I figured it out the other morning in the shower.
Someone somewhere once asserted that the last safe haven for the modern male was the toilet. If it was Jeff Foxworthy, and I think it might have been Jeff Foxworthy, you can stop reading now, because I apologize. I don't remember. Perhaps it was another stand-up "comic," though Foxworthy is more of a walking, game-show-hosting Shakesperean tragedy than a great comedian in the vein of Bill Engvall or Ron White or America's greatest stand-up comic, Larry the Cable Guy. Look, okay, I don't fucking know who said that, so find out for yourself. I am onto something here.
Having been party to several experiences of being interrupted while...heh...reading in the bathroom, I decree that the toilet is no longer safe, and that man's last, best hope, as some dude with Marfan Syndrome once said...is the shower. And honestly, I learned this from my mother. Maybe it has to do with being fully clothed more often than not when you're in the bathroom that people sense the fleeting possibility that their pressing business might be enough to interrupt an intimate and solitary moment. Should we strip down to nothing every time it's required so that we aren't defecating, interrupted? Oh Angelina, don't adopt any more babies from East Timor.
When I was a kid, I often had questions for my mom that coincided with when she was in the shower. This is where it all came together for me, a few days go, after twentysomething years. Whenever I asked my mom something and she was in the shower, I would yell through the door. Now, our house didn't have any showers inside bank vaults or panic rooms, so Forrest Whitaker never had trouble robbing us every leap year. What I'm getting at is that the door and shower curtain separating myself and my mother weren't that thick. Yet it seemed like every time I came to my mom with a matter of Threat Level: Midnight importance, she acted like she was inside of a roaring jet engine. Maybe she couldn't hear me, I don't know, but slick move on her part: enforcing the shower as the last great sanctuary. Where else would I have been able to figure this out?
Figure what out?
I thought this was about pooping and Jodie Foster avoiding burglars?
Huh?
Bear with me as a I change gears. Again, when I was a kid, I never understood why adults loved to sit around and talk all day and all night. Shouldn't they have been running around until they passed out, or playing videogames, or watching hours and hours of TV? That's what I thought, at least. But then again children are stupid.
The primary purpose of adulthood is to tell old stories, and correct me if I'm wrong. When I'm sitting in a bar, or talking on the phone, or eating lunch at work, or anything else practically, I find myself spinning yarns about past occurences to people who weren't around to hear about them firsthand. It's because the world is getting older and people who were once together have grown apart, so the majority of social interaction is bringing everyone up to speed. This is not to say that I find this bothersome, although I do when hearing rehashed stories or information I've already been given from another source. That's wasteful.
That's what I figured out in the shower.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Sunday, September 9, 2007
The Phone Book is Never Down
Stop me, oh oh oh stop me, stop me if you think I'm making a giant ass of myself by plagiarizing someone else's work and I have no ideaaaa...
After a most arresting two-part narrative, I have decided to return with something a bit more abstract. This spawned out of a discussion I had with my uncle a few nights back. Mostly it was me hypothesizing wildly and making erroneous assumptions but that's neither here nor the proverbial there. The center of the Tootsie pop is this...is it possible that a new generation gap exists? A generation gap unlike the previous one driven by a counterculture of polarized values, but one spurred by technological advances and new gadgets and thingamajigs that roll off Asian assembly lines every six months? iPhone, KRAZR, DS, WiFi, Zune, PS3, etc.
I wonder. Baby boomers seem to have slight difficulty adapting to text messaging, Instant Messenger, iPods, and so forth, and those older than them believe that they face a learning curve so steep they do not even want to bother, rejecting the personal computer as if it would bring one in direct commune with Lucifer himself. Of course this is typical hyperbole you might expect from me, so take it for what you will, which is roughly four cents. In any case, I only speak from experience and without any sources or citations. Disregarging all legitimacy (which I never purported to have), I believe that increasing advances in technology have left a gap between today's children and their parents.
Most kids today are able to live two lives: one that their parents see, and one that their peers see. Of course this has always been the case, but now the Internet and social network websites have enabled children to be "themselves" towards their peers without their parents finding out. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of; you might be the ultimate badass on the phone in front of your girlfriend, but when mom and dad pressed down on the receiver on the phone in the kitchen, you were done for, dude. Pulling the ethernet plug out to keep you from upload "ur pix 2 ur MySpace lol" might be a little more like an act of Congress for some parents, if they even know that the cable looks like. Kids can now call and text their friends with phones their parents will never use or even see, a godsend of privacy that Anthony Michael Hall might've killed for when he was fawning over Molly Ringwald. He should really encounter her in The Dead Zone. Is she dead? I don't know. OH WAIT she was in that movie...shit what was it called...whatever it'll come to me later. Anyway I just looked her up on Wikipedia and she is alive and was in Not Another Teen Movie in 2001, which, ah, sucked.
