Public Enemies Review

I got off work at around six, and had to be reminded that I had agreed to see Public Enemies with Rita.

After cramming some taco bell down my throat, I headed up to Sunset and Vine, locale of the Arclight Cinema. I parked and headed for the boxoffice.

The Arclight aspires to be more than it is. It seems to want to be a performing arts center. You pick out the spot in the theater where you want to sit, and you get a ticket that directs you to a specific seat, much like you’re about to see Madonna perform live. Except that you’re not. They also have an overpriced and decidedly lame “bar” in the lobby. I suppose it’s only fair to mention that I only assume it’s overpriced, because I would never, ever buy a beer in the lobby of a movie theater. Only a hardcore alcoholic or a soft-living yuppie would do something like that. And I’m only an early-stage alcoholic and I go to great lengths to conceal any traces of my inherent yuppyness.

Your experience at the Arclight is not complete until a man comes out before the movie starts and announces the name of the movie you are about to see, tells you his name, and gives you the running time of the film. This angers me greatly. For one thing, I already know what movie I’m about to see, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t appreciate having the surprise spoiled. Second, I do not need to know the name of the man whose job is to scrape jujubees off the floor between shows. I have nothing against him, but we don’t need to be on a first name basis. Second, and more importantly, I’m stupid enough to pay twelve bucks to see a movie, but I’m not so stupid that I don’t realize that having the title announced to me by a real live person is part of the reason that three of those dollars were wasted.

Then Public Enemies started.

The movie stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, as John Dillinger and the bastard FBI agent who pursues him and eventually helps to gun him down.

I like period pieces and I like Johnny Depp, and I love bank robberies and bank robbers. So I had been fairly eager to see the movie. I also love stories about John Dillinger. As a former delinquent and lifelong admirer of anyone who brazenly defies authority and consequence for a good length of time, I had no choice, really, but to see it.

I’m not a film critic, and I don’t like long-winded film critics, so I’ll just say that I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, I did not feel overly insulted by the history presented, and was indeed entertained for two and a half hours.

There was something missing. I don’t know what it was. You (or at least I) can really fall in love with a good sociopath onscreen, ala Tony Soprano, but I never really fell for Depp’s Dillinger. It’s not that it wasn’t a good, nuanced, believable performance. It was all three. If I had to guess, I’d say what I wanted to see and did not see was the buildup of moral deterioration followed by the inevitable fall from grace, and the sadness that follows the harsh consequences of all that glorious selfishness. Depp’s Dillinger just stole money for no apparent reason, fell in love for no apparent reason, and got a bullet in the face.

Christian Bale’s character was similarly one-dimensional, and he didn’t have to be.

You have to laugh at the Hollywood mentality. They made up six or seven incidents, swapped details in a few other incidents, and omitted several key facts about Dillinger’s story. But they spent vast sums of money and went to painstaking effort to precisely re-create the facade of the movie theater outside of which Dillinger was gunned to his death.

I rate it 7.7/10

Funny Comedy Jokes

Most of you are too stupid to get these jokes. And the people who are laughing right now? You’re the stupidest ones. But I’m going to tell my jokes anyway. I’m practicing for when I get a good audience.

Today I went to Disneyland with my brother. He said do you want to go to Tomorrow land. I said yes. He said when. I said Tomorrow. I don’t want to show up today, like a fucking asshole.

One time, I saw this guy, he had three arms. I said to him, were you born that way? He said no, were you?

My friend has a pet but he’s moving to a new apartment that does not allow pets. He said can you take my pet. I said what kind of pet? He said its a Komodo Dragon. I said no, I can’t take a Komodo Dragon. He said why. I said because my building only allows small lizards. And what you’re talking about is not a small lizard. You’re talking about a big lizard. In fact, you’re talking about the biggest god damn lizard on the whole planet. They’re ten feet long and they have poison mouths and they can eat goats without chewing. I don’t think that would qualify as a small lizard. Why would they go to the trouble of specifying only small lizards if they’d make an exception for a Komodo Dragon. It just wouldn’t make sense, man.

My anniversary is coming up. I’m going to get her flowers and a card. The card is going to say darling, I love you. Then I’m going to write in pen, underneath that, I’m going to write darling, shall I compare thee to a summers day. How many summer days shall I compare thee to? Let me count them. Signed, John.

My neighbor has a son and his birthday is coming up. I was invited to the party, so I have to show up because its my neighbor. I don’t want to go because the kid is ten years old and I don’t know what to get a ten year old. I asked my neighbor, should I get him a train? My neighbor said the kid hates model trains. I said what kind of a kid hates trains? He said my kid hates trains. So I said ok, its kind of weird that he hates trains. See the confusion is, I was going to get him a real train, not a model. My neighbor just made that stupid assumption.

My girlfriend said write me a poem. I said what kind. She said Chinese. I said I don’t speak Chinese, how can I write you a poem? She said learn to speak Chinese, and then write me a poem. You don’t have to know very much Chinese to write just a short little one. So I went and bought some tapes that teach you Chinese. I learned a few words. So I wrote a short little poem. It said, flowers are beautiful, just like you, and you need water, but you need more water than flowers do. But I wrote it in Chinese.

I had a stain on my carpet so I thought I’d get a rug to cover it up. So I went down to the store and looked at rugs. There were so many to chose from. The salesman said, what kind of rug do you want? So I told him about the stain.

My car started making a funny noise. So I took it in to have it looked at by a mechanic. I said its making a funny noise. He said what kind of a noise? So I said kind of a clanking noise. He said oooooh no. That’s the worst kind of noise a car can make. I said what does it mean. He said well, it could mean alot of things.

When I do this one, I talk like Steve Martin… I found a time machine, and I went back in time. I went back a hundred years. I said where’s Jesus, they were like, he’s gone. I was like fuck, I guess I have to go back farther. So I set it back a thousand years. I said, where’s Jesus? They said, he’s been gone a long time man. I was like, damn, I guess I have to go back even farther. So I set it back two thousand years. Then I saw Him. Jesus Christ, finally!

I have a picture of my grandfather. He’s dead now, but I’ve got his picture hanging on my wall. I don’t have a picture of my grandmother. But she’s still alive, so I guess I could get one, you know, in a pinch.

The other day I woke up and I was really craving a piece of fruit. I looked around in the kitchen, but all I had was Apple Jacks. So I poured a bowl, but the whole time I was eating it, all I could think was how bad I wanted a piece of fruit. So then I went to work, and come lunchtime, I really wanted a piece of fruit. So I went into the lunchroom, but all they had was sandwiches. I ate one, but with every bite I took, all I could think was, this sandwich aint bad, but I sure do wish I had an apple, or an orange. Then on my way home from work I figured I’d stop and get something to eat, because I didn’t feel like doing dishes. So I stopped. For that one I’m not talking like Steve Martin anymore. Sorry. I should have told you that.

