by
Axel Howerton & Scott Dammit
Henry Rollins, dressed in a black suit with a thin black tie and wing-tips walks out to the mark on the soundstage; Kleig lights blazing down in a drowning light causing him to squint as he speaks:
"In music, a Key represents the final point of rest for a piece. The right combination of Keys add up to a different type of key; one that unlocks the door to a new reality, one of not only Sound and Visions, but of mixed metaphors where light and shadows point to signposts leading to the fifth dimension, a place not just up, up, and away, but rather down to a place called…the "Hellway to High"…
[Fade into scene- INT. MENS ROOM IN SEEDY BAR]
“Did you see the crowd out there? It’s Llike some kinda Mullet Militia meeting at Camp Summerteeth,” said Oswalt. “The only person here pulling that look off is the waitress.” He steps over a Jackson Pollock of fairly fresh hork on the floor, and up to the urinal. There is a sonorous rumble coming from one of the stalls.
Posehn walks to the far urinal. “No shit. I slipped up and called her ‘dude.’ Twice…aww, fuck. This pisser has a shit torpedo in it!” He then sidles up to the one next to Oswalt, who maintained rigid eye contact with the Swisher flushing valve assembly that sat atop his urinal as he said, “If you slash a drop on me I will piss all over your leg.”
“Deal,” Posehn sighed as his stream made contact with the ominous, murky pool below him. “It's cold as fuck in here and the only hard nipples I’ve seen have been on the dude in the Loverboy t-shirt. If I didn't know better I'd say we were in Albuquerque.”
“We are in Albuquerque.”
“Kill me now,” said Posehn, shaking off the next-to-the-last-drop of piss.
Oswalt, despite an earlier start, kept on voiding himself. “Times like these I wish the Brady Bill had a loophole for suicidal comedians,” He said. “I'd be at Wal-Mart right now.”
“Yes!” Posehn shouts, “Today is a good day to die on stage!” He chuckled, patting Oswalt hard enough on his shoulder to make him swerve uncontrollably out of his arc, and onto the side wall.
“Oh you level ten douchebag with an 8X bonus strength cum-swilling ability!” Oswalt screamed to Posehn. He finished up and joined his friend over at the sink. “You know, if the audience turned into a rabid pack of mulleted zombies, Brian, I wouldn't flinch. God, I don't even want to try and tell them jokes, I just want to…” Posehn finished his thought, “Crack open your own skull and let them feast on your grey matter?”
Before Oswalt could answer, a low, rumbling voice came from one of the stalls behind them, “Either of you two gentleman got a match?”
Oswalt turned around and started to speak, “Yeah, his face and my buhh…” his voice trailing off as he realized to whom he was speaking to. The gaunt face, the porkpie hat perched on top of a ragged mop of greasy curls, the cigarette dangling between the thinnest of lips. It was Tom Waits in all his ragged glory.
“Hey, it’s that dude that sang that one song,” said Posehn.
“I’ve sung a lot of songs in my day, son” replied Waits.
Posehn started singing, “I like it Hot Hot Hot!” until Oswalt gave him a sharp elbow to the side. “That’s Buster Poindexter, you nimrod. This is the great Tom Waits.” Oswalt had reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of matches. “Here, I grabbed a couple packs of matches from the bar earlier,” he said, as he tossed them to Waits, who caught them without taking his eyes of the two comics.
