The Adventures of PB James: The Noxious Neighbors Part 2

The Noxious Neighbors Part 2
He raps his knuckles against the door and immediately everything is quiet and still. The light is no longer pulsing from under the door. There is no low hum coming through the walls and there are no screams. He raises his hand to knock again but pauses, concerned that what he heard was just a television that has now turned off. He will look a fool in his first meeting with the neighbors. The droplets of red liquid that still sit on the stairs leading up to the landing confirm the strangeness of the night and the sudden silence makes the fear creep up his skin and catch in his throat.
He retreats back to his own apartment and locks the door. It’s cold in the room and he’s sweating. He goes into the kitchen and grabs his phone off the coffee table, the only piece of furniture he owns. The fear lingers and it has him handling his phone and contemplating calling the police. What would he say? There were some screams. Could it have been a television? Yes. I just moved in you see but I have a feeling, a feeling that something evil is going on in the next room.
He places the phone back on the coffee table and returns himself to the mattress where he takes down a gulp of tequila straight from the bottle before settling back down. He doesn’t rest but when the sun is finally coming up through the window he is asleep.

The next morning he makes some coffee on the stove and after drinking it he realizes he has no choice but to approach the neighbors again. The sounds from the night before are haunting him. The memory of the screaming sits in his ears.
He goes out into the hall and the red liquid has disappeared. The stairs are clean, cleaner than they were the day before. He almost second guesses himself again but forces his hand up and the knuckles against the door. A moment is passing but he can hear the footfalls inside the neighbor’s apartment as someone approaches the door. It swings open and a girl stands in the doorway.
She’s a pretty girl but her face is a bit too full and her eyes are weighed down by the eyelids which make her look dull. The skin on her face is very pale and she looks tired and washed out. Her hair is brown and limply surrounds the round face.
“What?” she says.
“I’m your new neighbor,” PB replies.
She nods.
“Did you happen to hear anything kind of weird last night?” he asks.
“Like what?”
“Kind of like screaming. And a washing machine.”
“I don’t think so.”
Her dull face is a blank and it makes him feel stupid. He steps back towards his own door and awkwardly waves to her.
“Well, sorry. Have a good day.”
He closes the door on the dull face. Some people you connect with and some you don’t he supposes. He begins to dig through the boxes looking for something to eat and there’s a knock on the door. He opens it and is surprised to find the girl standing there, still dull. She walks by him into the apartment and stands in the middle of the studio among the boxes and the mattress.
“You heard screaming last night?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t at home. I was at work.”
She looks down at PB’s scattered processions and sees the tequila bottle lying by itself next to the mattress, three quarters empty.
“Can I have some of that?” she asks.
He digs the other shot glass out of the box and pours one for her as well as himself.
“I was working but my boyfriend was here,” she says and sips her shot.
“Does he scream at night?”
“I don’t know. He has been acting weird though.”
“How?”
“Just weird. I work at the senior home at night and I sleep during the day and sometimes I’ll wake up and he’s just sitting there, not saying anything.”
PB doesn’t know the boyfriend so he doesn’t know if that’s weird or not.
“What’s his name?” he asks.
“Owen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ellie.”
PB can’t really think of anything to say beyond that.
“The apartment smells strange too,” she says.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, just kind of weird. Like sulfur or something but really salty.”
Her description of the smell is disturbing. PB can’t think of what would create a smell like that.
“Have you talked to him about this? About the smell and how he acts?”
She shakes her head.
“Is there anything I can do? To help I mean,” he asks and immediately feels stupid.
She takes what he says and seems to weigh it for a moment before downing the rest of her shot and placing the empty glass on the carpet.
“Thanks but I think I just wanted someone to talk to about it. Welcome to the building.”
She goes out the door and PB watches her leave.
That night he sleeps on the mattress and dreams of the apartment next door and it is horrifying. The main room and the kitchen are just like his but the walls are covered in blood. There is a wide variety of snakes and potato bugs crawling through the carpet and on the linoleum. Ellie is in the kitchen and she is naked but it’s not sexy or erotic, it’s disturbing. She is acting processed, dancing madly around the kitchen and stepping on the insects.
The dream shatters. The walls are humming and the sound has woken him up again. This time he jumps up and gets dressed immediately, rushing around half blind. He gets to the door and the humming stops. He stands perfectly still, waiting.
He hears the door across the hall unlock and open and he looks through the peephole and sees who he assumes is Owen make his way out and with a backpack strapped to him. He’s a little shorter than PB and his hair is cut short with a scraggly beard of grown out peach fuzz that lines his jaw line. Owen makes his way down the stairs and out the gate. For a reason that he can't give at that moment, PB slips out his own door and down the stairs in pursuit.


