A Love Letter to Diner

Dear Diner,

I love you.

Sure, you're sexist. Then again, you take place in 1959. If you weren't sexist, this would be a fantasy, and your strength is your realism. 

If any movie perfectly illustrates the dynamics of friendship without relying on stereotypes, this is it. You can keep your buddy films and your bromances and your coming-of-age. 

Diner is one of the only movies that leaves me with: Yes. This is how friends behave. This is friendship amongst a group of equals.  It's not about heroes and sidekicks or mentors and students or rivals that 'respect' each other.

I think one of the main reasons I identify with Diner so much is because there are (please don't hate me for where I'm headed, here) so fucking few healthy female friendships represented in popular culture. Why is it that female friends are always jealous and backstabby? My friends aren't like that. If I met a person like that, I would just not be friends with them.

Hollywood has very, very, very low expectations of friendship, especially with women. Stories about camaraderie are usually better friendship barometers than stories about friends.  Movies about growing up that are written or directed by a person who is, simultaneously, coming into their own self, are always the best.
 
Diner's success lies in the level of comfort these actors feel around each other, how they ricochet and couple and strain. I don't think I have a single friend I relate to in the exact same way as another. Friendships are fueled by reflection. It's how you respond to each other, the unique phrases you use, how you reminisce...if you reminisce at all. Some friends are for arguing and debates. Some friends need protection. Some give the best advice, some spill out a slow reveal of our similarities or flagrant differences.

The things that I remember about my friends are the parts that were easy, and those are the things I tell the most.  Staying up all night in on the train to New Orleans with Bobbay, shaking creamers because Muffy told us that if you shook a creamer, it would turn into butter. What did we talk about? Shit, I don't know. Buttermakers? I just know it was effortless and rad, and my favorite part of that trip was getting there. One summer I remember drinking around a fire reading passages from erotic novels with CrazyLiz and Phil and Tyler: I remember the nuances ("You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word" - Modell, Diner) and stress that each of used and how differently we all read the text. Driving around with Schmee in college looking for cigarettes, refusing to buy our own, just having a day. We weren't out of control or fucked up or anything, we were just...us. Sometimes it's the simple lazy times, when no one is faking it, when you're completely at ease and you don't need to work at anything, when you're not trying, when you're just effortlessly idle. But tthings end, and people grow.

Diner takes place just before the minute hand strikes sixties: the world is about to change, to call out the boys' collective narcissism and smash it up. But no matter what, they'll always have the guys at the diner.

Then they're getting married, having kids, starting new jobs and leaving town. But you know that the next time they're together, Modell and Eddie are going to bicker about absolutely anything and everything, Shrevie and Boogie will remain friendly, but tensely competitive, Fenwick will probably be drunk and brilliant and pissing off everyone else.

And it's stories we all know: the universal, gap-mouthed look Eddie gets when he realizes he just lost a pointless argument, but he still keeps arguing because he must, because he is making a goddamn point, and then later on he brushes it off, why so serious?

Seriously, Steve fucking Guttenberg is a goddamn genius in this movie (words that have never, ever been spoken, and technically they still haven't since I typed them, but whatever jerk). As far as I'm concerned his role (Eddie) is one the most well-actualized characters I have ever seen - because we know him, we can tell how he's going to react to anything outside the sphere of Diner because he does such a fucking perfect job reacting to things. I could go on and on and on, but that shit's boring to list and dazzling to watch. I'll let the movie do it.

In a way, I guess, it's about taking shit seriously: my serious business is much more fucking important than your serious business. Nah, just kidding, super sors, we cool?

Maybe it's because, stripped of the question of masculinity and what it means to be a man and all that bullshit (which I could talk about, but don't want to) Diner is really about learning who you are and admitting those faults, and how none of it matters with the people you love. 

Maybe I the reason I love Diner is because it's like...it's like when an old friend gives you a confident a kick in the ass and tells you to fuck off, so you do a round of shots and make fun of each other for five minutes and feel better about the world. 


Love,
Rassles

...

So I guess I have a Love Letters series now.  I mean, I do. Click here for the list so far.

