Old Man in a Bar

TIRED

2008-09-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

i'ma tired. real tired. tired of your fancy-nancy drinks and mamby-pamby affectations, sure. but real tired of not sleeping well.

once was, i'd'a slept upon half-wet coils of smelly ropes on the open decks of ocean liners traversing the great atlantic ocean. i'd'a slept atop the baggages and packages piled willy-nilly into train cars traveling this once-great country.

you get the picture.

can't sleep no more. i close my eyes and wake up five seconds later.

maybe it's the way my life's unfolded, going from some great adventure to, well... this.

maybe it's this sitting in a bar night after night and watching the faces change but never really change because they all look too young to have personality and character.

or maybe it's the hipsers and their girlchilds YAMMERING ON AND ON outside MY WINDOW at 1:45 in the DADBLAMED MORNIN'.

no, i ain't gonna pop me no pills. i'll get me some sleep the old-fashioned way, the way my dad and his dad did before 'im -- i'll drink me another GIN MARTINI and head on out.

what? yeah, sure, 'nother one -- three olives... if you got the red-bits in 'em.

HIPSERS

2008-09-05T16:19:00.001-07:00

time was, you could get yerself to a bar and siddown and get yourself a PROPER MARTINI WITH GIN AND NOT VODKA and expect to get three green olives STUFFED WITH RED BITS and not BLUE CHEESE and just think a bit.

but then here comes the foppy young'uns who think they men.

they all look the same, like the chickbirds they flock with, but the chickbirds all look alike cuz they wanna and they hafta. whereas the young bucks look alike cuz they think they all look different.

them dudes stand around in old clothes even i wouldn't wear and think they are "cool." they wear suspenders and cuffed trousers and flannels and whatnot and they all wear black, thick-rimmed glasses. but the glasses are shaped different from one nother so they "different."

even if they are all the same.

they talk the same, too. they order drinks they've looked up on the Interweb: EWWW, they exclaim, HEMINGWAY DRANK A DAIQUIRI BUT IT'S NOT A GAY DAIQUIRI LIKE YOU'RE THINKING, IT'S JUST RUM AND LEMON JUICE AND SUGAR OVER ICE... AND THAT IS IT.

they all look at the bartender and they always ask, CAN YOU MAKE THAT??

then they sip off their drinks and announce, EWWWW! THIS IS HOW A DRINK SHOOOOOLD BE!

DAGNABIT -- YOU WOULD ALREADY KNOWN THAT, YOU JUST LISTEN TO SOMEONE WHO KNOWS.

but then they always chase it with a pabst, which they call "PBR." have you had yerself a pabst? IT TASTES LIKE PISS THAT'S TURNED STALE IN A TOILET THAT AIN'T BEEN FLUSHED IN THREE YEARS.

and then when one of the thick-rimmed glass boys walk away to donate some pabst to the latrine, the other kids will accuse him of being a, what? what is that? HIPSER. accuse him of being a hipser.

HE'S SUCH A HIPSER! DID YOU SEE HIS LOAFERS? TOTALLY HIPSER. THESE ONES? THESE WERE MY GRANDPA'S, SO...

They all take turns making fun of each other's hipser ways.

time was, an old man's bar was an old man's bar -- you coulda had conversation, with a friend or a stranger. maybe watch a game. maybe meet a good woman once in a while. maybe run into an old acquaitance.

nowadays, every time i find me a little place o' my own, ain't but a couple weeks before them hipsers take over, EWWING and AHHING about how AUTHENTIC this DIVE BAR is.

they look at me like i'm some kinda museum piece, like some extincted animal kept living in some zoo.

i miss the days you could go to a bar and enjoy a drink or three and not have to bear snot-nosed brats who don't know a dangblamed thing about drinks.

YOUNG LADIES

2008-09-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

i'ma tired of you womens always coming into my bar with your newfangled foppy guyfriends and ordering your fancy drinks y'all think haven't been drunk since 1892 because they don't make no gum syrup no more, but you think the bartender mixin' some sugar and water together is almost the same thing as real gum syrup.

MAN ALIVE YOU IS DUMB BECAUSE IT'S NOT!

you can't find no gum syrup no more. gum syrup is like a lovely lady in the right drink, and the right drink ain't right at all if there ain't no gum syrup.

just like there ain't no more lovely ladies no more, just a bunch of whores and harlots and ladies of the night. if you take my meaning.

lousy typerwriter. anyone tell me how to capitalize letters without hitting the capitalize lock?

anyway -- all you ladies think you are soooooo special with your pretty smiles and your pretty legs and your boobies.

i'll tell you what, i saw me some boobies back in the day and they weren't fulla plastic or no how. they was real natural boobies and they tasted deeeelicious and felt liker real boobies.

you ladies in my bar are all the same. you look the same. you smell the same. you flirt with the same sad boys who buy you the same drinks the same. you smoke the same with some sorta disaffected i-don't-give-no-damn, look-away standing way.

and you're that way until you grows up and become something other than girlchilds.

then the next group of girlchilds come in and the same thing, over and over.

i'm glad i'm gonna die sooner than later. no doubt about it. all this repeating's enough to drive a man batty gonzo.

in the meantime, do an old man a favor and stay outta his bar.

MARTINI, DANGIT

2008-09-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

when i order a martini, i don't want no goddamned vodka in my martini, want a proper martini, one with gin, dammit.

DO NOT SHAKE MY DANGBLAMED MARTINI.

you're bruisin' the goddamn gin in my martini.

how do you use this typewriter? capitalize lock i can do but how do you capitalize and not capitalize?

damn tv boxes.

they say "oh oh you just MUST have a computer because it makes life so much fartin' easier!" but here i am trying to figure out how to type a goddamn cap letter with out hitting capitalize lock every goddamned time.

i want three olives with my GIN MARTINI. three! thank y -- hey. what's this? in my olives?

BLUE CHEESE?

this goddamned century. i want proper green olives with red somethings stuffed into them just like we drank in EVERY DECADE throughout the 20th century and i get blue cheese.

OH EXCUSE ME IS THAT "BLEU" CHEESE?

traditions are there for a reason.

you kids, you don't know. you got your irack and afganystan but we had ourselves a proper war with battleships and flying fortresses and d-day and the greatest generation. you just don't know what it is not to be without your ham and your hot water and and and your googley-googley-google.

oh! oh! did you miss you mamby-pamby telephone call because you don't get your radio signal through the WALL? did you miss your texty messagy? BOO EFFIN HOO BOY!

no, i don't want your olives. just lemme drink my martini and stop your nattering and leave me to think on this tragedy we call "the future" of our once-great nation.

...

hey,

yeah, you, come back here. I KNOW WHAT I SAID, just...

can you take the olives off my tab?