Tough Bar

"I don't know about this," Cal said, his hands tucked firmly into his jacket pockets as he and Doug stood at the threshold of the biker bar.

"Come on, man," Doug said. "I've been wanting to try this place out for months. A real biker bar!"

"Dude, it's just, this whole thing seems way too 'Blue Velvet' for me," Cal said.

Doug had seen this coming, and had prepared a counter-argument.

"Tim and Frank went here last week," Doug said, "and they said it was fine! At least it can't be worse than another night at Twistee's."

This struck a nerve. "All right," Cal said after a moment's consideration. "Let's give it a shot."

The bar seemed calm, even serene. There was no sign of the violence and dystopia that Cal had dreaded. Most of the regulars were content to nurse their beers and smoke resignedly.

"What'll it be, boys?" asked the bartender, a man with a gentle bearing despite his immense size and imposing facial hair.

"I'll have a Schlitz," said Doug, fearlessly.

Cal mulled his options. "Do you guys have Yuengling on tap?"

"Nope, sorry."

A voice reached them from the other end of the bar. "First time here, college boy?"

"Excuse me?" Cal replied.

Cal and Doug could just make the man out in the dim light with which he had cloaked himself. He was grotesque in his elephantism, his girth spread across at least half of the bar and the three bar stools he placed in a row to support himself. His skin was sallow and pasty, shimmering with perspiration where the scarce light chanced upon it. His speech was kept to a minimum, as he was shaken by racking coughs with every few sentences that escaped his mouth.

"He's new all right," the man said, ignoring Cal. "Better give him the Brown Bag Special, Tommy."

Tommy, for that was the bartender's name, chuckled softly and shook his head. "I dunno, Patrice, he doesn't look like he's got hair enough on his balls to handle a Shirley Temple much less the Brown Bag Special."

"Ain't that the rule?" Patrice was working himself into a huff, punctuated by an abhorrent run of very wet coughing and wheezing. "Ain't that always been the rule that first-timers gotta drink the Brown Bag Special? I swear Tommy, sometimes I don't even know what kinda establishment you're runnin' anymore."

Tommy considered this. He eyed Cal somewhat cagily, then made up his mind. "All right, I guess you got to do it."

"God dammit!" Patrice gleefully pounded the bar in front of him, causing Cal to jump nearly out of his skin and knocking over several tumblers which had luckily been emptied of most of their contents. "I ain't seen a Brown Bag Special been drunk around here in a dog's age!"

Before Cal could give voice to the many questions racing through his mind at that moment, Tommy produced a brown paper grocery bag from a compartment beneath the counter and set about filling it with Bud Light from the bar's tap.

Cal was growing increasingly worried. "Uh, sir? If it's all the same to you we'd be happy to go on our way, we don't have to do this Brown Bag Special at all."

Tommy did not look up from the tap. "Sorry boy. Doesn't seem like you've got much of a choice."

It was then that Cal realized that the bar's exit was barred by two menacing individuals, one of whom was brandishing a pool cue.

Cal tried to protest. "Wait, now just hold on a second..."

"You got to do it boy." Patrice was beside himself with delight. His wheezing had become truly offensive, and flecks of spittle were gathering on his lower lip and chin. "You got to drink the Brown Bag Special."

By now the paper bag was full to the brim with beer. Tommy carried it with no little difficulty to the bar, and placed it before Cal, where it writhed and jiggled, spilling over the top.

"Doug." Cal was fully in disbelief. "Doug, I-"

"Dude. I think you have to drink it." Cal was staring fixedly at the sack of beer, his eyes betraying the zeal of the converted.

"Can't you help me out here, man? Or at least...you're new here, too, shouldn't you have to drink the Brown Bag Special too?"

Doug looked at Tommy, who gravely shook his head no.

"No," said Doug.

Cal could see that he was out of options. He approached the beer bag, leaning his head over the brim and taking little sips.

"Uh-uh," Patrice said. "You can't be doin' that. You got to hug it close up to you, like a lady."

The grocery bag full of beer was extremely damp by this point, so it was with a great deal of disgust that Cal attempted to negotiate the act of lifting it up and bringing it to his lips. He managed it, though, and began now to take full gulps of the brew, pausing to hack up pieces of bag that had peeled off in their saturated state and become lodged in his throat. These he placed on a pile that grew larger with each sip.

