Grateful Dead: After Dark

TotD was perfectly happy with no comment section, or one populated strictly by the insane, but now there seems to be a vaguely competent group and I am also okay with that.

However, sometimes the comment section introduces pernicious thoughts into the conversation, and IT IS ALL THEIR FAULT FOR WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN.

Grateful Dead Sex Toy Merch, available on fucktheewellmerch.com, was bound to be a big-seller, but the prudes upstairs shut it down. TotD has the only extant list of products.

• Grateful Dead Real Dolls. These lifelike, high-quality sex dolls looked eerily like any member of the Dead you specified. If you want to order a bunch of them and make them do stuff to each other, that’s your business and we do discount for volume.
• Garcia Latex Power Fist. With nub!
• Brent Latex Greedy Mouth. With beard!
• Cock Ring With Bruce Hornsby’s Disapproving Glare Printed On It. “Bruce says, “You’re a disgusting animal.'”
• Lube That Tastes Like Keith.
• Precarious Lee Brand Condoms. “For when you want a baby, or herpes.”
• Bonera. Bobby’s preferred prescription-strength boner pill; it’s half-viagara, half-vicodin.
• Alembic Penis Pump. This quarter-million dollar penis pump requires three mega-joules of power to run and will almost certainly rip your dick off.
• Alembic Vibrator. It’s the size of a Buick and has at least three dozen knobs on it.
• Alembic Handcuffs. They seem to be run-of-the-mill cuffs, but they cost $50 grand.
• Wall Of Pound. It’s a sex pillow, and it’s a quality product: real sturdy and easy to clean.
• Butt Plug Shaped Like Vince.

Okay, that’s enough.

I haven’t even started on the Ned Lagin section.

Don’t.

That’s the stuff you need a safe-word for, I guess.

Stop talking.

This Can Only End Well

John Mayer is such an irredeemable hipster product that there’s a bird on him. Seriously: he’s Ned Lagin without the charisma.

Is To As To

John Kahn:Ned Lagin::Rob Wasserman:Benjy Eisen

Mickey did not have a Robin.

Things More Unnecessary Than All-Star Tribute Jams

• Tits on a bull.
• Another hole in the head.
• A limp dick at an orgy.
• A bookstore in Las Vegas.
• Formalwear on Palau.
• Nor Tonga.
• Let’s just say that dinner jacket and starched shirtfronts are a waste of luggage space if you’re going anywhere in the South Pacific.
• Unless you’re going to be the Ambassador to the joint; then you should err on the cautious side.
• Those coffee machines that make your coffee and fuck up the planet one expensive pod at a time.
• And, besides the cost and waste, they faciliate a brain-dead way of dealing with the world. (“PUSH BUTTON GET MORNING JUICE YAAAY.”)
• Coffee should be drunk a pot at a time, anyway.
• States. Fuck states. Even the good ones are shit. They’re just as complicated as the federal government, but with no money and everyone is an idiot.
• Commonwealths, too.
• The Point After. No NFL kicker ever misses the things, so there’s never any conflict or interest; at this point, they’re just this weird addendum that exists because of tradition, like the Indy 500 winner getting doused in milk, or boxing champs being rapists.
• Here’s how you fix it: touchdowns are now worth seven. After scoring, a team could simply kick off; no PAT. But, a team could also go for a five yard play from under center OR a FG attempt from the 25.
• Now this is the cool thing: if you succeed, you get two points. If you don’t: one point OFF, leaving you with six points for the score instead of the seven points you would have had had you stood pat.
• Can you imagine Andy Reid trying to figure this out? At least one coach would completely screw the pooch every week and it would be the most goddamn entertaining thing you’ve ever seen.
• I fixed football: more math.
• Vests, unless they are neon and mandated by OSHA, or you are Han Solo.
• Also permitted to wear vests: American Indian dudes, biker dudes, building superintendents in sitcoms, members of the Warriors street gang.
• Surf and Turf. Just get the steak, you gluttonous sow. People are starving; don’t be an asshole at the dinner table.
• On the subject of food: any meat that tastes like chicken is unnecessary. We have enough chickens. Maybe more than enough.
• Chicken is so plentiful and universally available in this country that is has become the referent to other meats. When we say that something “tastes like chicken,” what we’re really saying is “chicken is paramount and supreme.”
• Chicken is hegemonic.
• The jumpsuits and stationery recently purchased by the Irish Space Agency.
• Nunchucks. Cool, but not necessary.
• Being at Waffle House at four in the morning is so unfathomably unnecessary I cannot explain it: no one needs to be at Waffle House at four in the morning.
• Except for meth addicts. They kinda need to be there.
• Probably to buy more meth. It’s certainly not for the food.
• Don’t do meth.
• Anymore Spider-Man movies for a while.
• At least six professional hockey teams. Tampa Bay shouldn’t have a team: hockey should not be played where ice does not occur naturally.
• Nipples. (Men.)
• All this drama. (Women.)
• Appendices, coccyx bones, pinkie toes. (Everybody.)
• Portugal. Just be Spain, Portugal. It’s like all you have is that you’re not Spain.
• Just be Spain.
• Because right now, all you are is Shitty Brazil.
• Having the words “flammable” and “inflammable” be the same thing is the apotheosis of unnecessary. Yes, it’s a Dr. Nick joke, but as a culture – shouldn’t we be more specific about what will and what won’t explode if you’re a dick to it?
• Why are we so vague in this important area? Why leave any confusion at all?
• Just have “flammable” and “non-flammable.” Get rid of inflammable.
• Ned Lagin.

