leave bob alone!

IT'S BEEN ABOUT A YEAR NOW SINCE THE GLORIOUS NIGHT I FOUND out Bob Plant was my neighbor. That's right, we here in Austin call rock star Robert by the more prosaic "Bob" – because that's how he likes it.

How do I know this?

I heard it during a cab ride down South Congress. Wayne, my new customer, was a hockey-playing Austin newbie by way of Boston when he was invited to his friend's Travis Heights backyard barbecue last year.

"So I'm standing there next to the grill," Wayne told me as my jaw began to drop, "and all of a sudden I notice the old guy watching the meat cooking next to me. I only realized it was Robert Plant until he stuck out his hand and introduced himself with a thick British accent –

''Ello, mate. I'm Bob. We live across the street.'"

You know Bob P. is feeling pretty comfy in Austin when he's showing up unannounced to his neighbor's backyard barbecue.

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The first time I heard Bob was living in Austin, the news came from a trio of UT grad students. The 3 Ph.D candidates, all of them studying to be history gurus, had been getting their drink on at Crown & Anchor before I picked them up for a ride home. I don't recall how the subject came up, but before long they were telling me about some photos the bartender had been showing them on his phone.

"The guy had pictures of Robert Plant with his 2 pomeranians at a vet's office up here in Hyde Park," the future Civil War historian said all too calmly.

"No!?" I blurted out in disbelief, if not a little rudely. "Robert Plant's bringing his dogs to my neighborhood vet?! Bullshit! You sure those pictures weren't Photoshopped? Plus, what's one of the greatest rock stars ever doing with a couple pomeranians? You ever been around a pomeranian? Yappy little fuckers."

"I think they were springer spaniels," pointed out History Wiz #2.

"I thought they were more like shih tzus," countered History Wiz #3.

"Either way," said the aspiring Civil War buff, "they were not the kind of dogs you'd expect a guy like that to be showing up with at your local vet's office."

"Although," History Wiz #2 pointed out, "in his defense, the dogs did have a bit of the rock star big hair."

The budding historians went on to tell me that Bob was dating Hyde Park's favorite songbird, Patty Griffin, and that's probably why he was in our 'hood.

Thanks to the internet, the next day I found out that the man responsible for some of my favorite music ever lived less than 5 blocks from me. Don't worry, I'm not stalking the guy.

But I'm not gonna lie. We did see a sudden spike in the number of walks we took around the neighborhood.

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I continued to believe I had a rock icon living a few blocks away until I heard Wayne's story about bumping into Bob P. at that Travis Heights barbecue. In the months since, I've had at least a dozen customers in my cab share their stories of seeing Mr. Plant at various spots around town.

A Westlake guy in his 50s – old enough to discover Zeppelin when they were the biggest band in the world – spotted Bob shopping at Whole Foods.

A girl who works at Fado said Bob comes in sometimes to watch soccer. ("Biggest head I've ever seen on a human being," she laughed. "Just massive.")

One of my regulars, Bailey, saw him more than once walking his dogs around Travis Heights. (Don't recall her take on the breed.)

We heard from a waitress at Quality Seafood that Bob came in with Shawn Colvin a few weeks ago – only to be bothered by a gushing fan during dinner. (C'mon, lady. Leave Bob alone!)

Last June I told my visiting musician friend, Colby Logan, that Bob was living in Austin. Not more than 2 hours later, Colby sends me a text: "Just saw Robert Plant" (He and his wife spotted Bob P. rolling down South Congress in a blue convertible.)

Apparently everyone in Austin has seen Bob around town except me.

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I do, however, feel somewhat qualified to regale townies and tourists alike with Zeppelin trivia and all these stories of Austin brushes with Bob. Plus, I've got my own insights and opinions on Bob and the band after working on an ill-fated Led Zeppelin documentary project a few years ago for Spitfire Pictures.

