How the hell was your day?

It was one of those days. I really should have just stayed in bed. I went to vote only to find that my voting location had been changed behind my back. The voting turned out to be an exercise in futility. I left the poll and went to work and was set upon and abused by an irate barber who apparently owns the parking space that I was occupying (or at least rents it and was quite upset by my intended use of it). I was then told by my boss that I need to be nicer to our customers at the liquor store after being scolded by a woman whose husband had made it all the way home with three bottles of wine before dropping one and breaking it. Yes, it was vaguely suggested that it was my fault and it was, “not cool, not cool”. She, at one point, even suggested (in a roundabout way) that I pay for the wine. Her wine selection represented two hours of my wages so that wasn't happening.

On a positive note, it seems that I have made great advances in my quest for more control over my emotions. I made it through all this without beating anyone to death or cutting or stabbing or shooting anyone in the face. Yay for me. I will probably die soon of a brain aneurism or stomach cancer.

Why not Cesar Chavez on a Google Doodle?

Okay, I wasn't going to do this but some things are just so idiotic that they have to be addressed.  Today was Easter.  It was also March 31 which happens to be Cesar Chavez' birthday and Cesar Chavez Day, a state holiday in Colorado, Texas and California.  Google decided to put his picture up today as their "doodle" instead of bunnies, eggs, a cross or Jesus. This inflamed many Christians to the point of posting rants on their Facebook pages and even calling for a boycott.  Really?  Fucking really?  So some of these "good" folks would like to force us all to celebrate their little religious shindig whether we want to or not?  Is this Iran?  What the fuck are those assholes thinking?  Oh, they're not.  You don't force your religion on people.  Religion is like a penis, it's all right as long as you're not waving it around in people's faces, trying to ram it down some one's throat or taking it out at school in front of my kid.

The most dipshit thing I saw was a comment asking who the hell Cesar Chavez was and the answer that came was that he was "some Mexican working for illegal alien's rights".  How much is wrong with that answer?  Well, to begin with Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma, AZ...Mexican American or, if you prefer, American.  He also served in the U.S. Navy.  He was a labor leader who helped to improve wages and conditions for farm workers, he was also a Latino American civil rights activist.  He used aggressive but nonviolent tactics.   In 1969, Chavez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of undocumented immigrants as strikebreakers.  So, he was quite the opposite of the description given in the uninformed answer to the question of who he was.  In the 1980's he led a boycott to stop the use of toxic pesticides on grapes.  That sounds like a damned fine thing to boycott about.  I like grapes, not so much toxic pesticides.

Cesar Chavez

So, why not recognize Cesar Chavez on his birthday?  There is a portrait of Chavez in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and the U.S. Navy named the last of its Lewis and Clark-class cargo ships after him.  There are a metric shit-ton of streets, parks, buildings and monuments named for him.  In other words, he's kind of a big deal and...he was real.  I know a certain portion of the Christian population want to try to insist that everyone celebrate their days and bow to their demands.  When that doesn't happen they tend to get all butt-hurt and start whining and bitching.  They are convinced that they are being persecuted because they aren't being allowed to persecute others and make them practice Christianity.  Isn't that one of the things that Americans hold in contempt when it concerns Middle-Eastern Countries and Muslim fanaticism?  What it comes down to is this, everyone isn't Christian, get over it.  If you want to hold onto your old superstitions and folk tales that's your business.  Don't expect me to take it, I won't.  Keep your peckers and your religion to yourself and try a little harder to not be hypocrites.  Kudos to Google for doing something different and standing firm.

And he was on a stamp.  Yeah, kind of a big deal.

I haven't abandoned you

I haven't' been very active in a while but I do have a valid reason.  I just wanted to touch base to let the few select people who may check in occasionally to see what new idiotic ideas I may have come up with know that I'm still out here.  I have been involved in a couple of long-term writing projects which are currently taking up almost all my time.  Trust me, as soon as I either have some epiphany that begs to be written about on my blog or have some good progress on my other projects, I will be back, keyboard blazing.  Until then, I will be lurking around the periphery.  Now, go out, have a drink or two and stir up some shit somewhere!  Stay tuned and thanks.

