Clublife

The "Busyness" Fallacy

2008-06-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

I have several theories about people who always claim to be “busy.” First, however, I’ll give you a rather cryptic version of the situation that motivated this little screed I’m about to offer.

A month or so ago, I wrote this post about a friend of mine who was being treated unfairly. Unfortunately, I have nothing new to report, because he’s still being treated unfairly. Because I can’t get into specifics here, I have no real way to get across how much it galls me to see this happening. This is one of those cases where everyone can see that what’s going on is wrong, yet there’s nothing anyone can do or say to change things because there’s only one guy pulling the strings of unfairness, and his decision to act entirely for his own benefit – disregarding the “needs of the many” - has already been made.

What bothers me most about this situation is that there’s little I can do to help, other than calling attention to the fact that the guy who’s screwing over my friend is a corrupt asshole with no regard for anyone but himself. Even this – the process of calling attention – has proven to be difficult, because in trying to enlist the help of someone who’d actually expressed some interest in rectifying things, I unwittingly ran headlong into the time-vortex of the sort of person to whom I like to refer as a “busy guy.”

A “busy guy” is someone who’s constantly lecturing you on how little time he has to do anything – which would be fine if the “busy guy” in question actually had a job that entailed having serious responsibilities. With busy guys, however, this typically isn’t the case. Most busy guys I know have no responsibilities at all. They just try to make you – and everyone else, including themselves - think they do. A friend of mine recently called this phenomenon “settling into a life of busyness.”

It’s a trap. The “busy guy” trap.

The “busy guy” in this instance is a member of the media who’s responsible, two or three times a week, for approximately two typed paragraphs of information in a local newspaper. For this, he went to college.

I could do this blindfolded, with a pen strapped to my penis, but I’m still working the door of a nightclub. Go figure.

I was told by this very busy guy that he needed to wait until he had a day off before he’d have time to call me regarding this matter, despite the fact that he’d written an accuracy-free article about it the day before I first contacted him. I found this strange for a variety of reasons. First off, I’m what you might call “a source,” so you’d think it’d behoove a journalist to contact me during his working hours – especially since the information to which I’m privy has direct relevance to something he’d published.

It’s the “busyness” angle that really fascinates me, though, because I’ve been running into it a lot lately with people I deal with. I can only think of two reasons why someone would claim to need a day off to engage in a ten minute phone call:

1) Because they really are engaged with work, full time, eighteen hours per day. From the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep, this man’s life belongs to someone else. If this is the case, I have a ton of respect for the amount of work he’s doing in order to pump out those precious six paragraphs each week. Proportionally speaking, each word in his articles must require a minimum of an hour of research. This, my friends, is truly impressive.

2) He doesn’t care.

Since I’m not mentally retarded, I’m well aware that option #2 is the case here, which pisses me off because it’s fraught with dishonesty – both to me and to himself. Why can’t people simply come out and tell you they’re no longer interested in what you have to say? I mean, I know I’m always full of unsolicited advice on this website, but here’s some I think you should take:

Don’t do this.

When you avoid contact with people by sanctimoniously lecturing them on how busy you are, it’s disrespectful. What you’re saying, in essence, is that the person to whom you’re speaking has no understanding of what it’s like to be as “busy” as you are. This, to me, is a defense used by people who have no idea what it’s like to actually work for a living. They don’t know shit about shit, and they project their ignorance on us, assuming we don’t know shit about shit either.

What kills me about these types is that I know people who actually are busy that don’t do this. One of my friends is a very prominent surgeon here in New York. If you know me personally, you’ll know to whom I’m referring. How anyone could possibly work more hours in a day than this person does, I have no idea, yet she has never once, in over a decade of knowing her, used “busyness” as an excuse for not getting back to me. She pretty much just returns my calls.

In other words, I know fucking trauma surgeons with more free time than some of the dime-ass, small-timer journalists, personal trainers and bouncers I know.

And yes, asshole, this is directed at you.

My Contribution

2008-06-20T04:00:00.001-04:00

I had jury duty today.

I was called into an empaneling room at approximately 10 AM. The two lawyers who were supposed to be running the show – read: selecting a jury – did nothing but fight with each other. This was very exciting.

“I have a few follow-up questions,” said the plaintiff’s attorney.

“This isn’t proper procedure,” said the defendant’s attorney.

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well,” said the plaintiff’s attorney, “I’m just going to ask one or two more questions, if you don’t mind.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am.”

“That’s IT! Counselor, step outside!”

And so on. This went on for several hours.

At 4:30, we were dismissed. No jurors were selected.

Hackneyed

2008-06-16T04:00:00.000-04:00

Mott Street, Chinatown.

What You're Reading

2008-06-13T01:18:00.001-04:00

Here is the full list of reading recommendations you’ve sent thus far. Any spelling errors are YOUR fault, not mine, because I simply copied and pasted some of these directly from the emails I’ve received. This list was compiled in chronological order, so it’s not organized in any particular way, nor is it sorted - which I know is pretty annoying, but hey, I just spent the last two hours copying all this shit down, so take what you can get.

And don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.

What Is the What -- Dave Eggers
The Chess Machine -- Robert Lohr and Anthea Bell
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories -- Susanna Clarke
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell -- Susanna Clarke
The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) -- Michael Chabon
Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy -- Jostein Gaarder
Motherless Brooklyn -- Jonathan Lethem
Savage Night -- Jim Thompson
Generation Kill -- Evan Wright
Playing for Pizza -- John Grisham
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets -- Sudhir Venkatesh

Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided
the Asian Markets for Millions -- Ben Mezrich

Dies the Fire (series) –- S.M. Stirling
Stones for Ibarra –- Harriet Doerr
The Road -- Cormac McCarthy
American Gods AND Sandman (series) -- Neil Gaiman
Then We Came to the End -- Joshua Ferris
Lush Life -- Richard Price
Absurdistan -- Gary Shteyngart
Beautiful Children -- Charles Bock
The Lions of al-Rassan AND A Song for Arbonne -- Guy Gavriel Kay
Boss -- Mike Royko
Forever - Pete Hamill
The Zanzibar Chest -- Aiden Hayley
Murray Whelan series -- Shane Maloney
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century -- Barbara W. Tuchman
The World Without Us -- Alan Weisman
Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun' -- Gene Wolfe
Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever -- Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman

Skillful Means -- Tarthang Tulku
Shame -- Jasvinder Sanghera
Long Walk to Freedom -- Nelson Mandela
Infidel -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Beach Road -- James Patterson
Deception Point -- Dan Brown
The God Delusion -- Richard Dawkins
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found -- Suketu Mehta
Run With the Horsemen -- Ferrol Sams
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip K. Dick
The Fountainhead -- Ayn Rand
Einstein: His Life and Universe -- Walter Isaacson
Anything by R.A. Salvatore
John Adams -- David McCullough
Island in the Sea of Time -- S.M. Stirling
Blood Curdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre -- H.P. Lovecraft
The Walking Drum -- Louis L’Amour
Grim Lands -- Robert E. Howard
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder -- Vincent Bugliosi
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army -- Jeremy Scahill