Case in point amongst the chaos here: my mother asked me not too long ago what Facebook was, and I explained it to her, including Facebook's functions and applications, including but not limited to pictures, friend invites, wall postings, groups, poking, Total Sports Fan, The Sorting Hat, Happy Hour, My Heritage, Top Friends, Flixster, Compare People, iLike, Superlatives, Horoscopes, Honesty Box, Where I've Been, Gifts, Free Gifts, X Me, Grafitti, Super Wall, Scrubs Quotes, Awareness Ribbons, HotLists, My Questions, Fortune Cookie, Chuck Norris, Greek Pride, The Compass, The Social Feed, Texas HoldEm Poker, Big Photo, Dane Cook, Moods, Tattoos, Art, Arrested Development, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Outer Limits Flight of Fear, Six Flags over Georgia, "Deez Nuts," The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and those Applebee's commercials with Chef Tyler Florence in which he refers to portions of lettuce as "bibs."
My mom understood all of this, but still did not see much of the point of Facebook, and I think here lies the so-called rub. What my age group sees as necessities in text messages, The Baconator, Facebook, and the XBox 360, those who came of age before Fourthmeal view as frivolous, egregious, and extraneous. To them, we don't need these things, because they got along just fine without them. My uncle had a point when he said that the phone book was never down. It's not...but can you ask a teenager to look up the number to the local pizza place? You could probably drive there, make the pizza yourself, fart, and drive back and eat a slice before he could find it in the phone book. Unless he's really bright and you might not be able to fart. Anyway, young people these days treat the phone book like a car that required winding up. It's an antiquity, an anachronism, a holdover from a dark and dreary age ruled by Led Zeppelin and General Motors.
WHOA DUDE DID YOU SAY ZEPPELIN!??! DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADA HUUUUUHHHHHHH WAAAAHHHHHHH UNH HUUUUHHHHHH WAHHHHHH UHN WE COME TO THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW AND BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ANNNDDD YUDDA DUDDA DUDDA YOW HAMMER OF THE GODDSSSSS YEAHHHHH ROCKKKKK
This all boils down to one thing, I suppose. Technology today has extinguished the presence of a vitriolic generation gap, spearheaded by differences in values and beliefs. In this modern age, generations are divided by MySpace prowess and feats of dexterity aboard a smart phone keypad. We can be ourselves, whoever that might be, depending on the dynamics of the situation. Sure, it's duplicitous and dishonest, but are we really and truly the same person around everyone we meet, know, and love?
It is most curious that the things we take for granted are the ones that will never leave us when catastrophe arrives. The Internet may go down but you can still listen to the radio or read print media for information. Your cell phone might go out of service but a land line is still reliable and available. In the end, the phone book is never down.
After a most arresting two-part narrative, I have decided to return with something a bit more abstract. This spawned out of a discussion I had with my uncle a few nights back. Mostly it was me hypothesizing wildly and making erroneous assumptions but that's neither here nor the proverbial there. The center of the Tootsie pop is this...is it possible that a new generation gap exists? A generation gap unlike the previous one driven by a counterculture of polarized values, but one spurred by technological advances and new gadgets and thingamajigs that roll off Asian assembly lines every six months? iPhone, KRAZR, DS, WiFi, Zune, PS3, etc.
I wonder. Baby boomers seem to have slight difficulty adapting to text messaging, Instant Messenger, iPods, and so forth, and those older than them believe that they face a learning curve so steep they do not even want to bother, rejecting the personal computer as if it would bring one in direct commune with Lucifer himself. Of course this is typical hyperbole you might expect from me, so take it for what you will, which is roughly four cents. In any case, I only speak from experience and without any sources or citations. Disregarging all legitimacy (which I never purported to have), I believe that increasing advances in technology have left a gap between today's children and their parents.
Most kids today are able to live two lives: one that their parents see, and one that their peers see. Of course this has always been the case, but now the Internet and social network websites have enabled children to be "themselves" towards their peers without their parents finding out. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of; you might be the ultimate badass on the phone in front of your girlfriend, but when mom and dad pressed down on the receiver on the phone in the kitchen, you were done for, dude. Pulling the ethernet plug out to keep you from upload "ur pix 2 ur MySpace lol" might be a little more like an act of Congress for some parents, if they even know that the cable looks like. Kids can now call and text their friends with phones their parents will never use or even see, a godsend of privacy that Anthony Michael Hall might've killed for when he was fawning over Molly Ringwald. He should really encounter her in The Dead Zone. Is she dead? I don't know. OH WAIT she was in that movie...shit what was it called...whatever it'll come to me later. Anyway I just looked her up on Wikipedia and she is alive and was in Not Another Teen Movie in 2001, which, ah, sucked.
