Gator Country Blues….or, Where are the Normal Bars in the Gainesville Area?

“…You go call your crew/ We can rendezvous at the bar around two…”

I have had a couple of requests for some more interesting old stories, so I wanted to share one with you guys from a little over a year ago when my friends and I made the mistake of staying in the Gainesville (Florida) area for a few days. As always, this story is 100% true, with no hyperbole required.

After my second year of law school, I really needed a break. I couldn’t take one right away because my crappy first-half-of-the-summer law firm job started right after exams, so I scheduled a week off in between the end of my first firm job and my second firm job for a little R&R. I spent the first half of the week with “Wifey,” and planned to spend the second half of the week with some old friends in a rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere in Central Florida. The cabin was about 40 minutes from Gainesville in a tiny-ass town where our cell phones did not work most of the time – a perfect place to relax and get drunk with no interruptions. My cohorts on this mission were no other than “Fat Stack” and “Cue,” of W.B.-ing fame, M.C. Coppin, and “Puff,” a friend of mine from way back who I could easily write two books about due to his tendency to end up in some of the funniest and most bizarre situations you can imagine. Although I tend to blog about the legends of Puff a lot more in the future, I will just tell you now that although he is amazingly “book smart,” his lack of “street smarts” – partly due to him being born in a different country and being used to different customs – really gets him into trouble sometimes, as you will see.

A lot of funny things happened on our first two days at the cabin, including Fat Stack getting so drunk and so sick that he ruined a great game of Texas Hold ‘Em; M.C. Coppin impersonating a U.S. Marine; and yours truly trying to teach Puff to shoot targets and play lacrosse. Unfortunately, none of it translates well into blogging, so I’m just going to fast forward to the last two nights.

On our third day at the cabin, we were getting really restless from being in the same podunk town, so we went out seeking some entertainment. Cue bravely asked a few “locals” loitering in the parking lot of a closed convenience store where the nearest bar was, and twenty minutes later, we were there. We were warned to make sure we acted like “we were from around there,” or else there might be trouble. Immediately, we should have realized that we should make other plans, but we went out of a pure sense of adventure.

When we walked into the bar, Cue said it made him feel like a scene out of a movie where the music stops and everyone stares at the newcomers. We got a lot of dirty looks from the locals, in part because Puff and Cue stuck out like sore thumbs. You see, M.C. Coppin, Fat Stack, and I knew that in a country bar, no one would be “dressed to impress,” and so we all wore T-shirts and shorts. But for some reason, Cue and Puff dressed in pants, dressy shoes, and button-down shirts, and were easily the most well-dressed people in the whole bar. Needless to say, the bar was a huge dive. The place had live (bad) country music, very little selection of drinks, and, get this, two separate counters – one for beer, and a separate one for alcohol. What’s weird is that they didn’t even have enough of a selection for one bar, featuring only a few kinds of beer and alcohol. Despite the fact that we were 10 hours from Tennessee, all of the alcohol bottles I saw were whiskey-colored brown. No vodkas, rums, or anything. And don’t get me started on the guests. I think the five of us had more teeth than the rest of the 20 patrons or so put together. Most of the guys were in tank-tops and many of them had shorts with an elastic waistband.

Well, we walked up to the bar and I had a very clear strategy that I shared with Cue – we should all order one “Bud” – no Bud Light, no Michelob Ultra, no Corona with Lime – just Bud, Bud, Bud. Wouldn’t you have guessed it, but Puff’s clueless ass strolls up to the bar and asks “Do you have any Smirnoff Ice?” Three or four patrons gave him a sideways look as the bartender informed him of the four or five beers they served, not one of them any type of malt beverage. Cue took over and ordered a pitcher of Bud and we sat down. After pouring the beer, we looked around and I saw one of the strangest things I have ever seen. At the next table, I shit you not, was a guy with a beer sitting by himself, with a Cabbage Patch doll propped up in the seat next to him, as if they were an old married couple out on a Friday night. I don’t remember exactly, but I think he even had some type of blanket or napkin or place setting on the table for the doll. It was the craziest thing ever. As the crowd got drunker and rowdier, and the music got more and more country, we decided to leave. As we got up and walked out the front door, two women were walking in. One said to the other, through a not-so-full mouth of teeth, “Damn, girl, all the good guys are leaving!”

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The next night, we decided that we needed to go to a city if we were going to find our kind of bar, so we drove the 40 or 45 minutes to Gainesville to find some entertainment. Now, as a Florida State grad, or, as I should say, as someone who has gone anywhere except the University of Florida, I knew that Gainesville was a major shithole only masquerading as a city. However, considering the experience we had the night before, I felt things could only get better. I was so, so wrong.

