Ron had a friend named Saucy Jack who was also from Trevor and also shared Ron’s subversive sense of humor. The two lived together and were always into something.
Saucy was the perfect partner for Ron. Ron had a shaved head, huge earrings, and generally looked punk. Saucy, on the other hand, looked like Joe Q. Public. You’d buy what he was selling. An example: Some years back, Saucy and a buddy of his bullshitted their way through an episode of the MTV show “Fanatic” by saying they were huge Bruce Willis fans. They, like most everyone else, could give two shits about Bruce Willis, but they’d heard he was gonna be one of the people they featured and MTV took the bait. They were flown to London where he was opening a Planet Hollywood to meet and interview him. Jack said that by the first night the MTV people were already suspicious and kept peppering them with questions like, “Are you guys REALLY that into Bruce Willis?” and stuff. At one point, they were threatened with MTV revoking their return plane tickets if they could prove they it was just a ruse. Jack and his accomplice refused to budge, though, swearing their allegiance to Willis and calling upon their vast pop culture knowledge to reference songs from Willis’ long-forgotten blues album “Midnight at Bruno’s” or whatever the fuck they called that piece of shit. They were put up in a four-star hotel in downtown London and told the meeting would be the next day. So, they partied it up on MTV’s dime all night and stumbled iinto the interview. It’s funny, but if you see the video, you simply CAN NOT believe MTV didn’t just throw their asses right out the door. The spend the entire episode practically laughing at the camera. When they finally did the interview, it only ended up lasting a couple minutes. An aide came in and whispered something into Willis’ ear and that was that. Turns out, what he whispered was that Phil Hartman (another partner in the Planet Hollywood empire) had just been shot and killed by his wife. So the pair were deposited onto a plane home under the disapproving frowns of the MTV suits, who steadfastly believed (correctly) that they’d been had.
Ron had an unusual childhood. Not a bad one, just an unusual one. His parents had divorced when he was young and his mom dated a guy named Ross for most of Ron’s childhood with whom Ron chose to live when they split up. Ross died recently, shortly after Ron’s mom, and I truly felt for him. It was one of the toughest periods anyone I’ve known has gone through. Ross was the coolest fucking guy, too. Everyone loved him. He’d come to our Wisconsin shows and hang with us and was a genuinely interesting cat. At his funeral a procession of people appeared out of the woodwork to thank Ron. It turns out Ross had been secretly helping out many, many people financially, emotionally, or both. And ya know, I wasn’t the least bit surprised, he was that kinda dude.
One day I was over at my parents doing laundry and mooching food when Pete called.
“Brian quit.” He said.
I asked why and it was pretty much what we figured would be his eventual undoing; he preferred metal and he preferred playing guitar, and though he wouldn’t say it-he was just too good for Lunkhead.
I thought for a minute and said, “Well ya know, there’s this guy I work with and he’s cool as hell and he plays bass…”
Pete asked if he was any good, and I said I didn’t know. Pete asked if he was cool.
“He’s into Crimpshrine.” I said.
It was done. We called Ron and he said he’d think about it and call us back. The phone rang a few minutes later and Ron said he was in. The whole thing took about fifteen minutes.
