"The Worst Night Ever" as told by Lurch, guest blogger

“A man’s dreams are an index of his greatness…in Shatner.”
Chinese fortune cookie, with addendum

Greatness takes effort. Left to its own devices, life is more likely to settle into its own grey torpor…a needle tic above or below the zero point separates how we feel about ourselves following a day on the couch watching “Girlfriends” reruns. But to really achieve an extreme, you must dream, aspire, and execute, whether it involves a trip to Russia (as our good friends Frank and Dan have experienced), or to truly, truly, have the worst day ever.

I have known Frank and Dan for sixteen years. During that time, we have shared many experiences, including the rise and fall of Frank’s first auspicious band, the emergence of the International Man of Mystery, too many dawnings of new years to count, and the revelation of Crazy Scarheaded Bitch on “Melrose Place” (come back Marcia, all is forgiven). And as men who have known how to live, it’s only fitting that we know how to really suck. It begins with an email exchange on Thursday:

“Hey guys…should we go see ‘Domino’ before the reviews sap our motivation?”

Let’s parse this out. Together, we are planning, a day in advance, to see a film starring Mickey Rourke, DBag aka Mr. Kari Wuhrer nee Mr. Tori Spelling, Ian “That’s EyeAn” Ziering, Keira Knightley’s fleabites, Dabney Coleman, and Walken. Actually, that cast is a good reason to see the movie. But it is already being identified as a crime against god and nature, sharing space with “Elizabethtown” as the only things on earth with lower approval ratings than Dubya. We are planning, with full knowledge that given time, wisdom will set in, and as reasonable men we will spend our time on other worthy pursuits. Given, as a unit, we’ve seen “The Specialist” (and one of us gave it a standing ovation), “The Quick and the Dead,” and “Johnny Mnemonic,” but we were young then and unaware of our mortality. Now, we are older, wiser and sadder, and spending our finite time on earth not only planning to waste two of those vital hours, but anticipating the chance to squander those hours.

That fateful Thursday email was only the first. Over the course of the next 24 hours, we three exchanged many more emails planning this. A plan which took a vital turn when Dan writes the fateful words:

“Dulli might make a surprise visit at Mighty Fine tonight.”

To parse this brief email…’Dulli’ is Greg Dulli, rock hero and one of the three people I would want to be if I were not me (along with Maxwell and Robbie Williams, although Robbie’s falling fast off the new single). Mighty Fine is the new band of a member of the Twilight Singers. I should note that I didn’t know which member he was, but Dan and F. did. Again, we have no enthusiasm for Mighty Fine. But perhaps the slim promise of Dulli, rock hero, will save us from our rendezvous with Domino.

Instead, Frank ups the ante, mentioning that Mighty Fine goes off at 9:30/10, meaning we can make a 12:05 of Domino. That’s right…we’re now planning a doubleheader. Keep in mind that as a rock hero, Dulli probably doesn’t get up for brunch until 11. We are explicitly discussing the fact that this is not happening, because a truly sucky night must be premeditated. For the next six hours, we are desperately attempting to get on the mailing list for a nonexclusive event at a random NY club in the Bowery like it is the Meatpacking District and we are looking to have our asses in Gawker Stalker. Six hours.
At 8, Frank, Dan, Irene (because every bad scene needs a celebrity hostage), and I meet at New Green Bo (we’ll leave this free of the suckage…it was the best, as always). Then we make our way to Crash Mansion. Crash Mansion is like the basement of a frat house (believe me, I know), only with more fake slate. The scene is actually a battle of the bands. The first band is basically the Gin Blossoms, only without the guy who drank himself to death writing hooky songs about drinking oneself to death. The lead singer might be the guy from Coheed and Cambria, which means sounding like the Gin Blossoms is kind of a step up. It’s lovely though, compared to the follow up band, the Paul Rudd Experience. It turns out that Paul Rudd is a fan of bands that sound like what would happen if X and The Killers had a baby, and that baby was retarded. We also begin accumulating victims, as Brandt and Alison appear in promise of Dulli. Our ears are bleeding. We sit and stare at each other, in mixed disbelief, horror, and abject hilarity.
And then out comes Mighty Fine.
Mighty Fine is in fact fronted by a member of the Twilight Singers. A touring member. A backup singer. I observe this to Dan.

