Badass Film Tour 2 – Day 22: Boston, in all its Glory

NOTE: For all future peoples who might read this (that would be ALL peoples, because first of all, that’s how linear time works and secondly, I haven’t even written this shit yet, so how in the hell could you read it in the present?), these tour journals have been delayed a bit.  It’s actually November of 2011 and we’re finally getting back to writing this thing. You might have noticed that on your own, what with the time stamp and all.  But in case you didn’t, I wanted to give you a heads up.  Some of my (Bob, that is) journals were partially written as the tour was in-progress.  And what wasn’t written as it happened has surely been forgotten.  Much like all of this will be forgotten moments after you read it.  So yes, please do notice that this here journal is popping up about eight months or so after the last entry and nearly a year after the tour wrapped up.  Why you ask? Seriously?  You are asking why?  Do you not know us at all?  Okay, perhaps you don’t.  Well, the reason why is a long story.  In a nutshell (and like every other problem or hurdle that has delayed or undermined us), it’s all Chad’s fault.  So, without further delay, here is the tour journal:

December 1, 2010

11:14 AM – CHAD
  Wow, what’s it been, six months now? Or eight, if you want to get technical. I guess I’ll go ahead and finish up the tour journal… So, as I was saying, I passed out at James in Boston’s house within about ten minutes of Bob and me arriving, even though the question of whether or not James in Boston was going to kill us was still very much unanswered.  Looking back now, I think the deal was that this wasn’t James’ regular house. This was like, his buttfucking party pad. The place had obviously belonged to an older lady with a Kennedy fixation at one point, but now James was the custodian. In fact, I vividly remember James’ face just lighting up when he was telling us about how Bobby and Jack Kennedy had run around that very apartment as children. My theory now is that James is actually partially convinced that he is the old woman (his mother, perhaps) who used to live in the house and that is why everything seemed so odd to us. Half of the place is completely emptied out for jello wrestling and fashion shows, but the other half is like a living shrine to the woman whose life he took over. I see this kind of shit all the time.

Anyway, we get up the next morning and he is gone, so of course we immediately go through the whole place with a camera, documenting how weird everything was. The refrigerator had nothing but beer in it. Sure, that sounds normal, but this was a hodgepodge of all different types of beer in various sizes and denominations.  It was like a bunch of people had brought beer from different places and left it all there. It was obviously remnant beer; the leftovers from countless raves, or perhaps the last traces of generation after generation of travelers who had stopped to stay the night, never to be seen again. There was way more jello in the pantry than you would see at a normal house. This was exacerbated by the fact that jello was the only thing in the pantry, at all. Nothing but boxes and boxes of jello. While most of the rooms were totally barren, others were frozen little snapshots of time complete with postcards and knickknacks and shit that all hearkened back to the days that Bobby and Jack Kennedy had spent there, growing up. The whole set- up made my butthole itch.

12:11 PM – BOB
 After a jello and beer breakfast, we hit the road.  First thing out of Jim James’s apartment, I notice that neither of us were dead.  Things were looking up.  Aside from our dashed hopes of a romantic scenario and a grinding curiosity to learn the true nature of Jim James’ nefarious intent, we were in top form (this would get the better of us soon enough).

The second thing I noticed was that my car had been nailed with a parking ticket.  We’d indeed been fucked in Brookline/Boston.  In order to preserve the precious and unspoiled impression I have of Boston, I immediately decided that I’m not gonna give the knotted shit-hole any of my money.  That would seem cheep and tawdry.   Like a whore.  The ticket remains unpaid.

2:53 PM – CHAD
 Sometime during the morning, we got word that Jeff Pinkus was up in Boston visiting his son, Jefferson. We went and picked the two of them up over in Brookline and went to a Thai restaurant that was pretty good. We told the waitresses it was Jefferson’s birthday, and that set off a dramatic birthday celebration that can be seen here:

