You sound tired a lot of the time. Are you?

Great question. Reminds me of a baseball story. There is an old story of a pitcher named Dock Ellis throwing a no-hitter under the influence of LSD. I just wrote a song about it. Jock rock with a drug twist, I call it. Touching. It makes me want to tell my hallucination story. It, too, is touching.

You see, when I was growing up in Portland in the eighties, my father pushed my brother and I into sports. My brother was great. I was not, but I tried. And by the time I was a junior at Beaverton Hgh School, I was on the varsity football team.

Now, if you weren’t on the team, let me sum up what it means to be on a football team in high school: Everyday for about four months, you and about 50 guys are gonna get together rain or shine, put on some incredibly uncomfortable outfits, go outside, stand in a field and, for about two hours, run into and away from each other in regard to the movement of a ball all while being yelled at by grown-ups. Now, sometimes it happens later at night. Sometimes, you might even do this at another school. Sometimes, students from other schools will do this with you and sometimes there will be a crowd gathered around, but, for the most part, it’s the same thing. They tell you you’re "honoring" and "representing" your school. They say you can "win district" or "state" or make "all-state" and things of this nature, but, tangibly, all you’re really doing is what I described above.

I remember that year, standing in the field, looking across the way at a different field full of kids about half as many as us with no outfits. They were just talking and smoking. Some of the older players informed me my sophomore year that this was the "smoke pit" and those kids were "burn outs," the natural enemy of the jock. I was told by the coach that these kids were losers, sheep, dirty kids standing around in a field doing nothing.

Fine. I didn't want any trouble, so I held to my clique rules. At first…

Then, one day, I met a “burn out" and we started talking. While we were talking it hit me: he seemed just as nice as anybody else I’d ever talked to. Then, he asked if I’d ever eaten mushrooms.

"No," I said.

"Want to?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

Well, about half an hour later I realized I wasn't gonna be able to go to football practice, so I went with my new friend to the "smoke pit." It was the first time in my life that I looked at my life from another angle. I kept staring across the field at this life I’d been leading. There they were, the football team. And you know what? They looked they could be perceived as losers, too. They looked like they could be perceived as sheep, too. Like dirty kids standing around in a field doing nothing. The only difference I could see was that they were wearing uncomfortable outfits and being yelled at by grown-ups. Oh, and also they didn't consider "the jock" a natural enemy. The smoke pit had seemingly evolved past that.

Then, out of the blue, the goal post turned into a candle. Then it turned into a Roman candle. Then a rocket ship. And then it took off. Amazing! These mushrooms had altered my reality and, watching my reality change, it occurred to me that my reality had been similarly altered in the past. By my parents.

They took 40 kids running around uncomfortably on a field, being yelled at by grown-ups, and turned it into "representing my school" and "winning district" and "making all-state,” much the same way the mushrooms had turned the goal post into a rocket ship. Mmmmnnnn???

And then it really hit me. I looked over at the group of guys who were pushing a tackling dummy, and, as I stared, the tackling dummy turned into Fred Sanford. Then Jesus. And they were still pushing him. And then Jesus turned into another guy that also looked like Jesus, but wasn’t. He looked like a guy who might have hung out with Jesus back in the day and he turned toward me. He noticed me staring at him from across the field and he shouted over to me, "Do you have two tens for a five? Or two quarters for a nickel? Can you tell me how to get to Arkabutler? Or can you get there from here?" And I knew in this moment, brothers and sisters, that I was never going to go back to football practice.

Ironically, today I am Coach Boyer and the Beaverton Beaver football team’s number one fan. Why? Because a) I think we might "take state" this year and b) we have the coolest goal posts in the district.

That, my dear readers, is the touching story of how psychedelic mushrooms turned me from the jock my father wanted me to be into the glorious example of good citizenship that I am today: a tree-hugging peace-loving pot-smoking porn-watching barefooting folksinging lazy-ass hippie.

Thank you, Jesus, friend of Jesus, and Mr. Sanford.

Stay in school, kids.