White Lines

Had absolutely no intention of going out tonight. Even started a new blog to keep me occupied on the couch: http://evilisthenewblack.blogspot.com/
Neat.

At 1:30am I got a drinks-call from Troy, in town from Austin and then-exiting the Devendra Banhart T-5 show with his British buddy Pat -- who apparently works telecom with Banhart's father. Small world.

Met them at The Cabin Down Below (Niagara), where the Banhart's-Dad connection got us into the semi-private room along with the bassist from the Strokes, and a bunch of other guys who might or might not have been the bassist from the Strokes.

Which is where Pat -- a former Olympic diving alternate and Lincoln, Nebraska radio personality (DJ "Wayne King") -- told us the weirdest 9-11 story of all times:

He'd answered a Village Voice roommate ad for a pad overlooking Downtown. The roommate was a third-rate drug dealer, from Jamaica by way of London. He smugly professed a violent hatred for white people, but the rent was only $600.

On the morning of the attacks, Pat ran back to the apartment to find his roommate passed out in bed with an Australian woman. Pat screamed out an account of what had happened. His roommate told him to shut up and let him sleep. Pat again screamed out the recap. The woman groggily sat up and said, not particularly emotionally, "I thought I heard something". Pat's roommate walked over to the window, surveyed the fallen buildings, and declared,

"This is a white man's war."

Then he went back to sleep.

Shortly thereafter, the roommate bought a shitload of cocaine to sell. Just a shitload. He was trying to finance a restaurant or something, and had also maxed out six credit cards for $20K. Anyway, the cocaine was terrible -- all it did was make you sneeze. And, apparently due to the Great Anthrax Scare, the market for all powdered substances had instantly dried up.

The roommate took to glumly sitting around watching television. As Pat was gleefully fond of reminding him, it wasn't just a white man's war anymore.

[On a semi-related note: Pat also has a new idea for a TV show: "It's called Two and a Half Men. You've got these two brothers. And one of them has a baby. And they ignore the baby to do an incredible amount of cocaine. Then they call up a hooker and just really, really fuck the hooker. And the baby is just in the corner, shitting itself. They look up and see that the baby has shit itself, and then they say, 'Oh, no, the baby has shit itself. What should we do?' Then they do more cocaine."]