Redeye June 24 2004
A Tramp, Video Vamp, Demolition Woman...: I have a new motto, and that is: “You can’t take two 6-foot-tall black women in platform shoes and miniskirts anywhere. Anywhere you don’t want to get attention, that is.”
My friends Soni and Chastity were in town last week. One’s a semi-professional dominatrix, the other a go-go dancer at a swingers club, among their other claims to fame. Both traveling bondage barmaids are from New Orleans, and people from N.O. exist in reverse: They have to drink daily so they don’t dry out and lose the struggle with dementia. Of course, they also act as magnets for the sublime. Especially buxom ones wearing T-shirts two sizes too small.
So we’re at Eastside Lounge for Monday night’s Post-MODern video vanguard, digging the sights/sounds of the British inversion. Garage rock becomes glossy pop, Long Island ice teas become Long Beach ice teas, and the ladies are threatening to dance on the bar, almost breaking furniture while trying to find a go-go podium, and loudly demanding someone help lace their panties back up. That’s just typical.
The surreal part was a to-remain-nameless cat who persisted his way into our conversation, blurring lines more than our already free pour-addled vision could decipher. He came on as trisexual, apparently up to try anything with any of us. Eastside may have those infamously massive unisex bathrooms, but it wasn’t about no afta party — the only threesome that night was the three of us staggering home ...
... Only to see me stagger, well, more like swagger, back in Eastside for Wednesday’s Voyeur night, thrown by Kim of Criminal Records. This time, I had a couple of other friends in tow, and I was seriously encouraging them to make a memory up against the bathroom’s full-length mirror. But instead we all chilled to an eclectric array of videos from DJ Shadow, Prince and Liars, among others. Both evenings get a stamp of unobtrusive approval, so find you someone, nestle in, and ask for Johnny to keep the drinks strong and the will weak.
What’s Fonzie?
On Sat., June 19, James and DeAnna Cool celebrated their BasicLux label’s latest New Sound Theory compilation by smoothing the mood of the Mark’s subterranean terrarium of boutique strut. Congratulations. Later, Rareform’s Tim DeGroot — who had celebrated his birthday at the Mark the previous evening — and electrophonic enfant terrible Richard Devine rolled through, so we talked Internet scat videos while getting shit-faced. The evening closed around the corner at the recently serendipitously placed 24-hour Landmark Diner, where our party alternately snacked and napped. Good feeling more “town” than “down” in the area.
Keep one RedEye open. And send all comments, questions, observations and invitations to redeye@creativeloafing.com.