King Dork Approximately

Read King Dork Approximately for Free Online Page B

Book: Read King Dork Approximately for Free Online
Authors: Frank Portman
different feel to it.
    This lineup had had several practices since We Have Eaten All the Cake broke up and we rearranged ourselves into the Shopping Centers, before a half-a-practice stint as Ice Cream Gulag, during the second half of which we disintegrated and remelded as Encyclopedia Satanica. So Shinefield was at this point a true veteran with several bands under his belt.
    I have to say that everyone at the practice was behaving strangely, even for us. Sam Hellerman, who, like everyone else, it seems, had the hots for Celeste Fletcher and even claimed to have done some messing around with her at one point—not that I ever believed it—was remaining almost as aloof from Celeste Fletcher as he had remained with regard to Jeans Skirt Girl. The thought occurred to me that I could get used to this aloof Sam Hellerman. At least his eyes were on his bass neck and shoes rather than on Celeste Fletcher’s ass, which meant better playing and footwork. (It was more than I could say for myself: I found myself unable to resist staring at her much of the time.) As you may have figured out, a little of Sam Hellerman’s act can go a long way, and a bit less of it from time to time, whatever the cause, can be a nice novelty. Nevertheless, the weirdness, in the end, overshadowed the novelty, at least for me.
    Everyone seemed to be talking past me, sharing some joke I wasn’t in on. I mean, more than usual. They kept saying things like “I guess we won’t be seeing each other for a while” and “So long, nice to know ya” and laughing. This threw me untilit struck me that they were most likely referring, in what I presumed to be a mocking spirit, to Sam Hellerman’s Y2K doomsday scenario.
    Y2K is an abbreviation for “the year 2000,” and worrying about it was based on the fact that the dates of computer systems had been originally designed to show the year as only the last two digits. Once the year 2000 rolled around and you needed four digits, the whole world was supposed to melt down because the computers would all self-destruct in a violent puff of logic and then, somehow, would come to kill us. Sam Hellerman had been predicting Y2K doom for much of the past year.
    “I’m just saying,” he would intone with solemn confidence and a distant look in his eyes, “convert your assets to gold and other precious metals. It’s our only hope.”
    I would inform him that I have no assets, and ask: “What assets do you have?”
    “Considerable assets,” Sam Hellerman would reply. And knowing him, I’d say there was a fair chance that he actually had “assets” and had indeed converted them to precious metals in preparation for the coming apocalypse, which I figured would go something like this: this big scary postapocalyptic guy with a chain saw for a hand and a spiky steel mask rides up on a ramshackle motorcycle and says, “Give me your assets,” and Sam Hellerman goes, “Okay, sir, let me put these assets in a bag for you.” And the guy says, “Thanks for the assets,” and drives away. This sensible vision of the future with regard to the topic of assets did not deter Sam Hellerman’s favored solution to the end of the world, however.
    Now, it seemed to me, and still does seem to me, that people have been saying the world is going to end since forever, and yet, somehow, it never actually does. God, or Communists,or nuclear power, or overpopulation, or the ozone layer, or the environment: they all tried to destroy the world and couldn’t manage it. Sam Hellerman was certain the computers would be what finally did it, but I was pretty sure that when the new year rolled around we’d still be here and everyone’s assets would be pretty much the way they were before. (And if you will travel forward again, briefly, through the mists of time to when I’m telling you about this, you will no doubt notice that I had the better of this argument. See? Now travel back again, if you please.)
    We sounded okay doing “Live

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