ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though they haven't met, many people know of G. Reaper. He has many names including Grim, Death, Zane and the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Despite his busy schedule collecting souls, Mr. Reaper decided, because of all the negative connotations attached to him, he needed an ego boost and some positive PR so he wrote a book about the role he played in the life of punk rock icon Newt Davies.
I would like to thank everyone who made this book possible. With my heavy work schedule it wouldn't have happened without a good many friends and minions. It would take me pages and pages to thank each and every one of you individually but you know who you are. Most importantly I would like to thank Newt Davies for making this book what it is. Without him there would be no story. There would be no story behind the music. He changed my life as much as I changed his. I will continue to change his life. It is my job to do so. Never once has Newt held this against me. He seems to have a understand of the circle of life that few do outside of Disney movies. It should be noted here and now that any events that I don't have first hand knowledge of were take from Newt Davies' college blog, All Newt All The Time. All our times have come Here, but now there, gone Seasons don't fear the reaper Nor do the wind, sun or the rain ~ Blue Oyster Cult ~ Grim R.
Newt Davies yearbook photo. Class of 2010
The spring days had grown longer and warmer as they faded into summer almost unnoticed. Unlike the other Universities scattered through out the urban landscape of Sim City, The Thomas School of Art always had a large turn out for the summer semester. Someone once tried to conduct a study to find out why art students were more inclined to start school in the summer rather than the fall as was the norm everywhere else. The official conclusion drawn from the study was "because they are like that." Newt Davies was one of those students. For reasons known only to him, Newt joined the Urele-Oresha-Cham Fraternity. The fraternity would later change its name to
Mors-Foetent-Artis, but that's not
important right now. Newt arrived from the swamp area of Twinbrook where he lived in a squalid one bedroom house with mismatched furniture. This was the type of place frequented by aliens because no one ever believed the stories that came out of the swamp. Aliens could visit unchecked and unquestioned. There was so little stock placed in the stories of those from the swamp that the outlandish tales didn't even make the tabloid journalism pages of the Sims Weekly World News. Everyone that lived there would tell you that aliens were real and that they visited with great frequency. Again, Newt was one of these people who could tell stories well into the deepest hours of the night about alien visitations. He told a great number of people stories about an alien by the name of Exugo Ne'Xafughos, who had become a close friend of his over the years. The more stories he told the less people believed him and eventually he stopped telling them
all together. There was no point if no one was going to take him seriously and offer to sell him aluminum foil hats. He briefly considered writing everything down and trying to get it published as a science fiction novel but he wasn't one to disguise fact as fiction.
Exugo was the deciding factor in Newt attending college. He was content with his part time job at the Divisadero Budget Books and had given no thought to his future but after much lamination decided if he had a college degree people would have to take him
seriously. He would be the first person from the swamps to even attend college making him different than everyone else. He would prove that just because those from the swamp were poor, especially compared to those in the city, didn't mean they were necessarily stupid. There were two problems. The first being money, the second not knowing what he wanted to do with his future. High school was three years behind him and he was happy with his life. The college aptitude test suggested Business or Fine Arts. Perusing a degree in business didn't appeal to his nature. First he would have to get rid of the mohawk. Waking up every morning at the same time, putting on a suit and joining every other rat that spent half their waking hours in a cubical farm sent him into fits of anxiety. Fine arts on the other hand meant he could become a starving artist of some sort and keep his own hours. Newt was also lucky and received a partial scholarship making his foray into higher education easier. He still had to cover part of his tuition and would take on odd jobs between classes. He would do things like deliver coffee beans to the School of Science or catch their escaped monkeys. Spending so much time in the science lab doing odd jobs he became a bit of an amateur scientist. Whenever there were no odd jobs to be done he would sell his plasma. Newt was determined to do whatever it took to attend and finish his degree, even when it looked like it would be in his best interest to drop out of school. If anything he had perseverance that landed him on the Dean's List each term. But I will
get to these stories later. First, I want to introduce the Urele-Oresha-Chan Fraternity that Newt Davies joined prior to his first day of classes. Each of them were art majors, some were nerds, others were jocks while the rest of them were the rebels of the group.
