ø - Razorcake

Music allows for empathy... When I kick my amp
and the feedback goes “whooom,” someone in the
audience is going to say, “That dork feels like me.”
Mobile to the Mobile infirmary to get my
mother to the hospital, just in time for me to
be born under flashlights. I wasn’t named
Fredrick. I guess she was too messed up.
They put her on drugs, but one of my best
friends, Dave, from Auburn, he was named
after Hurricane Dave, which was two weeks
before I was born.
Bradley: That’s something down on the
coast I’ve never heard of, naming kids after
hurricanes. So you do a good bit of deep-sea
fishing?
Bean: I used to but I’ve been landlocked for
the past six years going to school. But,
yeah, I’d like to go fishing sometime soon.
Chet: Landlocked!? Fuck them man! God!
Landlocked in your education. They’re
coming down on Bean, keeping him away
from that king mackerel!
Bradley: But where’s your education propelling
you? What are you in school for?
Bean: I’m going to school for aerospace
engineering. I’d ultimately like to work on
mission control for NASA.
Bradley: You’re a rocket scientist?
Bean: I’m a rocket scientist. Two classes
away from earning my master’s. What I’m
doing right now for my thesis is I’m developing
a new method to design inter-planetary
space trajectory for spacecraft that have
an exhaust modulated propulsion system.
Chet: Tell him about how’s there’s not
enough computing power at the university.
Bean: Right now I’m pretty much done. I
have to run a big computer program to
make all the calculations, but where I’m
stuck at right now, I’m pretty much done
with my program, but I need a supercom-
puter to run it. If I ran it on my computer in
my office, it would take seventy days to
complete the operation of the program.
Chet: So computers aren’t fast enough?
Bean: Those sorry-assed computers. They
need to do something better with those computers.
Auburn University, you guys need to
invest in a supercomputer!
Chet: Bean is landlocked and he doesn’t
have the right computing power either! This
guy’s tragic. The tragic hero.
Bradley: How did you get doing merch
with the Killers?
Chet: We need a rocket scientist. We need
someone to make decisions.
Bean: Well, right now I’m doing my
damned computer program so I’ve got seventy
days to spare. [laughter]
Chet: You write to Lynn (another Killers
roadman and all around wizard for
Sarcophagus Studios) and ask him about
when he tried to take the doors off a pharmacy
with his motorcycle.
Bradley: What?
Chet: He was in the van with us, just another
one of the crazy characters who’s gotten
in this van.
Bradley: Being that you’re in aerospace
engineering, I assume you do a lot with
aerodynamics. There was another band
(Soledad Brothers) who recently had a little
aerodynamic problem with their luggage
rack.
Bean: Yes, they did. I had to step up to the
plate and come through in the clutch.
[laughter] They’re excellent people. I
enjoyed their company. They’re very, very,
nice.
Bradley: But their aerodynamics were in
question?
Bean: Yes, they had troubles with the aerodynamics
of their van.
Chet: It (the luggage rack) was on backwards.
Bean: They had the luggage rack, on top of
their van, on backwards. The first night we
played with them, they thought I was full of
crap, I told them they had their luggage rack
on backwards. You know, we had a few
drinks after the show, and in a drunken tizzy
I wrote down how they needed to change
their aerodynamics schemes for their luggage
rack.
Bradley: This was a proposal that was written
to change the aerodynamics of the van?
An impromptu proposal while you were
running the merch stand at the show?
Bean: Yes, it was written on a memo pad. I
think they’re going to keep that for years
and years and hold it close to their hearts,
something they can always keep with them
that will help them along the way, and
improve their gas mileage on their van in
their travels across the country.
Bradley: With your calculations, approximately
how many miles per gallon have you
saved them?
Bean: I’ve saved them approximately four
miles per gallon, and with today’s steep gas
prices, that’s very monumental in the success
of a touring band.
Chet: This has been surreal.
Bradley: [After stuff, I bought a Red Bull.]
Do you know what taurine is? Do you think
it’s bull ball juice? I mean Red Bull.
Chet: It can’t be.
Bradley: That’s what I’ve heard it was, so
whenever you’re drinking Red Bull you’re
drinking bull ball juice.
Chet: That sounds like fuckin’ black magic
stuff from the Golden Bough. If thou
wisheth to have the strength of a bull, eat a
bull’s cock. From whence the spirit of the
bull derives itself.
Bradley: There’s a bull for a reason on the
label.
Chet: You know, I think you’re right. I
think it is bull sperm. They’ve got factories
of bulls masturbating. Just like they did
humans. [silence]
Bradley: Kind of like milk factories, but
gizz factories for the bull.
Chet: The have gizz factories for men, too.
Test tube babies and stuff. They don’t pay
very well for sperm.
Bradley: Have you sold before?
Chet: I’ve looked into it.
Bradley: What magazines do they provide
you with?
Chet: I haven’t looked into it that far. I
haven’t made it to the lobby. Evidently,
they give a lot more for plasma than they do
for sperm.
Bradley: It’s just something I was curious
about and I thought you would know.
Chet: No.
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