Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--When I was moving to Atlanta from
North Carolina, I rented an apartment
sight unseen, via long-distance telephone.And it turned out to be located a few feet away from a
world-famous scuzz-bucket strip club called The Clermont
Lounge.
This so-called lounge was in the basement of a large residence hotel,
catering (as best as I could tell) to alcoholics, mental patients,
derelicts, hobos, and career criminals.During my first few months there I was afraid to walk past it –
even in broad daylight.
One time a man approached me from the front doorway of the Clermont
"Hotel" and
offered to sell me a queen-size box spring.I told him I wasn’t interested (I mean, what the hell??) and he
followed me for a couple of blocks screaming all sorts of nasally
belligerence.I was certain
he was about to lunge at me with a sharpened spoon, and stab me in the
liver.
Another time I was walking near there and the door of a parked car
suddenly swung open, and vomit came rocketing out.Never saw the source.
The Lounge itself regularly featured strippers with the same general
body type as former Chicago Cubs manager Herman Franks.There were stretch marks, cesarean scars, beer guts, and
pubes that went higher than the belly button.Oh, and ice cold Rolling Rock.
On the other end of the street, the corresponding bookend of fucked-upness,
was a big rock club called the
Masquerade.It was a former mill of some sort, converted into a freakin’
rock ‘n’ roll complex.Inside
was three separate clubs:Heaven,
Hell, and Purgatory.
Heaven was the big concert hall, located upstairs.The floor of that place was terrifying.It would literally bounce beneath the weight of a thousand
hipsters.I saw Iggy Pop
there once, and Primus too, and it felt like we were on a trampoline.Every once in a while we’d literally go airborne.
And that building is old, really old.I’m sincerely surprised the whole thing hasn’t collapsed by
now.
Hell was the dance club downstairs, and I can’t remember ever going
inside.It was all flashing
lights and assholes and seizure-triggering house music, or whatever
it’s called.I’d rather
plunge my face into an airplane engine.
Purgatory, of course, was located somewhere between Heaven and Hell, in
a tiny room off the main staircase.It was a trendy little bar where they played Bauhaus at
ear-shattering volume, and all the patrons wore fingerless gloves.
I attended a lot of shows at the Masquerade, mostly for free through my
record weasel job.And a
couple stand out as especially horrible.
My girlfriend and I went there one night to see a British goth band
called Alien Sex
Fiend.As
best as I could tell, the whole thing was done by computers.Sometimes the band itself wasn’t even onstage, yet the music
continued.And by music I
mean drums, lots and lots of drums. Controlled by software.
The show went on for hours.Hell,
for all I know, it’s still going on.Around
four o'clock in the morning, or
whatever, a man who looked like a heroin addict, and sporting Alice
Cooper makeup, was standing in front of a microphone screaming over the
drums:“Smells like!Smells like shhhiiiiiiiit!!”
Of course he was right.
The other one that leaps to mind is Porno for Pyros – outside.The owners of the Masquerade apparently felt three clubs wasn’t
quite enough, so they carved out a chunk of the woods behind the
building and constructed a stage there as well.
I think Porno for Pyros was the first event at this new outdoors
facility, and it was advertised heavily.The concert itself featured people walking on stilts, men
juggling fire, and someone wearing a huge papier mache head.It pretty much sucked.
But the thing I remember most was the mosquitoes.There were thousands of them, maybe millions, and they were the
size of hummingbirds.Everyone
had a six dollar beer in one hand, and slapping frantically at exposed
skin with the other.I think
I lost a full pint of blood that night.It’s a wonder we didn’t all die of malaria.
The apartment itself was inside an old house.The place was broken-up into the three units, and I was upstairs
in the front.I had a
bedroom, a kitchen/living room hybrid, and a crapatorium which attracted
terrifying palmetto bugs that looked like a lady’s brooch come to
life.
At first there was a gay man who lived downstairs.He was really into Georgia football, and would
completely lose his shit while watching games on TV.One time I’m almost certain I heard him shove over a china
cabinet down there, in the grips of some sort of sports-fueled frenzy.After he left a group of fat girls moved in, who liked to drink.
Across the hall lived several members of Arrested
Development.This, of course, was before their first album came out, and they
all became millionaires.They
were really nice, but loud.And
sometimes it smelled like an REO Speedwagon concert out in the hall.
I remember standing outside talking to Dionne Farris one day, about the
drunken pudgies downstairs.They’d
put up a sign in our hallway, telling us where they wanted us to park
our cars.Dionne, who would
appear as the musical guest on Saturday
Night Live a few months later(!?), was not amused.
“If someone wants to talk to me, they need to talk to me,” she
ranted, “You don’t put up a fucking sign!”
Dionne had a problem with the drunken pudgies, and I didn’t much care
for them either.Their
leader was a disagreeable little bowling ball of a woman with a martini
glass surgically attached to her right hand.I have no doubt she was the one who’d taped up the parking
proclamation, under the cover of darkness.We should’ve looked around for Frito’s crumbs to prove it, but didn’t
think about it.
And that’s a little bit about My Most Memorable Neighborhood. What was yours?Tell
us about it, won’t you?Use
the comments link below.
--Before I call it a week,
be sure to check out this cool
new Smoking Fish sighting – coincidentally
captured in Atlanta. And, as if that weren’t
enough, we’ve got something fresh and extra-good from lakrfool today.Right here.
--
