Ethel here with some more to say about Halloween! I was just going to comment on the last post, but I now realize that I actually have some (maybe not so) important details to add. First of all, I must use this time to clarify something: I was not merely a slutty Native American! I was going along with the Peter Pan theme and in reality went as Tiger Lily (I’m not really sure who she is either). Next year I’ll have to be more obvious in my costume choice. I must also thank Trotsky for reminding me about my run in with the randos on the street. Did not remember making a pass at anyone, but I now realize that I indeed did. The important thing is that I didn’t go home with them and not all Bolsheviks can say that about Halloween night. I also have to let my temper come out a bit, because I was not so happy to hear that our gift of beer went to such waste (although I do imagine it was quite a fun time). Just the other day, the giver of that gift brought up that he had left that for the members of 2H. Now, I had seen the empty beer case the next morning, but figured someone had just left it there after drinking it. I certainly did not realize the owner had actually left an almost full case as a kind gesture. Upon realizing this, I wondered who had taken in from us! Being that I always think of my fellow Bolsheviks as being kind people who value their friendships, I never imagined it could have been one of them. So, you must be able to imagine my surprise when reading that last post. I do feel a little betrayed and also look forward to the next time that I can steal your alcohol from right under you, you dirty bastards.
Moving on. As Trotsky pointed out, the group was separated more than once during the night. Here are some things he missed. Most importantly, he missed the hot dog stand. What a damn good idea! Who isn’t hungry after an exhausting walk down franklin st? I sure as hell was and once I saw the beauty that was preservative filled mystery meat, there was no turning back. I had to have one, so, along with a few lucky others, I indulged myself with deliciousness. It was 30 seconds of pure joy. Having experienced bliss in a bun, we moved on to meet up with Trotsky, Caesar and some others. Upon entering the dance party, I noticed some fellas in the back doing what they referred to as the “hoola hoop dance.” Noticing the curious expression that spread across my face, they promptly encouraged me to join. So, I hesitantly began the dance. However, still not able to grasp the reasoning for such a dance, I quickly moved on. In fact, we moved on from the party altogether. At some point along the way to Townhouse, we were separated again and at this point, my roommate and I found ourselves at what I can only refer to as a “table party.” I call it this because everyone was drinking on a picnic table outside. It was different and we liked it, so we hopped on the table and grabbed the franzia (most of which would end up going down my left nostril). The group soon discovered the rotting pumpkins and feeling adventurous, a few members of the party decided it would be fun to throw them into the stone wall and break them. Unfortunately, most of the pumpkin ended up on those who threw them and that quickly spread to any bystanders, including myself. It is difficult to describe the foul smell that was now being emitted by our bodies. I can only advocate that people please not let their carved pumpkins sit for too long, for there is an appropriate time to say goodbye, even if that time happens to come before Halloween.
It’s important to note, in an attempt to show that we do indeed have manners, that my roommate and never fully realized that the renters of the house which we had gotten so much joy out of were not actually at the house. It is an easy detail to miss when franzia and pumpkins find your attention. So, it was a surprise to us that as we walked out of the kitchen with beers in hand, we stumbled upon two shocked and irritated renters. It seemed it was time to leave.
After a quick stop at Mill Creek, where a lot of bruises were created (it’s difficult to keep your feet on the ground after a night of Riot Punch), we headed back to our lovely abode and called it a night. And there, for you, is a little addition to an in-depth look at Bolsheviks Halloween-ing.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
What The Fuck Happened On Halloween
Okay so I’d like to apologize for the fact that the Bolsheviks have gone largely silent as of late – schoolwork has largely gotten in the way of my recreational writing, but don’t worry it hasn’t gotten in the way of my recreational drinking because I know where my true priorities lie.
For us, Halloween really began some weeks beforehand when we as a collective realized something – none of us had ever been in a fight. We decided that we needed to rectify this situation, and that Halloween was the night to do so. How fucking hilarious would it be to see a bunch of dudes in ridiculous costumes engaged in stumbly, drunken battle? Really fucking hilarious, that’s how fucking hilarious it would be. So keep in mind that the eventual goal for the entirety of Halloween was for our group of bro’s (or Brolsheviks, if you’d rather) to find another group of bro’s and, as Caesar put it, ruffle some feathers.
This year, Halloween fell on a Saturday, which meant that everybody in town was going to get trashed and go to Franklin Street, where they’d mill around for a few minutes and then go to some party. Which meant that our goal for the pre-Franklin festivities was to get as drunk as we could without dying.
How does one accomplish this, you ask? By instigating a Liquor Treat, which for the unenlightened is just like trick-or-treating but instead of candy you get booze. To paraphrase Alfred Kinsey, it’s a party.
We held this Liquor Treat at Townhouse, which is conveniently located about two blocks from Franklin Street and also a conveniently anarchic apartment complex where the only thing the landlords ask of their tenants is that they don’t burn the place down.
Oh, and before I continue, here’s a short list of our costumes:
- Santa Claus (myself)
- Snuggie Jedi (The Party Trotsky)
- The Bear Jew
- The Great Mouse Detective (Caesar)
- Sexy Indian (The always culturally sensitive Ethel Rosenberg)
- Slutty Snuggie (AKA the Sluggie)
- Peter Pan
- Hipster Pirate
The Liquor Treat commenced at the apartment of Ivana Trump (name changed), where we were served “blood,” also known as fruit punch with vodka in it. After we’d drank enough blood to make the Red Cross think we were wasteful and/or a bunch of vampires, we made our merry way to Ivana’s neighbor’s place, where we were greeted by none other than a man dressed as a lady.
I can’t really get into what transpired at that apartment, but allow me to say this: Friends, you have not lived until a man-lady has forced peppermint schnapps down your throat while screaming, “Drink up, bitch!” We of the Bolsheviks have indeed lived.
Following the uneventful and non-traumatic stop at Ivana’s neighbors, we went to Ethel’s apartment where, in a sub-perversion of our plan to drunkenly turn our childhoods on their collective heads, she and her roommates offered apple bobbing, except upon each apple, they had written a letter that corresponded to either a shot or a beer. Depending on which apple you picked out, you drank that drink. I oh-so-fortunately earned myself a double shot of Evan Williams honey whiskey.
With the initial buzz in place, it was time for the heavy hitters. We (did I mention there were like thirty of us?) made our way to the next apartment where we were served margaritas, or at least our hosts’ best drunken guess as to what a margarita was, which turned out to be an excessively potent combination of tequila and store-bought margarita mix which did little to cut the harsh taste of the tequila.
Some of us ducked out of this one early in order to head to Caesar’s apartment, which was the final stop on the only-depressing-if-you’re-an-adult cavalcade of drunkenness, where we had to make the final beverage of the tour, Riot Punch.
For the unindoctrinated, Riot Punch is a beverage that first debuted on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a show that’s always on point with the creative ways to drink (can wine, anyone?).
The recipe is Everclear and Blue Frost Gatorade. Mix to taste.
(I’m going to get on my 88 Miles Per Hour shit and jump back to Saturday afternoon, when we went on a mad dash to find ourselves some powdered Blue Frost Gatorade. Believe it or not, we checked like three different stores before we found enough BFG to properly mix with our gallon of Everclear so that the taste would not be “flaming death.”)
Anyway, we loaded up our several-gallon tub with Everclear and BFG, and even with about eight gallons of water all up in our mix, the Riot Punch still tasted extremely strong enough to power a tractor. By the time we’d reached this conclusion, it was too late and people had started to show up. Being that Riot Punch is traditionally consumed in one-gallon jugs, Trotsky, Caesar and myself filled ourselves up some jugs and got to drinkin’ along with everybody else, who in a rare, tragic show of Drinking Class Division were forced to drink out of cups.
And let me tell you my fair proletariat cattle, drink we did. We discovered that about two cups of riot punch could easily send its drinker on that magical journey from “comfortably buzzed” to “completely and totally fucking trashed.” I honestly have no idea how much Riot Punch I drank due to the fact that I was drinking out of a jug, but let me just say I drank so much that I had to pass the second half of this post off to the Party Trotsky.
Anyway, that comes later. At this point in the story came the dancing. We were listening to your typical mildly indie dance music (Justice, MGMT, Daft Punk, Crystal Castles, etc.) plus ironic rap music (Read: Lil’ Jon, Ludacris, whatever else we liked in middle school) when Caesar had the ultimate in good ideas: he put on “She Wolf” by Shakira. The people danced. Then, he put on “Party in the USA.”
That’s right. Party in the Motherfucking USA.
A quick retort to those who say that the song “sucks,” or is “poorly written,” or is “stupid and annoying and whoever likes it should die.” What’s not to like about this song? It’s about the two greatest things in America – partying and the USA. If you disagree, fuck you you’re wrong.
Anyway, at the moment that PiTUSA hit the speakers, the place erupted. The floor shook. The blind were healed. Everybody danced their fucking asses off and sang along to the chorus which we all know even though we pretend not to. In the interest of full disclosure, we were all stratospherically drunk.
