B004FEF6RO EBOK

by Wylde, Zakk

  He uses no pussy hair-care products to tame his bestial mane. As a matter of fact, it appears as though the only products he has ever used are sweat, grease, and the Anal Eaze he uses to help him endure the ass-pounding he receives while trying to get radio programmers to play the latest Black Label Society bona fide smash-hit single. I’m telling you, it would literally break my heart if I found out he actually got stuff done to his hair. I would have to tear up my manliness manifesto. [Editor’s Note: We reserved the right not to inform Forrest that Zakk actually triple-washes with Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific and goes to José Eber’s hair salon in Beverly Hills.] However, if I discovered that he has a harem of twenty virgin women follow him around on tour and stroke his hair with a silver brush with a bone-tooth handle, I could accept that—seriously, how long does it take to grow that much hair? He doesn’t just dazzle his audience with blistering-speed guitar shredding, he also literally beats and pounds his chest while onstage like he’s some kind of silverback gorilla, upholding his stage territory and challenging anyone to try to take his banana. Don’t take his banana. It won’t be pretty. We’ve all heard about his opting to put his wife in a gorilla suit instead of a French maid outfit when having “relations,” so I don’t think we really need to go any further into this punching-yourself-in-the-chest thing.

  The guy can bench-press over three hundred pounds. Over the past few years, he’s suffered like twenty-seven injuries. He’s had three pulmonary embolisms, throat surgery, hernia operations, and a broken back. Not to mention the gaping ass he has after the barrage of pummeling he’s taken during his time spent in the music business. But none of that shit matters to him because he can bench over three hundo. Basing your overall health on how much you can bench instead of the actual physical state of your body is ultra-manly. Zakk is so manly, in fact, that when he breaks a leg or gets the flu, instead of going to the doctor, he goes to the gym. As long as he can still press three hundred pounds, the world is as right as rain. It all comes down to the bench, my friend.

  Like Batman, Zakk is a master of every martial art. He is so manly he can even make finger-painting cool. I’m not insinuating that he does finger-painting, because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me exposing that side of himself. But still, if he did in fact finger-paint (again, not saying that I’ve seen his finger paintings or anything, especially not that portrait he did of a nude male model during his Thursday-evening art class), it would be manly.

  Although Zakk will probably get mad at me for telling you this, I feel it is an important ingredient in his manliness. That guitar he always plays—yes, it turns into a battle-axe (imagine the battle-axe He-Man used to wield, and you’re right on the money). If he plays a secret note, his musical instrument suddenly transforms into an instrument of death. No one knows this because anyone around to see this transformation instantly loses his or her head.

  As you can see from the list above, Zakk Wylde is all man. (Possibly some kind of super-evolved man-gorilla-Viking, much more masculine than just man or gorilla alone. He has told me that his wife has an affinity for zoo animals and dated several different species of them while they were in high school.) However, no one is perfect. Below I have included a list of things that actually take a little away from his manliness points:

  An article about Zakk in Revolver magazine mentioned that he has a tremendously hyperreactive gag reflex. He says he discovered this while undergoing treatment for a polyp on his vocal cords, but it makes you wonder if perhaps he discovered this a lot earlier. Perhaps on some lonely night while on tour.

  I understand why a short guy would wear lifted boots, but Zakk is a tall guy. I mean, how tall do you want to be? I justify his boots by telling myself that it’s his way of scaring away the annoying kids. I’m not saying he’s out to kill children, but he definitely wants to scare them. And it works, for the most part. I know if he gave my son candy, I would not let him eat it.

  For the longest time I thought Zakk actually wore a kilt, but recently I discovered it is actually a flannel shirt tied around his waist. You know, the kind of shirt that dykes like to wear. I don’t know why he would even own a shirt like that because everyone on the planet knows that he has never in his life worn a shirt with sleeves. The guy even has a sleeveless leather jacket. On one side, the flannel tied around his waist makes him look like a fat chick trying to hide her ass, which is not that manly. However, on the other side it resembles some Mad Max homoerotic-type leather attire, which is definitely manly.

