Yummy.

We particularly championed this sort of thing at American. One day, Jim Rose himself even showed up at one of our staff meetings to perform something called the "Dick Circus." In this one-man show performed for our staff, Rose pulled down his pants and proceeded to bend and stretch his dick into all these un-godly shapes and things.

Being the squeamish sort of guy I've always been, I felt myself getting sick about a minute in, and had to flee the room. My already mildly "un-cool" image at this point ( I was about ten years older than most of the other staffers there) had now became a curse I would never be able to reverse.

And it would only get worse...

Not long after the "Dick Circus," we were treated to a video from the goth-metal band Danzig at another meeting. Glenn Danzig himself was a pretty creepy character when you met him up close and personal. He was a short, sawed-off sort of guy who dressed all in black, and who pretty much lived his onstage "I 'Yam Evil" sort of image offstage as well. Despite his modest height, Danzig was also a muscle-head built like a brick outhouse, whose silent sort of weirdness made your arm-hairs literally stand on end when in his presence.

I tried to bond with the guy once, figuring the fact that we shared the same first name might help. It didn't.

So Danzig had this video for the song called "Mother," that we were going to use to promote a live EP called Thrall: Demonsweatlive. The video starts with some dungeony black-and-white images that fans of Nine Inch Nails might recognize. So I'm watching this thing thinking to myself "yeah right, I get it...Danzig is one evil sumbitch...yawn!" When all of a sudden, out of nowhere comes this scene where a guy is getting a nail hammered through his penis.

Ouch!

This inspired a quick package check of my own right in the middle of the meeting, followed by an overwhelming urge to puke my guts out.

What is it with these guys I work with and the need to do terrible, un-natural things to a guy's most precious, umm..."thing," I thought to myself. Unfortunately, my fate at the label was now pretty much set. And my days there were likewise numbered.

In fact, the very next day when I showed up to work, I had a present waiting for me at my desk. It was — you guessed it — a big, rusty nail. No one ever claimed credit for the gift, but I have my suspicions.

Not long after that, I got the "nail" for good from Def American. But that's another story...