After dinner, we went to an area near the University hoping to find a cool bar. The first bar we went into had a nice drink selection but was, we discovered, almost totally empty. We all ordered a drink and sat down. On our side of the bar, the only other people there were four girls who looked like they had seen better days, and, in the corner, a 250+ pound, 45-year old white woman with a 20-year old, 150 pound black man. The woman was sitting on a bar stool while he was dancing for her to the music, stopping every few seconds so they could make out. Cue suggested we leave, and I seconded, but Puff had us stay another half an hour asking us repeatedly if he should hit on one of the four girls. After working up the courage, he finally did, but she wasn’t having it. Finally, we moved on.

After walking along the street, we noticed one bar was the only one really hoppin’ in the whole area. It was called the “University Club,” or some generic name like that, and it sounded like the perfect place to have a few non-Budweiser drinks and meet a few co-eds. So, the five of us decided to go in. As we made the trek inside, I noticed more and more irregularities. First, unlike most of the bars on the strip, you had to enter this bar in the back (which was dark and dingy) instead of from the street. Second, there were several really tall women in evening dresses inside. Thirdly, there were a lot of 40-year old guys with shaved heads dancing, and hardly any guys our age. Fourth, there were not a lot of “love connections” going on, as it seemed like people were just in groups with their friends. Then, it hit me.

“I think this is a gay bar,” I said to Fat Stack. He looked around.
One minute later….. “I think this is a gay bar,” Cue said to me.
One minute later…. “I think you’re right…this is a gay bar,” Fat Stack said to us.
One minute later….. “Guys, I think this is a gay bar,” M.C. Coppin said.
Thirty minutes later….Puff realizes it’s a gay bar.

You see, as we spent more time in the place, and huddled closer and closer together, several things became apparent that we had missed when we walked in:

1. The tall women in evening dresses were actually men in evening dresses.
2. The 40-year old men were all dancing with 20-year old men.
3. The Budweiser bar tap had a rainbow symbol on it, and so did the bartender.
4. The reason why everyone was huddled together with people of the same sex was because they WERE making a love connection.

As we were sharing our observations, and huddling closer together, we realized that Puff had separated from the group. We looked around for him for a few minutes, and then we saw him a few feet away. Puff had walked up to a group of two or three girls and was hitting on one of the girls. We tried to get his attention to signal that it obviously was a lost cause, but he was in a groove, or so he thought. So, the four of us stood there waiting for him, trying to decide which one of us was “with” the other one of us for purposes of staving off the horny 40-year old men all around us. Puff was talking to the girl for a while, clearly not taking "no" for an answer. Eventually, he came back to the group, kind of dejected. I told him the girl might have been a lesbian, but he didn’t believe me. As soon as we all were within arms’ length of each other, we had the last swig of our drinks, took one last look around for memory’s sake, and walked briskly out the back door, cursing Gainesville, asking aloud why a gay bar had such a benign name, and wondering where all the normal bars were.

In retrospect, both stories could have been a lot worse, and so in a sense, both nights were non-events as much as they were events. However, you have to remember that this was a group of five guys together with a combined drinking experience of over 40 years, and we were 0 for 3 in finding normal bars. I guess it serves us right for trying to add a little “excitement” to an otherwise peaceful weekend. So, take my advice, folks. If you ever find yourselves in a secluded getaway spot, enjoy it for what it is, lest you find yourself trapped against a bar counter, with an overpriced beer, watching a bald guy with no shirt grind against a male co-ed hitting on another man in heels and an evening dress.

Entitled to Smack You in the Face, Maybe….

[(sample)...But he's stickin' you, and taking all your money....]
“Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!...”

Over the past several weeks, I have heard several TV and other media personalities refer to the current generation of 20-somethings as the “entitlement generation.” I will say that again. The generation above us is now referring to us, in public, as the damned “entitlement generation.” Can you believe this shit?

I have realized that the phrase “entitlement generation” is now one among an ever-increasing group of phrases that give me a knee-jerk reaction of instant anger, along with others such as “Future Interests in Real Property,” “Built Ford Tough,” “Pro-Choice,” and “Great J.Lo song.” It pisses me off to no end that people aged 35-55 or so not only think of us as the “entitlement generation,” but are spreading this garbage out into the universe. I mean, if you really think about it, we are doing a hell of a lot better than those assholes in the generation above us, especially considering all of the crap they’ve dumped on us and are depending on us to fix.

