Wednesday, September 28, 2005  

The Perfect Storm

The last time I was the Lake Ontario Playhouse, Sam Walters and I nearly broke the world through sheer debauchery. And this weekend, I'm going back.

You must not underestimate the depths to which a diabolical retard like Sam will drag you. He's dangerous, through and through, and while he has the vocabulary of a Cantabridgian, he oozes moral decay from every pore, and you MUST NOT LOOK HIM IN THE EYE, or he will infect you, quickly, and your hopes and dreams will pool around your feet like yellow pus while he stands over your quivering, wrecked body and cackles like an opium-mad warlock. He listens to Swedish heavy metal, on purpose, at bone-cracking volume and during every waking hour. This pseudo-music churns his insides, twists them, perverts them, adding to his sickness, his deficiency. Every song is about Satan or Thor, and he screeches along at the top of his lungs, eyes glowing red like a jackal, as these infernal lyrics seep out of his car stereo and he drives, strangely enough, like a timid old woman (an evil one) to whatever unsuspecting town he's about to corrupt like a cancer cell in the heart of a small child.

The Lake Ontario Playhouse is located in Sackets Harbor, New York, a sleepy little resort town that's home to two bars, two restaurants, the playhouse and a B&B. In short, it's quite unprepared for a walking, talking, soul-eating demon like Sam, and we tore through that burg like John Dillinger on a bender, consuming multiple cases of beer bought at a deep discount from a terrified gas station owner. We smoked so many cigarettes that we overwhelmed the building's ventilation system and could write our names on the wall in tar. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were PowerBars and white crosses, and while Sam successfully conned a couple of innocent young women back to our den of iniquity, even he could not stop them from literally fleeing when they saw the state of our hovel, the overturned ashtrays, the empty beer cans, the chessboard and the fist-sized holes in the wall. They ran, jumped, and climbed over each other to get away, their long, lean legs carrying them down three steps at a time as fast as if they were trying to outrun a werewolf. Sam just laughed and grunted and fell asleep on the floor, the air crackling and burning around him.

I am not bringing Sam this time.

Instead, I'm bringing Tom Dustin, a good comic, a solid fellow, and while equally debauched, he's more like a drunken puppy than anything else. He's tricky, but he's harmless. He's got big doe eyes and absolutely zero impulse control, and deeply scarred women fall in love with him on sight. They pull him to their bosoms, cradle him, shush him, and then, once past their defenses, he commits dirty acts with them, near them, and on them, all the while maintaining his helpless cover. Where Sam is evil, Tom is cuddly, even while he's stealing beer and sandwiches out of the refrigerator of a snoozing, satiated woman who made the mistake of talking to him after a show. He's a Jedi in the body of a street urchin, and he's got great jokes, to boot.

My plan is to foist Tom off on an unsuspecting drunk with nice breasts and her own home early on Friday night, so I can go to bed early, read a book, drink some tea, and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for Saturday's baseball game, which I hope to watch, uninterrupted, at the only other bar in Sackets, my Red Sox cap glowing like a beacon in the darkness, and my lazy eye daring the Yankee-loving yokels to say just one goddamn word while Tim Wakefield, a baseball ninja if there ever was one, baffles and befuddles Joe Torre's creaky baseball golems. I will then swagger to the show buzzed and happy, with a chip on my shoulder, and wait for Tom to show up, unshaven and molested, ready to roll.

Buckle up, Sackets, because here we come again. Shows Friday and Saturday night. Click the link above for details.