Days of the Week

I was talking to my Father the other day about the craziest things we had seen in churches.  As a kid my Dad was dragged to many churches in the Tri-State Area (West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.)  His parents sung in a gospel quartet, and they played wherever they were asked.  So my Father was dragged along to any and all sorts of denominations of Christianity.

His stories bought back a memory of something that happened to me from 27 years ago (Circa 1991.)  You see, my Mom decided to join a church back then.  It was when the Evangelical movement decided to take cues from musicians, and put on a service like a rock concert.  Instead of sitting there thumbing through your bible, they had you stand up, clap, etc.  It was even better when someone passed out.  It all made for a good show.

Mom was invited by a friend of hers to attend "New Life Christian Center," on April Lane.  Again, this was back in the early 1990's.  The church is still there today.  It's called something else, and run by a different group.  Back then, the pastor was Bishop James (sometimes Jimmy or Jimi) Higgins.

Normally on my posts I won't name anyone specifically.  But he's posted his information on the web.  He still preaches to this day.  Also, the service was filmed semi-professionally by the churches own employees/volunteers.  That way, you could purchase a VHS tape of the service for later.

So I went.  The service I remember was stranger than usual that day.  Bishop Higgins started preaching about the days of the week.  Or more importantly, Sunday.  He preached/argued/plead his case that Sunday was the first day of the week.

I looked at my calendar, and saw that he was right.

Alright, there it is.  A 1991 calendar.  You can see that Sunday is the first day of the week.  Again, I agreed with him.  But then he kept going... and going.  For two hours he made his argument about how it wasn't Monday or any other day of the week.  It was Sunday.

Now I didn't know it then, but this is what is called a, "Strawman Argument."

Here's the Wikipedia link to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

In case you didn't read the article, they use a good example of the "Strawman Argument" when Richard Nixon used it by saying he was going to keep his dog Checkers.  What happened is that, he took illegal campaign money.  By law, he was supposed to give it back.  One of his donations was a black and white dog his daughter named Checkers.

He said his opponents told him he had to give back everything, but he wasn't going to give back Checkers.  No.  That's not what they said.  They said he shouldn't have accepted the illegal donations to his campaign.  They didn't say anything about his dog.

And this is what Bishop Higgins was doing.  He was fabricating some argument that someone, somewhere, sometime wanted to change the days of the week to make our holiest day the last day of the week.  Go look at your calendar.  Yes, the one in your home or on your computer.  What's the first day of the week?  Yeah.  It's still Sunday.

It's been 27 years, and I haven't seen anything on the news or any protests about changing the days of the week.  Let's be honest.  It was never about the days of the week.  It was about the weekly whipping of the church crowd into a frenzy.  If you don't know what I'm talking about watch this Benny Hinn footage.

I can't even count the number of times I've heard, "Something is coming.  Something big is coming."  Again, I'm still waiting for it.  This is one of those, "If I had a nickel..." thoughts.

But the story doesn't end there.  So I go to church, yes the same church, the next week.  I open the church bulletin/Sunday flyer, and what do I see?  It's the Church calendar that shows what upcoming events are planned.

And you know what the first day of the week is?  MONDAY.   That's right.  After railing for two hours on the days of the week, the church's own calendar has Monday as the first day of the week.  So I ask one of Mom's church friends about it.

I'll admit, I was a bit smartassed about the whole thing.  I asked, "After last week I thought that Sunday was the first day of the week?"

You know what she told me?  "That's man's way."

I replied, "But isn't this, you know, church?"  (I'll admit I was 15 and not very eloquent back then.)

Without a hint of irony or understanding she said to me, "No.  That's man's way.  That's not God's way."

Again, I just had to ask, "But the Bishop railed for two hours last week about this.  Why would he say all of that last week, just for the church's own flyer to list Monday as the first day?"

It was like talking to a deer in headlights.  I saw pretty quickly she wasn't going to give one/one millionth of an inch on this, so I just gave up trying to make sense.

There are many more hilarious highlights of things that happened on those Sundays.  But I have to say this memory is one of two that really stand out to me from that time.  It's memories like this that make me glad I am no longer a Christian.  There's just too much "straw" to deal with.

Pills

I have really been digging this Americana and Alt/Country sound that has been coming up this last decade.  What I'm really glad to see is so many female artists being given the chance to be heard.  One such artist who I really dig is Sunny Sweeney.  Her album, "Trophy" is great.  It's all killer, no filler.

The standout track on the album is a song called, "Pills."  It was played on both our local station 88.5 WMNF and Sirius XM's Outlaw Country.  

Another great artist I follow is Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles.  I just bought her new album, "Love's Middle Name."  

As I was looking over her new album I noticed track number five.  "Are You Still Taking Those Pills?"  I thought, "It couldn't be the same song, could it?  Not so close to Sunny Sweeney's release?"  So I popped the CD in (yes, I still buy CD's,) and what do you know?  It was the same song, just performed in a different style.

So I started looking over the info on the CD.  It gave writing credits for the song to, "Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay."  So I had to look them up on YouTube.  And guess what I found?

It seems this little song has been getting around these last few years.  I suspect that it is going to be rerecorded a few more times.  It has "hit" written all over it.  I really hope someone can break through with it.  

New Year/New Project: The Tenor Guitar Project

This is the first post of the new year, and it's going off with a bang.  I decided on building something I've wanted for a long time.  But I took an odd route to get there.  Let me explain.

I found a neat website for cigar box guitars.  It's called C.B. Gitty Crafter Supply.

https://www.cbgitty.com/

I was thinking about building an inexpensive guitar, but then I noticed a few things on their website.  First, they actually have four string electric humbucker pickups.

https://www.cbgitty.com/cigar-box-guitar-parts/pickups/deltabucker-deluxe-4-string-maple-cigar-box-guitar-humbucker-pickup-pre-wired-with-volume-and-tone-no-soldering/

That made me think that I could build something with a cello tuning.

For those who don't know my musical beginnings started with me playing cello at age 12.  If there's one thing that every 12 year old dramatic teenage celloist wants, that's a guitar to play cello on.  What I didn't know then, is that, those guitars actually exist.  They are called tenor guitars.  They are a shorter scale, smaller guitar, and they are tuned like a cello, A, D, G, C.  Here's an example of one.

I wish I had known about these when I was a teen.  It turns out that tenor guitars were popular in the 1950's but not so much anymore.  Only a few companies manufacture them anymore.  The most famous for electric tenor guitars is Eastwood Guitars.

So now, since I am a builder of musical instruments, I can build a tenor guitar the way I want to.  First up, I know it will be a four stringed instrument, and it will have a 23 inch scale.  I will build it in the style of an archtop guitar.

Electronics will be simple.  I will have two humbuckers, one 3 way switch, one volume, one tone.  The woods will be pretty standard.  Spruce top, mahogany body, maple neck, rosewood neck, rosewood floating bridge.

Now, I decided to do this the smart way.  I actually drew out the plans on graph paper.   Here's a photo of my plans.

Next up, I had to acquire the spruce, but I had all the other woods hanging around here.

Here's the spruce being glued up.

I already had access to radiused rosewood fingerboards.  So I took one out, and shaped it.

I've always used a three piece neck method for building necks, but I decided to make one the way most manufactures do these days.  In other words, a scarf joint.  It all started with a giant chunk of old maple I had hanging around.

Within that board I found a really nice straight section.  I built the neck from that piece.

From there it was time to make the scarf joint.  How do you like my homemade jig?

Yes, it's oversized for a few reasons.  I wanted to make sure I had plenty of wood to work with.  Better too much than too little.  Since the neck is only four strings it won't be as wide.  That means it will need to be thicker for more support.  In the next photos you can see where I am planning on installing the trust rod.

Right now I am gluing up the mahogany body.  Admittedly, this will not be like a typical hollowbody.  I will glue the halves of the body together, and route it out.  I know, it's a hell of a waste of good mahogany.  But it works.  Also, I don't have side bending equipment or jigs, so this is the one way I know how to do this.  

 

A lot of the parts for this build I already had.  I will use a violin tailpiece for this project.  It actually fits perfectly.  I already had some old Schaller tuners that have been sitting in a drawer for a long time.  They will be perfect for this guitar.  I already have pots and copper wire.  The same with bone nuts.

The only things I had to buy were a few templates, a 3 way switch, violin tailpiece cord, a book, a fret slotting miter box, and the pickups.  Unless something odd comes up I think I have all I need for now.

So that's where I am so far.  Look for more upcoming blogs about this project.  I'm all ready to put this one together.

Adrian's Year in Review: The Best Blog Posts of 2018

Well, here we are again, it's my "Best of Blog Posts: Year in Review."  It's my best blogs of 2018.