I really like watching the show Bewitched on television. That Endora, the mother? Cracks me the fuck up. So the other day I’m watching Bewitched and it was an episode with not much Endora. I was like, fuck. So I started flipping through the channels, and then I figured, hey, this is stupid. Why would Bewitched be on another channel? They don’t show the same show one two different channels at the same time. They’ll show you the same show on two different channels at two different times of day, but never at the same time. So you know, I was flipping the channels and just going, man, what am I doing?

Wild Times on a Monday Night

I have this big fear that my drinking is starting to impair my brain function.

Even when I’m sober now I’ve noticed now that in speech I screw up different words and sentences, I lose my train of thought more easily than I used to and my concentration level has dropped to downright embarrassing  levels.  Of course, most people who know me don’t pay me enough attention to have noticed.  Yet.

That having been said, I drank tonight.  Not much, four or five beers.  Enough to get  comfortably numb.

Tonight we went to McCallons.  I have not been to the place in about two months, and am relieved to see that most of the cocktail waitresses no longer remember what I drink and I get only the faintest glances of familiarity from some of the harder-core alcoholics who seem to be stuck to the floor of the place like so much gum on the bottom of a big mocking shoe named Sobriety P. Normalcy.

There was nowhere to sit at the main area of the bar, the area with all the action.  I usually try to horn my way in there and stare at pretty girls until they get uncomfortable and leave.  But not tonight.  Tonight we had to settle for an out of the way spot way over near the door, in a portion of the room where you’d never otherwise have any reason to be.  I’ve always thought of it as the low class section.  Clearly, not the place for me.

Josh and I sat there for a while and ordered some drinks.  As usual, there was one bartender attempting to serve the entire bar, which tonight was at least forty people, most of them severe alcoholics.  There was rumored to be a waitress, but I had seen hide nor hair of her.  And I’d really been looking for her hide.

We finally got a couple of Coronas and the sweet caress of liquid love began to tease my wounded heart into a state of blessed indifference, when all of a sudden Josh noticed some girl sitting a few seats up.

“Hey, look at that girl.  She’s not bad looking.”

No, I had to admit, she wasn’t bad looking at all.  She was sitting by herself at the end of a row of tables, though I did notice a few tell-tale purses strewn around her.  According to Bar Theory 101, this means she is either the designated driver or that she doens’t dance, but her friends do, so she’s stuck on purse duty.  She was slugging straight whiskey, which in this place gives no clue as to whether she is the former or the latter.  Rancho Cucamonga’s finest regularly arrest upwards of a dozen patrons of this place for attempting to drive home, and that’s just on a Monday.

Josh was telling me I should approach this girl and ask her what she’s doing by herself.  He gave me some witty way to say it, but I’m not really very witty and I barely listen to Josh most of the time, so I wasn’t sure how to proceed.  I did what I normally do in these situations, which is to get up and hit the pisser.  After getting most of it in the toilet, which meant that I only slightly increased the ankle-deep puddle normally on the floor of the McCallon’s restroom, and journeyed back to the bar a couple of seats in front of her.  She was still by herself.

Here’s the thing about me… I don’t really like hitting on girls I don’t know.  In fact, I don’t really like hitting on girls.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t really like people.  Once every three or four years, I’ll come accross some unlucky soul who is twisted enough that for some reason I’ll like them.  Now if a girl has a pretty face, or like an ancient pyramid, is built, I can temporarily put aside my generalized misanthropism long enough to introduce myself and possibly have a short conversation.  So long as the girl does not reveal yuppyism, a shortage of brain power, a lack of taste, more than four visible tattoos, more than one missing tooth, or an unhealthy insistence on filling up silence with stupid chatter, I’m pretty much willing to make out with her.  If she’s game.

The thing is, we’re talking about a personaility type that is pretty rare.  About one in two billion, from what I’ve been able to gather so far.  So I sat there at the bar and occaisionally peered over my shoulder to see if I could discern any signs that this particular girl exhibited anything readable.  I noticed three tattoos.  Cutting it close, but under the limit.  She seemed to have all of her teeth, and for a real surprise, they were all lined up in approximately the same direction and seemed to be a pleasant shade of bone.  Her garb suggested a half-assed bohemian who partied her way through her college years and was now old enough to begin to feel the first pangs of regret for having done so.

I glanced back at Josh who was wildly motioning for me to either cut her throat or talk to her, I couldn’t tell which.

I ordered another drink, and when it came I rose and turned around.  From the corner of my eye, I saw Him walking up, and realized I was in a pickle.  Some guy I hadn’t seen until now was walking up to sit next to her, which meant that I had to either awkwardly change directions or risk a pretty silly little episode.  I decided it was too late, so in panic mode I approached her and asked her if she had a cigarette.  I quit smoking ten years ago, but I noticed a pack of Winstons in her purse earlier.

“Hey, can I bum a smoke?”

“I don’t have any.”

Right at that moment, He, I assumed her boyfriend, sat down next to her and eyed me suspiciously.  I asked him if he had one and he said he did.  Then he reached into her purse and handed me a Winston.  I gave her a knowing smile.  Which probably looked to her eyes astonishingly similar to a smartass, we’ll see who has a fucking cigarette smile.

Now I was stuck with having to go through the motions of smoking the thing, which meant a trip out to the patio, that concrete slab of real estate behind the back door, where the wrought iron is long rusted over, where the pallen ash hangs over the patrons and gets into your clothing and hair forever.  Where the worm dyeth not.

I lit the stupid thing and took a couple of drags.  Not bad.  I took a seat on one of the horribly uncomfortable chairs and kicked my feet up on a table that probably hasn’t ever been deliberately cleaned.

A couple of minutes later I saw Her walk out and look around, no sign of Him in tow.  Her eyes met mind and I smiled.  She didn’t, but she walked up and sat down next to me anyway.

“Those were my brother’s cigarettes.  That’s why I said I didn’t have any.  You got a light?”

A lesser cynic might have bought her pathetic story, but I saw right through her, right through to her tiny black nicotine-stained heart.  I lit a match and held it out for her, wordlessly.

We talked for a couple of minutes.  I managed to gather that she was 28, worked for a real estate company doing something involving a computer and papers, and that she was here with her brother and a couple of his friends.  She did not really like bars, she said.

I told her some crap about myself, which she did a respectable job of feigning interest in.  Actually, she started asking questions that required more than a short answer to, and I thought things were starting to look up.  Over the course of another beer and another cigarette, the questions and answers kept flowing pretty well.  Too well, in fact.

