Heartbreaking Balls of Fire (The Atomic Age)

Went to Tom Petty Wednesday night with a concert-promoter friend. He just read the book Meat Is for Pussies (testimonial blurb provided by MMA fighter Jake Shields!), and decided to go vegeterian for three months. In preparation, he went in to get a colonoscopy. The doctor told him that due to a lifetime of being a pussy, he needed four. His next scheduled evacuation was the morning after the show, so he wasn't drinking, abstinence I joined him in, for solidarity. He did, however, bring Atomic Fireballs, which were just as delicious as I remembered them.

Tom Petty was also just as delicious as I remembered -- even the five new songs he considerately (for hit-lovers that can't deal with new songs) clustered into a mid-concert mini-set killed it, especially "First Flash of Freedom", which channeled Floyd, Zeppelin, and Ten Years After, or possibly some other psychedelic blues-jammer I've spent even less time listening to than Ten Years After.

Last night at a birthday party at Madam Geneva (old Brit slang for gin, I just learned), I told a friend who I swear to God looks just like Madeleine Stowe about my fireballing. Turns out she's family friends with the Ferraras, the Chicago candymakers behind Fireballs.

I swear I'm not pulling that coincidence out of my ass.

Houston Does Houston

Just got back from Tales of the Cocktail, a New Orleans bartender & brand convention that, in the best possible way, involves various breeds of booze professional coming together to congratulate each other -- complete with an awards ceremony for those cocktologists whose inebriatory talents could actually make the movie Crash watchable. This is a small corner of aftermath from last night's convention-closing Bartender's Breakfast:

And this is a random homeless pirate at the convention's HQ, the Hotel Monteleone Carousel Bar. Musing on his bar's constant rotation -- barstools and all -- the bartender said, "Just because the room is spinning, doesn't mean you're drunk". But if you look up and see a pirate, hopefully you are.

Between the boozeworking (boozy networking...maybe?) and the buccaneering, me and a Nola-first-timer coworker escaped to hit some local spots I hadn't visited in a decade. We took the St. Charles Trolley all the way to the end, then worked our way back. This is Marvin from the Camellia Grill:

His name tag says "Word", because "word" is "the foundation of all communication":

After somehow convincing the entire diner to praise a piece of butter-drizzled fried pecan pie with a chorus of "MMMMMmmmmm", Marvin described my chili-drowned breakfast thusly: "This is an omelet. Other places serve...egg contraptions".

Standing in line to get into the Grill, we met a gay couple from Amarillo: an older, bald man man with a daughter on her way into college and another already graduated, and a much younger, pocket-sized, wryly quiet type who'd presumably come out without embarking on marriage/children first. Turned out me and the older guy both knew the same a prominent Amarillo family, me because two of the younger members were at UT with me, and him because everyone in Amarillo knows that family.

"Those guys were wild as hell, and they didn't even drink," I said of the two I knew, who used to launch homemade potato-guns at neighboring houses, the spud slicing one way or the other like an easily distracted bazooka shell. "Did you know that story about that crazy old guy they had the family feud with kidnapping one of them and..."

"Locking him in a chicken coop at gunpoint?"

"Yes! That was amazing." Everyone agreed it was amazing, except the younger boyfriend, who for some reason was weirdly interested in getting to the Nola zoo. "I just want to see the monkeys", he said, smiling...well, kind of creepily. I think if he actually witnessed a high school kid getting locked in a chicken coop by a shotgun-toting crazy old rich guy, he'd stare at the hapless prisoner for hours, but hearing the story just bored him.

Moving down St. Charles: We stopped at antebellum-mansion-turned-hotel The Columns for spiced-bean-garnished Bloody Marys. This guy was sitting at the bar barely working on a term paper about why England and not France waged the more successful Industrial Revolution; he and the bartender were Tulane classmates, and the bartender was supposed to help him write the thing, but I'm pretty sure that never happened. The kid told me that one time at Snake and Jakes, he's seen a guy at a table also working on a term paper, and doing speed, so hey, relativism.

The young woman 2nd from left is Lauren Bourgeois. On the asses-to-elbows trolly back to Canal Street, she spontaneously belted out "The Greatest Love of All" in its entirety -- totally nailed it, though not in a way that encouraged other passengers to sing along, which I think Marvin from Camellia would disapprove of. But she was very very nice. Turns out she was in town from Houston with her mom and other assorted ladies to try out for American Idol, where her diva streak should serve her well. She's still a high schooler, so if she believes strongly enough that children are the future, it'll hopefully become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And finally, this is Toni Kucoc, partying in the Absinthe House. He'd better sober up if he's going to sign with the Heat.

Skip to the End for the Part with the Prostitutes

My across-the-hall neighbor posted this notice. He's around 6'4”, closing in on 50, and has ferocious mood swings due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and generally being a dick. I actually heard the crashing, but was too drunk to investigate. The next morning, he asked if I knew the guy who'd done it. The way he aggressively accuses people via asking them questions ought to have its own mark of punctuation, a ferociously annoying coitus between the question mark and the fuck-you sign.

