A couple of months ago I read about Nick Cave’s new art opening in W Magazine. I assumed they were writing about this Nick Cave:

Not so much. Yesterday while driving through downtown Austin, we passed the Jones Center, which is currently exhibiting Hiding in Plain Sight, by a completely different Nick Cave. Rather than go into detail, suffice it to say he does stuff involving fibers and pogo sticks, among other things:

Anyway, all this reminded me of some moronic neighbors I had about a decade ago. After several years of weird roommates, I decided it was time to live by myself. Being that I was in school and working at a restaurant, I could only afford a certain amount of rent. My choices were limited, and I ended up in a crappy studio apartment in a building filled with some interesting characters. And by interesting, I mean thugs and stoners. The people directly across from me fell into the stoner category, and there were three of them living in a tiny studio. None of them were employed, so even though the rent was only $700 a month, the apartment manager was constantly threatening to evict them for non-payment. Keep in mind this was well before the economy went south, and all three dudes were about my age. They could have gotten jobs, but that would have involved getting up in the morning, and possibly passing a drug test, neither of which was going to happen.

To supplement for the lack of living space, the stoner dudes decided to put an entire living room set of furniture outside of their apartment, which was mere feet away from my front door, and because these were some of the tiniest studios ever, my bed. I went round and round with those guys. There was no AC in any of the units. I went out and bought a wall unit, but Larry, Curly, and Moe were only able to pull enough cash together for weed, so they sweated it out. Rather than hang out inside, they spent all their time outside on their what I assumed to be flea and lice infested couches. All their time, by the way, was at night. All night. Every night. And none of them gave a damn if they woke me or anyone else up in the building. I started by politely asking them to keep it down after midnight (which is beyond reasonable), to which I only got a blank stare. I asked not so politely, same blank stare. Between the three of them they had an IQ of about 10, so I don’t know why I bothered.

Flash forward to finals week. I stayed up half the night cramming for a test, and was trying to catch a few hours of much needed sleep. Instead, I listened to Red Right Hand over and over and over again, because The Stoners had brought a boom box outside and were playing it on repeat. Also on repeat was their conversation. They kept talking about how Nick Cave was so high during the recording of the song that, “You can just feel his eyes rolling back inside his head, maaaaaaaaaan!”

Every time they replayed the song they turned it up a little louder, which meant they had to yell a little louder to make their asinine observations heard. The fourth or fifth time it happened, something snapped in me. Clad in PJs, I opened my front door and let loose a torrent of pent up anger.

Pent. The Fuck. Up.

I had finals, and had put up with their nonsense for far too long. The funny thing was, they just could not understand why I was upset, you could see it in their bewildered and red-rimmed eyes.

After I finished flipping out, they replayed the song at full blast, and I’ve never been able to listen to it since without feeling a tinge of annoyance.

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By the way, the next two days will be a whirlwind of travel, so I won’t be posting again until Thursday. Happy Holidays to all of you!!