At this time it was about 11:15, so we decided to head up to Franklin Street to see everybody’s ridiculous costumes, and then head to a bunch of random parties to continue our heroic drinking binge. That’s when I made a fatal mistake. Trotsky grabbed me, partially to hold himself up and partially to get my attention, and held up his Jug O’Riot Punch, and simply said, “We have to finish this.” There was like a quarter of a gallon left, as we polished that shit off promptly.
This is the part where I blacked out and as I’m wont to do when completely shit-bombed, headed crookedly home and passed out. This is also the part where the Party Trotsky takes over in order to atone for giving me the beverage that set me over the edge.
Excellent summary of the events of the night so far by Castro, although he failed to mention one of the more terrible instances that seemed to keep happening to various members of our group, particularly Castro, Sluggie, and I, that instance being the fact that in every single apartment the temperature was comparable to that of the surface of the sun. Seriously, I was sweating like no one’s business at every available moment, most likely due to the fact that I WAS WEARING A BLANKET. Regardless of this minor problem I encountered, the night was going swimmingly as we approached our Grail-like quest of making it to Franklin Street, and the closer we got, the more people began to appear out of nowhere, and it appeared that we would soon be involved in what appeared to be slightly controlled chaos, on a town wide scale. I was correct.
We made it onto Franklin Street, with most of our group in tow, and so began the gawkfest that would define the rest of the night for me, with slutty (insert random job, person, or pretty much anything you want) being the costume of choice for the ladies, and a wide array of hastily made, slightly ironic outfits for the fellas. We picked our way slowly through the crowd, the majority of which was stumblingly drunk, but since this description also matched us, the speed and the demeanor of the crowd agreed with us considerably. Many picture taking opportunities were taken, my favorite being a picture with one of the many Green Men wandering the streets, and the brilliant display of dance moves from said Green Man, courtesy of Mr. Charlie Kelly. These pictures would be the downfall of our group, as each time someone stopped to take a picture, everyone else, obliviously drunk as to what was going on, continued on their merry way down the road, therefore losing the picture person in the crowd, which according to news reports later was as large as 50,000 people. So understandably, we lost more and more people as the night went on, and the “group” that I was walking with had a constantly changing roster. It was around this moment when I received a call from a dear friend of mine, who had decided to visit on this the most ridiculous of night in CH. She was farther down the street, and I told her to wait, I’d somehow make it there, and in about twenty minutes of cajoling the rest of my group to pick up the pace and hustle down to meet my friend, we finally found each other outside of New York Pizza. Greetings of love and happiness were exchanged, exacerbated by our mutual fucked upness. I discovered later that she was actually engaging in a myconically orientated journey that night, and I imagine the constantly changing and flowing stream of gaudily dressed people was built expressly for the purpose of the psilocybic meanderings. I plan on making a journey quite similar to this next week, but that will hopefully be the topic of another post.
As my friend and I continue to exclaim over finding each other in such a ridonkulous crowd, other members of my group wanted to continue down the street to regain various members of the original Townhouse liquor treat crew, who were apparently scattered every which way. My friend was going the other way, in an attempt to meet up with other mutual friends that had decided to make their way to our humble town. So we said our goodbyes, parted ways, and continued on, both on our individually mega fucked up planets. The mission of our group was to make it to Vespa and grab a friend of Caesar’s. We got there, went in, and proceeded to hang out in what I believe was the kitchen of Vespa. In our defense, I have no idea why the hell we were in there, but the kitchen was right next to the bathrooms, so fuck you it made perfect sense at that point to conversate in the kitchen, rather than a room we were actually allowed in. Just as we were about to start stealing random bits of food, someone who worked at Vespa began mean mugging us hardcore, so we exited and instead sat outside and bullshitted for several minutes.
At this point, I had a tiny, inconsequential encounter with Chapel Hill’s finest. While sitting outside, we spotted our dear friend Ethel with a group of acquaintances across the street. Me being the friendly friend I am, I decided the natural thing to do was to go across and discuss where the hell everyone had gone too, and also just to join Ethel back up with our limited group. As I set foot onto the street, I realized this would be more challenging than I had assumed. The time was about 1:00, maybe, and the streets were in the processes of being cleared of all those god damn collegiate hooligans, this being accomplished both by driving large vehicles down the road and forcing all those who didn’t want to be crushed out of the road, and also by having copious amounts of policia in the street, physically making everyone get the fuck out of the street. I thought, of course they’ll understand I just want to cross the street, and have literally no interest in standing or walking down it, merely across it. I gingerly started my way across, hoping I’d go unnoticed, but about 1.5 seconds into this charade I was spotted by a typically pissed off, slightly balding specimen of police beauty, and was told in no uncertain terms to “get the hell back on your side of the street.” I’m gonna throw some praise on myself, and say that while I’m definitely one to pull stunts that some would call stupid and which I choose to call ballsy, I weighed the pros and cons of running across the street after that outburst from my copper friend, and the cons won out. We arranged, via shouting, to meet farther down the street, at another party.
We vamoosed our seating at Vespa, and made our way onto Roberson, the site of a friend’s party. I stood outside and chit chatted for a while, and then I believe Caesar and I, although this could be completely wrong, discussed the fact that we needed more alcohol, and decided to check out a party across the street, at which we knew a total of none people. Entering the house presented us with the images of a dying party, with the few people inside gathered on the dance floor, doing some various white people dance moves. We moved to the kitchen, and despite our ingenious plan to get more alcohol at this place, there wasn’t any to be found in clear sight. Disappointed, Caesar and I moved towards the door, when suddenly a bottle on the counter caught my eye. It was a nearly full fifth of Kahlua, the drink of choice for put upon stoner dudes, and for my mom when she wants to sneakily drink with her morning coffee. Anyhoo, the situation presented in front of me was too perfect to pass up, and I gathered my robes/blankets, and crammed the bottle down the front of my costume. We peaced, and successfully made our way across the street and back to our friends, me being extremely pleased with my thieving ingenuity. We decided to make our way back to TH to continue drinking and go over what had happened so far. We began the long walk back to TH, which was fairly mundane, and except for Ethel making a few passes at some randos on the street (gotta love that; classic Ethel), we made it back to TH in one piece.
At this point my memory becomes a little fuzzy, but apparently I called the Bear Jew and Ivana Trump, who had been at some other unknown locale, and got them to come over to Caesars. After this, we decided to leave Caesar at his humble abode and went to meet Sluggie and Ethel, who had broken off from our group and ventured to Mill Creek for more drinking and dastardly deeds, but not before the Bear Jew, Ivana, and I passed by Sluggie and Ethel’s apartment, where we discovered a poorly hidden case of beer on her doorstep. We found out later that this was actually beer for the inhabitants of the apartment, but who gives a shit, we had a free case of beer, and I introduced my friends to a game I used to play a lot at my former school, that game being beer can baseball (BCB). This is sort of self-explanatory, but it consists of someone pitching you a can of beer, diving out of the way, and then you slamming the can of beer with another object, preferably a baseball bat, although I’ve used golf clubs and random branches in the past and can vouch for their ability to hit a beer can at high speed. This game is always fun, and we took to it with a distinct visceral pleasure, since we didn’t really have any monetary investment in the beer we’d stolen, and we were all still drunk/exhausted. After partaking in such a world changing event as BCB, the small group of drunken friends we met at Mill Creek hardly impressed, no offense to them. It’s just hard to compete with the childlike joy of hitting a full can of beer and seeing it spin off in the air, spewing its contents like a grenade over the landscape. Ivana and the Bear Jew decided to head back to his place, and I joined them in their long walk. At this point, it was around 2:30, and anyone who was outside that night around that time knows what happened around then. Rain. Fucking rain. Fucking torrential rain. I escorted the other two back, and then started my long, wet, cold journey back to my dormitorio. Honestly, the rain wasn’t really that bad until I made it onto campus, it was then that the Biblical floodgates opened and God decided to piss all over the remainder of my walk. Anyways, sorry for the complaining about weather related events, but in truth it put a ridiculous cap on a completely preposterous night. Well done Bolsheviks and Bolshevik related peeps, it was a classic night, and one that lent itself to being written about, two weeks later. Sorry for the delay, hope your night, if it didn’t intercede with this account, went as swimmingly as ours did. Peace in the middle east, I’m out.
For us, Halloween really began some weeks beforehand when we as a collective realized something – none of us had ever been in a fight. We decided that we needed to rectify this situation, and that Halloween was the night to do so. How fucking hilarious would it be to see a bunch of dudes in ridiculous costumes engaged in stumbly, drunken battle? Really fucking hilarious, that’s how fucking hilarious it would be. So keep in mind that the eventual goal for the entirety of Halloween was for our group of bro’s (or Brolsheviks, if you’d rather) to find another group of bro’s and, as Caesar put it, ruffle some feathers.
This year, Halloween fell on a Saturday, which meant that everybody in town was going to get trashed and go to Franklin Street, where they’d mill around for a few minutes and then go to some party. Which meant that our goal for the pre-Franklin festivities was to get as drunk as we could without dying.
