Hickory Shampoo and Other Discontents. WHOOOO!

Of course this video has been pawed over, analyzed, and generally chewed like a behavioral studies cud by so many ruminant internet animals that offering my input would be superfluous. But, in the parlance of our times: Do you know who I am? I’m Sippican Cottage! Superfluity is my métier!

I don’t really care too much about these two proto-sea hags in particular. Everyone else has pretty much covered the waterfront [The management cannot endorse this pun, and disavows any responsibility for it] about their sense of entitlement and so forth. Salt water is wet, y’all. But I’d like to bring something new to the table. Add some seasoning to the stew, and stir the pot, too. Share the benefit of my vast experience. So here goes: Just how obnoxious do you have to be to get the heave-ho from Clarke’s bar?

I’ll head the achshually crowd off at the pass and testify that I’m fully aware that the name of the establishment is the Clarke Cooke House. No one ever calls it anything but Clarke’s bar in my experience, which while somewhat out of date, is voluminous. You see, the minute I espied the screen cap on those videos I knew exactly where these two strumpets were getting their comeuppance. The quarterboard that reads Wine Bistro Spirits. The host’s standup desk thingie. The striped awning. I’ve been in Clarke’s lots of time. That’s Bannister’s Wharf in Newport, Rhode Island. I know it inside and out, and since trolling by it on Gargoyle Earth shows that most everything there is unchanged from the way I remember it, I’ll assume what goes on around there hasn’t changed much either.

Bannister’s Wharf is attached to Bowen’s Wharf right next to it, too, another place I know intimately. I performed in bands dozens of times in that general vicinity, and been drunk dozens of additional times, usually not at the same time. They set up a big tent at the end of one of those wharves, I forget which, and we performed there. There was a restaurant across from Clarke’s with a function room over it, and we’d played for another musician’s wedding reception there, and to give you some idea of the way people act at that locale, the groom jumped out of the second story window halfway through the reception. If you manage to cross America’s Cup Ave. without getting run over, you’ll be standing on Thames Street in front of One Pelham East. I performed there several times, and still have PTSD from it. I played in the nearby Newport Bay Club, too, and used to go across the street on our breaks to pound a quick beer with the jazz band that played in the Red Parrot.

You see, Newport has always been THE location for white bread girls like the two imbeciles in the video to let it all hang out. And by let it all hang out, I really mean yelling Whoo! a lot, and asking you to play Brown Eyed Girl for the third time that evening. Did I mention, WHOOH? Of course back in the day the WHOOOOH was accompanied by five drunk girls making ducklips while one drunk girl took an out of focus picture of the other drunk girls with an Instamatic. Now it’s resting bitch face straight into your Instagram cesspit, but the result must be the same. WHOOOOOOH!

Oh man. I’m having flashbacks. Salve Regina night at the One Pelham East. Yikes. Catholic college girls let loose for the evening, packed in like bullets in a box, yelling WHOOOOOH and climbing up on the stage to paw at us and yell whooo into your microphone, which transmogrified it into WHOOOOOOOO! The stage was several feet higher than the floor, thank god, or I wouldn’t be here to call myself Ishmael and finish the story. A WHOOOH! girl once called me to the edge of the stage in the middle of a song and motioned to me to bend down where she was. When I did, figuring all she wanted was to yell Brown Eyed Girl in my ear for the fourth time, she grabbed a fistful of my shirt, trying to kiss me, and pulled me head first off the stage onto the floor below. That certainly made everyone (but me) yell WHOOOOOOOOOH! Later, on my break, I was walking to the men’s room, and the girl’s room door opened, and there she was, with a gaggle of her friends, and they dragged me in there. I eventually escaped with my life, a torn shirt, and more lipstick on me than a maiden aunt, but I still have tinnitus from the WHOOOOOOOOOOH! they let loose in such close quarters.

And Clarke’s? I’ll ask it again. What in tarnation would a girl have to do to get bounced from Clarke’s? If you shot someone in there, they’d probably ask you to put on a silencer before you shot anyone else, but they wouldn’t bounce you. Clarke’s? Really? Oh, how we abused that place. My friend Mark knew someone who worked in the kitchen. He took me and my buddies to the little wooden gate that hides the alley between the buildings, and we entered through the kitchen, made our way through the rugby scrum of sunburned drunken hedge fund managers and dental hygienists in the bar, and came out at that bouncer lectern you see there in the video. Mark would tell the guy we just went in for a minute to see if someone we knew was there, and he wasn’t, so could we have our $10 cover charge back? He gave each of us ten of someone else’s bucks and we’d go right across the alley for oysters and pitchers of beer. That was pretty obnoxious of us, but we were just trying to fit in around there. So I’ll repeat myself: Just how obnoxious do you have to be to get bounced from Clarke’s?

