De Ja Voo Doo

So first off I spend the night drivng around with Yorey, my insane friend from when I was teenager. I met Yorey about 18 years ago when he almost ran me and my skateboard over in his Porsche. He slammed on his brakes and I swear if I hadn't bent my knees the bumper would have made contact with them. This little gnome looking guy with died black hair cut super short save for three little spike of varrying lenghth sticking up in the front stick he freaky little head out of the white Porsche.

"Oh fuck, sorry dude." he said in high, slightly southern voice. "You wanna maybe smoke some pot?"

Well, I certainly did. The spot where he almost killed me was right in front of his tiny little apartment. His pad was wall to wall art, canvases stacked everywhere. The guy painted up a storm. He had some wild mixed media pieces that just cracked me up. A picture of a chair pasted to the wall, with a dead bee hanging from a thread above it. Pasted in the upper left corner an article about increasing pesticides found in the air in Sacamento. He flicked the bee just enough to get it swinging and told me, "Oh fuck, looks like the little guy took his own life."

I became friends with Yorey, much to my parent's dismay. I was sixteen and he was somewhere past forty. My parents were right to be concerned. Yorey's house gave me access to guns, drugs, some really bizarre porn. He tried to get with all of my female friends, who I of course brought around. Having an older insane artist friend was a great and important piece of the image I was cultivating.

Yorey had a Master's degree and at one time he had had really good credit. He bought his car with cash while paying for all kinds of things that couldn't be liquidated using his credit cards. When he ran up the maximum debt he claimed bancruptcy. He was very proud of scraping the ice off his porsche using his food stamps card, feeling like he'd pulled the ultimate heist. We all thought it was pretty cool too. I guess we figured he had a back up plan, a phase two. But no. That was it. Since then he's lost the car, when he couldn't afford it's up keep, and he still lives in a tiny apartment with tons of paintings in expensive frames. He has a new crap job every few months. His plan sort of sucked.

So anyway, I frequent the place where he currently makes sandwiches. When Allen at The Horse Cow invited me to drive the shuttle for his last party I said why sure. I'd be driving until three am or later so I stocked up on eats, including a nice fat sandwich.

"Hey Yorey, gimme some extra avacado, and hey, you want to go to a party tonight? Cool, what time should I pick you up?"

Yorey decided to hang out in the van with me all night. It was great. We were picking up lots of fun and interesting people including quite a number of very attractive girls. In between runs we'd go into the party, eat some food, and I'd take skate breaks. We had a nice time.

I dropped Yorey off just before 3 am. "Oh fuck dude, I got something for you. You wanna come up?" I went up to his apartment, and he hands me a drawing I'd done just 2 days after my 18th birthday. I'd attempted in a dunken stupor to attach it to his cieling. It still has the safety pin and screw-hook that I used hanging from it's corners. The picture says "control" and the word forms the top half of a grinning face. Pretty neat thing to get back after so long.

Yorey quit drinking a few weeks back and I'm trying to help him show his art to someone other than me for once. It was great to hang out with him again. And he makes a pretty good sandwich.

The other weird flash back was going to see Ministry. The last time I saw them was half my life ago and I spent the night in the SF Greyhound station. I'll write about that in the next couple of days.