THAT NIGGER’S DEAD: RICHARD PRYOR 1940-2005

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor the Third, better known to the public at large as Richard Pryor.

Born and raised in an Illinois whorehouse. The self-admitted bard of self-destruction whose notoriety as a drug and wife abuser threatened to overshadow his importance as perhaps the most preeminent comedic voice of the latter 20th century. Movie star and co-scribe of Mel Brooks’ classic western lampoon, BLAZING SADDLES (1974). Survivor of a freebase-induced self-immolation that he later claimed to be a suicide attempt. Poet of the scatological and vulgar. Shatterer of societal and racial taboos simply by virtue of opening his mouth on stage and being the first black comedian to honestly state what was on his mind in the, shall we say, “colorful” terms used by us highly rhythmic individuals within our own homes or other places where we could freely express ourselves without fear of hempen reprisal from Mister Charlie. Richard Pryor was all of these things, but above all the guy was simply one of the funniest motherfuckers who ever lived, wrenching laughs out of the most bitterly painful and embarrassing human experiences — mostly his own — and now after a nearly twenty-year battle with multiple sclerosis the man is dead of a heart attack, just a few days after his sixty-fifth birthday. And the amazing thing is that it took this long for him to go; I mean, the guy did drugs like a motherfucker, had at least one heart attack and did his infamous Johnny Storm impersonation, for fuck’s sake!

It’s kind of difficult to explain Pryor’s importance and impact to those who weren’t there to witness his meteoric rise and equally spectacular crashes-and-burns, but I’ll give it a shot.

My parents were both products of cripplingly dysfunctional upbringings in the deep south during the pre-Civil Rights era and both were exposed to the earthy black culture of the time; as a result, both of them developed senses of humor that acted as a form of self defense, only my father’s veered deep into the territory of the sophomoric and ribald, which is clearly where I get it from. During my formative years my dad attempted to bond with me in the same way that his father tried to with him, namely by telling me jokes and stories that were completely inappropriate for my age and level of understanding, but his ham-handed attempts did prepare me for vulgarities that would come.

At about the same time Richard Pryor’s comedy albums were really beginning to take off, specifically THAT NIGGER'S CRAZY (1974).

I had not yet heard any of his work, but whenever he was mentioned in the popular media his name was virtually synonymous with foul language and much of the white media didn’t quite know what to make of him. Black folks, however, did, and his honesty and vitriol were the next logical step up for an audience already used to the profane antics of such “chitlin circuit” comics as Moms Mabley, Skillet & Leroy, Pigmeat Markham and Rudy Ray “Dolemite” Moore. The difference being that Pryor somehow managed to be a lowbrow for a higher-brow audience than those who preceded him.

Having cut his teeth doing what pretty much amounted to family-friendly comedy in the Bill Cosby vein during the mid-1960’s, Pryor quickly realized that he needed to find his own voice and in the midst of getting his shit somewhat together — and coincidentally discovering the toxic muse of hard drugs — he did just that. Honing his talents in some of the aforementioned chitlin circuit dives, Pryor reemerged as a bitter, twisted firebrand who addressed issues of race, sex, drugs and general human stupidity in no uncertain terms, dragging the raw sensibility of American black humor out of the confines of the community and vomiting it up into the lap of mainstream America. And not surprisingly, white America soon embraced him and his humor in the same way that it embraced all the other shit that it would later co-opt, such as corn rows, rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop and tanning (come on, white folks, admit it! You like us so much that you even want to look like us!).

Now I knew none of this in 1977 when I “liberated” my dad’s LP’s of Pryor’s THAT NIGGER'S CRAZY and ...IS IT SOMETHING I SAID? (1975) and I was in no way prepared for what I heard. Yes, the rampant cussing was there, along with some seriously raunchy and blasphemous anecdotes — my first eye-opening exposure to the concept of “pussy farts” and the fact that Dracula can’t handle a crucifix because he’s allergic to bullshit — but what really got me was the way in which this material was conveyed to the audience; it wasn’t the fact that the stories and gags were incredibly foul, nasty and even tasteless, but it was the way in which Pryor spoke to me. He told a story exactly like the men in my family did, with a relaxed flow that takes you along for the ride, and peppered with profanity that you eventually no longer notice because it isn’t used for shock effect; it’s just the way the storyteller talks. And take it from me, black people have cornered the market on outrageous storytelling since day one, what with tales of Anansi and the like, and among other things, if it weren’t for our gift of finding humor in the worst situations possible we, would never have made it through the centuries of slavery.

One of our comedic fortes is the fine art of “lying,” or the spinning of ludicrous yarns for entertainment that succeed or fail depending on the teller’s delivery. The story can contain nuances that will make a listener laugh, but the overall tale must be presented as if you were recounting an actual event. The first such “lie” I ever heard came from one of my grandfather — a self-described “Injun” who was raised steeped in southern black culture — and it went like this:

Boy, I once knowed a man who had a dog whose ass he’d kick if he had a bad day at work. He’d come home, cuss out the dog and throw the motherfucker out the window. Now I used to hang out with the man every day, so I saw all this shit happen. First day, he came home, kicked the dog’s ass and chucked the leg-lifter out the window. Second day, he came home, kicked the dog’s ass, threw the bastard out the window. On the third day, the man came home, kicked the dog’s ass and then the dog looked at him and said “Fuck this!” and threw his own self out the window. Swear to God!