For the sake of the one in a million chance that someone is going to read this who knows enough to put a name to her, I’ll keep our private conversation mostly private.  I’m good that way.  Sufficed to say I found something out that imbued me with the urge to put out my prop cigarette and walk back inside, where I proceeded to rush Josh out the door and into his car in search of a place to drink where she would not be present.

We ended up at the HiBrow yet again.  It was still there.  We dusted off one more for the road, and hit Taco Bell on our way home.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

You were probably misinformed about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Contrary to news reports, their selection of victims is apparently random; they aren’t hunting for jocks or blacks. Nor did they execute that Christian girl – they let her live to tell her story. They are not goths, they aren’t gay, nor were they ever members of a dorky clique calling themselves the “Trenchcoat Mafia.” They didn’t even listen to Marilyn Manson. Harris and Klebold are just a couple of extremely pissed-off kids with an arsenal. They probably just needed some antidepressants and a little more attention. If one of them had managed to get himself a girlfriend, the whole thing probably never would have happened. I’m not excusing them, but they’re misunderstood in death as they were in life, which was part of the problem all along. You’ll hear alot of media reports about them today, the tenth anniversary of the murders. What you won’t hear is that the media putting crap like that on the news is half the reason these kids do it in the first place. Just ask Mark David Chapman.

Another Day in the Life

I loaned my car to my sister in law today, so I made arrangements to be picked up and dropped off from work.

 

I got dropped off early, so I walked over to a liquor store on Santa Monica Blvd., mainly to kill some time.  On my way there I saw a woman in a pink pair of shorts that left very little to the imagination, and I thought about how depressing the sight of a hooker at eight in the morning can be. 

 

When I walked into the liquor store, I saw her bending over the counter talking to the guy who runs the store.  She looked up at me and smiled the smile of the deranged.  I headed to the back of the store and grabbed a Coke, and by the time I came up to the counter she was gone.

 

 

I thought about her during the work day.  It’s not smart to make a lot of decisions about a person from a glance.  It would be downright stupid, however, to believe that she wasn’t addicted to crystal or smack, to believe she hasn’t been beaten more than just once or twice in the last couple of months, or to fool myself into thinking she wasn’t molested or raped in her formative years.  Her face said all that.  She was probably in her late twenties, the skin on her upper body had that weather beaten look that people who spend a lot of time walking on the streets in the sunlight get, her body was still well shaped, but her eyes had that wild dog look that people get when they figured out (or decided) many years ago that no one cares about them and no one is going to help them with anything.

 

 

I tried to imagine what it must be like to walk up and down Santa Monica and Sunset all day, waiting to be picked up by horny disgusting men, wanting blow jobs and hand jobs and satisfaction for all the perversions they keep hidden from their wives and children, offering a couple of twenties in return.  Hollywood cleaned up a little bit a few years ago, when they built that five hundred million dollar shopping monstrosity.  You don’t see nearly as many hookers and drug dealers, and even the common homeless man is becoming a fairly rare sight.  At first all it seemed like to me was that they had pushed the runaway teenagers down from Hollywood Blvd. to Santa Monica and the eastern part of Melrose, but lately it seems like even those places are starting to clean up.  What this means is that the hookers you see in Hollywood now are the ones who are truly, deeply desperate.  They were probably young and fresh back in the days when you couldn’t swing a chicken on Hollywood Blvd. without knocking over at least three streetwalkers with a combined age of about 40, but now they’re about 40, and that fun little habit they originally turned to for help in dulling the pain has become a daily struggle that somewhere along the line became the source of the pain.

 

 

At a little past six this evening I headed back up to that liquor store to get another Coke and wait for my ride.  A homeless guy walked up to me and stepped right up in my face.  He smelled. 

 

 

“I want crystal.” He said.

 

 

“I’m not selling.” I said.

 

 

“Are you carrying?”

 

“I’m not selling, or carrying, I’m waiting for a ride.”

 

 

He took a step back and lost interest in me.  Seconds later a couple of guys on bikes with red shirts that said Safety Patrol came wheeling up and stopped a few feet in front of us.  They told the guy he had to be on the sidewalk or they were going to call the police.  I noticed they each had a pair of handcuffs clipped on their back belt loops.  I wondered if they actually have the authority to cuff people or if those are just props.  My gut tells me they don’t even have keys for them.

 

 

The guy shuffled over to the sidewalk and stood there, staring straight up into the sky at a spot that suddenly fascinated him.  I assume this was his impression of a person just minding their own business, standing legally on the sidewalk, no trouble to anyone.

 

 

The Safety Patrol wheeled away.

 

 

I was sitting on a barstool outside a little taco shack in the parking lot of this little strip mall, waiting for my ride.

 

 

The hooker form this morning rounded the corner from Highland and was heading toward me.  Now she was wearing a very short denim skirt with a denim jacket, kind of like an outfit you might have seen an extra from Footloose in.

 

 

The thing is, the girl, despite everything, from just the right angle and in just the right light was actually very pretty.  I’d stop short of using the word beautiful, but she had long lean legs and moved with ease and grace.  When she came closer I noticed that under the jean jacket she was wearing what looked like a black bathing suit top.  Her stomach was so hard it looked like if you threw a quarter at it you’d hear a loud tink.  Her tits were smallish and very far apart, like little sacks of sand that drooped straight down.  I noticed the area around her cleavage and neck was pretty distressed, like it had burned and peeled several times in the very recent past.  She must have seen me gazing at her and thought I might be a customer, because she walked up to me, (again, right up in my face, only this time I smelled beer) and asked me (really, really fast talking) if I wanted a date.  I said no thanks, and then she asked me if I had a cigarette.  I said I didn’t smoke.  Before the word smoke was finished, she was three steps away from me and heading away.

 

 

As she turned to leave I noticed her two high heeled shoes were different colors.  And the heels were each a different length.  She was stopped waiting for a light to change, with her hand clenched over her purse.  The meth guy from earlier was standing next to her and the two, who seemed one hundred percent oblivious to their mutual existence, struck quite the pair.  The light changed and she took off, he stayed put.  A couple of seconds later I saw the Safety Patrol dudes heading her way and talking excitedly.

 

 

After that everyone left my field of vision except the meth guy, and what I’ve been trying to decide ever since is whether these people live this way because of the drugs, or if they turn to the drugs because they live this way.  What I’ve decided is that it’s really a really stupid question for me to ask.  People do the things they do for incredibly complex reasons, and despite the fact that the little window into their lives I was peeping through was keeping me pretty enthralled, they both took the upper hand in their encounters with me, and both sized me up for worthless and disengaged in about six seconds. 