I was hired by Spitfire to come up with a fresh concept and pitch it in a document called a treatment. (Part blueprint, part sales pitch.) For close to 2 months I immersed myself in Zeppelin. Listened to nothing but Zeppelin. Read everything I could about Zeppelin. Watched as many of the existing Zeppelin documentaries that I could stomach, a little daunted by the fact that there were nearly 20 of them. (Give us a FRESH idea, damn it!)

After several weeks in full Zeppelin immersion, I came up with my spin. I wanted to tell the epic Led Zeppelin saga through the story of John Bonham. Bonzo was a family man who lived in the English countryside with his wife and kids. When the offer came to join this hot new band with the great Jimmy Page from the Yardbirds and acclaimed session musician John Paul Jones, Bonham turned down the gig. It was only at the urging of his good friend, Bob, that Bonham joined Led Zeppelin.

And we all know how that turned out.

After all my research, I got the impression that the '70s rock god Robert Plant was – despite the sex, drugs & rock 'n roll veneer – not all that different from Backyard Barbecue Bob: a good guy, with a good heart and a relentless conscience.

It's no wonder that Bob, of the 3 surviving Zeppelin members, is the one who doesn't want to get the band back together. Because for all their fame and success, it wouldn't be surprising if there was some guilt, shame and heartache forever linked with those days too. Shame for the way they treated some of the women they blew through. Guilt for talking his best friend into a life and a lifestyle that would eventually kill him. And heartache not just over the loss of his good friend Bonzo in 1980, but also for the sudden death of his young son, Karac, 3 years earlier when the band was touring the U.S.

For all the glam and glory of those days, there was also plenty of darkness
and suffering. So you can't fault Bob for not wanting to re-trace those steps with a Zeppelin world tour that would have half the planet buzzing with anticipation.

I admire the guy for having the balls to say no when the whole world wants him to say yes. I admire the fact that he's trying new things. Sticking to his guns. Living in the now. Moving to Austin for love.

But staying because he loves Austin.

So let's give the man his space.

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This past weekend I had the first Zeppelin album spinning in the cab's CD player. We'd just left west campus and I had the volume down low so as not to offend the UT kids in the backseat. It wasn't long before the girl sitting behind me spoke up.

"I LOVE Led Zeppelin."

"YOU love Led Zeppelin?"

I'm always a little shocked when anyone under 30 loves Zeppelin. Even though I know I shouldn't be. Good music is good music. Even if it was made 2 generations ago.

"I grew up with Led Zeppelin," the girl said. "My dad loved Led Zeppelin. It was on ALL the time when I was a kid. This right here is a slice of my childhood. Turn it up."

I cranked up the volume just as Jimmy Page was kicking off his blistering guitar solo on "Whole Lotta Love." For a split second I considered talking over the music, asking the girl if she knew that Robert Plant lived in Austin, telling her about my strangest Bob story yet.

But I came to my senses. Bit my tongue. Cranked it up a little more. Then let the ride down Guadalupe – trying to time all the lights before making that left onto 7th St. – tingle my ears and rattle my soul with the blazing genius of Plant and Page and balls-to-the-wall Bonzo.

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That strangest Bob story yet occurred a few months ago. It was a Saturday night and I was driving 3 people to a party in Travis Heights. As we slowly rolled down Annie St., I gestured to the intersection ahead and said in my best tour guide voice – "And on the right, we have the street where the great Robert Plant now lives."

From the backseat a familiar voice piped up.

"I just played tennis with him last week."

"What?!"

Dixie had recently become a BobCab semi-regular. The first night I picked her up she wasn't feeling so great. Her husband of several years – the guy she'd been with since she was 18 – had just moved out of their house that day. A few days before that she got the news her dad had brain cancer.

So if anyone deserved to play a little tennis with Bob Plant in Austin, it was Dixie. (And who knew the guy played tennis? Springer spaniels and tennis – the man is full of surprises.)

"Yeah, we played doubles," Dixie casually continued, as if she was describing a new friend from boarding school. "He played with my mom. And I played with my friend who's friends with him."

