Okay, tonight was nuts at work and I didn’t get out until after two in the morning. I just took a cab home and I think I’ll have a few thousand beers and sleep in tomorrow. So I’m putting the post up right away, before I pass out in a drunken stupor go to sleep. For tonight’s post I thought I’d post some video clips of one of my favorite holiday movies, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” I think it’s one of the funniest movies ever and a highlight of both Steve Martin’s and John Candy’s acting careers. The only thing I don’t like is the happy, sappy Hollywood ending. I’ve always thought a better ending would’ve been after Del tell’s Neal that his wife has died years ago, Neal gets so upset that he flips out and goes home and brutally and violently murders his wife and children, throws the Thanksgiving Day turkey out the front picture window and then he sets his own house on fire.
As he watches his house burn down, Neal laughs maniacally and says, “Happy Thanksgiving...assholes!”
The last scene would be Neal going back to the train station and Del is still sitting there with his trunk. Del looks shocked to see him returning.
“Del, I brought the turkey to you, this year,” Neal tells him while pulling a giant bottle of Wild Turkey out of a shopping bag. They both laugh and the bottle is opened.
“I’ve never been a big fan of Thanksgiving,” Del says while taking a long pull off of the bottle.
“Me, either,” Neal counters while grabbing the bottle and taking a hefty swig.
“What say, after we finish this, we go hit some bars on Rush Street and pick up some lonely Thanksgiving Day skanks,” Del says with a smile coloring his face.
“I think this is going to be one hell of a holiday season!” Neal laughingly replies back.
As they’re leaving the train station, they both say in unison, “Those aren’t pillows!” They laugh and the credits roll. Closing song over credits is, “Hit The Road, Jack,” by Ray Charles.
Could’ve been an Oscar contender with that ending, but what are you going to do? Here’s some clips from YouTube. See you tomorrow after dark.
--------------------------------- Bonus Linkage To The Craft Fair This Sunday At d.b.a! If you live in or around New York, you should check out the Holiday Hand-Made Gifts and Crafts Fair that CBBM documentarian, Spike and his wife put together at d.b.a. every year. EV Grieve has the details, check it out here: 7th annual d.b.a. holiday fair (part 2)
Bonus Card Board Box Man Shot! And speaking of CBBM’s, look what was staring at me just a block away from where I live. The mutations are growing more varied every day and sightings are becoming alarmingly frequent. Enjoy your freedom while you can, as we will all soon be enslaved by them. Aaaaahhh!
I’m really tired tonight. I had to come in to work early today and the rest of the next two weeks due to co-workers being on vacation (get ready for a couple of weeks of whine) and I didn’t get much sleep. On top of that I had to work later than usual, so for my six photos on Sixpack Monday, I’m just going to take six random photos on the way home and match them up to videos when I get there. I hope I can stay awake for the walk.
I had to work late tonight, so I was digging in my archives for something to put up, as I knew I wouldn’t have time to go anywhere because I have to get up and do this shit all over again tomorrow. Sometimes when I go digging through my old files I find things I completely forgot I did and this happened tonight. I found two covers, a back cover and an interview I did with a bartender for a magazine I published in 2004. The magazine was called Bar Crawl and my idea was to do a TV Guide-sized publication all about New York bars, bartenders and the people inside of them. Yes, 95% of my ideas revolve around bars and drinking.
My idea was to give them away in the bars you wrote about and try to get them to advertise in them. I also thought other advertising possibilities could be beer companies, cigarettes, liquor and who knows, maybe even hooker/massage ads like the Village Voice runs. If they can’t pay, hey, take it out in trade!
So I did the first issue, it was a ton of work, I couldn’t sell any ads (I suck at selling ads and I’m terrible at business), it was a pain in the ass dropping them off at bars (although I did get a lot of free drinks while do so) and I got as far as designing the cover for the second issue and decided to try something else. I wrote my Fire Truck book, then started blogging on MySpace and I’ve been online ever since.
