Well another weekend in New York City hath come and gone. Shuffled off its mortal coil, yadda yadda yadda. I’m filing an abbreviated and early report, due to two primary factors: 1) my Mom’s BBQ is waiting for me as we speak, but lo, I’m the type of guy who wouldn’t risk being too tired to report later tonite, and 2) Laura Branigan, Bret Michaels, and Wang Chung conspired to kick the bejesus out of me last night.
Now, I know last time in New York I filed daily reports, but in this case, only Saturday night is worth reporting. Not that the first two days in the city were dull and boring, but they were just…good. Solid. Enjoyable times. And you’re anything like me, you don’t read blogs to hear how much fun someone else had that you didn’t. You come for embarrassment, humorous anecdotes, and on special days, some racial slurs.
OK, so one quick Friday story: I head down to the Franklin Street Pier with two of the three UNICEF girls to see an outdoor viewing of “The Ring”. I had never seen “The Ring” before; at least a version that wasn’t preceded in the title by “The Fellowship of…” But hey, free film. I can deal with this. There are roughly 50 people already there when we arrive, and we take a few seats. About five minutes before it starts, the projectionist gets on the microphone. “Hey everyone,” he says. “For those of you hear to see ‘The Ring’, well, there’s been a mix-up. We’re only allowed to screen children’s movies. So, instead, we’re showing “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’. Sorry.”
Now THERE’S a shift in expectation. I’m not a huge fan of the flick, but the lovely ladies had not seen it before, so we stayed. They didn’t believe me when I told them how long this movie was. Obviously, the people next to me didn’t know either, even though apparently some of them had already seen it. The girl spent the first thirty minutes asking her friend what was going on, like she was in a Miracle Ear commercial or something. Finally her friend blurts out, “Look, you’re SEEN this already! Why are you asking me? I HAVEN’T!” Near the end of the movie, roughly 6 hours later, the Inquisitive One tries to reassure her friend that the end is near. Her poor friend grits through her teeth, “You…are a lying…sack…of shit!”
Good times. Onto Saturday.
Saturday night started by heading out with the UNICEF group and some of their friends to temporarily join their 5 Boroughs Drinking Tour. They had already done shots in the Bronx (don’t be fooled by the shots in the Bronx, I’m still I’m still Ryan from the Blog) and now were off to Staten Island to brown bag it. We missed the ferry, and we had an hour to kill. So they switched gears and decided to drink Manhattans in Manhattan. Problem was, there were no bars anywhere around there. None. We followed a neon sign in the distance, only to find a bagel shop. Someone in the party considered sign the company for emotional distress. Finally, we locate a bar on a side street of a side street. I was like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star tract compactor. I had a bad feeling about this. But hey, it was a bar. (Now I’m confused if it was Luke or Han who had the bad feeling. They always felt bad about something. People were totally bipolar in a galaxy far, far away…)
So we walk in. And there is no one in this bar. I mean, no one. This is the part of the horror movie where the door swings shut behind you, locking you in, and the 18 insane clowns descend from the ceiling and eat you. Instead of 18 clowns, we encountered a very confused, slightly ornery woman. We assume she works there. “Are you guys open?” one of us asks. Nothing. Blank stare. I’ve been at funerals that were more comfortable than this. Finally, she sighs, and looks upstairs, and says “You got people here.” Ah, silly me. In real life, the clowns just come down the stairs wielding their long knives. They don’t materialize through walls. My imagination sometimes gets the best of me.
Well, instead of Bozo the Terrible, we got an equally confused, ornery Irish man. We repeat the query pursuant to their state of “open” or “closed”. Again, crickets. This is ridiculous. Now we’re over-enunciating each syllable, in hopes of getting some answer, either way. Finally, he says, “I’m really tired.” Which again, does not help us to know if we should just leave. This is like asking a girl on a date, and having her answer, “I love cheese!” Just…what??? I felt like we were in a time warp of some sort, with the seven of us on one plane of existence, and our nice Irish man about twenty minutes in the future. Nothing was making sense. Finally, as the time-space continuum played towards our favor, he asked us how much we planned on drinking. One each, we say. And it’s on.
So we sit down, seven across, at the bar. “Whadd’yll have?” he asks, in his delicious brogue, looking under the bar for glasses. “Seven Manhattans, please,” one guy says. The bartender’s head whips up. He’s suddenly looking like a guy who’s looking for the hidden cameras. “You’re f@cking kidding me, right?” he asks. Poor bastard. Must of thought we were a cult. It didn’t help that only I actually knew what a Manhattan was. So when he asked everyone what they wanted in it, with all the energy of a man about to curl up in a ball and die, no one had a clue how to respond. As the outsider in the group, I didn’t wanna have the burden of selecting the alcohol, but I had just about enough of my share of awkward pauses in this bar. “Jack Daniels”, I say, trying to assure everyone else with my tone of voice that this indeed was a smart choice.
After he pours us the drinks, the scene at large starts to make sense. Honda had rented his bar all day for a television commercial. They had co-opted the parking lot next door and used the bar as a storage facility. We were the first and only customers all day. We felt super bad for the bartender, so we chatted him up. Well, some of us chatted him up. The other half was ruing the decision to have this devil liquid. First rule of thumb when ordering a drink: have a frickin’ clue what’s it in. Otherwise you get a smart aleck bartender who decides to make you pay with an asinine request like, “Surprise me!” You might get a Buffalo Sweat (151 rum, tobasco sauce, and the bar rag rung out into a shot glass) or a Dirty Mother (tequila and milk). So yea, the Manhattans were not a universal hit, but this bartender was.
