I flipped my phone open, somewhere on 13th street, sunny, unwashed from the night before, and dialed. Something about smacking a perfect stranger upside the head with a pillow makes you want to call your grandma. Odd that her number isn't in my phone, because out of anyone I could call in this world, she is the one who truly appreciates it.
5 minutes later I wandered into the New School, the same place that the homos from Project Runway go to argue and use sewing machines. The grassroots media conference had been there all day, but it was 2:30 pm by now, so I got the hangover rate of 15 bucks. Plenty of prissy bloggers wearing indie jeans, girls with dreads, activist buttons on backpacks with way too much text to read at a glance.
I walked out about 3 hours later, now realizing that any male in Senegal could out-rap any American rapper any day, realizing that municipal wireless networks are a shifty possibility, and realizing that I am crazy. Literally and completely.
I have a "go-getter" virus, I see opportunities to crack people wide open and spill their professional inclinations all over the ground like so many piggy banks, (mine included) with the intention to engineer and create something new. I am never not having delusions of grandeur. A one man movement. That last sentence is lofty and cocky and untrue, but damn it looks good on paper.
I only say professionally, if I happen to do this to people emotionally and personally, I have completely blocked it out and I choose to neglect it.
What the fuck is he talking about? I walked into that conference and walked out with a hairbrained idea for a massive NYC radio show, sponsored by the magazine and party promotions people I deal with. The scope of such a thing is staggering, and would involve a lot of work and consideration, but once I get such an idea, and I feel I have the people and resources to get it done I do everything I can to make sure this happens. 1 email and 2 IM conversations later it was done.
I love the way things work, and I don't do this go-getter shit as any kind of reputation building vanity project, I do it as a reputation building vanity-humanity project.
Vanity-humanity project. Fuck me thats cheesy.
Ok, overwrought shit aside, I sort of quit drinking for the month of february. Sort of. The only exceptions were the super bowl, the titty bar for my roommates birthday, the last Beautiful Decay release party, and the night out in the meatpacking district which sucked ass solely because of two many seven dollar beers. I did get to meet Bobby McFerrin's son though, who is cool as hell.
POST SCRIPT ONE DAY LATER: I think thats the reason I've been so damn ambitious lately. I'm not fucking hungover all the time. I like it, but it is March now, I'm going out and I am going to be hungover tomorrow. I rule.
I also realized I have not name-dropped in a while. I am going to be on set for a Masta Ace music video next weekend, which is going to fucking rule. There, you happy?....all 4 people who read this thing who might know who Masta Ace is.
"Why don't you update your faggot corner more often?"
-Drew
Because of posts like this buddy.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Apathy, Boredom, and Zombies!
I just googled "zombies".
Five minutes ago, I was watching a video of a 5 year old singing "lonely" by Akon.
Five minutes before that I checked to see if "Dawn of the Dead (2004)" got a good review on rottentomatoes.com
Is this what people do at work? I'm ready to fuck my computer screen when i see gossip about that Kardashian chick. Miss USA. I almost bought a Pretty Ricky ringtone but decided against it and went for the free iphone. I've been harassing people I barely know for concert tickets and CDs I barely care about. Checking my email. Hitting on girls via myspace, facebook, telepathy.
Work, blisters, callouses, work. My department, the one tapped to run advertising for an entire major record label has just been slashed and burned, right after our fearful leader defected. Its down to me and one other person.
Removing the head, or destroying the brain. Thats how you get it done.
We will completely cease all traditional media advertising and go balls-first into the digital sphere. Fuck the lawnmower man. This business needs a change to stay relevant and lucky me i get to spearhead the "new way"...
...great, just let me finish looking at the Vice "Do's and Dont's"...again.
Apathy is the name of the game here, in work, and fuckin a, in this post.
So, bored as fuck, I wrote a zombie story. Maybe I will write more, who fuckin knows. Apathy baby.
--It was never clear where or how these patrons ended up going. The "how" was eventually taken care of first by a busboy, then a cop, then a coroner, then a bunch of people in green scrubs saying, "what the fuck?" quickly before they had their throats ripped out.
See, for us it was so dark on the floor that no one ever really noticed the 8 year old with the glass of brown liquor, the trail of dark blood leading from the booth, to the bar, to the pinball machine, to the change machine, back to the pinball machine. There were other more malicious things to worry about, like the fucking black handprints all over the highball glasses. Black and murky like asphalt, smell like a science classroom on dissection day.
In fact, blood was normal, fists shredded to the bone and beyond were not. Manual tooth extractions were not. Instrument free dentistry was not. Not for me at least. Our policy was usually, "just let them scrap it out and pick up the loose change once they're done". But these weren't typical brawls, blacks would lose an arm and keep fighting, reds would rip off someone's lower jaw, throw up thick syrupy shit and get right back to their shitty rail and water.
Like I never said, apathy and routine took hold.
We never changed many lightbulbs, and it always smelled like that. Like so many old ladies, we had gotten used to our musk. We didn't give a fuck and the regulars didn't either.
The first inclination I had that anything was off the tracks was under the bar, changing a half expired keg for another less expired one. We never could sell much beer, real alcoholics didn't have time for it, they only bought it when they were too broke to afford anything else. Herpes, a "busboy" was down there. I hadn't seen Herpes in about 3 months. That was typical too, they would get their money for the night and run off to blow it all on bad junk, buying it with a needle in their arm in some other shitty bar's bathroom. Saved me the clean up. I figured the same happened to Herpes, apparently it didn't. When he stood up, groaning, I thought it was the junk and told him to fuck off, find a hotel room and never come back.
He was pissed, and I was armed. It didn't take much time or thinking or bullets. His blood didn't look right though. It was too brown, too thick, and his eyes, they weren't the watery desperate eyes of a smackhead. That's probably why i wasted him, that look in his eyes suggested that nothing good was going to come from my little intervention. The back of his head ended up all over a bunch of spare tin, and I went back up and closed the door.
When I came back, I was asked repeatedly about "that shot", but no one gave an inch of piss about the other one, the one for Herpes.
--"This place is completely fucked", he told me over the phone. Fucking Prick. Big fucking surprise I thought, the only reason I ever speak to this guy is when something, someplace or someone is completely fucked. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
I got there and did a line off the dashboard, and then put my fist through the driver's side window. I opened the door from the outside and wandered over to what was left of what had to be the shittiest bar in the shittiest town in the world. He stood there all dramatic lighting a cigarette, inhaling slowly and exhaling as he turned to look at me. All I wanted to do was break his fucking neck, but instead i just focused on the blood that was running off of my hand, I felt it cling to my knuckles until the last second when it dropped and patted the asphalt. It was bliss.
He gestured with his faggoty American Spirit and said, "some of them are still moving". I looked. They were. Some of them looked like the falling action in a shitty horror movie about construction site disasters. All twisted limbs with steel and glass stuck through them. Some of them just looked sad, crying. "WHO FUCKING CARES!" I screamed at him, feeling the blood vessels pop in my eyes. He just shrugged.
I went to the car, grabbed my gun, a mutant Pakistani Desert Eagle, drilled, rebuilt and fucked with by God-knows-who-for-crack. I've shot planes out the sky. I cocked it and walked up to the different faces, ignored the watery ones who asked me to "please stop" and put one in each. I heard Prick say something similar, but he knew why I was there and he knew he wasn't going to stop me. Only I can do that.
I came back, wiped off their "blood", licked some of it off my hands and ran the rest through my hair to keep it back. Their blood isn't contagious, the shit is motor oil, brown, useless, stagnant, delicious. Its their saliva that gets you. Of course there could be traces of it in their oil, I could have swallowed some of it, I could have been turning right then and there, but I didn't quite give a fuck.
"Nice job", he said, flicking his cigarette. Fucking Prick.
I huffed ether in my car and waited for the next shit storm to come.
Five minutes ago, I was watching a video of a 5 year old singing "lonely" by Akon.
Five minutes before that I checked to see if "Dawn of the Dead (2004)" got a good review on rottentomatoes.com
Is this what people do at work? I'm ready to fuck my computer screen when i see gossip about that Kardashian chick. Miss USA. I almost bought a Pretty Ricky ringtone but decided against it and went for the free iphone. I've been harassing people I barely know for concert tickets and CDs I barely care about. Checking my email. Hitting on girls via myspace, facebook, telepathy.
Work, blisters, callouses, work. My department, the one tapped to run advertising for an entire major record label has just been slashed and burned, right after our fearful leader defected. Its down to me and one other person.
Removing the head, or destroying the brain. Thats how you get it done.
We will completely cease all traditional media advertising and go balls-first into the digital sphere. Fuck the lawnmower man. This business needs a change to stay relevant and lucky me i get to spearhead the "new way"...
...great, just let me finish looking at the Vice "Do's and Dont's"...again.
