Greetings From Asbury Park (aka "Lets RFK")

I am back, slightly scarred, mostly mentally, from joining the Last Days of Disco (G, Lurch and The Kidd) on their sojourn to Asbury Park to see the crap band The Hold Steady. I can say this now because I have now seen them and everything I said in the post a few months back stands. But alas, I was not there for the band, I was there to keep things MOGpac after Paul (who is not MOGpac by any means) pussied out of the trip. I was then asked to step in, because MOGpac can only rely on MOGpac when looking for adventure. I immediately stepped up to the plate and dropped everything I was doing (read: Irene had plans that night with her friends so I was free) to raise the bar to new levels (read: lows).

Things started off in true idiot convention style as (please note I organized none of this trip) we had trouble figuring out where the 4 of us were at Penn Station. Lurch, he being foreign, told us he was on the "main floor", which really helps about as much as Danny in a kitchen or a brothel. Once we tracked said tall foreigner down, we got on the NJ transit.



It was a fun and uneventful ride in which we drank the Woodland Reserve Whiskey that Danny stole from his folks house. The four of us caught up and compared notes and discovered we all had shit weeks recently. I think Lurch declared, as another tall foreigner once said about the aggression, "We Need This". Then we took a cab to our hotel, the legendary Empress. Here's what the Wikishit says about this hotel:

"The Empress Hotel, located on the oceanfront at 101 Asbury Avenue, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, opened as a luxury resort for vacationing families in the 1950s. In the hotel's heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Judy Garland stayed there for a month.
In the 1970s, when Asbury Park began its decline, the hotel began to decline as well, notwithstanding Bruce Springsteen using it on the cover of his 1980 "Hungry Heart" single sleeve. It was very rundown and struggling for business in the late 1980s, and closed in 1988. It reopened in 1991, but quickly closed again. It was abandoned for nearly a decade when, in 1998, Shep Pettibone bought the abandoned building and opened the Paradise Nightclub inside. The nightclub lured crowds of gay travelers away from Fire Island and instead to the beaches of Asbury Park. The hotel portion reopened in August of 2004, and is very popular among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transvestite travelers in New Jersey. The hotel was a typical doo-wop hotel at the Jersey Shore until Pettibone renovated it; today it is a stylish and clientele-savvy destination."

Now who, you ask is Shep Pettibone? You FOOL. I can't even KNOW you if you dont know him. I'll let the Wiki do the talking:

"Shep Pettibone is a record producer, remixer, songwriter and club DJ, one of the most prolific of the 1980s. His earliest work known to the public was for one of New York City's top disco/dance radio stations, WRKS 98.7 "Kiss" FM, and later as remixer/producer for the disco label Salsoul Records. His prowess at production and mixing led him to work with Madonna in the 1985-1990 era during Madonna's arguably most popular period of creating dance music. Shep's contribution to 1980s club music is too extensive to list completely. He was instrumental in bringing the early underground sound of house music into the pop mainstream by way of a hybrid sound (much to the dismay of some purists who preferred standard disco/dance and R&B). Though he was contemporaneous to others (such as Francois Kevorkian), he is certainly the most prominent DJ/Remixer to bridge the high Disco and House eras in popular dance music."

Those of you who know us now understand that this hotel was straight up MOGpac Thug Style. We arrived and quickly noticed that this hotel has the best lobby EVER. I mean look at this:



Look at those chairs. Look at that rug. Now that is RESERVE. More on this in a bit. We checked in and had some time to kill. The venue is about a half block over from the hotel, so we did what men do: lounged around, drank more whiskey, and watched Smackdown and Teen Titans:





And then we went to The Stone Pony. I had been there many moons ago with Mr. Phingers to see Type O back in the day, but I forgot how desolate Asbury Park is. There's nothing there except broken down buildings and a few clubs. It was also 40 degrees below fucking zero and pitch black. There's a beach though which I am sure is awesome in the summer. This place is ripe for a comeback and I think it gonna happen in this century.

