Good Morning

Blah! I'll start posting some stuff in a bit. First, some diet Mountain Dew.

Beer Frame

I was just having a beer and looking at Rolling Stone’s website and Sunday night they celebrated folk singer Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday at Madison Square Garden. It was a star-studded event: Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Ani DeFranco, Kris Kristofferson and more. As I looked at the pictures I stopped cold when I got to the one of Richie Havens and John Mellencamp. Richie Havens. Richie Fucking Havens! Goddamnit, if I would’ve known he was going to be at the Garden I would’ve staked it out and tried my best to find him. Maybe try to make up a phony backstage pass in Photoshop or something.

I’ve always wanted to meet Richie Havens, not because I’m a big fan, but because I want to verify the fact that I think I’m responsible for one of the worst nights in Richie Havens’ life.

I wrote this story up for a blog on MySpace a couple years ago and it got such a good response I polished it up and included it as a chapter in my book of short stories that came out in 2008, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck. (And yes folks, copies are still available, find out how to purchase one here.)

Here’s the chapter about how I ruined a night in Richie Havens’ life. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Marty

P.S. Here I am blathering on YouTube about this chapter.

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Probably One of the Worst Nights in Richie Havens’ Life

One of folk singer’s Richie Havens’ biggest claims to fame is that he was the opening act at the legendary music festival Woodstock. That was probably one of the greatest times of his life. I can’t officially say this, but I think after you read this story you’ll agree that I was probably responsible for one of the worst times in his life.

Sometime in the early ‘80’s, when I was still living in Peoria, Illinois I was driving home from work and heard an ad from an FM station for a local bar announcing that Richie Havens would be playing in their beer garden on the following Thursday night. I was intrigued. I can’t remember the name of the bar, so we’ll just call it Buggers Bar. Buggers was only a few blocks from the apartment complex where I lived and it was kind of a dump. The bar itself was dark, had a couple of pool tables and a vintage jukebox in the corner. In the back was a beer garden with a couple of picnic tables. It would be lucky if fifty people cold fit in there. And Richie Havens was going to be playing there? Talk about your Spinal Tap moments! “Hello Cleveland!” Well, I guess that should be, “Hello Peoria!” Or maybe just, “Hello Beer Garden.” Anyway playing in Buggers beer garden was a gig I would’ve expected a local band to turn down. But Richie Havens? This guy had sold a lot of records through the years and was a famous musician. Sure, Peoria was probably a pit stop on the way to a bigger gig in Chicago, but still, Buggers beer garden? I knew one thing though, I was going to go.

Thursday night came and I picked up my friend Tim. Tim and I have been friends since we were freshmen in high school and both of us love music and absurdist humor and this was going to be both of those rolled into one. Tim got in and as I made my way to the bar I pulled out a big slab of hash wrapped up in tin foil. And I’m not talking roast beef hash either, I’m talking hashish. I had bought this off of a drug dealer friend of mine and he assured me it was top grade shit. And it was a big slab, like five inches by five inches. Tim was impressed with it and asked if I had a hash pipe in the car and since I didn’t we decided to eat it. Tim broke the slab in two and then broke those two in two and we each ate a quarter of the slab. I was sure that was enough to really get us fucked up. And it still left half the slab for later. It was like eating sandy dirt, but luckily Tim had brought a can of beer for each of us for the ride, so we quickly ate the hash and washed it down with the beer. Soon we pulled into the back of the gravel parking lot and made our way into the inner sanctum of Buggers Bar. We each sat at a stool with crumbling burgundy leather seats in the dark and smoky bar and ordered bottles of Budweiser. Two bikers were playing pool and there were assorted older hippie type people hanging out at the bar and sitting at a couple of the tiny beat up, wooden, cigarette burned rectangle tables.

After about a half an hour I asked Tim if he felt anything from the hash and he said he didn’t. I was certain my drug dealer friend had burned me, so we each ate another quarter of the slab. About five minutes later I started to feel really stoned. So did Tim.

“I’m starting to feel really fucked up,” I told Tim.

“Me too,” he shot back. “Wait’ll the second quarter kicks in.”

“Oh, shit,” I mumbled and then we both started laughing uncontrollably. The bartender was staring at us and so was everybody else in the bar because we couldn’t stop laughing.

Right around this time the back door to the beer garden opened up and a guy announced, “Anybody with tickets to see Richie Havens, can come into the garden.”

Still giggling we made our way to the door, we dutifully handed the guy our tickets walked into the beer garden. The beer garden was basically just part of the parking lot that the owner had put a fence around. Inside the fenced in area were two small picnic tables, some folding chairs and a steel garbage can to throw your empties into. Pretty exotic, huh? For this night they had pulled the tables back and a little a little make-shift wooden stage was built with a microphone stand on it. A silver, metal stool was placed directly behind the microphone.

