I'm trying to get through this day like hair through a comb

Just poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down, only to realize I’d already poured myself a cup of coffee. Now I look like a complete freakshow, surrounded by coffees, typing this dumb thing, shirtless wearing nothing but a balloon stretched and twisted around my balls and weiner. The window is open. Hey neighbor.
Last night I broke with form and popped out for a quick drink and went to this Romanian bar in my neighborhood. Well, it used to be Romanian, back when I used to go there a little, way back before I had a kid, way, way back when I still just did what I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. I often wanted to go to the Romanian bar and drink Ursus, the Romanian beer and talk to the old Assyrian men and the young Romanian guys and ogle the beautiful, young Romanian bartenders and play the crazy jukebox and look around at the black, windowless sparkly walls and wonder what the fuck really went on in this place?
It was always super friendly, and they loved that I drank the Romanian beer. I used to bring friends there, or my wife and I would go, and it was just this really fun place full of bizarre eastern euros that most likely had something to do with human trafficking and prostitution rings, just based on the quick turnover of the beautiful, young, fresh-off-the-plane waitresses, but fuck it. No one’s perfect, right. I mean, even nick jonas picks his nose.
Anyway, we stopped going there for a while when the summer ended and the next time I went back, the bartender was from Tennessee, not Romania, she was NOT hot, she had dumb rock and roll tattoos (like a cat with a pompadour playing a bass and some flaming dice and dumb shit like that) and she was just an overall DORKUS. I asked for an Ursus and she brayed and whinnied and laughed and said “I don’t know what that is.” And I said (trying not to be pissed that this dumb Real-Worldian was interfering in my little eastern euro fantasy) ‘uh, it’s the Romanian beer that all the dudes in here drink (subtext: it’s what I order in here that makes everyone look up and smile and eventually talk to me to find out if I’m a new Romanian in town or just what my deal is generally. It’s my icebreaker, you dumb hillbilly) and she said “oh, I think I drank all them last night.” Well, needless to say, I didn’t go back for a while.
We tried to go back on new years eve, when my wife was pregnant, just to ring in the new year, and it was nuts-to-butts packed out the door and it was a fifty dollar cover and some DJ was making everyone in there go absolutely buck wild, so we went around the corner instead.
I didn’t go back for a year but a few months ago after a band practice when we were warming up to record this record, I stopped in for a drink. It was all different. They had moved shit around, they’d gotten rid of the crystal meth induced paintjob in the bathroom, and it was a lot more really old men and weirdos. People still talked to me, but it wasn’t the same. It was a little more suspicious and guarded. The bartenders were still young, but not all Romanian, and they no longer carried Ursus. Everyone was smoking, which is illegal in Chicago, but they just don’t give two fucks in that place. Smoking hookahs, smoking cigarettes, whatever. The owner sat down with me and asked me how I had come to find myself there, and I told him I live around the corner and I used to come here and drink ursus and blah blah blah and he smiled and looked around and said with a smile (almost verbatim) “Well, good, have fun, it’s not like we’re doing anything illegal.” Really? Totally awesome subterfuge, bro. Master criminal, that guy. Well, I paid for my drink and left, noticing that the once retardedly low prices had been replaced with retardedly high ones.
SO, yesterday I went there again, cuz my wife was (and remains) sick and in bed and she and my baby were both asleep. I went just to see what the place was like. I wasn’t expecting the glory days, but what I got was so fucking strange….
Okay, so I walked in and the first thing I noticed were the three Mexican girls dressed like hookers…(dressed like? Hmmm) writhing around on the pool table, showing their panties and posing suggestively while a fourth, non Mexican girl directed them and took pictures with a camera phone. She was also dressed like a hooker, by the way. There were about five old men in there, all smoking, including one big bald guy who was smoking the giant house hookah and there was a bartender, weary, older, not really attractive at all and not in any way happy to see me. I sat down and the old men glared and kind of tried to intimidate me to move down a seat. I stayed in my seat and ordered a cocktail and watched the photo shoot, which is what everyone was doing, because, well, they were a bunch of pervy old men, and the whole thing was too strange to not watch.
I noticed the drink prices had, once again increased. I noticed that I was actually way more comfortable watching the 2001 rerun of Chelsea v Arsenal than watching the photo shoot, and then I noticed that there were a couple of young dudes in the room too. A young eastern euro goon who looked like he probably sold blow to his Ukrainian construction team and this Mexican kid who was a latin king, and was thugged out to the nines. I swear he was wearing three hats. The Latin King was talking loudly to an old man and they were talking about ‘fucking people up’ and all the trouble that they both get into or used to get into and I was sitting there just drinking my drink thinking “wow, this place is now a pathetic hangout for wannabe gangsters and perverts and it’s dispensed with the cool vibe and the clandestine, high end, naive hooker ring and it’s just going for it, and it’s these kinds of losers who start fights with random dickheads like me because they’re nobodies and out to prove shit to their other nobody old man buddies.
So I left. I went across the street to the dive bar that always has alan Jackson and toby keith on the jukebox and sat next to a beautiful black/asian tranny for about ten minutes while I had a beer then came home. Quite a night. On my way home, the old bald guy with the hookah drove by in his convertible (heh…he should have a bumper sticker on his nuts that says ”my other penis is a car”) and yelled “motherfucker!” at me. Well, I think it was at me. Whatever. Fuck that place, man. I’m never going back. That’s for sure.
Enjoy your weekends. My theme song this weekend is “I’m Me” by lil wayne. I never got what all the hype was about til I heard this. It’s so creepy and amazing. If you’ve ever looked at the ubiquitous praise of Lil wayne and thought to yourself “really? this jagoff?” Check out the track “I’m Me”. It’s fucking sick.
Alright dildos, I’m gonna go try to get through this workday then it’s on to keeping on.
Peace.