The Forgotten Tale of Rusty Parnassus: Surf Priest

Sup flock? Glad to see like, so many congregants in here on this beautiful Sunday. Anybody see the surf report today? Six foot swells out at Mar Clemente, supposed to get even better by mid day. Wish I could get out there, but today is God’s day, and I’m happy to see you all here this morning to ride the ultimate wave- His word.

I see some faces in the audience I don’t recognize, which is pretty cool. Let me introduce myself to you new comers- my name is Father Parnassus, but you guys can just call me Rusty if you want. My church is a little different than most churches, as I’m sure you probably noticed from the margarita and chips I substituted for the wine and bread during communion. My motto here is basically just chill out, you know, worship but like, don’t kill yourself doin’ it. Shoes are optional too, so you do whatever you want there.

I have two passions in life – preaching the message of His forgiveness, and scouring the globe in search of the ultimate curl. If I can get some sand beneath my feet and hunt down a killer fish taco in the process, well, chuuhh, I ain’t mad at that. I believe that god wants us to be happy, and if that means you have to break up with your common law wife to fly to Australia because you heard a rumor on the internet that swells might reach 16 feet this September, well, I think the lord is probably just gonna say “right on bro”.

My story starts back in the summer of 1995, when I was but a lost lamb trying to shred mother Gaia with all my free time, and working at a surf shop in Laguna and living off of mahi-mahi burgers from the beach shack. My worst enemies were seagulls and my best friend the ocean, and I spent all my time waxing my board and running my hands through my long golden-red locks. You guys could probably guess why they call me Rusty, huh? HAHAHA RIGHT ON

Anyways, I really thought I had my shit together back then. Slayin’ blonde puss by the life guard tower and showing off for my friends. We used to make home videos and call them “dome videos”- we would film each other getting sucked on by fat titty bitches under the lifeguard tower without the babe knowing. For example if my man Curl-J was getting his hog licked I would get the super 8 camera and duck behind the hot metal trash can where all the bees used to hang out and film it. Sure, it was grainy, and all you could hear was me laughing and talkin’ bout how scared I was of them bees, but those videos were fun anyways.

We used to get up in the morning- Curl-J, Fat Eric, and myself, and puff down a baseball bat joint before walking the 2 blocks from the hostel to the beach. With the sun barely peeking over the edge of the earth, we would zip up our wetsuits and get into the roiling ocean. We did this every day, communing with the Life Giver, surviving on what She gave to us- beach fries, dank waves, and endless beach babes that rained like mana upon us.

Sometimes at night, we would have bonfires and smash brews like nobody’s biz. Curl-J loved to play his acoustic guitar, pretty much exclusively Marley covers, although eventually he did write his own song called “She Cumz in Waves”. It had a double meaning.

With the bonfire like, crackling’ and whatever, we would usually throw whatever free food we scrounged up on some coat hangers and cook it over the flame. It was a pretty cool dinner most of the time, although once Fat Eric speared a styrofoam ramen cup and tried to cook it whole, and that didn’t turn out too well. He ate it anyways and didn’t feel like surfing the next day, but he was fine by the weekend. Fuckin’ Fat Eric, dude.

Anyways, I thought these times would go on forever, but let me tell you, flock, that they did not. You see, even though I had been living the life of a beachside puss annihilator and baseball bat joint toker, I was denying God. But we are all His children, and he cares about us even when we deny him. So, what does like, a pissed off dad dude when his children deny him? He teaches them a lesson to remind them why he’s important, guys. Duh.

My lesson came to me one day when I decided to swim out too far into a rip curl in pursuit of a super dank swell. I was most arrogant, but I really thought my relationship with Mother Gaia was good enough that if she saw ol’ Rusty Parnassus swimming’ into danger she’d be like “aww, like… nahhh dude… he’s cool, let him through, he’s just trying’ to get some time in the green room”. Turns out mother Gaia has nothing on the real god of the sea – Jesus C. Christ. He’s for real guys, and the only way you’re going to impress him is to ask for salvation, not free chili cheese fries and a 3 minute wave.

Well, before I knew it, I was caught up in the ocean current, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I struggled and tried to escape using my swim skills, which I always imagined to be superior (I even have “Aqua Rat” tatted on my collar bone), but it was all to no avail. The Father of All things had chosen to seriously fuck with me that day, and that was that. As I flailed, the sea got angrier and more violent, and I found my self getting sucked down and thrown out of the water repeatedly by the churning tides. This went on for what seemed like forever, until one final time, I was sucked down and tossed out again, dashed upon the jagged rocks of a sea cliff, and then dragged, my consciousness fading, back below the surface of the ocean. As my vision grew cloudily, I realized that this was the end, I was going to drown in Mother Gaia’s cold, black embrace. I began to hear the Stone Temple Pilots play as I slowly sank to the bottom and blacked out.