To be continued in Part 3.

A Conversation on Film between Dublin and Robert Fong: Reservoir Dogs

(Dublin and Robert Fong met up on a furlough day and watched a film together. This time Robert Fong picked the movie)

D: Reservoir Dogs? I’ve seen it.
RF: So have I.
D: Shouldn’t we watch something neither of us has seen?
RF: F**k that. This movie is the sh*t.

(They watch the movie)

RF: So?
D: What?
RF: What did you think?
D: I’ve seen it before. What can I say?
RF: Say what you thought when you saw it?
D: When I first saw it? Or what I thought just now?
RF: How about when you first saw it.
D: Well that was like fifteen years ago so it’s kind of tough. But I know it f**ked me up.
RF: What do you mean f**ked you up?
D: Well, it’s gruesome. I mean the guy is sitting in a thick red pool of blood the whole time. It’s disgusting.
RF: It’s real.
D: What does that mean? It’s real?
RF: That’s how people bleed when they get shot in the stomach.
D: Oh yeah? I didn’t know you ran across people when they’re shot in the stomach. That’s interesting Bob.

D: For some reason Harvey Kietel annoys me.
RF: Watch it buddy. That’s the Bad Lieutenant you’re talking about.
D: Why does he have to get all in the blood with Tim Roth? You know what I mean? I know he feels bad about the guy getting shot but does he have to roll around in the blood like that? It’s gross.
RF: The two guys are bonded. He’s trying to help the guy.
D: By rolling around in the blood? It’s disgusting. Plus what’s with the little whine he does at the end before the cops bust in.
RF: He just got shot. People have a tendency to whine when they get shot.

RF: What’s your favorite part?
D: I don’t know. I kind of like the scene where Tim Roth tells the story about the weed and it changes location six times. I like when he’s saying it to the cops in the bathroom. It kind of breaks the moment from the tough guy bulls**t and becomes surreal for a moment. I’d forgotten about that.
RF: I like the part where Michael Madsen chops the ear off.
D: Of course you do.
RF: It’s horrible. I know that. But it’s funny too. When he chops off the ear he talks into it. That’s f**king hilarious.
D: That’s what’s horrible about it.
RF: Exactly. Its f**king horrible because Michael Madsen is so cool and charming-
D: And a psychopath.
RF: Right.

D: Why did you want to watch this?
RF: I don’t know. It’s been years and it’s one of my favorite movies.
D: Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that there’s no women in it?
RF: Why?
D: I’m just pointing out a fact.
RF: That’s bullsh*t. There are women in it!
D: When?
RF: The chick that shot Tim Roth. She was a woman!
D: C’mon. She was in it for three seconds tops.
RF: I’m just pointing out that your f**king fact is in fact false.
D: Fine.

RF: I give that movie two thumbs up. It’s a f**king masterpiece!
D: Well you’re going to have to explain that one. You can’t just go around calling things masterpieces.
RF: Why are you so against it? This movie changed film.
D: How’s that?
RF: You don’t know s**t. This movie broke open a whole independent movement in the nineties. This was huge.
D: Maybe so. But does that make it a masterpiece?
RF: Look what you said. You said it f**ked you up.
D: Right.
RF: That’s the sign of a good film.
D: Is it?
RF: Yes! Tarintino knew what he was doing. He was taking the audience for a ride. He knew he was f**king them up.
D: Maybe so. I don’t know.
RF: Yes!
D: Well how do you feel after the movie is over?
RF: Like I just went on a crazy a** ride.
D: Anything else?
RF: What the f**k do you feel?
D: Nothing really. That’s the problem. Shouldn’t we leave a movie and take something from it?
RF: What the f**k is your problem? Did you like it the second time?
D: Sure.
RF: Were you entertained?
D: Yes. It was entertaining.
RF: Bam! Here’s a movie that you’ve seen before and you’re still entertained. That’s the sign of a great movie.
D: Hmm…

(November 2010. El Cerrito CA)

