Tales of Jake (feat. Kelly Harll)

There ya go, K9 (that’s now your rap nickname)…you get a hip hop style mention in the title (this was suggested during a jokey conversation at coffee).

Many of you remember Jake…many of you are still owed hundreds of dollars by the guy. However, only one of you (Hey, Liam) got to experience the true privilege that was living with him, as I did. I thought I’d go a bit old school and talk some memories of life with Jake. And I’ll also get a bit in to the story of just who Jake was for those of you who don’t know. So let’s take a trip back together, shall we?

First off, I actually don’t entirely remember how we came to meet Jake, but I believe it was on a BBS. Remember BBS’s? They were like the Internet, only more insular and less prone to pornography (photos and 14.4 modems didn’t exactly get along). Quickly, he became a part of our cadre. We spent a lot of time over at his place, since pretty much all of us were living at home at the time and goddamn, he had an apartment! We could curse and be loud and stuff!

Fast forward awhile, and as you may remember from an earlier post, I ended up moving in with him. It wasn’t so much a matter of want as a matter of necessity. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the chance, because I did. But…yeah. Not my first choice. Still, it beat having my dad and I kick the shit out of each other.

Liam had briefly spent a stint cooped up in the storage closet in Jake’s one bedroom apartment in some crappy building in Edmonton. And as he moved out, I moved in. Yes, yes…I lived in a closet. That means I frequently came out of the closet. Hahaha. Funny. Hilarious. Get it out of your system now…

Actually, it is funny, and I would still be needling someone else about that circumstance, so I totally understand your need to mock. So go forth and demolish me with my blessing.

Now this was the arrangement for maybe a month, until he decided one day to talk to the landlord and see if there were any 2 bedroom suites available, then took one. Not a bad idea from an accommodation point of view, but a rather shitty one from the perspective that neither of us had a job. Welcome to the first lesson in the theory that has since been tagged (by myself, and I’m rather proud of it) ‘Jake-o-nomics’. Truly, it was the most unique selection of financial concepts that the world has ever seen…who cares if it made absolutely no sense at all?

How broke were we? We basically ate one giant meal a day, a meal that consisted of a lot of rice with some kind of meat, seasoned with a bunch of that dried crap they include in those packets of Ichiban-style noodles. And yes, that’s where this stuff came from. Jake was a big believer in those noodles (they weren’t actual Ichiban, that brand was far too high end) so he bought them by the case and emptied the ‘flavour packets’ in to jars. That was what passed for seasoning in our kitchen. Sometimes we’d exchange the rice for the instant noodles…lucky us.

Allow me to share the Jake grocery shopping trip. It can be sized up in two pictures.

That thing on the right is what I can only describe as a log of processed ham. I can’t call it meat…I don’t know what to refer to that monstrosity as. All that I can say for certain is that the rare time we’d have hot dogs, I felt like I was eating healthy. Occasionally we would get some ACTUAL meat, mainly from me visiting home for the weekend and loading as much frozen beef (my folks’ freezer was loaded down with a side of beef at the time) as I could stuff in to my duffel bag around the unimportant stuff like clothes.

How in the Hell we avoided rickets is beyond me. I should have had a worse case of scurvy than any pirate in the history of the Caribbean.

Beyond the diet, I think that a sizable portion of the Jake experience can be described in a single word…and that word is Braveheart. I would get up, and Jake would be on the couch watching Braveheart. I would go make some rice…and Jake was watching Braveheart. I’d go meet my girlfriend at the time…Braveheart…and it was most assuredly playing when I returned. As I went to bed, I was lilted to sleep by the faint stirrings of the score from the movie Braveheart playing down the hallway in the living room.

To call him obsessed with that goddamn movie would be the understatement of the century. And every day, there would be new observations of the cinematography or the lighting or some other technical detail…I don’t know if it was something he was interested in or he simply couldn’t help but notice these things because the damn movie was drilled in to his brain. I also don’t care. All that I know is that I HATED that goddamn movie. I STILL hate that goddamn movie. I always will hate that goddamn movie. We had other movies! I don’t know why he couldn’t mix in something else from time to time…but no, it was a 24/7 Braveheart party, and he and I were invited.

