Chip the Ripper had to overcome incredible adversity to get where he is today. Like having the name Chip. And being from the same neighborhood as Bone Thugs N Harmony. But Chip is one of the greatest, most underrated rappers in the business. There's no story here. I can't say that I relate to anything that he sings about it. Certainly not crime. But some times it just feels good to give credit to someone who sounds good on a rhyme. 

We saw the world through a similarly shifting and scrutinous gaze, trying to give shape to things that lay just beyond the haze of that confounded maze in which we found ourselves trapped, like those research rats we once upon a time cared for. I told you to make the most of the hours, you taught me to stop and smell the flowers, and though we always went our own direction we kept meeting at those random fucking intersections, in our varying degrees of travesty we happily received each other's company - forgivingly, unconditonally - but eventually you built up your own set of rules, your own maze - too-tall walls of solitude meant to exclude me and everyone else from whatever new life you were attempting to cultivate. Resurfacing only to sprout whatever hate had been seeded inside you. So, fine, hate, enumerate the ways in which I've wronged you, but don't deny the group you once belonged to. Some day I'll be gone too. I'll go, and you'll just be somebody that I used to know. 

He arrived in a tornado and left in a hurricane, and the time spent in between was a swirling mix of these two currents – seething, twisting, unfocused. All energy and no direction, in the end just swept away. In the last moments of his life, as he stood on the precipice, looking into the eye of the storm, awaiting his judgment, they all had to wonder - did he let go, or did the tide drag him under?

If you don't have it yet, get busy and find it.

Did Mr. Dufresne feel this way? Little by little, chipping away, in the one place hidden from the all-seeing eye. The only sound is the turning of the screw - round and round and round. Sweat drips down on plaster covered skin. Do you have to love it to go to such lengths? Or is it enough that its tedium fills those gaps - those gaping holes? In the end, will they even know the difference? I hope not.

A king without his subjects is hardly a king at all. His edicts echo through empty halls - a beck without a call. Without the people, the kingdom is sure to fall. 

Hank's been watching over the house like a hawk since Blanche died, the duty uniquely his since his own wife passed suddenly just a few months back. I walk across his manicured lawn toward the garage where a pristine Ford Fairlane peaks its two tone nose out of the open door. At the entryway I pause to admire the details - the slouched cowbelly frame, the batman fins, the four startled-looking headlamps above a thunderbird-style grill, everything gleaming. "She's called a Sunliner. Fifty eight." I look up to see Hank stooping his massive, lanky frame to enter through the side door, cracked hands brown from weeding or some other earthy endeavor. He dusts them on faded jeans - the small particle cloud that appears is the only sign of dirt in an otherwise immaculate garage. "What's it running?" "Oh, it's a big block v8. Three fifty two. This one here was the first model to include the three speed transmission. Cruise-o-matic.  I don't even drive it, couldn't tell you how she runs now" "I'm one of Blanche's grandkids. Mike. I'm just staying at the house a few days to, you know, to help 'em get her stuff out." Hank nods and scratches at his big red nose.

"So how did you come by this thing?" Hank speaks in an unhurried and definitive drawl.  'Mailman sold it to me, James Tucker. He used to come by here every Tuesday and Thursday for a beer, then finish his routes. We got to be good friends I suppose. He knew I liked to tinker, and he mentioned he had a couple of old motorcycles he needed fixin'. So I told him I'd take a look, but no promises. Well, I got 'em running sure enough, and he asked me what you want for it? I shrugged and he said well how 'bout that car?' She was pretty even then, too much to give for a little bit of work on a couple of old bikes but I knew he didn't have nothin' else to offer, so I said sure that seems fine." I took the car, and not two months after that, couple of fellas took his life. Said he sold em on a  sour deal but I know Tuck wasn't nothin' but fair. Cut him up and burned the house with him in it. Just another one of them deals, you know?

"Anyway, I suppose you came to see the collection?" "There's more?" He gestures me inward, and slides open a couple of wall mounted cabinets to reveal a fleet of model cars - polished, ornate, probably none of them too easy to find. Cobras and Countache and Packers and Tuckers - all sealed in safe behind a spotless pane of glass, preserved from dust and grime and time.  I let out a low whistle as he makes his way around the room, realizing that behind each cabinet is a similar scene - thousands of scale model tributes to the internal combustion engine. Above one of the cases is an Indian - he taps a button somewhere on its frame and a tinny revving comes sputtering from some inner chamber. Each one has a story. 'That was my son's favorite there. That one my granddaughter went to the supermarket and opened up boxes and boxes of cereal til she had all twelve to give to me. Her mom just couldn't be mad." "How bout this one?" I point on top of the toolbox. "That's a hay rake. I made it out of coffee cans and finishing nails. Bailing wire and some other odds and ends. You're looking at a fella with entirely too much time on his hands."

