“Asserting dominance. Folks come in the gym and see me doing this? They step back.”
Yeah?
“They step back.”
Okay. Does this exercise have a name?
“Jeff.”
Just Jeff?
“Well, it’s short for ‘Jeffrey,’ I suppose. But we’re pretty casual in the gym.”
You love working out.
“Thinking about getting myself one of those sizable belts. You know the ones I’m talking about?”
Yes.
“They don’t hold up your pants.”
I know the belts, Bobby. Weightlifting belts.
“You can get all sorts of things carved on there to personalize it. Your name, or a ferocious animal. Maybe even a good-looking lady like they used to do on the noses of warplanes. Your imagination is the only limit.”
“Well, judging from the sign, I’m waiting on my spring rolls.”
Nice that you’re not letting unfounded and racist fears about the coronavirus affect your eating habits.
“Let’s not turn a pandemic into a moo goo gai pandemic.”
I have no idea what that means.
“It means that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as for For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
I don’t know Mandarin, but that’s not true.
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Gonna take this. Might be Johnny Depp.”
You know Johnny Depp?
“I was just in Miami.”
…
“Weir here.”
“Weir! I need you immediately! And your country needs you.”
“Is this Bernadette Peters?”
“It’s your President.”
“Very similar voices.”
“You, son. You’re the only one who can help me save America.”
“From whom?”
“Americans.”
“Ah.”
“Lincoln said it. No foreign interloper could ever step foot on our soil. Our great oceans prevent this, you see. Only we, ourselves, might bring about our own doom. I believed our end would come via the hippie, the communist, the psychiatrist. I, uh, employ the term ‘psychiatrist’ as a placeholder for another group.”
“The White Sox?”
“The Jews, Bob.”
“Ah.”
“But Nixon has learned, strategized, rethought. A politician must calibrate. Never losing sight of his core principles, of course, but a man without his eye on the ball is a man soon out of the league. Here, we must side with the Hebrews.”
“Okay.”
“It’s Biden. The decrepit wretch isn’t fit for public display any longer. Sentences are beyond him, let alone paragraphs. He fumfers, he flails. You mark my words: that man is going to take it out. He’s going to become disoriented, and out will come the meat. I’ve seen that look. Muskie had it, and then he took it out. The Democrats covered it up, but these aren’t those days. Too many cameras around.”
“Oh, yeah. We have to give Billy the camera talk before each tour.”
“It’s bad business, that. The mind gets loose. Biden’s already white-knuckling it. The pressure of the general will do him in by July.”
“The road’s not for everyone.”
“You’re much wiser than your facial hair suggests. Come and get me, son. The country needs Nixon.”
Joan Didion has no opinion on Bobby’s show in Miami; don’t even ask her.
…………………
What is the point? There was one, I am told. Thick, annotated books say that there was a point to all of this. At one point, there was a point.
…………………..
It is far easier to strike up a conversation at a Grateful Dead (Or What’s Left Of ‘Em) show than it is to carry on a conversation.
Tom and Alan. Tom had a pointy shaved head and a beard. Alan did terrible things for the cops; he thought he was boasting, but he was confessing. Tom was an architect who kept talking about his wife and then hitting on me. He points out a Gehry building, but does not call for Gehry’s execution on the charge of Crimes Against Urbanity. I did not fully trust him after that. A person’s aesthetic is a better predictor of behavior than their politics.
………
Johnny Depp used to hang out at the Mac’s Deuce. Johnny Depp used to hang out at every bar in Miami. Johnny Depp still approaches life as though it were fuckable.
………………………..
Information wants to be free, but no one will tell me where the fucking toilets are.
…………………………
In the line for $18 scotches, I started a rumor that BTS was going to sit in. It spread. A chant went up from the crowd during New Speedway Boogie.
“GIVE US JUNGKOOK!” Over and over like an unbound river.
Bobby took no notice, but Jay Lane appeared frightened. Don Was’ expression was, as usual, unreadable.
………………………
Wandered in, out, around the venue.
Guns, swords, children.
If that’s your shopping list, I hope you get in a car accident on the way to the store.
…….
Last year, same venue. Don Was had the same flippity-flops. A lovely Enthusiast sent me a magic cookie, which contained a small but noticeable portion of mushrooms. I went like this:
“Mm-hmmm.”
And:
“Heh heh heh.”
And:
“Oh hey yeeeeeeeeah.”
This year, same venue. Bobby had a hat. I cannot confirm whether it was the same hat, tho it was of the same millinery genus. I went like this:
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”
And:
“THIS IS BULLSHIT, ALL OF THIS, CHRIST IS RISEN AND YOU FUCKERS ARE PAYING TWELVE BUCKS FOR A BEER!”
And:
“ARE YOU MY MOTHER? ANSWER ME!”
Acid is different than mushrooms.
…………………….
Someone explained to me what Art Basel was and I nearly punched them. Motherfucker, I know what Art Basel is.
……………………
It was cold, and so I dug a shirt out of my closet. Second-oldest next to the Voodoo Lounge tee-shirt with the tongue on the front. Brown, denim, button-down. Levi’s made it a long time ago. There’s luck in it. Nothing bad could ever happen to me while it was on.