While that story is basically clean, you get the idea of how the form works. Perhaps the most famous example of Pryor’s handling of the lie is this one:

Ever hear the one about the niggers with the big dicks? Well, these two niggers went to see who had the biggest dicks but they wanted to do it in private ‘cause they wasn’t no freaks. So one says to the other “I gots to take a leak.” So they stop on a bridge, take out their dicks, and start pissing. One then says to the other “Man! This water’s cold!” and the other one says “Yeah, and it’s deep too!”

Silly, but funny.

So once I got past Pryor’s lies — the best of which were relayed by his alter-ego, Mudbone — he opened my eyes to issues of race and sexuality that perhaps I shouldn’t have heard at such a tender age, but when I ran into the exact same situations in real life I was armed with a perspective that allowed me to laugh while I felt the skewering of life’s serrated-edged blade. Case in point, regarding interracial romance:

Black women look at you like you killed your mama if they see you with a white woman. (mimics female voice) “Well, you shouldn’t be with a white woman anyway! (Cheers from black women in the audience)
Yeah, why should you be happy?” (Vociferous protests from black women in the audience)

No subject was off limits: his sexual abuse at the hands of a neighborhood child molester (who in later years had the nerve to show up on the set of JO JO DANCER, YOUR LIFE IS CALLING with his nine-year-old son in tow and demand an autograph!), a reenactment of his first heart attack, lusting after his teenage daughter’s school friends, his own love hate/hate relationship with the black community (“I just don’t give a fuck anymore! If someone came up to me and said ‘Fuck black people!’…”I AGREE!!!”), his mistreatment of his many wives and lovers, and his infamous and near-fatal love affair with cocaine were all grist for his tragic jester’s mill.

Those of you who are familiar with Richard’s work understand that he was a cripplingly flawed human being whose own self-hatred was matched only by his utter disgust at the world around him and such a worldview made for a pretty major league asshole, but Pryor’s humor appeals to me not merely for it’s hilarity, but for the fact that it sees the world as an escalating series of horrors that one can only face by laughing at one’s own personal idiocy and moving outward from there. Plain and simple, I understand where his humor is coming from.

For those of you who have never heard any of his albums, I recommend the following:

CRAPS (a very early recording of stuff that would later be polished into classic Pryor bits)
RICHARD PRYOR (the one with him dressed like a stereotypical bone-through-the-nose native)
THAT NIGGER’S CRAZY
...IS IT SOMETHING I SAID? (my personal favorite)
WANTED
RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP

And as for the movies he made and starred in, I say avoid them all; some have their moments — SILVER STREAK’s bit with Gene Wilder in the worst blackface makeup on record is hilarious — but most suck. When it came out, Pryor himself even publicly admitted that STIR CRAZY was a piece of shit, so what does that tell you?

And for the whole story straight from the horse’s mouth, I urge you to read PRYOR CONVICTIONS, Richard’s autobiography with an assist from Todd Gold; no punches are pulled, and when it comes time for me to chronicle my own fucked-up life story I hope that I am capable of doing so with the unflinching candor found in the pages of that book.

I really can’t add any more except to say that I actually wept for the guy when I heard tell of his passing. I didn’t know him, but I feel like I lost a good friend. A very fucked-up friend, but a friend nonetheless.

I loved you very much, Mister Pryor, and I hope that now you can find the peace that eluded and mocked you during your life.

WHAT A SURPRISE: YET ANOTHER LUNATIC AT THE BARBECUE JOINT

While I was enjoying a day off on Tuesday, my boss says that yet another refugee from the rubber room dropped in at the barbecue joint, regaling an unwilling audience with his endless prattle for several hours.

The outpatient in question was described as an imposing black guy who went on at great length about having virtually every job one could imagine, such as being a ranger, a machinist, and — my favorite — an agent for a secret government branch that required his Navy Seal-acquired scuba skills for retrieval of fugitives in some Louisiana bayou, a bayou that purportedly boasts turtles the size of Volkswagons and catfish as long as station wagons.

He then offered to buy my boss a carpet to replace the rubber runner that we put down on the floor when it rains or snows, and busted out a familiar picture book of the Park Slope area to show the bar patrons what the neighborhood looked like back in the days, a book that he claimed he wanted to donate to the restaurant. He showed the tome around and fixed the patrons with an icy stare that sounds reminiscent of the time when Snoopy worked to perfect his darkly-browed vulture imitation. My boss used that as his cue to get up and escape for a smoke break.

At that point the creepy bastard asked our lovely guest bartender, Margaret, to return the book, and she cheerfully said ”Sure!” He then announced to her that he was going to go home and write his name in the book so no one would take it. Margaret again said “Sure,” at which he approached her with Snoopy/vulture effect in full tilt and threateningly snarled “DON’T FUCK WITH ME.” He sauntered out and ran into my boss as he exited, and by all accounts was very polite as he left. That image was shot down when Margaret filled my boss in on being thoroughly creeped out by the exchange.

As a result, should he return, the guy becomes our second patron in nearly a year to be eighty-sixed for outright hostility. The joint only has one rule, clearly posted on the wall, and that rule is “Be nice.” To bad that douchebag wasn’t.

