Last night I took it upon myself to indulge in a little self-pity. It turns out that I'm not going to get my bonus until the 4th Quarter is closed. Pisser, that. So I sped down to Marina Del Rey with Blink 182 on blast.
I determined that I was going to conspire with a bartender somewhere to invent a new drink, an 'Angry Black Man'. And so I found myself finally at the Cheesecake Factory sitting in front of Sean, an actor who did an episode or two of Monk for USA. I toasted to Sean, 'characters welcome'. So it began.
Angry Black Man #1
So I tell Sean that this is going to take some time, and that it may take up to 50 bucks, but I was determined to coin this new drink. The first try was actually pretty good. A shot of Courvoisier and Southern Comfort. Taking a big gulp I realized that this worked a lot better than I expected. It has got a serious burn to it, and if you're really angry it will slow you down. But it seemed too simple and a little more harsh than I wanted. It wasn't sophisticated enough for the kind of anger I wanted to express.
Angry Black Man #2
ABM1 needed something to lighten it up, water it down and give it another flavor. So I said to repeat the formula as a cocktail instead of a shot. So we did Courvoisier and Southern Comfort with Drambuie on the rocks.This was one beautiful looking drink. The color was perfect. I raised it to my lips and took a deep swallow. It was awful. That one was cough syrup, just nasty. It wasn't a drink that worked. I think I lost Sean on that, and as he went to tend other customers, I scanned the bar to find the right combination.
Angry Black Man #3
This time I came totally out of left field. Start with dark rum. Gotta be Myers. Then something for more flavor..hmmm Frangelico. OK now something completely off the wall. Harvey's Bristol Cream. That's ethnic. And finally to make it ugly, a few drops of Bailey's. Put this in a sipping glass and Bam. I did it. This was a great drink and ugly as hell. I called my dog who was out at the black lawyer's expo downtown and asked what I should put in an Angry Black Man, and he said 'something white'. The Baileys did it, but it couldn't mix. Instead it clumped up and floated around the glass like plastic flakes in a snow globe. The concoction has an orangy look and the taste was undefinable, but it had a tart finish that left a strange sensation in your mouth. This was anger. Something you could drink up, appreciate and savor and have enough of a tang to remind you that you were hurting yourself. Perfect.
As I was putting this final mix together, an old silver-haired gent sat next to me. Ahh. Now things are interesting and fun. He slams down a gin and something and introduces himself. His name is Lance and he's an attorney. He cracks up at my project but realizes I'm deadly serious. After kicking back a few, he begins to interrogate, sloppily but earnestly.
Do I follow sports? No not really, only when extraordinary teams are playing like Jordan's Bulls, or the 84 Bears and so forth. I tell him that I prefer football in the end. The last time I played basketball, other than in my periodic dreams where I have mad ball control and am extraordinarily quick (although I don't have any memories of actually slamming to add to my 5 foot 11 game) was in 93. Then the game had changed and I hated the way kids played pickup - no driving the lane only staying out for the three point shot. I liked short quick brothers like Nate Archibald who weren't afraid to go to the hoop. I like power forwards, Rodman, Worthy, Barkley. That was my era. So no I don't give a rat's about this guy, gesturing to Kobe Bryant on the screen behind the bar. I like a real team sport, like football. This opens him up.
Lance was a hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky and his father was a factory worker. He moved to Cincinnati Ohio where he played right tackle. He was the only white player on an all black team and every day he lived to hit, hit, hit and protect his quarterback. His parents bought him the best equipment. Wilson knee pads, shoulder pads and helmet. Because he took the punishment. Lance is a good 6 foot even I'd guess, a bit small for a tackle, even back in the day. The brothers took their pound of flesh, and he got it in the teeth. But he still loved the game and he was dedicated.
Satisfied with my Angry Black Man, I returned to tradition for the rest of the night. Jack and Coke, thank you. Lance continued his tale, because we finally got to politics. It turned out that Lance was an official commie pinko hillbilly lawyer full of genuine concern for the plight of the black man. He went down south to the Mississippi bayou. Now when somebody from Kentucky talks about 'down south' it must mean down south. He talked about his friend, Corey or Kody, I forget which, who accompanied him. There he was in the dirtiest of the dirty south, with his black suit and tie and his new rented Hertz car sponsored for him by the American Something Association of [Commie] Lawyers, digging up evidence for class action suits to be pressed in service of civil rights law. There he was, not fooling anyone, asking about how much federal money was being spent for swimming pools for black kids vs those monies spent for white kids. He had a case. He was stirring up trouble.
It's not often that you see a grown man cry, but they tend to be moments that you don't forget, and they tend to be about moments that grown man cannot forget. For Lance it was the night that the locals decided that they had had enough of him and his pals. He was there because for him it was the right thing to do. He was a young idealistic man doing his part, but suddenly he realized that he was facing men with shotguns. They were shooting at him. What was he doing here, what had he gotten himself into? All of this rushed through his panicked mind. He was only trying to do the right thing, just a hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky in the Mississippi Delta running for his very life.
I toasted him for a job well done, and I would have raised the glass to the room but I was squirting tears myself and I thought better of the moment. But I told him in no uncertain terms that he did the right thing, and that it worked. I don't know what kinds of satisfaction Lance gets on a daily basis. He started his drinking that evening because he 'won' a divorce case for his client. Nobody ever really wins in those he said. But by the time we got through that history, the popcorn shrimp and three or four more drinks all I could do was remind him several times what I told him the first time. Thank you. You did the right thing, and it worked.
Not long after that, Lance was forgetting my name and reintroducing himself to me and the woman who sat to my left. He asked if we were happy together and when we first met. I told him the first time that we met in Marina Del Rey around Thanksgiving of 2007. I told him the next time that we were reincarnated from iguanas on the Galapagos Islands.
It turned out that Julie and I had partied in the same clubs a lifetime ago. Glitter, Paradise 24, 24K, The Five Torches and a host of other joints. We all talked about music while Lance periodically reintroduced himself. It occurred to me quite frankly that he was an estimable man in his time who only had to introduce himself once and could watch that affect. I looked him up this morning and it turned out that he had argued before the Supreme Court of the US and had hung around cats like Thurgood Marshall.
I always dig hanging out with old guys. It's one of the most fun things I do, and whenever I put on the Hollywood suit it's the best thing that ever happens. I don't think I've blogged about anyone of this sort for a while, but I aim to collect men like Lance and hear them out. In the end, that is the best way to get my mind off my own business and get a bit of America too. Now I can't vouch for his taste in music, he seems to have a woody for Woody Herman, and he seems to think that Diana Ross is not just good but great, and of course he's a Commie Pinko Hillbilly, but he did the right thing, and it worked.
Cheers Lance. See you around.
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