“Hey, You!” read the missive. “We're the old Fullerton punks who get together with each other at our annual 12 Bars of Christmaspub crawl. The number of pub crawlers tagging along with us has grown and grown over the last couple of years, so we decided to try and shake the uninvited extra people this year by moving our pub crawl forward one weekend and keeping quiet about it. Unfortunately, thanks to your totally thoughtless decision to publish the information in your column that appeared on the next to the last page of last week's issue of a local weekly alternative newspaper, our efforts to ditch those uninvited people didn't work at all. As if anyone who has ever attended 12 Bars in the past can't guess which bar we start in (every year) and what time! You have NO IDEA how close you came to receiving a beat-down at the hands of a gang of angry clowns on Saturday night.
“Thanks a lot, blabbermouth!
“Angry Clown Posse“
Why, I'm pretty sure they're talking about me!
The most amazing thing about the Angry Clown Posse's letter is that it didn't contain a single misspelling or grammatical mistake, leading me to wonder about the street cred of the old punks who writed it. (Tall Drink of Water Cher Greenleaf, is that you, dear?) The next most amazing thing was the supposition they could have kicked my ass. I punched a clown in the mouth Saturday night, for what I'm pretty sure was no reason at all (besides the fact that the clown in question had former HOB booker JohnPantle underneath, and in any court in the land, that's justifiable socking) and I still can't get it off my knuckles. (Also, I kicked him in the nards.) The least most amazing thing was the rage. There's the old Fullerton punks I know and love!
As for the punks' complaint, I call, as always, bullshit on that. Saturday's 12 Bars was fratty-stankeye-throwing-stranger-free (probably due to the rain) and was down to the HawaiianShirt Club essentials. And I know for a fact that at least one extraneous soul didn't show up when he learned I would be there!
You can thank me later.
A few dozen of us (the count was down from a couple hundred last year, clowns!), with half a dozen in Barnum N Bailey regalia (the big shoes almost made for Cameltoe the Clownbreaking his hip in the rain), half-a-dozen more in kitty-cat masks, one lass in a furry Rudolph kit, and everyone who wasn't dressed up quickly ending up with clown on their face and clown in their hair, wassailed from Angelo N Vinci (Bar One) to Roscoe's Deli (Bar 12), getting kicked out of bars along the way. By Bar Two (Hidalgo's), I was screaming at Pantle that I would fuck him in the ass, but it wasn't until Bar 11 (Heroes) that I got 86ed for smoking. It was fairly stupid of me, but it wasn't like I wanted to stay, and so I stumbled across the parking lot to Roscoe's. There, the barmaid gave me $3 change from a $20 for a (much-needed) sandwich, which I'm still kind of bitter about, but when I pointed it out to the bar manager, another bar wench came over and said, a bit too forcefully, “It was just a mistake.”
Yeah, no bartender would ever try to shortchange a drunk.
I'm not sure at which bar I copped a cup of the guy in the kilt, but I know I was still sober for the rendition of “Clownarchy in the UK,” which was ferociously stupid, and I'd expect nothing less.
And how many bars did I make it to this year? Apparently, 14.
The trick is never to start with gin, or to end with gin, or to drink gin anywhere in the middle.
I heard the OC Weekly Christmas party, at the same time Saturday night, was good too. (Pictures can be found on The Dirt.) Mary Reilly reports there were 500 people there, and that the open bar kept getting extended, and that everyone had the most blastest of blasts. (Our photo gal, Jennie Warren, says she was mistaken for me because she was double-fisting Champagne.) I probably should have gone to that, but at 12 Bars at least people know who I am—else to whom would they deliver their beat-down?—and you can't say the same for OC Weekly fetes.
It was with sadness I learned that my imaginary boyfriend, Brendan Donnelly, is leaving the Angels and is Beantown-bound. But then Lowery and Wielenga took much pleasure in informing me he was a scab (because the conversation was about neither hot rods nor gabardines, Theo Douglas just smiled and looked confused), and so I would have had to keep our love secret from Commie Mom anyway.
Besides, Daniel Craig is a far better imaginary lay.
When I took my small buttercup of a son for an anniversary movie date to Casino RoyaleSunday, I didn't know he'd be sitting next to his mother while she tittered in carnal glee. “Jesus Christ!” I was mumbling, and “Sweet Mary,” I was moaning, followed by a pithy “Uuuuhhhhhh!”
Luckily, he's sort of used to it, since we've been together now 11 years, and all he did was roll his eyes.
Happy anniversary, sweet boy. And you shouldn't be reading this filthy rag.