After twenty minutes of this, Doug offered some sage advice. "Dude, I think you should just dunk your head in the bag."

Cal was drunk and desperate enough by this point to see the wisdom in Doug's statement. Positioning the bag on his lap, he submerged his head fully into the beer, opening his mouth wide and inhaling the Bud Light in truly awesome quantities. Patrice guffawed and clapped his hands together, shaking the entire bar and sending some glasses and beer bottles crashing to the ground. "Woop!" he shouted.

Cal finally looked up from the bag. His eyes were red and he looked as though he held onto sanity with but a tenuous grasp. "I...I can't..."

A dull tearing sound followed by a splash was heard. The bottom of the bag had fallen open, soaking Cal's lap and the ground beneath him. Cal tried to stand, but slipped on the spilled beer and smashed his lip open on a nearby table.

Tommy was unmoved. "You failed the Brown Bag Challenge," he said.

Patrice was inconsolable. He smashed several ashtrays and was overcome by a coughing jag so monstrous that even Tommy had to look away.

Doug turned Cal over onto his back and could see that he was weeping.

"I just," he blubbered, "I just wanted to...to...try this place and...and you made me...YOU MADE ME."

"You blew it man," Doug said.

"I need a...I need hospital."

"What you need," said Doug, "is to be a little more open to new experiences."

Vegas

Amanda could see that Renee was out of sorts. A half-eaten Lean Cuisine was in evidence beside her computer's keyboard, the plastic seal not even all the way ripped off. A pile of paperwork was close to spilling off the edge of her desk; it was unlike Renee not to stay on top of that sort of thing. The newly instituted fruit-smoothie-in-the-morning regimen was not having the desired effect.

Amanda knocked softly on Renee's office door. Renee looked up, smiling weakly. Taking this as the invitation it was, Amanda sat down across from Renee, placing her leather portfolio on her lap and crossing her wrists atop it. She looked at her coworker in what she hoped was a commiserating fashion.

Renee's face said it all: she had been G-chatting with Mark again. Amanda was not surprised, but upset and certainly disappointed. Poor Renee, she and Mark had been together for two years, and it can be hard to break something off just like that. Amanda of all people knew that only too well. And certainly the stress from this latest round of layoffs wasn't doing Renee any favors either. What Renee needed, what they both needed really, was some time away from it all.

Suddenly, it came to her. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before?

"Renee," Amanda said. "Vegas."

"Vegas?" Renee replied after a beat.

"Vegas," Amanda said.

Slowly, and with a radiance that was stunning to behold, Renee seemed to wake from a deep stupor. Her soft eyes reemerged to display their shimmering beauty, much as a lone flower unfurls itself to greet the new dawn.

"Vegas," she said. "Vegas."

"Vegas," Amanda confirmed.

The open road was like an elixir to their wearied spirits. They listened to all their favorite songs again, singing along to every lyric and collapsing in laughter. They ate junk food at diners and argued over which of the truckers was the hottest. They rolled down the windows and let the dry desert wind whip their hair to and fro. Renee, overcome by euphoria, stood up and put her head through the sun roof, feeling the night scream past her and paying no heed to Amanda's panicked protests.

"Vegas!" she shouted to the stars. "Vegaaaas!"

When at long last they clapped eyes on the strip itself, it was beyond anything their imaginations could conjure. It was as if they had stepped through an unseen portal in the earth into another, stranger, more beautiful land saturated with bright light, crystal, and gold. Everywhere were signs beckoning them forward, each more uncanny than the last. "'O' at Bellagio," they said, "Criss Angel Believe" and "Lance Burton Appearing Nightly." The blinding beacon shone from the bowels of the Luxor, seemingly as old as time itself.

"Vegas!" said Amanda and Renee. "Woooo!"

There is little that needs to be said about that weekend except that it was the greatest of the two girls' lives. They forgot all about work, family, their love lives and mortgages, threw caution to the wind and had an incredible time. Vegas was like a wonderful drug that hit all of their pleasure centers at once. Time stopped, or better, was forgotten entirely. All that existed was the moment: the moment they first stepped blinking onto the casino floor; the moment Celine Dion sang directly to Renee; the moment they spilled sangrita on the cute waiter; the moment Amanda upended a tray of finger foods outside the casino's restaurant; the moment Renee, compañera that she was, held Amanda's hair as she vomited onto the hood of a rental car; the fire.

