Once upon a time, before Sordid Tales, before CityBeat even, there was a column called Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat that appeared in a magazine called SLAMM. It was, as I mentioned in the FAQs, a column about the comedy and the tragedy of the nightclub scene as told by a veteran bartender.

When CityBeat bought SLAMM, the editors and I agreed that it was time to change (slightly) the name and the focus of the column. Hence the shortening of the title to Sordid Tales. There are about 100 of those old bartender Sordids so I will post them here gradually, over time. Stay tuned.

Note: The first article in the string (Turn, Turn, Turn) was the last one I wrote for SLAMM before it was bought out by CityBeat.

EJD
3/31/07

Once upon a time, unscrupulous bar owners hired women of questionable repute to boost bar sales. They were called “B Girls” and they flirted with male customers to entice the gentlemen to buy drinks for them. The practice is illegal now.

In recent years however liquor and beer companies have employed similar tactics. They hire scantily clad, provocative women to go into bars and inspire alcohol sales, circumnavigating the room like living billboards — enticing weak or unsuspecting men to buy their liquor brands.

I call them Booze Floozies and they are powerful and evil.

The Jack Daniels floozies dress in black. They wear skimpy, black Jack Daniels shirts, thin black stretch pants, and a Jack Daniels stick-on patch on their asses. The Coors Light Sirens dress in snug, silver, shiny dresses. The Smirnoff Twist chicks wear rubber leotards and wigs of varying colors. The St. Pauli Girl girls act like sex-crazed German farm wenches looking for an ornery horse to ride. The Bacardi bawdys, Jager jezebels, and Miss Coronas all descend upon your favorite watering hole and urge you to drink there swill which would be fine except, I want to drink my own goddam drinks at my own goddamn pace and I don’t need some fake-flirting booze bimbo convincing me otherwise.

May 14, 2001: Wednesday, 11:12 pm:

You are sitting on a stool at one end of the bar. A Jager brunette is on the other end. She is making her way up the line of customers sitting on bar stools. She approaches the first in line and shoves her chest into his face. He is stunned, as if a grenade threw him out of a foxhole. Her cleavage is so . . . expansive. It’s like a fault line. Like her cleavage were the crevice that opens during earthquake and — before he even knew what she was selling — he found himself freefalling into her fiery, molten core.

“Will you buy a shot of Jagermeister?” She asks.

“Must. Have. Jagermeister.” he replies.

Up the line she comes, to the next guy. “Would you like to buy a shot of Jagermeister?” she coos.

“No Thanks,” he says, and turns away. She puts her arm around him and whispers in his ear, “Are you sure?” He shrugs and retrieves his wallet. “Two shots of Jager,” he tells the barman.

Up the line she continues, to the next guy and the next and you watch as men — men who are stronger, bigger than you — crumble to the floor in her presence. You worry that you might not be able to resist her siren call. So you begin practicing what you are going to say when she arrives. “No thank you, I don’t like Jagermeister. No thank you I don’t like Jagermeister. No thank you I don’t like Jagermeister…”

Up the line she comes. Destroying everything in her path. You see men — men who were once wild bucking stallions — rise from the floor, beaten and confused, with the Jager logo branded on their foreheads, and that crazy, cackling floozy waving the still-sizzling branding iron in the air.

Up the line she comes, until she is upon you. Flying in your air space. Bombing your silos. Breaking your code. You smell her hot, rank breath and something twinkles in your groin. It feels wonderful. Some would say it feels like love. You say it feels like a mouse scuttling on your testicles like they were exercise wheels. Her eyelashes flutter as she urges you to purchase a shot of Jager.

“No you Jager I do not thanks like,” you respond.

She softly places her hand on your shoulder and tells you to imagine how it would be to drink sweet Jager from her indecent fault line.

You shudder, but remain composed.

She realizes you are one stubborn bronco. She snaps her fingers and two bejeweled concubines materialize from thin air, presenting you with . . . The Box of Swag.
Oh no, not the Box of Swag!

Oh yes, the Box of Swag.”

The concubines place the box before you. Inside is an assortment of trinkets: Jagermeister key chains, Jagermeister patches, Jagermeister stickers, coasters, glasses, mugs and all the meaningless debris you would normally just toss in the trash. Only, now, they are as precious metals. For these are gifts of the booze concubines.