Please understand that I’m talking about how hard it would be for female humans to get bounced from any nightspot around there. If you’re not of the distaff set, you could get bounced, literally and figuratively, by the local constabulary, sometimes at the drop of a hat. This was also a known fact. But girls? Never.

I’m mystified (not really) by the assistant D.A., who not only doesn’t know the law that forbids turning off a cop’s camera under those circumstances, she’s also unaware that the Newport police department has never been in the business of handing out hugs. Everyone always said the were pretty enthusiastic about applying the hickory shampoo to your scalp. I got stopped by the cops  while going home over the Newport Bridge once, going about 40 MPH. It was really late (early), and the bridge was deserted. The cops said the limit was 25, because of “construction,” here’s your ticket. I mentioned it wasn’t posted, and there was no construction. He asked me if I’d like to come down to the station and “discuss it.” I demurred, because I’ve never wanted a second chance for my fontanel to fuse up. With cop-worn cameras, that approach seems to have morphed into a hair trigger, no compunction about telling you to STFU and move along, and a quick trip to the hoosegow if you put up a fuss. The STFU part is the same as it ever was, though.

So I know something the assistant D.A. doesn’t seem to. First, the Newport police ask you. Then they tell you. Then they make you. There’s no other steps, and they’re always in the same order. But to even the score, she knows something I’ll never know: How in the hell do you get bounced from Clarke’s bar?

The Golf Nazi

Sometimes, there’s a man…

Very few people are truly memorable. Lots of people try to be memorable these days, but fail miserably. If you dye your hair purple and put the contents of your tackle box into your face and stretch your earlobes and have more scribbles than a men’s room stall on your body, you just sort of blend in at this point. Most times, somewhat nondescript people are much more memorable.

It’s hard to define exactly what makes people truly memorable. For instance, way back when, a fellow student walked up behind me and sucker punched me in the face, because he mistook me for somebody else. Since I had nothing but a bloody nose entered into evidence, your honor, I might be forgiven for mistaking him for someone punching me in the face deliberately, and I decked him. But for the life of me, I can’t remember his name, or even a rough approximation of his face. You’d think a pop in the beezer would make a person memorable, but it didn’t.

But there was this one guy. I can’t remember his name, but that’s understandable. I never knew it. I would have been afraid to ask him what it was, and it was never offered. He was the Golf Nazi.

When in lived in SouthCoast Massachusetts, there was this little golf course a few miles from my house. It started out as nine holes, just a modest rolling pasture with some holes drilled in it with flags stuck in them. It was really well-run. I don’t mean well-run as a golf course, although of course it was certainly that. I mean it was well-run compared to any enterprise, public or private, that I’ve ever encountered. How well? I really think the whole world would be better off if it was run the way this place was run.

Unlike more elaborate golf courses, this place had a modest “clubhouse.” I feel a bit silly even calling it that. It was a small, one-room shack with a shed roof. It was, like everything there, orderly and sensible and neat as a pin. There was a man behind a counter inside. He sold a few items besides handing out Lilliputian pencils and scorecards to fib on. A refrigerator with cold water and soda. Golf balls. Little packages of snacks. The place was set up to do one thing, basically, and not only do it well, but do it relentlessly. You went there to play golf, and they’d get you out on the links doing it (badly) quite efficiently. Unless they didn’t.

You see, there was only one way to go golfing there. You had to present yourself to the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter was memorable, hooboy was he. He wasn’t young then, so I assume he’s dead now. I know his worldview is, because I never encounter it anymore. Even though decades have intervened, and I only saw him a handful of times, I’ll remember him forever. I could pick him out of a lineup. I might be able to mimic his  voice. I think I could paint him in oils.

It wasn’t that he had any distinguishing physical characteristics, or anything like that. No goiters or humps or anything else to hang your hat on. Medium height. Medium build. A senior citizen, but one of those people who just look like a young person who got older, not someone that had gone to seed.

You always had to deal with this guy, because he was the only person who was ever behind the counter. He owned the golf course. Think of that. When was the last time you dealt with a business with the owner standing behind the counter? It used to be almost universal in places like sandwich shops or butchers or dry cleaners or whatever. Now it’s all franchises and moody minimum wage workers behind the formica firewall between you and what you want.

So this guy owned the golf course, and he ran the golf course. Hell, he lived there. He had a nice-looking house at the edge of the property, near the road. It was as immaculately cared for as the golf course. His only help were his children, that I ever saw. His daughter was pretty, and a very talented landscaper. The place started out sort of barren, just lots of grass and a few sand traps. But she worked tirelessly to put little oases of plants and ornamental trees all over the place. The gardens were laid out in a fashion I’m familiar with. There was always something to look at. When one plant finished blooming and went by, another plant would take up the slack, right up until the late fall. The place got really nice after a while. He had a son or son-in-law, I can’t remember which, doing the heavier work, mowing and seeding and mucking out the retention ponds and so forth. The place ran like a Swiss watch.

