The Day The Nixon Died

I was out at this place called Gator's one time - it was inside some mall on the outskirts of Cincinnati (I highly doubt the place still exists). And this place was a cheese palace -an ode to 90's cheese. It was possibly the cheesiest dance club in the world. I was in this place one time in 1994 - in April - when news came over one of the TV's that Richard Nixon had died. I was there with my best friend Todd and we were pretty big fans of old Nixon (as you could probably guess). So, we start to get really drunk - doing something like White Russians really fast. Then we wandered into the part of the place where the music and the horrible, drunk, cheesy, too much hair-sprayed girls were. We kind of lost track of each other over the next half hour and I stumble over to get a beer after being dragged around the dance floor by some awful blonde slut for a few songs and out of the corner of my eye, I see Todd. He's on top of some huge speaker, dancing with a girl who I swear was not over 4 ft. tall. And that struck me as funny. So, I started laughing uncontrollably and pointed over to him. It took him a minute but he finally noticed me. And then he did something that the two of us gestured toward each other hundreds of times in the early to mid-90's - he rolled his eyes and smiled - realizing the absolute absurdity of the situation (although to be fair to Todd, I rolled my eyes toward him for more often then he did toward me during those years - he was a bit pickier about drunk sluts and was usually less wasted than me). So, I had some time to kill until the bar closed at 2. I gulped down another indiscriminate lite beer, stumbled around until some big-haired, service industry working, acid-washed jeans wearing girl grabbed me (it never took long). Time passed and the lights went up and the girl who had grabbed onto me and shoved her tongue all over me for 30 minutes goes to find her friends, but says before she goes "I'll be right back. I've got a lot in store for you." Well, I raced over to where Todd had been dancing with the midgetesque girl and started screaming "We have to get out of here before this girl comes back." And he's really drunk. And I know the night is going to end badly for someone - probably me. And it did. We named the girl he picked up Power Pack (I'm sure it had something to do with her ass). I said at one point the next day "At least we paid proper respect to old Richard Nixon." And we had - Dick would have found the whole thing terribly amusing. Gator's - fucking Gator's.

A good rule to live by is this - when you meet a girl in an awful place and if you are drunk (which you would have to be to go into said awful place in the first place) and if you are sane and if you don't want to be saddled with weeks on end of annoying phone calls - remember this: Never, EVER give out your real name and never, under any circumstances give out your real phone number (it's best to have a standard fake memorized, so you can't forget it - no matter how drunk you are and how normal whatever girl seems). I used to like to give out one of two names (one was the name on my fake Arizona driver's license and the other a certain singer born in Memphis in 1950) and as far as a standard fake phone number - I highly recommend some place that deals in porn (what is euphemistically called an adult book store). These are both very prudent measures to take - believe me. I realize how much more difficult this is with the incredible proliferation of cell phones over the past 10 years. So, lie. Say "I don't have my phone with me. It broke yesterday. Sorry."

I was out last Friday at Bananabee's playing a pointless game of trivia with a couple guys from Getting The Crabs. And this question comes up about opera and where some tenor is from - his name sounded Spanish, so we put Spain. We were right. But I wondered what if the old drunk guy was there - what would he say about this tenor question - and then it hit me, he'd say "Who gives a fuck." We lost the game anyway. We bet terribly and messed up two questions we should have gotten. It was totally my fault.

Keith was asking me why I seem so fixated on the guy who plays Mace Windu. And I really don't know, but it did remind me to tell everyone who hasn't seen Hard Eight - to see Hard Eight. Philip Fucking Baker Fucking Hall - Bookman.