“Oh Yes I will buy your Jagermeister,” You say, as you frolic in the Box of Swag — running trinkets through your fingers like a greedy king in a treasure chest — “And we shall thrash like lovestruck hyenas in a vat of warm grape oil,” you say as you reach into the Box of Swag and take a key chain you will never use, a sticker you will never peel, a small box of shot glasses that will gather dust in your cupboard forever, and a hat that will fall apart the first time it touches your stinking, greezy head. Then you pull out your wallet and purchase not one, not two, but thirty-six shots of Jagermeister for you, the girl and — “Oh hell. . . ring the bell” — the whole goddam bar.

I call them the Booze Floozies and they are powerful and evil.

Your typical day bar shift is a sentence. It is the working-on-the-side-of-the-road-picking-up-garbage-in-orange-vests of bar shifts. My brother calls it “Crossing the Desert,” because working the day shift is like an arduous trek across a wasteland. For the most part, the day bartender’s main task is to set up the bar for the night. The night is where there is life.

There is no joy in day bar. There’s no spicy Latin funk band to kindle the room, no giggling, perky women with racy shorts clinging to their buttocks, no mammalian mosaics with erect mammilla (Oh, momma!), no flashing lights or disco balls. . . There’s only a flickering television and a jukebox that hasn’t changed in 12 years.

There is no glory in day bar. Being a day bartender is like being that lonesome roadie, setting up the stage in an empty arena for the sold-out rock-and-roll show that night. You scrub the wells, polish the glasses, set up napkins, straws, and ashtrays. You cut fruit, wipe lipstick from wine glasses, count and stock the liquor inventory, clean the brass spigots, de-bleach the rags, scour the sinks, and fill the wells with endless buckets of ice.

Then there’s the horror of the cherry jar. Traumatic is the moment when you dip your hand into that icy, grotesque, chemical-smegma they keep in the industrial-sized cherry jar to ensure that the cherries survive the Apocalypse and last another 4,000 years. It’s a delightful mixture of sugar, formaldehyde, and the grime of a thousand infected hands that have dipped into that blood-red bog. I’m quite certain that ten years from now a scientist will discover that that syrup gives you hand cancer.

And while you perform your day duties, an occasional customer will step in. You soar with delight.

A customer!? Perhaps even a tip? Hallelujah! She’s lovely, too. Maybe we’ll chat. She will bat her eyes and say we’re meant for each other. I’ll toss my bar towel to the floor and book plane fare to Bali, away from this terrible place.

“What’ll you have?” you ask.

“An application,” she replies. “Do you have any jobs available?”

Your little heart is broken. The Bali-bound flight plummets to the earth and bursts into flame. You hand her an application and stifle your desire to scream, “Yes! This one! This job is available. You can have this job!” and never, ever look back.

To think that you once loved her.

Day bar is unsafe. There is no doorman to protect you. No employees to watch your back. You are alone. This is especially disturbing for female bartenders, when they have to kick Johnny the Seven-Foot-Meth-Head-Stalker-Biker-Barmaid-Raper out of the bar.

This is not meant to condemn all day customers — it’s just that the psychopaths wandering around outside seem attracted to the warmth of a neon sign, an open door, the clack of a pool table. And the voices they hear in the bar seem friendlier than the ones in their heads. Like the Vacuum Cleaner Lady, for example.

It was about 2pm and I was watching the L.A. riots on television. This woman walked in with a black, upright vacuum cleaner that was about as tall as she was. She sat at the bar and ordered a red wine. She said the vacuum cleaner had been a gift from her father. Then she asked if she could vacuum the bar. I thought about it for a moment, understanding that it was an odd request and that she was quite deranged — but I also recognized that the floor needed a quick pick-me-up.

So the woman went to work — with little success, as the appliance was not plugged in. She just smiled and vacuumed. Then she approached the dance floor and danced with the appliance: a sad, slow, romantic dance.

(I’ll have what she’s having)

Worst of all, there is no money in day bar. You barely make enough in tips to pay for lunch and gas. You hate how much money the night crew makes. This one woman who worked day bar didn’t want to use the normal tip jar — the empty, industrial-sized cherry jug — during her shift. It depressed her knowing how we filled that thing to the brim at night and she could barely cover the bottom of it. She hated, I mean really hated, to even look at the thing. She confided that it made her hate us — the night crew — too. I told her I was sorry, but that I had crossed many deserts myself and been as thirsty as she. I told her that someday she, too, would sling drinks on the Good Ship Lollipop booze cruise, where the movie stars and tycoons prefer to drink.

