It Makes It All Worth It!

THIS POST HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORMAT:  Changes or additions to the original post will appear in red.  


Yeah, I've been gone again!  I just noticed that it is more than a month since I've posted up on the  blog and I'm sorry, I didn't keep my promise to not disappear on you guys again.  I can't really explain why, sometimes I just drop off the face of the earth.  It's not like I haven't been up to anything, as a matter of fact, in the last month I've done some super cool shit.  Now is not the time to go into all that I've been up to but I will share a highlight of this time period that happened last night.  As a matter of fact, when this happens to me and it's happened quite a few times, each its own story, I can't begin to tell you the level of joy that this brings me....  so here is how it goes and went!

Last night, we went over the to Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix to see Bret Michaels do his show and his charity auction.  I've gotten to know the band fairly well over the last 9 months or so and I can say this for certain, the Bret Michaels Band is chock full of kick ass guys!  I've grown even closer to the main man who runs the console, Rudy T. Reily and John King Stensland super guitar tech to the god's!  So on Saturday night while having dinner with these guys, they asked if Diane and I wanted to go to the show. Well hell yeah we want to go to the damn show!  I never really get to take Diane to do cool shit much these days as the cool shit that I do is all over the country and she is always so busy and it's hard to get away.  I managed to shoot some video with the phone and that actually came out looking and sounding great but the photos are less than great but I'll share a few with you guys anyway.  It was hard not to get a good shot as we watched the show from the orchestra pit and practically sat on the damn stage.

 This is our buddy Rudy T.

 Guitar God himself John

 Dirty Ray rocking his new leather covered bass

 Pistol Pete just could not wipe the smile off his face last night

 So this is how the night went.  Rudy had John call us and tell us that they got tickets for us and we could pick them up at the will call office.  We walked in the basement door to the Celebrity Club or some shit like that, all I know was as soon as you made it past the security, there was a great big bar and what the hell, we were at a concert after all, so we grabbed a couple of Jack n Cokes and headed for the arena.   In this same area was a shit ton of memorabilia and signed schwag from Bret that was being auctioned off for several charities.  The ones I can remember are Wounded Warrior, American Diabetes, Phoenix Children's Hospital and maybe one or two more, but it was a great night of giving was ahead of us all.  We got up inside the venue and the opening act was on stage.  The opening act was just a re-mix of the Bret Michaels Band without Bret.  It was sort of like shuffling the deck with an extra guitar here and there.  We walked down towards our seats which were phenomenal, thank you guys and jumped down into the orchestra pit just to say hello and ended up virtually never leaving that very spot.    Well of course with the exception to smoking, drinking and pissing, none of those were allowed in the pit.... well, okay, the drinking was, it is in the end, rock n roll right?  So here is where the night got special..... All throughout the show, Bret pulled different people from the crowd on to the stage to sing, play guitar or just dance and then would stop everything and auction some shit off.  The first thing he did was take the cowboy hat off of his head and got 4 grand from someone in the crowd.  Then he offered a deal to the highest bidder;  the deal was, whoever gave the biggest donation would be invited to his home with a few of their own guests, party up, ride quads, rock out and he was going to bbq and cook for everyone.  What ended up happening was quite amazing in-fact.  Rather than one high bid, he ended up with 3 bids of 20 grand and one for 15 grand, so being a smart guy and thinking of the organizations that the money was being raised for, he took all the bids, they all won and in one single shot, made 75 thousand dollars!  That night, the band arrived having made 100 grand while on the road for charity.  In one night here in Phoenix, they more than doubled all the money they had raised and it was incredible to be part of it!  I have no idea how much was raised downstairs and what the final total was, but it had to be HUGE!!!

We ran up top to smoke and while I went outside and did that, Diane got on line for the bar.  I walked back in and saw a few faces that I knew and then I saw this woman's face just light up.  "Your that guy" she shouted as she pointed at me!  So I shouted right back "yes, yes I am"!  I had no idea what guy I was supposed to be and then in a flash thought, what if she meant, that's the guy who robbed me, that's the guy who raped me, that's the guy who screwed that giraffe in my back yard..... but it was too late, I'd admitted it was me!  She told me that she was a friend of mine on facebook and that we had never met in person.  For the life of me, I can't remember what her name was, but if I had to take a stab in the dark, I'm going to go with Gabby!  Sure hope I got that right!  So I told her how nice it was to meet her and I meant it, I love to meet people that otherwise I'd only know from online.  She told me that she wanted to thank me.  Thank me?  Thank me for what?  As she began to explain why, I noticed that she had a fairly large scar on her throat and she must have noticed me, noticing it.  She said "that is what I want to thank you for".  "Really, I don't understand" I said.  She then proceeded to tell me the fight she had recently gone through with cancer and then told me something that will warm my heart forever.  She said that it was my writing, my stupid jokes and videos and the way that I was pissing people off during the election process to try and get them to delete me so that I could add new friends that helped get her through it all!  Can you imagine?  I've been blessed a few times to have been told that something I've done, said or written has affected people's lives in an incredible way and it brings me the most incredibly warm feelings down deep in my soul!  To think that something I've done has the ability to help someone else is hard to fathom especially with the level of people that I seem to have the magical ability to piss off!

Lately, I have not had the urge, the ability nor the attention span to actually sit down and write ANYTHING!  Not even short lil updates of what's been going on in our lives could I muster.  I've gotten so many messages asking if we were okay and where I'd gone off to now and why I stopped posting on here?  It took this wonderful women's comments last night to me to make me smile and actually sit down and write again.  Gabby, if I got that right, you've now inspired me again, so I must thank you!  I'll never forget the kind words that you shared with me last night just as I will never for as long as I live forget the day at The Broken Spoke when for the first time ever, someone quoted something that I had written, verbatim, right back to me.  I know that life can be brutal and unforgiving at times and I believe as I've said in the past, that I was put on this earth to help people and to bring smiles to people, no matter how far apart on a map we may be at the time.

I hope life has not been too hard on you guys, my friends.  The holidays are coming and I know for a great many of us, this is the most difficult time of the year.  I pray that for those who suffer most, those who are away from their families, especially our armed forces and all those who are just feeling down that we all get through this shit.  Hell, if all goes well, we will only have to make it until the 21st of this month anyway, then the whole world ends.....  so if you are really feeling awful, we have that to look forward to....

Until we see each other again on the road,

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Your friend,
Jack Shit