Steven Wilson, founder of the superb band Porcupine Tree and distinguished solo artist, is the smartest guy on Earth. He's a self-taught singer, songwriter, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, record producer, composer, and audio engineer, among other things. I, something of a redneck lobotomized version of Steven, also do those things. but he's immensely talented and I'm not.

So, Steven Wilson day is the biggest day of the year for us, up there with TOOL day, Opeth day, and Portnoy Day. Other things like holidays, anniversaries, etc. pale in comparison. And, unlike with TOOL and others, as of 2018, I'd only seen SW once. PT had been disbanded for many years and I'd gotten on the SW trolley tragically late.

Yes, it was a big day, this Steven Wilson Day, Wednesday, December 19, 2018.

Noooo! Not the Lexus Corn Log Mobile! 
We had Dad that night, so we packed our mobile catering fandango for a shorter visit than normal to make a 2000h showtime. Just like on In-DUH-pen-DUNCE Day a half-year before, our hearts sank when we rounded the corner and saw The Lexus Corn Log Mobile.

While all were free to go to Dad's at will, we tried to stay out of each others' ways during our conflict. We had our time with Dad, they had theirs, with very few crossovers. Dad was in the middle, getting tug-of-warred between me and Neila.

I had not interacted with The Princess since the epic layin' of the wood I wreaked upon her in The Monster Clash over three months back. We were, though, on the heels of the grotesque Neila's Silly Ass incident just three days before, so there certainly was some extra zazz in the air.

Eeeee - Yeeeew - Wuh 
Immediately after entering, I was facepalming. The fresh crotchfruit's baby cage thing was set up in The Piss Parlor with a slight overlap onto her latest favored squirtin' ground.

"Goddamn," I muttered. I would not have put one of my guitars within 15' of that spot. I let it go, considering that perhaps Tiffany saw on a talk show that ammonia is good for infants.

Neila and Tiffany were there. We dryly greeted each another and Lisa and I warmly greeted Dad, who was more than hip to the thick air about us. The tension was heavy, old West gunfight-style.

Neila said she thought we were out of town, but there were THREE sources and six weeks notice informing we would be gone the next night, Thursday - one color-marked on the calendar and two in written notes.

They were both sitting on the stone fireplace, leaving all seating in the den open, something I'd never seen either do.

I was too naive and stupid to realize it then, but I was being set up.

Grabbing the calendar from the table, I laid some WTF? on 'em. Neila said, validly, that they can come to Dad's whenever they want. Fine. But, what's the story again? Out of town or Flozberk flexing? Which one?

Tiffany scolded me for being condescending to them. Damn right I was - I suffer fools poorly and we put substantial effort into dinner with Dad instead of attending a gathering with other SW fans before the show. How hard is it to read a calendar? Why not just drop us a line if you're going to be there?

But again, it calendar had nothing to do with it - they knew we were coming. This an ambush.

The testiness escalated.

Quick! Someone Call a Babysitter! 
During the escalation, something truly amazing happened - a ten year old girl broke into Dad's house and started hollerin'. I mean, what in the hell is the world comin' to? They keep getting younger and younger, those crooks.

Wait. Turned out the glaringly obvious 5th grade girl was no such thing - it was Tiffany!

See, as Neila and I argued in the den with Dad in his chair off to the side, she said something so sleazy and absurd that Lisa arrested her dinner prep and headed to the den to rebut, already scoffing. Tiffany, in the doorway, tried to physically bar Lisa from the den by extending her arm, palm out, like a traffic cop.

"Fuck you, Tiffany. I'm going in there," matched with a dismissive laugh, was Lisa's perfectly fitting response. My response to such an affront would have been much, much more harsh.

Princess Corn Log exploded into the den screaming...

"Grandpa!!! Lisa told me 'Fuck you!!!'"

...like an idiotic child. It was the second time in three days a Flozberk Shrew had burst in the room to screech some tattle on wicked Lisa.

None of that registered at first. Seriously, it didn't occur to me that a thirty-something year old mother would act so clowishly, wailing to a man nearing 90 that a woman in her 50s told her off. No, it had to be an elementary school-age intruder, damn it.

