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ANATOMY OF A SCREAM:
Conducted by Dege Legg |
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You say you’re related to Britney Spears. On what side?Britney Spears is my niece. Her daddy is my brother. You grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana? Grew up in Kentwood all our life. Worked for the family all my life. We started off boiler making and working in the oil refinery around here. And then we went from there to our own metal building company and health club. Britney started right there, dancing and singing. Then she wanted to go try out for Ed McMahon. All the family pitched in. We left and went up there. And she won that, then got an agent, and Mickey Mouse called her up. And then she made it. She was the youngest Mickey Mouse Mouseketeer ever. In the History of Mankind! Yep! Quick Question. What the hell is “boiler-making?” That’s working in the oil refineries around here. Building the oil storage tanks. Do you still live out there in Kentwood? Yes, I d. You mentioned something about the family “busting up.” Well, my brother finally got a divorce, but he’s still got 50% in my youngest niece, Jamie Lynn. So he’s making good money, huh? Ah! All of them making good money. I raised two girls. Both of them into college at LSU. What’s the story with the family busting up? My brother drinks like a frickin’ fish! Alcoholic? Bad. Real bad. I mean, day light’s dark, my friend. Did he ever try to sober up and get in AA or anything? Well, that’s what split me up from my brother. Everybody got up and moved out to L.A. from New York after the 9/11. And he finally went out there, got him a restaurant. And they put him in a 2 year rehab—the family did—cuz of my youngest daughter. He’s got a restaurant out there in Santa Monica. And…He’s still drinking like a fish! How’s his restaurant doing? Doing pretty good. Is it Cajun food? No, mostly steak & ale. He is a good cook. A damn good cook. Can cook some of the best I’ve seen. Drinks like a fish? BAD! Real bad. Was the poor guy always like that? Always been like that. And there wasn’t nobody at the house no more. Just me and my dad. My dad’s the only living grandpa left on both sides of the family. Everybody’s dead. On Britney’s momma’s side, her grandma and grandpa are dead. Aunt and uncle, dead. All dead. You ever get to meet old K-Fed? Yep, I met him in Arkansas…for the last year and half. And I left two days after the wedding. What’s that dude like? Bum. Yeah? Yeah. He ain’t the one that got the god dang cherry. Justin Timberlake did. What’d he do? Got the cherry. Justin Timberland. Yeh, he’s a little wimp-ass wimp. He’s a wimp?? Old Britney kept him strung out bad. One day I’ll write a book, yeh. All I say is: if you do put anything here, just make the radio the next day. What? Make the radio? I don’t like that 98.1(FM) radio station. No good motherfuckers. What’s wrong with those dudes? Ah, they cut me up one time, said I got beat up in a bar in Baton Rouge…by a WOMAN! Talking some bullshit, huh? Ah, it’s bullshit. They caught me down at the river, asked to put me in the magazine. Then they put me in the magazine; calling me “Road-Kill Willie.” I called them up and told them to stick up their ass. What are you doing down here, around Lafayette? Hurricane clean-up. I hooked up with these people, here, and they just about pay me almost as much money as I was making. Do you get to talk to the family much anymore? Yeh, I call them sometime. They fighting it. Fight what? The media and everything else. Just to live, man. And not be bothered by the public. It’s frightful. Very frightful. It’s rough on a person. I hear you. How do you think Britney will do with motherhood and all that? Ah, she’s gonna have to work into it. It’s tough. That’s a tough transition. She gets pissed off about having to take some much time. Does she get pissed off at old K-Fed? Oh, Big Time, cuz. I called the family. They went over to my brother’s house and they were cooking that evening. And he said a few things and my brother knocked the fuck out of him and threw him out on the porch. What he did was. He was drinking and cussing. Said a few unchoice words to Jamie Lynn, the little one. That’s my brother’s heart, right there. He grabbed him up and punched him a few times and drug him out the front door. Good’Ole Boy Style. Fucking A, man. Do Britney and K-Fed fight a lot? Yes. Fight all the time. Always trying to get over on Britney, but Britney runs the fucking shit for sure, buddy. She’s the boss. She always did and always will. He don’t do nothing, but hang out with homies. How long do you think she’ll stay married to that K-Fed dude? Not Long, my friend. Not Long. Talked to my brother last night and he said that they cannot take the pressure that that boy is putting on the family. They said he gone wrong. They don’t like him. What are they gonna do? Cut him a check and get him out there?
Oh, he will get a check. Trust me. Money talks; bullshit walks. I
promise you. That’s one thing I learned. It buys everything but love.
