The Gunpowder and Acid Incident (Part 1 of the Josh was Dumb in School Saga)

In the course of my so-called academic career at Madison Public Schools, I learned something at a very young age: It doesn't fucking matter. Until the 6th grade, I worked my ass of and several times was vocally refereed to as the "head of my class" by authority figures who cared to measure such things. However, with a school-system that was hesitant to teach evolution, and only did so as one of "multiple options you can go into yourself", 90% of what they taught was either bullshit, or far, far below anyone with a brain. As a result, I grew tired of their system and began to rebel against it (I went into detail some of the schools issues in this blog). For what it's worth, my grandfather (father's father), the once superintendent of the school system attempted to make this broken mess into something. This story is the first of three blogs I will be publishing about my major dealings with the powers that be during my Middle to High-school years.

Personal issues at home that I have spoke at length about in other blog posts combined with my having zero respect for such a laughable fucking school resulted in a heavy amount of early, outward rebellion from myself. Many people in these days were shocked by my disregard for the establishments rules and regulations, I however then and now, maintained that I was just ahead of the curve.. an early bloomer if you will. Anyway, this lead me to be very "experimental" at a young age, hence some of my many adventures.  One of the first major things my group of friends and I (more about them here) got into were explosives. We, as many other teenage boys at this age, greatly enjoyed occasionally blowing the shit out of stuff. Some of the gang would steal bottle rockets and such, but I always brought the gold as my Grandpa (Moms Dad) was a bit of a gun nut and thus, had plenty of artillery.

My Grandpa and I never had much in common. He drank alot and occasionally just wanted to argue about meaningless shit. He did love me, but being a battle-hardened, slightly crazy war vet, we really had fuckall in common. That is until the day I watched him blow up an old stuffed rabbit with a homemade artillery shell. Instantly we had what would be a lasting mutual interest in something... blowing shit the fuck up. Nearly every weekend we would cram some innocent toy and stuff it full of highly explosive materials hooked to some sort of detonation device and blammo! It was launched into a fiery oblivion. He introduced me to bottle-rockets, M-80's, black-cap, fuse, and most importantly... black powder.

Of all of the shady people I knew, James was the only one of them seemed as if he wasn't a total piece of shit (again, went into detail about him on this blog). James often bragged about his exploits with the older kids and one day in music class he made the mistake of talking about his experiences with acid. As soon as I caught wind of this, Nash and I immediately hit him up to get some. He quoted me a figure of way more money than I had access to at the time, but then asked me what I had to trade. The M-80's I had immediately came to mind. Unfortunately, he had a few already... but he did want something bigger. That's when I remembered my Grandpa's stash of black powder in the back of his closet. Nash and I then bartered 4 hits of acid (one for each of my friends and I) off of James for one full cup of pure black powder, and the exchange was set to take place the next week.

That weekend, I went to my Grandparents house with a much different plan than usual. Normally on these weekends I would wait till they were asleep and steal a few Miller Genuine Drafts from my Grandpa's drawer in his fridge, this time however, was different. I went to the cupboard to find a container with a top so as not to spill any in transport, but all I could find was my little cousin's sippy-cup. So making do, I grabbed it, went into his closet, filled it halfway up with black powder, and hid it away in my bag.

Seeing as how I lived in the country, did not have transportation, and lived 10 miles from him, I took the sippy-cup filled with gunpowder to school that Monday morning. In the middle of the day I quietly gave it to James and he hid it in his locker, promising to bring me acid the next day. As far as I was concerned that was the end of my involvement with it. It had left my hands and I assumed that he was smart enough to handle himself with it... boy was I wrong. What I didn't know was happening on his return from school would drastically change my life.

Somehow, the seemingly street smart dude dropped this container on the floor of the bus on his way home. Furthermore, he must have told at least a handful of people as to exactly what it was, but not necessarily what it was capable of. As the story from him goes, when it hit the floor on his bus trip home, a decent amount of it spilled out and a mutual friend of ours, Shawn, gathered it in a piece of paper and folded it up. Although I trusted James with this powder, I knew better than to give it to anyone with Shawns reputation, and he should have too. As soon as he got off the bus, a few of the "bad kids" all gathered round as Shawn put his face a foot above it and lit the paper.... thus igniting it directly in his eyes.

Now Shawn didn't sustain any permanent damage due to this, but he burned the shit out of himself and it effectively removed any and all hair he had on his face. To make a long story short, the ambulance came and treated him, the cops at the hospital made inquiries, Shawn rolled on James, James rolled on me, and the investigation officially began. Drug dogs made a sweep of the bus and positively identified there being residue of explosives. The cops intercepted James at school, made their formal arrest, put him in the car, and then came looking for me, ironically enough, in music class where the whole damn thing started.