Tim and I sat in a couple of the beat up white folding chairs and scoped out the rest of the “audience.” They were all older hippie types, with ponytails, faded denim and they all looked thrilled to be having this intimate show with the guy who opened Woodstock. All in all, the total audience count including Tim and I was probably around fifteen. A far cry from the 500,000 he performed for at Woodstock.

After about fifteen minutes the same guy who took the tickets at the door walked on to the small wooden “stage” and said into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the legendary Richie Havens.”

And out from the side of the bar he emerged, acoustic guitar in hand to as much enthusiasm as a fifteen person crowd can muster. Tim and I were higher than projectile moonbeams and we were laughing our asses off. To his credit Richie Havens walked right out with a beaming smile as if he was walking into a big concert hall gig. He looked pretty much the same and was wearing jeans and a white cotton shirt. He thanked everyone for being there and started in on some meandering story about a wedding he had just been to and about what it had meant to him. Tim and I were really fucked up at this point and I said to him, “I’m so high I can hardly stand it!”

I thought I had said it to him normally, but he told me later I had said it really loud, and that I almost shouted it. I was so high I wasn’t in control of my speaking levels, I guess. Well, this caused everyone to turn and stare at me and Richie Havens even stopped his stupid little talk and he was staring at me too. I was so high and now with everyone staring at me it was too much. Koo koo ka choo. Paranoia had struck deep and I had to flee these staring faces.

I turned to Tim and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

That said we both got up and ran out of the beer garden, through the bar and out to the back of the parking lot where my car was. We jumped into the car and we both started laughing uncontrollably. In between our laughter I said to Tim, “Watch this.”

Then I started my car and drove it over to the beer garden fence and positioned my car directly behind Richie Havens and I pulled it up as close to the fence as I could get it. He was singing, “Here Comes the Sun.” I put the car in park and then laid on the horn. This stopped the song and some people were screaming at us, calling us assholes and various other sundry names. I let up on the horn blowing and Richie Havens started singing the song again. Then I yelled out the window, “Hey Richie here comes the sun,” and I started turning my headlights off and on and honking the horn again. What a jerkoff I was, but it was some funnyass shit, let me tell you. Tim and I were howling with laughter. It was one of those stoned mind-tickling moments that can only happen after ingesting a couple grams of high grade hash into your system.

By now tears are streaming down our faces and Tim shouted out, “Oh shit!”

This caused me to look in his direction and the burly bartender and about five guys were runnning towards my car. And they didn’t look too pleased. I threw the car into reverse, backed up and then floored it out of the parking lot, spraying gravel at the angry fellows in our wake. We went to another bar and laughed ourselves silly over our adventure. Tim and I still talk about it to this day.

Just the fact that he could only drum up fifteen people to come see him in an entertainment-starved city must’ve been depressing enough. But then to have some stoned out hash-head blow you some serious shit must’ve really made for a bad night in the life and career of one Mr. Richie Havens. So Richie, if you’re by some weird chance reading this, I’d love to say I’m sorry...but that’s just not going to happen. Ha ha ha.

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Daily Video

In His Own Write

“In His Own Write” by John Lennon is one of my favorite books. A lot of the stories are in the jabberwocky style and they’re hilarious. The cartoons are great too. In this video you can hear George and Ringo talking about the book and then Lennon reads an excerpt of it. Surprise guest stars in include Mal Evans and Dudley Moore and a brief spotting of Peter Cooke. It originally aired on the English show, “Not Only...But Also.”

The Witty Beatle

And Now...Lunch!

This was today’s lunch, chicken stew and rice from the Garden of Eden on 14th Street. I just finished it and it was delicious!

My private joke I tell myself everytime I walk into this place is this: If Eve would’ve discovered crystal meth instead of an Apple it would be called the Garden of Speedin’. It cracks me up every time!

Walking Man

I really like the walking man on the “Walk, Don’t Walk” signs. My friend and designer Joe Freedman did a short film devoted to him and it’s really cool. You can see it right here: Walking Man.

Check out Joe Freedman’s new business located in Protland, Oregon:

Leaf Display

Beer Frame

I thought I’d post a little something after work every night when I’m winding down and having some beers.

First off, thanks to everyone who stopped by to check out The Marty Wombacher Show, yesterday! I appreciated all the nice words and the comments people left. Like I said yesterday, I don’t have a lot of time to comment back, but I read each and every comment and love them all, unless they tell me I suck, then I build a little voodoo doll in the image of that commentator and perform cruel and unusual acts on it. Thanks also to those of you who have signed the guestbook, I really appreciate it and it made my day!

