Dining with Darvez

Welcome back!  In quite the twist of fate / junk kick, the fridge in the kitchen (full of food) decided to die on Labor Day just before we began a triple-digit heat wave.  This means we'll be dining out due to electronic necessity on a nearly constant basis.  What's worked?

We foolishly thought this could be repaired, but in today's disposable world, the ends didn't justify the means, so any suggestions were welcome.  We started with a neighborhood spot, and my choice on a warm evening was a house side salad that came with a roll.  I was content with the sal.  It was my choice.  "That's all you're gonna get?" I was asked.  What the hell do you care?

The following day, I tried to snack my way through all non-perishable items, and I flashbacked to college, attempting to make a "meal" around whatever was around.  If I was close to full, regardless of what it was, well...mission accomplished.  Pistachios, cheese and crackers (the cheese saved in the beer fridge) and an apple sufficed.  This isn't far from my typical lunch anyway, but I also knew I couldn't do this for much longer.

An early and successful choice for dinner was a local Columbian restaurant which is sensational on all fronts.  Lately, despite my attempts to try all the entrees that interest me on the menu, I returned to the Pollo en Salsa Verde.  No, it's not an exclusively Columbian dish, but many Columbian dishes at this location include carrots which, as we know, are the enemy.  Besides, they have an extensive "fast food" menu, one the Big Scoop has chosen since we've moved here and the burgers & chicken sandos are top notch.  After a stressful day revealing the realities where I actually had to, again, defend the li'l beer fridge in the garage having (what I was told was) "too much beer", I shoveled it away happily, ignoring most conversation.  It wasn't aimed or geared towards me anyway.  

The prices are adding up, and the new fridges won't arrive until the following Tuesday (for fuck's sake...) so I started to think about how I could go out and get something cheap.  I didn't say delicious and inexpensive, so in my strive for just that, I tried to rationalize a Jr. Whopper with cheese.  About halfway through, I gave the rest to the dog.  What am I doing?!  Sandwiches became my life for lunch as the week ended as the temps crossed 105 daily.  The Sub Marine King himself shared his plight as I waited for the order.  105 outside means life isn't fun inside a kitchen, he intimated, even if we're all ordering cold sandos and cups of ice to hold up to our heads.

Friday, I went to the supermarket, looking longingly at items I couldn't purchase because I had no way to store them, ordering a meat n potatoes meal with green beans just to eat something square even though I was on my own food endurance run at this point.  A nightfall where it was a "cool" 97 brought a local pizza place where fans were going a plenty.  This place, too, confirms that temps that hot next to ovens are not enjoyable for the employees.  The Big Scoop and I overate salad because...fuck, I don't know anymore.  I don't...why am I doing any of this?! 

By college football Saturday, I stayed cool with the sangria (it's a beer fridge, so it gets priority) as we all rooted on Northern Illinois like any other good citizen.  I tried to assimilate the changes to my preferred surroundings, but how many god damned sandwiches can a man put away?  Should put away?!

By Sunday morning (you didn't see the sun was up, you felt it) a deviation was suggested, so overpriced empanadas did the trick.  Upon picking up the order under the glare of Mr. Sun, the kitchen help at this establishment also concurred that sitting by an oven, as a restaurant's AC does its damndest, is not preferrable either.  I'm sensing a trend.

That evening, as I tried to save what plants and trees I could (you can't water in the dark if you can't see, but if it's hotter than shit when the sun is up, too, well you're just fucked either way aren't you?) I was told she was making dinner.  As sweat poured over me, I gasped out a "fine."  I don't know that there was enough time in-between these chores and eating, and my body continued to pay for it the following day.

The new week started with some depression - I knew it was the last full day of this predicament, but it just seemed unending.  That and it was 106 outside.  I don't even remember if I ate anything during the day; just mainlining anything cold to drink, admittedly short with anyone who dared to press me with unneeded questions.  Yap yap yap.  It's fucking hot as shit.  WHAT.