Everything but love! I mean, Everything. Interview with a Junkie (2006, Lafayette, LA) How long have you been a junkie?Too long. Maybe 30years. Plus. How’d you get started in the shooting-up business? I started off shooting Preludes in the 70’s. Speed and stuff like that. Moved on to opiate based drugs. I was raised round Tempe, AZ. Joined the Army and moved around. Different places though the 70’s & 80’s. Moving. What is your drug of choice to shoot? Opiates. Morphine. O.C.’s. Heroin. Any kind of Schedule II narcotics. How many different types of heroin are there? Ah, there’s a lot of them. Brown. White. Mexican Tar. It depends on what part of the country you’re in. Out west, in California, it’s mostly Black Tar Heroin. On the east coast, you got the powdered heroins. Brown and white. There’s no heroin around here, except for New Orleans. That’s the only city you get heroin in Louisiana. Anybody from Lafayette that says they’re “on heroin” or whatever, is full of shit. It ain’t here, cuz if it was, I’d know. Why is that? You can get life in prison for possession of a quarter gram of heroin in Louisina. That’s not much at all, like maybe $20 worth. So that’s kept it out of all the smaller towns and even bigger cities, because of the penalties against it. You can get it in New Orleans, cuz it’s been around down there for so long, they’re used to it. That’s the only city that tolerates it. Everywhere else, you’d better watch out, cuz they will put your ass in jail for a long time. It scares people! They hear those words and it’s like a boogieman came to town. And they want to keep him out of their town. What about this brown-speckles of heroin in the ecstasy pill thing that you hear pillheads talk about? It’s bullshit. They tell you that to make you think that there’s something special in there so you’ll buy it. Then someone buys a bunch of them, gets fucked up, and tells all their friends, “Hey, see these brown specks? That’s heroin.” When in fact, it’s probably cut or chum from the lab the chemist made it in. What about all these pain-management clinics that have been sprouting up? Now you see there? That’s the loophole. That’s how the government is making money off it and getting it into these towns. And it don’t scare people as much, cuz it’s a pill and it’s made by pharmaceutical companies with their little stamp on it. But believe me, it’s just as bad. It’s all the same shit. Only now, the pharmaceutical companies are making the big bucks and not just the importing countries that make the shit in sheds and ship it over. Big operation. Oh, it’s huge! And it’ll never stop. They want the population drugged up and useless, so they don’t give a damn about whatever changes are instituted to their Constitutional rights. You don’t give a fuck if all you’re worried about is getting your next fix. Trust me, I know. It’s a full-time job. The party line is: keep them fucked up and they won’t give a fuck. Why do you think the ghettos are always full of drugs? They let that shit in there, man! It keeps all the poor people disorganized and distracted. That way, they ain’t a problem. And if they ever do become a problem; you just put them in prison. Have you ever tried to detox or get clean? I’ve done it many times, but I unemployable cuz of my back, so I always end up going back and getting a habit. What are the withdrawal symptoms when you kick? Shitting & puking out of both ends. You’re skin crawls. You can’t sleep. Your whole body aches. Cold and hot spells. It’s awful. Not an enjoyable experience.
___________________________________________________________________ How long have you been drilling natural water wells? 25 years. How far into the ground do you have to usually dig to hit water? Between 100 and 200ft. As you go closer to the coast, you have to dig deeper. It’s seems like it would be the opposite. As you get closer to the coast the water is nearer to the surface. You have to drill deeper by the coast because of the salt water. You have to go below that salt water table. Also the earth’s plates fold down at the edge and slant down into the ocean, so you have to follow that down also. The layers are just pan out and fold out down there so you gotta go way down to hit fresh water. What kind of tools do you use to drill these fresh water wells? I’ve got a drilling rig. It’s like a small oil rig, but on a smaller portable scale. What’s the diameter of the holes that thing digs? I can go from 4.5inch to .4inch. About 4 and a half is the biggest I can do. And what do people use these fresh water wells for? Mostly farms and irrigation. It’s the same water table that most of the cities pump out of, but I haven’t landed any of those kind of jobs. Mostly individual farms. I bet those city contracts pay pretty good. Oh, yeah. Lot of money in that. Do you even pull up anything odd when you’re drilling these holes? I have found some interesting things down there. Do you remember the Noah’s Ark Flood? Yes. Well, I’ve found absolute evidence of that, which was I once ended up drilling through a Cypress tree that was still standing up where it grew, in the ground. When I came through the roots, I took up topsoil and pieces of red pottery. And the root structure was at 110ft below ground level, which would’ve made the old water—since I was drilling about 5ft above sea level at the time—it makes the old water level, before the great flood, about 100 to 110ft. lower that where it is now. So that was land there? Topsoil? Is that what you mean? Yeah, that was the land and it couldn’t have been the water level we have today. The tree was standing up. Kind of confusing, but I got you. I drilled a 600footer in Pecan Island and I hit the same thing around 225ft. A tree standing straight that was still where it was growing. Weird. And the only thing that can cause that is a flood? Yes, the