Keith Browning

Epitaph for Doc Schlosser

I received some distressing news today. I was told that an old friend of mine had died. I'm not sure when; it could have been this year or last year or maybe even the year before that. It was that type of friendship. We could go for months or years without seeing each other, lose touch, come and go in our travels and then reconnect on a sidewalk or over drinks in a bar. We didn't call each other or visit much; we were occasional drinking buddies. The main thing is that I will miss him. Doc, as most everyone knew him, was a genuine character and a great storyteller. He had an accent that was hard to place and a lyrically rhythmic speech pattern. I always thought it sounded like a blend of Georgia elite and New Orleans hustler. Another thing that he did effortlessly was knowing where to put a punch line. This talent he was either born with or learned during his tenure as a stand-up comedian in New Orleans during his younger days. I'd always heard that he probably could've taken that career somewhere if only the club owners had figured out that they should give him an early slot instead of putting him on at 11 at night. If they'd have put him on at 8 or 9 they could have had him before he'd started drinking. That's right, Doc was an unrepentant drinker. He was also well-spoken, apparently educated and as sharp as straight-razor.  By the time I met him, in the early 90's, he was already on the skids, he was perpetually broke or about to be and, it always seemed that he had either just gotten out of jail or was in the process of trying to avoid it. He lived in conditions that would be unacceptable to most people, sleeping on floors or mattresses loaned to him or in one of the old beaters that he drove around. He had a wonderfully self-deprecating way of looking at his condition; he made fun of it and laughed about it and turned it into stories.

He told a story about being arrested in the French Quarter in New Orleans which was typical of the “Doc affliction", his self-inflicted curse. He had been relieving himself between two parked cars when a New Orleans police officer walked up. She was short and, according to Doc, somewhat rotund. When she started to rouse him, he looked her up and down and said, in his gently sarcastic drawl, “I thought that the New Awlins City Po-lice had height and weight re-kwiya-ments.” He caught six charges for that one, including resisting arrest. This was Doc, he had a cavalier approach to situations which usually led to a negative outcome for him. He was definitely the sole author of the tragicomedy that was his life.

 

There are probably as many stories told about Doc as there were stories told by him; here is one of mine. Once upon a time, I owned a business in downtown Vicksburg. It was a modest business but I had put everything I had into it and was struggling to make it work. Doc had been living in the store next door to mine as a guest of the owners. He was allowed to sleep there at night in exchange for “night-watch” duties, errands, and various chores but, mostly just to help him out. It was just days away from Christmas and to say that my business was very slow is being generous. The only reason I went in every day was to get the mail and lie in wait for the occasional customer. My sole employee, John, had been letting some “raisin buck” ferment in my darkroom. Raisin buck is a toxic concoction not completely unlike wine, the manufacture of which had been learned while my employee was incarcerated. I'm not sure of the etymology of the word “buck” or the use of it instead of wine in this case; it may have something to do with the fact that it was fermented in a garbage bag or the involuntary spasm that hits you on the first sip. No customers had darkened my door for over a week and we were just sitting around staring at each other wondering what we were going to do when Doc stopped by for a visit. We started talking and Doc was telling stories and being the consummate entertainer when I got the idea for a small impromptu Christmas party. I told my employee to go down and get the raisin buck and we'd all have a drink to pass the time. It wasn't half-bad and I didn't think it would blind us, so we continued to drink the stuff while Doc cracked jokes. Vicksburg's mayor had, several years earlier, started a tradition of making the rounds of businesses with a film crew to get holiday greetings from business owners to air on the local television station. He had also started a tradition of completely ignoring my business for these promotional spots. So of course, he picked this moment to decide to stop ignoring me. He ambushed us and got a holiday greeting from the three of us: my employee, Doc and myself; all of us aglow and half inebriated from the fermented buck. I think I may have even offered him a cup. I wish that I had a picture of me and John standing there with our cups, Doc in the background, smiling and waving.

 

Doc's name was John M. Schlosser, and he would tell people that the “M” stood for Moderation (it really stood for Mason) and that his last name had “loser” in it. He was a genuine character. It was said that he could clear out a bar faster than an angry man with a gun but, while most people would try to avoid him, I was always glad to find a seat next to him. I've been told, several times in the past, that a friend had passed away only to find out later that I had been misinformed. I hope this is the case with Doc and that I'll run into him somewhere one day and we'll have a few drinks and tell some stories.

Update:  A mutual friend confirmed that Doc was taken off the respirator at River Region Hospital and passed away on June 11, 2012.  Your friends are gonna miss you, Doc.

Now For Something Completely Different - My Illustration Work

I figured that since I've been sharing a good bit of my experiences and stories on here that I would add another dimension, my artwork.  I wanted to be an illustrator for as long as I could remember and even spent a couple of years at The Florida School of the Arts in Palatka, FL studiying graphic design.  I even won the Art Council's Scholarship after my first year.  Unfortunately, life intervened and I didn't finish my degree.  I owned my own business for a while designing logos and graphics, printing shirts and painting signs.  Anyway, here are some of my pieces for your perusal.