Imagine my surprise when I slowly came to, washed up on the sand, my board next to me. My vision was hazy, and it took great effort just to lift my head a few inches off of the ground. “Am I dead?” I wondered to myself as my eyes adjusted to the light. As my vision came into focus, I saw right before my face the sign that would change my life forever. Two cigarette butts laying in the sand, one laid perpendicular on top of the other – the sign of the cross, bros.

I heard a voice from above me.

“You ok, bro?”

I looked about beyond the cigarette cross in the sand and saw two sandaled feet.

“… is that you Jesus?” I gasped.

“Dude are you ok?” replied the deep voice.

“Uhhh, yea…” I replied, not wanting to look like a pussy in front of Jesus.

“Word,” replied the son of man, and the sandaled feet turned and left me. I briefly slipped back into unconsciousness, and only awoke later at night when a beach stray was urinating on me. This time, I had my strength back, and was able to drag myself home.

Since that day, I live my life for Him, you guys. I owe it all to Jesus, man. I mean sure, Father Rusty still surfs on the reg and chows down on beach burritos, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t still appreciate the company of a babe, but at the end of the day, after a few Pacificos, I get down on my goddamn knees and I thank the lord for the blessing he has given me. I have also devoted all my non-surf time to spreading the word of salvation, which I do to you now.

The message is you can still blow loads on the beach and give it up to god at the end of the day. He doesn’t care if you piss in the water, or spend every morning in the pipe, or even if you sometimes don’t pay for Corona at the Board Bar. He just wants you bros and bretts to accept his love, ya know?

Whatever it is that brought you to my ministry today, I thank you for coming to share the Word. After service there will be a make your own burrito bar outside by my Volkswagon van, and I encourage you to donate whatever you can to the ministry and partake in a righteous meal. I accept foreign currency as well as coupons, gift cards, and scratchers.

Alright, let me lead you all in a prayer so we can get to those burritos.

Dear heaven dad, who is most dank and understanding
Give us this day a tide most righteous, so that we may ride upon it
Forgive us for sometimes not paying for Corona, and for peeing in the ocean
Lead us straight to baja tacos, and let us not be ticketed for sleeping on the beach
Fill our beaches with only the fattest hooter bitches, but let the other chicks know they can dome us if they please
Thank you for our blessings, for 9 foot swells, for powder sand and late sunsets in summer
Thank you for letting seagulls take care of the rest of my fries
And thank you for your love and understanding, dear, sweet, loving father
Whose hand toucheth upon me in my time of need
Whose fingers runneth through my wet red hair when I wake up in the morning and say “whaaat” before smoking my bubbler

Amen”

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, my dear congregants. Let us now like, get to those burritos, and then maybe hit the beach.

 

It’s Easier to Buy a Dildo than a Microphone

I was at a camera store the other day with my mother, who is a photographer, helping her out with some things. As she was checking out a camera, the woman that worked at the store looked at me from behind the counter and asked “do you shoot as well?”

Before I could answer, my mother said “yes, and he has a wonderful eye,” which is not really true, I’m more or less as talented as any random person whose hands you could shove a camera into. I guess it’s better that she answered for me anyways, because I don’t really know how to answer a question like “do you shoot”. Don’t we all, sometimes? Who doesn’t have, at the very least, a camera phone that they occasionally use? If the question is, “do I sometimes snap a picture of a passed out bum or of particularly beautiful sunset”, then the answer is yes. In that regard, I guess I do shoot, kind of.

But I think what she meant was “do you own a $3,000 camera and invite models dressed in the fashions of today to your studio to light them and snap a couple hundred photographs?”. The answer to that would be no, definitely not. So I’m not sure, do I shoot? It didn’t matter, I figured, because the question had been answered for me. From now on in the conversation, as far as she was concerned, I shot.

“Oh, that’s great. Whats your subject?” the woman asked.

“Huh?”

“You know, what do you like to shoot?” she clarified.

I was about to say “you in about a second if you don’t stop with the intrusive questions”, but my mother got to the answer before I could even open my mouth.

“He likes animals! You know, taking pictures of squirrels, birds, butterflies on flowers, that sort of thing,” she said.

“Oh how great!” the woman replied. “So mostly animals, then?”

