I figure that I can’t die until I’ve lived longer than the following people:
- Jesus Christ (33 — success!)
- Mom (46)
- Mohammed (62)
- Dad (69…uh…dude)
- Siddhartha (80)
Archive for the 'Lush' Category
I tried to play pool in Bethesda, MD on Sunday. I should have known better.
Continue reading ‘Pool’
Like most normal, sane people, I had put high school behind me. The worst years of our lives, really, no matter how much you try to sugarcoat it. When the 20th reunion party planners contacted me, I was a little bit alarmed that (a) 20 years had passed and (b) those fucking assholes found me. My first reaction was the same kind of shock and horror I felt when they dumped pigs blood on me at the prom and… No, wait. That wasn’t me. But, still. I sympathized with Carrie in those moments. You get them, girl. You get them for all of us!
Continue reading ‘Reunion’
I’ve spent the past few years bemoaning the gentrification of Silver Spring. How the town has lost her charm, her spice. How our dive bars have died. How we’ve been colonized by hipsters, transplants, neo-yuppies, armchair liberals, and the saccharine, mindless masses of salary serfs and condo owners. How we must endure the herpes-like sores of places like Firestation One and 8407.
Continue reading ‘The Golden Flame’
Silver Spring’s historic dive bar, the Quarry House, is dead. What it used to be, that is. The old Quarry House.
It’s taken me six years or so to come to grips with this.
Continue reading ‘Quarry House’
I set out to review The Nest, a slightly off the beaten path yuppie hangout in Bethesda, MD, but then I found myself with the same problem as when I tried to review Fire Station One in Silver Spring. The Nest, while obviously a great date spot if you’re into that noisy herd of transplants thing, is, essentially, boring. Yet another overpriced and soulless watering hole.
Continue reading ‘The Nest’
I have a dream. I’m going to move to New Orleans and open up a DC-themed bar. I’m going to call it “In Session” and set it up somewhere posh where we can pick up tourists and commuters. For all the expats, it’ll be a true home away from home.
The first thing I’ll do is raze any historic buildings that are in my way and then build a faux-French Quarter style building that is, somehow, cold, brutalist, and unwelcoming.
“Okay,” I told James as he flooded the engine of his Triumph Spitfire which, despite years of neglect, was in remarkably reliable condition. Somewhat. He beat his head on the steering wheel and screamed. I continued. “We do have a purpose today.”
“What purpose?” he muttered, head against the wheel, hands on the cracked dashboard.
“We have to mention that I have an Amazon Wishlist to everyone we meet, and tell them my pitiful sob story so they’ll buy me stuff.”
“Oh my god.”
I pulled out a wax bag, because I inherited 5000 boxes from my grandmother, and handed him one of the cards I had inside. “I had cards made up with the link to the wishlist on one side, and the link to my sob story on the other.”
It’s time to answer the question that, I’m sure, is foremost in everyone’s mind: Where can I get a beer in Union Station at 8:30am?
And I don’t mean buying one at the liquor store, or getting one down at the weird pizza joint in the gladiator pit food court and drinking in a corner like one of the bums. Fingerless gloves, covered in ash from sweeping chimneys, drinking from a plastic cup and staring at the deaf girls from Gallaudet. That’s what I do every morning!
No, it’s time for A Touch of Class. I want to sit at a bar like a normal yuppie and be served a beer by a bartender. And I don’t want to have to cajole the bartender into doing so, or be given a judgmental stare like I just sat down and screamed, “I CAVORT WITH SATAN!” I want someone to serve me a beer at 8:30am like they do it all the time.
You’d think that, at a cosmopolitan railway station, and here at the Capitol of the Empire, bartenders would serve you in the early AM without hesitation. “Hiya Floyd, I just signed a bill that’ll murder millions. Can I have a beer?” Or, maybe, “Hiya Floyd, my motherfucking MARC train was just delayed for 17 hours because of a flash flood warning 1500 miles away in Louisiana. How about a beer? And some heroin?”
The plan: I leave home early, hit Union Station at 8:30 or earlier, find an open bar, and gauge reactions and quality of service. I’ll drink like a fish, scribble insane notes in my little reporter’s notebook, then totter to work and pretend like everything’s normal as I throw up on my supervisor’s shoes and then feverishly masturbate in the bathroom stall to mental images of the deaf girls from Gallaudet.
The thing I miss the most about Bethesda, MD, is the somewhat downtrodden have/have-not divide of the 80’s and early 90’s. Before it became a glittering jewel in the Galactic Empire’s crown.
People make fun of me when I rant about gentrification but, seriously, retards, look around you. Most days, I feel like I woke up from a hundred year sleep. Look at your space buildings! And you’ve exterminated the Spanish and the lower income people! Well, Bethesda did that long ago. Silver Spring’s the suburb with active extermination camps. But, still, what the fuck happened to Hot Shoppes?
Continue reading ‘Harp and Fiddle’
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