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"Where have you been? What have you been up to?" "Not a whole hell of a lot right now. I used to be the American tour manager for those Kuchi Boof girls." "Kuchi Boof?" "Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't heard of them. They're these three pre-adolescent Japanese girls in lingerie who sing about ice cream and butterflies and shit like that while pretending to have sex with cute robots and one another." "Wow! Is that for real?" "Fuck no. It's just a big gag. Their audience is all Junior High girls and middle-aged business men with failed or failing marriages." "Are they hot?" "Brother, these girls are beyond hot. They're on fire. These girls would make your dick so hard, you'd be able to hang a coffee mug from it." "But the tour ended." "No. It's going on right now. I was fired." "Really?" "Yeah. But I have no right to complain. I had it coming. I shouldn't have taken the job in the first place. After forty years in the business, I'm pretty burnt out. I started doing weird shit on the road. I'm lucky to be alive and not in some jail cell someplace, to tell you the truth." "But you always did weird shit." "Not like this." "Like what?" "Well, for example, one night the girls were playing a sold-out show in Cleveland, and while they were on, I got an idea and went out and bought a big sack of corn muffin mix. So I made all these corn muffins, and I was mixing up the batter, and I decided to stick my dick in the batter and take Polaroids of my dick stuck in the batter. So, by the time the girls were done, I'd made this shitload of corn muffins, and I brought them out to the girls and the dancers and the band, and of course they devoured them in no time because they were tired and hungry. And when they were finished, I busted out the Polaroids and passed them around. Well, that didn't go over very well." "No, I wouldn't think so." "Yeah, I mean, a couple of the dancers saw the humor in it, but most of them seemed pretty pissed off. I don't speak much Japanese, but I could tell they were mostly pissed off." "So they fired you." "No, that was just the start. Things got worse. We were at this arena in Buffalo and I... wait. Let me back up a second. You've seen All In The Family, right?" "Of course." "You remember that episode when Archie and his friends are trying to recruit the black guy to be in their club?" "Maybe. I'm not sure." "This is one of the better ones. Archie and his friends belong to this club called The Kings of Queens, and they find out their club is going to be suspended or disbanded or something unless they bring in some non-white members. Archie and his friends are all white, see? So Archie and his friends convince this black guy to come over to Archie's house. The idea is that they just want this black guy's name to be on the roster. They don't really want him to be a contributing member. Anyway, to make a long story short, the black guy figures out the scam and decides to take them for a ride. So he accepts their offer and vows to spearhead a campaign to recruit all his black and Jewish friends, and he suggests they could rename the club to The Kings of Queens of Spades. And just as the black guy leaves the house, he shouts 'Shalom, ya'll!' It's this big laugh riot, and right before the show ends, Archie says something like 'Well, at least nobody'll be able to beat us at basketball.' And like I said, it's this laugh riot." "I don't get it. What does this have to do with the Japanese girls?" "Well, like I said, we were in Buffalo, and I was hanging around the dressing room, clipping my nails and watching these tapes of All In The Family I'd bought in a Ben Franklin the day before. And that episode comes on and I'm dying of laughter. And the girls are out on stage about to do their signature song called 'Day-Glow Clam,' which is this tongue-in-cheek song about day-glow clams done to the tune of Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger.' And when they perform it, the backing vocals are pre-recorded and the girls wear matching corsets and eight-inch heels and very little else while dry-humping a big fluorescent clam shell. So, I got an idea and thought it would be a laugh riot, so halfway through the song, I went up and plugged the VCR into the mixing board and cranked up the volume right at the point when the black guy's figured out the scam. And I'm dying, because the girls don't know what to do and they're looking this way and that, and Archie's voice is so huge and loud, and the middle-aged guys in the crowd start throwing beer cups and half-eaten hot dogs. And the sound engineer is freaking out and trying to shove me out of the way, but I'm twice as big as him, so I shove him back and he hits this roadie who's in charge of the pyrotechnics and special effects. And at the exact moment-- the EXACT moment-- when the black guy shouts 'Shalom, ya'll!' this confetti explosion explodes out of the giant clam and up the girls' hoo-hoos and in their eyes and in their mouths and shit. I laughed so hard I damn near broke my hip." "That sounds terrifying." "Not on your life. It was just about the funniest thing I've ever seen." "I mean for the girls. It must have been terrifying for the girls." "Oh, well, sure. It was completely inappropriate. They were crying and the dancers were crying and the band was crying and it was a big scandal." "How is it that I haven't heard of this?" "Beats me. It was in all the papers and on TV and shit. They're still talking about it." "So, I assume that's when you were fired." "Well, kind of. I knew that they'd begun the process of replacing me, and I knew they were going to get rid of me right after they played Albany." "And you played Albany soon after Buffalo." "Right. Two days later, we rolled into Albany." "Albany's a weird town." "Albany's a fucking STRANGE town. Did you know that more people smoke marijuana in Albany than any other place on the planet?" "I find that difficult to believe. Is that true?" "It surprised me, too, but I was just reading about it." "So, the girls played Albany." "Right, so, it's the Fouth of July weekend and the girls are playing Albany. And the show went off without a hitch. I stayed in the hotel room the whole time with this very cool Thai wrestler I called 'Kid Lasagna.' I never figured out that guy's real name because I couldn't understand a damn thing that barking ape said. But, man, coud he ever put away the lasagna. So, anyway, I'm sitting there playing Uno with Kid Lasagna, and he's eating lasagna, and I get this crazy idea and start making some phone calls." "Aw, Christ. I think I DID hear about this. Isn't there a rental van in this story? Aren't there lawsuits filed against you and shit?" "Yes and yes. Plenty of lawsuits." "This is good stuff. So what happened?" "Okay, after the show, I told the girls that Jaleel White had invited them to a secret party at an office supply warehouse and they totally flipped becasuse they're probably the biggest Jaleel White fans on the planet." "Who the fuck is Jaleel White?" "He was that Urkel guy." "Oh, that's right. Sorry. Please continue." "So, I'd rented a moving van and made this quick sign written with ketchup on pages from a newspaper that said 'Jaleel White's Fuck Truck Deluxe.' And I stuck the sign to the side of the van with chewing gum and paid this crazy-haired, tattooed teenager a carton of American Spirit cigarettes to drive it. I had him pick up the girls around eleven." "In the morning?" "No, that night." My Sociology Professor rolled among the covers and sat up beside me. "This must be the WORST interview I've ever seen on Charlie Rose," she said. Her skin strobed from blue to yellow to red to blue in the light of the television. She whispered "Come to bed," and kissed the lobe of my ear slow and soft. With the press of a button, the night swallowed us and we drifted alone beneath a warm sea.
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