Love All the People (New Edition) Page 5

  ‘Goddamn right, it’s for drugs, lady. And if I don’t get ’em I’m gonna cut your fucking heart out and eat it in front of ya.’

  ‘Well, you put it that way . . . ding!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  See, I feel very sorry for these guys, cos I was an alcoholic. I quit drinking two years ago. I coulda been a bum. Anybody could be a bum. All it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends, man. You are well . . . oh, your buddys’ll see you off, goddamn it. They’ll christen your dumpster for you.

  Embarrassing drinker I was. I’d get pulled over the by the cops, I’d be so drunk, I’d be out dancin’ to their lights, thinkin’ I’d made it to another club. Turn the music up! Hey, what is this, a leather bar? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I’m not into this, you faggots. Oh, shit! You guys go all out.

  Man, I don’t even wanna chance that, too. The attitudes change . . . little too serious. Remember ten years ago if you got pulled over and you’d been drinking, a cop came up to your car:

  ‘Son, you been drinking?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oop, sorry to bother ya. Hope I didn’t bring your buzz down any. All right, get on outa here and have a good time. Bye-bye. Back in the car, Tommy, it’s just a drunk guy behind the wheel of an automobile. Come on.’

  Been on what I call my Flying Saucer Tour, which means, like flying saucers, I too have been appearing in small Southern towns . . . in front of handfuls of hillbillies lately, and ah . . . been doubting my own existence. I’ve noticed a certain anti-intellectualism in this country. Have you noticed that? Ever since around 1980,6 coincidentally enough. Last week I was in Nashville, Tennessee. After the show I went to a waffle house. I’m not proud of it, but I was hungry . . . and I’m sitting there, and I’m eating, and I’m reading a book, right? I’m alone, I don’t know anybody, I’m eating, and I’m reading a book. Fine. Right? Waitress comes over to me: (chewing) ‘What you readin’ for?’ I said, ‘Wow, I’ve never been asked that. Goddang it, you stumped me. Not what am I reading, but what am I reading for? I guess I read for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones . . . is so I don’t end up being a fucking waffle waitress. Yeah, that’d have to be pretty high on the list.’ Then this trucker in the next booth gets up, stands over me and goes, ‘Weell, looks like we got ourselves a reader.’ What the fuck’s going on here? It’s like I walked into a clan rally in a Boy George costume or something, you know? This is a book. I read. Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here? There, I said it. I feel better.

  I’m telling you, man. Tennessee. You know, in many parts of our troubled world, people are yelling, ‘Revolution. Revolution.’ In Tennessee they’re yelling, ‘Evolution . . . We want our thumbs!’ The thing is, they see people with thumbs on TV all day. Boy, that’s gotta drive them hog-wild, huh? (makes chimp noise) It’s a thumb, goddamn it. I can’t say enough about the thumb. I’m tellin’ you, man. There are some serious pockets of humanity out there. Go to some of these truck-stops the middle of nowhere, order a coffee. The guy behind the counter goes:

  ‘You want the 32 ounce or the large?’

  ‘Ah, shit, how big is that large?’

  ‘You gonna want pull yer car round back. I’m gonna start the pump.’

  Boy, that sounds like a lot of coffee, man. I don’t know if I want to be awake that long in Tennessee, you know? They’re nice people. They are. What would you describe them as? Rural? Backwoods? Hicks? After the show, one of them came up me real excited. ‘Man, you’re great. You’re cracking me up. I was about to spit.’ ‘Sorry.’ He said, ‘No, I loved it. I’d like you to meet my wife and sister.’ And there was one girl standing there . . . not a thumb between ’em.

