I was a totally rapeable child, if I do say so myself.

I don’t know where this fascination with pedophiles came from. I was never raped, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or not that I remember, anyway. Although, once, when I was 8, our neighbor—a 14-year-old girl with short hair and a reputation for violence—pinned me down in the backyard and unzipped my pants so she could suck me off on a moist patch of grass. I can’t remember her name, only that she was incredibly ugly. The kids on the street called her Alleyway because her face was dirty and freckled, and she always smelled of cat piss.

“I’m going to kiss it,” she said, chasing me around an Elm tree. Her braces flashed in the sunlight. I didn’t know what the “it” was.

I didn’t run as fast as I could have and when she caught me I only pretended to put up a fight while she fumbled around with my belt and zipper. I remember the feel of her mouth—warm and wet—and I decided the sensation of her quick, dry breath against my groin, her chalky tongue combined with the meaty smell of her head was somewhere in between horrifying and religious. But it certainly wasn’t rape in any of its devious forms. And, frankly, the story doesn’t explain much, except perhaps my own ecosystem of sickness and perversion, which is another freak show entirely.

Anyway, I’d taken to searching the sexual offender database almost every day for the past four years, so I’d gotten quite familiar with it. It’s set up so you can search by location or name and there’s a map marked with blue dots to indicate where the offenders live. When you click on one of the blue dots, you see the offender’s picture, a physical description (including tattoos), their address and their crimes, which range from public indecency to kidnapping and rape. I always begin the search in my Del Paso neighborhood, which occupies a poor, gang-infested corridor of North Sacramento. A ghetto, in the classic sense. My neighborhood is riddled with so many blue dots that in certain places they’re stacked on top of one another. If you didn’t know better, it would look like a rich terrain of royal blue castles, when really it’s a sinister Disneyland of sexual depravity.

James :(

Recently, to my surprise, I found my neighbor, James (a sad looking black man who reminds me of every grade school janitor I’d ever seen growing up in Boston—fat, bald, and unimpressed with everything). His saggy eyes and ashy brown skin were never sinister, just tired, so his crime—kidnapping and assault on a minor—seemed to betray him.

And as it turns out, Salome lives just down the street. He’s a Native American with a Johnny Depp goatee and a ponytail pulled back like a Samurai. In his picture he’s wearing a tight necklace made of Buddhist prayer beads. Salome was charged with rape in concert with violence and oral copulation on a minor.

In my four years of clicking through the blue-specked map, I’ve examined almost every one of the 90,000 registered sex offenders in California. Sometimes, by accident, I’ll click on one I’ve already seen and remember him like he was a long lost relative. In four years, I’d acquired 90,000 frightening uncles.

And aunts.

The Jodie Foster of child rapists

It’s not just men who are sexual offenders. There are also women, like Tamara, the 24-year-old spitting image of Jodie Foster. Tamara was a counselor at Bridges after school program when she fell in love with one of her students, a young girl named Josephine. According to Tamara’s court testimony, she fell in love with the little girl and the little girl fell in love with her back. It was mutual, she pleaded. Tamara forged emergency release documents and took her out of school, so they could express their love sexually in a hotel room. Four years later, Tamara’s internet presence hangs over her like a noose.

So here’s where the story gets kind of messy.

When I get home from work I decide that I need to call one of the pedophiles. I can’t explain why, but I can try to explain the feeling: I open the refrigerator, see a jug of filtered water and then feel something break in my brain, like the little pocket of air that pops in your knuckle when you push at it too hard. So I sit at my computer and pick one name at random from the database. The name is Charles, a disheveled man with unkempt hair. In his photo he’s wearing a suit and he reminds me of a poor man’s Rush Limbaugh. His crime is lewd and lascivious acts upon a child. When I type his name into Google there are many results: he’s a writer, a pizza maker, a veteran, a lawyer, a mechanic. I narrow the search by typing in his area code next to his name. And there it is, Charles’s phone number—right in front of me, like an old dollar bill folded neatly on the sidewalk.

Now that I think back, there was this one time when I was nine and I lived in Boston with my mom and step-dad. They wanted me to learn how to swim, so they enrolled me in lessons at the local high school. I was a shy kid and didn’t like being around other kids my age, mostly because they were cruel and impatient. But my parents insisted that spending another summer traveling the city’s subway system by myself was unhealthy. I didn’t know anybody in my class.

Our teacher, Mark, was probably 30. He had a big nose and tiny eyes, like a toucan. He spoke in the thick Boston accent that my mom always warned me about.

“Be careful with the way you talk,” she said. “People will treat you differently.”

But Mark was unashamed of his.

“Down, out, togethah!” he yelled when he taught the breast stroke.

After class, all the kids would run into the locker room. We shivered as we changed. Some of the kids snapped each other with towels. And Mark stood there, in the middle of the room with one foot up on a bench, taking it all in.

One time, when we finished changing, he approached and asked me if I wanted a ride home.

“No thanks,” I told him.

For the next two weeks, he asked me the same question, each time with more urgency, until I finally told my mom, who shook her head and laughed nervously.

My mother patted me on the shoulder. “Keep your little pants on,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“She wanted it”

When the phone rings, my hands begin to shake and suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing.

“Hello?” he answers. His mouth sounds like it’s stuffed with jelly doughnuts. Charles’ picture is still up on my computer screen and his large red face and shoulder length greasy hair remind me of a grocery store manager. “Charles?”

“Yeah, who is this?”
 For a second, I forget. My body is light. My brain turns into steam that’s billowing out through my ears into the porous ceiling. Words finally escape through the teacup of my mouth.

“We don’t know each other. Sorry. I’m writing a story.”

“How did you get my number?” he asks. I imagine his thick jowls swinging as he speaks.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was on Google.”

