Doing the Wadoosay

SATURDAY

My girlfriend, Kat, were badly needing a night out - it'd been too long since we'd seen a good band, hung out at a bar and engaged in a really good bout of intellectual cattiness. On this night, we had a date with a gay friend of ours, Steve. I'd met Steve at a non-profit job I got when I first moved to the City. He and I discovered that we shared a mutual-obsession with indie rock music and basically kept each other's spirits up by endlessly talking about new bands that we'd 'discover'. On this night, Steve was celebrating his 35th birthday and in a fit of Midwestern generosity, had treated Kat and me to a night at the Bowery Ballroom where we'd toast to his birthday and see The Fiery Furnaces. We were flattered, greedy and immediately leapt at the offer. Even when the gig was transferred to the Evil Concert Venue of New York City (also known as Webster Hall), we were eager to enjoy a debauched evening of music and drinking-enablement. We were so psyched for a night out, we even succumbed to a 1 ½ hour subway commute to Brooklyn (Steve's home turf) to help him feel at-home in his favorite, local haunt.

I'd been trying to be good about my drinking. Fitness had become my new obsession and I was determined to make myself presentable for a summertime beach. Of course, there had been one or two lapses including one night last week that involved a mishap with too many extra-dry martini, but overall I'd found been successful and I was focused on staying that way. Steve was not laboring behind my self-deluding rules. It took exactly one round for his agenda to become my agenda and soon I was pounding back pints of Stella at Brooklyn prices (50% off). These were the salad days (hours) of my weekend. I remember them fondly- I was so much younger then. I recall it as if it had happened only a few days ago. We laughed, we raged and in true Zelig-like fashion I found my inner-swish. Kat politely sipped her beer, lounged into the faux-leather lounger, and enjoyed display of two, self-involved music snobs in their mid 30's. Soon, we were hip deep in Joy Division, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop references.

As time raged on beneath our drama-filled banter, Kat grew restless. The last hour ran about like this:

KAT: "Wow. I didn't know that Iggy Pop was that disgusting or what a careering bitch Patti Smith was, but weren't we going to a concert or something?"
STEVE: "What time is it now?"
DECKARD: "Do you want another?"
STEVE: "Ooo! Ooo! Are they playing The Cure? Whatever happened to good Goth music?"
KAT:"Weren't we going to a concert or something?"
DECKARD: "We have plenty of time. Do you want another pint?"
STEVE: "It's my turn- what are you drinking?"

Finally, Kat managed to focus us into the 'now' long enough to herd us into the street... sort of. Steve was spun into a feeding frenzy of Indie music euphoria and the birthday boy had forbade us from leaving Brooklyn until we had listening to the MOST FanTAStic Song In The EnTIRE World by The Kaiser Chiefs. Six cigarettes, four blocks to Steve's apartment, 3 pee-breaks, a long listening, and 4 more bocks to the subway later, we regained our course and headed into Manhattan.

Webster Hall sucks ass. The last time I'd visited this club was when I tried to watch Sonic Youth. This place is designed like the mines of Moria with doors and stairwells that move from one performance/bar/club space to another. All the spaces are pretty dumpy but hell, I can do dumpy if there's a cool staff, cheap drinks, etc. The Sonic Youth gig was over-booked to the point where the back of the theater felt like standing in the front row at a U2 concert. The bouncers were complete ass-clowns who had certainly trained at the Sopranos School of Fuck-You Bouncing. The Bowery Ballroom, my favorite venue in Manhattan must have signed some boneheaded deal a year ago with Webster Hall so that bigger bands could play in a larger venue. At this point, I simply cannot believe that the same people could be running my beloved Bowery Ballroom and the Frankenstein monster of concert venues called Webster Hall.

Steve went to will call to pick up his tickets and that's when we realized that the concert had started a full 2 hours earlier than any other concert in Manhattan. We rushed upstairs to the only remaining view in the hall. We were just in time for the last 2 songs of the encore, a "thank you for coming to such an early show", then the quick exit of The Fiery Furnaces, leaving us enjoy a 'what the fuck' moment. Dejected and even without the time to order another beer, we chain-gang shuffled our way to the bottlenecked stairwell and down into the lobby. Kat and Steve rushed downstairs to the restroom while I stood guard beside a trashcan and tried to spot any hint of a T-shirt salesman.