I didn’t think I had any of Bar Crawl backed up, but I found the two covers and an interview I did with a bartender, so here they are. Enjoy!
This is the first cover. It’s a picture of John Lennon snorting a bottle of Coke from a scene in “A Hard Day’s Night.” I never noticed it until I was watching the movie in the ‘80’s all fucked up on coke and booze and at first I thought I was hallucinating! The cover lines are fairly nonsensical.
Here’s the back cover of the first issue, I was hoping to sell it as an ad, but I had no takers, so I put up this picture I took of five girls at a horrific frat bar on the Upper West side called, Bourbon Street. They were in various stages of drunkenness and the one on the end couldn’t even talk. I remember saying to her, “Your parents must be so gosh-darned proud of you!” Sadly the sarcasm was lost in translation. And the kicker is that it was just 5PM on a Sunday afternoon! I have a feeling she didn’t make any of her classes on Monday.
This is the second cover for the issue that never was. I thought I’d do a bathroom themed issue and was thrilled when I found this picture of Diana Ross shooting up on a toilet from the film, “Lady Sings The Blues.” I wanted to do a bathroom issue because it was issue number two. Get it? Bathrooms, number two, hello, anybody out there, Bueller...Bueller...Bueller...
The only other thing I found besides the covers are some photos and an interview with Dani Marco who was a bartender and had the distinction of being Ms. Rheingold. She was really nice and it was a fun interview, even though I couldn’t quit obsessing over the fact that she got free Rheingold for a year! Oh and Rheingold never did buy an ad, they went out of business about a year later I believe. Anyhoo, here’s the interview.
Hey Bartender! Dani Marco wears many hats and one tiara. She’s a seasoned young actor having appeared on national TV, on stage and in film. In addition Dani has studied and taught dance and was voted Miss Rheingold of 2004. In between all this activity she still finds time to bartend occasionally at 13 Little Devils Bar on the lower east side. And that’s exactly where we found her catching her breath after just wrapping up filming a national ad for Macy’s Department store.
So how long have you been a bartender here at 13 Little Devils? Oh God, since the inception. I’ve been here since the beginning of the bar a couple of years ago. Is it a good gig to have as far as the acting career goes? It’s a great gig, because it’s nighttime work. I?can audition during the day. Do you have flexible hours here? Yeah, it all depends on the acting jobs. I’m more or less a freelance bartender. (Laughs) Everything I do is freelance.
You were crowned Miss Rheingold last year, how has that gone for you? It’s been really fun. It’s very cool to be part of a classic New York business. Do you drink Rheingold? I like it. And I get free Rheingold, so that’s cool. You get free Rheingold all year? Yeah. All year? Yep. But I don’t drink a whole lot, so they got off easy with me. Jesus, free beer for a year, they’d be broke if it was me. So let me get this straight, you just order it and you get it free? Yeah I can order it and they’ll send it to my house. I’d go nuts if I had that deal. (Ed. note: Notice how I can’t let this go. I sound like some sort of alcoholic dork.) So you could just call right now and order four cases and they’d bring them. Yeah, that’s all I have to do. Wow, that boggles my mind. It’s a nice perk. Do you get to keep your Miss Rheingold tiara? I don’t know. It’s kind of fun, I never thought I’d wear one in my life. You ought to try and sell it on Ebay. Actually there’s a lot of Rheingold collectibles for sale on Ebay. So your Miss Rheingold reign is just about over? Yes, I’ll be passing it on to the next winner. So what advice do you have for the next Miss Rheingold? Umm...get a gym membership. (laughs) No, I’m just kidding. Just enjoy it, you know? The Rheingold people are really laid back, they want it to be fun. The promotional appearances are always a good time and I got to be in the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island which was a blast. Are you going to continue to do anything with Rheingold in the future. Yeah, I’m going to keep drinking it. (Laughs)