P4C7

It's been decided that there will be a slightly impromptu Pub Chugga Chugga Choo Choo 7 next Saturday, in celebration of Bobbay's birthday.

And by "slightly" I mean "I fucking called it" and by "impromptu" I mean "we've been debating if this was plausible for a good two weeks and officially reached a decision on Tuesday in favor of debauchery."

Not that any of you are really coming, but I thought you'd like to know, so you can sit and stew in puddles of green envy, conjuring elaborate fantasies about loss of innocence and nubile twenty-somethings with insatiable appetites, floating in savory rivers of beer and drinking the juice directly from the vine, because that's exactly how shit's gonna go down. It's best represented by this equation:

(the Garden of Eden + train) x Jager = Pub Chugga Chugga Choo Choo.

...

The City of New Orleans: A Killer Combination

Day Four.

It was much easier to wake up that Tuesday than I expected. Which is a good thing, because after a whole lot of drunk talk the night before, we promised Tom Turner that we'd eat his Lucky Dogs.

Like I mentioned in that drunk blog, we met Tom Turner hanging out in front of a liquor store with a rusted tackle box and a fishing pole, and he and Margaret got to talkin' 'bout fishin'. That girl knows her shit, but I was slightly stumbly and slurry, and I know absolutely nothing about fishing so I can't even faux a retrospective dialogue.

So we were Turner’s first customers on Tuesday morning, and I'm not gonna lie: he served up the most disgusting hot dog I've ever eaten. It's not like I expected high-class Chicago dogs, but it tasted like someone baffed into a meat grinder and linked it up for stupid, drunken New Orleans tourists who keep their stupid, drunken promises to dirty old stupid, drunken fishermen.

Luckily we were scheduled to be at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop at noon for a cemetery tour and "the best bloody marys in town," because there's nothing like bloody, spicy, vodka-y goodness to carve away the taste of vile-ass hot dogs.

We get there early and strike up a conversation with a chatty old guy at the bar, who was all sorts of yellow. Yellowish hair, matching teeth. Yellowing fingertips fondling a newspaper and a cigarette. He sounds like he lost his voice fifteen years ago, straining for volume ever since. He offers to take a picture of us, and rambles on and on about restaurants we should visit and places to see, and tells us he’s a buggy driver and gives tours.

“You’re a buggy driver? Can I ask you a question?” I’m interested in this.

“Sure, but I think you just did.” He smiles. Yellowly.

“Why mules?”

“Oh, they're just more sure-footed, better suited for the heat than horses. Easier to feed, easier to train, you know.” He hands me his Official Buggy Driver Tour Guide card: Jeffrey Faar. He offers to take us on a buggy tour the next day, seeing as he’s got today off. A Grand Tour for us, he says. We're all for it. Fuck yeah, buggy tour with Jeffrey Faar.

While we're talking, Bloody Mary shows up. She’s our actual tour guide of the day, slightly snobby, highly spiritual, and crazy-educated on New Orleans history.

“Is one of you Muffy?” she asks, thudding her purse on the middle of our table.

“Yep, that’s me,” Muffy answers.

“Hello, Muffy, I’m Bloody Mary.” She turns her battered blonde head towards the bar. “Sweetie, can I get a seltzer water? With a lime.”

The bartender nods, annoyed at being called, “sweetie,” and does his job.

She lights a cigarette and makes small talk about our trip, ignoring Jeffrey Faar, who momentarily turns back to his newspaper. Her voice has a husky, irritable, sultry authority, like a condescending Jessica Rabbit who believes she's the patron saint of knowledge.

“What kinda tour you gals doin?” Jeffrey Faar hollers from behind me.

“Cemetery, and strolling through the French Quarter for a little bit of history about lost souls and local legends and...mysticism.” She flirts when she speaks, punctuating her words with little shrugs and suggestive eyebrows.

“Oh, cemetery tour huh?” He gestures to his newspaper. “You hear about that murder last night—“

“No, I don’t really read the newspaper,” she interrupts, crossing her legs. Finite.

“Oh. You goin up to Lafay-yett?”

