Except for the Nazis, it was such a sexy week. But sexy or not, what's a Friday night without watching big Aryan goons pummel one another? For just that reason, we skipped merrily down to the Juke Joint-at which I'd had such a marvelous time with The Dickies last week-for the Agent Orange show. Silly little naive me, I expected the same older mellow crowd of people who've been punk-rock for the past 27 years and have gotten most of the urge to give people curb jobs-that's where you put someone's open mouth on the edge of a curb and then jump on his head-out of their systems.
“Let's get away from the Nazis,” my homegirl Arrissia said.
“How can you tell they're Nazis?” I asked, always ready to learn something new.
“The first clue is usually the big Swastika tattoos on their necks,” she explained. “The second is the bald head. The third is the silly dance they do.”
We stopped and watched delightedly as one egregiously stupid man-he kept grabbing the prodigious bellies of the guys in Drain Bramaged as they wound up their fun, synchronized-jumping set-was dragged out by a bouncer.
“The fourth is when they're dragged out of here on their ass by a really pissed-off bouncer,” Arrissia added.
We liked Drain Bramaged, we liked The Pushers-an extraordinarily attractive bunch of old punk rockers who play around with The Adz a lot-we liked Agent Orange, and heck, we liked watching the Nazis try to kill one another. It was exciting, having to constantly fear that your child will be left motherless while some cute little berserk Aryan girl (gotta wonder what her home life was like!) grabs people who are standing nowhere near the pit and shoves them into whoever's holding the most drinks. If I'd only known she'd be there, I would have worn my “I'm a Big Jew” T-shirt.
And the silly dance? Forgive me for having said skanking looked stupid last week; compared with what I witnessed (slack-jawed) in the pit, watching skanking is like watching Swan Lake. Trashy white boys exhibit a breathtaking lack of grace when flailing their arms and goosestepping.
Nonetheless, we now like the Juke Joint; it's just the kind of place where you need to know a few people to feel comfortable, and we're now on friendly terms with George the Bouncer, who's about 5-foot-4 and built like an entire masked-Mexican-wrestling team if they came in teams of, oh, I don't know, eight. We also like the promoter, Scott Tucker, who had 86ed a lot of the Nazis for dealing drugs in the parking lot at another show and asked me sweetly, “If I buy your drinks for the rest of the night, will you put my name in your column?” Someone's starting to get the picture!
Saturday was 00Soul at the Foothill-and it's just about the sexiest show this side of Rio de Janeiro. Looking for a hot Costa Mesa leather-pants-wearing rock star? They're hanging out beneath the portraits of Johnny Cash and Elizabeth Taylor! Looking for cute Austin Powers-y Mod guys? They're there, too, in their natty gray suits! Old ladies? Yup! Seven-foot-tall, sweet-as-kitty-cats Vietnam vets with dreadlocks down to their asses? At least one! Shaved-head gangsta-looking guys? They're your new best friends! Big happy groups of life-of-the-party hairdressers? They're shimmying up and down your body along with 750 other people in the 475-person capacity club, while the groovily multicultural, multigeneration 00Soul blow and blow, and you shake your bootie like an epileptic while drunks in fake British accents hungrily tell you you're a sexy chicken. Lawdy! And it's all yours for $7, plus drinks and a tip for Hank, the mean old bastard behind the main bar who, no matter how well and how often you tip, will still be surly, slow and make a rotten vodka tonic. I'll send $1 to anyone who can tell me (and be honest, please) they've made Hank smile.
We were back again the next night (we'd sneaked out early from John Hammond at the ultrabitchen Blue Cafe because we hate concerts where everyone sits; even the prospect of the devilishly handsome roots rocker Jimmy Intveld playing later that night couldn't keep us there) for Wink Mussleman and His Quartet of Shame. Sundays are Surf Lounge night at the Foothill, but-d'oh!–Planet Seven, a surf band from San Francisco, showed up at 8 p.m., saw an empty bar (shows don't start until 9 p.m. anyway, and even for 00Soul, with their fire marshal's nightmare of a turnout, no one got there before 9:30) and went back to San Francisco. There's just no excuse for that-even though they turned out to be right about the crowd.
But it was just as well: the six audience members and five employees (including doorman-to-the-stars Mike Meyer, heh, heh, heh) got a double dose-a lethal dose, really-of Wink Mussleman. There was a whole lot of love in the room, especially among the shameless sluts who make up the handsome, tuxedoed Quartet of Shame. Except for the nice old guy on keys, who was an honest-to-God real lounge guy back in the lounge day, the quartet spend an awful lot of time French kissing one another, telling child-molester jokes, and “simulating” gay sex on- and offstage while Wink croons “That's Why That Filthy Crackwhore Is a Tramp” and dons a plastic lei and a captain's hat for Captain & Tennille's “Muskrat Love.” He's the most! Especially when he drunkenly points to people who aren't there and winks and dimples and tells them they're fabulous.
Meanwhile, the sprawling, union-hall-sized place was so perfectly empty that there was plenty of time for the barkeep (no, not Hank, who after all is a mean old bastard, but Rick, who's not only a former Air Force man, but he's also in grad school, and if there's one thing I love more than an Irish bartender, it's one who's getting his master's) to come out from behind the bar and glide me gracefully around the floor. I believe our song was the theme from Love Boat. Somebody do me a favor and marry that man! Anna-whose juicy tacos are Long Beach's best-kept secret because, hell, it's scary to order food through a window in a time warp of a bar-came out from her kitchen and laughed her ass off. Why? Because Wink Mussleman and His Quartet of Shame are completely retarded. Do, do, do! do yourself a favor, and don't miss Wink's Happy Birthday Jesus Christacular on Dec. 19 at Java Lanes! I'll be the one swooning.
Lastly, I'd like to take a moment to wish a happy holiday to all our big Jew friends, and we hope to see you all Sunday at the Foothill for the trs-punk A Very Fauntleroy Hanukkah. They're retarded, and they wear knickers! Nazis, stay home.