Never have I been in a conversation with somebody where they learned so much about me without my ever even opening my mouth to speak. I too, was learning things from this conversation. Things like “I am a photographer”, and, apparently, my specialty is wildlife. While it’s true that I did once spend half of a day in Hawaii following a dog up and down a beach photographing it as it pissed on people’s sandals, I would hardly call myself an “animal photographer”.

This conversation was beginning to annoy me, so I did what I usually do when I’m annoyed: I just stood there and internalized it, knowing it would keep me awake later that night when I tried to go to sleep. How could I get any rest knowing there’s a woman out there somewhere in the world who thinks I am a wildlife photographer? We had gone too deep down the rabbit hole now, though, it would be more trouble than it was worth to try to set it right at this point.

In a way, I think I actually got off easy in that particular scenario, because usually when salespeople talk to me I actually have to do the answering myself. Now that I’ve cooled off, I realize that I don’t really give a shit if she thinks I work for National Geographic, she can think whatever she wants as long as I don’t have to engage her in conversation. My mom could have stood there and told her I take nude photographs of children and all I really had to do was smile and nod.

I oftentimes fantasize about living in another culture, one that is more respectful and courteous than Americans are. A place where people don’t ask what color your bedroom is painted or what kind of soap you use, where people understand that if you want them to know what your hobbies are, you will tell them on your own.

It seems like a very American thing to constantly have to make asinine small talk with everybody, which almost always comes down to asking personal questions. I find it hard to imagine a Japanese man walking into a Staples in Osaka to buy paper and having the fat woman in the red vest behind the register ask him what he plans to print on it.

One nice thing about Europe is that the waiters are disinterested in you and you don’t have to tip them anyways, a classic “win/win” if you ask me. They come over, never looking up from their iPhone, and mumble “what do you want you cunt?”. You order your food, and they walk away without even acknowledging that they heard you, but sure enough 15 minutes later your plate comes out. Then, afterwards, you don’t even have to do any math in your head, you just get up and leave.

In America the waiters are so nice it’s actually creepy. They are all forcing smiles and checking on you incessantly to make the meal hasn’t gone from good to bad in the 3 minutes since they last tapped you on the shoulder. Nothing is more obnoxious than having a mouth full of the food and being intruded upon by some cheerful redhead in an apron to ask if everything is okay. Yet, that is the American restaurant experience, and we actually tip for it.

At least the waiters are only interested in your food. They don’t usually want to know your cat’s name or what room of your house you like the most, like the goddamn salespeople do. Of all of the stores with salespeople, music stores have to be the worst.

I went into a Sam Ash the other day to buy a microphone, and got put through the ringer by a heavy blonde woman named “Liz” behind the counter. I came in knowing exactly the brand and model of microphone I wanted and still had to have an epic conversation with her, despite being the most unresponsive, disinterested prick I could manage to be. She was a real pro.

“Hey! Lookin’ for anything in particular?” Liz asked me second I walked through the door. I was caught off guard by this, my eyes had barely adjusted to the dim light and here I was suddenly in a conversation with somebody I couldn’t even see. It was a stupid question, too. Of course I was looking for something in particular, I didn’t drive here and pay a meter just to come stare at a wall of fucking guitar cables. The question was a trap, meant to lure me in and chat my ear off for 30 minutes. Or more, if she could get it.

“Uhhh… yea… I just want to buy a Shure 58 microphone real quick,” I said, hoping that she caught the “real quick” I had tagged onto the end. I don’t think she did. I could see the Sure 58s, she was standing directly in front of a bunch of them behind the counter.

“Oh yea? Well we got a couple of those,” she said. For a second I thought I might actually be able to just buy it and leave, but no, that’s not how the world works anymore, as much as I would like it to. “What kind of music do ya do?” Liz continued.

“Um, I actually don’t do any music. It’s just for recording voices,” I replied softly, trying as hard as I could to not engage and let this go any further.

“Oh yea?” said the perky Liz, “so like just acapella singing or what?”

“Actually no, just kind of like spoken word stuff, in a room, you know,” I said.

“Oh like, a poetry reading?” she continued to push.

I sighed heavily and thought about suicide. “No,” I breathed, reluctantly giving in. “It’s for a podcast. A couple of guys talking, I already have a couple of these mics, they work well, I just need one more and that’s all. I actually see them right there behind you, one of those would, uh, work perfectly.”

“Oh wow, a podcast!” Liz replied, pretending to be impressed. “What kind of podcast?”

At this point I was becoming irate. O.J. Simpson didn’t even have to answer this many questions after he stabbed his wife to death, and here I am getting reamed on why I need a microphone. It seemed so unfair.

