|
|
OUR EYES ON YOU: Oct 2009 |
|
Page 6 of 7
THE SCARIEST
Rita: Lolita, sit back in the land of Oz and watch a professional gossip columnist ask a proper question of the month. Gary, and the rest of you waiting on line outside the Middle East, would you please tell me about the scariest situation you’ve ever experienced. GARY WALEIK (Big Dipper): My stereo broke and I couldn’t listen to Pink Flag, Forever Changes, the Quality of Mercy is Not Strain’d, or the Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society for weeks. *** RICK BERLIN (on his own): Bahamas. College. 21. Slalom water skiing off the beach where Goldfinger was being shot. A gigantic white shark follows in my wake, fin like a sail out of water, close. Scary close. I realize this when the guy in the boat waves his arms in panic. I lean in towards the shore, skim into shallow water and skid up onto the sand heart in mouth. Shark slithers back out into the dark deep. *** CARLENE BAROUS (Carlene Barous/ Temper): The scariest situation I’ve ever been in is when a trusted person in the teaching profession kept me back in his office after hours, and continued to try to keep me there after much ado. I talked my way out of it, and once out the office, ran! And I was never so happy to see the silly little Ford Ranger my Dad had lent me, which started up immediately. This was my first get-away car for sure. *** ERIC WELSH (Chillhouse Studios): I went deep-sea fishing for shark and the boat caught on fire and sank about 15-plus miles out. Smoke started coming out of the fishing pole holders and the captain therefore opened up the bottom area where the life jackets were located and a bomb of smoke hit him in the face as he opened the door, like a back-draft. After many attempts with closed eyes, he was able to grab enough life jackets for everyone and we eventually jumped off the stern into an icy ocean. A boat picked us up before the coast guard arrived. *** IAN ADAMS (Ian Adams): Years ago I lived in an apartment on Hillside Street in Mission Hill. One night my girlfriend and I were awakened by the bed shaking so violently that we thought there was an earthquake, until we realized that nothing else in the room was moving. The whole incident lasted about five minutes. The next day we asked the housemates if they felt anything and they said “no.” After that we never slept in that bed again, and moved out within a week. Poltergeist? I dunno, but it freaked me the fuck out. *** KAREN DeBIASSE (Girl On Top): When I was very young we had company staying over and I was assigned a mattress on the floor by the front door. I couldn’t sleep that night for some reason—intuition. All of a sudden I heard footsteps approaching the door and then boom—the door kicked in, swinging back and forth from the force, and then footsteps running away. What the heck? *** ERIK LINDGREN (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic/ Arf Arf Records): While running audio at a video studio during a shoot in the early ‘80s, I briefly fell asleep at the mixing board and immediately woke up when the producer dug his fingers into my shoulder and said in a hushed voice “You fucked ... you fucked up...). The scariest part was that he was an ex-Marine and I thought he was going to kill me on the spot. *** FRANCIS DiMENNO (Wrong Hero/ the Noise): On March 2, 2007, in a blizzard, I skidded out on the Mass Pike eastbound about 15 miles out of Ludlow. Even though I took evasive measures, I thought for sure I was going to hit the guardrail head-on. However, both the guardrail and my bumper were coated with thick ice, and through some accident of fate I only skimmed it. I’ve been in worse fixes, but I though for sure that this was going to be the end. *** RAY MASON (Ray Mason Band/ Lonesome Brothers): On February 23rd, 1970 the band I was in was approaching Atlanta for a gig when we were fired upon from a vehicle in the passing lane on the highway. The guitar player, who was sitting next to me in the back seat, was shot in the head. He miraculously survived. Definitely the scariest situation I’ve ever been in! Lolita: Woha! Did you determine why your band was shot at? RAY: We think it was because we had long hair. After the shots, the car floored it. It was dark so we didn’t get a plate number or description. We then got off the next exit to a gas station and called for an ambulance. *** GLENN MATTO (All Mod Cons): My scariest moment I’ll keep to the basics. I was a 20-year-old novice skier who found himself on Killington’s highest peak with a couple of friends. We seemed to have ignored the signs “expert skiers only.” Once off the chair lift, we were forced to negotiate our way down double black diamond trails with catchy names like Plummet and Back Breaker. In Spinal Tap terms, these trails were all elevens. I eventually gave up skiing... and golf (that’s a whole other story). *** RUBY BIRD (Bird Mancini): My scariest story actually led to a song. “The Other Side” (from the CD Funny Day) came to me shortly after a near-death experience in the ocean, as the currents were pulling me out to sea faster than I could swim back in. Strangely, I was calm while thinking, well, this is it, but became quite freaked out after I was rescued and back on shore. It was a long time before I could sleep well again. I’m forever changed and now look at life through more grateful eyes. *** CORIN ASHLEY (himself): Why, just last week I was up in New Hampshire and we took wee Harrison to a ski resort so he could do some of the activities. They had a wading pool and a trampoline and he loved it. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to take him on the chair lift (it was his idea), so my wife and I hopped on the ski lift with our boy and immediately realized that it was a truly terrible idea. For the next hour, we held onto our very squirmy three year old while we rode all the way up the mountain and all the way back, 60 feet in the air with nothing but that bullshit little pull-over bar to keep our only child from being dashed on the rocks below. I nearly shat myself. For real. *** SIMON RITT (the Darlings): The scariest situation I probably was ever was when I was held up at gunpoint while working alone, at night, at a Tenneco self-serve gas station in Central Florida. I don’t know who was more frightened, me or the robber, but after a brief struggle he was gone with 200 bucks in a black late model Buick Regal with red interior. Thanks to my level headedness and keen powers of observation the police apprehended him in near record time. He received a 27-year prison sentence. I quit the Tenneco and got a job at a record store. *** JAY ALLEN (… & the Archcriminals): Many years ago I was working the family business, a run-down, should-have-been-condemned, amusement park. An obnoxious real estate developer pressured us to close down and sell the property to him. My great Uncle Cap refused to sell. I was closing up shop one night when I heard some rattling and moaning. There was a legend regarding the haunting of this place, dating back to a Ferris wheel mishap where a couple of lovebirds had perished, but I has always dismissed as hogwash. The moaning continued until I thought I had seen the spirits of the two deceased. Scared the ever-lovin &^%* out of me. Later someone revealed to me that the “ghosts” were a hoax perpetrated by the scumbag developer. *** A.J. WACHTEL (speaking): I used to visit the Western Front regularly when I covered the scene. During the week it had reggae music and mixed crowds but on Sunday it was wall-to-wall Haitian and I would usually be the only white guy there. Once, the manager, Pam Sylvia, caught me and three new Haitian friends smoking herb out in the open and she “punished” us by locking us in the cooler with the lights off. There I was, in pitch black, with three angry Haitians bumping into me and all the cases of Red Stripe. I thought, “this could turn out ugly,” but one of them had a lighter, and I had my pipe, and then another discovered he had a can opener—so we continued to smoke herb and we opened up a few Red Stripes and waited about 20 minutes until Pam came back and opened the door. It was an odd situation and I WAS scared for a few moments. Rita: See, Lolita, that’s how to do it.
|
|
|
Rita & Lolita 