Apathy is the name of the game here, in work, and fuckin a, in this post.
So, bored as fuck, I wrote a zombie story. Maybe I will write more, who fuckin knows. Apathy baby.
--It was never clear where or how these patrons ended up going. The "how" was eventually taken care of first by a busboy, then a cop, then a coroner, then a bunch of people in green scrubs saying, "what the fuck?" quickly before they had their throats ripped out.
See, for us it was so dark on the floor that no one ever really noticed the 8 year old with the glass of brown liquor, the trail of dark blood leading from the booth, to the bar, to the pinball machine, to the change machine, back to the pinball machine. There were other more malicious things to worry about, like the fucking black handprints all over the highball glasses. Black and murky like asphalt, smell like a science classroom on dissection day.
In fact, blood was normal, fists shredded to the bone and beyond were not. Manual tooth extractions were not. Instrument free dentistry was not. Not for me at least. Our policy was usually, "just let them scrap it out and pick up the loose change once they're done". But these weren't typical brawls, blacks would lose an arm and keep fighting, reds would rip off someone's lower jaw, throw up thick syrupy shit and get right back to their shitty rail and water.
Like I never said, apathy and routine took hold.
We never changed many lightbulbs, and it always smelled like that. Like so many old ladies, we had gotten used to our musk. We didn't give a fuck and the regulars didn't either.
The first inclination I had that anything was off the tracks was under the bar, changing a half expired keg for another less expired one. We never could sell much beer, real alcoholics didn't have time for it, they only bought it when they were too broke to afford anything else. Herpes, a "busboy" was down there. I hadn't seen Herpes in about 3 months. That was typical too, they would get their money for the night and run off to blow it all on bad junk, buying it with a needle in their arm in some other shitty bar's bathroom. Saved me the clean up. I figured the same happened to Herpes, apparently it didn't. When he stood up, groaning, I thought it was the junk and told him to fuck off, find a hotel room and never come back.
He was pissed, and I was armed. It didn't take much time or thinking or bullets. His blood didn't look right though. It was too brown, too thick, and his eyes, they weren't the watery desperate eyes of a smackhead. That's probably why i wasted him, that look in his eyes suggested that nothing good was going to come from my little intervention. The back of his head ended up all over a bunch of spare tin, and I went back up and closed the door.
When I came back, I was asked repeatedly about "that shot", but no one gave an inch of piss about the other one, the one for Herpes.
--"This place is completely fucked", he told me over the phone. Fucking Prick. Big fucking surprise I thought, the only reason I ever speak to this guy is when something, someplace or someone is completely fucked. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
I got there and did a line off the dashboard, and then put my fist through the driver's side window. I opened the door from the outside and wandered over to what was left of what had to be the shittiest bar in the shittiest town in the world. He stood there all dramatic lighting a cigarette, inhaling slowly and exhaling as he turned to look at me. All I wanted to do was break his fucking neck, but instead i just focused on the blood that was running off of my hand, I felt it cling to my knuckles until the last second when it dropped and patted the asphalt. It was bliss.
He gestured with his faggoty American Spirit and said, "some of them are still moving". I looked. They were. Some of them looked like the falling action in a shitty horror movie about construction site disasters. All twisted limbs with steel and glass stuck through them. Some of them just looked sad, crying. "WHO FUCKING CARES!" I screamed at him, feeling the blood vessels pop in my eyes. He just shrugged.
I went to the car, grabbed my gun, a mutant Pakistani Desert Eagle, drilled, rebuilt and fucked with by God-knows-who-for-crack. I've shot planes out the sky. I cocked it and walked up to the different faces, ignored the watery ones who asked me to "please stop" and put one in each. I heard Prick say something similar, but he knew why I was there and he knew he wasn't going to stop me. Only I can do that.
I came back, wiped off their "blood", licked some of it off my hands and ran the rest through my hair to keep it back. Their blood isn't contagious, the shit is motor oil, brown, useless, stagnant, delicious. Its their saliva that gets you. Of course there could be traces of it in their oil, I could have swallowed some of it, I could have been turning right then and there, but I didn't quite give a fuck.
"Nice job", he said, flicking his cigarette. Fucking Prick.
I huffed ether in my car and waited for the next shit storm to come.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Free Spirits (pt.3)
In Vino Veritas, In sobriety...what? Weed? Girlfriends?