WALKING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND

One nice thing about the bitter cold winters here in the Rotten Apple: you can walk down the street engrossed in reading a magazine, step in dog shit and not care because the turd in question is frozen solid as a rock. You WIN!!!

ON BEING A SCARY BLACK MAN

This afternoon I was out picking up groceries and as I approached my block I noticed a petite blonde casting fearful glances at me from over her shoulder. We both neared my corner and she kept turning to look at me...

Now for those of you who have never met me, I am six feet tall, around 240 pounds and tend to dress in black, and today I was decked out in my black leather trench coat, sun-goggles and a hideous raccoon hat (complete with the unfortunate scavenger's face just above my eyebrows), all quite fitting for the bitter cold and generally cruddy weather. In other words, I resembled a mulatto Frankenstein's monster on a four-week LSD bender.

The paranoid young woman rounded the corner and I was right behind her as we approached my building — where I have resided for eight years — she started to loudly shriek "STOP FOLLOWING ME!!!" She stepped up onto the stoop of my building and frantically fumbled with her keys in a desperate to gain entrance and escape the dusky pursuer who no doubt intended her complete and utter MANDINGO-style violation. Presently she crossed the threshhold and closed the lobby door with a look of relieved smugness. Said smugness changed to abject horror as I walked up, calmy opened the door and walked in.

She backed up the stairway to the second floor, wide-eyed, and again yelled "STOP FOLLOWING ME!!!" I said nothing, and as she warily advanced to the stairway to the third floor I turned to my own doorway, opened the door and said, "LIsten, lady. I live here. Deal with it." She spluttered for a bit, and said, "Oh, my God! I'm so sorry!" as she darted up the stairs like her naughty bits were on fire and she needed to sit in a tub full of water posthaste.

The saddest part of all this is that this has happened to me on several occasions over the years, and I have simply resigned myself to the fact that I am a scary black man to those who don't know me.

My favorite exmple of this is from some nineteen years ago during my college days at SUNY Purchase when a stereotypical Jewish princess from Long Island came up to me one day after class — for the record the class was "Rebels, Freaks and Prophets," taught by the legendary and truly excellent Esther Newton — and said, "you know, Steve, when I first saw you and that huge afro and leather and sunglasses and biker boots, I was terrified of you. Then you opened your mouth to speak in class and all fear flew away from me..." To my credit, I did not curse her out, but I ignored her from that point on.

So the moral of this is: unless some black guy is holding you down on the asphalt with a Ginsu pressed to your throat, please don't assume that we are out to get you. In fact, for all you know the brotha with the Ginsu may be attempting to remove a dangerous parasite, thereby saving your melanin-challenged ass.

WHILE WAITING FOR THE NEW KING KONG...

As Peter (LORD OF THE RINGS) Jackson’s much-anticipated remake of the 1933 KING KONG approaches, Warner Brothers has been kind enough to release a boxed set featuring digitally remastered prints of KING KONG, SON OF KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG on DVD with an obscene amount of extras — including commentary on KONG and JOE by living treasure and absolute master of stop-motion animation, Ray (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) Harryhausen — and my copy of the set arrived today. So much for using my day off for cleaning my apartment…

The 1933 KING KONG is my all-time favorite movie since it contains pretty much everything I would like to see in a film; it’s got suspense, action, graphic violence, an epic scale, romance between a he-man tough guy and a beautiful leading lady, crisp black-and-white photography, and a shitload of dangerous stop-motion monsters. And of course, King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World! It’s the movie that got me hooked on giant monster flicks the way a hardcore junkie loves a freshly loaded needle, and I will stop whatever I’m doing if I find out that it’s on TV, sit my beige ass down and stare in unabashed wonder at the sheer perfection unfolding before my eyes. I only wish I could have seen it on opening night back in 1933; I saw STAR WARS on opening night by accident in 1977 and it completely rocked my world, so I can only imagine how an audience some thirty-four years earlier must have shat a collective cinder block when faced with such spectacle that they were in no way prepared for.

My usual Monday activities curtailed by the cruddy weather, I delighted at having the films at my disposal and was saddened only by the fact that all of my friends were at work and I couldn’t have anyone over to share my geekery with. Nonetheless I tore open the package and set to viewing.

As I’d seen KONG about eleventy-jillion times since childhood and it’s annual running at Thanksgiving on New York’s WWOR for years, I dove straight into the second disc, a treasure trove of geek spank material including an exhaustive 2 & ½ hour “making of” documentary that has to be seen to be believed. I sat there with my jaw in my lap as Peter Jackson discussed recreating the legendary “Lost Spider Pit Sequence,” a bit cut from the original in which the unfortunate sailors whom Kong cast off of the log into a deep ravine where they were promptly devoured by a bevy of Lovecraftian wigglies; Jackson also reveres KONG as his favorite film, and he had the power and greenbacks to recreate the sequence with actual stop-motion critters rather than CGI and degrade the color into B&W. Lovely…

I then sat through KONG with commentary by Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, and the magic of that film was only amplified by having Harryhausen describe what it was like seeing that film when it opened and he was thirteen years old. Movie buffs, we have KING KONG to thank for inspiring — dare I say obsessing? — Harryhausen and spurring him on to create what may arguably be the finest handmade visual effects in film history, so even if you aren’t a fan of the big gorilla you owe him one motherfucking SERIOUS debt.

