Friday, February 20, 2009

Flashback #476

(I'm writing a piece on my old friends David and David, and their band, Jesus Lizard. Like hypnotherapy, the process releases a lot of old memories and toxins. Here is one...)

It should be known that David Yow, possibly the funniest man ever alive, once swam under a rusty tugboat in the toxic depths of the Hudson River. He was on the Frying Pan, a party boat anchored off the West Side of Manhattan. He was on the Lido deck, just, you know, discussing Hemingway, and he thought, 'Hey, I'll act like I'm going to jump into the river.' So he swung himself over the rail above the starboard bow, where he intended to perch, threatening to jump into the brine, until people noticed him and yelled, 'Hey, David, please don't do that!'
But once he was over there, hanging off the boat by his fingernails, he noticed the side of the old tub was a bit...greasy. And he started to slide. Down the bulkhead. Like a drop of orange fat off the side of a hearty mug of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. After a short while, he decided to just go ahead and make it look good, like he'd intended to go in all along. He took a dive.
Some girls threw a ladder down to him. This sunk. Other people panicked and ran to the bar.
Yow was already climbing out of the fetid river on the other side of the boat. I found him there, wringing his socks dry.
Two days later, I saw Yow again. He was "modeling" in a college rock fashion show. He had not changed clothes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

holy hell, i was at this show. thank you for the reassurance that this incident was not a hallucinaiton.

pat said...

Nope, nope, it really happened. You have the Euro Like Me guarantee on this. One day I'll relate the story of the CBGB's show where Yow body slammed me, but then himself got body slammed (for real) by an outsized oaf who almost knocked him out cold. A heroic moment for the funniest guy on the planet.....