are hot babes in leather short-shorts?" would not be the correct answer in question form. Probably "what are lakes of regurgitated beer?" would be a more correct answer. Or, "'What is blood?'Alex", would be another one.
It is not known at this time how many copies of "Hullaballoo" have been sold. If I had to guess I would say anywhere upwards of, for example, say, maybe six. Maybe seven. Six, maybe seven, yes, I think that would be fair to say. Maybe five. Somewhere in there. Four, maybe.
But you know what?.....you can't place a number value on the qualitative worth of the reading experience. But you can on the number of books sold. And, like I say, it's maybe six or seven. Or maybe three. I know that I have one. But it was given to me because, well, I think I have spent a lot of time explaining my essential part in this, what would you call it, not fiasco, milestone, that's the word. At least it's a milestone for me. For Dave Hull it will probably put the final brick onto his buried-alive tomb of infinitely increasing obscurity.
At any rate I'll keep you posted on how it all turns out at this.....anyone?......
that's right, at this
event!! YESSSS!!!!
And if the Fashion Police show up, I hope Kelly Osbourne has done something about that lavender hair and her steroid jawbones. And that tattoo that looks like a blue Band-aid on her arm: really, Kelly?.....a Band-aid? Wot weh yu
think-aing???
Ok, really, I
do have to go now, i am being tweeted by Gwyneth Paltrow. She wants to know if she can get in - haha, I dont think so, Gwinny, Miss Too Good To Come To My Deportation Hearings. She wants to know, besides, if she can get free eats. I guess she's eating this month. She is such a dear. Unfortunately I reserved her place for Bin Laden's corpse. He's not nearly as tiring a conversationist as she is. Even now.
OK, gotta run!!! See you there!! Or I'll tell you all about it!!
The second option will be a lot cheaper on your pocketbook. And your digestion.