I've been writing this blog since April of 2008.  Since 2011 I have been writing my "Year in Review:  The Best Blog Posts of."  When I started this blog I wanted to average one blog per week.  Every year I have attained my goal.  This year, including this post, I will have written 56 individual blog posts.

At the end of every year I make two lists for my "Best of" blog posts.  The first one is the top five blog posts that I love.  The second list is the most viewed blog posts.

First up are my favorites.  This year will be a little different.  I couldn't whittle this list down to five.  So here are my top 6 personal favorite blog posts.

#6.  The Ghost at Grandma's house.

There's a ghost haunting me at Grandma's house.  So I go in search of him/her/it.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-ghost-at-grandmas-house.html


#5.  The Day I Met Dimebag Darrell.

I'd been aiming to write this post for years.  It finally felt like the right time.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-day-i-met-dimebag-darrell.html


#4.  More Weirdness in Dreamland.

When Adrian dreams, reality goes out the window.  Heck it goes off the planet.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/03/more-weirdness-in-dreamland.html


#3.  Mommy and Me and Cthulhu.

Adrian finds a new dislike on Facebook.  It's those Mommy and Me pages.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/05/mommy-and-me-and-cthulhu.html


#2.  Kids... The Great Overactors of Our Time:  An Easter Story.

Kids really are like drunken midgets.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/06/kids-great-overactors-of-our-time.html


#1.  Everything Will Kill You, And Other Things I Learned From A High School Play.

I know the play was meant to be anti-alcohol and anti-drug, but I really needed alcohol and drugs to get through watching the play.  It was like a car crash.  Except that a car crash can be entertaining.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/06/everything-will-kill-you-and-other.html


Now it's time for the five best 2018 blog posts by views.


#5.  After 20 Years, It's New Hat Day.  (36 views.)

My very first post of 2018 makes the #5 spot.  In this post I share the story of finally buying a new hat.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/01/after-almost-20-years-its-new-hat-day.html


#4.  The Juggernaut.  (41 views.)

No, Adrian is not a giant mutant from Marvel Comics.  Adrian buys a Dean Juggernaut Bass!

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-juggernaut.html


#3.  I Made A Table!  (44 views.)

James Hetfield may be the table, but I made one.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/03/i-made-table.html


#2.  More Weirdness In Dreamland.  (48 views)

This is the only post to make both lists this year.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/03/more-weirdness-in-dreamland.html


#1.  New Guitar Day:  Epiphone ES-335 Pro With a Lot Of Work.  (91 views)

I made sure to add a lot of tags to this post.  I'm sure that's why it received so many views.

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/03/new-guitar-day-epiphone-es-335-pro-with.html


So there you have.  Another year, another great end of year list.  In over ten years I have written 677 blog posts.  It's hard to believe it's been that long.  But hopefully I will be able to continue this blog for many years to come.  Whether or not anyone keeps reading them, I'll keep writing them.  Take care, and happy new year everyone.

New Guitar Day: Agile 2500: Not Impressed

It finally happened.  I had a bad "New Guitar Day."  It was bound to happen sometime in my lifetime.  But some of this is on me.  Let me start at the beginning.

As I was looking over the Rondo Music website, home of Agile Guitars, I saw a B-Stock guitar that was exactly what I was looking for.  It was a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's.  I didn't want the P-90's so much as I wanted the P-90 route.  I was going to put mini-humbuckers in it.

It's easier to find a Les Paul style guitar with P-90's than mini-humbuckers.  Since I was going to change pickups anyway, even if it had mini-humbuckers, I looked for the best deal I could find.  Unfortunately, that came to bite me in the butt.

So this blue flamed, Les Paul styled guitar was actually marked down quite a bit in price.  It was considered B-Stock due to some damage on the fingerboard.  I thought, "Well, that's nothing.  I'm sure to accidentally bang it around in the first week.  It's going to have more dings than that in a short time."

So I bought it at a greatly discounted price due to the damage and finish imperfections.  When I received the guitar I had so much going on I didn't actually play it.  I took it out of the box, and put it on my workbench.  I then went out of town for a few days.  So I had it for a bit before even getting to mess around with it.

Once I played it I noticed the action was insanely high.  I thought, "Well, it probably just came from South Korea, and no one has even looked at it.  No matter."  But matter it did.  Usually when I start work on a guitar I do everything at once.  This was no different.

I started with a fret dress.  I then removed the P-90 pickups.  I realized to fit the mini-humbuckers I would have to do a few modifications.  Namely, I needed to cut holes in the route so that the pickup feet would fit.

