Pinkerton's Weblog

Rest in Peace, Dimebag Darrell

Dimebag Darrell, lead guitarist/songwriter of Pantera was shot to death last night. When I first read about this tragedy this morning, I was shocked and horrified. Let me explain this: what Kurt Cobain's death was to many of you, this was to me. It was extremely tragic.

When I was in high school, I worshipped Pantera -- and Dimebag Darrell represented not only the driving force of that band, but THE omnipotent guitarist of the nineties. As a guitar player and metal fan, I'd pick up the latest issue of Guitar World or Guitar Player, and without fail, Dimebag Darrell was there. Sometimes it would be a cover-page interview; other times the tablature to his latest impossible-to-play song; often he'd even be seen in a column, teaching young guitar players how to emulate his solos (that's how cool this guy was.)

Dimebag Darrell WAS heavy metal for the nineties. What Sabbath was to the seventies and Metallica was to the eighties, that was Pantera for the nineties for me -- THE metal band. I had a poster of him in my room at one point. While the rest of my high school was off worshipping Kurt Cobain, the true guitar players knew who the real musicians were. They weren't the guys who could strum a few barre chords. They were the fuckers who knew the fretboard like we know breathing -- and Dimebag Darrell, as well as Zakk Wylde, knew that fucking fretboard. They were, like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix before them, ROCK GODS. Fuck grunge, man. THIS was where the genius was.

I haven't listened to Pantera in years. I havent gone to see them live since I was in high school. It's a bygone era for me now. Even so -- hearing the news of Dimebag Darrell's death hit me hard today.

A guitar-playing god has been taken from us too soon. How much more could Stevie Ray Vaughan have given us if he hadn't been taken so early? What aural masterpieces could Jimi Hendrix have given us?

So too: what many more songs could Dimebag Darrell -- a versatile and ridiculously gifted musician -- have produced, had his light not been extinguished?

If you don't know the man's music, I admit you might laugh at that. But for me, one of the absolute greatest guitar players I've ever heard has been murdered. May the music you made live to the end of us, Darrell Abbott. And may your legacy inspire the musicians to come in time.

Glorious Man!

Damn damn damn!

File this one under "failed projects", I guess. I'd downloaded this old comic book called Defenders of the Earth. It was stupid, poorly written and made no sense, so of course I loved it and read it many times.

I started taking the panels and rearranging them, then writing new dialogue. As this progressed and I became happier with the results, I'd planned on doing an entire comic for it.

Anyway, I'm a moron. In an attempt to clean up my C drive last week, I accidentally erased all of the original scanned comics. I've asked around and can't seem to find them again. Sadly, it looks like that's that.

Bah. Well, no big deals. Actually, I've got a few other things in the works that are far cooler, so I'm actually glad to have my time freed up.

Nonetheless, since I thought this small part was pretty funny, I present to you the first (and now only) page of...

The Most Embarrassing Incident of My Life

This would be about four years ago -- I'd just gotten a job in a new city, and so didn't really know anyone yet outside of work. I had a small bachelor apartment, which was almost completely unfurnished. At the time, I think I slept in a sleeping bag. I had a couch, a chair, a TV and TV stand, a lamp -- not much else. Sort of the bare essentials. No curtains either, by the way. That's important, so hold onto that.

As it turned out, the apartment complex I chose was in the middle of the gay district. Since I was new to the city, I hadn't known this. I'd been walking around town on my lunch hours at work, trying to find a place to live (I crashed at a friend's place my first few weeks until I found one). I eventually found a great-looking bachelor apartment, which was inexplicably $100 cheaper than any of the bachelors in the surrounding area. Hardwood floors, a deck, track lighting -- I couldn't believe my luck, and signed the lease right there on my lunch hour. It wasn't until my father brought the truck into town and helped me move in a week later, and we showed up to find two leather bull-queers necking in the lobby, that I realized what was going on. My father, I remember, gave me a long look -- waiting, I think, for me to officially come out of the closet right there in the truck. Much explaining ensued that I wasn't gay -- just an idiot who doesn't research apartments well.