Sounds good. Getting back to bartending, what’s the best tip you’ve ever gotten? It was this young kid in a suit and tie and he was armed with his company’s gold express card. He was trying to impress this girl, so he’s buying expensive drinks and eventually bought a bottle of Dom Perignon. When he got the tab he tipped me $300! I?couldn’t believe it. Hopefully he still had his job after he turned in that expense report. Okay, what’s the best tip you’ve ever gotten as far as the acting career goes? I cut out a quote that I love. It reads: You’re unique, develop a method of your own. It was in Backstage. It’s taped to my mirror. What are some highlights of your acting career up to this date? I don’t know if this is a highlight, but I just finished filming a national TV commercial for Macy’s, so I’m excited about that. You’ve acted in some movies, right? Oh yeah, one of them went national, Games People Play: New York. I had a lead role in that film, so that was exciting. And didn’t Richard Roeper single you out when him and Ebert reviewed it on their show? Yeah, that was so cool. The publicist for the film had seen the transcripts of the show in advance and called me and said, “You might want to tape the Ebert and Roeper show this week.” They reviewed the movie and Richard Roeper says, “But I’ll tell you, you mentioned two of these actors, I think this Dani Marco in particular she could be a star. I don't know if she’s playing this character or it’s really her or whatever the case may be...” and I about fell out of my chair. That was a nice moment.
No kidding, that’s great. Well I just have one last question, how do you make a Tom Collins? (Laughs) I have no idea. That’s kind of a senior drink, isn’t it? I didn’t want one anyway. I think it’s named after Phil Collins dad. -------------------------------------------- Okay, hopefully tomorrow I’ll get out of work on time and I’ll go out on a Wednesday in search of a swizzle stick. See you tomorrow, after dark.
Fuck, I had plans to do something tonight and for once it was slow at work, so I thought I’d leave a little early for once. But then a funny thing happened about a half an hour before I was ready to leave. Work started flying in. One job, two jobs, three jobs and then a pain in the ass job that’s due to be installed first thing in the morning. Now it’s after midnight, I’ve got a ringing, stinging headache and just feel like going home, which is exactly what I’m going to do. I think I’ll fish around for an old story to put up. In fact I know which one I’m going to use. It’s called “Blowing Up The Gin Room” and was first published in NY Press and later in my book, “The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.”
Okay, almost home. What a fucking night.
----------------------------------------
Blowing Up the Gin Room In the summer of 1977, I was nineteen years old. I moved out of my parents’ house and into a dump of a three-bedroom house in a somewhat dicey neighborhood in Peoria, Illinois. My two roommates were Chris and Moon, and the main thing we had in common was a powerful thirst for all things alcoholic. Our drinks of choice were Blatz beer and shots of cheap gin.
To fortify ourselves in the midst of so much alcohol consumption, we bought more than a thousand hits of speed and kept them in a large candy dish on a crumbling secondhand wooden coffee table in the front room. Whenever we felt weary from the constant drink-a-thon we called life, we’d pop a couple hits of speed and–boom–back to the liquor store.
Our dilapidated house had a basement that was divided into two rooms. One had a door, but it also had a window on the outer wall. Since the basement was musty and came furnished with a variety of insects and rodentia, we didn’t spend a lot of time down there. We did, however, turn the sealed room into something we called the Gin Room. We dubbed it that because we would take our empty gin bottles and smash them on the cracked cement floor.
After a couple of months, the broken glass was nearing ankle height. It was really quite something to see. Smashing the bottles was a great release when you were about to jump out of your skin from too much amphetamines and alcohol.
Being constantly drunk and raging on speed leads to some weird behavior.Once, Chris and I turned everything in the house upside down and watched the sunrise while debating whether or not it would be a good idea to hang meat from the ceiling. Chris thought roasts would be the best choice, but I thought a variety of pork chops, steaks and hot dogs would be little more eye-catching and fun.
The greatest day in the house happened sometime in August when Moon came home clutching a large shopping bag.
"You’re not going to believe what I’ve got in here," he announced to me and Chris, a curious grin creeping across his face.
