It's been a good ride so far!

Since I was just a kid all I have ever wanted to do was to make people laugh or just smile. As a child, an educator sent a note home to my parents. It read; If your son thinks he is going to get through life making people laugh he is in for a RUDE AWAKENING! He is not living up to his potential. WELL, I'M STILL NOT! But at this site you will at least see me try. From the heart, thank you for even being interested, it means the world to me. I always say, I have not a single fan but many a friend!



Friday, December 7, 2012

AIN'T NO HEAD LIKE A KNUCKLEHEAD

As I sit here tonight on the couch waiting for the lil woman to get her shit together so we can do what all the old couples we know do, go out to dinner.  I remember the days when I didn't even get in the shower to go out until 10:30 pm and now most nights I find myself sitting on the couch, bag of pretzels between my legs watching some stupid fucking re-run on some overpriced movie channel and thinking "ah it's too late to go out now" and noticing that it is 9:15 pm.  When the fuck did I get so old?  Is it really age though or is it state of mind?  Hell, I know old people who go out and hike all day up mountains and then go and party all night so I have to deduce that it is not my age but my attitude and you know what?  MY ATTITUDE SUCKS LATELY!  It is one thing to know what your problem is and then not work to better it, but what do you do when you can't figure out what your problem is?  How do you go about making things better for yourself when you can't even begin to get a handle on what you need to make better?

I know that I'm tired of getting our asses kicked by the system for certain.  You know the old saying, you can't fight city hall, well it seems to be more like, you can't fight the insurance company, you can't fight the pharmaceutical  company, you can't fight the cell phone carrier, you can't fight FEMA, you can't fight the bank etc....  there seems to be more big business handing out crushing blows to us all, the little people these days than ever before.  I saw today that a friend posted up a photo of their home in Jersey.  Now these people lived down the shore (near the ocean or water for those of you that don't know that in Jersey, no matter where you are, north, south, east or west, you always go DOWN THE SHORE) and they had every single type of insurance that you can have.  Home, fire, flood, car.... they were insured out the ass and ready for any type of catastrophe that the universe could throw their way.  So Sandy hits and it's now long since passed but people are still screwed.  This particular friend had all of their insurance through All-State and had for many years.  The insurance adjusters finally arrived, assessed their damages and the home is a total loss by the way, water was up to the bottom of the second floor and a wave literally blew a massive hole through the front of the home, well anyway, they offered this family $158.65.  Yes, you are reading that correctly, that is not a typo, one hundred and fifty bucks for their home, their car and all their belongings!  They red tagged the home which means it is a total loss and uninhabitable and against the law for them to even enter the property, so they in-fact are now law breakers for taking photos of the damage in their own home!  How can this be?  How can they get away with this?  They take our money because you must have insurance BY LAW and yet they do everything and anything they can to keep from ever having to pay out a single penny to the policy holders.  My heart bleeds for the people on the east coast who have not only lost everything, but continue to be injured by the unjust treatment that they are receiving.  I know that this is something that has me really bummed out and I feel helpless because there is nothing that I can do to help them.  We've shopped for Diane's medicine last week to see if the price had gone down or to see if we can get it for a lower price anywhere and the cost rather than go down, has now gone up to $132,500 per month!  One month of medicine costs a thousand times what they are giving people for the total loss of their homes?  Does this make any sense to any of you?  I know that has got me down too and has for the last 12 years!  These companies are like criminal organizations that hold the power of life and death in their hands in many cases and still do whatever they can to break it off in your ass and the more people that they can break it off in the asses of, an employee is getting a bonus for it!  There is just so much that is wrong with the world and so many are hurting so badly and I can't seem to shake the awful feeling of it.  I've always been aware of suffering and I've always felt bad for those who suffer, but never before have I ever felt the weight of it so heavily.

So for me, what I try to do is focus on what I have that is good.  What I have to look forward to and those that I love.  Rather than be jealous of those I know who are achieving some level of success, I celebrate it and pray that good is coming our way as well.  Nothing in life worth having comes easy and nothing in life is free, this is obvious....  well except for the Obama phone but don't get me started on that shit....  I am a firm believer in a free market system, I just hate greed, so I try to counter the greed of the world by doing good for other people.  I've found that the worse I'm feeling, the more I do for others makes me feel so much better.  There was an old saying "your not in this alone" and normally it made you feel better to know that you were not out on a ledge by yourself, but is it any better to know that SO MANY people are standing on that ledge as well?  One would think that at some point, that ledge would not be able to bear the weight of all those people out there and eventually snap off!  I'm going to do whatever the fuck it takes to come in from that ledge and hopefully pull a few people back in with me.  No matter what the case, I'm trying to stay focused and positive and just try to find away around, over, under or through whatever obstacles the world keeps throwing in our way.  I've got more events planned in this coming year then I ever have before, I'm getting my writing out to the world now, Diane's health is staying steady and her MS has not progressed and gotten worse, we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and we just keep on fighting.  We need things to look forward to and this will help motivate you to keep up the fight.  For me, what I am looking forward to most is what you've read in the title of this post.