I bow to thee, day bartender.

What happens when a person loses consciousness from consuming large doses of alcohol? What are the dos and don’ts of a black out? How do you protect yourself and others too?

We at the Yearning Annex feel that, while there is an abundance of information explaining how to avoid a black out, there is little said about how to comport yourself while in the midst of one. Which is why we are offering a new course called, Black Out Strategies for the Beginning Alcoholic.

As a bartender, your qualified instructor (Mr. Edwin Decker) has served up thousands of black outs. He also has over twenty years experience as a full-time rummy; having fallen off countless bar stools, sat in the back of a dozen or so police cruisers, and experienced every color in the black out rainbow inculding: The “Gray Out,” the “White Out,” the “Black and Blue Out” (when you wake to find bruises all over you body and no memory of how they got there), and of course the wretched” Green Out” (when you wake to find that all that remains of your rent money are some crumpled dollar bills, a fiver, and a guacamole-stained Taco Bell receipt).

Decker has written many articles on the subject of Aggravated Alcoholic Amnesia. His most recent, Tips, Hints and Strategies toward a More Manageable Black Out, will be covered in the course, as well as selected chapters from his new suspense novel, Why Am I Naked, and Bleeding, and Duck-Taped to the Dumpster Again?!

“Alcohol wreaks havoc on the part of the brain that converts short term memories into the long term,” explains Decker.  “It’s called the hippocampus, and enough booze will render it entirely inoperative, hence the memory loss. This is why, for instance, a drunkard incessantly repeats himself – because he can’t store the memory of having said it in the first place. This is valuable information because it means that you don’t actually lose your consciousness in a black out after all, and can therefore create a strategy to manage it.”

Tips and Hints on Strategies to a More Manageable Black Out

• Learn to recognize your black out: One way to do so is play billiards. Black out victims can never remember what they are shooting. So, if you’re looking at that table, and can’t remember if that ball you just sank was the type of ball with the stripy thing down the middle, or the type of ball without the stripy thing down the middle — chances are that you are already inside the mouth of the great, black whale of dark blackness.

• Remain Inconspicuous: Once a black out has been identified, the objective is to not draw attention to yourself. This means . . .

• No Dancing: Your inability to store memory will cause you to repeat the same, awful, dance move over and over – like the proverbial one armed man rowing in circles. It’s best to just avoid dancing altogether.

• No Insulting Other Customers: Chances are, it’s now the eighth time you called that biker, “a fat, smelly pig fucking baby-raper.” I would avoid this language altogether.

• No Leaning Back on Stool: Your memory dysfunction doesn’t allow you to remember that you are already leaning back on your stool and that leaning any further back on your stool will likely lead to an FOS episode (Falling Off Stool).

• When an FOS episode is imminent: Always remember to stand up immediately, brush yourself off, and mutter something about how you are, “… grieving over a tragic loss in the family.”

• No More Mack Daddy Moves: You can not mack out, in the black out.

• Run now, ask questions later: If you hear a great crash, start running immediately. It just might have been you who threw that pool ball through the back bar mirror. Your hippocampus is so boiled, it is entirely reasonable to believe that you are the reason there is an overturned cocktail table at your feet and may explain why the bouncers are storming your way. Run now, ask questions later.

• Check yourself: If and when you are confronted by a bouncer or a cop, and he/she is saying something to you like, “Drop the knife mister,” May I suggest that you please take a moment to check yourself, thus decreasing the chance that you might further wreck yourself. Ask yourself some questions such as: am I brandishing any weapons; do I have any broken bottles, knives, or splintered pool cues in either hand? Have I taken a hostage? I know you don’t remember doing anything out of the ordinary, but just humor me and look. If you find that your fingers are tightly wrapped around the handle of steak knife, I recommend you set it down gently, mutter something about a “… tragic death in your family,” and exit quickly.

It is morning. You are viciously hungover.

