Holy Kee-rist, what an abomination! It looks like the Harmony.com profile of a bovine-semen collector who inappropriately enjoys his job too much. And what is that extra fold of skin just beneath my left eyebrow? Is that eyelid fat!? Kee-rist in Heaven, where did that come from?

There are so many reasons why I can’t stand having my picture above my column, some of which have nothing to do with the fact that I am ugly and old. Here are the top five:

• No More Identity-Denying: Every now and then, a stranger will approach and ask, “Are you Ed Decker?” Sometimes I say “Yes” in spite of the possibility that the asker will stab me in the face for writing an unflattering missive about his sister’s vagina. Other times, I deny my identity—not necessarily because I fear the wrath of Sir Sister-Vagina-Avenger, but because there is a likelihood—especially if it’s a drunken bar encounter—that I will be subjected to an hour-long reprobation of my writing skills, and/or an impassioned sermon about all the things that are wrong with my political opinions, and/or a screed about why I should stop bashing religion, all of which will be followed by a request that I write about his “totally awesome band,” The Attention Whores. So, um, yeah, CityBeat, thanks for that.

• No More Fly on the Walling: One of my favorite life-moments is the rare occasion when I stumble upon somebody who is in the process of reading my column. I love that! The last time it happened was in a Mexican-food joint. A couple in their early 60s were sitting at a neighboring table, reading it together. They were taking turns pointing out certain parts and laughing. When finished, I embarked on my usual undercover ego-recon mission: “Pardon the interruption,” I said, “but what are you reading that’s so funny?”

“It’s a column called Sordid Tales,” the man said, lifting the paper to show me the cover. “It’s in CityBeat magazine.”

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“It’s about the writer getting fired from his bartender job,” the woman responded. “It’s pretty funny.”

Well hot damn! I thought. They like me. They really like me! It’s a feeling that never gets old. But now that my goddamn face is up there—complete with quinquagenarian wrinkles and disgusting eyelidulite—I can kiss any future undercover ego-recon missions goodbye. Thanks CB.

• No More Man of Mystery: I used to receive a certain amount of flirtatious emails from enthusiastic and, let’s say, libidinous ladies. Well those days are over, too. See, when my picture was not on the column, an enthusiastic, libidinous lady was free to imagine me as whatever knight-on-a-white-horse, movie-star, hero, hunk, lifeguard and Marlboro-Man-of-her-dreams man she always dreamed about. It is for her that I grieve.

Even my wife loves the columnist-me better than the actual me. When she reads it, she fantasizes that it’s written by a totally yoked, college-age pool boy who comes over to clean the Jacuzzi we don’t have. Thanks a lot, CityBeat, for crushing what few little moments of joy W. had in her life.

• Parent Killing: Until now, I’ve been able to confound my mother and father into believing that the Ed Decker of Sordid Tales fame—the booze-slurping, drug-sopped porn-monger with the sense of humor of a high-school freshman that got left behind a time or two—is not the same Ed Decker as the one they raised. When they realize it was me all this time, their brains will likely burst, so, thanks for killing my parents, CityBeat.

• Ideological: I’ve always felt that columns which contained an image of the author diluted or distorted the effect of the words within. It’s the same way I felt when MTV debuted in 1981. I remember seeing Mark Knopfler’s goofy face and scrawny body for the first time and saying, “Huh? That’s him!?” The guy responsible for some of the most smoldering guitar pizazz of all time is wearing a Miami Vice patio jacket, neon-pink headband and glowing orange leather pants as if he were Sonny Crocket’s bi-curious lover and street informant from the theater district.

And I damn near dropped the bong the first time I saw Def Leppard in—oh, Kee-rist, say-it-ain’t-so—leotards! Now, it’s important to note that those early Def Leppard albums were respected, hard-rocking recordings, released long before big-hair glam had even been identified as a genre (largely because, without MTV, nobody knew they wore makeup and big hair in the first place). When I finally saw the video of them wearing leotards, eyeliner and an osprey’s nest of twigs and straw held together by a quart of Aqua Net on their heads—well, let’s just say I wasn’t able to masturbate to my Olivia Newton John poster for three months.

I never listened to those bands in quite the same way again. And now, I fear, you’ll never read these words in quite the same way, either. Although, admittedly—from a reader’s perspective—I do prefer seeing the face of the author. There’s something organically appealing about that, and I fully understand why the CityBeat overlords want to include our photos. I just can’t stand looking at mine, not in the least.

It’s Thursday night, seven minutes after midnight, which technically means Friday. My column—this column—is due on Friday. The Sword of Deadline-ocles hangs over my head.