Glenn Reynolds -- An Army of Davids
John Robb -- Brave New War
Riddley Walker -- Russell Hoban
Waiting for the Barbarians -- J.M.Coetzee
Pan -- Knut Hamsun
Anything by Derek Robinson
Carry Me Home -- John M. Del Vecchio
Anything by Alan Sillitoe OR David Storey
Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization -- Pat Choate
Falling Man -- Don DeLillo
The Thought Gang -- Tibor Fischer
Life, A User's Manual -- Georges Perec
Concrete Island -- J.G. Ballard
Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth -- Andrew Smith
The Trouble With Physics -- Lee Smolin
Red Harvest AND The Maltese Falcon -- Dashiell Hammett
Anything by Slavoj Ziztek
America’s Splendid Little Wars -- Peter Huchthausen
The Pillars of the Earth -- Ken Follett
Anything by Tom Robbins
The Rediscovery of Man AND Norstrilia -- Cordwainer Smith
City -- Clifford Simak
Immortality -- Milan Kundera
Mr. Vertigo -- Paul Auster
The Magus -- John Fowles
The Scramble for Africa -- Thomas Pakenham
The State of Africa -- Martin Meredith
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Desinovich -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Death's Men -- Denis Winter
Among the Thugs -- Bill Buford
The Soul Of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day -- Victor Davis Hanson

Down and Out in London and Paris -- George Orwell
James Clavell OR Robert Heinlein
Lamb -- Christopher Moore
Lost Fleet (series) -- Jack Campbell
Anything by Andy McNab
"No Matter Where You Go, There You Are" by John Kabat-Zinn
"Persuasion" by Jane Austen
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the
Beatles -- Geoff Emerick

A Short History of Nearly Everything -- Bill Bryson
Aspects of the Novel -- E.M. Forster
The Harry Dresden series of novels by Jim Butcher
A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R.R. Martin
Any cookbook in the "Cooks Illustrated" series
Melissa Good (Lesbian romance novels!!!)
John Kennedy Toole -- A Confederacy of Dunces
Baghdad Without a Map -- Tony Horowitz
Portnoy’s Complaint -- Phillip Roth
The Idiot -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Roughing It -- Mark Twain
The Children's War -- J.N. Stroyer
Factotum -- Charles Bukowski
Raymond Chandler OR Nabokov OR Nathanael West
Altered Carbon -- Richard Morgan
Charles Stross (Halting State & Glasshouse)
Neal Gaiman (American Gods & Anansi Boys)
John Scalzi (Old Man's War trilogy)
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 AND The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction -- Edward Ayers
Shantartam -- Gregory Roberts
The Terror -- Dan Simmons
Revelation Space -- Alastair Reynolds
The Blind Watchmaker -- Richard Dawkins
The Canon -- Natalie Angier
American Psycho -- Bret Easton Ellis
Liar’s Poker -- Michael Lewis
The Chosen -- Chaim Potok
Youth in Revolt -- C.D. Payne
The Man in the High Castle -- Phillip K. Dick
Dubliners -- James Joyce
A Prayer for Owen Meany -- John Irving
The Glass Castle -- Jeannette Walls
God is Not Great -- Christopher Hitchens
Slaughterhouse Five -- Kurt Vonnegut
Anything by Andrew Vachss OR Jonathan Archer
Shadow Divers -- Robert Kurson
The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson
Anything by James Ellroy
Private Angelo -- Eric Linklater
The Know-It-All -- A.J. Jacobs
In a Sunburned Country -- Bill Bryson
Anything by Cory Doctorow
Jack Reacher (series) -- Lee Child
Sharpe’s Rifles (series) -- Bernard Cornwell
Little Fuzzy -- Henry Beam Piper
Ender’s Game -- Orson Scott Card
Parasite Rex -- Carl Zimmer
Freakonomics -- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
With the Old Breed -- E.B. Sledge
His Excellency: George Washington -- Joseph J. Ellis (Isn’t this the guy who claimed he fought in Vietnam, but didn’t?)

The Poems of Wilfred Owen -- Jon Stallworthy
The Master and Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment -- Dostoyevsky
Boomsday -- Christopher Buckley
The Mortdecai Trilogy -- Kyril Bonfiglioli
Anything by Paul Auster
The GM -- Tom Callahan
Anything by Alan Furst (agreed)
Manhunt -- James L. Swanson
Anything by Mary Roach
Anything by David Sedaris
Anything by Chuck Klosterman
Ace of Spades -- David Matthews
The Professor and the Madman -- Simon Winchester
Fine Balance -- Rohinton Mistry

Power of One -- Bryce Courtenay
Piercing -- Ryu Murakami
Geek Love -- Katherine Dunn
Reefer Madness -- Eric Schlosser
Dante’s Inferno -- Dante Alighieri
Hegemony or Survival -- Noam Chomsky
Jesse Livermore: World's Greatest Stock Trader -- Richard Smitten
Gates of Fire -- Steven Pressfield
Perdido Street Station -- China Mieville
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World -- Mark Kurlansky
Already Dead -- Charlie Huston
The Siege of Mecca -- Yaroslav Trofimov
Anything by George R.R. Martin
The Sopranos OR Morvern Callar -- Alan Warner
Theft -- Peter Carey
The Fox in the Attic OR The Wooden Shepherdress -- Richard Hughes
Scoop AND Vile Bodies -- Evelyn Waugh
Black Swan Green -- David Mitchell
Anything by Penelope Fitzgerald
Lives of the Saints -- Nancy Lemann
Anything by Robert Girardi
Kissing in Manhattan -- David Schickler
A Time of Gifts -- Patrick Leigh Fermor
Anything by Julian Barnes
Towing Jehovah OR This is the Way the World Ends -- James Morrow
The History of Love -- Nicole Krauss
An Artist of the Floating World -- Kazuo Ishiguro
The Eyre Affair -- Jasper Fforde
The Count of Monte Cristo -- Dumas
A Feast of Snakes -- Harry Crews
The End of the Road -- John Barth
A Modern Magician -- Robert Weinberg
Anything by Matthew Reilly
Supercapitalism -- Robert Reich
The Name of the Wind -- Patrick Rothfuss
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party -- M.T. Anderson
Doomsday Book -- Connie Willis
Life of Pi -- Yann Martel
The Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri
Anything by Louis Bayard
Bounty Trilogy -- James Hall and Charles Nordhoff
Robinson Crusoe -- Daniel Defoe (Great idea…this might be the first one I read on this entire list)

Anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Thousand Splendid Suns -- Khaled Hosseini
The Rising Tide -- Jeff Shaara
Anything by Jeff Shaara or Michael Shaara
Anything by Steven Pressfield
Anything by Italo Calvino
Scott's Last Expedition -- The journals of Captain R. F. Scott
Atonement -- Ian Mcewan
The Last Campaign -- Thurston Clarke
The Fighter -- Craig Davidson
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War -- Max Brooks
In the Heart of the Sea -- Nathaniel Philbrick
Liberal Fascism -- Jonah Goldberg
Moment of Truth in Iraq -- Michael Yon
Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth -- Gitta Sereny
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt -- Edmund Morris
The Fifties -- David Halberstam
Befriend and Betray -- Alex Caine
Nocturnes OR The Book of Lost Things -- John Connolly
Ishmael -- Daniel Quinn
Life in the French Foreign Legion -- Evan McGorman
Shock Doctrine -- Naomi Klein
Revelation Space -- Alastair Reynolds

List

2008-06-12T04:00:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with reading recommendations. I appreciate all the material you've suggested, and I'm especially grateful for all the kind words.

This has been a strange week - the strangeness has nothing to do with Preparation H, I can assure you, although I could probably use some right about now - so in lieu of a regular post today or tomorrow, I'll publish a list of everything that's been recommended to me. Hopefully someone can find something to read.

Reading Material

2008-06-10T04:00:00.002-04:00

I need something new to read. In other words, feel free to email me recommendations, because I'm out of ideas. Yes, I am openly soliciting email on this subject. Don't worry about trying to tailor your selections for my tastes, because I read everything.

I will read your suggestions, then "review" them here. I will also publish a list of what's been sent to me before I read anything. I usually get some very good information when I run posts like this, so I'll share the wealth this time.

Thank you.

Straight From The Door

2008-06-09T04:00:00.001-04:00

I’m at the point with bouncing where I have nothing but complete and utter disdain for everyone who approaches me at the door. It’s been this way for a while. This is not my fault, and it’s not some sort of character flaw. As I hate to say, but all-too-often do, it is what it is. Do this stupid job long enough, and it’ll happen to you, too.

I work as a bouncer because it’s ridiculously easy money. You, the average reader of this site, wouldn’t be able to get my job. I’m not saying this because I don’t think you’d be able to do it. You probably could. Not that it’s anything worth bragging about, but I’ve been lucky in the nightclub business. I’ve been in some of the right places at some of the right times, and I’ve met some people who’ve been able to help me out. The point of this is not to crow about having a “money spot” at a nightclub, because in the grand scheme of things, that’s crap. All I’m saying is that with the economy the way it is right now, I’d be an idiot to give it up.

That said, I despise the customers so much that I’ve fallen into the habit of throwing their licenses when they act like arrogant pricks at the door. I take their cards, hook my index finger around the topside corner, and scale them down the sidewalk like little Frisbees. Yes, this is an asshole move on my part, and yes, I know some of you will say to yourselves, “If he ever threw my fuckin’ license, I’d stab him in the throat.”

That’s fine with me. If someone pulled this maneuver on me, I’d feel the same way. It’s “bullying” at its worst. I accept this, and I understand the sentiment. I also don’t care anymore. I’m done being a fucking punching bag, and I’m done with arrogant little shitbags who think the process doesn’t apply to them.

I’ve been less accepting than ever lately, in my non-bouncing life, of unsolicited hostility. This applies both to people I know and people I don’t know. If you’re hostile to me for no reason, I’m going to be openly hostile back to you. A handful of people with whom I’m acquainted can attest to this after having their steaming plates of hot garbage dumped back in their laps in recent weeks. I neither have the time, nor the patience, to be on the receiving end of anyone’s shit – especially if I’m not the cause of the problem.

So, if I’m not taking any of it from people I know, I’m sure as hell not dealing with it from some twenty-three year-old slapdick who pretends not to understand that the owners of the establishment he’s trying to enter are running a business – one that’s legally obligated to ensure that its clientele are all of legal drinking age.

I know I’m a boil on your ass when you’re trying to get into the club. You’re one on mine, too. Just take your fucking ID out, and we can avoid interacting altogether. Thanks.

For The Record

2008-06-06T04:00:00.002-04:00

I didn't ask anyone to write about me, quote me, or put me on TV. All I did was write a blog post on this, a personal blog. Nothing here was "presented as fact," other than the unfortunate reality that the use of Preparation H is widespread among the New York/New Jersey Guido club-going populace.

That people failed to recognize obvious satire - and it was pretty fucking obvious, based on all the emails I've received - and proceeded to blame me for their own failure to get the joke is what's really funny here.

This site may never win a Pulitzer, but at least I know a "slapdick" when I see one.

Interview

2008-06-04T15:04:00.002-04:00

I'm being interviewed on something called the "Greg Knapp Experience" at approximately 3:50 EDT. Here is a link to the show's homepage.

The country is at war, and I'm on the air talking about Preparation H.

Suppository Story

2008-06-04T04:00:00.003-04:00

The story began in my car. I was driving my friend Kevin to the airport at the beginning of May. En route, he related his account of something that happened the previous weekend.

The gym at which we train has a relatively small membership. If you keep going there long enough, you’ll eventually learn everyone’s name, because it’s usually the same twenty people going there every day – or night – at the same exact time. I can tell you what most of the people at this place do for a living, and I can also tell you where most of them live.

So when two of them asked Kevin if he’d like to do some club-hopping in the city that weekend, he thought nothing of it and decided to go. This is a perfect illustration of how you don’t really know someone until you see how they act in every possible situation. I’m friendly with the two guys he’s talking about here, and I definitely didn’t see this coming:

“They picked me up and we decided to drive into the city because Rich (the guy with the car) wasn’t going to drink. Right before we’re about to get on the LIE, he pulls over, parks the car, and the two of them take their shirts off and start rubbing Preparation H all over themselves.

“At this point, I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’, but they explain to me that they put the stuff on because it lifts the water out of their skin and it makes it look like they’re more ripped.”

The first thing I did, right then and there, was what I always do. I wrote down the idea, thinking I’d figure out a way to use it the next time I wrote something on the blog. A few days later, I wrote this post.

Now, what you need to understand about this post is that it’s completely fabricated. “Peter Minichiello” does not exist. I didn’t go to CVS on Hempstead Turnpike and speak to anyone named “Lawrence Weisz,” nor did I interview a nightclub manager named “Mitchell Goldner.” I’m sure there are people in the world with these names, but I haven’t ever spoken with them. I did take the precaution of Googling these names before using them to make sure I wouldn’t embarrass anyone, but the only legwork I did for this “story” involved taking a leak in the middle of making it up.