Back row (left to right): Brendon Kavanah, Jake Sammon, Newt Davies, Ludo Vicco, Miles Forthright Middle row (left to right): Harrold Assange, Jeffrey Dean Front: Rex Lovelace
Urele-Oresha-Chan Fraternity was an interesting group of people. They would have made for a grand reality show much better than anything MTV could put together. The
Real World had nothing on these guys. Each came from a different background, each had their own story, and they couldn't be more different from each other and yet they were able to co-exist peacefully for a time. Newt decided the day he met his frat brothers that his college experience would be documented on the internet for the world to see. There were some things you just couldn't make up, like aliens. He would take pictures and prove to the people back home that extraordinary things do happen every day. He just had to wait for extraordinary things to happen and what Rex Lovelace was an elderly man going through an identity crisis and trying to relive his youth. He was known for his incontinence problem above everything else.
There wasn't a person in the frat house that would bunk with him. Not even Harrold Assange. Harrold was a werewolf who refused to bathe. Rumor was he had fleas as well.
The first lesson that Newt learned at the Thomas School of Art did not come from a book or an instructor, and it was one of the most important things he would learn. Don't eat the candy bars out of the vending machine.
Newt much preferred hanging out with the outcasts, the rebels as it were, than anyone else. He learned very quickly that there were more people like him, he just had to leave the swamps to meet them. The rebels were throwing parties every night. They weren't very good parties but they were thrown at the sorority house and that meant girls. Anywhere there were girls, there was Newt. Even better, at least in Newt's mind, was often he was the only guy that was invited to these parties and that meant no jocks to compete with. It was true, most of the girls on campus wanted Newt. He never considered himself a ladies man, but the ladies loved him and a totally lame party was well worth it to be surrounded by girls. It was that first party that he went to after his first day of classes that sent into motion a string of events that would bring me into Newt's world and change his life forever. Picture if you will, a sorority house filled with girls in various states of undress hosting a kegger party. Imagine being the only guy there. Things seem good, right? What could possibly go wrong? In Newts case, everything. First there was the most embarrassing streaking fail on record anywhere. Girls everywhere, Newt strips off his clothes and goes running through both the sorority house and the yard only to find himself completely ignored. It wasn't that he was ignored on purpose. Maybe his timing was bad, but every girl in the sorority was
missing at that exact moment. Coincidence or unexplained phenomenon? No one knows.
Newt was feeling a bit down about himself after no one took notice of what he considered to be one of the best birthday suits around. That feeling of disappointment wouldn't last long. It was destined to turn into confusion, horror and a rather strong urge to suddenly drop out of school. Streaking is a weird right of passage at college. Dying at a college party...not so much. It's more than awkward to be at a party and witness the death of a total stranger from starvation. Even worse is when you find out that the stranger in question was a vampire who was trying to adapt to a vegetarian diet and starved herself to death. It is also a hell of a way to end a party.
This was the first time Newt and I met. We would end up running into each other a lot in the very near future. He returned to his fraternity just in time to witness his elderly incontinent frat brother, Rex Lovelace, passing onto the great beyond as well. Two deaths in less than three hours would unnerve anyone. Newt decided to deal with it all in the same any sane individual would and blog about it. That was what the blog was there for, to record the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, his room mates demise and he would take a good many picture of me before it was all over with. Not once did he ever catch my good side. There was also one special girl that he would write a lot about, Asala Karan.
They met prior to their first class. It was love at first sight for Newt. She was unlike anyone he had ever met in Twinbrook. She was pretty, not that there weren't pretty girls in Twinbrook, it's just none of them would talk to him. She was smart and artistic and they had a lot in common. Despite attending many lackluster parties just for the ego boost of being the most sought after guy on campus, he would spend a lot of his spare time with her. She was also the cause of the most humiliating moment of Newt's life to date. Yes, it could get more humiliating than the streaking incident. Being the extreme punk rock rebel that he has always been, Newt couldn't quietly and privately confess his love for her. He had to make a public display of it after class that very afternoon.
He was shot down publicly. Those that didn't witness it either heard about it from their friends or read it on one of the popular campus blogs. It wan't that Asala didn't like Newt, it just wasn't the love at first sight thing for her. It would take her time to warm up to Newt. Life comes up with ups and downs for everyone, but for someone extreme like Newt, those ups and downs were just as extreme. They had to be in order to make an impression otherwise life would be boring. Confessing to the world his love wasn't enough. Back then, Newt just didn't know when to quit. He still has a problem with boundaries and pushing things far beyond what he should, but he's learning. Life is such a good teacher, and so am I. I am probably the best teach anyone will ever have but I digress. Confessing his love wasn't enough. Newt decided to follow it up with a tirade about death.