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“Dulli’s showing up to support a backup singer on one of the tours? From three years ago.”

“Probably not.”

But did that stop us from scoping the door and feeling our collective hearts leap every time we see a fat white guy in a suit come in the club? And trust me, a lot of fat white guys hang out at Crash Mansion. Mighty Fine is…fine. They are audaciously mediocre, with lots of dance moves bitten off Prince, and an ersatz Afghan Whigs song that just makes you long for what you’re not getting. Similarly to how BFF Fuss misses Otis Redding every time she hears an Afghan Whigs song.

Oh, and their set is punctuated now with cries from Dan of “Liars!” and “Where’s Dulli?” But the front man made out with some random girl in the audience (read: plant) so bully for him. And his fucking hoax fucking emails. I can’t wait to actually start sending my bank account number to that mother fucker who’s trying to escape Nigeria.

Sour, beaten, depressed failures, we leave the safe refuge of Crash Mansion. Frank begins blaming Dan (inappropriately, I think). I laugh. Brandt and Alison leave (wisely). Irene prepares her celebrity escape to Brooklyn. We walk, walk, and continually question, ‘are we really going to do this? Are we really going to see this movie? This is the shittiest night ever, and we’re going to make it worse.”

The 12:05 Domino was showing in the attic of a Loews. Most of the escalators were turned off, meaning we had to walk half of the seven floors. I stopped for popcorn and coke (TO MAKE SURE I STAYED AWAKE), so I made it just in time for the start of the film.

“Domino” is ugly, both in aesthetic and overall crapulence. At no point does any recognizably human behavior occur. In fact, until the last twenty minutes of the movie, I don’t remember there being any actual cause and effect in the movie. That is, people simply do things, like look at each other, with no sense of what those looks mean or imply about the relationships between the people or reflect changes in the way they relate to one another. For a film described as ‘shamelessly violent,’ there is very little action. That might have interfered with the looking. It plays with time and sequence and frequently undoes the truth it just told, which might be interesting if the movie, you know, “had a plot” or “said something.”Keira Knightley’s narration is second only to Mila Kunis’ narration in “American Psycho 2” and I say that not to be show offy or obscure, but to accurately convey where this movie sits in the history of cinema. The movie trades in the notion that you have seen this millions of times before, so it can skip all the bits that happen in other movies. Which basically constitutes everything that is not posing. Perhaps this is notable for a movie about a model turned bounty hunter. Basically, I liked this movie a lot better when it starred Shannon Tweed.

There are two possibilities for “Domino.” Possibility A: it is too advanced for me. It is possible that the film is a complex satire about style, celebrity, and the ways in which we see each other, and how those perceptions defy simple notions of cause and effect…that our stereotypes override our ability or even need to observe others’ behavior or that we even react to one another. Possibility B: it’s a noisy, incoherent pile of suck. In favor of the second opinion...even with the appearance of Keira’s breasts, I was begging God for the movie to go as fast as its editing suggested, and to just end.

Final review honors go to Frank, who after the film stated, “Just punch me in the balls a thousand times.” The studio should feel free to use that as its pull quote.

Our exquisite planning came to pass. We didn’t believe the hype about Dulli showing, and sure enough, he didn’t. We believed the hype about “Domino’ sucking, and it did. Of the billion things one can do in New York City, the greatest, most alive city in the world, on a Friday night, this is what we chose to do. But this is not a cautionary tale. As I said, this night was a function of existential choice and aspiration. Instead, this is a way of purging the trauma. I’ve spent another 1300 words reliving how we planned the suckiest night of entertainment in our shared lives, encouraging you to read it like I was Naomi Watts and some crazy greasy little girl was going to kill my kid if I didn’t pay it forward. The thing I love about these friends of mine is that they are unashamed to dream, because that is the measure of greatness.

We dream big. And our dreams suck.