by Jay Onrait
A half hour later, three full hours after they were scheduled to take the stage, DJ Mr. Mixx, one of the founders of the group, walked out to the turntables, and the crowd let out a relieved and desperate cheer. Finally, 2 Live Crew was about to hit the stage! But first we were treated to a special added bonus, presumably because we had waited for such a long time with such patience. Two neon-green-and-orange-bikini-clad African-American statuesque beauties strolled out on stage to start gyrating to the beats the DJ was laying down on the turntables. It was a sight to behold for a kid from the Canadian prairies. In those days, seeing an African-American woman in Edmonton period was something of a rarity, but seeing two wearing clothes that barely covered their unmentionables temporarily made me forget that I had just spent the past three hours sweating out all my bodily fluids. Pink tongues wagging, big booties gyrating, fingers tipped with long, recently manicured fake nails cupping their massive, silicone-enhanced breasts, shaking them like maracas. This was pretty much worth the price of admission alone, and the group hadn’t even taken the stage yet—they were still backstage tucking into a late catered dinner, likely pierogies prepared lovingly by a small group of Ukrainian babas.
Finally, 2 Live Crew sauntered out to the performance area. They greeted the gyrating dancers with a few slaps of the ass, and the crowd, being both relieved and desperate to tell their friends they had seen some actual hip hop in “the City of Champions,” let out a thunderous cheer. The whole group was there: Fresh Kid Ice, Brother Marquis, and the group’s lead rapper, producer, marketer, and all-around guru, Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell—all of them presumably well fed and ready to perform to the best of their abilities. The opening sample that kicked off “Me So Horny” began to play over the loudspeakers—audio taken from a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in which a Vietnamese prostitute propositions an American soldier.
The dancers hopped up on the two massive speakers on either side of the stage and we were off! Campbell was up first, and I was immediately blown away by the accuracy of his rhymes. It was almost as if he was too precise. It was almost as if he wasn’t rapping at all. It was almost as if he was lip-synching.
And that’s because of course he was lip-synching.
He was mouthing the words to a recorded track. Is this how it is at all hip hop concerts? I asked myself. I tried to pass it off as a group not quite warmed up and ready to perform. Perhaps the next tune would give them a chance to show off their considerable South Florida rhyming skills. Meanwhile the two gyrating dancing girls were distracting us from the fact that we had spent three hours waiting to see four dudes lip-synch. The two girls were definitely earning whatever money they were being paid, bent over directly in front of the stage as Campbell and his cronies took turns playing slap the bongos. Not only had I never seen a booty shake like that, I had never seen a booty like that ever. I smiled at my friends, who were equally mesmerized by the display.
After the final beats of “Me So Horny” had played, the entire crowd roared in satisfaction. It was fairly obvious we were being duped here, but everyone was just relieved to be getting some sort of a show instead of slowly dying of thirst. DJ Mr. Mixx dropped the beat on the next track and we were off again. The nasally voiced Fresh Kid Ice had the first verse on this one, but this time he didn’t even bother to mouth the words. We could hear the track on the speakers, the dancers were still gyrating to the very best of their abilities, but Fresh Kid Ice just stood there with a goofy look on his face, as if to say: “Whoops! Oh well, we already have your money anyway.” Even a group of prairie kids who were just happy to be there had seen enough. A chorus of boos began to rain down on the filth peddlers from South Beach. But rather than become petulant about it, the Crew tightened up their act and finished strong, turning in as good a lip-synch performance as I had seen, leaving it all on the stage, holding nothing back. We had been robbed of our money and time, but we still cheered when the group walked away.
Sensing our impatience, Tone Loc came on immediately after the Crew was done—and he actually performed live, rapping into the microphone and performing awkward, choreographed dance moves that looked like a seniors’ underwater aerobics class without the pool. Tone Loc was a big, heavy man, and he truly looked like he was moving in slow motion. The requisite hits were performed satisfactorily, but two neon-bikini-clad dancers were pretty hard to follow. Not to mention that even though most of the people in the crowd probably had Tone Loc’s album, few of them had likely listened to it more than once all the way through. By that point, we had also spent five hours standing, dancing, and booing in a space best described as a really, really cheap and disgusting sauna. The night ended mercifully, and my poor father met us outside. I can’t imagine how bad we must have smelled as we climbed into the back of his Chevrolet Suburban for the hour-and-a-half journey home.