Back at the office on Monday, both were unable to speak because they were too hungover from all the liquor they had consumed. A passing mail clerk, though, on his way to the lunch break that was his sole island of peace and sanity in an otherwise absurd and horrifying work day, swore he heard a single word pass from Renee's lips before another round of dry-heaving into the Target bag she held beneath her.

"Vegas..."

Living Legend

“Whoa…oh my, who are you, sister?”

Emma choked on a scream. No sooner had she tacked up the dead rocker’s photo, freshly sliced from the Ultimate Rock Countdown issue of Rolling Stone, than the icon in question began to rub his eyes of sleep and stare at her in a deeply puzzled fashion.

“Ohmigod…ohmigod…”

“Can’t seem to get my craniality in order, you dig?”

“ARE YOU REALLY JIMI HENDRIX.”

“Shh shh slow down little lady, this isn’t exactly my proper, er, cup of tea, ah hah. Where have we found ourselves?”

“Um…um um we’re in- at my house…in Plainfield.”

“Oh goodness, Jersey? That’s tough stuff, you know, I can’t really mesh with that in a cosmic sense. It’s dissonant, one could say.”

“Mr. Hendrix, I just want to say, you’re my absolute favorite singer. All the kids in my school listen to, like, Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga and all that crap, but like, they don’t know about real music.”

“Did I meet you in Soho? You got groovy hair, it’s all the way down to your face.”

“I have to call Gabi.”

“No don’t worry about Gabi, Gabi’s on her own trip, dig? See when Gabi and I play music it’s kind of a spiritual thing and sometimes we take it to some far out places and we need a little time to re-tune our energies. Say, who’s that fella on the wall?”

“What? Oh um that’s Kurt Cobain, you probably don’t know about him. He’s my second favorite musician ever.”

“I can groove on that. So listen missy, do you know why is it that I can’t seem to move more very far in one direction or the other?”

“Uh, Mr. Hendrix, I cut you out of a magazine. I’m almost positive you’re two-dimensional.”

“Groovy, groovy. So what does a chick like you like to do in Plainview?”

“Ugh, nothing, Plainview sucks. Mostly just watch a movie or go to Dairy Queen with my friends and make fun of people there.”

“Dairy Queen, that’s a trip, baby. Sometimes, in Seattle and all, I’d get a chili dog down at Dairy Queen, and a root beer float sometimes.”

Super Bowl XLV: The Nightmare

The room is slathered in a patina of garish mauve, the walls are seeping. A lava lamp glows upon the dresser.

"Have a seat," says Ben Roethlisberger.

"I've never been here," I respond. Ben roots around in his burlap NFL-issue Steelers satchel; I hear rustling, crinkling.

"Yo Ben." A voice from outside. "The cops are here man and-"

"SHHHHHH." Ben's intonation is soft, yet fills the room and the inside of my frontal lobe. Finally he has the desired item.

"Try them." He has me by the throat.

"No thanks I'm not a fan of cool ranch-MMMPHHHH"

"DON'T YA LIKE DORITOS BOY HEH HEH HEH"

I catch a glimpse of the big game on the hotel TV. The Packers punt and Will.I.Am signals for a fair catch. From my perch in the broadcasters' booth I see Jerry Jones throwing a flag. Then he picks it up, then sits down on the field Indian-style. He seems confused. It is snowing.

Chris Berman and the PC from the Mac commercials are talking to the Cowboys cheerleaders on the sidelines about how Paul Westerberg just died. A thousand puppies roll Betty White down a jagged cliff for a bottle of Miller Lite.

I see you've noticed my books.

Oh yes, a little hobby of mine. You might even say it's grown into a passion. At first it was just, hello, what am I going to do with all these empty shelves? When I bought the stupid condo in the first place, they sold me on those shelves, really they did. Something about a tabula rasa, a gradual accrual, who can remember now, it's been two years for mercy's sake. Suffice it to say I had real hopes for my shelves in the beginning, but after a few months all I'd put up there were some unpacked boxes and a half-read copy of The Help . Languishing, really.

Well! They started to eat at me, these shelves, just nipping away at my psyche. My God, I would say to myself, I mean, look at the things, you could park a city bus in there! I tell you, it must have been some sort of divine kismet when I heard Delilah simply gushing about this fellow she'd hired for her place in the Vineyard, about how she felt energized to be in her space, really living in it, I think is what she said.

