Some dudes are just too hot to handle, and one of this was Zap Rowsdower, yes the Zap Rowsdower. Maybe you know him from his middle years, where he was beyond doubt a triple-denim clad badass, putting paid to a cult’s evil scheme, saving the world without the world even having to have a moment’s awareness about it. If there was any doubt about the trail of wanton destruction he left behind and how much of a badass he was, clockwise from top right, Zap Rowsdower: The South of the Border Years.

a) Zap himself, on the road in Arizona, or maybe Michigan, probably there, phew the heat in Michigan. Acid for how he wore his denims, of course. Zap invented acid wash this very day, actually. He spilled battery acid on the jeans pictured here, and rather than taking them off, he ripped the battery out of the campervan and evened up the effect, because he had a date with a cocktail waitress who would not wait. She ended up the night with acid burns all over her butt and hands, and a smile that wouldn’t quit, you know the kind with the corners with a mind of their own? despite.

b) A young Satoris (before he was a cult leader and tried to make a Final Sacrifice) with one of Zap’s broken-hearted ladies who still wanted to show Satoris how special he was by making a sweet record. Zap was ever Satoris’ nemesis.

c) Zap made Tim Nye, a banker in Wichita, do this, in the hope of getting a brush with the triple denim hunk. The closest Nye had come to cross dressing was decorating the Easter display at the Wichita Third Pentecostal Church, at which he played the organ. One whiff of Zap and Nye was yanking an outfit off the lines in a very seedy part of town. Zap did take Tynne out for a spin on his motorbike, and more besides, but it didn’t last. Zap didn’t roll that way, no matter how crazed the local organists got, or how good their bacon and flapjacks drowned in syrup were. Tynne’s were pretty good, she used fresh maple syrup and a dash of vanilla, just-so.

d) Another acid-wash butt happy camper. You couldn’t buy acid wash back then and Zap had left his first bespoke pair back with Tynne, lost while making a fast exit in the middle of the night. No Crying Game scene, Tynne had run out of syrup and it no shops were open at that hour.

e) These are some of Zap’s 783 love children. You thought Bob Marley was the man? Nope, and 563 of Zap’s love children became musicians, too, like the ones pictured here. Quantity over quality with the triple denim musical jeans, eh? Frank Zappa made sure none of them used the name, using his Ukrainian mafia connections, which was wise of him.

and f) It takes a lot to make a stripper pull this face and pose, but this is exactly what Zap did, on more than one occassion with his strip club tipping style that owed something to sticky maple syrup fingers and a shitton of cash that he got given to leave town, every town, even after being there only a few hours …

the fuck Zap who? Ah, if just one – mhm – of you guys gets it and has a tiny giggle at a tiny part, I’m happy.