After that, I didn’t listen to much 2 Live Crew anymore. The illusion had been shattered, and the group’s popularity quickly waned in the music community. It’s not hard to believe now that these lip-synchers weren’t considered hip hop pioneers when it was all said and done. Just opportunists.
Not long after that I saw the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time at a hotel while away at a tournament with my high school volleyball team. Suddenly hip hop took a major backseat to my newest obsession: indie rock. Less lip-synching, fewer gyrating booty dancers, but equal amounts of sweat and thirst.
Chapter 5
The Joke Goes Too Far
It was the summer of 1993, another beautiful sunny day that lasted until 11:30 at night and made us all realize why we loved living in Northern Alberta, and why we tolerated those long, cold winter months. I was working the entire summer in my father’s drugstore. Weeknights were mostly spent “swinging the sticks” at the Athabasca Golf and Country Club—something you could do after work because the sun went down so late. Fridays, we would all gather at Loggers Pub at the Best Western Hotel for pitchers of recycled beer and line dancing. Saturdays, you hoped someone was having a party, even a high school party—anything to get out of the house for a few hours.
One weekend a neighbour from university named Jen came to visit, and I was thrilled to find out that my high school classmate Krista Horstemeier was having a house party at her mom’s place a few kilometres out of town. Time to show Jen some prairie hospitality!
My friend Robin Bobocel was also back in Athabasca working for his dad. Knowing that a few of us would end up at Krista’s house that evening and knowing I would pass by Robin’s parents’ house on my way to Krista’s, I decided to call and see if he wanted me to pick him up in my 1970 Buick Skylark, with its bench seats perfect for carrying loads of people to parties, and also great for the sex I wasn’t having.
I called Robin’s house and there was no answer, so the answering machine picked up. This is where things went horribly awry.
Ever since we were in the seventh grade, my close circle of friends called each other “Joke,” short for “Physical Joke,” as a reference to all of us being incapable of performing even the simplest physical tasks, as well as not being able to get or maintain an erection. This was absolutely not true, of course. It was the opposite. I actually got too many erections. (Too Many Erections was an alternative title for this book.) But it was hilarious to pretend that at the ripe ol’ age of thirteen our bodies had already broken down and we were pretty much useless to everyone, especially women. So we all called each other “Joke” for the majority of my junior and senior high school years. A typical conversation with one of my friends would go something like this:
“Jooooooke, what’s wrong with you? You’re pathetic.”
“Oh, I know, Joke. I know. My tiny little penis is flaccid and unattractive to women.”
“Oh, mine too, Joke, mine too.”
It’s a real surprise we weren’t all getting laid more with this Proust-like dialogue we had going between us each and every school day. The worst part is this dialogue c
ontinued right up until high school graduation and beyond. So when I called Robin that fateful Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1993 and got the answering machine, the message I left sounded something like this:
“Joke, it’s Joke. Where are you? I’m disappointed in you, Joke. If you don’t pick up the phone I’m going to come over there. I’m going to come over to your house and I’m going to body-slam your mother, Edwina. Then when I’m finished with her I’m going to apply the Macho Man elbow off the top rope to your dad, Danny. Then when they are both on the floor I’m going to give them both the Hulk Hogan leg drop. That’s right, Joke. They are going to suffer physical pain, and this is all your fault.” Click.
By then Robin’s mom and dad had begrudgingly accepted us calling them by their first names. Hopefully, I thought, they would find the message funny. If they didn’t find the message funny, well, what harm could I have really done? They would just think I was kind of a douchebag. And they probably already thought that anyway.
That evening I took Jen to my favourite restaurant in town: Giorgio’s Pizza and Steakhouse. Like approximately 72 percent of Italian restaurants on the prairies, this one was owned and operated by a Greek family. George and Helen Skagos worked there every single day with their son Jimmy and daughter Athena, both a couple years my senior. On occasion George, who had a ferocious Greek temper, would blow up at someone working for him in the restaurant, and it made for startling—and fascinating—dinner theatre. You could tell it was coming by the looks on the faces of the waitresses who were not in the family: They would scurry out of the kitchen like something bad was about to happen, and then you would suddenly hear George’s thick, Greek-accented voice bellow from the back: “I TOLD YOU SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” We would all look around awkwardly for about a second, then return to the best souvlaki this side of Estevan, Saskatchewan—yet another prairie town where a Greek family runs the Italian restaurant.
After devouring a “Medium Number 3” (pepperoni and cheese), Jen and I hopped into the Buick and sped down the highway toward Krista’s house. I still hadn’t heard back from Robin. This being the pre-cellphone days, it was unlikely I’d be able to get in touch with him, so I assumed he would meet us out at the party.
The party was a blast—a classic prairie summer soiree where everyone gathered in the kitchen and talked and drank. There were almost never drugs at these parties, not even marijuana. Just a lot of really cheap vodka like Silent Sam or, worse, Alberta Vodka, and probably more than a few cans of Club Beer, easily the worst brew of its era. About two hours into the party, as Jen and I chatted amiably with some of my former high school classmates who were back home for the summer, Krista came around the corner and walked up to me.
“Phone is for you,” she said.
This was highly unusual. Again, this is pre-cellphone era, so if someone was actually calling the home of the party you were attending something had to be seriously wrong.
My father was, for the most part, a pretty happy guy. He was not a happy guy that evening in summer 1993, however.
“Hello?”
“Jay, it’s Dad.”
The tone of his voice was dead serious.
“Uh, hey, what’s going on?” I asked.
He got right to the point. “Did you leave a voice message at the Bobocels’ house where you said you would body-slam Robin’s mom and hit Robin’s dad?”
Well, that wasn’t exactly right. I believe I said I would deliver a Macho Man flying elbow to Robin’s dad, but I wasn’t about to argue semantics with the man.
“Yeah, that was me,” I said.
“They called the fucking cops.” My dad rarely cursed, but this was as good a time as any to do it. “They didn’t recognize your voice and they thought they were really being threatened. They’re at the police station and they’re threatening to press charges.”
Gulp.
“Get back here right fucking now.”
“Oh-kay.” I hung up.
Well this was awkward. I mean it was awkward enough that Robin’s mom and dad had called the cops and were considering pressing charges, but I also had a guest in town, and a female one at that. I was trying to impress this girl, and nothing says “impress a girl” like having your dad scream at you while you’re led into the police station in handcuffs.
We drove back into town. “My dad might be pretty upset. I’m worried about what you might see when we get back,” I said, trying to get ahead of the situation. Jen assured me that everything would be fine and that she had been through the same kind of thing before and that everything would be all right.
Really? I thought to myself. This tiny woman had left an inappropriate message on the answering machine of her friend’s parents that detailed various decapitating wrestling moves that would cripple said parents? I found this hard to believe, but I wanted to lean over and kiss her for being so sweet and kind and understanding. I would have, but the way my night was going I would likely have lost control of the wheel.
When we arrived back at my family’s house there was no one waiting outside. No cops, no vehicles other than our own. At least the neighbours wouldn’t see me at my darkest hour. I sheepishly made my way up the front walk, but before I could climb the stairs my dad opened the door and there was pure fire in his eyes.
“Get the fuck in here.” He honestly didn’t swear that often, almost never at all. He was really, really pissed. This was that terrible combination of your son not only screwing up but embarrassing you publicly in the process. All in a tiny little prairie town where everyone knew everything that happened to everyone else. This was not the way he wanted to spend a quiet Saturday evening at home.