"No, St. Louis. Actually, in an oddly poetic way, there was a suicide at Lafayette cemetery--"

There's a hacking cough, and Jeffrey Faar chimes in, "GEORGE?"

"Yes, George--"

"I knew him; he was a buggy driver!"

"Yes, he was. So's my husband. Actually—"

"He killed himself?" I interject, because of course I want in on this.

"What happened?" someone else asks. I have no idea who. Bloody marys make everything warm and forgetful.

"He got drunk and, well, went all on up to Lafay-yett,” Jeffrey Faar pokes his thumb towards the open doorway behind him, “an-an-and blew his brains out under a tree."

"Wow, that's a shame." Echoes and awkward sips all around.

"I actually performed a ritual ceremony for his mother and sister, it was really very sad,” Blood Mary says, somber.

"What happened?" I'm pretty sure that was Bobbay.

"Oh, well he was a manic depressive, you know," Jeffrey Faar puts down his cigarette and turns from his newspaper. "An' on toppa that a drinker."

"Ohhhhhh." Because we all understand drinker.

"An' you know that's lit-trally a killer combination."

"His family wanted a very private ceremony, too, because of just that,” Bloody Mary wisely nods, adjusting her leopard-print hoody. Seriously. Leopard.

"An’ so he was drinking, an’ with the medication an’ all that, an’ his mind couldn't handle it an’ so he blew his brains out----ahhhh, shoot," and Jeffrey Faar starts swatting the newspaper smoking beside him, flinging his burning, neglected cigarette off of page six and onto the floor.

"I burned page six," he calls to the bartender. "Sorry. I'm gonna get you another one, they're right down the street."

“Don’t worry about it, man,” the bartender responds from the back room.

Jeffrey Faar ignores him and continues talking to us, batting the newspaper. "Yeah an’ they had to cut down that tree, too. They say it's not because of George, and it's gotta be because of all the blood an’ brains on it or something."

Bloody Mary furrows. "No...I don't think that's true."

"Oh, well, that's just what I hear." And then he tries to convince her that the trumpet-playing angel over Louis Prima’s grave houses the soul of Prima and therefore his face, and where exactly you turn to get to see clearly it at whatever angle. Bloody Mary is skeptical and argumentative and bored with the conversation, telling him he's completely wrong while checking her red-as-hell lipstick in a pocket mirror.

Eventually, nearly mid-sentence and without warning, Jeffrey Faar up and hops on the bike resting next to the door and rides away, no goodbye or nothing.

“Did he just leave?” I look at Muffy.<

“Hyeah. He totally did.”

“Fucking whatever, man, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

Bloody Mary starts with her elaborate, well-acted history lesson, dismissing Jeffrey Faar completely. It’s interesting, really.

Then just before we leave, Jeffrey Faar returns to the bar, fresh newspaper in hand. As we leave the bar for the tour, he yells after us, in that taut, rasping voice of his,“You girls have fun!”

I make sure to shake his hand. “See you tomorrow, Jeffrey Faar.”

...

The City of New Orleans: Professional Drinkers Association

Day Three.

Because of the shatness of Bourbon Street, on Monday night we bought PBR silos and loitered on the sidewalk behind the cathedral in Jackson Square Park. Okay, sure, technically only Coors Light comes in silos, being the silver bullet and everything [nards] but you can't full well call a 24 oz can of heaven a tallboy when it's more than a tall order and you're drinking double the pleasure. So "silo" it is.

After striding around the block for awhile, two dirty crackheads plopped next to us on the sidewalk. We carried on conversations within our own individual groups, laughed at the same jokes and threw sporadic conversational interjections at each other.

A stranger ambled up after about half an hour, saddled with a low-slung back pack and munching out of a box of Crunch Berries with a long-handled spoon.

"Hey strangeh," called a crackhead. "Where yeh headin'?"

"Down Frenchmen street. There's a [some musical style] band playing at [some bar] and they got [some drink specials.]"

"Niiiiiice. I'll be headin down theah lateh."

"Cooo, maybe I'll see ya."

"Aiight. I'll be lookin fer the boxxah Crunch Berries." They exchanged smiles and a handslapfingersnap, and Crunch Berry Guy drifted away with his box and spoon.