only thing that can cause that is a flood or a second great flood. There was two of them. See, this is Delta soil. It holds a record, because of the river constantly covering up and covering up. And when you drill through it, you see a record of all the years and flooding and stuff. After 25yrs of waiting for that, you get a mental image of what it is down there. When you hit something like that, you don’t just…I don’t just scratch my head, I know what that is. So you’re pretty familiar with this phenomena? Yeh. I do more than just drill. I study it a little bit. It’s a curiosity that you’re obviously into. One time, from that 110ft layer, I got three eggs. Out of the hole. They were like turtle eggs or something. Weird. You can tell they were real old. The shell was thick and it had grey shale on the inside. What other kind of stuff gets pulled up from these holes? From about, well it’s further to the north, but about 240ft or 235ft down, there’s a layer of diamonds down there. I got a Coke bottle full of them. But they’re uncut. They’re not worth anything. The cut is what makes a diamond worth a lot. Unless you can get a lot of them and you don’t get that many when you’re drilling. I’ve been saving those for a long time. Do you ever find any Indian artifacts or something like that? No, nothing like that. We hit wood, pine sometimes, mostly Cypress. How drinkable or edible is this water that’s down there? Oh, it’s good. Really? It’s can just drink it? Yeh, that’s what you drink when you drink from the top. The city’s got water wells. Don’t they purify it to a certain degree? Mostly they toxify it. That’s what I was going to ask next. Yeh, it’ll kill you. They put some bad shit in the water? Yeh, pretty bad. Why? To keep nodules to keep from growing in the pipelines—these bristly things will grow, so they put stuff in there to retard that. And they put pipe-preservatives and chlorine and fluoride. I don’t think they really care about our teeth, cuz I don’t think will really help So how healthy would you say this treated city water is? Well, They say it’s not good for you, cuz it’s got all the chemicals in it. If you had to describe your occupation in two words, what would they be? Well-driller. Or water-well driller. Do you know anything about Dousing Rods and all that? Oh, yeh. I can do that. Does that work? Yeh, but you don’t need it around here. I can find a buried pipeline or anything with that. How do they (Dousing Rods) work? Off of the magnetic fields from the earth. The magnetics of the earth… Does it change when you get over water? No. You ever played with a magnet? Yeh. It’s just like a magnet. If you break a magnet in two, you get another north and south pole. So if you got a pipeline laying in the ground or anything that splits the magnetic field, you get a new north and a south pole. That’s what makes the dousing rods turn and work. I use bent coat hangers. If somebody wants me to find a pipeline, I don’t have to use a metal detector. I get me two coat hangers. When you walk them real slow over the pipeline, they cross. Interesting. Who taught you that? Everyone’s anxious to teach me new things when I go to someone’s house or farm to drill. One guy broke that out one day and said, “Here. Try it. Try it.” And it worked.
____________________________________________________________________ Have you ever got “the bends.” No, I haven’t. Ever seen dudes get it before? Yeh, I’ve seen a few guys take a hit. What’s it do to them? Usually a pain in the shoulder. Or they’ll get an intestinal hit and they’ll have nitrogen #4 in their intestines or their stomach. And it creates a lot of pain for them. How do they treat it? They table fix and they keep you in a decompression chamber for about 2 or 3 hours. How long have you been diving in the oilfield? About 10years. And how much do you make? $300 to $400 bucks a day. But that can go up, depending on how deep you’re diving that day. It’s called “Depth Pay.” So you get paid more for going deeper? Yeh, the deeper we go, the more we make. And why is that? The decompression factor. We have to make decompression stops. It tires your body out, the deeper that you go. The pressure that the water creates on your body, creates different atmospheres. Every 33ft is a new atmosphere. So if you go to 66ft, that’s automatically three atmospheres times the one on top of us. So that’s 3x the push that your body is normally used to. How long do you guys usually stay down? It just depends on how deep we go. We have a “schedule go-by” that determines the amount of time you can stay underwater at that depth. What’s the deepest you’ve been? 150ft. Is this in a regular scuba suit? No, it’s special thing with diving helmet and a wet suit and all that. And how long can you stay at 150ft? 50minutes. And how do you have to rest after that before you go again? 12hours. Wow. Half a day? That must be pretty strenuous diving. Yeh, they only allow you one dive a day. That’s the limit. So you must work in crew with another guy going in right after you? Yes. Soon as you come out another guy comes in after you. How many guys in a crew? Usually about 6 to 8 divers. Are there many women doing this kind of work? There’s a few of them. Not very many. But there are a few female divers. What initially got you interested in this occupation? My uncle. It’s kind of like a family thing. What would you say is the most dangerous part of the job? I would say Heliox Diving… What exactly is that? That’s when you breathe a helium & oxygen mix so you can stay deeper, longer. Wow. That’s kind of like being in space. You guys are like astronauts! Yeh, pretty much. Do you see some pretty big fish down there? A lot of barracuda and red-snapper and grouper. How big is the average barracuda? About 6ft. You ever see any Sea Monsters? Like a Big Foot of the Sea?? No, not yet.