Hangovers are bonfires in Hell to be sure, but they wouldn’t be so bad if you were home. Then you could deal. Then you would merely crawl out of bed (slowly, slowly–so as not to disturb those tender brain cells), inch toward the refrigerator, grab anything that resembles a fluid, inch back toward the couch (slowly, slowly) and remain there forever.

Alas, you are not home. You are laying on an unfamiliar bed in some unfamiliar female’s peach-colored bedroom with the goddam morning sun barreling through the window and splashing all over your pallid face like a crucifix searing a vampire’s flesh.

And, as if that weren’t a goddamnuff, this particular female has a thing for unicorns. It is a creepfest to be sure. There is a bluey, suedey unicorn poster on the wall, a unicorn lamp on the night table, a series of unicorn figurines scattered on various shelves and mantles, and a unicorn bedspread featuring multiple unicorns in various unicorn poses: such as unicorn-galloping, and unicorn-grazing, and unicorn-sparring-with-other-unicorn, and worst of all unicorn-close-up-with-unicorn-looking-all-cute-and-shit.

Walk of Shame Fact #67: Hangovers and unicorns do not mix.

Your bedmate awakens. To your horror, she wants to cuddle. Not that you are surprised (after all, her bedroom is painted peach), but cuddling and hangovers do not mix either. You know instantly what you must do. You must break free from the cuddle, exit this bizarro Glass Menagerie, and get your ass home, on the couch, with a bottle of something wet and cold and remain there forever.

First, you tactfully elude the cuddle maneuver by reaching for the glass of water on the unicorn-littered night table. Then you disentangle yourself from her clammy flesh (slowly, slowly), whisper a feeble excuse about some meeting you have to attend, then walk out the door and emerge into the cruel, cruel southern California pre-noon sun.

Thus begins the walk across the batholith that is the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Step after painful step – like a wounded fugitive slogging through a misty bog – you surge forward. Step after torturous step, as the bright-eyed, chipper, happy morning people all turn to gaze at the freak in scuffed black boots, wrinkled shiny shirt, and worst case of bed-head since Sid Viscious walk-of-shamed from Nancy Spungen’s on October 12, 1978.

From out of the crowd that has begun to form around you, an old white-haired hag steps forth and starts screaming.

“Look, look — look at the devil that carouses all night seducing unwilling women with drugs and alcohol!,” she howls. “Look at him slither through your neighborhood, leaving behind his trail of immoral slime,” she says as you slink away dragging the slippery, tangled tentacles of your disgrace.

Walk of Shame Fact # 82: While walking the walk of shame, there is all too much time to remember and replay the mistakes of the night before:

Step by step, and you begin to piece together the antics of the night before (First, it was Lemon drops and Laughter; Al Green on the jukebox. But then it became something else, something dark, something like shots of tequila and tongueswapping on toadstools with Tool blasting in the background.)

Step by excruciating step. You see a blistering Brazilian beauty soaping her Peugeot in the car wash bay. Forgetting yourself, you smile and say hi. But your dehyrdated snarl sounds like a thousand tortured demons piping from the fissures of Hell. She drops her foam brush and flees in terror. You lower your head in shame – like Frankenstein’s first look into the mirror – and continue your desperate journey.
Step by step by unspeakable step, your throat screams for something that resembles a cold, wet fluid. Step by step by appalling step, and you realize — it did not seem this far to walk last night, when we left the pub and headed toward her house – two drunken lustbugs swaggering down the street — stopping only to push her up against a wall and clumsily grope each other in the dark – it went much quicker then.

Step by head-pounding step. Until you see something ahead: Can it be?? Yes. Yes! It is the voluptuous curves of the golden arches. And you fall to your knees and thank the Lord saying, “Surely they must have something cold and wet to drink here, perhaps an Egg McMuffin to soothe your wormy bowels?

You get on the line and wait.

The cashier — a fortyish, decrepid, chubby stringy-haired, flea-bound hellhound — glowers as you order breakfast. She knows what you have done and does not approve of your lifestyle: dancing and drinking till sunrise; swooping on unsuspecting woman; seducing them with booze and bravado.

Walk of Shame Fact #1: You did nothing wrong. You had fun, she had fun. Hold your head up and walk of shame like a goddam man, man.