The statistic is that kids make 80% of the decisions on where to eat once the parents make the decision to go out to eat.  I cared but was too weak to put up a fight.  I didn't fight where we sat in a Mediterranean restaurant that hits more than it misses, and there we were next to a couple and their young boy.  We might as well have been eating in their apartment, because this annoying fucking kid was doing all the annoying-ass things loopy parents let their kids do in public.  (An aside- once at a casual Beverly Hills eatery, a couple who thought it was a good idea for them to spawn let their offspring scream over and over without putting up a fight.  When they finally left and were near the door, the entire restaurant broke into a thunderous applause.)  By this point, I had crossed the dividing line - I ignored usual politeness, shoveled it away, kept the iced tea flowing, and let the one-liners loose because I had little left and all that was in the tank were the zingers I've kept in reserves so that MY offspring doesn't misuse the skill.  Look at me - I can't even compare restaurant experiences.  I'm worn out.  This is not a comparison done in frivolity but in desperation, and my ability to pretend is over.

And so, yesterday, when it was "only" 95, 2 no-nonsense guys arrived with new fridges.  I offered help, but also offered to stay out of their way.  Not everything was as easy as they claimed, but maybe if felt that way to them when you do what they do, I guess.  Things are cold.  So, finally, are the temps outside.  So is my temperament, or at least its trending that way.  And looking back, maybe it's my emotion making this a bigger deal than it was, but I'm not sure.  Maybe it was someone asking me "what are we gonna do?" over and over on a daily basis that did it.  Or the heat?  I'll need to get my strength up if I'm going to party again, but how?  Only my future knows that, and it's insisting I find out for myself.

Incongruous with the rest of us

Yesterday, while I quietly mainlined Riunite, questions were answered by regaling tales of decades ago.  Only the good times from then, those old days.  This sent the Big Scoop and I to google maps, which then sent me to discover the public access archives from Bloomington.  Yes, such a library exists.  It doesn't contain everything (whatever that is), but enough to send my mind spinning back decades, and further neighborhood hunting.

But what am I looking for, exactly?  What am I searching for in my mind?  The last time I was physically there, I wrote how pleasing it is to find something that still stands from back then to assist in jogging the memories.  Last night, however, I didn't need to be there to make it happen.  I suppose that will be the ultimate verdict.  That (Covid notwithstanding) it's been 5 years since a visit, and if I really needed a score, I'd have been back since.  And in that prose from 5 years ago I realized, for better and worse, "those days" don't exist anymore - and that's fine.  

We have friends who moved next door to where one lived in his formative years, at least in MN.  That's a bridge too far for me, but I understand the pull.  I can also see that, for likely 6-7 months of the year, if I pulled such a stunt, I'd be insufferable; always in a foul mood about weather.  It was one driver to out here, and we're nearing a quarter century in Dealville.  The majority of my full life.

A rep visits the house today to pick up electronics.  He's visiting from NYC.  What do you think?  How's it been?  "I love it!"  In the brief chat, he exalted on the weather (dry heat), the food (it's all here), the people ("great").  After he left, I mulled over his statements and agreed.  It's why you move when you can, to where you want, and can do so again and again.  If anybody considers you an outsider or non-native, whether new to the area or even decades later, fuck 'em.  

In the Haze-E-Daze of summer vaca, the Scoop reiterated again about her large reluctance to travel.  "I love this house!  I want to live here my whole life!"  I was taken aback.  "Well, sweetie of course you're welcome any time you want to visit.  But--"  She then added more news from the future: "By that point, mom will be in a senior living home, so it'll be even better!"

Zinger aside, it made me realize that she's starting to get those feelings in the moment the same way I did back in the said "old days."  Will she have her own pull back, mentally or otherwise?  There's no Dealville back there, that's for sure.  Many times, I've opined to Laura how amazing it must have been to grow up out here, but she doesn't know any difference.  She, too, will occasionally want to go to Bel Air, usually when we're nearby on our way home, to see the house of her youth.  You can't see much from street level there, and those winding streets leave little room to park.  When she wants to go, we're all supposed to go.  I've seen it; that's enough for me.  I've long since stopped asking her, while in MN, if she wants to go to my old place.  It's a selfish exercise to me, holding next to no meaning to her.  

Decades from now, will the Scoop be sitting where I am right now?  Will I be here?  Or will we swing by on a visit, walking around, with her bringing up these very days?  Then, like now, the excitement and possibilities of the future awaits. 

Top 50 Trash Horror Films of the 1980's: #20-16

Now that I'm in the back-half of this quest, I'm starting to look at the volume of scenes and I think this is making me (very slowly) insane.

For those of you finding this randomly:

#50-#46

#45-#41

#40-#36

#35-#31

#30-#26

#25-#21

#20 - Ogroff (1983)

Back of the VHS description: (None found)

We're in 8mm and added sound (in French!  Mais oui!), and it's shot like Introduction to Film, so this is just a scavenger hunt.  All that said, if you look, you can find some real French gold in the hills...er, woods.