Right around the time our entrées arrived, I got a phone call from the New Orleans area code, and I knew right away it was going to be some kind of fallout from our rampage through the city a couple of weeks earlier. I took the call at the table, excited to find out what the latest drama was, hoping to share it with Bob and Pinkus vicariously via them overhearing the conversation. Well, I answer the phone and it’s Detective Vernon Haynes of The New Orleans Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit. This had exceeded even my expectations, I assure you. I excused myself from lunch and went outside to talk to him. This is by no means to be taken as any indicator of culpability, but I knew exactly who he wanted to talk about the second he told me who he was. Again, I’m not saying I did anything wrong, I’m just saying that I had sex with a finite number of women while I was in The Crescent City, and when this motherfucker told me who he was, I knew exactly which one he was calling about. Anyway, he tells me who he is, and asks me if I know so-and-so. I say yes, she’s been a friend since about 2006, and yes, the last contact I had with her was a couple of weeks ago, back in New Orleans. He tells me he needs to ask me some questions, but that I don’t have anything to worry about. I remember thinking what an odd part of his job that must be, calling people up out of nowhere, telling them that he’s a rape detective and needs to ask them some questions about the women they’ve been having sex with, while at the same time assuring them that there’s nothing to worry about. Well, I was hesitant at first, but the guy was really professional and open through the whole conversation, so I took his word for it and talked to him for a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I knew there was a full blown sexual assault investigation going on and that everything I was saying was being recorded and shit, but something about the way he was talking to me made me feel like I could just tell him the truth (without touching on any topics of a sexual nature, of course) and everything would be fine, just like he said. One of the first things he asks me was, “Are you in this movie, Total Badass?” and I felt like either I was part of one of the greatest practical jokes ever, or someone had horribly overestimated what I’d be worth in a civil suit. I told him yes, I am, but I know so-and-so from real life and I don’t see what a movie has to do with anything. Well, he tells me that so-and-so looked up some stuff on the internet, and apparently she found out that I was, as he put it, “Traveling around all over with this movie, going crazy in one city after another, having sex with all these women.” And I’m thinking to myself: Dude, you’re not a cop, you’re my fucking biographer. I went on to tell him how I had come across the lady in question to begin with, what places we went to and how we got there, everyone else who was with us, and how I eventually ended up over at her house. I left out all of the intimate details, for legal reasons, just like I’m omitting them right now out of some kind of newfound discretion. The horrible irony is that those same intimate details are so juicy and so outrageous, that they are the very things that could have either (a) cleared up any legal questions about consent that might have been on the detective’s mind, or (b) made this one those good old fashioned nasty stories I used to write and everyone loved so much that I can’t seem to write anymore. All I can tell you is that at one point, I fancied myself an old witch doctor, working with magical salves and ointments. That’s all you get, though.

So, after I’d laid out everything to Detective Haynes, he basically told me that based on what I’d said to him and what he already knew, he was dropping the investigation and I’d never hear from him again. He did go on to add that since me and the lady were friends, he felt like I should know how things had gotten to that point with me and him being on the phone, because he didn’t want me to feel like she was trying to get me in trouble. Apparently, he told me, she had gone online a few days after we had sex and I guess maybe googled me or the movie and watched a few things, then called her friend to come pick her up and take her to the emergency room in order to, as he put it, “Make sure you didn’t have any babies in her or give her any diseases.” That’s exactly how he said it. “Have any babies in her.” (plural) as though I reproduce by the litter, like some kind of hound or demon. While at the hospital, in the presence of the screening nurse, the friend apparently asked her why she ever had sex with me to begin with and she said she was so fucked up she doesn’t remember anything about the night at all, so that bound the nurse legally to report the event to the police. This all made me feel a lot better, because it was like, so you’re not looking at me as so much a sexual predator, but more like a public health crisis? Because for a minute there, I felt kind of bad, you know? Like a bad person. But really, it was more of a deal where as soon as a girl I slept with realized who I was, she went straight to the fucking emergency room, thanks.

I got off the phone with the detective and called up my lawyer, Adam Reposa, to let him know about the incident because it seemed like the type of thing you should tell your attorney. When he answered, I could tell he was partying somewhere with a bunch of his work buddies. I got about halfway through the story and he just cuts me off and starts yelling to everyone, “Hey, everybody! Everybody! I got Chad Holt on the phone over here and he’s all fucking scared because some bitch told a nurse that he raped her!”  I hung up with a table full of drunk defense attorneys laughing at me. I hate to make two Goodfellas references in the same tour journal, but you remember the “You really are a funny guy.” part where all the mobsters are laughing in the restaurant? That’s what these fuckers sounded like.

