there is a tunnel that goes from the music building on u.c. berkeley campus up in to the berkeley hills. its a huge cement drain that use to be "derby" creek now forced under ground. i have walked up in this tunnel many times. ive recorded music, fucked, cried, screEEemed cackled ...

in the pitch black echo chamber you can get so de -sensitized that you want to slap your face to know if its still there. it goes for miles and in a stooped waddle you can mezmorise youself for hours. one time i let myself drool while swinging
my arms propelling my stride up hill.
i have never brought a flashlight although when i went in
there with my daughter last year we used my cell phone for light when she got scared. that is untill i dropped it into the rushing water never to be found again. we call the tunnel the gates of hell
because at the very end of it, if you can make it, is a terrifying set of jail bars that block the
debris too large to come in with the water pressing it into the gate. often dead animals like deer
are stuck in the bars. in the pitch black for hours coming onto the gate is my second maybe third
most terrifying experience.

during my punk teen years i took lots of
photos of slightly destroyed bilboards.
i loved it especially when a storm would plough
through town and the paper would get torn
down. i thought it was a collaberation
between natural process and humans trying desperately
to sell shit.

to some kids safety pins were "punk"
i never understood that. they are "safety" pins
they are designed to not hurt or come undone.
that seemed so un-punk to me.
i liked arrows and decayed signs.

i was never told what to do by my parents. my dad was pretty much non exsistant and
my mom was in another state. i made my own bed time. therefore the idea of road signs telling
you what to do, especially advertising and directional arrows were funny. blatantly un dignified.
they were ridiculing humans. the same johnny rotten sneer could be heard coming from
a one way sign, or a perfume scarf blowing in the air billboard.



the ones that were decaying were
just plain good looking.
they were like a reclaiming by the wind and rain
they are the best in public art.

obviously nature will win however, this is
an on going demonstration of the twain.

i don't even see it as a struggle. more so a
process taking a lie and showing a truth.


just out of my teens i moved to berkeley
to go to collage. i moved into barrington
hall where the "punks" lived. the guy i hung
out with mostly was named shawn.
he was an african- american physics student.
he loved chess. i don't. he loved physics. i don't.
i gravitated to shawn because he was just so
real, he was awkwardly earnest and very eager
about the things he was passionate about
even if others weren't.

Shawn drew a comic with colored pencils depicting first a coffee cup. then a cup
with i cow in the distant back ground. eventually
page by page the cow approached the coffee cup untill the frame was just the cows face overtaking the cup. i loved it and asked him repeatedly for a copy of the zine. eventually
he made me one. literally made it. he re-drew each colored picture page by page because he
couldn't opperate a color copy machine and besides its cheaper to draw it. this same thing
happened to me by a guy named daniel johnston who re recorded on a tape player all the songs
he wrote at my piano in barrington for me when i asked for a "copy"

today (20 years later) shawn "the wiz" cant really communicate as well. he lives outdoors mostly and
occasionally he will be found sleeping in one of my vehicles. he carries all his bags of crap with
him and will get on a tirade about one thing or another getting him kicked out of his hosts place
in cycles. over and over i find him every half year or so. then some one realises that he leaves
bags of shit. actual shit.
like, he shits in bags... and he gets kicked out.
explaining this
he told my friend dave once when dave told him to just come inside and use the bathroom that
...."no, I am a REAL man"....

admission, i have two blogs going right now.
ticulator and followthatparade.
""
i thought i would only write stories about bus related things in "ticulator"
but i can't
my brain wanders too much.
i start writing about one thing and quickly switch to something else
i start talking about the bus brakes smoking in the rockies and two paragraphs later
am writing about licorice.
i also have to admit that i cant remember passwords and this website thing makes one password
require numbers and the older one doesn't so im typing in "drackula33" drackulalust" 2323drac....
on every page , finally i hit one that works and just start typing away not really knowing
which blog im typing on and what im talking about.
besides no one reads this crap anyway
and i don't feel like typing unless im avoiding doing something i should be doing and
maybe thats like once every two weeks or so.
like now.thanksgiving day, im suppose to be calling chase manhattin about my over due "occasional fee"
that is bullshit and try to get them to take it off my bill.
blechy.