 

Sam Kinison - One of the greats.

  Sam Kinison is a photo manipulation done using Photoshop software


 

American Queen at Vicksburg

 American Queen at Vicksburg is a photo manipulation done using Photoshop software

 

 

 

The Bride - Inspired by Poe's Premature Burial and other stories

The Bride was rendered digitally using an Intuos 3 tablet and Corel Painter 9 software


 

Ambrose - Inspired by Addams Family and Grimsly's Children

Ambrose was rendered using an Intuos 3 tablet and Corel Painter 9 software.

 

 



Chickens of War - I wanted to do something absurd, it was almost Guinea Pigs of War

Chickens of War was rendered digitally using an Intuos 3 tablet and Corel Painter 9 software.

 



Wood Nymph - rendered in traditional methods using India Ink and brush

 Wood Nymph was rendered using traditional methods with India Ink and brush on watercolor paper.




Scratch - Always a fan of 60's and 70's comic art, I wanted to do something in that style

Scratch was rendered digitally using an Intuos 3 tablet and Corel Painter 9 software.

 

 

 

Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton is a photo manipulation using Photoshop software 

 

 

 

Cthulhu

Cthulhu was rendered digitally using an Intuos 3 tablet and Corel Painter 9 software and, yes, I know, no wings

 

 

 

Where's the Party?

Where's the Party was rendered using a combination of methods.  I first drew the design in pen and ink, then scanned it into CorelDraw and converted it to a raster file to manipulate the colors.  It was a commission for a Mardi Gras Crewe to use on their t-shirts.

 

 

Thanks for looking, maybe I'll post some more once I get more of the traditionally worked pieces scanned or photographed.  Maybe I'll even get inspired to do some new work.

 

All images copyrighted by Keith Browning



The Kraken - A Beast of a Spiced Rum

 

In nautical lore, few beasts have inspired more awe and fear than the Kraken. In Norwegian mythology, it was huge, the size of an island with arms that could reach up to the top of the masts on the tall ships. It was big enough to attack a sperm whale...and win. In the thirties, there were reports that they occasionally attacked modern ships, but caught the worst of it when they encountered the propellers. The point being that, even though not the beasts of myth, these giant squids were large enough to mistake a ship for a sperm whale and attack it; a truly daunting creature.

Tonight, I am releasing The Kraken, The Kraken Spiced Rum that is. Like the beast of myth, the spiced rum is pretty daunting at a hefty 94 proof (that's 47% alcohol for the mathematically challenged). The first thing you notice is the cool double-loop handles on the jug-like bottle, pretty authentic looking and definitely nothing candy-assed here. A nautical-themed label depicting a Kraken attacking a ship...cool. The liquid inside is as opaquely black as the area where the weak brain cells used to reside inside my skull before I started thinning the herd. It is downright inky...nice.

 

About to release The Kraken

 

It was the looks of this bottle and the liquid that it contains which first drew my attention; its lack of frivolity intrigued me. It just looked like it was “all business”. I took the plunge and bought a fifth to try out. My first test was straight over the rocks, just to see what we're working with here. The first swallow (not a taste, mind you...a swallow) spoke to me on a primal level. It said, “Damn, that's a spicy burn.” It was a little like vanilla flavored kerosene. Then I regrouped and had another drink. The spices came through nicely, though there's still a burn (94 proof, remember?), it's a good burn. It's a good burn the way that a good alcohol drink is supposed to burn, enough to send some fire to your core and to let you know that you're still alive. The vanilla comes through nicely.

 

The second test was to mix a little Coke with it (I started with about a half-and-half mix), it would seem that it is the perfect blend. I have mixed few things with Coke that supported and complimented the mix as well as The Kraken (Bacardi Select is a close second as far as taste). The spice punches through the Coke flavor at just the right velocity. I have tried other spiced rums and The Kraken beats them all in my book. The flavor is great, it's a potent drink, and it is not one of those over-priced, over-advertised disappointments. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The Kraken is distilled in Trinidad and Tobago and blended with 13 secret spices, which is 2 more than Colonel Sanders used on his chicken.  Also, it is gluten, wheat, nut, & lactose free as well as vegan, for anyone who gives a shit.
 