They interrogated me for two hours with the assistance of the principle, the whole time of which I denied it... until they brought James out. James walked into the room, eyes swollen with tears, and he told me that it was over and that they knew nearly everything. The cops gave me one last chance to come clean, and in return, they would let my family collect me and not pull me out of the building and book me for the entire weekend. Fine, fuck it, I did it, I confessed. But with James standing there, I figured I'd do us both a solid and alter the storyline while I had him in the room. I explained to them how I sold the gunpowder to him for $20, and I saw him nod in approval, after all, why complicate this situation with the unnecessary addition of drugs.

They hauled him to jail and my parents hauled me away to the house. I was expelled, but seeing as how there was only two weeks left in class and I had A's, they went ahead and passed me with a C+. At home I endured the entirety of my family railing on me about what I had done. My Mother’s side of the family were more disappointed that I stole from my Grandfather than anything else, a fact of which I agree and am ashamed of. What really sucked is hearing my Father and his side of the family preaching to me about destroying my Grandfather's legacy (he had long since passed) and "ruining" the good Roush name in town (something they repeatedly did WAY better than I ever could a few years down the line, but that story is for another time).

I got a call a few days later and the court date was set (about a week and a half after the incident). My mother and I agreed it was best if I was represented by a capable attorney, so much to my father's disappointment, she called up the man that had represented her in their divorce. The man was damn good, and based on their prior experience, even agreed to represent me for free. Even though this good show of faith, my father refused to speak to the man or shake his hand. That was my dad.

I arrived in court with lawyer in tow, and we sat down in the cramped waiting area. We noticed the other families that were involved with this incident present as well. I darted my eyes a few times to avoid Shawn's scorched face, but eventually got up the balls to go and awkwardly apologize to his family. James' family and lawyer were also in attendance, though he was oddly absent (I later learned he had been in custody the entire time). Also gathered in the all-too-small area were a handful of miscellaneous witnesses to various pieces of this incident and their families. After several intensely awkward hours, we were all finally put before the judge.

We all had our time in front of the judge, Shawn got off completely due to the fact the judge decided he had learned his lesson. When it was done, his family got up and walked directly out... that's when I witnessed something that made me cry. James was brought before the judge in cuffs, his mother wailing hysterically, and his father shooting me a look of death. It was a terrible, horrid sight, which was made worse when it was all said and done. See, this wasn't James first offense.... nor his second. James was then scolded and sentenced to two additional months in Juvenile Hall, and I broke down when I saw this tough man walk out sobbing.

Then came me. My name was called, I raised my head up high and sat down next to my lawyer. I wasn't a tough guy, at least not yet. But be damned if I was going to let them see MY emotions. I sat down like a man to that table and expected to be carted off right after James. My lawyer got up, made my argument, stated this was my first offense, and made one king hell of a noble effort. Between the good lawyer and my clean record I got dealt 400 hours of community service and yelled at by a judge. It could have been much worse.

The judge then asked me if I had anything I would like to say, so I did. "I deeply regret my actions, and shall not do them again." I honestly told him. Then I continued, this time lying through my teeth, "I now have one hurt friend, and one jailed directly due to my actions, for that, I am deeply sorry as well."

Now, why was I lying through my teeth? Was I not emotionally impacted by the things that had happened to these two boys? Of course I was, and I was damn sorry I had to go to court because I stole from my Grandfather. But MY actions did not put them in their predicament, my terrible judgement merely enabled them to make bad decisions. Shawn was a nice kid, but at the end of the day he stole something he knew was dangerous and used it in a retarded way. And James? Well to quote Quentin Tarrantino, "He should have fucking better known better." He rolled on me, and although I hated to see an otherwise alright guy be put away, at the end of the day he still turned me in. Hell, it didn't even take him much coercing and he still got busted for the same crime at the end of the day.

THAT is the lesson I took away from this situation: What little you gain by rolling on a friend is nothing in comparison to what you lose within yourself.

Next time, The Marijuana Incident (Part 2 of the Josh was Dumb in School Saga)

Small Town, Small Corupt Minds In Power

Alot of the stories I tell are about my raising hell as a teenager. I was never a "rebel without a cause", I had a cause and I was damn sure it was just. Perhaps some... ok, alot of the time I didn't channel my anger and rage toward the correct subjects, but I'm beginning to learn how to. This blog is a big part of that, I write not only in an attempt of exorcizing my demons, but also to point out the wrongs that I have long quietly sat back and dealt with.

