March 18, 2011
Apocalypse Now—Part II:
The Search For O’Kurtz! @11:39 am
East Village
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another.
I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet.
It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel O’Kurtz's memory—any more than going out on St. Patrick’s Day was an accident.
Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.
Oh man, the bullshit piles up so fast on St. Patrick’s Day you need wings to stay above it.
The crew were mostly just kids. Rock 'n' rollers with one foot in their graves.
Their idea of great R and R was cold corned beef and buckets of green beer. They had only two ways home: stumbling or passing out on your stoop, covered in their own green vomit while screaming gibberish at an ear-splitting level. Things had spun out of control and I was sent to clean it all up.
He was close. He was real close. I couldn't see him yet but I could feel him.
This was his camp. A hideous and frightening outpost, with the most horrific glowing font I had seen in all my life. I had to go in, but luckily when it was all over I could leave and never enter it's blinding doorways again. And thank fucking God I didn’t live above this noisy monstrosity.
Everything I saw in here told me that O’Kurtz had gone insane. The place was full of bodies, throwing down booze just to get completely out of what little minds they possessed. They were screaming at one another, yapping on cell phones and texting all at the same time. I was close to a mental and physical breakdown.
Luckily, it was at this moment I found O’Kurtz. He was almost passed out underneath a table and mindlessly pouring green beer all over his round, bald head. He was wearing a t-shirt with three strange words printed on it in pink lettering: “Hot Chicks Room.” I don’t know what that meant, but something told me it was time to improvise. I leaned in and tried to shout above the racket: “O’Kurtz, can you hear me?”
O’Kurtz squinted his eyes, trying to make out who I was. After a moment he smiled. Perhaps he realized who I was, but the growing stain in the lap of his pants told me he had just relieved himself of some of the evening’s green beer. He pulled me closer in and placed his mouth one inch from my ear and screamed, “WOO HOO!”
The horror...the horror.
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Further reading: LawInfo, Crown Corned Beef, EV Grieve and Green Marlon Brando.
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The Papaya Dialogues
I've been having a nice conversation on Twiitter with the King and yesterday he told me about the Beatles coming to Papaya King in 1964, so I asked him this question.
I came home from work and there was no reply from the King. So sad!
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Some Things I Did Before Work Today
Checked my front right pocket to make sure my keys were in there.
Went to the corner deli.
Got a bottle of diet Mountain Dew, Teas Tea and a bag of Funyuns.
I didn’t really get the Funyuns.
I just like to type the word Funyuns.
Checked my front right pocket to make sure my keys were in there.
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I'm sitting' in the Sheraton Gibson playin' my Gibson,
And boy do I wanna go home.
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