My baby is getting ready to hit the road again.  My pride and joy as many of you know is my beautiful 47' Knuck.  Life is also about learning lessons and the most recent lesson I've learned is that a 65 year old bike is not meant to be ridden like a Ducati!  Oh well, lesson learned and the heart and soul of my knuck will be re-built shortly.  As a matter of fact, it is in the process of getting fixed right now.  I can't wait to kick that dirty bitch to life, hop on and run the mountain roads and switchbacks again.  So each time I'm feeling like shit, I pull out a pic or look at a video clip from riding her or think about a trip that I've taken her on and it lifts me up.
No matter how bad things are for us in our lives, there is either an amazing memory to look back and revel in or something that lay ahead to think of, look forward to, in some cases maybe to dream of.  No matter how small or big that may be, let your mind drift for a bit and let it take you on a trip to that happy place and you would be shocked at how much it helps.  I guess the point I've been rambling about here and driving some of those people out on the ledge to jump is simply, fuck it man, life is too short, be positive because how much worse can things really get?  Hopefully one day soon I'll notice you smiling on the side of the road or in a park or by the lake, I'll be the lunatic that comes screaming by on the bright red knuck!  Okay, so maybe I didn't learn my lesson about riding it too hard.... oh well...

All I know is that this time of the year is the hardest time for so many of us.  I know that we don't all feel the joy in this season and I understand that, I just wish that so many didn't feel so much pain during this time of the year!  Go out and volunteer, help someone, do something nice for someone who doesn't expect it and you know what?  It helps, believe me.  It will help both them and you and I've also found that it is in-fact contagious!  I hope that things get better for all of us and they get better soon!  I'm not even sure I should post this shit.  I never read what I've written once it's written, I just hit spell check and post.  Fuck, this started out to just be a post about my knuck getting worked on......  imagine what would happen had I not been stone sober?

Until we see each other again,

keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Your friend,
Jack Shit

An Evening With Dee Snider





Here is a quick teaser clip for the upcoming interview feature in the next issue of Cycle Source Magazine.  This was one hell of a night with a truly amazing individual!  This guy was nothing but class and one of the kindest stars I've ever seen with his fans!  I can't wait to share the interview with you guys, you will have a whole new way of looking at this rock n roll legend!

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

A DAY IN THE BEAR'S DEN

HERE IS YET ANOTHER POST THAT HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORMAT.  I ALWAYS SAY IF I MAKE A MISTAKE I'LL OWN UP TO IT AND IF I CAN, I'LL FIX IT.  A FRIEND BROUGHT A MISTAKE THAT I MADE TO MY ATTENTION SO I AM CORRECTING IT.  IT WILL BE IN BRIGHT RED BELOW.  

Every now and again, you hear a story about some hapless soul who wandered into a bear's den and ended up becoming bear shit because they were eaten by the bears.  Here is a tale of a similar event with a much different outcome.  In this particular case, the hapless souls were not eaten by the bear but rather, both the bear and its girl fed those crazy enough to walk into the den.  How is this possible you may be asking yourself right now?  If you think that shit sounds strange, imagine this....  THE BEAR SERVED VEGETARIAN CHILI!  Are you confused yet?  Well let me straighten this sorted tale out for you.

As we are quickly approaching the end of this monumental nightmare of a year for so many, myself included, I began to think back on the events of the year, the people that I was either blessed or cursed to have shared it with, what I've done right and what I've done oh so wrong and I was left wondering where this next year would lead me.  While reflecting on this years progression, aggression and some of my transgressions, I could not help but stew a little bit in the bad and marinate a little bit in the good.  It does however seem that with all the bad that we face in our lives, for the first year in a great many years, the good far outweighed the bad and for that I'll be eternally grateful.  I know, I know, what the fuck am I talking about?

