April 28, 2006
The Last Hurrah (4.27.06)
I always wondered why Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown decided to visit Israel and hang out with Ariel Sharon. Tonight, while eating Country Fried Kalebone™ at phATLanta’s Soul Vegetarian restaurant on N. Highland Avenue, I finally found the answer.
While waiting for my Country Fried Kalebone™ steak (Kalebone™ being a proprietary blend of wheat gluten and organic sponge like material) I looked up on the wall and read a newspaper clipping giving a bit of backstory on the establishment. It seems a certain self-titled Prince (not the artist formerly know as a symbol) formed a splinter group back in the early 1970s in Chicago called the Black Hebrews. It seems they’re all about hand-made goods, positive energy, good vegan cooking, and hardcore polygamy (having sex with many women under the approving eye of the big Vegan in the sky. I only assume that gay Black Hebrews aren’t allowed several husbands, but I could be wrong…)
The Black Hebrews have settled in Israel and finally found acceptance. A few things have led to this seemingly positive acknowledgment:
1. A Black Hebrew was killed by a Palestinian in a suicide attack, which somehow proved to Israel that the Black Hebrews were now legit.
2. White people generally like black people who seem non-threatening because it makes them feel better about themselves.
3. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown went to meet the Black Hebrews to find some positive energy and rescusitate their lives/careers. Question: Was Condoleezza Rice on the plane with Houston and Brown that landed in Israel, and if so, what was that conversation like?
After dinner Al and went for a walk on Ponce De Leon Avenue to Mark Cuban’s Midtown Art Cinema. Along the way a few nice things happened. First, we walked by the Clermont Lounge. The Clermont Lounge is home to the famous strip club where Trixie (not Pixie or Boopsie or Blimpie, or whatever I thought her name was) makes history. Al and I discussed going in but it was agreed that the mystery of what it might be like was much better than the truth of what it actually is. More than likely, Al knew that she wasn’t going to be his type. Or maybe he wasn’t up for wearing the helmet because other people with dirty hair wear the same helmet and of course the helmet isn’t washed regularly so the whole thing is a lice/dandruff trapdoor waiting to be sprung.
Walking by I felt like I always feel when I’m in Memphis on a road trip with people and we pull into the Graceland parking lot, and pay $3 parking, and then when upon learning that the tour is going to cost $22, we all get back in the car and get back on the road. What I’m saying is – I’ll probably never know and yet I know I’m cheating myself out of life, just like I always do.
Also along the way there was a fascinating confrontation between a possibly schizophrenic/homeless black man and two possibly gay definitely white hipsters dudes. Basically, the black guy was outside the front door of a diner and in the middle of a huge argument with the two white guys. For quick backstory, I noticed the black guy minutes earlier when I walked out the front door of the Soul Vegetarian restaurant. He was eating a snack bag of Lays chips and talking to himself. At that point he emptied the chips onto the street as he began yelling to himself or to someone in a car (not sure which, didn’t have a bead on him to make an honest assessment). Anyway, at the restaurant the two white guys were letting him have it verbally. I can only guess what started this whole imbroglio. The part of the interaction that struck me went something like this –
BG: Hey, be a man. Just say it to my face. You can’t do it. Be a man.
WG1: I am being a man. Fuck you! Get the fuck out of here!
BG: Be a man. Just be a man.
WG1: Fuck you! I am being a man.
Rather than walk into this imbroglio, Al and I crossed the street and observed with a few glances over the shoulder. A few older people crossed the street with us to do the same thing. For some reason they walked into a parking lot where a chartered bus was waiting for them. What was the bus for…?
The rest of the walk was uneventful. A few farts preceded by hand-pumping gestures.
The film, “Brick”, however, was excellent. Probably the most interesting film I’ve seen all year. It’s like Bogart and the Big Sleep were lifted and put in a modern High School setting, yet without the cute Veronica Mars treatment. This sort of updating has been done before a few times – the Elliot Gould/Robert Altman update in the early 1970s (“The Long Goodbye?), the Coen Brothers update with “Big Lebowski” – and shouldn’t be seen as that novel, but “Brick” was somehow quite interesting. The music score was full of lamenting trumpets. The cheating police detective was replaced with a cheating vice principal. The lead was a high school loser who likes to fight and defend his ex-girlfriend’s honor. Anyway, I don’t want to get too much into it but Lukas Haas plays a gothic gimp pimp drug dealer type who lives at home with his Mom, so obviously I appreciated the character immensely.
Walking back to our place to crash, and by “our place” I mean Al somehow got a friend from High School to offer up her apartment while she was out of town. A quick note on that. I hardly know this woman from High School. Yet, I see photos of her on her wall and obviously I remember her but everything is now different. I feel like I’m in a real-life museum of sorts, except of course that it’s actually her life. Familiar but strange. Anyway, this leads me to another, but similar thought as I found myself walking through old territory.
I’d like to call this a LATTICE OF COINCIDENCE (a line, if memory serves, from Repoman the film in general, but the weird dude who hangs out under the 4th Street bridge in LA, specifically.)
What I mean is, throughout this journey, already, I keep finding myself revisiting previous places from earlier points in my life, if not previous events marketing tours. Walking back to our place to crash, I recognized the parking meter on Virginia Avenue where I once locked up my bicycle. That was about a year ago on a job where I traveled around the country setting up appliances at hotels for local salespeople to get trained on the new equipment. I had a cruiser bicycle I bought from a friend in Austin and I took it with me all across the country to all the cities I hit – Dallas, OK City, DC, Atlanta, and Chicago. And so here was that damn parking meter again. Just laughing at me.
Previously this sort of déjà vu hit me in Philadelphia. The first time there was in 1996 with the Olympic Torch Relay job. I worked the Nightcrew and drove trucks randomly in the night looking for diesel gasoline to refill. I found a place fairly near the Ben Franklin Bridge. A few years later on a different tour called something like The Kmart Kids Race Against Drugs Tour, I randomly found myself back at same gas station. Perhaps I saw it from I-95 and was feeling nostalgic (for a gas station…?).
And just last week, Al and I were struggling to find parking for our yellow Penske tank. We found it at a Home Depot parking lot, and on our walk to Al’s friend’s apartment we walked through the same gas station. Basically, I haven’t been to Philadelphia without having some interaction with this gas station.
So what does it all mean? All of this adds up to absolutely nothing but I can’t help feel the need to feel something when I keep recognizing gas stations and parking meters and other conceptual signposts from the tours that came before.
Maybe if I don’t assign some meaning to it, then all the years of wandering will simply vanish into the either without a word.
Now who wants to be around when that shit goes down?
