Musician, Freak, Dayjobber, Etc.

I've blown a wad of cash this past week on the old rust bucket, the off-white ghost, the 1986 Chrysler LeBaron that I call home. Let me tell you a little bit about what happened...

My fly fishing buddy and great friend Bernard Yin was in town last week, spending a couple of days off from touring with his up-and-coming Sony-signed band, Astra Heights (www.myspace.com/astraheights) (they're currently on a month-long tour opening for She Wants Revenge). Bernard has been in Houston and New York City since, like, last November, when the band's label put 'em up in Houston to work on demos, then sent them to NYC to record their debut album with none other than David Kahne (The Strokes, Sublime, The Bangles). Bernard was DYING to get out on a stream and catch some trout on a fly.

With that in mind, I arranged to have Bernard crash at Kasa Kompost last Tuesday night, with the plan being to get up early Wednesday morning and hit a local stream that is known to "go off" this time of year. The potential for LARGE trout looked VERY good.

Tuesday night, after I'd been crashed out for awhile, I awoke with severe stomach cramps -- it felt like an anvil was in my belly. Within moments, I was in the bathroom, emptying the contents of my stomach via my esophagus. Yeah, I was riding the porcelain bus, barfing my guts out, savoring the taste of fresh bile in my mouth. When the spasms subsided, I felt better, went back to sleep, and then repeated the episode a couple of hours later.

Needless to say, I was in pretty frazzled shape when the alarm clock went off at 4:30AM but, being the trooper I am, I got up, awoke Bernard (asleep on the couch), got dressed, and we hit the road.

I felt okay on the drive up, all things considered, and, with the exception of having to drive through one very deep mud-hole and cross one very deep gully, we made it to the stream by 6:00AM, apparently escaping any vehicular damage. Little did I know...

I can't divulge any details about the stream or the location; suffice to say that it is very local, not too difficult to access, and that it is quite often overlooked in favor of other waters in the area. Later this year, I will write a full, detailed story about this place, but for now, while it's "going off", I'm going to keep my lips sealed with Crazy Glue(tm) and duct tape. Just know that this place is HOT, as Paris Hilton might say.

We rigged up, streamside, giddy with excitement and anticipation; I slid into my new waders -- waterproof pants that go up to my chest, basically -- then we headed up the beautifully-flowing, crystal-clear stream, intent on catching (and releasing, of course) some fine-ass trout.

With Bernard in the lead, we made our way up the streambed, wading through some nice riffle-y water in the process. Bernard kept heading upstream, much too focused on finding trout, but I had a hunch about this particular run he had passed by, so I tied on a Woolly Bugger (an underwater fly that imitates nothing in particular but tends to entice fish into making furious strikes) and made a few downstream drifts. What you do with a Woolly Bugger, basically, is let it drift downstream from the top of a run, maybe twenty, thirty feet, depending, then strip your line back in a herky-jerky fashion, retrieving the fly in a manner that imitates a swimming creature of some sort. It has the potential to drive fish into aggressive feeding behavior, much to their disadvantage. Silly fish.

Anyway, I worked this unremarkable-looking run for a dozen or so casts, feeling progressively more nauseated with each presentation, as Bernard flogged some water a few dozen yards upstream from me. On one of my retrieves, BANG-GLO-BUMP! I had a fish on my line -- how do you do, fish? Nice to meet you!

I let out a loud "whoo-hoo!" -- streamside code for "I've got a fucking fish on dude!" -- and Bernard -- slightly bummed much to my amusement -- came back downstream to see this first fish of the day and to help me land the thing. Turned out it was a bitchin' seventeen-inch rainbow trout, in full spawning colors. Way too cool!!! Well, it was cool until I had to throw-up about a half-gallon of Gatorade(tm), anyway.

With that fish, I finally broke my "March drought". I had previously fished four times in March, and came up empty handed each time (never mind that each trip came a scant day after significant rains, which can sometimes scatter the fish and render them in "safe" mode, not really feeding at all, making fishing TOUGH). Not today buddy! I have a resolution for 2006 to catch a trout each and every month. January and February had been no-brainers -- I had dialed in another local stream and was pretty much having my way with the fish, landing a total of 22 fish in that period -- but March had kicked my ass, thoroughly. With that gorgeous seventeen-inch trout, I could now relax and enjoy the rest of my day -- I had done it. I had caught a nice fish for March and now I could go home and go back to bed for all I cared.