I didn't want to be THAT guy and grill her for info. But a few quick questions and a short ride to the Travis Heights party left me with a few interesting Bob tidbits:

* In addition to that blue convertible Colby saw him driving down South Congress, apparently Bob also drives a Crown Vic. I know. I couldn't believe it either. I drive a Crown Vic myself. And my name's Bob. And I moved to Austin for a lady. Geez, it's like we're living parallel lives here.

* Bob's go-to grocery store is the HEB on Oltorf – "because the Mexicans don't recognize him in there."

* Apparently Bob's made several attempts to get his Texas driver's license. But every time he goes to the DMV and gets in line, he loses patience after 10 or 15 minutes and leaves. "I told him he should go the Georgetown DMV," Dixie said. "He'd have 3 or 4 people in front of him, be in and out in no time."

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A few weeks ago, after hearing yet another brush with Bob story, my girlfriend asked me: "Have you thought about what you'd say if you did see him?"

"If I saw him out living his life I wouldn't say anything. I'd glance at him real quickly, then turn away and act like I didn't notice him. Then I'd muster up all my strength and will power to make sure I didn't turn back around and stare."

But if I bump into Bob at the DMV – whether it's in Austin, Georgetown, even Pflugerville – I'm definitely gonna offer to let him cut in line.

Ramble on!

my apologies

To the douche, er, dude who jumped on the hood of my cab hoping to get a ride after the bars had closed on 6th Street:

My good sir, I hope you will accept my apologies for snapping at you like that a few weeks ago. After you did an impressive, albeit drunken and slightly slow-motion Jason Bourne shoulder roll off the hood of my washed, leased and dent-free white Crown Victoria, I should have kept my cool. Clearly. A couple deep breaths and a few moments to contemplate YOUR needs is obviously what the situation called for.

Instead, opting not to focus on what could have driven you to make such an asinine decision, I flew into the kind of public rage a civilized man like myself is not familiar with. Throwing my cab in park in the middle of 7th Street to get out of the car and confront you was most definitely a bad idea. Especially with two customers sitting in the back of my cab. My bad, guys.

And then to explode out of my cab like that, like a frothing Tasmanian devil — not cool. You looked pretty scared, like you thought I might be some unhinged maniac who was gonna clock you with my handy drumsticks. Maybe for a split second there . . . I was. Maybe for a brief snippet of time, all the drunk a-holes and d-bags who've flipped me off and screamed at me for not stopping for them as I'm on my way to pick up one of my regulars who has called me for a ride, maybe all that rage and stupidity that's been blasted at me when the bars close finally came out in our encounter. Your drunken stupidity made me realize I need to chill the fuck out.

So I thank you for that.

I'm not so proud of that torrent of inarticulate fury I leveled at you once I was out of my cab, either.

"What the FUCK, dude?! Are you KIDDING me?! What the fuck?! THIS is how you . . . you . . . you go about getting me to fucking STOP for you?! You fucking idiot! Do I go to your job and fuck up your shit?! Huh?! Would you like that?! What the FUCK, man?!"

My brain was in flames and the synapses weren't firing quite right. What I meant to say was:

"Listen, asshole. Jumping on my hood is probably the WORST way to get me to pick you up. In fact, it makes me never want to pick you up. Ever. Do I go to your house and destroy your property? Not cool, dick. Not to mention the fact that should you damage the cab — which I do not own, btw — I WILL track you down and get you to pay. Which would be a big pain in the ass for me AND you. So stop jumping on hoods, guy. Besides, I wasn't gonna be stopping for you anyway because I was on my way to pick up someone who called me ahead of time for a ride. Maybe if you stop jumping on hoods, some cab driver out there would be willing to take your call and come scoop you up in the middle of all this bullshit."

This is what I should've said. I apologize for not being more articulate in the moment.

And that move I made to crack you in the nuts with my drumsticks? That was bush. My apologies. That must've felt pretty emasculating when you cowered like a little girl. And I must thank you for being such a happy dumb-ass drunk. That's the closest I've ever felt to being a big league manager jawing nose-to-nose with an umpire. But you took it — all my spit and rage — like a goofy golden lab that just got caught shitting on the rug.