  While it is certainly manly to be a rock god, the fine-motor coordination it takes to play the guitar bothers me a little bit. But at least he is not a singer. That would have really cost him some manliness points. [Note from the editor: Forrest still doesn’t realize that Zakk is in fact the singer of Black Label Society. We try not to feed Forrest too much information at once or he may turn into a gremlin and start destroying everything in sight.]

  There are very few people who I would want by my side when the apocalypse comes (and trust me, it is coming sooner than you think), but Zakk Wylde is definitely one of them—especially if he brings his guitar battle-axe and cuts off the head of anyone who is not a proud member of the almighty Black Label Order. So, in closing, don’t fuck with this guy. I’m a professional fighter and get paid to punch people in the face, but I would not fuck with this cat in a million years. Seriously, heed my words and you may live to see another day.

  Note from Zakk: Father Forrest, thanks for the dyke comment, my Black Label brother. I figured somebody was gonna pick up on that sooner or later. But it’s actually not to hide my fat ass. It’s to proudly proclaim my dyke-ness. Wait … so I am gay! Just a gay chick. I was confused up until right now—I’m cool with that.

  And thanks for the comment warning people that you wouldn’t fuck with me in a million years. Maybe if people read it coming from you, they will listen. As it stands, everybody is always picking on me and hurting my Black Label feelings.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  No Shitting on the Bus

  Stern alarums set forth dreadful marches. The Battle cries of the Berzerkers resonated through the very Halls of Valhalla, and from above the sounds of steel and iron clashed with conflict. The wails of willful women echoed through the ether as our horde crushed the countryside on its quest. Neither the enemy nor the excrement of our own reckoning soiled the progress of this divine undertaking. Many times the fiend of the bowels would, without warning, raise its mighty brown turtle-like head to wreak havoc upon the Berzerkers and sabotage their efforts to bring forth the Metal! But our hearts could not accept failure and with each debauchery our legend swelled like the engorged Mjöllnir of the Narwhal.

  And on this adventure of conquest we rode in caravan with other, like-minded crews of warriors, and these allies joined us in battle, in song, and in drink. And so strengthened our Metal brotherhood with the roars of ten thousand lions. And the armies came together and grew into the OdinForce of reckoning. For it was Odin’s behest we awake remembrance of the valiant dead, and with our puissant arms renew their feats! For the blood and courage that brought our mighty ancestors renown swelters through our veins!

  And the Berzerkers rode their barbed steeds to fright the souls of our fearful adversaries. O, belike his worship we shall ride to Victory! Our plan is one of strength, determination, merciless and forever! With true preparation, our longevity shall be eternally known.

  Note from Zakk: “For the blood and courage that brought our mighty ancestors renown swelters through our veins!” For fuck’s sake… Reading this horseshit makes me want to take a blunt butter knife and slice my fucking veins, as it would be less painful than reading this horrendous fucking drivel that pours out of Father Eric’s horrendous dribbling fucking brain that resides in the empty cavity that is known as Eric’s cranium. C’mon, man. Enough already. Let me ask you this—how much time did you spend writing this peanut-brained crap instead of going out looking for a girlfriend?

  Rules of the Road


  AS YOU CAN PROBABLY IMAGINE, THERE AREN’T A WHOLE LOT OF RULES when you’re out forging the metal of Valhalla. Vikings will be Vikings, but we do have a few laws to keep the order of things, day in and day out. I’m talking about the Black Label rules of the road here, with Rule No. 1 being: No shitting on the bus.

  Every touring band knows this one. There is absolutely no shitting on the tour bus whatsoever. Even with the fancy new buses that have the grinder in the toilet so you can safely take a shit—I don’t trust those fucking things either. Unless you’re willing to Black Label up after you’ve committed the Unholy and shove your fucking hand down there to clean your own shit up, don’t do it. That’s how it works on these buses. You can’t just pour some magic powder down there and disintegrate the shit you just unloaded. The driver has to go in there and literally clean the shit out by hand. Not only that, but it stinks the entire bus up to holy hell, and there’s no escaping it. It’s like you’re in a submarine loaded with shit stink—a rolling port-o-john. In the immortal words of one Arthur Fonzarelli, “That ain’t cool, Cunningham.”