Next up was the lamentable SON OF KONG, a quickie sequel that actually made it to the screen less than a year after KING KONG. Willis O’Brien’s animation notwithstanding, the less said the better. Robert Armstrong’s reprisal of his role as Carl Denham is still fun, though.

Next up was MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, coming some sixteen years after KONG and being everything that SON OF KONG could never have hoped to be. It’s not a sequel, but it fits neatly into an unofficial trilogy and is an utter delight; the tale of a giant gorilla and his human companion who are appallingly exploited by a lucre-hungry showman — sound familiar? — has charm to burn, and Jo’s personality is the polar opposite of Kong’s insomuch as while Kong is sympathetic Joe is actually sweet-natured until fucked with beyond all reason. Unlike Kong, Joe’s fate is not dire and you and your little one will not be reaching for the Kleenex at the end of the flick. When you watch this one on DVD, check out the commentary from Harryhausen — who cut his stop-motion teeth on that film — Ken Ralston, and Terry Moore; it’s a lot less “Golly, I love this movie” than the KONG commentary, and it’s fun to have Moore along for the ride since she played Joe’s companion. And in the sixteen years between KING KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, the stop motion technique was refined quite a bit and some of the sequences in the nightclub when a drunken Joe rampages are logistical nightmares that no sane animator would even go near these days, but Ray Harryhausen was the Bruce Lee of such techniques, and Joe’s demolition of the nightclub is truly incredible when one takes into account exactly how much concentration, patience and talent goes into the creation of top notch model animation.

So if you’re looking for the perfect holiday gift for your kids or the film geeks in your life, or even for yourself like I did, pick this set up. And I recommend using deepdiscountdvd.com for this; the set cost me a total of $30.42, including postage and handling. Trust me, it isn’t even like spending money.

RETURN OF THE BIRTHDAY GIRL

A couple of months ago an attractive blonde sat down at the barbecue joint’s bar, ordered a stiff rum drink and announced that it was her birthday. I wished her a happy one, and almost immediately my “looney sense” began to tingle. That extra-sensory ability is one that has been honed in me by years of dating and/or dealing with women of varying degrees of sanity, and this chick was registering a solid 10 of warning vibes. Heeding my instincts I avoided her and observed from a distance, and sure enough she was as crazy as an outhouse rat, a condition that was only amplified by her copious liquor consumption. I swear that I could almost hear the out-of-tune toy piano soundtrack of her madness as she sloppily worked the room.

This woman has since showed up a few times, always reminding me that she’s “the birthday girl,” and last night she dropped in again. She appeared to be slightly drunk when she arrived, and quickly compounded her intoxication with a few rounds of rum and coke, loosening her tongue and making her irritatingly friendly.

I walked toward the front door to get some fresh air after tending to the contents of the billowing smoke shack, and as I neared the threshold she beckoned me over. I politely greeted her and asked what was up, and she stared blankly at me for a moment before asking me if I was one of the establishment’s managers. I explained that I’m just the cook, and she warned me that I had better watch it because I might get fired. She then reached out and took my hand while looking up into my eyes and stating that when she was last at the joint I was clearly upset and yelled at people so much that I drove away customers, including her, but my obvious anger caused her to come back…

Folks, let me tell you that the incident she was referring to NEVER happened, and as near as my co-worker, Tracey, and I can figure out she has me confused with some other psycho at another establishment.

Anyway, I withdrew my hand, a move that offended her, and she then demanded my hand back and requested that I sit down next to her. When I refused to sit, she told me that I shouldn’t yell at people because that’s not what God would want me to do. At that point the crazy carnival music began to play and she asked me if I believed in God. When I told her that, no, I do not believe in God, she got silent for a moment and then looked at me incredulously, and said “You don’t believe in God? Why not?” I offered that in my forty years I had seen enough evidence to convince me utterly of the non-existence of such a deity, and once I dropped that bombshell Birthday Girl attempted to sit me down and give me the God rap. I stopped her in mid-sermon and said, “Look. You have your opinion and that works great for you. I have my opinion, which you clearly are not willing to let me have, and once you try to drag me down the road to religious conversion, I’m OUT.” I then retreated to the safety of the kitchen, doing chores that I had reserved for the next day in a successful effort to avoid Birthday Girl’s rantings.

Presently Rob and Andrea — two of our favorite regulars — arrived and sat down next to Birthday Girl. Andrea came to the kitchen to chat with me, but I warned her not to leave her unsuspecting boyfriend with the drunken loon. She soon sat down with poor Rob, who had been kindly weathering BG’s lunacy, including her sad tale of how her family couldn’t deal with the fact that she was in love with a black man, a development that also killed her intentions of becoming a nun. At that point, BG noticed Andrea and said to her, “I am white. You are black.” Now Andrea has a slightly spooky way about her, and she looked at Birthday Girl with an expression that read to sane eyes “Bitch, I KNOW I’m black,” or “Come near me again and I’ll fucking deck you, right here and now!” Rob and Andrea soon left to go to a show, but they both stopped in to the kitchen to see me before they left and let me know in no uncertain terms that Birthday Girl was “twelve shades of fucking crazy.”

