I’m going to Denver tomorrow and can’t think about politics for another God damned second. So…how about drugs and sex!

Lohan shows some coke bloat while chilling w Marky Ramone at Beatrice. And yes I do think these two hanging together is cool…

Under a sub-head of “Herogram,” Gawker has a funny vignette up today about a Euro who goes to Beatrice Inn, the famed West Village dive club, every night and uses corny lines (”You bad girl”-style) and offers coke—but doesn’t sniff it—to get poon:

The thirty-something “Bea rat”—a real-estate investor who claims an interest in screenwriting —goes in, usually alone, almost every single night. He approaches a woman and says, “I’m going to find you later because you look like the kind of girl who wants to do very bad things.” If you’re French, he calls you “Frenchy.” If a girl’s Italian, he calls her “Siciliana.”

More importantly, the seduction is accompanied by the promise of cocaine, back at our Casanova’s apartment a few blocks away…

Most cunning of all: the cap-wearing Euro doesn’t actually share the cocaine: that way the calculating seducer remains sober and ready to take advantage of any opportunity. Too creepy? “Well, do you do coke?” a Beatrice bartender asked. “If you do coke, he’s a cool guy.”

Bro, you suck! Why waste money on blow? You’re so…Euro!!! All you need to get laid at Beatrice is a wang—though it helps to have the ability to sing along when they play R Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” while grinding on a female. Here’s the lyrics, and I’ll highlight key phrases. Attn all Euros, start memorizing so you can stop that $50 per gram non-habit:

Now, usually, I don’t do this but uh….
Go head’ on and break ‘em off wit a lil’ preview of
the remix….

Now I’m not trynna be rude
But hey pretty girl I’m feelin’ you
The way you do the things ya do
Reminds me of my Lexus coupe
That’s why I’m all up in ya grill
Trynna get you to a hotel
You must be a football coach
The way you got me playin’ da field

Hook:

So baby gimme dat “Toot toot”
And lemme gi’ ya that “Beep beep”
Runnin’ her hands through my fro’
Bouncin’ on twenty fo’s
While they sayin’ on the radio

Chorus:

It’s the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh out the kitchen
Mama rollin’ that body
Got ev’ry man in here wishin’
Sippin’ on coke and rum (rum)
I’m like so what I’m drunk (drunk)
It’s the freakin’ weekend
Baby I’m about to have me some fun (fun)

Bounce (10X)
C’mon

Now it’s like “Murda She Wrote”
Once I get cha out them clothes
Privacy is on the do’
But still they can hear ya screamin’ mo’
Girl I’m feelin’ whatchu feelin’
No more hopin’ and wishin’
I’m about to take my key ‘n’
Stick it in da ignition

Repeat Hook

Repeat Chorus

Crystal poppin’
In the stretch Navigata
We got food everywhere
As if the party was catered
We’ve got
Fellas to my left (left)
Hunnies on my right (right)
We bring ‘em both togetha
We got drinkin’ all night
Then afta the show
It’s the afta party
And afta the party
It’s the hotel lobby
Yeah, around about four
You gotta clear the lobby
Then take it to ya room and
Freak somebody

Can I get a “Toot toot”
Can I get a “Beep beep”
Runnin’ her hands through my fro’
Bouncin’ on twenty fo’s
While they sayin’ on the radio

Repeat Chorus(2 times)

Outro:

Girl we off in this Jeep
Foggin’ windows up
Blastin’ the radio
In the back of my truck
Bouncin’ up and down
Strokin’ round and round
To the remix
We jus’ thuggin’ it out

TAGS: Cocaine, Denver, Drugs, drunk, Politics, Review

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This is music. “I ain’t no god damned son of a bitch,” says Matt Caplicki, who took this cellphone photo of Yo La and friends doing the Misfits’ “Where Eagles Dare.”

Yo La Tengo are the rare live band that, on any given day, can totally suck or be better than Zeppelin at the Garden 75. Yesterday, at the last free show ever at McCarren Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the trio made Page, Plant, and co look like pansies.

Playing a sun-soaked late afternoon set before 6000 nostalgic drunkards, YLT meandered through a 2-hour career spanning set, with styles careening across sonic oceans. In what was undoubtedly the best set any band ever played at this venue, the band seamlessly moved from free jazz to hardcore, ambient post-rock to solo-ed out fuzz jams, minimalist maraca and organ soul to ye olde style rock n roll. By the time they welcomed the opening band onstage for a cover of the Misfits’ “Where Eagles Dare,” my ears had heard more variety than a Kim’s Video clerk’s iPod shuffle. And YLT’s just one band—with only three people! Mind numbing. 