  When we were out on the road for No More Tears, Randy Castillo brought a girl on the bus. This chick was drop-dead gorgeous, with a smoking-hot power-ass of doom, the whole nine yards. The only thing she actually lacked was knowledge of the cardinal rule for any touring band’s bus. Actually, she probably lacked any knowledge whatsoever. Fuck, she probably didn’t even know her own fucking name. God bless her—she looked amazing.

  I was sitting in the front lounge when she came on, and several of us were there bullshitting and noodling on guitars. She asked to use the bathroom in her cute squeaky little mouse voice, and of course, none of us thought anything of it. Within about two minutes, this smell creeps up through the bus. It’s the kind of unforgettable smell that has the effect of freezing time, sound, and space. It was as if my life flashed before me during a near-death experience. And actually, something really did die that day on that very bus—our hopes, our spirits, and all we’ve lived to believe in. Right after receiving that devastating right-cross of shit-stink, we were all looking around at each other silently, but our eyes were clearly saying “No, she didn’t just shit, did she?” thinking that chicks just don’t do that—girls don’t go to the bathroom!

  A lot of traumatic things happened in that exact moment in time: Santa Claus no longer existed, the Easter Bunny had just been shot, and this smokin’ hot-ass chick just dropped the kill bomb of all nuclear kill bombs in the Ozzy band bus bathroom. She painted that porcelain throne deep brown with kernels of corn clinging to the sides of the gaping mouth as the bowl devoured her entrails. She obviously thought it wouldn’t stink and it would work like a normal bathroom. But her ass stench invaded every air space on the bus. There was no escaping it. Just like whenever I take a double dose of Viagra and hunt Barbaranne down with my rod of doom and force anal sex upon her innocent yet soon-to-be-plowed-and-gaped heart-shaped ass, there is no escape. And just like the astronauts in Planet of the Apes before me, who crossed over into the forbidden zone, I too shall enter the forbidden zone, woman—your succulent ass.

  I digress.

  When this hot rockin’ mama-jama came out of the bus bathroom it was completely awkward because we all knew she just shit and it was obvious to her that we all knew. I couldn’t even look at her, I felt so bad. No longer did she seem to be that magical, Farrah Fawcett-back-in-the-day-looking babe who had strutted onto the bus with her overly short skirt and stripper heels. Now she looked like my three-hundred-and-fifty-pound tub-of-shit buddy Joe, after he blasted a smelly fucking taco meal out of his grimy butthole. Her once-so-sexy, mouthwatering, apple-ass—an ass only rivaled by Clint Eastwood’s—now looked like a beef delivery system.

  To make things worse, one of the guys came from out of the back of the bus yelling, “All right, who the fuck just shit?” This girl was just beyond mortified, man—red-faced and busted. She bolted out of there before it got ridiculously stupid, and we never saw her again. The bus driver was so pissed off because he had to clean that “bitch’s shit,” as he kindly put it. We all take it for granted that everyone knows there’s no shitting allowed on the vehicles, but obviously they don’t. Make sure you post a sign, big and bold, that simply states, NO SHITTING ON THE BUS!

  Of course, squeezing your ass cheeks shut for five hours isn’t realistic, and there are many long stretches of highway and lonely country roads where indoor plumbing will be a tough find. This is when it becomes necessary to go au naturel. I call this the pull-the-fucking-bus-over-now-I-gotta-fucking-shit theory—crude yet highly effective.

  While out on a desert highway, I thought my ass was going to fucking explode. Our bus wasn’t even moving because we were stuck in some accident traffic or some shit like that. I grabbed a roll of Brawny paper towels, jumped off the bus, ran down into a gully, and squatted to take a shit right there, spraying the nearby rocks with my Black Label shit of doom. I swear when I was finished it looked like someone did a rock painting of three large buffalo.

