Crazy Town

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Sorry about the Youtube post, it's just what came to mind. Maybe a little more imagery of your own would help flesh out what you were going for, more showing instead of telling.

I thought the imagery was adequate but I'll try and pay more attention when I'm in Crazy Town (if that's possible). Give me about a week, I'm usually there on Friday or Saturday, and of course, I rarely post on Saturday or Sunday. In the meantime people are welcome to riff on the idea (like Jenne did) as long as it doesn't involve youtube clips.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Think I have a good follow up, actually. Let's see how it comes out.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Sometimes you can see someone very clearly in Crazy Town. You know he's in there, but you're miles away. Something like this happened to me once on  a work night. It was in my apartment in Newton, and Matt, who I think is awesome outside from this story, had his friend John over. On a work night.

But whatever, we've all done that.

Anyway, they were drinking this awesome rum which they gave me a sip of, called Kraken. Well, in the apartment afterwards we had a phrase, "riding the Kraken" which was akin to saying that you're in Crazy Town. Matt and John wanted me to stay up and party with them, but, alas, I had to go to a job that I knew I only had about a month left in, and I needed to be a responsible soon to be laid off employee. So, I tried to go to sleep.

The problem was that the Mayor decided to move his office into the living room that night, and he was all about hearing lobbyists.

Gotta take a piss. On the bright side it's right across from my room. On the not so bright side, It's only slightly farther from Crazy Town. Well, a bladder doesn't take no for an answer. Ok, lets make this quick. I'm standing there, doing what a man with a full bladder does, and I have this odd sense.....

....Matt's going to bust in here in about 5... 4.... 3... turn my back to the door.... 2.... 1....

"Oh shit dude, I'm sorry. Didn't know you were in here."

I finish up and I wash my hands and come out, and John comes and gives me a hug. I just met John tonight. And he thinks I'm awesome. I just want to go to fucking bed. But there's a man in my kitchen campaigning for Mayor of Crazy Town, and Matt's his biggest supporter.

I go back to my room, and try to fall asleep, amidst the laughing and merry making. It's 3 in the morning. I get back up to eat something. John, in his campaign, has stumbled his way into the bathroom to give the electorate what they deserve. When he's done delivering his speech we here the flush.... and then a thud...

Drunk Matt and I bust in, ready to cover our eyes if we need to. And there is John, Mayor elect, lying in the bathtub, looking very confused as to how he got there. Matt and I picked him up. I got the legs, Matt got the head. Now mind you, we had two couches in the living room and we wanted to put him on the shitty one in case he puked on it as his first act as Mayor. Well, dead weight is heavy. So we got him to the good couch first and were trying to keep him awake. At some point here, sober me outside of Crazy Town seemed to have insulted the Mayor. He mumbled some sort of decree, and I asked what, he told me to come closer.... closer.... closer.... Bastard tried to bite my fucking cheek off. I'm not voting for him next time. Matt told him that wasn't a very good thing to do to his constituency, especially where I was being such a good tax payer. Now that it was about 3:30 am. On a Wednesday.

Well, we told the Mayor we were moving his office over to the less good couch, and again, drunk Matt gets the head and I get the feet. We pick him up, get him about a foot, and, well, Matt just... drops his half. We ask the Mayor if he's ok, and he grumbles. We get him to the couch, and Matt keeps him company. I bring the waste basket to the Mayor, put it by his head. That thing was cleaned out the next morning. I'll give the Mayor John one thing, he pays those fucking street sweepers.

I was so late for work the next morning. And I didn't have more than a taste. It's definitely more fun to be in Crazy Town than to watch the people inside. I never saw John again. But I heard he ran a quieter reelection campaign after I moved out. And well after we all wrote a poem about his wild ride on the Kraken.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Boyfriend had a bottle of Kraken. We used to joke about it, as it was so sweet.

Much better imagery in this one. I might have a contribution or two of my own to Crazy Town, delved from the archives. Not tonight. But soon.

[Jenne]

...I can describe the world I go into with my own Crazy Town better, too.  If I have a chance tomorrow, I'll do it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Looking forward to both additions. 