“Stop apologizing,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be on there, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well I just typed it in,” I say. “And it popped up.”

“What is this about?”
 “I have to be honest, I saw you on the offender website. I wanted to ask you some questions.”

At this point, I’m fairly certain he’ll hang up. I want him to hang up. I’m not sure what I’m expecting from the conversation, but I’m fairly positive this isn’t it. But Charles doesn’t hang up. Instead, he sits on the other end of the line, presumably thinking. I can hear him breathing long, disturbing breaths.

“What’s this about?” he asks again.

“It’s for school,” I say, lying.

“School?” he asks. “Are you going to record this?”

“No,” I say, another lie.

“So you’re not recording this right now?”

“No.”

We end up talking for an hour. He’s lonely. He tells me about his life now that he’s on “the list,” which consists mainly of watching television and reading passages from the Bible.

“Does it help you?” I ask.

“Does what help me?”

“The Bible.”

“Oh, yeah.”

I ask him what it feels like to be outcast.

“It’s bad,” he says. “People spit on me when I’m walking down the street. They wait at my house. They threaten me.”

Charles tells me about his childhood: His mother was an alcoholic; he was a strange kid who didn’t get along with other kids; he was a bad student, but he liked to read. When his father died he cried, even though he beat Charles and his mother until they both ended up in the hospital.

“Right now I’ve stopped living,” Charles says. “I’m only existing.

He tells me about how he can’t get a job and how he only makes enough money by doing random odds and ends to pay rent. Sometimes he doesn’t eat for days.

“Can you tell me about the girl?” I ask.

“What girl?”
 “The girl,” I say. “The one you assaulted.”

“She was 13. My wife’s daughter from another marriage,” he says, pausing. “You know, men have certain impulses. We can’t help things. The girls now wear all kinds of short clothes, tank tops.” Charles tells me how she’d come home at night and they were alone together. The aloneness is what broke him. It was unbearable, he said. She was suggestive. He insists that he didn’t rape her. It was consensual, he says.

“She wanted it?”

“The crime was absolutely wrong,” he says. “No ifs, no ands, no buts, no excuses—but there has to come a time when the pound of flesh has been exacted. With a registered sex offender, that pound of flesh doesn’t exist.” I can hear the frustration growing in Charles’ tone. He wants me to understand. He’s expecting a high-five.

“The daughter, the one you raped, does her mother still talk to you?”

“She wants nothing to do with me,” Charles says. “But I don’t blame her.” When I hang up with Charles, I look out the window. As the sun begins to set, I watch two men smoke cigarettes and talk outside the pornography shop across the street. One of them is so obese that his stomach hangs from his opened jacket, over his belt and it covers his groin. The smaller one gestures wildly with his hands and they laugh. The fat one holds his hand over his heart. The men flick their butts onto the street, get into a rusted pickup and drive off toward the freeway.

World’s Greatest Grandpa

I open my laptop to another offender—Roger—who lives just a few blocks from where I live, though I’ve never seen him in real life. He was born in 1948, but his wispy white hair and thin brittle skin are deceptive. He looks older—demented, even. His jaw bones form sharp angles and he wears the chin of an old boxer. When he was younger, he might have smoked a pipe and imitated Sinatra while his wife put down her magazine and rolled her eyes in the bedroom. He might have been handsome—an athlete who kept a girl in the library and one at the bowling alley, just in case. Or perhaps he was a family man, the kind of guy who’d steal a bouquet of flowers from the cemetery on mother’s day. He has a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on his forearm and one of a lightning bolt on his neck. Under his list of crimes, it says 288, which is the California Penal Code that means he’s been caught having sex with a child. I close my eyes and imagine how he was once a child. It’s almost impossible to picture a child rapist as a young boy, so I keep trying. I think about how he carried books in his backpack, how his eyes were blue but now they’re darker, the color of wet concrete, like he’d been crying for the entirety of his 62 years.

“This is me,” he says, his sharp lips expose the rawness of his bloody gums. He’s choking back a ball of tears, trying to muster a truthful smile. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Right?”

Anyway, he seemed like such a nice, funny guy. And  he is. But when I saw today that he’s now on Celebrity Fit Club next to Bobby Brown, the fat gay guy from Project Runway and Kevin Federline I remembered this disastrous story.

I got a lot of shit for this interview because I really just wanted it to  be short and sweet and buried in the back of the paper. But the editor of the SN&R at the time was kind of a psychopath and he was like, “Fuck it, lets put him on the cover!”

The result was this:

A Bachalypse Now!

Usually, you need a reason to write a cover story about a person. And I guess this reason was, “It’ll be hilarious!” And it was, for about 5 people. The rest of the readers were mad. “How dare you?!?” they said, with righteous indignation. “We want stories about women who eat rocks and sex toys that are powered by the sun!”

Anyway, the best part of the interview were the illustrations by Kelly Mudge.

[Note: When Bach says the word “rock,” he pronounces it “rooock” in an almost Germanic accent.]

OK, check this out, dude: We’re doing a whole Sebastian Bach issue.

Whaaaaaat? All right! That sounds great. I love it!

So I’ve seriously been listening to Angel Down non-stop since I got it.

Well, thank you, dude. That makes me feel great. I worked on it for seven years.

Does anyone try and tell you that heavy metal is dead, that you should change your sound to conform with trends?

They told me that when I was recording [Skid Row’s] Subhuman Race record. Back in ’94 was when I heard that. But that was a long time ago and people seem to love rooock, that’s for sure.