Bernard? He had different ideas. He hadn't fished in ages, and today, by golly cheese whiz, he was going to make the most of it. Which he soon did. It wasn't long before he, too, had his first fish of the day, and, from that moment on, we were Trout Masters. Seriously, the fishing was almost TOO easy (although, in reality, it's NEVER too easy). We spent the rest of the day working about a mile's worth of stream, me mostly napping in the soft sand, warm sunlight drenching me, and Bernard catching fish. I swear, every time I looked up from my napping, Bernard had a fish on -- some of them extremely, absurdly large.

Man...this one memory in particular just slays me....I was napping on a nice sandy spot along the stream, and was deep in blissful sleep -- dreaming, actually. I kept hearing Bernard say "Kerry, you've GOTTA fish this spot!". Eventually, after a little prodding, I gathered the strength and the courage to arise and try this Ungodly Spot that Bernard was going on and on about, almost annoyingly so. Bernard had caught and released at least a half-dozen fine-ass fish out of this incredibly compact pool behind a boulder, all on nymphs. I happened to have a #12 olive beadhead Woolly Bugger on my rig. I had Fresh Meat(tm) for the trout, so to speak.

So, I stumble up to the boulder in a complete daze and kind of lazily toss the bugger out into this most holy of locations. I only threw it out about ten feet and was just about to whip it back in and make another, farther cast, when Bernard said "No! That's fine right there dude." So, I started my strip-retrieve, and we, the both of us, watched in shock-n-awe as an amazingly large fish came out of nowhere and SLAMMED my bugger, Mike Tyson-style. Man, that fish took me downstream about 50 yards until Bernard finally got a net under the monster (THANK YOU brother!) about five minutes later. Waaaaayyy too much fun! I kept thinking "I wish I could wake up every day like this!"

And so went our day. I caught -- in between cat naps -- three fine fish (the seventeen incher was the smallest, smirk), and Bernard actually lost count of the number of fish he enticed with his beautiful hand-tied nymphs. He had had himself one hell of a day, and that was exactly what he needed. Mission accomplished.

One sad thing was that, since this was a stream you could literally drive up to, I had brought along my gas grill with plans to BBQ some sausage sandwiches with homemade tomato sauce, grilled peppers and onions, and slabs of mozzarella. I also brought along a cooler of beer and other extravagant food items like brie and goose-liver pate. Sadly, I couldn't eat or drink a THING, although I still prepared a killer lunch for my bro. Good times!

Eventually, around 3:00PM, we decided to call it a day, de-rigged, and loaded up the old Chrysler. We drove back out, over the killer gully, through the mud-hole, and back up the big-ass hills. About three miles from the main road, the car died, just like that (do they die any other way?). As I drove up a steep hill, suddenly it was as if the transmission had gone out -- I was in gear but pressing the gas pedal did nothing but rev the engine. Then the car died, utterly. Well, shit.

Fortunately, I had had the Boy Scout sense to bring along my mountain bike for just such an emergency. Still feeling like utter garbage, and getting no cell phone reception out in those forlorn hills (actually, they were quite stunningly beautiful), I decided to ride the bike to the nearest phone about three miles away and leave Bernard with the car.

I made it to the pay phone in remarkably good time (although thoroughly exhausted, as you can imagine), called good old AAA, and, within the hour, a tow truck arrived, and I led the driver to the dearly departed Chrysler stranded on the remote backroad. The cost of the tow job back to Van Nuys cost me $250, but, I tell you, it was worth every penny.

Amazingly, we arrived in Van Nuys at our originally scheduled time of 6:30PM. Bernard's lovely girlfriend came to pick him up, and I crashed out into a black-out sleep phase for the next twelve hours, awakening the following morning feeling just as sick as ever. Needless to say, I called in sick to work.

What I thought was a transmission problem was actually a broken front axle, which, along with a new starter -- damaged in the murky waters of the mud hole -- cost me about $800 to have fixed. I rented a cheap car -- check out www.699rentacar.com -- and, a few days later, had my car back in my possession. For awhile, anyway. You see, my alternater had also been damaged in the water, and the first repair shop hadn't bothered to find that particular problem, so, after I picked up the car, it ran on sheer battery power for about eight miles before the battery died, leaving me stranded in Hollywood amongst the hookers and coke whores. Sheesh, another tow job! Just today, I had the alternater replaced and now, hopefully, the car is back to being reliable. We'll see tonight when I drive to Culver City for a rehearsal with Ryo.

