It seems that Irving, our newest employee at Pollstar.com, is no longer with the living.

Irving was a man of many talents. When he wasn’t entering dates for bands like Reel Big Fish and KISS, one might have found him in the employee lounge cleaning his guns, or out in the parking lot showing his coworkers how to hotwire automobiles. Of course, he’ll also be remembered for his volunteer work for the pharmaceutically impaired. Yes, he was that kind of guy.

Irving was also a smoker. While Pollstar.com is a smoke-free workplace, we do not have a problem with workers who want to slip out back for a quick drag of death before continuing with the daily grind of managing tour data for Kenny Neal and Joan Armatrading. We just smile as they walk out with their cigs and lighters, while we quietly cross their names off the company health insurance policy.

But Irving was more than just your average smoker. He was totally into the tobacco experience, and it wasn’t unusual to see him standing out back with one of his latest creations, a hand-made pipe.

And fantastic pipes they were! There was his hand-carved Britney Spears pipe made out of the silicon he scrounged from the Dumpsters behind Dow Corning. Equally impressive was his Ted Nugent pipe, fashioned from freeway road kills. And who will ever forget his Dismemberment Plan pipe which was featured in Black Lung Magazine? Yes, we’ll miss old Irving.

We can still remember him hard at work on his last creation. It was late one night after a busy day of entering dates for Eddie Money and Dave Koz, and Irving was fiddling with a 20 foot long piece of plumbing pipe. He told us that it would be the first wind-driven pipe in the world, and could handle up to 20 pounds of tobacco at any given time. On one end was the mouth piece, while on the bowl end he had attached a windmill. “For long-time smokers who don’t have the lung power,” he told us.

The wind was furious as we watched him lug that smoker’s monstrosity out the front door. The windmill started spinning frantically as he pointed the bowl into the wind. “Just a quick test and then I’ll go enter those dates for Jo Dee Messina,” he said as he fumbled with the propane lighter torch on the side of the pipe. He flipped the switch, the bowl lit, and the wind, forced through the pipe by the windmill, shot out the other end at approximately 100 mph, ripping poor Irving’s head off of his neck and shooting it over the horizon.

Yes, we’ll miss Irving. To some he was the psychotic who proofed tours like Sammy Hagar and Aaron Carter. To others he was the happy guy, always talking to himself about muzzle velocities and stopping power while he processed dates for Biohazard, Meat Puppets and face to face. And we’ll always remember his last moments on earth as he tried to smoke his 20-foot long pipe.

In fact, you might even say he was bonged with the wind.