Return of the Dude

Friday night has long been my church, my temple. Since i moved to the Burgh and became gainfully employed and sometimes not so gainfully friday has been the night i've gone out and torn shit up, i know Tom Waits is always looking for the heart of saturday night but fuck all that, saturday's seem a bit desperate, so it's always been fridays and for the last 15 years and probably longer i've missed only a handful of nights on the town, granted they've grown shorter with the arrival of the boyos but that night is like my church, i'm usually always there and devoted to say the least...

Another constant of this life of mine has been grass, from the age of about 16 to 30 i was what i would call chronically stoned, sometimes for days on end, yes part of that came with the territory when you are in the retail and distribution side but i didn't quit that until a few years later and there was a point where the old second job was rolling at such a magnitude that i didn't enjoy smoking for a a couple of years, of course that was followed by a period that i will someday get into but won't now where i just didn't fucking care anymore and moved on to harder substances and then the I-mac showed up and i figured that the hard stuff might not be so good for me, of course recent studies show the booze isn't that great for you either and actually pegged opiates and hallucinogens as better for you in the long run, needless to say i don't drink nearly as much as i used to or really smoke for that matter, but back in the day i was a dead ringer for the Dude, in fact Gulfboot was the one who really pointed it out, with me always wearing second hand sweaters and my long hair and beard and basically lifestyle, the only thing missing was the bathrobe...

So it was quite amusing to me last night as i got back to my roots so to speak, partook in some of the finest weed in the shire, the kind that makes Frodo think he's tall and as i got in my car to head out for the night i thought, damn there's nowhere i really want to go in terms of bars, don't really feel like watching the cool kids be cool and since i'm so pleasantly stoned i went to the bookstore where i wandered around for a bit trying to remember all the books i wanted to check out, i had some $10 credit for signing up for the shit megachain's consumer card and figured i might as well fall into their consumer culture trap and buy a book instead of supporting one of my local bars, of course i didn't realize they closed so early and when they announced i had 25 minutes i knew it was time to make a decision... the choices: White Noise by Don DeLillo, which i've never read but feel i should and found quite fitting because the subject matter deals alot with consumption, a trilogy by Richard J. Evans a professor at Cambridge, on the Third Reich cuz i just got done reading a work of fiction about a gay SS officer who wanted to bang his sister, a fine book i must say and something i will cover in the future and last but not least Mozipedia, written by music journalist Simon Goddard, basically it's everything you ever wanted to know about Morrissey and the Smiths, of course if you've been reading the lounge for awhile you know i'm a bit obsessed with the man and the band so it should come as no surprise to anyone that i chose to purchase Mozipedia... i'm nothing if not a predictable nerd and besides i could get the trilogy online for about 20 bucks less and DeLillo i'll get from the library...

Of course i was so delighted with my purchase i raced home but not before thinking i should park and walk across the street for a white Russian or two or what i've been corrected on a few times A Caucasian, but the need to fire up a few more tokes and lie about the couch and read about Moz and the boys was to strong so i shuffled back to the abode not some 45 minutes after i left.. put on the jammies and flipped through my new book, drifted off in thought that this wasn't such a bad way to spend a friday night, see i've been going out so long now, have lived long enough now that i've seen the fashions and trends and music begin to repeat itself, granted i like to study my fellow humans, eavesdrop on their conversations, watch the dog and pony show they put on to attract the opposite sex, it's what i do, but i've also begun to realize that i'm not missing anything and that sitting on my couch or lying in bed reading is quite a pleasant way to spend the night, besides in the next year or so i'll move out of the city proper and into a lily white suburb so my kids can go to good schools and there will be friday nights where i won't be able to go out and i will adjourn to my private room in the basement and roll a pinner and maybe mix up a Caucasian and enjoy the silence and lily whiteness of my new digs, as opposed to constant sirens, helicopters and general cacophony of my neighborhood now... it will be a new way of living but it will still have a familiar feel. And now i do own a bathrobe. Abide.