Alcohol, a common ground with so many holes drilled, I love thee. "Tonight make me unstoppable", I pray. Benevolent god of rye and peanut shells, allow me to win. When I trip over human debris, let me hold my friends up so they don't step in it also, but give me the wisdom to laugh my balls off when they do.
Allow me to go the way of Bill, the prophet with tunnel vision, who found the lord by mightily whipping off the used condom and sticking it to the wall above his bed like a vinyl U2 sticker everytime he "smote" a chubby one. That is fuckin funny.
Reward me with good stories. Curb intentionally the stories about being sober and making some damn internal discovery about "what you want in life", for these are terrible stories. "Good for you John Boy, but where are the tits and inflatable goalposts?"
Socrates was a DRUNK FUCK. "Jesus, CO, and my last PO", were not.
I pray, to the patron saint of "same again", progenitor of the buy-back, and lover of those cold and stumbling.
Furthermore, oh god of chirping birds at 5 am, I rebuke thee. Begone foul fowl, back to hell with you.
Amen.
Alcohol, a common ground with so many holes drilled, I love thee. "Tonight make me unstoppable", I pray. Benevolent god of rye and peanut shells, allow me to win. When I trip over human debris, let me hold my friends up so they don't step in it also, but give me the wisdom to laugh my balls off when they do.
Allow me to go the way of Bill, the prophet with tunnel vision, who found the lord by mightily whipping off the used condom and sticking it to the wall above his bed like a vinyl U2 sticker everytime he "smote" a chubby one. That is fuckin funny.
Reward me with good stories. Curb intentionally the stories about being sober and making some damn internal discovery about "what you want in life", for these are terrible stories. "Good for you John Boy, but where are the tits and inflatable goalposts?"
Socrates was a DRUNK FUCK. "Jesus, CO, and my last PO", were not.
I pray, to the patron saint of "same again", progenitor of the buy-back, and lover of those cold and stumbling.
Furthermore, oh god of chirping birds at 5 am, I rebuke thee. Begone foul fowl, back to hell with you.
Amen.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
So apparently I review tracks now.
Juelz Santana (ft. Lil Wayne): "Black Republicans"
The pre-track banter makes the whole damn thing worthwhile. Weezy sounds fuckin DRUNK in the beginning, "that's that 'can't feel my face' shit". His flow sounds a little oiled-up also, but not in a bad way, like that time you "slayed" some dude while waiting in line for the bathroom at Southpaw. Or the time I grabbed the mic at my graduation party. Like that.
And Juelz? Hilarious. “Have my London boys English muffin you”. “Fuck a tongue, she put a lung on it”. That dipset fuckin NONSENSE that is so fun to listen to.
By the time Wayne said he would "get all in her mouth like Polident" I almost fell off my chair at work. Sorry Grandma.
Get it here.
And now...
Shady Milos
Gross. You can keep that, to redeem an otherwise lazy post.
The pre-track banter makes the whole damn thing worthwhile. Weezy sounds fuckin DRUNK in the beginning, "that's that 'can't feel my face' shit". His flow sounds a little oiled-up also, but not in a bad way, like that time you "slayed" some dude while waiting in line for the bathroom at Southpaw. Or the time I grabbed the mic at my graduation party. Like that.
And Juelz? Hilarious. “Have my London boys English muffin you”. “Fuck a tongue, she put a lung on it”. That dipset fuckin NONSENSE that is so fun to listen to.
By the time Wayne said he would "get all in her mouth like Polident" I almost fell off my chair at work. Sorry Grandma.
Get it here.
And now...
Shady Milos
Gross. You can keep that, to redeem an otherwise lazy post.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
"and then people need to get killed by it to know its there"
Some bunz ass CDs for you.
Rooney Real just woke up in someone's front yard. "Rooney!! Look more REAL! The camera loves you baby!"
Michael Cole has a guitar boner and wants to tell everyone about it.
No. I don't want to.
This guy did his cover art in a booth, in a mall, in Pennsylvania, and then paid for it.
Poetical is a word now. I called it.
Seriously, FUCK the papyrus font and fuck your serene picture. Papyrus does not make everything look "mystical" and "earthy" it makes you look like a fuckbag.
No. YOU Spend some time.
"I've seen gay-er things, but not today"
-Ogre
This is just great. I cant make fun of this. "Vehicular Bump-a-side" might be the coolest phrase I have ever heard. Ever.
I might buy this one, because I reeeeally want to know what happens to Little Suck-a-Thumb and Flying Robert.
Yeah....
It is extremely challenging.
Jesus.