What happened next was a cluster-fuck at the hands of the emotionally-challenged. A squat, dour blond barked at me that it was time to leave. My hesitation prompted second, squat-assistant to join in and reiterate, for my convenience. A bouncer, wielding a metal barricade, trudged through the now-vacant lobby and offered his two bits of derisiveness. I turned to the blond goblin and tried to explain that I was waiting for my friends to get back from the restroom and that I was standing out of the way. Not satisfied with my lack of cowed behavior, both women moved into my personal space. Fed up with trying to hold my ground behind a garbage can, I retreated to the far corner of the lobby and barked that they didn't have to act like such assholes about it. Well, that tore it. What followed was a staccato waterfall of hoots and chest-beating from the barricade-toting bouncer who dropped his gate and scrambled after me, all the while screeching "What did you say?!". Again and again the words looped over and over as if I had any chance of getting a word in edgewise until it began to morph into a rambling conjunction of "Wadoosay?!". The call had been sent out... Wadoosay... wadoosay, in the deep. Bouncers clambered from every stairwell and doorway.Fool that I was, I had moved from my vantage behind the garbage and had allowed myself to be cornered with no Fellowship and not even a good buzz to numb the imminent flurry of self-righteous blows. Remarkably, I was able to able to maintain some semblance of composure. I tried to slow things down- bring down the energy level another notch. Speak slower, so every would understand my position. I was just. waiting. for. my. friends. who. are. in. the. restroom. I was certain that I could feel, in the heels of my feet, the distant rumble of a Balrog.

The bouncer was feverish from the success of his wadoosay chant and was ready to go in for the kill. Unfortunately, he overextended his repertoire when he tried to switch to put-down mode. "You wanna see an asshole," he demanded. This momentarily threw me off. I had expected to be lifted from the carpet and trown clear of the front doors like you see in Three Stooges or Marx Brothers films. A question? Was he serious? What sort of an answer should I offer? From the flinty twitch in his eye, I could tell that I was taking too long to answer. The zinger - he had to land the zinger. "Turn around and look in that mirror! You'll see an asshole, then!"

'There is a mirror behind me,' I asked myself. I suppressed the impulse to turn and see for I feared that the bouncer's sense of humor would cry out for more and he would take the opportunity to try out a physical joke involving my underwear. The bouncer army must have thought his joke to be a sufficient punishment for my belligerence for soon after he landed his zinger, the mob began to disperse. The squat woman and her assistant returned to their ticketing boxes at the entrance and the bouncers shuffled back to the hollows from which they had sprung. The Great, insult-joke bouncer strutted back to his lonely barricade, lifted it triumphantly upon his shoulder, then disappeared out the front door.

Kat was cheerful, relieved and utterly oblivious when she appeared at my side. I might have been able to cover up the entire incident, but when she asked me if I was ready to go, I began to fire off sentences like a rail gun from a Blackhawk. She glanced about the lobby and noted the scowls and snears that came from the darker corners. "What happened," she asked. I tried to explain but there was simply too much adrenaline in my system. The story burst from my mouth in a gigantic twitch of incoherence and fury. Kat nodded and placed a calming hand on my arm (she studies Buddhism). "Let's go," she said.

"Where's Steve," Kat asked. My mind immediately lept to only the most graphic scenarios. Was he, at this very moment, enduring gruesome wrongs at the hands of that hulking, cave troll I'd seen in the restroom when we first arrived? He was standing behind a ramshackle stand, selling overpriced candy in a black-light dim of urinals and booths. I had survived the verbal thrashing of Moria and I'd be damned if I was going to abandon my good, gay friend who wouldn't possibly harm a fly. I scrambled down the stairs and into the john. I was prepared to grab an errant mop or glass jar of peppermints to drive off the foul perpetrators, but the room was silent. An Hispanic janitor stood at the candy stand, poised at the apex of an evil, Spanish-laced conspiracy that he was about to unleash upon the candy troll. Suspicious eyes tracked my movements as eI stepped to the vacant stalls. No doubt, they had received word of the altercation upstaris and were waiting for me to unsuspectingly stroll into one of the stalls where I would be relentlessly violated by the business end of a switchblade or, at least, be administered a brutal swirly upon my head.

Where had he gone? Had he already been beaten senseless and thrown out of the Hall for being associated with the Great Troublemaker of 'Aught-Five'? I grabbed Kat's hand and sped for the Exit. outside, a fresh line of victims were eagerly awaiting the verbal de-pantsing and economic pick-pocketing they would soon find inside. I had escaped from my foolish escapade.. and, to my startlement, so had Steve. Standing on the shore, beyond the bouncers and barricades and eager naiveté, stood Steve. He had witnessed my incident in progress and like any good citizen, immediately dashed from the building and awaited the pitching of my gouged and spintered remains onto the pavement.

I was disheartened and far to sober to have witnessed such wildly-confirming displays of human nature. Clearly, the most consistent handicap of the evening had been my sobriety. I needed a drink- check that, I needed a concoction that would be crippling in its potency. I wanted the shortest path from A to Z. I had to be laid so low that I would actually learn from this debacle and sear into my brain this lesson so it would be never repeated. We wandering the unaffordable streets of the Village and my impatience grew to an imperative. Finally, at the bequest of Steve, we collapsed behind the neon-beckoning window of Dallas BBQ- an interesting choice for one gay man, one gangling, angry, degenerate looking to get loaded and one elfish, young woman who happens to be a vegetarian.

It was apparent what when we were in for when the menus arrived. Actually, they were already in front of us - paper place mats. I only lacked the mini-Mason jar of crayons to complete one of my childhood nightmares. The experience reached another tier of heinous when I discovered that only booze choices are pricy bottles of Bud Light or hyperneon-colored, frozen concoctions involving decorations of unripe pineapple. I chose the latter. That, along with the coleslaw and macaroni & cheese concoction I consumed, succeeded in laying me low for the next 2 days and teaching me, once again, lessons... about something.

Good times.

The Kills do the Bowery Ballroom

I saw my favorite band for the last time. When The Kills come back to NYC, they will be an opener for some "Ubergroup" or the headliner at a big venue- Webster Hall, Roseland Ballroom, Hammerstein Ballroom or Irving Plaza will snatch them away, rub them all over with smarm, and that will be it. It's the Catch 22 of indie rock. You discover a new band, fall in love with them. You run around telling everybody about them and giving them burned songs and begging them to go to the shows. Then, your band breaks and just like that, you realize that they've grown up and left you. I'm too upset to point out the perfunctory metaphor involving butterflies or babies. Maybe they'll continue to linger along the edge of the Big Time like The Raveonettes or The Notwist, but I'm thinking that it's going to be more of a White Stripes career arc. Of course, this might all be the result of my cynicism following Saturday night's Wadoosay.

I've seen every NYC concert since 2003 and I've gotta say that The Kills were really fucking good on this night. They've settled into their stage personas, especially VV (Allison Mosshart) who always looked like the only thing keeping her from bolting off the stage was her curtain of raven hair and endless procession of cigarettes. It always worked because she'd use some of the songs to channel her nervous energy into a stage show of growling, grinding, sexual tension between her and Hotel (Jamie Hince). On this night, The sexual tension wasn't as overt (except for the gymnastics move involving her and Hotel's guitar), I didn't see her smoke a single cigarette and she's finally returned from the Land of the Painfully-Thin and looked really good. Hmmm... VV, Cat Power, PJ Harvey, Hope Sandoval... well, my aesthetic tastes have at least remained consistent. (Yeah, my girlfriend is going to love that observation). The presentation has a comfortable, slicker feel. They've always been stagey, but in the past it always had a fun and somewhat-campy feeling to it. I love groups that will throw themselves into a bit that they feel a little silly doing, but you know they're having fun. Now, The Kills feel more like an act. I'm not screaming "sellout!", though. I think such arguments are usually crap. People so easily get into the mindset that a band should always stay the same, but that gets old and, after a while, painful to watch, like with Kiss, Aerosmith, or AC/DC or... well, maybe I'll stop with the comparisons. The Kills are starting to move away from some of their earlier bits and coming more into their own. If you haven't seen them, go. You won't be disappointed.