The rest of this is poorly edited and acted (I wasn't expecting much less) but one pleasing side-effect was that the music used (mostly swanky synth) reminded me of what was used on In Search Of...  And I can also say- 

SPOILER ALERT

I haven't seen a plot where the guy hacks up the family in front of the mom...but not just that: he then makes a BBQ of the family pieces and eats them in front of the wife!

Hanging out in the French countryside, '82.  New Wave synth on the radio.  Everyone smoking.  What were you doing in the Summer of '82?  Probably the same thing.

Good doggie!

There's also one scene of Ogroff in bed at home that I can't screencap or type out...you'll just have to see it for yourself.  You'll have to see a movie just throw in anything it can think of to fit into the plot since, honestly, there are no words.  You'll have to see a movie where the ending is...left to your interpretation?  Or avoid this movie.

#19 - Bordinghouse (1982)

Back of the VHS description: Can a house be alive and have a personality all its own?  Of course not!  At least that's what the beautiful girls thought BEFORE they answered the ad that seems too good to be true!  The final conflict will confirm the delicate balance of creation...at the BORDING HOUSE.

Paragon Video!  The sign of quality!  In this case, however...

The disclaimer at the beginning, ridiculous.  The graphics, public access.  The pacing, non-existent.  The acting, the b-level crew of Night by Night.  

After a while, with the video aesthetic, it seems like something Floyd Gondolli made and tried to sell Jack Horner.  I'm talking hot fucking action to the max.

The whole time doing this exercise, I have applauded those films where they made the best with what they had, be it small budget, location, whatever.  This is the first time, and even with a cast this large, where I, someone who was more producer than director, think...no, FEEL that I could do better, especially on video, than this movie.  So could anyone else.  

#18 - Blood Rage (1987)

Back of the VHS description: Todd and Terry are twins - blonde, cute as buttons, bright and identical in every respect, with one exception.  One of them is a murderer.  It all started one night at the drive-in when a teenager was slaughtered in the back seat of his car while his girlfriend watched.  Todd was found guilty for the heinous crime and locked away in an asylum.  Years passed and Terry lived happily with his mother, who smothered him with enough love for two sons.  All was fine until one night when they received news that Todd escaped.  The nightmare begins once again and out of its forbidding darkness steps a maniacal killer, raging for blood.  But which brother is the killer?  The truth may not be seen...until it's too late!

To be honest, this movie has been the barrier in the way of this posting.  Intermittently I've been searching for this movie low and high, and I don't have the torrent skills of Drew Boatman, so my quest (lazily) went on for a while.  But then - glory be!  It's found, without anything holding it up as amazing so that I'd say, "I spent months looking for this?!"

Well, we're starting out with a shot of a drive-in, and it says "1974" - already you've got 2 in the plus column there.  

Wait.

OK, hold on, now we have swanky synth, 80s clothing...I just...this totally rules, it's just people going at it at the drive-in, hell I'd watch 90 minutes of this opening montage alone.

(A brief aside - as the 70s dawned, she divorced Woody Allen, and for maybe a year or 2 in the mid to late 70's, Louise Lasser was one of the biggest TV stars around.  There was a bit of a fade, but she was likely A-list adjacent into 1980s - she was just on the first season of It's a Living before filming this.  I just want to put you in my mind frame as I'm watching her act around, well, the rest of the cast)

A voice-over narration attempts to cover up a re-edited scene.  

 Condo Bowl '83

"Looks like you're going to get a chance to meet the rest of the family.  My psychotic brother just escaped."

"Could you pass the green beans, please?"  Ah, Thanksgiving.  There's nothing like it anywhere else in the world.  Oh, and apparently the accent is on the beans in green beans.

You never really know how Thanksgiving will go, do you?  Hell, one minute, you're in your condo office enjoying a cold, refreshing Old Style

And within that very same minute...

No hand, and no Old Style.  Of course, your real right hand sneaks into the frame afterwards, but that's only a plus as far as we're concerned.  People conducting manslaughter (or in this case, handslaughter) or even murder can just show up out of nowhere.  Just right out of frame, complete with synth sting for effect.  You kids out there might think you're cool but are you stabbing-someone-while-smoking-a-joint cool?!  I told you, drugs are bad, m'kay?