Did I mention YLT are the masters of site specific setlist-free shows? Example: at about 6:40pm an August sun blindingly spiked the stage. So Yo La played their song “Summer Sun.” I’ll stop…It was great. The end.

RIP pool shows (though I must admit I only attended one before this—so “best show ever” would be hyperbolic had everyone I spoke to not said so). Mayor Bloomberg has announced plans to return the Bob Moses-built pool to it’s former self (a swimming pool), at a cost of a lot of millions of tax dollars. But smart money says the city will have no money come next year. Expect the pool to rock again next summer…  

TAGS: Brooklyn, drunk, free, iPod, Music, Video, williamsburg

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Breaking the law at Beatrice

Did you know you can only legally dance at 181 places in New York City? Yup, the lamest and most violated law ever (besides pot’s illegal status) may finally end. Mayor Bloomberg’s office is moving to reverse the 1926 Cabaret Law that requires any venue with “more than three people dancing” to have a permit, called a cabaret license, of which there are less than 200.

In a city with 10,000 bars and 8 million insane horn-dogs, dancing’s illegality always made zero sense. Let’s all get drunk at 3am and…stand around staring at each other or talking about nothing. Drunken convos are so overrated. Of course, it was only after Rudy G’s “Quality of Life” campaign that the Cabaret Law started being enforced.

Cheers to Bloomberg! The end of the Cabaret Law would offer many more DJ gigs and cut down your pointless drunk conversations by at least 60%. Soon, I may never have to hear about the company or magazine or “eco-friendly sustainable co-op” you’re (not) starting—I’ll be able to just dance away.

Via NYDN:

“We either want to eliminate the license or establish a different license so that it would be less onerous for people to engage in dancing,” said a source close to the mayor.

The 82-year-old license “as it exists doesn’t offer a reasonable opportunity for New Yorkers to dance at clubs,” the City Hall source said.

As the 1926 law stands, three or more people can’t dance unless a bar or restaurant has a cabaret license - even if music and liquor are allowed.

There are 181 licensed cabarets in New York, according to Consumer Affairs, and most are limited to techno-thumping clubs in Manhattan.

But dancers have long complained the license process squeezes out small venues that might offer swing and salsa and even sued the city last year to reverse its Prohibition-era ban on social dancing.

 

TAGS: dog, drunk, Manhattan, Music, New York, New York City, NSA

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Getty

I love “human interest” stories. Of course, every British paper picked this wire story up. Nothing like a history of Iraqi booze habits to enliven a slow UK news week. Reuters:

Alcohol is openly for sale once more in Baghdad. All over the Iraqi capital, drink stores, which closed their doors in early 2006 when sectarian strife was raging, have slowly begun to reopen. Two years ago, al-Qa’ida militants were burning down liquor stores and shooting their owners. Now around Saadoun Street, in the centre of the city, at least 50 stores are advertising that they have alcohol for sale.

The fear of being seen drinking in public is also subsiding. Young men openly drink beer in some, if not all, streets. A favourite spot where drinkers traditionally gathered is al-Jadriya bridge, which has fine views up and down the Tigris river. Two years ago even serious drunks decided that boozing on the bridge was too dangerous. But in the past three months they have returned, a sign that militant gunmen no longer decide what people in Baghdad do at night. “I drink seven or eight cans of beer a day and a bottle of whiskey on Thursday evenings,” said Abu Ahmed, a former military intelligence officer who now makes a living driving a taxi.

Iraq was one of the most secular of Arab countries until the early 1990s. Restaurants all served alcohol and there was a plentiful supply of nightclubs. None of the prohibition on alcohol seen in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait held sway. In Basra, in the late 1970s, the main local complaint was that Kuwaitis were pouring across the border and drinking the city dry. In Baghdad it was possible to sit in one of the restaurants off Abu Nawas Street on the bank of the Tigris River eating fish grilled over an open fire and drinking beer and arak (a spirit made from dates and flavoured with aniseed).

(more…)

TAGS: attack, beer, drunk, free, Iraq, Islam, Muslim, Slam, Trade, war

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Just in time for the July 4 weekend, the LA Times reported that the Justice Department is thinking about letting the FBI open investigations on people it suspects might be terrorists without, you know, evidence or any suspicion of wrongdoing. Instead, the FBI would investigate anyone, including Americans, who fit a terrorist “profile.” On top of that, the rules would allow for FBI agents to consider race and ethnicity when trying to sort out who exactly is a terrorist. That’s bad news for Arabs and Muslims, not to mention privacy and Freedom. There’s this gem from the LA Times story (italics mine):

Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

For all practical purposes, if you’re Arab, Muslim, or generally some shade of brown, you’re now guilty until proven innocent.

