Four Things

Suggested Soundtrack: "Jump" by Van Halen



Okay, where to start? This will be a jumble of shit, so I’ll try and keep it moving swiftly along.

1. THE BIKE

I got a new old bike. You may remember my habit in San Diego of buying old bikes and fixing them up. It has started again here. The only reason it took so long is that Dallas lacks old bikes. As a matter of fact, Dallas lacks bikes in general. It’s as if when the automobile was invented, everyone in Dallas said, “Fuck this bike. I’m getting one of those cars, with air conditioning.” There are no bike lanes, there’s like three bike shops for all 2 million people, and the majority of those 2 million people are woefully ignorant of the fact that sometimes bicycles will be ridden in the road. “What’re you doin’ in tha’ ROAD?!” is the distinctive call of the Nascar-Hat-Wearing-Large-Truck-Driving-Texas-Moron (NHWLTDTM). They slow down and shout this at me, and honk once or twice for good measure, and then tear ass on down the road, empty beer cans rattling around in the bed of the truck. It never gets old. Getting back on subject, this total lack of interest in bikes means that there are less old bikes for me to buy on craigslist. San Diego had TONS of old bikes to buy, because the weather is mostly nice and the residents aren’t mostly NHWLTDTMs. But one finally became available and I snatched it up.

So the moral of the story is: I just bought another bike that I won’t be able to ride.

But I’m fixing it up anyway. Here are some pictures of it now.







If I ever finish it, I will show you pictures of that. It’s in pretty good shape. I really like the fenders and the beer rack on back. That would come in handy if there was a place to buy beer in this fucking county, but Hey! I guess I can use it to bring twelvers of Pepsi back from the Walgreens.

2. BLAST FROM THE PAST

A friend of mine, Steve, the guy whose wife set me up on that Herbal Cleanse, had some extra tickets to Van Halen this past Thursday. It was BAD ASS. Those guys rock hard, and they are well into their 50s. Furthermore, they aren’t trying to hype some shitty new album. They got David Lee Roth back and they just wanna SING. The crowd alone was worth going. Most of the people there looked as if they had been frozen in ice since 1982, and were thawed just so they could witness the reunification of David Lee Roth and the Van Halen family. Sleeveless black concert shirts and torn blue jeans were the name of the game, with headbands rounding out the list of essential apparel. They were jazzed about David Lee Roth. I mean, David Lee Roth really could’ve just farted into the mic for two hours, and as long as Eddie Van Halen was playing guitar, there would have still been uproarious applause. Luckily for us though, old David was in rare form. He was a high-kicking, microphone-twirling, jumping, screaming, props-giving, storytelling, singing machine. And he sang all the hits. I’m not a huge Van Halen fan, but I knew most of the songs. It was awesome. Everyone had a blast, and just being in a place where 20,000 people are fucking stoked to see a band is a wonderful thing.

3. HEADED NORTH

Got a great deal on a ticket to Minneapolis/St. Paul, so this weekend I’ll be up there visiting Nick, and as an added bonus Jason, who now lives in Omaha, might drive up and hang out. So, just to make sure you all know how bad ass this may be:



A full-on reunion!!! I’m very excited. Expect more details after the trip.

4. AND FINALLY, A QUICK WORD OF ADVICE

I recently got a pair of sunglasses. Since my opinion on the matter is that sunglasses always end up getting lost or broken, so spend accordingly, I got my pair on the way to Austin at a truck stop in Waco. Seven bucks. Rosy-tinted, gold-framed aviators (see fig a).

fig a.

I love ‘em. And I was never really a sunglasses kinda guy. I’ve always been more of a squinter. Clint Eastwood is also a squinter. But I got these glasses, and now I’m having to learn what to do with them, and to try and build good glasses habits. For example (and here’s the word of advice), always put your glasses in the same spot while not in use. I like the little “V” that is formed by the collar of a button-up shirt. That’s where my glasses go when they’re not on my face. Some people prefer the shirt pocket, others will hold them and set them down on the table, whatever. Whichever person you are, consistency is key. Same spot, every time or else. Otherwise, you may go to lunch one day and on the way out, you may realize your glasses aren’t (for example) in the “V” of your shirt collar, nor are they in your car, so you may just run back into the restaurant and look around the table, and then you might go over to the trashcan and hold the little “Thank You” flap open and look inside to see, yes, okay, that’s my trash on top but still no glasses, and then you might even walk up to the counter because one of these little minimum wage kids might have taken the sunglasses you like so much, and then, as you get up to the counter, you might just all of a sudden realize that the glasses are there, right there, perched on top of your own fucking head, so you stutter something to the counter kid and leave, and because this could happen to you, because this may have happened to someone you know, I urge you to be consistent in your glasses spot.
Thank you.

