#horrible meat muppet baby

[tench]

rottmnt is a gift that keeps on giving

[deanmiles13]

I WANNA’ BE ELECTED

“THE TIME I CADDIED FOR ALICE COOPER AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT!!!”

I Wanna Be Elected! Well not really. You see.... I was working at a shop that had been bought by Neil Lomax. He was a Portland native, who had graduated from P.S.U. and had a career in the NFL. The Cardinals to be specific. Which, had relocated to Phoenix Arizona in 88.

Home of J.F.A., The Meat Puppets and the great Mighty Sphincter. Oh and George Lynch, and Rob Halford. And the one and only Alice Cooper.

Now, almost everyone knows that Alice is a serious golfer.  And that’s where we are going with this story. Not really a Rock and Roll story except for when I hound him with trivia questions, later. So, back to Neil. Super sweet man and excellent human being. He was heading to play a golf event that Alice would be at, in Phoenix one weekend, and he said, “Hey Dean, going to see your buddy Vince Fernier. See, Neil actually thought his name was ALICE COOPER. I corrected him one day and he loved VINCENT. He even came back from this event with a framed Hatch Show Print poster of the event. He let us display it in the shop when he got back. I was hoping he didn’t care for it and would part with it. But alas, my reward was yet to come. He actually had another golf tournament and I sent him down with a copy of Killer.

It came back signed and I was stoked. But there would be more....

So, then Its Neil’s turn to have his big golf event “The Quarterback Shootout”. 

It’s an annual charity event he is really known for in Portland. A meet and greet with NFL legends and local celebs. The big ones I can recall are Drew Bledsoe, Marcus Allen, Charles Barkley, Jim Plunkett.

Having worked with Neil for a while, he had events and people would help and volunteer from work. The big event was this golf thing. Everyone fought over caddying for Charles Barkley. He was big tipper. The real cool thing was, this year Alice was coming up for it as a favor to Neil. No one at work was stepping up to caddy for him. What I knew about golf fit into a golf tee.

I imagined me out there fumbling around and dropping clubs to the sound of all that iron clanging and people laughing. So I was petrified, to say the least, when it was decided that I was going be Alice Cooper’s caddy. They demanded that the “residential rocker” at work, handle this rock royalty on the links.

Well the thought of me on a golf course was as foreign to my mind as being a surgeon, so I spent the morning getting ferociously stoned at home. The event was held at Heron Lakes Golf course and I lived pretty close. I got to the golf course and met up with everyone from work and just kinda waited.

Some people were already on the part where you tee off and practice. The driving range?!?!? You can see I’m out of my element here!

Anyway, we are kinda waiting for our assigned celebs to show up when a car pulls up, out comes this really petite person. All in black with their back to me. I was unable to make out who it was. They turn around and it’s Alice. People cheer and they hand me his clubs. This is the first time I have EVER held golf clubs. I used a golf bag for my drum stands to carry to many clubs, but this was the first time the had actual clubs in it. 

He signs some stuff and is escorted my way, and I’m on the driving range. The first thing I tell him after we are introduced is “Alice, there is NOTHING I can tell you today to help you in any way on the course today!!!” He smiled and said “ I think I got it.”

That put me at ease right away.

We made our way to a practice area of sorts and already, people were coming up for autographs. I got the impression I would be doing a little security work today as well.

That was no problem actually since I had done set security on movie sets and all sorts of events. And he was approached by all sorts of people. Old, young, and everything in between. The first person I remember to approach held out a cassette and said “I took your music to Vietnam with me!” Alice stopped on a dime and just talked right to the guy. Not to/at him, but TO HIM!!!.

I could tell right away that this dude was genuine. Little kids with Todd McFarlane/Alice Cooper dolls would come up and he would sign the smallest signature. Taking time with everyone he took a photo with. He had a line for everything. After the photo was snapped he would say “Now, I may not show up in the picture when you get it developed.” He was, in a word “PROFESSIONAL”

This is a guy who hung out with Harry Nelson, Keith Moon, Salvador Dali.

I mean, he was on the Muppets for cryin’ out loud!!!

I know we were paired up with Jim Plunkett and played against Drew Bledsoe and Rick Mirer. Jim was an old school NFL dude and was here to have a good time. Drew Bledsoe did some things that day that I thought really were uncool. For someone being asked to a charity event, to sign autographs and take pictures, he was acting like he was being put out. It was interrupting his game. That was the whole point of this thing. You could saddle up next to the celebs and say hi and a bit more. It’s what they paid for, quite frankly. He was taking his golf game a little too serious if you ask me. Jim and Alice had wagers going as to who could drive the ball the farthest and stuff like that. Alice was a petite guy and Jim was a bigger dude.