Case in point amongst the chaos here: my mother asked me not too long ago what Facebook was, and I explained it to her, including Facebook's functions and applications, including but not limited to pictures, friend invites, wall postings, groups, poking, Total Sports Fan, The Sorting Hat, Happy Hour, My Heritage, Top Friends, Flixster, Compare People, iLike, Superlatives, Horoscopes, Honesty Box, Where I've Been, Gifts, Free Gifts, X Me, Grafitti, Super Wall, Scrubs Quotes, Awareness Ribbons, HotLists, My Questions, Fortune Cookie, Chuck Norris, Greek Pride, The Compass, The Social Feed, Texas HoldEm Poker, Big Photo, Dane Cook, Moods, Tattoos, Art, Arrested Development, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Outer Limits Flight of Fear, Six Flags over Georgia, "Deez Nuts," The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and those Applebee's commercials with Chef Tyler Florence in which he refers to portions of lettuce as "bibs."
My mom understood all of this, but still did not see much of the point of Facebook, and I think here lies the so-called rub. What my age group sees as necessities in text messages, The Baconator, Facebook, and the XBox 360, those who came of age before Fourthmeal view as frivolous, egregious, and extraneous. To them, we don't need these things, because they got along just fine without them. My uncle had a point when he said that the phone book was never down. It's not...but can you ask a teenager to look up the number to the local pizza place? You could probably drive there, make the pizza yourself, fart, and drive back and eat a slice before he could find it in the phone book. Unless he's really bright and you might not be able to fart. Anyway, young people these days treat the phone book like a car that required winding up. It's an antiquity, an anachronism, a holdover from a dark and dreary age ruled by Led Zeppelin and General Motors.
WHOA DUDE DID YOU SAY ZEPPELIN!??! DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADA HUUUUUHHHHHHH WAAAAHHHHHHH UNH HUUUUHHHHHH WAHHHHHH UHN WE COME TO THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW AND BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ANNNDDD YUDDA DUDDA DUDDA YOW HAMMER OF THE GODDSSSSS YEAHHHHH ROCKKKKK
This all boils down to one thing, I suppose. Technology today has extinguished the presence of a vitriolic generation gap, spearheaded by differences in values and beliefs. In this modern age, generations are divided by MySpace prowess and feats of dexterity aboard a smart phone keypad. We can be ourselves, whoever that might be, depending on the dynamics of the situation. Sure, it's duplicitous and dishonest, but are we really and truly the same person around everyone we meet, know, and love?
It is most curious that the things we take for granted are the ones that will never leave us when catastrophe arrives. The Internet may go down but you can still listen to the radio or read print media for information. Your cell phone might go out of service but a land line is still reliable and available. In the end, the phone book is never down.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Picking Up Where John Lennon Left Off: Part Two
Flash-forward roughly twenty-four hours to 6PM the next evening. After making the same mistake twice and taking the wrong exit on the interstate, I found myself back at where it all started, and where it was about to start again. This time our course was set for downtown rather than around the corner, which meant that I got stuck with the bag and had to drive. I was all set to see my car keyed into a paint by number scheme the next morning.
(Actually, let me interject here. I couldn't think of a better place to put this since I was content with the flow of the opening paragraph. While slowing down to approach a toll booth, I was cut off by this small van that glided from three lanes over to get into the full service lane. How in the hell do you mistake an E-Z Pass for the full service lane? The Autobahn isn't where you ride a tricycle! Anyway, I got in the exact change lane and loaded up two quarters like dice and tossed them into the basket like a craps champion, and without missing a beat, sped through the toll before the light turned green to beat the van to the punch. Ultimately it was a stupid and childish move, as my conscience and probably the city of Richmond will later tell me.)
Though I've been there before and shouldn't be surprised, every trip to the Tobacco Company at Shockoe Bottom is like a time warp back to an earlier age. Girls walk around as vendors of tobacco products and kind gentlemen and ladies are always swooping down to pick up empty glasses and ask if you'd like another beverage, as if we are all high-rolling gangsters in the Prohibition era. Aside from the modern conveniences of a powerful soundsystem and dancefloor lighting, I expect flappers and tommygun-wielding wiseguys to regally enter the doorway and saunter up to the bar for some jazz chowder. Only there are two bars, and while one is more modern in appearance, the other seems to stretch on and on, with tiers and tiers of liquor bottles standing sentry between the bartender and the dirty and faded looking glass, as if it has witnessed the entirety of American history from its spot on the bar wall, from the birth of the nation, to the rise and fall of the Confederacy, to the Kennedy assassination, and finally to High School Musical 2.
