Driving My Life Away

Omar Bricks here, writing to you from the seventh ring of hell, or as it is known in mapese, Nashville. How'd I get here? What am I doing here? All fair questions. If you come up with any plausible answers, let me know.

It all started, if these kinds of things can ever be attributed to simple cause and effect, with a 12-hour repeat listening of the Eddie Rabbit tune "Driving My Life Away." This was caused, I assure you, not by conscious choice but rather Foghat putting the CD player on one-track repeat when he was listening to the new Counting Crows album the other day and I'll be damned if I know how to switch the thing back. By the way, I won't be held responsible for my dog's taste in music. As long as he limits his crap-listening to the hours when I'm not at home, well, that's his own deal with the devil and not my problem. Most people that visit Bricks Manor are impressed enough that my basset hound knows how to operate the CD player at all, but after I have Foghat make everyone omelets they usually forget about how impressed they'd been by the whole CD thing. Because they're too busy throwing up half-cooked omelets.

To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in working on the development of my latest invention, a pneumatic fly-stunning air cannon, that I didn't even realize the song was on repeat for the first six hours or so. And by then my body rhythms had so completely melded with the song that I couldn't very well shut it off without risking serious epilepsy, so I rode it out until I fell asleep on the floor in a pile of freshly unwashed laundry. When I woke up, the song was still playing, but I don't count those hours in my total even though it thoroughly infiltrated my usual Driving Miss Daisy-themed dreams.

Before you start asking why in the hell I put that song on in the first place, let me explain that it's the only halfway decent track on the disc. The rest is all Bulgarian folk music and European techno, which is every bit as shitty as it sounds. The CD itself came in a Discman I bought for seven dollars at the Salvation Army, I didn't realize there was a disc inside until I got home. Even before this all came up the Discman purchase was revealed as a mistake, since I'd envisioned Foghat using it to listen to his shitty musical tastes in a way that didn't crawl up my own ass like a hungry banana slug. But if you've figured out a way to get a dog to wear headphones, you're handier with a roll of duct tape than Omar Bricks, that's all I can say about that.

Anyway, the song repeated for another hour straight after I woke up, by which time I couldn't even hear it any more, it had so completely rewired my internal landscape. But then the CD started skipping, probably the disc glues coming apart after so many hours of constant spinning, and the skipping music was causing Foghat to freak out, running around and pissing on everything at a slightly higher rate than he normally does. I had to get the disc out of the player with the toilet plunger, though from the way Foghat looked at me there was probably an easier way, maybe a button on the CD player or something. I don't pretend to have a PHD in consumer electronics.

At first it was a relief that the music had stopped, but then I started to feel my insides twist around like two snakes at an orgy, and I began to feel an irresistible compulsion to drive my life away. It was sort of like that scene in Naked Gun where Reggie Jackson gets hypnotized and runs around shooting everybody with a machine gun, yelling "Say hello to my little friend!" It was like my brain wasn't my own, I was just holding onto it while a buddy was in the can. Before I knew it I was behind the wheel and out on the open road, with Foghat riding shotgun. Then I put the shotgun in the back seat because I'll be damned if that dog hasn't been freaking me out with his marksmanship as of late.

All was well out on the open road, except for the fact that I didn't have any Eddie Rabbit tapes in the car, and none of the Mexican oompa-oompa tapes that came with my car were scratching that itch. This distracted me so much I didn't even realize I was driving to Nashville. I'd had some vague visions of Vegas in my head, maybe the sunset strip or Baja California... in all honesty it wasn't that well-planned of an excursion, but I think Nashville is too harsh a punishment for such minor indiscretions.

Everything you've heard about this place is true: it's full of rednecks, everybody moves slower than Ed McMahon getting up off the couch, and everyone's got real shit taste in music. Not to mention the high asshole-to-Bricks ratio. When I cruised the Bricksmobile IV through the pedestrian entrance at the CMA Music Festival, you wouldn't believe the number of assholes who were yelling at me to turn down the Mexican polka tunes. Look, Slocum, you think I'd be listening to this shit if I could get it out of the tape deck? I left the toilet plunger at home and I don't trust Foghat with that shotgun after he tried to use it to open a can of Kibbles 'n Bits back in West Virginia. Don't hate a player just because you weren't smart enough to get around the cover charge, Hoss. You'll get yours when I get behind the microphone on the main stage. Bricks out.

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