Back when I worked at Donut Farm, I had the opening shift on Fridays. I rolled my ass out of bed at 7:15 and washed my face and brushed my teeth and walked two minutes from my house to Donut Farm, which was a block away. For the first hour and a half, I was alone . . . I usually just put on fuckin classical music and drank coffee and read a book. Out the window I could see the Berkeley Hills, way the hell over there. Usually only a handful of people came in around that time, mostly to get coffee. I can think of no greater enemies of mine than the morning and the sun that comes with it, and yet it was not so bad because I only worked till 1:30, eating as much free food and drinking as much coffee as I liked, and then I could go home and sleep for a few hours and still have the rest of the day to do whatever it is I do with my days.

And on those Fridays, I worked with a cool dude named Neil who came in around nine. He was the cook. Neil was from Austin and had given up his life in the mountains of Northern California where he had sold weed for several years. He said he made a lot of money but he was always working and having to hang around a bunch of assholes, and there was the ever-present phantom threat that the ATF was spying on him. So he went straight and worked at Donut Farm of all places. He drove a huge white truck that essentially had monster truck tires on it.

On Neil’s huge bicep, he had a tattoo of a penguin standing next to a bowling pin with a broken heart hovering above them. I once said to Neil: “Neil, I hate to ask what a tattoo means, because I know that is an annoying question, and also it’s not as though a tattoo has to mean anything at all. But I’ve got to know the significance of the broken-hearted penguin and the bowling pin, if any.”

To which Neil replied: “You’ve obviously never done PCP before.”

I did not inquire any further. I love not knowing what that means.

Anyway: Somewhere along the line, Neil and I decided Fridays should be dedicated to Black Sabbath. And so we created Black Sabbath Fridays, and we played all nine Ozzy albums in chronological order from BLACK SABBATH to NEVER SAY DIE! . . . which clocks in at nearly six hours of Black Sabbath, and so unless I had to stay later and help the second server who came in at 10:30, I usually only got through SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH, which is my favorite one . . . though yeah: it was a cool thing we did.

Mutually and without discussing it, we shared a sacred ritual for “Changes” . . . we did not talk while it was on! Hey man I guess we just held a certain reverence for it. It’s one of my favorite Sabbath songs.

Yesterday when I read that Ozzy had died, I put it on. Ozzy was one of my favorite dudes. He was like Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando and Orson Welles in that he seemed like a dude who embodied the joy of being alive. I will miss him.

Last night I watched the second part of THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION for the first time in many years . . . and with the exception of Ozzy, Lemmy, Alice Cooper, and Dave Mustaine, everyone else in the documentary comes off like an insufferable egotistical asshole (almost all of whom are total nobodies now). Ozzy’s segments are just him making breakfast and talking about his life and being in Black Sabbath. He comes off like a cool and decent dude. He also has the final line in the movie, which is the best line:

Farewell my brother!!!

now all my days
are filled with tears
wish i could go back
and change these years