Here is what it looked like after I cut the holes for the feet:

I also had to drill holes for the mini-humbucker pickup rings.  (Note: not pictured.)  That took a bit of time and effort as the rings just barely covered the hole.

After a lot of back and forth I managed to get the mini-humbuckers installed, I started to set the guitar up.  That's when I noticed I was having problems with frets, 14, 15, and 16.  I still had dead spots.

I couldn't figure out why that would be.  That is, until I looked down the neck.  It was then I discovered that where the neck met the body, the heel was kicked up.  I was instantly furious.  Not just at myself, but at Rondo Music for letting that guitar out of the factory.

For those who know me, know I worked as the repair department for Dean Guitars.  At Dean we never would have let a guitar like that be sold, even as B-Stock.  It should have been marked at X-Stock, stripped of it's parts, and the body destroyed.

I wrote Rondo Music since they don't have a publicly listed phone number.  I told them I had modified the guitar, but since it shouldn't have been sold in the first place, could I return it?  Frankly, I received a lot of attitude in the message back.

I wrote explaining that I was, in fact, a luthier who actually went to luthiery school, and apprenticed under a master luthier.  I told them that guitar should have never left the factory.  I'll admit, I told him that when I received the guitar, the strings were so high you could shoot arrows off of it.  Of course, they had the action that high so it would make the 14th, 15th, and 16th frets playable.

What I received back was an E-mail critical of my skills.  It also stated that they dealt with 50,000 guitars, and knew what they were doing.  Also, if I had bought a Ford or Chevy, modified it, and tried to return it, would the dealer accept that return?  He didn't think so.  But he finished the e-mail saying, just return it, and they would see what they could do.  He wasn't promising anything.

I'll admit, I was pretty hostile.  The e-mail was written in a very nasty tone.  So I went to work on the guitar.  I took the mini-humbuckers out, and reinstalled the P-90's.  It was then a thought occurred to me.  If I sent it back, they would just try to set it up and then send it back to me.  Well, since they did such a shitty job the first time, why would I trust them to do it a second?

So I set the guitar up to where it would be playable.  That way, if they said, "Nothing was wrong with it," I would know they didn't even try.  That, or they have some really lazy and incompetent people working there.  So I set it up.

I raised the action on the high E (treble) side.  I had both sides at 2/32nd's.  That basically what I set a Floyd Rose equipped guitar to.  That way, players can dive bomb or pull back as far as possible and it won't fret out.  Would you know that just raising it that much cleared it enough so that all notes were playable?  Again, I was furious at myself for not trying that earlier.  I just got into too much of a hurry.

So now I had a dilemma.  If I sent the guitar back, they would look at it, play it, and say there's nothing wrong with it except for the holes I drilled in it.  They would then just send it back to me leaving me in the same place I was before.

So after consulting a friend I decided that I wouldn't return it.  When it comes down to it I modified the guitar.  After fret-dressing and setting the guitar up correctly there was nothing Rondo Music could do with it.  I doubt I was going to get a refund, so why bother trying to return it?

So I wrote a very straight-forward e-mail saying, "After continuing work on it, I made the guitar playable.  Since I had modified the guitar I understand I couldn't return the guitar for a refund."  I left it at that.  I also received a very simple return message that said, "Thanks for the update."

Now, I understand I should have looked the guitar over before I started work on it.  I'm just so used to performing all my work at once.  I've found there's not much I can't do, but I'm used to working on guitars that would pass a basic inspection.

What upsets me is the way the e-mails were worded.  They came across as pretty nasty.  I mean, I'm actually a returning customer.  That's right.  I bought an Agile guitar four years ago.  I wrote a blog about it.  Here it is:

New Guitar Day: Christmas Edition

So it's not like I've never dealt with Rondo Music before.  I like my Root Beer colored Agile.  I thought it was a better quality guitar than any of the comparable South Korean made Epiphone Les Paul's.  But this blue 2500 fell far from the tree.

And the lousy thing is I put the P-90's back in it.  I have been working myself back up to putting the mini-humbuckers back in it, but I just haven't had the motivation.  In fact, I forgot to take photos of the guitar with the mini-humbuckers in it, hence, why none are posted on this blog.

Eventually I will get around to installing the mini-humbuckers.  After I do that I'll post a blog reviewing them.  The pickups I bought were a set of Alnico 2 mini-humbuckers by Artec.

