I was talking with Massimo yesterday about his English skills. He’s gotten a lot better at our language in the two months he’s been here, and I told him so.

He said he studied english only two months before he came over, and that they only teach you phrases and that sort of shit when you start, and in the beginning you don’t learn any verbs.

So, apparently there’s a verb shortage in northern Italy.

Mr and Ms David Ryan Harris

I had the distinct honor and pleasure of playing at David Ryan Harris‘s wedding last night. I have respected and enjoyed his material and playing ability for some time, so it was a real treat to meet him and play with him.

I was concentrating very hard and trying not to hit a sour note while following him on his songs, but of course I had to hit one. Doh!

His buddy John Mayer was there too and he got up to play with us on a few songs as well. Those two fuckers can really play. John and Dave both have silly silly chops. At first, John was going to sing one of his songs, but then he decided to just play guitar.

John Mayer, Dave Harris, Francisco, Woody and myself played two of the Francisco Vidal Band’s songs, then Raspberry Beret by Prince and I Wish by Stevie Wonder. Dave sang some incredible vocals and John seriously ripped it up on guitar. It was really a treat to play with them. I also hit a sour note while playing one of our songs with John. Oops.

I’m headed down to the beach for vacation at the moment, but will return on Wednesday to open up for Jimmy Buffet with Francisco. That should be a treat as well!

When I was growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, I once had a summer job working at a landscaping company. The guy who owned the company was a friend of my dad’s I think. Anyway, my dad got me a job there. It was called Montgomery Landscaping Company, or MLC for short.

When I started they said they needed more people to come and work, so I told my friend Foster about it. He started coming along to work there too. Foster was a much better worker than I was. He actually did stuff all the time and took pride in his work, whereas I was a slack bastard and sat down as much as possible.

I’m not terribly proud that I was a slacker, but it is the truth.

MLC owned several pickup trucks, and they all had big green logos on the doors that said MLC with a tree growing out of the L. They had one big diesel dually with front and back seats, one 80′s era Ford regular cab, and one nissan pickup whose clutch I burned up in the middle of the summer. They also had all manner of little bulldozers and big dump trucks and whatnot as one might have at a landscaping company.

From time to time, I was told, vehicles would disappear from the yard of the company because it was situated a few miles from a women’s prison on one side, and a juvenile detention center on another. The story went that escapees would regularly break in and run off with a truck, but I never saw it happen.

There were two crews that worked there; a black crew and a white crew. I don’t think that the groups were segregated by the company, I think they just chose to ride and work together. Even though it was Montgomery, Alabama, I never saw any evidence of any racism from either group, and we all worked together regularly. I was pretty young and stupid, though, so who knows.

The white crew had the big dually, and they all rode together from job to job. The black crew had the ford, and they also rode and worked together. Foster and I were likely to be tossed in with either crew as needed, but mostly worked with the white crew.

The white crew was headed up by David, who was a skinny, bearded guy with a fair amount of tattoos. He took a liking to Foster because they were similarly built and both liked to talk about fucking. David called Foster “Chester”, reasons unkown. David also seemed to move the top of his head rather than his lower jaw when he talked, but this may have been an optical illusion caused by his carefully perched trucker hat. Also on his crew was his ever-present sidekick, Wormy. No shit, that was his nickname.

The black crew was headed up by Willie, who had a good bit of metal in his mouth instead of teeth. His nickname was Wiremouth, but that was not a complementary nickname. His crew had several men on it, not the least of which being a huge guy named Jelly. Jelly took a liking to me for reasons unknown, and referred to me as “My buddy Big Man”. They all called me Big Man.

Willie didn’t like me much at all, but did offer on occasion to take me out behind the office and show me his “black snake”.

Jelly looked a lot like a big sack of rocks. He had a bunch of bulging muscles all over himself and a half smile on his face all the time. I could barely understand him when he said something, which wasn’t terribly often. He mostly seemed to just walk around and do whatever he was doing. From time to time he would hand me a dead bush or a stick to plant in a hole I had just dug, and he got a big laugh out of that sort of thing.