There had to be multiple people on this shoot who knew full well what they were doing.  As the plot chugs forward in the Florida night, you get incredible throwaway shots, like mom helping herself to Thanksgiving leftovers:

This doesn't mean there aren't bad edits in here, and there are, but if anything, that makes it fit into the good column of 80's slashers.  

(your basement as you remember it)

(re: video games) "If those things are around, you can write off this night."

"Girls having a good time back there?"

"Oh sure.  Just talking about the bad old days when guys were horny all the time."

"Well, that sounds like my kind of conversation."

And it goes on from there, including some amazing additions:

- People are dead because, well, someone else screamed and I don't see them anymore

- You can open a locked sliding glass door with a flathead screwdriver and some good old-fashioned gumption

- What, you don't have "make up" lying around to pretend you've been killed?

- Kids take everything literally.  Don't you forget that.

- A phone to the shin?  Ouch!

I will pay $20 for that Sam the Olympic Eagle beach towel.  OK, $30.  $35?

I haven't seen Thanksgiving, and this barely qualifies as a slasher around the holiday, but I might not need to because this one is fun...not great, but fun.  Quite the ending, too.

#17 - Sledgehammer (1983)

Back of the VHS description: No one has dared enter this house for nearly ten years since a young couple from the valley were brutally murdered by a madman with a sledgehammer.  No one...until now.  They would not be alone.  There was something evil in this house.  The kind of thing no one believes in yet everyone fears.  Something that moves only through the still of the darkest night, creeps within the shadows of man's deepest fears and strikes without warning.  Something which does not want them in this house yet cannot allow them to leave.  The night will be shrouded in their fear, stained with their blood.  The nightmare has begun.  God help them!

Direct to video, shot on video.  Immediately with the Night by Night effects and the no-star cast broken out "with" other standouts as well.  

Some curious puns here too, unless I'm led to believe the last name of the editor just happened to be Cutter and the lighting director's last name is Watt.

We move quick in this video with a swift back-of-the-mannequin head sledgehammer shot, right as he was getting...well, we won't talk about that.  With the fact that this is 100% video, I'll let your imagination run.  The killer uses the sledgehammer just as a judge would with a gavel, which is unique.

Outside of an insert or 2, we stick with the exact same shot for 2 minutes?!  We follow a scene with stock music of acoustic guitar and the same two people talking in the previous scene...walking away in slow motion?!  We get one of the worst Carl Spackler impersonations you've ever heard...by an adult?!  We see people aggressively drink alcohol...then eat sandwiches...for over 10 minutes?!

Normally, in movies like this, you're trying to find the motivation of the killer as the others are simply innocent and in the wrong spot at the wrong time.  Here, just off the git go, I'd say if 75% of these folks saw their action van and folks inside said van meet a sledgehammer head-on, you'd be cheering for the sledgehammer.

Sledgehammer and Boardinghouse were both shot on video.  You can use both of those cassettes to tape over them with something else.  Anything else, I don't care.  You now have 2 free blank tapes.

#16 - The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Back of the VHS description: A thrilling one-of-a-kind action packed film loaded with adventure, horror, science fiction, and unforgettable big-budget special effects.  Melvin, a skinny weak wimp of a man, is janitor at a health club.  Teased by the "beautiful" men in the club, he falls victim to a particularly nasty trick, plunging into a vat of Toxic Waste.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Melvin has become - The Toxic Avenger - A monstrous mutated mass out to rid the world of evil.

If you're reading this, you've (of course) seen this movie.  At worst, you have to have HEARD of this movie.  A product of its time, one that spawned many imitators, even within its own production company.  As with Class of Nuke 'Em High, the effects are sensational, there are 1-liners a-plenty, moments that would in no way fly today (and that's a good thing), but the good outweighs the bad.  

I can't be the only person to have noticed how a young Jason Vorhees and Melvin (the Toxic Avenger himself) bear a resemblance.   Almost like looking at itself in a mirror.

The Toxic Avenger is more than it needed to be, but that's why it's on this list.  It's why Troma made so many sequels.  It's why there was a cartoon.  It's why it's so high on this list. 

Honoring a decorated employee

In the Summer of 2013, we welcomed in a new member to the team.  We were very excited to have them become part of the family.  Over a decade later, it's more than overdue for a retirement (laughs).  Please stand up and take bow.  NCAA Football 14, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't need to tell you, or anyone else here for that matter, that we had to lean on you for quite some time.  The usual time served is 2 years.  But the laws changed, technology changed...hell, a lot of things changed.  Yet you were always there.  While set in your ways, you knowingly know no difference.  What happened in 2013 was going to happen forever.  