I grew up in Madison Township, a little rural area right outside the City of Middletown Ohio otherwise known as "living in the country". Middletown is a small, shithole of a city so named due to its proximity between Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio (the area had it's "15 minutes" when this appeared as a question on Jeopardy). It's one of the many cities in the United States that grew exponentially with the once prospourous paper and steel industries densely located in the area. However, as these companies prodominetly began to move overseas, the jobs went with them.

Whats left today is a battleworn shell of the area's former glory. An all but abandoned downtown sits largely vacant where the locals are more likely to rob or proposition you then they are to provide any legal service. Once upon a time these buildings were hot commodities and the entirety of the town came to the area to do their day to day business. Today, the local industry is mostly located outback of Central ave where the toothless, meth addled prostitutes service the town's men in the back of old rusted out pickup trucks. This begs the question, how do once prosperous towns get in this shape?

With small towns either everyone cares about the business of the city and perticipates in the local government, or no one does and leaves it up to the jackals that flock to the potential oppertunity that only being in power provides. Unfortunately, Middletown/Madison seemingly fell into the former category (although Madison wasn't big enough to be bothered with any real politics). There are many, many examples of this particular brand of small minded, self-entitled thinking to be spoke of, but due to the nature of the blog format, I will only list a few, particularly viscous cases.

The first is of local "entrepreneur" and "humanitarian" Perry Thatcher. While serving his elected duty heading the Middletown City Council, he owned about 112 acres of seemingly useless real estate. No one thought much of this until he and his partner received about 5.5 Million dollars in taxpayer income when the board he was member of voted to purchase the land and build the new city hospital there. Thatcher claimed to be "hands off" with the deal. Unfortunately that seemed enough to passify the public as he pocketed nearly 2.25 Million Dollars of their hard earned money without a conflicted-interest.Yes, a few people raised issue with this, but no one cared enough to be vocal on the subject.

Thatcher donated alot of money to local charities, many of which were designed to help the local economy and promote the growth of the local artistic community. That would seem to be completely contradictory to his position of removing the "punk rock element" that "plagued" a venue of which he owned. Enter, the Hoosegow, a local studio that hosted some of the hardest working local bands of the area. The place was located in a nearly abandoned area of downtown Middletown located next to the local homeless sanctuary and even the bank sharing its corner had shut down. This "detriment" of a musical showcase had both local and national acts that toured in it. However, Thatcher deemed it a public nuisance and successfully seeked to kick out the local inhabitants. After a brief and well deserved riot protesting the ending of the only local strictly musical venue happened, he had the property turned into a much more profitable endeavor. A parking lot. In an already vacant area. (One day, when certain unnamed statute of limitations run out, I will go more in depth on this event)

But Middletown wasn't the only source of corruption, it branched out into the country as well. Madison School system and the powers that helmed it for several years were just as corrupt.. Every 2 years the school begged the community for more money due to needing "increasing infrastructure, facilities, and faculty". Horseshit. I used to watch as the teachers would take publicity photo's of "overcrowded rooms" and not having enough desks for students. Do you know how these photo's were accomplished? Piling 3 different classes into one half vacant classroom. I was there, I saw it happen, and it wasn't just on one occasion.

Furthermore, when ever it appeared that a new budget increase would not go through, the powers-that-be threatened to pull the only thing that the school had to offer, the football team. Now, the coach was a piece of shit as were most of the players, but to speak honestly, football was the only activity in Madison that MADE the school more money than it shelled out. Now, why would a school threaten to remove a program that actually benefitted it financially? Because they knew they had the community by the balls and there was no way they would let their prescious football program go by the wayside.

Worst place ever? Not by far. Middletown/Madison has plenty of amazing humans who care deeply about one another residing in it. These are but a few quick examples of the corruption that unfortunately plague the area. One is left to wonder if the area would be in the shitty mess that it is neck deep in at the moment if greed, power, and money weren't the primary concerns of those governing. Many of us are quick to blame the economy for the conditions of our beloved hometowns, but sometimes, you have to place the blame within yourself for not rising up and pointing out the corruption right underneath our noses. I for one am tired of sitting backseat as some greedy, cash obsessed asshole helms the wheel, only to tuck and roll as you are sent off of the edge of the cliff.

The Day I Traded My Car For Schlitz Malt Liquor

In 2001, instead of concentrating in school, I spent the majority of my time working at a automotive repair shop named "Top-Notch Automotive". We mainly specialized in body work on salvage-titled cars in an attempt to fix them up and resell them. We also did other more traditional work to other people's automobiles and occasionally had a few extra cars laying around that people were looking to unload cheap.

