we have a date with the underground, chapter 14
by Turtle Jones

This is the 14th in a series. Tales of an anonymous punk rocker. This whole series came out when Michele and the Turtle met and some stories were exchanged. This is the product of both their ideas. Turtle writes them, Michele provides some inspiration and crossed the i's and dots the t's. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we enjoy putting them together.

A Kidnapping

Late night. Really late. Like four in the morning late. Wandering around with a stack of papers. Not hand bills. Flyers.

We were in your town. We drove here. You may not wanna see us. But you were gonna god damn know about it. Late night things like this made you addicited to this kind of adrenaline. Blood racing and heart pounding. This was fun. Shirtless. Tired. Going on nothing but pure adrenaline. In a new town. We have one day. Maybe less. Maybe a few hours. Maybe even less than that. We need to do something. Grab something. Get those guns and that stack and lets go. Let's hit the college and the schools. We wait until the dead of night. Nail everything in sight. We can do this. Where is the college at? You know? You do? Well guess what? You are coming with us. Get in the van cause we are going to do this now.

The band was halfway shot so we left most of them on the floor back at the place to sleep. Loading up on methamphetamine, we grabbed a hostage who knew the town. If you didn't know, speed and adrenaline make a fucked up head. But, anyways. Our hostage knew how to get around town. He could give us instructions to get there. Where are we going? Tell us. Like a torture scene from some bad WWII movie. "You have information we need to know! The school closest to the club! Where! Where is it? Where is the club! Where is the club at?! Where! Tell us where the local dive bars are! Where! I don't care if it's four in the fucking morning. Tell us where! Now! We have ways of making you talk...." You get some seriously angry people looking at their watches and feeling like a vampire, knowing the sun will soon rise. We didn't want to know where we were or see any light unless it was lit with a streetlamp and sometimes that streetlamp was to much. Light hurts.

Let's just get this done and then go home and sleep. You need to load this up. This thing right here. You ever see one of these? This is called a tack gun. And before you ask, yes they were all stolen from painters.hataht30.jpg You know what these are. These are flyers. These are what the tack guns hit. This is why we are here. We are here to get these bills up. Tack guns help us in our goal. The reason you are here is to point us to where we need to go. Where is the club. Point and everything will be ok and we can all go back and meet our friends and band members from last night, smoke a cigarette and pass out before that evil, evil sun comes up. So it's your call. Help us and sleep soon. Or act like a whiny "I need to go to sleep" bitch and drag this out longer.

It's your call.

Be here til five, six, seven, or fucking eight.

It's your call.

Get us to where we want to go and you will get you home sooner.

God, that sounds like a threat.

Scratch my head as we head to the crappy parts of town. Basic fact. We didn't draw the cream of the crop fans. We went to the punk rock dive bars hitting up kids who shouldn't even have beeen out in the streets much less be near a bar. No sorority girls here. Which kinda sucks. Cause they always wear sweats. I always wondered about sorority girls. Why do they always wear sweats? I mean I'm not gonna sit around and say I dress the best, but when you see like 20 of them all in sweats with the name of the school or the chapter on their ass, you always have to ask yourself why can't you just go out naked? They didn't put much effort into this so why should I have to? I mean, if I get bitched at for eating food in a restaurant while being shirtless because it looks bad, why can't I point at them and say,"Hey dude, I might be shirtless, but they are all wearing sweats! What the hell is with that?!? Think about that before you toss me out of your half ass fast food joint."

I always got tossed out. Still, I think I made my point. But I'd always lose.

Group of Girls in Sweats v. Some Shirtless Dude Covered in Tattoos.

Oh yeah. I'm taking a walk. I'll leave now.

Back to the story.

We couldn't hit the nice areas of town. Well, we could've. But it wouldn't matter. They wouldn't really care. It would be just like another "Garage Sale" sign that would be ignored and left up two weeks after the sale was over. That would just be a waste of time. Just doing something for the sake of doing it has fucked me over way too many times. I'm not gonna sweat at five in the morning in front of surburbia when I can barely move and when all the residents cared about was where the new Java City is going in. So I take my time now to think about what I am doing. I've spent too much time spinning my wheels till the sun came up to think about this anymore. We were gonna hit three places. The club, which is ok for promotion. The school, which is better promotion. And then the dive bars. The best for promotion.