It didn’t matter to me when I was doing Subhuman Race what they told me, so it doesn’t matter now, you know? I don’t look at outside situations when I’m making my music, as far as what other bands are doing or anything like that. I know what I like and I know my rooock ’n’ roll. I love rooock and I made it for myself. That’s the way I made the first Skid Row record, and that’s the way I made Slave to the Grind. That’s the way I made Angel Down. I made a record that I dig 100 percent. That’s what I’ll always do, you know?

And this time around, it seems like you had a perfect combination of people behind this album—like Axl Rose, for one. Did things just click in the studio?

That’s an interesting question. I wrote the album with a bunch of different songwriters—that’s why pretty much each song has its own vibe … and I don’t care if my plumber, my gardener, or I don’t care who the fuck writes the fucking song, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want a kickass record no matter what it takes—and it has to be able to kick ass from the first song to the last note. For me, it’s not who writes it, but what is written—what the tune is. I have an amazing collection of songs, and basically “Metal” Mike, Steve DiGiorgio, Johnny Chromatic and Bobby Jarzombeck are my band right now [except for Steve, who is not in the band anymore]—they’re the basic nucleus of the album. And we had a lot of metal tracks written, like “American Metalhead,” “Get it Right” and then Roy Z came in and he’s like, “Dude, you know what would be cool is if you had some straight-up rooock!” and then he came in with these riffs, like “Bitchslap,” which has like, holy shit, very straight-up, very sleazy, street kind of rooock—and I love that kind of music. That made it more of a complete kind of a record with all the textures and sounds. What I love about the album is that it keeps going. It’s 14 songs. Every song stands on its own.

You know, Angel Down gives me the same feeling as the first time I put on Mötley Crüe’s Too Fast for Love.

Oh wow! Really?

Bach is the inventor of "collar poppin'"

Yeaaahhhhhhh! Hahaha! Well, the song “Angel Down” is great. It makes you turn your stereo up because the intro is quiet, so you’re like, “What’s goin’ on?” Then it’s like, fuckin’, “Boooooom! It’s over!”

Yeah!

It kicks your ass! I made it like that, dude—for me. I’m trying to make an album that you can put in your iPod next to Slave to the Grind and fucking it makes sense. And that’s not easy.

Would you be pissed if someone said that Angel Down is better than anything Skid Row has ever done?

Would I be pissed? I’d kiss the motherfucker!

Oh shit.

I mean, you can’t compare, you know? I know just like every band I look up to, like Rush and AC/DC, they have 30 records out. So, believe me, I’ve got a ton of energy and all of the TV and theater—everything I do is to promote my rooock ’n’ roll because we live in such a crazy celebrity-obsessed culture that if I could wear my Angel Down T-shirt on Celebrity Rap Superstar, it’s fucking killer to me because my fans are like, “Look at Baz, man, wearing his fucking album cover on a rap show. He knows what he’s doing.” I mean, I gotta get the word out. I’m one of those guys, but in my brain all these TV shows I do, nothing means anything close to what Angel Down means to me. It means so much to me and I love talking about it and I can’t believe it’s coming out. I’ve been working on it so long. It really is coming out. When I listen to it, I can’t do any TV shows. I’m like, fuck every TV show in the world, because this is the shit right here.

You waited a while to put out this album.

I was given a deadline, too. I got a new record deal through EMI—a huge fucking record deal—but they said if you want it out by Christmas, you gotta have it done by this certain date. It was in August! And I was like, “Jesus Christ, why do you have to have something done in August to have it out by December?” But it was good that somebody put that in my face and got the job done, finally.

I was reading in an interview when I think you were 20-something. You were like, “When I’m 39, my voice will be at its peak.” [Bach is now 39.]

Is that what I said?

Yeah dude. And you’re like, “I’m gonna’ have long-ass hair like Crystal Gayle.”

Ha! No way!

And finally, you’re like, “and I’m still going to be rocking!”

That’s right!

And you still are, dude!

That’s totally true! And my hair is getting back to fucking Crystal Gayle level here. I’m on track!

Good.

Dude, I’m gonna be doing this for the rest of my life. I look up to people like, I mean, you mentioned Too Fast For Love, my heroes used to be like Mötley Crüe, now it’s like Neil Young and Willie Nelson—these old dudes that just never stop rooocking. That’s definitely what I’m going to do. I’ve got the voice. It’s in my throat right here and that’s really all I fucking need, if you really want to know the truth.

There’s never going to be a point when you’re just going to stop rocking?

No, nothing really makes me happier than making music. Since Slave to the Grind came out, [Angel Down] is like the natural progression from that. To me, this is like when Ozzy put out Blizzard of Oz after Black Sabbath. This is kind of the same vibe, for me, because it doesn’t really sound like Skid Row, but it kind of does, though.

Yeah, it does.

Because my voice—that’s the voice of Skid Row, and that’s just the way it is. And, like, Duff McKagan, when he was talking about Velvet Revolver, he definitely wanted me in the band. He said, “I love Sebastian and he can sing like a motherfucker, but all you think of when you hear that voice is Skid Row,” and I’m going, well, dude, all I think of when I hear your bass playing is Guns N’ Roses … but I love Guns N’ Roses! A lot of people love Skid Row, so if you dug “I Remember You” and all that stuff, I mean, I know you’re gonna dig this album because I dig that stuff, too. I don’t deny my own music or shy away from it. I embrace it, and this album, to me, fits along with the other albums. And that’s all I wanted.

You know, when I heard “Falling Into You,” I think I fell in love with you a little bit.

The law offices of Bubbles & Bach

Ahhhhhh!!!! [Pause] That’s OK!

Ha, does that make you uncomfortable?

That’s fine with me. No. I wrote it with Desmond Child. I know he wouldn’t be uncomfortable about it.

When you were approached by MTV with Celebrity Rap Superstar, were you kind of bummed out at first?

