GAINESVILLE, FLA – A 46-year-old University of Florida sophomore was arrested Saturday when he was found wandering naked in the Sweetwater Wetlands Park and mumbling about doing things, “my way or the highway,” while playing air turntables. This type of behavior isn’t unusual for a Saturday night in Gainesville, but Duane Buford’s fantastic story started hours earlier, and under much more mysterious circumstances.
The University of Florida, Gainesville is home to a labyrinthine warehouse of dusty artifacts and oddities that rivals any of the world’s great collections of curiosities, where top men study the mysteries of mankind. Unlike the collections at the Smithsonian or the Royal Museum in London, however, the University of Florida’s carefully curated warehouse is largely dedicated to the ephemera of nü-metal.
While many of the artifacts in the James “Munkey” Shaffer Warehouse at the George A. Smathers Libraries are shrouded in mystery, some are well documented, including the original KoRn Kage, the diabolical ‘Tude Mask worn, at various times, by members of Slipknot, Mudvayne, Mushroomhead, and Motograter, and the enslaved leprechaun who wrote all of Godsmack’s chord progressions. The greatest secret of them all, of course, is The Toilet.
Limp Bizkit toured relentlessly to promote their debut full-lenth Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, and by 1998 landed a main stage slot at Ozzfest. The setpiece of their stage show was a twenty five foot tall disgusting toilet that frontman Fred Durst would emerge from and berate the audience. Bizkit used The Toilet throughout the US leg of Ozzfest ‘98 and brought it out again for a headlining slot on the Family Values Tour in the Fall, but from there the trail goes dark. Many assumed The Toilet was lost forever.
Nü-metal fan Duane Buford spent twenty years trying to track down the location of The Toilet, finally keying in on the Munkey Warehouse in Gainesville. Gaining access wasn’t so easy, however – it required becoming a University of Florida student, which in turn, required obtaining a high school diploma. Six years and multiple failed college applications later, Duane, now a sophomore majoring in freshwater fishing, finally took the next step towards securing his future – it was dark, he had a key card to the Smathers Library, and a paper bag with a 40 in it.
As he described it from a weekend holding cell at Gainesville PD, the door to the Munkey Warehouse was fairly easy to jimmy – which surprised him, given the dedicated subject matter and type of artifact hunter it could attract. Once inside, Buford took no time locating The Toilet, mostly because it towered over the other crated items stacked in the warehouse.
As he approached the porcelain mountain, however, Buford became afraid. Smoke poured out of the bowl, followed by a bowel-loosening bass rumble. Suddenly he could see a creature – and it wasn’t Fred Durst or Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland – it was a furry mutant with wild eyes and a backwards baseball cap who called himself The Nookie, guardian of The Toilet. Suddenly, the game had changed, and Buford had to answer nü-metal trivia or face certain death.
Luckily for Duane Buford, the questions were fairly easy for a man of his expertise: What was P.O.D.’s highest charting hit single? (“Youth of the Nation”), Who produced all of System of a Down’s albums? (Rick Rubin), How does Fieldy get his signature bass tone? (Glowing green strings). Buford then had to run through the warehouse to find a fitted red Yankees cap large enough to fit on The Nookie’s oversized head (which was especially difficult due to the sheer volume of Make America Great Again caps littering the warehouse).
“I did it all for The Nookie,” Buford reported from his holding cell, “and then I was violently launched into the bowl of The Toilet. I entered this strange, utopian world, where Christian metal could be aggressive but not lame, and rock bands didn’t need to get rid of their DJ to still get radio play. It was a lot like Tampa. Bubba The Love Sponge was there, I think. Then I got flushed out into the swamp.”
Duane Buford is being charged with two counts of breaking and entering and one count of public intoxication (Florida grade).
Ronald Sampson