(more…)

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The scene in Copley Sq: fans and the racist cops who hate them, arresting a doo-rag-men. Pics by Geoff Kenyon.

In Europe they’re called hooligans, sometimes thugs. Americans call them delinquents, punks. In Boston, Mayor Menino calls them “knuckleheads.” Others use the anti-Irish Sully or Mick. But the most unique word to describe Boston’s insane fans is “Yahoo.” As in, “You see that fahkin’ Yahoo on TV throw a street sign through that window?”

For the past week, I’ve been among the Yahoos in Boston and various towns along Massachuesetts’ North Shore and Merrimack Valley, and in southern New Hampshire. This area truly is Celtic Nation, and it’s where I grew up. Remember, the Pats play 30 miles south of Boston, in Foxboro, and the C’s above North Station. Admittedly, I think I am a Yahoo. 

The latest episode of Yahoo-ery started Tuesday night with KG’s post-game interview. The Celtics had just won their first NBA victory in 22 years, a record 17th for the franchise. Still, it was the first ring for C’s superstars’ Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett. Green and white confetti rained down as the Big Three got emo on the parquet.  KG—tears in his eyes, scowling, yelping, hat pulled lowed—suddenly thanked “Peanut” on network TV. 

Of course, no one knew who Peanut was. But every Yahoo in Boston has a friend nicknamed a Peanut. And with this, the streets began to fill with Yahoos, myself included, our collective inhebriated brains thinking, “Yeah Peanut!!! This one’s for you!!! Peanut…ooowwwoooowaaaawaa!!”

I was by Northeastern University—Yahoo Central—my alma matter (ok, I went there for one year), bottle of tequila in hand, a “Wooooo” on my tongue, celebrating on St Stevens St. There I spotted two Yahoos in wife-beaters aptly beating up a mailbox. One had sweet ink: a tribal armband enmeshed with a Red Sox “B.” Around the corner, in front of Our House (a bar famous for selling $3 32 oz. beers called Bruebakers aka “‘Roid Rage-ade”): ten Yahoos hugging while pogoing and yelling “Boston, Boston!”

Inside the bar, TVs were tuned to live footage of fans rioting downtown—dancing around mini-fires, running into trees, climbing trees, kissing trees, facing off with cops. I soon found myself fighting the bouncer at Our House for absolutely no reason. Kicked out, I put on another shirt and snuck back in. “Lollipop” was playing; chubby fake id chicks dancing; ‘roid bros started fighting. Damn, it felt good to be a Yahoo…

(more…)

TAGS: beer, Boston, Celtics, drunk, idiot, Kanye West, Kevin Garnett, kids, New Hampshire, NSA, Racial Unity, Racism, Red Sox, Sports, war

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At The Beauty Bar in Los Angeles Thursday night:

Watch the movie, get a little drunk. Vice is giving out free stuff. Read about the movie here.

This critically acclaimed film (produced by Spike Jones) will be screened at Beauty Bar in Hollywood at 9pm sharp.  After the film screening, the True Metal Night will supply the ultimate soundtrack for your listening pleasure.

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I watched the clip, I think he was drunk.

UPDATE: HE’S DRUNK AGAIN ON MSNBC!

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The future has landed

Chicago rapper Kayne West came to New York this week, playing MSG (left) and a private party (right).

America’s biggest rapper arrived in America’s biggest city this week to make the case that he’s fully transcended rap to become the Nu Prince. New York is the place to gauge where an artist is on the pop culture index, and Kanye West’s week in New York (as detailed below) proved he’s definately pop’s coolest act, if not its biggest and best.

On Tuesday Kanye played Madison Square Garden—a show that sold out (20,000 tix) in 7 minutes. The Times’ chief pop critic Jon Parles gave the MSG show a rave review, headlined, “Ego-Fueled Hip-Hop Sci-Fi Space Odyssey”:

Mr. West’s set was the most daring arena spectacle hip-hop has yet produced, and in some ways the best, even as it jettisoned standard hip-hop expectations. It is a show of stamina and lonely self-determination that takes on its own obsessive momentum, like a Samuel Beckett scene staged by Robert Wilson and George Lucas.

