Best Tom Waits Anecdote? Please Share!?

Question

Mine has to be at the end of "Nighthawks" album.
...After introducing his band, "They all come from good families, but they've developed ways about them that aren't quite right."

on letterman show, "I overheard my two sons talking, 'don't ever let dad help you with your history homework.' I was a little let down, but what do you expect when you make up a war or something? I just wanted to keep the conversation with my son going."

Answer 1

One I remember was when he was on Fernwood Tonight.

Answer 2

He was asked years ago why he took up the piano rather than another instrument. He said "Well, I had this friend who saw an accordion in a pawn shop window and took a shine to it. He knew that was gonna be his instrument, so his mama threw a brick through the pawn shop window and dragged it home for him. A while later, they had a piano in there and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, so my mama threw a brick through the window and dragged it home for me. I been usin' it ever since." He points to the ragged edge of a countertop near the back door and says "I couldn't get it past that thing, so I had to take a hammer to the son of a b***h. Heck of a job, but I'm not gonna let a little thing like that stop me." He also recently said "I'm a lousy neighbor. If you knock your ball into my yard, you ain't gettin' it back." Praise Tom.

Answer 3

I saw him at the Roxy in L.A. in the late '70s/early 80s, which was the first time I heard the saying "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy".

Answer 4

"And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue ball head, was wishin' he was home in a Wisconsin bed, but there's 15 feet of snow in the east, and it's colder than a well-digger's a**, colder than a well-digger's a**"