Songs that Split Open My Brain

Everyone has favorite songs.  Sometimes a song can stick with you for a few weeks or months, and sometimes you can hear it time and time again over a period of several years without getting tired of it. 

 

 There have been a few songs over the years for me that I’ve just never entirely been able to wrap my head around.  The first time I heard it, it sent a chill up my spine the way a song will when you hear it and immediately know it’s going to become an all time favorite.  That doesn’t always resonate with a new song, even a song you end up really liking, but sometimes a song, for whatever reason, just tears straight into your subconscious and stays there, it plays over and over in your head as months and years and decades go by.  I don’t want to push the point too far, but sometimes those songs end up becoming a part of you, in a way.

 

 

I think it’s a deeply personal thing, specific to individual people and specific times in their lives.  There are songs that have come out in the past few years that I know I would have loved when I was younger, but they don’t yet crackle with the resonance of having a personal history for me yet, they don’t remind me a specific corner of time and the universe and they haven’t been around long enough to have served as the backdrop for what became a cherished memory of a particular time and place.

 

 

I’ve been meaning to make a list of them at some point and put them together on a disc to keep in the car, but the thought eventually occurred to me that having them that accessible would, in a weird way, cheapen them for me.  I know I could listen to them all a million times and they wouldn’t lose much if any impact, but to put it plainly, they just aren’t songs for every day use.  Driving to work on a Tuesday morning is just not a fitting backdrop for certain songs, it’s as simple as that.  For some people these are just everyday songs, but for whatever deep-seated reason, they mean more to me.  Maybe it’s just my own personal experience, or maybe something is happening musically or lyrically that speaks to me individually.

 

 

But I did make a mental list, and here are a few of them.

 

 

Satisfaction – Rolling Stones

Probably the single most famous guitar riff ever laid down on wax, this songs just rips into me with reckless abandon.  It’s a riff that lasts about five seconds, and yet it says all you’d ever need to know about the band, the guy who wrote it, and an entire idiosyncratic style is contained within it that came to define something that millions of people understand and follow along with.  I’ve heard Satisfaction so many times by now that it’s lost some of the early punch, but to this day sometimes it’ll come on the radio or I’ll hear it playing somewhere, I crank it and it can just blow me away.

 

 

Love Buzz – Nirvana

The message is pretty simple: I love you, and you’re going to feel it.  The music is pretty simple, just an easy little riff repeated on top of a mid tempo drum beat that gets faster during the chorus and slower during the verses.  I think the studio cut lasts two minutes or something, and the lyrics could have been written by any love-smitten sixth grader.  But the overall effect, for me, feels like having my head slammed into a brick wall.  I have no idea why this song bites the way it does, I can’t explain it or define in it any way, but I hear a genius in it that I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the equal to.

 

 

Pretty Tied Up – Guns N Roses

In some ways it’s a very typical guns song, the production could be accused of being a bit overdone and there are probably a couple of sections of it here and there that could go away.  It’s a song about a woman who lives on Melrose and likes to be beaten.  But there are some really, really odd sentences thrown in here and there that give it a quality that is, for me, so surreal that it’s almost like listening to a dream.  “I just found a million dollars that someone forgot.”  Where the fuck did that come from?  They probably had half a song here and half a song there that kind of got meshed together to form Pretty Tied Up, but it’s one of those happy accidents that becomes something you could never have done on purpose.  “Once there was this rock and roll band rollin on the streets, time went by and it became a joke.”  It’s self referential in a way that only a tortured egomaniac like Axl Rose could think was fit for public consumption, but the song buzz saws it’s way through my brain every time I hear it.

 

 

Holiday in Cambodia – Dead Kennedys

This song is sort of a sermon, written by Jello for college kids who think they know everything by their junior year and go around spouting their half-baked liberal ideology to anyone who will listen, “bragging that they know how the niggers feel cold” as they go.  Jello himself is somewhere to the left of Karl Marx, and yet he chooses to attack not conservatives or soccer moms, but the stupid among his own ranks.  All in all, not your every day subject matter, and pretty odd even for a radical punk band.  What Jello thinks those half educated little pinko pricks need is a Holiday in Cambodia, to have their asses tied to a chain on one of Pol Pot’s work gangs, to “slave for soldiers till you starve and your head is skewered on a stake”, and then see what they think of their own pro-eastern, anti-capitalist rhetoric.  This from an outspoken left wing radical.  The music is a murky mix of California surf rock and a weird hybrid of punk rock and Chuck Berry.  It’s otherworldly, and yet it can put you in such a specific place and mindset.  It just slays me.

 

 

Anything, Anything – Dramarama

Never truly a hit song, and yet probably the single most played song on most modern rock radio stations.  I could not possibly begin to describe why this song has such an effect on me, but it does.  From the opening guitar weirdness to the end, it has all the ingredients of a grade AAA piece of shit, but for some reason it takes a left turn and finds its way to the single weirdest place I’ve ever heard a hard rock song go.  Bands have tried for decades to sound so “alternative” and never succeeded, bands have gone as far out of their way as they could to sound so hip and with it and sounded like pretentious jackasses in the process, and people have spent entire careers trying to put together three minutes of music that transports you the way this song does, and failed miserably at it.  I don’t think Dramarama themselves have any idea where this one came from. 

 

 

God Save the Queen – Sex Pistols

“No future!  No future!  No future for you!!!”

I dare you to write a better chorus.  Four words that communicate what whole books have failed utterly to communicate about what punk rock is.  An outsider looking in and sticking up his middle finger at the stodginess, just for the fun of it.  A smart kid thumbing his nose at a mean teacher.  Sarcasm, dumbassed brilliance, social commentary, an anthem, or maybe just a stupid and unmelodic song.  What faith do you have in the queen?  She made you a moron, didn’t she?  Blows.  Me.  Away.

 

 

Hurricane – Bob Dylan

A protest song about Hurricane Carter, the boxer.  He just tells the same story they tell in the movie.  I guess the truth is he could be talking about anything, the structure of the verses and choruses astounds me every time I hear it.  It’s not the story or even the perfection of the music and the melodies though, it’s the specific words he uses.  “Enter Patty Valentine from the other hall, she sees a bartender in a pool of blood, cries out my God they’ve killed ‘em all!!!!!”  Some people might not even think that’s a good sentence, but listen to that eight seconds of music, and ask yourself if it’s even possible to advance the story that far and fit the melody with the music without forcing it.  He just does it over and over throughout the whole song. 

 

 

I could go on, but these are enough for now.