__________________________________________________________________ How long have you been a commercial DJ?Close to 7years. What kind of station do you work at? Hip-Hop and modern R&B. I work for two stations. One in Lake Charles and 107.9, here, in Lafayette. How’s the pay? It depends on what type of radio you’re doing. If you’re doing commercials, clubs, promotions, all that. Strictly on-air DJ, like me, makes about 30-35k in a market this size, which is kind of small. Lafayette is not a big market. Places like Atlanta, New Orleans, and Dallas you can make close to $100,000 just doing what I normally do. What don’t you like about your job? Working in small markets, like here, you gotta really grind hard to make the right kind of money. It’s tough. People don’t respond to new stuff as well. They just wanna party and go with the flow and not spend too much money on advertising. That’s similar to the music scene. You play music? Yeh. I’m a rapper, also. So I work both ends. I moved here from Atlanta, where you work all the ends to come up, so I’ve got a different perspective on stuff. Lafayette’s kind of country. If you work too hard, they wanna pull you back down, but what they don’t understand is that you’ve got bust your ass off to get anywhere, especially in smaller cities. Nobody hands you nothing. How’d you get your start doing this? I was 14 and called into a radio station for some free stuff and they tripped out on my voice. Wow. You’re only 21?? You look and sound a lot older. You got that Tone-Loc gravelly thing.
That’s what they say. I’ve sounded like this since I was 14. So they gave
me a little job. Nah, I did an internship for a while. Learned the ropes for few years, and then got a job. What’s your plans for the future? Hopefully, get out of this market and get into syndication. That’s where the money is. What does “syndication” mean exactly in radio? That’s like where everybody all over the country hears your show. You’re in one place, but you’re on in like 20 cities. Like Howard Stern. Got you. Well, good luck with all that, man. Thanks. __________________________________________________________________ Interview with "Boobie" How you doing?What’s the name, brah? Dege. What is it? Dege, man. D-E-G-E. The Dege! That’s it. What kind of cigarettes you smoke? I got this red, but I smoke Kool Mild. What you got? I’m out. I smoke Marlboro Lights, but I’m out. How you doing today, Player? I’m good. What are you doing today?I’m trying to deal with this bitch. I lived with her for two years, but then I went to jail, you heard me? Now I’m back. But things done been started getting freaky, so now I’m gonna dog her out, you see? I’m dog her fucking ass out. Is she cheating on you?It’s not like she like to fuck around, but she the sneaky type. Locked up with a motherfucking nigga like me…like, whoa, yeh. Sneaky type. She bad. 51. And I took this fall for simple battery…busting her ass…I get back out and she still want to holler at me. I was there last night and she kind of acted funny, so…now I’m gonna fuck her in her ass…not clean it, and make her suck it off my dick. Teach her something. Dog her out a little bit. Bitch is sneaky. Why is it people want to be all sneaky like that? I don’t know, brah. I mean, a bitch, once they go with a man for so long, they want fresh dick. Just like a man wanting to get some strange. But them bitches eat pussy, too! So you got to watch them on both fronts. I ain’t gonna let this woman treat me like that. This is how I’m gonna let her know—fuck her like she ain’t been fucked in a long while and treat her like the nasty bitch I know she is. That’s how you keep a woman, you heard me? Show them you love them. That’s the only thing this bitch understands, so I got to play it like that. Ain’t gonna get over on me. It’s a shame we’re living in a world where there’s so much crooked shit, Boobie. Look at you; you’re all the way up in it. Yeh, but what else have I got? ____________________________________________________________________ |
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