welcome to drink & walk

"Irregular" ain't no river in Africa. It ain't no river anywhere, except, okay, in Arizona, but even then it ain't never got no water in it. Irregular ain't no holiday or no picnic or no bazaar or no emporium or no flea market or no op-ed or no milk money or no busfare. It ain't no way to be. The dictionary defines irregular as: (1) Raising a peanut butter sandwich to your mouth but missing; (2) Not really being in the army even though you think you're in the army; (3) Eating lots of toothpaste; (4) Skipping to your "Lou" when you ain't got no "Lou;" (5) Hanging out on a busy corner, all by yourself, sitting down, underneath a blanket; (6) A man named "Chester" or "Danger;" (7) Goin' down to Taco Bell for a load of chop suey; (8) A person *not* in a neighborhood bar or a neighborhood bar without any sense of desperation; (9) Not coming to Drink & Walk; and (10) There ain't no 10.

Join us for another round of Drink & Walk, the happy hours where you, too, can be a "Regular." We'll shout out your nickname when you show up -- "Iron Bladder!" -- "Sexual Chocolate!" -- "Sausages!" -- and show you the secret handshake, the secret wolf whistle, and the secret method of excusing yourself after a belch. (Actually, it's not so secret -- you just order yourself another drink.)

Drink & Walk -- the Happy Hours, the Action Figure, the Treatise, the Manifesto, the Lighthouse in a World of Murk.

welcome to drink & walk (avec baseball)

I would submit to you that you haven't lived, until you've successfully heckled Jesse Orosco, the former left-handed pitcher who played, for 24 years, for the Mets / Dodgers / Indians / Brewers / Orioles / Cardinals / Dodgers / Padres / Yankees / Twins. Ah, it was a balmy evening in Baltimore, at old Memorial Stadium, and I was pissed, sloshed, wasted, looped. My buddy and I, Kenny, took in two ass pockets of whiskey and were acting like two asses in a pocket of morons out there behind the visiting team's bullpen.

The Indians were in town, 1990, and I told Jesse Orosco, who was warming up at the time, and I quote: "@#$%!!&&**@@!" This elicited nothing but a smile from the veteran pitcher. So, instead, I told Orosoco that I was gonna get down there in the bullpen and, and I quote: "Put a coat on his hanger." To which, Orosco stopped warming up, and with a big chew of terbacky in his mouth, yelled up to me: "Phook you!" A pitcher don't like his curveball being called "a hanger." And then the ushers ejected the guys behind us. Justice.

To put a coat on our hangers, hang out this Thursday for another round of Drink & Walk. Oh, we'll be Drinking & Walking at the appointed hours, but before that, at 1:05 p.m., we will be seated in the RFK Stadium cheap seats for the matinee game between the (g)Nats and the Astros. We won't carry in any ass pockets of whiskey, but we will cheer as the Astros groove the tittie whip, as the (g)Nats throw that high cheese and bat those dingers and peas.

Drink & Walk: The Happy Hours that takes you out to the old ball game. (Let us know if you'd like to join us at RFK.)

welcome to blelvis

Are you ever nostalgic for the days of Blelvis -- Black Elvis, who used to skulk around the streets of Adams Morgan and sing you any Elvis Presley song you could think of? I'm beginning to think that he's been a casualty of the "War on Terror" --
such that the Bush administration was terrified of a black man singing Elvis Presley songs, and had him deported to Guantanamo as an "enemy singer/impersonator." There's been a guy named Pelvis, the Peruvian Elvis, walking around Adams Morgan lately, but it's fishy. There's also someone going around named Whouis Armstrong, the White Louis, but that's not the same either. And Juke Ellington, the Jewish Duke. All of these men cannot be trusted, and are probably undercover NSA Agents, aka Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Agents, who have been sent out to reduce swelling in urban areas. But I'm here to tell you -- that's a violation of our constitutional rights.

If you, too, would like to swell in an urban area, join us for another round of Drink & Walk, the happy hours that stands for an American's right to inflammation. All the other happy hours would rather that you apply an ice pack, or elevate your limbs, or take an aspirin. But not Drink & Walk. We want you to be roused, rowdy, ridiculous, omnivorous, and, in the words of Mike Tyson: "Ludicrouth." We want you to be so inflamed, it'll be ludicrouth how inflamed you are. i.e., Party for your right to swell, swelter, helter-skelter.

squid versus assclown

Sharon Mesmer at the Flarf Festival, April 21, 2006
Medicine Show, New York City

look it up!

I had called my father because I was going to brag that I knew of a half-Jewish guy who he didn't know of -- Paul Desmond, aka Paul Breitenfeld, the alto sax player famous for writing and playing "Take Five" with the Dave Brubeck Quartet -- but my dad, never batting an eyelash, threw Gene Wilder at me, and he's a real Jew, through and through, and I hadn't seen that coming. "How many times do I gotta tell ya, it's a stage name!!!" thundered my father, who, apparently, keeps a few such names in his back pocket, and takes them out when he needs to. It's a brass knuckles version of Who's A Jew that he plays, and if you want to play, yourself, you have to wake up pretty early in the morning. I called up Rod to complain, but he threw Jerry Garcia at me, and I was still reeling from Gene Wilder, and I didn't have writer's block, exactly, but "Jew's block" and I blurted out, instead, "god damn it," which is not a smart thing to say, in the grand scheme of Who's A Jew. Finally, I said, "Paula, Straight up Now Tell Me, Abdul," but it was too late, I'd already hung up the phone. I used to imagine certain people marrying certain people, and if she had married Kareem Abdul Jabbar, she would've been Paula Abdul Abdul Jabbar. How cool would that've been?

Want to share, with us, your favorite half-Jew? If so, then join us for another round of Drink & Walk, the happy hours where you can be a Jew, a half-Jew, a non-Jew, or someone who just likes to salt the meat. Ahem. Next week, Dad holds forth on the D.C. "tagger" Borf, thinking that, instead, the confused young man meant to say Barf, each time, but made a typo with the spray paint.