 

Check out Love Buzz if you have time…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alsE-G84VPI

 

Or Pretty Tied Up…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLsGK5xl9MA

 

Or Anything, Anything…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MK-ibxlYKw

 

Or God Save the Queen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z2M_hpoPwk

Hello? Who is this? Put Lexi on the Phone!

Hello? Who is this? Put Lexi on the phone. Now!
Category: Pets and Animals

This morning I woke up and took a shower.  The shower was a hot one!  Woowee!!!! Yow!!!  That was some hot dang ‘ol water.

I went out to my car.  Dang, man, I says, that’s my car!  Fuckin A!  My car! Wooh!

I opened up the driver’s side door and out comes this racoon.  I said dang man, that there’s a big ‘ol fuckin A rack coon!  Sweet heeby jeeby, what’s a big ‘ol racoon doing in my car I says!

So I broke it’s neck.  Then I dressed it up in my bathrobe and put little sneakers on it.  Said, god damn, you don’t look so fuckin smart now, do ya?  Ya little shit!

Then here’s the funny part.  This big ‘ol racoon with a busted neck, and my bathrobe on with little sneakers on his paws, he looks  up at me and says, “How much you want for this car?  I was gonna buy it off ya.  I kicked the tires and I just jimmied the door so I could check the odometer.  Looks like a fine car to me.  I wanna buy it.  How much?  And why’d you break my neck for?  That was fucked up man.  I don’t even know how I’m gonna drive, or keep my job, or hell, how I’m gonna do any damn thing now I got a busted neck.”

I felt bad, but I was still sore at that racoon.

“What’s your name you little varmit?” I says.

“Lexi.”

“What kinda stupid ass name is that for a racoon?” I aksed.

“What am I supposed to be named? Victor?”

Well that pissed me off plenty so I kicked him hard as I could in the gut.  Then I threw his ass out in the street and tried to back over him with my car.  But he rolled over so I missed him.

Then just now I came home from work.  Damned if that little coon wasn’t layin right where I left him.  Still breathin too.

“You still alive you little shit?  I ought to kill you.”

“Please do.  Kill me.  Please.  I sure wish I hadn’t rolled over when you tried to run me over.  I wish you’d have split my skull right down the middle and killed me.  I don’t think I could begin to describe the kind of pain I’ve been in.  Layin here all day.  Shit.  You’d think the nerves would die down or something.  But they aint.  I feel every damn thing.  It flat hurts is what I’m trying to say.”

I came inside and said god damn, you don’t hear a coon say that every day.

Turned on the news.

Fuckin hamas shootin rockits at Isreal, Isreal bombin everybody and their fuckin brother too.  Fuckin Hesbolah just waitin to get into the mix, fuckin Iran tryin to enrich enough uranium to blow them jews off the map, fuckin Russia backin their play, fuckin China buyin their oil, fuckin US borrowin money from China to buy Chinese goods just for the hell of it, fuckin Barrack tryin to act like he understands what’s goin on, appointin latinos to his staff, already runnin against a ghost in 2012, fuckin GM tryin to act like they aint dumber than shit, runnin around like wolves with checkbooks.

That was on the news, and all I could think was, hell, I wonder if I oughta put that damn coon outta his misery.  Maybe I acted just like a big old sonofabitch.

Phone rings.

“Hello?  Who is this?  Put Lexi on the phone.  Oh for Christ’s sake please, put Lexi on the phone.”

My New Years Eve

I never seem to have anything decent to do on New Years Eve.  This year I had planned to head out to downtown Fullerton with some friends.  So nothing new on any front.

The first mistake I made was that I decided since I don’t get to see my friend Gerimi very often, I thought we should get some dinner before heading out.  I figured this way we’d get a chance to actually talk, instead of just sitting next to each other in a dark club or bar with the music blaring so loud you can’t hear yourself think, let alone the person next to you talking.  So we went and got some Olive Garden.  Not exactly the Meal of the Year, but the line was short and the appetizer sampler I ordered was actually pretty decent.  The problem was, by the time we finished eating dinner we were embroiled in a conversation about my failing creativity and ever diminishing capacity to produce anything worthwhile, so we drove around for a while before meeting up with Josh and the others.  By the time we parked, went up to the apartment and rounded everyone up, it was well after ten.

So as it turns out, if you want a decent seat in a bar in downtown Fullerton on new years eve, you might want to get started a little sooner than that.  There were huge lines and monsterous covers everywhere we looked, and when we peered inside, the places looked crowded, hot, and loud.

We finally found a place, I can’t remember the name though I know I’ve been there before.  There was a big line, but by that point we had figured out that we were going to have to wait no matter where we went.  So we stood in line for a while.  And the line didn’t move.  It was almost 11 when it was suggested we grease the palm of the doorman.  He told us that it was ten bucks to get in, meaning we’d have to shell out eighty bucks, for the eight of us.  But for the low low price of 120, he’d let us in right now.  Some quick math, and I figured that was only five extra bucks a head, and looking around at the desperation on the faces of my fellow line-waiters, I thought we should do it.

“Ok, I’ll make you a counter offer.  Fifty bucks for all of us, right now.” Josh said.  Josh has a way of grinning when he says these things that makes people have to stop and think about it for a second before they realize he just insulted them.  It’s kind of like a jedi mind trick, but like a Jedi mind trick, it only works on the weak-minded.  This guy was never going to split the atom, but he searched deep into himself, punched some numbers on a calculator, and decided that his orginal offer of 120 was going to stand.

Now in big groups of people with some couples and some singles mixed in, where everyone only knows each other on pretty flimsy tangents, things can break up pretty fast.  At this point I’m not clear on what happened, but the next thing I knew, Gerimi, Josh and myself were heading back to Debbi’s apartment to drink.

This wasn’t my idea of new years eve.  I can sit around someone’s living room and drink with these jerkoffs any night of the year.  I wanted to hit a bar or a club.  We passed Rockin Taco, found out there was no cover, but the line out back indicated these people thought they were waiting for Space Mountain, not a crappy little bar/eatery.  So we kept walking.  Then I saw this place where there was only a very small little line, and that little line was made up exclusively of drop dead gorgeous 22 year old girls who you could just tell were planning on making some bad decisions. 

“Hey let’s go to Envy!” I said.

“Big ass cover.” Josh said.

“Bullshit.  Let’s ask.” I retorted.

Turns out they wanted twenty five bucks a head. 

“Damn, that line was promising, but I don’t want to pay twenty five bucks for the priviledge of being overcharged for weak cocktails.” I said.

“They want twenty five bucks because they know what their line looks like.  I’m pretty sure at least a few of those girls are shills.”

Fair point.