In this world, and the world you created, some things never ended.  Things like the Beef 'O Brady's Bowl.  In your world, it continued to live on.  So did the Fight Hunger Bowl.  The names change, of course, so it always took a moment to look up just what the Russel Athletic Bowl, the BBVA Compass Bowl, and the GoDaddy Bowl were, or what they became.  

The world you created was an interesting one: all 3 service academies spent a few years towards the top.  Some teams were always good.  Some teams fell and stayed there...for decades.  That's not unlike real life, I suppose.  You could say that some of the world you created could only happen in the world you made, right?

Yes, in the year 2036, Minnesota did win the national championship.  No doubt about it.  I didn't coach them.  I didn't have anything to do with it.  You said it's so, and so it shall be done.

Then there's the world I created: starting at Georgia (before they were what they are today), then Hawaii, then Tulane.  I would involve The Woman Formerly Known as Smiley on where "we" should go next.  This made her part of it and allowed me to play it more.  After 2 successful years at Tulane she said, "you can only eat so much gumbo" (a statement from someone who has never eaten gumbo, mind you).  Then 2 years at Northwestern as a challenge, then a long stretch at UCLA.  Back to Georgia, and then another long stretch at Hawaii.  Maybe it was island fever, looking for a challenge, or a tie to my own background, I turned around Boston College.  The final stop was back to the Golden State and Stanford.  

Your attempt to make names was a valiant one, but I think we all know that I do that much better.  I'm grateful you let me edit the players so that the graphics showed the names fly through the screen after a big play.  Let's remember some of these names...I mean, players:

Eddie Bierschwale     Rollo Phlecks     Harry Frosy

Rex Havlock     Ahmad Slippins     Hodge Strunk

Snell DeWitt     Garfield Bortz     Lunnington Lu

Flint Farnt     Cleve Jonker     Dunwoody Pfaff

Thornell Schwartz     Sealy Hunkle     Turk Zeiff

Fyfe Symington     Noah Burzlaff     Norell Pearlnutter

Darn Wilgont     Hap Poppenheimer     Merv Forgsworth

Al Ott     Derik Lawnd     Gilbert Bunthorne

Ash DePung     Shepp Searles     Noah Eeg

The one thing you couldn't do was no fault of your own: you couldn't adapt to the real-world changes around you.  People worked hard to make uniform changes and field changes that, somehow, could work in the game.  You couldn't add new schools without taking one away, of course, so we were left to wonder (or do the work ourselves) how Coastal Carolina might fare.  

The last 2 years have been difficult for all of us.  We're teased with release dates while we continue to lean on you.  Trailers for a new game only frustrated us...until the real date came out.  Real explanations and examples were shown.  We were left overjoyed, and now only waiting a few more weeks until reality is here.  

An oft-used phrase is "you don't know what you have until it's gone" but that doesn't apply, and that's all thanks to you.  A true "above and beyond" service was made, and all of us thank you for it.  In this new game, I will have much that I wished for over the last 11 years.  The one thing I won't have, however, is my decades of success.  But look at it this way - it's a new beginning.  

No one knows what the greatest video game is, but I know one that served its people right up there with the Ms. Pac Man / Galaga combo game in the bowling alley.  That would be you, NCAA Football 14.  A toast - congratulations on your service.

(applause, as the dusty case is opened one last time)

The Ballad of Beauchant

What this ballad is...is what he represents.  It was the only cab I took in New Orleans.  Beauchant has likely driven the route hundreds of times.  He could have driven me to Baton Rouge and back and I wouldn't have known, but he didn't.  That would be difficult.  An unnecessary use of time.  Instead, I arrived at my hotel.  It was easy.

It'd be easy to blend in along the Mississippi River wearing a Tulane Angry Wave t shirt.  The humidity was already getting to everyone, family, on-looker, and local color alike.  It wasn't until I had yet another shrimp po'boy and half a dozen iced teas in me that I could finally get up the movement to hop along with a roving Dixieland band on a street in the middle of a Memorial Day afternoon.  I didn't spill any of my 7th iced tea on St. Ann Street while dancing, either.  Maybe I wasn't totally in the groove because there were occasional nuthouse screamers not far away threatening the vibe.  But I pressed on.  It was easy to do so.