Some of these cars were lifted directly from the island of misfit toys, we had Blazer 4X4's with the top cut off and made into a truck, we had cars that looked fine and drove but stunk of rot, we even had a small 2 door Izuzu Truck with a 350 Chevy engine. It was a real plethora of cars no one had any love for and people would unload for pennies on the dollar to us. One of these cars was a rusted out 1986 Toyota Corolla Station Wagon, and after the company obtained it for free, it was given to me as a project car.

At this time, I already had a car and had zero use for it. Instead of doing the responsible thing and fixing it up and selling it for a few hundred dollars, I opted to keep it next to the field outside the garage and do terrible things with it. The Jay's (who I previously introduced in this blog) and I would all get stoned, hop in it, and use it as a personal go-kart. We would drive it 45mph around farmers fields, through cow-pastures, in the ravine, and occasionally use it as a battering-ram on wheels to fly people's trash-cans down the street or into their mailboxes. Many a wasted night was spent in the car doing the worst things a 16 year old could imagine.

The Jay's and I were always looking for places to go and smoke bud and drink. Most night's we just went behind my dad's company or wherever I was working at the time, but that got boring quick. We tried to hang out at Fat J's house, but his parents would get mad at us for smoking and at everyone but me drinking (they allowed me to drink because as they put it "He has problems at home.") We went to Kuban's house occasionally, but as he lived in the shed of his house, it was uninsulated and freezing cold in the winter. It was about this time that Kuban began dating a girl (of who's name I won't expose or go into detail about) and he became quick friends with her stepdad.

Well, "friend" is a strong word. This guy enjoyed drinking with, making fun of, and randomly knocking the shit out of Kuban, his name was Junior. Junior was a mid-40's white trash hillbilly that lived off of disability and spent both his day's and night's drinking shitty beer in his garage while staring at motor's and pretending to be a mechanic. Every now and then he would get drunk enough and mutter "Wanna watch somin' funny fuckers?" and pour gasoline into a motor on a stand, throw a crowbar on the fly-wheel, and crank-start the motor for a few minutes as he sat back and cackled. I was always unclear on whether he did this for shits-and-giggles, or whether this was his attempt at making it sound as if he was actually making head-way on a project to his couch-bound wife

In short, Junior was a lazy and worthless piece of shit. But, he was a piece of shit with a warm garage, so we occasionally would come over and hang out. Junior liked me as I tended to kick him back when he would randomly kick me, and I would even wrestle with him when he started to push me around. I suppose that's the sort of thing he respected, not taking shit. This made it twice as funny when he would kick Kuban because after a few hours of abuse, he would eventually gather the courage to fight back. Then Junior would, as they say back home, stomp his ass into a mud-hole. When he was in a good mood, and we had gotten him plenty (and freely I might add) high, he would then allow us access to a few of his beers. His main selection of choice? Schlitz Malt Liquor tall-boys.

One night,we were standing around his atrocious smelling propane heater that he ran with diesel fuel and began talking about cars. He was currently working on a 1987 Toyota and needed a transmission. I mentioned that I may have one if the price was right, so we walked over to his driveway and checked on the car he was working on.... and it was a beat up piece of shit. It was in worse condition than the car I had been using as a go-kart for a year. I laughed at him to his face and asked him what a working transmission would be worth to him to fix up this glorious automobile that he was restoring and he offered me fifty dollars.

Now, at the time I was basically broke and had long since lost the title to the car, so that eliminated all options of my driving it legally, but fifty dollars? What a joke. So I drunkenly countered his offer with emptying out whatever he had in his beer-fridge. We went and took account of the situation and there were 18 loose tall-boys of Schlitz Malt liquor. If you haven’t had Schlitz, let me inform you that this is bargain-bin booze. This makes Mad Dog 20/20 look like a Nappa Valley wine in comparison. It reeks of skunk, tastes horrendous, but at 5.9% APV, it will fuck you up and help you make terrible life-decisions... and I had already had 3 that night. So without hesitation, we made our drunken accord, I hopped in the back of Krazy’s Blazer, and off we went to go retrieve my go-kart.

There have been many, many drunken adventures on the motorways by many, many drunken 16 year-old's, and although I would never condone drinking and driving, this was one for the record books. Take a nihilistic 16 year old me, add booze, a car that he doesn’t care about selling in one piece, and the back-roads of Madison Township? That drive back to Junior’s made that car the talk of the town and was searched for for two weeks by the local Sheriff Department. The car may or may not have made several pit stops in many lawns, fields, and gardens. Also, the car may or may not have taken out a small rickety barn on an abandoned property. I say "also" not only for legal reasons, but in part because I had to be told the next morning what had happened.