One of the highlights of the year for me was once again hosting the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally at The World Famous Broken Spoke Saloon.  I love this gig for so many reasons and oddly enough the reasons that I don't enjoy the gig are often the same.  Let me give you an example of how this is even possible.  One of the things I love the most about hosting rallies is getting to see friends from all over the world when they come to visit and party and one of the things that saddens me the most is not getting to spend any real time with them.  A minute here, sharing a shot there or a few minutes at the end of the night before we make our plan for how to make our guests happy the next day.  So even though my face lights up when I get to see these friends, I can't help but to frown a bit as I watch them all ride away or head back to camp to party for I still have work to do.  I won't complain about it, I would not trade it for anything but no one says I have to be happy about it either.  Because my birthday always falls during the Sturgis rally, my wedding anniversary falls during the Laughlin River Run, Diane's birthday falls during Daytona Bike Week and so on, we are forced to celebrate these events on different dates and that's okay too.   One of the things we do as many of you may remember comes after Sturgis.  When I get home, I sleep for damn near a week and then Diane and I jump on the bike and we head off to California for some much needed rest and relaxation and we go and visit our friend Chopper Doll.

We had been posting on Facebook about our trip between us and a friend added onto the thread.  Asking when we were coming out etc.  As it turns out, this friend was not even a 30 minute ride from her house.  We called up, found out when he'd be around, made plans and headed off to visit.  I figured hey, it's right down the street and I didn't get to spend any time with him in Sturgis, why not go visit now for a few minutes.  Well minutes turned into hours and we went from just stopping by to receiving the royal treatment.  Not only were we welcomed with open arms and big hugs but we got to tour the entire place.  We even got to go into the "no cameras allowed" museum that boasts a treasure trove of chopper history and then sat down to watch a short film of him at the Harley Davidson Museum.  As the hours passed by, we thought for sure we were intruding but we were assured that we were not.  Not only were we not intruding, but the Mrs. was heading down to the shop to make dinner for everyone.  We just kind of all looked at each other wondering if this was really happening?  "Will you stay for dinner" we were asked and of course, our answer was absofuckinlootely!  I wandered around the shop looking at pieces of history, projects a plenty in different stages of completion and the sweet smell of Turkey chili cooking away on the stove.  I WAS INFORMED THAT TURKEY IS NOT A VEGETABLE AND THEREFORE CAN'T BE CONSIDERED VEGETARIAN CHILI!  Have you guys figured out who I'm talking about yet?  This day was a day that I won't soon forget and I had held off on sharing this story here or running it in Cycle Source and I thought what the hell, I'll share it with you guys.  We were treated so kindly by this legend of the bike world.  The stories that were shared with us were incredible and informative.  Things I thought that I knew were so very wrong and in-fact, I didn't know shit compared to the facts in a few cases.  We got to hop around on his bikes and in a split second, Diane was hooked and was sure that she now needed a 20 over front end on her next bike.  He just kept saying, go ahead, sit on it, feel the bars and turn the wheel in any direction and watch what happens and when we did we were amazed.  I wanted Diane to have the full "real deal feel of being in the wind" on the bike so as she sat on it, feet up on the pegs, I blew air into her face to blow her hair back.  Well here, see for yourself.
Diane didn't have the decency to do the same for me and I had to pretend that I was rolling down the road on one of these pieces of history and just imagine that it was just a day with very little wind.  Are you recognizing the shop yet?
As you can see in the pic, this is one happy girl and you can see the wheels in her head turning, thinking about how cool she is going to be running down the road with that front end poking a half mile out in front of her.
The truly observant will have figured out just whose shop we are in right now and if you look closely, you can just peek through the door of the "museum", but since you can't really see anything, I figured it was okay to share this photo.  Well I'm thinking that once I share the next photo you are going to know exactly where we were so here goes.
So now you have it!  The man who was so kind to open up his shop to us, stop working all together, deal with my stupid questions, give us the grand tour and take us all on a walk down memory lane for the TRUE history of the chopper and then after it all invite us to stay for dinner is the one and only Sugar Bear!  The reason you see the ladder standing behind us is because there was no way on earth that I was leaving there without a Sugar Bear shirt and neither was Diane or Chopper Doll so Bear pulled out the ladder and went digging for us.  Hell, if all he did to welcome us wasn't enough, we then made him pose for silly pics with us and he could not have been any more gracious than he was.  The man is a gentleman, an icon and a legend who has held true to what he believes in from the moment he began in this industry and has never wavered.  A true testament to standing behind what you make is by sticking to what you know and as far as I know, no one on earth makes a better, badder, cooler front end than my friend Sugar Bear!
 If it wasn't enough for us to make him pose for pics, it then became, okay, stay there Bear, we have to switch places and photographers and he just laughed and waited for us to get set and take the pics.
After meeting so many people at rallies, on the road or friends who run Sugar Bear front ends there is one thing I hear each and every single time and that is "I'd never want another front end as long as I live, there is nothing on earth like it"!!!  If you have not heard of Sugar Bear, where the hell have ya been?  If you want to see more of this legend, just google him or go on youtube and search "history of the chopper" and you too will learn some things you would have never even imagined!