The place also has a table set up for Blackjack, and the purpose of it is to donate to a charitable cause of which I did not get the name. In my humble, inexperienced, and ultimately worthless opinion, it is the best place to enjoy the establishment's Happy Hour as it gives you a prime view of the door and all of the denizens of the night that pass through the portal. In the middle of some good-natured ribbing I received from the dealer and some borderline harrassment from her sorority sisters demanding us to put more money in the tip jar, I was able to observe a hilarious phenomenon that I had not previously witnessed in college: the single man on the prowl. You see, while single men are on the prowl every waking moment of their lives, the quote-unquote real world single man is a new and most ferocious beast. With a pack of other single men, they travel, resplendent in exposed gold chains and well-styled with hair gel in animalistic fashion, strutting and fanning their feathers, hoping to attract young females with their elegant plumage. Since I lack the necessary feathers for the ladies to fawn over, I sat at the Blackjack table. Par for the course.
Of course, Tobacco's dollar drinks don't last all evening, so after as many as we could stomach, we asked not for whom the bell tolled because we jumped up before it did the tolling thing. Once again I found myself following the lead of dangerous rapscallions through seedy parts of town to another establishment I had yet to attend.
When we arrived at the place called Blackfinn, I thought I had stepped into a Gotham City haunt as high-end cars with halogen lights blazing pulled up to the front door, their owners passing keys off to the lead-footed valets who stormed off into the night. The bouncer at this establishment also suffered from the same brief spell of illiteracy as the gentleman from the Three Monkeys in part one of this blog entry, but thankfully their were no gutter-mouthed barflies hanging outside the door chastising patrons, so I made it inside without any threat of a developing brouhaha.
Unfortunately such a high-end establishment lacked the character and panache of the watering holes in the Fan, so I'm unable to relay much about this point in the evening. I'm also not sure about the presence of the overly active porter in the bathroom, discussing the possibilities of the newborn football season with inebriated customers. For one, he would squirt soap into my hand while brushing off my back, which I found astonishingly offensive, as if I had some sort of extreme dandruff problem that required medical attention. In one seamless motion he would wave his hands in front of the paper towel dispenser's motion sensor to appropriate towels for the damp digits of each man passing through, yet he would not rip off the towel. All of this occured while he discussed the finer points of LT or CBGB or VDOT. I quickly made haste without even letting the neurons in my brain begin to consider the possibility of a tip. It was not as though the man drove me somewhere or delivered me a pizza. His services were simultaneously superfluous and subpar, and didn't prevent me from being inconvenienced by the much more intoxicated gentlemen around me. We can all prevent muscle atrophy by pumping our own damn soap.
Quickly my comrades and I discovered that we would not be able to "ball" with those in attendance, plus we were getting bored of the Richmond skyline, which is to say some bank buildings. It was not an arduous task to locate a cab and promptly we were whisked uptown by a cabbie with a Redskins shirt and jorts that screamed to me, "I miss Doug Williams." He had the voice of a weedwhacker disregarded the cab company's emblazoned request to refrain from smoking with the cab's confines: hence the sound of plastic being whipped across blades of grass. We made it back to Quinn's and paid the man his due, only to slingshot back into the night and to more Fan hangouts.
Essentially this was more of the same. Running into alumni from years gone by or girls we had previously embarrassed ourselves in front of at one time or another. Those who had not seen me in some time clearly exhibited some form of excitement or contenment upon my arrival. I am free to make this assumption without any trace of modesty because there's honestly no way bottled domestic beer brings anyone any semblance of euphoria.
Luckily for us or not the places seemed to be less crowded that the previous evening, all of the scenester girls having grown weary of running into uneven sidewalks and the barflies not recovered from threatening unassuming people like myself the night before; a certain energy seemed to be sapped from us all. Perhaps it was the humidity, for it was very draining. In time we shuffled back home and fell into peaceful slumber, and so ended the lost weekend of a working class hero. 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Addendum: My thanks to you, if you soldiered through all of "Picking Up..." Expect the next post to be a bit less Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a little more...iPhone.
(Actually, let me interject here. I couldn't think of a better place to put this since I was content with the flow of the opening paragraph. While slowing down to approach a toll booth, I was cut off by this small van that glided from three lanes over to get into the full service lane. How in the hell do you mistake an E-Z Pass for the full service lane? The Autobahn isn't where you ride a tricycle! Anyway, I got in the exact change lane and loaded up two quarters like dice and tossed them into the basket like a craps champion, and without missing a beat, sped through the toll before the light turned green to beat the van to the punch. Ultimately it was a stupid and childish move, as my conscience and probably the city of Richmond will later tell me.)