Eventually we pulled up back to Juniors where I was informed that the deal was to be renegotiated due to Junior now having drank 3 of the beers in question. So without hesitation, I threw him the keys, grabbed a trashbag, loaded in the remaining 15 cans of hellish bargain-booze, and took off again into the night to see what other hell there was to be raised. I ran into Junior a few months after that and asked him how his transmission exchange had went. In typical Junior fashion, he informed me that after they had pulled it from the car, they drunkenly dropped it off of it’s stand and cracked the case, making it completely useless to them. The remains of that car sat in his front yard until far after I graduated high-school and moved to California.

AntiCurrent Archive Vol 4: Kick A Cunts: 1604 Demos

For the fourth edition of the "AntiCurrent.com Archives", a collection of rare albums I'm releasing through this blog, I'm releasing the first band I ever recorded.  Click here to view all past AntiCurrent.com Archive Albums.

Back in 2002 The J's (See Previous Blog as to who we were) began hanging out with Nick Jones, the bassist of The Kick A Cunts, whom we knew from our high-school. 3/4 of the band was based out of the city of Middletown and we were based out of the country where Nick went to school with us. We went one day to check out their rehearsal spot which was located in the basement of the lead singer Chirs Kay's house, dubbed 1604 after the address of the house. We soon began to visit more and more (as did many people and bands in the punk scene) until we just began to go over near everyday.

1604 allowed the scene a place to watch The Kick A Cunts (a, if not the predominant band in the scene) practice, have the occasional show, and most importantly at the time, a place to drink. Many crazy nights were had there, and I can recall far less than I actually participated in. It wasn't out of place for us to run and take shelter at 1604 once or twice a month with the cops not far behind some member of the group, leaving the cop to just knock on the door for half an hour before giving up in defeat.  

The band consisted of Nick Jones on Bass, Chris Kay on vocals, J.D. Attenborough on drums, and Derek Busch on guitar. The Kick A Cunts played streetpunk with overtones of The Exploited, The Unseen, The Virus, and others. As my group of friends started hanging out there more and more, I began to hang out a lot with J.D. and he quickly became one of my best friends (and I'd eventually join his next band, The Jackoffs).

By the end of Chris moving out, which caused the end of 1604, the place had meant so much to all of us that the entirety of The J's and The Kick A Cunts (and many others in the scene) got a tattoo of the numbers "1604". Mine are located on the back of my neck.

Somewhere around this time I bought a 6 track recorder with the intention of starting my own band, and brought it over to their rehearsal spot to test it out. The idea was to take my very limited knowledge, record the band as a whole, and then track by track overdub each member. I recorded their entire set at the time with 2 mic's feeding into one channel as the master, but the loudness of the cramped basement and all of our lack of patience never saw the fruition of a full album. What it did produce is what is here, a debatably decent quality 9 song demo of the entire band playing live.

I gave this out half a decade ago to the members of the band, but having no formal audio experience yet, the recording was slightly sped up and reeked of tape hiss and terrible EQ. So when I started this Archive release through my blog, I knew one of the first things I wanted to do was to go back to the original tape, recapture it, and remaster it, releasing it here with both the optimal sound (considering the source) and decent artwork.

So without further bullshit, here is the remastered version of The Kick A Cunts demo, named after their (and in my opinion, the entire Middletown Punk scene's) birthplace: 1604

Download The Entire Album and Cover Art Here:
MP3 Zip Archive

The tracklist is:
1. Shit Face
2. Fuck Mike Jones    
3. True Cunt Like You      
4. Dirty Punx
5. Media Brigade  
6. Die My Darling    
7. Punx Not Dead
8. Spikey Hair Drunk Punx    
9. Tool Sucks

A Brief Synopsis of The J's (AKA: The Kafeteria Kids of America)

I was going to do this post on a story about my trading of a working car for 15 loose cans of Schlitz Malt Liquor at age 16, but I realized that to understand such a thing would require the knowledge of who the the key characters involved were. Matter of fact, for many of these posts, you would need to know who the key members of miscellaneous groups, bands, and gangs I've hung out with throughout the years are. Otherwise our actions might be wrongly interpreted as random, senseless acts of violence.... well many of them were, but that is not the point. This is the story of the group of friends I hung out with throughout high school, The J’s.

Kuban J and Drunk J

Back  then I always hung out with the older kids because most people in my grade weren't into music the same as I. Particularly, aggressive music. As it stood, none of the J’'s were into the same genre of music. We all came from different backgrounds. I listened to punk, Jay #1 listened to metal Jay #2 listened to experimental Residents type stuff, and JZ listened was a Juggalo. There wasn't anyone else in our bumfuck country town that listened to anything other than top-40 and new-country, so because we didn't have the luxury of hanging out with people of similar taste due to there being zero scene in Madison Township, we were all banded together as the group of weird outcasts.

In retrospect, it was kinda cool to hang out with people that didn’t listen to your particular genre of music. I introduced them to Social Distortion, they introduced me to Gwar, and before many years our tastes contained enough bleed-over that we discovered music that all of us could tolerate while riding in one anothers cars... although we all agreed that JZ was retarded as all hell  for enjoying the “stylings” of Insane Clown Posse.

Kaf Kids and The Kick A Cunts

So this is the story (or at the least a brief synopsis) of the J's. The J's consisted of myself, JZ, and two other members named Jay.... get it? The J's? Well we didn't come up with it, that was a nickname that stuck, given to us by a punk band in the neighboring scene of Middletown. They were the Kick A Cunts... and I’ll be covering them in my next blog.

Looking back, for being friends we were all cruel as shit to each other as our nicknames arose from the worst or most shameful attribute each of us had. We always joked at one another's expense and we were always picking on one member or the other.

Jay #1 was nicknamed Fat J for potentially obvious reasons, he was a big fucking dude... but he didn’t mind the nickname. Fat J was sort of the ringleader of the group, not that he was any more in charge than the rest of us, we just tended to mainly hang out at his place and ride in his car. He was the sort of guy who called you a faggot for having a conversation where you displayed any sort of emotion, but then would drive you to fight a guy and back you up during it if someone tried to jump you.

Jay #2 was nicknamed Krazy J. Krazy was good people, damn good infact. The kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back without you asking for it. He came from good stock too, his parents were solid human beings, a rarity in this life. A few years  prior to his hanging out with us, Jay had hung with the popular crowd, and it is my estimation that they used his good naturedness to hang at his amazing house and play with his amazing toys. I suspect he either grew too smart to deal with this or was for some reason ostracized from the group. He could be a bit strange some days, but then again, who of us fucking aren't. But his demeanor toward others and their reception to him is why we dubbed him Krazy J.

JZ was nicknamed Kuban J. Why? Because we were fucking cruel to each other and he obviously came from sort of hispanic descent... even though both his "mother and father" were as white as a klansman's hood. Kuban was a Juggalo... and if you don't know what that is, do a google search and prepare yourself for the weirdest sub-genre/cult of music in the fucking world. A brief synopsis of the movement would read like this: They dress up like hell-spawned clowns in black and white makeup, drink Faygo, and are proud to be the whitest of white trash. Its fucking strange to say the lease, and to them, that would be a compliment.

Me at 18

Me? Oh I was known far and wide (and would continue to be for years) as Drunk J. Why? Go fucking figure, even at 16 I was a committed (albeit functioning) alcoholic. I was so known for my alcoholism at this early age that even Fat J's parents didn't have a problem with my drinking in their house (though no one else could) because as they said it, "He's got issues". My issues? Getting kicked out of my fucking parents house every two weeks. I'd bounce back and forth between my mother and fathers house until occasionally they ganged up on me and both kicked me out simultaneously.

My solution? No problem, I'll just go live at Fat’s house. It never lasted more than a few weeks or a month, but there were many, many nights I stayed there due to a lack of other options, and much as Krazy's parents were solid humans, so were Fat J's. They fed me, allowed me to sleep on their floor, and never raised issue one with it. Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful about that, and for Fat J allowing me to do it as well. As I said, he WAS a cocksucker, but he was my cocksucker... though not literally.

We all even had a band called the Kafeteria Kids Of Amerika (noticing a trend with the K's? Not even I am sure about that). What did we do? Well not much, we all played instruments to varying degrees, but we never played one show because we didn't make any goddamn music. We were the only band that did not practice or play. There are a handful of 5-6 demos that we recorded, but they are as low-fi as it gets and no more than us screaming into a mic with a few instruments accompanying.

Our lyrics made fun of ourselves, and handicapped children (told you we were cruel). We were nicknamed the Kaf Kids and got our name from the fact that the "helpers" in our schools cafeteria were mentally handicapped.... Just being honest here, judge all you want, but in our defense, most of our songs made fun of ourselves, songs like "Roush is a Penis", "I Am A Piece Of Shit", or "JZ fucked a goat" are overly apparent of this. You can expect this to be included as a future part of my AntiCurrent.com Archive series.

So that's us. Now I can tell you stories of the mischief, mayhem, and disorder that we caused and don't have to re-explain who the fuck we were.

