Thursday Thirteen #23 — The Balancing Meme

one
Kermit Ladd: The question I’ve been sent here to present to you today is how you achieve balance in your lives. You’re these mega-huge rock stars, but you’re also ordinary guys. How do you do it? What is the biggest challenge you face in balancing your lives?
Trevor: Wait. What happened to that babe who called us delicious? Would she like a taste? (He leers. When that gets no reaction, he eyes Mitchell nervously, but the singer merely stretches his legs out before him and casually crosses his feet at the ankles.)
Trevor: Okay, then. Just make sure she knows how to find me.

two
Kermit Ladd: Balance, Trevor. Not women.
Daniel: Why can’t women be the balance? Even if it’s only for two minutes in an elevator, any sane man can get lost in a good woman. There’s your balance. You get that time to forget about performing for an audience and get to think about you.

three
Kermit Ladd: Most people would call that selfish since you’re not caring for your partner. That’s not very balanced — or is that your biggest challenge?
Trevor: My biggest challenge is doing it right. You need both feet on the floor. (He stands up and lifts one foot. Immediately, he sways and has to touch his toe to the ground.) See? My balance sucks.
Eric: There’s real wisdom in there, Trevor. (The bass player turns away, but not before a sneer crosses his face.) There’s a reason people call us stars. They think we belong up there–
Mitchell: In outer space. Like freaks.
Eric: No, M. High in the heavens, with the other celestial beings. Worshipped and celebrated. But the truth is that we’re just people.

four
Kermit Ladd: Exactly. Now, how do you manage to balance your audiences’ expectations?
Mitchell: We make better music and put on great shows.
Eric: We’re approachable. Our fans can come up and talk to us.
Mitchell: Well, they could before they got so thick. We had to hire security to save us from them!

five
Kermit Ladd: So you’ve got the fans. What about being yourselves? How do you maintain that balance between private person and rock figure?
Trevor: Well, Mitchell’s parents kick us in the ass when we need it.
Eric: They remind us to keep both feet on the ground. When we’re at home, not only do we do our own laundry–
Trevor: No, Mitchell’s mom does mine.
Mitchell: Kerri does ours. Won’t let me near it.
Trevor: You turned her favorite panties pink?
Mitchell: No. She said please. Please leave it for me. (He shrugs.) If it makes her happy, I’m all for it.
Daniel: Happy women are good things.
Trevor: Gotta have both feet on the floor to keep a woman happy. Or both knees on the bed. Take your pick.
Daniel: Val‘s happiest when I’m home and paying attention to her. I can be Daniel, not Daniel of ShapeShifter, and I do that because she makes me check my ego at the door.

six
Kermit Ladd: So, sometimes, it does get to your heads?
Eric: We wouldn’t be human if it doesn’t.

seven
Kermit Ladd: How do you come back to Earth?
Mitchell: A roadie stops our prima donna routine over a broken amp by plugging it in. Management calls with something we need to deal with. You kick the garbage all over the kitchen floor and realize you’re the only one home to clean it up and take it out already.
Trevor: Eric and I get stoned. That’s a good way to come back to Earth.
Daniel: Sure beats those announcements the doctors make, telling what you caught this time.

eight
Kermit Ladd: What about priorities? What are your priorities, and how do you meet them?
Mitchell: It’s a dead-heat between Kerri, making music, and running the band. As for taking care of it all (he shrugs), I do what needs to get done. Any spare time’s for me.
Daniel: Ditto. It’s what we do in our spare time that’s different.
Eric: I meet things one at a time and try not to freak about how much lies ahead. It’s about faith: having enough faith that I’ll get through everything and will have time for myself.
Trevor: My priorites are simple: women, girls, bimbos. My bike. Getting stoned. And the band. Possibly in that order, but you need to put girls in between all the other shit.

nine
Kermit Ladd: How about balance in your personal lives, then? Mitchell, you’re married. Daniel, you’ve got a long-time love. How do you balance the demands of the fans with your personal lives?
(Daniel and Mitchell exchange looks, daring each other to go first.)
Mitchell: Sometimes, you have to turn to a fan and ask if they’d mind giving you some space. I hate to do it, but say you’re in the hotel pool, getting some laps in, and they’re standing on the edge, yelling at you to come sign an autograph. What do you do? We deserve down time, too.
Daniel: I had it once at an Otters game. Sitting in the stands, digging the ball field, eating my hot dogs–
Trevor: And Cracker Jack?
Daniel: Wouldn’t be a ball game without it. But there’s this fan, bugging you and not letting you watch the game. You feel like a total heel for asking them to let you alone, but you’ve got to, or suddenly, there’s ten thousand people forgetting they came to watch baseball. Instead, they’re standing in line for your autograph and the team’s gathered on the field, drawing straws to see who gets the privelege of knocking you out.

Ten
Kermit Ladd: What does that have to do with the women in your lives?
Trevor: Nothing, unless they’re at the game, too, and the fans are stepping on them to get to us. I’ve seen it happen.
Mitchell: You told them to do it.
Trevor: Well, the fans weren’t crawling after us, so what did we care? Besides, the girl who got stepped on dumped that dick and ran off with me. I got what I wanted in the end.

eleven
Daniel: I think that sometimes, our fans forget that we are people first. That we can’t be ShapeShifter twenty-four-seven.
Kermit Ladd: Why not?
Eric: We’d only have one foot on the floor. Show him again, Trev.
(Trevor stands and, again, lifts one foot. Again, he quickly wobbles.)
Daniel: See? You’ve gotta have both feet on the ground or you’re useless.
Mitchell: Especially when you need to adjust something on your guitar’s foot pedal without stomping on it.

twelve
Kermit Ladd: You make it sound easy.
Mitchell: Sometimes, it is. Sometimes, we need someone to stand on one foot so they can use the other to kick us in the ass. Especially when we’re on the road and we’re surrounded by people who get paid to say yes to us, no matter what we ask for.
Trevor: No one said yes when I asked to spend a night in the locker room with those cheerleaders.
Mitchell: You could’ve spent the night. You just got pissed when we said you’d have to do it without the girls.
Trevor: What’s the point without them?

thirteen
Kermit Ladd: Final question and it’s back to the women, so please answer it this time. How do your women deal with you guys being on posters that fans pin to their walls?
Eric: We stay in a lot. That way, the girls don’t have to deal with the jealous pettiness of the others.
Daniel: Bodyguards.
Trevor: I let a girl pin me to … okay, not the wall ’cause I don’t get that hardcore. But the floor. With her knees. It was a lot of fun. (He ducks as Mitchell takes a swipe at the back of his head.)
Mitchell: Kerri’s strong enough that when she’s in a bathroom and hears someone saying how they wish she was dead so they could take her place, that sort of thing doesn’t bother her. And when girls come on to me and tell me to forget about her, she laughs in their faces.
Daniel: She likes telling you about the shit she overhears.
Mitchell: And most of it’s shit, too. We all know whose bed I’ll be in.
Trevor: Yeah. Just remind the world you’re the idiot who picked her over all the better ones out there, why don’t you?

Kermit ends the conversation here as Trevor takes off running, Mitchell hot on his heels.

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