How does one accomplish this, you ask? By instigating a Liquor Treat, which for the unenlightened is just like trick-or-treating but instead of candy you get booze. To paraphrase Alfred Kinsey, it’s a party.
We held this Liquor Treat at Townhouse, which is conveniently located about two blocks from Franklin Street and also a conveniently anarchic apartment complex where the only thing the landlords ask of their tenants is that they don’t burn the place down.
Oh, and before I continue, here’s a short list of our costumes:
- Santa Claus (myself)
- Snuggie Jedi (The Party Trotsky)
- The Bear Jew
- The Great Mouse Detective (Caesar)
- Sexy Indian (The always culturally sensitive Ethel Rosenberg)
- Slutty Snuggie (AKA the Sluggie)
- Peter Pan
- Hipster Pirate
The Liquor Treat commenced at the apartment of Ivana Trump (name changed), where we were served “blood,” also known as fruit punch with vodka in it. After we’d drank enough blood to make the Red Cross think we were wasteful and/or a bunch of vampires, we made our merry way to Ivana’s neighbor’s place, where we were greeted by none other than a man dressed as a lady.
I can’t really get into what transpired at that apartment, but allow me to say this: Friends, you have not lived until a man-lady has forced peppermint schnapps down your throat while screaming, “Drink up, bitch!” We of the Bolsheviks have indeed lived.
Following the uneventful and non-traumatic stop at Ivana’s neighbors, we went to Ethel’s apartment where, in a sub-perversion of our plan to drunkenly turn our childhoods on their collective heads, she and her roommates offered apple bobbing, except upon each apple, they had written a letter that corresponded to either a shot or a beer. Depending on which apple you picked out, you drank that drink. I oh-so-fortunately earned myself a double shot of Evan Williams honey whiskey.
With the initial buzz in place, it was time for the heavy hitters. We (did I mention there were like thirty of us?) made our way to the next apartment where we were served margaritas, or at least our hosts’ best drunken guess as to what a margarita was, which turned out to be an excessively potent combination of tequila and store-bought margarita mix which did little to cut the harsh taste of the tequila.
Some of us ducked out of this one early in order to head to Caesar’s apartment, which was the final stop on the only-depressing-if-you’re-an-adult cavalcade of drunkenness, where we had to make the final beverage of the tour, Riot Punch.
For the unindoctrinated, Riot Punch is a beverage that first debuted on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a show that’s always on point with the creative ways to drink (can wine, anyone?).
The recipe is Everclear and Blue Frost Gatorade. Mix to taste.
(I’m going to get on my 88 Miles Per Hour shit and jump back to Saturday afternoon, when we went on a mad dash to find ourselves some powdered Blue Frost Gatorade. Believe it or not, we checked like three different stores before we found enough BFG to properly mix with our gallon of Everclear so that the taste would not be “flaming death.”)
Anyway, we loaded up our several-gallon tub with Everclear and BFG, and even with about eight gallons of water all up in our mix, the Riot Punch still tasted extremely strong enough to power a tractor. By the time we’d reached this conclusion, it was too late and people had started to show up. Being that Riot Punch is traditionally consumed in one-gallon jugs, Trotsky, Caesar and myself filled ourselves up some jugs and got to drinkin’ along with everybody else, who in a rare, tragic show of Drinking Class Division were forced to drink out of cups.
And let me tell you my fair proletariat cattle, drink we did. We discovered that about two cups of riot punch could easily send its drinker on that magical journey from “comfortably buzzed” to “completely and totally fucking trashed.” I honestly have no idea how much Riot Punch I drank due to the fact that I was drinking out of a jug, but let me just say I drank so much that I had to pass the second half of this post off to the Party Trotsky.
Anyway, that comes later. At this point in the story came the dancing. We were listening to your typical mildly indie dance music (Justice, MGMT, Daft Punk, Crystal Castles, etc.) plus ironic rap music (Read: Lil’ Jon, Ludacris, whatever else we liked in middle school) when Caesar had the ultimate in good ideas: he put on “She Wolf” by Shakira. The people danced. Then, he put on “Party in the USA.”
That’s right. Party in the Motherfucking USA.
A quick retort to those who say that the song “sucks,” or is “poorly written,” or is “stupid and annoying and whoever likes it should die.” What’s not to like about this song? It’s about the two greatest things in America – partying and the USA. If you disagree, fuck you you’re wrong.
Anyway, at the moment that PiTUSA hit the speakers, the place erupted. The floor shook. The blind were healed. Everybody danced their fucking asses off and sang along to the chorus which we all know even though we pretend not to. In the interest of full disclosure, we were all stratospherically drunk.
At this time it was about 11:15, so we decided to head up to Franklin Street to see everybody’s ridiculous costumes, and then head to a bunch of random parties to continue our heroic drinking binge. That’s when I made a fatal mistake. Trotsky grabbed me, partially to hold himself up and partially to get my attention, and held up his Jug O’Riot Punch, and simply said, “We have to finish this.” There was like a quarter of a gallon left, as we polished that shit off promptly.
This is the part where I blacked out and as I’m wont to do when completely shit-bombed, headed crookedly home and passed out. This is also the part where the Party Trotsky takes over in order to atone for giving me the beverage that set me over the edge.
Excellent summary of the events of the night so far by Castro, although he failed to mention one of the more terrible instances that seemed to keep happening to various members of our group, particularly Castro, Sluggie, and I, that instance being the fact that in every single apartment the temperature was comparable to that of the surface of the sun. Seriously, I was sweating like no one’s business at every available moment, most likely due to the fact that I WAS WEARING A BLANKET. Regardless of this minor problem I encountered, the night was going swimmingly as we approached our Grail-like quest of making it to Franklin Street, and the closer we got, the more people began to appear out of nowhere, and it appeared that we would soon be involved in what appeared to be slightly controlled chaos, on a town wide scale. I was correct.
We made it onto Franklin Street, with most of our group in tow, and so began the gawkfest that would define the rest of the night for me, with slutty (insert random job, person, or pretty much anything you want) being the costume of choice for the ladies, and a wide array of hastily made, slightly ironic outfits for the fellas. We picked our way slowly through the crowd, the majority of which was stumblingly drunk, but since this description also matched us, the speed and the demeanor of the crowd agreed with us considerably. Many picture taking opportunities were taken, my favorite being a picture with one of the many Green Men wandering the streets, and the brilliant display of dance moves from said Green Man, courtesy of Mr. Charlie Kelly. These pictures would be the downfall of our group, as each time someone stopped to take a picture, everyone else, obliviously drunk as to what was going on, continued on their merry way down the road, therefore losing the picture person in the crowd, which according to news reports later was as large as 50,000 people. So understandably, we lost more and more people as the night went on, and the “group” that I was walking with had a constantly changing roster. It was around this moment when I received a call from a dear friend of mine, who had decided to visit on this the most ridiculous of night in CH. She was farther down the street, and I told her to wait, I’d somehow make it there, and in about twenty minutes of cajoling the rest of my group to pick up the pace and hustle down to meet my friend, we finally found each other outside of New York Pizza. Greetings of love and happiness were exchanged, exacerbated by our mutual fucked upness. I discovered later that she was actually engaging in a myconically orientated journey that night, and I imagine the constantly changing and flowing stream of gaudily dressed people was built expressly for the purpose of the psilocybic meanderings. I plan on making a journey quite similar to this next week, but that will hopefully be the topic of another post.
As my friend and I continue to exclaim over finding each other in such a ridonkulous crowd, other members of my group wanted to continue down the street to regain various members of the original Townhouse liquor treat crew, who were apparently scattered every which way. My friend was going the other way, in an attempt to meet up with other mutual friends that had decided to make their way to our humble town. So we said our goodbyes, parted ways, and continued on, both on our individually mega fucked up planets. The mission of our group was to make it to Vespa and grab a friend of Caesar’s. We got there, went in, and proceeded to hang out in what I believe was the kitchen of Vespa. In our defense, I have no idea why the hell we were in there, but the kitchen was right next to the bathrooms, so fuck you it made perfect sense at that point to conversate in the kitchen, rather than a room we were actually allowed in. Just as we were about to start stealing random bits of food, someone who worked at Vespa began mean mugging us hardcore, so we exited and instead sat outside and bullshitted for several minutes.
At this point, I had a tiny, inconsequential encounter with Chapel Hill’s finest. While sitting outside, we spotted our dear friend Ethel with a group of acquaintances across the street. Me being the friendly friend I am, I decided the natural thing to do was to go across and discuss where the hell everyone had gone too, and also just to join Ethel back up with our limited group. As I set foot onto the street, I realized this would be more challenging than I had assumed. The time was about 1:00, maybe, and the streets were in the processes of being cleared of all those god damn collegiate hooligans, this being accomplished both by driving large vehicles down the road and forcing all those who didn’t want to be crushed out of the road, and also by having copious amounts of policia in the street, physically making everyone get the fuck out of the street. I thought, of course they’ll understand I just want to cross the street, and have literally no interest in standing or walking down it, merely across it. I gingerly started my way across, hoping I’d go unnoticed, but about 1.5 seconds into this charade I was spotted by a typically pissed off, slightly balding specimen of police beauty, and was told in no uncertain terms to “get the hell back on your side of the street.” I’m gonna throw some praise on myself, and say that while I’m definitely one to pull stunts that some would call stupid and which I choose to call ballsy, I weighed the pros and cons of running across the street after that outburst from my copper friend, and the cons won out. We arranged, via shouting, to meet farther down the street, at another party.