So after some further disconnected conversation, Josh was gone.  I have no idea where he went or why, but now it was just me and Gerimi.  We decided to go back to the place we started at.

When we got there, I noticed the line had tripled.  I walked up and told the guy I’d give him thirty bucks for the two of us if he’d let us in right away.  He called another guy who came out and took our money, and in we went.  The looks on the faces of the people we walked ahead of was well worth the extra five spot, I assure you.

We got inside and it was really hot and really crowded.  You couldn’t sit down or even turn around very easily.  I ordered a shot of Wild Turkey and a Coors light.  The shot went down, I swallowed some beer, and we looked for a spot to stand.  We ended up over near the dance floor.

At some point I got up again to get another shot and beer.  There was a girl who I had earlier noticed looking at either me, or Gerimi, or both of us.  She was standing next to me at the bar.

“Wish shanna wone canson bore me outta my mind, nive somma dat.” She said.

I looked her up and down.  She was very pretty, very drunk, and very moist with sweat.  I leaned in and spoke softly into her ear.

“My friend likes you.” I said.

A few minutes later she was talking to Gerimi, and I noticed it was about a quarter to twelve.  There I was, stone cold sober, hot, uncomfortable, standing in a bar and realizing I needed to pee.

I walked back to the bathroom and saw there was a huge line for both the boys and girls restroom.  I ignore rest room lines, so I just walked in.  My theory on this is that if you just walk like you know what you’re doing, almost no one will ever call you out.  When I got up to the boys bathroom and walked in, I noticed two things.  First, there was a girl lying on the ground.  Second, she was alone in the boys bathroom lying on the ground.  I stepped back out.

“Do you know her?” I asked the first guy I saw.

“Yeah, she’s sick.  She’ll just be a minute.”

“She’s passed on on the bathroom floor man.  I’ll help you carry her out if you want.”

He looked inside, yelled at her, and then she got up and walked out like nothing had happened.  I went in and peed, and saw that someone had torn out the mirror.  Thirteen bucks for a shot and a beer, and no bathroom mirror.  I was angry now, because I wasn’t getting my money’s worth.  That always annoys me.

By the time I hit the bar and came back to where Gerimi and I had been standing, it was five to midnight.  I grabbed a chair from a table of Asians and sat down, and after I was sitting there I turned around and mumbled something along the lines of asking them if they were using that chair.  In my experience, Asians in Orange County are soft-hearted college types that would never, ever, under any circumstances, publicly disagree with anyone except another Asian.  Especially not a three hundred pound guy who smelled like whiskey and hadn’t smiled or spoken all night.

Next thing I knew it was midinight and Gerimi had his tongue seven or eight inches into the girl-from-ealier’s throat.  It went on that way for a bit longer than I thought was appropriate for a new years eve kiss, but it was all in fun.

Then another few minutes went by and Gerimi was dancing with her.  Then another few minutes went by and I noticed he wasn’t actually dancing with her, he was actually holding her up, but it looked like he was dancing because holding her up was actually a very difficult task.  Then a few minutes later he came up and sat next to me.  The Asians, as I had hoped, had vacated the table, no doubt cursing me under their breath.  (WAY under their breath.)

“So what happened?  You going home with her?” I asked, only half joking.

“I’m not sure what happened.  She just kind of freaked out.” He said.

Then she hit the ground.  Hard.  I mean, really hard.  Then she got up and someone propped her up in a chair.  Then a minute later she hit the ground again.  Even harder.  Then a minute later the bouncers came up and said something to her friends, and then some guy walked up to Gerimi and I and handed us two full drinks.

“Here, they kicked us out.  You guys can have these if you want.”

I smelled one of them.  I detected alot of whiskey and a hint of sweet and sour mix, but the side of the cup was dripping with condensation, suggesting this thing had been sitting around for quite some time.  I passed on the free drink.  So did Gerimi.

I stopped with the shots and just started ordering beers.  At some point during this time, a black girl sitting behind me leaned over and started rapping, with her face a few inches from mine.  I knew the song, so I rapped with her for a minute.  When she saw I knew the words, she raised her eyebrows and her face affected a look that said “Wow, you actually know this song… but you weren’t supposed to rap, you were supposed to listen.  I’m confused now so I’m going away.”  Her eyebrows communicated all of that.

A minute later I decided that was funny, so I burst into hysterical laughter.  Then I thought it would be even funnier if I leaned over and started rapping again.  I didn’t know the song that was playing now, so I just made some things up.  You might call it a freestyle.  She didn’t seem to think it was funny, and neither did her boyfriend, so I stopped and turned back around.  Then I decided that was funny, too, so I started laughing again.

Then a blonde walked by.

Gerimi said, in these exact words and with deadpan perfect delivery:

“That girl has sucked dick for money at some point in her life.”

That might have been funny, except the more carefully I looked at her, I realized he was almost certainly correct.  She had a face that I swear you only see on porn starts, a skirt that did not completely cover her ass even when she was staning perfectly still, and enormous boobs that were spilling out everywhere.  Lots of lipstick, lots of makeup, etc.

Her friend was very ugly.  There was a short, pudgy guy with a shaved head who was talking to them.  I couldn’t decide if he was bothering them or winning them over.  Then I thought maybe he had moved in on the hot slut, but was now in the process of settling for the ugly one.  The ugly one seemed to think this too, and she kept grabbing him and pulling him closer to her.  At one point, she actually grabbed his head and turned away from the pretty blonde slut and towards her.  I felt kind of sorry for her, but it was kind of funny at the time.  I remember thinking maybe she might want to think about going out with someone else if she desired male attention, but then I thought that this was probably an act the two of them put on all the time.  You reel em in, I’ll pull em off the line kind of thing.

I’m not clear on what happened for the next hour.  I somehow ended up at the other end of the bar, I thought it would be a great idea to send a text message to everyone on my phone list, wishing them a happy new year.  Some of them were coherrant, others were not.  I only got down to R on the list when I decided this was a horrible idea.

Then I got up and looked for Gerimi.  The short pudgy guy was still working his magic on superslut and her ugly friend.  Gerimi was nowhere in sight.

I went back to the bathroom again.  No line.  There was a guy standing in front of the mens room. 

“There’s a girl in there.  Someone got sick in the girls room so she’s using the mens.  She’ll be out in a minute.”

The thought occured to me that someone had been sick in the mens room too, but then a girl walked up to the girls room, opened the door and went in, and came out a second later with her hand over her mouth.

“Oh my god that’s the worst thing I’ve ever even seen.” She said.  She seemed to forget she even had to pee.

Finally the mens room door opened and a girl walked out.  Her face was green and sweaty and her shoes were gone.  She collapsed in front of us. 

