Chapter Five:     Cincinnati Sin

OSMOND BURNETT narrating events of Thursday, June 24--

Testing testing...okay... it's working...

This is Osmond Burnett speaking, Chief Security Officer for Chrome Pie Inc. Okay, I like to say "chief" but I'm the whole department. I guard the convoy, sometimes act as bouncer if we get some rowdy fans.

The guys in Chrome Pie used to call me "The Incredible Hulk" because I was bigger than them, but now that we have three Bigfoots along on this concert tour, I ain't even close to being the biggest guy anymore, so I lost that nickname. Oh well, it was copyrighted anyway.

Some say I look like Vin Diesel, from the movies, y'know, which is great when I've gotta act tough. But I don't really see it, I mean oh sure a little, we've both got shaved heads and work out to stay fit, so I'm buff, just like him. I need to be muscular for the job, to at least LOOK strong so I can intimidate troublemakers.

I'd say I am still pretty strong, for a regular guy, but having Bigfoots around puts "strong" in a whole nother category. Adam can pick up a CAR and so can his girl friend Magga. Have you seen the video where they're unstacking cars in a big traffic pile-up in the middle of a snowstorm? Happened over in Minnesota State coupla months back.

Anyway there's this life-story exposé about Adam running ‘round the Internet, they call it The Document, and it's causing some fuss for the band. Some puritanical Bible-pounders don't like Adam's life-style, or the way any of the Bigfoot folk live their lives. So they want to burn the book.

Only there ain't no book. Seems it don't exist nowhere, it's just words on a computer screen. They call it "text". We had a meeting about it, but I'd never heard nothing of it before, which was kinda embarrassing since everyone else did.

I hadn't read it because... well ...because I don't read too good. Never could. Oh, I can get most words, but I'm kinda slow about stringing them together and understanding long sentences, I just study the same line over and over again without getting the gist of it. So it gets to be too much work and I give up.

That used to bother me back in high school, people thought I was stupid or something. They can get really insulting about it, really nasty. At least until I grew too big to insult and then high school ended anyway.

But Adam can't read at ALL and he's got to be one of the smartest people I know. I like the songs he writes. And I understand them just fine.

Anyway I decided I should read The Document if it means so much, whatever it was, but didn't know where to start. At the same time, Melly and Liss were going around inviting everyone to write a chapter in that same Document, so I had to tell them I'm not any good at writing stuff but then Liss said I could just talk and record it with the "Sound Recorder" app on my smart phone. That's the same way Adam writes his songs even though he's even worse than me at writing "text".

I've had my smart phone for a while now, but I'm still finding out all the stuff it can do, so I guess it's smarter than me. But Liss showed me some tricks, then showed me how to find The Document on my phone and set it up so I just click on an app and it pops up on screen right where I left off reading last. It's just a little telephone screen but I think it makes it easier for me to read just one line at a time instead of seeing a big white page with a whole wall of text. It's a "browser version" so it even has some pictures.

So I began to read the ADAM OUT OF EDEN document, and it was actually pretty easy. It's even got a good story; about Adam as a baby Bigfoot, kinda sad when his mommy gets killed, but pretty glad when he gets found and adopted by Art & Elaine, then goes to school like any other American kid, he gets shot because of Melly (yeah, the same Melly) and crawls off into the woods to die. But the Bigfoots come to rescue him, and he starts to learn their "Nokhon" ways. That's as far as I got up to now.

But there's a lot more, and now here I am, mixing my own story into it, so the Document keeps getting bigger and better. Almost everybody on this tour has writ a chapter by now and Liss asked me to write-- or record a little speech --about what it's like in Cincinnati and the show we'll put on there later this evening.

Okay, we're arriving into Cincinatti now, it's a new town for me, so I want to see it. More later.

The weather is really nice, which is lucky for us because our manager scheduled it months ago, coulda just as easy been rain and storm. I got kinda excited about that river, thinking maybe we could finally go for a swim, but the water was all brown and yuckie, like rivers usually are in big cities.

Oh yeah, Cincinnati, I'm supposed to tell what it's like. Okay, the downtown part looks pretty from a distance, Not that we'll be spending very much time there, it's easier just to park our whole convoy at a shopping mall on this side of town, where we ate lunch, had some beers, and that's about it.

Some of us roadies went looking for something interesting to eat instead of just another McDonald’s burger. Marcie asked a town person if there was any “special cuisine” there in Cincinnati and we were told to check out the local chili. It was supposed to be “Greek-inspired” instead of Mexican and is mostly ground beef instead of beans. So we tried out one of those "Skyline" chili restaurants and it was kinda special and messy, but pretty good. That's where we saw a lot of professional-type guys in swanky business suits wearing these funny plastic bibs, so I guess that's a thing there.

The Riverbend Music Center was right in a big park area, so after we set up for the show we hung out where lots of dogs were being walked, like that was also a thing there.

Oh say-- it was interesting to be with Bigfoots when dogs notice them: first they go crazy, like they’ve just seen a monster: barking and snarling, showing lots of teeth, looking dangerous and ready to bite. It's only because the dogs get scared, not the Bigfoots. But then Magga, our big Bigfoot lady, makes a clicking sound with her tongue-- just once --and the dogs all of a sudden don't seem to notice them anymore; just kinda doggie-shrugs, wag their tales and wander off to pee somewhere. No sniffing, no yelping, no problem. That happened a few times.