Both crews were under the jurisdiction of Red. Red had a red face, red hair, and the most enormous beer gut I have ever seen before or since. He smoked five packs a day of Merit Ultra Lights, covered everything he ate with a 3mm blanket of salt, and generally had a poor disposition. He also, it turned out, had high blood pressure. Wonders never cease!

The crews amused themselves while driving from job to job in two ways. First, whoever was in the following truck rather than the leading one would pull up so close to the front truck in traffic that they would bump it. This is especially disconcerting if you are a 17 year old kid driving a nissan pickup with a faulty clutch and someone bumps you with a huge dump truck.

The other major activity was driving at top speed down the interstate so that whatever plants or sod were in the back of the truck would be blown out by the wind, and thus not have to be planted.

This was the sort of thing that would have Red ready to strangle someone, but he never seemed to catch anyone “red-handed” so to speak. He found plenty to yell about though.

I can’t really remember if the crews were a bunch of idiots or not, but Red certainly seemed to think so. He was constantly shouting at David or Willie, who would then shout at a few members of the crew. David and Willie were sort of like our sargents. They were on the crew’s side, but it was understood that they had to yell a bit to make things look good in front of Red.

One day we were laying some sod in a back yard with had a fence that opened just wide enough to back the dump truck in. It was a tight squeeze to get out between the fence and the truck’s tires, so everyone who went out stopped and gathered to watch the next guy negotiate the tight spot. Excitement built as everyone realized that fat Red had not come through yet.

I squeezed through and turned around to watch as Red approached the gap. He looked at it, then at the men gathered beyond, all watching intently. He had to come through, and he really had no reason to order the men to fuck off. I watched him as he seemed to decide that his best course of action was just to push on through and act like it was nothing, but as he drew closer he saw that the gap was really very narrow.

He stopped to consider it, visibly decided it was better to just bull through than stand there thinking about it and being laughed at, and leaned into the gap.

“Huff!” he said, trying to push through. He didn’t make it. No one really dared to laugh out loud, but we all wanted to, I’m sure.

What was Red to do? He couldn’t move the truck, because that would mean losing face. Everyone on both crews had gone through already and were watching. He had to do something, and fast.

He squatted down a bit so that his belly would go into the wheel well next to the tire and not be restrained by the fender, and shuffled mightily in crab fashion at the gap.

“Haruff!” he shouted, and squirted through the hole, huffing and puffing.

No one said a word, and we all went to lunch. It was the subject of conversation for weeks, behind Red’s back.

Eventually the summer ended and I went back to school. I went to pick up my last check with my first steady girlfriend, and we had sex in the parking lot in my car. Someone came out of their house next door to the parking lot and walked around on the porch, looking at us, so we drove back to my parent’s house to hump it up before they got home.

And that was my summer job that year.

Looking in the window.

There’s a wierd homeless guy who hangs around in Buckhead most of the time. He comes to our bar and dances outside the window (pictured at right) a lot, to the delight of all. He has a bushy beard and a trucker hat on usually, and he dances with a lot of enthusiasm.

He’s been known to do any number of combos, including the clap spin, the spinning raised arm, and the clap sidestep. He doesn’t break out the advanced moves too often, lest they become trite, but he has been known to drop to the ground and do the one armed pushup/ground hump maneuver from time to time.

The first time I saw him do that I laughed so hard I almost blacked out.

What makes it all even more amusing is that he always wears tight, tight jeans over his tiny ass. He has the smallest ass I have ever seen.

The other night he was gyrating about outside our window and Francisco leaned over to me.

“That guy’s got a real small ass” he said.

Having a small ass doesn’t harm one’s ability to dance wildly on the sidewalk, apparently.

That underhanded Italian Mossimo snuck up on me in straight sets again in yesterday’s Jimbledon matches. He won 6-2 6-3.

Well, dammit.