ME, I'M WAITING SO PATIENTY LYING ON THE FLOOR
The Rick Nelson Move
“Woo-hoo”
(repeated 4 x)
- Blur
You’d be surprised what happens when you get all the psychopaths out of your life. For one, there’s a lot more time to spend on the simple things that come from finding and wandering the vast acreage that now exists in your mind. Depending on where you came from, you may have or may not have ever laid eyes on this real estate before. And while the earth may be scorched, there’s value in there. I advise you to go full Spaghetti Western with it. Find that inner poncho with a thin cigar and Coburn’s Fistful of Dynamite early skinnier Harley Davidson. Enjoy those Techniscope 2.35:1 Spanish views and ride on while practicing your aim shooting at bottles. And while R&R is good for the business of the soul, I cannot stress this point enough: Make sure to check the integrity of the fence posts at all your borders.
Next, with a steady hand, a pair of pliers, and a bottle of peroxide, which many keep in the medicine cabinet or under the bathroom sink, get to work on getting that broken blade out of your back, gut, or heart. I prefer to do it that way. Like a detective. Those watchful emergency room nurses ask too many questions, which makes it a bit tougher to slip across state lines while things cool off. And, unlike many a fallen ancestor of mine, there is no need for a seemingly invisible butterfly stitch. I now take my scar tissue as jagged as the dog bite puncture on my left hand—a good conversation starter when going for a swim with friends during a summer BBQ or making small talk at the old Beach Club in Monte Carlo while waiting on a club sandwich.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Surviving. Hand me that mustard.”
I prefer having the room to spread out, which is maybe why I didn’t go to New York when that side of the film world told me I should be there. Some may call it an L.A. thing, but I dunno. As a kid, I went through long blocks of living in large spaces without furniture for numerous reasons. Initially, this was the result of my father saying this exact phrase to an Internal Revenue Service Representative,
“Get fucked.”
Then, the old man slammed down the cordless phone.
It’s interesting when that happens. One minute, you’re watching Thundarr the Barbarian with an Entenmanns chocolate donut before school. The next, a swarm of IRS agents drill the front door’s deadbolt, enter the house, and take away all your worldly possessions, including the T.V. you’re watching cartoons on, while your mom hides all her jewelry under her bathrobe.
After that audit and countersuit, we spent a short stretch as a family in a rented mansion on Deep Canyon, which was also without furniture, yet a fine black British sportscar with red pinstripes sat in the driveway (that car, luckily, had been put in my mother’s name)—a Jensen Interceptor 440 convertible. It was an excellent vehicle when it ran, with no working seatbelts, and a passenger seat was a great place to stand while jamming down the winding hills into the flats. I slept on the floor of my room with one of my few possessions, a G.I. Joe helicopter. My predicament didn’t go unnoticed, though. A kid I knew named Ryan at school who suffered from severe behavioral problems and was sent outside a lot felt sorry for me and gifted me a Friday the 13th 3D poster so I could brighten my room up a bit. And while a hockey mask-clad maniac busting through a window wasn't what they call age-appropriate now, I felt it did the trick and broke up the monotony of the endless white walls and scattered cardboard boxes. I’m not sure, but maybe those moments are why I’ve found solace lying on the floor in the center of a room, looking at the art on the walls. It’s familiar. To this day, I will lie on the floor of my den (which has every stick of furniture pushed against the walls by my design) while a record spins to find a little peace.
A little while back, I found out that Rick Nelson, the 1950s television star/singer & guitarist from Ozzie and Harriet who re-invented himself as a pioneer in the lonesome L.A. cowboy scene at the Troubadour and scored a timeless top ten hit based on his experience of being booed offstage at Madison Square Garden for changing up his artistic game, also lived in a big house without furniture. And Nelson had a De Tomaso Pantera in the drive. The result of a rough divorce and a failed plan to restore Errol Flynn’s infamous den of voyeuristic sex and illegal gambling. She took all the money, and he got the crumbling estate overlooking Universal City, which Flynn affectionately named Mulholland Farm. With few options, the farm would become Nelson’s crash pad and a rehearsal space until his tragic death by way of a private plane crash in 1985.
Imagine that. A chaotic showplace repurposed into a sanctuary….
Here’s an underrated song from Rick Nelson and The Stone Canyon Band—side one, track 1.
Wow, I enjoyed this !