“Do you know her?”

“Yeah.  Can you wait with her for a minute while I piss?” He asked me.

So he goes in to the bathroom and leaves me in the hallway with this thing.  A minute later a guy came up and sees her laying on the ground.  He looked up at me.

“Is she yours?”

“No.”

Then he leans down and ran his fingers through her hair.  She stirred a little bit, but only a little.

“Her boyfriend is in the bathroom.  You should probably leave her alone.” I said.

The guy looked up at me as though I had just slapped his mother in the face.  Then he stood up and looked around to see if anyone else had seen what he had done, then walked away.

When the guy came out, I asked him if he knew this girl.  He said he did.

“Then don’t leave her alone again.  Ger her some water and take her home, and don’t leave her by herself.  Some guy came up just now and tried to grope her.”

“WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“He’s gone.  Just don’t leave her alone.” I said.

He leaned down and grabbed the girl by the shoulder and shook her.

“Who raped you!!!!”

“No, no one raped her.  A guy just looked at her kind of funny.  Just get her some water and keep an eye on her.” I said.

I went in to the bathroom.  Her shoes were in the sink, as was, for some reason, alot of her hair.

When I came back out they were gone.

A couple of minutes after that they took last call, then the next thing I knew everyone was standing out back in an alley behind the place.  A few people asked me for a cigarette.  I saw a girl sitting on some stairs, also with no shoes.  She was fast asleep, but breathing.  A few people walked up and asked if she was allright.  She just kept sleeping.

Then a bouncer came out with a flashlight and was waiving it around, telling everyone to go home.  No one moved much, and this seemed to anger him.

Then he shined his light in my face and screamed.

“You need to GO HOME.  You can’t be here anymore.  We’re closed!!!” He shouted.

I was a little confused, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t still in the bar.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t the bar.  So why don’t you let me get some fresh air and stop yelling at me.  I don’t think you can tell me where I can and can’t stand unless I’m in your bar.” I said.

“Careful.” He said.  He said it very carefully.

The thought occured to me that this was how lots of bad stories started.  So I started walking without knowing where I was going.

We got back to Josh’s place and there were lots of people I didn’t know.  Josh had texted me on the way home to say the living room floor was ours if we wanted it.  But there were lots of people all over the place.

One of them had pizza, and offered me some.  It was really, really good pizza.  Like magic pizza.  It tasted like love.  I commented on how it tasted like a little piece of heaven, and several others agreed.  Then we talked about how Ghostbusters was the best movie ever made, without equal in it’s cinematic glory.  Then we talked about how Bill Murray in Ghostbusters was kind of like
Michael Jordan in the 91 NBA Finals.  Just a man without equal. 

When I realized that I didn’t know anyone I was talking to, I decided to go to sleep.  When I woke up, the number of people I didn’t know had diminished greatly, and I was still alive, and it was 2009.

Pointy Black Boots and Big Boobs

I knocked on Josh’s door at 9:30.

After exchaning the usual insults, we jumped in Josh’s trusty convertable Benz and sped off into the night. Amazing how a mere sixteen thousand dollar per month payment can put you into such a fine automobile. After a couple of minutes on the road, I noticed that our leather jackets are starting to smell like ash trays. If either of us smoked, I might be more OK with that.

We hit McCallon’s at about ten and were both surprised by the size of the crowd. When we got to the front door there was a guy carding people, which I don’t normally expect at this place, but there he was carding up a storm. I reached for my back pocket when a sudden and paralyzing reality dawned on me… I had forgotten both my wallet and my cell phone. They were in my other pants. Don’t you hate it when stuff is in your other pants.  This meant that not only would I have to charm my way past the card man, but I’d have to bum beers off Josh all night.

Cheap bastard that I am, you might think I’d be pleased to swill gratis booze all night, but you’d only think that if you didn’t know that I like my beer to flow like a river: fast and without alot of question-asking.

So we get inside and sit down and next thing I know we’re smack dab in the middle of a karaoke competition. The first couple of girls I heard were so good that I kind of felt sorry for them. I don’t know what it is about karaoke, but for some reason when I see people who really can’t sing, it seems to me like they’re having a good time and I’m happy for them. But when I see people who can sing like the devil, I feel really bad for them, like, I just know that they always had dreams of being a big singer and now this is what it’s come to…

Being without my cell phone to harrass people unfortunate enough to have given me their numbers, and feeling like I had to curtail the beer parade on account of it all landing on Josh’s credit card, I quickly became annoyed and judgemental. That’s usually how I get when things don’t go my way.

A guy got up and did the worst, most pathetic Jim Morrison impression I’ve ever seen in my life. Then a sixty year old woman got up and sang Bohemian Rhapsody, and you could barely hear her voice, but the song got people going pretty well. Then a guy who kind of reminded me of that dipshit pickup artist, I can’t remember his name but he has a show on VH1 or something about how to pickup girls even though he’s obviously not very good at it, anyway a guy who looked like him got up onstage and sang that song by Eminem, the one where Eminem repeatedly threatens his mother that he’s going to clean up his closet.

Which always struck me as a funny song, because don’t mothers WANT you to clean up your closet? Then a short, heavyset Mexican girl got up and sang that song by Gwen Stefani where she spells banana over and over again. Josh and I opined that if you’re going to make a song where spelling out a word is the chorus, at least she picked kind of a hard word. BANANAS. Then we thought it would have been even cooler if she had spelled out MISSISSIPPI, because that one’s even harder.

Then the competition broke, and for some reason the judges had to go outside and the audience members had to go and talk to the singers to decide if they liked them. I thought that was a pretty weird way of running the competition. In fact, I still think it. Next thing I knew, someone had been voted off. So I guess they’re kind of running the thing like American Idol, where someone gets voted off until there’s only one person left standing. Which is not a great way of picking a winner, if you think about it. In my opinion, which is informed by my dim (but accurate) view of humanity, when running an entertainment competition this way the winner is not the person who has the most fans, but rather the person who offends the least amount of listeners. So the winner is not someone anyone really wants to listen to, just someone people aren’t completely disgusted by. I’m not sure who was voted off today, but I hope the bad Jim Morrison isn’t there next week in any case.

Then we went out on the patio. Josh and I think of the patio at McCallons this way: People who vacation in Vegas by getting an overpriced room on the strip so they can take pictures of their bathroom and put the pictures on myspace and then go out to some stupid club to pay too much for champagne and take more pictures with captions that say things like “WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS… LOL”, those are the people who stay inside the bar.

People who vacation at Lake Havasu with jetskis and ice chests, whose idea of a good time is listening to police scanners to avoid DUIs… those are the people who hang out on the patio. So we went out to the patio to kick back for a while and get some fresh air like we always do.