After MSG, Jay-Z hosted Kanye’s after party at 1Oak, a new club on W 17th that feels like an orgy/80s Armani ad shoot on a Spanish island but with everything bathed in pink light. In the bldg: Jay-Z, Diddy, Marbury, and Russell Simmons.

Fab and Kanye at 1Oak…

I caught Kanye Wednesday night at a G-Shock/Timex sponsored event underneath the Queensbourgh Bridge. The free show, attended by 1500-2000, was at Guastavino’s, a 25,000 sq ft beaux-arts room with roman columns. What a space! The ceiling is a web of white-tiled vaulted-arches, like a meta-version of the ceiling at the Oyster Bar beneath Grand Central, all connected to the bridge’s steel girders. The stage was placed underneath the bridge’s granite arch, in front of a glass wall looking across the river to Queens’ refracted orange glow.

The crowd was the usual media, fashion, PR, downtown mish-mash. All perfectly dressed, of course. The only Wall St/suit dude there was my neighbor Sean, an accountant. DJ Cassidy, Puffy’s personal DJ, was spinning the warm-up, doing the usual Jay-Z verses into old school then back to Biggie or Snoop/Dre. The bar was open top shelf—Knob Creek, Patron, etc. The food: everything from lamb chops to cupcakes. By about 10pm the whole crowd was drunk and dancing—a rarity at a corporate sponsored after-work event, though I suppose Kanye-anticipation was to blame.

When the lights finally went down, keyboard strains rang out. Soon a retro-future light show began, neon green and fluorescent blue. Then a live band started jamming the second song off Graduation. But I couldn’t see Kanye, so I moved to about 10-ft from the stage. Oh, there he was, sitting in an egg-shaped chair in white jeans, an alligator skin vest, and 80s shades with a pink glow-light across the top. He stayed in the chair for the next few songs. “Wow, next level arrogance,” a girl from T Magazine said. Kanye had two Prince-esque back-up singers, a guy and girl, but, like the rest the backing band, they were kept in the dark. Only Kanye was light-worthy.

Kanye’s in-chair performance lacked energy until a sextet of topless space chicks came on stage. “Just like The Box,” someone said, referring to a high-end downtown sex club, adding, “He didn’t have the titty dancers last night at MSG.” This mesmerizing, site-specific titty show saved the first half of Kanye’s set.

By song six Kanye was out of the chair and forgetting lyrics. But he made up for it by breaking into a freestyle—”I wrote this shit at 8 am this morning, I thunk it!”— about wanting to making babies with a Swedish girl and how he was number 1 and met girl who was a 10, and that makes 11, but her friend was a 7 so he sent her to 7-11 to buy condoms and soda. That verse happened, yes indeed…

By this point the whole crowd was dancing. He closed with all the hits (Golddigger, Flashing Lights, “Wait til I get my money right…”, the Daft Punk Jam): bouncing across the stage, jumping up and down, slapping his face with a white-gloved hand, dripping sweat, wooing the crowd with finger points—arms in the air—even crying during one emotional verse. This was a man at his peak. Selling out MSG then getting 2000 of New York’s most uptight, seen-it-all taste makers dancing and waving their hands in ecstasy. Well done.

Can you see the breasts? My finger…

PAGE 6 reports Kanye was payed $1million for the show, though I heard from sources the number was $300,000 and the overall event cost was $1 million. But this is just part of an overall G-Shock/Kayne deal that’s probably worth at least $2 million:

May 16, 2008 — KANYE West made a quick $1 million helping Casio promote its G-Shock watch at Guastavino’s Wednesday night. After keeping such guests as Lindsay Price, Caridee English and Spike Lee waiting for an hour and a half, West performed with four topless dancers, their faces hidden behind space helmets. Earlier, the swollen-headed rapper complained about the green room, which was last occupied by designer John Galliano when he threw a Dior show in the restaurant under the 59th Street Bridge. West sniffed, “It smells like a dirty French boudoir.”

I don’t know, maybe in June when Kanye returns to play before 80,000 at Giants Stadium he’ll up the ante again, but Kanye’s already proved this week he’s pop music’s prince in an egg shaped throne. Now, the real Prince needs to do a week in New York on par with what Kayne just pulled off. Maybe start with a 5-night stand at The Box, then a one off at MSG or something. Otherwise the Purple One best admit Kayne’s got him beat on the ego/pop front.

One last look: Weds show (left) and Tues show (right)…

TAGS: Babies, drunk, free, HBO, Jay, Kanye West, Music, New York, Review, spin, The Box, war

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(Kanye in egg, flanked by space sluts)

This isn’t a show review, I’m just professing my love for this city.