I didn't get the chance to go to the Bear's Den at the Broken Spoke Campground in Sturgis for the BBQ during the rally but I did finally get to sit down and break bread or well in this case, tortilla chips with a legend and this was hands down one of the very best highlights of my year!  I am not sure how to spell his beautiful wife's name, I believe it is Fugi and it sounds like it would be spelled Fuji so I mean no disrespect if I've gotten it wrong.  Thank you so much for taking a few bikers into your home and making us feel so warm and welcome and like we had been friends for 30 years!  This is one class act and from the bottom of my heart, thank you again Bear! IT IS SPELLED FUJI!

So you all see it is possible to safely go into the Bear's Den and not be eaten but be fed instead!  Everyday we go out and we make memories, some good, some bad, but regardless, we have to go out and make them, they shape us into the people we become!  On days when I'm feeling down or laying around in brutal pain, I'll be able to look back on 2012's post Sturgis trip and remember just how great it all was, especially this day in the Den!  Thanks again Bear and FUJI!  Thanks for snapping the pics Chopper Doll and for putting up with your late sleeping house guests!

Until we see each other on the road again,

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Your Friend,
Jack Shit

Monday, December 3, 2012

Don't get much cooler than this!

This is the first time that I've ever tried to upload a video directly to the blog so I really have no idea how it is going to turn out so if it is screwed, we'll have all learned a lesson.  Early in November some friends invited me down to Houston to stay with them and ride on down to the Lone Star Rally and party with them and do a little bit of riding in a place I've yet to visit.  It took some serious thinking and when I figured out that I could not only get in a few days of riding but accomplish a much needed task for The Broken Spoke Saloon, the plans were set in stone.  The first chance that I get, I'll try to sit down and tell you how that amazing trip went but for now, I just wanted to share this with you all.  On my last day in Houston after the rally, with a few hours to kill before my flight home, my friends James and Sarah Lovelady invited me to lunch.  To be honest, I was still full from breakfast the day prior but when James hit me with "we'll drive over in the 32' " he had me and he knew it.  I was shocked at how amazing this fucker rolled down the road.  Here I am, driving to lunch in a car that is 80 years old and it is in better shape then some cars I know that are 10 years old!  Where oh where did the pride and craftsmanship disappear to in the products that are made these days?  Anyway, I thought you all would love to get a look at the piece of American Gangster history right here.  The car, with very few exceptions is exactly how it rolled off the assembly line in 1932!  Enjoy and until we see each other on the road again.  Thank you again so very much to my incredible hosts and all the people that I got to meet down in Texas!

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back 
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Jack Shit



Sunday, December 2, 2012

It Makes It All Worth It!

THIS POST HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORMAT:  Changes or additions to the original post will appear in red.  


Yeah, I've been gone again!  I just noticed that it is more than a month since I've posted up on the  blog and I'm sorry, I didn't keep my promise to not disappear on you guys again.  I can't really explain why, sometimes I just drop off the face of the earth.  It's not like I haven't been up to anything, as a matter of fact, in the last month I've done some super cool shit.  Now is not the time to go into all that I've been up to but I will share a highlight of this time period that happened last night.  As a matter of fact, when this happens to me and it's happened quite a few times, each its own story, I can't begin to tell you the level of joy that this brings me....  so here is how it goes and went!

Last night, we went over the to Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix to see Bret Michaels do his show and his charity auction.  I've gotten to know the band fairly well over the last 9 months or so and I can say this for certain, the Bret Michaels Band is chock full of kick ass guys!  I've grown even closer to the main man who runs the console, Rudy T. Reily and John King Stensland super guitar tech to the god's!  So on Saturday night while having dinner with these guys, they asked if Diane and I wanted to go to the show. Well hell yeah we want to go to the damn show!  I never really get to take Diane to do cool shit much these days as the cool shit that I do is all over the country and she is always so busy and it's hard to get away.  I managed to shoot some video with the phone and that actually came out looking and sounding great but the photos are less than great but I'll share a few with you guys anyway.  It was hard not to get a good shot as we watched the show from the orchestra pit and practically sat on the damn stage.
 This is our buddy Rudy T.

 Guitar God himself John

 Dirty Ray rocking his new leather covered bass


 Pistol Pete just could not wipe the smile off his face last night
 So this is how the night went.  Rudy had John call us and tell us that they got tickets for us and we could pick them up at the will call office.  We walked in the basement door to the Celebrity Club or some shit like that, all I know was as soon as you made it past the security, there was a great big bar and what the hell, we were at a concert after all, so we grabbed a couple of Jack n Cokes and headed for the arena.   In this same area was a shit ton of memorabilia and signed schwag from Bret that was being auctioned off for several charities.  The ones I can remember are Wounded Warrior, American Diabetes, Phoenix Children's Hospital and maybe one or two more, but it was a great night of giving was ahead of us all.  We got up inside the venue and the opening act was on stage.  The opening act was just a re-mix of the Bret Michaels Band without Bret.  It was sort of like shuffling the deck with an extra guitar here and there.  We walked down towards our seats which were phenomenal, thank you guys and jumped down into the orchestra pit just to say hello and ended up virtually never leaving that very spot.    Well of course with the exception to smoking, drinking and pissing, none of those were allowed in the pit.... well, okay, the drinking was, it is in the end, rock n roll right?  So here is where the night got special..... All throughout the show, Bret pulled different people from the crowd on to the stage to sing, play guitar or just dance and then would stop everything and auction some shit off.  The first thing he did was take the cowboy hat off of his head and got 4 grand from someone in the crowd.  Then he offered a deal to the highest bidder;  the deal was, whoever gave the biggest donation would be invited to his home with a few of their own guests, party up, ride quads, rock out and he was going to bbq and cook for everyone.  What ended up happening was quite amazing in-fact.  Rather than one high bid, he ended up with 3 bids of 20 grand and one for 15 grand, so being a smart guy and thinking of the organizations that the money was being raised for, he took all the bids, they all won and in one single shot, made 75 thousand dollars!  That night, the band arrived having made 100 grand while on the road for charity.  In one night here in Phoenix, they more than doubled all the money they had raised and it was incredible to be part of it!  I have no idea how much was raised downstairs and what the final total was, but it had to be HUGE!!!

We ran up top to smoke and while I went outside and did that, Diane got on line for the bar.  I walked back in and saw a few faces that I knew and then I saw this woman's face just light up.  "Your that guy" she shouted as she pointed at me!  So I shouted right back "yes, yes I am"!  I had no idea what guy I was supposed to be and then in a flash thought, what if she meant, that's the guy who robbed me, that's the guy who raped me, that's the guy who screwed that giraffe in my back yard..... but it was too late, I'd admitted it was me!  She told me that she was a friend of mine on facebook and that we had never met in person.  For the life of me, I can't remember what her name was, but if I had to take a stab in the dark, I'm going to go with Gabby!  Sure hope I got that right!  So I told her how nice it was to meet her and I meant it, I love to meet people that otherwise I'd only know from online.  She told me that she wanted to thank me.  Thank me?  Thank me for what?  As she began to explain why, I noticed that she had a fairly large scar on her throat and she must have noticed me, noticing it.  She said "that is what I want to thank you for".  "Really, I don't understand" I said.  She then proceeded to tell me the fight she had recently gone through with cancer and then told me something that will warm my heart forever.  She said that it was my writing, my stupid jokes and videos and the way that I was pissing people off during the election process to try and get them to delete me so that I could add new friends that helped get her through it all!  Can you imagine?  I've been blessed a few times to have been told that something I've done, said or written has affected people's lives in an incredible way and it brings me the most incredibly warm feelings down deep in my soul!  To think that something I've done has the ability to help someone else is hard to fathom especially with the level of people that I seem to have the magical ability to piss off!

Lately, I have not had the urge, the ability nor the attention span to actually sit down and write ANYTHING!  Not even short lil updates of what's been going on in our lives could I muster.  I've gotten so many messages asking if we were okay and where I'd gone off to now and why I stopped posting on here?  It took this wonderful women's comments last night to me to make me smile and actually sit down and write again.  Gabby, if I got that right, you've now inspired me again, so I must thank you!  I'll never forget the kind words that you shared with me last night just as I will never for as long as I live forget the day at The Broken Spoke when for the first time ever, someone quoted something that I had written, verbatim, right back to me.  I know that life can be brutal and unforgiving at times and I believe as I've said in the past, that I was put on this earth to help people and to bring smiles to people, no matter how far apart on a map we may be at the time.

I hope life has not been too hard on you guys, my friends.  The holidays are coming and I know for a great many of us, this is the most difficult time of the year.  I pray that for those who suffer most, those who are away from their families, especially our armed forces and all those who are just feeling down that we all get through this shit.  Hell, if all goes well, we will only have to make it until the 21st of this month anyway, then the whole world ends.....  so if you are really feeling awful, we have that to look forward to....

Until we see each other again on the road,

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Your friend,
Jack Shit