Everything contained in these “journalistic” posts came directly out of my head. The situations are real – guys really do rub Preparation H on themselves before going into clubs – but the names and quotes are all me. The post was mentioned on Gawker, which is always cool, and I pretty much forgot about it from there because I figured everyone was in on the joke.

Until this week, that is.

First, this story came out. This led to a series of emails from Fox asking me to appear on Mike and Juliet – their morning show here in New York. They sent a limo to pick me up, gave me a room in a luxury hotel in Manhattan, then had me as a guest on the show’s 9:45 segment. Once I was finished looking really uncomfortable on-air, I went right back into a limo and was driven home. Funny shit, but it was actually a good idea to have me as a guest because, sadly enough, I probably know more people who’ve applied Preparation H to themselves for purposes other than hemorrhoid relief than anyone on the planet.

Then, I check my blog stats and see this story, which claims that “Fitzgerald, who writes the blog Clublife, recently conducted his own research on the phenomenon, interviewing a user, a drugstore worker and a nightclub manager.” Of course, as stated earlier, I did nothing of the sort. Figuring everyone would just “get it,” I didn’t think I needed to qualify these posts by issuing a disclaimer. You’d think people would ask before quoting me. In fact, they should probably hire me. I’ll write the story better and check my facts.

This is very funny: “I don’t give a shit what these slapdicks are using it for. I wish they’d stay out of my fucking life. To be perfectly honest with you, I think the shit doesn’t even work, because if it did, these club assholes would all disappear. It’s supposed to get rid of hemorrhoids, isn’t it?”

But who says shit like that? I mean, how can you not know?

In any event, this is yet another example of why starting this blog was both the smartest and stupidest thing I’ve ever done – and yet another reason to disbelieve damned near everything you’ll ever read.

Update: The Fox story has been edited since this post first appeared.

Shiny

2008-06-02T04:00:00.000-04:00

We instituted a tightening of the dress code this past weekend. This was done because we’ve been having problems lately. These problems have invariably involved people wearing similar kinds of clothing. When this happens, the logical solution is to stop letting in people who dress in the same manner as the people with whom you’ve been having trouble, so that’s what we did.

One gentleman – from Long Island, of course - came to the door on Friday night wearing one of those horrible Ed Hardy tee shirts. This thing had so many rhinestones and sequins on it that I found myself having a hard time reading his license because of the glare. This pissed me off, so I told him he couldn’t come in.

“Sorry, man. I can’t do the tee shirt tonight.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“You gotta have a collared shirt tonight. That’s what they want.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, man,” I replied. “That’s what the owners want tonight.”

“Yo, dis fuckin’ shirt cost a hundrit fitty bucks!”

“Oh, please,” interjected Guestlist Girl. “I could make one of those for five bucks with my fucking Bedazzler.”

Stop

2008-05-30T04:00:00.001-04:00

The New York in which I live – topping out at middle class and descending – consists of paved pathways not-so-lovingly laid out in grid patterns. I live on an “avenue.” Others live on “streets.” If you’ve ascended to some strata above middle class – this isn’t universal, mind you – you might live on a “drive” or a “lane,” or in something called a “Mews.”

Drives and lanes aren’t designed in grid patterns because the people who can afford to live on a drive or a lane are expected to be able to find their way home without counting blocks. This, unfortunately, doesn’t hold true for most of the parts of New York in which I’ve lived. I often wonder how some of my neighbors manage to make it back from wherever it is they go every day. Most times, I wish they wouldn’t. My neighbors make too much noise, they smell, and they try, all too often, to trap me in their time vortexes when I’m in a hurry to do something.

When you live, as I do, deep in one of New York’s grid patterned working-class neighborhoods, and you’re situated somewhere decidedly non-commercial, intersections of streets and avenues are regulated by stop signs, as opposed to traffic lights. Some intersections require all cars, coming from all four directions, to stop. Others require only those cars using the relatively less trafficked of the two intersecting streets to stop.

I live about a hundred yards from an intersection requiring all four directions of traffic to stop. In theory, this is a very good system for regulating vehicular flow. It works, provided people choose to obey the law. In New York, however, people don’t obey the fucking law. Ever. They believe that whatever they’re doing is exponentially more important than what you’re doing, so they do what they want to do regardless of whether they’re permitted to or not.

In my neighborhood, stopping at stop signs is optional. People around here don’t even do the “California Roll” anymore. They don’t look and they don’t care, and when they see a stop sign ahead, all they want is to be the first to get through the intersection. This is because they’re very meaningful people who need to get back to their laboratories to find the cure for cancer. I’ve convinced myself of this in order to make them less irritating.

Today I pulled up to an intersection with a four-way stop. I looked in each direction, and to my right, I saw a young girl in a Lexus SUV who looked for all the world as though she intended to ignore the stop sign and barrel through the intersection at about fifty miles-per-hour. At the last possible moment, she slammed on her brakes and screeched to a stop. By the time she’d stopped moving, my car had been stopped for at least five seconds.

The only reason she didn’t blow the stop sign was because she saw me sitting there. This made her angry, and she disgustedly waved for me to proceed – granting me, in her magnanimity, the right to continue on my journey to the next stop sign, some eighty yards ahead.

I let her sit there and gesticulate at me for a few seconds, remaining motionless, then rolled down my driver-side window, stuck out my left arm and gave her the finger until she sped off. I even fired it up and down a few times for good measure.

She was wearing sunglasses, so I was unable to read her mind.

Snapshot

2008-05-29T04:00:00.001-04:00

Hot Spanish-looking girl flows into the club. All fucked up. E.

She spends two hours dancing her burned out E dance with her back to the fronts of random men, one by one. My turn comes close to last, before she leaves, but she’s not looking at me. She’s not looking at anything. A black guy tries to get her attention but nothing registers. He looks at me and laughs. I laugh back.

Last in line is another bouncer, Dominican Jorge from 179th and the
Concourse. Nonplussed, but heading for the 2 train happy.

“Yo, her pussy was HOT! I’m a catch a boner!”

The beauty of the English language is in its infinite flexibility.

Dregs

2008-05-28T04:00:00.000-04:00

There are entirely too many non-shady shady characters walking around New York, which has become a massive problem for those of us who make money in the nightclub business. Non-shady shady characters are people – mostly men – who aren’t actually shady by necessity, but look, act and become shady because they think that being a shady character is trendy and fashionable. This is an error in judgment – and taste – on their part, but the disease continues to spread, and it seems like there’s nothing any of us can do to make it stop.

I think I addressed this a few years ago when I questioned both the “dirty scumbag” and “abrasive greaseball” modes of dress that have become the norm around here in recent times. People in New York seem to enjoy looking like disreputable guttersnipes when they go out to bars and clubs. They achieve this look not by shopping in thrift shops and consignment stores, but by deliberately dressing – and acting – like bad movie clichés.