I blame Rob Garbowski.

Rob Garbowski is a good friend of mine but the other day he said something that irritated my ass off.

He was detailing the reasons he was not impressed by a recent column I had written and concluded by saying, “I could tell that you phoned that one in.”

Now, normally I welcome criticism. Constructive criticism has improved my writing a great deal over the years, not the least of which has come from Rob, who you can always count on for honest and intelligent critique.

So, I hope you take it in the right spirit, Rob, when I tell you to lick my liver-blisters.

This is not the first time I’ve heard that particular criticism. There have been many friends and acquaintances who have accused me of phoning in one column or another—meaning, I assume, that I did not try hard enough or care sufficiently about the article in question. Well, Rob, and the rest of you, for the record, I have never phoned one in.

This is not to suggest that I am incapable of not caring or not trying. The truth is, phoning shit in is something at which I excel: I phone in my chores, I phone in my taxes, I phone in my workouts. I’m generally a lazy person who would phone his phone calls in if such a thing were possible. But this column is different. This column, you know, it goes out there; it goes out to people—people who scrutinize it—people who are just waiting for it to start sucking so they can tear me to shreds. People like you.

Don’t deny it. You know it’s true, even if you don’t know it yet. And I’m not blaming you. I’m not mad. Because I’m the same way. It’s how we all are. We’re all waiting for somebody to suck so we can tear them to shreds, and I live in fear of that day when I start sucking and you start shredding, which is why I spend a lot of time on these columns. I spend a lot of time inventing ridiculous words, absurdly hyphenating existing phrases, Creating Useless Acronyms (CUA), thinking of various festering organs for my nemeses to lick and, the hardest part of all, finding the right column topic.

Sordid Tales is due every other Friday at 2 p.m. The only time I have any peace in my life is the weekend after I send it in. It’s the time when I don’t worry about what the hell I’m going to write about for my next column. But come Monday the mad dash to find a premise begins.

I know, I know, at that point, my next deadline is still 11 days away. So why the rush to find a topic? Because I go through topics like coyotes go through canyon kittens.

Here is my life on the biweekly Hamster Wheel of Despair: I spend one or two days searching for a column idea, followed by one or two days working on it, after which I realize the idea is rubbish, toss it, find another, work it and toss it. I usually do this several times per deadline, and before I know it, it’s Thursday night / Friday morning again and I’ve got the Hamster Droppings of Damocles hanging over my head.

Take this column you’re reading now. Originally it was called (ugh) “Phoning it in.” I pondered for days about whether to go with it, mostly because, a long time ago, I swore I would never do this. I swore I would never write a column about how difficult it is to write a column. It’s the first thing they teach you in Column College.

However, Rob’s “phoning it in” comment kept nagging me, taunting me. I had to write about it, which presented another problem: If I do write about writing my column, should I write that I know it’s wrong to write about it? My inclination is, yes. If I write that I know it is wrong to write about my writing, the reader might give me a pass. Of course, the whole thought process sent me headlong into the obvious, imminent, infinite regression vortex because now I’m writing about writing about whether it’s right to write about my writing, and uh-oh, see that? I just wrote about writing about writing about writing….

The whole thing became so ludicrous that I tossed it in the trash and began working on another idea, which was the adverse effect that eating pot brownies has had on my sanity. I moiled on that piece of garbage for two days before I realized that writing about the adverse effect pot brownies have had on my sanity was adversely affecting my sanity. So I trashed it and retrieved the “phoning it in” file—this file—to see if I could make something of it after all. I gave it a useless acronym (CUA), an absurdly hyphenated word (Deadline-ocles), a festering organ for somebody to lick (blistering liver), then took a sip of coffee, blinked my eyes, looked at the clock and the clock ticked Friday—that confounded sword shimmering a mere quarter inch from my throat.

So a column about “Phoning it in” it will have to be. The decision has inspired a minor panic reaction within me. In my mind, I see you scoffing as you read this. I see you tapping your friend on the shoulder. “Get a load of this piece of trash,” I see you saying to your friend in my mind. And, yes, perhaps it was a mistake to submit this column. I don’t even know. I never know. The only thing I know is, I didn’t phone it in. I dragged it in–on bloody hands and knees–again.

When I started this thing I had no idea what I was doing. It was your classic fake-it-till-you-make-it scenario. The only thing I knew about writing columns was that you had to string words together to make phrases that led to some sort of point or something. I never imagined it would last ten months, let alone ten years. So I hope you’ll excuse me while I take this moment to lean back in my work chair, fold my arms, take a long, deep breath and say out loud, “Holy crap! How did I do that?”