I Saw a UFO and Fuck You, It Was Real

There is no way to ease into this subject.... yes, I have seen a UFO and yes, they do in fact exist. No, I'm not claiming to have seen "little green men" nor am I suggesting that this was some sort of alien life-form  I AM claiming to have seen a UFO in the most traditional of senses, an "Unidentified Flying Object". Now, I lived about a 45 minute drive from Wright-Patterson Airforce Base, where they are infamous for having off-the-book experimental aircraft and I suspect that it was just that, some still-not-yet released aircraft that was in some sort of development phase.... BUT nonetheless, this happened, and it was real.

It was in late 2001, I was 16 and my buddy Brian was spending the night when we snuck out onto my roof to smoke a cigarette. Brian had just turned 18 and we were enjoying the comfort that comes with having readily-available access to cigarettes  So once my Mom fell asleep, we crawled out of the window to my room around midnight, STONE SOBER, (no beer, no weed, no anything). After about 10 minutes of quietly chain-smoking, we notice a light far off, pointing in our general direction. We began to discuss it and how strange it was to see a light of that type at midnight out in the country-side.

As it gradually got closer we realize that the light is unmistakably pointed directly at us. Not only that, but it IS actually some sort of spotlight,. We literally turned and looked behind us, and could see our shadows silhouetted onto the woods behind my house. "Must be some kind of police-helicopter" I said.... "should we put out our cigerettes?" "No" he responded, "Fuck 'em, I'm over 18 now anyway". Not thinking what that meant to myself being underage, I agreed with him immediately.

As it got closer, we could tell that it had a triangle/dart-like shape unlike anything I'd ever seen outside of the X-Files. It's bright-blue lights vividly outlined its edges, and the spotlight (unmistakeably directed at us alone) originated from the dead center of it. It was quickly approaching us and the house seemed to shake with the tremendous noise that it made, yet my mother's light in her room never turned on... as a matter of fact, no ones lights seemed to go on in the neighborhood. "How can anyone NOT hear this?" I asked myself. Brian and I turned to look at each other, his face seemed bewildered and I'm sure that my face reflected the deep fear that was coursing through my body at the moment.

By the time it approached us at 100 or so feet away, it stopped and paused in mid-air, it was still deafeningly loud, but it somehow just peacefully paused there hanging motionless in the sky. Was I about to be abducted? Dissected? One thing was for sure, I was scared shitless. I turn to Brian in an effort to see what sense he can make of the situation.... as I do, he stands up, pulls his pants down and flashes his beaming white ass at the object. I just sat there in a stupefied-awe as he began to slap his ass and scream "Come on motherfucker!" (To this day, I have not seen a weirder, more ballsy move when confronted by potential danger.)

As I watched this mad, mad scene, I again looked behind us at the tree-line in disbelief, watching the silhouette of my friend provokingly slapping his ass while screaming belligerence at the object. After about 5 seconds of this spectacle, the pilot of the vessel must have either got bored or had "bigger fish-to-fry" as it started to move again. At this point it was directly above us, and my friend finally had the good sense to pull his pants back up as he too watched it in awe. As it loomed directly above us, the whole house was shaking with the insane noise that no one but us seemed to notice. Then the main spot-light went off and suddenly all noise stopped... not metaphorically... literally. There was no noise. There was no sound of crickets. No sound coming from my trying mouth, just dead, dead silence.

Then it quickly took off, vanishing behind the woods at a speed of which I could only make out the blinding light trail of it. Ive never seen anything go so fast in my life, as if it went from 0-300 miles per hour, and as it did, sound seemed to return. As soon as I could collect my rattled thoughts, I struck him several times in the shoulder with my fist and asked him what the hell he was fucking thinking. He then informed me "If I was going to be abducted, they weren't going to take me begging on my knees". He actually said this as if presenting his ass was a better option of some sort.

So that's it. I saw every bit of that and I remember it quite vividly... every terrifying fucking second of it. Alien? Maybe, but more than likely not. More than likely it was just some secret government aircraft that is as of yet unclassified and was being tested at Wright-Patt. But honestly? I hope it was some lifeform trolling the galaxy for signs of higher learning... and as it descended for the first time to experience life on this obviously industrialized planet, it saw Brian's ass and hightailed it back home, warning it's kind to never, ever visit again.

Booze, Guns, and Bombs

There we were, surrounded and out-numbered by four incredibly pissed off Butler County Sheriff Deputies, pointing their issued guns directly at our faces. I vaguely recall asking myself how I got into this mess, just as my thoughts then drifted back to the time shortly after all of the alcohol had been imbibed. When my then-girlfriend Chelsea, her 15-year old brother Curtis, his friend Blake and I made the conscious decision to have a mid-day bonfire for no reason whatsoever in semi-wet conditions.

