About to be roasted by the Bar Flys - and you're all invited

Flys,

I'm sad to announce that one of Saatchi's finest copywriters and loyal Bar Fly PK is bidding farewell to the agency this week. He's heading south of the border for greener pastures, which of course includes fine tequila and exploring the Mexican coastline...and we all hate him a little for that.

PK has been my neighbor for as long as I've been here, so I find it pretty amazing that he has endured three years of me constantly blurting out swear words as I balanced finances or attempted to understand my clients' actions. Despite the close proximity, we've never actually worked on the same team before. But as the observant neighbor that I am, it's pretty clear that he's a talented writer and will be missed. It's common to overhear other writers coming to PK for guidance and advice, and he's always willing to help out wherever he can. And the guy used to supervise L----- A---- and somehow managed not to kill her, which he should probably receive an award for or something. Come join us for a drink tomorrow at:

Village Tavern
46 Bedford Street (Bedford and 7th)


Let's send PK off in style, because it's pretty obvious he's going to miss us while he lounges on the beach and enjoys a margarita. As always, the party starts around 6. I'll see you there.

IDCWLT,
A---

Empire State of Mind

OK, tonight may have been the most unusually odd and insightful and fateful and fun night in the past 3 years.

I leave work with a tremendously guilty conscious at 6 after a wreck of scientific referencing performed by my Senior Copywriter, a wretched layout by a junior art director, and an uptown meeting for a 100 M pitch we’re doing Monday.

I try to fix what I can, knowing that I have to leave to meet a friend from college who needs a shoulder because he’s in the midst of planning a divorce.

I meet him in SoHo and we hang in his hotel trading stripper stories and iPhone apps. And talking about the bullshit intricacies of marriage and divorce.

It becomes time for me to leave and catch a 10:18 train home. So I do that. I ride the train for an hour-and-a-half. At the Red Bank stop (11:45) guess who the fuck I see on the train? A-----a. My hot, sexy hair stylist.

We are both flipped out at meeting in such a way. She’s supposed to be in Florida but for some reason was at the Rangers/Devils game at MSG. We hug, laugh and kiss and decide to get drinks.

Turns out she’s staying up here for awhile because she just got hired to be on a reality show to be televised on the Style Channel this summer. She’s going to be the hot guest star character with mega personality, star quality, eyelashes and tits. And she gets to choose her friends/clients for the show.

Four Jack and Cokes later, guess who’s supposedly going to be on the show, too?

New Order - Regret

As the words left my mouth the cloud of regret settled. This is the feeling that accompanies the words, “I quit.” Fuck it all. I want to take a different path. Like everyone, I fear the unknown. Like nobody, I crave it.

Systemaic to all

I just quit my job.

So far, three friends have cried. Not including me. I'll be in next week's body count of staccato weeping. It's cold here in New York today. I woke this morning with the warmth of tears running down my face. My diagnosed occular rosacia will be stuttering on and off toward an indeterminate future. The irony lies somewhere in the fact that I have 20/30 vision and a right eye that blinks out a bowl of virtual Chex Mix every time the lid flutters.

Where to be when you want to witness the secret ingredients

And, by the way, seeing Bruce in the swamps of NJ is kinda like seeing your grandma baking a pie in your kitchen.

Up stream, II

We walked against a rip tide of humans who were pouring in to the stadium with a voracity that would rival the hedonism of a orgy of horny pornstars trying to enter the same orifice. When I say that, I mean that’s what we were working against, not with. As if.

We found our way, eventually, to Gate B and re-entered the security meat-grinder. This time, they let us in and I realized that 70,000 people were watching me. Kind of. These are the type of thoughts that race through a stoned person as they enter a stadium and emerge at a well-lit spot in view of 70,000 people. I was the guy with the spikey blond hair, beard, blue Hollister shirt and Mark Nason boots wearing vintage 2007 RayBan sunglasses. In other words, I was the dickhead rockstar going to a real rockstar concert.

Within 10 minutes of entering the stadium and finding a cool spot, the concert started. Here’s the set list:

Wrecking Ball
Out In The Street
Outlaw Pete
Hungry Heart
BORN TO RUN – album, start to finish. Seeing this made my year.
Waiting On A Sunny Day
Hard To Be A Saint In The City
My Love Will Not Let You Down – Max is an awesome drummer. Take it from another drummer…
Because The Night
Human Touch – Meh
Lonesome Day - Cool 

The Rising 
- very cool. I saw this 2001 narrative unveil in the same time and place as the song’s author. So I have that going for me.
Badlands – Perhaps my fave Bruce song live next to Sandy or Rosie.
No Surrender

4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) Dedicated to Danny - Big smile from me. My equivalent would be 4th of August, Belmar (Christine), but the sentiment resounds.

Bobby Jean – Ode to Stevie
American Land – This one was kinda new on me. The fireworks were cool. I think.
Dancing In The Dark – Boring, but as the song was winding down he picked up a sign from a fan that read, “ROSIE!”

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) – The very best song that all people need to see played live in order to live a complete life. This song never fails to make me feel like I’m 16 and at my first Bruce show. The stadium rocked. Moved, shifted. Even the newbies loved it. This was the bonding song. This is why my ears are still ringing. This is why I have friends and tinnitus and eat food and first had the inspiration to write words. This was life support. This is why we all sing songs together.

Twist & Shout – Ferris could have played it and no one would have minded. Rosie was the rare earth gift surrounded by diamonds presented in a velvet box.
Getting home is a whole ‘nother story. For another day.

Swimming up stream

Couldn’t ask for better weather for an outdoor stadium show. The cool breeze felt good in the mosh pit. (It was only a Bruce-grade mosh pit, so things were kinda comfy.)

Dave and I met in the parking lot about a half-an-hour before the show and managed to fit about three hours of tailgating in as the tock was clicking. It felt for awhile like we were on a Japanese game show the way we were quickly passing beers, bottles and Mexican brick back and forth on some poor soul’s car. By the time it was time to walk into the stadium, I was fairly disoriented.

Which is good, I guess. But for the first time in a long time I saw through the disoriented part so that I could ask myself, “Why did you purposely disorient yourself to enjoy an experience?” An interesting question for the ages…


So, after I get this weird sort of agoraphobic/exhibitionist buzz on, we decide it’s time to walk to our seats. It was around that time when Dave asked, “Where are we sitting?” I was, like, “I don’t know, let me check the tickets.”

Fucking floor seats.

Do you know what this means? This means going from passive to active. This means going from innocent bystander to culprit. This means a mental transition from watching to being. Which is why I will get paranoid in the next chapter.

We go about trying to find a gate that will let us in. We walk a half-mile to Gate C. We are in a mob of 5,000 people. We thread our way to what was about one level lower than a cavity search. We get to the ticket scanner chick. “You can’t enter through this gate.”

“Why?”

“Actually, your seats are too good for this gate. You have to go to Gate B to get where you need to be.”

You have no idea how stoned I was at this point. And the ticket chick telling me I had to walk against a tide of 5,000 people to a point on the other side of the stadium didn’t help. I somehow got more stoned and started walking in the complete opposite direction of every human being on the planet. Dave was leading the way.

Now, when I say stoned, I don’t mean it like ordinary people. This wasn’t a pleasant little buzz. This was full-on. My body felt like it had smoked Jamaica. My mind felt like it had read Bukowski. My spirit was ready for Armageddon.

And this was only ramping up.

Busting down the pretext

OK, Pearl Jam is hot again, but let's remember again how hot and ripe hey were in that sliver of time Nirvana graced us.

As the band said on the "Singles" soundtrack...

State of love and trust as I busted down the pretext
Sin still plays and preaches, but to have an empty court, uh huh
And the signs are passin, grip the wheel, cant read it
Sacrifice receiving the smell thats on my hands ... hands, yeah
And I listen for the voice inside my head
Nothin, Ill do this one myself

Lay her down as priest does, should the lord be a countin
Will be in my honour, make it pain, painfully quick, uh huh
Promises are whispered in the age of darkness
Want to be enlightened like I want to be told the end ... end, yeah
And the barrel shakes and, a-directly at my head
Oh, help me, help me from myself
And I listen, from both sides of a friend
Nothin, Ill do this one myself - Pearl Jam

Unborn

I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral
— the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

Born to...

Does anybody know the expected cover-to-cover/track by track album performance that will take place on the Thursday show of next week? Rumor says it will be Born to Run again. I really don't care as long as it isn't Born in the USA. I want Born to Run, as in the harmonica intro of Thunder Road to the last long stretch of violin, voice and major chords of Jungleland unbroken and untainted. I've seen the Boss perform many a show at the concrete monstrosity of a stadium bowl known as Giants Stadium 10, maybe 15 times. I just want to know what show I'm set to see this one last time before the wrecking ball hits. Sorry. It's a NJ thing when one considers the biggest rock star in America to surface after John Lennon's death and the fall of the towers; a dude who's played at least 55 times at the soft-infested clubs you go to, and knows the sad slam of an old screen door flapping shut on the Backstreets of Jungleland. You know, the same dude who you see time to time in Jack's Music buying discs or walking down Ocean Ave. in Sea Bright, looking like he needs a ride. I saw him christen the Meadowlands with The River, I'd like to see him turn the curtain with a splash.