My boss was behind the bar and very wisely cut off BG’s liquor flow, but just as soon as Rob and Andrea left a group of three Polish contractors came in and took up residence at the end of the bar right next to our heroine. They tried to hit on her and buy her drinks — which my boss put the kibosh on — and that’s when Birthday Girl revealed her native-speaker proficiency with the Polish tongue, which we were treated to at Motorhead arena-concert-level decibels. Between loud pronouncements and brief crying jags, BG would excuse herself and head outside to smoke and communicate via cellphone with her ebony lover-man. Soon enough, the merry Poles realized that the Birthday Girl was pretty much partied out and made sure she got into a cab.

But where one birthday girl was a tiresome irritant, another was a welcome bit of Latina sunshine.

A few months back two cute Puerto Rican chicks just barely of legal drinking age dropped in late one night, and we instantly hit it off because we are all movie geeks. The girls in question are named Ericka — a luscious mami if ever I saw one; too bad she’s young enough to be my daughter — and Joyce, and last night was Joyce’s birthday.

Joyce is funny as hell (when she laughs she snorts just like Chrissy on “Three’s Company”), smart as a whip, and very easy on the eyes; she has a slight Rosario Dawson/Vanessa del Rio look that totally works. She and Ericka had been in the prior night and now Joyce was ready to go out dancing and partying to celebrate her twenty-second year of existence. She sat at the bar for a couple of hours, waiting for a friend to pick her up, and we kept each other amused. I hope she had a happy birthday and I also hope she comes back soon. With the yummy Ericka in tow…

DAVID CRONENBERG ON DOCUMENTING ONE'S LIFE

I have often asked myself why I blog and I have never really come up with a satisfactory expanation, but tonight I have found a partial answer while watching the new two-disc DVD of David Cronenberg's exquisite remake of THE FLY.

Cronenberg's THE FLY is one of my absolute favorite films, dripping with intelligence and the "body horror" that the director is known for, and one of the most touching and tragic love stories in film history despite its finger-down-the-throat visceral grue and disgustingness, and I treated myself to the new DVD release yesterday while out on one of my weekly day-off excursions into Manhattan for comic books, fish and chips, and whatever else I can get away with before I return to the kitchen. I initially went into the video store in search of another piece of biological sci-fi, namely FANTASTIC VOYAGE, but while searching fruitlessly for it in the "F" section I came across the new release of THE FLY and all bets were off.

Last night I watched the second disc, which is FUCKING LOADED with extras, including a two hour and forty-some-odd minute "making of" documentary and an exhaustive look at the effects, and it was utterly fascinating, whetting my appetite for the film itself, complete with Cronenberg's commentary throughout. So tonight I sat back, excellent slice of Quiche Lorraine from Night & Day ready to shovel down my gullet, beer at the ready, and got down to business. I've seen the movie many times so watching it with the commentary was sheer jiblet gravy, especially since Cronenberg has a vision and thematic viewpoint utterly unique in the world of film, and for that I will always love and appreciate him.

Anyway, while watching and listening to the movie, I reached the point when Cronenberg got to the moment in the film where we see the videotaped chronicle of the sheer, repugnant horror of watching Brundlefly winsomely talk about how he eats, and the director offered this observation about why people document their lives on videotape:

"Once again, that whole idea of documenting your life, no matter how hideous, in fact, the more hideous, the more you want to document it; in a way it takes you out of your life, it makes it a movie, it makes it not be real, and I think that's why people have the impulse to document their own lives, even their worst moments... ESPECIALLY their worst moments."

I have documented many happy moments and musings from my insignificant existence, but well said, David Cronenberg. Well said indeed.

REQUIEM

Last week another of the barbecue joint's cast of characters joined the Choir Invisible, and here is his story.

One of the things that anyone who works in a bar/restaurant can tell you is that sooner or later you will encounter certain regulars/repeat customers who simply drive you right up the tree, and at the top of the list for me was L—. The guy was a fifty-something Puerto Rican local who loudly expressed his disdain for Mexicans and was stinking rich thanks to real estate investments made by himself and his wife, but prior to my first encounter with him he had been a long-time intravenous drug abuser and due to that aspect of his lifestyle he developed a virulent case of HIV.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I found out that I had the HIV and there was no cure in sight I would probably drink like a motherfucker from the moment I woke up until the second that my body finally could take no more and just shut itself down for a few hours, and that’s exactly what L— did every single day for years. During the nearly eight months that L— frequented the barbecue joint I never — and I do mean NEVER — saw the guy sober. He’d show up totally blasted and ramble incoherently, the only understandable words issuing from his mouth being, “STEVIE! I NEED A SAN’WICH!!!” or “HEY, BOO-BOO! I NEED A SAN’WICH!!!,” and it got to the point that if I or anyone else in the place saw him coming we’d have his sandwich and side of homemade sauce ready and in the bag within moments just so we could get him out of our hair. He was so plowed that he even once walked in, right past me who served him his brisket sandwiches every single day, found the only other black guy in the room (who looks NOTHING like me) and said to him, "STEVIE! I NEED A SAN'WICH!!!" Hell, it got to the point where we’d even bump his order to the top of the list on our busiest nights. I know that sounds unnecessarily mean but due to his rampaging drunkenness the guy was a danger to himself and others, occasionally coming in clothed in his pajamas and covered from head to toe in his own blood after taking an inebriated spill, even going so far as to try to enter the kitchen in that state of disarray.

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear right now: NO FUCKING WAY will I ever let such a major sanguinary biohazard into any kitchen I’m working in, and that’s that.

