Messenger Puppet

Spot light? Check. Radar detector? Check. Mirror alligator? Check

April 1981 photography by Chevelle

You almost can't see the rust bubbles

Me And My Arrow: Plymouth Fire Arrow on eBay

We know this is a fake. Why? Because:

Me: Your ‘new’ 3 year old car is all brown and splotchy with rust.
Milquetoast: It was blue when I bought it yesterday from those clowns on Stadium Drive.

The one saving grace on this car? it could make the South Haven to Richland to South Haven run on ‘E.’ Very handy for those who spent all their gas money on beer and Hangover McMuffins.

Aaah, glorious Philmont. DC 10s, midnight bus rides, long trains to nowhere.

On the way home from Santa Fe to Chicago, hang out in the bar car. Watch as your friends (Phid, Bagman and every other horny dork at the table) hit on a little blond girl nicknamed “Ducky”

(what’s really scary? Remembering her real name and address in Thousand Oaks California all these years later.)

Anyway, take the seat next to her and do not give it up for anything. Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. Eventually Phid will go downstairs to poach drinks. Those wussie 16 year olds will tire or grow bored. Weaklings.

Finally, it’s just you and her. Amazingly, she is interested in you and it’s not even because she’s intoxicated.

Batter up.  Stuff happens.  Base hit.  You’re past 1st and rounding 2nd base (with no clue what 3rd base entails or how to get there).

Suddenly, Phid appears from the bar level. He just stands there until you notice him. He wants to “talk.” Phid is a little oblivious. and more than a little fucked up.

Thanks dude. The opportunity to ride the rails is suddenly over. Surprisingly, you do not kill him right then and there.

To complete the disastrous end to this brief romance, write stupid, clumsy letters to this girl. As a bonus, you can brag to people (who surprisingly don’t give a fuck) that you have a girlfriend in Cali, since she has never told you to get lost. People with actual experience in these sorts of things know you don’t have a girlfriend in Cali, and her mom, who read your moronic ramblings, has sent the poor girl to a convent.

not the trophy I’d hoped for…

Stupid Drunken Things Not To Do

It’s international Phid/Camaro Day. Drink up!

Phid is getting married. WTF?

By this point, you should have figured out that you will not be stealing his girl (Camaro) from him, as you silently bet yourself you could when you first met her. You were a clueless imbecile then (and she instantly recognized it- game over, dorko).

Too bad you don’t have the balls to pierce your ear, just to piss off the bride. You can congratulate yourself in 20 years.

The future couple will make the comic/tragic mistake of having an open bar, even though they know you are on the guest list. Again, WTF?!

At the reception, amuse the old people with supplemental lyrics to a popular song “Hey!Get laid, get f***ed!” (Really scream that last part. Old people are deaf.) If “Eat Shit/Fuck You” works at tigerStadium, this can’t be out of line here.

Later on, while the happy couple is in lounging in Margaritaville, go with Pod and Dribble to a lake where, once upon a time when he was 14, Phid scored a phone number from some girl you guys met. Man, that guy was good. And now he’s married? WTF?

Anyway, Dribble wants to swim, even though it’s midnight. She does not want to risk showing your horny ass any of her fun skin (for good reason), and refuses to change right there on the beach. “Honest, I can’t see anything” is somehow unbelievable when coming from undersexed drunks in the middle of an immense vodka and beer mistake.

So, go over to that nearby party store where you work , owned by Mr. and Mrs. Trailer Park – Dribble can change in the beer cooler. You know the alarm code and have a key. What could possibly go wrong?

You can work the key just fine, but something seems amiss with the alarm. Call the police station up the street and ask if your alarm is going off, because you are too drunk to hear it yourself. Then wake up Mr. Trailer Park (who lives – guess where?) and try to explain it while your brain and lips are novacained. Asshat. Then go swim. The trailer park people will be so relieved that they still have beer to sell that they will forgive you. Or at least not shoot you.

At least not today.

A little bit of Joe College, a little bit of big ass lake…

179. Meet a guy named Darrell at freshman orientation. Party with him and some other dork in his “suite” at the Downtowner ($19.99 per nite or portion thereof). Nearly kill yourself in a DUI going home, because DUI is still just a social issue, and is not really a violation of everything good and holy.