We vamoosed our seating at Vespa, and made our way onto Roberson, the site of a friend’s party. I stood outside and chit chatted for a while, and then I believe Caesar and I, although this could be completely wrong, discussed the fact that we needed more alcohol, and decided to check out a party across the street, at which we knew a total of none people. Entering the house presented us with the images of a dying party, with the few people inside gathered on the dance floor, doing some various white people dance moves. We moved to the kitchen, and despite our ingenious plan to get more alcohol at this place, there wasn’t any to be found in clear sight. Disappointed, Caesar and I moved towards the door, when suddenly a bottle on the counter caught my eye. It was a nearly full fifth of Kahlua, the drink of choice for put upon stoner dudes, and for my mom when she wants to sneakily drink with her morning coffee. Anyhoo, the situation presented in front of me was too perfect to pass up, and I gathered my robes/blankets, and crammed the bottle down the front of my costume. We peaced, and successfully made our way across the street and back to our friends, me being extremely pleased with my thieving ingenuity. We decided to make our way back to TH to continue drinking and go over what had happened so far. We began the long walk back to TH, which was fairly mundane, and except for Ethel making a few passes at some randos on the street (gotta love that; classic Ethel), we made it back to TH in one piece.
At this point my memory becomes a little fuzzy, but apparently I called the Bear Jew and Ivana Trump, who had been at some other unknown locale, and got them to come over to Caesars. After this, we decided to leave Caesar at his humble abode and went to meet Sluggie and Ethel, who had broken off from our group and ventured to Mill Creek for more drinking and dastardly deeds, but not before the Bear Jew, Ivana, and I passed by Sluggie and Ethel’s apartment, where we discovered a poorly hidden case of beer on her doorstep. We found out later that this was actually beer for the inhabitants of the apartment, but who gives a shit, we had a free case of beer, and I introduced my friends to a game I used to play a lot at my former school, that game being beer can baseball (BCB). This is sort of self-explanatory, but it consists of someone pitching you a can of beer, diving out of the way, and then you slamming the can of beer with another object, preferably a baseball bat, although I’ve used golf clubs and random branches in the past and can vouch for their ability to hit a beer can at high speed. This game is always fun, and we took to it with a distinct visceral pleasure, since we didn’t really have any monetary investment in the beer we’d stolen, and we were all still drunk/exhausted. After partaking in such a world changing event as BCB, the small group of drunken friends we met at Mill Creek hardly impressed, no offense to them. It’s just hard to compete with the childlike joy of hitting a full can of beer and seeing it spin off in the air, spewing its contents like a grenade over the landscape. Ivana and the Bear Jew decided to head back to his place, and I joined them in their long walk. At this point, it was around 2:30, and anyone who was outside that night around that time knows what happened around then. Rain. Fucking rain. Fucking torrential rain. I escorted the other two back, and then started my long, wet, cold journey back to my dormitorio. Honestly, the rain wasn’t really that bad until I made it onto campus, it was then that the Biblical floodgates opened and God decided to piss all over the remainder of my walk. Anyways, sorry for the complaining about weather related events, but in truth it put a ridiculous cap on a completely preposterous night. Well done Bolsheviks and Bolshevik related peeps, it was a classic night, and one that lent itself to being written about, two weeks later. Sorry for the delay, hope your night, if it didn’t intercede with this account, went as swimmingly as ours did. Peace in the middle east, I’m out.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
MAJORNOMICS
You guys are lazy. Also, there’s a really good pun in this post; just wait.
I foresee what we in the biz call a “big weekend” coming up, so I think I’ll indulge myself in the contemporary hyper-intellectual’s favorite pastime: a bullshit, pseudo-Marxist critique of a social institution, mixed—of course—with the pernicious flavor of self-awareness you’ve already grown tired of from Old Major. Also, the only social institution in which I’m interested is parties.
Because I’ve just today taken an exam in Microeconomics, the parallels between the role of the firm and the role of the party organizers is lodged in my mind. (An aside: my Microeconomics teacher is dick-chafingly hot. As in, if I wear jeans in that class I’ll regret it for a week. She only wears like size -6 Levi’s and t-shirts that are adorably FOB (assuming, that is, that Turks arrive in the US via boat).) From a supply-side perspective, the production function of a firm is dictated by the factors of production, generally simplified to K=capital and L=labor, so that Q(K,L).
Similarly for parties, but let’s define the variables differently: Q is quality rather than quantity, K is party capital rather than monetary capital, and L is still labor, though more in a “do work” sense than a do work sense. In micro, the general approach to this problem is to combine the production function and the budget constraint (I=(wage)L+(rent)K) to determine the optimal allocation of resources between the factor of production.
This model breaks down in our case, though, because the microeconomic assumption that money can be freely divided between L and K does not hold in our case; discounting the potentially-worth-exploring category of strippers, money can only be used to increase K. In order to develop a new model, I propose a reexamination of the factors of production of a party.
Rather than the vague variable L, let’s introduce three more specific variables: people the party organizers can comfortably invite via facebook, call it GP for gross popularity; people who come to the party, call it P; and the per capita “will to party,” call it WP. Additionally, we can say that K=c$, where $ is the total expendable income of the organizers and c is the marginal propensity to party.
So, in the short run, we can say that GP is exogenous to the model because popularity cannot grow by any appreciable fraction in a few days, and also because talking about popularity is just embarrassing. Now we need to determine how our variables are related.
P, the people who come to the party, is surely a function of GP and K; in fact, let’s let P=GP/(1+9e^K). My choice of 9 is arbitrary but I think it plays out pretty well in reality. For example, if K=0, P=.1(GP), so only 10% of people you invite show up. As K approaches infinity, however, (1+9e^K) approaches 1, and P approaches GP; in that case, everyone you invite shows up.
WP is also related to K, but here I’ll introduce one final piece of notation, A, which is the Awesomeness of the occasion for the party such that A={1,2…10}, where 1 is “Oh dope I still have 4 stones in the fridge from Hipster Night and The Price Is Right is on” and 10 is “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD ETHEL IS TURNING 21.” I’ve derived the equation so that WP=A*(K^1.5). So, keeping in mind that it is obviously better to party on better occasions, A is pretty much constant; there are only a finite number of 10s IN YOUR LIFE SO USE THEM WISELY. Note also that the relationship between WP and K is not linear. Each unit of K increases the value of all previous units of K in the case of WP because it helps to escalate the party and loosen inhibitions, which in turn encourages more drinking, looser inhibitions, and so on.
So that leaves us with a General Equation of Partying such that Q=WP*P. Let me note here that it MAY BE POSSIBLE for a party to get too good—I’ve theorized something I call the Asymptote of Police Involvement, but that, my friends, is the subject of another paper. Substitution into our General Equation yields:
Q= GP * A * (K^1.5) / (1 + (e^K))
Since GP and A are both very difficult to change, it becomes abundantly clear that the only real way to improve Party Quality is to increase K.
FUNNY.
THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG.
REAPPROPRIATE THE CAPITAL FROM THE BOURGEOISIE.
LET ME START
BY REAPPROPRIATING
THE
CAPITALS.
No but seriously I’m super psyched for this weekend.
Old Major
I foresee what we in the biz call a “big weekend” coming up, so I think I’ll indulge myself in the contemporary hyper-intellectual’s favorite pastime: a bullshit, pseudo-Marxist critique of a social institution, mixed—of course—with the pernicious flavor of self-awareness you’ve already grown tired of from Old Major. Also, the only social institution in which I’m interested is parties.
Because I’ve just today taken an exam in Microeconomics, the parallels between the role of the firm and the role of the party organizers is lodged in my mind. (An aside: my Microeconomics teacher is dick-chafingly hot. As in, if I wear jeans in that class I’ll regret it for a week. She only wears like size -6 Levi’s and t-shirts that are adorably FOB (assuming, that is, that Turks arrive in the US via boat).) From a supply-side perspective, the production function of a firm is dictated by the factors of production, generally simplified to K=capital and L=labor, so that Q(K,L).
Similarly for parties, but let’s define the variables differently: Q is quality rather than quantity, K is party capital rather than monetary capital, and L is still labor, though more in a “do work” sense than a do work sense. In micro, the general approach to this problem is to combine the production function and the budget constraint (I=(wage)L+(rent)K) to determine the optimal allocation of resources between the factor of production.