As The Kills begin their ascent out of the world of Indie Rock, so do others rise to fill the vacuum. I was blown away when I listened to an opening band I'd never seen before - Scout Niblett. They may not be the Next Big Thing, but they grabbed my attention. After Googling the group, I've discovered that Scout Niblett is actually Emma Niblett and she's essentially a soloist with backup. Her stuff is a great synthesis of Cat Power and Nirvana. Scout offers high, lilting lyrics, then gives a wry grin before launching into a wave of by crunching, power chords. She had that great, coiled energy that I've seen from so many of the recent, English rock bands. Part way through the set, she set down her guitar, took the the drums and ripped out a couple solid drum-backed songs. After the show was over, I saw her sitting at the bar and had to go over and tell her how great her set was. Damn, I love the Bowery Ballroom.

not-for-profit Temping

I promised myself that I wouldn't do it. It makes me crazy. It runs contrary to every fiber of my being. But I did it. I got another office, temp job. I'm working at this mega-huge non-profit organization that takes in millions of dollars from Upper East Siders and uses it to clean up vandalism in Central Park so that property values stay sufficiently high. Like all non-controversial, bigwig non-profits in this city, they love to throw a pretentious, yearly dinner and/or luncheon to provide an arena for ostentatious displays of wealth... and to raise money. This is the 3rd non-profit that I've worked since I moved here and it never ceases to amaze me how much disposable income lives on the Upper East Side. This event is so exclusive, you've gotta know somebody if you want the privilege of spending $500 per ticket or, up to $50,000 per table. They're based on the southeast corner of Central Park so I get to walk across the park every day. There isn't a square centimeter of the park that doesn't feel like it's untouched, but damn, it's beautiful. Daffodils, crocuses and forsythia are in full bloom.

This is the first job that I've hade on the Upper East Side. I am regularly seeing people that might as well be living on Mars for all that I share in common with them. It's a culture of toy dogs and plastic surgery that'd make sense to nobody outside their inner circle. The younger women are long, thin, blond, beautiful and virtually non-sexual. They look like laminated models that are still living in the pages of a fashion magazine. And such anger. It must be the backwash from all the reindeer games that society people play with one another.

Interestingly, I've had very few sightings of the millionaire husbands that mate with these specimens. I would never be so gauche to expect a dual-sighting. Occasionally, I get a glimpse of a potential sighting as some man in an Armani suit strategizes with another over a cell phone. The discussions normally involve somebody making a 'move' in a board meeting somewhere and what the potential fallout might be. It's all very arcane and utterly childish in it's tone. I suspect that most of these husbands work in the Financial District and eat their lunches in those restaurants with dark wood and tinted windows that I could never possibly enter, much less afford. They don't go out at night, unless it's to catch a taxi or elongated car. Much of the Upper East Side looks like an abandoned theme park at night. Entire blocks lie dormant until someone with a dog-ornament emerges with a cellphone surgically-attached to one ear.

I know... I'm being bad. But hey, when you're earning low wages at an organization raising tens of millions of dollars and handing out door prizes of equivalent value to your yearly rent, it can be a little demoralizing.

(almost) springing from the Cave

Winter has finally begun to break in New York. I emerged from my cave a few days ago and discovered that the storage pounds that I packed on for the winter months had not melted away during my hibernation. Unlike my bear bretheren, I continued to eat General Tso's chicken and suck down vodka tonics in a frantic attempt to hold off the inevital depression that hits during a season of short days. Something had to be done.