The dramatics didn't work on Dad - he was cool with Lisa's bitch thumpin' of Princess Corn Log. They didn't seem to realize how much Dad noticed and were oblivious that their melodrama and grandstanding turned Dad off. He was not a weirdo Eurasian walking Borat satire impressed by such circuses, but rather a down-to-Earth Arkansas farm boy and electrical engineer.

I'm gonna have a roadie on this one - FUCK YOU, PRINCESS CORN LOG. You're lucky  you didn't try to pull such a stunt on me.

Thou Shall Not Pass
I'm an ardent nonviolence and deescalation advocate, but some acts are so wretched as to merit exception. An act as audacious as Tiffany's deserves an ass-kicking, I hate to say. And, it's not the only time The Flozberk Way had actually stooped to petty, agenda-based restriction of free passage at Dad's. From Mom's mini-memoir:

2007 Neila took my husband to hospital but she (Claudia) wanted to replace her when during each of his many surgeries. When Neila came along as Charlie wanted her she barred the door to Neila upon our return to home and told her to go home rudely as she was in charge at our house.

Ain't that special? Tiffany emulating Claudia, John's then-wife Claudia. She and Princess Corn Log are enemies until death, yet kindred spirits, too, pulling the same kind of outrageous stunt at the same place. It's one of MANY noxious ways in which Camp John and Camp Neila are alike.

Only people who need the shit smacked out of them restrain others absent cause. Again, had Tiffany pulled such a stunt on me, I might have bitch-slapped her dumb ass clean out of her shoes...were it not Steven Wilson Day!

Neila Attacks!
As the little fracas rolled on, I needled Neila about various acts of windbaggery on her part and she launched a flailing array of salvos, including:

A desperate, whiny, near-sobbing, eyebrow-raising complaint that Dad "didn't even get any Turkey" last Thanksgiving, which was thrown into disarray by Neila's lack of basic courtesy. We instead had a a fantastic grilled rack of lamb feast and what Dad said was the best pecan pie ever. Turkey was moved to Xmas.

An impressively spirited charge that I was an elder abuser "worse than John" simply because I sternly admonished her to be EARNEST and ACCURATE in her yapping. That stunt really pissed Dad off.

And, a couple that merit their own sections:

Hey, You! Lady! Don't Botch that Expression!
In the kitchen, Neila noticed me looking at her with a truly sad, baffled expression. Why was I doing that? I was sad and baffled.

I saw Neila's wheels turning, then BAM - she spat out a bizarre episode in which she loudly claimed my expression was actually a menacing glare of hatred and rage. It was something no human with basic knowledge of human emotions and facial expressions and emotions would have claimed. I was taken aback by the sheer strangeness of it.

At that moment it became clear Neila was recording us and trying to create a false narrative while repeatedly baiting me. I'd say she was also trying to paint an alternate reality to influence Dad, who was too blind to see things like facial expressions.

It didn't pan out.

Jax Off 
Neila accused me of depriving Jax and Dad of each other. Jax, son of Tony, son of The Golden Psycho, son of Queen Kool and The Sultan of Sodomy, was Dad's step-great-grandson.

Tony, my half-nephew, and I had been buds since the 2002 week of Mutchie's demise and John's rat bite wedding. In 2015, a few months after Mom died, I gave him a hard time about Dad's grandkids disregarding him. He pushed back, we got into it quite harshly (all via email), and we stepped away from each other until early 2018, when, after getting his life sorted out, he reached out and we became closer than ever.

Many problems with Neila's claim. First, never did I discourage Tony/Jax and Dad from getting together. I had no desire or power to do so. Plus, our conflict was resolved almost a YEAR before - longer, actually. There were absolutely no obstacles associated with me.

The obstacles were Dad and Tony. Dad didn't really care anymore - he was old, exhausted, and Flozberked out. Jax was a preschool stranger. Old, blind, worn out men often don't find strange tiny people as delightfully superb as Neila does.

I actually asked Dad, then followed up months later, if he was interested in "seeing" Tony and Jax. He wasn't. There was just no deep bond there and the less he was involved with The Istanbul Bunch and their offshoots, the less unhappy he was.