So you’d go into the (snicker) clubhouse, and present yourself at the counter, and tell the man behind the counter that you wanted to play golf, and that you had moolah enough to do it, which wasn’t much as rounds of golf go. Then that man would look at you, wordlessly, a blank expression on his face, no hint of what he was thinking. And more than occasionally, he’d simply shake his head and say, “No.”

I witnessed it more than a few times, so I know it’s not an urban legend. He would just say, “No,” nothing more, and that was that. He didn’t feel the need to explain himself, or argue, or listen to any argument. He’d just say no, and when they inevitable flummoxed reply came his way, he’d say nothing more than, “Because I said so.”

Few people understood the whole concept of a firm no. They’d try to start arguing or cajoling or threatening the guy. He always looked impassive, but more than once I heard him tell people that they couldn’t play today because he said so, but if they didn’t close their trap and leave, he’d ban them forever. Occasionally he’d explain that he owned the place, so he didn’t need to offer an explanation, which was a kind of snake eating its own tail explanation in and of itself.

It was always obvious to me why he said no to people, although they never seemed to figure it out on their own. If you were a male wearing a shirt with no sleeves, you had no chance. People wearing sneakers tried to sneak past the golfing gorgon, but never made it. If you looked disreputable in any way, or inebriated, acted unruly, or had unsalubrious slogans on your clothing, you had no shot. He told people to leave, and they did. He never had to threaten to call the cops or anything. Somehow or another he projected the inner force he possessed that made him so memorable. You left because he told you to.

What that man was demonstrating was freedom of association, and an iron backbone. The concept of freedom of association is a little fuzzy, at least legally. It’s never explicitly mentioned in America’s founding documents. The First Amendment talks about the right of people “peaceably to assemble.” In a way, that’s a positive concept. Peaceably refusing to assemble is a little further down the line from that. Who you’re not required to hang out with is as important as who you are, I guess. The stern man at the golf club certainly thought so.

As a practical matter, the cranky man behind the counter didn’t relish the downstream effects of being forced to welcome anyone clutching money. He knew by experience, I’m sure, who would replace the divots we all hack out of life’s golf course, to stretch a metaphor. Instead of enforcing the rules of his little empire after the fact, he preferred to avoid problems before they got a chance to be a problem.

We could use more men like the golf nazi. We could use a government that allows you to be a golf nazi. I won’t hold my breath while waiting for it to happen.

Planet Fatness Again

Went to the gym again this morning. I don’t have any heavy physical work to do anymore, for the first time in decades, so we exercise like people do. Except it’s not like people do.

Wifie and me go together. We row, and lift weights, and cycle, and she uses the bingo wing machine while I do what are called woodchoppers. Honestly, I should just get a job digging ditches, and my wife should take in laundry.

It was later than usual when we got there, so we got to see a different crop of human flotsam and jetsam. No matter what time it is, everyone just sits on the machines and fiddles with their phones instead of doing much of anything. Then they drink out of giant binkie bottles, which I’m sure are filled with some form of stupid water, or that cough syrup stuff mixed with caffeine that makes people skydive and race motorcycles or maybe kitesurf with logos on their spandex.

The crowd today was much younger than we’re accustomed to earlier in the morning (it was nine-ish). It’s mostly girls who travel in little packs. Earlier on it’s old farts and gay men and people who want to shower in strange, redolent places before going to work. It’s nearly warm out these days here in Maine, so the young girls who sleep in and exercise later are finally able to shed their yoga pants and display their voluntary port wine stains to the best effect.

The teevees are everywhere, spraying us with visual sludge while we row and bike. The sound was off, thank the savior. A weird man was taking a tour of John Cougar’s bass player’s house, which for obscure reasons qualifies him for celebrity, I gather. They were very specific to call him John Cougar, not John Kroger Kruggerand, or Jack Kennedy Melonballer, or whatever he was calling himself there for a while. In any case, Jack Catamount wasn’t present.

I intuited that our F-clef hero and his consort wanted to sell their house and move to other quarters. By the look of him, it occurred to me that he might want to shop for a bed with a lid instead of a ranch house or similar crash pads. The outside of the house in question was the usual faux-colonial, bland, featureless white vinyl box somewhere in St. Louis or Kansas City or another place I’ve never been.

Then they toured the inside. Every surface on every room on the interior had been decorated with garish paint colors and defaced with alleged artwork by this shortbus polymath, and lavishly garnished with acres of ghastly mosaic tile, until the whole house looked like an extract from a drunkards’ nightmare.