Until next time…

New Orleans Trip

(Note: In a move I hope will become more commonplace, I am posting details of my New Orleans trip immediately, so as to purge my mind of fresh experiences while they are still vivid in my head. The whole point of buying this laptop was timeliness, the ability to write on the fly and throw that shit on the web before laziness forces me to abandon my lofty plans [See also: The 2000-word post-to-be from my Seattle Trip {the one from December, yes}]. In the spirit of all that, this post was started as I waited, delirious from lack of sleep and reeling from a two-and-a-half-day bender, in a shitty food court dining room in the New Orleans airport. Cramped quarters and the reclining asshole in the seat in front of me stymied my plans to keep writing on the plane, so now, with my last nap 36 hours behind me, I’m going to finish this thing and go to bed. So start the music, come with me to New Orleans, and then see what I get for attempting to confess to my sins by spilling my guts to the internet. As always, I welcome your comments. –Nik)

New Orleans Trip

Suggested Soundtrack: “Galaxie” by Blind Melon



or:

"Paranoid Android" Jazz Cover of Radiohead by Brad Mehldau



New Orleans by the numbers:
# of hours spent in the city: 59
# of hours spent sleeping: maybe 14
# of alcoholic beverages consumed: who knows
# of cigarettes smoked: 60-something
# of karaoke songs sung to very crowded bar: 1
# of cute girls needed to provide backup for said song: 3
# of boobs seen: 18 (as in 9 pair)
# of German tourists befriended: 1
# of live music acts witnessed: 6
# of offers from perfect strangers to buy some coke: 7 (just avoid eye contact, and the scary man will go away)
# of requests from perfect strangers for me to sell them some coke: 3 (look at the requestor as if they have some sort of incurable-yet-voluntary mental illness)
# of actual meals sat down for: 2
# of street vendor hot dogs consumed: 2, unfortunately (see below)
# of blackouts: 2
# on a scale from 1-10 on the likelihood of another visit to New Orleans, with 1 being never, ever again and 10 being VERY FUCKING SOON: 10

What a cool town. Considering all the shit that this place has gone through, it’s a damn miracle that it still parties as hard as it does. New Orleans is such an anomaly, such a bizarre place to find myself in in the middle of America. Anyone who has been to New Orleans will understand…with the same standards of partying as Vegas, and a Euro vibe (narrow streets, lots of litter, public drunks), the French Quarter is heaven for a history-loving boozehound such as myself. Uptown and the Garden District, where you can find Autobahn Park, and Loyola and Pepperdine Universities, is a sight to behold with its humongous mansions, stout trees, old-time streetcars and clumps of stranded beads hanging from the power lines. But, as you know, it is not all happy here. Head out of town on interstate 10 and you will see on all sides an absolute mess. Abandoned homes, restaurants, and hotels. Weeds that grow high enough to obscure the first floors of most buildings. Whole large parcels of land that look like the aftermath of a zombie invasion. At night, there are no lights in these places, because the people that lived and worked there are as far, far away. The ones that aren’t far away can be found in the tent cities under the freeway just north of the French Quarter, in a permanent campground for those who had nowhere to go, or would rather be nowhere else. It has only been a few years since the storm, and every conversation that lasts longer than a few minutes eventually comes around to Katrina. I would imagine it was (and possibly still is) the same way in Manhattan regarding 9/11. The people that are left here (400,000 moved and didn’t come back) have come to cope, I suppose, and the stories they tell are sometimes funny but mostly just scary as hell: martial law, and the machinegun-toting soldiers that enforced it; the pain of having to evacuate and leave your pets behind; the shock of finding appliances and boats and downed trees in your front yard, but not finding your house there; signs everywhere that read “You loot, we shoot”; the sometimes tasty, sometimes nasty dining experience that is the MRE (Meal-Ready-to-Eat). After all that shit, some people stayed, not because they had to, but because, I think, they wanted the city to be the way is was before a gigantic storm came through and very nearly pulled the whole area into the sea.
But enough of that.



New Orleans is swinging hard, and this weekend in particular was special because it was the French Quarter Festival. Lots of stages set up on the streets, and (according to my guide) more street art vendors that usual. I flew in right after work on Friday, and hit the ground running. Elaine was my guide, and after dropping my stuff off at her place in the Quarter, we hit the town. Seeing as we never bothered to eat anything, and my last meal happened back at 2pm, I got good and drunk. I really have no idea what time we got in that next morning, but waking up at 11am took some serious effort.
To properly wake up and conquer the hangover, we headed to Café du Monde for coffee and beignets (French Donut Thingie covered in powdered sugar). Holy shit. Strong coffee, and some of the best sugarbombs I’ve ever had. I could see why the place had a huge line (which we skipped, somehow) and why everyone who knew I was headed to New Orleans told me to go there. Yum.



