Chapter 17
(Johnny)
“All right, what’s the theme for tonight?” I asked as I flopped down beside Rebel on one of the two couches lining each side of our tour bus.
For the first time since Rocktoberfest, it was just me, my band brothers, and a mound of snacks ranging from chicken wings to Ho-Hos.
“Cars,” Dash replied.
“Fast cars, and not the cartoon type this time,” Rebel declared as he slung an arm across my shoulders as we settled in.
“Who get’s first pick tonight?” Dash asked.
“I do,” Ozzy declared from the kitchenette where he was filling the last of the platters. “Cue up Gone in 60 Seconds .”
“The original or the remake?” Dash asked.
“There’s a remake? Why? It’s not even that old,” I grumbled, confused and frustrated with Hollywood’s inability to be original while turning to look at Ozzy, who just rolled his eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh.
“The Nicolas Cage one is the remake, Johnny,” Ozzy groaned. “Sort of, anyway, it’s more like one of those loose interpretation things that didn’t even bother to try to be original with the name.”
“So, my question still stands,” Dash remarked. “Which version am I looking for?”
“The one with the best car chase,” Rebel declared.
“Modern one for the win,” Dash said, grinning.
“Original has a forty-minute car chase,” Ozzy offered as he set the platter on the table and dropped on the cushion beside Dash.
“Wait, that’s what, half a movie?” Dash said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s bullshit. No one is gonna waste half a film on just a chase.”
“Pull it up and let’s see.”
“This had better not be boring or your name is going back in the book,” Rebel grumbled.
“Why do you even bother taking him out of there?” I asked.
“Because every now and then he earns it,” Rebel said.
“And then earns his way right back in again, too,” Dash said, pulling the little notebook from between the cushion and the arm of the couch and waving it at them.
“One of these days you are going to stuff that thing in there and the couch gremlins will refuse to give it back.”
“Hasn’t happened yet,” Dash remarked, and made a big show of lightly penciling Ozzy’s name onto a page already riddled with eraser marks.
“Doesn’t mean it won’t,” Rebel and I declared before dissolving into a fit of laughter, sprawling against each other in the process.
“Hey, we haven’t even hit play yet,” Ozzy complained. “How’s my name already back in the notebook?”
“Precedence.”
“Just give it a chance.”
“Fine, but your name stays until it’s over,” Dash replied before tucking it back in its spot.
From the opening scene, I could tell that it was going to be one of those zone out movies that I was probably not gonna get through without falling asleep. Those old school muscle cars were sure beautiful, though. As I leaned against Rebel’s arm and the arm of the couch, my eyes sought the coffee table to be certain that I’d brought my notebook and sketchbook out and enough pens and pencils that I wouldn’t have to get up and go look for one before the end of the night.
Good. I was all set.
Movie marathons were one of the band’s favorite ways of passing time on a long stretch of highway, especially on a dark, rainy stretch that meant the day would drag on longer. We’d pulled the shades all the way down and now Ozzy hit the switch for the lights while Dash hit play on the movie .
Unlike some bands we knew, who only spent time together in the studio and up on stage, these guys were my family as much as the people back home. Hanging out was just something that came naturally to us. We picked a theme and took turns picking the movies, giving each other shit along the way and often producing some stunning lyrics written to the light from the screen.
Every one of us had come prepared with something to jot down notes in, and it never came as a shock to any of us to be passed something to read and even add to in the middle of a movie, it was just the way we worked. When Rebel started playing with my hair, there was nothing intimate about it. The soft strands were a touchstone for him. He did it to all of us. It had become soothing for me, too. There were times when I put his hand on my head, knowing he’d take the hint and start playing with my hair the moment he touched it.
Oh holy shit, this movie was going to be a long one. The colors were everything that I’d come to expect from a movie of that era. Everything seventies had a muted, almost washed-out aesthetic, even in the disco movies that Ozzy tended to slip in whenever one remotely fit our movie night themes. It was his favorite era, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, because we’d all been born in the nineties.
“This chase scene better be amazing,” Dash grumbled, startling me.
Flailing, I blinked and sat up a little, brushed the hair from my eyes and nudged Rebel in the ribs with my elbow when he snored in my ear.
“I don’t care if there is a canyon jump and a flaming twenty-seven car crash,” I declared because holy shit, this movie was boring and outdated as well. “His name stays in the book for this one.”
“Seriously,” Rebel grumbled. “Is it over yet?”
“We haven’t even gotten to this so-called amazing car race,” Dash complained.
“Wake me when we do,” Rebel groaned and draped his forearm over his eyes.
“You guys have no appreciation for the classics,” Ozzy huffed.
“Not when classic is just the socially acceptable term for old,” Dash said. “And let’s face it, Ozzy, not everything old ages with the grace and sophistication to categorize it as classic.”
