Dan & Dan - The All Seeing Sigh, Part I.

   I woke with a startled intensity, encased inside of an old tomb of sorts. Gasping for air, feeling the dust and dirt leave my lungs, every bone within my body ached and creaked to life. Complete darkness surrounded me. My mind racing to put things into perspective, I desperately groped and clawed at my stone coffin. My hands meet my chest, and feel a long beard trailing down to my belt. My hands come up to my face, and I am greeted by wolverine-scale nails. How long I have been out? Or in, rather. Suddenly, I hear the faint sounds of a shovel scraping against stone. I hear the sing-song coo of a familiar voice. Then: daylight.


  I'm alluding to this guy digging me up: Dan Auerbach! Yup.

"What ... When am I??" I coughed, struggling to stand as Dan helped me out of my (apparently) freshly-dug grave.

"What is that, you say-ee? You ain't been in there too lo-ong, baby boy." Dan laugh-sang as he dusted me off.

"What the fuck are you talking about? Look at me! What year is it?!"  I screamed at Dan, clutching his shoulders and shaking violently, dust clouding the immediate area.

"Re-mem-ber when, we were drinkin', that bottle of Wild Turkey?" Dan coughed, waving dust away from his face. "I said you couldn't pull a full-on David Blaine, and then you bet me you co-ould. I, guess, you, won."

"What?!"

Dan laugh-sang again; "Something like six, seven years, broth-errr!" He smiled, slapped a hand on my shoulder, singing excitedly; "Now come on, lets go get some pa-ee-a-ee-a-ancakes."

There is no situation in existence that a short-stack can't fix.

   After shaving and, to my own embarrassment, "showering" in the restroom sink of a local Denny's, I sat back down with Dan just as our glorious pancakes had come to the table. Blueberry. Thank Homme. There was a small hi-def television in the top corner of the bar, local news muted as to not disturb the older folks sitting there. Right in front of me, Dan was steeped hard in the newspaper wings clutched in his hands, spread wide open like an albatross in flight.

"Whatchya reading?" I said, between fork-fulls of pancake bits, and gulps of orange juice.

Dan said nothing to me, only flipping the albatross wings around, so that I could see what he was reading with such quiet intrigue. I scanned the paper, cheeks bursting with un-chewed pancake.

"Who the fuck is Miley Cyrus?" I mumbled. My eyes then met the picture of the headline.

Just in case you've, say, been buried for the last seven years: Miley "Tongues-alot" Cyrus.

 "Dan," I chuckled, "Look at her face, man. Total money-shot face. What is that all about?"

"O-oh-O-oh-OOOooooh face, weird, baby!" Dan cooed in return.

   He then flipped the paper back around and went back to reading the headline. I continued to shovel pancake into my mouth, until someone asked for the television to be turned up. It was a little girl with her mom, eating breakfast at the bar. Miley Cyrus was in the news, and she apparently was coming to town on her new tour.  

More tongues. It's as though the spirit of an old and great lizard species had crawled its way into her soul, took over, and is now on a path of world domination. Or something. Slowly, pieces began to come together inside of my mind. Memories flashing back of something related to a wrecking ball of sorts ... And an achy, breaky, heart. Lightning struck me.

"Dan, are you seeing what I'm seeing? The one closed eye? The open mouth? Symbolism, and etc?!" I whisper-shouted as I lunged across the table, grabbing Dan by the collar of his jacket. "Illuminati Sex-Cat!! Paul Lynde was right!!"

"No one fucks with the Center Square, misss-ter!"

"Hey, Broth-errr, you allright? You were down, in-tha-groun', for a pretty long while." Dan said, slowly removing my hands from his collar.

"Dan, you gotta trust me on this one. Lets just go to this concert tonight so we can see what the fuck is really going on. And if I'm wrong, I'll buy you a bottle of Wild Turkey."

"Hell yeah, boy-ah!" Dan replied, slapping my hand to confirm the deal.

We threw down our money for the short-stacks, grabbed our gear, and busted through the doors into the sun without pause: we had a show to see.

Stay tuned for

 The All Seeing Sigh, Part II: Tongue'd Be The Queen