I could not let this stand. No one talks about me like that and gets away with it. A brief touch with Death usually straightens everyone out and teaches them a few things about life. If more people would read The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman instead of Freezer Bunny Adventures I wouldn't have these problems. I suppose Newt was a bit upset about witnessing two deaths in the course of a day, but still, that is no excuse. At least we were now on a first name basis. This meeting was also the catalyst that would turn Newt into a social media guru. His reasons for blogging changed and he shared everything no matter how trivial or how big. Every waking moment of his life would now be documented. His blog provided the
title of this book, All Newt All the Time. He blogged about our meeting. He blogged about Asala. He blogged about art. He blogged about parties, the weather, class, his friends, people he met on the street. Everything was a subject that could be written about. He became more interested in blogging than he did in interacting with people. He blogged about the squalor of the frat house. The members of the frat house were slobs, and that is being nice. There were always dirty clothes everywhere, no one would clean up dirty dishes or pick up after themselves, and the majority of the members refused to bathe. Everyone thinks that college is all fun and games, the truth is your roommates are much better than farm animals and they keep you up all night. It's somewhat of a trade off. Newt's brush with death turned him into the talk of the campus and his popularity escalated. He was instantly the most popular guy at the university and it was only the second day of class. That also meant another party invite. This time it was to a lame bonfire at the sorority. Newt was a few minute late because he was doing one of the odd jobs for the science lab and when he arrived the party had already broken up and he was told he missed it. That bonfire party went down in the books of Thomas School of Art as the shortest part ever at 32 minutes. To amuse himself for rest of the evening Newt decided to hang out at the campus grocery store. The Tomas School of Art has a coffee shop, bowling alley, comic book store and a number of parks and other places where one can hang out and meet
fellow students but Newt chose the grocery store. This is when he decided to take up two new hobbies. The first was dumpster diving.
This proved to be another life changing event in his life. Newt found his first guitar in the dumpster behind the grocery store. To this day he still owns this guitar and occasionally plays it despite moving on to bass. The music was born from a dumpster, nurtured by a punk rock art student and rebel until it grew into the phenomenon of Toxic Dream. That trip through the dumpster was much like Alice's trip down the rabbit hole. It was a good thing nothing was labeled Eat Me or Drink Me because Newt would have. He ended up horribly sick from something toxic that he came into contact with that also
gave him a weeks worth of nightmares, the inspiration for the band name, Toxic Dream. The second hobby that he took up was street art. There was nothing Newt wouldn't tag after that.
Newt was so much better with a spray can that he was with pencil and paper. He really couldn't draw to save his life and it was amazing that he was ever able to pass his drawing classes.
Put a spray can in his hands and he could create amazing works of art. His art would become known all over campus and he would be commissioned to paint murals around campus.
This would come later though. He returned to Urele-Oresha-Cham for a second time to witness the death of not one, but two fraternity brothers.
Brendan Kavanah and Jake Sammon both died of starvation on the second day of college. Four deaths in two days, three of them from his own frat house. All from starvation. Newt was convinced that his fraternity was doomed. He also didn't buy the starvation story that the medical examiner gave everyone. He was sure that it was from eating the candy bars in the vending machines in the student lounge. After all, eating one of them did, at the very least, make you wish for death. The admissions office was insensitive about the entire thing. The waiting list to get into The Thomas School of Art was so long that as soon as someone kicked the bucket they would move someone else in. They didn't even wait for their beds to get cold. That first week of school the deaths continued unabated. Day three it was Ludo Vicco.
Day four it was Harrold Assange, the flea infested werewolf. The one upside of his death was the ability to finally fumigate for fleas.
Day five it was Jeffrey Dean and Miles Forthright..
Newt was the only original member of the fraternity left alive. Everyone else had died of starvation, or bad candy bars, depending on who you asked. At this point I decided it would be in the best interest of the college, Newt and myself, as I was getting severely overworked, to temporarily move into the frat house. I was already an honorary member, but now I would live there and teach each of them how to cook. Not that it did any good. Every time Bernie Butler would attempt to cook he would set the kitchen on fire.