As luck would have it, within a month of my moving in the landlord announced a total overhaul of all the decks by a construction crew. Suddenly the outside of my building looked like a war-zone, with lumber and cement mixers and dolleys running up the sides of the buildings. All the decks were ripped off the building, the doors were sealed up from the outside, and crews got busy laying the steel frame foundations for all the new decks. This took place over the course of months -- it's a thirty-storey building, with about eight apartments per floor, and a deck per apartment. So a little math tells you this wasn't finished in a day. As weeks turned to months, I stopped noticing them entirely.

One morning, I woke up hard, and I woke up early. Usually I trot off to the shower, have a little breakfast, get my shirt and tie pressed, and I'm off to work. This time I had a little time to kill, and so popped on the TV, found some hotty, got comfortable on the couch, and... well, started having some fun, if you catch me.

So I'm stroking away, and because I was already pretty revved up to begin with, it wasn't taking long. Tissues were at the ready. I revved up the pace a little, and...

...I orgasmed. Shot my load.

Just as four construction workers on a machine-lifted scaffolding appeared in my window to install my deck.

Sadly, I noticed this just before the load-shooting. As anyone who's shot a load or two will know, this isn't actually something you can stop. So, just as they appeared, and caught my eye, I... ejaculated in front of them.

Having done the deed, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. So I very casually removed the tissues, gave a slight nod in their direction, as if to confirm their presence and pretend it was business as usual -- that gay construction workers watch me spank off every day from the window and this just happened to be their turn -- and casually waltzed into the bathroom.

You'd think this would be the end of the story. And well it should be, since it's already extremely, extremely embarrassing. And yet it's not the end of the story. Because since I'd rushed into the bathroom in a shamed state, I hadn't actually taken anything in with me. Like, say, clothes. I just had the underwear I was wearing. My only hope was to go about my morning bathroom routine very slowly, hoping they might move on before I finished so I could leave my bathroom and get a change of clothes.

I brushed my teeth. Hammering noises from outside. I showered. Drilling noises. I shaved. Silence. Ah!

I walked out in my underwear. The four of them were sitting around having coffee out of a thermos. Still there, of course. Still watching.

At this precise point I realized I'd simply have to get over this, and so went about the business of getting dressed in front of the construction workers. Pants, shirt, tie, socks. After I'd finished lacing up my shoes, I grabbed my briefcase and, turning to the window, gave a small bow.

They clapped.

That night I nailed bedsheets up against the windows.

Quickly! To the Rhinoceros Stables!

I just watched a Nikon commercial where a rhinoceros rampaged through the backyards of a suburb, flattening fences and scattering swingsets like toothpicks. Our hero of the commercial manages to scoot out of his house in time to take many crisp photos of the lumbering beast with his trusty Nikon
camera.

Here's the crazy part: while the rhino goes nuts, the commercial flashes a warning at the bottom that what you're watching is only simulated.

Eventually it occured to me that Nikon was simply hoping to avoid complaints from extremely dim animal rights activists. ("What? Jurassic Park? This is no time to discuss Michael Crichton novels, man! We've a rhino to save!") But my first assumption was that Nikon was hoping to dissuade anyone from copying the stunt, as most commercials involving high-octane action-packed selling usually state.

How many rhinos does Nikon think we have? I wondered. And assuming we had one or more, why would this commercial necessarily be the lynchpin to one of us snapping and launching our rhino at an unsuspecting populace?

It was a nice commercial, I guess. But really, if I had A) a rhinoceros, and B) a long-standing ax to grind with my neighborhood, I can't imagine it would have taken me this long to put two and two together on this. "Rhino... smashing through backyards...? But that means... OF COURSE! To the rhinoceros stables!"