Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 28-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Dave sent me an email that included information about a mouse in his apartment. I replied with some tips on dealing with mice, but when he arrived for rehearsal the other day, he told me the story of the mouse. Dave turned on the light in his kitchen and saw the mouse on the counter. The mouse evidently leapt straight up in the air, maybe two and a half feet by Dave’s mouse jumping gesture. The mouse leapt off the counter onto the floor. Dave grabbed the broom and started thwacking at the mouse. Thwacking and missing the mouse, who managed to get away. I’ve seen Dave swing into action before. Like the time we were on tour in my 1974 Toyota Corolla and a large chunk of cardboard came up off the highway in front of us and slapped directly over the entire windshield. I was driving. Dave unrolled his window and yanked the cardboard off. I didn’t have time to say anything. I’ve seen Dave snatch fruit flies out of the air and saunter to flush them down the toilet while continuing a conversation. That is to say, I was surprised the mouse got away.
Next on the agenda was the matter of Dave going to see Calvin’s band the Hive Dwellers play at a house where women in their 20s were drinking wine out of large bottles trying to get Calvin to dance while the opening band played and then later, during the Hive Dwellers’ set, they hoisted Calvin above what wasn’t really big enough to call a crowd. The way Dave told it, the way I heard it, after seeing his video of the room, there was something slightly inappropriate about young drunk women picking up a man approaching 50, a man who doesn’t drink, in the living room of a house slated for demolition, where pizza was being sold in the kitchen. Calvin held perilously close to the ceiling by women drinking wine out of bottles.
There was something about the two stories: the mouse jumping when the light came on and Calvin rising to the ceiling, while in a brightly lit kitchen, pizza was being sold by the slice. A cartoon mouse suspended mid-air. I would have been more likely to get up on a chair than to pick up a broom, but we all react differently. Dave the broom. Calvin up near the ceiling. The women and their hoisting, like Joe Hill being dreamed-up yet again by Joan Baez at Occupy Wall Street. Behaviors transcending time. Yes, it was a punk show at a house, unceremonious in some ways, yet a tradition. A protest. It was an all-ages show. “Climb up on that barstool and come out swinging,” to quote myself. “The simplest of stories don’t get told. The simplest of stories don’t get old.”
