Some nights you don't know where to start. Hence chronological order.
Met buddy Tim in his neighborhood. First we drank at th excellent corner beer garden which serves $1 frankfurters. Then we went to a play game of of pool at the worst bar I've been to in a long time. It was called Gracy's or something like that.
The usual yupster swill was on tap: three pale ales, three Harp products, yadda yadda. But up above the mirror behind the bar was a rotating Schlitz sign. I called the bartender over.
"Do you serve Schlitz?"
"No." Oh I get it. The sign is ironic. Another ironic sign they had: A red neon one that just said LAMINATING. Ah, the humor of the trucker hat crowd.
The pool table at Gracy's didn't work, and the bathroom was covered with lefty graffiti, running the gamut from "Open your mind" to "Kill our billionaire out-of-touch mayor."
We left none too soon and went to Boat, a bar which for Tim embodies all the ideals of the Cheers theme song. It truly is a friendly place. I shook hands with Tim friends, talked to the bartender, played a round of bar bowling.
Tim goes to the bathroom and a drunk sidles up toward me. He announces that he has to sit next to me and my friend because there are no other seats.
"Until your friend gets back, just talk to me like you would him," he says.
No. He's my friend. I don't know you. Whiz right off.
Tim returns, drunk tries to engage him. Tim gives him a token response and resumes talking politics with me. While we talk the guy begins looking at the book I've placed on the bar. He pulls it toward him with one figure and begins looking through it. I'm now certain I don't like this guy.
Apropos of dick, the drunk slams the book down and yells, "Well, it's good to see you're a conservative!"
I snapped. I'll spare you a list of obscenities launched. Please take my word that they were all creatively conjugated, and that I never let the bile get ahead of the message. Which was:
A) This book ain't conservative, it ain't liberal. It's important.
B) What kind of a nutsnack starts looking through someone else's book without permission?
C) How sick am I of dealing with locals--be they liberal, conservative, or idiotarian--who are too damned intolerant to not let me carry around whatever damned book I choose?
D) Have fun resuming your solitary drink and in the grander scheme your downward spiral toward complete social failure, you lonely unfunny drunk.
But the largest of these was C. This particular wingnut just happened to embody the kind of knownothing presumptuousness that I've gained an acute loathing for over the years. Hence the freakout.
Tim settled me down with a request: this is my bar, I know everyone, please don't raise a fecalstorm. Fair enough. But, I said, when I get home to my computer, this guy is goona get it. On the internet.
Woo yeah! Blogging!