I apologize for rubbing your nose in the shit. And I thank you for not being an angry drunk with a short fuse. Things could have gotten ugly. Drumsticks could have been broken.

Again, I apologize for my unacceptable behavior. Just stay the hell off my hood.

Chilling the fuck out,
Bob the Cabbie

so many names to remember

“WHAT'S YOUR NAME AGAIN?"

“Bob, you do this to me EVERY time!”

“Dude, you’ve gotta sit in the front seat once or twice for me to remember you.”

“C’mon, Bob! It’s Spencer. You KNOW that!”

It’s after 2. The bars have just closed. And I’m in survival mode, dodging the hundreds of drunks flooding the streets of downtown Austin looking for a cab.

“I’ve got a better idea, Spencer. Let me take your picture so I can never forget that pretty face of yours.”

The double bird action was Spencer’s idea.

Hope the hook up was successful.

hot tamale

TODAY IS MY GIRLFRIEND'S BIRTHDAY. SO INSTEAD OF DRIVING MY cab on this fine Saturday night, I'm escorting Tamale to her cousin Caitlin's wedding. Of course, we're running late, so we'll get back to the stories in a day or two. Until then, here's a goofy music video we did with our friend Ahn-dee back in Laurel Canyon 6 months before we started dated.

Can you see the love in our eyes?



All hail Tamale!

"doe, a deer, a female deer..."

Here's a little video I shot today after I dropped some airport customers off in the hill country near 2222. (This is the first time I've shot footage and posted it on this blog. No laptop necessary!)

the start of SOMETHING

SUNDAY WAS QUITE THE DAY. MY NEW 2ND FAVORITE HOOPS team — sorry Texas, but I'm a lifelong Laker lover — won its first NBA championship. And I turned 50 years old.

As a gift to the new old me — holy shit, am I really 50?! — I promised myself I'd start writing more. I've been realizing more than ever that there's something missing — something important — when I'm not writing. There's too much brewing in my head, too much happening in my life, not to get it down in words. I realize that I need to write.

Has it really taken me 50 years to figure this out?

Then tonight I got another sign that it's time to scratch that itch. For the first time ever, I noticed a tab called "Stats" on the page where I write these entries and build these pages. Maybe the stats option has been around and I just hadn't noticed. I'm sure I could've tracked the numbers down if I'd dug around a little.

Yet for some reason I wasn't compelled to look. Even though when I first started blogging back in 2003 — TheGreatestYearOfMyLife.com felt like the Stone Age of blogging — I had a very visible attendance meter on the home page. And don't think I didn't check that number on a daily basis.

But up until tonight, I didn't care to check the numbers on this thing. I'm not sure why. Maybe I didn't want to feel the sting of rejection. Maybe I didn't want to be a slave to the page views. Maybe I was just too lazy to figure out how to fetch the numbers.

Then I saw that "Stats" tab. Now my competitive juices are flowing. Not to mention my numbers-obsessed inner math geek.

I haven't written regularly enough to have any expectations about having a regular, sizable audience. Back in October I had my busiest month, with 631 page views. This past April — two months removed from my last blog entry — saw my page views dip to an all-time low of 80. In May they actually went up, despite no new entries, with 89 page views. Those extra 9 no doubt came back wondering, "Is this bastard ever gonna write anything on here again?"

Hell yes, he is!

Now that I know where to find these numbers, I want to find out what would happen if I started writing on here regularly. As in every other day. We're at a measly 44 page views so far in June. But we've had 9 today — 2 since I started writing this thing — and I've got to think that a regular dose of these cab stories might get those numbers to spike.

Here are the 13 stories I'll be sharing over the next 26 days:

1) Seeing this guy on Friday the 13th at the new Moody Theater and the customer later that night who threatened to kill me before running off with my Flip video camera.

2) A cab ride with this kid the day before he flew back to L.A. to discuss declaring for the NBA draft with his family.

3) Hearing about going to Austin High with the Bush twins from this guy the night before he flew to L.A. to record his first album.

