Friday Flashback: C.C. DeVille Might’ve Been High

I’ll never forget this one innocent ride from the airport to West Hollywood one lunch hour. In the car only a minute, we had turned onto Sepulveda when I saw this guy crawling on the sidewalk. But a second later I came to notice that he wasn’t crawling (like a baby), rather he was super-low to the ground and moving one limb at a time, like a thief sneaking under barbed wire or Tom Cruise climbing the glassy face of a skyscraper. On his face was an expression of persecution and concentration, his mouth working like he was chewing a golf ball made of taffy. He looked freakishly high on drugs, like a normal dude who had just been tricked into smoking bongloads of crack. Chills.

And it was Wednesday that I was magically transported back to that moment years ago, for again my world stopped as I witnessed somebody so uncontrollably, disturbingly high: I saw the video for C.C. DeVille’s “Hey Good Lookin’,” from 1993’s soundtrack to the Pauly Shore movie Son-In-Law. It marks DeVille’s first activity after his ouster from Poison for being incomprehensibly ripped all the time, and features full-tilt vocals by Spike from London Quireboys to compete with DeVille’s crank-wanking. Like the sight of a regular dude zombie-dragging himself through Playa Del Rey at noontime, it made me blurt out fearfully, “Holy shit that guy is high!”