"Girl Scouts?" I wondered aloud.
"Fuck you,” he shot back. “I've got enough fireworks here to blow up a tank."
Then he overturned the bag, and the goods spilled out onto the floor.
A friend owed Moon a hundred bucks, and when Moon threatened to break the headlights on his car if he didn’t pay up, the guy offered him the fireworks and the deal was done. There on the floor were M-80s, firecrackers, Roman candles, cherry bombs and things with fuses on them I didn’t recognize. We huddled around the explosive pile, and it became painfully obvious what was to be done.
“Let’s blow up the Gin Room,” I said in quite a noble fashion. Of course Chris and Moon were in total agreement, and we moved the artillery downstairs and set it up on a pile of newspapers that would act as a mass fuse. But first, celebratory drinks upstairs. And a handful of speed all around.
When the beaners had kicked in, we moved back down to the basement and argued over who would light the newspaper. (Moon won, as they were his fireworks, so it was only fair.) The fire set, we quickly exited and watched the action from the outer window. Soon, an orgasm of colorful explosions, smoke, fire and ear-shattering bangs and booms belched out of the room. After a minute, the glass on the window cracked and fell out. After four minutes, it was over. Four minutes. Of pure joy. Pure joy unfettered by the everyday worries magnified ten times by the booze and speed. Worries about money, a busted-up car, a dead-end job at a downtown discount store, running out of cigarettes, the question of what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and the greatest worry of all: would we make it to the liquor store before closing time. Nothing mattered for those four minutes but the colorful explosion in the gin room. It was quite a liberating experience. It was a wonderful life-lesson that had no meaning. I think that’s why it’s meant so much to me as the years have moved on.
It took two minutes to put the fire out on the left wall. The whole room was covered in black soot. In fact, the whole house had a smoky gunpowder scent that we would never be able to totally eliminate. A month later, we were thrown out. We didn’t recover our security deposit needless to say,.
Moon went on to become a financial director for a loan company. Chris went back to college and became a lawyer. I moved to New York and went to work at a shitty night job while trying to peddle my writing.
Okay, this is going to be a quickity blickity blog for today. It's after three in the morning and I just got home after working 13 hours. And twelve of those hours were filled with stress, anxiety, things going wrong, running out of material and work that just kept pouring in. The last hour I was too fucking tired to give a fuck anymore, but the only place I felt like going was home. I'm going to drink a shitload of beer and sleep in tomorrow.
The very good news is I'm off work tomorrow through the following Monday! My niece Casie is getting married in Brooklyn and my whole family is coming in for the celebration! There'll be photos and more about that in the next coming days. So I'm going to post a picture of Gumby, a Warren Zevon Nightcap and that's going to be all she wrote. There's beer to be drunk and a horrible day at work to try and forget.
Oh, and it's officially July 7th. 18 years ago on this day I moved to New York and wondered if I would last a full year. Hard to believe it's been 18 of them already! I have a short story I'm going to write about that, maybe it'll be up tomorrow. As Bongo once said, "Tomorrow never knows."
A shot of Gumby watching me toil at work. He feels my pain. Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
MAD commenter, friend and former co-worker, Jason Hwang moved to France this week. His wife, Zioum Zioum sent in the following two photos along with this message: "Jason is ok! I put him in his cage with some beer!! hahahahhahaha!" Thanks Zioum Zioum, i'm glad he made it there safely! Uh, ask him to put some pants on next time!
First off, apologies to Al for this, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Okay I worked kicked my ass all day and all of the night to quote Ray Davies. Everything was a rush, and not a good kind of a rush like after you’ve huffed a whole can of spray paint either. I could go on, but I just don’t want to. There’s only one place I want to go...
And it's off we go. Today and tonight was an eleven hour packed day of pure stress and it's hard to put one foot in front of the other.
And here we are at the Mothership that houses my Fortress of Solitude...whatever that means.
At least people are standing still on the escalator. On a night like this you savor any moment that somehow goes your way.