Anyway, this whole thing really ended up bothering me for the rest of the trip and even after I got home. Initially, I was touting this incident as the official reason I got so far behind on the tour journal, because I really didn’t want to write about it, but how do you write a tour journal without including all the rape allegations? In all seriousness, what I think happened is that I basically hurt homegirl’s feelings with things I said and printed in our journal or perhaps said in the press or at question and answer sessions. I certainly mentioned that I had sex with someone in New Orleans, but I felt at the time like I did it in a way where nobody would ever be able to tell who I was talking about, and that should make it acceptable. In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that regardless of the way I did it, it upset the woman involved in this particular incident, as well as other women I spent time with in New Orleans, so I really wish I had said nothing at all. I’m apologizing for the initial comments, the ensuing investigation and this current rehashing of events, all at one fell swoop.

9:00 PM – BOB
Hey look! We’re screening in Boston.

10:30 PM – BOB
  One-quarter of the Butthole Surfers came out to watch Total Badass.  And then there was the guy who owns a slew of Super Cuts all across Boston. He was there.  An unprecedented 100% of the crowd was important people.  This screening was about quality, not quantity.  If you’re math-dumb, that adds up to two people.  An all time low.  And yes, both were friends of mine. What’s also funny was that there were two people sitting outside of the cinema, all dolled up in 30’s garb.  Apparently, they were waiting for the hordes of people to file out of the theater so that they could stuff into their grabby hands a handbill promoting their alt burlesque show.  They did a hell of a job and promo-ed to 100% of our audience.  All both of them.  To y’all young go-getters, I apologize for not providing you with a larger crowd to whom you could promote your surely awesome show.

You could blame the lack of a crowd on freezing-tits weather or a lack of promo or Bostonians not giving a shit about us or our movie (for no other reason than consistency, I fault Chad). The blame-the-mainstream-media angle won’t hold much water as there was this misinformed, misquoted write-up from whatever the hell a Patch.com is:
http://arlington.patch.com/articles/new-regent-doc-shows-musicians-struggle-for-redemption

Later in the eve, we met up with my actor/filmmaker pal Lance Greene.  I first encountered Lance in Phoenix at the super-fun Phoenix Film Festival (I’ve somehow managed to keep up with nearly all of the other filmmakers I met in PHX).  Lance has a hardcore-wicked Boston accent that has me cracking the fuck up every time he opens his mouth.  We had some damn good fun.  Here are six pictures that will save me the effort and you the pain of reading an additional six thousand of my words:

 

 

 

   

Aside from that fun, we got lost in Boston about eight times and pulled about 14 u-turns today.  I subsequently learned that the streets were designed by cows. Fucking cows!  Leave it to a bunch of drunk Irish hicks to allow the cows to lay out their streets.  Nice planning, Boston.  Since I’m getting all educational and shit, dig this: if you check out the About Boston page you can learn of the slave-rum trade and a bunch of weird stuff about Irish folks and beans of some variety.  They probably mentioned this stuff in high school history class or something, but nevertheless, it was news to me.  And hey, wanna start a fight?  Say some shit about the potato famine.  That’ll do it.  These fuckers are angry drunks.

Then there’s this: I’ve seen more cops in the last ten minutes than all the cops in the Rodney King circle-jerk combined. Fuck, if you count the whole day, I’ve seen about 17 cops.  Boston makes me nervous.  And even if we didn’t have a car packed with weed and illegal pills, these cops would make ne nervous.  They’re fucking cops.

It’s all very colorful and exciting, but my gut is telling me that Boston sucks.

8:15 PM – CHAD
 Ok, so I know I’ve mentioned a couple of times here in the journal about how I went out on such-and-such a night and get really fucked up, but those times weren’t shit, ok?  This night, and every night from here on out, in the aftermath of the rape investigation, I really let myself go. Pinkus was with us all night, and I’m not blaming him, but he does like to drink hard liquor from a bottle, and I’m just not cut out for that shit. I pretended like I was for as long as I could, though. I know that Pinkus and another friend of Bob’s were the only two people at the theatre, which seated about five hundred people. I know we went to several bars and drove around lost, a lot. I know I made about two-hundred rape jokes throughout the night, most of them in the form of “What’s my favorite…” as in: What’s my favorite Steve Albini band? Rapeman. What’s my favorite Steinbeck novel? The Grapes of Wrath. What’s my favorite fairy tale? Rapunzel. Who’s my favorite singer? Ray Parker, Jr. and so on… Here are some videos from the bars, the second of which features a jug band of sorts covering John Prine:

2:11 AM – BOB
 It’s 2AM.  We’re pulled over trying to figure out Pinkus’s GPS on his smart-phone.  I kill the engine and shut down the lights moments before a cop approaches, his lights blasting our faces. He pulls a three-point u-turn right behind us.  My ass starts to self-lube as I’m sure that we’re about to be royally fucked. I’m really hating Boston right now.  The copper creeps by and drifts off.  False alarm.  Luck.  I am part Irish, after all.

