I LOVE A FUCKING HAPPY ENDING

So after posting the story yesterday about how FedEx screwed me up the poop chute with only a smidgen of spit for lubrication, I still wasn't exactly thrilled with my situation.

Sooooo ... I sent the company an email ... the company I ordered the snow juice from.

An hour later the phone rang.

It was the MF'ing president of the company.

He said something along the lines of "Soooo ... you want some snow juice?" to start the conversation.

We then spoke for 15 minutes. He told me all about his business, what the snow juice is made of, how he hates FedEx too, but UPS has screwed him over more than FedEx (and he owns 600 shares of UPS stock ... go figure).

He was the nicest freakin' person I had spoken to in like ... I dunno ... forever.

He then said that he was going to ship me another case of snow juice and if I eventually ended up receiving the first case as well ... hey ... that's a free case for me.

He also said he was calling FedEx to get to the bottom of this.

I thanked him profusely and we hung up.

An hour later ...

He calls me back and says FedEx confessed everything to him.

They're pretty sure they left it at the wrong address and the driver who did it was scared of losing his job over it, so he never put it in the system that he had delivered it.

I was all "DAMN!! They told you that??"

And he said "When you spend $1,000 a week with them, they'll tell you everything."

Mr. Snow Juice is my new best friend.

Now I just have to wait for this freakin' case of snow juice to get here and life will again be a blast blast blast.

Horrible.

STINKY NASTY HORRIBLE FUCKING GIG.

If some of you recall ... I was to do my first 12 hour gig tonight from 6 pm until 6 am for the Cancer People who have a legitimate name to their organization, but I don't want to type it because they're nice people and I'd do anything for them ... except write a namby pamby bullshit review of the gig tonight.

The gig starts at 6, it's 30 minutes away and I figure I'll leave about 4:45 so I can have plenty of time to set up.

Susie and Andrew get home at 4:30 and Andrew wants to see Daddy because we've only seen each other in passing all week.

So we have a little quality time while Daddy loads up the van with his equipment and then Daddy's all "Gotta go to work, son! Hope you don't resent me in 10 years!!"

And I get into the g-damned rush hour traffic.

I'm told that the gig is at the local high school's stadium.

So I have printed out directions to the local high school ... right?

I get up there at like ... 5:30.

There's not a person in sight.

And I left the cell number of my contact person on the kitchen counter at home.

So I drive around until I find a convenience store.

"Do you know anything about this big event that's supposed to be at the high school stadium?" I ask.

He does.

Except the high school stadium is at the junior high school.

Huh???

The guy was Indian and I thought maybe he was confused and so I asked him again, only slower.

He repeated that if I was trying to get to the high school stadium, I had to drive across town to the junior high.

I'll be damned if Aboo wasn't right.

So I get there and it's now 5:50.

I ask a woman where the DJ is supposed to be and she's all "I dunno."

Alright, fuck you. Where's someone that DOES FUCKING KNOW?!?

Someone points me toward the end of the football field, where I'm greeted by Kirk.

Kirk has a fucking attitude from hell when I approach him.

"You're late," he said.

"I was told to go to the high school stadium" I said. "I had no idea the high school stadium was four miles away at the junior high school. Where do I set up?"

"We thought you weren't showing up, so we've gotten someone else," he smirks.

Heh.

My contract says I start playing at 6.

It's now 5:53.

You have just screwed yourself, Kirky. Gimme my money and I'll leave right now.

Kirk then points out that the other "DJ" only has one CD and a CD player with some tiny speakers.

I tell him that I'm obligated to play and if he'll excuse me, I've got a system I need to set up in seven minutes.

So I get it all set up and I'm ready to go by 6.

They're not.

At 6:20, they start their little ceremony over my microphone.

They don't like my microphone because it's not wireless.

So one of the organizers says he has a wireless mic at home ... just a few minutes away.

He goes home, gets his precious fucking wireless mic and starts to hook it up through my system.

... And somehow manages to screw up my amplifier to the point that one speaker isn't working.

By now, some local Karaoke Queen is singing her 10 song Karaoke set to ZERO applause because everyone's busy chit-chatting on the other side of the football field.