Now, let me add my disclaimer so that all the pretentious pricks who have made it this far will feel vindicated:

If you've made it this far or have read any of my other posts, you know that I'm not a connoisseur nor sophisticated in my opinions, I am a drinker. I don't swirl my drinks in glasses, sniff at them and talk about 'bouquet', nor do I talk about the subtleties in a blend. It's simple, I like to drink and I especially like to drink things that (1) taste good, and (2) will aid me in my quest for inebriation.  I'm Irish, I work in a bar and in a liquor store and I feel that it is my duty to drink as much of that sweet elixir as possible.  Having said that, I will give The Kraken a hearty thumbs up and my own stamp of approval, an endorsement, if you will (are you listening, liquor companies? Reciprocate!). It fills my needs on both levels. This is something that I will buy again and suggest that my friends try. And yes, I do have friends, very interesting friends as a matter-of-fact, thank you.

As always, I will post a 'morning-after' report when that information becomes available.

The morning-after (or in my case, the afternoon-after) came without any ill after-effects, no headache, nothing. Just a little laziness, but I'll attribute that to the "sleep aids" that I took at 6:00 this morning to try and overcome my chronic insomnia.  So, my final verdict is that The Kraken is a quality product and my initial endorsement still stands.

 

And a thousand, thousand slimy things lived on and so did I.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Coleridge

 

The Kraken Rum homepage

The Kraken Rum Facebook page

The Battle of New Orleans - July 17, 1976

This is an older post from several years ago.  I'm bringing it back for a couple of reasons.  (1) I'm considering consolidating all my old blog posts into one location and, (2) because someone who had read it before requested it.  So here it is, warts and all!

Trying to remember all of the concerts that I have experienced made me think about some of the circumstances surrounding these events. I call them events, not in the same way that promoters refer to them as events but, in the sense that, in those lost days from the 60’s to some point in the 90’s, they were truly events, milestones in a teenager’s life. It was a chance to go see the artists that you’d idolized and listened to on recordings endlessly and only occasionally got to see on television.

You could read about them in magazines like Rolling Stone. Back then, Rolling Stone magazine was an important and relevant publication, worthy of the money you spent on it. It was an edgy magazine with great articles and writers, and the musicians were interesting trend-setters and experimenters. Rock and roll music was still in its adolescence and was not yet accepted into the mainstream and was frowned upon by most of society. Information on musicians used to be hard to come by, especially if you lived in the outlands. There were no 24 hour-a-day music channels on television and they weren’t the mainstream social entities that they are now. Today, Rolling Stone magazine is not worth putting in the bottom of a bird cage. It has been sold and sanitized and filled with talentless, plastic poseurs who put out pre-fabricated recordings of meaningless tripe.
 

Most of these concert events were wild road trips with caravans of friends in different vehicles, loaded with passengers and party supplies, roaring along the highway blasting music and pre-gaming for the show. I figured that there were some that would be worth writing about. Here is one.

 

I had been out partying with a couple of friends all night and, with the arrival of morning, the glaze of the night before became painfully apparent. We had been smoking and drinking for hours and the grimy crust of an all-nighter hung on us like a parasite. We had drunk beer and wine all night and smoked ourselves into a near catatonic state. The sun was coming up and we were faced with the decision to find somewhere to rest or to keep going. We were just sort of cruising around and winding down when an advertisement on the radio announced that The J. Geils Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top were playing at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans that night. Well, that was only about two hundred miles away, three hours driving time, give or take and, at the time, ZZ Top was the big dog. They were outselling The Rolling Stones and were traveling with the world's biggest sound system packed in nine semi trucks. The tickets were $12.50 each at the gate, remember this was 1976. My buddy, let's call him Rat because many years later that's what his nickname turned out to be, said, "I'll buy the tickets and pay for the gas if we can take your car." That sounded just about as reasonable as it could be, to a sixteen year old who'd never been to New Orleans, so I agreed.
 

We spent some time around town picking up a couple of other friends along the way, we’ll call them Willie and Randy. See how this is already starting to become an “event”? At the time I was driving a pretty ragged out '67 Chevy Malibu with worn out shocks and a really good stereo system (typical '70's style). The shocks were non-existent so anytime I had passengers in the back seat the tail pipe would drag when you hit a bump. In the 70’s you could get away with driving a car like that and even be very successful with the ladies. Then, not many kids our age were driving cars that were as good as or better than their parents, unlike now. After stocking up on more party supplies, we were off, I just didn't know how "off" we were going to be before it was all over with.
 