We've had some special times together the past few years. Like when he attempted to forcibly enlist me into his crusade against the downstairs sake bar for their kitchen fan's allegedly corrosive exhalations onto the side of our building, and for their rat-seducing methods of waste disposal. He claims to have jacked one of the bar's “chink” employees against the wall for that offense, and left a dead mouse w/ note at their door, and often yells at the tenants above him, also “chinks”, for “dancing around in their goddamn high heels at four in the morning”. This from a guy who blares Bad Company out his open window louder than anyone has blared Bad Company since people realized Bad Company was kind of shitty, maybe even the shittiest, and yes I owned 10 from 6.

(as I'm writing this, a bald old man wearing suspenders just vomited across the street, then walked away. he did not appear drunk -- if others start doing this, I'll know I'm in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, or possibly a movie by that other guy who wrote about the same bad thing happening to lots of people)

Another time, he yelled at my roommate for avoiding his sexual advances, then muttered “I've got a key to your place” as he stalked off (we changed the locks the next day). Before I even moved into the apartment, he handed my former roommate a $100 bill off a stack of at least 20 -- then after that roommate moved out, came up to me and said, “do you remember that time I gave you $100?” One time I returned home to find a woman on her knees banging on his door, begging him to let her in and -- unless he's greatest cocksman since (insert legendary cocksman here) -- give her drugs. I let her crash for an hour on my couch. She looked like this 80s porn star whose name I can't remember but who definitely used to eat her own vagina. I very much wanted to take advantage of the situation, even though I'd be posting this entry sans penis if I had. Instead, I watched Major League: Back to the Minors, starring Scott Bakula, while she slept her way back to half-sanity. A few days later, my neighbor hit me with a friendly-threatening (freatening?) “Hey, I heard you met my ex-girlfriend”. I told him I didn't realize it was his ex-, and thought it was just some random woman howling at his door for twenty minutes, but in any event, yeah, I let her take a nap. Surprisingly, that ended that.

My favorite episode: I walk out of my apartment at noon. He's in the hallway. He steps up to me, already committing borderline assault.

“Did you call the fucking cops on me last night?”
“I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.”
“Well somebody fucking called the cops. I had two hookers in there. I thought it was the third hooker at the door, but it was the cops. Are you sure you didn't call them?”
“Why the fuck would I call the cops on you? Why do I give a shit?”
“Well if you didn't do it, somebody did.”
“Obviously. Next time you've got something to ask me, just ask me instead of getting in my face.”
“I didn't get in your face.”
“You're still in my face. I'm leaving.”

Later that afternoon, I was walking by the Astor Place news stand, which at the time was run by a 120-year-old Greek man who might be dead by now, and might actually have been dead then. My neighbor was sitting with the man chatting. “Hey, #4!” (he calls me #4, because I live in #4; I don't call him #3”). “This is Nikos”. I shook Nikos' hand. He looked back at me from another place -- if I was more in tune with the universe, I'd have some idea where, but it was definitely not Astor Place.

“Hey #4”, says my neighbor, as genuinely apologetic as you can get without admitting you're 87% pure jerk-off. “I'm really sorry about earlier. I was drunk. We're good friends -- remember that time I gave you that silver dollar?”

We're not good friends, but he actually did give me a silver dollar once. I think it was for Christmas. “Sure man. Look, it's no big deal. I really don't care about your sex life” (though I am curious how you managed to land that lady who looked like the porn star who used to eat her own vagina -- she's hooked on your drugs, not your dick, right?), “just talk to me before you start accusing me of crap.”

A few days later, it's Valentine's afternoon. I'm sitting in McSorley's drinking many tiny beers with six large guys. My neighbor walks in with his old black lab, sees me, walks up all friendly. “Hey man, sorry again about the other day. I think I'm getting some more hookers tonight. You want to go in on some hookers with me?” I told him I was all good, even though that particular Valentine's would have been greatly enhanced by a prostitute. “Maybe your friends want to get some hookers?” My bewildered friends were also all good. “All right then, well, any time you're up for it.”

Maybe my rejecting his offers to join him in group sex and vigilante justice is causing me to miss out on a deeper, richer emotional existence. One of the big complaints about adult life is that you just don't make friends like you used to. Probably because we look for people who are essentially like us, when in the past we looked for people who were radically different, because the less like us they were, the greater their power to turn us into something else. That many of our friends were bastards afforded us the opportunity to choose to not be bastards, or to be better bastards ourselves.

On the other hand, there's a part of me that just can't fucking listen to Bad Company anymore, except for maybe the soul-searching ballad “Seagull”, which I think my neighbor would call me a pussy for liking, causing the part of me that's still unformed and boyish enough to enter into chaotic, formative friendships to either go “yeah, you're right, it is kind of for pussies” or “screw you, this is a good song” and storm out of the room, then go listen to the thing alone for three straight hours.

My copy of that song is on a probably melted cassette tape in my parents' attic, so instead of knocking on my neighbor's door and seeing if he wants to party with some hookers, I'm going to grab drinks with  two girls who probably won't sleep with me, especially not for money. Maybe I'll get so drunk I'll piss in the vestibule.

