What Will You Wear For The Meth-Amphetamine Appreciation Day Parade?

I was so happy to hear that meth-amphetamine had its own day! 

Crystal meth — not that shitty sulphate powder that has been popular in the UK since the 70s, or the crap that the American Tattooed Neck Society distills from over-the-counter cold medicine, you know, that caustic weasel dust that burns like drain cleaner and is featured every week on Cops and cheaply-produced MSNBC special reports — I mean the real deal, the shiny, sparkling-clean zoom-drug of my youth, the stuff that kept America great, winning wars and hauling ass from coast to coast.

Goddamn, I miss that.

Meth has such a bad rep these days. And it is sooooo undeserved.

Here is the Truth: the drug is not the problem, the real problem is DAYTIME TELEVISON.

Dig it – if you spend your days tweaking at home watching Oprah and Jerry Springer, then NO SHIT, you are going to age twenty years in six months and your teeth are gonna fall out. That is not what the drug is designed for.

Speed, or crank, or whatever the kids are calling it these days, is a wonderful thing. Trust me. It’ll keep you up all night dancing, or making love, or studying for the bar exam. A couple of lines of the good stuff and you can drink with God himself. BUT TWEAKING — or SPEEDING, as it used to be known by hep rock’n’roll cats, bikers, and thrill jockeys —WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE THE ACTIVITY ITSELF.

If you are doing it right, snorting a few lines before the big Mötörhead concert, or before playing guitar in the Stooges, or driving a truck across the country, or storming Normandy, then you will have no problem. But if you keep shoveling that crap into your head and think that watching The View is a good way to spend your time high and wired, well, then we have all seen the results, and they ain’t pretty.

Which is why I was so happy to hear about Meth-Amphetamine Appreciation Day!

Connoisseurs always knew it was better than coke — it was cheaper and lasted ten times longer! This was our day! I was going to wear a white linen suit.

Then I realized that I had read the press release wrong, and it was Meth-Amphetamine AWARENESS Day, and it was being thrown by Alberto Gonzales, who was the United States Attorney General for a few minutes, and there wasn’t going to be a parade, or even a reception.

I was thinking about this because I was musing on all the great people whom I have met since my book came out – drug dealers and strippers and professional wrestlers  and the usual assortment of stoners, freaks, book geeks, gangstas, and literary groupies – but I keep coming back to the couple from Oklahoma I met in a very swank hotel bar in Los Angeles.

They were in Hollywood because they were going to be on The Price Is Right, which as I understand it, is a favorite among mid-western housewives and toothless meth-heads.

What I didn’t know was that Bob Barker had retired and it was now being hosted by Drew Carey, whom I knew from nighttime television.

The couple from Oklahoma knew the prices of EVERYTHING — Kraft Mac and Cheese, Rice-a-Roni, Gatorade, and most importantly, a Ski-Doo, which is a kind of snowmobile, and the very reason they were in California.

"We’re going to win a Ski-Doo!" they told me over some sort of boutique Tequila cocktail that probably cost as much as the damn snowmobile.

"What people don’t understand," the woman told me, "is that the whole point of The Price Is Right is so people can find out what the Ski-Doo costs so they are not afraid to go out and buy one! They really aren’t as expensive as you think." 

I admit that I don’t know a lot about Oklahoma, or snowmobiles. I knew a guy from Norman, Oklahoma, who used to steal cars and race them at an abandoned Air Force base. He is now a successful pornographer. I was in Oklahoma City once and it was very dusty, so I have no idea why anyone would need a snow-anything there, or travel to all the way to Hollywood to win one.

These were, without a doubt, the most optimistic people I have ever met.

Mike Edison, author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

***********************************

Mike will be performing with his band, featuring Jon Spencer, in a very special evening of "Literary Mayhem and Rock’n’Roll," with special guests Jonathan Ames, Rachel Shukert, and Amanda Stern, Thursday, October 16^th, at the incredible Spiegelworld tent at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. For info, free MP3s and videos (including the infamous Bong Guitar video) and much more, please visit www.rockettrain.com