I like dogs, wish I could have one, but I’m on the road too much. But I did get to play with some of them today, when their masters weren’t in a hurry.

(a freakishly handsome young TV journalist is brashly asking Adam) "...we've heard that your band practices orgies and that all of you are regularly having sex with each other. Can you give us a comment about that?"

"Sure, I'll give you a comment: (Adam smiles) it's none of your business."

"Actually, it is precisley our business. You're famous, so our readers are interested. Are you a Rasputin running a cult of sex slaves?"

"Why must I be the Rasputin here? It could just as well be I who is the poor abused sex-slave to these greedy women. Melly can be pretty demanding. And Lissandra? Man, it's a good thing I'm a 500-lb squatch!"

"Speaking of Sasquatches, (brash reporter aggressively continues without relent) according to your own released document, these two females are also among your harem."

"Harem? That connotates ownership, which I certainly deny. We are all companions and friends and whatever romantic liasons we might practice is simply private information. The Media factory has no intrinsic right to profit by manufacturing a scandal about whether I have a girl friend or not. I mean, so what?"

"There's a moral issue here..."

"Well, yes, but not the one what you're trying to fabricate. Perhaps if I was a Catholic priest who'd taken a vow of celibacy or chastity, but I'm not. How about you, guy, are you celibate?"

"That's not the question here.."

"It is now-- my question to you. If you answer it truthfully I'll answer yours. Are you celibate or not?"

"That's not news..."

"Exactly what I've been saying."

"Okay, okay, yes... I mean NO: not celibate. Not me! I have a girl friend. (smirk & wink) And she's a beauty."

(Adam's nose wrinkles) "Come on, I did stipulate truthfully."

(angry) "What are you implying?"

"Look, I don't necessarily want to embarrass you in front of the world, but you must have heard or read that I can smell a lie. They kind of stink."

(offended) "But I did tell the truth: I do have a girl friend!"

(nose wrinkles again) "Okay that's not the lie, it's the avoidence of truth I'm smelling. Which is probably that you, like I, have more than one friendly girl floating around."

"That's not...er, true...not..."

"Pyeuwwee! I'd have to guess three, four, maybe more naughty relationships that you you really don't want your wife or official girl friend to find out about."

"No, no, not me!"

"Stinky stinky, whew!"

(that handsome young gym-trained Romeo freezes, all cameras upon him, obviously aware that he has been caught red-bonered; backs off and lets another journalist move in to interview Adam)

(bright, peppy young female reporter steps up)

"Why do you always avoid talking about your love life? Don't you care about your fans? Are you ashamed?"

"No, absolutely not. But we do get death threats, you know, because some über-patriotic American racists are simply driven to protect all you pretty young white girls from the big bad horny Bigfoot monkey men. They have AR-15s." He held up his left hand, the healed wound still visible. "But this bullet was only a little .22 caliber, so I got lucky that time."

(Liss recognizes her chance to get some yuks in) "Okay, everyone, it's time to set the record straight. I'm actually the one in charge of all the sex slaves. Their Union Representative, more or less. Now come on, slaves, we've got a freaking concert to perform!"

MmmMmm, that Liss. Every time I see her I just...

They sounded really fantastical-- well, I think they always do; Scott and Charlie singing together do good harmonies and then Adam's big voice fills everything up from bottom to top. And those two Bigfoot girls singing in their own language, man that's really exotic stuff. So is Mike's Spanish guitar sound. BJ's big drum set and Pokey's snappy tom-toms somehow work together. Lee and Melly do impressive keyboard runs, in and out of each other's melody lines, Lissandra's floating cello tones behind it all. Damn, they're really kinda magical together.

Damn, I'm proud to be part of this band, even if I'm not a musician.

Which means that all of us are older than we used to be and the super-young chicks just don't come flocking like they did back then. And even if they do, we always end up checking their ID so as not to go to jail for messing with underage girls. Even BJ, who never used to let age stop him.

Although now it seems that most of the really crazed fans are very young girls all over again; teen-agers, way off-limits to us old farts. But they're not after us, they're here for our two Bigfoot chicks and they just wanna dance with them.

But I do get the feeling that a lot of women-- not teens, grown up young ladies, maybe even MILFs --are maybe hot for Adam, even though he's a Bigfoot. Or maybe 'specially 'cause he IS what he is: big, mighty, smart, talented, exotic as hell. I guess he ain't bad-looking either, once you get used to all the hair. He sure does all right with those four chicks who love and service him, and they're ALL super-hot, so they could easy pick and choose any guy they want... 'specially me, if they wanted. So Adam isn't after any groupies either, not at all, he doesn't flirt or encourage them. Hell, I wouldn't either if I had a harem like his.

'Specially Lissandra, that girl "rilly" gets my... wait, anyone can read this? Guess I better be... polite. Not that I was gonna badmouth her-- no way, she's... uhh... ass-speciallyy attractive, that's all.

So no, I wasn't interested in partying with groupies either, just kept on reading that AooE Document on my cell phone. Now I've gotten to the part about last year's concert in Seattle with Chrome Pie and Adam's band. I remember that; I was there. Just like I was yesterday and am right now, so I can't stop reading.