Speaking of which, can you believe how hard it is to be a 20-something human being these days? I mean, there is no flipping way that our generation is the “entitlement generation,” the generation of people who just think that the world owes them something for being alive. However, if you look at the world that the generation above us has handed us, and how large of a shithole we would be in if every generation was as bad as the one before us, maybe we 20-somethings are not so wrong in asking “what’s in it for me”?

Let’s take a look at what they’ve given us:

1. A ridiculously unfair and impossible-to-justify spike in college and graduation school tuition. Today’s rates of post-secondary school education are ridiculously high and do not come close to matching the slow rise in salaries attributable to growth and inflation. For our parents, it cost them $2000 to go to college for all four years, and at that time many firms hired college students at an entry-level position while they were still in school, allowing them to move up a few rungs at graduation (Which brings me to another point, that you could actually get a family-sustaining job with a college degree, discussed later.). If you were one of the few who went to graduate school, more cheap tuition awaited you. The average law student in the 80s graduated law school with a TOTAL of $4000-$5000 in student loans, which was like one-sixth of their first-year’s salary. The average law student today graduates with over $50,000 of debt (although I’ve seen as high as $120,000), equal to the average lawyer’s entire first-year’s salary, or more. And, the government has just raised the interest rate on student loans over 1.5%, making our predecessor generation even richer at our expense.

2. What’s worse, this money is paying for less as colleges and universities, run by, you’ve guessed it, NOT anyone in the “entitlement generation,” have not kept up with the needs of today’s employers, and serve as more like a “13th through 16th grade” for students, without the colorful and entertaining mix of mystery meat school lunches, pep rallies, prom, fist fights, and dudes who live in trailers. We’re totally getting screwed with that.

3. Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to get out of school, you step into a world where we’re getting the shit taxed out of us. Witness the increase in property, sales, income, and gas taxes, also not matching the rise in our salaries. What’s it all going to pay for? Well, I don’t know how much you may need Medicare or Prescription Drugs, but my needs are fairly low in that department. Except for Zoloft when I get my student loan bill, and then Vicodin after I punch the wall after getting my credit card bill. And Prozac after I see how much in taxes are taken out of my salary. And Viagra when I need that “extra lift.” Juuuuust playin’, everybody.

4. And since we’re always “out partying” and seeking “instant gratification,” you know we can’t have helped but miss the introduction and/or spread of incurable sexual diseases like AIDS and herpes, made popular by, you guessed it, that responsible and wonderful generation of people before us. Thanks for the genital warts, Baby Boomers!

5. Finally, this sick ethos of a lack of personal responsibility. It’s bad enough that our predecessors had to blame their moms, dads, brothers, sisters, bosses, the opposite sex, the opposite race, their pet parakeets, 3 Catholic Priests, and Milli Vanilli for all of their problems, but now they’re blaming their kids, too? Unbelievable!

And what hypocrites these people are! They’re the ones who are whining about not getting their social security payments at the same rate of inflation from the government that they’re “entitled to.” It’s not our fault that our parents’ parents screwed like jackrabbits in the 1950s. Maybe if the generation before us paid their child support payments, planned for their own retirements themselves, and actually took parenting seriously, we wouldn’t have these problems. And, as for us, maybe if we weren’t looking at 30 years of paying off all of these loans, credit cards, and other charges that accompany affording to live in a world of inflation and ever-increasing interest rates, we could solve their problems, too.

If you add all this up, and more, it’s no wonder people talk about a “quarter-life crisis” in people of our age these days. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all these of problems so much. Every generation leaves problems, even big ones, for the next generation to fix. But if you take the way older people have crapped on the world by creating these ridiculously huge problems and footing us with the bill, and couple that with their absolute, unflinching, and hypocritical arrogance in giving society the suggestion that we’re the deadbeats, and you’re about as close to my sense of outrage as I can describe in words.

I’d write more, but I’m taking a well-needed break. After all, I deserve it.

Unbelievable!

As an update to this post, check this out....

With the eyes of the nation upon them, how do the City of Los Angeles and the L.A.P.D. respond in the Biggie Smalls wrongful death lawsuit that began almost three weeks ago? By concealing evidence, of course!

Read about it here....a mistrial has been declared and the Plantiffs have been awarded costs and attorney's fees. The truth, however, is nowhere closer to being found.