I once ran afoul of an Ed Hardy type who told me his “hands were registered with the police,” and how he “didn’t want to be deadly,” but his “pops made (him).” This is a prime example of how stupid people are: obliviously using a line that’s been ridiculed – making fun of this line is, in itself, a cliché - for longer than any of us have been alive, in hopes of frightening me into respecting his nonexistent “ch’i.”

I don’t know why I find it all so distasteful. I think it’s because I’m still young – and possibly inexperienced – enough to be startled when people my age start doing “adult” things like getting divorced or going to prison for pedophilia. I have that same reaction when I see people my age and younger looking as though they should be facedown on a table in some “waterfront bar” from a bad Who’s The Boss? episode where a determined Angela dons a leather jacket and boots to offer salvation to a sullen, despondent, drunken Tony after his embarrassing behavior at Samantha’s private school compels him to flee Connecticut and hit the bottle. Or did I dream that one?

This isn’t about Guidos or giant juiceheads or any of the other elements of irritation I’m always writing about here. It’s about people – guys, for the most part – who wake up one morning and decide they want to look like someone the world won’t trust as far as it can throw. It’s about groups of these people who get together and mimic each other’s behavior and mannerisms until they reach that one fatal point-of-no-return when they’re genuine, card-carrying scumbags who drug drinks and stab bouncers.

People can redeem themselves, sure, but that summit always exists – the day you finally fling yourself over the ridge and turn into something you may not have been the day before. It’s the day a guy becomes an addict, or the day a girl turns into a slut. There’s a point in time when you turn, going from one to the other. Sometimes I wonder how I never reached it.

Books

2008-05-27T04:00:00.000-04:00

Since I’m sort of pressed for time at the moment – yet still want to post something – I’ll go back to one of my old copouts: a reading list. Before that little hiatus I seem to have taken, these lists used to interest people, so I’ll bring them back periodically and see what kind of email rolls in. I’ve had some very good, “if you like those, you should try reading this…” responses in the past, so that’s kind of what I’m going for here.

In no particular order:

The Secret History of the American Empire, by John Perkins: Very nearly unreadable, and not because of the subject matter, either. I’m sure John Perkins is a very smart man, and I’m sure he’s done a lot of the things he refers to in his books. What he doesn’t have, however, is his finger on the pulse of the people he’s trying to reach. I can’t get past his self-congratulatory tone or his inability to convey a reasonable emotional context for the things about which he writes. The subject matter is fascinating. The writing is horrific.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson: I’ve made no secret of the fact that Neal Stephenson is my favorite author. This go-round with Snow Crash was, in fact, a rereading, and as always, it was worth the time. As “Clint” once pointed out, it’s still a dream of mine to trap Neal in a HarperCollins elevator and demand that he “say something smart.”

Spook Country, by William Gibson: Not bad, but definitely not Gibson’s best effort. In Spook Country, I think he’s trying to create the same sort of tableau he nailed down in All Tomorrow’s Parties, but it doesn’t work nearly as well. This book should’ve been a hundred pages longer for purposes of character development. I finished it knowing nothing about any of the main characters and felt a little shortchanged considering how excited I was to get my hands on a copy.

Turing’s Delirium, by Edmundo Paz Soldan: If it looks like I’m big on Cyberpunk and Cypherpunk stuff, I am, but it’s not what you think. I really have no interest in science fiction and never have. Stephenson, Gibson and others are simply terrific writers who put out some of the most engaging material I’ve ever read, regardless of genre. Turing’s Delirium is translated from Spanish, so the writing is a bit off at times, but it’s a good story and it kept my attention.

Homicide, by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson: I now know a lot more about why people act like assholes, especially in Massachusetts. Homicide isn’t about people from Massachusetts, and it doesn’t really reference people from Massachusetts, but when I pretended that certain sections involved Massholia, the whole thing made sense to me. There’s a certain evolutionary aspect to it that I hadn’t considered until reading this book. This is a scholarly work, but it’s a fairly interesting read.

Friday's Post

2008-05-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

Today's post will appear as a column here. I don't know what time it will appear, exactly, but it's an account of a recent "brush with greatness."

Handled

2008-05-21T04:00:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had a fitness epiphany. I met up with some friends who told me some things, in ways both implied and specific, that pissed me off in ways I hadn’t been pissed off in years.

I’m not going to mince words here. Over the course of the past two years, for a variety of reasons, I’ve turned myself into a pussy. I haven’t been doing any of the things I know I need to do in order to make progress. I was eating like shit, training like a little girl, and deluding myself into thinking I was “hardcore” because I was a big fish in a little pond who could stack a bunch of plates on a bar and lift it a few times.

Big fucking deal. What difference does being moderately strong make when you look like shit and you’re stuck on the same lifting and running numbers for years at a time? Are you really doing anything right?

My friend Jim Wendler from Elite Fitness Systems nailed it for me. Here’s what he said:

“I’m very, very happy that I never had the fuckin’ internet when I started training. What that forced me to do was something that ninety-nine percent of the training population has forgotten to do, and that’s lift fuckin’ weights. That’s it. Because I had to sit, by myself, in a gym with no one else to train with, and guess what I had to do? I had to fuckin’ think.”

The internet is full of fantastic training advice from people who know exactly what they’re doing. If you know where to look and what to read, you’ll never need to pay a personal trainer for as long as you live. If you want to know where to look, feel free to email me and I’ll point you in the right direction. The internet is also filled with slapdicks who have no idea what the fuck they’re doing, but so are most gyms – including mine - so what’s the difference? That’s a topic for a different day, though, so let’s move on.

The problem with the internet, at least as I see it, is that without learning things in the way Jim describes – the way I originally learned them in my basement as a kid - we’re all capable of taking the good advice we’re given and warping it into something that doesn’t even come close to resembling the original product.

For a while now, I’ve had a problem with the concept of “infrequent training.” The idea behind this is to turn rest into a training methodic. You build muscle through getting the proper amounts of rest between sessions. You recharge your central nervous system (CNS) by taking days off between “hard” workouts. You keep yourself injury-free and able to come back stronger by taking “deload” weeks where you lighten your load or, in some cases, take an entire week off.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this method. In fact, it’s actually the ideal way to train. All of the above concepts are irrefutably true. The only way to make real progress as an athlete, or as someone who simply wants to get in better shape, is by getting enough rest between workouts. I know this is true because I’ve experienced it myself. It’s why professional football teams, by the time they get midway through a season, pretty much don’t do shit in practice after Wednesday. It works.

The caveat here is that you have to be working hard enough to earn these rest periods. I was lying to myself on this point. I was mailing in some seriously half-assed workouts three or four times a week, then taking entire days – and sometimes weekends – off because I claimed to be adhering to the “infrequent training” principle of resting my CNS. I was scheduling deload weeks once a month whether I needed them or not – and believe me, I didn’t need them.