So that was my little car/fish adventure. Total cost? About $1,500 all told. Was it worth it? You tell me:

Friday night, my band Ultra Suede (www.myspace.com/theultrasuede) played our first “public” gig at the 2006 Glitter Awards (aka the Gay Oscars), held at the beautiful – okay, scummy – Ivar Theater (a former burlesque/strip club which was established in the early 1920’s), located in the heart of glamorous Hollywood.

Imagine, if you will, hanging out with that particularly colorful crowd, rubbing elbows (and god knows what else) with the likes of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Jake Gyllenhaal, hanging out with RuPaul, her lovely, sweet mother in tow, cracking jokes and looking beyond fabulous, talking trash with Kevin Spacey, and catching glimpses of Ellen and Portia backstage, making out (a fantasy of mine, weirdly). Imagine the pageantry, the majesty, the celebrity, the spectacle. Imagine having your band play their “hit” song -- featured in one of the films nominated for an award (even though the film hasn’t been officially released yet) – and nailing the performance, blowing away the considerable, wildly appreciative crowd. Imagine how cool that would be.

Keep imagining, baby, ‘cause the reality was something altogether else.

When Nipper and I arrived at the theater (we may be separated but we’re still friends, goddamnit), I was concerned, to put it mildly, that there were only about seventy-five people in the three-hundred-and-fifty seat room. There was no concession stand, no bar, nothing. How do you expect to keep a room full of gays hanging around (so to speak) without a freaking bar, I ask you? Christ, there were more valet attendants than patrons, or so it seemed. Backstage, confusion reigned as we tried to figure out what was going on, trying to get our stuff set up amid a flurry of drag queens and assorted whackos going about their pre-show routines. At one point, a really cute showgirl ssshhhhh’d me, saying -- foreshadowing? -- “I’m going to miss my cue.”

Cue this, bitch.

I guess you could call this a celebrity-studded event, if you consider Jim Verraros (2002 American Idol top ten finalist) a celebrity. Nipper was wearing a studded dog collar, so there you have it: celebrity, studded.

After the awards presentation started – an hour behind schedule, no less – we hung out and actually did a little TV interview for some Adelphia Cable Network thing, which was fun. However, I will never forget when the first award was handed out – I don’t remember who it was or what it was for – and hearing the emcee say “Unfortunately, so-and-so is unable to be here tonight, so on behalf of so-and-so...”

It was at that point that the theater literally emptied, as if someone had yelled “Fire”, or as if Dick Cheney had just burst into the room, shotgun in hand, shouting “Quail! QUAIL!”, shooting anything that moved, or as if some grossly overweight person had let out a really impressive fart (silently, of course, this being a predominantly gay male audience).

From that point on, the evening was a surreal, sadistic joke. There were more entertainers than entertainees, let me put it that way. Several more awards were “presented” – virtually none of the nominees were in attendance – and a few “acts’ put on their shows (I recall one “danse” troup who mixed ballet moves with break-dancing, much to my dismay and discouragement). There was even the requisite folk-y, introspective shoe-gazer boy band, a group of three young gentlemen sporting more false – or misplaced – angst than Alanis Morrisette at her zenith. Their guitar player was a dead ringer for that dude from the Goo Goo Dolls, but, unlike the GG Dolls, these guys had forgotton to write some songs. They had the nerve to perform not one, but TWO numbers, and a little part of me died, inside.

Meanwhile, the pathetic audience had shrunk to a whopping nine people. I could hear the emcee say “Hey! There were ten of you a few moments ago, who left?” -- it would’ve been funny if it weren’t so sadly true. Whoever put this thing on sure took a bath, that’s for sure.

Anyway, Ultra Suede were scheduled to “close out” the evening’s festivities with a pop-rock bang and, after an undeservedly fantastic introduction, the curtains opened and there we were, playing to all of seven, sad souls. To make matters worse, our microphones weren’t even turned on. To make matters even more worse, I knocked my mic stand over with my bass, but caught it before it hit the stage which, of course, meant I had to stop playing for a measure while I tried to wrestle the stand upright. Had it fallen, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway – the mic was off for almost the entire performance.

Eventually, the sound guy got all of our mics turned on and, in spite of all the mishaps and lameness, we actually rocked the joint. At least, that’s what the seven audience members told us after the show.

So there you have it, our grand debut into the glamorous world of Hollywood. To any gay people I might have offended with this post, know that I mean no harm and harbor no prejudice -- I loves me my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, please believe. In fact, I’m curious if this particular event was put on by actual gay people – in my experience, gays know how to throw a fucking party, and this thing was a full-blown disaster. It was probably organized by some straight dude...