  So . . . ‘Smokers, thank you. Thank you, guys. Just smoke away, huh? Don’t worry about us.’ Hokay. How many smokers do we have here tonight? Smokers? (a few claps from audience) Oh boy, listen to that energy they can pump out at will, huh? (wheezy coughs by Bill) Thank you, guys. That was a valiant effort on your parts. Listen to this: how many non-smokers do we have here tonight? Non-smokers? (lots of audience applause) Hear that? Bunch of whining little maggots, aren’t they? Aren’t they? Obnoxious, self-righteous slugs. I’d quit smoking if I didn’t think I’d become one of them. The worst kind of non-smoker’s the one where you’re smoking and they just walk up to you and (coughs affectedly). I always say, ‘Shoot. You’re lucky you don’t smoke. That’s a hell of a cough, dude. I smoke all day and don’t cough like that. Maybe you were conceived with a weak sperm. Maybe your dad was jacking off and your mom sat on it at the last second.’ Did I over-react? Didn’t, did I? I think that’s kinda cruel: I’m smoking and you come up coughing at me. Jesus! You go up to crippled people dancin’, too, you fucks? ‘Well, hey Mr Wheelchair, what’s your problem? Come on, Ironside. Race ya.’ You fucking sadist. I’ll smoke, I’ll cough, I’ll get the tumours, I’ll die. Deal? Thank you, America. People say, ‘Well, it’s not that, i-i-i-i-it’s the secondary smoke. It’s not just the smoke that you smoke but the smoke that comes out of you. That’s called secondary smoke. And that’s not good smoke, just cos it came out of you.’ Shut the fuck up, right now. Goddamn it, if I don’t smoke there’s gonna be secondary bullets coming your way. D’you understand this? I’m fuckin’ tense! All right? Thank you! I been on a fucking flying saucer tour for three months, OK? Thank you. Hope you don’t mind if I just enjoy my cig.

  I love when people in New York City complain about your smoking. Isn’t that great? Yeah. These people are standing ankle-deep in dog links, straddling a dead guy, you know. Apparently my cigarette’s fucking up the delicate balance of nature here. ‘Oh, this is bothering you? Ohhhh. I’m sorry. Let me go over here to this pile of bum dung and put this out. There we go. Restore New York to that pristine state we know it exists in . . . if it weren’t for my godawful cigarette.’ Jesus. How much do you smoke a day, dude?

  Man in audience: Pack an’ a half.

  Bill: Pack an’ a half? You little puss. Get a little— why don’t you just put a dress on and swish around for us. (singing) ‘Pack an’ a half. I smoke a pack an’ a half.’ Makes me ill. I go through two lighters a day, dude. Yeah. And I’m startin’ to feel it. Eurgh, shit. But I do have this big fear, right? Doing smoking jokes in my act? Showin’ up five years from now, going (in monotone), ‘Good evening everybody. Remember me? Y’all were right. Smoking’s bad.’ Ewwwww. You ever seen that? Does that . . . let me tell you something: if you’re smoking out of a hole in your neck . . . I’d think about quittin’. I would. And that’s just me, you know. See, once again I’m not being stringent with the rule of thumb. See, what’s cool is every pack has a different Surgeon-General’s warning. Isn’t that great? Mine say: ‘Warning: Smoking may cause foetal injury or premature birth’. Fuck it! Ha ha ha! Found my brand. Just don’t get the ones that say ‘lung cancer’, you know. Shop around, man. ‘Yeah, give me a carton of low birth weights. What the fuck do I care?’

  ‘Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide.’ Well, so does my car and it still fucking runs, so. Ah, shit. See, I smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, you know. Can I smoke? Can I? Like a fucking fiend I can.

  The fact that we live in a world where John Lennon was murdered, yet Barry Manilow conTINues to put out fucking albums. Goddamn it. If you’re gonna kill somebody, have some fucking taste. I’ll drive you to Kenny Rogers’ house, all right? Get in the car, I know where Wham! lives. (singing) ‘You gotta have faith, da da da da. (makes sound of two gunshots) No, George, you’ve gotta have talent, dude. (three gunshots). New rule. And you can shave that two-day growth of beard off, buddy. Cos you’re fooling no one, you big girl. (gunshot) For the record . . . and let’s not mince words, because our very lives depend only upon truth: George Michael is . . . a . . . big . . . girl. If you ladies like him, you’re dykes. End . . . of . . . fucking . . . story. This is not a matter of opinion, this is not a matter of taste, or perception. I can prove this on a home computer. These aren’t idle thoughts.
The guy’s such a big girl. Have you seen this? He’s hawkin’ Diet Cokes now. Ewwww. Diet Coke. Even Madonna fucking hawked real Coke. You little puss. ‘Diet Coke. I’m George Michael. I drink Diet Coke so my heinie doesn’t get too big. We don’t like big heinies, do we girls? Hee hee hee. Diet Coke.’ Why don’t you just put the fucking skirt on and get it over with, that’s what I say.

  These are our like our music representatives. These are our rock stars. What kind of fucking Reagan wet dream is this world, man? Rock stars hawking Diet Cokes! What real rock star would do something like that, you know?

  ‘It’s Keith Moon for Snickers!’

  ‘Sometimes I’m doing a drum solo, and I haven’t eaten for like three fucking weeks. I eat a Snickerrrrrssssssss.’

  That’s a rock star.