180. Months later, you should join a frat, and go to a party at Darrell’s frat. This is the first time you have seen this guy in months, so show him your frat is better than his because you (personally) can drink more than him and his brothers. Someone will tell you later whether you were right on either premise, Bluto. In the meantime, try to figure out what puke, your favorite yellow quasi-preppy sweater and the bath tub at the Lamb Chop house have in common. Yes, it’s that and not a Roman orgy with the A-O-PIs, you fool.

181. Go on a swamp run from the community college end. Drink, because alcohol makes you invulnerable to frostbite. On your way back, duck in the gym because there are GIRLS in there. (Never mind that they are all 16, and you are out of high school. Plus, it’s a church group doing a “lock-in”) Beg the chaperones to let you convert, as they are throwing your drunk asses into the snow.

182. Go to the nearby inland sea for pirate adventures like the following (most of these require abusing boy scout privileges):

• launch a 3 am raid on the nuclear plant that’s conveniently nearby (a raid being a stroll down the beach and happenstance discovery of this place). Look at it in that “WTF do we do now?” sort of way, which you have perfected for your dates. Tell the younger dudes that you commandeered the place. You will be so cool. Or arrested as a terrorists, depending on if this is the 80s or just 1984 disguised as 2004.

• Skip high school to go to the beach with Pod to pick up chicks. Discover topless hotties walking on the beach, 1/2 mile away. Instead of being stealthy, so you can get between them and their tops for a cheap thrill, parade towards them in the most obvious way possible, so that they run back to their chairs, and all you can see as you walk by is their adequately covered backsides. You are a dork.

• Take Phid to the beer store in town to buy beer with Tiny’s ID. Tiny and Phid are interchangeable for fake ID purposes, because they are both male, and within 100 lbs and 24″ of each other (barely).

• Drive all your hungover friends to the McDonald’s in town and back in Merloid’s Fury. At 100 mph. Or more. It’s hard to tell except that 85 mph speedometer will swing back towards zero. Back at camp, get the Fury stuck in the mud, 0.1 inches from a 100 year old Oak. Or three.

• Enter Penis, Lord of Scum mode after everyone else is asleep. Run around naked howling at the moon, nature boy. The one girl there (Yoko) is not drunk enough to boink you if she wakes up, but that’s a nice thought.

• If you can’t get a key for a legitimate entrance to the campsite, use Pod’s Le Mans to go 4 wheeling up the muddy, log-blocked “back way.” Bring a rope.

• Before the beginning of sophomore year in college, have an end of summer party. Phid, 8 Barrel and Birdy will show up on Saturday. Drink 100 Proof Popov and Squirt. Spend Friday night using a couple (or 17) cans of Raid to kill all the spiders in the cabin (think Harry Potter 2). The next night, sleep on a metal cot frame next to the bird girl, while your pals sleep outside. Pretend you are a rack of ribs. This counts as sleeping with this girl because your standards are REALLY flexible (sleeping in the same county would probably count).

Now playing: Thornley – So Far so Good

FIRE!!! Nothing says stupid and drunk like vast, barely controlled fires. As a male, you have an inherent ability to douse any flame, so don’t worry about it. Plus, if you did it right, you can just burn your empties (throw them in top up or they explode, so watch out).

Start one of these fires in the middle of a softball field across the road from scout camp. Unless you’re still clinging to it as a trophy for an imagined sleepover with Birdy, take a metal cot and toss it on top of the fire for a rack to cook ribs on. Woo Hoo!

The best car ever

1973 Plymouth Fury I

318 V-8

Active Terrorist Repellent System

Ebert Repellent System

Law Enforcement Scrutiny Diffusers

Other, classified enhancements…
1979 (69,000 mi.) -1983(?)