Huh, the Duane Reade. Let's see if they've gotten any better cards in here, the last one's I saw were pretty nasty!
These cards in here are harsh! Someone should write a letter to the manager! Sheesh!
Aaahhh! The Fortress of Solitude! I see a familiar face...
And he's got a dog and a giganzo Budweiser waiting for me! I love it in here!
My table awaits...
Gumby's settled in...
Time to relax. Maybe I'll draw a few cartoons while I'm here. Let me get some napkins.
You can't see it, but there were folds in the napkins and they were really flimsy, not a good canvas at all! What a horrible night!
I really should quit whining about working the dayshift, but here we go again!
Today was almost a twelve hour day and I’m fucking beat. I feel like Monday’s and Tuesday’s post weren’t that great and I appreciate those of you who are sticking with me this week. It’s not only that I hate working and moving around in the daylight hours, it’s also that my workdays are a lot longer and I don’t feel like doing jack shit afterwards. So tonight, I’m taking a suggestion from MAD commenter and the future Jerry Lewis, Jason Hwang.
After I went to the shitty Tick Tock Diner (a diner without a counter!) he suggested I try the Skylight Diner which isn’t far from work. So that’s where I’m going tonight. This way if it sucks you can blame Jason.
Sadly I had to work late today, but the good news is at least it's dark outside and I'm staying true to the name of this blog.
This is Harold Camping's latest prediction, I don't think this act of heavenly division will happen. I'm calling it the, "Crapture."
And here we are, the Skylight Diner. Looks like an old school diner, nice!
And like all true NYC diners, it's open 24 hours.
Looks like they speak my language here!
And there's a nice curly-Q counter to sit at. Perfect!
Muffins!
Within three minutes of sitting down, an ice-cold Budweiser is placed before me. Aaahh, memories of where I work are fading fast.
And speaking of beers, check out the selection here. A large and varied list for a diner!
Ebony and Ivory condiment shot!
Here's some of the staff hard at work behind the counter. I've just placed an order for a bowl of matzo ball soup.
And I've also ordered a second beer. While we wait for the meal to arrive, let's take a little tour. Here's the back of the diner where there's table seating.
There's booths up in the front window for a nice view of the street as you eat.
I hear the desserts here are homemade and simply delectable!
Obligatory counter diner mirror shot!
Another shot of the other side of the counter...
And when I return to my seat, dinner is served! Their matzo ball soup is the best I've ever had, it not only has matzo balls, but there's noodles in it as well! Delicious!
I was tempted to have a black and white cookie for dessert, but opted for another beer instead.
And now it's out the door and home to collapse. See you tomorrow after dark and thanks to Jason for the suggestion!
If They Do Say So Themselves! (From their “About Us” page on their website) Welcome to Skylight Diner, servicing residents and businesses in Hell's Kitchen since 1996.
We are Teddy & George and we own and operate Skylight Diner. We're on hand every day to ensure that whether you come into our restaurant or order delivery, your food is prepared just the way you want it.
We offer value and speedy delivery. Choose from triple decker sandwiches, salads, pastas, Greek specialties, seafood entrees, pancakes, eggs and much, much more!
Skylight Diner 402 W. 34th St. (Near Ninth Ave.) 212-244-0395
Okay, tonight was nuts at work and I didn’t get out until after two in the morning. I just took a cab home and I think I’ll have a few thousand beers and sleep in tomorrow. So I’m putting the post up right away, before I pass out in a drunken stupor go to sleep. For tonight’s post I thought I’d post some video clips of one of my favorite holiday movies, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” I think it’s one of the funniest movies ever and a highlight of both Steve Martin’s and John Candy’s acting careers.
And speaking of CBBM’s, look what was staring at me just a block away from where I live. The mutations are growing more varied every day and sightings are becoming alarmingly frequent. Enjoy your freedom while you can, as we will all soon be enslaved by them. Aaaaahhh!
15 Comments