3:01 AM – BOB
We dropped off Pinkus and have nowhere to go. We are desperate, tired and maybe bi-gay curious so we call Jim James.

Chad is too wasted to navigate and I’m in no shape to attempt driving AND navigating.  I rolled the car up a house down from where we dropped off Pinkus.  I figured we’d crash in the car for the night and that Pinkus would walk out in the morning and we wouldn’t be the first thing he saw, but maybe the second or third.  And that’d be funny.

5:26 AM – CHAD
When we dropped Pinkus off at home that night, I was already passed out and had been for quite some time.  I know Bob got me up and tried to get me to help him figure out what we were going to do and where we were going to stay, but I was making my best case for staying right there in the car by drifting in and out of consciousness. Eventually, we did decide to pass out there in the car, and I settled in for what should have been about an eight-hour coma. A couple of hours later, I became vaguely aware that I was attempting to have a conversation with someone in my sleep. I didn’t know who they were, or why I was talking to them, but I woke up trying to explain the last time I had ever seen “The Macarena” performed in public, which had been about a decade earlier with Jim Isaacs at a wedding reception at Jasmine Hall in Lake Jackson, Texas. I heard myself saying all this as I came into consciousness, but I had no idea why, or to whom. I opened my eyes and there was a cop hanging in the passenger window, trying to talk to me. I remember concentrating on him really hard, and trying to grasp the situation as a whole, but all I really took away from it was that he was a mulatto, and it was really working for him. You know how some people will be half-black and half-white, and they look like somebody just took all the negative qualities of both races and dumped them into one person? Well not this guy, this guy looked great. I didn’t understand who he was, or why he was trying to talk to me, but I remember feeling like he was an excellent example of inter-racial bioengineering. Eventually, Bob’s voice entered into the conversation, and although I had no idea who he was either, or what he was saying, I knew there was some sort of comfort to be had in his words. I felt like it was now acceptable for me to go back to sleep, so that’s exactly what I did.

5:27 AM – BOB
That didn’t happen.  In order to sleep, I chomped a soma and a valium.  I got about two good hours of ZZZs on that dose.  Then I heard a knocking on the glass.  I looked over and Chad’s window was down a hair.  A cop’s face was squeezed in the crack, like a drop a of syrup dangling from the bottle.  Chad was chewing on his tongue and his teeth seemed to be made of rubber.  He was bouncing unintelligible syllables around in is mouth and occasionally something you might call words would stumble out. The situation was dire.  Then the cop asks “What are you doing in Brookline? What do you think you’re doing?”

I scraped my wits from the floor and managed to put forth an impenetrable defense: “We’re sleeping.”

“Not in Brookline, you’re not.”

He might be right.  Or at least half right.  I’ve no idea where we are, but I’m certain that we were sleeping. Or at least passed the fuck out.

“What are you doing here,” he asks.  I thought I’d already explained that. He was unimpressed with the “we’re sleeping” angle, so I figure to impress him with our awesome credentials. I explained that we were world famous artists on tour and had to make it back to the big city of New York by tomorrow and that we were just being thrifty and thought it was okay to sleep in the car.  “Not in Brookline. Not in my city.”

He took our IDs and retreated to his car to further investigate.  Even with the brain being completely fucked with booze and drugs, the stakes of the situation became clear: We have a ton of pills in the car, three different strains of kind-bud and a pipe.  That’s the shit that we know about.  Who knows what a thorough search would turn up.  Basically, we’re looking at: felony, misdemeanor, misdemeanor and maybe some etc.

Somehow, Chad got wise and kicked the pills up under the dash in a hasty effort.  The cop returned, poked the IDs through the cracked windows and said, “I’m gonna take you some place that might not be as comfortable.  Follow me.” This is a weird as fuck way to take us to jail, I thought.  Or maybe we just lucked out.  Irish?

He led us to a pond where I parked between two cars that apparently were packed, circus clown-car like, with gypsies.  The car in front of me had a busted window and a trunk held closed with a bungee cord.  It felt right.  For a couple of fucked up fuckups, this felt safer than the posh town of Brookline, which had so far, been nothing but kind to us.  So be it.  Back to sleep.