Your Thursday Regret: Pink Floyd

It is fairly common knowledge that back in the day I was a major consumer of alcohol. The popularly-tossed-about figure is "a bottle of vodka a day," and while that is a slight oversimplification it's close enough to accurate for our purposes (our purposes being, for this feature, a bizarre mix of nostalgia and mordant self-criticism). What is slightly less-known, or at least less-publicized, is that I was a recreational user of complex pharmaceuticals at the time as well, though certainly not to anything close to the same extent.

All the big words in that sentence were chosen with exquisite care. (Hm, there I go again.) "Recreational" and "complex pharmaceuticals" are the keys there - it was hardly a regular or even semi-regular thing, and your garden variety narcotics held no interest for me. I was a pills guy back in college, and when it came to pills I had one rule: up, up, gotta be up. This isn't that surprising when you consider the massive quantities of depressants I was ingesting at the time - taking Quaaludes on top of Absolut is not only a good way to ease yourself into hypotensive brain death, but it doesn't provide you with any sort of different experience; it's just more of the same. Plus, I don’t know if they even still MAKE Quaaludes. No, I was a stimulant guy, the more exotic the better. It is interesting to note that I don't directly recall ever taking stims while I was drinking, indicating that while my body was clearly trying to kill itself it apparently wasn't in any sort of actual rush to do so.

It is also distinctly possible that my taste for chemical enrichment did not extend beyond little while AWAKE! pills because one time around my 18th birthday I was at a party and I watched a guy drop acid. As I stood there drinking a screwdriver whose color was best described as a thin, pale, semi-transparent light yellow he proceeded to have what I still consider to be the Freakout of the Millenium.

This guy went BERSERK.

I've hallucinated before; never from drugs, just lack of sleep. I distinctly remember a class my sophomore year when I hadn't slept in about 40 hours previous and the print in my British Literature textbook turned bright red and started sliding back and forth across the page, and when I looked up the room was full of smoke. A few months back, driving home from New York in the middle of the night I started seeing cars and trees that weren't actually there. As hallucinations go they're kinda lame. The real problem with hallucinating isn't so much that you see all kinda of wacky shit but that moment when the conscious part of your brain realizes that you're seeing things that aren't there. THAT is what fucks you up, your conscious mind not being able to handle the disconnect between what you're seeing and what is real.

But this guy back at this party, oh my goodness, he just lost his shit. He was running around the room like his life depended on it, having shouted conversations with people no one else could see; he'd stop every few seconds and try to swat away imaginary insects from the air around his body; he'd clutch various limbs and body parts as though he were afraid they'd fly away. I believe the appropriate drug culture term for what he experienced is "a bad trip." No kidding. When he started screaming about "the monster" I finished my screwdriver, politely excused myself, and vowed never, ever, ever in my life to take LSD.

I have occasionally wondered in the years since if not ever taking LSD is what eventually led to the erosion of my love of Pink Floyd, but I'm pretty sure now it probably wasn't that. If acid usage and the concomitant flashbacks are necessary elements to enjoying a band I'm pretty sure the band wasn't that good to begin with.

The weird thing about Floyd is that unlike a lot of the things I've talked about here I can't remember what it was that made me actually like them in the first place. Back in high school I saw them in concert, for Chrissakes, and I have NO IDEA WHY. It was just one of those things you did back then. To an extent, I suppose, everyone discovers music - I mean really discovers that they actually have a musical taste, even if for most people it's laughably bad - in mid-to-late high school somewheres, and if you don't go hip-hop or country it seems that sooner or later, before you get to college, you're into Pink Floyd. It boggles the mind.

So I go off to college and I have all these Pink Floyd CDs. I did the whole bit with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz around, I dunno, junior year or so, and even though I was still into Floyd I had long since determined that I really fucking hate the Wizard of Oz, so even drunk it wasn't as impressive as it probably should have been. I listened - looking back on it I honestly can't believe this - to Dark Side and The Wall OVER AND OVER AGAIN. What was I THINKING? At one point when I couldn't find my copy of The Wall I actually borrowed one from someone else and NEVER RETURNED IT. This is how much I was into Pink Floyd back then and looking back I really can't figure out what the hell I was doing.

There are still bits I like, to be sure. "One Of These Days" still works on some sort of primal level in a way I really enjoy (plus it reminds me of Life on Mars), and, since hearing it on the radio on the way to class earlier this week was what got me thinking about this whole thing in the first place, the line in "Run Like Hell" that goes "if they catch you in the backseat trying to pick her locks," as rock and roll metaphors go that's really just outstandingly good.