But this was not designed to be your standard bonfire, in fact we had a dozen or so two-liter sized metal bottles of pressurized propane for what can only be assumed was our potential camping needs, and we planned on putting them to good use.

In the beginning, we were having great fun sitting in Chelsea’s backyard, watching Curtis chuck the propane bottles into the fire, and just as their casings began to hiss, shooting them with his father’s 44-magnum and exploding them into 20 foot tall, roaring fireball clouds. Judging by the time of the polices arrival, they must have been called shortly after the fourth mammoth explosion, just as the neighbor began to become frightened that we might next turn our drunken pyromaniacal gaze toward her house.

Mere seconds after we realized that they had arrived, one cop was aiming his weapon directly at my face and shouting unintelligible obscenities, while another attempted to apprehend Curtis, who was still holding the gun in question, and was vainly attempting to duck behind a half dead pine tree. At that moment, I was convinced that this was the last time I was going to see him alive, and looking back, I believe I made the correct assumption.

It wasn’t until the cop followed him around the tree, and threatened to bring his life to an abrupt stop that Curtis thought it wise to throw the gun to the ground. He was then immediately tackled by the bulbous pig, thrown into handcuffs, and stuck into the back of the cruiser before dialogue of any type could take place.

After the short interrogation in the back of the squad car, the shortest and stubbiest cop (from here on out I’ll just refer to him as “Stubby“) then focused his undivided attention upon me. “How old are ya boy?” He shouted in my face. Before I could even finish my sentence explaining that I had just turned 18 he interrupted me with more berating. “Ya know that makes you guilty of corruption of a minor? I could take put you in jail right now, but if you just be straight with me, I won‘t take ya in.” I then informed him that I had just arrived and was ignorant of any goings on, save for the fact that I heard an incredible roar that I believed to have been coming from somewhere down the road.

It soon became obvious during my grilling that this swine had not put together the fact that between the fire and the place where the gun had ultimately landed, sat a half used package of propane bottles. “Ah“, I thought to myself, “his powers of deduction are even below my wildest expectations.” He was obviously native to this region, he actually believed that only the gun was being shot, he had no clue to the mamoth explosions.

So after “Stubby” grilled Curtis’ friend, my girlfriend, and myself once again, the officer told us that there was no need to jail Curtis, because as he said, “Juevy is full.” Despite the fact that juenenelle hall was full, they would still bring him up on charges to which would require him to make a brief court appearance. “Thank god. I thought to myself. I won’t have to explain to his parents why they have to bail him out of jail.”

Before “Stubby” shifted his attention back to Curtis who was in one of the now three squad cars in the neighbor’s driveway, he told us (including Curtis’ mother on the telephone) in no uncertain terms that they were going to continue to scare the bejesus out of him, but that he would not be arrested. So, of course after he was out the front door, we did the only natural thing- we stared out the side window of their house and cackled like school girls about the fact that Curtis was clueless, scared shitless, and in no immediate threat of being jailed by the cops that were harassing him.

It is for this reason, we took many hilarious photos of the cops interrogating him. After all, what would be better than to sit back after this with a few beers and crack up over the photos of this fine incident after the pigs had left.

We were having an amazing time watching the cops barade Curtis. They put fingers in his face, waved their hands around in the air, yelled, preached… the whole bit. Then rather abruptly, they put him back into the car.

“Their really going all out, I said, must really be giving him a scare putting him back in the car like that….pulling out the drive way like that….down the road….oh hell.” Soon enough the car was out of sight, and “Stubby” was walking back to our house. “Their taking him in” he said.

We immediately asked why they had the terrible change of heart, and he refused to respond. Having a somewhat short temper, I repeatedly asked him why such a thing would ever occur, and he danced around the question with multiple answers, all resembling- “It was up to the arresting officer”. With the same amount of skillful tact that they had used for this whole proceeding, the stubby bastard then reminded me of the “break” that they had given me and walked away.

Unfortunately, all of this occurred on a Friday, and juvenile court does not convene until Monday. Even worse yet, we later discovered that there is no bail system for minors in trouble with the law, and that poor Curtis would indeed be spending the weekend in Butler County Juvenile Hall.

Fortunately for Curtis, “Juevy was a walk in the park” as he put it. But perhaps even more fortunate for me, Chelsea’s parents immediately forgave me for not stopping a drunken 15 year old from wielding a firearm and blowing up what was essentially bombs in their backyard. Today Curtis and I still get together, and after a few rounds and shots, begin retelling the story for anyone (and usually no-one that cares) that will listen, and it always starts out the same way. “There we were, surrounded and out numbered”