Thursday, March 8, 2007

Hush Hush

Yesterday I was on the way to breakfast with my friend Alex and we were on our way to breakfast on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when we passed Guitar Center, which was packed with a bunch of press people on some bleachers with cameras out in front. Initially, we asked each other if either of us knew what was going on, but we didn't know and we didn't care all that much, so we soon forgot about it. I had meant to stay in Hollywood and have Wylie meet me with some posters that I could go put up in the area for our shows on Friday and Saturday, so until he called me I had to come up with ways to spend time. Alex needed a new practice amp so suggested visiting guitar center, which I normally detest, but yesterday it sounded fun.

When we first parked at the Guitar Center, we both noticed a man behind the car in front of us pushing his car along sunset at perhaps a little faster than a snail's pace. We asked him if he needed any help and said that he needed to push it all the way to the mobil station on Fairfax, which, for those of you not from Los Angeles, is perhaps 3/4 of a mile up from guitar center, and on a busy street like Sunset with yesterday's midday heat, it was quite an undertaking. Anyway, we committed to help the man who turned out to be a self proclaimed ex-LAPD officer who had been gambling for the last 86 hours straight with no sleep and no breaks. By us having to push the car this terrible distance to the gas station rather than having him buy a gas can and bringing it to the car made me assume that the gambling had not gone as well as he had hoped.

During our push, a long haired homeless man started yelling, 'push you bastards!' and then 'Do you need any help?' He was about 5'8'', deeply tanned, thin, wearing board shorts, a t-shirt and holding a drink in a coffee bean cup. As he put it down he said 'if my drink spills, I'm kicking your ass.' When he realized that we were going further than the next available spot on the side of the road, he went back to get his drink and handed it to me in the driver's seat where I was steering as they were pushing. He said, 'Don't spill my drink. It's alcohol.' So we kept pushing, kept sweating and the homeless man kept yelling at us, thinking he was very funny. Once we got to the gas station, the gambler thanked us and Alex and I headed back towards Guitar Center.

When we showed up it was closed for the next 20 minutes because a Kenny Loggins (famous for hits like 'Danger Zone') private show was wrapping itself up. That explained all of the press people there earlier. So while guitar center reassembled it's main show room, we tried killing more time in music stores across the street, and finally the hall of fame, which is a room attached to guitar center filled with rock star paraphenilia (sp?) like guitars, amps, and clothes from people like Bob Dylan, Elvis, Angus Young, Johnny Ramone, Bo Diddley. We were carrying on some aimless conversation while looking at all this gear and then at the end of the room on a table we saw a pair of 'hands.'

Note: In front of the Hollywood Guitar Center, there are cement hand prints of famous artists as a walk way. They're all broken up into small squares so that each individual artist, or in some cases, band, has their own separated spot. I hope I explained that alright.

But the pair of hand prints we saw in the hall of fame should have immediately struck me as odd that they were inside this room rather than outside in the ground, but due to our wandering conversation, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it and walked up, perhaps mainly as an impulse, the way anybody would, I placed my left hand into the indented left hand and Alex touched it with his thumb which turned out to still be wet cement, and I looked up at the name above the hands which read 'Kenny Loggins'. This meant that at his private show, Kenny Loggins made his own set of cement hands to be added to the collection out in front of the store. My hand was now covered in cement, which I jammed into my pocket to keep from anyone who worked there from seeing me. Alex and I could not understand why it would be left out unprotected like that, but we were grateful for no one catching us. And at the very worst, it truly was an honest mistake. The point of this entire story is that I have now replaced the left hand of Kenny Loggins on the Guitar Center walkway. If anyone gets a chance to make it out there, know that if you look at Kenny Loggins' spot, you're not seeing his hand print, you're seeing mine. Yesterday, I became immortalized.

I apologize for the long story, but I thought it was funny and thought you could appreciate something like that. Even though I've put it up on the blog, make sure that no one runs to Guitar Center to tell them what happened. They're be no proof and I will just deny it if I have to, but that would be lying.

TOMORROW'S AN ALL AGES SHOW IN LA AT SAFARI SAM'S.
Talk to everyone soon.

taylor

10 comments:

shelana said...

brilliant story. nothing like that ever happens to me.

Anonymous said...

It's alright man, I forgive ya.

Hailey k said...

HAHAHAHAHA! Thats awesome Taylor! haha

Hailey k said...

HAHAHAHAHA! Thats awesome Taylor! haha

Anonymous said...

Your Alex friend wouldn't happen to be a Mr. Greenwald, would he? If so, please tell him I miss Phantom Planet video blogs! Phantom Planet and Simon Dawes live together would be the best show ever!

amy said...

That IS funny, and has brightened my day no end.

amy said...

Just occurred to me; do you and this Kenny have similar sized hands?

Because otherwise, that poor man is going down in history as some weird-handed freak.

Anonymous said...

That is funny on so many levels.

Good job the ex-cop was still fucked up or maybe, on arriving to the station, he would have hit alex on the back "cheers fellow" and walked round to you and gone "and you son, i'm going to have to arrest you for possession of alcohol at the wheel of a vehicle" and no chance of laying it on the homeless man, those hobo's can run mighty quick!!

...and i have no idea who Kenny Loggins is but should i happen to stumble across his little slab I shall ensure i have a black marker on me to write next to his name "prove it!"

Anonymous said...

What was the song you opened with at Safari Sam's?

Anonymous said...

What was the song you opened with at Safari Sam's?