But honestly, my disillusionment with Floyd came into being a couple months back when I was driving someplace without my iPod and "Comfortably Numb" came on the air, and while I was sitting at a red light listening to it I just said out loud to my empty car, "what the fuck is this song about?" I couldn't come up with anything. My mind drifted as I drove - it was on Bustleton Avenue, I remember that, though God knows why I remember it or what I was doing there - and I realized I couldn't think of what a SINGLE Floyd song was really about beyond, I dunno, sounding neat.

I haven't done anything drastic like erase all the Pink Floyd from my iTunes - honestly Floyd sliding in my estimation must have started a long time ago because there isn't a whole hell of a lot of it in there, so at some point my albums disappeared for good and I didn't notice - because it's not like their music is offensively awful (like some other people we've talked about here). I just don't understand what I ever saw in it in the first place, and the fact that I am unable to determine my own motivations pisses me off more than anything else.

JLK

Your No Quizo Update

That's right, folks, no game tonight for St. Patrick's Day. If you choose to go to a bar tonight, well, that's your problem.

I'll have updates on scores and what we'll be doing for the last two rounds of the tournament later this week.

JLK

Your Cause for Celebration Quizo Update

Today's e-mail is going out a little late because I am operating at slightly less than 100% due to catching the plague this weekend. The illness itself isn't really terribly serious, but my overreaction to it certainly is. Massive alternating doses of orange juice and NyQuil (unfortunately the green kind, don't know how I got that) leaves one a little woozy.

I caught the plague at a wedding on Saturday, the last of this year's silly season. This year was certainly nowhere near as bad as last year - three weddings in four months doesn't even hold a candle to five in ten weeks - and the event itself was fun enough, I suppose. I had a nice little moment when I was talking separately to friends of mine who have been going out a long time. Let's call them... say... "Rich and Colleen of Huntingdon Valley, PA." At about the halfway point of the reception I was talking to Colleen.

"So when's your wedding?" I asked her.

Colleen looked at me blankly.

"I mean, maybe you don't have a date set yet, but like an idea on when maybe? Next summer, next fall, what're we talking? I'm a busy man, you know."

Colleen continued to stare at me as though I had suddenly sprouted a second head. I began to grow confused.

"What? Richie proposed a while ago now, didn't he?"

Stare.

"What the hell, he bought the ring, I know he did, it's not like..."

As Colleen's stare moved from blank uncomprehension to seething anger I realized that if any of the things I have just mentioned are actually true, which I was starting to seriously worry may not have been - i.e . proposing, buying a ring, etc - she knows nothing about any of them.

Oh dear.

I fled outside for a cigarette and when I came back in I motioned for Rich to come over and join me.

"So I just talked to Colleen," I said.

"Colleen's nice," Rich said, clearly on his way to being very drunk.

"Yeah, I, uh, I may have intimated some things that, uh, you might not have done yet. See I THOUGHT you had done them, so I was asking, and, uh..."

I've never seen someone sober up as quickly in my entire life than at that moment.

"What did you SAY?" he asked.

"I may have, uh, mentioned something about, uh, you buying a ring and, uh, proposing and, uh..." I struggled to find a way to wrap this up. "I think you may be engaged now."

Rich stared at me.

"Congratulations?" I said.

He punched me twice in the back of the head. I deserved it.

Part of the reason I am overreacting so strongly to getting sick is because I will be turning 30 on Friday and I need to be well for the gigantic birthday celebration at the Dark Horse Friday night. I figure you only turn 30 once so there might as well be a gigantic blowout bash. If you're reading this you're invited - we start at 9, get there early if you want a seat. It's going to get... er... crowded. However, if I am not operating at full capacity, not only will I not be able to fully enjoy the festivities, but I will succeed in getting everyone I know sick. While in a sort of academic sense that sounds interesting (if not fun outright) I don't want an army of plague-bearers bearing down on me this weekend while I'm trying to watch the new Futurama movie (comes out tomorrow!).

JLK

Your "Has Anyone Seen My Lighter?" Quizo Update

No, seriously, I just sat down to write the e-mail and it's nowhere to be found. What the deuce.

So how was everyone's weekend? Aside from temperatures 20+ degrees above normal - global warming, bah, what's that - I hope everyone had a good time.

I was at a wedding on Friday which was primarily notable for the actual wedding itself - I am not making this up - lasting less than three minutes. I'm serious. It was at one of those riverside mansion places up in Bensalem. We're sitting in folding chairs out on the lawn (like you do), there's the whole little collapsible-arch-thingy for the ceremony, a guy is off to the side playing vaguely classical-type music off a Powerbook - you know, a wedding. The Pachelbel Canon starts playing and the bride/groom/assorted hangers-on start walking up the aisle.

This is where it gets weird.