Meanwhile, Captain Audio says he can go home and get his amp and save the day.

You go, boy.

Seriously.

Go.

Fucking NOW.

So he goes home and I'm playing music out of one speaker for a bunch of cloggers now.

I'm on this rickety stage to begin with and now I've had to scoot all my stuff to the back edge of the stage so the cloggers can stomp the shit out of the stage.

I fucking hate cloggers.

I hated 'em before tonight, but now I really hate 'em because they're arrogant.

Well guess what, cloggers??

That dead silence after every fucking clogging dance you do? That means your primitive dance shit isn't WELL ACCEPTED, EVEN BY THESE LOCAL FUCKING CORNPOKE HILLBILLIES.

Meanwhile, Captain Audio is back with an amp that puts out about half my wattage.

Which means you can hear the music about ten feet away and from there ... nothing.

Then a local gospel group gets up on stage and FUCKING LIP-SYNCS to five songs in a row.

Their mics aren't even plugged in to anything.

And ... remember way back when ... couple of years ago ... I mentioned how I hated cloggers and everything they stood for??

Well, I hate lip-syncing local gospel groups just a hair more.

Because they're all staring at whoever is lip-syncing at any given moment and grinning like a horny monkey ... like they're just really "digging that message from God".

And I just wanted to get on my mic and say "Quit the asinine grinning, you fucks!! She's not even singing!!!"

By now it's about 10:30 and I FINALLY get to play some music. Because this shit has gone on for HOURS and I've just been standing out there, behind every fucking loser entertainer and grinning like I'm enjoying their garbled shit.

I was "digging their messages" to the naked eye.

But inside, I was f'n seething because my amp was busted, Prissy Kirk wanted me dead, Captain Audio wants to try and fix my $700 amp for me in his truck, I've got a guy named Junior who swears Captain Audio has no idea what he's doing and Junior will really fix my amp good if I just let him take it home with him. He'll call me when it's finished.

Chhhh-right.

THEN ... Bubba shows up.

That was his name ... Bubba.

Bubba was about 450 lbs of mental retardation.

And Bubba wanted to sing karaoke.

Now then ... I was promised that I'd be under a tent because the Weather Channel swears we're going to be hit by a monsoon sometime around midnight.

No tent. I forgot to mention that earlier.

And the winds were ... hmmmm ... windy as fuck?

I had removed the LEAST amount of equipment from my van in case these severe thunderstorms moved in quickly. That way, I could sprint everything that was still in working condition to the van and salvage what was left of my equipment.

I told Bubba that we'd be doing karaoke at 2 a.m.

He whined.

He fucking whined.

This colossal tub of shit whined because I wasn't going to pull out the karaoke until I was convinced it wasn't going to hail on my karaoke shit.

Then they had a Miss(ter) Relay contest which meant men dressed in drag and pranced around the stage and all that shit.

Whoo-hooo.

Then it was time for the Pajama Mama contest to see who had the best pajamas.

Then it was time for the funny hat contest. The winner had a roll of toilet paper on her head.

Oh, the hilarity.

By now it was 11:30 p.m. and Captain Audio informed me of the only good news I heard all night.

He had fixed my amp.

Basically, he had pulled something loose while jamming his wireless microphone shit into the back of my equipment.

Hallelujah.

I played about two songs and then Kirk had an announcement to make at 12:30.

The event was over five and a half hours early.

Why??

Because there was about 15 people left walking around in circles for cancer.

Y'see ... the cloggers and Karaoke Queens and stupid hat contests and pajama contests ... well ... it was just too much excitement for the 200 people that were there at 6.

Kirk came up to me as I was tearing my stuff down and said "I bet that made YOU happy."

Because I was all worried about these severe thunderstorms rolling in and none of my shit was protected.

I said "Yeah, I am. This is $5,000 worth of stuff I have here and I didn't want to get it wet because you guys didn't provide me with a tent like you said you would."

He then said they had the frame for the tent ... but not the actual canvas to go OVER the frame. And that's why I didn't have a tent.

Bush league motherfucker.

Regardless, I got paid the full amount, I get about five extra hours more sleep than I thought I'd get and you got a rare Saturday update from moi.

We're both winners.