Time (Sheath Technology) Is A Flat Circle

“You remember how I promised not to use the Time Sheath technology anymore?”

“You mean after you got caught trying to abandon Ned Lagin in the Pleistocene?”

“I wasn’t abandoning him, Bob. He wanted to see a stegosaurus.”

“But you handcuffed him to a tree and left him there.”

“One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

…

“Did Stegosaurs live in the Pleistocene?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, I might have snuck ahead 40 years, just to take a look around. Plus, my contract was up and I was/will be due for a new phone.”

“How do you use that thing, anyway? The cell towers haven’t been put up yet.”

“Oh, you just beam the signal through the Time Sheath technology. Bear worked it out.”

“Huh.”

“Roaming charges are astronomical.”

“So, what about 40 years from now?”

“Our fanbase seems to be intact, but a good number of them have far more money than brains.”

“How so?”

“You wouldn’t believe what kind of money tickets to our last shows are going for.”

“Fifty dollars.”

“More than that.”

“Sixty.”

“Way more.

“Eighty-five.”

“This’ll take forever, so I’ll just tell you. Five figures.”

“With the decimal point?”

“No, Bob.”

“Jeez.”

…

“Garcia still gonna be dead, Phil?”

“Dead as disco.”

“Future seems all fucked up.”

“That it does, Bob.”

“I’ll still cash the check, though.”

“Fuck, yeah.”

But What Does Ned Think?

Ned Lagin is just about the same size as one of Billy’s more whiskey-soaked boners. Phil’s beard weighs more than him.

Grateful Ned

Obsession recognizes genius first. Those that are good will see great coming from a distance. Salieri is the first to bow to Mozart.

And I must admit to my status as the F. Murray Abraham in the relationship between TotD and NedBase. A work of breathtaking specificity and (seemingly) impeccable research, NedBase is the scholarly home of the Lagin Chair in the Study of Neducation.

Y’know what: fuck my silly jokes. Go find out when Ned’s parents met Garcia. (Hint: Dark Star>Spanish Jam>U.S. Blues.)

Lackin’ Lagin

Though present for much of the Dead’s ’74 run at Winterland, Ned Lagin’s image appeared in none of the film exposed those nights, nor on any tapes from the evenings.

Sound, Body, And Mind

What sound do you fear?

Is it the door slamming shut behind you? The screech of tires too close in front? The wet, meaty slap of the winged penises as they dive-bombed the last remaining human stronghold in the final battle of the War of the Flying Dicks?

The rumbling romance of the deep part of the water, the part out past the breakers, the dark blue bit. When you go to the beach, you stand in the water and face inland: you heard the call once, sinuous and sonorous in your ear, you were a child and you listened to voices like that; out you swam and you could taste the water get saltier as the continent sheered away beneath you, hundred yards, thousand, mile. You treaded water and laughed and listened for the voice over a mile of water and you felt the presence and swam farther faster and when your father hooked you under the arms and dragged you back–how did you get this far out–you struggled. You fought your father for that voice and now you keep your feet on the ground. Wade out to the sandbar, wade back.

You have no idea what it means to fear a sound.

One In Ten Thousand

The Dead experimented with many formats before settling on the Two-Set Solution that finally brough peace to the long-embattled region.  Some of them were good ideas, and others the drummers came up with, but since Lost Live Dead refuses to return my phone calls and texts and frowns upon my climbing into his window, I’ll have to illuminate these dark corners of Dead history:

The “All-At-Once” Approach was Phil’s idea, and it wasn’t really his idea so much as it was Charles Ives’ idea, and it was completely awful. Ned Lagin loved it, which should tell you something.

Backwards Day was a spiritual cousin to Opposite Day, I suppose, but instead of just turning their guitars around, the Boys (and Mrs. Donna Jean) turned the whole show around, opening with U.S. Blues, doing the drum solo in the first set, then closing with Promised Land or Bertha, and then just standing there smoking for a while. It was, as you would presume, anti-climactic.

Inside-Out Day might also be considered a spiritual cousin to something, but it was just weird. The band would jam backstage for an hour, then take the stage and smoke, get high, get beejers, get more high, check their gambling losses, poo, and yell at the road crew. Then they would return to their dressing rooms and jam for two hours. This approach angered people.

Karaoke Night with the Dead was a poor attempt to ride a 90’s trend, as was Macarena Night with the Dead. In the former, lucky audience members were allowed to sing with the group until they wandered too close to Garcia and Parish punched them in the head. The latter was exactly what it sounds like and I’m not gonna lie: it caused a suicide or two.

The Wheel of Rock and Roll Fortune is an idea recently dusted off by Elvis Costello, a longtime Deadhead, wherein a large wheel of chance with various song titles is spun and Fata Morgana herself chooses the set list. Except Bear built the Dead’s and he was, you know: utterly mad, so it ran on lukewarm nuclear fusion and the first time it was spun, it generated an EMP burst that took out half of Palo Alto. Also, the Wheel of Fortune, like most things around the Dead, quickly gained sentience and it and the Wall of Sound fucking hated one another.

The Dead in the Round only happened once, and for god reason: Bobby got immediately and violently unwell upon taking the rotating stage. It wasn’t moving that fast, but all those people who got drenched don’t care about details. They got Bobby-juice on ’em.