“You ever work in the armored ticket truck business before? It’s an easy gig. All we do is distribute all the new concert tickets to the local Ticketmaster outlets. That’s right, tickets for shows like Phish, Tuck & Patti and Windham Hill Winter Solstice. Uh, you wanna watch where you point that Uzi?

“What’s that? Have we ever been robbed? Ha! The stories I could tell. Like that time we were carrying a load of new tickets for Slobberbone and Gallagher. That’s where I got this scar, see? Took 471 stitches on the left side of my face. Uh? Hurt? Oh, no. Only when I laugh. Ha, ha, ha. Ouch!

“Then there was that time the Sillerman Gang tried to hijack us while we were carrying tickets for Blues Clues Live! It happened down at Clear Channel Gulch. They pulled up right next to us, then one of them jumped over from their car to the truck, grabbed my former partner and threw him down to the pavement under the right rear tire. Good old Larry. He was my third, no, my fourth partner. Whew! What a mess! No, son, you want to put the Kevlar vest on under your uniform. Yeah, like that.

“Or take that time we were running with a load of Guns N’ Roses tickets for the weekend onsales. The Willy Mo Boys must have tossed at least 20 or 30 grenades into the cab. That’s when I got me this artificial appendix. Hear that? Thonk! Thonk! 100 percent pure titanium.

“Yeah, the stories I could tell. Like when the HoB Mob ambushed me, chopped off my second partner’s right arm and took our load of Jazz Mandolin Project tickets. Or that time when we were loaded up with tickets for Bernard Allison, and Aerosmith, and Michael Hill’s Blues Mob distracted me at the traffic light. You see, one of them was dressed as Cher and… and… Well, you can guess the rest.

“Yup. Life is always intense when you’re an armored ticket truck driver. Fire bombings, bazookas, flame-throwers, they’ll throw everything at you when you’re carrying a load of valuable tickets for Bon Jovi or Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Just ask my last partner. The Virgin Records Boys kidnapped him and forced him to watch that Mariah Carey movie, Glitter, over and over and over. In fact, I just heard from the hospital yesterday. Poor guy’s still huddled in a corner, refusing to speak. But they think they can remove his straightjacket in a couple of weeks and… and…

“Hey, where are you going? Come back! The truck’s almost ready to roll and we’ve got tickets for Insane Clown Posse and Erasure to deliver and… and…

“Damn! Lost another one.”