Again, what upsets me about this guitar is the way I was treated, and that Rondo Music would let a guitar like that leave their factory.  I have it playing alright, but it should be so much better.  I'm also hoping that the kick up at the heel doesn't get worse with time.  Right now, I'm not sure I will ever buy from Rondo Music again.

Les Paul Madness: Part 2: Pickup Madness!

Please start with Part 1.

Les Paul Madness: A Guitar, A Case, A Great Deal, And A Lot Of Work

I really enjoy playing my Epiphone Les Paul Custom.  I performed a lot of work on it to make it play this awesome.  But I had a problem.  (A white people problem.)  I did not like the bridge pickup at all.  So I made a few changes.  Here's the list.

As I wrote in Part 1 of this blog post, I started with a Dean Mountain of Tone pickup in the bridge position.  Basically it's Dean's version of Seymour Duncan's Custom 5 pickup.  I hated the lack of mids in it.  It just wasn't my sound.

What's funny is that I actually have a Seymour Duncan Custom 5 in my parts drawer.  Since I really disliked how it sounded, I performed a magnet change on it.  I learned about changing magnets from the Seymour Duncan Forum.  It's been a great way to achieve new sounds from pickups.

For those who don't know the Custom series pickups are all the same wind with a different magnet.

Custom = Ceramic magnet.
Custom Custom = Alnico 2 magnet.
Custom 5 = Alnico 5 magnet.  (AKA, jokingly called the "Custom Custom Custom.")

So I changed the Alnico 5 magnet out for a ceramic.  That way I would end up with the original design of the Custom pickup.  It had a bit more mids, but I still didn't care for it.  So back to the workbench.

Next, I changed the ceramic magnet for an Alnico 8 magnet.  Now, Seymour Duncan doesn't actually make a "Custom 8" pickup, but that's what the folks on the Seymour Duncan forum call it.  I tried it, but I still thought it was thin and just not that great.

I was aiming to change the Alnico 8 magnet for an Alnico 2 magnet.  However, I saw and bought an interesting pickup off of Ebay.  Anyone who knows me, knows I love bladed pickups.  And on Ebay I saw a bladed pickup with a silver baseplate for only $19 plus free shipping.  I thought, "I have to try this out."

So I tried it out.  You know what?  I loved it.  The sound fell right between a Bill Lawrence (Wilde pickups) L-500-R and an L-500-L.  And that's the sound that I have been looking for.  For years I've used an L-500-R in the bridge.  It is a very PAF meets bladed pickup sound.  In other words, mid-scooped with lots of bite.

 

I've tried the L-500-L, and it's a bit compressed for my taste.  The L-500-XL does metal really well, but I wouldn't use it for anything else.  So this new pickup is what I have been looking for, for a long time.

You can find it listed as: Twin Blade High Output Bridge Output Humbucker Pickup Black Nickel Silver Baseplate.  The seller is sanman8753.

So I thought, "Why stop there?  Let's find a matching neck pickup."  Well, the seller didn't have a matching neck pickup, so I searched for one.  95% of the bladed pickups were for the bridge position.  However, I found one neck pickup that intrigued me.  What got my attention was that it also had a silver baseplate.  It was, however, a bit more expensive than the bridge pickup.  It cost $38, but had free shipping.  It still cost less than a GFS or equivalent pickup.

You can find it posted as:  New Alnico V Twin Blade Rail Hot Humbucker Guitar Pickup Neck or Bridge - Black.  The seller is: Allsoundstore.

If you will notice, the blades are a lot thicker on the neck pickup.  I think this brought out a much thicker sound.  It has a bit more mids than an L-500-R.  I'd say the treble is about the same.  The real difference is that the bass is huge on this pickup.  I will say it had a lot more compression than the L-500-R.

I brought the treble side up to the strings where I normally do, but I had to lower the bass side since the bass was too overwhelming.  After I did that it seemed to find it's sweet spot.

The good news, is that, the pickups blended well.  I really dig the sounds I can get out of this guitar now.  Surprisingly, I can achieve some really interesting and usable sounds using the tone controls.  I didn't get to play it as much I would have liked today, but I am looking forward to playing it in the future.

Hell Bus: 7th Graders Are Assholes

Hell Bus.  There was no other way to describe it.  A bunch of self absorbed asshole 7th graders.  When adults say, "When I was your age, we didn't dare do..."  Well you know what?  I did.  All the way back in 1988-1989.  We were juvenile.  We were rude.  We were borderline criminals.