  Although most of the time it is possible to get the bus to pull over for a quick shit break, there are times when you are simply too hungover to make it any farther than the bus’s bathroom. (Or maybe you scarfed a couple of McSomethings for lunch and that garbage slid through your system like a pig on a waterslide.) And as your Black Label luck would have it, that’s usually when you feel that well-known rumble in your lower bowels alerting you that it’s time for your daily disaster. When this occurs, you’ve got to be prepared. Stock up on biodegradable bags for the bus before the tour. Take one of those bags and wrap it over the goddamn toilet, do your business, wipe your ass, and stick the toilet paper in the bag as well. Then tie that shit bag off and heave it right the fuck out the bus window while driving down the road. I’ve done this several times and it works perfectly. While this does break the rule of actually shitting on the bus, it’s a great way to set it free and get rid of the evidence. So maybe you end up with an infraction of the rules, but nothing a couple of matches couldn’t handle to get rid of the fucking stench. Just make sure the bag is biodegradable, because that’s the Black Label way—when you’re going brown, you’ve still gotta be thinking green.

  World Tour Survival Technique: Rules of the Road

  OF COURSE NO SHITTING ON THE BUS IS RULE NO. 1, BUT ON THE BLACK Label ride we have a few more that you may want to incorporate into your own rulebook.

  Rule No. 2: No tea-bagging anyone while they’re sleeping. I say “while they’re sleeping” because if someone is awake while the tea-bagging is occurring it either means that they want it to be happening or that JD has some unfortunate dude in his basement and is about to let the Gimp out of the box. Some people find it funny to pinch the nose of their sleeping friend and when the unsuspecting victim opens their mouth, in drops the ball sac for a tonsil dip. Personally I would not find this amusing at all, but when traveling around with the likes of my bandmates, it is sometimes necessary to put down the obvious as a solid rule so no one gets any funny ideas. You would think a rock legend like myself would be safe from a Delta Tau Chi prank like this, but I read in Slash’s autobiography that even he wasn’t safe from the getting tea-bagged by Tommy Lee back when Guns N’ Roses toured with Mötley Crüe.

  Note from Zakk: Once again, Father Eric added this little tidbit of knowledge, probably due to something he is trying to forget from his college days. I just figured this is a rule in life. I’ve never been tea-bagged or tea-bagged anybody. But evidently some clowns find this fucking funny. You want to know fucking funny? Stick your ball sac on my fucking face while I’m sleeping and I’ll gnaw your nuts right the fuck off. I can’t wait to see the look on your face while I’m biting down on your soon-to-be-severed balls—as you hear them snap, crackle, and pop. Then the next round of comedy will be when you have to explain your stupidity and my oral castration of you to your fucking girlfriend or wife and your doctor. So if you ever want your fucking balls removed, you know where I
sleep.

  Rule No. 3: No spooning. When you’re on the tour bus, spooning your with girl is a hard-ass maneuver, and because of the size of the bunks, there really isn’t room for this sort of behavior. But I’m not talking about heterosexual, lovey-dovey cuddling here. What I’m referring to is oversized and undershowered hairy man-snuggling. Admittedly, this rule was established because of me.

  Our drummer Philth and I had been up late one night drinking and he ended up crashing out in the bed that was in the back of the bus, Barb’s and my bed. When Barb saw Philth sleeping in our bed, she just went up to the front of the bus to sleep there. Next entered me, thinking Barb was in the back bed waiting for my sweet lovin’, so I strolled into the back, climbed in the bed, spooned Philth, and grabbed his ass. That’s when I heard his deep, alcohol-dried vocal cords mutter, “Zakk … that’s my ass. It’s Phil, not Barb,” as if I wouldn’t have figured it out by the deep voice and handful of man-ass I was holding on to. But what really made me realize that it wasn’t Barb is that Philth’s back is nowhere as furry and gorilla-esque as Barbaranne’s.

  “Oops, sorry about that, brother. How about that Giants game today?”

  “Hell of a game, Zakk, hell of a game,” he murmured, still half-asleep.

  “We’re looking good this season. If we can keep moving the ball down the field and play heavy with our defense, we could make the playoffs.”