[Imprint Volume: 2.]

I’ll never forget the day when Popcorn, out of nowhere stated, “Man, you know… Andy is actually pretty cool.”

Up until that moment, Andy was just Popcorn’s younger brother. Scrawny little guy with blonde hair and glasses. We used to make fun of him for liking Sugar Ray. Really, he just liked one Sugar Ray song. That alone was hilarious enough for us, to get him branded with the nickname stylized “Shooger Ray”.

We used to freak him out by telling him there were dead Indians buried in walls of their house in Chebanse where Andy had a basement bedroom.

I got to know Andy over the years, especially because he became Popcorn’s road dog. His sidekick. For me, Andy’s sense of humor was the main thing I clicked with.

Lovely. Completely bizarre. 

I would always have Popcorn work with me on movies and music. Various rap projects and video camera sagas my friends and I would concoct around Kankakee. Full time hijinks of early adulthood when we had no semblance of accountability to anyone, anywhere whatsoever.

When Popcorn was in his rotating door of prison sentences and county jail stints, or sometimes just off grid or even on house arrest, Andy would fill in. To be sure, Popcorn always had my back. He has always been legitimately my tried-and-true friend. It’s just that the police would remove him randomly from my timeline every now and again. The cops never seemed to care.

Andy helped me with full length albums I’ve recorded as well as feature length movies I’ve done with various compatriots over the decades passed. I counted on Andy to take over for my missing link, Popcorn. The Juggalo-adjacent Shooger Ray would shine though with a vulgar yet quality verse or highly absurd movie scene cameo.

He was just always ready to go. Reliability being such a rare trait back then within a sample size of local early-twenty-somethings, it was great to know he was always on board. Andy would show up with a rap he had etched in a spiral-bound notebook, or he would appear on time with his dialogue memorized for a scene.

I wrote a screenplay called Harvest of Fallacy that some friends and I shot and cut. It was like an hour long. It’s awful. Andy has a few scenes in it. I’ll never forget that he seemed to “get” it.

I’ve never really shown anyone the movie because it’s so embarrassing (my apologies to everyone who worked on it). But I remember Shooger Ray watching his DVD copy of it over and over and reciting all the dialogue and the monologues.

He really liked it, and it seemed to click with him. For a while there, any time we were together he’d ask me about the scenes and the messy, non-linear attempt at storytelling. The esoteric lines and odd references – he’d talk about how great they were. That meant a lot to me seeing how it was the first thing I ever really sat down and worked hard on.

One particular verse he wrote for a standalone rap project was noteworthy. Andy’s prose was about a Devils Night, years prior. The particular evening, I was really bored with some friends I decided to put a random street delineator with a flashing light thing in front of this church family’s front door. Like, we just set it on the front porch.

We’d also call them, and I’d ask to speak to their son on the phone. Their son was an infant at the time.

I found out later that the family went to the pastor in heated panic, proclaiming that someone had “barricaded” them inside of their home and was trying to kidnap their little kid.

To a casual observer this would be seen as harassment. Ok, it was harassment. But look; church forbade us from drinking or even associating with people on the spectrum of normalcy. So, we fabricated our own forms of entertainment. The only people we knew were wonky church families. Who else could we even know to harass, really? In the scheme of things, I blame the church for this family’s terror.

Andy would have been too young to be involved in those shenanigans but thought the lore was so funny that it stuck with him on a level inspiring enough to pay homage in a rap years later. I appreciated that he carried out my insane legacy of social experimentation on some small plane of an old wives tale.

Both Andy and I became obsessed with the movies Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, and Snatch. We would quote them any chance we were together. One movie in particular, Napoleon Dynamite, we basically treated as a religion, just quoting it nonstop, over and over, with nobody else being in on the joke.

To flash back, we went to see Napoleon Dynamite in the theatre in 2004. I picked him up one night after his shift at Taco Bell. I had seen the movie already, and when I learned that he didn’t know what it was, I told him, “Ok… we need to go see this movie right now.” I knew that he’d idolize the film like I did. It was a reflection of Andy’s off-based humor.

Lovely. Completely bizarre. 

We bonded over Bone Thugs n Harmony, Star Wars, and the first three Eminem records. We started the same exact accounting program at KCC and even talked about one day opening a CPA firm together. Neither one of us would end up in accounting. We both drove a Chevy Malibu, which Andy told me at the time was “the most stolen car in America”.

I remember us going to Quiznos to visit Popcorn and to get free sandwiches from him when we worked there. Popcorn didn’t care, man. He’d hand Andy and I loads of food to just walk right out the door with, free of charge. He didn’t hold his role at Quiznos for very long. Come to think of it, he didn’t hold any real job for very long. I’m not sure why.

The Krause Bothers had a giant iguana at one point. In some odd turn of events this guy Lol was over at their place, and we were down in the basement near Andy’s bedroom. Lol was another church guy we innocently harassed. I remember Andy picking up the iguana and setting it on Lol’s upper back. The thing was just hunched there gripping the dude’s shirt with reptilian claws. Lol’s only response was a robotic: Get it off me. Get it off me. Get it off me.

That combination of such an awkward move, prompted by absolutely nothing at all, and Lol’s unintentionally hilarious and monotone reaction… I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed out loud that hard in my life.

Lol, if you’re reading this – I’m sorry but please put your phone away and go back to work. You shouldn’t be reading this stuff on the clock.

…

I got a text December 26^th, 2023, from Popcorn and Andy’s sister Laurie.

When Andy didn’t show up for the family Christmas gathering, his mother became worried and asked for a policeman to go check his apartment. Andy was found deceased on Christmas Night 2023, sitting up in a chair.

It’s been two years now. Oftentimes when I think of Andy, I think of the silliness. Sweet Rapz Records and C39 Syndicate. An unhealthy obsession with AC/DC. I think of how he befriended the downtrodden characters of quirk, like that kid from church who somehow burned his own house down while lighting matchbook cars on fire.

I don’t equate Andy’s being to the times he was struggling. The anxiety and the cycles of addiction with methamphetamine. But those times are there.

I knew him as a friend who would be around as soon as I called him, however trivial my request. I knew him as a fellow outcasted oddball character who seemed to be able to tie into my peculiar, off-brand humor when not many else did.

I knew him as a solemn Army Veteran deployed to Operation Iraqi Conflict (the Second Persian Gulf War). I knew him as someone who had once suffered the loss of one of his close loved ones, and I knew him as a guy waging a completely different war with addiction – earnestly trying so hard to kick it time and time again.

Though tragic and intensely sad, I’m comforted he at least passed while relaxing in a plush chair in front of the TV.

I picture him lounging in the Halls of Valhalla with a cold Frothy Whoop Dub and endless kegs of 4Loko. Back in Black blaring in the speakers while talking conspiracy theories and reciting lines from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I think of the moment in 2004 as we walked out of the theatre at Meadow View, Kankakee during the closing credits of Napolean Dynamite while song “The Promise” by When in Rome played. 

If you need a friend

Don’t look to a stranger

You know in the end

I’ll always be there

And when you’re in doubt

And when you’re in danger

Take a look all around

And I’ll be there