After that, we wandered the streets of the Quarter for some time, checking out the jazz bands that sat at random intervals along the way. We popped into Tricou, a bar that Elaine used to work at, and started the heavy drinking. Two rum punches and I was working a respectable buzz. Elaine was feeling sick so I walked her home, and after a brief nap, I headed back out to Bourbon Street on my own. This must’ve been 4 or 5 in the afternoon. First stop: Tricou, where the bartender recognized me from earlier and proceeded to pour me more of those heavy-handed-hangovers-waiting-to-happen. Four down, and I hit the road, some primal instinct telling me that I should eat something, anything, if I was gonna drink like I had planned. So I headed to the Lucky Dog hot dog stand, which reminded me of one of my favorite literary characters, Ignatius J. Reilly of the fantastic novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (if you haven’t read it, do so as soon as possible, if you need a copy I’ll mail you one of mine). Locals call it “Pigeon in a Bun,” and bearing that in mind, I ordered the smoked pigeon hot dog. I could tell you what it was like, but I’d rather quote Confederacy, as Ignatius tries one of the hot dogs for the first time:

“My,” Ignatius said to the old man after taking his first bite. “These are rather strong. What are the ingredients in these?”

“Rubber, cereal, tripe. Who knows? I wouldn’t touch one of them myself.”

That being said, it was delicious.



Having fortified myself, I headed to The Cat’s Meow where 3-for-1 beers were being offered. In I went.
There I met a couple of girls from up Baton Rouge way: Amanda, who had just turned 21, and her friend Shannon. We became fast friends, and after a short time it was decided that we should sing karaoke. Since “Don’t Stop Believin” was mysteriously “not working,” we decided to do a rendition of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer.” It was awesome. It was easily the most people I’d ever sang in front of, and the girls kicked ass and took names (if we’d been able to sing Journey, man, that place would’ve come apart). We danced:




Took pictures:




The girls hit the stage:



It was a riot.
At some point, the girls took off, but not before exchanging numbers, which was cool. Hopefully our paths cross again.
Alone again, drunk and at large in a strange new city, I did the only respectable thing and went out for another hot dog.



…and then it was back to aimless wandering with a plastic bucket full of booze as my only companion.



The only strangers to talk to me were either a) offering to sell me coke, or b) wanting to buy some coke off of me. So I was a bit wary of the tiny, grinning man in the red shirt that was all of a sudden hanging out with me. Turns out this guy is from Germany (so’s my Papa) and he had gotten to New Orleans earlier that day. He was flabbergasted. He was amazed at the drunken revelry going on all around him, and was really stoked about “zee titties.” Empowered by my full 24-hours-worth of experience, I elected myself ambassador to my German friend. We got ahold of some beads, went back to the Cat’s Meow, climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony, and proceeded to get the guy all the pictures of “zee titties” that his camera could hold. We met a large group of ladies from Dallas, danced around for good long time, and when they departed for some bar with an automatic bull thing, German boy went with them. At this point the sun was on its way up, so I stumbled back to Elaine’s and crashed out.

Sunday, funday. Waking up, it tasted like a beer ate a cigarette and then took a dump in my mouth. Took a quick shower, and Elaine was all better, so the two of us and Elaine’s friend Sadie headed uptown for a picnic.



Picked up Po’boys...



...sat in the park across from Tulane and Loyola...




...fed some squirrels, and headed to the nearby town of Slidell where my Aunt Charmaine lives. Hadn’t seen my Aunt in 14 years, turns out she’s as cool as I remember. Beers, cigarettes, steaks, French fries, and good conversation. It was a vacation inside a vacation. We talked the evening away, and after tearful goodbyes, headed back to the quarter. Drank a lot more, until the sun was on its way up again, and I knew my time in New Orleans was coming to a close.

After showering at Elaine’s, hopped in a cab, and sped off to the airport to catch my 8am flight. Upon arrival in Dallas, hopped in the car and went right to work. Felt kinda like:



All in all, a great trip. It was great to see Elaine. It was good to meet new friends. It was a treat to explore a new place, with and without a tour guide.
Hear me now, New Orleans: I shall return. And when I come back, if “Don’t Stop Believin’” is still “broken,” there will be hell to pay. Consider yourself warned, city. And thanks for the good times.



Until next time…