[A Villager]

I learned not to drink the water in Crazy Town last time I was there. I seemed to have a stomach bug all the next day.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I learned not to drink the water in Crazy Town last time I was there. I seemed to have a stomach bug all the next day.

[Jenne]

...I can describe the world I go into with my own Crazy Town better, too.  If I have a chance tomorrow, I'll do it.

Aw crap will have to do this later.  Busy fucking day at work.  All evidence to the contrary nothwithstanding.  LOL

[Nephew Twiddleton]

...I can describe the world I go into with my own Crazy Town better, too.  If I have a chance tomorrow, I'll do it.

Aw crap will have to do this later.  Busy fucking day at work.  All evidence to the contrary nothwithstanding.  LOL

No worries, I'm not imposing deadlines here

[navkat]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in "Crazy Town" over Mardi Gras weekend in the Quarter.

Also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOLxcrtYt6E

Even better in Française, I think.  

[Jenne]

A Typical Day in CrazyTown^TM (or how I almost got beat up by a madman last year)

WARNING:  LONG POST IS LONG

So my cousin lived in the IE.  What's the "IE" you ask?  It's the Inland Empire.  It's maverick territory where caucasian honkeyness meets cholos and desperadoes.  Down most main drags, there's at least 5 liquor stores and 5 feed stores.  The industrial building complexes belch out smoke and steam with their various microparticles into the air hour by hour, and their stench mixes with that of horse, cow and pig dung.  A brown haze settles over the area that reaches from the hills of the Orange Curtain (the now-famous "OC") to the foothills of the mountain ridge that skirts the whole damned area.  "Damned" as in condemned, mind you.  

There's little redemptive about the IE except for cheap housing and even cheaper labor.  Everything else:  looks like shit, smells like shit.

When I visited my cousin in CrazyTown^TM, IE, she was busy-busy.  Buying smokes, buying booze, buying junk food.  She's worked for Costco since she was 20, and that's a long fucking time.  I would go and live her crazy life with her for a day or two just to get away from my red-roof-by-suburbia-by-the-sea neatly pinned existence.  It was exhilirating but dangerous.  I came away exhausted and happy to be back.

So her parties were usually pretty decent—they had them in her garage—with foosball, darts, ping pong and pool.  The washer and dryer served as a makeshift hifi/media area, the freezer held our vodka and a side of beef bought from the butcher who gave them the kegerator.  My cousin's husband, we'll call him Shamus, had built a bar out of a piece of wood he got from a sculptor, and it had a cabinet full of booze.  Usually mostly whiskey, though, because Shamus is Irish and that's all he drinks besides beer.

I'd usually get to my cousin's around 3 in the afternoon, and we'd spend the late afternoon and evening readying her house for a party.  I'd usually get there early not to do her dirty work for her (there was usually SOMETHING that needed doing—she worked fulltime so there was always something to put together/do/fix/clean at her house—laundry, bathrooms, trash, dishes, floors, SOMETHING).  I got there early to SMOKE.  And drink.  And feel dirty.  My lungs needed the dirty smoke curling into them, my brain needed a vacation, and, well, this was a sort of nasty way to escape.  I mean, one minute it was 7 pm and we were putting cheese in a crockpot for nachos, and the next it was 4 am and I was butt-diving in a coffee can with Shamus.  No one has to tell me, I know that's some sick shit.

And then the truly nasty part about being there would curl into the day—her husband would come home from work/wake up from his nap/get home from their son's sports game or just walk in from doing school work (he was in school for forever, to the tune of $80K—how do you wrack that up at DeVry?).  And he'd start in on her.  She'd ask for cash for cigarettes and wad up and throw the bills at her.  He'd whine that this or that hadn't been done yet.  He'd make some comment about her friends or brother or his wife who was on their way over.  Something to spoil the good mood we had going.