The wedding party gets up to the arch-thingy, the priest guy says "dearly beloved..." and at this point a helicopter starts flying directly overhead. The mansion we're at is maybe 800 feet from the junction of 95 and Woodhaven Road, so I'm guessing it's a traffic copter. I can barely make out the proceedings - I catch an "I do" here and there - and almost before you can finish buttoning your jacket from standing up when the bride passes they're walking back down the aisle. Done! Married! It's taken you longer to read about it then it did for the actual wedding to occur.

I turned to the guy standing next to me and said, "you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

I wasn't timing it myself but I am informed by reliable sources that the entire ceremony, from dearly beloved to walking back down the aisle clocked in at about two minutes and forty five seconds. After I got past the initial shock I said, "this is the greatest wedding ever."

Of course, it did not go all super-nice, as at the after-party after the regular party I had to say to the groom, "yeah, before you go on your honeymoon, I need you to make sure that your Dad doesn't think I'm a giant drug addict." Now you have to understand that for many years now the groom's parents have, to put it charitably, scared the living shit out of me. They are very intense people; I am fairly certain that if his mother concentrated very hard her gaze could actually shatter plate glass. Before the ceremony I ran into his father at the men's room sinks and, trying my best to both be pleasant and seem brave (they can smell fear) I said, "so how we doing?"

He said, "eh, pretty good. Can't wait until I can get a drink, though."

"Well," I said, "some of us are luckier than others on that score."

For the first time I can remember in the last seven years he looked at me as though he did not want to eat my liver and said, "that's right, you don't - how long now?"

In a rather catastrophic example of totally blowing the coverage, I said, "eight years since I stopped drinking. But, you know, I still do massive amounts of cocaine to keep myself limber."

The liver-eating look came back, and I thought "FUCK!" very loudly.

Saturday night, of course, was the Springsteen show, and I don't think anything needs to be said about that.

...

...

...

Oh, come ON, you didn't really think THAT was going to happen, did you?

Going to a Bruce Springsteen concert is something of an odd experience if you aren't used to it. It's a bit like being in the chorus of a musical. Everybody knows every song in its entirety, but you only have to sing certain parts at certain times. You have choreography to remember, which is slightly different than what the leads are doing. Everybody knows who the real star of the show is, but damn if you don't still feel like you're an important part of it. And he played Thundercrack! FUCKING THUNDERCRACK! OH MY GOD HE PLAYED FUCKING THUNDERCRACK!

I am going to restrain myself at this point because if I don't I could go on for literally thousands of words about the amazing transcendent awesomeness that is a Springsteen concert. If you are not an especially religious person - and "not especially religious" is a pretty accurate way of describing how I roll with such things - a live Springsteen show is as close are you will ever get to pure, unadulterated joy. It is, truly, awesome. As they said on the Office, if you don't realize that it's awesome, well, you just need awesome lessons.

For a taste, most of the concert can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=cgb77&p=r

And, finally, I am publicly calling out Cum From Behind and The Darg Whores, both of whom have been notably absent the last few weeks.

JLK

Your "One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall" Quizo Update

Let's spend a minute or two talking about the Transformers movie, which I saw last week.

Transformers is the greatest movie in the history of ever. It is the crowning achievement of all human endeavor and is the single most important piece of entertainment since the dawn of human civilization, if not before.

Deviations from or disagreements with these statements will not be tolerated. Freedom may be the right of all sentient beings, but if you bitch on Transformers in my presence I will kick your ass right off this planet.

And that's all we need to say about Transformers.

The movie was far and away the highlight of the last week, since the only thing that even could have competed with it (before I saw the movie, at least) was my trip to New York this past weekend to hang out with the New York Blues (the official East Coast Chelsea supporters' club), and that ended with me watching my friend Tim, who was at the time the single drunkest being in not only this universe but through several layers of parallel dimensions on either side of it, asking a prostitute if she knew where the Kwik-E-Mart was. You haven't been mortified until you've watched someone ask a hooker for directions to a fictional convenience store.

You'd think that the only single woman at the party leaving with you and your friend is a good thing, even when said friend's blood has enough alcohol in it to successfully clean your sparkplugs, but trust me - said friend spending a 30-block cab ride threatening to throw up all over you and said single woman and then, after said cab ride, walking up to said prostitute and saying, "hey, do you know where the fucking Kwik-E-Mart is? Come on! I know you do! Where - is - the FUCKING! - Kwik-E-Mart?!" is not repeat NOT a good thing.

This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Finally, if anyone would like to see the New York Red Bulls play the Los Angeles David Beckhams on August 18 for $25, please let me know by noon tomorrow - the aforementioned New York Blues are getting a group ticket thingy and this is, to my knowledge, the only way to buy tickets to only that game (and not, as they normally make you do, also buy tickets to three others).

