"I'M GONNA WORK ON THIS FRY FOR A WHILE"

10. X are old. Really really old. With Gary Glitter missing in action, Billy Zoom (above) is now the creepiest old man in rock, and he kept sticking his tongue out at girls and making them touch his guitar. They were good, but he was gross. Exene kept yelling at him and acting like he was an asshole.

9. James is coming tonight? And Steve?

8. JENNY GODDAMN JUPITER! Summer must be here, because Silk City was a maelstrom of old faces I hadn't seen in a year or two. All the freaks were out:

Freaks Come Out at Night - Whodini

Incidentally, thank you Christopher for that song--it stopped me dead in my tracks. I hadn't heard it since probably 1990, when I was ten years old. There was a house party across the street from my house--thrown by those strange evil creatures that roamed our neighborhood aimlessly--teenagers--and my conservative Christian parents, terrified that I would be eternally corrupted if I saw whatever was happening over there, ordered me to bed early. Of course, my room was in the front of the house, so I did what any red-blooded American would do and leaned out the window to get as corrupted as possible. This song came on, with its weird robot vocals, and it blew my mind. I really thought the lyrics were, "The Flinstones and the Go-Bots, the Flintstones gotta fly." Awesome, right? I ran down to tell my parents all about the undiscovered country of American pop music and the fantastic narratives it spun--the ancient past of cavemen and the glorious future of superhero sentient robot protectors meeting in the electric present moment of summer heat at the end of the millenium--just to sing and dance--and was commanded to shut my window and go to sleep. But for the next year or two, I wandered around my house making up robot dances, singing, "The Flintstones and the Go-Bots, the Flintstones gotta fly." I wanted to party really really bad with people in leopard-print tunics and robot voices. Two years later, at a family wedding, my fifteen-year-old aunt, who looked exactly like Madonna, dragged me out onto the dance floor to learn how to Vogue, and, well, the rest is history.






And what the hell:

Madonna - 1990 MTV Vogue
Uploaded by bebepanda

7. Free drinks are great, but not when twenty people are trying to get the bartender's attention and he ignores all of them to hand you a beer and very visibly waves away your money. You know what happens next? I can tell you: everyone turns around and looks at you with rather unhappy expressions.

6. My heroes are those people who just say "fuck this heat" and start their own dance party outside.


5. Rob tried to hold a table for us before we got there, but he had to compete with a table full of tube top-wearing bitches from New Jersey. I texted him to tell them that a hungry gay man was on the way and he would claw their eyes out. He texted back, "I did. They said the gay man has to be here to prove it."

4. Conrad spilled the contents of Angela's purse all over the ground beneath our table. That kid is smooth.


3. Sue tried to eat a French fry. One. She couldn't make it work, so she thought about just eating the soft inside of this single French fry and not the fried outer layer. That was difficult, too. Finally, she sucked some ketchup off the tip of one, and that gave her enough determination to work on the fry until it was eaten. I am proud to say that in the end, she ate more than half of the French fry.


2. This morning, JK woke me up to tell me his brother was missing, his phone was shut off, and the cops were calling their parents because they found Conrad's car smashed up at 6th and Tasker. Eventually I found Conrad, safe and sound--a moving truck had plowed into the back of his car early this morning while he was asleep. So, that sucks for him, but let me tell you, there is nothing scarier than waking up and thinking your roommate and BFF is dead, and nothing funnier than seeing him burst into the room in a suit jacket with lightning bolts on the lapel.


1. At 2:30 in the morning, Reyes showed up and started knocking on my window. Ben and I were watching a movie inside. I don't know how to describe how fucked up Reyes was--he was on his little stunt bike, twitching and convulsing and yelling about the Republican club. Then he repeated my address a few times and started guffawing and shouting, "Ferris Beulah's day off, that's what this street is!" until he biked home. I can definitely say that this kid is awesome and I'm glad he's my neighbor.