I kinda just rolled my eyes. My attitude is kind of like, “Uh, is this what you want? This is what you want? It’s what you want, right? Here. Here you go.” Phhhhhesh.

Jesus.

Like, that is my attitude. I’ve been doing television shows for MTV for 20 years—this is another one of them. That’s what that is. You know?

It was a fun show, though.

Yeah, I thought it turned out pretty good, actually. I mean it’s live, so I could suck, you know? And some performances were better than others, but when I was on, man, and when I was really kickin’ it, it was kickass!

When you were on tour with Guns N’ Roses, to watch you onstage with Axl, it just looked insane, seeing you there in front of thousands of people with Axl fucking Rose next to you. A normal person like me can’t wrap his head around that kind of thing.

I can’t wrap my head around it, either! And I’ve spent a better part of the year on the road with them. I sang on Chinese Democracy on a song called “Sorry” and I came out to finish my album a couple months ago and I said (to Axl) “When are you gonna’ sing on my record?” just kidding around, and then he came down and did it. He sings on three songs: “Back in the Saddle” [an Aerosmith cover], “Love is a Bitchslap” and also “Stuck Inside.”

I think my favorite part of the record, definitely, is the ending of “Stuck Inside,” when he goes to this high harmony over what I’m singing, and it’s so mind blowing. It’s just crazy. And if anybody out there digs metal-style vocals, this album has got it. We got metal singing on this album.

That’s the cool thing, because I really wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting a change or some kind of weird, pop shit.

Fuck all that. I’m gonna give you rooock. It’s what I’m gonna give you, dude.

Just from watching you on television, it seems that people are always like, “God damn, calm down Sebastian.” Do you get that a lot?

Yeah … yeah, yeah … yeah. Ha! On the rap show, I’d be doing my Italian vocal exercise and Kurupt would be like, “What in the fuck are you doing?” I was like, “Le-le-le-le-le-le!” and he’s like, “Stop it, dude—your voice is warmed up enough, brother.”

And, I mean, SuperGroup was one of those shows that’s edited to make everyone look as shitty as possible. So I’m kind of done with those kinds of shows.

Would you say that you rock harder than everyone who rocks now?

No, I think everyone rocks hard in their own way.

That’s very nice of you.

OK, I rock harder than, what the fuck is that guys name? That guys name from The Hills? [Jason] Wahler.

But do you rock harder than Van Halen?

No, they rock pretty hard.

Anything you wanna’ say about the album?

Check it out. I worked really hard on it. Everybody’s been waiting a long time for the return of Axl Rose. That day is November 20. I really hope you dig it and that’s it man. Go to the Web site, www.sebastianbach.com.

Joe Grand is a hacker, electrical engineer, father, husband, son, friend, child of the lord, wacky party bro and was also one of the hosts of the recently cancelled show on Discovery Channel called Prototype This. He’s really detail oriented, so if I fuck up this intro and get a bunch of stuff wrong he’s going to be really pissed and sue the shit out of me. Anyway, I don’t really know why Prototype This was cancelled. I guess it was too expensive or they didn’t get enough viewers or something. If this was a newspaper I guess I’d have to research that and give you some facts, but since it isn’t, just use your fucking imagination or something.

Sorry, Joe, but here are some fun facts that I can get right:

• I’ve known Joe Grand since kindergarten and we spent a lot of that year in a timeout box.
• Our kindergarten teacher had a brown greasy face.
• kindergarten is a really fucked up word to spell.
• There is a Trivial Pursuit card about Joe Grand.
• Joe Grand once built a tazer and we may or may not have used it on a cab driver.
• Joe Grand is an electrical engineer and he builds things that don’t make sense to the average human being.
• There is such thing as the Jewish Olympics and Joe Grand participated. Because he is a sporty Jew.
• Joe Grand once testified in front of some kind of U.S. Senate committee or some other group of powerful and old white people about some computery type shit.

[This interview happened when the show was still on the air, hence the present tense. C'mon, it's Monday at 4:35  in the morning and I just finished working on a project that took like ten fucking hours. Like you do work on the fucking weekends. Psshhht. OK, now I feel bad, like you're judging me.]

"Gahhh, my girl-o-meter detects a female humanoid presence!"

So which guy are you on the show?

I’m the electronics-hardware hacker guy, and probably the goofiest and the nerdiest of them all. And then Zoz [Brooks] specializes in robotics and software programming; Terry [Sandin] does the machining and Mike [North] is a material scientist.

Has there been one project that you were pretty stoked on?

I really liked the “pyro pack” that I designed for the firefighter project. That was cool because I got to use a lot of my skills and also do something that firefighters would really like. The thing about the show is we’re building prototypes of stuff just to prove the concept that we can do something. But a lot of people watch the show and are like, “Oh whatever—no one’s really going to wear an ergonomic fire pack.”

But it seems like the firefighters liked it.

Oh, they were totally stoked. They were cool; they had big mustaches.

So does the team end up getting in arguments a lot?

We used to. Like the first few episodes of the show were weird because none of us knew each other, and the producers didn’t know anything about engineering. They just threw us all in a room and they’re like, “Here, build this.”

What is it like when nerds fight? Is it like when regular people fight?

It’s crazy. You know how when they have rap battles? … It’s like that, but we spew code.

How did you do on the Run to Feed the Hungry?

I ran 18:42. I was fifth place in the Male 30-34 and 48th overall out of 14,992. That was the fastest I’ve run in, like, two years.

Didn’t you do the Jewish Olympics or something?

Yeah, the Maccabiah. [It happens] every four years, and it’s the third largest athletic event in the world, next to the Olympics and the Asian Games.

You did pretty well in the last one.

The one I went to before was the Pan American Maccabi Games. … That one I got second place in my division and fifth place overall in the Olympic distance triathlon. … It’s cool to beat Jews from other countries.