  ‘It’s John Bonham for Certs.’

  ‘Threw up blood in me sleep last night. I got a date with two thirteen-year-old twins. I suck a Certs.’

  That’s a rock star. ‘Diet Coke!’ Boy, I tell ya, if money had a dick, George Michael’s would be a flamin’ faggot. ‘Oh, Diet Coke? Ohhhhhhhh, oh boy, ohhhh. Mm-mmm, I love that Diet Coke, ohhhhhhhhh, god damn that, oh god damn that Diet Coke. Ohhhhhh! Drink it every day! Ohhhhhhh.’ He’s a demon . . . set loose on the earth to lower the standards. End . . . of fucking story. Everyone, though. Everyone is hawking products. That’s like the highest thing you can achieve now, isn’t it? Become some barker. Sinatra hawks beer; he doesn’t have enough money, does he? No. Nothing’s sacred to these fucks, man. I’m waitin’ to see:

  ‘It’s Jesus for Miller.’

  ‘I was crucified, dead for three days, resurrected, and waited 2,000 years to return to earth. It’s Miller time.’

  ‘You know, Jesus, it doesn’t get better’n this.’

  You don’t see the imminent danger, do you? You’re staring at me like, ‘Bill, they’re just musicians, and they’re, you know, and they’re just doing their thing, and’ NO! They are DEMONS SET LOOSE ON THE EARTH TO LOWER THE STANDARDS FOR THE PERFECT AND HOLY CHILDREN OF GOD! Which is what we are. Make no mistake about it. What’s happened to us? After eight years of Ronald Reagan and Yuppies we live on like the third mall from the sun now, you know? Come on, man. Is it fuckin’ me? Debbie Gibson7 had the number one album in this country, y’all. Now, if this doesn’t make your blood fucking curdle . . . I mean, who buys that shit, you know? Is there that much babysitting money being passed around right now? Have you seen that little mall creature at work? (singing) ‘Shake your love.’ What love are you shaking, Debbie? You’re twelve. You got no titties . . . you look like Johnboy and your music SUCKS. Go back to the mall that spawned you. This is not a matter of perception, this is not a matter of taste, I can prove this on an Etch-A-Sketch. Go babysit Tiffany8 That’s what you should be doing. Spank her little bottom till it’s bright red, then lick it all over. There’s a video I’ll fuckin’ watch of yours. Wouldn’t you love to see those two little hairless peach fishes locked in a sixty-nine?

  ‘Oh, Debbie.’

  ‘Oh, Tiffany.’

  ‘Oh, baby what have we been waitin’ for, honey?’

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, Lord.’

  For God’s sake, keep their mouths busy so they can’t sing. Anything. Number one album. Sorry. I find that . . . hard to believe, but . . . then again Reagan was elected twice. Ha ha ha ha ha! I should be used to disappointment, I guess. ‘Get over it, Bill!’

  Man, Rick Astley?9 Have you seen that little incubus at work? (singing) ‘Don’t ever wanna make you cry. Never wanna break your heart.’ Ha ha ha, I wouldn’t worry about it without a dick, Rick. You got a corn-nut, you got a clit, you’re not even a guy. You’re an Aids germ that got off a slide. They’re putting music to Aids germs, putting a drum machine behind ’em, and Ted Turner’s colorizing them, goddamn it. These aren’t even really people. It’s a CIA plot to make you think malls are good. It’s all in Omni10 next month.

  You’re still staring at me. You just don’t feel the fire cos you just been anaesthetized, right? You just, ‘Come on, Bill. Debbie Gibson, she’s just a little girl.’ NO! ‘You know Debbie Gibson writes all her own songs?’ No! Fucking just pull me up a chair. ‘Yeah, she writes all her own songs about her own real-life experiences.’ Yeah, what’s her next one called? ‘Mom, Why Am I Bleeding?’ When did we start listening to pre-pubescent white girls? I musta missed that meeting. We have on our fingertips the greatest minds of all time, the knowledge and history of the greatest thinkers of ALL FUCKING TIME, but no, what’s that little white girl sayin’? Let’s go put Debbie Gibson’s thoughts on a fucking compact disc so they’ll never be destroyed. Is it me? I mean, goddamn it, I remember I think – and maybe I’m romanticizing the past – but I remember when music had a conscience, and music had soul, and music had balls, man. Does anybody remember that at all? Jimi Hendrix? Any question about that guy? (singing) ‘Stand by the mountain/ Chop it down with the edge of my ha-ay-and.’ (Boom . . . Whoo) This guy had a dick . . . like an anaconda . . . blowing in the wind, man. (singing) ‘Don’t ever wanna make you cry, never wanna break your heart, Diet Co-o-oke for ever.’ ’SCUSE ME! I would love to have seen the Jimi Hendrix/Debbie Gibson album. (laughs) I bet he could shake her love right in half. Boozch! (imitates opening to ‘Foxy Lady’)

  (singing) ‘Foxy!’