Wanna look like a complete tool? Everything you need is right here.
FUCKING FUCK THE PAPYRUS FONT. Seriously, if you have ever used this to try and make your shit look cool, leave, don't ever come here again.
Ok so yeah it was unrelated to anything, but I just found this website (http://kunaki.com/) where aspiring musicians can design their own CD packaging and get it printed. I could look at the gallery on that site for hours for the staggering amount of assholes with chauncey ass packaging. Its a worn out blogger bit, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style ragging on some poor sucker who takes himself seriously, but I dont give a fuck. This shit is too funny.
I really hope some of these artists find this and get mad at me. They won't.
I will be back to the booze thing a little later, no worries.
Rooney Real just woke up in someone's front yard. "Rooney!! Look more REAL! The camera loves you baby!"
Michael Cole has a guitar boner and wants to tell everyone about it.
No. I don't want to.
This guy did his cover art in a booth, in a mall, in Pennsylvania, and then paid for it.
Poetical is a word now. I called it.
Seriously, FUCK the papyrus font and fuck your serene picture. Papyrus does not make everything look "mystical" and "earthy" it makes you look like a fuckbag.
No. YOU Spend some time.
"I've seen gay-er things, but not today"
-Ogre
This is just great. I cant make fun of this. "Vehicular Bump-a-side" might be the coolest phrase I have ever heard. Ever.
I might buy this one, because I reeeeally want to know what happens to Little Suck-a-Thumb and Flying Robert.
Yeah....
It is extremely challenging.
Jesus.
Wanna look like a complete tool? Everything you need is right here.
FUCKING FUCK THE PAPYRUS FONT. Seriously, if you have ever used this to try and make your shit look cool, leave, don't ever come here again.
Ok so yeah it was unrelated to anything, but I just found this website (http://kunaki.com/) where aspiring musicians can design their own CD packaging and get it printed. I could look at the gallery on that site for hours for the staggering amount of assholes with chauncey ass packaging. Its a worn out blogger bit, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style ragging on some poor sucker who takes himself seriously, but I dont give a fuck. This shit is too funny.
I really hope some of these artists find this and get mad at me. They won't.
I will be back to the booze thing a little later, no worries.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Free Spirits (Pour me another) Part 2.
I'm considering all of this as I am cruising off of a massive bender. Let me explain. I had 10 days off from work to celebrate the holidays with my family and friends back home. Those 10 days were almost wholly occupied by passing out in loveseats, playing with my dog, wearing a mustache, mixing absurdly strong brandy and coke IV's for my auntie Tammy, dancing drink-in-hand to James Brown with my entire family, playing guitar hero, and taking BAC tours of lower Minneapolis. Fantastic.
And, this deserves its own paragraph, tangling myself night after night inside Awesome. A girl that should have monuments erected in her honor... Besides mine.
That being said, I crash landed, refreshed, back in NYC to celebrate a speedy new years in a shady warehouse in Brooklyn. Depleted of vitamins, moisture, semen, brain cells, and sentences, I returned to work for a four day work week. Four because any opportunity to subtract will be taken enthusiastically by the entirety of this business. I don't remember most of those four days, but they were the most productive of my entire 6 month career.
So naturally, it was again cause to celebrate, continue the bender, Robbie Williams high-fiving Rod Stewart, shattering highballs for three whole city blocks while kicking Angelina Jolie square in the tit. It was that good. So I went to Vermont. To "ski". For a whole week. How I pulled off the logistics of such a vacation in such close proximity to another is far beyond me.
It was to be me, my friend Jay From Queens (Bro), his girlfriend Jess, a hardcore Irish girl from Broad Channel, 160 Queens College kids, and Shady Milos, a Serbian National with a Beethoven haircut and his own language.
A brief glossary, the official dialect of Milosistan:
Beasting: Verb, to beast. To attack something head on, be it a buffalo wing or a vagina. "I beasted that shit, son". One can also be in "Beast Mode", which is the state of Beasting. This is similar to "Berzerk" mode in Doom 2, where you Beast everything in sight without the aid of a weapon.
NOTE: "Son" should be uttered after 95 percent of all statements made, regardless of familial relation to the subject.
Bunz (or buns): Variation: "Bunz-ass": Adjective. The state of being bunz, inconvenient, ugly, shady, pointless, or lame. "That girl is bunz, son."
Done Dotted: Who the fuck knows. To be finished, over with, or, "a wrap". I think.
