JOSH CLARK'S BIRTHDAY PARTY - PART ONE 1-25-04
My good pal Josh Clark , whom you might remember from all our wild adventures with the Swedish Chicks, sent out an e-vite (evite.com's digital invite service) for his birthday party. The evite spoofed my birthday party evite in that it noted that his party was to be devoid of celebrities, give aways and covercharges (Hey, I didn't have a covercharge!) I just knew this would be a good time.
It was set to be at a bar/resturant/lounge called "THE PARK" The Park, located on 10th Ave. btwn. 17th and 18th street, which I had personally never been to-but from Josh's description sounded pretty classy. I rounded up a few people who were willing the brave the ZERO degree temperatures and we hopped in my car city bound, Ran-D (painter/sculpter) and my brother Brett (who back then was still living in New Brunswick, NJ, now in California) came along for the ride.
The original idea for the three of us was to get to the city early and go to this BIG COMIC BOOK CONVENTION that was happening at one of the convention centers. We wanted to all wear wigs and glasses and go around filming ourselves acting like Jackasses. And I wanted to meet that old Carradine dude from Kung Fu and Kill Bill. We would proceed to the party afterwards.
Sadly, we managed to only secure one wig (which my brother told me looked like a cool British hairstyle, but actually looked like a Charles Nelson Riley fright wig). So we opted to skip the convention and just get to the city in time for the 11:00 party.
We ended up heading out a little later then expected. By the time we got near, it was after 11 and we still wanted to buy some booze and get our drink on a little before we arrived and had to pay through the nose for tiny ice filled glasses (A.K.A. pregaming it). We stopped at a liquor store / bodega in Hoboken and my brother was reminded angrily in broken English with a Korean accent by the shopowner that they don't sell hard alcohol after 10 PM.
I assume she was so angry and annoyed because there was a giant sign right in front of the bottles of hard alcohol that read "No hard alcohol sold after 10pm" which my brother blatantly ignored and just stood there in front of the shelves of hard booze mulling aloud "Now...what do I want...what do I want?"
We ended up buying 3 bottles of Mad Dog. Strongest shit available at that hour. And when I say shit, I mean the taste, not like "THA' SHIT," more like the kind that falls from your arse into the crapper after you eat steak topped with mothballs.
Brett and Ran-D opted for the orange flavor, while I chose the red one figuring it's tough enough for a bartender to mix a good screwdriver, the odds of me liking the orange would be slim to none.
What ever synthetic red flavor they were going for wasn't obvious, cherry, strawberry, cranberry? Who knows? But if they were going for a certain fruit taste, they missed their mark. It reminded me of when you eat blue candy or have a blue kool aid or sports drink. What the hell are they trying to simulate with the blue? Blueberries? The insides of blueberries are green! What fruit in nature is blue?
After a few swigs Ran-D gave up, saying that his drink tasted like a screwdriver that someone had vomited in, which is what I had guessed it would taste like. He couldn't stomach it and handed it off to Brett, whom much like the fictional Life Ceral- posterboy "MIKEY" Brett will drink anything-so long as it has alcohol in it.
Mine, the red colored liquid, tasted like Kool Aid someone had made with Kool Aid mix and Urine instead of water. I could see where Ran-D was coming from with the vomit comparison as well. It resembled cherry cough syrup with an aftertaste of stomach bile. I was reminded of the taste you get in your mouth after you drink a bunch of cranberry vodka's and vomit, if they bottled that, this would be that bottle.
It was freezing so we picked up a cab and backseat chugged this noxious liquid all the way to the Resturant/lounge "The Park". The odd thing, and this should be accredited to the strength of the alcohol, by the last sips of the bottle, I could barley taste it, so I assume, the second bottle-if I were to have had one, would have been a lot easier going down, and would have gotten me rightly schnockered. At 2 bucks a bottle, you can see why this is a wino's after 10PM booze of choice.
We arrived at the club and trashed our empty brown bag covered bottles in the nearest garbage can. We hadn't even gotten throughout the door to the club when a shitfaced and exuberant Josh attacked me with happy handshakes. The doorman had to pull him off to get a good look at my ID and see I was of age. Josh directed us to the back, and stressed the coatcheck being in the basement, and the party is in the way, way, back, and up the stairs. We decided to bypass the coatcheck and just headed up wanting to scope out the scene as soon as possible.
We realized once we got up there why Josh had stressed the coatcheck, the 3rd floor, where the party was, felt like the 7th level of Hades. We quickly went back down and checked our coats before heading back up to say hi to all of Josh's crew and acclimate to the temperature.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo