Skydiving: My Dad and the Drop

When I was a kid, and by that I mean when I was 16+, my dad and I always dreamed of going skydiving together. You see, my dad was a badass. He worked several jobs to earn for my family. He was selfless and cared little about himself, but had great regard for his family instead.

One reason that I loved him so was because he was so goddamn cool. My dad played in bands his entire life. Years ago his band was featured in some old-person magazine. Regardless, my dad ripped on the guitar and was a major influence throughout my life. He was the best father I could have ever hoped for, but to the devastation of my family, he passed away when I was 19 years old. While the mere thought of it chokes my throat in sorrow, I know that he would have told me to shut up and deal with it. And that's where this article begins.

No matter what the occasion, my dad would push me. As a child my dad busted my balls. He screamed at me during little league baseball games. He filled in for Umpires when the Little-League Umps were sick. He encouraged me to do my best and had supreme confidence in me always. He pushed me into doing the unpredictable and the intense. From supporting me musically (teaching me to play the guitar, which I love), to calling me a pussy until I hopped onto the scariest of rollercoasters with him. My dad was all that I admire: a logical, reasonable man. Logic and reason were his strengths, and I could never agree more with his state of mind.

Though the ideals of logic and reason were far from the extent of my dad's best traits. Poissibly what I admired most about him was his balls. My dad grew up and went to school in South Providence. His high school sweetheart was none other than my mom. They shared an amazing sense of humor, comprised of Monty Python jokes and Bugs Bunny's cartoon shenanigans. My mom remains the glue in which our family sticks together. Thankfully my brother and I grew up in the bright light that was my mother and father. Laughter is our real reality.

Skydiving:

So with that long-winded speech over, it's time to get to the goods. Like I mentioned five hours ago in my initial text, one of me and my dad's goals were to go skydiving. This was years ago.

However, several weeks ago, long since I had given up on the idea, my mom presented me with a certificate at lunch. Midway through my chicken dinner, I saw and accepted that I was to skydive. The skydive was for both me and my dad. My dad would have never let me dive without him, but he caught the easy road this time.

Next, my mom and my brother and I went to CT Parachutists Inc. The Newport Parachutists organization was closed for the season. After a two hour trip, we finally made it. To our surpirse, the entrance to the airstrip looked like something out of a horror film. It was nothing but dirt and LARGE rocks. At one point, the terrain was literally at a 45 degree angle.

After the travel ordeal, we pulled up to the location.

The Skydiving Experience, For Real

We walked up to the only structure we could see for miles, in hope that it was where we were supposed to be. Miraculously we were only 4 hours late:


I'll give you the quick tour.

First I was outfitted with a harness:


My balls were spared no expense:


After all that shit, I had a pre-jump interview with my camera guy:


Here I am coming in for a landing with my instructor:


Finally, here's the photo of those involved. From the left: My instructor Larry, Me, and my videographer Nick:

True Coventry Stories - Imaginary Homicide

So my birthday is coming up on the 31st of the month and my Mom, my brother and I went to Texas Roadhouse to "celebrate" preemptively. After we finished eating we filled our pockets with peanuts (they have huge barrels of them) and headed to the car. My brother stole a fork, too.

Once in the car we promptly began throwing peanuts at each other. Once we ruined all the peanuts, we turned to our imaginations for fun. My brother picked up an ice scraper in the back seat and started pretending to shoot me with it (childish gun noises included). We then turned the weapon on the general public.


Laughing hysterically, yelling at people and pretend-shooting them with a 12 gauge pump action ice scraper, we were having a ball. The highlight of our imaginary rampage being a lone fat man to which my brother yelled "HEY", *the man looks over and my brother cocks the ice scraper*, "BAM!".

A minute away from home, you guessed it (or did you?), cops. As it turns out, six people called the police saying that we were shooting a BB gun at people. Six people. The Coventry Police Force had four units looking for a green Grand Am with a highly dangerous armed male suspect. The cop was a real douche about it, but you just can't make someone feel like a criminal for capping people with imaginary bullets.

The cop went on and on about how unfunny it was as my brother and I struggled not to burst out laughing. This has been a True Coventry Story.

True Life: I was Physically Assaulted by Sound Waves

(and I shit my pants)

In addition to earning a Ph. D at Badass University in Beverly Hills in creating awesome titles for blog articles, I'm also a revered and highly decorated music critic; and the results are in, motherfucker. If you don't like at least one of the vast number of Metal genres, you are a faggot and utterly and indefinitely involved in a severe degree of faggotry.

To elaborate further, even so much as disliking Metal is like re-inventing the wheel, except the wheel is called faggotism, and you literally frolic about, faggoting all over the place with a magic wand made of Harry Potter's dirty vaginal pubic hair. Get it yet you tight-green-tunic-wearing fairy? I THOUGHT so... Moving on.

Like honestly... It's the equivalent of engaging in rigorous masturbation, only to then spontaneously decide that you're on the top floor, and that your altitude is simply and indescribably less than satisfactory. You begin to descend down the stairwell towards the bathroom only to stumble in a largely hysterical manner over your own pre-ejaculant, ultimately resulting in your laughable bumpy slanted road to your untimely demise. Minutes later, your biological parents happen upon your small, exposed, shriveled sorry excuse for a premature limp dick. You wake up in a confused and horny daze only to see your Dad. You shamefully walk in silence to your room, putting the experience well behind you, never to be spoken of again.

Oh wait. Next, you venture downstairs to find your Dad examining your family's computer screen intently. After a short time, he removes his credit card from his wallet, and makes an online purchase. You make a peanut butter and faggot sandwich and head back to your gay pink race car bed with the number “intricately detailed picture of a guy sucking a fat dick” on it.

The following brisk Wednesday morning you slowly awaken to faint audits of joy. In the magical light of the beautiful morning sunrise, you saunter down the stairs (like a guy who likes other guys) to your living room.

You turn casually to see your father frantically opening the newly delivered package. In a final brutal act of pure homophobic desperation, he lunges at you with the box cutter, slashing your throat and severing your shitty insignificant balls. As you rapidly lose your blood, you slowly descend toward the floor. With your knees devoid of strength, and your head full of gay scenarios involving blowing dudes, you finally collapse to the floor. With your last bit of conjured strength, you open your eyelids one last time. The soft shadows of a thousand rectangular regrets descend upon you. As your fading vision comes to one last desperate focus, the image lands in front of your face. Mere moments before your grim, dark red blood oozes onto the photograph, you repent your now represented mortal sin to your last hope: the might of the Norse Gods of Metal.

“Not all mortals have the gift”, T. “Big Cock n' Balls” Thor declared loudly. “Indeed”, agreed the impressively hung god Tyr. “But this human has defied the ancient confines of what can even be considered music. He has effectively crossed the line of auditory acceptance, breached the Berlin Wall of talented artists, and trickled his piss along the historical record of enjoyable music to this very day.

“Great Norse Metal Gods of inexplicable rage!” a mysterious voice yelled from the heavens. “Surely this mortal can be forgiven of his awful taste in music, don't you agree?”

But even Jesus would not save this man. The Norse Gods painfully explained to him that the mortal in question preferred the whiny tone of a shitty out of tune guitar combined with the lyrics of a thousand emo dating cliches to the face-melting, boner-inducing concentrated rocking rage of a testosterone fueled asshole rocking power of a Dragonforce guitar solo.

Then suddenly, like something straight out of a version of the Bible that I wrote myself that that definitely would have been more interesting, the Metal Gods and Jesus took action. Raging with the rage of a million rage induced killing spree rages, the mighty Gods burned unto his skin the musical notation of the epic riffs of a thousand John Petruccis; an unreasonable number of platinum albums of a million shitty untalented bands, and the raging melodic melodies of melody of a hundred more Equilibrium keyboard riffs.

“Some may shred and some may jam” Tyr continued. “But if you don't like metal, well...you're just a plain old fag.”