Batman Begins, by Pissing on Batman

“…Every Line/ I live it, I write it with a pencil so n—gas die of lead poison if they bite it/ Hate it but recite it…” *

Due to the hurricane-inspired weather for the last month or so (as well as our staggering indebtedness), “Wifey” and I have been going to a lot of movies with our friends and family. I have seen recently, among other films, The Interpreter, Star Wars, The Longest Yard, Cinderella Man (which, although besides the point of this rant, is one of the best movies I have ever seen), Fantastic Four, and, most recently, Batman Begins. I’ve also seen long trailers for countless other movies, which, along with most of the aforementioned movies, has made me very depressed. Here’s why:

I don’t know exactly why, but it’s clear to me that the heart of moviemaking is gone. Maybe it’s because the almighty dollar is the only concern of today’s major studios. Maybe it’s because the common moviegoer is a freaking idiot, part of the repeating generation of idiots that M.C. Coppin has blogged about so passionately lately. Or, maybe it’s simply because it’s the summer, the time of the big blockbuster, where the major movie factories churn out movies concerned only about their rating, their length, and their release date, because they know most people are in a movie-going mood and will pay regardless of quality. I don’t know, and it’s beside the point. The point is that movies today have no point. Or, better put, today’s movies had a point – as in, they had a point back in 1975 when their idea was originally thought up.

Today’s movies are a waste of perfectly good film. They feature recycled plots on top of recycled plots, devoid of most of the feeling, passion, good editing, meaningful music, and ACTING that got all of us to be moviegoers in the first place. In other words, movies today have become rap music. This statement may puzzle many of you, since I like rap music but have been complaining about movies. The point I mean to make is that rap music is defined (and has always been defined) by borrowing the basic musical foundation of others’ music, adding in a more urban beat and feel, and adding the artist’s own lyrics as an imprimatur. It’s a genre based upon borrowing something and improving it, and personalizing it. The movies have always been the opposite. Movies have always been about originality – the originality of screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers, combined to produce a unique and original visual portrayal of the human experience. This has traditionally always been the case. While it’s not uncommon at all with rap music with a partially recycled “hook” or “sample” to be critically acclaimed, what’s the last movie remake to win an Oscar? Exactly.

In other words, the shit that is out in theaters today is the filmmaking equivalent of the “remix.” But, while we tolerate the latest P. Diddy jingle because it’s only four minutes long and our ladies like to dance to it (yeah, we get it, Diddy, you won’t stop. ‘Cause you can’t stop. We get it, bro), we should be getting fed up with Hollywood doing the same thing for two hours and charging us $10.00 for. Or, as Richard Roeper put it recently, we're so hard on movies because that 120 minutes of our life…that we’ll never get back. Fo’ rilla.

The goal of any good movie used to be to produce a catharsis, or a “cleansing of emotions.” In other words, the true sign of a good movie is that it runs the gamut – by the end of the film, you should have been moved to feel nearly every conceivable emotion the body can feel, leaving you feeling “cleansed,” or “empty,” or, at least, different by the time the movie is over. Today, though, the goal seems to be to have just enough one-liners, toilet humor, sex, slapstick comedy, and shock-value to get you to buy a ticket. If by the end of the movie, you feel like you’ve been raped by three prison inmates, they don’t care. So, maybe instead of the cinematic equivalent of the remix, it’s the cinematic equivalent of date rape. I haven’t yet figured that one out.

What I’m trying to say here is that instead of being creative, movies today follow what I have deemed “The Formula.” Whereas a director used to think of a movie as a person, a life-form that needed to be molded and tweaked and “raised,” much like you raise a child, today’s movies are thought of by directors as Coca-Cola. As long as you stick to “The Formula,” it’s enough to keep the public coming back for more.

Feel free to add or take away from this list, but to me, here are the essential elements and trends of “The Formula.” If this discussion so far has become too abstract for you, I have included a few examples.

1. The Remix Redux -- Today’s movies start out with a concept of something that’s already been done before, as opposed to an original idea. The Movie Biz has come full circle. While the point of movies used to be to make something creative, now the point is to make something fundamentally uncreative. The best example is the flood of movies this summer that are remakes or re-adaptations of previously-made movies or TV shows. Witness such abominations as Be-Bitched, The Longest Turd, The Dookies of Hazard, and Charlie and the Chocolate Shittery.