L— was allegedly kept on a short leash by his wife and given a limited allowance with which to buy various small items, including setting up a sandwich account with us, and he was eventually accompanied by a caretaker who guided him around the neighborhood and made sure that he didn’t spend his meager cash on some of the dirt-cheap horse to be found in some of the less savory establishments in the Greenwood Heights area. In recent months, provided his caretaker was elsewhere, he’d run up his tab and when he could no longer afford booze on his own he would attempt to borrow money from my boss, myself or any other staff member available and we’d all turn him down flat. After I finally put my foot down and told him in no uncertain terms that he would never get even one red cent from anyone in the barbecue joint, L— staggered out of the establishment, deeply hurt by my stern standpoint, and stood outside attempting to shake down locals and random passersby for beer money. Since that strategy was met with success on the same level as that of CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC (the Village People movie that unofficially marked the end of the disco era), L— moved on to other things.

Periodically, L— would be hospitalized for a week or two and forced to dry out under supervised conditions, but the minute he got out he’d hit the bottle hard once again, thereby rendering whatever prophylaxis he’d undergone thoroughly moot. Simply put, the guy was just too far gone to give a fuck.

During the past month and a half L— would come in and attempt to reminisce with my boss about various events that he was convinced that both of them had been involved in, events that my boss would flat out tell him he’d had no involvement in. The poor bastard was now totally delusional and we got to witness his swift descent into barely-functional madness.

Which brings this narrative to just over a week ago and a few details supplied by an unimpeachable source:

I was in the kitchen on the Sunday in question and I heard L— enter the joint and approach the bartender. He pulled out a $20 bill and informed the staffer that he was settling up his tab and that we should let our boss know that his account was now squared. He then left to wander down the block (at which point my source’s info kicks in) to the home of a local with whom he’d had a longstanding animosity. Upon arriving at the man’s apartment, L— made peace with his enemy of old and staggered to the bodega to purchase several forty-ouncers of either Budweiser of Colt 45. Upon obtaining his beers, L— went home and promptly began to vomit blood, so much so that he literally bled to death on his living room floor, in front of, some accounts say, his poor wife.

The guy may have been a fucking nuisance and a biohazard, but nobody should go by puking up blood all over the goddamned place.

The next couple of days following L—‘s demise witnessed many locals coming in and sharing their memories of his sad life, and his nearly-toothless brother coming in for a few before shipping L—‘s body back to Puerto Rico the next day. Handling his sibling’s passing with a sense of prepared inevitability, the brother was rather amiable throughout his time on the barstool and candidly answered the one question I had during all of it: if L— knew that by kicking booze and smack he could prolong his life for a few more years, then why not get help, especially if he was wealthy enough to afford it without even noticing a depletion in his bank account? His brother kicked down his Schaeffer tall-boy and simply said, “Hey, he liked to party a little too much, know what I mean?” Then some more relatives arrived and led the brother away, and with that L— was relegated to the lore of the barbecue joint.

POSTSCRIPT:

Furthering my theory that by working at the barbecue joint I am living as part of the revolving cast of a soap opera/sitcom, shortly after the death of L— an old man who looked like one of the rummies who hang out at the local V.F.W. sat down at the bar and ordered a beer.

The old duffer launched into the well-worn spiel that the staff endured from many of the older, alky locals, namely about living in the area since the Cretaceous era, hating the way the neighborhood is changing (translation: young, educated people who have actually been somewhere else are ruining their provincial tribalism), blah blah blah, all while clearly settling in for hours of drinking and boring us with his droning/slurring nonsense.

Our beleaguered barkeep, Jeff, walked into the kitchen in an attempt to get a moment’s peace — it was early on Sunday and there was no one in the bar except two of the cool locals and the old guy — and I headed out behind the bar for a glass of milk (hey, it was early!). The old coot reached across the bar and grabbed my wrist, offering “Hey! My name’s D— and I was in here on da night youse guys opened! I forgot ta leave a tip fer da red-haired guy behind da bahr, so could youse give it ta him fer me? I wanna be a regular, so I wanna start widda fresh tab…”

I hurried back to sanctuary in the kitchen and watched as Jeff suffered through more of the coffin-dodger’s inane ramblings until the old man eventually staggered away, apparently displeased at Jeff not having heard his softly-slurred request for another beer. The old turd didn’t even leave a tip, a fairly common custom with some of the older locals. Hopefully he won’t return, but the whole scene felt like an audition for the role of our new irritating barfly.

Life goes on…

THE HORROR...THE HORROR...

Here's another story from the barbecue joint trenches, and it sure as fuck ain't pretty.

On Friday night, "Cotton Ear," one of the joint's rotating cast of worthless douchebags came back in and asked to use the bathroom. The woman in question is the wife of "The Troll," some idiot who tried during the early days of the joint to become our live entertainment as a guitarist while trying to pass his wife off as a singer (who purportedly had a brief career crooning at vaious rest stops along the New Jersey Turnpike; no, seriously). My boss gave the guy the nay-no but he persistently tried to weasel his way in, ultimately to no avail.

This couple is hard to get across to the casual reader because they are a true horror that must be personally witnessed in order to be understood. They are obviously junkies, never sober, are redolent of who-knows-what, and worst of all they have a beautiful infant daughter whom I am convinced was kidnapped. The vaginally-equipped portion of the pair even came in one night and asked me if we threw out food each day and if we'd give it to her and her verminous mate.

