Vapid Magazine : A Personal Note ( from current editor, Jonathan Shallowpond)

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A Personal Note:
Jonathan Shallowpond, editor of Vapid Magazine, here, I’ll get right to the point. My wife kicked me out. Said she was tired of supporting me. Told me to go get a job. I told her that I had a job, that I was editor of Vapid Magazine. She said ‘I mean one that pays f***ing money.”
So here I am living in my parents’ basement, sleeping on a camp bed. My dad’s okay with it but my mother keeps giving me that “you should have done medicine or law” look.
It’s not too bad except the basement doubles as a rehearsal space for my dad’s band which consists of my dad, Johnny Shallowpond Senior on guitar and vocals, his friend Slim on bass and his friend Jake on drums. They rehearse twice a week in the afternoon which means I have to put my headphones on while I’m writing but they play so loud that it’s impossible to concentrate.
I’m not sure what they are rehearsing for because they don’t do gigs, I guess they are just jammin’. Their name changes every couple of months. They started off as The Liver Spots , then it was The Good, the Bad and the Varicose. Currently it’s Johnny Statin and The Beta Blockers and they keep playing the same song which they wrote to the tune of the Doors’ song, ‘Riders on the Storm’. It’s called “Geezer in the Pool”. It goes like this (my dad shouts out chord changes between the lines):

Geezer in the pool
EM! A!
Geezer in the pool
EM! A!
He’s got his swim trunks on
C! D!
He’s got his swim trunks on
EM! A!
Like a flag without a pole
A fish without a shoal
Geezer in the pool.
EM! A!

That’s it, that’s all they’ve got. They just keep repeating the same verse and then occasionally my dad tries a guitar solo and they all break down in hysterics. .
But, you know, we share a few beers after and have a chat so it can be a nice break from my work bringing vapidity to the world.

There’s one thing that puzzles me a bit though. Every now and then, my dad sits me down and says:
“You know, son, your mother and I are not getting any younger”
I mean. What’s with that?

at night
basement drafts
drumkit cymbals tinkle

Keeping it Vapid!
Jonathan Shallowpond

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.

24 thoughts on “Vapid Magazine : A Personal Note ( from current editor, Jonathan Shallowpond)”

  5. Brendan's avatarBrendan

    Played with great vapidity! There’s a guy I played hard rock with back in the ’70s who’s in one of those granpa bands — the Strolling Bones or something.

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  9. Frewin55's avatarFrewin55

    Laughed out loud, except the bit about you getting thrown out – the basement space not so much liminal but truly vapid…

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