Though I've been there before and shouldn't be surprised, every trip to the Tobacco Company at Shockoe Bottom is like a time warp back to an earlier age. Girls walk around as vendors of tobacco products and kind gentlemen and ladies are always swooping down to pick up empty glasses and ask if you'd like another beverage, as if we are all high-rolling gangsters in the Prohibition era. Aside from the modern conveniences of a powerful soundsystem and dancefloor lighting, I expect flappers and tommygun-wielding wiseguys to regally enter the doorway and saunter up to the bar for some jazz chowder. Only there are two bars, and while one is more modern in appearance, the other seems to stretch on and on, with tiers and tiers of liquor bottles standing sentry between the bartender and the dirty and faded looking glass, as if it has witnessed the entirety of American history from its spot on the bar wall, from the birth of the nation, to the rise and fall of the Confederacy, to the Kennedy assassination, and finally to High School Musical 2.
The place also has a table set up for Blackjack, and the purpose of it is to donate to a charitable cause of which I did not get the name. In my humble, inexperienced, and ultimately worthless opinion, it is the best place to enjoy the establishment's Happy Hour as it gives you a prime view of the door and all of the denizens of the night that pass through the portal. In the middle of some good-natured ribbing I received from the dealer and some borderline harrassment from her sorority sisters demanding us to put more money in the tip jar, I was able to observe a hilarious phenomenon that I had not previously witnessed in college: the single man on the prowl. You see, while single men are on the prowl every waking moment of their lives, the quote-unquote real world single man is a new and most ferocious beast. With a pack of other single men, they travel, resplendent in exposed gold chains and well-styled with hair gel in animalistic fashion, strutting and fanning their feathers, hoping to attract young females with their elegant plumage. Since I lack the necessary feathers for the ladies to fawn over, I sat at the Blackjack table. Par for the course.
Of course, Tobacco's dollar drinks don't last all evening, so after as many as we could stomach, we asked not for whom the bell tolled because we jumped up before it did the tolling thing. Once again I found myself following the lead of dangerous rapscallions through seedy parts of town to another establishment I had yet to attend.
When we arrived at the place called Blackfinn, I thought I had stepped into a Gotham City haunt as high-end cars with halogen lights blazing pulled up to the front door, their owners passing keys off to the lead-footed valets who stormed off into the night. The bouncer at this establishment also suffered from the same brief spell of illiteracy as the gentleman from the Three Monkeys in part one of this blog entry, but thankfully their were no gutter-mouthed barflies hanging outside the door chastising patrons, so I made it inside without any threat of a developing brouhaha.
Unfortunately such a high-end establishment lacked the character and panache of the watering holes in the Fan, so I'm unable to relay much about this point in the evening. I'm also not sure about the presence of the overly active porter in the bathroom, discussing the possibilities of the newborn football season with inebriated customers. For one, he would squirt soap into my hand while brushing off my back, which I found astonishingly offensive, as if I had some sort of extreme dandruff problem that required medical attention. In one seamless motion he would wave his hands in front of the paper towel dispenser's motion sensor to appropriate towels for the damp digits of each man passing through, yet he would not rip off the towel. All of this occured while he discussed the finer points of LT or CBGB or VDOT. I quickly made haste without even letting the neurons in my brain begin to consider the possibility of a tip. It was not as though the man drove me somewhere or delivered me a pizza. His services were simultaneously superfluous and subpar, and didn't prevent me from being inconvenienced by the much more intoxicated gentlemen around me. We can all prevent muscle atrophy by pumping our own damn soap.
Quickly my comrades and I discovered that we would not be able to "ball" with those in attendance, plus we were getting bored of the Richmond skyline, which is to say some bank buildings. It was not an arduous task to locate a cab and promptly we were whisked uptown by a cabbie with a Redskins shirt and jorts that screamed to me, "I miss Doug Williams." He had the voice of a weedwhacker disregarded the cab company's emblazoned request to refrain from smoking with the cab's confines: hence the sound of plastic being whipped across blades of grass. We made it back to Quinn's and paid the man his due, only to slingshot back into the night and to more Fan hangouts.
Essentially this was more of the same. Running into alumni from years gone by or girls we had previously embarrassed ourselves in front of at one time or another. Those who had not seen me in some time clearly exhibited some form of excitement or contenment upon my arrival. I am free to make this assumption without any trace of modesty because there's honestly no way bottled domestic beer brings anyone any semblance of euphoria.
Luckily for us or not the places seemed to be less crowded that the previous evening, all of the scenester girls having grown weary of running into uneven sidewalks and the barflies not recovered from threatening unassuming people like myself the night before; a certain energy seemed to be sapped from us all. Perhaps it was the humidity, for it was very draining. In time we shuffled back home and fell into peaceful slumber, and so ended the lost weekend of a working class hero. 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Addendum: My thanks to you, if you soldiered through all of "Picking Up..." Expect the next post to be a bit less Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a little more...iPhone.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Picking Up Where John Lennon Left Off: Part One
When last we spoke (or I wrote and you read), I permitted myself to partake in some Benadryl to help with my cat allergy, and I considered the Benadryl-influenced results to be pretty satisfactory, so WATCH OUT, I'M DOING IT AGAIN. Also, to be fair, this post will be narrative in approach, so if'n you ain't like that much none, go'on and git outta hurr.
After a work week that resembled the Hatch plot of the second season of Lost and paying $1.00 to get into Richmond rather that skirting around the insidious Powhite Parkway, I found myself at the home of a certain nefarious character who has truly been at the root of some of the most embarrasing moments of my entire life. His reputation as a scurrilous personality is only preceded by his abnormally large head, so large in fact that hats cannot contain it, so if everyone's head were his size New Era and every mom and pop haberdashery in the country would be out of a job, which would be a true system shock to the American infrastructure and G Unit. If you guessed Quinn Ramsey, congratulations. If you guessed former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, well, he hasn't been returning my Facebook wall posts lately. But you were close!
Yes, Quinn Ramsey. Tales of him smack of the apocryphal but they are so solid Wikipedia won't even claim "citation needed." Once again for Friday night he had assembled a motley retinue of vagrants and vagabonds. What follows is a whirlwind two evening introduction to what seems to be what people do AFTER they punch in 4 8 15 16 23 42 at work.
Friday evening our merry band of ne'er do wells found ourselves first at Buddy's, an establishment where we sought sustenance for the evening. When my number was up, I asked the waitress what came on the indigenous club sandwich. She may have considered this an attempt at being jovial, but I was serious and too famished for any sort of extended repartee. I merely wanted to know if the sandwich came with any sort of unwritten condiments or fixings that in my opinion would've made the creation undesirable and I would've been dismantling that meal like the 1998 or 2004 Florida Marlins, take your pick. And I hate doing that any looking like some ungrateful jackass. UGH I CAN'T BUHLIEVE THEY PUT THIS SHIT ON THIS SANDWICH...GOD. WELL I AIN'T TIPPIN' NONE MUCH. My query still left her perplexed but she concluded it would be cute to call me "Mr. No Surprises." Here's a surprise miss, my drink's empty.
Anyway.
The time between Buddy's and the next stop at the Metro Grill (maybe?) may or may not have been taken up by us not playing Guitar Hero for what was probably not an hour and a half.
I've written about bars. I tried to write about bars. I wasn't content with the work I did in attempting to sum up the experience, but thankfully our escapades have enabled me to retrofit my old post with some new insights.
Bars are about as loud as one's face inside of a fighter jet's thruster. The worst part about it, for me personally, is that everyone seems to be able to hear everyone else. Are my ears damaged from seeing too many crappy bands like Clockcleaner? If so, I guess I'll need to start listening to more Maroon 5. Really though, no one appears to have a problem but me. I have to scream and constantly cup my ear to make out sentences, looking like Joey D. Vieira's character in The Patriot. iMDB that one for your homework.
I had long since decided that I would be unable to converse with any of the young ladies Quinn had intended for us to meet, so I decided to focus on the ESPN ticker to see if the Detroit Tigers had won or lost. Mind that four persons were squeezed into a booth that reminded me more of a pew than anything else, so I sat straight back waiting for something with a little more kick than grape juice. My position in the booth caused my right leg to stick out, and soon enough, some drunk Jimmy Buffett fan stepped on my foot. My train of thought was as such...
I can't hear in here.
Neither can he, look at him, he's so drunk he thought Hawaiian print would be decent to wear out.
I've already yelped in fake pain. What now? Oh God, he's trying to talk to me.
I can't understand him.
I'll yell back.
Nothing. Like a tennis ball against a brick wall.
Okay. I'll...tell him MY LEG IS FAKE!
"HEY DUDE IT'S COOL MY LEG IS FAKE. I'VE GOT A FAKE LEG! SEE? TOTALLY MADE OF WOOD!"
His response was something like "AGRGHRHRGRGHHGGR OKAY!"
Of course, all the dudes we were with found this hilarious. All the ladies didn't get it because they were sitting on the other side of the booth.
We tried to explain it to them: "ARGRHRGRH HAHAHAHAHAHAH SWQDAFSGF OKAY!? HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
They sat stone-faced.
The rest of my time spent at this bar is unremarkable, save for the accusation by some gentleman that I was using the bathroom for something other than bowel movements. I promptly replied in my best football stadium voice "AM NOT!" Then we left.
I have absolutely no idea what's going on or where we are, I'm just following Quinn's lead, which I stupidly did in college for two years. We were apparently following these girls we met up with to another establishment, though I couldn't see them for the lights. I was busy trying to avoid the runaway freight train that was a scene girl flying down the street on a bike. In perfect cinematic timing, she hit a bump in the sidewalk and slammed into the ground. We tried to assist her but she started yelling at us, as did another scene girl from across the way. I responded with numeric assignments to the biggest words she was using per sentence, concluding with "WELL THAT WORD'S GOT SEVEN LETTERS IN IT, SO WAY TO USE ONE OF THE BIG ONES!"
Continuing on we approached the venerable Three Monkeys, where a slight line kept us from crashing the gates yet again. Perhaps in this moment is where I found Richmond to be called the "Fist City" by some...
Everyone else in our cadre easily passed through the door, but I guess the bouncer had a relapse of illiteracy as he decided to inspect my ID in the time it takes the College of Cardinals to elect a new Pope.
As I stood there, a very inebriated gentleman who resembled an unholy union between Kevin Federline and the guy on the cover of the first Arctic Monkeys album was standing beside the bouncer, smoking what looked like a stick of ash. He shot something derogatory my way and I looked at him so he did it again.
I asked him: "What's wrong with being nice?"
He responded: "Well who the fuck (he said this in italtics) wants to be nice?"
I responded: "I do."
The guy growls back at me and the bouncer still intently stares at my ID like it's written in Cyrillic. Talk about agony. I get a few more cusses thrown my way and some smoke blown on my person. Then he propositions me to some old-fashioned fisticuffs right there on West Main., which I promptly decline, asserting some sort of Quaker religious alignment and fluidly snatching my ID from the bouncer and gliding in the door like Deion Sanders might, if Deion Sanders were white. That rhymed nurrrrrrrrrr. Fist City indeed.
Once inside, the jet engines are roaring and I can't hear a damn thing. I find my quarry and relocate, and though it would hit me like a ton of bricks later (man, what great masonry imagery I've got going on here in this parenthetical moment of self-aggrandizing glory), I started to realize that everyone I was with who was male was a couple of sheets to the wind, while everyone I was with who was female was stone sober. It would come in this evening-defining moment.
One of the young ladies in our party found it appropriate at this point in the evening to make judgments about my physical appearance. Culled from my patchwork memory, it went something like this...
"You're gorgeous."
"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU IT'S REALLY LOUD!"
"I SAID THAT I THINK YOU'RE GORGEOUS!"
"OH THANKS THAT'S REALLY NICE OF YOU TO SAY."
Then, less than five minutes later...
"YOU'RE GAY."
"WHAT? IT'S REALLY LOUD."
" I SAID THAT YOU'RE GAY. YOU HAVE A GAY WAVE."
"Oh."
Then they left.
Soon I found myself stumbling around side streets in the Fan looking for Quinn's house. With orientation skills I didn't know I had, I finally found my destination.
But that was only Friday, and Lennon had a lost weekend...
After a work week that resembled the Hatch plot of the second season of Lost and paying $1.00 to get into Richmond rather that skirting around the insidious Powhite Parkway, I found myself at the home of a certain nefarious character who has truly been at the root of some of the most embarrasing moments of my entire life. His reputation as a scurrilous personality is only preceded by his abnormally large head, so large in fact that hats cannot contain it, so if everyone's head were his size New Era and every mom and pop haberdashery in the country would be out of a job, which would be a true system shock to the American infrastructure and G Unit. If you guessed Quinn Ramsey, congratulations. If you guessed former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, well, he hasn't been returning my Facebook wall posts lately. But you were close!
Yes, Quinn Ramsey. Tales of him smack of the apocryphal but they are so solid Wikipedia won't even claim "citation needed." Once again for Friday night he had assembled a motley retinue of vagrants and vagabonds. What follows is a whirlwind two evening introduction to what seems to be what people do AFTER they punch in 4 8 15 16 23 42 at work.
Friday evening our merry band of ne'er do wells found ourselves first at Buddy's, an establishment where we sought sustenance for the evening. When my number was up, I asked the waitress what came on the indigenous club sandwich. She may have considered this an attempt at being jovial, but I was serious and too famished for any sort of extended repartee. I merely wanted to know if the sandwich came with any sort of unwritten condiments or fixings that in my opinion would've made the creation undesirable and I would've been dismantling that meal like the 1998 or 2004 Florida Marlins, take your pick. And I hate doing that any looking like some ungrateful jackass. UGH I CAN'T BUHLIEVE THEY PUT THIS SHIT ON THIS SANDWICH...GOD. WELL I AIN'T TIPPIN' NONE MUCH. My query still left her perplexed but she concluded it would be cute to call me "Mr. No Surprises." Here's a surprise miss, my drink's empty.
Anyway.
The time between Buddy's and the next stop at the Metro Grill (maybe?) may or may not have been taken up by us not playing Guitar Hero for what was probably not an hour and a half.
I've written about bars. I tried to write about bars. I wasn't content with the work I did in attempting to sum up the experience, but thankfully our escapades have enabled me to retrofit my old post with some new insights.
