This book chronicles the rise of our business Lombardo Barnyard and why we quit. This is a chapter of the book called "Destrow Everything."
The footnotes have been cut out, those are a bonus for those who actually bought the book.
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What if you had to kill your own child, a child from your very seed, pressed from your loins, raised by your hand; a child who you not only shaped, but shaped you as well? Would you do it? Would you kill you child, if it was the very will of God himself?
“My life! My life!”
Jarmo and I were faced with this very problem. The Basement, a place of diet swill, moldy cheese, and broken furniture, a room of infinite pure and childlike emories. For me it was life before Lombardo Barnyard, before Jarmo, before everything that I now was. Inside it was sticky, slimy, but warm, and cozy; like a sheet in summer, a comforter in winter, a mother’s hug, a girlfriend’s kiss, the Basement was my mother’s womb, and out of it, I entered into the world.
Jarmo and I laid on the floor next to each other hoping death would smite us from existence, hoping the foundations of the would collapse and crush our skulls. Nothing has ever been so hard – killing the Basement. It was so mentally frustrating that we had no plan, no procedure, and the very thought reduced us to the babies the Basement was meant to protect.
It was Christmas morning. On the ceiling above my head I could hear the rat-a-tat of my parents cooking dinner, my sister opening presents, and my uncle and grandparents laughing in their most pure sound. I was downstairs on a patch of sticky carpet with my family, Lombardo Barnyard.
I felt like the father of Israel, Abraham. God promised to make him into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great, the LORD said that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through him.301 It was a covenant between God and man, the same covenant etween Jarmo and I. So far all had gone to plan, but just as the type302 Abraham was asked to kill his son Issac, the promise of the covenant, so too it was in our hands to kill hat we made, what had made us.
When Abraham held his silver dagger up to his son’s chest, he was ready to pierce, ready to cut out his son’s own heart in the name of the LORD. He was ready, and he was stopped by God. He was ready to do it. Jarmo and I, we couldn’t even stand.
“My life! My life!”
Brent and Simon kicked the Basement’s door in. They grabbed us by the scruff and the flab. They picked us up, threw us against the door and wall, punched me in the face, hit Jarmo across the chest with a piece of bamboo ripped from the wall, broke our guts and stepped on our spleens. Simon threw a ehumidifier across the room and it caught me on the top of my head. Blood started to dry in my scalp. They were forcing us to fight. They were making us bleed. They were making us men.
If Abraham wouldn’t have picked up his knife and held it against his son’s heart; God would have sent Brent and Simon.
It had been so long since Jarmo or I had talked to Brent and Simon, but yet their fists to my eyes and kidney told me otherwise. When they first grabbed our lifeless bodies I thought that they were beating us because we left them, beating us out of revenge or anger. It wasn’t until I was completely bruised, until I could move no more, that I discovered they were once again teaching us the truth.
Each punch was a punch to my self-doubt; each kick strengthened me, crushing my very weakness. They were beating the crap out of us, and pounding ourselves back into Lombardo Barnyard.
Who were we? We were Lombardo Barnyard. We were the fastest, strongest, sexiest, sons of nothin’ this side of Texarkana. Who the hell could mess with us? Since when were we attached to this world anyways? The taste of blood in my mouth made me realize who I was.
There was no discussion, no pointless meandering around the subject. The date was set, the death of the Basement, December 31, 2005, 11:59PM. At the very moment the world shifts from one calendar to another, one state of mind to the next, the start of another terribly tragic day; we would kill the Basement. New Years, the symbol of rebirth would only bring death. The new era of Lombardo Barnyard would begin.
In the days leading up to the Kill the Basement party, Brent and Simon taught us the fine art of destrowing. Destrowing is the ability to not only destroy, but to completely banish something from all time and space, to erase time and memory, to stricken something from God’s predestined plan. In those final days of the Basement, all we did was fight and destrow.
Our fights were spectacular, each battle a junkyard match, no rules, nothing off limits. In one battle, Lombardo Barnyard’s greatest battle, Jarmo and I grappled and rolled on the ground, his hands on my throat, my fingers in his eyes. We were tearing up the place, ripping paper and breaking wood. Brent with barbaric strength, threw a couch down on to our twisted bodies. Then Simon threw a recliner on top of that. Jarmo, the little snake that he was, was able to crawl out, but my leg was trapped under the heavy wood couch, pinched between two bars of splintered wood. I wanted to bite it off. Seeing my weakness, Simon threw a phone at my eye, Brent hit me with a TV. I swung the phone cord like helicopter blades until I could escape. Finally free, I crawled to my feet only to be tackled once again by Jarmo. We rolled all over the floor, knocking books off shelves and ripping posters off walls as we defended each others attacks. With Mihály Csíkszentmihályien focus we didn’t feel the duct tape that Brent and Simon were binding us in. We were stuck together, only having enough room to punch each other in the face. Hit for hit, fist to head. Brent grabbed a bag full of hardcover Danielle Steele romance novels and poured it on Jarmo’s head. I laughed, leaving an opening; Jarmo grabbed a book and shoved it into my mouth piercing my soft upper palate. Blood ran out my mouth. I was in pain, but I was able to free my arm and grab a VHS tape of the 2003 WWE Pay-Per-View event, Backlash. I hit him in the face with the tape several times until his body went limp and his face askew.
Why did we fight like that? To knock the weakness out of each other. To cleanse our body. To discipline each other. These are the things we had learned from Brent and Simon. This cleansing needed to not only happen to our body, but to the Basement as well. We destrowed so much in that basement: three rows of bamboo lattice, a bottle of Gold Medal Apple Cider, a box fan, a pair of brown pants, five cans of corn, the ceiling, a circle end table, a dehumidifier, Jarmo’s jacket, a kodak easyshare CX7430 digital camera, a piñata, a projector, my rib, a telephone, three TV’s, two VCR’s, a wall, a whammy guitar, two wooden couches, a wooden rocker, two vacuum cleaners, a vanity table, and our bodies. Our destrowing ability was so triumphant that it digressed destrowing things long since forgotten, things in the past. Things like the Basement’s door knob, a box fan, four cans of corn, the ceiling, a coat rack, a five pound jar of olives, my two front teeth, a golf club, a huge stuffed animal, a knife, a lamp, a picture in a frame, a plastic sword, two Playstation 2’s, a radio antenna, a rocking chair, three TV’s, the wall, two wooden hairs, and a young girl’s heart.
We destrowed so that when all the peoples of Alpena came to see the Basement for the final time, they would only see a graveyard, a bloody mess of trashed memories and smashed artifacts. They would see a near dead eyes. Nothing would hurt them more than seeing him killed before them.
We destrowed so no one could ever be like us again.
There were a few artifacts that were too sacred, too powerful, or to dangerous to destrow, so we agreed to construct a special ark to house the artifacts for a later date.
When the day had come for the Kill the Basement Ceremony I looked at all our destruction and knew that this ceremony would lead Lombardo Barnyard to be great, would create for Lombardo Barnyard a powerful new nation, and would make Lombard Barnyard a true power.
I felt like Abraham, except unlike him, I had the guts to finish the job.