At 9:45 pm last night I was bummed because I was stuck downtown for work, at some shitty show I didn’t need to be at but had to meet with a promoter for, my allergies were on fire, I was starving, I had homework to do, and I was going to miss seeing Negative Approach play out in Brooklyn.

At 9:55 pm I got a text from Ray to come to a party, so I hopped in a cab and figured I’d make the best of the night, or at least get angry drunk.
At 10:00 pm I got another text telling me to hurry, as Kanye was about to go on.  Kanye?

At 10:05 pm I bullshitted my way  through security, and walked up a red carpet into a giant space under the Queensboro Bridge, built around its arches with huge ceilings that had a Burton-era Batman feel, only filled with 1500 hip dudes and hot chicks with glow necklaces on.  Grabbed two giant bourbons from the open bar, and walked up front to watch Kanye West perform 45 minutes of greatness.  He spent 90% of the time sitting in a futuristic egg chair with his LED shades on, and had a dance team of super hot naked chicks with space helmets on through half the set. My mood had officially been altered, and it wasn’t the bourbon.

I’ve spent time in every major city in the western world, and New York City is the only one where, on a Wednesday night -in a timespan of 20 minutes- you can go from angry- “I’m about to get all Grand Theft Auto on someone”-dude to ecstatic-”I don’t deserve this good of a life”-guy.

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Matt Beaudoin, right, was killed by a drunken Yankee fan for chanting “Yankees suck”…

Last week I posted about a crazed middle-aged female Yankee fan in Nashua running overMatthew Beaudoin, 29, for chanting “Yankees suck,” and this response came in yesterday from Dawn Jordan.

Yes someone died. He was a wonderful person and a very good friend of mine. I have noticed 3 yankees suck stickers on nashua cars in the past week. The stickers have likely been around for months or years and I never noticed it—a great idea in retrospect. At the least owners should perhaps worry about destruction of their vehicle. We have seen the worst case scenario. This crazy woman would have found another reason to vent her rage however I would dicourage anyone I loved from displaying such a sticker.

Certainly, the stickers have been around for years. Chris Wrenn, a Boston area music industry huckster, first made them in 2000. I think Wrenn bought a Red Mustang with the profits? Nonetheless, I’ve seen him in a Red Mustang complete with Yanks Suck sticker…

Now, does Yankees Suck propaganda contribute to violence? Yes. Did it contribute to the death of Matt Beaudoin? I suppose that it did. All the commercialized hype of Yankees/Sox-fan hate, best seen at the bootleg t-shirt stands in Kenmore Square and on River St in the Bronx, helps fan the flames of fights like this (note the Yankee fan being tossed over a railing and the “Boston sucks” chant that follows).

But the Nashua incident might be the first “Yankees suck” death. As one of the first people to market a Yankees Suck shirt, it’s been hard to ignore.

When I first started making those shirts, in 99, I was obsessed with foreign soccer fans. I loved how a team became part of kids’ identities in London, Barcelona, Rio, and beyond. I loved the soccer-fan style—wind-pants, good jeans, parkas, weird sneakers, Brit-pop hair. I watched videos of the mass brawls in the stands and on the streets. I read Bill Buford’s book “Among the Thugs.” So when the Fenway crowd on a cold night in April 99 began chanting ‘Yankees suck’ during a Sox game against….Minnesota, I knew I had to make a shirt.

In the years since, Yanks-Sox fan culture has adopted a hooligan mindset. I certainly did nothing to stop it, and overall I think it’s interesting to see baseball fans so passionate, yet the level of violence tolerated at the Toilet and Fenway has gone too far.

Really, I’m all for bar/street fights, but 300-pound assholes bitch slapping each other in the stands next to 10-yr-olds is lame. Stopping this would be easy: added security during Sox-Yanks games. As for the Nashua death, let’s just hope it was a one-time thing.

TAGS: Boston, drunk, kids, Music, Sports, Video, Yankees, Yankees Suck

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The Warfield is in an awesome neighborhood. By awesome, I mean its littered with crack heads, beggars and crazies. It’s right next to a strip club and right around the corner there’s actually a decent restaurant. We started there, had a few drinks and walked over. The Warfield is also a pretty mellow place… you feel safe of persecution just in case you end up being a total fucking idiot in pursuit of a great time. There’s plenty of bars selling a variety of beers and the room is a generally simple layout with every seat being pretty good. The crowd was a reminder that we are getting old. We’re thirty somethings. I see less and less shaggy hair every time I come out to a show like this. Male pattern baldness is a bitch. Luckily one need not to sport a mane to rock the Clarks Wallabies. So predictable but what fucking ever. Richard Ascroft is our hero, so the least we can do is respect his uniform.

