What? (what did he say?)

Hey, can you tell those kids to stop screaming in there? I didn't hear what you said.

Whatsit, Karen -- KEVIN -- I know he's a "dude", don't talk to your father that way, I just made a mist- look: she walks away. I'm saying something to her and she just leaves. She learns how to drive and she thinks she doesn't have to resp...

What? OK, Kevin, are we all what? Old? (shifts in chair to ease the ass surgery place, where it pinches) (winces from the lower back thing) (grimaces from the meds). Wha? oh, what do you young people know, with your hip-hop and whiney-white-boy folk singers who only know two chords and how every girl singer thinks Mariah Carey is better than Joni Mitchell.

I saw her once, where was it, in St. Louis? hey, Deb what was that place? Freedom Palace?

Civic Auditorium? No! ...wait. Right. The Palace was in KC.

No, not Carey, Joni. Mariah Carey, geez, all that fancy trill shit, all that yodeling. You read Catcher in the Rye? remember the "Grand" guy? Who couldn't throw the magazine on the bed? it was...no, wait. It was the other phony guy, the piano player, in Manhattan, where he takes the girl, where he talks about all that show-off-y trill stuff he hates. Like that. Singers now think they just oodlie-oddlie-eeya-uhya-uhyuh-woo-hoo on the notes and it means they are good singers.

You should listen to Miles of Aisles. Or Ella Fitzgreald. Or Etta James.

There's a direct line from Kate Smith to that whatsit, Melanie, Candle in the Rain, "lay it all down" crap to Madonna to Kelly Clarkson: all crap. Populist, bloodless. non-artists.

I saw Zappa three times. And the Airplane, before Starship. And I saw Jimi in 1968. Whaddya mean Jimi who? are you a complete moron?

(adjusts ass surgery place again) What? No, I'm not old. Some of these writers here are old. You can tell from their little pictures up there, which ones are old.

Young people. Feh. A bunch of sissy-asses if you ask me.

Explain what? Just a minute. I. Can't Hear. In Here! I'm serious! (long pause, waits for a lull in other room.) I'M SERIOUS! It has to be quieter!

(scratches beard, rubs head)

Zappa has more in common with Rosemary Clooney than he does with the bullshit they call rock and roll nowadays.

Hand me that seltzer. I like a little seltzer with my cranberry juice. Sip this. No, c'mon, sip this. Eh? See? Oh, just wipe that off, where I was...sorry. But good, eh?

Hey, girls, don't bring that noise in here. OK. (puts head in hands, wipes face.) Just get what you want from the fridge and go. I. CAN'T. HEAR!

Girls, say hello to Carl - KEVIN! -- he's my waddya callit, meetup from OS. OS. Open Salon. Never mind. He thinks we're all just old people on ...look at that. They just walk away. They can't wait to get back to the marathon on that E channel, the back-to-back Bling LoveRocket HiltonZilla Gilded-Cribs reality sex humiliation show -- ah, you like that, eh?

He he.

I know more about this shit than they know I know. See old has nothing to do with -- (winces) (adjusts ass surgery place again, rubs small of back) -- oh man. No, I'm OK.

You talk now. Tell me why you write on OS.

I mean if you think it's all old farts -- sorry, but just let me interrupt here, I know I'm talking too much -- but this is just what's coming, you know, the whole deal, for you too, all you young people. Did you read about my kidney stones? I did some good stuff there. Anybody can write about the pain and all that but i made it real, I get you in there with me. Pissing blood. That's real stuff there.

That's the real "Saw" you know: old age. Me and Jeremiah -- I mean Jeremiah and I -- he lives here in town, you know? -- he and I are doin' a collaboration. It will be the most horrifying thing ever seen: two old guys, on stage, sitting in chairs, talking about their ass surgery and their cancer and their hospitals stays and the ER.

No props. Two chairs. Truth to powerlessness.

TURN. IT. DOWN! (long pause) Thank You.

That was my I-really-mean-it voice. You have to save that, use it sparingly, or else they ignore you complet--TURN IT DOWN!

Goddamnit.

You want some more of my seltzer juice? No? Sure?

Lights-out-in-the-reptile-house, that's all that is, that "Saw" and "Halloween" and "Chainsaw" and all that shit. Just tricks. You want horror? Piss your pants, cry for mama, want to die NOW horror? Getting old. The nuts and bolts of it.

If the young really knew? They'd lay down and die, right here, right now.

They send you home with the catheter now, to save money, the insurance companies, those goddamnsonuvabitchbastard gonif  insurance companies. You know what it's like, to have a heavy bag of piss taped to your leg, to turn suddenly and feel that rubber tear at the waddyacallit, the pisshole at the end of your cock? Just knowing there's a bulb in your bladder, and if you yank the tube wrong you'll pull the whole fat ball of it thru that little, that little channel in your cock, or have it get stuck halfway out, while you sleep, and...