This model breaks down in our case, though, because the microeconomic assumption that money can be freely divided between L and K does not hold in our case; discounting the potentially-worth-exploring category of strippers, money can only be used to increase K. In order to develop a new model, I propose a reexamination of the factors of production of a party.
Rather than the vague variable L, let’s introduce three more specific variables: people the party organizers can comfortably invite via facebook, call it GP for gross popularity; people who come to the party, call it P; and the per capita “will to party,” call it WP. Additionally, we can say that K=c$, where $ is the total expendable income of the organizers and c is the marginal propensity to party.
So, in the short run, we can say that GP is exogenous to the model because popularity cannot grow by any appreciable fraction in a few days, and also because talking about popularity is just embarrassing. Now we need to determine how our variables are related.
P, the people who come to the party, is surely a function of GP and K; in fact, let’s let P=GP/(1+9e^K). My choice of 9 is arbitrary but I think it plays out pretty well in reality. For example, if K=0, P=.1(GP), so only 10% of people you invite show up. As K approaches infinity, however, (1+9e^K) approaches 1, and P approaches GP; in that case, everyone you invite shows up.
WP is also related to K, but here I’ll introduce one final piece of notation, A, which is the Awesomeness of the occasion for the party such that A={1,2…10}, where 1 is “Oh dope I still have 4 stones in the fridge from Hipster Night and The Price Is Right is on” and 10 is “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD ETHEL IS TURNING 21.” I’ve derived the equation so that WP=A*(K^1.5). So, keeping in mind that it is obviously better to party on better occasions, A is pretty much constant; there are only a finite number of 10s IN YOUR LIFE SO USE THEM WISELY. Note also that the relationship between WP and K is not linear. Each unit of K increases the value of all previous units of K in the case of WP because it helps to escalate the party and loosen inhibitions, which in turn encourages more drinking, looser inhibitions, and so on.
So that leaves us with a General Equation of Partying such that Q=WP*P. Let me note here that it MAY BE POSSIBLE for a party to get too good—I’ve theorized something I call the Asymptote of Police Involvement, but that, my friends, is the subject of another paper. Substitution into our General Equation yields:
Q= GP * A * (K^1.5) / (1 + (e^K))
Since GP and A are both very difficult to change, it becomes abundantly clear that the only real way to improve Party Quality is to increase K.
FUNNY.
THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG.
REAPPROPRIATE THE CAPITAL FROM THE BOURGEOISIE.
LET ME START
BY REAPPROPRIATING
THE
CAPITALS.
No but seriously I’m super psyched for this weekend.
Old Major
Saturday, October 31, 2009
THAT REFUTATION
It’s well established that PBR is The Beer to Drink (thanks, Castro!). But it shouldn’t be. The idea of a Hipster Standby is impossible; once enough people know about something it CANNOT still be cool. At the gym yesterday, homeboy with those BIG weights made tiny, tiny guns during the chorus of Paper Planes.
People are squeamish about shopping at Urban Outfitters; people are squeamish about reading Pitchfork; people are terrified, outraged and pissed off about being identified as hipsters. So the PBR thing makes no sense to me. I saw a dude with a t-shirt with a PBR logo that had replaced the words with “Mob Mentality”—nice idea, buddy, but the REAL way to effect change in people’s beer choice is to write about it on the internet.
But I don’t want to be one of those guys who just complain about something without proposing a solution.
KEYSTONE LIGHT
There are a number of really tragically similar products when it comes to light beers, but Keystone Light is the apotheosis of the Light Beer: it is the ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST, it comes in those hilarious TALL CANS, its name is FUCKING DUMB, and it tastes THE WORST. Let’s do this 7th grade writing test—argumentative prompt—style:
Keystone light is the absolute cheapest because it costs less than any other beers. So for example, because it has a lower price tag, and your income is fixed by the amount your parents give you per month, you can by more beers.
The tall cans serve to simultaneously remind you that you’re drinking beer—because only beer (and I guess Red Bull but come on) comes in that size of can—and that the beer you’re drinking is NOT a PBR. Derrida calls this phenomenon différance, a word worth knowing but too weighty to explain here. Suffice it to say that it’s a French neologism combining the words difference and “to defer,” and that it points to the way things can only be defined negatively—that is, by explaining what they are not—and to Derrida’s idea of an infinite string of signifiers deferring meaning indefinitely.
I feel like I cannot even begin to explain how terrible a name Keystone Light is. However, just try to come up with a worse name. See? You can’t. Also, you can call them “stones.” As in, “Oh fuck there’s only 19 stones left in this case I brought to the party and it’s the only beer in the fridge and people are bitching about being out of alcohol even though I told them they were welcome to some stones.”
This is the important part. Keystone Light tastes super, super shitty. This is good because no one will steal your beer. Also, it makes it impossible to drink outside of the party setting—it is impossible to drink a Keystone Light recreationally. These both contribute to the one true goal of any good party Bolshevik: to party.
But partying is more than just an activity. It’s a state of mind. I’ve been reading a lot of Dostoevsky criticism of late, and I’m especially intrigued by Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of carnivalization in Dostoevsky, which I’ll extrapolate to Keystone Light here. During a carnival, the everyday, mundane life is turned on its head. There is a spirit of infinite permissibility, and everyone is equal. Endemic to this radical equalization is a change in status, whether up or down, to the level of everyone. Because we are forced to change we are uncomfortable, and we combat this with alcohol. I’m not saying this is good or bad, just that it happens.
PBR has become everyday, has become comfortable. We have even become acclimated to the flavor, so it doesn’t even really taste that bad any more. FUCK THAT. Sitting around playing video games smoking weed and drinking PBR with your boys is comfortable. Going to a party, talking to people you don’t know, trying to get with chicks, and drinking Keystone Light is uncomfortable.
AND COMFORT IS THE GOD OF THE BOURGEOISIE. We are all bourgeoisie, like it or not, but parties are our opportunities to transcend that abominable comfort. Drink Keystone Light.
Old Major
People are squeamish about shopping at Urban Outfitters; people are squeamish about reading Pitchfork; people are terrified, outraged and pissed off about being identified as hipsters. So the PBR thing makes no sense to me. I saw a dude with a t-shirt with a PBR logo that had replaced the words with “Mob Mentality”—nice idea, buddy, but the REAL way to effect change in people’s beer choice is to write about it on the internet.
But I don’t want to be one of those guys who just complain about something without proposing a solution.
KEYSTONE LIGHT
There are a number of really tragically similar products when it comes to light beers, but Keystone Light is the apotheosis of the Light Beer: it is the ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST, it comes in those hilarious TALL CANS, its name is FUCKING DUMB, and it tastes THE WORST. Let’s do this 7th grade writing test—argumentative prompt—style:
Keystone light is the absolute cheapest because it costs less than any other beers. So for example, because it has a lower price tag, and your income is fixed by the amount your parents give you per month, you can by more beers.
The tall cans serve to simultaneously remind you that you’re drinking beer—because only beer (and I guess Red Bull but come on) comes in that size of can—and that the beer you’re drinking is NOT a PBR. Derrida calls this phenomenon différance, a word worth knowing but too weighty to explain here. Suffice it to say that it’s a French neologism combining the words difference and “to defer,” and that it points to the way things can only be defined negatively—that is, by explaining what they are not—and to Derrida’s idea of an infinite string of signifiers deferring meaning indefinitely.
I feel like I cannot even begin to explain how terrible a name Keystone Light is. However, just try to come up with a worse name. See? You can’t. Also, you can call them “stones.” As in, “Oh fuck there’s only 19 stones left in this case I brought to the party and it’s the only beer in the fridge and people are bitching about being out of alcohol even though I told them they were welcome to some stones.”
This is the important part. Keystone Light tastes super, super shitty. This is good because no one will steal your beer. Also, it makes it impossible to drink outside of the party setting—it is impossible to drink a Keystone Light recreationally. These both contribute to the one true goal of any good party Bolshevik: to party.
But partying is more than just an activity. It’s a state of mind. I’ve been reading a lot of Dostoevsky criticism of late, and I’m especially intrigued by Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of carnivalization in Dostoevsky, which I’ll extrapolate to Keystone Light here. During a carnival, the everyday, mundane life is turned on its head. There is a spirit of infinite permissibility, and everyone is equal. Endemic to this radical equalization is a change in status, whether up or down, to the level of everyone. Because we are forced to change we are uncomfortable, and we combat this with alcohol. I’m not saying this is good or bad, just that it happens.
PBR has become everyday, has become comfortable. We have even become acclimated to the flavor, so it doesn’t even really taste that bad any more. FUCK THAT. Sitting around playing video games smoking weed and drinking PBR with your boys is comfortable. Going to a party, talking to people you don’t know, trying to get with chicks, and drinking Keystone Light is uncomfortable.
AND COMFORT IS THE GOD OF THE BOURGEOISIE. We are all bourgeoisie, like it or not, but parties are our opportunities to transcend that abominable comfort. Drink Keystone Light.