I looked at Muffy. "I am hungry. And that guy was awesome."

"Dude. Yes."

"He is not an amateur."

"Hell no, that guy's definitely a professional. I'll bet he gets paid to be fucked up."

"I would pay him to be fucked up."

"I would give you half."

"And then I'd double his fucking salary."

"Crunch Berry Guy is so pro he's got a Masters In Professional Fuckedupness."

"Yeah, but that M.P.F. was bestowed upon him in the streets. Being a Professional in a field such as ours is a natural talent. That's some shit you can't learn at Tulane."

"Fuck Tulane."

"Unless he went to Kellogg. Now that's a school for Professional management."

"HAH! For sure, dude. And Crunch Berry guy manages to mix business and cereal."

"Dude, cereal is business. That's what they teach you at Kellogg."

"Cereal is serious business."

"They should really leave cereal for the Professionals."

"PDA 2009, dude. P. D. A."

We hung out there for a couple of hours before wandering back to the hotel, where I ate some Cheetos, wrote a drunk blog, and then convinced Muffy and Amber to head back out with me.

I led them to the casino across the street. I was just itching to play craps. Seriously itching. Took twenty dollars cash and an ID, because if I'd had plastic on me I would have diced my ass off. Nearly two hours of craps and free drinks, and I passed out back at the hotel with fifteen still in my pocket. Muffy and Amber weren't as lucky, but then again, they don't play craps.

And I am a Professional.

But the highlight of the night was back on the sidewalk, leaning against the fence behind that cathedral.

"I came here twenty-two years ago with my dad--" the older dirty crackhead began, his voice surprisingly clear and pleasant, without an ounce of the grit we expected, "--and he was like, I'll be right back."

He paused to light a cigarette, taking a long, slow drag. "I'm still waiting," he exhales in an expert stream of smoke. "He never came back."

We exchanged secret glances, listening in on his confession.

"So I fucking went to Mardi Gras and sold my roller skates for crack."

...

The City of New Orleans: The Perception of Cool

Day Two.

As we eased into New Orleans on Sunday afternoon, once again, Muffy took it upon herself to play that song again on speakers, for the train to hear. This time, however, all of the patrons that we'd befriended over the past several hours sang along with us.

There was this old Irish woman whose son lived in Kankakee, IL, and got all excited when Willie dropped the town name in the song. A gentleman from Memphis kept on singing out, "Good morning, America, how are ya?" on repeat, laughing in embarrassment, but playing along anyway. Others, too, whose names and life situations I completely forget.

It was like living in the jaunty, annoyingly elevated and rosy minds of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Secretly, I loved it, and in my head, a motley crew of strangers harvested complex vocal harmonies and shared rhythmic dance sequences with the steel rails of the train, and singers dropped their personal lines with smiling, coaxing asides to scowling passengers who eventually realized that they needed to lighten up and live, dammit, and in the end succumb to the raw power of Willie Nelson and his proverbial back-up singers.

Jesus, I don't even know if that made sense.

We stepped onto the platform, twenty minutes after the song was over, and people were still humming the tune, singing with each other.

In the end, though, I think everyone was just really excited to get off the goddamn train.

Immediately the five of us snagged a cab and headed straight to a show at the Dragon's Den, packs and all, just so we could watch a band from Indiana that we see all the frakking time in Chicago.

On our way to the show, our cab dragged behind a short man in a vest and fedora riding a doubledecker lamplighter bicycle and balancing a live rooster on its high horse handlebars.

The Dragon's Den is on the border of the French Quarter and Bywater, littered with those heroin chic little crust punk fuckers.

You know the type. The ones who are trying so hard to express their individuality through fashion, and in the end just all look like a clan of dirty little homeless people, with torn clothing and too much eyeliner. The punk-punched leftovers of last night's party...why do they try so hard to be each other? Individuality should be effortless.

Just as an aside, to the naysaying elitists: the harder you try to be different, the more of yourself you will lose. You are conforming to the movement of non-conformity, and there's already tens of thousands hiding in there, striving for cool. I propose that to truly be different, you must first abolish the concept of "cool," because really, that's all that's holding everyone back from becoming what they want: they're afraid it won't be cool enough for their peers.