4) Picking up this couple hugging on the corner of Guadalupe and 5th the very night my sister Jeni and millions of other people tuned in to see who the lucky winner was on The Bachelor.

5) Several interesting cab rides during SXSW with the lead singer of this hot new band from New York.

Ah, hell, that's plenty to get me started right now. Every day driving a cab in Austin feels like there's a story worth sharing. But we don't want to overpromise. A blog entry every couple days shouldn't be impossible to pull off. Especially as we hit that stats tab and watch the numbers grow.

Before long, we might even be ready to explore the other new tab I noticed tonight. The one next to the stats tab that says "Monetize."

A guy can dream.

alright already

ENOUGH OF THIS INACTIVITY, THIS BLOG ABUSE, THIS DREADFUL procrastination bullshite.

I began the year thinking I'd be blogging every day I was in the cab — 2 or 3 times a week at the very least. Yet here we are, nearing the end of February and I've got all of 1 blog entry. ONE. In 7 weeks.

Not good.

And it's not as if nothing's happened. I had a young CIA agent tell me about his surveillance work recently. I had a sloppy drunk hairdresser ask me to go back to her Eastside apartment for some good times (no thanks) before leaving her wallet in the backseat of my cab. Last Saturday night I found myself inside a Texas State dorm room, 26 miles from Austin, trying to collect an $80 fare from an incoherent coed who kicked me in the shin after she refused to pay me. (An appearance by the cops eventually changed her mind.)

Plus I had my first experience with a customer puking in my cab.

Twice.

In the same night.

So it's not like I haven't had anything to write about. Which begs the question: Why the hell haven't I been writing? Too busy with other things — driving the cab, relationship time, other projects? Not quite. I've got at least an hour or 2 a day I can carve out to write something. Anything.

Am I afraid I've got nothing to say? Hardly. I've lived and witnessed countless stories, both during this 9-month run as a cabbie and beyond. Maybe it's a little like having a messy bedroom or an overstuffed garage. You want to clean it up, but it's just so full you don't know where to begin.

I do know that when the majority of my postings inspire 1 or 2 — if any — comments, my enthusiasm wanes. Most definitely. Then I think to myself, most of the time I read someone else's blog — which is shamefully infrequent, I'm not proud to admit — I'll read and run without stopping to leave so much as a "Nice job!" or "P-U!" in the comment box. So how can I fault anyone else for dropping by for a look, having a quick read and getting the hell out of Dodge?

I can't.

And yet...

I heard someone say recently — a writer? comedian? director? — that an artist, any creative person really, can't create just for himself. To complete the circle, whatever is being created requires an audience.

And judging from my malnourished comments sections, I've got none.

Over the last few months, however, I've gotten a fair amount of feedback — during conversations, via emails, in Facebook messages — from a wide assortment of readers, some of whom I was surprised to learn read this stuff. I even got some constructive criticism from a UT frat dude — a fellow SAE, no less — who claimed he spent a recent afternoon reading through every posting.

"The writing's really good," he told me. "No, seriously." Then he added. "I think you should write more stories." (You mean, like I'm NOT doing right now?)

He was advocating cranking out more "No way!" tales. "Write about the crazy shit that happens in the cab," he suggested during one drunken cab ride. "That's what we want to read. That's what's gonna keep us coming back."

Okay then. Give the people what they want. Let the stories begin. I'd be happy to take a crack at this suggestion. (With the right to take occasional detours into the dark night of the soul, remembrances of things past and seemingly inconsequential internal monologues.)

But I need to know someone is reading this stuff. So as of today I'm implementing a new admission price. If you should make it to the end of the day's entry, you are hereby asked (make that ordered for you S&M types) to leave a one-word answer to the Question of the Day.

For instance, today's QOTD is: What is your favorite number? (Faithful readers already know mine.)

C'mon, people. Participate. It won't take long. We're trying to spark a dialogue here. Work with me.

Keep this up and I'll supply you with a daily dose of video love from the Bobcab. Today's clip is a ride downtown with a trio of dancing Zetas. Thanks, ladies.

Jump around, y'all!

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