"Well I wanted to thank you for looking after the place. My parents say you were over here every day when she was sick. Straightening up and running errands and keeping the yard looking nice." "Well that was mostly Dot. i just did what she told me to do. She really liked Blanche. Said she was the strongest lady she'd ever met. It wasn't even last year that she was going out to the farm regular. Said that's why it was so hard to sit and watch her fade. But me, I woulda given anything for that time. Good or bad. I just-"

Hank buries his head in his hand and just as quickly hauls it back, waving off a wake of tears, wrinkling his nose against emotion. "I'm sorry. It's just another one of them deals, you know?"

I think about the memories I found locked away in my own Grandmother's basement. The hand-cranked record player, old Blue Note discs, Victor, Columbia, Wilcox-Gay. The fold out Singer sewer gilded with a golden scarab. My grandfather's fire coat. The burned out flash cubes from the old Instamatic. Did they retain some trace of their subject's essence? This was a mistake, he thinks. I think. Better to keep the memory of these things beautiful, behind clear glass. Laid out for all to see but protected from withering touch of time. Until it comes our time to ride, top down in the Skyliner off toward the sky line. Until we're just another one of them deals.

I'm telling you man, you can't get stuck on that girl. You can't even stick with her. She's like...a female Bobby Fischer. Always thinking eight moves ahead. Only the board is all pawns, and she's the queen. Line 'em up and knock 'em down. She sends them off towards the ends of her earth one step at a time, straight ahead. Getting picked off left and right, and all in the name of...what? To clear some space for the real knight in shining armor? So that, maybe, just maybe if they make it all the way they can become something else? Something they're not? And what will she be. Where will she be? Will she even still be there? 

Somehow it all comes together, pretty in its imperfection. Rhino rumbles forth and deflects it skyward and Wheels as always is exactly where he should be, quick to stepping, hurling himself through the air and making hard contact as Mouse scurries for cover. Kobayashi's on the receiving end with Sarge shouting orders from afar. She cuts it clean down the line. Punkin with the mean crossover to Purple Jesus and you know he's giving it up. He taps out some fancy footwork and finds our man Enis the Menace, loping with a gazelle's long gait through heavy traffic, trailing the prize as if tied by a string, followed by a pack of howling dogs. It's a beautiful disaster that never seems to happen. He always slips through the slavering snarling jowls to emerge unscathed. By the time he gets to the guardian he's ten feet tall. But if there's punishment to be meted out, I have not seen the heavy hand fall yet. Just a casual tap, smooth as butter, perfectly placed, and he's falling back without a second glance, like Jordan on the jumper. The spotlight that falls upon him is reflected off onto us all, a light for real that won't fade away.

The bartender's been told to make them stiff. Best not to piss off this crowd. Might as well clear the shelf of all the unnecessaries because tonight the call is beer and whiskey. You make your way through a sea of black shirts long beards and short cropped haircuts toward the front of the stage, under red hued house lights refracted by weed smoke, the smell of it thick and moist and mingled with sweat, a dog's hot breath on your face. Here is good - close enough to the emergency exits in case a fight breaks out. The people here aren't much for conversation - everyone's waiting with arms crossed and eyes fixated on the expectant stage. A pair of heavy boots appear at the stairwell, and as the band descends from whatever hell that spawned them so does the sweat. So do the rally cries, the fist pumps, the forks in the air. The hardest most rock solid among you admits to himself at least a head nod. Sound explodes outward like a thousand heavy hands to shake your soul. You'll remember its touch tomorrow by the ringing in your ears. Boom boom boom.

Center stage stands a six foot six bruiser. Seems like he's troubled by the voices shouting down at him or the ones in his head. He bats at his brain sporadically, interrupted by hard shoves to members of the mosh pit that swirls around him. A metalhead vortex. Willie Nelson on steroids - sixty something and solid. A pack of skinheads. An amorphous orange blob seeking to reconcile a lifetime of insult.  Beer tossed to the rafters rains down golden, soaking heads and seeping to the sticky floor. The pounding's too much for the bruiser. Security's escorting him out. On the floor in a pile of gangly limbs is his unsuspecting victim. Bang bang bang. 

By the time the band hits its stride there's not a soul who hasn't lost himself to the music. Everyone knows the hook. Everyone anticipates the highs and lows. The pauses and the pickups. If you didn't before you can almost feel it now. And by the time the sound dies down and all feet beat to the exits, you're buzzing. You're forgetting for a minute whatever elsewhere awaits you in tomorrow's workday. Vamonos, vamonos.