That's soccer I'm talking about there, by the way, for those of us who haven't been paying attention.

JLK

Your Happy Happy Joy Joy Quizo Update

Did everyone have a good weekend? I know I did. So many good things happened the last couple days I don't know where to start.

That being the case, I will start on Friday when I saw Hot Fuzz, which may be the single greatest movie ever made (passing even Top Secret! in my estimation). Essentially, no one can ever make an action movie ever again. Hot Fuzz broke them. If nothing else it shows you how INCREDIBLY RETARDED most of those movies are (although I do still have a soft spot for the first Lethal Weapon and Die Hard). So go see that.

Then came Saturday morning and Manchester United unexpectedly drawing with Middlesbrough, thus opening the door for Chelsea to swoop in and crush them in the race for the Premiership title. The only thing better than United dropping points was the fact that it gave me an opportunity to do one of the things I love and I'm best at: ruining someone else's day.

I spent the better part of early Saturday afternoon madly calling and texting all my friends who are Manchester United fans with messages ranging from a simple "oops" to "hey, you know what Cristiano Ronaldo and Barack Obama have in common? They're just... not... ready..." Some people took this in greater stride than others, though I will say that only ONE of them... let's call him... say... "Pat Hackett of Stamford, CT" chose to seek an ill-thought vengeance the next day. We'll get to that in a second.

Saturday night, then, I was at a birthday party at the Dark Horse (trip to the DH 2 of 3 in a 16 hour span). That went extraordinarily well despite the birthday boy's insistence that the Johnny Black I bought him was actually lighter fluid. Around the midpoint of the party a group of five guys who, from twenty feet away, appeared to be obvious jerkoffs, walked into the party and proceeded to talk to no one. Clearly they were not invited. I was asked to politely remove them from the party.

Two opportunities in one day to do my favorite thing! What a weekend!

So I walk over to these guys fully knowing that they don't belong and pretend to strike up a conversation with them.

"So how do you guys know Mike?" I ask.

"Who's Mike?" the lead jerk says.

"This is Mike's birthday party," I say.

"Oh, we don't know him," another jerk says.

"Sorry, guys, this is a private party."

"What the fuck," the lead jerk shouts. "We just got kicked out of another private party."

This is when I get another great moment of instant inspiration.

"Well, fellas, that's what 'private party' means, doesn't it?" I say.

And I just point at the door.

I love parties.

Then, of course, Chelsea proceeded to not beat Newcastle yesterday (trip 3 of 3 to the DH in 16 hours) and not swoop in and crush United's title hopes. This left me feeling relatively bad until Hackett called yesterday and tried to take his aforementioned ill-thought revenge for the day previous.

When he calls the little window on my phone flashes a very distinctive Manchester United crest, so I can see from about 10 feet away that it's him calling me and be appropriately pissy the second I answer.

Me: What the fuck do you want?

Him: Hey, don't be like that. I was just telling you I'm in town and wanted to know if you wanted to get a drink.

Me: Oh. Well, you should have told me you were coming. Yeah, let's go out.

Him: Okay, great. I'll have a Newcastle.

Me: [pause]

Him: [laughing]

Me: Uncool, man.

Him: No, it's very cool.

Me: Okay. Fine. You have a Newcastle. I'll have a Portsmouth.

Him: Touche.

Me: And a Middlesbrough.

Him: Okay, that's enough of that.

Me: And a Celtic. And a Copenhagen.

Him: Please stop.

Me: And two Arsenals. And an about-to-be-fucking-relegated West Ham. And a not-even-in-the-Premiership-Southend.

Him: God I hate you.

Me: You really didn't plan this very well.

Is it so wrong to love what I do? And can one really love a thing TOO much? I sure don't think so.

Important note before I go: the Second Anniversary Dark Horse Quizo will be two weeks from tonight. Two years! Who could believe it? I spoke with James yesterday and we WILL have some decidedly special stuff on offer that night. I will reveal them as we get closer. One is pretty damn good, the other is god damn outstanding. Also note that since that night is also the DH golf outing we won't be in the main bar. We may be in the Rigger Bar like we were last year, but since the availability of smoking isn't an issue anymore we may move into the restaurant, which is a hell of a lot more comfortable for a large group. So Monday, May 7, is one day you definitely want to show up for the game - Delicious Bass, I'm looking at you.

Finally, please note that not only is today the 50th birthday of Palestra Jon (of the rule which bears his name) but that he and Oprah's Book Club will be going for their third win in a row tonight. So join us at Quizo Central in wishing him a happy birthday, and please show up tonight and stop them, since if they do get three in a row they will become absolutely unbearable.

JLK