Rover in the front seat

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Budowitz Website: http://www.budowitz.com

Excuse the interruption, but this urgent and relevant query was waiting on
my hard disc after being on the road, so I thought I'd share it in hopes of
enlightening those of you with similar problems. Beware: True story,
freakier than fiction. No offense intended. Josh Horowitz

Dear Dr. Klez,
I¹m a bandleader with a problem: my musicians are always late to everything.
Rehearsals, sound checks, even the gigs themselves. Please advise as to what
I should do. Francesco Enziano

Dear Francesco ,
Better late than sopping wet, and I¹ll explain why I say that. Normally my
band members bring their clothes to the gig and dress there, but sometimes
it happens that we just don¹t have the time and are in a rush. As often
happens on our tours, our hotel was a good 20 minutes from the venue, we
were playing acoustic, and because there was no sound check, everyone became
rather lackadaisical about the time, the result being that we all had to
dress for the gig before leaving the hotel and were in a mad rush to get
loaded up, as the gig was to begin in 15 minutes. Having finally gotten
underway, we of course took a wrong left turn and ended up on a one-way
street going nowhere in particular.

Well, wouldn¹t you know it, one of our band members suddenly put on a wince
and with a whining voice said he had to pee. Since I was driving, I simply
said that it¹s gonna have to wait, because we can´t waste anymore time.

Now, how many people do you know who can´t hold it in for 20 minutes after
the first urge hits? I mean come on. As a bandleader, wouldn´t you have also
felt the responsibility to get to the gig on time and expect your band
members to have a minimum of bladder control? Why on earth is it that I get
the only musician this side of the Dniester who can´t drink a Guiness and
wait till the next available restoom to pay for the consequences?

He repeated the need to stop again and said that it was REALLY imperative.
Well, either I had underestimated the amount he had drunk before entering
the car, or had simply misjudged his capacity for rebellion. Seeing that I
wouldn´t comply, he bent down to the floor of the van and picked up the
empty  Gatorade bottle which had been rolling around there for the past 2
days, maneuvered himself into a strategic position, unscrewed the lid, then
unzipped his pants and made a gesture of preparation which I assumed was
purely symbolic. Surely, I thought, he wouldn´t follow through with it.

I was wrong. He daintily placed the object of his discomfort into the ample
neck of the Gatorade bottle - which seemed designed for precisely this
situation -  and began to unleash a stream which was certainly impressive
under any circumstances. I inadvertantly became fascinated by the similarity
in texture and color which the fluid entering the Gatorade bottle now had
with the original substance that came in it when we bought it, and, being so
engrossed in this comparison, did not notice that I had picked up velocity,
nor was I aware of the particulars of the road on which we were driving.
Right before the decisive moment, the band members in the back screamed in
that staggered unison that Budowitz has become famous for, ³SPEED BUMP!!²

I don´t know what it was that shocked me more - the other members screaming
at the top of their lungs or the van leaping into the air over that cruelly
placed speed bump. It doesn´t matter now. The Gatorade bottle lept out of
his hand, bouncing off the dashboard with such force that the contents of it
splayed all over the windshield, the cassette player, the ceiling and, as
fate would have it...me.

Two warm droplets landed on my right cheek. The back seat members went
almost unconscious with laughter, which only excacerbated the situation, as
the culprit - whose incontinence had already put us in this situation, was
now laughing in absurd solidarity with the other members so unabashedly,
that his diaphram began an almost superhuman force of unrelenting rhythmic
pressure on his bladder, which was still swollen with whatever it was that
he had voluminously poured into it that afternoon.

The effect was daunting. The organ of affliction began to spray like an
unattended firehose, flailing wildly about as its owner convulsed in a state
of dilerious hilarity, flooding the entire van. Liquid landed in places
where a sponge could never dream of reaching. The windows, the vents, the
rear view mirror. It even managed to reach the rear hatchback window, don¹t
ask me how. The act was no less controllable than it was constant. No end
was in sight.

I felt as though I had just been placed in an Esalen hot tub. My shirt
changed from a dull black to a shiny, gleaming purplish tint and my pants
were soaked so thorougly that the seams of both of them began to drip into
the instep of my shoes - causing them to make little squishing noises every
time I stepped on the clutch.

No one was protected from the evils of our fiddler´s digestive produce.
Whereas I was assaulted from the right side, the backseat band members had
been flooded from the top of the ceiling, as certain thrusts of laughter had
a catapulting effect on the hosing, causing the heavy stream to shoot over
the back of the head of its perpetrator, ricocheting in a hypotenuse angle
into the backseat region onto his victims. For them it was like standing
under a balcony drainpipe, whereas for me the onslaught was direct,
powerful, revolting, unavoidable and utterly canine in its implications.
But, justice be done, no one in that van had been exempt from the act. The
entire band smelled like a Kennel at Christmastime.

When we finally reached the venue, we had our tails firmly tucked between
our legs and our  chins collectively pressed against our chests so as not to
incur any more notice of our condition than was absolutely necessary. The
promoter of the venue greeted us amiably at first, but his face quickly
changed from a nervous, yet relieved enthusiasm that the group had finally
arrived at the venue only 10 minutes late -  to a polite, but quizzical
disgust when the fragrance reached his nostrils and wafted through the
entire backstage area like a pea soup fog.

Needless to say, it was difficult to make it through the concert. Perhaps it
was the odor, the memory of the experience, the audience´s confusion as to
where that offensive fragrance was coming from and why was the entire band
drenched from head to foot, smirking and grimacing through both halves of
their performance and what had they been drinking, anyway?

So, you see, Francesco, sometimes it is better to allow your band a certain
modicum of tardiness. And if you tell them to be at their destination at a
time which is calculated to be earlier than the actual start time, maybe
they´ll show up only a little late. But at least they´ll be dry.
Dr. Klez

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