Bill and I got a treat tonight. Henry Rollins was speaking at MTSU.

Bill's a huge Rollins mark. He's on Henry like white on a mayonnaise sandwich on wonder bread. The boy reads three things: comic books, pro wrestling news pages and long, rambling tomes by Mr. Henry Rollins. Likewise, the only thing he listens to on the stereo are albums from either his massive Patsy Cline collection, or his even more massive Henry Rollins collection.

So when Bill found out that Henry was going to be in Murfreesboro on Friday night, he very nearly made in his pants.

Tickets were free from the MTSU Student Activities Office. Once we got those, we had but to wait.

Henry spoke. It was great.

Have you ever listened to a Roy D. Mercer prank call? It was on his records the first time I ever heard the phrase "you and me are gonna get sideways of each other." Since then, I'll occasionally say that somebody and me are about to get sideways of one another. Usually in jest.

Henry's speaking style is largely confrontational, from his rhetoric to his subject matter all the way down to his stance. Except when he would have to become animated to prove (or exaggerate) a point, Henry stood slightly sideways to the audience, right foot and right shoulder forward. Now that I think about it, it may be a product of having been a singer, and out of habit, Henry wants to lean on the microphone. It may be instinct to pound out every word (or note). That only helps my argument, I guess.

A few thoughts on what was said (without re-hashing so much what he said):

Henry's a sharp feller who has put much throught into what he's said. By his own admission, he can only think of the things he thinks of because of his excess of spare time. So much of his time is spent travelling from gig to gig that all he can do is sit back and think of things. There's an old Geroge Carlin bit about his good ideas (such as a light that will shine only on those things worth looking at) that he thought up when he's home alone and the power goes out. I imagine that being on a tour bus between either singing or speaking engagements is much the same thing in Henry's case. I don't know that all that free time is the complete truth (at least not in the terms of what I'd think of as free time), but I'd say that he feels somewhat trapped and bored most of the time, simply because of what he's accepted as free time.

Henry's a funny feller. He's got a standup comic's cadence. I think he'd have done alright if he'd somehow veered into comedy rather than music. Guys with his charisma do well with that sort of thing. Henry told a story about how the Ramones played such a pivotal role in his life and how seeing a concert at a small club near Washington, D.C., changed him in such a way that he still hasn't recovered. I don't know that necessarily there's a comedic equivalent. But what if he and a friend had instead decided to see Richard Pryor or Robert Klein or George Carlin at a small club back in the day?

His point, though, was how drained he was by the musical experience (drained in a good way), and how he never lost that. I'd have a hard time seeing 800 people trying to pack into a small venue for comedy and it having the same result as 800 people packing into a small venue to see the Ramones. Different product, different obstacles....I don't know. I'm rambling.

Back to Henry:

Henry's an outcast kind of feller. I think that's why he appeals so much to a lot of different people. A shitload of those people at Tucker Theatre had books of his. I think Henry, like his music, appeals to people, especially people who feel like they lack a connection with the rest of the world. Something Henry brought up was how the music of his day (Dreamweaver, Fly Like an Eagle) didn't seem to be made for him and people like him. How getting beaten up by bullies and getting rejected by girls didn't seem to make him want to sing the Electric Light Orchestra. The Ramones touched him.

I wonder if he realizes that, on some level or another, when he writes, when he speaks, when he sings, he probably touches a lot of people in a lot the same way. Probably does. He's a sharp feller, like I said.

A brief note, that Tucker Theater was full. MTSU's a notorious suit case school, and when I first started going there more years ago than I'd like to admit, if you had a function on a weekend, whether it was a speaker, the symphony or even a movie showing in the theater on campus, you might as well forget it, because you won't draw flies. Hell, Mojo Nixon and Jill Sobule spoke a couple of years ago and maybe a hundred people showed up.

Tucker was fairly well packed. I'd say they had seven or eight hundred. It was packed. It's not a huge theater. But Henry filled it. So, for once, I was proud of my fellow MTSUites and I was proud of campus recreation/student activities for actually promoting an event that A.) people wanted to see and B.) advertising it so that people would actually know when and where it was.

Although Bill and I were fairly oblivious and it took Bill seeing a guy with tickets at International House of Pancakes to catch on.

I'd probably never have noticed.

All in all, I enjoyed Henry's visit. I hope he comes back.

Briefly, I'll touch again on why this site's called Big Stupid Tommy.

Twice. Twice, now. Twice in the past three days, I've been driving around with my window down on my truck. I get where I'm going, and my mind leaves me, and I don't think to roll the window all the way up. And what happens? It rains like a sumbitch.

It did it Tuesday at the wrestling show Jason and I attended. I left it cracked about two inches, and it rained at such an angle that my whole seat was wet.

And I did it again today. Stupid Big Stupid Tommy. It was parked at the apartment. I'd gone out to stop by work for a second, and when I got back, my Ignorance Switch turned on.

And it rained hard while Bill and I were watching Henry Rollins. My seat was soaked.

Wet ass, yall.