Old Major
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Truly Bolshevik Experience
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The most truly Bolshevik I have ever felt came this past weekend in Prague, Czech Republic, where the street signs look like this:
And the locals party by candlelight and in Cold War nuclear bomb bunkers. No joke. Read on, comrades:
So, stuffed absolutely full of delicious coffee and dessert and general revelry, we had quite a trek in front of us to reach the Zizkov district, where there were a large number of authentically Czech bars. I am a large fan of walking as far as possible, and on this particular occasion Abby was as enthusiastic of a walker as me, so our voyage past the train station and through various back streets and past Place Winston Churchill was quite nice, brisk, and cheesily happy. Passing some drunk Praguians (?) on the street, opening their beers on street signs was comforting. We had to be going in somewhat of the right direction! So we climbed another street and saw right in front of us the invisible entrance to Blind Eye bar (the best possible recommendation, Juliet, I felt right at home immediately, THANK YOU). The bar was almost jet-black and cheap beyond belief and we plopped down across from two native Czechians chatting in their indecipherable tongue to smoke cigarettes (indoors!) and look at pictures on Abby's camera. After a bit of exploring in the bar, we realized that there were a bunch of rooms that were hardly lit at all (and pretty much exclusively by candles). I got a drink called a Zizkov Liberator, which was enormous and tasted kind of like cream soda, but was too sweet for me to finish. The beer was Czech Budweiser, which I was into, and the very cute bartender was from Prague but spoke better English than me. Embarrassing.
I met a couple of guys at the bar who were happy to hear that I loved Prague and thought that South and North Carolina were the same place (I corrected them) and they told me that the Prague train station (where we had traversed to find this bar) was "the sketchiest part of the entire country." I told them I didn't find it sketchy in the slightest and they said exactly, the whole country is safe and it must be hard for me to understand coming from America. I said yeah, but it's mainly fear tactics and racism. They laughed. They were in the vein of all of the Czech people I had the pleasure of meeting, very very sweet and friendly and didn't hate me because I was American. I wanted to come to the Czech Republic after all!
Abby and I had agreed that we were both pretty tired and we did have a long walk home, so we weren't going to stay out too late, especially considering our obscenely early flight (9:30, but I am NOT a morning person). However, this was quickly reassessed when we met this group of Germans and Canadians who invited us to play foosball (thank god for all my years at afterschool programs) and swiftly to finish our drinks and accompany them to a secret techno club in a Cold War-era nuclear bomb bunker somewhere on this side of Prague. We had a map but their Czech friends had abandoned us, so we pretty much just had the instincts of one of the Germans (named Arne, but he said it would be easier for us to call him Bob, so we did) and this vague vague map. So we walked even farther, past a church, a grocery store, a TV tower covered with metal babies (weird, Juliet, I thought you were kidding but wtf) and chatted with the Germans and one boy from Austria wearing an Amsterdam t-shirt and the Canadians, who had been friends since they were young and were seeing one another for the first time in years, deciding to meet randomly in Prague.
We found the club, completely nondescript except for a bit of graffiti outside, under an overpass and a park. Walking in, the graffiti grew and filled all of the small, empty concrete rooms of the entrance to this club. After descending a long metal staircase past a climbing wall (?) we made in to the bottom and since I don't speak any Czech and the people at the door didn't seem to speak English, I illogically switched to French, asking how much the cover was and asking the pierced girls if they were having fun. Of course they didn't know what I was talking about but the cover was 30 Crowns (a little over 1 Euro) and huge beers 26 crowns (1 Euro). The club was almost empty, but I was just awed by the fact that I was actually in a Cold War nuclear bomb bunker where there was now very bad techno music and graffiti and people partying. The very few people that were there were very Czech and smoking what looked like crack, and later large amounts of hash and weed. My ability to dance to techno music without a beat (which you might think is oxymoronical - it's not) is pretty hard to harness, so I just sat with one of the Canadian boys and smoked cigarettes/drank beer and talked about lots and lots of things, including tattoos, traveling, the internet, cooking, beer, and in short, almost all of my favorite subjects, while Abby and the other Canadian danced. I have no earthly idea what time it was when they turned on all of the lights in the club, but we had been there for a couple of hours probably and decided to get out of there.
Luckily, in all of Europe they do a thing called "Non-Stop," which means 24-hours. This includes some grocery stores, sex shops, but the best of all is that it includes bars. So leaving the techno club and waving goodbye and (me still stupidly saying "bonsoir") we began to trudge back in the direction of Greater Prague in pairs. We stopped at a bar near Old Town and got a couple of beers and watched VH1 with the bartender, who did not speak English but for whatever reason, let us in for drinks and refused to let in anyone else. He was very funny and reading the paper/smoking cigarettes, and the four of us got personal and made fun of the Culture Club and David Bowie videos, along with the very bad version of classic Beatles that Paul did solo. After a while, we decided to continue to walk to the hostel where Abby and I were staying, since it was now very late and foggy and we weren't actually very far away anymore.
I was once again in charge of getting everyone to where they were going, my favorite thing to do at 5AM drunk and tired, taking advantage of the time change at 2AM (fall back! An extra hour in Prague!). We found it, stayed up for a while talking, and fell into a fitful sleep on the couch in the "Fun Room" of the hostel at about 6AM. At about this time, the Canadians awoke and decided to get back to their hostel for some real sleep. Lucky bastards, we had to meet our driver at 8, so our night was pretty much done. They were really wonderful and funny, and I am disappointed that life works the way it does, i.e. being extremely unlikely that we will ever meet either of them again. Oh well, now I know something about the geography of Canada, which, as an American, I had never ever been taught.
Planning on probably moving to Prague one day, to become a real post-Soviet kind of gal.
Proletarian Love from Lenin
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Noise-Porn Bro
A Character Sketch of a Sketch Character
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in…ya know…us.”
~William Shakespeare
The weekend following my foray into Sparks and its successive decadence, I was invited to a Drinking Olympics by my friend Janis Joplin. Earlier that week, the world found out Obama had lost his bid and Chicago would not be hosting the 2016 Winter Games. But come 9:45 Friday night, with five plastic barrels full of beer and a fridge stocked with all kinds of hangover, I discovered the games were in fact still being held on American soil.
As I walk in, I am immediately ostracized because I’m the only one who does not look like a circus act. I quickly learn this is a costume Party. As I keenly shake hands with Aladdin, Cowboy Woody, and other staples from my childhood, I’m told to stick my hand in a Yankees cap and pick my team. I drew a thin piece of pink cardstock from the Sorting Hat and found my way onto ‘It Ain’t Pretty Being Easy’. No, it is not.
But apparently it’s easy being pretty good at drinking games. We were near quadrupling the other teams by the end of the fourth round. Also, they were awarding bonus points at the end of the night for collecting can tabs from every beer we finished and for every shot we took in the kitchen. I took it upon myself to drink for the cause and make my way to the kitchen. There I met a girl who insisted I call her ‘Tuesday’. Though I gave her a hard time for it then, let me disclose my public support for her now: this is a great tactic to having people remember your name at a Party. Save for your name being something like Barack, it is not on the person you meet to remember your name; it is on you to get them to remember. My memory is limited and on-the-outs as it is; it’s imperative that I save it for the important stuff, like IMDB user ratings and lyrics to 90’s one-hit wonders.
Janis Joplin arrived after getting off sentence (or as the bourgeoisie call it, work) and we were soon making a duck out the door, on to the next Party. A farewell was bid to the guy in the BoSox shirt who offered me “cheap but decent” acid and medicinal reefer from California. I dig in my pockets and pull out five silver tabs to hand to the scorekeeper, asking him if it’s a good idea to walk down the street with a sixth in hand. He said no, I cracked it in front of him, tore off the tab, and rejoined my friends. Janis’s friends Jim Morrison and Neal Cassady were visiting from Georgia for the weekend, and being a good hostess, she was determined to show them a good time. But after they barged in the door, raising a case above their heads in a Superman shirt (not, mind you, for the theme), I came to realize they were determined to make it a good time wherever they were. I can fuck with that.
The next pit-stop we make is a rock-climbing Party. Now, as I’ve had to several times since, let me clarify: this was a Party for rock-climbers. They were not climbing rocks that night. Kinda the inverse of the Middle School/Middle School-Themed Party. But enough semantics, more shame. This one was a little more chaotic in the bass-thudding, beer pong-playing sense, and right as I walk in, I spotted my first middle-school girlfriend surrounded by a pride of climberbros. Behind her laid a tub full of Everclear lemonade. I get like a deer near a salt-lick. Shuffling past Jimmy Eat World stockholders and fitted North Faces, I aggressively navigated the throngs. This was a treasure hunt and ex- marked the spot.
After a couple Solo-fuls of Everclear with a margarita chaser, Janis Joplin stole me aside and said Neal Cassady had gone home with a 37-year-old. “Score?” It was a dude, who lived across the street. Apparently Neal and Jim had scorched him so thoroughly in pong, his only way to rationalize the loss was to invite them back for a congratulatory bowlpack. We walked through the open front door to find them chiefing on a stool-high stack of vinyls. All I could gather—given the rollercoaster my sense of balance was riding—was a serial cough and a strained larynx.