You finish the last bite of simulated-hash-brown patty and walk toward the door (slowly, slowly). As an after thought, you hoist a middle finger toward the corpulent cashier wench, as if to say, “Yeah I got laid last night. You should try it sometime lady.” Then walk out the door, raise your head high and resume the arduous – yet proud — walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

EJD
03/27/02

Yes Dan, it is as fun and exciting as it seems. A world where peppy bouncy party girls burst out of their tank-tops like a microwave popcorn accident and where time flies faster than a clock on the Concorde — but there is a flip side. Bartending is also a dirty stinking grind. It takes a certain type of person to be a bartender. The question is, Dan, are you the right person?

There will be adjustments you know; a turbulent transformation of lifestyle and worldview. For instance, when you are a bartender your social life is the bar. You go out to bars when you’re not working. Your friends and acquaintances are primarily other bartenders, waitresses, and ever-boozers. And you all become this enormous, deranged, dysfunctional family: Your co-workers are alcoholics; your customers are alcoholics; your lovers are alcoholics; you are an alcoholic (that’s why you want the job right, to be just a little closer to all those shiny pretty bottles?)

How can this not mangle your worldview? You live inside a black comedy and all you can hope for is that you aren’t the punch line. The job is to poison your customers and it’s just so wrong it’s funny. Funnier still because you adore it — despite the fact that the happy peppy party girl is puking in the bathroom because of what you served her.

Oh yes, bartending pays well. Oh sweet farts of Christ – you can make crazy monies. You just wish there was some sort of future in it . . .

. . . So you dream of owning your own bar one day – a fabulous bar; where drinks are cheap as chicken spit; where happy bouncy peppy party girls arrive in droves; where patrons spontaneously erupt into theme song; and where the jukebox is filled with all the Sabbath, Zep, Public Enemy, and Johnny Cash you can get your clammy hands on. And best part about your jukebox?:

No.
More.
Creed.

Creed is verboten. Oh Bliss! In fact Dan, your night club is a place to seek asylum from the Creed onslaught outside — where Creed songs just seem to rain from the sky. And in the absence of Creed, all the happy jumpy peppy party pretty girls will finally discover Mr. Johnny Cash, and he will drape his song around them like a long black coat, and they will hear what it means to sing with emotion — without being a pompous asshole — and the bouncy party girls will stand semi-circle around the jukebox, hold hands, sing and sway, and tear off their tank tops, draping tongues over nipples and . . . er, uh . . . anyway, there’s no future in bartending.

So you want to be a bartender, eh Dan? Please note then, people are going to see you differently. I’ve heard it said, “If a man and his reputation were walking down the street, they would not recognize each other.”

If a bartender saw his reputation walking down the street, he would duck into an alley and hide. Because a bartender’s reputation will always kick a bartender’s ass.

Mavericks, and ever-boozers, and college kids will regard you as noble or Knightly — a sentinel of some magnificent Brewtopia. Yet, adults – the kind with families and careers — acknowledge you with pity or contempt.

Of course, you are none of these.

Your father regards you as some sort of pinko subversive. Your mother wants you to grow up and give her a grandchild goddammit. Your sister will interrogate all your girlfriends. And your brother will try to steal your shifts.

As for your sex life, Yes Dan, oh yes there is plenty of sex. Sometimes even with actual women – sometimes beautiful women who you think of as divine – that they were accidentally discarded from Heaven when God was throwing out all his Creed CD’s.

Yes there is sex Dan. But after time, you notice a trend. You notice the only women with whom you sleep are women you meet in bars. Though you know there is something wrong with that, you are not quite sure what it is.

So Dan, are you the right type of person? Here are some simple questions that will help you decide. 1) Do you like people, but wish you could go through life with three feet of wood between you and them? 2) Can you look into a person’s eyes longer than they can look into yours? 3) Can you tell a joke? Can you take one? There is nothing in this universe more foul than a jaded, humorless bartender with a delusion of authority. 4) Do you prefer the night? 5) Do you drink with dignity? (Sloppy drunks need not apply). 6) Is your skin callous enough?; your chin sturdy enough?: Is your back broad and are your feet hurting enough? Hey Dan, are you man enough to be our man?

There is no question that I was too drunk to drive home that fateful April ’93 evening. But I was very hungry and Tequila — my nemesis — insisted I drive to Roberto’s for a carne asada burrito.

It was 3 a.m.