On Saturday, with torch in hand, I rummaged through the mounds of dead leaves until I found the 15-speed bike my parents had given me for my birthday. I had ridden it every day for the first month, then I went to Thailand, then winter arrived then - the point is that I had a renewed energy and the determination to change my lifestyle and become FIT again! I ambled to the crack at the back of my cave and, with some difficulty, scouted out my biking uniform:

• non-hip biking helmet- to allow me the illusion of personal safety despite the two-dozen gypsy cabs that regularly prowl my steet
• padded biking gloves- to save my palms from personal irritation and look cool in that cut-off, punky-biking-gloves kinda way
• 7-year-old running shoes- to let my feet know that I once again intend on losing 20 pounds and getting those rock-hard abs (they have been known to snicker)
• neon yellow windbreaker- so idiot drivers from 3 blocks away can get a bead on me from long-distanc
  
• water bottle- to provide water in case I get stuck in the desert with a flat tire during my usual, 30-minute ride along the river
• accessory bag- to hold hex wrenches (for repairs), a Metro card (when the repairs don't work) and a quarter (when I discover my Metrocard has expired and I have to call my girlfriend)

With this euphoric inspiration to Do Something, I set out for my first workout. I stepped into the early-morning air, secured my helmet, then stepped on the bike. The front tire was flat... and the tiny, new tire valve didn't fit my bike pump. Stupid new-fangled bikes.

Well, Spring has sprung. It's only a matter of time...

aging - American Style!

Growing older is not going the way I'd imagined. It's difficult to see that I am, in fact, a man approaching his mid-30's. My dad didn't look this way when he was in his mid-30's, did he? It's strange to observe that movies, music and historical events that you experienced have become historical. It's horrifying to watch contemporary culture try to sell this history back to you as nostalgia (also known as 'comfort food'). Apparently, my generation is supposed to have more disposable income than I currently possess. Many of the heroes of my youth have fallen from the lofty perch I built for them. They have dismissed, mocked, parodied or simply forgotten the sacred cows they had given to me. Was Chevy Chase ever funny? Was Dustin Hoffman of Meet the Fockers fame the same actor who challenged and inspired me in his portrayals of Lenny Bruce, Rizzo the Rat and Benjamin Braddock? What in Christ happened to George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert DeNiro? I can barely recognize anything I once loved about them. Bob Dylan shills for Victoria's secret while John Lydon continues to methodically destroy any ounce of credibility he once commanded among the punk culture.

I am a part of one of the most visually-documented generations in the history of mankind and it's disturbing to watch what is being edited and forgotten. It is bizarre to live during the Cold Warm the 70's gas crunch, disco, grunge, and the advent of cable television only to have politicians and fundamentalists reshape history in their image. I was STANDING 3 blocks from the World Trade Center when the first tower fell, but I can't tell you the number of Europeans and Midwesterners who try to tell me what it was like. With so much live coverage of the news and filmic approximations of life, it's easy to mistake your emotional experience with the experience itself. Maybe that's why I'm taking the devaluing of my music and film so personally. I want to believe that I have some ownership of those things because I felt something when I experienced them.

The older I get, the more I realize that there is no such as a thing as 'the good old days'. I sure-as-shit wish there were. The future is unknown and the present is rife with unexpected twists and turns. The past, however, is comforting because I've done it. I've completed it. I can look back on it and understand it better with each passing year. Eventually, I find myself feeling like it must have been better because I can finally GET IT. I can see the consequences as they rippled out from those haggard, impulsive choices. I find myself comforted by that wisdom and I want to be able to use it in-the-now. I want to know whether it's a good or bad thing that Americans don't read as much anymore or that we appear to be re-learning things taught in my lifetime or that we've become visual-oriented society or how downloading will affect my future as an artist. So that feeling becomes a yearning - for the past to be the present where the rules and outcomes have already been laid out.

A few years ago, a friend of mine came to visit me in the City. She and I had always been great fans of indie music but in the 4 years since I'd last seen her, I had gone off to grad school in a rural town and found myself immersed in the world of theater. After moving to NYC, I tried listening to the local radio stations, but I couldn't stand the remixes and bubblegum pap that they were churning out. I was living in the biggest city in America and it felt like there was nothing worth hearing. So, I bemoaned the Death of Rock and Roll to my friend. She patiently listened until she couldn't stand it any longer. She told me to shut up and start looking harder. She told me that there was better stuff out there than ever before. She pointed me to Seattle's KEXP http://www.kexp.org/ and left me to find out for myself how stupid I was sounding.

The rules of finding new music had changed but I hadn't. Rather than push myself to explore a little more, I chose the easier route - blame the changing world and wish for the good old days. Getting older is REALLY easy. All you have to do is sit around. The hardest thing about growing older is keeping an open mind to new things.