Brody to the Max

Yesterday, was standing outside Village East debating whether to kill two blisteringly hot hours watching Predators. This gentleman was unsuccessfully trying to convince a friend that it'd be worth his $13: “Look, man, it's Robert Rodriguez. He directed Desperado. It's not going to have any heavy emotional undercurrents or anything, but it'll be fun. Okay, fine, do your thing.”

He should have tried the opposite tack: “Look, man, it's a film that uses a malevolent alien species to expose the barbarity of humanity -- so yeah, it has the heavy emotional undercurrent you're looking for. It also has Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody in it, so you know it's good.”

And aside from the IDF sniper character somehow knowing all about the ill-fated, Schwarzenegger-led American operation in Guatemala and inexplicably keeping that information to herself, it kind of was. If Adrien Brody doesn't become the next thinking-man's action hero, may a fish-faced interstellar deathstalker rip out my spine and skull in one primordially triumphant motion.

(some people eventually showed up -- not a lot of people, but some)

Small Dogs, High Heat

This is Satchel. Met him at a party last night. I assumed his name was Satchel because his owner enjoyed carrying him around in one, but she told me he was actually named for Satchel Paige. She left her reasons crypto-hilariously murky, moving her hands to the general vicinity of her reproductive area and telling me that, when Satchel was "naturally birthed", they expected him to be black. Even though he's not, his own reproductive area is still intact, making him one of the few dogs lucky enough to be able to play with his balls later in life -- so maybe he's a lot like Satchel Paige after all.

USA: Top Dog

Showed up to the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Championships just as IFOCE cofounder George Shea was warming up the crowd with an in-German rendition of “99 Luftballoons” so outrageously earnest, it should've left everyone rolling on the ground laughing. But the pavement proved too hot for the food-stuffing fan base to roll on, and between its lack of Nena-ppreciation and its xenotarded anti-Kobayashi sentiment (“Kobayashi is a pussy!” “Yeah, he's a little pussy! He's shorter than I am!”), it was a tough day for the old Axis powers. (The fans did get behind Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, though in retrospect, I'm not even sure we hated the Italians during World War II.)

But it was a good day for emceeing, as Rich Shea took his game to new levels: claiming that some have described Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas as “the absence of good, the shadow underneath the rose petal”; praising Joey Chestnut's technique with “he's like an amoeba in a petri dish: he doesn't know why he's shimmying and shaking...except he does know why, because he's trying to get those hot dogs down into his stomach”; and, with much gravitas, explaining that he calls one competitive eater “Two Shoes” because “HE WEARS TWO SHOES”. What elevates the Shea Brothers over other professional hucksters is that whether they're belting out German pop music or creating new metaphors for evil, they don't overly concern themselves with the sensibilities of those they're huckstering. I'm pretty sure that makes them artists.

 

Proving that hell can be cute, this three-year-old boy straddling his dad's shoulders asked his dad if Eric Badlands Booker was black. His dad dismissively said “No”. The kid was confused, and asked if Badlands was “wearing a bunch of stuff on his face”. The dad said yes, that must be it. You can see the dad's video camera below. Hopefully he'll review the footage later and determine that, despite Badlands' predilection for Jewish cuisine (21 baseball-sized matzo balls in just over 5 minutes!), the man is almost certainly black.

In other news: the crowd treated “Don't Stop Believing” like people in more openly patriotic times treated the National Anthem, and while God might prefer Florida Gators football, Uncle Sam is partial to the basketball team, probably because nothing encapsulates America quite like Joakim"The African Viking" Noah: 

This sleeveless gentleman below was hustling people into his friend's bar with promises of ice cold beer and a gleeful chorus of “To the window/To the wall/To the sweat drop down my balls!” He says he does events for Mob Candy Magazine (“the entertainment magazine of mafia politics pleasure and power”, complete with restaurant reviews!). He also says he's the reigning champion of an unsanctioned Coney wings-eating competition -- his tally last year was around 37, compared to Sonya Thomas's record of 165, and he admits he cheats. He'll be arriving to this year's competition in a 1918 Studebaker, dressed as Al Capone. When we made to leave, he reintroduced himself as "Sean Lennon", then called Ben and me “Mark”, because apparently we were marks. Which isn't true. I know that the real Sean Lennon would've nailed that Lil John song.

Back in the East Village, purchased some lemonade from two enterprising youths and their somewhat more enthusiastic parents. Someone saw me taking a picture (for some reason it got screwed up on my point-n-click -- which is now literally held together with tape -- but you can bet it was precocious), and took one of her own, but didn't buy any refreshment. Not very American, though I guess I didn't buy a beer from Sean Lennon. I would have bought an issue of Mob Candy, but despite claiming he had copies in his trunk, he never produced them, and it remains uncertain if he even has a trunk. 

Crashed out, then headed to a rooftop party in Williamsburg. As anyone who's ever watched the Black  Widow eat can tell you, those shadows can be intoxicating.