So I thought to myself, oh what's the harm in bringing this contractor or specialist or what have you over to see my shelves at least for a consultation. He wasn't asking all that much just to take a look at the dear things, and anyway, I thought, I might be able to pick up some pointers on the cheap. And I tell you, Diane, after half an hour he had changed my entire way of looking at, you know, not just the shelves but the whole condo, what a home meant to me and about me! "These things are a void," he said, which I thought was a little heavy-handed but still I could see where he was coming from. And he said, "But I've got a solution. A book solution!"

That was it, my darling, I was sold on this thing, this whole concept, this slippery slope that I've spiraled into, haha. Pretty soon it was vellum this and anachronistic typeface that, and I was finding myself at places I would have never dreamed I would be setting foot in just a month earlier: rare book auctions, estate sales...he must have dragged me to at least thirty Goodwill stores in April alone, if you can believe that!

There was method to the madness, of course, and he must have explained the whole thing to me fifty times, but again it's a bit hazy. I recall the phrase "welcoming me into my aesthetic comfort zone," and that he kept mentioning Basquiat. The whole thing is based on the map gallery at the Vatican, I remember that much. It's very subtle though, most people can't tell.

I mean, of course I read the things. That is to say, well, some of them are so ancient that they'd just turn to dust in my hands if I so much as thumb through the pages, so I leave those alone, and all those old Russian masterpieces he bought, I don't know, when I think of those miserable winters and all that heavy cream I start to feel dizzy. Oh and I got rid of The Help, too. He made a face when I showed him that one.

Unsolicited Concepts For Donovan McNabb and Alexander Ovechkin's Capital One Ads

CONCEPT 1: Donovan is leaving Fed Ex Field after a particularly tough defeat. Alex pulls up in his whip for their Sunday visit to Dairy Queen (a dietary indulgence that each man can afford once a week at most).

"I'm am sorry Donovan," says Alex. "That was a truly heartbreaker."

"Thanks, man," Donovan replies. Then: "Oh SHIT! I had to pay the pool guy to fish out that dead squirrel right before the game, I'm out of cash!"

Suddenly, like a lightbulb: "Capital One Bank," says Alex. "They're everwhere."

"Oh man, you're right Ovie!" Donovan is effervescent. "When we get to DQ, I'm treating you to a chili dog and a Blizzard!"


CONCEPT 2: Alex is spotting Donovan as he works on his bench press. Donovan finishes his set, grabs a towel.

"Whew!" he exclaims.

"Make sure you always are locking it out," Alex reminds him. "That last set was not looking so good."

Donovan concurs. "You're right man. It's just, I feel like I'm not getting the kind of pump I need from my supplements. I'm worn out lately!"

"I know of a guy," Alex offers. "He is super underground, only having the shit that is not in the Vitamin Shoppes yet. However he is taking cash only."

"Hell man, I don't feel like driving across town to BB&T just to get some cash," Donovan replies.

Alex grabs Donovan by the shirt collar and pulls him Eskimo-kiss close, staring unblinking into his eyes. "Capital One Bank," he hisses. "They're everywhere."

Donovan is nonplussed.


CONCEPT 3: Donovan is trying to book a seat on a flight to Saint-Tropez five minutes before it departs National Airport. His credit card is declined.

"I'm terribly sorry Mr. McNabb," the firm but accommodating young lady at the ticket counter tells him.

"No, no, it's fine," he replies. "Damn! I knew I shouldn't have put all those cases of Orca caviar on that card right before this trip! Orcas don't even lay eggs!"

Almost before he can finish the sentence, an enormous hirsute hand floats before his face, clutching a freshly minted American Express black card, issued by...

"Capital One Bank," says Alex. "They're everywhere."

"Alex!" Donovan exclaims, dumbfounded. "You're a lifesaver! But aren't you supposed to be playing a game right now?"

"Yes." Alex gestures to a nearby airport bar, which is broadcasting a live feed of a Caps-Sharks game in the first period. Alex has already scored twice and is attempting a penalty shot.

"Woooowww," Donovan says. "You really are something else, man!"

"I got to go," Alex says.

Hells Yeah

Xtranormal is fun