When the colored lights flashed behind me, I panicked. I liken that terror to what a diver must feel when he sees the silhouette of a shark coming into view from the murky darkness of the ocean floor. I was polite to the officers, as usual, but Tequila was uncouth. He called the male cop a fascist, told the female officer that her gun was a poor substitute for a penis. As they cuffed me (tightly), and walked me toward the police car, I gazed at the alluring red and yellow tiles of Roberto’s shimmering like the walls of the Emerald City only one block away.

“So close. I had been so close.”

They brought me to some special government DUI station where cops were bustling back and forth with their DUI suspects in handcuffs like a sort-of DUI anthill. The woman cop asked me whether I wanted to give blood or urine.

“Tell her to go fuck herself,” said Tequila. And so I did, citing Miranda rights, democracy, and Abe Lincoln,” and explaining that I would not be giving any such tests as I have a “rightsch to not incrimimate mysshelf).

The woman cop said my license would be automatically suspended for a year unless I gave them an alcohol test and, because I didn’t know what on Earth to do, I sighed and rolled up my sleeve and offered them a most potent Bloody Maria.* Then I was taken back out to the police car and given another joyride that ended at the downtown jail. The male cop went inside while the female officer stayed in the cruiser with me.

“She looks good for a cop,” said Tequila. “You should ask her out.”

“Shut up!,” I said.

“Think about it,” insisted Tequila. “It would be a historic score. To pick up the cop who arrested you for DUI?? You’ll be a legend!”

They brought me inside and handcuffed me to the outside bars of a cell. Three armed guards entered the room escorting this Manson/Gotti/Ice Cube hybrid into the cell and chained him so that we were facing each other, nose to nose. His jailhouse tattoos, menacing scars, 4-foot jawbone, and his “I-axed-my-family” scowl made me realize — in the penitentiary food chain I am plankton. I am an amoeba. I am a baby seal bleeding in a nest of sharks. I see that he sees that I am easy pickings for the anal-raper squadron he no doubt commands over there in cell block 666.

“Got a smoke,” he asks in a way that suggests that if I didn’t have a smoke he would chew out of his leg chains and rape my anus. Tequila wanted me to say something snotty to him. But somewhere inside of me I knew that was a bad idea.

“Sorry, I don’t,” I said.

After an hour or so I was taken away from the scowling family-axer and led to a 15×15 foot cubicle.

This was the infamous drunk tank. It stank of urine and mold and was crammed with an assortment of 30 or so drunk drivers, drunk hookers drunk hobos and various other intoxicated scalliwags of the downtown shadow-scape.

I always wanted to spend a night in a drunk tank. You know, get drunk in Mayberry one night and sleep it off in the jail cell while the deputy played solitaire in the other room. But this drunk tank was nothing like the TV drunk tank. There was no cot to lay down on, no deep-voiced “incarceration blues” songs. There is no romance to be had in a real drunk tank, unless you count the homo-eyes I was getting from the drag queen hooker junkie standing in the corner.

The worst part was, it was so crowded there was nowhere to sit. For hours and hours we stood there with no way to take a load off — unless you were depraved enough to plop your ass down into one of those mystery puddles that formed in various locations on the cement floor. The puddles were rank, and congealing — like Satan’s ass juice oozing up from the cracks – and probably infested with various unscrupulous microbes swimming about searching for new orifices to invade.

But after two hours of upright misery I began to break down. I couldn’t stand another second of standing. To make matters worse I had Tequila in my ear saying, “Do it! Sit in the puddle. Sit in the puddle of despair!!” So I chose the shallowest, unmurkiest, least disease-ridden puddle I could find and slowly lowered myself into it. Suffice to say that that moment – the precise moment when the pus of a million street urchins seeped onto my pants, and into my pores and other sacred orifices — is the watermark against which all my future despairs will be measured.

After my release some 9 hours later, I climbed into a cab, wretched and stinking from Satan’s anal moisture.

“What the hell happened to you?” the cabbie asked.

“Tequila is what happened to me,” I answered before closing my eyes. “It was Tequila.”

EJD
05/01/99

* Bloody Maria — A Bloody Mary with tequila

To everything there is a season my friends. In case you haven’t heard, our fearless leader, Kevin “Give-em” Hellman, is no longer the owner/publisher of SLAMM. He has sold the magazine to some big-time publishing firm — who will probably turn our beloved grass roots paper into some glitzy, soulless, alternative weekly, ad-rag, distributed straight from the printing presses of hell, with horrific column titles like, Why I Love Kittens and Happy World, and inked with the dripping, toxic, searing blood of the damned.

But I kid the new publishers.

I’m just sorry to see Kevin relinquish the helm. I have a powerful allegiance to that MGD-drinking bastard; for it was he who broke me into the field of journalism.

The first piece I wrote for SLAMM ran on March 5, 1997 (Issue #16). It was an uninspired CD review on a now-defunct local band called Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver. Subsequently, I received — and SLAMM printed — my first ever hate mail: “Well, Mr. Edwin Decker, do you have some sort of hearing impairment? It is amazing someone would pay you for writing such crap.”

Imagine my glee. Somebody actually cared about my little review – as if what I said about anyone’s CD mattered. Instantly, I became a hate-mail addict. And the hate mail poured in. I got letters saying things like, I am ignorant as I am sick, and that I would burn in Hell, that I probably ball my sister, and that I must have a serious, upper rectal disorder. (Actually, it’s Ms. Beak that has rectal dysfunction).

Last month I got a letter that said, “I hope you fucking die, ASAP.”

But my all-time favorite hate response wasn’t mail at all. Rather, it was a song. A local, ska band called Spazboy was so incensed by my lackluster rendering of their CD, they lashed back and recorded the hit single, “Ed Decker Thinks We Suck.”

Can you imagine that? A song written about me. And it was a damn good song. Suddenly I understood – it’s all about conflict. Not just in journalism – but everything! Mountains are formed by the conflict that is a volcano, forests emerge thicker and stronger after the forest fire, Bill O’Reilly, the conflict monger, has the top rated news show on cable, and a Spazboy song is propelled by their loathing of me.

That is what the Book of Ecclesiastes means when it says, “To every thing there is a season . . .   A time of love, a time of hate, a time of war, a time of peace . . .” It means the universe revolves on conflict and resolution.”

Which is why it is so much more fun to write a review about a band that sucks. Otherwise you end up having to write something innocuous like, “Listening to Roger McGuinn play bass is like listening to a puppy softly barking on a floating, fluffy cloud of happy, joy joy.”

Of course you’d rather write something nasty. You didn’t get into this CD review business to blather about the brilliance of others. No way. You got into this business to showcase your amazing wit, and your amazing style, and your amazing repertoire of assonyms. Yes, you are the genius who truly understands conflict. And you want to scream out, “It sucks. It sucks! Roger McGuinn’s bass line sounds like fecal logs barreling down your intestinal flume and into the toilet of mediocrity.”

But that would be wrong (wouldn’t it?). After all, Roger McGuinn is a fabulous bass player. So you write about clouds and puppies, and at night, in bed, staring at the ceiling, you say, “Ugh – is this all there is?”

Then one day I asked Kevin, “How about I compose a column about the comedy and the tragedy of the nightclub scene — as told by some drunken, Bohemian, malcontented, anti-guru, bartender in search of higher truth through casual sex and obscene language?”

And Kevin Hellman said yes.

And Charles Bukowski turn, turn, turned in his grave.

And writing Sordid Tales has been the best writing gig of my life.

And now, Kevin has turned our lovely paper over to some new publishers and editors — whom I just learned aren’t publishers and editors at all, but convicted puppy rapers — who plan to use the offices of SLAMM as a front for their heinous puppy-raping operations!

But I kid the new publishers and editors.

I just wanted to say, “Thanks Kevin.” Thanks for publishing my drunky ravings. And thanks to editors Andrew Altschul, Troy Johnson, and Will Shilling for letting me invent words like “assonyms,” (synonyms for the word “ass”). Thanks to my literary neighbor, Ms. Beak, for bringing so many readers to our little cul-de-sac in the magazine here. And thanks to Tom Gulotta, for laying it all out, clean and professional-like, so Sordid Tales doesn’t look like what it really is: drunken half-thoughts scrawled out in the middle of the night on crinkled cocktail napkins.

1. Kevin Hellman remains on staff as Director of Marketing and recently as publisher.Troy Johnson remain as music editor.
2. Ms. Beak does not really have rectal dysfunction. (Though it’s amusing to imagine she does).
3. Sordid Tales remains.

