By popular demand...

Okay, I may be exaggerating a wee bit. One person suggesting that I write about an event doesn't really qualify as popular, nor as a demand, but she has requested it several times, so does that count? I thought of writing about it in the meme I posted prior to this, but it seemed like to long of a story for a meme. Besides, I already had made reference to it in a previous meme and I promised to write about it some day.

Here's the story...

It was a dark and stormy...

Oops. Wrong one. Try again.

As has been mentioned a couple of times on this blog, I once worked for an electric guitar manufacturer. It's not a particularly well known company, but, at least at the time when I worked there, they also made guitars for other brands, one of which was Dean Guitars. While nowhere near as well known as Fender or Gibson, Dean is a pretty well known brand in the world of electric guitars. At one point in time, we were in the process of building a prototype guitar for Dean. I don't remember the exact details, but as I recall it was co-designed by Dean and former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell and would be the first in the Dimebag series of Dean guitars. They were calling it The Razorback. While working on it, I enjoyed playing around with the concept of being named Dimebag Darrell. "Hi! I'm Dimebag Darrell. This is my little brother, Nickelbag Darrell, my sister Douchebag Darrell, my cousins Sleazebag and Scumbag Darrell and my grandfather Colostomybag Darrell." Etc., etc..

Since the manufacture of most electric guitars these days involves at least some automation, some programming needed to occur before the first cuts could begin, and as always seemed to be the case, there were some bugs that needed to be worked out causing the entire project to be, ummm, let's just say it was behind schedule before we even started building. As I understood it at the time, there was an impending photo shoot scheduled for Dimebag and the prototype Razorback and it was looking like we weren't going to have the guitar ready. Some long days followed, mostly for the owners of the company, as I was obligated to pick up my daughter after school and, most days, couldn't stay late. It gets to be the day before the scheduled photo shoot and the guitar is close to being finished, but not quite. I made arrangements to work late, but when I went home it still wasn't quite done. I got to work the next day to find the guitar was still in the shop. Not good. When I asked about it, my employers told me that, yes, it was done. They had finished it at around 9:45 the previous evening. "Then why is it still here?" I thought to myself.  Better not to ask, I thought. Hadn't I heard? Dimebag Darrell was shot and killed on stage the night before. Later we found out that he was shot at around 10:45 Eastern Time. The guitar was finished at around 9:45 Central Time. Think about it. As Dimebag's guitar was getting ready to be packed up, Dimebag was dying. (I might not be remembering the exact times accurately, but relative to each other, they are correct.) It felt pretty creepy, even though I had never met the guy.

So that's it. The story you've all been waiting for, whether or not you knew you were waiting for it. Here's a picture of the Dime Razorback, although it's not the prototype.