This was a total crock of shit, because what I was doing was turning myself into a pussy who was able to rationalize not going balls-out in the gym by thinking I was taking the advice I’d gotten from the best in the world and running with it. Meanwhile, “taking advice and running with it” wasn’t what I was doing. I was turning myself into a mentally weak person who had a thousand excuses – disguised as “training science,” of course – for not doing the things I instinctively know are right.

Here are the steps I’ve taken to solve the problem. Be advised that I’ve been a fairly high level athlete in the past, which has helped me to learn my body and mind better than most people I see in the gym. The way I’m doing this is working for me, but it’s not for everyone. Some of it has no “training utility” whatsoever and is intended strictly to de-pussify my mind. That said, here’s what I’ve been concentrating on of late:

1. Conditioning: Without getting into any heavy science, I’m going to define “conditioning” as follows: the ability to do hard shit repeatedly for long periods of time. Essentially, I’ve been doing this “hard shit” until the point of vomiting just about every day for the past three weeks. I’m well aware that this is not the ideal way to go about doing things, but I’m training this way to benefit my mind rather than my body. Every day, when I’m on the way to the gym, I say to myself, “Self? What’s the thing you’d least like to do today?” Usually, this involves the use of the Prowler, so that’s what I do – back and forth, with short rest periods, until my legs go lactic and I end up puking water all over the place. This has gotten easier with time, which is precisely what I wanted to happen.

2. Nutrition: I have eaten “clean” for the past three weeks. During this time, I’ve lost 14 pounds of water weight – which is fine because I’m continuing to get stronger. I eat nothing but chicken, fish, vegetables and oatmeal – all organic when I can help it. I eat every three hours, and I cycle the amount of carbohydrates I take in based on what I’m doing in the gym that day. I love eating like this because I look different every morning when I wake up. People are already noticing.

3. Gym Habits: I’m back to being a lit fuse in the gym. I don’t talk to anyone from the time I walk in the door to the time I’m finished. I throw on headphones and a hat from one of the football teams I played for, and I just fucking go. I pace like a mental patient between sets, staring at the floor or at the exercise I’m about to do. People at my gym have gotten the message.

4. Setting Records: I keep records of every exercise I do, and I try to better them the next time I’m in the gym – whether it’s lifting more weight, doing more reps, or doing more conditioning. I’m taking my assistance exercises – the little shit – as seriously as I take the major stuff, trying to do better and better every time out. When I don’t get a record, I get pissed and I curse, loudly. This has made a huge difference. The extra conditioning has helped a lot because I’m not hanging on for dear life at the end of my sessions anymore. I feel myself getting stronger as the workouts go on and I’m actually getting something out of the latter parts instead of just going through the motions.

5. Motivation: Being an athlete has always been “my thing,” but I’ve felt, lately, that it’s been co-opted and taken away from me by people at my gym – and elsewhere - who feel they have the right to bother me while I’m training, or to interfere with my life to the point where I can’t train properly. I’ve been motivated these past few weeks by the feeling of taking back what’s mine, and it’s been liberating like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t particularly like Slipknot, but the song Snap is on my MP3 player. I love the part where they say the lines, “All I want is what’s mine…All I want is what’s mine…” over and over again. I save that one for when I need it.

Now, before you think I’m jumping into this too quickly and things will level off, you need to know that this isn’t being written by someone who's ever stopped training. I’ve been in the gym at least five days a week since junior high, and that was a long time ago. I’ll never stop doing this. In fact, I’m more likely to stick with doing things this way, and I’m more likely to quit if I think I’m being half-assed and getting nowhere.

Not giving your best in the gym – or wherever – is fine if that’s not where you want to apply yourself. There’s definitely something wrong, however, with lying to yourself and thinking you’re giving a hundred percent when you’re not. That’s what I was doing, and it’s just fucking weak.

Those days are over for me. On to better ones.

Nightlife: Taking a Stand

2008-05-20T04:00:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Making your way from one area of a busy nightclub to another has always been a challenge, even for veteran clubgoers accustomed to maneuvering through the tightest of spaces. Nightclubs have historically been more than willing to skirt occupancy laws in order to get as many customers through their doors as possible. In the nightlife industry, it’s all about numbers, and the amount of money collected at the front door, in the form of lucrative “cover charges,” is the most important number of all.

Here in New York’s Meatpacking District, however, nightclubs and their patrons have taken the art of egress blockage to an entirely different level – and if you ask the people who work there, the problem has nothing to do with overcrowding.

“You can’t get there from here,” said bouncer Stephen Walsh. “I say it every night, to a hundred different people, but they never listen. You just can’t get from one place to another the way some of these people want to go.”

According to Mr. Walsh, 32, this isn’t because his nightclub is too crowded. “It’s all about the bottlenecks and the choke points,” he said. “I still can’t figure it out, exactly. They just don’t let each other move. Either people have no fucking idea what’s going on around them, or they do it on purpose. Sometimes I’d like to carry a chainsaw to work and just start hacking away.”

Customer Jonathan Cervic disagrees with Mr. Walsh’s sentiments. Mr. Cervic, 26, is an unemployed mortgage broker from Atlantic Beach who said he’s often disappointed with the “disrespect” shown to him by club employees. “These clubs cost a lot of money to come to,” he said, “and I think that if I’m paying a fifty dollar cover at the door, plus a tip to the guy to let us in, I should be allowed to stand wherever the fuck I want. I’m sick of people telling me to move all the time.”

“I told him to move,” said Mr. Walsh, “because the fucking slapdick was standing in a doorway and nobody could get through because he was in the fucking way. I mean, how stupid can you fucking be? Then, when I tell the guy to move, he starts yelling at me, and he takes out a money clip and starts waving it around. Is that normal? Is that fucking normal?”

Ever since childhood, Mr. Cervic has enjoyed forming bottlenecks, taking immense pleasure in knowing that people’s forward progress – or lack thereof – could be regulated by his actions. “Every time I go anywhere,” he said, “the first thing I do is take a look at the layout and see where people have to go single file in order to squeeze through. When I find those spots, I make a point of standing there and making people run into me. There’s a certain rush to it. You don’t know what it’s like to be the guy who started the traffic jam until you’ve done it, but once you’ve done it, you’ll always find yourself wanting to go out and do it again.”

Finding strength in numbers, Mr. Cervic said he’s not alone in his affinity for standing in inconvenient places. “There’s a lot of us out here,” he said, “and we need to be heard. Just like the rest of you think you have the right to go places and get things done, this is a free fucking country, and I’m well within my rights to stand wherever I want to fucking stand. People block my way all the time. Sometimes even I have to go take a leak, and there’s some guy in the way. You know what I do? I go around him.”