The Adventures of PB James: The Noxious Neighbors: Part 1

The Noxious Neighbors: Part 1
He carries the last box of books up the stairs to the new apartment and he puts them down on the landing so he can unlock the door. He pulls the key and swings the door open and he looks at the four walls of the cramped studio and feels…. he doesn’t know. Loneliness perhaps? Definitely sadness. He feels the end of something but feels no new beginning and that is painful.
He turns around in the doorway to pick up the box and eyes the door to the neighbor’s apartment. The new apartment is in a duplex built above a Peruvian restaurant. There is only he and the neighbors in the building. He hasn’t met them yet. He doesn’t want to. The one good thing he expects now that he has his own place is total solitude. He will read and eat food and watch television (once he gets one) and mind his own business. He thinks that is all he wants. What he knows is that he wants a drink.
He goes through one of the fifteen or twenty boxes that lie on the carpet of the apartment and digs out the bottle of tequila. He goes through another box and comes up with a shot glass. He drinks two shots in a row there on the carpet and then crawls over to the mattress and sits on it with the bottle in one hand and the shot glass in the other.
He is thirty years old and this is not how he had pictured his life turning out. He had imagined that he would have a career of some kind. He had thought he would have a few things figured out. He at least thought he would be in some sort of solid relationship but now she is across town in the old apartment and he is here on the mattress.
He pours another shot and puts it down his throat. This apartment does not feel like home. He has two more shots and then falls back onto the mattress and doses off.


He awakes to the low hum. It’s pulsing through the walls and it annoys him. Is this how living here will be, large washing machines running and vibrating the walls all night? If it is then he must get used to it and he lies back down. He begins to drift off again but he dreams of her and that is annoying as well. Then the screams begin and he is instantly awake.
He sits up and tries to figure out if the scream was part of the dream or if it was real. Could a scream from a dream wake him up? He thinks not. He knows not because now the scream is piercing through the room again. It is muffled by the wall which means it is coming from the neighbor’s apartment. The machinery is still vibrating the walls. Maybe the screams are from a washing machine that has an overly human sounding alarm?
He digs his watch out of the carpet and looks at it using the light coming from the window. God damn it, its 3:39 in the morning. This can’t go on, especially if he gets a job some day. He pulls himself off of the mattress and stumbles over at least four boxes trying to get to the door of the apartment. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and stands in his stocking feet, contemplating the walk across the hall.
It comes again: the scream. It is not a machine he realizes now. It is most definitely not. It could be a woman but it seems too low. It is incredibly frightening listening to the scream through the door. In fact it's blood curdling.
He opens the door to the hall and stands on the landing. The scream comes again. It is screeching out through the neighbor’s door and there is a light coming from under the door, a blue light that could be from a television. A television, that’s it! He glances down the steps to the gate below and notices thick dark droplets of some kind of liquid dribbled out all the way up to the landing. He reaches down and touches one of the drops and holds his finger up to the light of the hallway. The liquid is sticky and it is red on his finger. It is a dark red, like spilled blood.
The scream comes again and PB James realizes he has no choice but to find out what is going on behind the neighbor’s door. He is standing in his boxers and a t-shirt and he is very scared. He reaches up and knocks on the door.

To be continued in Part 2.

The Midst of Summer: by Dublin

Judge me if you need to but after many years I finally made the plunge and had Comcast come over and install cable at my apartment. Originally I just wanted internet hooked up but then I asked the lady on the phone: "If I got TV can you guarantee that I can watch every Giant's game that is shown?" “Yes” the lady replied and it was a done deal; the guy came over way too early the next morning and was drilling holes in my wall and making corny jokes, and I was drinking coffee dreaming of sitting in my cozy cave on a Saturday afternoon watching Panda knock a ball into McCovey Cove with all the windows open and a relatively large and perfectly cooled beer in my hand.

I know the pitfalls of TV. You take a break to sit down to watch Law and Order for a few minutes and next thing you know a season has passed and you haven't accomplished anything in your life. 'Not me' I said 'I'm just watching baseball and that's it.' Well Jesus, that's a lot of fucking TV when you add it up. I came home last night and flopped down to watch the game and the frigging thing went into the 14th inning. That's four and a half hours of watching TV for God's sake! It's not healthy. I went to sleep shortly after the game was over and didn't have a single dream. My brain was mush, making blank uninspired electrical pops as it just sat there in my skull, the TV having messaged it into a coma.