howver, what i really want to do, is tell someone about the amazing attendant call i did last night.
whollly shit. i even had to say out loud "i cant believe im doing this" as i was doing it
i got called to go to a guy i give rides to occasionally.
i know that he can't speak, has a dog
and likes porn.
i didn't know that along with not speaking he cannot swallow.
i should have guessed because he is always drooling on everything and after i take him out of my
van i often have to wipe up his drool off the floor so some one doesn't hurt themselves,

im not too surprised when i get into his dorm that his dog is barking non stop and
"johna" is sitting in his wheelchair in the dark. i start asking simple yes / no questions like,
"hey there, does the dog go into a different room?"... "do you want the lights on ?" "you feeling o.k.?".... johna communicates with one hand; he either moves it in a "yes" thumbs almost up thing, or a back and forth "no" across his lapboard.

the dog is hungry and wants to be fed. it stops barking.
i find a list of tasks lamenated and hanging on a hook in the kitchen. i ask him if i should do
the dinner page of tasks. thumbs up.
the dinner tasks only say to grind up medications in the motor and pestle and that the soda is
in the fridge along with clean latex tubes. no further explanations.

a long list of questions from me eventually lead to johna lifting up his shirt as much as he could
i pull it up to his belly button and see that there is a plastic tab next to his belly button.
it looks just like a snap. it takes me all of a minute to figgure out that the tube from the
fridge snaps in this tab and on the other end i use a big syringe to inject his meds directly into
his stomach. i mix them with two cans of ensure and suck them into the syringe then squirt them into the tube. he tells me to go faster by making a circular "come on " motion with his hand. im trying to make small talk and ask if this is making him nauseous. "no" says the hand.

when i think im done with the syringe he stops me from removing the tube and motions
to the fridge.
oh i forgot to mention that the big dog finishes eating in thirty seconds and proceeds to lick
every inch of the wheelchair and most of me. remember that johna is drooling everywhere.

inside the fridge are cans of diet pepsi. i pull one out and ask if he wants a cup and a straw
oops, he cant swallow, "no,,",,; i inject four cans of diet pepsi directly into his stomach. the pressure of the carbonated drink is pushing the syringe stopper out the other end if i don't
keep my thumb on it needless to say johna starts belching continually. this is when i say "i cant believe im doing this"

i go on to check his mail and wash his face.
over an hour later the dog is still licking everything and johna is still burping

show interview for dalton

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:04 AM, john benson <followthatparade@yahoo.com> wrote:

your name, age-
*john benson-40

how long you've been having shows at your house-

* 18 years at my current house plus five more
at my other previous ones. and in a bus for two.

does your house have a nickname-

* purple house (genoa )

describe the space that bands play in-

* living room or where ever, or in a bus

what kind of bands play-

* if you play for free and wrote the songs
youve prolly played at my house, or in a bus.

WHY DO YOU HAVE SHOWS AT YOUR HOUSE-

* sharing, like on sesame street.