And hell, you might as well ask everyone about restaurants because you're just gonna wander and drink and eat constantly.  Only way I knew how to beat this heat.  It didn't prevent everyone from acting like a jerk or get in your way.  I just slowed down.  Breathed slower.  Seems like it's something Beauchant would do at times like this.

At night, I roamed the music clubs of Frenchmen Street, all enticing you to hang out, come inside, drink, and enjoy.  If it's easier to enter a club a half hour before a band goes on to get some drink in you before the cover starts, so be it.  The music selection as the band was setting up was apparently the playlist "funk-o-gold" so that was in my favor.  When they finally showed up, this group tore it down.  After a particularly spirited tune, something made me think to head outside.  Not sure why.  I did, and a block away found this:

They passed the hat, musicians left and showed up simultaneously, and it was evident to me how easy it was to have a good time.

It's not easy getting out of the rack early on a vacation, but a bus took me and others out of town, out to White Kitchen, Louisiana.  Part of the allure was seeing what a town called White Kitchen actually looked like, and also to drive by a Piggly Wiggly.  Near the Mississippi border, I boarded a boat with "Captain Sonny," but it's also easy to choose to sit next to him as his "co-captain" to watch him hand grass snakes to the offspring, and to show how to throw "gator bait" so that, over time, they know to come to you.  As we get away, another boat waves and says "Hey, brother!" to Sonny.  "I'm not your brother, thank God.  Not with what you're up to.  I know you."  Later, in a peaceful enclave off the Old Pearl River, we assist in de-escalating a possible stand-off between alligators and raccoons.  Everyone gets food and no one becomes it, either.  It was easy to let the breezes cool me down under the shade of trees.

I don't need to tell you that a trip here wouldn't be complete without visiting Preservation Hall to hear jazz.  It's sensational, these small venues, so intimate that you feel you are part of the show, that they aren't playing for you; you just happen to be there while they're playing.

What I didn't know until afterwards was just how easy it would be to talk to all the musicians.  They were approachable as hell - including one who'd been there for decades.  I felt like I just visited the church of music.

Even with a helpful app, it took a fortifying BBQ lunch to get a-moving on the streetcar.  Once I did, it was liberating to move about in a very local way.  It wasn't without the usual public transport issues, but those were pleasing rides.  Maybe it was the fact that I figured out what went where.  (More than 1 local said that in the 70s, many lines were dug up and replaced with busses.  "Busses can't drive on these streets!  Now they bringing them all back."  

I was thinking that on one of my trips on the St. Charles line, the oldest running streetcar line in the world.  For centuries, people have travelled this line, and here I was taking this to get more ice cream.  It's just as it always goes for me - just as I figure out how to get around, where to go and where I want to go, it's time to leave.

It's not easy going anywhere, especially with family members that are either indecisive or don't want to be there to begin with.  It's not easy to always have to stop for beignets when I still don't "get them" and, frankly, would rather eat more of those delicious praline pecans.  Now, a few days after returning to Dealville and reflecting...when vacationing in New Orleans, it really was all a Big E-Z.

Contents Stripped...what's left?

Once we were nearing The Whiskey, it was like I was narrating one of those Hollywood Tours...except this one covered my own life.  Why are we taking this road?  It's a shortcut; you avoid 2 lights.  I used to live here.  Drive a mile or more, and then another sneaky way - see?  Here we are.  

As with anything else in Dealville, you drive through famous streets and just as much point out places you remember, you also point out the things that are gone.  The Sunset Strip always changes.  It evolves.  The only thing permanent, beyond a handful of clubs and buildings, is the street itself.  One unexpected change, however, was a curious feeling: is the moment over?  I'm not saying I was the only car on the road or anything, but it was a Friday night and...I had no trouble navigating the road.  Parking was a breeze.  Weird.  Maybe we beat the traffic?  It's kind of dinner time, I guess...

We passed Carney's (still there!) and the Artist Formerly Known As Smiley was thrown.  "Whoa.  What's this?"  The Big Scoop herself told her it was Supreme's store.  I added that there was a skate bowl inside.  Confusion continued until I mentioned it was once Tower Records.  "Oh!"  Hey, it could be worse: so many things on our way had been replaced by 5-6 story buildings of various gaudy styles, all seemingly made by outsiders trying to fit in.