Some Acceptable Phrases:
"You're getting mad grimy with that cheese, son.", but only in reference to sandwiches. And:
"Ya' done Son!" In reference to basically anything.
It should be noted that Shady Milos is the biggest hater in history. So bad to the point that he literally "hates" in his sleep.
This trip happened, among the girls with wigs and the guys with non-ironic unibrows. The mutants of Queens College. By the second day, the four of us were simultaneously hated, adored, and feared by each unfortunate mongoloid we ended up drinking with. For my part, I was unknowingly thrown out of a house for informing a room full of girls they were "stuck up cunts". Which they were.
For Jay's part, a red-head, he somehow managed not to kill a small, shook-looking child named Terrence (who insisted that all call him "T-Hef") for grabbing his girlfriends ass repeatedly. This restraint brought Jay local fame.
Shady Milos shouldn't have been allowed near anyone, but he did end up finding security for us. Through his Balkan pride, some-the-fuck-how he befriended Vlado, the Judo champion of Croatia and trainer of military special forces for the Croatian military. Vlado was our de fatco bodyguard, all he required was a warm beer every 20 minutes from my backpack. We were happy to oblige.
Be that as it may, the amount of drinking achieved was basically heroic. It would only take three trips down the slushy mountain to kick up the thirst again, and three strong drinks to bat down the shakes. One more to shuttle us in for good. Nighttime, it hit well, 2 glasses of Jameson were fine the way 2 glasses of Canadian Club were in the morning. I was getting paid for this. 6 more to make a bet with Jess on who would fuck the first girl (yes), and 14 more to win the bet (yes). 0 to fall corpse asleep with the condom on. 0 to stay passed out, spread eagle on the hide-a-bed while the cops raided the house looking for T-Hef (yes). 2 more to make sense of it all. One more warm one on the way home.
None of this seemed problematic to me. The same way I feel comfortable writing about it. Of course, I think it was funny, but none of it seemed like a bad idea. A good time was had by all. Andy's Tap was open early for a reason. So people could start having fun sooner. This makes sense. The first time I had an inkling that such a lifestyle could be foolish was as a 7 year old, ducking a drunk as he screamed condemnations to the ref at at a Gopher basketball game.
"What's wrong with that guy Dad?"
--"Nevermind him, he's just drunk."
"Probably just can't handle his shit huh?"
Oh yeah, I am going to stop drinking for the entire month of February (Super Bowl excepted).
To be continued...
And, this deserves its own paragraph, tangling myself night after night inside Awesome. A girl that should have monuments erected in her honor... Besides mine.
That being said, I crash landed, refreshed, back in NYC to celebrate a speedy new years in a shady warehouse in Brooklyn. Depleted of vitamins, moisture, semen, brain cells, and sentences, I returned to work for a four day work week. Four because any opportunity to subtract will be taken enthusiastically by the entirety of this business. I don't remember most of those four days, but they were the most productive of my entire 6 month career.
So naturally, it was again cause to celebrate, continue the bender, Robbie Williams high-fiving Rod Stewart, shattering highballs for three whole city blocks while kicking Angelina Jolie square in the tit. It was that good. So I went to Vermont. To "ski". For a whole week. How I pulled off the logistics of such a vacation in such close proximity to another is far beyond me.
It was to be me, my friend Jay From Queens (Bro), his girlfriend Jess, a hardcore Irish girl from Broad Channel, 160 Queens College kids, and Shady Milos, a Serbian National with a Beethoven haircut and his own language.
A brief glossary, the official dialect of Milosistan:
Beasting: Verb, to beast. To attack something head on, be it a buffalo wing or a vagina. "I beasted that shit, son". One can also be in "Beast Mode", which is the state of Beasting. This is similar to "Berzerk" mode in Doom 2, where you Beast everything in sight without the aid of a weapon.
NOTE: "Son" should be uttered after 95 percent of all statements made, regardless of familial relation to the subject.
Bunz (or buns): Variation: "Bunz-ass": Adjective. The state of being bunz, inconvenient, ugly, shady, pointless, or lame. "That girl is bunz, son."
Done Dotted: Who the fuck knows. To be finished, over with, or, "a wrap". I think.
Some Acceptable Phrases:
"You're getting mad grimy with that cheese, son.", but only in reference to sandwiches. And:
"Ya' done Son!" In reference to basically anything.
It should be noted that Shady Milos is the biggest hater in history. So bad to the point that he literally "hates" in his sleep.