2. The Crack Epidemic ­– Related to #1, not only must the film be taken from something that has already been done several times, but it must be taken from the most refined, widely disseminated, and cheapest source. You see, first, we had movies that were adaptations of books, and plays. This was like putting cocaine in soda like they did in the 1920s. It was okay because at least you had the writer of the original getting a “say” in the final product – either because they were asked to help or their work served as a restraint on the director and the actors getting too out of hand. Furthermore, it at least required the screenwriters to read a book before working on a film. Then, we had movies that were loose adaptations of stories, legends, or characters in other films, or, at worse, comic books. This was at least tolerable, because, again, there were restraints on making the new product too cheesy and commercial, and going too far from the original fan base. This was like powder cocaine. It was by no means good for society, but for the most part not deadly, not too catchy, and too expensive to do all the time. But now, we don’t even have that. Now, we have every schmuck at every major studio making a movie out of a movie or TV show that we as a society have just got done watching. This is the movie-making equivalent of the crack epidemic. It’s cheap, addictive, and any idiot can make some. And it’s invading everyone’s neighborhood.

3. Movies for the MTV Watcher – In middle school, we learned that the average MTV show or video changed frames every 4 seconds, and based on my own experience, it’s even less than that now. Apparently, this strategy has made it on to the silver screen today. Today’s movies bounce from frame to frame, and, even worse, from scene to scene virtually without pause, like the whole thing is a friggin’ Charlie Chaplin short without the black-and-white introduction to every scene. Movies skip from one character’s scene to another without giving the audience any chance for reflection, meaningful thought, or even to process what happened in the scene before (Well, since I guess we’ve already seen the exact same movie ten years ago, we already know what’s going to happen, so why waste time, right?). And the worst part is, no one even cares! Don’t they know that movie producers are only doing this because some “bean counter” who spends his life in a closet has told them the target audience would like a one hour and forty-three minute movie more than a one-hour and forty-six minute movie, but the director doesn’t have the nuts to cut down a dumb scene? Watch Star Wars, Episode IV and then watch the latest Bore Wars and you’ll know what I’m talking about. You’ll see it also in comparing The Longest Yard to its newest remake, and even comparing American Pie to American Wedding.

4. Got Realism? -- Today’s movie-makers love to replace realism or, in the case of remakes of fantasy films, good acting, with cheap digital effects, corny jokes, or simply more characters than the original production. For instance, the decision by George Lucas to invest in getting Annakin Skywalker a mullet and a six-pack instead of getting acting lessons for him and Natalie Portman before the last installment of Star Wars. Was Annakin contemplating joining the dark side or was he just constipated? I couldn't tell.

5. Loved the Original? Now Watch us Piss on it! – I may catch a little heat for this one, but I thought this factor was the #1 reason which makes a movie like Batman Begins go from a potentially great movie to just a fairly good one. Now, I thought the idea for Begins was a pretty good one, but certain elements of the first ½ hour of the movie almost ruined the whole thing for me. First, the writers totally re-wrote why Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed and who did the killing, which totally ruined my ability to “suspend by disbelief” while watching the film. Secondly, and just as shittily, the writers ruined the “dark” aspect of the movie by making Bruce toe the line between straight vigilante and “vigilante with a conscience” throughout the whole film. Now, I won’t spoil the ending for you, but you have to admit there is a major problem with hyping how “dark” and “raw” a movie is, and then trying to make a character who’s just fanatical and bent-on-revenge-enough to become a serial vigilante who kicks the shit out of criminals without due process, but enough of a “nice guy” to not be as fanatical and bent-on-revenge as those other vigilantes out there. Now, don’t get me wrong, I thought that other aspects of the movie, like the acting of Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine made the movie better than average, but the film kind of took a dump on the first Batman to make itself seem better. Batman did not start out as both a vigilante and a protector – he was a vigilante who eventually became a protector. But what do I know? Maybe in five years, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Batman comes out, we’ll find out that at sixteen Brucey liked to dress-up like a girl and screw single moms in the back of his pink Cadillac while practicing ju-jitsu in Mexico City during the summers, while Alfred danced in an all-male burlesque show while siphoning Bruce’s trust fund into off-shore accounts. It could happen.

I think the biggest problem is that today’s movies are ruining the “guilty pleasure” by making every movie a guilty pleasure. In the past, I could go see a Few Good Men or a Shawshank Redemption or an L.A. Confidential and then come home and pop on Driven or Dirty Work because I needed something light and stupid. Now, if I want to watch something intellectual, I have to [gasp!] read a book or, even worse, do something I’d never do – watch a period piece starring some wimpy prick with a foreign accent.

What’s the R.D.’s advice to get us out of this quandary? Skip The Craptastic Four, The Bad News Bores, and Be-Bitched and watch Cinderella Man five or six times. If Hollywood only cares about the almighty dollar, then let’s show them with our wallets what makes a great movie.



* = this song lyric is by Shyne, not B.I.G.