We stood in the entryway with my father across from us. I couldn’t even look over at Jen at this point I was so mortified. I was about to get called to the carpet by my father in front of a girl from college. Seriously, was there any worse scenario other than a fatal disease?
My dad spoke slowly. “I will tell you one thing right now. I will not hesitate to kick your ass out of this house.”
What? That’s not the opening line I imagined. Kick me out of this house? For leaving an inappropriate phone message?
“I am fucking serious,” he said.
“Hey, I know. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He quickly recognized his surroundings and turned to Jen. “I’m very sorry you have to hear this.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” said Jen. It took everything for me not to laugh out loud at this entire exchange, but I knew that might push Dad’s rage over the edge.
“We’ve got to go down to the police station.”
Oh, lovely.
After leaving Jen behind at the house, probably wondering if she should try to steal one of the neighbour’s cars and make a break for it, Dad and I hopped into his Silverado and drove the two miles to the Athabasca RCMP barracks located right across from the high school. The drive was a short one, but Dad had a few more things to say.
“You guys need to stop calling each other ‘Joke.’ Quit fucking calling each other that stupid name.” He did have a point. Had I identified myself, it’s unlikely we would be in this mess. In that case, the Bobocels would simply think I was a little punk and not someone who was about to break into their home and try to kill them using a slow and deliberate display of professional wrestling moves. Instead, I had kept up a weird identification tag for my friends since we were all thirteen years old, and now it was coming back to bite me in the form of criminal charges. Worse yet, I was now eighteen and could be tried as an adult, meaning I might be destined to spend my second year of university doing correspondence courses from jail.
As luck would have it, and because this day might as well get shittier, we pulled up to the police station at the exact same time as the Bobocels. This wasn’t going to be uncomfortable at all. Robin’s father, Daniel, didn’t even say a word, but his mother, Edwina, couldn’t hold her tongue.
“This will all be over in a few minutes, g
uys,” she said matter-of-factly. Turns out the Bobocels had been told that it was indeed one of their son’s idiot friends who’d made the threatening phone call. Now all that was left was the humiliation.
After Mrs. Bobocel made the comment my dad did something I’d never seen him do to someone in my entire life. He disrespected another adult in front of me. My father was always worried about his reputation because when you’re a small-town business owner reputation is everything—unless you sell lottery tickets, in which case you can probably get by without any personality at all. We bought all our vehicles from local car dealerships and shopped at other local stores as much as we could. My parents tried to treat everyone with respect in and outside of their store. So imagine my surprise when after hearing the comment from Mrs. Bobocel that it would all be over in a minute, he snapped back at her, “Yeah, whatever.”
It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing. Basically, he was just mad that he’d been dragged into all of this stupidity. Just another summer night on the prairies when you have an idiot for a son. (That was also an alternative title for this book.)
We all walked into the police station and were led into a conference room in the back where two cops were standing with a tape recorder.
I should immediately correct myself and say it was actually one cop and one guy that those of us young people around town who sometimes got into trouble liked to call a rent-a-cop. A rent-a-cop was an auxiliary police officer who would help out the local RCMP detachment from time to time. Basically, he or she was a person who had pledged to spend their free time breaking up fights between drunks at the old Union Hotel bar downtown because, I don’t know, they wanted small-town justice? Making matters significantly worse was the fact that the rent-a-cop was a former student at my high school named Glenn whom I had known since we were both about twelve years old. Glenn was only two years my senior, but he had been a rent-a-cop basically since he was eighteen. He probably applied at fourteen, but they held him off until he became an adult. There was to me something very strange about a person who is only twenty years of age and wants to spend their Saturday nights riding in a cop car trying to bust low-level criminal activity in the small town they grew up in. Almost every single case that this person would tackle could involve someone they went to high school with. That’s like being a glorified hall monitor. I don’t care if Glenn wanted to be a cop or actually even became one. At the age of twenty you should probably be the obnoxious drunk guy at the bar instead of the obnoxious guy who hauls the drunk guy out of there.