Bars are about as loud as one's face inside of a fighter jet's thruster. The worst part about it, for me personally, is that everyone seems to be able to hear everyone else. Are my ears damaged from seeing too many crappy bands like Clockcleaner? If so, I guess I'll need to start listening to more Maroon 5. Really though, no one appears to have a problem but me. I have to scream and constantly cup my ear to make out sentences, looking like Joey D. Vieira's character in The Patriot. iMDB that one for your homework.
I had long since decided that I would be unable to converse with any of the young ladies Quinn had intended for us to meet, so I decided to focus on the ESPN ticker to see if the Detroit Tigers had won or lost. Mind that four persons were squeezed into a booth that reminded me more of a pew than anything else, so I sat straight back waiting for something with a little more kick than grape juice. My position in the booth caused my right leg to stick out, and soon enough, some drunk Jimmy Buffett fan stepped on my foot. My train of thought was as such...
I can't hear in here.
Neither can he, look at him, he's so drunk he thought Hawaiian print would be decent to wear out.
I've already yelped in fake pain. What now? Oh God, he's trying to talk to me.
I can't understand him.
I'll yell back.
Nothing. Like a tennis ball against a brick wall.
Okay. I'll...tell him MY LEG IS FAKE!
"HEY DUDE IT'S COOL MY LEG IS FAKE. I'VE GOT A FAKE LEG! SEE? TOTALLY MADE OF WOOD!"
His response was something like "AGRGHRHRGRGHHGGR OKAY!"
Of course, all the dudes we were with found this hilarious. All the ladies didn't get it because they were sitting on the other side of the booth.
We tried to explain it to them: "ARGRHRGRH HAHAHAHAHAHAH SWQDAFSGF OKAY!? HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
They sat stone-faced.
The rest of my time spent at this bar is unremarkable, save for the accusation by some gentleman that I was using the bathroom for something other than bowel movements. I promptly replied in my best football stadium voice "AM NOT!" Then we left.
I have absolutely no idea what's going on or where we are, I'm just following Quinn's lead, which I stupidly did in college for two years. We were apparently following these girls we met up with to another establishment, though I couldn't see them for the lights. I was busy trying to avoid the runaway freight train that was a scene girl flying down the street on a bike. In perfect cinematic timing, she hit a bump in the sidewalk and slammed into the ground. We tried to assist her but she started yelling at us, as did another scene girl from across the way. I responded with numeric assignments to the biggest words she was using per sentence, concluding with "WELL THAT WORD'S GOT SEVEN LETTERS IN IT, SO WAY TO USE ONE OF THE BIG ONES!"
Continuing on we approached the venerable Three Monkeys, where a slight line kept us from crashing the gates yet again. Perhaps in this moment is where I found Richmond to be called the "Fist City" by some...
Everyone else in our cadre easily passed through the door, but I guess the bouncer had a relapse of illiteracy as he decided to inspect my ID in the time it takes the College of Cardinals to elect a new Pope.
As I stood there, a very inebriated gentleman who resembled an unholy union between Kevin Federline and the guy on the cover of the first Arctic Monkeys album was standing beside the bouncer, smoking what looked like a stick of ash. He shot something derogatory my way and I looked at him so he did it again.
I asked him: "What's wrong with being nice?"
He responded: "Well who the fuck (he said this in italtics) wants to be nice?"
I responded: "I do."
The guy growls back at me and the bouncer still intently stares at my ID like it's written in Cyrillic. Talk about agony. I get a few more cusses thrown my way and some smoke blown on my person. Then he propositions me to some old-fashioned fisticuffs right there on West Main., which I promptly decline, asserting some sort of Quaker religious alignment and fluidly snatching my ID from the bouncer and gliding in the door like Deion Sanders might, if Deion Sanders were white. That rhymed nurrrrrrrrrr. Fist City indeed.
Once inside, the jet engines are roaring and I can't hear a damn thing. I find my quarry and relocate, and though it would hit me like a ton of bricks later (man, what great masonry imagery I've got going on here in this parenthetical moment of self-aggrandizing glory), I started to realize that everyone I was with who was male was a couple of sheets to the wind, while everyone I was with who was female was stone sober. It would come in this evening-defining moment.
One of the young ladies in our party found it appropriate at this point in the evening to make judgments about my physical appearance. Culled from my patchwork memory, it went something like this...
"You're gorgeous."
"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU IT'S REALLY LOUD!"
"I SAID THAT I THINK YOU'RE GORGEOUS!"
"OH THANKS THAT'S REALLY NICE OF YOU TO SAY."
Then, less than five minutes later...
"YOU'RE GAY."
"WHAT? IT'S REALLY LOUD."
" I SAID THAT YOU'RE GAY. YOU HAVE A GAY WAVE."
"Oh."
Then they left.
Soon I found myself stumbling around side streets in the Fan looking for Quinn's house. With orientation skills I didn't know I had, I finally found my destination.
But that was only Friday, and Lennon had a lost weekend...
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