You always run into some interesting people out there. Josh knows most of them from some of our previous visits. I know most of their faces and can remember the first letter of some of their names, but I can never remember who is who or when we met them or why we talked to them or why I shouldn’t beat them up.  Josh is in charge of keeping all that straight.

He found a couple of wrought iron chairs in the middle of the pack and we sat down. To our right was a group of girls being entertained by a black girl who kept pulling down her pants (seriously), and to our left was a different group of people whose dignity I once salvaged by defeating the local armwrestling champion (Again, seriously.) I remembered the arm wrestling people by their occupations… one was a teacher, one was some kind of carpet layer, and one was a student who was clearly too old to be a student and did not seem to enjoy direct questioning as to what exactly it was he was studying or why he was studying it.

Directly accross from me in front of the door was a girl in really, really tight jeans with a super tight black tank top (and it was super January on the patio). She had really, really big fake boobs and a pair of boots on with abnormally long heels. Josh and I were both astonished at the sharpness and length of the heels. Josh made a comment about the heels, and a girl from the party of girls who were watching the black girl pull down her pants heard him, so she mentioned the fact to the girl in the heels. She seemed to think that was her cue to talk to us. She asked us if we liked her boots. We said we did. Josh asked her how she got them on, and then she relayed a story about it having been really hard to get them on. Then I suggested that the best plan would be boots first, then the jeans, and her face lit up and she said I was RIGHT, that WAS how she had finally gotten them on.

Then Josh made a comment about how the heels were quite long, and she asked us agian if we liked them. We said we did. Then Josh asked her why she wore such long heels, and her face screwed up in confusion. Then I suggested it was because they were the AWESOMEST BOOTS EVER, and again her face lit up and she agreed that this was the precise reason indeed for such long heels.

She must have decided I was her friend now, because she popped one of them up on my leg for my inspection. That was when I wondered for the first (but not last) time where those boots had been in the last few minutes.

Then a shortish guy with a stockyish build with a face that kind of reminded me of Luke Duke came up and started chatting up Boots. That was my new name for her. They talked about how the cops in Rancho are real bastards, and how the guy had three DUIs, and what bastards the cops are for continually arresting him for driving drunk in Rancho.

One time, he hadn’t even been that drunk, but they arrested him anyway, he suspects it was because although he had only consumed about five alcoholic beverages that night, all five beverages were at that point sitting in his backseat without bottle caps or beer in them. Boots was really enjoying his witty banter.

Then a really tall, skinnyish guy with a pot belly started trying to get Boots and the black girl who pulled down her pants to kiss. I reflected at that point that she hadn’t pulled them down in at least five minutes. The skinnyish guy with the pot belly was winning Boots over, and Mr. Triple DUI was desperately trying to win back her attention with his rapier wit. In a final act of desperation, he told her a detailed story about the directions to his trailer.  It was a story that involved having to go over a hill where it doesn’t look like there should be a road, but there is one. Shockingly enough, Boots was not won over by this mesmerizing tale, and she moved over toward the tall potbelly guy, who now seemed like the clear winner.

At some point during this era of the evening, a Mexican guy came up and told Josh that he was in a good mood, then I asked him why he was in a good mood, then he started singing I Want You Just The Way You Are by Billy Joel. He sang it really loud, really badly, and like he meant every word. He finished the entire first verse and broke into the chorus, about taking the good times and taking the bad times, and then he trailed off and stared at his shoes. Josh told him it was horrible. Josh (who is not unlike Simon, in many respects) will tell you if something you did was horrible, and he will detail your failure for you and everyone else in earshot. This seemed to anger the Mexican troubador, and he stood between the two of us and made a couple of incomprehensible comments about letting people have fun, and then he left.

By this time Potbelly had realized he was not going to get Boots and Pantpuller to kiss, so he was now in the middle of a story about how he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer while in prison, and was now retired at the age of 33. It bugged me a little bit to know that 33 year old guys can have thyroid cancer. He mentioned that the doctor visit in prison had cost him two dollars and fifty cents, and that the state was still paying for his care. His condition became a source of worry for the prision officials when his weight dropped from 225 to 125 in the course of a year. He said he was put on a medication that “cleared me up” and that because of the medication, his eyes did not fall out.

By this point, Boots was gone and Pantpuller was talking to someone else, so Potbelly was pretty much just talking to Josh and I, although we were not pointing our heads at him or making any overt signs of listening. Potbelly went on to explain that one of his eyes had nearly popped out in prison, and this worried him greatly, because it would have meant he’d have had to chose between a glass eye or a pirate patch. I suggested that a pirate patch could be quite a fetching look, but Josh won the day with the suggestion of wearing a glass eye UNDER the patch, that way Potbelly would win no matter what. (I did wonder skepticly if this guy hadn’t just seen the movie Valkyrie, like I had.)

Then Josh leaned over and asked me if I had been as frightened of the Mexican troubador as he had. I said that yes, I had been. Then Josh pointed at a dark figure, his arms spread in front of him like a big V, holding him up above the railing. Sweat was pouring from his forhead. I asked him if he was allright, and when I did, he got up from the fence and started talking to us again. I have no idea what he was saying. It was not English or Spanish, but there were elements of both to it, along some special words that I’m pretty sure only he will ever understand.

Josh had grown tired of the festivities, so he went to take a piss and close out his tab. While he was gone, some guys inside the bar who could see out the window were whistling and catcalling at Boots. She responded to them coyly, by banging her ass against the window so hard that it sounded like an earthquake. They made their mating noises again, and she did the ass slamming into the window thing again. I thought it might happen a third time, so I mentioned to her that if the glass broke, her ass would be cut. This longshot of a possibility must have frightened her, because she stopped. Then she looked around and realized she no longer had an audience besides myself and the carpet laying guy and the professional student, so she went back inside.

A moment later Josh emerged and made a slashing motion over his throat, indicating it was time to go.

On our way out, Boots saw that we were leaving and said that it was nice to have met us. Josh said well yeah, sort of. What he meant was that it had been nice, but that we had only sort of met. She took it to mean that it was only sort of nice to have met. She turned from him and looked to me, and when she saw my friendly smile, she said this…

“He’s my friend, John, John was like, Oh it was OH to meet you, and Josh was all, sort of SHIT!”

I did not know what that meant. I didn’t know how to respond to it, so I just smiled sheepishly and kept walking. The sheepish smile and walking away gets you out of lots of barroom trouble. I was still confused on the car ride home. (This was when Josh explained that she had taken his sort of comment the wrong way, for some reason the thought hadn’t occured to me.)

Then we drove home.