Monday, November 04, 2013

Doggy Doo

Nina and I went to Target the week before Halloween, ostensibly to see if they had a Mag-Safe 2 adapter for my new work laptop, but actually so that I could buy a big thing of Halloween candy. The adapter was not forthcoming, but I was able to talk my way into bringing home a four-pound bag of fun-size candy: Snicker, peanut butter Snicker, M&Ms, Skittle. A little kid threw up on the floor in one of the aisles over by the pharmacy, but a guy with a mop was summoned and quickly cleaned it up. It was a good day for Target; people were on top of their shit and everything was humming.

I left work a little early on the 31st, which for me means 5 o'clock. I wanted to make sure I'd be home in time for the dog Halloween costume contest that was scheduled to take place in front of my building at 5:30. Have I said much about The Yuppy Puppy? Probably not, sidebar: We live above a doggy day care place. We moved into this building around the same time they did. Our building shares a wall with an identical (also styrofoam) building to the east, as well as a concrete "back yard" and a small shed. The Y.P. occupies the ground floor on both sides; before that, there was a hair salon and a garage, unused. Danielle, who runs the place, keeps five of her own dogs on the premises as a kind of seed population, including a huge, un-cut mastiff named Floyd and a weird little Boston terrier with one eye named Batman. The neighborhood kids have recognized that she can't say no to a sick or wounded animal of any species, and have started dragging various strays and almost-roadkill into the store. As such, the ground floor is now also home to three cats and a couple of pigeons that Danielle feeds with a bottle. I go in there sometimes to get cat litter (World's Best!), which she keeps in stock mostly for me, I think, and to see what all is happening with the zoo.

Whenever I look out our rear window, I see dogs snoozing or sniffing around (plus a whole lot of dog turds). They do sometimes bark in the morning, earlier than I wish they would, and the barking is often accompanied by the sound of Danielle loudly chastising the dogs for barking. ("Batman, no!!") But I've learned to kind of filter it out and / or accept it as useful punctuation in the continuum of my life. Nina might tell you different, though. And Stacy, the woman who briefly lived downstairs from us had a small meltdown when The Yuppy Puppy moved in. She's a writer (of middlebrow non-fiction) and was understandably concerned about the potential for daytime noise. While we were moving in, she invited us into her apartment and showed us how she'd used the half-bedroom area we were planning to turn into an office for Nina, our apartment layouts being mostly identical. There was some soft acoustic guitar percolating in from the second-floor apartment in the next building over. "I call this the hell corner," she said. She moved out a week before The Yuppy Puppy opened, having unsuccessfully attempted to convince the post office not to deliver their mail. Should I feel bad for her? She was an unremitting buzz-kill, and so much the better if she got metaphorically paved over in this deal. Our new downstairs neighbor is a sweet guy whom we almost never see or hear. Nina thinks he's a computer person, like me. I guess I hadn't Livejournaled about any of this yet, because of all the Sturm und Drang which accompanied our moving out of our old apartment. I was afraid this place wouldn't work out, but, you know, so far so good.

We could hear the dogs starting to gather as soon as I got home. Nina grabbed her camera and we went down to the twilight street, where the costumed dogs and their owners awaited judgment. There was a dog dressed up like a hot dog. There was a dog dressed up like a fairy. There was a beautiful brown dog with light-colored eyes named Beetlejuice, wearing a kind of 3-D skeleton costume. And there was a pit bull dressed up like a king, with a velvet cape and a floppy, plush crown. The dogs milled around, sniffing each other politely. At about a quarter to seven, Danielle had them line up and conducted the judging by a sort of applause meter. The winner was the pit bull king. I'm not sure what the prize was. A gift certificate, maybe? The pit bull's owner posed with it for a picture. Beetlejuice grabbed a complimentary squeaky toy in his jaws and ran to the end of his leash lest it be taken from him.

We went back upstairs and got dressed to party: I had tickets to see The Dickies making a highly unusual east coast appearance at The Knitting Factory. We made our way to the G train, me carrying the opened sack of fun-size candy like the spoils of a cartoon bank robbery. I was hoping that a drunk or a kid would see it and ask for some, but nobody did. The best I could do was trade a fun-size Snickers for a little bag of fruit gummies from the guy behind the counter at the bodega across from the venue on Metropolitan Ave. It was about eight o'clock, and we were just hanging out in front of the place, trying to display the bag of candy suggestively and waiting for Chris and Billy to show up. Billy was first, then Chris, telling me he told me that he'd be late, so what did I expect. And then with some surprise, we realized that Stan Lee was leaning up against the wall next to us, playing with his phone. "Stan," I hissed. "You want some candy?" "Bengals minus three," he said to his phone. "Whaddya mean you can't cover that?" He came over and dug around in the bag. "Are you a Bengals fan?" asked Billy. "Sure," said Stan. "Although two of my Bengals died this year. Sad. My Bengal cats, I mean. The football team is good, too. But the Dolphins have the best logo in the NFL. Dolphin wearing a football helmet -- how can you beat that?"

Stan went inside to help Little Dave Teague with something. We went inside and sat down at a table in the bar area, which, with its soundproof window onto the performance space, makes me think of an observation bunker for a nuclear test site. We ate Halloween candy from the bag and drank beer. I recognized the lead singer of Wyldlife at a nearby table. I don't know if they were secretly opening or if he's just a fan. Stan came into the room looking like he didn't know which table in the cafeteria was his. To our surprise and delight, he came over and sat down next to us. Billy and Chris and I peppered him with questions. Did he remember the time the band snuck 15-year-old Billy and Chris into a 21-and-over show at Life (now le poisson rouge)? No, but he remembered the show. ("That was a strange place to play a punk show.") Did he remember opening for Misfits at Club Exit (now Terminal 5)? Sort of. Did he remember playing a New Year's Eve show with The Kowalskis at Southpaw (now some kind of day care) in 2008? Maybe. Did he remember Coney Island High (owned in its time by Kitty Kowalski)? Yes! "That was a great place," he said. He showed us pictures from his Instagram on his phone of a show they played at Rob Zombie's haunted house in L.A., which, unsurprisingly, seemed to be decorated half with scary, grimy stuff, and half with doodles from a pot-smoking teenager's composition book.

He asked if there were any songs in particular we wanted to hear. Oh wow. "I'm OK You're OK," I said without thinking.

"No," said Billy. "That's, like, one of their hits."

"Okay," I said. "How about, Welcome To The Diamond Mine?"

"Yeah." said Chris. "Or what's that song from Dawn Of The Dickies? Infidel Zombie!"

"Can't do that one," said Stan. "No saxophone since Bob died."

We spent a while trying to stump him with songs he didn't remember. The best we could do was Canyon, a song that Chris found on a very early live bootleg while he was working at KSPC. "Wow," said Stan. He didn't think they knew how to play that one. He talked about which of their records had the worst covert art: All of the live albums and Idjit Savant. "Are you guys writing new songs?" we wanted to know. "I've got a ton of new stuff in a box in my closet," he said, but they didn't have plans to record a new album any time soon. It wasn't clear whether he thought the demand wasn't there or whether the band's inertia was too great. "This is really just a hobby," he said, although he spoke with obvious pride about the promo they were doing for the 25th anniversary of Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Billy geeked out over guitars with him. His signature yellow Spider-Man was in the shop with a cracked headstock, so he'd flown out east with a newer rig, a Jackson Flying V that'd been custom-built for him by a friendly luthier.

When we saw the opening act winding down their set, he left to go get ready. Lingering at the bar, we almost missed The Dickies starting, but made it into the room in time to hear Stan and Dave shredding their way through the main riff in the theme from Killer Klowns, a perverted take on Entrance of the Gladiators. Leonard came out wearing a lycra ghost mask and a long-sleeve t-shirt with a picture of a suit and tie on it; a sort of dickey, if you will. The band sounds as good as or better than ever: the synchronized piercing guitar, the perfect-pitch helium vocals. Leonard's fierce little face like a spitting-mad cat's. He sticks his middle finger in his ear, does that same little kicky-leg dance. I find that I've seen them so many times now that I know exactly how he'll move on stage, from the way to he snaps his towel at the guitar amp to the way he chokes that grimy plush penis during the bridge of If Stuart Could Talk. But man are they great. They plowed through one perfect song after another, a real Ramones set, and though the pit was sparse, Billy and I danced ourselves soaking wet -- like, actual soak: The back of my sweatshirt was saturated.

Billy snagged the actual set list by begging it off of their new bass player, a hulking dude who looks like a life-sized action figure, but here's an approximaton of what they played:

  • Killer Klowns From Outer Space
  • Welcome To The Diamond Mine
  • I'm OK, You're OK
  • Paranoid
  • I Got It At The Store
  • Give It Back
  • Doggy Doo
  • I'm Stan
  • Manny Moe & Jack
  • She's A Hunchback
  • Rosemary
  • See My Way
  • Going Homo
  • You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla)
  • Attack Of The Molemen
  • Gigantor
  • If Stuart Could Talk
  • Rondo In A Major (Midget's Revenge)
  • Banana Splits

Billy and Chris took the L back to Manhattan together, but Nina and I headed across the street to Mariella Pizzaria [sic], our go-to for sweaty, post-show pizza even though they pretty much always run out of pizza by the time we get there. They're one of those places that makes unconventional pizzas -- like, in addition to the regular combinations of cheese and marinara and, like, broccoli, there'll be a "pizza" that's just bread and chicken and thick brown barbecue sauce. A dude we'd seen in the crowd at the show was holding forth on the glory days of apartment squatting on the Lower East Side. His friend broke away for a moment to say hi. "That was the best version of 'Manny Moe & Jack' I've ever heard," he said. My voice was shot from screaming and I was exhausted. "Amazing show," I croaked. Someone else came in and tried to order a slice of plain, but there was no plain to be had, only barbecue. He left empty-handed.