A Brain, A book, and A Ballpoint Les, Truth, and Jaques-imos

"So you are out looking for a ticket again, you know these things sell out. You should really buy your tickets in advance."

I suddenly felt bad for the hundreds of times (ok maybe a slight exaggeration but not much of one) that I asked this man for tickets to some show or another. "I did, well at least for the Duo, I even bought two in case I ran into someone on the lot that needed one." This seemed to shock him a little bit, for anyone who knows me, has seen me with my finger in the air at 99% of the shows I’ve been to and in some cases 100% of the shows they have seen me at.

"How do you know something to be true?"

"You just do."

"But how do you know something to be true."

"When you’ve read it somewhere."

"But how can you be certain?"

"You can research it?

"But what will research tell you, something that someone else believes to be true."

He down right stumped me but got my thought process in motion, "You just do"

"Nothing can tell you what is true, but you feel inside."

While this conversation was taking place Stew would then point to someone who might have a ticket just to see them sell it to someone else. After about a half hour or so we went up to the will call. "These kids right here have an extra ticket because their friends couldn’t come."

"What do you want for the ticket?" I asked.

"A hit of ecstasy," They replied.

"I don’t have that but I’ll give you face for it."

"No all we want is X"

"Well there is plenty of that around, how about I give you the cash and you go buy the X yourself."

"No we can get a better deal with the ticket."

Do to my previous experience dating back from the moment in question to my first dead show n ’93 I knew the inter-workings of ticket deals fairly well and knew they were not going to budge.

"Here," Said Stew while digging through his pockets and fishing out a cigarette cellophane with some foreign objects in them. Then promptly shoved it back in his pocket and said while pulling something completely different out, "You know what, here," Handing me a ticket to the Les Claypool show. "I heard what I wanted to hear from you."

"You mean to say you had this ticket the whole time?"

"Yes. You knew I was going to get you in right?"

"Well,yeh."

"How do you know something to be true?"

I then thought back to all the times I had asked for tickets from this man, and he always turned up with one. This how I knew I was going to get in before I even knew it. "Well what do you want for it?"

"Something less than face value."

I couldn’t believe the audacity of this man, but that is what makes him so interesting and wonderful to run into all across the country. We went into the show and I bought him and myself some Makers Marks on the rocks and we drank to our friendship.

While we were making our way towards the front of the room, I almost felt like I was being tested in my concert tactics. We made it up to about the forth row and settled in to few complaints. He mentioned that I should go and eat at place called Jaques-imos. A short while into the set Les suggested that everybody should go eat at, where else but Jaques-imos.