“Sup…duuuudes…”
Darkness.
I wake up to a wall full of faces I don’t know. Shit. I’ve gotta stop doing this. My body feels like all moisture has been hand-wrung from it and my stomach feels like it’s been roundhoused by a bull. I reach into my pocket and pull out 5 beer tabs. What the fuck did I give him then?? My ONE Card is gone. I come downstairs to Neal Cassady and Jim Morrison opening the freezer and finding an open bottle of Everclear lemonade which has solidified into a slushie. What. Happened. I haven’t felt this confused since last weekend.
After spending a day in recovery, I met up with Neal and Jim on Franklin to head down to the Party Castro’s for the bash you’ve already read about. They’d taken a couple fakes and ran $70 top-shelf at a Mexican joint down Rosemary. Janis Joplin was still on the clock, so we had to bust into her place intruder-style and retrieve the case we promised to bring. Out the door in five minutes, we began heading up the street toward Cameron, when all the sudden we heard thumpin’ techno emanating from the dude’s ranch we were at last night. Shudders vibrating, all lights on, shadows from the back porch: place looked like a discothèque. We figured there must be a solid 70 to 80 people in there, and quickly concluded why the hell not. We followed the shadow around back until it winds to the patio where a lonesome figure was sipping on blush, pretending to conduct a symphony like they do in cartoons.
Dude:“Oh wha——hey?”
Us: “Hey. We were over here last night.”
Dude: “Go on.”
Us: “Sounds like you’re having a crazy Party in there!”
Dude: “Nope. Just me.”
(pause)
Dude: “You wanna come in and drink that beer?”
As soon I stepped inside, I realized how truly annihilated I was last night; I didn’t remember anything from this house. His entire living room was a makeshift studio, complete with soundboards, synths, and venue-sized speakers. His only piece of furniture, in the traditional sense, was a chewed-up futon opposite his DVD library of Star Wars and porn. And then there were the Legos, enough to build the entire place over again. If this were preschool, he’d be the coolest kid on the block. Though the neighborhood moms may be hesitant to let their prides and joys near a man with such a mammoth collection of cooter vids. This place was half playground, half Buffalo Bill.
He started rummaging around, flipping switches back and forth, messing with knobs, and creating the disharmonic sounds you get plugging guitars into amps. After about eight minutes of distortion and white noise, he turned to a speechless, regretful us.
“Yeah, man, I love me that real gritty ass shit. Word.”
He then began to regale us with his life-story. I felt like there were some holes here and there, and surely some details had been obscured by chronic chemical abuse, but he was such an earnest narrator, I didn’t have the heart to implement reason. Apparently he works for IT, though he hates computers and the internet. The only site he uses is MySpace, to get his DJ set off the ground. He’s never seen a fortune, yet he’s perfectly content with his situation:
“I never had a ‘nice car’…or whatever that is. I always told myself I’d rather just kick it here with my soundboards. Make my music, ya know. Some of these fuckin’ things cost just as much anyway. Like check this out---{holds up an orange mixboard}---look how many motherfuckin’ buttons this thing has! Whaaaaat?? {spins them back and forth rapidly} Hey! Whatcha doin. Whatcha DOIN.”
It was at this point we learned he could not read music, and instead just “felt” his way through his grooves. Trying to impose an abrupt death chair to this conversation, Neal Cassady sifted through his record collection and nearly jumped when he discovered Gustav Holst’s The Planets shoved deep in the mix. Having such an icon of modern classical on vinyl padded this guy’s cred ten-fold in our books, although it didn’t cushion us for what came next:
“Oh yeah, that. Well hey, if you like that…you’ll love this. The other week I was on a…downloading binge. Music, porno, whatever. Heh, heh. Anyway, my Winamp started up…while I was in the middle of this one video…and it just like…started recording, man. The audio and all. But I was like...far out! This kinda works. So I went back…after I finished the video…and dropped a phat beat to it. Duhrhreennrrhee. [sic] Check it out. It’s…one of my best.”
What ensued was one of the strangest musical journeys of my life. Essentially, he had looped the sounds from the porno—chicks moaning, guys shouting “Yeah, baby, yeah!”, various ‘Haarderr!’s, etc.—to an original composition of ambient electronica. His back was turned away from us the entire time, dancing about over his laptop, gleefully pointing out, “Wait! This is the best part,” about six times. Finally the lead vocalist came to an earthshaking climax, to which he accompanied a crescendo of noise and space rock. Neal quietly inched The Planets back into the shelf.
This is, of course, when Janis Joplin called me to say she’s gotten off work. I tried to step outside to avoid the soundtrack of Boogie Nights from filtering into our conversation, but one of the women starts squealing in ecstasy before I could get to the door, and I had to explain that we…hadn’t made it to the Party quite yet.
So congratulations to Noise-Porn Bro, honorary Bolshevik of the week. He lives life the way he wants and couldn’t care less what society thinks about it. He also loves him that gritty ass shit.
- Caesar
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in…ya know…us.”
~William Shakespeare
The weekend following my foray into Sparks and its successive decadence, I was invited to a Drinking Olympics by my friend Janis Joplin. Earlier that week, the world found out Obama had lost his bid and Chicago would not be hosting the 2016 Winter Games. But come 9:45 Friday night, with five plastic barrels full of beer and a fridge stocked with all kinds of hangover, I discovered the games were in fact still being held on American soil.
As I walk in, I am immediately ostracized because I’m the only one who does not look like a circus act. I quickly learn this is a costume Party. As I keenly shake hands with Aladdin, Cowboy Woody, and other staples from my childhood, I’m told to stick my hand in a Yankees cap and pick my team. I drew a thin piece of pink cardstock from the Sorting Hat and found my way onto ‘It Ain’t Pretty Being Easy’. No, it is not.
But apparently it’s easy being pretty good at drinking games. We were near quadrupling the other teams by the end of the fourth round. Also, they were awarding bonus points at the end of the night for collecting can tabs from every beer we finished and for every shot we took in the kitchen. I took it upon myself to drink for the cause and make my way to the kitchen. There I met a girl who insisted I call her ‘Tuesday’. Though I gave her a hard time for it then, let me disclose my public support for her now: this is a great tactic to having people remember your name at a Party. Save for your name being something like Barack, it is not on the person you meet to remember your name; it is on you to get them to remember. My memory is limited and on-the-outs as it is; it’s imperative that I save it for the important stuff, like IMDB user ratings and lyrics to 90’s one-hit wonders.
Janis Joplin arrived after getting off sentence (or as the bourgeoisie call it, work) and we were soon making a duck out the door, on to the next Party. A farewell was bid to the guy in the BoSox shirt who offered me “cheap but decent” acid and medicinal reefer from California. I dig in my pockets and pull out five silver tabs to hand to the scorekeeper, asking him if it’s a good idea to walk down the street with a sixth in hand. He said no, I cracked it in front of him, tore off the tab, and rejoined my friends. Janis’s friends Jim Morrison and Neal Cassady were visiting from Georgia for the weekend, and being a good hostess, she was determined to show them a good time. But after they barged in the door, raising a case above their heads in a Superman shirt (not, mind you, for the theme), I came to realize they were determined to make it a good time wherever they were. I can fuck with that.
The next pit-stop we make is a rock-climbing Party. Now, as I’ve had to several times since, let me clarify: this was a Party for rock-climbers. They were not climbing rocks that night. Kinda the inverse of the Middle School/Middle School-Themed Party. But enough semantics, more shame. This one was a little more chaotic in the bass-thudding, beer pong-playing sense, and right as I walk in, I spotted my first middle-school girlfriend surrounded by a pride of climberbros. Behind her laid a tub full of Everclear lemonade. I get like a deer near a salt-lick. Shuffling past Jimmy Eat World stockholders and fitted North Faces, I aggressively navigated the throngs. This was a treasure hunt and ex- marked the spot.
After a couple Solo-fuls of Everclear with a margarita chaser, Janis Joplin stole me aside and said Neal Cassady had gone home with a 37-year-old. “Score?” It was a dude, who lived across the street. Apparently Neal and Jim had scorched him so thoroughly in pong, his only way to rationalize the loss was to invite them back for a congratulatory bowlpack. We walked through the open front door to find them chiefing on a stool-high stack of vinyls. All I could gather—given the rollercoaster my sense of balance was riding—was a serial cough and a strained larynx.
“Sup…duuuudes…”
Darkness.
I wake up to a wall full of faces I don’t know. Shit. I’ve gotta stop doing this. My body feels like all moisture has been hand-wrung from it and my stomach feels like it’s been roundhoused by a bull. I reach into my pocket and pull out 5 beer tabs. What the fuck did I give him then?? My ONE Card is gone. I come downstairs to Neal Cassady and Jim Morrison opening the freezer and finding an open bottle of Everclear lemonade which has solidified into a slushie. What. Happened. I haven’t felt this confused since last weekend.
