06.01.2015 05:30 AM

So long, Ritalin Boy

The Palma Violets gig is done, and so is “Ritalin Boy.” He’s out. Long time coming, etc. Ten reasons for it.

  1. The sexism. Misogyny – endless misogyny. In the songs he wrote denigrating women, in the things he said, even when we (and the women in our lives) asked him to stop . He wouldn’t.
  2. The substances. He was wasted all the time.  He played lousy when he was wasted, and he wasn’t pleasant to be around.
  3. The dishonesty. He said he was the founder of Facebook in Canada. He wasn’t. It was a lie. It became national news and a national embarrassment. He actually claimed a song he wrote about Jesus getting aroused was a “Christian anthem.” The media laughed at him for that.
  4. The erratic behaviour. He smashed a glass door at the home of his ex, and she (rightly) called the cops. To him, she was the one to blame. She wasn’t. He was. There was a lot of that kind of stuff.
  5. The serial disasters. If we had a buck for every time he’d been fired from a job, we’d be rich. He was getting flushed all the time. It was always someone else’s fault, however. He’d treat band practices like they were his personal therapy sessions. We got tired of it.
  6. The unreliability. He said he was going home for a vacation, then sent us a message saying he was running for office. We wished him luck, found another (great) guitarist and kept going. When he lost, we took him back. He was resentful about the new guy, however.
  7. The jerkiness. He was a jerk. He is a jerk. He treated the new guy like dirt. And when the new guy didn’t give him a job (after he’d again been fired somewhere, see point 5), he went nuts on the guy.
  8. The snobbery. He was in his forties, but a trust fund loser. His mother bailed him out all the time. Despite that, he’d never pay for a damn beer or a damn pizza. Nada. He was the moochiest mooch you’ve never met. And he would make nasty remarks, too, about the musical ability of the rest of us. He was better than us, no doubt, and he made certain we all knew it. He looked down on us.
  9. The centre of the universe. It was him, to him. He didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s stuff. All he cared about was his own problems – and he had plenty. When we met with him to try and work it out – and when we told everyone else has challenges, too – this was his response: “I don’t care.”
  10. The crazy. All of us knew he had issues. All of us knew there were some deep-seeded problems. We kept quiet because the band was supposed to be about fun. He – because of the sexism, the lies, the endless-crises, the snobbery, the self-centredness – made it not fun. At all.

He’s out. We’re going to keep going and have fun.

Best of luck, Ritalin Boy. You’re going to need it.

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