It’s around two in the morning right now and I really like this time of the day. Things are quiet, I know nobody’s going to call me, there’s no place I have to be, it’s just me and my beer. And what a beer it is! A giant, 24 ounce can of Budweiser and there’s four more in the refrigerator. Woo and hoo! I love the 24 ounce beer can, for one thing, it doesn’t look like you’re drinking quite so much because you only have half of the empties to deal with. During the day and early evening I always feel like I’m in a fog, I really come to life at this time of night. The only problem is, no one else is awake to witness it. Oh well.

So, once again, thanks to everyone who stopped by yesterday. Come back later on when I wake up and I’m in a horrible mood and hating the world and everything in it. I am not a morning person, even though I usually sleep through most of it. I’ll probably start posting some stuff around noon, after I scan the gossip pages. Sneeze ya then!

Cheers,

Marty.

P.S. A couple people asked me how they could get on the friends links and it’s simple. Just email me and put my link on your site and I’ll do the same. We’ll start a community of linkage!

Hello!

Hello and welcome to the Marty Wombacher Show! If you don’t know who I am, please proceed to the About Me, go on, we’ll wait. Those of you who already know me, you can entertain yourselves by watching this fun video (it’s timely and swinely!)--video, while the others read all about me. And don’t you love it how I assume droves of people are reading this, oh well, a guy can dream can’t he? Anyway, I’ll meet you all back here in a little bit.

(A little bit later.) Okay, now that we’ve established who I am, I’d like to establish what I’m doing with this website. Quite simply, I’m doing what I’ve always done, I’m just fucking around. When contacted by Matt Haber of the New York Observer regarding my last issue of Natalie Word, Adam Moss, the editor of New York magazine wondered what sort of point I was trying to make. That quote inspired a lot of laughter by friends of mine, because most people who know me, know I pretty much live my life to just fuck around with shit. Often with no point intended. And now, with this website, I can now do it on several levels. I will now explain these levels.

The Daily Post. The Daily Post, the section you’re currently in, is going to be random thoughts, essays, humor columns, links to video clips, what I’m having for lunch, what other people are having for lunch and lots of other ideas and mind nuggets I’ll think of as time goes on. Basically this is just going to be a potpourri of writing and things springing from my cranium. Today this will be the only post, since it’s the start of this whole project, but starting tomorrow, The Daily Post will be updated several times throughout the day. And speaking of updates, most of the updates will start popping up right around noon every day. I work a night job, so I sleep a little later than most people. I try and get up around the crack of noon.

The Daily Photo. This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a photo (usually taken in New York City) that I’ll post along with a caption. This will be updated once a day, again probably around noon.

Condensed Gossip. So many gossip blogs and websites these days are just a quick paragraph or two with a link to the actual piece in another gossip column. I guess it’s because there’s such a glut of gossip these days. Since this is a one-man show, I’m going to be extremely busy, so I thought I’d take the quick update idea a step further for my gossip page and present Condensed Gossip, which takes a look at some of the day’s gossip in one line or less and gives the reader a link to the source. Like the page says, it’s gossip in one line or less, because who’s got time for this shit? Not me.

fishwrap. Fishwrap is going to be somewhat of a web version of what fishwrap the magazine was, basically a vehicle for me to write and/or make fun of mainstream media. I won’t always be as timely as some of the other media websites (today’s Esquire post is making fun of last month’s issue) as I have to write the bulk of the fishwrap material on the weekends as updating the other pages daily and working eight hours a night won’t allow me to write much material throughout the week, but it’ll be the same fishwrap you knew and loved back when it was print. And I’m also going to feature some posts about websites, blogs and other people’s status updates from social sites I’m on. It’s all the news that’s fish to print.

Photoblog. This section will be me travelling to some destination (usually in New York) while taking pictures and then documenting the trip with pictures and captions within the Photoblog. I used to do this on my blog on MySpace and people really seemed to like it, so I thought I’d keep up the tradition here. It’s a lot of work, so it’ll just be updated about twice a month.

The news, product and sponsor pages are what they are and really need no explanation, besides my head’s starting to hurt thinking about all the work this is going to be.

Oh, and each page has a subscription link if you want to be notified everytime I update it. Subscriptions are free.

And so like a hamster stepping onto a wheel that never stops turning, it’s time for the Marty Wombacher Show! Enjoy!

P.S. The main updates will be done Monday through Friday with light updates over the weekend as I write my fishwrap material for the upcoming week (and also squeeze in a beer or twelve. Cheers!) Oh and leave comments if you are so moved, I’d love to see what you think of the show.

P.S.S. One more thing, I rented a post office box and every Friday I’m going to check it and do a posting on what people have sent me. So if you’d like to send me something and then see it on the website, here’s the address:

The Marty Wombacher Show
P.O. Box 395
New York, NY • 10113

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