That’s always been my motto. Hey, is the government building an invisibility cloak?

Are they? They’re building a lot of crazy shit.

Is that even possible, do you think?

I don’t know. No. But people didn’t think airplanes could fly, either. They built a sound-generating thing where if you point it at someone they’ll throw up. So if they can do that, they can probably make somebody disappear.

Paulina Lawrence and Kato Fernandez.

I tracked down Paulina Lawrence, a pet intuitive, and asked her some questions about my goddamn cats, who by the way, are fucking nightmares. Actually, the orange one is OK, but the gray one pisses all over the house and is generally unpleasant. I’m one step away from setting him free.

So what’s going on with my cats?

Loki’s your question kitty.

What kinds of questions does he ask?

“What’s going on?” “Why is [a new kitten, Kato] here?” He just has that type of personality. He likes Kato a lot. … And you named Kato appropriately. He’s a very energetic little soul but he’s very curious. And he asks if this is his home; all you have to do is reassure him on that.

You mean I just tell him?

Yeah. They pick it up from us. With these guys, they use everything: what’s going on around them, our facial expressions, what we’re thinking. They pick all that up.

Do you know exactly what they’re saying at a given moment, or do you just get a feeling?

It’s both. They don’t really speak in English. It’s how I interpret it. I’ll get the emotion, I’ll get the question, and I’ll try to formulate it for people. They live in the present and it’s not because they negate all past experiences, it’s just that they happen to work in the present.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing now is a lot of animals developing the same type of neurosis that we as humans have because they live in our world.

So animals take on the characteristics of their owners?

Well, whatever their environmental situation is. They will accommodate to what’s going on.

So my cat might go around making stupid jokes and annoying people?

Some are just really funny. It just depends on their personality. You never know.

Do the animals ever say things that scare you?

Yeah. They do. Sometimes I’ll go over to a home and they’ll ask me to work with a specific animal and another animal will come in and sit next to me for a little while and go, “You need to help the person.” That was one of the things I was very surprised about. I use my abilities working as a veterinary tech, however, I wasn’t expecting that I would be helping the humans as well. I’ll have an animal say, “She’s depressed,” or “She’s worried about this.”

Are my cats telling you that I’m depressed?

No. They’re very laid-back.

Do animals ever want to violently turn on their owners?

We do have ones that go over the top because they have no discipline. … People seem to forget they have distinct characteristics for each species. And if you do challenge a dog, or you do challenge a cat, or even a bird, they’re going to take you out.

Remember when Siegfried and Roy’s tiger ate one of them? What was going on there?

I don’t know about that, but I can speak generally. That animal is a wild animal. That’s why I like volunteering at the Folsom Zoo, because it gives me another perspective. Circus animals have definite show egos.

So you’re really just shifting your perception toward the way an animal thinks a little bit?

Yeah, just a little bit. Just to understand where they’re coming from, behavior-wise.

So would you be able to tell if my cat had cancer?

I can tell when a cat is not feeling well. Unless the cat is verbalizing it. … I can look at the animal and see how it’s feeling.

Are people in your veterinary field ever doubtful of you?

That’s part of the reason why it’s not something [I flaunt]. When I work with people who don’t believe me, it usually changes … because they’re like, “Well, how do you know that?”

Whenever I would cry, my parents’ old German Shepard would come up to me and sit down and cuddle.

They bring a lot of joy and comfort to people.

And then he would bark at black people.

Sometimes they’re just not used to—

So he’s not racist?

Some animals develop a prejudice because of the way they’ve been treated. It’s just what they’ve been exposed to.

Anything else you want people to know?

Mainly, we just need to really connect more to our animal friends.

Do you think my cats like me?

Oh my God, yeah.

Find out more about Lawrence at www.paulinasark.com.

Gustavo Arrelano’s ¡Ask a Mexican! column won the 2006 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies award for the best column in a large circulation weekly. He’s a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times and has appeared on Today, Nightline, NPR’s On the Media, The Situation with Tucker Carlson, and The Colbert Report. And he’s published two books: Ask a Mexican and Orange County.

So I thought he’d be kind of a dick when I called him.

“Heyyy, what’s up, half-Mexican?” Arellano said when he picked up the phone. He sounded happy as a clam, probably because he wasn’t washing a white person’s car or running through Compton with a hubcap—a successful Chicano brother, indeed. Of course, my Mexican half was proud, but my resentful white half wanted to call immigration right away.

Well, I know you’re not, but do you ever feel half-Mexican, like I am?

I think any child of Mexican immigrants in the United States is always going to feel that he’s not Mexican enough—usually because his parents tell him he’s not Mexican enough. For instance, my dad wanted me to wear a Tejana [a Stetson], and I wouldn’t do it because I’d look like an idiot. I wear glasses, and when was the last time you saw a cowboy with glasses? Because I wouldn’t do that, it pained my father to no end. I had it even [worse] than most Mexicans because I’m also a nerd. Apparently, there was no such thing as Mexican nerds.

Were you a nerd throughout high school?

Dude, I was a nerd from the day I was born. I was reading in kindergarten. I got humungous glasses that covered half of my face in second grade. I’ve been living the nerd life ever since. And it’s doubly tough when you’re a Mexican nerd.

Do you ever cringe when white people pronounce Spanish words correctly?

Yeah. Now the white people are turning Mexican. They’re going to be more Mexican than us, and they’re going to take us over again.

Is it irony that everything in California is named in Spanish, yet we’re trying very hard to keep Mexicans out?

Absolutely. Down here, in the ritziest part of Orange County, all the street names are in Spanish—and that’s where the most virulent anti-Mexican sentiment in the county exists. If anything, it just proves that God has a delicious sense of humor.