“Hey, is that vintage?” a guy asked me during half-time.
“Yes, it is,” I told him. “I live here in Miami in a fashionable condo right off Collins Avenue. I saw the 2001 internet bust coming and parlayed my stake into vast financial holdings.”
He didn’t look at my shoes, so I think he believed me. Always look at someone’s shoes.
…………………….
Mac’s Club Deuce in Miami Beach opened in 1964, just six days before the Wayside Inn in Little Aleppo, and seems just as real. The clientele is–now–the Dirtbag Left, dart hustlers, and guys who look like Sam Cutler. Pool table to the left, W-shaped bar to the right. Blow is playing on the teevee with closed captioning. Maybe Johnny Depp will stagger in. You never know in Miami.
I have ordered a Jagermeister and a Heineken, and I will wait until dark to leave. Entering a bar when the sun is up is acceptable (tho degenerate) but leaving one in the scalding bright is out of the question
Foreign lesbians enter, sit next to me. They have been touring the country.
“Where have you been?”
They tell me: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco.
“What did you think of New York?”
“Like London, but moreso.”
“And Los Angeles?”
“We didn’t get it.”
“San Fran?”
“It would be prettier without all the people shitting on the streets.”
I find no fault in their observations. Go to Vegas, I tell them. The only way to understand America is see Las Vegas. Rent a suite at the Trump International and have the boy fetch you a drink and a Cadillac. Don’t listen to the nabobs, I tell them. The Cadillac is still a superior machine. Johnny Depp won’t drive anything but.
……………………..
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
………………………
The boy who worked the outside bar was 18, 19. He had thin, ropey arms and sandy hair, and wore a Nirvana shirt. The black one with the smiley face. When I went out to smoke, he was playing this:
Too bad we broke the sky. The kids are all right.
……………………….
What happened to that toilet was a war crime. Jackie Gleason didn’t deserve that.
…………………….
At no point did Bobby and Don Was go back-to-back. This is a classic Rock Move™. The musicians are wobbled from within–the power of Rock, you see–and they need leaning posts. Scapulae against scapulae, but butts do not touch, as that would be gay.
……………………
It was wrong of me to tell that woman I had just returned from Singapore, and then cough on her. Apologize for me if you know her.
……………………
Alan asks me this: “How many shows did you see?”
“Define ‘you,'” I answer while not breaking eye contact.
We have consumed different entheogens, and so he does not understand me. I try to make myself clear.
“I saw 37 shows,” I say. “But three of them were palindromic.”
“What is that?”
“The set lists read the same backwards and forwards.”
“The Grateful Dead never did that.”
“The Grateful who?”
He is less friendly after this exchange. I don’t think it was my breath, as I was chewing prescription-strength gum.
……………………..
Johnny Depp’s not coming, is he?
……………………..
During Eyes, Bobby and Don Was and Jay Lane play a riff like The Other One, a chugging triplet figure with strength and momentum, a high-calorie harmelodic, and the ladies go WOO and the men all go YEAH with their arms around one another or maybe holding $12 beers in a room where Jackie Gleason once promised to beat his teevee wife in a city which will be drenched momentarily–the Gehry notwithstanding–and the music is enormous and plain-spoken, and we spin around and are consumed by fire.
And then they go back in to Eyes.
……………………….
“But you got the blue passports back,” I said.
“That’s right, yeah.”
“They’re made in Poland.”
“I read that, yeah.”
One of the foreign lesbians was British. The other was from Lombardy, where they lived on a dairy farm. Italy did not permit them to marry, because it would have made the Pope sad, and so they had to go to Belgium. The Brit and I try to explain the American primary system to the Italian, fail. I don’t even bring up the Electoral College.
………………………..
Blacks and whites and boutique hotels. Less vaping than previously; cigarettes still, cigarettes always; tables with Cubans smoking shisha. Every Lamborghini is the wrong color. Chokepoints where you let the big guy through first. (There are many big guys. Their girls are tiny, and wrapped around them. You don’t look at their girls.) Face mask or two. Cops rumble by the Ritz-Carlton. Overly-lit swimsuit stores, same as they got on the boardwalk in Wildwood. Side streets with bars tucked in like obedient children. So much ass you can’t believe it.
Señor Frogs, too.
………………………….
At night, we spin around and are consumed by fire.
“Kid’s coming on the tour with us. He’s gonna be New Josh. Just as cute, and far fewer regrettable interviews. And, uh, I can pay him much, much less. Kid’s a winner all the way ’round.”
Do you know his name?
“Not as such. But I could pick him out of a crowd. Especially if the crowd was made up of the Wolf Bros. He stands out.”
Matt Jaffe is his name.
“Oh, no. Matt is Matt Busch’s name. Can’t have two Matts on one bus. Terrible luck.”
Is it?
“It’s like going to the theater when you’re named MacBeth. Bad hoo-doo.”
Didn’t know that.
“Way more name-related superstitions than you’d imagine.”
Recent Comments