Anyway, on Friday night Bride of Troll came in and asked our bartender if she could once again use our bathroom. After her lavoratorial visit, she promptly left and vanished into the night. Then our waitress attempted to use the facilities and recoiled as if avoiding the strike of King Cobra. "FUCK!" she cried, "It smells like the homeless!!!" Being the only staffer on duty at that time who was able to deal with the situation since the kitchen was closed and the bartender was otherwise engaged, your humble narrator girded his loins and opened the Ladies' Room door.

There are those who say that people who witness Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors that man was not meant to experience go mad at the first exposure to such sheer, otherworldly evil, and I am here to say that I nearly gave up the last vestiges of my sanity upon crossing that threshold. I reeled as though physically assaulted by the horrific stench and, staggered though I was, I somehow managed to wobble into the kitchen and dig out the appropriate tools for handling such an olfactory Chernobyl, namely several rough bar rags and a surfeit of bleach in a spray bottle. With the theme from GHOSTBUSTERS playing in my head, I disconnected all emotion and got down to business. After pulling my shirt up over my nose and mouth to form a makeshift air filter, I entered the now-violated privy and sprayed bleach willy-nilly into the air, all while casting a critical eye over the entire room. The fetid miasma that cursed the atmosphere was without question the most powerful yeast infection waft in the history of pussy, and compounding that was the horror of that vile woman having somehow left her steaming, drippy feces on both sides of the toilet seat.

I had to clean that, folks.

After handling that douche-chill-inducing spectacle I hit every surface in the restroom with bleach and called in a friend of the bar who happens to be a seriously experienced nurse to verify that it was safe for women to use. Once I was given the all-clear I retired to the bar and sucked down shot after shot of tequila in an attempt to soothe my shattered nerves. The next day I explained all of this to my boss — minus the screaming and cursing that occurred once I was out of that vortex of pestilence — and stated flatly that the musical goon and his plague-disseminating spouse be permanently banned from ever setting foot in the joint ever again, a decision made by all of the staff in attendance that night, especially since they only ever come in to drop their toxic waste and never spend a fucking cent on anything.

My boss — who is already rather pallid, being the spawn of Russian-American coal miners from Pennsylvania — visibly turned chalk white upon hearing of my ordeal and flatly approved the 86ing of the two offenders. I can't wait to tell them that they are no longer welcome...

SMOKE 'EM IF YA GOT 'EM: CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER FULL-TIME STONER

A few days ago I was offered a taste of some righteous Northern Lights bud; no joke, folks, I’m talking some serious Cheech & Chong shit, so I figured why the hell not? I sparked the joint with the well-practiced ease of the experienced stoner and waited for the effects to kick in as the illicit vapors filled my lungs. Soon enough the familiar frontal lobe wobble began and I gave in to other-than-nicotinal bliss. The odd thing about it was that while I was enjoying some primo smoke, I was in no way as wowed by the experience as I would have been during my heyday as a full-time, pot-smoking reprobate, an era that began twenty years ago and yet somehow seems like only yesterday.

During my formative years I self-righteously railed against “druggies,” firmly convinced that anyone who partook of even the most innocuous path to an altered state of consciousness was destined to die alone, wretched and scorned, most likely infested with all manner of vermin, residing in a discarded refrigerator box while wallowing in a pool of day-old piss. Such views were seeded by my know-nothing-of-the-outside-world parents —both products of a Depression-era deep Southern upbringing (translation: ignorance as culture) who both had teaching degrees, sheepskins that they felt granted them a superior and unimpeachable omniscience — and an endless rotation of televised public service announcements that came in the wake of the hippie era, a government-fueled attempt at sobering up the nation, which may not have been the best of ideas since we were still in Vietnam, being shocked by Watergate, and gearing up for the juggernaut of Disco.

I was one of the few kids where I grew up who never tried pot during junior and senior high school and my resistance held firm until the second semester of my sophomore year of college (Spring 1985), when a friend who I still hold dear to this day talked me into taking a few hits off of a bong crafted from an Agree shampoo bottle. I didn’t “freak out” and go on a Manson Family-style binge of murder and mutilation while shrieking the lyrics to Alice Cooper’s “Cold Ethyl,” and as a result I would occasionally smoke a bowl with friends at a party.

Then came my third year of college, or what may be more honestly referred to as my head-first, total immersion into 1980’s stoner culture. I lived in a single room in a basement suite of the dorms that was once the university's infirmary, and a budding stoner could scarcely have asked for a more secure toking space. I equipped my room with a multi-colored crazy quilt of movie posters, old photos and comic book promo ads, surrounding a large and comfortable bed festooned with comfy pillows, and the one item that no would-be opium den is complete without: the obligatory lava lamp. The icing on the psychedelic cake was my ever-growing record collection, and in no time my room became THE hangout spot for my friends.

Yer Bunche, circa Spring of 1986.