Tony, too, about had enough with our side of the street.  Every gathering was Neila babbling for hours about how she was going to have John, Tony's dad, thrown in jail. While Tony was no stranger to his father's glaring flaws, our toxic scene wasn't his cup of tea, either, as he wrestled to solidify custody of his son and get his ducks in a row.

He did, and did well. Dad, already marginalized by Mom's dominance, remained so even after her death. Too bad things didn't turn out better, but I get it. Tony did well to stay away for a while.

If anything drove a wedge between Dad and the boys it was the toxic blanket the war between Neila and John, fueled largely by their lust to exploit Aydin, pulled over us all.

When Mom died and Tony got a boost from the estate, the executor Neila had a hard time connecting with him 'cuz he didn't wanna take her calls. He, like so many others, had enough. She was trying to give him a decent chunk of money and he was avoiding her. LOL!

I get it.

So, yeah - Neila, smarting from an on-camera depantsing 3 days before and faring poorly in the current ambush as her hold on Dad slipped away, was reduced to pulling desperate, alternate reality stunts like this. Never did I obstruct Dad and the boys. Dad in no way suffered by not seeing them. She was trying to hard to discredit me, but only managed to AGAIN make a petty, malicious fool of herself square in front of Dad.

Ironically, next year Neila and Tiffany would throw a big birthday party for Jax, then, in an abominable, wholly unjustifiable act, flick him away like a roach the following year after Tony politely declined to embrace their sleazy, unhinged position on me.

Damn, Mama!
I first left this part out, but it matters. I'd not seen Tiffany in a half year. The first time she rose and moved, I was floored by how immense her ass had grown. The lone advice I offered when she announced, on Father's Day the year before, that she be gravid wid child, was to avoid using it as an excuse to swaller everthang in sight.

Let's get this straight - I don't care how big the Princess's corn log distribution center is in and of itself, OK? The implications, however, are slammin'. Unless he'd turned over a fat new leaf since our long talks not so long before, poor Langdon was bummin'. Watching huge asses walk back and forth, hour after hour, day after day was not his thing. Trust me.

More important, Tiffany, who at times seemed interested in her well-being, was on the path to a life of obesity and its myriad attendant hardships. As written many times here, seeing Tiffany, one of the few people I've known since their birth, turn into her mother both above and below the neck, has been one of the worst kicks in the gut in this whole affair.

Badly Compromised
After some other jawing, they left and Lisa and Dad finished eating. I was too upset to eat, for that was actually the first serious, in-person conflict I'd had with both Neila and Tiffany in our long histories.

We admonished Dad to "PAY ATTENTION" to every act and word coming from FlozWorld, then hauled ass downtown for the gig, changing clothes in the car, It was a great show, but I was distracted and worked up. Those fucking assholes Neila and Tiffany ambushed us, tried to set us up, and badly compromised Steven Wilson Night. Damn!

Thank goodness there was another show the next night in Houston that proved a delightful experience. Had the Dallas gig ended up being the final one in Life v1.x, that would have been awful.

Leaving Dad's that night, as we got in the car, I asked Lisa if she would have dropped the same F-bomb had it been Neila instead of Princess Corn Log. She pondered, then gave a perfect answer:

No, I don't think so. Neila has at least some status here. This, though, was fuckin' Tiffany.

Epilogue: Badly Compromised, Again
A sad, fascinating aspect of this was watching this multigenerational tag team of existential grifters run their dog and pony show. From the constant interrupting to the melodrama to the slanted language to the outright spinning of a post-fact world, the way they worked together was impressive, reminiscent of how mother/daughter druggie con teams swindle pharmacists.

Seeing The Flozberk Way flow between mother and daughter, watching the one corrupt the other, then back the other way, was both captivating and revolting. The way Tiffany, who years before spilled her guts to me upstairs at the car lot about how The Flozberk Way eats one alive, so freely and loosely embraced the monster was hearbreaking.

From The Playpen at The Piss Parlor to the team hatchet-jobbing, there was some badly compromised parenting on display. Neila was chasing a goal, yes, but both the example she set for her daughter and allowing her to be a participant were parenting failures of pretty high order. 

It really sucks that all this had to happen on Steven Wilson Night.

I'm confident there is an audio recording of this conflict at Camp Flozzie. I'd pay good money for it. Breaking it down a la Neila's Silly Ass would be gold.

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