(large tan left footed Wallabie, front and center)

We had general admission tickets. Right on the floor which we’d normally call the pit… if The Verve was a hardcore band. Thankfully those who’d once enjoyed a hardcore show or too were there also, friendly faces from which to sway shoulder to shoulder with. (Those there know the full story - Pete, maybe not.)

My favorite feature of certain adult shows like this one is NO OPENING BAND. Who gives a shit about some dumb emerging band that was pushed onto the bill from some major label crap? I don’t, you don’t and quite frankly, you probably have a job to go to in the morning so you wanna get on with it. I assumed I’d be, as I was, a little drunk and work in the morning sounds like a terrible idea, so I took PTO.

(cell phone cam)

So the band took the stage. The old farts in the crowd were good enough for a Wednesday night. After a bit of screaming throughout the room, Richard Ashcroft mumbled something. He looks younger than us. He’s still skin and bones, wearing a black zip-up shirt, mostly open with no undershirt. He looks happy.

I don’t write set lists down, nor have I ever paid attention to song titles anyway. I’m one of those people that thinks what ever word is said most often in the chorus is probably the song’s title. I try to enjoy the show and that means allowing the entire set to melt together into one giant experience. Maybe Azriel can help me fill in the blanks and make corrections. I’ll try my best, but here’s a short rundown. (Those who want to be surprised in New York should stop reading.)

“This Is Music” - yes and it was awesome.
“History” nope, WTF?
“Sonnet” yep!
“Bittersweet” yep! “It’s a masterpiece” Rick says.
“A New Decade” booze makes my memory fuzzy but I think yes
“The Rolling People” oh yea
“The Drugs Don’t Work” yes, the semi-epic version
“Weeping Willow” yup
“Lucky Man” yes, maybe the best song live
“Velvet Morning” yes, yes, yes.

And a new song, which I can’t describe but was pretty good.

For the ending, The Verve practically did turn into a hardcore band as seen here in this terrible cell phone video clip. I think it’s some of my best camera work to date. Don’t ask me if they were good. At the beginning of the clip you can see a cloud of smoke puff up from the nerdy guy in front of me. He was obviously having a good time. Yes they were really good.

Update: I forgot to say, Ashcroft dedicated a song to Ken Kesey. Nice!

TAGS: beer, Crack, Drugs, drunk, HBO, idiot, Music, new song, New York, Review, Richard Ashcroft, The Verve, Video, war, youtube

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Left, video of fight at Club Mansion Miami. Right, da club…

Yesterday I posted about The Box—how the downtown club was struggling to find a lawyer and that if it shuts down we’ll all be stuck going to Mansion New York. Located in West Chelsea, Mansion, with a capacity of 1800, is NYC’s newest megaclub. It’s actually kind of fun, but there’s a sleazy trance vibe in the main room that makes it decidedly uncool. Mansion’s owners, Opium Group, are a Miami-based syndicate…

Today, The Miami Herald’s lead story is about the South Beach branch of Mansion. Supposedly, 3 college dudes on Spring Break (wooohhh!) were trying to skimp on a bottle charge, so eight bouncers decided to beat them up. Now Miami Police Dept have released a video of the incident. (The video and story are here) :

Club Mansion employees threw punches at, physically restrained and dragged three University of Delaware students during a fracas inside the South Beach club early Friday morning. Eight bouncers were arrested shortly after the brawl on battery charges.

The video begins about 3:45 a.m. Friday, when the three students were escorted into a back room to discuss a disputed tab for a bottle of vodka. When they enter the room, a man is sitting behind a desk.

`It reminds me of a Joe Pesci movie. They take you out back and break your legs if you ask a question about the bill…”

Lesson? As much as people want to hate on The Box, you’d certainly never get mob-style assualted there—unless Diddy is involved.