Aside from that, the only form of entertainment we had was hopping on the computer and joining in some asinine conversation on a BBS.  And I don’t necessarily mean to say that EVERY BBS conversation was asinine, but I know that the ones we were involved in most certainly were.

Every now and then, some poor bastard would take pity on us (Hi, Liam) and we’d go out to coffee…and for us, it WAS coffee…we couldn’t afford food. Nothing like sucking back the equivalent of a pot and a half of coffee with nothing in your stomach to soak it up (This is actually a disgusting tradition that continued for many moons after Jake had left our lives). Now, I’m honestly not sure if Jake had started borrowing money from people at this point (maybe some of you can clarify this in the comments), but it didn’t take long for it to happen regardless.

Now, this is where things get a bit fucked up with Jake and I. By this point, my dad and I had patched things up and figured out our problems, and I really didn’t have any ongoing interest in spending any more time living with Braveheart. I pretty much got the Hell out of there. We really didn’t talk after that, in no small part because I managed to pull off a bit of a miracle. See, Jake had started working part time at night…spending his money on ham logs and the like. I was still a bum. I actually managed to leave owing HIM money. This is actually something of a substantial achievement.

This is also where Jake-o-nomics was truly born. A fair amount of this is stuff I’ve been told second hand, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the basics down.

Jake would ask to borrow 50 bucks from someone, with the promise that he would then use some of that money to buy them dinner. How can turn down such a lucrative opportunity?! It’s like a free meal…but not!

At some point, he met some pregnant girl in Philly on a BBS somewhere, and racked up such a substantial phone bill that his service was actually cut off. Why let that stop you, though, when you can purchase a cell phone! He then offered to buy this girl a round trip plane ticket. I don’t know if he actually went through with it, though.

He started working on some kind of software (inventory management or something, if I remember correctly) for a guy who worked at SLH. Jake WAS employed there…unloading trucks, not programming software. This guy he was talking to probably had absolutely no ability to make a purchasing decision on a major piece of software. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from immediately budgeting massive profits and buying a better computer and God knows what else (I suspect a life size William Wallace statue, perhaps?) on credit, right?

One thing that Jake pulled off that truly IS impressive…he ripped off Amway. I don’t even know how he got hooked up in to Amway, but he was, and he started selling products to friends with a pity complex. And he would then pocket the money. I have to give the man a tip of the cap for that one. Still, he assumed a monthly profit of something like $2500, and spent accordingly.

Eventually, the various forms of credit that he had maxed out all came calling at once, and he ended up moving in with Kyle and Erron, who were so thrilled with their new house guest that Kyle ended up driving him to his grandparents’ place in Merritt, BC. So ended the Legend of Jake, though he made a brief appearance out of the blue promising to pay back the many dollars he owed several different people, only to once more vanish in to the ether.

Was he real? Who can say! His economic theory is the basis for story and song, though (or at least should be).

And since I threw a featuring bit up there for Kelly, I figure I need to spin another Jake-related yarn with him as a part of it.

Well before I moved in with him (while Liam was the roomie du jour), several of us headed over to Jake’s place one night with a lot of beer. A LOT of beer. We spent the evening just joking around and drinking a lot of beer (A LOT of beer). Finally, it came down to the few of us who still remained. Kelly was sleeping in Liam’s closet. I believe it was just myself, Atti, maybe Kyle and Jake. One of us inquired about a box in the living room. Oh, that was Liam’s stuff.

Again, for emphasis…LIAM’S STUFF.

So, someone dove in. Oh look, videos! One was played. It was porn. It was really bad porn. Liam apparently has atrocious taste in porn, or perhaps was choosing from some kind of XXX  bargain bin. But yeah, a few dudes sitting in a room, drinking beer and laughing at bad porn. Welcome to the single gayest moment of my life.

During this bad porn, one of the male leads would continually make a sound that apparently was him sharing his pleasure with the world, but it sounded like a donkey who had gotten his testicles caught in some sort of motor. It was a horrifying noise, but it was funny as Hell. Even funnier was the fact that this actually woke Kelly up, and he came stumbling in to the room all glassy eyed, probably expecting to see one of us bleeding to death and crying for help on the floor…and instead seeing several of us watching some dude bang a chick on TV.

I promised I’d mention ya, K9. You’re welcome.