While Mr. Cervic may, in fact, have every right to occupy whichever square foot of space he likes, there are some who disagree with his methods. John Arsenault, director of the New York Protest Reaction Monitoring Organization (NYPRMO), a watchdog group dedicated to tracking annoyance complaints resulting from public demonstrations and protests, said Mr. Cervic’s energies would be best applied elsewhere. “I think it’s a complete waste of his time to be this passionate about being a pain in the ass,” said Mr. Arsenault. “There’s a time and place for everything, but if you’re going to sit there and argue for your right to make everyone else’s life miserable, you’re not some kind of pioneer. You’re not Rosa Parks. In my book, you’re just a fucking prick.”

Mr. Walsh concurred with this assessment, but said there’s little he can do, as a nightclub bouncer, to curtail the behavior of customers like Mr. Cervic. “My hands are tied,” he said. “The guy comes in, he meets the dress code and he spends money. Even when people push him out of the way, he doesn’t get in fights and he’s never been violent here. I mean, I think he’s a fucking pussy, but if we didn’t let pussies in the door we’d be empty every night and I’d be out of a job.”

As for Mr. Cervic, he said he plans to continue the fight. “You’re damned right I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing,” he said. “If you’re walking behind me, you bet your ass I’m going to stop suddenly. I’m going to stop my car on all the parkway merges so you’ll have to wait, and I’ll stand in every doorway and at the bottom of every flight of stairs. You know why? Because I can.”

“That,” said Mr. Walsh, “is why people get shot.”

Today's

2008-05-15T12:19:00.001-04:00

You can find today's post here.

Believe me, I'm not moving anywhere.

Astonishing

2008-05-14T04:00:00.000-04:00

This is going to sound cryptic. I’m sorry about that, but it kind of has to be that way right now because I don’t want to cause problems for a friend of mine. I also don’t want to get sued, which is what would probably happen if I told the real story of what I’m planning on complaining about here.

I’m not writing a regular post today because I’m absolutely fucking enraged about something. A very good person I know is being fucked over by some very bad people I know. This person has gone way above and beyond the call for me and countless others for several years now, and I’m proud to call him a friend. He has been an incredible help to me both personally and professionally in more ways than I could ever adequately describe in this medium.

This selflessness of his played a huge role in putting him in a prominent position where he was vulnerable to attacks from the aforementioned bad people. These people attacked him because they didn’t want him in this position. They didn’t want him in this position because they were jealous of the fact that he’d succeeded where they’d failed, so they fucked him over and acted in ways that grown men shouldn’t ever act. I wish I could get into specifics here, but I can’t.

No matter how many times I’ve been around to see it, it still amazes me when bad shit happens to good people, especially when the bad shit is avoidable because it’s unnecessarily instigated and perpetuated by assholes. One guy who has helped hundreds of people is being fucked around by a handful of people who’ve never helped anyone but themselves. Believe me when I tell you that the world is decidedly not a better place for it.

Nightlife: Wee 'Pocket Men' Make Everyone Miserable

2008-05-13T04:00:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK, N.Y. – At 5’11”, Christopher Bright isn’t often described as being excessively tall, at least by conventional height standards for American men. In fact, Mr. Bright, a bouncer in Manhattan’s thriving Meatpacking District – where being well over six feet tall seems to be a prerequisite for nightclub security employment – has become accustomed to the good-natured ribbing of his less vertically challenged coworkers.

“I’m used to it,” said Mr. Bright, 29. “I’m the shrimp out here.”

One look down Gansevoort Street would seem to contradict Mr. Bright’s self-deprecatory comments. An examination of the steady stream of patrons waiting for admission to the popular nightspot at which Mr. Bright is employed yields somewhat less-than-stellar results in terms of the average height of the men in line.

If you’ve found yourself standing in the middle of a Manhattan drinking establishment with an unfettered view of all four walls, you’re seemingly not alone. Then again, according to a comprehensive survey done by the New York Entertainment Industry Research Group (NYEIRG), maybe you are.

“We’ve been doing our research on this for almost three years,” said Serena Lydon, executive director of NYEIRG, “and we’ve come to the conclusion that Manhattan nightclubs, especially those in lower Manhattan, are virtual magnets for shorter men. For 2008 alone, the average height of male customers in Meatpacking District establishments is approximately five-foot-seven.”

Mr. Bright concurs. “I’ve worked at a few places down here, but I like this one the best because I’m at the front door. Everyone coming in here has to roll past me, and I say the same thing to the guys I work with every night about how I can’t believe how short some of these motherfuckers are. After all the shit I take from all the bouncers that work here, standing up front makes me feel really good about myself.”

After three years of observation, Ms. Lydon said NYEIRG has developed a large enough statistical sampling to detect height-related behavioral patterns in male nightclub patrons. “I hate to generalize,” she said, “but shorter men, on average, tend to cause more problems. We thought this was an anomaly at first, but the vast majority of incidents we’ve seen here in New York have involved at least one man of less than average height, and sometimes several.”

Eyes on the Prize

Anthony Zizzadoro is one of the men who’ve been on the study’s radar for the past year. Mr. Zizzadoro, 38, is a self-described “small business owner” from Staten Island who frequents Manhattan nightclubs “at least three or four times a week.” At 5’5”, he’s also typical of the troublesome variety of male customer Ms. Lydon describes.

“I’ve watched his evolution for a while now,” said Ms. Lydon, “and it parallels what we’ve seen from most shorter men who fit the profile. When we first saw Anthony come here, he waited in line with everyone else and his night consisted of having a few drinks at one of the bars. Now, two years later, we’re seeing him spend exponentially more money, he’s wearing more jewelry, and he’s obviously been spending a lot of time at the gym.”

Ms. Lydon said Mr. Zizzadoro’s behavior has worsened in the process. “As soon as he shaved his head and started adding tattoos, I had a feeling things were about to get interesting, and they eventually did. He’s much more angry and aggressive now.”

Later in the night, Mr. Zizzadoro’s demeanor - Ms. Lydon said he’s rather “soft-spoken” when not inside a nightclub – had undergone marked changes. Gone was the collared silk dress shirt he’d worn initially, replaced by a “wife beater” – the ribbed white undershirt popularized as outerwear by young working-class males from New York’s outer boroughs and suburbs.

At the start of the evening, Mr. Zizzadoro seemed content to sit quietly in the club’s VIP section, sipping Grey Goose vodka and chatting with friends. After a few hours, however, he was perched atop a sofa, shouting and pumping his fists in time with the music. By 3 AM he was on the sidewalk, ejected by bouncers for attempting to instigate a fight with another patron who, he claimed, had encroached on his space.

“This is a typical night for Anthony,” said Ms. Lydon. “Over the past year, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’s left a nightclub on his own accord.”