what's the best thing about having shows at your house-

* standing in the flow

what's the worst thing-

* bummed neighbors

what are the best memories of shows at your house-

* uh, well... how much time do you have?
;5 drunk skin heads carrying a massive dead tree
up to the second floor, where it sat for months
untill i cut it up with a chainsaw and turned it into my loft. the guy who crawled thru my skylight and insisted i take mushrooms that
he found in new mexico because it was my 30th birthday and the bands lyrics told him to. the
time my daughter told her friend that its o.k. not to party all the time. once when a naked girl asked me to use my phone so she could call some one in new york, or when the neighborhood gangster fools who i use to make oatmeal for when they were nine took over a bands set to start rapping about
my big bus, another time a man tried to steal my car during a party and a few friends told him that
he needed to push start it and they helped him
push it three blocks away- he gave up and ran away
because they were taking his picture the whole time, the big soccer game that went from the
front street through the house to the back yard
about a hundred people played and it took
precident over the band. one time some one brought
goats to the party and they ate our carpet. children taking the drumsticks away from the metal band and playing...oh, that time the band "i hate you when youre pregnant" was made (by the women housemates) to do all the dishes in the house before he would be allowed to play, wait no.. the
band green day got so stoned that they asked if they could play last but the opening band, rancids, bass player hit his head on my p.a. speaker and had to be taken to the hospital for a compacted spine, then green day had to play and they couldn't remember thier songs so we just yelled at them.ah no wait the guy, "biff rose" who
wrote some of david bowies songs got thrown out
of our party for asking a 14 year old girl if
she ever had sex, then yelled at her that "a pussy smells like pussy no matter how old it is", as he
was getting thrown out of the house he called the
person doing the throwing a '"dickless wonder" not
having any idea that his asailant indeed was a transexual dickless wonder. oh no wait just last
month our city representitive was lighting fires
on my front porch as the last band was playing
and he is in charge of the local fire dept...
oh, man no.. how could i forget that time this
girl passed out in my bed and i slept on the floor
only to wake up to her pissing on me so i grabbed her and took her into the bathroom where she
passed out again then three hours later i was awoken by her dad in his full oakland p.d. uniform
who carried her to his car... oh! damn wait no..
that time these two cops showed up while my band was playing, we had a smoke machine going and
were projecting a cop porn movie on to us and we
were playing in our underware, they had flashlights out and just stood there till we finished then they clapped and left.
oh yeah then there was...
no, i cant tell that one,
awe, right.. then there are the shows on the bus...

what is difficult about having shows at your house
again, feel free to add whatever you want to this

* being responsible.


*************************************************************
~how the worst can make the not so good seem great.~
*************************************************************
bus picts at www.flickr.com/photos/followthatparade

my broken camera could take pictures of ghosts.
we have a ghost living in the upstairs hall. she is a younger woman in a blouse
who just hangs out when the house is empty for more than an hour.
ive seen her maybe a dozen times over the years but the camera has taken
her picture a few times when i couldn't see her.
in the 17 years i have lived here three people have died in my house.
two from drugs the other from suicide. none of them were female and this
ghost is definitely from a time long before i moved in.
my most personal visit with a ghost was when i was about eleven years old
in my grandfathers workshop i had a fairly long talk with him, although he had been dead
for seven years by then. he first told me how grown up i was,
i didn't even look around. he was behind me, and i just answered "yeah, that what they all say"
my grandfather chuckled and said " i suppose so, your about to go?" and i didn't know what
he meant so i said, "well, i guess.. i like your shop. i always hang out here."
he told me some more stuff, like how he'll be around. i never looked behind me. i just kept
looking down. i wonder if i would have seen him.

tonight my friend burned his art out at the beach.
it was wood letters about six feet high spelling out the words "fuck it"
painted blue sparkles.
after the sun went down he lit it on fire
he also filmed a spanish romance movie inside an ikea
he used the staged kitchen/living room/ bedroom areas to make the movie and
they filmed for 8 hours without getting kicked out.

once i made a movie on a super 8 film camera where i had my friends jump around naked
on my roof. this is visible from a bart train and the idea was that i film from inside the train
looking out the window passing this roof of dancing naked folks.
now, this was before cell phones so they all danced around for half hour to every train that went by assuming that i was ridding back and forth on one.

my mom turned our house into her art studio when i was a kid. for weeks she painted a large painting she called "snow white" a white girl looking frightened over her shoulder and the
black woods behind her were catching her long black hair. we had a pure white dog named "snow" who, when my mom set the painting up to dry, licked the painting clean over night. the dog
had black all over its muzzle.
snow, the dog, was born with no eyes. he was a long legged white puppy who would run
all over the house except for this one empty five foot square in the middle of the kitchen as well
as half of the front lawn. the dog would run full speed twords the areas and stop on full as if
it would fall off a cliff,.
being a young boy this would totally amuse me. i would stand on the other side of the area with treats and call for "snow!" after a while where the dog would run up and down the invisible fear line i would just grab the dog and pull it into the area. i wanted to show it that
there was nothing there to fear. the poor dog would struggle away from me and run.