After spending a day in recovery, I met up with Neal and Jim on Franklin to head down to the Party Castro’s for the bash you’ve already read about. They’d taken a couple fakes and ran $70 top-shelf at a Mexican joint down Rosemary. Janis Joplin was still on the clock, so we had to bust into her place intruder-style and retrieve the case we promised to bring. Out the door in five minutes, we began heading up the street toward Cameron, when all the sudden we heard thumpin’ techno emanating from the dude’s ranch we were at last night. Shudders vibrating, all lights on, shadows from the back porch: place looked like a discothèque. We figured there must be a solid 70 to 80 people in there, and quickly concluded why the hell not. We followed the shadow around back until it winds to the patio where a lonesome figure was sipping on blush, pretending to conduct a symphony like they do in cartoons.
Dude:“Oh wha——hey?”
Us: “Hey. We were over here last night.”
Dude: “Go on.”
Us: “Sounds like you’re having a crazy Party in there!”
Dude: “Nope. Just me.”
(pause)
Dude: “You wanna come in and drink that beer?”
As soon I stepped inside, I realized how truly annihilated I was last night; I didn’t remember anything from this house. His entire living room was a makeshift studio, complete with soundboards, synths, and venue-sized speakers. His only piece of furniture, in the traditional sense, was a chewed-up futon opposite his DVD library of Star Wars and porn. And then there were the Legos, enough to build the entire place over again. If this were preschool, he’d be the coolest kid on the block. Though the neighborhood moms may be hesitant to let their prides and joys near a man with such a mammoth collection of cooter vids. This place was half playground, half Buffalo Bill.
He started rummaging around, flipping switches back and forth, messing with knobs, and creating the disharmonic sounds you get plugging guitars into amps. After about eight minutes of distortion and white noise, he turned to a speechless, regretful us.
“Yeah, man, I love me that real gritty ass shit. Word.”
He then began to regale us with his life-story. I felt like there were some holes here and there, and surely some details had been obscured by chronic chemical abuse, but he was such an earnest narrator, I didn’t have the heart to implement reason. Apparently he works for IT, though he hates computers and the internet. The only site he uses is MySpace, to get his DJ set off the ground. He’s never seen a fortune, yet he’s perfectly content with his situation:
“I never had a ‘nice car’…or whatever that is. I always told myself I’d rather just kick it here with my soundboards. Make my music, ya know. Some of these fuckin’ things cost just as much anyway. Like check this out---{holds up an orange mixboard}---look how many motherfuckin’ buttons this thing has! Whaaaaat?? {spins them back and forth rapidly} Hey! Whatcha doin. Whatcha DOIN.”
It was at this point we learned he could not read music, and instead just “felt” his way through his grooves. Trying to impose an abrupt death chair to this conversation, Neal Cassady sifted through his record collection and nearly jumped when he discovered Gustav Holst’s The Planets shoved deep in the mix. Having such an icon of modern classical on vinyl padded this guy’s cred ten-fold in our books, although it didn’t cushion us for what came next:
“Oh yeah, that. Well hey, if you like that…you’ll love this. The other week I was on a…downloading binge. Music, porno, whatever. Heh, heh. Anyway, my Winamp started up…while I was in the middle of this one video…and it just like…started recording, man. The audio and all. But I was like...far out! This kinda works. So I went back…after I finished the video…and dropped a phat beat to it. Duhrhreennrrhee. [sic] Check it out. It’s…one of my best.”
What ensued was one of the strangest musical journeys of my life. Essentially, he had looped the sounds from the porno—chicks moaning, guys shouting “Yeah, baby, yeah!”, various ‘Haarderr!’s, etc.—to an original composition of ambient electronica. His back was turned away from us the entire time, dancing about over his laptop, gleefully pointing out, “Wait! This is the best part,” about six times. Finally the lead vocalist came to an earthshaking climax, to which he accompanied a crescendo of noise and space rock. Neal quietly inched The Planets back into the shelf.
This is, of course, when Janis Joplin called me to say she’s gotten off work. I tried to step outside to avoid the soundtrack of Boogie Nights from filtering into our conversation, but one of the women starts squealing in ecstasy before I could get to the door, and I had to explain that we…hadn’t made it to the Party quite yet.
So congratulations to Noise-Porn Bro, honorary Bolshevik of the week. He lives life the way he wants and couldn’t care less what society thinks about it. He also loves him that gritty ass shit.
- Caesar
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A REFUTATION, AND SOME MUSINGS
But not in that order. Musings are easier because they require less coherence, and coherence, I’m finding, is not a side effect of vicodin.
The main thing that separates, in my mind, a Party Bolshevik from a party proletariat is self-awareness. Be it a blessing or a curse—or as is always the case with binary definitions in the real world, both—it is our responsibility take a good hard look at the practice of partying because we are fairly uniquely well situated to do so. I see here a rare confluence of intellect, affability, the willingness to write recreationally and the inexorable need to party; it seems irresponsible to let this go to waste.
Now I’m fully aware that this entire endeavor is couple of dudes and chicks writing some bullshit so that we and maybe 8 other people can read it. And I’m also fully aware that it’s far easier to make grandiose plans than to even begin to follow through with them. But part of Bolshevism, and in fact the most important part, is that the REAL Bolsheviks were one of hundreds or thousands of “revolutionary circles” in Russia and Europe, all of whom spent all their time talking bullshit about how they were gonna overthrow the government and institute a worker’s paradise—BUT THE BOLSHEVIKS DID WORK, SON.
So call me Old Major if you like, but what the fuck else are any of y’all doing with your time? It is just a fact that writing is the best thing you can do to improve yourself intellectually and make yourself more marketable for any profession not involving steroids, and if writing about bullshit is the impetus I need to write anything, then so be it.
But so what I’m calling for is an increased dedication in the form of more essays (yeah let’s call them essays) but maybe even more importantly, an improved discourse about what we write. As it is, it seems like we’re talking past each other, and that needs to change if we’re to improve. We all have things to learn from each other stylistically, grammatically and thematically, and I assume we’re sufficiently adult to give and receive criticism rationally.
On a related note, I’d like to propose a rather large project, one that could give our outfit a more solid framework for how we do business: I’d like to define “party” by deconstructing the elements which make it up. By isolating the integral aspects of the Party, my hope is that we can purify our methods and thus move closer to the Party in its ideal form.
I anticipate an objection to this plan because its one I would have made as recently as this summer—that by analyzing “fun” we make it impossible to truly enjoy ourselves earnestly, Beyond [to bastardize Nietzsche] Irony and Post-Irony. That’s terribly naïve. We are all self-conscious, and to pretend that we can be selectively self-conscious is a childish conceit.
Vicodin’s wearing off so I’m done. Look for a refutation in the near future—here’s a hint it’s about Keystone Light.
-Old Major
The main thing that separates, in my mind, a Party Bolshevik from a party proletariat is self-awareness. Be it a blessing or a curse—or as is always the case with binary definitions in the real world, both—it is our responsibility take a good hard look at the practice of partying because we are fairly uniquely well situated to do so. I see here a rare confluence of intellect, affability, the willingness to write recreationally and the inexorable need to party; it seems irresponsible to let this go to waste.
Now I’m fully aware that this entire endeavor is couple of dudes and chicks writing some bullshit so that we and maybe 8 other people can read it. And I’m also fully aware that it’s far easier to make grandiose plans than to even begin to follow through with them. But part of Bolshevism, and in fact the most important part, is that the REAL Bolsheviks were one of hundreds or thousands of “revolutionary circles” in Russia and Europe, all of whom spent all their time talking bullshit about how they were gonna overthrow the government and institute a worker’s paradise—BUT THE BOLSHEVIKS DID WORK, SON.
So call me Old Major if you like, but what the fuck else are any of y’all doing with your time? It is just a fact that writing is the best thing you can do to improve yourself intellectually and make yourself more marketable for any profession not involving steroids, and if writing about bullshit is the impetus I need to write anything, then so be it.
But so what I’m calling for is an increased dedication in the form of more essays (yeah let’s call them essays) but maybe even more importantly, an improved discourse about what we write. As it is, it seems like we’re talking past each other, and that needs to change if we’re to improve. We all have things to learn from each other stylistically, grammatically and thematically, and I assume we’re sufficiently adult to give and receive criticism rationally.
On a related note, I’d like to propose a rather large project, one that could give our outfit a more solid framework for how we do business: I’d like to define “party” by deconstructing the elements which make it up. By isolating the integral aspects of the Party, my hope is that we can purify our methods and thus move closer to the Party in its ideal form.
I anticipate an objection to this plan because its one I would have made as recently as this summer—that by analyzing “fun” we make it impossible to truly enjoy ourselves earnestly, Beyond [to bastardize Nietzsche] Irony and Post-Irony. That’s terribly naïve. We are all self-conscious, and to pretend that we can be selectively self-conscious is a childish conceit.
Vicodin’s wearing off so I’m done. Look for a refutation in the near future—here’s a hint it’s about Keystone Light.
-Old Major
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