I looked around and saw other locales that very quickly put back in a state and time, roughly 2 decades ago.  Your author spent much time getting drunk, seeing comedy and rock/punk shows, and just wandering.  The streets were packed and, as the slogan used to say, "the best show IS the strip."  I kept this inside as I arrived at The Whiskey.  My name was on the guest list!  I've arrived!  

"Because she's under 18, she can't go in and out."  Why not?  "It's our policy."  Okay...

As it goes, we entered as one act was going on.  I was still taking it all in, keeping an eye on the Scoop (who was mildly enjoying it) and AFKAS who was trying to turn this into a wedding reception dance floor.  As the evening wore on, the Scoop kept wanting to move farther and farther back from the stage.  I probably should have bought her ear plugs.  Just doing this activity was a lengthy discussion.  "Why does it have to be a rock concert?"  "Hey, I know you'd rather see smooth jazz, but we're trying something else.  We don't have to stay all night.  Plus, I found an Italian restaurant nearby."  (Her face lit up)

So, she and I left and wandered up and down the strip.  Outside a restaurant or 2, she didn't seem interested in anything else.  She was annoyed by people smoking.  I was mildly concerned by some of the strip's, uh, more colorful characters that were wandering around.  The traffic continued to flow freely.  Most times, we had the sidewalk to ourselves.

Upon return to The Whiskey, she said, "let's get dinner" and I tried to bargain - we haven't even been seeing the bands 90 minutes.  That's it?!  Then I remembered she couldn't even go back in if I wanted her to, and I had to go in to tell the AFKAS that we're getting something to eat - she won't hear or notice her phone.  I left her alone on the street while I tried to tell someone who already has hearing problems to meet us whenever you're ready, but the Scoop's hungry and bored.  I calmly and quickly got out to the street, a concerned parent, leaving my kid out there, but I needn't have worried: even if the security was more concerned with people going inside, no one else was around.  But maybe my timing was perfect: as I talked with her outside the door, down the strip came a woman looking the very definition of "bad road."  Like an 80's hair metal rock had been overturned and they crawled out.  I had one eye on her talking to the door guy, and one on the scoop.  The old groupie walked on and I heard the door guy say to a friend "Did you see her?  I hadn't seen her in years.  I thought she was fucking dead.  And there she is!"

The Big Scoop was easily pleased by the pasta, headache and cares long gone as she regaled the owners of their high-quality garlic bread.  People known and new wandered over from the show to join us.  Most of us discussed YouTube's byzantine monetization policies.  None of these things would've happened decades ago, nor would the following phrases have been used: "Yeah, it was dead in there."  When the scoop and I dined, a to-go order customer said "Yeah, I haven't been by in a while.  It's dead out there."  In a brief moment, I remembered: Easter Weekend, around Christmas, I remember those were slow times on the strip.  But this was a regular Friday night with good weather.  

I discussed this with the help of the restaurant.  It was almost a lament.  I shared something I've probably shared on this blog.  "I worked with a guy who was down here in the late 70s, early 80s all the time, and I'd say, 'you were there in the PRIME days.'  And he'd shake his head and say no, you're in your 20's, you're going to look back at right now the same way."  The help agreed.  I said "yeah, I guess he's right, it was fun.  But (gesturing outside) now?"  The help said they get traffic during the day now from international tourists.  They've all heard of it.  They want to see it.  They stop in for lunch.  "Well, that's cool.  Things keep moving."

Fortified, we continued around and saw vacant buildings (not forlorn, just ready to lease) and bars & clubs having trouble attracting anyone.  We were at the early stages of the shank of the evening...and we figured we might as well head back.  Nothing going on.  I made a left turn with ease, something impossible 20 years ago.  I had no problem making it home.  Once inside, I took a moment to reflect: some things should pass me by, and some things I've passed by, that's how life goes.  Melrose was a hot spot for decades because of what the people made it...until real estate found out, priced every weird thing out, and it is a shell of its former self if even that.  The Strip, I figured, would continue to evolve but remain a hot spot.  Maybe that, too, is in the long, slow fade.  There is less that I can go "back to" out here, a vibe being one of things, especially while so many physical things still stand.

It's not really the speed so much, I just wish I hadn't drunk all that cough syrup this morning

It's nice, in today's day and age, to be able to count on things...especially in March.  For example, what can YOU always count on each March?

A) Weather getting better (location permitting)

B) Flowers beginning to bloom

C) Steve Alford finding a way to fill that diaper