This trip happened, among the girls with wigs and the guys with non-ironic unibrows. The mutants of Queens College. By the second day, the four of us were simultaneously hated, adored, and feared by each unfortunate mongoloid we ended up drinking with. For my part, I was unknowingly thrown out of a house for informing a room full of girls they were "stuck up cunts". Which they were.
For Jay's part, a red-head, he somehow managed not to kill a small, shook-looking child named Terrence (who insisted that all call him "T-Hef") for grabbing his girlfriends ass repeatedly. This restraint brought Jay local fame.
Shady Milos shouldn't have been allowed near anyone, but he did end up finding security for us. Through his Balkan pride, some-the-fuck-how he befriended Vlado, the Judo champion of Croatia and trainer of military special forces for the Croatian military. Vlado was our de fatco bodyguard, all he required was a warm beer every 20 minutes from my backpack. We were happy to oblige.
Be that as it may, the amount of drinking achieved was basically heroic. It would only take three trips down the slushy mountain to kick up the thirst again, and three strong drinks to bat down the shakes. One more to shuttle us in for good. Nighttime, it hit well, 2 glasses of Jameson were fine the way 2 glasses of Canadian Club were in the morning. I was getting paid for this. 6 more to make a bet with Jess on who would fuck the first girl (yes), and 14 more to win the bet (yes). 0 to fall corpse asleep with the condom on. 0 to stay passed out, spread eagle on the hide-a-bed while the cops raided the house looking for T-Hef (yes). 2 more to make sense of it all. One more warm one on the way home.
None of this seemed problematic to me. The same way I feel comfortable writing about it. Of course, I think it was funny, but none of it seemed like a bad idea. A good time was had by all. Andy's Tap was open early for a reason. So people could start having fun sooner. This makes sense. The first time I had an inkling that such a lifestyle could be foolish was as a 7 year old, ducking a drunk as he screamed condemnations to the ref at at a Gopher basketball game.
"What's wrong with that guy Dad?"
--"Nevermind him, he's just drunk."
"Probably just can't handle his shit huh?"
Oh yeah, I am going to stop drinking for the entire month of February (Super Bowl excepted).
To be continued...
Monday, January 15, 2007
"Free spirits ain't settin no one's spirits free"
I suppose I've just lived in bars...I might have even been raised in them. The drinking wasn't anything to me, Wednesday nights at Frenchmann's. Every Wednesday. From age 5 until about....14. Without fail. My Dad and all of his softball buddies downing pitchers, smoking cigars, throwing darts. I would play pinball and swallow cokes, hamburgers. I was always happy there. Shit, everyone was. Every now and again one of my Dad's slurred pals would throw quarters in the machine, lean over me and tell me the about the finer points of multiball management.
My aunt also worked there, Patty, the baby of the family. She ran the bar, she didn't own it, but when she was in there, she ran the motherfucker. She outsized most of the people in there, both in heart and physical space occupied. Stout, she found herself ducking whipped pool balls on more than one occasion, as they sailed to connect with the already dotted booze and wood behind her. Never when I was there though, not on the weeknights, the good vibes ran shit then. All those nights, she would duck out of the windowless bar after closing time into her broken muffler plymouth duster and haul ass out of there sounding like a thousand punctured lungs screaming at the road. That was her war call, my brother often found himself in fights with the dirty fucks in his trailer park. 4 to 1, 8 to 1, my brother never cared. He'd kill 'em all or catch an ass whooping. Either way, when those thousand lungs came screaming rusty around the corner, kicking the back end out, everyone fucking scattered. Patty was coming. And that meant headlocks. Fight was over.
She raised me too, I was raised by committee. She was second only to my auntie Jer. Jer was a traveler, a road person who would slang trunkfulls of dope all around the country, she knew hitmen, pulled scams on car dealerships by moving cars across state lines, saw the pyramids of Giza, smuggled pounds of weed over the fence to my 2x vietnam vet uncle at "camp" (read:jail). All of this, but just like Frenchmann's, none of this seediness while I was around. She took care of my cousin (my cousin is my age) and me at the age of two and beyond. She would take care of us while our more straight laced mothers were at work, showing us the way light bounced through prisms, telling us stories, and, I believe this to be one of the most important parts of my life to date, playing us every Bob Marley record she had. And she had a lot.
We didn't just like it, we fucking LOVED it. We would crawl into her room and viciously scatter all of her records on the floor, grab the Bob ones, hold them up, eclipsing our tiny bodies, and say "Bob". How the fuck did we know which were which? Doesn't matter. My cousin's first word was "rastaman" (a fact that his mother denies vehemently to this day). Said.
