The "Nudie Suit" story | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

NAMM. I was There.

ARRIVED AT MY HOTEL ROOM, and found my roommate, Jim Cara, had already arrived. I told him about my having sat next to Awad, thinking he'd love the story. But his airplane story was better -- sort of a "Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought this would happen to me" story. Part of the fun was that Jim, married, acted the perfect gentleman throughout his adventure. So I got really mad at him for beating my story, and that became our running gag. "...and The Forum team is still just a little bit out front -- but wait! What's this? Out of Nowhere, The Nubians Score!!!"

Every month, the back page of Music and Computers magazine (published by Miller-Freeman) features a photo of me in The Ugly Suit, with a few paragraphs of crackpot philosophy, which I narrate in about an hour every month to editor Dave Battino. Dave edits it brilliantly (modest guy -- he says he just "takes out the 'um's'"), and the column has gained a bit of a following among computer-oriented musicians. I was at the NAMM show to sign autographs at Miller-Freeman's booth. The slogan for the event was "It ain't over 'till the Fat Man Signs." To be recognized, I wore The Ugly Suit. It's interesting to note that the signing event was taking place at the LA Convention Center, the same building in which I had once used the Heimlich maneuver to save the life of a movie producer, in front of 300 people, dressed in my "cowboy hero" clothes. How all those people got in my cowboy hero clothes, I'll never know.

At the booth, during signing hours, things went slowly. To pass the time, the Miller-Freeman staff and I took to swapping some stories. When my turn came, I opened with the phrase "Amazing things seem to happen to me." I began to tell of opening my guitar case in the little store in Austin. I told how Mac Yasuda had walked up, and how he had said "I once paid $28,000 for that guitar." I was doing my best gruff Japanese accent, which is somewhat thicker than Mac's. At exactly that moment, somebody stopped right in front of me and waved. I looked up. It was Mac Yasuda.

The two or three people who had stayed with me during my story were dumbfounded at this coincidence. I told Mac that I had just been telling a story about him. I even repeated the last line in my awkward "Mac" voice -- I don't like to say things about people behind their backs that I wouldn't say to their faces. He touched me on the brick-red rhinestone-studded sleeve and said only this:

"Hank wants the suits back. I'm seeing him in two weeks."

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