dimebag darrell week begins............ now!

i'll never forget that frigid december morning in '04, waking up to the howard stern show, anticipating laughs but being met by a morose and solemn tone among the personalities.

dimebag darrell, pantera guitarist, shot dead at a gig by a disgruntled and disturbed fan who was upset that the musician had taken up with a side project, damageplan. fucked my world up. comedian jim florentine (special ed from crankyankers and a close friend of the pantera guitarist), was on the brink of sobbing, solemnly admitting that he'd spent the night before the shooting boozing with dimebag and signing autographs. he couldn't attest enough to the kindness and fun-loving nature of the wild haired maniac.

maybe this shouldn't have meant much to me, but it was only nine months prior that i'd had my own pantera epiphany of sorts. after wandering around our college town causing problems at 5am, timemachine and i returned to "the House," still looking for trouble, swayed out of our minds and not even able to pronounce the word "sleep."

so what do we do?

we head for the rooms of those who could pronounce it, chanting "so small!" (the chinpokomon episode of south park had just aired that week), blaring pantera on our friend's surround sound system at sunrise, pounding kentucky gentleman, and trying to score more tour support.

our fervent, cro-magnon ceremony would lead the stevo to rip the cords out of the speakers in a sleep-deprived rage.

"go to bed you guys!" he shouted, all long faced. test in three hours?

cast away like children. just the way we like it.

good times. and given those good times, and others that would involve those guitar heroics, hateful lyrics, and hard intoxicants, the death of dimebag (like b.i.g. and pac before him) was more or less an equivalent of the kennedy assassination for me. or lennon if you wanna take that route, but i like my jfk reference better.

where were you the day it happened?

dimebag. you will be missed.

If You're a Wizard Then Why Do You Wear Glasses?

two nights in a row. what they'd call a recurring dream maybe? whatever its label, i'm thoroughly haunted. yet, last night's version was a bit less edgy.

the deal is as follows: there's kasai, watching the night's news broadcast, we see that the coalition forces are being handily defeated in the streets of baghdad. i mean real-time, super nintendo type shit; the poor bastards are disappearing onscreen like so many super mario goombas.

so, seeing this, my friends and family tell me that i have to ship off and suit up for war.

despite my protest, i'm put on the next bus for fort meade or wherever.

of course, this isn't a dream for so many out there, but as far as i'm concerned, having to go over there is abreast of going to prison and committing murder. three things that are absolute bad news and that i hope never come to pass. so needless to say, this dream shook me up upon sunrise.

now everyone knows that reading/hearing about someone else's dream has the tendency to bore you to tears (except in the case of an artist like michel gondry's vivid films and music vids).

but it's last night's sequel that makes the trip worth the price of admission. because i mean come on, everybody loves unicorns, right?

now in the first chapter, i woke up before i got to iraq, so i was spared that portion of the nightmare. in the second ride, however, i actually did get to the desert, riding atop a glistening unicorn named duke, not unlike Bellerophon atop his trusty steed Pegasus.

arctic mane glistening in the noon sun, chaos all around, yet both ride and rider remain calm in the face of VBIEDs and tanks shrieking and dead kids and body parts and blast walls and such. delivering all from the shitshow that is Iraq.

really triumphant stuff.

further examination shows that the unicorn's presence can be attributed to a rather simple chain of events. attempting to fall asleep, i began to reminisce, to think of wild and dangerous days. particularly, i began to reflect on those raucous sunday nights that one spring, poisoning ourselves with roxies and booze as we eagerly awaited TimeMachine and Dollar Bill's radio show "Wizards and Unicorns: A listener's guide to Dungeons and Dragons" on 88.1 WMUC.

Yessir, good times those, the hosts beasting out with us beforehand, then retreating to their broadcast post to disseminate the gospel of D+D, all the while spinning everything from Mighty Mighty Bosstones' "Knock on Wood" to Broken Social Scene's "I'm Still Your Fag," the latter being edited during play of course. really good stuff.

on account of the dxm trouble (see earlier post: "What More Can I Say?"), the thought of unicorns prancing about meadows, obeying their wizard riders, triggered somewhat blurred closed eye visuals. that's right, months after the fact, i'm still tripping. that's why i try not to think of horrible things like abortions and date rape and the holocaust when i'm trying to fall asleep. difficult though, as i watch a lot of R-rated movies and black metal music videos. and snuff films. sometimes, the fun never ends.

the lesson, because there always is one: don't do drugs or whatever, unless you've got something to hide. then by all means, do as many as you can get your hands on, at all times.