But hey, I deserve some coma time. I spent last weekend in New York City with the JM crew and it was all just rapping and drinking and running around and "we're running behind!" and missed flights and bad breath and everything else. It was a blast, don't get me wrong, but I'm a guy that doesn't necessarily want a 'blast' every waking moment. I want quiet moments sometimes, just some food and a nice book or possibly a Giants game on TV. Feel me? I can't function when I'm over stimulated all the time. That's the term I would use for New York by the way: over stimulating. I'm sure you get used to it but Christ, I would have to go all out for days at a time and then sleep for a week and then do a few days and then sleep another week and so on. My big question for New Yorkers is: how you decide where to eat? There are a billion restaurants in the naked city.

While in New York we got to share the stage with Roy Ayers which was an honor. He had so much class and skills and had written so many songs that hip-hop artists had sampled, it kind of blew my mind. He's seventy years old and he was getting down and having the best time with everything, not tripping at all on us young punks. One of my favorite moments was when he dropped some knowledge on the kids at Harlem School for the Arts and mentioned that as an artist you need to make sure you own the rights to your songs and that knowing the law is the most important things he could pass on to a young musician. This was coming from a man who is one of the most sampled in the business so it was time to listen up on that part.

Speaking of the kids at the Harlem School: they were the first New Yorkers I came across when I got to town. I was tired, uncaffinated, greasy, just pissed off pretty much. I get picked up at the airport and find out: nope, you're not going to the hotel, you're going to a school to teach kids. Teach kids what? About hip-hop. Oh God. Listen, the irony wasn't lost on this white guy from Graton CA when I walked in and started talking about hip-hop to thirty kids from Harlem New York. It was silly really. I stood there talking, trying to keep my brain awake and they looked out at me, bored, hungry, and not happy to be there. They were sweet kids and we had a fine time but please, let's just be blunt, I am not an educator, I'm not a teacher, it's just not me. I can talk to kids, I like kids, but teaching has to be a passion, you have to need to do it. I don't have any of that.

So after that Solati and I went out for a morning drink and then I got to crash for a few hours before playing what felt like ten shows in 24 hours (it was really just three, or four, can't remember which) all over New York and going full blast. Now I'm home, the windows are open with breeze a coming in, and the Giants are on the TV, and I think there's a beer in the fridge. I'm going to the fridge.

Life in a Van Part 2: The Further Adventures of The Shotgun Wedding Quintet on Tour with Grouch & Zion I

Life in a Van Part 2
(The Shotgun Wedding Quintet plays for the kids)

I hadn't played at the Phoenix Theatre for probably five or six years and there I found myself on a Monday on the third night of a nation wide tour. I went out front and there were kids puffing on cigarettes that looked like they had just been born: fetuses committing self made abortions with Marlboro menthol, woah(that's a bit much). It was an odd thing to see kids smoking that hadn't been alive when Ice Cube put out Death Certificate. We've been playing for the bar crowd for years, the mid twenties to forties and suddenly we're on stage playing classic hip-hop breaks for kids who think Eminem is old-school.

By Sacramento I was over it but don't mean I was like "f**k these new jacks, they don't know Pete Rock from Pete Seeger" I mean that I was over the stigma and was really enjoying playing for these young people. They are open. They love hip-hop. They don't necessarily understand what The Shotgun Quintet is all about or the context when we first come out but by the end of the first song they have their hands up in the air and they're down for what we're doing.

In Sacramento they had the room split in half with a plastic wall that went down the middle and cut right into the stage. The 21 crowd was on the left and the minors on the right of the plastic. It was really strange because you have to go from the left to the right, rapping to one side of the wall and then turning to the other side and rapping. It was like playing a show at the borders of Berlin circa nineteen eighty five.

When we started playing our first couple hits the drinking crowd hid out in the darkness while the kids came right up front while we began to bang away and sweat off the bandstand. At the end of the set the 21 crowd had crept up and filled the space on their side of the wall as well, following the example of their juniors. At the end of the set a girl that must have been in middle school came up and told me how much she liked my lyrics. It was very sweet of her and heart felt and it made the hunger and the fact I hadn't slept in 32 hours take a back seat and reminded me why we were there.

