JAB-uh, the nut

so today is JAB’s fortieth…

…and so in honor of that, i’ll postpone whatever bullshit sixer i had planned for today in order to give you:

six little known JAB facts

he’s had a radio career, too…well, sorta… – as one of the few folks still in my inner circle who was deep in it back in my radio days (and in his case for almost a decade before that) he got dragged along for a show or several. he co-hosted my all old-school 10th hip-hop radio show (for some reason i saw hitting the ten show mark on that one as some kind of milestone), co-hosted my 101X show with me on Xmas day of 1995 (the last Xmas my Mom was alive for and i spend the night on the radio) and is the only in person witness to me letting “fuck” slip on the radio…in fact, he was kind of the cause of it: i finished a bit, went silent so a song could kick in, and when i hit “play” on the cd player i forgot to have it up on the board. “helps if i crank the volume on the fuckin’ thing, don’t it?” i said to him…and heard it through my headphones, letting me know it went out on the air. oops.

i’m kinda jealous of the kid – i never really talk about it, but i always figured by forty i’d have the wifey, the brats, and a bike. i’m zero for three. he’s three for three. at this point i’ll he dick-hard happy to go two for three, but figure i’ll, at best, end up one for three…

…and to save the guessing, i’m talking about the bike.

favorite JAB quote for the ages – “you only live once, so why drag it on…”. said right before you do something at least somewhat stupid. who knew this generation would shorten it to that “YOLO” bullshit?

i don’t know about “thunder buddies”, but… – in a landfill somewhere there’s an interesting piece of paper from a story i KNOW i’ve told on here…mr. clarke, band director for lockhart high school, had this idea to help freshmen by starting a “big brother/big sister” program. i got JAB. signed off that i’d watch his back, and he’d watch mine (didn’t use those terms, but that was the gist of it) until the next time we signed off on somebody new. than mr. clarke quit and there was never another drawing. ever. so twenty-six years later here we are.

boosted from the arcade – while “JAB” is not his real name, but is his real initials, i got the idea for it from the pizza hut arcade, where we tended to live if the weather was too shitty for us to be riding bikes or skating. when he got a high score (which happened pretty often) the old games only allowed you three characters – he put “JAB”. when i started mentioning my people on here i gave most of them nicknames to protect their identity. “shane” was the exception from the word go, ’cause i asked him what i should call him (he shared an office with me when i first started this site) and he said “shane”. there we are. the boy is nothing if not creative.

you read this, but he won’t… – over drinks at the start of his fortieth (i took off “early” last night to drive in for his party, which i pretty much missed completely but he and i went out for a round or three) he told me due to work and life and kids he never gets the chance to read the site anymore, which is funny ’cause all those times i griped back in the day about how i couldn’t talk to my friends ’cause the second i started a story they’d say, “oh, i know – i read it on the whore” i was talking about him. odd how life works out, huh?

so happy fortieth, JAB – glad i was there for it, as well as your thirtieth, twenty-first (i wore the van halen shirt from that one for his fortieth, actually), eighteenth, sixteenth, etc, etc…who knows – maybe i’ll live to see your fiftieth.