Back at the bar, watching these people, these friends of my Dad put down pitcher after picther and laugh after laugh, I never once thought "these men are bad people", or, "these guys are intoxicated". Nothing about their behavior suggested they were dangerous. Zero. Less than zero. It seemed to me to be a normal part of adulthood.
The same went for Andy's Tap. Andy's was right next to the hobby shop where I would snag comics out of dusty boxes and weights to throw my pinewood derby cars down the track. Every Tuesday, my genius Dad found a way to parlay my weekly swimming lesson into a wet haired trip to the bar with his son. At Andy's it was video bowling instead of pinball, and instead of an Aunt it was a waitress who knew my name and my family. She is still there to this day. Again, this seemed to be everything OK. Low light, happy people who knew each other, swilling beer (at 3.2% alcohol. the bars in Bloomington couldn't serve the real stuff until a few years ago, unless they were on the freeway) laughing, playing games, and handing me an odd colored lollipop on my way out.
Fuck it, I thought, as a 5 year old. I'm away from the wife, they got pull tabs and MGD on tap, what the fuck else do I need?
Not much apparently. Like the Cat Power track, I've lived in bars ever since then. And I still don't see what's wrong with that.
To be continued...seriously this time.
My aunt also worked there, Patty, the baby of the family. She ran the bar, she didn't own it, but when she was in there, she ran the motherfucker. She outsized most of the people in there, both in heart and physical space occupied. Stout, she found herself ducking whipped pool balls on more than one occasion, as they sailed to connect with the already dotted booze and wood behind her. Never when I was there though, not on the weeknights, the good vibes ran shit then. All those nights, she would duck out of the windowless bar after closing time into her broken muffler plymouth duster and haul ass out of there sounding like a thousand punctured lungs screaming at the road. That was her war call, my brother often found himself in fights with the dirty fucks in his trailer park. 4 to 1, 8 to 1, my brother never cared. He'd kill 'em all or catch an ass whooping. Either way, when those thousand lungs came screaming rusty around the corner, kicking the back end out, everyone fucking scattered. Patty was coming. And that meant headlocks. Fight was over.
She raised me too, I was raised by committee. She was second only to my auntie Jer. Jer was a traveler, a road person who would slang trunkfulls of dope all around the country, she knew hitmen, pulled scams on car dealerships by moving cars across state lines, saw the pyramids of Giza, smuggled pounds of weed over the fence to my 2x vietnam vet uncle at "camp" (read:jail). All of this, but just like Frenchmann's, none of this seediness while I was around. She took care of my cousin (my cousin is my age) and me at the age of two and beyond. She would take care of us while our more straight laced mothers were at work, showing us the way light bounced through prisms, telling us stories, and, I believe this to be one of the most important parts of my life to date, playing us every Bob Marley record she had. And she had a lot.
We didn't just like it, we fucking LOVED it. We would crawl into her room and viciously scatter all of her records on the floor, grab the Bob ones, hold them up, eclipsing our tiny bodies, and say "Bob". How the fuck did we know which were which? Doesn't matter. My cousin's first word was "rastaman" (a fact that his mother denies vehemently to this day). Said.
Back at the bar, watching these people, these friends of my Dad put down pitcher after picther and laugh after laugh, I never once thought "these men are bad people", or, "these guys are intoxicated". Nothing about their behavior suggested they were dangerous. Zero. Less than zero. It seemed to me to be a normal part of adulthood.
The same went for Andy's Tap. Andy's was right next to the hobby shop where I would snag comics out of dusty boxes and weights to throw my pinewood derby cars down the track. Every Tuesday, my genius Dad found a way to parlay my weekly swimming lesson into a wet haired trip to the bar with his son. At Andy's it was video bowling instead of pinball, and instead of an Aunt it was a waitress who knew my name and my family. She is still there to this day. Again, this seemed to be everything OK. Low light, happy people who knew each other, swilling beer (at 3.2% alcohol. the bars in Bloomington couldn't serve the real stuff until a few years ago, unless they were on the freeway) laughing, playing games, and handing me an odd colored lollipop on my way out.
Fuck it, I thought, as a 5 year old. I'm away from the wife, they got pull tabs and MGD on tap, what the fuck else do I need?
Not much apparently. Like the Cat Power track, I've lived in bars ever since then. And I still don't see what's wrong with that.
To be continued...seriously this time.
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