Drunken punk rock bars rule. You can smell the Pabst walking up. They rule. You know you need to bring out the flyers when you see one of these.

It's always too bad when you find them too late. After they are closed. Unless it was Nevada, you were kinda out of luck at two in the morning. But it happens. But, there still are hangers on. I hate to say it, but gutter punks. They hang out till the sun comes up. Hm. They have friends. What to do.....Kick 'em and stick 'em! When they roll over, push a flyer in their chest and move on. Hell if I know if it worked. All I know is kicking gutter punks is a hell of a lot fun! You like the Subhumans? You like Crass?
150px-Subhumans_Head.jpgWell take a shower then! Hearing them in a drunken stupor telling you something about the government in some slurred language that could only be understood by someone as drunk as they were. "The system is killing you and me! We need to fight the real enemy!"

Ok, stinky. Just show the flyer to your friends and we can call this a night. I don't need to know how CBS has brainwashed me while blood is dripping out of your nose because of the amount of shitty cocaine you did the night before. Slow down there, crusty. Just take the flyer to your friends.

If you have never done this, this activity is illegal in most states and in Canada. Not really illegal, but meh....it is breaking the law. Leaving them up gets you in trouble, but by that time, we were gone. Out of town. Maybe it's not in Mexico. But I was always to busy looking for a Velvis to really care in Tijuana. But, you had to do it though. Not kicking crusty punks, that was more for fun, but posting. This is something you do late at night. Usually the night before. You take a shitload of flyers, not bill size but full size and nail everything in fucking site. This is what we did. This was the way it worked. Nail everything in site. Whoever couldn't make it that night had to do it the next night. Drop off the tired crew while the others went out. Grabbed who ever could tell us where we were at. Shove them in the car. Hand them a beer. Start the engine. Tell them that they have a few choices. Learn how to use this gun and learn how to jump as high as you can and how to swing your arm in mid air and don't god damn land on me. I don't like staples in my back or bodies crashing down on me. So hit it right the first time. And don't land on me. Please.

But, there was a problem. Sometimes "Good Samaritans" would pull your flyers down. They would wake up and walk their fucking dogs in the morning. Little, old short men with an agenda? I don't know. All I know is driving down streets I know I posted the hell out of these streets three hours before. Now? No posts. What happened? Who pulled these down? It's only been three hours? It's nine in the morning? They are all gone?

It's happened too many times for me to think it was a drug induced hallucination. They were there last night. I know it.

Just another lesson learned on the road.

Sometimes you can break your ass all night to get your show promoted, but in the end, some little old man with a cane and some shitty dog can ruin a whole nights work.

7 Seconds - Red and Black

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Comments

i'm a master poster. i climb, i have no fear and i love meth. i'm a touring band's dream.

you also reminded me of a time i had to choose between buying a velvis and the same of a devil on a toilet smoking a cigarette. i only had enough cash for one or the other.

i ended up with the vevil on the pot.

thanks for a great story as always, turtle!

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Hey, check this out. This is Turtle's Velvis.

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hey dude

thats a cool velvis, ok?

he looks so happy

and velvety!

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and because it's shoulders up you can't see how fucking FAT AND GROSS he is...

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ok kali. we need to talk about something here. the velvis is cool for so many reasons. It is the pinnacle of the 70's and also a mexican tradtion of painting on velvet.

This painting means that he was someone. He has made a difference in this lifetime. He has painted The King.

He may eat churros and take you to donkey acts, but look into the eyes of elvis.

His love was in this painting.

sure its just a screen on velvet, but hell, what do you expect for 10 bucks? the fucking mona lisa?

Plus it's on velvet.

and that's neat!

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word.

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Remember, Elvis is everywhere. Soon all will become Elvis.

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Elvis is in your jeans.
He's in your cheesburgers.
Elvis is in Nutty Buddies!
Elvis is in your mom!
He's in everybody.

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