That whole Guido-”I’ll fuck you up, ugh”-bouncer-vibe is so depressing. I understand that drunk people suck and clubs need to employ security. But really, what does a bunch of steroided jujistu retards bring to a situation? Is it that hard to find responsible, calm doormen? The book below—by a king fu bouncer—makes it sound like such a hard job. In reality, one can diffuse 80% of all potentially violent situations with the following words: “I didn’t serve four years in the US Marine Corps to get shit talked by someone like you.” No one—and I mean not one human—wants to fuck with a crazy ex-Marine. You can also substitute “Marines” with “two tours of Iraq”…

STEROIDS+BOUNCER+JUJITSU=WORST HUMAN

TAGS: ACLU, drunk, Iraq, Movie, New York, The Box, Video, war

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Demons dreaming,
Breathe in, breathe in…
I’m coming back again…
Voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo. 
—Sully Erna, Godsmack, “Voodoo”

They call Jim Morrison “An American Poet.” Dylan’s lyrics are studied at universities. But they forget Sully Erna, singer of Godsmack, a band from Haverhill, MA. Godsmack wrote and recorded the greatest music in world history after Mozart, Kenny G, and Robert Johnson respectively.

(Blake, Auden, Pound, Erna)

So the other day I was sitting around, holding a seance and listening to Godsmack’s s/t debut, thinking about the time I saw them at a bowling alley in Haverhill, MA, back in 1998. Life doesn’t get much better than ‘Smack playing an Alice in Chains cover for an encore.

(Academy Lanes in Haverhill: Home of glow bowling!!!)

Anyway, back to the seance. I’m dripping wax on my pet lizard Goober (pronounced goo-bah) when “Voodoo” comes on. Soon I enter a trance and drift to my bookshelf, unconsciously yanking down Robert Stone’s voodoo novel “Bay of Souls.” I read the whole book while ‘Smack’s s/t LP plays on repeat.

Twelve hours later I awake from my trance covered in Cheetos dust and slobber. All I can think about is voodoo. Where is this leading? Oh, just to a first-hand account of an all night voodoo affair in the Haitian jungle…

It all started in Las Cayes, on the bottom left of the above map…
(more…)

TAGS: BOOKS, drunk, Music, Palms, war

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You know when you see that couple at a party, or at a nice restaurant, or wherever really, and you actually catch yourself saying either out-loud, or in your head, “look at how awesome they are - they are the perfect couple.” ?? So I spotted what I now deem to be the most perfect couple in the history of couples, in Philadelphia, yes of course on South Street.

Where and when did they meet? Probably mid 80’s, probably coked out and drunk, probably at a Van Halen (David Lee Roth) afterparty. Turning this issue into a selfish issue, it makes me wonder where/how I can meet a lady like this. Do I look for a girl who dresses like me? Who has the same hair cut? Who walks in a perfectly cadenced stride along side me? Is that possible to find this caliber of woman who is out there? And single? Well obviously this gentleman in the photo looked, and found, what seems to be a mirror image of himself, but in female form. Does that also bring up the question of narcissism? Whatever, who cares because we can all admit that she is beautiful, he is beautiful, they are as beautiful as it gets.

This certain boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, brother/sister have to be the world’s hottest, sexiest couple I’ve ever seen, hands down. Period. End of question.

TAGS: drunk

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Oh my friends, how we are divided. Were asking “Stones or Beatles?” (a truly stupid question) in a bar full of drunken music geeks, and we’ve got ourselves in a bar fight that is spilling into the streets over nothing and McCain is calmly finishing his drink and strolling out the back door unscathed.

As Jonathan Alter says, Hillary has a math problem. This is going to get nasty and the Clinton’s will resort to more Rovian tactics. Obama will have to respond the same way. So we don’t need to start sounding like a bunch of right wingers attacking either candidate, which we all both love. Meanwhile, we’re letting McCain rest up for the real fight.

We don’t really want to see a well rested Keith Moon pick up the award for Ringo Star, do we?

Notice Brian Wilson’s sniffle problem in the first shot.

The Keith Moon reference is in relation to McCAin (a crazy fucking psycho). In case you didn’t get it.

TAGS: attack, drunk, Hillary, mccain, Music, obama, war, youtube

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Finally! Fucking mad fer it!!! The Verve announce NYC dates. Thank God. Now I don’t have to go to Coachella and stand around the desert with a bunch of 17 yr olds from Riverside on E.

“Yeah I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now…”—’Chard ‘Croft at Live 8.
Bowery Presents
WaMu Theater @ Madison Square Garden
Monday 4/28, Tuesday 4/29
DOORS 7PM / SHOW 8PM ALL AGES
$40 - $50 (ED NOTE: Cheap for an act such as Verve)
(PRICE BY SECTION)
ON SALE 03/01 11:00 AM

“Tell me what you see, was it a dream, was I in it?” On Your Own, A Northern Soul, 1995.

