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May 3, 1997, Saturday

Today I mused: I'm sure that on occasion an earthworm does manage to cross an asphalt street on a sunny summer day.

H

oagie, my mother, presented me with a large bottle on Jim Beam bourbon after I woke up this morning. It was the kind of bottle that comes with a handle. She said that she had withheld the bottle yesterday to ensure she'd be able to get some sleep last night. I was hungover, but seemingly not too badly. Still I had trouble imagining drinking any of that bottle.

Of course I don't. I live on canned vegetable soup, ramen, pizza, art opening food and burritos.
Hoagie visited with me today during my daytime Comet shift. She said something that troubled me a lot. She said that despite the fact that I seem pretty happy with my life these days, I don't look very healthy to her. She says I've lost my "healthy glow." She wondered if I eat enough vegetables. Of course I don't. I live on canned vegetable soup, ramen, pizza, art opening food and burritos.

Before departing for Staunton, Hoagie hung out for a long time using the trusty World Wide Web to read advice columns and check the value of her many stocks. She says she wants to get Internet access for the Shaque.

I enjoy the ritual of manually checking the logs on Atlas, the reliable Unix machine which doubles as a web server and a domain name server. The logs are often full of surprises that I wouldn't otherwise discover.

A

fter the Comet shift, I returned to the Dynashack and presented my housemates with the big bottle of bourbon. This exited them considerable. We all sat on the front lawn taking shots and listening to very loud trip-hop blaring from Andrew's room. Clouds overhead spit occasional tiny droplets of rain down upon us. Meanwhile Ches was carving a thin sheet of birch wood. Presumably he will be printing woodcuts.

I showed remarkable restraint with the bourbon. The comment my mother had made about me appearing unhealthy had really hit home. My weekend binge drinking certainly FEELS unhealthy. And it isn't even particularly fun, especially when I go into blackout. I have never been so regularly dissolute in my entire life. And there's no reason to continue with it. I have to set sail on an evening without the feeling of complete abandon that characterizes my typical behaviour.

So I had one small shot and then returned to the Corner for a Two Moons burrito. While eating it, I sat with Josh Mustin in front of Hot Tomatoes. For some reason I made the mistake of inviting him back to the Dynashack.

At the Dynashack, others started arriving. First it was the dreamy boy from Abundance House (his name is actually Franz and he used to date none other than Mellow-D). Then came Monster Boy and Leticia the Brazilian Girl. Last and most definitely least was Josh Mustin. Josh was acting like an impulsive figgety Attention Deficit Disorder case, repeatedly tossing a stick and the air and smacking it against things semi-destructively, making harsh little clanking noisings. In my mood (perhaps as a result of a nascent hangover), I had no tolerance for this at all, so I went inside and watched two episodes of Cops followed by a special Lousiville (Kentucky Derby) installment of America's Most Wanted. The bombastic style of these shows is wonderfully entertaining for its kitsch value alone.

Outside the horror of the Horrid Crash Pad, where Josh can be easily compared with those (such as my housemates) possessing far better social skills, his obnoxious stupidity is made garrishly apparent.
The others came in to help me watch Cops. Since there was no obvious alternative, Leticia didn't complain at all. Meanwhile Josh Mustin continued to figget and make little rhythyms with his feet. Everything he sais was so numbingly stupid that I felt myself rolling my eyes. After Josh finally left, Monster Boy said Josh had been making him cringe. Outside the horror of the Horrid Crash Pad, where Josh can be easily compared with those (such as my housemates) possessing far better social skills, his obnoxious stupidity is made garrishly apparent.

T

he Amy who works at the Tokyo Rose made an appearance. She seemed uncomfortably detached and sober at first, but then she started drinking bourbon and interacting with my hospitable housemates, and seemed to start enjoying herself.

Out on the street, Leticia found Floyd, the spunky big black and white cat from two doors down, and she brought him in. To my delight, he explored the place and found it to his liking. The rest of the evening he could be seen having brief interactions with various people or requesting to be let in or out.

Everyone but Elizabeth and I left the Dynashack at this point. Amy went to meet some friends at the Tokyo Rose. Monster Boy and Leticia set out to pick up Cecelia from the C&O. And Ches, John, Steve and others went to celebrate a friend's birthday at Michæl's Bistro. Elizabeth and I talked about my drinking problem. She suggested that perhaps the fact that I hang around with much younger people has prolonged a normal early adulthood heavy-drinking phase. She says that her sister, who is my age, drinks very little now.

When Monster Boy and the Brazilian Girls returned, Cecelia started drinking white wine and complaining about how bored she was. She and Leticia wanted to go to the Horrid Crash Pad, where, they'd been told, people would be departing for another party. Neither I nor Monster Boy had any interest in going, and when the girls determined they couldn't convince us to join them, they set out alone. But no one was at the Horrid Crash Pad (they'd missed the train, so to speak) and so they rejoined our party.

I tried to keep things interesting by saying that one of the problems that I've noticed attending my aging is sexual dysfunction. I said that I can't even pee out of my penis anymore. Cecelia found this interesting news for some reason and kept bringing it up long after the conversation had moved on to other topics.

I stated that Andy Warhol had once proclaimed "everyone will one day wear a spiked collar for fifteen minutes."
E

veryone else (with the blessed exception of Josh Mustin) eventually rejoined the informal little Dynashack party. The boys who'd been to Michæl's Bistro were much drunker than before. For example, both could be seen wearing Monster Boy's spiked collar. I stated that Andy Warhol had once proclaimed "everyone will one day wear a spiked collar for fifteen minutes." I've never worn one yet. Amy came back and resumed drinking a bourbon, vermouth and coke concoction. From the looks of things, I would say she became an unfamiliar level of drunk. It helped her enjoy herself. For my part, I was amazingly sober. I drank occasionally for a happy glow. But I never became particularly drunk. It was all for the best. The only problem I sensed was being too "in control." To an extent I missed being THE BEAST.

John ordered pizza and bread sticks from Gumby's, the least expensive pizza delivery outfit in Charlottesville. With every bite I was reminded of how inexpensive the pizza was.

They all have white picket fences and diligently tend their lawns while living the stereotypical white suburban ideal.
F

ranz showed up with a videotape of a movie, Cool as Ice starring none other than Vanilla Ice. For those who don't recall, Vanilla Ice was a white guy who, in the late 80s, rose to stardom by unabashedly singing rap music and acting as black as possible. I rather expected this movie to be a kitsch hootfest, but it wasn't. It was full of subtle symbolism and occasionally good acting. It was, though, a B movie, with a preposterously predictable plot and cliché hero development. The movie tells the tale of Vanilla Ice and his band members, who, riding cross country on their motorcycles, suffer engine problems in one of the bikes. The roll into the nearest town, which must be the whitest town in America. Every car in the town is white, as are all the people. They all have white picket fences and diligently tend their lawns while living the stereotypical white suburban ideal. Vanilla soon finds himself trying to woo the beautiful daughter of the richest guy in town. But her father and boyfriend keep getting in the way, as do a pair of villains who are out to settle an old score with the father. It seems the father is living a lie as part of the federal witness protection program. The most facinating thing about the movie was Ice himself. He talks black, sings black, dresses black. But there isn't any question, he's white. The tension between what he is and what he wants to be gives him an amazing amount of charisma. It rather reminds me of Boy George of Culture Club. Boy George looked like a girl, dressed like a girl and sang like a girl. But no, he was a boy. Looking for evidence of this drew people into his videos, where they were conditioned to love the music. It's an interesting interaction between marketing and the mysteries of the human mind.

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