Captains of Misery

For men like Mr. Zizzadoro, according to Mr. Bright, the negative tone of an evening is established when they first walk through the doors of the club. “They walk in here like they’re fucking miserable,” he said. “All I see, all night long, is all these angry little dudes coming up here. I feel bad for them. Sometimes I want to bend down and say, ‘Hey little fella, what’s the matter? Why don’t you go inside and turn that frown around?’ We should fucking carry lollipops up here for these motherfuckers, I swear.”

Dr. Benjamin Waldenstein, a Manhattan clinical psychologist and renowned expert in the field of anger management, believes he understands the motivations of men like Mr. Zizzadoro.

“It’s obvious from their behavior that they believe, even if it’s at a subconscious level, that they have some deficiency for which they have to compensate,” he said. “For some men, it’s a lack of financial power or social standing. For others, it’s a physical thing. Their physical carriage doesn’t get them the attention they crave, so they try to make up for this in other ways.”

The New York nightclub scene, said Dr. Waldenstein, is a perfect incubator for such insecurities. “In nightclubs, these men feel a sense of power because nightclubs are places where people can pretend to be who they’re not. This is a dangerous business, though, because a psychologically damaged individual is always walking a fine line. When that illusion of importance is somehow broken, no matter how it happens, the results can be catastrophic.”

That, said Mr. Bright, is when nightclub security necessarily gets involved. “I hate all these little motherfuckers. That’s all I see up here is one stupid little motherfucker after another one, and they’re the ones that start all the problems. We should make a height limit for this place, like they do on roller coasters and shit. Like, if you can’t touch this line, you can’t come in. I bet we wouldn’t have a single fight in here if we did that.”

“As a research professional,” added Ms. Lydon, “I’m fascinated by all of this. But as a woman, and as someone who occasionally goes out to clubs with my friends when I’m not working, I’m horrified to think that this is what’s out there. They’re all just fucking short and gross.”

Back Tomorrow

2008-05-12T04:00:00.003-04:00

My friend's brother made this documentary. You should go see it when it opens.

Big Fish

2008-05-09T04:00:00.000-04:00

“If you think your shit doesn’t stink, it won’t stink, but even if it does, you can pretend it doesn’t. And if anyone notices and tells you your shit actually does stink, you can always just browbeat them into silence. That’s what happens when you look like me.”

Nightlife: All in a Night's Work

2008-05-07T04:00:00.002-04:00

OCEANSIDE, N.Y. – From the open bathroom window, the sounds of throttled-down boat engines are barely audible over the sound of running water from Jessica Nelbandian’s sink.

“It’s all canals back here,” said Ms. Nelbandian, 23, readying herself for another Saturday night in New York with her friends. “People ride their boats up and down all night long on the weekends.”

Ms. Nelbandian’s preparatory process takes time - sometimes as long as three hours. For a weekend night spent in one of Manhattan’s exclusive Meatpacking District nightspots, anything less than perfection is unacceptable. “There’s a lot you can do to get the good shit,” she said, “but it all starts with how you look. If you don’t look right, you can’t get anyone’s attention and they’ll never give you anything.”

Perfecting her aesthetic for the club, however, is only the first hurdle in an evening seemingly swimming with potential setbacks. The real difficulties begin when her parents realize where Ms. Nelbandian is going. Emerging from the comforting hair dryer and perfume scents of her steamy bathroom cocoon, she knows she must eventually make her way downstairs and run the maternal gauntlet.

“I’ve always supported her in everything she does,” said Mila Nelbandian, Jessica’s mother. “She works very hard at what she does, but sometimes I wish she wouldn’t stay out all night every weekend.”

“I don’t care what they think about what I do,” said Jessica Nelbandian. “I’m young, and this is the time for me to be out with my friends having fun.”

Mila Nelbandian said she had no real objections to Jessica’s nocturnal weekend habits until last October, when Jessica was involved in a GHB - gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, commonly known as the “date rape drug” – incident at a Long Island nightclub. “Somebody drugged her drink,” said Mila Nelbandian. “She got sick and we ended up in the emergency room until the next morning. After that I told her she should stay out of these places, but she keeps going.”

By day, Ms. Nelbandian works as a nail technician at a storefront salon in East Meadow. She says her job is the reason she invests so much time in the Manhattan nightclub scene. “It’s the only place I can meet guys,” Ms. Nelbandian said. “You don’t meet guys at a nail salon. It’s just a lot of older women who are jealous of me because I’m young and I can still go out and get attention.”

Once in the club, unburdened of familial tensions, Ms. Nelbandian and her friends engage in a series of friendly greetings with acquaintances they’ve made since discovering the Meatpacking District. “We know everyone in here,” said Sophia Gagliardi, 22, a high school friend of Ms. Nelbandian’s. “The bouncers are so nice to us. I love it here.”

The club’s security staff, though cordial to Ms. Nelbandian and her party at the front door, seemed skeptical of their motives. “Yeah, she’s hot and everything,” said Raymond Velarde, a bouncer at the club, “but I’ve seen her do some grimy shit, man. She’s sucked off just about every guy in here.”

Ms. Nelbandian didn’t deny the fact that her weekend club outings occasionally result in compromising end-of-the-night positions, but said the more unsavory aspects of “clubhopping” are necessary to squeeze every possible ounce of enjoyment out of the experience. “Yeah, I have to go back to the bathrooms with guys every once in a while,” she said, “but it’s worth it to me. It’s not like I have to take them home, right?”

Stephen Cardi accompanied Ms. Nelbandian on one such bathroom visit. Mr. Cardi, 34, a self-described “entrepreneur,” said such adventures make the nightclub scene worth his time and money. “I love seeing these little Long Island rats here,” he said. “Especially her. She laps it up like a fucking Hoover.”

The challenge, according to Ms. Gagliardi, is getting Ms. Nelbandian home in one piece. “The time they gave her the roofies was scary,” she said, “because we didn’t know where she was. Then there was a fight because some old guy was trying to drag her out the back door. We’re more careful now and don’t get out of each other’s sight, but Jessica still likes to party.”

“If I wanted to stop, I’d stop,” said Ms. Nelbandian, “but I’m living life to the fullest right now. If people don’t understand that, it’s too bad for them.”

Mailing It In

2008-05-06T04:00:00.001-04:00

Last night was Cinco de Mayo – otherwise known, at least to me, as “Monday” – so I worked. It sucked, of course, because being surrounded by Guidos until three in the morning on a Monday night is not something I envisioned when I scored over 1500 on my fucking SAT back in 1948.

I have nothing of significance to report, other than the fact that there is a bartender where I work who’s not as hot as the other bartenders. She’s also not very nice, which doesn’t help her cause.

I commented on this to one of the other bouncers, who informed me that she’s known among the staff as “The Underdog.”

“Why do they call her The Underdog?” I asked.

“Because she ain’t got a chance in hell.”

Also, a guy paid me $100 to not throw him out, so I didn’t throw him out.

I’ll have a much better post for you tomorrow.