(Author’s note: The song, “Turn Turn Turn” was composed by Pete Seeger.
He took the lyrics directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes)

EJD
08/22/02

There are three Chargers fans sitting at one table and two Raiders fans sitting at another table across the room. The Raiders fans (a seedy lot of demon spawn) weren’t satisfied with the demeanor of the Raiders/Chiefs game. The Chargers fans (a group of dim-witted man-children to be sure) were quite pleased to see the Chargers kicking the Eagles asses. This infuriated Satan’s children. Words and glances were exchanged, and escalating, throughout the game.

The Chargers win their game about five minutes sooner (by the game clock) than the Raiders game, and they hoot and holler with glee.

At this point, all eyes are on the Raiders game, which actually looks like a comeback might happen. They are down by five points but Jeff Hostetler is driving them into the redzone and just as it looks like victory is in his grasp, Hoss gets picked off and run back for a KC touchdown: game over.

The table of three Chargers fans go wild, pointing and taunting at the Raiders table until one of the Raiders fans, about 5′ 8″ and 275 pounds, rises from his seat and approaches the Chargers table.  He is a demon, with filed fangs, foam dripping from the corner of his mouth, and an erection from the thought of shredding a docile Chargers fan’s ass.

Of the three Chargers fans, the demon begins shouting at the largest. Something he says really upsets the demon and it sets him off. But instead of going after the big guy he’d been confronting, he accosts another, smaller guy, herein referred to as “The Missing Ear Guy”(TMEG).

The demon throws a fist into TMEG’s face which crackles through the room. I’d never heard a bone-breaker like that before. The force knocks him to the ground and the demon jumps on top of him. He lands fist after fist on poor TMEG, who was fighting back like a Journey fan, which is to say he coiled himself into the fetal position. The demon, in contrast, is like a Danzig fan, with the power of Beelzebub behind every blow, fire leaping from his nostrils and acid dripping from his pores. I jump on his back and try to pull him off the poor guy, but his back is stone solid and he shakes me off with ease. He is like a burrowed tick that can only be loosened with a lit cigarette, or in his case, a bonfire.

Next thing I know, I am being shoved aside and a throng of people are trying to pull him off. The demon is firmly latched, however, and he proceeds to chew off TMEG’s ear like a shark ripping off a piece of bluefish.

The demon tears away a piece of flesh and spits it out.

Plop!

Out of the pile, like a football in a fumble frenzy, rolls the ear. At first I think it is a finger. It is about that size. Then the demon stands up and, with blood dripping from his mouth, high-fives his buddy and the two of them stroll out the front door as though nothing happened.

The commotion to help TMEG is such that no one notices Satan leave. I take it upon myself to follow the offender into the parking lot to get a glimpse of his license plate. Unfortunately, they are on foot and walk down the street, passing the lot.

I go back inside to see TMEG bleeding down the neck. The ear is in a plastic bag and looks like a bloody cat turd. And then, coming from my lips like a bad actress’s only line in an Ed Wood flick, are the six words I never thought I’d have occasion to say:

“Somebody put that ear on ice!” I screamed to the rafters.

A bartender arrives with a bucket of ice and the ear is buried into it.

One of TMEG’s friends begins calling for a posse. “Let’s go get this guy,” He shouts, followed by the deep voiced murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

“Murmur, murmur!”

“He bit my friend’s ear off”

“Murmur, murmur!”

His fucking ear!”

“Murmur, murmur, MURMUR!”

One at a time, they rise from their seats, pick up the torches, and single file out the door to chase Frankenstein to the castle. They catch up with the monster a few blocks away, and encircle him. Oddly though, they don’t strike out. Just circled around him and yelled shit. It’s like nobody knew what to do, or wanted to strike first. They were frightened I guess, as if they could each see their own ears, bloody Lincoln Logs, bouncing on the carpet. Before anyone could land a blow the cops came, and that was that.

Epilogue: The offender’s name was Carl Ditmars. He was charged with mayhem and battery. I was deposed as a witness but outside the courtroom, just before we were to start the proceedings, the D.A.  sent me home because he had more witnesses than he needed. The victim’s name was Michael Burrows. From what I was told, doctors tried to reattach the ear but it didn’t take.

Originally published in SLAMM November, 1995