Time passes and you forget what it was like to be a kid from a small town and be completely obsessed with hip-hop. Then you go to a town like Missoula Montana and you meet these kids that drove three hours south to see Zion I and the Grouch and you see yourself in the enthusiasm that exudes from their faces when they talk about beats and raps and it feels like you're coming home. One kid told me how he was working on writing a lot but wasn't quite ready to perform on stage yet. He said he would be around the Bay Area in a few months and hoped to come and see us then. I asked what the reason was for his visit and he said his older brother was locked up for meth out there. He was a good a kid, trying to live and he loved hip-hop. This thing brings people together, all races, sexes, financial levels, and generations. It's a beautiful thing.
-Dublin 03-30-11

Life in a Van Part 1: The Adeventures of The Shotgun Wedding Quitnet

Life in a Van Part 1
(The Shotgun Wedding Quintet head out on tour with Zion I, Grouch, and Blu)

The road is vast and the country is beautiful. Oregon flies by in the windows as green leaves and gray branches with clear cut hills beyond the tree line. Washington is the same with clear rushing rivers that follow along with us and then criss cross around under us and back around again. Cows stand passively chewing their cud as we rush by. They don't know this is our first national tour and don't care. Many bands have driven by these pastures looking for dues paid and glory made and the cows didn't care then either.

It wasn't until we hit Eugene that I realized we were really on our way. After driving out of Arcata the night before we had gone farther than we had ever gone in Blue, the whole band together, the cooler stocked with food and beers, merch and CDs smashed together and cracked in the back with the instruments and the sleeping bags, and all of Blue smelling like hot man breath and ass.

For those confused: Blue is the van. Blue has driven The Shotgun Wedding Quintet all over California for the last few years. She is a Dodge Ram, assembled in 1996, and, obviously, painted Blue. This gets confusing because there's a rapper on tour with us named Blu, and sometimes one of the band will come out of the club and say: "Hey! Where's Blue?!" and someone trying to be helpful will point at the rapper Blu and say; "There he is!" and the Shotgun member will shake his head and the helpful person will be confused and it's all just a stupid misunderstanding.

So, like I said, the Blue I'm referring to is the van (unless I refer to the rapper Blu who is a great guy) and she has driven us around southern California, and up into the Sierras and she has served us well, but now we're pushing her harder then she has ever been pushed. On this tour so far she has driven us up through Oregon, across the border all the way up through Washington, down through Montana and Idaho, and is now transporting us across the frosty valleys of Utah. She has a long way to go but hasn't faltered yet. We love her and admire her and realize this tour wouldn't be possible without her.

The other obvious factor that has allowed us to take the open road: Zion I and The Grouch. It's a big chance they took on us having us play every show with them and then have the guys in the band back up their set. Every show has been sold out pretty much and that hasn't had much to do with us outside California. The Shotgun Wedding Quintet are a complete bunch of unknowns beyond the northern Golden State so that means all those kids and men and women are coming out to see Z&G and of course Blu. They don't need us which makes it a very generous oppertunity they've allowed us.

Beyond that: for all they know we could have been a bunch of drunken, vibe flashing, tar sniffing assholes that would have mucked up the whole trip, and although there is an element of that to our band, we haven't let any of it hang out while we've been on the road. We've been professional, showing up to the clubs on time and setting up and rocking the crowd as hard as we can. There's still three weeks to go so let me knock on a little wood right now.

It took us about four shows to figure out how the set should work. On the fourth night we had it cracking with the hands in the air and the folks at the merch table asking for a copy of the album from that first band. It wasn't really like that the first few nights but I'll get into that in another entry. Right now Zumbie and Grouch are checking their mics and the monitors are feeding back like crazy. More to come later.
-Dublin 03-29-11

Back again. Why not?

It's been at least three months since there was anything written on this blog and I would like to stand up right now and take full blame for it. People have been sending me stuff they wrote and asking me to post them and I haven't. Why? I could say that I'm busy, in fact I could say I've been the busiest I've ever been in my life, and while that's true in a lot of ways the reality is that really I'm just lazy. "Really f**king lazy" to quote contributor Bob Fong.
Now I'm not posting this to make excuses and then give a list of the things I'm involved with and projects that are being put together and what's been going on in my life that has led to the disentigration of Dublin's World. I'm just here to say out in public that I am now recommitting myself to this thing on behalf of the contributors and the readers (whoops, I mean reader. And when I say reader I mean you Sandy).
Alright, great, here we go, 2011, let's get it started.
-Dublin, 2-25-11