  (screaming) ‘MUMMY!’

  (singing) ‘Foxy lady!’

  (screaming) ‘MUMMY!’

  ‘Debbie, you wanted to be a rock star, honey, remember? You gotta hang with the big boys, sweetie.’

  ‘I wanna go back to the mall! I suck! I suck! Get him away! HE’S GOT THE BIGGEST DICK!’

  (Boom crash) (singing) ‘Voodoo Chile, baby!’

  Just a dick like a buzz-saw. (makes buzz-saw noise) Cut her into little mall cordwood, man. Save a pair of bloody panties for George Michael to slip on. Boom! He’s a woman; she’s dead. Jimi’s still fucking jamming, goddamn it.

  I don’t do drugs . . . any more. Ha ha ha ha ha! Haven’t done drugs . . . today. Oh, god. Used to do lots of drugs. Not ashamed of it. You know. Had no luck with drugs. One time me and three friends dropped acid, drove round in my dad’s car. He has one of those talking cars. We’re tripping, and the car goes, ‘The door is ajar.’ We pulled over, thought about that for twelve hours, man.

  ‘How can a door be a jar?’

  ‘Well, why would they put a jar on a car?’

  ‘Oh man, the freeway’s melting.’

  ‘Put it in the jar.’

  Hours. (makes sound of crickets chirruping) ‘But if it’s a jar . . .’ (crickets chirruping) ‘. . . for what kind of car?’ (dog howls)

  Got pulled over tripping once, too. Whoo, there’s a dream come true. I’ll match that with any drunk’s story you’ve ever heard. Man, a cop was tapping on this window. We’re staring at him in this mirror over here.

  ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘Ambush!’

  ‘Big one and a little one. Twins.’

  George Bush11 says we are losing the war on drugs. You know what that implies? There’s a war being fought, and people on drugs are winning it. Ha ha ha ha! What does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative people on that side. They’re winning a war, and they’re fucked up! Ha ha ha! Are we winning? It’s like, they fight the war on drugs like the colonials fought the Indians, right? They’re walking in a straight line and red coats; drug users are like Indians. They’re up in the trees, going, (inhales smoke) ‘Are they fighting us? (exhales smoke) We’re not even in that fucking field. (inhales smoke) I guess we’re winning by default. Ha ha! No combat; we’re ahead.’ (inhales smoke) Drugs– you know, war on drugs. Hey, I don’t get it, because alcohol and cigarettes are drugs, so the war is definitely taking a ceasefire here, isn’t it? Yeah. Alcohol and cigarettes kill more people than crack, coke and heroin . . . combined.

  You never see a positive drugs story on the news, do ya? No. Always negative. News is supposed to be objective, isn’t it? Supposed to be? The news? But
every drugs story is negative? Well, hold it. I’ve had some killer times on drugs. I’m not promotin’ it, but I’m not denyin’ it. Let’s hear the whole story. Same LSD story every time: ‘Young man on acid, thought he could fly, jumped out of a building. What a tragedy.’ What a dick! Don’t go blaming acid on this guy. If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he take off from the ground first to check it out? He’s an idiot. He’s dead. Good. You mean there’s one less doorknob in the world? Whoo! What a tragedy! ‘Why so down, Bill?’ We’re missing a moron. Ha ha ha ha ha. We’re missing a moron.

  I’d like to see a positive LSD story. Would that be newsworthy? Just once? Hear what it’s all about?

  ‘Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.’

  ‘Wow! Did you see the news?’

  You know it’s not gonna— it’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom is what it is, OK? Keep that in mind at all times. Thank you. They lump all drugs together. It’s not gonna work. Pot and crack? Hey, hey, hey, dude. Don’t put pot in the drug category. It’s an ’erb, man. Like tea. Not only do I think pot should be legalized, I think it should be mandatory. Think about it. You get in traffic behind somebody:

  (makes sound of truck horn)

  ‘Shut up and smoke that. It’s the law.’

  ‘Oh sorry, I was taking life seriously. Ha ha ha ha . . . oh, man, who’s hungry?’