Oh man, you're cringing here, sorry. But this is what I mean. Being old takes guts. Once you have  some "procedures" you start to think: fuck me. Uh-uh. I want to fall off Everest or die rescuing kids from a fire or something. I don't ever again want to hear some nurse say to me: " now I won't lie, this is going to hurt," and then spend the next two days trying to chew chrome off a pole from the pain of it.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah music. Just let me say this one thing: it's about GRIT. Practically nobody has grit. Some do, they have a little. Whatshername, April Laverne? She's good. She write's her own stuff -What? Avie -- Avril? yeah! Avril Lavigne! Right! -- she's good. What? What's so funny?

But you want to hear grit. "Wang Dang Doodle", Koko Taylor. Google it. Wait a minute it's on my iPhone, just a minute. She had grit. Etta James, I mentioned her. Just a second. listen to this.

(we listen)

You hear that? That saxophone? That's sex. Not that humpty-hump my lady bumps, smirky bullshit. She says, she says there: "..and when the fish scent fills the air, there'll be schluf-tooths everywhere",

Yeah. We're old. We're old, but we fucked in the grass -- what? too loud? yeah OK: (lower) we fucked in the grass. We filled the air with fish scent. Schluf tooth, you don't get that? (demonstrates) Ah! See? Sucking air thru your teeth because, not because she's got a nice ass, not JUST that, but because she moves it just so, and she turnnns, and looks you straight in the eye, and you feel it, you feel her in the root of your pelvis and in the tops of your thighs, just above the knees, and because everybody feels it, the whole rent party street dance feels it all at once and...

What? Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. OK, OK! So it's a common thing, the dance floor is the dance floor; you still have this thing. You know. All right. I guess.

No. Wait a minute. No, it's NOT the same. You got that whatsit, beat box. Fake drums. What the fuck is fake drums? why would anybody want a drum MACHINE? Arms, man. Arms with sticks.

You smile. You think a beat is a beat. I see how you young people dance now. hands behind your head, thrust thrust thrust.

Yeah. OK. You dance better. You got choreography. We just flowed and rocked and boogalooed. Looks silly now, that hippie sine-wave thing. You guys pump it up, do the moves, do it right. More corrector. Smooth.

(leans in)

But we had grit. We had soul. You guys, not so much. There was more dance in Otis Redding when he just leaned, man, just LEANED into a phrase, than Britney Spears ever wriggled in, or on, ever, or ever thought of wiggling...shit. I don't know. Britney Spears is bullshit. The Jonas Brothers is bullshit.

Joni wrote about razor blades, fever in the rust brown bowl. Bobby Dylan wrote "I hope that you die" about the men who made money sending me and my friends to war. He didn't want his bitches and hos to go down. He wanted to stand over Evil' s grave and make sure it was dead.

Where's your MC5? Where's your "kick out the jams, motherfuckers?" Where's your Ralph Stanley, your "Rank Strangers"?

Where's your "Hound Dog?" (coughs) You ever hear (coughs harder, adjust ass surgery place again) Big Mama Thornton sing that song?

It's about grit -- God, I really wish they would turn that down. You know they have a show now about teenage rich kid's cribs? I mean what the fuck? First, cribs: is that supposed to be gangster or ironic or what? Next, these kids did nothing, I mean nothing, to get these private disneyworld houses and playland acres. What are we supposed to do, we normal parents, when our kids sit and watch this and say "awesome" and "cool" to all these private dance floors and indoor basketball courts and plasma screens in their bedrooms? It's bullshit. It's all bullshit.

You read Sandra Stephens? She's on OS, with us. No? I don't think she's too old. She runs, anyway. She says "we admire the wrong things." This is the point. You want to forget about this "old" shit.

Ha! yeah, true, true: I'm the one going on and on about this. Ha. Yeah. I guess so.

But we had an idea, back then, in the 60s, and it was good and true and right. Dance like you mean it. Admire grit. Love soul. Trust all joy. Make this a better place, if you can.

Scent the air with the holy stink of real, of real us. Suck air though your teeth.

Simplify. Buying shit doesn't make you young. It saves you from nothing. You'll see. It hurts like crawling naked on glass to be old. Old people who smile and caress their grandkids anyway, as they rot away, who don't bore you with the agony of dying? Admire them.

We were wrong about shit in the 60s, too. A LOT of shit. We said don't trust anyone over 30. How sad that is. How stupid we were.

Ok, you talk now. Tell me, why do you do it, write on OS, where old know-it-all assholes post? Why would the young listen to us at all? Why should we listen to you?

What, you got grit?