Who would win in a fight, you or Cheech?

I wouldn’t fight him. He’s a god of all Mexican-Americans. Every Mexican kid in this country grew up watching [Born in East L.A.] and loving it because it had the Dodgers, and it had an orange fight. It was the standard.

I don’t feel Mexican most of the time. Is there anything I can do to feel more connected to La Raza?

If you get [Chuck Taylors], almost immediately your Mexican points go up tenfold. And … oh, offer amnesty to someone. Yeah, get an illegal-immigrant Mexican woman [and] say, “Hey, I’m a citizen. I’ll marry you,” and you will be a god in the Mexican community.

Here’s an interview I did with Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton, a finalist on America’s Got Talent. She ended up losing to a ventriloquist. Ha! I spelled ventriloquist right the first time! I should be on America’s Got Talent.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I did this interview. I sound like a creepy, perverted old man. But I’m not that old.

This was a hard interview because she obviously wanted to get off the phone and she probably wanted to talk about music and other boring shit. But I didn’t.

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Television land is chock-full of depressing and loveless a-holes trying to give us love advice, and like many other things about this confusing world, it’s just twisted and sick. Seriously, flip to ABC’s The View sometime, and try not to vomit as the five sexless, libido-wilting power-yentas who probably haven’t had an “encounter” since prohibition ended try to wax poetic on the nuances of amour. It’s grosser than watching a cat give birth, but less hot. Who do these sexual hack-jobs think they are? And more, why are they trying to traumatize us? America has spoken, and we want love advice from a young, beautiful and intelligent woman, which is where, thank God, the 22-year-old beatboxer and finalist on NBC’s America’s Got Talent who goes by the name of Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton comes in. Well, Clinton, a Davis resident, doesn’t actually offer her advice per se, but if you call her enough and push her nearly to the point of a restraining order, she’ll give it to you. Yeah, she’ll give it to you, all right.

What can I do to be more romantic?

Be yourself. Just focus on trying to give to other people.

Hey, that’s pretty good.

I don’t know. You could write a song, write a poem.

I’ve been going out with my girlfriend for seven years. Do you think I can wait a few more without getting married?

I think you should maybe pop the question soon.

Like in the next year?

Um, yeah.

Hmm … how can ugly dudes look less ugly?

Uh, hats are good.

That’s perfect, because I wear hats. Is there a good color for ugly people to wear that makes them less ugly?

I don’t know. Maybe black.

I was going to say turquoise.

Turquoise is a good one.

Yeah, it really draws the eyes away from the ugly. Anyway, one time I went out with a black girl, and she told me that my nose was too pointy and that I kissed like a white person. It was 10 years ago, and it was traumatizing. Do you have any tips so that doesn’t happen to anyone else?

Well, don’t use too much tongue.

That’s a great tip.

Moderation is everything. Don’t try to go too fast; it’s just like a lip massage, you know?

No. But yeah, that’s really good. Where do you stand on dudes with plucked eyebrows?

If they have a unibrow, it’s cool.

It’s cool to have a unibrow?

[No], it’s cool if they pluck it.

Oh.

But if their eyebrows look better than mine, then that’s not good.

Moderation again.

Yeah.

I can’t drink anymore because of legal issues. Is there anything else I can do to get me really fucked up?

Uhh.

You’re supposed to say, “My music, man.”

Uhh.

Are you dating anyone?

No.

Weren’t you on that show with David Hasselhoff?

Yeah.

He’s a ladies man, huh?

Sure, if you like old.

You don’t think he’s pretty hot?

No.

Oh. OK. Well, hey, would you ever date a half-Mexican?

Yeah, of course.

That leads into my next question: Would you ever provide the “beats” to my “raps”?

Uh, I’m not so sure.

I was telling him about my cool new dance move.

The wood paneling in the Slayer dressing room gives off the vibe of one of those ’90s Calvin Klein commercials that reeked of pedophilia. There’s only one dimmed lamp turned on and the cavernous space is scary, like a waiting room to hell would be — except it’s really goddamn cold.

But Tom Araya seems to enjoy the sub-zero temperature and lack of light. And despite being only a couple of hours away from his performance in front of thousands of people on the first stop of the Mayhem Festival, he looks calm and relaxed as he takes a seat on a giant, black leather couch, wearing a peace symbol necklace and his long, graying hair in a loose ponytail. Araya’s trademark goatee, which is shaved to look like the hair of a billy goat, is almost white. It’s hard to imagine, but Slayer, the thrash metal band — hailed as one of the greatest metal bands of all time — is approaching 30 years old. And because it’s funny, this is where Slayer and Pat Benatar are mentioned in the same sentence: Benatar is celebrating a 30th anniversary and she, like Slayer, is also touring this year. And that’s pretty much where the comparison ends.

Araya remembers fondly Slayer’s first major tour. “We played the L.A. Sports Arena in 1990 when we did Seasons in the Abyss,” he recalls. “And it sold out — 15,000 people. That was a first.”

Stock tips.

But it certainly wasn’t the last. The band would sell out many arenas in the years to come. Although “sell out” is probably a poor choice of words, considering Slayer, even after two Grammy awards for Best Metal Performance, recognition from both MTV and VH1 and a number-eight spot on the Billboard charts, managed to keep their fans (some of the most shirtlessly aggressive, tattooed, sweaty and violent beings on the planet). “We have like a lot of loyal fans,” says Araya. “From the very first day on you start recognizing people in the audience. I’ll look at them and they know that I recognize them … 30 years and they’re coming back, which is cool.”