Fuck if I know.

This upcoming Sordid Tales anniversary has got me thinking about a lot of things lately. Things related to writing: For instance, I wonder how many more columns I have in me. Do I have hundreds and hundreds, or just a handful? I wonder if, in ten years of writing, have I made more enemies than friends? I wonder also if my writing has improved or did it get worserer? I wonder what happened to all those paragraphs I deleted over the years; thousands and thousands of sentences that I eviscerated for one reason or another. Oh how many times I hesitated over that delete key, so reluctant – as they say – to kill my babies, to send them off to that unknown place where all the dead sentences go.

But what I wonder most of all, as the 10th Anniversary of Sordid Tales fast approaches is why – in the Hell – am I still writing it?

I know why I started writing it. I started because I wanted to see my name in lights. I wanted chicks to dig me. I wanted to be able to say to women I met at various social events, when asked what I do for a living, that I was a columnist. Oh sure, saying “I’m a bartender” got me laid plenty. But to also be able to also say “columnist” – to have that option – I knew would be priceless:

Like, if you’re at a summer keg party, and the hot drunk party girl with the tray of Jello shots asks what you do for a living, you tell her you’re a bartender.
But at the wedding reception at the Grand Colonial Hotel, making time with a bridesmaid by candlelight at the dining table, you tell her you’re a columnist.
And when you meet the woman of your dreams, a millennium gal – a strong, smart, beautiful career woman who also likes to drink and screw and rap-wise about art and politics – you tell her you are a bartender and a columnist and she can’t scramble out of her thigh-highs fast enough.

Yes, I know why I started writing Sordid Tales. What I don’t know is why I continue. It’s not about having my name in lights anymore. Having my name in lights, even on this lower level, is a nuisance more than anything else. And I certainly don’t write it to attract women. I’m married now, nothing attracts single women more than being unavailable does. It isn’t the money. Writing columns has all the financial reward of a paper route, and as much stress as a giant ape perched on a skyscraper getting shot at by military attack jets.

So why then?

I was watching Oprah a few days ago. She was interviewing a man who survived a plane crash. The man described how a fireball incinerated everybody who sat in the middle of the plane. He said that as they were dying these lights appeared over their heads, these orb-like lights that departed their bodies and flew toward the heavens. The man believed those lights to be their auras.

“Some of the auras were brighter than others,” he said, which he took as an indication of how they each lived their lives; that the people with brighter auras had lived richer fuller lives than those with the dim ones.

At the end of the interview Oprah asked what in his life had changed and he pretty much said what everybody else who has had a near-death experience says: that he has a new lease on life and that he meets every new day with zeal.

“I want to live my life so that when I die I have the brightest aura of them all,” he said.

OK, now normally I don’t go for this aura-schmaura talk. I don’t really care for the word aura. It sounds a little too new-age-hippy-fem for my liking. I’d rather call it something else. Like a soulfire perhaps. The word soulfire has the kind of masculinity and intensity I am looking for in an aura. Because if auras do exist, well I want mine to blaze. I want it to rage like a bonfire stacked with gasoline soaked mattresses. And when I die, and my soulfire soars toward the heavens, I want that mutha to light up the land, to scorch the faces of anyone who happened to be watching, to make those sumbitches go blind.

And that, I realized while listening to this guest on Oprah, is why I continue writing this column. Because writing it stokes my soulfire profoundly. For me, each column is another gasoline soaked mattress thrown onto the bonfire. And every-other Wednesday, when I grab an issue of CityBeat, open it up, and see my name in lights above a bunch of words I strung together to make some sort of a point or something, I can only hope in my allest of hearts, that I strung them together in a way that stokes your soulfire too. Even if only a tad.

EJD
03/07

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

When the buyout was complete, the decision was made by the publishers and editors to keep the column, however the scope of it needed to shift a bit. They needed something that would appeal to a wider audience than bar goers. So I shortened the title to Sordid Tales and altered the scope.

Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat was a column about the comedy and tragedy of the bar scene complete with anecdotes of drunks and brawlers and loners and miscreants from a bartender who’s seen it all, while Sordid Tales was more about the tragedy and the comedy of our culture as a whole — as seen through the bartender’s eyes. Some people preferred the original, others the latter. As for me, I love them both for different reasons. Enjoy.

Job Application
(A Mission Statement)

Hello. My name is Ed. Some of you may know me from a column I’ve written for a local, biweekly, music magazine called SLAMM. The column was called Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat. It was about the comedy and tragedy of the bar and nightclub scene as told by a bartender who has been slinging drinks in San Diego booze pits for nearly 20 years.

Southland Publishing, which also owns Pasadena Weekly and the Ventura County Reporter, have recently purchased SLAMM magazine.

Their intent is to turn it into a weekly metro paper called CityBeat. Since Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat is not a music column, the editors have removed it from the SLAMM section of the paper, and placed it here.

The only other change we are going to make to the column is the title. We are removing the words “Bartender in Heat.” After all, SLAMM was a biweekly music magazine whose target audience was boozers, babes, bartenders, musicians, poets, artists and other such slackers with backfiring Pintos and multiple roomies. CityBeat is a weekly city paper. It means people with day jobs are going to be reading now: people with families and SUV’s, people who attend morning meetings and say things like “quarterly earnings” and “profit projections,” people with breakfast nooks and walk-in closets, people who wear slacks – you know, the kind of people who just don’t spend that much time hanging out in bars.

Whereas Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat was primarily an industry column about the bar and nightclub scene, Sordid Tales will be a column about life and love and culture and politics, and booze, and excess, and sports, and entertainment, and travel — as seen through the bartender’s eyes.

Now, as delighted as I am that CityBeat asked me to join them on this new endeavor, I realize that it’s you, the readers that dictate whether or not I get to keep this job. This sorta makes you my boss. So it seems only proper, since I am vying for a much-coveted slot in your weekly routine, to submit this job application to you. . .
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Job application for Edwin Decker:

For Which Position Are You Applying?: Column guy.

Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony?: I beat the rap.

Schooling?: College dropout. The best schooling I ever received, was getting pummeled at the bus stop by Janet Abrignani in the fifth grade.

Employment History: Poured drinks in Blind Melons, 4th and B, Winston’s, The Bacchanal (during the heydays), Buffalo Joe’s, (during the heydays), Poppy’s, (which never had a heyday, but hey what the hey is a heyday anyway?). I have had multiple articles appear in SLAMM, San Diego Reader, San Diego Union-Tribune, Modern Drunkard Magazine and numerous alternative weekly magazines around the country.

Special Skills and Qualifications: Have served tequila to an African Lord, got scolded by B.B. King, made out with Wendy O’Williams, and saw Moby’s tiny, hairy ass in the dressing room of 4th and B. I played kazoo with the Beat Farmers, floundered in the city drunk tank, been kicked out of numerous bars including the Bambi Club in Tijuana. I have vomited on a lady, fell off a total of three barstools, broke up fourteen fights, and received one DUI. I was arrested in Mexico for possession (twice), mugged at gunpoint in New Orleans (once), bribed a Mexican Federali (thrice), and out-drank Country Dick Montana (once). I rarely ever short-pour, never roller blade, and don’t believe in good and evil. I have never owned a pair of Spock ears but love the allshit out of Star Trek. I take drugs, drink booze, and view porn. I don’t give a good-goddam about religion, nor race and certainly not Creed. Scott Stapp makes me nauseous. I believe rock stars should never close their eyes and raise tightly-clenched fists when they sing, I believe columnists should not place pictures of themselves at the tops of their columns (unless in character), and while I don’t believe we should outlaw leaf blowers, I do believe they should be manufactured with the exhaust tube aimed at the user’s face.

Mission Statement/Job Description: I, Ed Decker, do hereby swear to report to you, with vino and vigor, all that is vile or absurd in this world. I promise to twist the corkscrew of contempt into the flaking cork of social disrepair. I promise to sear, bruise, and muddle the egos of the egomaniacal – including my own. I promise to stumble drunkenly along the line between depravity and decency. I promise to spike the status quo with shots of 100-proof dissent. I promise to always question authority – even if it’s only to ask Authority where the keg is at. I promise to write only the truth, except if I need to lie, in which case I promise to lie as truthily as possible. (I never actually kissed Wendy O’ Williams). And I promise to never shake or chill or in any other way dilute my resolve with the ice cubes of mediocrity. Welcome to Club Sordid Tales, what’s your poison?

Author’s note: the word heyday has nothing to do with the word “hay” or “hey” or “day” even. “Heyday” comes from the old Germanic word heida, meaning “hurrah.” In 16th century England, “Hey!” or “Heyda!” was an interjection of joy or pleasure. Eventually and inexplicably, “da” was replaced by “day,” giving us the word we use today: “Heyday — a period of one’s greatest success.”
EJD
8/21/2002