I should start at the beginning, Sligh Jr. High.  It was a 7th grade center only.  If you've ever seen HBO's "Oz" or a prison documentary, Sligh was like that.  Fights, weapons, drugs, gangs.  I mean, I came in from a pleasant, caring, learning environment.  This was now prison rules.  I was not prepared.  

The place was so bad the principal was fired halfway through the school year.  That just didn't happen back then.  Wait. I'm sorry.  He "retired" halfway through the school year.  Still, that just didn't happen.

I've since found out that 12-13 year old kids are the worst human beings on the planet.  They are self absorbed and full of hormones.  They hate adults, other kids, and most everything.  They steal, curse, fight, gossip, and  So you can imagine at the end of a long day when the kids finally break out from prison... I mean school.  They go insane.  

Here are the highlights.  There was one girl Melissa who didn't want to be in school.  She was a headbanging, cigarette smoking, white trash chick who made straight F's.  I don't think she passed 7th grade, much less any of the others.  She would fight who she wanted.  Fuck who she wanted.  And liked to sexual harass Cass, the one good kid on the bus.  

Melissa had either developed early or been held back a few grades.  Either way, she had a pretty good set of boobs.  And she liked to shove those braless boobs right in Cass's face.  I mean, really grab him by the back of the head and stuff them in his face.

I constantly had my pencils stolen on the bus by a kid named Richard.  Back then, they liked to play this game where they tried to break a pencil with another pencil.  Some of them got so good at it, they could crack a pencil in one or two tries.  You can see how they ended up going through a bunch.

The one thing that we did, mind you, should never be allowed was throw wadded up paper balls out the window at other cars and people.  Especially people with their windows rolled down.  

I remember one time someone threw a paper ball out the window, and hit a jogger.  He flagged down the bus, got on, and talked with the driver.  He then asked if, "Anyone wanted to step outside?  If anyone wanted to "dance" they should step outside."  I had never heard that term before, but he actually challenged 7th graders to a fight.  No one took him up on his offer.

I have to admit something even my parents didn't know.  I must have gone through 10 times the amount of notebook paper that year than any other year in school.  And yes, 90% of it went out the bus window.  

I remember the time I really got in trouble.  I threw a paper ball out the window, and it hit perfectly right on the windshield of a passing car.  The driver flipped out, swerved, and almost hit the bus with his car.  He flagged the bus and pulled it over.  

So they were trying to figure out who did it.  Well, mostly girls sat in the front of the bus.  Most of the boys were in the back of the bus... wrestling.  

No I'm not kidding.  That day a whole bunch of them were in the back of the bus wrestling.  The paper ball also came out the left side of the bus, so that narrowed it down.  So there was just a few of us that it could be.  

Eventually everyone finked on me so they wouldn't get in trouble.  The bus driver called my house, and told my Dad what I had done.  Yeah, I got in a bit of trouble for that one.  

Some of the other great things we did back including singing filthy songs.  The "2 Live Crew" had come out with their debut album back in 1986.  They had a song called, and I'm not kidding about this, "We Want Some Pussy!"

What ended up happening is that the boys on the bus would yell/sing, "Hey, we want some pussy!"  Then the girls would yell/sing/callback, "Hey, we want some D.I.C.K.!"

There was one time where everyone thought it would be great to outright scream in each other's ears.  Sometimes you would sneak up on someone and yell.  Other times a person would have you do it intentionally to see just how much direct screaming they could take.  

And I really want to emphasize just how close and loud we were screaming in each other's ears.  I'm talking about two inches away, and at loud as we could possibly scream.  

One time everyone decided to play, "Bloods and Crips."  They were waiting to get off at the main stop (not my stop) so they could have a mass fight/wrestling match.  Yeah, I didn't get to see that one.  I hear it was pretty intense.  Luckily, they only did that the one time.  

I, myself, can only remember getting into one fight on the bus.  It was actually with a girl named Candance.  She was repeatedly kicking me.  So I punched her in the face a few times.  Of course, you shouldn't hit a girl so I caught a lot of crap on that one, even if she was kicking me.  Honestly, I never liked her.

As I write this it's 30 years after the fact.  I can only imagine what I would read if I had kept a journal of that time.  Actually, it would be like a Steven King novel.  Seriously, when I describe Sligh Jr. High these days the first question I ask is, "Have you seen HBO's "Oz?"  Yeah, it was that bad.  The bus ride, less so.  But not for our bus driver.  We really made that a Hell Bus.