Araya seems to genuinely enjoy reflecting upon his career. He’s sober now and feeling healthy and happy. “After [touring] for so many years … I’ve gotten to the point where I kind of isolate myself; I don’t socialize. I don’t want to see people. Everybody wants to hang out and party and I just don’t do that anymore,” he says, leaning forward on the couch, smiling. It’s obvious that Araya is content — even in a dressing room with a temperature that could keep raw salmon fresh for weeks.

True love.

When it’s time for Slayer to hit the stage, fans are visibly weary from a full day of metal and beer. Behemoth, Black Dahlia Murder and Killswitch Engage all played terrific sets. And now it’s Slayer’s turn. The curtain drops, pentagrams flash at the back of the stage and Araya, with no introduction, growls his way through a setlist with virtually no banter in between songs — just three decades’ worth of blistering metal. When Jeff Hanneman’s wailing opening riff to “South of Heaven” slashes through the speakers, Dave Lombardo’s drums ring out like the first shots of war. Guitarist Kerry King lumbers in his two-foot radius. And the mosh pit, as it has for the past 30 years at Slayer shows across the world, once again becomes a cyclone of tattoos, bad breath, swinging flesh, danger and a shitload of blood.

How are things?

Excellent. Couldn’t have asked for a better tour, man.

At speaking engagements, do people argue with you?
Oh yeah, all the time.

Is there a pervasive argument?
I did [a lecture] in Atlanta … and I [stated] publicly that I’m not black. And here I am, in Atlanta, a black/African-American mecca, saying, “No, I’m not black; I’m hip-hop.” That caused a little bit of a disturbance.
It’s all respect, though, no doubt, because ain’t nobody kicking my ass. But you’ve got the black nationalists, Nation of Islam, Black Panther Party-types coming through and they’re really pissed off at the idea that I’m not black. I’m hip-hop. I’m a new breed of person on the planet. That’s one argument.
And I just did an interview with [radio host] Alex Jones that got a lot of criticism—and praise—out of people on both sides of the fence: “Why you dissing Barack Obama?” I guess we’re all supposed to fall down and worship the black president. I’m not feeling it. Not at all.
What’s wrong with Barack Obama?
I don’t have a beef with Barack Obama in particular. He’s only been in office a little while. My beef is with any president. … They’re all incompetent, if you ask me. Everyone’s saying “The best thing about Bill Clinton was the economy.” I think that’s nonsense. Just because the president didn’t pay you off doesn’t mean he was a good president. The whole basis of government is so you can put a dollar in my pocket?

Does the same philosophy apply to hip-hop?
In what way?

Executive incompetence …
I wouldn’t blame it on hip-hop. That’s giving us too much credit. [It’s] the incompetence of the music business itself: the [Recording Industry Association of America], MTV, BET, VH1, Viacom—all of that. … However, there is something to be said about hip-hop’s internal incompetence, meaning, taking us out of the music business and looking at us just as a culture—just as a brand-new civilization on the Earth: hip-hop. If you look there, we’re too young to be incompetent. We’re learning. We’re not just shaking our asses anymore. I applaud that. But we got another 20 years. If the Earth doesn’t fall apart on [December 21] 2012, hip-hop will be a great nation.

What’s that date?
That’s when the Mayan calendar ends. A meteor is supposed to hit the Earth and we’re all out of here! That’s what that is. No doubt.

Wow, look out. Let’s talk about Temple of Hip Hop. It seems like another religion, like you’re trying to be an L. Ron Hubbard type of fellow.
Oh, L. Ron Hubbard!

Seriously, do we really need another religion?
Well, to be blunt, yes. Absolutely. KRS is starting a new religion. When you really get down to what religion is, it’s culture. It’s spiritualizing your daily lifestyle. Some people say sewing is a religion to them; for some people it’s money. Whatever you’re willing to give your full heart and your full attention to becomes your religion. We’re suggesting that you can have a direct relationship with God through hip-hop. We’re living in a new age; we don’t ride donkeys anymore; we’re pushing Beamers and Benzes. What does God have to say to that? What’s the spiritual thought for today?

Remember when you dissed the Juice Crew? Do you still have that much piss and vinegar in your blood?
There’s two answers. … One is that the piss and the vinegar is a little less in my blood these days, but I do keep a jar on the side just in case. I do have a 1986 jar of piss just in case anybody gets it twisted.

This story originally appeared in the Sacramento News & Review.

This is part of (and a different version of) an interview with Bob Saget (Full House, America’s Funniest Home Videos, Half Baked and a ton of other movies and HBO specials) that will appear in print across our great communist country. Read the interview in its entirety on Thursday, October 29 in the Sacramento News & Review.

Bob Saget’s phone call came about an hour late, but he was very apologetic. His excuse had to do with John Stamos, a Broadway staging of Bye Bye Birdie and an unfortunate mishap. Don Rickles heckled from the crowd. The story ended with Saget, the hero, coming to the rescue, armed only with his with love of Stamos and his sharp wit. He injured himself in the process of saving Uncle Jessie from a bombed stage performance and had to get fluid drained from his knee. It sounded like the plot of a weird porno movie. Or a Freudian nightmare. But it was all true. Saget, just back from the doctor’s office, was feeling calm, rejuvenated and overwhelmingly heterosexual.

How’s it going?

I’ve been doing yoga. You ever done that?

I’ve wanted to, but I can’t seem to get myself on the floor.

One of the things I luxuriate myself on—that’s not even a word—is one-on-one yoga. And it’s kind of cool because—well, no matter how you look at it—it’s fruity.

Yeah, it is.

I think watching me do yoga in a class would be better than watching my stand-up. It’s so sad—I’m angular and six feet tall. But I can do the thing where you balance your knees on your elbows and stuff. I’m vulnerable because I’ve been doing so much yoga.

