My Adventure With Green Day: The Story of Laurie L.

This originally appeared in Tales of Blarg fanzine, and was later reprinted on the insert to Green Day’s Kerplunk album. About a million copies later, I heard that Green Day hadn’t been all that happy about it being there.  Oh well, can’t please everyone, though I am sorry if anyone was seriously offended.  Anyway, the story’s a classic now, even if I do say so myself.

My Adventure With Green Day
by Laurie L.
Dear Diary,

I still can’t believe it!!! Me, Laurie L., the plainest, most boring girl at Pinole Valley High School, the girl that all the boys bark at when I walk by, the girl whose mother wouldn’t even let her go to a New Kids On The Block concert because “there’s often a bad element at those rock concerts, dear,” I got to go on a four day tour with my total hearthrobs, GREEN DAY!!!!

Little did I know that when I entered that “Win A Dream Date With Green Day” contest in Tiger Beat magazine (my lame-o brother calls it Puberty Beat, but what does he know, he’s probably a homo anyway) that I, out of all the millions of Green Day fans in America would get picked! The day that letter arrived was the happiest day of my life. But before I could get too excited, I realized I had a biiig problem…. my parents!!
I knew they’d never let me go off with a rock band for even one night, let alone four days! So for once I decided not to put up with their crap. I wasn’t sure what to do, so at school the next day I went around to all the weirdos and asked them what would THEY do? See, I figure people who have blue mohawks and only come to school when they feel like it and make these gross magazines with naked pictures in them must have figured out a way to handle their parents.

So I went to this guy Eggplant (boy, I feel sorry for him, his parents must have really hated him to name him something like that), and he looked at me like, “You really want to go on tour with Green Day?” And I said, “Oh yeah, I’d DIE to go on tour with Green Day.”

He looked at me kind of funny and said, “Yeah, but would you KILL?” I thought he was joking, but I wasn’t sure. Then I looked at his beady little eyes piercing deep into my soul and I KNEW he wasn’t. I thought, hmmm, what the hell, you only go around once, might as well go for it, blah blah, blah… So I said, all kind of hoarse and everything, “Yeah, I guess I would….” And he said, “Then the one you should talk to is Claude.”

Omigod!!! Even I had heard of Claude. He’s so evil that he’s practically…SATANIC!!! He dropped out of school in eighth grade and all he ever does is take drugs and read weird books and molest little girls. I was always afraid to even look at him. But I’d gone too far to stop now. After school instead of going home I went to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley where all the scummy people hang out, and sure enough, there was Claude. He looked all perverted and he was smoking cigarettes and all these girls were standing around him like they wanted him to do bad stuff to them.

But they got out of the way when they saw me coming, and Claude wasn’t mean or dirty or anything. He was actually kind of nice. He said, “My friend Eggplant tells me you have a problem.”

I said, “Two problems, actually. Two really big ones.” “Parents, huh? This ought to take care of them.”

He handed me a brown bottle it was full of pills. “How many of these should I take?” I asked him. He laughed, kind of heh-heh like. “No, you don’t take them, THEY do. Your parents.”

“Oh no,” I said, “my parents wouldn’t take drugs. They’re Christian Scientists.”

“You look like a smart little girl. I’ll bet you can figure something

out.”

And you know what, he was right, I DID. That night I offered to help my mother with dinner. Then, when she wasn’t looking I emptied all of Claude’s capsules into the mashed potatoes. Then I said I didn’t feel like eating, and went upstairs and listened to all my Green Day records five or six times. After a while I stuck my head out the door. “Yuck!” I heard my father saying. “These are the worst mashed potatoes I ever tasted in my life!”

“Then cook your own goddam dinner, you lazy scumbag. I’m not your slave.” I was surprised, my mother didn’t usually swear.

My dad said, “I’m not going to eat these, they taste like shit.”

But my mother yelled at him, “You eat those potatoes or I’ll dump them over your head and shove the dish up your ass.”

“Shhh” he said, “Laurie will hear you.”

“She’s asleep, the stupid little bitch. I swear, I don’t know how my daughter could be such an idiot. I bet the babies got switched at the hospital.”

“Now, now, she’s just a little bit slow.”

“Yeah, and I wonder who she got it from. Are you going to eat those potatoes?”
My dad always does what mom tells him. I even heard him scraping the bowl. After a while I heard a clunk and a crash and then the whole dining room table fell over. I went downstairs and they were both flopped out on the floor, like totally dead. It was pretty weird.

I realized that I’d better do something before my brother came home, because I didn’t have enough pills to get rid of him, too. Luckily we have a brand new garbage disposal, so I took a butcher knife and cut mom and dad into pieces and put them down the garbage. It took a long time and it was kind of messy, but I kept singing all my favorite Green Day songs, and it made the work easier.

The only trouble was, the bones wouldn’t go down the garbage disposal, and now I was getting nervous, because my brother would be home any minute. Then I got an idea. I gathered up all the bones and carried them out into the backyard and threw them over the fence to our neighbor’s pitbull. He was so happy he didn’t even bark at me.

Then my brother came home. “Where’s mom and dad?” he asked.

“Uh, they went away. To… uh… Utah!”

“Utah! Why the hell would they go there?”

“Uh, I think they decided to become Mormons or something.”

He looked at me kind of weird and went upstairs to look at his porno pictures. I went in my room and started packing my bags.

