Gravity and Jack Daniel’s

Even though shooting up cop cars while armed with two hot chicks and some paint-ball guns is terrific fun, we decided to quit while we were ahead, go to the mountain, and finish the Jack Daniel’s.

There, in the dizziness of the early morning, I started to climb down the dark mountain side. I hoped the girls would follow me so I could ask them important questions like why their shoes didn’t match their hair. But then it happened. I lost my rapport with gravity and tumbled a hundred and fifty feet down the mountain. Luckily, I landed on top of a lonely tree.

It was on this lonely tree where I began to reflect on my life, a life devoted entirely to music. I won’t claim it’s a noble pursuit. My biggest mistake was trying to create music simply for the sake of art. I now see that music and art don’t always mix, and I’ve checked my idealism at the door, along with my soul.

I’ve always valued individuality, and as a kid, strived to express it through music. Recently though, I’ve come to the conclusion that individuality can be a detriment to musicians. Why try to create something unique when it takes much less effort, and the rewards are potentially so much greater, to copy something that people already accept?

I often become frustrated when I get on stage and hear, “He’s cute.”

“But I wish he’d smile more.”

“What’s with the hair?”

“That’s all right,” I tell myself. “One day, there will be a beautiful princess who will understand. She will be the one.”

But if there’s one thing I learned during my recent conversations with God, affectionately known as Eddie Van Halen, it’s that I’ve been dreaming, and there’s precious little space reserved in the world for dreamers.

On the lonely tree, I thought about a girl I used to know. She was the most beautiful girl I ever saw. Not that I’d ever tell her that. She knows, they all know. I imagine it must disappoint women when they first realize how simple men really are.

Sometimes I wonder what’s so special about being human. Like monkeys, we watch and mimic all the other monkeys we see on TV. If I were in charge of the world and wanted to control the monkeys, I’d show plenty of examples on TV for them to follow. I’d reward psychotic behavior of all kinds. I’d feed the monkeys drugs, then lock them up for getting high. I’d encourage the monkeys to fight over such stupid things as the color of their fur. And if I was feeling particularly ambitious, I’d start a religion and say, “I know you’re only a monkey, but pretend you’re not. If you just sacrifice all your monkeying around in this life, in the next one you’ll have a hundred monkey-whores feeding you grapes.”

Then, just when the monkeys were about to give up their hopes and dreams and their faith in the greatness of monkeykind, I’d fake a Mars landing.

Paranoid monkeys have a fancy word for this, and it’s the paranoid monkeys who know what’s really going on. They call it imprinting. They say the head monkeys use imprinting to encourage certain types of behavior in lower-class monkeys, like musicians. If the whole idea of imprinting doesn’t disturb you, it might not have dawned on you yet.

Distracted, I heard a concerned voice call from the top of the mountain. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answered as I checked for broken bones. My right knee appeared to take the worst of it, but my ego also took a bruise.

“Good thing you’re so cute, because you’re dumb as shit.”

As I climbed down the lonely tree, I came to realize why Eddie Van Halen invented Jack Daniel’s. I took a deep breath and embarked on my journey back to the top of the mountain, but this time I was especially careful because just like art and music, gravity and Jack Daniel’s don’t mix.