“More like classless, at least for a lot of it,” Rebel grumbled. “I hear the term Hollywood classic and my brain immediately starts thinking Hollywood fails.”
“What do you mean, fails?” Ozzy protested. “Explosions and seventy-two car crashes are awesome, but do you really think they’ll stand the test of time?”
“If by stand the test of time you mean will we look back at them and see diverse casts and better representation in feature films, yeah, sure, I guess. We’ve still got a ways to go, but maybe we’d be further if old Hollywood hadn’t kickstarted the tradition of either whitewashing everything or filling their films with some of the most offensive, stereotypical characters the world will ever have the misfortune of watching.”
Oh yeah, movie marathons got serious, too. Lots of healthy discourse to go along with those movies, the conversations fueling some of those lyrics the same as the images on the screen.
“I don’t care who stars in what as long as it’s good and original,” Ozzy declared. “I get that today’s movies have amazing CGI and special effects, but there is something to be said for realism and that’s what those old movies gave us when it comes to how they pulled off their stunts.”
“It’s not just about the effects or the CGI,” Rebel said. “I love old school animatronics, and I wish they used more of them in movies today, especially the live action pictures, that would be the perfect place to continue furthering that art. I just wish they’d explored a more diverse array of stories and characters back then, so we’d have an even greater array now, rather than directors who still claim that they had to hire Joe Shmo Hollywood A-lister who’s been in everything, rather than an actor who fit the character the way it was originally written. That’s kind of important when you take something, especially a character from another country, and decide that their origin and heritage doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just a movie.”
“If movies were just movies they wouldn’t be scrambling to make seventy-five remakes a year rather than tackling new stories,” Rebel pointed out. “The movie industry picks and chooses whose stories and experiences to share with the world and what spin to put on them. They are as much propaganda as they are entertainment, or have you forgotten the explosion of shark fishing that followed Jaws and how one movie almost ended a species?”
Cinema propaganda.
The words found a rhythm in my mind and I immediately reached for my notebook and jotted them down.
What’s the span between truth and reality?
Is the world they show the one we see?
Or do they just skew the views until it’s what they want it to be?
When your only view of different places
Comes from opposite the screen
What do you assume you know
Based on the chaos you’ve seen
With Rebel still stroking my hair, I jotted the words as they came to me, the rough, rambling collection of thoughts a literal word vomit as they spilled out onto the page. By the time the chase scene finally began to unfold, I’d run out of words, and passed my notebook to Rebel, who nodded and leaned forward, the same as me, to take in this amazing chase Ozzy had promised us.
“Let me see that if you’re not going to look at it right now,” Ozzy said, holding his hand out for the notebook.
Rebel passed it over while we watched a chase not unlike all of the chase scenes on the Dukes of Hazzard , only without all the dust of the dirt roads. Cops were still kind of bumbling, though.
“Do you ever think it’s futile?” I asked, as the chase continued on as Ozzy had promised it would, but without any of the thrilling, jaw-dropping maneuvering I’d hoped for. NASCAR was more thrilling, even with the traffic and the obstacles they’d tried to work in.
“What?”
“Chasing something so relentlessly,” I muttered. “Like, what if the universe is really hoping you’ll catch a hint because you’re not supposed to have the thing in the first place?”
Silence met my words, but I knew my bandmates, they were thinking about what I said.
“Maybe,” Dash said, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Isn’t it splitting hairs, though?”
“How do you mean?”
“If it’s too easy and you don’t have to struggle, it’s hard to appreciate what you have,” Dash said. “But chasing, fighting, sacrificing, that makes it that much more valuable when you attain it because you know what you sacrificed to get to that point. I guess it can make people complacent, too, and they forget that the fight doesn’t stop once a goal’s been attainted.”
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Ozzy said.
“More like a triple-pronged trident,” I amended. “Attain the goal and you may have everything you’ve ever dreamed of, or it may absolutely ruin you in the end. Attain the goal and have it snatched away because you weren’t diligent enough in guarding it, or quit and never know what could have been. I mean, look at that car. It’s worthless at this point, so the cops are just chasing the guy to try and bring him to justice and the guy is just running to get away. Sometimes the cops win, sometimes the robbers win, but tomorrow there’ll be another chase, another outcome, and another reason it all kicked off in the first place.”
“That’s profound, dude,” Rebel said, squeezing the back of my neck. “Now where’d it come from, ‘cause it sure as hell didn’t come from this movie?”
“Ozzy, I’m going over your name in permanent marker this time, there’s just not going to be any more erasing for you,” Dash declared.
“Oh, ouch. Come on, man, seriously,” Ozzy said, pressing his hands to his chest and feigning a wounded look.
“I second that,” Rebel concurred. “This is the worst one yet.”
“Until one of my worst is worse than Lamageddon , none of you have any room to talk,” Ozzy cautioned.
Dash snorted, while Rebel hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” Rebel asked.