Being only sixteen, I felt like the only proper thing to do in this situation was to let my parents know where I was going. I also knew that, given the chance, they'd probably forbid it, so I was elated to spot my younger brother playing in the yard when I drove up. He was four at the time and I figured that he was more than capable of delivering the message so I leaned out the window and said, "Hey! Tell Mom and Dad that I'm going to New Orleans to see ZZ Top, I'll be back tomorrow," and then I left. I was feeling really responsible and good about myself, having done the right thing.
 

The first indication that we may be in for a less than pleasant experience was when, before we even cleared the city limits, we were pulled over by a cop. Rat was driving because I was still sort of blown out from the previous evening's debaucheries and besides, he knew The Way. I was hunkered down in the passenger seat trying to be invisible when the cop thrust his huge head into the car to look us over. I can remember squinting up at him through red, puffy eyes and seeing the little alligator style, roach clip that I had clamped on the visor rubbing all over the top of his cop hat. I just tried harder to be invisible by closing my eyes and squishing lower into my nest. He made some comment about us needing new tires and let us go on our way.

"Jesus!" I thought, "I can't believe that lunatic is just going to let us go, doesn't he realize that he'll be responsible for whatever happens to us from this point on! Oh, well, whatever happens will be on that crazy bastard's head."

The next time that I opened my eyes we were somewhere in the bowels of downtown Mobile, Alabama. I looked up with one eye and saw a One Way street sign slide past my window with the arrow pointing toward the rear of my car. I sat up and looked around. I was disoriented and needed desperately to get my bearings. I was also a little concerned about the sign which seemed to be at odds with the direction we were taking. I considered the possibility that it could be an omen.

"Hey. Rat. That sign said One Way"
"I'm only going one way" was his reply.
"Oh."

That sounded like a reasonable answer.

We were in Mobile to stop by someone's (I forget whose) sister's house. Why? I don't know. I guess to raid the refrigerator and see if there was anything we could steal because that’s probably what we did. After about an hour we were back on the road, finally, some interstate travel.
 

The closer we got to the venue, the more carloads of "heads" and young people we saw. In one of these cars were some cute, girls who were about our age. They pulled beside us and held up a bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey. We didn't have whiskey but we did have weed, so we held up a joint. They motioned for us to pull to the side of the highway and we sat beside I-10 sharing our weed and their whiskey. They were on their way to the same concert so we had plenty to talk about. After this short interlude we resumed our noisy, sodden journey.
 

When we reached the Tulane area of New Orleans it became apparent that there had been no provisions made for parking this many vehicles. We got as close as we could and just pulled up onto the median or 'neutral ground', if you’re using the local patois, in the middle of Tulane Avenue. We weren't the only ones doing that, Tulane Avenue had turned into one long parking lot with crowds of concert goers walking along the sidewalks carrying bottles, backpacks and ice chests. This was the party! We were there! We got out and locked the wreck up and fell into the procession. We were walking behind a guy who was carrying two plastic gallon milk jugs with some murky looking liquid sloshing around in them. Assuming it was wine we asked for some and in the post hippie spirit of the mid-seventies he was happy to oblige. After taking a few good pulls on the neck of the jug, I think it was Randy who said,

"Man, that's some shitty tasting wine!"

"That's not wine, it's mushrooms." Psilocybin, woops.
"Oh."

That didn't faze us, being the veterans that we were. It just set the tone for the rest of the day, weirdness.

As we approached the gates where the crowd was being bottle-necked into the arena it got tighter and tighter. Randy, who was a couple of years younger than us and much smaller, said that his feet weren't even touching the ground. He was just mashed up in the crowd and being swept along. I reached over the shoulders of several people and got a hand on him to try and keep him from being separated from us. We finally got inside and found some seats in the stands to call headquarters. Anyone who was ever at an outdoor concert like this in the seventies knows that it is a non-stop hedonistic orgy of excesses and this one was no different. The gates opened at three and J. Geils wouldn't start until around seven. Loud music was blasting from house-sized speakers and everywhere there was fun. F-U-N fun. More fun than is allowed, more fun than is legal, more fun than we should be having. So much fun that it could scare the shit out of you. Smoking, drinking, tripping, fighting, puking, necking, running, shouting and dancing. Fun fun fun. It was as if someone had opened the back door to a lunatic asylum and let them all out into a fenced yard to romp in the evening air. Small town Alabama was never like this, even on Saturday night. It was a lot to take in.

The J. Geils Band got started a little before it got completely dark and put on rollicking good show. Peter Wolf was dancing and scat-singing like an amped-up version of King Louie from the Jungle Book, yes, like an orangutan ripped to the tits on crank. I never knew that the human body could move that way.

Soon, after they finished their set and left the stage trouble started brewing. We saw a commotion and looked into the crowd on the ground in front of where we were sitting and saw a blue knot sliding through it. It looked like a big blue porcupine because on top of the blue mass were all these spines sticking up bristling and moving. Then we realized that the spines were night sticks being wielded by the New Orleans City Police who were moving through the crowd stomping the shit out of everything too slow or too stupid to move. What got all this started we never knew, but as soon as the crowd in the upper seats noticed what was going on it turned into a bottle throwing competition. Bottles floated out of the night sky from every direction aimed at the blue mass of law enforcement storm troopers down there. After the aerial assault had gone on for a while and the cops had slowed their beatings down in favor of covering up their heads, someone came on stage and made a statement over the P.A. system.

"Hey, everybody, calm down! Calm down! We're all out here trying to have a good time, now, don't ruin it, just calm down…and will the New Orleans City Police please leave the stadium!"
 

Holy shit! Really? They can say that?  And get away with it? It was an epiphany! If you have a big enough crowd on your side and a microphone plugged into a big enough P. A. system, you can get away with saying all kinds of stuff.

At the sound of this last part of the announcement the crowd erupted in a deafening roar of approval. This went on the entire time that the police worked their way back out of the crowd like a bunch of whipped dogs. I still don't know what sparked that whole incident off and I don't know how asking the New Orleans Police to leave the stadium really worked, but it did. Many years later I heard that one of the cops had been paralyzed by someone dropping an ice chest on his head from the top of the stands. I don't know if this is true or not, I hope not, that’s somewhat severe. I also heard that this incident had a lot to do with the closing of Tulane Stadium and that they didn’t have any more concerts there after this one, I don't know if that's true either, but it did close. What I do know is that they had one there, one time, and we were there.

A little later another announcement was made stating that due to some airplane trouble (ironic, isn’t it?) that Lynyrd Skynyrd would not be able to make the show that night. It was a terrible disappointment because I never got another chance to see them before their plane crashed in a swamp in Mississippi a year later. But to make up for it ZZ Top came on and put on a hell of a show.

Three spotlights hit the stage illuminating a cactus with a vulture (I think it was a vulture) perched on it to one side of the stage, a bison on the other side of the stage, a guy holding up what we assumed to be a rattlesnake in the center of the stage and long horn steers all on a huge Texas shaped plywood stage.  Then, they introduced ZZ Top. If there had been a roof on the place it would have been blown off. This was their 1976 world tour, back when they were still just a little old band from Texas and they were blues fueled, raucous and kicked ass. They started out just like the live side of their album (some of you will recognize the term “album side”) Fandango with "Thunderbird" and rocked the rest of the night.

ZZ Top wound up returning to the stage for seven encores that night for over 50,000 fans. At the end of the last encore a curtain was lowered with "Adios Amigos" emblazoned across it to the strains of "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" playing over the P.A. system to usher us all peacefully out into the New Orleans night.

By then we were completely wrung out and exhausted. We made our way out of the stadium and back to the car in the middle of the median where we had to sit and wait for traffic to clear before we could move. It was a pretty long wait if memory serves. On the three hour drive back Rat decides that he's had enough and wants to pull over to sleep, after a brief argument I took the wheel and brought us back home without incident.

It was a wild ride on a wild highway and one of those experiences that helps us to become who eventually turn out to be. That is life, that’s what life is. It is a series of experiences each of which changes you in some way to make you the person that you are right now. Ten minutes from now you may have had an experience that turned into a different person, that’s who you’ll be then. There are an awful lot of instances of questionable behavior and wrong turns stowed away back there in my youth, some of it dangerous and irresponsible. Everyone likes to think about going back to their youth and knowing then what I know now, but you know, if a person were to go back and fix all of their mistakes they would surely be an entirely different person. In some cases that may be an improvement but in most I’d say, probably not.

They began demolition on Tulane Stadium in November 1979, but in my mind it will always be there on July 17, 1976 the place where, at sixteen, I was part of the biggest party in New Orleans for one night. I won't ever forget my first trip to New Orleans to that concert thirty-one years ago. My mother won't let me.

The names have been changed to protect the lawless, criminal swine who took part in this shameful episode but the dates, places and events are all true.

Keith Browning - 2007
 

I still have this but I have no idea where my keys are