You Are So Right

Ach ja... estas tan correcto, sweet seniorita. I do, indeed. So why is it that I haven't the energy to put pen to paper, never mind to dance, laugh, stay out all night, make art both good and bad, drink too much and actually live the life worth writing about, the way we all did just a few years ago. We all stay in now, we feel older, tired, more...serious. Now the work we do we do alone, at home, in our pajamas with a cup of tea at our elbow. Not a decade ago we did it together, in the bars, on dirty stages and half out of our minds. What I can't figure out is this: it can't be age that wears us, because I was older in 98 then than Rev is now, and Prichard was older than I am today. Were we just drunk on.... what? The 90's? Clinton? cushy internet jobs, IPO and Launch Parties for websites that would disappear a month later, open bars every night of the week... Was it that, or is it us? Maybe it was 9/11. Maybe it's the city. In 1998, the 1-2 Giuliani-Bloomberg punch was still in mid-swing, New York wasn't yet on the ropes with blood in her mouth, both eyes swollen shut. Surf Realities still had a fighting chance, the future wasn't yet inevitible. We all smoked in bars and it wasn't against the law, or half a day's pay for a pack. We raised our flag in the dirt, the LES, the only island of old New York we could find - an island sinking like Atlantis, deeper by the hour.

Tonight I let the marijuana wash the stress of the day off my shoulders... struggle with inertia just turning off the TV and touch my face while I write. I wonder if there an alternate reality somewhere, maybe it's just another city, that still has reverend hanks flushing their own heads down toilets, red-leather clad curry spices following friends home at 5 in the morning, friends who have to work at 7. A place where the kids like to have fun and they don't notice their common alcohol bloat and face is still all alpha. A place where empty spaces still exist, and people come to fill them with play... where the only reason you need to create is space/time to do it in. Where did those things go?

I'm rambling. Just blowing off steam. My apologies.

new empty spaces replace the old ones



pic by jen-x. i stole it from her myspace profile.

be careful what you wish for

Thursday night, the 202 Restaurant in Chelsea Market - a ridiculously overpriced "restaurant" that also sells overpriced clothing and furniture for some reason - invited the tenants of the Market (O2, Food Network, etc.) to a 2 hour free margarita open bar, from 6-8pm. A mass email was sent to all O2 employees, so I fully expected the joint to be packed with my coworkers at 5:59. I twisted our production manager Rebecca's arm to get her to skip the gym and go with me, and we headed down at five-of, in order to be right on time like good alcoholics. Shockingly, only about 7 Oxygenites showed up... most of the drinkers were from the Food Network, all of whom seemed a little snobbish when they found out we were from O2. During the first hour, I noticed that either I was growing larger and larger, or the margaritas were getting smaller and smaller. By 6:45, they were being served up in shot size glasses, and by 7 I found out why: they had run out of stinkin' tequila!! Now look, I don't want to tell anyone how to throw a party, but if you're throwing a 2-hour *margarita open bar*, you should, umm... HAVE PLENTY OF TEQUILA ON HAND! They also ran out of Contreau, which meant that the drinks had to be made with some ghetto triple-sec bullshit. Rebecca and I bailed immediately, and went to get some food and margaritas at Mary Ann's, where I knew the tequlia would be plentiful. Later, I headed over to Rev Jen's for our weekly OC party (which has dwindled to just she and I of late) and drank beer while we watched our fave show, yelling at the TV and digging into her roommates beer when ours ran out. Somehow, she convinced me to go to the Bowery with her at midnight to see THE HOWL, and we spent the 2 hours after the OC doing drunken friend-invites on myspace and applying our makeup. The rest, as you can imagine, is kind of a blur... I do remember seeing the crazy-dancing Lopi and our good friend Kat at Bowery, and that I got home (somehow) after 2 AM. I menatlly adjusted my usual friday schedule of getting up at six for the gym, and fell into bed.

Needless to say, yesterday I was a mess, and in no shape to be doing anything but going home after work and watching my 24 DVDs. Nevertheless, I'm still enough of a pushover to be talked into going out, no matter how out-of-it I am. Rev called in the afternoon and asked if I didn't want to go see Pamela Des Barres reading at a bar in Greenpoint, instead of seeing her Saturday (today) at Coliseum Books as we'd originally planned. It was tempting and, as a Wilde boy once said: "I can resist everything but temptation". Since I came into work almost 2 hours late, and am doing an off-site training on Monday and Tues, I stayed at the office til 8PM finishing things up, and then hopped the L out to Bedford. Rev and I found each other on the corner, and fled the mob scene of milling hipsters as fast as we could flee - down Bedford towards Greenpoint. It's a good ten-minute walk at least, which we spent marvelling at just how many hipsters were in Williamsburg and fantasized about throwing a "Dork-Fest" in the neighborhood, in an attempt to drive them out. I said we could appoint a hipster pied-piper of sorts, who could carry a boom-box blasting Cold Play, and lead the parade of hipsters through the streets and into the east river. She suggested Monopoly tournaments and Tolkein readings. Just before we hit McCarren Park, we passed a ginormous patch of vacant land, at least the size of a city block, surrounded by chain-link and barbed-wire. "What's that?" Rev asked. "That," I answered, "is a hipster-free zone." For a moment we thought we'd gone in the wrong direction because we couldn't find the bar (Enid's), but every time we tried to ask a passing hipster for help, we were completely ignored. I finally realized they weren't ignoring us, per se, but that each and every one of them was listening to an iPod, and were blissfully oblivious to our plight.

We found the bar, and were quite early, as we'd planned. Still, there were no tables available so we ordered our beers and stood awkwardly in the back by the restrooms. There was a big birthday party (evidenced by the half eaten birthday cake in the center of the array of pushed-together tables) in the center of the room, a few of whom had apparently abandoned their cake and drinks and split. Rev and I wondered if we should just sit at the birthday table, and I voted yes. After all, they're probably not here for the reading, and surely no one else would have the balls to just move in on someone else's party. So that's what we did, and no-one said a word. I almost cut myself a piece of cake, but didn't want to jeopardize our amazing seats. Eventually an even better table right next to ours was freed up and we jumped on that immediately. Rev's friend Angie from work showed up with a couple of her buds, and we ganked some chairs for them so that they could sit at our best-table-in-the-house.

Pamela came on at about 10:30, and the reading was amazing. She is 57 years old, and looks like she is in her early 40's. Surely there's some botox and surgery involved in that equation, but she really did look stunning. She started out by reading a short piece from her bestselling memoir, I'm With The Band, about hanging out and doing PCP (actually, a drug called Trimar) with Jim Morrison in the early days of The Doors. She then gave up the stage to Rhett Miller, a musician from The Old 97's, who read an even longer piece from the book, about Pamela's torrid affair with Jimmy Page. She then returned to the mic for a wildly entertaining Q&A with the audience. I'm still going tonight at Coliseum, where she will be reading with Sandra Bernhardt.