The next morning, I was at the airport. My own private jet waiting for me there, and you know what, it was all painted GREEN, and on the side it said, “WELCOME ABOARD LAURIE L., GREEN DAY TOUR ’90.” So I went on the plane, and I was the only passenger! And all the stewardesses just waited on me! And we listened to Green Day records all the way to Arizona, where the tour was going to start.

When I got there, there was a limo, a GREEN limo, of course, waiting for me, and this guy in a top hat opened the door for me, and when I got in the back seat THERE THEY WERE! All three of them, Billie Joe, Mike , and Tre!!! I was so excited I didn’t even know where to sit. I mean, I didn’t know which one I wanted to sit next to first.

So I sat in between Billie Joe and Tre and they both started talking to me, and I didn’t know which one I liked best cause they were both so nice, but then I decided I liked Billie Joe better because Tre kept singing these rap songs that had a lot of bad words in them. In fact, I was surprised that they let him be in the band, because I didn’t think Green Day ever said swear words. Well, they did on that one song, “Knowledge,” but that’s only because it was written by that other band, Operation Ivy, who I heard were a bunch of punk rockers.

Then we went to a show at this place called “Hippycore” and there were all these people with long hair standing around eating vegetables and stuff. It was kind of icky. But the worst thing was when I found out that some OTHER bands were going to play, too. I got really mad and said, “Why can’t Green Day just play for three hours. Why do you have to have these other stupid bands?”

Everybody told me to be quiet, that the other bands were good too. But they weren’t. I mean they weren’t Green Day. They didn’t even have any songs I could sing along to. So I kept yelling, “BOOOOO! You’re terrible! We want Green Day!!” until some punker girl told me to shut up or she would rearrange my face with her bottle opener.

I wondered if she was just trying to be friendly, then I decided she wasn’t, so I went outside to wait for my heroes. But when they finally played, it was worth everything. Billie sang every one of my favorite songs, and then, right in the middle of “Disappearing Boy,” he stopped and said, “I’d like to dedicate this song to our special friend Laurie L., who came down from Pinole to be with us here today. She’s just so beautiful and nice, gosh, I know if she was my girlfriend, I’d never disappear again.”

That’s when I fainted. When I woke up, the show was over and they were packing up the equipment.

I said, “Billie Joe, did you really mean what you said on stage?”

And he looked at me all sincere, and said, “You know it, babe, but our love can never be, because I already belong to another. Besides, you’re too young and innocent for the life of a rock and roll wife. Take my advice, go back to Pinole and finish high school, and some day you’ll make some lucky man very happy.”

“But Billie, I’d do anything to be with you. I already did! I killed my parents just so I could be with you here tonight!!!”

He laughed and said, “Really? Killed your parents, huh? That’s pretty cool.”
Then we all got in the Green Day tour bus to drive to Los Angeles. I was pretty excited because I never was in Hollywood before. I had a map of all the movie stars’ houses and everything. But we didn’t see any movie stars, just a bunch of boys with big hairdos and women that Tre said were prostitutes. I never know whether to believe him or not, he’s kind of mean, you know. I’m starting to think that maybe he’s my least favorite member of Green Day, because he kept singing that horrible Ice Cube song that goes “bitch-killa, bitch-killa.” Besides, when I asked him for his autograph, he said I had to talk to his agent, and when I asked who his agent was, he started to unzip his pants.

So I screamed and Billie and Mike told Tre to behave and he did after that, even thought I said I thought they should tie him up or something until the next show, but Mike said a lot of drummers are like that, their brains just get rattled around too much from all that pounding. Then you know what? I saw Billie and Mike drinking out of BEEBOTTLES!!

I was shocked, because they’re not even 21, in fact they’re only 18, so I asked them what was the big idea, but Billie took me aside and whispered, “Listen, you’ve got to keep this a secret, but there isn’t really beer in these bottles.”

“There isn’t?” I asked.

“No, it’s really milk. Everybody in Green Day likes milk best of all, but the thing is, we drink it out of beer bottles because if we don’t people will make fun of us and say we’re sissies.”

Then I understood, and I felt so sorry for the boys. Peer pressure is such a terrible thing. At the show in Hollywood I even got to stay backstage and everything, but just when the boys were getting ready to play there was a knock on the dressing room. “It must be our deli tray,” everyone said, but it wasn’t, it was the POLICE! Omigod!! I jumped in front of the officers and said, “Wait, don’t arrest Green Day, it’s not beer in those bottles, it’s really just milk!”

He looked at me and said, “Is it now? And your name wouldn’t happen to be Laurie, would it, little lady?”

And I said, “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Then we’ll have to ask you to come with us.”

“What do you mean,” I screamed. “Are you crazy? Green Day are going to start playing any minute now!”

But he said, “Sorry, it can’t be helped,” and they took me in the back of the police car and handcuffed me and everything, and then I thought, oh god, I wonder if this has anything to do with my parents?

Sure enough it did. That stupid pit bull dragged one of my dad’s collarbones into the house and his owner found it and called the police. So I didn’t get to see the rest of the tour, and I had to go to court and everything and now I’m in jail, and I might not get out until the year 2019.

Oh well. Everyone’s pretty nice here and they let me listen to my Green Day tapes. But they all ask me, was it worth it? Killing your parents just so you could go on tour with Green Day?

And I just smile, a deep, knowing smile, because I’ve seen and done things that they’ll never experience, not if they live to be 100, and I say, “Of course it was. After all, everyone gets two parents, but there’s only one GREEN DAY.”