[Newspoetry] Jello versus Slayer

[William at Spineless Books]

Keeler Variation Case  XI

"Hello?" "Jamie I love you." "It's you! Hey beauty. You never call this 
late at night. What time is it there?" "Jamie it's dawn and I've been 
awake all night. I called to ask you something very important, something I 
should have asked long ago." "Oh I thought you were calling to see if I 
was okay. Did you hear what's happening here?" "No! What?" "Oh my god a 
riot. The whole city is on fire, there's fighting in the streets!" 
"What?!" "Chaos! Violence!" "In Champaign?" "AND Urbana. There's stuff 
happening right out front. Oh my god, what was that?" "Holy shit. What was 
that?" "Did you hear that?" "I could hear glass breaking. Either that was 
really loud or your phone has great sound quality." "It does, yeah, it's 
old. And it's not cordless, so, hold on, I need to put that down, I mean, 
put you down, so I can go see what that was. Here, I'll put you down by 
the radio, all the stations are talking about it." "Yeah, you have one of 
those phones that's attached to the wall by a wire, right? Is that why I 
can hear everything in the room? With cellphones everything sounds like 
robots shorting out... Hello?" "Oh my god, they're breaking windows!!!" 
"Okay, that was some terrible music by the Dead Kennedy's, whose politics 
I find frankly Medieval, asinine, and facile, and that goes out to Jello 
Biafra, whose fault this all is. Thanks Jello. Thanks for ruining my town. 
I hope they've got the radio on in your cell, and I hope some good ol boy 
country deputy impales you on his nightstick. I just got off the phone 
with a caller who confirmed what the earlier caller had said: the riot was 
started at a Jello Biafra talk at Foellinger Auditorium on campus tonight, 
a Jello Biafra talk which Jello Biafra could not make it to, since, 
driving in from the Indianapolis airport, he was pulled over in 
Veedersburg, Indiana, and arrested for resisting arrest. I don't get that, 
but, it probably doesn't take much to get locked up in Indy. Anyway, so, 
punks had driven in from all over Illinois to hear Jello, anarchists and 
angry teenagers from Mattoon. Danville. Decatur. Unhappy people, looking 
for guidance from... a man named Jello. And according to the guy I just 
talked to, who I still have on the phone here, Jello sent along word to 
quote take to the streets. Great advice from a man in jail. So, okay, I'm 
putting you on the air now. You there?" "Yeah." "You went to hear Jello 
talk tonight?" "Yeah." "Did you hear somebody say 'Jello says take to the 
streets?'" "No. I couldn't get in." "Why not?" "It was full of fucking 
college kids." "So right now you are standing at a payphone by the quad? 
Tell the people where you are and what you see." "Okay, I'm at the edge of 
the quad, I can see Green street. Traffic is stopped. I see a kid jumping 
on a car. Right now there are a few punks limping by. There's some blood. 
Dead Kennedy's Tshirt. They seem really happy. Let's see, I think I see a 
fire over behind the Foreign Languages building, and the Illini Union is 
swarming with cops. There's another wounded guy, lots of blood, Metallica 
Tshirt." "Geez, if you kids would just listen to the Beatles none of this 
would have happened. Tell me, where are you from? You a townie?" "Farmer 
City." "Can you pick up WEFT in Farmer City?" "Pick up what?" "WEFT. 
That's what station this is." "Oh, this is a TV station?" "No. Radio." 
"Oh. I don't listen to radio, it sucks." "Why did you call?" "Is Jamie 
there?" "Jamie?" "Yeah." "I think you got the wrong number. Sorry. Punk." 
"What the fuck? Was that punk trying to call my Jamie?" "Hello?" "Jamie?" 
"Oh my god there's these punks trashing the Independent Media Center." 
"You mean, they're below you? In the building?" "There's this paper mache 
George Bush somebody made for an anti-war protest, and the punks dragged 
it out in the street and were taking turns jumping up and down on it, then 
they set in on fire. This cop car just sat there and watched them. Then 
these rednecks came out of the sports bar and started throwing, like, 
bottles of Miller Lite, at the punks, and the punks LOVED it, and were 
trying to, like, head-butt the flying bottles like they were soccer balls. 
The rednecks got scared and went back in. It was like, violence without 
anger really made them uncomfortable." "Well, I guess it takes the 
satisfaction out of beating the shit out of someone if they enjoy it. Did 
you hear about Jello?" "What the fuck are you talking about? My building 
is going to be burned down and you want to tell me about Jell-O? Hold on, 
I need to go back to the window." "Shit. What is she playing now? Is this 
the Dead Kennedys? Ew, this is awful." "Okay I'm back. I'm getting more 
calls and I think I have another piece of the puzzle, the events that 
triggered the riot that seems to be sweeping the twin cities. Apparently, 
it's a clash between Jello Biafra fans and fans of the puerile hair band 
Slayer. People who came in from all over the midwest to hear some amateur 
shredding performed by middle aged men in bicycle pants. Music for 
aspiring alcoholics, adolecent men feeling those first pangs of budding 
sexism. These guys make Jello Biafra look like Noam Chomsky, the Dead 
Kennedys like Kronos. The plot thickens. So I have another caller I'm 
going to put on the air now. Okay, you're on. Tell us what happened." 
"Okay well I drove in from Moline to see Slayer at Mabels. And the place 
was packed. Lots of people moshing, slamming, jumping around. Slayer had 
this, like, lighting boom, and the crush of people was knocking down one 
of its supports. I saw this blue spotlight was going back and forth 
between the singer and the drummer, and I looked to see if someone was 
operating it, but the whole scaffolding was swaying. And Slayer started to 
get nervous and stopped playing and were trying to calm people down so the 
lights wouldn't fall. And the singer was like, really freaked out, and he 
was screaming 'Do you want to die?! Do you want to die?!" and the crowd 
went nuts, they thought he was just trying to be dark metal, and the 
lighting boom fell. My girlfriend was in the front row and she had to be 
carried out in an ambulance. A fire got started. The bouncers were going 
nuts, just trying to get people out of there, pounding everybody, but 
nobody really knew that Slayer had already left in a hurry. So when people 
got thrown out everybody was feeling really pumped and then there were 
punks all over the place starting trouble. Fights started breaking out 
everywhere, all over the campus." "Yikes. How was that for you? Was that 
terrifying?" "Dude it was awesome. It was the best metal show I've ever 
seen." "Bye. What an idiot. Here's some more Slayer. One more track before 
I break the record in half. Slayer? I hope you guys are listening. All 
coked out in your van stuck on the Indianapolis beltway. Or having your 
cavities searched in Veedersburg. Ick." "Hello?" "Yeah? Jamie? I'm 
checking the American news online and I see no mention of any of this-" 
"Oh my god my building is full of rampaging... grits. I gotta call 911. 
I'll call you back. Bye."

William

Spineless Books Box 2458 Providence RI 02906 http://spinelessbooks.com