 | Children of Booze
Current mood:  peaceful I didn't get around to blogging on Saturday, so this will be a longer one. I'm going to break up topics/days by ********************* so you can skip ahead to other sections if you'd like.
Weekend starts Friday night with a few games of Beirut before heading with Julian, Cella and Sean to Ace Wasabi's. Once we get there, I'm pretty good, and in the hour long wait for the table, I get significantly better as Mike plys me with warm sake, which feels warm and kinda like baking bread in my stomach.
I know that I should have baked one fewer loaf when I turn to two girls sitting next to us eating, and ask them which was the better portion of the dish they were eating...the avocados or the tomatoes. "Did you say tomatoes?" "yes..." "um, that's tuna..." I know that the sake was too much now because I just mistook a fish for a fruit. I stutter something about apologies, they laugh and tell me that the tuna was the best part of the dish. I hide my head in shame.
We get seated and all I remember from dinner is that the philly roll was very good and we drank more sake. I thought about killing Julian because he kept handing me shots, but then realized that sadly, this was my choice and I better suck it up and shoot it.
We leave Ace's and I spark a spliff, which is immediately a bad idea. Without my wits about me, and with no one else really paying attention, Julian pulls some trickeration and leads us all to City Tavern. I will say this...That was only the 3rd time this year that I've been there. If I can get away with only going to City Tavern 3 times a month, with two of those times being specifically to pre-party and leave, that's something I can handle.
It ends up being a good night all in all as Miller, Wolfklain and others show up to share the festivities.
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Saturday I wake up and head to an Education Open House at USF for a program that joins a teacher credential with a masters degree. It seems like it might be solid for me, and I'd be able to continue working as I pursued it. I'll have to wait til after Track to think of that though (and track starts this week!!!)
Then I hit Nini's for the gauntlet and follow it up with one of the better movies I've seen in at least the last year, if not longer. Children of Men.
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Now, I've heard some troubling things about Children of Men, namely people I know not thinking it was a very solid movie (Charles, Dawson, Alan obviously excluded)...and I need to wonder if people saw the same thing I did. I'm not going to spoil the movie for those of you that haven't seen it, so don't be afraid to read on.
Let's start with the basics...a movie needs to take you to a place, mentally and emotionally. This movie is set in 2027, and while we can't know how realistic the vision portrayed will be, I can tell you that the setting and the way it was shot was incredibly realistic. You could feel the dirt, the blood, and more importantly for this movie, the constant feeling of fear. It would be one thing to fear for the characters, but this movie goes a step further and actually creates fear for the entire human race, not just in the movie, but in our current situations.
With the premise the infertility of the entire human race, the movie exams questions of morality, economy, race, gender, ethnicity and faith. Britain has turned into the last superpower on earth, having done so only by eradicating much of civilians' freedoms and placing refugees and illegals into detention centers. This plot line felt like Japanese citizens in WWII, as well as suspiciously like current practices surrounding Muslims in the war on terror. (You're even given a few courtesy shots of British soldiers torturing detainees with Abu Ghraib tactics).
You watch it, unsure how much of it could become real, and quite certain that none of it is completely out of the realm of possibility. You watch people, all from very different backgrounds and personal histories viewing the issues of the movie from different perspectives. What tops it all is that the movie doesn't seek to give you answers to these questions, or lead you in any direction. It simply poses them, tells the story and lets you deal with the aftermath.
Children of Men is able to boast what only the best science fiction can....the use of futurescapes, projected "history" and a basic future premise to bring to light questions and ideals we must face currently in our culture and world as a whole. If anyone would like to discuss this movie with me, I'd be thrilled.
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After the movie, I feel like driving off a cliff because I have so much energy and so little hope for the immediate future of our country in the war on terror and other such nonsense. I chuck this feeling out the window and head to the city to meet with Damie, Charles and Brandon. Now, Brandon called me early in the day to ask me to come out for his cousin's birthday party at Cheesecake Factory and then Zebra Lounge. I tell him Cheesecake won't happen, but I'll meet them at the lounge.
Luckily, Derek and Mamie's friend Goo is working bar, and he gets us past the line and past the cover charge, VIP style. He then serves us drinks at the upstairs bar where they haven't allowed people into yet. We're running the place, make no mistake. The crowd starts to pick up, the music as well, and before you know it, the upstairs looks like a cross between a high school dance, a college frat party and a Wild 94.9 street party.
As I'm leaving the bathroom, Brandon calls me to tell me that there's a cover, they're not going there anymore, and can I meet him outside...I do, we hit a spliff around the corner (with cops EVERYWHERE), say hello to Zeke who's with him and then head back in. He heads back to his party at Velvet Lounge, nevermind the fact that I came out and sold everyone on the Zebra lounge idea because he was going to be there!
We party some more in Zebra, get a few more cheap to free drinks and decide to head over to Velvet to hang out with Brandon and his crew. We make our way down to the front, get outside, and as we hit the sidewalk, Brandon calls to ask if Goo can hook his cousin up with free drinks at Zebra. I say, um, yea, he would have, but we're on our way to Velvet to see you guys. At which point he tells me that he and Zeke are on the way home already, and his cousin and her friends didn't like Velvet and had gone to Zebra.
Now knowing that we're not tied to Brandon anymore, we decide to meet up with some of Mamie's friends at Fiddler's Green, which I had been to once before. For those that don't know, it's a very random place where the downstairs is a little quiet, live band, some dancing, bar and about 62 degrees. The upstairs is a packed dance floor bumping dj spun hip hop music that runs somewhere around tropical. Mamie, in typical fashion, has very attractive friends...we smoke more, drink long islands and take pictures with my camera (all of them up in the profile now) until it's time to go.
At this point, we're in North Beach, around 2 am, and who's gonna find a cab? I do. I call Maurod the cabbie, and I'm not sure if I mentioned him previously, but believe I did in another blog. I get him on the phone, tell him where we are, and he says he'll be there in 5. He drives up, and Maurod is the baddest ass cabbie you've ever met. First he kicks a couple out of the cab because he was coming for us...(that feels VIP...sorry, that's MY cab you're in buddy!) and then we're two minutes in the drive and he says, "something smells good back there." I know what he's referring to, so I ask him if I should spark it, "yea, yea, spark it!"
So here we are, Charles, Damie and myself, rolling with Maurod the French Cabbie through North Beach and downtown, blowing trees and listening to french hip hop. That's how we do it.
He drops us off at Vic's where we meet up with Vic, his girlfriend, Alan, Simon and the rest of the Jewish Russian Mafia. Alan pours vodka shots down Charles throat until, at around 2:30, it's time to go and Charles can't get off the bathroom floor where he's made new friends with Phil's toilet bowl. This is where we leave him as Damie give me a cab ride to where I need to go.
So there you have it...the weekend in all its gruesome glory. Don't get it twisted, unless, of course, you're trying to twist one up. |
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