Our smoking implement of choice was a two-hosed glass hookah named “the Fusion Plasma Generator,” and it was the lightsaber of water pipes; perhaps it’s because of the impact that it made at the time, but I will swear in a court of law that I have never gotten a better hit out of any smoking apparatus since. The FPG was the first in what would become a long line of bongs and such, usually one those plastic $30 pull-tubes, and an infamous pipe that bore the moniker “the Claw,” so named because it was a regular stemmed pipe whose bowl rested firmly in the grip of a nauseating dried chicken's foot. But such horrid sights did not deter my friends and I from getting wasted as often as humanly possible, a tight fraternity of stoners united in our utopia of love, peace, incense and junk food munchies. And sometimes we even went to classes!

During that year I became consumed with getting as high as possible as often as possible, and it definitely had an effect on my schooling, but seeing that I was in an art school in the 1980’s it was pretty easy to do everything while baked and get away with such behavior being written off as standard hijinx that the creative are heir to. And despite the easy availability of much harder drugs on campus, I stayed true to my leafy love.

That romance intensified the following year during my tenure as a resident assistant — or R.A. in common parlance — and I have to say that I was the kind of example that parents dread when sending their little darlings off behind the ivy-covered walls of higher learning. By the fall of 1986 I looked like the long-lost melanin-infused member of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, complete with Death Star-sized Afro, black karate gi top and prescription Wayfarers to hide my perpetual case of red-eye. I actively encouraged my hall full of freshman charges to get stoned and drink constantly, and they were mostly all-too-willing to oblige, adding drunkenness and drug abuse to their away-from-home rampaging carnality with nameless partners. At the time I felt like I was encouraging freedom for those former-high-schoolers, but in retrospect I realize that I aided in the scholastic crash-and-burn of some of those kids. I know they had the choice to say “no,” but I have to admit my part in what went on, despite my attempts at cultivating the image of a post-modern, psychedelic Pied Piper. “Do what thou wilt,” indeed. Stupid, and wasteful. (Hell, I even got away with passing off an entire semester’s worth of intoxication and sordid sexual encounters by telling the dean to her face that I had skipped classes due to what I thought was the onset of a totally fictional case of “congenital blindness” that supposedly plagued my family, a performance that allowed me to continue my education for another year and finally graduate, but that’s a story for another day’s posting…)

My hall quickly became notorious on campus for its rampant stonerism, but if ever there were an example of “hide in plain sight” then I was it. Yet, as things are wont to happen, I was eventually found out by my boss — a clueless motherfucker to an absurd degree, who was a pitifully self-loathing Born Again Christian/closeted homosexual momma's boy — after being inadvertently ratted out by another hard-partying R.A. who gave me up while being reprimanded for his own peccadilloes, and I was quietly ejected from my position so as not to embarrass an administration that somehow never noticed — or cared — that such a shameless partier had been allowed to gallivant around unchecked for nearly the entire school year.

The following fall I ended up in the school’s apartments for a semester, an even more ideal setting for all manner of unchecked debauchery, and became host to several spectacular keg-and-weed shindigs that culminated with me being described in a student senate session as — and I quote — “a detriment to learning on campus,” a designation that still fills me with pride thanks to the person who dubbed me thus being a complete and total asshole who hadn't seen a trace of pussy since he slid out of his mother's. During this time a high school friend of mine joined the United States Marines and gave me a three-and-a-half-foot two-chambered bong that he christened “Nuke.” Unless you had arms long enough to make the reach, Nuke required another person to light it, and needless to say, the legend of the great beast made the rounds among the campus’ stoners and other riff-raff, attracting low-lives like flies, all of whom sought to get "nuked." By the time the Spring of 1988 rolled around, I only had one class left to complete before I graduated and could no longer reside on campus, so I left Nuke in the capable hands of the Beer Police (more on them in future postings) where it eventually had to be destroyed to end the growing tide of unsavory stoner pilgrims who sought to test their mettle against its mighty evil.

Spring of 1988: two of the Beer Police (Smoky and Senter) experiment to see if Nuke can be utilized rectally.

With college finally done I found myself back home for a little over a year, still smoking cheeba when I could, even hosting a now-legendary weekend-long “weed fest” during the summer of 1989 while my mother was out of town touring Greece. My Westport home became so vaporous — even with the windows and screen doors open — that it resembled the surface of Venus, and my college and high school friends in attendance littered the couches, beds, floor and lawn in a state of near-catatonia. For my own part, at one point I found myself upstairs away from the rest of the partygoers with a favorite college friend who had thoughtfully brought a bag of psychedelic mushrooms, a bag that she and I devoured and soon we were tripping our faces off. For all intents and purposes, I feel that weekend was the true and excellent coda to my youthful drug experiences, but my days of brain cell destruction were far from over.

I moved to New York in early 1990 and it was there that I found out the comics industry is a repository for drunks and drug abusers of all stripes, and discovered that my years of collegiate indulgence amounted to training for the much more hard core world of adult stonage. For years I smoked and drank with abandon, eventually seeing my much more expensive pot habit supplanted by much alcohol binging, a state that reached a self-destructive peak, or nadir if you prefer, about six years ago. I have reigned in my clearly addictive behavior considerably since then, sticking almost strictly to beer as intoxicant of choice, and not really giving much of a damn about pot anymore, kind of a “been there, done that” thing, and I marvel at the enthusiasm of the new generation of stoners, an enthusiasm I shared just as ardently during my misspent youth.

All of that crossed my mind the other day, my synapses ignited by that first familiar drag of a really good joint. Nostalgia sure is a motherfucker.