Sean Kinney is an idea man.

And he came up with one a couple of years ago that I thought
was actually pretty clever, so I helped him see it through to fruition.

The idea was for a t-shirt that would combine 70’s pop
singer Leo Sayer with thrash metal legends Slayer.

It’s a simple concept really, so once he ran it by me, it
wasn’t too difficult to use the internet, photoshop, and a little imagination
to create the shirt.

We both liked the end result, I printed a few off, and that
was pretty much it.

Until Saturday, September 24th at the Houston
Open Air Festival.

Three things happened in Houston.

1: I wore my Sayer shirt.

2: Slayer was on the bill

3: Kerry King came on our bus after the show

I forgot I even had it on, but Jerry immediately pointed it
out to Kerry, who didn’t really have much of a reaction.

Thinking he wasn’t getting it or didn’t see it clearly,
Jerry & Sean both proceeded to call attention to my shirt again.

Meanwhile a small bead of sweat was forming on my upper lip,
because Kerry King is an intimidating guy.

He’s in Slayer for God’s sake (ironic sentence).

He literally wears nails and writes songs with titles like
Evil Has No Boundaries, Raining Blood,
and Serenity In Murder,
so it wasn’t a giant leap in logic to think that he
might jump off the couch and attack me for wearing a t-shirt that he found to
be insulting.

That’s about the point in time when I slowly pulled a couch
pillow onto my lap and carefully inched it up my torso to hide the artwork, all
the while explaining to Kerry that “It was Sean’s idea!”

It may have been a bit of a candy-ass move on my part to
throw Sean under the bus, but they were sitting next to each other and I
figured my odds of escape & survival would increase if Kerry elbowed Sean
in the throat first before he lunged at me.

But Kerry is a nice guy, and although he made it clear he
didn’t share our affection for the shirt, he didn’t tear my flesh off and set
me on fire.

After another 10 minutes of conversation and hanging out,
Kerry left, my butt cheeks finally unclenched, and Jerry said what we were all
thinking; “I don’t think he really liked the shirt”.

Um, no.

No he didn’t.