Veern The Yonder Light Analysis

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“No one speaks English anymore…you bastards,” croons the singer, melodically and gruffly simultaneously. Well some people referred to him as a singer at different points in his career. Growler, howler, melody-vomiteer, waste of talent; those were among other nomenclatures aimed at Vern Templeton, the sad sap slouching half behind the piano and half holding himself up with the cheap whiskey glass. The Yonder Light, a velvet and mahogany adorned bar attached to the Morning Star Hotel and Suites like God probably attached testicles to man before sending him down the chute to the world; this was the only place that would still book Vern on a regular basis. In town alone he had burned every talent booker and agent that ever gave him a sniff…show more content…
On any given night, in any given town, in any given bar, there is always somebody who is the drunkest person in the bar. Said person has a responsibility to create friction; to drive the plot. They don’t hire bouncers and doormen to scan ID’s. Of course that ends up being part of their duties but not why they were hired. When that drunken slob, that hiked-skirt-lush, that drooling sack of gin and pretzels wheels around on the barstool, they are like some sort of high-tech military genius. Heat seeking, automatic aiming, lurching and looming on a hair trigger, the drunk searches for a target. Depending on the specific setting the ending will vary. Meatheads fight, skanks grind on some random’s junk, nerds argue about anti-matter. Eventually they all are removed or asked to leave. Whenever Vern Templeton was at a bar, he was undoubtedly the drunkest person at that bar. And if he got there late, it never took him long to catch and pass the leader of the drunken mass. By these means he usually alienated himself from the crowd with odd chortles and tasteless searing jokes pointed at unpresuming bystanders. Once while playing a dive bar in Roanoke, Virginia, Vern Templeton offended an entire table of 5 in a brief exchange. “You got eyes like a gook. Just like a damned zipperhead. Your momma a gook, honey? Hey, don’t get upset fella, me love you long time, right?” Insert moment of coughing that sounds like wet sandpaper. “Your friends there don’t give a damn, they’re progressive fags…ain’t ya fellas?” The last line was half shouted as the table was already halfway out the door. It was only a matter of time before he would lose the crowd followed by losing interest in concentrating and trying to make it through a set. The crowd usually had a collective weight lifted off their shoulders when he would stumble off the stage or drum riser. And I think some nights the

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