Anyhow, The Stone Pony is a cool venue. I think. I was drunk. I can tell you this, they have the best Mozzerella Sticks EVER. I would go back to see even more shit music just for the sticks. Many drinks were had. We had fun in the back eating snacks, comparing NJ rock Icons to cunts who shall not be named and meeting a young man with an Irish fetish who struck up a conversation with G and I after hearing G saying "IF YOU FEEL IT, THEN YOU SHOULD GRAB IT (in regards to my interest in eating a hot pretzel). Serial. This shit only happens to us. Conincidentally, The Kidd introduced himself as MICHAEL McDOWERY to said Irish freak. They hit it off. As you can see here, good times were had with these two assholes and Lurch:



Then the band came on. And these three popped like schoolgirls. I tried. I don't get it. They look like The Fabulous Thunderbirds. The singer has an everyman charm that is very genuine in a dorky way. Then he sings, and he's incoherent and reminded me less of Jarvis and more of Corky. I made it through three songs and I just hated it. I can't lie. the band is fine, but it's so uninteresting to me. So instead of sitting there looking bored and making my friends uncomfortable, I took the high road and showed them respect by retreating to the bar so they could have fun. And your Hero drank. And drank. I don't know how long the gig was, it didn't seem that long, maybe cause I was having fun regardless, but I did join the Kidd outside for a few smoke breaks during the gig (hes the smoker), and he and I tried to climb a mountain on a construction site and that was not a good idea.

Anyhow, the gig was over and we stayed at the bar to drink more and more. The vibe was good. The locals were nice. Everything got blurry for a bit, but I remember this guy...:



...punching this guy in the face after repeatedly telling him he had "beautiful hair":



Look, I have no idea what the fuck happened. but all I know was in that in a matter of seconds, security had swarmed us and were trying to kick us out while Nickelback (I swear he looked exactly like Nickelback) was yelling at that Kidd "YO BRO WHY DID YOU HIT ME IN THE FACE LIKE A BITCH". All I remember is laughing because all the security guys were about a foot shorter than me and the Kidd wouldn't leave so he could apologize to this guy because supposedly his ski cap of violence (seen above) was over his eyes and he "thought" he was hitting G and not Nickelback.

Might I reiterate that theres nothing in Asbury Park, at least that we knew about, and it was a hundred degrees below zero so of course our ejected asses went straight to the beach. That lasted about 3 minutes while the Kidd sulked about punching Nickelback. So we finally landed back at the Hotel at Club Paradise. The Kidd lasted about 3 minutes and retired to the room to ponder his "violence" and to vomit (which he later denied even happening". The three of did what 3 thugs do in a gay club, we hit the dancefloor. Dancing to Timberlake by ourseleves was actually very enjoyable. Then lurch found the only straight girl in the club to dance with. I wish I had pictures of this, but her two gay friends saw her dancing with Lurch and proceeded to comment that he was gayer than they were. Hearing this, I popped like I was watching Wrestlemania 3 and the two guys, not knowing I was pals with Lurch came over to share a laugh as we all agreed.

The club was fun, but it was over literally after two songs (Sexyback and Nelly's Maneater), because guess what, shit CLOSES at 2am here. What the fuck. There's nothing else going on and you fucking close at 2? We just bought tons of drinks. What do men do?

They retreat to that kick ass lobby and hang out with Donny, the conceige, and wish the departing clubgoers a happy evening. Danny went to the room and brought back some pretzels and we were set, chillin in the lobby. Donny told me the hotel was 1/4 full that evening and two suites were available. I won't bore you with the other stories, but when I yelled YO MYSPACE, YOU WANT SOME PRETZELS to the charismaticaly challenged women who rode the train next to us, to their great shock, Lurch declared the evening over.

But of course that's never the case. All I remember was climbing into bed, just starting to doze off and a flying Kidd soared overhead to deliver a flying elbow to a sleeping lurch. And then, the hotel equivalent of the Royale Rumble broke out. Yep, no hotel room unscathed with the MOGpac. Beating G with the room phone was noteworthy. And the morning came:

I bunked with this guy, who makes noises in his asleep akin to Harvey Keitel in BAD LT:



The Queens slept well:



This is for you Eric Powell. The legend lives:



As Andy Schneider, one half of the legendary Schneider Sisters of Fernwood Terrace once told me:



Your Hero woke up a bit worse for wear:



And after some rest, and some weird storytelling from the Kidd, it was time to check out and boy were we hungry. So we decided to walk in the 50 below zero weather. And for awhile there was nothing but deserted buildings and we reached fork in the road. This was like being the Jersey equivalent of THE WARRIORS (serial). Luckily, a girl at a bus stop told us the right direction to go. The other way would have led us to, in her words, "the bullshit ass ghetto". Lucky. The other option would have led us in direct conflct with The Crazy Outback Shadows, a legit streetgang that rolls in Asbury. We ended up in the cool part of town that had nice places to hang out and we found a nice cafe to get a bite and a bucket of tots. Laughs ensued.

This put us in walking distance of the train station but they dont HAVE THE GODDAMN WAITING ROOM OPEN so we froze our asses off waiting for the NJ transit.

And then we went home:



However, we will be back soon though for this gig at the Stone Pony:



Good times. Thanks for inviting me, men!

F