Alice won the drive contest. The main thing that I took a way that day was answers to a load of questions that I had. Some prepared and most just off the top of my head.

As I relate some of these, just realize, that I’m paraphrasing what was said. He was so totally open and honest with me, it was quite staggering to be honest. I would feel horrible if anything was misinterpreted. 

I started by asking about Johnny Rotten doing the liner notes on a Rhino Box set and he said “Johnny hates EVERYONE.... EVERYONE! Except ME! I can’t believe it. 

I guess him and Sid used to play Dead Babies on acoustic guitars to make pocket money.” 

I was like, Oh, it’s on! We proceeded to hole one, and I started chronologically with his career and headed back to Detroit. I asked about Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, MC5 and Iggy. He said “I’ll open for anyone! The Stones! The Who! But not Iggy! He just wipes the crowd out. Uses them up and wrings em’ out, and I can’t come on after that.”

I asked about his song “Only Women Bleed” and he said that was a number one multiple times, multiple countries, for multiple people.Tina Turner had a hit with it and he was proud of that.

I asked if he was a WHO guy or a STONES guy. He said “Listen to the opening of Elected.” DUH!!!

There were some interesting crowd interactions. From, two young dudes that wanted to have him sign a joint they had, to the McFarlane dolls and everything else. I told kids with the joint, there was no way... Then I mentioning it to Alice and he said “Yeah, it’s like right when you quit smoking weed and your friend comes over with 8 ounces and says “Hey, I’m leaving town for a few months, can you hold onto this for me?!?!” 

This one women came up to us and was yelling to get his attention. Frankly, I was a little sketched about having to “deal” with her. We go over, she says “Can you sign something for me?” He says “Of course, what do you want signed?” She starts pulling scarp pieces of paper out of her pocket and I mean like a match book, a receipt, and just whatever. So he signs whatever it was and we walked away. He is being real silent, like in his head and he said “Man, that was 40 miles of rough road!!! I often wonder what I would be like if I had kept drinking and what not ?!?!”

That was probably one of the most profound things he said that day. I asked him when he quit drinking and he said, when his daughter was born. I too had recently quit with drinking and found this to be sort of a bonding moment for us. I remember that I had brought some items to have him sign. A postcard and an album etc. But the cool thing was I asked him at the last minute if I could have the ball he had used for the whole game. That was awesome, and I still have THAT. 

I had all the stuff I wanted to asked and had kinda prepared the questions in my head, but it was the interaction with his fans that was really neat to see. The two young women who came up and started to bow and say “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy.” I had kind of spaced the whole Waynes World thing, and when I told him “Oh man, I kinda forgot about that!” He replied “ I didn’t!!”

I asked if he gets that from people all the time, seeing as it was a whole new generation of exposure sorta thing. He said “No! It’s just that, when you get a movie script and you just see your scene, it’s not like you get to see the whole movie. It’s just me, backstage, Mila-wa-kay- and then we split.”

I’m still not really picking up what he’s putting down... “So when they asked us what we wanted, we just took my day fee for the movie and didn’t worry about any “back end” so to speak. So what happens? The movie goes on to make 18 million opening weekend.” He was not kidding... you could see that this one hurt.

I had mentioned a quote from him in Rolling Stone, I had recently read in which he commented on Marylin Manson. He said “Yeah... Real original. Call your self a girl name and put makeup on. Where have I heard that one before?”

Not in a rude or snide way, but in a kinda joking way. With a smile... I guess that’s what it all came down to that day. Here was a man who had done it all, seen it all, drank it all, and snorted it all. And in the end, he was alive, enjoying something that kept him sane (golf). Now, he’s out the other side, meeting people, saying HELLO - HOORAY!!! Let the show begin!!!

He was so at ease with it all and it was a true pleasure to watch him “work”. When anyone ask, what was he like?

I just say... “In a word - KILLER”

He was a man who seemed very content where he was. I mean if you weathered a storm like he did and lived to crawl from the shipwreck and right yourself for a second, third career?!?!? 

Man... that’s it!!!  That’s a success.

Telephone is ringing......

[tench]

I still don't know if I can let myself get attach to the horrible meat muppet baby or it will be eaten by the end of the season... By which i mean i realise that they probably feed what was left after the fight to human kids already anyway....

(Also after watching the whole play through of Soma not so long ago, i really have some not so nice thoughts about the fish head fused with grinded meat forming semi-sentient being. "How human is human enough", Simon.)

But also i really want to draw Sunita babysitting the damn thing just because slime shenanigans.