Oh, The Verve. Sweet, sweet Verve. Last time they played NY was in 98 at MSG. But they never quite caught on in the US like they did overseas. And I consider them the most underrated band of last decade and a half. They played their last shows in summer 98 at Slane Castle, Ireland, in front of 80,000. They’ve since reformed, and played Britain in December.

For many in Boston circa 98-02, The Verve were a soundtrack to living: sonic providers of transcendent albums that bridged Zep and Britpop with the Stone Roses, soul, and dream pop.

Driving Boston’s Storrow Drive’s riverside curves while listening to The Verve makes the Dropkick’s scenes in The Departed feel chump-ish and white trashy—and I love those scenes. No true man of taste would enter Boston from Chelsea listening to skinhead rock. Rather a Boston gentlemen, circa 98-02, would be cranking “A Storm in Heaven” and thinking about Mass Art girls (and grads), heading to Mod Night w/ DJ Vin in Allston (where the Verve was never played, oddly, because college kids only got into the Who but whatever, save that for another time…)

In 2001 I spotted Richard Ashcroft at an Oasis gig in London—it was a small show—wearing a fur coat and standing on his balcony chair hyping the crowd like a drunken gull. Mad Richard indeed…

When Ashcroft played a solo show in NYC in 2002, he sent a song out to “Jay Z and Biggie Smalls.” Since, every clip I’ve seen of ‘Chard has been whigger-fied. Brits can get away with being faux blacks easier than Americans (the UK never had that whole domestic slavery thing). And I hope Dick Ashcroft brings a gangster ritmo to NYC in April. Or at least wears an all white outfit like he did at Irving Plaza in 97.

(This poster, on silver paper, was up in my dorm in 1997.)

I guess it’s music day again.

“I feel accused just like you of being born without a silver spoon,” This Is Music, A Northern Soul, 1995.

TAGS: Boston, Coachella, drunk, free, Jay, Jay Z, kids, Music, Oasis, Richard Ashcroft, Soundtrack, The Verve

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FORGET TIMES STORY, LONG PROFILE FROM 2005 PROVES MCCAIN INSANE, LIKE CLINICALLY…

MCCAIN’S PARTY

Why the senator from Arizona believes he can be the next Republican nominee for President.
by Connie Bruck

MAY 30, 2005

Watched closely by a North Vietnamese guard, a dirty, feeble-looking young man on crutches, carrying a slop bucket, inched forward in slow, painful steps, and then, with a huge effort, hoisted the bucket, emptying it into an open, fetid trough. As cameras whirred, the white-haired John McCain, standing a few feet away, regarded this portrayal of his younger self intently. The Arizona senator had come to New Orleans to visit the set of a movie based on his 1999 book, “Faith of My Fathers”—an account of growing up with a father and grandfather who were both famous four-star admirals, and also of his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. It will be shown on the A&E network on Memorial Day, with Shawn Hatosy starring. McCain remarked that the set, based that day in a dilapidated former brewery, looked a lot like the “Hanoi Hilton,” where he spent most of his captivity: the interrogation room with long ropes hanging from the ceiling; the wretched infirmary cubicle; and the model hospital space, which the North Vietnamese displayed to visitors. “I spent about one and a half hours there,” McCain, who was a prisoner for five and a half years, commented dryly.

(more…)

TAGS: attack, beer, Bill Clinton, Colorado, Congress, Crack, Cuba, debate, dog, drama, drunk, election, Fox News, france, free, George Bush, global warming, HBO, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, immigration, India, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Jr., Las Vegas, mccain, model, motivation, Movie, NATO, New Hampshire, New York, NPR, NSA, paris, pennsylvania, political, Politics, polls, putin, Race, Racism, Republicans, russia, Schools, Supreme Court, surf, Texas, Trade, Travel, united nations, war

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Thank God!

V is For Vagina, Burlesque sucks!

Beau is away for Fasnacht (Basel Carnival where he drums for 3 days straight along with about 20,000 other people) thus leaving me all on my lonesome for Valentine’s Day. We aren’t really a ‘hallmark couple’ so truth be told this wasn’t such a big deal. So a friend (whose husband was also drumming his heart out for 3 days) decided to host a V IS FOR VAGINA Valentine’s ladies night dinner. Armed with champagne, a Valentine’s balloon and a penchant for mischief, I went to join 3 other fabulous ladies for a girl’s night.

(more…)

TAGS: Crack, Drugs, drunk, model, Music, New York, war

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