My primary denomination of Musician would probably be ROCK, first and foremost. Thanks to my darling sister telling me about groups like KISS and Alice Cooper at the ripe age of 5 or so, rock music perked my interest and quickly became an obsession. Whenever Moms or Pops took me to K-Mart and I grew tired of ogling the Star Wars junk, I would always walk over to the record department and gaze at album covers and posters, wondering about things like how the guitar player on the AC/DC record cover was still alive if he was impaled by a guitar like that... and if Alice Cooper really was as blue as he looked on the From the Inside album cover. Although I didn't own any rock albums, I always felt connected to the cover art and would stare at it whenever I could. Eventually that obsession gave way to buying those records and listening to them... which led to buying rock and roll magazines, which led to picking up the guitar (shout outs to my parents as well on making that one happen), and ultimately 25 years later led us to New York. 
My rock/metal magazine phase kicked into high gear around 1980-81. They became my comic books - I spent countless hours looking through them until they would ultimately fall apart and become wallpaper in my bedroom. Many of those mags featured articles on (and more importantly pictures of) Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy pretty much scared the crap out of me more so than anyone else I'd laid eyes on in those magazines. Meat Loaf was the scariest rocker prior to that, basically because in most of the photos I could never tell if he was a dude or a chick (I was still uncertain when I first heard Paradise By The Dashboard Light but eventually figured it out). To me, he was just a big sweaty androgynous something-something who wore shirts that looked like wedding cakes.I would see the pictures of Ozzy and read all of the interviews and stories and think Holy crap... that dude is truly crazy; if I were in the same room with him he might bite me in the face! Other than maybe Popeye, Ozzy was the first person I'd ever seen with tattoos. And they were scary ones. Tattoos are about as pedestrian as eyeglasses nowadays, but the flaming blue demon head on Ozzy's upper right chest was the first large tattoo I'd ever seen and it had me convinced that his threshold of insanity knew no bounds (I wasn't too far off the mark). I never actually heard Ozzy until Bark at the Moon came out in late 1983 and I saw the video for it. I'd just gotten over the phobia of our basement that the movie Poltergeist had sparked, and when I saw the Bark video it was back to square one - I pretty much promised myself that I would never go down there again. Our basement had a creepy crawlspace which contained a frighteningly realistic dwarf-sized stuffed clown doll that our grandpa allegedly dumpster dived and brought over to us kids as a "present". My siblings will testify that in addition to the dead basement bugs and scary clown doll, the crawlspace was infested with Krenner-eating monsters eagerly awaiting to kidnap us into their underworld. After experiencing the Bark at the Moon video (which looks completely ridiculous when I watch it now, thankfully) I was convinced that Clown and the Krenner-eaters were most likely accompanied by a rabid pack of Ozzywolves.
About a year or so later I was playing video games with my home boy Troy and he popped in the Bark tape. "So Tired" came on and I thought Huh... this stuff is actually pretty damn good. He can't be THAT much of a freak, can he? Around that same time my Aunt Lucy brought me some old Black Sabbath tapes to listen to (I have been blessed with some really cool aunts). I had read about Ozzy being in Sabbath in my old magazines and now FINALLY got to hear them. At first it was a little too slow and syrupy for me, but after a few more listens it clicked. The Wizard became an instant favorite tune of mine and is to this day. Although I never got into Ozzy's music as much as I did KISS, Zappa, and all of the other big ones, I always put him at the very top of the heap as far as heavy rock music royalty goes (yes, even above KISS). Ozzy is more than the dope on The Osbournes and/or the guy who bit a bat's head off... he basically helped invent heavy music as we know it. For example: Without Black Sabbath there would probably be no Melvins, and without Melvins my life would be very sad. He has released a wealth of material since, most of it rules, and I still consider him to be the king as far as heavy metal goes. Some may beg to differ with all of that, but that's just how the mental waffles stacked up over time in my little noggin. It is what it is.
That said, my "religion" left me with no choice but to go pay my dues for a few hours with Wife last Tuesday at the Borders bookstore in Columbus Circle where Ozzy was doing an I AM OZZY book signing. I had high hopes to A) get a book signed for Troy - not only for his birthday, but as a thank you for being my gateway to Ozzy records, and B) make some sort of connection with the man himself for a few split seconds. I always make a point of it to say something slightly left of field in situations like this to break the "Dude you fucking RULE" monotony (I once met Dave Grohl and asked him what he had for breakfast). Thankfully we were there early enough to get a decent spot in line. A river of people ran throughout the entire store, and an additional gaggle of Ozzyheads were staged outside of the store hoping to get in. As we got closer to the table I felt fireworks in my belly similar to those I felt when standing before KISS during a signing they did at Sam Goody in the Mall of America in '92. We were about 20 feet away from Ozzy now and had a great view of him. He appeared to be in a "Let's get these f*&king books signed already" mode - not really looking up all that much. His hair was hanging in his expressionless face as he signed book after book. The only movements he was exhibiting were a) his mouth chewing gum, and b) his right hand swirling over books with a Sharpie as the Borders gimps hurriedly passed them under his hands like an assembly line. From a distance it looked like he was drawing an infinite series of slow-motion loops. I wasn't sure what I was going to say and we were just seconds away...Bryn went first and got her book signed, and when he looked up at her I instantly heard that infamous blurry Ozzy voice in my head: "Bullocks, an I haffta go home to Sharrin?" My book was slipped beneath his hands and life was suddenly in fast-forward. He started squiggling his name in my book and I peered into those trademark circular Ozzy sunglasses. It was like looking into the top of two cups of black coffee; I could just barely make out his eyes. The fireworks in my belly turned into an all-out fireworks factory fire. It was my turn. I had to remind myself: Quick... think... don't just stand there - say something, dumbass!
The first few pages of his book contain a strategically placed blank page which I found to be quite the humorous and priceless literary inclusion on his part. I decided to use that as my ice breaker for our 5 second rendezvous. Belly fireworks ablaze, I felt my mouth open and heard it say "The blank page is absolutely brilliant, I seriously can't stop reading it." He stopped his name doodling, looked up for a moment, and although I still couldn't really see his eyes all that well I could tell he was looking at me. This officially confirmed that I'd just jostled the little Ozzy hamster wheel in his head and that it was starting to rotate a little. Victory! He broke into a nice big pearly white-bearing goofy open mouth smile and bobbed his head up and down - and although he didn't say anything, I could see exactly what he was thinking: "Haaaaaaaaaaaa, yeah, ah know, that woss a real good one, roit?"
We were rushed towards the exit by the Borders gimps much like the mall elves rushed the kids away from Santa in A Christmas Story. I looked at the inside of the book. I thought about how he was already back to scribbling in other people's books and giving them their moments. He had probably already forgotten about what I'd just said to him, but I was happy to have said something that briefly changed his disposition and crack him up.
Yet another priceless moment to cross off of our "Cool shit in life that we didn't know we were gonna get to do" list. And thankfully this is as close as he came to biting our faces off or turning into a werewolf:
