Wisconsin Death Trip
What’s my Forevertron?
It’s been two weeks since the last NIHILISTIC installment, so let me begin by apologizing for my infrequency. The intention, when this began, was to put out two posts per week: Audio on Tuesday, writing on Friday. As ever, life intrudes. First, the Saturday prior to Halloween we flew to Wisconsin for a long-overdue visit with my former NPR New York Bureau colleague Caryl and her husband Jim. The trip was hastily arranged after realizing I had a soon-to-expire $428 United flight credit from an aborted February 2022 trip to Miami (my friend Jim and I were going to take another Outlaw Country Cruise but we ended up canceling after a COVID-19 spike). Trying to put together non-stop flights that wouldn’t require coughing up more money was maddening but I finally arranged early morning departures. When I tried to check in online Friday the United app told me to go fuck myself.1 First, I called, navigating an interminable phone tree, then an “Automated Assistant”. I soon found myself shouting “I NEED A HUMAN!” into the phone, causing Sweet T. to wonder just what the hell was going on.
“I just want to speak with an ACTUAL FUCKING PERSON.”
Someone who sounded Filipino came on the line and I explained the situation. After turning over all my information and being forced to endure an endless hold loop of United’s smooth jazz take on Rhapsody In Blue, the rep came back on the line having moved the ball no further down the field.
“I’m sorry, sir. I do not know why you’re unable to get a boarding pass for this flight.”
I was beginning to sweat, wondering if I somehow hadn’t completed the booking. But I had United’s emailed receipt, complete with confirmation number.
“Can ANYONE tell me what’s going on? I need to know if we can get on the plane tomorrow.”
“Let me see if I can transfer you. Can I put you on hold for a short while?”
More Rhapsody In Blue, interspersed with pitches for upgrades (“Economy Plus offers more legroom!”) for a flight we might not be on. Some other rep came on, took all the same info, put me on hold several more times, and fifteen minutes later came to the same non-conclusion.
“I’m so sorry, sir. The best I can say is to try at the airport.”
Fucking hell.
Not willing to leave it to chance tomorrow morning, I get in the car, drive to Newark Airport, park in short-term parking, and find a United agent named “Diane”. She brings me over to a special computer terminal and in a few minutes prints out two boarding passes. But even Diane can’t tell me what the problem was.
“I have no idea why it wouldn’t let you get a boarding pass online.”
That makes four of us. A genuine mystery.
Brightsiding this, the first half hour of parking is free and I manage to get in and out without paying. I also accomplish a dry run for tomorrow (we’re driving ourselves to the airport for the first time–we’ve always taken cabs, Uber or Lyft–and leaving my car in short-term parking). There’s still a moment of panic the next morning when I miss the turn for Terminal C Short-term Parking and have to loop around again. The rest goes smoothly and I’m pleased to find I breeze through Security due to my TSA Pre-check status. The flight boards on time and two hours later we’re in Madison, where it’s thirty degrees colder. Caryl meets us at the bottom of the main elevator and I’m hard-pressed to recall exactly when I saw her last. It’s been twenty years or more since I traveled to Roscoe, New York to visit her at her parent’s place. I’m glad we’ve stayed in touch on the phone. Caryl is the best audio engineer I know and taught me much… but I also lean on her periodically for life advice (recently, only Sweet T. did more to get me through the death of our beloved orange tabby Roger). This visit fulfills a promise I’ve been making a decade now.
Saturday and Sunday we’re chauffeured around Madison by Jim and Caryl but the highlights of the whirlwind trip, for me, are Le Tigre Lounge and Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron. The former is a pitch-dark bar that’s been around since the 1970s and where literally everything has a tiger on it:
The latter is the life’s work of an American obsessive: the greatest assemblage of scrap turned into welded-together outsider-art steampunk sculpture you’ll ever see:
In the evening we head back to Caryl and Jim’s lovely mid-century modern split ranch on many acres twenty minutes southwest of Madison and sit down to incredible meals prepared by our gourmand hosts. A main topic of conversation over dinner is the physical changes wrought by gravity over the intervening years. Caryl and Jim, who chose to not have children, also speak about what they’d like to do with their sizable property after their gone: leave it to the city of Madison for a park, preserving some open space as former Verona farmland is sold off and fills with shoddily-constructed houses for those moving here for work. Madison is Boomtown and from their windows Caryl points out two cranes on the horizon, telling us we won’t recognize the place if we come back in a year. When Sweet T. and I retire to our guest accommodations downstairs I find my thoughts darkening, wondering how much time I have left on the planet and what might be my “legacy”. There’s no acreage to leave for a park, no Le Tigre Lounge or Forevertron and no doubt no one read any of my writing online or listen to old radio shows and podcasts I’ve cranked out. A chill comes over me and I fall asleep imagining all my shit on folding tables, strangers picking over it and rifling through photos that mean nothing to them.
The further I go into the research for NIHILISTIC, the more I contend with Death. The Nihilistics, fair to say, were death-obsessed… and not in a comic-book Misfits way. We were teenagers going on about rotting in the mud and necrophilia and murder and annihilation. It was a bleak outlook informed by the premature death of Mike Nicolosi’s father and the feeling we all carried of being hemmed in by our circumstances and lack of resources. No one in my family ever spoke about college, for instance, and–as I’ve often mentioned–the extent of career advice I got growing up was my grandmother telling me to get a job at the post office, you’ll have a pension (sometimes I wish I’d taken heed). I can’t speak for any other members of the band but I know how I felt back then: The Nihilistics are about all I have and there’s no fucking way this shit will ever amount to anything. It’s another dead end but what else is there to do?
From an early age I found myself thinking of my own demise, wondering how it’d come and if I should hasten it rather than endure more misery. I was convinced I was what my brother Marc constantly told me I was: a fat piece of shit. If I hadn’t picked up a guitar I doubt I’d still be on this side of the soil. And while it amazes me anyone still cares about the Nihilistics all this time later, the band doesn’t feel like “mine” and certainly not my legacy. That’s why I have to write this book. Set it down, get it out there, leave some trace of myself. Otherwise, I fear my life will amount to nothing more than piles of possessions pawed over by those in search of a bargain.
“We are unable to complete the check-in process as your reservation has not yet been ticketed or you are holding a paper ticket. Please contact a United representative or proceed to the airport for assistance.”