And then I was at Bye Bye Birdie watching my dear friend John Stamos, but there was a gap in the show. One of the pieces of scenery didn’t [work] and they had to shut the curtain down. Don Rickles was very funny, heckling. I got on stage but [I fell because] there were no steps. Some article quoted me as saying, “I think I hurt my leg really badly.”

And you did. It was a heroic act.

It was so heroic. There’s something, you know, about coming to the rescue in theater … [Stamos] said, “No matter what you do, you’re the proudest gay man of all because you’re on Broadway.”  You’re on Broadway and you’re automatically gay.

Especially if you’re saved by a guy who does yoga.

Especially if you get saved by a guy who was Danny Tanner.

Right.

I did The Drowsy Chaperone a couple years ago on Broadway and there was one time the curtain went up, the lights were down and one of my mics (inside my pants) went out. The curtain goes up. It’s in the dark, but somebody left the light on so they could see some man with his hand down my pants before the show began. I’m like, “Close the curtain!” And then the show started. Fortunately, it was kind of a foolproof monologue where I was able to say (because the first line of the show is), “I hate theater.” And the guy explains why he hates theater. One reason was technical mishaps.

So far everything you’ve told me makes you the gayest man on Earth.

It is. There’s nothing I can do. And yet I find it very hard just showing up as incredibly hetero as I am. Lately someone will say something like, “Any rumors that you played a gay guy on Full House have been dispelled by what you’re like on stage, dude.” I don’t know if it’s a compliment: “Hey man, you’re not gay.” What does that mean?

So you’re single. Are you schmoozing or what?

You mean with girls?

Sure.

I, uh, have an interesting life because I have three daughters and I put my kids first … and I have so many jokes that I could say that are not suitable for your newspaper. But it would be nice to date somebody. I’ve been divorced a long time. I don’t think there are a lot of people who understand me or want to tolerate me. I’m pretty easy to get along with. That’s what the doctor said today when he was sucking the fluid out of my knee. He did it with his mouth. Is that a good doctor? I don’t think that was right. My urologist did the same thing. Now how dirty are jokes like that? They’re meaningless. Who does a joke like that hurt?

Are you out on the road right now?

Yeah, I’ve been out. I’ve been “out”? Everything’s back to the gay. I’ve done what I call a “tour” and my friends go, “Oh, Bob’s on tour!” It really is for me. Last week I was in San Francisco at the Warfield on Friday night. That was one of the most fun shows I’ve had, maybe ever. A week before I was in Phoenix and it was so funny I stood on the stage and it was a theater in the round and I took a giant wiff and went, “Ah, skunk weed!” I got the cheapest waft of smoke I’d ever had in my life. But I can only be on contact high now. I can’t partake because … of my knee.

Weed is gay, anyway. And you’re heterosexual.

And I really am … I’m really into a performance mode right now. When I’m in New York or L.A. I’ll go up at the Laugh Factory, the Comedy Store, the Improv and I’ll do stuff without it being announced—just when I feel like doing it. It’s really fun because I’m in a place because I’ve been doing it so long where I’ll be out for dinner and I’ll go, “God, I just had some wine and I never drink” and then I’ll go perform, like I’ve gotta try all these things we just talked about. Thank God for that kid in that aluminum jiffy pop thing that went flying around. I am so happy when that stuff happens because everything else is just … they’re digging up bodies of people. I’d rather have no bodies and floating invisible coffins going around with nothing in them.

So you like stupid funny shit?

Just funny shit. And people are always like, “You’re so dirty” and it’s like, I’m really not. I probably drop the f-bomb too much, but otherwise it’s just silly. It’s silly, dirty and I try to mix it in with things I think about, which is my kids and relationships and things that don’t really segue from the other material too well.

Do you have any sacred topics that you don’t touch?

Well, people yell out “The Aristocrats” and I’ve tried to tell it on stage just to please the people, but it really loses 85 percent of the room. What’s funny about the joke is, number one, it has a meaningless clean ending. And the other thing is a lot of people don’t know it. So there’s no one that needs to hear it for the first time with a couple thousand people sitting around.

I didn’t even get it the first time I heard it. When I saw the movie I was like, “What are they talking about?”

I guess it was 25 years ago and I was stanidng in front of the Improv, and Dom Herrera was on the street and he goes, “Hey Saget, you gonna go on?” and I said yes.  And he goes, “You heard the Aristocrats, right?” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” And he’s like “You never heard it?!” He got so excited because it’s like getting the dog high, you know what I mean?  And he told me. And I’m like, “I like getting there but I don’t really like the punch line.” Getting there is why it’s funny. It’s about how desperate people are to get into show business. That’s the joke. That’s what’s so funny. Everybody’s always wanted to be in show business, whether they admit it or not. That’s why they judge you and say they hate it—they hate that movie, they hate that guy. And meanwhile they’ve spent 10 years trying to get their movie made. It’s a hard business, and that’s how low a family were to go to be a success. It would be like The Sound of Music if the Von Trapp family had done that to escape during the war. I think if a family does that on stage in front of the Germans you just get shot, don’t you? You can’t do that.

Was there ever a point in your life when you were like, “I’m Danny Tanner and I’m fucked”?

No. Because I didn’t start like that. I started doing stand-up when I was 17 … And then I got Full House and I was excited as hell to get a prime-time sitcom. And then I had another year of [America’s Funniest Home Videos] and those are two things that don’t even happen in a lifetime. Full House was made for 12 year old girls, you know? I get body builders that come in and go, “Yo, you raised me, dude.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, a guy in a cardigan sweater who would talk to his daughter and then the organ would play [raised you].”

Catch Bob Saget’s stand-up act America’s Favorite Dad is About to Burst Your Bubble at the Crest on Friday, November 6 at 8 p.m.; 1013 K Street; $35-$45.