The homeowner was wearing a shirt with his high school picture printed on it dozens of times in a pattern, kind of a weird flex for a guy nearing judgment by more substantial deities than cable TV hosts. After an excruciating tour of his lair, he eventually went off-camera, and then came back playing a washboard with various kazoos on bendy straws and other apparatuses for making unpleasant noises appended to it. It looked like Hannibal Lecter had designed his own bagpipes. I’ll drop to my knees this evening and thank my creator that the sound was off.  The whole time, this guy’s wife stood next to him and looked dazed, which I gather is her signature move.

I eventually wandered off to lift heavy things, and push objects that didn’t want to move, and so forth, and when I returned, the real estate circus was just finishing up. The chyron informed us that for some strange, inexplicable reason, the house hasn’t sold. Yes: causes unknown, a stark mystery wrapped in an enigma and buried in a Folger’s can in the yard. Unknowable.

It occurred to my wife and I, on the way home, that we’re the last sane people on earth. It also occurred to us, that by the dictionary definition, that makes us the weirdos. I think we can bear up under the shame of it.

[Update: Thanks to Gerry for his continuing support of this website. It is greatly appreciated]

{Additional Update: Thanks to an anonymous contributor for their kind words and their generous donation to our tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated]

Psychotic Savonarola Says Hi

Well, we’re home.

Our trip from Mejico to Maine was a trip, indeed. The intertunnel generation abuses and misuses all sorts of words, never mind plain misspellings. Maybe the worst example I can think of is the word “journey.”

Whenever some douchebro runs his fourteen-line javascript empire into the ground after burning through half a billion in seed money, he writes a poorly composed blogpost about what part of his “journey” this particular bonfire of bills represents. Then it’s time for his vacation journey, and his restaurant journey, and his journey through the court system with his “partner,” who doesn’t seem to care for him as passionately now that his mattress isn’t stuffed with other people’s money.

At any rate, we had a gol-durn, jenn-you-whine, real McCoy of a journey back home, and we were at a low ebb. Awake, more or less, for 36 hours, maybe more. I had occasionally drifted off to sleep, bolt-upright in an airline seat designed to accommodate masochist midgets, not a king-sized man on a real-life journey. These momentary interludes were always immediately interrupted by airline personnel informing me that if I was about to die, I could take several steps to save myself. You know, like hyperventilating into one-half of a Barrel of Monkeys toy container, or strapping myself to my seat cushion and pitching myself headlong into the ocean to die face up instead of face down. Maybe use the playground slide near the front door I couldn’t reach while helpful airport personnel tried to extinguish my charred flesh. But other than that, have a wonderful “journey!” WAKE UP! Do you want a complimentary Sprite?

So we were primed. We were the seven additional dwarves that Grimm didn’t have the ink for: Bleary, Weary, Angry, Hungry, Confused, Cashstrapped, and of course, Buttsore. My wife and I circled our apartment three or four times, like a dog thinking about lying down, and tried to stay awake long enough to get back on some sort of schedule. We made it to later in the day, but finally surrendered to sunset like farmers used to. We slept like Exhibit A and B in an Egyptian wing at the museum. Then he appeared.

A psychotic Savonarola. The current portion of our housing journey is urban, if only just barely. Augusta, Maine couldn’t fill the bleacher seats at Fenway, but it’s the state’s capital, and it has buildings that rub shoulders and sidewalks to spit your gum out on, and other wonders of city life. And of course, one of the charms of any city is a maniac yelling under your window at eleventy-o-clock in the wee hours.

But this guy. He was no run-of-the-mill shouter, a George Thorogood of bums. He was the real deal. This Howlin’ Wolf of hobos let loose an endless string of expletives, concatenated masterfully into a skein of paranoia and generalized disaffection that somehow achieved a kind of sublimity. He was, as the kids say, amazeballs. And tripping balls, no doubt.

See, now don’t misunderstand. He didn’t scream. Screamers can’t last. Their journeys are short. This guy had made volume his special study. He was Garrick, Huey Long, and Pavarotti rolled into one, reaching even the cheap seats in his imaginary balconies, and effortlessly at that. His disturbed, pharmaceutically-enhanced, slipping-synapse, stentorian genius settled over us like a blanket, right though our granite walls, double glazed windows, and insulated curtains.

When you’re in the presence of greatness, you sit up and take notice. We didn’t sit up in bed, exactly, being paralytic with sleep, but my wife did reach over and pat me. She told me later that she wasn’t frightened or angry or anything. She just wanted to make sure she found the usual lump in the bed. She figured I was the only person on Earth who could emit such a long, loud, Homeric, discombobulated, Icelandic Saga of insanity, anger, and expletives. If my side of the coverlet was flat on the mattress, she might have to go outside and collect me.

You know, to continue our journey.

[Update: Many thanks to Bob D for his very generous hit on our Ko-Fi tip jar, and to Gerry for his ongoing generous contributions, and kind words about my scribblings. It’s greatly appreciated]