Really Stupid

1. As Cracker, karate kick the back of the toilet and break off the water inlet tube.(There IS a technical term for this thing. Once you do this, the toilet is out of commission. Plus, flooding – BONUS!!!) The mechanics are really simple:run down the hall at full speed, hoping to make the toilet before the hangover spew is in full tsunami mode. Make that turn bouncing on one foot. Except you are wearing socks. And, it’s a linoleum floor. Between that and the projectile spew that is just now cresting – you are going airborne in a gyroscopic pirouette rotor of doom move,

2. Vernors in a glass bottle looks just like a bottle of MHL. So, flaunt that ice cold bottle of soda in front of every cop you see to see if they will pull you over. (Answer: only if they haven’t met their dork quota).
3. Score some domestic dope. (a real weed, that looks like WEED). Go to a former insane asylum and smoke dat shiznit with 8. Dude, yer wasted. Or not.
4. If that doesn’t work, light a match, blow it right out and sniff some phosphors ‘n’ shit.
5. If sniffing match heads does nothing except singe nosehairs, smoke some Boy Scout kirchcord. (remove the nylon core first, nimrod). Dude, that looks just like a “j.”
6. Never try to smoke dried up lettuce wrapped in wax paper. Don’t ask.
7. Go to an engineering school demonstration at some cow-tipped Big 10 school.Your folks will think it’s career exploration. Really, you’re just going up there to drink a couple beers with 8Barrel and smoke a few….

…

…

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Tareytons. Don’t forget to steal some from your Uncle (and steal the Buds from pops before he switches to St. Ides or something. Man, that ½ a beer and the smokes still has you buzzed 3 hours later (or you’re a dork).

4. Next year, go to the same thing w/o the parents, but with 8 and Jimmy V. (of the infamous donuts in the median of I-69). First, take your life savings to the liquor store in the ghetto (Better hope that Sterno bum buys what you ask for, instead of a bottle of ripple.)

5. At career day in science class, impress the kids at your new school with how cool you are by describing your intended career as a FPERET (fermented plant experimental research engineering technician), like your uncle, “Al C. O’Holic.” (No, Kip will not be impressed, despite getting the oblique and subtle joke; apparently Becca’s sister Lindsay will take this as career advice).

6. Get loaded at Ms Camaro and Mona Lisa’s basement apartment. It’s a balmy summer night, so ease on over to your nearby frat house – you’re a wolf on the prowl. As you stumble back to the apartment for a fun night of “floor coma” don’t pay any attention to banger wannabes behind you (who are trying to tell you that your hat looks cool in a State Farm actuarial auditor kind of way (i.e., you are the dorkmaster 9000)). When you get to the stairs, three things happen: you wind up at the bottom of the stairs in a blink, there is a big ass rock right next to you, and for some reason your have no air in your lungs. Obviously, you had a run in with the Crip fashion police. It is completely impossible that you just tripped down the stairs in a stupor and landed on the rock. Use this real or presumed attack to garner sympathy from the girls and score easily. Or pass out. Your choice. Only one will work. The latter one.

7. Your Marquis is straight from Pimp My Ride.Don’t hate on those fools that park too close when you’re partying at Camaro and Mona’s. Instead, show some love. Bend their antenna like a coat hanger, so that they will not be stranded if they ever lock their keys in that POS that is 2 inches off your bumper.

8. Wait until your Dad goes through a midlife crisis where he marries some harpy named Jane.You will be a good son and show up to his wedding (unlike Milquetoast or Cracker). You and 8 will help him move. You and 8 and Phid will even visit in the dead of night. At no time will sobriety be appropriate (or possible).

9. Taco John’s Super Beef Burrito with greenie meanie sauce. Braumeister (or it’s evil skunky cousin) – 3.99 a case. Life is good.

10. Go to Liz Mango’s for a party. Her dad (VP of world domination or something at the International House of Rogaine) is there, and so is Mrs. Cleaver. Show ‘em how a beer bong works, right there in their kitchen. Parents love that

11. Reflexively give your real name when you pick up a street walker
    as a birthday present “for a friend” because you are too scared of this person to think straight. It SOUNDED like a good idea to do this at the time. Offering her rum-soaked grapes will not make her forget it. Maybe crack withdrawal syndrome will work to your advantage. Failing to bring exact change will not win any favors with this entrepreneur, either (bottles to return for a deposit and sofa change are not accepted forms of payment, and neither is American Express). Give it up, you can’t afford it, and the joke ain’t worth it. Drop her off three cities over, so you can GTF outta there before Huggy Bear starts looking for his commission on a $0 non-transaction. (Tell her you’re looking for an ATM)