By the time the girls went en masse, pack-like, to the bathroom, we were this guy’s best friends. We’re asking about the video shoot, his schedule for the day (he had been there since 6 am) and what time he started the next day (3:30 am), and all of a sudden, we hear way too much giggling in the women’s bathroom. The bartender gets this gleam in his eye and says, “Hey, wanna turn off the lights on them?” Being the upstanding citizen, not to mention most excellent friend, that I am, I lean over, and gravely say, “Oh HELL yes.”
Now, the five men bolt towards the door, stealth-like. I felt like a cop ready to bust some drug kingpins. Pretty sweet. So I approach the door, and the bartender whispers, “The black button!” I look, observe, collect the visual confirmation, look back to him, pull my ear, touch my palm to my ear, and then point to the heavens. So now that I had told the bartender to steal third base, I flicked the switch.
And man, few sounds in my life have been delicious as the high-pitched shrieks that were emitted roughly .43 seconds later. So worth it. After this mature bout of humor, we paid the tab and parted ways. They to Staten Island, me to get my expensive 80’s groove on.
I had a previous engagement to visit Commentator Extraordinaire Diana’s birthday party at Culture Club in Greenwich Village. For those of you who have never been there, it’s a retro-fashioned club, decorated with retro décor (ET, Debbie Gibson, Pac Man, etc) with two dance floors. All the look at the 80’s, with all the prices of modern-day New York City. Holy Moly. $20 just to get in. I ended up going into the club myself, since I was coming without anyone else in the party. I walked in around 10 pm, and I kid you not, thefemale/male ratio was 10:1. I’d like to turn over the next comment to the Maxim Editor in my head to describe my initial thought walking in there:
Maxim Editor: If I can’t laid tonight, I might as well just donate my reproductive organs to science.
OK, now we’re back.
I didn’t want to go in by myself for the reason which ensued: namely, I was “that guy” circling around the club, looking like a predator. But really, I was just looking for Diana. Nary a Diana to be seen. So I figure I can do the “get a drink and intently sip it, avoiding most eye contact. So I get a Bacardi and Diet Coke, served in what resembled nothing more than a plastic shot glass. Paid $8. The 80’s suck.
I don’t take one step away from the bar when I see this perky, and I do mean perky, blonde right in front of me. “Are you engaged?” she asks me. Normally this would have thrown me, but in my one pass around the club, I saw four bachelorette parties. Saw roughly a dozen more as the night went on. I’m not sure of the link between “about to get married” and “Billy Ocean” for some women, but hey. Anyways, I tell her I’m not engaged. “Great!” she says. “Then you can bite my neck.”
The 80’s rule.
Turns out, she had a stretchy, string necklace on with candy laced along the circumference. She was going around, getting guys to bite candy off. Hey, whatever passes the night, yo. So I delve in. When in Rome, etc. So this candy is really putting up a fight, so I’m pulling the damn necklace pretty hard. Not that she minds. “Jesus, that’s so HOT!” she says.
And then the necklace snaps, sending every piece of candy to the floor. On a level of 1 to “Extremely Slick”, this was a negative 300.
OK, so luckily she didn’t mind that much. She kisses me on the cheek and leaves. On the stereo, Poison’s “Nothing But a Good Time” is playing. No kidding. Within 15 minutes, the entire birthday crew is there. It’s myself, the Commander, Diana, Mr. Diana, and some other friends. When I say Tim and I got to hang with the four most beautiful girls at this club, I kid you not. Not only that, but they knew how to get down to The Bangles. I mean, that’s a scary combo. (Between the UNICEF girls and these four, I had some seriously good fortune this weekend. And the best part? They all want to lick me. Oh yea. OK, that’s a total lie. But give me my illusions. They are all that keeps me from sinking in a deep abyss of drugs, gambling, and antique collecting. And none of us want that.)
After a few initially good songs, the DJ decided to help the bar make more money but playing some utter crud for about 30 minutes. Not good times. Craptastic times. But then, out of nowhere, Mr. DJ pulls off an epic combination of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” which segued directly into The Go Go’s “Vacation”. From there, it was 80’s music nirvana. I had felt bad all week about slacking on my cardio workouts, but I’m pretty sure I lost a good 10-12 pounds on the dance floor last night. Cathartic numbers of the night: “Gloria” by Laura Branigan, “Separate Ways” by Journey, “My Sharona” by The Knack. We had the type of group where you could do the “make eye contact, scream some lyrics, and do a silly arm gesture” all night long and have it never get old. At one point, we all did performance art. Excellent times.
As the night went on, our spot on the dance floor grew smaller and smaller. The gender ratio never came close to equally, but around 1 am, there were many a man on the prowl looking for the by-now “too drunk to have standards” girls. Just insane. When I’m President, I’m enforcing a “Girl’s Only” area on each dance floor, where girls who actually just wanna dance with each other can do so without fears on an unwanted male crotch suddenly shoved in their butts. I mean this. Just drives me nuts. But the end of the night, the party had dwindled, until it was just myself and three of Diana’s friends. I left with two of the lovely ladies, we spent the next half hour hydrating at the bagel shop next door, and one of their husband’s picked them up. I got back to Tim’s place about half an hour later, drank an entire Brita’s worth of water, and collapsed.
Somehow I dragged my butt off Tim’s futon in time to catch a bus this morning. Now, I’m off to the folks’ place for free food (free is good, New York was Ike Turner to my checking account’s Tina). Let’s see how I’m doing by the time I get home. Actually, let’s not. I think I’ll keep that particular physical condition offline.
Oh, I did bring back one souvenir. You know, as a reminder of the evening. Hope you enjoy.
