Best Laid

Oh the plans that I had. I was going to be a wandering, mendicant poet, traveling the deserted back roads of America, blowing the minds of the children and inducing quiet revolt. I was going to be a rock star.

My band would be named after an inside joke, cryptic to the point of catching the imagination of the jaded music press. We were going to release an EP that NME would rave about, but sales would be pretty lackluster. Interest in the band would begin to spread after a particularly fiery appearance on the "Arsenio Hall Show" where Tommy, the lead guitarist, would make like he was going to smash his knock off Les Paul only to savagely yank it back and toss off a roaring solo.

It would be after rumors of strange sex rites and rampant abuse of "mood elevators" on the Killing You Kindly tour that the band would become a hit. Our breakthrough video would be a dark, completely surreal (read: nonsensical) bit of four minutes, directed by a young, up and comer just out of film school. Our look and sound would attract the disenfranchised youth like ants to sugar water, and we would re-release the first EP (with a couple of previously unreleased outtakes and live cuts) to tremendous sales.

The wild stories of drug use and groupie abuse would be nothing compared to the internal struggle within the band. The drunken fights would destroy thousands of dollars worth of gear and end up burning down our newly built recording studio. The full on brawl that would occur onstage during a stadium show on the Soul Glue tour would be a staple of MTV and talk shows for weeks, but would unfortunately rip the band asunder.

I would embark on a solo tour, full of myself with the knowledge that I didn't need the rest of the band, with minor success. The venues would become increasingly smaller and dingier. To protect my self esteem, I would blame the lagging interest on the fact that the audience just didn't get what I was doing.

I would age gracelessly in a fog of cheap scotch and Whip-Its, writing a tell all book titled quite cleverly from one of the band's popular songs. This would spark a very brief interest in the band again. A song would be used on a soundtrack and would be played on a radio station serving those addicted to nostalgia. This would bring me enough royalty money to keep me in frozen pizzas until I died a completely unnoticed death at the age of 62 - a drunken, accidental drowning in the kiddy pool placed in the courtyard of the apartment complex.

Man, what the hell happened...