LUDIC LOG

Nick and Percy, popularly (so to speak) known as the Glower Twins, are on their way to Tempe, which is what passes for an artsy college town in Arizona. "Artsy", in this instance, means that the place is choked to the gills with expensive specialty boutiques that sell things like beads, international coffees, imported candy, wicker baskets, novelty window decals for the automobile, and t-shirts with mass-produced, screen-printed, copyrighted anarchy slogans on them. Also featured are pricey ethnic restaurants thatreceive raves from gluttonous food critics who don't have to pay for their own meals; exorbitant cafés where 15-year-old goth types slouch moodily, exchanging obscene and depressing Jim Morrison poems and talking about Kafka; costly record stores where young punks cluster around the imports section and nod to each other knowingly; and most of all, clubs. Rock, punk, blues, jazz, country, folk, metal, hip-hop, dance, even God help us all comedy clubs, dotting the city like pins in a police map denoting the trail of a mad gang of drunken college students with too much money and no taste. And it is to one such club that Nick and Percy are wending their misanthropic way -- the infamous Hair of the Dog, owned and operated for ten years by scene legend Pickup DeGroove -- for the purpose of performing with their rock and roll combo, The Years.

"Who's supposed to be there tonight?", Percy asks, hoping to allay with the prospect of good company his fears that this will be another atrocious Thursday night sorry-boys-fifty-bucks-is-the-best-I-can-do gig like too many in the past. "Anybody worth mentioning? Anybody gonna be there at all?"

"Um...GODDAMN FUCKING SEMI, I CAN'T SEE AROUND YOU, ASSHOLE! Don't they have a special freeway for those things? I think TJ's giving Charlie a ride, and you invited Shelley and Bob..."

"They aren't coming. They've got some important sex to be having tonight. One of those last-minute things, apparently."

"Unh. George and Danny are gonna be there, I think, and those assholes from Dwarf Animals are at the Dog every fuckin' night..."

"Sometimes...turn left up there on Mill Avenue -- no, left!...sometimes I think Pickup got into running clubs just so he could have middle-class white kids kissing his ass all week long."

Nick pulls his primer-gray deathtrap into a space in the Dog's parking lot that was meant more for a very fast Japanese motorcycle, or maybe even a pedestrian, than for a gigantic foul-smelling Chevy van burdened down with drums and amplifiers.

"There's Terry's car," coos Nick in a voice that betokens sinister deeds to come.

"Terry? ¿Quien es Terry?"

"That moron from Planet, the hipster."

Percy chuckles, although there is a certain malignant undercurrent present that one does not usually associate with chuckling. He digs into the glove compartment and comes up with a can of metallic red spray paint. "Might have to do a little paint job after the show, eh, Nick? Nick?"

When pointless, malicious vandalism is discussed, Nick is usually the first to warm to the subject. So when he reacts so diffidently to the prospect of defacing the expensive car of someone so universally despised as Terry "Terribly Important" Redacre, Percy will know the reason why.

Nick does something that is, to say the least, uncharacteristic. He winces, and allows what might be interpreted as a look of dread to cross his already too dreadful face.

"There's a possibility that Sheila's gonna be there too."

"Oh my God! Nick, this is going to be one WHALE of a show. I'm suddenly so excited about this gig." Percy takes altogether too much glee, in Nick's view, at the prospect of another confrontation between Nick and his much-vaunted ex-girlfriend Sheila Sirocco. Whenever the two meet, it begins with civil (or what passes for civil between two such volatile personalities, which is similar to what passes for civil between two hungry wolverines) repartee and quickly degenerates into what is (inaccurately, given the panoply of body parts often involved) referred to as "fisticuffs". Why Nick is so fretted by the prospect is something of a mystery; in most other circumstances he would welcome the opportunity for shouting at and assaulting someone he didn't like, but with Ms. Sirocco the prospect fills him with angst rather than joy. TJ believes that Nick didn't like it when Sheila is around because it showed a tender side of him he didn't like exposed (although how being party to a violent, drink-throwing shouting match in public with a disgruntled ex-lover showed one's sensetive side she cannot easily explain); Percy simply thinks Nick doesn't like being seen with someone as aggressive and repellent as himself. But for whatever reason, the possibility of her presence always sets him on edge.

Percy clambers into the back of the Van of Love and, maneuvering around piles of noisemaking electronics as well as a man with the physical grace of a kneecapped wildebeest can, changes into his gig clothes. He slips on a t-shirt (white) emblazoned with the shield of the Soviet KGB (red). This is the only item of his wardrobe at variance with the You Can't Go Wrong With Black Rule. His pants (thrift store issue, like most of the Glower Twins' fashion collection) are black cotton slacks forced into the juvenile practice of being pegged over with safety pins, making it appear that he has just ridden in on a bicycle. Black Chuck Taylors and a black rag that used to be a dress shirt but is now basically a bunch of knotted-together tourniquets complete the look.

"Fucking Sheila. She's gonna start shit tonight, and ruin what might have otherwise have been an okay show. If you think I can spend five hours on Mill Avenue with all these jerky downtown trendies without hitting someone, Ratboy..."

"Calm down. Come with me to the bookstore, and I'll buy you an eggnog shake."

"Eh." Nick doesn't really like bookstores, especially since Percy's contempt for the works of Sylvia Plath, along with his own admiration for the works of the Zippo lighter company, got them tossed out of the Barnes & Noble at Metrocenter, but Percy does know his weaknesses: there's no one Nick wouldn't kill for an eggnog shake, coincidentally available year round at the soda fountain next door to the very bookstore Percy grants his custom.

When we next join the two delinquents, they will stand on a tiny stage and make a huge amount of electrically amplified racket and holler lyrics about girls at the top of their lungs. Wish them bonne chance, because unbeknownst to them, their lives are about to take an unusual and significant turn.