This was all fine except when he did it while people were over having a good time.  He'd drunkenly tell about 20 people at once, at the top of his lungs, what a whore she was.  How when she used to walk onto Edwards Airforce Base before it closed the guards'd salute her because she was so "well known."  Truth was, they were BOTH whores before they met, but he'd forget that very conveniently at 1 am in the morning.

His whiskey soaked brain went too far one St Paddy's Day Party they had a nd  now very few will come over and witness what I've seen everytime I've visited them since.  The worst day was the day before Easter, one month after said party.  I came down early to help out, and life was BAD for my cousin.  Shamus had been taking her paycheck and not letting her have any money for bills.  He also had a printout of every text she'd made in the last month.  He thought she was having an affair with a coworker she'd given a ride to a couple of times, so this kinda took over his broken ass head.

He's an intimidating fellow—weighing about 230 and standing about 6'5".  But he's also a letch, and he'd kissed the ho of a crackhead neighbor 2 years before.  So for him to stalk my cousin and call her a cuckolding bitch was just too much for me.  So that night in April, I stood up for her against him.  It probably could have cost me my life.  

I'd watched that evening as she begged money from him for ciggaretts and dinner, and he literally threw the billsin her face.  He wasn't working, so this was HER money.  Her cash.  And I got pissed.  I'd heard the stories of him stalking her at work, paying people near the door to Costco to watch her.  How he'd called Verizon to get her phone records, and he interrupted every fucking phone call I made to her.

But watching the abuse LIVE was just too much.  And I'd just visited my grandmother for Easter—her life was ebbing away, and it had fucked me up.  She didn't know who I was anymore, and that had fucked me up even more.

So by 9 pm, I'd had enough, and I took his little paper I found in the pocket of the jeans I was laundering for her, and I told him I was throwing it away.  He got pissed and came after me.  I shut and locked the door and tore it to shreds, and then I put it in the cat box, under the shit and piss in the sand.

It was dumb.  A total dumbass thing to do.  But I did it anyway.  He busted into the room and got in my face, told me this was none of my business.  The scene only got uglier as she stepped in to stand up for ME.  I confess I enjoyed ripping him to shreds with my superior wit and really didn't think of consequences.  Till he left and hit the wall.  I mean, literally, took his fist and slammed it into the wall where the family photos hung.

I told my cousin we were outta there.  And she agreed.  He took her car keys away and threatened to call the cops on me.  I told him go right the fuck ahead—who they gonna arrest in THIS situation?  A 5'2" PTA mom who's totally sober or a crazed hugeass jolly green giant who just punched a wall?  Cold reason sunk in, and he left us alone.  

We slept out on her couch that night, and Easter, which was at her house the next morning, dawned really soon.  My cousin TRIED to pack up Shamus and send him down the road, but he refused to go.  It was a lousy holiday, and I was never so glad to leave CrazyTown^TM.  It finally got the better of me.  And instead of leaving with a helluva hangover or at least just some secondhand smoke, I left chilled and relieved.  Chilled to the bone with the knowledge my cousin was probably going to end up dead at the hands of a madman, and relieved that I was gone from there.

They're still together, and he now has a job, which has solved most of his issues.  But he's broken.  They no longer live in the IE, and after I visited them last month, I realized CrazyTown^TM is not the same.  It's got a veneer over it, like a thick lie.  Some might say it's the posher surroundings they live in—Southern Orange County is much prettier, after all.  But I think it's rather the lie that is their life.  That everything is going to be ok, eventually.  And I'm just about done with it.  I'll have to find another CrazyTown^TM, one where I can still forget about my own plasticine existence, but doesn't leave the taste of bitter ashes in my mouth.  Unless I'm smoking something to get them there.

[Jenne]

...oh and one more thing I forgot:  Shamus had (or still has?) a gun.  And yes, he used it to threaten the poor 22 year old dude my cousin gave a ride to, and yeah, he had it on him when I messed with him in April.  And it's one of those that needs a thumbprint to unlock.  And there's only one thumb that will unlock it--Shamus's righthand one.

...heh.  I am teh dumb.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Holy fuck....

[Jenne]

Oh and it was MARCH AFB, not Edwards. An typing on phone so will fix that later.