We had at least three kitchen fires. With a response time of 30 minutes for the fire department it's amazing the place didn't burn down. Maybe I should have taught them about pizza delivery.. The photos of the kitchen fires were some of Newts most popular blog posts. They had everything you could want: dirty dishes, drama, suspense, panic, ghosts and fire. They couldn't have been planned better by Michael Bay.
Newt was distraught over the loss of his original frat brothers and didn't like the jocks and nerds that had moved in. He felt out of place and spent a number of hours a day in the fraternity graveyard, located on the front lawn.
Here he would draw, study and feel guilt that he never had the time to get to know any of them. In the case of Harrold, it was his own fault. No one wants to hang out with a flea infested werewolf who doesn't bathe. As for Rex, it was probably for the best, with his advanced age, that he had moved on to the next life. Newt once confided in me once that he thought it would have been funny to buy Rex adult diapers and make it part of the fraternity hazing ritual that they had to change them. Yes, Newt, that makes you a bad person.
The number of deaths and the refusal of most of the fraternity brothers, old and new, to shower prompted the college board to rename the fraternity Mors Foetent Artis, the Latin words for death, stink and art, at the start of Newt's second term. There were whispers around campus about how strange it was the Newt was the only one out of the original frat members to live. No one blamed him, at least not outright. It was just awfully strange that seven people, all living under the same roof, would starve to death in the course of a week. yet there was no formal investigation.
Once I was sure that everyone knew how to cook and there would be no further deaths, I moved out. I did keep a close eye on everyone though.. I never felt comfortable when Bernie was in the kitchen.
Newt's spent less and less time at the frat house. As I stated he didn't care much for the jocks and nerds. He also didn't want to be around if anyone else decided to kick the bucket. He spent a good deal of time staging protests from everything from radiation to the Yeti.
His protests always had a great turnout as many people on campus felt the same way he did, or so they told him. Some did, some didn't. They just wanted to hang out with Newt. Many encouraged him to stage a hunger strike over what some believed to be unfair policies at the college but that was the one thing that Newt refused to do, with good reason. It would be his luck everyone would die. He greatly improved his relationship with Asala. She was never formally his girlfriend but Newt was happy with the relationship they did have.
There were three reasons that Asala never agreed to be Newts girlfriend. Those reasons were Samantha Gray, Hanna Germanotta and Connie Cronk.
Newt never actively perused any of them, but Samantha and Hanna were potential love interests in case things didn't work out with Asala, and she knew this. Connie was a different story. Much like Rex, Connie returned to college a bit later in life, but while Rex wanted to relive his youth, Connie was there to pick up younger men. Connie was a cougar, The Tomas Art School was her hunting grounds and Newt was her main prey. Nearly every day Newt would find a love letter in the mail from her asking him to call her along with some sort of gift. Not creepy or stalkerish at all. If Connie knew that Newt was going to be at a party she would show up. She was convinced that she would be able to steal him away from Asala or anyone else. Newt may have been extreme and adventurous, but he wasn't about to get eaten alive by someone old enough to be his mother. Avoiding Connie turned out to be harder than avoiding the fraternity. Newt eventually quit attending parties as part of his effort to avoid her. The more he avoided her the more letters she would send him. She was also the biggest donator to All Newt All The
Time. He even gave up blogging near the end of his second term just because it was more and more obvious Connie was obsessed. Newt's relationship with Asala was always hanging by a thread because she didn't understand that, despite how things looked on the surface, Newt was in fact as loyal as they came. It strained things even further when Newt start requesting various co-eds to pose for him where he could practice drawing people.
It was always in a public place and it wasn't like asked anyone to remove their clothes. In fact, he originally asked Asala to be his model, his muse, and she yelled at him and told him he needed to behave more appropriately. Everyone talks about how college is supposed to be an exciting time, a time of new adventures and meeting new friends. It's that transition to adulthood where you sow your wild oats while learning the things that will help you succeed in the world. College was never that enjoyable for Newt. Despite spending each term on the Dean's List and graduating with honors it was brutally apparently Newt would never be the artist he wanted to be. His art skill never developed to where he wanted it to be and there wasn't much call street artists in the world outside of university life.
Graduation day came and he was relieved to be returning back to the swamps of Twinbrook. Asala promised to keep in contact with him and they could decide if their relationship was worth perusing but he never heard from her again. Many things transpired after college for Newt before he became the famous and successful bass player of Toxic Dream, but those are tales for another book. Until then...