Define cool however you want. It could be crust punk and dreadlocks, it could be power suits and couture handbags, it could be serving fried catfish at a Christian Mission House, it could be dried flowers and old oiled leather. Murder the concept cool, cement and bag it, because you don't need it, and it's holding you back.

At least I think you don't. I could be wrong.

Now, Bourbon Street? That's not cool. I know, I know, I said murder the concept of cool and don't judge and be yourself and all that business, but seriously, fuck that succession of city blocks. Amateurs, the lot of them, puking and pissing and crying all over themselves. One girl: riding a mechanical bull with a short skirt and an open crotch, giggling uncomfortably, embarrassed at getting mad at the operator, who gyrated the bull and pimped out her box for the bar, grinning like a pedophile at the playground.

Bobbay yelled at that guy for nonconsensual eye-rape of a girl too scared and stupid to stand up for herself. I have never been prouder of a friend.

And so, the Professional Drinkers Association was born: consisting of Us, passing drunks their good, solid reputation back, with a handshake and a guffaw, not as slutty bullshit Tinkerbells oblivious to action, but as sloppy, poetic fighters and dreamers and champions of hilarity and conversational soul.

Welcome to New Orleans.

...

The City of New Orleans: Deborah in a Tizzy

Day One.

On the train they call The City of New Orleans, one of the Amtrak employees threatened to call the Amtrak police on us within five minutes. Deborah. That's her name. Obviously, Miss Deborah was having a real honk of a day (Is that a phrase? That should be a phrase), and she wanted to take it out on the five girls who smuggled liquor onto the train. She didn't know we smuggled liquor, though, and she didn't know that a member of our party was carrying pot, and she didn't know that we were going to be harassing all of the Amtrak employees about the frequency of train stops where some of us could take smoke breaks, or that we were going to hang out in the lounge car being loud for the duration of the twenty hour trip.

But Deborah was upset with us because we settled into some seats that were "Reserved for parties of three two or more" according to the piece of flimsy chicken-scratched paper tacked up above the chairs, and Muffy whipped out a marker to made necessary adjustments, so the sign read, "Reserved for parties of three two or more Us."

So Deborah got her inner-workings all bunchy and flipped out on us for destroying Amtrak property.

Then, just to be more obnoxious, the second our train starting chugging out of Union Station on Saturday night, Muffy cranked up her Ipod speakers and we all sang along to Willie Nelson, because I mean, come on, when you're on the train they call The City of New Orleans, it's like a rule or something.

Muffy got it into her head that if you shook up a little cup of half-and-half long enough, eventually you'd get butter. Silly Muffy. All you're gonna get is gross warm milk. But Muffy wanted butter, and Bobbay and I sat in the lounge car, taking it upon ourselves to see the butter process through after she passed out. We'd finished all of the alcohol, so really, what was the point of her staying up anyway? Other than making butter?

So I'm just hanging out, shaking the cream, churning the butter, and I turn to Bobbay. "Seriously. Muffy's all, 'I want butter.' And then she makes us do all the work."

"She's lazy," Bobbay shrugs.

"I know. What kind of buttermaker is she?"

"She's...a half-assed buttermaker."

I slam the creamer down on the table. "She is a half-assed buttermaker."

And then, just to prove the exchange existed, Bobbay and I recorded ourselves overacting that dialogue about forty times over the next three hours before heading back to our seats, attempting sleep.

...

On another note, I would like to apologize to anyone I drunkenly emailed any time over this past week.

...

We Need More Beer.

If anyone lives in Carbondale, our train will be there at 1:21 AM. Please drop off one case of PBR...hold on...a fifth of Jager, and some peppermint schnapps to the Carbondale Amtrak station. Because we are out of liquor.

We have a five minute window. You must be there between 1:21 and 1:26 AM.

Thank you for your time.

You will be paid back in cash money, karma and possible blow jobs, but probably not from Bobbay. Or Margaret. Or Amber. Or me, really. Okay, so Muffy might suck you off.

...