“It’s like, just a comedy podcast I guess. Just funny stuff.” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully so as not to give her an opening for a further line of questioning. Despite my best efforts, it happened anyways.

“Oh that’s so cool,” Liz said. “So are you like a comedian or something?”

“No, I’m not,” I replied, basically admitting that I am just some loser who likes to record himself making dick jokes with his drunk buddies in the hope that one day somebody might care enough to listen.

I had to hand it to her, Liz had finally done it, she’d dragged it all out of me. Satisfied that she knew everything about me, it was time to actually sell me the microphone. She turned around, opened up the case with all of the microphones in it, and reached for a different one.

“A lot of people have been trying these new ones out instead of the Shure 58s,” she began. “I have a 58 at home myself, I’m a singer, mostly singer-songwriter stuff, ya know, vocal heavy. Anyways the rep for this new mic was in here the other day showing me these, they are pretty amazing. I myself am considering buying one.”

Not only did I have to divulge my entire personal life to Liz before I could buy a microphone, but she was also going to make me sit through a sales pitch too. At this point I began wondering how long it was going to be before Liz finally just pitched the time share to me and got this “music store” charade out of the way.

She took the microphone out of it’s box and pointed to the mesh ball at the top. “See this mesh here? Now this is some strong stuff. You can really beat the shit out of this mic, no joke, it’s reinforced. The rep that was in here was smacking it against that table right there, real hard too, like not playing around. And guess what? No dents. Try that with a 58!”

I imagined myself in my room, sitting in a chair, telling a dick joke into a microphone that was sitting on a stand while a few of my friends sat lazily and watched. Then I imagined Liz, holding an acoustic guitar in her own room, singing some song about drying clothes on a line or whatever dumb shit singer-songwriters write about. In neither of these scenarios did I see the need to bash the microphone repeatedly on a piece of wood.

“Well, I mean, look, does it sound okay?” I asked. At this point, I was ready to buy the microphone in her hand, because it was already on my side of the counter, and the way things were going so far, getting another one over here was going to take another 20 minutes and potentially a stool sample.

“Well let’s just go right over here to the P.A. system and you can try it out yourself!” Liz said enthusiastically, making a move to get out from behind the counter. I stepped to counter her, putting up my hand.

“No no,” I said quickly, “that’s okay. I’ll just take it.”

Liz was delighted by this news, and put the microphone back in it’s box and began to ring it up. I was foolish enough to believe that the questioning might be over, but oh how wrong I was.

“Hmm,” said Liz typing away on the cash register. “You know any purchase over 50 dollars means we send you a 10 dollar gift card! How cool is that? So why don’t you go ahead and give me your address so I can put that in here for you.”

I had forgotten that every music store always wants your address. They literally will not let you buy anything without it, because their real business isn’t actually selling musical equipment, it’s flooding your mailbox with catalogs. This gift card business was just a means to that end. But what was I going to do? I gave her my address.

“Oh!” Liz exclaimed. “You’re Sean! You’ve been here before!” she went on, telling me things I already knew. “Well that’s great, you’re already in the system!”

About 5 minutes of this and I finally had my microphone in a bag, ready to leave. As I got to the door, about 5 teenagers came in, and Liz shouted to me “have fun making your podcast with your friends Sean!”

One final humiliation in front of teenagers, one last exposé for all the world to see. I couldn’t just bring money to a store and buy a microphone, everyone in the whole fucking world had to know exactly what I intended to do with it. They should be this scrupulous at gun stores, not places that sell guitar picks. But alas, it is not the case.

I wonder if this kind of behavior is acceptable at sex shops? Something tells me even the place that sells anal beads probably has more courtesy than your common retail store in this day and age. Can you imagine being a woman and going through this experience trying to buy a dildo?

“So what’s it for?”

“Excuse me?”

“That big enormous dildo you want to buy. You gonna put that thing up your pussy or are you thinkin’ also your asshole too? I myself prefer this new model here that you can run over with a car and have it still vibrate. Wanna give it a shot? Hey, what’s your dog’s name?”

In the end there’s really nothing to be done about these people. You could tell them to shut up and mind their own business, but they’ll just think you’re being a Grinch, or a Scrooge, or even just an asshole. In my head I imagine that most of us must feel as put upon by all this worthless small talk as I do, but I don’t really know for sure if anybody else minds. Certainly nobody seems to bring it up, anyways.

Which leaves me alone, to suffer silently. Having inane conversations with strangers, day in and day out, until long from now I will be old, and my grandchildren will pester me with questions like “what was it like when Adam Levine hosted The Voice? Were you excited?”, and I will think of Liz, and miss her dearly.