“You’d have been the champ if you’d waited until the official Worst Movie marathon, but you tried to break that out on a horror night when you knew we were gonna break out shit like Alien , The Silence of the Lambs , and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ,” Dash reminded him.
“Not one of my finer moments.”
“Naw, but we love you anyway,” I said before elbowing him away from the pizza flavored Chex Mix so I could grab a handful.
“If that’s love, I’m in trouble,” he groaned as he rubbed the spot where my elbow had dug in.
“I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about what we all gave up to get here,” I admitted. “Having ‘Ghosts of Enemies Past’ hit number one, after how close we’ve come over the years only to just miss out, that’s phenomenal and I want to bask in the joy of it and soak up every accolade, but on the other hand, man, I’ve still got this case hanging over my head, and we’ve got a rapidly growing tour stretched out in front of us. What if it’s too much for us to handle? What if we are never able to capture the magic and hit that number one spot again?”
“What if the rest of the album is filled with nothing but chart toppers?” Ozzy said. “Looking at the words you’ve got written here, and the ones I’ve started adding, what if the next album outsells this one and folks start reaching out for us to bring the band overseas?”
“Yeah, man,” Rebel said. “What if we finally blow up? We’ve earned this!”
“What he said,” Dash chimed in. “We did shit the right way, even when it was hard, and we stuck together. Good, bad, we didn’t give up on each other or the vision we had, and we’ve never compromised. If it turns out we’re one hit wonders, so what? It was still a hit and we’re gonna keep on playing, and if it turns out were destined for mega stardom, then we’ll ride that wave, too, and make a pact to keep each other grounded so we never forget it what it took to get there or how little we had at the start.”
“I still say we should write a cookbook with all the Spam, tuna, and Ramen Noodle recipes we came up with other the years,” Ozzy said.
“ The Poor Rocker’s Guide to Feeding Four Guys on Five Bucks a Day ,” Dash declared.
Rebel let out a long, low whistle.
“You’d better hope they don’t charge by the letter with a title like that,” Ozzy muttered.
“Yeah, that’s a mouthful,” I said. “But also an accurate description of what life was like for us. I'll never forget the infamous Day of Spam, where Ozzy diced it and sprinkled it in the pancake batter and Rebel sliced it thin, fried it up and added it to the grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“Oh, I notice how you left out the Spam strips you added to the noodles that night,” Rebel pointed out. “Somehow, those two cans and a handful of ingredients from that roadside farm stand managed to get us through an entire day.”
“Maybe a cookbook wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Dash murmured. “Remember when we got that huge ass zucchini?”
“Man, that thing looked so obscene I still have nightmares about it,” Ozzy grumbled.
“You could have knocked someone unconscious with it and only bruised the dammed zucchini,” I said, grinning at the memory. “That could be a whole chapter of its own right there.”
“A dozen ways to use the same zucchini,” Rebel said, stroking his beard. “We did have fun with that.”
“I may be biased, but the chocolate chip zucchini bread was phenomenal,” Dash declared.
“You are biased,” Rebel said. “But you’re also right. That was the best dessert right there and I love that you broke it out right after we’d devoured those grilled steak and zucchini kababs.”
“We need to make those again and get little pearl onions to stick on the skewers, too,” I suggested.
“And mushrooms,” Rebel suggested. “Fat, juicy bellas and shiitakes.”
“Definitely,” I groaned, wiping at the corner of my mouth where drool had begun to form.
“Okay, I’ve got a grocery list started,” Ozzy said. “And I made a note to see if we even have any seasonings left in the top cupboard or if we need to stock up when we hit the grocery store.”
“Pretty sure were out of damn near everything, with all the cooking we did in the desert,” Dash said.
“True. I’ll just add them to the list, too.”
As the movie mercifully wound down, I sat there thinking about the way we fed off one another and the energy a single idea could raise, despite the dreariness of the rain-soaked world outside our windows. I knew they’d heard what I said about the case, and I was grateful they let it pass without comment. We all knew what the reality was, but they were choosing to embrace a possibility while celebrating a piece of our past. A cookbook would be fun for our fans. I could add doodles, and we could sell the eBooks as well as physical copies. We could even offer signed versions directly from our website and at shows, making them actual collector’s items in the process. Might be fun to go over those old recipes again, too. We’d have to before we printed them. Jagger had tried several of them when I’d made them for him back home, but his bandmates hadn’t, nor had Draven. It would be fun to get his take on them, too.
“What’s the next movie?” Dash asked, staring across the table at Rebel, who looked Ozzy dead in his face. “ Smokey and the Bandit , with a real god damned police chase!”
“Heaven help us all if they ever try to remake that,” I grumbled, tiny bits of lyrics still floating around in my head.
Ozzy must have sensed it because he passed my notebook back and I settled in to watch a movie I loved and could quote in places, hoping for dozens more days like this in the years ahead.