🚀 go-pugleaf

    During the time I was manager of the menagerie known as the Ghetto,
my reign of terror extended over a dramatic cast of characters.  My
girlfriend, Erin, and I lived in the front apartment with a super-smart
dog named Boogie and an ornery old Siamese cat named Chingo.  Erin was
a superb artist as well as a beautiful, hilarious, hard-drinking,
hard-playing, intelligent friend and confidante.  She was something of
a Mother Superior to the crazed crowd in the Ditch.  She was treated
with respect and a little bit of awe.  She could handle even the most
berzerk Vulgarian with the ease and confidence of someone who'd worked
the night shift emergency room for years.
    I was still working with Menagerie when I first became the Ghetto
"manager", then later got off the road after 7 years as a lightman to
commit the ultimate sacrilege of becoming a disco jockey.  Who'd
a-thunk it?  But hey: the money was just as good and I could sleep in
my own bed and wake up without wondering where I was, staring at that
ever-present "clipper ship painting" that cheap motels are so fond of.
    The discotheque in which I spun that spell I spun was a cavernous
bar housed within a large hotel called, at that time, the JoVonn Inn.
"Jive on down to the JoVonn Inn" was one of my wildfire catch phrases.
It was a very popular bar with the college crowd and it was not unusual
to see a line of polyester-clad disco ducks and duchesses waiting to
get in and boogie.
    The JoVonn was also the focus of a lot of official scrutiny, owing
to allegations of improprieties on the part of the owner, who owned, in
addition to a string of hotels, controlling interests in several large
Alabama banks that had ALSO come under the official eye for creative
business dealings.  It was across this cracking sheet of thin ice that
I found myself skittering and caterwauling in a furious strobe-lit
disco frenzy and it did nothing if not heighten the surreal atmosphere
of my home life.
    The others who waited to greet me upon my return were:
    Eubanks,
probably the funniest person I have ever met (although when we first
met him he'd signed his lease as "Otis Bunch" - later when he ran out
without paying his rent, we realized the significance of the name),
    Allen Hinds,
who later won Guitar Player magazine's best amateur guitarist contest
and was off to free tuition at the Guitar Institute of Technology or
whatever it's called, where he was later asked to teach and whose
roommate Adam was keyboardist for Miles Davis group a few years ago and
provided me the insider's basis for my earlier observation on Miles'
assholistic attitudes, which is a moot point, I know, but I'm trying to
stretch this sentence into oblivion.  Allen is Hiroshima's lead
guitarist when they go on the road, incidentally.  He was one of the
killer guitarists in our band back in those days.  Chingo the cat was
his originally, by the way, and I really really hated that cat -
everybody did - he had the piss-poorest attitude of any creature that
ever walked the earth. On the day before Allen left to attend Boston's
Berklee School of Music (this was before the Guitar Player magazine
thing) he came up to me and asked if I would please take care of his
cat for him.  "But I hate that cat!" I sputtered.  "Well, could you
just, you know, maybe feed him once in awhile?"  I ended up loving that
cat for a great deed which he was soon to do for me, but I'll save that
for later on in the narrative...

Hey folks - it's quittin time

I'll pick this up a little ways down the road

Felonious
Gone to drink Corona